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Past Blogs

The Story of Stuff  - Sunday December 30, 2007

Waiver on GHG rules denied by EPA - Sunday December 23. 2007

No More Kurrent - Sunday December 16, 2007

EVS 23 - Sunday December 9, 2007

Th!nk Again - Sunday December 2, 2007

Tango Update - Sunday November 24, 2007

2007 LA Auto Show - Sunday November 18, 2007

Carpooling - Sunday November 11, 2007

 Electric Vehicle Delays - Sunday November 4, 2007

Plug in Hybrids V BEVs debate - Sunday October 28, 2007

Santa Monica Alternative Fuel - Sunday October 21, 2007

Faster NEVs  - Sunday October 14, 2007

The future is Electric - Sunday October 7, 2007

Fifty-one Worst Cars - Sunday September 30, 2007 

eBay - Sunday September 23, 2007

Visit to Electra City Motors  - Sunday September 16, 2007

Driving Courteously - Sunday September 9, 2007

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hybrid and Alternative Fuel Vehicles - Sunday September 2, 20007

EV Prospects (part 2) - Sunday August 25, 2007

EV Prospects (part1) - Sunday August 18, 2007

Food and Green House Gases - Sunday August 12, 2007

Toyota Plugs In - Sunday August 5, 2007

Pasadena Clean Air Car Show - Sunday July 29, 2007

GM's Hydrogen Fuel Cell Trial - Sunday July 22, 2007 

Public Transport - Sunday July 15, 2007

Station Cars - Sunday July 8, 2007

Dust to Dust - Sunday July 1, 2007

New CAFE Standards - Sunday June 24, 2007

The Complete Idiots Guide to Motor Scooters - Sunday 17 June, 2006

Negative Publicity - Sunday June 10, 2007

The Car That Could - Sunday June 3, 2007

Site Visits - Sunday May 27, 2007

Buying Used EVs - Sunday May 20, 2007

Electric Bikes - Sunday May 13, 2007

Sky High Gas Prices - Sunday May 6, 2007

The Carb ZEV Report - Sunday April 29, 2007

Insurance woes - Sunday April 22, 2007

NEV Friendly - Sunday April 15, 2007

Supreme Court Rules - Sunday April 8, 2007

Discord in the Ranks - Sunday April 1, 2007 

The Hype About Hydrogen – Sunday March 25, 2007

It's all about Numbers - Sunday March 18, 2007

Europe ’s EV revival - Sunday March 11, 2007

Phoenix Rising - Sunday 4 March, 2007

Future Car - Sunday February 25, 2007

News Rants and Raves - Sunday February 18, 2007

Fast Charging v Battery Swap - Sunday February 11, 2007

United Nation's Study on Climate Change - Sunday, 4 February 4 2007

State of the Union - Sunday, 29 January 2007

Range Myths and Realities - Sunday, January 21, 2007

Plug-In Hybrids - Sunday January 14, 2007

Reducing CO₂ - Sunday January 5, 2007

Sunday December 30, 2007 - The Story of Stuff - Another year has almost gone and it's time to begin making New Years resolutions.  Doug Kerr sent me an interesting web site called The Story of Stuff which provides some interesting things to think about and some actions that would make excellent new years resolutions.

The Story of Stuff web site contains an interesting flash presentation where Annie Leonard walks us through the cycle of Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal that shows how all the stuff that we got this Christmas came into being.  She points out the major flaw in our current lifestyle; that we need to keep consuming more and more to maintain our way of life and that the "stuff" we consume is mostly thrown away within six months so we can consume more.

The presentation does lay it on pretty think and it does miss out on some of the things that are already happening such as recycling, but it also highlights that if we continue to grow at the current rate we will exhaust the earths resources within a few generations.  The presentation calls on us to find a better way.  The web site also has some tips on starting down that road to a better way.

One such tip is to recycle, an obvious thing we can all do without much effort.  Another thing is to buy locally produced seasonal items as this cuts down on the energy costs needed to get the articles to market.  This can be as easy to follow as a trip to your local Farmers Market. 

Energy consumption is one of the big entries.  Changing light bulbs to energy efficient bulbs is an easy way to cut energy usage.  Annie also suggests that we do more radical things like turning off lights, TV and Computer when they aren't needed.  She also suggests that we get out into the neighborhood and interact with friends and family instead of sitting at home watching TV.  Driving less is another way to use less energy.  Walking to the local store not only provides you with exercise it keeps you from running your car for a short distance with a cold engine where the exhaust produces lots more pollution than when the engine is warmed up.

We also need to waste less.  This can be as simple as taking your own travel mug to the local coffee shop instead of getting a Styrofoam cup, or when the guy at the supermarket says "paper or plastic" whipping out a canvas bag and saying neither. 

Annie also advocates taking action with your local politicians to try and improve the situation.  For example, if your local city doesn't have an adequate recycling program then get in the face of your local council to get on the ball. 

In the end, we need to move away from our current cycle of population growth and consumption and move toward a new steady state that allows us to create a sustainable living model that will hand over a world worth living in to future generations. We need to do this with caution however.  We are deeply entrenched in our current model that requires that the GNP keeps growing year after year or the whole economy crumbles, people get thrown out of work, and economists tell us we are in a recession.  We need to design a new economic model that will allow us to get to a sustainable lifestyle without plunging the world into chaos.  

So when you make your new year's resolutions come January 1, make at least one resolution to cut energy use, recycle, or make your life more sustainable in some way.  My objective for 2008 is to use less gasoline than I did in 2007.

Sunday December 23. 2007 - Waiver on GHG rules denied by EPA - This week, for the first time, the EPA refused to grant a waiver to the state of California to set its own rules on greenhouse gas emissions.

 It looked like everything was finally starting to come together.  First, a Federal Judge ruled that California had the right to set rules of Green House Gas emissions, then Congress passed and President Bush signed into law H.R. 6, The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007.  This act increased CAFE standards for cars and light trucks for the first time in since 1975.

It appears that this was done, at least in part, to try and stop California from setting its own, more stringent rules, which would have force the auto makers to make cars even more fuel efficient even quicker.

Pointing to the Energy Bill signed earlier this week, Stephen L. Johnson said "The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules,"  He seems to have forgotten that the states have always had the choice of following the Federal Law or adopting California's stricter law.  That would mean 17 states would follow California's law while the rest followed the Federal law, hardly a patchwork.

The EPA put off a decision for two years then came out with a ruling only days after the Energy Bill was signed into law.  Clearly they were looking at ways to deny California its right to control its environment.  It has proved once again that the Environmental Protection Agency needs to be renamed the Corporate Protection Agency.  

Meanwhile, the denial has brought about a furor of protest.  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger accused the EPA of "Standing in our Way" and vowed to "sue to overturn today's decision and allow Californians to protect our environment".  Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, promised to launch an investigation into how the decision was released.  California Senator Barbara Boxer called the decision "disgraceful".

The only people who seemed pleased about the denial of the waiver were the Association of Automobile Manufacturers who now only have to deal with an increase of Corporate Average Fuel Economy to 35mpg by 2020 not a 30% reduction in tailpipe emissions, which translates to about 36mpg by 2016

The new energy bill is going to tighten fuel consumption standards for automobiles and will help the US Auto industry keep competitive but it doesn't go far enough.  The US Auto Manufacturers don't have to do anything until 2011 when the CAFE standard will begin to rise.  It will then rise slowly each year until 2020 when the fleet average will have to be 35mpg.   There is also some provisions that will phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2014 and provides some money to develop geothermal energy.  Of course there is a lot more money to develop ethanol.  

So, what are California's options.  The first thing that you are going to see is a lawsuit between California and the EPA to try and get the decision overturned.  I think that there is also going to be a lot of pressure from the California members of Congress and the Senate but I don't know if they will be able to drum up enough support from representatives from states outside of California to make any difference.

California is currently reviewing its Zero Emission Mandate.  It has become clear that the auto manufacturers are not going to be able to deliver hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in anything like the volumes they promised at the last review.  Since California cannot regulate tailpipe emissions via its Green House Gas initiative it may just choose not to weaken the Zero Emission Vehicle mandate forcing the automobile manufactures to begin making electric vehicles again to meet this commitment.  Finally, California can bring in a carbon based tax on vehicles making high consuming vehicles more expensive and diverting the money toward carbon reducing technologies.

In the end, we are all losers because of the EPA decision.  I think that this might come back to haunt the Republican party in the next elections as voters look on them as the party that tried to prevent action on Global Warming.  We can only hope that under pressure from Congress and the American people the EPA will do the right thing and reverse this decision.

Sunday December 16, 2007 - No More Kurrent - Over the last three weeks we have has some exciting news to report what with Commuter Cars getting set to deliver Tango number 2 and Th!nk Nordic starting up their production line.  This week I got some news that somewhat put a damper on the situation as I found out that American Electric had ceased operations.

American Electric was one of a number of companies that distribute NEVs in the USA.  In this case they were selling a version of the Italian build Start Lab open as the Kurrent. 

The Start Lab has appeared under several names over the years.  ZAP was the first company to import these micro cars into the US as the ZAP L.U.V Intimidator.  Last year I spoke with Gary Star at ZAP about this NEV and he told me that the fall in the dollar had made it uneconomical for ZAP to continue to import them.

Along came American Electric who started to import them again, this time selling them under the name Kurrent.  Their plan was to eventually build the car here in the US.  They got the car on sale and had started to build a dealer network.  Earlier this year they moved into a larger facility and looked like they were going to take off.  Then, suddenly, I got an email from one of their dealers saying that they had shut down operations.  This was also confirmed by a second dealer.

The cause of the shut down isn't known at the this time and one dealer told me that American Electric had lost the rights to the Start Lab and were shutting down until they had another NEV to sell.  Another dealer told me that they existing Kurrent owners would be left without warranty coverage which doesn't sound like American Electric will be coming back.

The NEV market in the US is a very competitive one.  Chrysler's GEM division has an 80% market share and the other dozen or so manufacturers have to scramble for the remaining 20%.  Still, there are quite a few companies that have managed to build a good business around NEVs and the market in general appears to be flourishing.

The Start Lab Open is quite capable of speeds faster than 25mph and in the UK, where Electric Vehicles are exempt from London's congestion charges, I hear that the car is selling well under the brand name Electtrica.  This week I also received word that the car is being sold in Japan, this time under the brand name Girasole.  

In unrelated news, the Aixam factory in France that produces the Mega line of micro car trucks, currently being sold in Europe under the Nice Mega brand, burned down in the early morning of December 1, 2007.  Here in the US, Columbia Par Car had just started selling these trucks as a NEV.

I understand that Aixam has already leased some new factory space and is working to get the production line back up and running.

It is always sad to see an EV manufacture go out of business but the automobile market is littered with companies that showed promise but eventually faded away.  Still, the day of the electric car is coming and strong companies with good products will survive and prosper.

Sunday December 9, 2007 - EVS 23 - Last week the Electric Drive Transportation Association held its twenty-third electric vehicle symposium in Anaheim, CA.  On Sunday December 2 the conference opened with a public day so my wife Aggie and I went along.

We timed our drive to Anaheim so that we would arrive at 11am, just as they were opening the doors.  Traffic was pretty light for Southern California so we arrived right on time.  After parking the car we went over to the ticket booth and joined the a queue of about thirty people.  As I joined the line I saw Bill Moore from EV World and had a chance to say hello.  For some unknown reason the people selling the tickets were working like snails.  It actually took us 40 minutes to get to the front of the line.  By the time we got to buy our tickets the line strung out all the way down the hall.  Fortunately they brought out some more people and got the line moving faster.

We went into the hall and I did a brief stop at the Electrifying Times stand to say high to Remy Chevalier who was going to come out from Connecticut for the event.  He didn't make it as he was busy fighting the restart of the Indian Point nuclear power plant.  I did get to see Editor in Chief Bruce Melland and pick up a copy of the latest issue of ET along with the LA Special Edition that includes my interview with Reverend Gadget.

From there we went outside to try and get to the ride and drives before it got too busy.  My first target was a drive in the Phoenix SUT but there was pretty long line and Phoenix only had one truck running so I had to wait for another half hour before I got to drive it.  You can read my write-up here.  While on the drive Bryon Bliss from Phoenix told me that they are currently working on version two of their vehicle which would include a new motor.  He couldn't give out details of the motor at the moment but he did say that it would have almost twice the horse power of the current motor.  He also told me that the new motor would require that they re-do two of the crash test sequences.  Also, they still haven't received CARB certification because of an issue with the charging connector but they are still on track for fleet deliveries around the end of first quarter of 2008 with the consumer version still set for 2009.

When I was done with my all too brief drive of the Phoenix SUT it was already time for Lunch so we went into the convention hall to grab a bite.  Aggie is quite a finicky eater and didn't like anything on the menu.  We decided to step across the way and have lunch in the Hilton.  After a refuel we went back to the ride and drive to try out a couple more vehicles.

When we got back to the test track I found that the Columbia Par Car vehicle was available immediately.  I went over to get a test ride.  The Mega is a truck that is built in France and only seated two people.  Aggie was happy to sit this ride out while I took the NEV for a spin.  The Par Car Mega is really targeted as a work truck and is available in both left and right had drive.  The car had a lot of rattles and the usual rough ride I have come to expect for NEVs.  Still, it was a fun little truck to ride around in.  You can read my write-up here.   I did find out that the Par Car Mega has just gone on Sale here in the US.  The current vehicles are built in France but production will be shifted to the Columbia plant in Wisconsin in 2008.

Next I wanted to check out the Miles NEV.  We went over to the Miles stand and found that I was first in line.  Miles had both the ZX40s fully enclosed NEV and their ZX40ST NEV Truck.  I wanted to drive the ZX40s and only had a few minutes to wait until the car pulled in from the test circuit.  The two people in the NEV were from Mexico and were looking to distribute the NEV in their country.  They spent about ten minutes looking around at the car while Aggie and I cooled our heals.  Finally I was able to hop in and take a drive.  You can read my write-up here.  I came away really impressed with the Miles which rode much more like a car than any other NEV I have driven.  On the way back I asked about progress on the freeway capable car. to be called the XS500.  I was happy to hear that Miles is pursuing crash testing but they are estimating a cost of six million dollars which I think is very low.

We decided it was time to go back into the main hall and take a look around at the various exhibits.  One thing I noticed was that there appeared to be at least three electric Smart Vehicles on display.  The first one turned out to be a Chinese made Smart clone being sold by Revolution Electric Cars in San Luis Obispo, CA.  This car appears to be the same car that is being sold under the Flybo and Sparky EV names.  The stand was really busy so I wasn't able to do more than grab a flyer and move on.

The other two Smart vehicle really were Smart for Two cars with electric drive.  The first one was at the Daimler stand and is one of the electric Smarts that are undergoing testing with various fleets in the UK.  The second one was from UK EV drive train developer Zytek.  Zytek were the company that actually designed the electric power train for the Daimler vehicle.  Both of these cars were connected to a charging tower that was a tall thin column with a cable that can be attached to the car.  I understand that these types of charging stations are currently being installed around London.

The Daimler stand also had a display of the 10 year anniversary edition of the GEM.  The cars come in a light blue color that I really like and are also fitted out with leather seats and other goodies.  I learned that the blue color is only going to be available on the limited run anniversary edition cars which is a pity because it is a very nice color.

The British have always been a leader in electric delivery vehicles with the lowly but hard working Milk Float.  At one time there were over 100,000 milk floats silently plying the streets of Britain in the early hours of the morning.  One of the biggest makers of Milk Floats was Smiths Electric Vehicles and now they are turning their expertise to electric delivery trucks for the US market.  On display was their huge Newton delivery vehicle which they are building in small quantities in the US but plan to expand production to over 10,000 per year.  

Another British delivery vehicle on display was the Modec. This is quite a bit smaller than the Newton but it is still a decent sized delivery vehicle that should sell well in the UK where congestion charges make electric transportation quite cost effective.

EAE de Mexico showed a nice Nisan Sentra that they are converting to electric power.  The cars will be available for lease in Mexico city.

Two wheel transportation was represented by the Vectrix and the EVT line of scooters.  Since I have seen both of these on several occasions I didn't spend much more than a passing glance at either of these two stands.  The Enertia from Brammo was also on display.  The Enertia was a bigger bike than it looked in pictures.  Being short I really think I would have a problem riding the Enertia.  I doubt that I could comfortably hold the bike up with both feet on the ground.  If you are considering the Enertia and have short legs I recommend that you try it out before buying. 

Ronaele was another stand that proved very interesting.  They are about to introduce all electric versions of the Ford Mustang.  They will have a 300hp version and a 600 hp version both with 110V and 220V charging capability.  The 600EV will have a range of about 125 miles and the 300EV should have a range of about 160 miles per charge.  The mustang is the quintessential American muscle car and an electric version should give it a whole new level of performance.  Now, if only they had a convertible.

Tesla also had a nice blue roadster on display.  I am pretty sure that this was the same car that I missed when they had it on display at the LA Auto Show.  Tesla seems to be going through a bit of an upheaval now as they move from development to production but hopefully we will start to see cars coming off the production line soon.

At Southern California Edison stand and they has a couple of interesting vehicles on display.  One was a plastic bodies "Vehicle of the Future" that looked like an oversized Tonka Toy, and the other was the first of the Ford Escape plug-in hybrids.  The Escape Plug-in looks like the latest version of the Escape Hybrid but has a second fuel hatch that conceals a connector for the charger cable.  Edison will be conducting extensive fleet trials with the Plug-in Escape hybrid and hopefully we will be seeing them at your local Ford dealer in the near future.

On the way out of the hall we bumped into my friend, and RAV4 EV driver, David Sheldon  David is going to be one of the first drivers to get a month driving the Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell vehicle as part of GM's Project Driveway.  Hopefully I will have more to say about David's experience with the fuel cell vehicle in later blogs.

This is the second EVS event I have attended and this one didn't seem as well organized as the EVS 20 in Long Beach.  Still there is plenty here to be hopeful for as more and more electric vehicles start to come into the market.  Better batteries are also becoming production ready and if we can start to get volume up then prices will come into line with ICE vehicles and everyone will be able to get an electric vehicle. 

Sunday December 2, 2007 - Th!nk Again - November has been a pretty good month for Electric Vehicles.  Last week we heard about Commuter Cars starting delivery of the Tango again.  This week there is more good news but this time from Norway.

Th!nk is rising again.  Earlier this week I received an email to let me know that Th!nk has started up its production line at their Factory in Aurskog, Norway.  The first cars are now rolling down the production line and will be used for durability testing.  Th!nk appear to be on target to start delivering vehicles around the end of March, 2008 and should be able to produce about 3500 car per year running one shift with the ability to go to two shifts if demand warrants.  

Th!nk has had an interesting history.  The company was founded in 1991 as Pivco and produced a car called the City Bee.  The City Bee was brought over to the US under waiver of DOT certification rules and used in a station car demonstration project in the San Francisco bay area.  The cars stayed in the US for three years but were then returned to Norway and were crushed.

Pivco then developed their second generation car, the Th!nk City.  Then, like many EV companies before them, funds ran out.  At the time Ford were looking for ways to comply with the California ZEV mandate and Th!nk looked like a good candidate so Ford bought them in 1999 renaming the company to Th!nk Nordic.

Ford began selling a NEV produced in the US under the Th!nk name but also brought over the Th!nk City, again under waiver, and began leasing them in California and as part of a station car project in New York state.  Over 1000 cars were produced, more than half of them being sent to the US.

In 2003, after California had backed down from the ZEV mandate, Ford, who had by this time developed a third generation City car that complied with US crash test regulations, dropped Th!nk.  The company was put up for sale and was purchased by Swiss based KamKorp Microelectronics.  When the leases ended on the US Th!nk Neighbors they were collected up by Ford to be crushed,  That's when Dontcrush.com (now Plug-in America) came into the picture.  They began to organize demonstrations at Ford Dealerships to stop crushing both the Ford Ranger EV and the Th!nk City.  Green Peace also got in the act and organized international demonstrations including ones in Norway.  Unlike GM, Ford did the right thing and stopped crushing the cars.  The Th!nk Cities couldn't be kept in the US because of the waiver regulations, but Ford agreed to return them to Norway were they were refurbished and sold.

KamKorp, who also owned Fraizer-Nash, the British NEV manufacturer, stopped development on the City and concentrated on developing vehicles designed by Fraizer-Nash.  Once again funds ran out and it looked like the end for Th!nk.  Once again Th!nk was rescued, this time by a group called InSpire lead by Jan Otto Ringdal who was one of the original founders of Pivco.

InSpire went back to development of the Th!nk City, replacing the NiCAD batteries with Zebra batteries to give the car better range.  Now, the production line is starting up again.  It is currently projected that cars will start selling in Norway around the end of March next year and should go on sale in the UK, taking advantage of the demand for electric vehicles that is being driven by London's congestion charge, by the middle of 2008.   Plans also call for Th!nk to begin selling the City in the US but this is unlikely to happen before 2009.

Sunday November 24, 2007 - Tango Update - This big news during the past  week is that Commuter Cars is getting ready to deliver a second Tango to a customer.  

Rick Woodbury sent out an email to the Tango group on ebay that they were going to show the blue Tango T600 at the San Francisco Auto show which started on November 22 and runs through December 2.  Shroty after the close of the show the Tango will be being delivered to Google senior software engineer Jorg Brown.

For those of us that have been following Commuter Cars through the years this is stellar news.

It seems like a long time since Rick and Bryan Woodbury first built their prototype Tango up in Seattle.  The first prototype has been around since at least 2001.  I had a chance to meet Rick and take a look at the Tango back a the 2004 and I was very impressed with both.  The Tango is a narrow two seat electric vehicle with an ingenious tandem seating arrangement that leaves lots of leg room in what looks like a very small space.  

The car is designed to fit two in a standard twelve foot lane so that in states where it is legal, like California, the Tango can lane split like a motorcycle.  It is also short enough to be able to park perpendicular to the curb and still fit in a regulation parking spot.

It is no slouch either.  The Tango can go 0-60 in about 4 seconds and top out at 120mph.  For safety the car is fitted with an Indy car style roll cage and has the batteries mounted to keep the center of gravity low making it very stable while cornering.

In 2005 Commuter Cars set up a contact with British company Prodrive to do the actual manufacturing of the tango.  They built a black Tango which was delivered to Academy Award winning actor George Clooney.  However, after building the first car Prodrive wanted to charge a lot more to build subsequent cars so the Woodburys decided to sever the relationship, buy up the equipment, and bring production back to Seattle.

Since 2005 Commuter Cars have struggled to get the financing they needed to go into production.  They have been in the classic chicken and egg situation, to attract the fifty million dollars they need to build an $18,000 version of the Tango they need to sell cars, but to sell cars they need to have the funding.

During this period George Clooney had also been driving his car and, as you would expect from production vehicle number 1, problems did apparently emerge.  The result of this was a redesign of the chassis along with a few other tweaks. 

However, Commuter Cars did get several people, best as I can tell about 10, to commit enough money to be able to buy the parts required to build their cars.  Late last year the company began to set up for production, basically hand building the first group of ten vehicles which will sell for around $108,000.  They also have some investors beginning to take note of this company and more sales will undoubtedly help them secure funding.

It has taken them over two years to from delivering Tango number 1 to delivering Tango number 2 but I understand that the they have 9 additional vehicles under construction so future deliveries should come more quickly.

The Tango is an excellent commuter vehicle and if they really can start building them to sell in the sub $20,000 range then Commuter cars should be one to watch.

Sunday November 18, 2007 - 2007 LA Auto Show - This week I attended the first of the media days for the 2007 Los Angeles International Auto Show.  My full write-up will be published in EV World but I thought I would use my blog to give some of my impressions.

This year can almost be called the year of the hybrid, or at least the year of the US hybrid since both GM and Chrysler announced that they would be producing full sized SUVs using their jointly developed "Dual Mode" hybrid system which, like the Prius, allows the vehicle to run for short periods on electricity alone but still gets all its energy from gas.  Porsche also announce that they would be selling a hybrid version of the Cayenne and are working on a four door sedan that would also be offered with a hybrid option.

It appears that the US manufacturers are seeing the hybrid system as a way to continue to capitalize on gigantic SUVs but it also appears that they have finally gotten the message that they need to start producing smaller more fuel efficient vehicles.  Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, told the gathering that Ford is moving towards building lighter, more aerodynamic vehicles using advance materials like titanium and carbon fiber composites.  Mulally, who originally came from Boeing, knows that weight is important for fuel economy and Ford finally appears to be heading in the right direction.

Both Toyota and Ford are working on plug-in hybrids and they are both setting up test programs here in California.  This week Toyota delivered two factory build plug-in Priuses, one to UC Berkley and the other to UC Irvine for evaluation.  Ford also announced  that they would deliver some plug-in hybrids to Southern California Edison by the end of the year.  

Fuel Cells were also back in the spotlight as Honda showed their Clarity fuel cell vehicle and announced that they would be leasing a limited number of these cars in Southern California starting in mid 2008.  There was no indication of how many they would lease but the lease costs would be $600 per month for a 36 month lease which would include all maintenance and insurance.  To qualify for one of these vehicles you have to live near one of the three public Hydrogen fueling stations in the area, Santa Monica, Irvine or Los Angeles.

The whole lease thing reminds me of the situation with the EV1 and EV+ both of which were lease only.  Anyone who saw "Who Killed the Electric Car" knows that the EV1s were taken away and crushed.  This also happened to some of the EV+ drivers as well but for the most part Honda renewed leases on these cars as long as they didn't need expensive repairs.  Honda currently have three families, one of which is Terry Tamminen, advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger on Energy issues, who lease the current FCX fuel cell vehicle.  I can only assume that they will get a chance to trade in their FCX on a Clarity. 

VW also showed a plug-in hybrid concept called the Space-up Blue that has a 60 mile range on batteries which is extended to 200 miles using a fuel cell stack.  They said they would produce the Space-up Blue by 2010 but would use a diesel engine instead of the fuel cell as a range extender.

Speaking of Diesel, VW have finally managed to make their Jetta TDI clean enough to pass California's strict emission standards and will should be seeing the car in showrooms by the middle of 2008.  This is good news for the Bio-Diesel crowed since new diesel vehicles haven't been available in California for several years.  

Under the category "what were they thinking!" Green Car Journal chose as its green car of the year none other than the Chevrolet Silverado dual mode hybrid.  They chose the gas guzzling pick-up over the Nisan Altima hybrid and even had the Chevy Malibu mild hybrid as one of the finalists.  I know that increasing the mpg of large trucks cuts gas consumption by a relatively large amount but so far we have seen that hybrid buyers are shying away from large trucks and are looking for high fuel economy.  It seems like the Green Car Journal favors US companies over their foreign competition.  

Smart had a display of four vehicles outside the West Hall and it appears that we may finally see the Smart being sold in the USA.  Mercedes Benz does seem to be dragging its feet in getting the Smart into stores but setting up a new dealer network takes time.  Word on the street is that the Smart Fortwo should be arriving in showrooms early in 2008.

Finally, for the history buffs among us, Porsche has the Lohner Porsche on display.  This historic vehicle is an all electric car designed by Ferdinand Porsche and was the first vehicle to carry the Porsche name.  It dates from around 1900 and is distinguished as being the first electric vehicle to use hub motors.  Porsche went on to design a plug-in hybrid in 1901.

This year's LA Auto show indicates that the Automobile industry is starting to get off its collective butts and is moving towards a more sustainable future.  They are moving along at a snails pace but that's what you expect from an industry that has over 100 years invested in the current technology.  Where are the plug-in hybrids? Where are the hybrid minivans?  Where are the 80mpg hybrid subcompacts?  The next ten years will be make or break for the automobile industry.  They are at the point now that the makers of steam locomotives were about 60 years ago, of the horse drawn carriage companies were 110 years ago.  New technology is emerging and the longer that the car companies stick to their old ways the more likely it is that an upstart like Tesla or Phoenix or Miles or ZAP will emerge to eat their lunch.

Sunday November 11, 2007 - Carpooling - On Friday, I drove to work alone for the first time in a very long time.  My Prius has the California clean air decals so I can drive alone in the carpool lane and that does help a bit, but I still prefer to carpool if I can.

The reason I was driving alone is that one of our carpoolers found a new job nearer to home and Thursday was here last day traveling with us, while my other two rideshare partners were both taking the day off.  

This week oil prices got very close to the one hundred dollars a barrel level and gas prices seem to be jumping up daily.  I filled up at Costco one day and gas was sitting at $3.12 per gallon.  Jerry was driving the following day and also had to stop at Costco to refuel and he paid $3.17 per gallon.  When gas prices are so high and commuting distances are so far, it really pays to carpool.

There has been a lot of talk in political circles around Los Angeles about the growing problems with gridlock.  I see that first hand almost every day when the 405 turns into a parking lot each evening as you approach the 90 freeway.  Over the years we have developed strategies for getting around this gridlock and it paid out big time this week when a truck carrying a crane collided with an overpass and blocked most of the 405 in both directions for most of the day.  The resulting back-up must have wasted thousands of gallons of gas.

The traffic in LA is so near the edge that even a slight hick-up in the system can cause delays.  For most of this weak the traffic light at Pico and Motor has been set for incorrect timing of traffic flow.  The result was a half mile tail back from the intersection and three to four changes of the traffic light just to get through to the next block.

Los Angeles, of course, has struggled for many years with one of the poorest public transport systems in the country.  With the advent of light rail, the subway, and Bus Rapid Transit, things have improved somewhat, but the culture of driving everywhere still pervades society.  

I often hear complaints from Prius drivers who only get around 35 mpg and when you dig a little deeper you find that they invariably have a very short commute, usually less than 3 miles.  The Prius uses extra gas until it gets its catalytic converter warmed up which usually takes about five minutes and by that time you have already gone most of a 3 mile commute. You have to wonder why these people are getting out the Prius to drive just 3 miles, why not bike, take a bus, or use even drive a NEV which would easily handle a six mile daily round trip.  I can only assume that they don't like exercise, don't have a public transport option.

It strikes me that we need to fix the public transit issues, but this is going to take a lot of time.  We need to find ways to get more people to carpool.  In our carpool we now have three regular people and two others who ride with us occasionally.  This takes two to three cars off the freeway.  It's pretty easy to see that this also saves a lot of gas.  Now, if we could just get a few thousand more carpools going we could get the freeways moving and everyone wins.

I know that there are many cities around the country that face similar problems to those in Los Angeles.  Carpools can help there too.  This is going to get increasingly important as we now appear to be very close, or actually at, peak oil.  There are now several high profile oil men who are saying this, including T. Boone Pickens who thinks that we have already peaked, and Christophe de Margerie, CEO of Total who said that peak oil may be "just a few years away".  Meanwhile a new report by the German based Energy Watch Group stated that world oil production peaked in 2006.

It is going to take a long time to get more efficient cars on the road, ones that don't require that we sustain the current level of oil production.  Carpooling is one way to help cut our dependence on foreign oil.

Staring a carpool is easier than you might think.  Many larger companies now have electronic bulletin boards where employees can place ads.  I used the one at the company where I worked to advertise for carpool partners.  It only took a short time before someone answered my ad and we had a carpool of two.  People have come and gone from the carpool ever since, but there hasn't been a time when I haven't had a least one other person to carpool with since then, and that has been over six years.  There are also lots of resources, like eRideshare.com that provide places to find rideshare partners.  Even a postcard on a board like the one they have at our local Whole Foods can produce results.

Sunday November 4, 2007 - Electric Vehicle Delays - The big vehicle manufacturers have all been talking about electric vehicles being the way of the future "but battery technology isn't ready", so it is interesting to see that several potential electric vehicle manufacturers have all been delaying shipment and in some cases it has been the batteries, but not in the way yoiu would expect.

First of all it was Tesla, who have delayed shipment of the first production roadster until early 2008.  The reason for this appears to be caused by reliability issues with the transmission.  This did have a domino effect.  

Th!nk Nordic, who were originally going to ship cars using Zebra batteries, signed a battery deal earlier this year with Tesla.  Now,  Tesla has informed Th!nk  that they are going to concentrate on getting the roadster ready for production and will not be supplying them with batteries after all.  This I think is a mistake on Tesla's part since setting up an income stream and getting the Thailand factory working would have helped them build the business.  Tesla's action left Th!nk scrambling to find a new battery supplier and they have been talking to several companies including A123.  They have also announced that they are delaying the launch of their cars until March 2008.

Another company that has delayed launch until 2008 is Phoenix.  I still suspect that a lot of this delay is a wait and see on CARB's next review of the ZEV mandate because their business plan is so dependent on selling ZEV credits.  I was really surprised to see that they didn't exhibit at the Santa Monica Alternative Fuel and Transportation Expo this year since this is one of the largest gatherings of electric vehicle manufacturers on the west coast and it was right on their back doorstep.  I have also yet to test drive the Phoenix SUT.  

Commuter Cars up in Seattle is another company that has delayed shipping their next car.  I have heard rumors that they have been having trouble with the first car that they sold to George Clooney and I was told by Rick Woodbury that they had done some re-design.  They have also followed other companies and moved on from Lead Acid Batteries and now offer both NiMH and Lithium.  The have been telling me for the last six months that the next ten cars are being built but they don't seem to be getting close to completing any of them.  I hope that they too can start delivering to those cars in 2008.

I also reported last week that Universal Electric Vehicle have also delayed moving to production on their Electrum Spyder.  Their issue is that they still haven't been able to attract the kind of funding that they need to build production versions of the sports car, or continue development of the three wheel vehicle they have also been talking about for the last few years.  I even went so far as to move their listing from the Full Sized EV page and placed them back on EV Watch.  They are going to try to go the AC Propulsion route and start a sponsorship program.  They should be announcing details on their web site soon.

I must say this all makes me pretty disappointed.  Right now gas prices are climbing and there are lots of people looking for alternatives to ICE vehicles.  EV options are still pretty thin on the ground.  There are plenty of opportunities to buy a NEV or a "Vespa Style" electric scooter.  There are a few Chinese made three wheel electric vehicles around but most of them are either scams or not really DOT certified.  Only the ZAP Xebra, or the ACP eBox. are real option right now if you want an EV that does more than 25 mph (35mph if you live in MT or WA).  

I only hope that 2008 brings a change of circumstance to all the budding EV manufacturers.

Sunday October 28, 2007 - Plug in Hybrids V BEVs debate - In a Wall Street Journal Article this week, Norihiko Shirouzu reported that Honda would not be pursuing plug-in hybrids saying that they would be better off using lithium batteries to produce battery electric vehicles.

Honda, along with Mitsubishi, Subaru, Nissan, and Nissan parent company Renault, are soundly in the battery electric vehicle camp.  Subaru, in fact, is planning on producing a BEV for sale in Japan, and possibly the USA, by 2010.  Other automakers, led by Toyota, GM and Ford, have set their sights on plug-in hybrids as the next step forward.  Both parties, however, stubbornly cling to the notion that we need better batteries even though perfectly good batteries, in the form of Panasonic NiMH and Altair Nano Lithium batteries have both been demonstrated to totally adequate for electric vehicles.

The Germans companies VW and Mercedes Benz still appear to be hanging their hat on diesel.

All of these companies need to move forward to build cars that greatly reduce the amount of oil that we use.  Legendary oil man, T Boone Pickens, in a recent interview on NPR, when asked when he thought peak oil would arrive answered that peak oil was already here.  He said that production was now at 82 million barrels a day and that the demand now exceeded supply.  He went on to say that he had stopped wildcatting because there was no longer the big finds of oil that made the expense worth while.

Now, if T Boone Pickens thinks that we are at a peak in world oil production it is time to sit up and take notice.  We have to get our oil consumption down and the debate is do we do this with plug-in hybrids or battery electric vehicles.  

The debate is simple, plug-in hybrids allow us to do most of our driving on battery, but if we want to do a long drive we have the gas engine to basically extend our range to allow us to drive anywhere we could drive with a regular ICE.  There is a premium that we pay for this and the payback is in lower fuel charges over the life of the vehicle as we drive more electric miles and use less gas.  Battery electric vehicles mean we drive electric all the time, with zero pollution out of the tail pipe and emissions getting cleaner as we clean up the power grid.

Battery electric vehicles cost more than gas vehicles or plug-in hybrids because at the moment large capacity advanced chemistry batteries are very costly.  The cost is somewhat recovered because of lower fuel bills over the life of the car but not enough to break even when compared to a regular gas car.  This should change as larger volume manufacture brings costs down.

It is my opinion that there is actually room for both plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles in the short term although long term we are going to need to go fully electric.  The big issue here is cost and battery life.  We now have a couple of battery chemistries that allow the car manufacturers to build cars where the batteries will last the life of the car, or at least the 10 years, 150,000 miles average life of a modern car.  There are already RAV4 EVs that have in excess of 120,000 miles on them and the Altair Nano batteries are rated for 15,000 cycles which, at 100 miles per charge, would give a battery life of 1.5 million miles.  The big issue now is cost.

Both Li and NiMH batteries are horrendously expensive.  This provides a major barrier to there use in cars.  When a battery pack costs $12,000 there is just no way that you can recoup that amount of money by fuel savings when you look at a fuel efficient car like the Prius.  The battery pack above would cost about eight cents per mile over a 150,000 mile life while the fuel costs of the Prius would be about seven cents per mile.  Of course, that assumes the price of gas stays at $3.00 per gallon but we know that isn't going to be the case but cost of electricity has also been rising.

What we need is to get the cost of advanced batteries down closer to the cost of lead acid and that means volume.  Now, we aren't going to get that volume by selling 500 Phoenix SUTs or Tesla Roadsters, we need to get to around 10,000 vehicles per year so that the manufacturer can justify setting up production lines for the large format batteries.

I personally think that the best option for this is a relatively low range Plug-in Hybrid.  Starting with an all electric range of just 10 miles would work for many people and, if the car was attractive enough it would be able to sell in at least a ten to twenty thousand units per year range.  The danger with such a low range Plug-in is that people wouldn't bother plugging in and would just drive it like a regular hybrid.  I think that most of the early adopters however would want to plug in and would find that they prefer to drive in all electric mode.  This would lead to the other possible problem, people charging during the peak demand times because they want to keep driving all electric.

While volume sales of the plug-in hybrid will be used to drive down costs, introducing all electric cars will help to keep development on the right track and will provide options for those who want to drive all electric while at the same time moving the dealerships toward supporting a very different kind of vehicle fleet.

Now, I also think that bio-fuels have a place in the grand scheme of things.  Bio-Diesel fueled hybrid trucks will be needed to move heavy goods and we will also need to move toward bio-fuels for the airline industry.  I don't think that bio-fuels is appropriate for personal transportation; the move to bio-fuels would just put too much strain on the environment and too much competition for food resources.

In the end, we have to move toward renewable electricity and battery electric vehicles.  Without some major breakthroughs in the hydrogen paradigm battery electric vehicles are the only option that make sense as we move into the future.

Sunday October 21, 2007 - Santa Monica Alternative Fuel and Vehicle Expo - Yesterday I attended the second annual Santa Monica Alternative Fuel and Vehicle Expo at the Barker Hanger in Santa Monica Airport.  I got to meet up with some old friends and there was plenty there to please the EV enthusiast. 

We arrived about ten thirty in the morning and at that time the event was pretty quite.  I passed by the ride and drive section outside the barker hanger and went straight to the main exhibit floor.  Just inside the door I met up with Russell Sydney from the Santa Monica Sustainable Transportation Club who filled me in on the move to introduce medium speed legislation in California.  The movement is growing to allow more car like vehicle such as the ZENN and the Miles NEVs to go at 35mph instead of 25mph.  Montana was the first state to implement this legislation and Washington State wasn't far behind.  There are several more states that have legislation close to approval and for once California is behind.

I Continued to walk around the exhibit hall and bumped into another old friend, Dave Cutter from Village Energy who was there manning the Electric Vehicle Association of San Diego's booth.  They were recruiting members and publicizing their upcoming EVent, Electric Draggin 2008 which will be held on January 26 and 27 at the Barona Drag Strip.  They also had a Bug-e on display, the first time I had seen one.  They look like a really interesting ride.

Wandering around I saw a few more interested vehicles.  One of the most promising was the Solar Bug from Free Drive EV Inc.  This is a NEV that can be configured for 35 mph for those states that have a medium speed vehicle law in place.  The car has 200 watts of solar panels on the roof which, according to Steve Titus, President of Free Drive EV, can provide as much as 10 miles per day of range in a sunny area like Southern California.  The thing that sets the Solar Bug apart however is that the car seat is like that on a motorcycle, in fact very similar to the one used by the Vectrix, and the car is steered using handlebars similar to the old Lambereta scooter cars.  According to Steve, the company is only about a month away from making these available to the public. 

I stopped by the Falcon EV Booth and talked to Andrew.  Falcon EV were showing their new Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries that give their range of scooters a range of up to 50 miles per charge. 

Another interesting company was Good Earth EV who were showing two vehicles, a NEV truck that looked very similar to the ones being sold by Dymac and ZAP, and an electric Trike called the Freedom Buggy.  They incorporate a two motor set-up to give the vehicle the equivalent of two gears.  When the vehicle is accelerated from a standstill the first motor is used and this has the effect of limiting current.  As the vehicle picks up speed the second motor picks up and provides higher speed.  The objective is to limit start-up current.  This trades off increased range for slower acceleration.

Universal Electric Vehicle were also displaying their Electrum Spyder for the second year in a row.  It's nice to see them getting their car in front of the public.  They are still trying to find investors to really get the company rolling out product and the more their car gets seen the more likely they are to get investors interested.

I was surprised to see Oka exhibiting here in Santa Monica.  The Oka is built around a Russian built passenger car that is fitted with an Electric Motor in Nevada.  I haven't seen anything much of the Oka in recent years but they are now selling cars.  I didn't get an opportunity to drive one but closer inspection showed that the build quality appears to be about the same as the Miles vehicles, but not as good as the ZENN.  Still, with a base cost of around $7500 they are a relatively cheap way to get into a car-like NEV.  The Oka will also be a good candidate for a medium speed vehicle.

There were also a several dealers,  who were showing electric cars from the likes of ZAP, Columbia Par Car, Dynasty, and American Custom Golf Cars.  I was somewhat disappointed that nobody had a Zapino on display.  I haven't had a chance to see one up close yet and I have been hearing good things about them.  I was also disappointed that Myers Motors wasn't there this year, I was expecting them to be there and I was hoping to finally get a chance to test drive the NmG.

After the main exhibit hall I stepped outside to see what was available in the ride and drive.  The first thing I came across was Vectrix who had a big display at this years event.  They were offering test rides but only to people who had a motorcycle license since the test ride was being conducted on the street.  I could have had a ride on the back of the bike but that doesn't let you learn anything much about them.  I did note however that they are quite noisy when accelerating hard.  I did meet Paul Scott there, he was helping demo the Vectrix using his own Motorcycle. 

Also offering rides but not test drives were the City of LA and UCLA, both of which were exhibiting Fuel Cell vehicles.  I also decided to pass on test driving the Smart.  The ones on display were the old version modified by a third party and selling for around $26,000, about the same price as a Prius.  The new 2008 Smart, being distributed by MBZ, is a better car at a much lower price.  

In the end I decided to test drive the ACP eBox which I found a blast, and the e-Ride NEV which was very noisy but still fun to drive.  Follow the links for my test drive write-up.

The Santa Ana winds were kicking up and so were my allergies.  By the the time I had finished test driving the e-Ride I had a splitting headache and was hungry so I went up to the Spitfire Grill for Lunch.  Service at the Spitfire Grill can only be described as Glacial which didn't do anything for my headache, and the food wasn't that good either.  In the end I just decide to call it a day and head for home. 

This years Expo was bigger and better than the previous year and I expect the event to continue to grow.  I am looking forward to next year.

Sunday October 14, 2007 - Faster NEVs - I couple of weeks ago I received my monthly email news letter from the Santa Monica Sustainable Transportation Club.  This club is one of the most active in our area and is dedicated to promoting sustainable transportation in the city of Santa Monica. 

The club has promoted bicycling and the use of electric scooters for many years and has done a lot of work to expand the network of bike lanes in and around Santa Monica.  They have now turned their attention toward getting the state of california to increase the top speed allowed for certain low speed electric vehicles, commonly known as NEVs, from 25 mph to 35mph.

In 1996, with the growth of communities built around golf courses,  there was a movement to increase the speed of golf carts so they could be used to drive from home to the club house as well as around the links.  The problem was that if the golf cart was modified to go faster than 20 mph it was considered a car by the NTSC and had to comply with all the safety regulations that the family Buick had to follow.

Under urging by the Canadian company Bombardier the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Introduced legislation to allow low speed vehicles to drive on public roads.  The law, passed in 1998, allowed vehicles with a top speed of 25 mph to drive on roads that were signed for 35mph or less.  These vehicles were dubbed Neighborhood electric vehicles and had to come equipped with basic safety equipment such as seat belts, lights, turn indicators and horn.  The bill left the decision on allowing low speed vehicles on the streets to the individual states.

There were two manufacturers that took advantage of this legislation, Bombardier and Trans-2.  Bombardier would eventually withdraw from the NEV business but Trans-2 went on to become GEM, was eventually bought out by Chrysler, and now has an 80% share of the NEV market.

The other 20% is shared between a group of small manufacturers who initially started building souped up golf carts but has recently been joined by the likes of ZENN, Current and Miles Automotive who are selling vehicles that were designed to go faster than 25 mph and provide much better crash protection than the golf cart like NEVs.

The NEV has actually done very well as a vehicle class and GEM have certainly sold more than 30,000 of them over the years.  They do great service in closed communities and even in towns but the many people won't buy them because they are just too afraid that they can't keep up with traffic.

Having driven a NEV on the Las Vegas strip and other roads around Las Vegas I know that most people are more likely to slow down and snap a photo than they are to get upset that you are going slower than the traffic flow.  Having said that, I acknowledge that while many urban areas have 25mph speed limits with occasional 35 mph speed limits, traffic tends to run at 35 mph to 45 mph on these roads, 10 mph faster than the legal limit.  Many people seem convinced that if they drive along at 25 mph in a 25mph zone some guy in a hummer is going to run them off the road.

Enter the state of Montana.  They introduced a law to allow low speed vehicles earlier this year, but they did something more, they included in their legislation a provision to allow vehicles like the ZENN which has enhanced crash worthiness, termed Medium Speed Vehicles,  to drive at a maximum speed of 35mph instead of 25mph.  This takes away much of the concern for those who worry about keeping up with traffic in their NEV.  Washington state soon passed similar legislation.   

Once again we see the States stepping up to push the envelope on vehicles legislation when the Federal Government has been dragging its feet, and for once it wasn't California that was leading the way.

Now, the Sustainable transportation club is working to get similar legislation on the books here in California.  Santa Monica is already the home to quite a few NEVs and if you go into down town Santa Monica it is a common site to see a GEM go gliding by.  The area around the Third Street Promenade is a good area for NEVs because speed rarely get up to 25 mph let alone faster, but once you head up towards Main street or out to Montana speed pick up quickly.  35mph NEVs will work perfectly in that area.

So, if you want to expand the use of electric vehicles, think a $100,000 Tesla is too rich for your blood, but still want 4 wheels under you, then write to your local state representatives and see if you can get Medium Speed electric vehicle legislation passed. 

Sunday October 7, 2007 - The future is Electric - This week I received several emails that indicate a significant shift in the way that electric vehicles are being perceived and it looks like the march towards a future where driving electric vehicles is commonplace has taken another step.

First, there was video of the PIVO 2, a concept car that was shown by Nissan at the Tokyo Auto Show.  This battery electric concept is designed to exploit some of the things that can be done with electric drive trains that would be almost impossible with an internal combustion engine.  The car has hub motors that allow the wheels to be turned through 180^o so the car can drive sideways.  The car body also rotates so that you don't need to drive it in reverse.  

The next two items came to me both via an feed from EV World and through an email that I received from Environmental Motors, one of the local electric car dealers here in LA.  The first was an article about developments in New Zealand and the second was an article about Isreal.

The first article, New Zealand could lead the way in Electric Cars on stuff.co.NZ talks about how New Zealand, a country that has lots of renewable electricity from Hydro and wind power and lots of potential for Geothermal energy is including electric cars in its climate change strategy.  

The article asks how electric vehicles are going to succeed now when they have failed in the future and quotes David Parker, the Minister responsible for climate change issues as saying "In the past decade there has been no real environmental imperative driving it, and that is the big change now."

New Zealand is going to get electric cars in the near future.  Mitsubishi will begin selling their I-car there in 2010 shortly after it debuts on the roads of Japan.

In two related stories out of New Zealand. the state owned electricity utility, Meridian, announced plans to conduct a small-scale trial of electric cars starting in early 2008, while Ulrich Schmid has been trying to import an electric car from Europe for two years but his attempts have been blocked by the New Zealand Government.  This is typical of governments world wide where one arm doesn't seem to know what the other is doing.  In Ulrich Schmid's case, he is trying to import one of the EVs converted by MES-DEA in Switzerland but, because the car is left hand drive and New Zealanders drive on the left, his application has been denied.  It seem to me that if you want to move toward electric cars then you provide exemptions for cases like this.

While Global warming is the prime mover for New Zealand, it's Oil that is the primary consideration for Israel writes Benjamin Bakhshi on Israel21c.  While Israel sits in the Middle East it has very little oil of its own and, given that the bulk of the countries in the Middle East want the destruction of Israel, oil is a rare and precious commodity.  This has led Israel to become one of the leaders in renewable energy, particularly solar energy.  Where there is solar energy, electric cars shouldn't be far behind.

Now,  Shai Agassi, who made a fortune when he sold several software startups to German software giant SAP-AG has started an electric car venture.  "Our goal is to get to 100,000 cars on the road in 2010," he said.  He has already found funding for this project, Israel Corporation has agreed to invest $100 Million in the venture, and the Israeli government has also agreed to provide grants and tax benefits.  They expect to be shipping their first car around 2012.

Now, the other country that is top of the heap when it comes to renewable energy is Iceland.  They have abundant supplies of both Hydro and Geothermal energy.  Unlike New Zealand and Israel they have taken the hydrogen economy route.  This road offers promise but the finish line seems to constantly recede with every step that is taken forward.  I know that Iceland is having problems because it just can't get hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in quantity so I wonder how long it will be before they realize that Battery Electric vehicles are here now and are more efficient than fuel cell vehicles.

In the past the environmentalists pushed for electric cars because of their many benefits in air quality.  Now there is a rising appreciation that global warming and dependence on foreign oil threaten our very way of life and one part of the solution is electric transportation.  The perfect storm is brewing and the electric car will become the vehicle of choice over the next ten years.

Sunday September 30, 2007 - Fifty-one Worst Cars List - A friend of mine forwarded a link to me recently from the Time web site that listed the fifty-one worst cars of all time.  The list included some of the usual suspects but also some cars that were surprising entries.

The list included a few cars that you would expect to find on anyone's list of worst cars.

Number 39 on the list was the Yugo, the poster child for bad cars.  The car was most noted for poor brakes but it also known for mechanical problems with the engine, and for parts that would just fall off.  This car was imported into the US by Malcolm Bricklin who also brought the US entry number 24, the Bricklin SV1 which I am not familiar with but was supposed to be way too underpowered for its weight.  Malcolm Bricklin is now working with the Chinese manufacturer to bring a new Chinese built sedan to our shores.  Based on my experience with Chinese build quality I expect that the next Yugo is just around the corner.

Number 17 on the list is the Corvair, the car that prompted Ralph Nader to write "Unsafe at Any Speed".  The Corvair had a reputation for spinning out because the rear engine design put too much weight behind the rear axle.  It was also known for leaking oil and for pumping noxious fumes into the passenger compartment.  This car, and Ralph Nader's book about it, led to major changes in safety standards and the huge cost barriers for entry into the car market that we see today.  Surprisingly, there are a surprising number of these GM cars still on the road.

The Pinto, 22 on the list, is also a car that would appear on most lists of worst cars.  The problem with this car is that it had a tendency to burst into flames on rear impact.  Ford did nothing to fix this problem because they calculated that it would cost more to fix it than it would to pay the damage claims.  The Ford Pinto hasn't survived as well as the Corvair so you hardly ever see them on the road anymore.

My biggest surprise was to see GM's Hummer H2 at number 49 on the list.  The article says "the Hummer H2 sent all the wrong signals. It was/is arrogantly huge, overtly militaristic, openly scornful of the common good. As a vehicle choice, the H2 was a spiteful reactionary riposte to notions that, you know, maybe we all shouldn't be driving tanks that get 10 miles per gallon".  Those of us that feel that we need to reduce our use of petroleum products in transportation totally agree with this statement.  Now, with gasoline at close to $3.00 and predictions that $5.00 a gallon isn't far off, the Hummer has fallen out of favor with all but the most die hard urban warrior wannabe.

These types of lists are obviously very subjective and so it is not surprising that I have a different take on some of the vehicles that were included on this list.

Lets start with number 42, the GM EV1.  This is my favorite car of all time and would be number one on my list of best cars.  The article starts out by describing the car as "Quick, fun and reliable" and "The best electric car ever built" but then goes on to toss out the old chestnut about batteries not being ready even though we know that the later generation NiMH batteries are totally ready for prime time.  The article goes on to say "The car itself was a tiny, super-light two-seater, not exactly what American consumers were looking for. And the EV1 was horrifically expensive to build, which was why GM's execs terminated the program".  Well, according to Michael Shnayerson in "The Car that could" the parts costs of the EV1 was around $15,000 which was GM's target so I don't see how the car could have been "horrifically expensive to build".  The truth is that the EV1 was an exceptional car that was killed by GM because it wanted to overturn the California ZEV mandate and it does not deserve to be on this list.

The list also includes a car that I really liked when I was growing up.  Number 9 on the list is the Renault Dauphine.  This car was built to be low cost and I can remember the TV ad quite clearly, "a penny farthing a mile and you travel in style - the Renault Dauphine".  The article says "It was, in fact, a rickety, paper-thin scandal of a car that, if you stood beside it, you could actually hear rusting".  I have to agree that the car did have a serious rusting problem.  They have been know to rust so badly that they actually split in two while being driven down the street.  While they probably deserve to be on any list of worst cars, they bring back too many memories for me to include them.  Back in the early 1960s the Singer Sewing Machine company converted about 40 of these to electric and sold them under the name Henney Kilowatt.  There are some good examples, possibly half of those ever built, that are still around.  It was the purchase of one of these that led to the formation of Feelgood Cars who tried to introduce a car that was a conversion of existing Renault Dauphines and ,because they couldn't import them into the USA due to the need to pass crash testing, they switch to manufacturing the ZENN NEV.

Number 25 on the list was another alternative fuel vehicle, the Morgan Plus 8 Propane.  The problem with this car was the position of the propane tank on the rear of the vehicle.  However, the Morgan Plus 8 Propane wasn't a factory model, the cars were modified to run on propane by Bill Fink, a San Francisco based Morgan fan, after the old Rover engine used for many year by Morgan could no longer pass US emissions standards.  As a note, Morgan has finally given the Rover 3.5 V8 the old heave ho and have now returned to the US market with a cleaner engine built by BMW.

The last surprise I had was with number 2 on the list, the Model T.  Now the main problem the article has with this vehicle, one of the best selling vehicles of all time, is the fact that it was the car that actually made the automobile the transportation method of choice, especially in the USA.  Some might say that without the Model T, electric may have become the power plant of choice but the truth is that unless you understand the impact gasoline has on our environment, its energy density makes it the natural winner, especially when compared with the primitive batteries that were available in the first decade of the twentieth century.  The article also says "And by the way, with its blacksmithed body panels and crude instruments, the Model T was a piece of junk, the Yugo of its day."  The truth is that the Model T wasn't successful just because of its low price but also because it was tough enough to deal with the roads of the day which, once you got outside the main cities, were little more that rutted cart tracks.

I am sure that in the future, there will be new cars that will enter this list, and people will be able to argue about them for hours.  Some of these will be electric, I fully expect that by 2020 we will be seeing a new list that will contain some of the fuel cell cars that will come into showrooms over the next decade.  In the end, we may see one entry for worst car, any car that was powered by petroleum products - the future is electric.

The entire list of 51 cars can be reviewed on the Time web site.

Sunday September 23, 2007 - eBay - Some people call it sleaze-bay but it has become one of the internet's biggest success stories and a major place to sell items world wide.  Little wonder then that eBay has also become a major place to sell EVs.

I have been listing EVs advertised on eBay for a long time now and I think I have come to learn quite a bit about how things work on the auction site.  I can often look at an auction and say to myself, that's not going to sell and I am usually correct.  I thought I might share a little of what I have learned over years.

First, let me say that I don't agree with the sleaze-bay tag, I think that while eBay attracts its share of scam artists and dishonest sales people, eBay works hard to try and minimize the impact of these crooks.  They even have an email address, spoof@ebay.com, where you can report phishing type emails and other scams.  They are one of the few companies I have come across that actively go out to try and prosecute these people.  

There are quite a few people who purposely or inadvertently cause problems on eBay accounts.  First of all there are people out there who try and run the Nigerian Scam, bidding up on a article then offering to pay with a cashiers check for more than the wining amount and have the seller send the balance either to some "Customer the buyer owes money too", or "the buyers shipping company".  These buyers are always from a foreign country.  It used to be West Africa, which is how the scam got its name, but now the UK seems to be the popular location.  The advice here is to delete any bidding from outside your country unless you can verify that the buyer is legitimate.

There are also people who try to sell items that they don't have.  In some cases, like the recent Flybo and Sparky EV auctions, they actually say that delivery is expected shortly after the auction begins.  This is a clear red flag and I always put a warning on these actions to use caution.  I was just informed by one of my readers that eBay has pulled the Sparky EV auctions and removed the seller from their system but at least three auctions for Sparky EVs have finished which means some people may have been taken for over $5,000.  My recommendation when buying any vehicle is to go look at it, or if that's not possible get someone you trust to go look at the car.  If the seller won't agree to an inspection of the car then expect the worst.

Another favorite eBay scam is the second chance offer.  The way this scam works is that after an auction is complete the scammer contacts two or three of the other high bidders pretending to be the seller.  They say that the high bidder dropped out and they are offering it to you at your bid price.  Of course the scammer doesn't have the car but if he can get one person to send close to the asking price that can reap a bundle. A big red flag on this one is if the second chance seller wants you to wire the money.  I recommend reporting second chance notices to spoof mailbox at eBay then passing.  

In the UK they are known as time wasters, over here in the US we call them deadbeats.  These are the people who bid up on auctions, often just getting caught up in the bidding war, sometimes just trying to find out what the reserve on an item is.  This category also includes those who get cold feet and those who found they have bid more than they can get financed.  This group of people win the auction then back out leaving the seller with the car still in the garage and eBay fees to pay.  There isn't much you can do about this but give the buyer negative feedback.  To guard against this, review the bidders feedback and if they show a pattern of bidding then backing out cancel their bid.

A tactic often used by sellers is to place an article up for auction with low or no reserve.  They then watch the bidding and if the price doesn't come up to the amount they are looking for they will cancel the auction anything from a day to a few hours before the bidding closes.  Now, sellers will often list the article locally and also put it on eBay.  This is very common for car dealers who have the car on their lot but will also list on eBay.  However, you often see an auction close saying the vehicle is "no longer available" but then the same item shows up a few days later.  This is one area where eBay falls down, there is no way to give such sellers negative feedback so unless you watch individual sellers over a long period of time, there is no way to tell if the no reserve auction is going to get pulled at the last minute.

When selling on eBay some common mistakes that people make are to run the auction for too short a time, three days isn't nearly enough time for people to find your EV, and I recommend either a 7 day auction or a 10 day auction.  The other big mistake is setting the start bid too high.  For example, if you are trying to sell a 2002 GEM 2 seat,  which will sell for between $3500 and $4,500, a starting bid of $4,000 will more than likely result in zero bids.  I usually recommend setting the start bid low and a reserve price at the minimum amount you are willing to take for the car. 

Finally, when selling a car you need to make sure that people can find it.  Most people search for Electric Vehicle, Electric Car or the specific brand of vehicle.  I see ads all the time, especially from the UK, that list electric vehicles without even mentioning the manufacturer or model they are selling.  How are you supposed to find the item if you can't tell what is being advertised.  I also see people that put in the name of a more popular brand.  For example someone will say "2001 Big Man you will Think this car is a GEM" which captures people looking for the two most popular brands of NEV, the GEM and the Th!nk Neighbor.  Some people think this is sleazy but it really brings in people who might not even know that a NEV like the Big Man exists.  

You also need to put enough detail in the listing so that people can form a good idea of the condition of the vehicle.  In particular, you need to specify the condition of the batteries.  I see lots of auctions that really skimp on details.  This is most prevalent in the European listings particularly in France and Italy and to a lesser degree in the UK.  People are often buying the car site unseen and they deserve to get an honest reporting on the vehicles condition.

eBay is a fast and relatively easy way to buy or sell an EV, but it also has its pitfalls.  Use caution and common sense when either buying or selling on eBay and you should be able to complete the transaction in a quick and fair way.

Sunday September 16, 2007 - A Visit to Electra City Motors - This week I have been taking a break, a vacation around Southern California.  On Tuesday I was passing through Escondido so I thought it would be nice to stop by Electra City Motors, a Xebra dealership.

It was about ten thirty in the morning when we pulled into the parking lot outside a shop tucked in behind a small building on W. Washington Ave. and I met Joseph Gottlieb for the first time.  Joseph is a regular contributor to the Yahoo Xebra group that I moderate and is one of several dealers that I recommend when people are looking for Xebras.  

Joseph only had one Xebra in stock at the time of my visit, a white PK Zero.  This is the first time I have seen one of the pickups that are fitted with solar panels and I think they look pretty good, although I have my doubts about the benefits of installing what amounts to about 120 Watts of charging, but while it only provides a couple of miles of additional range each day, its main benefit is to  provide a trickle charge to the batteries when the sun is out which should provide lots of benefits for battery life.

I was a little disappointed that he didn't have a Zapino in stock, I haven't had a chance to check one out yet and I have been hearing good things about them.  He did have a couple of Zappy IIIs there but wasn't very happy about the quality of them.  He showed me how loose the front forks were and told me that he had warranty work on every one he sold due to issues with the wiring up to the hand controls.

We chatted a bit about the overall quality of ZAP products.  Joseph talked about how he has seen steady improvement in the quality of the Xebra but still felt that while the car ran OK there was still a lot of improvement that could be made to the overall build.  He also confided that since Richard Weaver had left ZAP communications with the company had deteriorated and now he mostly talked to the parts guy.  This is a pity since many of the improvements to the Xebra have come from dealers like Joseph.

I also got a look at some of the other things that Joseph is working on.  One of his bread and butter items is wheel flares for the Suzuki Samurai which his has manufactured in China and sells both here and in the UK.  Apparently there is a big market for Samurai wheel flares in the UK.

He also has an old Hyundai that was converted to electric back in the 1990s by a company in San Diego.  The company is now defunct and the car is in need of repair so Joseph is planning on turning it into an electric dragster.  

Back in his office I was able to inspect one of the struts that Joseph sells to improve the front suspension on the Xebra.  I know of quite a few people who have replaced the stock front strut with the one Joseph sells and everyone tells me the ride quality is improved tremendously.  

One issue that is relevant to most EVs is the trade off between range and comfort when you introduce air conditioning and heating.  Both of these are must haves for many people but are a significant drain on the batteries and reduce range appreciably on an EV like the Xebra.  To solve this Joseph, along with Steve Isom of EV Carolina  have developed a seat that will provide both cooling and heating.

The seat, which is really more of a seat cover, sits atop your normal seat and is connected to power.  It can be set to either cool or hot and uses a lot less power that the normal electric heater or air conditioner.  Joseph had a demo set up there in his shop and after sitting in it for a few minutes it my rear end began to feel quite warm.  I don't see this as being useful for extreme climates but for most situations it would work quite well.  For example, in the winter you could pre-heat your EV with a space heater in the morning then use the heated seat to maintain comfort during your commute to work.  I wonder if this will work in my Prius?

Josephs current shop is a little out of the way, tucked in behind an office building as it is.  While I was there he was packing up to move to a new location which hopefully will give him more exposure for his vehicles.

Sunday September 9, 2007 - Driving Courteously - I was driving home last Friday night in typical LA rush hour traffic and as I approached the Ralph's market on Pico traffic came to a halt.  There were a lot of cars waiting to turn left into the parking lot and a couple of good drivers had left a gap to allow them to turn.  This was good until a car stopped in the entrance to wait for a parking spot and another car pushed in behind him blocking the main road.

It struck me that this was a pretty common occurrence here in LA and probably happens in cities all over the US as people rush to get home on a Friday night, or any night of the week for that matter. 

While I sat there waiting for the traffic to clear I began to ponder how much gas was wasted because one drive was being discourteous and blocking the street.  There were at least ten cars sitting backed up to the light at Beverly and Pico and, although I couldn't see the situation at the junction, I suspect that more cars were backed up there blocking the junction which was delaying traffic on Beverly.  In all there were maybe 100 cars sitting idling because one driver was too selfish to wait and blocked traffic.

Now this didn't make much of a difference to me as I was driving a Prius so the motor shut off as I came to a halt, but just think how much gas is being burned, not to mention how much CO2 and other pollutants are being spewed into the air from the massive SUVs that many LA drivers like use to roam the streets of our city. 

So it boils down to this. if you live in a city where gridlock is an everyday fact of life, remember that it isn't just you that you effect by blocking intersections, it is all the other drivers who can't be motoring on their way because you are blocking their path.  Even if you drive an electric car, you can still cause pollution when you block other drivers.

The moral of this story is that there are many ways of cutting down our use of oil products, and one of them is to drive in a courteous way.  In the end, if everyone drove in a less selfish way, we will all arrive at our destination a little less frazzled and with a little less crud in our air.

Sunday September 2, 20007 - The Complete Idiot's Guide to Hybrid and Alternative Fuel Vehicles - This week I read the Complete Idiot's Guide to Hybrid and Alternative Fuel Vehicles by Jack R. Nerad.  The book is a simple overview of the current state of Hybrid and Alternative Fuel Vehicles designed to to help people choose an alterative to Gasoline.

Jack R. Nerad has been a leading automotive journalist for many years and now, among other things, is the executive editorial director of Kelly Blue Book.  In this book he comes over as someone who very much believes that the future still lies with the internal combustion engine, but he attempts to give a balanced view of alternative fuel vehicles and for the most part he does a very good job.  The book is marred in places by errors and omissions, but overall someone who is looking to buy an alternative fuel vehicle would get some useful information from this book.

 The book opens with a discussion of the challenges that we currently face.  He talks about limited supplies of oil and global warming,.  It is with oil supply that provides the biggest omission in this book, he totally fails to mention the concept of peak oil.  In reading this book he obviously believes that Global warming isn't real and that there will be plenty of oil around to drive out cars.  He tells the reader that oil will not run out, that new sources are being found all the time and that as oil gets scarcer it will just get more expensive.  He does not mention that as oil extraction reaches about fifty percent of reserve, the amount of oil that can be extracted declines and as supplies tighten prices skyrocket.  He does point out that much of the worlds oil comes from the middle east, an unstable region where the United States is often regarded as the enemy.  This is his reason for cutting our oil usage, as good a reason as any.

He then goes on to give a little history of the early automobile market to illustrate the fact that there have been alternative fuel vehicles around since the earliest days of the horseless carriage.  He talks about early steam and electric vehicles and goes on to discuss the reasons why the internal combustion engine eventually became the power source of choice for our mobility needs.  He even discusses some of the early hybrid vehicles including the one designed by Ferdinand Porsche.

Having set the stage he then goes on to write a chapter on each of the major types of alternative fuel vehicles.  He starts with a chapter on hybrids, followed by Flex Fuel vehicles, Natural Gas, "Clean" Diesel and Bio-Diesel, New Technology gasoline vehicles and Electric cars.

At the end of each chapter he talks about the benefits and problems with the technology.  In chapter 4 he also  introduces a concept of determining how if a hybrid or alternative fuel vehicle is right for you.  He suggest that you should look at how much you will pay for your vehicle, how much you expect it to be worth when you are ready to sell it again, how far you will drive, and how much you expect gasoline to cost on average over the time you own this vehicle.  This is very sound advice, and apart from trying to guess how gas prices will fluctuate, one of the best things that you can get out of this book. He uses this criteria to do a cost of ownership calculation for a typical driver.

It is clear that he doesn't like the current dominance of the Japanese hybrid vehicles like the Prius and Civic Hybrid.  This chapter comes off like it was taken straight from GM's rants against hybrid vehicles and clearly shows that he doesn't have a complete understanding of this technology.  He does make some good points, that this technology does produce good gas savings and I agree that the technology is more complex than a standard ICE vehicle, but it isn't actually that much more complex, particularly when compared to the latest vehicles that provide displacement on demand (DOD) where the vehicle shuts down cylinders when cruising on the highway.  He trots out the old myth that the hybrid system doesn't help much on the highway.  While accepting that shutting down three cylinders on a V6 can help fuel economy he ignores the fact that modern day hybrids do the same thing, under certain situations, like when going down a long incline the hybrid will actually shut of the engine completely.  When talking about displacement on demand he also introduces one of the books errors where he says that the car shuts the valves to shut off the cylinders.  If it did that the pistons, which are still moving, would be working against the compression in the cylinder and this would cause the car to slow down.  What they do is open the exhaust valves and shut down the fuel injectors so there is no compression in the cylinder.  He has a calculation that shows that the extra cost of a hybrid is more than the fuel savings but does show that state and federal incentives may make this a good option.  

In the next chapter he talks a lot about how there are so many more flex fuel vehicles than there are hybrids on the roads, over two million of them.  He appears to like flex fuel vehicles and the coverage of how we commonly use E10, a blend of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol in our cars, and how some vehicles are set up to use a mixture of 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol, a fuel known as E85.  The coverage of E85 is very good in this book and he does go through the issues of using it such as how E85 isn't as energy dense as gasoline so you will get less miles per gallon.  He also mentions that E85 is often hard to find but passes over this pretty quickly.  The only thing missing from the discussion is the issues around producing enough ethanol to power these vehicles.  In this chapter he doesn't do the usual cost of ownership calculation, merely noting that that the car can always be run on gas if E85 isn't available.  He does do a useful calculation that shows the cost difference if gas costs $3.00 per gallon and E85 costs $2.50 per gallon.  Since the nearest E85 station to me is 120 miles away in San Diego I can't say if this cost comparison is reasonable, although according to USA Today E85 cost more than gas in many places, but if you live in an area where E85 is available you can use the method in this book to do your own calculation,  

The next chapter covers Natural Gas Vehicles.  Once again Mr. Nerad does a very good job of pointing out the pros and cons of using Natural Gas as a fuel.  I learned about the differences between Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)  and Liquid Propane Gas (LPG).  There was nice discussion of Honda's Phil although it is clear that Mr. Nerad doesn't think that the device is worth the $1000 cost.  He does give a good overview of the benefits of driving a Natural Gas Vehicle, showing how they run much cleaner than a gas vehicle and also how most of our CNG can be supplied from domestic sources reducing our dependence on foreign oil.  He also emphasizes how the lack of public fueling infrastructure is a major barrier to those who want to use a Natural Gas vehicle as their primary driver.  At the end of the chapter, the calculation on cost of ownership shows that the CNG vehicle only comes out ahead with the current $4,000 federal tax credit.

Mr. Nerad appears to be a big fan of so called clean diesel; not unexpected if your major issue is the need to reduce the use of foreign oil.  In the next chapter of the book he informs us about the increased efficiency of diesel over gasoline power and shows how diesel can get fuel economy close to that of hybrids.  He does admit that diesel is much dirtier than regular gasoline cars.  He tells us about the new Bluetec systems that are likely to be introduced by Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, and BMW and does mention that issues still surround the use of Urea injection to treat diesel exhaust which may still prevent the sale of diesel in states like California.  The chapter does a very good job of introducing bio-diesel and explains the different types of diesel like B20, (20% bio-diesel and 80% diesel) and how the higher temperature at which bio-diesel gels impacts it's use.  In the cost analysis at the end of the chapter, diesel comes out a winner.

The next chapter talks about some of the new technologies that have come out to improve the cleanliness and fuel efficiency of modern gasoline engines.  While Mr. Nerad has much praise for the many vehicles that have achieved California Partial Zero Emission Vehicle (PZEV) certification, he seems particularly taken with displacement on demand (DOD) technology.  Manufacturers like Honda and GM have introduced models that shut off one bank of cylinders on a V6 or V8 engine when the vehicle is cruising on the highway and doesn't need the power.  This produces a boost in fuel efficiency and is really a very good thing.  He also lavishes praise on the so called Mild hybrid systems that use an alternator and belt system to allow the engine to shut down at stop signs and traffic lights.  His idea is that this feature costs much less than the full hybrid treatment so it will sell better and have a much bigger impact on the overall amount of fuel being consumed.  He contrasts this with the Prius which he classifies as not being mainstream.  Timing is everything they say, since I have to assume that this was written before the Prius became one of the top ten best selling cars in the USA with over 110,000 vehicles sold between January 1 and July 31, 2007. His cost analysis seems to come out a wash on these vehicles.

The last class of alternative fuel vehicles he addresses is the electric vehicle and here is where his bias shows.  First a couple of errors that crept into the text.  When he talks about the electric vehicles that the major manufacturers introduced in the late 1990s he says that they used Lead Acid batteries.  Now, the first generation and some of the second generation EV1s, and some of the Ford Ranger EVs and Chevy S10 EVs did use lead acid batteries, but Honda, Chrysler, and Toyota used NiMH.  Ford used NiMH in some of its Rangers and NiCAD in the Th!nk City, GM also used NiMH in some Chevy S10s and most of the second generation EV1s, and Nisan used LiIon in its vehicles.  The other error is that he refers to the Tesla roadster as a Lotus Elite, but while the Tesla is based on the Elise (not Elite) platform is has its own body styling and is not just a conversion.

While it is true that Mr. Nerad is obviously not a fan of the electric vehicle in the end what he is saying actually mirrors somewhat the advice I give to people every so often who email me here at evfinder.com.  They are usually looking for a vehcile with 150 mile range capable of freeway speed and they have a budget of around $10,000 and I have to tell them to buy a nice used compact car since there is nothing that fits their requirements.  As Mr. Nerad tells us, there is no electric vehicle from the major manufacturers and the once currently available are either low speed vehicles like the GEM or the ZAP Xebra, or very expensive vehicles like the Tesla roadster.  He does look at the pollution issue and comes to the conclusion that if you compare an electric vehicle to a gasoline vehicle on a well to wheels basis the electric comes out way ahead.  Not surprisingly the cost analysis shows that the electric car falls far short of the gasoline car in cost comparison.  However, the calculations are loaded.  In all the other calculations he used a cost per gallon of $3.00 but when he does the calculation for the electric vehicle the price per gallon for gasoline mysteriously falls to $2.31 per gallon. Now, on the other cost comparisons he was comparing one internal combustion engine to another so maintenance could be considered a wash, but an electric vehicle has no oil changes and no tune-ups, but may require battery changes, so unless you consider these a wash, his calculations are invalid.  

The book continues with a chapter on converting the car to different types of alternative fuels.  This chapter is quite will done and even includes a small section on converting a hybrid to a plug-in hybrid.  If you want to convert an existing vehicle to E85, Bio-diesel or natural gas there is some good information that will get you on the road to an Alternative fuel life style.  There is even a bit about getting converting a car to a hybrid.  What is missing from this chapter is information on converting a car to an electric vehicle, one of the most common conversions that people undertake.

The next chapter is one that considers how you go about selecting a hybrid or alternative fuel vehicle.  This chapter shows you how to analyze your current driving requirements and use this to select the vehicle that you select.  There is a handy chart that show the different benefits from various engine technologies, like DOD, and the fuel economy savings that you might expect.  It also introduces the MPG per person concept.  He points out quite rightly that a driver driving a Prius alone in the carpool lane actually gets less MPG per person than a family of 5 driving behind them in a Chevy Tahoe.  to keep this in perspective though he does point out that if that same family were driving along in the Prius they would be getting a whapping 275 mpg per.  Once  person.  Something that I find quite refreshing is the piece that tells us that people don't consider the cost when choosing a V6 over a 4 cylinder or selecting a top of the line stereo option so why would they consider price when choosing say a hybrid.  This is one of the truest things in this book.  In vehicle selection price is one of the last things that most people think about as long as they can make the payments.   Once again this chapter seems to ignore electric vehicles.

The final chapter of the book takes a look at future vehicles.  The book covers plug-in hybrids and diesel hybrids and it is clear that the author doesn't see these as the next big thing.  He sees the biggest increase in the area of mild hybrids like those being sold by GM at the moment.  Since this is a relatively cheap way to increase fuel efficiency I also expect to see such devices becoming common in the future.  I was also impressed with the section of Fuel Cell vehicles.  I thought Mr. Nerad did an excellent job of laying out the benefits of these vehicles and the barriers that have to be overcome to make them economical enough to enter the automotive mainstream.

Overall, I can recommend this book for those that are interested in getting a good overview of the various alternatives fuel vehicle technologies that are currently available.  If you are interested in E85, Natural Gas, or Diesel this is a really good starting point.  If you are interested in electric or hybrid vehicles then, while there is some useful information to be gleaned from this tome you have to approach this book with a skeptics eye.

Sunday August 25, 2007 - EV Prospects (part 2) - Last week I took a look at some of the manufacturers that are currently producing and selling Electric Vehicles so this week I thought I would take a look at some of the manufacturers that are on the verge of selling cars.

The world of Electric Vehicles is littered with companies that have designed working Electric cars but haven't been able to turn their design into a workable product.  They often emerge from the workshop in a big splash, generate a lot of interest, then quietly fade away.  Some actually make it into production but the high capital cost of moving to production makes it very difficult to sustain a business.

There are currently several companies that have working prototypes that look to be close to production. 

The company with the best prospects is Tesla.  Tesla is already taking orders and has firm commitments for over 500 Roadsters.  If you look at my listing on the Full Sized EV page you will quickly realize that Tesla isn't my favorite company.  They just don't seem to be interested in a tiny outfit like evfinder.com.

Apart from that one lapse in judgment however the company is well funded with a strong management team that is moving forward with crash testing and durability testing.  I think they are going to be late on their October 2007 date for first delivery but I fully expect to see Tesla Roadsters on the road by early 2008.  How well they do with these cars will heavily effect the development of their follow-on car, a four seat sedan code named Whitestar.  

The biggest concern I have with the Tesla is the battery pack.  They are assembling battery packs from individual lap top batteries and this gives them exceptional energy density, but laptop batteries aren't designed for the demands of Electric Vehicles and I expect most Tesla Owners are going to need at least one and perhaps two battery pack changes during the life of the car.  Still, if you can afford a $100,000+ car you can probably afford to replace the battery pack.

Long term, new battery technologies are being developed that will provide both high energy density and long life.  Costs will fall as volume increases and the long term prospects for Tesla appear to be good.

Phoenix Motorcars is another company that have an EV that is close to production.  They too have taken more than 500 orders, mostly from fleets.  They have just sent a letter to these customers announcing that deliveries will be delayed until 2008 as they haven't yet finished CARB certification.  They should also have finished crash testing by now but they have made no announcement on this so far.

I have several concerns about their SUT the biggest being that I have scheduled three different times when I should have been able to take a test drive of their truck and each time they have been unable to let me drive one of their vehicles.  Other people have test driven their truck but it does seem like they have a lot of work to do to get durability up to acceptable levels.

My other concern is that the Phoenix Motors business plan depends heavily on the accumulation and sale of ZEV credits.  The price of about $47,000 is less than the cost of the Truck, but because the truck has over 100 miles of range and can be recharged in 10 minutes, it is eligible for a lot of ZEV credits from CARB.  If other manufactures aren't selling enough vehicles to meet their ZEV requirement then they will be able to buy these credits from Phoenix.  

CARB is currently reviewing their ZEV program and there is talk about extending the deadline for the ZEV program.  This will mean that the Automobile manufacturers will have longer before they have to obtain ZEV credits.  I fully expect this to happen since the high level people in California government are totally sold on the hydrogen economy and will give  Ford, GM and Chrysler longer to try and make that happen.  This will mean no ZEV credit sales for Phoenix and their business plan goes out of the window.  I expect that the delay in shipping is more to do with waiting for CARB  to come up with its new ZEV rules than any issues with passing CARB certification. 

Universal Electric Vehicles is another company that has had a prototype on the roads for a long time.  Like Tesla, they also have a two seat sports car, which they call the Electrum Spyder.  They did their official launch at the Santa Monica Alternative Fuel Expo last December and are now taking orders for the car.  

I don't expect Universal Electric Vehicles to go very far because they are just too under-funded.  If they can find an investor to pump enough cash into the company to get through crash test procedures (at lease $10,000,000) and can then set up production and distribution (at least another $30,000,000) they will be unlikely to produce anything but a very small number of cars.  

The biggest concern about this company, apart from the apparent lack of funds, is that they are way too publicity shy for this stage in their development.  The company doesn't get their car out in front of the public.  The last major event they attended was the aforementioned Alt Fuel Expo, and this isn't making enough of a splash to pull in big money investors.  They also need to let people like Dan Neil from the LA Times, Bill Moore from EV World, and even me,  test drive their car.  If they want to attract investors they need to get their name into the Media.

Miles automotive is another company that is publicity shy and this has got to be impacting sales.  Miles is much better funded than ULEV but has the same issues, they just need to get their cars out in front of the public.  Miles currently sells a fully enclosed NEV, build in China, that is in direct competition with the ZENN.  They have announced plans to sell a highway capable electric car in 2008 that will have a target price of around $30,000.  If they can pull this off they will have a real winner.

My biggest concern here is that they don't understand the cost and time it takes to get a car through the various DOT and CARB approval processes to get a car like this on the road.  I can't see them completing this process but the end of 2008, and even if they do, they don't currently have the distribution in place to be able to sell more than a handful.  

Miles does appear to have the money to make their car happen but I would like to see them concentrate on the NEV market, and the slowly building mid-speed market, where their cars can go 35mph,  at least until they get their sales and distribution system expanded.  There is already legislation in Montana and Washington State with other states looking to implement similar legislation and this is a market where Miles is very well positioned to take a leading role.

In Norway, Th!nk is another company that is poised to re-enter the EV market.  Th!nk started out back in the 1980s as Pivco and built a small two seat city car that was sold mostly in Norway, but some did make it to the USA as part of a station car project in Northern California.  Eventually the company went bankrupt and re-emerged as Th!nk.  The company got into financial difficulties again and were bought out by Ford in the late 1990s to help them meet their California  ZEV requirments under the ZEV mandate.  Once the Automobile Manufacturers managed to overturn the ZEV mandate Ford sold Th!nk to Swiss company KamKorp.  KamKorp dropped the Ford Developed Th!nk City and tried to build a vehicle of their own design but once again fell onto hard times and closed down Th!nk Nordic.  A new group of investors came in and took over the company.  Now, with adequate funding, they are resurrecting the old Th!nk City, upgrading the batteries, and getting ready to start selling cars again.

They will initially target sales in Norway and the UK.  Th!nk Already has a strong market in Norway selling refurbished Th!nk city cars and will be able to build on this when they start to sell the updated version.  London's congestion charges have also helped to spur the growth of electric vehicles as they are exempt from the charge saving drivers about $18 per day.  

My biggest concern with Th!nk is that London City council will change the congestion charge law to make small ICE cars exempt from congestion charges.  This will ultimately kill the growing EV industry before it is able to get totally entrenched.  If this change is made, it will hit Th!nk's business plan really hard.

For total success Th!nk will also have to find a distributor for its cars here in the US.  This will mean getting the cars through crash testing and being able to sell them at a reasonable cost.  They appear to have the funds to do this so they have a very strong chance of building a successful EV business.

There are other companies that are currently working on electric vehicles but all of these, including some of the worlds big automobile manufacturers, appear to be at least three years away from introducing an electric car that the public can buy.  Mercedes Benz subsidiary, Smart, appears to be closest,  They have just started a pilot project leasing electric versions of the Smart to fleets in the UK.  There is no indication yet if this program will be expanded or if it is just an green-wash exercise.  

Mitsubishi also has an electric car under development and this car could be in showrooms by the end of the decade.  There is a strong chance that Mitsubishi will follow though on this since an electric car would seriously set their product line apart from the  crowd.  

Citroen, Ford, GM and Toyota are all working on plug-in hybrids with Ford and Toyota announcing users tests and GM saying they will have the Volt in production by 2010.  I think that these companies will position themselves to respond if an upstart company like Tesla starts to grab market share but otherwise they will keep these cars under wraps as long as possible.

Sunday August 18, 2007 - EV Prospects (part1) - Earlier this week I received an email from Rick Woodbury about the current production at Commuter Cars and it got me thinking about Prospects for EV companies around the world.

It seems that there has been an explosion of companies that are trying to manufacture EVs.  Unfortunately this doesn't include most of the major automobile manufacturers but the number of EVs that likely to be available in 2008 makes the heady days of 1997, when the California ZEV mandate was in full swing, seem tame in comparison.  Of course, government agencies are doing their best to head off this move to EVs but I for one think we are seeing the start of a silent revolution which will dampen the noise pollution of the internal combustion engine.

First, let's start with a quick look at some of the current manufacturers.  In this article I am going to ignore the low speed vehicles like the GEM and the multitude of Electric Mopeds that currently have a small but growing market around the world.

Top of the heap has to be an Indian company called Reva.  Reva came to California and had a tiny 4 seat city car that sold quite well in India.  They eventually expanded into Europe but sales didn't really hit the stratosphere until London introduced congestion charges and had the foresight to make electric vehicles exempt.  Reva, along with three other electric microcars, Nice, Mocrovette, and Maranello and  are now selling very well and Reva has recently introduced upgraded models including an AC version, and sales in Europe, particularly in Italy, are starting to build.

Of course, the City of London, flush with this success, are now talking about making small ICE cars exempt from congestion charges, a move that is sure to kill the growing EV market and increase pollution as people move from the current EVs to the cheaper small gas cars.

ZAP is a company that has been around producing electric vehicles for a long time.  They started out selling an excellent electric bike and more or less invented the small electric scooter market.  People still refer to the small electric scooter as a 
"Zappy" style electric scooter.  They still have a fine electric scooter for sale, but recently they have moved up to selling a three wheel electric car, with a top speed of around 38mph, called the Xebra.  The Xebra is built in China and comes with all the poor build quality that we have come to expect from a product labeled "made in China",  but the cars actually work surprisingly well once they are correctly prepped by a good dealer.  ZAP has sold over 500 Xebras over the last year and a half and sales seem to be going quite well.

The company has also announced a couple of other EVs that is is planning to bring to market, a freeway capable three wheel vehicle, and a 100mph crossover vehicle.  Both these vehicles are being developed for them by Lotus Engineering.  ZAP do seem to be stretched to the limit and have customer service problems but they have demonstrated that they can get a car through the mine field of DOT crash testing, having successfully modified the Smart to meet US crash test standards.  If they can bring any of the other cars to market is a big question mark right now, but with Mercedes Benz bringing the new version of the Smart to the US at a considerable amount less than the one that ZAP sells, they need to find another vehicle for their dealers to sell if they are to keep growing.  I think ZAP will be a survivor but I am not sure they will be selling a freeway capable EV any time soon.

There are a few other three wheel vehicle manufacturers that need to mentioned, Twike, Citiycom and Myers Motors.  Twike and Citycom have both been around for a long time and both have good mature products.  They mostly sell in mainland Europe although Twike has now entered the US and Canadian markets and both have recently started selling in the UK.  The biggest threat to these two companies is that when new EVs come to market, both these will have a problem competing on price.  Myers Motors is a US based company who bought up the remnants of Corbin Motors, took the existing Sparrow, corrected most its many flaws, and are now building out the remaining 76 Sparrow body shells which are being sold as the NmG.  They are also looking at designing a follow on three wheel freeway capable vehicle but so far there has been no indication of what their design will look like.

Over in Norway, Kewet, continues to build the Buddy EV in small quantities.  Like Twike and Citycom Kewet has been around selling electric cars in the city class for a long time.  They even sold some cars here in the USA during the 1980s.  Now they are concentrating on the Norwegian market and appear to be doing steady business selling about 50 cars per year.

Vectrix is another company that has had a long struggle to make it to market.  They had a couple of false starts before coming out with the current scooter design.  The good news is that Vectrix has just started making Customer deliveries both here and in Europe and the bikes, while expensive, are receiving rave reviews.  I think they are likely to find a steady niche as a freeway capable electric motorcycle.  The bike is really too expensive but they should still be able to do steady business as there is little competition for an electric motorbike in this class.

Another long time EV business, and the company that brought us the legendary T-Zero, is AC Propulsion.  They have begun to sell their eBox, a converted Scion Xb that is driven by the same ACP 150 power train that drive the T-Zero and is the basis of several other EVs including the Tesla Roadster and the Venturi Fetish.  Their first car was delivered to Tom Hanks, who is an investor in the company, and they are now building about one car per month with orders through the end of October.  I was told by Tom Gage they they didn't plan on being a large scale manufacturer, and 100 vehicles per year would be a significant boost to their revenue.  While ACP continues to lead the pack with innovation in electric vehicles they will continue to prosper.

Finally, back to Commuter Cars.  They delivered their first T600 to George Clooney over a year ago but then ran into issues that shut down the production line.  The original car was built in the UK but the company doing the assembly wanted to charge much more for subsequent vehicles so Commuter Cars decided to buy up all the equipment and move the production back to Seattle.  Along the way they also redesigned the chassis so production didn't really start back up until just recently.  The latest word is that the next vehicle will be ready for delivery in about a month.  Commuter Cars currently have firm orders for ten T600 cars and these are all being built as we speak.  They hope to have these cars on the road in time for Christmas.

This is a company I would really like to see do well.  I have met Rick Woodbury a couple of times and he really seems to want to produce an outstanding vehicle.  I have my doubts about the long term viability of this company.  The premise of the Tango is really quite good, a narrow, two seat commuter car that can lane split and park perpendicular to the pavement, two to a parking spot.  I just don't see lots of people paying over $100,000 for such a car when they can buy a Tesla Roadster for the same price.  Commuter Cars desperately needs investors that can provide the Fifty Million dollars or so that it needs to put the car into volume production, a T200 that will sell for less than $20,000 would sell very well.

Another Company that is selling Electric Conversions is Swiss company MES-DEA who make electric versions of the Fiat Panda and Smart Fortwo.  The problem with this company is that they really don't have any marketing.  I don't list them on evfinder.com because I have never figured out how someone would buy one of their cars.  There must be a way, since they are selling cars in Switzerland and Italy, but I have never been able to figure out how a person would schedule a test drive or place and order.  If they improve their marketing they might be able to ride the current interest in reducing Green House Gasses that is sweeping through Europe but otherwise they will never be more than a very small volume producer.

In next weeks blog I will consider the prospects for a number of companies that are ready to burst onto the scene with exciting new electric vehicles.

Sunday August 12, 2007 - Food and Green House Gases - The Pro-Automobile Loby have been all of a twitter this week over an article in Times online called "Walking to the shops damages planet more than going by car" by Dominic Kennedy.  

The article is based on calculations done by Chris Goodall, author of "How to live a low carbon life".  The premise is simple, if you drive 3 miles to the store and back in a typical UK car you release about 2 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere but if you walk you will burn about 180 calories and to replace those calories you will need to eat about 3.5oz of beef which will produce 7.9 lb of CO2 to raise, butcher, distribute and cook the beef.

Well, I guess we all need to stop walking to the store and get the Hummer out of the garage.

The problem with this type of analysis is that it focuses on only one thing.  The green house gas (GHG) emissions in the equation.  The truth is somewhat different.  First, who among us walks to the store then says "Oh! I just burned 180 calories I had better get that steak out of the fridge".  What we do in reality is we eat whatever we were going to eat, no more no less and we either burn the 180 calories walking to the store, we go to the Gym to work it off, or we grow a little more around the middle.  

The other fallacy in Mr. Goodall's analysis is that GHGs aren't the only nasty stuff that comes from that drive to the store.  The car emits lots of nice things like oxides of Nitrogen, hydrocarbons and particulate matter that has a huge impact on the health of the population.  All in all, Mr Goodall's analysis, while well intentioned, does more harm than good to our planet.

Not that he doesn't have a point, that the energy intensive methods we have for producing food is a major contributor to GHG emissions.  The fact that we buy large quantities of wheat gluten from China which we use as additives for many food products, while being the largest producer of wheat in the world says a lot for how the economy has gone global.  

We now use a large amount of energy shipping food supplies for all over the world.  We ship tea from India and Rice from China, and strawberries from Mexico.  When we take corn and begin turning it into Ethanol to power our cars the price of Tortias goes up in Mexico city.

To reduce carbon footprint we need to look at the food we eat and make some decisions.  First, some foods are much more energy intensive to produce than others.  Mr. Goodall used the example of beef which is one of the most energy intensive foodstuffs possible.  The location the food is grown is also a big factor, the further away the source the more energy it takes to get to market.  For example, Mexican grown strawberries may not take much energy to ship here to Southern California but will take a lot more energy to ship to New York.  The use of Locally grown produce is one way to reduce your carbon footprint, you just have to understand where local is.  

Another part of the article talks about how driving in a 4X4 would produce less GHGs than a family traveling by diesel train.  The example given is that if ten or fewer people travel on a Sprinter Train (Diesel Multiple Unit) then it would be less polluting to give them each a Land Rover Freelander to drive to their destination.  Well, you can always use this type of argument, assume that the train is traveling nearly empty and then say that a car would be less energy intensive.  However, when I travel by rail in the UK I rarely see trains that have 10 or fewer people on them, I see trains that are pretty full and once you get to maybe a hundred people traveling by train then the picture looks a whole lot better for the train.  

I am not saying that train travel is perfect, it is my firm belief that electrification of these local lines would seriously reduce the amount of GHGs and other pollutants put out by the diesel trains, I just don't think that people should use the idea that if a train runs almost empty it causes more pollution than driving alone as an excuse not to take a train, it seem like the train works better when there are more people aboard so to address pollution concerns you should try and take the train to reduce its emissions per passenger mile.

I have said in other blogs that you have to be careful when reading article like this because when you focus on a single item, not the whole picture, you often end up doing more harm than good.  

Sunday August 5, 2007 - Toyota Plugs In - There has long been a rumor that Toyota was working on a Plug-in version of their popular Prius hybrid that would have an all electric range of 9 miles.  Toyota finally announced that it was going to begin trial in Japan and the USA on such a vehicle.

The Prius, which will actually have an all electric range of just 8 miles, gets its EV range by adding a second NiMH battery pack which is the same as the one in the current Prius.  See Video

In the regular Prius the all electric range is about 1.5 miles but the batteries are kept in a state of charge that hovers between 40% and 80% which is the way that Toyota get longevity from the packs.  To get 8 miles of range from the addition of a single battery pack one must assume that they are taking the state of charge both higher and lower on the two packs so battery life is a question.

Toyota said as part of the announcement that they were using NiMH because the Lithium batteries they were developing weren't ready yet.  

The current Prius also has a top speed of somewhere between 38mph and 42mph in EV only mode, go faster than that and the ICE starts.  The Plug-in Prius has been tweaked to allow the car to run at up to 62 mph before the ICE turns on so the car can be used in almost any city street and on many highways in electric only mode but will still need to fire up the ICE to keep up with 65-75 mph traffic on the freeway.

The announcement created quite a stir on the email lists, and several people have already written to Toyota demanding better range for the Plug-in Prius.  My response was that 8 miles of EV only range is a lot better than 0 miles of EV only range.  Remember, you can't plug the current Prius in so even though it will run in EV only mode, the energy in the battery ultimately comes from the ICE so it doesn't really run on electricity.  

Now, 8 miles isn't much, 20 or 40 miles would be better, but 20 or 40 miles would also cost a lot more so the benefits may not be as much as we would expect.  Funnily enough, 8 miles just happens to be the round trip distance from my home to the parking lot where I meet up with my carpool.  That means that I would be able to drive in EV mode every day that I wasn't the designated driver.  On the days when I drive I would be on the freeway most of the rest of the time anyway so I would really get a great benefit from plugging in.

I also hear from people who drive a Prius for very short distances, often as little as 3 to 6 miles per day.  These people are usually complaining about their mileage.  The reason for their low mileage figures is that to achieve low levels of emissions the Prius needs to get the catalytic converter hot and to do this the Prius runs the ICE continuously for the first 5 minutes or so.  In this first five minutes the Prius usually gets only about 25 mpg so if you have a very short drive with a cold engine 33mph isn't unusual.  The 8 mile range of the Plug-in Prius is will allow these people to run in EV mode most of the time and their mpg will skyrocket. 

The cost of the batteries also has to be factored in and I thingk Toyota, starting with a low EV only range, has the right idea.  If they can produce the car at just a little more cost than the regular Prius, they can sell a large number of them.  Rumor has it that the traction battery costs Toyota about $800 so they could build their plug-in Prius for maybe $1000 more than the regular Prius.  This is less than the cost of adding a Navigation system so it would be affordable whereas adding enough lithium batteries to give the car a 40 mile EV only mode would add something like $10,000 to the price of the car which puts it out of reach of a lot more customers.  In the end the objective would be to sell enough Plug-in Priuses to bring the cost of batteries down to where a 20 mile then 40 mile range vehicle would be affordable.

In the end, you will probably sell a whole lot more 8 mile range plug- in Priuses than you will a 40 mile range plug-in.  Now, lets say we take a typical driver with a 22 mile round trip commute.  The 8 mile range Prius will do 8 miles on electric only and the remaining 14 miles using the ICE, while the 40 mile Prius would do the whole trip on electric, sounds like the 40 mile range Prius wins out.  

Well, lets say we sell 100,000 of the 8 mile Prius and 10,000 of the 40 mile Prius then the 8 mile Prius would see a combined EV only range of 800,000 miles while the 40 mile Prius would see an EV only range of 220,000 miles, so we get an additional 580,000 miles per day of all electric range  using the 8 mile Prius, just because we sold a whole lot more of them.  

The other thing to consider is that the Plug-in Prius is going to be sitting in the parking lot all day while the driver is working away earning the money for the car payment.  During this time the Plug-in Prius could be charging so then we would get 16 miles of electric only driving and 6 miles of ICE driving and the 8 mile Prius looks even better.  Of course this means charging during peak hours where the most desirable situation is to charge overnight when there is surplus capacity in the grid, but I would expect that most people won't be able to charge at work anyway as there will be limited plugs available in the parking lot, at least until the electric companies have caught up with the trend towards electrical power for our automobiles and start installing solar charging stations. 

Toyota's announcement also said the Plug-in Prius would not be produced it was only being used as a test bed.  They will be sending two vehicles over to the USA.  One will go the UC Berkley who will be doing a study to analyze the behavior of drivers.  The second will be going to UC Irvine who will study the car's impact on air quality and energy use.

If anyone feels compelled to write to Toyota we shouldn't be urging them to put in bigger batteries, we should be urging them to get these cars on the roads as fast as they can.

Sunday July 29, 2007 - Pasadena Clean Air Car Show - Last week I drove over to South Pasadena to attend their Clean Air Car Show and Film Festival.  

The show wasn't very large, and there was only a small contingent of electric vehicles.  Ralph's and Trader Joe's were both there giving out water and unfortunately we had a slight accident and my notes got soaked so I am writing this mostly from memory but I will try and be as accurate as possible.  

Most of the vehicles there were hybrids.  The local Toyota dealer was there with some Camry Hybrids, and there was another dealer showing a couple of Prius hybrids.  There were also two companies there that were converting the Prius to a plug-in hybrid.  There were also a several Fuel Cell vehicle on display including two from Daimler Chrysler.

Both Energy CS and Solar Prius were there with their Plug-in Priuses.  Energy CS was one of the first to convert a Prius and their system, using Lithium batteries is being used by several fleet operators including the City of Santa Monica.  Solar Prius takes a different route, they have installed Solar panels on the roof of a Prius as well as batteries in the concealed compartment under rear.  

Also in the solar category was a company called Cruise Car Inc. who were showing a line of Chinese built NEVs, the ones that look like a Th!nk Neighbor, but these were fitted out with solar panels on the roof.  This is the first chance I have had to get a close up look at one of these NEVs and it was obvious that the build quality wasn't anywhere close to the Th!nk and these NEVs are also based on a 48V system instead of the 72V system used buy the Ford.  I also think they are overselling the solar panels installed on the roof.  They claim that the panels will generate 180W at an output level of 60V but the panels seemed to be way too small to produce that much electricity.  They also claim about 15 miles per day where the best anyone else has achieved is about 5 miles per day and usually more like 2.  Still, the solar panels do provide a trickle charge during the day which will help to preserve battery life.

A Honda Dealer was also there with a Civic GX, a Compressed Natural Gas vehicle which is now the cleanest vehicle currently available from any of the major automobile manufacturers.  Honda also had one of their FCX fuel cell vehicles on display

One really interesting vehicle was being demonstrated by a Police Officer from Monrovia, the T3 Personal Transporter, a three wheel stand-up scooter that is being sold to Police Forces in both the US and the UK.  The scooter is highly maneuverable so it can be used to patrol neighborhoods bringing back the idea of the cop on the beat.

Another very interesting exhibit was by a company who's name got lost in the flood that once was my notes. They had a display that featured leaflets on AC Propulsion showing the T-Zero.  They also had an electric scooter connected to an ACP eBox.  They were using the vehicle to grid features of the eBox to charge the electric scooter.  The electric scooter was a Chinese import that one of their employees had brought into the country and gotten through DOT testing but the person manning the booth didn't know the name of the scooter.

Environmental Motors was also there with their line-up of electric vehicles, they had a Xebra pick-up, Xebra sedan and a ZENN on display.  They also had a Zappy 3 in their line-up but for some reason they didn't have any of their Skeuter scooters, or the ZAP dirt bikes that they sell.  When I was their both of the Environmental Motors sales people were busy so I didn't get a chance to ask them if they were going to start stocking the Zapino electric scooter.

Someone else had a Phoenix Motorcars SUT on display, it looked like the one that was donated to the Petersen, but there was quite a crowed around the truck so I decided to check back later and plum forgot that it was there.  However, I have seen the Phoenix on several occasions now so I didn't really need to check it out again.

Los Angeles MTA had one of their Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) busses on display but since I grew up riding the old British double deckers and have taken regular MTA busses many times I wasn't really that interested in taking a tour.  LA has been a leader in BRT and these fast moving busses have done a lot to fill the huge gap in public transit in the LA area.  They are also powered by Natural Gas which makes then much cleaner than the old diesel busses.  I can tell from experience it is much more pleasant to drive behind one of these than one that is belching dark black smoke.

Southern California Edison was also a the expo giving away florescent light bulbs.  This gave me a chance to change out a 60W incandescent in our second bathroom, a light that was used so little that replacing the bulb wasn't economical but when the bulb comes free, it makes good sense.  

The show also included free showings of "Who Killed the Electric Car', and "An Inconvenient Truth" at an adjacent movie theater but since I had already seen both of these films I didn't stick around to watch them again.  If you haven't seen one, or both of these films, do so, the are both excellent.

All in all, I had a good time at the show but it would have been nice to see a few more EVs there.  It seems like the push for alternative fuel vehicles is growing and I expect more events like this to be held in the future.  If there is a clean vehicle show in your area that features EVs then please let me know so I can get it on my events calendar.

Sunday July 22, 2007 - GM's Hydrogen Fuel Cell Trial - A few weeks ago GM were looking for a few good men and women to participate in a trial of their Fuel Cell vehicles.  I signed up for the trial and this week I was sent a survey to see if I was a suitable candidate.  I am rather sad to say that GM still find me to be unworthy of their automobiles.

Those of you who have followed my writings over the years will know that I was one of the people on the infamous waiting list for the EV1.  I attempted to sign up to lease an EV1 way back when GM actually allowed the odd person the privilege of driving one of these cars.  I was told back then that I didn't qualify to drive their car but one of the subversives in their midst sneaked my name onto the wait list so I did get a "Dear John" letter from Ken Stewart when the program was cancelled.  I think I still have it filed away somewhere for posterity, and if I ever start an electric vehicle museum it will be a star exhibit.

Back in the days of the EV1, GM did some early test marketing by allowing a few individuals to test drive the early Impact prototypes and were overwhelmed with people looking to join the program.  I heard that GM was looking for people to participate in a similar program for their fuel cell vehicles.  I jumped on the web site without hesitation and signed up.

I made cut in the first round.

The first round basically asked you where you lived and if you lived in certain areas, presumably those areas close enough to a hydrogen refueling station to allow you to refuel the vehicle, you were in.   It appears that there is a station close enough to where I live because I got a nice note back from the web site saying that I had qualified and I would be getting a registration package through the mail in a few days.

"Days turn into weeks how quick they pass"  

It was more than a month before I heard anything else from GM and then it was a spam email telling me about all the wonderful cars and trucks that they made and suggesting that I rush down to my local GM dealer and snap one up immediately.

More weeks pass and still nothing in the mail, but wait, I got a note form some PR firm including a link to a survey to see if I was eligible to join the program.  I ignored the email for a few days because I barely had time to open my mail let alone take a survey, but yesterday I finally had a few moments to click on some radio buttons.

The survey itself asked about my household and my commute.  The household stuff was very straight forward but the stuff about the commute was a bit more challenging, it seemed to assume that you drove daily on your own - a reasonable assumption for the LA area but something that doesn't quite fit my lifestyle.  I have a pretty long commute but to mitigate that I carpool with three other people and there just isn't any way to deal with that in the survey, for example how do you say that you drive 48 miles on Tuesday and 108 miles on Wednesday and 8 miles the other three days of the week, or deal with driving mostly with 3 passengers when you have a two member household.

I can give GM the benefit of the doubt and say that the odd numbers that don't add up on the survey is what caused them to reject me in round 2 but others may say that it is yet another GM conspiracy to prevent me from driving a GM car, after all, when I went to drive the Saturn View Green Line at last year's LA Auto Show the guy from GM told me he couldn't find the key, and I the guy handling the Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicle appeared to be hiding, at least nobody could find him whenever I went to get a test drive.  

I am obviously disappointed that GM didn't let me participate in their fuel cell program.  I have already driven fuel cell cars from Nisan and Ford and I know that there has been a lot of advances made in the fuel cell vehicles themselves.  It would have been nice to get to drive the Chevy Equinox fuel cell vehicle for a few weeks to really see what challenges await the early adopters of this technology.

I am personally skeptical about the near term viability of fuel cell vehicles and would sooner see the vast amounts of money being put towards improvements in battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids since this seems to be a much better near term solution to the oil problems.   I am not totally opposed to fuel cells, I think that there is lots of potential there, I just think that in the long term the BEV is going to make more sense.

Oh well, I can still look forward to GM telling me that I can't buy a Chevy Volt.

Sunday July 15, 2007 - Public Transport - This week the Orange County Transportation Authority bus drivers went on strike and the freeways began to fill as workers attempted to find alternative ways to get to work.  Now, Southern California isn't noted for its public transportation but the OCTA does about a quarter of a million passenger trips per week and if a good portion of these riders get into their cars the results is to further stress an overworked freeway system.

I have been noticing significant delays on the 405 freeway through Orange County over the last week and even the carpool lane has become bogged down more than usual and it should be noted that in peak hours the 405 carpool lane normally falls below federal guidelines of 45 mph on a regular basis along some stretches of this freeway.

The strike does outline one of the major problems with using a public transport system to get everyone too and from work.  Service interruptions from strikes, accidents, or other causes can reap havoc on people traveling too and from work.  Many years ago, while I was living in London, I can remember how a surface rail accident at Finsbury Park make me over two hours late getting home to Palmers Green in North London.

But overall, public transport provides many benefits over an ever growing freeway system, it's just that you need to have an interlinked system that isn't controlled by one entity.  In London there are interlinked bus, subway and surface rail systems and now that there are multiple companies providing bus and rail service the impacts of strikes is much less than it was when I lived there and bus and subway systems were all controlled by a single entity, London Transport.

Europe in general has a very effective public transportation system that allows you to get around the EEC without having to resort to a car.  Now that the Channel Tunnel is open you can even take a train from London to Paris, traveling between the two capital cities in comfort in about three hour and producing less carbon emissions riding behind an electric train than you would taking an airplane.  

Now, some cities in the US have a pretty good public transportation system, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco all come to mind.  But the lack of high speed rail linking many cities, especially here in the West, mean that more and more people are driving or taking an airplane.  The freeways are becoming more and more congested, more and more gasoline is being wasted in stop and go traffic, and local airports are being choked by ever increasing numbers of passengers.

Now, Los Angeles is one probably the poster child for poor public transport, although I have to say that the city is doing something about this and things have improved somewhat over the last ten years as new light rail lines, bus rapid transit systems, and the Metrolink surface rail systems have come on line.  

The trouble is that these changes have often been done piecemeal without being thought through properly.  This can best be illustrated by the Green Line light rail system.  The Green Line starts a little way from LAX and runs east to link up with the Blue line from Long Beach to down town LA.  Why the Green Line doesn't go all the way into LAX is a total mystery making it almost impossible to get to LAX by public transport unless you take one of the Flyaway services from places like Van Nuys, or you take one of the cities bus lines, most of which run very infrequently.  

To illustrate some of these issues, the wife of a friend commutes from Torrance to Beverly Hills.  She is a rare animal in Los Angeles; someone who doesn't drive.  My friend drops her off at the Green Line station and she catches the Green Line to the Blue Line which then transfers her to the Red Line and finally she catches a bus to Beverly Hills.  The whole trip takes her over over two hours.  Of course with LA traffic driving alone can take over an hour.

What I would like to see is some intercity high speed rail systems that would link some of the major cities.  For the last 20 years they have talked about a high speed rail link between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.  The 280 mile trip between these two cities is a four hour drive.  On busy holiday weekends that time can double as cars crowed Interstate 15 which can be a virtual crawl from the top of the Cajon pass all the way to the Nevada state line.  A high speed rail link could cut travel time down to about two and a half hours.  It wouldn't be cheap since there are some serious mountain passes  to negotiate but such a system would be possible.  It could even be powered by solar energy using the vast solar resources that pour down on the Mojave desert each day.  From Las Vegas the line could then be pushed on across the desert to Salt Lake City in Utah.

Other lines that could be electrified would be Los Angeles to San Diego, Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and then on up the coast to San Francisco, eventually stretching all the way to Seattle.  I am sure that people living throughout the country can think of places where high speed rail lines would be of great benefit.  You can even do things like pulling flat bed trailers behind the train so people can take their electric cars with then instead of renting at their destination.  High speed rail is expensive but as a hedge over flying when it comes to global warming, since electricity can be generated from renewable resources while aviation fuel is oil bases and further it injects CO₂ high into the atmosphere where it does the most harm.

If we are to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions we need to develop electric based public transportation system that are convenient for the general public to use.  We, the general public, then need to actually use them.  The US is woefully lagging the rest of the world in this area and needs to catch up quickly.  If it takes two hours to do a half hour trip then most people aren't going to use public transport, but if it is cheaper without sacrificing much in the way of convenience then people will flock to public transport.  The high rider ship on LA's Metro Rapid busses illustrates that fact perfectly.

Sunday July 8, 2007 - Station Cars -  The concept of Station cars has been around for many years and pilot programs have been run successfully in many locations including one currently being used by UC Irvine.  So what is a Station Car program?

The basic concept of a Station car is that you have small electric cars that are based at stations, members of the program can use the station cars to drive from home to the station where the car is plugged in and left to charge.  The member then uses the train or subway to commute to work.  When the members return home at night they pick up a car at the station for the drive home.  If they need to run errands in the day they can also pick up a car at the local station and use that to do their errands.

There are variations on this theme, including the member using their own car to drive to the station and then picking up a car at the other end of the line to drive to work.  This makes the use of the train practical for some people.  Let's take for example someone who works in Newport Beach, CA.  The nearest train station is in Irvine but there is no easy way to get from Irvine to Newport Beach.  A few individuals have bought old bangers that they leave in the parking lot at Irvine station but these are usually older high polluting cars not small Zero Emission Vehicles. 

The University of California, Irvine solved the problem of people getting from the Irvine Metro station to the University Campus by putting a small fleet of Toyota eCom electric cars into a station car program that allows their commuters to pick up a car at the station and drive to Campus,  The cars are then available during the day to get around Campus and run errands.  At the end of the day the cars are returned to the station and placed on charge so they have a "full tank" the next morning.

Station car programs have also been run in other cities.  New York Power and Light ran a successful program using Th!nk City electric cars that were used by a lucky few to commute from home to rail station and back each day.  The problem here wasn't the lack of demand but the lack of cars, huge waiting lists developed for the opportunity to join the program.  The program ended when the Th!nk City cars, which were allowed over here for 34 months on a crash test waiver,  were collected by Ford in 2004 and returned to Norway.

There have been a few failed attempts too.  Atlanta tried to start a station car program with the help of Donald Panoz and Solectria.  Panoz was going to convert Daimler Chrysler Smart cars to electric using the Solectria drive train and supply them to a car share program based in Atlanta.  The program never got off the ground although a few Smarts were converted to Electric power.

The big problem now is that there aren't many EV options that can be used for a station car program.  Apart from the ZAP Xebra, a three wheel EV with a range of about 20 miles, there isn't anything else suitable except NEVs.  Although the Xebra is capable of handling many station car requirements, people are often reluctant to drive three wheel cars in the mistaken belief that they are unstable.

In an urban environment where transportation is on City streets a NEV like the Miles ZX20 or the ZENN would work well but the problem is that these types of locations are often well covered with public transportation so the need for a station car is very limited.  The NEV can't be used on roads faster than 35mph but new legislation like that passed in Washington State and Montana, allowing Medium Speed vehicle to go as fast as 35mph and travel on faster roads, may open up some possibilities.

Another variation on the station car program is car sharing.  There are several companies that do car sharing including Flexcar and Zipcar.  The ideal behind car sharing is that instead of owning a car that you might only drive one or two hours per day, you subscribe to a car sharing scheme and pay a fee for only the miles you actually drive.  Another advantage of the car sharing schemes is that you can get the use of a number of different types of vehicle, for example if you need to go to the hardware store to pick up some lumber for that deck project you have been promising the wife for the last six months, you can get one of these instead of your normal sedan.

Car sharing programs can work well with electric vehicles, even NEVs, although as far as I can tell, nobody has put the two together yet.  Let's say that you join a car share program and part of the monthly fee includes the lease on a NEV.  The NEV can be used to run your local errands, and also to get you to the nearest point where cars and trucks are stored.  Now, when you need that pick-up to go to the hardware store you can hop in the NEV and drive to the nearest car share location that has a pickup available and off you go.  While you are out running errands the NEV is being charged and checked out and will be ready when you return the pick-up.  

This type of car sharing removes one of the primary barriers to owning an electric car, namely the idea of what you would do if you suddenly decided to hop off to Vegas.  Now you throw a bag into the back of the NEV, drive over to the nearest car share  location, and before you know it you are off to Las Vegas in a Prius.  When your brother-in-law ad family come to stay and you need a Mini Van to run them all to the beach then you simply get one for a few hours from your friendly neighborhood car share location.

In the end, station car and ride share programs can enhance EV ownership and provide a way for an EV to be the only car in your household.  In effect you could have a multi purpose Plug in Hybrid, with the EV doing the day to day running around town on battery only, and the right car for the job on those longer trips.  The cost is lower than owning two cars, and it takes just a little bit more effort.

Sunday July 1, 2007 - Dust to Dust - There has been a lot of discussion on the RAV4EV group this week about a Dust to Dust analysis done by CNW research that shows the energy used over the lifetime of a Prius is greater than that used over the lifetime of a Hummer.  I am a Prius driver myself so I want to know what the rational behind this is.

Well, the report makes some very wild assumptions.  The most glaring error is the assumption of a 100,000 mile life for the Prius and a 300,000 mile life for the Hummer.  Now, if the numbers had been the other way around the report may have been credible but the idea that the Prius would only last 100,000 miles when the evidence is that it will more than likely last at least 150,000 miles, and some are already over 200,000 miles makes this report totally off base.  The idea that the Hummer would last, on average, 300,000 miles is also highly suspect.  If the report had used 150,000 for each model the results would have been more likely to reflect the real world.

The section on Research and Development also had a glaring error,  the costs attributed to the Prius appear to be based on the expectation that technology wouldn't be used elsewhere.  The report states "As time passes and the design of the hybrid technology is leveraged into other products, the cost will obviously diminish on a per-model, per-sale basis.  We, however, could not make the assumption that any of the technology would be spread across other products at the time of the study.  As the GM Impact showed, high-tech products aren't guaranteed a long life.  So we included all of the Prius's technology D&D energy consumption into a single product".  

First let me say that the GM Impact R&D, which this report refers to as D&D, resulted in 23 patents of GM many of which have been transported into other vehicles which is exactly why automobile manufacturers don't try to apply the cost of R&D to an individual model in the first place.  The report was also wrong in not spreading the cost of the hybrid R&D across other models since it was already being used in the Estima Minivan sold only in Japan since about 2000 but not included in this report,  and also in the Toyota Highlander Hybrid and the Lexus 400h hybrid.  The report also omits the Camry hybrid and the Lexus GS 450h which, while not on sale at the time of the report, had already been announced by Toyota.   Toyota has also licensed its Hybrid Synergy Drive technology to Nisan who are using it in their Altima Hybrid, and they have cross license agreements with Ford who use the technology in their Escape and Mariner Hybrids.  

There is also no indication about the number of vehicles that the R&D costs were spread over.  This is one of the biggest failings of the report, there is no underlying data that shows the assumptions in terms of build numbers.  The R&D costs would be a lot different if you assume 250,000 cars than it would if you assume 1,000,000 cars, and different again if you assume 2,000,000 cars.  Toyota has already sold its one millionth hybrid and will probably sell its one millionth Prius this year now that the Prius is in the top ten best selling cars in America.  

One of the big problems with Dust to Dust analysis is the way that energy costs are attributed to the car.  For example, the report states that "The cost (of transporting the worker to the factory) is not included in the retail price of the vehicle because the cost is bourn by the worker from his or her paycheck".  Now, where do you think this paycheck comes from, it isn't magically delivered by the paycheck fairy, it is given to the worker to compensate him for the work he has done to build the car and as such it is factored in to the retail price, to add this on to the cost of the vehicle is double counting.   The only exception to this is where public transportation is publicly subsidized where the cost of the subsidy would not be factored into the price of the car.  

The other problem with this kind of analysis is to determine how exactly the energy costs of worker is attributed to the cars that are built.  In the case where a production line builds only one type of vehicle then you can spread that out over the average number of cars built and the average number of workers who work on a given day, but in the case of the Prius, which is built on a multi vehicle production line, how do you attribute the cost between the Camry, Estima and Prius vehicles that are built on the line in varying numbers each day?  At best you can take a guess based on the total annual production. 

Another place where costs are grossly overstated is the cost of recycling.  The cost to recycle a Prius in the CNW report is given as $147,391.88 and this just doesn't pass the sniff test.  If you consider the fact that most of the materials for a car now come from recycled material then you have to ask how you can build a $25,000 car from $147,000 worth of materials, actually over $220,000 when you take into account the profit supposedly made from the recycled materials. That's a $73,000 profit on materials that actually cost less than $15,000 originally.

There is an old adage in the world of Statistical analysis that you can use statistics to prove whatever you want.  The same can be said for Dust to Dust analysis.  Most analysis of this type often double counts items like the cost of transportation of the workers to the factory.  In the end, the cost of a vehicle is much more than the original purchase price since parts are replaced regularly, but in the end, if the overall cost of the Prius was anything like the amount attributed by the CNW report then either Toyota would be bankrupt in a year or I would be looking for a huge pay increase.   The bottom line is that you need to take any dust to dust type analysis, especially one that isn't open to peer review, with a grain of salt.  Try the sniff test, if the report doesn't smell right then it probably isn't right.

Sunday June 24, 2007 - New CAFE Standards - Finally, after twenty years of inactivity, the US Senate finally passed an energy bill that would increase CAFE standards from the current 25 mpg to 35 mpg by 2020.

There is still a long way to go before this bill becomes law; Congress still needs to pass similar regulations, the two bills need to be reconciled, and President Bush needs to sign it.  Along the way there will be lots of compromises and I am sure that more than one Congressman will attempt to insert a poison pill, an amendment that will make it impossible to pass.  In the end I totally expect President Bush to veto the bill and I only hope that Congress can sway enough votes to override his veto.

The Auto industry is also opposing this bill and they will have their lobbyists out in force to stop this legislation.  In my opinion they are doing themselves a great injustice with this, they need to build more economical vehicles if they are to survive.  They can't continue this business for usual.  If they need supporting evidence they need only look at the history of the Steam Locomotive and the part that GM played in its demise. 

In 1934 GM introduce the first mainline diesel electric locomotive; they sold only ten that year.  Just four years later, more diesel electric trains than Steam were being sold and GM held more than 50% of the market.  In 1947 only eighty steam trains were sold in the US and four years later the steam locomotive manufactures were gone.  If the US automobile manufacturers don't start to product more fuel efficient vehicles they too will be a footnote in the pages of our history books.

There are still some challenges to face as far as CAFE is concerned.  We are now moving away from the one size fits all gasoline/Diesel model that has supported out transportation needs for the last eighty years and back to a situation where fuel sources are more diverse.  When calculating CAFE numbers for the Auto manufacturers fleets these differences need to be taken into account.  How do we account for the Honda Civic GX natural gas vehicle, or a flex fuel vehicle that may or may not be run on E85.  Hybrids like the Prius are easy because they get all their power from gasoline, but once you add a plug how do you determine how these fit into the overall CAFE scheme when some people will drive the PHEV almost entirely on electricity while others will drive them mostly on gasoline.  

These are questions that will need to be worked out as we adopt new CAFE standards in the bold new world of alternative fuel transportation.  The way we do this can be used to promote alternative fuel vehicles but the regulations have to be intelligently designed so that achieve the required results.  The current CAFE standards encourage the production of E85 capable flex fuel vehicles but since E85 is not available in many areas of the country the vast majority of these vehicles are only ever run on gasoline.  The regulations need to make sure that the adoption of alternative fuels is achieved in real life, not just on paper.

Still, you can support this legislation by contacting your local Congressperson and letting them know in no uncertain terms that they need to vote to increase CAFE standards and pass a bill this year.  

Sunday 17 June, 2006 - The Complete Idiots Guide to Motor Scooters  -This week I got to review a new book on Motor Scooters that, although not related to  electric vehicles, still has much to offer anyone looking to get into a two wheel EV.

The Complete Idiots Guide to Motor Scooters by Bev Brinson and Bryce Ludwig is an easy to read primer for anyone who is thinking about buying their first scooter. 

The book starts out with a brief history of scooters and then goes into a very simple overview of how scooters work   It highlights the difference between two stroke and four stroke scooters and differentiates between scooters you need to shift and those that have Constant Variable Transmission (CVT).

The book also gives some great tips on selecting the right scooter for you and what to avoid when you go out to purchase your scooter.  There are also plenty of tips on riding a scooter safely, and the kind of clothing to wear to help protect you if you should get into an accident or lay the scooter down; wise words that could prevent a severe case of road rash.  Included in this is a very good section on the different types of helmet and how to choose the kind that works best for you.

The chapter on scooter maintenance was really good for the novice.  It doesn’t try to go through the maintenance procedures step by step but does describe what needs to be done and also highlights the pitfalls you can fall into.  It gives enough information to give the prospective new scooter owner a good idea if they can perform the maintenance themselves of if they need to turn to a professional.

There is also a good discussion of ways to accessorize a scooter, including preventative measures to stop the scooter being stolen and things you can buy to help you carry items with you when you ride.  There is even a chapter on the ways that people have tricked out their scooters.

The book closes with a look at the scooter culture and talks about joining scooter clubs and attending scooter rallies.  In this chapter was a section that talked about Mods and Rockers. Since I was a teenager in England in the sixties, Mods and Rockers were a part of our culture.  I remember once they asked the Beatles if they were Mods or Rockers and Ringo Star answered that he was a Mocker.  Apparently Mods and Rockers still exist and of course Mods ride tricked out Scooters, it’s a part of their culture.

If this book lacks one thing it is that it totally ignores the growing number of electric “Vespa Style” scooters that are used throughout the world.  However, there is a lot of good information here for those that want a quieter ride.  While the chapters that explain how a scooter works, and the one on maintenance, don’t apply to electric scooters, the ones on riding the scooter safely, picking the right clothing, and customizing the scooter, are applicable whether the scooter is two stroke, four stroke, or electric.

If you are one of a growing number of Americans that are thinking of making a move to a scooter to save money of gas and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Motor Scooters” is a good starting point to learn the basics.

Sunday June 10, 2007 - Negative Publicity - Last week I wrote about "The Car that Could" a book about GM's project to build the EV1.  This week Bob Lutz appeared in the NPR program "On Point with Tom Ashbrook" and left some very negative and inaccurate information about the EV1.

First of all he said that GM had "tried and tried to sell it, we couldn't.  We finally put it out on lease".  Well, I have news for Mr. Lutz, GM never offered the EV1 for sales which is why they never sold any.  The EV1 was only ever offered for lease.  They even turned down an offer of $100,000 per car from Disney for about 6 of the original impact cars.  Jay Leno was another person who wanted to buy and EV1 and was turned down.

Bob Lutz also went on to say that they  leased a few "numbering in the hundreds" to "mostly Hollywood celebrities" when the truth is that they never made more than a few hundred available for lease and least all of them.  They had a large number of Hollywood celebrities because they were the only people that, to quote Chelsea Sexton, "had a chance to lease these cars".  I tried to lease one myself and was told that I couldn't and so were the 5,000 or so other people on the waiting list.  Still, for every Hollywood celebrity that leased one of these cars there were 5 unknowns who were lucky enough to get to lease them.

Mr. Lutz also went on to say that in a "period of financial stress, maintaining this the tiny fleet of cars was becoming a very onerous financial problem for us".  Now, since the cars hardly ever broke down, and since they were easily old enough to be out of warranty, all they had to do was sell the cars, at $24,000 each without any warranty, and they would have had a nice pot of cash.  Instead they took the strange step of paying to have the cars collected, shipped to Arizona, and crushed.  

His final misstatement was that the cars were collected when "their lease expired", when I know of several people who had their leases terminated early.  

Now, Bob Lutz wasn't working for GM at the time they started leasing the EV1 so we can give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he was merely parroting the GM line and didn't really know what went on.  However, he was involved with the final destruction of the EV1 so he has no excuse for his misstatements about that sordid affair.

ZAP also came in for some criticism this week from none other than Forbes magazine.  Forbes wrote an article on their financial practices and was hyper critical about the ZAP-X car.  

The magazine talked about how much of the compensation for ZAP employees, and the way they pay many of their bills is with stock.  To do this they need to get the stock to bump up in price so that it can be converted into cash.  To accomplish this they issue regular press releases.  The ZAP-X was one of these release, talking about a deal with Lotus Engineering and a car that is no more than a dream at the moment, not even a prototype.

The magazine was also very critical of the Smart deal, and appears to have completely missed the point that Daimler Chrysler could have been selling their Smart here through the ZAP dealer network with little or no risk to them, but chose instead to sue ZAP to prevent them from selling their Smart - a not so Smart move on their part.

ZAP also ran into a stumbling block with the Xebra when it was revealed on the Xebra Yahoo group  that they were having  a shortage of cars.  There was some speculation that they had failed to order cars from China and that lead to speculation that ZAP were having financial problems.  ZAP reported that they were having difficulty filling some large orders.

ZAP's balance sheet is still dripping with red ink and it needs to get out of this cycle and present some profitable quarters.  But as Gary Star told me, the auto business is very capital intensive so it will take a lot of time to become profitable.  

Another EV that was being pelted with negative publicity recently is the G-Wiz.  This tiny EV, built in India under the name Reva, has been selling very well in London because it is exempt from congestion charges.  A recent BBC report brought into question the safety of the Reva.  This report sounded very similar to the safety report that Consumer Reports did on the Citicar about three decades ago.

The Reva is currently sold under the European Quadracycle laws which exempts cars with a weight of less than 400 Kg (without batteries) and a maximum continuous rated power not exceeding 15KW from many safety requirements that are standard on full sized cars.  

The UK department of Transportation is now conducting tests on the G-Wiz , and another electric quadracycle, Axium's Mega City.  Results of these tests are pending but may spell the end for the G-Wiz.

This sort of negative publicity is only to be expected as these vehicles have suddenly come onto the public radar.  They are now threatening the big automobile manufacturers and are also becoming a concern to the oil lobby.  Since these two entities have a lot of sway over the media it should come as no surprise that we will get negative comments about these electric vehicles showing up in the press.   In the end, the automobile manufacturers will have to product electric vehicles or they will go the same way that the big steam locomotive manufactures did when diesel electric trains appeared on the market. 

Sunday June 3, 2007 - The Car That Could - I just finished reading "The Car That Could" by Michael Shnayerson, the epic story of the development of the EV1.  I had read it several years ago but decided it was time to give it the once over again.

Shnayerson starts this story with Ken Baker getting called into the office of Lloyd Reuss to be asked to take on the GM Electric Car project.  Baker, who had been in charge of the ill fated Electrovair project, was reluctant but eventually decided to take the job.

The story then flashes back to to 1987 when GM asked Paul McReady of AeroVironment to build a solar powered car for them.  Aerovironment proposed a teardrop shaped craft called the Sunracer.  Lead by Alec Brooks and Alan Cocconi AeroVironment built the Sunracer for GEM who entered it in a race across Australia.  The car drove from Durban to Adelaide in 44 hrs and 54 minutes beating out the nearest competitor by over 11 hours.

When GM needed an Electric Car they once again when to AeroVironment who developed a teardroped shaped two seat all electric vehicle which was called the Impact.  AeroVironment created the car in a very short time.  The most difficult part being the inverter which was built by Alan Cocconi in his garage using hundreds of MOSFETs.  

The Impact was introduced to the world in 1990 at the LA Auto show and caused a sensation.  GM Chairman Robert Stemple then said that they would make the car and sell it to the public.  The result of this bold move was that the California Air Resource Board introduced its ZEV mandate, dictating that for the largest automobile companies 2% of the cars they sell would have to be zero emissions by 1998.

The book goes on to document the intrigue within GM as different subsidiaries, Delco, Remy Delco, and Hughes each vied to supply parts for the car.  The car itself had to be totally reworked to make it production ready.  The Impact prototype rode too low to the ground and had to be raised higher, the MOSFETs in the inverter proved to be a weak spot and had to be redesigned using IGBTs.  The car had to be made crashworthy while still meeting targets for weight and parts costs.

At the same time GM was hemorrhaging cash and in 1992 Jack Smith replaced Robert Stemple as CEO.  Smith continued to support the EV project but while Baker and his group continued to work hard on their electric vehicle GM, along with Ford and Chrysler, were working hard to overturn the ZEV mandate. 

Ford, GM and Chrysler were also outwardly co-operating on batteries under the umbrella of the US Advanced battery partnership, but the truth is that the three companies each tried to one-up the other on batteries and very little was accomplished with the federal money pushed into the program.  

In the end, GM's financial position caused them to delay the EV program, pushing up costs and diverting resources to other projects.  GM cut the program to building only 50 prototypes and then set up a test drive program using mailers sent out in electriity bills within California and New York.  Response was overwhelming and in both states the program had to be terminated early because of the volume of people who wanted to test drive the Impact.  Response to the test drive was also overwhelmingly positive.

It wasn't until 1997 that the Impact, now renamed the EV1, was delivered to customers through Saturn dealerships in California and Arizona.  The car was bagged as a GM car, the first vehicle in GM's long history to be sold as a GM car.

The book ends here with the first sales.  It does talk at length about the problems with the Delco lead acid batteries and testing that was done with NiMH and how the car was driven over 160 miles using a pack of batteries supplied by Energy Conversion Devices.  

The book doesn't detail GM's failure to promote and sell the car properly and the final round-up and destruction of these wonderful vehicles; you will need to see "Who Killed the Electric Car" for that piece of the story.  It does point out that the EV1 program resulted in 23 new patents for GM, most of which are now used in other GM cars.  The one mentioned in the book is the magnesium alloy seats that are now used to cut weight, and this improve gas mileage, on many GM models.  

Michael Shnayerson, who is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, was given unprecedented access to the top GM officials who shaped the GM EV1 program.  The book is an excellent look at the inside workings of the company and the way that a small rebel force could work miracles from within.

Sunday May 27, 2007 - Site Visits - This week I took to the road and did a couple of interesting site visits, first to Phoenix Motorcars in Upland, and then to the grand opening of EnVironmental Motorcars in Glendale.

Both these visits took place last Tuesday so I had a very busy day.  At 10am on Tuesday morning I had an appointment with Bryon Bliss of Phoenix Motorcars to test drive their new SUT.  I arrived at the Boshart Engineering facility in Upland, CA at the appointed time and after a short wait and a quick cup of coffee I met Bryon Bliss who had some bad news, they had just shipped their trucks down to San Diego so there wasn't one available for my test drive.  This is the third time in a row that I have had the chance for a test drive but the drive has fallen through for some reason.  Well, Bryon promised me that they would try again to get me behind the wheel so I will keep my fingers crossed.

What I did get to see was the production facility at Boshart where the trucks are being built.  The facility is quite small, just a bit larger than the one at ACP, but quite big enough for the current production volume.  They start with a glider that comes from Korean Manufacturer Ssang Yong without the ICE engine and associated equipment.  From there the electric motor, controller and other components are installed at the Upland factory.

When I was there they had one truck that was being worked on.  It had the Motor, Controller and DC-DC converter installed already and was being prepped for the battery pack.  They had another glider sitting on the factory floor waiting to be moved into a bay so I was able to see one as it came from the factory.  

Outside in the yard there were about thirty other gliders, all painted white, and these Bryon told me, would be the first batch of trucks that would be sent to fulfill fleet orders.  That prompted me to ask about the status of crash testing and here was some good news.  crash testing has apparently gone very well so far and they only have two more tests to complete.  Bryon though that they would be done in about three weeks.  

I also asked to get a look at the fast charger but apparently Phoenix doesn't currently have one.  Their fast charging tests have been completed at AeroVironment using one of their large Posicharge systems. 

The visit was very disappointing since I didn't get to drive the SUT or see the fast charging system in action, but it was good to find out that the Phoenix SUT should be through crash testing and on the roads quite soon now.

In the Afternoon I had an invitation to attend the Grand Opening of EnVironmental Motors in Glendale, just about 45 minutes drive from my home.  Traffic was heavy over coldwater canyon and on the 101 freeway but I arrived in Glendale with a few minutes to spare.  As I drove along Glendale Blvd. I say a line of Smart cars parked along the side of the road, I had reached EnVironmental Motors.

EnVironmental Motors is one of a growing number of auto dealerships that are springing up around the country to sell vehicles that are more environmentally friendly.  Kent Sokolow has been selling cars in Glendale for many years, and for the last 8 years he has driven and electric vehicle.  He, along with his daughter Taryn, who serves as director of EnVironmental Motors, set up the company to sell Electric and other environmentally friendly vehicles like the high mileage Smart Fortwo.

In the yard outside the showroom was a line-up of electric vehicles including the Zenn NEV, the ZAP Zebra PK and SD, a Miles ZX40, and the Skeuter, an all electric Moped.  They also sell some of the smaller Zappi III electric scooters and a ZAP electric dirt bike.  I was surprised to see they didn't have a Zapino, ZAP's new "Vespa style" electric scooter.  Another surprise was that they had the Miles ZX40, which is not road legal, but did not have the road legal Miles ZX20 NEV in stock.

I talked to one of the sales people there who told me that they would be carrying the Miles NEV and also thought that they would also be carrying the Zapino.  We talked about the Skeuter for a while and I was surprised to find that they now offer a 1500W version for only $100 more than the 600W version.  The sales person was recommending the 1500W version for hill climbing.  My personal opinion is that the 600W version is way under powered for anything but a petite woman who rides only on flat roads, for the rest of us the $100 is well worth the price for the extra 900W of power.

I got to sit in a Xebra PK for the first time and found the cab extremely cramped.  The accelerator and brake pedals basically fill the space in front of your feet so I almost wanted to brake with my left foot and accelerate with my right, not that I got to do a test drive.  

I also got to check out the inside of a ZENN and was impressed.  The layout looks like any small car and the seats were quite comfortable.  The car was well equipped and at a price range of $13,000 to $16,000 these cars should give GEM a run for their money, especially in colder areas where there is a need for doors.

The miles didn't seem to be quite as well built as the ZENN but with a top speed of 40 mph the ZX40 should do well in campus settings where there is no need to drive on public roads.  

Also in attendance was Chris Paine, director of Who Killed the Electric Car", a film that has had a huge impact on the resurgence of the electric car.  He was there to take part in the ribbon cutting ceremony that would mark the official opening of the dealership.  

After the ribbon cutting ceremony I got to chat a bit with an old friend, Dave Cutter of Village Energy, who had driven up from Carlsbad for the opening.  While chatting outside we noticed that the Glendale traffic enforcement showed up to complain about the Smart Cars that were parked perpendicular to the pavement, two to a parking meter.   I was surprised about this since the Smart Fortwo fits into a standard parking slot even when parked perpendicular to the pavement so I thought that they weren't really parked illegally.  Chris Paine joked that GM had sent in the goons to stop the sale of electric vehicles.  EnVironmental Motors, being good citizens of Glendale, sent out a bunch of their staff and in a few moments half the Smarts had vanished and the rest were parallel to the pavement one to a parking spot.  Glendale parking enforcement went away happy and no citations were issued.

At 5pm we moved into the main showroom, that had been cleared of vehicles except for one lonely ZENN, to listen to a talk given by Bill Williams, the Director of North American Sales for ZENN Motorcars.  Bill has been around Neighborhood electric vehicles for many years, running the original Trans-2 dealership in Palm Desert, California, and also selling the Bombardier.  He told the assembled group that the ZENN is being enthusiastically greeted by fleet sales and that their dealer network continues to grow.  At the end he answered many questions about electric vehicles.  One thing he said stuck in my mind though, he said that if we are addicted to oil then driving a hybrid is like being on Methadone.  

I had to leave at 6pm so I didn't get to hear the end of the question and answer session but I did hear one of the sales people say they had just sold a GEM so I was encouraged.  I really hope that EnVironmental Motors is successful, we need more EVs on the streets and the only way we are really going to see these companies build market share is when people like Kent and Taryn Sokolow put their money on the line and begin to provide local sales and support for the growing number of EVs that are being offered by small start-up companies.

Sunday May 20, 2007 - Buying Used EVs - Buying a used EV can be a great way to start driving an EV but there are pitfalls that you may want to avoid, or at least know what you are getting into before you take the plunge.

You know that an EV should be your next purchase, you want to stop paying large amounts at the gas pump, you want to cut down on the pollution and greenhouse gasses that are produced every time you drive, but what to buy.

Well, the first thing to do is to establish your budget and your driving needs.  The first, and most important question, is how much can I afford.  A Tesla roadster would be nice but if you can't afford the $92,000 price tag it isn't worth considering.  One thing to remember is that most EVs use lead acid (PbA) batteries which need to be replaced periodically and this can result in a major on-going expense.  A 72V pack may last for 10,000 miles and will cost about $800 to replace, but keep in mind that the EV will require a lot less maintenance than a gas car, there will be no oil changes and no tune-ups.  Gas, currently averaging $3.50 per gallon here in Southern California is going to be lot more expensive than the electricity you need to power an EV too so fuel costs also have to be taken into consideration.

Some other key things to buying any EV is the range that you need it to do, the top speed that you need, and the number of people you wish to haul.  Will this car just be hauling the driver around or will it need to haul the family.  Will it be a passenger car, or will you need a truck to haul stuff from the hardware store?

Be realistic about these numbers, and remember that you are looking at an EV here so you aren't constrained by trips to the gas station.  We would all like to have an EV with a 300 mile range but if you are going to use the EV for a short commute and local errands a 20 mile range might be quite adequate when you remember that you will be charging the car overnight and will have a full tank every morning.

One last thing to consider is the use of this car.  Is it  going to be a second car which is going to be used as a commute vehicle, or are you trying to use this as your only car.  If it is going to be an only car, you may need to factor some car rentals into your budget to handle any long road trips you might need to make during the year.

So you have figured out a budget, the type of car you need in terms range, tops speed and passenger capacity.  Now you need to figure out if you should buy new or used.  In making this decision one thing to consider is how handy you are with tools.  Although EVs do require less maintenance than a gas car there are also a lot less people out there who can work on them.  If you aren't comfortable wheedling a voltmeter and a spanner the first thing to do is to find someone near you who can work on an EV.  This is not unlike buying a rare gas car.  You probably wouldn't want to buy an old Triumph GT6 if you couldn't find a competent mechanic who could keep it running.

First see if there is an EV dealer in your area.  The most likely place to look is for shops that sell golf carts.  The basic golf cart uses the same principals as most EVs so a golf cart shop should be able to work on an EV without any difficulty.  Another good place to get help is from your local chapter of the Electric Automobile Association or local EV club.  There are EV clubs around the world and you will find people willing and able to assist you in both the purchase and on-going maintenance of an EV.

Now you can start to look for that EV.  A good place to start to go click on the classifieds button at the top of this page.  The evfinder classifieds page contains a number of EVs that are for sale.  Even if the listing looks old, the EV might still be available so if it fits your needs and budget contact the person.   Also on the list is a group of eBay listings for electric vehicles and some other specialty sites what sometimes offer EVs.  Finally at the very bottom of the page you will find links to many other sites that also offer EVs for sale.

There are a few things to keep in mind when buying an EV, especially when you are going to purchase through eBay.  First, you will find many EVs that are being sold because the batteries are bad.  When I talked about budgets for EVs that the batteries need to be changed periodically.  However, what I failed to mention is that PbA batteries can often be killed prematurely by unwary EV owners. 

There is a saying in the EV world, when you buy your first set of batteries buy the cheapest you can find that will do the job because you are probably going to kill them pretty quickly before you learn how to treat them.  The big mistake that people make is to drive the batteries down too low, often to the point where the car won't move, and this type of abuse will kill PbA batteries very quickly.  I like to recommend that you don't discharge PbA batteries below about 80% and best battery life appears to be to recharge them after they get down to 50% discharged.  Letting the batteries sit discharged for long periods of time will also damage the batteries so you need to keep them charged.

EVs also tend to pull a very small current so letting an EV sit for a long period of time can also discharge the batteries to the point where they become damaged.  This is the second thing to note, where low mileage on a gas car is usually a good thing, you often see EVs advertised with extremely low mileage, like a 2002 GEM with only 250 miles, and this may mean the car has been sitting around for a long time so the batteries may need to be replaced.

Range is another thing that you need to be cautions of.  When someone is selling an car they want to present it in the best light so they will often quote the range numbers that appear on the manufacturers web site.  Anyone who has browsed this web site knows that the manufacturer usually highly optimistic range numbers so my rule of thumb is that you take the range and reduce it by 20%.  If you live in a very hilly area then reduce this by another 20% and you are probably close to the real world mileage you will see.  Cold weather also effects mileage so you need to take that into account also, again reduce your mileage estimate by another 20% for those times when the temperature falls below zero.

Once you decide what car to purchase, there are other resources that can be a big help.  For many vehicles there are email groups that provide support and information.  For example if you decide you want to buy a Corbin Sparrow there is an excellent group on Yahoo where many experts can tell you what to look for in a Sparrow and things that you can do to keep the car in tip top condition.  You can join one of these groups and browse through the archives to get answers to most of your questions.  I recommend going through the archives, and also looking to see if they have a FAQ posted somewhere, before asking questions.  For many of these groups 95% of questions have been answered at least ten times already so some up-front research saves a lot of emails flying back and forth.

Once you purchase your EV these groups will also provide a lot of support going forwards including questions on where to find parts or what pressure to rum your tires. 

One last comment, most people buy an EV to use as a second car.  May people find that it quickly becomes their primary car and the old gas car sits in the driveway gathering dust.  Others don't do their homework first and buy an EV that either doesn't meet their needs or they quickly kill their batteries.  These end up sitting gathering dust in a driveway.  Do your homework, buy an EV that will meet your needs, and enjoy it.

Sunday May 13, 2007 - Electric Bikes - Recently one of the people who I carpool with bought a new bike and now does regular bike rides from Playa Vista to Hermosa Beach, about a 6 mile round trip.  I began to wonder why doesn't she use the bike to cycle the mile or so to the parking lot where our carpool meets.

It seems that there are several reasons why Americans generally don't use bikes to get around.  One of the major reasons is the excuse that I use, it's dangerous out there.  When I suggested that I might want to get myself a bike to travel around LA my wife's reaction was "No way no how".  She had visions of me being turned into a hood ornament by one of the airheads who float around Los Angeles streets driving gigantic SUVs, with a cell phone permanently attached to their ear.

The other major concern many people have about commuting on bikes is that they don't want to end up at work all sweaty after a hard ride to the office. 

I personally think that most Americans see a bicycle as a piece of exercise equipment not a mode of transportation.  They, like my friend, want to use their bikes for leisure, as part of their fitness routine, not as a mundane way to get from A to B.

Now, there is not much that can be done to enhance the safety of people on bikes.  Even where there are bike lanes, they are more often than not totally useless because motorists are allowed to park in the lanes so the rider is forced out into the main stream of traffic.  Still, if more was done to enforce traffic laws for bicyclists it might help with their safety. 

I often see people riding against traffic flow even though the California vehicle code specifically states that this is illegal.  I also see bicyclists running stop signs at top speed even when traffic is quite heavy.  Motorists are also to blame, LA drivers are notorious for turning and changing lanes without signaling and that has to make it more dangerous for cyclists.

There is something that can be done about arriving to work sweaty.  If people use an electric bike they don't have to pedal hard, or in some cases don't have to pedal at all to get to their destination.

Electric Bikes come in two flavors, the pedalec and the electric cruiser.  With the pedalec the rider has to keep pedaling all the time and the electric motor is used to multiply the force the rider is exerting which means that the rider can whisk along at a decent clip without having to pedal really hard.

The Electric Cruiser is an electric bike that can be ridden using the pedals or can be ridden using only the electric motor.  With this type of bike a short commute could be done with little or no effort on the part of the rider, other than perhaps a bit of pedaling on a steep hill.

Electric bikes can also be used for leisure rides as well, and can even the playing field when one rider is fitter than the other.  If your significant other is an avid cyclist and you aren't, it may be very difficult to keep up with them, so you might be tempted to stay home.  Get an electric bike and you can swish along next to them with little or no effort and enjoy the ride together.

I started this blog by saying that most Americans look on the bike as a leisure item.  I just want to add that there are also lots of people who do successfully commute using bikes, both pedal and electric.  These people not only aid the environment by using a pollution free way of traveling, but also get the benefits of exercise while they travel to work or school.  I salute these people.  If you have a short commute, consider the benefits of using an electric bike.   

Sunday May 6, 2007 - Sky High Gas Prices - This weak I passed a gas station advertising regular gas at $4 per gallon,  the first time I had seen such a price since I moved to the USA.  The meteoric rise in gas prices has, of course, prompted the usual round of email about not buying gas for a day.

This type of action might sound like a way to cut gas prices but the trouble is that it isn't going to work.  First of all, most people need to get from A to B so they are going to totally ignore the call.  Those that do decide not to fill up are either going fill up the day before, or fill up the day after.  In any event, they are still going to buy that tank-full of gas so the oil company will still get their pound of flesh.

There is only one way to reduce gas prices - USE LESS GAS

Gas prices, like most commodities in the US, is governed by supply and demand.  When demand exceeds supply the price goes up, when demand is less than supply, prices do down.  Right now the demand for gasoline is outstripping supply to the point where instead of building reserves for the summer driving season we are actually pulling from reserves, and this can only mean more expensive gas latter in the summer.

Of course, there are those that believe the oil industry is artificially controlling supply and that it the reason for their record profits.  This should be investigated thoroughly by Congress, if this democratic lead body is doing its job properly.

Down in the trenches we need to conserve like we have never conserved before if we are to avoid a gas crisis that would severely impact the world economy.  The US is the worlds leading consumer of gasoline so we need to be the ones that take the most drastic action.

The best way to cut down on gasoline is to not use it at all.  If you want to pop down to the local store you probably don't need to fire up the old gas guzzler, consider walking or taking a bike.  You know that it's good for you!  

Driving electric is a wonderful way to avoid burning gasoline.  Even just using a NEV to do those short trips around town can save gallons of gas each month.  Another great option is to take public transport instead of the car.  True public transport probably uses some form of fossil fuel, most likely Diesel or Natural Gas, but the bus or train is going to be traveling anyway so the incremental amount of fuel to push your weight from your home to your office is going to be much less than the fuel needed to push you and your car or truck.

If, like me, you can't avoid driving, then there are some options that can help.  The first is to use the most fuel efficient car that you have.  If you drive 30 miles each way and have an  SUV that gets 15 miles per gallon, you use 4 gallons for your commute.  Taking the family sedan, that gets 30 miles per gallon, and you use 2 gallons.  That's a saving of about 40 gallons per month.  At $4.00 per gallon that is going to save you $160 per month.

To save even more gas you could try car pooling.  A few years ago I got laid off from my job in Santa Monica and finally found a good job in Newport Beach.  My wife still needed to be in LA so I couldn't move down to Orange County.  This left me with a daily 100 mile round trip.  My new company had an electronic bulletin board and I advertised there for carpool partners.  We now have a carpool of 4 people who split the driving so I drive on average about 2 days per week.  Even though I drive a Prius and get over 48 mpg,  that still saves me over 6 gallons of gas per week or 24 gallons per month.

Of course you should also keep the car in good running order.  Check tire pressure regularly when the tires are cold.  It's estimated that about half the cars on the road are running with tires that have their pressure low by 5 psi or more.  This is often caused by checking the pressure when the tires are warm and setting them to the cold tire recommendations given in the driver handbook.  Other things, like not changing the oil on schedule, or not taking proper care of the brakes, can also cause lower than optimum mileage. 

The other big way to cut down gas consumption is to cut down on speed.  Since getting the Prius I have found that I drive about 5 mph slower than I used to and I also tend to be more aware of the road ahead.  I can't tell you how often I see some idiot in a huge SUV that will sprint past me at 45 mph when the traffic light up ahead is red.  I try to get to the light just after it has changed so I don't have to stop.  I have to admit I'm not really good at this so I often finish up sitting next to the SUV for a few seconds until the light goes green.  The SUV will then take off like a bat out of hell and make it up to the next light in record time only to sit and weight until I catch up to them again.  I have done this for several miles along Santa Monica Blvd and can only assume that the guy isn't looking ahead far enough to notice the traffic light in front is red, or perhaps the guy is a raving optimist and expects the light to magically turn green as he approaches.

I have even heard NEV drivers report doing the same thing for miles along the highway, being left in the dust by a car or truck only to catch them at the next light over and over again.

Friday, on the way home in my carpool, we were listening to NPR and they had an interesting segment where they were answering listeners questions about Global Warming and reducing ones carbon footprint.  One caller said she was thinking of changing her car but since she would be selling the old gas guzzler it would just mean that someone else would be driving it around.  This was a multi-part question and the panel didn't answer that part of the question.

Well, it is true that the gas guzzler in question would have been bought and driven by someone else, but since most people are trying to cut gas usage it is highly likely that they will trade in an even worse gas guzzler to buy her car.  Even if they traded in a more fuel efficient car it is still likely that the car they bought would not have been more economical had they not bought the caller's car.  Now, these cars will be passed down the chain until somewhere at the bottom of the heap, a less fuel efficient and probably more polluting car, would be taken out of the fleet and sent to the crusher for recycling.

The caller would also have no way of knowing how the car was being used.  She might be driving 15,000 miles per year but the new owner may only drive 5,000 miles per year or may drive 30,000 mile per year - unless you sell to someone you know there is no way of knowing how much impact that car will continue to have.

The caller knows that the right thing to do is to get a more fuel efficient car and is merely rationalizing the desire to keep the existing car.  

It has become more and more apparent that the US addiction to oil is driving this country, and the whole world for that matter, towards a meltdown that could have as much implication for our current society as the sacking of Rome by the Germanic tribes in the 5th century AD, an event that ushered in the Dark Ages.

We are ever more dependent on foreign imports of oil which saps the country of billions of dollars each year.  A portion of these billions eventually end up in the hands of terrorists who use the money to attack American interests around the globe.  This means that US forces need to be engaged in places like Iraq and Afghanistan bleeding the US treasury of even more money.

At the same time we continue to burn fossil fuels at an ever increasing rate pumping more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere prompting ever greater probabilities that we will push global warming past the tipping point to create a massive impact on the world population.  And to think, we can start to reverse that trend just by taking a few steps to cut our gas usage.

Sunday April 29, 2007 - The Carb ZEV Report - On April 13, 2007 The California Air Resource Board (CARB) released its "Status and Prospects for Zero Emissions Vehicle Technology Report of the ARB Independent Expert Panel".  I haven't worked my way through the entire 207 page report yet, but the Executive Summary makes for depressing reading.

The report looks at the status of batteries, reviewing NiMH, Li and NaNiCl (Zebra) batteries,  They found that NiMH batteries were being used successfully in electric vehicles but where too costly and lacked energy density.  They considered NiMH to be a mature technology, totally ignoring the fact that Panasonic had demonstrated improvements but were being blocked from moving forward with them because of patent and licensing issues. 

Li batteries seemed to be the battery of the day.  The report stated that these batteries worked well in smaller sized BEVs and showed lots of potential, for larger full performance electric vehicles.  

The report acknowledged that NaNiCl batteries had been demonstrated successfully in Europe and were the cheapest and most readily available of all the advanced batteries, but considered them to have insufficient power density and noted that none of the EV manufacturers in the US appeared interested in these batteries.

I have always had major problems with the battery reports that come out of CARB.  A few years ago if you read their report you would have thought that there were only two types of batteries being made, Lead Acid and NiMH.  This report isn't much better, they totally ignore lead acid batteries accept to acknowledge that most NEVs currently use this technology.  More glaring is the lack of any review of the latest advancements in lead acid technology such as those being done by Firefly energy which should lead to an affordable battery with long cycle life and energy density on a par with NiMH.

Another omission in the report was any discussion of Ultracaps, in particular those being produced by EEStor.  The EEStor Ultracaps appear, at least on paper, to provide huge amounts of energy storage at a low cost and they also claim to have solved the problem of energy leaking from the capacitor which has always been the big problem with these types of devices.  

CARB might have looked at these two companies, and others like them, and decided that they are just snake oil, but then they should have addressed these issues in the report.  EEstor are very secretive and may not have talked to the CARB experts, however Firefly are very open about their development work and have been keeping me up-to-date on developments in their company.  I can only believe that CARB didn't even bother to talk to them.

The report did, of course, look at Hydrogen and did acknowledge some of the tremendous challenges that face the move to a hydrogen economy.  It does look like this move is still the favorite over at CARB but they at least indicate the problems that are inherent with storing enough hydrogen onboard a vehicle.  The report concludes "However, it seems unlikely that either compressed or liquid hydrogen storage systems can meet weight or cost targets, especially for 2015."

When the report comes to look at BEVs the conclusions are not good.

In the case of Full Performance BEVs the report finds "It is the Panel’s opinion that FPBEVs are not likely to become mass market ZEVs in the foreseeable future due to the high cost for the battery not being recoverable with fuel cost savings and limited customer acceptance due to range and recharge time issues."  This conclusion is seems to be based on the old manufacturers whining that there is "limited mass market customer acceptance due to lack of range and limited recharge times".  They do concede that due to higher costs of fuel and less demanding conditions in Europe and Japan may make them successful there.  The report also has no mention of the effects that will occur as the cost of oil based fuels continues to rise in the future.

For City Electric Vehicles (CEVs) the report says "Prior efforts to produce CEVs were unsuccessful due to high cost and limited mass market customer acceptance and there has been little progress since.  It is the Panel’s opinion that CEVs are more likely to become future mass market ZEVs in Japan and Europe than in the U.S. due to performance limitations."  

In the report I don't see any indication that the primary barrier to the adoption of CEVs is the huge barriers to entry into the market that have been placed on the Auto industry.  The incredible cost of getting a CEV DOT certified in the US means that small companies just can't enter the market.  The only way in is to loose one wheel, as ZAP did with the Xebra.  This report totally ignores the three wheel EV market and doesn't even acknowledge that ZAP is selling Xebras as fast as it can ship them over from China,

For Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs) the report says "NEV technology appears to be commercially successful but has low volume potential due to limited applicability".  They go on to say "Also, because they use very simple technology, NEVs have very little synergy with larger BEVs."  The only thing I can think of here is that most NEVs use DC systems while the OEM vehicles like the RAV4 EV use AC systems which add complexity in the form of an inverter, but also improve efficiency.

In the body of the report they do state "GEM estimates there are more than 15,000 NEVs on the road in California and that this fleet represents the largest concentration of electric vehicles in the world."

The report concludes "It is the Panel’s opinion that NEVs provide no significant technical benefits to future mass market ZEVs due to their simple technology and performance limitations."  They seem to have totally ignored cities like Lincoln, just a few miles down the road from Sacramento,  which has show that with the addition of NEV lanes to their road system, and a few public charging locations, they can get people out of their cars and into NEVs.

The panel also examined Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and stated "It is the Panel’s opinion that PHEVs have the potential to provide significant direct societal benefits and are likely to become available in the near future. They may foster future mass market BEVs by stimulating energy battery development and conditioning mass market. customers to accept plugging in."    This is pretty much a no-brainer given the recent increase in fuel costs and the prospect that the era of cheap gas is over.

Finally the report looked at Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEVs).  It states "It is the Panel’s opinion that with the past rate of success and the massive intellectual and financial resources being devoted to this technology, FCEVs continue to be a promising candidate for a future mass market true ZEV."  

Their overall conclusion is summarized thus, "As a long term ZEV outcome, the Panel can envision plug-in hybrid FCEVs, powered by sustainable electricity for shorter trips and sustainable hydrogen for longer trips." It projects full commercialization of FCEVs for 2025 which puts it so far into the future that it makes it no more than a pipe dream, especially considering the number of breakthroughs that need to be made to make fuel cells work.

It appears that CARB is still living in a state of denial that they were hoodwinked by the Automobile Manufactures into dropping the original ZEV mandate and following the hydrogen hype-way.  This report still steers the state towards the FCEV even though these vehicles are the least likely to have an impact on reducing our dependence on foreign oil.  This isn't surprising since CARB is only interested in air pollution, they aren't looking at the big picture and someone needs to do that.

They seem to have totally ignored the three wheel electric vehicle and two week electric vehicle market, both of which could have major impact on emissions.  They have also ignored the fact that a few small changes could make the NEV market really take off.  The report didn't mention congestion charges and how making electric vehicles exempt from congestion charges has made sales take off in London.  Once again, as I have seen in report after report, their battery experts failed to look, or at least failed to report, on all the latest developments in battery technology.

All in all it looks to me like the panel started with a conclusion and worked backwards from there, instead of looking at the potential for the BEV market and how this market could be advanced.  This is a very disappointing report and the only good spot on it was their support for PHEV.

Sunday April 22, 2007 - Insurance woes -  I moderate the Xebra Yahoo discussion group. which is a great place for any ZAP Xebra owner to get advice about ownership issues, and one of the current hot topics is the difficulty in getting insurance.

In one recent post on the Xebra group a potential owner was quoted a massive $1600 per year to insure this $10,000 automobile, more than three times what it would cost him to insure say a Mustang.  In most states a driver is required to carry at least liability insurance before he can venture out onto the road in his automobile so getting insurance for EVs is critical.

The first thing to note about insurance is that it is not controlled by the Federal Government, it is managed by the individual States.  This means that an insurance company may have to make the policy different from state to state so what works in one state may not work in another.  These laws are formulated and governed by the State's Insurance Commission and the Insurance company's adherence to these policies is also monitored by this body.

To try and make things less confusing the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) makes model laws and most States try to make their laws conform with these model laws. 

Insurance companies are also concerned with risk and spreading the risk over a large number of policy owners.  If you request a policy for a mustang the company probably already has thousands of other policy owners that have a mustang and it knows that repair shops can easily get parts from Ford, so the process of evaluating the individual  risk of for this vehicle, known as Underwriting, is fairly straightforward.

When it comes to insuring a vehicle that isn't well known, such as a Myers Motors NmG or a California Roadster, things start to get tricky.  Most people start out by approaching an Insurance Agent and this is the first barrier.  Rare or unusual vehicles may not be easy to find in the Insurance Companies system.  A lazy Insurance Agent may poke around for a few minutes and not find out how to insure the car, decide he could be making more commission from selling to a guy who wants to insure something easy like a Mustang, and tell you that their company doesn't insure electric cars.  This may be true or it may not, and in this case it's time to find another agent.  

If the agent finds a way to submit the EV to his company then the next big step is the Underwriter.  If the underwriter isn't knowledgeable about electric cars they may take the easy way out and reject the application where a more knowledgeable underwriter will come up with a reasonable cost to insure the car.  This is where membership of an email group or club dedicated to your vehicle comes in handy.  If you can go back to the Insurance Company and give them examples of other policies they have written for this vehicle then you can get the company to reverse their decision.

Some Insurance Companies are more likely to issue policies than others.  One strategy for getting a vehicle covered is to find someone in your state that has the same vehicle covered, find out who their Agent was, then armed with this information, go to the local Agent for that Company and if they appear to be struggling, suggest they talk to the Agent who has successfully insured a vehicle like yours.  Be aware that the company may want you to switch all your vehicles to them before they will insure the EV.  You will also stand a better chance with an Insurance Company if you already have your home and a number of vehicles insured with them, they won't want to loose a good customer.

Hopefully, as EVs become more common insurance companies will eventually see that they are loosing a lot of good business by not insuring them.  In the case of NEVs, accident rates seem to be quite low and even when they do get into accidents, the resulting damage is often quite light because of their low speed.  GEM, with more than 30,000 vehicles on the roads in the US, seem to have the easiest time getting insured.  Still, not all insurance companies will insure them but I think that will change over time.  

Once you have a policy in place the insurance company doesn't always know how to treat the vehicle when the worst happens and you get into an accident.  This is particularly bad when you are dealing with a vehicle that has been converted to an EV or have one, like the RAV4 EV, that is based on an existing vehicle platform.

RAV4 EV owner and long time EV advocate Paul Scott got into an accident when his RAV4 EV was rear ended by another driver.  The insurance company wanted to treat the car as a regular RAV4 and write the car off for a pittance.  If you take a look at Kelly Blue Book, where the insurance company would no doubt go to get a value on the car, you won't find a RAV4 EV listed.  The regular RAV4 would be listed at about thirteen thousand dollars and that is the price that the Insurance Company would come up with.  At that time, 2002 RAV4 EVs were selling at between fifty-five an sixty-five thousand dollars.

Paul was able to come up with several comparable sales that demonstrated that the RAV4 EV was worth a lot more than the standard RAV4 and, after a long hard fight with the insurance companies, was able to get his RAV4 EV repaired and back on the road. 

The moral of this story is to keep records, including receipts, for any conversion work that you have done on a car so that you can show that the car is worth a lot more than the donor vehicle if you should get into an accident. This is good advise also for anyone who might be restoring an older vehicles.  I keep records of EV sales, mostly those that occur via eBay, so I might be able to help if you need additional information when dealing with your claims adjustor.

The other issue I have seen recently was a report of an Insurance Company that was canceling policies because the vehicle was an EV.  I have no idea what the rational is behind this but I would recommend that anyone who had their policy cancelled purely because their vehicle was an EV should immediately contact both their local state representative and their state Insurance Commissioner.  These two may be able to reverse the decision, but even if they can't it would plant the idea in their minds that something needs to be done to make sure that those who want to drive an electric vehicle can find adequate, affordable insurance in their State.

Sunday April 15, 2007 - NEV Friendly -This week, GEM owner Tracy Crawford sent a link, via the yahoo Xebra group, about how the town of Lincoln, CA, just north of Sacramento, has remade itself to be NEV friendly.  

This ABC News article posted on youtube tells how the town has combined cycle lanes and NEV lanes to allow people to get around in their NEVs.  The article goes on to say that there are over 600 NEVs in Lincoln, a town of about 32,000 people.  to put this in prospective, Beverly Hills is about the same size and probably has 10 NEVs.

I used the example of Beverly Hills because there are other similarities as well, both of the towns have an aging population and if you drive through Beverly Hills you will often come across older drivers that are tooling along at 25 mph on 35mph streets.  Older drivers aren't usually in a hurry and feel safer at the lower speed.  I have also noted that drivers are usually quite tolerant and you rarely see a driver honking their horn when sitting behind them.

Now, I'm not advocating that Beverly Hills start to add NEV lanes, it wouldn't be practical there as the volume of traffic is so high that carving out NEV lanes would almost certainly result in total gridlock.  However, since traffic is often barely moving in that city, NEVs can usually manage to keep up with traffic.  The same can be said for downtown Santa Monica as well.

Another thing that was mentioned in the video segment was that Lincoln has added electric vehicle charging stations in various places around town such as shopping centers.  This is a key element that is needed to make NEVs work in a community and, when dealing with a car that may only have 20-30 miles of range, greatly improves the utility of the vehicle.  

I often hear EV advocates decry the lowly NEV because they tend to support the notion that EVs are slow and have limited range.  The term glorified golf cart is often used to describe these vehicles.

I have always had the opinion that there are plenty of situations where the NEV can be a useful tool, and if this type of vehicle suites your needs, which is does for quite a number of people, then they can be another part of the overall solution to air pollution, global warming and dependence on foreign oil.  The city of Lincoln is leading the way here, showing that with a little bit of effort the NEV can be a useful tool in the transportation mix.

There are other Communities such as Peach Tree, GA and Celebration, FL that have grown up around the use golf carts for mobility and in these cities there is also a large population of NEVs.  Palm Desert, CA also installed specially lanes for golf carts but for some reason wouldn't allow  NEVs to use these lanes.  To the best of my knowledge, Lincoln is the first town to modify regular roads specifically for NEVs.  

There is an excellent web site called LincolNEV that takes about Lincoln's NEV program and is well worth a look for anyone else planning to do something similar in their community

Sunday April 8, 2007 - Supreme Court Rules - This week the Supreme court, in a 5 to 4 decision, ruled that CO₂ was an air pollutant and that the EPA had the authority to regulate emissions of CO₂ from automobile tailpipes.

While this was a slap on the wrist for the Bush administration, and will undoubtedly give the top brass at the EPA a major headache, it may not seem like a big deal to you and me.  However, it may end up being one of the most important rulings the Supreme Court has ever made since it opens up a potential floodgate of legislation aimed at finally curbing CO₂ emissions in the USA.

California's landmark legislation to curb CO₂ emissions has already been challenged in the courts.  California has argued that such green house gases are air pollutants and California has the right to create its own rules for managing air pollution.  Now that the Supreme court has ruled, I am sure that California will move for immediate dismissal and will be able to get on with the work of implementing this new legislation.

It is also clear that the EPA cannot continue to sit on its hands and do nothing.  It is going to have to move forward on legislation of its own to curb greenhouse gas emissions and we may finally have an Environmental Protection Agency that does more to protect the environment than it does to protect big oil.

Another piece of legislation that may end up on the Supreme Court's docket involves new NEV rules that have recently been adopted by the State of Montana.  The State recently passed legislation making Low Speed Vehicles legal on public roads, but they went one step further and introduced the concept of Medium Speed Vehicles, basically a NEV that can do up to 35 mph.

We now have a relatively strange situation, in the state of Montana you can legally drive a NEV at 35mph but since the certification on NEVs for use on public streets is controlled by the Department of Transportation (DOT), a part of the federal government, manufacturers can't legally make NEVs that can go faster than 25mph.

In 2005 GEM had to modify their vehicles to limit the speed to about 24.5 mph.  I was told by a GEM representative at the 2005 LA Auto Show that the DOT had made them do this because in certain situations the speed of the vehicle could get up to about 27mph which violated the law.

The situation becomes very complex, the setting of such speed limits within the state becomes part of the laws controlled by the state, except on those roads that are federally funded.  That means that a person could buy a GEM in Montana, modify it himself to increase the speed of the car to 35mph, and drive it on state roads at that speed.  If, however, he strayed onto a federal highway then he would be limited to driving at 25 mph.

It should be noted that most Federally funded highways have speed limits of more than 35mph anyway so this isn't likely to be much of an issue, and even if the highway speed limit was down to 35mph, it is usually the State Highway Patrol that polices these routes and they would follow State, not federal regulations.

Medium speed vehicle legislation is currently going through the Washington State legislature and other states, including California, are also beginning to look at this issue.  

I personally believe that the medium speed vehicle concept is way overdue and the DOT should jump in now to make sure that vehicles can be legally constructed to make them relatively safe without putting an undue burden on the manufacturers for items like extensive crash testing.  If the DOT did this we could end up with legislation like the Quadracycle rules in Europe that would allow cars like the Reva and the Kewet onto our roads and let vehicles like the Zenn live up to their potential.  I worry though that this will end up in a turf war between the DOT and the various states over who has the right to create such legislation.

In the end it may finish at the Supreme Court and could redefine the whole relationship between the rights of the states to govern them selves and the role of the federal government in controlling interstate commerce.  

Sunday April 1, 2007 - Discord in the Ranks - I am writing this one handed since I injured my left hand earlier this week and it is still sore, so I will keep things short. 

I just read an article on Grist by Stacy Mitchell about how Walmart have pledged to reduce energy usage in their stores by 20% by 2013 and double the fuel economy of their trucks by 2015.  Now, I'm not a big fan of Walmart but it seems to me that this is something we should be singing their praise about but this article used the announcement to tell us how the big box store could never be sustainable.

When I read this it brought to mind the bickering that has gone on in the Electric Vehicle community.  I see advocates of freeway capable EVs griping about how NEVs give EVs a bad name.  I find people on say the Yahoo Citicar group telling everyone about how bad the ZAP Xebra even though they only saw one of the early prototypes.  I see flame wars erupt between rival EV car dealers.

I have had a never ending argument with the Plug-in Hybrid advocates about promoting 110V charging and have never gotten the message across that just because you don't have to charge doesn't mean charging isn't desirable.  I would just like to add that although Walmart doesn't have a policy on providing public charging right now there are some stores that will let you charge if you ask them first.

I just want to say that if you truly believe that we need electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids as a way to help solve issues with global warming, air pollution, and dependence on foreign oil, then we need to start supporting the overall EV movement and recognize that all forms of electric vehicles, from the Tesla Roadster to the eGo electric Scooter, can play their part.

We do need to keep vigilant.  We need to watch out for scams like Keystone Motors.  We need to keep the EV movement growing and get as many EVs on the road as we can.  We won't accomplish this if we spend all our time fighting among ourselves.  In the end, we should even be able to admit that once in a while even Walmart can "do good".

Before you hit me with the flame of all flames, I know that I can also be as bad as anyone, just look at my entry on the Tesla Roadster if you don't believe me.  I think that Tesla probably has the best chance of moving from a development company to a true builder of cars than any other company in the USA.  They are making progress in the right direction and are working to produce a truly outstanding product.  I know I'm being petty because they totally ignored evfinder.com but hey, at least I have an entry for their car even if it doesn't contain any useful information.  

The Hype About Hydrogen – Sunday March 25, 2007 - I just finished reading Joseph Romm’s book “The Hype About Hydrogen” which gives an excellent overview of the challenges that we face to implement the Hydrogen economy.

Now Dr. Joseph Romm holds a Ph. D. in Physics from MIT.  He also served in the US Department of Energy from 1995 through 1998 where he led the program that was the primary federal agency for the development of technologies such PEM fuel cells. 

You might say Joe Knows Hydrogen – he is considered one of the foremost authorities on Hydrogen Fuel Cells in the world.

In his book Dr, Romm starts out with a brief history of the fuel cell, they were first created by William Grove in 1843, and a description about the different types of fuel cells that are currently being developed.

He then goes on to discuss the various challenges that are facing our current way of life that have come about because of our use of fossil fuels to power our lives.  There are three things here that are central to the discussion, Global Warming, air Pollution, and dependence on foreign oil. 

He then looks at some of the challenges to getting enough fuel cell vehicles onto the roads to make a difference in these three factors. 

First he notes that most hydrogen is currently made by steam reformatting natural gas.  Since natural gas is a fossil fuel and the steam reformatting process produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct, the process helps with air pollution but is only partially helpful when it comes to the other two.

Making hydrogen from coal cuts dependence on foreign oil but produces a lot more carbon dioxide.  Unless reliable ways are found to sequester carbon dioxide from this process this isn’t a suitable way to produce hydrogen.

The cleanest way to produce hydrogen is by electrolysis of water, but this takes a tremendous amount of electrical energy and if this is driven with power plants that use fossil fuels it will only be a marginal improvement over what we have now. 

His first conclusion then is that we need to develop much more electricity from renewable sources and we need to find reliable ways to sequester carbon dioxide if we are to expand the use of coal.

He did acknowledge that there is research going on into using biological processes to produce hydrogen but since nobody has yet found a way to do this commercially he didn’t think that this would be likely for a long time.

Next he talked about the cost of PEM fuel cells, the type that are suitable for transportation applications, and pointed out that they were still far too expensive to be able to produce a vehicle at a price that people can afford, a price that has to be competitive with other fuel types such as gasoline and diesel. 

Another big issue is the ability to store sufficient hydrogen in the car to give it enough range to suit mainstream American motorists.  Right now most of the fuel cell vehicles store the hydrogen in tanks that compress the gas to a pressure of between 5000 and 10,000 psi.  Just compressing the gas to that level requires quite a bit of energy. 

Other ways of storing gaseous hydrogen is in a hydride.  Hydrides are chemicals that basically soak up large quantities of hydrogen.  Apply heat to the hydride and the hydrogen is released.  This method allows storage of large quantities of hydrogen but the tanks are also quite heavy adding mass to the vehicle.  Liquid hydrogen is another method, one currently favored by BMW, but fuel is lost over time as the hydrogen boils off and the extremely low temperatures required for storage add complexity to the fueling infrastructure.

Then he pointed out the chicken and egg problem with fueling infrastructure.  If you want to sell cars you need to have easily available locations where you can fuel them, but you can’t sell them unless people have fueling stations so they can easily fill them up.  This is the classic chicken and egg situation, to sell cars you need filling stations to build filling stations you need cars.  He also points out that building adequate infrastructure will take billions of dollars.

Finally he reviewed a couple of projects that were aimed at testing fuel cells in the real world.  Most of this was focused on Iceland , a land that already has a surplus of renewable energy from hydroelectric generations and geothermal power stations.  He thinks they have the best chance of being the first to implement a hydrogen economy.  He also talked a little about the California Fuel Cell partnership and how that is working to expand hydrogen car use by focusing on fleet applications.

Overall, Dr. Romm believes that fuel cell vehicles won’t be on the streets in significant numbers until mid century.  His opinion is that in the short term we would be better off focusing on hybrid technology.

I have had a chance to ride in fuel cell vehicles and recently had the opportunity to drive both a Nissan FCV and a Ford FCV and I can tell you that over the last five years the car companies have made tremendous improvements in these vehicles.  I think that the vehicles. 

I don’t see the same progress being made with the infrastructure or with hydrogen production and storage however, so I agree with Dr. Romm that fuel cell vehicles in significant quantities are at least 30 years off.

In my opinion we would be better served putting our money into battery development.   We already have batteries that can give us 300 miles of range; we need to develop batteries that can give us a cycle life of at least 5000 cycles.  Then, we can develop plug-in hybrids with 30 miles range that won’t need a battery swap over the life of the car.  Once battery costs come down to reasonable levels we can then go to full electric vehicles and fuel cell systems will only be needed for really long range vehicles like trucks and boats. 

Whichever route we take, it is clear that we need to focus our efforts on increasing the amount of electricity on the grid that is generated from renewable sources.  We need to greatly expand wind and solar electricity generation and start to exploit more geothermal sites and small hydro systems.  Research needs to move forward on wave and tide technologies also.

I can recommend "The Hype About Hydrogen" as a good primer on the issues facing the emergence of a hydrogen economy told in a balanced way by an expert in the field.

There was one quote in the book that really struck me.  "You might think that after fighting two wars in the Persian Gulf, since 1990, after enduring a major terrorist attack funded in large part by Persian Gulf oil money, and imports accounting for more that half of our oil consumption and our sending $100 Billion per year off shore, that our first call to action would be to significantly reduce those imports.  And yet we have done essentially nothing".  Now we have to ask ourselves what am I going to do about it!

It's all about Numbers - Sunday March 18, 2007 - When we talk about producing electric vehicles that are price competitive it's all in the numbers.

The automobile industry is one of the most capital intensive there is and that becomes one of the biggest barriers to the entry of a new company into the market..  It takes a lot of cash to get a freeway capable vehicle onto the market and the only way to build an EV that is price competitive over its life cycle with the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) driven competition is to build them in the same sort of volume.

To illustrate this I am going to use an example of a European ICE vehicle that was modified to meet US crash test specification.  Back in 2005 ZAP worked through the crash test procedure to get the Smart Fortwo fully qualified so that it could be sold in the USA.  According to Garry Star at ZAP this cost them $10,000,000.  Since the cost had to be amortized over a relatively small number of vehicles this cost alone pushed the price of the car up from around $15,000 to around $26,000.

In the EV world the biggest issue is the need for advanced batteries.  I have mentioned several time in my blogs that I consider NiMH batteries up to the task of powering an EV and lasting for the life of the car, usually considered 10 years of 150,000 miles.  If you build a car that has a range of 150 miles and the NiMH batteries are capable of doing 2000 charge cycle then in theory the batteries should be good for 300,000 miles which gives a 100% margin of error for a manufacturer who wants to be sure the batteries will last 150,000 miles.

The patents for the NiMH battery are currently controlled by Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) who manufactures NiMH batteries through a subsidiary, Cobasys, which is jointly owned by ECD and Chevron Texaco.  There has been lots of stuff posted about how Chevron are preventing Panasonic from building EV sized NiMH batteries and I think there is some truth to that, however a couple of months ago a very interesting flame war erupted between David Goldstein, President of Washington DC chapter of the Electric Automobile Association, and environmental activist and long time EV driver Doug Korthoff.

Doug has been very vocal about how Cobasys has suppressed the NiMH battery while David pointed out that Cobasys would be very happy to build an EV style NiMH battery but they need a commitment from an automobile manufacturer for them to build 100,000 batteries per year for 3 years before they would set up a production line.  It's all in the numbers you see, they need a guaranteed market to make it worthwhile to make the huge investment in setting up a production line.

If we run the numbers for a Plug-in Hybrid like the Chevy Volt, we start to see a whole different picture.  If we assume that the car has an electric only range of 30 miles then 2000 cycles would only buy us 60,000 miles before we needed new batteries.  If we wanted to go 150,000 miles we would need a battery that is capable of 5000 charge cycles before it needs replacing.  

You might of course argue that this is a plug in hybrid so the car won't be driven on the batteries all the time.  From the point of view of an automobile manufacturer you have to plan for a worst case scenario and in this case it would mean that the car is bought as a hybrid but never driven beyond its 30 miles electric only range so the ICE is almost never started.  While I think that NiMH has clearly demonstrated that it is ready to power a real EV I can see the argument that it isn't ready for a Plug-in Hybrid yet.  

In my opinion, Cobasys blew it big time with the NiMH battery, they should have let Panasonic take the risk and build the batteries and they could have sat back and taken in huge royalty checks.  Now, Li is surpassing NiMH as more money is being sent to R&D for Li batteries.  Once again it's all about the numbers, NiMH which is being protected by patents, has been virtually dropped by all the other battery manufacturers.  The money is going into Development of Li batteries and there is an explosive growth in new batteries as companies scramble for a market share.

Some of these smaller companies, like AltairNano, are hungry enough that they are ready to partner with fairly unknown companies like Phoenix Motorcars in the hope that they can produce enough volume to make it worth the cost of investing in a production line.  

I think that Phoenix has the opportunity to make a successful business and reap the sort of volumes that are needed to build reasonably priced cars.  Again it's all about the numbers.  You have to be able to guarantee a certain volume to make it worthwhile for the suppliers to build production lines to produce parts for a specific vehicle.  In some cases a company can use off the shelf parts which are already produced in volume but even here, the manufacture will give you a better price if you can order a large number.

For the major components on the SUT, Phoenix has gone to UQM Technologies, a company that has been producing electric vehicle components for a number of years now.  I don't know how much of the components used in the Phoenix SUT is off the shelf and how much is specifically manufactured for Phoenix but I am pretty sure that UQM are hungry enough to assume some of the risk in the Phoenix venture.

One other thing that has raised some eyebrows is that Phoenix choose a base vehicle that wasn't currently crash tested in the USA.  There is no indication that they are moving forward with crash testing on their web site but to make this vehicle in economic numbers they are going to have to get DOT certification and that means crash testing.  The whole certification process and cost as much as $20,000,000 but I will use the ZAP number of $10,000,000 in an example.  Let's say that Phoenix sells 1,000 vehicles per year, over a 5 year period the amortized cost of the crash testing would be 10,000,000/5,000 = 2000 per year, and that doesn't include the cost of money in the calculation which would make the cost slightly more.

Now, lets consider a different scenario, say 100 cars in the first year, 3,000 cars in the second, 5,000 cars in the third , then 10,000 in years four and five.  In this case there are 28,100 cars built and if we amortize the cost of crash testing over that number of vehicles we get 10,000,000/28,100 =  355.87 or about 356 dollars per car.  If Phoenix or one of the other up and coming EV makers can produce cars in that sort of volume then we might see a chance of seeing an EV on the road that is affordable.

It is my opinion that this can only be achieved by a significant amount of purchases being done by fleets.  Electrical Power companies have a vested interest in the development of Electric Vehicles while State and Local governments nation wide also buy lots of vehicles and can contribute greatly towards building a mass market.  The likelihood of success depends on a lot of factors but in the end, it's all in the Numbers.

Europe ’s EV revival - Sunday March 11, 2007 - Europe has always been an important market for electric vehicles and in the last two years we have seen impressive growth in electric city cars across the EEC.

The EV got it’s start in Britain when Robert Davidson from Aberdeen, Scotland first put an electric motor on a carriage and drove it around a circular track in his barn.  That was some time between 1836 and 1839.  In 1841 Davidson built a larger locomotive, called Galvani, which he displayed at the Royal Scottish Society of Arts Exposition in 1841 and drove for about 1.5 miles on the Edinburgh to Glasgow railway the following year.

The next big development for EVs occurred in France in 1859 when Gaston Plante invented the first rechargeable lead acid battery.  Camille Faure further improved Plante’s batteries in 1880 and this allowed Charles Jeantaud to build his first EV with rechargeable batteries in 1881.

By the turn of the Century firms like Kriéger Co of Paris, France, the Madelvic Motor carriage co of Edinburgh Scotland, and Lohner in Germany were just a few of the companies building electric vehicles in Europe.  In 1900, the 'System Lohner-Porsche' electric carriage, the first car designed by Ferdinand Porsche, made its debut at the World's Fair in Paris.

It was in Britain however that on-road electric vehicles really had an impact.  For almost a hundred years milk was delivered to millions of homes by the lowly Electric Milk Float.  At it’s peak in there were over 100,000 electric Milk Floats plying the streets of Britain.  Milk is typically delivered early in the morning so the nearly silent Electric Vehicle was the perfect solution.

Electric passenger vehicles lost out to the internal combustion engine though and the petrol car came to dominate the European scene.  Then in 1975 the oil embargo hit and petrol shortages meant long lines at the gas pump.  The idea that oil is a finite resource and the growing notion that burning fossil fuels was having an unwanted impact on global climate lead people to take another look at the electric vehicle.

A new crop of companies began to spring up around Europe .  The 3-wheel Citi-El was developed by a Danish company and first sold in 1989.  The original manufacturer went bankrupt, and the design was sold to a German Company.  Several companies have built the car then gone out of business, but the basic design is still being produced and sold.

Other European EV manufactures like Twike in Switzerland and Th!nk Nordic and Kewet in Norway have also been producing vehicles for a long time now and each has had a very rocky road but have managed to survive.

By the early 1990s Governments were also starting to get involved.  In California we saw the birth of the Zero Emission Mandate that, for a short time, pushed the big automobile manufacturers into producing electric vehicles.  France, with lots of surplus electricity at night due to it’s abundance of nuclear power plants, also got into the act and French manufacturers began to produce electric vehicles.  Peugeot alone produced over 5000 electric cars in the 1990s but like car companies in the USA they made it very difficult for individuals to own one of their EVs.

By 2000 the oil shortage had turned into an oil glut and prices at the pump had fallen somewhat.  Companies like Toyota and Honda had launched their hybrid systems and in Europe there was a growing number of high mileage diesel cars arriving in showrooms.  Interest once again wandered away from the Electric vehicle.  There were still some disquieting facts coming to light.  The whole Global Warming issue just wouldn’t go away and then several studies came out that linked the particulate matter emissions from Diesel engines to heart problems and asthma.  

On February 17, 2003 an event occurred in London, England that would have an impact on electric vehicle production that would be as important as the ZEV mandate was to electric vehicles in California; London introduced its congestion charge.  For the first time in a major city motorists would be levied a fee, in this case £5 (about $9) to drive in central London during rush hour. 

Certain alternative fuel vehicles, including electric vehicles, are exempt from the congestion charge.  The problem was that electric vehicles weren’t readily available at the time.  Peugeot with its Berlingo Van, and Renault with its Kangoo Van were technically available but even if you could track down a dealer that would admit they were for sale it was still almost impossible to get one of these EVs.

Then along came Going Green.  Going Green had been founded in Leeds to sell the Indian built Reva in the UK under the name G-Wiz.  They didn’t get many takes in West Yorkshire but in 2004 they moved their operations to London where they started to sell the G-Wiz in larger quantities.  In July 2005 the congestion charge was increased to £8 (about $14.50).  Sales of the G-Wiz took off and now they have a three-month waiting list.

Since then several more companies including Maranello, NICE Car Company, Piagio, South Coast Scooter, Elcat, Micro-vette, and Twike all have models available for sale in the UK, and Th!nk Nordic will be joining the list later this year.  I also heard from Rick Woodbury at Commuter Cars that they are currently building a T600 (Tango) that will be the first one to be delivered to the UK later this year.

Not to be outdone, the Societe de Vehicules Electriques produced a Li powered all electric version of the Renault Kangoo that was tested by the French postal service, who have since announced that the test was so Successful, they plan to replace their entire fleet of 48,000 vehicles over the next few years. 

Monaco based Venturi also have an electric sports car called the Fetish available in Europe while Kewet, Cityel and Twike are still for sale.  Italy also has a growing number of vehicles for sale.  The Piagio Porter, Micro-Vett Maranello, and Stat Lab (which forms the basis for the South Coast Scooter vehicle) are all built and sold in Italy and there is a large market for electric “Vespa” style scooters there also.

Another big help for European vehicles is the quadracycle rules.  A quadracycle is a car that weights less than 550Kg.  In Europe it is much easier to get homologation on a city car like the G-Wiz than it would here in the USA, more like getting DOT approval for a NEV, but the Quadracycle can go over 50 mph so it is much more usable than a NEV.

This allows the micro-car makers to get models into showrooms at a fraction of the cost and time needed to get DOT approval for a similar car here in the USA.  ZAP for example spent about $10,000,000 to get the Smart Fortwo through the crash test process and although the Reva was designed in California they have been unable to market it here.

Europe , with its smaller size and higher population density makes a great place for electric vehicle to flourish.  We are now seeing a movement towards the installation of public charging which will solve one of the major problems that prevents ownership of EVs there, the need to park on public streets where a plug isn’t available for charging.  I am hopeful that we will see more freeway capable vehicles hit the roads in Europe over the next few years.

Sunday February 25, 2007 - Future Car - This past week I watched a documentary on the Discovery Channel.  This was actually part three of a four part series examining the future of the automobile.  This weeks show featured alternative fuel vehicles.

The show featured all the usual suspects starting out with Ethanol and Bio-diesel then moving on to electric cars, hydrogen and finally looking at the Midi compressed air car.  The tone of the whole show was very upbeat and, for the most part, they didn't look at the negatives associated with any of these upcoming technologies.

I say for the most part because they did, of course, bring up the issues of downstream pollution when talking about electric vehicles but did almost manage to get the message across that even after the downstream pollution is taken into account then the electric vehicle is still the cleanest of all these sources.  They totally ignored the down stream pollution from the other sources.  

Now, since they proposed obtaining hydrogen from electrolysis of water, they should have mentioned that it takes between three and four times the electrical energy to go the same distance on hydrogen than it does in a BEV so that means three to four times the down stream pollution.  Of course if you listen to the proponents of hydrogen it is always made using renewable electricity but BEVs are always charged using electricity produced from coal.  

The place where the Future Car documentary really made me through up my hands in despair was when they started talking about the Midi compressed air car.  Now, I am not disputing that the Midi does run but I do dispute some of the claims that the company makes.  First, they claim the car can go two hundred miles on a fill of compressed air.  about five years ago I did some calculations on the car based on the amount of on-board compressed air it could carry and the very best case I could get was about 20 miles.  I was being very generous when I did the calculations so I wouldn't be at all surprised to see ranges more like 10 miles in real world driving.  

They ended their piece on the Midi talking about the ability of the Midi Engine to act as a compressor.  They were actually talking about using the compressor to fill up the air tanks while the car was being driven so you would never need a refill.  They actually used the words perpetual motion.  You say perpetual motion and I say snake oil sales person.  Anyone with even a rudimentary  Knowledge of physics knows that friction losses in any sort of mechanical device means that you have to put more energy into the engine than you get out.  In other words, if you use a liter of air to run the compressor the amount of air compressed will be less than one liter, and that's before you start to move the vehicle.

They did cover electric vehicles quite well though, especially the AC Propulsion T-Zero and those vehicles that it has spawned, the Venturi Fetish, Tesla Roadster, and Wrightspeed X1.  

Talking of future cars, there have been more exiting developments this week that move us another step closer to an electric vehicle future.  Electric motorcycle maker Vetrix has started to supply its dealers in both the UK and the USA with demo vehicles so you should be able to schedule a test ride in the near future.   It can't be long now until dealers have vehicles for sale.

In Norway, Th!nk announced that they had restarted their production line making the Th!nk City vehicle that was designed a few years ago by Ford.  They should have vehicles for sale in Norway and the UK later this year.  They are not expected to hit the US market until 2009.

Finally, I heard that Phoenix motor cars will be holding a press conference next week to make an announcement about their new SUV.  I hope to have more about this in my next blog.

Sunday February 18, 2007 - News Rants and Raves - It seems that over the last couple of weeks there has been quite a bit of good news on the EV front.  First, I got the news that AC Propulsion has delivered the first eBox to Tom Hanks.  This is good news and we can hope to see many more being delivered in the future.

Tom Hanks, who also owns a RAV4 EV, was the first person to invest in AC Propulsion's eBox so it is fitting that he gets the first production vehicle.  You can see Tom Hanks talk about electric vehicles with David Letterman courtousy of youtube.

Second, several dealers on the Yahoo Xebra group reported that the latest batch of Xebra cars coming from China have been pretty much trouble free.

When I started the Xebra group I thought that new Xebra owners would need a place where they could get support to deal with the inevitable problems that always accompany a brand new vehicle like the Xebra.  I closely followed the Sparrow group after its launch and most owners had quite a few problems to deal with.  The Xebra on the other hand didn't have many problems at all.  There were a few owners that got bitten by the wiring issues that caused the auxiliary battery to not get charged, and the problems that early Xebras had in the rain, but these were actually quite rare.

It is credit to ZAP that they have jumped on these problems and addressed them quickly.  Dealers and customers alike report that the quality of the Xebra just keeps getting better with each new shipment.  According to several dealers the latest batch to arrive was the first one that didn't need some work on them before being delivered to customers.

Earlier this week I was monitoring the RAV4 EV discussion list and one of the long time EV owners reported that his RAV4 EV was about to roll over 100,000 miles.  The next day another member of the group reported that his RAV4 EV was now at 102,000 miles.  Both of these drivers are still using the original battery pack and have stated that they have seen some minor reduction in battery capacity that only shows up when they try to drive the batteries into very deep discharges.  They are both still able to get more than 100 miles on a charger.

The batteries in the RAV4 EV are an older generation NiMH battery and Panasonic is quite capable of producing a battery with even better life cycle performance.  The experience of these two EV drivers, and the Southern California Edison fleet that has at least 5 RAV4 EVs that have gone over 100,000 miles, shows that the NiMH battery is quite capable of lasting the life of a car in an EV or Plug-in Hybrid application.

I also received an email from Paul Scott of Plug-in-America this week which had an invitation to the official announcement of the new all electric SUV from Phoenix Motorcars.  I have sent in an RSVP but so far I haven't hear anything from them.  I guess I will have to give them a call next week to confirm.

Those of you who have reviewed evfinder.com will know that Tesla Motors has very little coverage on this site.  The reason for this is quite simple, when they launched the Tesla Roadster they totally ignored evfinder.com.  They didn't respond to my emails or my telephone calls.  Now, if they had just sent me an email saying sorry but the event is full then I might not have been so peeved but since they invited quite a few people who were neither prospective customers or likely to give them one tenth the publicity of evfinder.com then simply ignored evfinder.com, I think I am justified in ignoring them.  Of course, It wouldn't be fair to those looking for an EV to totally ignore Tesla so they do have an entry on the Full Sized EV page but it doesn't do much more than provide web search criteria.

It often seems like evfinder.com is overlooked.  In the words of the immortal Rodney Dangerfield, "I don't get no respect".  I can't tell you how many times I go on email lists and find a question about where to buy EVs and the person responding, although totally familiar with evfinder.com, sends the person on a wild chase around the net to find about a quarter of the EVs that are listed on this site.  I also come across lots of sites that have EV links but don't have a link to evfinder.com.  

On the other hand, I have been told by more than one vendor that they get a good deal of business from referrals through my site.  That kind of makes up for all the frustration of not being noticed.   I also get surprised once in a while, like when I was reading Sherry Boschert's excellent book "Plug-in HYbrids the cars that will recharge America" and find my URL listed in the section on "What you can do", or I find my site reviewed on Treehugger.com.

I must say that I personally must take the blame for being ignored.  evfinder.com isn't my day job and I don't always have enough time to devote to keeping it as up-to-date as I would like.  I also find it difficult to make site visits or get to conferences since getting away from work can sometime be impossible.

I have, on occasion, gotten so frustrated that I have considered shutting down but I believe that EVs are our future and the more that I can do to get EVs on the road the better off we will all be.  So I will try and keep this site up and running until EVs are as easy to buy as an ICE car is today.  You too can help.  If you find an EV through this site then let the company know how you learned about them.  If you find a company that isn't listed then let me know,  If you have an EV event then send it to me so I can include it on the events calendar and if you have a site send me your URL.

Sunday February 11, 2007 - Fast Charging v Battery Swap - This past week I have been involved in a continuing discussion about fast charging and battery swapping strategies, both of which tend to be very misunderstood.

These discussions usually start from an announcement by a battery manufacturer about some breakthrough battery that can be charged in seconds.  It inevitably turns out that these batteries are very low capacity batteries; think AA.  People get very excited about being able to charge an EV in a few minutes but most people don’t understand that these small batteries don’t scale up to large format packs like those used to drive EVs.

The calculation is quite simple really, the amount of power needed to charge a battery can be determined by using the formula W = V * A (Watts = Volts * Amps) now if we look at a small battery that needs one watt of power it’s easy to see how it could be charged quickly.  Now, consider a battery pack that is going to take 30 KWHrs to charge it.  Volts is a constant at 110V, 220V or 440V depending on the type of power you apply to your charger so if we take 30,000/220 we find we need about 136 amps to charge this battery in an hour, or 818 amps to charge it in 10 minutes.  Of course this is a rough calculation, which ignores any losses in the charging system but illustrates the point quite well.  For a 300-mile range EV you would need to push at least 100 KWHrs into the battery pack, which requires thousands of amps.

This weeks discussion started out slightly differently where someone reported on a battery that could be charged quickly but noted that the high current required would require cables about 6 inches thick – perhaps my arguments on this point over the years are finally sinking in.

This caused someone to bring up the other regular visitor to the EV discussion lists, the idea of using battery swapping.  On the face of it, battery-swapping sounds like an ideal solution.  You purchase the EV but lease the batteries.  Normally you charge them at home over night but when you are on the road you go to a service station and have the batteries swapped for charged batteries – sounds perfect.

Well, like the fast charging issues, what sounds good in a single situation doesn’t always scale up to high volume.  First, for battery swapping to become viable you need to have standard battery packs, but different applications would have different power requirements so it would be very difficult to make the packs uniform across a large volume of vehicles.

Now, once you have your batteries installed you are tied to the leasing company.  Imagine driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco but you can only fill up your car at a Union 76 station so you have to drive past Chevron, Exxon, Shell, BP etc. to find the only brand of gas that will work in your car. 

Once you find the service station you might be lucky enough to be able to drive in and get the batteries swapped.  However, you aren’t the only EV on the road, there are lots of other drivers who also want to charge.  In queuing theory terms, the number of cars arriving at the gas station in a given time is called the arrival rate.  As arrival rates increase the wait time in the queue increases.  The queue will demonstrate a knee curve, as the queue gets beyond a certain point the wait time increases very rapidly.

I have also heard claims that a battery swap could be accomplished in three minutes.  With the correct modular design I could see this happening but that would be the physical swap of the batteries and wouldn’t include the time taken to get in the queue and verify that you are a valid customer.  Of course this could be as easy as swiping a smart card but it still takes time.

Once we begin to scale up from hundreds of EVs to thousands of EVs to millions of EVs the storage requirements for the hundreds of battery packs needed at a service station also becomes an issue.  Managing these battery packs to make sure that there are fully charged packs available when cars arrive, staging them to the battery charge bays, and getting the older packs to a place where they can be recharged is also a major factor effecting the time that the next car in the queue can be serviced.

Battery swapping is quite common in industrial operations where electric forklift trucks are used extensively.  I have heard cases where the truck will be out of service for a whole shift as it waits to get its batteries changed.

Ford motor company is one company that makes extensive use of electric forklifts.  Downtime on the trucks while they waited in line to have their batteries swapped was a major loss in productivity.  To solve this problem they installed fast charging units supplied by Aerovironment.  These 70KW fast chargers can be used to charge the fork lift in about an hour, just the time that the operator takes for his meal break.  This keeps the forklifts in continuous service.

One of the big problems facing electric vehicles is that gasoline is such a great fuel from the point of view of energy density.  Even with the outrageously inefficient Internal Combustion Engine it only takes eight or ten gallons of gasoline to transport a car and four occupants 300 miles.  If oil wasn’t such a finite commodity, and burning gasoline wasn’t so polluting, we would be in great shape.  We are now beginning to realize that the problems that gasoline brings to the equation far outweighs its benefits as a fuel.

I have come to the opinion that if we really want to get serious about electric vehicles we need to change peoples perceptions about them.  We need to emphasize the benefits of charging over night.  A full tank every morning is much better than breathing noxious fumes at the gas station.  Once EVs with advanced batteries come generally available we need to provide fast charging infrastructure along transportation corridors.  This fast charging isn’t likely to be the ten-minute charge of our dreams but more like a one-hour charge.   This gives the vehicle operator time to take a break, get a meal, or visit a local attraction while the car charges.  I know this isn’t what we are used to but I think that it is something that people can handle.  When I travel long distances I usually take a break every two or three hours anyway and I suspect most people do the same.  With electric vehicles and fast charging we would learn to proceed at a more leisurely pace and enjoy the journey more.

United Nation's Study on Climate Change - Sunday, 4 February 4 2007  This week the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the results of a six year study involving 2500 scientists from 130 nations.

The study concluded that the climate was warming and there was a 90% chance that Human activities since the mid eighteenth century was responsible for the warming, mainly through emissions of carbon dioxide.  This showed a marked increase from the 60% chance that was the conclusion of the previous study released in 2001.

The study projects that by the end of this century we would expect the average temperature rise by as much as 4.5^oC which will cause storms of increasing intensity in some areas while other areas will see severe drought.  The report indicated that while sea levels will rise the amount of this increase is difficult to predict.  The current rise was attributed to the warming of the ocean to a depth of 3000 meters.  The only good news, at least for those who live in Western Europe, is that so far no major slowing of the North Atlantic Drift had been observed. 

US reaction to the study has, of course, been predictably negative.  The UK paper the Guardian reported that Exxon Mobile Corporation, the giant oil conglomerate that just reported a thirty-nine billion dollar profit for 2006, the largest ever reported by a US company, has offered scientists and economists $10,000 to write articles refuting this study.

The present Administration has finally admitted that Global Warming is real but continues to whine about the effects that battling global warming might have on the US economy.  They claim that any attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions will hurt the economy by sending US jobs abroad where labor is cheaper.   The US has about 4% of the worlds population but produced 25% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.  If the US doesn't work to curb CO₂ production then the work done by the rest of the world will be for nothing.  

It's time for the US to wake up and realize that the US Economy will be damaged much worse by not working to curb global warming.  Countries are going to want to cut greenhouse gas emissions so they will buy products that actually produce less of them.  The US can be in the forefront of this or it can sit and watch it's manufacturing base erode as Japan, Europe, and China produce more efficient products and US companies become less and less competitive.  It is now quite clear that we have to stop putting near term comfort ahead of the health of this planet and the future or our children.

The US has a great opportunity here.  We need to move aggressively to implement renewable energy resources like wind, solar, geothermal and small hydro, and increase research into less developed sources like wind and tidal energy.  We need to support the growing number of companies that are building EV and PHEV vehicles that can make use of this renewable energy to provide emission free transportation. 

The UN Study makes it clear that we can no longer ignore the effects of human activity on global warming.  The US considers itself the world leader and it is time to stand up and take the lead battling this threat to life as we know it.

Sunday, 29 January 2007 – State of the Union – This week President Bush gave his state of the Union Address and once again called for energy independence.

He started to by saying that the US must kick its addiction to oil and called for an expansion in the use of clean coal, nuclear, solar and wind energy.  I don’t know if President Bush has had an epiphany or if it was just a way to try and boost his flagging popularity but he also made some calls for a reduction of 20% in gasoline usage by 2017 and an increase in fuel economy standards by 4%, or about 1 mpg, for cars by 2010 and for trucks by 2012.

It is unfortunate that while the President is calling for energy independence, his actions over the first six years of his presidency have actually worked to increase our dependence on foreign oil.  Under his direction the federal government joined the auto industry in its successful attempt to gut the California Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate.  While he calls for an increase in renewable energy his administration has actually cut the budget for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado .

I applaud his idea to increase CAFE Standards but the call for 4% by 2010 is too little too late.  The failure to increase CAFE standards has much to do with the current woes of the US automobile manufacturers.  If tougher standards had been set five years ago then the US manufacturers wouldn’t be stuck with such poor fleet fuel economy.  If President Bush hadn’t killed the Partnership for the Next Generation of Vehicles perhaps the US manufacturers wouldn’t be so far behind Toyota and Honda in hybrid vehicles.

President Bush’s call to reduce gasoline usage by 20% by 2017 is also very worthy, but his plan focuses on replacing this gasoline by ethanol.  We already put ethanol in gasoline.  There has been a great increase in the amount of ethanol used in gasoline as it has been used to replace MTBE as an oxygenate.   Right now most gasoline should really be called E10 as it consists of a blend of 90% gasoline and 10% ethanol.  This demand is going to rise more than 700% if we move from gasoline to E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

Earlier this week I was listening to NPR and there was an article about the problems being faced by Missouri cattle ranchers due to the recent cold spell.  The snow in that area is too deep for the cows to scrape though the snow to reach the grass underneath.  The farmers have to provide feed for the cows and they would normally do this by feeding them corn.  The requirements for corn by the ethanol industry, however, has driven the price of corn so high that the farmers can’t afford to use it to feed their cows.  They have to buy hay, and the only hay they can get is low quality, which they often have to bring in from long distances.

The Washington Post also had an article, “A Culinary and Cultural Staple in Crisis”, this week about how the rise in corn prices due to demand for ethanol production was impacting the tortilla market in Mexico forcing poor Mexicans to eat cheaper, though much less nutritious noodles.

How are we going to grow enough corn to produce the ethanol needed to replace 20% of our gasoline usage without impacting food production?  The Answer, according to President Bush, is to use grasses and waste vegetable products to produce the ethanol.  This is a good idea but the problem is that nobody has managed to work out how to do this in economical quantities, and it still takes land to grow the prairie grass, land that could be growing food crops.

Another thing that worries me about ethanol is the low net energy gain.  The best-case scenario is that the energy gain is only 25%, which means it takes .75 gallons worth of ethanol to produce one gallon of ethanol.  This means we need to provide a lot of renewable energy to produce the ethanol if we are going to get any CO₂ benefits.

The final issue I have with ethanol is the lack of infrastructure.  Right now there are over a quarter of a million E85 capable vehicles here in California.  Recently we doubled the number of E85 stations in the state, so now we have a choice of two stations to refuel our E85 vehicles.  Before we can move forward with E85 the lack of infrastructure has to be addressed.  This will cost a tremendous amount of money and, guess what, we are being told that we will need to do it all again in a few years as we move to the hydrogen economy.  

President Bush also talked about the use of hybrid vehicles, and indeed, he has since issued an executive order to add hybrids to the federal fleet.  He also called for increased research into battery technology to make plug-in hybrids viable.  Groups like Plug-in-America are trying hard to get the word out that battery technology is already at a level that makes plug-in hybrids viable.  Using NiMH batteries like those in the RAV4 EV we can already build a plug-in hybrid with forty-mile range and these batteries will already last the life of the vehicle.

Plug in hybrids, and even better, electric vehicles, are a good choice to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil.   To get the full benefit of these vehicles we need to expand the amount of renewable energy that we generate.  We have to expand the use of solar, wind, wave, small hydro, and geothermal power plants.  To achieve this, research facilities like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory need to be well funded. 

Governments also need to support electric vehicles.  World wide, government fleets purchase hundreds of thousands of vehicles each year.  If as many of these as possible were electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, it would open up the market and allow manufacturers to get their vehicle production up to volumes where prices become competitive with ICE vehicles.  If the big manufacturers won’t produce electric vehicles then buy them from companies like Phoenix Motorcars or the Commuter Car Company who are ready to produce electric vehicles.

Sunday, January 21, 2007 – Range Myths and Realities – The biggest issue in selling Electric Vehicles to the general public is the often issue of Range. 

The biggest myth about vehicle range is that anything less than 300 miles is a major problem.  The truth is that according to the US Department of transportation the average male drives 18,000 miles per year while the average female drives 11,000 miles per year.  That works out at about 50 miles per day for men and 30 miles per day for women.  These trips are made up with lots of short trips along with a few long distance hauls.

As Ed Begley Jr. said at the EV1 funeral, “EVs are not for everyone, they can only work for 90% of our driving needs”.  EVs like the RAV4 EV, with a range in excess of 70 miles, can easily handle all but the long-range trips, and even a NEV like the GEM, with a range of 20-25 miles, can handle most of the short trips people regularly take.

The truth is that people generally overestimate the number of miles that they drive.  Most trips are really quite short but people seem to think that they need a lot of range to make the trip.  Try this little experiment, next time you do a run to the local Mall, set your trip meter before you set out then see just how far you actually traveled.  I’m willing to be it is quite a bit less than you expected.

One of the big issues with range is that people have been conditioned to the freedom that an automobile can give you.  Years of advertising have accustomed people to the idea that they can hop in their car on a whim and drive of to Las Vegas or Atlantic City.  The truth is that most adults don’t just hop in the car and set of for Los Vegas, they plan out the trip make hotel reservations then pack the family in the Minivan¹ a week or two later and they are off. 

Most twenty-first century families, especially here in California, are multi-car families.  Once we get away from the idea of a personal car and start to think about the car as a shared family resource an electric car becomes somewhat of a no-brainer.  You have the family Minivan for the long distance work and hauling the kids to soccer practice and you have the EV to run all the short errands that really increase the wear on the Minivan and cause the most air pollution.

Range is affected by many factors including outside temperature, hilly terrain, or the way the car is driven.  The truth is that your Internal Combustion Engine powered vehicle is also affected by these factors but because most of us don’t keep close tabs on our mileage each day we don’t realize how mileage varies with various factors. 

The main determinant of mileage in an EV is the batteries.  It seems that we currently have a technological hurdle that is difficult to get over.  Most EVs for sale at the moment rely on the good old standby, the lead acid battery.  There are EVs like the ones being developed at Phoenix Motor Cars and the latest vehicle being built by Commuter Cars that are using the newer battery technology such as NiMH and Li Ion but since these batteries aren’t being mass-produced yet they are very expensive.  There Is a big divide between the low cost NEVs, Electric Scooters, three wheel EVs and conversions that all use Lead Acid batteries, usually sell for less than $30,000, and offer range of around 20 – 30 miles, and vehicles that use the newer batteries that are priced above $65,000 but offer ranges of 100 to 200 miles.

People do find that they can get by quite well with a range of 20 miles.  Mark Higley uses his Xebra pickup to drive his son to school and run errands around town.  He likes to remind people when they talk about EVs being in the car future “I drive an EV now and it works for me”.

Tracy Crawford uses a GEM Long Bed Utility for both her business in Wisconsin and her personal use.  She has been talking about the Utility being her second car but told me that she only drove her primary car, a Toyota Prius, once or twice per month.  She was surprised when I told her that the GEM was her primary car since that was the one she drove most of the time. 

Of course EVs won’t work for everyone.  Janice Woolery was one of the first people to buy a Xebra Sedan.  She bought this as her only vehicle based on claims of a forty-mile range.  It turned out that the range on a Xebra is somewhat less in real world driving and the car just didn’t have enough range to support her commute and she ended up trading it in for a Toyota Yaris. 

This brings me to the next big Myth in the EV World, the amount of range claimed by the various EV makers.  Most EV makers seem to test the car on the flat at low speed to get their range numbers.  I have found that these numbers, while no doubt achievable, are not what most people would get in real world driving.

As a rule I tend to reduce the manufacturer’s quoted range by 20 to 25 percent when I quote range on evfinder.com except in those extremely rare cases where the quoted range looks reasonable.  For example ZAP claimed the range of the Xebra was 40 miles so I warned people to expect a range of 30 miles and even that seems optimistic in most instances.  I hear from ZAP dealers that ZAP is telling them not to oversell the Xebra so many of them are now quoting ranges closer to my 30 mile estimate.

This also happens in the Internal Combustion world.  The automobile manufacturers are legally required to quote the EPA mileage numbers but very few people are able to reach those numbers.  This becomes particularly obvious with the hybrids like the Prius.  The EPA says that the Prius should get 60 mpg in town but if you drive one on lots of short trips of ten minutes or less then you are likely to see about 35 mpg.

The big exception to this rule is the mileage quoted by the big automakers, especially Toyota.  They quote a range of 70 miles for their RAV4 EV while I know lots of drivers who routinely get 100 miles of range with a little careful driving.

The reality is that if you want to buy an electric vehicle it is wise to assume that you won’t get anything near the mileage the manufacturer quotes.  Before selecting a car measure how far you drive on your regular daily routes and select a car that will give you at least double that range.  But remember, the average car is only driven about an hour a day so there is adequate time to recharge while the car is sitting.  If you can charge at work for example then you can support a much longer commute than if you have to drive the round trip on a single charge. 

Driving today’s electric vehicles does require a little bit of a lifestyle change.  You need to go from driving the same car each day to driving the most appropriate car for the trip.  You also need to plan your trips more carefully so that you keep your trips within the range of your vehicles.  May people find that the quite operation of the electric car, never having to go to the gas station, and the environmental benefits, make it well worth the effort.

Battery technology is improving and once the price of newer more energy dense batteries comes down to affordable prices, there will be less need to compromise.  For now, battery electric vehicles aren’t for everyone, but they will work as a second vehicle for the majority of people.

¹I use the example of the family Minivan rather than the family SUV because of safety issues.  I recommend that anyone who is considering the purchase of an SUV because of it’s safety read Keith Bradsher’s excellent book “The High and the Mighty” before heading out to their local automobile dealership.  The lowly Minivan might be looked down on as a “Soccer Mum” mobile but they are the safest vehicles on the road.

Sunday January 14, 2007 - Plug in Hybrids - It seemed like the 2007 Detroit Auto Show was being held in a parallel  universe when Toyota announced its biggest truck ever while GM showed a plug-in-hybrid concept.

With the current high price of gas focusing attention on small cars, the overblown Tundra crew cab, which will start gathering dust in dealer lots next month, received little attention.  All the buzz in the media focused on GM's Chevy Volt concept car.

The Chevy Volt is a five door compact powered by an electric motor.  The car has a grid rechargeable battery pack that offers a 40 mile range.  The battery pack is backed up by a 1 liter 3 cylinder engine that drives a generator capable of extending range for as long as there is fuel in the tank.

GM is trying to sell this as an electric car but it is really a serial hybrid.  This design is commonly used in railway locomotives, which are correctly termed "diesel electric".

On the surface this announcement seems like the silver bullet everyone has been waiting for.  Organizations like Plug-in-America and California Cars have been issuing guarded praise but many, including myself, remain skeptical.

GM's announcement started out by referring to the EV1 as though it wasn't capable of climbing hills or running AC, where those of us who had the privilege to have driven one new better.  GM also said that they wouldn't build the car until battery technology had improved to make the batteries viable, when "Who Killed The Electric Car" demonstrated that he NiMH batteries used in the EV1 and RAV4 EV were more than adequate.

It looks to me as if GM have rushed this concept into the Detroit show to counteract the bad publicity created by "Who Killed The Electric Car" while pushing back production to a point in time where crushing the EV1 will be a distant memory.  I have seen video of the car being driven so it is a working vehicle but I will be very surprised if this car ever gets into production.

Now, a hybrid is basically vehicle with two or more distinct sources of power. 

A serial hybrid is one that has an electric motor to drive the wheels and an internal combustion engine to drive a generator to supply the electricity to drive the wheels.  It saves fuel because the engine can be run at the constant speed at which it is most efficient.  The Chevy Volt is a serial hybrid - which is why it won't be listed on evfinder.

A parallel hybrid is a vehicle that can be driven directly by any of its power sources.  The Toyota Prius is an example of a parallel hybrid.

A Plug-in Hybrid can be either serial or parallel but have an energy storage system, usually batteries but it could also be super capacitors or a flywheel, that stores energy from the electricity grid to be used later for propulsion.  These are sometimes referred to as grid chargeable hybrids.  Plug-in Hybrids are usually classified by the distance they can travel in electric only mode. The Chevy Volt for example would be a P40 meaning it can go 40 miles before it starts the Internal Combustion Engine.

Hybrids have been around for years.  In the early days of steam power a boat couldn't carry enough coal to fuel them over long sea voyages., but the advantage of steam power in increased speed and no longer relying on the vagaries of the wind were obvious. To get around this problem boats were equipped with both sails and a steam engine.  The boat could be powered by wind, seam, or both.  Current examples of vehicles that we might not at first think of as hybrids include Human Electric hybrid like the electric bike and the Twike

Around 1902 Ferdinand Porsche built a serial hybrid using  a 100. hp. Daimler engine to power four hub motors, one on each wheel.  In 1905 an American called H. Piper patented a parallel hybrid but never built one.  Several other companies did though, including Woods in the US, who built their "Dual Power" from 1916 until 1919.

Many EV advocates believe that the Plug-in Hybrid will be a necessary step between today's gas car and the EV of the future.  I too thought that we would see a natural progression from the non-chargeable hybrid like the Prius to Plug-in Hybrids to EVs.

Recent developments have made me think that the plug-in step may not be necessary.  AC propulsion demonstrated that a 300 mile range was quite possible and in a recent conversation with Phoenix Motorcars I found that the can charge their 130 mile range pack in 10 minutes.

Now, the fast charger costs $100,000 and a 300 mile range pack checks in at $20,000 so they aren't cheap but getting these costs down is where we need to invest our dollars, not in increased battery power.

There has been a persistent rumor that the next Prius, due in 2008 as a 2009 model, will have an all electric range of 9 miles.  That will be very welcome, but I would really like to see the big car manufacturers see just how far they can push existing EV technology.

For more information on Plug-in Hybrids read Sherry Boschert's book "Plug-in Hybrids - The Cars that will Recharge America" which is available through Plug-in America.  

Sunday January 5, 2007 - Reducing CO₂  - 2006 has passed into the history books and the coming of the New Year is the time to make a new start.  I made a resolution to loose weight.  I made the same resolution last year and actually dropped ten pounds so I just want to keep the trend going.

I received a couple of emails from people I know, Dave Cutter from Pleiades Enterprises and Russell Sidney from the Sustainable Transportation Club who had New Year’s resolutions with loftier goals, to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

Russell in particular challenged everyone to reduce their carbon emissions in 2007 and to try and get others to do the same thing by spreading the word about sustainable transportation.  This is a lofty goal but a worthy one.  After watching “An Inconvenient Truth” last week it became clear that we need to address global warming by reducing CO₂ and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but how to go about it.

We could wait for our government to enact legislation that will force companies and individuals to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, but I am a believer in the not so old adage “Think Globally, act locally”.  I think that we need to take individual action to reduce our carbon footprint and if enough of us take action it will become the norm not the exception, but how are we going to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.

Well, the easiest way to accomplish this is to reduce the amount of energy that we consume.  My new year’s resolution comes in here; loosing weight involves eating less and exercising more.  Eating less means less energy needed to produce the food consumed; exercising more can mean walking or bicycling on errands rather than getting out the car and driving.  Even weighing less means that you need less energy to move you around when you have to travel in a vehicle.

Now, there are lots of other ways to reduce your carbon footprint.  The simplest is to reduce your energy consumption.  This can be as easy of turning off the lights and the television when you don’t need them.  Turning off a single 100W bulb for 1 hour, say the time it takes to eat dinner, can save 36 KWhrs per year.  Now imagine if a million people did this, that just saved 36MWhrs of electricity and that represents quite a lot of CO₂ that won’t be pushed into the atmosphere.

This web site is all about transportation though so let’s look at that.  Obviously the best way to cut the amount of fossil fuel burned is to not travel at all but that just isn’t practical.  The next best thing is to walk or bicycle everywhere or if your commute is too far then try and use public transportation.

Let’s face it; sometimes none of these things are practical.  We would all love to live within a few minutes walk of our place of employment but circumstances often dictate that we have to commute, and if you live in large metropolitan areas like Los Angeles , Chicago or New York this commute can be horrendous.   Here in LA many people have little choice other than driving.  The solution here is to carpool to minimize the amount of CO₂ produced as a group.  We estimate that our carpool save around 2000 gallons of gas per year and since 1 gallon of gas produces 16 lbs of CO₂ we are saving 32000 lbs of CO₂. I am also hoping to eventually telecommute to avoid driving altogether.

For those that must drive a battery electric vehicle is a good choice when you can find one that fits your commute.  Even electric bikes can make a huge contribution to reducing greenhouse gases and air pollution if enough people use them.  The usual objection to this is that electricity has to be generated using so you just ship the pollution to another location.  So how does this stack up?

I saw a post on the RAV4 EV group board a couple of days ago that claimed, based on numbers for electricity and natural gas consumption by oil refineries in the state, provided by the California Air Resource Board, that a Tesla roadster could drive 35 miles on the amount of electricity used to refine a gallon of gasoline.  I’m not convinced that this number is accurate but the refining industry is certainly the biggest user of electricity and natural gas in the state. 

An EV can also use electricity generated from renewable sources and when this is done the electric vehicle comes out much cleaner.  When you think of renewable resources most people think of solar or wind energy.  Not everyone can put solar panels on their roof or install a wind turbine but there are some other ways to get at least pseudo-renewable electricity.  Southern California Edison for example has a program where you can contribute a little extra on top of your electricity bill and that money goes towards funding renewable projects.  Edison now has more renewable energy in its mix than any other electricity provider in the state.

For those where currently available EVs just won’t fit the bill, then using the most fuel-efficient vehicle you can afford takes you in the right direction.  For me this is the Toyota Prius but your needs may vary.

If you have to drive around in an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) car then there are services out there that allow you to purchase carbon credits to offset your CO₂ usage.  One company that does this is Terrapass which will sell an “Around Towner terrapass” for $29.95 that offsets 6,000 pounds of CO₂ and would cover the 5282 lbs of CO₂ that my Prius would generate each year.  The site offers a calculator so you can figure out how much CO₂ your annual driving produces. 

The way that the Terrapass system works, is that the revenue from purchasing their pass is passed along to fund renewable energy projects like wind farms and electricity production from biomass. 

Another company, e-BlueHorizons also offers the ability to purchase Green House Gas reduction credits.  There program for carbon reduction is more difficult to understand but they also put half the contribution into carbon sequestration projects such as reforestation. 

So this year, I am expanding my new year’s resolution to include reducing my carbon footprint and doing more to get others to reduce their carbon footprint.  Below I have listed some things that can be done to accomplish this.  Most of them are old hat and I have been doing them for years but there are some that I still haven’t adopted and maybe this will help me do better and jog a few of others to adopt them too.

Ways to reduce Carbon emissions

When not in a room turn off the lights, television etc.

Turn off the computer, or at least the monitor, when not using it.

Turn down the thermostat to 70F in winter and up to 80F in summer

Buy locally produced items to keep transportation to a minimum

Walk or bicycle where possible

Use Public transport when you can

Keep the car properly maintained and keep tires at the correct pressure

Use the most economical vehicle for the required trip

Combine trips to reduce the amount of driving

Drive more efficiently avoiding jackrabbit starts and hard braking

Use cloth bags at the grocery store

Recycle as much as possible

Use a ceramic mug when you can instead of paper or Styrofoam

Buy Carbon Credits to offset remaining emissions