Still pimping for hydrogen

Secretary Chu may have acted on the science, but the Terminator hasn't gotten the termination memo.

Reporter: Are you satisfied with the number of hydrogen stations and vehicles we have today?

Schwarzenegger: I wouldn't be here if I was. I'm hungry! I want more cars, more stations, and not just in California. I think Washington has to get with it. . . We will find the partners and we will build the stations. We always march forwards.

Electric car agitation in Norway

In Norway, the effort to find a means to get financing so Th!nk can fulfill existing orders for thousands of vehicles took to the streets on Tuesday. A 50-electric car parade took the issue right to the Trade and Industry Department in downtown Oslo. A concrete proposal for a Guarantee Institute for Electric Vehicles was presented to the government.

ElectricAid, Norstart and Bellona, along with politicians from the left and the right and the Green Party, Greenpeace and the Norwegian Environmental Union demonstrated support for a loan guarantee program. An answer should be forthcoming shortly.

They broke it, we own it

Looks like GM's imminent bankruptcy will result in the US government holding a 70% stake.

NY Times

First Electric Mini Delivered!

Peter Trepp in Southern California is the first consumer to take delivery of their electric Mini. The USA Today story begins:

"Peter Trepp just can't keep his foot off the accelerator of his new Mini E."

Peter blogs about his electric Mini at www.petersminie.blogspot.com/.

Toyota spokesman on PHEVs at EVS

You can smell the PHEV procrastination. Asked by the reporter when the plug-in Prius on display will be available in Norway, he replies:

"This is the first demonstration program. We have a small number of vehicles in Paris, France and in the UK and we're involved in gathering some data to understand how consumers actually use these vehicles...We will start much bigger scale demonstration... 100 vehicles in Strassbourg, and it's intended a 3 year trial to understand how consumers react, how they use the vehicle, to gather information and this will enable us to decide the best way to configure the vehicle and then we can make decisions about marketing. No decision about introduction of plug-in hybrid vehicle. The whole reason is we have to do the trial to better understand consumer requirements..."

[Source: Electricaid/Norstart]

Chu speaks on hydrogen and fuel cells

Sounding a lot like Joe Romm in Who Killed the Electric Car.

TR: The hydrogen fuel-cell program has been scaled back in the proposed budget, and the emphasis has been changed from transportation to buildings.

SC: That's right.

TR: It used to be thought, five to eight years ago, that hydrogen was the great answer for the future of transportation. The mood has shifted. What have we learned from this?

SC: I think, well, among some people it hasn't really shifted [laughs]. I think there was great enthusiasm in some quarters, but I always was somewhat skeptical of it because, right now, the way we get hydrogen primarily is from reforming [natural] gas. That's not an ideal source of hydrogen. You're giving away some of the energy content of natural gas, which is a very valuable fuel. So that's one problem. The other problem is, if it's for transportation, we don't have a good storage mechanism yet. Compressed hydrogen is the best mechanism [but it requires] a large volume. We haven't figured out how to store it with high density. What else? The fuel cells aren't there yet, and the distribution infrastructure isn't there yet. So you have four things that have to happen all at once. And so it always looked like it was going to be [a technology for] the distant future. In order to get significant deployment, you need four significant technological breakthroughs. That makes it unlikely.

From an interview with Kevin Bullis of Technology Review, here.

Tom Hanks on his electric car

Tom Hanks' letter to the editor of the New Yorker about his electric car, a Toyota RAV4 EV.

RE: THE ROAD AHEAD
A letter in response to Peter J. Boyer’s article (April 27, 2009)

MAY 18, 2009
Peter J. Boyer, in his otherwise spot-on piece about the car industry, assumes that I once leased G.M.’s sadly fated EV1 electric car and, like other drivers of that twin-seat rocket of a vehicle, watched the emission-free car be wrested from my garage, towed away, and busted up into pieces of metal, glass, and rubber smaller than razor blades (“The Road Ahead,” April 27th). Luckily, I did not. The source of Boyer’s slight inaccuracy may have been the documentary film “Who Killed the Electric Car?,” which used a clip of a visit I made to the “Late Show with David Letterman,” during which I claimed to be saving America one electric car at a time. However, by the time I began shopping for an all-electric car, in 2003, the EV1 had already been yanked from showrooms as if the car had never existed. Instead, I found what was purported to be the very last electric car available for sale in the state of California—a Toyota EV. It had four doors, a rear hatch, room for my family, including a dog in the back, power windows, A/C, a great sound system, and the fastest, most effective windshield defroster known to mankind. When the car companies collectively, and, to some, diabolically, decided to take these cars back, the electric vehicles disappeared. But not mine. I have the pink slip. I own that car, and it is still driven every day, albeit by one of my crack staff of employees. My electric car recently crossed fifty thousand miles on the odometer with its original battery but without so much as a splash of gasoline.

Tom Hanks
Los Angeles, Calif.

Source: The New Yorker

Minneapolis gets EV Ready

Minneapolis will be getting 18 electric cars from Ford, and stimulus funding will be used to install charging points, as reported in the Twin Cities downtownjournal.com

Electric Minis only weeks away from delivery

Four hundred fifty electric Minis will hit the road in the next few weeks in California, New York and New Jersey. The leasees, who will have the car for one year, are chomping at the bit. Bill Nye the science guy will put aside his gas-guzzling Prius for twelve months. Ex-EV1 drivers will be among those taking advantage of their first opportunity to get back in an electric car. Ken Bensinger reports on a gathering in LA.

Chu kills fed fuel cell funding

The New York Times reports:

Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, once hailed by President George W. Bush as a pollution-free solution for reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years, the energy secretary said Thursday, and the government will cut off funds for the vehicles’ development.

It's about time. Gotta wonder what they're thinking about their pet project now in Sacramento. California does seems determined to be the last supporter of hydrogen and fuel cells left standing. There's still time to reallocate AB118 money being flushed away on a few hydrogen stations. CEC, CARB, anyone listening?

Source: NY Times

Report shows bioelectricity yields more miles per acre than ethanol

It has been suggested before that it just might be more efficient to turn crops into electricity than biofuel, and here's a study that proves that to be the case.

According to the study co-sponsored by the Carnegie Institution for Science, "Bioelectricity was the clear winner in the transportation-miles-per-acre comparison, regardless of whether the energy was produced from corn or from switchgrass, a cellulose-based energy crop. "

"The internal combustion engine just isn't very efficient, especially when compared to electric vehicles,” says Elliott Campbell, lead author and professor at UC Merced. “Even the best ethanol-producing technologies with hybrid vehicles aren't enough to overcome this."

“Some approaches to bioenergy can make climate change worse, but other limited approaches can help fight climate change,” says Campbell. “For these beneficial approaches, we could do more to fight climate change by making electricity than making ethanol.”

And it's all here in this cool graphic. Click it to see it larger.











[Source: Carnegie Institution for Science]

Oil makes us impotent

“I had a surprising call this week,” the author Richard North Patterson told the audience that had gathered last weekend as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. It was former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Patterson’s new novel, “Eclipse,” is based on the case of the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Mr. Clinton spoke of a phone call he had made 14 years ago to Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria, asking him to spare Mr. Saro-Wiwa from the hangman.

Mr. Clinton said General Abacha “was very polite,” but “he was cold,” Mr. Patterson related. “Clinton took away from that, among other things, that oil and the need for oil on behalf of the West and other places made Abacha, in his mind, impervious.”

The event’s moderator, the Nigerian novelist Okey Ndibe, added an unexpected epilogue. A friend in the Abacha cabinet said the general later boasted: “All these pro-democracy activists run to America and expect America to save them. But the U.S. president himself is calling me ‘sir.’ He is scared of me.”

Source: New York Times

Letterman slams GM and Hydrogen

FT: EV subsidies a waste

Yesterday's Financial Times had a great companion piece to the idiocy in today Post. The UK announced a £5000 incentive for EV beginning in 2011. After recognizing that the intent of such a subsidy is to "encourage early adopters of the technology, helping electric car manufacturers achieve economies of scale," author Richard Pike suggests a reason to oppose it is that "it would cost more than £150bn to subsidize Britain’s entire car fleet," a proposal no one has made.

Read it here.

WashPost: Volt Caused GM's woes

Charles Lane is a member of the editorial page staff of the Washington Post. Here are some gems from his screed against the Volt, and electric cars in general, in today's paper:

"GM wouldn't be in quite so deep a hole if it had not sunk a billion dollars, and much of its corporate reputation, into a not-very-realistic plug-in electric hybrid vehicle known as the Chevrolet Volt."

"Unless and until gas prices shoot up, you'd be crazy to buy one of these much-ballyhooed vehicles..."

"To be sure, the green-leaning Obama administration has not ruled out allowing a restructured GM to continue pouring (federal) money into the Volt. But I hope it won't. The Volt and other electric vehicles could gobble up more subsidies than ethanol."

"Indeed, to the extent that we use more electric cars, we reduce the demand for petroleum, which drives down the price of petroleum, which makes electric cars less competitive with gas-burning ones."

Essentially he saying that even the success of the electric car ensures its failure. Wow.

Read the entire (hit) piece here.

Chu on higher gas prices

From an exchange about gas prices between Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Florida Republican Cliff Stearns during a House hearing on the proposed climate bill:

Stearns to Chu: Last September you made a statement that somehow we have to boost the price of gasoline to the levels of Europe, which at the time exceeded $8 per gallon. As Secretary of Energy would you speak for or against any measures to raise the price of gasoline?

Chu: The Secretary of Energy, especially now in today's economic climate, would be completely unwise to want to increase the price of gasoline. We're looking forward to reducing the cost of transportation in the American family. This is done by encouraging more fuel efficient cars. This is done by developing alternative forms of fuel like biofuels that can lead to a separate source, an independent source of transportation fuel.

Stearns: You can't honestly believe that you want the American people to pay for gasoline at the prices the level in Europe.

Chu: No we don't.

Stearns: Your statement that gas prices ought to rise to the level of Europe, doesn't that sound a little bit silly, in retrospect, for you to say that?

Chu: Yes.

[Source: SF Streetsblog]

Goodbye GM, Hello Tianjin-Qingyuan Electric Vehicle Company?

I write a monthly column for the Electric Auto Association newsletter, Current EVents. Here's my April column.

As March came to a close, the Obama administration found GM and Chrysler’s restructuring plans “not viable.” GM CEO Rick Waggoner was pushed out and the company got sixty days to get its act together. Chrysler was told to consummate with Fiat quickly or else. At the same time, the value to the economy and environment of a major push for plug-in cars as part of the recovery hasn’t sunk in at the top. Obama should take extraordinary steps to empower the electric upstarts to prove their mettle. A billion dollars of loans and grants directly supporting Tesla, Th!nk, Fisker and Aptera, for example, would get cars on the road and allow the plug-in project the chance to more quickly advance to economic viability without the legacy burdens carried by the majors. And these days a billion dollars is barely a rounding error in the money going to prop up the American auto industry.

While the American government is deep in the morass of Detroit’s legacy, the Chinese leadership may have turned to face the future. As reported in the NY Times, “Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.” BYD already has a plug-in hybrid for sale in small numbers in China, and has Warren Buffet-infused plans to market PHEVs and EVs in the US within a few years. Tianjin-Qingyan Electric is poised to offer an all-electric car in China before the end of the year for less than $30,000, before any incentives. Given the much lower production costs in China, the first Chinese company to pass American certification could place an EV on the market in the US that would cost a consumer under $20,000 (after incentives.) That would be a game changer.

Can I charge my new EV here?

At the moment only Tesla is putting cars on the road, at the rate of about 20 per week. But other cars, including the MINI E, will be out and about soon, and stimulus money abounds, so the question of public EV infrastructure is much discussed. The EAA is taking the lead, along with Plug In America, to get it done right. A major error of the ZEV mandate period, no single connector standard, will be overcome once the SAE Standards Committee finally approves the new protocols. That process has been too slow, already resulting in new cars with differing connectors on the road.

A new opportunity and complication has appeared with startup companies appearing that wish to offer competing subscription-based public charging networks. The EAA and Plug In America are working closely with these companies to ensure adherence to some basic principles: universal access, interoperability and maintaining needed legacy infrastructure. In the future, any plug-in car must be able to charge at any public charger.

New public charging infrastructure, however, won’t bring us electric cars. And while I can testify that it is useful to have public access chargers, people with RAV4 EVs in places like Long Island, Hawaii, and Nova Scotia have gotten along fine without. The effort to get cars to market must remain our focus. Stop in at a car dealer today and let them know: No Plug? No Deal!

Honda Kills CNG Home FuelMaker

Honda has pulled the plug on its wholly owned subsidiary Fuelmaker, which made the device for home CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicle refueling, calling a loan, and throwing Fuelmaker into receivership.

All Fuelmaker employees were abruptly fired without severance or warning, and given just a few hours to gather up their belongings and leave the premises. All Fuelmaker operations were suspended without notice to dealers, clients or suppliers. All assets were immediately placed on the auction block for liquidation.

Huh? Wasn't Honda the big promoter of CNG? The only car company offering one in the US, the CNG Civic? Wasn't the home fueling device meant to blaze the path to a home hydrogen fueling device?

Edwin Black does the reporting on the machinations around FuelMaker's bankruptcy last week. Read about it here.

Who wants a Th!nk City?

Automakers the world over, large and small, are in the crapper. The financial crisis has hurt those that sell gas guzzlers and electric cars. Electricaid.org in Norway is trying to support its native EV company, Th!nk, and the efforts to offer the Th!nk City in the U.S. as soon as possible with its "Get Me A Th!nk" campaign. My first electric car was a Th!nk City so I'm biased. That little car made me an EV advocate. If you are interested in buying a Th!nk City, sign up by clicking here.

Saab Story

Unlike other countries, including the US, the conservative government in Sweden is opting to let Saab sink or swim without government aid. GM took the distinctive Swedish brand into the toilet, and is now preparing to cut it loose. The people of Trollhatten are now surprised to find their main source of employment abandoned by both its corporate parent and national representatives. Read Sweden Says No to Saving Saab in the NY Times.

This does make me wonder about the suggestions Sweden might be more hospitable to Th!nk.