EV Technology Becoming Cost Competitive

Source: EPRI

[Mar 26, 2003]

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 26 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new research study from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a combination of greatly improved battery life and projected cost reductions for batteries and other components can make electric drive vehicles (engine-hybrid EVs, plug-in hybrid EVs, and some pure EVs) cost competitive with gasoline vehicles.

These lower costs and a doubling of battery life times -- up to 150,000 miles -- result in significantly reduced fuel and maintenance costs for electric drive vehicles, and over their lifetime will offset their higher initial price by the end of this decade.

The EPRI study chronicles important and steady improvements in battery technology, even over the past few years. Researchers specifically found that advanced batteries used in electric drive vehicles are exceeding previous projections for cycle life and durability, a key consideration in cost. Longer life essentially means reduced cost to operate. These developments, along with recent announcements that vehicle manufacturers will substantially increase production of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), will bring down costs of the special electric drive components, making electric-drive vehicles more cost effective.

After considerable testing on the road and in the laboratory, the researchers concluded that nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries could be designed, using current technologies, to meet the vehicle lifetime requirements of some full-size battery EVs, subcompact "city" battery EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs. It also appears that only one battery pack per vehicle may be required instead of two as previously projected. With this new information, the EPRI study suggests that savings in fuel and maintenance can pay for the higher upfront cost of battery EVs and hybrid EVs with and without plugs.

"The cost of advanced batteries for non-plug hybrid EVs, plug-in hybrid EVs, and battery EVs is highly dependent on the establishment of a growth market situation, a predictable regulatory environment, and consistent production volumes that encourage capital investment in production capacity and line automation by battery and automotive manufacturers," said Bob Graham, EPRI's area manager for transportation.

"Produced in volume, hybrid EVs such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic will help drive down the cost of motors and controllers that could be used in all types of electric-drive cars," Graham added. "But the commercialization of the plug-in hybrid EV, because of its large market appeal, holds the key to the one remaining barrier to zero-emission vehicles -- the cost of the 'energy' battery."

The non-plug hybrids, plug-in hybrid EVs with a 20-mile all-electric range, and subcompact "city" battery EVs with a 40-mile all-electric range that were analyzed in the study can cost-effectively reduce smog-forming gases, greenhouse gases and petroleum consumption in all scenarios analyzed. The higher initial cost of electric-drive vehicles is due to the battery, but in the long-term, fuel and maintenance savings cover this. According to the EPRI research, plug-in hybrids could reach life cycle cost parity with conventional internal combustion vehicles, after relatively small production runs of 50,000 vehicles per year.

The EPRI study built upon earlier research carried out by the EPRI Hybrid Electric Vehicle Working Group, whose members include the environmental community, automakers, regulatory agencies, power companies, and academic researchers. The earlier work showed that the plug-in hybrid EV with a 60-mile all electric range has the potential to be the first advanced vehicle to attain the equivalent of 80 miles per gallon (the U.S. Department of Energy goal for midsize sedans) without lightweight materials or extreme aerodynamics

The plug-in hybrid EV works a pure EV for a portion of its daily travel when it has been plugged into a 120-volt outlet (i.e. each night at home). When its electric range is used up, the vehicle switches automatically into hybrid mode, operating much like a "regular" HEV (e.g., a Toyota Prius) until the battery is recharged. Depending on the size of the battery, it can provide 20 to 60 miles of daily range in zero polluting EV mode. A plug-in hybrid EV drive system is compatible with all vehicle models and does not sacrifice vehicle performance and driver amenities for the sake of clean air and reduced consumption of petroleum.

"These EPRI-led studies show in our opinion that plug-in hybrids are a mass market technology. We consider them an important bridge' technology," said Ed Kjaer, director of Electric Transportation for Southern California Edison. "They will help make a viable business case for other technologies that deliver zero emission miles from an 'energy' battery -- such as pure EVs and fuel cell EVs."

More information on the study can be found on the EPRI website. Go to http://www.epri.com/corporate/discover_epri/news/downloads/EPRI_AdvBatEV.pdf .

EPRI, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., was established in 1973 as a non-profit center for public interest energy and environmental research. EPRI's collaborative science and technology development program now spans nearly every area of power generation, delivery and use. More than 1,000 energy organizations and public institutions in 40 countries draw on EPRI's global network of technical and business expertise.
http://www.detnews.com/2003/business/0304/04/b03-127834.htm

House Panel Cuts Tax Credit for Hybrids

Move seens as setback for carmakers hoping to encourage future hybrid car sales in US.

Source: Detroit News

[Apr 04, 2003]

The House Ways and Means Committee dropped the credits amid concerns about the cost of a broader energy tax package. Chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said the credits were no longer necessary because consumers would buy the hybrids on their own, without government help.

If the tax credits for hybrid vehicles are not revived, it could be blow to the auto industry. Automakers argue that the tax credits are necessary to sell the fuel-sipping hybrids in large numbers. Consumers, they argue, need financial assistance to cover the costs of the hybrid technology, which can reach $3,000 or more per vehicle.

The Senate Finance Committee included hybrid tax credits of up to $1,000 per vehicle in its version of the energy tax package approved on Wednesday. The legislation will need to be approved by the full House, the full Senate and a conference committee before becoming law.

Hybrid tax credits were included in the Bush administration's budget released in February. Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee were assured by a Treasury Deparment official that the administration still supported the hybrid credits, said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Royal Oak.

Levin said he would push to add hybrid tax credits when the bill reaches the House floor.

"They were trying to keep the costs down," Levin said. "I think they're very wrong. Some incentives are very much in order."

If the hybrid tax credits are left out of the energy bill, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. stand to lose the most in the short term. The two Japanese automakers sell the only hybrids available in the United States. Ford Motor Co. plans to offer a hybrid Escape SUV in model year 2004. General Motors Corp. plans to sell up to 1 million hybrids by 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/02/business/02FUEL.html?tntemail1

Light Truck Fuel Economy To Be Raised 1.5 MPG

Increase amounts to 4.5 percent improvement by Model year 2007.

Source: New York Tiems

[Apr 02, 2003]

DETROIT, April 1 — The Bush administration said today that it would raise fuel economy regulations for light trucks — S.U.V.'s, pickups and minivans — by 1.5 miles a gallon, or about 4.5 percent, by the 2007 model year.

The administration called the plan, which has been working its way through the regulatory system for several months, one of the biggest fuel economy increases in years. Environmental groups criticized it as a minuscule step at a time when gas consumption is a national security issue.

"The Bush administration is committed to improving vehicle fuel economy while protecting passenger safety and American jobs," Dr. Jeffrey W. Runge, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said in a statement.

David Friedman, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the measure's oil savings would be more than offset by a decision to continue credits automakers receive for making cars that can use ethanol.

Daniel Becker, the top global warming expert at the Sierra Club, said, "Our troops are risking their lives in the Middle East for a war that is in part about oil, gas prices are skyrocketing, and global warming pollution is more of a problem than ever."

Source: Detroit Free Press

[Apr 02, 2003]

BY JOCELYN PARKER

DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Automakers will make the largest fuel-economy increase to sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans in 20 years under new rules federal regulators issued Tuesday.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will require automakers to raise the corporate average fuel economy for light trucks by 1.5 miles per gallon between model years 2005 and 2007.

Environmentalists view the increase as too small, but automakers said that meeting the new fuel-economy standards will be a challenge. More than half the vehicles U.S. automakers sell are in the light-truck category.

"In order to meet the target, we're going to have to change American buying habits," said Eron Shosteck, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents the automakers. "Nonetheless, we are committed to meeting it and working with NHTSA."

General Motors Corp. spokesman Chris Preuss said the new standards give foreign competitors an unfair advantage because they sell more passenger cars.

NHTSA's assumption that the technologies needed to make the improvements will pay for themselves through fuel savings is also overestimated, he said.

Environmental groups say a 1.5-mile-per-gallon increase over the next few years is only a drop in the bucket given the advanced technologies the auto companies have to improve fuel efficiency.

"The agency's rule making on this matter is a sham," Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said in a statement. "NHTSA failed to budge from its proposal last fall, deciding instead to ratify numbers it had already set, despite receiving tens of thousands of comments from citizens calling for a tougher standard."

Under the rule, which NHTSA proposed in December and adopted after a public comment period, the current standard of 20.7 miles per gallon will increase to 21 miles per gallon in model year 2005, 21.6 miles per gallon in model year 2006 and 22.2 miles per gallon in model year 2007.

The current standard for passenger cars is 27.5 miles per gallon.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, have introduced legislation to close the gap between SUV and passenger car fuel economy. The bill calls for SUVs to achieve 27.5 miles per gallon by 2011. That would save 1 million barrels of a day and reduce dependence on foreign imports by 10 percent, they argue.

The country uses 8.8 million gallons of gasoline a day, according to the Energy Department.

NHTSA administrator Dr. Jeffrey Runge said the new requirements reflect the Bush administration's commitment to "improving vehicle fuel economy while protecting passenger safety and American jobs."

NHTSA estimates the total cost for the industry to meet the target is $170 million for model year 2005, $537 million for model year 2006 and $862 million for model year 2007.

Improving the fuel economy of sport-utilities and other light trucks has become a contentious issue among environmental groups, especially given the war with Iraq.

Jason Mark, who heads the clean vehicles program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the new standard "seems out of place given the priority of saving oil.

"The automakers' response is disappointing given all the technology that they've described as coming to market," Mark said.

Some fuel-saving technologies include hybrid vehicles, which save gas by combining an electric motor and an internal combustion engine, and engines that feature displacement on demand, which shuts down half of the engine's cylinders at highway speeds.

Mark also added that the 1.5-mile-per-gallon improvement over the next few years is less than what some automakers are offering already. For instance, he estimates Ford Motor Co. can get a 1.8-mile-per-gallon improvement in the same period.

Far less polluting, they are growing far more common.

By Chris Bowman -- Bee Staff Writer

Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, April 13, 2003

In a remarkable -- and remarkably quiet -- evolution in technology, automakers are rolling out more than 100,000 affordable, everyday cars that come tantalizingly close to realizing California's dream of a pollution-free automobile.

Surprisingly, the vehicles run on gasoline with basically the same internal combustion engine that helped make California the nation's king of smog.

The pollution controls on these vehicles are so tight and the burning of fuel is so complete that, under certain conditions, the exhaust out the tailpipe is cleaner than the air outside.

Such was the case four years ago when Honda Motor Co. drove an experimental gasoline car that actually cleaned the air, albeit on a smoggy Southern California freeway.

Today, the offspring of that breakthrough vehicle are entering mass production and appearing in showrooms from San Diego to San Francisco.

The cars are all familiar models with familiar prices, from a $13,000 Ford Focus compact to a $28,000 BMW 325i sedan. They look and drive the same as versions sold outside California with conventional smog controls.

"These cars are affordable, and because they are being built in such large numbers, they are having an immediate impact on air quality," said Jerry Martin, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board.

This year, Californians are expected to buy about 135,000 of these super-clean vehicles, according to the air board.

Three million of them are projected to be on the road by 2010, all warranted for life to run as clean as the day they were made.

The huge cleanup of gasoline engines is an unexpected and largely unrecognized success of California's 13-year-old mandate requiring automakers to mass produce "zero emission vehicles," or ZEVs.

"This is the real jewel we have been able to glean so far from the zero emission vehicle rule," Martin said.

The air board considers these cars clean enough to earn manufacturers partial credit toward the ZEV mandate. Regulators dub them PZEVs, or partial zero-emission vehicles.

To qualify, these cars must run at least 90 percent cleaner than the average new car, according to the air board, which sets vehicle emission standards. That translates to about one pound of smog-forming pollutants every 15,000 miles, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Automakers and dealers, however, are not exactly talking up the clean-air gems.

Smog control, no matter how effective, is not a key selling point for most American buyers, manufacturers contend.

Given the technology costs automakers more, they make only a limited number of PZEVs. They build enough to meet their government-mandated production quotas but no more than they think they can sell.

Sharp-eyed buyers can find the cars by scanning the fine print of vehicle specifications for the PZEV code. Automakers post the identification on the window sticker or under the hood, on the Vehicle Emission Control Information label.

But advertising is practically nil. Consumers conceivably could buy a PZEV without knowing they have one.

Marsha Colendich nearly did. The Rocklin commuter had her heart set on a new Camry when she stopped in at Roseville Toyota earlier this month. But a Prius model caught her fascination. She had heard about its new, environmentally hip "hybrid" engine, powered by gas and an electric motor.

A salesman then pointed out that the Camry actually is rated as a cleaner vehicle.

"It was really cool to find that out," Colendich said.

The greening of gasoline engines has been overshadowed by the well-publicized introduction of the more intriguing electric cars -- no gasoline, no smog.

Cars powered by gasoline, compressed natural gas and other fossil fuels always will emit some amount of smog-forming hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides no matter how far pollution controls advance, engineers say. The battery-powered electric engine is the only commercially available technology that qualifies as zero-emission.

The story on these futuristic vehicles, however, has been one of fits and starts.

Time and again, the air board has relaxed the quotas and extended deadlines on production of nonpolluting cars in the face of manufacturers' objections and technological changes.

General Motors Corp. has pulled the plug on the battery-powered model it once championed as "the car of the future" -- the sporty EV1. Other automakers have followed suit, saying consumers generally were put off by the high price (at least $25,000 after rebates and tax credits), the short driving range (about 100 miles between charges), and lengthy recharges (at least three hours).

Manufacturers have all moved on to fuel cells. The technology uses hydrogen and water to make electricity and spits out only warm water.

Fuel cells, though, are at least 10 years premature for the auto assembly lines. Many issues remain unresolved over safety, reliability and fuel availability for these engines. Demonstration models currently cost manufacturers about $1 million each.

Consumers are catching on to hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight. The few models available are priced from $14,000 to $21,000, get good fuel mileage and have the same tailpipe emissions standards as the PZEVs.

Cars such as the Toyota Camry that qualify as PZEVs, however, go a few steps further toward zero-emission.

They are state-certified as having almost no evaporative emissions from the engine and fuel tank. And they carry a manufacturer's 15-year or 150,000-mile warranty on the smog controls. So the vehicles theoretically will remain clean for the life of the car.

Colendich said these details turned her attention back to the Camry and clinched the deal.

"I have to have a car, so why not have something that helps the environment?"

If the PZEV smog controls turn out to be as durable as billed, the air quality gains will extend to second and third owners.

"That will have a significant impact on low-income communities where people can't afford a new expensive car," the air board's Martin said.

The air board initially pinned its hopes on the more expensive battery-powered cars when it adopted the landmark ZEV rule in 1990.

The rule came at the insistence of Los Angeles-area smog regulators who believed the smoggy basin stood little chance of achieving clean air unless growing numbers of vehicles were completely smog-free.

"The law said we had to meet the federal air standards within the next two decades, and it was the only way we could visualize getting there," recalled James Lents, then executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Some automakers, mainly domestic producers, worked to eliminate or weaken a rule they deemed too costly and utopian. Other companies, mainly foreign competitors, plotted a course many thought was unachievable.

Honda, Toyota, Nissan and some Western European automakers worked to clean up the gasoline engine to where emission levels would be on par with a ZEV. That is, the amount of pollutants would be equivalent to those a natural gas-fired power plant produces to recharge an electric car.

"They wanted to build the argument that these gasoline cars are so clean, why do we need batteries?" Martin said. "To some extent, they have accomplished that."

By the mid-1990s, foreign automakers began to introduce cars that surprised California's smog regulators.

They cut evaporative emissions with tighter gaskets, hoses and fuel tanks. Variable valve-timing and computerized fuel injection made for better combustion and cleaner exhaust.

At the same time, federal Clean Air Act amendments requiring cleaner-burning gasoline in smoggy areas were taking effect. The reformulated fuel cut levels of sulfur that hindered performance of the catalytic converter.

Mounted in the exhaust pipe, the device removes a lot of unburned hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. These are the compounds that react with sunlight to form ozone, the gas in smog that irritates the eyes, nose and lungs.

But the exhaust control works only at high temperatures. It does almost nothing in the minutes it takes to heat the engine from a cold start.

So Honda installed a system that traps the smog-forming pollutants until exhaust gases are hot enough to activate the catalytic converter.

The company claimed astonishing results. In 1999, it sought to verify them at an independent emissions testing laboratory at the University of California, Riverside.

"This car was so clean we couldn't even measure the emissions," recalled Lents, who had left the South Coast air district to help run the UC Riverside lab. "We had to develop new measurement technology just to be able to test this car."

Technicians took the prototype for a spin on the freeway. "Sure enough," Lents said, "the air coming in the air intake was dirtier than the air coming out the exhaust."

Now, seven major automakers are offering models with smog controls nearly as effective as the Honda test vehicle and more durable, earning them the PZEV label, according to the air board's current listing.(Cleaner Cars Buyer's Guide at www.arb.ca.gov )

The dozen models are all compact and midsize passenger cars. They generally are sold only in California and in states such as New York and Massachusetts and Vermont that have adopted California's ZEV rule.

Some automakers say they are close to licking the technologically tougher job of strapping the advanced pollution controls on heavier and more powerful full-size cars and midsize pickups and sport-utility vehicles.

If that happens, manufacturers would be breaking a lifestyle barrier that has kept many consumers from buying low-polluting, fuel-efficient cars. They can keep driving the luxury cars and go-anywhere, do-anything vehicles, but with less noxious signatures on the environment.

The state's air pollution experts contend that the advances toward ever-cleaner gasoline as well as cleaner diesel engines will not be enough to achieve and maintain healthy air quality in California.

Large numbers of ZEVs eventually will be needed to offset pollution from growing numbers of cars and miles traveled, the air board contends.

Meanwhile, the super-clean gasoline cars are expected to take ever bigger bites out of pollution as consumers become more aware of them.

"The public doesn't know yet that these vehicles have a huge role environmentally," said Ben Knight, Honda's vice president for research and development.

"We see them as the fastest, most practical and most effective path to healthy air."

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