With Earth Day upon us, CNET News.com's green reporters sat down and selected five leading companies in five different clean-technology categories. Here are the transportation companies selected:
Click here to see all of News.com's Earth Day 2008 stories, photo galleries, and more.
1. A123 Systems: Like a number of other companies, A123 wants to sell lithium-ion battery packs for electric cars and plug-in hybrids. The difference is that A123, which spun out of MIT, has influential friends. General Motors invested in the company and is testing A123 batteries for its hybrids, including the Chevy Volt expected in 2010. So is Norway's Think, which makes an electric town car. In all, the company has raised more than $100 million, including funds from potential users like Procter & Gamble.
The company's batteries employ a nanophosphate electrode, and other tweaks that make them less likely than conventional lithium-ion batteries to experience a "runaway thermal reaction"--or explode to you laymen. Others in this category: Altair Nanotechnologies, which has a lithium-titanate battery, and EnerDel.
2. Tesla Motors: No need to explain much here. The San Carlos, Calif.-based company played a huge role in bringing the electric car back from the dead. Chalk it up to good engineering and clever marketing: aiming electrics at the high end of the market up-ended the harsh economics of trying to build a battery-based car. Celebrities have lined up to buy the Tesla Roadster.
A Tesla Roadster prototype
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)Tesla's next big challenge is Whitestar, a luxury sedan coming in 2009. Two versions will exist: a full-electric version and a gas-electric hybrid. Other ones to watch: Fisker Automotive (a luxury hybrid from the renowned designer), Lightning, and Nissan.
3. ZeaChem and Coskata: This one's a tie. What's the best way to convert plant mass and other cellulosic materials into fuel? Some companies, like Range Fuels, are betting on thermochemical processes. Others, such as Mascoma and Gevo, are scouring the landscape for microbes that can convert biomass biologically.
ZeaChem and Coskata combine both chemical and biological processes. ZeaChem claims they can get 160 gallons of fuel per ton of matter, higher than most if can hit that mark. Coskata, meanwhile, says it can accommodate a variety of feedstocks--like garbage, old tires, and weeds--in its processes. Turning cellulosic ethanol from a lab experiment to a multibillion dollar industry will take years, several strategic alliances, and lots of work. But progress is being made. Along with those mentioned here, keep your eye on Amyris Biotechnologies (synthetic biology), Catchlight Energy (a joint venture between Chevron and Weyerhauser), and Blue Fire Ethanol (garbage).
4. Transonic Combustion: 100 miles a gallon--it's the modern day Holy Grail for mechanical engineers. Transonic has an injection system that lets a diesel engine run on gas, which is easier to find, and hit 100 miles a gallon.
Also stay on the lookout for EcoMotors and Achates Power, which are developing opposed piston/opposed cylinder diesel engines that can get 100 miles a gallon. The engine design dates back to the '30s when Junker used this kind of motor in some airplanes.
The VentureOne
(Credit: Michael Kanellos )5. Venture Vehicles: Outside of movies and street fairs, you don't see a lot of three-wheeled cars like the VentureOne, coming in 2009. But with more people moving into cities, a market is developing for small, energy-efficient vehicles that you can park almost anywhere. Plus, it's a lot easier to hit a manageable price point ($20,000-$24,000) with an electric car when the car only has to go 120 miles between charges and might never see a freeway.
And the novelty factor doesn't stop with three wheels: the car tilts like a motorcycle when you drive it, which is sort of fun. Others in the urban transpo market include cycle makers Zero Motorcycles and Vectrix.
January is diesel engine month, it seems.
Following announcements from EcoMotors and Transonic Combustion, San Diego's Achates Power has said on its Web site that it's creating a clean, light, fuel-efficient diesel engine.
The company has also received investments from Sequoia Capital, a relative newcomer to energy investments, Rockport Capital Partners and Interwest Partners. (VentureWire has a brief interview with Achates CEO James Lemke.)
Achates has not said how its engine will work, the company has three patent applications on file with the U.S. Patent Office. Two of the patents describe what's known as an opposed piston/opposed cylinder engine. In this type of engine, two pistons sit inside a single cylinder. That makes it different than most other motors where pistons have individual cylinders. (Some car makers have made engines with horizontal pistons, similar to an opposed piston engine, but they have their own cylinders.)
"The opposed-piston engine was invented by Hugo Junkers around the end of the nineteenth century," one of the patent applications states. "In 1936, the Junkers Jumo airplane engines, the most successful diesel engines to that date, were able to achieve a power density and fuel efficiency that have not been matched by any diesel engine since...Nevertheless, Junkers' basic design contains a number of deficiencies."
As a result of the deficiencies and costs, it never went mainstream. But who knows? It could now. EcoMotors, which has received investments from Khosla Ventures, is doing the same thing.
Transonic, meanwhile, has come up with a fuel injection system that increases the pressure inside of diesel engines. Putting Transonic's system into a diesel lets the engine run on regular gas (which is cleaner). Mileage also goes up to 100 miles per gallon. The system sounds similar to a technology called HCCI being tinkered on at Toyota and GM.
Achates, by the way, was in Roman mythology a close friend of Aeneas, the star of The Iliad.
It's sort of like an organ transplant for cars.
Transonic Combustion, which has been relatively secretive until now, has created a fuel injection system that will let diesel engines run on regular gasoline. Diesel engines get better mileage than regular gas engines, explained CEO Mike Cheiky in an interview. However, diesels typically emit more particulates. Gas is also far more readily available than diesel in the U.S. Insert Transonic's components into a diesel engine and you get the best of both worlds.
(Credit:
Transonic Combustion)
Additionally, the company's fuel injection system dramatically increases the internal compression in an engine, which in turn increases efficiency and mileage, he said. A standard 2.3-liter diesel engine that gets 50 miles per gallon can get 100 miles per gallon when retrofitted with Transonic's components.
"This gives us a clean-burning engine at very high compression," he said.
The Camarillo, Calif.-based company has already retrofitted a couple of engines with its injection system and is currently building up a car around one of its engines to test how it works. The car tests, hopefully, can begin this summer.
The principles behind Transonic's technology can be traced back to Nicholas Leonard Sadi Carnot, an 18th-century French engineer, according to Cheiky. Carnot studied the output of heat engines and determined formulas for achieving maximum theoretical efficiency.
In a compression engine, efficiency is dominated by the compression ratio, or the ratio of the volume inside a cylinder when the piston is down and the volume when the piston is up.
"The higher compression ratio, the higher efficiency," said Cheiky. "That is fundamentally why diesels are more efficient than gas engines."
Ultimately, the company will approach car manufacturers about adopting its technology. First, however, Transonic wants to extensively test it. Car companies are notoriously conservative so there's no shortage of testing that can be accomplished.
Cheiky wouldn't say much more about the technology--there's a lot more that he's not disclosing--but that's more than in the past. Transonic popped up on the radar last May when Venrock Partners, Rustic Canyon Partners, and Khosla Ventures announced investments in the company. (At the time, Transonic has single cylinder prototypes.) Details were scarce. Later in 2007, Transonic said it had set a goal of making an engine that can get 100 miles per gallon. The company said the engine could run on any type of fuel but didn't get into specifics on how it worked. More details might come out in the second or third quarter, he added.
One vague clue Cheiky gave me was that some of the technology in Transonic's device can be traced in part to his work in fuel cells and batteries. Cheiky helped start battery company Zinc Matrix Power. (He has 45 patents to his name. Some are in the cellular industry.)
Transonic isn't the only company citing historical sources. EcoMotors, another Khosla company, is working on an opposed cylinder/opposed piston motor that it says could make 100 mpg cars real. The engine design was tried in the 1930s, but it never caught on because of manufacturing costs.
At the Detroit auto show, attendees are going to be talking about the magic 100 mile per gallon mark.
EcoMotors will be at the show to talk about its diesel engine which it says will let cars go 100 miles a gallon by 2011. At that level, you could get across the country and only have to stop once for gas.
Khosla Ventures has invested in the company. The firm also has an interest in Transonic Combustion, which has developed a fuel injection system for getting diesels (as well as other types of engines) to go 100 miles per gallon. The trick is to burn the fuel far more efficiently. That gassy smell that often comes out of diesel engines is un-combusted fuel. VCs often persuade their companies to work together, so you one day may see collaboration between EcoMotors and Transonic, if it isn't occurring already.
The X Prize Foundation, meanwhile, is holding a contest for ecologically friendly vehicles. The winner will be the group that can come up with a car that hits the 100 mpg mark, but in a car that is affordable--and they are serious about the affordable part, the organizers have said.
EcoMotors is run by Peter Hofbauer. The company says that members of its engineering team have been designing since 1967, or about the time Hot Wheels were invented. Company employees have worked on high-level projects at Volkswagen, Ford, and Daimler Benz.
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