Green Wombat

Think unveils new electric car, GE investment

General Electric has officially confirmed its $4 million investment in Norwegian electric carmaker Think Global, a development Green Wombat reported back in December.  GE Energy Financial Services (GE) also has invested $20 million in Massachusetts lithium-ion battery maker A123Systems, which will supply batteries to Think. General Electric said its scientists will work with both Think and A123 to improve battery technology for electric cars to “enable global electrification of transportation.”

And as Green Wombat reported last week, Think, formerly owned by Ford (F), unveiled its next model Wednesday at the Geneva Auto Show, a futuristic five-seater called the Think Ox that will eventually be available as a two-door coupe and possibly a taxi. The sleek five-door vehicle resembles a low-slung crossover SUV but maintains the signature touches of the Think City — an urban runabout now rolling off Think’s production line in Norway — including the roof-to-bump glass rear hatch. The concept car also sports a translucent roof with a solar panel, presumably to run radios and other equipment.

According to Think, the Ox will have a range of about 125 miles (200 kilometers) on a charge and a top speed of about 85 miles an hour. Future models may include a range extender — a small flex-fuel engine that will charge the battery and let the Ox go 280 miles. (The General Motors (GM) Volt electric hybrid is based on the same concept.) Think also unveiled its “connect car” technology to make the Think City and Ox a rolling Internet-connected, GPS-enabled computer that will calculate the cheapest and most environmentally beneficial times to recharge as well as give drivers access to the cars’ systems through their mobile phones.

When Green Wombat caught up with CEO Jan-Olaf Willums in San Francisco last week he emphasized that although the Ox is being presented as a concept car, the technology is almost ready for prime time and the car that is expected to hit the market in 2011 will resemble the show version.

Electric carmaker Think hits the accelerator

It was a year ago that venture capitalist and solar energy entrepreneur Jan-Olaf Willums appeared at the Cleantech Forum in San Francisco shortly after taking over Think Global, a Norwegian electric car maker once owned by Ford (F). Willums and his partners had just secured their first round of funding and unveiled plans to revive Think and a zippy urban runabout called the Think City. This week Willums made a return appearance at the 2008 Cleantech Forum and showed just how fast an automotive startup can move amid the lumbering dinosaurs of Detroit.

Green Wombat caught up with the ever-cheerful Willums over coffee Wednesday (unlike his American counterparts he meets the press without the PR minders that seem to accompany every exec everywhere). A day earlier on a panel about alternative transportation he dropped something of a bombshell: At the Geneva Auto Show on Tuesday Think will unveil its next-generation car, a sleek five-seat sedan.

Willums, who has raised $93 million from U.S. and European investors, was keeping mum on the identity of its big-league partner until Tuesday but did say that new model was not just a concept car. "We have designed a five-seater show car but it really is much more than that," says Willums (photo above). "It is very much a car that can be produced and it looks like the car that will produced." The plan is to offer the next-gen Think in 2011 as an all-electric as well as well as a so-called series hybrid that uses a small engine to charge the battery and extend its range. (The current Think City has a range of 180 kilometers --112 miles.)

The drawing Willums briefly displayed on the panel showed an stylish aerodynamic four-door sedan. He says Think is planning to later produce a crossover SUV and coupe version of the car. Silicon Valley electric car startup Tesla's next car also is a five-seater sedan, code-named White Star. "We won't compete with Tesla," says Willums. "The Tesla will be more a BMW; we'll be more the Volkswagen."

In the meantime, the two-seater Think City is rolling off the production line at the company's factory outside Oslo and the first 500 cars are set for delivery to customers in March. (For the Think back story and my 2007 Business 2.0 magazine feature on the company and its innovative business model click here.) Production will be fully ramped up by the end of 2008 and Think aims to produce 10,000 cars a year.

Willums also tells Green Wombat that Think later this week will introduce the City to London and Paris. Think's strategy is to pursue urban markets that offer incentives for electric vehicles. For instance, for electric cars London waives the $15 congestion "congestion fee" charged for driving into the city and offers free parking. France gives EV buyers a $7,500 rebate. Think plans to begin selling the City in those markets in early 2009. Think has also established a subsidiary in Denmark

The company's North American plans are still in flux. "We hope to have a plant in the U.S. in 2009," he says. As with Europe, Think will target urban markets in the U.S., such as San Francisco and New York.

Think has markedly picked up the pace since I last met Willums in Oslo. That's due in part, he says, because of the big automakers' more aggressive moves to get into the electric car market, such as General Motors (GM) with its Chevy Volt electric hybrid.

It also seems increasingly clear that innovative startups like Think will survive by making strategic partnerships with bigger players and moving nimbly into select and potentially profitable markets. Whether Think will be a drive-away success remains to be seen but its clear Willums is hitting the accelerator.

Vinod Khosla plugs into the electric car

Silicon Valley green tech investor Vinod Khosla caused a stir recently when he dissed plug-in electric hybrid cars as “toys” that would not contribute much in the way of fighting global warming. The blogs were buzzing from red-faced EV enthusiasts taking umbrage at Khosla, who has made big bets on biofuels and is never shy at expressing his opinions on all matters green.

But an investment Khosla Ventures announced this week in EcoMotors, a Detroit startup developing a high-efficiency diesel engines, shows that the legendary venture capitalist is more eclectic when it comes to electrics than his public pronouncements might make him seem.

EcoMotors founders Peter Hofbrauer and John Coletti, veterans of Volkswagen and Ford (F) respectively, are engineering engines that they hope will achieve 100 miles per gallon, run on gasoline, diesel or biofuels and be used to power — wait for it — plug-in hybrid electric cars.

What drove Khosla to change his mind on hybrids? He didn’t, really. To understand why, we need to look under the hybrid hood. There are two types of hybrids. A parallel” hybrid contains two drive trains — an electric motor to power the car at low speeds for short periods of time, and a conventional gasoline engine for higher speeds. The Toyota (TM) Prius and Honda (HMC) Civic hybrid and most other hybrids on the road today are parallel hybrids. (A plug-in version would allow for a more powerful battery pack that could be recharged from a standard electrical outlet.)

In contrast, a series hybrid takes some of the complexity — and presumably the cost — out of the design by using only an electric drive train to propel the car while relying on a small internal combustion engine to power a generator that charges the battery and provides power to the electric motor when needed. The Chevrolet Volt, General Motor’s (GM) plug-in electric hybrid under development, is a series plug-in hybrid. And the EcoMotors’ engine will be designed for use in a series hybrid.

“He was referring to parallel hybrids,” says Khosla Partner’s Ford Tamer of his boss’s anti-hybrid comments made in a speech at an investor conference. “We do believe a series hybrid is the way to go. He was also referring to the fact that the hybrid platform is inherently an expensive platform.”

So is a series platform at this point, but Khosla’s vision is to drive that cost down by creating high-efficiency engines and batteries. Hence the investment in EcoMotors. And hence the hiring last September of Tamer, a former top executive at chipmaker Broadcom and a co-founder of another chip company, Agere (later acquired by Lucent). “I’ve been focused on the efficiency side of Khosla — engines, motors, turbines, even solar and batteries,” says Tamer, Khosla Ventures’ operating partner.

Khosla is the sole funder of EcoMotors – and no, Tamer won’t reveal the size of the investment – which officially launched this month and remains so stealthy it doesn’t even have a website yet.

Tamer says EcoMotors CEO Hofbrauer developed a high-efficiency engine under contract with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, of DARPA, for use in military vehicles. EcoMotors has now licensed the technology for commercial use.

Here’s how it works, as explained by Tamer: the EcoMotors engine is built of 2-cylindar “modules” that can be stacked depending on the need for power – one or two modules for a car, three or four for a big truck. “If you have two modules, you can shut down one module for city driving,” says Tamer. “But when you need to need to go uphill or need power for highway driving, you engage the second module. That gives you better fuel efficiency and reduces emissions.” (EcoMotors’ renderings of the engine’s design are above.)

With the recently enacted energy bill mandating automakers raise the average fuel efficiency of their fleets to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, EcoMotors aims to demo its first engine to potential customers by early 2009.

A plug-in electric hybrid drive train will be further down the road but Khosla Ventures already has made investments in companies developing components for such a system. One such startup is Seeo, a Berkeley, Calif.-based company whose website cryptically says it is “developing advanced materials to revolutionize electricity storage and delivery.”

“Our belief is that we have to get a fuel-efficient, emissions-conscious diesel engine on its own,” Tamer says. “Then going to a hybrid becomes a bonus.”

One of Vinod Khosla’s mantras is that green technology must become cheap and scalable enough to be adopted in China and India, countries whose impact on climate change is monumental. In other words, a $25,000 plug-in hybrid doesn’t stand a chance against a Tata Nano, the Indian people’s car unveiled last week.

Remarks Tamer: “$2,500 will buy a Tata  – that’s a DVD upgrade on a Lexus.”

A Honda Civic for the age of global warming

Amid the upheaval at Tesla Motors last week, a milestone in the annals of the electric car went largely unnoticed. At Think Global’s factory in the Norwegian countryside, the first of the company’s battery-powered City urban runabouts rolled off the assembly line.

A canary-yellow two-seater sporting baby-seal-eye headlights and a bumper-to-roof glass hatch, this first production Think City will go about 112 miles (180 kilometers) on a single charge. It’s zippy, fun to drive and could well be the Honda Civic for the age of global warming.

No, Green Wombat hasn’t drunk the electric-car Kool-Aid. (Or the aquavit, in this case.)

Consider: Though ubiquitous now, the Honda Civic arrived on U.S. shores some three decades ago as a tiny, under-powered hatchback from a little-known foreign automaker in the era of the Detroit land yacht. Timing, of course, is everything. The Civic made its debut as the oil embargoes of the 1970s drove Americans from their gas-guzzling Chevys and Fords; and as an entire generation turned to the Japanese for economical well-made models, Tokyo gained a foothold in the U.S. market. In time the Civic morphed into a full range of vehicles and cemented Honda’s (HMC) hold on car buyers even as Americans returned to their profligate ways with the advent of the SUV.

Think -- and other electric car companies -- finds itself at a similar inflection point. Gas prices are at historical highs and global pressure to cut greenhouse gases will inevitably fall heavy on one of the biggest carbon culprits, the internal combustion engine. The success of the Toyota (TM) Prius gasoline-electric hybrid is just a harbinger of the market for all-electric cars.

Last May Green Wombat spent some time at Think in Norway and had a chance to test-drive a couple of the City prototypes.

You can read my Business 2.0 magazine feature story on Think here but the capsule version goes like this: A Norwegian startup, the company was acquired by Ford (F) in 1999 when the automaker faced a California mandate to begin producing electric cars. Ford poured some $150 million into Think to develop an EV for the U.S. market then sold the startup once the regulation was killed. (A few hundred of the first-generation City were available for lease in California -- Google (GOOG) founder Sergey Brin was one owner -- and old-style Thinks can still be spotted on the streets of Oslo.)

Last year Norwegian renewable energy entrepreneur Jan-Olaf Willums (center in photo above) and his investment group acquired Think and revived plans to produce a next-generation City with a next-generation business model. The Internet-enabled car will be sold online and seeded through car-sharing services like Zipcar. Buyers will purchase the car but lease the battery as part of a mobility fee that could include insurance and WiFi access. (The City will sell for about $34,000 in Norway and Willums is shooting for a U.S. sticker price of $15,000 to $17,000 plus $100 to $200 a month for the mobility fee.) Willums has raised nearly $80 million from Silicon Valley venture capitalists and European investors to get the production line up and running.

Green Wombat caught up with Willums over the weekend via e-mail to get an update on Think’s plans. According to Willums, General Electric (GE) is now an investor in Think and the company struck a deal with GE to collaborate on battery technology. The cars now coming off the assembly line will be put through their paces in the harsh Norwegian winter -- a trial that bodes well for an eventual entry into the U.S. northeastern market -- and will go on sale in Norway in the first six months of 2008.

Those cars will be powered by a Zebra sodium nickel chloride battery. Earlier this year Think struck a deal with Tesla to buy a version of its high-powered lithium-ion battery packs that give its Roadster its zero-to-60 mph-in-four-seconds vroom. But Tesla put its battery business on hold as it focuses on getting the Roadster on the road. Willums says Think now will obtain lithium-ion batteries from A123 (which is working with General Motors (GM) on its Volt electric hybrid) and EnerDel. Think will begin testing those batteries in the City in the first half of next year. In 2009, Think will begin selling the City in other European countries.

“In 2009 we plan to have a "face lift" i.e. introduce a number of additional features,” says Willums. “The plan is to have a stronger engine and some increased battery capacity at that time.”

The cars sold in Norway carry a Web-enabled black box that transmits battery performance data to Think. Tbe ’09 model will be fully Internet-capable so drivers can communicate with their City and the car can ping its owner when, for instance, it needs maintenance.

Alas, for American electric car enthusiasts, the City will probably not make it to the U.S. for another couple years. To pave the way, Willums says Think will open a Silicon Valley office in early 2008. (Willums is a familiar figure on Sand Hill Road and held the initial brainstorming sessions for the new Think at the Googleplex in 2006.)

To have a chance to even crack the urban U.S. market, Think will need to increase the City’s top speed from 62 mph and give it more drive time. Inventor Dean Kamen of Segway fame invested in Think and has developed a Stirling heat engine that would extend the City’s range by trickle-charging the battery. (For Green Wombat’s wild ride with Kamen click here.)

“We have recently started discussions with other partners (not in the automotive industry) to explore if one can make a development consortium to make the engine mass producible,” Willums says. “That would be a multiyear project, and we would like to be one partner in such a consortium that would look at many applications of the Stirling engine.”

The road for Think is a long one and many unforeseen obstacles could crash its ambitious plans, which include introducing a family sedan. But like the Honda Civic of 1972, the 2008 Think City may be well just be the prototype of a new automotive model.

Tesla Motors founder ousted

For Tesla Motors founder Martin Eberhard, getting news of his ouster was like glancing at the review mirror and seeing one of his electric Roadster supercars approaching at 130 miles an hour without a sound.

In other words, he was blindsided. "Somebody in the company asked me if I would be leaving at a certain date and I said, `I don’t think so,' but that turned out to be the case," Eberhard told Fortune’s Green Wombat.

The date was last Friday and Tesla left Eberhard by the side of the road just months before the Silicon Valley electric car company rolls its hotly-anticipated Roadster off the production line and into the hands of celebrity customers like the Google founders and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Green Wombat spoke to Eberhard and Tesla chairman Elon Musk Monday afternoon about the changes at Tesla and the company's plans for the future.

Eberhard, long the public face of Tesla, stepped down as president of technology and gave up his board seat in a move that is -- depending on who's talking -- either part of a planned transition or a hit-and-run take-out of the founder following the appointment of a new chief executive last week. The shakeup comes as Tesla wrestles with a transmission problem that has delayed production of the $100,000 all-electric car that does zero-to-60 in four seconds and can go 245 miles on a single charge.

In August, Eberhard, who started Tesla five years ago with the financial backing of PayPal alum Musk, relinquished his CEO spot so the San Carlos, Calif., startup could hire a top executive with experience in large-scale manufacturing. Former Flextronics chief Michael Marks took over as interim CEO, but Eberhard says he never expected to be booted from the company.

"I truthfully thought I’d be spending quite a few more years at Tesla Motors," says Eberhard before boarding a flight in Burbank to San Francisco. "The only surprise was that the board no longer wanted me as part of the company. There wasn’t any major disagreement going on, not that I know of anyway."

As Eberhard recounts it, Musk told him about a month ago that he wanted him to leave at some unspecified future date. "I thought it was a strange notion to kick the founder out of the company anyway, where there wasn’t a big ideological difference on the board where we wanted to go," Eberhad says. "For all Elon’s character and personality, he’s trying to solve same problem as I am. "

The end came suddenly last week. On Wednesday, Tesla announced the replacement of Marks with a permanent CEO, tech veteran Ze'ev Drori, founder of chip company Monolithic Memories. Two days later Eberhard was packing up his office. "Elon did talk to me about leaving the company without having a [board] vote," Eberhard says. "I left voluntarily when it was clear that I wasn’t going to win a vote anyway." Eberhard, who will serve on a Tesla advisory board, says Musk explained why he was being ousted "only in the vaguest terms."

When I reach Musk on his cell phone and put the question to him, he pauses and laughs a bit nervously. "I don’t know what to say without being negative," says Musk, whose other post-PayPal ventures include rocket company SpaceX and solar systems installer Solar City. "It did not make sense for him to be at the company. Of course, if the board thought if it would be better for him to stay he would still be there."

"I don’t think its ideological, it was more operational, I suppose," he adds. "There wasn’t an obvious role for Martin."

That rankles some at Tesla, acknowledges Darryl Siry, the company's vice president of sales, marketing and service. "I think for a lot of people who have identified with Martin for many years and who are emotionally connected to Martin as a leader at Tesla, this transition is a bit jarring," he says. "But we have to all adapt and move on. "

As CEO, Eberhard used Tesla's blogs to interact with electric car enthusiasts and customers, giving them an unusually detailed look at the development of the Roadster. As his final act he posted a farewell on a Tesla fan site. "I am also not going to lie about it. I am not at all happy with the way I was treated," he wrote, "and I do not think this was the very best way to handle a transition -- not the best for Tesla Motors, not the best for Tesla's customers (to whom I still feel a strong sense of responsibility), and not for Tesla's investors. " (Tesla has attracted a roster of investors that include Google (GOOG) founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page as well as venture capital firms VantagePoint Venture Partners, Technology Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.)

Some Tesla insiders tell Green Wombat they believe Eberhard's departure is more the result of personality clash with Musk rather than the speed bumps Telsa has hit as it gears up to get the Roadster on the road to meet the expectations of the tech titans, Hollywood celebs and others who have have plunked down six figures for the car. Telsa put plans to sell electric car batteries to other manufacturers on hold while it focuses on the two-seater's transmission, which hasn't met the company's durability standards.

"It’s our biggest issue," says Musk. "Unfortunately the company picked the wrong supplier, not once but twice, and now we’re on to our third. I feel pretty confident the way things are going but I personally had to take a hand in getting us there." He says in recent months he's spent up to a third of his time at Tesla.

"The first production cars should be out in the next few months," Musk says. "It’s going to be a fairly slow stream until we clear up the production issues. We need to work on production costs as well."

Musk offered a preview of what's next for Tesla, saying that early next year the company will unveil its second model, a sports sedan code-named WhiteStar. Tesla also is developing a next-generation transmission, battery and drive train, which it expects to be production-ready in a couple years. "What we’re working on in the shop is a significant advance," he claims.

Rather than just sell batteries to other electric car manufacturers, Musk says Tesla aims to provide the complete drive train package -- motor, transmission, battery and software.

"I think the right path for Tesla is as an independent company," he says. "As soon as the timing is right we’ll take the company public and use that capital to fund additional product development. We see Tesla as being one of the great car companies of the 21st century and not as a nameplate of some big auto company. We really want Tesla to branch out and have a wide range of models. Our primary interest is how do we get as many electric miles as possible."

Eberhard says it'll be difficult to watch from the sidelines. "I wish things were different, for sure. I still feel a strong sense of loyalty to the company. It’s been my life for the past five years. It's not just a business. It’s a company I started for ideological reasons as well as business reasons -- to deal with climate change, oil dependence."

Under Eberhard Tesla almost single-handedly revived the electric car just a few years after it was declared dead, pushing General Motors (GM) to develop its own EV, the Volt. (GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz acknowledged as much in a recent interview with U.S News & World Report. "When Tesla announced they were building a car, that kind of tore it for me. I thought, 'If some little West Coast outfit can do this, we can no longer stand by.' ")

Eberhard says he'll take a few months to figure out his next step. In the meantime, he still has his Roadster to look forward to.

He's No. 2 on the waiting list, right behind Musk.

Silicon Valley's $200 million electric car startup

Former SAP (SAP) top exec Shai Agassi unveiled his new venture last night in the pixels of the online editions of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times: A startup backed by $200 million that will lease removable batteries for electric cars. The company will also build a network of battery-charging stations and battery replacement centers. It appears that Agassi's company, called Project Better Place, won't spend its considerable cash hoard on developing new battery technology or electric cars themselves. Instead, according to the articles' somewhat differing takes, Agassi seeks to extend the range of existing electric car batteries by making it easy to charge up or swap power packs on the road. The company would make money by renting batteries to car owners and charging them to charge up.

"The business model for the electric cars will be similar to that used by mobile phone operators," the company says on its site. "In the same way that wireless operators deploy a network of cell towers to provide an area of mobile phone coverage, Project Better Place will establish a network of charging spots and battery exchange stations to provide ubiquitous access to electricity to power electric vehicles.  The company will partner with car makers and source batteries so that consumers who subscribe to the network can get subsidized vehicles which are cheaper to buy and operate than today’s fuel-based cars. Consumers will still own their cars and will have multiple car models to choose from."

Among the big names backing Agassi are Israeli holding company Israel Corp, Morgan Stanley (MS), Tesla investor VantagePoint Venture Partners, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn and Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

Battery leasing is an idea that's gaining currency among electric car companies. Batteries typically account for half the cost of an electric vehicle, requiring that buyers essentially prepay upfront for years of fuel cost. Norwegian EV maker Think, for instance, plans to sell its City urban runabout and charge a monthly "mobility" fee that will include the battery lease as well as other features like insurance. General Motors (GM) is exploring a similar idea for its Volt electric hybrid under development. Utilities like PG&E (PCG), meanwhile, have expressed interest in buying tens of thousands of used EV batteries to store renewable energy produced by solar arrays and wind farms for use when power demand peaks. Such a secondary market for electric car batteries potentially makes leasing schemes viable.

Agassi will face competition from Capricorn Investment Group, a Palo Alto private equity firm that also intends to launch a battery-leasing company to jump-start the EV market. Capricorn has invested in both Think and Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley startup that is building the Roadster supercar.

The risk Agassi faces is that companies like Tesla, which itself has raised more than $100 million, will develop long-range electric car batteries that make a network of charging stations and battery replacement stations superfluous. Tesla, for example, says its latest tests show the Roadster will go 245 miles between charges in combined city and highway driving. Still, it'll be some time before an electric car goes 400 miles on a charge and Agassi has $200 million to play with. A few months ago, Tesla co-founder Martin Eberhard spoke to Green Wombat about the potential for EV battery leasing. "I would love to see that work," he said. "It may work for us down the road. I think it’s a great idea."

Tesla: Roadster's Delay Worth the Wait

Tesla Motors' announcement that it is delaying production of its electric Roadster sports car until early 2008 to deal with quality-control issues has generated a lot of news coverage. (The car had been set to go into production later this year.) Less attention was paid to the Silicon Valley car company's other news: EPA-approved testing shows that the Roadster will go 245 miles on a single charge in combined city/highway driving. (If you're just zooming around town the range is 255 miles while a road trip will take you 235 miles before you need to plug in.) Tesla originally promised the Roadster would have a 250-mile range and then downgraded that estimate earlier this year to around 200 miles. If the new numbers hold up in extended real-life driving, it's a significant milestone in the development of electric cars. The last production electric car, General Motors' (GM) EV1 had a top range of about 140 miles. The ability to go 235-255 miles on a charge gives the Roadster a range competitive with fossil-fuel powered cars. (Of course, the nearly $100,000 two-seater is not competitive on price and you'll be lucky to fit a bag or two of groceries in the trunk.)

According to Tesla's blog, road tests also found that the car went 267 miles when driven "conservatively" around the Silicon Valley suburb of San Carlos; 230 miles on a grip to Lake Tahoe with two people and luggage; 186 miles when driven "aggressively" on the highway; and 165 miles in a "worst-case scenario" that consisted of "impatient commuting, aggressive stops and starts, high speeds" with the air conditioning blasting.

When Green Wombat interviewed Tesla founder Martin Eberhard in June, he commented on the extraordinary challenges of building an electric car company from the ground up. "Every single little problem that we’re dealing now is doable, but there’s lots of them," says Eberhard.  "Starting a car company is hard. We have an exotic car, with an entirely new drive train, and we’re putting together a supply chain from both automotive and non-automotive sources around the world. And we have all kinds of regulatory requirements."

Crowdsourcing the Electric Car

photos: green wombat
Tesla Motors is Silicon Valley's first car company, founded by geeks rather than gearheads. The startup behind the forthcoming all-electric Roadster sports car may also be the first Web 2.0  automaker.  Tesla execs regularly blog, detailing the development of the zero-to-60-in-four-seconds, $98,000 Roadster and engaging potential buyers and green car supporters in discussions about everything from the engineering challenges of producing an EV to marketing strategies.  Now the San Carlos company is tapping its fan base to gather data to be used in designing home charging stations for the Roadster and, presumably, for future cars like the WhiteStar electric sedan under development.

In a blog post last week, Tesla founder and president of technology Martin Eberhard asked EV enthusiasts to download an Excel spreadsheet to record information about their home's circuitry and the electrical load created by their various appliances. "Okay everybody, I need a little help from you," wrote Eberhard. "What is the biggest EV charging circuit that could be installed in your house? This sounds like an easy question, but it turns out not to be. The answer depends on a lot of factors....Help me out here: Download the spreadsheet, roll up your sleeves, survey your own electrical service, and report back to me. If you are really inspired, do a few more houses – your parents, your brother, your neighbor, whatever." (Tesla is also getting help from California utility PG&E (PCG) on the home-charging front. A prototype charging station is pictured at right.) Telsa communications director David Vespremi told Green Wombat that more than 30 people have sent in surveys over the past week.

Back in June, Green Wombat sat down with Eberhard at Tesla's headquarters to talk about electric cars and the benefits of blogging the development of the Roadster. "We get more customer feedback, more market data than you could ever get from the most expensive market survey you could pay for," Eberhard says. "Being open and getting feedback has been tremendously useful to us. I'm not a big believer in market surveys and focus groups. They're useful for small things, like 'does this user interface actually work?' On the hand with the blogs its a constant conversation and the amount of data and the quality of it is very good. We know our customers, what they know and don't know, how to target our messaging, and whether our message is getting through. I think the secrecy thing is overrated."

And it goes without saying, that's a great PR and marketing strategy. Eberhard, of course, acknowledges that Tesla keeps its core technology secret. And that as a startup that has yet to put its first car into production, the company can afford to be more open than competitors who can't risk killing demand their current lineup of cars by disclosing too much information about the next model.  "If I had already some other sports car on the road and was coming out with the Roadster I'd have to be more careful about it," he says. "With WhiteStar we're taking a pretty calculated gamble that people who would opt for WhiteStar, most of them wouldn't have opted for a Roadster anyway. We'll have to be a little more careful down the road, that's just the market reality. We'll try to remain an open and transparent company. Even if I'm not telling people about features on the car, I'll tell people why."

Tesla and PG&E Team Up

photo: green wombat
In another step toward creating an alternative automotive infrastructure, Silicon Valley electric car company Tesla Motors and California utility PG&E said today they will collaborate on developing "smart charging" technology. That will allow cars like Tesla's forthcoming Roadster to be juiced up by remote control, giving utilities the ability to control when the vehicle is charged, say, when electricity demand is low - and power cheap - or when solar, wind and other renewable energy comes online. Smart charging also lets utilities set the rate of charging to balance power demands on the grid. It's part of a developing vehicle-to-grid system where one day it's hoped that electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid cars will be able to transmit power back to the grid when demand peaks to avoid using carbon-spewing power plants.  PG&E (PCG) said it anticipates integrating the Tesla smart charging technology into its SmartMeter program, which could give electric car owners a break on their utility bills if they charge their cars at certain times of the day. Other utilities, like Southern California Edison (EIX), are working on similar initiatives.

Google's Green Car Challenge

Hoping to jump-start innovation in "sustainable transportation," Google.org - the search giant's philanthropic arm -  today issued a $10 million request for proposals for projects that will promote the commercialization of plug-in hybrid vehicles, electric cars and vehicle-to-grid technology. "We plan to invest amounts ranging from $500,000 to $2,000,000 in selected for-profit companies," said Google.org. "While $10 million is a fraction of the total investment needed to transform our transportation sector, we hope this RFP will help catalyze a broader response. We need the automakers to bring these cars to market, but plug-in vehicles also need an entire ecosystem of companies flourish." The grants are part of Google.org's (GOOG) RechargeIt.org initiative. In June, the company unveiled a solar-powered parking bay and recharging stations it created with utility PG&E (PCG) where workers can juice up a fleet of plug-in hybrid cars that Google is creating for an employee car-sharing service. Google is also testing several plug-in Toyota Priuses (TM) to assess their potential to serve as mobile generators, transferring electricity back to the grid from their batteries during times of peak demand.

That's good for the environment and a weapon in the fight against global warming. But it also could be a big business opportunity for Google if plug-in vehicles and vehicle-to-grid (V2G) become common. Imagine the data and network management infrastructure needed to figure out where millions of cars are plugged in at any given moment, determining the power level of their batteries, and matching that with the demands of the power grid. Green Wombat happened to be at the Googleplex on Saturday and asked Dan Reicher, Google.org's director of climate and energy initiatives, about whether the company has a role to play in V2G. "It's clearly a data management challenge and there are things we can do, but it's unclear if it's a big business opportunity," he said.

What Google is doing now is collecting data on the performance of plug-in hybrid Priuses. On Saturday, Reicher showed the latest additions to Google's plug-in fleet. Since may, hundreds of Google employees have been using the modified Priuses to run errands and as they tool around Silicon Valley black boxes installed in the cars record data on the driving conditions, fuel efficiency and other factors.

Powering Fuel-Cell Cars With Hydrogen Pellets

photo: PNNL
Will the car of the future be powered by hydrogen pellets? Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, are investigating the feasibility of using the chemical compound ammonia borane to store hydrogen. When heated, ammonia borane releases hydrogen gas that could, theoretically, be used in automotive fuel cells. PNNL scientists say an ammonia borane pellet weighing three-quarters of a gram can contain as much as 1.8 liters of hydrogen (for the metrically challenged, that's about half a gallon). The range of fuel-cell cars currently under development by Ford (F), General Motors (GM), Honda (HMC) and Toyota (TM) is limited by the amount of hydrogen that can be stored in bulky on-board tanks. Pop in a handful of hydrogen pellets into a small onboard reactor that would control the release of hydrogen, the thinking goes, and your fuel-cell car would have the range and performance of a conventional vehicle. "It’s somewhat hypothetical but we think it's something potentially doable," PNNL staff scientist Donald Camaioni told Green Wombat on Thursday. Presumbably such a reactor could also be used to generate electricty for home and commercial use as well.

The research is in its earliest stages, and the prospect of a hydrogen-pellet powered car is many years away, if ever. Camaioni says he and his colleagues have managed to release hydrogen from ammonia borane in the laboratory but two big challenges need to be overcome. One is figuring out how to control the release of hydrogen from ammonia borane through varying the temperature of a reactor. The other is to develop a system that can reprocess the spent pellets for reuse. "Right now there isn’t a well known way to do that cost- effectively, he says. Of course, if a hydrogen-pellet fueled vehicle is to be a carbon-free car, a no-emissions way of powering the reactor must be found as well.

Tesla Roadster to Make First Road Trip

photo:  squiddphoto
The Tesla Roadster hits the highway later this month for the electric sports car's first public road trip, a 200-mile journey from San Francisco through the Sierras to Lake Tahoe. Sure, it's a publicity stunt but one designed to demolish the perception that electric cars are short-range put-put mobiles more suited to suburban cul-de-sacs than the open road. As the Silicon Valley startup gears up for production of the zero-to-60-in-four super car this fall, it will use the final prototype of the Roadster for the August 29 road trip. The Global Hyatt hotel chain is sponsoring the event and the Roadster will stop at Hyatts in Sacramento and Incline Village, Nevada, on Lake Tahoe. Hyatt is considering installing charging stations at some properties - Tesla in May won a $561,000 grant from the state of California to develop charging stations that can be deployed at hotels. While this is the first public road trip for the Roadster, Tesla has put the $98,000 car through its paces during long-distance testing, says Tesla public relations director David Vespremi.

Green Wombat recently had an opportunity to take a ride in the Roadster with Vespremi while reporting a story on electric cars ("Have You Driven a Fjord Lately? in the August issue of Business 2.0). The test car is a "fusion red" prototype that screams sex and speed.  Vespremi - like other Tesla employees, he's a gearhead - backs the Roadster out of the garage at Tesla's Silicon Valley headquarters and turns onto a busy thoroughfare. We cruise at about 40 mph for a bit and then he punches the accelerator and the car shoots forward into the traffic. I’m pushed back into my leather seat,  subconsciously bracing for impact as we silently rocket straight toward a tractor trailer ahead.  David flicks the steering wheel and the car effortlessly swings around the truck and heads toward the entrance ramp to the 101. It’s rush hour and the metering lights are on. He hits the accelerator and we rocket up the ramp at 90 miles an hour, gliding around the traffic as we merge onto the freeway. Green Wombat briefly considers taking out a second mortgage and adding his name to the wait list. The drive back to San Francisco in the Zipcar Prius is anti-climatic, to say the least.

Toyota Exec: Lithium-Ion Hybrids Not Ready for Prime Time

A blogging Toyota exec has fired back at a Wall Street Journal story that claimed the automaker has delayed by up to two years a plug-in hybrid Prius that uses lithium ion batteries. "To suggest that any timing has been changed for the introduction of a vehicle for which an introduction schedule hasn’t been finalized and published, using battery technology that we’ve previously said isn’t ready for prime-time, is – well, it’s curious and perplexing," wrote Toyota (TM) corporate communications exec Irv Miller on the company's Open Road blog on Friday. Still, Miller indicated that you won't see a lithium ion Prius hitting the road anytime soon. "We have consistently affirmed that there are many issues that need to be resolved, beyond the safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries, before a commercial lithium-ion-equipped hybrid – and what we’re talking about here is the so-called plug-in hybrid, or PHEV - is ready for the market," he wrote. "These issues include battery cost, availability, performance and packaging. All of the car makers face the same problems when it comes to these issues. The answers, unfortunately, are not just around the corner.

Miller contends that "nobody has fully figured out the optimum use of lithium-ion batteries in automobiles" and thus "promises of longer driving ranges on a single charge appear to be several years away." Not exactly. Tesla Motors is preparing to roll out its lithium ion-powered Roadster later this year and has just named a new CEO to ramp up production. But what may have also incited Miller's ire was the Journal's suggestion that any delays will open the door for Ford (F), General Motors (GM) and Honda (HMC) to catch up to the industry's technology leader.

Eberhard Out as Tesla CEO

Tesla Motors co-founder Martin Eberhard has been replaced as CEO of the Silicon Valley electric car company by former Flextronics chief Michael Marks. Tesla marketing executive Darryl Siry told Green Wombat that Marks, a Tesla investor, will serve as interim CEO as part of a planned transition. The news was first reported Saturday night on San Jose Mercury News auto editor Matt Nauman's blog.  Tesla communications director David Vespremi says Eberhard will become the startup's president of technology as it prepares to roll out its Roadster super car later this year. "We were looking for someone who could help take the business to the next level, someone who had manufacturing experience," Vespremi told Green Wombat. "Michael Marks definitely has those credentials with Flextronics. This is all part of growing the business and positioning us to be ready for even more success. Which is why Martin is still very much involved. If anything, it allows Martin to do what he does best, be a technology leader."

After stepping down as Flextronics CEO in 2005, Marks joined private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Flextronics is an electronics manufacturing services company that designs, engineers and builds tech products. Siry said Marks will remain with KKR while he serves as interim CEO.

"Martin and the board have been looking for a permanent CEO since early this year and the plan was to have someone in place before we got into production because the amount of manufacturing expertise needed is tremendous," says Siry. "We haven’t found the right one yet, and since we’re about to head into production we decided to name an interim CEO so we could get through this period. Michael Marks has a tremendous amount of manufacturing experience and he knows Tesla."

So far more than 500 people - including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Google (GOOG) co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and inventor Dean Kamen - have ponied up nearly $100,000 each for the thrill of going zero-to-60 in four seconds.  The leadership change comes as automakers like General Motors (GM) and Toyota (TM) step up programs to develop plug-in hybrid electric cars. The Roadster takes its first public road trip later this month.

Here's what Green Wombat wrote about Eberhard in Business 2.0's 50 Who Matter Now list from the magazine's June issue:

Eberhard's high-tech, battery-powered electric car is less about bland eco-consciousness than about sex and speed. The Tesla Roadster does zero-to-60 in a whiplash-inducing four seconds, reaches over 130 mph, and goes more than 200 miles on a single charge.

And oh, yes, it's also helping to save the earth. No surprise that the likes of Larry Page and Arnold Schwarzenegger have lined up to buy the six-figure supercar. Next up, Eberhard will take aim at the mass market by introducing a four-door sedan, the WhiteStar, that's slated to debut in 2009 at half the price.

Utilities to Drive Hybrid Repair Trucks

photos: green wombat
PG&E has put California's first hybrid diesel-electric service truck on the streets as part of pilot program to cut greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants while reducing fuel bills. The nationwide effort involves 14 utilities - from PG&E (PCG) and Southern California Edison (EIX) on the West Coast to American Electric Power (AEP) in the heartland to Duke Energy (DUK) and FPL (FPL) on the East Coast. Hydro Quebec also is participating in the truck trial. This morning a 16-ton "bucket truck" silently rolled up to a plaza in front of PG&E's San Francisco headquarters. The International truck can run up to 35 miles an hour on its electric drive train made by Eaton, according to Efrain Ornelas, PG&E senior program manager for clean air transportation. Batteries also power the bucket that lifts workers up to power lines. In a conventional bucket truck that equipment is powered by the vehicle's diesel engine, which is left idling and spewing carbon while the repair work is being performed. "Normally when one of these trucks is working in a neighborhood it's so loud you can't hear yourself talk," said Ornelas as the bucket quietly lifted a technician into the air.

According to PG&E, the hybrid bucket truck will slash fuel consumption up to 60 percent, saving up to $5,500 a year in diesel costs. The year-long trial will help the truck's manufacturer tweak the vehicle's final design. Ornelas said the electric lift can operate for about two hours on battery power, which should let PG&E customers get some sleep when trucks are dispatched in the dead of night to fix downed power lines. Meanwhile, as Green Wombat wrote earlier, New Jersey utility Public Service Electric and Gas (PEG) plans to replace a quarter of its 5,000-vehicle fleet with diesel-electric hybrids and biodiesel-powered trucks.

Federal Energy Official: Plug the Prius into the Grid

photo: CalCars
Thanks to Felix Kramer of the California Cars Initiative for tipping off Green Wombat to an enlightening exchange between a Toyota executive and a U.S. energy commissioner on the automaker's blog. The topic: plugging a plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) version of the Prius into the power grid to supply electricity when demand peaks. Toyota (TM) corporate communications exec Irv Miller wrote a post on July 26 about the company's move to supply plug-in versions of the Prius to the University of California, Berkeley, and UC Irvine for testing. In response, Jon Wellinghoff, a commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, posted a query on Toyota's Open Road blog about the car's vehicle-to-grid capability, or V2G in green car geek talk, which would allow owners to be compensated for generating electricity. "Is Toyota planning on incorporating this 'cashback' hybrid technology into the cars they produce for testing?" asked Wellinghoff. "Studies have demonstrated that PHEV with vehicle-to-grid capability can realize annual payments from electric grid operators of between $1,000 to $3,000. These cashback payments could completely offset the high cost of this technology. What is Toyota doing in this regard?"

In a lengthy reply posted less than a day later - warp speed for a multinational corporation dealing with a hot-button topic - Miller said Toyota's priority is to produce production-ready PHEVs rather than build mini power plants. "Our expertise is in building motor vehicles. It’s not in power generation," wrote Miller. "That’s something that we would prefer to leave to those best equipped to do it." Nevertheless, he went on to discuss the challenges of V2G. Among them:

• Battery performance.
• Coordinating thousands of PHEVs to supply power to the grid.
• Building and financing the V2G infrastructure.
• Consumer's willingness to accept lower fuel efficiency by giving up battery power to the grid.

(One hurdle not mentioned but something that Tesla Motors CEO Martin Eberhard has raised with Green Wombat is the impact of V2G on PHEV or electric car battery life.)

"The automobile business is changing and will, we feel sure, require strategies, partnerships and alliances we might not even have thought of yet. We don’t even know, for sure, if PHEVs will come to market in the way in which we think they will," concluded Miller. "So while the potential for V2G is another intriguing aspect of hybrid technology, we must not become sidetracked so that we lose sight of the immediate goal. That goal is to produce an affordable, reliable PHEV that can be sold in large quantities, that can be serviced at any dealership, and that will meet the needs of the American motorist."

For CalCars's Kramer, whose organization promotes plug-in hybrids, Toyota's willingness to even publicly discuss vehicle-to-grid was more important than Miller's laundry list of obstacles to V2G. "The company's reservations are less significant than the fact that it is paying very serious attention to the subject," Kramer told Green Wombat in an email. If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area you might spot the PHEV enthusiast tooling around in his converted 100-miles-to-the-gallon plug-in Prius, as Green Wombat did just the other weekend out at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Green Wombat is also fascinated by how a high-level U.S. government energy official and a corporate executive are having a direct, and apparently minimally mediated, open discussion via blog on a matter of public policy. Toyota's willingness to talk no doubt owes in part to the pressure exerted by groups like CalCars and the interest of utilities like PG&E (PCG) and Southern California Edison (EIX) in V2G. Google (GOOG) also has focused attention on the issue by installing a vehicle-to-grid charging stations at its corporate headquarters in Mountain View. Now the question is, will Honda (HMC), General Motors (GM) and Ford (F) join the discussion?

The Electric Car Opportunity

photos: green wombat
While reporting a feature story on Norwegian electric car company Think that appears in the August issue of Business 2.0 ("Have You Driven a Fjord Lately?"), Green Wombat had the chance to sit down with Ion Yadigaroglu, co-founder and partner at Palo Alto's Capricorn Investment Group. Capricorn, the investment vehicle of former eBay president Jeff Skoll, has invested in both Think and Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric car company making the Roadster super car. "This is the first time in a very long time that there are two car companies – two real car companies - that are being launched," says Yadigaroglu.  He believes there's an opening for electric car startups to grab market share while Detroit and Tokyo dither. "The reason there might be a window is because, clearly, the incumbent car companies didn’t take this electric car phenomenon seriously," says Yadigaroglu. "They have, as always happens, big incentives to drag their feet and maintain the status quo." 

Automotive history, of course, is littered with the rusting name plates of failed startups, from Tucker to DeLorean. But thanks to the economics of electric car production, companies like Think and Tesla are able to make cars for $100 million versus the $1 billion automakers will spend on just retooling an existing model. "Fundamentally, by going all-electric there is a radical design change involved," Yadigaroglu says. "The complexity goes down. Half the complexity of a regular car is in its drive train, its engine and transmission and all that. You have such savings by going all-electric in terms of what engineering is needed." Tesla and Think will use Tesla's lithium-ion battery packs, piggybacking on the billions spent to create such batteries for laptops and cell phones. Think is also benefiting from the $150 million that former owner Ford (F) pumped into the company to develop a highway-ready electric car that met European and U.S. safety standards. And both companies are pursuing a classic Silicon Valley strategy: attract high-profile early adopters with disruptive technology and then popularize it for the mass market.

Think and Tesla will roll out their cars this year from from opposite ends of the market - Think with a two-seater urban runabout called the City and Tesla with its two-seater $100,000 Roadster. The challenge will be ramping up to get costs down so both companies can expand production to more mainstream passenger vehicles. "The real game here is how are we positioned in 2009," says Yadigaroglu. "There will be two electric car companies in the world that will have significant numbers on the road with the knowledge and assets in order to be competitive with Toyota. Car company incumbents are maybe slow but they’re not stupid. I guarantee you in two years there will be interesting vehicles coming out of even the U.S. automobile industry."

Whether an electrified Toyota (TM) or General Motors (GM) will attempt to crush or co-exist with the upstarts in the great unknown. To help drive down the cost of electric cars and boast Think and Tesla, Capricorn plans to start a battery leasing company. Think, for instance, will sell the City but lease the battery, which accounts for half the cost of the car. When you buy an electric car you're essentially paying upfront the fuel costs for the life of the vehicle. (It would be like buying a $20,000 Honda and then having to pay a $20,000 surcharge for the gasoline the car will consume over the next decade.) Capricorn's lease might be sold as a "mobility" fee that could include insurance and other services. Utilities like San Francisco-based PG&E (PCG) are interested in buying thousands of used electric car batteries to store renewable energy and ease demand on the power grid. "

Yadigaroglu met Think CEO Jan-Olaf Willums last year when he invited Willums, an expert in corporate sustainability, to a meeting at Capricorn. As the two were driving back to San Francisco - in a Prius - Willums mentioned he and his investment group had just bought Think. "He’s a very interesting person and delightful to be with and very generous," says Yadigaroglu. "They’re not in it just for the money. They really aren’t. One thing that always keeps me optimistic about the world is that sometimes when you try not too hard to make every last dollar of profit is when you actually create companies, organizations or ideas that are truly worth an outstanding amount of real value."

Who's Resurrecting the Electric Car?

Green Wombat's feature story on Norwegian electric car company Think appears in the August issue of Business 2.0 and is available online. A startup acquired by Ford (F) in 1999 and now owned by a group of Norwegian entrepreneurs backed by Silicon Valley and European investors, Think is revving up the production line for its zippy two-seater City coupe. (Alas, the convertible City on the Business 2.0 cover is a prototype.) The company, which has attracted the attention of everyone from Google (GOOG) and Tesla Motors to inventor Dean Kamen and PG&E (PCG), will begin selling cars in Europe in 2008 and hopes to bring the Think to selected U.S. markets in 2009.  Like Tesla, Think is attempting to upend a century-old automotive business model as it rolls out the first highway-ready production electric car since General Motors (GM) scrapped the EV1 in 2003. Over the next few days, Green Wombat will feature bonus material that didn't make it into the Think story.

Avis Goes Green With Hybrid Rentals

Avis is greening its rental fleet, announcing today that it will add 500 Nissan Altima hybrids to the thousand Toyota (TM) Priuses it began offering earlier this summer. The move is probably less a sign of Avis's (CAR) eco-consciousness than a strategy to spice up a dowdy rental fleet of Detroit cast-offs like the Chevry Impala. For ethanol fans, Avis offers flex-fuel cars. The hybrids are part of Avis's new "Cool Cars" collection that includes some decidedly brown vehicles like General Motors's (GM) Hummer and Dodge's (DCX) Nitro monster SUV. Apparently traditional car rental agencies are feeling some pressure from Web-based competitors Zipcar and Flexcar, which maintain fleets of "cool cars" like the Prius, Honda (HMC) Civic hybrid and Mini Cooper but which, for the most part, eschew carbon-spewing big sedans and SUVs.

Report: Plug-In Hybrids a Solution to Global Warming

photo: neuroticjose
The first major analysis of the potential impact of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles has found the widespread adoption of such cars and trucks would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and improve air quality. By 2050, plug-in hybrids, or PHEVS, could eliminate 450 million metric tons of CO2 annually - the equivalent of taking 82.5 million conventional cars, or a third of the nation's current fleet - off the road. That would also cut oil consumption by nearly 4 million barrels a day. Assuming PHEVs hit the market by 2010, and depending on sales of the cars, the total reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050 would 3.4 to 10.3 billion metric tons, according to the study conducted by the non-profit Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The study was based on sophisticated computer modeling of the U.S. power grid and transportation system.

"What we’re talking about today is potentially a very, very large effect," said John Bryson, CEO of utility giant Edison International (EIX), during a press conference in Washington, D.C. this morning. Utilities like Edison, PG&E (PCG) and Austin Energy have taken the lead in pushing automakers to get in gear on plug-in hybrids.

Even if plug-in hybrids become the dominant form of transportation they would only spike electricity demand by five to eight percent, researchers said, because most car owners probably will charge their vehicles at night when power plants are idle or under-utilized. The study's computer models considered various scenarios, from a high CO2-intensive grid to a greener one as well as plug-in hybrids with varying ranges and sales. But even if plug-in hybrids made up only 20 percent of the nation's vehicle fleet in 2050 and the electric grid remained relatively dirty, greenhouse gas emissions would still decline by some 163 million metric tons annually.

The impact of plug-in hybrids on global warming will depend on the electric system, noted NRDC scientist Dan Lashof. "The key to utilizing plug-in hybrids is a cleaner power grid," he said. The greener the grid, the greater the greenhouse gas reductions as coal-fired power plants are displaced by renewable energy or begin to deploy technology to capture their CO2 emissions.

General Motors (GM) executive Tony Posawatz brought a plug-in Chevrolet Volt concept car to the press conference. The automaker is designing the Volt to run primarily on battery power and use other alternative fuels to extend its range. "We at General Motors are certainly very interested in this study," said Posawatz. "The potential for plug-ins, I think everyone recognizes, is tremendous."

Think Raises $60 Million to Put Electric Car on the Road

photo: green wombat
Think the electric car is dead? Think again. Norwegian electric car company Think has raised $60 million in its latest round from U.S. and European investors, including Silicon Valley's DFJ Element and Capricorn Investment Group. Other U.S. investors include RockPort Capital Partners and Wintergreen Advisers. Think now has $85 million in the bank to begin production later this year of the City, a two-seater urban runabout that can go about 112 miles (180 kilometers) on a single charge with a top speed of 62 mph (100 kph) with its current battery. The zippy little EV should get even zippier: Think has cut a $43 million deal with Tesla Motors to buy a version of its lithium-ion battery packs that power the Silicon Valley electric car company's forthcoming Roadster super car. Think will initially sell the City in Norway before expanding to other European markets in 2008. The company hopes to bring the car to the U.S. sometime in 2009.

The latest funding round marks the rapid resurrection of a company left for dead little more than a year ago. It began life as a startup before being acquired by Ford (F) in 1999 when automakers faced a California mandate to produce a zero-emission vehicles. After investing $150 million in Think, Ford sold the company to a Swiss electronics outfit in 2003 when it looked like Detroit would be able to gut the California regulation. (For its part, General Motors (GM) subsequently scrapped its EV1 electric car.) With Think in bankruptcy by 2006, the three founders of $8 billion Norwegian solar energy company REC bought Think last March, acquiring an electric car factory and Ford's designs for a next-generation car. Stay tuned to Green Wombat and Business 2.0 for more on Think in the coming weeks.

Ford Plugs in to the Grid

The announcement Monday from Ford and Southern California Edison that they will collaborate on commercializing plug-in hybrid cars represents a tentative step toward a replacing the petrol pump with the power outlet. At first glance, the agreement looks rather modest: Ford (F) will provide SoCal Edison (EIX) with a fleet of hybrid Ford Escape SUVs that will be converted to plug-in hybrid vehicles, or PHEVs, by developing a larger battery with a yet-unnamed partner. Ford and the utility will assess the the performance of PHEV Escapes and the potential for charging them with renewable energy like solar or wind. That means the utilility then could potentially tap the cars' batteries to provide electricity to the grid during peak demand rather than rely so much on greenhouse-gas emitting power plants. Plug-in hybrids sport larger rechargeable batteries that allow the cars to travel longer distances on electricity and thus use their gasoline engines less, reducing CO2 emissions while significantly improving fuel efficiency.

But the real potential of the collaboration involves Ford and Southern California Edison's interest in developing new markets for plug-in car batteries, which could reduce the cost of electric cars while providing new ways to store and use renewable energy. As Green Wombat earlier wrote, utility PG&E (PCG) is also exploring the potential to buy thousands of such batteries once they've outlived their usefulness for transportation but still retain capacity that could be used to store electricity produced by solar arrays and wind farms. As these programs progress, we could start to see the century-old axis between the auto and oil industries be supplemented by a new alliance between car makers and utilities.

"The utility industry and the auto industry have to really sit down and understand both sides of the technology equation," Ed Kjaer, an EV veteran who runs Southern California Edison's electric transportation program, recently told Green Wombat. "The auto planners of the future need to understand the grid of the future. The designers of the grid of the future need to understand what is the technology capability of these cars connecting to the grid." Still, he cautions, there is much work to be done. One big issue: the impact on battery life if electric cars are used as mobile generators to provide electricity to the grid.

A note to readers: Green Wombat is on holiday in Australia so posting may be a bit sporadic over the next week or so.

 

Report: Hybrid Cars' Low Impact on Oil Imports

The hundreds of thousands of hybrid cars sold in the United States since their arrival on these shores in 1999 must be putting a dent in oil imports, right? Not quite. Or at least not yet. According to a report released by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, fuel efficient electric-gasoline cars like the Toyota (TM) Prius and Honda (HMC) Civic have saved a grand total of 5.5 million barrels of oil over the past eight years. On the other hand, the U.S. was importing 8.5 million barrels of oil a day in 2003 to power cars and light trucks. "Hybrid electric vehicles would have to replace a significant portion of the total light duty vehicle fleet to have an impact on petroleum imports," NREL researchers concluded. The lab calculated gasoline savings based on fuel efficiency data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and reports from hybrid car owners and then used modeling software to calculate how many hybrids were on the road in any given year. Despite the negligible consequence of hybrids on oil imports so far, researchers were optimistic about their potential, noting that hybrid sales have grown 72 percent a year over the past five years and that such vehicles were 45 percent more fuel efficient than similar-sized conventional cars in 2006. "Although the fuel savings from hybrid electric vehicles to date is relatively small compared to the total fuel use, as the technology matures and these numbers increase they can have a significant impact in reducing our overall transportation fuel use,” said NREL senior research engineer Matthew Thornton in a statement. Of course, that impact would be magnified if General Motors (GM), Ford (F) and other U.S. automakers focused less on creating hybrid versions of monster SUVs like the Chevrolet Tahoe and more on developing small and mid-sized hybrids. Or all-electric cars, for that matter.

Google Powers Push for Plug-In Hybrid Cars

photos: green wombat
Talk about a clean commute: As part of an $11 million green cars initiative, Google is creating a plug-in hybrid car-sharing fleet. Employees will be able to book a super fuel-efficient plug-in Prius online through a partnership with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, charge the car under a solar-powered canopy at the Googleplex and, eventually, feed electricity from the car's battery back to the grid. Google (GOOG) and California utility PG&E (PCG) demo'd the technology yesterday in Mountain View during the launch of the RechargeIt.org initiative from Google.org, the search giant's philanthropic arm.

Under sunny skies, Google.org chief Larry Brilliant drove a white plug-in Prius emblazoned with the Google colors into a parking bay whose roof is covered with solar panels, part of the company's 1.6 megawatt solar installation - the nation's largest. He got out of the car and grabbed one of the retractable power cords hanging from the roof and plugged in the Prius to applause from the Googlers and guests.  (Plug-in hybrids feature larger, rechargeable batteries that allow the cars to travel further on electric power, dramatically increasing fuel efficiency as the gasoline engine is used less.) "We hope to demonstrate the potential of plug-in hybrid cars and vehicle-to-grid technologies as a way to create a more, secure and efficient green energy system," Brilliant said as nearly a dozen other Priuses sat parked behind him.  A123 Systems/Hymotion has converted two Priuses for Google, which will use them to gather data on plug-in hybrid performance. So far, the Google Priuses - named Galapagos and Great Barrier Reef - have averaged about 74 miles per gallon - that's 3.2 liters per 100 kilometers for readers residing in the metric world - and produce 68 percent fewer emissions than the average U.S. car.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who rode to the event on a bicycle, showed how plug-in hybrids can feed electricity to the grid at peak demand times to reduce the need to tap greenhouse-gas emitting power plants.  "I happen to have a Prius but not a plug-in. Now I'll have to try to get one myself," Brin said. "It would be very nice not to have the inconvenience of going to gas stations."  He plugged a power cord into a Prius and then pressed a button on a laptop that sent a wireless signal to the car, which began sending electricity back to the grid.

"I think the potential for plug-in hybrid cars and all-electric cars is really great," Google co-founder Larry Page told Green Wombat as he stood by his blue Huffy bicycle. "I love the demo with the plug-in to grid. If you have tens of thousands or millions of these cars, the amount of energy they can produce is much more than the normal generation capacity."

As part of the RechargeIt program, Google will invest $10 million in alternative transportation technologies and is giving $1 million to various groups to advance plug-in hybrids. Small change, perhaps, by Google standards, but as electric car companies like Silicon Valley's Tesla Motors have shown, you don't need Detroit and Tokyo's billion-dollar budgets to make significant strides in automotive technology. Tesla, for instance, will put its Roadster super car on the highway for about $100 million.

But efforts like Google's plug-in hybrid car-sharing program may have the most potential to light a fire under the automakers, which have so far dragged their feet on developing such cars. When up to 100 converted Priuses begin cruising the highways and byways of the Bay Area, many consumers are going to have the same reaction Green Wombat had after a ride in the Tesla Roadster: I want one. Now imagine if other Silicon Valley companies - say, Yahoo (YHOO) - follow Google's lead and create similar car-sharing programs. Microsoft (MSFT), for instance, itself has a huge solar array at its Mountain View campus.

"We hope programs like this will encourage manufacurers to make similar commerically viable plug in cars available. We know there's a pent-up demand for such a product," said Enterprise executive Greg Stubblefield. And we're anxious to see manufacturers progress in that direction. As we would certainly be a buyer for these vehicles."

PG&E's Battery Power Plans Could Jump Start Electric Car Market

photos: green wombat
California utility PG&E has given Green Wombat an exclusive look at new technology that could provide a big boost to both the nascent electric car market and renewable energy production. In the coming years, the utility plans to buy thousands of plug-in hybrid and electric car batteries once they've outlived their usefulness for transportation and install them in the basements of office towers and at electrical substations to store green energy. That will cut peak demand for expensive - and greenhouse gas-emitting - electricity. On a recent morning Green Wombat went down to a sub-basement below PG&E's (PCG) San Francisco headquarters where the utility parks its plug-in hybrid Toyota (TM) and Mercedes fuel-cell car. Against one wall a nickel metal hydride battery salvaged from a wrecked Prius sat on a metal cart attached to an inverter that converts the battery's DC power into AC power. The setup is hooked up to an electrical meter, a fluorescent light and a portable heater. (In the photos, the Pruis battery is on the middle shelf; the inverter is on the top left.) "The meter is spinning anti-clockwise right now," says Sven Thesen, PG&E's supervisor for clean air transportation. "That means we energy is coming out of the building and powering the meter. PG&E is paying for this right now." A minute later the meter begins to spin in the opposite direction and the lights and heater come to life as the 1.3 kilowatt/hour Prius battery uploads electricity into the power grid.

Electric vehicle batteries generally retain 80 percent of their capacity even after they're no longer good for powering cars. Thesen envisions a time in the near future when banks of EV batteries are charged at night with electricity produced by wind farms, which tend to generate the most electricity in the evening when power demands are the lowest. Normally, that energy is just lost because it isn't stored. During the day when air conditioners crank up and energy demand rises, electricity can be released from the batteries to take the load off the power grid. In theory, that means PG&E won't have to build as many planet-warming natural gas-fired power plants to meet peak demand or as an insurance policy against blackouts. It also allows the utility to do "load leveling." Cranking up a power plant to supply electricity when demand suddenly spikes is expensive. EV batteries could release electricity to the grid to smooth fill in the gaps between supply and demand. The same is true if batteries are used at electrical substations. "If we can put in $5,000 worth of batteries and avoid putting in a $50,000 transformer and upgrading the lines then everyone is a winner," says Thesen.

Electric car makers like Silcon Valley's Tesla Motors and Norway's Think could be some of the biggest winners. The battery is the most expensive part of the car, and PG&E's plan would create a significant secondary market for them, especially if other utilities like Southern California Edison (SCE) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) follow suit. A second life for electric car batteries would lower their cost as battery financing syndicates are formed to buy and sell the micro-mini power plants.  That would help jump start the market for electric cars by making them more affordable. It would also spur further technological progress in battery development to exend their range and power. "Those batteries have some residual capacity and that residual capacity is actually valuable," Tesla CEO Martin Eberhard told Green Wombat last week. "At a substation you take a whole stack of three-quarter dead batteries and just run them into the ground an then chuck them into recycling." He says there would be no obstacle to re-purposing Tesla's powerful lithium-ion batteries - which give its forthcoming Roadster super car its 200 mile range and zero-to-60-in-four seconds vroom - for such use.

The chicken-and-egg dilemma, of course, is that PG&E and other utilities will need thousands of EV batteries. Ford (F), General Motors (GM), Toyota and other automakers are not yet making plug-in hybrids.  Companies like Think and Tesla, meanwhile, will be selling limited numbers of electric cars over the next couple years. Man