Planetary Gear

Artist's rendering of the Universal Freight System loading a standard shipping container on to a train.

(Credit: Texas Transportation Institute)

A group of Texas researchers would like to resurrect the train as chief freight mover in the U.S.

The Universal Freight Shuttle is the brainchild of Stephen Roop, assistant director Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), a branch of Texas A&M University's system chain.

The automated train, which is designed to accommodate standard shipping containers and trailers, would move forward along a track by linear induction motors powered with electricity.

Roop and others at TTI have been working on the concept and design for eight years, keeping in mind not just the technology, but how such an infrastructure would impact federal and state transportation departments, freight companies, shippers, and border security.

In addition to providing a cleaner option for shipping freight, the UFS includes a conveyor-like system to screen standard shipping containers at ports and borders while they're in motion, and automatically divert suspect containers to an area for further human inspection.

"It's moving into a commercial phase with prototyping and proposals for application in both Texas and California. This system is designed to offer an alternative to over-the-road trucking for heavily congested corridors. It is of course an electric, zero-emission solution," Roop said in an e-mail.

"If we were to sum this up in a bumper sticker, it would say something like: 'America, the U.S. military gave you the Hummer. Now we're taking it back."

Dennis McGinn, a retired vice admiral in the Navy and former commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, spoke those words Monday during a teleconference.

McGinn is on the military advisory board of the not-for-profit Center for Naval Analyses. The group issued a report (PDF) on Monday, stating the U.S. military must, as a matter of national security, work to reduce its dependence not just on foreign oil, but on natural gas, coal, and an increasingly unstable U.S. electrical grid.

"We believe in the study that national security, energy security, and climate change are interdependent. We've come up with a list of findings and priorities, a challenge to the DOD, an opportunity to lead," John Napman, a retired admiral, said during the teleconference.

McGinn added: "We're heavily dependent on a global petroleum market that's volatile, but it's not just restricted to oil. Natural gas and coal also ran huge spikes in the last year."

Center for Naval Analyses logo

The transfer of wealth (via fuel purchases) to nations associated with terrorism has essentially put the U.S. in the position of financing both sides of conflicts and has been a wake-up call to the military, according to McGinn.

To some degree, the Department of Defense has already made strides toward increased use of electrical vehicles for light-use and of some hybrid and alternative fuel vehicles for other uses, according to Gordon Sullivan, a retired general and former U.S. Army chief of staff.

"Throughout DOD installations, you'll find a lot of the pick-up trucks. (There's a lot of) natural gas being used. And I think in the administrative fleets, you'll see a lot of that. And some of these things that look like John Deere Gators or whatever. They're like golf carts fueled by natural gas," said Sullivan.

But reducing foreign oil dependence is not enough, according to the report.

Military installations "are almost completely dependent on commercial electrical power delivered through the national electrical grid," according to the report signed by 12 former U.S. generals and admirals, and sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the Energy Foundation, and the Grayce B. Kerr Foundation.

Considering the military's increased reliance on computers to analyze data, provide tactical support to troops, and remotely fly UAVs like the Predator, the "outdated, fragile, and overtaxed national electrical grid is a dangerously weak link in the national security infrastructure," said the report.

The report also recommended a slowdown of the development of coal-to-liquid fuels for the U.S. Air Force in favor of fossil- and alternative-based blends. It pointed to DARPA's $100 million in research and development toward JP-8 blends from nonfood crops such as algae and other plant-based biomass as an area in which the DOD has already expressed interest.

By addressing its own needs with regard to developing electrical smart grids, fuel efficient vehicles, and even jet fuel, the Department of Defense can influence the general market as it did with the invention of the Humvee, according to both Sullivan and McGinn.

Only this time, that crossover vehicle from military to civilian drivers will likely be a lot more fuel efficient.

Ecotality is in talks with leading automakers--not only Nissan--concerning its electric charging stations for highway-legal electric cars, according to CEO Jonathan Read.

"We have been contacted by every major automaker about electric vehicle systems relating to charging and infrastructure. We expect to convert these discussions into firm contracts," Read told investors Wednesday at a shareholders' conference that was open to the press.

The Arizona-based company recently announced a partnership with Nissan and the local governments in the Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., areas to build charging stations for electric cars that would cover the regions and the 116-mile stretch between them to make an electric vehicle corridor.

Ecotality's CEO Jonathan Read

(Credit: Ecotality)

Read told CNET News at the time that while Nissan's electric vehicles (or EVs) will be the first ones commercially available in the area, Ecotality's charging stations will be built to Society of Automotive Engineers standards so that they'll be compatible with any electric cars built to that standard.

In addition to the going after Big Auto, Read told investors the company has applied for Department of Energy loan packages to expand its manufacturing and for other loans and grants from the federal government. It has also bid on contracts in both the public and private sectors.

"We're building a strong position to benefit from the new stimulus program. Many companies are planning for the launch of their EVs, and we've responded to proposals. We have applied or are in the process of applying for about $1.5 billion in contracts through private and government programs. Obviously, receipt of any of these contracts would drastically change the dynamic of our company," said Read.

Ecotality and subsidiary eTec have been in the battery-charging business for years for light-use utility trucks like ones used at airports or for commercial fleets. And charging stations for the general consumer are not an entirely new foray for the company either. While Delphi was the manufacturer, eTec installed many of the charging stations for General Motors' EV1s of "who killed the electric car?" fame.

An artist's rendering of what Ecotality fast-charging commercial stations may look like.

(Credit: Ecotality)

Nissan has promised to supply its highway-legal electric vehicles to the Phoenix area, as well as the previously announced Tucson area, for public and private fleets by the end of 2010, the Renault-Nissan Alliance plans to announce Thursday.

"This is a deployment well in excess of a couple hundred," said Mark Perry, director of product planning for Nissan North America.

In anticipation of Nissan's municipal and eventual commercial electric vehicle (EV) launch, the energy technology company Ecotality plans to also announce on Thursday an expansion of its chain of electric charging stations beyond the Tucson Metro area stations it announced in March.

The total plan, which includes partnerships with the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) and Pima Association of Governments (PAG), is that Ecotality will create an electric plug-in infrastructure corridor encompassing the greater metropolitan areas of both Phoenix (Maricopa County) and Tucson (Pima County), as well as the 116-mile stretch between them along the Interstate 10 highway.

Using a 480-volt rapid-charge option, Nissan's EV-02 prototype--which has the battery pack and motor that will be used in the final commercial version--can charge up to 80 percent capacity in about 26 minutes, according to Perry.

Ecotality's CEO Jonathan Read said charging up at its SAE Level 3 (440V) fast-charging stations may actually even be a little quicker in practice.

Ecotality's fast-charging commercial stations may look similar to those Ecotality stations used for typical private off-road EV fleets.

(Credit: Ecotality)

"Nissan's conservative. We believe that generally the charge time can be 15-20 minutes, given most people are not going to run to zero. I almost dare you to try to get a Starbucks in less than 15 minutes. It's really conducive to a stop for a beverage, a quick shop, a stop at the pharmacy, so we're going to position these where people normally stop for a few minutes anyway," said Read.

In addition to commercial charging stations, there are also plans to work with local utilities to install 220-volt outlets in the garages of would-be EV owners. At those outlets, Nissan's EV would take an average 4 hours to recharge from zero to full capacity, according to Perry.

But you won't have to be a Nissan customer per se to get a charge from an Ecotality-built station in Arizona.

"Our charging stations are going to be agnostic; they'll work on any battery in any vehicle that adheres to the SAE standards. So while Nissan will be the first here, they'll attach to any vehicle that comes along," said Read.

Phoenix and Tucson residents may actually have cooperative community leaders to thank for the EV opportunity, if Nissan is to be believed.

Never underestimate the value of municipalities that get along with each other, their utilities, and the private sector when embarking on projects that require permitting, said Perry.

"Phoenix had all the things we were looking for in a launch market: High consumer interest, but really something you shouldn't underestimate (is) a regional planning authority that has a history of working well together and moving things forward in a coordinated fashion to make Phoenix plug-in ready. Plus, we have support from the utility companies. Plus interest from the private sector, support from Ecotality, and major employers interested in participating. When those factors are there, that's what you want," said Perry.

Perry said he's seen interest from companies who'd like to provide employees with free charging stations in their parking facilities as part of a sustainability plan.

Ecotality, which is based in Scottsdale, Ariz., had another logical reason.

"We actually have a long and storied history in electric here. We worked on charging stations for the old EV1s before they were crunched by General Motors," said Read, referring to Ecotality's subsidiary eTec.

While the charging equipment was made by Delphi, eTec installed many of the residential charging stations for General Motors' EV1 customers in the Southwest, particularly Arizona, as well as some public charging stations, according to Ecotality.

Battery material made by Gerbrand Ceder and Byoungwoo Kang could lead to quicker charging portable devices.

(Credit: Donna Coveney/MIT)

Engineers at MIT have made a breakthrough that could translate into smaller, lighter, and faster-charging lithium ion batteries, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Wednesday.

Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT; aided by Byoungwoo Kang, a graduate student in materials science and engineering, have made a small battery that can be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds.

A detailed explanation on how they did this has been published in the March 12 issue of Nature, but here is a brief recap of what they essentially accomplished.

While lithium ion batteries have high energy densities, they are also known for their inability to gain and discharge energy quickly. That is why it commonly takes hours to recharge the battery on a plug-in electric vehicle.

Electric vehicle proponents have been struggling with this battery issue, some coming up with clever ways around it. Better Place, for example, came up with the idea of drivers saving time by swapping-out discharged car batteries for fully charged ones at electric vehicle stations.

Ceder and Kang experimented with the way lithium ions move in and around lithium iron phosphate, a material commonly used in lithium ion batteries. They worked with it to develop a new surface structure that gets ions to move more quickly from one place to another. They compare their project to building a beltway that goes around a city to avoid traffic, but has tunnels that let you drop in to exactly where you need to be.

"The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may open up new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes," according to Ceder and Kang's paper in Nature.

In addition to being significantly faster, batteries made with their material degraded much less than usual lithium ion batteries after repeated discharges and recharges during testing. Because of that, they believe their batteries could be made with less material making them lighter and smaller.

Because their invention is not a completely new material, but rather a change to the way it's structured, the researchers said in a statement that their material could be implemented into commercial batteries within 2 to 3 years.

The Greenster sports old-school style on the outside, but green-school tech on the inside.

(Credit: RUF Automobile)

RUF Automobile and Siemens Corporate Technology, the research arm of Siemens, debuted their all electric car concept at the Geneva Motor Show this week.

The Greenster, like its name suggests, is designed to look like a roadster vehicle of yesteryear complete with plaid seats. But the tech speaks to the 2000's interest in green technology.

Siemens is providing technology for the car's power train which includes the motor/generator, the power electronics, and the interface with the car's battery.

The Greenster concept car displayed at the Geneva Motor Show had only one motor. But the Pfaffenhausen, Germany-based company said in a statement that the street version, which the company plans to start selling in 2010, will actually have a dual-motor system.

The electric vehicle will be able to recharge in less than an hour when plugged into a 400V outlet. The company made no mention of how long the car might take to recharge if the street version is made to plug into household outlets, which fall between 100 and 240 volts, depending on the country.

Greenster's interior includes the nice throwback touch of black, white, and tan plaid seats.

(Credit: RUF Automobile)

RUF's Greenster in partnership with Siemens.

(Credit: RUF Automobile)

Mitsubishi and Peugeot Citroën made an announcement of a similar nature late Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show.

The two companies have signed an agreement to collaborate on an electric car based on Mitzubishi's i Miev that should become available in late 2010 or early 2011. The car will be manufactured by Mitsubishi, but sold under the Peugeot brand name, according to the agreement.

The i Miev, which will take about 7 hours to recharge at 200V outlets and 14 hours at 100V outlets, is being launched this summer in Japan, with testing and pilot projects underway in the U.S., Europe, and New Zealand, according to Mitsubishi.

The Maui Electric Company and General Electric are joining up to test a unique smart-grid technology on the Hawaiian island's electrical grid.

The Maui, Hawaii, project includes the usual smart-grid tech: developing a substation with battery storage capability to remove and store excess electricity generated from connected wind and solar energy sources. The electricity supply is then released from the substation to the main power grid when it's needed during peak usage times.

Many companies are interested in smart-grid energy technology. Google wants users to confront their home energy use appliance by appliance. IBM is jockeying to be a key supplier for smart-grid tech to utilities. Venture capitalists are investing in smart-grid start-ups.

What's interesting about the Maui Smart Grid project is that it's enlisting regular people to allow their appliances to participate in an electrical grid experiment.

General Electric released news of its Maui Smart Grid project via its employee-authored research blog, From Edison's Desk, on Wednesday.

"For example, consumers may 'opt in' to utility programs that automatically adjust high energy consuming devices, such as water heaters, during periods of peak demand and higher electricity prices," Devon Manz, an energy systems engineer and the project manager for General Electric's Maui Smart Grid, wrote in his blog.

The goal of the project is to see if regulating consumer energy demand can be used to deal with the fluctuations in energy production from renewable resources, according to Manz.

The work will help "GE identify the most relevant technologies for enabling significant penetrations of wind and solar power around the world," he wrote.

Clearly, it's an area the company is truly interested in.

GE's Consumer and Industrial division has already been experimenting with "smart appliances" used by Kentucky residents. The appliances wait for a signal from the power grid that it's a good off-peak time to run non-essential systems.

Kyle Good (left) and Bryan Le (right) receive their $25,000 check from: (top left to right) S. M. Shahed, corporate fellow of Honeywell Turbo Technologies; Neil Blakesley, vice president of strategy and marketing at BT Americas; Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation; Lee Stein, founder of Prize Capital; and Mark Bernstein, managing director of USC's Energy Institute.

(Credit: X Prize Foundation)

The X Prize Foundation announced the winner of its "What's Your Crazy Green Idea?" competition on Thursday.

The first-place winners, which will receive $25,000, were University of California at Irvine students Kyle Good and Bryan Le on the Capacitor Challenge team, for their idea that someone should develop a more efficient energy storage device to replace batteries, for everything from iPods to cars.

Unlike other X Prize competitions, the winners of "What's Your Crazy Green Idea?" were not picked by a panel of educationally pedigreed judges to build an invention for which they submitted plans.

Instead, the creative-idea winners of the "X Prize in Energy and Environment" were chosen through a contest held on Google's YouTube. Competing among 130 submissions, Good and Le's team video garnered about 4,200 votes.

"Capacitors recharge in seconds, survive thousands of recharge cycles, and provide high-efficiency electricity by using environmentally benign materials. But here's the challenge: capacitors are far more expensive (and) provide far less energy than common batteries," Le said in his team's contest pitch video on YouTube (below). "We invite the next generation of inventors and engineers to construct an energy storage device far more advanced, far more environmentally friendly, far more affordable than we have yet to see in our lifetime."

While they are absolutely right about the need for such a device, the idea is quite a hard technological challenge.

For the engineering geniuses game for taking a crack at this, here are the guidelines, as proposed by the Capacitor Challenge team:

• Use only self-contained capacitors.
• Exceed the energy density of average lead acid batteries.
• Fully recharge in less than a minute and up to 500,000 cycles.
• Be completely recyclable and incorporate nontoxic materials.
• Cost less than twice the price of average lead acid batteries.

The Better Place Rogue is an all-electric version of the Nissan Rogue crossover SUV.

(Credit: Better Place)

Hawaii has decided to partner with Better Place to bring car battery exchange stations for electric vehicles to the islands, Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle announced Tuesday.

Better Place stations, similar in concept to gas stations, offer drivers with electric vehicles an automated system that swaps out exhausted lithium ion car batteries for fully-charged ones. The swapping system is intended to be convenient for both drivers and local electric companies, since Better Place can recharge the exhausted batteries with excess electricity generated from renewable sources during off-peak electricity hours.

Lingle said the project is an example of Hawaii's efforts to gain independence from foreign oil, and to stimulate its economy through investment in energy technology.

Not surprising due to its geography, Hawaii spends about $7 billion a year on oil imports with its drivers facing some of the toughest prices at the pump in the U.S. The plan to implement Better Place stations coincides with the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI) intended to change that. Signed in January, it sets Hawaii's renewable energy bar at 70 percent clean energy by 2030, as well as encouraging programs that foster local economic growth.

Shai Agassi, founder and CEO of Better Place, was also on hand at the plan unveiling in Hawaii on December 2. According to Agassi, Hawaii is the second state in the U.S., and the fifth place in the world, to adopt the Better Place electric-car infrastructure. Better Place stations have already been implemented in Denmark and Israel, with Australia and California recently announcing intentions to add them.

"Hawaii, with its ready access to renewable energy resources like solar, wind, wave, and geothermal, is the ideal location to serve as a blueprint for the rest of the U.S. in terms of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, growing our renewable energy portfolio and creating an infrastructure that will stabilize our economy," Agassi said in a statement to the press.

Hawaii Electric is also onboard. The state's electric utility signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Better Place which plans to power its public charging and battery-swapping stations with renewable energy resources.

According to the plan, Better Place will pull permits for its stations in 2009, offer electric cars within 18 months, and make both available for the mass-market in Hawaii by 2012.

Better Place has said it's in talks with major automakers and would like to offer swappable batteries for any electric vehicle regardless of which company makes the car. But right now the company's stations only service two electric vehicles: the Renault Megane and the Better Place Rogue, an electric vehicle based on the Nissan Rogue crossover SUV.

Hawaii's plan with Better Place is to install about 20 electric battery-swapping stations across its islands.

(Credit: Better Place)