Honda FCX Clarity Hydrogen, Tesla Roadster

Top Gear Reviews Tesla Roadster and Honda FCX Clarity Hydrogen

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I was browsing AutoBlogGreen today and I found out that Top Gear had done a piece on the Tesla Roadster. This was something I had been waiting for for a very long time, because I love the British show and couldn’t wait for their take on the famous electric supercar. Performance wise, the car, fitted with Tesla’s Powertrain 1.5, definitely impressed Jeremy Clarkson, likening the car to broadband motoring in a world of dial-up. However, that was before the car’s battery died after 50 miles of driving. Then they were not impressed by the 16 odd hours it would take them to charge it back up. So they got another Tesla Roadster, which Jeremy managed to overheat (overheated motor, he said, which is odd because the electric motor is just air-cooled for its nominal cooling requirement). To add insult to injury, somehow, the brakes broke on the first one while it was sitting in the garage. So this led the show’s hosts to deem the car impractical for today’s world of driving. Here is the Top Gear: Tesla Roadster Youtube video, which will probably go down soon:

[EDIT: If you want to see Tesla’s side of the story, scroll down to the first comment of this article, by Rachel Konrad, Senior Communications Manager of Tesla Motors. Top Gear’s piece ended up being somewhat of a PR disaster regarding Tesla’s reliability, and hearing another side to the story is helpful.  I won’t make a judgment on what happened because I wasn’t there and I can only write about what was in the video.]

The other host on the show, James May, sparked my curiosity at the end, talking about finding an alternative to the battery electric car and future of motoring. So I found the James’ segment on the Honda FCX Clarity Hydrogen electric car. I have never been a fan of hydrogen cars, because they are about as technologically advanced as spaceships and don’t seem like they will be practical economically. Some say the car, right now, would be priced at $10,000,000. Plus, hydrogen is something Shell can sell you, so of course they will push this on us. But I was impressed by the FCX Clarity Hydrogen, which is really basically just an electric car with a hydrogen powered generator that will extend the range to around 300 miles. So it utilizes the superior efficiency of an electric motor while eliminating the bulk and range limits of batteries.  Also according to the video, hydrogen is about at cheap as gas and the car’s only byproduct is water. Don’t be fooled though, the hydrogen car is very far down the road. Here is the Top Gear: Honda FCX Clarity Hydrogen segment:

Sources: YouTube, Autobloggreen

eBox

New Video from AC Propulsion

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AC Propulsion(New Site, finally) technology is responsible for electric drivetrains found in the EV1, Tesla Roadster, eBox and the new Mini E, to name a few. This video mostly covers the eBox and how AC Propulsion will retrofit any combustion engine vehicle you have with their electric drivetrain, which I did not know. However, a full conversion will cost you $55,000. These drivetrains have extremely robust regenerative braking. Notice the eBox will come to a complete stop without touching the brake pedal. This ensures all of the energy from the car’s momentum is captured and put back into the battery. Also, Tom Hanks makes another guest appearance for AC Propulsion.

BYD Auto

BYD’s Electric Car Technology

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BYD Auto, offspring of Chinese cell phone lithium-ion battery giant, will soon be releasing two electric car drivetrains.  One will be the fully electric F3e technology, which will allow for a top speed of over 150km/h, a 13.5s 0-100 km/h acceleration, 300km / per charge range, and and a battery life-cycle of about 600,000km. This stems from their superior Fe battery technology. The Fe-battery has such innovative advantages as low cost, zero pollution, zero noise and recyclable. It can deliver voltage twice as high as a standard Ni-MH battery, while costing less than comparable batteries.
Fe Battery

BYD is also making a huge investment into range extended vehicles, notably the BYD DM (Dual Mode).  The BYD site seems to try to distinguish this as something more than an electric vehicle with a gasoline range extender, but they are not very clear. This is how BYD describes their technology:

As early as in 2003, BYD started DM electric vehicles project, on which currently 500 auto engineers are working. DM stands for Dual Mode and BYD DM (Dual Mode) electric vehicle combines a solely electric vehicle system and a hybrid power system. The DM hybrid system is an advanced technology which integrates two hybrid powers to control electricity generator and electric motor, thus not only massively reducing fuel consumption and emission but also enhancing the power and operation performance. In addition, it enables dual energy supplies via both recharging and refueling, which makes up the dual mode hybrid system in the real sense. If we call an electric driven system “EV” and the hybrid electric system “HEV”, then BYD DM should be named “EV + HEV”. This system is bound to replace the traditional electric-gasoline hybrid system, becoming the most popular and advanced new energy hybrid system in the world.

F6DM

Source: BYD Auto

Tesla Motors

Tesla wants some of that money too.

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With loans to the Big 3 all but signed for, Tesla Motors feels they deserve a piece of the government handout pie. Tesla’s Vice President of Business Development, Diarmuid O’Connell, blogged about how it was a bad idea for the Big Three to get money that had been set aside in the December 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), specifically Section 136. Section 136 set up the Advanced Technology Vehicles Loan Program (ATVMLP), and Tesla opposed taking money that was supposed to make cars cleaner and instead use it to just keep the Big Three operating.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk told the Detroit Free Press that if the electric car maker doesn’t get a $350 million loan from the government, then the Model S will be delayed and San Jose plant won’t open. Musk said that with $350 million, Tesla could sell 20,000 electric sedans a year by 2011. “We can’t move forward with that without a major amount of capital,” said Musk. “If we don’t get any government funding, then what we need to do is we need to wait until the capital markets recover, which could be a year or two years from now.”

I sure hope the government does the right thing by helping a company with a proven track record of providing energy efficient vehicles. Sadly, the way things are moving right now, this will probably not happen soon enough.

Sources: Detroit Free Press, Autobloggreen

ZENN

Founder of ZENN Motor Company Takes Questions

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You’ve heard of Fisker, Tesla, Chevy Volt, and Better Place, but ZENN Motor Company is the quiet upstart lurking in the shadows that may have the Excalibur that propels electric vehicles into the mainstream.  ZENN’s secret weapon goes by the name of EEstor, a company that has developed a type of capacitor for electricity storage called the ‘Electrical Energy Storage Unit’ (EESU). According to its patent application, these units will use high-purity barium titanate coated with aluminum oxide and glass to achieve a level of capacitance claimed to be much higher than what is currently available in the market. The claimed energy density of the prototype is 1 MJ/kg; existing commercial supercapacitors typically have an energy density around 0.02 MJ/kg, while lithium ion batteries are around 0.54–0.72 MJ/kg.1

ZENN has exclusive rights to EEstor technology for four-wheeled, light vehicles. In April 2008 ZENN Motor Company announced that a future highway speed electric vehicle using EEStor’s capacitors will achieve 80 mph (130 km/h) speeds, 250 mile (400 km) range and charge in 5 minutes (not from standard plug). ZENN is hoping these models will be ready by Fall of 2009 with a price range of $25,000-$30,000. This vehicle will be called the cityZENN.

With that said, there has been a lot of excitement surrounding EEstor, but very little information on its progress. So when Ian Clifford, founder of ZENN, took questions from concerned stockholders to casual electric car aficionados, he did his best to calm some jitters while not revealing too much. Supposedly, he has a non-disclosure agreement with EEStor so he cannot state whether or not he has actually seen and held their wonderful technology.

Highlights include Ian stating that they are still confident the EESU powered cityZENN will be lauched in late 2009, ZENN Motors will retrofit fleets of commercial vehicles with the ZENNergy drivetrain, and somebody asked about using EEstor technology in green sailboats.

Aptera

Final touches being put on the Aptera

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Aptera

First of all, the electric Aptera Typ-1 will now be known as the Aptera-2e.  I would prefer Aptera Raptor or something cool, but that’s just me.  I can never remember cars with a bunch of numbers and slashes in their names.  Here is the company’s reasoning behind this attempt at simplification:

The challenge is that, with the name Aptera Typ-1, we have two names vying for attention: ‘Aptera’ and ‘Typ-1.’ With that in mind, we have decided to simplify the name and call the vehicle the Aptera-2e, where the 2 designates the number of passengers and the e denotes the electric powertrain.  Our sentiment is that with this convention, the vehicle name will rarely be spoken apart from the brand.

Secondly, the car will now have traditional rear view mirrors and a single fin mounted camera on the roof for optimal visibility and user friendliness.  Tom Reichenbach, chief engineer of Aptera, explains:

By moving to a single camera and screen – in conjunction with more traditional side-view mirrors – drivers are now placed in the safest, most practical and familiar setup.  We worked hard to make these changes without compromising our core mission of minimizing drag.  Through our comprehensive aerodynamic studies we’ve been able to design mirrors that slip right through the air.  And because the body-mounted cameras created air pockets that disrupted airflow over the vehicle, the change to the overall drag has been minimal.

Source: Aptera