LOS ANGELES--Nissan Motor will keep the price of its upcoming battery-powered Leaf competitive with similar-size cars and expects to make money on the vehicle despite the cost of its launch, said Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn on Friday.
The five-passenger hatchback, which is being designed to have an all-electric range of 100 miles, would cost only 1 percent to 2 percent more than traditional combustion engine vehicles in its class, he said.
"On the pricing of the vehicle it is too early to say, but there will be no surprise," Ghosn said. "We know it will be the key to the mass market."
Nissan has not disclosed pricing on the Leaf, but has said it expects the car to be the first affordable, mass-market electric car when it goes on sale in the United States, Japan, and Europe by the end of 2010.
Nissan has bet heavily on electric cars and expects that by 2020, 10 percent of the world car market will be for electric vehicles. It has announced a series of partnerships with utilities and government agencies to advance technology where it believes it has a chance of seizing market leadership.
The automaker said on Friday that it would cooperate with Houston-based Reliant Energy, a subsidiary of NRG Energy in developing a charging infrastructure for electric cars at homes and near office buildings.
Ghosn, who was speaking to reporters at an event outside Dodger Stadium to kick off a U.S. marketing tour for the Leaf, said Nissan would roll out the car slowly in the U.S. market to get more feedback from consumers.
The Leaf is designed to draw power from a battery-pack developed with Japan's NEC that Nissan has said can be recharged overnight on a 220-volt connection.
Nissan has taken $1.6 billion in low-cost loans from the U.S. Department of Energy to revamp a plant in Smyrna, Tenn., to make the Leaf. The first models in the U.S. market will be imported from Japan.
Nissan's rivals have pushed competing battery-powered technologies. Toyota Motor dominates the market for traditional hybrids and has floated plans for a broader range of vehicles under the Prius name.
Others, such as General Motors and Fisker Automotive, are banking on plug-in designs that rely on batteries for short drives but also include a gasoline-powered generator to recharge the battery on longer trips.
"We think this technology is a technology we control, but we need scale. And that is why today we are building an overall capacity between Renault and Nissan of 500,000 cars and batteries a year that we are installing between the United States, Europe, and Japan," Ghosn told reporters.
"Hopefully, we are going to move upward. Because it is not about one car, it is about four cars for Nissan and four cars for Renault."
Leasing the car's batteries is a way to bring down the upfront cost, analysts say, and Ghosn said he preferred to lease batteries because Nissan can have control over replacement as technology improves.
But while Nissan plans to lease batteries on a global scale, executives said that they are still studying whether to do so in the U.S. market.
Ghosn said the Leaf would be profitable for Nissan. By contrast, GM has said it does not expect to make money on the first sales of its plug-in Volt, expected to be priced near $40,000 when it launches in late 2010.
"We will make money out of the Leaf," Ghosn said. "We have to make money, because if we don't make money the technology is condemned."
He added: "Everything we are doing today--and that is one of the reasons we are negotiating with the government--is to make sure this technology can continue to develop. We have a reasonable return on our investments and continue to develop the technology. And the consumer has to pay a reasonable price."
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BOSTON--Green tech has been a hot venture capital investment category the past few years, but that doesn't mean investors are actually earning money. In fact, some venture capitalists eyeing gold in green may soon be moving on, a panel of investors said here on Friday.
In the third quarter this year, green tech garnered more venture capital than the traditional categories of software and biotech, bouncing back after a sharp drop-off earlier this year. That reflects the high level of confidence that investing in energy-related technologies makes sense in the long run.
But there's a growing understanding that applying the same venture model used for biotech or IT won't always work in energy, said speakers at a panel on venture capital at the Fifth Annual Clean Energy Conference.
"Clean tech is broadly recognized as an area of expansion," said Issam Dairanieh of BP's alternative energy venture capital arm. "But those who went into it because it looked sexy will suffer. Those who went into it without doing their homework will go away."
The two most dramatic differences between IT and energy technology is the amount of time required to build a product and the capital that's needed. A product could take 15 to 18 years to enter into the fuels business and cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, said Dairanieh. The traditional venture model is built around getting sizable returns in five to seven years.
"Venture capital in clean tech as currently practiced will not be successful or last very long," said Matthew Nordan, a vice president at venture-capital company Venrock. Venrock is focusing on very early-stage companies with an eye toward finding one that can have a technology breakthrough over many years, Nordan said.
The panelists said that the best VC investors are patient and invest for the long term. But there are many investors who chase fads, said Bic Stevens of Stevens Capital Partners. "Most VC returns are made by getting ahead of a bubble," he said.
Right now, many venture capitalists in green tech are focusing on the companies they have already invested in to ensure that they succeed, a situation that makes it more difficult for newly formed start-ups to secure funding. IT-heavy areas, such as smart grid, are also getting more attention in part because they can be businesses that IT investors feel comfortable with.
The shift to later-stage venture investments was clear in an analysis of third quarter venture capital done by Ernst & Young. For the first nine months of the year, 62 percent of the companies that received funding were already shipping products, compared to 37 percent for the same period last year.
BP's Dairanieh said that despite some limitations, there is an important role for venture capitalists to play in developing very specific technologies. For example, a biofuel company can develop a process for converting algae to fuel, but a small company should expect to bring it to market by partnering with established companies, such as refiners and distributors.
Another heavy presence in energy investing is Washington, with billions of dollars in stimulus money and research funding being put toward energy. Over the past year, many start-ups have applied to Department of Energy programs with a hope of getting a grant or loan.
BOSTON--While hundreds of other companies are trying to make a better battery, start-up SustainX Energy Solutions is trying to find better ways to compress and store air to help utilities take full advantage of intermittent sources of energy like wind.
Dax Kepshire, president of SustainX, sketched out the company's technology and product plans here Thursday at the Fifth Annual Conference on Clean Energy. SustainX was spun out of Dartmouth College last year and received $4 million in funding from Polaris Venture Partners and Rockport Capital in August of this year. It now has 10 employees.
There are already a few compressed-air facilities in the world where off-peak electricity is used to pump air underground for storage. During peak-demand times, the air is released and pushed through a turbine to make electricity.
It's a method that's getting more attention now as a way to store several hours worth of wind power, for example.
Traditional compressed air storage uses underground formations to store compressed air, which is released when needed to make electricity. Click on the image for a photo gallery of other types of energy storage.
(Credit: PG&E)The primary difference with SustainX's approach is that it doesn't need an underground salt dome or limestone cavern to store the compressed air. Instead, it proposes storing the compressed air in off-the-shelf tanks. Its technical goal in two years is to cram 4 megawatt-hours worth of stored energy in a 40-foot long container, said Kepshire. The tank-filled container would be able to deliver 1 megawatt of power.
In the near term, it plans to build a 100 kilowatt hour pilot system to test the efficiency and then to validate the larger model in 2011, Kepshire said.
Its technology is also very different from the existing compressed-air storage facilities. With traditional compressed-air energy storage, a machine called a compressor compacts air and pumps it underground. To make electricity, the air is released and run through special turbines and a generator to make electricity.
SustainX is designing a system that uses a hydraulic piston to compress air. When the air is released, it moves a hydraulic motor which is attached to a generator to make electricity, Kepshire explained.
The key to making the overall system is to reduce the energy loss that happens in the compression and decompression of air, he said. He expects the first pilot system to be about 50 percent efficient but the full system to be more around 70 percent efficient overall.
Compressed air energy storage has a lot of potential because it's relatively inexpensive and because utilities can store many hours worth of electricity. Pacific Gas & Electric is investigating locations for compressd-air storage capable of delivering 300 megawatts of electricity for 10 hours, or 3,000 megawatt-hours. By contrast, utility-scale battery storage systems in use now deliver 1 or 2 megawatts for a few hours.
SustainX doesn't have any customers yet, but Kepshire said the company is targeting utilities looking to use more renewable energy. The company's technology, if it proves efficient enough, can be scaled to stored many hours of energy and deliver large amounts of power, he said.
BOSTON--If you attached a cost to putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, how would the energy business change?
Steven Koonin, the undersecretary for science at the Department of Energy and former chief scientist of BP, has thought this question over. Koonin was the keynote speaker Thursday at the Fifth Annual Conference on Clean Energy here, where he offered a big-picture analysis of how the U.S. should convert to low-carbon energies.
Steven Koonin, undersecretary for science in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
(Credit: DOE)The main drivers toward cleaner energy are efforts to improve the country's energy security and to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But there are many paths to that destination and we won't get there by only putting a price on carbon, Koonin said.
"Now the economists will tell you that all you need to do (is put a price on carbon emissions) and the market will take care of itself after that," Koonin said. "And that may be true, but as a technologist I have the ability and in fact the responsibility to look ahead and ask what the likely responses will be if there is a carbon price."
Establishing a significant, long-lasting, and universal carbon price would act as a "supply side" signal to the energy industry and favor certain technologies, he said.
One clear implication for the U.S. would be a greater shift toward natural gas, which is significantly less-polluting than coal for making electricity. Recent drilling improvements allow for capturing large amounts of natural gas from shale in the U.S., Koonin said.
Onshore wind is economically competitive in many areas in the U.S. and has the potential to supply 20 percent of the country's electricity by 2030. Another clean source of power is small and medium-size hydro power, which can supply tens of gigawatts from small dams.
Nuclear fission, which now supplies about 20 percent of the electricity in the U.S., is also poised to expand in an economy with a carbon price because there are no emissions during power generation. Carbon capture and storage facilities attached to coal-power plants, too, are needed because existing coal plants will continue to operate, he said.
Finally, increased conservation and efficiency are required in both the transportation field and for heating and power, he said.
Not just about technology
Koonin favors a cap-and-trade system to regulate carbon emissions, a system proposed in the energy and climate legislation now being debated in the Senate. Under cap and trade, heavy polluters such as utilities are given pollution permits and can buy additional permits to stay under a government-set limit on carbon.
But other policies are required, in part because the energy industry by its nature changes very slowly. Koonin specifically mentioned portfolio standards, where utilities need to get a portion of their electricity supply from renewable sources or a "low carbon" portfolio standard.
"One of the most important things we need to do beyond technology is to accelerate energy change," he said. "It takes decades to affect significant changes in the energy system."
It's a mistake to look at the IT industry as a model for how quickly energy can change, Koonin said. Whereas digital technologies evolve very quickly, energy changes slowly because power plants and buildings last decades and even cars last 15 years.
The first hybrid passenger car came to the U.S. in 2001, and even now, eight years later, there are fewer than 1 million sold, out of a total 150 million cars, he noted.
The scale and investments required to adopt different energy technologies is much bigger in than IT, and the energy industry is dominated by incumbents with well-optimized processes, he added.
To accelerate changes in energy, the DOE has established different types of research centers. This year, there will be $25 million a year to fund three "innovation hubs" at universities focused on specific problems, such as advances in nuclear. The DOE also recently awarded grants for ARPA-E, research aimed at breakthrough technologies.
Green Plug's twist port universal charger.
(Credit: Green Plug)Start-ups Green Plug and WiPower are working together on a universal wireless charger for portable devices, the companies said Thursday.
The partnership makes sense since GreenPlug has developed a protocol to allow power sources and portable devices to communicate, while WiPower has invented technology to transmit power wirelessly over short distances.
Green Plug's universal chargers allow portable electronic devices containing its embedded Greentalk chip to be charged from a universal port. Once a device is plugged in to a Green Plug charger port, the charger's Greentalk protocol reads the chip inside the device to determine the power supply needed to charge it. It then tunes its power output to charge the device accordingly.
WiPower has a developed technology that can transmit power over short distances wirelessly. You can place a device on a WiPower pad in any position, and it automatically begins recharging.
Powermat makes a wireless charging dock that works with cases made for specific devices.
(Credit: Powermat)Here's the caveat. For this to become a reality, manufacturers must opt to embed Greentalk chips into their products instead of offering individual power adapters for each model they make.
The idea is considered green because millions of chargers are thrown away each year when people buy new devices and discard the old chargers. Embracing the Greentalk chip could theoretically prevent millions of chargers from being manufactured in the first place.
The idea is not entirely unique, though. Powermat makes a pad for wirelessy charging any Powermat-enabled device. In order to work with it, the device must be placed inside a special case that houses a Powermat receiver programmed to work with the charger and a specific device's needs. Users can also buy a cube with eight different types of ports that can sit on the mat and be plugged in to compatible devices.
An M1A1 70-ton tank crosses a bridge made from Axion's thermoplastic composite at Camp Mackall in North Carolina.
(Credit: Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army/Dawn Elizabeth Pandoliano)Axion International Holdings has won a $957,000 contract to provide the U.S. Army with two bridges made from a thermoplastic composite and recycled plastic, the company announced Wednesday evening.
The two bridges, which are replacing old wooden ones, will be constructed at Fort Eustis in Virginia from a proprietary Recycled Structural Composite (RSC) developed by Axion in conjunction with scientists at Rutgers University.
The railroad cross-ties will be made entirely of a plastic composed of recycled materials from both consumer and industrial plastic waste. Axion asserts that its recycled plastic railroad ties are actually longer-lasting that typical creosote-treated wood railroad ties.
Both the 40-foot and 80-foot bridges to be built will each have a high-loading rating of 130 tons, and be used to transport both locomotives and freight traffic, according to Axion.
The location is significant. Fort Eustis is home to the U.S. Army Transportation Corps, the branch of the Army responsible for coordinating the movement of personnel and cargo. The Fort Eustis motto is Einstein's famous quote "Nothing happens, until something moves." It's also the location of the U.S. Army Transportation Museum.
But this is not the first military bridge to be made out of plastic by Axion for the military. The Army has previously built plastic bridges for Fort Bragg and Camp Mackall in North Carolina using materials and structural design that allowed for a bearing load of 73 tons for tracked vehicles and 88 tons for cars and trucks. To demonstrate its strength a 70-ton M1A1 Abrams tank was driven across the bridge at its official unveiling in September.
The design and engineering of the bridges is being be done by Parsons Brinckerhoff and Centennial Contractors Enterprises.
Helix Wind's The S322 vertical wind turbine
(Credit: Helix Wind)Helix Wind announced Wednesday that it's beginning a trial run in Southern California to see if its wind turbines might be useful for powering cell phone towers.
The manufacturer is becoming known for its small vertical-axis wind turbines that can generate electricity with winds as low as 10 mph, as well as its unique business model to finance them.
The pilot program, conducted in conjunction with cell phone tower operator Core Communications, will experiment with whether the turbines powering cell phone towers could also generate surplus energy to sell back to the energy grid.
If they generate enough surplus power, small wind turbines could provide a new source of income for cell phone tower operators as well as a new power source.
Helix Wind's turbines, which will be installed in early 2010, will run for up to three months before being re-evaluated.
According to statistics provided by Helix Wind, there are approximately 3,500 cell phone towers in Southern California, and another 1,000 expected to be added in the next five years to cover consumer growth.
Updated on November 13 at 1:11 p.m. PT to clarify and correct technical details.
Big levitated spinning disks will provide electricity to the grid in a project set to begin next month.
Flywheel energy storage company Beacon Power on Tuesday said it plans to begin construction of a 20-megawatt storage facility in Stephentown, N.Y. Provided on a continuous basis, twenty megawatts could power thousands of homes. But flywheels are used only for providing power for short periods.
Rather have many hours of stored energy on standby, the flywheels will store and dispatch bursts of electricity for what's called frequency regulation in the utility industry. Because of fluctuations in power demand, power generators need to deliver power to the grid to maintain a steady signal frequency. Beacon Power's flywheels are designed to provide one megawatt of power for 15 minutes.
George King, supervisor of flywheel assembly at Beacon Power, stands next to the company's 100-kilowatt flywheel.
(Credit: Beacon Power)With flywheels, electrical energy is converted into mechanical energy and stored by the spinning disks. By absorbing electricity and dispatching it for quick bursts of a few minutes, utilities can maintain the frequenc with a system that uses no fossil fuel and responds quickly, according to Beacon Power.
The project will help the utility better use renewable energy that supplies electricity intermittently to the grid, according to the New York State Public Service Commission.
The installation in upstate New York will be the first large-scale use of Beacon Power's technology, according to the company. The Tyngsboro, Mass.-based company secured a Department of Energy loan guarantee in July for $43 million to partially finance the project.
Until now, Beacon Power has operated two smaller 1-megawatt facilities, where 10 flywheels are placed in a shipping container-size structure. The wheels themselves are made of carbon fiber composites, rather than metal, and spin at 16,000 revolutions per minute. To reduce friction, the mechanical components are stored in a vacuum and levitated with a permanent magnet, according to the company.
Another idea that has been pursued by Google for frequency regulation is using networks of electric-vehicle batteries. Rather than dispatch stored energy from batteries, plugged-in cars could have the charge rate throttled back, which a grid management system could use to maintain frequency.
Correction at 2:33 a.m. PDT November 12: This story incorrectly stated the name of the wireless communications technology used by AlertMe. The system uses ZigBee.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has formed a task group to determine what standards need to be modified to ensure Wi-Fi is the tool of choice for smart-grid applications.
The nonprofit industry association that approves devices for the Wi-Fi Certified seal released a report Wednesday called "Wi-Fi for the Smart Grid: Mature, Interoperable, Security-Protected Technology for Advanced Utility Management Communications." The report expounds on all the possibilities for Wi-Fi as a communication tool for smart appliances, home area networks, neighborhood networks, and wide area networks integrating with smart grids. It also details how the standards being set by the U.S. Department of Energy for smart grids might affect Internet Protocol standards for Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi seems like an obvious choice for electronics and appliances communicating with a wireless, smart grid-integrated system. The low-power, short-range data transmission method is already the dominant standard for digital communications among computers and electronics in wireless home and neighborhood networks.
Both GE and Whirlpool have said they are close to bringing smart appliances to the consumer market. But Whirlpool has said it's still waiting for an "open, global standard for transmitting signals to, and receiving signals from, a home appliance."
Google PowerMeter has already partnered with AlertMe in the U.K. on a do-it-yourself smart-appliance integration system for homes that bypasses the need for a smart meter and it relies on ZigBee not Wi-Fi. AlertMe relays information between a wireless hub that plugs into a home's broadband connection, smart plugs used by appliances throughout the house, and an electric meter monitor. It allows users to observe and regulate electricity use of their home appliances from anywhere in the world via Google's Web-accessible PowerMeter platform.
"Wi-Fi networks can be deployed to meet the Smart Grid requirements for robustness, manageability, performance, and security," according to the report.
But from the contents of the report, the Wi-Fi cognoscente also seem to realize that Wi-Fi device manufacturers will need to step it up if they want to provide the standard for smart-grid-related communications.
Dropped or insecure connections between a laptop and wireless network is one thing. But once Wi-Fi communications can affect appliances and electricity use, device irregularities or shortfalls in cybersecurity won't be tolerated by the U.S. government or consumers.
If you wanted to start a business and help save the world, what would you do?
The Ignite Clean Energy (ICE) competition on Wednesday, announced the winners of a business plan competition that offers a peek into how university students are approaching environmental problems through business. There is a wide range of technologies being pursued--everything from ocean power to providing off-grid power systems to developing countries.
A conceptual design of a microbial fuel cell where microorganisms reacting with organic material create a chemical reaction that induces an electrical current.
(Credit: IntAct Labs)The awards were decided on Tuesday afternoon after student teams pitched their business plans to a panel of judges at the Massachusetts State House. Winners are eligible for cash and in-kind services, ranging from $50,000 to $12,500 in total with a sizable portion coming in the form of legal advice.
The first-place winner for this year's competition was IntAct Labs, which is working on a range of bio-energy technologies. The company is developing microbial fuel cells that make electricity from wastewater, sensors made of proteins, and photoactive proteins that could act as solar cells.
New Jersey-based InnoSepra won second place for a technology it says reduces the cost of separating carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants. It is using a "microporous" material for capturing CO2 and demonstrated its feasiblity at bench scale, according to the company.
Third place went to EGG-Energy, which has a business mission of bringing affordable electricity to people in poor countries. Its team last summer traveled to Tanzania to test out how its battery and electric light combination work as an alternative to kerosene lighting.
Among the "people's choice" awards in the competition were Velkless, which is developing flywheels for energy storage, and HydroCoal, which is working on a coal gasification process to make a substitute for natural gas.
For business plan summaries of all the participants, see here.
The Ignite Clean Energy competition is one of many cropping up around the country to fund entrepreneurs working in green technology. The event at the Massachusetts State House is part of a "clean energy week," which also includes a showcase of ongoing energy research on Wednesday and the Fifth Annual Clean Energy Conference starting on Thursday.
