by Frankie Berti

New York City’s Department of Transportation and Alta Bicycle Share, Inc. will be opening the largest bike share system in the country by summer of 2012. Ten thousand bikes in 600 stations around Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the surrounding burroughs will be available 24 hours a day throughout the year for short bike rides.

The Details:

Alta Bicycle Share, the same company that runs Boston’s New Balance Hubway and Washington D.C.’s Capital Bikeshare, will be running the program. New York City’s program is funded by private sponsorship and user fees, much like Miami’s DECOBIKE. Alta will be responsible for installation, maintenance, repairs, cleaning, and customer support. The bike stations will be solar powered, thus reducing energy costs, do not require roadwork for installation.

Rental rates will be determined after the contracts are signed, but Alta is promising affordable annual memberships, costing less than a monthly unlimited ride MetroCard (around $90-95). Unlimited weekly membership would cost $20-25 and unlimited 24-hour access would be $8-10. The NYC bike share will include the obligatory smart phone app, which will use the system’s wireless technology to find real-time bike and station availability.

Like the DECOBIKE bike sharing program in Miami Beach, the bikes will be available in 30 to 45 minute sessions. Longer trips will incur a small, graduated usage fee. Check out the Boston and Washington D.C. bike share programs to compare rates. Check out NYC Bike Share to see how it works.

Who will benefit:

Bike shares are great for short trips: they reduce bike parking, storage issues, and as well as theft. This share program will help New Yorkers connect to different modes of mass transit where subways don’t reach. And Alta Bike and the NYDOT will be hosting demonstrations, open houses, and workshops throughout the city for those who are new to the concept. Alta Share estimates that it will employ 200 locals to help run the share.

The Benchmarking Bike and Walking Report shows that New York is in the top five states for bicycling and walking levels, and that New York City ranks in the top five cities for the same. The city’s transit system already tops the nation in its scope; items like this bike sharing program no doubt make biking the Big Apple that much more accessible, especially considering that 54 percent of all trips New Yorkers make are less than two miles, the perfect distance for a quick bike ride.

New York City has one of the highest bike userships in the country, but it also ranks in the top 10 cities with the highest fatality rates for bicyclists and pedestrians. Mayor Bloomberg acknowledged this in his State of the City address in January: “…the reality is more and more New Yorkers are biking, and the more bike lanes we put in, the fewer deaths and serious injuries we have on the streets.” Of course, that depends on education and biker awareness. But it seems that the government will be providing the infrastructure support needed, as per the mayor’s address: “We’ll also make our city smarter and safer by deploying Traffic Enforcement Agents to safety hot spots at key intersections, doubling the number of 20 mile-per-hour zones for schools, and continuing adding more miles of protected bike lanes.”

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

by Christopher DeMorro

Last week the California Air Resource Board voted to pass new regulations that would require automakers to put 1.4 million plug-in electric and hybrid cars on the roads by 2025. But as I pointed out in the initial post, automakers can get around making that many EV’s by simply “overcomplying” with a greenhouse-gas reduction target.

By overcomplying, CARB means that automakers who reduce their overall fleet emissions by 2-grams-per-mile more than the stated goals of a 34 percent reduction from the 2016 GHG emissions standard can sell about half as many zero or low-emissions vehicles. That could cut in half the 1.4 million clean car goal, which would be a boon to automakers who see the goal of 15 percent clean car sales as largely unachievable, short of a massive and permanent gas price spike.

So, not only is CARB now mandating what kinds of cars automakers should make, but they are also leaving a massive, easily-attainable loophole that will cut the legs right out under from the overly-ambitious goal.

Do two bone-headed moves make for good policy? Probably not. CARB hasn’t even left the door open for discussion of this move, and since 15 other states apply to CARB standards, this affects the whole nation, not just the Golden State.

Does anyone here really believe that by 2025, 15 percent of cars on the road will be electric or plug-in hybrids? I don’t. It is far more likely that Americans will transition from huge cars into smaller, more fuel-efficient offerings that don’t have a huge price premium like hybrids and EV’s. Nationwide, hybrids only account for less than 3 percent of all new car sales. California expects a five-fold increase in less than 15 years. I am all for electric cars and hybrids, but the last time California mandated that automakers build and sell electric cars, it ended poorly for all involved.

Instead of mandating the cars automakers should build, CARB should instead figure out how to make electric vehicle ownership easy and affordable while at the same time increase gas taxes on the cash-strapped state to help fix up some of their many crumbling roads and bridges. The market will figure things out from there.

Only CARB has the ability to simultaneously piss off the private industry and environmentalists in one fell swoop.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

by Jim Motavalli

The big electric car launches of 2011 failed to generate the consumer excitement that some had predicted. But as new battery technologies emerge and tougher mileage standards kick in, automakers and analysts still believe that electric vehicles have a bright future.

At the Detroit Auto Show early this month, I sat down with some Nissan executives who were celebrating the sale of the 10,000th Leaf battery car in the U.S. (and 20,000th worldwide). Behind them on the company’s stand was the eNV200, a plug-in version of one of Nissan’s minivans and one of three new electric cars Nissan will have on the road by 2015. Brendan Jones, a Nissan marketing and sales strategist, told me, “From a Leaf perspective, 2011 was a great year, and very positive for the company.” He said that Nissan’s EV sales had topped those of any other automaker in history.

By traditional auto standards, 10,000 sales of a much-hyped model in a full calendar year are disappointing. The Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, equally celebrated, did slightly worse, with sales of 7,671 in 2011. By contrast, Nissan sold 114,991 Sentras and 268,981 Altimas last year, and Chevrolet sold 204,808 Malibus.

Since the Obama administration offered subsidies to ease the EVs way forward, the early sales performance became the target of political attacks, particularly after a Volt caught fire following a government crash test. (The car was later exonerated by federal regulators.) The Republican Party’s website headlined an article “Failed Promise: Obama’s Million Electric Cars ‘Overly Optimistic.’” Mitt Romney, the son of an auto company president, described the Volt “an idea whose time has not come,” and Rush Limbaugh said bluntly, “Nobody wants to buy any.”

But much of the reporting on the subject, and the attacks, failed to tell the full story. Neither the Volt nor Leaf were available nationwide in 2011, and both were plagued by supply problems. Leaf customers on the East Coast, who put down early deposits, should be getting their cars in the coming months, and Nissan hopes to double production and delivery in 2012. The EV technology is still a novelty for prospective buyers, but the necessary charging networks, though still embryonic, are growing rapidly.

Yet while the big electric car launches of 2011 failed to find as many buyers as hoped, automakers and analysts still see increasing success for electric vehicles in the U.S. and in global markets, including China, which will soon be the world’s largest. The future, they say, lies in new battery technologies that will lower the cost and increase the range of EVs. And tougher mileage standards for U.S. auto fleets, set to kick in over the next decade, will give the cars a big boost.

Felix Kramer, who founded CalCars.org to promote plug-in hybrids, is optimistic. “In spite of press reports of disappointing sales, we don’t hear about unsold cars stuck on dealer lots or buyers’ remorse. We do hear current and prospective owners talking about the features they want in the next cars that come to market.” He points out that Ford, Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, BMW, and most other carmakers will be rolling out new EV models over the next two years.

“Early adopter” buyers tend to be vocal boosters — a group of loyal Volt owners sent a letter after the fire controversy broke, headlined, “Why are Chevy Volt Owners Keeping Their Keys?” Paul Scott, a director of Plug In America who doubles as a Leaf salesman in the Los Angeles area, says electric cars are doing great. “Instead of a few hundred EV drivers, we now have almost 20,000. A high percentage of these are vocal advocates of the technology... As long as the external costs of dirty energy are not in the price, we’ll be at a disadvantage, but the gap will close eventually, one way or the other, and EVs will dominate in every way.”

But clearly, there were unreasonable expectations for electric car liftoff. “I think we, particularly the government, created too much hype and conversation about both pure EVs and plug-in hybrids,” David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research in Michigan, told me. “The fact is that the economics are not here yet... The problem was that they invested in commercialization before it was ready for prime time. The fact is that just because you want something to happen doesn’t make it happen.”

The U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium has set a cost goal of $250 per kilowatt-hour stored, but many packs today come in at three times that. A $7,500 federal income tax credit (and some state subsidies) helps take the sting out of high prices, but the cars (which currently start at more than $30,000) are still expensive.

Does this mean that EVs are doomed? Not at all, but it does mean that early numbers are likely to be relatively low. Cole is siding with many in Detroit when he says that plug-in hybrid technology (which, as in the Volt, combines an electric motor and batteries with a gas engine acting as a generator) “will be the long-term winner” because it solves the “range anxiety” issue presented by battery cars that travel 100 miles on a charge. Even with that advantage, however, GM’s sales goal of 45,000 for the Volt in 2012 may be overly optimistic. “I want some of whatever they’re smoking,” said Eric Evarts, associate autos editor at Consumer Reports.

But cars running solely on batteries will get cheaper and offer increased range. Automakers are pouring billions into battery research, and some predict that pack costs will be cut in half within five years. “All of the manufacturers are working very hard on the technology, as they should, so they are prepared when the economics work to launch product in high volume,” Cole said.

Bob Lutz, who famously dismissed global warming as “a crock of [expletive]” when he was vice chairman of General Motors, nevertheless earned the title “Father of the Chevrolet Volt” for shepherding the car to production. Lutz told me that, by 2025, 20 to 25 percent of new car sales will be hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or battery electric “merely because of government regulations — by 2025, American auto fleets will have to achieve 54.5 mpg.” And he added that European regulations are similarly demanding. “No one knows how to meet these regulations without massive hybridization and electrification,” he said. In the film Revenge of the Electric Car, Lutz says that “the electrification of the automobile is inevitable.”

Aside from government regulation, other factors likely to boost plug-in cars are the quest for energy independence — since electricity, especially when it’s generated from renewable fuels, is domestic — and state efforts, especially in California, to combat global warming and cut local pollution from tailpipes.

Lutz’ predictions are in line with the industry and the analysts who follow it. According to the Boston Consulting Group in a 2010 report, all forms of electrics will have “a likely overall penetration of 26 percent” in the global market by 2020. And that explains why — despite the slow sales — the stands at the Detroit Auto Show, both foreign and domestic, were crowded with electric cars and plug-in hybrids. “For the next 20 years, the internal-combustion engine will be the leading powertrain, but increasingly the electric cars will dominate,” I was told by Peter Marks, then the CEO of major auto supplier Bosch. “My grandchildren will drive electric cars, I’m convinced of it. It’s inevitable that cars will become electric.”

The pace of EV adoption in Europe and China — which has the potential to develop a market far outstripping that of the U.S.— has also been slow in the early days, despite subsidies that in some cases dwarf those in the U.S. John Gartner, an auto analyst with Pike Research, attributes the sluggish sales pace around the world to “a combination of the automakers making the vehicles available later than intended, the twin natural disasters in Japan, and the sluggish global economy.”

According to a survey from JATO Dynamics, by last September only 5,222 EVs were registered in Europe, with Germany (1,020 cars) in the lead, despite the lowest subsidy ($491) on the continent. Denmark, with very lucrative $26,000 tax credits possible on EVs, registered only 283 of them in the first half of 2011. JATO concluded that perks associated with EVs — such as free city-center parking in Oslo, Norway and access to bus lanes —mattered more than price as a determining factor. In Norway, despite lower subsidies, EV sales were three times those of Denmark.

But price is still a problem for many European buyers, despite the EV’s significantly lower operating costs. Even with a $7,700 government subsidy, the Leaf in Great Britain (where it costs $44,000) is $10,900 more than the very fuel-efficient VW Golf Bluemotion. The Leaf is 10 cents a mile cheaper to run, but it takes a lot of dimes to total $10,900.

Pike Research predicts that China, with the world’s largest auto market, will also have the leading EV market by 2015. China, with 150 automakers, has no less than 55 companies now building electrified vehicles or launching development programs. Some EV builders, such as BYD (with a 10 percent investment by financier Warren Buffett), are also major battery makers. Chinese government subsidies are among the most generous in the world. In five major cities, consumers can tap into $9,474 in rebates (paid to automakers rather than car buyers) for battery electrics and $7,895 for plug-in hybrids. Pike’s Gartner, who calls China’s electric sales so far “disappointing,” also points out that, beginning January 1, all electrified vehicles were exempted from vehicle usage taxes, “which is likely to boost sales there.”

China set a government goal of enabling production of 500,000 electric cars and buses a year by the end of 2011, but its actual rollout is at this point considerably smaller, only a few thousand annually. BYD’s plan to start selling electric cars in the U.S. has stalled. A China Business News count identified only 10 registered electric cars in Shanghai (which has 23 million people) last fall, and 25 in Hangzhou.

But Chinese central planning could dictate that the industry will ramp up quickly. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has called for a new “road map” for green cars, and the EV effort is heavily supported by China’s state-run electric companies. As the New York Times reported, “With China expected to surpass the United States in the number of all vehicles on the road by as early as 2020, the government-run utilities see it as their job to provide an alternative to imported oil as a way to power several hundred million cars, trucks, and buses.”

China is a sleeping giant when it comes to electric cars, and that’s a pretty good analogy for the rest of the global industry, too. If you judge by the cars on the road today, EVs aren’t impressive — but it’s the potential just around the corner that has gotten automakers and governments excited. Consumers aren’t yet on board in large numbers, but if the cars continue to improve and get cheaper, they will be.

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

by Christopher DeMorro

Electric vehicles are finally starting to saturate the market, though some of the same old arguments continue to be made against the limited range of EV’s. But a new study but two doctoral students claims that 95 percent of all single-destination trips could be made by today’s electric vehicles. Surprised? Don’t be.

Cars like the Nissan LEAF and Mitsubishi i are rated at a real-world range of between 70 and 80 miles. That doesn’t sound like much range, but two Columbia University students analyzed data from a 2009 National Household Travel study, and came to the conclusion that only 1 percent of all single-destination trips were farther than 70 miles. An overwhelming majority (95 percent) of these trips were under 30 miles in length, well within today’s range limitations.

But the doctoral students Garret Fitzgerald and Rob van Haaren (who run the website Solar Journey USA) did not stop there, going on to tackle the American commuter mentality. Their findings? 93 percent of commuters travel less than 100 miles to work every day, just beyond the average range of today’s EV’s. But the average commute was 13.6 miles, well within the range of today’s EV’s.

Of course that does not solve the problem of high prices and limited public charging options. EV’s may not make sense for everybody. But, once the prices come down and EV’s can be competitive with today’s compact cars, EV’s will make sense for a lot of people, no matter what the politicians and pundits try to tell you.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

While the major automakers have unveiled new electric plug-in and hybrid cars at this week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit, including a cheaper version of the Toyota Prius, industry observers say consumer demand for alternative fuel cars remains tepid. Even as auto sales in the U.S. increased by 10 percent last year, sales of “alternative source” light vehicles increased by just 2.3 percent, according to one analyst group. Overall, sales of hybrids and plug-ins dropped to 2.2 percent of all auto sales last year, down from 2.4 percent in 2010, the New York Times reported. So even as automakers say they believe electric vehicles are an important part of the future (with Ford, Chevrolet, and Nissan also unveiling new hybrids this week), some major players concede they might be forced to reduce production. On Tuesday, a General Motors executive said the company may cut production of the plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt if sales don’t achieve expectations during the first half of 2012. Last year, the company sold about 8,000 Volts — about half of its target.

Photo by Kerry Woo/flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from Yale Environment 360

by Dave Hurst

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recently announced that they are doing an official investigation into fires in the Chevrolet Volt battery packs. Essentially, if the packs are not discharged after a catastrophic crash, some of these packs have caught fire hours, days or weeks after the crash. While this does not seem to present a safety issue for owners, it could for first responders, towing companies and repair facilities. Jordan Weissmann, writing for The Atlantic, claimed that this is “an unpleasant story for GM. But it’s also bad news for the rest of the electric car movement.”

To some degree, he may be right. The Volt is a symbol or halo vehicle for GM, and those who are eager to see plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) fail will certainly enjoy this and make some hay from it. Giving the PEV haters an opportunity to point to a safety issue is definitely not ideal for continued growth of the market in general. While Neil Cavuto’s uneducated, seething hatred of the Volt is distinctive (and seemingly based in politics rather than anything engineering related), the point is that a symbolic vehicle whose battery failure results in a fire is a dramatic enough event to even draw questions from non-automotive writers like Mr. Weissmann.

However, I don’t agree that the symbolism will ultimately drag down the entire market. It does seem likely to hurt Volt sales in the short-term, but long-term this looks more like the typical growing pains of a new product, rather than the death of the PEV. More likely, the impact will be a few new model delays as automakers look to shore up any outstanding safety questions that may stem from the Volt fires. I do not expect to see automakers lambasting each other’s battery technology. We did see sniping between Nissan and GM over the BEV vs. PHEV issue in the early months, but nobody wants to see a shadow cast over lithium batteries used in vehicles.

For GM’s part, they have responded quite reasonably to this issue. GM has been communicating with owners, offering loaners and now offering buyback for those concerned (no one to date has accepted this offer). Contrasting GM’s actions to Toyota’s response to unintended acceleration allegations last spring, we see a very different strategy. Claiming that this type of problem will kill the entire PEV market is analogous (albeit not exactly the same) to claiming that Toyota’s unintended acceleration would kill the entire midsize gas-powered vehicle market. Perhaps even more relevant, several years back, Dell recalled batteries from nearly every laptop product line due to a fire risk. That didn’t kill the market for Dell laptops.

Mr. Weissmann came full circle in the article, pointing out that, “There’s also no sign at this point that the Volt is any more of a fire risk than your average gasoline-powered car”, wrapping up “How GM handles it will have lasting implications not just for the company, but the industry as a whole.” I agree that GM could have harpooned the whole PEV market, by laying the blame at some fundamental lithium technology. But that has not been the case. Are the American consumers smart enough to see the difference between a single, although symbolic, vehicle issue and a fundamental vehicle technology? I’m betting they are.

An analyst for Pike Research, Dave Hurst studies emerging markets in electric transportation.

by Christopher DeMorro

As long as there have been automobiles, there have been people trying to go faster and faster. The whole sport of land speed racing is a revolving-door of record breaking, and with renewed interest in alternative fuels, people are finding all sorts of ways of going faster. A team of college students from Boise State University with no prior experience in land speed racing, built a veggie oil-powered Chevy pickup, and smashed the standing record for veggie-oil trucks.

Land Speed Racing 101

The team they formed, called Greenspeed, is made up of students from Boise State’s College of Engineering. Led by Dave Schenker and Patrick Johnston, in the span of a few months Greenspeed was able to pick up over 70 sponsors and acquire over $100,000 in donated parts that would go towards a 700 horsepower Chevy S-10 that can run on diesel or straight vegetable oil. I spoke with Patrick Johnston, who is the VP of the Greenspeed team, about what it took to put this crew together.

“The idea goes back over two years ago,” says Johnston. “The school wasn’t exactly keen on a bunch of students going after land speed records.” The idea originated with Dave Schenker, who had tinkered with diesels for years. Johnston joined up “because who wouldn’t want to do this?”

Once the school finally acquiesced, Schenker, Johnston, and the rest of the Greenspeed team began work in May of 2011. “Dave got a lot of those sponsors, and all of us contributed to building this car,” says Johnston. “I cannot emphasize enough what a team effort this was.” To get started, each member pitched in $100 to buy a 1998 S-10 pickup. “We wanted something that would be easy to identify over a purpose built streamliner that looks as if it can only be used on the salt and not the every day commute,” says Johnston.

Though Boise State eventually agreed to the student-led land speed racing team, Greenspeed went above and beyond the safety measures required by the sanctioning bodies of land speed racing of their own volition. “For example, to go as fast as we planned on going, we only needed a 4-point rollcage, but we installed a 10-point cage,” explains Johnston. “Instead of a 5-point harness, we use a 7-point harness.”

There is no such thing as too much safety when it comes to land speed racing, especially when you’re sitting behind a 700 horsepower 5.9 liter Cummins engine (yes, the same one that came in 90’s Dodge Rams.) Converting the Cummins to run vegetable oil was a simple matter of installing a P7100 mechanical injection system, a separate tank for the veggie oil, and a heating element to ensure the veggie oil is thin enough to run through the system. The engine itself was heavily upgraded, and capable of running 110 PSI of boost.

Chasing The Dream

But building a land speed racer is neither easy, quick, nor cheap, as Greenspeed was soon to find out. “We wanted to set a record at Speedweek, but on the day we were supposed to leave, the engine still wasn’t in the truck.” This year’s event began on a Saturday, though Greenspeed didn’t end up leaving for the Bonneville Salt Flats until Tuesday.

“We got there, and a lot of people were blown away that we had put together this whole thing in just a few months,” says Johnston. While they got a lot of things right, passing tech inspection is no easy thing, and the team had to make a few alterations. By the time they passed tech inspection, it was the last day of Speedweek. “We managed to make one run and get our Class C license.”

Speedweek behind them, the team had a license, and tried to attend two other land speed racing events, but encountered engine problems during their second run (cracking two cylinders) and the third event was rained out. With the season drawing to a close, they started looking for other venues. “Dave got in touch with SCTA about El Mirage, which is a dry lake bed. The SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) was glad to have us, and so we headed there,” says Johnston.

That was earlier this month. After an initial pass of 139 MPH running veggie oil, Greenspeed’s S-10 pickup made a second run on their blend of cottenseed and sunflower oil. The result was a record-breaking speed of 155.331MPH, blowing away the previous veggie oil record in the diesel truck class. And that’s how a bunch of college kids set a new land speed record, though according to Johnston "Had we been on the salt, where we’d get more traction, we could have gone even faster. There is a lot of power left in that truck."

So what are their future plans? “Well we want to continue promoting the club, and there was talk about doing some drag racing too. The next major milestone though will be beating the standing regular diesel record of 215 MPH,” says Johnston. According to him, the S-10 is more than capable of chasing down that record.

And at the end of the day, that is what land speed racing is all about. Chasing records and chasing dreams. Green is the new fast, and Greenspeed is just the vanguard of an ever-growing movement of environmentally responsible racing. My hat is off to them.

If you’d like to follow Greenspeed’s progress, or just send them a virtual high-five, check out their website and their Facebook page too.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

by Dave Hurst

Recently many EV observers have been disappointed by pricing for two plug-in electric vehicles. First, the Toyota Prius plug-in announced a price of $32,760 (including destination charge), which is about $3,000 higher than I had hoped to see. Last week, Ford announced the Focus EV price of $39,995 (including destination charge). Again, this price is a disappointment as I had hoped Ford, with its claimed plant flexibility, would be able to provide pricing that matched or bested the Nissan LEAF (a custom EV platform) at $37,250 (SL model). Suddenly, $40,000 for a Volt, CODA Automotive’s $45,000 Sedan and even $57,400 for the more luxurious Tesla Model S do not seem as uncompetitive.

I have said before that the PEV market needs lower prices. The Ford Focus EV, priced at $39,995, is $16,500 above the equivalent packaged gas-powered Focus (Titanium package). With all the power electronics and software (inverter, charger, BMS, etc.), the motor, a 23 kWh battery pack, and Li-ion battery prices of nearly $800/kWh, these costs are not at all surprising. Similarly, the Prius plug-in is priced about $5,400 more than a Prius Four, though these packages are not quite identical. Again, add the power electronics, the 4.4 kWh Li-ion pack, and telematics, and the Prius’ price is about what you’d expect. This increasingly indicates that Nissan may in fact be running a deficit on their LEAF program, despite their assertions to the contrary.

These high prices lead to questions about the viability of PEVs for mass adoption. While some are already speculating on the collapse of the PEV market, it is too early to claim the market as a failure. How will the market make it past the early adopter stage and grow more mainstream? Aside from old-school incentives, there are four main tactics that automakers can pursue:

1) In the very near term (approximately 2012-2013), high residual values and low lease rates in the PEV market will play an important role in attracting consumers;

2) In the near to mid-term (2012-2015), increasing connectivity and other unique features or technologies to PEVs will attract increasingly mainstream interest (Ford’s success with SYNC could be considered proof-of-concept for this);

3) In the mid-term (2014-2016), utilizing PEVs to capitalize on credits towards government regulations for more strict fuel economy and emissions rules (for California Air Resource Board’s ZEV mandate as well as CAFE rules);

4) In the longer-term (2015 and later), the cost of ownership of PEVs will have to become even more favorable with a combination of lower manufacturing costs, lower battery costs, stable electricity costs, and higher petroleum costs.

The disappointment in pricing for PEVs so far seems likely to be repeated as Honda, Hyundai, and VW get in the game in the next two years. While these sticker prices may be tough for some to swallow in the early years, the real test of market sustainability will be prices for 2015 and 2016 model year PEVs. If PEV prices aren’t starting to fall significantly as battery costs begin to flatten out in the mid-$500’s, the viability of PEVs as a mainstream vehicle will be more widely questioned.

An analyst for Pike Research, Dave Hurst studies emerging markets in electric transportation.

by Charis Michelsen

The enlargement of small cars in America is no secret and no surprise – it’s been happening for years. Part of it is the American assumption that bigger = better, but changing safety regulations also have to be taken into account.

Because of the safety regulations, foreign small cars adapted to the American market can’t escape enlargement either. Mitsubishi’s i-MiEV, tiny and cute in its native Japan so it can navigate the super-narrow city streets and alleys (sometimes barely an inch wider than the tiny car itself and that is not an exaggeration), will be bigger and heavier in order to comply with American safety standards. It will also be called the Mitsubishi i, rather than i-MiEV.

The i-MiEVs meant for North American consumption will be produced in Mitsubishi’s Mizushima plant, where the most visible evidence of their intended market will be the bigger bumpers. Much of the Japanese news on the subject reads as somewhat indignant that the Americanized i-MiEV will sport front and rear bumpers 11 inches longer and just over 4 inches wider than the original, although whether that’s due to it spoiling the lines of the car or just that it’s getting changed at all isn’t really clear.

The new specifications for the i also include an advanced air bag system which will detect passenger seat location and use that to control how far the bag expands, as well as tire air pressure monitors and other (unspecified) safety features. The engine torque has also been increased to improve performance, although speed limits and driver behavior inside most cities are more or less comparable across both markets.

The i will reach the American west coast (and Hawaii) by late November, with plans to offer it for sale across the rest of the U.S. and also in Canada by the end of 2012.

Reprinted with permission from Gas 2.0

by Steve Duda

Electronic vehicle charging stations are soon to be a ubiquitous part of city landscapes. With the current drive to establish a workable infrastructure for alternative fuel vehicles, these stations will be found everywhere from parking lots to retail centers to parking structures. Now, a Germany-based group of designers and researchers are rethinking both the look and the composition of these stations.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials, in collaboration with industrial partner Bosecker Verteilerbau Sachsen, are seeking to develop new materials and designs for charging stations based on eco-friendly principles.

Currently, most charging stations sport a rather utilitarian, industrial look that relies on steel cladding to protect cables, power outlets and electronic switchgear. The team’s solution is to replace the steel cladding with honeycomb panels made of a wood-plastic composite (WPC). The most widespread use of WPC is in outdoor deck floors, but it is also used for railings, fences, landscaping timbers, cladding and siding, park benches, molding and trim, window and door frames and indoor furniture. Manufacturers claim that wood-plastic composite is more environmentally friendly and requires less maintenance than the alternatives of solid wood treated with preservatives or solid wood of rot-resistant species.

WPC is a natural fiber composite made up of 70 parts of cellulosic wood fiber derived from sustainable resources to 30 parts of thermoplastic polypropylene. Its advantages, apart from the high proportion of sustainable raw materials, are that it is 100 percent recyclable and contains no tropical timber. The housings are manufactured in the form of modular components that can be clipped together as required to create a wide variety of different designs, thus allowing them to blend in with the surrounding architecture. Their modular structure also enables the composite panels to be removed easily during repairs. The researchers are testing samples of the material in a climate chamber to assess its resistance to extreme temperature conditions and determine which additives or types of coating provide the best weather protection. The team has almost completed its first prototype of the new WPC housing and is about to start outdoor testing.

Reprinted with permission from EarthTechling