Tag Archives: EVs

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

NRDC OnEarth

Meet the Change Makers: How UPS Delivers Big Energy Savings | OnEarth

For UPS, the world’s largest package delivery company, no time of year is more challenging than the holiday season. This year, the Atlanta-based company predicts the surge of packages it handles between Thanksgiving and Christmas will exceed half a billion. That tidal wave will peak on December 20 when, on a single day, some 28 million cardboard boxes will be loaded into UPS’s iconic big brown trucks to be delivered, at a rate of roughly 300 per second, to homes and businesses around the world.

The challenge of getting those packages where they need to be using the least amount of energy possible falls to Scott Wicker, who was named UPS’s first chief sustainability officer in 2011. Like many of UPS’s top execs, Wicker is a lifer. He got his start in 1977 unloading UPS trucks while studying to become an electrical engineer. Some three decades later, it’s fair to say Wicker is still working in trucks. Yet today, as CSO, his mandate is to improve the efficiency of UPS’s entire fleet of 93,000-plus vehicles – which includes those brown vans, long-haul trucks, and cargo planes as well as gondolas and tricycles — along with the company’s global portfolio of more than 1,800 facilities.

True to his engineering roots, Wicker approaches this challenge quantitatively. Given that fueling the UPS armada generates more than 90 percent of the company’s carbon emissions, much of UPS’s sustainability efforts focus on its fleet, such as streamlining delivery operations, developing fuel-efficient technologies, and exploring alternative fuels. In 2011, those efforts helped reduce company-wide greenhouse gas emissions by 3.5 percent, even though total package volume grew by 1.8 percent, according to a 2011 report.

OnEarth contributor Adam Aston spoke with Wicker about how UPS has achieved these gains and become one of its industry’s top performers on sustainability.

If there’s a singular example of UPS’s focus on efficiency, it’s the left-hand turn rule in which delivery routes are designed for drivers to make as few lefts as possible. How did this come about?

It’s one of a long list of tweaks we’ve been making to drivers’ routes over the years. It goes back to the ‘70s. Back then, we saw that we were wasting a lot of time making left turns. The more time a van sits waiting to turn, the more fuel is burned idling.

Can you quantify the benefits of the rule?

Partly. It’s part of a broader set of efforts to eliminate idling. Last year we avoided 98 million minutes of idling. And less idling means less fuel burned. We estimate that this effort alone saved 653,000 gallons of fuel.

So fuel efficiency is as much about how vehicles are driven, as what fuel they use or how the vehicle is designed?

Yes, some of the biggest changes to our fleet operations are the least visible. Last year, for example, we estimate we avoided driving nearly 90 million miles thanks to improvements in routing and package-flow technologies. That translates into more than 8 million gallons of fuel not burned. Our technologies determine how to load each package and where each one goes on a specific shelf in the truck.

We’re also developing the ability to adjust routing on the fly. If the driver has to veer off a route for any reason, the system can recalculate the optimal delivery sequence. Further, the system will help the driver to mix more urgent, early-morning deliveries in between less urgent deliveries with later time commitments. In the past, this hasn’t been possible — instead, all urgent packages are delivered first, regardless of lost opportunities to deliver another package nearby.

It may sound minor, but these changes can help reduce the number of miles each driver travels each day. When you multiply a few miles saved per driver per day, the aggregated savings in time, fuel, and carbon are significant.

That said, is the push for a high-mileage truck still a top priority?

Yes. With more than 90,000 vehicles, it’s a constant concern. Our fleet of alternative-fueled vehicles is the largest in the industry, and one of the most diverse. Since 2000, some 2,500 unconventional UPS vehicles have racked up over 200 million miles in service.

Many are powered by natural gas, which we’re looking to as an alternative to diesel. For example, more than 900 local delivery vans are powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) in the U.S., and almost that many vehicles in Canada are powered by propane [a close relative of natural gas]. For long distances, we also have about 59 big rigs — highway tractor-trailers — powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Rounding out the alternative fleet are 381 hybrid electric models that, similar to Toyota’s Prius, use a combination of combustion, electric motors, and battery storage to boost mileage. Because they recapture so much of their energy through regenerative braking, these models are especially well-suited to urban routes, where total miles travelled is short, with many stops and starts, and pollution control is important. We’re also running a small number of ethanol-powered vehicles and pure electric vehicles, which run solely on power stored in their batteries.

We’re also excited to announce that starting this month, we’re rolling out 40 hydraulic hybrid delivery vehicles. This is a continuation of a program we piloted with the Department of Energy and other partners in 2006. Instead of storing energy in a conventional battery, these vehicles use hydraulic fluid as the storage medium. When the vehicle accelerates, some of this stored pressure helps it to start moving. During braking, the process works in reverse: the vehicle’s momentum is converted into pressure to recharge the hydraulic tanks. It’s a remarkably rugged system that can save up to 40 percent of fuel.

Why pursue so many kinds of technology?

We’d like to get off of fossil fuels. That’s our goal. Our approach is holistic because there is no silver bullet. It would be foolish to try to predict which fuel will emerge as the best or most durable.

Can you squeeze greater savings from your conventional diesel trucks?

Yes. One of the things we’re most excited about is “lightweighting.” Last year, we rolled out a test truck that looks similar to our regular delivery van, but that’s built with advanced materials that shave off 900 pounds. There are body panels made of lightweight plastic composites instead of metal sheets. Because the vehicle is so much lighter, we’re able to use a smaller engine, as well.

The trucks deliver approximately 40 percent gains in fuel efficiency, and the price is in line with the cost of a conventional vehicle. Based on that trial, we ordered 150 of these higher-mileage models. We’re also more comfortable with composite material and will consider adding more composite components into larger vehicle types.

UPS operates a lot of vehicles consumers rarely see, from planes to long-haul trucks. What are you doing with these?

To put this in perspective, more than half of UPS’s carbon dioxide emissions come from jet fuel, and the rest of our mobile fleet make up about a third of emissions.

For surface transportation, we shift as much as possible to rail, which is a far more efficient way to move goods than road. For rail and air, the efficiency options are fewer than on the road. With planes, we’re testing more efficient flight paths. Simplifying a jet’s landing pattern, by letting it glide down continuously rather than descending in a step pattern, delivers substantial savings. We’re also testing aviation biofuel. We know it works. The problem is making it at the right price.

Are your customers asking for data on the carbon impact of their shipping?

Customers began to push for this kind of data a few years ago. Big companies are facing more pressure from groups like the Carbon Disclosure Project, the federal government, and financial entities to report on their carbon footprints.

It’s been a challenge to build a system that collects all this data. But today, we’re one of the few logistics providers that calculate Scope 3 emissions, which often comprise a very large share of the total. These are the emissions produced indirectly to make goods or deliver services a company buys. [Ed. note: Scope 1 emissions are created from direct actions, such as fueling a UPS truck. Scope 2 are emitted indirectly, such as the emissions associated with electricity bought by a UPS utility. Find out more here.]

When we ship for a company, or handle its logistics, UPS becomes a major source of the company’s Scope 3 emissions. Delivering that data reliably is a very sophisticated process. Our experience developing these measures has helped us advise partners on their efforts to map out their own Scope 3 emissions, too.

Have UPS’s sustainability efforts helped attract customers?

Yes. UPS is the only U.S.-based company offering a carbon neutral shipping option across all product lines. Puma, for example, ships everything carbon neutral. Toto [a Japanese bathroom fixture maker] uses the service, too. Another example is LiveNation, which organizes touring bands. We ship of all the bands’ gears in our trucks, and, in some cases, have begun to manage transport for those tours in a carbon neutral manner.

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Originally published at http://www.onearth.org/article/meet-the-change-makers-how-ups-delivers-big-energy-savings

GreenBiz

How to jump-start the vehicle-based smart grid | GreenBiz

The triple tragedy that struck Japan in March 2011 is already remaking global energy markets. In the wake of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, public outrage over the meltdown delayed or derailed nuclear energy’s promised renaissance in many markets.

Yet if Japan’s tragedy hastened the demise of one energy technology, it may have jumpstarted another. In the year since, as Japan struggled to cope with crippling shortages of electric capacity, a handful of automakers have brought to market appliances that convert electric vehicle batteries into systems that can provide backup power to homes and help support the teetering grid.

In April, Mitsubishi Motors unveiled a portable adaptor, the MiEV power Box. For roughly $1,800, the appliance lets owners of MiEV electric cars plug in, and draw up to 1.5 kilowatts. A month later, Nissan followed suit with its Leaf to Home, a $7,000 device that, drawing power from a Leaf EV, can power a typical Japanese home for up to two days. Toyota too is demonstrating a similar system linked to its plug-in Prius hybrid in 10 homes and plans to launch a commercial version next year, if all goes well.

For the thousands of Americans suffering through power problems this summer—due to a punishing heat wave and storms in the mid-Atlantic—the appeal of these technologies is surely tantalizing. The case for EVs would sure seem more compelling if consumers knew the Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf in their garage could also power their homes during an outage.

In fact, vehicle to grid, or V2G, has emerged as a sort of holy green grail. All manner of energy gurus — from Google.org to Rocky Mountain Institute-founder Amory Lovins to the DOE to Wired magazine — have recognized V2G as a grand solution to many of the problems that bedevil our grid and transportation fleet.

The promised benefits go well beyond household backup. As consumers buy more EVs, the combined stock of batteries offers utilities a low-cost path to grid-scale storage—why pay for grid batteries, if utilities can “borrow” EVs to perform the same trick? In turn, cheaper storage capacity paves the way for more solar panels and windmills by making it easier to store their notoriously variable output. And since utilities today pay for the sorts of storage services EVs might deliver, V2G systems could earn cash payments for EV owners, thereby lowering the cost of EVs and boosting their sales.

Yet despite Japan’s new systems, a comprehensive V2G solution remains years off. “[They are] a good first step, but they essentially turn the car into an expensive backup generator. There’s still a big leap to V2G,” says Ted Hesser, Energy Smart Technologies analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

In Japan, those new systems can support the grid indirectly, by feeding power back to the households and reducing their pull from the grid. But for now, they cannot link to the grid: by regulation, they’re strictly vehicle-to-home, or V2H, Ali Izadinajafabadi, a Tokyo-based analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance wrote in an email.

To make the leap from V2H to V2G will require navigating a thicket of barriers, including funding investment needs, upgrades to grid software, and creating cooperation between industry players who, so far, haven’t been eager to play.

The first of these barriers is a simple lack of standardization for two-way EV connections. It took big automakers years to agree on technical standards on how one-way charging plugs would be built. The effort didn’t account for two-way flow of power. Already dogged by high-costs and reliability concerns over EVs, carmakers are wary of imperiling warranty terms, or adding to the material and engineering costs to create two-way plugs that might not ever be used.

“It’s not that it can’t be done,” says Mark Duvall, Director of Transportation Research at EPRI, the utility industry’s policy research arm. “The automakers, utilities and the others involved have had a lot of other challenges to solve first.”

The Japan solution, Duvall explains, cleverly works around this barrier by offloading the technology necessary to manage the power flow out of the car into a standalone device. Both the Nissan and Mitsubishi systems tap into the EV batteries through high-power, 440-volt direct-current connections, which remain rare in the U.S.

Then there’s the closely related problem of the lack of a smart grid. For V2G networks to deliver grid-scale benefits, they will have to be connected into advanced systems able to communicate to vast numbers of EVs, in real time, to orchestrate hundreds of small power sources so that they behave as a single sizeable resource that can be tapped by grid mangers such as PJM. Those systems are taking shape, “But they’re not there yet,” says Bloomberg’s Hesser.

Another scale problem: there aren’t yet enough EVs on the market to make big V2G plays of interest to utilities. Sales have been steady, but slow. Pike Research recently postponed until 2018 the year in which it projects EVs will hit 1 million in the U.S. Until they reach a critical number, they’re too thinly dispersed, and too few in number to provide megawatt-scale storage and other power services that interest utilities, adds Hesser.

Lastly, however appealing they look on paper, the economics of V2G networks remain less than compelling for EV owners, especially if early systems run as high as Nissan’s $7,000 unit in Japan.

Last year, NRG Energy unveiled a pilot program called eV2g. Targeting commercial fleets, the company estimates that each vehicle would net $440 per year, Erica Gieswrites in Forbes.com.

A 2010 study by CMU looked at consumer (not fleet) V2G. The researchers used market information on the value of the sorts of near-, medium-, and long-term energy storage services V2G networks could provide and estimated the total annual value for an individual EV owner at not more than $250.

These guesses also underestimate the costs utilities face to market these programs as well. “You have to convince consumers to adopt this very new way of owning a vehicle,” says Hesser. As we’ve seen with EVs, “That takes a massive amount of marketing and education.”

What then will it take to get V2G off the ground here? Progress will continue, to be sure. Writing in the New York Times Wheels blog, green car guru Jim Motavalli reports that Nissan and Mitsubishi are both evaluating the option of adapting their V2H systems to the U.S. Meanwhile, pilot scale V2G efforts, run by the DOE, NRG and others are ongoing — but they involve only tens or hundreds of vehicles.

Such projects won’t get to commercial scale anytime soon. For V2G to link up millions of vehicles, and fulfill its green promise, Hesser believes the industry will have to push the technology, rather than wait for consumers to pull it. “For V2G to work, it means lining up the interests of vehicle owners, carmakers, smart grid players,” he says. “There’s just too many players for this to happen anytime soon on its own.”

He likens the challenge to the conundrum facing energy-efficient appliances. In that market, the value of energy savings were too low, or spread out, to motivate consumers. So the DOE stepped in to establish efficiency and technology standards that have delivered huge aggregate energy savings.

Specialized commercial fleets also show early V2G promise. An MIT study cited by CleanTechnica.com suggests that fleets may offer a sweeter spot for V2G deployments, at least early on. Trucks or buses, after all, require bigger battery packs. And because they park in the same area, they offer big battery capacity in a single location, making them easier to orchestrate. The study estimates earnings potential of up to $1,700 per truck.

Very high prices for energy could jump start V2G, too. Consider Nuvve — to date, the leading commercial scale V2G effort in the world. Started in 2011, the company is based in Denmark where, importantly, electricity rates are roughly four times higher than in the U.S. Plus, a third of electric power comes from variable renewable sources such as wind, so storage services are paid at a high rate.

Based on business plans mapped out by Zachary Shahan at CleanTechnica.com, EV owners in Nuvve’s network will be able to rake in up to $10,000 from V2G services over a vehicle’s lifetime.Finally, there’s the hard-to-price appeal of backup for blackouts. The U.S., luckily, hasn’t faced power problems as dire as Japan’s. But if blackouts multiply, necessity may spur V2G invention here too.

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

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.

The Fiscal Times

Charge! Electric Cars Fueled by Higher Gas Prices | The Fiscal Times

Turmoil in the Middle East, uncertainty about oil prices, and gasoline still flirting with the nerve-rattling level of $4 per gallon in some parts of the country are making consumers nervous. Even after prices slipped in response to concerns about reduced demand from the crisis in Japan, oil is now trading at about $100 a barrel. Prices are likely to stay high in the near term, or even rise further, given recovering economies in much of the world,  unrest in the Arab world, and the coming summer travel season.

We’ve been there before, only worse. In 2008, when oil peaked near $150 a barrel, car buyers stampeded away from big, gas-guzzling vehicles and overall auto sales collapsed. Just as Hummers were practically being given away, automakers responded with fleets of smaller hybrid vehicles, and the path to sustainable energy consumption was set.

The good news today is that the U.S. is better prepared to cope with an oil crisis with the advent of the electric car. All but written off in the 1990s, following GM’s decision to junk its EV1, dozens of highly efficient electric vehicles (EVs) are headed for U.S. roads this year and next.

“It’s not just improved car technology,” says Jack Hidary, Global EV Leader at Hertz, which is rolling out electric vehicles at rental sites in the U.S. and overseas. Beyond carmakers, other big players “see a roadmap of business models to make EVs a commercial success,” says Hidary, a technology entrepreneur who was a co-architect of the federal Cash for Clunkers program…

More here: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/03/17/Electric-Cars-Gas-Prices.aspx