Boats are following in the wake of cars when it comes to electrification.

Tech Brew recently caught up with Mitch Lee, CEO and co-founder of electric boat manufacturing startup Arc, about the company’s newest product, its expansion into the commercial segment, and how it hopes to help the marine industry catch up to its automotive counterpart.

“Boats make even more sense to go electric than cars do,” Lee told us. “The percent improvement you [get] from gas powertrain to electric powertrain is dramatically higher when you’re on the water, because gas boats are notoriously bad at what they do.”

Coasting: The LA-based company recently unveiled a model called the Arc Coast, a 24-foot all-electric center console boat, which is commonly used for fishing. TechCrunch reported that, with a starting price of $168,000, the Coast will be Arc’s most affordable product yet.

Features of the Arc Coast, which seats 10, include a redesigned helm; a touchscreen with navigation, entertainment, and diagnostics; and over-the-air software updates. The model reflects Arc’s strategies of vertical integration and using the same electric platforms to support multiple products, which the company says have enabled it to get products to market quickly.

Keep reading here.—JG

Engineers working on the Cadillac Celestiq—an ultra-luxury, hand-built, bespoke electric sedan with a starting price tag of around $340,000—contemplated numerous ways to make the center of the vehicle’s metal steering wheel.

Ultimately, they opted to 3D print the part, because “additive manufacturing [or 3D printing] was the only [method] that came in with the right ability to create the very fine details and the thin, delicate nature of that part, and still be able to hit the cost targets” for the Celestiq, Brennon White, technical specialist for additive manufacturing product integration at General Motors, told Tech Brew.

The team employed “metal laser powder bed fusion technology,” which, GM explained in a blog post, “uses a laser to infuse layers of metal, creating durable parts with geometries that are impossible to produce through traditional manufacturing processes.”

Those considerations—whether additive manufacturing both meets functional requirements and makes economic sense—guided GM’s use of the technology on the Celestiq, which features more than 130 3D-printed parts.

“Anytime you’ve got a low-volume vehicle…[additive manufacturing is] a great solution set. However, Celestiq really allowed us to take design advantages that we would be struggling to be able to fit in other spaces,” White said. “And there was a mandate to give the customer something they couldn’t get someplace else. And that really made us look for manufacturing methodologies that were able to provide something you couldn’t do.”

Keep reading here.—JG

That little blue Energy Star logo affixed to energy-efficient home appliances is at risk of being cut by the Environmental Protection Agency, and trade and consumer organizations are pleading with the Trump administration to save it. Their actions are the latest in a slew of letters and pronouncements from professional organizations asking the federal government not to cut programs and tax credits.

The Energy Star program, which was created by the EPA and Department of Energy under President George H.W. Bush, sets energy-efficiency standards for home appliances. In turn, those that meet the standards can advertise with the program’s logo. Earlier this month, CNN reported that the EPA was planning to shut down Energy Star, and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has now said that he hopes to privatize the program.

In response to the news that Energy Star might be shuttered, Consumer Reports, a nonprofit product testing organization, urged the EPA to “find a way to preserve” it.

“If this popular program goes away, it would be a big loss for the millions of consumers who’ve come to recognize and trust the label every time they shop for major products and appliances,” Consumer Reports’ associate director for product sustainability, research, and testing Shanika Whitehurst said in a statement. “The loss would hit especially hard at a time when people are dealing with unpredictable energy bills and trying to cut expenses.”

Keep reading here.—TC