Month: September 2021

Enlarge / Major Hurricane Sam is, fortunately, going to avoid landmasses as it churns away. (credit: NOAA)

It has been another record-setting hurricane season in the Atlantic basin, with a total of 19 named storms so far. It has been so busy that, with still more than two months to go until the season's end, the National Hurricane Season is probably going to run out of names for the second year in a row.

Currently in the Atlantic, Hurricane Sam is rampaging across open waters. Fortunately this major hurricane is unlikely to threaten any landmasses. Behind Sam, it's possible that Victor and Wanda will form during the next few days. Neither of these storms, either, poses any immediate threat to land.

If they do form, these two storms would exhaust the allotment of "official" names the National Hurricane Season uses for tropical storms and hurricanes. (Because the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z are not commonly used for names, they don't appear on the list of Atlantic names). In years past, the Miami-based hurricane center would then start assigning Greek letters for excess named storms.

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  This is the BrightDrop EV410, a new electric delivery commercial vehicle from General Motors. [credit: BrightDrop ]

In January, General Motors created a new electric vehicle brand. It's called BrightDrop, and like GM's legacy brands that are electrifying, it, too, will use the company's forthcoming Ultium batteries and Ultium Drive electric motors. Unlike the rest of GM's brands, this one is aimed squarely at the fleet market. At the time, GM CEO Mary Barra revealed that Fedex would be BrightDrop's first customer. On Tuesday, BrightDrop announced that Verizon will also start using the electric vans.

In fact, Verizon will use a second BrightDrop vehicle, called the EV410. This uses the same battery pack and motor as the EV600 that we saw in FedEx colors at the start of the year. It will also offer the same 250-mile (402 km) range and come with the same package of safety systems. The biggest difference is the size and the amount of cargo each can carry; the EV410 is shorter overall than the EV600 and can carry 410 cubic feet (11,610 L) versus the bigger van's 600 cubic feet (16,990 L).

Meanwhile, BrightDrop is completing the first production EV600s, which are destined to start work for Fedex this holiday season. BrightDrop has contracted out the initial low-volume manufacturing to an unnamed supplier in Michigan while it refits GM's CAMI Assembly Plant in Ingersoll, Canada. EV600 production at CAMI is scheduled for late 2022, but Verizon has a longer wait on its hands—EV410 production won't begin until the following year.

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  The Rivian R1T is the first electric pickup truck to reach the market. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo.—Hats off to Rivian. Until 2018, almost no one had heard of the company. Now, it has brought the first battery electric pickup truck to market ahead of electric vehicle giant Tesla and just-plain-giant Ford, and this vehicle is aimed at a distinct buyer when compared to the everyman F-150 Lightning or the Mars colonist's Cybertruck. The $67,500 R1T is for people who like exploring the outdoors—this is an adventure truck. And to put that claim to the test, last week we drove one up a mountain and back.

Rivian got started in 2009 and toyed with the idea of a number of different vehicles until it settled on a pair of battery electric vehicles—a truck and SUV—to begin with. Both were to be built in a former Mitsubishi factory in Normal, Illinois, that the company bought in 2017. The following year, the company emerged from "stealth mode," and in 2019, I got to check out the concept R1T at that year's New York auto show, where it pushed all the right buttons.