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Blogger extraordinaire Mickey Kaus recently spied the above SUV innocuously parked in Santa Monica and sent us the photos, wondering if we had any clue what it is. As luck would have it, we do. The truck is a SsangYong Actyon SUV, but it's also more than that. You see the Actyon, in both SUT and SUV body styles, is the basis for Phoenix Motorcars' electric SUT and SUV, which are scheduled to arrive in the U.S. in 2010. The white example Mickey snagged had been de-badged, which lends it an air of mystery, but we know SsangYong's not coming to the U.S. market.

As our esteemed colleague Sam Abuelsamid points out, Phoenix is based in Ontario, CA so it's basically a lock that this is one of their EV development mules. Using the SsangYong trucks as the basis for their electric utility vehicles has two distinct benefits for Phoenix. First, they offer proven, practical and usable packaging that'll work fine in the real world. Second, their front-end styling is bizarre enough that the unwritten rule which states that EVs have to look weird will surely be upheld. Obviously, those Tesla guys, with their sexy-spiffy Roadster, didn't get that memo.

You can check Mickey out every day at Kausfiles, and, on occassion, at Bloggingheads.tv as well. Thanks for the photos!

[Source: Mickey Kaus]

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This week, at the AFVI Expo, I moderated a panel on the roll-out of electric vehicle products from Miles EV, Phoenix Motorcars and GEM. The representatives were Bryon Bliss, vice president of sales and marketing for Phoenix, Jeff Boyd, COO of Miles, and Richard Kaspar, GEM's president and COO. Oh, and our friend Ed Begley, Jr. was there as well, continuing his relationship with Phoenix.

The purpose of the panel was for each company to present their case not only for EVs but for their particular products. Since these companies all offer vehicles with quite different capabilities and styles, they're not really competitors, and it was a congenial event. Since I expect our readers to be pretty familiar with the vehicle line-ups of these three companies, I won't go into details about them. There were a few things said during the 90 minutes that caught my ear, though, that I think you'll want to hear about.

• The Miles EV offices are in Santa Monica, CA. To commute to work, Boyd drives a prototype of the XS500, Miles' upcoming highway-speed battery-powered sedan. The price target is still $35,000 and deliveries should start in the third quarter of 2009. The sedan will be followed by an electric SUV. I told Boyd that the next time I'm in town, I'll be knocking on the office door, begging for a ride. I mean, it worked for the Roadster.
• Phoenix expects deliveries of its all-electric SUT to start at the end of June (yes, in six weeks). Certification should be finished June 1, Bliss said and the company has orders for 600 vehicles to fill as of today.
• GEM's big news is the addition of new options to the back cargo space of its work trucks. Since GEM vehicles have been selling for over a decade, GEM has had plenty of time to listen to customers and find out what they want/need. New covers and door types are now available, and you can see a list of GEM vehicle options here.

Greentech media was also in the room, and wrote up this account of what happened. Both Miles and GEM had vehicles on the show floor, and I've included galleries of their displays below. The Phoenix photos are from the 2007 AFVI Expo. For those of you keeping score, Zap and Dynasty were nowhere to be found at the Expo this year (unlike last year).

It appears that along with re-engineering the powertrain of their upcoming electric vehicles Phoenix Motor Cars has decided to hedge their battery bet. Phoenix was the first company to commit to using Altairnano's lithium titanate batteries in an automotive applications. However Canadian battery supplier Electrovaya announced the other day that they would be supplying battery packs to Phoenix. The obvious question is what becomes of Altairnano? According to Phoenix Marketing VP Bryon Bliss, the company will be offering packs from multiple suppliers. Both Altairnano and Electrovaya batteries will be sold for the upcoming SUV and sport utility truck. The Altairnano batteries have the advantage of being able to withstand 10 minute rapid charges. Unfortunately they only have about half the energy density of other lithium battery technologies and so far they are also much more expensive. We're still trying to get more clarification on timing and cost differences for the different battery packs and we'll keep you updated.

[Source: Green Car Congress]

In an interesting twist to the saga that is the development of the Phoenix Motorcars electric SUT & SUV program comes news that they are now partnering with a Canadian battery maker. In a press release from that company, Electrovaya says that they are now negotiating an arrangement with Phoenix and have already begun the work of integrating their proprietary Lithium Ion SuperPolymer® battery along with its intelligent battery management system ("iBMS").

Phoenix Motorcars President and CEO, Daniel J. Elliot is quoted by the release as saying, "We are pleased to have Electrovaya join forces with us, and we are excited to be working with their team and their advanced technologies. Electrovaya's innovative Lithium Ion SuperPolymer® battery technology stands apart from its peers as a platform, chemistry agnostic technology. Electrovaya's systems expertise and design experience provide what we need in terms of battery performance." Hmm. That strikes us as possibly being in conflict with a statement made by the CEO a couple months ago in a different press release which can still be found on the Phoenix Motorcars website. And we quote, "We wholeheartedly support Altairnano's technology and believe they provide the greatest product available on the market today." Altairnano being the company that has been trumpeted as the supplier of their battery of choice for some time now, we wonder if a similar fate has befallen them as has their original motor supplier, UQM. Or perhaps Phoenix plans on utilizing the power packs from both companies. We shall try to get the straight dope and let your enquiring minds know but in the mean time go ahead and read the available details in the press release after the break.

After making a pretty big splash in 2006 around the same time that Tesla launched, Phoenix Motorcars has not made all that much noise about their four-door electric pickup, based on a SsangYong design. We enjoyed our drive in the electric SUT last year, and sincerely hope that the company is able to make good use of the Altairnano lithium titanate batteries that seem so promising.


What's Number 11?

Phoenix Motorcars, the company behind the much-anticipated electric SUT with the SsangYong body and Altairnano battery has given their website a fresh look in anticipation of increased traffic. Set to finally begin building their vehicles for fleet customers and take a few retail orders, the company from Ontario, California has rolled out the welcome map with a fresh set of pixels and features.

The feature I was just having fun with was the savings calculator. You tell them the cost of the vehicle you're thinking of buying, it's gas mileage, and a few other variables and POW!, they give you a graph that shows you how long it will take to get some serious return on your investment. If you like the results you can sign up to reserve one of these for yourself.

Bonus video: For a short video of their plant and a bit of a test drive, hit the jump.


[Source: Phoenix Motorcars / YouTube]

An online Mexican newspaper has announced that Phoenix MotorCars is building a manufacturing plant in the state of Puebla in México. The plant, which is made jointly with Pristine International, will create 1,500 jobs in the area. The plant will be built in a new industrial development area near Huejotzingo's airport. The companies are investing an initial $90 million, but a total of $250 million will be invested in the near future.

Ricardo Lorden, Phoenix's director for México and Latin America said that the plant would produce a car "able to run up to 200 km/h (130 mph), which can be recharged in 10 minutes." Mr. Lorden also envisioned a future network of fast recharging stations powered from different sources of energy, which could make gasoline redundant. We'll see if this plant can help us decipher at all the recent changes in Phoenix's motor of choice for their all-electric SUT.

[Source: Intolerancia Diario]

The popular Motley Fool investment site today published a list of "3 Stocks That Missed the Mark." One of those is the common AutoblogGreen presence Altair Nanotechnologies. Now, AutoblogGreen doesn't get into investment tips or anything like that, but the Fool is not the only one to dampen the good news that Altair puts out. Part of the problem, writes Anders Bylund of the Fool, is that, "One key customer reportedly delayed a $3.2 million order for Altair battery packs while waiting for the federal standards wheels to grind out a battery interface specification." It's no secret that Phoenix Motorcars is a Altair customer, and is keeping the company's nanotech batteries for the Phoenix SUT, but in smaller versions than previously announced.

Bylund also says that "Altair keeps burning cash at an alarming rate" and that investors looking to fund nanotech companies might want to look elsewhere.

[Source: Motley Fool / Anders Bylund]

C-NET's Michael Kanellos did a little thinking out loud this week when he tried to list all of the electric car start-up companies (not major automakers working on EVs). He counted 16 small companies. The names on this list will be familiar to just about anyone who reads AutoblogGreen, but I thought it was interesting to see them all gathered in one place:

Tesla Motors (sports cars), Wrightspeed (sports cars and plug-in drivetrains for trucks), Fisker Automotive (electric sedans), Zap (low-speed and sports cars), Miles Automotive (low speed), Zenn Motors (low speed), AC Propulsion (retrofitting Scions for electric), Phoenix Motorcars (SUVs), Aptera (three-wheelers), Porteon (low speed electrics), Lightning (sports cars in England), Reva (economy cars), Ultramotor (electric trishaws), Myers Motors (freakish three-wheelers featured in Goldmember), Think (electric economy cars) and Venture Vehicles (three-wheeled electric cars.).

I'd say the only "major" player that Kanellos missed is GEM, which has been making glorified golf carts for ages. Other contenders not on his list include Universal Electric Vehicle, American Electric Vehicle, G-Wiz and Hybrid Technologies. I'm sure there's at least a couple more we're missing, but we're already got over 20 small EV companies. Pretty soon, he figures, this list will be much easier to calculate: "History shows that most of these companies will be wiped out." So it goes, as my favorite author would write.

[Source: C-NET]

Sunday's New York Times has an article about the complete lack of a normal electric car the average person can afford. There are smaller vehicles you can buy and you can search Ebay for a good conversion or a RAV4 but the New York Times is essentially correct. If you are a middle class guy with 2.5 kids and you want a four-door sedan, electric car for about $30,000 you are SOL. Here are some quotes from the article;

"Strip away the promises and the offerings are virtually nonexistent. Not a single purely electric vehicle with four seats and the ability to reach highway speeds is being mass-produced anywhere in the world. ... There is still not a single E.V. or plug-in hybrid available that can approach the driving range, interior room and performance of a typical gas-powered family sedan, at anywhere near the price that an average consumer would pay."

Below the fold is a video of the Exar-1, a failed normal looking electric car. Lots of electric cars have failed not just in the '70s,'80s and '90s as the New York Times mentions, but from the '20s to '60s as well. Will history repeat itself with the new promising batch of fully electric car and/or battery companies like Miles, Tesla, Phoenix, A123, Altair and EEstor? Maybe the fully electric car will never play a large role?

Editor's Update: I think we should point out these ten electric cars, which are perhaps not normal or affordable, but they are (mostly) available.

[Source: New York Times and tipster Phil]

Not satisfied with a photo op with the President Bush in front of the White House, Phoenix Motorcars has lined up a test drive with the Clintons for today, August 17. There are no guarantees but we will probably see him beside the car. I don't know why but I can't wait for that photo op. Bill has had experience with other green cars. He likes big green cars :D

He drives a special edition Presidential Mariner hybrid. Hilliary has also seen some green cars like the 100 MPG Prius and drives the Ford Escape hybrid. She is not alone. Other presidential candidates John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Mitt Romney and Bill Richardson also drive the Ford Escape hybrid. The video is Olbermann on the Bush blew himself incident which has the Phoenix SUV just off camera. It was all a joke, a bad joke.

[Source: CNET]

Phoenix Motorcars has their first firm orders for their upcoming electric pickup truck. They have received seventy-five firm orders from municipalities and one utility. Phoenix is the first automotive company to commit to using the Altairnano NanoSafe lithium ion battery. According to the Phoenix press release, they also have a three-year US exclusivity agreement and they got gave a 16.6 percent equity stake in to Altairnano.

The agreement has certain restrictions which could make it difficult for GM to consider these batteries for the Volt. Phoenix has to meet sales levels to keep the exclusivity. The release also says it's exclusive for all-electric vehicles, but since the Volt has an engine, it may depend on the exact wording of the agreement. Phoenix has 16 trucks in progress right now, and wants to have federal safety testing done with these vehicles done in time to sell 500 trucks before the end of the year. Click on the Read link for the Phoenix press release.

Related:

• Altair NanoTechnologies ships first 10 batteries to Phoenix Motorcars

[Source: Phoenix Motorcars via AutoBlog]

On Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Alan Gotcher of Altair Nanotechnologies broke down his company's batteries. Not physically, but verbally and with Powerpoint slides. In a room full of battery experts, Gotcher explained why his company's NanoSafe batteries are the top of the line. No one got up to call him a liar when he described these greatly improved batteries, in part because most of this information has been floating about for a while, and in part because he had the data to back up his claims.

Standard li-ion batteries, like those used in laptops and cell phones, charge in about two to six hours, have a power density of less than 1,000 watts per kilogram (W/Kg), and have a lifespan of less than 1,000 cycles (full discharge). NanoSafe batteries, which use li-ion but have the graphite in the anode electrode material replaced with nano-titanate. This change gives them vastly better numbers. We're talking batteries that can be charged in less than 10 minutes, have a power density of 4,000 W/Kg, and can retain 85 percent of their charge 20,000 charge cycles. Combine this with a wider operating temperature range (between -50 to 75 degrees C) than standard li-ion batteries, an expected life of 12-20 years (depending on use) and batteries that have not smoked or caught fire in any of the standard battery tests, and you've got a battery with great potential for automotive use.

At least one car company thinks so. As we've mentioned before, Phoenix motorcar and Altair will be releasing an electric truck in the spring of 2007 that uses a 35,000 Watt-hour NanoSafe battery-pack. The truck is expected to have a range of 136 miles, a top speed of 95 mph, and a recharge time of less than 10 minutes. These numbers are slightly different that what was reported earlier: a 85 mph top speed and 120 mile range.

More battery news, from Tesla and ZENN, in a little bit.