Green Tech

Start-up ReVolt Technology is developing rechargeable zinc air batteries, a technology it says promises longer runtime for consumer electronics and plug-in vehicles.

The Switzerland-based company, which was spun out of a Norwegian research institute five years ago, anticipates commercializing a rechargeable coin-size batteries next year. But the technology has the potential to be a cheaper and more energy-dense alternative to lithium ion batteries in consumer electronics, grid storage, and transportation, according to CEO James McDougall.

The components of ReVolt's current rechargeable battery technology include an air electrode, an interface below it in blue, and a zinc electrode.

(Credit: ReVolt Technologies)

Zinc air batteries, which are already used in hearing aids, create an electrical current through a chemical reaction between zinc and the oxygen in air. Researchers have pursued rechargeable zinc air batteries for many years because zinc is relatively abundant and the internal chemistry, safe.

But there remain some technical challenges. After multiple charge-discharge cycle, the anode in zinc air batteries can become damaged and stop working. McDougall said ReVolt is trying to reach between 500 and 2,000 charge cycles, depending on whether the battery is used for consumer electronics or large-scale storage.

ReVolt engineers are working on a new design in which a zinc slurry is pumped through tubes that act as an air electrode, causing the chemical reaction that produces a current, McDougall explained. He expects it will take four or five years to commercialize the technology for large-scale applications, such as grid storage.

The company has raised 24 million Euros in funding, including an investment from power generator RWE of Germany, which is looking at the zinc air for storage on the electricity grid. ReVolt has applied for an ARPA-E grant aimed at breakthrough energy technologies but was not chosen in the first round of awards.

For vehicles, it makes sense to combine the relatively large energy storage of zinc air batteries with other storage technologies, McDougall said. Power-dense lithium ion batteries could be used for boosts of acceleration and ultracapacitors could capture energy from regenerative braking.

"You could increase the range of next-generation of electric vehicles with hybrid storage... You could get three times the range, eliminate the safety concerns, and cut the cost of the system," he said.

Updated at 10:55 AM pt with corrected timing for coin-size battery release.

Simon Hacket and Emilis Prelgauskas at their 313-mile mark in Coober Pedy, South Australia.

(Credit: Hackett)

A record for a Tesla Roadster driven on a single charge was set at 313 miles (501 km) in Australia on Tuesday.

Tesla Roadster owner Simon Hackett and his friend Emilis Prelgauskas drove his electric sports car from Alice Springs, Northern Territory, to Coober Pedy, South Australia, as part of an alternative-fuel vehicle rally called the Global Green Challenge.

The Tesla's electric-charge port door was sealed shut at the start of the 313-mile journey and the trip was filmed for a documentary, as well as monitored by contest officials. The Tesla's lithium ion battery, which the company assures owners will last over 200 miles between charges under normal driving circumstances, had 3 miles to spare when the team reached its destination in Coober Pedy, according to Hackett's chronicles of the race experience on his company blog. (Hackett happens to also be the founder and managing director of Internode, an Australian national broadband and Internet services company.)

Hackett said in his blog the achievement is actually a record for any production electric car, not just a Tesla Roadster, which is why his team was so careful to record it. To squeeze as much distance out of the Tesla's battery as they could, Hackett and Prelgauskas tried to drive at a consistent speed of 55 kph (roughly 34 mph) for a large portion of the almost 12-hour journey.

"The security seal was applied to the charge port door when we started the journey. As this is being done as part of the Global Green Challenge, we have a full set of official verifiers here who will attest to the results and to achieving the outcome. We were followed along the journey by our support crew and a documentary film crew--so we have it on film," said Hackett.

While Tesla Motors is not an official sponsor of the contest or Hackett, the company has shown support by spreading the news of Hackett's success. It's not hard to imagine why as Tesla poises for a major retail expansion.

The stunt may certainly speak to consumers who likely drive nowhere near 313 miles in a single day, but are still reluctant to hem themselves in with a car restricted to a limited number of miles between recharges.

DETROIT--For plug-in electric cars, it's no longer a question of if. It's a question of when and how.

After many years of buildup, plug-in vehicles aimed at mainstream buyers are set to come to the market starting next year. But even with the momentum around plug-ins, many questions remain unanswered over how this technology transition will impact the ailing auto industry and how the cars will received by consumers.

"You have the feeling that we're at the beginning of something that could be very special," said David Cole, the chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, which is funded by government and corporate sources, during the opening of the Business of Plugging In conference here on Tuesday. "There are a great many uncertainties, but we have to recognize that the key invention is here with the lithium ion battery."

The sold-out conference, which attracted about 600 people, represented the varied groups needed to deliver these vehicles: automakers and supply chain suppliers, electricity utilities, policy makers, tech entrepreneurs, and investors.

Photos: Plug-in vehicles in Motor City

Regardless of the initial volumes of electric-vehicle sales, the stakes in this shift are high. Electric vehicles promise to reduce pollution from transportation, decrease oil imports, and provide economic opportunity for a broad number of businesses.

Compared to biofuels or hydrogen fuel cell technologies, the large automakers and several start-ups have coalesced around electrification, to a greater extent. But there still remains the question of how much money consumers are willing to pay and how easily they can adjust strong habits.

"We've placed big bets in this area...(but) the question is: will consumers want these vehicles?" Bill Ford, the chairman of Ford Motor, said during a Wednesday talk. "The short answer is, it depends on how many trade-offs they need to make...and I think customers aren't prepared to make many trade-offs at all."

Hybrid premium
Plug-in cars come in various forms, but the larger battery means a higher purchase price than today's hybrids or equivalent gasoline models. If consumers are going to accept that up-front cost, automakers need to convince them that owning an electric car is cheaper in the long run. One idea that automakers are seriously considering is leasing batteries, which could make the monthly payments for a new electric car comparable to a gasoline version.

The actual prices for many cars aren't yet known, since companies have not yet decided. Nissan's all-electric Leaf sedan, set for its U.S. debut next month and availability next year, is said to be in the $25,000 to $30,000 range. Industry executives estimate that the electric Chevy Volt, due late next year, will be in the $40,000 range.

Fueling up an electric car is less expensive than running the equivalent gasoline-only vehicle, and auto industry executives say the maintenance is simpler on electric drives (no more oil changes, for example). Jonathan Lauckner, General Motors' vice president of global program management, on Tuesday said the cost per mile of the Volt could be a sixth of a gasoline car's, offering as much as $1,500 a year in savings. Those savings get better, if gas prices go up and if drivers can charge up more than once a day.

And consumers want this information. Surveys show that consumers are drawn to plug-ins for environmental reasons, but fuel savings are actually more important, according to a survey of U.S. drivers done by Ernst & Young. Safety, of course, is another high priority.

"We've always had a disconnect between the purchase price and the usage cost, where consumers way undervalue the usage costs, which will continue to be a problem here," Richard Curtain, of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan, said during a panel on Wednesday. "If it got to less than a $5,000 premium, that would allay many of the concerns of the consumer."

Industry executives say volume production, a goal of the Department of Energy's $2.4 billion grant program launched in August, will help bring down costs in the coming years, much the way hybrid components fell in price. But that up-front premium is tough to totally erase, given that electrification is competing with a deeply entrenched technology: the internal combustion engine.

Battery improvements will help the cost picture as well. Many companies are working on batteries--a new generation of lithium ion batteries and other chemistries--that can pack more energy. More "energy-dense" batteries means that drivers will get a longer driving range from a battery of a given size. Ultracapacitors, another storage method, have also been proposed as way to work with batteries in vehicles.

Technology horse race
The different routes automakers are taking to electrification affects costs. General Motors' Chevy Volt has generated plenty of buzz, but company executives say its design will make at least the first generation of the car pricey. GM hopes to wring thousands of dollars from the Volt power train, notably the battery and power electronics in the second generation of the car.

Fisker Automotive, a start-up that received a $528 million loan from the Department of Energy, is using a similar power train for its planned Karma and Nina high-end luxury cars. Called an extended-range electric vehicle or a series hybrid, these cars will run on battery charge only in the beginning--40 miles in the case of the Volt--and then use an internal combustion engine to operate a generator for the electric motor on longer trips.

A handful of automakers--Ford, Nissan, Think, and Coda Automotive among them--are making all-electric vehicles, also called battery-electric vehicles. Because of the limited range of about 80 miles to 100 miles, these cars are being sold as second cars in the United States or Europe or for city driving.

By contrast, Toyota, which has already sold millions of Priuses, believes that the way to sell large volumes of plug-in cars is to build on the existing hybrid technology, where batteries and the gasoline engine both propel the car.

"We think that blended (mode) is going to be the only way to reach the cost parity that the consumer is going to want," said Justin Ward, the advanced power train program manager at the Toyota Technical Center. "There (are) a lot of high-end cars, but how high do you go before it becomes unattainable for the general consumer?"

Infrastructure
Electric and hybrid cars aren't going to take over the market any time soon, because of cost and because they face competition from more efficient gasoline engines and diesels. Market researcher IHS Global Insight projects that pure-electric and range-extended electric vehicles will account for just more than 1 percent of the total market by 2014, with hybrids and plug-in hybrids being nearly 21 percent.

But even though plug-ins of various types will be a niche in the early years, utilities need to start preparing now. On a local level, utility executives are concerned that just a few plug-in cars, which can pull as much juice as a whole house when charging, will strain local power grids. That's particularly true, if consumers install faster 220-volt charging ports, which will cut charge time to about two or three hours, from six or eight.

The way to avoid stressing the grid is to charge cars at off-peak times, utility executives say. Pacific Gas & Electric, considered one of the most aggressive utilities in embracing new technologies, plans to offer customers a 220-volt charger that has a timer so consumers can take advantage of lower rates at off-peak times. Using a smart-grid technology, a car charger could pick its charge time and rate by communicating through a smart meter.

But what if someone can't charge at home? Like others, utility industry group the Edison Electric Institute advocates new building codes demanding that all new buildings are wired so that charging stations can be added in places such as underground parking garages in apartment buildings or retail areas, according to Anthony Earley, the chairman of the institute and CEO of utility DTE Energy.

A few charging stations will go a long way, according to people who spoke at the conference. "We act like this is a chicken-and-an-egg problem, but it's really not," said Mark Duvall, the director of electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute. "They are not enabling technologies, in my opinion, but they can help."

If plug-in electric vehicles are wildly popular with consumers and fleet owners, the industry will then face the challenge of having sufficient capital to scale up. During a discussion on battery technologies, academics said that even now, there isn't a sufficient workforce to do the engineering required for electric vehicles, with the most glaring hole in materials science.

Although higher manufacturing should significantly cut battery prices, there were regular questions about the supply of lithium at the conference. Overall, auto and battery company executives said lithium supply is not a pressing concern. Lithium could be extracted from different sources and can be recycled, said Yet Ming Chiang, the chief scientist of battery upstart A123 Systems and professor of ceramics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The U.S. auto industry has an opportunity to be reinvigorated with electric auto technologies, as its seeks to transition from the "rust belt to the green belt," Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday. China, meanwhile, is investing heavily in electric transportation, which national leaders see as a way to "leapfrog" to the latest technologies, said Yibing Wu, the managing director of Legend Holding, the company that makes Lenovo laptops and is moving into clean energy.

On an environmental level, plug-in hybrid cars have 30 percent lower carbon emissions, even if a car is fueled by coal-fired power plants, Earley said. That's particularly important on a global level, since hundreds of millions of cars are expected to be sold in the coming years in developing countries, said Ann Marie Sastry, a University of Michigan professor and a co-founder of a Khosla Ventures-backed battery company Sakti3.

"The small car is absolutely going to be essential for electrification and to all of us because it doesn't matter where the carbon comes from--whether we generate it or it comes from the emerging economies," Sastry said. "It's imperative (that) the United States play a role in this technology development because of our own interest in climate change."

Lithium ion batteries used as energy storage for utilities will be a $1 billion industry by 2018, according to a report released Wednesday by Pike Research called "Energy Storage Technology Markets."

Much of the lithium ion battery development has been geared toward perfecting the batteries as power sources for electronics, and in recent years, cars. But the alternative energy industry is going to benefit from that research, too. Once that happens, there will be a surge in the sales of industrial-scale lithium ion batteries for power utilities, according to Pike research.

"Utilities will be the downstream beneficiaries of innovation and investment in lithium ion batteries for the transportation sector," Pike Research analyst David Link said in a statement.

The energy storage industry in general is poised to grow as more private and public organizations embrace wind and solar energy worldwide. Because wind and solar systems provide energy in bursts and their cycles are not usually in sync with local peak energy usage hours, power storage when using wind or solar will become an obvious necessity for utilities, according to Pike Research.

Out of eleven methods of energy storage, Pike Research found that lithium ion batteries for utility use will be the fastest growing segment of the storage industry.

Sodium Sulfur (NAS) batteries and kinetic storage systems like pumped hydro and Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) were seen as the next likely leading utility energy storage solutions.

Editors' note: This is a guest column. See Matt Mattila's bio below.

As every major automaker reveals plans to sell electric vehicles, the future appears to be upon us, replete with silent, emissions-free, peppy, electric vehicles.

Given this impending electric-vehicle revolution, where are all of the electric pumps?

Electric-car charging points like this one, which is fed by solar panels and installed by SolarCity, are being installed in the bank parking lots of California's Rabobank.

(Credit: SolarCity)

With electric vehicles, you could probably do away with stopping at fueling stations entirely, as the majority of your fueling, or battery charging, will be done overnight while plugged in at home or during the day while parked at the office. But because it is conceivable that not every trip will be within the battery range of your vehicle, the mere presence of public charging stations for electric vehicles could help alleviate "range anxiety," or the concern that with an electric vehicle, you will be stranded when your battery dies.

Wouldn't it be nice to know that a stop for a Big Mac to fill your belly could also serve as a stop to extend your car's driving range? While some electric cars are already on the road, and people are installing charging stations at home, can the government roll out enough public charging stations in time to support all of these vehicles?

Sure, and if we were the green fairy, we'd sprinkle magical carbon-free dust on President Obama and have him pour billions of dollars into making electric vehicles affordable.

Wait--that's already happening--and it may be enough to get started. But if we want electric vehicles to be successful on a large scale, we can't rely on the government to do it all. We need big-box retailers, office buildings, and fast-food franchises to invest.

And, while it would be great if these companies invested just because they feel strongly about energy security, global warming, or innovative transportation, it also makes good business sense.

With an initial investment of definable costs, owners have a variety of options for earning a significant return:

• Collect fees for battery charging
• Attract more customers
• Recharge your own vehicles
• Enhance your brand

The Rocky Mountain Institute, my employer, has a new guide for investing in charging infrastructure , detailing the full costs of charging stations--not just what the charging station manufacturers will quote, but the installation and running costs, as well. The guide helps potential investors ask the right questions, understand the differences across the technology, and connect to those active in this space.

Each business has a unique scenario, and for those who wish to see their own numbers, RMI has also developed an interactive tool to help business owners accurately assess their business case. This report and tool will help users understand if and how they can make money from a charging station.

Coulomb Technologies is developing networked equipment for charging electric vehicles at the curb. It has inked deals with service stations throughout California to provide the equipment.

(Credit: Kim Smith/General Motors)

Does investing in charging infrastructure make sense for your business?

Let's take the example of a McDonald's. The total cost of a station may be about $5,000, and installation may cost about the same. Ten grand is nothing to sneeze at, but the actual cost to the investor is likely to be lower. Uncle Sam will provide a 50 percent tax credit, and many states have an additional incentive on top of that. As a typical McDonald's grosses $2.2 million annually, a one-time investment of $5,000 is less than half of 1 percent of annual revenue.

Let's consider what the station would provide in return. Even though most of the companies RMI interviewed for this guide did not list branding opportunities as the top driver for interest in charging stations, this hypothetical McDonald's owner already would generate great publicity, which has real value.

Paying for an advertisement in a nationally syndicated publication is expensive, and not nearly as powerful as being "caught doing good."

Of RMI's corporate interviewees, a commitment to retaining employees and the potential to attract new customers came up most often as incentives for installing charging stations. In the McDonald's example, think of how quickly these stations would pay for themselves if a few new customers a day decided to go to this McDonald's instead of another fast-food chain because they agree with its practices.

Most of these charging stations will also have intelligence built in that enables fee collection from users to refill their batteries. Depending on the number of electric-vehicle users, this is another potential source of revenue. These individual streams can start to add up to real returns.

Installing a charging station may not make sense for some businesses. However, it may be possible that some companies make a little green by being a little greener.

Judged by media buzz and venture capital dollars, lithium ion batteries are the name of the game in the emerging field of storage for electric vehicles and the power grid. But there is a cadre of companies pursuing ultracapacitors that can work hand in hand with batteries.

South Korea-based Neescap on Tuesday said that it has raised $9 million in bridge financing to expand production of its ultracapacitors for the transportation, power industry, and consumer electronics markets.

Ultracapacitors: an alternative route to energy storage than batteries.

(Credit: Ioxus)

In the U.S., early-stage companies designing the materials and electrolytes for ultracapacitors include Graphene Energy, EnerG2, and Ioxus. Much hyped EEStor, backed by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has signed a supply deal with electric vehicle company Zenn, although its products are still not commercially available.

Compared to batteries, ultracapacitors can't store a lot of energy, so they wouldn't typically be used alone to run plug-in electric vehicles. On the other hand, ultracapacitors are "power dense," which means that they can discharge the energy they do have quickly. Conversely, they can be recharged quickly--in seconds or minutes, and with almost no degradation in performance over time, say backers.

Ultracapacitors are already used in consumer electronics such as digital cameras to help provide a burst of power for flashes, which extends overall run time, said Chad Hall, the chief operating officer of Oneonta, N.Y.-based Ioxus, on Tuesday. The technical challenge for ultracapacitor companies in the coming years is to build storage devices that can operate in high-voltage applications, he said.

Ioxus, which means "power" in Greek, was spun off from its parent company three years ago to pursue energy storage in electric transportation, renewable energy storage, and backup power. Rather than replace batteries, the company expects that its ultracapacitors, which it began manufacturing earlier this year, will complement them. "It all comes down to hybridization. We've got hybrid cars, so you need to hybridize energy storage," he said.

One of the first markets the company is pursuing is fork lifts. An ultracapacitor could be used for the jolts of power needed to lift heavy things, which would give a longer life to fork lifts' lead acid batteries, said Hall. Other promising uses include maintaining the stability of grid frequency, he said.

"Ultracapacitors enable battery technology, or fuel cells, or solar and wind. They become the bridge you need for most of those applications to go forward. It's gotten to the point technology-wise so that you can do that," he said.

Another advantage is that Ioxus ultracapacitors don't use hazardous materials. But getting the price low enough for these applications remains a barrier, he said.

Breakthroughs ahead?
Joel Schindall, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, predicts that ultracapacitors will make a jump in energy storage capacity in the years ahead.

Right now, ultracapacitors discharge 10 times faster than batteries but only store about 5 percent of the energy as comparably sized batteries, Schindall said last Wednesday at the EmTech emerging technology conference.

"It's still useful in applications when you charge and discharge frequently, such as regenerative braking, but it's not a replacement for batteries at a large scale," he said.

For the past five years, Schindall has been leading research on ways to replace activated carbon--the porous material in ultracapacitors that stores electric charge--with a "shag carpet" of carbon nanotubes on a conducting substrate. The company FastCap Systems was formed earlier this year to commercialize the technology.

Schindall projects that ultracapacitors eventually will be able to store as much as 25 percent of the energy of batteries, a jump he said would be "disruptive." Right now, nanostructures developed by MIT researchers can hold twice as much energy as activated carbon. In the coming months, his team expects to show it can hold five times the energy as activated carbon, he said.

The Watertown, Mass.-based company, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, saw its share prices rise over 50 percent from its offering price to close at over $20.

A123 Systems' battery platform is being used for power tools, transportation, and power grid energy storage.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

Through the initial public offering, the company is expected to raise over $400 million, Reuters reported. It had initially hoped to net $250 million but adjusted its offering price to raise more.

A123 Systems' IPO has been closely watched in the green tech community because it is one of only a few energy-related companies started this decade to go public. It currently supplies batteries for power tools and has built large, megawatt-scale batteries for utilities.

It's also eyeing the automotive sector, a potentially much larger market. A123 Systems received a $249.1 million grant from the Department of Energy to build a lithium ion battery packs factory in Michigan as part of a $2.4 billion investment in the plug-in electric car supply chain.

A123 Systems' IPO was the second most successful of the year, Reuters reported. A123 initially filed to go public in August of 2008.

Although it was a strong IPO, some energy storage experts say that lithium ion batteries, which will be used in a number of upcoming plug-in electric vehicles, need to come down in costs significantly for electric cars to be more mainstream.

The Fisker Karma at the Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in August.

(Credit: Fisker Automotive)

American start-up Fisker Automotive may be about to unveil the first truly affordable plug-in hybrid for the U.S. market.

Ray Lane, managing partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, told an audience at the Always On Going Green conference in Sausalito, Calif., on Tuesday that there could be a big announcement within the next week about a $39,000 plug-in hybrid. Though he would not say who, he mentioned that it was a car for the U.S. market and that it was not strictly electric, according to a report from Cleantech Group.

While Kleiner Perkins has investments in several transportation start-ups such as Think Global and EEStor, the likely company from its repertoire to make such an announcement would be Fisker Automotive.

Fisker has already unveiled the Karma, a four-door luxury plug-in car that can go from 0-62 mph in 6 seconds, and has a maximum speed of 125 mph. But Fisker has set the tentative price for the car at $87,900, making it not much cheaper than Tesla's Roadster sports car.

Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker also told CNET in an exclusive May 2008 interview that advances in battery and software technology would allow his company to offer a $40,000 plug-in car in about four or five years.

Perhaps that day has come sooner than the founder was willing to let on at the time.

But it may not be as soon as others have speculated. Fisker's European press office sent out an e-mail on Monday informing journalists the company has canceled a press conference originally scheduled for this week at the 2009 Frankfurt auto show.

Electric vehicles are the clear favored technology for concept cars at the Frankfurt Motor Show this week. But Toyota, the leader in hybrid cars, thinks that the high cost of the lithium ion batteries will keep electric cars from penetrating the mass market for another decade.

Over the past three years, Toyota secretly tested lithium ion batteries as a potential replacement for the nickel metal hydride batteries now used in the Prius, according to a Bloomberg report

In its tests, Toyota concluded that lithium ion batteries were safe and reliable, but the higher cost doesn't justify a complete shift over for Toyota's hybrids, executives said. As a result, the company will remain with nickel-based batteries for most of its hybrid cars, according to the report.

Toyota will start testing plug-in Priuses that use lithium-ion batteries but is sticking with current nickel-based batteries for most of its hybrids.

(Credit: Toyota)

The lighter weight that lithium ion batteries offer over other battery types has led automakers to that technology for all-electric sedans such as the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt extended-range electric vehicle.

Toyota, too, this week unveiled a plug-in Toyota Prius based on the 2010 model that uses a lithium ion battery. It expects to start leasing them to fleet operators early next year. But when it comes to the "mass market," the company still considers costs and range of battery-electric vehicles a barrier until 2020.

"Electric vehicles of today are less costly than in 1990s, but if you compare them with the other vehicles out there they are still too expensive," Executive Vice President Takeshi Uchiyamada said at a news conference at the Frankfurt show. "Unless there is a very big breakthrough in battery costs I don't think electric vehicles can take a large market share."

Among the many electric-vehicle concepts expected this week are four sedans from Renault, including the Fluence ZE which can work with Better Place's automated battery-switching stations.