Can you feel the relative calm before the storm? That is the sound of car manufacturers ironing out the kinks in business models, entrepreneurs battling relevancy and technology companies joining in the fray to make tomorrow’s electric transportation a reality. (more…)
July 1, 2009
The perfect electric vehicle storm
May 29, 2009
GE Fighting On Different Fronts
GE is an interesting company, highly diversified, it has its hands into many energy hungry markets and has been at the front store of innovation in the past. Their latest foray into the battery development places it as one of the leaders on the market. What is lesser known is its crusade to reduce its pollution footprint. (more…)
July 20, 2008
Government Gets Serious About Plugin-Hybrids
You know things are getting serious when even the government steps up to entice three different projects with $30,000,000.
There will be up to $30 million in funding over three years available to three cost-shared Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) demonstration and development projects. So what does this mean? According to the DOE in this article: “selected projects will accelerate the development of PHEVs capable of traveling up to 40 miles without recharging, which includes most daily roundtrip commutes and satisfies 70 percent of the average daily travel in the United States. The projects also will address critical barriers to achieving DOE’s goal of making PHEVs cost-competitive by 2014 and ready for commercialization by 2016.”
OK, why not sooner? Well, this is a technology that will grow in leaps and bounds over the next few years. I guess the DOE is thinking long term here. Why not concentrate completely on electrical batteries? Ah, that a great question. If you read on you will see that the entire three projects work hard on squeezing more performance out of batteries.
The projects selected will be geographically diverse in regions in order to identify performance, operation, and fuel economy in a real-world environment. I liked that last part because too much has been said about the less-then-clear modern day gas mileage estimates conducted in perfect situations that rarely reflect real life. This is a step in the right direction.
So who are the three projects? GM, Ford and GE. General Motors was selected for negotiation of an award for a project aimed at enhancement of lithium-ion battery packs, charging systems, powertrain development, vehicle integration, and vehicle validation. Ford Motor Company has been selected for negotiation of an award for a project to identify a pathway that accelerates commercial mass-production of PHEVs. The project will focus on development of battery systems and deployment of prototype PHEVs. The project will test and demonstrate the propulsion system design, controls, and communications necessary to develop a viable PHEV production program. And finally, General Electric has been selected for negotiation of an award for a demonstration of PHEVs that relies upon an innovative dual-battery energy storage system capable of 40 miles accumulated electric driving range. The project will focus on developing the dual-battery energy storage system in parallel with vehicle integration.
Even though nothing is directly aimed at pure electric vehicle, all of them will help battery technology in the long run, thus helping consumers squeeze more out of the lives of their batteries.