Sunday 1 August 2010

Biofuels left out as automakers go electric

In the race to replace oil, electric cars seem to be leaving biofuels in the dust.

Five years ago, biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel looked like the best bet for breaking the world's addiction to oil. Biorefineries turning corn into ethanol sprouted across the Midwest, while startups trying to make fuel from wood chips or grass soaked up venture capital. Big automakers considered electric cars a lost cause.
Now the situation has been reversed. The buzz surrounding electric transportation has never been louder, while the biofuel industry struggles to regain momentum after two brutal years.
By the end of 2010, two global automakers will start selling plug-in cars priced for the mass market. Nissan will introduce the all-electric Leaf, while General Motors offers the Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid that runs solely on batteries for the first 40 miles of every trip. Automakers as different as Ford, Toyota and Porsche all have plans to go electric.





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GSA adding 5,600 hybrid vehicles, but higher cost remains issue

A massive fleet of new hybrid vehicles is arriving at federal agencies this summer as part of an unprecedented effort to offload the government's least fuel-efficient cars and trucks.
The General Services Administration earlier this year purchased more than 5,600 hybrid vehicles, which pair an electric motor with a traditional gasoline-powered engine. The move single-handedly doubled the government's inventory of hybrid vehicles.
GSA is leasing the new hybrid vehicles to agencies as they trade in their older vehicles, which GSA will sell at auction.
GSA received the first batch of vehicles about a month ago and will continue to receive new vehicles throughout the summer as they roll off the assembly line, said Bill Toth, director of GSA's Office of Motor Vehicle Management.
The new vehicles will go a long way toward helping agencies cut gasoline consumption and reduce their carbon footprints. Nearly all of the hybrid vehicles GSA purchased are 2010 Ford Fusions, a midsized sedan that gets 39 mph on city streets and highways combined — second in class only to the Toyota Prius. The Fusion emits 4.8 tons of carbon dioxide annually, compared with 7.5 tons for the nonhybrid version.

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Nation's first electric car sold to individual

Last week little-known carmaker Zotye Auto became the first Chinese company to sell a purely electric car to an individual buyer.
Li Ziqiang, a Hangzhou resident, bought the 5008EV from the Zhejiang-based private manufacturer last Monday after leasing a 2008EV model based on the company's small SUV for six months.
In January this year, Zotye put 100 of its 2008EV model up for lease in Hangzhou to test them in daily use under actual road conditions.
Li paid 2,500 yuan a month to lease the car that would sell for more than 200,000 yuan - far more expensive than its 60,000-yuan petrol-powered cousin made by Zotye.
He said the car only cost him about 100 yuan a month for electricity. He made the decision to buy one after he learned about a government subsidy for new-energy vehicles, said a report of Qianjiang Evening News, a local newspaper in Hangzhou.
Eventually Li paid 108,000 yuan for the car, - not even half of its sticker price - thanks to the central government's subsidy of 60,000 yuan and an allowance offered by the Hangzhou city government.






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Green cars drive into green Shanghai Expo

A brighter vehicle life in 2030 was shown in SAIC-GM Automotive Exhibit Hall in World Expo: "zero emission", zero traffic accident; away from dependence on petroleum, away from traffic jam; automatic drive, even the blind are able to drive -- the green cars shown and running in Expo park make us believe that maybe all of them will be true.
I. April 11, the Expo Park public-traffic program was published. In the Expo Park, two bus lines among of the three adopted pure electric buses, and another one used super capacitance bus, meanwhile, two tourist lines were equipped with hydrogen fuel tour bus. After the Expo Park was open, bus lines would be added to 6 from the current 3 ones, and the total running distance reached 19 kilometers.
On the same day, the concept vehicle, "Leaf", researched and developed independently by SAIC, made its world debut in SAIC-GM Automotive Exhibit Hall in the Expo Park. Besides fresh design, "Leaf", with a giant "green leaf" on its head, steps across "zero emission" and realizes "negative emission", and shows people the brighter city traffic life in 20 years.


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Auto suppliers' dilemma: Which e-vehicle to plug into

In June, Jeneanne Hanley, head of business development and strategy at Southfield-based
Lear Corp
.'s hybrid and electric vehicle business unit, took part in a meeting that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
A customer was making a pitch, hoping to buy Lear's parts.
The potential customer, one of dozens of automotive startups that aim to sell electric vehicles, was at Lear to “give a presentation to us as to why they think they'll be successful,” Hanley recalled.
The proliferation of alternative-vehicle startups poses difficult questions to suppliers. Which ones will survive and therefore pay their bills, and which won't?
And how many engineering resources should a supplier devote to these new customers, helping them integrate the supplier's parts into unproven vehicles?

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Troy Wolverton test-drives the all-electric Nissan Leaf and plug-in Chevy Volt

Who knew that electric cars could be fun to drive and practical at the same time?
Those were my impressions last week after test-driving the all-electric Nissan Leaf and the plug-in Chevrolet Volt, two new cars that will reach showroom floors later this year. The Leaf was zippy, spacious and fun. The Volt felt like a standard family car updated for the 21st century with high-tech features you can control through a smartphone.
I liked them both but for different reasons, and would consider buying either of them if I were in the market for a car.
The Volt and the Leaf represent the vanguard of a new generation of electric cars, but each has its own take on what that means.
The Leaf is all-electric, which means you never have to worry about burning gasoline or having to deal with the maintenance issues of a combustion engine, such as changing the oil or replacing the spark plugs or timing belts. The trade off is that it has a range of only 100 miles — less if you drive fast or run the heater or air conditioner, both of which draw power from the battery.
And once you drain the battery, recharging it is not as easy and quick as filling up at a gas station. Instead, you'll typically have to wait eight to 20 hours for the batteries to recharge, depending on the type of outlet you use. (Recharging can be much quicker — as little as 30 minutes or so to get an 80 percent charge — at one of the relatively few fast-charging stations.)



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