Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘electric cars’

California to avoid regulating EV charging companies

Posted in Better Place, electric cars, green cars, green policy, tagged , , , , on February 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

photo: Better Place

In The New York Times on Friday, I wrote about the latest developments in California’s efforts to write the rules of the road for an electric car infrastructure:

California officials have indicated they are not inclined to regulate electric car infrastructure companies that plan to sell electricity to drivers through networks of charging stations.

Whether to treat such companies as quasi-utilities has been a contentious issue. The state’s three big utilities have split on the topic, while battery charging start-ups like Better Place and Coulomb Technologies have warned that regulation could stifle innovation and scare off investors.

Now the president of the California Public Utilities Commission, Michael R. Peevey, has signaled he is siding with the companies as the commission moves to put electric car regulations in place.

“Facilities that are solely used to provide electricity as a transportation fuel do not constitute ‘electric plant,’” wrote Mr. Peevey in a recent ruling. “As such, the commission would not have regulatory authority regarding the price that an electric vehicle charging facility operator charges for charging services or other aspects of the operation of such facilities.”

That is not likely to be the final word on the subject. Mr. Peevey, who is overseeing the electric car rule-making process, invited utilities, automakers and charging station companies to file briefs on his proposed interpretation of the law.

With several mass-market electric cars set to hit showrooms by the end of the year, the utilities commission is moving unusually swiftly to resolve a variety of outstanding issues. In his ruling, Mr. Peevey set an April deadline to issue a preliminary decision on the most of them.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Read Full Post »

New York City ready for electric cars

Posted in electric cars, environment, green cars, green policy, tagged , , on January 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

photo: Think

In The New York Times on Monday, I write about a new McKinsey report that looks at the potential for electric cars in three of the world’s “megacities” — New York, Paris and Shanghai:

New Yorkers, start your electric cars.

A report from the consulting firm McKinsey, scheduled to be issued Monday, found that about a fifth of New York City residents are “early adopters” likely to purchase an electric car. Such vehicles could account for 16 percent of automobile sales by 2015, with 70,000 electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars on city streets.

Even so, the city would only see a net two percent reduction in carbon emissions from the replacement of gasoline-powered cars by electric vehicles, or EVs, according to a summary of the report provided to The Times.

“Achieving a visible carbon effect from EV penetration will require a higher penetration of the fleet and further improvements in local power generation, with a higher share of renewables and less carbon-intensive technology in the future,” the report said.

Those findings were part of a study gauging the appeal of electric cars in three large cities – New York, Paris and Shanghai. The report’s release comes as electric vehicles take center stage at the opening of the Detroit auto show Monday.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Read Full Post »

Norway’s Think to build electric cars in Indiana

Posted in electric cars, environment, green cars, Think, tagged , , , on January 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »

photo: Think

In The New York Times on Tuesday, I write about Norwegian electric carmaker Think’s announcement that it will open its first U.S. assembly plant in Indiana:

Think, the Norwegian electric carmaker, said on Tuesday that it will open its first American assembly plant in Elkhart, Ind.

The Think City, a battery-powered, two-seat hatchback, is set to begin rolling off the Indiana assembly line in early 2011, ramping up to a potential annual production of 20,000 cars by 2013. The factory is expected to eventually employ more than 400 workers.

About 1,500 of the plastic-bodied cars are already on the street in Europe, and Think will begin selling the City in the United States later this year. The car will be imported from a Finland assembly plant until the Indiana factory opens in a former recreational vehicle factory.

Think’s investment in the Indiana facility depends in part on securing a United States Department of Energy loan guarantee to finance the project, according to Richard Canny, Think’s chief executive.

“Our plan is based around the D.O.E. loan,” Mr. Canny said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “If that didn’t happen we would be looking at a slower and shallower investment plan.”

Indiana was one of several states vying for the Think assembly plant. Tax incentives offered by Indiana and Elkhart’s proximity to automotive suppliers in neighboring Michigan helped clinch the deal, according Mr. Canny.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Read Full Post »

Test-driving Ford’s Model T of electric cars

Posted in climate change, corporate green, electric cars, green cars, green policy, tagged , , , , , , on October 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »

IMG_0021
photo: Todd Woody

Ford executives brought a battery-powered Focus sedan to San Francisco on Thursday (along with a plug-in hybrid Escape). It was clear from the presentation by Nancy Gioia, Ford’s director of global electrification, that the automaker is aiming for a mass market and is spending a great deal of effort on helping create an entire electric car infrastructure. As I wrote in The New York Times on Friday:

At a press event in San Francisco on Thursday, Ford showed off a prototype of what might be called the Model T of the automaker’s electric car strategy: the battery-powered Focus sedan.

“This is about affordable transportation for the masses — this is not about a small niche,” said Nancy Gioia, Ford’s director of global electrification.

To keep costs down, the Focus and plug-in electric hybrids will be built — in small numbers at first — on what the company calls its global “C” platform, which produces two million cars a year.

“The assembly line in Michigan will produce the battery-electric Focus and also, with minor modifications, the gas Focus,” Ms. Gioia said. “We can change production as the market shifts.”

The Focus will hit the market in 2011 followed the next year by a plug-in electric Escape sport-utility vehicle, which Ford also showed off in San Francisco. Ms. Gioia said she expects electric and plug-in hybrids will account for 10 to 25 percent of the market by 2020.

You can read the rest of the story here.

But the cars seemed almost beside the point as Ford executives focused on their strategy to work with utilities and other groups to create open standards for electric cars and ensure that a charging infrastructure is in place when buyers hit showrooms.

Read Full Post »

How electric cars will drive solar power

Posted in electric cars, green cars, green startups, renewable energy, solar energy, SolarCity, tagged , , , , , , on October 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »

SalinasRabobankTeslaChargingSM

photo: SolarCity

In my new Green State column on Grist, I write about how SolarCity, a Silicon Valley rooftop solar installer, is getting into the electric-car charging station business:

You can’t get more California greenin’ than this.

Peter Rive can charge up his Tesla Roadster electric sports car in his San Francisco garage with carbon-free electricity supplied by a solar array on his roof. Then, if he’s in the mood for a road trip, he can drive to Los Angeles, stopping at a solar-powered charging station along the way to top off the battery.

The free charging stations on the “solar highway”—aka the 101—were recently installed by SolarCity, the Silicon Valley rooftop solar company Rive founded with his brother Lyndon. (The electric-blue Roadster sitting in his garage was made by his cousin Elon Musk‘s startup, Tesla Motors.)

So what’s a solar company doing installing highway charging stations for six-figure sports cars driven by people with seven-figure salaries?

In part, it’s a result of SolarCity’s connection to Tesla and grants the electric carmaker received from the state of California to demo charging stations. It makes for great PR, of course, but the bigger picture here is how the emerging electric vehicle industry will drive (sorry) the adoption of residential and commercial photovoltaic systems.

You can read the rest of the column here.

Read Full Post »

Mass market electric cars: It’s all about the software

Posted in Better Place, electric cars, green cars, tagged , , , on September 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

switch station location

photo: Better Place

In today’s New York Times, I write about Better Place’s unveiling of its software platform for managing tens of thousands of electric cars on the road and the grid. Software as much as hardware will be key to making electric cars a mass market phenomenon:

Electric cars may be all about hardware – batteries, drivetrains, charging stations — but companies like Better Place are depending on software to give a niche product mass-market appeal.

At the Frankfurt Motor Show on Tuesday, Better Place, which builds electric vehicle charging networks, is expected to take the wraps off a software platform that tells drivers when and where to charge their batteries, while giving utilities the ability to manage the impact of tens of thousands of vehicles tapping into the power grid.

The company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has signed deals to roll out networks of charging spots and battery switching stations in Australia, Denmark, California, Canada and Hawaii and Israel.

Better Place will own the car batteries and drivers will buy “miles” (or kilometers) on a subscription plan much like they purchase mobile phone minutes. That means Better Place must track the location and capacity of thousands of batteries at any given moment to properly bill customers and ensure that fresh batteries and charging posts are available when needed.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Read Full Post »

The Whip comes down: Wheego joins electric car race

Posted in electric cars, green cars, tagged , , , , on September 10, 2009| Leave a Comment »

IMG_1598

Photo: Todd Woody

In my Green State column for Grist on Thursday, I write about Wheego, an Atlanta startup that will soon begin selling an electric microcar called the Whip.

I took the Whip for a spin around San Francisco with Wheego chief executive Mike McQuary riding shotgun but what really grabbed my attention was the fact that the chassis and body are made in China. While U.S. automakers take halting steps toward weaning themselves from the internal combustion engine, the Chinese are positioning themselves to make the great leap forward into the electric age. As I write on Grist:

A traffic jam is developing on the electric highway.

A decade after General Motors killed the electric car, big automakers and startups are revving up to put battery-powered vehicles on the road over the next couple of years. One of the latest entrants is Wheego, an Atlanta company that is about to launch the Whip—a tiny low-speed “neighborhood electric vehicle” that will be upgraded in 2010 to a full-speed, highway-ready car.

Wheego chief executive Mike McQuary brought a Whip to San Francisco last week, and I took the car for a spin around the city. (More on that in a bit.)

You see quite a few neighborhood electrics across the Bay in Berkeley where I live. Their top speed is around 25 miles per hour and many look like glorified golf carts or cast-offs from an East Bloc auto factory, circa 1984. And at the risk of stereotyping, most seem to be driven by the proverbial little old leftist lady in tennis shoes who glides down the hill for the weekly nuclear disarmament rally outside the Cal campus (circa 1984).

The Wheego Whip, on the other hand, looks like a “real” car (PDF brochure). Somewhat similar in appearance to the Smart fortwo or Think City EV, it’s a two-seater microcar sporting all the mod cons—power windows, Bluetooth stereo, iPod/iPhone jack, air conditioning.

Like Coda Automotive’s forthcoming electric sedan, the Whip’s body and chassis are Chinese made—another sign that China is emerging as a player in the nascent electric car industry—while the battery comes from Canada and the motor from Wisconsin (U-S-A! U-S-A!). The Whip will be assembled in California in the Los Angeles exurb of Ontario. Other electric startups are following a similar business plan, making the old Detroit automotive model increasingly look as viable as a Hummer.

You can read the rest of the column here.

Read Full Post »

Norway’s Think is back in business — in Finland

Posted in electric cars, environment, green cars, Think, Think Global, tagged , , , on August 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »

think-city-8_imagelarge

photo: Think

Norwegian electric car maker Think has exited bankruptcy protection and brought on board new investors. As I write in the New York Times Green Inc. blog today:

Norwegian electric car maker Th!nk is back on the road.

The company on Thursday said it has exited bankruptcy protection and secured $47 million in new funding to restart production of the Think City, a highway-capable urban runabout with a range of about 112 miles.

Think had shut down its assembly line outside of Oslo late last year when the global financial crisis cut off access to new capital.

But is Think still a Norwegian automaker? The company did get some local street cred Thursday: Among its new shareholders is Investinor, an investment fund backed by the Norwegian government.

Still, in another sign of the globalization of the nascent electric car industry, the Think City will now be made in Finland at the plant of one of its new investors, Valmet Automotive. (Valmet assembles the Porsche Boxster and Cayman and will begin producing the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid electric sports sedan.)

You can read the rest of the story here.

Read Full Post »

Think to sell electric drive trains

Posted in electric cars, green cars, Think, Think Global, tagged , , , on July 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »

TH!NK-city-Michigan-USA_imagelarge

photo: Think

Norwegian electric carmaker Think is going into the drive-train businesses with battery maker EnerDel and their first big customer is the Japanese postal service.

Think makes the City, a two-seater urban runabout currently sold in Europe. EnerDel supplies (ENER1) lithium-ion batteries for the car and will be the provider of batteries for Think’s new electric drive-train business.

“We have seen increased interest in Think’s proprietary EV drive system from a variety of third parties, which represents a significant and exciting new business line and revenue opportunity for the company,” said Think CEO Richard Canny in a statement.

The company is selling the drive trains to Zero Sports, a Japanese company that converts cars to battery power and which is working with the Japanese postal service to electrify its 22,000-vehicle fleet.

Think, previously owned by Ford (F), was forced to halt production of the City late last year as the global financial crisis cut off access to capital. The company subsequently obtained new funding and has announced plans to build a factory in the United States.

Read Full Post »

IBM charges into the battery business

Posted in alternative energy, corporate green, corporate sustainability, electric cars, energy, energy efficiency, environment, green buildings, green cars, green computing, IBM, water tech, tagged , , , on June 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

ibm-smarter-planet

While the U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday issued nearly $8 billion in loans to Ford (F), Nissan and Tesla Motors to manufacture electric cars and batteries, IBM unveiled an initiative to develop a next-generation battery technology that would allow those vehicles to travel 400 miles or more on a charge.

Big Blue will investigate the potential of lithium air technology to replace current state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries. Lithium air potentially could pack 10 times the energy density of lithium ion storage devices by drawing oxygen into the batteries to use as a reactant. As a result lithium air batteries would weigh less than lithium ion batteries, C. Spike Narayan, manager of science and technology at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, told Green Wombat.

So besides powering cars, lithium air batteries could store electricity generated from solar power plants and wind farms, turning them into 24/7 energy sources.

But don’t expect to see the super-charged batteries anytime soon.”This is a five-to-10-year project,” says Narayan. “The first phase is to go after the big science problems. Then we’re ready to engage with automotive companies and battery manufacturers.”

The technological hurdles are high and even IBM (IBM), with its expertise in nanotechnology, green chemistry and supercomputing, won’t try to go it alone. It’s seeking partners at research universities and government laboratories to crack the tech challenges, which include developing a membrane that will strip water out of the air before it enters the battery and the development of nano materials to prevent layers of lithium oxide from interfering with chemical reactions.

IBM intends to limit its role in the battery business to R&D. “We have no desire to make batteries,” says Rich Lechner, IBM’s vice president for energy and the environment. “We will license the IP.”

In another sign that climate change and the imminent imposition of carbon caps are creating opportunities for Big Business and rearranging the competitive landscape, IBM also announced “Green Sigma,” an alliance of erstwhile competitors that will offer solutions to companies seeking to shrink their carbon footprint.

Green Sigma includes business software giant SAP (SAP), Cisco (CSCO), Johnson Controls (JCI) and Honeywell (HON). Dave Lebowe, an IBM executive with the Green Sigma program, acknowledged the potential for conflicts of interests among these frenemies but said such problems were outweighed by the upside of bringing together a broad range of expertise to help customers cut their CO2 emissions and save money.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started