Vehicles

A recent comment on our report entitled "Ford Delivers Electric Vehicles" (written in April 2001 when USPS tried out a fleet of 400 EVs) has called our attention once again to EEStor (site under construction), the stuff of legends, the company developing an ultracapacitor to supply partners such as ZENN Motor Company, among others. According to Wikipedia's entry on EEStor, EEStor's capacitor may achieve an energy density as high as 700 watt-hours per kilogram. By comparison, the lithium ion battery only attains an energy density as high as 150 watt-hours per kilogram. This is making up a lot of ground. For example, a lead acid battery has an energy density of about 40 watt-hours per kilogram, but a good off-the-shelf conventional capacitor only has an energy...

The attention some of the electric automobile designs have attracted over the past few years has tended to take the focus away from bikes and motorcycles. But for every Volt or Tesla making a splash in the news, dozens of models of electricity powered two-wheelers have been selling by the thousands for years. In aggregate, millions of electricity powered bikes are already in use around the world. Should anyone doubt the electric scooter industry is alive and well, if not already gone through several cycles of maturity, go to Alibaba.com and search under "Electric Scooters." You will get links to an astonishing 6,903 products, ranging from Suzhou Rununion Motivity Co., Ltd., to Wuxi Beiyi Electric Bicycle Co., Ltd., to Taizhou Wangpai Automobile Industry Co., to Jiangsu Taler Science and Technology of Motor Vehicle Co., to Jiangsu Xinling Motorcycle Manufacturing Co. , and on, and on, and on, and...

The fate of GM, Chrysler and Ford hang in the balance, with widely varying sentiments regarding what can be done, if anything. Both a bailout or a bankruptcy present a set of opportunities as well as negative consequences. If a bailout were structured to include in its terms some of the restructuring benefits that otherwise could only be realized through bankruptcy, however, it would be the preferred option. Indeed, a federal bailout that facilitated fundamental cost cuts for the automakers might set a useful precedent for restructuring other large U.S. institutions that have overpaid workforces and inefficient operations, such as most of our state and local governments. Using General...

With renewable energy sources like wind and solar constantly on hand, it is no wonder that everyone wants to harness this energy with constantly evolving technology. Cars and buildings are going solar, why not boats and massive cruise ships? Solar Sailor, an Australian company that owns the patented 'solarsail' technology, has developed devices comparable to 'wings' that attach to ocean-going vessels to harness the ever-popular wind and solar energy. Both sources of energy are especially abundant when floating on the ocean. This hybrid marine power (HMP) technology comes in the from of a 'solar wing', which typically rests on top of the ship like a solid metal sail (to take advantage of wind) and...

Mid-level ethanol blends such as E12, E15, E20 and even as high as E40 have garnered a lot of attention lately. Mainly because ethanol producers want a quick and easy way to soak up a surplus of ethanol that will soon reach the saturation point for the current supply in the marketplace. Under current federal law, conventional fuel cannot contain more than 10 percent ethanol, known as E10, but proponents for higher mid-level blends would like to replace the current gasoline mixture with higher levels of ethanol, which would change the fuel used in vehicles and small engines. GM's concerns with higher ethanol blends include the capability of our engines and fuel systems to handle them...

Are the Studies We Rely On Reliable? We discovered "The Antiplanner," Randall O'Toole, a few months ago, and ever since we have been publishing selected works by this prolific author and researcher. His findings, carefully documented, contradict important pillars of the conventional wisdom that informs modern urban planning - transportation options in particular. O'Toole's work deserves as large an audience as possible because his conclusions, if correct, or even partially correct, have profound implications when determining how best to allocate taxpayer funds. If light rail, for example, is not nearly as cost-effective or even fuel efficient as cars and busses, for example, why are we...

San Diego is an urban paradise. Temperatures are always comfortable, the sun shines most days of the year, and locals can spend any day enjoying their time at beaches, museums, zoos, stadiums or any number of shows that occur there. The San Diego Convention center is always booked with events ranging from tech conferences to bridal bazaars and the world renowned International Comic Convention. Traffic can get out of hand in such a popular place, and paradise isn't so pretty when seen from the inside of your car in 90 degree weather. The answer to this dilemna lies with smaller electric vehicles that allow drivers to safely speed by traffic with the use of the carpool lane. Just north...

Most of us have heard about the "Hydrogen Highway," that mythical roadway which, along with bullet trains and bridges to nowhere, may actually get built someday at a staggering expense to the taxpayer (to be fair - we're as hopeful as anyone the formidable technological barriers to using hydrogen as a transportation fuel are eventually overcome).  But meanwhile, as of last week, the first ethanol highway in the United States is open for business - I65, stretching from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.  Corn ethanol is a viable transportation fuel today, not someday, and implementation of this ethanol highway, the first of many, is an exercise in practicality, not pipe dreams. For...

With Tesla now shipping 10+ vehicles per week, and other automakers, small and large, increasingly announcing electric vehicle programs, what is the latest on the Chevy Volt? At this point, with about 110 weeks to go before the Volt is going to be in showrooms, are they on track? We got an update last week from GM spokesperson Rob Peterson, as well as access to photos of the final Volt exterior and interior design. Here's what we know: GM is currently testing two "mule" vehicles with prototype components in an old Malibu body. By the end of this year GM expects to have the next generation of test vehicles in service, using production intent propulsion and chassis components. There will be over...

There is an interesting recent report on IndianAutoBlog entitled "Introducing The Blade Runner."  It describes (with ample concept drawings) an intriguing idea - a bus that operates with two sets of wheels, one for roads and one for rails.  If the bus is operating on roads, the railway wheels retract into the underbody of the vehicle, and vice versa.  The Blade Runner concept is being pioneered by Silvertip Design in the United Kingdom.  It is great to see new ideas, but some commentary is in order.  First of all, anything that helps to move mass transit off of urban rails and back onto roads is a good idea.  Despite persuasive light rail scams that have helped - along with public employee pensions - to pretty much bankrupt...

In our interactive spreadsheet "How Much Electricity for all Commuters? " you can calculate what it would take to replace our combustion-driven automotive fleet with electric vehicles.  The assumptions that the spreadsheet default to (which you can change to anything you wish) indicate that based on 4.0 kilowatt-hours per mile, and 40 miles per day of average driving per vehicle, it would take 10 gigawatt-hours to power 1.0 million electric vehicles.  At ten hours of off-peak charging per night, that would be an additional 1.0 gigawatt of off-peak energy going into the grid per each additional 1.0 million electric vehicles.  But if the winds come and go, and the solar peak is in the middle of the day, where will this energy...

There are dozens of credible companies rolling out next generation cars. From the GM Volt, now barely two years away, to the start-up Tesla Roadster, the list of companies aspiring to deliver the next generation car is growing almost as fast as the denizens of newly minted green journalists rushing to cover their progress. But what about the components? Three interesting companies provide a encouraging glimpse into progress occurring upstream of the finished vehicle, all of them working on ways to dramatically improve the performance of the internal combustion engine. In Camarillo, California, Transonic Combustion is developing an engine that can allow "operating conventional reciprocating piston gasoline engines at...