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August 2009 Posts
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Join Bo and Ryan with special guests Russ and Ray from Sunmotors as they discuss their company and what it takes to bring a car to the US market. Also stick around after the interview for this weeks EV news and listener feedback.
Don't just listen to the EVcast -- experience and be a part of it! Join us at 1:00pm Eastern, M-F, in our live video broadcast and chat along with us!
Thanks for the positive comments about the ebook Ryan! How much do I owe you for it this time? Feel free to forward Bo a copy of the ebook/videos if he's interested... or has insomnia.
I'm not convinced with the sunmotor's car just yet - only due to the look of the thing. I guess that makes me shallow? Otherwise the specs (speed aside) look interesting. No waffle maker though. That's going to put off 72.6% of the waffle-making public.
I like the look of the LEAF. It's not ugly or excessively "electric" looking. But you can forget the battery leasing idea. $10,000 for their 24kw/h battery pack sounds a little excessive considering it's going to be mass produced. That's $416 per kw/h.
BYD have got their battery pricing under $300 per kw/h with Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries so I wonder if you could supply your own batteries for the LEAF. I'm guessing that would void every warranty imaginable though...
quote comment add new comment
At 57:33
ZENN did *NOT* spend $750M for a supercapacitor. To date, they have paid EEStor $2M on third party verified technical milestones. Only the final $500K milestone payment remains outstanding. It is for *delivery* of third-party verified production quality 15 kWh EESU which meets the agreed upon operating parameters.
In addition, ZENN has invested in EEStor equity. In April, 2007, they bought their initial 3.8% of EEStor for $2.5M. And very recently another $5M to boost their share to 10.7% of EEStor.
$7.5M, if you wish to say so. NOT $750M.
And, SunMotors is working on establishing a new assembly plant, in Massachusetts, instead of using the one in China?
Even thinking such a thing hurts their credibility.
As much as I wish it could happen, it's preposterous! Utter waste of nerve impulses, IMHO.
Likewise, I'm also sorry to say, putting PV on a car roof! Cute / highly distinguishing. But nutsoid expensive, inefficient and prone to damage / vandalism. And, will end up in the junkyard, at end of life? Or, salvageable?
So they have One car testing it in a parking lot. Hmmm.....
I also like how they skirt the issue of such a long range for an NEV.
I didn't like his answer about why toyota doesn't let the Solar Panel charge the batteries or lack there of.
15 miles from the solar panels? How about a demonstration for the Evcast listeners.
Field Trip to the parking lot!
About Volt. They derive 230 MPG city by excluding the battery energy and calculate using approx 45 mpg in charge sustaining mode. Essentially, if the car travels 100 miles, only 60 (100m - 40m) is factored into the mpg calculations. Electric miles come free apparently. Watch as the fuel numbers drop as the electric/gasoline-electric blend becomes further disproportionate.
Total Distance Generator Gallons MPG
40 miles 0 0 infinite
50 miles 10 miles .22 (227)
60 miles 20 miles .44 136
70 miles 30 miles .66 106
100 miles 50 miles 1.1 90
200 miles 160 miles 3.5 57
300 miles 260 miles 5.7 52
I finally got a response from Jay Friedland about Pluggin America's work on making Nimh batteries more available. Yeah li batteries are in vogue but nimh are cheaper per KWh. Nimh batteries may be the key to affordable EVs for the masses.
"
Hey Fred,
With the acquisition of Cobasys by Bosch and Samsung, we think there may be a new opportunity for NiMH. Plug In America is also looking for a pro bono patent attorney who can help us both follow and advocate in this critical patent arena, so... if you know anyone please send them our way!Thanks,- Jay"
Bo, Ryan--
Thanks-- this was a very "tight" EVcast-- lots of data on EVs, and nothing but. It sounded almost like an network evening news commentary, all meat, no fluff. I particularly appreciated the breakdown on Volt's 230 mpg claims. We gotta keep GM's marketing team hontest.
Since the real success and the real cost of an EV will depend largely on battery cost, I would greatly appreciate timely info on such thngs as the STAIR (St Andrews Air) battery, the Micro Bubble Technology battery and any other such storage technologies that may increase the energy density and reduce costs.
Hi Bo,
Thank you for having Sunmotor on your EVCAST. It was a pleasure talking to you and Ryan.
For those of you haven't seen the Sunmotor Coupe DX, you can see it here on our short demo on ' Youtube'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNvC6cGsVYE
Sincerely
Russell Durham
Assistant Director
Sunmotor Group
I love this car. Wish it was full speed now.
Also, the pv panel they are using is probably only 12% efficient. If somehow they could use a sunpower panel, they would get 21% efficiency. A spectrolab might be 30%.
The sunmotor.us website has been down for at least 2 days. Is there another website?
sunmotor.us does not work with mozilla.
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230 MPG for the Chevy Volt
Since GM didn’t disclose the exact methodology we have to do a little guessing to see where they are coming from. Over the time period of a week, a person probably makes a number of short trips. If the trips are less than 40 miles, the batteries can be recharged and no gasoline is consumed. But some of the traveling over the course of the week would exceed 40 miles and so the gasoline engine would turn on.
So making a few assumptions, a figure of 230 MPG can be obtain
180 miles/week using electricity only
50 miles/week using gasoline
Assuming a 50 MPG gasoline powered mode, the car travels 230 miles and only consumes 1 gallon of gasoline.
But this is more than a little misleading. If only electricity was used, then the car gets infinite MPG. So another method is needed.
The Automotive X Prize calculated MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent) that looks at all sources of energy used in moving the vehicle. I will skip the details here, but using this method…
180 miles/week using 36 KWH (122,832 BTUs) of electricity 50 miles/week using 1 gallon of gasoline (116,090 BTUs)
Results in 112 MPGe which is still a pretty impressive number and includes some accounting for value of the electricity used.
Unfortunately even this calculation shows a slight bias in favor of electricity. If the electricity for the vehicle comes from solar or wind or hydro, then the calculation is probably OK. But if the electricity comes from coal or natural gas where only about 30% of the energy in the fuel is converted to electricity, then the MPGe number is very misleading.
GM should really stick to the story of having no tailpipe emissions for 40 miles per day and no consumption of foreign oil for 40 miles per day. These are wonderful achievements and don’t involve misleading mathematics. The Chevy Volt looks to be a great vehicle and should not be tarnished by marketing men.
MPGe (miles per gallon equivalent)
This is really not the right place for this, but I can't help myself. The MPGe concept is very nice and tries to place different forms of energy on a level playing field. For example, Diesel fuel contains more energy than gasoline an E85 Ethanol contains less energy than gasoline. So looking at MPG for these different fuels is misleading.
With MPGe more direct comparisons can be made so let's look at few vehicles that used different fuels.
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Chevy Impala
Gasoline 29 MPG --> 29 MPGe
E85 21 MPG --> 30 MPGe
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Mercedes ML350/ML320
Gasoline 21 MPG --> 21 MPGe
Diesel 24 MPG --> 22 MPGe
So for the Chevy Impala E85 and gasoline have very similar MPGe numbers. Also, for the Mercedes ML320 SUV, the advantage of diesel almost disappears when the MPG number is converted to MPGe.
On the other hand, I did find some Diesel vehicles that had impressive MPGe numbers.
Mercedes E350/E320
Gasoline 24 MPG --> 24 MPGe
Diesel 32 MPG --> 29 MPGe
VW Jetta
Gasoline 31 MPG --> 31 MPGe
Diesel 41 MPG --> 37 MPGe
Both of these vehicles show significant improvement in MPGe in the diesel versions of the vehicles.
So in the end, vehicles and engines must be engineered for high efficiency and we should not just assume Diesel is more efficient.
