State close to giving up on electric-car requirements

By Paul Rogers Mercury News

The rotary dial telephone. The black-and-white TV. The eight-track tape player.

California is on the verge of adding a new item to the list of yesterday's technologies: the electric car.

In a historic shift, state officials spent Monday putting the finishing touches on a new plan to end a longstanding requirement that forces automobile companies to build and sell specific numbers of electric cars in California.

As soon as today, the staff of the California Air Resources Board in Sacramento is expected to issue proposed changes to the

zero-emission vehicle'' rules that date back to 1990. Under them, automakers will be able to earn credits for building low-emission gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles instead of purely battery-powered electric cars.

For California, which has pushed Detroit harder than any other state to produce electric vehicles, the shift comes as a difficult acknowledgment that hybrids such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Civic are more practical, cost-effective and attractive to consumers.

What we are doing is being realistic,'' said Jerry Martin, a spokesman for the Air Resources Board.

The electric cars we were talking about in 1990 when we first adopted the rule just haven't happened.''

Approval expected

The new rules are expected to be approved by the California Air Resources Board on March 27. If the switch to hybrids is allowed, the already-small market for pure electric cars is likely to shrink to almost nothing.

Because of battery limits, most electric cars can travel only 75 to 125 miles on a charge. The batteries remain so expensive that it costs up to $24,000 more to manufacture an electric car than a gasoline car, according to a 2001 report by the air board's staff.

Major automakers including Ford, GM and Honda have pulled the plug on their electric car programs, with Toyota dropping its electric RAV-4 most recently after selling only 1,200 vehicles since 1998. The RAV-4 cost $42,000 and could go only 80 to 120 miles before needing to be plugged in for up to six hours.

Instead, Martin said, hybrid cars have matured faster than the state had hoped, and put out very little pollution.

Our program will continue,'' Martin said.

This rule just recognizes some technological shifts.''

Unlike battery-powered electric vehicles, hybrids, which are powered by a combination of batteries and a small gasoline engine, do not have to be plugged in to recharge. They recharge by the turning and braking of the wheels.

Sales of hybrids grew 43 percent in 2002 to about 36,000 vehicles, including the Prius, the two-door Honda Insight and the Honda Civic Hybrid sedan. The Prius, at $19,999, gets 45 miles per gallon on the highway and 52 mpg in the city. It also emits 75 percent less smog than a new Toyota Corolla.

Although all details were not complete Monday night, Martin said the air board staff will recommend several significant changes to the so-called

zero-emission vehicle'' program, known to insiders as the

ZEV mandate.''

First, it will drop rules that require purely zero-emission vehicles. The air board made national news in 1990 when it required that 10 percent of new vehicles sold in California by 2003 -- roughly 100,000 cars -- be

zero-emission'' or electric.

Steadily backing away

As battery technology failed to deliver, however, the air board slashed that requirement at least three times. By 2001, the board mandated that only 2 percent of new cars sold be electric by 2003.

With credits for increased range and early introduction, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan, Toyota and Daimler-Chrysler were required to sell at least 4,650 electric vehicles a year by 2003.

Now, even the 2 percent mandate is proposed to be scrapped, Martin said.

Instead, automakers will have the option of making up the difference with hybrid vehicles.

Second, the air board staff will propose requiring that automakers build and sell about 250 fuel cell vehicles in California by 2008. Fuel cell vehicles run on a complex chemical reaction, gaining energy from hydrogen or other clean sources. But they remain years away from production.

Finally, the air board staff will recommend that a panel of experts report back in 2008 on the status of battery technology to see whether a new electric car rule should be passed.

Some environmental groups on Monday said they will fight to keep some

zero-emission'' targets in state law, even if only to pressure automakers to spend more money developing fuel cells.

This is extremely disappointing,'' said Jason Mark, a spokesman with the Union of Concerned Scientists, in Berkeley.

While we expected the state to takes its foot off the accelerator on the program, we didn't expect them to slam on the brakes.''

Automakers said the change was long overdue.

California tried to force us to build something that wasn't market ready, and it looks like they have finally realized that fact,'' said Greg Dana, vice president of environmental affairs for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, in Washington, D.C.

The industry knows that because of air pollution problems, we have to build cars that have no emissions. We are working hard to get there.''

Gains in cutting smog

Since 1970, dramatic gains have been made in reducing the amount of smog from cars. Because of catalytic converters, cleaner burning gasoline and computers, the average new car emits less than 5 percent of the smog that a 1970 model did. But vehicles remain a major source of air pollution, accounting for roughly 50 percent of California's ground level ozone, or smog.

The air board's change of heart on electric cars comes after a coalition of automakers, led by GM, won a federal injunction last year to delay the zero-emission rule until the 2005 model year.

Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal, a newsletter based in San Luis Obispo, said the air board's new direction is practical.

This is a pretty significant shift,'' Cogan said.

Hybrids are here now, and they make significant improvements on emissions, fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions.''
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Contact Paul Rogers at progers@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5045.

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By Bill Moore

There are some folks you just can't help but like first time you meet them. For me one of those people is Dr. Andy Franks, professor of engineering at the University of California at Davis.

I first remember him as the outspoken advocate of EVs at a conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I have since bumped into him many times at various electric vehicle events from FutureTruck to the California Fuel Cell Partnership open house. And we occasionally correspond through email.

His UC Davis FutureCar and FutureTruck teams have consistently placed in the top rankings of these competitions, so he does more than theorize about EVs, he and his students make it happen.

So, when he wrote me an email about the inefficiencies of making hydrogen compared to storing electric energy in batteries, I decided to ask him his views not only plug-in hybrids -- one of his favorite topics -- but also on the hydrogen economy. We talked for nearly an hour and what follows, along with the streaming audio link at right, is the result of that conversation.

I began by asking him to explain the concept of a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PIHEV) and why he thinks this is the direction automotive engineers should be going, though none of the big carmakers are at present.

It is his theory -- as demonstrated in UC Davis' latest Ford Explorer FutureTruck -- that consumers will not only reap the benefits of lower operating costs, but also improved performance going the plug-in hybrid route. Basically, what he advocates is dramatically downsizing the gasoline engine, while increasing both the size of the electric motor and battery pack.

Historically, the automotive industry has balked at this strategy because they claim it adds weight and cost to the vehicle.

Professor Frank counters that not only will his plug-in hybrid Explorer weight nearly the same as a conventional Explorer but more importantly, it will have more power, to the tune of 330 horsepower when the gasoline engine and electric motor outputs are combined. He jests that not only will his vehicle pull anything a V8 Explorer will pull, but that his vehicle might just pull the hitch right off the frame.

As for added cost, he tells EV World that according to his estimates, a plug-in hybrid system would add only 10-15% to the total price of the car, comparable to the cost of adding leather seats and a sun roof. This is due, in part, to the use of newer, more powerful and cheaper Phase III NiMH batteries built to custom specifications for the UC Davis team by Ovonics. He estimates these new batteries will last 150,000 miles because of the university's battery management system.

While most consumers aren't that concerned about emissions, Frank also notes that the plug-in or grid-connected hybrid also reduces emissions considerably, even if you take into account the sources of the electricity. He points out that he and his students have looked at the emissions issues and well-to-wheel efficiencies of this approach not only for California and the West Coast where much of the electricity is generated by hydroelectricity, natural gas and even renewables like wind and solar, but also in the American Midwest and East Coast, which depend more on fossil fuels and nuclear power.

However, he asserts that plug-in hybrids make sense in all these areas because of the power industry's shift towards the use of cleaner fuels like natural gas and more modern coal-burning power plants, which are gradually phasing out older, dirtier systems.

Plug-in Theory

The principle behind PIHEVs is that instead of using the energy from a small battery pack to assist the IC engine, the PIHEV uses a larger battery pack to provide all of the traction power for ranges between 20 and 60 miles, depending on the vehicle and size of the pack. The IC engine only starts to operate once the vehicle reaches the limits of its designed zero emission vehicle (ZEV) range. Such a vehicle would have nearly all the attributes of both a completely battery electric car and a gasoline-powered car. For most commuters, the car would generate no local emissions.

Such cars would use electric power -- generated from America energy sources -- for most of their daily driving needs, offering a very practical way to reduce American dependence on imported oil, improving our national security, reducing our trade deficit, and cleaning up the air locally.

Frank envisions consumers charging their vehicles at night using off-peak power. He calculates that the operational costs of such a vehicle would be one-sixth that of gasoline car. And this doesn't include reduced maintenance costs because the plug-in design eliminates the need for many power-robbing components and accessories.

Carmaker's like Honda and Toyota have stressed in their advertising messages that you don't have to plug in their hybrids to recharge them. This is intended to assuage consumer misconceptions that the car will not run if it runs out of electricity even though it has a gasoline engine.

From Frank's perspective -- and many battery electric car drivers and California regulators -- this may have helped sell cars, but it fails to point out that plugging in your car at night actually can save you a LOT of money! Dr. Frank estimates you can run a plug-in hybrid for the equivalent of 50 cents a gallon of gasoline! Gasoline in California, he noted, is now over $2 a gallon and climbing. He says that the plug-in hybrid will run just fine without plugging it in, consumers just have to buy more gasoline.

PIHEVs are beginning to look very appealing just on pure economic grounds!

Plug-in Range

Dr. Frank says that computer modeling at UC Davis indicates that PIHEVs can have pure ZEV ranges of anywhere from 20 to 60 miles without changing the weight of the vehicle. He says he can do this by adjusting the size of the IC engine to the size of the battery pack.

The UC Davis FutureTruck Ford Explorer is currently about 300 pounds over stock Explorer weight of about 4,500 pounds. He says that one of the tasks for this year's team is to cut weight and bring the vehicle back down to the stock weight. They will do with by lightening various components in the vehicle like the tailgate and seats.

"We're not weakening anything, but swapping materials" he emphasizes.

He tells EV World that if he were able to design the vehicle from scratch, he could keep it at its same weight while further improving its performance, operating costs and emissions. This is partly due to the fact that the weight distribution in the vehicle is now evenly spaced between the front and rear, unlike the currently front-heavy conventional Explorer.

One of the newer innovations Frank is investigating is a dramatically downsized charging system on-board the vehicle. He says he and his students are looking at a simple 110-volt charger that will take 10-12 hours to completely recharge the vehicle, basically from the time the vehicle gets parked in the family driveway or garage in the evening until its driven away to work the next morning. This will reduce the complexity, weight and cost of the system and eliminate the need for an extensive public charging infrastructure. All you need to recharge the batteries is a common 110-120 volt AC outlet, usually readily available in most garages.

Professor Frank points out that over a decade of experience with batteries at UC Davis shows that they are highly complex devices that require careful monitoring and management.

"They have to be intelligently managed," he says. When they are, they can last the lifetime of the vehicles, he contends. He also notes that since doing a cost study two years ago, the price of advanced batteries has dropped even further.

Comparing Emissions and Costs

An obvious question that any thinking person will ask, is if everyone starts to recharge their PIHEVs -- assuming that carmakers actually begin to offer them for sale -- from the grid at night, won't we run out of power?

Franks responds that he and his students have very carefully looked at this issue, especially since it is such animportant one in California, in the wake of the energy crisis of 2001. UC Davis studies show that the current power grid can easily support up to 10% PIHEV fleet penetration without having to build new plants or capacity. He says it will take years to reach this level of penetration, after which time, new base-load generating capacity will have to be built, but the net effect of this will be to actually reduce the cost of electricity, rather than increase it.

In addition, when coupled with a bidirectional, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging system that enables the power company to pull power out of vehicle batteries during peak load times, the cost of electricity will drop even further because now the fleet of PIHEVs become peak shaving devices. As EV World has suggested in the past in interviews with other V2G proponents, there is the distinct possibility that the power company will even pay car owners for the use of this energy, turning a historically depreciating asset into a potential income generating asset.

Suddenly PIHEVs with V2G capabilities look even more attractive!

Part Two Continued Next Week....

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES March 4, 2003

MONTREAL -- Hydro-Quebec (X.HQB) and France's Societe de Vehicules Electriques, or SVE, will develop a primary electric vehicle.

The potential value of the agreement wasn't disclosed.

SVE's principal shareholders are Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault and Groupe Henri Heuliez.

In a news release, Hydro-Quebec said it will provide the drive system, including the electric drive train and the lithium-metal-polymer battery. Dassault and Heuliez are completing the electric vehicle prototype, which will be presented in a few months, it said.

The first markets targeted are commercial and institutional fleets in Europe and North America, Hydro Quebec said.

Company Web Sites: http://www.hydroquebec.com, http://www.dassault.fr and http://www.heuliez.com

Montréal, March 4, 2003

Driven by a growing demand for high-performance, environmentally friendly technology, yesterday’s dream is becoming today’s reality. With this as the backdrop, Hydro-Québec and France’s SVE (Société de Véhicules Électriques) announced that they are actively collaborating to engineer an electric vehicle using products (motor, battery and power electronics) developed by Hydro-Québec. The announcement was made jointly by the heads of SVE’s principal shareholders, Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault CEO Serge Dassault and Groupe Henri Heuliez CEO Gérard Quéveau, and by Hydro-Québec CEO André Caillé. The two French companies are recognized for decades of excellence in technological innovation.

Electric vehicle powered by Hydro-Québec

Products developed and marketed by Hydro-Québec subsidiaries TM4 and AVESTOR, combined with Dassault and Heuliez know-how, will make it possible to develop a primarily electric vehicle that meets market expectations. Hydro-Québec will provide the drive system, including the electric drive train and the lithium-metal-polymer (LMP) battery. Dassault and Heuliez are completing the electric vehicle prototype, which will be presented in a few months. The first markets targeted are commercial and institutional fleets in Europe and North America.

Serge Dassault and Gérard Quéveau pointed out that they are very satisfied with the performance of the products developed by Hydro-Québec and went on to say “We intend to keep these components in the electric vehicle we are developing and will be presenting in the coming months. With this technology, we are very confident we will succeed in implementing an electric vehicle in Europe, a market with excellent near-term growth potential.”

André Caillé strongly affirmed that “Hydro-Québec showed just how creative and daring it is by offering automobile manufacturers technology adapted to the needs of the electric vehicle market and I am very proud of this success. SVE experts assessed worldwide electric drive offerings and selected products from our subsidiaries. I am personally convinced of the future of electric vehicles and wish to thank our partners who, through the credibility and effort they bring, will lead us to success with this project.”

TM4 and AVESTOR Products:

a decade of R&D and productization efforts give results

Over the past decade, Hydro-Québec has developed unique expertise in manufacturing an electric vehicle drive system comprising motor, battery and power electronics. Building on the invention by Hydro-Québec’s IREQ research team of the motor-wheel, what remains to our day a technological revolution, TM4 has developed a ground-breaking product line offering, at a very competitive price, the top-performing central electric motor on today’s market.

Through its initiatives in this area, Hydro-Québec has taken a major step in providing high-performance products that help make Québec a leader in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, a major environmental issue of planetary scope. Hydropower and the breakthrough of the electric vehicle will help achieve the goals of the Kyoto protocol.

To learn more about Hydro-Québec and about electric-vehicle-related products from TM4 and AVESTOR, visit the following Web sites (www.hydroquebec.com) (http://www.avestor.com/automotiveev.ch2) (www.tm4.com) (www.hqcapitech.com/seve).

To learn more about SVE and about the French companies Groupe Industriel Marcel Dassault and Groupe Henri Heuliez, visit the following Web sites (www.dassault.fr) (www.heuliez.com).

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/11/eveningnews/main543605.shtml

GM Pulls Plug On Electric Car

CBS Evening News March 11, 2003

It is sleek and streamlined, fast and electric. But as CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone reports, General Motors' EV1, the car of the future, is about to become a thing of the past.

"I can out accelerate most of the cars on the road without using a drop of gas," says Greg Hanssen, who owns an EV1.

"Get a good look at it because when it goes away, it's gone," says Patrick Preminger, another EV1 owner.

General Motors is pulling the plug on its electric car. The company never sold it, it only leased the car and is now demanding every EV1 be returned.

Greg Hanssen led a campaign to save the little cars from the crusher.

"We had $22,000 turned in from over 80 individuals who said 'can I hold onto my car.' And they said 'No, you cannot hold onto your car,'" says Hanssen.

When GM's chairman unveiled the EV1 seven years ago at the Detroit International Auto Show, it seemed there was finally an alternative to gasoline.

"GM's goal is to make a business out of the electric car," said Jack Smith, chairman of General Motors.

In a commercial, GM suggested electric cars would soon be as common as toasters.

Those commercials boldly announced, "The electric car is here."

But General Motors built only about a thousand EV1's, available only in California and Arizona. General Motor's Ken Stewart says few people wanted a car that had to be plugged in every hundred miles or so.

"After ten years and investing over a billion dollars we think its time to move on," says Stewart.

When the EV1 was introduced California was setting tough new standards for cutting air pollution from cars. But since then GM and other automakers have gone to court delaying those standards. With the immediate pressure gone, the EV1 is going too.

Linda Preminger calls the situation "heartbreaking".

The Premingers hate to lose their EV1.

"It's not a luxury car, but it's the best car I have ever driven. And you don't have to smell the gasoline fumes," says Linda.

GM is now touting a new car of the future that runs on hydrogen, but it won't be for sale for years. So as the EV1 disappears, so does the brief hope for freedom from the gas pump.
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Plugged-In Vision - Part 2

By Bill Moore

The plug-in, grid-connected, charge-depletion electric-hybrid has a lot of good things going for as Dr. Frank enumerated in Part One of our interview. Better performance, lower-operating costs, fueled by American electrical energy, dramatically cleaner emissions, batteries with 150,000 lifecycles and all for the cost of adding leather seats and a sun roof to a conventional SUV.

On top of this, you'd have an SUV you could run your home off of in case of a power outage and, assuming your utility offered it, the ability to actually put power back into the grid -- a strategy called Vehicle-To-Grid charging -- that would put money in your pocket.

So, with all that the concept has going for it, why all the talk about hydrogen and fuel cells, I asked him?

Dr. Frank responds that while he sees a number of issues with hydrogen, he doesn't see it as an alternative, necessarily to his plug-in hybrid concept. He says that hydrogen could simply be used to replace gasoline in the ICE or even fuel cell vehicle. The grid-charged hybrid makes sense regardless of the energy source.

Taking Frank's architecture to its logical conclusion, going the charge-depletion hybrid route in a fuel cell vehicle would enable designers to downsize the fuel cell stack. This means you could lower the cost of the vehicle because more energy would be coming from the battery pack -- whose cost per kilowatt is substantially less than a fuel cell. This would let carmakers offer them sooner rather than later, again depending on the availability of hydrogen.

"We have looked at this plug-in hybrid technology as a road to advanced technology. and that advanced technology can include fuel cells, as well," he tells EV World.

Improving ICE Efficiency

Another engineering payoff of plug-in hybrids are dramatic improvements in engine thermal efficiency. Dr. Frank calculates that this approach can raise the overall efficiency of the vehicle's internal combustion engine/hybrid system to 40% which is even higher than the current best fuel cell technology.

"We are now looking at gasoline engine thermal efficiencies over 40%, which is now approaching the best of hydrogen fuel cell technology"

That sounds like a mighty tall claim, but Franks contends that this approach enables him to not only downsize the IC engine, but to strip it of many of its power-robbing accessories starting with the fan belt-driven water pump, the radiator, alternator, and starter motor.

An electrical water pump helps cool the engine using an internal thermistor and a closed cooling loop. These are electronically controlled by computer.

"We can now pump only the water we need to cool the engine," he says. "There is a huge energy savings in the water pump alone."

Dr. Frank points out that with shaft power efficiencies of over 40%, UC Davis' gasoline engines are approaching the efficiency of diesel engines, but without the cost or pollution control problems associated with these compression ignition engines. He also adds that the incremental cost of his plug-in hybrid IC is comparable to the cost of the traditionally more expensive diesel engine.

Hydrogen's Drawbacks

For Frank, the fundamental problems with hydrogen include lack of availability, storage and range or what might also be called energy density. At present hydrogen is not readily available to the average consumer. Secondly, storing it safely and in sufficient quantities for meaningful travel range is also a problem. He points out that most of the current prototype hydrogen vehicles have ranges of between 70-80 miles in real world driving situations.

He contends that by the time you would find a hydrogen refueling station, you'd have used up a significant percentage of your fuel just getting to and from the station.

"It's a long ways before the hydrogen infrastructure is constructed," he notes. "That's the first thing."

His next concern is the cost of fuel cells, which he contends are as much as 10 times more than the cost of a comparable gasoline engine. "It'll be a long time before that cost comes down."

Part of the reason is the cost of platinum, one of the key materials used in a PEM-type fuel cell stack. One estimate EV World came across recently is that more than 40% of the cost of a fuel cell is the platinum, a precious material more costly than gold on an once-by-once basis.

(Platinum is currently trading in the $690 an ounce range while gold is in the $350 per troy ounce range.)

Frank says that since there is no current substitute for platinum on the near horizon, getting over this cost barrier will be a challenge.

Finally there is the issue of energy efficiency. He tells EV World that the process of charging a battery is about 80% efficient in terms of energy in and energy out. By contrast, the most efficient way to make hydrogen from steam-reformed natural gas is about 40% efficient. Then you have to take in the losses accounted in storage and the fuel cell itself. Hydrogen electrolysis is even less efficient.

Dr Frank argues that by the time you look at all of the inefficiencies in our current hydrogen fuel cell system, which is admittedly in its early stages of development, the overall well-to-wheel efficiency of a fuel cell vehicle drops below that of an internal combustion engine.

When asked under what scenarios does hydrogen make sense, he chuckles and replies, "If you living on the sun, I guess." He is, however, confident that mankind's creativity and ingenuity will eventually overcome the issues of using hydrogen more widely as an energy carrier. He says we're not yet done inventing.

He is also not completely convinced that hydrogen is the answer either, arguing that he's seen many promising technologies come and go over the last 50 years, many promising to revolutionize the world only to be superseded by something better, cheaper or more efficient. Hydrogen might be the "fuel" of the future or it might be replaced by something not yet discovered.

"Perhaps it will end up hydrogen. Perhaps it will end up 'unobtainium."

Role of Nuclear Power?

It has been suggested that the only energy source that generates no CO2 and can be depended upon to produce electric power either for plug-in hybrids or to make hydrogen is nuclear power. Frank agrees that grid-connected hybrids will require more electric energy than the current grid can provide once they reach a concentration of about 20% of the current vehicle fleet. Prior to that, from studies he has done for the state of California, the cars can utilize unused off-peak capacity.

So, he admits that we may have to go down the nuclear pathway at some point in the future, but he estimates it would take 10 years at least to reach that point. But from his perspective, he has few issues with nuclear power, especially the problem of waste. He believes that eventually a benign use will even be found the various radioactive wastes that result from the nuclear fuels proceess.

[Editor's note: One not-so-benign use for the waste that results from the enrichment of nuclear fuel rods is depleted uranium - DU - warheads which were used extensively in Gulf War One and in Kosovo and may again be used if the US invades Iraq, which may happen sometime on or after March 17, 2003].

"What we consider nuclear waste today, could be an energy source tomorrow," he says.

Electricity, the Power of the Future

Dr. Frank is confident that the electricity is the best power source for the future, be it powering vehicles or home appliances. But he also thinks it needs to be used directly, no converted into some other form of energy like hydrogen and then back to electricity. He points out that every time you change from one form to another, you lose efficiency.

He adds that he's "not knocking" research into hydrogen, but that we already know how to very efficiently put power into and take it out of batteries at a rate of about 80% efficiency. By contrast hydrogen electrolysis is only aboefficienticienct. In effect we are throwing away more than half of the electricity to make hydrogen.