A glimpse at the future of electric drive train technology

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Wrightspeed's X1 Electric Supercar Sparks Hybrid Dreams
Chaddus Bruce 04.04.07 | 2:00 AM

SAN FRANCISCO -- A year after introducing the X1 pure-electric car prototype that blows away Ferraris in drag races, startup company Wrightspeed is seeking investment for plans to morph its demo model into a superfast production hybrid.

Ian Wright, founder and CEO of Wrightspeed, showed off the X1 here Thursday night at a gathering of the Business Association Italy America at Club Sportiva -- a sort of country club for car enthusiasts.

"Our vision is to enable the luxury and pickup market to enjoy extreme efficiency of 70 to 100 miles per gallon," said Marv Bush, chief business officer of Wrightspeed. "The production car will be a hybrid with a specialized power source for the batteries."

The plan is, surprisingly, to make it a plug-in. It will also be even more powerful than the X1, Bush said, capable of 1,000 horsepower. The car, which will cost about $120,000, will have motors on each wheel and no welding -- it will be made of composite pieces using something like the Lotus manufacturing model, which takes just 52 people to build 5,000 cars a year.

The project has the potential to reinvigorate interest in plug-ins, and dust off their granola stigma. The car will be able to cover hundreds more miles than previous plug-ins, allaying fears of dead batteries in the middle of nowhere, Bush said.

Wrightspeed is still working to close its first funding round of $9 million. That's why Wright, a Bay Area entrepreneur originally from New Zealand, showed off the easy-to-gawk-at X1 -- a proof-of-concept hook for the hybrid production car.

The crowd was bopping and talkative in the airy and skylight-lit showroom. A row of meticulously kept cars began with an orange Lotus Elise and ended with a 1990 Bentley Turbo R sedan. These magazine-cover cars knock back gas with the best SUVs.

Case in point is the wide-bodied 2004 Lamborghini Murciélago with suicide doors that costs $310,000 and gets 9 mpg. At Wrightspeed's event it rests facing the X1, which can go from 0 to 60 seven-tenths of a seconds faster than the Murciélago (3.07 seconds versus 3.80 seconds).

Wrightspeed's strategy is to bring efficiency to high-end, big-margin gas guzzlers that garner big profit margins. During a 20-minute presentation, Wright said that by capturing 10 percent of the gas-guzzler market, more fuel would be saved than by turning 100 percent of already-efficient gasoline-powered cars electric.

Wrightspeed is not squared off against any particular company, he said. It will license its drive-train technology to anyone who wants it.

When the company raises its first round of capital, the company will ramp up to around 50 employees from its current two (himself included), Wright said -- and he's already drafted a hit list of most-wanted employees.

Some investors, however, have concerns about investing in an upstart car company.

"They have no patents," said Paul Mahal, a principal with Stanford Technology Ventures." That's bad news for investors." Asked about patents, Wright said the company has about nine patents it plans to file on the production car.

Also in question is the total amount of money the company will need for its production car venture. Wright says $20 million to start, which Mahal said seems low.

Hon Luu, vice president of O2 Venture Partners, which is helping Wrightspeed raise money, said the company won't stop at $20 million -- it will raise more in future rounds of funding.

Club Sportiva members were excited about the car. "We are car people," said member Randy Bunkley. "Anything that pushes technology -- bigger, better, faster -- we are interested in."

source: http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/news/2007/04/xonecar_0402

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Electric dragsters aim for gas-fueled records
By AARON CLARK

The Associated Press

PORTLAND, Ore. — Straddling a 619-pound motorcycle, Scotty Pollacheck tucks in his knees and lowers his head as he waits for the green light. When he revs the engine, there's no roar. The bike moves so fast that within seconds all that's visible is a faint red taillight melting in the distance.

Pollacheck crosses the quarter-mile marker doing 156 mph; he's traveled 1,320 feet in 8.22 seconds, faster than any of the gas-powered cars, trucks or motorcycles in the drag sprints this weekend at Portland International Raceway.

It's particularly impressive given Pollacheck is riding a vehicle that uses no gasoline and is powered entirely by lithium-ion batteries.

Electric vehicles are making their presence felt at amateur drag races across the country, challenging gas-powered cars and motorcycles.

Pollacheck and his bike — dubbed the KillaCycle — are part of a growing movement that is exploiting breakthroughs in battery technology and could soon challenge the world's fastest-accelerating vehicles in the $1 billion drag-racing industry.

"In professional drag racing I expect to see the electrics eventually pass up the fuel dragsters," said Dick Brown, president of AeroBatteries, which sponsors White Zombie, the world's quickest-accelerating street-legal electric car: a 1972 white Datsun 1200.

"Electric gives you instant torque whereas gasoline you have to build up," Brown said. "As we learn to manage it, you're going to see some really amazing performances."

Electric drag racers are test-driving the technology that will eventually spill over into mass-production cars, analysts say.

Today's hybrid cars, such as Toyota's Prius, use nickel metal hydride batteries, which cost less than lithium-ion batteries. But the price of lithium-ion batteries is expected to drop. In addition, the latest generation of batteries offers a higher rate of conductivity and takes less time to charge; the KillaCycle's battery pack can be juiced up in five minutes.

New materials also mean the battery is less prone to overheating and explosions, a danger of earlier generations.

Experts say lithium-ion batteries that will power a car tens of thousands of miles over their lifetime and deliver more horsepower are on the horizon.

The Chevrolet Volt, which is expected to be released in 2010, is a consumer hybrid that uses gas to power a charger and can travel 640 miles on a tank of gas and up to 40 miles on one electric charge. The vehicle will run on a lithium-ion pack similar to the one used by the KillaCycle.

Bill Dube, KillaCycle's owner and designer, and other EV racers say electric cars aren't just about 2-cent-a-mile transportation, lessening reliance on foreign oil or curbing global warming. They're also about performance.

"For electric cars to matter, people have to buy them," he said. "If you have a car that is faster than everyone else's, if it's electric so be it, but people will buy it."

The KillaCycle runs on 990 lithium-ion battery cells that feed two direct-current motors, generating 350 horsepower. The bike accelerates from zero to 60 mph in just under a second — faster than many professional gas-powered drag motorcycles and within striking distance of the quickest bikes that run on nitromethane. With that hyper-potent racing fuel, riders can get to 60 mph in 0.7 seconds.

In drag racing, two vehicles accelerate from a standstill and race over a straight quarter-mile track. The National Hot Rod Association oversees the racing of amateur street-legal cars on hundreds of tracks around the country as well as the professional drag circuit.

In the most popular professional division, Top Fuel Racing, dragsters with large rear wheels and narrow bodies reach speeds exceeding 330 mph in 4.6 seconds.

The National Electric Drag Racing Association holds just four races a year. But electric drag racers are increasingly showing up at drag strips across the country to show what they can do.

Their vehicles are posting faster and faster times at amateur meets, but they still have a way to go before matching professional world record times. The fastest quarter-mile time by an electric vehicle is the KillaCycle's 8.16 seconds — that's 2.36 seconds off the nitromethane world record for drag bikes.

In December, the KillaCycle will receive a second-generation battery pack that will have twice as much juice as its current 374-volt system, giving it close to 1,000 horsepower. Ric Fulop, founder and vice president of business development for A123, the maker of KillaCycle's batteries, said he believes the KillaCycle can break the drag racing motorcycle record within the next year.

from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003812415_electric30.html

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By Jeff Green
Bloomberg News

General Motors may build as many as 60,000 Volt electric cars for their inaugural year on the market, four times the sales of Toyota's hybrid Prius in its first full year in the U.S., people with knowledge of GM's plans said.

Production at that level may allow GM to sell the plug-in Volt for less than $30,000, said the sources, who didn't want to be identified because the plans are confidential. The discussions show the Detroit automaker, racked by losses and U.S. sales declines, believes an affordable electric car will help spur a revival, the people said.

"If they were able to get 30,000 to 60,000 on the road in a year, it would be a huge leap in technology," said Brett Smith, an alternative-fuel analyst at the Center for Automotive Research. "It will be difficult, though, because there are so many barriers to making this happen."

A high-volume debut for the Volt, designed to go 40 miles without recharging, would lend credence to Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner's strategy of using technological advances to gain ground on Toyota. The Japanese company has a decadelong lead with its Prius, a gasoline-electric car that is the world's best-selling hybrid.

"If GM can make a Volt that costs less than $30,000, you really could start to see significant demand," Smith said.

GM product chief Bob Lutz has said he wants to sell the first Volt by late 2010, and expects to have prototypes ready for testing early next year. GM spokesman Scott Fosgard declined to comment on plans for the Volt.

Sales of 60,000 units would vault the car past the Chevrolet Aveo as GM's best-selling high-mileage car. It took almost five years for the Prius to reach annual sales of 60,000.

Toyota has sold more than 800,000 Priuses, and the hybrid helped the automaker earn a record $14 billion in its last fiscal year. GM lost $1.98 billion in 2006.

"We've got a technology that's established in the marketplace and has been reliable," said Irv Miller, Toyota's group vice president of U.S. communications. "If anyone thinks the Prius of today is going to be the Prius of 2011 or 2012, they underestimate Toyota."

GM said this month that it will jointly develop the lithium-ion battery needed for the Volt with A123Systems, a privately owned battery-technology company.

Creating a high-volume, plug-in electric car with a lithium-ion battery within three years may be impossible, said Menahem Anderman, president of Advanced Automotive Batteries, an industry consultant.

A 60,000-unit target "is totally ridiculous at this point," Anderman said. "To reach that level by 2010, they'd need to be placing the orders right now." If GM proceeds with A123 as the main battery supplier, "they would be doing it with a company that has no experience in high-volume manufacturing on such a scale," Anderman said.

To offer 40 miles of all-electric range, he estimates GM would need a battery pack that would weigh about 400 pounds. That would be seven times heavier than the nickel-metal-hydride pack in the current Prius. Added weight reduces fuel efficiency.

Higher production would let GM get volume discounts from auto-parts suppliers and put the $30,000 goal within reach, the people familiar with GM's planning said. The average U.S. vehicle sold for $28,450 last year, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association. The Prius, which doesn't come in a plug-in version and uses less-expensive batteries than those planned for the Volt, costs $22,175 to $23,070.

Demand for cars less reliant on gasoline is growing as automakers face stricter emissions rules around the world and the U.S. tries to cut its dependence on imported oil. In addition to funding the Volt, Wagoner is spending more than $3 billion on cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells and gasoline- electric hybrids like the Prius.

The Volt is charged at a household outlet and uses an on-board engine to generate electricity when the battery runs down during travel. The engine, powered by gasoline, diesel or a hydrogen fuel cell, only recharges the battery and doesn't drive the wheels. Its full range is about 640 miles on a tank of gasoline, about double the range of a typical car or truck.

Existing gasoline-electric hybrids such as the Prius and GM's Chevrolet Tahoe sport-utility vehicle use the electric motor only at start-up and lower speeds, and rely on engine power and friction from braking to charge the battery.

from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003849115_voltcar23.html

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Can new technology go the distance in replacing the battery?
By GRANT SLATER

The Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas — Millions of inventions pass quietly through the U.S. patent office each year. Patent No. 7,033,406 did, too, until energy insiders spotted six words that sounded like a death knell for the internal-combustion engine.

An Austin-based startup called EEStor promised "technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries," meaning a motorist could plug in a car for five minutes and drive 500 miles roundtrip between Dallas and Houston without gasoline.

By contrast, some plug-in hybrids on the horizon would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and promise only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute.

"It's a paradigm shift," said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed the EEStor invention. "The Achilles' heel to the electric-car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion-engines unnecessary," he said.

ZENN expects the battery replacement later this year for use in its short-range, low-speed vehicles.

The technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing efficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a small scale, a flash-charge for cellphones and laptops.

Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch existing technology to the point of alchemy.

"We've been trying to make this type of thing for 20 years and no one has been able to do it," said Robert Hebner, director of the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics.

EEStor's secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other.

Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material. The result is an ultracapacitor, a batterylike device that stores and releases energy quickly.

"The idea of getting rid of the batteries and putting in capacitors is to get more power back and get it back faster," Hebner said.

But he said nothing close to EEStor's claim exists today.

For years, EEStor has tried to fly beneath the radar in the competitive industry for alternative energy.

The company declined to be interviewed.

Yet the speculation and skepticism have continued, fueled by the company's original assertion of making batteries obsolete.

The deal with ZENN Motor and a $3 million investment by the venture-capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers hint that EEStor may be on the edge of a breakthrough technology.

ZENN Motor's public reports show that it so far has invested $3.8 million and has promised an additional $1.2 million if the ultracapacitor company meets a third-party testing standard and then delivers a product.

Clifford said his company consulted experts and did a "tremendous amount of due diligence."

EEStor's founders have a track record.

Richard D. Weir and Carl Nelson worked on disk-storage technology at IBM before forming EEStor in 2001. They have acquired dozens of patents over two decades.

Previous attempts to improve ultracapacitors have focused on improving the metal sheets by increasing the surface area where charges can attach.

EEStor is instead creating better nonconductive material for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.

Researchers say the strength and functionality of this material is the only thing standing between EEStor and the holy grail of energy-storage technology.

Joseph Perry and the other researchers he oversees at Georgia Tech have used the same material to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold.

Perry says EEstor seems to be claiming an improvement of more than 400-fold, yet increasing a capacitor's retention ability often results in decreased strength of the materials.

Until EEStor produces a final product, Perry said he joins energy professionals and enthusiasts alike in waiting to see if the company can own up to its promise and banish the battery to recycling bins around the world.

"I am skeptical, but I'd be very happy to be proved wrong," he said.

from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003867135_nomorebatts04.html

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Lots of interesting ideas and technology in this Aptera Typ-1e electric vehicle ($27,000). It plugs into normal 110v and has a 120 mile range.

They also have a hybrid version, the Typ-1h that gets up to 300 miles per gallon ($30,000). A traditional 4 wheeled version is also in the works.

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/aptera-5-interior.jpg

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/aptera-6-trunk.jpg

http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/aptera-8-doors-up.jpg

Link to video (http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1351302783?bctid=1351300070)

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HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- Toyota Motor Corp. plans to install a solar power generation system on its Prius hybrid car, when the vehicle goes through a complete makeover as early as next spring, according to a media report Monday.

The move will make Toyota the first major automaker to install a popular model with solar panels. The redesigned Prius will have solar panels on the roof, which will supply part of the two to five kilowatts needed to power the air-conditioning unit, the Nikkei business daily reported.

...

The Japanese auto giant intends to produce 450,000 units of the Prius in Japan next year, about 60% higher than the vehicle's output in 2007. It also aims to reduce the Prius' weight to improve the gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle's fuel efficiency, the report added.

from: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/toyota-equip-prius-solar-panels/story.aspx?guid={A5960A1A-E176-4A08-952C-4BC4A0A69284}&siteid=yhoof

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By Emma Vandore
The Associated Press

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2008/08/15/2008116687.jpg

PARIS — My electric bike is no Batmobile, but it makes me feel like a superhero. The motor is so quiet, it's easy to forget it's there when I'm pedalling through the streets of Paris — only I move much faster than a regular bike and I don't sweat. When I ride uphill, it feels like someone is giving me a push.

The silver Chinese import that I bought for 300 euros ($470) might not look as flashy as Christian Bale's wheels in "The Dark Knight," but it is much cheaper to run and kinder to the environment, too. All of which helps explain why electric bikes are one of the hottest buys in Paris this summer — and are filling the streets of Amsterdam, Beijing and beyond. "It's become a new means of transport," said Olivier Birault, owner of the Paris store Velectris.

"In France, we lost the culture of the bike after the war when it was seen as old-fashioned or for poor people.

"Now it's coming back — and with the latest increase in gasoline prices, we are seeing enormous interest."

More than 10,000 electric bikes were sold in France last year, up from 6,000 in 2006, according to the Conseil National des Professions du Cycle, an association of bike professionals. The trend is hitting all of Europe. Sales in Germany this year are expected to double the 60,000 sold in 2007, according to Hannes Neupert, manager of ExtraEnergy, a nonprofit organization promoting electric vehicles headquartered in Tanna, Germany.

In the Netherlands, sales of electric-powered bikes increased from 45,000 in 2006 to 89,000 last year, according BOVAG, a motorized-vehicle industry association, which expects the meter will read 121,000 by the end of 2008. That compares with an estimated 10,000 units sold across the U.S. in 2007, according to the Gluskin-Townley Group, which does market research for the National Bicycle Dealers Association. The popularity results from imports from China, where manufacturers make affordable models.

Alberto Antonelli, whose family has been running the Molari bike shop in the seaside Italian resort of Cattolica since 1902, says he stopped selling European brands because customers balked at the price tag.

"The Chinese bikes are less than half the price of Italian ones, and clearly that makes a difference to a lot of people," he said.

China has more than 1,400 electric-bicycle manufacturers, producing around 5.5 million units a year, according to the China Bicycle Association. According to Economic Reference, published by the official Xinhua news agency, China exported 3 million electric bicycles in 2006, worth 40 billion yuan (or $5.8 billion).

Imported electric bikes don't come much cheaper than mine, which my partner assembled and then upgraded by fitting three-speed gears and a new basket. Its performance is starting to fade after nine months, particularly the battery, which is made from lead and has a limited life span. If I run out of juice, the heavy battery makes it difficult to ride uphill.

But it still incites curiosity wherever I take it. At least twice a week, I get stopped by passers-by. "How does it work? Are they very expensive?"

At the top end of the market, where electric bikes can cost upward of 3,000 euros ($4,600), some models look like something Batman would ride — if he rode a bike. The latest high-end models will go 62 miles without recharging, weigh as little as 44 pounds, and offer funky features such as regenerative braking.

Birault says bikes are only the start of an electric revolution. "People are waiting now for the electric car," he said.

AP writers Bonnie Cao in Beijing, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Franziska Scheven in Berlin contributed to this report.

from: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008120401_btbikeside18.html