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U of So Australia Develops 150km TREV Electric Car

25/January/2008
By JWM

TREV stands for "Two-seat Renewable Energy Vehicle." Built by students at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, it is an attractive three-wheel (tadpole configuration), tandem-seat battery electric runabout.

It has a range of 150 km (93 mi) and top speed of 120 km/hr (75mph). Acceleration is 0-100 km/h in 10 seconds, according to the specfiications on the UniSA web site.

The power plant that propels the 300 kg (661 lbs) EV is a 25 kW (peak) permanent magnet brushless DC motor, energized by a 40 kg (88 lbs) lithium polymer battery with a capacity of 5.5 kWh.

To get the weight of the vehicle down, the team, led by Dr Peter Pudney, made use of aluminum honeycomb boards to form the tub chassis. The smooth aerodynamic body is shaped from foam and fiberglass. The canopy is blown acrylic. The tires are 165/65R14 low rolling resistance models, which also improve the vehicles economic performance.

Besides seating for two, there is enough room in the vehicle for two overnight bags.

The team estimates the car will operate for just AU$1/100km. This is equivalent to a mere US$0.0146 cents per mile. Because it uses 1/5 of the energy consumed by a conventional motorcar, its environmental impact is dramatically lessened, especially if the electric power comes from local-produced wind or solar power.

During the recent Darwin to Adelaide World Solar Challenge, the Trev traveled the 3020 km journey consuming the equivalent of AU$33 of electricity (at AU$0.18 per kWh).

As the teams web site states, "It makes petrol look silly."

This is the future of commuting, people.
Posted:10:22:34

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ExxonMobils Electric Car Surprise

24/January/2008
By JWM

Look fast. The official ExxonMobil corporate web site now features (as of January 24, 2008) an electric car.

Ostensibly, the reason it is there is because Electrovaya, a Canadian lithium polymer battery maker, just announced they are planning to offer a Chinese-made electric car called the Maya 300, which is featured in the screen capture above. The separator material used in the battery is manufactured by ExxonMobil Chemical, as explained in an EV World.com interview entitled, ExxonMobil Joins Electric Car Race.

A call to the Toronto-based company revealed that the vehicle will be rated as a NEV or neighborhood electric vehicle, but equipped with proprietary Lithium ion Superpolymer batteries that give it a range of 120 miles. The car was converted in-house at Electrovaya, which announced last week that it had entered a joint venture to built battery modules -- complete with battery management system (BMS) -- for Malcolm Bricklin s Visionary Vehicles. A company spokeswoman said that more details would be forthcoming on the car, which is envisioned for operation on corporate, government and educational campuses, as well as in urban neighborhoods.

Currently, only one Canadian province - British Columbia -- permits NEVs to operate on public streets, so presumably, sales will focus on the United States.

While the Maya 300 is an interesting electric vehicle, especially since it is likely to be the first commercially-available NEV powered by lithium polymer batteries, which are dramatically more powerful, smaller and lighter than the lead acid batteries typically found in similar vehicles.

Of more interest is ExxonMobil for their sudden embrace of electric cars. They apparently see the handwriting on the wall, especially after the likes of GM CEO Rick Wagoner stands up at the Detroit Auto Show last week and announced that oil had, effectively, peaked and the future is electric-drive vehicles. So, without a skipping a beat, the oil giant begins promoting cars that use no oil, but do use their custom separator, a key ingredient in Electrovaya Superpolymer batteries.

Maybe there is hope yet for these guys. Now if only theyd pay for the environmental and economic damage their oil tanker did in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

Posted:13:33:37

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Lets Call on Dodge to Build the ZEO by 2012

20/January/2008
By JWM

According to Chrysler, the Dodge ZEO will appeal to a very select audience of car buyers. To quote the companys press release...

Dodge owners and those who will desire the ZEO concept are unquestionably driving enthusiasts. They are less family-oriented, with a desire for things that are high-tech, and place less emphasis on pure practicality. While they boast environmental and overall responsibility, they also exhibit a "need for speed."

But whats not practical about the ZEO? While its performance would rival Dodges Hemi-powered vehicles, it would never use a drop of gasoline over its 250 miles driving range, giving it the equivalence of 120 mpg. Its 2+2 seating means it can carry four adults, who can easily enter and egress the vehicle through its pair of "scissor" doors. This makes it far more practical than the two-passenger Tesla Roadster, as well as a lot easier to get into and out of.

The 200 kW (268 hp), remounted electric motor will power the car to a top speed of 130 mph... in theory. 0-60 mph is a brisk 5.7 seconds, covering a quarter mile in just 11.0 seconds.

Of course, all this depends on the development of an affordable, long-life lithium-ion battery pack, of which the ZEO would require a hefty 64 kWh of onboard energy, four times the size that would be installed in the Chevy Volt and some 20 kWh more than the Tesla Roadster.

Given that the cost of the battery is typically the largest component cost of an electric car -- a 64 kWh lithium-ion pack with integrated battery management system would likely somday cost in the neighborhood of $16,000 (based on a production target of $250/kWh, per a May 2000 study conducted by Argonne National Lab entitled Costs for Lithium-Ion Batteries for Vehicles.). However, we are nowhere even close to that target. Costs today range from a low of $750 kWh to much, much higher, usually determined by the limited production capacity of the manufacturer; the fewer the batteries, the lest automation, the higher the cost.

Still, this shouldnt preclude our calling on Dodge to follow GMs example with the Volt and to commit to build the ZEO. It is an exciting car, with fabulous performance and room for four adults. Yes, it would be expensive, but that never stopped Detroit from offering expensive luxury cars before. I would bet that Chrysler could find a sub-contactor to help manufacturer the car in limited numbers -- maybe 1,000-2,500 the first year with the target date of 2012, which happens to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar and which many see not as the end of time, but as the coming of new, more enlighted age. Now that would make a really interesting marketing angle, would it not?

Posted:12:45:07

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Will G4e Be the Electric Car Subaru Sells in 2009?

14/January/2008
By JWM

Subaru has announced that it will begin selling its battery electric car starting with 100 units in 2009. The model they appear to be focusing on is their R1e, which was jointly developed with Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and is currently undergoing testing by the utility. As EV World points out, the Mitsubishi iMiEV is also participating in similar evaluation programs with TEPCO and several other Japanese utlities.

However, Subaru showcased a newer, larger, slicker electric car concept called the G4e, which is an acronym for "green for the earth." The triangular styling and low coefficient of drag (0.276) means it should require less energy to move through the air. Equipped with a newly developed Vanadium battery, Subaru claims it can "store two to three times more lithium ions than conventional materials on the positive terminal ... (achieving an)... energy density... about twice that of manganese lithium-ion batteries of the same weight."

Between the light-weight, aerodynamic body and powerful battery, Subaru engineers believe the G4e will have a range of upwards of 200 km (125 mi) per charge. And while the car takes about 8 hours to charge on standard household current, it can be quick-charged to 80% capacity in as little as 15 minutes. Below is a comparative chart between the G4e and R1e.

	G4e	R1e
Dimensions	3985x1695x1570mm	3285x1475x1510mm
Weight	n/a	920kg
Seating	5	4
Range	200km	80km
Battery/Voltage	Li-ion/346	Li-in/346V

Given the improved performance of the G4e over the R1e, the question naturally has to be asked, when will the former car replace the latter? I think it could be logically assumed that if the market for the first 100 R1e models can be demonstrated to be a viable economic proposition for the company, that they will move fairly rapidly to introduce the G4e or something similar, probably sometime early after the turn of the next decade. Posted:16:55:37

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What Indian Carmakers Can Learn from Grameen Cellphone Ladies

14/January/2008
By JWM
The big news this week out of the New Delhi Auto Show was the introduction Tatas Nano, also known as the Peoples Car -- in Germany it would be called the volks wagen. Despite its tiny size and price (Rs 1.5 lakh or about US$2,500) is can carry five passengers in relative comfort. In a the booming Indian economy, its is destined to be a huge sales success.

And therein lies the problem. The Indian car market is expect to grow to twice the size of the already bloated American car market by 2050. Thats 600 million motor vehicles and if they are powered by the internal combustion engine burning some primitive fossil fuel derivative, likely coal-to-liquid given Indias sizable coal reserves, it will only accelerate global climate change -- not to mention aggravating the air pollution problems of Indias overcrowded cities.

Indians deserve the same level of mobility enjoyed by those of us in the West, but they do not need the problems that it brings.

So, I would like to offer one potential solution that is, in fact, patterned after a highly successful model pioneered by the Grameen cellphone ladies of Bangladesh.

Founded by Grameen Bank -- the institution started by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus -- Grameen Telecom helped impoverished women acquire cellphones. They would then rent out the phones to local villagers who used them to make important calls to family or doctors, paying a tiny fee for the service. The cellphone ladies earned needed income and the villagers got the benefit of a service they alone, they could not have afforded.

So, what can we learn from the cellphone ladies of Bangladesh? They are selling a service, not a phone. It is the service that the poor of Bangladesh or India, by extension, need, not a piece of hardware.

Okay, lets look at the rise of the cheap automobile in India -- Tata being just the first to reach the market, others are coming. I had a telephone conversation last week with the CEO of Deeya Energy, makers of a new type of flow battery used typically for backup power. He was explaining to me that the cellphone market is huge in India, selling tens of millions of phones every year. Indias telcomm system, like Chinas, has leap-frogged, the wired network age. But Indias electric power system is notoriously unreliable, so Deeya is building its first production plant to turn out 3kW size flow batteries, which cost one-fifth the price of lead-acid batteries, in India, for use as back-up power for the nations cell tower network.

Taking the model of the Grameen cellphone ladies and the India telcomm model, I suggest that India consider leap-frogging the whole individual car ownership model and instead create carshare programs, ones that are based on cellphone networks. Companies can own the fleets of cars, networking them similar to other carshare programs like those proposed by MIT or by the city of Paris. People who need a car to visit a relative or run an errand, can use their cellphone to reserve a car. They get the benefit of the service, without the headaches of ownership. And best of all, the cars are now income generating assets for their owners, not liabilities. Since a typical carshare vehicle supports upwards of 5-7 drivers, the total number of vehicles on the road is reduced, reducing congestion and pollution.

Finally, taking this cellphone model one step further, since the cars operate in a distributed generation model, they are ideal candidates for being electrically powered, either from the local grid or local solar power. India has a growing photovoltaic, as well as wind energy industry that could be used to charge Deeya flow batteries, which in turn could quickly charge the car batteries. And the Tata Nano is an ideal candidate for turning into a great little electric runabout.

The combination of renewable energy, cellphones, flow batteries, and carshare telemetrics could provide vastly improved personal mobility in India and elsewhere while reducing the environmental and economic impact of 600 million new cars on the planet. Posted:

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Middle East Connection to Nissan Mixim Electric Car?

13/January/2008
By JWM
What do the Nissan Mixim electric car and the State of Israel have in common?

Maybe nothing. Maybe more than meets the eye... given a small news item in Globes, an Israel-based newspaper. But first about the Mixim, pictured above.

The three passenger vehicle is powered by twin 50kW (67bhp) electric motors driving both the front and rear axles. With electric power stored in advanced lithium-ion batteries that purportedly can be charged -- given a whopping amount of amperage on the scale of small electric substation -- in 20-40 minutes, the angular, gull-winged EV (electric vehicle) has a "theoretical" top speed of 112 mph and a range between charges of more than 150 miles (240km).

The seating of the car is a bit unusual. The driver sits in the middle and the two passengers sit on either side and slightly behind him/her. The target customer for this electric car are the iPod/Video game generation, giving it a menacing angularity that reflects a certain lethality found in popular video shoot-em-ups.

The Times of London correspondent Gavin Conway got to take it for a spin only to find out that like most concept cars it was more promise than reality. He found himself being passed by an aging cyclist traveling faster than the 7 mpg of the Mixim.... maybe they should have called it the Nissan Minimum. Still, it looks really fast. We will have to wait for the real thing... should it every come..

Which brings me back to the Globes story that quietly announced on 10 January 2008 that Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault (who only recently relinquished direct control over Nissan), would be visiting Israel for the official kick-off of the Project Better Place, a $200 million program led by Shay Agassi to develop the necessary infrastructure to promote the sale of battery-powered electric cars.

Reports Globes...

The Renault Nissan Alliance of Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. is expected to participate in the technical development of the electric car, at an estimated investment of $150-300 million.

The car, however, will not be built in Israel. Could it be that the Mixim or a successor will server as the starting point for Project Better Place vehicle? If so, it will need to undergo some significant redesign given the serious visibility issues Mr. Conway discovered.

Now if only Mr. Agassi can get Tata to electrify their new $2,500 Nano PeopleCar before millions of them clog Indias roads and pollute its air. Posted:

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