The Trike That Thinks Its an Electric Car

This entertaining hybrid, part three-wheeler, part bike, part electric car, goes by the nickname ELF. There's something intrinsically appealing about this little vehicle.

Grist did a quick profile on it and, if you're interested, a 7-minute video follows as well. A bit pricey ($5,495), but about as low impact as travel can be.

Specs in a nutshell:

The ELF can go up to 30 mph and carry up to 350 pounds, but doesn’t need any of that pesky car stuff like a license plate, insurance, or actual gasoline. The battery’ll charge in 90 minutes when plugged in, carrying you up to 14 miles — farther if you put your thighs to work.

Three-wheeled ZAP Alias classified as a motorcycle

Federal certification for the ZAP Alias was simplified by the three-wheel design, which means that it only had to meet certification standards for a motorcycle rather than more stringent automobile requirements. ZAP, headquartered in Santa Rosa, CA, recently acquired a majority share in Zhejiang Jonway Automobile Co. Ltd. in China, where the Alias will be manufactured. The first deliveries of the electric vehicle, priced at $38,000, are slated for September 2011.

Saab Goes Electric

From borderline extinction to a surprising renaissance under the Dutch firm Spyker, Saab may still have some innovative ideas left in its automotive bag of tricks. The company has unveiled its first electric car, an introduction which should help keep alive its reputation as an idiosyncratic but forward-looking auto manufacturer, as reported by AllCarsElectric.

Mats Fägerhag, Executive Director of Vehicle Engineering at Saab Automobile, says that "this program is designed to evaluate the potential for developing a high performance, zero emission electric vehicle and is an important next-step in the extension of our EcoPower propulsion strategy".

Let's hope that this is a positive step toward recovery for a car company that (at least until the GM years) always bristled with personality.

Real-world road test: life with a plug-in Prius

Adam Vaughan puts the new plug-in Prius through its paces in London and its outskirts and discovers that the vehicle is reasonably practical. But clearly more charging points are needed for this type of vehicle. Even in the mighty metropolis of London there are far too few.

Plugged in via the leads in the boot, the electric battery was topped up for free in an hour and a half. While Westfield’s developers deserve credit for installing the points in the first place, they also warrant a raspberry for allowing any car to take the charging spaces – they’re not reserved for electric vehicles.

And here lies the only real drawback to PHEVs: there are not enough places to charge them, even in the urban areas where they’re best-suited. Home-charging, in particular, is tricky in cities because of the lack of driveways and garages. Of course, because you have petrol as a backup, you don’t have to panic about recharging as you would with a 100% electric vehicle. But by not being able to charge out and about, you lose the unique environmental and financial benefits.

It's promising technology if we find smarter ways of generating the energy supplied to the charging points, but that's another problem for another day.

Life Cycle Analysis: Electric Vehicles

A recent Gizmag article summarized the findings of a life cycle assessment of the lithium-ion batteries often used in electric vehicles. Scientists from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research tracked the environmental footprint of Li-ion batteries, including the charging cycle when tied to a typical European electricity mix, with generally positive findings.

The study shows that the electric car’s Li-ion battery drive is in fact only a moderate environmental burden. At most only 15 per cent of the total burden can be ascribed to the battery (including its manufacture, maintenance and disposal). Half of this figure, that is about 7.5 per cent of the total environmental burden, occurs during the refining and manufacture of the battery’s raw materials, copper and aluminum. The production of the lithium, in the other hand, is responsible for only 2.3 per cent of the total.

“Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are not as bad as previously assumed,” according to Dominic Notter, coauthor of the study which has just been published in the scientific journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Now if we could just get past the controversy on whether there is a pending lithium shortage, the technology would have a clear path to success.

Kia set to introduce electric vehicle

The Kia Electric POP (highlighted by Fast Company) hints at the future of electric vehicle design. The tiny three-seater will be on display in October at the Paris auto show. Bring sun glasses.

Tesla Gears Up to Manufacture the Model S

With a USD 465-million loan finalized, Tesla is setting up manufacturing lines for the world's first mass-produced electric vehicle, the Model S. An article in Ecoseed notes that this loan from the United States Department of Energy is one of a series intended to stimulate growth of this sector of the transportation industry.

The loan is the second agreed by the Energy Department with an advanced technology vehicle manufacturer. The department signed its first loan agreement for $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Company in September last year.

The department has also signed conditional commitments with Nissan North America Inc. and Fisker Automotive. Nissan plans to build electric cars and battery packs at the company’s Smyrna, Tennessee manufacturing complex, while Fisker recently announced that it will re-open a General Motors plant in Wilmington, Delaware to build plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

The price tag for the Model S is daunting ($49,900), but the technology offers promises to change the nature of the auto industry.

The Future of E-bikes

Adam Stein in this article on The TerraPass Footprint points out that e-bikes (electric hybrids) occupy an odd place in the American landspace. People don't know what to make of them. Dedicated bicycylists think they're a cheat. Auto drivers see them as an annoying poor-man's transportation they'd rather not share the road with. Motorcyclists see them as a joke. With a slightly different mindset, the e-bike could be a very useful and practical mode of transportation that could effectively take scores of automobiles off the road over the long term.

Stein asks:

Could this change? Maybe. In China, where bicycles are a major mode of transportation, people love them. In Copenhagen, also a cycling hotbed, people are indifferent. I’m not entirely sure what accounts for the difference, but I’m guessing culture plays a big role.

Developing more acceptance of two-wheeled transportation might not be a bad idea. Bike paths, anyone?

Primed for the Denver Auto Show: the LH4

Many of the more interesting hybrid vehicle designs are coming not from the established automotive giants (whose stature seems to be shrinking daily), but from innovative smaller firms. Lightning Motors has come up with a design that combines an efficient diesel engine with a 150-horsepower Rexroth hydraulic hybrid system to produce a sleek machine, which will be unveiled at the Denver Auto Show, capable of achieving 100 miles per gallon. The associated article in Wired.com, 100-MPG Hybrid Evokes the Classic '63 Corvette, by Ben Mack explains how a technology originally targeted for delivery trucks adapts quite well for automobiles.

Hydraulic hybrids use a diesel engine to drive a hydraulic pump, which charges an accumulator - essentially a high-pressure tank. The accumulator, in turn, drives smaller pump motors that send power to the axle or power the wheels directly. Such systems have been around since the 1980s but limited to delivery trucks - UPS plans to roll out the first of seven sometime this year - because the accumulators are bulky and tough to fit within the confines of a passenger car. Lightning Hybrids isn't saying how it will address this problem but insists it is "working night and day" on it.

The Lightning Hybrids look like strong contenders for the Automotive X-Prize competition. First-place winners will walk away with ten million dollars.

Renewable Energy in the 21st Century

One of the refreshing parts of the following independent short, Unlimited: Renewable Energy in the 21st Century, is the perspective of the young people interviewed. If there is hope for the human population of this harried planet, it's in the upcoming generation's unvarnished, unblinkered viewpoints.

Using Wind to Power Cars

Lester Brown calls T. Boone Pickens to task for pushing natural gas as a vehicle fuel when using wind to recharge electric cars is a much more efficient process (and far easier to implement).

Brown gives Pickens credit for the wind power side of his argument in an opinion piece for The Capital Times, but sees no sense in the natural gas advocacy. In this piece, he asks:

Why not use the wind-generated electricity to power cars directly? Natural gas is still a fossil fuel that emits climate-changing gases when burned.

Plug-in cars are here, nearly ready to market. We just need to put wind in the driver's seat. Several major auto manufacturers, including GM, Ford, Toyota and Nissan, are producing plug-in hybrids. Both Toyota and GM are committed to marketing plug-in hybrids in 2010. Toyota might even try to deliver a plug-in version of its Prius gas-electric hybrid, the bestseller whose U.S. sales match those of all other hybrids combined, next year.

GM is in the game, too, with its Chevrolet Volt. This plug-in car is essentially an electric car with an auxiliary gasoline engine that generates electricity to recharge the batteries when needed. It boasts an all-electric range of 40 miles, more than adequate for most daily driving. GM reports that under typical driving conditions, the Volt averages 151 miles per gallon.

Brown goes on to say:

This new car technology is matched by new wind-turbine technology, setting the stage for an automotive-fuel economy powered largely by cheap wind energy. The Energy Department notes that North Dakota, Kansas and Texas alone have enough wind energy to easily satisfy national electricity needs. To actually put wind power on the road, of course, we would have to tap the wind resources in nearly all the states, plus those that are off-shore, which the department says can meet 70 percent of national electricity needs.

Who is right? I'm inclined to cast my vote in favor of Occam's Razor, or, as it is often paraphrased: All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best. Wind-powered plug-in hybrids appear to be the simplest solution.

Electric Car Infrastructure

The day is fast approaching when electric cars will be tooling around our city streets and neighborhoods, driven by people other than well-heeled celebrities or devoted hobbyists. As GM and a slate of other automobile manufacturers ready their first serious electric cars for the market, thoughts naturally turn toward the state of the infrastructure for dealing with these electricity sipping vehicles.

Joel Makower in Electric Cars: Where Will the Infrastructure Come From? grapples with some of the issues that are quickly moving from the theoretical realm to the practical.

In reality, the GM-utility conversation isn't entirely new. It began in January, at a Vehicle Electrification Workshop held at GM's research center in Warren, Michigan. I had the privilege of attending the meeting, which was facilitated by my colleagues at the sustainability strategy firm GreenOrder. The meeting included more than two dozen utility executives, including a team from the Electric Power Research Institute, the industry-funded consortium that served as the co-convener of the meeting.

It was an eye-opener, to say the least. It turns out that building the infrastructure for the plug-in electric vehicle isn't simply a matter of, "Here's a plug, here's a socket. End of story."

First of all, not everyone has a socket — a secure place to park their car and recharge it. Those living in apartment buildings, for example, lack this ability. Even where a plug exists, it may not have sufficient amperage to handle the load. (I'm a good example: I have a socket in my garage, but it's on the same circuit as my bedroom. If you plug in a power-hungry appliance in the garage, TiVo gets grumpy.)

But that's the least of it. Building the plug-in infrastructure involves a mind-numbing array of technical challenges.

Makover goes on to talk about connector compatibility, outlet access, vehicle-to-grid considerations, and other topics that make it clear that there is more to this transition away from the petrol pump than just hopping in an electric vehicle and driving away. Now is the time to start setting the standards and creating the infrastructure.

Karoshi and Other Prius Stories

"Karoshi", a term used by Japanese workers that translates to "overworked to death" was the fate of 30-year old Kenichi Uchino, who collapsed and died at the Prius plant in "Toyota City", Japan. The court in Nagoya ruled the cause of death as exhaustion and noted that in the month leading to his death, Uchino had worked as much as 155 hours overtime, much of it unpaid.

This story and other unsettling details included in a report by the National Labor Committee in New York (NLC) casts a shadow on the labor practices of Toyota, the world's largest automobile manufacturer.

Paul Abowd, who picked up the story for In These Times, noted:

In its 65-page report released in June, NLC includes first-hand testimony of factory conditions in “Toyota City,” outside of Nagoya, Japan — less than 200 miles southwest of Tokyo — where the largest auto company in the world employs some 70,000 people.

The report alleges that Toyota exploits guest workers, mostly shipped in from China and Vietnam. According to the NLC, these workers are “stripped of their passports and often forced to work — including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota — 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage.” Workers are forced to live in company dormitories and deported for complaining about poor treatment, the report finds.

Both Abowd and the NLC recognized that Toyota's position in the auto industry hasn't been gained by a multitude of bad practices, but a growing trend toward undercutting the rights of the workforce by systematically lowering wages and introducing harsh work situations for temporary workers is steadily degrading the labor situation worldwide. Even in the U.S., where a middle class was born from comfortable automobile manufacturing jobs, Toyota's temporary worker practices are raising eyebrows.

In a rebuttal to the NLC report, Toyota responded:

Toyota is committed to being a good corporate citizen to all of our stakeholders, including our employees, partners, suppliers and customers. The NLC report contains numerous inaccuracies that present a false and misleading picture of our company. Contrary to the report’s allegations, Toyota respects its employees and honors the basic human rights of the people involved in our business. We comply with all applicable local laws and regulations wherever we operate while providing fair compensation and benefits.

However, many of the specific allegations in the NLC report went unanswered. We hope that Toyota takes its corporate responsibility seriously and addresses these labor issues in a transparent manner. Anyone driving around in a "green" Prius manufactured under questionable conditions should take Toyota to task and demand accountability and fairness for the way workers are treated.

A Car That Runs on Air

When I first ran across this story, about a new vehicle design that uses compressed air to drive the cylinders, I was convinced it was a scam. But, it's been written up in Popular Mechanics, appeared in a Discovery Channel segment (shown above), and a currrent model made a personal appearance at the New York International Auto Show this year.

The potential here seem enormous and I plan to investigate and report more on this in future posts.

Here is a prototype illustration of the six-seater version being designed for the U.S. market.

The Greening of the Hawks

With the urgency of climate destabilization growing daily, the purity of one's ideological calling card becomes less important than the need to phase out fossil fuels and phase in renewable energy as quickly as possible. As Laura Rozen reports in a Mother Jones article, James Woolsey, Hybrid Hawk, neoconservatives and Iraq war boosters are increasingly seeing the wisdom of clean energy. Though they may cloak the shift as a matter of national security, rather than a means of combatting global warming, many of them are becoming unlikely allies in the quest to beat oil addiction.

Rozen's dialogue with James Woolsey unearthed some interesting revelations:

Woolsey recalls the moment he started thinking seriously about energy as both an environmental and strategic issue. "I was sitting in my car in a gas line in Washington in '73, after the Saudis had declared an oil embargo on us and Israel was attacked," he says. "And I got mad." Energy issues have captivated him ever since. In the early '80s, he joined the Jefferson Group, an alternative-fuel salon founded on the Jeffersonian ideal "that the future of America is determined by the independent yeoman farmer."

An independent streak has run throughout Woolsey's 40-plus years in Washington. He has served in four administrations, both Republican and Democratic. In the twilight of the Cold War, he found himself increasingly identifying with Republicans on national security. He spent three years as a member of then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board. When I met with him, he was expecting another career change, leaving the federal contractor Booz Allen Hamilton to join a California firm that invests in alternative-energy technology. He'd also just appeared in an anti-oil print ad for the American Clean Skies Foundation, a PR group started by a natural gas company.

With earth's future in the balance, we need all the clean energy promoters we can get.

Finding the Ultimate Battery

Storing energy effectively lies at the heart of our contemporary quest for escaping fossil fuel addiction. Two of the most promising alternative energy sources, wind and solar, are inconsistent throughout the day or week or month. Without a means of capturing the energy so generated for those times when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow, the potential is diminished. And the vast promise of electric cars hinges on the ability to extend their range sufficiently so you don't run out of power on the way home from work.

Lee Hart, a self-employed electrical engineer profiled in a recent Mother Jones article, A Charge to Keep, tracks the progress of battery technology from his basement lab. What he has learned in the course of rigorous testing is enlightening.

Britt Robson, the writer of this piece, nurses out the crux of the problem:

Hart has heard the dreamers wax on about a time when batteries will run for days on end, revolutionizing plug-in cars, windmills, and solar panels—just about any source of alternative energy would benefit from good batteries, which allow electricity to be stored and transported. He has sympathy for those visions. A motto of his hero, Thomas Edison, is inscribed on a favorite sweatshirt: "To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." Like most electro-geeks who'd rather tinker than strut, he also adheres to Edison's practical DIY ethos, which explains the battery room and the small fleet of electric cars he has either retrofitted or built from scratch. His tests invariably reinforce what he and most everyone else familiar with the battery market have long known. When it comes to practical applications for sustainable energy, batteries are more of an Achilles' heel than a panacea, because we are running 21st-century technology with what is essentially 18th- or 19th-century chemistry.

Hart's work is leaning toward extending available battery power by creating light, structurally solid automobile frames, favoring efficiency over raw power.

But the main innovation in Hart's car has nothing to do with how it's powered—it'll be compatible with any kind of battery—but rather with its strong and lightweight frame, influenced by the ultraefficient "hypercar" philosophy of environmentalist Amory Lovins. "If I make the car lighter, I still get the fuel economy I'm looking for," notes Hart. In other words, for now, the best way to get more out of batteries is to simply demand less of them.

Improved efficiency could make a tremendous contribution to reducing our energy-consumptive habits, as has been thoroughly documented by the Rocky Mountain Institute, providing savings in home and business heating and cooling, industrial operations, and transportation. And even the variability of solar and wind power is not as straightforward as you might think, as this RMI article, Rethinking the Reliability of Solar and Wind Power, points out.

The solutions are out there, if only we'd take advantage of them.

Take a Ride in the Tesla

There have been some management upheavals at Tesla Motors since this video first aired in November of 2007, but you can still get a sense of what a revolutionary car looks like and how it drives by watching the video. The company plan is to progressively drive the price down from the current $92,000 tag to where subsequent models will penetrate that conventional strata where Accord, Camry, and Taurus drivers now reside. Interesting plan... Will it succeed? Look at the vehicle and you tell me.

U.S. Automakers Toy with Plug-In Concepts

Chrysler and GM are jockeying to introduce viable plug-in hybrid vehicles, convinced that the market is finally ready for a practical electric car. The versions appearing at auto shows may not be the same as the vehicles that actually reach production. A Gartner analyst quoted thinks that instead of making a true commitment to the technology, the automotive industry still seems to be dancing around the fringes.

The MercuryNew.com article, Chrysler rolls out three plug-in concept models, describes these latest concepts:

Chrysler's entries in the concept race are the Chrysler ecoVoyager, Dodge Zeo and Jeep Renegade. Officials say consumer demand isn't generated solely by technology. It also needs to come with distinctive designs - in other words, no one-size-fits all approach.

Frank Klegon, Chrysler's product development chief, said the Zeo concept, which is completely electric, is designed to maintain Dodge's tradition of performance. The ecoVoyager, coupled with a fuel cell, is meant to convey Chrysler's reputation as an "iconic American brand." And the Renegade, combined with a low-emission diesel engine, is envisioned as a vehicle that could "go anywhere" and "go green."
Still, he said, they are purely concepts with no production guarantees.

"With emerging technologies, you don't really know which one is going to be the right solution, or something else that leapfrogs in the meantime," he said. "That's one challenge for us as an industry and a company."

What will emerge from all the chatter is still unknown, but the automakers are at least trying to talk a good game.

Troy Clarke, GM's North American president, said the technological timing is right, and comes at the convergence of three trends: concern over climate change, the need for U.S. energy independence and the high costs of oil.

"You don't really need anybody to convince you that this is the right time to start doubling down on your bets with this type of technology," he said.

Short-Sighted Automakers Ignore Indicators

Back in 1973 when a worldwide oil crisis was triggered by OPEC, U.S. automakers plodded unimaginatively along, trying to use the same forumula for success that had worked for the last fifty years--during the years of cheap oil when gas guzzlers ruled the road. In comparison, Japanese automakers invaded America's shores with a succession of small, fuel-efficient vehicles that over time captured a significant portion of the market from domestic manufacturers.

Apparently, it was a lesson quickly forgotten. Kelpie Wilson, reporting on the North American International Auto Show in Truthout, saw more focus on bigger, more powerful truck; beer coolers built into vehicles; and luxury machinery than on fuel savings. The notion of peak oil and fuel efficiency was relegated to a small footnote, a barely acknowledged afterthought that plug-in hybrids and hyper-efficient vehicles may be the better choice to slow the advance of global warming.

On the CNBC broadcast about the show, Kelpie commented:

Between the NASCAR heroes and half-naked women you would have thought there might be a few minutes to look at some of the green cars on display. According to Auto Alliance, the show features 34 flex-fuel vehicles from eight manufacturers, one hydrogen vehicle from BMW, 24 hybrids from nine manufacturers, and ten new diesels from four manufacturers. Chevy and Toyota also have plug-in hybrid cars at the concept stage. But the CNBC television special had nothing to say about green cars until 44 minutes into the show when there was a comment that green cars were there and "there is ethanol, plug-ins, a lot of stuff they don't have yet, but great eco-fuel stuff to talk about." And that was it. They didn't bother to show the viewing audience a single green car.

Retro styling, along with retro attitudes, is all we are seeing from Detroit at a time when the world needs to radically reinvent everything to do with energy and the economy. It's not just about climate change either, but also the fact that global oil production is near its peak while population and consumption are both rising. Meanwhile, the only cure for the US recession is massive public investment in a new, post-oil energy and transportation infrastructure. The future will revolve around plug-in hybrids coupled with a smart electric grid and a huge expansion in mass transit buses and railroads. There is no real reason why Detroit should not be a part of that, but the auto industry and its supporters will have to work to make it happen.

The world changes while the automakers sleep.

Popular Mechanics Looks at the Aptera

It looks a bit like a wingless aircraft and draws stares from nearly everyone it passes. It's loaded with high-tech ideas, from the solar panels on the roof that help vent hot air on sunny days to the recycled materials used on every inch of the cockpit. The prototype shown in this video, the Aptera, is reputed to get 300 miles per gallon. For another view of what the car of the future might look like, check out this video produced by Popular Mechanics: