Gas 2.0

Editor’s Note: Frank Weber is the Global Electric Vehicle Development Executive for General Motors. Here he discusses the Chevy Volt and the future of transportation. This post was written for Gas 2.0 and reposted at the GM FastLane Blog.

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak at EVS 24 in Norway about extended-range electric vehicles (E-REVs). Attendees and presenters were some of the brightest minds from around the world working to make electric vehicles an everyday reality, but frankly, I sensed many of those minds think electric vehicle development is better suited to small, entrepreneurial companies, some with little or no automotive experience.

There seems to be in the minds of many some sort of inherent conflict between being a large, traditional automaker and the ability to develop cars of the future.

I couldn’t disagree more with that sentiment, and GM is on a mission to prove it. Read the rest of this entry »

After the big three Detroit auto makers essentially had their rear-ends handed to them in a bag by Washington politicians last week, they have been scrambling to find ways to get the money they feel they need to stay alive — and their proposed solutions are making Tesla cringe.

Last year, when the US congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), a $25 billion fund called the “Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Incentive Program” (ATVM) was established to help new and existing auto makers re-tool their operations to bring next generation car technologies to market quickly. Just this month, the program started accepting applications for funds from interested parties.

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Poll results released by General Motors today clearly indicate that the majority of Americans think the government should provide bailout loans to the auto industry and that without those loans the “Big 3″ (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) will go bankrupt.

In a random survey of 804 American adults conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates and commissioned by General Motors (PDF), there is broad support for bailing out the the American auto industry — and even broader support of President-elect Obama’s plans to make sure “the American automobile industry continues to be able to operate.”

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Editors Note: This is an industry perspective guest post by Jo A. Borras, who works for the Florida-based high performance tuning company RENNtech.

A summer full of record gas prices has changed the automotive landscape forever, with changing consumer demands and buying habits forcing automakers to quickly bring more fuel-efficient vehicles to market ahead of larger, less-efficient trucks and SUVs.

These changes have also brought issues of energy conservation and environmental responsibility from the “back-burner” to the very forefront of future car design — but one question that has been largely ignored by the mainstream media is how these changes will affect car enthusiasts who usually care more about horsepower and acceleration than economy and emissions.

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Buckypaper is a material composed of carbon nanotubes. It is 10 times lighter and over 500 times stronger than steel and the “buckytubes” that make it up are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. It is predicted by futurists that this material will storm the auto and aviation industries.

One of the best ways to make transportation vehicles more energy efficient is to reduce their weight, so the commercialization of buckypaper promises lighter, super efficient and much stronger vehicles.

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Work commenced at the site of a $175 million electric car factory in Franklin, Kentucky, according to officials for Integrity Automotive, a joint venture to expand electric vehicle manufacturing in the USA for ZAP.

The State of Kentucky has suddenly jumped into the world of electric cars.  First in early August Governor Steve Beshear signed an executive order that allowed low speed vehicles on Kentucky roads with speed limits of 45 mph or less.  Soon thereafter the state developed a $48 million incentive package to encourage ZAP to build an electric car manufacturing plant in Kentucky.

ZAP’s vehicles are currently manufactured in China, but according to the company’s CEO Steve Schneider, the costs of logistics for ZAP have risen in recent years, particularly to ship vehicles from California to the East Coast.  A Kentucky manufacturing plant would help reduce that cost, he said.

They sure didn’t waste any time.  Construction equipment arrived at the site of the Wilkey North Industrial Park on Thursday September 11th, and a site contractor with a work crew have been mobilized to prepare the 200-plus acre site for rough grading, according Randall S. Waldman of Integrity Manufacturing. The goal of the project is a one million square foot factory for electric vehicles, a project with an estimated value of $100 million. The factory is expected to begin producing electric vehicles within 12 months and employ up to 1,000 people initially with the possibility of more in the future.

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General Motors Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, appearing on Capitol Hill, called on Congress to support advanced-battery development in the U.S., which he said lags far behind the government-supported development efforts in Japan and South Korea.

The lengthening lead Japan’s auto makers hold in securing supplies of advanced batteries to power the next generation of automobiles has become a rallying point for the U.S. auto industry in seeking at least $25 billion in government loans.
Over the past decade, Japan’s auto giants have been teaming up with its electronics companies, which have dominated global battery manufacturing for laptop computers, mobile phones and other products.  Now the American auto companies are playing catch-up.

Securing an adequate supply of batteries over the next few years has become a growing concern for auto makers everywhere. The U.S. industry is leery of depending too heavily on foreign battery makers allied with Japanese auto makers, for fear those suppliers would give priority to filling the orders of their Japanese partners.

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Back in July, Ford released the details of a new Fiesta it plans to begin selling this November. The new car is based on Ford’s ECOnetic platform and can get 63 mpg in the city and 73 mpg on the highway. So why is it only available in Europe? It’s a diesel, and Ford doesn’t think Americans will ever adopt diesel cars.

According to Businessweek, Ford lists a littany of excuses why they could never market this car in the US. Chief among these excuses is that they don’t think they could ever sell enough of them to make a profit. Ford says that in order to produce them for the US market they’d have to build a new plant and then make at least 350,000 of them a year.

If there’s no way to make a profit on these cars and Americans won’t buy them, why are so many European and Asian car makers bringing these new “clean diesels” to the U.S. starting next year? When I see news that Mercedes, Nissan, Volkswagen and even Honda are all building clean diesel cars with excellent fuel economy for the US market, Ford’s excuses start to seem pretty hollow.

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Editors Note: This guest post was contributed by Charley Territo, spokesperson for the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers, in an effort encourage better dialogue between the auto industry and the environmental movement. Charley also contributed a guest post on Grist on May 20. I asked him to weigh in on a question I’ve had for a long time: How can automakers like GM complain that consumers only want to buy big cars when they spend hundreds of thousands advertising brands like Hummer? Here is his response. Feel free to weigh in with your own comments below.

For years it’s been assumed that, using their superior marketing skills, automakers have the ability to trick consumers into buying SUVs and pickup trucks…when, in reality, the consumers really only
wanted to buy compact cars.  While that’s probably quite flattering to the marketing departments, it doesn’t have the important benefit of actually being correct.

Current events are now allowing people to see more clearly the greater force at work driving consumer demand: Gas prices. Read the rest of this entry »