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While the traditional fossil fuel vehicle is pretty much a dead weight when it’s not in use, electric cars offer promise of increased utility. Automakers have been on a roll finding – and implementing – novel ways of integrating the electric car into our lives. Ford’s foray into sustainable energy partnership with SunPower is one just positive step forward. On August 2nd, Nissan took a similarly bold step forward in increasing the utility of electric cars in our lives with the introduction of the “Leaf to Home” system.

The process uses the Leaf’s 24kWh (killowatt hour) battery to power a house. Through the system, the Leaf battery connects to the home power distribution panel using a special connector linked to the Leaf’s standard charging port. The power control system is a two way design that can be used to charge the Leaf conventionally, but in the advent of a brown or blackout, the Leaf’s battery returns electricity to the home. Designed for Japanese homes, which use an average of 12kWh of electricity a day, the Leaf to Home system would barely supply an energy voracious American home for a day (typical American homes suck down 30kWh of juice daily).

Nissan is working with commercial partners to produce the system, and expect production by the end of the year. With the recent disruption in electricity production in Japan as a result of the Tohuku Earthquake, and ensuing shutting down of nuclear power stations, Japanese households have been subjected to brownouts and blackouts with increasing frequency. Nissan hopes the Leaf to Home system can help alleviate the effect of these occurrences. Nissan also believes this two way system could also be beneficial in reducing overall household electricity consumption, providing energy back to the grid during peak demand during the day (if the car isn’t being used) and recharging the battery at night when demand is low. In conjunction with sustainable energy production methods such as solar, it could reduce a household’s demand to zero in certain circumstances.

Hopefully other manufacturers take heed of Nissan’s system and partner with other household energy providers to bring out more systems like this. By making the car become an integral part of the energy usage composition of a home, households can take a major step forward in reducing their energy consumption. Considering the number of households with cars, the impact could be significant. The downside to this system is how starkly consumptive American households are with electricity. Reducing our home consumption, adding renewable energy sources such as solar – and cleverly making our vehicles do more work than just burn energy could radically reshape domestic energy concerns. Of course the installation and construction of these systems means more jobs too. In this difficult economic climate, that’s something everyone can agree on.

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One of the great hopes behind electrified vehicles is reduced dependence of not only foreign oil, but all polluting energy sources. In a step towards that greater goal, Ford announced that they have teamed up with solar energy panel manufacturer SunPower. While not the first domestic manufacturer to team up with a solar energy provider (GM recently announced a $7.5million investment in Sunlogics), they are the first to provide a customer-centric solution towards decreased grid-dependence.

The fruit of the team up is a rooftop solar system designed to provide Focus Electric owners enough renewable energy to offset the electricity used for charging. The 2.5Kw SunPower system is projected to provide 3000 kilowatt hours of energy annually.

“Under the ‘Drive Green for Life’ program, Focus Electric owners can reduce their total cost of ownership by generating enough energy from their high efficiency SunPower rooftop solar system to offset the electricity required to charge the vehicle at night,” said Mike Tinskey, Ford director of Global Vehicle Electrification and Infrastructure. “It’s an eco-friendly solution that perfectly complements our plug-in products and other green initiatives.”

The panels are sized to provide approximately 1000 miles of driving for an average customer. Ford and SunPower intend the system to be an offset to customer’s charging needs, and would provide renewable energy back to the grid when they are charging during the day.

The SunPower E18 panel at the heart of the system is touted by the company as being 50% more efficient than competitive systems. The total panel conversion by the E18 panel is 18.5%, which makes it a competitive solution to most of its current competitors in the home solar market.

The complete SunPower solar system is offered at a base price of less than $10,000, after federal tax credits. Local and state rebates, along with other incentives, may drive the system cost down even more, depending on a customer’s location. Included in the purchase is a residential monitoring system, which includes the ability to track the performance of their solar system on the web or through an iPhone application.

For the coin consumers won’t be saving money in a direct comparison with just buying a gasoline powered Focus, but that isn’t the point. The goal of the project is to spur interest in home solar initiatives as being directly related to plug in driving. As the cost of solar systems continue to drop more of these home systems would make plug in motoring a truly green alternative.

SunPower has worked with other automakers in the past, putting the largest rooftop solar installation in North America on Toyota’s North American Part Center California.

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Perhaps the single greatest barrier to widespread adoption of plug-in automobiles is the time it takes to charge them.  We have looked into charging times in the past, and even with the most advanced infrastructure in place at charging stations, you are still looking at one hour or more to fully recharge your battery.  The automobile industry (and investors), however, have not been deterred, and many have pointed to a trend in developing lower-cost, more efficient rechargeable batteries.  Lately, it seems, their optimism has been warranted.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign have built a prototype battery that  can conceivably reduce charge times down to mere minutes.

Lithium-ion batteries, like all batteries, work by connecting two electrodes through an electrically conductive material — called an electrolyte.   When that battery is charging and discharging, negatively-charged electrons flow between each electrode while positively-charged ions flow to balance out the charges.  As the image to the right shows, lithium has recently become the material of choice due to the amount of energy it can store relative to its weight.  Nickel-metal hydride batteries are still in use, however, and come at a cheaper cost.

The breakthrough in this instance comes from increasing the surface area between the electrodes and the electrolyte: a critical factor in determining the recharging rate.  At the same time, they were able to maintain a large battery volume, a key attribute to storing maximum energy.  The researchers were able to accomplish this by starting off with a material made up of closely packed polystyrene spheres, each about one-millionth of a meter in diameter.  The gaps between the spheres were filled with nickel through a process called electrodeposition.  The porosity of this nickel-layer could be increased using electropolishing, creating a framework conducive for placing electric cathodes.

Both a nickel-metal hydride and a lithium-ion battery were created using this material, and in both cases the area of contact between the nickel, the electrolyte, and the cathodes were greatly increased.   The researchers claimed that they were able to re-charge a lithium-ion battery to 90% capacity in two minutes!  Furthermore, they say the increase in production costs to manufacture such a battery should only be 20-30% higher than current techniques, once these batteries start becoming mass produced.

The Future?

So, will these new batteries revolutionize plug-in cars?  The answer is not so simple.  The huge current that is necessary to charge a battery so quickly would require significant upgrades to a car’s electrics as well as to charging stations.  It is also uncertain whether these faster-charging batteries affect battery life.  These concerns aside, however, this could be a major step in the right direction.  Like we mentioned earlier, charge-times are a major barrier to customer adoption of plug-ins.   Charging overnight is fine — but wasting significant time at a charging station is most likely a deal-breaker.  If advances in battery technology such as this one shatter that barrier, the positives of electric cars might finally outweigh the negatives… which would indeed create a revolution.

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This year, the Nissan Leaf and the Ford Focus Electric will hit showroom floors across America, becoming the first mass-marketed all electric cars of the century. But they were not the first to be invented – the technology behind electric vehicles is actually much, much older than many people realize.

Electric Motors

The mid nineteenth century saw a steep rise in the study of electricity, with crude electric motors developed as early as 1828 by Hungarian Physicist Anyos Jedlik. His contemporaries with similar inventions included the British William Sturgeon and Americans Emily and Thomas Davenport. At the time, trains were widely used, and most electric vehicle concepts came in the form of passenger trains that ran on electrified rails. An electrified rail was needed, because batteries were not yet rechargeable. The AC electric motor most commonly used today was invented by the visionary Nikola Tesla in 1888. Today, a small electric car firm in California is named after him.

Batteries

In 1859, French inventor Gaston Plante produced the first rechargeable, lead-acid battery by taking two thin sheets of lead, rolling them up with a sheet of linen, and submerging them in a glass jar of acid. Another French inventor, Camille Alphonse Faure, developed a more reliable model in 1881, and this was widely used in electric cars of the day.

Europe

England and France were quickest to embrace electric car technology. In 1867, Austrian inventor Franz Kravogl unveiled an electric motorcycle at the World Exposition in Paris. Paris also saw the debut of French inventor Gustave Trouve’s three-wheeled electric automobile at the 1881 International Exhibition of Electricity. By the end of the century, European electrics were the fastest vehicles on the planet. In 1899, engineer Camille Jenatzy set a new land speed record of sixty-five miles an hour in his rocket-shaped electric car, Jamais Contente. Around this time, Ferdinand Porsche developed a record-setting electric automobile with all-wheel drive. Each wheel was powered by an individual electric motor. Ironically, this is how many electric and hybrid concepts are designed today.

America

The aforementioned American scientists Emily and Thomas Davenport were the first in putting an electric motor into a car, but their automotive and industrial motors required non-rechargeable batteries at the time, and the Davenports went bankrupt. In 1891, William Morrison developed an electric, six-seat wagon. It’s top speed? Fourteen miles an hour. Electric firms like Columbia and Edison took up electric car projects in the following years. Edison was a close friend of Henry Ford, and Ford promised an Edison powered electric vehicle, but the project lost momentum when a dispute over battery use arose.

Worldwide, electric car projects have lain mostly dormant for the better part of a century. This may be the year they return in force.

Miles Walker is a freelance writer and blogger who usually compares car insurance deals over at CarinsuranceComparison.Org.

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REVA, an automobile company based in Bangalore, India, is preparing to launch its own plug-in models, except with a twist.  Shown off at last year’s Frankfurt Motor Show, and scheduled for production early this year, the NXR, a 3-door, four-seater hatchback, will have a range of about 100 miles and a top speed of 65 mph.  The NXG (shown above) will sport a top speed of 80 mph and a range of 125 miles.  Both of these car models will feature REVive, a reserve-charging technology.

According to key experts in the company, REVA will be adding a unique technology to its plug-in cars, which will be designed to combat “range anxiety”.  This phenomenon arises when motorists worry that their car will run out of charge mid-way through their journey — or perhaps on their way to a charging station. The REVive telematics™ feature will operate like an “invisible reserve fuel tank”, enabling drivers to get their reserve battery power remotely activated during an electricity crisis on the road.  In such a situation, drivers would need to call or text-message REVA for an immediate top-up, however, remotely.

This idea might sound gimmicky at first, however it is meant to address a key issue with plug-in vehicles: the lack of charging infrastructure.  Knowing that there is “spare fuel” in your vehicle might be an incentive to purchase a plug-in.  However, the actual usefulness of this technology will depend on motorists behavior.  The instant they start thinking of this extra charge as part of their normal battery life, its function will be worthless.  Granted, having to text message your auto manufacturer in order to continue to operate your vehicle, and the embarassment it might cause when others are inside, might be enough of a hassle so the technology is not misused.

Prices for the REVA NXR start at $9,995 for the lead-acid battery version and $14,995 for the lithium-ion version.

About Reva:

REVA Electric Car Company is a Bangalore-based car manufacturer. It is a venture of AEV LLC of California and Maini Group of India, which is supported by US investors such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson and the Global Environment Fund.

Launching its 1st electric car in 2001, the company is capable of manufacturing around 30,000 cars in a year at its factory in Bangalore.  They are developing a new plant in Bangalore for an “ultra-low carbon” motor vehicle. This plant will have the capacity to produce an extra 30,000 units per year.

REVA operates in a country with a population that is becoming more affluent and highly invests in clean-energy vehicles.

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Hitachi, Japan’s largest industrial electronics manufacturer, is devoting significant resources to capture the global car battery market.   Already, they are able to boast of the 100,000 hybrid car order that GM has placed for its lithium-ion batteries.  But, of course, that is not enough.   The Tokyo-based corporation is ramping up its capacity in order to accommodate the needs of 700,000 electric vehicles a year, a gain of 600%.

The Nikkei Business Daily has estimated the expansion costs at between $200 and $300 million.   The completion date would be somewhere around 2015, a time when many more plug-in models are set to hit the road.  The announcement is probably designed to instill confidence in electric-car manufacturers that Hitachi is taking its battery division seriously and will be ready and able to meet future demand.

The company plans on producing two new types of lithium-ion batteries for “next-generation” hybrid vehicles.   The design changes will reflect the industry goal of increased power storage with a reduction in weight and size.   And with many adept battery manufacturers all clamoring for the reputation of providing high quality at a discounted price, the increased production is sure to provide Hitachi with the logistical and engineering experience necessary to emerge as a leader.

Hitachi’s other clients for lithium-ion batteries include Isuzu Motors and Mitsubishi.   They are targeting sales of $1.04 billion by the year 2015 — when global sales of electric-car batteries are expected to surpass $6 billion, according to Nikkei.

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