News Roundup: Collegiate Competition, Car Sharing, and EV Chargers

This week’s news roundup includes some of everything with a hybrid ferry, a collegiate competition for autonomous cars, some car sharing updates, and a lot more. Here we go!

A new hybrid cargo ferry in Vancouver runs on liquid natural gas and electricity in a hybrid-electric powertrain. The ferry was delivered to Seaspan Ferries and will be used to haul cargo between Vancouver Island and British Columbia. The company will add four more ferries this year and next.

SAE International and GM have announced a new collegiate competition for autonomous technology using the Chevrolet Bolt as the platform. The competition is called the AutoDrive Challenge and will be a three-year autonomous vehicle challenge wherein students will demonstrate a fully autonomous passenger vehicle based on the Bolt. Learn about it all here.

The future of car sharing has been outlined by car2go Europe’s CEO. Thomas Beermann, presented six assumptions about the future of car sharing now that over 14,000 cars are in the car2go program globally. Read them here.

California Public Utilities Commission approves EV charging program from PG&E adding 7,500 stations in Northern California. The approval allows the Pacific Gas & Electric plan to move forward towards installing the public charging infrastructure they’ve planned.

NHTSA has proposed a rule to mandate vehicle-to-vehicle communications for light-duty vehicles. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has issued the proposed rule in order to receive comment.

Volkswagen has unveiled a Dynamic Road Sign Display system that reads relevant road signage and shows them to the driver. This is similar to systems by Volvo and others that read speed limit signs and the like.

General Motors will begin testing and manufacturing autonomous vehicles in Michigan. The program will take advantage of Michigan’s new SAVE Act, which allows the use of some public roads for testing.