Kevin’s Daily Digest, 5/6/16

GM and Ford moving fast on self-driving cars, major milestone crossed in U.S. coal plant retirements, the chart that puts the Fort MacMurray fire in context, Tesla enters Bioweapon Defense Mode, and more.

The Daily Digest, published Monday-Friday, focuses on the latest news in renewables, storage and electric vehicles. For more follow me on Twitter @kkchristy.

GM and Ford lean on Lyft and Pivotal for help in developing self-driving cars (LA Times). “Ford announced an $182.2-million investment in Pivotal Software Inc., a San Francisco company whose programs are already used by the likes of Lockheed Martin and Allstate Corp., to quickly develop their own computer applications. “Expanding our business to be both an auto and mobility company requires leading-edge software expertise,” Ford Chief Executive Mark Fields said in a statement. And officials at General Motors and ride-hailing app Lyft Inc. said they had made significant progress toward developing self-driving Chevrolet Volt cabs for use at the automaker’s Warren, Mich., campus by the end of the year. That could put Lyft on a faster course than larger rival Uber Technologies Inc., which hopes to bring self-driving cars to passengers by 2020.”

U.S. CROSSES MAJOR MILESTONE IN COAL RETIREMENTS (Sierra Club). “Yesterday’s announced retirement highlights the great progress of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign and its allies to phase out coal plants at a rate that has averaged one coal plant announced to retire every ten days since 2010. To date, this coalition has helped announce the retirement of 101,673 MW of coal electricity, which includes 232 coal plants and 662 coal units across the country. As coal plants are retiring at record rates nationwide, states are also making major investments in wind and solar power, fueling the transition to local clean energy economies. In Illinois, for example, there has been a massive build out of clean energy over the past decade, with more than 113,000 workers currently employed in Illinois’ clean energy industry today.”

Putting the Tesla HEPA Filter and Bioweapon Defense Mode to the Test (Tesla Motors). “Inspired by the air filtration systems used in hospitals, clean rooms, and the space industry, we developed a HEPA filtration system capable of stripping the outside air of pollen, bacteria, and pollution before they enter the cabin and systematically scrubbing the air inside the cabin to eliminate any trace of these particles. The end result is a filtration system hundreds of times more efficient than standard automotive filters, capable of providing the driver and her passengers with the best possible cabin air quality no matter what is happening in the environment around them.”

Leading by Example: State and Local Governments Are Adopting Electric Vehicles (Center for American Progress). “Incorporating EVs into public fleets makes budgetary sense as well as environmental sense. The cost of fueling an EV is lower than the cost of using gasoline or diesel for fleet vehicles, and across all regions of the United States, driving an EV produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than the average new car powered by gasoline. Public fleets are well suited to using EVs because they often have set routes, so public officials can predict daily charging needs. If the fleet is based around an agency hub, for example, the EVs can be charged at a centralized location.”

US wind takes on gas (Renews). “The US wind energy market is the most competitive in the world in terms of the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE), according to consultancy Make. The company said in a research paper that US competitiveness is because of the economies of scale that have been created in Texas and the Midwest region.”

4 drivers of solar growth utilities need to know (UtilityDive). “[T]o better understand solar’s growth, stakeholders must understand how four key themes are responsible for shaping the solar narrative, according to Cory Honeyman, a senior solar analyst at GTM Research. These four themes are: time-of-use rates, breakout of community solar, corporate buyers looking to procure green energy and the potential that the current boom will not carry over into 2017. “All are indirectly or directly in the hands of utilities,” said Honeyman said.”