Let’s be clear: TTAC is not in the business of bashing EVs just for the hell of it; there are good reasons why battery-power is the gas foe’s great white hope. But this story is just too crazy. In BMW’s rush to launch its 450-unit MINI E test lease program, it has failed to secure Underwriter’s Laboratory approval for its high-voltage charging cord. As many as 300 of the 450 customers who’ll be getting Mini Es many not get their high-voltage charging cables for a month or so and will have to use sloooooowwwwww 110-volt trickle charging to replenish their car’s power pack when the battery runs down,” according to Edmunds. Which means instead of taking 4 hours to recharge the MINI E’s 150-mile-range batteries, users will have to wait 23 hours to fill up through a 110V cable. At an $850/month lease rate, that makes the MINI E the mother of all EV debacles. Approval for the charger will happen “within weeks,” say BMW. But as professional EV booster Chelsea Sexton puts it, “they are guaranteeing virgin customers a poor experience.” And ain’t that just the way it tends to go for virgins.
No, we’re not anticipating more congressional hearings. The AP (Breitbart) reports that inappropriately named Zero Pollution Motors is trying to bring MDI’s compressed-air technology to America. Again. Still. There’s only one problem. “Air compressors are one of the least efficient machines to convert electricity to work,” says Harold Kung, professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University. “Why not use the electricity directly, as in electric cars? From an energy utilization point of view, the compressed (air) car does not make sense.” What the professor appears to be missing is that the firm is called Zero Pollution Motors. Put that in your chemical engineering bong and and give it a toke.
President Bush’s imaginatively-named “Freedom Fuel Initiative” has been slashed by President Obama, cutting $100 million per year from hydrogen research funding according to DailyTech. Government spending on hydrogen fuel cell technology will drop from about $169 million per year to about $69 million, as a natural and healthy skepticism grows about hydrogen’s short-term potential. “The probability of deploying hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the next 10 to 20 years is low,” say Department of Energy spokesfolks, taking an early lead for understatement of the week.
President Obama gave the dying ethanol industry a huge shot in the arm Tuesday when he announced that over $780 million of stimulus money will be spent on biofuel “research and commercialization,” guided by an all-new Biofuels Interagency Working Group. Think of a giant, government-funded R&D/marketing department for the ethanol industry, and you’ll have some idea of what we’re looking at. “We need to work in concert with the industry to figure out how to do a better job to create a market for biofuels, how to increase the use of flex-fuel vehicles, how we can assist those who market, and to coordinate the infrastructure, and do all this in a sustainable way,” says Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack. Unfortunately “creating a market” isn’t easy. The US already spends more on ethanol subsidies than any other renewable energy source, and has been rewarded only with crashing ethanol demand and rampant refinery bankruptcies. Good thing hope springs eternal in the breast of K Street.
Ok, it’s not really a secret. But I sure wasn’t aware that the Italian automaker is “the biggest player in the market for natural gas engines,” selling 68k natural gas-powered rides last year and aiming for 120k unit sales this year. Thanks for the heads-up, NY Times! In yet more evidence of Fiat’s politically-savvy strategy, Italy’s scrappage scheme currently doubles the rebate for paisans who junk their clunker for a natural gas hoopty. Naturally though, one government incentive isn’t enough: “Fiat is collaborating with fuel companies and the Italian government to provide more than 1,000 stations where motorists can fill their tanks with natural gas.” Though most NG Fiats are “dual-fuel,” US infrastructure will have to be significantly upgraded (with help from taxpayers) to cash in on NG’s green promise stateside. Nonetheless Fiat’s natural gas technology is raising hopes for Chrysler’s future, if a deal is done, if infrastructure is upgraded, and if US consumers spring for the emerging fuel. But a word of warning: eco-tech enticement sent several billion GM bucks down the Fiat rabbit hole in search of competitive diesel technology not that long ago. And we all know how that turned out.
A post at the former Tesla PR chief’s personal blog recounts the debate inside Tesla over where to manufacturer the firm’s WhiteStar sedan. Siry describes grappling with the tradeoffs between a reasonable price and skeptical public perceptions of Chinese cars. “The part causing the most conflict,” writes Siry, “was that it was clear in the world of consumer electronics and chip manufacturing that low cost manufacturing had been achieved while also maintaining the highest standards in quality. Why couldn’t this be the same case for automobiles?” After all, he argues, your iPhone is designed in California but built in China—and nobody confuses it with a purely Chinese product. Pointing to the Volt’s projected $40K price point for a Cruze-based compact/mid, Siry argues that cost is too important to phasing EVs into the market to be ignored. And that firms like his former employer will pay the price for not taking advantage of China’s opportunities.
Do we want to place bets on how soon Chrysler will shift its sales strategy back towards fleet sales? Unfortunately for Americas struggling automakers, $565M in low-profit sales probably isn’t enough to make much of a difference to anyone’s bottom line. Especially considering that the expenditure is set to take place over the next ten years. On the other hand, AT&T is only replacing about 15,000 vehicles, meaning the average price per vehicle is budgeted at about $37K, which is pretty decent for fleet costs. So who will benefit? Ford, hybrids and natural gas, says Automotive News [sub]. The Telecom giant plans on buying about 8,000 compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles from Ford, and will fill out its portfolio with hybrid and “other advanced technology power system” vehicles. Sorry, ChryCo!
Nissan is determined to sell electric cars in the US beginning in 2012, but the problem of building a charging infrastructure continues to bedevil product planners. Charging stations must be plentiful, convenient, and most importantly EV owners must be willing to wait there at least half an hour to complete a fast-charge of their EV’s batteries. Having added it all up and thrown in just a dash of condecension towards American culture (or lack thereof), Nissan’s boffins reckon that fast food joints are the perfect location for EV charging station, reports Automotive News [sub]. Of course the idea of sitting around a fast food joint for a half-hour while your car recharges for another 80 miles of driving kind of defeats the idea of fast food, but no matter.
The New York Times reports that the European Union is drafting trade duties on imported American biofuels to protect its own $10b biofuel industry. Even though both the US and the EU subsidize biofuels, European producers complain that American producers benefit from production subsidies in the US and retail subsidies in Europe. The EU has been investigating these claims, and tariffs of 44 euros per 220 lbs of imported biofuel could be put in place by this summer. Meanwhile American subsidies for corn ethanol production are set to expand indefinitely. We’ve argued that trade disputes could bring the bailout boom to a rapid close, but perhaps such a dispute will rid us of wasteful ethanol pork first.
Efforts of folks like Willie Nelson notwithstanding, the alt-fuel scene used to be pretty uncool. Just picture guys who spend their evenings filtering used grease they get for free from french-fry factories, or travelling salesmen who’ll drive a detour of 20 miles to fill up with Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). But the supply of pretty good alt-fuel cars is increasing—at least on the right side of the Atlantic, where VW and Opel have recently introduced sexier Euro-CNG-mobiles. VW is now selling a technologically-interesting Passat version that utilizes both a turbocharger and a compressor.
OK, so I linked to this in the post below, but it really deserves its own post. After all, few things define the times quite as poignantly as Chrysler’s peculiar brand of insanity. See, the problem with the psychology of recession is that it causes inordinate self-doubt among panicked executives and their long-suffering staffs. Which, if you’re Chrysler, might be a good thing. Except that for some reason, the principles of reflection and continuous improvement always take a back seat to some brainiac who thinks that the problem is that the firms products aren’t exactly like iPods. At Chrysler, this brainiac is named Peter Arnell. In an interview with AdWeek, Chrysler’s “Chief Innovation Officer” lives up to his cliched title by spewing the most ridiculous twaddle about his pet project, the Chrysler PeaPod. For those who don’t know, the PeaPod is a GEM Low Speed (Neighborhood Electric) Vehicle (LSV/NEV). This means that the PeaPod is limited to 25 mph and is barred from thoroughfares with speed limits of higher than 35 mph. In other words, it’s useless. Unless you live on a golf course or in a gated retirement community. But the way Arnell tells it, the PeaPod is just a Wired Magazine cover away from becoming the next Apple killer app.
It would be everybody’s dream come true: A car running on nothing else than sunshine. Well, not everybody’s dream maybe. In Saudi Arabia, they have a lot of sunshine, but it doesn’t fit in tankers. “Toyota Motor Corp. is secretly developing a vehicle that will be powered solely by solar energy in an effort to turn around its struggling business with a futuristic ecological car,” reports AP via Yahoo News. AP says, Toyota is working on an electric vehicle that will get some of its power from solar cells on the vehicle, and that can be recharged with electricity generated from solar panels on the roofs of homes. As a next step, says AP, “the automaker later hopes to develop a model totally powered by solar cells on the vehicle.” Sounds unbelievable? AP says they have it on good authority. Read More >
The bailout-beggar line just got a little longer, as Green Car Congress reports that the US Fuel Cell Council is requesting a cool $1.17b of your hard-earned tax dollars (kudos for making the smallest handout request in months!). The money would come in the form of full funding for a number of programs authorized in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, including deployment programs; development of a refueling infrastructure; learning demonstrations; building domestic manufacturing capability; accelerating public-private research; and investing in fuel cell transit programs. And they aren’t leaving it there, either. A July 2008 study by the National Research Council estimated that a total public-private investment of about $200 billion would be required from 2008 to 2023 to support a transition from gasoline to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, at which point fuel cell vehicles would become competitive with gasoline-powered vehicles. Or, as we find so many causes for repeating, not. Though hydrogen fuel cells offer more long-term promise than say, ethanol, we’re still talking about some serious pie in the sky. At an appropriately astronomical cost too. Sorry kids, but if we’re to spend government money on something like this, I’d like to see it go towards lithium-ion battery development, which shows more medium-term promise and doesn’t require a new ground-up infrastructure.
Oregon’s governor Ted Kulongoski is currently getting some flack in our comments section over his pay-per-mile road tax scheme. But this is not the only green-oriented plan Kulongoski is floating, having already confirmed that Nissan will provide EVs for the state fleet in 2010. Another controversial transportation proposal of Kulongoski’s is to replace the $1,500 hybrid tax credit with a $5k credit towards the purchase of an all-electric car. If this plan does go into effect, it will make your Tesla Roadster (or Nissan Better Place-mobile) a little more affordable, just be prepared to have your doors blown off by a Datsun 1200 when you hit the road. Check out Oregon Field Guide’s visit with White Zombie, the zero-emissions ass kicker you never saw coming.
Auto Motor und Sport hears that Mazda will debut a gas/hydrogen powertrain on its 2012 rotary-sportster, the RX-9. This got the German lads so excited they comissioned Mark Stehrenberg to sketch up this rendering of a potential next-gen RX. Keep in mind that all Stehrenberg had to go on was the Taiki showcar and news that the wankel engine would power the rear wheels only. As for the dual-fuel hydrogen system (think BMW Hydrogen 7), Mazda is already testing the powertrain on RX-8 mules. Although Mazda will probably improve on the BMW system’s many shortcomings by 2012, it will be interesting to see what Lithium-Ion batteries will be capable of by then. Or if there will even be hydrogen refueling stations outside of LA. Elsewhere in 2012, I’ll be stalking the used CRZ market for my slice of eco-friendly fun.
Recent Comments