Hybrids Lead the Way for Auto Transport Industry 16 comments
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By John Addison
A growing number are eager to buy plug-in hybrids from Toyota (TM), Chevy, Ford (F), Fisker, and others that are completing new manufacturing for 2010 orders and look to be serious competition in 2011. Oil prices have doubled from their low this year. People are planning to save on fuel for years, by using more inexpensive electricity and less gasoline.
Fuel costs millions for the delivery and service fleets that bring us our mail and goods and keep our cities running. About one million new vans are purchased annually in North America.
For years, the United States Postal Service (USPS) has piloted electric vehicles in its fleet of over 200,000 delivery vehicles. Azure created custom electric vehicles for the post office. Encouraged, the USPS has ordered 165 of the new plug-in hybrid Chrysler Town & Country Minivans for delivery use. Next year, these Chrysler vans will be available for commercial sale by everyone from small businesses to active soccer families.
Ford is starting to take orders from municipalities and other government agencies that will use the new Transit Connect light-duty van in a variety of applications from city maintenance to on-demand transit. Deliveries of these electric vehicles, made for Ford by Smith Electric Vehicles, will start in 2010. Transit Connect may also do well with small businesses and local delivery fleets. (Clean Fleet Ford Report)
South Coast Air Quality Management District has helped fleets achieve significant mileage gains with Sprinter Vans converted to be plug-in hybrid.
The electric utilities that will help power these plug-ins often have thousands of vehicles in their fleet. Utilities have turned to companies like Eaton to double the mileage of their trouble trucks with hybrid and plug-in hybrid drive systems. Ford F550s were first converted into hybrids and now into plug-in hybrid trouble trucks. In addition to using less diesel fuel, these trucks can run all their accessories electrically. Previously, they had to idle the truck engine for hours to hoist a repair technician into the air, to run repair equipment, and all auxiliaries. (Clean Fleet PG&E Report)
The Eaton hybrid-electric drive system will be used in 138 FedEx delivery vans. In New York alone, FedEx deployed 48 E700 Eaton hybrids. (Clean Fleet FedEx Report.) Local delivery vans can particularly benefit in fuel savings by capturing braking energy with frequent stops, by establishing a central charging infrastructure, and by having mid-day opportunities for recharging in between morning pick-ups and afternoon deliveries.
Eaton Corporation’s (ETN) truck and electrical businesses will support a $45.4 million grant to develop a fully integrated plug-in hybrid systems for Class 2 to 5 vehicles, weighing up to 19,500 pounds. A demonstration fleet of 378 plug-in hybrid trucks and shuttle buses will be put into use. (Green Car Congress)
Plug-in vans and trucks can have a major impact on U.S. oil dependency. Federal, state, and local fleets own 4 million vehicles. Corporations have bigger total fleets. There is great interest in extending the electric-range of vehicles. Most attention has been placed on battery improvements. A more practical way to extend range is to make vehicles more aerodynamic and lighter.
Bright Automotive wants to make 50,000 plug-in hybrid vans per year that are built from the ground-up to deliver 100 mpg in a van that can carry 180 cubic feet of cargo. A typical van carrying such load might achieve 15 mpg. This spin-off of the Rocky Mountain Institute has major strategic partners including Alcoa (AA), Johnson-Controls (JCI), and Google (GOOG). The Bright IDEA van weighs only 3,200 pounds, less than a Prius, and can go 30 miles on battery power alone. It will be stronger than steel, yet built with light-weight aluminum and composite material like the Tesla. With a sub-.3 drag coefficient, the van only needs a 10 kWh lithium battery pack. In demanding delivery applications, each Bright IDEA could save $6,000 per year in fuel.
Bright is currently doing a project for the U.S. Department of Defense that involves converting a VW Transporter to be a plug-in hybrid. Bright hopes to secure a federal loan to build a manufacturing plant in Indiana to build the new light aerodynamic vans in volume.
Fleets are taking the lead in energy security and reduced emissions with fleets of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and electric vehicles.
John Addison publishes the Clean Fleet Report and speaks at conferences. He is the author of the new book - Save Gas, Save the Planet
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This article has 16 comments:
Nice and for once a accurate article on Electric drives.
I noticed a most important detail that is rarely talked about, Lightweight and aero. I can't say enough how important these are to cost effective EV's, PHEV's and even trucks. By being these the drag is greatly reduced as is the battery pack, EV drive costs, key to cost effective EV's and high mileage ICE's too.
Facts are 2 seat, light, aero EV's made from medium tech composites can cost less than ICE's both to produce and run. These with 100 mile range, 80 mph stronger than steel units can be built at a good profit at $12k. By using medium tech composites instead of carbon fiber and forklift EV drive tech and even lead batteries, this is easily doable.
Sadly car companies don't want EV's to be either low cost, small or affordable because they are simple, need few aftermarket parts and cut sales of their larger offerings.
Sadly we won't see more than a handful of EV's for yrs as they stretch out deployment as long as they can. Look to outside companies like Tesla to bring real change.
Long QTWW, ENER, AONE, XIDE, BYDDF, HEV
And the pollution to make all that electricity would be conveniently in the midwest.
> Sadly car companies don't want EV's to be either low cost, small
> or affordable because they are simple, need few aftermarket parts
> and cut sales of their larger offerings.
Spot on with that statemenet. I personally am not a fan of plug in hybrids due to their heavy battery load and would have preferred to see automakers opt for full time hybrid designs where a tiny (as in 24 hp v-twin tiny) gas engine runs at as close to a constant speed as possible while the vehicle is running and a minimal battery pack and capacitors are used. The weight and cost savings with such a design are substantial. Unfortunately, those designs are so simple that auto buyers would be able to learn how to service their own cars again and automakers would end up further jeopardizing already strained relationships with their dealer networks, so we get plug in hybrids that are so ridiculously convoluted they put Rube Goldberg to shame.
This is part of the reason we're in a massive recession, companies make their products intentionally costly and complex so consumers aren't able to self-service, and those companies are able to get away with this ridiculousness because there isn't any real competition in the marketplace.
On Oct 07 12:33 AM THofler wrote:
> Keith, Any idea what the transmission losses are from say Nebraska
> to S.F.? I'd guess more than 60% lost even with state of the art
> hardware.
On Oct 06 10:49 PM LilBob wrote:
On Oct 07 11:24 AM George Marchetti wrote:
That type of powertrain is known as a "series hybrid
> electric" powertrain and would be extremely efficient
I really think it's because the auto companies have so much invested in their dealer networks, they're afraid of customers no longer needing service. That to me is an opportunity for a new car company to leap-frog the competition and create an enormous competitive advantage-create a line of small cars using series electric hybrid drivetrains, and instead of building a dealer/service network, auction the cars via a website and provide owners with a laptop with each car that has all the adaptors and diagnostic equipment you needed to maintain the vehicles. Then the company could sell that same equipment and software to repair shops the same way the major automakers do. It'll be interesting to see if we see a Kia/Hyundai spinoff or one of the new Chinese or Indian automakers pursuing this tack. The advantage is that you don't have to make a huge capital investment to provide maintenance your vehicles, you can focus on the business of building and selling cars.
"Inexpensive", "Light", and, "Composite" are three goals that are often used in combination. Unfortunately, the final product often has only two of these three traits. And don't forget, "re-usable" after the car is scrapped.
You could very well be right about the maintenance issue. Automakers already know how to build a series hybrid electric diesel powertrain with a very small internal combustion engine (1.2 liter) and nickel metal hydride batteries. See, evworld.com/news.cfm?n...#.
I like your proposed business model too. It makes sense.
See, evworld.com/news.cfm?n...#.
I like to sketch and doodle ideas. If I had more money right now I'd buy a Porsche 356 replica and pop my power plant in it. It would use four axle mounted pancake motors, a Kohler Aegis powerplant, Optima Red Top Batteries and several other innovations. The hardest part of the whole project will be figuring out how to get the control system to work. If I can build that "black box" the rest is a cake walk.
On Oct 07 03:28 PM LilBob wrote:
> On Oct 07 02:58 PM George Marchetti wrote:
>
> See, evworld.com/news.cfm?n...#.
>
> I like to sketch and doodle ideas. If I had more money right now
> I'd buy a Porsche 356 replica and pop my power plant in it. It would
> use four axle mounted pancake motors, a Kohler Aegis powerplant,
> Optima Red Top Batteries and several other innovations. The hardest
> part of the whole project will be figuring out how to get the control
> system to work. If I can build that "black box" the rest is a cake
> walk.
> For high volume production of vehicle bodies, there are many material
> choices that have been tried.
>
> "Inexpensive", "Light", and, "Composite" are three goals that are
> often used in combination. Unfortunately, the final product often
> has only two of these three traits. And don't forget, "re-usable"
> after the car is scrapped.
But all 3 compared to steel is easily done! I do these for a living and to me, a car is just a 14' boat. While the stresses, etc need to be dealt with, they are fairly easy to do. The key is using medium tech composites like bi-axial FG, Kevlar, various cores to keep costs low while still being far lighter, stronger than steel.
They can be useable as a car for 50 yrs and after that most of it's weight is recyclable and even the body can return to oil, RE or fossil and sand it came from. But even when it's run it saves far more in fuel getting 150-500mpg equivalent.
Because EV drives are so eff even charged by coal powerplants, it still less polluting than gas cars because keeping 1 source clean is far easier that 100k of them. But in the near future many will have their own RE power on their homes to charge them. Why is RE equipment is falling fast and oil, coal are going up fast.
A series hybrid works best, most eff, can use a smaller engine if they have a 10-40 mile battery pack. Without a pack that large the ICE must be larger to handle peak loading the EV drive is far more eff at. The extra battery weight is made up partly by not having a transmission.
Wheel motors don't work well because they have to be way overpowered in order to start up a hill. If they are sized to that, then they are too heavy in unsprung weight killing handling, comfort and expensive.
Ultracaps cost, weight many times more and hold far less power than batteries. All this talk of ultra/super capacitors is a scam/hype to suck investors in and maybe gov grants.
Most batteries can be fast charged or swapped so soon hybrid will be the past with 300 mile range EV's doing all the jobs of a car including long distance.