Tag Archives: electric vehicles

Research reports, SED - Smart Energy Decisions

State of vehicle fleet electrification | SED

Working with the content director at Smart Energy Decisions, led the data graphic design and drafted the copy for this piece of original, survey-based market research looking at trends in vehicle fleet electrification, on behalf of NRG.

View the full report here, at Smart Energy Decisions: https://www.smartenergydecisions.com/research/2021/10/18/research-the-state-of-vehicle-fleet-electrification 

Smart Energy Decisions presents The State of Vehicle Fleet Electrification, a first-of-its-kind study to explore key dynamics driving the transition to electrified commercial fleets. Sponsored by NRG Energy, exclusive survey results reveal drivers and barriers experienced as organizations advance toward fleet electrification. Among areas explored in the study are operating models, intentions to electrify, the decision-making process, where growth is expected, benefits already achieved, and how best to plan the journey.

Or download directly, here.

SED-NRG-State-of-Fleet-Vehicle-Electrification-Final-as-publshed-2021-10Download

Corporate Knights

A Different Kind of Hybrid: USPS Bets on Hydraulics | Corporate Knights

Package delivery giant UPS gives its fleet the hybrid treatment, minus the expensive batteries

To help its iconic brown delivery vans go much further on a gallon of fuel, United Parcel Service is rolling out a new type of hybrid vehicle that’s propelled by hydraulic pressure instead of electric batteries.

The technology is a relative of the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) pioneered by Toyota’s Prius, which achieves enviable mileage by recapturing much of the energy lost during braking. Instead of saving that braking energy in batteries, UPS’s new hydraulic hybrid vehicle (HHV) delivers a 35 per cent boost to mileage by storing hydraulic fluids in super strong tanks.

“The hydraulics are the muscle, managed by very sophisticated electronics,” says Mike Britt, director of maintenance and engineering for the company’s international ground fleet.

Hydraulic systems may be new to delivery trucks, but they’re widely used elsewhere. The strength and durability of hydraulic systems have made them a mainstay in countless heavy-duty machines, from fighter planes and garbage trucks to bulldozers and car crushers. But until now, high costs have made it difficult to use hydraulic drives in everyday vehicles.

As part of a long-term government-backed program to study and scale up this technology, UPS began at the end of 2012 to introduce 40 of the advanced Daimler-built hybrids on delivery routes in Atlanta, Georgia, the shipping giant’s hometown, and Baltimore, Maryland.

From the outside, UPS’s hybrids are the same familiar brown boxes-on-wheels that have delivered catalogue orders and holiday gifts for generations. Pop open the hood, however, and you’ll begin to see differences. Inside is a powerful diesel engine, but instead of connecting to a drive axle and transmission, as in a regular truck, the motor drives an advanced pump that pressurizes a tank of hydraulic fluid.

Upon acceleration, digital controllers send bursts of highly pressurized fluid via narrow pipes to pump motors, which set the wheels spinning. The system works in reverse during braking. The pumps act as generators, recapturing more than 70 per cent of the vehicle’s kinetic energy. At idle, the engine doesn’t run. Rather, it switches on and off intermittently to top up hydraulic pressure.

The design’s main attraction is that it consumes less energy. Using the diesel engine to generate hydraulic pressure, rather than propel the van, allows the motor to run at a fixed, optimal speed.

What’s more, the regenerative braking process is about 50 per cent more effective at recapturing energy compared with a Prius-style hybrid electric vehicle, Britt adds.

There are also secondary savings in the form of less wear and tear. Compared with conventional designs, UPS anticipates the brakes will last four or five times longer.

Likewise, running the engine at its “sweet spot” should extend its lifespan two- or three-fold compared with a diesel engine used conventionally, Britt says.

Given that a typical UPS brown delivery van has an average lifespan of up to 25 years, less day-to-day downtime means many more deliveries and lower lifetime operating costs.

Performance improves, too. Drivers like that the system delivers enormous torque – or pushing power – immediately. That’s an advantage when moving a 27,000-pound van up to speed, then back to a stop, scores of times every day. “Hydraulic power is really well suited to stop-and-go delivery routes,” says Britt.

The design is the result of a project that started in 2006, backed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Clean Cities program.

In the six years since, the department has orchestrated the development of a series of pilot vehicles in collaboration with three vehicle manufacturers (Eaton, Parker Hannifin and FCCC) and three major shippers (FedEx, Purolator and UPS).

With a fleet of 93,000 delivery vehicles – running the gamut from big rigs down to three wheelers – UPS has proven itself an eager early adopter of green vehicle technologies. The hydraulic hybrids join a fleet of 2,500-plus “unconventional” vehicles, which includes HEVs, compressed natural gas (CNG), clean diesel and pure electric vehicles (EVs). Taken together, this fleet has motored more than 200 million miles since 2000.

The hydraulic hybrids are hitting U.S. roads at around $120,000 per vehicle, Britt estimates. That’s roughly twice as much as a standard diesel version. To help validate the long-term cost advantages, and to amass data on the real-world performance of the technology, the Environmental Protection Agency subsidized about a third of UPS’s total costs.

Britt believes there’s room for costs to fall and energy savings to rise. “If we do this right, we can set a standard for the whole industry.”

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See the original story here: http://corporateknights.com/article/tech-savvy-united-postal-service

GreenBiz

Seven lessons learned from driving 24 million EV miles | GreenBiz

In the world of electric vehicles, nothing attracts as much speculation or disagreement as the debate over exactly how EV drivers behave. Do they need 100 miles of range or will 30 miles do? How many public recharge stations do they need? Do energy prices influence charging? And so on.

The answers to these questions could have huge implications for the success of EVs. If drivers are satisfied with lower-range cars, fewer recharge points and overnight recharging, then the overall challenge of electrifying the nation’s fleet could be resolved at lower costs and more quickly — with greater economic and environmental benefits.

The best way to answer these questions, of course, is to watch EV drivers and to learn what they’re actually doing.  To assist in that process, the Department of Energy commissioned an industry collaboration — involving a wide range of carmakers, utilities, retailers, government entities and technology providers — to help identify current and potential barriers to EV adoption.

Dubbed the EV Project, the program began in late 2010; gathering data from EV drivers willing to share that information. And last week, the EV Project announced it had amassed an unprecedented volume of behavioral data drawn from more than 24 million miles of EV driving.

The DOE awarded management of the project to ECOtality, which manufactures EV charging units and related software. Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan LEAF are project partners, too. Qualifying Volt and LEAF drivers also receive a residential charger and installation at little or no cost to themselves.

“We’re beginning to really see how people are using chargers,” said Colin Read, vice president of corporate development for ECOtality. I spoke with Read while he was in New York City.

So far, the EV Project is tracking some 4,600 vehicles. And including public sites the EV Project is also monitoring 6,200 charging stations, made up mostly of the Type II chargers that operate at 240 volts.

Geographically, the project is tracking EV behavior in 18 markets, including the “Birkenstock Belt”— those eco-conscious parts of West Coast: Washington, Oregon and California — plus sites in Arizona, Texas, as well as Tennessee, where Nissan builds the LEAF. “We picked regions with very little in common on purpose. We’re seeking a diversity of driver experience,” Read said.

The EV Project is also buying EVs from dealer lots, much like regular consumers do, to understand the overall buying experience. “We call it the ‘Noah’s Ark of EV programs,’ because we buy a pair of every EV on the market,” Read joked. The project does make some exceptions, however, with the most costly models, where just one car is enough.

So, what are some of the project’s early lessons?

  1. The current EV driving distance is modest. According to a pool of EV drivers, made up most of LEAF drivers, average daily mileage is running at 27.7 miles. That distance is very much in line with the overall, rule-of-thumb estimates that most Americans drive less than 40 miles per day.
  2. There’s range anxiety, but not the sort most expected. Project data is showing a curious quirk. There’s been a collective worry that ‘range anxiety’ stifles demand for EV. But data from a small but growing pool of Volt drivers reveals that its drivers work hard to stay in all-battery mode — rather than routinely taking advantage of the extended range provided by the Volt’s gas engine. To stay within the Volt’s 40-mile battery range and not use any gasoline, “[Volt drivers] are being very disciplined,” Read said. “They want to drive all-electric, so we’re seeing them plug in more frequently than LEAF drivers.”
  3. Recharge times are fairly short. Given these relatively low daily-driving distances, the amount of time EVs are actively drawing power to recharge is averaging about 1.5 hours. The average amount of time the car is plugged in (although not necessarily drawing power) is 8.5 hours. And the bulk of cars are reportedly plugged in during a window that spans 8pm to 8am. The upshot? “Drivers don’t need to recharge continuously overnight,” Read said. This data suggests the transmission grid may be better prepared to handle large volumes of EVs than originally thought.
  4. Price signals work. The EV Project looked at San Diego, where utility San Diego Gas & Electric runs one of the nation’s most sophisticated time-of-day consumer pricing programs. And according to the Project, there’s a strong demand there for low-cost, late-night power. SDG&E sells power at four tiers: full price, half price, one-quarter price and, from midnight till early morning, one-sixth of the full price. “We see almost no charging until midnight, when prices fall to their lowest,” Read said. This has implications for grid use: “The knock that the grid will need more capacity to handle a lot of EVs isn’t true; if we can shift charging to night, it will actually balance out the grid.”
  5. Topping off is habitual, but maybe not necessary. The EV Project data shows that daytime charging rises from 9am to 4pm. “People plug in when they’re at work, regardless of whether they need the charge,” Read said. At the moment, because the daytime chargers are free, this behavior may not be reflecting real-world conditions. “People recharge more out of convenience than out of fear,” Read notes. “If the charger is available and free, they’ll plug in.” But higher prices for daytime pricing are inevitable, he adds, and that change will likely drive down demand for daytime plug time.
  6. Installation costs must fall. ECOtality is also tracking installation costs and procedures in its test markets. The costs to permit and install a home charger vary widely and must come down, Read said. Installation costs can run as high as $1,400, and “this has made us rethink the design of the installation process and charging device,” he said. Earlier chargers had to be hard-wired into the wall — but now they can be plugged into a heavy-duty 240V wall plug, like those used for clothes dryers or ovens.
  7. It’s too early to judge true demand. Read’s final point: criticism of EVs in some industry and political circles is premature and unjustified. Critics have been pointing out that the LEAF and Volt fell short of sales targets in 2011, with a total volume of just over 17,000 vehicles. But Read points out that Toyota’s Prius sold just 5,000 units in 2000 – the year when first-generation hybrid cars such as the Prius and the Honda Insight were first sold. “We’re about to see a more real-world test of demand,” he said, with the arrival of Toyota’s plug-in Prius hybrid and the debut of Ford’s battery-powered Focus EV.

Keep an eye on the EV Project’s progress at http://www.theevproject.com/documents.php.

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Image of concept alternative electric vehicle by AlexRoz via Shutterstock. 

Check out the original article here: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/04/30/how-evs-are-changing-driver-behavior-7-lessons-24-million-miles

GreenBiz

What’s keeping electric vehicles from the mainstream? | GreenBiz

Advancements in electric-vehicle technologies have made them increasingly viable for consumers, fleets and car-sharing services, but they’re still not mainstream alternatives to conventional gasoline-powered cars.

One key missing link is more infrastructure and support services, but investors are wary to plunk down the cash for these pieces until there are more EVs on the roads. It’s a classic chicken-or-egg problem. Which should come first: EVs or infrastructure, like charging stations?

This question took center stage last week at GreenBiz’s VERGE DC event. The thesis behind VERGE — the convergence of energy, information, technology and transportation — fits the long-term vision for EV expansion, yet so far EVs haven’t integrated well with other networks, said the panel’s moderator, Beth Lowery, a principal with GreenOrder and a former General Motors executive.

To help explore how, where, and when the EV ecosystem is evolving, Lowery spoke with:

NRG is betting big by building the only privately funded EV recharging network in the country, including the largest network of “fast” chargers, which use high-voltage DC current to slash recharge times drastically. In Dallas, Houston and elsewhere in Texas, NRG is partnering with Walgreens and other retailers to install recharging hubs.

And in California, the company announced Friday that will spend approximately $100 million to build, own and operate a comprehensive EV charging network, including at least 200 publicly available fast-charging stations. (The deal is part of a settlement with the state’s public utilities commission over a dispute during California’s energy crisis more than a decade ago.)

Instead of range anxiety, “EV drivers should have full range confidence,” Banskota said.

Meanwhile, Eaton has seen growing convergence in the commercial vehicle space, where it has been developing hybrid and EV technologies, Wirtz said. The trend has yielded hybrid systems not yet seen in passenger vehicles, such as diesel electric hybrids and hydraulic-hybrids, which recover braking energy as mechanical energy.

“We’re trying to imagine what the world will look like when 75 percent of vehicles are EVs,” he said.

For Greenlots, convergence means using the data cloud to better integrate EVs, homes and renewable-energy sources into the grid. “In Germany, we’re taking wind power and matching that with EV battery storage,” Mahabir said. “In the U.S., utilities don’t yet know when EV drivers are going recharge.”  That lack of transparency can unnecessarily tax the grid.

Another challenge includes a lack of public understanding about EVs, even five years after their rebirth. When NRG surveys consumers if they’d buy EVs, Banskota recounted, typically around a third are inclined. “But after we show them how it works, where they can recharge, and the cost benefits, that share doubles,” he said. “Education is critical.”

Despite the press coverage they’ve attracted, EVs are so rare — just 17,000 GM Volts and Nissan Leafs have been sold so far — that few drivers have had hands-on experience. Getting the public to have more direct experience with EVs can be a game changer, Wirtz said. “First-time EV drivers always find the experience exhilarating,” he said, because the driving experience is so quiet, powerful and smooth.

In terms of policy, Mahabir believes that support should be focused on the battery problem. “Korea, Japan, and China are investing billions in batteries, and we need to do the same” he said.

Eaton’s Wirtz concurred: If the industry can get batteries right, charging networks will follow.  That means lowering battery prices, boosting their capacity, and shrinking their charging times. For EV adoption, we’ll see a “top up” strategy where, everywhere you go, drivers will want plug in — that’s different from gas driving, where folks are comfortable letting their tank get near to empty, Wirtz said.

“People talk about this being a chicken and egg problem,” he added. “We firmly believe if you get the battery price down, the infrastructure will come.”

Banskota replied that the lifetime cost of ownership of EVs is something consumers don’t yet understand properly. The Nissan Leaf, for example, is already the lowest-cost vehicle in terms of lifetime costs, including maintenance, fuel and sticker price. “EVs are already competitive,” he said.

One way to help lower EVs’ costs and drive adoption would be to standardize chargers, Wirtz said. “We’ve identified 11 protocols for vehicles to communicate to recharging points,” he said. That creates costly complexity and deters economies of scale.

Another barrier: EVs don’t necessarily fit well into legacy car retail channels, Mahabir pointed out. Dealers don’t love the financial impact of EVs on their profits, since battery-powered cars are relatively expensive, leaving a thinner margins. What’s more: EVs need less maintenance, which hurts shop income.

In terms of federal incentives, the focus ought to be on early-stage research and development, said NRG’s Banskota, in order to drive progress in the basic battery science.

Locally, giving EVs access to HOV lanes and preferential parking are low-cost ways for cities to stir interest in EVs. “It would provide a huge boost for EV owners,” Banskota said.

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View the original story at: http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/03/23/whats-keeping-electric-vehicles-mainstream

GreenBiz

Can Lit Motors’ self-balancing electric motorcycle succeed where Segway couldn’t? | GreenBiz

What rolls on only two wheels, but can’t be toppled? No, it’s not a Segway. But it does look a little like a Tron-inspired light cycle. The answer is Lit Motors’ C-1 virtually uncrashable electric motorcycle.

At GreenBiz’s VERGE DC confab last week, Lit Motors founder Daniel Kim made a case for why this super-stable electric motorcycle may just succeed where the Segway failed – and why it has the potential to accelerate our breakup with internal-combustion-powered four-wheelers.

What makes Lit’s C-1 so VERGE–y is that it’s a mashup: It combines old-school motorcycle design with cutting-edge sensory and stabilization systems.

The stabilization systems evolved from the digitally controlled gyroscopes first used to stabilize the Hubble Space Telescope. The C-1 uses a pair of advanced gyros as the foundation of a covered, electric motorcycle that — for all intents and purposes — can’t be knocked over. Sounds ridiculous? Well, check out the scale models in this video to see how it works:

Here’s how Lit explains the techno-mojo behind all that stability trickery:

Utilizing electronically controlled gyroscopes located under the floor (putting out over 1,300 lb/ft of torque), the vehicle balances at a stop and stays upright in the event of a collision. In-wheel electric motors (40 kw) provide the power and regeneration, while hub steering keeps you pointed in the right direction. With a top speed of over 120 MPH and battery packs providing 200 miles per charge, the C-1 is perfect for commuters and city dwellers alike.

Since 2010, Kim’s team of nine has logged nearly 20,000 hours developing the C-1 and its constituent technologies. In the process, they’ve applied for 13 patents and designed for a compact manufacturing operation — all on a budget well south of $1 million. Talk about lean innovation.

Kim is aiming for something that transcends slick electric motorcycles. Like a growing generation of transportation thinkers, he sees traffic as a vicious problem that’s seen very little real innovation during the century-long reign of the car. Given that three-quarters of vehicles are driven alone, converting them into the smaller footprint of single-passenger C-1s could effectively free up half of our existing road capacity.

Lit Motors founder Daniel Kim talks about the C-1 electric motorcycle.

Daniel Kim, founder of Lit MotorsThe gains could go further, too. Imagine if the C-1 were mated with the autonomous vehicle systems being developed by the likes of Google and Audi, which promise to reduce congestion by optimizing vehicle behavior. The result could be agile, self-driving robot cars whizzing along fast-moving, jam-free roads. That is, at least until the inevitable robot rebellion.

Back to the C-1. As a motorcycle and bicycle-loving technophile, it’s hard for me not to enthuse about this tantalizing technology. But in truth, the transportation world is littered with achingly smart gizmos that crashed and burned. High atop that list, of course, is Dean Kamen’s Segway, a two-wheeled, self-balancing scooter packed with such blinding promise that Time magazine judged it a “reinvention of the wheel.” Yet these days, Segways are exiled to duty on Paris’ lazy-tourist circuit.

To be fair, the C-1 gets right much that was wrong with the Segway. The Segway promised to revolutionize urban transportation, but was quickly mired in legal wrangling over whether it belonged on sidewalks or roads. The C-1 clearly belongs on roads. The Segway was open, exposed to the weather, while the C-1 is sealed like a car.

Another problem was that the Segway offered a costly solution for shortish journeys, for which plenty of perfectly good, cheap alternatives exist – feet, bicycles and buses, to name a few. In contrast, the C-1 looks to be a true alternative for distant commutes. Kim emphasized that its range would more than cover the average U.S. daily commute.

And don’t underestimate the cool factor. Aside from the above-mentioned reasons, the Segway also was doomed by a chronic case of “I’d be embarrassed to be seen on it” design. It screamed park ranger. Conversely, the C-1 stirs science-fiction dreams. In a chat after his presentation, Kim explained that the fab shop that produced the Tron lightcycle for the recent remake of the sci-fi film helped to build the first C-1 prototype.

Of course, the C-1 has a long way to go to reach the market, and many speed bumps, detours and dead ends can crop up on the road from lab to factory. Passing federal safety and classification standards are costly obstacles. Then there’s the marketing challenge: It will still have to overcome the Segway curse.

Yet, really, it all comes back to one basic question: Who wouldn’t want to commute on a light cycle?

You can put down a deposit on one for as little as $250 at http://litmotors.com/reserve/. Kim is hoping the first commercial models will roll out on U.S. roads in 2014, priced in the neighborhood of $24,000.

Photos from VERGE DC taken by Goodwin Ogbuehi for GreenBiz Group.

Global CCS Institute

Lessons form California’s daunting carbon challenge | Global CCS Institute

Among US states, California is leading the race to explore and implement ways to lower its greenhouse gas output. Its goal: to cut emissions to one-fifth of 1990 levels by mid century. As such, other states and nations are closely watching the Golden State’s practices for inspiration and technical guidance.

What then, if a deep, hard look at California’s ambitious plans to lower its greenhouse gas emissions revealed that – even by pursuing an all-out, no-holds-barred mix of today’s technologies and aggressive efficiency measures – the state was only likely to get about halfway towards its goal?

That, roughly, is the conclusion that Jane C. S. Long comes to in a commentary published in the journal Nature last October. Titled Piecemeal cuts won’t add up to radical reductions, her note maps out, with remarkable clarity, the mountainous challenge ahead for California to achieve its climate goal. The bracing conclusion: California can’t just spend or deploy its way to an 80 per cent reduction or beyond – and neither can anywhere else.

Jane’s expertise stems from her role as co-leader of a team of energy analysts who wrote California’s Energy Future: The View to 2050 published in May 2011. By day, she’s principal associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a global leader in research on energy technologies and policy.

One of the important implications that surfaces in Jane’s broader analysis is the central role of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). This is somewhat surprising given that California’s grid is all but coal-free.

California is different from most states, she observes, with 40 per cent of total energy used for transportation, versus 25 per cent nationally. Thus CCS must come into play less so for grid power than to help generate low-carbon vehicle fuels and other applications where neither electricity nor biofuels can substitute for existing fossil fuels.

The model Jane and her team developed strives to avoid what she calls ‘sleights of hand’ where it can be difficult to fully account for the secondary or tertiary impacts induced by switching to new energy forms. For example, rather than simply count solar panels as clean generation, Jane’s model more fully enumerates the impact of electric power generation at night and other times when solar panels are off line.

The analysis reveals that to achieve a 60 per cent reduction – well short of the 80 per cent goal California and many nations are looking to – would require all manner of tough-to-imagine steps:

[The state would have to] replace or retrofit every building to very high efficiency standards. Electricity would have to replace natural gas for home and commercial heating. All buses and trains, virtually all cars, and some trucks would be electric or hybrid. And the state’s entire electricity-generation capacity would have to be doubled, while simultaneously being replaced with emissions-free generation. Low-emissions fuels would have to be made from California’s waste biomass plus some fuel crops grown on marginal lands without irrigation or fertilizer.

Given that California represents a best-case scenario for the rest of the US, Long’s assessment is a compelling case to accelerate the speed and scope of carbon-reduction efforts.

I’ll refrain from diving into the broader implications of her report here – better to check it out in whole. Instead, for the Global CCS Institute’s community, I wrote to Jane to tease out a bit more of her vision of CCS in California’s future. An edited version of our exchange follows.

Adam: You’ve said that CCS has a critical role in helping California achieve its goal of cutting emissions to 20 per cent of their 1990 levels by mid century. How so?

Jane: I would guess that CCS will not play much of a role in meeting the AB32 goals of 20 per cent reductions, but it may play an important role in meeting the longer-term goal of 80 per cent reductions by 2050. Natural gas generation is a large part of California’s electricity portfolio. If this is to continue and meet the emission reductions, CCS would have to be used whether or not that generation was within state or say, by wire from Wyoming.

In the long term, CCS may play a critical role in solving the fuel problem. We are unlikely to have enough biofuel to meet all of our demands for fuel even if we are successful in cutting demand in half through efficiency measures and electrifying everything we can. CCS could be part of a hydrogen scenario where we get hydrogen from methane and sequester the CO2 generated in this process. Or we might use biomass to make electricity and sequester the emissions to create a negative emission credit to counter the continued use of fossil fuels.

Adam: Yet CCS technologies remain immature and under-commercialized. Starting in what years would CCS need to begin entering into California’s energy mix to play this kind of role? And are we already behind that pace?

Jane: If we start now with demonstration projects, it could be possible to have all new fossil generation be using CCS within a few decades. We need that amount of time to be sure the demonstrations are working.

Adam: What lessons does California’s CCS case have for the transportation challenge in other countries?

Jane: The transportation problem in the developing world is really interesting because it’s not clear that countries like India, for example, should electrify automobiles as a first strategy. If their electricity is made with coal without CCS, electrification is not a clear benefit. If they move to de-carbonize electricity, then electrification of transportation and heat makes much more sense.

Adam: I’ve assumed that developing countries such as China and India ought to leapfrog to electric fleets ahead, and skip the oil-burning stage, to whatever degree possible. You’re suggesting that might not be the best bet for the climate?

Jane: The distance countries like China and India have to go to provide enough electricity at low emissions is huge. If having to run cars on electricity means they add twice as much coal-fired electricity without CCS it would be a disaster. As well, the biomass for biofuel problem is likely to be more acute in these countries as they face serious challenges with food supplies. In the same 2050 period that we are looking to more than double energy supply, we are looking to double food supply. As it takes some time to roll over the fleet of automobiles to electric vehicles, it probably makes sense to move forward with electric transportation at some level as this is what we need in the long term, recognizing it will make the need to decarbonize electricity even more acute.

Adam: Writing for the Institute, the Natural Resource Defense Council’s CCS expert, George Peridas, recently summarized California’s progress as “not a whole lot of progress on the CCS front to showcase since last year, but developments are expected soon”. How could the state reorder its CCS priorities to pick up the pace of technology development?

Jane: The state could get behind a demonstration project for a combined cycle gas plant. There are a lot of people skeptical about CCS. We need to have a concrete example that it works. A big issue in CCS is integrating all the complex industrial processes: electricity generation, capture, and storage. We need experience in actually doing what we theoretically ‘know’ how to do.

For an exploration of the broader report, along with further details on the technicalities of the model used in Jane’s analysis, check out Andy Revkin’s interview with Jane at his Dot Earth blog at the New York Times.

NRDC OnEarth

Book Review — High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry | OnEarth

Jim Motavalli | Rodale Books, 272 pp., $24.99

When the Toyota Prius debuted in the United States a decade ago, reactions were polarized. Fans loved its tantalizing mileage; skeptics scoffed at its relatively high cost and smug eco-imaging. Today, with more than two million sold, the groundbreaking gas-electric hybrid is as uncontroversial as it is unsexy, its success a profitable reward for an early, risky bet on green technology.

In High Voltage, the longtime automotive journalist Jim Motavalli argues that we’re at the start of a similar arc with electric vehicles, or EVs. As these finally hit the streets, we’re still early in the fascination-versus-skepticism phase. Pundits fret over “range anxiety” — how far an EV can go on a charge — while consumers are drawn to the remarkable mileage, the equivalent of as much as 100 miles per gallon of gasoline.

High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug in the auto industry Riding shotgun with Motavalli, readers get a sense of how this technology may not only electrify most new cars (either partially or completely) but also remake the auto industry, rewire our electrical grid, and redefine how and where we refuel — all while lowering oil consumption and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

For the lay reader, Motavalli breaks down the basics of the technology, untangling the often confusing taxonomy of subspecies. There are the now-familiar gas-electric hybrids, such as the Prius, which are never plugged in. There are plug-in hybrids, such as the Volt, which recharge from an outlet but also have a gas engine for extended range. And there are the truest EVs, such as Nissan’s Leaf, which use no gasoline, drawing all their energy from a supersize battery pack.

If you think the $40,000-plus Volt is too costly, Motavalli writes, blame the battery. Higher-capacity batteries may spell the difference between success and failure, which explains, he says, why “battery companies have become the rock stars of the EV business.”

How and where EVs recharge is shaping up to be a monumental technology shift in its own right. From developing a safe, standard design for EV plugs to transforming the grid to handle the EV era, the effort has pulled in some big newcomers to the auto biz. There’s Southern California Edison, which is working out the kinks to install at-home and public charging points. Then there’s GE, which is fortifying the grid for EVs and rolling out “smart grid” technologies, including curbside gizmos that will allow even garageless city dwellers to recharge.

China, already the world’s largest auto market, looms as the EV industry’s game changer. China’s top battery maker, BYD (which is one-tenth owned by Warren Buffett), is targeting the U.S. market with both battery and plug-in hybrid models, the latter priced just south of $30,000, about $10,000 less than the Volt. They’re still crude, and safety is a question, Motavalli reports, but the same was said of the first Japanese imports in the 1960s, and those turned out to be harbingers of a sea change in design and efficiency.

Motavalli concedes that “because of high cost, range issues, relatively low fuel prices, and a scarcity of federal incentives,” EVs may yet hit one of the potholes that has crashed past runs. The odds are with them, though. High long-term oil prices are driving the shift, as are moves toward higher fuel-efficiency standards. Without some measure of electrification, Motavalli contends, few manufacturers will be able to sell in tomorrow’s car markets.

A decade from now, EVs may be just one more kind of vehicle stuck in traffic. That would be exactly the sort of humdrum success EV players hope for. And it would be great for the environment, too.

View and comment on the original story at http://www.onearth.org/article/high-voltage-the-fast-track-to-plug-in-the-auto-industry.

NRDC OnEarth

Meet the Change Makers: Steering Ford Toward Sustainability | OnEarth

A focus on efficiency helps Ford pull away from the Detroit pack. Executive Sue Cischke explains how.

In the long history of U.S. automakers, green strategy and profitability have rarely gone hand in hand –until, that is, Henry Ford’s great-grandson made them a centerpiece of his tenure as the company’s president and CEO. But by 2006, in the face of larger woes in the U.S. auto sector, Bill Ford had to step down from day-to-day management of the company (he now holds the title of executive chairman). Just two years later, in 2006, Bill Ford’s green vision looked cannily prescient. With gas prices spiraling skyward that summer, U.S. drivers stampeded away from gas-guzzlers. Soon after, the financial crisis leveled the economy, and car sales collapsed. Unlike its Motown rivals, Ford was able to steer clear of bankruptcy, thanks in large part to savvy financial moves by Bill Ford’s successor, Alan Mulally.

Today, with auto sales looking up again, Sue Cischke (pronounced SIS-key) believes that extending Ford’s commitment to green corporate practices and energy-efficient vehicles will help it outpace global rivals. Cischke entered the auto biz as a mechanical engineer at Chrysler in 1976, in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo and as high-mileage Japanese imports began to fundamentally reshape the business. These days, she is Ford’s senior-most executive focused on environmental strategy, reporting to CEO Mulally as group vice president, sustainability, environment and safety engineering. One of her top responsibilities is steering Ford’s long-term vehicle development, a vital part of helping the company meet its commitment, unique among its peers, to cut the greenhouse gas emissions of all new Ford vehicles by 30 percent by 2020 (based on a 2006 baseline).

OnEarth contributor Adam Aston recently caught up with Cischke in Detroit to hear how Ford’s green push is unfolding.

Discussions about automakers going green tend to focus on vehicles. But Ford’s been pushing sustainability in its internal operations, too. How do you measure that?

We recognize that our manufacturing operations, in terms of energy use and the materials we consume, have an environmental impact. So our strategy includes increased energy efficiency in both our products and our manufacturing.

Since 2003, we’ve seen energy consumption at Ford’s factories around the globe fall by 29 percent. We’ve won a series of Energy Star awards from the EPA recognizing these efforts. We’ve undertaken countless steps, from small to big, to make these savings. On our assembly lines, for example, thepneumatic tools used to assemble cars have been made smarter, so that they power down quickly when not in use. We’ve also upgraded factory heating and lighting systems. And at some of our paint shops, we’re also converting fumes into fuel to make electricity.

Water is another concern. From 2000 to 2008, we have reduced our water usage by 56 percent. At our Cleveland plant, for example, a program to lower the amount of water used in the casting process, together with efforts to filter and reuse water thoroughly, cut fresh water use by 35 percent in 2009, on top of a 27 percent reduction the prior year. Each year, that’s saving the plant more than $1.2 million in city water costs alone. Worldwide, those kinds of efforts have saved more than 9.5 billion gallons of water at our factories. And we work aggressively to recycle the water in our plants for reuse in manufacturing.

And what about your vehicles?

Ford’s largest environmental impact comes from our products, which is why we have made the commitment to increase fuel efficiency and cut CO2 emissions in every new vehicle we produce. Ford now offers 12 cars, trucks and utility vehicles that lead their segments in fuel economy, including four with certified ratings of 40 mpg or more.

At the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, Ford announced an ambitious range of electrified vehicles. What green technology do you see as having the greatest impact?

In a car, to eke out mileage improvements, it’s about much more than the engine. It’s looking at every component as well as overall design, looking for ways to improve efficiencies. We call it paying attention in exquisite detail. It’s like going on a diet: to lose weight, you can’t just cut down on desserts. You’ve got to exercise more. The change needs to be comprehensive to last.

In the near term, I think Ford’s EcoBoost technology will have the biggest impact because it is an affordable fuel-economy technology that we will offer across most of our lineup. The centerpiece is a four-cylinder engine that delivers the power of a six-cylinder design, boosting gas mileage by up to 20 percent and reducing CO2 by as much as 15 percent. We use turbochargers and direct injection of the gasoline at higher pressures to help achieve these gains.

The approach makes other improvements possible, too. A smaller engine is lighter, so we can downsize other parts on the car — smaller brakes, lighter power-steering motors, and less rugged transmissions, for example — without sacrificing performance.

You’ve said that improving the efficiency of Ford’s entire product line with steps like EcoBoost — rather than the development of a particular advanced hybrid or electric technology — will be the company’s biggest impact. Why?

Because we developed EcoBoost and related design enhancements at a time when the industry was throwing out attention-getting, high-tech prototypes like EVs and plug-in hybrids. Those are important technologies, but will sell in small numbers for some while. We wanted a solution that was more holistic and mainstream.

It doesn’t have the same pizzazz, but because this [EcoBoost] technology will make its way into nine out of 10 of our models within a few years, most of the cars we sell will have the option to be up to 20 percent more fuel-efficient. We are adding more EVs and hybrids too.

In the near term, selling larger numbers of more efficient, affordable gasoline engines will have a bigger impact in reducing CO2 than the much smaller volume of electric vehicles.

In July, President Obama announced a landmark agreement with the auto industry to boost average fuel efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon, for the model year 2025. In talks with lawmakers, car manufacturers have long fought to stop, delay or reduce such an increase, as they did during recent negotiations. For all the talk about greening cars, why has it been so hard for industry to change its tactics?

We look at affordability and higher mileage goals and realize we can’t just force certain technology onto consumers. When we started the first serious push for fuel economy back in the ’70s, consumers were disappointed with cars that were so underpowered they could barely get out of their own way.

That said, much has changed. In the past, the government would throw out a new mileage number and the industry would say, “No,” and the relationship was much more adversarial.

Today, we recognize efficiency as a strong reason for consumers to buy a Ford. It’s a competitive advantage for us. We are committed to improving the fuel efficiency of every new product we bring to market, but in terms of regulations, we still believe the agencies setting standards need to understand there is not a single technology solution, and that the technology advances we employ must remain affordable for car buyers.

In your role, how do you make sure that the company isn’t just paying lip service to sustainability but is getting actual, measurable results?

The thing is, the company that figures this all out is going to be the most successful. That’s a powerful incentive to get the strategy right. It’s easy for a company to project a vision and talk about the future. We’ve found it more useful to do what we need to do, and then talk about it.

Frankly, with all the noise out there about the financial troubles in the auto sector in recent years, it’s been hard for our green offerings to get the attention I think they deserve.

Our momentum is building. We’ve had a highly successful launch of our EcoBoost technology. The Escape Hybrid SUV has been on the market since 2004. The Fusion Hybrid joined the line up in 2008. And we recently announced we are bringing a new hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, and two all-electric vehicles to market within the next two years.

What does the future hold for Ford’s lineup — will it be all-electric?

It’s important to recognize that there is room for an entire range of technologies, but in terms of electrified vehicles (EVs), we see a stronger future for hybrids and plug-in hybrids. A plug-in hybrid can be charged overnight and run on batteries until they’re depleted, before switching over to a gas engine.

If I look into a crystal ball, we’re looking for two breakthroughs: battery costs have to come down as more EVs are sold, and we’re looking for new, better battery technology that will help increase driving range. Without both of those, I’m not certain whether drivers’ concerns about running out of battery power can be overcome for EVs that don’t have a traditional engine as a backup.

That’s why we’ve also focused on charging infrastructure, improving both charging speed and encouraging the development of more sites where drivers can re-charge outside their homes. We expect most people will charge at home, but we also believe consumers will become more comfortable with the concept of electric vehicles when there are a lot more places to plug them in.

In a company with some 160,000 employees around the world, simply delivering the message that sustainability is a priority seems daunting. How has Ford done that?

Our CEO Alan Mulally saw my background and appointed me to head up sustainability. Given that I started out as an engineer, his decision reinforced that the sustainability factors are woven into the earliest stages of our design process all the way through manufacturing.

Day to day, one of the ways we keep the organization’s many moving parts in sync is via a sustainability mobility governance group, which includes senior executives in charge of developing new products, R&D, marketers and others. The issues we evaluate and prioritize there help guide Ford’s highest, board-level discussions of automotive strategy.

Sidebar: Truth Squad

Checking industry claims with NRDC’s sustainability experts

Alone among its Motown rivals, Ford outran bankruptcy during the fiscal crisis. For this and for developing a genuinely greener lineup of hybrids, electric vehicles and higher mileage cars, Ford deserves praise, said Roland Hwang, NRDC’s transportation program director in San Francisco. For example, under CEO Alan Mulally, Ford has re-geared its product offering to emphasize fuel-saving options across more of its offerings. In mid-September, it ended production of the Crown Victoria sedan, a fuel-economy laggard that averaged just 16 mpg in the city.

The broad shift has proven Ford can make money selling more efficient, in some cases smaller, vehicles, said Hwang. “Ford’s return to profitably this year has been impressive,” he said, and unlike past years, “earnings weren’t driven by pickups or SUVs.” Yet this fiscal resilience cast the company in a peculiar role: as de facto leader of the automotive industry’s opposition to the White House’s push for higher mileage standards. With the federal government holding about one-third of GM stock, and nearly a tenth of Chrysler’s, Ford emerged as the industry’s flag carrier.

In May, Mulally personally lobbied Washington lawmakers to bar California from setting higher standards independent from federal rules. And behind the scenes, Ford’s top lobbyists led a push to soften the new standard, known as Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE). “These lobbying efforts run counter to its progress with greener vehicles,” said Hwang. In early July, the auto industry and the Obama Administration settled on a figure of 54.5 mpg by 2025, up from around 30 mpg today. A month later, Ford responded to the tougher rules with a plan to join forces with Toyota, its top international rival, to co-develop gas-electric hybrid systems for SUVs, pickups and other light trucks. Under past mileage rules, this so-called light truck category has been granted loopholes that tighten under the new standard.

There are competitive reasons for the tie-up too. The world’s other two top auto markets — China and Europe — are pushing towards mileage standards more stringent than proposed U.S. rules.  Adds Hwang: “Ford knows there’s a solid business reason to be ready sooner than later with high mileage solutions.” — Adam Aston

URL for the original story: http://www.onearth.org/article/change-makers-ford-sustainability

NRDC OnEarth

Review: Revenge of the Electric Car | OnEarth

Chris Paine’s 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? arrived with perfect timing, capturing the country’s collective frustration with sky-high energy prices as well as our growing disenchantment with the automotive alternatives on offer. Let’s hope his sequel, Revenge of the Electric Car, previewed last week in New York and set for wide release this October, proves equally as prescient. The film, which captures what may turn out to be the first stages of the auto industry’s evolution away from oil, cruises smoothly over the finish line where its predecessor ultimately stalled short.

For Revenge, Paine scored fly-on-the-wall access to three of the most charismatic leaders in the auto industry. And he did so at a key moment — just as each was in the midst of executing a high-risk, multi-billion-dollar bet on battery-powered cars. Add in the fact that Paine’s crew was filming during the 2008 economic crisis and implosion of GM, and the result is more than just a snapshot of the gamesmanship behind the creation of mass-market vehicles. Revenge offers a look inside the minds of business leaders struggling through one of the most troubled periods of recent economic history.

As the documentary opens, U.S. automakers face an environment that’s radically different from the cheap-oil days that ruled when GM developed its first electric vehicle, EV1. Now oil prices are running at historic highs, and governments around the world have begun to put some real muscle behind the idea of the electric car.

Here’s Bob Lutz, GM’s American-born vice chairman and a veteran of the Big Three (Chrysler, Ford, and GM), becoming the unlikely champion of the Chevy Volt, and opening a door to GM’s salvation after the company’s downfall. Known in Detroit as “Mr. Horsepower,” Lutz personifies the about-face that the industry as a whole went through in the time that passed between the making of the two films. Once a deep skeptic of EVs, he now artfully tilts GM’s monolithic culture toward his goal of developing the Volt.

Facing off against GM is the enigmatic Carlos Gohn, the Brazilian-Lebanese CEO of Nissan/Renault, which is building the all-electric Leaf. Gohn’s orderly execution of the Leaf offers a welcome perspective on EVs from beyond American borders. After all, battery-powered cars are likely to flourish on the roads of Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo before they do here, for the same reasons that small cars did.

Playing counterpoint to the corporate titans is Paypal-founder Elon Musk, a charismatic South African-Canadian struggling to steer the scrappy Tesla from startup mode to full-scale manufacturing. With confidence bordering on hubris, the then 38-year-old is at once inspiring and pain-inducing, as he underestimates the complexity of manufacturing and struggles to produce a stream of fault-free $100,000-plus electric sportsters. (This while also navigating his way through a painful divorce and playing doting dad to his five sons.) There’s real drama in watching Musk’s brave face flicker as he inspects an armada of faulty cars and in watching him awkwardly deliver the news to early depositors that the price of their vehicles will have to rise yet again.

One of the film’s delightful subplots involves the struggles of Greg “Gadget” Abbott, a goateed indie tinkerer who made a brief appearance in Who Killed and who excels at retrofitting classic cars with batteries and electric motors. With an infectious, mischievous air, Gadget offers a reminder of the gear-head roots of EVs’ most devoted fans.

Unlike with his first film, where Paine came to the topic too late to build a “how-it-happened” tale and leaned instead on activists and half-baked acolytes, Revenge captures rich natural tension as it unfolds. Who Killed, for example, featured a parade of Hollywood A-listers (Tom Hanks) and B-listers (Phyillis Diller), many of them sore about having lost their exotic cars and whining about GM’s decision to kill the EV1. Revenge gives us mercilessly few Hollywood prima dons — though Danny Devito does get downright giddy test-driving the Volt.

It won’t be giving anything away to tell you that the end of Revenge is a happy one. Of course, it’s far from the end of the story. Should Paine opt to complete what seems like a natural triptych, the final installment will no doubt prove more global in scope. Beijing has set national EV goals that dwarf those of Washington, for example, and the Chinese have much deeper capital resources. They also have a strong knack for building things like smart grids, which will be necessary for the wide-scale adaptation of EVs. And the race to build a better battery is heating up elsewhere overseas, with labs in dozens of countries working to build batteries capable of matching the range of your average gas tank.

With the gee-whiz stage of EV creation now complete, GM, Nissan, and Tesla also face the tougher slog of turning these enormous bets into reliable, mass-market machines that can actually make some money. Sales of EVs and hybrids are so far running far below the ambitious targets set by national governments, including our own.

Lurking farther out is the persistent threat of volatile oil prices. Many, myself among them, would argue that the real killer of the electric car was cheap oil. In the late 1990s, prices hit a post-’60s low, in inflation-adjusted terms, at the very moment that GM’s EV1 was being rolled out. That wouldn’t make it easy for any $1.25-million prototype to get off the ground, I don’t care how many starlets tell you it’s a great idea. Sub-$2-a-gallon gasoline may seem unimaginable to us today, but a double-dip recession — a real possibility given the anemic economic growth and sovereign debt woes on both sides of the Atlantic — could send energy demand crashing, rendering the EV once again an intolerably uneconomic prospect.

Revenge closes with a scene featuring the Los Angeles Times reporter Dan Neil. The sole automotive writer ever to win a Pulitzer, Neil is cynical about the industry’s abysmal record on eco-cars. At the same time, reflecting on a lifelong affair with gas-guzzlers, he admits that in recent years even he has begun to “let go” of the idea of the traditional car, and to acknowledge that it may finally be rolling toward the sunset.

Original URL: http://www.onearth.org/article/revenge-of-the-electric-car

GreenBiz

GM Upgrades OnStar to Power First Real-World, Smart Grid EV Pilot | GreenBiz

Hard to believe that OnStar — GM’s in-car mobile data service — celebrates its Sweet 16 this year.

Back in 1995, when the service was launched for GM’s luxury line, pundits griped it was just a superfluous add-on. This was back in the cell phone Stone Age when they were still a luxury, analog and kinda huge. Few predicted then that telematics would mushroom in importance over the next decade. These days six million subscribers pay for OnStar’s emergency assistance, remote diagnostics, mapping, entertainment and more.

To that long list, add one more trick OnStar is helping GM to pull off: offering a short-cut to connect electric vehicles (EVs) to the smart grid. GM yesterday announced the launch of a pilot program that can let utilities and customers skip the need to install physical smart grid points to manage recharging of their EVs. The new OnStar service will act as a remote brain, wirelessly tracking and governing the EV’s charging behavior, coordinating the timing and billing, and potentially dramatically lowering the costs to extend smart-grid management features to EVs.

By skipping the need to install physical smart apparatus, the OnStar system can save utilities some $18 million per 1,000 customers, said Vijay Iyer, GM’s director of communications for OnStar, citing GE estimates. To mesh OnStar’s data services with utilities’ internal information management systems, GM worked with GE, whose IQ Demand Optimization Services unit is used by utilities to monitor demand response systems.

This is important step for utilities which are busily, and expensively, building intelligent power and data devices in customers’ garages, as well as at charging terminals, to referee how and when EVs will re-charge. Utilities don’t want fleets of EVs drawing power on 95 degree summer afternoons when power is in short supply. Customers, likewise, will prefer the option of charging at night when power is much cheaper.

The Detroit automaker is calling the trial the first “real-world pilot of smart grid solutions.” This quarter, staff of regional utilities will become the guinea pigs for this program, driving Chevrolet Volts for everyday use. Ford announced plans to scale up a broad smart-grid integration at the last Detroit auto show. And Toyota has laid out ambitions to collaborate with Microsoft.

GM is betting that this approach will let it leapfrog the smart-grid technology demos being piloted across the U.S. Given that OnStar can pick up recharging activity anywhere — whether at home or on a distant road trip — the approach promises to offer deeper insight into how, where and when EVs are charged. Since it doesn’t matter whether the EV is connected to a smart-grid charge point, OnStar should let utilities more accurately model how to manage peak versus non-peak charging too.

GM’s EV approach may get real traction where others have struggled. It appears to offer utilities a faster, cheaper way to hook up a major new source of electricity consumption to the grid. If utilities don’t see the benefit, it will be DOA. We saw evidence of the importance of this recently when software heavyweights Google and Microsoft suspended efforts to develop software applications for home energy management, in part because of the difficulty of getting access to the all-important data stream from utilities.

There are some intriguing long-term implications to GM’s announcement. With smart-grid enabling technology embedded in the car, GM opens the door to a faster rollout of sophisticated vehicle recharging schemes than would be possible if utilities must first build hardware networks of recharging stations.

There’s big global potential too: GM as a company remains the No. 2 auto producer in the world, even after its recent near death experience. Two of the top 10 selling vehicles in China, the world’s largest auto market, are GMs. And China has the largest goals for EV deployment of any country.

The inevitable next question is whether GM might make this service available to other automakers, so that they could roll out smart grid EV charging on a faster track too? Until 2006, GM licensed OnStar through a variety of other carmakers, but has since stopped. This Sunday, however, GM will release a portable form of OnStar that can be installed in any car, OnStar for My Vehicle (OnStar FMV).

Who knows? In time, maybe even your Toyota could hook up to the smart grid via GM’s OnStar.