Electric drive systems developer and supplier UQM Technologies says it has received a U.S. patent on a new operating geometry for electric motors that require fewer of the expensive permanent magnets that transfer the motor's power into wheel-turning torque.
The system developed by the Colorado company can help reduce the cost of EV and hybrid vehicles' electric motors and the demand for the rare-earth metals used in their permanent magnets.
UQM's engineers developed a component layout that allows a motor to produce the same level of power using 20 to 25 per cent fewer or smaller permanent magnets, said Jon Lutz, the company's vice president for technology.
An electric motor has two basic pieces, a fixed-position stator, or outer assembly that contains the permanent magnets and the rotor, which holds the cols of copper wire coils that produce an electro-magnetic field. The rotor is spun by the interaction of the magnetic field with the permanent magnets (think of that experiment when you were a kid and put the same ends of two magnets together, watching in awe as an invisible force-field pushed them apart).
By reducing the number of magnets needed in an automotive drive motor by 25 percent, Lutz said, UQM can lower the cost of the entire motor by about 5 percent - a savings that can help trim the cost of electric vehicles.
The system is one result "of our longstanding effort to minimize the magnet content and production cost" of UQM's motors, Lutz told Green Car Advisor.
Argonne National Laboratory researcher Thomas Wallner explains the R&D center's omnivore engine project.
The nice thing about flex-fuel engines is that if one type of fuel isn't available, the other probably will be.
The not-so-nice thing that automakers with flex-fuels in their lineups don't like to talk about is that they mostly are turned for gasoline, so performance diminishes when ethanol, natural gas or other fuels are used.
The answer maybe the so-called omnivorous engine, set up to burn all kinds of fuels and overseen by a smart engine control unit that changes valve and injection timing and other variables to minimize emissions and maximize performance, and fuel economy, from whatever is exploding down there in the cylinders.
From Gas to Electric, 3-Wheelers to Exotics, Contestants Vie to Build 100 MPG Vehicles
Students from West Philadelphia High School are youngest competitors, but no slouches when it comes to design or performance, as shown by their Alternative category entry, the biodiesel-electric EVX-GT hybrid sports car. The school also has a diesel-electric hybrid Ford Focus in the Conventional class.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Judges for the Progressive Automotive X Prize contest have winnowed the field in the race for $10 million in prize money for building the best 100 MPG MPH car to the final 43 teams.
The teams will enter a total of 53 vehicles (there are different categories, so multiple entries are possible) in a competition pitting them against one another in a variety of road and safety tests.
All the finalists already have survived two design judging rounds that pared the number of entries from the original 111 teams with 135 vehicles.
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The Progressive Automotive X Prize was launched at last year's New York Auto Show.
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The contest, aimed at inspiring green-car development, was announced more than 18 months ago. It challenges contestants to design, build and operate a commercially viable vehicles that can deliver fuel economy of at least 100 miles per gallon - or the equivalent.
Part of the competition involves presenting a marketing plan to the judges, who will decide if the vehicle has real-world possibilities.
Among them, the final entrants use 14 different fuels including gasoline and electricity, with battery-electric and hybrid-electric the most popular types of powertrains.
In the hybrid-electric category, teams are entering vehicles whose internal combustion engines run on gasoline, diesel biodiesel, ethanol, butanol and compressed natural gas.
There are even three entries that use plain old gasoline as their sole fuel.
Just in time for Earth Day 2009, the company that wants to put us into people-powered cars is coming out with a new model, the Imagine PS, a grid-rechargeable neighborhood electric vehicle that gets additional go power from its occupants and also could be used as a temporary power station.
HumanCar says the PS-NEV, which is scheduled to be featured on the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet program in Canada all this week (the Oregon-based company is taking reservations on-line already) will be priced at $15,500 and is slated to hit the streets later this year - possibly, the company says, along with several other previously introduced HumanCar models that have been delayed.
The price will get you an aluminum-bodied, open car with looks only a mother could love. A spinoff from last year's people-powered Imagine LMV (low-mass vehicle), it is powered by a pair of permanent magnet DC motors that turn the rear wheels and draw their juice from lead-acid batteries that are charged from a conventional 110-volt power outlet.
Additional range can be obtained by augmenting the grid-charged batteries with juice generated by the car's human occupants, who "row" with oar-handle like levers attached to each seating position.
The manufacturer says the vehicle is limited to total powertrain weight, including batteries, of 400 pounds. A nickel-metal hydride battery pack is available for a "high-performance" option that uses more powerful three-phase AC motors and can add up to $10,000 to the base cost, depending on the amount of battery capacity and motor power a customer wants.
The power stored in the batteries, either left over from the grid-charge or from the regenerative braking system and human-powered generator, also can use used with an optional Home Unit to run household appliances, said Chuck Greenwood, HumanCar's chief executive. The "PS" in the car's name stands for "power station."
(Greenwood says the company also is starting to test lithium-ion batteries but has no timetable for adopting them.)
As a NEV, the Imagine PS is limited to a top speed of 35 miles an hour, he said. The company's aiming at what it sees as a growing number of people who can use low-speed transportation for much of their daily driving and who want to free themselves - and their vehicles - as much as possible from dependence on petroleum.
The marketing message is unique: the Imagine PS not only resolves problems associated with petroleum dependency and greenhouse gas emissions from autos, said Greenwood, but can help its users stay healthy through daily exercise (although not as much as required by the HumanCar FM4 model, which gets all of its power from its people).
Greenwood, whose company is 30 years old, says he's hoping that demand for the Imagine and the other HumanCar models will build to the point the company can scale up to use unemployed, skilled autoworkers and idled factories "to not only provide a boost to the economy but to lower resource dependencies and create healthy people along the way."
You can check out HumanCar and the Imagine PS-NEV on YouTube.
And while the program doesn't air regularly in the U.S., Discovery Channel Canada's "Daily Planet" show is making a piece on the Imagine PS part of it of its Green Week lineup starting today -episodes are available on-line for those who don't get the TV program.
If its human contact with HumanCar that interests you, the company is planning a tour of major U.S. cities this summer.
Auto racing, demanding of performance and downright disdainful for most of the past century of concepts such as curbing tailpipe emissions, is getting greener.
Formula One's governing body, the FIA, for instance, has a website promoting green initiatives, and there's a conference in Southern California today, in advance of this weekend's Long Beach Grand Prix, that focuses on opportunities in the racing world for environmentally friendly products.
Yokohama Rubber, for example, has just come out with a "green" racing tire that replaces 10 percent the compound's petroleum-based oil content with orange oil. That cuts down the amount of oil used in production and makes the tire easier - thus less energy-intensive - to recycle.
Most of the talk and development work, though, has been centered on increasing race cars' fuel efficiency and reducing racing's carbon footprint - engine and fuel stuff.
Bio-Racer
That hasn't been enough, though, for researchers at the University of Warwick in England.
Concerned about racing's environmental impact and its financial future given the high cost of building and maintaining cars and the wobbly economy that's put a big dent in sponsorship money, a team at the university-affiliated Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre set out to see if it were possible to build a competitive race car from environmentally sustainable products.
The short answer: Yes, although not every component can be earth-friendly.
The research team has designed and built a "proof-of-concept" Formula 3 race car that might best be described as a bio-racer.
It uses carrots, potatoes, flax fiber, soybean oil and other natural products in its various parts, makes extensive use of recycled carbon fiber and composite body panels, runs on biodiesel that can be made from vegetable oil or even waste from chocolate candy factories, and has radiators that clean the air that passes through them.
All that and it goes around corners at 125 miles an hour - or at least that's what it's designed to do: the researchers just fitted the engine last week and haven't completed on-track testing yet.
To stop, it uses non-carbon brake discs and the research team is working on - believe it or not - brake pads made from cashew nut shells!
World's First
The builders call themselves WorldFirst Racing and the car, which they say is the first to be made largely from sustainable and renewable materials, the WorldFirstF3 racer.
James Meridith, WorldFirst project manager and a university researcher, told Green Car Advisor that the car will make its first public appearance May 7 at Circuit Zolder raceway in Belgium at the kickoff for next year's Clean Week 2020 event.
Talk about advanced technology batteries usually includes words like "lithium," "polymer" and "cobalt."
Lead, the substance on which common automotive batteries have been based for decades, is old school. Lead-acid batteries are too heavy, too bulky and won't hold enough energy for sufficient time to be useful in modern hybrids and electric cars.
But don't tell that to Axion Power International
, a small, publicly traded (over-the-counter) Pennsylvania battery and energy storage products developer that uses a new lead-carbon technology to lower the batteries' weight, reduce their size and boost their energy density.
---------- Axion batteries, lighter, more power-dense than conventional lead-acid batteries, are suitable for larger hybrids and EVs, company says. ----------
Axion claims that its lead-carbon, or PbC, batteries, can compete with nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion batteries for use in conventional and plug-in hybrid vehicles and in all-electric vehicles.
While still not small and light enough for use in electric sports cars, they can be used in larger family cars, SUVs and pickups, the company says.
The lead-carbon battery's big advantages are relative low cost, ease of recycling and easy integration into existing battery manufacturing processes, thus avoiding the huge expense of building and equipping new plants, Axion Chief Executive Tom Granville told Green Car Advisor this morning.
The company is announcing a deal today to supply its batteries in a multi-phase supply contract with with Exide Technologies, a major global player in the energy storage market.
Exide, which has been looking for a way to break into the growing hybrid and battery-electric vehicle market, plans to test the batteries over a variety of applications.
"We believe our batteries can compete with the more expensive and exotic battery chemistries. In the end, our relatively low cost, when compared to the battery chemistries that appear to dominate today's headlines, along with our ease of integration into existing manufacturing lines, will be telling advantages when novelty wears thin and cost-consciousness and practicality move center stage," Granville said.
Student teams line up with their cars at 2007 Formula Hybrid race.
EV and rechargeable hybrids advocate Plug In America says it has channeled $60,000 in funds from the California Air Resources Board into a quartet of $15,000 grants to student racing teams at four California colleges.
The grants are to be used to design, build and race plug-in, hybrid-electric Formula Hybrid (yes, there is such a beast) racecars.
Recipients are teams from Cal Polytechnic State University at Pomona and its sister, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, as well as the University of California, Irvine, and University of California, San Diego.
The race they are building for is the Formula Hybrid International competition, organized by Dartmouth College's engineering school and slated to be held May 4-6 at the new Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon, New Hampshire.
It would take a heck of a lot of advanced-technology batteries for President Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to put a million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015.
Unfortunately, unless the competitive picture changes dramatically, most of those cars would be powered by batteries produced in Asian countries that now dominate the advanced battery manufacturing sector.
With that hard economic reality in mind, Argonne National Laboratory is teaming up with two Kentucky universities to establish a national research and development center that will be charged with transforming the U.S. into a viable contender when it comes to manufacturing tomorrow's high-tech batteries.
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Prius test vehicles at Argonne National Laboratory
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The center that will be located in central Kentucky will be supported by the University of Kentucky and Louisville University. Its not-so-modest goal, as summed up on Wednesday morning by Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear: ramp up domestic production capacity and turn the U.S. into "the hands-down global leader of these technologies."
The center is supposed to make it easier for federal laboratories, university researchers, manufacturers, suppliers and end-users to collaborate on technologies that can be commercialized.
Many experts believe that advanced battery design and manufacturing could become as strategically important to the global economy as oil is today. But the U.S. has reduced itself to a bit player when it comes to manufacturing increasingly high-tech batteries that will be needed to reduce global dependence on oil and cut tailpipe emissions.
Ford's SmartGauge features a multitude of displays to help people become more fuel-efficient drivers.
By Robert E. Calem, Contributor
Regardless of the kind of car you drive, one of the keys to improving fuel economy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is to drive smarter - don't hammer the accelerator pedal, don't brake harshly and do steadily maintain just enough speed to keep up with the flow of traffic without passing everyone in sight.
These often are not easy tasks.
To help, automakers have begun rolling out new features and technologies that call attention to uneconomical driving behavior and offer "rewards" for fuel-efficient driving.
Some of these features are passive, like instrument panels that change color as fuel economy improves.
Others more actively engage with the driver, such as an accelerator pedal that pushes back when pressed too aggressively.
Some automakers are even working on technologies that will be able to take the driver out of the fuel economy equation by allowing the car to practically drive itself with best mileage in mind.
Read on to learn more about the driver training features and technologies in cars you can buy today, and be able to buy tomorrow.
Smart Gauges Make Smarter Drivers
"The whole idea is coaching the driver, but as a good coach you don't want to preach," says Sonya Nematollahi, driver information engineering supervisor at Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, Mich., while describing the "SmartGauge with EcoGuide" instrument cluster in the 2010 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids.
Conceived by Ford in collaboration with IDEO, the design and innovation consultancy that also devised the Swivel 'n Go seating in Chrysler minivans, SmartGauge consists of two 4.3-inch, high-resolution color LCD screens - one on either side of the analog speedometer - that display a collection of digitally rendered gauges accessed through multi-layered menus.
SmartGauge with EcoGuide, fashioned by Ford Design Studio with features input from the industrial design firm Smart Design, uses the menus and gauges to offer increasingly detailed information in four modes: Inform, Enlighten, Engage and Empower.
"Like a good coach, we designed modes into SmartGauge to engage drivers at their experience levels and then guide them to new energy-efficient behavior," says Steve Bishop, global lead for sustainability at IDEO in Palo Alto, Calif.
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Green leaves 'grow' on fusion instrument panel as visual reward when fuel economy improves.
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"Video games engage their users in a similar fashion with levels. In fact, when we observed hybrid drivers, we found they were going for high scores, a gaming behavior that has never existed in cars before. We designed to accommodate it."
Steering-wheel mounted directional buttons are used to navigate through the modes, and the driver can customize the displays in each mode by adding or removing gauges.
Report by PatentCafe.com shows GM to be light on green technology patents versus other major automakers.
By Robert E. Calem, Contributor
As President Obama was criticizing General Motors Corp. and Chrysler this morning for falling short on their efforts to produce viable survival plans, we turned up a new report on the health of various automakers' patent portfolios - a report that underscores both companies' problems, particularly in the area of green car technologies.
The "Automaker Patent Assets Intelligence Report" by PatentCafe.com studied the patent portfolios of GM, Chrysler, Ford Motor Co.,Toyota Motor Corp. and Volkswagen - the largest automakers in the U.S., Asia and Europe, respectively - and, among other things, ranked each by the percentage of its patent portfolio associated with green technologies.
The portfolio study ended with 2007 calendar year patent applications.
The report was delivered last week by PatentCafe.com, Inc., to the administration's Auto Task Force, incoming Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
According to the automaker patent study, Toyota is emphasizing green tech development the most, with 29.1 percent of its portfolio composed of green tech patents.
Ford is trailing closely, with 26.3 percent of its patents focused on green tech, followed by Volkswagen with 22.8 percent.
GM and Chrysler fall into distant fourth and fifth places; GM with 15.1 percent of its patents devoted to green tech and Chrysler with 14.6 percent.
Ford has the largest portfolio overall, with a total of 6,375 patents, followed by Toyota, GM, Chrysler and Volkswagen, which has only 728 patents.
It's not just the numbers that count, though, said Andy Gibbs, chairman and chief executive of PatentCafe, a patent search and analysis software firm headquartered in Sacramento, Calif.
Despite Toyota's numerical lead in green tech patents, an analysis of "forward citations" - the number of times new patent filings refer to earlier, seminal patents - shows that "peers in the auto industry feel that Ford's technology is superior" to Toyota's because Ford's patents are cited more frequently, Gibbs said.
Successfully Restructuring Auto Industry Isn't Something That's Entirely Up to Detroit
There's an old Caribbean folksong in which a son calls his father's effort to explain the birds and bees "as clear as mud, but it covered the ground."
That pretty much describes the Obama administration's early direction to General Motors and Chrysler as it rejected the automakers' initial restructuring plans this morning and said they'd be given financial support for a limited period to come up with better plans.
In both cases, the President said in his televised address on the auto industry restructuring this morning, that means a plan to be economically viable while building and selling "the fuel efficient cars and trucks that will carry us to an energy independent future."
America's automakers, Obama said, should "lead the world in manufacturing the next generation of clean cars."
He covered the necessary ground, but without much clarity in terms of just how those goals are to be achieved. That's to be left it up to the automakers and the administration's auto industry restructuring team.
Even when green, politics make for strange bedfellows.
As in the National Wildlife Federation's decision to support General Motors' bid to receive additional federal government bailout funds.
The show of support for GM by the Reston, Virginia-based environmental group with 4 million members came in a March 24 letter that NWF President and Chief Executive Larry Schweiger sent to President Obama's automobile industry task force.
Referring to GM's federal loan "application" in which the automaker pledged to make development of fuel-efficient, low-emission vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid paramount in the future, Schweiger wrote that "when you consider that GM's plan is a critical step in confronting global climate change, then our involvement is not only expected, it is required."
The nation needs "to make investments in companies like GM who will deliver the technologies critical to achieving that clean energy economy," the letter said.
Schweiger reiterated what he said on March 17 when he and GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner appeared together on behalf of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of companies and environmental groups that are lobbying Congress to establish a cap-and-trade system for controlling carbon-dioxide emissions.
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the federal funding for green vehicle technology research has been flowing.
The Clinton administration favored plug-in hybrid electric vehicle research. The Bush administration steered funding to hydrogen fuel-cell research. And who hasn't heard President Obama's repeated pledge to have 1 million plug-in hybrid electric vehicles on American roads by 2015?
But some in Washington, D.C. are cautioning against the anticipated swing of federal funding back to plug-in hybrids at the expense of hydrogen technology research.
"I hope that we will avoid again putting all of our eggs in one technology basket," U.S. Rep. Brian Baird (D, Wash.) said while chairing a Tuesday hearing in Washington, D.C., by the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. "While we must be targeted in our federal R&D programs, this single-minded approach ignores the importance of balancing a diverse portfolio with sustained funding for longer-term research."
Subsequent testimony by Steven Chalk suggested that the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has taken to heart Obama's 2015 pledge.
New Petroleum-Saving Compound Makes Retail Bow This Summer
The bad news is that they still smell just like a regular rubber tire, leaving no faint tracery of orange blossom perfume in their wake as they roll by. Not even a fierce scrubbing of rubber on a hairpin turn or during an off-the-line burnout gives hint of their unusual chemical makeup.
The good news, by utilizing an oil derived from oranges, Yokohama Rubber Co.'s newest tires do help the environment just a bit. Adding the orange oil to the tire compound lets Yokohama reduce the petroleum content in each tire by about 10 percent and makes each tire easier - less energy intensive - to recycle.
One could argue that debuting an environmentally friendly tire in the U.S. as the official racing tire of the GT3 Challenge Series takes away a little of the environmental message: race cars aren't exactly easy on fuel or tires, but we like racing so we're not going to wag a finger and go all greenie over that issue.
Suffice it to say, if we're going to continue to have auto racing, and we sincerely hope that is the case, then it needs to get an green as possible. Little steps like Yokohama's orange-oil tires help move things in the right direction.
So we cheer that the company's U.S. arm, Yokohama Tire Corp., staged the world debut of the racing version - the orange-oil infused ENV-R1 tire - in Sebring, Fla., as part of the Sebring International Raceway's storied endurance race series this past weekend.
All of the cars (Porsche 911s) in the GT3 series wore the same rubber, so the Yokohamas also scored their first podium appearances at Sebring.
Next up is a regular retail version of the tires - which have been on sale in Japan for about a year and were first shown in the U.S. in a display at the 2007 Los Angeles International Auto Show (left).
Yokohama says U.S, consumers will get orange-oil rubber this summer as the Yokohama dB Super E-Spec tire, initially in sizes fitted for the Toyota Prius and Camry hybrids; Honda Civic and Accord hybrids and the natural-gas fueled Honda Civic GX. All are cars with a green theme, so you can see where Yokohama's marketing campaign will be headed.
Daimler AG
says that its Mercedes-Benz Hybrid LLC subsidiary will build a research and development near Ann Arbor, Mich. that will focus on conventional and alternative propulsion systems.
Government officials in Michigan said that the project will include a $9.9 million investment and create 223 direct jobs and an estimated 231 indirect jobs.
The Michigan Economic Growth Authority earlier this week won Daimler's decision to locate the center in Michigan by approving a $7.5 million,10-year tax credit for the 65,000-square-foot R&D facility Government agencies in Ann Arbor are expected to consider abatement of local taxes on the R&D center as part of the incentive package.
Officials in Michigan said that Daimler opted for Michigan over a competing bid from Greenville, S.C.
What led Daimler to choose Ann Arbor?
"It was the Detroit workforce," a Daimler spokesman told The Detroit News, a reference to the thousands of skilled but jobless auto industry workers in the area.
Daimler has until June 15 to select a specific site for the facility and has said an Ann Arbor locale depends of local tax breaks.
As our sister blog Edmunds AutoObserver reports, the German automaker already is working in the Detroit area, in cooperation with General Motors and BMW, on the two-mode hybrid technology already used in GM's full-size SUVs and pickups and slatled to be offered in upscoming BMW and Mercedes-Benz SUVs.
The new center likely would be dedicated to hybrid systems for Daimler's Mercedes-Benz passenger cars and, possibly, for its large commercial trucks as well.
Dismayed to discover that its three-wheeled electric commuter vehicle won't qualify for federal green car manufacturing loans under present policies, California-based Aptera Motors says it is heading to Washington to try to get the rules changed.
The company says it wants a level playing field so it can competitively manufacture its teardrop-shaped, lightweight Aptera 2e(left). The vehicle, still in the per-production prototype stage of development, can travel up to 100 miles on a single charge of its batteries and deliver the fuel efficiency equivalent of 200 miles per gallon.
Aptera has slated production to begin at its North San Diego County headquarters and assembly facility in October.
But the federal Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan program, which has $25 billion to foster manufacturing of the next generation of fuel-efficient vehicles, is only open to applicants that make automobiles and related components.
By law, the Aptera and other three-wheeled vehicles are motorcycles, not cars, and thus not eligible for the loan program.
"We've received financial backing from funders like Google and IdeaLab, and now we'd like to tell our story of breakthrough aerodynamic design and efficiency on Capitol Hill," Aptera President and CEO Paul Wilbur (right) said in a statement released late Thursday evening.
"Aptera can change everyday commuter driving forever, and even though we're a relative newcomer, we're confident our vision, purpose and results will compel federal lawmakers to rally around our cause and embrace efficiency in federal policy," said Wilbur, a former Chrysler executive who also headed independent automaker Saleen and components manufacturer ASC Technologies.
Wilbur's Washington itinerary is unclear. But his plea for inclusion of the battery-electric Aptera 2e in the federal advanced-vehicle funding program has won backing from two California congressmen, which should help open doors.
Could Lead to 5-Minute EV Recharging - If Power Delivery Systems Are Developed
Engineers at MIT have come up with a way to turn lithium iron phosphate, a common compound several hybrid- and electric-car battery developers are working with, into a super-expressway for electrical energy: a breakthrough that could dramatically reduce charging time for lithium batteries.
But while the process holds great promise for ultrafast recharging of cell phones, laptops and other small devices, don't hold your breath waiting for 5-minute recharging for electric cars.
EV or plug-in hybrid batteries made using the MIT process could take an ultrafast charge if one were avaialbe, but still needed is technology that could dramatically increase the amount of power a battery charger could draw from household and other electrical outlets.
The technology breakthrough, reported today by MIT and the journal Nature (subscription only), changes the way lithium iron phosphate is made, enabling it to absorb and release energy-toting lithium ions hundreds of times faster than before.
For many consumers, the donut-shaped API Service Symbol
on a quart of motor oil is akin to the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on an oven or dishwasher. The familiar logos arguably take some of the guesswork out of shopping by instilling a sense of confidence in the product.
So count on Green Earth Technologies to drum up as much publicity as possible in the wake of today's announcement that its biodegradable, fat-based motor oil, G-Oil SAE 5W-30, is the first bio-based motor oil to win the American Petroleum Institute's certification. In short, the product meets API's performance specifications for gasoline-engine oils.
G-Oil is manufactured from fat from American-bred livestock, the company says.
It has a molecular structure that is similar to traditional, petroleum-based products (Hey, some regular oil also comes from animals -- well, big lizards. They've just been dead a long, long time.)
The company boasts that "it takes three barrels of crude oil to make one barrel of motor oil, but it only takes one barrel of animal fat to produce one barrel of G-Oil."
Green Earth Technologies will incorporate the API label, like the one pictured at left, into product packaging later this year when the first G-Oil shipment begins to show up in stores nationwide.The company said it will market the bio-based motor oil as "the environmentally safe 'green' solution" for those who'd like to be able to stop using conventional motor oils.
"It's been almost two years in the making and a true team effort, but I am happy to say that G-Oil motor oil is finally ready for retail," Green Earth Technologies co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Jeffrey Loch said in a statement.
Green Earth said it plans to seek API certifications for its 10W-30 and 5W-20 weight products later in the year.
Designers and manufacturers have high hopes that nanotechnology
will play an integral role in upcoming generations of electric cars and hybrids.
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Carbon nanotubes like this can be used to improve lithium-ion batteries.
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Nanotechnology -- the engineering of materials, devices and systems that are just a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair -- is of particular interest to researchers who are trying to improve the durability and reliability of lithium-ion batteries.
So it's of interest that UC Santa Barbara and AECOM Environment are cooperating on a new Sustainable Nanotechnology Initiative (SNI) that will be housed in the university's Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.
The newly created SNI will focus on the environmental risks associated with engineered nanomaterials. AECOM is a global provider of environmental health and safety services. The company's Environmental Toxicology Lab and risk assessment group will collaborate with UCSB to conduct "real world" testing to assess nanotechology's environmental impact potential.
The nitrogen-rich agricultural runoff than can choke the life out of lakes and ponds with thick green algae "blooms" might someday help fuel our cars and trucks.
That's the hope of a California company, QuantumSphere, that has received a $100,000 research grant from the California Energy Commission's Energy Innovations small grant program for a year-long project to develop an algae biogasification process that can turn the aquatic vegetation and other biomass material into methane, hydrogen or other synthetic gases.
Because algae grows so rapidly, is so rich in carbohydrates and needs so little care, it is considered a prime feedstock for biofuels - if a cost-efficient method of breaking it down can be developed.
QuantumSphere, which will use engineered nano-metals as catalysts for turning algae into gases, says the slimy green stuff (it comes in other colors, too) can produce as much as 60 percent of its biomass in the form of oils or carbohydrates.
The oil can be turned into biodiesel and the carbohydrates into alcohols - for ethanol production - or into synthetic gases for fuel or industrial use.
"Our vision for this project was to use this process to take wet algae produced in a place like the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley of California and convert it into renewable fuels," said Subra Iyer, QuantumSphere's principal technologist.
"The Salton Sea is a place for large amounts of agricultural runoff which sometimes creates large algae blooms. If successful, we envision a large plant" on the shore of the inland sea that could convert large amounts of algae into renewable fuels, he said.
Iyer said the process QuantumSphere plans to use is designed to convert any biomass, including leaves, algae, vegetable waste and corn stalks, into fuel.
The company's plan calls for it to build a small-scale demonstration plant to show the feasibility of its conversion process.
After what seems like years of lagging the industry in adopting new technologies, Ford Motor Co. appears to be adapting to the 21st Century with gusto.
---------- Ford says its dual-clutch, six-speed gearbox is smaller, lighter, more efficient and more fun than a standard four-speed automatic. ----------
A lot of that is driven by the company's survival instinct, but no matter, Ford has found the joy of fuel efficiency and is applying it most everywhere.
The latest, to be announced Wednesday morning at the Automotive News World Congress meeting in Detroit, is a dual-clutch, six-speed transmission for Ford's small car lineup in North America, starting in 2010.
The transmission, called PowerShift, is essentially an automatic manual. It uses electronically activated dry clutches, the same type found in manuals, to seamlessly change gears, eliminating the power loss - and wasted fuel - that occurs as a standard automatic momentarily disengages gears while shifting up or down.
The PowerShift's clutches each operate a separate "bank" of gears - one carrying 1st, 3rd and 5th speeds , the other 2nd, 4th and 6th. The transmission's computer matches revolutions and manages the clutches to pre-select the next gear so that each change is instantaneous with no waste of engine power.
Big Mileage Boost
Ford says the technology can improve a vehicle's fuerl econonmy by up to 9 percent. It already is in use in the European Ford Focus (right), although with a "wet" clutch system to better handle the higher output of the European Focus' four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, and is beginning to be used by other mainstream automakers as well.
The fuel economy gain is several notches above the 4- to 7-percent fuel economy increases a standard six-speed automatic can realize when replacing a four-speed automatic.
Hot on the heels of its recent announcement that it is pushing hard to bring plug-in hybrids
and more conventional hybrids to market as quickly as possible, Toyota Motor Co. now has put a date on the launch of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.
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Toyota Highlander fuel-cell vehicle completed a 350- mile trip from Osaka to Tokyo last year without refueling.
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The company's top product planner, Masatami Takimoto, a corporate executive vice president, said in interviews during the Detroit show's media days earlier this week that "limited commercialization" of a Toyota fuel-cell vehicle will begin "in 2015, and maybe sooner."
The program is seen by Toyota as "the beginning of true commercialization" of the fuel-cell vehicles, Takimoto said.
Although it is best for its gas-electric hybrids, especially the Prius, and its (mostly) reliable and fuel-efficient conventional cars, Toyota Motor Corp. has never abandoned the hydrogen fuel cell.
Indeed, the company continues testing models in Japan and in California as a charter member of the California Fuel Cell Partnership and last year announced several improvements that greatly improved reliability and range.
"We think the technology has been achieved," said John Hanson, Toyota's top environmental spokesman in the U.S.
Falling Fuel Prices Are 'Disincentive' For Consumers, Analyst Group Says
U.S. automotive executives are using the bully platform offered by the Detroit auto show to step up calls for an increase in the funding that Congress is considering - has already allotted in some cases - to finance development and production of advanced vehicles, biofuels and battery technologies that can help reduce the nation's dependence on oil.
What's missing is a call for a sensible fuel tax policy that encourages people to buy the fuel efficident cars the government says automakers must build.
Congress already has approved $25 million in loans to automakers and suppliers to use in retrofitting facilities - or building new ones - for the manufacture of advanced cars and trucks. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler has requested a combined $22 billion of the pot and would like to see the money increased.
President-elect Barack Obama, who is to be sworn in as the 44th president on Jan.20, has indicated a willingness to do just that, perhaps even doubling the $25 million loan pool.
Want More
But the automakers would like to see additional funding made available in the $800 billion economic stimulus plan Congress is now developing at the behest of the incoming Obama Administration.
"It's an issue of economic security, of national security, of energy security," GM research and development chief Larry Burns told reporters during the North American International Auto Show's media preview days this week.
It would be devastating, he said, for the U.S. to merely go from being dependent on foreign oil to being dependent on foreign nations for the advanced batteries and other components needed to make electric vehicles - battery-electric, fuel-cell electric and hybrid-electric .
Granted, GM needs federal funds to survive right now and Burns has a lot at stake - his job, for instance - in promoting federal funding that helps the industry.
But we still agree with him.
We'd rather see a few hundred billion tossed to the companies working on lithium-ion and more advanced batteries, clean biofuels, fuel cell and electric charging and hydrogen fueling station infrastructure development than to be handed to the corn ethanol industry or to big banks so they can continue bolstering their reserves.
Need Tax Plan
Analysts in the London offices of Global Insight economic and business forecasting and consulting, looking at the U.S. situation from an outsider perspective, suggest that things could work well if federal tax policy encouraged purchases of and investments in more fuel-efficient vehicles.
General Motors Corp., signaling that it has learned its lesson, said it plans to build its own advanced battery-pack manufacturing lab, establish a battery research facility, partner with the University of Michigan to develop an advanced battery engineering curriculum at the school and add hundreds of battery technology specialists to its own R&D staff.
---------- GM engineers work on early Volt battery pack. ----------
The automaker also announced the expected - that it has selected South Korea's LG Chem to supply the lithium-ion battery cells that will be used for the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid.
The announcements were made by GM chairman Rick Wagoner, who said that GM, which launched the modern auto industry's first electric vehicle, the EV1, in 1996 and then killed it in 2003 after declaring that people weren't interested in electric cars, is now firmly committed to electrification.
The company has spent more than $1 billion developing the Volt and will continue investing huge sums in battery technology for future electric vehicles, he said.
When Ford Motor Co. launches its 2010 Flex all-purpose wagon and the 2010 Lincoln MKS luxury sedan and MKT crossover later this year, all three will be endowed with the company's new, fuel-efficient but powerful EcoBoost V6 engine (right).
The powerplant, which will later find its way into more Ford vehicles, is tuned to make a V8-like 355 horsepower and 350 foot-pounds of torque while delivering V6 fuel economy.
The automaker will discuss the engine technology at a press conference today as the North American International Auto Show kicks off the first of three media preview days, but provided this early look for those who don't like to follow strict schedules.
In the full-size Flex, all-wheel drive models equipped with the twin-turbo EcoBoost engine are expected to deliver 22 miles per gallon on the highway and combined highway-city mileage of about 18 mpg.
The Lincoln MKS sedan with the EcoBoost V6 delivered 25 miles a gallon on the highway and 16 mpg around town in Ford's preliminary testing and is expected to win federal EPA ratings that are the same, the company said.
Ford executives said the 2010 Lincoln MKT crossover with EcoBoost is expected to get a highway rating of about 20 mpg.
Ford's 2010 EcoBoost lineup: Ford Flex, Lincoln MKS and Lincoln MKT.
A Look Inside
All of Ford's twin-turbo EcoBoost V6s will be mated to a new 6-speed automatic with select shift, the company said. Increasing the number of gear ratios, or "speeds" in a transmission helps improve fuel economy by letting the engine operate in its most efficient range more often.
Ford Motor Co. plans to jump into the electric vehicle word in a big way, chief executive Alan Mulally and other executives told reporters at the North American International Auto Show today.
---------- Ford is testing a plug-in hybrid version of its Escape SUV. ----------
The company already has announced plans to launch a battery-electric delivery van
for the commercial vehicle market in 2010, and Mulally said a battery-EV small car for the retail market will follow in 2011.
Beyond that, Ford plans to hit the market with a new generation of hybrids - including its first plug-in - by 2012. (The company presently is testing a plug-in version of its Escape hybrid SUV.)
The 2010 Ford EV will be developed in partnership with Canadian auto components supplier Magna International, and Ford executives said the company would work with partners on other green vehicles and on lithium-ion battery development as well.
The company's high-volume global platforms for small and mid-size cars such as the Focus and the Fusion, will support battery-electric powertrains as well as conventional gas and diesel engines said Mark Fields, president of Ford's Americas division.
Ford's chairman, Bill Ford, said the company has formed a four-way partnership in China and the U.S. to help expand its electric vehicle expertise.
In addition to Ford, the partners are Changan Auto Group and the cities of Chongquing, China, and Denver, Colo.
The cities' cooperation is valuable because they can provide real-world test-beds for EVs by introducing them into city fleets and by facilitating tests of things such as public charging infrastructure, smart grid electrical hookups.
Advanced automotive battery developer A123 Systems has plunged into the government funding pool with an application for $1.84 billion in loans to help build several lithium-ion battery plants in the U.S.
The 7-year-old company is seeking the loans from the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles program recently funded by Congress.
The so-called retooling loans are available to help automakers and automotive parts and components makers retool existing plants or build new ones dedicated to building more fuel-efficient vehicles.
In a statement issued Wednesday, A123 said that, if granted, the loans would help it "dramatically expand production capacity" to supply battery systems for up to 5 million conventional hybrid vehicles or 500,000 plug-in hybrids a year by 2013.
Fierce Competition
The company is one of dozens, in the U.S. and abroad, racing to develop powerful, reliable battery systems that will underpin the new generation of electric and hybrid-electric vehicles being worked on by automakers around the globe.
A123 Systems uses a proprietary nanophosphate chemistry to produce lithium-ion batteries. It's technology builds on work initially done by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where one of the company's three co-founders is a professor. Another is an MIT business school graduate.
The Massachusetts-based company was in a "quiet period" imposed by securities regulators prior to its proposed initial public offering and would not make any executives available for comment.
But in Wednesday's prepared statement, company CEO David Vieau said the auto industry is "entering a new phase...where we increase the electrification of vehicles, reducing consumption of gasoline though advanced batteries."
While Toshiba's initial aim is to develop large solar power generating systems for utilities and industry, the new unit also would give it another avenue into the electric vehicle business if solar-powered EV recharging stations ever catch on commercially.
Toshiba already makes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery for use in EVs.
The company said that its new photovoltaic division intends to tap into a utilities and industry market that analysts expect to generate almost $24.5 billion in global sales by fiscal 2015. The company said it hopes to secure a $2.2-billion slice of the market by then.
Not Alone
Toshiba's announcement comes at the same time U.S.-based Solar Power Inc., a manufacturer of solar systems, said it has signed a deal for Chinese photovoltaic cell maker JA Solar to supply it with up to 60 megawatts of solar cells over the next year.
South Korean automaker Hyundai says it has developed its own 6-speed automatic transmission as a fuel-efficiency tool for its cars and sport utility vehicles.
The transmission reportedly is about 25 pounds lighter than the company's present 5-speed automatic and, with an extra gear range, will help vehicles that use it improve fuel economy by up to 12 percent by keeping the engines running in the most efficient range more often.
In its U.S. models, the new Hyundai 6-speed transmission will help the company reach its goal of meeting the new 35-mpg average fuel economy standard by 2015, five years ahead of the required deadline.
With the new transmission, Hyundai joins Toyota, General Motors and Ford as the only carmakers to have proprietary 6-speeds for front-wheel drive vehicles.
Hyundai said it intends to use the transmission on 16 models, beginning this month with the new '09 Grandeur models - that's the Azera in the U.S. The redesigned 2010 Santa Fe SUV also will get a 6-speed when it hits the showrooms late this year.
The automaker also said that its new gearbox will be sealed and maintenance free, with a lifetime transmission fluid that needs no topping up.
Okay, so what do your family car, a box of laundry detergent, the beans you're eating because you can't afford anything else in this economy and that Christmas tree you now have to get rid of have in common?
Well, if researchers at Pennsylvania State University are successful, the last three items could be combined to make fuel for the first.
A Penn State research team is genetically modifying woody plants for use in biofuels by adding a bean-based protein that makes them vulnerable to the enzymes used in laundry detergents.
Woody plants use a material called lignin to help form a tough outer layer that shields their soft cellulose insides from beetles and other pests. The lignin also gives the plants rigidity so they can grow upright.
But it also makes it hard to break them down and extract the cellulose for use in making cellulosic ethanol. That's the big reason we use easy-to-extract starches from corn for most ethanol production in the United States.
But the university says that two researchers, John Carlson and Ming Tien, have developed a way to introduce a protein that makes it easier to break down the lignin and extract the cellulose from woody plants and trees.
Right now, a lot of research is centered on using expensive, genetically engineered fungus and bacteria to do the work.
"There is lots of energy-rich cellulose locked away in wood," molecular geneticist Carlson said in an interview with the university newspaper.
"But separating this energy from the wood to make ethanol is a costly process requiring high amounts of heat and caustic chemicals. Moreover, fungal enzymes that attack lignin are not yet widely available, still in the development stage, and not very efficient in breaking up lignin."
Another approach is to reduce the amount of lignin in the plants, but that, scoffed biochemist Tien, is "like trying to engineer boneless chicken. It just doesn't make sense" because the plants would have no structure to keep them upright while growing.
Honda took its sweet time, but finally delivered an FCX Clarity fuel-cell sedan to Edmunds.com's garage for a multi-day field test (we did one of the first test drives
a year ago, but that was only good for about two hours of seat time).
Features Editor Joanne Helperin, who writes for our sister blog, Strategies for Smart Car Buyers, took the futuristic car out to the test track Tuesday and in a piece posted this morning talks about driving the hydrogen-fueled Clarity in real-world conditions around town and on Southern California's freeway system.
If you're a cutting-edge trendsetter, very eco-conscious, or simply love Hondas, and if you can afford a $600-a-month, two-year lease and happen to live in Santa Monica, Torrance or Irvine, California, you must read Helperin's piece. From front to rear visibility, from the corn-based fabric on the seats to the host of techno-goodies, she provides insights you'd expect from someone who takes test drives for a living.
On the other hand, if you just want to know what it's like driving a vehicle that emits nothing but water vapor from the tailpipe and gets the equivalent of 74 miles per gallon, you must read Helperin's observations, too. Can Honda dampen the high-pitched whine the FCX Clarity lets out every time the accelerator is depressed? Helperin has her doubts.
So jump on over and give it a read. Then come back for more Green Car Advisor.
A Silicon Valley startup that believes it has developed a better battery is planning to spread its proprietary lithium-ion cells from power drills to hybrid cars within a few years.
Imara Corporation, a research, design and manufacturing company that just emerged from "stealth mode" with the launch of a public website Sunday, says its batteries represent breakthrough technology that can deliver greater power, longevity and reliability than lithium batteries on the market today.
---------- Electrode material with Imara's proprietary coating merges from hulking coating machine in company's Menlo Park plant. ----------
The company believes it has something else going for it - a U.S. address and manufacturing plant.
Domestic automakers and import brands that build cars in the U.S. have long expressed concern that virtually all lithium battery production is done overseas by foreign companies.
Many have visited Imara's Menlo Park headquarters - near famed Stanford University - and asked for early prototypes of the company's automotive-quality cells so they can begin the lengthy testing process, Neil Maguire, the battery company's business development veep, told Green Car Advisor.
He declined to name the companies, but said visitors to Imara headquarters have included representatives of "10 of the top 16" automakers.
The company has a 50,000-square-foot factory next to its research and development offices in Menlo Park, Maguire said. It is there that Imara will process the electrode material that forms the heart of its batteries.
He said the company's technology is "material agnostic," meaning it will work with various types of lithium battery chemistry, including cobalt, cadmium, manganese and iron phosphate. Each type of chemistry provides a unique level of power, energy, thermal build-up, charging cycles and other battery characteristics. Imara is working with nickel-manganese cobalt.
The company, which began life about two years ago as Lion Cells and changed its name just last month (Imara is a Swahili term that means strength, endurance and power, Maguire said), licensed its core technology from Stanford Research Institute, which developed it as part of the federally funded Partnership for the Next Generation Vehicle initiative. PNGV operated as a cooperative research program from 1993-2001 and has been replaced by the Freedom Car progam.
The Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched a Website
today to enlist the public's help in tracking down fugitives accused of violating federal environmental laws.
At least three of the fugitives being sought are wanted for offenses close to our heart.
The most heinous of the three is the father-son team of Alessandro and Carlos Giordano, the former owners of Autodelta USA, who were arrested in 2003.
The EPA claims the company illegally imported and sold Alfa Romeos in California that did not meet U.S. emission or safety standards. The two men are believed to be living in Italy.
Also wanted by the feds is Jun Wang, who allegedly discharged fuel from his tanker truck directly into Little Beaver Creek in Kettering, Ohio.
Neither the type of fuel nor information on possible victims were immediately available, but we suspect beavers and/or little beavers may have been involved.
Wang (left) is believed to be living in Shenyang, China.
Information about the EPA's captured fugitives can also be found on the site.
French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroen
has done a deal with Germany's Robert Bosch
that moves Peugeot's diesel-electric hybrid technology a big step closer to the market.
Under the agreement, Bosch will supply the electric motors and control systems and the regenerative braking for the four-wheel drive diesel hybrid systems PSA Peugeot plans to introduce in the 2011 model year.
The company showed a pair of diesel hybrid concepts, the Peugeot Prologue (right) and the Citroen Hypnos (below) at the Paris Auto Show earlier this year. You can read a bit more about it all (click here) at Edmunds Inside Line.
It was a veritable green Christmas at the nation's largest port complex Tuesday as Daimler Trucks North America delivered 232 new natural-gas fueled tractors to be used in the Clean Truck Programs
at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
----------
Natural-gas trucks such as this Sterling model from Daimler are beginning to replace diesel trucks at nation's busiest port complex.
----------
California Cartage, a privately owned trucking company that specializes in short-haul trucking from the ports, took delivery of 132 of the liquid natural gas tractors from Daimler's Sterling Truck Co. subsidiary. The trucks will be leased to the company's contract drivers.
An additional 100 trucks were delivered directly to the port operating authorities to be leased by carriers and independent owner-operators who do business with the ports and want to upgrade their fleets with the clean-burning LNG trucks.
A company founded by California EV entrepreneur Shai Agassi has dedicated the first of what it says will be as many as 500,000 electric vehicle recharging stations in Israel, the first country to sign on to Agassi's vision of electric cars for everyone.
----------
Better Place Israel's Moshe Kaplinsky demonstrates EV charging station.
----------
The company, Better Place (formerly Project Better Place), has agreed to install 500 of the charging points in a number of Israeli cities including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in a pilot project now, and says its expects to have half a million installed by the time electric vehicles made by Renault and Nissan are ready for market in 2011.
More to Come
The Israeli EV charging network would be the planet's first nationwide commercial system, but Better Place has similar agreements with Denmark, the Australian state of Victoria, the state of Hawaii and a consortium of major San Francisco Bay Area cities.
The company also announced Monday that it has been invited by the Japanese government to build a battery exchange station in Yokohama early next year as part of a electric vehicle demonstration project involving a number of Japanese auto makers.
Israel's First
In a report in today's edition, Britain's Guardian newspaper said the first charging spot in Israel has been installed in a parking lot atop a shopping center in the coastal city of Ramat Hasharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv.
The paper quotes Moshe Kaplinsky, head of Better Place Israel, saying that the firm believes electric cars are a fundamental challenge to the ubiquitous gasoline and diesel vehicles.
"The vision is to stop this addition to oil," he told the paper.
In addition to charging stations, the Better Place network will include quick-exchange stations where depleted EV battery packs can be replaced with fully charged packs - the same sort of station the company will build in Japan.
Participants in the Israeli system would purchase an electric vehicle but the local arm of Better Place would own the batteries and lease them to vehicle owners - an electrified version of buying the car and then purchasing fuel on an as-needed basis.
Like Cell Phone Contracts?
EV customers would pay for fixed or unlimited mileage on their batteries - much as cell phone users sign up for plans based on minutes of use - and when they didn't want to wait for a recharge from the grid would go to one of the battery exchange stations for a battery pack switch.
Better Place has teamed with the Renault-Nissan Alliance for a program in which the California-based company will provide the charging infrastructure and the automakers will design and build the vehicles to use them.
So far, the automakers have only shown a concept for a Better Place car based on a Renault Megane sedan (left).
Various government partners can provide financial assistance and ease the way for installation of the charging infrastructure.
Such a system works in small, self-contained territories such as Israel and Hawaii, or in urban areas such as San Francisco, because the average automobile trip is relatively short.
Israel, for example, is 260 miles long and only 85 miles across at its widest point. It is about 75 miles from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, well within the 100-mile range of the lithium-ion battery packs Better Place says the Renault-Nissan EVs will use.
The Southern California company that brought air conditioned and heated seats to the luxury car segment has joined a development team aiming to use thermoelectric technology to help come up with an energy efficient system for automobiles that involves heating and cooling the occupants without wasting energy on changing the overall cabin temperature.
Amerigon Inc. said its BSST subsidiary will join Ford Motor Co., Visteon, Ohio State University and the Department of Energy's National Energy Renewable Laboratory in the three-year project.
The team plans to develop a high-efficiency thermoelectric heating and cooling system
---------- Project envisions use of thermoelectric devices to heat or cool air that would be focused directly on occupants. ----------
that will substantially reduce energy consumption, engine load and, ultimately improve fuel economy. The system also would eliminate the need for air conditioner refrigerants, which are a source of greenhouse gases.
Zoning Out
The concept is to use thermoelectric technology - which can place the source of heated or chilled air precisely where it is needed - to create a zoned system that directs the conditioned air directly on the vehicle occupants. It would eliminate the need for a heated liquid loop system and for engine-driven air conditioning compressors.
Amerigon's seat-mounted heating and cooling technology will be one part of the system and thermoelectric devices also will be placed at strategic locations in the instrument panel and cabin ceiling to chill or heat air that would then be directed to the occupants.
Hawaii's governor has unveiled a plan to create an alternative transportation system for the islands based on plug-in electric vehicles with swappable batteries and a battery-recharging network.
The plan put forth by Republican Governor Linda Lingle calls for creating a public-private partnership with Better Place to create 70,000 to 100,000 recharging points that would support the zero-emissions vehicles expected to be available after 2011. Hawaii's biggest utility, Hawaiian Electric, will aid in the rollout.
Lingle said the arrangement with Better Place of Palo Alto, California, will "help Hawaii get off its extreme oil addiction," which costs the state $7 billion a year.
The plan, which is the brainchild of Better Place CEO and former software executive Shai Agassi, is intended to overcome the major hurdles to electric vehicles: slow battery recharging and limited availability. The latter challenge is particularly daunting, and Better Place has yet to line up financing for the $75 million to $100 million needed for the Hawaii venture.
Tuesday's announcement follows earlier Better Place endorsements from Israel, Denmark, Australia, Renault-Nissan and a coalition of Northern California localities supporting the idea. The California company plans test deployments of vehicles in 2009 and broad commercial sales in 2012.
Honda Motor Co. has joined the list of automakers downplaying the importance of January's 2009 North American International Auto Show , but the automaker says it still will use the Detroit show to debut the production version of its upcoming Insight hybrid.
Unlike Nissan and several other carmakers that are pulling out of the upcoming Detroit show
completely in order to save the millions of dollars show participation can cost, Honda will still be there, and will still have a range of top executives available for interviews and to promote the company's vehicles during the show's four-day media preview, said spokesman Sage Marie.
---------- Honda's 2010 Insight Hybrid will look a lot like the concept (right) shown in Paris and Los Angeles. ----------
"We're just doing away with the smoke and mirrors," he said, referring to the company's decision to not stage a formal unveiling ceremony with the kind of theatrical productions -- including indoor snowstorms, cattle drives, entertainment and sports stars hawking vehicles and cars crashing through walls of glass -- that has distinguished the Detroit show for decades.
It wasn't a difficult decision.
With the auto industry in turmoil and the fate of the ever-shrinking "Big Three" U.S. automakers expected to be the center of attraction anyway -- there probably will be more financial obituary writers than auto writers in attendance during the media preview days -- an expensive launch party for the Insight probably wouldn't have gained any more publicity for the car than its mere presence on the show floor will garner.
"It's an important vehicle that will still generate a huge amount of interest," Marie said of the Insight, a five-seat hybrid expected to be priced below $20,000, making it the industry's least-expensive gas-electric car at a time consumers are looking to save money in the showroom as well as at the gas pump.
"We'll still be at the show, and with the right car at the right time," he said.
We were expecting, maybe, that Honda might juice up its press conference at the LA Auto Show with an updated concept version of the hybrid sports coupe the company's been teasing us with.
But no, boring old Honda pulled the covers off the same CR-Z concept it first rolled out at the 2007 Tokyo show.
Then the company found excitement, knocking our socks off by rolling out an all-new design study -- a fuel cell sports car concept called, back in boring old Honda mode, the FC Sport.
On a more mundane plane, Honda also rolled out the Insight Hybrid concept (which, we're told, is pretty much a giveaway off what the production model will look like) that it first showed at the Paris auto show last month.
The Insight (right)
, which resurrects the name given Honda's first hybrid, will debut next year in the U.S. as a five-passenger compact that slots into the lineup beneath the Civic and Civic Hybrid and will be priced, the company suggests, a few thousand dollars less than the base Toyota Prius.
Unlike hybrid-centric Toyota, though, Honda thinks of hybrids as an interim step to a brave new world of silent, zero-emissions electric cars that produce their own juice by blending hydrogen and oxygen in a fuel cell stack.
That's what the FC Sport Concept is all about.
We're not naive enough to think we'll ever see a Honda that looks quite like it - with or without a fuel-cell electric powertrain - but we do think that developing the concept shows Honda still believes fuel cells have a future. (Indeed, the company in July began leasing its limited-production FCX Clarity fuel-cell sedan to select customers in the Southern California.
CNG hasn't caught on with automakers - Honda's the only company presently selling a natural gas car - but Toyota thinks things could change and wants to be ready if they do.
Thus was born the CNG-electric Camry Hybrid Concept (right) being unveiled today at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
Toyota actually spilled the beans two months ago when it announced that it would show the concept car at the LA event, which opens to the public Friday and runs through Nov. 30.
But the company is providing a few previously withheld technical details with today's official unveiling.
The numbers
Under its hood, the CNG Hybrid Camry carries a 2.4-liter, 4-cylinder engine and Toyota's patented "hybrid synergy drive" electric powerplant and drive system. The whole thing has a combined power output equal to 170 horsepower
Toyota says the concept would get almost the same EPA mileage rating as the conventional gasoline-electric Camry Hybrid, coming in at 32 miles per gallon in the city cycle, 34 mpg on the highway and 33 mpg overall, versus 33 mpg city, 34 highway and 34 overall for the regular hybrid model.
In testimony to the fuel saving prowess of a hybrid system, the non-hybrid Honda Civic GX natural gas car is EPA-rated at 28 mpg overall, 15 percent less than the larger and heavier Camry CNG Hybrid.
The Camry CNG Hybrid Concept started with a standard Camry Hybrid then stripped off its gasoline fuel storage and delivery system and replaced it with a system suitable for compressed natural gas.
That included a pair of 4-gallon cylindrical fuel tanks installed in the car's spare tire well (right)
, and special fuel lines, injectors and engine control software to handle the pressurized gas (it usually is delivered at 3,600 psi).
Because it is a show car, the vehicle's exterior also got some attention, including a custom front fascia and front bumper cover that eliminates the grill opening, and a custom rear bumper that conceals the tail pipe and otherwise visible part of the exhaust system.
The CNG hybrid concept is shod with 19" Bridgestone run-flat tires - to make up for loss of the spare tire - and the car was lowered and its sides emblazoned "Compressed Natural Gas Hybrid" graphics.
Automakers that receive federal aid should double the fuel economy of their fleets by 2020, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said today.
Nelson's remarks during Senate floor debate suggest that Republicans are not the only lawmakers who may block emergency loans to the Detroit 3.
In an interview, Nelson said a new energy law that raises fleetwide fuel economy to 35 miles per gallon by 2020--about 40 percent higher than today--falls far short.
"Why should we be pouring taxpayer money into an automobile industry that has continued to resist higher miles per gallon, which has led us in part to the problems we're in?" he said.
Nelson said he wants a fleetwide average of 50 mpg by 2020. Asked whether he would seek to block aid to the industry over that issue, he said: "All of that is process. That is yet to be determined."
Nelson echoed other lawmakers who say the aid legislation should include pay limits for Detroit 3 executives. But he also said current senior management of the automakers should step down.
General Motors declined to comment on Nelson's proposals, pending the release of the actual legislative language.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he plans to introduce a broad economic stimulus bill that includes aid to automakers.
If that bill fails, Reid said, he will offer a bill that provides only for expanded unemployment benefits and aid to the Detroit 3, expected to be $25 billion in loans drawn from $700 billion already approved to rescue the nation's financial system.
The White House today proposed letting the car companies take $25 billion in loans previously approved to develop fuel-efficient vehicles and use the money for more immediate needs.
Chrysler Town and Country EV (left) Dodge EV (center) and Jeep EV concepts represent Chrysler's shot at a future.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
In hopes of creating some buzz about the company that doesn't have to do with who might be buying it or how soon it might collapse from lack of funds, Chrysler LLC is bringing its three recently unveiled electric vehicle concepts to the Los Angeles Auto show this week.
There won't be a press conference or any big announcements from the company during the media preview days Wednesday and Thursday, but the three Chrysler EVs will be on the stand for oohing and aaahing and, the company, hopes, photos and stories.
We wrote a bit about the cars when they were first introduced in Michigan in late September, and we happily would have taken the bait and written about them again when the LA show's media days commence.
But we got an early peek last week at a special program Chrysler's ENVI program for advanced technology vehicles (it stands for ENVIronmental) hosted for a few media types at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, so we're going to write about them a few days before they go on display for the rest of the crowd.
The cars are a battery-electric "Dodge" EV built from a Lotus Europa and "extended-range EV" versions of a Town and Country minivan and a Jeep Wrangler 4-door, both with 40 miles of all-electric range on an electric drive system whose batteries are "replaced" by juice from an on-board internal combustion generator once the battery charge is depleted.
All three are first-phase demonstration vehicles, said Lou Rhodes, ENVI's president and ranking engineer. That means that they started life as regular production models with gas engines and conventional drivetrains and were converted - a process that requires some compromises be made.
The compromises were hard to find, though, as all three are nicely finished vehicle with no dangling wires or exposed components (there were some test modules installed in the trunk of the Dodge EV that wouldn't be there in a production model, but there were nicely hidden, covered in the same material as lined the rest of the trunk.)
The Town and Country wasn't working, though, and the Jeep didn't have the ICE generator installed so was running only on battery power. Rhodes said the ENVI team has built "multiple models" of each in recent months and had simply run out of time to finish the LA Auto Show cars before it was time to ship them.
The reason there are multiple models is that Chrysler already has started on a plan to to have 100 of the cars on the road for real-world testing over the next two years-Rhodes said the plan is for 50 next year and 50 the year after, with one model ready for limited volume retail production sometime in 2010.
Nobody will say which model is the leading candidate for production, but we'd guess that the Town and Country would be a safe bet.
It is large enough to handle the extra weight and size of an EV's battery pack, and a range-extended EV model (or RE-EV) would give Chrysler - already king of the minivan segment -a unique entry in the growing electric car segment.
Just A Ploy?
Rhodes is an engineer and while he's got a lot of retirement money (and, we expect, bonus and incentive bucks and other potential future income) tied up in Chrysler's future, his job isn't to worry about finances but to build vehicles that people will want to buy - something Chrysler's a bit short of these days.
Still, we asked him how, with the economy collapsing, the auto industry collapsing faster and Chrysler's very existence being questioned daily in the mainstream and financial media, he can remain serious about his job.
Isn't ENVI just a smoke screen to make the politicians who control potential auto industry bailout funds more likely to end send some cash Chrysler's way?
How, we asked, can Chrysler afford to finance development of a whole line of electric vehicles when it can't afford to keep plants open and workers employed?
The financial struggle, he replied, is for others to worry about. He insisted that there's been no cut-back of funding for ENVI and no indication that Chrysler's bosses are anything but serious about moving forward with the project.
The question shouldn't be whether the company can afford to pursue green initiatives, but whether it can afford not to.
"There's always been product that has turned Chrysler around," he told us. "This is some of the product that will do it for the company in the future."
The South Korean automaker says it is getting ready to join the small list of automakers offering fuel-saving eight-speed transmissions.
---------- Genesis sedan could be first Hyundai to get new eight-speed transmission after 2010. ----------
Hyundai's research and development chief first talked about an eight-speed in September, and now the company's powertrain chief, Park Seong-hyun, has put a date on it, telling the Asia Pulse news service that the new transmission will be available in 2010.
The transmission is to be made by the automaker's affiliated Hyundai Powertech Company.
Park wouldn't say which vehicles it might be used on, but figure it first for Hyundai's top-of-the-line Genesis sport sedan, now equipped with a six-speed automatic.
Expanding the number of discrete gear ratios in a transmission enables automakers to improve fuel economy because the engine torque is maximized and less energy is wasted.
Lexus is the only automaker now offering an eight-speed transmission, but Germany's ZF Friedrichshafen is about to introduce one with BMW as its first announced customer.
VeraSun Energy Corp., the bankrupt ethanol refiner, said it has won court approval to receive about $215 million in funding from creditors.
The funds would enable the South Dakota-based company -- the nation's second-largest ethanol producer -- to stay in operation.
VeraSun said it expected to receive about $40 million to $50 million in funding from secured creditors this week with the rest coming through within 20 to 25 days.
The European Union may grant automakers a three-year delay in making new vehicles compliant with carbon-dioxide emissions regulations in light of the global financial crisis, negotiators said this weekend.
Representatives from the 27 EU nations met Friday and reached a consensus to push back the original 2012 deadline to 2015, according to wire services, citing a negotiator who participated in the talks.
The environmental target remains the same: New vehicles sold in Europe must emit no more than a benchmark average of 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer.
The consensus comes as European automakers seek $50.1 billion in loans to develop greener vehicles.
"The automotive sector is not in great shape, and for some, the commission's proposal amounts to asking a man who weighs 60 kilograms [130 pounds] to lose 30 kilograms [66 pounds] on pain of death," a negotiator was quoted as saying.
At the same meeting, the member states also agreed to an additional target to limit emissions to 95 grams per kilometer by 2020. The consensus now goes to the European Parliament for its consideration.
Fighting the long-held perception that much of the technology in their company's first "full"-hybrid system for the Escape hybrid SUV was bought or licensed from Toyota, executives and engineers at Ford were crystal-clear during this week's media preview of the all-new hybrid architecture for the company's upcoming Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrid sedans: Everything, they said, was designed by Ford in North America.
The new hybrid system is "100 percent Ford technology; 100 percent Ford design, invented right here in North America," said Nancy Gioia, Ford Motor Co.'s director of sustainable mobility technologies and hybrids. She and other engineers say every major component was developed under Ford engineering.
In detailing the key components, engineers said they stressed an interdisciplinary approach that helped optimize all components for maximum system efficiency. The process developed several intriguing new components and advances, they said.
Perhaps most impressive is the nickel-metal hydride battery pack, put together by Delphi Corp. using individual cells supplied by Sanyo.
The latest NiMH chemistry enabled Ford to use 17 percent fewer cells (208) in the pack and to reduce total system voltage to 275 volts from the previous 330 volts because cell power has been increased by 20 percent.
The pack nonetheless is 30 percent smaller and 23 percent lighter that the nickel-metal hydride pack used in the automaker's Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner hybrid SUVs.
The new battery chemistry also means the batteries can deliver their utmost at higher temperatures. As a result, engineers were able to ditch the previous system's dedicated cooling system - the battery pack now will be cooled with cabin air.
Ford engineers tell Green Car Advisor that losing the dedicated cooling architecture delivered a weight savings on the order of 15 pounds. That's on top of the enormous 50 pounds. chopped from the battery pack itself.
The system's more-powerful 93-kilowatt drive motor, higher-capacity generator (73 kW vs. 45 kW) and "power-split device" (CVT for lack of a better term) all are housed in one monolithic transaxle casting (top illustration). There is no increase in size or weight, despite the higher-power components.
We just can't help but be amazed, over and over again, at how the Web has no memory. Everything that happens now is new and never happened before.
We bring this up because there's been a flurry of postings about Hyundai's top executive remarking the other day that the company plans to begin selling a fuel-cell electric car in 2012.
---------- Hyundai has been working on fuel cell vehicles for years and thinks they can go commercial as early as 2012. ----------
It started out talking about how the South Korean automaker was planning to launch its first mass-market hybrid in 2009 in South Korea, then followed in the third paragraph with this: "A fuel-cell electric vehicle is expected in 2012, the company said."
We don't mean to toot our own horn, others had the same report back then. In fact, Hyundai had said as early as 2006 that it wanted to do a commercial fuel cell vehicle in 2012. But our sense of what ought to be headline and what ought to be footnote gets ruffled when we see the same headlines being recycled as fresh news.
Reminds us of the old Saturday Night Live skit in which comedian Chevy Chase, playing the show's news anchor, would solemnly announce week after week in tones usually reserved for outbreaks of war or pestilence that: "This breaking new just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."
In the real world, the Spanish dictator died in 1975, SNL's first year on the air, after a lingering illness. Chase was riffing on network news programs' efforts to keep the story going during Franco's illness by regularly reporting that he hadn't died yet. Chase kept the gag alive on SNL for nearly two years after Franco's death.
Our take on Hyundai Chairman Mong-Koo Chung's comments is that the news should have been "Wow, even in the midst of a global economic slump that threatens to last for years, Hyundai still sees possibilities in fuel cell vehicles and is willing to continue spending money developing them."
We don't do a lot of motorcycles here at Green Car Advisor
but we certainly understand the need many have to get out of the car and into the open air once in a while.
For those whose idea of a great weekend is to hightail it along an off-road patch atop a motorized two-wheeler, the folks at Zero Motorcycles have been offering the Zero X, a battery-electric dirt bike that competes with conventional 250 cc bikes.
Production is limited and the 2008 model sold out late last month.
Now the company is launching the 2009 Zero X dirt bike, which it says has been upgraded for better power, ride and handling.
The basic specs pretty much look the same: 23 horsepower, 17,400 watt motor, 58-volt, 2/3 kilowatt-hour battery pack, 40 miles (approximately 2 hours of rising (range with a two-hour recharging time and super light weight - although, at 151 pounds, the 2009 Zero X is six pounds heavier than the '08 model.
But Zero says it has incorporated a number of updates to the "drivetrain, frame, suspension, brakes, wheels and tires" that make the '09 model faster and more durable.
Ford's newest hybrids will be able to outpace the competition in a test of all-electric operation as they'll come with a battery-pack and power management system that will enable them to hit speeds of up to 47 miles an hour without cranking over their internal combustion engines, the company says.
----------
The 2010 Fusion hybrid will look a lot like this Ford image of a conventional 2010 Fusion Sport model, but with special badging and a world of difference under the hood.
----------
That's an 18 percent improvement over the 40 mph top electric speed of the company's present hybrids, the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner gas-electric SUVs and beats Toyota's Prius by 12 percent, or 5 miles an hour.
The new hybrids, to be launched in the first quarter of 2009 as 2010 models, also are expected to deliver up to 700 miles of city driving on a single tank of gas, Ford said. The company didn't specify the size of the hybrids' fuel tanks, but it uses a 17.5-gallon tank in the conventionally powered models
The automaker unveiled details of the upcoming 2010 Fusion hybrid and 2010 Milan hybrid sedans in a press conference today at its headquarters in Dearborn, Mich.
In addition to the all-electric top speed (which beats Toyota's Prius by about 15 miles an hour), features include a 2.5-liter, 155-horsepower four-cylinder gas engine coupled to an electronically controlled continuously variable transmission (CVT). (At least for year one, the new hybrids won't get the new turbocharged, direct-injection,1.6-liter Eco-Boost engine that Ford recently announced it will be building in Europe.)
Better Place,
the Johnny Appleseed of the electric vehicle movement, has selected Australia as the next country to sample its unique program of spreading EVs through private-government partnerships.
---------- Better Place hopes to promote widespread use of electric vehicles such as this prototype built by partners Renault and Nissan. ----------
Shai Agassi, the California-based organization's founder and chief executive, has executed an agreement with the Australian state of Victoria
for a $676 million (U.S.) project to build electric vehicle recharging stations along the country's heavily populated east coast. The group plans to expand later to Austriali's western region, dominated by the city of Perth.
The carmakers have agreed to develop electric cars for the program, with rollouts to begin as early as 2012, while Better Place -- formerly called Project Better Place -- would build and own the charging stations and, in some cases, a network of battery exchange stations that would enable motorists to pull in, swap discharged battery packs for full ones and be quickly on their way.
The team also has agreements for projects in Israel and Denmark.
According to a Financial Times report Wednesday, Australia's Macquarie Capital Group is planning to raise the money for Better Place while Australia's largest gas and electricity utility, AGL Energy, will pledge to add enough energy capacity from renewable sources to power the cars.
Qualifying for home mortgages, car loans and other big ticket credit items is getting harder for many to do, and major banks are hoarding cash as they wait for better - or at least more certain - times.
But contrary to a lot of what's passing for conventional wisdom these days, cash for clean-tech projects including alternative fuels and other green transportation technologies still is out there.
It's not as easy to come by as it was just a few months ago, but the head of the National Venture Capital Association
says that the private investment community is expected to pump out $30 billion this year, with $4.5 billion of it for clean-tech investments.
The annual total is unchanged from last year, but the amount earmarked for clean technologies is up 50 percent from $3 billion.
"Clean-tech is getting a bigger slice of the same-sized pie," NVCA President Mark Heesen said in an interview with Energy & Environmental News
, a subscription-only news service.
Early-stage companies that rely on cash from venture capital investors are heavily buffered from the credit crunch because most venture capital firms are investing money they raised during the past two years, said Heesen.
"We're very different than banks," he explained. "We're about equity, not debt."
One of the most recent to benefit form the flow of venture capital is Cobalt Biofuels
, a three-year-old California company aiming to convert non-food plant material into a cellulosic biobutanol fuel
.
Cobalt said this week that it just raised $25 million in a new round of private financing, bringing total equity raised to $38 million.
The question of just how automakers bringing diesels with urea-based anti-NOx exhaust systems into the U.S. would guarantee that the emissions-cleaning chemical would not be allowed to run dry was a sticking point for months in negotiations between federal regulators and carmakers.
---------- New 2009 Mercedes-Benz diesel SUVs use urea system to knock down NOx emissions. ----------
Well, now we know: The vehicles won't start if the urea tank is allowed to run too low.
We would love to make a joke here, but the industry trade journal Automotive News (subscription only)
beat us to it Monday, with one of the best double-entendre
headlines we've seen (or read) in years: "Urea must flow or new diesels won't go."
You know, of course, that the urea we're talking about isn't the kind produced by too many beers at a ball game, but a type of chemical ammonia that's synthesized from natural gas (and we'll spare you any attempt at a bodily functions joke here).
It is carried in large tanks on board the trio of Mercedes-Benz diesel SUVs -- the GL320, ML320 and R320 (above, right)
that hit dealer showrooms at the beginning of the month and is periodically injected into a special "selective catalyst reduction" or SCR exhaust catalyst, where it combines with the emissions of toxic NOx, or nitrogen oxide, breaking it down into harmless water vapor and inert nitrogen.
From the terribly remiss department: John Gartner, editor and co-founder of MatterNetwork.com, a site that covers sustainability issues, recently attended symposium on plug-in hybrids and the smart grid, sponsored by futurist Amory Lovins' Rocky Mountain Institute.
Because of attendance limitations, MatterNetwork was tabbed to be a sort of "pool reporter" for on-line coverage of the event (that means no one else from the blogosphere was invited - at least not as a writer), Gartner has compiled his postings on the blog's site, and we're remiss in not alerting you sooner to his reports.
The meeting, held earlier this month, brought together executives from more than 20 organizations - including Ford Motor Co., Tesla Motors, General Motors Corp., Duke Energy, Pacific Gas and Electric, Austin Energy, Wal-Mart, IBM, EDS/Hewlett-Packard, and ZipCar - to cogitate on and discuss the technical and financial obstacles to linking the battery-powered car and the commercial electric grid - so-called V2G, or vehicle-to-grid, technology
RMI organized the "Smart Garage" charette - a collaborative, problem-solving meeting - because it sees the transportation and power generation industries as major energy consumers and big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and, thus, likely candidates to be able to actually come up with some solutions to the growing problems of energy consumption and greenhouse gas buildup.
We are not fans of the idea of havign just one outlet cover an event as we believe that the public is best served by having what's being said and done reviewed, interpreted and commented on by as many resources as possible. The sound of one hand clapping just doesn't carry very far.
However, we believe Gartner to be a comprehensive, honest and thoughtful reporter of events, and found his reports on the Smart Garage event quite thought-provoking.
You can read them for yourself in MatterNetworks' transportation section, under the "Views that Count" heading. Look for Gartner's name over these four titles (listed here in chronological order):
A sizeable chunk of the SUV crowd still wants SUVs but is willing to downsize from large and luxury models to midsize utes - as long as the automakers continue to load them up with all mod cons.
---------- SUV owners moving down in size (blue bars) are far more interested that others in keeping deluxe equipment, according to study by AutoPacific. Click on chart to enlarge. ----------
That's the word from AutoPacific
, a global automotive market research and consulting firm headquartered in Southern California.
The company's research underscores the difficult choices - and technological challenges - the auto industry faces these days: we want vehicles with better fuel economy, which usually translates into smaller and lighter.
But a goodly percentage of us also want them to have power seats - front and rear -- backup cameras, power folding second- or third-row seats, power mirrors, power windows, power trunks and tailgates and more.
All those options require lots of electric motors, extra wiring and heftier components that can withstand constant adjusting - all stuff that adds weight, which, as we know, reduces fuel economy.
Hydrogen fuel-cell and plug-in hybrid test programs move over. BMW Group is joining the alternative fuels race in a big way, announcing today that it soon will field a fleet of 500 battery-electric Minis in the U.S.
The "Mini E" electric cars will debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show's media preview Nov. 19 and 20 and while BMW has not provided a launch date for the leasing program, it said the electric cars are to be built over the next few months, indicating a late 2008 or early 2009 start.
The company, which has been teasing about an electric Mini program since July
, said in a prepared statement being released this morning that it plans to lease Mini E models "to select private and corporate customers as part of a pilot project."
In addition to program and vehicle details, the company also released a number of exterior and interior photos (below).
Just in time for global economic collapse and the resulting really, really tight pocketbooks, comes word that if we buy enough hybrid cars, the increased volume should help automakers slash hybrid production costs by two-thirds over the next decade.
---------- The cost of building hybrids such as the upcoming 2010 Prius would fall dramatically with volume increases, says investment bank's study. ----------
A report by JPMorgan Chase & Co., predicts that gas-electric hybrid systems will cost automakers an average of $1,919 apiece in 2018, down 67 percent from the present average of $5,869.
The report bases its numbers on the supposition that global sales of hybrids will rise dramatically, from about 600,000 this year to 9.6 million in 2018.
With new car sales expected to be in the toilet for the next few years, we're hoping the big bank knows a lot more about the timing of an economic recovery than bankers seemed to know about the present collapse.
The Morgan Chase study, reported by Bloomberg
news service, says that North America will continue to be the world's leading hybrid market, followed by China and Europe, where hybrids will experience strong growth after 2013.
A Californian company is developing a new technique for recycling carbon dioxide and turning it back into fuel.
Workers at Santa Barbara-based Carbon Sciences believe they have made a breakthrough with their technology, which they say can transform carbon dioxide back into basic fuel building blocks efficiently.
Their biocatalytic process converts carbon dioxide into basic hydrocarbons -- methane, ethane and propane -- which can then be utilized to make higher-grade fuels like gasoline and jet fuel. The company says the conversions can be achieved without high temperatures or high pressures, which require a lot of energy.
By employing biocatalysis -- using natural catalysts to perform chemical reactions -- Carbon Sciences researchers hope to bypass the problem of inefficient energy ratios that can render many carbon dioxide recycling projects pointless.
Officials at Carbon Sciences envision setting up shop next door to large carbon dioxide emitters such as coal, gas-fired plants and oil refineries, and recycling concentrated streams of carbon dioxide discharged from fossil fuel plants.
After rudimentary purification and regeneration of the biocatalysts, the carbon dioxide is turned into hydrocarbons in liquid reaction chambers filled with biocatalysts. The liquids are then filtered and gases are extracted through condensers ready for conversion to higher grade fuel.
Anticipating a big boost in electric vehicle sales in Europe, Indian EV maker Reva
has expanded sales and distribution of its low-speed city cars into continental Europe after selling more than 1,000 in London under the "G-Wiz" brand name over the past few years.
---------- A model standing beside a Reva "G-Wiz" illustrates EV's small size. ----------
Reva's electric car, originally launched in India, is now on sale in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, Spain, Cyprus, Greece and Norway.
The Bangalore-based EV maker said it is looking for distributors for other European countries as well.
"With certain industry predictions forecasting that electric cars will constitute 20% to 25% of all new car sales by 2020, we hope to build on our early success as a technology innovator and succeed in this exciting new segment," Keith Johnston, president of the company's new European division, said in a statement late last week.
The best minds in the auto industry are busy developing all sorts of new "green" vehicles powered by high-tech batteries, hydrogen fuel cells
----------
Air car proponent Guy Negre with prototype 3-seat MiniCat compressed-air car. ----------
and even advanced internal combustion engines sipping good old-fashioned gasoline or diesel fuels. Could they all be misguided?
Guy Negre and Shiva Vencat believe they are.
Negre is the CEO and founder of Motor Development International
(MDI), a tiny company based in Luxembourg that has developed a family of automobiles powered by compressed air. Vencat is the company's exclusive representative in the U.S.
The two claim that a compressed-air car is a better alternative than any of those other technologies. They also maintain that MDI's compressed air technology is already viable for mass production, and they note that India's Tata is licensed to use it in vehicles that would be marketed in that country.
Of course, credible naysayers abound, including experts in automotive powertrain engineering who point to the technology's inefficiencies and warn that a car with a compressed air engine would be impractical for the long-distance highway driving that is common in the U.S. and other developed nations.
Nevertheless, Negre and Vencat are undaunted by the criticism, which they insist is unfounded and unsubstantiated. The critics have not driven MDI's compressed-air car, and would be converted to believers if they did, the two say.
In a recent meeting with Green Car Advisor
in New York, the Negre and Vencat briefed us on the company's compressed air technology and its product plans. Negre spoke entirely in French while Vencat translated.
MDI's "compressed air vehicles" or "air cars" will achieve twice the mileage of the Toyota Prius, emit zero or near-zero pollutants and cost practically nothing to operate, they say.
The ongoing economic crunch may accomplish for alternative fuels what an ambivalent marketplace and bipolar political system haven't been able to do: Thin the herd and get everyone working toward the same goal.
So far, automakers and fuel and energy companies have been wandering all over the place in the search for replacements for crude oil and improvements in vehicle fuel economy.
Some favor a particular approach - Toyota Motor Co. and hybrids, for example.
Others, like General Motors Corp., sample everything, spending part of their R&D budgets on fuels like ethanol, part on hydrogen, a little bit on improvements to the gasoline engine and the rest on battery-electric vehicles.
But with an already cash-strapped auto industry staring at double-digit declines in annual new-vehicle sales for the next few years, money for ongoing projects is going to be harder to find than a tree-hugger at a McPalin rally.
Alex Molinaroli, head of Johnson Controls' hybrid battery unit, is one of a growing number of industry watchers who believe that automakers are soon going to have to exert some discipline, pick a technology for long-term alternative fuel and powertrain solutions, and stick with it.
Electric cars are the hot topic at this year's Paris auto show, with General Motors, Renault, Nissan, Smart and many lesser-known car manufacturers showing off a huge variety of EVs.
They range from wildly exotic supercars to tiny commuter cars that look ready to park in your driveway. Some are strictly concepts. Others could go on sale - even here in the U.S. -- much sooner than you think.
Green Car Advisor's man in Paris, contributor Nick Kurczewski, was at the show last week and offers some thoughts on the biggest electric-car newsmakers there.
Chevrolet Volt
- Yes, we've written a ton about it and you've read even more, but we still can't ignore it. There it was, sitting on the GM stand in Paris, bowtie gleaming in the spotlights.
Chevy's Volt is often called a plug-in hybrid, and it is a hybrid by definition. But it also is an electric car, using only an electric motor for propulsion.
Its small 1.4-liter gasoline engine cranks over only to recharge the batteries and never sends its power directly to the Volt's wheels.
Whether you consider it an EV or a hybrid, chances are the bigger factor in consumer acceptance of the four-door sedan will be its escalating price tag.
A new bill just signed by the White House makes the Volt eligible for a $7,500 federal income tax credit, but before applying that, the sticker price - which determines the size of down payments and monthly lease or purchase costs - is likely to be at or above $40,000 when it goes on sale in late 2010 in the U.S.
That's awfully steep sticker-price, especially considering that new Honda Insight hybrid will cost less than $20,000 when it arrives next year.
Renault Z.E. Concept
- Renault and its sister company, Nissan, are busy co-developing electric vehicles that will go on sale as early as 2010. The Z.E. Concept is the first indication as to where Renault is taking its version.
The design of the Z.E. - for Zero Emissions -- looks like a shortened version of the humble Renault Kangoo, a tall and boxy utility van currently sold throughout Europe. The green glass in the concept model adds a bizarre touch of show-car drama.
Other details include the use of rear-view cameras instead of side mirrors - to smooth out the aerodynamics and improve range - along with solar panels built into the roof, to aid battery recharging.
The Z.E. concept car uses double-walled insulating bodywork, which keeps the cabin cozy whether it is hot or cold outside and requires less energy from the ventilation system.
Its lithium-ion batteries provide a driving range between 60 to 90 miles.
Renault does not currently sell cars in America, which makes it unlikely the French manufacturer will ever bring its EV stateside.
But it's Japanese partner has other plans.
Nissan Nuvu
- Don't worry if you love the idea of an electric-powered Nissan but hate the blobby looks of the Nuvu concept car.
The 2+1 seat Nuvu is important chiefly because it offers a glimpse of the lithium-ion powered drivetrain of the electric vehicle Nissan says it will start selling in the U.S. in 2010.
The Japanese company reassures us that the quirky Nuvu is not a totally faithful indication of what this production car will eventually look like.
Under its skin, the Nuvu's battery pack provides a range of 75 miles and a top-speed of 78 miles per hour. Range will likely be improved, and the wacky looks toned down a bit when Nissan unveils a more accurate glimpse of its upcoming EV during next year's Tokyo motor show.
Cellulosic ethanol pioneer Mascoma Corp.
says it has received a $49.5 million cash infusion from the State of Michigan and the federal Energy Department for development of a new plant in Michigan.
Mascoma, one of two cellulosic ethanol companies being backed by General Motors Corp., has developed a process that uses proprietary enzymes to convert wood chips into ethanol fuel.
The grants announced today include $26 million from the federal government and $23.5 million from the state.
Boston-based Mascoma also has a demonstration plant in Rome, N.Y.
While conventional ethanol is made from crops including corn and sugar cane, cellulosic ethanol is made from waste products and non-food crops such as praire grasses.
Production of both types of the alternative fuel has drawbacks -- including potentially increasing heat-trapping carbon dioxide. But conventional ethanol production has been blamed for increasing the cost of grain-based basic foodstuffs.
The goal of cellulosic ethanol backers is to remove the fuel's impacrt on the food chain and, possibly, to reduce the amount of energy required in ethanol production.
European automakers today called for $55.2 billion of low-interest loans to help develop greener cars in the fight against climate change, but their request was instantly rebuffed.
"This idea does not even merit discussion," a source at the European Commission said.
An auto industry group claimed the global economic crisis was making it increasingly difficult for carmakers to achieve European Union emissions targets by 18 percent over the next several years.
But the European Commission rejected the demand for a loan that would equate to over one third of the annual EU budget.
A representative for the auto industry group said it was trying to start a discussion of how the EU might support its automakers in a time of change.
The same group has asked the EU to create incentives for motorists to scrap vehicles over eight years old to speed up fleet renewal.
Borrowing from the Detroit 3 playbook, Europe's automakers plan to ask the European Commission for a $55.2 billion loan to accelerate the transition to fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel cars, The Wall Street Journalreported
today.
The request follows a similar move in the U.S., where Congress last week approved $25 billion in loans to help American carmakers improve the fuel economy of their vehicles.
Fiat suggested the request to European auto executives at a board meeting of the European Auto Makers Association, or ACEA, on Friday, the Journal reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter.
The board met to discuss the commission's proposals for tighter rules on emissions that scientists say cause global warming. Under the rules, Europe's automakers would face fines if the average emission for their vehicle fleet exceeded 120 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer.
Car companies have complained that meeting the emission limit for the entire fleet by 2012 isn't economically feasible for them, though they would agree to a gradual application of the rules. They have lobbied for the commission to delay applying the rules in full until 2015.
"All European carmakers agree on the [$55.2 billion] demand," a spokesman for Fiat said Saturday, confirming earlier comments by his boss, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne. The final details of an agreement remain unclear, another person familiar with Fiat's proposal told the Journal.
In case you've been in a deep, dank cave with no wireless connection for the past few hours, the news du jour
is that the House has approved the Wall Street rescue measure that includes the original $700-billion in bail-out bucks plus wads of cash for renewable energy, biofuels and energy-efficiency programs.
The $17 billion energy package also includes a plug-in hybrids tax credit plan
with an estimated price tag of $1 billion. It won't expire until the auto industry has, collectively, sold 250,000 plug-in cars and trucks that run at least part of the time on all-electric drive from energy stored in rechargeable, on-board batteries.
While none of the major automakers has yet to offer a plug-in, just about all (Honda Motor Co. is a notable exception) are working on them, with General Motor Corp.'s Chevrolet Volt perhaps the best known of the bunch.
Reporters walking the floor of the Paris Auto Show this week, however, are seeing a lot more as European car makers seem to have embraced the idea
of electric cars and gas- and diesel-electric hybrids with a fervor usually associated with revival meeting preachers.
German automotive giant Daimler says it has seen the future, and it is green and uses batteries.
The company, which last month launched a major electric car and charging station program in Berlin and has been testing electric Smart cars in London for almost a year, unveiled the newest generation of Smart EVs (or EDs - for electric drive) Thursday at the Paris Motor Show.
The tiny Smart, in production since 1998, is an attempt to help make individual transportation environmentally sound and sustainable and the quiet and emission-free ED versions, the company says, could be the answer.
Speeches at major auto shows are usually grandiose and full of promises, and Daimler Chairman Dieter Zetsche's was no exception as he talked of the future he sees for his company and the auto industry:
As people continue moving out of the suburbs and into cities to be closer to work and to cut their fuel bills, "the future will see an ever-increasing proportion of traffic on the roads in urban centers," Zetsche said.
"Zero-emission electric cars could shape the image of environmentally aware cities because zero local emission motoring is no longer science fiction - and also when seen as a whole emissions will be further reduced as the proportion of 'green' electricity increases. The future of mobility is green. We invented the car - and we will do it again!"
As the world as we know it crumbles around us, with older Americans staring at shrinking pension funds, younger Americans looking at grim job and housing scenes and everyone wondering which big bank is the next to
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62-mpg diesel Golf BlueMotion concept from VW is one of the cars to be featured at Paris show.
----------
collapse, why there's no credit and when elected representatives will stop worrying about politics and start working for the people, the City of Lights is preparing to flick the switch on the first post-meltdown auto show.
Talk about good timing.
But the Paris Motor Show is in Europe, home of the fuel efficient small car (of course, Europe also has given us 9 mpg Lamborghinis and equally thirsty Rollers, Ferraris and big Benzes, but who's counting?), and while there will be a few exotics on display the spotlight for the next few days is going to be on the gas sippers that will be unveiled over there.
We gave you a taste a few weeks ago with Green Car Advisor'sParis preview, and today Edmunds Auto Observer brings a comprehensive look at the hybrids, electrics, diesels and other fuel-efficient cars - production and concept - that will be on display as the show prepares to open its doors.
Click here for AO's take on the Paris show, which holds its media preview Thursday and Friday and opens to the public Saturday for a 16-day run.
Toyota Motor Co. and SunPower Corp.
opened the blinds and let the sunshine in on what the two companies say is North America's largest rooftop solar power installation.
---------- Workers install a SunPower solar array similar to Toyota's atop the Department of Energy building in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. ----------
The array of more than 10,000 photovoltaic modules is located atop Toyota's sprawling auto parts distribution center in Ontario, Calif. It was put into operation on Wednesday.
Toyota
said the installation, which covers 242,000 square feet of the buildings' roof, will produce 2.3 megawatts of electricity per day - sufficient to supply 3.7 million kilowatt hours, or 60 percent of the building's power needs.
It will replace conventional generating that was producing an estimated 3,200 tons a year of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, one of the major "greenhouse" gases believed to contribute to global warming.
Unlike most of the vehicles there, it won't be running, but a production model of General Motors Corp.'s Volt series hybrid car (left)
will be on hand for viewing at AltCar Expo 2008
this weekend in Santa Monica, Calif.
The two-day event, now in its third year, is one of the nation's premier showcases for alternatives to the conventional gasoline-burning automobile.
Organizers say more than 100 vehicles - cars, trucks, scooters and 'cycles with natural gas, battery-electric, hydrogen fuel-cell electric, compressed air, biodiesel, flex-fuel and hybrid propulsion systems - will be on hand, several available for test drives.
The expo, to be held Friday and Saturday at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, drew more than 10,000 attendees last year.
In addition to the vehicle displays, the event features numerous displays by alternative energy providers and proponents; a series of seminars addressing climate change and transportation and energy trends and featuring panelists from government, industry and advocacy groups.
GreenHunter Energy Inc. said Monday it expects its Houston, Texas, biodiesel refinery to be out of service for six to eight weeks due to damage from Hurricane Ike.
The plant (right, pre-storm) can produce 105 million gallons of biodiesel per year, making it the largest biodiesel refinery in the country.
Located on 20 acres beside the Houston Ship Channel, it suffered floodwater damage and lost power when Ike came ashore early Saturday along the Texas Gulf Coast with strong winds and torrential rains.
The local utility in Houston, Center Point Energy, is expected to restore electricity and natural gas service to the location in six to eight weeks. In the short term, generators will provide temporary interruptible power.
GreenHunter can produce biodiesel from animal fats, vegetable oils or a blend of the two at the zero-emissions refinery.
The site was originally home to a waste-oil recycling facility owned by Channel Refining Corporation. GreenHunter bought it in early 2007 and converted it into a biodiesel plant.
Nano-technologies and battery-electrode developer QuantumSphere Inc., said today it has filed for a patent on a technology that can increase the capacity of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries as much as fivefold.
The technology, if suitable for the mass market, could substantially increase the range of plug-in hybrid and battery-electric vehicles using lithium-ion batteries.
Range, reliability and safety all are major concerns being voiced by battery development specialists meeting this week at the Argonne National Laboratory to discuss developments in lithium-ion technology.
QuantumSphere, a six-year-old company based in Santa Ana, California, said its new technology involves a "novel electrode structure" in which the battery electrode material is enriched with "nano lithium particles" that increase the battery's fuel source.
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Nano particles such as these manufactured by QuantumSphere are microscopic particles typically 1-billionth of a meter or less in diameter.
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In additional to hybrid and electric automobile applications, the new technology could be applied to lithium batteries used in cell phones, laptop computers and other electronic devices.
"Instead of four hours of operating time on a laptop computer, a single charge could last up to 12 hours and provide users with enough computing time for a complete round-trip flight between Los Angeles and New York," said Kevin Maloney, quantum Sphere's president and chief executive.
The company didn't offer an example of what its technology might do for an electric car battery pack.
We opined last week that Honda was skipping at least the initial heat of the battery electric vehicle race to concentrate on its hybrid and fuel-cell electric programs.
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Honda believes fuel-cell electric cars such as its FCX Clarity will be marketable before battery-electric vehicles can make the grade.
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Now comes word, via Bloomberg News, that the automaker also is bowing out of the plug-in hybrid contest.
Batteries just aren't advanced enough to make rechargeable gasoline-electric vehicles sensible replacements for gasoline-only cars, Honda research chief Masaaki Kato said in a recent interview with the business news service.
"For battery-powered vehicles to become more widespread, more popular in the market, we feel battery technology needs to advance further,'' Kato said. "We just don't see it providing the type of driving performance you get with a gasoline-powered vehicle.''
Honda's reticence flys in the face of aggressive moves by General Motors Corp, with its promised Volt plug-in sedan, due in fleets in small numbers toward the end of next year and scheduled for mass production at the end of 2010, and Toyota Motor Corp., which is developing a plug-in Prius hybrid for fleet use and has scheduled a late 2009 introduction (no word on when or if the car will be made available in the retail market).
GM, as you may know, celebrates its 100th birthday on Tuesday.
Some wags marvel that the company's hung on this long, others pray for another 100 years.
As you might expect, the top dogs at General Motors are among that second group (although there may be a few who, in the privacy of their own minds, feel some kinship with the doubters) and are going all out to celebrate the company's centennial not as an end but as a beginning.
To that end, GM is holding a number of online events Tuesday and we thought we'd alert you to them now as several of the potentially better ones require advance registration.
The biggie is a Webcast roundtable discussion featuring industry experts pondering the next 100 years of personal transportation.
It could provide a good look at where the General is heading as it prepares to roll out new vehicles such as the Volt plug-in hybrid and continues to test fuel-cell electric vehicles and, we hope, other types of fuel-efficient and/or oil-free vehicles of the future.
The roundtable will be Webcast live on Tuesday at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, and you can register here
to view and to submit questions to the panelists.
Honda Motor Co. and Yamaha Motor Co. have set launch dates for electric motorcycles, the Nikkei business daily reported today.
Yamaha aims to launch electric motorcycles by 2010 with a range of 60 miles on a single charge, comparable to those with 50cc engine displacements, the paper said.
There was no information regarding the Yamaha's battery.
Honda, the world's largest motorcycle maker, will launch lithium-ion battery electric motorcycles in 2011, targeting fleet customers such as Japan Post Service, which likely would consider replacing its 90,000 gas-powered motorcycles with electric models.
Neither officials at Honda nor Yamaha would provide additional details, including prices.
A Honda Cub Concept fuel-cell motorcycle is pictured above.
Pressed to lower its cars' carbon dioxide emissions and to give consumers more fuel-efficient vehicles, luxury car maker Daimler says it anticipates that gas- or diesel-electric hybrids could account for one in fiive of its Mercedes-Benz unit's cars and SUVs by 2015.
Beginning with an S-Class hybrid(right) next year, Daimler plans to roll out at least one hybrid vehicle a year, Susanne Klauser, a spokeswoman for the German carmaker told Bloomberg News today.
German auto companies, heavily invested in advanced diesel technology, have been slow to jump on the hybrid bandwagon and still argue that putting two powertrains in one car is a costly and inefficient way to go green.
But there's no arguing with success and Daimler, BMW, Volkswagen and Porsche all have watched Toyota Motor Co.'s Prius shoot to the top of the best-seller lists in recent years, as consumers have become convinced that hybrids are one of the best ways to cut fuel consumption.
Daimler hasn't abandoned other green technologies, however, and recently showed Green Car Advisor a spate of projects including an advanced fuel-cell electric car and an improved clean-emissions gasoline engine that delivers diesel-like torque and fuel economy.
From the flights of fancy file: Skycar designer Moller International said this week that is has designed a concept plug-in hybrid sports car capable of flying for about 15 minutes.
We'll get to the details in a bit, but the idea of a PHEV flying car sure raises a bunch of questions:
Does it require a really, really long extension cord to support 15 minutes of flight?
How heavy - or light - is the battery pack and what kind of power is needed to lift it.
Is this the answer to a question that no one ever thought to ask?
With all the people on the road today who can't seem to drive for 15 minutes without running into someone or something, do we really want to encourage folks to take off and "drive" in the sky?
Would anyone really pay $250,000 for it?
Northern California-based Moller calls the 2-seat car the "Autovolantor
" (from a Moller-invented word, Volantor, which was derived from the Italian "volante
," which means flying, or, in music, to move with light rapidity, and the French "Volant
," meaning having wings extended).
The company says the car was designed at the behest of an unnamed wealthy businessman who found commuting from Moscow to his country home unbearable because of the Russian city's crowded streets.
The photo Moller supplies (above)
looks like a plastic model from Revell, but it shows that the car would use eight engines to lift it vertically like a hovercraft - only higher if it's going to fly - when sitting on the ground becomes too much.
There's been some grumbling and rumbling among the green group this week after automobile.com posted an item maintaining that electric car maker Tesla Motors had confirmed that its next model will be a plug-in gas-electric hybrid rather than a pure EV.
Relax, says says Tesla marketing veep Darryl Siry. The report was wrong.
The next Tesla, like the company's iconic Roadster, won't have anything to do with an internal combustion engine.
Tesla's long-awaited family-sized sedan -- formerly called the White Star but now dubbed the " Model S" -- will be a battery-electric vehicle, Siry said in a brief interview with Green Car Advisor.
The sedan - we suspect there will be a new, catchier name coming soon - is the Tesla electric vehicle that will be assembled in California under a tax-break deal announced earlier this year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
No production date has been revealed, although there's lots of speculation that Tesla is aiming at late 2010.
If "several" is closer to two than to three, Siry might have confirmed that today, telling us that that the Model S is "several years away" from hitting the streets.
He said that the company is shooting for an "entry level" price tag of around $60,000 but added that Tesla plans several trim levels that will be priced higher.
"And the $60,000 is our goal," he said, leaving lots of wiggle room. "Actual pricing will be announced much closer to production, and we're still several years away."
As promised, Honda has released the first official photo of its new Prius-fighter, the 2010 Honda Insight hybrid.
Smaller than the Honda Civic Hybrid but still a five-seat vehicle, the new Insight (right) is expected to be priced at under $20,000, making it the least-expensive hybrid on the market when it goes on sale next year.
Although still called a "concept," the car pictured is not expected to be much different from the production version that will be introduced in the flesh (so to speak) on Oct. 2 at the Paris Motor Show.
The Insight, a five-door hatchback sedan, takes many of its styling cues from Honda's FCX Clarity fuel-cell electric car, Honda says - ignoring critics who say it owes a lot of its look to Toyota's Prius, the world's best-selling hybrid.
(Honda probably wouldn't be hurt if that association was to be made by a lot of buyers, but we're not going to suggest that any resemblance to the Prius is intentional. Both cars were designed to minimize wind resistance, and that pretty much dictates the basic body shape.)
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Honda's Insight (right) and the CR-Z concept (left) borrow design cues from FCX Clarity fuel-cell car (center).
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Whatever it looks like, the new Insight - which takes its name from the original Honda hybrid, the two-seat Insight introduced in 1999 and discontinued in 2006 - sticks with Honda's proprietary Integrated Motor Assist hybrid system.
It is a somewhat downsized version of the system, though, likely with a smaller battery pack and power control unit than in the IMA system that helps propel the Civic Hybrid. A smaller car, however, can get away with a smaller hybrid system.
While not revolutionary on the technology side of things, the new Insight is a ground-breaker on the price front.
It "will break new ground as an affordable hybrid within the reach of customers who want great fuel economy and great value," said Takeo Fukui, Honda chief executive.
The company wouldn't disclose fuel economy estimates, but one would expect a car that is lighter and more streamlined than the Civic hybrid to deliver better mileage.
Honda says the Insight will be followed - probably sometime in 2010 - by an all-new model based on the CR-Z sport coupe concept car shown at the Tokyo Auto Show in October, 2007.
Chrysler co-president Jim Press, the carmaker's self-described "demand" man charged with developing a product line people actually want to buy, says that despite its image, the company isn't stuck in the performance-car track and is well on the way to launching a full slate of "green" vehicles.
In addition to gas-electric hybrid models of the Chrysler Aspen (left)
and Dodge Durango SUVs just hitting dealer showrooms and a hybrid Dodge Ram pickup due next year, Chrysler engineers are testing a trio of hybrid and all-electric models with componments that are "near" market-ready, Press said.
Speaking to a group of automotive journalists and industry insiders in Los Angeles today, Press -- former head of Toyota's ultra-successful U.S. sales and marketing operation -- said that while a slimmed-down Chrysler will not abandon the Hemi V8s, hulking trucks and off-road vehicles it is known for, it is also looking at ways to boost fuel economy and, eventually, offer plug-in hybrid and battery-electric versions of many of its models.
A Dutch company called Detroit Electric but owned by a longtime British auto industry executive, says it plans to start building electric cars, buses and trucks with a Malaysian partner next year.
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Malaysian journalists take a Proton-bodied car with Detroit Electric's drive system for a spin.
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Albert Lam, former chief executive of Lotus Engineering and now chairman, chief executive and majority owner of Detroit Electric, told reporters in Malaysia that his company is negotiating with Malaysia's national automaker, Proton (which owns Lotus), to build the zero-emission vehicles.
He said he also was in discussions with an American automaker and a German car company, but declined to identify them.
An Associated Press report reprinted in numerous U.S. newspapers including the Detroit Free Press, quotes Lam as saying the initial car would cost about $24,000 and would use lithium-ion batteries and a powerful new lightweight electric motor developed by Detroit Electric.
So here's what it comes down to: two global automotive giants jousting over who has the better technology for future hybrids.
In this corner, if somewhat reluctantly, it's Toyota Motor Corp. and the "plug-in" hybrid-electric vehicle
(PHEV), an extension of its renowned Hybrid Synergy Drive system popularized the world over by the standard-setting Prius.
And in that corner, simultaneously playing underdog and catch-up, is General Motors Corp. and its heavy-duty green hype-machine, the Chevrolet Volt - a vehicle that, just as with Toyota's plug-in Prius, doesn't yet exist in retail form.
The Volt, still being tested and prototyped, is the high-fashion showcase for GM's potentially game-changing but unproven "extend-range" electric vehicle (E-REV) technology.
GM says that a Volt vs. plug-in Prius match-up isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison because the Volt isn't really a hybrid.
The company insists that it is an electric vehicle - albeit one fitted with a "range-extender" combustion engine that can recharge its lithium-ion batteries in the event the vehicle needs to be driven beyond the planned 40 miles of electric-only propulsion.
Truth is, the Volt is an EV, but it also fits the classic definition of a series hybrid, in which one powerplant produces electricity to feed the electric motor that propels the vehicle.
The Prius, plug-in or otherwise, is a hybrid of another stripe; a parallel hybrid, so called because its two power plants (gas and electric) can work separately or be harnessed together- operating in parallel - to provide propulsion.
The two systems are going to end up head-to-head in the race to win the hearts and minds of an expanding population of environmentally concerned buyers and head-to-head in the struggle to determine whether one design prevails in a high-efficiency future nobody can yet fully forecast.
Oh, and one final bit of fun and intrigue: neither company has been immune to a little trash-talking about the other's technology.
Unwilling to leave the potentially lucrative electric vehicle market to Japanese, European and - maybe - American carmakers, Indian auto companies are rushing to develop EVs of their own.
The impetus is twofold: To combat gridlock and air pollution at home, and to cash in on global demand for cleaner, eco-friendly vehicles.
The Indian firms will be joining a rapidly growing field of manufacturers looking to market environmentally-focused vehicles.
Industry heavy-weights like General Motors, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Renault-Nissan and Daimler all have promised to bring plug-in hybrids or battery-electric vehicles to market within the next three-to-five years.
Some of their upstart Indian competitors, however, say they will hit the market with their electric vehicles as early as the end of this year.
To find out what's on tap, Green Car Advisor
took a look at three of the main players in the burgeoning Indian electric vehicle market.
Reva
Reva Electric Car Co. is the minnow of the bunch. And no, we're not referring to the 102 inch length of the company's cartoonish-looking two-door hatchback (right)
-- four inches shorter than a Smart Fortwo.
Based in Bangalore, Reva is a small family-owned company that happens to be one of the most established electric car manufacturers in the world, with a vehicle that initially went on sale seven years ago.
A Reva offers room for two adults plus two children in the rear, and a top speed of 50 miles per hour.
Since retail sales began in July 2001, some 2,600 Revas have found homes. Chetan Maini, Reva's deputy chairman and chief technical officer, says the majority have been sold in Bangalore and London, where it's called the "G-Wiz."
Maini explains that Reva's intention was to begin with "one Indian city and one European city," and build the business from there.
Looking to boost the fuel efficiency of its commercial trucks (left),
auto giant Daimler's truck division has opened a hybrid research center in Japan, where it owns a big chunk of truck maker Mitsubishi Fuso.
The new Daimler Global Hybrid Center will be located on Mitsubishi Fuso's campus in Kawasaki, the company said.
Mitsubishi has developed diesel-electric hybrid systems for city buses and light commercial trucks and Daimler wants to harness that expertise to its own Teutonic engineering prowess, according to industry analysts at economic consultant Global Insight
The aim is to come up with systems that can be applied to the range of commercial vehicles it manufacturers in its Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Sterling, Western Star and Mitsubishi Fuso subsidiaries.
And if some of that technology happens to trickle down into the company's Mercedes-Benz and Smart passenger car divisions, well, so much the better.
The cost of automotive injury claims involving lighter-weight vehicles tends to be significantly higher than the cost of claims involving heavy vehicles, according to new research from the Insurance Research Council.
The findings are important because they suggest insurance costs should be taken into account by motorists who are principally interested in purchasing a lighter vehicle to save money at the pump.
The council -- a nongovernmental organization supported by insurance companies -- found that the average auto injury claim payment in accidents involving lighter-weight vehicles was 14.3 percent greater than the average payment in accidents involving heavy vehicles.
These findings suggest that as gas prices prompt more drivers to choose lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles, the average cost of injury claims arising from motor vehicle accidents can be expected to climb.
The council's findings indicate that the higher average claim costs associated with lighter vehicles have the potential to at least partially offset whatever fuel savings that might be achieved at the pump.
I'm a non-mechanical hypermiler. I do everything short of modifying my car to eek out as many miles from a tank of gasoline as is humanly possible.
So when Ford Motor Co. asked me if I'd like to attend an eco-driving class they were hosting in Phoenix yesterday to learn how I could become a more fuel-efficient driver, I quickly agreed.
It's them who would learn from me, I thought. The so-called class is just more green-washing event put on by an automaker that was slow to get with the high-MPG program. So I thought.
And I was dead wrong. It was I who had much to learn about hypermiling -- or as Ford prefers, eco-driving.
There were maybe a dozen journalists in the class and nearly as many people there from Ford. We learned that during the preceding days, Ford had posted an ad on craigslist inviting Phoenix-area residents to evaluate a few vehicles and earn $125 for their trouble.
A diverse group of 48 people participated, only Ford wasn't primarily interested in what the 48 thought of the vehicles. Rather, Ford wanted to see whether or not they could be taught to drive very fuel efficiently in a short period of time.
The participants adhered to an 11.6-mile route, seven miles on 25- and 35-mile-an-hour streets through residential and commercial neighborhoods and 4.6 miles on a fast stretch of Interstate 10. They drove four vehicles: a 2008 Ford Fusion, a 2009 Ford Flex, a 2008 F-150, and a 2009 Lincoln MKS AWD.
Seated beside each participant was a Ford eco-driving trainer, only the participants didn't know that initially. Rather, they were led to believe that the trainers were researchers tasked with recording the participants' likes and dislikes regarding the four vehicles.
Organizers of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize
opened the official registration process this week - the first step in qualifying for the fuel efficieny competition's $10 million in prizes - after receiving letters of intent form more than 120 teams.
The prospective entrants are from 17 countries, with most coming from the U.S. - 28 states are represented on the initial list.
The contest challenges entrants to design, build and operate a production-capable vehicle that can deliver, at minimum, the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon fuel economy.
Prospective entrants range from Indian automaker Tata Motors to a high school team from West Philadelphia.
Missing from the preliminary list are all of the major U.S., European and Asian automakers, but a few celebrities apparently will be on hand, among them Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Neil Young, who has said he intends to enter his 1960 Lincoln Continental - converted to a plug-in hybrid running on biodiesel..
Registration closes January 1, 2009, and entrants then will have about eight months to prepare for a series of competitions that will start in New York in September and take the vehicles to as many as nine major U.S. urban areas through early 2010.
Winning teams must deliver vehicles that achieve at least 100 miles per gallon-equivalent fuel economy and meet stringent emissions standards. the teams also must present compelling business cases for their vehicles.
Click here for more information about the competition, the prize and the entry process.
Mercedes-Benz, with its 2009 BlueTec SUVs
, and Volkswagen with its 2009 Jetta TD
I are the big players in the U.S. diesel market these days. But it looks like BMW is close behind.
We got the keys to a Euro-spec BWM 745d over the weekend and gave it a whirl as part of a program, sponsored by diesel systems developer Bosch
, to show off the differences that advances in diesel technology have brought to oil-burners in recent years.
Diesels, long thought of by U.S. motorists as smelly, noisy and dirty - because they were smelly, noisy and dirty - have undergone a metamorphosis overseas as Europe's carmakers turned to them to help cope with governmental concerns over CO2 emissions and consumer concerns over fuel prices that are now running in the neighborhood of $8 a gallon.
They now are clean and quiet and pretty near odorless thanks to stringent emissions filtering systems and the low sulfur content of modern diesel fuel.
They also deliver quite a wallop in the fuel economy department - usually offering 30 to 35 percent better mileage than gasoline versions of the same vehicles.
The 745d, for instance, delivered a pretty consistent 24 miles per gallon in combined highway and city driving while we had it- 33 percent more than the comparably performing, gasoline-fueled 4.8-liter 750i sedan that's EPA rated at 18 miles per gallon in mixed use.
We came across a recently publiched spy photo that purports to show a slice of the driver's side of the 2010 Toyota Prius interior.
If that's what it really is, Toyota is definately ratcheting things up with its 4th generation hybrid, due to make its inaugural public in January at the Detroit Auto Show.
The photo of the new interior (above left), published on the World Car Fans site, shows a car with sportier bucket seats and steering wheel than the 2008 model (right).
The new model's dash is sleeker, with a one piece center stack and console and -- first for a Prius -- a console-mounted shift lever.
Based on other published reports, we can say with some degree of certainty that the new interior will fit into a car that looks a lot like the present Prius, although it likely will be a bit wider, a tad shorter and maybe just a teensy bit taller.
The 2010 model also is expected to boast a larger gas engine -- maybe 1.8 liters versus 1.5 liters now -- and a more powerful electric motor for quicker acceleration, better cruising speed and, with an improved nickle-metal hydride battery pack, slightly longer all-electric range at low speeds.
Not only are they the primary building block of the computer and advanced electronic devices entertainment, communications, military, industrial, you name it) but they are, increasingly, the key to greening up the automobile.
That's the word according to Gartner Inc., the Stamford, Conn.-based information technology research and consulting company.
In a recent report
, Gartner research analyst Amy Leong opined that the worldwide market for automotive microprocessors, spurred by the industry's race to develop fuel efficiency and emissions reduction innovations, should top $6.3 billion by 2012.
That's up almost 19 percent from an anticipated $5.3 billion this year.
About half the total in 2012 will be directly related to environmental and fuel management improvements in our cars and trucks.
And now that we've helped those of you with portfolios diversity them a little bit more, let's look - through Leong's eyes - at why microprocessors (above)
are making it easier for auto companies to get greener.
Many of the auto industry's green car technologies are dependent on microprocessors, she wrote.
The list would include hybrid cars, diesels and direct injection gasoline engines, fuel-cell and battery-electric vehicles, even things like Nissan's "eco-pedal" that pushes back to tell you that you're accelerating too hard.
Microprocessors, aka minicomputers on a chip, control the interaction of gasoline and electric powerplants in hybrids (as well as regenerative braking systems and a host of other items); they run variable valve timing and complex high-pressure fuel injection systems and on and on and on.
Microprocessors also drive electric equipment that can replace hydraulic pumps and other hefty components as automakers adopt technologies such as electronically controlled brakes, steering and acceleration to lighten vehicles ('cause a lighter car is a less-thirsty car).
These systems are increasingly complex, "amplifying the need for higher-performance 32-bit" microprocessors with increased memory, Leong wrote in her report.
We don't have much of a portfolio ourselves, (unless you count a passbook account at a local credit union), but we're still heartened by the analysis.
Why? Because anything that makes it easier and, ultimately, cheaper, for automakers to go green is a good thing in our book - and microprocessors do tend to make things get cheaper. (Remember those $100 pocket calculators that now cost about $3.95?)
Use of advanced tech also can help speed things up.
The report says Gartner analysts expect "revolutionary zero-emission and alternative fuel solutions" to be in commercial use after 2015.
But who knows? All it takes is one little breakthrough in chip design and 2015 could become 2012.
PS - If you want to read the whole 14-page report, Gartner will sell it to you for $1,295 - just click here
for the company's marketing site.
Otherwise, thank the folks at Urban Age Institute
in San Francisco for tipping us to a boiled-down version of the report so we could synthesize it for you.
If the though of driving around with tanks of hydrogen pressurized to 5,000 pounds per square inch makes you nervous, consider this: Fire fighters routinely enter burning buildings with 4,500 psi air tanks strapped to their backs.
With those words of assurance, GM hydrogen specialist Alex Karos led us out to the fuel-cell Equinox for our first refueling lesson.
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GM's Alex Karos, center, explains working of hydrogen fuel nozzle while Edmunds editors Chris Walton (left) and Brian Moody (back to camera) look on.
Well, General Motors finally has a few Equinoxes (Equinoxii? Equinii?) in its long-term media fleet and has loaned one to the crew at Edmunds for the next week.
So you'll be reading a lot more about it in up coming reviews from staffers for both Edmunds.com and Edmunds Inside Line. We here at Green Car Advisor will provide links to the pieces as they appear so you'll not miss 'em.
Still A Gas
But while you're waiting, we though we'd try to give you a feel for a fueling process that could someday replace topping off the tank with a gas other than gasoline.
Right now it's a bit more difficult - requiring a greater degree of dexterity than pulling into your local service station for a tank of regular unleaded.
We did, actually, pull into a local service station, a Shell station on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Federal Way in West Los Angeles. Shell recently installed a hydrogen pump there as part of program, backed by the feds, to help get people used to the idea of hydrogen as a fuel for passenger cars.
There are two big islands at the station, one with a bunch of gas pumps, the other with a gas pump and the new one labeled "Shell Hydrogen."
There were 10 of us from Edmunds gathered there the other morning, all aiming to drive the Equinox while we have it and all required to go through the brief fueling lesson so we could fill it up ourselves while out there on the road.
As the nine cars crossed the Hydrogen Road Tour
"finish line" Saturday in the shadow of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, promoters of the 13-day, 31-city event piped in Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" - theme song of "Rocky III" -as many in the audience of about 150 people waved mini checkered flags.
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Daimler's A-Class mercedes-Benz fuel cell car on display at Road Tour finale.
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The image they hoped to convey, of course, was the hydrogen, like actor Sylvester Stallone's fictional fighter, Rocky, is a winner.
It remains to be seen, though, whether the hydrogen fuel-cell technology promoted by the tour has a chance of knocking gas-electric hybrids out of contention as the dominant alternative to fossil fuel-powered engines.
Fully fueled, such cars, which produce electricity through an electro-chemical process in the fuel cell stack and limit tailpipe emissions to mere drops of water, have traveling ranges that vary from 100 miles for Daimler's Mercedes-Benz F-Cell to about 270 miles for Honda's FCX Clarity.
It sometimes looks like the automotive future is all about batteries, but there's still a lot of research into hydrogen,with a potential breakthrough
just announced at an American Chemical Society
meeting this week.
Researchers at Ohio State University
say they've developed a new catalyst that can convert ethanol - and possibly other biofuels - to hydrogen at far less cost than possible with present methods and materials.
---------- Producing and distribution hydrogen fuel -- there are only 63 pumps in the entire country -- is one of major impediments to development of fuel-cell electric cars. ----------
The catalyst could make it possible for individual fuel stations to produce hydrogen on site, eliminating the need for costly pipeline or other national distribution systems and hastening the day when fuel-cell electric vehicles could become a viable part of the nation's transportation pool.
Umit Ozkan, the chemical and biomolecular engineering professor who developed the catalyst, said it costs about 26 cents an ounce to produce - while rhodium, the precious metal now used in most catalytic systems, costs about $9,000 an ounce.
Now: "Let's see. I've got $50, so guess I'll get 12 gallons of regular unleaded."
Someday: "Gimme 10 gallons of that sewage sludge distillate please."
Sounds yucky, but sewage sludge and garbage and plant waste that used to go to the dumps may someday be part of the nation's transportation fuels supply.
A two-year-old California startup, Byogy Renewables Inc.
, said today that it has licensed a process developed by researchers at Texas A&M University that turns waste into high octane gasoline.
Production of the alternative fuel could begin within two years (could
being the operative wiggle word), said Daniel Rudnick, chief executive of the Bakersfield-based company.
The beauty of the biofuel Byogy hopes to produce is that it doesn't need to be blended with other fuels, he said.
And it can be shipped through existing gasoline pipelines and pumped from existing gasoline pumps, unlike biodiesel or alcohol fuels such as ethanol that are corrosive and need to be blended and, in some cases require a separate delivery and pumping infrastructure.
"This technology is important because it addresses many issues -- eliminating waste, producing economical fuel quickly and being friendly to our environment," said Kenneth Hall, associate director of the Texas Engineering Experiment Station
at Texas A&M University, which developed the waste conversion process.
"Furthermore, this technology is ready to be commercialized now and does not require any new scientific or technological breakthroughs to become a reality," Hall said in an interview with Greenwire, a subscription-only environmental news service.
Byogy uses a multi-step process that begins with fermenting the waste and then treating it hith heat and chemicals to produce intermediate materials that are subjected to heat and pressure to produce 95-octane gasoline, Rudnick said in an interview with Green Car Advisor.
Ford Motor Co. announced today that its 30 fuel-cell test vehicles have exceeded the expectations of the company's hydrogen research engineers by accumulating more than 865,000 real world miles without significant maintenance issues since the fleet's launch three years ago.
Encouraged by the program's success, Ford said it recently reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to extend its three-year-old hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle program for up to 24 months, until the next-generation system is ready for deployment in the 2010 timeframe.
Ford was one of the first automakers to launch a fleet of hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles in 2005, after unveiling a prototype in late 2003. Its Focus Fuel Cell fleet partners include government agencies across the U.S. and in Canada, Germany and Iceland, where cold climate testing is expected to result in significant performance improvements on the next generation.
Additional Ford hydrogen projects have included a fleet of 20 hydrogen internal combustion engine buses, the Fusion Hydrogen 999 that set a land speed record in 2007, a Fuel Cell Explorer and a Plug-in Hybrid Edge that uses a fuel cell-powered HySeries Drive.
A hydrogen fuel cell vehicle produces electricity through an electro-chemical process in the fuel cell stack. Its only tailpipe emissions are drops of water. Fuel cell vehicles hold the promise of decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming by replacing vehicles that run on fossil fuels.
According to Ford's global fuel cell team, the first-generation fuel-cell vehicles worked much better than originally expected with virtually no degradation in performance. In light of that success, the Department of Energy, which shares the test program's operating cost with Ford, agreed to extend the program.
In some of the best news builders of low speed electric vehicles have heard in some time, the Canadian transportation agency
has updated its regulations to allow truck versions of the battery-powered LSVs to be driven on roads with speed limits of up to 50 kilometers (31 miles) per hour.
---------- Low Speed electric trucks such as this Miles model weren't allowed on most Canadian roads until now. ----------
The regulations
, posted earlier this month, essentially make Canada's rules mirror those already in place in the U.S.
For low-speed electric truck makers and importers, including Chrysler subsidiary GEM
, Miles Automotive
and Zap
, that means vehicles designed for sale in the U.S. can now be shipped north -- and without expensive modifications.
Previously, all of Canada's provinces prohibited low-speed cars from being driven on public roads, limiting their use to closed campuses - business complexes, parks, airports and schools, for example.
But Canada's definition of LSVs omitted trucks, making impossible to market them in that country for any use -- until now.
We hope GM doesn't release the Chevy Volt to dealers as slowly as it is dribbling out information about it.
The latest teaser, from GM battery guru Denise Gray, is that the lithium-ion battery pack for the extended range electric car (also called a plug-in hybrid, and both terms are correct) will weigh-in at about 400 pounds, have fewer than 300 cells and pack 16 kilowatt hours of energy.
Gray, director of hybrid energy systems for General Motors Corp., divulged the info during last weeks Management Briefing Seminars sessions in Traverse City, Mich.
She said the T-shaped pack will take six or seven hours to fully charge and is being designed so it can fit into a number of different compact models that GM offers worldwide.
In other Chevrolet Volt news, GM says that tweaks to the car's aerodynamics (it was a all angles and sharp edges in its concept phase, looking quick but delivering the aerodynamics of a refrigerator box) have added almost 7 miles to the distance it can travel on battery power alone.
The company has promised a car that can deliver 40 miles of all-electric driving before the on-board internal combustion generator kicks on.
In case you've been wondering, major automakers and the lame-duck Bush Administration have reaffirmed their joint commitment to hydrogen fuel and to getting fuel-cell electric and other hydrogen-using vehicles into the retail market by 2018.
The happy group renewed its vows during a hydrogen technology showcase Thursday in Washington.
----------
A pair of Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell electric Vehicles are shown in rendering of a hydrogen fuel station being installed near los Angeles International Airport.
----------
"With continued investment, hydrogen holds the potential to help fundamentally change the way we power our vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions," Bud Albright, an Energy Department undersecretary, said in remarks delivered during the public showcase.
The Energy Department, Transportation Department, nine automakers with prototype hydrogen-using vehicles and a number of fuel companies and other hydrogen advocates are in the midst of a cross-country tour to promote hydrogen as the logical successor to oil for fueling cars and trucks.
The manufacturers in "Hydrogen Road Tour '08" are BMW, Daimler, Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Honda Motor Co., Hyundai-Kia, Nissan Motor Co., Toyota Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG.
Ford motor Co. says it will build a retial model of the Lincoln MKT luxury crossover next year - probably as a 2010 model - and will offer one version with its new "Ecoboost" fuel efficiency powertrain.
----------
Left, Ford designer Peter Horbury introduces MTS concept at Detroit Auto Show.
----------
The company also said it will use the Ecoboost technology in a new version of the flagship Lincoln MKS sedan, to be launched next year as well.
The Ecoboost strategy, announced earlier this year, combines a smaller-than-usual engine with a turbocharger and direct injection to deliver 20 percent better fuel economy, 15 percent fewer tailpipe emissions and, often, more horsepower than the larger fuel-injected engines that typically would be offered as standard equipment in most models.
Ford intends be producing 750,000 Ecoboost-equipped vehicles a year by 2013, offering the engine package for almost every model it makes.
The Lincoln MKT, a three-row, 7-passenger crossover styled like a sport-wagon, was introduced as a concept model in January at the Detroit Auto Show.
The standard production version will use a new 3.7-liter V6 while the Ecoboost package will use a 3.5-liter V6, the company said today.
The company hasn't released fuel economy estimates for either engine and is keeping power specs for the 3.7-liter engine under wraps as well.
Many analysts expect it to come it at about 300 horsepower.
The company said today that the smaller and greener Ecoboost engine will produce 340 horsepower and 340 pound-feet of torque.
Ford will build the new Lincoln at its Oakville plant in Ontario, Canada.
The sky isn't falling - yet - but North America's battery development infrastructure is - falling behind those of Asia and Europe, that is, according to Mary Ann Wright
, chief executive of the Michigan-based Johnson Controls-Saft battery development venture.
Speaking Tuesday at the annual Management Briefing Seminars for auto industry types in Traverse City, Mich., the former Ford hybrid chief (right)
said North America's battery components supply base is weak and needs investment from government and private sources.
She said that more than 90 percent of the lithium needed for the lithium-ion batteries that will power the next generation of hybrids as well as batter-electric and fuel-cell electric vehicles of the future will come from South American and China because North American production wasn't profitable and has been shut down.
Wright also bemoaned a shortage of engineers in the U.S. capable of working on battery development.
On the bright(er) side, she announced that her company, a partnership of U.S.-based global auto industry supplier Johnson Controls and French battery maker Saft, has been awarded a contact from a consortium of automakers and battery manufacturers and developers to help develop a domestic supply infrastructure.
The U.S. Department of Energy is also involved, providing $8.2 million in funding for the two-year contract.
Honda's Integrated Motor Assist mild hybrid system (right) would get a boost from new high-power lithium-ion batteries the company could start using for 2010 models.
By Bill Visnic, Senior Editor
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich
. -- Honda Motor Co. is preparing for an all-new, advanced lithium-ion battery that will allow its engineers to extend Honda's Integrated Motor Assist hybrid-electric technology to larger vehicles, a senior company executive told Green Car Advisor during an annual auto-industry conference frequented by heavy-hitters from carmakers' management ranks.
Honda has in the past been non-committal about lithium-ion, but that posture apparently is changing. And Honda recently was linked in lithium-ion talk with Japanese electronics giant and battery developer Sanyo Electric Co.
John German, American Honda's manager of environmental and energy analysis, said the coming lithium-ion battery formula -- the developer of which he wouldn't name -- does not enjoy extra capacity compared with known lithium-ion characteristics. Instead, the new chemistry is targeted at allowing the batteries to charge much more quickly.
This, in turn, will allow for an increased amount of battery capacity that can be assigned to actually powering the motor. And more power means the IMA system can be employed for larger, heavier vehicles.
While automakers wait for more 85 percent ethanol blend gasoline pumps to be installed at gas stations, the ethanol industry is waiting for automakers to produce more "flex-fuel" vehicles that can safely burn the E85 blend, in what has resulted in a widespread waiting game.
"E85 needs more infrastructure," Rick Gunther, Midwest fleet and commercial operations manager for General Motors, told the subscription news service Greenwire. "I tell retailers, 'We're the chicken, you're the egg.' "
Detroit's Big Three automakers are waiting for Japanese companies Honda and Toyota to be more active in the flex-fuel market to stimulate demand for more pumps, but so far their response has been slow. Toyota plans to introduce a flex-fuel version of its Tundra in 2009.
Pump manufacturers told Greenwire they are waiting for Underwriters Laboratories certification of safety and efficiency on the new blender pump, which would offer more options for ethanol blends -- beyond the 10 percent or 85 percent currently available.
And everyone is waiting for U.S. EPA to decide whether it's safe to use a 20 percent blend of ethanol in car engines. The 10-percent blend is now the maximum for regular engines, although EPA has approved E85 for flex-fuel vehicles.
Ethanol proponents say E20 and maybe even E30 are safe for regular car engines, although automakers disagree.
Researchers at the University of California at Davis have developed a process for making a new kind of biofuel -- one they say is cheap, easy to make and takes advantage of hard-to-use cellulose.
Research published by Mark Mascal and Edward Nikitin in the German journal Angewandte Chemie describes a method to transform biomass into fuels that could be used as substitutes for diesel fuel.
In an e-mail to Greenwire, a subscription-only environmental news service, Mascal said his process very efficiently turns raw materials into fuel and is simple and inexpensive compared to processes to make ethanol from cellulose.
Many U.S. and international companies are pursuing the conversion of biomass to ethanol, in large part spurred on by federal ethanol mandates.
But while using sugars to make fuel is fairly straightforward, producers have stumbled over challenges involved with processing plant waste and other cellulosic materials that exist in abundance and would avoid conflicts between food and fuel.
Mascal told Greenwire that while the recent publication covers just the processing of sugars into furanic fuels, his research shows similarly strong results for cellulosic materials that are currently being written up for a follow-up paper.
The hot air that escapes from a car's tailpipe could help us use less gas.
Researchers are competing to meet a challenge from the U.S. Department of Energy to improve fuel economy 10 percent by using wasted exhaust heat as energy to help power the vehicle, according to an Associated Press article.
General Motors is close to reaching the goal, as is a BMW supplier working with Ohio State University. Their research into thermoelectrics -- the science of using temperature differences to create electricity -- couldn't come at a better time, as high gas prices accelerate efforts to make vehicles as efficient as possible.
GM researcher Jihui Yang told the AP that a metal-plated device that surrounds an exhaust pipe could increase fuel economy in a Chevrolet Suburban by about 5 percent, a 1-mile-per-gallon improvement that would be even greater in a smaller vehicle.
The mileage improvement was achieved by using the generated electricity to reduce the load on the alternator. Because it takes mechanical power from the crankshaft to move a belt that runs the alternator that produces electricity to power headlights, ignition coils, the radio and other electrical components, the greater the load on the alternator, the greater the demand on the vehicle's fuel to turn the crankshaft.
Reaching the goal of a 10 percent improvement would save more than 100 million gallons of fuel per year in GM vehicles in the U.S. alone, the AP reported.
Honda's FCX Clarity fuel-cell electric car (right) is one of 10 vehicles traveling 'cross country in Hydrogen Road Tour '08.
Ever wonder what a hydrogen fuel cell really looks like, or how a fuel-cell electric vehicle handles? Itching to try that hydrogen-burning BMW 7-Series that so far has been piloted publicly only by high profile business, entertainment and political people?
(Article modified at 6:45 a.m, Pacific Daylight Time)
Your chance of laying eyes, or hands, on a vehicle using what many still believe will be the fuel of the future increases beginning today as a coalition of hydrogen backers launch a 13-day, 18-state, 31-city, cross-country tour to boost interest in hydrogen vehicles.
We wish them well. And we hope everyone who has a chance stops by, takes a look - or a drive - and becomes a hydrogen missionary.
But there's a sad note to what is being billed as the "Hydrogen Road Tour '08."
At times, Mostly,
the vehicles will be trucked rather than driven to locations very near their various destinations on diesel or gasoline-burning commercial carriers. After being off-loaded, they'll be driven under their own power just a few short miles to the venues.
A hydrogen fuel-cell bus already in the fleet of big red buses serving London tanks up at a BP hydrogen station.
London's new mayor, intent on undoing some of his predecessor's most expensive anti-congestion plans, has tossed up a roadblock that is likely to further slow progress on the snail-paced development of a global hydrogen vehicle infrastructure.
Boris Johnson, who replaced Ken Livingstone earlier this year as Lord Mayor of England's capital city, canceled an order Livingstone had placed for 60 hydrogen vehicles, according to a report by analysts in the London office of Boston-based Global Insight economic consulting.
It would have been England's largest hydrogen transport project and one of the biggest anywhere. It also likely would have boosted interest in hydrogen vehicles and demand for hydrogen fueling stations by including a variety of cars, trucks and even motorcycles and scooters, all using hydrogen fuel cells to power emissions-free electric drive systems.
Johnson said he still will accept the 10 hydrogen buses his predecessor had ordered as additions to the city's growing test fleet of fuel-cell electric buses.
But one of his spokesmen told a major London newspaper that Johnson had decided the 60 smaller prototype fuel-cell electric vehicles would not help stimulate the market in hydrogen transportation.
Ironically, Johnson just a few weeks earlier told a group of London school children that hydrogen is the alternative fuel of the future.
The hydrogen buses alone, however, will cost the city about $20 million ($1.92 million or £1 million each), and Johnson apparently doesn't have enough faith in the future to spend that much or more on the 60 smaller vehicles.
AE Biofuels Inc., a Silicon Valley energy-crops startup, announced today that it will open the nation's first integrated cellulose and starch ethanol demonstration refinery (right) on Monday.
The Butte, Montana, refinery is expected to produce up to 150,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol annually from local wheat straw, corn stover and other agricultural waste materials, said Rory Mackin, a spokesman for the Cupertino, California-based company.
The refinery will use a patent-pending enzymatic process (see graphics) to break down tough cellulosic materials into fermentable stands of sugar, Mackin said. If the technologies work as expected, AE Biofuels will likely expand the plant to produce 1.2 million gallons of ethanol annually, he said.
"The enzymes do work," Mackin told Green Car Advisor. "It's only a matter of getting them up to commercial scale," he said, adding that company scientists "may have to do some tweaking" of the enzymes for certain feedstocks to make that happen.
AE Biofuels' project comes amid a high-powered political push to reduce the nation's dependence on fossil fuels.
President Bush signed an energy bill last year that requires the use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels annually by 2022. The legislation includes specific targets for cellulosic ethanol, starting with 100 million gallons in 2010 and escalating sharply over a decade.
Major oil and chemical companies are responding.
On Wednesday, British Petroleum PLC said it would invest $90 million in Cambridge, Massachussets-based Verenium Corp. to research and develop cellulosic ethanol, a biofuel typically produced from the non-edible parts of plants
Nissan packaged its new electric vehicle ssytem in a Cube compact van for testing, but is planning a more conventional sedan for production.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
OPPAMA, Japan -- Much of the rest of the auto industry seems to be slowing down, but Nissan Motor Co., hoping to ride the green wave to growth in the U.S. and globally, is pumping billions into environmental initiatives that executives say could propel the company to the top tier of automakers in a just a few years.
In pursuit of that goal, Carlos Ghosn, Nissan's charismatic chief, already has committed the company to zero-emissions leadership by 2012.
Nissan this year has announced plans for a rear-wheel-drive hybrid and a battery-powered electric car by 2010; has formed a partnership with electronics giant NEC to develop a new generation of powerful lithium-ion batteries for hybrids and EVs; is helping develop a rapid charging system for electric cars that could recharge battery packs in as little as 10 minutes; and continues development work to commercialize hydrogen fuel cells for automotive use.
It showed off many of those technologies for the first time in a seminar this week at its research and development facilities in this port city southwest of Toyko.
The company isn't alone. As fuel prices have soared globally and international concerns about energy independence grows, most automakers have begun or stepped up efforts to bring alternative fuel and alternative power plant cars and trucks to market.
But Nissan is a standout for its push for battery EVs and its determination to make the technology -- promising in the late 1990s but long-since abandoned by most -- viable once again.
On Wednesday (Tuesday night in the U.S.) Nissan let a group of journalists try out prototypes of its 2010 EV and hybrid powertrains and showed us the technology behind the advanced lithium-ion batteries that will make them go.
Minoru Shinohara (right)
, Nissan's senior vice president of technology development, told Green Car Advisor
that the company sees a business advantage in EVs and intends to be the industry leader in affordable, mass market zero emission cars that use batteries to power electric motors.
Nissan also wants to be a leader in providing the batteries and the battery-charging infrastructure that will make EVs work, he said.
While others champion the gas-electric hybrid and the plug-in hybrid with limited all-electric range, Nissan's faith in the all-electric vehicle is based on its belief that people all over the world are moving out of suburbia and back into cities as they try to minimize commutes and economize on fuel.
PORTLAND, Ore. -- I'm sitting in my hotel room after a day of panels and seminars at the 2nd running of an event called Meeting of the Minds, and am wishing I had a better one than was issued as original equipment.
This is a by-invitation gathering of about 250 people, mainly concerned with transportation and urban planning, and was convened to consider, as the confab's subtitle states: The Innovations We Need for More Sustainable Cities.
The reason an automobile writer, albeit one specializing in green issues, was invited (and I have to confess I'm not the only one) is that these folks get it -- most cities in the U.S. were built to accomodate the car, and there's no cure for what ails our municipalities without addressing transportation-related woes.
After a full day of discussions, it is clear that a lot of people are working hard to head off disasters that could be caused by horrid traffic congenstion, rapidly degrading infrastructure and a national political malaise that has robbed us of leaders with the guts to stand up and lead the charge for things we need.
Researchers at Ohio State University have invented a new material that could potentially make cars more efficient by converting heat wasted through engine exhaust into electricity, RenewableEnergyWorld.com reports.
The researchers say that the material has twice the efficiency of anything currently on the market.
The same technology could work in power generators and heat pumps, said project leader Joseph Heremans (right), Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology at Ohio State University.
The materials are known as thermoelectric materials, and they rate the materials' efficiency based on how much heat they can convert into electricity at a given temperature.
Previously, the most efficient material used commercially in thermoelectric power generators was an alloy called sodium-doped lead telluride, which had a rating of 0.71. The new material, thallium-doped lead telluride, has a rating of 1.5 - more than twice that of the previous leader.
What's more important to Heremans is that the new material is most effective between 450 and 950° Fahrenheit - a typical temperature range for power systems such as automobile engines.
Some experts argue that only about 25 percent of the energy produced by a typical gasoline engine is used to move a car or power its accessories, and nearly 60 percent is lost through waste heat - much of which escapes in engine exhaust.
A thermoelectric device can capture some of that waste heat, Heremans said. It would also make a practical addition to an automobile, because it has no moving parts to wear out or break down.
For additional information, go to the article posted at RenewableEnergyWorld.com.
The future of diesel passenger vehicles in the U.S. market is coming under question by some in the auto industry as diesel fuel continues to run about 20 percent higher than gasoline, nearly erasing the diesel vehicle's fuel efficiency advantage.
But European automakers with a strong diesel product line - including Volkswagen
, Mercedes-Benz
and BMW
- all say they will stick with their plans to launch a number of 50-state legal diesels in the U.S. in coming months and years.
The doubters are no slouches, though.
We've written about Nissan Motor Co.'s diesel concerns
(which exist even though the company intends to being a diesel car to the U.S.) and on Monday the Wall Street Journal
quoted a board member from tier-one auto industry supplier Continental saying he's become more skeptical about the economics of diesel in the U.S.
Fuel-Sipper Savings
Our own number crunching,
however, shows that even at a 20 percent fuel price disadvantage, diesels can still save money at the pump because they can deliver 30 percent or better fuel economy over gasoline-fueled versions of the same models.
The new diesels also are qualifying for federal green car tax credits that help offfset the diesel premium carmakers charge to cover the higher cost of diesel engines and emissions equipment.
The race is on to develop cellulosic ethanol that comes from waste material and plants that aren't part of the normal food chain and can be grown in much of the country, as map (left) shows. The resulting fuel can help offset oil use in the U.s. and abroad.
Cellulosic ethanol refineries
seem to be growing these days like the switchgrass many hope to use to make an oil-replacement fuel for our cars and trucks.
The latest announcement comes from DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol, a new joint venture of DuPont
and Denmark's Danisco
(a food and enzymes conglomerate).
The two plan to build a 250,000-gallons-a-year cellulosic refinery and research facility in eastern Tennessee, near Knoxville, feeding it with corn cobs, corn stover - the leaves and stalks of corn plants - and with switchgrass grown by area farmers under a program aided by the University of Tennessee's Biofuels Initiative
.
Cellulosic ethanol is a plant-based alcohol fuel that is not dependent on food crops,
as is the corn-based ethanol now produced commercially in the U.S.
Its drawback, to date, is that it is more difficult to break down fiberous plant material to extract the sugars that are then fermented into alcohol. That has made cellulosic processes more expnesive and more energy intensive than producing ethanol from corn.
Well, the car qualifies, but it's the buyers who'll get it -- a $1,300 federal income tax credit.
That's what comes with the first 60,000 of the 2009 Jetta TDIs that Volkswagen dealers sell.
The credit, from the same pot 'o funds that the hybrid credit comes from, is designed to help ease the pocketbook pain of buying greener cars with advanced or alternative -- and thus pricier -- powertrains and fuel systems.
The 50-state-legal '09 Jetta TDI, which hits dealer showrooms in late August (most dealers are limited to a single demonstration model right now), is priced $2,000 higher
than the standard gasoline model, so the credit will lower the diesel premium to just $700.
The diesel Jetta has recently been rated for fuel efficiency
by the Environmental Protection Agency at 30 mpg in the city and 41 mpg on the highway -- in a test that the government acknowledges wasn't designed to properly rate diesels and tends to understate actual mileage. A test commissioned by VW showed better numbers of 38 miles per gallon in the city and 44 on the highway.
Using the lower EPA fuel economy numbers, it looks as if TDI owners will be able to save enough on fuel to pay off the price difference in a reasonable amount of time.
We promised a few more photos of Honda's first FCX Clarity
customer getting his car, and here they are.
Honda delivered the car to Hollywood producer Ron Yerxa and his wife, Annette Ballester, in a closed ceremony Friday, so we were unable to attend and shoot our own photos.
---------- Ron Yerxa and Annette Ballester receive ceremonial key to Clarity from Honda of Santa Monica's sales manager, Dan Rowand. ----------
We apologize that the pictures, supplied by Honda Motor Co. seem a bit promotional, but we thought the event was worth presenting because it marked the first long-term retail delivery of a fuel-cell electric car.
General Motors Corp. supplies models of its fuel-cell electric Equinox to regular people in its Project Driveway, but only for about a month at a time.
In contrast, the car Yerxa and Ballester received is for a three-year-lease.
About 199 more 2009 Honda Claritys will follow, with some to be leased in Japan, but most slated for customers in four Southern California areas with access to publicly available hydrogen fuel pumps.
Friday's delivery ceremony occurred just shy of three years after Honda unveiled the initial concept model of the car at the 2005 Tokyo Auto Show, and about nine months (hmmmm) after the first production model was unveiled at the 2007 Los Angeles auto show last October.
Above left, Yerxa and Ballester receive refueling instructions at new hydrogen station in West Los Angeles from Honda fuel-cell vehicle program consultant Tim Cunningham. Above right, a happy Yerxa shows off his new car.
We'll provide some photos and perhaps a bit more text in just a little while, but wanted to be first to let everyone know that Honda has made good on its promise to start getting the swoopy and silent Clarity into consumers' hands by the end of July.
The first customer for the limited-production fuel-cell electric car is Hollywood producer Ron Yerxa ("Little Miss Sunshine"), who has described himself as a green guy who just wanted to be able to drive the coolest clean car around.
Like others who have signed up to lease the Clarity for three years (at a heavily subsidized $600 a month), Yerxa lives in Southern California, near one of four hydrogen fueling stations that Clarity drivers can use to fill their 74-miles-per-gallon (actually, it's "gallon-equivalent" as hydrogen gas is measured by weight - kilograms - not volume) cars.
A GM worker adjusts Chevrolet Volt's internal combustion "range extender" engine-generator on test-bed at automaker's new powertrain development center in Pontiac, Mich.
Amid all the bad news coming out of Detroit these days, a little ray of sunshine: the new, 450,000-square-foot GM Powertrain Engineering Development Center has been officially opened for business.
GM intends to use the center - which it calls that largest and most technically advanced in the word - to speed development of new alternative fuel, fuel-efficient and/or low- emissions drive systems. That would include engines, transmissions, electric motors and power electronics.
In a posting on the GMnext blog this morning, Dan Hancock, the automaker's vice president for global powertrain engineering, says the center is designed not only to provide state-of-the-art testing capabilities but to speed up the processes by as much as 50 percent to slice 10 weeks off the development time for a new powertrain.
That's development speed the ailing automaker desperately needs as it scurries to catch up to what Asian and European rivals are doing in the green powertrain arena.
We can only hope now that weak knees and shortsightedness in the boardroom and the corporate suites don't result in slashed budgets and canceled development programs - as has all too often been the case when profits turn to losses and the future begins looking as if there might not be one.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Sprawling GM powertrain center (left) is jammed with high-tech test equipment (center) and outfitted with thermal oxidizers (right) to destroy 96 percent of the carbon monixide emissions form engines beging tested.
Rendering of a waste-to-ethanol plant being built in the Midwest by Coskata Inc., a start-up firm financed venture capitalists and by General Motors Corp.
Los Angeles County's decision the other day to give BlueFire Ethanol a permit to build a $30 million waste-to-fuel plant in California's high desert raised a question: How much money is being pumped into efforts to produce oil-replacing automotive fuels from things such as wood pulp, algae,wheat chaff and the gazillions of tons of garbage society creates each month?
A recent survey of venture capital firms - the same wells of largesse that helped fuel the dot-come and Internet booms - helps answer that.
It's not a whole lot when compared to the money being spent to turn food supplies into ethanol and to hunt for more, and more efficient, ways to suck crude out of the ground.
But, as my dad was fond of saying about any huge sum of money, it's sure a lot more than I make in a week!
In the first half of the year, according to the survey by Thompson Reuters reported in the New York Times, venture capital firms invested $612 million in biofuel development firms, up from $375 million for all of 2007.
The total for this year is likely to top $1 billion, and if even a few of the biofuel firms being aided by the investment funds manage to become commercially viable, the flood gates could open.
Maps from Iowa State University show existing biofuels plants (ethanol on left, biodiesel on right) in green, proposed plants in yellow.
We hear a lot of doubt when the subject of Aptera Motors and its odd-looking, three-wheeled EV is raised around the office.
But the company and search engine giant Google has announced that Google's green tech investment arm has just pumped some of its money into Aptera.
The $2.75 million investment was made by RechargeIT, a unit Google.org started to "accelerate the commercialization of plug-in vehicles."
Google.org, if you are trying to keep score here, is Google's philanthropic arm.
"We've been looking for top entrepreneurs working to find innovative transportation solutions, and we're delighted to include Aptera Motors among those innovative companies we're supporting," said Karl Sun, a Google.org investments principal.
Right, BMW 7 Hydrogen on Nürburgring racetrack. The car or one like it will be available for test drives.
The Detroit area is famous for the Woodward Dream Cruise, a summertime showcase of thousands of hotrods, muscle cars and other exotics.
Now in an effort to improve Motown's gas-guzzling image, a new group has organized what they call Nextcruise, which will actually give the public an opportunity to drive what many see as the next generation of vehicles - hybrids, fuel cell, clean-diesel, plug-in electric and other green machines.
The low-emissions, fuel-efficient vehicles will be available for free 15-minute drives on a first-come, first-served basis in Pleasant Ridge, just outside Detroit, in mid-August.
The event will take place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 16, and from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 17, at Memorial Park, 23925 Woodward Avenue, Pleasant Ridge 48069-1199.
Nine automakers have agreed to provide green vehicles and green-car-technology demonstrations for event to date. They are: General Motors, Chrysler, Ford, Nissan, Toyota, Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes-Benz and BMW.
In a speech that every American ought to read or at least watch, former VP Al Gore today told an energy conference "to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge: for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It's time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now."
It was in large part his inconvenient-truth pitch, but he broadened his case; he says we must abandon fossil fuels for national security and dire economic reasons, too. The New York Times' coverage made a nice note of the expansion.
But we could practically hear the ears of thousands of plug-in EV fans perk up when the Nobel laureate said, 27 minutes into his speech: "We could further increase the value and efficiency of a Unified National Grid by helping our struggling auto giants switch to the manufacture of plug-in electric cars. An electric vehicle fleet would sharply reduce the cost of driving a car, reduce pollution, and increase the flexibility of our electricity grid."
Those 49 common-yet-wonderfully-arranged words were magic to Felix Kramer, one of this nation's most resilient proponents of plug-in EVs, and thousands of other plug-in fans.
"This definitive acknowledgment of the benefits of electrification gives advocates of steps on global warming a better answer for transportation than timid suggestions that more people buy more efficient gasoline cars or drive less," Kramer wrote in a passionate posting on his calcars.org site.
But it was another Website that came to mind when we heard Gore speak, the one belonging to Tesla Motors, maker of the all-electric Roadster. Tesla sponsors blogs for its customers, one of whom wrote something two years ago that stayed with us.
The first-ever international conference dedicated exclusively to plug-in electric hybrid technology will be held in California's Silicon Valley next week.
"Plug-In 2008: A Short Drive to Tomorrow" takes place July 21-24 in San Jose. The event is open to anyone and on-site registration is available.
Admission isn't cheap, with full access to the conference starting at $250 for students with ID, but everyone who's anyone in the PHEV world will be there. Among the attendees:
Senior representatives from the automakers, high-tech component manufacturers, electric utilities, state and federal government.
Exhibitors who will showcase the latest innovations associated with PHEVs and supporting electricity infrastructure.
Scientists who will share current technical research on PHEVs in areas including batteries, powertrains and vehicle to home technology.
Analysts who will discuss the business case for PHEVs, including potential adoption scenarios, customer segments and profit potential.
Policymakers who will explain how regulations impact PHEVs and the electricity grid, and how future rules may accelerate PHEV adoption.
Clean-tech entrepreneurs who will outline their ideas to expand the PHEV market with new technologies for vehicles and communication systems.
General Motors Corp. announced today that it will lay off salaried workers, cut truck production, borrow up to $3 billion and make additional investments in green-car technologies in response to the weak economy, high fuel prices, shifts in consumer vehicle preferences, and the lowest U.S. industry sales volumes in a decade.
GM said the moves will raise $15 billion to help cover losses and turn around its North American operations, including $10 billion from internal cost-cutting and $5 billion from selling some assets and borrowing against others.
"We are responding aggressively to the challenges of today's U.S. auto market," GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said in a broadcast to employees. "We remain committed to bringing to market great products that target changing consumer preferences for more fuel-efficient vehicles."
Wagoner noted that 11 of GM's 13 most recent major U.S. product launches, and 18 of its next 19 launches, are cars and crossovers, which are key growth areas.
Spending for non-product programs will also be reduced, the company said, but powertrain spending will be increased to support the development of alternative propulsion and fuel economy technologies and small-displacement engines.
Choosing a fuel-efficient automobile was a whole lot simpler 30 years ago, the last time the U.S. was in the throes of a gasoline price crisis. It was often as simple as buying a small vehicle with a manual transmission.
Today, with gas prices soaring to new record highs almost weekly, finding fuel economy means navigating an almost bewildering selection of vehicles. Even enormous SUVs can qualify if they come equipped with gasoline-electric hybrid drive systems.
Behind this tremendous hike in choices -- to a fairly significant extent, experts say -- has been a concomitant increase in the variety of transmissions.
Whereas in the 1970s there were only four- and five-speed manual transmissions and three- and four-speed automatic transmissions, now there are six-speed manual, six-, seven- and eight-speed automatic, six- and seven-speed "dual-clutch" automatic-manual, and continuously variable transmissions.
The result: more efficient engine operation and higher fuel economy in every car, whether it's a high-performance Porsche Carrera or a modest Volkswagen Jetta.
But there are important differences among these sophisticated transmissions, including in how much they contribute to better fuel efficiency. Knowing those differences may help you the next time you're in the market for a new car.
Ninety-five percent of motorists polled recently said that high gasoline prices have prompted lifestyle changes, and nearly as many said the near-record fuel costs have changed the way they drive or maintain their vehicles, the results of a survey released today show.
Forty-four percent of those polled reported driving more slowly or less aggressively to increase fuel economy, 35 percent indicated they were in the market for a more fuel-efficient vehicle and more than half said they would be shopping for another vehicle if the price of a gallon of gasoline reaches $5.
The respondents were generally optimistic that fuel prices won't rise much in the near future, with nearly three in four saying they believe the national average price for a gallon of regular-grade gasoline will be less than $5 during the Labor Day weekend (August 29-September 1).
Thirteen-hundred and 12 people participated in the survey, which was conducted by Edmunds.com, the parent of Green Car Advisor, June 20-25.
Additional survey results and commentary can be found at Edmund.com's Karl On Cars blog.
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan -- Like the environmentally friendly "hydrogen energy loop" that he designed more than a half-century ago, Stanford R. Ovshinsky's career has come full circle.
He was among the first in the world to outline how solar and hydrogen power might someday renewably and cleanly provide most of modern man's transportation and other energy needs -- his "loop" -- and now it looks as if things might come to that.
At 85, Ovshinsky finally is enjoying a turnaround in fortunes of the company he founded in 1960, Energy Conversion Devices Inc.
The inventor's science underlies fabulous technologies such as flat-screen TVs, photovoltaic roof shingles, lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries for cell phones and automobiles, and a form of computer memory that Intel is investigating as a possible successor to Flash.
But Ovshinsky always ran ECD more as a research institute than as a capitalistic enterprise and was unable to make the company commercially successful over the long haul. ECD's board and long-suffering investors finally ran out of patience and ushered Ovshinsky out last summer.
Also booted was CEO Robert Stempel, the former General Motors chief executive who had teamed with Ovshinsky 13 years ago and had brought ECD to the brink of commercial viability.
Since the shakeup, the long-moribund stock of this small technology company has risen to prices of around $77 a share, about double its trading average last fall. ECD also just reported a first-quarter profit, its first in years.
General Motors' leaders are not nuts, and yet to pour hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car - the Chevy Volt - guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.
So says the Wall Street Journal, in a particularly cynical and yet possibly prescient piece. With each hectic advance in the development process, the expected sticker price to consumers has gone up. At last leakage, GM is saying now the Volt may need a sticker price of $45,000.
GM executives justify the costs and risks of the Volt as a way of changing the automaker's image in the minds of consumers and politicians, the article says. To commit a pun, the Volt is GM's vehicle for making a bailout of GM politically acceptable.
The company has already started signaling it expects Washington to provide a whopping $7,000 tax credit to Volt purchasers. In Europe and the U.S., under whatever fuel economy and emissions regulations prevail, GM also expects special favoritism for the Volt.
The goal is to re-enact the flex-fuel hoax, in which GM receives extra credit for making cars that can burn 85 percent ethanol, even if they never see a drop of such fuel.
The article is well worth reading, even if - as it likely will - it leaves you wondering, Does America's largest automaker have to stoop to this nonsense to stay afloat?
Argonne researcher Chris Marshall holds beaker of new catalyst material while chemist Sundar Krishnan (left) and Steve Ciatti work with equipment that will be used to test it.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
A new diesel engine catalyst that can remove smog-causing nitrates of oxygen (NOx) without costly liquid ammonia injection systems and platinum coatings has been developed by researchers at Argonne National Laboratories and licensed for production by a Washington start-up company.
The manufacturer, Integrated Fuel Technologies Inc., wants to use the material in its emissions-reducing products for large diesel engines, said Robert Firebaugh, president of Kirkland, Wash.-based IFT.
A number of major diesel equipment makers, including John Deere, Cummins and Siemans have talked to IFT about the technology, called Diesel deNOx, and "want to know if the technology can survive continuous testing," Firebaugh said.
If proven successful in the heavy duty diesel market, the catalyst also could reduce the cost and complexity of NOx treatment systems for passenger vehicle diesels as well, Firebaugh told Green Car Advisor.
Reducing NOx has been a major stumbling block for automakers hoping to bring more diesels into the U.S. Present systems add hundreds of dollars to the cost of diesel vehicles.
A lobbying group for 10 major automakers including Detroit's Big Three, Toyota and Daimler urged federal regulators today to dramatically water down its proposal to hike fuel efficiency standards or run the risk of costing 82,000 autoworkers their jobs and the U.S. economy tens of billions of dollars.
In a thousand-page document filed today by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the automakers condemned the April 22 proposal by the U.S. Transportation Department that would boost fuel economy requirements to a fleetwide average of 31.6 miles per gallon by the 2015 model year.
That average includes 35.7 mpg for passenger cars and 28.6 mpg for light trucks. The nation's new passenger cars currently are required to meet a fleet average of 27.5 mpg, while the light-truck fleet - generally encompassing port utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans - must hit a target average of 22.5 mpg.
"This goes beyond what is technologically feasible and economically practical," the automakers said. "It would require manufacturers to expend resources at a pace that is excessive given the fact that the auto industry is already under economic stress."
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Electric drive systems developer and supplier UQM Technologies says it has received a U.S. patent on a new operating geometry for electric motors that require fewer of the expensive permanent magnets that transfer the motor's power into wheel-turning torque. 
The rotor is spun by the interaction of the magnetic field with the permanent magnets (think of that experiment when you were a kid and put the same ends of two magnets together, watching in awe as an invisible force-field pushed them apart). 
![HC_Imagine_PS[1].jpg](http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/HC_Imagine_PS%5B1%5D.jpg)
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