2010 Blog Archive

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Sunday June 19, 2010 - UK Trial First Test Results

Sunday June 13, 2010 - Life Beyond Petroleum

Sunday June 5, 2010 - Swiss Post Electric Scooters

Sunday May 30, 2010 - Sold Out

Sunday May 23, 2010 - NEVs Under Attack

Sunday May 16,2010 - Kerry Lieberman American Power Act

Sunday May 9, 2010 - Ghosn's Big Gamble

Sunday May 2, 2010 - Oil Spill

Sunday April 25,2010 - Venus

Sunday 18 April, 2010 - Peak Oil 2014

Sunday April 11, 2010 - 2010 New York Auto Show

Sunday April 4, 2010 - Hawaii and Electric Vehicles

Sunday March 27, 2010 - Goodbye ZENN

Sunday March 21, 2010 - Electric Commuter Vehicles

Sunday March 13, 2010 - Range Anxiety

Sunday March 7, 2020 - 2010 Geneva Motor Show

Sunday February 28, 2010 - Survey

Sunday February 21, 2010 - Peak Oil Report

Sunday December 14, 2010 - Chicago Auto Show

Sunday February 7, 2009 - NiMH Controversy

Sunday January 31, 2010 - e-Drive

Sunday January 24, 2010 - J1772

Sunday January 16, 2010 - 2010 Detroit Auto Show

Sunday January 10, 2010 - Dual Mode Transportation Systems

Sunday January 1, 2010 - Spectrum Magazine Bashes EVs  

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Sunday June 19, 2010 - UK Trial First Test Results - While most of us here in the US have been focused on the EV trial being conducted by BMW with the Mini-E there are lots of other trials of electric vehicles going on, especially in Europe.  One such trial is being conducted by a group called CABLED in the UK and this week they published their initial results.

The Coventry and Birmingham Low Emission Demonstrators (CABLED) is a consortium of 13 organizations and is based in the Uk's West Midland region.  They are in the process of running trials involving 110 electric vehicles from six manufacturers, Jaguar/ Land Rover, Mitsubishi, Smart, Tata Motors, LTI, and Microcab Industries.

Participants in the study sign up on the CABLED web site and then go through a selection process run by the University of Coventry.  Those selected can then lease an electric car for a one year period.  The vehicles come equipped with a GPS tracking device and a data logger.  This setup monitors the driving habits of the participants, logging information on distance duration, frequency. and date/time of each journey.  Also logged is the ambient temperature the location (home, work or other location) of charging, and average speed.

The program started on December 12, 2009 when 22 Mitsubishi i-MiEV were handed over to a selected group of individuals who live and work around Birmingham and Coventry.  The data gathered to date was handed over to researchers at Aston University for analysis.  The first set of test results has just been released and they are eye opening.

The participants drove an average of 23 miles per day with most trips being five miles or less.  This is a typical driving pattern for UK Drivers and is well within the 80 mile range provided by the i-MiEV.  During the winter period temperatures dropped as low as -10C (14F) and the researchers did notice a drop-off in usage when temperatures were low but again that is typical as people drive less when the roads are icy.

The drivers also used the full range of speed on the car, taking it on the freeway and driving freeway speeds when necessary.  The cars were, on average, parked 97% of the time leaving adequate time for charging.  The vehicles were kept plugged in for about 20% of the time and in some instances they were left plugged in for up to two days.  Participants found that plugging the cars in was easy and it quickly became habit so most drivers started the day with a full charge.

It is clear that the drivers in this test plugged in the car when they got home so the bulk of charging was done in the early evening.  This will be a problem once electric cars become the majority of vehicles on the road because this would coincide with peak electricity demand.  One of the often unmentioned benefits of electric vehicles is their ability to level the load on the electric grid allowing the grid to be run much more efficiently.  It is clear that there will need to be tools to make it easier for cars to charge at off-peak times and incentives for drivers to use those tools.

Something to remember about this trial is that there was no real public charging infrastructure in the Birmingham and Coventry area.  CABLED plans to install 36 public charging units to support their trial, but have only just recently installed the first four of these.  Of course, with 240V service being pretty standard in the UK most drivers are able to plug in to any standard outlet and can probably get permission to charge at work.

Studies like this are coming late in the game as companies such as GM and Nissan begin to roll out electric and plug-in hybrids to the general public.  Mitsubishi, of course, are already selling the i-MiEV in Japan and have been for almost a year now.  The results of this study will undoubtedly help people get over any range anxiety they might be feeling and be more ready to buy an electric car when they start to ship later this year, but once we have 13,000 Nissan Leaf drivers on the road this sort of study becomes moot.

It is clear from this study that many UK drivers could make use of an electric vehicles for most of their driving needs, especially if they had easy access to an ICE vehicle in a program like the one that Citroen is proposing where purchases of one of their electric cars gets access to low cost rentals on an ICE vehicle when they need one.  We just need to get EVs and PHEVs out of the evaluation programs and into the showrooms.

Sunday June 13, 2010 - Life Beyond Petroleum - I just read a recent New York Times article "Life Beyond Petroleum" that offered a rather bleak view of life in the coming years.  While I agree that we are going to have to face a future where fossil fuels are becoming more and more scarce I am still optimistic that we can avert disaster.

In the article John Leland talked about those people who are doing things like stockpiling food and changing all their money to gold in case there are shortages when the oil runs out.  The views of people in the article reminded me a lot of the sort of comments that came around during the run up to the year 2000.  I attended seminars on Y2K that had planes dropping from the sky and elevators crashing to the ground as the clock slipped over past midnight on December 31, 1999.  Of course while there were problems the whole Y2K issue became a none event.

The truth is that even if we are already beyond peak oil, and I personally believe that the peak is still a few years off though not many, oil production isn't going to suddenly plunge.  In fact we won't know we have crossed the peak until several years after the fact because production will fall very slowly for the first few years.  

In essence we still have time to move away from Petroleum and towards a more sustainable energy future, and we still  have time to make our lives more energy efficient.  Many people have already done this simply by doing things like switching from incandescent light bulbs to CFLs.  Taking other simple steps like turning off lights, TVs, CD players and other stuff when you leave a room for an extended time, or powering off your computer when not in use, can save tons of electricity.

Unless you live in Hawaii, by the way, your electricity isn't being generated from Petroleum anyway, its mostly coal, natural gas, large hydro, or Nuclear at the moment and moving towards more renewable sources.  

So, how do we deal with peak oil.

First we have to get out of the state of denial we are currently in.  Peak oil might not be here just yet but it is coming and we can't prepare for it if a sizable portion of the population don't think it is happening or just don't give a damn.

Next we have to move our sources of energy away from fossil fuels in general and petroleum products in particular.  We can do this by moving a greater proportion of our energy production to renewable sources like solar, wind, small hydro, geothermal and wave energy.  At the same time we can move our transport systems to using electrical power.  This includes powering a larger and larger proportion of our rail networks with electricity.  

We need to develop bio-fuels for those areas that are difficult to operate using electricity such as airplanes and ships.  

While this is all going on we need to improve overall energy efficiency.  For example, CFLs are more energy efficient that incandescent bulbs, but LEDs are more efficient that CFLs.  If we develop LED based lighting that is overall cheaper than using CFLs then we win out and use less energy in the process.  We have already developed more efficient refrigerators, and the current generation of flat screen TVs use less energy than the previous generation.  We need to continue developing system that use less and less energy,

I personally think that we can build world for future generations that will be much more sustainable than the world we know today.  We have to do this or descend back into the dark ages.  I'm going to power my computer off now to save a little energy for the future.

Sunday June 5, 2010 - Swiss Post Electric Scooters - I came across an interesting article this week about the Swiss Postal Service, La Poste, which has just entered into a contract with Italian scooter maker Oxygen to add 250 Oxygen Cargo scooters  to its already large fleet.

The latest addition will bring La Poste's electric scooter fleet up to 1000 vehicles making it the largest electric scooter fleet in the world.  The benefits of using electric scooters are several.  

In a country that values quiet an electric scooter makes almost no noise so they  won't wake people up as the postman makes his early morning deliveries.  The near silence of electric vehicles is one of their best features.  They remove lots of the noise pollution that we associate with the ICE vehicle.  This was well known in the UK where a hundred thousand milk floats quietly delivered milk each day so there was a bottle of fresh milk on the doorstep when you woke up for breakfast.

Electric scooters don't have any tailpipe emissions so they are very clean around town, much better than say a smelly old two stroke scooter.  Switzerland generates about 40% of its electricity from five nuclear power plants and a further 10% comes from small hydro.  Most of the remainder is generated from natural gas, and other renewable sources with coal making up a relatively small portion of full capacity.  This makes the electric scooter very clean not only in terms of localized air pollution but also in terms of CO2 and other air pollutants generated at the power plant.

The lack of tailpipe emissions has another big benefit for postal workers.  The scooters can be driven into the postal facility.  Instead of having to lug mail bags out to a van the postman can ride his scooter right into the sorting office, load it up, and be on his way.  These scooters are powered by lithium batteries that offer a range of up to 120 kilometers which is more than adequate for the average delivery route.

Costs are another area where these vehicles can reap benefits for La Poste.  The scooters lease for around $260 per month and, since they are electric there is very little maintenance on top of that.  They just need to be plugged in every night for a charge and they are ready to go in the morning and the cost of running these scooters is considerably less than the cost of running a gas powered scooter..  The lithium batteries are designed to last for about 5 years without any serious degradation in range even when charged daily.  Total Cost of ownership over a five year period does, according to Oxygen, "guarantee a considerable savings in comparison to the same models supplied with petrol".

Home delivery for such things as postal services, food, and groceries, typically require a relatively short daily range and this is an area where electric vehicles really excel.  Europe has always been ahead of the US in using electric delivery vehicles and in recent years companies and postal services around Europe have lead the way in introducing EVs.  There are certainly some areas in the US that use electric vehicles.  UPS has just started a pilot program in the Los Angeles area using electric vans from Modec, and of course Southern California Edison has a large fleet of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.  

In the past many cities in California had electric vehicles in their fleet.  Beverly Hills for example had ten RAV4 EVs.  Most of these cities let the vehicles go once the lease expired but I hope that now we are seeing a new crop of electric vehicles coming to market that they will add EVs to their fleets once again.  While it is nice for electric vehicles to be available for us consumers, fleet purchases can really help push development along and prices down in the early days by providing high volume sales of electric cars, vans, and trucks.

Sunday May 30, 2010 - Sold Out - A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog called Gohn's big gamble which discussed the gamble taken by Nissan that the Leaf would sell enough volume to make the car profitable given the low price of that they were projecting for the battery pack.  It seems like my question has been answered, at least in part.

Nissan has recently announced that pre-orders for the Leaf have reached 13,000 in the USA, that is the projected amount that was set for first year sales of the car.  The car is also being sold in Japan and pre-orders there have reached 6,000 which is also the target first year for sales.  It appears that the car has sold out in just 35 days and that's before any European sales; the car doesn't go on sale there until March of next year.

So, it appears that there has been a large pent-up demand for an electric vehicle that is reasonably affordable, offers good range and ICE car performance in a decent sized 5 seat sedan.  It looks to me like Nissan has hit a home run with this car.  

I also want to point out that these orders are not occurring at a time when gas prices are spiking but have been stable and even falling a little over the last five weeks.  One thing that I do think has influenced people is the gulf oil spill,  This environmental disaster has brought home to people more than gas shortages and price spikes ever could the effects of our oil addiction.

To put this in prospective though, 13,000 vehicles is about the monthly sales for the Toyota Prius.  In its first year the classic Prius sold about 24,000 units in the US and when the second generation vehicle was introduced people had to wait months to get a new car.  There were a significant number of people, me included, who ordered a 2004 and did not get a car until the 2005 model year.  Toyota stood by its customers and gave them the 2005 vehicle at the 2004 price.

Nissan has already rolled out one celebrity to endorse the Leaf, Lance Armstrong will be the first person to take delivery of a car, probably well before the car is available to the general public, possibly as early as August or September.  You can see Lance Armstrong talking about the Leaf courtesy of youtube.

The success of Nissan has also had consequences, the most immediate being a reduction in the price of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV already being sold in Japan.  The price still isn't as low as the Leaf but with the prospect of long waits for a Leaf some buyers may be tempted to go for the i-MiEV instead.  There has been no announcement from Mitsubishi about them commencing sales of the i-MiEV in the US but I have seen two developments.  

First, Mitsubishi issued a press release that they will loan two vehicles to the State of California for evaluation.  Second, I was driving south on the 405 in Long Beach earlier this week and I saw a car transporter with some odd looking cars on the back.  When I got closer I found that the truck was loaded with six white i-MiEV.  There are several companies testing i-MiEV at the moment including Southern California Edison and Best Buy's Geek Squad so the cars could be meant for them but it does appear that evaluation continues to expand and I expect it can't be long before we get notification that the i-MiEV is going to be sold here.

We still haven't heard anything from GM about the price of the Chevy Volt, and Toyota have been pretty cagy about the introduction of a plug-in Prius.  I think that both these companies are going to have to react to the price and popularity of the Leaf in order when they set both price and production volume.

GM, for example, planned on a first year production run of 10,000 vehicles.  Now they have a dilemma; price the car at a rate that is competitive with the volt and they will probably get many more orders than they can build vehicles; price the car at a higher price point and they might not get orders as people look to the cheaper Nissan.  I expect that they will be looking at the pricing to try set it at a rate that will produce around 10,000 sales in 2011 to match their projected build.

Toyota is another manufacturer that has already shown a PHEV at several auto shows and is expected to make a limited number of cars available for sale in the 2011 model year.  Toyota, especially Toyota USA, has been downright hostile to plug-in vehicles even though they have an approach which will meet the needs of many drivers.  On the Prius boards I have heard over and over again the mantra "I want to be able to plug it in but I don't want to have to plug it in".  The Plug-in Prius is set to fit right into this market.  The 12 miles range and the ability to operate in electric only mode only at speed below 62 mph make this the sort of car that will work for those who don't want to "have to plug it in" and those for whom charging opportunities are limited.  Pricing on this vehicle shouldn't be too much more than the regular Prius given the need for a smaller battery pack but I expect Toyota to price the car high because they don't want to sell them - a bad mistake if they do that.

The American public appear to be finally getting the message that evfinder.com has been putting out for the last ten years, that electric cars are good for the environment, are fun to drive, and are the only feasible way to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.  I am looking forward to the time when I can go to my local car dealer and drive off in a plug-in vehicles, that time is only a few years away. 

Sunday May 23, 2010 - NEVs Under Attack - The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is calling for banning NEVs on public roads because of poor the protection they offer in a collision.  

Although most people consider the risk of being rear ended because of 25mph top speed limit for a NEV to be the major problem with driving them on city streets where other drivers may be driving at 35 - 45mph.  In truth it is very unlikely that someone will come up behind you and ram you because you are only driving 25mph.  They may honk at you, they may give you the finger, they may even do unsafe maneuvers to get around you, but they are highly unlikely to purposely drive into you, they aren't going to want to get their nice shiny car scratched.

The problem that the IIHS found was in direct collisions.  They did a side impact test using a Smart travelling at 35mph on a GEM and found that the driver in the GEM would "most likely have been killed".  This kind of accident is a more likely sort of accident than the example sited above, a driver running a red light and t-boning a car going through on the green.

We have always known that NEVs, by their very nature, have been less safe than normal cars.  On the other hand, the top speed of 25mph and only being able to drive on roads with a top speed of 35mph, combined with typical low usage caused by range limitations of about 30 miles per charge, has tended to make NEV accidents pretty rare.

I have heard it said that there has been no fatalities associated with the crash of a NEV and, although I have not been able to confirm this statement, I have also been unable to find any information about fatalities associated with driving or riding in a NEV either.

I don't think that the NEV should be banned from the roads.  There are a lot more vehicles on the streets that are much less safe than a NEV.  Consider what happens to a motorcyclist when he gets side swiped on the freeway travelling at 75mph, of the bicyclist who gets hit by a car travelling 31mph as the rider crosses an intersection, yet we don't start to ban bikes and motorcycles from public roads do we.

Sometimes we have to accept that people are willing to risk life and limb to drive the vehicle of their choice.  In fact, every day we get into our cars and turn on the ignition we risk life and limb and we don't even think about it.  We also have to accept compromises for the greater good.  We don't ban ICE vehicles from public streets yet the number of people who die from illness related to vehicle emissions each year makes the number of NEV drivers who die in accidents look like a drop in the bucket.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against legislation that makes NEVs safer.  I just don't want it pushed to the point where NEV manufacturers have to go out of business because they can't afford to do government crash testing.  In any event they would probably just go to building three wheel cars which would register as motorcycles and we would be no better off.

One of the reasons I have been against current MSV laws is that the way most of these have been implemented is to just allow a NEV to go faster.  I have always considered that what we need is a good quadracycle law that allows cars that can travel at speeds that are useful in town and, say 45-55 mph, but not on freeways.  They should have safety features like seat belts, air bags, front and rear crumple zones, and side impact protection.  However, the manufacturer should be able to get certification by using computer simulation rather than having to go through expensive crash tests.

I expect that the IIHS report will present some pressure for states and cities to think about banning NEVs from their streets,  We should aggressively oppose any move by our legislature to take such action.

Sunday May 16,2010 - Kerry Lieberman American Power Act - On May 12 Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced the American Power Act to the US senate.  The goal of this act is to "secure the energy future of the United States".  While this bill has some saving features is full of warts.

The bill promotes a cap and trade system for carbon reduction.  Under a cap and trade system the amount of CO2 that can be emitted is capped.  Those companies that can reduce CO2 emissions below the cap are given credits that they can sell to those companies who can't.  The idea is to let companies that can't reduce their emissions fund emissions activities at companies that can.  It is a system that does work although we, the consumers, end up paying the bill, but that is going to be the case anyway.

One of the biggest provisions of the bill is to promote the development of new nuclear power generation facilities.  We all know that there are serious problems with nuclear energy in its current form, including the issues of disposal of nuclear waste, and the problems that can be caused by accidents at the nuclear facility, but this bill offers tax incentives for companies to start building more nuclear sites.

The bill also promotes more offshore oil and gas exploration.  Given the problems that we have right now in the Gulf of Mexico I would expect that there would be a note of caution but this bill seems to echo the "drill baby drill" attitude.

Coal is another area where the bill is weak.  The main thrust appears to be the building of carbon sequestration systems.  Now, Carbon sequestration, where emissions from coal fired power plants are captured and stored away in underground facilities like old mines is, to my mind, like sweeping dirt under a rug.  It gets rid of the immediate problem but leaves us with millions of tons of carbon dioxide just sitting waiting to get loose into the atmosphere.  I can see a time in the future where a quake on some unknown fault opens up a fissure and all that captured CO2 pours into the atmosphere.

The bill acknowledges that there is a need for massive increases in renewable energy but most of this section appears to provide loans to rural areas to increase efficiency.  Getting the same done using less energy is of course one of the best ways to reduce emissions but the bill just doesn't give me a sense that it will drive the widespread expansion of alternative forms of energy generation such as geothermal, solar, wind and wave energy.  It does however create a clean energy technology fund to help develop and deploy clean energy technologies

The bill also calls for the generation of a plan that projects the short and long term needs for electric vehicle charging infrastructure.  Part of this provision calls for the "standardization of public charging access ports with wireless or smart card billing capability".

There are some provisions for the development of electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell vehicles but the main thrust of the bill seems to be promoting natural gas powered vehicles.  The USA is more self sufficient in natural gas than it is in oil but natural gas is still a fossil fuel and with the current lack of infrastructure we would be better served using it to generate electricity for plug-in vehicles until we can get sufficient renewable energy online rather than burning it in an internal combustion engine.

In my opinion this bill is a bad bill with some good provisions.  It seems to be more into protecting coal and oil interests than doing something to really attack global warming and dependence on foreign oil.  We need a bill that will firmly set priorities on renewable energy, public transportation, and plug-in vehicles. 

Sunday May 9, 2010 - Ghosn's Big Gamble - Recently the Times of London reported that the Nissan Leaf battery pack "costs £6,000 to produce" which places the cost of the pack at about $9,000 for 24 KWH battery, or about $375 per KWH, much less than anyone else has been able to produce a lithium battery for.

To produce batteries at that price there has to be volume.  Carlos Ghosn, head of the Renault Nissan alliance, has placed a big bet on the ability to sell large numbers of Nissan Leaf.  In fact he is betting that they will be able to sell many many more Nissan Leafs than any other EV has ever sold before.

This is a bold move by Ghosn and if it pays off it will make the Renault Nissan alliance the global leader in electric vehicles, and most people now consider that personal transportation will move from a system that is mechanical to a system that is electrical over the next 40 years.  

To look at how bold the move is, GM has set up a production volume for the 2011 Volt of 10,000 units.  Nissan on the other hand are looking to produce 30,000 units for the US, 6,000 units for Japan, and an unknown number of units (at least I haven't been able to come up with a number) for Europe.   Alliance partner Renault is also going to launch a line of electric cars and I assume that there will be some components such as the batteries that will be shared between the two marks.  Renault will be marketing primarily in Europe and already has an agreement with Israel to sell electric cars there in conjunction with Project Better Place.

Nissan is also setting up factories to produce both the Nissan Leaf and its battery pack in the US and UK.  The US plant should go online in 2012 while the UK plant will follow in 2013.

The big question is can Nissan really sell vehicles in the sort of volume needed to produce battery packs at $375 per KWH.

So far things are looking good for Nissan.  In Japan the early reservation system has taken orders for more than half of the 6000 units planned for the 2011 model year.  In the US the reservation system hasn't done quite so well but they have already taken orders for over 8,000 vehicles at last count.  The question still remains, how many of these orders will turn into actual sales.  When people place orders for a car months in advance, in this case mid April for deliveries starting in December, situations can change.  People can loose jobs, or move to a job that makes the electric car unviable.  Other expenses can also crop up, like needing a new roof, that make buying a new car no longer possible.

With the price of the battery pack being so low Nissan has said that they can make a small profit of each Leaf that they sell.  The reality of this profit will hinge on how well the packs hold up during the period when they are under warranty.  Here in the US, as I understand it, the standard warranty will be something like 10 years 100,000 miles on the battery pack with 10 years, 150,000 miles in those states that follow the California emission laws.  To get this sort of reliability GM has basically produced a battery pack for the Volt that has twice the standard capacity and they still say they can barely make the 150,000 miles with the pack.  Nissan don't seem to have this sort of tolerance built into their packs so we will have to see if warranty claims kill any sort of profit on this vehicle.

I am hopeful though that the time is now right for the rise of the electric car and Nissan are certainly leading the charge.  If they are successful it will push the other manufacturers to be more aggressive in EV development.  Nissan's pricing has already caused Mitsubishi into lowering the price of their iMiEV but it will only be lots of customers driving off the dealers lots that will push manufacturers into volume production.

Carlos Ghosn has taken a big gamble that the time is right for electric cars.  I happen to agree with him and hope that the Leaf exceeds his expectations.

Sunday April 25,2010 - Venus - I just finished reading a science fiction novel, Venus, by Ben Bova.  You might think that a science fiction book is a strange thing to be writing about in my blog, but this book, first published in 2000, is set against a backdrop of an Earth struggling against the ravages caused by global warming.

It tells the story of Van Humphries, a sickly young man who is the type of person that is constantly being stepped on by everyone around him.  The book opens with him landing on the moon to attend a party thrown by his father.  We learn that his father, an extremely wealthy industrialist who now lives at one of our moon colonies, appears to hate him and has called Van to the moon to tell him he is going to be cut off without a penny.

Van had an older brother Alex who led an expedition to Venus to find proof that it was runaway global warming that changed Venus into the hell it is today.  Alex's expedition had been lost and the older Mr. Humphries offers a ten billion dollar reward for anyone who will go to Venus and bring back his son's remains.

With the prospect of loosing his income Van takes up the challenge.  He builds a spaceship based on the one his brother had used and sets off to Venus.  He is not alone however, a mysterious asteroid miner named Fuchs is also after the prize and he has a head start on Van.

As they descend into the clouds the discover life on Venus.  The problem is that these tiny creatures have a distinct liking for Van's ship and begin to eat it.  The ship eventually begins to break up but Fuchs comes to the rescue.  Only Van and one other member of his crew survive and they are taken on board Fuchs' spaceship and put to work as crewmen.

After a few more harrowing adventures Van finally manages to retrieve his brother's and get back to earth.  Along the way we learn some surprising information about the relationship between Van, the older Mr. Humphries, and Fuchs.  The information he has about the cause of warming on Venus is not what you would expect but what Van finds is enough to make him a spokes person for the Green movement.

The first few chapters of the book plod along and it doesn't get really interesting until Van leaves the earth and starts heading for Venus.  After that the book becomes a compelling read.  References to the effects of global warming on earth are scattered through the book so you have to keep an eye open for them.  In the end the book does provide a cautionary tale of what could happen if we don't take steps to curb global warming and also offers some hope that all is not lost.

Sunday 18 April, 2010 - Peak Oil 2014 - If you think that Global Warming is the driving force behind the move to electrification of personal transport a new report produced by researchers at the University of Kuwait and published in Energy and Fuels may cause you to thing again.

The researches, using an update of the Hubbert model, predicted that oil production would peak world wide in 2014, and that's just four years away.  Usually the Hubbert model, which says that oil production will peak when half the oil reserves have been extracted, us used against the entire known and predicted oil reserves world wide.  Scientists using this model have come up with a variety of projections that can show that oil production will peak at anything from 2004 to 2040 but most researches put the date at around 2020.

The researches in Kuwait used a modified version of the model applying Hubbert's formula to each of the 47 major oil producing nations.  The date they came up with for peak oil was 2014, just four years away.  They also applied the model to the OPEC nations only and their production appears to peak in 2026.

If this study is accurate then we have much to be concerned about.  According to this model, after 2014 oil production will no longer be able to keep up with rising demand.  The only way to curb demand is for prices to rise so we will start to see sustained increases in the cost per barrel of oil which will translate to increases in the cost of gas at the pump.

Just to be clear, peak oil doesn't mean that there will be no more oil, it just means that the oil that is there becomes increasingly more difficult and expensive to extract and this cost will need to be passed on to the consumer.  Another thing to note about the findings of the report is that the OPEC nations will peak long after world production peaks.  This means that we will become more and more dependent once again on OPEC.

So what steps are we taking to avert the coming crisis.  First of all we are moving toward making our fleet of vehicles more fuel efficient.  CAFE standards are pushing the automobile makers to make more and more fuel efficient vehicles so that we can level off our oil consumption and eventually start to reduce the amount of oil that we burn each year.

With vehicles like the the Tesla Roadster, ZAP Xebra, and a whole host of NEVs and Electric bikes and scooters, we have started on the road towards the use of electricity in place of oil to power our vehicle fleet.  One bright ray is that, with the exception of Hawaii, we generate very little of our energy from oil, although we still have to replace other fossil fuels with renewable energy.  

Towards the end of his year we are going to see the first electric and plug-in hybrids from the major car makers hit the streets.  Initial word is that sales of these vehicles is going to be much better than anyone predicted.  Nissan is claiming that they already have orders for 56,000 Leafs and that's before they open up their order process to individuals on April 20.  GM have said they have over 50,000 hand raisers for the Chevy Volt and while past experience has shown that raising a hand before prices have been set doesn't guarantee a sale, I am sure that they will have no problem selling the 10,000 Volts they plan to produce for the 2011 model year as long as they don't do the same thing they did with the EV1 and make it extremely difficult to purchase one.

The 2014 date for peak oil may not be true, but this number should act as a warning to us all, the end of cheap oil is on the horizon and we need to do our part to make sure that peak oil doesn't mean economic catastrophe.

Sunday April 11, 2010 - 2010 New York Auto Show - This year's auto show season has been all about small cars and electric cars and the New York Auto Show continued this trend.

The big announcement came from Nissan with the thing that everyone has been waiting for, the MSRP for the leaf.  There will be two trip levels starting with the base SV which comes very well equipped including a navigation system at a base MSRP of $32,780, or for just $940 more you can step up to the SL trim which includes additional features including a solar panel that is used to trickle charge the auxiliary battery.  On top of this low price there will be approximately $2,200 to install the Charger.  A Federal tax credit of $7,500 can be applied to the base MSRP and some states, like California, have additional tax credits that will further reduce the cost.  

Nissan will start deliveries to the public in December but it appears they will be selling initially in only ten cities around the nation.  So far I have only been able to track down one of these, Tucson, AZ but I would also expect to see Portland, OR, San Francisco, Nashville, and probably Los Angeles on that list also.  They will begin to take orders on line starting April 20.

Ford also had the Transit Connect on display.  The Connect is probably going to be the first EV to hit the streets when it goes on sale to fleets this fall.  The Van, which offers a range of around 80 miles while hauling a payload of 1000lbs will not be available initially to the public.  Ford has said that it will begin selling the vehicle to retail customers if there is a demand so if you are interested in owning an electric van you might want to write to Ford and let them know.

Chevy of course had the Volt on display and it too is expected to go on sale in December.  What is of interest with the volt however was not what was happening in New York but what was going on in Detroit where, on April 3 the first pre-production volt rolled off the line.  This is the stage where Chevy are testing the production process to make sure that the cars can be built correctly.  

Hyundai showed off the new Sonata hybrid.  This car is a full parallel hybrid that uses a system unlike the power split device used on the Toyota, Ford, and Nissan hybrids.  The car mates a 2.4L engine to a 6 speed transmission.  The system also includes a 30KW electric motor that can drive the car in electric only mode at speed up to 62mph.  When it goes on sale later this year the car will be the first to be powered by a Lithium Polymer battery pack.  Unfortunately the car is not grid chargeable.  In the immortal words of Maxwell Smart, "missed it by that much".  Still, the car will be a dream for the plug-in hybrid converters who, up to this time, have been constrained by the 38mph electric only speed of the Prius and the Ford Escape.  The Sonata hybrid comes in at a respectable 37mpg City/39mpg highway.

For those that like their cars small Toyota showed off a version of the Toyota IQ that will be marketed in the US under the Scion brand.  This tiny car is aimed at being a direct competitor of the Smart.  It has a 1.3 liter 4 cylinder engine driving the front wheels that develops 90hp.  The ten foot long IQ will seat 4 people which gives it an advantage over the two seat smart.  The car is expected to go on sale in the US some time next year.

This weeks blog has been cut short because of a family emergency.

Sunday April 4, 2010 - Hawaii and Electric Vehicles - This week the First Hawaii Car Show was being staged at the Honolulu convention center.  The event, which should have been a great location to showcase electric vehicles, was almost completely overshadowed by the New York Auto show which also started this weekend.  

At the New York Auto show Nissan chose to announce the Nissan Leaf pricing (see EV Watch page) which was the big EV news of the week.  I will have more to say on the New York Auto Show in next week's blog.

In Honolulu electric vehicles were front and center in the Convention Center with a display that included the Tesla Roadster along with a whole group of other EV advocates and support companies like Plug-in America and Project Better Place.  But actual electric vehicles were thin on the ground.

That's a pity because Hawaii, especially the island of Oahu, is one of the best places on earth to showcase electric vehicles.  Oahu is a relatively small island, only 44 miles long and 30 miles wide.  The island is home to around one million people most of whom live on the south east side of the island in or around the state capitol of Honolulu.  The climate is tropical with temperatures hovering at about 80^o F year round so there is no issue with falling battery capacity in cold weather and the temperatures are rarely going to get up to the point where they may threaten battery life.

While Oahu has around 227 miles of coastline a good chunk of the island is used by the military and is off limits so the road that runs around the island is actually not much more than 100 miles round trip so most of the new EVs like the Nissan Leaf would be able to make it around the Island with perhaps a short charge half way along just so the driver has no worries about getting home, and lets face it most people are not going to just drive straight around the island, they are going to want to stop at the beach or at any number of recreational sites. 

Let's just take a few examples.  The Royal Hawaiian Hotel sits in the middle of Waikiki and is only 9 miles for the airport.  A popular tourist destination is the Polynesian Cultural Center which is locate up on the North West shore and is only 35 miles from the hotel.  Sunset Beach on the North shore is about as far away as you can get from the Royal Hawaiian without getting wet yet is it still only a 46 mile drive.  If you wanted to go surf the Banzai Pipeline the round trip would be right around 80 miles.  Any of these journeys would be quite do-able in a Nissan Leaf and since you would spend time there public charging would eliminate any possibility of not making it home.

All the other Hawaiian islands, with the exception of the Big Island, could tell a similar story.  They are all relatively small although the other islands have a much smaller population than Oahu.

Now the problems.

Most residents, at least in Honolulu, live in apartments or condos.  Most of these buildings have parking structures but to adequately roll out electric vehicles it would be necessary to have legislation in place that makes it easy for apartment dwellers and condo owners to install chargers in their parking spaces. 

Hawaii is the one state in the Union that uses oil to generate most of its electric power.  If we want to get the benefits from electric propulsion then using renewable energy is most desirable.  The good news is that Hawaii has boundless amounts of sunlight during the day so solar charging stations around the beach areas would be pretty much a no brainer.  The big island is still an active volcanic zone and as such gives the opportunity for large amounts of geothermal energy, and the long coastline also leaves the possibility of harnessing the power of waves.  There is also some possibility of wind energy but since the state relies heavily on tourism they aren't likely to do anything that might mar their spectacular views.

The Hawaiian islands are an ideal place to introduce electric vehicles and I hope the major manufacturers realize this and make it a prime location not only to sell electric vehicles but also to roll out enough infrastructure to make them totally usable in all situations.  Perhaps next time I travel to the islands I will be able to rent an electric car at the airport, charge it up at my hotel, and tour the island with no tailpipe emissions.

Sunday March 27, 2010 - Goodbye ZENN - When Ian Clifford bought a Henney Kilowatt he immediately saw the possibilities for electric cars.  He was so taken by the car that he formed a new company called Feelgood Motors with the idea of buying up existing Renault Dauphine cars and convert them to electric.

While this was a really good idea and the cars they built functioned well, they found that the US DOT would not let them market the cars in the USA unless they went through crash testing and it was unlikely that 40 year old cars would pass current crash tests.  

Mr. Clifford decided to take the company in a different direction and began working with a French micro-car manufacturer to produce a neighborhood electric vehicle.  The car turned out very well and it was entered into the Michelin Challenge Bibendum and placed first in its class.

ZENN did not sell this version of the car though, moving on to the next generation of the car and improving the drive train.  The car eventually went on sale but sales were not as good as expected and the cars were plagued with quality problems.

In 2001 Richard D Weir and Carl Nelson formed a company called EEStor with the objective of building a new form of energy storage.  EEstor has been very secretive but approached ZENN and, in 2003, set up an agreement with them to market their product once it came into being.  The agreement has been amended over the years and now ZENN has exclusive world wide rights to the EEstor ESU.

ZENN also invested heavily in EEstore and now own something like 5% of the shares of that company. 

The EEstor ESU (electric storage unit) is supposed to have a very high energy density, much better than even lithium batteries which means that for the same energy storage the ESU would be quite a bit lighter in weight.  The other big advantage is that the units can be charged and discharged thousands of times without any degradation of energy storage, a problem that plaques all other forms of battery.  

About once a year EEstore send out a press release that states they have managed to achieve a certain level of permittivity on the compound that forms the heart of the ESU.  The last press release stated that they had achieved better values than those projected for the production version so the next step is to actually build and test an ESU.

If they can really deliver on their promise, the ESU will be a game changer.  An electric battery capable of powering an electric car at a price that is a fraction of the cost of lithium batteries.  A power source that will last the life of the vehicle so that worries over the cost of replacement batteries won't factor into the buying decision.

To capitalize on the EEstor ESU ZENN motor company started development of a full sized electric vehicle called the City ZENN with a top speed of 78mph and a range of about 250 miles.  The car would also be capable of charging in about 5 minutes using a special fast charger.  

It appears that ZENN realize that while designing and building a prototype vehicle isn't that difficult, actually putting it into production requires a lot of time and money.  ZENN have decided not to try and become a car maker but are aiming to become a supplier of electric drive trains to the big auto companies.  This in my opinion is a good move as long as they can design a decent drive train and line up customers.

The problem is that EEStor, who was expected to deliver the first ESU to ZENN last october, still haven't delivered anything.  In a recent stock holder meeting Ian Clifford told gathered stock holders that they were totally dependent on EEstor.  Now that they have no product to sell, they are going to be burning cash fast.  In the stock holder meeting they claimed to have enough cash to last through the end of 2010 but if EEstor doesn't deliver soon I expect they will find it very difficult to raise more.

The French manufacture who supplied bodies for the ZENN NEV have recently released a new model and the old model is no longer being built.  Rather than build a NEV around the new model ZENN have shut down the production line and laid of all the workers (thus goodbye ZENN) who were involved with building the ZENN.  In these tough economic times the ZENN had to be a money drain so shutting down production has the added advantage of reducing their burn rate on capital,

Given that the typical design process for a car takes around 5 years from the initial concept to the final production model I have serious concerns about ZENN being able to stay the course.  If EEstor can deliver the prototype ESU and it performs anything like the expectations that EEstor have set then I don't think ZENN will have a problem raising cash and applications could be found, such as electric scooters and NEVS, that can be moved into production much quicker than with the OEM vehicles.

This still raises significant questions, can they build a reliable and durable electric drive system? since they have exclusive rights to the EEStor ESU do they have the strength to exploit this technology or will their size prevent them from making the ESU a true competitor for the lithium battery. 

Ian Clifford has rolled the dice and I hope he doesn't come up snake eyes.  He is one of the few people who has real insight into the developments within EEStor so I assume that his decision is based on firm intelligence on their progress.  I for one will be watching ZENN and EEstor carefully over the next few months.  

Some dealers may still have some ZENN NEVs for sale so check them out through the Archive Page

Sunday March 21, 2010 - Electric Commuter Vehicles - This week I received an email from Peter Dickinson at Florida International University who is working on setting up an evaluation program to look at the use of City Electric Vehicles for commuting.  He wanted some input on City Electric Vehicles that are currently available in the USA.

The idea is not a new one, there have been several successful and unsuccessful attempts at setting up such a system, sometimes referred to as a station car system although I think that Peter envisioned something more on the lines of using a City EV for the daily commute.

The idea behind a station car program is simple and designed to get people to utilize rail systems.  The problem with rail systems can be the difficulty of getting too and from the railway station.  In one of the more successful programs, run by the University of California in Irvine, the cars were used to get from the Irvine Metrolink station to the University.  Irvine has a rail link from Los Angeles but the big problem is that there isn't an easy way to get from the station to the many businesses in the area as they are pretty widely spread out.  

The cars, mostly Nissan Hyperminis,  were charged up overnight at the Metrolink station.  In the morning commuters would pick up the cars and drive them to the various University locations.  The cars would be available for their use during the day then would be returned to the Metrolink station each evening.

Peter's idea is much more like the one that was run by New York Power and Light using a number of Th!nk City cars that were brought to the US on a crash test waiver.  The cars were leased out to customers who mostly used them for getting from home to the local railway station and running errands around town.  The program was very popular and the available cars sold out quickly, but because they were brought here on a waiver the cars had to be returned to Norway at the end of 32 months and since there was no electric cars available at the time to continue the program it was abandoned.

Multiple car families are very common in the US and so having a car dedicated to commuting is quite feasible for many households.  A car like the Th!nk City, with a top speed of 55mph and a reliable year round range of about 50 miles would work well for many commuters.  The problem is that there just aren't any cars available in the US at the moment.  The problem is that such cars need to undergo extensive crash testing and the idea of spending $10-$20M on crash testing alone means that you have to have quite high volume just to cover costs, or charge prices that are so high nobody will want to buy one.  

ZAP for example spent $10M on crash testing the Smart and this pushed the price up to around $26,000 and even then they didn't make any money on the car because they just couldn't sell enough.  

The alternative is to go with a NEV but these are too specialized to work for most commuters unless a city is also willing to change traffic flow patterns to accommodate them by lowering speed limits or installing NEV lanes.  This has been done quite successfully in Lincoln, CA but most other towns are not interested in making such changes.

The best I could suggest to Peter was to look at three wheel vehicles like the Myers Motors NmG and Duo or Green Vehicles Triac with the alternative of having a small car converted to an electric city car for purposes of the trial.  On reflection though it seems to me that if Nissan actually delivers on its promise of an all electric car for under $30,000 dollars after rebates then working with them would make a whole lot of sense.  

Personally I think that there is plenty of room for a city electric car in a good number of family garages.  I envision a system similar to the one that Citroen is proposing in Europe where you lease a city EV which includes the option to rent a variety of cars at low cost.  In this way the driver gets the best of both worlds, low running costs for normal situations then access to the correct car for the job when the city EV won't work.  For example if you want to take a road trip then rent am efficient hybrid, if you need to haul stuff from Home Depot then rent a pick-up.  For a vacation with extended family rent a minivan.

I hope that Peter is successful in setting up the trial and that it proves that City EVs will work. 

MDCavalier wrote

YOUR EXPECTATIONS

I don't know exactly what you were looking for when you offered the ability to comment on this story, but here is my story and my opinions. I am only giving you my experience and am not looking for an argument and am not necessarily expecting you to finish reading my comments.

MY BACKGROUND

I do not claim to be an expert, but I am an engineer, have been following the automotive industry since about 1975 and have a particular interest in electric vehicles. I have learned a bit along the way. For one, I was way too optimistic when I thought that my new 1992 Nissan Sentra was going to be my last internal combustion car. Another thing that I feel that I have learned is that an increased fuel tax would be a better way to reduce fuel consumption than forcing higher MPG standards (I used to think that higher MPG standards were a better idea).

MY MASS TRANSIT STORY

I lived in the Los Angeles area from 1989 through 1997. I had several different long commutes and used mass transit for some of these routes.

MASS TRANSIT USING THE STATION CAR

In 1996, I used a “station car” at one time to reduce the pain of my 120 mile round trip commute. I had my 1992 Sentra. I bought a 7 year old Mercury Sable and a monthly pass so that I could park the Sable at Union Station in Los Angeles. I drove the Sentra from home to the local station. This took 10 minutes and planned to arrive 5 minutes before the departure (for a total of 15 minutes). The commute to Los Angeles took about 1 hour (and I just checked – it still takes an hour). I then got into my Sable and drove the 10 minutes it took (going in the opposite direction of the rush hour traffic) to work. Altogether this took about 1 hour and 25 minutes. I did get to read or work on my computer on the train, so there were some benefits. My original commute driving the whole way by myself was typically 55 minutes and aggravating.

MASS TRANSIT ONLY

The only way to get from Union Station to work was for me to catch a bus going east and then connecting to another bus going south. This would have added 1 hour to the time for a total of 2 hours and 15 minutes for a daily total of 4 hours and 30 minutes round trip versus my original 1 hour and 50 minutes. I did not consider this to be reasonable.

CONNECTIONS

It cost me extra money and time to use the “station car” concept. Many people will experience the extra cost in time largely because most trains don't go where they need them to go. Therefore, most will have connections to make, possibly multiple connections. At each connection, if the next mode of transportation does not arrive in a timely manner, the commuting time is extended further.

ELECTRIC STATION CAR

Using my example, I do not see how having an electric car to replace my 7 year old car would have helped at all, even assuming that I could plug it in at Union Station. Replacing my Sentra car with an electric would have made things worse, because then my primary vehicle would be significantly range limited. This does not even consider any cost difference between my 7 year old car and an electric car. I would find it hard to believe that my 7 year old car would cost more than an electric car without governmental subsidies.

DENSITY

I have lived in a place where mass transit makes sense for many people. New York, especially Manhattan, has enough density to support many routes with trains running at relatively close intervals. Many that live in New York City don't own a car. Without enough density, solutions must be custom tailored to the location.

CONSIDERATIONS IN LOWER DENSITY AREAS

This comment concerns areas with densities significantly lower than New York City. And yes, I consider Los Angeles to be one of those places. Many people have opinions about using mass transit and I think a number of them speak from ignorance. I was having a conversation with my dental hygienist about mass transit because we were coming up on a vote to tax ourselves to significantly “improve” mass transit. Please keep in mind that she has never used mass transit anywhere. She thought that it was a good idea, even though our city is significantly smaller than Los Angeles. I believe that most people would be willing to endure a greater monetary cost to use mass transit. I say greater mass transit cost because I do not believe that most people will be able/willing to give up their primary vehicle. Therefore, some of the largest costs of ownership (depreciation and insurance) will be relatively unchanged. The biggest disadvantage is the additional commuting time. Most people feel stressed for time and do not want further stresses.

SOLUTIONS IN LOWER DENSITY AREAS

A custom solution could work in a given area, especially if there were very few large employers. Mass transit could then use these employers as final destinations and the mass transit spokes could be added as needed. The only connection would then be going from one's private vehicle to the mass transit vehicle. When custom solutions are not appropriate, I believe that other options should be considered. In low density areas, it is my belief that adding car pool lanes and possibly improving bus transit systems will provide the lowest cost in time and money because of the flexibility.

HOW DOES ANY OF THIS SHOW MY INTEREST IN ELECTRIC CARS?

The quick answer is that it doesn't. My interest in electric cars is completely separate from my interest in mass transit. I agree with the idea that many people do not need a pickup truck, SUV or minivan for daily use. I think that an electric vehicle with sufficient range (>100 miles) will alleviate range anxiety if combined with the idea that people may need to rent a vehicle for long range trips or specialized needs such as moving household goods. However, I do not believe that most people will be willing to pay a large premium for an electric vehicle. The large premium would be offset by lower operating costs but increased by rental costs when their primary vehicle's range is insufficient.

Sunday March 13, 2010 - Range Anxiety - This weak we were having a conversation about electric vehicles as we rode home in our carpool one evening and Hany talked about how he wouldn't like to have to wait 8 hours to recharge the batteries.

This is a common reaction from people who are not used to electric vehicles and is the driving force in range anxiety.  People in general don't get the idea of charging at home, the concept of "a full tank every morning" just doesn't come to mind because people are used to the old model of waiting until your gas tank is getting empty then going to the gas station.  Hany is one of those people who goes to the gas station when the low gas light starts to blink.  

So I told Hany that he would charge up the car each night in his garage and have about 100 miles of range each day.  If the typical daily drive is 41 miles (that's the US average of 15,000 miles per year) then you would still have plenty of range left for those lunch time errands.  

Hany countered with "what happens if there is an emergency and I need to drive a long way?"  That's a fair question.  Hany lives with his wife and daughter and they have four vehicles, not atypical here in southern California, so I asked why he would take the electric if he new he was driving beyond its range, just take one of the other cars.  Hany's response was "what if that was my only car?", another good question.  The answer is that if you only had one car and knew you needed to drive beyond its range on a fairly regular basis then the electric car isn't the right car four you and you should get a plug-in hybrid with enough electric only range to cover your normal daily driving. 

The alternative is to rent a car for those occasions when you are going to go beyond the range of your electric car.  Peugeot have recognized this and will be offering discounted rental cars for people who buy the Ion electric car when it goes on sale later this year.

An interesting study by Dr. Thomas Turrentine, which looked at the experience of 150 drivers who leased the mini-e electric car, just came out from the University of California, Davis. The study showed that the 100 mile range of the Mini-e was enough for the vast majority of drivers.  The most interesting finding from the study was that home charging was sufficient for most drivers and they were not using public charging at all.

This is something that I have been saying for a while now, public charging isn't needed for the initial roll-out of electric cars.  There are still things that need to be dealt with, the most obvious being the situation with people who have to park on the street or live in apartments and don't have ready access to an electric outlet, but these will not be the initial target market for plug-in vehicles.  

My conversation with Hany illustrates that range anxiety exists in the general public, who are not typically educated about electric cars.  The U. C. Davis study shows that once people become used to driving an electric car and charging it at home, range anxiety becomes a non-issue.  

In order to sell electric cars the manufacturers have to educate the public on the advantages of home charging.  I have a few ideas for commercials that will get the point across if any manufacturer out there is interested.

Talk about range anxiety People seem to forget that it was not so long ago that cars carried 6 gallons of fuel good for only 35 to 40 miles. A horseman will say " My horse can go twice that far only stopping for a short drink in the river and an ocassional grass clipping, available anywere for free" " Why will I need that impractical 'automovile' thing? Back then the range anxiety would have been also an excuse not to buy cars. Take a look around now. How often do you see a horse? Cost? You could buy 5 horses for the price of a car. The electric alternatives are not even twice the price of a similar gasoline car. Why the people of the past embraced the change so fast and the so called modern advanced society is so reluctant to such a similar change is beyond my comprehension.

Jose Montes Puerto Rico

Sunday March 7, 2020 - 2010 Geneva Motor Show - This week saw the opening of the 2010 Geneva Auto show and electric vehicles are front and center as the technology prepares to move from the concept stage into production.  Here are some of the highlights.

Opel, and its British counterpart Vauxhall, did something different this year at the Geneva Motor Show, they drove one of their exhibits, the Opel Ampera, 350 miles from the Open plant in Russlesheim, Germany to the Show to demonstrate that the car is a full working version.  The Ampera, which is basically a European specked version of the Chevy Volt, will go on sale in Europe as the Opel Ampera, and in the UK as the Vauxhall Ampera, toward the end of 2011.

Talking of plug-in hybrids, Porsche showed off its 918 Spyder concept plug-in Hybrid.  The car is powered by a mid-engine V8 with an electric motor on each axel that adds an additional 160KW of power.  This gives the car the ability to travel from 0-60kph in 3.2 seconds and a top speed of 320kph.  While no details were given, Porsche did indicate that they would be placing this car into production.

Another plug-in hybrid on display for the first time in Europe was the production version of the Plug-in Prius.  The Plug-in Prius, which uses Lithium batteries, will have an all electric range of just 12 miles and will not run in EV mode at speeds above 62mph, but the smaller battery pack required for this sort of range will help keep prices low while the battery only range will be enough to meet the needs of people who make very short trips, a situation that currently kills Prius mpg.  Toyota is planning on making about 600 of these cars available to fleets in Japan, the USA, and the UK over the next few months to further test out this technology.

Toyota is also showing their Auris HSD compact hybrid.  This 5 door sedan is a conventional hybrid built on the Corolla platform.  This 5 door, which is similar in size to a ford Focus or VW Golf, is destined for the European market only and will be the first hybrid from Toyota to be built in Europe.  During testing on the European drive cycle the Auris HSD managed a very impressive 61.9 Miles per US gallon.  The Auris HSD goes on sale in Europe this summer.

German automaker Audi showed off yet another concept car in their e-Tron range, this time a three door 4 seat plug-in hybrid.  The A1 e-Tron will have an all electric range of about 35 miles (50 Km) after which the gas engine, in this case a single rotor Wankel that can provide up to 15 KW of power, will fire up extending vehicle range by 124 Miles (200 Km).  Fuel consumption is projected at 123.8 mpg (US).  So far no production date has been set for any of the e-Tron range of vehicles but Audi has made it clear that they will be producing a range of electric cars under the e-Tron name.

Lotus, who you may remember build the bodies for the Tesla Roadster, are showing a plug-in hybrid of their own, the Evora 414E.  The Evora uses a lithium ion battery pack that will offer an electric only range of 35 miles after which, the 1.2 liter three cylinder range extender will fire up to add a further 300 miles of range before needing to refuel.  The two seat sports car offers a 0-60 time of less than 4 seconds.  One interesting feature for the gear heads is a pseudo sports mode that gives the driver to simulate a 6 speed paddle shifter.  

Citroen, who has made more electric cars than any other major automaker, showed off its latest concept, the Survolt.  The Survolt is a low slung aggressive looking sports car but Citroen had very little to say about its drive train except that it is all electric.  Citroen seem to show a new concept at every major European auto show and like the rest, I doubt that this car will ever go into production.  Production of electric vehicles will start off in 2010, but it will be a rebranded version of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, called the C-Zero that they will be selling through their dealer network throughout Europe.

Peugeot, Citroen's sister company, announced that it would start selling a plug-in hybrid version of the 3008 crossover in 2012.  The Peugeot 3800 Hybrid4 will employ a diesel engine to drive the front wheels and an electric motor to drive the rear wheels.  So far Peugeot hasn't given any details of the battery pack just saying it will be larger than the one employed in the more conventional hybrid version of this car.  It is likely that the 3008 Hybrid4 will be the first diesel hybrid to arrive in showrooms.  Like Citroen, Peugeot will also be selling a rebranded version of the i-MiEV, the Ion, starting late this year.

Tata Motors, the Indian company that makes the worlds cheapest car, the Nano, will begin selling a European version of the car in 2011.  The Nano Europa is actually a little larger than its low cost cousin sold in India and has been given some improvements to make it more acceptable to the European market, but it will still be the cheapest car you can buy.  Tata plans to launch an electric version of the Nano Europa in 2012 and they have a concept on show in Geneva this week.

The Nano EV has a range of 160 Km (100 miles) and will go 0-60kph in under 10 seconds. Also on display was their Indicta Vista EV which boast a range of 200 Km (about 120 miles).  They plan on introducing the Indicta Vista EV in select markets in Europe later this year.

Rinspeed showed off an interesting concept car, the UC (for Urban Commuter).  The UC is an electric car that is capable of a top speed of 75mph and offers a range of 65 miles.  The big idea behind the UC is that it is designed to be loaded on to specially designed rail cars so that the car can be used for long distance travel such as a quick trip from London to Paris via the Channel Tunnel.  One particular feature of the UC is that it uses a joystick to steer instead of a steering wheel.  The steering system is designed to provide feedback to the joystick that mimics the feel of the tires on the road you get from a conventional steering wheel.

If you lust after electric super cars then the NLV Quant concept is sure to go high on your list of must have vehicles.  The car is a 4 door sports sedan which has both a carbon fiber body and a carbon fiber chassis which makes the car extremely light even with its lithium battery pack.  It is driven by four 147 KW electric motors that give the car a 0-100 Km (0-62mph) time of just 2.8 seconds and a top speed of 377kph (234mph).  Of course at that kind of speed you are not going to travel very far on a charge but remember that the Bugatti Veyron can only run at top speed for 10 minutes before running out of gas.  The other interesting thing about this car is that the body is covered with a film that basically turns it into a large solar pannel.  Quant say the car can be ready for production in about 12 months.

It is obvious that this year is going to be exciting as manufacturers finally begin to roll out their electric and plug-in hybrid cars.  The Geneva Auto show, more than any other so far this year, has highlighted the paradigm shift that is under way in personal transportation.  

Sunday February 28, 2010 - Survey - This week I I tried something different, a simple survey to help me define the direction for evfinder.com.   The results of the Survey are below.  I have also included a bit on new information I just received on the Nissan Leaf.

I must say I was very disappointed with the survey results, only three people responded to the survey.  All three of them said that they enjoyed reading evfinder.com and that I should include information on plug-in hybrids.

I assume this means that very few people are reading my blog, but from the responses I will be adding plug-in hybrids to the evfinder pages over the next few months.  Look out for them initially on the EV Watch page.

Now for some EV news, in a speech in New York marking the end of the Nissan Leaf tour of the USA, Carlos Taveres, head of operations for Nissan, announced that when the Nissan goes on sale at the end of this year they will be sold with batteries included to both fleet and retail customers.  This is different from what most people thought, expecting Nissan to have a separate lease for the batteries. 

He didn't announce any pricing for the car but did say that the price would be very competitive.  You can see video of his speech by clicking here

In my opinion Nissan would do better to offer both options, a lower price for the car with a separate lease for the batteries, or a higher price for the car and batteries.  Peugeot-Citroen did that very successfully with the line of electric cars they sold back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  That lets those who have been burned with lease only deals buy the car while those that are nervous about battery life can have the lease option.

Sunday February 21, 2010 - Peak Oil Report - The UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security has just released a report on Peak Oil and it makes depressing reading.

While presenting the report Philip Dilley warned “Within five years we think peak oil is going to affect every aspect of our daily lives,”.  It's not that we don't have plenty of oil in the ground, it's just that we have already removed the stuff that is easy to get to and much of  the rest occurs in tar sands and is often in inaccessible places making it very expensive to extract.

The report sees global demand rising from the current level of around 80 million barrels a day up to 120 million barrels a day by 2030.  On the supply side, the report doesn't see us being able to extract more than about 92 million barrels a day.  This shortfall of as much as 28 million barrels a day will see prices for crude oil driven up past $150 a barrel.

The effect is going to be greatest for those in rural areas who tend to heat their home with oil but it will also have a big effect on transportation as well as the price of gas pushes up into the $6-7 per gallon range.

The report also sees the same issues happening with natural gas although the predict that problems will occur a few years later. 

It is clear that if we are to avoid the large economic impact that peak oil would place on our economy we will need to move quickly away from the use of oil and natural gas as our primary energy source.  We need to begin moving toward an economy based on renewable energy.  There is plenty of energy to be harvested from sun, wind, wave, hydro and geothermal sources to provide all the energy we need including the energy needed for transportation.

The report estimated that the UK was about 18 months behind in implementing changes needed to deal with peak oil and I believe that the US is even further behind.  However, demand for oil has fallen in the US during the recession as people have begun to move away from large SUVs and back to driving sedans.  It remains to be seen if this trend will continue once the economy strengthens.  US consumers have been notorious for falling back on their old ways once a problem has been resolved.  

It will also remain to be seen if consumers will embrace the electric and plug-in hybrid cars, the only way we can really move away from an oil based economy.  The 2011 model year, starting late this year, should see the availability of about 10,000 Chevy Volts and 20,000 Nissan Leaf vehicles being offered to the public along with a unknown number of Ford Transit connect EVs, Plug-in Prius, and Fisker Karma vehicles.  I expect to see these vehicles, with the possible exception of the more expensive Fisker Karma, being snapped up as fast as they can be built.

The bottom line is that we know that we won't be running out of oil any time soon, but we know that the end of cheap oil is very close and if we are to continue to support our existing quality of life we have to move away from dependence on oil as quickly as possible and that means electric cars driven from renewable energy.

Sunday December 14, 2010 - Chicago Auto Show - This week saw the start of the 2010 Chicago Auto Show and once again the automobile manufacturers have been trying to boost their green credentials.  This show is indicates a pull back from the SUV and Truck days of the last decade to the family sedan, but the biggest news for those of us who love Electric Vehicles came in the form of a van from Ford.

Ford showed an electric version of the Transit Connect van last year and were working with Smith's Electric Vehicles to produce a version for sale in the USA.  Suddenly they switched suppliers to Azure Dynamics and I for one thought this would push back the schedule for Launch, especially when they only showed the Gasoline version at the LA Auto show.  In Chicago they trotted out the all electric version and announced that it would go on sale before the end of the year.

The 2011 Transit Connect EV is targeted at fleets although Ford have said they haven't ruled out selling it to the public.  The van will come equipped with an Azure Dynamics power train driven by a 28Kw Lithium battery pack supplied by Johnson Controls.  The car will have a range of around 80 miles and will be capable of a top speed of 75mph and can be charged using either 220V or 110V.  With 135 cubic feet of cargo volume the van should be ideal for many fleet uses such as electric meter readers and city applications like parking enforcement.  It should fill the niche that was once occupied by the RAV4 EV quite nicely.

Ford is also going to release a Taxi version of the Transit Connect.  The Taxi version will be similar to the van but with rear windows and a passenger seat installed.  This version will be offered with the standard gasoline engine but Ford will also offer CNG and LPG versions to replace the aging CNG Crown Victoria used by most taxi companies today.

An exciting concept vehicle came from an unlikely source, Kia Motors.  Kia Motors is usually known for cheap but boring cars but their Kia Ray concept is a plug in parallel hybrid based on the Forte platform.  The Ray is a sleek aerodynamic 4 seat Coupe with wide doors to allow easy access into the rear seats.  The car mates a 1.4 liter direct injection engine and a 78KW motor that can drive the front wheels independently or together.  Kia claim an electric only range of 50 miles on a charge.  It is unclear if Kia will actually produce a car based on this concept.

Once again the Chevy Volt was on show at the Chicago Auto Show and GM trickled out more information.  In this case they have announced that November 1 is the day they start regular production.  Dealers will not be able to place orders before November 15 however, although they will be able to give GM and idea of how many cars they would like starting in September and I would expect pricing to be announced around that time.  The schedule means that first deliveries to customers will likely take place some time in the first half of December.

Honda showed off a concept Odyssey minivan that looks like it is close to being production ready and they have said that there will be a new look for the 2011 Odyssey due in showrooms in the second half of this year.  They claim that they can get 17mpg city and 25mpg highway from the V6 powered minivan.  It is disappointing to see that they did not have a hybrid version.  I keep hearing people crying out for a hybrid minivan but so far no manufacturer have stepped up to the plate and offered one in their lineup although Toyota do sell one in Japan and Europe.

There were lots of other hybrids and electric vehicles on display including several concept vehicles and the production ready Fisker Karma but these have been going the rounds of auto shows like LA and Detroit and are nothing new.  What they do show  is that the move toward electric cars is gathering pace and we will soon be seeing them back in the showrooms for the fist time since 2003.

Sunday February 7, 2009 - NiMH Controversy - This week I joined a couple of email groups that talked about the Chevy Volt.  The Volt isn't due in showrooms until November which means there isn't a lot to talk about at the moment so there was a lot of bandwidth being given the the whole Chevron suppressing NiMH debate.

I have often said that the fanatical way that some EV advocates view the agreement between Cobasys and Panasonic is not good for the promotion of electric vehicles.  The tone of most of the comments implies that if Chevron hadn't stopped Panasonic from making the EV-95 NiMH batteries used in the RAV4 EV then everyone would now be driving EVs.

Well, Panasonic were making the NiMH batteries in violation of the Energy Conversion Devices patent.  In the final agreement Panasonic were licensed to make the D cells that are used in the Toyota and Honda hybrids but were not licensed to make batteries for EV applications.  Since at the time of the agreement they had no customers for their large format batteries they probably didn't even try to contest that clause in the settlement.

There are many people who believe that this blocked manufacture of batteries suitable for EVs but Panasonic was only one of several companies that could make large format NiMH batteries but the agreement pertains only to Panasonic.  Other companies that had licenses to make large format NiMH batteries included Hong Kong based Gold Peak, and French based Saft (now owned by Johnson Controls).

Another thing that I hear regularly is "Chevron controls the patent to NiMH".  Now, Chevron owned about 80% of Cobasys who had the rights to NiMH.  The actual patent belongs to Energy Conversion Devices but they turned over control to Cobasys.  Now, Cobasys got in financial trouble and there was a whole lot of nastiness over claims by Daimler that they hadn't delivered batteries which the Germany Automaker had paid for.  The result was a three way law suite which ended up in the sale of Cobasys to a joint venture between Korean company Samsung SDI and Germany company Bosch.  

Now things become really murky.  The agreement for the sale of Cobasys grants proceeds from the license fees received from Panasonic to the former owners.  80% of these fees goes to Chevron and 20% to Energy Conversion Devices. 

In a subsequent email thread that I had one of the people pointed out that Ovonic Battery, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Energy Conversion Devices, has just entered into a couple of new license agreements where the license that is granted excludes manufacturing batteries for transportation use.  

If Chevron are now out of the picture why is Ovonic blocking the manufacture of large format NiMH batteries?  Further investigation shows that while Ovonic has the exclusive rights to build batteries for non transportation use it is Cobasys that holds exclusive rights to the NiMH batteries for transportation use.

So for NiMH batteries the oil companies, at least Chevron, don't appear to have a strangle hold on the technology anymore.  Cobasys has the right to manufacture NiMH EV batteries and the joint venture company, SB Li Motive has its primary business of building EV power trains.  The company appears to be focused on lithium batteries, their web site has no mention of NiMH that I could find.  They do have an agreement to supply lithium batteries to BMW as part of their "Megacity Vehicle" project.

This opens up a whole new set of questions.  Why did SB Li Motive purchase Cobasys?  I would speculate because of that companies battery test facilities and experience with battery testing.  Will SB Li Motive be willing to license other battery makers to make NiMH EV batteries?  If someone wanted to use NiMH batteries in an EV and could guarantee a large enough volume would SB Li Motive start manufacturing NiMH batteries?

The biggest question of all is who would use NiMH batteries in an EV application since most manufacturers have already moved on to use lithium chemistries.  I for one think that there won't be enough demand for NiMH batteries for any company to make the huge investment needed to build a production line that can make them economically so it looks like Lithium batteries are the way forward in the near term.

Sunday January 31, 2010 - e-Drive - Back in 2006 I interviewed Gary Star of ZAP who had just begun selling the Xebra electric three wheel car.  One of the things Gary told me is that the best way the government could stimulate electric vehicle production in the USA was to start replacing their vast fleet of vehicles with electric cars and trucks.  A new bill, known as e-Drive ,making its way through Congress attempts to jump start this process.

HR 4399, the American Electric Vehicle Manufacturing Act or e-Drive, seeks to provide two billion dollars of funding to replace 20,000 postal vehicles with battery electric vehicles.

The US Postal Service (USPS) has one of the largest fleets of vehicles in the country which includes 142,000 local delivery vehicles that average only only 9mpg.  Most of these vehicles have been in service for a very long time, the average age being 17 years, so many of them are in need of replacement.

The USPS fleet of delivery vehicles are an ideal candidate for conversion to electric.  The average postal route is about 18 miles and less than 5% of routes are longer than 40 miles.  The majority of routes are driven at a low speed with lots of stops.  The vans are typically parked at postal service facilities between the hours of 5pm to 8am which leaves plenty of time for charging.  In summary almost every one of the post office routes are well within the capability of the current generation of electric vehicles.

e-Drive would be implemented in two phases.  In the first phase about 10,200 of the current vehicles would be replaced by electric delivery trucks, and 12,000 charging locations would be installed.  There would be a variety of different vehicles installed in this phase.  In Phase 2 a further 10,000 vehicles would be installed, along with a further 12,000 charging points,  using the best solution found in phase 1.

Phase 1 could include the purchase of 2,000 all electric trucks from those that are currently available.  This "off the shelf" approach will serve to stimulate current manufacturers.  4,000 new electric USPS "Long Life Vehicles" that will be developed especially for the USPS along with 200 other derivative vehicles.  1,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles will also be purchased and 3,000 existing vehicles will be converted to electric drive.  

Phase 1 also includes seven regional deployments of smart grid technology, and a demonstration of Li battery repurposing which basically means finding a use for battery packs that can no longer be used for electric vehicles but have enough capacity to act as a UPS or with other low current draw applications.   The bill also has a provision that requires the vehicles to be produced in the USA which should mean jobs, something that is badly needed in the current economy.

The bill still has a long way to go.  It has lots of support in the house but will also need to pass the Senate and be signed into law by the president.  The bill is a bi-partisan effort with support from both sides of the aisle in the house but there is no indication yet that the bill will garner support from Senate republicans who now have the ability to filibuster any bill and prevent it from moving forward.

If, like me, you think that this a good thing for the country and the environment, then you can support this bill by going to the e-Drive site and registering, or by letting your local Congressperson and Senator know that they should be getting behind this bill.  These older postal vehicles need to be replaced anyway so we should be replacing them with zero emission vehicles.

Sunday January 24, 2010 - J1772 - On January 14, 2010, in all the excitement about electric vehicles generated by the Detroit Auto Show, the Society of Automotive Engineers finally, after years of wrangling, adopted the J1772 standard for electric vehicle charging.  This is very good news.

The interface is designed to run on 120V or 220V electric systems such as those used in the USA and Japan.  It consists of a 43mm connector that has 5 pins of three different sizes and is designed to operate on both 120V and 220V supplies pulling a maximum of 16a on 120 and 80A at 240.  At 80amps a car like the Chevy Volt would be charged in under an hour.  

The five pins offer AC Line1, AC Line2/Neutral, Ground, Proximity Protection to prevent the car from being driven while plugged in, and Control Pilot that is used to co-ordinate charging between the car and the charging station, such as limiting the amount of current a car can draw if the charger is connected to say a 30amp circuit.  The charger standard is designed to provide several levels of protection against electric shock even when it is used in wet weather.  The connector is also designed for 10,000 connect disconnect cycles so it should last for about 27 years in the once per day usage associated with normal overnight charging.

GM, Ford, Nissan, Toyota, and Tesla are all likely to sign on to this standard and I would expect Mitsubishi and BMW to follow since using a proprietary standard would shut their vehicles out of the mass of public charging that is being installed around the country.  BYD has already announced that it will use the J1772 standard interface when it begins to sell its electric and plug-in hybrids in the USA.

The adoption of J1772 has been a long time in coming but the benefits of having a single charging standard are clear.  In the past there have been several different kinds of interface.  NEVs, three wheel EVs and electric scooters for the most part have used 110V charging with a few vehicles, like the Corbin Sparrow, offering an optional 220V charger that basically plugged in to a 220V drier style outlet.  The major manufacturers used several standards with Ford and Honda going with the AVCON conductive charger, Toyota, Nissan, and GM using two different flavors of inductive chargers, and Chrysler using their own three phase charger.  Both the Tesla Roadster and the Mini-E also have their own interfaces, the Tesla can be charged using 110V but the Mini-E cannot.  AC Propulsions eBox uses the same charging system as the Tesla but uses a regular 220V connector rather than the Tesla charging station.

A look at three local charging locations will illustrate the issues this presents.  

Just a few blocks from where I live is the Bristol Farms store in West Hollywood.  This location has three chargers, two large paddle inductive  (LPI) chargers and one AVCON.  There is also a 15amp 110v receptacle in this location.  Now, the LPI charger was used by the EV1, the Nissan Altra and Hypermini, both of which are no longer around, and by the Chevy S10E.  Some RAV4 EVs also used this interface but the ones sold to consumers used the Small Paddle Inductive (SPI) chargers so they can't charge at this site.  The AVCON interface was used by the Honda EV+ and Th!nk City, both of which are no longer on the roads in the US, and by the Ford Ranger.  The 110V connection would allow most NEVs etc to charge at this location.

A mile or so to the west is Century City Shopping Center which is equipped one LPI, one SPI, and one AVCON.  Ford Ranger Owners, Chevy S10 Owners and RAV4 EV owners can charge here OK but anyone else is out of luck.

A few miles further west is the Ralphs store on the corner of Olympic and Cloverfield in Santa Monica.  This site has one LPI, one SPI, and a 110V connection.  This will allow the Chevy S10 and RAV4 EV drivers to charge along with Tesla and eBox drivers and most NEV etc owners.  Ford Ranger and Mini-E drivers are out of luck at this location too.

Drivers of electric cars who are planning on taking a drive where the round trip is beyond their available range need to worry about many things.  Is there charging near their destination or on route.  Does the charging location have a charger that matches my vehicle.  Is the charger that matches my vehicle in working order.  Will the charging space be available or will some selfish driver ICE the spot (park and ice vehicle in the EV charging spot).

Once we have everyone using a single standard interface the driver will still need to worry about the existence of a charging station and will also need to worry about if the chargers are working or available, but won't have to worry if the chargers are compatible.  The role out of chargers will also be easier.  Each manufacturer won't have to role out chargers to every location, instead they can spread the cost which will, in the long run, mean more charging locations.  Since all chargers use the same interface economies of scale will apply to help keep costs down.

The Adoption of a single charging standard has been a long time in coming and now companies can start to role out electric vehicles with a common charger.  This is one more positive step to the wider availability of electric cars.

Sunday January 16, 2010 - 2010 Detroit Auto Show - The 2010 Detroit Auto Show is currently going full blast and this year it is all about electric cars.  They even have an Electric Avenue that features some of the small manufacturers along with a couple of vehicles from Nissan and Mitsubishi.

Nissan, as they did with the LA Auto Show, chose to bypass the Detroit Auto show this year.  They did have one car on display though, the Nissan Leaf, set to go on sale world wide later this year.  The Nissan Leaf is one of the major cars that you can see if you stroll along Electric Avenue.

The other big player who had a car on display was Mitsubishi who showed off the i-MiEV.  The i-MiEV is already on sale in Japan and it will go on sale in Europe later this year.  Mitsubishi has also said it intends to put the car on sale in the US but hasn't yet announced a date.

Another car on Electric Avenue was the Tango T600.  The Tango, from Seattle based Commuter Cars is also on Sale in the US at the moment although sales have been slow with only around 12 units being placed in consumers hands.  The Tango is a narrow EV designed to be able to fit two cars side by side in a standard 12 lane.  Performance wise it can smoke a Tesla but the it doesn't have the Tesla's sexy looks and at a price starting around $108,000 they will not sell many cars.

Another small west coast manufacturer on display on Electric Avenue is Green Car Motors who showed of the 2010 Triac three wheel electric car.  Green Motors have delivered a very small number of cars to paying customers and did this on an evaluation basis even having the buyers sign a non-disclosure form.  They have taken feedback from these early adopters and have incorporated their experiences into the 2010 model.  The car, or technically motor cycle, will have a range of about 100 miles and will be capable of travelling at freeway speed.  The car is not likely to be available before October, 2010 so anyone placing an order is in for a long wait.

The biggest display of vehicles came from the Korean company CT&T who showed of a line of NEVs that included one decked out as a police car, and an amphibious open topped version that you could drive to the lake then take a cruise.  I haven't yet seen CT&T vehicles on sale in the USA but I expect to see them trying to attract dealers.

Out on the main floor Chevy had the Volt on display.  The Volt, which is expected in dealerships around November, is a plug-in Hybrid with a 40 mile all electric range after which the car can be driven on the gas engine, which is E85 compatible, for another couple of hundred miles before in needs to be refilled or charged.  GM also announced that they would be making an electric only version of the Volt but didn't say when that version would be available.  Bob Lutz did say that making an electric version was "Trivial" after they had done the plug-in hybrid.

GM also showed off their Cadillac XTS plug-in hybrid concept vehicle.  The car uses a 3.6 liter V6 mated to a hybrid system powered by lithium batteries.  GM didn't give any information on electric only range but this system appears to be the same as the one developed for the the now defunct Saturn Vue hybrid which had a 10 mile electric only range.  There was no indication from GM that this concept vehicle would actually make it into showrooms.

Ford must be very pleased with this year's Detroit Auto Show since they swept just about every award there was.  There seems to be something magical happening at Ford where they seem to be bringing out one great vehicle after another.  The new Ford Focus is a good looking entry into the very competitive compact car segment.  The car is designed for marketing around the world and there will be about 80% of parts will be common across all cars sold world wide.  The car will also be E85 compatible.  Ford announced that an electric version of this car is the one that will go on sale in 2011.

BMW also had a electric car to show off, the ActiveE.  BMW already have an electric car test project going with about 500 drivers world wide, most of them here in Los Angeles, testing the Mini-E in real world driving situations.  BMW plan to repeat this test with their latest offering, the ActiveE, which is really a converted BMW 1 Series.  This car will seat 4 people and provide adequate trunk space to carry luggage.  It will still offer a range or around 100 miles and top speed is limited to 90mph.

Another German carmaker with an electric offering is Audi.  They showed off an Audi eTron, but not the same car that showed at the LA auto show.  This one is somewhat smaller than the one shown in LA, more the size of the Audi TT.  The fact that both concept cars have the same name is because e-Tron is the name that Audi plans to give to its range of electric cars.  This one is driven by two motors powered by a 880lb lithium ion battery that gives the car a range of 155 miles.  Top speed is electronically limited to 120mph.  Unlike the car shown in LA, which Audi has said will be produced in a limited run, there has been no decision yet on this car being placed into production.

Chrysler, who is now owned by Fiat, showed off the Fiat 500 including a BEV concept car.  They have already confirmed that the Fiat 500 will be coming to dealerships in the US and the first of these, he Mexican built 500 Abarth, should be here later this year, or more likely in early 2011.  The BEV version however is built using the same modular electric drive system that was developed by the now defunct ENVI Group.  Chrysler said that this car was done to investigate packaging of the EV components and should have performance similar to the Mini-E but no details were given.  There does not appear to be any plans to make this car.

Chinese auto maker BYD showed off their E6 EV, a large crossover vehicle that is driven by their proprietary Ferrous Lithium Ion battery that is said to give the car a range of 205 miles.  They have announced that they will begin sales of the car in the US towards the end of 2010.  Now I am somewhat skeptical about this since they don't appear to have started crash testing yet and that can take a significant amount of time.  They also don't have a dealer network established yet.  Still, they have climbed up to become the number four carmaker in China in just three years and they have the huge financial strength of Warren Buffet behind them so they can't be written off just yet.  BYD is also the first company to announce that it will begin using the standard J1772 connector. Price has not been announced yet but is expected to start at around $40,000

Toyota also had their Plug-in Prius on display and although Toyota appear to be less than enthusiastic about plug-in Vehicles they are going to put this Prius version into production in 2011 as a 2012 model.  The Plug-in Prius will have an all electric range of about 12 miles and the gas engine will kick in when the car's speed gets above 62mph on the highway.  This version is going to be a niche product that will work well for those people who have very short commutes on surface streets.  It actually works well for those who get really bad mpg from their current Prius because the car's engine runs constantly for the first five minutes or so of driving because it needs to warm up the catalytic converter.  I also think this is going to be the car for people who tell me they don't want to have to charge the car but want the option to charge the car.  People who live in apartments for example who can only charge their car once in a while will be able to drive a plug-in hybrid if they choose even though they probably won't get any better mileage than they would from the none plug-in version.

The big buzz at the Toyota stand is the FT-CH concept car.  The FT-CH is a dedicated hybrid vehicle that is built on the Yaris platform but is not a Yaris with a hybrid drive train added on.  The car looks a little like the Nissan Leaf and is 22 inches shorter and 1 inch less in width than the current Prius.  CH stands for Compact Hybrid and this car definitely fits into the compact category.  Toyota has released any specs on this car but it should get mileage better than the Prius.  They did confirm that they are planning on releasing a family of cars under the Prius brand name and the FT-CH concept is just one of the cars they are considering for the Prius brand.  They are planning on releasing 8 new hybrid models over the next few years and stated that the synergy hybrid drive would become the core drive technology at Toyota.

Hyundai also showed off a plug-in hybrid concept, the Blue-Will.  This car is a compact sized five door that is driven by a 1.6 liter direct injection gasoline engine and a 100Kw electric motor.  The electric motor is driven from a lithium polymer battery pack under the rear seat that can propel the car for up to 40 miles in electric only mode before needing a recharge from a standard electric outlet.  The concept also features solar panels on the roof that allow the car to be cooled while sitting in the sun and can also provide a trickle charge to the batteries.  There is no indication that Hyundai will make this vehicle.

There were lots of other conventional hybrids on display at this show, and it is clear that the march towards the electrification of the automobile is getting under way.  It will be interesting to see if the market for these cars takes off in a way that the auto makers expect.  Personally I think that growth in the early years will be quite slow with plug-in hybrids making a good showing and BEVs moving much slower.  The speed at which these cars are bought will depend a lot on how the price of gasoline does.  Prices are on the rise here in LA at the moment and if prices continue to spike then so will sales of electric cars.  I am watching developments with great anticipation.

Sunday January 10, 2010 - Dual Mode Transportation Systems - I just read David Petrie's excellent article "How to make a small Electric Car-based Mobility System" in EV World, and while I find the idea intriguing, I think that the system is unworkable in its current form.

Not that I think that David's ideas don't have a lot of merit but the system has problems that would need to be worked out and there are other ways to accomplish the same thing with less issues.

The basic idea is that you start with a standard EV that you drive to a local station where the car is loaded onto a transporter called a Car Bus that runs along the freeway until you reach a station near the persons final destination where the car is offloaded and the driver then takes surface streets to his destination.  This kind of thing is already done in some locations, most notably with the channel tunnel between the UK and Europe.  You can drive the car down to the station in London and have it loaded onto a train.  The train then runs through the channel tunnel and in about three hours you are driving off the train in either Paris or Brussels.  

The issue with this type of usage is that it is difficult to get the vehicles off and on the Car Bus when lots of people are going to different places at different times.  In Los Angeles, where we are the poster child for urban sprawl and log distance commutes, really needs to improve public transit but this kind of system would have limited applicability. 

It does seem to me that the idea would work better by using the Channel Tunnel model rather than trying to replace the commuter model.  If we used a railway link from one of the commuter towns around the area then we could have the option picking up a bunch of people in say Westlake Village and depositing them in down town LA from where they could drive to their office.  I think the whole thing would work better though if they left their car in Westlake, boarded a train and then had a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system that would take them from Union station to their place of business.

The problem with many of the ideas like battery swapping and Dual Mode Transportation is that while they work well on a small scale, when you try to push them up to much larger scale, like the 5 million or so people who live and work in the Los Angeles urban sprawl, or the 13 million people who live and work in London, the system doesn't work that well.

Los Angles is probably an extreme example but here not only are people dispersed over a wide area but so are the offices and factories where they work.  Now, imagine over a quarter of a million cars that need to get on and off a Car Bus travelling along the 405 freeway.  The Car Bus would need to exit at several points, and because of the sheer volume of people there would need to be thousands of these Car Busses going up and down the freeway.  apply queuing theory to that mess and you will see significant delays in trying to get the cars on or off the Car Bus.

Personally I believe that this form of transportation would work far better on a rail system for long distance travelers.  Being able to put your EV on a high speed train in Los Angeles then drive it off the Train in Chicago makes a lot more sense than trying to commute between Temecula and Newport Beach using a Car Bus.  For local urban commutes having a smart system on the car that will allow the car to join a vehicle chain and travel at high speed on a freeway, while being driven from electricity that is pulled from the roadway, makes a lot more sense to me.

In the end, a good interlinked system of public transportation using a mix of bus, subway, surface rail and PRT is a much easier way of moving people too and from work.  A light rail train can move over 100 people at a time while a Car Bus is probably capable of moving 5 people with their EVs.  You would need to have 20 Car Buses for every light rail train in a public transportation system.

What we really need to do is to find ways to allow people to live closer to where they work.  Let's take a look at Beverly Hills.  The town brings to mind large mansions and movie starts but the five square mile city also has top of the line police, fire department, and schools, yet the people who work in these institutions can't typically afford to live in the city so have to commute long distances and can't take advantage of the organizations they help to make so good.

In the end we need to make the area in the center of towns a place where people can raise families and find good schools, or moving the work out to commuter towns.  I'm not sure either of these can be accomplished easily but our local governments have to move that way. 

Sunday January 1, 2010 - Spectrum Magazine Bashes EVs - A recent series of articles in Spectrum, the Institute or Electrical and Electronic Engineers' magazine, has been bashing EVs.  This from a group of individuals who I would expect to be all for electric vehicles given the opportunities it would open up for their membership.

One such article is entitled "Looser: Why the Chevy Volt will fizzle".  In this article the writer, Philip E Ross, quotes a few luminaries such as the Johan de Nysschen, the president of Audi of America who is reported as saying ”There are not enough idiots who will buy it”.   This tells you much about the true attitude of Audi for our environment.  Audi, who are pushing the so called "clean" diesel, which is neither clean nor an answer to the growing issue of reliance on foreign oil.   I think that there are many smart people who will buy a volt at $40,000, and a lot more idiots who are going to shell out $50K - $60K for an Audi Q7 SUV that will manage about 15mpg on super unleaded fuel.

The article, like many such articles, contains a half truth, this time a quote from Nick Tredennick who said ”Lithium-ion batteries degrade substantially in just a few years. Owners will face decreasing range and, ultimately, the need to replace and recycle the car’s giant, expensive battery."  This is true, Li Ion batteries do degrade over time, but does mister Tredennick think that the engineers at Chevrolet don't know this.  They have specifically sized the batteries and designed the battery management system to take this into account.  They have designed the pack to last for 10 years of 150,000 miles and will need to warranty the system for that period to meet the requirements of the California Air Resource Board.

The overall premise of the article is that people won't buy the because "The car can't save enough on fuel to justify the $40,000 price".  Well, lets take a look shall we.  Lets say I buy a Volt for $40,000 and get a tax credit of $7,500 - overall cost $32,500.  My neighbor buys an Audi A7 at $50,000.  Now, I drive 130 miles five days per month so I will need to drive 90 X 5 or 450 miles per month using the ICE engine.  If the car gets 30mpg running on the ICE then I need to buy 15 gallons of gas per month.  which, at $3 per gallon works out at $45 per month is fuel cost plus about another 250Kwhr of electricity which, at 10 cents per KWHr words out at $25 in electric costs for a total fuel cost of $70 per month.  Now, since my Neighbor paid $10K more than I did he will have to leave the car sitting in the garage for $10,000/70 = 142.86 months or just a hair shy of 11 years.  

Of course Mr. Ross will no doubt do the calculation based on my neighbor buying a Toyota Yaris but a more accurate comparison would be against a Prius which changes the picture completely.  A similarly equipped Prius would cost about the same as the Volt after tax incentives, and because it gets around 50mpg the numbers come in much closer.  For my driving I would use about 25 gallons of gas in the Prius which would translate to around $75 per month so the difference would be about $5 less in fuel cost for the Volt.  The difference in value would boil down to things like being able to get California carpool stickers for the Volt and not for the Prius, a perk that has been valued at $4,000 on the used car market.  The other item for consideration would be the residual value on the two cars and that is anybody's guess at the moment.

The bottom line is that most people don't buy a car based cost, they buy the best car they can afford.  If people bought cars based on cost we would all be driving Kia Spectra or Hyundai Accents.  For a growing number of people the best they can afford involves a car that helps wean America off foreign oil and cuts down their carbon footprint.  GM isn't trying to sell hundreds of thousands of volts, and certainly isn't expecting the volt to be the savior of the company.  They are looking at the volt as the logical first step in a move that will take the automobile industry from mechanical propulsion to one that is electric based.  I don't expect the Volt to set sales records but I do expect that first year production of the Volt, about 10,000 units, to sell out. 

In another article, "Speed bumps ahead for electric vehicle charging"  Peter Fairley trots out the latest chestnut about local capacity being an issue.  Well, again there is some truth in this, in some areas, where there is older equipment, if a large number of people suddenly bought electric cars local equipment may begin to fail due to the increased load.  More likely though is that this equipment begins to fail because it is just too old.  In my neighborhood we have had two transformers explode this year and there isn't an electric vehicle anywhere near here.  The 70 year old equipment is way passed its expected life and is starting to fail.  Electric vehicles could speed this up but then again they are also a reason to change out this old infrastructure before it fails catastrophically.   

To support his article he says "Such "AC Level 2" chargers, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers' emerging J1772 standard, draw up to 6.6 kilowatts. Turning one on is like adding up to three homes to a neighborhood, and that's with the air conditioning, lights, and laundry running."  Now I'm not an electrical engineer but 6.6 Kilowatts on a 220 volt circuit pulls about 30 amps.  Now, most older houses have 100amp circuits while newer properties often come with 200amp supply so unless they house is actually running the stove, AC lights, TV Computer etc, the amount drawn by even 2 EVs isn't going to trip a breaker.  In fact, if I turn on our electric range with all 4 elements going, plus the oven, I will be drawing well over 30 amps.  

In the end electric vehicles aren't going to be rolled out in vast numbers any time soon.  Like any other technology it will start small and will grow slowly over the first few years.  The pace will accelerate as we reach the tipping point where volume begins to bring down costs.  The electric power providers have ample time to take care of older undersized equipment well before we have the situation where every house has an EV.  The move to electric vehicles is one that will provide many opportunities for electric and electronic engineers so shame on Spectrum magazine for mounting a negative campaign against this radical change in  technology.