In the future, utilities will pay you to plug in your vehicle. Millions will plug in their electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), and fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) at night when electricity is cheap, then during the day when energy is expensive, sell those extra electrons at a profit. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is a bi-directional electric grid interface that allows a plug-in to take energy from the grid or put it back on the grid. V2G helps solve the major problem that demand for electricity is high during the day when everything from industrial plants to air conditioning is running full blast and then excess electricity is wasted at night.
Several early models of passenger vehicles have enough energy stored in advanced batteries to power several homes for hours. Hybrid electric buses and heavy trucks could power many homes or a school or hospital in an emergency. Recent announcements demonstrate that electric utilities and some automakers want to make V2G a reality.
The Smart Grid Consortium, established in December 2007 by Xcel Energy, will select a community of approximately 100,000 residents to become a Smart Grid City using V2G. Potential benefits include lower utility bills for residents, smarter energy management, better grid reliability, improved energy efficiency, and support for EVs and PHEVs.
Current consortium members include Accenture, Current Group, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, and Ventyx. Smart Grid City will use real-time, high-speed two-way communication throughout the distribution grid. Smart meters and substations will be integral. Installation will be made of thousands of in-home control devices and the necessary systems to fully automate home energy use.
The current electrical grid is poorly designed for distributed generation of power. Individuals and businesses lose months and connect fees when they add solar and other forms of renewable energy to the grid. Smart Grid City will easily support up to 1,000 easily dispatched distributed generation technologies including PHEVs, distributed batteries, solar, and wind.
In addition to Smart Grid City, another major EV/V2G initiative is unfolding.
The Renault-Nissan Alliance and Project Better Place have signed a memorandum of understanding to create a mass market for electric vehicles in Israel, which is an excellent target market: it has a sales tax exceeding 60 percent for gasoline vehicles, gasoline costs over $6 per gallon, most driving fits the range of electric vehicles, and the government strongly supports energy independence.
Project Better Place plans to deploy a massive network of battery-charging spots. Driving range will no longer be an obstacle, because customers will be able to plug their cars into charging units in any of the 500,000 charging spots in Israel. An onboard computer system will indicate to the driver the remaining power supply and the nearest charging spot. Nissan, through its joint venture with NEC, has created a battery pack that meets the requirements of the electric vehicle and will produce it in mass volume. The entire framework will go through a series of tests starting this year.
The Israeli model is different than the rapid battery swap model that Better Place has promoted as better than "dangerous" fast charging. For the future, Renault is working on developing exchangeable batteries for continuous mobility.
As part of the solution framework, the Israeli government will provide tax incentives to customers, Renault will supply the electric vehicles, and Project Better Place will construct and operate an electric recharge grid across the entire country. Electric vehicles will be available for customers in 2011.
Just as wireless service providers offer smartphones at discounted prices, Project Better Place will offer discounted electric vehicles with usage pricing plans. Prepaid 600 kilometer cards are one approach that is suggested. A free car on a four-year plan in France is another idea mentioned by Shai Agassi, CEO of Project Better Place. Annual use of an EV should be less than the average cost of $8,000 per year for using a gasoline vehicle in many countries including the U.S.
Shai Agassi predicts that Israel will have more than 100,000 electric vehicles in use by 2010. This will be 5 percent of the nation's vehicle population. The number represents a significant step toward energy independence.
Project Better Place has already received more than $200 million of venture capital investment. Shai Agassi presented its new business model at Davos. Agassi was an executive at SAP who led the software company to being the enterprise software leader ahead of Oracle, IBM, and all others. (Read Agassi's Davos insights here.)
Success with V2G would be a double win for electric utilities. Millions of EVs and PHEVs would expand the sale of electricity as an alternative to oil. Utilities could avoid building more dirty-peaking power plants. Instead they could buy back electricity at peak hours from vehicle drivers. It would be a financial win-win for all.
Scion eBox
(Credit: AC Propulsion)I had a chance recently to test drive two of the cars whose creators are bent on changing the way we view transportation, a converted all electric Scion eBox by Silicon Valley startup AC Propulsion, and a Saturn Vue Greenline hybrid. Both were highly enjoyable. The first, with a $70,000 price tag and a $10,000 deposit, is clearly an EV targeted at Conspicuous Sustainability consumers. I guess then, that the Saturn Vue Greenline with a $24,000 price tag, is perhaps the hybrid for the rest of us.
Saturn Vue Greenline
(Credit: General Motors)One of my friends, who was considering buying an eBox invited me to take it for a spin up and down some of the San Francisco hills with him while he was test driving. I have to admit, coming down California Street into downtown, one of the City's steeper hills, is an entertaining way to get used to the feel of regenerative braking on a true EV. I highly recommend it. For most of the drive I never touched the brakes. To stop you simply take your foot off the accelerator. And for those who have not driven an EV before the acceleration itself is phenomenal. Touch, and Go. Of course, with a $55,000 price tag for the EV conversion (you provide the Scion), limited range, and few electric charging stations, a purchase would be a hard call for me to make. The payback on fuel savings, many times the useful life of the car.
In contrast, General Motors (NYSE:GM) had given me a 2007 Saturn Vue to drive around for a week, to get the feel of it. If anything, GM is not known as an innovator of clean technologies. They are still tarred with the who killed the electric car brush by many environmentalists. That has only made it harder for GM to get out the message on things like its massive R&D effort in fuel cell cars, its push into flex fuel and ethanol with the Live Green Go Yellow campaign, and now hybrids. Having been to a number of their press luncheons on some of the new technologies they have been developing, I had some idea what to expect, but had not written about it before. The Vue is what is known as a mild hybrid, and its lack of bleeding edge, ultra green technology compared to a Prius had a few of my greener friends turning their noses up at it. But this didn't really phase me after I drove it. As a car and SUV, I found it quite impressive. It handled wonderfully, was extremely quiet, and quite comfortable. You can feel the regenerative braking, but only as a slight tug, so besides the lack of noise, it is like driving any other SUV. Saturn bills it as getting the best highway gas mileage of any SUV, and the cheapest hybrid SUV on the market (not to mention a little quicker than the conventional Vue). Like all hybrids today, the payback is real, but not so great. At the average miles driven per year for most Americans we are talking 9 to 11 years or so compared to the standard Vue, according to my conversation with the Saturn people. If you happen to a real heavy commuter 25,000 to 30,000 miles per year type of thing, the payback may be down towards 5 or 6 years. In short, despite the c. 20 percent fuel savings, a consumer is looking at 120,000 to 150,000 plus miles before reaching a payback, depending on your assumptions, for this or almost any hybrid. The real payback, as always, comes from just buying a smaller car, hybrid or not.
What I love is that the Vue Greenline is really just the first in the Saturn line of hybrids and cleaner fueled cars. GM is basically planning on making virtually the entire Saturn line as green as can be. It is rolling out something like 8 new hybrids or hybrid versions of existing Saturn makes as we speak over the next couple of years. And at a $24,000 price tag, I could actually see buying one of these.
So whether you have the pocket books to look for full EV conversion or just a mild hybrid to make a small difference like the rest of us, the choice is there.
A whole new crop of startups are busy living that dream, especially in Silicon Valley - and tons of money is flowing in to fund them.
EVs, Plug-in hybrids and next generation batteries and electric drive systems are exciting Silicon Valley to invest - and 2007 and 2008 are targeted as breakout years. Here's a taste.
AC Propulsion - 15 year old startup developing an all-electric drive train technology, currently providing all electric conversions of Toyota Scions using Li Ion batteries. Their technology is in the Wrightspeed prototypes. I had a chance to drive one of their vehicles not too long ago on the hills of San Francisco - delightfully fun. For $55K (you provide the car) you can get one now.
Wrightspeed - Another Silicon Valley startup - from their website "The X1 prototype is just the beginning. It meets its design specs of 0-60 in 3 seconds, 170 mpg equivalent; and at 1536 lbs, is only 36 lbs over the design target of 1500."
Visionary Vehicles - (Malcom Brickland the back for another try after the the Bricklin SV-1 of 30 years ago) - the story here is low cost (<$20K) plug-in hybrids made in China for the US market. (Plug-ins are electric hybrids with extra batteries that you can charge from a wall socket device.)
Tesla Motors - The highflying Silicon Valley electric car startup is making lots of headlines and has raised oodles of money (the Chairman Elon Musk is another one of the Greentech bloggers so don't take my word for it). The target car is a $92K all electric two seat roadster. As of a few days ago, Tesla is in the battery business as well, having announced a $43 mm deal with Think to sell lithium ion batteries. They were targeting '07 for product deliveries. I'm not sure what the latest is.
Phoenix Motor Cars - Canadian based, building EV fleet cars, with a Altairnano battery and UQM propulsion system. Targeting all electric trucks for the fleet market. Targeted early releases in late '07/'08.
Zenn Cars - Another Canadian based community EV startup - partnered with EEStor for the ultracapacitor technology.
So, regardless of where you come down on electric vehicles - it is pretty clear the independents are looking to challenge Detroit - banking on recent advances in battery technology and the rush for plug-in hybrids to let them make a dent in a market that has proven an unbelievably tough nut to crack. One of my colleagues was involved with Zebra Motors 10 years ago - another San Francisco Bay Area EV sports car startup that made cool prototypes but never got off the ground. Perhaps it was just too early.
Are electric vehicles really back? That's a hard prediction to make. EV technology has proven to be brutally hard over the years to get right. And even if you can, challenging Detroit and Japanese automakers has not exactly been a money making strategy either. The car business is hard. Yes, battery technology has improved and costs have come down - but just how much? Yes, plug-in hybrids offer a new way to get EV technology into fleets and mainstream (I'm a very big fan) - but cost is still a factor. And while Silicon Valley has lots of money to invest - so do the major automakers. When it comes to EITHER vehicles or EVs, $100 million in capital is not a marker of success, it's the ante up to play the game.
It's all exciting to watch in any case.
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