It could be the quickest vehicles to go from concept to a public, drivable prototype in automotive history. As previewed, "Israelis got a first demonstration Sunday of the electric car that developers hope will revolutionize transportation in the country and serve as a pilot for the rest of the world," began the report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
A parking lot in Tel Aviv hosted the demonstration of the Project Better Place/Renault collaboration. Acceleration was said to be impressive and the silent drive familiar to proponents of electric vehicles was noted in the silver, normal looking sedan. The car is expected to have a range of 125 miles, more than sufficient for most drivers in a nation that's no more than 60 miles wide and 260 long. Haaretz reports that several hundred cars will begin appearing on Israel roads in 2009, with sales to begin in late 2010.
Not all electric conversions are small Geo Metros, Volkswagens or Porsches. For sale on the San Francisco Bay Area Craigslist, here, is an eVolvo. It's a converted 1995 Volvo 850 sedan. It's got new batteries and new low rolling resistance tires. The seller claims a range of about 40 miles with 15 kWh of lead acid batteries. Asking price is $14,000. Searching through the EVAlbum database, a useful resource with over 1,500 electric vehicles listed by their owners, one only finds three Volvo conversions in the U.S., including, I believe, this car listed by its previous owner in Seattle.
For Volvo fans awaiting the ReCharge plug-in hybrid, we've previously reported about, this could get you into an electron-driven Swede today.
You may have seen an ad or two by "The People of America's Oil and Natural Gas Industry" lately. With price reaching $120 a barrel and $4 a gallon, the monopoly fuel for transportation in the U.S. apparently feels the need to do a little explaining. A spokesmodel on TV tells us there's enough oil here to fuel 60 million cars for 60 years (if only we let the oil companies go get it.) A voice on radio suggests we stop knocking oil companies because they are us; we all own a piece (through our pension funds). We really ought to stop beating up on ourselves.
Last night, Stephen Colbert took a closer look at a newspaper ad on "The Price at the Pump." He discovered "oil is a zero profit business." Check out the video clip after the break.
A Wall Street Journal story today highlights the promise and potential problems with plug-in cars. More accurately, it highlights the problems and shoves most of the promise to the bottom. As automakers ready plug-in hybrids and electric cars for market, the sensational headline poses a clash of the titans: "Utilities, Plug-In Cars: Near Collision?"
As gasoline reaches $4 a gallon, the benefit to consumers of transportation energy at about $1 per gallon (equivalent) is undeniable. And if one reads down to near the end of the story, one finds the studies that show the tremendous upside in terms of carbon emission and petroleum reduction. As the article makes clear, as long as most plug-in cars charge up at night, the American electrical grid can already carry the load of more plug-in cars than are likely to be produced for a decade or more. Of course, night time charging is also more convenient; most cars are parked at night and used during the day. Still, the utilities are already exploring ways to ensure cars utilize the low-cost, excess capacity existing while consumers sleep, including incentive pricing, time of use metering, and smart meters.
And the environmental benefits reported are extraordinary. If enough plug-ins were on the roads, we could see oil consumption cut by 6.2 million barrels a day and U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions cut "by 450 million metric tons annually, equivalent to scrapping 82 million cars." Where the grid is comparatively clean, as in California, switching to electricity is a no-brainer. More surprising, the story reports, "Carbon-dioxide emissions would probably fall even if coal-fired plants made the electricity, some studies have found, because they burn coal more efficiently than automobiles burn gasoline." Of course as the electric grid becomes cleaner and more renewable thanks to state and federal mandates, the cars charging actually get cleaner, too.
Renault-Nissan's plans to build electric cars is looking more serious by the day. Nissan has announced its intention to build an electric car for Japan and the U.S., and said so in its presentation to the California Air Resources Board last month. Earlier this year, Renault made news signing on to Shai Agassi's Project Better Place plan to produce electric cars for Israel and, more recently, Denmark. Now, according to a Thomson Financial News report in Forbes.com, Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn said at a news conference in Portugal, 'We are negotiating to launch an electric car with a Gulf state.'
Israel's desire for electric cars is obvious. A small Middle East state with no oil reserves, it's demand for petroleum finances its enemies. A nation in the Gulf region, presumably with sizable oil deposits, would seem at first glance a less likely candidate to begin to shift toward electricity.
Lessons, perhaps, are being learned from countries as diverse as Norway and Brazil. Each has come to realize petroleum is more valuable as an export commodity than as a transportation fuel. Norway has 50 percent of Europe's oil reserves. Yet, electrics in the country are given incentives as it continues to export petroleum. The Nordic state is where Th!nk is headquartered. Brazil made investments decades ago to move automobiles off petroleum and on to locally-produced sugar cane ethanol. As petroleum has been found within its borders, rather than being burned locally it is shipped to world markets at ever climbing prices, helping mitigate the financial problems associated with petroleum imports plaguing many developing countries.
Upstart lithium battery maker A123 is a lesson in how fast things can move in the battery space. The MIT Technology Review has a story, An Electrifying Startup, in its May/June issue recounting the tale.
Founded in late 2001, small amounts of funding lead to technological breakthroughs by mid-2002. By 2003 Black & Decker was interested in powering its new line of cordless power tools with A123's new lithium cocktail, and product was rolling off assembly lines in Asia by 2005.
Cut to the burgeoning success of hybrid cars, dependent on batteries to utilize the great efficiencies of electric drive technologies to raise the fuel economy of gasoline-powered cars. NiMH batteries are already raising mpg by 30-50 percent, and had propelled all-electric cars 100 to 140 miles per charge. The greater energy of lithium could promise even higher mpg for hybrids and longer range for EVs with much less weight, the battery bugaboo.
GM finally began to face the reality of hybrids' market success just as the company was being battered in the press by the true story of EV1 emerging via the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? GM could have been years ahead of the competition with electric cars powered by its own NiMH venture, just as Toyota carved out its preeminence with hybrids. But, having sold off its 50 percent stake in NiMH to Texaco when it killed off its own electric car, by the time they got serious and announced the Volt, they had to look elsewhere. Into the picture stepped A123 (and other lithium battery makers like LG Chem/Compact Power Inc.). GM may or may not be the first major auto maker with lithium powered cars, but the evidence is in that it is batteries, not fuel cells, that will bring cars with zero emission capability to market in the near term.
London's iconic taxi cabs have long been comfortable, loud and diesel-belching. Now, one of the largest manufacturers of the taxi cabs, Manganese Bronze, has announced plans to produce an electric version with electric vehicle specialists the Tanfield Group. The company has been losing business as some cities refuse to buy the standard diesel version due to emissions.
The green cab is to be produced in Shanghai, China in a deal with Chinese carmaker Zhejiang Geely. The car is expected to have a top speed of 50 miles per hour with a 100 km range. Although the car is expected to be priced at more than the £30,000 diesel, running costs will be significantly lower. Thanks to Philip H. for the tip!
As ABG reported earlier today, Th!nk has announced it will be coming to the U.S. market. More information has come out on Reuters via Th!nk's venture capital partners Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Rockport Capital. Ray Lane, a managing partner at Kleiner and chairman of Th!nk North America, said today "In a couple of years, we hope to be selling 30-40-50,000 cars per year." The report states that Th!nk intends to launch the vehicle in 2009 at a sub-$25,000 price point.
Th!nk's VC partners' high profile participation in the electric car maker's U.S. launch is evidence of the greater attention being paid to battery electric technologies after an initial preference for biofuel development.
The outgoing President of Shell's U.S. operation has thrown some cold water on the latest GM and Toyota PR offensive for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Shell's John Hofmeister told a Sacramento, Calif., audience Monday at a conference on low-carbon fuels that widespread use of hydrogen as an automotive fuel remains one to three decades out.
GM's Larry Burns recently called on fuel providers (read oil companies) to make a greater effort to roll out hydrogen fueling stations. Hofmeister sees difficulty convincing service station owners to make the investment required to offer a fuel for which there is no near-term prospect of vehicles. The federal government has provided over $1 billion dollars for hydrogen and fuel cells to little practical effect. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pet Hydrogen Highway project, to which he has devoted millions of taxpayer dollars, "is going to be a long, drawn-out process. These infrastructure issues are going to continue getting in the way."
The San Francisco Bay Area always leads in cultural trends, technology, and gas prices. It may be mocked and marginalized as unrepresentative, but eventually the country catches up. As tourists stroll up the Panhandle toward the entrance to Golden Gate Park admiring the quaint Victorians of the past, the future interrupts at the corner of Masonic and Fell Streets. Self-serve unleaded regular has reached $4.18 a gallon.
The New York Times reports today on the confluence of factors causing oil to reach $114 a barrel while the average U.S. price per gallon hit a record $3.39. Diesel now averages $4.12, and the economy is beginning to feel the impact as prices rise to keep pace with increasing transportation expenses. Small disruptions to supply - pipeline problems in the Midwest and Nigeria and bad weather in the Gulf of Mexico - are having oversized impacts on the world market. President Bush's attempt to jawbone oil producers into increasing supplies has been rebuffed. Speaking of its oil reserves, Saudi Arabia's king said recently, "Let them remain in the ground for our children and grandchildren who need them."
In a further sign of weakening demand for large, gas-guzzling SUVs, GM has announced it is idling its 54-year-old Arlington, Texas plant for three weeks. This comes only two weeks after a GM spokeswoman said this about Arlington: "We are currently running at full production and foresee continuing to run at full production indefinitely..." Workers at the plant had been producing 900-1000 Chevrolet Tahoes and Suburbans, GMC Yukons, and Cadillac Escalades a day.
Ten months ago, Autoblog reported large SUVs were holding their own. Now, these models are seeing reduced sales compared with last year as consumers react to the worsening economy and increasing gasoline prices. "Sales of the Escalade fell 25.7 percent in March from year-ago levels, and the others fell more than 30 percent," the Associated Press reports. New orders from dealers have slowed as a result.
Popular Mechanic's Senior Automotive Editor Mike Allen raises a question in his biweekly Mechanics Diary that is rarely broached by auto writers: How about cars with less power?
The automobile industry, using advertising which runs into the billions of dollars each year, sets the pace. A pace that suggests we drive in a world of open roads and no speed limits, what one car maker calls "zoom, zoom." In reality, most driving is a modestly paced, crowded trudge from home to work and back again. As car makers contemplate and begin producing what could be a commuter's dream car - a plug-in hybrid - Allen asks if they will insist on unnecessarily large and powerful engines.
Reflecting on the 1200 cc, 40hp engine that powered the VW hippie van of his youth, he wonders why PHEV engineers are all insisting on a larger engine in a new-fangled vehicle that won't even use it much of the time. A smaller yet sufficient ICE functioning as a generator to keep batteries charged (and passengers heated) after the grid-supplied power has been depleted would be less expensive, less gasoline-consuming, and less polluting. For a significant share of the new car market, less has already become the new more. The Honda Accord Hybrid was discontinued when consumers rejected a power hybrid; they wanted greater fuel efficiency. With a year and a half wait time for a Smart car at one California Smart dealer, the writing may be on the wall.
With all the attention being paid to alternative fuels, it is not surprising that Big Oil should launch a PR counteroffensive. The American Petroleum Institute (API), advertising itself as "the People of America's Oil and Natural Gas Industry," is running a new TV ad, Delivering America's Energy Security, which can be viewed at their website at energytomorrow.com. Their contention is that there is still so much oil under America that we can achieve energy independence without getting off oil for a long time. According to API, there are "112 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil beneath U.S. federal lands and coastal waters. That's enough oil to fuel 60 million cars for 60 years." Unfortunately, we already seem to have about 250,000,000 passenger vehicles in the U.S. And perhaps we don't have 60 years to reverse the effects of 100 years of gasoline-powered internal combustion.
Dan Sperling, second from right, at press conference with Gov. Schwarzenegger in January.
It is barely two weeks since the California Air Resources Board disappointed electric car advocates when it voted to lower the number of Zero Emission Vehicles required by its program. The cost to the car industry was cited at the time as a prime reason for the reduction.
Today the spotlight returns to the powerful California agency with an article in the LA Times that exposes the links between Board Member Dan Sperling's UC Institute and auto and oil companies. Sperling, a one-time advocate of electric cars, says he saw the effects of advocating positions at odds with the preferences of industry.
"I lost funding [for the institute] from the Detroit car companies for many years, and I realized I should not be taking those policy positions unless it was really well-grounded," he said. Well over half of the private contributions to the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis come from the car and oil industries. Most of its funding comes from the government, including CARB.
Sperling has become a forceful advocate for the Gov. Schwarzenegger's hydrogen highway project and the automakers' preferred zero-emission vehicle type: those with hydrogen fuel cell. The powerful Board has been the center of controversy since the previous Chair, Robert Sawyer, was fired by Gov. Schwarzenegger last year.
Deutsche Bank analysts took a serious look at the proposal of Project Better Place for electric cars in Israel and Denmark and came away impressed with its viability. The researchers returned to Germany believing that the Better Place idea would work not only in small countries with extremely high automobile taxes and gasoline prices, but also in the U.S.
As reported at Solveclimate.com, their conclusion states "From checking the Project Better Place business model, we are concluding that a pure electric car should not cost any more than a diesel- or a gasoline-powered car, and in most countries its operating costs should actually be lower."
The proposal, spearheaded by Israeli-American entrepeneur Shai Agassi, envisions a financial separation of the car from its battery, lowering the initial cost of ownership. Following the cell phone model, a monthly charge would pay for the battery and electricity. The electric cars would be manufactured by automakers. Nissan-Renault has already announced it will produce electric cars for the program in Israel and Denmark.
The report not only adds financial establishment credibility to the idea, it contained some news. It suggests that five to ten additional countries will announce similar programs before the end of the year. Perhaps more significantly, it predicts two more manufacturers will announce their intention to produce electric cars to work with the Better Place model. The Israeli new website Globes was given an exclusive copy of the report which appears on the site in Hebrew only. ABG has been following Project Better place closely, most recently posting a video of CEO and Founder Shai Agassi's speech on "The Future of Electric Cars."
It could be the quickest vehicles to go from concept to a public, drivable prototype in automotive history. As previewed, "Israelis got a first demonstration Sunday of the electric car that developers hope will revolutionize transportation in the country and serve as a pilot for the rest of the world," began the report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. 
A Wall Street Journal story
Renault-Nissan's plans to build electric cars is looking more serious by the day. Nissan has announced its intention to build an electric car for Japan and the U.S., and said so in its presentation to the California Air Resources Board last month. Earlier this year, 
London's iconic taxi cabs have long been comfortable, loud and diesel-belching. Now, one of the largest manufacturers of the taxi cabs, Manganese Bronze, has announced plans to produce an electric version with electric vehicle specialists the Tanfield Group. The company has been losing business as some cities refuse to buy the standard diesel version due to emissions. 
The outgoing President of Shell's U.S. operation has thrown some cold water on the latest 
The San Francisco Bay Area always leads in cultural trends, technology, and gas prices. It may be mocked and marginalized as unrepresentative, but eventually the country catches up. As tourists stroll up the Panhandle toward the entrance to Golden Gate Park admiring the quaint Victorians of the past, the future interrupts at the corner of Masonic and Fell Streets. Self-serve unleaded regular has reached $4.18 a gallon. 
In a further sign of weakening demand for large, gas-guzzling SUVs, GM has announced it is idling its 54-year-old Arlington, Texas plant for three weeks. This comes only two weeks after a 
With all the attention being paid to alternative fuels, it is not surprising that Big Oil should launch a PR counteroffensive. The 
Deutsche Bank analysts took a serious look at the proposal of 
_thumbnail.jpg "Beijing 2008: BYD e6")
