Small strides-Big leaps
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- Category: World News
- Published on Saturday, 16 March 2013 14:48
- Written by Tejas Joseph
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Worldwide industry and commercial EV market on an upward trajectory!
Electric Vehicle (EV) technology and production is still in its infancy. It has yet to gain technological maturity and commercial viability to become as ubiquitous as the common automobile or motorcycle. But trends show that it is on this path and it is only a matter of time before a tipping point is reached and the age of electric transportation is formally ushered in. It is too early to read the signs now but industry watchers aver that good things are going on.
Despite its slowness and setbacks the hybrid and pure electric vehicle business is set to continue an upward trend through 2013, posting profits and growth in most sectors. Maximal growth seems to be happening in the area of commercial vehicles as opposed to personal - passenger transportation. For eg.the market for pure electric mobility vehicles for the disabled and the handicapped is growing strongly. The elderly and obese too are driving this new market with their determination to stay mobile and even move about indoors. Taiwan currently accounts for about 70% of the global output of mobility vehicles for the disabled. However this market share is likely to be eroded from 2013 as many others are poised to enter this lucrative segment.
Buying electric vehicles primarily for payback is on the rise. Again this is not happening in the automobile segment. An electric golf car has long been cheaper to buy and use than an internal combustion one,more so now with the introduction of long range,lighter lithium-ion batteries. Hybrid outdoor forklifts are also seen to 'pay back' well through reduced maintenance, reduced fuel costs and longer life along with intangible bonuses like reduced noise and pollution. Pure electric and hybrid/electric buses are already exhibiting superior costs of ownership with each passing year for the municipalities and city councils that introduce them.
The rising use and deployment of electric mission critical vehicles by the military is a big boost to the electric commercial vehicle industry and market. This decision anticipates a 70% reduction in fuel requirements. Boeing is considering making its airliners go electric when on the ground. This 'advanced move' (it is calculated) will save the airlines millions of dollars a year when clean electric power replaces megawatts of inefficient, noisy and polluting jet engine power when taxiing. Pure electric helicopters are getting better with each test flight. They are likely to become commercail quite soon.
These developments in the commercial (non automobile) sector is likely to entyce component and system suppliers to follow these new and promising vehicle segments rather than queuing up behind pure electric cars whose time,sadly, has not come.
Zero emission Nations : Pt 2
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- Category: World News
- Published on Saturday, 22 December 2012 07:58
- Written by Tejas Joseph
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The story of Denmark
Continuing our story on how favorable policies and committed government support can usher in changes, we turn our attention to Denmark, a country gripped by green concerns as much as by future transportation technologies.
Movia is the largest public transport company in Denmark. Together with BYD Europe they have introduced a small fleet of full sized pure electric buses to service commuters in Copenhagen, which has set itself the ambitious goal of becoming the world's first zero-emission capital by 2025.
The Transport Minister of Denmark, Henrik Dam Kristensen, is very supportive of the project.The electric buses provided by BYD is part of a project being carried out in cooperation with the Municipality of Copenhagen, DONG Energy, City-Trafik and Arriva. They will go on trial service on different passenger routes and loads in Copenhagen for two years.
According to Dorthe Nøhr Pedersen, CEO of Movia , "Movia's buses currently plying in the trial neighborhoods consume around 50 million litres of diesel fuel per year. The introduction of the BYD electric buses in these trial zones allows for significant improvements to the environment and overall noise levels. If BYD's buses can meet our requirements for reliability while simultaneously lessening environmental impact, we will consider introducing more of them"
Electric Buses and zero pollution
Electric buses can significantly bring down CO2, NOx and particulate air matter levels in cities as they give off no such emissions. They can also significantly reduce noise levels and are cheaper and easier to maintain. To highlight this Yongping Chen, the business director of BYD says "Our electric buses have proven that it not only reduces pollution and noise in large cities significantly, but it has also greatly reduced operating expenses when compared with natural-gas and diesel run buses."
The BYD electric bus is full sized (12m long) and able to go 250 km (155 miles) on a single charge in urban conditions. The Fe (Iron Phosphate) battery fitted in the BYD electric bus boasts the highest safety, longest service life and most environment-friendly rechargeable chemistry as it contains no heavy metals or toxic electrolytes. BYD electric buses are now in regular passenger service in several cities in China, Europe and North America, putting BYD in the big league of electric bus makers in the world along with Volvo and Bombardier.
The accumulated mileage reached by BYD electric buses worldwide at the end of May 2012 was an impressive 7 million kilometers (or 4.35 million miles).
Fallouts and adoptions
Such national programs of support for buses and other clean industrial and commercial vehicles is resulting in faster cycles of viability and adoption and the sectoral changes that these (in their turn) drive. Airports are introducing ever tougher pollution restrictions.
Lead acid batteries (that power most Ground Support Equipment (GSE) vehicles now) are being increasingly overlooked in favor of Lithium-ion batteries and super-capacitors,which could become the next generation of preferred storage devices for electric vehicles owing to their reduced pollution indexes and recycling potential.
Amongst electric bus makers there rages a debate over which is more market viable – pure electrics or hybrids? Volvo,another giant electric bus maker, is also inclined towards hybrids in a big way. Bombardier,on the other hand,feel that it will focus on electrics more since it is the future. It does not see the need to continue to perpetuate the intermediate 'hybrid' stage as the technologies for pure electric buses and other commercial vehicles (like trucks) keep getting better.
Sadly, there is no parallel to this frenzy of innovation and adaptation in the car industry!.
The missing link!
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- Category: World News
- Published on Monday, 19 November 2012 12:11
- Written by Tejas Joseph
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Charging station eco-systems for electric cars at last
One indisputable factor that has delayed the acceptance of electric cars is the absence of a charging infrastructure. Though electric cars have been getting better these last few years they refused to cross the popularity threshold for want of in-transit charging facilities as much as for their expensive price tags. While research and development kept focusing on drive trains,batteries and better designs to diminish drag no one seemed to be paying much attention to developing public charging stations to service electric vehicle owners and users on the road. Opening the market through providing a means to extend range miles for electric car users simply escaped the calculations of EV developers and promoters it seems. It fell upon a leading electric car maker to take this first step in what could be the beginning of a whole new era for electric cars redefining its purpose.
Tesla Motors are planning on erecting a network of 'superchargers' to be strategically located across the United states to enable 'inter-city petroleum free driving'. For long have customers been throwing the question at Tesla “ How do I drive across the country in your electric car?”,which led them eventually to think seriously about it. Tesla's chief technical officer, J B Straubel, admits that not being able to take a long round road trip is one of the holdouts affecting the mass acceptance of electric cars in general.
Tesla intends to address this deficit through installing powerful charging stations — pumping electricity at 90 kilowatts, adding about 250 miles of range in an hour — at key locations between major American cities. As it stands the cars from the Tesla stable have enough range to facilitate intra-city travel reliably. The goal of the proposed high-speed charging network is to enable inter-city journeys eventually on a nationwide basis. Mr. Straubel said he saw the high-speed chargers as “the final piece of the whole technology suite” enabling Tesla now to work the electric car market in a way that no one has. It will also bestow upon them a lead that others will soon start chasing, to the betterment and progress of the electric car industry and market at large.
Tesla plans to open its first charging locations by the end of the year to customers who have bought the Model S,whose owners will receive free electric fuel for life at these stations.
This looks like the beginning of a whole new chapter in road travel, albeit with some big differences :- cars moving with the stealth and silence of ghosts. And, of course, giving off no tailpipe emissions!. Look out for them.
The rise of Zero Emission Nations : pt1
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- Category: World News
- Published on Thursday, 06 December 2012 10:27
- Written by Tejas Joseph
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Commercial electric vehicles are blazing a leading path with active government support.
The story of China and Denmark: Models in the making
In an unexpected but welcome twist, commercial vehicles - buses, taxis
and trucks – are outclassing passenger cars when it comes to electric
vehicle (ev) technologies and developments. Buses in particular are in
the forefront of ev R&D attracting substantial grants and support from some
governments committed to reducing urban pollution and their own
carbon footprints.
Even though buses account for only 0.1% of global warming statistically,these governments are looking beyond economics to building a green image for their cities. Electrifying their public transportation fleets is a step towards reducing their local and global pollution contributions to some extent.
Far fetched as it may sound the logic of these governments is founded upon faith and a pioneering vision. In ensuring a quieter, smoother and cleaner ride for passengers (it is argued), electric buses will increase in popularity and, consequently, increase incomes for their operators. The result of such an attitude is that industrial and commercial electric vehicles - buses,trucks,forklifts - are becoming commercially successful owing to their growing mass acceptance,sparking, in its turn, a feverish pitch of R&D to constantly improve them. Their market is on the rise and the pace of their technological development is believed to be outstripping cars.
The Chinese national bus program is a case in point. It is one that other Asian cities (amongst the most polluted in the world) can take inspiration from, most notably India whose growing numbers of private automobiles, rising air pollution, poor roads and public transportation beg for such enlightened interventions. India's involvement with EVs (R&D,policies or production) remains conspicuous by its marked absence making it miss out on this critical development,one that it cannot afford to.It can readily transplant some of these Chinese initiatives as both countries share similar problems with regard to large populations,inner city pollution and congestion and a beleaguered oil economy.
Under this program China has begun phasing out noisy, polluting IC engine driven buses in favor of hybrids and electrics in a big way . The administration is favorably inclined towards pure electric buses that could predominate the Chinese public transportation fleet by the year 2022. To meet these visionary goals the Chinese government is supporting mainstream and related R&D of ev technologies as well as supporting suppliers through buying core components for electric vehicles. Such efforts are stimulating a nascent ev industry and market to achieve quicker maturity in the absence of a well defined and responsive market for this category presently. In a span of just ten years the urban bus in China has gone from being the noisy and smoky vehicle it was with an internal combustion engine to become, firstly, parallel and series hybrids and,finally, to an all electric avatar. This short transformation time line is a truly outstanding one.
This national initiative has enabled Shenzhen City in China to add 1500 pure electric K9 buses and e6 taxis to its public transportation fleet, considered to be the largest zero-emissions fleet in service world-wide today.
The Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission (SDRC) proudly claims that "Shenzhen is the first city in China to implement a subsidy for new energy vehicles to promote their mass acceptance".They also cited “rising oil prices and growing environmental pressures as key reasons to transform the public transportation system”. Shenzhen City administration believes electrified transportation offers “the most effective way to stimulate economic recovery while restoring the environment through lowering urban CO2 emissions”.
Buses vs Cycles!
In an irony of sorts the cleanest form of transport ever -the humble bicycle - is being edged out by electric buses.While China has the world's largest bicycling population (over 125 million electric and regular bicycles getting people to work and about) local governments see them as a cause of congestion and accidents.They are also now becoming a source of pollution resulting from the indiscriminate and unregulated disposal of lead acid batteries displaced by this giant 2wheel fleet every 12-24 months.
Clean Ratings
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- Category: World News
- Published on Monday, 23 July 2012 09:12
- Written by Tejas Joseph
- Hits: 3599
Helping customers choose clean vehicles through better information
It looks as if the age of information is going to make for some driving changes in the way people choose their cars and run them. In what is seen as a convergence of timely legislation and rising public awareness, the US Government plans to release new window stickers for vehicles commencing with the 2013 model year. These new labels/stickers represent the biggest makeover in the sticker program’s 35-year history and will replace an old design that hitherto provided only basic information about estimated fuel economy in new vehicles. For the first time there will be different labels for different categories - conventional vehicles, plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles.
The Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) and the Department of Transportation, who are jointly responsible for the window sticker program, passed over another design that many think would have better disclosed a vehicle's environmental efficiency. This is a letter grading system - from A to D - that compares a given vehicle’s fuel economy and air pollution to those of other cars in its class. US automakers objected to this sticker concept as being 'simplistic and potentially misleading'. However,this letter grading system has found favor in Europe both because of strong environmental lobbies and the pro-environmental inclinations of many European governments notably Denmark,Sweden,Switzerland and Germany.
Still this new labeling system is not so bad for starters and indicates the dawning of a new pollution control age in America. The proposed new stickers for US cars will (for the first time also) include a greenhouse gas rating that compares a vehicle’s carbon dioxide emissions and heat-trapping gases with those of all other vehicles. It will also provide smog ratings based on emissions of other air pollutants like nitrogen oxide and particulates.
Stickers for plug-in hybrids and electric cars will include their charging time and estimated range while running in electric-only mode. While electric cars will surely clock the highest greenhouse gas and smog ratings the measure certainly does not take into account emissions from power plants that generate the energy needed to charge EVs up. According to a spokesperson “ the government was right to leave power plant emissions out of its ratings for electric vehicles. Upstream emissions raise a complex mix of factors that auto makers have no way of predicting or controlling”.
The EPA said the new gallons-per-mile measure, combined with the estimated fuel costs, would provide consumers a more accurate measure of efficiency and expenditure than the traditional miles-per-gallon figure, which “rarely reflects real-world driving conditions” according to them.
The National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) welcomed the new design saying it provided far more reliable and realistic information to customers. It would also serve to put more fuel efficient cars on the road they think. Such disclosures illustrate that the US car making lobby have just entered the 'fuel efficiency' era while others, the Japanese and Germans to note, have moved on from here and are setting their sights on the emerging horizons of ecological transportation, reflecting a total distinction in perspectives and not just technologies.
The labels will also include a QR code that can be scanned by smartphones (calculators will also be available online) to get cost estimates based on driving habits and the price of gasoline/electricity in a given region. It will also provide comparisons with other vehicles.
Such interventions, sadly, are not at all on the list for consideration by the automobile makers or the governments in India,China and other large Asian countries whose goals are still centered around maximal and cheap production. Energy conservation and emissions control have not become priorities in these developing economies. Even major automakers who have set up shop in these countries cash in on the lax environmental norms of these nations.