Hybrid makeovers help owners dump the pump
Countless small start-ups and Detroit automakers are trying to revive electric cars from an early grave, although there's a long road ahead before electricity might serve as a "fuel" for the masses.
In the meantime, however, a handful of companies aims to put the power cord in the hands of drivers who want to transform their gas-electric hybrids into plug-in hybrids, or to replace the internal combustion innards of other cars with all-electric systems.
The businesses are touting plug-in hybrid systems that can be driven up to 40 miles on batteries alone, with average fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon. The cars use gasoline once the batteries drain.
It can cost more than $10,000 to install a plug-in hybrid system on a Toyota Prius. Is the limited electric driving range worth the expense?
Absolutely, according to Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars, which counts nearly
The range of 40 miles or less, likely to expand as battery makers race to make advances in the years ahead, covers most small trips Americans make in a day, he said. Therefore, Kramer views plug-ins as an ideal second car for commuters who still want to roll out the SUV for a weekend getaway.
"A conversion gives them the opportunity to say, 'I'm driving the world's cleanest extended-range vehicle,'" he added. And early adopters will pay a premium for the plug-in option, as they do for luxury extras, such as leather seats, that offer no economic payback.
The battery pack for Plug-In Supply's conversion will leave room for a tire in the spare tire well.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET News)Kramer believes that car makers will give their blessing eventually to qualified vehicle modifiers to install plug-in systems. For now, a small but growing collection of mechanics and dealers around the country will perform the service.
Among the choices already available to consumers (scroll down for comparison chart), Plug-In Supply is making conversion kits based on an open standard from CalCars.
The Petaluma, Calif., company is selling $5,000 conversions that enable a Prius to drive a maximum 20 miles on full, lead-acid batteries, or $11,000 with lithium-iron phosphate batteries. Professional installation takes a day or two and costs about another $1,000.
The battery chassis can be installed on hinges to sit handily above the spare tire compartment, although adding the heavy lead-acid kit also requires boosting the car's shocks. By contrast, $10,000 conversions from competitor
Drivers can charge up by connecting a power cord from an exterior panel on the Prius to a 110-volt outlet, then waiting 8 hours or less.
Plug-In Supply has shipped 30 systems, and a factory in San Jose, Calif., should produce enough kits to ship two per day later this summer, according to founder Robb Protheroe.
He's seeking $5 million in venture funding to expand and attract a following before the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid is due to roll off assembly lines late in 2010.
Protheroe described having a backlog of 75 orders and said a dozen dealers are signing up to install his systems in California, Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, Texas, Florida, Washington, Oregon as well as in Italy, Australia, Canada, and Germany.
"Texas is wide open right now," said Bill Kelly, who is working to establish Protheroe's plug-in conversions at an auto service center in Plano, Texas. "A lot of people are scratching their heads trying to figure out why they bought their SUVs."
Installers of Protheroe's equipment include the solar-powered, female-owned Luscious Garage, which caters to hybrid owners in San Francisco, and plans to add a space for plug-in electric hybrid conversions.
Another shop in San Francisco, Pat's Garage, has serviced hybrids since 1999. Owner Pat Cadam has been performing A123 Hymotion plug-in conversions for more than a year.
"We both share in the idea that the more of these cars that are on the road, the better," he said.
Cadam doesn't believe that electric cars will come to mass market until around 2012. Toyota's 2010 plug-in hybrid plans, he noted, are limited to a run of several hundred vehicles for fleets only.
In the interim, Cadam sees expanding the number of plug-in cars as crucial to whetting the public's appetite for electrified cars.
A123 Systems offers to convert a Prius to a plug-in hybrid with its Hymotion L5 battery.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET News)A123 Hymotion's other approved plug-in conversion facilities include Seattle's Green Car Company and four Toyota dealerships in Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C.
The kit maker, owned by battery company A123 Systems, which is filing to go public, said it has begun shipping consumer-ready systems, with the majority of orders to ship by the end of this year.
Utility Pacific Gas & Electric and Google are among the high-profile Hymotion testers. Employees at Google's Mountain View, Calif., campus found the plug-ins achieve an average 93.5 miles per gallon. (The search giant's RechargeIT initiative gave $2.75 million to electric-car start-up Aptera and battery maker ActaCell in July.)
However, the safety of plug-in hybrids came into question in June when a Prius converted by Hybrids Plus of Boulder, Col., burst into flames. That setup used battery cells from A123 Systems, but not the same kind found in its plug-in conversion kits. A third-party investigation blamed improper assembly for the fire.
A123 Hymotion insists that its crash-tested product will disconnect a battery pack automatically in the case of an impact, and meets federal safety and emissions standards. Both that company and Plug-In Supply offer 3-year warranties and assure consumers that a conversion won't void a Toyota warranty, unless plug-in alterations directly cause a failure.
Protheroe suggested that the added plug-in batteries allow the original Prius batteries to rest, perhaps extending their life.
Kim Adelman, who aims to sell plug-in installations by November, considers his use of nickel metal hydride batteries--the same brew used in the Prius--an advantage over systems with high-density lithium-ion batteries, which can be unstable if punctured in a crash.
"Safety is No. 1, of course," he said. "No. 2 is making emissions better and using less gas."
Adelman's company, Plug-In Conversions near San Diego, has 20 potential Prius owners waiting to pay between $9,750 and $19,750 to enable an electric-only range of between 8 to 30 miles.
Other passenger car conversion companies in California that appear to be in early stages of development include OEMTek and EnergyCS.
More-expensive, all-electric makeovers are also available. For $55,000, AC Propulsion of San Dimas, Calif., will convert a Scion xB to run up to 95 miles per hour, lasting 150 miles per charge.
Some consider converting gas-guzzling road hogs more important than focusing on compact or hybrid cars that are already relatively green. Former Intel chairman Andy Grove called in July for electrifying 10 million large vehicles in the United States in the next four years.
In that spirit, engineers led by professor Eli Emadi of Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology gutted a Ford F-150 truck to install a plug-in hybrid system meant to increase fuel economy from 16 to 41 miles per gallon.
"We are targeting pickups, SUVs and vans--that's the really big market," said Emadi. "If you start with a gas guzzler that gets 12 miles per gallon or a school bus that gets 7 miles per gallon and increase that, the impact is far bigger."
His team "hybridized" the Ford's conventional drive train and then turned it into a plug-in hybrid. Nickel metal hydride batteries take up to 5 hours to charge and enable the truck to run without gasoline for 15 miles. That adds about 15 percent of the vehicle's weight to the body but also improves its torque, he said.
Emadi has spun off the technology into Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, and plans to produce up to 50 more conversions at $60,000 each by 2009. He said that scaling up the technology, with a hoped-for infusion of $5 million in venture capital, should sharply cause a price drop by 2010.
And Andy Frank, known as the inventor of the plug-in hybrid, has spun-off his technology by licensing it to Efficient Drivetrains, a Palo Alto conversion company.
Evangelists of electrified, hybrid cars argue that although costs need to come down to accelerate adoption, other technical hurdles are less daunting.
Improved battery technologies are key to expanding the electric driving range, but today's storage capacity is good enough for the majority of trips, some claim.
Those who doubt the viability of electrified cars point to the lack of a public charging infrastructure, which start-ups Better Place and Coulomb are trying to address.
Yet, advocates of plug-ins say the infrastructure to charge the cars already exists in the form of 110-volt outlets found in nearly any building. And some hope that if drivers plug in only at night, tapping into unused energy from the electrical grid, then adding new power plants will be unnecessary.
Plug-in hybrids have entered the national political spotlight, as politicians praise the potential for lessening the nation's dependence on foreign oil. Those behind electrified-car start-ups hope that government support will arrive with the next administration in Washington, D.C.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in August proposed offering a $7,000 tax credit to Americans who buy plug-in hybrids as well as loans of $4 billion to makers of efficient cars. Republican opponent John McCain called in June for a $5,000 consumer tax credit for buying zero-emissions cars and a $300 million prize for a battery maker to advance electric car technology.
"No matter how it turns out I think we've had an effect on automakers," said Adelman of Plug-In Conversions. "The feeling is just like we had with personal computers in the 1970s. We knew it was gonna change the world, and in this case it has to."
As to whether it's cost-effective to build nuclear plants, check out the www.rmi.org website and search for the article "Forget Nuclear". Amory Lovins makes a pretty good case for investing in far more cost-effective power generation and power conservation strategies. Wasting money on nuclear power plants would actually make global warming worse, since it diverts funding from much more cost-effective ways to provide power while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and it takes far too long for nuclear plants to be built and to save enough CO2 emissions to make up for the huge emissions that would be released during their construction. Efficiency, solar-thermal, PV, wind and even natural gas power plants would be better.
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Seriously? I agree that nuclear power is relatively safe, but what do we do with the nuclear waste this kind of power creates? Without a safe way to store this waste, nuclear power has more negatives then positives. If you're so worried about your power bill then install a windmill and some solar panels on the roof of your house and never pay an electric bill again; hell the electric company will pay you!
Really the answer to the whole nuclear waste issue is to not make any in the first place, at least none that has weapons potential and a long life. The way to do that is the Thorium breeder reactor (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor ). This reactor uses U-233, which can't make a bomb, as the primary fuel. The fission of the U-233 releases neutrons, some of which are absorbed by a thorium jacket around the reactor, which transforms the Thorium into U-233. Without U-238 around to absorb a neutron, there is no Plutonium created, so there is no bomb making material coming out of this reactor. In fact the existing supply of Plutonium could be consumed by using to jump start the breading process to create the seed U-233 needed by new reactors. Plus the fission products of this reaction are nearly all very short lived (less than 50 years), so there is no need for long term storage. In fact several of the by-products are useful medical isotopes. The molten salt version of the breader reactor also has the advantage of continuous refueling and inherently safe.
First, reprocessing gets nearly all the hot stuff. The rest cools in a water tank for 6 months. By then it's low level enough to put in concrete sealed steel drums. Load it on a truck, ship it to a boat, then sail it to an oceanic trench and dump it over the side and let it subduct back into the crust.
The real problem is that you've been told for decades that ANY level of radiation increases your risk of cancer. The fact is, that's not true. Below a certain threshold, radiation is completely harmless.
Nuclear waste is actually the least toxic byproduct of energy production known to modern technology. Far less toxic than the pollution created by coal, oil and natural gas.
I am only half kidding on my suggestion, has anyone actually looked into this possibility?
Spent fuel rods are a waste product only because we scare ourselves with boogy man stories of reprocessing producing weapons grade fuel. True Plutonium is extracted from the spent fuel and can be chemically concentrated to weapons grade if the "Bad Guys (TM)" got their hands on it. So we just need to make sure that they don't. Put a fuel-rod making plant to disperse the Plutonium withing tons of new fuel rods within the same facility as the reprocessing plant. That way weapons grade Plutonium is never where Bad Guys can get at it without a full military assault, huge trucks to carry the spent or new fuel rods and a still pretty sophisticated facility to break down the fuel rods and isolate the dispersed Plutonium. All not an operation that some group hiding in a cave half way around the world is going to mount. The way we treat fueling our reactors is sort of like buying a car with a full tank of gas and when the gas tank runs dry, throwing the car away and buying another car rather than just filling up the tank. Just dumb!
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Nuclear_Remediation
Hydrogen can "neutralize" radioactive waste via "Brown's" gas. Way Cool Tech!(tm)
Another thing - I read some articles on a ?pneumatic car" that would do over 55 mph and get 125 miles per charge. A technology well know and used in tools for years, yet it is not on the lists anywhere I can see. Sierra Club must have stock in wind and solar!
We need many solutions and many businesses as the greed of business and stockholders make them single foucused as the oil companies on bottom-line and not interested in other engery forms until the bottom-line falls - that is just good business. And that is why the enviromentalists of today are a religious cult vice truely caring for their human brothers and sisters and our planet.
Bob
http://www.lionev.com
I have no affiliation with that company, but was impressed by the "DIY" info on their site.
Let the buyer beware!
After some additional web research related to "LionEV fraud", it does appear that they may be committing fraud. Either that, or LionEV is doing an amazingly ****-poor job of providing their products and service to their eager money-in-hand customers.
In hindsight, sorry I mentioned them.
Utility companies and consumers are steadily building more renewable power, such as the massive new solar facilities in the Mojave, wind in Texas and the Midwest, rooftop solar. Plug in vehicles will be the only vehicles that will be able to take advantage of that clean power.
If we, steadily and manageably, build renewable power, while gradually migrating to plug-in vehicles, we can go 100% renewable within 25 years. In so doing, we beat high gas prices, have much cleaner air, import no oil, avoid drilling offshore and in ANWAR, support locally produced energy and energy jobs, keep more money in the US, and oh yeah, that global warming thing - it's all win. Let's just do it.
And solar power simply doesn't provide the energy needs of an industrialized nation. If you're going to use energy from stars, I prefer supernova fragments myself. Thorium is my personal favorite.
I think it's safe to say that EVERYONE alive today will not be around to care when that time comes.
Personally, I think we should be exploiting Yellowstone and its geothermal potential. Heck, when THAT overdue supervolcano blows there's not going to be any Old Faithful or pretty flora and fauna left for the Sierra Club to whine over. Come to think about it, there won't be much left EAST of there, period. Who'll need a Prius--fully electric or otherwise--when all your roads are covered with thirty feet of volcanic ash?
When I get home I plug in my iPod, my bluetooth and my phone. Wish I could plug in my car. Sure, there's a cost shift, but if it were hidden in the electricity bill, it would be out of sight, out of mind.
if you have to offer a subsidy, you don't have a viable industry. If electric and solar were economically viable, you wouldn't NEED to take money from one taxpayer and give it to another.
And I realize that talk is cheap. I've put solar PV and solar hot water panels on my house and I've put money down for the plug-in upgrade on my Prius. It's going to take me years to pay for it all, but I am doing something and not just talking about it. There's just no getting around the fact that we all have to make some sacrifices, whether we do it directly by what we buy or by paying higher taxes. The candidates might not be willing to admit that this is so, but it doesn't make it any less obvious or any less inevitable. We will all end up paying something for the financial system bailouts and if we don't stop buying foreign oil and start investing in clean energy, we'll all end up working for foreigners, since we'll have to sell our businesses and our land to them to pay the trillions of dollars in debt that we'll owe.
Fortunately, batteries made from carbon-nanotube supercapacitors may reach production by 2010, and that will make plug-in hybrids much more viable because we can cut down the battery pack size and reduce charging times drastically.
Electric cars do NOT solve emission or energy problems. Where do you think the electricity comes from? Coal, oil, (uranium, if we're smart). So, with a bunch of electric cars, we're going to need a lot more powerplants, most of which are coal, oil, or natural gas. All of these pollute, and one of the biggest hurdles is that transferring electricity is incredibly inefficient over long distances. Of course, once we figure out a new source of energy, then electric cars are the way to go.
the reason politicians are pushing plug-in cars is because the US has about 400 years worth of coal reserves. right now, we are EXPORTING coal. unfortunately, energy independence is NOT environmentally beneficial. hopefully we will soon figure out a solution that is both environmentally friendly and decreases our dependence on foreign energy.
- by farmer-dave August 14, 2008 11:34 PM PDT
- How does the government collect the road tax ($.17 per gallon federal, state tax in addition) on these electric vehicles? We DO need to maintain our roads, bridges and tunnels.
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