Electric vehicles

NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:25 a.m. PDT (12:25 p.m. EDT) Friday to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter.

The recent increase in range of typical pure electric vehicles from 160 km/100 miles to 240 km/150 miles is due to many small but significant advances and there are many more of these to come. One is solar protection.

Toyota leverages technology across more of the electric vehicle market.

The ubitricity Mobile Metering concept rethinks infrastructure solutions for electric vehicles and will revolutionize EV charging. Rather than installing metering and communication technology inside every single charging point, metering and billing is processed by electronics inside the car or the charging cable. Charging points are reduced to simple and highly cost-efficient system sockets that can be installed easily and enable users to charge power from renewable energies wherever they chose to park their EV - at home, at work or in other private or public parking spaces.

Chevrolet is harnessing the power of the sun by installing solar-powered electric charging stations at dealerships in North America.

On July 27 2011, HaloIPT announced a new strategic partnership with Drayson Racing Technologies, the green R&D racing organization. It was founded by Lord Drayson, former UK Minister for Science and Innovation. The partnership intends to use HaloIPT's unique wireless charging technology to power high-performance cars as they race around the track. This partnership, which develops and races green motorsport technology, including electric vehicles (EV), aims to pioneer the deployment of dynamic (in-motion) charging of zero emission electric vehicles. The racing cars, fitted with HaloIPT technology, will pick up power wirelessly from transmitters buried under the surface of the road or race track; transferring power directly to the vehicle's electric battery, ensuring that the vehicle receives constant charging on the move.

Chevrolet is harnessing the power of the sun to install solar-powered electric charging stations for its Volts at dealerships in North America.

Back in March IDTechEx reported on the work of DLR who had recently finished development on a fuel cell-powered electric nose wheel. The system is now out of the laboratory and onto the runway for real-world testing in collaboration with Airbus.

Billions of dollars have been spent on fuel cells over the last few decades with few commercial successes as a result. US Energy Secretary Steven Chu is reportedly against them as a major option in electric vehicles: certainly he ensured that the Obama EV billions were not directed that way. However, the two US rulemaking bodies, EPA and NHTSA, are now considering incentives for electric vehicles, including fuel cell vehicles.

Last week IDTechEx reported on work at Stanford University tackling the issues of low energy and power densities in lithium-ion batteries using sulphur particles. Now another significant problem associated with electric vehicle batteries is being explored by US based company Leyden Energy by exchanging traditional battery chemistries.

Just 215 pure electric cars were bought under a UK Government scheme to encourage the take-up of green vehicles in its second three months of operation compared to 465 in the first three months.

Led by the Japanese and with Hyundai of Korea, the Europeans and the Americans coming up fast, we are in the decade of the hybrid vehicle, with much more being spent on them than on pure electric vehicles. This is because traction batteries alone cannot affordably provide sufficient range in most of the large applications by land, sea or air.

Earlier this month the British journal //Nature Geoscience// published an article revealing the discovery of rare earth mineral deposits by Japanese scientists on the Pacific Ocean seabed. The scientists estimate this discovery //could provide one-fifth of the current annual world consumption// of rare earth elements often used in green technolgies.

We attended the Plug In 2011 event in Raleigh North Carolina last week. In contrast to the successful IDTechEx event }}Electric Vehicles Land Sea Air | http://www.idtechex.com/electric-vehicles-europe-11/}} event in Stuttgart Germany, this had the more typical focus of cars. Organised by the Electric Power Research Institute and with many prestigious sponsors, it was a great success with over 600 attending on a given day excluding the public openings.

ECOtality, Inc., a leader in clean electric transportation and storage technologies, announced recently a partnership with car2go N.A. LLC, a subsidiary of Daimler North America Corporation, to provide electric vehicle charging infrastructure to support the first 100-percent electric car sharing program in North America. With plans for approximately 300 smart for two electric drive vehicles, the program in San Diego represents the largest fleet of EVs in the United States.

Lithium batteries have become ubiquitous in modern society. More than likely, every house has several in the different portable electronic devices it's equipped with. Although there's been tremendous performance improvements in recent years, lithium batteries are still not fully up to the demanding task of powering the next generation of electric vehicles due to low energy and power densities.

Based on the same theory that currently enables consumers to wirelessly charge toothbrushes and cell phones, EDL has expanded the technology to levels and efficiencies that are unprecedented.

The University of Texas at Austin has announced an agreement with Canada-based Hydro-Quebec for lithium-ion material technology invented and patented by Dr. John Goodenough, a world-renowned scientist at the university.

Fuel cells were originally considered to be replacements for internal combustion engines used in traditional vehicles and replacements for traction batteries used in pure electric vehicles. Unfortunately, they have proved woefully incapable of efficiently and economically supporting the frequent load changes of vehicle traction. Many of them had a troublesome start up time and problems of life and reliability as well. Thus building ever larger fuel cells was pursued from about 1991 to 2001 but it ended in tears.

Clarian Laboratories in Seattle USA is developing an internal combustion range extender that generates electricity despite having no drive shaft. It has other potential uses as a reliable small source of electricity running on a choice of fuels. In EV terms, this is something of a crossover product from piston engines used in second generation range extenders and gas turbines and fuel cells in third generation range extenders.