The U.S. transportation system is in danger of falling apart, and will take down the economy with it, Bill Shuster, chairman of the House of Representatives Transportation Committee, said today while Reuters was keeping notes:

“If we don’t deal with this issue at some point, as I said, we will reach a tipping point and the transportation system may not recover and we will fall behind the rest of the world.”

According to Shuster, the U.S. transportation system has already “gone from being one of the top three, four (or) five systems in the world to now we’re 23 or 24, so we need to act.”

A recent study from the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated the United States needs to spend $2.75 trillion to maintain and improve its infrastructure by 2020.

The ASCE gave America’s roads a D-

A top congressional leader on Wednesday made clear his opposition to President Obama’s idea of spending $10 billion to create a national infrastructure bank (view details). The bank, part of the White House jobs bill, would offer public subsidy for the financing of “public private partnerships” — which most often would take the form of a toll road. The chairman of the US House Transportation Committee said at a hearing the president’s plan would not advance.

“A national infrastructure bank is dead on arrival in the House of Representatives,” Chairman John Mica (R-Florida) said. “If you want a recipe to put off job creation, adopt that national infrastructure bank proposal.”

Opponents called the proposal a “distraction” from the issue of a long-term highway program reauthorization bill which would include funding for state-level toll road banks. Already, thirty-two states have their own infrastructure banks which have financed $6.3 billion in loan agreements along the same lines as the proposed federal bank.

“Many people are skeptical that bureaucrats in Washington would have any idea which transportation projects are most deserving of receiving a federal loan,” Highways and Transit subcommittee Chairman John J. Duncan, Jr (R-Tennessee) said. “This skepticism is why Congress has already established the state infrastructure bank program in SAFETEA-LU.”

In addition, the US Department of Transportation already provides federal credit for transportation projects under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA), which has offered $8.4 billion in project finance. Dozens of other financing mechanisms are offered by the Federal Highway Administration.

“Why build one when you could build two for twice the price?” Representative Howard Coble (R-North Carolina) said sarcastically.

Democrats offered the only backing for the bank idea.

“Before Wall Street destroyed the economy, I had said, ‘Well, I really don’t see the need for an infrastructure bank — most of the states have good credit and they can go out and borrow on their own at very good rates,” said subcommittee Ranking Member Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon). “But that isn’t the case any more. The states need guarantees, they need help, many are against their borrowing limits, and most of the banks generously bailed out by Congress — not by me, I didn’t vote for it — aren’t lending. Credit and bond markets are tight.”

DeFazio only supports the use of the bank only for water, sewer and energy projects. He does not support tolls on existing interstates.

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Toll roads at one point appeared to be unstoppable. Steady growth in traffic yielded rapidly rising profits, especially for pioneers in the field such as Australia’s Macquarie Bank where executives became so rich from deals that included the leasing of US roads that it was dubbed the “millionaires’ factory.” That all changed when the recession took hold and motorists scaled back on the mileage driven each year. Losses began to mount, and as a report released last week by Fitch Ratings argues, the dynamics for tolling may not improve in the near future.

“Fitch tracks data on toll roads, bridges, and tunnels across its ratings portfolio,” Fitch analysts wrote in the report, Downshifting: US Transportation Reacts as GDP Growth Flattens. “Traffic declined year over year as much as 10 percent during the Great Recession. Sustained positive growth in traffic commenced in February 2010. The most recent Fitch data indicates that growth in traffic volumes began slowly declining on tolled facilities, heading to zero growth in second-quarter 2011.”

The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported a similar decline in commercial transportation services for both goods and passengers. Despite some recovery, the index remains below pre-recession levels. These transportation statistics mirror figures for consumer spending which began recovering early last year only to falter this March. Growth in consumer spending for the second quarter of 2011 was under 0.1 percent.

The credit ratings agency argues activity in the economy at large and the in the transportation sector are directly linked. When someone gets a job, he generally gets in his car to drive to work. When stores sell goods, the supplies, raw materials and final product are usually transported by truck. When unemployment is high and sales are low, such transportation activity drops.

“Higher oil and other commodity prices account for some of the change in consumer spending,” the analysts explained. “Unlike past downturns, these prices are increasingly influenced by external factors as well as US demand. Consumers are reacting to increased prices and a weak labor market with belt tightening.”

Fitch will not downgrade any existing credit ratings for toll roads because these operations have a monopoly position that enables them to recover from downturns by hiking tolls that many motorists have no choice but to pay.

“Tolled facilities have experienced low and even negative traffic growth since 2007,” the analysts stated. “Revenues have grown at a much higher rate as facility operators reacted to the downturn by raising rates to preserve financial and operational flexibility.”

The ratings agency warned that sustained periods of low economic growth imperils the financing of deals built with healthier traffic and economic forecasts in mind.

“Most public infrastructure facilities should be able to weather little to no growth scenarios over the next three to five years,” Fitch wrote. “However, there are a number of issuers whose escalating debt profiles could pose a problem in the medium term. Newer toll facilities generally have such debt service profiles… Stand-alone, concession-based facilities, originally financed in 2006 – 2008 when expectations for future economic growth were very high, will be more vulnerable.”

[Courtesy: Thenewspaper.com]

Colliers International has come out with its 2011 parking survey results for North America [PDF] and the world [PDF], and you might be surprised by what people pay on average to let their car sit somewhere. The global expensive parking crown (on a monthly basis) goes to London’s West End, which runs a cool $1,014 per month… by comparison, the US average is $155.22 per month. On a daily basis, Copenhagen takes the cake with $73.11, with the highest daily rate in the US coming to $41 per day in Midtown Manhattan. Puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?

Though it doesn’t get the play it deserves in the auto media, Project Better Place is one of the most ambitious, potentially disruptive plays anywhere in the world of cars, uniquely positioning itself to eliminate the biggest shortcomings of electric vehicles. TTAC was on hand when the “end-to-end” EV services firm opened its first battery swap station in Israel, and now the firm has launched its first European swap station in Denmark. Better Place’s single model, the Renault Fluence Z.E won’t be widely available in either of the two initial launch markets until later this year, but having sold over 70,000 of its initial order of 100k units from Renault, Better Place is keeping its foot on the gas… er, juice.

Earlier this year, BP signed a deal with GM’s Australian division Holden and several suppliers, to develop large, rear-drive sedans based on the (Zeta Platform) Commodore. At the time, we noted

This project is highly significant on a number of levels. First, battery-swap-enabled large sedans operating in Australia could show the way forward for the US, by breaking stereotypes about EV size, capability and operating environments. Second, the project marks the first sign of flirtation between General Motors and Project Better Place’s battery-swap-based business.

And that initial challenge, proving that BP’s battery-swap infrastructure can provide “unlimited range” EV motoring at relatively low costs (thanks to its unique battery-leasing arrangement) outside of tiny, densely-populated markets like Israel and Denmark, is one that the firm is eager to conquer. And so BP is building on pilot testing in Canberra, Australia, by announcing that the first Fluence Z.Es will begin arriving Australia in the middle of next year. Cars will first arrive in Canberra, and Australia-wide sales will follow, and according to the firm’s press release

By 2013 Better Place will give Australia the largest electric car charge network in the world, which is expected to outpace current deployment plans in market-leading countries including the US and China.

If Better Place can build momentum and create a viable market for its EV scheme in Australia, there’s no reason it can’t do so in the US. Keep an eye on these guys…

A study released earlier this month by the Cascade Policy Institute questioned whether pricey mass transit options in Portland, Oregon are really being used by the public. The city has been a leader in securing funding for various forms of passenger rail and trolley systems. The Obama administration, for example, pledged $745 million in federal gas tax dollars to pay for the construction of a $1.5 billion, 7.3 mile light rail project connecting Portland to Milwaukie. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has singled out the city’s priorities as for praise.

“By adding innovative transit opportunities, Portland has become a model livable community, a city where public transportation brings housing closer to jobs, schools, and essential services,” LaHood wrote in March.

The Cascade Policy Institute wanted to verify the claim that the TriMet transit system was able to move more passengers than a standard bus line. The researchers did so by attending five special events where use of mass transit would make the most sense, including the final playoff game for the Portland Trail Blazers. The events were spread throughout the year to examine the effects of different weather conditions on transit use. City officials have never made a study of this sort.

“This is important because transportation planners at Metro, TriMet, ODOT and other agencies routinely make multi-billion-dollar decisions based on travel surveys, computer models or simply their own personal beliefs about how people should travel,” Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr wrote in his report. “They rarely have any direct knowledge of how people actually travel under specific conditions of time, mode availability, parking pricing and geographic constraints.”

The Cascade team counted a total of 47,666 individual attendees, noting how many headed toward the venue from a light rail station and how many arrived by automobile, bicycle or foot. At best, 21 percent arrived by rail to see the Trail Blazers. At worst, the opening of the Gresham Civic Station saw just 2 percent arrive by rail. On average, rail accounted for just 11 percent of the trips recorded.

“The field research shows that continued use of the phrase ‘high-capacity transit’ by local planners to describe the regional rail program is Orwellian,” Cascade President John A. Charles, Jr. said in a statement. “Light rail is actually a low-capacity system, and the streetcar is simply irrelevant. TriMet’s buses carries two-thirds of all regional transit trips on a daily basis, and that’s the service that should be recognized as high-capacity transit. Unfortunately, bus service is being sacrificed by TriMet in order to build costly new rail lines that carry relatively few people.”

A copy of the report is available in a 1.2mb PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Light Rail, Streetcars and the High Capacity Transit Myth (Cascade Policy Institute, 5/2/2011)

[Courtesy:Thenewspaper.com]

One of President Obama’s signature achievements, passage of $812 billion in stimulus funds at the height of the recession, was labeled a failure by the chairman of the US House Transportation Committee, which had jurisdiction over about eight percent of the projects funded. In a hearing yesterday, Representative John Mica (R-Florida) explained that the money did not end up going to needed infrastructure projects.

“This will go down in history as one of the greatest failures of a government program to stimulate the economy that mankind has ever created,” Mica said. “This is a trillion-dollar lesson.”

Initially, the idea behind the stimulus was to create a $250 billion package with the most of the funding going toward infrastructure projects. The total amount of the package more than tripled, but the funds for infrastructure dwindled to just $64.1 billion. Of that amount, only $27.1 billion went to highways and bridges.

“I could not be more frustrated by the results that I see,” Mica said. “The total stimulus package was $787 billion and that’s been re-evaluated to over $800 billion, and still we have a stagnating economy…. Many of the jobs created were very temporary jobs.”

Committee Democrats defended the stimulus, suggesting the economy would have been in far worse shape had the money not been spent. Mica cited administrative problems with the spending. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) audited how effectively the Department of Transportation (DOT) disbursed grants, particularly for the high-speed rail and “TIGER” grants. Over $9.5 billion was handed out based on vague criteria.

“DOT cannot definitively demonstrate the basis for its award selections, particularly the reasons why recommended projects were selected for half the awards over highly recommended ones,” Phillip R. Herr, director of physical infrastructure for GAO, testified. “Developing internal documentation is a key part of accountability for decisions, and DOT guidance states that officials should explain how discretionary grant projects were selected when projects with the highest priority in a technical review were not funded. The absence of documentation can give rise to challenges to the integrity of the decisions made, and DOT is vulnerable to criticism that projects were selected for reasons other than merit.”

GAO also noted DOT’s failure to measure the potential for long-term benefits when selecting projects.

[Courtesy:Thenewspaper.com]

Just over a year has passed since these statements made air, and in typical Israeli fashion – most of the goals were not met. Despite promising to begin delivery of cars in the beginning of 2011, Better Place has not sold a single car over the four months that passed since New Year’s Eve. And the number of battery switch stations built in Israel was – you guessed it – exactly zero. Until now.

I couldn’t blame the residents of Kiryat Ekron – a small town located about 20 minutes south of Tel Aviv – for mistaking Better Place’s latest effort for an automatic car wash. Examined up close, Better Place’s first commercial car battery switch station still looks like a carwash for the yuppie: it’s a white, square structure with an appropriately modern rounded-rectangle tunnel attached to it, standing in the backyard of a gas station.

But before we talk about switching batteries, let’s talk about cars. Namely, let’s talk about the Renault Fluence Z.E, which Better Place sets to be its most important car in Israel. So far, Better Place has only demonstrated their solution to the public using a fleet of converted Renault Lagunas – one of which I briefly drove last year. The launch of the first Israeli battery switch station was the first opportunity for me to meet the nearly-finalized prototype of Better Place’s flagship in person.

Unsurprisingly, it’s based off the Renault Fluence – which in its turn is a bigger, four-door version of the Megané, targeted mainly at developing markets outside of Europe. While the Fluence is formally a compact car – despite being quite large for its segment – its electrified sibling errs ever further towards midsize in the automotive wardrobe, having been extended by a few inches in order to accommodate the battery somewhere underneath the rear seats. Interior dimensions seem to have remained the same, while trunk space was slightly compromised in the conversion process.

While Better Place didn’t let us drive the cars ourselves, performance figures seem to be adequate – just over 10 seconds from 0 to 60 mph and an electrically (no pun intended) governed top speed of about 90 mph – all that from an engine putting out about 90 horsepower and 167 ft-lb of torque. Interestingly, according to Better Place officials, the entire battery pack weighs just under 660 pounds, while Renault itself gives a more optimistic 550 pound weight figure.

The battery switch process itself is thoroughly unexciting, which must mean great praise for Better Place’s work in developing the concept. The driver only needs to flash his Better Place RFID card at the machine, drive into the rather narrow tunnel and find something to occupy himself with during the upcoming 3 minutes. The car slides into position, slightly lifted – then an underground robot grabs the battery, disappears – and returns with a fresh one. All of this is invisible to the technologically impaired driver, while the geekier amongst us can watch the entire process streamed live on a TV planted outside.

Better Place says that the stations are designed to be modular and compatible with several different vehicles and that 15 batteries are stocked in every station at all times. Even though that doesn’t sound like a lot, Better Place claims that the calculations they’ve made found this to be the optimal number. 8 more switch stations are in construction, and the company set 40 stations throughout the country as its initial goal, despite initially promising 70 stations by the end of 2010. According to company officials, they found that 40 stations provide a complete coverage of Israel, and that more stations may be installed in the future according to answer demand in key locations.

Shai Agassi, the company’s charismatic CEO and founder, was as optimistic and ambitious as usual. “You’re seeing the second Apple”, he announced in the press conference that followed the switch demo. This time, however, Agassi and his team were significantly less keen on throwing promises around – only committing to starting distribution to customers on Q4/2011.

Despite already announcing its pricing schemes in Denmark in the beginning of this month, Better Place refuses to reveal Israeli prices at this time. An internal Better Place memo which leaked to the Israeli press, however, sets the price of the Renault Fluence Z.E at 123,000 NIS, or about $34,500. That may sound like a lot of money for a compact car, but consider that in heavily taxed Israel, the bestselling car – the Mazda3 – is only some $800 cheaper, while lacking much of the equipment that the tax-reduced Fluence Z.E is expected to carry standard.

As fleet sales account for more than 60% of the new car market in Israel, Better Place is aiming to sign contracts with the country’s most prominent rental and lease companies in which it guarantees buyback of its vehicles after three years in service in exchange for a commitment by the companies to price the Fluence Z.E closely to internal combustion competitors.

If the Danish pricing schemes are of any indication, Better Place is expected to offer several different plans for various mileages. In Denmark, the most expensive plan – allowing for unlimited mileage –costs the user about 400 euros (or about $550) per month, while the most basic – allowing for up to 12,000 miles per year – costs from 200 ($280) to 250 ($350) euros. Considering Israel’s slightly higher gasoline prices, the appropriate plans in the Holy Land will likely cost more compared to Denmark.

And if those prices sound a bit high to you, it’s probably because they are. A very rough calculation puts one month of Denmark-priced gasoline for an average compact car travelling 12,000 annual miles very close to the price Better Place offers for that mileage, and perhaps even slightly higher. It seems that Better Place’s main lure would be the ‘unlimited’ packages. On its end, Better Place doesn’t try to refute this claim, only going as far as promising running costs “comparable or lower” to those of equivalent gasoline vehicles.

One of the most interesting points brought up in the press conference was the compatibility of Better Place’s charging points with third party cars. The company was keen to emphasize that the charging points, of which a 1,000 have already been installed in public and private parking garages, are designed according to a “standard”, which will allow non-Better Place cars to be charged using their current infrastructure. Agassi went as far as claiming that the company doesn’t view fixed-battery EVs as competition since they only target drivers travelling short distances. Agassi was also reluctant to answer journalists’ questions regarding specific models, but said that the company is in “negotiation” with several local dealers regarding possible cooperation.

As I was standing next to one of the Fluence Z.Es parked by the curb, a curious passerby interrupted my photoshoot. “Nice looking car,” he said. “What’s the engine’s displacement?” “It’s electric,” I dutifully replied. “Oh, cool”, he noted as he continued to circle the car. “So how big is the engine?”

“Our target is for people to say it’s a car”, said Agassi in his opening statement. Did they succeed in that? The answer is a resounding yes. Better Place and Renault have managed to create a car that looks, feels and refuels like your average Camry, and for that they deserve credit. Unfortunately, that’s not the toughest challenge the company has to face. The jury is still out on the viability of Better Place’s model in real life, and in an industry as conservative, the company isn’t going to have an easy time proving the skeptics wrong.

[Google] is working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is developing a database of available charging stations (known as EVSEs, or electric vehicle supply equipment) around the United States. Installers of EVSEs have the option of having their stations displayed as public. When we were charging the Nissan Leaf at our facility, not a public venue, our chargers showed up on the Leaf’s navigation system; The navi in the Leaf is designed to remember sites at which it had been charged.

The bad news? Well, just look at that map. Unless you live in California, you don’t need Google to tell you where the nearest charging station is, you need a clairvoyant to tell you where one might someday be built. If you’re still struggling to understand why EVs need to be tested on a local level before the federal government spends more money subsidizing them on a national level, look no further.
[UPDATE: The screen grab above is not comprehensive. Surf over Google Maps for a closer look at EV charging stations in your area]

For most Americans, the appeal of electric vehicles is somewhat blunted by the fact that they tend to be small, European-style hatchbacks rather than large, red-blooded “American-style” sedans. But what if large, rear-drive electric sedans were developed, using battery-swap technology that could allow battery-leasing business models and instant range-extension? Might Americans rethink a few of their long-held stereotypes about EVs?

Well, the United States isn’t the only nation facing this dilemma, and unlike the US, Australia is actually doing something about it. Australian automotive suppliers, Air International, Bosch, Continental and Futuris, have teamed up with Project Better Place to develop seven “proof of concept” Holden Commodore-based rear-drive electric sedans that could be the first of their kind [press release here in PDF] in a joint venture called EV Engineering. The project is part of Australia’s effort to revamp its automotive industry by 2020.

Holden is only peripherally involved in the the $26m JV, providing engineering support and use of its proving grounds, according to drive.com.au, but several former Holden executives are heading the project. And the project is almost entirely privately-funded as well, with a mere $3.5m coming from the Australian government’s now-defunct green car innovation fund. The project has no plans to put EV Commodores into production, but each participating supplier will use the vehicles to develop know-how around large, rear-drive electric vehicles, a segment that does not yet exist in the marketplace. The idea is that, down the road, the research will help Australia become the global auto industry’s source of rear-drive EV technology and experience.

The projects goals, beyond building the seven prototypes, are:

1) Deliver zero emissions motoring when powered by renewable electricity and greater than 30% reduction in CO2 emissions when powered on grid average electricity.

(2) Deliver the same high standards of safety and feature available in this class of vehicle while delivering comparable performance.

(3) Be designed for a manufacturing cost equivalent to top selling petrol vehicles in this class, without battery. (Batteries will be included as part of monthly electric vehicle charge network subscriptions, replacing petrol costs.)

(4) Be capable of accessing both EV charge spots and ‘battery switch’ stations for unlimited range extension. Additionally, the project will help to develop electric vehicle engineering skills and components within the Australian supplier industry for potential export to car makers globally, with opportunities including battery pack design and thermal management systems.

This project is highly significant on a number of levels. First, battery-swap-enabled large sedans operating in Australia could show the way forward for the US, by breaking stereotypes about EV size, capability and operating environments. Second, the project marks the first sign of flirtation between General Motors and Project Better Place’s battery-swap-based business. Though Holden is not an official partner, there’s no doubt that GM will be keeping a very close eye on the project, especially given its possible applicability to the United States. Thus far, only Renault has officially signed on as a Better Place vehicle supplier. Finally, by spurring on development of an EV based on Australia’s best-selling car,  Better Place strengthens its position in the Australian market, which could also inspire more interest from American governments and automakers in the batter-swap business.

Consulting firm Accenture took a look at a number of EV pilot programs in hopes of gaining some insights into how exactly the rise of plug-in vehicles will change the automotive industry, the refueling infrastructure and the customer experience [full PDF here], and came away with some interesting conclusions. First, the study finds that the market models for plug-ins will vary from region to region. That’s good news for the automakers, as it makes it less likely that they will be forced to comply with standards set by a single firm dominating a global market model. On the other hand, the regional variations in market models (more on the models themselves shortly) will worsen one of the major challenges of plug-in proliferation, namely scale. The study finds that scale, along with cost and grid control are the three factors that pilot programs can not provide insight into, and all three require “creative” solutions. And here’s where business-as-usual in the car business gets blown wide-open: the business models, rather than the vehicles themselves, are where the real competition is. So, what are the models?

Accenture identifies three basic models which, with some variations, are being tested around the globe: teh Public charging infrastructure, the private charging infrastructure and the so-called “end-to-end model.” The firm summarizes the pros and cons of each as follows:

In short, the public model is the government-led “investment in the public good” aimed at accelerating EV adoption, a model we’ve seen in a number of the US-based pilots. The private model assumes a return on investment purely on the charging infrastructure. Accenture found that both public and private charging infrastructures tend to have a higher grid impact, and because home recharging is expected to remain the main source of EV power, their impact will likely be limited. The “end-to-end model,” on the other hand seems to be the winning formula, by integrating vehicle, service and infrastructure costs (which frees pricing options), limiting grid impacts, and offering a convenient customer experience that is not dissimilar from the familiar cell phone model. One of the key advantages to this model is that it allows EV “service providers” to disaggregate the cost of the battery, lowering a key barrier to consumer acceptance (battery depreciation), using batteries more efficiently and charging a fixed fee for “mileage plans” not unlike cell phone plans where consumers purchase “minutes.”

Accenture concludes that the public model best addresses scale, while the private model best addresses costs and grid control, while “end-to-end” is the only model that addresses all three. This would seem to be a fairly ringing endorsement for the oft-dismissed (by the auto industry, anyway) Project Better Place, which is the only real player in the “end-to-end” model. Of course, Accenture hedges considerably by saying the models will receive varying levels of support by geography and that all three will continue to evolve, but it’s fairly clear that “end-to-end” shows the most long-term promise.

Unfortunately, the rise of “end-to-end” EV “service providers” would essentially spell the end of the auto industry as we know it. EVs generally present challenges to the product differentiation the industry currently competes on, but an end-to-end solution explodes every traditional value in the industry. After all, automakers will not only need to develop batteries, but infrastructure as well to survive as an “end-to-end service provider.” Dealers won’t be able to stay alive on the backs of their service departments. Consumers will be forced to think rationally about their vehicle usage in order to purchase a service agreement, destroying the prevalent consumer perspective that decades of marketers worked so hard to cultivate.

Electric vehicles are generating a lot of excitement, but the vehicles themselves are actually something of an afterthought. A refined infrastructure business model is what will take EVs from their early-adopter ghetto and into the mainstream, a task Project Better Place is currently launching in Israel. The exciting part: a year from now, we will have some idea of whether or not the “end-to-end” model really works in the real world (well, Israel, anyway). If it does, that infrastructure model could have a greater impact on the world of cars than any actual car. It’s a brave new world…

As one of California’s leading bastions of privileged liberalism (2009 per-capita income: $91,483) , Marin County is probably one of the top counties worldwide in terms of EV market potential. But apparently the local government isn’t ready to tap its unique combination of money and idealism to become a leading market for electric cars. Even as Californian EV activists are being forced to install second power meters to separate EV charging from home electricity use in order to take advantage of lower electricity rates for EV charging, the NYT reports that Marin County has banned the use of “smart meters” which would allow more widespread EV adoption.

Smart meters, which communicate electricity use wirelessly to the power company would allow EV charging to be easily separated from home use, but they also raise a number of issues that Marin County simply doesn’t want to have to deal with. Privacy, health risks from electromagnetic frequency radiation, and radio communication interruptions are all cited in the Marin County ordinance [PDF here] which bans installation of the smart meters in unincorporated areas of the county. The upside for EV enthusiasts is that this affects on 70k of the county’s 260k residents… but again, knowing Marin County, the county’s numerous rural mansions are probably a huge part of its potential base of EV support. And the towns of Fairfax and Watsonville have already banned smart readers, as has Santa Cruz County, another prime EV market. Time to start rethinking those running costs?

The California legislature’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) blasted a public-private partnership deal between the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and investors for the development of Doyle Drive. The plan was to give a private company, Golden Link, a 30-year lease on this vital southern route to the Golden Gate Bridge to perform needed renovation to the route. The state would pay the consortium $173 million for finishing the road, followed by $28.5 million in “availability payments” each year the road is open.

“Overall, our analysis finds that the Golden Link agreement does not meet all the goals Caltrans intended and is not likely to be a good fiscal deal for the state,” Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor wrote. “In light of these findings, we think that the state should consider not signing the contract with Golden Link, and instead build the project with a more traditional approach.”

The total cost of the project is estimated at $594 million on the partnership model, while traditional methods would cost around $490 million — not counting a number of potential cost overruns on the riskier partnership model. In terms of bearing risks, the deal put state taxpayers on the hook if any discoveries of endangered species threatens roadside construction. It offered no guarantee that the companies undertaking the project would finish on time. Because the interest rates that will apply are not yet known, the analyst was unable to estimate the final cost with more certainty.

“Based upon our own analysis, we disagree with Caltrans’ conclusion that the agreement results in a lower lifecycle cost,” Taylor wrote. “As described in detail in another section below, we have concluded that a traditional design-bid-build procurement would be less expensive in this particular case than under the Golden Link agreement.”

The analyst recommended dropping the public-private partnership contract. A copy of the letter is available as a 450k PDF at the source link below.

Source: Public Private Partnership letter (Office of the Legislative Analyst, 12/22/2010)

[Courtesy:Thenewspaper.com]

Discovered by Discover Magazine, this “speed bump” in a Vancouver BC parking garage is the creepiest application of the “trompe-l’œil speedbump” technology to date. Apparently,

the girl’s elongated form appears to rise from the ground as cars approach, reaching 3D realism at around 100 feet, and then returning to 2D distortion once cars pass that ideal viewing distance. Its designers created the image to give drivers who travel at the street’s recommended 18 miles per hour (30 km per hour) enough time to stop before hitting Pavement Patty–acknowledging the spectacle before they continue to safely roll over her.

Chinese buy more than just cars. They have bought (well, leased) enough land, buildings and machinery in order to more than double car output by 2015. With the current expansion and investment plans exercised, China will have production capacity for a mind-blowing 31.24m units by the end of 2015. That according to Chen Bin, head of industrial coordination at the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation’s economic regulation agency.That’s more than six (!) times the U.S. production in 2009, and three times the U.S. auto production in the heydays of 2007. You are not the only one to get worried now. Even China’s NDRC thinks that might be a bit much.

The production capacity in place could exceed demand, a worried Chen said at the International Forum on Chinese Automobile Industry Development in Tianjin. Unchecked expansion of China’s auto industry must be “resolutely” stopped, said Chen Bin according to China’s state news agency Xinhua.

The comments weren’t as much directed at the automobile industry as they were at parts of the Chinese government. Encouraged by the industry healthy profits and economic benefits, local governments had been making “blind” efforts to open new factories and expand capacity, Chen said. Twenty-seven of the country’s 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have plants that are able to produce finished vehicles.

Chen is worried about excess capacity inviting vicious competition, and hurting profits. Bringing out the big guns, Chen warned that unchecked growth may even threaten sustainable development of China’s economy.

Unrealistic output quotas for auto makers, and preferential land and tax policies for car makers must stop, said Chen in the direction of provincial governments that cut those deals.

Mind you Chen is talking about going easy on adding more capacity on top of  the 31.24m units, for which planning and building is already under way. Chen is most likely more worried of competition than of a lack of demand. Using a – for Chinese tastes – moderate annual growth rate of 20 percent, China could buy more than 40m cars in 2015.

According to The Nikkei [sub] “companies big and small see a golden opportunity in providing chargers for this impending wave of cars.”

JFE Engineering has developed a high-speed charger that can fill an electric car battery to 50 percent capacity in just three minutes. That takes a lot of Amps, and to prevent the lights from going out in the neighborhood, the company buffers the power in a high-capacity storage battery that can also discharge very rapidly. Their charger meets the specifications of the proposed CHAdeMo standard. It costs about $50,000, installed, “roughly half the usual amount,” as the Nikkei says.

Nissan developed a rapid charger that goes for only $15,000. The maker of the Leaf wants to install the charger at 200 dealerships an sell it to others.

Yokohama-based Hasetec has a whole line-up of rapid chargers. They added a medium-speed charger that requires 90-120 minutes to fill a car’s battery, and cost about $20,000. They see a niche at operators of parking lots and amusement facilities.

Itochu thinks “green” and “distribution.” They want to install solar panels Japan’s ubiquitous FamilyMart convenience stores, and combine them with an Itochu Enex charger.

Distribution is a huge challenge. For some reason, the most logical choice (gas stations) doesn’t range on top. The charger folks seek places with a higher dwell time, such as shops, parking garages, and amusement parks. Especially for shops, the concept is attractive: If the car isn’t full charged, shop some more.

Research company Fuji Keizai says the Japanese market for chargers should be $100m by 2015. Want to get your share of the EV market? Build chargers.

Worried about the high MSRPs on most of the electric vehicles scheduled for launch over the next year? Don’t forget to include the cost of buying and installing a home charging station. Nissan reckons the charger for its Leaf will cost about $2,200, including a home electrical inspection [er, that's a medical marijuana grow...] and installation. Oh, and it won’t be Nissan coming into your home: Aerovironment, a firm otherwise best known for its Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, has the contract to supply and install the Leaf’s charger. Coulomb Technologies supplies the home charger for Ford’s first EV, the Transit Connect EV, and according to Automotive News [sub], they’re partnering with Ford to give chargers away to the first 2,000 buyers of the electric-drive delivery van. But, as usual with good news in the EV sector, the charger giveaway is actually being funded by tax dollars…

The chargers are being given away as part of Coulomb’s ChargePoint program, which seeks to improve EV infrastructure in nine US regions. That means the free chargers are only available to customers in or around

Austin, Texas, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Fla., Sacramento, Calif., the San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area, Redmond, Wash., and Washington DC

Which is kind of ironic considering the Alliance of Automotive Manufacturer’s (which Ford is a member of) recently lambasted a regionally-based infrastructure development bill, arguing that it

risks resulting in federal resources becoming overly concentrated in a small number of communities, which could establish electric cars as boutique vehicles… Electric cars and their infrastructure should be available to everyone nationwide, not just people in select communities.

Ah well. In any case, $15m of the ChargePoint program’s $37m budget is being paid for by a stimulus bill grant (via the Department of Energy’s Transportation Electrification Initiative), and Coulomb hopes to fund the rest of the program with money from local governments. In return for the free Ford/Coulomb publicity, free chargers for early adopters, and a free sense of green self-satisfaction, the ChargePoint program will conduct a two-year study of EV and charging network use for the government.

And though the fairness and efficacy of government subsidies for home-chargers is debatable, it’s not likely to let up anytime soon. There is currently a federal tax credit worth half the value of a home charger installation (up to $2,000) which is set to expire in December of this year. That will help Nissan and GM, which do not have access to a government-funded charger-giveaway program like Ford’s (although local governments like Los Angeles are also rolling out home-charger subsidies). Look for that credit to be renewed before the end of the year, as governments the world over have clearly signed on to the idea that EVs are worth being subsidized from every possible angle. And considering that costs for installation could, in some cases, reach all the way to $10,000, home chargers are going to need all the help they can get.

Did you ever arrive in a foreign country, and the plug of your battery-depleted cell phone did not fit? Or worse, it did fit, and the charger went up in smoke? That’s nothing compared to the impending EV disaster. Buy an EV, and you will find yourself between the battle lines of plugs, voltages, and technologies. Imagine the horror: Guided by your GPS, you limp into a charging station on the last watts in your battery, and their round plug doesn’t fit your square socket.

The Japanese government has set a goal of 5,000 high-speed charging stations in place nationwide by 2020, writes The Nikkei [sub]. Some say that this is a mere shadow of the approximately 50,000 gas station in Japan that serve cars with a much bigger range. Other say that this is Japan’s move to establish a fait accompli in the worldwide race to establish a global standard for charging technology.

In Japan alone, all kinds of companies are entering the charging business. They range from established charger manufacturers such as Takaoka Electric and Hasetec  to Nissan which wants to install proprietary charging equipment at 200 group dealerships (nice traffic generator…) Even trading houses like Marubeni want in on the game.

Toyota, Nissan, Tokyo Electric Power Co. and 155 other companies and associations formed a consortium in March to promote the Japanese standard, dubbed CHAdeMO. Earlier in the year, Japan has been making moves to set ECE standards for electric vehicles.

The U.S. and European countries have their own ideas and their own technologies. Setting the standard “would give their automakers an advantage in the market for electric vehicles,” says the Nikkei. Ain’t that the truth.

Ah, the amount of ingenuity electric cars trigger. They need to get charged. Cheaply. They need to get rid of the bad rap that creating electricity isn’t the environmentally friendliest endeavor on this planet. So what about wind power? Comes with its own set of problems. Mitsubishi and the Tokyo Institute of Technology got together and devised a method to use excess wind power to charge electric vehicles while saving the power company gobs of money, a.k.a. the dreaded capex problem. The result? A true wind-wind situation!

Windmills produce power when the wind blows. The wind doesn’t give a hoot about peak demand. It blows whenever it feels like it. Power created during low demand times, for instance at night, either goes out the wind-ow, or get it gets stored in batteries. Those batteries are way expensive, they are “are as costly as power generators,” says The Nikkei [sub]

The wind-wind solution? Use the batteries in electric cars. Why pay twice? A system collects data both on power generation and electric vehicle recharging. If there is sudden demand, the power that charges the car batteries gets cut off until excess power is sloshing around the lines again. A field test of the system has already been conducted in Hokkaido, says the Nikkei. We assume, successfully.

A large windmill can charge 200-300 electric vehicles a night. Mitsubishi wants to commercialize the technology in remote islands first. Small grid, and the geography of the island keeps range anxiety at bay. Now imagine the new excuses: “Sumimasen, so sorry, can’t come to work today. We were in the doldrums last night.”

Move over! A Tokyo taxi.

Forget about the crafty Japanese starving off any attempt of honest American companies to penetrate the Japanese market. A true blue American company, founded by true blue American venture capital, goes right for the heart of Japan: Tokyo’s taxi market.

The darling of venture capital writers at Wired and Red Herring, Palo Alto’s Better Place is fighting the good fight against a market that is the fiefdom of the Toyota Crown: Tokyo’s (usually LPG or CNG powered) taxi market.

On Monday, the company that was founded by former SAP star Shai Agassi, uncovered three electric taxis, along with a million dollar charging station. According to The Nikkei [sub], “the taxis will cruise Tokyo’s streets for three months to test their safety and reliability, and officials said they will then decide whether to continue or expand the program. Mr. Agassi said he hopes other large cities will follow.” Tokyo alone is quite a market: Tokyo has 60,000 taxies, almost five times the number of cabs in New York. The ride must also cost about five times the price of a New York cab. (JFK to downtown Manhatta: $50. NRT to downtown Tokyo: $250 )

To overcome range-, cost-, and recharge-time anxiety, Better Place preaches as a system of switchable batteries. The company owns the batteries, people will pay “for miles like a mobile phone user pays for minutes, at prices still to be determined,” says the Nikkei. Empty batteries can be switched for full ones in 60 seconds, faster than it takes to fill up your car.

Smart devils they are at Better Place: The actual cars on trial are converted Nipponese Nissan Rogue crossovers.

Where there is Nissan, Renault is not far away. They are manufacturing cars for Better Place. Better Place buys lithium-ion batteries from suppliers such as A123 Systems and – will the circle be unbroken – from Automobile Energy Supply Corp., a battery joint venture between Nissan and NEC .

(Speaking of Tokyo: Your BS will go from Beijing to NYC tomorrow, with a stopover in Tokyo. If I have recovered on Thursday, normal reporting will resume.)

Japan appears to get extremely serious about all-electric cars. What stands in the way of their success? Apart from the price (we’ll get to that later:) It’s the infrastructure, stupid. Fabricating, fuelling, and fixing an ICE-powered car is supported by an infrastructure that had more than 100 years to grow. Keeping a plug-in running needs an infrastructure to guarantee mobility away from the charger at home. Japan’s Environment Ministry teams up with Nissan, Sumitomo, and other companies to build the infrastructure for electric vehicles, reports The Nikkei [sub].

Apart from the most obvious – building charging stations – there are some solutions to questions that haven’t been addressed so far. Don’t worry (or do) those questions will surely come up. For instance, what happens if you are on the road and run out of juice? With an ICE, you can trek to the next gas station, and come back with a gallon or two. With a plug-in? Currently, you need a tow. Think about it. You’ll develop a serious case of range anxiety if you think this through.

To solve that issue, Nissan will develop a truck that will give emergency charges – good for 10km or 6 miles – to electric cars that strayed too far from a plug. Then, drivers can use their car navigation system, co-developed by Nissan and Yasukawa, that shows them the way to the nearest charging station.

Orix Auto will help design a car-sharing system.

Nissan will also test a system for collecting and recycling lithium ion batteries together with NTT Facilities and Sumitomo.

Did we mention price? There is movement on that front also. In a separate story, The Nikkei [sub] sees signs “of an emerging price war in electric vehicles.” Mitsubishi Motors will lower the suggested retail price of its i-MiEV by about 620,000 yen ($6,700.) The new price is 3.98m yen ($43,000.) After generous government subsidies, the car will cost 2.84 million yen ($30,000). Nissan answered that their Leaf electric car, which will come out in December, will cost 2.99 million yen ($32,000) after subsidies are deducted. Jeez, that’s what the car will cost in the U.S.A. before subsidies are deducted.

Mitsubishi just began full retail sales of its i-MiEV. Their planning is conservative. They want to sell 9,000 in the new fiscal year that begins April 1. Nissan is more aggressive. They want to produce about 50,000 Leafs a year in Japan, and plan to begin mass production in the U.S. in 2012 and the U.K. in 2013.

Nevertheless, price remains a serious issue. Said Koji Endo, managing director at Advanced Research Japan: “For electric vehicles to really catch on, the actual cost for consumers needs to be 2 million yen or less.”  That would be around $21,000, and sounds about right.

Government subsidies will not last forever. Also in Japan, customers need to wait three to six months until they get their subsidy, which means that they have to front 4 million yen. That and the pesky infrastructure problems will make the all-electric plug-in much less than a run-away hit for the foreseeable future.

The DOT policy is to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycling facilities into transportation projects. Every transportation agency, including DOT, has the responsibility to improve conditions and opportunities for walking and bicycling and to integrate walking and bicycling into their transportation systems. Because of the numerous individual and community benefits that walking and bicycling provide — including health, safety, environmental, transportation, and quality of life — transportation agencies are encouraged to go beyond minimum standards to provide safe and convenient facilities for these modes.

Having spent most of his tenure chiding distracted drivers and hunting down demon-possessed Toyotas, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood appears to be over the whole car thing. The policy statement above was just one element of his push to put bicycling and other car alternatives on an equal footing to cars in transportation planning, which he recently announced at the National Bike Summit.

The main points of LaHood’s pro-bike policy shift are explained in his “Recommended Actions”:

The DOT encourages States, local governments, professional associations, community organizations, public transportation agencies, and other government agencies, to adopt similar policy statements on bicycle and pedestrian accommodation as an indication of their commitment to accommodating bicyclists and pedestrians as an integral element of the transportation system. In support of this commitment, transportation agencies and local communities should go beyond minimum design standards and requirements to create safe, attractive, sustainable, accessible, and convenient bicycling and walking networks. Such actions should include:

• Considering walking and bicycling as equals with other transportation modes: The primary goal of a transportation system is to safely and efficiently move people and goods. Walking and bicycling are efficient transportation modes for most short trips and, where convenient intermodal systems exist, these nonmotorized trips can easily be linked with transit to significantly increase trip distance. Because of the benefits they provide, transportation agencies should give the same priority to walking and bicycling as is given to other transportation modes. Walking and bicycling should not be an afterthought in roadway design.
• Ensuring that there are transportation choices for people of all ages and abilities, especially children: Pedestrian and bicycle facilities should meet accessibility requirements and provide safe, convenient, and interconnected transportation networks. For example, children should have safe and convenient options for walking or bicycling to school and parks. People who cannot or prefer not to drive should have safe and efficient transportation choices.
• Going beyond minimum design standards: Transportation agencies are encouraged, when possible, to avoid designing walking and bicycling facilities to the minimum standards. For example, shared-use paths that have been designed to minimum width requirements will need retrofits as more people use them. It is more effective to plan for increased usage than to retrofit an older facility. Planning projects for the long-term should anticipate likely future demand for bicycling and walking facilities and not preclude the provision of future improvements.
• Integrating bicycle and pedestrian accommodation on new, rehabilitated, and limited-access bridges: DOT encourages bicycle and pedestrian accommodation on bridge projects including facilities on limited-access bridges with connections to streets or paths.
• Collecting data on walking and biking trips: The best way to improve transportation networks for any mode is to collect and analyze trip data to optimize investments. Walking and bicycling trip data for many communities are lacking. This data gap can be overcome by establishing routine collection of nonmotorized trip information. Communities that routinely collect walking and bicycling data are able to track trends and prioritize investments to ensure the success of new facilities. These data are also valuable in linking walking and bicycling with transit.
• Setting mode share targets for walking and bicycling and tracking them over time: A byproduct of improved data collection is that communities can establish targets for increasing the percentage of trips made by walking and bicycling.
• Removing snow from sidewalks and shared-use paths: Current maintenance provisions require pedestrian facilities built with Federal funds to be maintained in the same manner as other roadway assets. State Agencies have generally established levels of service on various routes especially as related to snow and ice events.

Improving nonmotorized facilities during maintenance projects: Many transportation agencies spend most of their transportation funding on maintenance rather than on constructing new facilities. Transportation agencies should find ways to make facility improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists during resurfacing and other maintenance projects.

As the authors of Carjacked, and others (especially here in bike-obsessed Portland) are quick to point out, America’s transportation policy has existed solely to serve cars since time immemorial. Including provisions for non-car transportation shouldn’t necessarily come at the expense of cars and road infrastructure. Especially considering how relatively few opportunities there are to replace regular car use with bicycles or the bus. Besides, LaHood can only veto major, federally-funded infrastructure programs if they fail to include provisions for cyclists and non-car transportation.

Like so much that LaHood has done since taking office, this statement was highly symbolic and of little real consequence. But while LaHood grandstands, a larger problem looms: the president just signed legislation that will spend $19.5b to keep the federal highway trust fund solvent until 2011, at which point more tough choices will have to be made. Given LaHood’s publicly-stated preference for a vehicle-tracking, pay-per-mile taxation regime to rebuild the highway trust fund, some might see his wooing of anti-car (or, at least pro-bike) forces in a more sinister light. LaHood has made no secret of his desire to “wean America off the automobile,” and and between pay-per-mile and the British government’s bag of anti-car tricks and taxes, he’s got a lot of options. But with the 2012 election picture looking far from perfect, LaHood will probably have to forgo any big political risks for more symbolic pronouncements like this one. Car fans can breath easy for a little while longer.

The first public-private partnership toll road established as a not-for-profit corporation has gone bust. The Connector 2000 Association, which operates a sixteen-mile, four-lane toll road linking Interstates 85 and 385 in southern Greenville County, South Carolina, announced last week that it was in default on its financial obligations.

“Traffic on the Southern Connector was inadequate to permit the association to collect sufficient toll revenues to pay debt service on the bonds which came due January 1, 2010,” a Connector 2000 Association statement explained. “The association has been advised that the trustee has made no payment of any such debt service. An event of default currently exists… The association is actively negotiating the restructuring of its bonded indebtedness with the trustee, the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT), and certain owners of large blocks of the bonds.”

In 1998, the association floated $200,177,680 in tax-free bonds to fund construction of the toll road that opened in 2001. These bonds were to be repaid over thirty-five years with the proceeds from toll collections. Just a few years ago, SCDOT touted this project as a prime example of the department’s “innovative financing successes.”

“Without innovative financing, this southern loop around the city of Greenville would be nothing more than a dream,” a SCDOT brochure boasted.

Like other highly-leveraged tolling efforts, the Connector was hampered by unrealistic traffic projections and rosy financial scenarios for an area expected to experience an economic boom.

“The expected growth in the region has yet to materialize,” the toll road’s 2008 annual report admitted. “This factor, the recession and consumer resistance to the payment of tolls (the Southern Connector Toll Road is the only toll road in Upstate South Carolina) have all contributed to the lower-than-forecasted traffic demands.”

There is little hope for the road’s recovery. In 2009, the association collected $3.9 million in tolls from motorists. Because SCDOT decided not to make the Connector a freeway, the majority of that revenue was swallowed by $2.8 million in expenses for things such as consultant fees, marketing, toll collection employees and legal fees — most of which would not be required if operated as a free road. With such a constrained cash flow, the road could not come close to meeting its $13.1 million annual bond interest obligation. The toll road’s bond payments had been insufficient since 2004, and now the association’s net deficit stands at $169 million.

As a result, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the toll road’s bonds from C- to the lowest possible rating of D. A copy of the road’s latest financial statement is available in a 600k PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Briefing by the Connector 2000 Association (Connector 2000 Association, Inc., 1/11/2010)

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced on Wednesday that he would re-write funding guidelines to dispense with rigid cost-benefit analysis when deciding which transit programs should receive funds. Under the previous system, because motorists provided the majority of the funding through the gas tax, money was allocated to cost-effective transit programs that promised the greatest overall reduction in traffic congestion. In remarks at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting, LaHood explained that the objective criteria will be replaced by a set of goals.

“Measuring only cost and how fast a project can move the most people the greatest distance simply misses the boat and… has slowed down transit expansion,” LaHood reflected yesterday. “In 2010, a policy that has that effect is ridiculous.”

One of the major hurdles in spending US motorist dollars on projects such as streetcars has been their extremely high cost and low usage rates. Fort Worth, Texas, for example, wants to spend $250 million on a streetcar project that is likely to serve between one and two percent of the population. With new flexibility to spend large sums to benefit a small constituency, LaHood will now be able to exert influence on electoral battleground states over the next few years.

“I’ll make sure those investments in manufacturing help our most distressed communities in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere,” LaHood said.

The administration’s move was heralded by Capitol Hill’s most prominent advocate of streetcars and bicycles, Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-Washington).

“In line with President Obama’s commitment to promoting livable communities, USDOT will drop a Bush-era practice that emphasized out-dated analyses focused primarily on travel-time savings for suburban commuters,” a Blumenauer statement explained.

The Federal Transit Administration now take steps to codify new regulations to reflect the updated priorities. In his Wednesday speech, LaHood also emphasized the need to increase spending across the board on transportation projects to help the economy.

“Everywhere I go, the message is loud and clear,” LaHood said. “They want the opportunity to leave their cars behind. To live near work and schools and good hospitals. And to enjoy clean, green neighborhoods. Our stimulus funds are helping many communities begin to realize those dreams…. But if we’re really serious about creating livable, sustainable communities built around good transportation, then we must reform our current spending programs.”

LaHood cited the spending of $8 billion in taxpayer dollars on a new passenger rail program, expanded support for Amtrak and another $1.5 billion in discretionary TIGER grants, which are designed to support efforts such as tolling, as evidence of the administration’s willingness to spend on priority projects.

Feast your eyes on these images of the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge being constructed over the Colorado River near Hoover Dam. Sure, it cost taxpayers $160m, but just look at it. America may have lost its way in terms of auto manufacturing, but we’ve never stopped being the greatest country to explore by car. [Hat Tip: Dean Huston]