Biodiesel technology is low on the list of priorities for auto industry research, according to a global survey of 200 senior auto executives conducted by KPMG that was released Thursday.

When asked to rate which were the most important alternative fuel technologies to the auto industry over the next five years, hybrid systems were ranked first followed by battery electric power, fuel cell electric power, and biodiesel, respectively.

Fuel efficiency was ranked as the feature auto executives believed makes the biggest impact on customers’ purchasing decisions, while “environmental friendliness” was second followed by safety innovation in third.

A car’s style and looks came in last on the list of factors auto executives thought customers looked at these days when deciding which car to buy. They’re likely right. The information follows news that Ford Motor announced in December it saw record sales for its hybrid cars in 2009 compared to hybrid car sales in other years.

“Automotive manufacturers are in the challenging position of being asked to compete on both technology and cost. With global consumers still feeling the pinch of the recession, those OEMs who can deliver on this equation will be in the driver’s seat,” Gary Silberg, national automotive industry leader for KPMG, said in a statement.

The survey was conducted September through November 2009.

SOURCE: Cnet

Score one for diesel hybrids.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory got its hands on six hybrid vans that United Parcel Service is using, and after testing them nine ways from Sunday found diesel-electric technology improved fuel economy more than 28 percent. What’s more, it cost significantly less per mile to operate while delivering the same reliability and performance as conventional diesel vans.

The federal eggheads spent a year analyzing fuel economy, maintenance and vehicle performance data for six first-generation hybrid UPS vans developed by Eaton Corp. It’s no surprise a delivery service would be eager to give diesel-electric tech a try — UPS must spend money by the truckload on fuel — and the NREL joined UPS in putting the trucks through their paces in Phoenix.

So why’d they team up for the research?

Because the Eaton parallel hybrid system was developed in part under a $7.5 million, 33-month contract from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Heavy-Hybrid Propulsion System program. The feds like the technology because it increases fuel economy and reduces emissions, and they wanted to see what we got for the money.

“Having provided funding for the development of the Eaton hybrid system, DOE was eager to participate in testing the system in a commercial fleet,” Lee Slezak, manager of the advanced heavy-hybrid program, said in a statement. “Our goal is to help develop more efficient vehicle technologies and then document their on-road performance.”

The feds compared six diesel-hybrid vans to six diesel vans. According to the lab’s report, the hybrids delivered 28.9 percent better fuel economy, averaging 13.1 mpg to the diesels’ 10.2 mpg. Maintenance costs were about the same, but the diesels showed slightly better reliability — a factor the researchers chalk up to “troubleshooting and recalibration issues” associated with prototype components.

The hybrids were driven 15 percent fewer miles per day, which the feds attribute to the fact the diesel-electrics were assigned to urban routes where they made more stops per mile and spent more time at low speeds or idling. Overall, the hybrids delivered a 15 percent improvement in total cost per mile.

UPS is, as you’d expect, quite pleased with the results.

“NREL’s report on the performance of our hybrid delivery vehicles is helping make this type of energy-efficient vehicle a standard in the industry,” said Robert Hall, the company’s director of maintenance and engineering. He’s hoping the findings speed up market acceptance of the technology.

Eaton supplied the hybrid propulsion systems for the vans, which were manufactured by Freightliner. The system uses an Eaton automated transmission with an integrated motor-generator and lithium-ion batteries. The electric bits are mated to a four-cylinder Mercedes-Benz diesel engine — the same one used in the conventional vans.

UPS must like what it sees, because the delivery company just ordered another 200 Eaton hybrid vans.

SOURCE: Wired

Who drives hybrid automobiles? If one were to watch the annals of the Hollywood elite then it would be a safe assumption that actors of all stripes who care about the environment drive them. Were a person to watch Fox News, then it would be a safe assumption that the Liberal elite drive hybrids. The real question is though, who does drive these cars and why?

For many, an automobile is the 2nd most important investment after their homes. A car takes one to and from work, as well as on various other trips that can potentially lead to a great and fulfilling life. It is fair to say that the automobile has replaced the dog as man’s best friend, at least in terms of economical practicality.

The question remains though, who buys hybrids? For many Americans the benefits of having a hybrid car do not outweigh the negatives of having such an auto. The amount of gas spent in a hybrid auto is certainly less (depending on driving style), but besides that, what do you really get? The amount of time it takes to get from 0-60 is often near to 10 seconds in most models, which doesn’t make a hybrid particularly practical for getting up to speed while entering the freeway. The initial cost of a hybrid is far higher than a normal internal combustion car, and the styling on hybrid cars is, without a doubt, some of the ugliest ever created. There are more benefits than previously stated, such as reduced emissions and other eco-friendly advertisement gold, but what does it all come down to? Is the hybrid car a luxury item, just like a fine bottle of wine (wine industry hurt by economic downturn), or perhaps taking a vacation (amount of traveling down due to economic downturn). The answer is, not surprisingly: yes.

The new Honda Insight Hybrid has failed to make any kind of significant dent in the hybrid market, and thus the general automobile market. When a car company tries to make a knock-off of a proven success, the chances of failure are quite high. This is the case with the Honda Insight, which clearly copied much of the Toyota Prius. This is lack of success is a bit surprising however, due to the fact that the Honda Insight is in the same echelon of ugliness as the Toyota Prius but costs $2,000 less than its rival. Yet, the Prius is still outselling the Insight nearly 6 to 1.

This strange development in the hybrid market has induced speculation as to how the General Motors Volt will fare. Due to its extreme amount of gas mileage (53 miles to the gallon), and its certain lack of driving pleasure it should capture a large portion of the hybrid market. Chevy is producing this car, which is set to cost about the same as a Toyota Prius, though it looks far better than the elongated excrement body styling that the Prius has relied on all these years.

Despite the hybrid market growing at a good clip, who is going to spend $32,000 on a car that doesn’t have a shred of performance, sex-appeal or jaw-dropping speed? More to the point, who is going to spend $32,000 on the Chevy Volt when they can spend $10,000 less on a brand new Camaro? Who is going to drive a car that gets 53 miles to the gallon for anything but the amount saved at the pump? The young crowd won’t go for it due to the initial price, the midlife crisis folks won’t go for it because it doesn’t induce any sort of adrenaline rush. Who will want to buy this car is all speculation at this point. But it’s not hard to guess that it will likely be eco-friendly folks with a lot of money who want to “help the environment”. Many hybrid drivers have an annual average income of over $100,000, making the hybrid market a niche one, based solely upon this diminishing economic group. The question of who would buy the Volt having been answered, when are the car companies going to make a hybrid that all of us can afford and actually want to buy? The clock is ticking.

SOURCE: Green Street Journal

Ford Motor Co. has outlined plans to invest as much as $500 million in Michigan to engineer and assemble battery packs for a new generation of electric vehicles and manufacture a new hybrid and plug-in hybrid here — if state lawmakers approve a request for tax credits it is submitting today in Lansing.

These moves would consolidate much of Ford’s electric vehicle research, development, engineering and manufacturing in the state, creating approximately 1,000 new jobs at the company.

“We think it has a great opportunity to help in the economic growth of Michigan,” said Nancy Gioia, director of Ford’s global electrification programs. “It promotes Michigan’s competitiveness.”

Ford’s announcement comes a day after General Motors Co. said it would invest $336 million to upgrade its Hamtramck plant to produce the Chevrolet Volt and the next-generation Malibu.

Ford, which was the first U.S. car maker to manufacture a hybrid, plans to begin production of a battery-powered commercial van next year, to be followed by a battery-powered version of its new Focus compact in 2011. The company also is readying a new generation of gasoline-hybrids.

It currently purchases battery packs for its hybrid vehicles from Delphi Corp., which assembles them in Mexico. But the automaker said battery engineering is a “core competency” that is too important to entrust to a supplier.

If the state does not approve tax credits for Ford, the automaker said it is considering other sites.

The new Ford Focus and other vehicles based on the global compact platform are slated to be produced at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne.

Ford said it has not decided where in Michigan the batteries would be assembled.

SOURCE: Detroit News

AFTER 12 YEARS of speculation and the odd jibe from cynics, Toyota’s Prius is finally getting a plug.

The car that brought hybrid technology to the attention of the mainstream masses has always offered a mix of petrol engine and battery electric power. However, the electric charge has always been created from either spare energy in the engine or recouped through gathering the brake-force energy.

Now, with the third generation of the car – in full family guise – on our roads, Toyota has finally added the option of recharging the battery directly from the mains.

While the additional power source will be available only on 500 prototypes at first, all signs are that Toyota is preparing to roll out the plug-in option to the general public once electricity suppliers and governments get their acts together on providing recharging points.

Of the initial batch, 150 will come to Europe, with 20 destined for the British market. These will be leased to people who will then feed back their views and reports to the development team in Japan.

So what is different from the current Prius? Well, nothing much in terms of the appearance, except for what looks like a secondary filling cap on the front left wing. This is the plug-point for the car. Bootspace is also slightly compromised by the larger battery. And it’s here, under the boot floor, that the most significant changes have been made, with Toyota finally moving to a 5kW/h Panasonic lithium-ion unit.

Lithium is regarded as the future saviour of battery technology for electric cars, allowing more power to be stored for less weight. While this new battery does add 110kg to the car, it’s a worthwhile trade-off in terms of power.

Where the regular hybrid Prius with its nickel-hydride battery can power the car up to 50km/h on electric power for short bursts, the plug-in lithium battery version can reach speeds of 100km/h without needing to call on the petrol engine for support, and the car can run on battery power alone for between 12km and 20km.

Combine the extended speed range and distance and you see that for city or urban driving, this plug-in Prius is effectively an electric car. The big difference is because it’s hybrid, it also offers the chance to call upon a petrol engine for extended range. While we await batteries that can challenge combustion engines for range and the introduction of a proper recharging infrastructure, it’s the best combination on offer.

On a brief test drive we cruised along at 80km/h completely on electric mode and it was only when we floored the accelerator on the test track that the petrol engine kicked in. Lift off slightly and the engine gives way again to electric power.

On the most gentle of obstacle courses we also got the chance to test the car’s handling and though the Prius has never been dynamically enthralling, the added weight of the battery at the back made little difference to its ability.

In terms of recharging, Toyota promises it will fully recharge from the mains in 100 minutes. With a 12km range if you are pushing the car on, you can expect it to cut your fuel bill, particularly for short commuter runs.

If you take that away from an average journey and run the rest of the time on a mix of regular engine and Prius’s current hybrid system, it’s not unrealistic to suggest you could achieve figures in the realms of 70-80mpg. The estimated emissions level of 65g/km will certainly reap rewards in terms of motor tax.

It has been long overdue and admittedly Toyota lost some of the electric buzz to the likes of Opel’s Ampera, which for all the media attention is still a couple of years from delivery.

Mitsubishi will have its fully electric plug-in city car, the i-Miev, on sale in Ireland next year. For now we’ll have to wait and see if any of these plug-in Priuses make it to Ireland under the test programme.

First impressions behind the wheel suggest it will be another string to the Prius’s bow, making a car that remains something of an icon of green motoring even more attractive.

After several months of bad news about recalls and the loss of its leadership in electric car development, it could offer a much-needed boost to the brand, if they can get it into showrooms.

SOURCE: Irish Times

Authorities said Tuesday there are currently no plans to levy more fees on hybrid cars as demand on such vehicles has surged recently, a trend attributed to concerns that extra charges are imminent.

According to figures by the Jordan Customs Department (JCD), a total of 4,796 cars have been cleared from the free zone since the beginning of 2009, with 859, or 18 per cent of the total number, entering the market between December 1 and 21.

The value of the environment-friendly cars, which are mostly imported from the US is JD102.5 million, the JCD indicated.

During the past month, people started to speed up clearance procedures for hybrid cars in the free zone, where over 2,850 hybrids were cleared between January and November, said Nabil Abu Rumman, president of the Jordan Free Zone Investors Association.

“There are rumours that the new government plans to impose more custom fees on hybrid cars early next year, but we have not received anything about such plans,” he added.

Current fees on green cars, which use both gasoline and electricity, range between JD1,000 and JD4,000 depending on the size of the engine, according to Abu Rumman.

Earlier this year, the Environment Ministry requested customs fees to be imposed on large-engine vehicles, saying that only hybrid vehicles under 2,000cc should be exempt from taxes and fees because they are more fuel-efficient and environment-friendly. But the Finance Ministry announced then that it had no plans to impose such fees.

JCD Director General Ghaleb Sarayreh told The Jordan Times on Tuesday that there are no plans to introduce more fees or taxes on hybrid cars, saying this issue has not been discussed by the new government.

“Even if a decision in this regard was taken, it will take into consideration the vehicles on display at the free zone,” the official noted.

Nadim Haddad, the marketing and sales manager at the Central Trade and Auto Company, a Toyota agent in Jordan, said that in addition to the availability of maintenance and spare parts for such cars at some dealerships, rumours about new custom fees were the main reason for the increasing demand.

Jordan is the largest importer of fuel-efficient cars in the region due to high fuel prices in addition to the fact that importing vehicles is not exclusive to agents, Haddad said.

According to Luay Shurafa, the regional manager of General Motors (GM) in the Levant area, said Jordan is the region’s first country with demand for hybrid models, expecting hybrid SUV sales to overtake conventional SUV sales in Jordan in the coming few years because buyers want to take advantage of low customs fees on hybrid models in addition to the element of fuel efficiency.

Haddad stated that maintenance and spare parts are available at agencies for hybrid cars, which are made to suit the topography and the climate of the Kingdom.

The battery costs between $4,000 and $5,000 while the price of the electric motor is $7,000, according to Haddad.

Abu Rumman explained that availability of green car maintenance and spare parts will increase in the coming year with more affordable prices because most manufacturing companies will focus on producing such types of cars.

SOURCE: Jordan Times

Ford will invest up to $500 million for its hybrid vehicle projects and create more than 1,000 new jobs in Michigan if state lawmakers expand an existing incentive program and approve $85 million in tax credits, according to the Detroit News.

If Ford’s needs are met, the company will go ahead with plans to design and assemble battery packs for a new generation of hybrid vehicles in Michigan, and possibly even make a new hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicle based on the Ford Focus platform it plans to launch in Detroit in January, The Detroit News reports.

Last year, Michigan lawmakers authorized tax credits for the assemblage of high-capacity lithium-ion battery packs, but Ford is now requesting them to expand the incentives to include lower-capacity batteries used in hybrid vehicles.

Ford is specifically requesting $85 million in tax credits from the program through 2014, and on top of that, an additional $35 million beyond 2014 if the lithium-ion cells for the battery packs are made in Michigan, the Detroit News reports.

Currently auto-parts supplier Delphi assembles the battery pack for Ford’s current hybrid vehicles in Mexico according to Reuters. Ford says the change it is trying to make is in no way a reflection of Delphi’s performance. Rather, it represents Ford’s desire to set itself apart from competitors through battery development.

Ford is the only large U.S. automaker not to reorganize under a government-funded bankruptcy this year. Ford captured a larger market share in November than a year ago and is getting ready to ramp up its vehicle production in North America by more than a half for the first quarter of 2010.

SOURCE: The Street.com

Is it possible that the auto industry has found it’s latest Holy Grail?

For a long time, the industry had relied on its pickup trucks and sports-utility vehicles (SUVs) as their largest profit centers. Indeed, they looked at these vehicles as the geese that laid the golden eggs. That changed with the sharp spike in gas prices a couple of years ago. With gasoline now settling back to the $2.50-$2.75 range the margin on pickups and SUVs is razor thin, if theres any at all.

However, if you look at the hybrid segment, theres an interesting phenomenon going on. The 10 least expensive hybrids are priced between $19,800 and $28,100. And the prices seem to be holding at or near dealer invoice, which means that dealers are making a profit on these vehicles that, while it may not approach the same levels as their former star profit-makers, they are still doing all right.

AOL’s list looked like this (from least to most expensive):

1. Honda’s reborn Insight. The Insight was the first hybrid to market, beating Toyota by a full year, and became a cult car when it didn’t achieve the mass it needed to be considered a mass-market car. The Insight is priced at $19,800.
2. Toyota’s Prius Hybrid. Available since 2001, this has been the vehicle to beat in the hybrid market. It achieved the critical mass needed to become a market mainstay and offers a wide variety of features, including 40-plus mpg on the highway. The Prius starts at $21,000.
3. Honda’s Civic Hybrid. The Insight was produced until 2006, although it was very limited in its last year on the market. The Civic Hybrid, which came to market in the 2003 sales, powered by a 1.3-liter four, is available only as a sedan and is starts at $23,800.
4. Chevrolet’s Malibu Hybrid is next. It is also a mid-sized, rather than a compact as are the first three on this list. Still, it achieves respectable mileage of 34 on the highway and 26 in the city. It is powered by a 2.4-liter Ecotec four and cranks out 164-horsepower. It is priced at $25,592.
5. Toyota offers the next hybrid with a Camry Hybrid. Priced starting at $26,150, this front-drive mid-sized sedan seats five and offers mileage of 34 and 33, highway/city.
6. Saturn, although no longer part of General Motors’ active stable, has an entry with its Aura Hybrid. It is essentially the same car as the Malibu Hybrid mid-sized and achieves mileage of 36 and 24, highway/city. It is priced starting at $26,325.
7. Nissan’s Altima Hybrid is next. Another mid-sized sedan, it seats five and powered by an electric motor that is charged by a 158-horsepower, 2.5-liter four. The interesting ratings for this vehicle are its highway/city rating. The Altima Hybrid achieves 33 mpg on the highway (probably the most realistic estimate so far in this bunch) and 35 around town. This is the type of mileage skew you would expect in a hybrid. The reason is that in the city the vehicle can take advantage of the natural charge offered by first and second gearing as well as the charging of the regenerative braking system that does put a lot of energy into the battery system. The Altima Hybrid starts at $26,780.
8. The Ford Fusion Hybrid is next on the list. The 2010 Fusion was radically restyled for the 2010 model year, roughly three years into its product cycle which makes this an even more interesting offering because automakers usually wait until the fifth or six year of their product cycle to change a model radically, but Ford chose to do it halfway into the Fusions product cycle for 2010 and the result is not only a Car of the Year, but also an exciting product. The Fusion Hybrid if a sedan that seats five and uses a 2.5-liter four to power its electrical system. Ford is another of the automakers that uses honest figures in its mileage, showing its highway mileage to be 36 mpg and its city cycle to be 41 mpg. This is a far more honest way of listing things. This model starts at $27,625.
9. Mercury’s Milan Hybrid, the Mercury twin of the Fusion, is next on the list and it offers the same figures at the Fusion. It starts at $27,855.
10. The Saturn Vue Hybrid rounds out this list. An SUV, this orphan GM model is a front-drive model that seats five. It starts at $28,160.

Given the interest many potential buyers are showing in hybrid technology and given the fact that this list of 10 vehicles is a list of the least expensive vehicles on the market, it is extremely likely that for a while, at least, the auto industry has found another magic golden goose that could bring in added profitability. The reason for this is simply that all the industry has to do is keep the numbers down and it can keep the price and profitability up. Its simply supply and demand.

SOURCE: All Cars Electric

Toyota Motor Corp. will release a plug-in hybrid vehicle that can be charged at home beginning in late 2011, the company has said.

The carmaker said it hoped to initially sell about 15,000 vehicles of the new model annually in the United States, and was considering releasing the model in Japan around the same time.

The vehicle likely will be priced at about 3 million yen (46,200 Singapore dollars) or more.

Amid fierce competition among automakers worldwide to develop next-generation eco-cars, Toyota concluded that a plug-in hybrid vehicle, which has better mileage than a car solely powered by electricity, will become the market mainstream.

The carmaker hopes the new model will attain market penetration with its lower price tag than electric cars.

With its fully charged high-power lithium-ion battery, Toyota’s new plug-in hybrid vehicle can operate for about 20 kilometers powered only by its motor.

Even after the battery runs out, the vehicle continues to run as a hybrid car powered by its gasoline engine.

The longest operating distance achieved by existing electric cars is about 100 kilometers or more. The carmaker is expected to further take the lead in eco-car development due to the new hybrid model’s greater efficiency than electric cars.

Toyota plans to launch sales of the model in the United States because California regulations to require carmakers to sell a certain percentage of eco-cars will likely become tougher.

SOURCE: Asia One

With more electric, fuel cell and hybrid vehicles on the road today, measuring miles per gallon isn’t as easy as it was in the old days, the Washington Times reports.

Alternative-fuel cars have different ways of computing mpg. For example, the new Chevy Volt electric car has a projected fuel economy equal to 230 mpg.

Edmunds.com is asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to come up with fuel-cost ratings to assist buyers in comparing the cars. On Sept. 15, the agency asked for public comments on emissions and fuel economy standards for plug-in electric and hybrid cars.

“A consumer could reasonably assume, based on the way that they have been using window stickers now going back to 1975, that the Chevy Volt is over four times more efficient to operate than the Toyota Prius. And [that] would actually be completely wrong,” said Jeremy Anwyl, CEO of Edmunds.com.

Edmunds.com would like for the EPA to stop allowing car makers to promote vehicles based on mpg. “If car companies are building cars with very high monthly costs from a fuel perspective, that’s the sort of information that needs to be out there,” he said.

Anwyl said the agency is interested in the proposal from Edmunds.com and has been inquiring of the company how customers use the Internet comparison sites when making decisions.

SOURCE: NACS Online

Whether you call them myths, urban legends, fables or old wives’ tales, there’s a lot of misinformation out there about plug-in electric hybrid vehicles. These vehicles, abbreviated PHEVs, hold great promise as the key to weaning America from its dependence on imported oil, which represents nearly two-thirds of all the petroleum burned in the United States today.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has taken a lead role in developing and testing plug-in hybrid technologies. At the lab’s Center for Transportation Research (CTR), vehicle systems engineer Forrest Jehlik and his colleagues work to bring these cars to market quickly and cheaply. Here, he dispels some commonly held myths about plug-in hybrids.

Myth #1: A significant number of plug-in hybrids are currently for sale.

Although several major auto manufacturers — including General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen, and Volvo — have plug-in vehicles currently in the development pipeline, the first wave of these cars is still at least a year away from officially hitting the market, Jehlik said. The first plug-in hybrid for sale will likely be the Chevrolet Volt, which General Motors claims can travel up to 40 miles on a single charge. The Toyota Prius and other hybrids currently on the roads are not plug-ins — their batteries are charged by kinetic energy transferred from the brakes and wheels.

Myth #2: Researchers can measure the fuel economy for a plug-in hybrid just as easily as they can for gasoline-powered cars.

Establishing fuel economy standards — how many miles a plug-in hybrid vehicle can travel per gallon of gasoline burned — is a complicated question. The answer, Jehlik said, depends entirely on the driving and charging habits of the vehicle’s owner. If a particular plug-in hybrid gets 40 miles on a single charge, then a driver who has a 15-mile commute each way to work and does 10 miles of additional driving each day before charging the battery overnight would, theoretically, use no gasoline at all. If the same driver had a five-mile-longer commute, she’d probably burn just over a gallon of gasoline per week, despite driving 250 miles.

Myth #3: Prices for plug-in hybrid vehicles are currently so high because manufacturers are trying to make a killing on them.

“The truth of the matter is that the components required to build a viable plug-in hybrid are still quite expensive,” Jehlik said. In many cases, the battery for a plug-in vehicle by itself costs nearly $10,000. Because the price of petroleum remains relatively low, consumers may not yet be willing to invest the extra money in a plug-in vehicle — even with sizable government rebates.

Myth #4: The batteries in plug-in hybrid vehicles are unreliable, possibly unsafe, and require frequent replacement.

Most plug-in hybrids currently under development use lithium-ion batteries in their battery packs. Although complex chemical processes produce energy within the battery, vehicle system engineers have built in advanced control systems to prevent fires or other safety issues. “Researchers have devoted just as much time and effort to developing inner-pack safety systems as they have to the batteries themselves,” Jehlik said. “Consumers don’t need to worry about battery malfunction.”

Jehlik and his colleagues in the CTR have also tested the current generation of lithium-ion batteries in what are known as “lifecycle vehicle tests,” which take the car through its paces for more than 150,000 miles. Even at the end of the car’s life, the vast majority of batteries still function quite well, Jehlik said. “When these cars become available for sale, the batteries are going to last as long as any part of them will,” he said.

Myth #5: Scientists have identified lithium-ion batteries as the only battery technology that could work in plug-in hybrid cars.

Although lithium-ion technology came to replace nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries as the preeminent focus of electric vehicle development efforts, scientists at Argonne and around the world are currently investigating several different approaches for energy storage that could help to bring down the cost of plug-in hybrids. “Manufacturers are looking at these possible solutions not as silver bullets but as silver shotgun pellets,” Jehlik said. “The organizations that hedge their bets among a number of different technologies will likely be the ones that bring vehicles to market the earliest and the most successfully.”

Myth #6: America’s electric grid can’t handle the increased load caused by the charging of millions of electric vehicles.

According to Jehlik, the nation’s current electric grid has the capacity to accommodate the imminent rollout of plug-in hybrids onto the country’s roads. “If everyone were somehow able to buy a plug-in hybrid tomorrow, that would probably present a problem as far as the supply of electricity is concerned,” Jehlik said, “but given the pace that they are likely to enter the market, we won’t face a system-wide failure.”

However, Jehlik noted that the country’s electric infrastructure would need to change eventually—not only to keep up with added demand, but to ensure the smarter transmission, distribution and consumption of electricity.

Source: PhysOrg

It’s been a decade since an odd-looking little car called the Honda Insight hit the U.S. market and Americans discovered the smug, fuel-saving joy of owning a hybrid vehicle.

Now, gas-electric hybrids seem to be everywhere.

More than a dozen hybrid models are available in the U.S. today, with options spanning nearly every taste and budget, from gas-sipping small cars like the Toyota Prius to big SUVs like the Chevy Tahoe that blend right in on Texas roads.

And even though hybrid sales have fallen with the recession and lower gasoline prices, the category continues to attract buyers.

“Hybrids were once seen as a curiosity but have now become mainstream,” said Ailis Aaron Wolf, spokesperson for hybridownersofamerica.org.

Hybrids are likely to make still bigger inroads in coming years as automakers strive to meet tougher fuel-economy standards recently introduced by the Obama administration. The rules call for fleets to achieve an average 35.5 mpg by 2016.

Motorists are demanding cleaner and more fuel-efficient transportation in the wake of $4 gasoline last year and widening climate-change concerns.

Hybrid sales will account for about 2.8 percent of U.S. auto sales this year, growing to 6.7 percent in 2012, predicts J.D. Power and Associates in Troy, Mich.

The Toyota Prius sedan continues to be the best-seller, accounting for 50 percent of U.S. hybrid sales. A newly redesigned Honda Insight is seen as an emerging challenger while hybrid models by Ford, Lexus and Saturn are also finding takers.

Most hybrids — which combine a gasoline-fed internal combustion engine with an electric motor — tout better fuel economy and reduced tailpipe emissions when compared with models powered solely by internal combustion engines. The models are especially recommended for stop-and-start city driving, in which the electric motor takes over, recharged with every tap of the brake.

Critics contend that automakers often overstate gas-mileage claims and that hybrids’ higher sticker prices make sense only if gasoline prices are much higher than they are today.

But Aaron Wolf said the growth of hybrid technology over the past 10 years is silencing detractors. It’s also providing a bridge to electric cars for the masses.

Next year, hybrids are expected to take a leap closer to that goal with the release of the Chevy Volt, which General Motors says can achieve 230 miles per gallon. It pairs a gas engine with lithium-ion batteries that can be recharged by plugging into a wall socket at home. The Nissan Leaf, a fully electric and zero-emission model, is expected later.

Meantime, Americans will see a variety of more traditional hybrid vehicles offered in coming years from the likes of Hyundai, Mercedes, BMW, Ford and Toyota.

SOURCE:

A top executive with the U.S. arm of Toyota Motor Corp said on Monday the automaker may expand the Prius nameplate into a marketing sub-brand for a broad family of low-emission, high-mileage hybrid vehicles.

Speaking at the Reuters Auto Summit in Detroit, Bob Carter, the group vice president and general manager of Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc, said the proposal was controversial within the company and that a final decision on the idea was more than a year away.

But as long as Prius was expanded only into a sub-brand and not a separate franchise, Carter said the change “was one that I support.” He said he believed his boss, Jim Lentz, the president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Sales, supported the idea, too.

“Prius has become such an icon in the market that it is my desire, and the desire by many of us … that we nurture Prius beyond one vehicle and more into a family of vehicles,” Carter said.

Life beyond Prius’ current incarnation as a sedan comparable to the company’s Camry might include making it bigger “to meet the needs of larger families” and “smaller to meet the needs of people who do not need the space of a mid-sized sedan,” Carter said.

He said Toyota currently claimed about three-quarters of the hybrid market and that it expects to sell globally “in excess of 1 million hybrids per year in the relatively near future.” He said that by the 2020s, hybrids would be either optional or standard equipment on every vehicle Toyota sells.

Carter said consumer demand for clean, efficient vehicles remained high despite a dramatic retreat in fuel prices over the past year.

“It’s almost as if the consumer is saying, ‘Yes, I understand fuel prices are low today but I am buying this car with the intention of driving it five or six years and I don’t have confidence that fuel prices will stay low,’” he said

Carter said Toyota, which already offers seven hybrids in its Toyota and Lexus lines, planned to introduce 10 more globally in the coming years.

Source: Reuters

Toyota Motor Corp. is on track to start testing the prototypes for its first crack at plug-in hybrid cars later this year, a spokeswoman said yesterday.

By Jan. 1, the company expects to release 500 plug-in versions of its Prius onto American, European and Japanese roads, said Toyota spokeswoman Cindy Knight. The cars will use lithium-ion batteries, not the nickel-metal hydride packages seen in Priuses today.

The pilot will kick off a three-year effort by the Japanese auto giant to get data on how these cars fare in the real world: how they’re charged, how their batteries perform, and what sort of mileage they get. In recent years, Toyota has resisted pressure to develop a plug-in, even using commercials suggesting that plugging in hybrid vehicles is a bother.

Engineers will use the new plug-in data to design a more widely produced plug-in version of the Prius, but they don’t intend to copycat other companies’ plug-in efforts, said Tom Stricker, director of the energy and environmental research group for Toyota North America.

The Chevrolet Volt, which General Motors Co. has slated for release late next year, would get a range of 40 miles on all-electric power before firing up its gasoline engine. GM says it based the range on statistics showing that 75 percent of American commutes are less than 40 miles.

Early forecasts are that Toyota will aim for an all-electric range of 10 to 15 miles instead.

Batteries are the most expensive part of any electric-drive vehicle, Stricker said, and Toyota has decided that a 40-mile range is too much.

Trying to keep GM in the rearview mirror

“That might not be the right number if it costs you $15,000 a battery and nobody buys it,” he said.

He pointed to research from Carnegie Mellon University suggesting that about half of U.S. miles driven are for trips shorter than 20 miles.

In its three-year pilot, Stricker said, Toyota will try to find a sweet spot — a balance between all-electric range and the pricey batteries needed to power it.

“The key question for plug-ins, from a design perspective, is how much of an electric range is really necessary, and what will that cost,” he said.

It’s not a bad strategy, according to Andrew Frank, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Davis, whose students once built a plug-in SUV with a 50-mile all-electric range.

Lithium, the main ingredient in the batteries, is hard to come by. So “for the amount of lithium available today, you can build three times more Priuses that are plug compatible than Chevy Volts, since the battery packs are one-third the size. And you make money by selling cars and not batteries!!” Frank said in an e-mail.

Frank said the more cars Toyota sells, the more the price of its batteries will fall, enabling it to make cheaper, longer-lasting cars.

An ‘oddly conservative’ strategy?

The shorter all-electric range for the Prius means that under some conditions, it would use more gasoline than the Volt.

“From an environmental perspective, the more [electric] range the better,” said Roland Hwang, transportation program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in an e-mail.

He said Toyota’s strategy on plug-ins “seems at first oddly conservative,” and that the company risks “being seen as a technology and environmental laggard, and losing their current perceived pole position on environmentally friendly cars.”

Toyota currently leads the U.S. clean car market with the Prius, a regular hybrid that sold almost 160,000 models last year. Including its Camry and Highlander models, the company sold more than 240,000 hybrids.

Automakers remain unsure which clean-car technology will catch fire with the public — and through what channel. Major manufacturers are developing vehicles powered by batteries, fuel cells and biofuels, but costs remain high, thanks to technical hurdles.

Smaller companies such as Tesla and Fisker are angling for niche markets, with the eventual goal of reducing price and selling to the mass market.

Driving toward an uncertain market

Meanwhile, carmakers face uncertainty about future market conditions — namely, the price of gasoline and a possible price on carbon emissions.

Toyota is moving toward low-range plug-ins because they make it easier to promise low cost and durability from the get-go, said Bruce Belzowski, an assistant research scientist at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute.

“They’re just not convinced that they have the lithium-ion battery in the right spot to be able to do the things that GM says they wanted to do,” he said. “Toyota is much more conservative when it comes to this.”

The company knows it’s walking the tightrope of public reputation, Belzowski said. Past examples show that a single, high-profile failure can be enough to sink an entire line of cars.

That’s a lesson General Motors knows well — in the 1980s, its efforts to market diesel engines floundered thanks to performance flaws (ClimateWire, June 22).

Instead of going with a smaller all-electric range, Belzowski said, GM will simply sell fewer Volts, improving the defects from year to year. “They’re trying to manage the risk by not promising high volumes to start with,” he said.

SOURCE: New York Times

On paper, Michio Shinohara has few reasons to be cheerful. He works in the car business, the manufacturing sector hardest hit by the downturn. His company, Honda, halted production at its Swindon plant for four months this year and ditched plans for a sexy new NSX sports car. It pulled out of Formula One, only to see its driver, Jenson Button, win race after race for his new team, Brawn.

Yet on a muggy afternoon in Tokyo last month, Shinohara threw back his head and laughed: “It seems that we have been incredibly brilliant.”

The car he launched in February, the petrol-electric Insight, stole the title of best-selling hybrid in Japan from Toyota’s Prius and became Japan’s top-selling vehicle overall in April, the first time a hybrid had topped national sales rankings. More than 1,000 have been sold in Britain, and 5,000 across Europe.

The Insight is so popular that Shinohara, Honda’s head of environment planning, can’t get one himself. “The factory can’t make enough for the orders we already have.”

Petrolheads may mock the Insight’s basic interior and the anaemic performance of its small petrol and electric motors, but Shinohara’s creation is proving to be an ideal product for its time. It’s cheap and green, two qualities car buyers prize more than ever.

“We launched this vehicle at a very lucky time,” he said. “It was not important to us to have the car with top performance. We wanted an eco-friendly car that is accessible to the greatest number of people. Price is key.”

The Insight costs up to 18% less than the Prius, its main rival, and returns similar fuel economy of about 60mpg but the Prius has lower carbon emissions.

Shinohara’s excitement is matched by a sense of relief. The Insight is a car that simply had to work. Although Honda led the way with hybrids — it launched the first, also called Insight, in the late 1990s — it quickly fell behind Toyota. Gawky styling — it looked like an upside-down bathtub — killed the first Insight. A hybrid Accord followed but it failed to sell and was soon scrapped. The hybrid Civic has been a moderate success but Toyota has become the de facto green car brand, thanks to the Prius.

Buoyed by the success of the Insight, Shinohara is leading Honda’s new push into the hybrid market. Next will be a sports car, the CR-Z, due to go on sale next year. New hybrid versions of the Civic and the Jazz will follow.

In a decade, Honda expects to follow Toyota and become the second car company to have a hybrid version of all its models. On sales, however, Honda has fallen so far behind Toyota that it cannot hope to match its rival soon. It expects to sell 250,000 hybrids a year by 2015 and double that by 2020, more than 10% of its current total output. Toyota already sells 400,000 Priuses a year and that figure is expected to rise with the release of new models, including a plug-in version that will extend the car’s electric-only range.

Given the Insight’s success, you would expect Shinohara to be an evangelist for hybrid technology. He regards it, though, as a sticking plaster solution until someone — he hopes it will be him — perfects the hydrogen fuel cell car.

Honda is working up the technology in the FCX Clarity and as Shinohara drove the car around Tokyo, he explained why it, not the Insight, is the future.

Electricity in the Insight comes from a battery that is charged by “recycling” excess energy normally lost during driving, for example when braking. The battery powers an electric motor that works with the car’s 1.3 litre petrol engine, giving it a range of 500 miles.

Carmakers have experimented with vehicles powered entirely by battery but Shinohara said they were “not very customer-friendly” because their range is too short and the battery recharge time too long. A few years ago he tried to persuade Californian motorists to go fully electric with a prototype called the EV Plus, which had a range of about 100 miles. He could hardly give them away. “It was very difficult,” he said. Hydrogen fuel cells are, he believes, the best green car technology because they have the potential to offer the power and range of a conventional petrol engine with water as the only by-product.

The Clarity has several hundred fuel cells creating electricity from an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen. It powers the engine. The 171-litre hydrogen tank gives it a range of 300 miles.

A conventional battery-powered car would require a battery weighing two tons to match the range and performance of the Clarity, and it would take hours to charge fully.

The Clarity is undergoing testing in Japan, Europe and America. A few have been released to customers in locations where there are hydrogen refuelling stations, notably California. The actress Jamie Lee Curtis drives one.

Shinohara admitted hydrogen technology is problematic. The Clarity is so expensive to make that it is, for now, sold at a colossal loss. Consumers are “scared” of hydrogen, he said, because it is explosive. It is, at present, expensive to produce and, most importantly, persuading energy companies and governments to construct a network of hydrogen refuelling stations will be a challenge.

Shinohara is undeterred. Honda is experimenting with installing domestic hydrogen stations at homes in California. Natural gas, supplied to the homes using existing pipelines, runs into a converter where it is separated into its various elements, one of which is hydrogen, which can be stored and used as necessary.

Shinohara’s dream is that one day soon motorists will fill the Clarity with hydrogen at home, drive to their remote country cabin emitting no carbon, use the car as a clean generator to power the house, and use the water and steam it produces to make a cappuccino. Truly a car for life.

SOURCE: Times Online