Transportation Research News
Explore our archive of transportation and mobility research news stories.
Dec. 20, 2024
NREL's partnerships with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Department of State, and countries and organizations across the globe are accelerating social, technical, and economic development worldwide.
Dec. 19, 2024
A collaboration between NREL and Purdue University to create an optimized hydraulic system for farm tractors could increase their hydraulic efficiency by 50%.
Dec. 5, 2024
Asked to describe transportation in rural areas, you might picture a rancher kicking up the dust of a long country road with a pickup truck or a farmer using a tractor to harvest acres of crops.
Nov. 12, 2024
The one-stop shop for the latest transportation technology cost and performance data is back with even more data.
Nov. 11, 2024
As communities look for tools to navigate their electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure projects, NREL and the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation developed a one-stop shop playbook to help communities plan for their EV charging needs.
Oct. 29, 2024
Researchers from NREL have released a new version of the Transportation Technology Total Cost of Ownership tool, known as T3CO—the most sophisticated open-source commercial vehicle TCO tool available today.
Oct. 10, 2024
How do researchers examine the relationships between various factors within a given system, how they could change, and how those changes ultimately lead to different behaviors in the system over longer periods of time? The answers to those questions may lie within a sophisticated modeling method known as system dynamics.
Sept. 30, 2024
Researchers from NREL and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory broke new ground by surveying the national state of smart charge management strategies.
Sept. 30, 2024
From current on-road vehicles to future electrified aircraft, the safety and reliability of energy storage systems is critical across battery applications.
Sept. 30, 2024
NREL's world-class power electronics researchers are reimagining the propulsion system for U.S. military ground combat vehicles. Their new silicon carbide (SIC)-based inverter design will give military vehicles 200% greater range at a fourth of the size of predecessor technology.
Sept. 25, 2024
As electric vehicles (EVs) continue to grow their share of the market, several federal agencies are transitioning their own fleets to EVs, too.
Sept. 20, 2024
Barriers that are currently preventing the use of greater percentages of biomass-based diesel fuel blended into petroleum diesel have been identified, along with strategies to overcome them.
Sept. 5, 2024
A group of 10 stakeholders from the Lao People's Democratic Republic visited NREL to advance the country's vehicle electrification and clean energy transition goals.
Aug. 27, 2024
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is extending its "Powered By" webinar series to feature more grid planning and analysis tools starting on Sept. 10.
Aug. 8, 2024
Khan is a researcher within NREL's Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences and has been named a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Aug. 5, 2024
Soft costs for the private and public electric vehicle supply equipment needed to support electric vehicle fleets are essential to the transportation sector's electrification but are not well understood.
July 30, 2024
Electric vehicles have moved beyond novelty to ubiquity, with approximately 1.6 million light-duty electric vehicles were sold in the United States last year. NREL researchers are doing what they can to make sure the experience of driving an EV is a positive one.
July 22, 2024
Reducing capital and viability risks for infrastructure investment decisions will accelerate the adoption of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. NREL is helping stakeholders forecast demand and minimize infrastructure buildout costs.
July 16, 2024
Sreekant Narumanchi, who leads NREL's Advanced Power Electronics and Electric Machines group, was chosen as one of NREL's Distinguished Researchers in 2024.
July 15, 2024
Each year, awards are presented to individuals from Department of Energy national laboratories and other partner organizations for their contributions to overall program efforts and in recognition of their research, development, demonstration, and deployment achievements in specific areas.
June 27, 2024
The U.S. Department of Energy has selected two new projects to benefit from a premier grid control evaluation capability at NREL.
June 26, 2024
Seeking ways to build EV charging capacity, Sedona, Arizona participated in a peer-learning cohort through the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Energy to Communities (C2C) program focused on planning and funding strategies for EV charging infrastructure deployment.
June 17, 2024
Massive public and private investments are being made to support the buildout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the United States, but efficient planning and deployment require sophisticated analysis to ensure convenient, reliable, affordable, and equitable charging for all Americans.
June 14, 2024
The U.S. Department of Energy Hydrogen Program honored five NREL researchers for their outstanding achievements at the 2024 Annual Merit Review and Peer Evaluation Meeting.
June 11, 2024
Electric vehicles that use high-power charging are quickly becoming the new standard—understanding the grid impacts of high-power charging will ensure inter-grid reliability and keep charging costs low.
June 10, 2024
Realizing the need and opportunity to probe deeper into the mysteries of the chemical reactions that sustain photosynthesis and enable light-driven ammonia production and hydrogen catalysis, NREL formed the Advanced Spin Resonance Facility.
May 20, 2024
NREL's Venu Garikapati, a senior transportation data researcher, started his three-year term as chair of the Transportation Research Board's Technical Committee on the Effects of Information and Communication Technologies on Travel Choices on April 15, 2024.
May 16, 2024
Energy efficiency and on-road performance are central to the future of transportation and the clean energy transition.
May 15, 2024
NREL's fuels and combustion researchers studied the combustion and chemical properties of a potential new biodiesel made by sugar-eating bacteria. This fundamental research is a necessary step to creating well-vetted, reliable, and appropriate new vehicle fuels to hasten the clean energy transition.
May 15, 2024
As the United States continues to transition to clean energy, strengthening the domestic supply chain by increasing the availability of critical materials and domestic manufacturing is paramount to enabling greater domestic manufacturing.
May 8, 2024
Nearly 33 million electric vehicles (EVs) nationwide—that is the number of vehicles the Unites States should be prepared to support through a national charging network by the year 2030, researchers at NREL estimated in a recent landmark study.
April 22, 2024
NASA and NREL created a device that causes an internal short circuit inside the layers of a battery cell, providing information that allows NASA to meet its stringent battery safety requirements.
April 17, 2024
When the Board of Commissioners for Washtenaw County, Michigan, approved a climate action plan in 2022, the county was uncertain what implementation steps it needed to take—and how to pay for all of it.
April 17, 2024
Payment issues can affect electric vehicle (EV) drivers' charging experiences. EV charging should be accessible, convenient, and reliable, and payment issues affect both accessibility and reliability.
April 8, 2024
Researchers from NREL, in collaboration with industry partners, have demonstrated the potential for a zero-tailpipe emissions supply chain—one that transports goods from the nation's busiest ports to their final destinations without producing vehicle emissions—all while using today's technology.
April 3, 2024
Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDVs) account for just 5% of vehicles on the road in the United States, yet they are responsible for 21% of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.
March 7, 2024
An important consideration for electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft is where they will charge and whether the existing power grid infrastructure can accommodate this demand.
March 5, 2024
Combined, two first-in-the-world products—NREL's ALTRIOS rail optimization software and Parallel Systems' autonomous battery-electric rail vehicles—aim to help shift a portion of the freight currently carried by on-road trucks to rail, catalyzing decarbonization across the whole transportation sector.
March 4, 2024
New NREL research is providing first-of-its-kind modeling to help curb the current shortage of distribution transformers and ensure a reliable and resilient power grid.
Feb. 27, 2024
Senior polymer science researcher and group manager
Nicholas Rorrer currently leads a team of NREL researchers working to replace the heavy, resource-intensive steel parts in vehicles with recyclable carbon fiber composites.
Feb. 20, 2024
Transit and school bus fleets across the nation are working hard to incorporate clean transportation solutions that help communities meet decarbonization goals and improve local health outcomes.
Feb. 13, 2024
A recent battery manufacturing project—affectionately coined BatMan—has developed a novel laser patterning process to alter the microstructure of battery electrode materials.
Jan. 29, 2024
Shashank Yellapantula, senior staff scientist in NREL's Computational Science Center, was recognized as a 2024 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Associate Fellow.
Jan. 29, 2024
A cross-disciplinary research team is gathering meticulous fuel chemistry data to equip the aviation industry with an ultra-detailed sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) combustion simulation. Powered by supercomputers, the "virtual jet engine" can predict how SAF performs during flight and provide insights on how to tune it to maximize its safety and performance.
Jan. 19, 2024
Mithat John Kisacikoglu has been tapped to lead the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transportation Systems Committee (TSC), which focuses on electrification of the entire transportation sector.
Jan. 18, 2024
In just three years as a researcher at NREL, K. Shankari successfully enabled communities to collect impactful multimodal data and went on detail to the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation to ensure the reliable buildout of a national electric vehicle charging network.
Jan. 9, 2024
People who own electric vehicles are more likely to go a step further and add solar panels to their home, according to an analysis of a behavioral study by researchers at NREL.
Jan. 4, 2024
Transportation and mobility researchers will showcase their latest research at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Jan. 7–11, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
Jan. 3, 2024
Three NREL researchers recently had the opportunity to contribute to the landmark Fifth National Climate Assessment, sharing NREL’s expertise and learning from other leaders at the table.
