Green Car Advisor
Profiles
August 22, 2008
People with disabilities have long had access to prime parking spaces. Now some stores are setting aside coveted parking spaces for fuel-efficient vehicles.
Ikea has designated hybrid-only spaces across the United States. Home Depot and Office Depot are trying out similar parking perks for fuel efficiency in Austin, Chicago and several other cities.
Some cities are offering free parking to owners of fuel-efficient vehicles or are considering it.
Los Angeles for the past three years has offered free parking to any vehicle with the California Clean Air Vehicle Decal.
The New York City Council has discussed letting drivers of fuel-efficient vehicles park for free at city meters.
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- Scott Doggett August 22, 2008, 9:45 AM
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August 20, 2008
Although he expanded the dialog about the future of automotive propulsion, few in the auto industry noted the death on Aug. 2 of Geoff Ballard, the Canadian scientist who moved fuel-cell technology from the aerospace milieu into the heart of the transportation sector.
Several large newspapers ran obits, and of course Ballard's passing was larger news in the Canadian press. But the auto industry at large seemed strangely silent about the man whose drive to reconfigure fuel cells for transportation purposes forever changed ideas about how vehicles of the future will be powered.
Ballard fitted a fuel cell into a Vancouver transit bus in 1993, making the bus, which used hydrogen as source fuel, the world's first transport vehicle to be driven by electricity generated from a fuel cell.
Although he established his fuel-cell development company in 1979, it wasn't until the technology was proven on the road with the transit bus that Ballard Power Systems evolved into an empire, as virtually all the world's major automakers signed on in some fashion as partners and technology sharers.
But the major breakthrough has yet to come. Steady research and development has reduced size - and equally important, cost - by exponential degrees, but the potential for fuel-cell powerplants in the automotive mass market still is widely considered to be decades away.
Many industry watchers considered it a significant signpost about the fuel-cell's future when Ballard sold its automotive business to Ford Motor Co. and Daimler AG, choosing, the company said, to concentrate on development of stationary applications.
A man who seemed perpetually ahead of the curve, Ballard originally intended to develop lithium battery technology - today's industry darling -- for transportation purposes. When that effort failed, he shifted his focus to fuel cells.
Ballard, named by Time magazine in 1999 as a "Hero of the Planet," was 76.
Bill Visnic, Senior Editor, Edmunds Auto Observer
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- John O'Dell August 20, 2008, 8:08 AM
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July 10, 2008
So you think it would be a blast to make sports cars, especially sexy roadsters that can go zero to sixty in under four seconds and do it with the stealthy silence of a cat on the prowl.
That was supposed to be a question, but it's hard not to like the sound of that sentence, particularly the sub-4-secs 0-60 part. Ah, how purrfectly sweet that life must be.
A piece in Fortune will snap you outta that daydream in a gnat's heartbeat. It's on the making of Tesla Motors' Roadster and here's a taste of what you can expect:
[Founder Martin] Eberhard had cut a deal with Lotus for production of the Roadsters that included penalties if production didn't begin on schedule. It didn't. In October, Lotus hit Tesla with a bill for $4 million. That was just the start of the company's cash-flow problems. "We had bought 80% of the parts for hundreds of cars, but since we didn't have the remaining 20% of the parts (including a working transmission), we couldn't ship [the cars] and get paid for it," said [CEO Elon] Musk.
There's maybe 5,000 juicy words in all and the way they're arranged will leave your slack-jawed, drooling and sweaty.
Don't like looong stories? More a visual type? Then take a click at these Roadster picks. And dream on.
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- Scott Doggett July 10, 2008, 9:38 PM
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- Emissions, Fuel Economy, Opinion, Plug-ins and Electric, Profiles, Tesla
April 28, 2008
By Dale Buss, Contributor
Prabhakar Patil is used to taking the battery and running with it.
The company he heads, Compact Power, is one of two suppliers of the lithium-ion batteries General Motors is testing to outfit its hypercritical Volt plug-in hybrid project. But the high-pressure task before him only reminds Patil of a decade ago, when he was Employee One in Ford’s crash initiative to develop the Escape Hybrid.
"At the time, I was manager of electrical and electronics for Ford production vehicles," recalls Patil.
"Alex Trotman was [Ford] CEO, and Toyota had just introduced Prius. I got my assignment in the backseat of a Prius when he and I were being driven around, and [Trotman] said, 'Develop a hybrid for Ford.'"
Patil began immediately to build his Escape Hybrid team. He had a crew of about a half-dozen within a month and the team peaked at an enterprise of about 300 people before Ford introduced the vehicle in 2004 as the first hybrid SUV on the American market.
Patil came to Compact Power, a unit of the Korean chaebol LG Group, in late 2005, again as Employee One of what promised to be an ambitious enterprise to produce a market-leading lithium-ion battery and powertrain for the burgeoning U.S. hybrid market.
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- John O'Dell April 28, 2008, 3:05 AM
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- Batteries, Chevrolet, General Motors, Profiles
February 18, 2008
By Dale Buss, ContributorWarrenville, Ill. – Todd Kimmel's field is business, not technology, but it required his risk-taking entrepreneur's eye to see the possibilities in some college researchers' efforts to make bacteria that can dissolve an old tire.
Kimmel, a 32-year-old venture capitalist searching for investments to make, saw the possibilities of using the technology to make cellulosic ethanol economically feasible. And he conquered the challenge of pulling together a deal to launch a company to develop and manufacture it, linking the academics with automaking behemoth General Motors Corp.
Now, having gotten startup
Coskata Inc. to the crucial doorstep of commercialization, Kimmel is returning to the West Coast to develop other clean-technology investments for the venture-capital firm that backed Coskata in the first place.
"Creating companies is something I am passionate about and enjoy," said Kimmel, whose youthful looks belie an impressive early track record as a venture capitalist.
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- John O'Dell February 18, 2008, 11:10 AM
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- Alternative Fuels, Biofuels, General Motors, Profiles
