Click here to view the embedded video.

While Damon Lavrinc at  Wired’s Autopia makes the observation that the revived Detroit Electric company seems to be following the Tesla playbook, launching their company with a car based on an electrified small Lotus, Detroit Electric CEO Albert Lam insists that his team is using a different business model than Tesla and that they have learned from other EV startups’ mistakes. Lam also said there was no comparison between Detroit Electric and Fisker, which appears to be headed to bankruptcy soon, having just furloughed all but 50 employees. Detroit Electric says they are following the model of Apple (on Lam’s CV along with a stints at Lotus and Sun Microsystems) focusing on design and engineering with much of everything else contracted out. Lam pointed out, at a press conference following the reveal of the SP:01 sports car, that buying and equipping a factory to build an original platform, as Tesla is doing, or even contracting out assembly of an original platform, as Fisker has tried to do, both require up front investments of hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion dollars or more, requiring quick success and substantial early sales just to break even. Lam says that Detroit Electric will proceed more slowly that those other two EV startups.

Tesla used a Lotus platform to get their company off the ground with their Roadster but much of Tesla’s focus has been developing the all-original Model S, built in the former NUMMI GM/Toyota plant in California. Detroit Electric will only be selling 1,000 of the $135,000 SP:01 as the startup moves to put a volume model, in sedan and hatchback styles, into production. Those new cars, with a projected sales figure of 10,000 units in 2015, ramping up to perhaps 40,000 in three years, will not have a unique platform like the Tesla Model S or the Fisker Karma. While that 40,000 unit figure seems a bit optimistic, Tesla is producing (and selling, they claim) the Model S at a rate of about 20,000 units a year, Chevy sold 23,400 Volts in North America in 2012 and just shy of 10,000 Nissan Leafs were sold in that market last year. Globally, Nissan sold about 27,000 Leafs, so Detroit Electric could be selling ten to twenty thousand cars a year if they have a competitive product.

They wouldn’t say who will be supplying them with gliders, but Lam said that an announcement of a strategic partner will be made at the upcoming Shanghai auto show. Lam did say that their platform supplier will be in Asia and that the cars will be built with unique Detroit Electric exterior bodies and interiors, as well as the tech features unique to the SP:01, particularly the SAMI smartphone app that controls most of the car’s infotainment. By giving their cars a brand specific look and a competitive interior, perhaps Detroit Electric will avoid the problems that another EV startup, Coda, has faced. Coda also based it’s business model around selling an electric version of an existing platform, but they decided to use a rather generic looking sedan from China’s Changan Hafei that is arguably the most boring looking car on sale in North America. Also, consumers have said that the Coda’s cheap interior plastics look out of place in car that has a list price of over $44,000. Reportedly Coda sold less than 100 cars in 2012 and early this year there were reports that the company had laid off 30% of its workforce. One dealer had slashed prices 40% on the Codas he had in stock.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Detroit Electric did promise that they will be doing final assembly in a Detroit area facility. Lam said that components will come in “CKD” (completely knocked down) form that will then be put together in Michigan. In a sense, that reverses how the big Detroit automakers often shipped CKD kits to foreign subsidiaries where they would be assembled. A similar facility will be operated in Europe for cars sold in Europe and Asia. North American distribution will be done through traditional dealers, most likely a hookup with a large dealer group. European sales will follow a new model, though the only hint they gave us was that it will operated on the model of “don’t call us, we’ll call you”, whatever that means.

One actual similarity with Tesla is that Detroit Electric will be assembling their own battery packs from cells supplied by vendors. That assembly, along with that of the batteries’ air-cooled thermal management system, will be done in the Detroit area. Detroit Electric’s head of engineering, Ben Boycott, said that the company “for commercial reasons” will not be using a single supplier for their cells. That’s a smart move after Fisker’s production was interrupted by battery maker A123′s own bankruptcy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Korea’s Kokam had already been mentioned as a possible supplier to Detroit Electric. An additional battery maker will be announced as soon as final prices are negotiated. Boycott said that from a technical standpoint both Kokam cells and those supplied by the other company are equivalent. That other company will also be Korean but will not be LG Chem, who supplies the Chevy Volt. If you want to sleuth it out, Lam did say that the unnamed Korean battery supplier already has a facility near Detroit.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Detroit Electric, like Tesla, will also offer the same cars in two different battery capacities, ranges and prices. The entry level, lower range car will be competitively priced to the Nissan Leaf. Lam mentioned a price of $32-$35,000, the cost of a loaded midsize car these days.

Lam stressed how Detroit Electric will be “an American company”, headquartered and operated out of Detroit. Currently, six people work in Detroit Electric’s temporary offices in Detroit’s historic Fisher Bldg, including Don Graundstadt, CEO of North American operations. Once their permanent offices in the building are ready, that will go up to about 20, the same number of people who will initially staff the local assembly facility. An engineering and R&D center employing up to 200, also in the Detroit area, is in their plans. When asked about the company’s financing, Lam said that they have both private and strategic investors, including the company that supplies them with battery packaging equipment. He took pains to emphasize how he had recently been contacted by investment bankers representing a state owned Chinese business looking to invest in Detroit Electric and that he turned them down. He said that they welcomed private equity investors, and specifically mentioned investors in Europe and Hong Kong, but that they did not want any equity investments from governments linked businesses.

On the topic of government money, Detroit Electric received a $50,000 forgivable startup loan from Ann Arbor’s SPARK business incubator which was repaid in full.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Until the modern day revival of electric vehicles like the Teslas, Nissan’s Leaf or the Chevy Volt, the best selling electric car ever was the Detroit Electric, produced by the Anderson Carriage company from 1907 to 1939. They sold thousands of them (1914 was the high water mark with ~4,500 produced). Among the people who drove Detroit Electrics were electricity pioneers Thomas Edison and Charles Steinmetz and the wives of automotive industrialists  Henry Ford and Henry Joy (he ran Packard). Interestingly, John D. Rockefeller, who made his enormous fortune from petroleum products like gasoline, owned a pair of Detroit Electric Model 46 Roadsters. Now, not only has the electric car industry been revived, but also the Detroit Electric company, which says it will start producing battery electric sports cars in a Michigan facility by the end of this summer. Following Tesla’s example, their first car will be based on a Lotus, in this case an Exige coupe, and the company promises two other “high performance” models in 2014.

Teaser of the Lotus Exige based Detroit Electric sports car

Using a Lotus glider as the basis of an EV, as mentioned, isn’t a particularly original idea. Besides the Tesla Roadster if you remember, before their bankruptcy, Chrysler showed a raft of electric powered concept cars including the Circuit EV based on the Elise derived Europa. With aluminum superstructures and composite bodies, Lotus cars are light enough to still have good performance after being fitted with heavy electric battery packs. The choice of the Exige is an interesting one since that car is not sold in the United States – apparently because of a regulatory issue with its airbags. Perhaps Detroit Electric’s chairman and CEO, Albert Lam, who used to run Lotus, will use his connections with the British firm to get the gliders federalized.

John D. Rockefeller had two Detroit Electric Model 46 Roadsters, like this one for sale at RM’s 2012 St. John’s auction

In addition to announcing that Detroit Electric is going to be more than just a placeholding website that’s been around since Lam acquired the rights to the brand and logo in 2008, the company has signed a lease for its headquarters to be located in Detroit’s historic and automotively connected Fisher Building. The new car will have a press launch in Detroit early next month, followed by a global reveal at the Shanghai auto show later in April. In addition to signing the lease on their HQ, Detroit Electric has selected what they call a “dedicated production facility” in Michigan that will have an annual capacity of 2,500 cars a year. Since they’re working with the quasi-governmental Michigan Economic Development Corporation, most likely it will be a facility that has formerly been used to build relatively short production runs of specialty cars. My WAG would be either the facility in Troy where Saleen did final assembly of the Ford GTs, or the former GM Lansing Craft Centre that built the Chevy SSR. Between the offices in Detroit and the production plant, Detroit Electric hopes to create 180 new jobs in Michigan over the next year.

Detroit Electric logo on the aluminum running board of Helen Newberry Joy’s 1914 Detroit Electric. Note the broken shoe scraper.

Apparently that production facility will not be owned by Detroit Electric. Before working at Lotus, Lam’s resume includes stints in Asia with Apple and Sun Microsystems, and Detroit Electric will be following an “asset light” business model, focusing on R&D and marketing and jobbing out production.

When the new Detroit Electric sports car is first revealed next month we’ll have coverage of the event. Press release here.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Volkswagen has been tinkering with hydrogen for longer than I can remember. Yesterday, CEO Martin Winterkorn said it was all for naught. Hydrogen fuel cells are unlikely to become a cost-effective way to power cars in the near future, Winterkorn told Automotive News at Volkswagen’s press conference in Wolfsburg. He said it’s not Volkswagen’s fault:

“I do not see the infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles, and I do not see how hydrogen can be produced on large scale at reasonable cost. I do not currently see a situation where we can offer fuel cell vehicles at a reasonable cost that consumers would also be willing to pay.”

Automotive News takes that as an indicator that VW won’t join a list of global automakers that want to roll out fuel cell vehicles in the 2015-2020 time-frame, among them Toyota allied with BMW, a Nissan-Renault-Daimler-Ford alliance, Hyundai, Honda, and more.

Instead, VW is seen to embark on a somewhat belated diesel plug-in hybrid strategy, while hybrid pioneer Toyota does not have a problem envisaging fuel cell vehicles at a reasonable cost. Two years ago already, Toyota’s chief engineer Satoshi Ogiso told TTAC that an affordable hydrogen-powered car in this decade is “his job.”

Energy density isn’t the only reason why battery-powered cars have never caught on. As was highlighted in Tesla’s somewhat less than successful media road trip, the amount of time it takes to fill batteries with electrons can be as significant a factor in the practicality of EVs as the amount of electrons those batteries can hold.

That’s one of the reasons why high power capacitors, also known as supercapacitors or ultracapacitors, have held promise – caps can charge and discharge very quickly. That promise, though, has been held back by the old bugaboo of energy density. Capacitors unfortunately have limited capacity. Researchers at UCLA who had previously announced the almost accidental discovery of a simple and inexpensive method of creating graphene sheets, which have ideal properties for fabricating ultracapacitors, have now published the results of their further research, demonstrating a scalable process for fabricating flexible graphene micro-supercapacitors that have some of the highest energy densities achieved yet for such capacitors.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The team, led by Richard Kaner, is developing the devices out of one of those fortuitous discoveries that expands the frontiers of science, like penicillin or nylon. Maher El-Kady, of Kaner’s lab, had invented an elegantly simple and inexpensive method of making graphene, a single atom thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in that hexagonal latice that C loves so well. He poured out a layer of graphite oxide solution on a plastic substrate and then exposed it to laser light. The process wasn’t the most clever thing about El-Kaner’s discovery, it was the equipment that he used. El-Kaner’s substrates were DVDs and he used a standard consumer grade LightScribe DVD burner for the laser. Refining the process, the team has now figured out a way to embed electrodes into the graphene, which is formulated over a flexible film, and they claim energy density comparable to current thin-film lithium ion batteries.

Often “scalable” means scaling up, but Kaner and El-Kady discovered that scaling down has advantanges. Miniaturizing the devices enhances charge storage capacity and charge/discharge rate and it also allowed them to produce more than 100 micro-supercapacitors on a single disc in 30 min or less. The flexible substrate allows for packaging options and the size means that they can be mounted on the back of solar cells or other chips.

As is always the case with potential energy gamechangers, the research team is looking for partners to produce their invention in industrial quantities. While the initial applications will likely not be for transportation, any development concerning electrical storage that combines enhanced energy density, faster charge/discharge rates, and lightweight miniaturization is bound to attract attention from the EV crowd.

UCLA press release here.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Note the date of publication is 1914, not 2013

While following the he said he said back and forth between the New York Time’s James Broder and Tesla’s Elon Musk, over Broder’s unsuccessful drive from New York to Boston in a Tesla Model S, it seemed to me that one important factor affecting consumer acceptance of EVs is being obscured by all the Sturm und Drang of the NYT and Musk both working this story for maximum bad publicity for their respectless enterprises. That factor, ironically, is why Tesla set up the media road trips in the first place, the fact that EVs will need a publicly accessible charging infrastructure if they are going to be seen as anything other than town cars. The Model S press trips from DC to Beantown were supposed to demonstrate Tesla’s expanding network of locations equipped with Tesla’s “Supercharger” quick charging stations.

That need for public charging stations has been obscured by other issues in the discussion of electric cars, which it seems to me have been focused more on range than anything else. Tesla is not unwise to create it’s own charging infrastructure for its customers because the simple fact is that if you could recharge an EV as quickly and as conveniently as you can refuel a gasoline or diesel powered vehicle, and if you could find a charging station within your EV’s range, range becomes more of a non issue. Let’s face it, how many owners of gasoline cars really consider range on a single tank of gas when buying a new car? As long as you can get ~300 miles between fill ups, the vast majority of car consumers don’t really care about range. Gas mileage yes, but I’d bet that total range is only important to a minority of gas/diesel drivers.

This is nothing new. Like 3D photography and movies, this is not the first go-round with EVs. Electric cars and were marketed more than a century ago, at the dawn of the automotive age and soon enough electric car companies, electric component makers, trade organizations, tire and battery companies, and publishers rushed in to help EV owners find a charge.

The EV side of the auto industry understood that drivers of EVs would need public charging facilities at the same time that it promoted electric cars as suitable for touring. The Electric Vehicle Association of America even published a charging station guide to the Lincoln Highway, America’s first attempt at a coast to coast road. Since the longest distance between charging stations was about 120 miles, well beyond the range of any contemporary electric car, it’s doubtful than any early electric automobilists completed the entire route, but the EV industry did what it could to dispel the image that electric cars could not be taken on long trips. Tesla is doing the same today.

The fact that the Electric Vehicle Association agreed on a standard charging plug that was used by most EV makers made things a little easier. In the photo above, the charging port on a 1922 Milburn Light Electric is being held open so you can see the terminals in the photo above. The photo below shows a similar charging port, though closed, on a 1914 Detroit Electric runabout.

By 1912, the Detroit Electric Car company, the most successful of the first wave of EV makers (it has only been in the past year that the Nissan Leaf surpassed the Detroit Electric as the most successful EV ever, in terms of total sales) had both standalone charging garages as well as combined sales branches and charging stations in Detroit, Manhattan, Chicago , Boston, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Cleveland, Evanston, Kansas City, and Minneapolis.

In 1914, the New York Electric Vehicle Association, in conjunction with Automobile Blue Books started publishing route guides for “electric touring”, that mapped the locations of charging stations and provided suggested touring routes.

The guide was updated, apparently annually. In an emergency, drivers of electric cars could get a charge from electric streetcar or trolley wiring – as this Tom Swift story relates.

While General Electric sold  mercury arc rectifier based residential chargers to EV owners, the majority of the more than 14,000 chargers that GE sold a century ago were sold to public facilities like hotels and parking garages.

The Exide battery company, perhaps the major EV battery maker in the early days of the automobile, set up its own storage and charging garage (many city dwellers didn’t have residential parking for their cars) and “battery depot” in New York City.

In addition to public charging facilities, taxicab companies that operated electric cabs set up their own charging garages and had chargers installed for their drivers’ use at hotels they serviced.

As was shown 100 years ago, broadscale consumer acceptance of electric cars needs a publicly accessible charging infrastructure. It’s unfortunate that the war of words between Mr. Musk and the New York Times is obscuring rather than illustrating that need.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

Today must be International Backpedaling Day. Volkswagen said “Never mind beat Toyota by 2018.”  Obama says: “Never mind a million EVs by 2015.”

Under a new strategy announced today, the Department of Energy promised to support research into new battery technologies and manufacturing methods that would lower the cost of lightweight materials and improve vehicles’ fuel-efficiency, Reuters reports.

But the DOE backpedales furiously from a goal set out in a 2011 State of the Union speech, where President Barack Obama announced what he called “Apollo projects of our times.” One of them was the goal for the United States to be “the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.”

“Whether we meet that goal in 2015 or 2016, that’s less important than that we’re on the right path to get many millions of these vehicles on the road,” an unnamed Energy Department official told Reuters.

Reuters notes that “demand for hybrids and electric vehicles has been weaker than expected.” Government money was poured into black holes. Says Reuters:

“Poor demand has hurt lithium-ion battery makers, pushing two DOE grant recipients, A123 Systems Inc and EnerDel, to file for bankruptcy protection. Dow Chemical Co took a $1.1 billion charge last year, related in part to a writedown of its lithium-ion battery business, Dow-Kokam LLC.”

“Everybody uses the road and if some pay and some don’t then that’s an unfair situation that’s got to be resolved,” said Jim Whitty, manager of the Oregon Department of Transportation’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding.

Ah, yes. As with any number of current governmental activities, the rationale for per-mile taxation will be fairness.

With the recent American election safely delivered into the appropriate hands, there’s no longer any need to sugar-coat the facts of life in the United States, is there? So let’s not. The unemployment rate is dipping because many people have simply given up and have either stopped looking for work or have dropped off the five-year cliff beyond which the Bureau of Labor no longer considers people unemployed – as if being unable to find a job for five years and one day was somehow equivalent to swanning one’s way off to Sun City, AZ. Meanwhile, we’re reassured that the middle class hasn’t disappeared — it just looks like the lower class now.

This modern life, this grey parade of single mothers and hopeless, underemployed men listlessly piloting the oldest automotive fleet in the country’s history between 29-hour-a-week “part-time” jobs, dismal food, and lonely evenings lit only by the constant flickering of the Internet as the one-percenters and rich kids of Instagram breeze past in an ever more obscene panoply of tasteless, pumped-up hyper-SUVs and bluff-faced, BMW-based Rolls-Royces. It’s not just bad for morale. It’s bad for taxes. And if some of the nation’s proles have the nerve to swing a loan for a more fuel-efficient car in the hopes of simultaneously preserving scarce resources and making a long-term positive economic impact in their own lives… well, something will have to be done.

The Statesman-Journal reports that Oregon has started a pilot program to study the implementation of a per-mile travel charge. This was apparently done in response to stricter CAFE standards and concerns that a smaller fleet of more fuel-efficient vehicles would impact gas taxes, which are already declining as more and more people just stay home.

Under the pilot, about 50 participants in Oregon paid 1.56 cents per mile and received a credit for the gas tax they paid at the pump. Participants, which mainly included transportation officials and lawmakers, chose from five plans with different ways to track miles driven and pay their bill.

They could report miles driven using a smartphone application, a geographic positioning system device or a reporting device without GPS.

Participants could also pay a flat annual charge or opt out of using a gadget in the vehicle to record miles.

The existing state gas tax is thirty cents per gallon, so this program would effectively return revenues to the days when the notoriously thirsty Ford Explorer was simultaneously doing 400,000 units or more a year and punishing the buyer of each one with real-world fuel mileage in the 15-mpg range. If you’re wearing a tinfoil hat right now, you’ve no doubt considered a likely implementation scenario where the flat fee will be based on a very high annual mileage and payable in a high-three-figure lump sum, while the privacy-eroding GPS-tracking device will be easy to use and the most affordable choice.

Insofar as this program deliberately encourages people to hold on to older, less fuel-efficient vehicles, the Obama administration will surely have an opinion on Oregon’s antics. The state’s famously liberal urban residents might also have a strong opinion about a program that seems targeted at electric and plug-in vehicles. One question perhaps not covered in the pilot program is this: If a young man lets a pair of valets put two hundred miles on his father’s vintage Ferrari, will running it in reverse on a pair of jackstands result in a tax refund?

Yesterday, we told you about that miracle battery, Toyota allegedly has developed. The Nikkei [sub] said it will double the range of an EV. The Tokyo wire quoted  researchers as saying that they “may also be able to achieve a driving range of between 500km and 1,000km” (310 to 620 miles), You possibly noticed the skeptical tone when we reported on the report . As it turns out, the Nikkei was a bit – exuberant.

Checking in with Toyota this morning, we learn that Toyota’s researchers indeed have a new Sodium-Ion  battery technology. However, research into this technology is in its very, very early stages.

A group of Toyota researchers (M. Nose, H. Nakayama, K. Nobuhara, S. Nakanishi, and H. Iba) presented a paper titled “Novel Cathode Materials of Sodium-Containing Metal Phosphates as Highly Voltage Sodium-Ion Batteries” at a symposium in Honolulu. After two of the researchers,  Nakanishi-san, and Iba-san were interviewed by the Nikkei, some finer, but crucial points were either misunderstood or lost in translation.

Instead of targeting 2020 as the date of  commercial release of the battery, the researchers think that commercialization can take anywhere between 10 to 20 years – if commercialization indeed turns out to be viable.

The researchers confirm  that the new battery has the potential to extend driving range. However, they did not say, “We may also be able to achieve a driving range of between 500km and 1,000km.” What they said was that to be commercially viable, a next-generation battery should give an EV that range or one exceeding it. With that in mind, they are pushing forward with their research.

Bottom line: Take that sodium story with a big grain of salt.

Fiat and Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne finds it “most shocking” that the U.S. auto industry is not throwing its might behind natural gas, which has been found in abundance in the United States:

“A rapid adoption of CNG as a fuel source for automotive applications would almost instantly kill the reliance on foreign oil, and it would bring about a substantial reduction in emissions. Those are opportunities that need to be grabbed and they need to be industrialized. Especially with large vehicles like pickups and large SUVs, we could probably accommodate the installation of CNG tanks within the next 24 to 36 months.”

Marchionne said this on the sidelines of an industry convention in Shanghai, China, over the weekend, but it wasn’t reported. Reporters instead pestered Marchionne with inane questions whether bringing Jeep production to China would cost jobs in the U.S., or Italy. Both of which Marchionne answered for the umpteenth time with a no. Poor reporting by unscrupulous bloggers has been blamed for the rumor that Jeep production would be outsourced to China, but correspondents of major U.S. newspapers tried their best in Shanghai to keep the rumor alive. At the same time, they buried the story on how to end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and to put an end to global warming – at least as far as Sergio Marchionne is concerned.

Sergio by the way doesn’t think ethanol has much future in the U.S. Sergio thinks alcohol as fuel works for Brazil where, “from a global standpoint, producing ethanol probably is the most efficient use of their sugarcane.” It was tried in Africa, and it failed. And, said Marchionne, he is “making no comments on the U.S. side of ethanol production which relies on grains.” We take it, Sergio doesn’t think it’s a good idea.

Asked why alternative fuels aren’t adopted in wholesale fashion the world over, Marchionne started “the dominance of oil …” Then he checked himself, took a big breath, and said “I am not pointing fingers on big oil being responsible for anything.” He continued to say that the existence of big oil as a big business with established refinery capacity in most of the developed countries is a force to be reckoned with.

A day later, on Monday, it turned out the Chrysler doesn’t need two or three years to install tanks on trucks. The first Ram 2500 Compressed Natural Gas pickup trucks started rolling off the line at Chrysler’s Satillo Truck Assembly Plant.

TTAC is no stranger to the topic of Peak Oil, but the theory has fallen by the wayside with the recent explosion in unconventional oil and gas. A study by the British think tank Chatham House argues that the biggest issue facing oil and gas producers in the coming century isn’t Peak Oil, but Peak Demand (summary here).

The crux of Chatham House’s argument rests on the reformation of the transportation industry – a desire for fuel-efficient automobiles, the expanding use of biofuels and government regulation mandating reduced carbon emissions has all led to a slackening demand for oil.

Those factors, combined with the rise in “unconventional” supplies, like shale gas could have drastic effects on the oil and gas industry. In 2009, 95 percent of energy used in the global transportation sector came from petroleum. In 2030, Chatham House estimates this number could be as low as 60 percent. One interesting component of this actually comes from China. Chatham House argues that because their fueling infrastructure isn’t so tied into “legacy” fuels like gasoline, there is significant potential for them to be on the leading edge of alternative fuel adoption.

The report cites the increasing adoption of fuel-efficient vehicles like hybrids, Generation Y’s reluctance to drive cars and the potential for CNG powered automobiles as some of the largest drivers of peak demand phenomenon. Among the unintended consequences of reduced driving would be a significant drop off in tax revenues for municipalities that levy a gas tax. Reduced sales of fuel would naturally reduce revenues.

“We do not need incentives for natural gas technology to drive adoption,” Bill Larkin, CFO of Westport Innovations, a Vancouver-based developer of technology that allows truck and bus engines to run on natural gas, told Reuters in an interview:

 “It actually hurts the investment in this technology because the U.S. government has been dangling this carrot … and so investments are delayed.”

While billions of tax payer money are spent on electrification programs with dubious prospects (and a few certain duds,) the U.S. sits on a mountain of natural gas. Prices of natural gas are coming off decade lows as production soars from U.S. shale fields.

Larkin is glad that the U.S. Senate’s rejected proposed tax incentives for long-haul trucks and commercial vehicles to switch to CNG. At about $1.33 per gallon, the cost of CNG is around half of gasoline, more than enough of an incentive to make the relatively low-tech switch. Natural gas produces lower emissions of nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and greenhouse gases than gasoline or diesel.

Tesla has officially launched their long-awaited “Supercharging” network last night to a star-studded crowd in Southern California. (We assume it was star-studded since our invitation got lost in the mail.) The EV network promises to enable Model S and Model X owners to charge 150 miles of range in 30 minutes. What about your Roadster? Sorry, you aren’t invited to this charging party. Have a Tesla and a LEAF? You’ll have to be satisfied with separate but equal charging facilities as the Tesla proprietary charging connector restricts access to Tesla shoppers only. Is this class warfare or do we parallel the computer industry where connectors come and go with the seasons?

What’s the big deal with charging? Let’s go over the Model S’s charging time chart and you’ll understand. From a regular 120V wall outlet the Model S will gain 4-5 miles per hour of charging and consumes about the same amount of power as a space heater. Charging at 41 amps, the car gains 31 miles per hour and consumes as much power as TWO average electric clothes dryers. Charging at 81 amps (a service that many homes with older wiring or smaller services cannot support) the Model S gains 62 miles an hour and consumes more power than an average home’s A/C, dryer, washer, stove, oven, lights and small appliances put together. With a range of 300 miles and a 10 hour charge time at the 41A rate, it’s easy to see why fast charging stations are appealing. Tesla’s Supercharger’s specs are yet to be revealed, but by the numbers it is apparent the system is delivering a massive 90kWh charge which is likely 440V DC at around 200A. An hour of charging at that rate is 70% of the power that my home uses in an entire month.

Is this a Tesla issue? No, it’s an EV issue. If you expect your EV to drive like a regular car, modern EVs are a delight. If you expect your EV to refuel like a regular car, we’ve hit a snag. But it’s more complex than that, you see, only three of the four Model S trims support DC fast charging and the only other EVs on the market with a DC charge port are the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i-MiEV. Except they don’t use the same connector or the same standard. Oops. Adding more complications to the mix are the EVs with no DC charge connector like the RAV4 EV, Volt, Prius Plug-In, Accord Plug-In, Focus, Active E and Coda while the new Chevy Spark is rumored to début a third standard: the SAE combo plug.

Of course, if you think of your car like you think of your cell phone, this makes sense as the phone you bought last year wont use the same charger as the phone you buy today. If you think of this in car terms however it’s like buying a new car and finding out that most of the gas stations have a nozzle that won’t fit your car.

Back to those Tesla charging stations. Tesla opened the first four in Southern California and announced two more stations will go online in October with stations in Las Vegas, Northern California and Oregon by summer 2013 with the 100 station network being complete by 2015. If that network sounds familiar then it should, because the recent settlement in the California vs NRG lawsuit means there will be 200 new CHAdeMO stations in California over the same time frame in addition to the 8 already installed and the 75 commercial stations planned or under construction. It isn’t just California on the CHAdeMO bandwagon however, the Department of Energy claims there are over 113 CHAdeMO stations in the USA and a 1,200+ unit installed base in Japan.

What does this mean to Tesla owners? Until Tesla creates a CHAdeMO to Tesla charging adapter cable (much like they have a J1772 to Tesla cable for use at public AC charging stations), Tesla owners will be restricted to regular AC charging or the smaller Tesla only charging network. On the flip side, Tesla is promising the Tesla charging stations will be free to Tesla owners, positioned next to trendy restaurants and you won’t have to mix with the Leaf owning rabble. You can also feel superior because Tesla’s newer standard charges 80% faster than the 50kWh CHAdeMO connector.

What does this mean to LEAF and i-MiEV owners? It means this is just the beginning of a standards battle. If you bought an EV before this raft of new J1772-connector-toting models, you know what I’m talking about. While CHAdeMO has the lead now, depending on what standard the rest of the industry supports this could change rapidly.

What about the rest of us? If we continue to build more battery electric vehicles and continue to develop batteries that are more and more power dense, you can expect even the snazzy Tesla charging connector to be outdated on a few years. If you expect an EV SUV to deliver 300 miles of electric range, AWD, decent performance, mild off-road ability and Range Rover quality luxury trappings, then expect it to have a battery that is 50-100% larger than the Model S’ massive 85kWh pack. This means you have to either take all the charging rates and nearly double them, or you have to develop a charging method that charges 50-100% faster to keep the same performance.

Of course, just like LEAF owners experience battery degradation caused by repeated use of DC quick charge stations, Tesla owners should be mindful that batteries don’t last forever and the faster you charge them the shorter their life will be.

Earlier this year, Nissan Leaf owners in Arizona started to observe bars missing from the charge state display of their cars. Instead of the 12 bars that signal a full battery, some saw only 10 or less. This spread like the Arizona wildfires through the EV community. As of today, the discussion at the Mynissanleaf forum  has swelled to 373 pages. Nissan looked at the affected cars, and so far has not rendered a verdict. Or maybe it did. 12 Leaf owners did assemble one night to prove Nissan wrong.

Three weeks ago, Nissan’s Executive Vice President Andy Palmer was quoted by Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald as saying that “we don’t have a battery problem” and that the battery level display is faulty. Enraged, the Arizona Leaf owners set up a massive test, and published the results at InsideEVs.

12 Leafs with odometer readings as low as 2,500 miles and as high as 29,000 miles assembled at night at 7755 South Research Drive, Tempe, Arizona. The location was chosen because it has a DC Chademo fast charger, and two J1772-2009 EVSE charging stations. From there, they did set out to drive the Leafs until the battery runs out, or more exactly, until the Turtle in the display strongly recommends to get off the road. They even had a small fleet of dollies and a flatbed truck to collect the exhausted Leafs.

The results of the test appear to support the group’s claim that the Leaf’s batteries degrade much faster than they should, at least in the hot climate of Arizona. A Leaf with 29,000 miles on the clock did last only 59.3 miles during the group’s test, a nearly 30 percent degradation from the 84 miles the group says a new Leaf should get. A Leaf with only 2,500 miles on the meter did last nearly 80 miles.

The test was professionally set up, VERY detailed description here. The group also measured the charge indicator, and found that in most cases, the instrument low-balls the available charge. Says Tony Williams who spearheaded the effort , and who had done an all-electric Canada to Mexico trip in a Leaf:

“So, Andy Palmer was right… they have poor instruments. But, he was wrong about the batteries. It was sheer stupidity to tell this group of owners that the batteries are ok. “

We talked to Nissan’s General Manager of Global Communications, Jeff Kuhlman, in Yokohama. Kuhlman praises the affected owners who “are very knowledgeable, some are engineers themselves.”

He denies that Nissan has come to a conclusion on the matter: “We cannot give you a final analysis, because there simply is none available yet.”

Seven affected Leafs were inspected by Nissan , and subsequently returned to their customers. Nissan did a full data download on all units.

“The data are with our technical team in Yokohama, and they are still analyzing them,” says Kuhlman. “Once they have finished their analysis, the owners will be contacted first, and we will discuss with them what needs to be done.”

Kuhlman expects the verdict to be available “within days.”

The Obama administration, through the EPA and the DOT, on Tuesday released new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that mandate a national fleet average of 54.5 MPG by the year 2025. That figure was the result of negotiations with automakers, state officials and environmental activists. Despite the industry’s apparent support, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign called them “extreme”. President Obama responded by implying that Romney was some kind of 19th century Luddite, suggesting that the former Massachusetts prefers steam engines.

“My opponent called my position on fuel efficiency standards extreme. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem extreme to me to want to have more fuel efficient cars. Maybe the steam engine is more his speed.”

The problem with that remark is that steam engines may indeed play an important role in America’s energy efficiency. Even curiouser, Mr. Obama’s own administration is funding steam engine research. For the past few years, Cyclone Power Technologies of Pompano Beach, Florida has been developing what they call “a Rankine Cycle heat regenerative external combustion” otherwise known as a steam engine, that can run on just about any liquid or solid fuel, or even waste heat from industrial processes or internal combustion engines. As a matter of fact, Mr. Obama’s own Department of Defense has been funding Cyclone’s development of a steam engine to power a 10KW generator for military vehicles. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is also looking into using the Cyclone engine as a power source for battlefield robots that could live off the land and refuel themselves by foraging for biomass to burn. Cyclone says that their engine can run on “virtually any fuel (or combination of fuels) including today’s promising new bio fuels, while emitting far fewer pollutants than traditional gas or diesel powered internal combustion engines.”

To be honest, though Cyclone has been pitching their engine to possibly replace the internal combustion engine as a motive force for automobiles, it seems that another application of Cyclone’s engine will likely find a market first. A Rankine cycle engine uses external sources of heat for power, which means that as long there are enough BTU available, you can use just about any heat source. That means “waste heat” can be used to run the engine. What is waste heat? Well, to give you an example, a typical gasoline engine might have a thermal efficiency of 25%. That means that 75% of the energy is wasted as heat, mostly in the form of hot exhaust gases. No process is 100% efficient so that kind of waste heat is generated in a wide variety of industrial processes. Nowadays industrial “smokestacks” aren’t really emitting much smoke, i.e. particulates and harmful gases. Environmental laws ensure that exhaust has been scrubbed fairly clean. Most of those plumes of “smoke” are really just steam, which condenses as it hits the cooler atmospheric air. That steam contains waste heat. Cyclone Power claims that their Waste Heat Engine (WHE) can run on heat as low as 500 degrees F. That means that it can recover energy, spin a dynamo and generate electricity from a variety of sources, like industrial ovens and furnaces, landfill, refinery and other industrial waste gas flares, biomass combustion, and even the exhaust of internal combustion engines, both stationary and those used to power vehicles. BMW has already more or less proven that automotive concept with their “Turbo Steamer“, a test bed that uses a Rankine engine running off exhaust and coolant heat to assist the combustion engine, claiming 10-15% improvements in fuel efficiency and power. Even if Cyclone’s steam engine proves to be impractical as an automotive power plant, wide scale use of waste heat engines could significantly improve the energy efficiency of American industry.

After Pres. Obama reacted to the Romney campaign’s criticism by dissing Romney and steam engines, I asked Cyclone Power Technologies for their reaction. Cyclone is in an interesting position. They’d love to leverage Obama’s comments into more publicity for their company and engine and they certainly want to rebut the notion that steam engines are archaic, but since they indeed have government contracts, I’m sure they’re not eager to be seen as criticizing the president. Getting in the middle of a political campaign is not always a great idea for a business.

Chris Nelson, Cyclone’s president sent TTAC this response:

“We are a small U.S. business, employing talented American workers who are developing a 21st Century steam engine that is powerful, clean, fully fuel-flexible and efficient enough to beat these new CAFE standards.  We are working with the U.S. military to make their power supplies more efficient, and developing other ways to turn waste into energy using our steam technology. Furthermore, we are currently building the car and engine that will attempt to break the land speed record for steam powered vehicles.  We hope that President Obama and Governor Romney recognize the incredible possibilities that Cyclone’s modern steam technology present to advance our independence from foreign oil and protect our environment, while supporting American jobs.”

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS

You can see this ad. Television viewers in the UK can’t.  The Chevrolet Volt  is sold in the UK as the Vauxhall Ampera, and its ad has been banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority. It says the ad is misleading. The ad claims a 360-mile range. GM is a serial offender when it comes to alternate realities, and this ad is the latest installment.

Says the Daily Mail:

“The real range of the electric batteries in the Vauxhall Ampera is a rather more modest 50 miles. And to go beyond that, it relies on help from a somewhat less green source – a petrol engine.”

The ad, created by long-time GM agency McCann Erickson, came complete with the usually hard to read and even harder to comprehend disclaimer:

“Comparison based on electric vehicles and extended range electric vehicles driven electrically at all times, even when an additional power source is generating electricity”.

The advertising standards bureau did not buy into it. Says the ruling:

“We considered that throughout the ad the emphasis was on the fact that the car was being driven electrically, and that most viewers would not understand that the car was in some circumstances being powered by electricity generated with a petrol engine. The ad promoted an innovative product which many viewers would not immediately understand and we therefore considered that it would need to explicitly state that the car had a petrol engine. Because it did not clearly explain how the vehicle worked in extended-range mode, we concluded that the ad was misleading.”

The ASA does not parse an ad through the eyes of a lawyer, or through the eyes of GM apologists and amateur spinmeisters. The ASA sees it through the eyes of the ad’s target, the average consumer. That consumer is being fooled. Using imagery of plugs and cables, and the slogan “Driving electricity further”, the ad pushes electric range, and that range simply isn’t 360 miles on pure electricity.

This isn’t the first time that GM got into hot water with its allegedly clever, but in truth ham-fisted public relations. Last March, the language police embedded in new and old media feigned outrage over a Chevy Volt ad that claims that the car can save “a crapload of money.”  TTAC was less upset about the robust language, but challenged the claim. Even after the $7,500 credit, the Volt is overpriced. When Tony Posawatz was still line director of the Volt, he told Bloomberg in an interview that there is no such thing as a crapload of savings:

“The Volt’s cost of ownership matches the average car when including the $7,500 U.S. tax incentive and gasoline fuel savings.”

That remark clashed with the advertising claims, and possibly ended Tony’s career. In June, Posawatz left GM into early retirement, only to land at Fisker as its new CEO.

In 2010, then CEO Ed Whitacre claimed in an ad that GM paid back its “loan, in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule.” Even the Detroit News, by some regarded as the in-house organ of GM, had issues with the ad and said it “glosses over the reality.” Congressman Darrell Issa said the ad brought GM “dangerously close to committing fraud.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a deceptive advertising complaint with the FTC. GM stopped running the ad.

CEI also filed a Freedom of Information request with the Department of Treasury. The statutory period for a response to an FOI request is 20 days, Treasury took a year. After a review of the documents, the CEI says “that General Motors and the Obama administration coordinated their PR strategy regarding GM’s much criticized 2010 ad campaign, in which the car maker misleadingly claimed to have repaid all its government loans.”

In all three cases, the claims were technically true, but they created an untrue perception. The Vauxhall Ampera, a rebadged Chevrolet Volt that is sold in the rest of Europe as the Opel Ampera, technically has a 360 mile range on electricity, but only when the gasoline motor is running. The Volt technically saves a shitload of money, but only if you disregard the price of the car, and only if you don’t take it farther than the grocery store. GM technically repaid the $7 billion loan part of the government’s $50 billion investment, but forgets the $43 billion balance, and ignores that the equity part today translates into “an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion,” if Forbes is correct.

Perception is reality. These allegedly “clever” ads bank on the stupidity of the viewer. While technically true under a high powered magnifying glass, they attempt to create an alternate reality that is far from the truth. People don’t like it when they find out that they have been had.

As a former GM owner, I say: Don’t get smart with me, GM. Get real.

Fisker responded  quickly to the fire that left a Fisker Karma  a clump of smoldering sheet metal last Friday.  Fisker issued a statement saying that Fisker engineers, working with independent investigators from Pacific Rim Investigative Group, have started examining the Karma. What they found so far does not support speculation put forth on major car blogs:

“Evidence revealed thus far supports the fact that the ignition source was not the Lithium-ion battery pack, new technology components or unique exhaust routing. The area of origin for the fire was determined to be outside the engine compartment.”

The investigation now will focus on where the fire did start, namely the area “located forward of the driver’s side front tire.”

Fisker Karma Fire, Woodside, CA – Photo Courtesy of Aaron Wood

A second Fisker Karma has been reported by Jalopnik to have caught fire and burned yesterday. The owner returned with his groceries to find the car in flames in a Woodside, California parking lot. Interestingly, he first called Fisker who advised him, wisely, to call 911. Back in May, after a Karma started a house fire in Texas, engineer John Bereisa said that the proximate cause of that fire was likely heat, the result of tight engine packaging. The ultimate cause, he suggested, was the hybrid vehicle’s weight, which Bereisa said necessitated a larger, more powerful combustion engine to power the car’s generator that charges the batteries for extended range use. Bereisa is one of the world’s experts on building electric and hybrid cars.

In May, Bereisa told Automotive News:

“That engine is shoehorned into that bay, because they had to use a larger engine, because it was too heavy a car. As a result, there’s no room for exhaust routing and heat shielding to route the heat away… [the Karma is] using the hell out of that motor-generator.”

Bereisa also noted how tightly packed the exhaust system is. In those circumstances leaking fuel, oil, or even coolant (glycol is flammable) could ignite from heat or a hot surface.

Fisker issued a statement to Jalopnik:

We have confidence in the Fisker Karma. Safety is our primary concern and our Fisker staff have been in contact with the customer and are investigating the cause. We are also employing an independent fire investigation representative to assist in the root cause analysis. A further statement will be issued once the root cause has been determined.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading– RJS

Says The Nikkei [sub]:

“While many car companies are already in a fierce battle for a slice of the market for environmentally friendly vehicles such as hybrids and electric cars, they are also in the final stages of developing fuel-cell cars, which are widely expected to be the ultimate eco-cars because they emit no greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, or other pollutants.

Leading the charge in fuel-cell development are Toyota Motor Corp. , Honda Motor Co., General Motors Co. of the U.S. and Germany’s Daimler AG. The stakes are high, given the vast sums already spent.”

Roland Berger Strategy Consultants told the Tokyo wire that “the four automakers have already spent a combined 100 billion yen on the technology.” That would be a little over a billion $, and I believe that number is low.

Fuel cell research had been conducted since the last millennium. The 2008 financial crisis slowed it down. Carmakers had to cut R&D even on regular cars. Recently, development revved up again.

Prototypes and test vehicles have been driving around for years without exploding. 2015 is the date several carmakers name for the first commercial launch of fuel cell vehicles. Satoshi Ogiso, Toyota’s man in charge of new technology, thinks that the only challenge is affordability.  During an interview with TTAC last year, he likened the challenge to what had faced him during the launch of the first hybrids in 1995.

Just like hybrid powertrains in the 90s, current fuel cell powertrains are big, bulky, heavy and expensive. Ogiso and his colleagues at other carmakers are working on the problem.

The solution to many ills in the auto industry is scale: Make and sell enough cars with the new technology, and you can spread the price of development over many units. Also, with mass production, the price of components can come down drastically.

Even the largest automakers don’t want to wait until they achieved the necessary scale effects themselves. They forge alliances with other automakers.

• Toyota, usually a company that does it alone and in-house, famously entered an alliance with BMW.
• Nissan and Renault agreed with Daimler to expand the scope of their cooperation to fuel-cell cars.
• Honda appears to be partner-less.
• GM negotiated a fuel cell partnership with BMW. The Bavarians broke off the discussion and are winding down a new energy alliance with GM partner PSA after hooking up with Toyota.

Says The Nikkei:

“One GM executive who has worked on the automaker’s fuel-cell effort for a long time lamented being handed another setback by Toyota.”

Observers familiar with the matter expect more tie-ups. The Roland Berger consultancy predicts that Toyota will enlarge its circle of fuel cell partners.

It will be a few years until fuel cell cars can compete in the marketplace. In the meantime, there is a fierce and sometimes uncivil competition for government grants.

When the U.S. government did bet heavily on EVs in 2009 and decided to shift funding away from fuel cell vehicle research, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said that fuel cell vehicles “will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years.” In the meantime, he had a change of heart.

“The development of America’s tremendous shale gas resources is also helping to reduce the costs of producing hydrogen and operating hydrogen fuel cells,” Bill Gibbons, a spokesman for the department, told the New York Times in May.

If an investment into fuel cell vehicles would be successful at last, past investments into EVs would not go to waste. A fuel cell is just another battery. Except that it can be charged in minutes than hours, and except that it lasts 400 miles instead of 100.

Your humble author is TTAC’s resident cycling enthusiast, as shown in the eminently regrettable photo above which can best be titled “35-Year-Old Man Takes Mountain Bike To Skatepark For No Good Reason.” When I was younger, I had unveiled contempt for people who drove somewhere when they could ride. Three knee surgeries and a child later, I’m not so sure. Still, cycling is gaining momentum across Europe in precisely the same way that the economy isn’t. The public-bicycle scheme in Paris, Velib, now profitably shares 23,000 public bicycles across a subscriber network of 225,000 people — and the electric-auto-sharing service which has been operating for over half a year now looks to be headed for similar success. The implications regarding private and public property raised by both services are worth discussing.

As a cyclist, I considered my bicycles to be more sacred than my cars. Why would I ride some horrible public bike when I could ride my own? The Velib experience, which offers 45-pound rental bikes, no doubt inspires similar repugnance among French roadies. Furthermore, the adage about partying and rentals appeared to hold true in Paris. According to Eurasia Review’s excellent article on the subject:

While most Parisians snubbed the heavy public bicycles (weighing 23 kg), others destroyed or stole them. During the first year, 8,000 Vélib’ bicycles disappeared and another 16,000 were vandalized, according to official figures… But despite it all, when Vélib’ marked its fifth anniversary on Jul. 14, it was also able to celebrate its undeniable success: in five years, 138 million people have used the 23,000 rental bicycles, and the system currently has 225,000 subscribers out of a total urban population of 2.3 million… In 2011, Velib’ achieved profitability and is fully expected to yield profits again in 2012.

The implications are interesting: when a nation which is famous for individuality, and cycling snobbery, puts 138 million asses on rental seats over the course of five years, something is changing. The notion of personal transport is, perhaps, increasingly falling victim to class resentments, European economic immobility, official indifference towards urban theft and abuse of property, and the simple but irresistible force of raw convenience.

The Autolib scheme takes this a step further, to include electric cars. Pay between four and eight Euros and receive a fully-”fueled” electric car for half an hour. If you consider that the average new-car price is almost thirty grand now, and the payments on such an item, plus reasonable insurance and fuel fees, would cover perhaps fifty to eighty hours a month in a loaner car — more than two hours per day — it’s no wonder that the Autolib scheme is gaining momentum.

This isn’t a unique idea — Zipcar offers conventionally-powered cars for similar money in cities across the world — but its progress is worth watching. Every happy Autolib customer is one less customer for a conventional mass-market automobile. He or she is also a vote against many of the things TTAC readers enjoy about cars: speed, freedom, unlimited personal mobility, the choice of everything from interior color to camshaft specification. That is, of course, unless people are stupid enough to let you rent their Corvettes.

America may be the world’s up-and-c0ming natural gas producer, but if you have a car powered by CNG, good luck finding a station. CNG terminals are thin on the ground in certain parts of the country, and half of them are closed to the public.

While Honda was formerly in partnership with a home refueling station company, the history of the unit, known as the “Phill” has been rocky, and the system has largely disappeared from the spotlight.

Just-Auto is reporting that the Phill won’t be the sole contender for much longer – Eaton, a major automotive supplier, is apparently working on a lower-cost home refueling station - with a target price of around $500 (versus $4,500 for the Phill).

General Electric is also getting into the act, with their own low-cost charger program and a promising new technology, known as CNG In A Box, which

takes natural gas from a pipeline and compresses it on-site at an industrial location or at a traditional automotive refilling station to then turns it into CNG, making it faster, easier and less expensive for users to fuel up natural gas vehicles.

Natural gas prices may be the big variable here. Prices can’t stay at record lows forever, but as long as they stay low enough to make it a viable fueling option, expect to see the disciples of T. Boone Pickens making a big push. Eaton’s own system isn’t expected to come out until 2015 – who knows what could happen in three years?

In 1896, when he was still the chief operating engineer of Detroit’s Edison Illuminating Company, and not yet famous as a car maker, Henry Ford was invited to accompany his boss to a banquet in New York, honoring their big boss, Thomas Edison.

At the dinner, the topic turned to the then newly invented automobiles and the money that could be made selling electricity to charge the batteries of electric cars. Ford’s boss mentioned Henry’s experiments with gasoline and his Quadricycle. Ford’s description got Edison’s attention, and the great inventor asked Ford to sit next to him (Edison was hearing impaired from his youth) while they discussed the relative merits of gasoline, electricity and steam. Edison pounded on the table in encouragement of Ford’s efforts.

Young man, that’s the thing; you have it. Keep at it. Electric cars must keep near to power stations. The storage battery is too heavy. Steam cars won’t do, either, for they require a boiler and fire. Your car is self-contained—carries its own power plant—no fire, no boiler, no smoke and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it.

Five years later, though Edison had apparently changed his mind. Edison, or more likely researchers working for him, developed a new battery chemistry, that used a nickel oxide-hydroxide cathode and an iron anode, with an electrolyte of potassium hydroxide. They were an improvement over lead-acid batteries, particularly in terms of being able to handle multiple charging/discharging cycles and durability. Modern tests have verified Thomas Edison’s claim that his batteries would last 100 years. In 1903 Edison set up the Edison Storage Battery Company to manufacture and sell them. Electric car companies like Baker and Detroit Electric offered Edison batteries as an upgrade option. In 1896, gasoline was, according to Edison, “the thing”. Now that he had batteries to sell to EV makers…

Electricity is the thing. There are no whirring and grinding gears with their numerous levers to confuse. There is not that almost terrifying uncertain throb and whirr of the powerful combustion engine. There is no water circulating system to get out of order – no dangerous and evil-smelling gasoline and no noise.

Partly due to his friendship with Edison, Henry Ford himself, after the success of the Model T, pursued the dream of an electric car, spending $1.5 million in 1914 dollars, hiring experts and building prototypes.

Within a year, I hope, we shall begin the manufacture of an electric automobile. I don’t like to talk about things which are a year ahead, but I am willing to tell you something of my plans.

The fact is that Mr. Edison and I have been working for some years on an electric automobile which would be cheap and practicable. Cars have been built for experimental purposes, and we are satisfied now that the way is clear to success. The problem so far has been to build a storage battery of light weight which would operate for long distances without recharging. Mr. Edison has been experimenting with such a battery for some time.

Today we would call Ford’s electric car project vaporware. He hired experts to head the project but they were stymied by the Edison batteries’ high internal electrical resistance that made them unsuitable in certain real world conditions. Also, they are slow to charge, slow to discharge, and like most batteries, simply didn’t have the energy density to compete with gasoline. When Ford found out that his technicians had substituted lead-acid batteries in a prototype, he had a conniption and the project died.

While they may not have been ideal for EV’s nickel-iron batteries are indeed practical in some applications. Edison Storage Battery Company existed into the 1970s and nickel-iron batteries are still being used in off-grid installations. Now comes news that researchers in Canada and China, headed by a team at California’s Stanford University, have revived hopes that the Edison battery will yet again power EVs. The researchers say that they have improved the charge/discharge performance of nickel-iron batteries a thousand fold through the use of nanotechnology.

The research was published in the journal Nature Communications. Instead of mixing iron and nickel with conductive carbon at the macro level, the researchers grew nanocrystals of iron oxide onto graphene [single-molecule-thin sheets of carbon arranged in a honeycomb lattice], and nanocrystals of nickel hydroxide onto carbon nanotubes [cyclinders of carbon molecules, also arranged in a honeycomb lattice. Lead researcher Honjie Dai described the effect:

Coupling the nickel and iron particles to the carbon substrate allows electrical charges to move quickly between the electrodes and the outside circuit. The result is an ultrafast version of the nickel-iron battery that’s capable of charging and discharging in seconds.

So far a one-volt prototype has been built and tested, charging in 2 minutes and discharging in 30 seconds, and the team says that the idea is scalable. Unlike lithium-ion batteries, nickel-iron cells use common raw materials, and also unlike lithim-ion cells, the electrolyte is not flammable.

Unfortunately, the modern high tech Edison batteries have one of the same drawbacks that the century old originals had, low energy density. Though improved over previous Ni-Fe batteries, lead author Hainliang Wang says that the nanotech nickel-iron batteriess still wouldn’t have enough energy density to power EVs by themselves. He does see a potential use along the lines of how ultracapacitors have been suggested for use in EVs (or implemented as in Formula One KERS systems). “It could assist lithium-ion batteries by giving them a real power boost for faster acceleration and regenerative braking.”

Toyota is far ahead with the technology. The company had Fuel Cell Hybrid Vehicles (FCHV) on the roads for ten years. In 2009, it “launched” its FCHV-adv, basically a Highlander with the hybrid synergy drive from the Toyota Prius connected to a 90kW fuel cell stack. A few months ago, editor-at-large Ed Niedermeyer and I had it on a short test ride through the scenic warehouse landscape of Torrance, CA. Except for an eerily quiet drive, the ride was uneventful.

On a full tank of – this time real – gas, we could have taken it all the way to San Francisco and beyond – no range anxiety here. Fuel cell vehicles have all the advantages of a battery-operated vehicle, i.e. no emissions (the fuel stack produces water), and nearly none of its drawbacks.

If you want to drive tailpipe emission free, your choices are battery, or fuel cell. A fuel cell is basically a battery. Fuel cells and batteries use a chemical reaction to make electricity. When the chemicals in a battery are depleted, you must recharge or throw away the battery. The chemicals of a fuel cell are hydrogen and oxygen. You provide the hydrogen. The fuel cell stack uses free-of-charge oxygen from the air and produces electricity plus H2O – water. Proponents of the technology say that well-to-wheel, fuel cells involve much lower emissions than batteries. Refilling the hydrogen tank should not take longer than filling up with unleaded. Next stop after 400+ miles.

The only way to extend the range of a BEV (if you don’t want to add an ICE) is by adding more batteries. This quickly becomes an exercise in futility. Each added battery cell means more weight, heavier brakes, a larger traction motor, a stronger body to carry the mass, and in turn even more batteries. And most of all, it becomes insanely expensive.

Not so with fuel cells. Fuel cells can make electricity at weights that are between eight to 14 times less than current batteries. Extending the range of a fuel cell vehicle has negligible impact on its weight.

Like electricity, hydrogen is not a way to make energy, it is a way to transport energy. Hydrogen can be made in the same number of ways as electricity.

And why aren’t we all driving around in fuel cell vehicles by now? There were a number of technical challenges, but as Toyota Chief Engineer Satoshi Ogiso had told us last year, the challenges have all been mastered. The only real problem Ogiso is facing with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is money:

“For us, the only remaining real issue that stands in the way of fuel cell electric vehicles is mass production cost.”

Current fuel cell technology is big, bulky, heavy and expensive. With enough scale, package size and price can come down considerably. Toyota plans to launch a commercial FCV in 2015. It still will be expensive, the Nikkei figures 5 million yen, or $62,000. By 2020, Ogiso plans to have an affordable FCV.

Luxury vehicles are much better for early-tech alternative propulsion, because the cars are big enough to hide the heft and expensive enough to mask the price. With their alliance, Toyota and BMW plan to “take the lead in commercializing fuel cell cars,” as The Nikkei [sub] writes. Says The Nikkei:

“Other automakers are forging ties over green technologies. Daimler AG is rushing to develop a fuel cell car with capital partner Nissan Motor Co. Meanwhile, Honda Motor Co. and Hyundai Motor Co. are developing fuel cell cars on their own. General Motors Co. has been considering a fuel cell tie-up with BMW, but it may have to change course now that the German firm has opted to partner with Toyota.”

Last December, Toyota and BMW announced “a long-term technological partnership.”  Ostensibly, it was about developing batteries together, and about BMW supplying diesel engines. In March, the happy couple announced that they indeed are developing batteries, and that BMW indeed will supply diesel engines.

Toyota’s people in Europe had complained that one of the reasons for Toyota’s measly sales in Europe is the lack of diesel mills. Around half of the cars sold in Europe are oil burners. Hybrid-happy does not have the bandwidth to tinker with its own diesel engine and will buy them instead from BMW.

For hybrids and EVs, BMW currently has another alliance with PSA Peugeot Citroen. That alliance is said to be coming apart. PSA is short of money, and it entered a partnership with GM, BMW wants out. “Toyota is a leader in hybrid technology,” writes Der Spiegel, “in contrast to the financially underpowered French, Toyota has money to invest into new technologies.”

BMW needs a strong partner. Investments in new technologies need high volumes for a return in an appreciable time. BMW, or for that matter Daimler, don’t have that volume. Only a mass market manufacturer can provide that scale. Daimler cozied-up to Nissan and Renault, BMW cozies-up to Toyota.

In the new “broadened partnership”  Toyota will supply hybrid systems and fuel cell technology to BMW, The Nikkei [sub] heard over the weekend. Supposedly, an announcement will come within the next days.

Toyota spokesfolk in Tokyo maintain strict radio silence when it comes to that matter, saying that they currently have nothing to say. When something is bunk, they usually say so.  Toyota invited the crème of international business reporters on a plant tour in Tsutsumi on July 3^rd to show how the plant deals with anticipated power shortages.  It would be a handy occasion for a surprise appearance of Herr Reithofer and Toyoda-san. Just thinking …

What will BMW offer in return? The talk in Tokyo is that the Bavarians proposed to share their expertise in developing carbon fiber bodies.  BMW is heavily invested in industry leader SGL Carbon. Volkswagen also bought shares.  However, says the scuttlebutt, Toyota feigned disinterest, saying that it already had developed significant carbon fiber expertise in-house. Toyota has been doing carbon fiber research  for nearly ten years. The Lexus LFA supercar is made from 65 percent carbon fiber and 35 percent aluminum.

However, there are many unanswered questions in the carbon fiber business, notably how to produce CFRP bodies quickly and therefore at low cost.

Nobody dares to say that it does not make sense at all. We say it.

• There is no market for EVs in China, at least not at the moment. Despite grand plans, EVs in China have not morphed beyond experimental projects.
• There is absolutely no market for imported EVs in China. Every carmaker knows that. Only noobs don’t. In China, new energy cars can only benefit from generous government policies if the car is built in China and sold under a Chinese brand, Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn said at this year’s Beijing Auto Show. Ghosn should know what he is talking about. His company makes the all-electric Leaf and will make it in China under the Venucia brand to comply with the Chinese regulations. Without the subsidies, even a made-in-China EV would be way too expensive.
• Instead of benefiting from subsidies, an imported EV would be priced way out of the non-existing market. Customs duty, taxes and import costs can double the price of a car once it goes on sale in China.
• “Saab” has absolutely no brand cachet in China. Most likely, this won’t be a factor. The sale of the assets does not include the brand name, it would have to be licensed from a very reluctant SAAB AB.
• Lastly, an EV must be purpose-built to make halfway sense. The battery pack of the Nissan Leaf for instance weighs 660 lbs. The rest of the vehicle must be built considerably lighter yet stronger.

“We’re struggling to see how this enterprise is going to work,” Ian Fletcher, a senior analyst in London for IHS Global Insight, said to the New York Times. “Do they have some kind of magic bullet?”

It’s a magic bullet that would be aimed at the foot.

The only way this sale make sense is when the tools, production equipment, and most of all the production know-how that sits in the Trollhättan plant gets shipped to China.

The investigation into a Texas house fire that apparently started in a 2 month old Fisker Karma continues, with an EV expert weighing in with his opinion that the packaging of the combustion engine that drives the Fisker’s generator was likely the cause of the fire, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration saying it is looking into the incident, and the car’s owner and his attorneys firing back after Fisker initially implied there might be fraud or foul play.

Automotive News asked Jon Bereisa, CEO of Auto Lectrification, an EV consulting firm, for his opinion. Bereisa is perhaps singularly qualified to discuss electric vehicles, having been both the chief engineer of General Motors’ EV1 project and also the systems architect for the Chevy Volt. Bereisa told AN that based on a test drive and his examination of the Karma’s layout, he thinks the cramped engine compartment and excess heat most likely caused the fire, not the car’s battery pack.

“That engine is shoehorned into that bay, because they had to use a larger engine, because it was too heavy a car. As a result, there’s no room for exhaust routing and heat shielding to route the heat away… [the Karma is] using the hell out of that motor-generator.”

Bereisa also noted how tightly packed the exhaust system is. In those circumstances, a fuel, oil or even coolant (glycol is flammable) leak could ignite from heat or a hot surface. The consultant also pointed to the burned Karma’s owner’s remarks. Jeremy Gutierrez, the owner of the burned Fisker Karma, and CEO of iEnergy, an electrical power marketer, said that he smelled burning rubber just before the fire broke out.

Bereisa pointed out that, “You don’t smell rubber with batteries, but you will if it’s something on the engine.” Bereisa also said that since the car had just been driven on errands, the battery pack was likely drained and no longer contained enough energy or waste heat hot enough to ignite. “If the [battery] pack were to burn down the car, you would see where it started and reached the [battery] case… There’s more odds that it’s a conventional, heat-related problem in packaging and heat-related leaks.”

Fisker is agreeing that the battery pack, which uses cells manufactured by A123, wasn’t the cause of the fire, though it has sent a team of engineers to pore over the charred Karma’s hulk. That team is beginning to annoy Gutierrez, already a bit miffed that Fisker cast aspersions on his character, raising the possibility of “fraud or malicious intent”.

Gutierrez is so annoyed that he’s gotten his attorneys involved:

Mr. Guitterez fully accommodated the precise and somewhat peculiar demands of Fisker Automotive, who sent their self-proclaimed SWAT Team of engineers and inspectors (that included their own forensic cause and origin investigator) to the Guitterez home within 24 hours of the fire. They descended upon the Guitterez home in alarming numbers and immediately demanded a 24-hour lockdown of his home, including the remains of the Fisker Karma vehicle. They also cordoned off portions of the Guitterez home with non-transparent tarps to block the view from the public. Fisker even had access to eyewitnesses, who were interviewed by Fisker investigators and those investigators were shown video footage of the Fisker vehicle on fire before any other part of the garage.

Guitterez’s lawyers have demanded that Fisker to end its probe “immediately.”

For its part, Fisker still considers the cause of the fire as “yet to be ascertained.” A company spokesman said,

“There are myriad combustible materials that could be in the garage, in the wheel arch, or picked up on the roadside. They think the source is around the Karma, but they have not determined any cause yet. We have investigative teams, three insurance companies and the local fire chief all with their opinions. There are some question marks.”

When asked about Bereisa’s theories, the spokesman said, “The Karma has been through all regulatory and certification checks.”

Meanwhile, though Robert Baker, the chief fire inspector for Fort Bend County, Texas, continues to say that the Karma started the fire, his investigation is still incomplete, and NHTSA is started to show some interest.

“Yes, the Karma was the origin of the fire,” Baker said. “But what exactly caused that we don’t know at this time.” The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a statement that it “is aware of the incident and in contact with local authorities. The agency will continue to monitor the situation and take appropriate action as warranted,” though no formal NHTSA probe has been launched.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS