Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 21, 2013
The XL1. Click to enlarge. Volkswagen has confirmed that its XL1 Super Efficient Vehicle, featuring fuel consumption of 0.9 l/100 km (approx. 261 mpg US), will go into limited production at the company’s Osnabrück factory in Germany. The plug-in diesel-electric hybrid, which Volkswagen will showcase at the Geneva show, can cover a distance of up to 50 km (31 miles) in all-electric mode.
Green Car Reports
FEBRUARY 8, 2013
Remember the world's first all-electric monster truck? If you're at the AutoRama Car Show in Kansas City, Missouri this weekend, you'll be able to see it in action. We're told it'll be "participating in two car-crush demonstrations per day", which sounds like a polite way of saying it'll be causing total mechanical carnage as it pulverises a.
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National Green Transportation
FEBRUARY 11, 2013
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is blasting an NY Times reporter over what appears to be a shoddy Tesla Model S test drive report last weekend. Musk's twitter posts on Monday call the article, by John Broder.
Green Cars News
FEBRUARY 12, 2013
Buying an automatic instead of a manual car often come at the expense of fuel economy and emissions. But not if you buy a Volvo. The Swedish carmaker has been hard at work reducing the emissions and improving the fuel economy of its models. That includes ensuring that automatic models deliver the same economy as [.].
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Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 21, 2013
Total US petroleum deliveries (a measure of demand) were down 1.7% for January against the same month a year ago to just under 18 million barrels per day—the lowest level for the month in 18 years, according to figures from the American Petroleum Institute (API). The January numbers reprise last year’s theme of weak demand. This isn’t surprising given an economy that’s still treading water.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 5, 2013
UPS announced the deployment of 100 fully electric commercial vehicles that will be delivering packages around the state. The vehicles were manufactured in Stockton, California by Electric Vehicles International ( EVI ). ( Earlier post.). These UPS electric trucks will reduce the consumption of conventional motor fuel by approximately 126,000 gallons per year.
EV Driven brings together the best content on electric vehicles from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 7, 2013
California Governor Jerry Brown’s Office and state agencies issued a 2013 Zero-emission Vehicle (ZEV) Action Plan. The Action Plan follows on Governor Brown’s Executive Order (B-16-2012) released March 2012, which set required milestones for state government to enable 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on California roadways by 2025. ( Earlier post.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Electrochemical performance of the modified hollow carbon nanofiber cathode. (a) Specific capacities of the PVP modified sulfur cathode at C/5, C/2 and 1C cycling rates. (b) Comparison of cycling performance at C/2 with and without the PVP modification. Credit: ACS, Zheng et al. Click to enlarge. Lithium sulfur batteries are of great interest due to their high specific energy and relatively low cost (e.g., earlier post ).
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 4, 2013
Achates Power says that its 2-stroke OP engine offers higher best point brake thermal efficiency than diesel or gasoline engines. Source: Achates Power. Click to enlarge. In December 2012, the US Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) awarded Achates Power, Inc., developer of a two-stroke, compression-ignition (CI) opposed-piston (OP) engine, and AVL Powertrain Engineering, Inc. a $4.9-million contract for design and construction of the Next-Generation Combat
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
Global sales of the Nissan LEAF EV since its introduction in December 2010 have passed the 50,000 mark. The owners of Nissan LEAF around the world have now covered a total distance of more than 260 million km (162 million miles). The highest mileage LEAF globally has been a Japanese customer who has covered more than 175,000 km (109,000 miles) in a car that has only been on sale for two years.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 7, 2013
A comprehensive assessment of black-carbon climate forcing accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres estimates that black carbon, with a total climate forcing of +1.1?W?m -2 , is the second-most important human emission in terms of its climate-forcing in the present-day atmosphere. Only carbon dioxide has a greater forcing, the international team of researchers who performed the study found.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 18, 2013
Voltage curves of the first discharge?charge cycle, K?O 2 battery (0.5 M KPF6 in DME) at a current density of 0.16 mA/cm 2. The dash lines indicate the calculated thermodynamic potentials for the batteries. Credit: ACS, Ren and Wu. Click to enlarge. Researchers at Ohio State University (OSU) have demonstrated the concept of a potassium-air (K?O 2 ) battery with low overpotentials.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and California Lithium Battery , Inc. (CalBattery) have signed a licensing agreement for an Argonne-developed, silicon-graphene composite anode material for high-energy lithium batteries. CalBattery says it plans to move forward rapidly in the commercial scale-up and production of the novel composite anode material and to offer it in commercial production in the US by 2014.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 10, 2013
Rate performance of all the samples at the 0.1 C rate, 0.5 C rate, 1 C rate, 2 C rate, 5 C rate, and 10 C rate. The GeO 2 /Ge/C sample showed the best rate performance, and the capacity at the 10 C rate was 1680 mAh/g. Credit: ACS, Seng et al. Click to enlarge. Researchers from the University of Wollongong, Australia and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), S.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
The new 1.6 CDTI diesel delivers 100 kW/136 hp and 320 N·m of torque for fuel consumption in the Zafira Tourer of 4.1 l/100 km and 109 g/km CO 2. Click to enlarge. At the Geneva Motorshow (7-17 March, 2013) Opel will introduce a new generation diesel engine, the 1.6 CDTI ECOTEC—its cleanest diesel yet—in the seven-seater Zafira Tourer.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 11, 2013
An Ohio State University team has demonstrated the successful operation of Coal-Direct Chemical Looping (CDCL)—which chemically harnesses coal’s energy and efficiently contains the carbon dioxide produced before it can be released into the atmosphere. The technology is now ready for testing at a larger scale. For 203 continuous hours, an OSU combustion unit produced heat from coal while capturing 99% of the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 15, 2013
Preliminary industry data reveals that year-end geothermal growth in 2012 was up 5% from the previous year, according to the Geothermal Energy Association ( GEA ). This uptick in development— representing 147.05 MW of new gross online geothermal capacity—is due in part to pioneering developments in geothermal technology, GEA said. In 2012, seven new geothermal projects and additions came online in three different states.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 5, 2013
Consumer Reports’ own fuel economy tests of vehicles equipped with small turbocharged engines has found in many cases that the turbocharged cars tested by CR have slower acceleration and no better fuel economy than the models with larger conventional engines, the organization said. Consumer Reports tests many cars with small, turbocharged engines, and many competitors with traditional, naturally aspirated engines, large and small.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 7, 2013
Ford is partnering with PlugShare, an aggregator of public charge stations, to provide real-time charge station information to drivers of Ford’s plug-in vehicles. Ford’s MyFord Mobile smartphone app and Web portal now features a charging station finder powered by PlugShare.com. In addition to aggregating publicly available lists of charging stations from a variety of sources, PlugShare incorporates crowd-sourced information from users to provide the most comprehensive dataset available.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 18, 2013
Peugeot 2008 HYbrid Air. The energy tank can be seen in the central tunnel, and the low-pressure tank at the rear. Click to enlarge. Like its group partner Citroën ( earlier post ), Peugeot will display an application of the new Hybrid Air technology ( earlier post )—the 2008 HYbrid Air—at the upcoming Geneva show. The new hybrid combines a 3-cylinder gasoline engine with a compressed air/hydraulic motor/pump system comprising an energy tank containing pressurized air installed under
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 21, 2013
In a study published in the journal Energy Economics , MIT researchers have found that a fuel economy standard is at least six to fourteen times less cost effective than a fuel tax when targeting an identical reduction in cumulative gasoline use (20% by 2050). The researchers also found that a binding fuel economy standard, combined with a cap-and-trade (CAT) policy, increases the cost of meeting the GHG emissions constraint by forcing expensive reduction in passenger vehicle gasoline use, displ
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 24, 2013
Powertrain of the McLaren P1. Click to enlarge. McLaren Automotive will unveil the production-ready version of its P1 plug-in capable hybrid supercar at the upcoming Geneva Motor Show. (McLaren had introduced a design study version of the P1 at the 2012 Paris Motor Show.) Deliveries are expected to commence in late 2013—the year of McLaren’s 50 th anniversary.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 3, 2013
The US Department of Energy (DOE) is issuing a Request for Information (RFI) ( DE-FOA-0000855 ) seeking input from stakeholders on proposed cost targets for fuel cells designed for automotive applications. The purpose of this RFI is to solicit feedback from developers, manufacturers, end users, and other stakeholders on proposed cost and durability targets for automotive fuel cell systems.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
XL Hybrids hybrid drive unit in place. Click to enlarge. XL Hybrids, Inc., developer of a low-cost hybrid electric powertrain designed specifically for class 1 to 3 commercial fleet use ( earlier post ), signed a non-exclusive installation partnership and distribution agreement with Leggett & Platt Commercial Vehicle Products (CVP), one of the top commercial vehicle upfitters.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 18, 2013
Structure of door panels. Click to enlarge. Honda Motor Co., Ltd. has developed a technology to join steel and aluminum and applied it to enable adoption of aluminum for an outer door panel, which has conventionally been made of steel. Honda will adopt this technology first to the North American version of the all-new Acura RLX, which will go on sale in the United States in March 2013, and will expand application sequentially to other models.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 20, 2013
35 kW free-piston linear generator module. Click to enlarge. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Institute of Vehicle Concepts in Stuttgart have developed a demonstrator multi-fuel free-piston linear generator (FPLG, or Freikolbenlineargenerator, FKLG in German) as a range extender for electric vehicles.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 11, 2013
Flow diagram of the solvent extraction and product recovery method used. Credit: ACS, Roberts et al. Click to enlarge. A team at the University of Kansas has demonstrated the feasibility of an integrated wastewater algae-to-biocrude process using hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) that can sustainably cultivate algal biomass for biofuel production. A paper on their work is published in the ACS journal Energy & Fuels.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) has begun volume production of its “Polysol LB Series” water-based anode binder for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The product is a water-based emulsion containing acrylic synthetic resin particles, ensuring lower environmental impact at the time of production compared with solvent-based binders. It provides such advantages as low electrical resistance, good temperature characteristics, and good adhesion to anode collectors, thereby contributing toward extending the life an
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 12, 2013
Corvette’s new shape memory alloy wire replaces a heavier motorized part. Click to enlarge. As one of a number of advances to reduce its weight (90 lbs/41 kg lighter than its predecessor), the redesigned seventh-generation Chevrolet Corvette is the first vehicle to use a GM-developed lightweight shape memory alloy wire in place of a heavier motorized actuator to open and close the hatch vent that releases air from the trunk.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 5, 2013
Internal AC Kinetics testing used an AC induction motor coupled to a large inertia, following a modified EPA city traffic cycle. The AC Kinetics drive used about half of the energy of competitor commercial drives, while also having the smallest tracking error. Source: AC Kinetics. Click to enlarge. Motor control company AC Kinetics, Inc. will introduce its next-generation motor control technology at the upcoming ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., 25-27 February.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 4, 2013
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan —Strategic Analysis of Global Market for Range Extenders—estimates the total market for range extenders will exceed 329,000 units by 2018. Extended range electric vehicles (eREVs) will be equipped with different applications such as internal combustion engine range extenders, fuel cell range extenders and micro-gas turbine range extenders.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Zipcar, Inc. has introduced the battery-electric 2013 Honda Fit EV ( earlier post ) into the Zipcar Portland fleet, with the first vehicles located at Portland State University (PSU). Charging stations for the EVs are provided by ECOtality, Inc. The new Honda Fit EVs are located on PSU’s campus at Parking Structure 1, and are available to all Zipcar members ages 21+ for hourly reservations, starting from $10.25 per hour.
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 28, 2013
Electric Defender research vehicle. Click to enlarge. Land Rover will unveil seven new battery-electric Defender research vehicles at the 2013 Geneva Motor Show. Although there are no plans for the all-terrain electric Defender to enter series production, the seven EVs will go into service in specialist real world trials later this year. The standard 90 kW (121 hp), 360 N·m (265 lb-ft) 2.2-liter diesel engine and 6-speed manual gearbox in the 110 Defenders have been replaced by a 70 kW (9
Green Car Congress
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
Continental and the BMW Group are pooling their development capacities to define the long-term prerequisites for series introduction of highly automated driving on European freeways. In January 2013, the two companies signed an agreement to jointly develop an electronic co-pilot for this purpose. The overarching aim of the research partnership is to pave the way to highly automated driving functions beyond the year 2020.
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