Hydrogen Fuel Cells Are Not The Answer

Recently Top Gear had a segment on the "world changing" Honda FCX Clarity, a commercially available (in California and Japan) hydrogen fuel cell car. The hyperbole spewed forth during the segment was over the top even for Top Gear. Statements about how this car is the single most important thing to happen to automobiles in the past 100 years, or that it makes all battery electric vehicles obsolete were thrown around with gay abandon. Jeremy Clarkson, famous for "dissing" plug-in electric/hybrid vehicles among other things, was in full agreement with James May's assessments that this car is basically Jesus with wheels.

It annoyed me no end and actually prevented me from falling asleep for an hour or so as their biased comments kept bouncing around in my head. Sure, hydrogen fuel cell cars are a step in the right direction (i.e. away from oil dependence) but to liken it to the invention of the internal combustion engine was just too much for me.

Refuelling

What most boggled my mind was May's joy in finding that he had to stop every 250 miles (~400 km) in the Clarity to fill up on liquid hydrogen at the few and far between filling stations at a cost similar to what we pay for petrol. Surely if we're going to have a revolution in motoring it won't involve making things worse for us by opening the door for a whole new generation of cartels and corporations to rule our driving.

Currently I travel around 450-500 km in my Nissan Pulsar per tank and I despise having to divert from my route just to fill up, and that's with petrol stations all over the place. My vote goes to whichever technology means I don't have to keep stopping at some third party establishment where the unit price fluctuates hourly. Imagine if the local store had a sign out the front showing how much a litre of milk was going to cost you if you bought it right now.

The Power

Ahh, but the hydrogen fuel cells emit only water as a byproduct but BEVs use the electricity from the AC outlet and where does that come from? This is one of Clarkson's oft repeated BEV-bashing comments and is based on the fact that most household power comes from polluting sources like coal, natural gas, nuclear power etc which is totally true. Unfortunately for the Clarity electricity is required to produce the hydrogen that it needs, as are the raw materials the hydrogen is ripped from. Once the hydrogen is prepared it still needs to be shipped and trucked to fueling stations which uses up even more energy.

Wikipedia says that "As of 2006, 49.0% of the electricity produced in the United States comes from coal, 19.4% comes from nuclear, 20.0% comes from natural gas, 7.0% from hydroelectricity, 1.6% from petroleum and the remaining 3.1% mostly coming from geothermal, solar and biomass.^[32] When hydrogen is produced through electrolysis, the energy comes from these sources. Though the fuel cell itself will only emit heat and water as waste, pollution is often caused when generating the electricity required to produce the hydrogen that the fuel cell uses as its power source (for example, when coal, oil, or natural gas-generated electricity is used)."

Surely the best answer would be to cut out the middle men and use the electricity directly and via the billions of AC power outlets around the world. Or even better, get yourself a nice solar panel set up in your house to charge your car for free.

Batteries

The Clarity and other fuel cell vehicles don't require batteries for storing power. Batteries are the biggest cause for concern in BEVs in that they take a while to recharge, they don't hold the charge long enough, they're heavy and they're made from finite natural resources such as zinc, nickel and other metals. There are a few points here that I'd like to address.

Charging Time

During Top Gear's test of the Tesla Roadster in the same episode, the statement was made that it would take 16 hours to charge the car's battery pack completely. As part of Tesla's response to the review it was said "that the 16-hour recharge time quoted by Top Gear is an absolute worst-case scenario - sort of like filling your gas tank using a thousand Dixie Cups full of petrol." The Tesla website says it can take as little as 3.5 hours with the High Power Connector which you'd install in your garage at home. Countries with higher voltage AC, like Australia's 240 volt, 50Hz power, will be able to charge their cars faster.

The general public will have to change their thinking around charging their cars. Currently the thinking is that it is same as filling up with petrol but in actual fact it is a lot more like how you handle the power in your mobile phone. I keep my phone plugged in at work and I have a charger at home. It never goes flat.

Of course, you aren't required to charge the car's battery totally each and every time you plug it in. If you need a quick charge you can give the car enough juice to get you where you want to go. Cars like the Chevy Volt take the idea a little further by having a secondary power source (a small internal combustion engine) to generate the electricity if you get into trouble.

Battery Technology

Battery technology has taken great leaps in the past few decades. Remember the handbag sized battery packs that were required to power mobile phones back in the 80s? How much smaller are the batteries you now find in phones and laptops? Even if we can reduce the size of the batteries by half over the next decade that's a huge leap. Regardless of Top Gear's admittedly ficticious review of the Tesla Roadster, it comes with a custom lithium ion battery pack that gives you up to 220 miles (300 km) per charge which is far more than I'd ever drive in a single day.

Servicing

After the Clarity review, as May and Clarkson dried their tears of joy, an off-hand comment was made that you might never have to take your Clarity in for servicing as it only has "one moving part". Sure, the propulsion system only has one moving part (the electric motor) but what about the wheels, axles, tires, brakes, suspension, steering and accessories?

This is the case for all cars using electric propulsion. Doing away with the noisy and messy internal combustion engine doesn't mean you don't need your car serviced, it just means the service will be easier, cleaner and maybe less frequent.

The Final Straw

May's final statement sums up everything that was wrong with his Honda Clarity review nicely. To paraphrase, he said the Clarity was the most important car in living memory because it was just like the cars we drive today. Fuel-cell vehicles are more polluting, rely on an overblown production, transportation and delivery infrastructure, are more complex than BEVs and with advancements in photovoltaic panels (solar panels), battery technology and newer methods of generating clean electricity maybe we should be trying keep things simple instead of just doing what we've always done.

Michelin Man Goes Green

Michelin, the French company famous for its rubber donuts and an over inflated mummy, has teamed up with a Chinese tech company to produce this amazing bit of gadgety gizmo that you could very well be riding on in a year or two.

Dubbed "Active Wheel" this seemingly unassuming piece of tech-in-a-wheel actually contains motors for propulsion and suspension which means you can whack a few of these babies onto almost any vehicle frame and you've got yourself an EV.

According to AutoblogGreen, Michelin and CITIC Guoan Mengguli Corp. in China have a working prototype built atop a Lifan 520 sedan that can reach 87 mph (140 kph) and go for up to 81 miles (130 km) before needing a recharge of its lithium ion batteries.

The partners have announced that the wheels will be available to OEMs by the end of the year but didn't say which year.

Chrysler With Tesla-Like EV

A few months ago Chrysler were behind their competition in the EV stakes then they introduced us to the Dodge EV prototype which is now a reality and doing the show circuit.

Chrysler kind of cheated in the Tesla way by basically taking a Lotus Europa and replacing the engine with an electric powerplant. That said this little beasty with its 268 hp electric motor has a 0-100 time under 5 seconds and it will run for up to 200 miles (320 km) on a single charge.

Not quite the rocket that Tesla have but I reckon this thing will be half the price of the Tesla Roadster and being badged as a Doge will probably be within reach (geographically speaking) of many more people. To give the Chevy Volt a run for its money the word on the street says is it could be available as early as 2010. Of course it's still only a 2-seater so won't be in direct competition with the Volt. Looks like fun though!

Fuel Prices Have Dropped. Yay, Let's Buy SUVs!

Here we go again, the price of petrol ("gas" if you don't know the difference between liquids and solids) has dropped back to the price it was a few years ago and people have already forgotten how much money they were forking out only a few short weeks ago to fill their tanks.

Autoblog Green tells us the sad tale of a manufacturer kicking their SUV/Truck manufacturing plants back up a notch in anticipation of increased demand after almost shutting them down over the past year and people who went through a car downsizing are now feeling buyer's remorse.

All price and environmental issues aside, oil is a fossil fuel and therefore a finite resource. Why go burning through something we'll still need in the foreseeable future for the production of plastics and the like when there are alternatives already available. All the people who were bitching and moaning about the price of petrol, imagine if you drove up to the bowser and there was no petrol at all.

Now I'm not a big fan of hybrids as they don't really solve the problem, they just make people who would have driven a medium sized car use the fuel of a small car or a more efficient car. Ultimately you'll still need to stop and fill up with fuel which is a chore and plug in electric cars are still a few years away from being in my garage.

So while I wait for my Holden Volt or Mitsubishi iMiEV I've been trying to drive more efficiently using some basic hypermiling techniques (apparently it's the word of the year for 2008) and tracking my success with Fuel Frog. My last fill up shows I averaged 7.7 litres per 100km, not too shabby, and that's basically from accelerating and braking slowly and coasting when possible.

While I was stoked to pay only $1.19 AUD per litre for my tank of dead dinosaurs I still hate having to stop for petrol. At the weekend we drove to Marysville which has a lot of trees and not much else for half the trip and I was thinking how screwed we'd be if we ran out of fuel out there.

And if that's not enough, now we have ninja kittens driving around on our roads!

While I'm on the topic, take a look at these car ads from the 1970s during the "energy crisis", look familiar?

Australia to Become A Better Place

Great news everyone! Australia usually gets shafted when it comes to big new technologies that require brand new infrastructure due to the amount of whitespace between cities but today we got some great news.

Better Place, "a California-based, venture-backed company that aims to reduce global dependency on petroleum" has just announced that their next target for building a nation-wide electric car charging network is the good old Land Down Under. They say, "[w]e will build an electric vehicle network capable of supporting the switch of Australia’s 15 million gas cars to zero emission vehicles.", just in time for me with my Holden Volt!

I like Better Place's stance on why they chose Australia as their next area, "If Australia can do it, so can others.". I assume they're talking about the previously mentioned wide expanses rather than us being so stupid that anything we can do, others can do (better).

About Better Place, Wikipedia has this to say, "In January 2008, Better Place announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Renault-Nissan to build the world's first Electric Recharge Grid Operator (ERGO) model for clean transportation in Israel. Under the agreement, Better Place will build the electric recharge grid, and Renault-Nissan will provide the electric vehicles. In 2009, Better Place expects to deploy hundreds of charging stations as the company moves toward wide-scale deployment in 2011.". I guess they'll be doing something similar here.

Yay Australia!

Citroën Stops Teasing and Finally Reveals GTbyCITROËN

Citroën, one of France's largest manufacturers, has been teasing us for weeks with shots of their mystery concept car. The photos that have been dribbling out have shown a white (it's the new black!), highly stylised vehicle mostly shrouded in a red sheet with the Gran Turismo branding on it.

Well, they finally revealed the whole car at the Paris Motor Show and we even know its name: GTbyCITROËN. Yes, the name looks like a typo but that really is it... all mashed up like that.

I'm not a big fan of Citroën's production car designs but this beast blew me away. What makes this concept car even more interesting is that it is already available to play in Gran Turismo 5: Prologue on the PS3. Loading up the game now will let you download a set of new vehicles including the GTbyCITROËN. Citroën says the car was "a partnership between Citroën and Polyphony." Polyphony of course being the people behind the hugely successful Gran Turismo game series on Playstation 2 and 3.

In the game the new GT concept is a hybrid EV powered by hydrogen fuel cells with 646 bhp (481 Kw) from the main engine plus an additional 136 bhp (101 Kw) from hydrogen-power. The 3,000-pound two-seater takes a virtual 3.6 seconds to get from 0 to 100 kmh so it's fast, but not THAT fast. Of course anyone can make up whatever they want in the game world so we'll just have to wait and see what the real deal can do.

Plenty of photos of the real thing and the virtual thing over at Autoblog.

Tesla Completes Updated Drivertrain For Roadster

My favourite little EV-that-could looks like it'll finally be getting the drivetrain it was supposed to be originally released with.

Tesla announced that they have completed "Drivetrain 1.5" which includes an upgraded electric motor and swapping the original two-speed automatic transmission for a Borg Warner-sourced one speed. This means the Tesla Roadster's instant torque will go from 155.5 Nm (211 lb-ft) to a relatively huge 206 Nm (280 lb-ft) while also improving its range by 10% to a shockingly impressive 244 miles. That's 392.6 kms of uninterrupted, fossil fuel-free fun.

Drivetrain 1.5 also means Tesla can get serious with the output of these little rockets with them producing 10 Roadsters per week and up to 40 per week by next March.

There's also good news for the 38 lucky people who already own a Roadster as Tesla will be keeping its promise to retrofit those models with the new drivetrain.

More info and pics over at AutoblogGreen.

550 Km Prius Gives Hope For All Electric Vehicles

A Toyota Prius-based taxi in Cairns, Australia had clocked up 550 kilometers in travel before it required a battery pack replacement, that's around 340,000 miles for those living in the olden days.

This is obviously good news for Toyota as it may alay some of the fears behind people taking up their whale-shaped hybrid but it's also good news for all electric vehicles and hybrids.

The NiMH battery tech in use by the Prius is pretty old in comparison to packs in some of the newer vehicles coming or already on the road. To hear that a battery pack will sustain thousands of charges and discharges for up to 550 Kms (easily twice more than I'd ever drive in a single vehicle) means the rather hefty replacement cost may never need to be forked over and maybe when it does happen battery tech will have improved enough to make them cheaper and more efficient.

The taxi company mentioned that their Prius cost half as much to run and half as much to maintain as a regular vehicle in their fleet. Imagine the savings if they used a car that didn't rely on fossil fuels for propulsion.

Lightning GT, An EV For The Aston Martin Lovers

You may have heard that at the British International MotorShow another performance EV was announced, the Lightning GT. With a range of between 150 and 180 miles per charge and a 0-100 time of "under 4 seconds" this Aston Martin-esque car is squarely set to compete with the Tesla Roadster.

While the Tesla Roadster looks more like a Lotus this new entrant has taken design cues from Aston Martin setting itself up for the upper class.

More photos and video of the enveiling over at Autoblog Green.

iMiEV Ain't Gonna Be Cheap

Here I was thinking that a smaller EV would be cheaper than a larger EV but apparently the Mitsubishi iMiEV is going to go on sale in Japan in 2009 for the handy price of only 4 million yen ($38,899 AUD / $37,496 USD). Fair enough, you might say, but that means it'll be around the same price as the larger and cooler looking Chevy Volt.

If I was judging on looks alone the Volt wins hands down but if I was judging on the mechanics of the vehicle the iMiEV wins as it's purely electric. Decisions, decisions!

The First Production EV To Go On Sale In Australia?

South Korean car manufacturer CT&T has announced it will be opening a manufacturing plant in Fiji (of all places!) for their little electric cars.

As per the company's website, the eZone is basically a fancy golf cart that can go 70km or 110km on a single charge (depending on the battery pack you get) and can only reach 55 kph top speed. Still, according to their video, it only costs $5 a month maintenance (no mention of your electricity bill), has zero emissions and uses zero oil.

Seeing as Fiji is neighbours of New Zealand and Australia perhaps we'll be seeing these little buzz boxes on our streets sooner than any other production EV, just so long as they stay out of my way in my iMiEV. Thanks for the heads-up ABC.

Check out the promotional video below and try not to cringe at the odd choice of voice over talent.

Personal Public Transport

One advantage of driving yourself around in your own vehicle is that you can come and go as you please but it's a bit of a drag on the planet and your pocket. One advantage of public transport is that you utilize shared resources and they often run on renewable energy sources but you need to wait for the next train or bus or whatever.

Now, imagine you take these two advantages while ditching the disadvantages and put them into the one solution. The solution, developed by Jay Andress and Andy Webster, comes the "Liberator Car" from MonoMobile. It's a small electric car that is handy for short distances but, using the wheels attached to the roof, connects to a public monorail system for longer distances. The rail will also recharge the car's batteries for a fresh start when you "land" after whisking you away at up to 200 mph (320 kph).

Autoblog Green tells me these two gents are looking for $10 million in funding for a 1 mile test section of monorail. "They expect it would cost upwards of $500 billion to add a MonoMobile infrastructure to the existing interstate highway system but say the increase in transportation efficiency and productivity would save almost an equal amount of money each year."

Mitsubishi iMiEV Available Next Year

Some good news on the electric vehicle front today from Mitsubishi. Apparently, due to crazy oil prices, lots of successful testing and positive public response, Mitsubishi is pushing the release of its funky jelly bean iMiev forward a year.

Originally the plan was to lease them out to commercial and government fleets during 2009 with a retail launch to the Japanese public in 2010. Now they're saying that Japanese car buyers will be able to grab their own jelly bean by this time next year.

No mention of a US or Australian release. :(

Who Rose The Electric Car From The Dead?

Chris Paine, the director of the controversial documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" is back again with a sequel and this time the electric car wins!

Autoblog Green is reporting that Chris has tentatively scheduled this revenge film for a 2009 release and titled it "Revenge of the Electric Car". Interestingly there's no mention of it (yet) on IMDb.

I guess with the Telsa Roadster, Chevy Volt and others all making big noises in the media it makes sense to bring the topic up again.

Mercedes Going Super Green

Autoblog Green has a few interesting pieces of Mercedes news today. First there was the confirmation of an electric luxury vehicle from the three pointed star due out in 2010. Then we hear that Mercedes wants to totally eliminated the reliance on petroleum by 2015.

That sounds quite amazing but when you look closer you'll see that while they're planning not to release any more petrol powered cars they will be releasing biodiesel powered cars. Still, they have my full support... now go make me a car I can afford.

Gen 1 Chevy Volt To Cost $40K USD

So now Bob Lutz, GM's Vice President, tells us that the Chevy Volt which was pretty much promised to be sold in the US at around $30K is more likely to be $40K. $40K at a loss to GM. But that's the price you pay to innovate.

Seen by many as the saviour of the (US) car industry, the 2010 Volt promises so much and the almost daily news we get on its progress toward release helps. Personally I'd buy one if I had the cash and it was released and it was available in Australia. At least there's some good news ahead.

Telsa Roadster #4 Spotted

The fourth Tesla Roadster to roll off the production line (if you can call it that) has been spotted in the wild. Apparently this one has been doing the marketing rounds and is now being delivered to its owner. I hope he/she got a discount for having their $100K baby paraded around and sat in by various people.

Mister Bitchy and Poo Shoot Working Together on Electric Cars

Autoblog Green reports that Mitsubishi and Peugeot are going to be sharing knowledge and basically being good buddies while producing electric vehicles. As we all know, Mitsubishi already has the iMiev up and running so they've certainly got some know-how. I just wonder what the French will be bringing to the table... escargot?