Click above for more shots of the Erockit electric bike

The debate over serial and parallel hybrid rages on, with Toyota and Honda placing their bets on the parallel model where both the gasoline engine and electric motor power the wheels directly. General Motors has placed a huge bet on the serial hybrid approach, where the second-fiddle powertrain serves only to extend the range of the predominately electric vehicle. There are numerous ideas as to what makes a good range extender. Hydrogen fuel cells and small gas or diesel engines are the most popular choices, but have you ever considered just using your legs?

Erockit has made a new electric bike which is capable of going fifty miles per hour and reportedly has strong acceleration. The range can be extended by pedaling along, though your strokes don't actually ever make it to the wheels in a conventional way. Instead, your legs turn a small generator which adds a bit of juice to the battery. The company has plans for a limited model release starting next year.


[Source: Erockit via Hell For Leather]

If there is any type of vehicle that would seem ideally suited to a hybrid drive application, it is a garbage truck (right, Volvo?). With the continuous stop and go driving involved with collecting the detritus of modern civilization there is plenty of opportunity for regenerative braking and electric launch. ISE Corporation already has a series hybrid system that they've developed for transit bus applications. ISE is partnering with Crane Carrier Company to build five series hybrid trash haulers for testing in New York, Chicago and Houston. The project is being organized by the Hybrid Truck Users Forum of CALSTART. ISE's ThunderVolt system is a self-contained hybrid drive system designed for installation into existing vehicle platforms. A pair of motor-generators are mated with a combining gearbox and replace the conventional transmission unit in buses and trucks. Electrical energy storage will be handled by either nickel metal hydride batteries or ultra-capacitors.

[Source: ISE Corp]

This week at the SAE World Congress in Detroit, Raser Technologies will be displaying their new plug-in series hybrid powertrain designed for application in full size trucks and SUVs. Raser is working with FEV, who are doing systems integration work on the design. The Raser configuration uses an AC induction motor with 200kW of peak power and 100kW of continuous output, a 100kW generator and a 700V lithium ion battery. Think of it as E-Flex for big trucks.

The system is expected to propel a truck up to 40 miles on battery power and yield an average of 100mpg. The system will also be able to provide up to 50kW of electrical power that can be used to power tools for commercial applications. We'll be looking for Raser at the Congress to learn more about their system.

[Source: Raser Technologies]

The Opel Flextreme diesel electric concept got a visit from reporters in a studio setting instead of at a busy car show. The video above and the one below the fold are very quiet, thoughtful looks at European's E-flex concept without the usual busy car show in the background. The videos include a great look at the car's doors, which open when you touch them, and rear view cameras replacements for the rear view mirror. Many of the ideas on the car are already in several vehicles you can buy today, so it's very possible you could see something like the Flextreme coming from GM very soon.

[Source: YouTube]

Johnathan Goodwin is the patron saint of green cars (although as of yet, this honor has gone unrecognized by the Vatican). Last April, John was the guy behind the Chevy Impala conversion that smoked a Lamborghini in a quarter mile on the Earth Day special of MTV's Pimp My Ride. Arnold Schwarzenegger was so impressed that when he did a guest appearance on the Earth Day Pimp My Ride special, he hired SAE Energy (where John is co-partner) to make his Jeep run on biodiesel. Recently, John made the cover of Fast Company magazine for an article describing a green gearhead's wet dream.

Fast Company visited John's garage and found a 2005 Hummer H3 on jacks. John is going to put a 60,000 PRM, 1985, turbine, jet engine in the Hummer. The turbine engine will run on biodiesel or waste vegetable oil with a hydrogen-injector. John plans to make a series hybrid with this turbine engine. A beauty like that going to waste as a range extender? No, it charges a set of super capacitors in a matter of seconds, giving the car 600 horse power.

That's not all. Jon says "it'll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You'll be able to smoke the tires. And it's going to be superefficient. ... Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!" John is not just making drool worthy cars for stars like Neil Young (John is converting a 1960 Lincoln Continental to biodiesel, electric hybrid for him.) John said he wants to make a 100-mile-per-gallon car one day and he is working on a $5,000 conversion kit that make diesels run 50 percent more efficiently and emit 80 percent less pollution. John estimates his bolt-on kit will pay for itself in a year for bigger SUVs and two years for a normal car. He is getting patents hoping to license them to the big carmakers but he thinks automakers can do a lot more right now.

Go below the fold to see how John is using Ace Hardware better than you.

[Source: Fast Company]

In a presentation at Gadgetoff 2007, Howard Morgan, co-founder of Idealab, says the Aptera (an Idealab company) will have a range of 1,000 miles in series hybrid mode. You can watch a video of Howard's presentation below the fold. Howard also says the Aptera will be a quarter to a third the price of the Tesla but it certainly does not look like Tesla.

Recently, I wrote about comments by Tesla co-founder, Martin Eberhard, on a mystery electric car in Martin's Gadgetoff 2007 presentation. Martin later commented it was actually in response to a dig at Tesla by Idealab. Howard and Martin, I hope this small, public fight is good natured ribbing. Variety in the market place is what makes it work.

[Source: YouTube]

The video above is of an Electrathon racer on display at AltWheels Boston 2007. Electrathon racers travel 50 miles in an hour using a kilowatt/hour of electricity: That's the equivalent of 1,500 MPG at highway speeds on the power of a hair dryer. The next stop for that Electrathon racer is the Red Bull Soapbox Race, a sort of frat party on wheels.

Below the fold are two more videos I shot at AltWheels. One shows the Microfurthur, a series hybrid made from an old farm work vehicle. The other is about the eMotive, a university project that hopes to bring electric cars to the third world.

We reported last week on a presentation given by Toyota Executive Vice President Kazuo Okamoto in Japan. One of the slides in that presentation compared series and parallel hybrids and talked about the superiority of parallel as manifested in Toyota's Hybrid Synergy drive. Toyota wasn't able to provide ABG with a text of the presentation, but Irv Miller, the Group VP for Communications at Toyota here in the States, has elaborated over on Toyota's Open Road blog.

First of all he reiterates the mantra that GM has been repeating all year of energy diversity. In the future there are likely to be many different fuels and energy sources in use for transportation. He goes on to explain that the size of battery that would be needed for a useful series hybrid would take to long to charge and be too large and heavy to make it perform better than a parallel hybrid. He also mentions that said batteries haven't even been fully developed yet.

Mr. Miller and Toyota may well turn out to be correct in their assessments of series hybrids in the long run. However, there was plenty of skepticism about the work that Toyota did on parallel hybrids over a decade ago and if they hadn't proceeded anyway we probably wouldn't be where we are today. No one has abandoned parallel hybrid development in favor of series. They and other technologies are continuing on parallel paths. Ultimately we may well end up using all or none of these. But for now let's see where they go. Thanks to Irv Miller for chiming in.

[Source: Toyota]

Click the image of the Volve ReCharge chassis for a high-res gallery

After the news of the Volvo ReCharge plug-in series hybrid came out a couple of days ago we got in touch with Volvo for some more information. The ReCharge that's being displayed in Frankfurt is a mock-up. However, there is a running prototype being built and the mock-up was used to work out packaging of all the components.

The ultimate plan is to use the wheel motors for all the braking. The initial test units though have mounting provisions made for hydraulic brakes. These will be used during initial testing as a safety backup. One limiting factor of using only regenerative braking is the ability of the battery to absorb the kinetic energy fast enough. Most current lithium batteries (except the nano- material batteries like those from Altairnano and A123) can't take a charge that fast which limits the ability to use regen.

The lithium polymer battery in the ReCharge only has a 12kWh capacity but a claimed 62 mile range. Based on that it must be able to absorb energy pretty quickly and use a lot of regen to get that range. Volvo plans on field testing the ReCharge as soon as possible to gain experience with the system.

[Source: Volvo]

Click to enlarge the 1/4 scale model of the EXV-LS

This morning serial automotive entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin announced that his Visionary Vehicles company is developing a car that they will enter into the Automotive X-Prize. Visionary Vehicles has undergone a corporate transformation. After launching several years ago with plans to import vehicles built by Chinese manufacturer Chery, the company is now developing a range of new vehicles that they plan to sell beginning in 2010.

Although specifics are scant right now, the first model is planned to have a series hybrid drive-train with a lithium ion battery and plug-in capability. The luxury car, said to the be size of a Mercedes S-Class, is being designed Herb Grasse who designed the original Bricklin SV-1 gull-wing coupe that was briefly built in the 1970s. The plan is to have a battery range of 40-50 miles (Update: est. 850 miles total with the engine running) and a price tag starting at $35,000.

Continue reading after the jump including specs.

We have written about PML FlightLink's mini before. The news report in the video above has a few more details and a look under the hood, so we thought we would give you a look. The mini has four in-wheel motors and a battery under the hood. It also has a gas engine in the back that recharges the battery. This gives the car a 900 mile range. Zap liked that so much they ordered $10 M's worth for the Zap-X.

A few facts from the video. The battery is lithium. The gas engine in the back is smaller than a motorbike engine. It has regenerative braking. Learning computers, based on neural networks, control the motors and make 4,000 calculations a second. The car hits the test track this Summer. Chris Newman of PML claims a fourth of cars will be electric drive in five years.

He says every car company has looked at this and found it to the best model for cars. GM is developing the Volt which has a very similar set up. Even Toyota may follow suit, showing off a plug-in model recently. Is a serial Toyota hybrid far behind? Is the series hybrid the car of the future? Hard to argue with a 900-mile range. The series hybrid's time may have come.

[Source: YouTube]

At the UITP public transit conference in Helsinki Finland Mercedes Benz has announced plans to introduce a new hybrid version of their Citaro bus later this year. Unlike the GM Two-Mode system now used on several hundred North American buses the new Mercedes configuration is a series hybrid with wheel motors. The articulated buses will use four wheel motors at the center and rear axles that will be powered by roof-mounted lithium ion batteries. The four motors have a combined output of 320kW.

The standard 12L diesel has been replaced by a smaller 4.8L unit which is sufficient to keep the batteries charged since it doesn't have the deal with transient loads of acceleration. The smaller engine cuts about 550kg from the weight of the powertrain and the elimination of the transmission also contributes to a net weight penalty of only 1 tonne for the hybrid bus. The engine in the Citaro will only run when the batteries need charging which will also be supplemented by regenerative braking from the motors.

The hybrid Citaro bus is expected to cut diesel consumption twenty to thirty percent annually. Pilot operation of the series hybrid should start early in 2008 with full production starting in 2009. More information is in the press release after the jump.

[Source: DaimlerChrysler]

Cleanova is a unit of the Daussault Groupe in France and they are currently testing series hybrid vehicles with an eye toward offering them to the public in 2008. The vehicle they are working on is a small minivan type vehicle based on the Renault Kangoo. The test vehicle has a 55hp engine running a generator to charge the lithium ion battery, but it can also drive the vehicle in conjunction with the electric motor. They claim a range of 120 miles on the battery and a top speed of 80 mph. They are testing batteries with capacities ranging from 16 to 30 kWh. Unfortunately the Cleanova website is only in French, but it appears there is also a battery-only version of the vehicle.

[Source: Auto-future.blogspot.com, props to David for tip]

After getting some bad press earlier this summer following the release of the film "Who Killed the Electric Car?", it looks like General Motors is going to take another stab at electric cars. This time the approach is very different from the star of that film, the EV1. According to an Automotive News interview with Bob Lutz, the work that GM has doing on fuel cell vehicles will contribute to a new series hybrid vehicle. Where most current hybrids are primarily powered by the internal combustion engines, this new vehicle will run primarily off the batteries. A gas or diesel engine would mainly be used as a backup and to charge the battery. Alternatively, a smaller fuel cell could be used to charge the battery.

It now appears that GM's focus, at least in the near term, is on primarily battery powered vehicles that have onboard charging systems for extended range. Lutz expects significant advances in battery technology in the next few years, which hopefully will include non-exploding lithium-ion batteries. More details are expected at the upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show, including whether this new vehicle will able to be plugged in.

[Source: AutoWeek]