An exciting ride in a VERY fast EV!

If you give engineers enough time and money, they can design some amazing products. Witness the Peraves E-Tracer, winner of the tandem division of the Progressive Automotive X-Prize.

This amazing 2-seat enclosed "cabin" electric motorcycle can travel close to ten miles on a kWh of energy while traveling 70 mph on the freeway. That's the equivalent of about 350 miles per gallon!

My buddy, Stefano Paris, drove this amazing vehicle to the beach on Sunday and enticed me away from my friends at the rings with the promise of an extended test drive on the LA freeways.





This is the view from the cockpit as Stefano arrived at the beach. Stares from everyone!




My friend, Alexandra, tried to convince me she should get the ride, but I wasn't about to give up my turn in the E-Tracer for anything!

Stef wanted to drive across town to Pasadena to visit a friend. So, I settled into the back seat, which looked very cramped until I got in and found my legs could stretch out fully making for a very comfortable ride.

The E-Tracer, being an enclosed motorcycle, presents an interesting problem when coming to a stop. Since you can't put your leg down as on a normal motorcycle, you have to flip a lever on the dash which triggers outrigger-style wheels that immediately (within half a second) hit the ground. The noise was similar to that of the wheels being lowered on a jetliner, although much quicker and quieter. When the light turns green, or the traffic clears in front of you, the driver begins moving forward and then hits the "wheels up" lever to get back to two wheels.

We jumped on the freeway and Stefano gave me a taste of what this engineering marvel was all about. Traffic was light, and conditions good, so he just barely opened the throttle and the bike bolted forward like it had all the power in the world. We've all driven cars for years, and everyone knows the feeling of a given vehicle's power to weight ratio. Most cars have generally the same feel, a lot of weight and only moderate power. This was not like that.

The acceleration was an enormous rush! It feels like you have about double the power of a normal car, but with one fourth the weight and virtually no drag.

We zoomed past the car in front of us like it was barely moving. It felt a lot like my exhilarating rides in a Tesla roadster, only instead of having the pedal to the metal, the throttle was barely tweaked.

Cruising at 70, we were consuming a mere 4 kW of power from a motor capable of 150 kW. Stefano says the E-Tracer is geared for a top speed of 200 mph! While we weren't about to test the top end of this bike, we definitely got to test the acceleration. The gearing is set for a fast top speed, so the 0-60 acceleration was something just north of 4 seconds. However, the 60-120 time is a mind-blowing 3 seconds! I only got a slight taste of that since Stef is a careful driver and doesn't want to risk a ticket.

The power plant Stefano had at his control is an AC Propulsion 150. This is the same motor that BMW used in its uber-popular MINI-E, and is the basis of the motor in the first generation Tesla. One big difference is that the E-Tracer is a mere 1260 lbs, less than half that of the Tesla.

The straight cut gears gave out a soft whine much like the EV1. Stefano says the production model will use helical gears which will eliminate the sound all together. Other than the gears, all you can hear is the wind. It's a very quiet ride.The view from inside as we cruised the 110 freeway in downtown LA. Notice the "Tron" advert in the upper right.

The windows are huge from the inside. The visibility is almost as good as being outside, yet you're in a climate controlled environment, protected by a kevlar shell capable of withstanding a pretty serious crash. The people inside, who knows? We did have three point belts, and I felt much safer than on my Vectrix.

One of the other aspects of the E-Tracer that contributes to its phenomenal efficiency is a coefficient of drag - how much air it pushes aside as it travels down the freeway - of only .19. This compares to the Tesla Roadster's .35 and a Hummer H2 of .57.

In LA, Ferraris and Lamborghinis are somewhat common, so while they elicit a longing look from the teenage boys and their close cousins, men in their mid-life crisis, they don't garner near the attention this unique vehicle gets. Everyone who saw this bright yellow bullet with its decals and sleek "Tron-like" appearance strained to get close enough to take pictures. I've never seen so many cameras shooting in my direction! It was like being on a movie premiere red carpet. What fun! When we were going through downtown LA and the traffic slowed to a crawl, cars on both sides of us jockeyed to get pictures. Given the speed, we had to drop the balancing wheels several times which must have looked really bizarre to those behind us.

Being a careful driver, Stefano didn't go very fast, but now and then, he would tweak the throttle to show the 7 series Beemer next to us that, well, there is no contest here. I was jonesing for a Ferrari, or even better, a Tesla, to pull up beside us so we'd have some decent competition, but the BMW was the fastest car we got to blow the doors off of.

Before heading back to Santa Monica, we stopped by the home of Alec Brooks, one of the leading designers of the modern EV, and a central character in "Who Killed the Electric Car?". Alec knows this motor well having worked for both AC Propulsion and Tesla in his storied career. Few people on the planet could have the appreciation Alec has for what this vehicle represents.

From Protest to Plug-Ins: Plug In America celebrates 5 years of activism

Five years ago, this motley crew known as "DontCrush.com", fresh from protests to stop the crushing of the Ford Think, Ford Ranger, GM EV1 and the Toyota RAV4 EV, met for a celebratory weekend retreat at the Mariposa County ranch of Dave Raboy and Heather Bernikoff. We needed to relaunch what had been a grassroots protest group, grown from the burning desire to prevent thousands of great electric cars from being destroyed by the very companies that built them, into an advocacy group that could help rebirth the modern EV. We really didn't know how we were going to do it, but we knew it had to be done. With the addition of a few key board members with very good strategic skills, we earned some serious clout within the federal and state legislative process, created a very effective outreach and education program, and to some degree, we convinced the car makers themselves that plug-in cars were part of their future.

Shown here are Ron Freund, Linda Nicholes, David Lane, Heather Bernikoff, Jennifer Krill, Sherry Boschert, Paul Scott, Ted Flittner, Lisa Rosen, Dave Raboy, Paul West, Mike Kane, Marc Geller, and Kevin Lyons. Not shown is Chelsea Sexton who unfortunately could not attend that weekend, but was Plug In America's first Executive Director.

We endured many frustrations along the way, but eventually, there were successes.

Of singular importance was the premiere screening at Sundance of "Who Killed the Electric Car?". Exiting the hot crowded theater into the freezing Park City night, the realization that we had such an amazing tool to use in getting the word out about electric cars gave me shivers above and beyond the cold air.

(This picture was taken minutes before we saw WKTEC? for the first time. Shown Left to right: Sherry Boschert, Marc Geller, David Lane, Howard Stein, Dave Raboy, Heather Bernikoff, Paul Scott, Zan Dubin Scott, Mike Kane, Ted Flittner, Jennifer Krill, Linda Nicholes, Colette Divine, J. Karen Thomas, Alexandra Paul, Dave Freeman, (?? Please help??), Butch Pash, Chelsea Sexton, Lynda Pash, and Earl Cox)

We knew this film would change things, but we didn't imagine it would become one of the most popular documentaries of all time. The EV movement owes Chris a lot for creating such a fine film, and we'll no doubt go deeper in debt when "Revenge of the Electric Car" releases in the spring.

Through Chelsea Sexton, we found a donor from the east coast who paid for hundreds of WKTEC? DVDs to be sent to all 50 Governors and all of the members of the House and Senate, including the staff of George Bush's White House. This was a significant donation that no doubt contributed to some key Representatives and Senators supporting plug-in vehicle legislation once Obama got elected. Jay Friedland's strategic legislative work helped seal the deal on $14.1 billion dollars in federal support for plug-in vehicles.

This is some of what Plug In America has done for the movement.

We continue to focus our efforts on dispelling myths about plug-ins and educating the public on the importance of this technology.

Virtually all of the reasons we need to make the transition to electricity and away from oil fall into three areas.

The Economy.

From the point you get your EV, unless you drive a lot of long distances, you will never give the oil companies another dime of your money.

Let that sink in.

Consider that you spend between $2,000 - $4000 every year for gas. Sixty percent of that money leaves the U.S., and 90% leaves our respective communities. We spend a billion dollars every day for foreign oil. This constitutes 45% of our national foreign deficit. A thousand million dollars every day, leaving our country instead of staying here, creating jobs and wealth for us.

When you get your EV, your part in that ends.

Think what good your money will do when it is instead spent on local goods and services, creating jobs for your friends and family instead of helping some freaking Saudi Prince buy a freaking palace.

When you get your EV, your part in that begins.

Health and the Environment.

Now, I know there's a lot of "controversy" over climate change, but the science is very clear that our atmosphere is warming, and energy (heat) added to the atmosphere causes more frequent and more intense storms. The only "scientists" in opposition to this position are paid by those who are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo - staying dependent on dirty carbon-based energy.

The costs of Katrina-type events, combined with record heat waves and snowfalls, will only increase.

With global population increasing by 85 million each day, the pollution problem grows right along with it. India and China are rapidly industrializing, building millions of cars and hundreds of coal plants. Peak oil is pretty much here, and its effects will likely be felt within two to three years. You can argue those time lines, but you'd be a fool to not plan for the worst.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, for every gallon of gas burned, there are 28 cents in health and pollution costs generated. University of Southern California Cancer Center published a report that documented thousands of cancer cases along the freeways and downwind of the refineries in Southern California.

None of these costs are paid by those who buy the gas.

National Security.

According to a recent RAND study, we annually spend about $75-$80 billion to protect and gain access to foreign oil. This figure is exclusive of the war in Iraq.

When you buy a gallon of gas, you pay nothing for that.

We have never fought a war over electricity and we never will.
*************

Broadly speaking, these are the reasons we have to transition from oil to electricity, the sooner the better. Making this happen is Plug In America's central focus. All of our efforts are geared toward expediting this transition.

This is why you need to support us by coming to our party and helping us celebrate the historic moment when the transition begins. We want to share this moment in history with our friends and supporters who have been there to help us when we needed you.

We have a great evening planned with several examples of the first wave of new electrics, including the Volt and LEAF situated next to the pool, the Ford Focus EV, Think EV and Chris' Tesla in front as guests walk in, and fresh from winning its category at the Automotive X-Prize is the super efficient, and super fast 200 mph E-Tracer. We'll have it in the interior courtyard where Stefano Paris will be keeping a close eye on this one-of-kind world's best electric motorcycle.

For tickets, go here.


And best of all, the long awaited debut of the seven mysterious Plug In America PSAs. Based on the popular Mac vs. PC ads from Apple, our "Gas Vs. Electric" spots are the ultimate in "edutainment" for the EV world. You don't want to miss these.

Our creative team of director, Eric Swenson, editor, Jeff U'ren, along with producer Alexandra Paul will be showing these slick and funny public service announcements for the first time anywhere. Our entire board is anxious to see them as even we have been kept in the dark. We're told to expect greatness:~)

Sorry for the length of this post, but today was a rainy Sunday in Santa Monica, and so I couldn't go to the rings. It was a perfect day to plop down on the sofa and crank this out while playing with the kittens.







Cheers,

Paul

Battery value in the afterlife

This story is about the economics of EVs, but it addresses a mostly unknown aspect that is only recently getting some attention.

What is the value of the battery pack when it can no longer give you the service you require?

"Lithium-ion batteries have a limited number of charge cycles in electric vehicles, but once a car’s battery pack goes kaput, it can be recycled or find new life in less demanding applications — storing renewable energy generated during off-peak hours, for example."

This is precisely what Ed Kjaer of SoCal Edison told me when I toured the SCE "smart garage". The large battery packs will have a long afterlife storing kWh from off peak charging at night in your garage or anyplace you can safely store the batteries. In the near future, we will all be on Time of Use (TOU) utility rates, so any energy we use during peak load times will be much more expensive than energy used at night.

Charging these large battery packs at night on 8 cent/kWh energy and using it to offset 40 cent energy the next day could prove quite lucrative. Therefore, when you replace your EV's battery pack with a new one after 7-10 years, the old pack may be worth hundreds, or even thousands of dollars as a storage pack in your house, or at a commercial building where many packs are strung together. It's this value that Nissan, and everyone else, wants to know.

This "afterlife" value affects the cost of EV ownership in a positive way since any value attributed to the battery pack increases the value of the car at the end of the lease, or when a used car is sold.

Nissan wants to take advantage of this value by offering to finance the cars themselves, at least for the initial rollout. As Josie Garthwaite astutely observed in her article, this will let Nissan set the residual value higher based on its internal assumptions of the battery's value and longevity which will mean a lower lease price.

A potential downside was highlighted in the article when Larry Dominique, VP of product planning for Nissan, was quoted saying, "We want to be able to control the residual value; we want to be able to control the end value, so at the end of a lease or loan we have the vehicles back and we can decide what to do with them."

Whoa! I had a flashback to March, 2005 on the rainy sidewalk in front of the Burbank GM facility when GM hauled 12 truckloads of EV1s to the crusher. I'm sure Nissan would never do such a thing-again. All the same, I would encourage Nissan, and all the other carmakers, to always offer the option to buy the cars outright. Those of us who understand the EV and how to operate it, may think it's a better bet to own that battery. We at least want the option.

Speaking of taking EVs back after the lease expires, I'm already hearing talk of some action against BMW should they decide to take their wonderful Mini Es away and destroy them after the one-year-only lease program. Whatever happens with those cars, it'll happen in time to be included in Chris Paine's upcoming "Revenge of the Electric Car".

Paul
******

Bright Idea

This past Friday, I got to drive an Idea.

Bright Automotive, a start up based in Anderson, Indiana, about as heartland USA as you can get, is poised to become a very successful company. I've written about them a couple of times based on news items and their own press releases, but this time, I'm writing based on first hand experience. Full disclosure, they paid my airfare and bought me lunch.

The team at Bright consists of many of the same engineers responsible for the EV1. Starting with CEO, John Waters, and including engineers like Sean Stanley and Jeff Ronning in addition to battery experts like Kurt Rogge. Several members of the team have spent time at the prestigious Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Amory Lovins' think tank in Snowmass, CO dedicated to efficiency. Other team members, such as Dave Busch, come from equally sterling backgrounds at engineering powerhouse Aerovironment where he worked on the precursor to the EV1 under the tutalege of "Engineer of the Century", Paul MacCready, whose biography is entitled, "Doing More With Less". This seemed to be the mantra at Bright Automotive, a company with one of the most competent teams of EV engineers anywhere.

They are singularly focused on one goal, to make the most efficient and cost effective plug-in hybrid delivery van in the world.

I was surprised to learn that much of the work on the EV1 had been conducted in nearby Indianapolis. Turns out, Indiana has been home to over a hundred car companies in years past and once vied with Detroit as the car capitol of the U.S. John Waters drove me to a nondescript group of buildings on the north side of Indianapolis where he told me he had worked on the battery pack that powered the EV1 and spoke at length of the historic efforts of their team that created the "Car That Could".

Toward the end of "Who Killed the Electric car?", Ralph Nader lambasts GM executives for their part in killing the EV1, but he pointedly excepted the engineers who he says really did want to make a better car. These are the guys Nader was talking about.

After GM's bean counters unceremoniously killed the EV program, Waters spent some time at RMI where he again got the bug to get back into electric vehicles. RMI's "Hypercar" program had piqued his interest in efficient vehicles, and a key meeting with Amory Lovins and people from Google and ALCOA convinced him to make the leap. They arranged a meeting with the head of the postal service's fleet services and came away convinced they could make a plug-in hybrid that could economically compete with existing postal delivery trucks and save a lot of energy in the process. In early 2008, Waters assembled his team with ex-EV1 engineers from RMI, Aerovironment and at least one protege of Professor Andy Frank of UC Davis, the "Grandfather of the plug-in hybrid". Thus was born Bright Automotive.

With Paul MacCready's "do more with less" mantra constantly in mind, they set about to design a vehicle that could haul a full ton of cargo with 180 cubic feet of space, yet travel up to 30 miles on electric power alone before the internal combustion engine kicked in. This would enable most postal vehicles to deliver their routes without burning any gas, and allow fleet operators needing more range to average as much as 100 mpg.

The key to success lay in doing this without making the vehicle cost too much relative to the existing internal combustion vehicles. With a judicious use of aluminum for the frame and skin, they were able to keep the weight to a remarkably low 3200 lbs, and their design team managed a drag coefficient of less than .3, very slick for a delivery van. This meant they could achieve their 30 mile all-electric range with a very modest 10 kWh battery pack.

The team is replete with experts in design and drivetrains, but it's their battery expertise that sets them apart from most start ups of this nature. They have decided to remain agnostic as to the cell manufacturer and will try out any LiIon cell that comes their way, although they are currently using lithium iron phosphate cells from EIG in Korea. Their testing equipment is the state of the art ABC 150 from Aerovironment which can replicate charging profiles of an infinite nature, and their dynometer room can test batteries in both hot and cold weather conditions. Their expertise with batteries is such that they will offer to package cells into battery packs for hire since not all OEMs have their depth of knowledge.

So, how did the test drive go? I've had the opportunity to drive both the Tesla Roadster and BMW's super quick Mini E, so I had to re-calibrate my expectations some, this is a delivery van after all, but I'll give them a strong B+. The acceleration was pretty good, but when the internal combustion kicked in, it was noticeable. Talking to the drivetrain team of Sean Stanley and Patrick Kaufman, they assured me that would be smoothed out soon. All in all, I was very impressed that they've come this far this fast. I fully expect they'll have the vehicle in A+ shape in a matter of months.

So, how soon will these clean-running vans begin replacing the noisy and dirty postal carriers plying our roads? Well, like Tesla Motors, they've applied for a loan from the Department of Energy's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Incentive Program. Telsa, along with Ford and Nissan have already been awarded their loans and they are all in the process of hiring thousands in California, Michigan and Tennessee, respectively, to staff up to build plug-in vehicles and batteries. Bright has not yet heard about their loan yet, but I would be amazed if the DOE didn't see the promise I saw in this company. The fleet vehicle niche is a large one consisting of hundreds of thousands of vehicles used by private and public fleets throughout the country. The sooner these fleets get vehicles that allow them to use cleaner, cheaper, domestic electricity instead of dirty, expensive, foreign oil, the better.