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EDITION: 10.7 | 07 Feb 2010 |
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400-Mile Game Changer?
Want to drive 650 km (400 miles) easily on a single charge or fly 300 km (200 miles) on a battery that runs on air? That's the goal of researchers at Argonne National Labs, as well as at IBM, among many others. The reason is obvious. The best energy density per kilogram we can expect from lithium-ion is around 585 Watt-hours/kg. Compare this to a theoretical potential of as much a 5,000 Watt hr/kg for lithium-air (Some estimates go as high as 11,000Wh/kg).
But here's the rub. Lithium and water don't mix, if they do the exothermic reaction is a violent one: they spontaneously combust at temperatures of molten lava. This is why the manufacturing rooms where lithium batteries are made have to be virtually devoid of any water vapor. So, how do you create a lithium-based battery that uses air and yet doesn't go poof?
One solution is to create an electrolyte that only allows the oxygen atoms in air to collect on the cathode, along with the lithium cations from the anode. This stimulates the flow of electrons through the load circuit. According to Wikipedia, the first research team to demonstrate a solid state, rechargeable lithium-air battery was the University of Dayton Research Institute. More recently, Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) envisions a system where "the driver of a vehicle equipped with the new battery could make use of a revolutionary new cassette refill system, and then continue driving without waiting for batteries to be recharged."
Meanwhile outside of Chicago, Argonne researchers are hoping that more federal research dollars will enable them to solve Li-air's not insignificant challenges...
“The catalyst being used right now is not stable,” he said. “Stability is important because the catalyst needs to remain highly active in order to have the chemical reaction take place reversibly.”At this point, no one is giving any dates for commercialization. Khalil Amine, a material scientist and manager of the Advanced Battery Technology Group at Argonne, offered his view that what's needed are more teams working on the problem and more global collaboration.
The metal used as the catalyst, manganese oxide, starts to change after numerous chemical reactions between oxygen and lithium ions take place. This makes the life span of the battery unreasonably short.
If Li-air can be brought to commercialization, at its predicted energy densities, it could be the real game changer we've been waiting for, but I am not quite ready just yet to start holding my breath.
V2G and the Oak Ridge Boys
Some 430 miles SSE of Chicago, at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee, another step in the evolution of electric vehicle technology appears to be taking place, not in batteries, but in chargers. Instead of a separate battery charger such as that currently found in conversions like my PICC plug-in Prius on the Chevy Volt, Gui-Jia Su and his team at ORNL have integrated their charging circuitry into the vehicle's drive electronics. Below is an ORNL-supplied photo of the device. Click it for a high-resolution version.
States ORNL's official press release...
"The new technology eliminates the separate charging mechanism typically used in PHEVs, reducing both cost and volume under the hood," said Gui-Jia Su of ORNL's Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Research Center. "The PHEV's traction drive system is used to charge the battery, power the vehicle and enable its mobile energy source capabilities."If this system is what I think it is, and I've emailed Gui-Jia Su for clarification, it could be as important a breakthrough in EV technology as the lithium-air battery. OEM's could begin incorporating it into their next generation PHEVs and BEVs, moving us sooner towards the inevitable 21st century marriage of transportation and power generation even sooner than we might have thought possible. Or, I could just be fantasizing again.
Providing more power than typical freestanding portable generators, the PHEV can be used in emergency situations such as power outages and roadside breakdowns or leisure occasions such as camping. Day-to-day, the PHEV can be used to power homes or businesses or supply power to the grid when power load is high, according to Su.
The charging system concept, which is market-ready, could also be used to enhance the voltage stability of the grid by providing reactive power, Su said.
Pop Goes the Federal Cap
President Obama made it one of his election promises to see that 1.5 million plug-in hybrids are on America's roads by 2015, and leading the way will be the federal government. There was only one problem: PHEVs are going to cost at least twice what the government allows it agencies to pay for automobiles. An automobile price cap was instituted in the 1940s to prevent government employees from buying luxury cars for government fleets. The GSA is limited by law to paying no more than $13,197 for sedans and $13,631 for station wagons. Law enforcement and specialty vehicles like ambulances are allowed to exceed this by just $4000.
In order for federal fleet buyers to purchase PHEVs like the Chevy Volt legally, this cap must be lifted and that's exactly what the Obama Administration is proposing. Acting GSA administrator Stephen Leeds told the Federal Times...
Existing law already allows the caps to be exceeded by up to 5 percent for electric and hybrid vehicles purchased to further research and testing of new technologies, but that exception doesn't apply to alternative fuel vehicles that are already sold commercially. For example, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt — a plug-in electric hybrid from General Motors that is scheduled to go on sale in November — is expected to retail for about $40,000.It's nice to know that, at least in this regard, the government's been pretty frugal with my tax dollars, but in this case, I'd be willing to make an exception.
While the government has made good progress in greening its fleet, lifting the price cap would allow agencies to purchase some fuel-efficient vehicles that otherwise could be off limits.
Harrop V. Petersen
If it weren't for John Petersen, our EV World might be a rather dull place. Clearly a very bright man, he has made it abundantly clear for years now that he's no fan of plug-in cars of just about any flavor -- going so far as to refer them as frauds and insanity. The only exception might be mild-hybrids using some advanced forms of lead-based batteries; they alone make economic sense to his mind.
On the other hand, there is Dr. Peter Harrop, whom I met what seems like ages ago now at some event not long after starting EV World. As pragmatic as Petersen in some respects, he nonetheless takes what I regard as a more even tempered view of the state of electric vehicle development. Where Petersen clearly enjoys the role of 'devil’s advocate,' Dr. Harrop actually devotes his time to a serious study of the industry across a far boarder sweep. Here's his take on the future of EVs taken from the press release announcing the availability of his latest industry study. Entitled Electric Vehicles: Second Time Lucky, he writes...
There are many reasons for believing that the new wave of electric vehicles will be enduring but there are no guarantees.That certainly is a lot more upbeat than Petersen's "bah humbuggery," though he does say there will be shakeouts, noting, "predicting the winning manufacturers is a more thorny issue. Certainly their strategies are healthily different and there will be survival of the fittest. This time ‘round, they will not all bite the dust and an extremely large new industry is in the making."
The electric car is on a much firmer footing this time ‘round and this is based on a market underpinned by new laws, far better batteries and technology that makes the car outperform in an increasing number of respects...
One of the main arguments for being much more optimistic this time ‘round is the huge number of benefits now offered.
Operational costs are plummeting. Plug in hybrids and affordable pure electric cars are arriving with useful electric ranges. That means appreciable use of electricity at no more than one quarter of the cost of gasoline.
All electric family cars with 250 miles range have now appeared. There is even a clear development path to merging hybrid and pure electric technology in cars that have longer range than today's conventional cars.
So will EVs be successful this time around? IDTechEx gives a resounding Yes to that one.
Turbine Hybrids
The idea of powering an automobile with a gas turbine has been around for over a half a century now. Back as early as the 1950s carmakers were experimenting with them, hoping they would do for automobiles what they did for piston-powered airliners. The idea was clearly feasible, as the circa 1963 Rover BRM racer illustrated, they were thirsty, noisy, generated a ton of emissions and produced a lot of high-temperature waste heat that posed safety issues. In short, they just weren't ready for prime time.
That now appears to be changing with the announcement last month that a consortium of the now Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover group, along with SR Drives Group and Bladon Jet secured $1.8 million in funding from Britain's Technology Strategy Board to develop a Ultra Lightweight Range Extender (ULRE) for "the next generation of electric vehicles."
Jaguar Land Rover was brought in because of Rover’s long history with gas turbine experimentation and Jaguar's automotive integration capabilities. SD Drives will provide the electronics and electric power side of the effort, while Bladon -- makers of the soda pop can-sized micro jet -- brings its micro-turbine talents.
Presumably, the idea is that instead of using a bulky, heavy and inefficient IC engine to power the series hybrid generator -- or a fuel cell -- the consortium's ULRE will be use something akin to the Bladon turbine, though I am guessing it will have to be scaled up from its diminutive size at the moment, and will probably not look like something you'd hang on wing of Boeing 767 or Airbus 330. It will likely be something more industrial looking, since what it needs to do is produce torque, not thrust.
Now, to be honest, I really wasn't all that enamored by this story when it started to make the rounds of the Internet under headlines like "Jaguar Developing Turbine Hybrid." That happens to be only one-third correct. True the ULRE will eventually be mounted into a Jaguar demonstration vehicle, but the real story is the drive, not the car.
It wasn't until another microturbine-in-a-hybrid story appeared, this one about the Velozzi Solo, that I figured there might be a trend emerging here. Velozzi announced that it was partnering with Capstone to incorporate one of its 65-kilowatt microturbines to recharge the supercar's battery pack and ultracapacitors, which is an interesting development –maybe the first of its kind. The company says the car will be available yet this year and have an EV-range of 200 miles, as well as an extended range of up to 1,000 miles.
Interestingly, this isn't the first car with a Capstone turbine. The CMT-380 rolled out late last year sports one as well, and its designer told Tom Slater at Green Beat that even a stripped-down version of the Capstone turbine manufactured in China still takes a $15,000 bite out of the budget, so he's not sure how Bladon and company are going to produce not just an ultra lightweight range extender but a commercially affordable one.
Peugeot's Bright Idea
Now here's an idea that you could see coming eight kilometers (5 miles) off. When Peugeot begins selling its Ion electric car (a re-badged Mitsubishi i-MiEV) in France this year, it is going to offer its customers discounted car rental rates as part of the deal.
The Ion has a range of around 160 km (100 mi), ideal for most daily commutes and errand-running, but what happens if you want to run the family to Grenoble in winter or Biarritz in summer? They probably aren't going to tolerate stopping a couple times to recharge over the 300 km trip (or they could just take the TGV and get there in three hours). And from Paris to Biarritz is nearly 670 km (415 mi).
You solve the problem -- as we've long argued on EV World -- by just renting a car for those occasional trips out of town. Now Peugeot will let its Ion owners do that at a discount. It's a nice service and selling point that I'll wager every other BEV manufacturer will offer at some point.
Amazon Bound: Electrifying Ride
As you may know, I started working on a book last year: it's entitled "Electrifying Rides -- The Breakthrough Electric Vehicles of the Last Decade and the Next," What you don't know -- other than my friend and mentor Ron Gompertz -- is that I temporarily shelved it late last fall. It was simply too ambitious a project as it was unfolding at that time: one that would require me to spend a lot of time and money acquiring photo rights, not to mention rewriting much of it after Ron critiqued the first few chapters. ("It's too technical and boring, Bill," is basically what he said.) I still want to pick it up and finish it, but I decided I needed to start much more modestly.
It was while I was listening to Steve Jobs introducing the iPad, that I suddenly realized how I could do just that. It was one of those "duh!" moments when something so painfully obvious suddenly strikes you. I was reading a lady's account of how she published her first couple books on Amazon's Kindle e-reader that it occurred to me; I have more than a decade of material I've written for EV World, probably hundreds of thousands of words, that only a relative handful of people have ever read. Why not comply that material into a collection and publish it on Amazon, and then later on Apple's iBook store when it launches.
So, last weekend, I started doing just that only to discover that there is just too much material for one book, which I have entitled, "Electrifying Ride: The Lost Decade." At more than 230 pages, it covers material (actually only a fraction of it, as it turns out) I wrote starting in 1999 through 2004. A subsequent volume - Book Two -- will continue the timeline from 2005 through 2009, assuming anyone actually buys the first book on Amazon.
It took me about three days to compile the material and put it into a Kindle-compliant format. Now I need to go through it carefully and make revisions and corrections. After that, my wife has promised to proofread it for me, since as you know, I am terrible at proofing my own material. My goal is to have ready to publish on Amazon by March 1st. When it does, I'll let you know. If you don't have a Kindle reader, Amazon does have an app that allows you to read its ebooks on PCs. A Mac OSX version is also in the works.
This is going to be an interesting experiment in self-publishing, one that I hope will introduce an entirely new audience to our EV World.
Until next time, stay plugged into EVWorld...
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