USA: public charging 10% of total

Greentechmedia.com reports from the US that public charging for electric vehicles makes up only 10 percent of the charging pie, according to a new report from Recargo and PlugInsights.

The 2013 U.S. PEV Charging Study examined the opinions of more than 3,700 plug-in drivers who get behind the wheel of 17 different vehicle makes and models.

Although public charging is the least-frequent type of charging, the study authors confirmed what others have found anecdotally: drivers want more DC quick charging. Whether there will actually be more, however, is yet to be seen.

There has been a shakeup recently in the charging world, with Siemens ditching its public EV charging business and ECOtality declaring bankruptcy. For both companies, the bulk of their public charging business was focused on Level 2 chargers, not DC fast chargers. 

Fast chargers, which can charge car batteries in as little as 30 minutes, make up about 3 percent of the more than 12,000 public chargers now available in the U.S. Though fast chargers represent only a fraction of available chargers, nearly half of all drivers with long-range battery electric vehicles reported having used a quick charger in the past 30 days, as well as about one-third of mid-range EV drivers. Both types of drivers used them more than once, with the mid-range drivers averaging 3.4 times in a month.

“Until fast charging becomes broadly available, mid-range battery electric vehicles like the Nissan LEAF are trapped on a leash, close to home,” PlugInsights’ managing director, Norman Hajjar, said in a statement.

“Our data shows the average longest trip mid-range BEV drivers have ever taken is only 96 miles. They never stray too far from home because it’s just not practical to stop at a slow Level 2 charging station and plug in for 4+ hours mid-journey. Our data suggests drivers do this only when they absolutely have to," he added. "Until fast chargers can bridge the gap between distant points, the appeal of these vehicles to a broader audience will be limited.”

One challenge, however, may be the price of DC fast chargers. Fast chargers are far more expensive than Level 2 chargers, and the majority of EV drivers are seeking out free public chargers. One solution could be the approach that some retail outlets are adopting, in which the first segment of charging is free but the rest comes at a cost.

Norway EV sales boom - 9% market share in 2013

www.dw.de reports that while Norway may be one of the largest oil producers in Europe, it also has more electric cars per capita than any other country. State incentives have been the key to success, experts say.

Espen Andreassen is the proud owner of a new electric Nissan Leaf car, making him one of over 4,000 Norwegians who has bought an electric car so far this year. So far, nine percent of all new cars sold in Norway in 2013 have been electric.

"Cars in Norway are extremely expensive due to the way they tax cars," Andreassen told DW. "They often cost twice of what they cost in other comparable countries. But, there is basically no tax on electric vehicles. If we were going to buy a petrol or diesel car, it would have been about the same price."

Espen Andreassen and other electric car drivers enjoy a host of other benefits too. One of the more popular incentives is being allowed to use the bus lane. Electric cars speed past rush hour queues in and out of Norway's larger cities, often halving commuting times.

Espen Andreassen was happy to choose an electric car ahead of a petrol-powered option, he says

"For us it's fantastic. Usually we drop the kids at kindergarten and my wife and I drive together. That saves us a lot of time," said Andreassen.

Ten year battle

Norway's electric car revolution has happened fast, with most of the growth in sales happening over the past three years. But, this is a result of years of lobbying from electric car owners and their organisations.

"It took a long time to get the benefits," said Snorre Sletvold, President of Norway's Electric Vehicle Association.

"It started with no import tax and no first time registration tax. Now we also get free parking and free passing through the toll roads, exemption from VAT and access to use the bus lane. It took 10 years to get all these benefits in Norway," he said.

The rapid increase in electric car sales has had a noticeable environmental impact too. The average carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from all cars in Norway is currently 118 grams per kilometer, down from 125 grams per kilometer last year. That easily beats the EU target.

Massive oil producer

Yet critics say this is a drop in the ocean when it comes to Norway's global responsibilities for climate change. The country is the world's eighth largest crude oil exporter and third largest exporter of natural gas.

"Even though Norway is the country with the most electric cars per person, it's not going to save the world," says Lars Haltbrekken, chairperson of the Norwegian division of Friends of the Earth.

"The largest environmental footprint in Norway comes from our huge oil and gas production," he told DW.

Haltbrekken says that when emissions from Norway's most recently-discovered oil and gas field are calculated, they would total CO2 levels equivalent to that of 40 million cars.

Lars Haltbrekken points out recent oil discoveries off of Norway's coastline on a map

Others argue that electric cars don't necessarily produce much less CO2 than modern fossil fuel cars. The production and disposal of batteries and the oil and gas needed for electricity production all adds up to give an electric vehicle a much larger CO2 footprint than many believe.

Although a massive fossil fuels exporter, domestically, nearly all electricity in Norway comes from renewable hydro electric power plants, helping reduce CO2 emissions further.

The incentives dilemma

The Norwegian Parliament in Oslo has guaranteed generous incentives for electric cars until 2017. If the current growth in sales of these vehicles continues, those incentives will have to be reconsidered.

"Of course the bus lane will have to be closed for electric cars one day. Then we have to find another way. Maybe we will have to raise the tax in the toll fee for petrol cars," said Snorre Sletvold from the Electric Vehicle Association.

Not surprisingly, electric car manufacturers have taken a special interest in Norway, and despite the possible rolling back of some government incentives they remain optimistic about the future Norwegian market.

An electric car charging station in the Norwegian capital of Oslo

"Norway is by far our biggest market in Europe, and actually it's the second biggest market for us globally," said Esben Pedersen from Tesla Motors, a US company making luxury electric cars.

Despite a price tag starting at 71,400 euro ($96,430), the Tesla Model S was the best selling car in Norway in September this year, beating the trusty VW Golf into second place.

"Whereas politicians elsewhere in Europe do a lot of talking, in Norway they actually act and they have a national electric vehicle policy as the only country in Europe," said Pedersen. The government's willingness to invest in electric car use helped Tesla make the decision to invest in a Norwegian network of super-chargers, electric hook-up points which can charge an electric car battery in less than one hour.

The chicken and the egg

The number of electric cars globally is still very small, and even if the rest of the world caught up with Norway, the energy needed to charge them all would still be coming mainly from fossil fuel sources.

To some it is a chicken and egg issue: do we wait until most energy production is sustainable before turning to electric cars, or do we go electric and hope this will help speed up the growth of alternative energy production? Electric car owner Espen Andreassen in Oslo believes in the latter.

"We can't wait until all power sources are renewable before we start developing and driving and buying electric cars. The amount of renewable energy in the EU mix is increasing, so it will get better all the time. At least we have to try and see if it works out," he said.

Meanwhile Norway's love affair with the electric car shows no signs of abating. According to a recent survey, more than half of Norwegians would consider an electric or hybrid for their next car.

Self-healing li-ion battery a possibility

According to theregister.co.uk top boffins at Stanford uni say they have cracked a key problem afflicting today's lithium-ion batteries, which might make the next generation of phones, e-cars and other battery powered kit much, much better.

The problem the researchers have tackled is that silicon - though an excellent material for a modern battery electrode, as it has a high capacity for absorbing and then releasing lithium ions during charging and discharging - swells up and shrinks massively when so used. In fact a silicon electrode increases in size by no less than three times over and then returns to its original size duing a charge-discharge cycle, and this naturally tends to mean that it comes to bits in fairly short order.

This is a major underlying reason why li-ion batteries often have a fairly poor service life. That's not a crippling problem in a smartphone - even if it's an iPhone or similar, designed in such a way that it's hard to replace the battery, people tend to get a new phone quite often. But it is a big deal in a much more expensive electric car: while a lot of people change cars frequently, they expect them still to be in saleable condition when they've finished with them - without any need to replace the major component of the power train.

The general distrust felt by the motor industry regarding battery service life, based on many years of beta tests with small groups of vehicles, is one major reason why not very many battery cars are being made. Even Tesla Motors, the flagship firm for battery cars, has admitted in SEC filings that battery life may yet become a major problem for it as its cars age.

But now the Stanford boffins say they're on the track of a fix. They have developed an astronishingly strong and stretchy polymer which can be coated onto a silicon electrode in use. As cracks form, the coating "heals" them. Here's a vid of a balloon coated with the stuff being inflated and deflated, indicating just how stretchy it is: 

“Self-healing is very important for the survival and long lifetimes of animals and plants,” says Chao Wang, a postdoc researcher at Stanford. “We want to incorporate this feature into lithium ion batteries so they will have a long lifetime as well.”

Thus far, the silicon+gunge electrodes aren't ready for prime time: they can only do 100 charge cycles before starting to lose performance.

“That’s still quite a way from the goal of about 500 cycles for cell phones and 3,000 cycles for an electric vehicle,” admits Wang's colleague professor Yi Cui, “but the promise is there, and from all our data it looks like it’s working.”

So this technology isn't going to manufacturing yet, or perhaps ever if it can't be improved. But it is impressive enough that it has led to an article by the Stanford lab crew getting published in Nature Chemistry. And perhaps the amazing stretchy-stuff might have other uses, as well

What next for Tesla?

For the last six months of 2013, Tesla's retail expansion includes the addition of four stores, increasing the total from 41 at the end of the second quarter to around 45 by the end of the year. 

The company appears to be placing a greater emphasis on its service centres; by the end of the second quarter, they stood at 47, and are expected to reach 75 by the end of 2013. A greater number of retail stores and service centres, along with an expanded network of supercharger stations, are part of the infrastructure buildup that the company needs to achieve greater mass appeal.

Tesla's first European customers in Norway, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland took delivery of their cars in August, with th UK and Sweden deliveries to start in Spring 2014.

Tesla designers are working on the Model X, set to debut in late 2014. The Model X will be priced much lower than the Model S, with hopes of attracting a larger audience and increasing sales volume for the automaker.

Has the recent reports of the third fire hurt Tesla. In spite of a possible US government enquiry, I doubt it.

Can Tesla maintain its momentum? I think they probably can. I hope so.

EVs surge in Germany in October

According to InsideEVs, last month was a real hit in Germany, where the number of electric vehicle registrations almost exceeded 1,000 units.

According to KBA, 978 units were added in October, which is almost three times more than in October 2012 and nearly two times higher than the 532 in September.

 The electric smart hassold 331 units and probably will be number one for 2013 with over 1,500 units delivered so far.

Despite sales not even underway, the BMW i3 took second with 197 registrations – all by companies.

Plug-in Priuses had 142 registrations, compared to 16 Opel Amperas and 2 Chevrolet Volts.

Renault ZOE had 125, Nissan LEAF 40, Peugeot iOn 8, Mitsubishi i-MiEV 4 and C-Zero, as it name indicates, 0.

Tesla registered 38 units, with the remaining 75 split between Renault, Ford and others.

VW e-Golf spec announced

Volkswagen has released all of the official details of the 2015 VW e-Golf ahead of its debut next week at the LA Auto Show. The zero-emission version of the next-gen Golf, which we saw for the first time at Frankfurt, will go on sale in the US during the fourth quarter of next year.

In place of the new Golf's gas and diesel engines, the 2015 e-Golf gets an electric motor whirring out 115 horsepower and 199 pound-feet of torque. Juice comes from a 24.2-kWh liquid-cooled lithium-ion battery pack. These figures (especially torque) are far less than that of theSpark EV (140 hp and 400 lb-ft), so we don't expect it to be as fun in the stoplight-to-stoplight drag, which is backed up by the 0-60 time of 10.4 seconds. There are two driving modes (Eco and Eco+) as well as driver-selectable brake regeneration modes for one-pedal driving. VW pegs the driving range at between 70 and 90 miles.

VW says the e-Golf can be fully recharged in four hours using a dedicated 220-volt wallbox in a garage or carport, while a standard household plug (110 volts) will take about 20 hours; a DC fast-charge option is also available giving the car an 80 percent charge in about 30 minutes.

The e-Golf is easily noticeable from its exterior styling with a unique grille and front fascia, aero-optimized wheels and LED headlights. The cabin also gets a few changes that include a new instrument cluster layout with a touchscreen display that shows a range monitor, energy flow indicator and an e-manager that allows the driver to set future departure times to ensure proper charge. But just in case the battery is depleted, VW still has its customers covered with a unique roadside assistance service. If a customer runs the e-Golf out of power within 100 miles of their home, VW will have the vehicle towed to a nearby charging source at no cost

Slow EV sales not deterring automakers

According to autocar.com, the slow global uptake in electric cars hasn't dented many manufacturers' support for them, but concerns remain Car makers and governments are placing their faith in electric vehicles, despite the disappointing sales of the past three years.

Both BMW and the Volkswagen Group have recently spoken out in support of the German government’s aim to get one million electric vehicles on the country’s streets despite tiny sales of electric vehicles last year.

According to industry sources, less than 4200 pure EVs and hybrids were sold in Germany last year in a market worth about three million new car sales each year.

Even in the United States, which is thought to be the most EV-friendly of Western markets, the penetration of battery-powered vehicles has not yet exceeded 10 per cent. According to figures released at the recent Global Automotive Forum, between January and June this year, some 15,444 electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles were sold in California. 

This number breaks down into 9700 EVs and 5736 plug-in hybrids, together accounting for just seven per cent of the Californian market. 

In China, the world’s biggest market for new cars and one suffering from serious pollution, EVs are failing to make an impact. Between January and June this year, 5123 pure EVs and 775 plug-in hybrids were sold in China.

Volkswagen chairman Martin Winterkorn was recently quoted as saying that Germany could hit the million target if plug-in hybrids were included in the calculation. VW bosses privately feel that only plug-in hybrids have any chance of widespread acceptance.

BMW has been bullish about the production prospects of its futuristic i3 EV, even though it costs £30,000 before the government grant of £5000. Analysts have also dramatically marked down the sales of the affordableRenault Zoe EV, predicting that the company will sell about 25,000 next year, well behind the 50,000 suggested as the firm’s internal target.

Honda's city runabout - MC Beta 1+1

This year's Tokyo Motor Show. Not every electric vehicle needs to have range of up to 300 miles, such as that provided by the Tesla Model S. After all, as more people move into cities, the less they’d need such range. Range in electric vehicles is most directly dictated by the size of the battery pack, which is expensive. Offering short-range electric vehicles, such as the Honda MicroCommuter MC-α at last year’s Tokyo Motor Show, cuts down on costs, making clean electric vehicles much more affordable.

This year, at the Tokyo Motor Show, Honda will be showing off an autonomous version of the MC-α, as well as an updated version, which will be called Honda MC-β. The mini electric vehicle offers 1+1 seating, similar to the Renault Twizy as well as a swappable rear seat to accommodate two children, perfect for the busy family man [or woman] to drop the kids off at school on the way to work. The Honda MC-β’s 15kW electric motor can power the vehicle up to 50mph for a maximum range up to 37 miles. Considering that the average American driver drives less than 30 miles per day, this is actually perfect for about 95% of the driving, in a much smaller package.

How does the Honda MC-β fit into the future home? At the Tokyo Motor Show, Honda, Toshiba, and Sekisui will put together a smart-home demonstration, including renewable energy balanced by the lithium-ion battery pack in the MC-β and the hydrogen fuel cell in the FCX Clarity. The result is a clean-energy, reliable home, that has less of an environmental impact without sacrificing mobility.

Electric batteries may last over a decade

According to NextGreenCar.com, data gathered from Smith Electric Vehicles sheds new light on the residual value debate: advanced battery technology suggests that electric commercial vehicles could be productive vehicles for a decade or more.

Smith Electric Vehicles has conducted extensive trials on the latest lithium-ion phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries in its Smith Edison and Smith Newton commercial vehicles. When combined with data from its customers' vehicles, Smith Electric can make a compelling case for the real operational productive life of its LCVs and light trucks being longer than initially expected.

Kevin Harkin, Sales Director for Smith Electric Vehicles, said: "The battery condition reports delivered much more impressive figures than we ever expected, demonstrating far lower levels of battery degradation than even the manufacturer forecast."

"Our own research – and independent tests that we commissioned – have verified that the battery should still have a minimum of 80 per cent capacity after 3,000 cycles. So even if the vehicle uses a full battery cycle, every day for 300 days a year, it will still be 80% efficient after 10 years. For example, a vehicle that had a 100-mile range brand new will still have an 80-mile range, a decade later."

Smith now guarantees its batteries for five years, as opposed to the 3-year warranty it could offer on Zebra batteries. And because the drive train on a Smith vehicle is friction-free, it does not wear in the same way as an internal combustion engine.

"Couple this to the extended battery life and you can see why many of our fleet customers are pushing out the operating life of our vehicles to seven, eight or even 10 years. This extended life creates a compelling saving on whole life costs – it's an extra three to five years without having to buy diesel," added Kevin.

Prior to the development of the new technology vehicles, the most profitable part of the Smith Electric business was the refurbishment and re-sale of road-going EVs to industrial and airport customers. Smith sees a similar model developing with its LiFePO4 vehicles – a fleet manager can operate an EV until its range capabilities decrease below their requirements; then sell the vehicle into an application that requires lower mileage.

Smith Electric acknowledges that there are many applications for used electric vehicles that have degraded batteries; for example, airside operations in airports do not need a full 100 mile range, and a refurbished vehicle is likely to satisfy requirments.

Although battery technology will undoubtedly improve as the EV industry matures, Smith does not expect that this will render older technologies obsolete. The company expects the value of older vehicles will be linked to their displacement of diesel costs – therefore, every increase in pump prices or congestion charging enhances the worth of an EV. There are road-going electric commercials built by Smith 30 years ago that are still working vehicles.

Tesla and Mahindra Reva voted Fast Company Most Innovative 2013

Everyone knows how successful the Tesla Model S is. But have you heard about the other pure electric vehicle start-up that's also capturing the imagination?

Fast Company just voted India's Mahindra Reva in joint 22nd place with Palo Alto's Tesla in their 2013 Most Innovative Companies list.

Watch this space.