Clean Energy and Transportation News for 2018

Nissan has been backing away from the battery manufacturing factory they built in Tennessee, and overall the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi Alliance haven't had a common battery supplier. This investment is for Silicon-dominant Li-ion batteries which may mean it's an investment in the future, and will not help current battery supply issues. But it points to a future where the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi Alliance hopes to be leaders in electric vehicles.

A few years ago Harley-Davidson garnered a lot of interest with the LiveWire concept electric motorcycle. Even though that bike lacked performance matching extant electric bikes on the market, it was awesome to see a major motorcycle manufacturer taking electrics seriously. Today the company is announcing details on the 2020 LiveWire, and plans to begin shipping in late 2019. So, yes, Harley-Davidson may be ready to let go of producing motorcycles that make obnoxiously loud horrendous noises.

The multiple EV charging networks with differing membership capabilities have been a big hindrance for public EV charging. EV owners have had to maintain memberships in multiple networks, and have faced the challenge of only charging at stations where they have a membership. This agreement enables "roaming" similar to how we are able to use any ATM machine -- meaning they're implementing a system of agreements with other EV charging operators to form a larger charging network.

Volkswagen has been making big claims for years, that VW would be the prominent electric vehicle seller offering a full range of EV's. Here they are again making a big claim. VW is asking us to believe that during 2010 they'll sell 150,000 electric cars of which 100,000 will be the VW I.D. and VW I.D. SUV. VW plans to jump from zero ID sales to 100,000 per year over the next 2 years. But, how will that be done?To do that VW has developed the MEB vehicle architecture.

Volkswagen's investment into Electrify America is increasing.

Mazda is all about engines, and therefore one should not be surprised to learn their "electrification strategy" is "compact, lightweight electrification technologies while further refining the internal combustion engine". As Mazda puts it, internal combustion engine vehicles are expected to be in the majority of new cars for years to come. Either Mazda is stuck in engines, or they're aptly pointing out the conversion to fully electric drive will take years to accomplish.

Porsche is throwing down quite a lot of money and investment - new employees - new production facilities - for the purpose of "electrification". Notice in the title for the press release Porsche used the word "electric", but in the body they used the word "electrification". However they are describing a fully electric sports car and the advantages of moving to an 800 volt drive-train. It's a matter of physics, with the same wiring thickness Porsche can move double the wattage with their 800 volt system versus a 400 volt system. This enables ultra-fast charging at 350 kW, and higher power delivery for all subsystems.

BMW has upgraded the BMW i3 battery pack to cells with 120 Ah capacity, and a total energy capacity of 42 kiloWatt-hours. Because the i3 is built with carbon-fiber its energy efficiency is vastly superior to all other electric cars, giving the i3 more driving range than implied by the 42 kWh pack, or a total expected driving range of 260 kiloMeters. That's a 30% improvement over previous model years.

Lucid Motors, a new luxury electric car startup company, has announced an agreement with Electrify America regarding a nationwide fast charging plan. The Lucid Motors car can support ultra fast EV charging, and the company plans to go to production in 2020. It just so happens that Electrify America is building a nation-wide network of fast charging stations, with charging power up to 350 kiloWatts. The immediate goal is that by June 2019 the company will have over 2,000 DC fast charging locations across a large portion of the USA. Such a network is required in order to be competitive against Tesla Motors.

Audi began talking about the E-Tron in 2011, IIRC, and has shown several different cars under this name. They've settled on this, an all-electric luxury SUV. This car has a lot going for it, with plenty of cargo space, to a high power drive train, a dual motor drive train with very good performance, high power 150 kiloWatt fast charging, and a 95 kiloWatt-hour battery pack. Curiously this press release keeps reiterating ways Audi engineers designed-in energy saving features to extend driving range. Why would that be? What's going on. The Audi E-Tron should equal the Tesla Model X in luxury, capabilities, driving range, charging speed, though not quite in raw performance. Unfortunately, Audi designed in a huge flaw: the E-Tron is only available on special order. Therefore, Audi is not serious at this time in competing with Tesla. If Audi were serious about this they'd simply take the E-Tron to production and go head-to-head with Tesla.

With the newly unveiled Audi E-Tron, Audi is showing off several EV charging connections. In a deal with Arcadia Power, E-Tron buyers can make a deal to buy renewable energy via a Community Solar program. In a deal with Amazon, E-Tron buyers can have charging stations installed by Amazon Home Services. Finally, Audi showed a concept charging facility design in San Francisco.

BMW is unveiling an updated version of the BMW X5 Plug-in Hybrid SUV. It is primarily a fossil-fuel powered SUV, with electric assist and a meager all-electric range.

Nissan and EVgo have teamed up on another "Arc", meaning a series of EV Fast Charging stations connecting points A and B. In this case the route between Boston and Washington DC seems, going by the PlugShare map, to be already well-populated with fast charging services. More charging stations are certainly a good thing, however, and will encourage more of us to drive electric on longer trips. In this case it appears the maximum charging rate is 50 kW, which isn't sufficient for road trips, but the press release also says the facilities have been designed to support 150 kiloWatt fast charging in the future.

A few days ago Elon Musk idly tweeted that he's considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share, and that funding is lined up. At least this wasn't posted on April 20. After initial excitement some realists started studying this, asked where the funding was, the SEC started mulling a stock manipulation investigation, and so on. And now the NY Times has an article following an hour-long interview with Musk, describing him as overworked, and the Board is worried and is looking for someone to take over some of Musk's responsibilities.

Airbus has flown an unmanned high-altitude airplane for 3 minutes shy of 26 days, beating an endurance record also owned by Airbus. The airplane combines solar panels and energy storage to enable continuous flight, and operates at a 70,000 foot altitude where there is little air turbulence. The primary goal for such an airplane is to implement a kind of very-low-orbit satellite -- that is, remaining at a very high altitude means such an airplane can perform reconnaisance or communications services like a satellite, but without the expense of launching a satellite into orbit.

The 70,000 foot altitude is above the weather, above regular air traffic, and for example is high enough to provide a very wide viewing angle for camera systems, or for telecommunication systems, that might be mounted on such a vehicle. By operating on solar power such an airplane could theoretically operate indefinitely. But of course it is useful for it to land every so often for maintenance.

A couple years ago the Solar Impulse solar electric airplane used a similar drive train to complete an around-the-world journey. In that case the airplane was manned, and therefore its time aloft was limited to pilot endurance. The longest flight of the Solar Impulse was from Japan to Hawaii and (if memory serves) took over five days.

The most obvious time to recharge an electric car, immediately upon arriving home from work, is not the best for the grid. In the early evening is when the "duck curve" dictates a need to steeply ramp up fossil fuel electricity production because the sun is setting lessening solar power. It's necessary to instead orchestrate electricity demand, like electric car charging, to occur later at night when demand is lower and the grid has excess power.

Honda has struck a deal with eMotorWerks (a subsidiary of ENEL) to integrate eMotorWerks' JuiceNet platform, using that service to orchestrate the best timing of electric car charging. The eMotorWerks system taps pricing information from electricity grid operators to optimize electric car charging.

The current deal is to implement a beta program among Honda Fit EV "owners" to study optimum timing for electric car charging.

Toyota is sticking with hydrogen fuel cells, this time for a class 8 heavy duty truck. The truck was unveiled at a meeting of the Center for Automotive Research, and increases the estimated range to more than 300 miles per fill. The vehicle operator has a larger sleeper cab than the previous iteration. The previous iteration began operation in April 2017 and has logged almost 10,000 miles of testing in real world service at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Toyota plans to put the new vehicle into operation this fall.

The design uses the fuel cell drive train from the Toyota Mirai - two Mirai fuel cell stacks plus a 12 kiloWatt-hour battery pack.

The described target is not long-haul trucking, but drayage trucking. That is, the trucks driving back and forth between cargo ships and train depots and warehouses. There's a large number of these trucks the vast majority of which are diesel powered and produce a horrid form of air pollution.

Former Toyota business partner, Tesla, is targeting a different market with their battery-electric class 8 truck. Namely, the long haul trucking market.

Since launching the LEAF, Nissan's battery packs came from its subsidiary Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC). In August 2017, Nissan announced it would sell that subsidiary to GSR Capital. On July 1, 2018, Nissan announced it was canceling the sale. GSR Capital, a Chinese investment company, was unable to raise the funds by the June 29 deadline. Clearly the batteries made by AESC were not desirable enough to warrant an investment. According to Reuters, Nissan sought to sell its battery business as part of a plan to get lower-cost batteries from other manufacturers, such as LG Chem who supplies sister company Renault. Nissan has talked with other battery manufacturers about purchasing the AESC subsidiary. Panasonic is quoted by Reuters saying they're not interested in buying the manufacturing equipment used by other makers, and that Nissan's formulation is not all that interesting.

Takata airbags can decompose and once in that state, if triggered the airbag will spew shrapnel on the passenger causing physical harm and possibly death. This is a big big safety deal, so why is Tesla refusing to replace these airbags for folks who've repaired and rebuilt a Tesla car? For that matter, why is Tesla going out of its way to throw roadblocks in the way of folks who've done so? Repairing and rebuilding cars is a widespread hobby/practice, and other car manufacturers support the rebuilders with parts and diagnostics tools. Not so with Tesla.

Electrify America is looking to build a nationwide electric vehicle charging network. Some of that network will be at Walmart stores, and will utilize ultra-high-power charging stations running at up to 350 kiloWatts.

Electrify America is looking to build a nationwide electric vehicle charging network. This describes the charging station vendors.

Takata airbags can decompose and once in that state, if triggered the airbag will spew shrapnel on the passenger causing physical harm and possibly death. This is a big big safety deal, so why is Tesla refusing to replace these airbags for folks who've repaired and rebuilt a Tesla car? For that matter, why is Tesla going out of its way to throw roadblocks in the way of folks who've done so? Repairing and rebuilding cars is a widespread hobby/practice, and other car manufacturers support the rebuilders with parts and diagnostics tools. Not so with Tesla.

In the Niger Delta, a battle is raging between local villagers and the Nigerian government. The villagers have little way to make a living, yet from underneath their feet there are tremendous crude oil reserves that are enriching the oil companies. The locals are running illegal oil refineries in extremely unsafe conditions, and selling fuel on the black market. The Military is attacking the villagers, destroying the refineries.

All these operations are releasing crude oil and refined oil products into the local environment that's directly in contact with the people. Fishermen are complaining their nets are being soiled, and that eating the fish is harming their health.