Politics in the Zeros

TOSA is the first full electric articulated bus that runs without overhead lines. With it’s so called “flash charging”, it recharges at the bus stop along the route in a record time of 15 seconds.

Credit: Better Place

Electric vehicle manufacturer Better Place made cars with swappable batteries. Drive into a Better Place outlet and they’d swap your battery in minutes, just like filling up with gas. But their cars were expensive and so were the swapping facilities. Their concept got traction in small counties like Israel and Denmark where conceivably a dozen or so well-situated facilities would suffice for most buyers. But a country like the US would require thousands of facilities and this lack of infrastructure was their biggest stumbling block and the company has shut down completely.

Ouch, that makes my brain hurt

Hey, let’s encourage people to buy electric vehicles and hybrids because they’re all squeaky green and non-polluting then tax them extra for doing so. Yes, special hybrid and EV taxes will be sure to increase sales of these vehicles.

Texas and Oregon are considering doing this, based on the dubious logic that efficient vehicles use less gasoline which means less gasoline sales tax revenue for them, so therefore the only possible solution is to invoke special taxes for those being innovative. Never underestimate the power of governments to be mutton-headed.

From the comments at AutoBlogGreen:

Brought to you by your local Exxon supported state representatives.

The main effect on Hybrids will be a massive reduction in sales of Hybrids that get >54 MPG.

EVs are selling well below 1% of vehicles. Targeting them now will have no real effect on improving state revenues. In fact it will likely cost the states more money to set up the bureaucracy than they will get from the paltry number of EVs.

Mayor Bloomberg wants New York City to have 10,00 new electric vehicle charging stations in seven years. There are currently a mere 2,069 EVs registered in the city. So, if they build the beginnings of a charging network, will more people buy EVs? We will see…

The proposed charging stations will take just 30 minutes and some of them will used by Nissan electric taxis. But is a 100-125 mile range enough for a taxi on an 8-10 hour shift? Dunno. Seems like they’d have to recharge at least once during a shift and constantly have to be be checking their charge. “Oh sorry, I can’t take you to JFK airport because the taxi would run out of juice on the way back.”

Hmm, this means the rich in NYC could find it much easier to find parking spaces by the simple expedient of buying an EV since the new parking spaces would presumably be EV-only.

Yeah, I’m a bit skeptical of this since it seems quite expensive, only a few would benefit, and the future is probably in hybrids. An EV might make a good car to zip around Manhattan in. However, owners will need their own charging stations in their garage at night.

The video show how EVs are still in their infancy. Smartphones apps let EVs owners find charging stations and determine if they are available. That’s a nice (and essential) app to have. However, if you are driving around Manhattan on a busy day running errands or going to business meetings, do you really need the hassle of locating a charging station then waiting 30 minutes? What’s the advantage of this over a hybrid for a driver?

And if by chance EVs really take off and there are 100,000 of them recharging at any given time during the day in New York City, then maybe we will need new sources of electricity too.

This could be the Manhattan Project for EV batteries.

Autoblog has more on the electric Smart Forjeremy by designer Jeremy Scott

Electric vehicle battery maker A123 received almost $250 million in funding from the government in 2009. This morning, the company announced it would not be able to meet loan payments and is now in bankruptcy. The stock cratered from an already abysmal 24 cents a share to 6 cents.

Johnson Controls will buy automotive assets and factories from A123.

On October 16, 2012, A123 Systems, Inc. announced that it has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Johnson Controls, Inc., which plans to acquire A123’s automotive business assets, including all of its automotive technology, products and customer contracts,

The government funds startups and tech all the time. This is a good thing. The internet and solar power emerged out of government funded enterprises. However, the A123 bankruptcy will make it even harder for cleantech startups to get funding now even though the vast majority of clean energy and battery projects funded by the government are solvent.

The Nissan LEAF EV, innovative as it may be, apparently doesn’t function well in very cold or very hot climates. Range drops in cold weather and the battery degrades in hot weather.

ECOmove’s car, the QBEAK, can reach 75 miles and hour, uses electric motors and a fuel cell that converts a bio-methanol and water mixture into electricity, which charges the battery.

The QBEAK is being developed by Danish car makers. Sure, it’s tiny. But a 500 mile range on an EV changes everything.

“Every prior attempt to electrify the car has assumed the vehicle would be the energy carrier. By comparison, the grid is much more efficient at moving energy from point A to point B, so if you can make dynamic charging safe and affordable, you are truly introducing something new.” — Jeff Muhs, director of Strategy and Business Development for Utah State University’s Energy Dynamics Laboratory

Utah State is working on a prototype now for buses. This could be a game-changer for electric vehicles.