For manufacturers of engine timing chains, main bearings or any of the hundreds of unique components for engines and transmissions, EVs like the Nissan Leaf pose an enormous threat. Decades of investment in the manufacturing technologies and IP are potentially rendered irrelevant if the switch to battery-powered EVs progresses at the rate that its optimists proclaim. Bloomberg tells the tales of woe from anxious Japanese suppliers: “It’s a crisis-like situation,” said Toru Fujiwara, head of Tsubakimoto’s auto-parts division. “With electric cars, there’s no way we can apply our current technology.” Especially when their current technology lacks AC or DC. (Read More…)

Better Place founder Shai Agassi brags that his firm’s purchase of 100,000 Electric Renault Meganes is the first such mega-buy since the Ford Model T.  Better Place’s cell phone-inspired battery leasing infrastructure hits Israel and Denmark next year, and Agassi insists that “real customers will be driving real cars” by the 2011 Frankfurt Auto Show.

Even frugal cars need to be desirable. Most electric vehicles are anything but. Right now, EVs are slow, ugly, cheap, and not good to drive. In contrast, the Tazzari Zero from Imola, Italy, wants to be a “wanna have”: great to drive, good to sit in and easy on the eyes. Here’s the data: cast-aluminum, glued frame, central motor, RWD, low center of gravity, Li-Ion Fe batteries. A two-seater that is a bit longer, but lower than a Smart. Weighing just 545 kg (1202 lb), 150 N·m of torque and 15 kW engine power would seem to go a long way. The top speed is 56 mph and it has a range of 88 miles. Gorgeous looks (if you ask me), with a dose of NSU TT attain the right balance of aggressive and cute.

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China has become the biggest producer, consumer and exporter of electric vehicles in the world. But China’s people are facing huge problems buying and driving them.
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Hydrogen-fueled propulsion has been the Next Big Thing since the 1970s. Recently, it has also been assigned to the past, at least by US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who said, “We’re going to be moving away from hydrogen-fuel cells for vehicles.” Thus, hydrogen propulsion seems to be one of those things that are everywhere in the time-space continuum except in the present. Some hydrofans are refusing to give up, though. VW’s evil genius boss of bosses, Ferdinand Piëch, has a nephew, Sebastian Piëch, who is a grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. Seb seems to be a smart, rich guy who speaks four languages, has an engineering and marketing background and lives in Shanghai and Tokyo. He’s a big name among big names at Riversimple, an alternative-car company which recently presented its first car in London. If Piëch had a monkey-man slogan, it’d be “ideas, ideas, ideas.”

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The Detroit News covers the report by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (because TRI texts are behind a password lock). Authors Walter McManus and Ron Kleinbaum write,

Story after story frames the issue of a struggling industry that will not survive tough fuel economy standards. However, there is substantial evidence that the domestic auto industry has ignored customers’ demands for fuel economy, and has consistently undervalued the impact of fuel economy on their profit potential.

Plus,

Our view is that GM is still not prepared to change enough, fast enough to achieve the transformation it needs to make.

Go on . . .

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Let’s be clear: TTAC is not in the business of bashing EVs just for the hell of it; there are good reasons why battery-power is the gas foe’s great white hope. But this story is just too crazy. In BMW’s rush to launch its 450-unit MINI E test lease program, it has failed to secure Underwriter’s Laboratory approval for its high-voltage charging cord. As many as 300 of the 450 customers who’ll be getting Mini Es many not get their high-voltage charging cables for a month or so and will have to use sloooooowwwwww 110-volt trickle charging to replenish their car’s power pack when the battery runs down,” according to Edmunds. Which means instead of taking 4 hours to recharge the MINI E’s 150-mile-range batteries, users will have to wait 23 hours to fill up through a 110V cable. At an $850/month lease rate, that makes the MINI E the mother of all EV debacles. Approval for the charger will happen “within weeks,” say BMW. But as professional EV booster Chelsea Sexton puts it, “they are guaranteeing virgin customers a poor experience.” And ain’t that just the way it tends to go for virgins.

No, we’re not anticipating more congressional hearings. The AP (Breitbart) reports that inappropriately named Zero Pollution Motors is trying to bring MDI’s compressed-air technology to America. Again. Still. There’s only one problem. “Air compressors are one of the least efficient machines to convert electricity to work,” says Harold Kung, professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University. “Why not use the electricity directly, as in electric cars? From an energy utilization point of view, the compressed (air) car does not make sense.” What the professor appears to be missing is that the firm is called Zero Pollution Motors. Put that in your chemical engineering bong and and give it a toke.

President Bush’s imaginatively-named “Freedom Fuel Initiative” has been slashed by President Obama, cutting $100 million per year from hydrogen research funding according to DailyTech. Government spending on hydrogen fuel cell technology will drop from about $169 million per year to about $69 million, as a natural and healthy skepticism grows about hydrogen’s short-term potential. “The probability of deploying hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in the next 10 to 20 years is low,” say Department of Energy spokesfolks, taking an early lead for understatement of the week.

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President Obama gave the dying ethanol industry a huge shot in the arm Tuesday when he announced that over $780 million of stimulus money will be spent on biofuel “research and commercialization,” guided by an all-new Biofuels Interagency Working Group. Think of a giant, government-funded R&D/marketing department for the ethanol industry, and you’ll have some idea of what we’re looking at. “We need to work in concert with the industry to figure out how to do a better job to create a market for biofuels, how to increase the use of flex-fuel vehicles, how we can assist those who market, and to coordinate the infrastructure, and do all this in a sustainable way,” says Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack. Unfortunately “creating a market” isn’t easy. The US already spends more on ethanol subsidies than any other renewable energy source, and has been rewarded only with crashing ethanol demand and rampant refinery bankruptcies. Good thing hope springs eternal in the breast of K Street.

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