One of the hurdles in the way of the widespread adoption of electric vehicles is the ability to pull into a fuel station for a quick fill-up. A "multi-million" dollar injection from Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital could very well give Dutch company Epyon just what it needs to leap over that obstacle. The company claims their technology can charge lithium ion batteries in as little as five to fifteen minutes instead of the hours it typically takes now. How do they do it? By using "state-of-the-art power conversion techniques and intelligent control systems" combined with high-power lithium ion and supercapacitor storage. The needs of each cell within the battery are evaluated and met through communication between the charger and battery management system (BMS). Also, by incorporating an energy reservoir into its system, Epyon avoids the predicament of overloading the grid with extreme demand spikes.

You won't see an Epyon station on the side of the road tomorrow though. The first thing they need to do is build some installation demonstration units and partner up with an appropriate battery company. The company, a spin-off of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, plans on concentrating their initial installations in large commercial facilities such as airports or other industrial environments. Let's just hope the technology doesn't take too long to trickle down to personal vehicles since this is the kind of energy-charging solution that American electric vehicle manufacturers would seem to prefer.

[Source: Clean Break / Earth2Tech]

Neste Oil has announced plans to build a new biomass-to-liquid diesel plant in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The plant will produce what the company calls NExBTL renewable diesel fuel at the rate of 800,000 tonnes per year after it begins operating in 2011. Neste will spend about €670 million (a little over $1 billion at current exchange rates) on the facility which will use Neste's processes to convert a mix of palm and rapeseed oils and animal fat into a high-quality diesel fuel. Neste already has a smaller plant in Finland using this process with another one the same size as the Dutch plant that was announced for Singapore last fall. The NExBTL fule is claimed to reduce total life cycle CO₂ emissions by 40-60 percent compared to petroleum diesel. Neste also has a variety of ongoing research projects to use non-food vegetable oils, wood waste and algae for diesel fuel production.

[Source: Neste Oil]

It's easy to argue that road taxes are quite unfair because they're flat: You pay fees to drive around; it doesn't matter how much you actually use the car.

The Netherlands has decided to improve the country's road tax by taxing according to the vehicle type, usage, hour and roads the vehicle is using. The system uses GPS, a car transmitter and a standard cell phone GSM network to send this information to a central computer that processes the information. Once these figures are calculated, the driver is charged. Congestion and the environment are both taken into consideration in the rate scheme. Using a highway that enters a city in peak hours while driving an SUV will be taxed more than driving a small car in a rural area where private vehicles are more of a necessity.

Dutch officials hope the system will reduce CO₂ emissions and congestion, because the Dutch government claims that there is no more room to build more roads. Critics say this system is an attack on privacy: a computer will know where and when you've driven, although the company that implements the system guarantees that this information won't be stored once translated into money. The system starts in 2011 for freight transport and will be expanded to include cars in 2012. Full deployment of the system is scheduled to be completed in 2016. A similar system has been under study in the UK.

[Source: Qué!]

If you thought that the Dutch only were known in the auto industry because of their cool DAF cars from the '60s, (which, by the way, had a very clever CVT system), they're out to prove you wrong. The Netherlands has a manufacturer that has a very interesting EV that looks to be ready in April. It's called the duraCar Innovan, and it's made from light recyclable fiber.

The van is aimed at companies who need to make local deliveries, but performance is quite decent and far superior to any of the available quadricycles in Europe (or NEVs in the US). Although the Innovan runs on electricity, it's estimated that its fuel-equivalent consumption is 1 liter per 50 km (about 118 mpg), with CO₂ emissions under 30 g/km. Driving range is claimed to be 150 km (90 miles) thanks to the vehicle's low weight, and driving cost is very low: the electricity bill will only cost you from 150 to 200 EUR every 10,000 km (that's 220 to 295 dollars for 6,200 miles, or 3.5-4.7 cents a mile).

There's a couple of videos from the presentation after the jump. They're in Dutch, but the van looks great to me. Don't miss the electrically-operated back doors.

[And kudos to Lascelles for the find]

Ford in the Netherlands has declared its campaign to retrofit older cars with DPFs (Diesel Particulate Filters) a success. More than 9,000 motorists chose to install the soot-reducing devices in their vehicles, and they got them almost for free: Ford reduced the price of the DPF so it would match the amount of the government's subsidy to install such devices in passenger cars. A similar promotion was held in Germany last September.

Retrofitting DPFs in your car is not an easy task to do (some would even say troublesome), but Ford reached a partnership with the Nederlandse Rijksdienst Wegverkeer (RDW) to officially approve the procedures. Starting January 1st, all diesel Fords sold in the Netherlands have a DPF installed as standard.

[Source: Ford Netherlands]

In terms of efficiency, cars driven by humans are fickle. There's only ever one optimal accelerator position for the best fuel efficiency, no matter what gear you're in. This leads to the situation where the imprecise driving of humans is responsible for lowered fuel efficiency and performance. But what if you could tweak the vehicle's software just a little to take human behaviour into account? John Kessels, who just obtained his doctorate from the Technical University Eindhoven (Netherlands), has been playing around with hybrid vehicle efficiency techniques on non-hybrids to achieve just that.

Hybrid cars utilise technologies such as regenerative braking to reduce energy wastage and boost efficiency. The key for hybrids though is the availability of a generator which can store excess power produced by the internal combustion engine, or draw upon the power stored in the on-board battery pack if the combustion engine's output is lagging. In other words, the generator works to smooth out the energy fluctuations of the combustion engine, flattening the energy output curve and reducing its variation from that of the optimal energy output curve.

Looking to achieve efficiency improvements in non-hybrid vehicles, Kessels realised that the smaller generator and battery pack of a standard petrol or diesel vehicle could still be used in a similar fashion to those found in a hybrid.

• Car battery charged with excess power production
• Battery-charging generator turned off when inefficient
• Electric braking to generate energy and stored in the battery
• Shut off rear window and seat heating
• Shut off other electric energy systems

Analysis: Kessels' research indicated that with minimal modifications including uploading a software patch to the car's computer, fuel savings of 2.6 percent could be achieved. Shutting off the engine while idle would boost this figure but would require major modifications. These are great examples of "mining negawatts" as outlined in URGE² theory and should be embraced by the automakers immediately to improve not only the efficiency of new vehicles, but potentially of the installed fleet already on the roads today.

Related:

• A call to URGE² - Use Renewably Generated Electricity, Efficiently
• Bob Lutz blogs on GM's electric drive development
• Allan Mullaly wants to expand tech sharing with Toyota

[Source: PhysOrg.com]