All the hot air about the MDI air car may experience a sudden cold downdraft. Not that cool breezes questioning its efficiency weren’t already wafting in the air. But now there’s a genuine academic study questioning the questionable. The NYTWheels has mined a study by the University of California at Berkeley titled “The Economic and Environmental Evaluation of Compressed-Air Cars,” which concludes that the air car “fared worse than the battery-electric vehicle in primary energy required, greenhouse gas emissions and life-cycle costs, even under very optimistic assumptions about performance. Compressed-air-energy storage is a relatively inefficient technology at the scale of individual cars and would add additional greenhouse gas emissions with the current electricity mix.” (Read More…)

One of Chrysler’s major problems in the powertrain department is a mass of V6 engines of varying ages and displacements. The lack of interchangeability between engines contributes to Chrysler’s unprofitability, and the advanced age of some hurts overall fuel efficiency considerably. The debut of a brand-new Pentastar V6, arriving with next year’s Grand Cherokee, will change all that. The 280 hp, 260 lb-ft engine will replace all of Chrysler’s V6s, and handily gives Fiat their only modern V6. Single and twin-turbo versions are being considered. Meanwhile V8s aren’t going away, with 5.7 and 6.4 liter versions planned.

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Home game machines are no good. Playing something that realistic makes the need for cars disappear

So goes the Gawker hive-mind translation of a quote, attributed to an unnamed Toyota executive by Masahiro Kawaguchi, in an editorial published by the Mainichi Newspaper of Osaka (got that?). Best of all, Kawaguchi’s piece apparently goes on to attempt a further causal link to Japan’s falling population. “Guys used to work hard at their job so they could get a stylish, cool car for girl’s to ride in,” he argues. But isn’t the connection between falling car sales and a falling population easy enough to establish without blaming videogames? And what about the geographical arguments for an inevitable leveling-off of car sales in Japan? Or perhaps Mr Kawaguchi was subtly blaming some other, non-car-related “realistic video game” for a declining birth rate. Either way, the comment reflects a gnawing paranoia that is no longer unique to the auto executives of Japan: how do we sell cars to young people in mature markets? I always thought they used video games.

Bloomberg reports that the US International Trade Commission has launched a probe of alleged patent violations which could result in the banning of all Toyota hybrids from the US market. Paice LLC won a 2005 civil suit against Toyota, in which Paice’s founder Alex Severinsky sought a court order banning the sale of Toyota’s Prius, Highlander and Lexus RX400h hybrids. Instead, an appeals judge awarded Paice $4.3m in damages, and ordered Toyota pay Paice a $100 royalty per hybrid sold in the US. In the current case before the ITC, Paice claims that Toyota’s Camry, third-generation Prius, Lexus HS250h sedan and Lexus RX450h are “are materially the same” and violate the same patents as those in its first case. If Paice can convince the ITC that Toyota indeed violated its patents, he will still need to prove that the little-known company has a market to protect. But Paice doesn’t actually want Toyota to be banned from selling cars. In the words of one patent attorney,  an “injunction would have given Paice strong leverage to negotiate a lucrative licensing deal with Toyota…Paice always felt that their technology was worth a lot more than [$100 per car] to Toyota.” (Read More…)

Sigh. On one hand, you have to give the brains behind Moller Skycar (guess who) credit for not giving up. On the other hand, enough already. The dream of personalized airborne transportation is a fund-raising MacGuffin. The company’s latest salvo in the BS wars: Moller Skycar Goes to War! Or, as the press release puts it, “Moller is pleased to announce today that its Skycar technology has gained ground within the military for its use in high-tech, demanding battlefield applications like those in Afghanistan.” Apparently, one Lieutenant Colonel James Thomas, 304th SB, 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, recently issued white paper entitled “Winning an Asymmetric War with Skycars.” Google loves the story, but offers-up no such report or background on Col. Thomas. Still the press release, quotes from the heretofore unknown document:

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Motorists expecting change from President Barack Obama’s choice of transportation secretary will find only a slight adjustment of priorities. Former Illinois Congressman Ray LaHood (R-Peoria) appeared before Senate transportation committee colleagues yesterday to give the first glimpse at what he wants to do to with federal transportation funds after taking his place in the cabinet. “Tolling new lanes of highways is thinking outside the box,” LaHood said. “We need to think about those kinds of opportunities. If we’re going to think innovatively, those are some of the ways we’re going to have to think about these things instead of the gas tax.” LaHood referred to the federal fuel excise tax first implemented in 1932 as a “dinosaur” and repeated the claims made by former Transportation Secretary Mary Peters that traditional funding sources were not bringing in enough money (more). LaHood suggested tolling was the “innovative” alternative that the country needs to “plus up” transportation revenue. Toll roads have been in use since the Middle Ages both as a means of generating fee income and of controlling public movement. And that’s OK, apparently.

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Fourteen US companies have ganged up on the taxpayer to demand $1 billion so they can get back into the battery game. Today’s Wall Street Journal tells the story of this “latest pitch from corporate America to inject federal dollars into a project”. Alliance participants point to the 1987 creation of Sematech as an example of a successful government-industry partnership. There are, however, some big differences between the US Semiconductor industry of 1987 and the almost non-existent US advanced battery industry of today. The US’ semiconductor industry was a world leader in 1987 and was shocked into further efforts by the rise of Japanese competitors who made higher quality, lower priced memory chips. The US battery industry, on the other hand, was largely abandoned by indigenous firms as they chased ever higher return-on-investment businesses in order to boost short term stock prices. The story of failing to keep a hand in significant games due to the lure of better profits elsewhere has been told over and over again in America’s MBA infested halls of shame. (Read More…)

Last night’s TopGear (which will air in the U.S. by 2015 or on your computer now) featured Jeremy “The Gentle Giant” Clarkson driving the Tesla Roadster. His observations?

The good: Same time around the track as a Porsche GT3. No gas. Very fast in straight lines. Looks good. Very fast in straight lines. Cheap to fill up compared to a gas/diesel car.

The bad: Handling only so-so, because of the low-resistance tires and the 1000 lbs added by 6831 batteries in the middle of the car. Ample road noise. Green-ambiguity of electric cars & power production.

The ugly: After caning it, Clarkson got 55 miles of range. In a 13 amp UK socket, he estimated a 16 hour recharge time. Tesla had to bring two cars. One overheated while driving (on the track), the other’s brakes “broke” while it was recharging.

Clarkson calls the car a stunning “technical achievement” but finishes by saying it is “completely irrelevant” as he previews a later segment on Honda’s fuel cell car, the Clarity FCX.

James Malackowski penned an editorial in today’s Detroit News, improbably arguing that “much of the privately funded green and energy innovation in the United States will stall or likely never come to fruition if the domestic automobile industry fails.” Malackowski reaches this conclusion by comparing the Detroit 3’s patent portfolio in four areas (emission control, hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid/electric tech, and “emerging related technologies developed by these same firms including solar, wind and other green inventions”) with those of 15 other large automakers. His conclusions, presented without sourcing, are that “GM has higher average quality and newer green technology and patents than the other 14 automakers combined”; “Ford and GM together hold approximately a third of all green technology patents and the related value”; “GM has 70 percent of the patents in the emerging technology category. This domestic share increases to 85 percent if Ford is added”; and “Ford owns 30 percent of all patents with a similar related value measure in emission control innovation.” Unfortunately for Malackowski’s argument, comparing the number of held patents is meaningless considering that these innovations are simply not reflected in these firms’ products.

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