EDTA Conference & Exposition Report

9/28/04 by Mark E. Hanson Copyright 2004

Executive Summary:

Overall there were incremental improvements in batteries, super caps and drive train efficiencies, which have been fairly consistent with this industry. Lithium batteries, capacitors and power electronic components saw cost reductions realized from spring boarding off of other markets. That will be the long-term success of the industry to alleviate the chicken and egg syndrome. By using high volume laptop computers like Electrovaya has done for Lithium batteries or “D” battery enclosures as Maxwell has done for Ultra caps, results in cost reduction due to volume sales. The EV industry has had low volume sales and profit margins.

The love fest the government and the auto industry has recently had with hydrogen based fuel cells has been tempered by the realization that with hydrogen as an energy carrier, the conversion electrolysis process from renewable energy (the final goal), solar-wind or electricity is 50% whereas transmission lines exhibit 8% losses for BEV’s. This was brought out in a University of Washington study this year pointing out “laws of physics” reality assessment of the hydrogen fuel cell.  Presently Air Products (main supplier of hydrogen) etc. extracts H2 from natural gas with a 30% loss and there are already CNG vehicles available with similar overall well-to-wheels 20% efficiency. H2 must be compressed to 10k PSI to have adequate >150mile range which reduces efficiency further. Present cost of H2 has been 2X of gas per gallon equivalent at $4.00 for hydrogen and the PEM fuel cell vehicles are orders of magnitude more expensive than presently available clean CNG alt-fuel vehicles, EV’s and hybrids. Thus there will be more a mix of technologies as time moves on, with battery EV’s, hybrids, CNG and some expensive fuel cell vehicles, not a total shift to hydrogen that has been reported in the media recently.

It was noted that the political winds directly affect this industry with the energy bill stalled in congress. Removal of California’s CARB EV requirements by the auto industry and federal government has resulted in the crushing of GM EV-1’s, Ford’s Think EV’s and RAV4’s. This conference has been the smallest in recent years due to the rollback of these vehicles and clean air requirements. It was easier therefore to spend more time with individual manufacturers.

Important Key points noted by the EDTA are that transportation accounts for 66% of all oil consumed in the US. Over 50% of U.S. oil is imported from OPEC producers and the U.S. spends $200,000 on foreign oil every minute.

 The conference was held at the Gaylord Resort in Orlando, Florida September 21-23, 2004. I picked some of the highlights in this three-day conference that showed growth over the previous year.

Technical Improvements:

Drives:

Edward Moore with ENOVA, a California based drive systems company, developed a new series of hybrid drive systems for tractor-trailers. The drive motor & control is for a 60kW diesel-electric system and is claimed to reduce fuel consumption by 60% in large trucks. Peak power drive is up to 240kW on acceleration.

Richard Kasper with GEM NEV’s a subsidiary of Daimler-Chrysler demo’d the E2 two passenger and E4 four passenger 25mph vehicles. Improvements for this year included double A arm front suspension, digital drive display, battery indicator and an improved DC converter. They are tested at Arizona proving grounds and have sold 28k to date. I asked him if since they were under Chrysler if that was the reason they didn’t want to produce a higher speed competitive EV. He agreed and said that Chrysler kept GEM to meet California mandates but not to compete with their higher speed gas vehicles.

Ultra caps:

Bob Maher with Maxwell technologies based in San Diego develops ultra caps with a 10-20 year life. The newest addition is the 350F “D” cell at 2.5V. This packaging reduces cost from 1cent to 1/2cent per Farad this year. The cells are usually prepackaged in 50V packs. The primary application is to soak up the initial current surge required on acceleration thus extending range by 25% in a typical lead-acid EV. I did a quick calculation on my EV that would need 2600F large beer-can ultra caps at 2.5V or 2.7V surge for 70 cells at 155V max charge voltage on a 120V system for $100 each x 70 = $7K to improve range by 25%.

Chargers and Drives:

Deborah Jelen with Aerovironment went over this prolific company’s products. The company was founded by inventor Paul McCready 32 years ago and presently has 300 employees. They have developed the Helios unmanned aircraft for NASA and the original pterodactyl human powered airplane that is at the Smithsonian. Alan Coconi developed the Impact or EV-1 there. They have EV vehicle test equipment, the ABC-5 and DLS 250, AC load simulator, 5kw DC rack mount load testers and fast chargers for forklifts.  Aerovironment also has wind and solar control equipment products.

Reuven Koter with Eldre Corporation showed his company’s laminated buss designs fro EV’s and power electronics applications.

Gary Gloceri with WaveCrest showed their electric bikes, motorcycle and electric roadster car. Only the electric bike military 30mph and commercial 20mph versions are in production. I asked about the car and motorcycle and found that they are not intended for production, only demo vehicles to sell their drive systems (similar to UQM technologies, Inc.) WaveCrest has in-wheel BLDC motors, which are more efficient than having the extra hardware (transmission-differential) that is conventionally required and allows for more inside vehicle room as well. They have reduced their unsprung weight to acceptable levels he claimed. However, the major manufacturers, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Honda have their own engineers and generally develop their own drive systems, the NIH (not invented here) syndrome.

Customer Roundtable:

NY Power Authority and US Air Force, and Martin County representatives shared their perspective using electric drive vehicles in their fleets. EDTA president Brian Wynne moderated the discussions.

Gene Zeltmann with the NY Power Authority was appointed in 02 and believes in a mix of technologies, fuel cells, electrics, hybrids and photovoltaic generation to relieve our 60% foreign oil dependence for transportation and (northeast-diesel) heating. He noted that SUV’s consume more oil and 2 million were sold in China last year resulting in energy shortages. New York governor Pataki issued an executive order for lean fuel vehicles and clean fuel vehicles. New York has the largest state owned electric utility. More than 700 fleet state EV and Hybrid vehicles have been put in service with more than 3 million miles traveled. Ford’s Think EV was a highly successful program used for to & from trains and electric subways. Ford has now abandoned production. New York has implemented 30 electric Postal Vans giving new meaning to the concept of “Email”. With 325 hybrid busses it has the largest fleet in the country. Electric school busses are now being implemented. Plug-In hybrids would be the ultimate solution for better range, reduced petroleum use, and clean operation.

Rick Ruvolo with San Francisco’s Clean Air Coalition started it in the 1980’s to purchase clean vehicles and reduce dependence on foreign oil. He noted that we haven’t learned our lesson from the first gulf oil war and are still learning in the second war in Iraq. San Francisco has 700 clean vehicles and 57% are electric. He worked to develop the 10% ZEV requirement, which would help our energy security that has been overturned. There is a high demand for EV’s and hybrids but there aren’t many or any products to choose from. There are not enough products available to meet demand and the commitment to purchase these vehicles is solid he noted. After spending millions on electric infrastructure, (charging stations), the manufacturers pulled out. “We could buy 100’s of patrol vehicles if they existed”, he said. “We want today’s solutions and hydrogen will be a piece of the puzzle but don’t want to be distracted by future promises. He would like a return of battery electrics and more hybrids for fuel economy and emissions.

Carl Perrazzola with Robins Air Force Base works with advance power, fuel cells, electric drives, batteries, motors, distributed generation, solar photovoltaic and hydrogen generation. The air force has 500 dual fuel vehicles in use. Average cost to get a gallon of JP8 jet fuel into the theater of operations (aka war) is $400 he noted. By using more efficient vehicles this will have a large impact on costs. He requested to the audience of design engineers to keep the US Air Force informed of new technologies. With the upcoming election, we need funding for renewable energy.

Robert Crowder, sheriff with Martin County in Florida spoke about law enforcement needs in clean vehicles. He started using hybrids in 01’ when he noticed that grayish-orange air is not just limited to California anymore. His vehicle fleet of 300 vehicles is fuel budgeted 12-18 months in advance so increases in fuel costs have a great effect on operations. He liked the Prius with 23 in service for administration, civil division, community programs, correction and patrolling but not for high-speed chase vehicles. Reduced fuel consumption by 60% over previous vehicles used has helped his budget. “We are stewards of the environment and taxpayer’s money”, he said. He also noticed that hybrids are excellent for gated communities and stop & go city traffic where they are preferred.

Opening Plenary:

At the opening plenary session Brian Wynne head of the EDTA noted that we need government as a partner and have been riding on the back of a Dinosaur and now need to ride on the back of an electron. Government needs to provide more incentives to the marketplace, education and regulation. Virginia and California provide HOV lanes to hybrids for incentives. The ZEV mandate and CAFÉ pushed EV’s in the 90’s. NHTSE is looking at crash standards for compressed H2 vehicles.  Educators provide to the public training and emergency responders in H2 vehicle accidents.

Bernard Faultrier from Monaco talked about European EV’s available such as Citroen’s Berlingo used in France, Italy, Switzerland and Monaco. Saft developed the Ni-Cad for their EV’s. France has an electric Renault and Peugot. Italy has an electric Fiat in use. It was noted that the removal of the California EV incentive by our government has put a damper on the EV industry. We need more indirect subsides and tax incentives.  He noted that we are at a turning point with high petrol prices and public incentives and though that Lithium-Ion polymer was the most long-term promising battery technology. He pointed out that the Japanese are the technology production forerunners and will accelerate hybrids & EV’s.

Some Key Speakers from the three tracks:

Lee Slezak with DOE’s Freedom Car noted that we were (a few years ago) sending $2 billion per week out of the country and now $4 billion to support our 63% foreign oil usage. He noted that the PNGV 80mpg car initiative was cancelled and funding for the hydrogen fuel cell was favored (by the present administration).

Alan Bedwell with the State of Florida noted how oil and electric supplies can be disrupted in hurricanes and how alternatives would be desirable. “Using hydrogen and alt fueled vehicles will help”, he said. These technologies will help with growth and jobs. These new businesses keep our environment clean, which reduces health costs. Economic security is at risk with an oil-based economy. There was a run on gas by 3X in the last several hurricanes. Hybrids can take people twice as far per gallon. Government tends to promote these vehicles but ignores its’ own advice. This state now requires hybrid vehicles to be purchased for its’ fleets to create a market “pull”. Hybrids should be limited to passenger cars and extended to diesel hybrids for greatest fuel efficiency. Florida was the recipient of the “Evisionary Award”.

Air Products’ Richard Goodstein spoke about his hydrogen supplier company (largest company supplier), which supplies 50% of the requirements for hydrogen and NASA’s fuel cells. Air Products is a $6 billion global company that uses natural gas to produce H2 gas with 70% conversion efficiency. Presently H2 is used for oil refineries to make clean burn gasoline. H2 can also be made from wind or solar. (I noted that 50% conversion electrolysis efficiency from electricity is why it is not converted in this manner). Fueling with compressed H2 is easy to do at the pump (with a properly designed sealed nozzle like CNG). He noted that energy legislation has been staled in congress and we need tax incentives and vehicles may get down to $500k by 2012. He said, “Republicans are reluctant to promote energy efficiency”.  He then put up a comparison between the two candidates showing how the policies directly affect us.  Under Bush: Hydrogen spending will be increased as noted in the State of the Union speech.  Under Kerry: “Since he is not beholding to oil companies,” he said, there would be more funding for a mix of technologies and tax incentives for EV’s and hybrids. He noted that Wall Street promotes him (fiscal responsibility). (Kerry promised to increase renewable energy useage by 20% over his term through incentives, jobs).  Some statements then came from the audience. Presently H2 is $4 per gallon equivalent and can be used where pure EV’s can’t for long distances. Another noted that even though 80% of daily driving is <50 miles, the public perception is to purchase a vehicle that must have 300 miles per charge or H2. Goodstein noted that natural gas conversion produced Co2 but was a wash compared to direct burning CNG. Bill Moore with EV World noted that there is no interest or capitol available for Biogen H2.

Jake Plante with the FAA noted that for airport transports, 85% are still gas or diesel. Ten percent are electric and five percent are CNG. He thought there is a huge opportunity for more electrics in this area.

H2 has half the energy density of natural gas and must be compressed to 10k psi to get 300 mile required range. But H2 has 2X the burn efficiency of natural gas in direct burn. (So I noticed that it’s efficiency wells-to-wheels wash either way).

Patrice Dupont with TM4 is making an integrated traction system for sale to OEM’s similar to other suppliers like UQM and WaveCrest. It has a 40kw nominal power, 50 kW peak. The motor generator and controls can be used in a hybrid car for a motor-wheel type configuration. The unsprung weight is 21kg, which is good for the Peugeot vehicle tested.

Tim Fehr with Raser technologies talked about his AC Induction motors called the Symetron which he claimed >92% compared to the Siemens 90% and the Prius at 90%. It is a pancake AC induction radial motor. He said his actual method of improving efficiencies could not be mentioned. (Finer, more expensive machining resulting in a smaller air gap between the stator and rotor I noted generally increases motor efficiencies).

Don Francis with Georgia Power noted that “the news of the death of the battery powered EV may be a bit premature”.  Chris Washburn with Wavecrest went on to talk about his company’s hub motors/controls for sale. The high performance Ebike factory in Dulles, VA has 150 employees and was founded by two Russian scientists four years ago. They want to supply industrial drives/ wheel motors in the 1 RPM-1500RPM range with an adaptive BLDC PM motor controlled with linear torque over the entire range. Most will be sold to the transportation market and stealth military vehicles. On the Ebike the motor control and motor are in the rear hub and the NIMH battery is in the front stationary hub.  The standard M750 bike is 20 mph but the military version can be tweaked up to 45 mph. Both had a 20-mile range.

Rick Kasper of GEM (Chrysler) talked about his 25 mph NEV and has sold 21K from 01-04. They now have four products.  Operating at 72V with Trojan 30XHP batteries. Or maintenance free batteries if needed. (I noticed that the maintenance free last about ½ as long on the battery manufacturer supplied data). They increased the track width and have better steering this year I noticed while driving it. They noted that there are 11000NEV’s in California and the average person takes 8 trips a day 3 miles or less. Rick mentioned that they are a niche market with low volumes and return on investment was adequate.

Sankar Das Gupta, Electrovaya CEO in Ontario Canada partnered with Microsoft to use their Lithium-Ion Super Polymer cells in Laptops to leverage volume production in order to drive the cost down for EV’s.  He said the typical range in an EV is 150-200 miles with his batteries and cost will come down after volume production in laptop computers. Electrovaya has fault tolerant cell failure which the additional battery monitoring electronics bypasses the offending cell. (It would also have to alert the driver prior to charge or compensate the charger I would think). Life is 100K miles or 7 years he claims. (He said they were low cost but when I asked for some to replace my 14kWh 120V pack he said I couldn’t afford it). Hopefully they’ll be more cost effective in the future as commercial use increases. They are at 220wh/kg whereas lead acid is 50 wh/kg, a huge improvement. He said they have licked the safety issue for lithium fires. In tablet PC use, they are seeing 9 hours vs. 3 hours of run time. They have a Cami-Suzuki econo test car, which he said would be in the $50-70k price range. (A bit high for my level of “economy”.)

Rich Schaum with Wavecrest tested their wheel motors at 48V with a 70mph speed showing that their low voltage wheel motors can operate efficiently at a safe voltage and deliver substantial power in a Spark Mercedes vehicle. They used Matlab and Simulink to develop their drive/motor and partnered with Emerson Electric for product development. Unsprung weight is the biggest challenge with wheel motors and they have achieved 2kW per KG, which is adequate for vehicle handling.

After comparing these technologies above I checked with Richard Smith of Maxwell Technologies to compare their ultra caps to battery statistics for combinational usage. Energy storage in their ultra cap is 1/10^th that of lead acid batteries but 10Kw per KG for a huge power storage. The result is they will never replace batteries but smooth acceleration current so that range and battery life are increased by 25% as mentioned previously. Besides EV’s, wind, consumer wattmeters, digital cameras, fuel cells and forklifts are good applications for ultra caps. Fuel cells can be decreased by a factor of four when used with 90F of ultra caps on a GEM test vehicle he claimed. A nominal 10-second acceleration rate is calculated for optimum performance, which on my vehicle would be 70 beer-can cells 2.5V (2.7V surge), 2600F, and 155V for a 120V pack.

At the closing plenary, Bob Stempel, formerly CEO of GM and now Ovonics was the moderator. Honda (who develops there own components and subassemblies) had Gunnar Lindstrom, marketing manager talk about their environmentally friendly products. They have developed EV Jet skies, Accord SULEV and quiet/clean 4-stroke marine outboards. With the cost of oil being a dinner table discussion and energy security in the general psyche, Honda’s goal is fuel efficiency with the variable cylinder management system cutting back to 3-cylinders as needed. The Civic GX (NGV) car is presently available. Honda said they have “PHIL” an H2 home H2 generator that has Natural Gas as it’s input with 70% efficiency H2 as the output. The unit hangs on a garage wall.

Lawrence J. Oswald, Director of GEM noted that innovation must matter and customers make the choice, so the product must make business sense. Customers rated from 1^st to last, reliability, cost, fuel efficiency and environment last. He noted that with GEM NEV owners, that they used 15% less fuel and had 2-3 less cold starts resulting in 50% less regulated emissions. He noted that a plug-in diesel hybrid would be the ultimate in fuel efficiency. (A 3-cylinder diesel Kubota tractor engine in a British Sprite will get 80mpg by itself for example similar to the VW Lupo).

Ford has a light hybrid Escape SUV that gets 35mpg using previously licensed Prius technology and GM had a truck with a contractor DC-AC inverter from 36V battery. Ken Stewart with GM mentioned that 88% of the world does not have an automobile and that cars will double by 2020 due to population growth and increased per capita income. Hybrid buses save 60% over conventional buses. Garbage trucks make the best hybrids he pointed out due to the stop & go driving. He advocated home electrolysis H2 conversion units similar to Honda’s but at 50% conversion efficiency they may not happen.

Toyota’s Ed LaRocque indicated that the Prius sold 100k since 2000 in the US and will double next year. Volumes will be 440K by 08’ and 2M by 2012. It was noted with exorbitant fuel cell costs that FC buses make the most sense with a 7-year payback possible when they go into operation. Ford noted that H2 direct combustion would probably occur to produce a cost effective vehicle. They are not sure if customers will stay with hybrids or pay a premium for FC vehicles so they will have both available. Plug-in hybrids with a 30-mile range would be great but it increases costs for additional batteries and a series hybrid (bigger motors) as opposed to a parallel hybrid where both motors share for acceleration (but can’t be plugged in). Toyota will maintain its’ 100k 7-year warranty. Toyota noted that the government must buy the vehicles it wants others to buy to get the industry moving along.

Thanks to Jennifer Watts and the EDTA folk’s for putting on a great conference.