Ford delays hybrid SUV debut

September 22, 2003: 7:49 PM EDT

DETROIT (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co. has delayed the debut of its gasoline-electric hybrid sport utility vehicle by several months, saying Monday it wants more time for testing.

Ford (F:Research ,Estimates ) is the second Detroit automaker to delay plans for a high-mileage, high-technology hybrid truck. DaimlerChrysler (DCX :Research ,Estimates ) said last year it was canceling plans for a hybrid version of its Dodge Durango SUV.

Ford's Escape and hybrid pickups from DaimlerChrysler AG's (DCX :Research ,Estimates ) Chrysler unit and General Motors Corp. (GM :Research ,Estimates ) are now all promised for 2004.

Ford had said it would sell an unspecified number of hybrid Escapes to business fleets this year as a test program and sell them to retail buyers next year.

But Ford spokeswoman Angela Coletti said Monday that the automaker was delaying sales to fleets and that hybrid Escapes would now go on sale in "late summer" of 2004.

Coletti said Ford is already conducting durability and fuel economy tests on some hybrid Escapes.

"External fleet testing would have given us the same information that we're collecting internally," Coletti told Reuters. "It's a more efficient use of our resources to conduct the same testing internally."

Coletti said Ford was still targeting fuel economy of up to 40 miles per gallon in city driving for a front-wheel drive hybrid Escape versus 23 miles per gallon for the regular front-wheel-drive Escape with a four-cylinder engine.

Hybrid vehicles use an electric motor and battery pack to improve the fuel efficiency of a traditional engine. The batteries charge when the vehicle cruises or brakes, and the electric motor eases the load on the engine under acceleration.

Environmentalists have demanded more hybrid vehicles from Detroit's Big Three, but automakers have run into several engineering hurdles. Making the electric motor, batteries and all other pieces of the hybrid system work together requires complicated software. Many hybrids do not save enough fuel over the lifetime of the vehicle to pay for their extra cost. And hybrids' fuel consumption can be dramatically affected by driving habits.

So far, Toyota Motor Corp. (TM :Research ,Estimates ) and Honda Motor Co. (HMC :Research ,Estimates ) are the only automakers offering hybrids. Sales of their three hybrid cars have totaled about 27,000 vehicles through August, or about 0.2 percent of the U.S. market.

Toyota has been more enthusiastic about the potential for hybrid vehicles, rolling out an updated version of its Toyota Prius sedan and promising a hybrid version of its Lexus RX 330 SUV next year.

Honda sells a hybrid version of its Civic sedan, but is slowly phasing out its two-seat hybrid Insight and has not said what its next hybrid model will be, although insiders say a hybrid version of the Accord might be in the works.

ep. 23, 2003. 01:00 AM

Azure CEO hails

Purolator, the country's biggest courier company, will use the chassis made by Azure Dynamics Inc. to power its urban delivery fleet. It will take delivery of 30 vehicles in 2004 and, if they work well for the courier, Purolator may buy up to 400 hybrid electric vehicles a year starting in 2005 as it replaces its fleet of 3,700 urban vehicles.

"This is a watershed event in the battle to help clean up urban transportation smog in Canada," said Campbell Deacon, chairman and chief executive of Azure Dynamics.

After testing the Azure Dynamics technology for months, Purolator saw greenhouse gas emissions reduced by up to 50 per cent in the test vehicles and fuel efficiency increased by up to 50 per cent.

"We're delighted to be able to invest in technology that is environmentally friendly and efficient," Purolator president and chief executive Robert Johnson said.

"We are sure that on-going reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions and fuel savings will make this a true win-win investment for us and for the environment."

Shares in Azure Dynamics Corp., which released its news after markets closed yesterday, ended the day up 5 cents at 45 cents on the TSX Venture Exchange.
http://www.vvdailypress.com/cgi-bin/newspro/viewnews.cgi?newsid1064323429,81822,

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

By NIKKI COBB/Victorville Daily Press Staff Writer

VICTORVILLE — They come in any color imaginable. But whether they're red, teal, yellow or taupe, new technology makes some new lines of cars green through and through.

Partial zero-emission vehicles, or PZEVs, are also golden for auto manufacturers struggling to comply with California's notoriously strict auto emissions regulations.

PZEVs, and the even less-polluting AT-PZEVs — the AT is for advanced technology — cost little more than a standard gasoline-fueled internal combustion auto. However, they emit 90 percent less pollution.

They're even cleaner than most electric-gasoline powered hybrid vehicles, and cost only about a hundred dollars more than a similar, higher-emissions model.

"These cars have fewer emissions while being driven than your average car puts out while sitting still," said Violette Roberts, spokeswoman for the Mojave Desert Air Quality Management District.

"And since in our area 60 percent of the pollution comes from vehicle emissions, that's where the major amount of our emissions reductions will have to come from to meet state requirements," Roberts said.

To be called a PZEV, a vehicle has to have extremely low tailpipe emissions, as well as next-to-no evaporative emissions — the gasoline vapor that leaks out through gas caps or imperfectly sealed engine systems.

Rich Varenchik, spokesman for the state Air Resources Board, said that car manufacturers can earn credits for producing PZEVs and AT-PZEVs. Those credits help the manufacturer satisfy California quotas for the production of environmentally friendly vehicles.

"These are vehicles people are very familiar with. There's nothing strange about them," Varenchik said of PZEVs. "The performance is the same, and there's very little price difference."

Caltrans spokeswoman Rose Melgoza said that unlike alternative-fuel vehicles, PZEVs don't qualify a buyer for any incentives, neither financial nor special consideration for use in restricted carpool lanes.

Varenchik said he doesn't think people need those attractions to spend a little more for a minimally polluting product.

Dave Bernstein, fleet manager at Valley-Hi Toyota-Honda in Victorville, said the enthusiastic response he's seen to electric-gas hybrids shows that people are shopping with the environment in mind.

"Sales have been very, very brisk on those vehicles," Bernstein said.

"People in California are especially savvy that way, and about one in 10 customers asks about the emissions standards" when shopping for a hybrid, Bernstein said.

Nikki Cobb can be contacted at nikki_cobb@link.freedom.com or 951-6277
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/22320/story.htm

Schwarzenegger Says He Will Push Fuel Cell Cars

USA: September 23, 2003

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

CARPINTERIA, Calif. - Action star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who drives a gas-guzzling Hummer, promised on Sunday that if he became governor of California he would promote hydrogen-fueled cars and solar energy.

"I want clean air, clean water and a clean environment," the Terminator star said at a campaign appearance in Carpinteria, about 85 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

The Republican actor, running neck-and-neck with Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, promised to cut air pollution by 50 percent in California and to forge a "public-private partnership" to create stations for hydrogen-powered cars every 20 miles on major Interstate highways by 2010.

He also set a target for half of new houses in California to incorporate solar energy by 2005.

Schwarzenegger said the hydrogen supply network would inspire Detroit to build vehicles powered by fuel cells, which combine hydrogen with oxygen to generate electricity and produce only water as a byproduct.

"By the end of this decade we will have hundreds of thousands of cars driving with hydrogen fuel rather than fossil fuel," he said.

The actor said he would fit his own Hummer -- which he has said has gasoline consumption of 14 miles to the gallon -- with a fuel cell to test the technology.

Schwarzenegger aims to replace Democratic Gov. Gray Davis in a recall vote originally set for Oct. 7. Courts are reviewing a suit aiming to postpone the poll until voting station technology is updated.

But Bill Magavern, a spokesman for the Sierra Club environmental group, noted that hydrogen itself is usually produced by fossil fuels or nuclear energy.

"Retrofitting one Hummer will not make up for the damage of the tens of thousands already on our streets and the others that will be out there because Schwarzenegger championed them," Magavern said. However, he lauded Schwarzenegger's solar power goals.

Davis, campaigning to keep his job, is due to sign new environmental laws yesterday.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wheel23sep23,1,4497813.story?coll=la-headlines-california

September 23, 2003

Although the 'green' choices are available at the San Diego facility, officials say increased awareness is needed to bring in customers.

By Kurt Streeter, Times Staff Writer

SAN DIEGO — It was a simple movement, the kind made countless times at gas stations every day. But to Troy Rhoads, placing the silver nozzle of this particular fuel pump into the gas tank of his metallic Ford Ranger was just this side of revolutionary.

"Man, this feels just great," said Rhoads, 35, his eyes gleaming from below the bill of a red, white and blue "USA" baseball cap.

"Filling up my tank — it's cheaper, I'm doing something good for the environment. And it's just good for the country."

Rhoads' fuel of choice was ethanol, an alternative fuel often made from corn. In this case it was made from scraps of cheese. He noted that the cost, $1.59 a gallon, was far lower than that for ordinary gas in San Diego.

The place where he filled up is far from ordinary.

Newly built and located in the City Heights district of San Diego, the Regional Transportation Center is a mecca for energy-efficient, environmentally sensitive "alternative autos."

The center has a nonprofit arm that promotes alternative autos, a dealership that sells them and a service shop that maintains them. (The center also bills itself as the West Coast's only licensed dealer for the Segway, the battery-powered people mover that looks like a pogo stick on wheels.)

Although a Segway rider always draws a crowd, the biggest novelty here is the gas station, which has three rows of pumps.

Two of the rows are standard-issue gas: regular to supreme and diesel, all of it derived from oil. But the third row of four pumps offers what state officials say is the widest variety of alternative fuels in one location in California.

In addition to ethanol, there's compressed natural gas, liquefied propane gas, ultra-low sulfur diesel and biodiesel, which is made from used French fry grease. A few feet away from the pumps is a line of 3-foot-tall electric chargers for battery-powered cars.

"We've just about got all of your fuel options covered," said Mike Lewis, 37, a former service manager at a nearby Ford dealership who runs the center. "When we started this, we wanted to give every fuel equal billing.

"We've done that. Now we've got to get more people interested in buying cars that use this stuff."

One day in the mid-1990s, Bimson sketched out a vision for the transportation center on a restaurant napkin, while talking to friends about how to promote alternative energy.

With money from Ford, individual investors and state, local and federal sources, Bimson raised $15 million to buy land near the freeway and construct the center, which opened in August.

"It's pretty much turned out the way I imagined," said Bimson, who asked Lewis to run the operation.

"Nobody knows what fuel is going to be the most popular one in the future. But no matter what, we will be ready to offer it to the public."

Problem is, the public isn't on board just yet.

Most people simply don't drive vehicles capable of handling alternative fuels like compressed natural gas, which powers cars with the same highly pressurized, clean-burning fuel that lights many kitchen stoves.

"There's still a major hill to climb," said Dan Fong, a transportation specialist with the California Energy Commission. "You have to have the cars and we don't have that yet in this state. But to get the cars, you have to convince people, and one of the major barriers has always been where to get the fuel. There's just not enough other options."

Bimson believes the Regional Transportation Center will show private investors that more fuel stations can and should be opened. He argues that alternative fuels are poised to take advantage of the moment.

Regular gas prices are high. Many drivers are concerned about the effect their cars have on the environment, or about the nation's dependence on oil from the Middle East.

And despite the domination of regular gas guzzlers, California has long been a leader in the effort to boost sales of alternative vehicles.

The state's goal is for 10% of new car and truck sales to be of zero- or low-emission vehicles by 2005, according to Jerry Martin, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board. Martin said that fewer than 1% of California cars currently meet such standards. By 2012, the state wants at least 3.5 million of its vehicles to be powered by alternative fuels or extremely low-polluting engines such as those in some new-model gas-powered Honda Civics.

That goal seems a long way off. During three hours on an afternoon last week, dozens of people came to the San Diego station for regular gas. Only a handful came for the alternatives fuels. Of those, most filled up with ethanol. By Lewis' estimate, about 30,000 cars in San Diego can use ethanol, many of them trucks and SUVs that are built to handle regular gas or the alternative fuel.

But, he noted, until the Regional Transportation Center was built, the closest place to get ethanol was Salt Lake City.

"There was just nowhere to go," said Lewis. "Kind of hard to get the people excited when that's the case."

Rhoads, one of the afternoon's few alternative customers, said that he had bought his Ranger knowing it could take ethanol, but that he had never given the capability much thought, because there was no place to buy the fuel. When he heard there was an ethanol pump near his home, he said, he decided to give it a try.

Rhoads said some of his friends told him he wouldn't like how ethanol would affect his car, that it would make his truck sluggish and hurt his gas mileage. He said he had found the opposite — his Ranger was running better. Moreover, he said, he was happy that the fuel was produced in the United States rather than in the Middle East.

"Never thought I'd be doing this," he said. "But now I've got a little more pep in my truck, and I can do my part to help the country. Pretty cool."
http://asia.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=3545654

Hybrids Can Be Cheap to Make, Toyota Says

Thu October 2, 2003 06:05 AM ET

By Chang-Ran Kim, Asia auto correspondent

TOYOTA CITY, Japan (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp showed off the production site of its gasoline-electric hybrid cars to journalists for the first time on Thursday with a powerful message: they don't have to be expensive to make.

Not long ago, many leading auto makers, including the world's biggest, General Motors Corp, questioned the benefit of developing hybrid cars, arguing they are merely an interim solution before zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles take over.

They accused -- possibly accurately -- Toyota and Honda Motor Co, the only other mass-producer of gas-electric hybrid cars, of selling them at a loss given the labor-intensive assembly required.

There may have been some truth to that argument before, but no longer, says Toyota, which launched its second-generation Prius hybrid sedan in Japan last month.

"We used to build the previous Prius on an exclusive assembly line at the Takaoka plant, and later at Motomachi," said Kenji Takahara, head of administration at neighboring Tsusumi plant, which now builds the Prius.

"Now, it shares a line with four other mass-production sedans," he said.

That's a big and necessary step for Japan's top auto maker as it aims to offer the hybrid option on most of its models in the not-too-distant future. Toyota is hoping to sell 300,000 of the fuel-efficient vehicles a year starting mid-decade.

Hybrids use electric motors and battery packs to improve fuel efficiency, adding power during acceleration and reclaiming energy when braking and coasting. Toyota says the Prius gets 35.5 km per liter of gasoline, which is over 80 miles per gallon.

Visual comparisons with the production method for the previous Prius, launched in late 1997, are difficult since journalists were never allowed to visit the assembly site.

But the numbers speak for themselves: the Prius's current assembly line rolls out around one car every minute, versus one every eight to 10 minutes for the has improved by at least 15 percent for the current model, a factory official said.

"This is proof that mass production of the Prius has started in earnest," Takahara said.

BLENDING IN

Touring through the factory floor in this central Japanese city named after the auto maker, it is indeed difficult to tell there's any difference between a hybrid and a conventional car.

"The worker is installing the hybrid engine system into the Prius just like a regular gasoline engine," assembly manager Yoshihisa Nagatani says proudly, pointing at the shell of a Prius hanging on an overhead conveyor belt as it follows a Camry.

In addition to some tweaking of the assembly line required with any new model launch, mixed assembly has been made possible by the huge increase in projected sales, Toyota says.

The auto maker is aiming to sell 76,000 units of the new Prius a year globally, with 36,000 of that in Japan. Actual sales of the previous Prius was 28,000 units last year.

But the sales target is already looking extremely conservative. Toyota said on Thursday that orders in Japan reached 17,500 units in the first month. In the United States, where it goes on sale this month, orders topped 10,000 as of September 24.

Reflecting their popularity, every other car on the five-model assembly line at the Tsutsumi plant is a Prius.

In contrast, rival Honda says low volumes are forcing it to practically hand-build its Insight hybrid model, much like the NSX and S-2000 sports cars. Japan's second-largest auto maker admits that after four years of selling hybrids, it barely makes any profit on them.

Nevertheless, Toyota's feat in mass-producing its hybrid car should be an encouraging sign for other rivals as they follow Japan's top two auto makers into the market.

Among them, GM and Ford Motor Co are planning to introduce their first hybrid vehicles later this year. But with Ford admitting to doing so at a loss initially, it could be a while before they can emulate Toyota's success.

Published on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 by Reuters

by David Morgan

PHILADELPHIA — The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and other critics of the United States' romance with the sport utility vehicle unveiled the blueprint Tuesday of what they called a safer, more fuel-efficient SUV based largely on features already available in the market.

David Friedman, an engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, talks about the 'Guardian,' an SUV that he helped design, at a news conference in Philadelphia, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2003. The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Center for Auto Safety say their sport-utility vehicle, dubbed the 'Guardian,' uses the same amount of gas as a car and is significantly safer than the SUVs currently on the road, while maintaining the power and size that motorists covet. (AP Photo/Mark Stehle)

The key is a series of off-the-shelf features that would add between $735 and $2,960 to an SUV pricetag but pay for themselves in five years through lower fuel costs, they said.

For example the UCS Guardian design, a modified Ford Explorer, would curb rollover deaths with $50 worth of roof design modifications, "smart" seat belts, and window curtain air bags.

Greater fuel efficiency would be had through a six-cylinder engine, a six-speed automatic transmission, an integrated starter-generator allowing the engine to switch off in traffic jams, improved aerodynamics, and a lower unibody design.

"Families deserve to know that they can get a better SUV," said David Friedman, research director for the UCS Clean Vehicles Program. "The problem is not SUV owners. The problem is that people think SUVs are safer than cars. They're not. In fact SUVs don't even have to meet the same safety and fuel standards as cars, and automakers have fought to keep it that way."

But auto industry officials rejected UCS claims, saying that advanced safety and fuel efficiency options were already available to SUV buyers.

"Vehicles that consumers are choosing are not always the vehicles that the Union of Concerned Scientists would like them to buy," said Charles Territo, spokesman for the Washington-based Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

While charging automakers with using outdated technology to maximize profits on most SUV models, the UCS engineers acknowledged that Ford's Volvo XC90 already incorporates most of the safety features they advocate, while the Honda's Pilot SUV offers a similar fuel-efficient engine design.

SUVs represent the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. auto market over the past decade, while the Ford Explorer ranks as the biggest-selling SUV.

But environmentalists and consumer-safety advocates view SUVs as gas-guzzling behemoths that have reduced U.S. fuel economy to a 22-year low while making the road more dangerous.

The UCS, which was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s, launched the new Guardian design in four U.S. cities along with the Center for Auto Safety, a consumer group founded by Consumers Union and Ralph Nader.

To drive home the need for a new SUV design, the UCS said current models burn 40 percent more gasoline than the average car and, with pickup trucks, account for more than 60 percent of the increase in 2002 traffic deaths.

By contrast, the Guardian design, if adopted for all SUVs, would raise gas mileage from 21 miles per gallon to as high as 36.3 mpg while reducing traffic deaths by up to 2,900 fatalities a year, according to the UCS.

The group also said the Guardian would save 800,000 barrels of oil per day in 2015 — or about half of U.S. oil imports from Saudi Arabia — if applied to the light truck fleet over the next five years.

Copyright 2003 Reuters Ltd

September 16, 2003