Electric SUVs: A smaller footprint for big vehicles
By Mark Clayton | 11.04.09
Tom Reid likes his ride big – a 2000 Ford Explorer SUV with plenty of interior room and all the amenities. None of those prissy little hybrid vehicles will do for him.
But after gas hit $4 a gallon last year, Mr. Reid had a big fuel bill, too – and an epiphany: convert his gas guzzler to an all-electric vehicle.
So he did. Now Reid’s bright idea has become a sideline business for his shop, HTC Racing, which produces specialized protective coating for automotive and other metal parts in Whitman, Mass. He offers kits to convert any 1995-2004 gas-sucking Ford Explorer into a cheap-to-keep, no fuel, little maintenance all-electric SUV. Cost: $15,000.
He admits that the idea may be “ahead of its time.” Reid has yet to sell a single kit. With gas at only $2.50 a gallon, the conversion cost is too much for even SUV-loving die-hards. But if gasoline prices soar again, Reid says he’ll be ready – and he won’t be alone either.
Converting America’s vast existing fleet of gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks into electrified vehicles is an idea percolating among policy wonks, start-up companies, and fleet owners such as FedEx and the US Postal Service.
Despite all the hoopla over Detroit’s move to make plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles, there’s a need for a speedier US shift away from oil in order to enhance energy security and slow the buildup of carbon in the atmosphere, says a small but growing chorus.
President Obama has set a goal of 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. But with 260 million cars, SUVs, and light trucks on the road today, new electrified vehicles won’t arrive in sufficient volume to yield a significant benefit on reducing US carbon dioxide emissions or oil consumption for at least 15 years, says Felix Kramer, cofounder of the California Cars Initiative, an advocacy group that promotes plug-in electric-gas hybrid vehicles.
What that means is that conversions will be needed – and the best place to start is with gas guzzlers, Mr. Kramer says .
They point out that even if all new cars sold in America were electric by 2030, they would only represent a third of US vehicles.
“We’re happy automakers are changing – but new plug-in vehicles sales can’t do the job alone or anytime soon,” he says. “It’s clear [new plug-ins] will initially be a drop in the bucket. So we have to change over existing vehicles – we need conversions.”
A big part of the problem is vehicle longevity. It takes 15 to 17 years for a typical vehicle to go from showroom to junkyard crusher – and sometimes longer for SUVs, pickup trucks, and vans that have sturdier frames.
In the scenario where 100 percent of new car sales are plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2030, US oil consumption would fall by just 21 percent and carbon emissions by 15 percent because of the millions of remaining gasoline cars, estimates a California Cars Initiative white paper.
But with an active conversion program that included tax incentives, the number of plug-in vehicles would roughly double to about two-thirds of the fleet by 2030. That would produce a 36 percent cut in oil use and a 25 percent chop in CO2 emissions.
The reason to focus on gas guzzlers rather than gas sippers is the much bigger benefits from electrifying them. When Kramer of the California Cars Initiative converted his Toyota Prius hybrid into a plug-in hybrid with more electric power – the car went from 50 miles per gallon up to 100 m.p.g. But the United States could save far more, he says, if it converted existing pickup trucks that get 15 m.p.g. to vehicles that can go 30 to 40 miles on a charge before shifting to gas.
And that’s the aim of Ali Emadi, president of fledgling Hybrid Electric Vehicle Technologies, a Chicago spinoff of the Illinois Institute of Technology. His young company has just converted its first Ford F-150 pickup truck from a 16 m.p.g. gas hog into a plug-in hybrid that gets up to 41 m.p.g. gasoline equivalent.
“Our technology could be applied to almost any vehicle from SUVs to pickup trucks, buses, or even school buses,” Dr. Emadi says. “The important issue is that when you apply our technology to larger vehicles – trucks and buses – the fuel economy savings and return on investment are much more attractive.”
Unlike Reid’s all-electric approach, Emadi’s company plans to add an electric drive system to an existing internal combustion engine to create in essence a retrofitted plug-in hybrid vehicle that runs primarily on electricity. But once the battery is depleted after 15 miles or so, it can continue running on its internal combustion engine while recapturing braking energy just like a standard hybrid.
Emadi is in talks with potential customers. Big commercial fleets of pickup trucks, SUVs, and vans seem likely to be the first arena where the economics line up and gas-guzzler conversions get the go-ahead.
FedEx, the big delivery company, began retrofitting some of its trucks to standard hybrid models. But its president, Frederick Smith, says that, in the long term, the company “would likely convert a substantial portion of our fleet to the new plug-in hybrid technology.”
Bright Automotive, an Anderson, Ind., startup, has its sights set on building a new commercial 100 m.p.g. plug-in hybrid van it calls the IDEA. But until it wins funding it is focusing on converting Volkswagen’s Transporter van from a 15 to 22 m.p.g. vehicle to a plug-in hybrid workhorse that goes 22 miles on all-electric and 57 m.p.g. across its 50-mile daily drive cycle.
Earlier last month, Inglewood, Calif., announced it had tapped REV Technologies, a company in Vancouver, British Columbia, to convert its existing fleet of 21 Ford Escape SUVs into all-electric vehicles that get 100 miles on a charge.
“When you just look at the sheer number of cars on the road, they’re not going away anytime soon,” says Jay Giraud, president of REV. “People are saying, ‘I want to keep driving what I’ve got – I just want it to be electric.’ ”
Making a similar point in dramatic fashion, Raser Technologies in Provo, Utah, unveiled a converted plug-in hybrid “extended range” Hummer that gets 100 m.p.g., according to the company. Raser is trying to sell its technology to a manufacturer and has no current plans to convert existing vehicles, a spokesman says.
Which leaves Reid wondering when gas prices will rise high enough that individual consumers begin converting their beloved SUVs, vans, and pickup trucks. He also wonders why those fat federal tax credits of $7,500 for new plug-in hybrids like the upcoming Chevy Volt don’t yet apply to converted all-electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids that accomplish the same fuel savings and environmental benefits. Why not a “cash for conversions?” Kramer adds.
“If the government would help with a reasonable tax credit, you’d get all these entrepreneurs like me converting all kinds of vehicles for maybe $10,000,” Reid says. If gas rose to $4 or more a gallon, he figures his SUV conversion to electric-vehicle kits would be selling like hotcakes.
“The way I see it, Americans have a love affair with their SUVs,” he says. “None of my friends want anything to do with little cars – no matter how high [the price of] gas goes.”
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How to keep track of climate change
By Mark Clayton | 10.26.09
It’s a vexing problem – how to keep the public and policymakers informed and engaged on what many scientists say is the primary long-term challenge to humanity’s well-being: global warming.
You could invite folks to burrow into the most recent 998-page climate-change opus by 620 leading scientists and editors. Or, for lighter reading, peruse the 34-page “frequently asked questions” primer on that same 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
But to capture public attention while avoiding the need for a PhD on sea-ice thickness, glacier melt rates, and carbon dioxide concentrations, you could just put that data into a single index that tracks the pulse of climate change as it happens.
So says Daniel Abbasi, who has proposed a Global Climate Change Index, not unlike the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tracks stock prices. The index would try to distill the latest ecological figures into something simple enough for the average reader to understand and concrete enough to hold policymakers accountable for lowering greenhouse-gas levels in the atmosphere.
“We’ve got these big reports that appear every few years, but few people read them,” says Mr. Abbasi, a former senior adviser at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in an interview. “Why not reduce this thing into an easier-to-understand set of indicators that can be weighted and aggregated – a distillation that reveals actual impacts we’re seeing in the field.”
Now director of regulatory and public policy research for MissionPoint Capital Partners, a Norwalk, Conn., investment firm, Abbasi’s proposal is stirring scientific debate even as other projects with similar goals are beginning to emerge in the public square.
The big problem with global warming, he says, is not just that the planet is being roasted – it’s trying to maintain public focus on an “inconvenient truth” that is currently portrayed in a nearly incomprehensible way, he says.
“In their scrupulousness to accurately reflect the complexity of climate change when communicating with the public and decisionmakers, scientists have overwhelmed many people,” he writes in an online essay about his idea.
Besieged by disparate climate data and deniers’ claims, both the public and policymakers “have tuned out the science and relegated climate change to a matter of ideological opinion rather than fact,” he writes.
But by distilling the arcana and regular data drips into a single Global Climate Change Index or GCCI, the US and other nations could avoid political drift on this critical issue.
Television news anchors might spout off the latest shift in the GCCI, breaking out for specific attention to key nuances.
Still, the key reason to do it would be to keep policymakers focused on actually reducing climate impacts – not simply developing policies that make constituents happy but don’t effect the needed shift.
Buried in the massive American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009, which recently passed the House, is a “look back provision” that requires the EPA to report the latest data to Congress by 2013. The National Academies of Science would assess those findings and report on if the US climate program was on target.
But what happens between those big, monumental four-year reports? The bill would bring “an impressive succession of reports, but no real action to keep our emissions targets and other action in line with the latest science,” Abbasi contends. Enter the GCCI, which would fill the gap and provide a reality check for both Congress and the president.
It’s early days yet, but Abbasi’s proposal unveiled in late August already has scientists and congressional staffers debating its merits. “There’s great strength in the idea of something that’s up there all the time – an index with long-term averages and trends,” says Richard Somerville, a research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California in San Diego.
He’s quick to provide caveats about the idea that worry him, such as getting agreement on what measures to use and how to weight them. Another hazard: how to keep such an index from masking dangerous tipping points that would lead to runaway environmental or climate tipping.
“While it’s good to track these things, it might divert attention from underlying causal mechanisms and could lull the public into a false sense of security,” says Paul Raskin, president of the Tellus Institute, a Boston-based environmental think tank.
Abbasi says that his index – unlike the “debt clock” in New York (see sidebar) – would be more than a counter. He wants to focus much more on the impacts. It would also incorporate climate modeling data in order to provide a predictive capability.
Overall, the index idea also resonates with some thinkers behind other types of newly emerging projects to inform the public on climate change.
The world’s first “carbon counter,” tracking tonnage of carbon-based greenhouse-gas emissions into the atmosphere, was unveiled in June, just outside New York’s Madison Square Garden.
“Alerting the public and keeping their attention on climate is a good thing – certainly part of our motive was to focus public attention on the issue,” says John Reilly, a scientist and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School, who helped create the Deutsch Bank-financed carbon counter.
Sporting a 70-foot-high sign with a 13-character digital display with bright red letters, the counter is tracking more than 3.6 trillion of tons of greenhouse gases humanity has so far emitted into the atmosphere.
By tracking simple tonnage, the Deutsch Bank Carbon Counter avoids one key weakness of an index: the difficulty of deriving significant meaning from a combination of measures and deciding the proper weighting for each one.
“I haven’t seen this proposed index, but it sounds a little like indices that try to quantify the best school or the best community to live in,” Dr. Reilly says. “They can lead you in the general direction, but may give some odd results. The challenge is how things are weighted together.”
Meeting that challenge is important, Abbasi argues, because without it, the political process is unlikely to meet what science says is needed to avoid the worst effects of global warming.
“There’s a strong likelihood that the targets we set in Congress will be scientifically inadequate to deal with climate change,” he says in the interview. “We need to make this scientific look-back provision stronger, put some teeth into it, so that when the legislation is revised someday, we won’t have a repeat of today with the political dynamics taking over.”
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Taking aim at energy-sucking TVs
By Chris Gaylord | 10.05.09
Television’s high-definition era has done an impressive job of bringing theaterlike experiences to the not-so-small screen. New tube TVs are hard to come by these days, as stores make room for flat-panel models measuring 50 inches or more.
But it takes a lot of energy to power those millions of pixels – enough that the US Environmental Protection Agency suggested in September that perhaps there is such a thing as a television that’s too big.
As picture quality improves, television sets are sucking down an increasing share of home-energy costs. America’s TVs consume “4 percent of all households’ electricity use,” reports the federal energy-efficiency program, Energy Star. “This is enough electricity to power all the homes in the state of New York for an entire year.”
Three things contribute to televisions’ growing appetite: technology, size, and brightness.
Plasma TVs in particular crave a disproportionate energy appetite, placing them close to refrigerators in terms of monthly energy use. An average 50-inch plasma TV, lauded for its top-notch colors and image contrast, guzzles 375 watts of power, according to Energy Star. A similarly sized LCD set wants just half that – 180 watts. (LED-lit LCD sets, still relatively new and high priced, use even less.)
If you think in terms of energy used per inch, tube TVs aren’t that much more efficient than LCDs. However, tubes rarely outgrew 32 inches. Many electronics stores now stick LCDs that size in the “small television” section.
Concerned about the rapid growth in screen sizes, Energy Star started pushing back. The program tracks and certifies efficient home appliances. Most TVs currently meet its standard for energy use, although conforming to it is not required by law.
In September, Energy Star unveiled its guidelines for 2010. Starting next May, TVs will need to be 40 percent more efficient than today’s standard to receive Energy Star certification. By May 2012, the bar rises to 65 percent.
The new rule will be particularly strict on TVs larger than 50 inches – suggesting that Americans really don’t need a plus-sized TV set.
The EPA, which helps run Energy Star, will put in place “a requirement that TVs greater than 50 inches in size meet the same On Mode requirements as a screen of 50 inches – 108 watts,” said the EPA’s Katharine Kaplan in announcing the new benchmarks.
The agency considered disqualifying all TVs that were larger than 50 inches – sending a stronger message about their excesses. But Kaplan explains that the EPA didn’t want to needlessly exclude innovative companies that could engineer enormous yet efficient models.
For example, CNET’s TV reviewers found a 50-inch Vizio plasma that sucks down 474 watts and a 50-inch Panasonic that sips just 163 watts.
Regardless of the size or technology of your TV, brightness can significantly sway its energy diet. If you’re concerned about your energy bill, consider dialing down the television’s settings. Even a slightly dimmer picture can ease your TV’s thirst.
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Rush Limbaugh on Jay Leno: ‘I like the electric car!’
By Andrew Heining | 09.25.09
It was billed as an environmental grudge match – Rush Limbaugh, the king of conservative talk radio and avowed global warming skeptic, was taking a lap in a fully electric car on Jay Leno’s new show.
Would he refuse to participate? Crash intentionally? Last on anyone’s list of outcomes was “Love it,” but that’s what happened.
After a heated discussion (by Jay’s standards) of Limbaugh’s weight loss, capitalism, healthcare, the government’s stimulus plan, social security, and sky-high Wall Street bonuses, Limbaugh and Leno stepped outside to the show’s racetrack for two laps in the custom Ford Focus built for the show’s celebrity “green car challenge.”
After refusing to put on the helmet donned by other guests (”Jay, this helmet will not fit my brain!”) Limbaugh asks mockingly “Is the car running” and takes off.
After gingerly navigating the first lap of the course, Limbaugh turned up the juice, powering through the second lap’s onslaught of ping-pong balls and streamers. He didn’t, however, steer safely around the pop-up cutouts of environmental activists Al Gore and Ed Begley Jr., in fact stopping – in both cases – to give each a double running-over.
The radio host’s verdict, when exiting the car, though, was full of joy – “Mama!” he exclaimed to himself, “nobody would believe this car is electric!”
The late-night TV shows have played host to a back-and-forth over electric cars recently, first with Tesla Motors CEO debuting his company’s Model S electric passenger car (and dissing GM’s Volt), and then with GM product manager Bob Lutz coming on to refute those claims.
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Fisker Automotive lands $529 million White House loan
By Matthew Shaer | 09.23.09
Fisker Automotive, a private company based in Irvine, Calif., has received a $529 million loan from a Department of Energy program designed to fund the development of alternative vehicles.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Los Angeles Times that the low-interest loan, which was announced on Tuesday, “is another critical step in making sure we are positioned to compete for the clean-energy jobs of the future.”
In a statement, Fisker said it would use the bulk of the money to fund the design, engineering and assembly of a next-generation plug-in hybrid cars. The cars will retail at $39,900, after tax credits, according to a Fisker statement:
By 2012 Fisker Automotive is expected to launch a family oriented, user friendly plug-in hybrid featuring cutting edge technology, radical styling and world-class quality. Global sales are predicted to exceed 100,000 units annually. A significant percentage will be exported, helping to balance the US trade deficit.
The rest of the loan will reportedly go towards a line of more affordable vehicles.
Earlier in the year, the Department of Energy issued loans to Ford, Nissan, and Tesla – part of a green energy push on the part of the Democratic administration.
In August, Obama unveiled the details of a separate $2.4 billion grant and loan program aimed at boosting production of electric cars and next-generation battery technology. The funding for the program comes from the 2008 $787-billion economic stimulus bill.
The program represents “the largest investment in this kind of technology in American history,” Obama said at the time. “For too long, we’ve failed to invest in this innovative work, even as countries like China and Japan were racing ahead. That’s why this announcement is so important.”
Editor’s note: The original article incorrectly identified the name of the car that Fisker will manufacture with the government loan.
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Obama: Online news doesn’t come for free
In an interview with the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, President Barack Obama hinted that newspapers should consider charging their readers. Read more here.
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