WSJ Online on TeslaMotors

Joseph B White, Wall Street Journal's Detroit bureau chief, takes Tesla seriously and respectfully. His column in Monday's WSJ Online explains what's going on with the Silicon Valley automotive startup so many hope will push electric to the fore.

Other than one stupid paragraph about the EV1 and RAV4 EV that repeats the conventional received wisdom on why we have no plug-in choices - "GM EV1 and the electric Toyota RAV4 struck mainstream customers as geeky, slow and impractical" (really? Mainstream customers knew about the EV1 and RAV4 EV? The EV1 was slow? The RAV4 impractical?)- the article is well worth the read.

Chinese Electric Car in 2008?

I've long heard rumors of Chinese auto makers developing an electric car. It makes lots of sense, given Chinese battery production.

Now Autobloggreen has a report out of China involving BYD. I recalled hearing in 2005 that BYD acquired a license from Ovonics to manufacture NiMH batteries. But I was disappointed if not surprised when it was stated clearly in the press that they were acquiring "the nonexclusive right to manufacture, use and sell Ovonic Battery's proprietary NiMH technology-based batteries for nonpropulsion applications."

Now, using Lithium (a Chinese product without lead!), we get a name, F6E, and a photo. Unfortunately the article suggest the car will be solely for the domestic Chinese market. Seems to me the Chinese ought to capture the American market for electric cars before the majors get off the dime.

Subaru to Show EV in Tokyo

Another auto maker is suggesting the future is with electric cars.

CNet is reporting Subaru will be showing an electric car prototype at the Tokyo Auto Show later this month. Unlike many electric prototypes - Nissan's Pivo comes to mind - the G4e looks like it could appear in showrooms today. Story includes a photo and gives some stats: Lithium batteries, 125 mile range, but no word on whether it's actually to go into production.

Cnet's story raises two important questions. Will a mainstream producer of an electric car spell trouble for the small companies - Tesla, Th!nk, Miles, Phoenix - hoping to enter the EV space abandoned by the majors?

And, will consumers accept a sub-200 mile range car?

Clearly, the first major to offer an EV will have a tremendous market advantage. Whether any are truly brave enough remains to be seen.

On the range front, most of us who have experience with OEM electrics know 125 miles is more than adequate. There are at least a few thousand ex-EV1, EV+ and Th!nk City drivers waiting for the opportunity to buy a 75 -150 mile range EV. Bring 'em on!

Charging Cars in England, Fast Charging in Norway

Business Green Blog in the UK reports on a plan to install 250 EV charging stations in England. Elektromotive is making a sleek charge point with a tiny footprint.

CNNMoney reports on a cooperative effort of Aerovironment, AltairNano and two European partners demonstrating fast charging on a converted full size 5 passenger Fiat Doblo in Norway.

It's no coincidence these reports are out of England and Norway. Both are seeing serious electric vehicle activity. The congestion charge in London has spurred electric car availability and sales. Th!nk Global will be selling its electric cars in Norway again soon.

As a daily driver of a Toyota-built electric car here in California, I'm all in favor of public charging stations and fast charging. But although lack of public charging and fast charging are often cited as a problem inhibiting EV acceptance, until we have electric cars in showrooms, neither really matters. In reality, public charging is as close as the nearest outlet. Ultimately, the market and citizen action will take care of both once cars are available.

Toyota, too, Says No

"Automakers get it this time, calling for up to a 40% increase to 35 mpg by 2022, the first increase since 1985. In a business where product plans are set six, eight and even 10 years in advance, 2022 is closer than it would appear."

- Irv Miller, V.P., Toyota, in Open Road Blog, the official Blog of Toyota responding to NY Times Columnist Thomas Friedman's Et Tu, Toyota?

This quotation tells us all we need to know about what the auto industry would like the future to look like. Simply put, even 15 years from today, they foresee nothing better than petroleum burning vehicles with ever so slightly better mileage. As an industry they must oppose even the meager Congressional call for 35mpg by 2020.

Were plug-in hybrids and electric cars added to the automakers' fleet mix they could achieve astounding CAFE standards. But that is not what they envision or work for. Such grid-connected options, which would lower automobiles' role in global warming, pollution and petroleum dependence, may be inevitable, but the automakers' self-interest remains postponing that day.

Government regulation such as the California ZEV Mandate or the price of petroleum could still push automakers toward grid-connected electric drive, but corporate self-interest is still perceived to be connected to the internal combustion engine. Better to keep CAFE standards low and fuel options limited to petroleum.

Now I don't believe we'll be without options come 2022. There will be numerous plug-in choices available. But politicians and industry continue to play the political game as if there weren't serious consequences, squandering time and resources.

Ghosn Suggests Renault City EV

Puregreencars.com reports Renault's (and Nissan's) Carlos Ghosn sees electric city cars in their future. Three to four years away, apparently. Seems like further confirmation of my previous Nissan post (cnet), and the rumors of a renewed interest by European automakers in electric city cars.

The question for us in the USA is whether plans will include cars that meet the peculiar and unique legal requirements which limit the availability of many more fuel-efficient, interesting vehicles.

Unfortunately, it remains in the foreign automakers' interest to sell us their biggest product. Let's face it, even the perceived eco-leaders such as Toyota oppose higher CAFE standards here as they push high-profit, low-mileage Tundras and Sequoias. Don't take my word for it. Read Thomas Friedman's Oct 3rd column in the NY Times Et Tu, Toyota?

Toyota, which pioneered the industry-leading, 50-miles-per-gallon Prius hybrid, has joined with the Big Three U.S. automakers in lobbying against the tougher mileage standards in the Senate version of the draft energy bill....“Toyota wants to keep its green halo and beat G.M. in the big trucks, too,” said Deron Lovaas, vehicles expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Does Nissan Get It?

Cnet reports "Nissan bets on electric cars, not biofuels."
Minoru Shinohara, senior vice president and general manager of the Technology Development Division at Nissan says making a car run on biofuels is, of course, easy, but the benefit of easily available, affordable electric fuel, will trump ethanol or biodiesel, at least for city cars. "The most important thing is availability of fuel," Shinohara said.

Interestingly, he says Nissan is not so excited about plug-in hybrids. An all-electric car is certainly technically much simpler than a PHEV, and perhaps ultimately less expensive to produce.

VW Coming Up PHEV? Why Not UP EV?

VW's announced "Up Concept" city cars could have a Plug-in Hybrid version. Autoblog and Left Lane News are reporting VW will be showing a PHEV UP at the LA Auto Show.

Small enough to be labeled "tiny" in DailyTech.com's headline. Only 18 inches longer and one inch wider than my beloved 53 mile range Th!nk City that Ford confiscated in 2004.

Sure would make a sweet all-electric city car! I say 75 mile range sub-$25K and they've got an urban green dream machine. Easy parking and super cheap to refill.

Ethanol Boom Busting

Check out today's NY Times story Ethanol’s Boom Stalling as Glut Depresses Price.

...the ethanol market is suddenly plagued by a glut, in part because the means to distribute it have not kept pace. The average national ethanol price on the spot market has plunged 30 percent since May...And if the bust becomes worse, candidates for president could be put on the spot to pledge even more federal support for the industry...

The ethanol boom was set off when Congress enacted an energy law in 2005 that included a national mandate for the use of renewable fuel in gasoline...Already, ethanol producers are poised to outpace that mandate...As ethanol supply increases over the next 12 months, the challenge will be to find a home for it,”...Because ethanol is corrosive and soaks up water and impurities, it cannot be shipped through the country’s fuel pipeline network. So it must be transported by train, truck and barge, a more expensive transportation network that is suddenly finding it hard to keep up with the surge in ethanol production....Gasoline wholesale marketers have been slow to gear up ethanol blending terminals, in part because they had to invest simultaneously in equipment to manage low sulfur diesel and tougher product specifications.

Even "overproduction" will never result in enough ethanol to fuel a significant portion of America's cars. California still has only one, yes one, E100 station. Hundreds of state fleet flex-fuel vehicles now use more gasoline and cause more emissions than the gasoline-only vehicles they replaced. (We can thank Arnold for that "green" purchase.)

And blending ethanol into gasoline is complicated, and ultimately merely perpetuates our petroleum addiction.

Tesla - Longer Range, Later Delivery

CNet is reporting some good and some not so welcome news about the Tesla Roadster. Seems the batteries are performing better than expected, and range is back up to about 250 mile per charge. But another delivery delay has been announced. Cars will not hit the road until early next year. Personally I'd trade range for earlier delivery, but of course it doesn't work that way.

Simply getting on the waiting list for the car once cost $50,000. Now, for only $5,000 you can tell your friends you're waiting for one. But don't expect to receive your car for at least a year.

Someone videotaped me

A few months ago I attended an eco-event in Fairfax, CA with my electric car. Someone seems to have videotaped me and posted it on youtube.

Co-op America Really Gets It! - Plug-ins YES; Ethanol NO!

Co-op America has cut through the hype and hyperbole about "clean" cars. They did an excellent issue of their magazine analysing the pros and cons of hybrids, plug-ins, electrics, bio-fuels of all types and hydrogen with a Consumer Reports type objectivity. They found

"the truth is, not all of the "new" fuels are created equal. In fact, some are nearly as bad as gasoline in their environmental impacts, and others can't be scaled up in a meaningful way without creating other problems.

Not surprising to us, electricity came out on top - cleanest, cheapest, most infrastructure-ready. Now they are taking their findings one step further. They are mounting a campaign to move the automakers away from ethanol and toward plug-ins.

Read about it:

Plug-in Hybrids 'Yes,' Ethanol 'No:' Largest-Ever Push Mounted to Drive GM, Ford to Shift From Ethanol to Plug-in Hybrids

Take Action:

Tell Ford and GM: Ethanol is Not the Answer!

Dissipating Doubt

From the pricey ads in national magazines devoting serious space to the Volt to today's announcement about the plug-in hybrid Saturn Vue, GM is compelling me to take their expressed interest in plug-in cars seriously. As announced in Frankfort and reported in Detroit, GM hopes for a 2009 release of the first Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid SUV. Leaving wiggle room, "2009-ish" brand general manager Jill Lajdziak said Thursday.

While GM is looking to achieve 40 miles all electric range with the Volt toward the end of 2010, the Vue is meant to have 10 miles all electric range. Seems piddling, but if it goes on sale in less than 2 years it will be an historical turning point.

Worst Cars Ever: TIME and Dan Neil Trash EV1

Along with a host of the filthy, the ugly and the dangerous, Time and Dan Neil declare the EV1 one of the 50 worst cars ever. Had they wanted to include a crappy electric car, they had plenty to choose from. But no, they picked what might have been the best electric car ever, and said even it sucked.

Dan Neil, the LA Times writer who naively blames consumers for the lack of electric cars in the market in the film Who Killed the Electric Car?, knows better now. He knows we need to move toward plug-in cars, and he knows the "perfect" electric car won't drop down from heaven one day. Had the EV1s been sold to consumers rather than leased, confiscated, and destroyed, they'd be very in demand.

If we are very lucky, some company will come out with a car with the decade-old EV1 specs considered unmarketable in this peculiar smackdown - 140 mile range without gasoline, miata-sized, fast. Does anyone out there truly believe this car couldn't sell for $50,000 or more now?

Coal Into Cars: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The Ugly

Coal sucks, there's really no two ways about it. Extracting it is ruinous of the landscape and burning it has disastrous environmental consequences. It should be perhaps our last fuel of choice regardless of how it's used. But not all use of coal is alike.

The Good

About half our electricity comes from coal, and that will change, at best, slowly as we move to renewables. But we need to keep in mind that when we're talking about cars, even coal-generated electricity results in lower greenhouse gas emissions compared with petroleum. The EPRI-NRDC Plug-in Hybrid Study makes clear that under every scenario studied, every region will yield reductions in greenhouse gases as we increase the number of plug-in cars. That includes the worst, most coal dependent areas. Of course as our efforts to green the grid take effect, and that's happening already, plug-in cars yield even greater reductions in GHGs. And ultimately, you can get no cleaner car than an electric car using wind or solar generated electricity.

The Bad

There is a major push at the federal level to subsidize the coal industry to produce liquid coal as a replacement for petroleum. It is touted as part of a move toward independence from foreign oil. Support knows no party. Like subsidies for ethanol, it's a regional matter. As a replacement for gasoline, there is probably no worse choice than coal-generated liquid fuel. As the Scientific American editorial "Worse Than Gasoline" states:

"...the polluting properties of coal - starting with mining and lasting long after burning - and the large amounts of energy required to liquefy it mean that liquid coal produces more than twice the global warming emissions as regular gasoline.....driving a Prius on liquid coal makes it as dirty as a Hummer on regular gasoline."

Lessons

There's a lesson here we can apply to our choices regarding biofuels, too. The energy required to make biological matter into liquid fuel certainly tips the balance against ethanol, just as it does with liquid coal. However, as the Environmental Entrepreneurs report on Costa Rica recommends, biomass crops into electricity is a beneficial strategy.

We can make electricity many ways, some better than others. But in the end, there is no further pollution using the electricity, whether in iPods, toasters, light rail, or cars. If we must use coal, make electricity, don't turn it into a liquid fuel we still have to burn. If we find it advantageous to use biomass or even corn for energy, make electricity with it.

It bears repeating again and again - the worst electricity is better than petroleum. And only electricity offers us the possibility of truly zero emission transport.

It's the plug, stupid.

EV Briefs, and Black Rock City & EVs

A few items before I head out to Black Rock City for two weeks. Out in the desert as part of Burning Man, our encampment, Snow Koan Solar, is setting up a solar photovoltaic EV Charging Station (at 7:30 and Desert) for electric scooters, golf carts, sofas and barstools. We'll also be taking Burning Man art projects off petroleum generators by switching them to solar electricity.

Although Black Rock City probably has the worst air in the west during its brief annual existence, it is where I had my first electric transport epiphany. The electric sofas and scooters were so much cooler - and quieter - than the gasoline powered stinkers that predominate. As Burning Man attempts to go green, here's to hoping they become the first American City to ban the internal combustion engine within its borders. We may need ICE vehicles to get there (gas cars will serve for long distance travel even as EVs come to market, I believe) but they should be parked and forgotten. Feet, pedals and electric motors only will make for a much more pleasant and greener event. Back after Labor Day.

Google Guys Th!nk it Over

Recently I posted about how Google.org gets it. Their Rechargeit.org campaign really makes the connections between renewable power and plug-in cars. The founders of Google have made personal investments in Tesla as befits dotcom billionaires, and they're converting Priuses to plug-in hybrids for the company fleet with battery maker A123. Now the relationship with EVs may be going further still. A number of websites (webpronews.com, pandia.com) are reporting that Google may be getting more involved with Th!nk Global, the reinvigorated Norwegian electric car maker. Google founder Sergey Brin drove one of the 2001 Th!nk City cars when Ford brought them to California to meet its ZEV Mandate obligation. I did, too, until Ford confiscated the cars and sold the company.

I believe Google would find Th!nk City electric cars a great fit with Google.org’s intentions. The plug-in Priuses are almost doubling the fuel efficiency of Google standard Prius fleet, getting 74 MPG rather than 41 MPG. That's great, but because most driving down Silicon Valley way is on the freeway for rather short distances, the plug-ins don’t do much all-electric driving and the MPG isn't approaching the much touted 100MPG. The Th!nk City could do the 20 – 50 mile round-trips without petroleum, using only the power from Google’s solar array. I hope Google is realizing that their plug-in hybrid fleet could probably mostly be all-electric cars. And with Google's clout, they could make the cars a reality

GM Getting Lots of PHEV Ink; Rolls Out 100 H2 FCVs – Huh?

GM has been getting a lot of attention with its plug-in intentions. Contracts for lithium batteries for the plug-in hybrid Saturn Vue and the Chevrolet Volt have received much press. Still no truly firm date for either car, but GM has been stoking the expectation fire.

At the same time, they are looking for 100 consumers to take on a $1 million hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. They will join the one Honda Fuel Cell car currently in private hands in Southern California. The participants in Project Driveway will have to be located in Westchester, NY, Washington DC or Orange County, CA, places with hydrogen fueling stations. If drivers have to pay for fuel, this may become Project Permanently Parked in the Driveway, as the price of H2 is about four times that of gasoline.

If GM truly believes what it’s saying about the electrification of cars and the future of plug-in technology, it ought to announce the shelving of its fuel cell program for the time being. GM hasn’t got the resources or good will banked to do both plug-in and fuel cell roll-outs, and it knows only one of those has a near term prospect for success. We’ve all got electricity at home and work right now, and we’d like to use it for our cars.


Toyota’s first Plug-in Prius to Use NiMH

Toyota is postponing its Lithium Priuses and rolling out a few NiMH plug-in Priuses for testing purposes. Hard to say what the Lithium issues are, as GM and A123 are reporting Lithium batteries all but ready to go. Perhaps Toyota’s battery division is having problems. Perhaps Toyota, as hybrid leader, doesn’t want to get too far out front. It’s hard to believe Toyota will allow GM to be the plug-in leader. Of course, the Volt remains a desire at this point, not yet a reality. I hope to drive the Toyota built plug-in Prius coming to nearby UC Berkeley, and will give a full report. But let's be clear: Toyota could have NiMH plug-in cars on the road in large numbers already - both all-electric and plug-in hybrid - but has chosen not to. My RAV4 EV with NiMH batteries is going strong after more than 5 years and over 50,000 miles. Hundreds of thousands of Priuses with NiMH batteries are on the road without battery issues.

EPRI-NRDC Study Out; Electricity Better, If You Want It To Be

The oft-postponed EPRI-NRDC plug-in hybrid study was unambiguous – moving to electricity for cars would yield a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. And in most places other toxic emissions would be lower as well. But the study managed to find a few places were a few people might be exposed to slightly higher levels of one toxin or another, and thus refused to make the bold statement required to help move environmentalists toward a sane position on plug-in cars. See for yourself at www.epri-reports.org/

Vectrix - Awesome ZEV Maxi-Scooter Available Now

The Vectrix made its debut in San Francsico. Using NiMH batteries, it provides the range and the zip missing from most electric scooters. At a price, of course, but a state rebate of $2000 for Zero Emission Vehicles will apply.

Imagine the Volt

Seventeen years ago GM could imagine, and then produce, an electric car. Check out this 13 minute GM video on the car that became the EV1. Commenting on its technological achievements, John Zwerner, GM Advanced Product Engineering, says "we wanted to drive a stake in the ground....as to what a contemporary produceable electric vehicle would look like and how it would perform if we were to build such a vehicle." Instead, as we know, GM drove a stake in its heart. Literally. Right through the controller after they confiscated each EV1 from consumers. The video makes quite plain the societal and personal benefits of electric cars, and how GM actually met the challenge. GM hasn't got another 17 years to make this real.

By the way, that's Alec Brooks in the still of the video. He's now working at Tesla.



Tip of the Hat to Stefano Paris

Is GM Playing Games with the Volt?

As I've blogged previously, I want to believe as much as the next guy that the Volt - GM's announced plug-in hybrid - is real. I believe enviros have spent way too much time pushing for higher CAFE standards and ignored alternative methods of getting clean cars on the road. The enviros gave up on electric cars, let the automakers and California off the hook just as the cars were proving themselves viable and popular. Sierra Club, UCS and NRDC should have been indicted along with CARB and Big Oil in the film Who Killed the Electric Car? The ZEV mandate offered a way to get plug-in cars - zero-emission, zero-petroleum, zero-carbon producing cars - on the road outside the CAFE protocol.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. GM wants us to believe they are serious about the Volt, but continue to fight over CAFE. They tell us they will produce the Volt in serious volume. Serious volume is enough to significantly effect their fleet average. If they are serious about the Volt, they've got no reason to fight efforts to raise CAFE. Edmunds Inside Line reports Chevrolet Volt Goes to Washington To Underline GM's Anti-CAFE-Increase Argument.

Joe Romm asks the question on Grist Is the Chevy Volt just more GM greenwashing?.

I'd like to see enviros point out that CAFE can be achieved with plug-in cars.

Top Climate Scientist on Lessons Not Learned from Electric Car Debacle

Dr James Hansen is perhaps the top climate scientist in the country. From his post at NASA he warned Congress and us what's up with global warming long ago. There are some lessons we need to learn as we are inundated with adverts about "clean coal," if we are not to get snookered as enviros did over the electric car.

California had a regulation that would have required automobile manufacturers to produce a small percentage of cars without emissions by such-and-such date, and a larger percentage later. Automakers despised this rule, and decided that they had enough clout to ignore it, arguing that it was impractical. Environmentalists seemed to conclude that they were overmatched. Rather than go to the mat, they decided to play ball with the automakers, to try to work with them, accepting promises that the automakers would do everything that they could to improve vehicle efficiencies and reduce emissions. [emphasis added]

The glee with which the automakers tracked down the trial electric cars that they had produced, and crushed the cars into small cubes, must have been palpable. Profit margins on large SUVs were much bigger. Automakers soon forgot their promises about better gas mileage, instead using technical efficiency improvements to make vehicles bigger and accelerate faster.

Read the full email at Joe Romm's blog Climate Progress.

Let My People Convert! - The A123 Challenge

Les Goldman wants you to convert (your hybrid.) Easy as 123. So he proposed at the California Air Resources Board ZEV workshop on Tuesday.

An ARB ZEV meeting is ordinarily a predictable affair. What began as a simple program requiring an ever increasing percentage of Zero Emission vehicles (read electric cars), has become mired in cumbersome bureaucratic complications. Acronymphia is not a sexual disease. (Look it up.) ZEV, SULEV, PZEV, ATPZEV, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Type I, II, III, and on and on. Tuesday's workshop was not so different. They are contemplating Silver+ and Type IV ZEVs. Uggh.

Unfortunately, everyone recognizes that there is no coming down from this byzantine construction. Simplify is the mantra, but unachievable. Now, to add some further complication, everyone's got religion on plug-in hybrids. Many, including electric advocates, some enviros and ARB staff, (even some cars makers, it would seem) want to figure new ways to use the regs to bring plug-in hybrids to market quickly due to their near term benefits, commercialisability and pathways plug-ins offer to true ZEV. (Add more batteries as they become cheaper and more energy-dense, dump the engine; or, for the more fantasy-minded and those receiving compensation, add hydrogen fuel cell and drop the engine.)

But PHEVs are inherently the most complicated of all options. A plug-in hybrid, one could say, simply integrates electric drive into a car with internal combustion. However, there are innumerable ways to do it. Parallel, serial, blended, just for starters. Even the Prius and Civic Hybrid are quite different. ARB could spend a year in conversation with stakeholders to figure out regs and credits for new OEM plug-in hybrid cars.

A123 has an idea to cut through the difficulty of getting OEMs to make cars. Les Goldman, A123's lobbyist, presented the outline of a proposal that could be a win-win-win and get cars on the road quickly. They've been converting some cars back east, working out the kinks. Lately Goldman has been driving one around DC, meeting with policy makers and pushing for consumer incentives for hybrid conversions. (See my 7/12 post Plug-in Hybrid Bills in Congress Scare Auto Makers) With the addition of the A123 battery module, a Prius gets between 125 and 175 mpg. They are beginning to do crash testing, and will meet emission requirements, in pursuit of a fully legal, compliant vehicle. Throw the ZEV mandate into the mix, and maybe we've got something.

• Use the existing and growing base of hybrids, offer kits to authorized installers, and give ZEV credit to the original manufacturer in exchange for not killing the car's warranty.
  
• Hybrid drivers in California could finally actually get their hybrid converted.
  
• ARB could finally take some credit for cars with true ZEV miles once again on the road without depending on the ever-resistant, crusher-happy automakers.
  
• A123 gets to sell a lot of batteries without having to wait for the automakers to place orders of the magnitude they promise "once the batteries are ready."

The few automakers in the room remained poker-faced, but it must be an intriguing proposition. They get credits (and credit) and don't have to do much of anything but watch their hybrid improve on someone else's dime. Now that Toyota's got it's own 8 mile (not 6 as I previously reported, thank you sk) all-electric range NiMH Prius being openly test in Japan, and soon here in California, (see Toyota's Plug-in Prius: Out of the Pod, Into the Podcast) and virtually every auto maker making noise about eventually coming out with some sort of PHEV, this proposal could prime the pump, test the waters, prove the pudding. Or not. Let the people convert!