Green Wombat

The hundreds of thousands of hybrid cars sold in the United States since their arrival on these shores in 1999 must be putting a dent in oil imports, right? Not quite. Or at least not yet. According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, fuel efficient electric-gasoline cars like the Toyota (TM) Prius and Honda (HMC) Civic have saved a grand total of 5.5 million barrels of oil over the past eight years. On the other hand, the U.S. was importing 8.5 million barrels of oil a day in 2003 to power cars and light trucks. "Hybrid electric vehicles would have to replace a significant portion of the total light duty vehicle fleet to have an impact on petroleum imports," NREL researchers concluded. The lab calculated gasoline savings based on fuel efficiency data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and reports from hybrid car owners and then used modeling software to calculate how many hybrids were on the road in any given year. Despite the negligible consequence of hybrids on oil imports so far, researchers were optimistic about their potential, noting that hybrid sales have grown 72 percent a year over the past five years and that such vehicles were 45 percent more fuel efficient than similar-sized conventional cars in 2006. "Although the fuel savings from hybrid electric vehicles to date is relatively small compared to the total fuel use, as the technology matures and these numbers increase they can have a significant impact in reducing our overall transportation fuel use,” said NREL senior research engineer Matthew Thornton in a statement. Of course, that impact would be magnified if General Motors (GM), Ford (F) and other U.S. automakers focused less on creating hybrid versions of monster SUVs like the Chevrolet Tahoe and more on developing small and mid-sized hybrids. Or all-electric cars, for that matter.

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photos: green wombat
Talk about a clean commute: As part of an $11 million green cars initiative, Google is creating a plug-in hybrid car-sharing fleet. Employees will be able to book a super fuel-efficient plug-in Prius online through a partnership with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, charge the car under a solar-powered canopy at the Googleplex and, eventually, feed electricity from the car’s battery back to the grid. Google (GOOG) and California utility PG&E (PCG) demo’d the technology yesterday in Mountain View during the launch of the RechargeIt.org initiative from Google.org, the search giant’s philanthropic arm.

Under sunny skies, Google.org chief Larry Brilliant drove a white plug-in Prius emblazoned with the Google colors into a parking bay whose roof is covered with solar panels, part of the company’s 1.6 megawatt solar installation – the nation’s largest. He got out of the car and grabbed one of the retractable power cords hanging from the roof and plugged in the Prius to applause from the Googlers and guests.  (Plug-in hybrids feature larger, rechargeable batteries that allow the cars to travel further on electric power, dramatically increasing fuel efficiency as the gasoline engine is used less.) "We hope to demonstrate the potential of plug-in hybrid cars and vehicle-to-grid technologies as a way to create a more, secure and efficient green energy system," Brilliant said as nearly a dozen other Priuses sat parked behind him.  A123 Systems/Hymotion has converted two Priuses for Google, which will use them to gather data on plug-in hybrid performance. So far, the Google Priuses – named Galapagos and Great Barrier Reef – have averaged about 74 miles per gallon – that’s 3.2 liters per 100 kilometers for readers residing in the metric world – and produce 68 percent fewer emissions than the average U.S. car.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who rode to the event on a bicycle, showed how plug-in hybrids can feed electricity to the grid at peak demand times to reduce the need to tap greenhouse-gas emitting power plants.  "I happen to have a Prius but not a plug-in. Now I’ll have to try to get one myself," Brin said. "It would be very nice not to have the inconvenience of going to gas stations."  He plugged a power cord into a Prius and then pressed a button on a laptop that sent a wireless signal to the car, which began sending electricity back to the grid.

"I think the potential for plug-in hybrid cars and all-electric cars is really great," Google co-founder Larry Page told Green Wombat as he stood by his blue Huffy bicycle. "I love the demo with the plug-in to grid. If you have tens of thousands or millions of these cars, the amount of energy they can produce is much more than the normal generation capacity."

As part of the RechargeIt program, Google will invest $10 million in alternative transportation technologies and is giving $1 million to various groups to advance plug-in hybrids. Small change, perhaps, by Google standards, but as electric car companies like Silicon Valley’s Tesla Motors have shown, you don’t need Detroit and Tokyo’s billion-dollar budgets to make significant strides in automotive technology. Tesla, for instance, will put its Roadster super car on the highway for about $100 million.

But efforts like Google’s plug-in hybrid car-sharing program may have the most potential to light a fire under the automakers, which have so far dragged their feet on developing such cars. When up to 100 converted Priuses begin cruising the highways and byways of the Bay Area, many consumers are going to have the same reaction Green Wombat had after a ride in the Tesla Roadster: I want one. Now imagine if other Silicon Valley companies – say, Yahoo (YHOO) – follow Google’s lead and create similar car-sharing programs. Microsoft (MSFT), for instance, itself has a huge solar array at its Mountain View campus.

"We hope programs like this will encourage manufacurers to make similar commerically viable plug in cars available. We know there’s a pent-up demand for such a product," said Enterprise executive Greg Stubblefield. And we’re anxious to see manufacturers progress in that direction. As we would certainly be a buyer for these vehicles."

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photos: green wombat
California utility PG&E has given Green Wombat an exclusive look at new
technology that could provide a big boost to both the nascent
electric car market and renewable energy production. In the coming years, the utility plans to buy thousands of plug-in hybrid and electric car batteries once they’ve outlived their usefulness for transportation and install them in the basements of office towers and at electrical substations to store green energy. That will cut peak demand for expensive – and greenhouse gas-emitting – electricity. On a recent morning Green Wombat went down to a sub-basement below PG&E’s (PCG) San Francisco headquarters where the utility parks its plug-in hybrid Toyota (TM) and Mercedes fuel-cell car. Against one wall a nickel metal hydride battery salvaged from a wrecked Prius sat on a metal cart attached to an inverter that converts the battery’s DC power into AC power. The setup is hooked up to an electrical meter, a fluorescent light and a portable heater. (In the photos, the Pruis battery is on the middle shelf; the inverter is on the top left.) "The meter is spinning anti-clockwise right now," says Sven Thesen, PG&E’s supervisor for clean air transportation. "That means we energy is coming out of the building and powering the meter. PG&E is paying for this right now." A minute later the meter begins to spin in the opposite direction and the lights and heater come to life as the 1.3 kilowatt/hour Prius battery uploads electricity into the power grid.

Electric vehicle batteries generally retain 80 percent of their capacity even after they’re no longer good for powering cars. Thesen envisions a time in the near future when banks of EV batteries are charged at night with electricity produced by wind farms, which tend to generate the most electricity in the evening when power demands are the lowest. Normally, that energy is just lost because it isn’t stored. During the day when air conditioners crank up and energy demand rises, electricity can be released from the batteries to take the load off the power grid. In theory, that means PG&E won’t have to build as many planet-warming natural gas-fired power plants to meet peak demand or as an insurance policy against blackouts. It also allows the utility to do "load leveling." Cranking up a power plant to supply electricity when demand suddenly spikes is expensive. EV batteries could release electricity to the grid to smooth fill in the gaps between supply and demand. The same is true if batteries are used at electrical substations. "If we can put in $5,000 worth of batteries and avoid putting in a $50,000 transformer and upgrading the lines then everyone is a winner," says Thesen.

Electric car makers like Silcon Valley’s Tesla Motors and Norway’s Think could be some of the biggest winners. The battery is the most expensive part of the car, and PG&E’s plan would create a significant secondary market for them, especially if other utilities like Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) follow suit. A second life for electric car batteries would lower their cost as battery financing syndicates are formed to buy and sell the micro-mini power plants.  That would help jump start the market for electric cars by making them more affordable. It would also spur further technological progress in battery development to exend their range and power. "Those batteries have some residual capacity and that residual capacity is actually valuable," Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard told Green Wombat last week. "At a substation you take a whole stack of three-quarter dead batteries and just run them into the ground an then chuck them into recycling." He says there would be no obstacle to re-purposing Tesla’s powerful lithium-ion batteries – which give its forthcoming Roadster super car its 200 mile range and zero-to-60-in-four seconds vroom – for such use.

The chicken-and-egg dilemma, of course, is that PG&E and other utilities will need thousands of EV batteries. Ford (F), General Motors (GM), Toyota and other automakers are not yet making plug-in hybrids.  Companies like Think and Tesla, meanwhile, will be selling limited numbers of electric cars over the next couple years. Many EV batteries are expected to last five years or 100,000 miles, meaning it’ll be some time before they’re ready for recycling. Still, the creation of a secondary market for batteries could drive down costs and expand  the electric car fleet sooner than anticipated.  That will create another source of supply: Inevitably, drivers will crash their cars, leaving behind batteries in mint-condition that utilities can re-deploy.

"By having these out there we don’t have to import as much peak power when it’s really expensive from places that are far away," says Thesen, who himself drives Prius he had coverted to a plug in. "We move it at the cheapest most efficient time. And for PG&E that also means it’s the cleanest. So we’re going to be able to upload more clean power to the grid and it’s the cheap stuff. So it’s this wonderful synergistic win-win for everyone and it will make vehicle batteries cheaper because they will have worth. When we make an electric battery cheaper that means more people can afford it; that means we put less demand on foreign oil imports."

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photo: PSE&G
When it comes to being clean and green, California often gets the glory, what with the governator and all those Prius-driving eco-celebrities. But New Jersey – yes, New Jersey – gives the Golden State a run for its money when it comes to fighting global warming. The state offers some of the state’s biggest incentives for solar power and today New Jersey’s largest utility, Public Service Electric and Gas (PEG) announced it’s replacing a quarter of its 5,000-vehicle fleet with hybrids and biodiesel-powered trucks over the next decade. The utility estimated that switching 1,300 cars and trucks to run on alternative fuels will eliminate more than 81,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. PSE&G has purchased two of the first hybrid "bucket trucks" (photo above) that use batteries to operate the aerial lift rather than tap the gasoline motor. The utility’s fleet of 450 bucket trucks typically keep their engines running while the lift is in operation. Deploying hybrids will take a projected 73,000 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere and save about 6.5 million gallons of fuel, according to PSE&G. Meanwhile on the West Coast, California utility PG&E (PCG) will be testing an all-electric truck from Phoenix Motorcars, and it and Southern California Edison (SCE), Ford (F) and the Electric Power Research Institute are working on developing a plug-in hybrid trouble truck.

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photo: kennedye
The California Air Resources Board last week handed out $25 million to promote alternative fuels and cars such as plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, or PHEVs.  Among the recipients was ZEV Research, which scored $150,000 to develop a pilot episode for a television series about teams that convert fossil-fueled luxury and sports cars (along with more mundane transportation) to run on electricity. We can see it now: Pimp My PHEV! California allocated $5 million for PHEV programs, including:

• $561,000 to Tesla Motors to develop a commercial battery-charging station to be installed at hotel chains across the state. Tesla’s electric sports car, the Roadster, is expected to hit the streets in October. The Silicon Valley car company’s proposal for a $961,000 grant to test advanced battery technology for electric cars was a runner-up. (PG&E (PCG), meanwhile gets $175,000 to update an electric charging station at the utility’s Davis facility.)
• $1.1 million to the University of California, Berkeley and UC Irvine to conduct a market analysis of  PHEVs and other electric vehicles.
• $344,000 to the Electric Power Research Institute and UC Davis to evaluate the performance of various battery technologies.
• $1.5 million for an adopt-a-PHEV program that will place 10 plug-ins hybrid cars with up to 100 households and businesses for a few weeks at a time. UC Davis’s Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicle Center will collect data on how the cars perform and evaluate consumer acceptance and use of plug-in hybrids.

CARB is one of the most powerful environmental agencies in the United States – famous (or infamous) for mandating that 10 percent of cars sold in California be zero emission by 2003 and then subsequently backpedaling under pressure from the auto industry.  What’s striking is how CARB now –  through such funding, modest that it is – apparently aims to build a market and infrastructure for electric vehicles first.

The agency last week also dispensed cash for a number of biofuel initiatives, including the construction of biodiesel refineries, cow power projects and the installation of ethanol pumps at gas stations. The complete list is here.

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photo: hobbes8calvin
The U.S. Department of Energy this week doled out $19 million to spur development of plug-in hybrid vehicles, hybrid electric cars and fuel cell vehicles. The money will go to five teams for research into creating more efficient and lighter electric drive trains, inverters and motors. As has been past practice at DOE, the recipients of taxpayer cash include multinational corporations like General Motors (GM) and General Electric (GE). One team, though, is led by a tech startup, US Hybrid of Torrance, California. Other members of the teams include universities, U.S. research labs and smaller companies.

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photo: Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors has inked a $43 million agreement to supply lithium-ion battery packs to Norwegian electric automaker Think. The deal is the first for Tesla Energy Group, a division of the Silicon Valley electric car company. Tesla Energy was launched to commercialize the battery technology that gives Tesla’s forthcoming Roadster supercar its zero-to-60-in-four-seconds punch and 200+ miles-on-a-charge range. The deal will rev up Think, which makes a two-seater electric runabout at the other end of the automotive spectrum. The Think City will need about 3,000 lithium-ion batteries – the Roadster sports around 7,000 – to give the car a range of about 112 miles on a single charge, according to Think. The company says the agreement calls for Tesla to develop prototypes for a range of batteries. "We will be in the lead of the thriving battery technology, and our goal is always to achieve higher capacity and more power," said Think CEO Jan-Olaf Willums in a statement. "We will get the first test batteries already this fall, and I am anxious to test drive the first ‘Think powered by Tesla.’ " Think will continue to sell models powered by batteries from Zebra. "Customers will now get the choice of whatever battery that suite their driving pattern," said Willums.

Ford (F) bought the Norwegian startup in 1999 and invested some $100 million before selling the company five years later. Think subsequently changed hands again and was acquired in 2006 by a group of Norwegian investors led by Willums (pictured on the left with Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard). A new generation of its Think City model (photo below) will hit Norway by the end of 2007, and the company says its plans to expand to other European markets and the United States over the next year or two. The agreement calls for Tesla to begin delivery of the batteries in December. "We have seen a high level of interest from companies in developing custom battery packs for a wide range of applications," said Tesla Energy Group executive vice president Bernie Tse in a statement. As automakers like General Motors (GM), Toyota (TM) and Honda (HMC) continue to show off electric concept cars that may or may not ever get made, the Tesla-Think deal shows that an alternative automotive infrastructure is emerging far from Detroit and Tokyo.

photo: KnutBry/TinAgent/Think Technology

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Yahoo will donate a fleet of hybrid taxi cabs to the town that wins its "Greenest City in America" challenge. The giveaway marks the launch of Yahoo’s (YHOO) new eco-site Yahoo Green, which the Internet giant bills as a "one-stop resource for the growing number of environmentally-concerned consumers." So, how do you help your city score points so it can replace some of those carbon-belching yellow cabs with cleaner hybrid versions? By trading in the SUV for a Civic, perhaps? Or installing solar panels? Nah. You – and Yahoo – win by accumulating points when you go to Yahoo and ask environment-related question on Yahoo Answers, use "eco-friendly mobile search terms" on Yahoo’s mobile service, and take a green pledge to do things like use compact fluorescent light bulbs, adjust your thermostat by two degrees and carpool to work once a week. Yahoo will even send you an energy-efficient CFL.  Yahoo will unveil the  "greenest" – or at least the most Yahoo-friendly – city on June 8. It kicked off the contest today in New York City, where it’s giving the Big Apple a squadron of hybrid cabs – Ford (F) Escapes, judging by the photo. But if you really want to green up the taxi fleet, why not donate the much more fuel efficient, albeit smaller, Toyota (T) Prius or Honda Civic (HMC) hybrid. Heck, even a plain-vanilla Corolla gets better mileage than a hybrid SUV.

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Tesla Motors this morning announced a $45 million round of financing, bringing its total funding to $105 million as the company prepares to ship its hotly-anticipated all-electric Roadster this fall. The Silicon Valley startup is backed by a who’s who of the tech elite: individual investors include PayPal co-founder Elon Musk – who serves as Tesla’s chairman – Larry Page, Sergey Brin and eBay employee No. 1 Jeff Skoll. Technology Partners and Musk co-led the latest round of financing. New investor Capricorn Investment Group was joined by previous backers Vantage Point Venture Partners,
Draper Fisher Jurvetson, JP Morgan Bay Area Equity Fund (JPM), Valor Equity Partners and Compass Venture Partners. Technology Partners’ Ira Ehrenpreis joins Tesla’s board as does Valor CEO Antonio Gracias. The new round will help fund the development of Tesla’s next zero-emissions car, a four-door sports sedan called WhiteStar slated to hit the streets in the 2010 model year. The first production run of the $92,000 Roadster ($100,000 fully loaded) sold out, but the company is taking orders for the 2008 version on its site. Vroom.
 

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Will you feel better about driving a planet-warming SUV if you’re sitting on seat covers made from 100 percent post-industrial waste? Ford hopes so. Its 2008 Escape Hybrid sports seat fabric crafted from discarded plastic and polyester fabrics "that would have otherwise ended up in landfills." (Though an all dead-cow interior remains an option.) The eco-friendly fabric is also available on the gas-guzzling version of the Escape. "The new fabric offers the same feel and durability of virgin-fiber fabrics, and was subjected to a battery of tests to verify its durability, seam strength, color consistency, and even new-car smell," according to the tag attached to a shopping bag made from the seat material express-mailed to Green Wombat from Motor City. (A sniff test confirms that new-car smell, and the material looks and feels better than that found in the last Detroit-made rental Green Wombat drove. And as Ford PR person cleverly notes, the bag could come in handy in San Francisco, which has banned non-biodegradable plastic bags.)

Now, it’s hard to whack Ford (F) for showing some eco-imagination, as it were.  And a 34-mpg hybrid small SUV like the Escape is certainly better than no hybrid at
all. (Full disclosure lest I be flickrized: Green Wombat drives a so-called cute ute himself, a Toyota 

(TM) RAV4.) Yet it’s way too obvious to point out that offering recycled seating on one product line will hardly offset the greenhouse emissions produced by such crimes against nature as the Ford Expedition and the F-150. And we won’t even go into the campaigns by Ford – and General Motors (GM), DaimlerChrysler (DCX), Honda (HMC) and most of the other automakers – to quash efforts to raise fuel-efficiency standards and a California law that limits cars’ carbon spew.

The recycled seat covers are made by InterfaceFabric, a division of ecologically oriented Atlanta textile company Interface (IFSIA). Interface estimates that the green-seated Escape will eliminate the
equivalent of 1.8 million pounds of carbon dioxide and 7 million kilowatt

hours of electricity consumption while saving 600,000 gallons of water.  Impressive. So why not make InterfaceFabric’s material standard equipment on all Ford vehicles and urge other automakers to follow suit. In fact, if you want to really get post-industrial about it, start using recycled materials on dashboards, moldings and other interior trim.  There should be plenty of raw materials on hand when gasoline hits $5 a gallon and Suburbans, Tundras and Tahoes start landing on the scrap heap of automotive history.

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