Tesla Founders Blog

I forgot to mention the massive trickle down benefits founding Telsa motors has provided. Even if Tesla never actually produces any cars in volume the real success is volt. And not so much even volt itself as getting GM into the game to motivate Toyota. I see Toyota having the greatest commitment and potential. So in an amazing nth degree of separation way, you have effectively commanded Toyota to produce a plug-in hybrid, accelerate their transition to lithium chemistries and advance their pure EV program. Naysayers will happily point out that this would have all happened anyhow and I would counter with, “when?” It seems for as long as I have driven there has been some amazing platform on a next generation technology at every autoshow; but, regardless of how much time passes the same damn thing is at the next autoshow with a new body design and remix of the amazing platform. Now we are seeing actual production commitments and real designs. It is a very exciting time.

The impact this will have is really immeasurable. Thank you Martin and Marc.

The more that I think about Hawaii as a testbed/showcase for green technology (especially EVs), the more sense it makes. As Pete pointed out, there are numerous sustainable energy sources that can be converted to electricity, and if Iceland is any indication, the geothermal alone could be enough to power the entire island chain. There is a relatively high number of high net worth individuals with homes there who, with a little encouragement, might become early adopters of cleantech/greentech. And the idea of planting the seeds of greentech awareness within the tourist population is brilliant. When people get home from vacation they love to tell their friends about the things that they have seen.
In addition, I would imagine that on a relatively small island there would be a lot less “range anxiety” for EVs, despite it’s unfounded nature. I have never driven in Hawaii, but I imagine that it would be difficult to exceed the Roadster’s 220 mile range there in a single day.

Now, if we could just fuel those jetliners with pineapple juice…

All the best,

Chris H.

I enthusiastically agree with Pete. And when roadsters start showing up on the street in significant numbers their contribution will be even greater.

Hi Martin,

A good way to put Powerpoint slides online is to use Slideshare. They’re like YouTube but for Powerpoint rather than video.

Look forward to hearing about the new roadster!

Martin sez:

Crushingly lame.

Hi Martin,
Also, what do you think of this bus?

http://www.adelaidecitycouncil.com/scripts/nc.dll?ADCC:STANDARD::pc=PC_151048

I’ve been wondering about trying to get a bus like this (i.e. pure EV) in operation in a different environment (say, volcanic, hilly Auckland, NZ) – and I’ve been told that drawing power from the batteries when you need it is an issue. I wasn’t sure about that – and if so, how does the Tesla get around it?. Adleiade is pretty flat, so large bursts of power wouldn’t be so much of an issue. I read an article about the Morgan fuel cell car…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7265267.stm

The relevant extract:

When the car needs to accelerate or climb a hill it draws extra power from a bank of ultra-capacitors aligned down the centre of the car.

“They are like a battery but they do not store quite as much energy and they allow the energy in and out much quicker,” explained Mr Whiting.

These are primarily charged by a regenerative braking system which slows the car by converting the vehicle’s kinetic energy into useful electrical energy using a motor.

Would something like this be able to be applied to something much bigger like a bus?

Thanks
Nathan

Martin sez:

I would need to do the math, but I bet that standard lithium ion batteries (lithium cobalt, lithium manganese, lithium iron phosphate, etc.) would provide ploent of power for hill climbing with a bus, no ultracaps needed.

# Chris Harvey wrote:
## Now, if we could just fuel those jetliners with pineapple juice…

Then you could call it the Pineapple Express!

# Pete wrote:
## Flying a family to Hawaii just one time has C02 emissions approximately equivalent to that same family driving for a full year

Oh man. I am heading over in a few weeks and now you remind me how guilty I should be about it!
Martin: got any ideas for less “emissive” air travel?

By the way, Martin, when I use Firefox browser many of your web links at the top of this blog entry don’t work. The links seem to come across as http://http//(blah)

Martin sez:

Thanks, TEG! I think the links are all fixed now.

Martin,

Thanks for your talk here the other day and for spending the time talking to all of us individually outside. I think you hit all the high points in your talk quite well and it gave me even more ammunition than I already have in dealing with all the naysayers about electric cars.

Your insight in to Hawaii being the perfect test bed for electric vehicles is spot-on though I must say to the commenters who think that we couldn’t exceed 220 miles here in a day that such a thing is quite possible although represents the outside edge of vehicle usage (I’m excluding fleets here). However, Maui really represents the best test bed with enough distance to travel in a mix of city-style traffic and rural roads and being small enough to make it quite easy to only have to charge a vehicle every 3rd day.

The Big Island of Hawaii, however, is another story. We don’t call it the Big Island for fun, exceeding 220 miles there would be quite easy in a day and getting around the island is a chore given the size, the distances and the traffic.

The Maui grid is actually the most stable of all the islands because of the combination of the windfarm (only 1 so far with one in the planning stages) some small hydro, bagasse burning at the sugar mill and some home grid-tied systems. Having the Kaheawa windfarm and the sugar mill both as independent producers allowed us to come back online in only a few hours after last year’s earthquake while Oahu struggled for days with power problems.

I’m looking forward to our wave energy test bed system coming online in a couple of years.

Aruba is another good candidate…LOTS of wind and sun, and definite power needs as they desalinate all of their water….

Very nice presentation. The slides make a very compelling argument, both for BEVs and for a green Hawaii. Good job, Martin.

Keith

Martin sez:

Thank you Keith. I usually consider slides to play only a supporting role in presentations that I give. For this reason, my slides tend to be very visual, and with not too many words. I worry when I post my slides that a lot of the presentation gets lost.

Recent “Wired mag. Autoblog” has story (quoting Tesla Marketing guy Siry) about Martin’s Tesla Roadster #2- due to arrive sometime in April, color: matte gray, (similar to early Audi TT gray color), with orange racing stripe. I think I remember that Audi color, a rather medium warm gray- nice color. Siry also said next priority for Tesla is to sell the car in Europe, especially in light of weak dollar. Sweden and Norway supposed to be especially good due to incentives to buy elect. cars. On a heavier note: part of Antarctic iceshelf 7 times the size of Manhattan just broke off. Also, 90% of bats in caves in parts of New York state have died off suddenly (with white fungus around their mouths). Similar to wordlwide frog die-off situation, where I think they finally attributed that to fungi that proliferated due to higher temps. caused by global warming.

Martin sez:

I am annoyed that Siry decided to announce the colors of my car. He reads this blog, as well as http://www.teslamotorsclub.com, and he knows perfectly well from my comments on both sites that I was not going to say what color my car would be until it arrived. Knowing this, the only reason he would do such a thing is plain, petty meanness.

Martin-sorry I spilled the beans on car color here ( I don’t visit Teslaclub site, and missed post here). Siry has gone over to the dark side? Re. fungus on bats- here’s short thought on that: besides frog and now bat die-offs there are the recent bee colony collapses-where they also found some bees infected with fungus, but haven’t pinned down cause of die-offs for sure. I did google search on fungus increase and co2 level increase-pulled up “Harvard Gazette Review” article of 7/17/03 titled ” Climate, asthma connected according to research”- asthma rates have doubled recently, due partly to more pollen via more co2 & warming. Article said: “Co2 stimulates photosynthesis rates in very small plants like fungi”. They also said: ” Of 1.5 million species of fungi worlwide , scientists have named and characterized maybe 70,000 or so”. Leaves a lot of room open for maybe hidden fungi-caused trouble in small creatures-maybe via weakening of immune systems if nothing else. Since bats eat tons upon tons of insects, could have significant impact on N.Y. agriculture & human health (via more mosquitos & west nile virus)- according to PBS news story I saw.

Hi Martin,

Could you please help at the C.A.R.B. meeting tomorrow to make sure the minimum requirement doesn’t get lowered to 2000 cars. That would be a joke, as Tesla will soon produce more than that annually soon.

-Max

What reason do you have to believe that your special paint job was revealed intentionally? I just don’t see how revealing your special paint job is anymore childish, petty or mean than trying to keep it a secret in the first place. Were you afraid someone was going to copy you, so that you weren’t unique? Were you hoping to do a dramatic unveiling, to illicit oh’s and ah’s?

I keep hoping that you move on from this, and embrace your next endevour – you’ve got a supporting wife, and large fan club, so you are doing better than me.

Martin sez:

When you keep your wife’s birthday present a secret until her birthday, are you being childish, petty, or mean? If I knew what you were giving her and told her before her birthday, wouldn’t you think that was mean of me? Do you see the difference?

I would just like to clarify something. When I said:

“In addition, I would imagine that on a relatively small island there would be a lot less “range anxiety” for EVs, despite it’s unfounded nature. I have never driven in Hawaii, but I imagine that it would be difficult to exceed the Roadster’s 220 mile range there in a single day.”

I wasn’t trying to start a debate as to whether it’s possible to drive 220 miles in one day on the Big H, I was merely trying to point out that there should be less concern among potential buyers on an island like Hawai’i about range limitations. I hope that this clears up any confusion about the point I was trying to make. All the best,

Chris H.

Let me straighten one thing out. This is Martin’s car. He did not mean to imply that it was a surprise birthday present for me. My birthday was months ago!

Martin sez:

My reasons for keeping my car color a surprise were my own personal reasons, which should not matter to Siry or anyone else.

I have known the color choice all along. There is even a Photoshop picture of his car in our bedroom. It was on the night stand, but I moved it. I just realized that there is no picture of our son in our bedroom, but we have one of the car. Hmmm…..I might have to fix this!

Martin sez:

David,

Marc and Martin actually covered that issue of range quite well in their talk here. It is to a certain extent about “range anxiety” as someone else said, but it is also about the practical. There really are times when I would need more than 150 miles range between charges (a more accurate measure) and the 220 mile range of the battery pack ensures that margin. Also, the larger battery pack means that most charge/use cycles will be less than 30%, which is better for the long term health of any battery system.

As for costs, I’m sure Martin can address this specifically but my guess is that there is a certain base cost to the battery infrastructure itself and adding more range is not as expensive as that basic infrastructure. By that I mean that a battery pack with 110 miles of range would not cost 1/2 of a pack with 220 miles of range.

The 220 mile initial range of the pack also allows for longer pack life as batteries age and/or drop out of use in the system, reducing real range. Better to have the battery pack last 150,000 miles and have 180 mile range at mile 150,000 than to have them drop below 90 miles of range in less than 100,000 miles.

Having heard them speak I feel pretty confident their choice of range was about more than just miles but pack life and overall cost as well as range on a charge.

Martin, I don’t believe it is possible to spoil the ownership of your new Roadster.

I assume you’ll be getting Drivetrain 1.0 so at some stage the car will have to go back to be fitted with 1.5. I’m sure there will be a list of other niggles and flaws which you will spot and list for correction. I’m sure that favourite TT of yours had a few quirks as well.

But this car is unlike any other you have or will ever own. It represents years of your own effort and belief and will to inspire others. It is an intensely personal piece – no other car will ever mean as much to you.

But it is built by the British and assembled and serviced by Californians. Consequently, owning it is very likely to involve the same mix of emotions and frustations as were involved in creating it.

But you already know this – the colour scheme is outside your personal comfort zone. I get it. It’s about making change happen; about pushing the envelop.

Re. energy storage-for homes, PV systems-what’s the deal with fuel cells ?-You hear of solar prototype homes with these-are these better than batteries for PV power storage for use at night? Re. car color-nice color, bold move on the stripes. Elon’s color is black: bad move. I consider black a non-color, white too-but at least white’s semi- cheerful. Black gets hot and shows every scratch in the sunlight, besides not being fitting for a zippy sportscar vibe. I read once where black and red are “power colors”, preferred by “power people”. I like yellow, or blue ( or blue-gray,blue-green), cream, pewter, – or the warm pewter color on Corvettes-or taupe maybe, or silver: but light, “pure aluminum” type silver.

# T.J. Wrote:
## one of (Aptera) funders is “Esenjay Investments”- can’t find any info.

From Wikipedia : “Idealab is the original investor in Aptera Motors, with Esenjay Petroleum CEO Michael Johnson as a second round investor.”

Martin said…

Tesla is not in the business of making cells, though I have thought about it a lot. If no one else steps up to the plate and if I can figure out how to finance such a venture, I might take a swing at it. Now if you are looking to invest about $500M, please let me know…

So martin are you hinting at the next Eberhard Edventure

Ciao,

Mike

Martin sez:

If I could figure out how to raise $500M

Martin,

I apologize for jumping on you about the color scheme thing. I just wish there still wasn’t so much animosity present that even little things cause flare-ups. I sincerely want you to move on to the next great thing that you could be doing.

I am relieved about the CARB turnout – reducing 25,000 ZEV’s to 7,500 ZEV’s and adding 60,000 hybrid requirement – sounds to me like reasonable give and take between government and industry.

Martin sez:

It is also interesting to note that (at least according to the CNN story), BMW managed to wiggle out of its obligation to meet the mandate. I believe that BMW crossed over to become a large-volume manufacturer in California this year, and I was at one of the CARB hearings where a BMW spokesperson was pleading for relief from its new obligations.

Great Slides Martin. You know Hawaii is just teeming with abundant energy sources. I would assume solar (if cost-effective) would have to be the best option for the island. I’ll tell you what, project better place has really got me excited. The announcement of Denmark going online now is huge. This plan could REALLY work. I was somewhat skeptical for awhile about battery swapping systems. Shai Agassi speaks of 7 – 20 second swap times. That’s amazing. Shai Agassi has strong partnerships, which helps to boast his credibility. I know Nissan can easily meet the demands of Agassi’s business plan. I see something in him and it’s powerful. As a side note, there is
a test project at the Penn State campus here. The college erected a small 3 Kw wind turbine. It is always windy on the campus. Starting yesterday it was operational, and let me tell you that it was working great. That turbine really rips. That thing will cut someone in half.

Aloha Martin,

Thanks for mentioning what our students (www.seaburyhall.org/engineering) are doing to engineer a sustainable future. Thanks also for stopping-by our school to meet with the ‘kids’ while you were on Maui. We were all very inspired by the presentation you and Marc shared at the Focus Green event. It seems that you and many of the other presenters (e.g. Amory Lovins and Bill Nye) at this forum share the same vision for Hawaii and what it can and should be doing to wean itself from imported oil. Hawaii’s abundance of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, wave, geothermal, etc. coupled with our limited driving distances should compel us to become leaders in the innovation and implementation of EV and smart-grid technology. I think both the governor of Hawaii and the mayor of Maui have the same vision. However, there is always the bureaucracy one has to contend with when making progress in such realms. Maybe some other time I’ll tell you of all the hoops I had to jump through to install a net-metering PV system at my residence… Our mayor sponsored the first ever Maui County Energy Expo 2007 last November and not only did our engineering students attend, they gave a very polished presentation promoting EV’s (people tend to listen more intently when young people speak). Just recently our class toured the local wind farm and as a result we are in negotiations with UPC Wind Power to design and build an electric tour vehicle for their site. We also proposed a gondola/tram system to be used for possible revenue-generating tours. (That could be stretch considering how hard it was for them to get the wind turbines approved in the first place.) The views of the turbines and the rest of the island from the top of west Maui are breathtaking. As you say, Maui has the potential to become a sort of eco-destination that can advance need for renewable energy around the world. Our goal as educators is to instill these ideas within our students, the ones who have the greatest chance of making it all happen. Mahalo for sharing your message with the Maui community.

Martin Emde

Martin sez:

Thanks, Martin. Carolyn offered to take you out for a beer and trade stories about the hoops the power companies make us go through in order to give them free solar electricity. LA is supposed to be easy; it most definitely was not!

Tom,

Thank you for your response. Much of what you wrote has merit and hopefully this is productive discussion for all.

I’m sure plenty of Hawaiian drivers could use 200+ mile range at some point, but it just seems that given the geography they would be comfortable with less range than mainland US drivers.

I am not a battery expert, but am an interested observer and have not seen it indicated 30% cycles vs 60% cycles for Lithium chemistries would have any significant affect on cycle life.

I agree there are base costs that do not get saved with reducing capacity, but I believe that a 110 mile pack will cost about 1/2 the price of a 220 mile pack. Not because it would be 1/2 the capacity, but reducing battery range by 1/2 significantly reduces weight and thus the battery battery capacity would be reduced by more than 1/2.

A 220 mile pack certainly has potentially more pack life, but one must use the pack enough to realize this potential. Let’s take the 220 mile Tesla pack as an example. According to Tesla’s website the battery is expected to last 100,000 miles or 5 years, whichever comes first. Battery life is determined by a lot of factors: rated cycle life, usage with rate of charge/discharge, charge level with temperature, time (calendar life), and depth of discharge. This is why Tesla says “or 5 years”. They are defining the useful life as 70% of initial capacity. To get 100,000 miles from the Tesla pack, you would have to drive 20,000/year or more given these expectations. For my current driving pattern, I could optimistically expect to get 30,000 miles out of a 220 mile pack and 25,000 miles from a 110 mile pack. Drivers that average 27 mile/per day or less will get minimally less use from 110 mile packs as they would from 220 mile packs, assuming they rarely need greater than the available range. Limited range, however, could be a deal killer for the smaller pack, since it would be expected to have 77 mile range at end of useful life. Thus, it is important for BEV manufacturers to consider the minimum range that targeted buyers will “need”.

Martin made a very astute observation that Solar cells are more appropriately judged by their cost/KWh rather than their energy conversion efficiency. Similarly, I strongly believe (perhaps foolishly) that EV battery packs for mainstream autos should be judged on cost/expected mile. By this I mean that the total pack cost should be divided by the total miles a driver can expect to achieve. This is also why I think there will need to be different range options, at least until battery prices comes down significantly. Incidentally this leads to another of Martin’s insights. Batteries have improved significantly and consistently for many years. Given the logical assumption that this will continue, one could more economically buy a battery that ends up lasting 1/2 as long as a higher capacity battery while still costing more than 1/2 as much. I don’t understand why so many people believe that the battery must last 10 years or the life of the vehicle or any arbitrary amount. What does it matter if 2 or more batteries over the life of the vehicle cost less or more importantly the cost/mile is less.

I do believe Tesla did a good job in sizing their battery pack for their targeted market, but other markets could be bettter served with different sizes.

Martin, when I wrote “The existing solar plant has provided 10% of the power on Maui in its first year of operation” I meant wind farm instead of solar plant. Dumb mistake, hopefully obvious from context.

I’m in pretty close agreement with you on all these issues; I just was unaware that Maui had done such a good job with dealing with the wind farm problems. My concern there was not so much for Hawaiians, who will benefit immensely from it, but for a possible negative impression about alternative energy being created among visitors. Of course I unreservedly agree that wind energy, or almost any other practical energy source, is better than imported petroleum for power generation.

As you point out elsewhere, energy storage is a major issue. That’s true in particular with interrupted sources like solar and wind. Wherever geothermal energy is practical, as it is in parts of Hawaii, e.g. http://www.punageothermalventure.com/PGV/17/power-generation which has been in operation for 15 years, I think it should be developed aggressively because it’s 24/7.

A mix of solar and wind seems like a good idea, because it’s often sunny with calm winds, and windy without direct sunlight.

Unfortunately, petroleum and refineries will still be part of the mix for a long time to come, to fill in for solar and wind idle periods, and to fuel the aircraft and automotive gas guzzlers. Hopefully their role can be reduced as much as possible.

Incidentally, I’m a huge fan of Maui, and hope to go back and stay someday if it’s still affordable. I like everything about it, from the obvious stuff like the fantastic weather, food, flora, sailing, scuba, snorkeling, the amazingly cheerful and friendly attitude of the people; and the not so obvious stuff like the extensive wilderness. My girlfriend and I hiked from the coast up through a dense bamboo forest to the foot of a spectacular waterfall, and didn’t see another person or any debris left by another person. The innocence and beauty and ecology of the island should be protected as much as possible, and I’m very happy to see the strong effort along those lines, even though sometimes it seems supercritical of new ideas.

About EEStore technology

There are fundamental physics based limitations of any capacitor as energy storage. So far I could see that EEStore skillfully presented simlistic believable story about energy storage. It is hard to see definite weakness in it for sure even if you are a specialist. It is also obvious that EEStore avoid to make demo capacitor prototypes and instead concentrate on getting dielectric powder parameters. Latest move was that they hide under military secrecy. All these betray very skillful investment hunting skills just for money themselves without delivering real technology. Most likely founders of this were always aware that their technology will not work. But they used clever crafted story to hook investors and keep getting funding pumping in under false hope they skillfully cook.

Yes, slides are excellent, but video would be better

I said,

“Fuel Cells are *supposed* to cost 2 billion dollars (of course in real life it is much, much more) and to get to mass market in 15 years.”

I meant for this to be part of the hypothetical situation. A better way to write it would be,

“Let’s say your engineers tell you that fuel cells are *supposed* to cost 2 billion dollars (of course in real life it is much, much more) and it will take 15 years to get to mass market.”

Can you please change this Martin?

Oh my, Steve I’m really bothered by this:
Recently I posted reservations about wind farms as poster children for renewable energy, based on a visit to Tehachapi Pass. I did say I wondered if I were missing something. Indeed I was, although my concerns were quite valid. The people of Maui were even more concerned than I about the environmental problems of wind farms. In addition to a solution to the admittedly major noise and eyesore issues, they demanded studies on the possible effects on flora and fauna at the sites.

Most importantly, the existing farm and future ones have remote locations, inaccessible to tourists. They can’t be heard, and can be seen only at a considerable distance. Even that is troublesome to locals, because the existing farm is a small sore spot on a majestic skyline. Tourists probably won’t mind, and will probably think it’s interesting and even inspirational.

This is simply so wrong. I live in proximity to the windfarm (about as close as one can get for a neighborhood) and believe me it isn’t an eyesore when you compare it to the belching diesel plant on the shore below it. The whole “eyesore” garbage tends to come from a bunch of spoiled rich folks in S. Kihei and Wailea who somehow think looking across the bay and seeing a windfarm is asthetically displeasing but cannot see the eyesore neighborhoods in which they live, bloated McMansions that are often unoccupied much of the year, that I have to look at from the other side of the bay. The whole “eyesore” issue is bogus.

Maui residents by and large love the windfarm, there are no noise issues at all, and the environmental requirements were not “demanded” by residents but worked out between Kaheawa wind and Native Hawaiian elders who worked closely with the wind farm owners to ensure that not only would native flora and fauna be reintroduced to an area devastated by invasive species but that the windfarm construction was a great way to get into the area, remove unwanted invasives, catalog any native species that remained and engage in a major replanting of native species in the area. This was done eagerly by the windfarm, not under any “demands”.

The windfarm is anything but a sore spot on the skyline and the only sore spot for me is having to see and hear such silly statements from the uninformed.

David, I understand your concern about aging of battery packs and if your requirements for range and battery life are that different then it is a matter of finding a different vehicle than the Tesla. I suspect the Tesla is a vehicle that will be driven more than your range and thus not likely the best for you. As you illustrate there will also be a good market for more utilitarian vehicles (of the type similar to the retrofit Scion xB ebox from ACPropulsion) with shorter range.

As for comments about Hawaii (and Maui in particular) being great for solar (i.e. photovoltaics) it actually isn’t as good as, say, Colorado, where temperatures, insolation, and available power are better than here but the biggest problem with trying to use solar in any system as with having more windfarm capacity, is energy storage to both tide us over the nights and cloudy times but also to balance our small capacity grid so that the power quality is acceptable.

That’s why I’m such an advocate of pumped storage. I actually believe there’s a good potential for any of the companies here that have water rights (agricultural and MECO) to put in multiple pumped storage “batteries” that would be able to balance the system with sufficient hydro output 24/7 and the ability to store excess energy to as high water to run through a flexible hydro system that can increase and decrease its output to match system requirements.

If we do that we will truly make fossil fuels the “alternative” energy here on the island in terms of electricity generation in that the diesel power plants would then represent a much smaller portion of our grid generation but be available for backup (maybe even powered by bio-diesel because the demand would be lower) and the island’s energy sources would be spread out over photovoltaic, wind, wave, and hydro generation giving a healthy balance to a system where a failure of any one source would not jeopardize the entire system.

As Martin said, we can be a great test bed and example to the rest of the country.

Tom –
Is geothermal not a part of the mix for Maui? The station on Hawaii seems to be proven technology and doesn’t seem to have large negative enviromental concerns. And it doesn’t have “downtime” as do the solar and wind technologies, so storage isn’t a concern.

That CARB would dilute the ZEV mandate even further is beyond comprehension. One would think that they might want to clean a bit of the egg off their face from their past decisions. Nope. “Throw another omelette at us, please.”

Here’s my question: if you were in charge of CARB, what would you propose to facilitate and accelerate the transition to clean, renewable energy for transportation?

IMHO, I think that CARB should completely forget about percentages (like before) or numbers and credits (like now).

The ZEV mandate should simply require that, by 2012, all the major auto manufacturers (and I would lower that “threshold” to include companies like Mitsubishi, Subaru, Volvo, etc.) must comply with these requirements:

* They must have a ZEV vehicle in their dealers’ showrooms, and at least one more on the lot for customers to test drive.

* Those ZEVs must be capable of a top speed of no less than 80 mph.

* They must have an emissions-free, EPA certified range of no less than 125 miles.

* They must meet federal safety standards.

* They must cost no more than 120% of the average base price of all the models in the same “class” sold by the parent company in the previous year.

* They must be deliverable to customers who purchase them within at least a 60-day period.

* For its part, CARB will establish the very best government incentives available to those who purchase the ZEVs (say, for example, tax deductions, no registration fees, no sales tax, carpool lane access, etc.,etc.).

* If the car manufacturers do not comply? They just can’t develop and produce the ZEVs fast enough to meet that deadline? Then make it legally possible for the dealers to secure their ZEVs from other sources without losing their franchises.

* And if the dealers do not comply? Then the state revokes their business licenses until the requirement is met. Period. THAT will get the auto companies moving, believe me.

I do not think that such a mandate is unreasonable. After all, the EV1 and the RAV4-EV were capable of that same speed and range back in 2002, so surely car manufacturers can do even better nowadays.

What kind of ZEV the car companies wish to provide should be left up to them –be it an electric car, a fool-cell vehicle, a series hybrid, or even one powered by a flywheel or a solar panel (ha!)— as long as it produces ZERO emissions for at least 125 miles. No more of CARB favoring one technology over another: let the technology itself decide.

And no more of this “no customer demand” excuse. If customers do not even know about the option, how can they demand it? This ZEV mandate would assure that customers DO know –and can decide accordingly. Get the ZEVs in the showrooms! Take advantage of the free market system instead of trying to thwart it.

Roger, Geothermal isn’t an option on Maui and the geothermal on the Big Island has not been universally well-received and I don’t know what the cost of production is or the realities of emission quality is (I’ve heard the reality is quite different from the hype but what I’ve heard is all anecdotal).

Mark, pumped storage is a highly flexible and scalable energy storage system and of course for our islands there is no grid bigger than any individual island. Plus, distributed generation is a far more secure and stable power supply environment than any system that tries to do it all at one location (that’s the biggest problem with nuclear in my opinion).

Global Air Pollution

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/apr08/alacarte.asp

Yanq,

In time, you will have the automakers greatly exceeding all your requirements. The latest CARB rules give credit to automakers for trying several intermediate steps towards the end result. This allows the marketplace to choose the technology / price tradeoffs they are willing to make at this time, and we will see the mix of solutions changes as technologies increase while prices come down.

At this moment, only a small percentage of people can afford to buy a $100K Roadster, but many more can afford a $40K Volt, and even more can afford a $35K Prius, each costing less and performing less, but still better than the alternative.

Steve,

I’m not saying at all that the windfarm isn’t an eyesore but that the diesel plant is or that Wailea is, the point is that such things are relative and complaining about the windfarm as an eyesore, in the midst of many other things about which the same can be said, is narrow and misguided, to say nothing of shallow thinking. This is certainly not unique to Maui, it is a common complaint in areas where windfarms are to be built within sight of communities yet it is highly illogical thinking. People are seeing something new and automatically concluding that it is an “eyesore” simply because it is different when they are surrounded by “eyesores” of all kinds to which they’ve become accustomed.

Also, my comment about Maui as a testbed has little to do with the idea that a windfarm is something new, by reading what I’ve written here you ought to at least get the idea I know more than a little about energy, energy policy and alternative systems. I’ve been involved in them for years (though no longer directly here on the island), that’s just a silly statement on your part.

You don’t say which local publications you are citing with those quotes but cherry picking like that isn’t really evidence of anything other than a diversity of opinion. What Kaheawa wind did that other projects didn’t do was to seek out Hawaiian Kupuna and input from local groups as to their concerns ahead of time, other projects that were criticized generally didn’t do that and paid for it. That sort of consideration of Hawaiian culture is an essential part of any project like that in this state and woe be unto them who don’t take it into consideration. That’s what I meant by my comments that Kaheawa wasn’t forced to do things by local residents, they worked in cooperation with locals to address concerns including bird impacts (always way overblown, thanks to Altamont) and native flora and fauna. The migration issue isn’t that important here on Maui as it would be other places because there is limited migration in this region.

Also, the expansion of Kaheawa hasn’t been rejected at all, just put on hold since the Ulupalakua project was already in the pipeline and includes a pumped storage component which MECO feels is necessary if wind is to become a bigger percentage of their generation package. Also, Kaheawa provided, overall, about 8% of the total power in its first year of operation and there are ongoing engineering issues related to the interfact between the variable wind power output and the limited size of the grid generation on the island. The balance is touchy and the MECO engineers are always grumbling about it, that’s why they are looking to the Ulupalakua project before expansion of Kaheawa. They’ll get used to it though.

The comprehensive environmental impact studies are a basic requirement, not anything special “demanded” by the public over any other project (except the Superferry and the public demanded it but the government ignored us).

Oh, and I was present and was a testifier at the environmental impact hearing for Kaheawa.

As to the Superferry, it is far from being friendlier than an airplane. It burns massive amounts of fuel, carries about 20% of its capacity of cars and people when it operates and does little to address any real need here in the islands. It has also been in drydock for almost two months now and operated intermittently when it was even in the water since Kauai effectively prevented that half of the proposed service from even happening. It is an overpriced piece of junk that if it were a car would have been returned to the dealer as a lemon long ago.

As to the quote you have about trade winds that is pretty generic stuff and doesn’t reflect reality very well. Kona winds are actually quite rare here, occurring in winter when conditions are right. In the winter we have calm periods that can last up to two weeks (rarely more) but even in winter the prevailing winds are trade winds, just not necessarily as strong. But just to point out how variable that can be our biggest and strongest wind periods since last summer were two weeks of cool Kona winds with storms in December and 3 weeks of powerful trade winds in January.

Also, from a temperature standpoint the islands aren’t universally cooled by the tradewinds nor heated only in calm periods. Try visiting Lahaina in the summer (the name means “cruel sun” in Hawaiian) or Kihei for that matter, the tradewinds don’t help much. The windfarm isn’t just for peak demand, our generating capacity on this island from all sources is 250MW and our usage ranges from 160 to 210MW with occasional peaks above that (the system needs redundancy so it never reaches capacity, if it did we’d be in real trouble). So the windfarm is a benefit no matter when it operates and any savings in fuel usage is a good thing. But our power costs are still 36 cents per Kilowatthour and rising, having gone up about 1/3 this past year alone. And yeah, those high costs make grid-tied PV a really good idea, if I were building a home I’d definitely put on as much as I could afford, the payback would be relatively short.

As for the practicality of pumped storage here on Maui, that Wiki article starts with a reference to putting a tank on a tower then references using hills nearby. We have one of those, maybe you’ve heard of it, Haleakala? The existing moderate sized hydro plant operated by HC&S uses water brought down the mountain to their irrigation system to generate energy on the way through and the County is already talking of the need to create more water storage anyway on the mountain to handle residential needs. Putting pumped storage in as part of these would be a no-brainer to me, allowing of course for the dual use nature of the system in its design.

Tom, you seem to rely heavily on your own off-the-cuff opinions, and don’t have much respect for others’, or for research. That’s pretty common in blogs. More disturbing is your cavalier dismissal of a concern for preserving the state’s natural beauty as much as is practical.

Nothing off the cuff at all, I live here and am involved and active in land and sea based environmental issues, as I said I was a testifier at the hearings for Kaheawa and work with cetacean rescue and the Monk Seal project. This is my home, not just some ideal viewed from a distance. Maybe if you lived here you’d understand there is more to what is happening here than your distant research might indicate.

No Steve, all of your opinions aren’t silly and misinformed but when you make statements that are I’ll point them out.

Hi Martin,

I was wondering if you are aware of a company called Lithium Technology Corporation. I would guess that you are, but just in case, here’s a link to their site:

http://www.lithiumtech.com/index.html

I came across them last year when I was looking for components for a possible EV conversion project. It looks like their main focus is lithium iron phosphate batteries (which is the type that I think Shai Agassi is contemplating using in the PBP vehicle, based on cycle life… ). I think I remember you saying somewhere that this type of battery had a low energy density, and that’s part of the reason why you went with the LiCoO2 cells. Maybe I have that wrong. It was probably also related to price and availability too. Anyway, I was wondering if anything has changed that would make you consider using LiFePO4 on any (hypothetical) future project? I realize that the energy density issue remains the same, but what about price & availabilty. Also, with no thermal runaway issues with LiFePO4, there’s no need for a cooling system. Doesn’t that help to compensate for lower energy density?
Whatever insight you can share on this subject, I would be grateful to hear.
All the best,

Chris H.

Martin sez:

Note, by the way, that a LiFePO4 cell can also go into thermal runaway, and when it does, it is quite dramatic. I have done it myself… But whereas a typical LiCo cell will runaway when the external temperature reaches about 180 degrees Celsius, the LiFePO4 went at around 220 degrees.

Tom, I was glad to see that you weren’t bothered by my post. I regretted having perhaps been more oppositional than I intended. Life’s too short. We should just agree to disagree. I certainly don’t mind if you criticize my opinions in the future, but I won’t often be able to reciprocate. I already have a full time job, one that’s even more interesting than this.

I could have provided links to all the sources of the articles I quoted, and I usually would, but this blog has a spam filter that rejects posts with more than a few hyperlinks. At any rate, I didn’t have any illusion of changing your mind. I just wanted to draw you out a little on some of those subjects, like illogical thinking. Do you have any thoughts on non-sequiturs?

One last quote that I forget to include last time provides, unless I misunderstood it, an alternative take to yours:

Business News (Honolulu), February 7, 2008:

A Maui wind farm operator has filed a complaint against Maui Electric Co. and its parent, Hawaiian Electric Co., with the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission.
UPC Hawaii Holdings, which runs the Kaheawa Wind Power farm above Maalaea, is asking the commission to investigate the process the utility used in selecting a second wind farm project for the island.
UPC Hawaii had proposed expanding its current 20-turbine farm, which supplies 30 megawatts of power to Maui Electric, to add another 21 megawatts of power.
But HECO selected another project bid by Shell Wind for a farm in Ulupalakua on the east side of Maui.
HECO spokesman Peter Rosegg said the decision was based on location.

“On a small grid like Maui’s, there’s a limit to how much intermittent wind power the system can take without impacting reliability for customers,” Rosegg said. “Having two wind farms in two locations with two different wind regimes will make it possible to accept more wind on Maui’s system.”
But the wind farm operator says it believes HECO did not “negotiate in good faith” and that its decision wasn’t in line with state PUC rules and federal bidding policies.
“UPC Hawaii has worked diligently and in good faith in this process and has invested a great deal of time and money in getting it right,” said Vice President Mike Gresham in a statement. “The utility created and conducted its own form of mini-competitive bidding based on its own requirements and evaluation criteria.”
The complaint asks the PUC to review HECO’s evaluation process.
UPC Hawaii is a partnership between UPC Wind Partners of Newton, Mass., and Makani Nui Associates based on Maui. The company financed and built the Kaheawa Wind Farm in June 2006, and says the generated energy accounts for about 9 percent of Maui’s electrical power.
—

I’ll risk a couple of links, first to the superferry site, in case anyone is interested in alternative transportation:
http://www.hawaiisuperferry.com/about-us/community/default.html

The other is to Haleakala: http://www.nps.gov/archive/hale/pages/tier_one/home.htm

A place geographically somewhat similar, from a pumped-storage perspective, is Yosemite in California. It has a large vertical height difference in a relatively small area. It’s nowhere near as beautiful as Haleakala, admittedly. Would that seem to you like a good site for a test lab pumped storage project, maybe in collaboration with Martin? It has the advantage of not being all that far from where he lives.

Martin sez:

Don’t worry too much about the links. All that happens is that your post will get held until I get around to approving it – usually within an hour or two. I only chuck the ones that are either actual spam (deals on Viagra, enhancements for various body parts, etc.) or seriously offensive..

Hydrogen roll-out is progressing slowly, along with BEV’s, but progressing none the less:

http://www.fuelcellsworks.com/Supppage8610.html

By the way, is there any word about whether Chairman Musk is threatening to sue Google and Branson? It’s pretty obvious that he’s the butt of their April Fools joke.

Hi Jason,

I think that what Steve is referring to is that Elon’s “other job” is CEO of SpaceX, and one of his stated aims is to “help make life multi-planetary”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onajosm9PWo

A modest goal, to be sure. Elon also manages to make light of Branson’s Virgin Galactic project in this interview, which may provide some impetus for RB to poke a little fun back at EM. Perhaps I’m wrong, and maybe I should just let Steve S. speak for himself, but that’s the connection I saw.
BTW, Steve, I don’t know if you’re the first to use the “Chairman Musk” moniker, but it’s pretty funny anyway.
All the best,

Chris H.

Chris Harvey / Steve S.,

Thanks for linking me to Elon Musk’s interviews, both vid and text.

I didn’t think Elon’s video treatment of Virgin Galactic was harsh, although he might have stated it better.

Virgin Galactic (VG) is endevouring a completely different goal than Space-X. VG is trying to achieve a low cost, re-usable, quick turn-around vehicle as its first goal, and will extend its capabilities, as the first goals are met. VG is actually brilliant in its simplicity, achieving re-entry at low speeds using variable geometry craft, as opposed to the Space Shuttle, which requires high maintenance ceramic tiles to handle the high speed re-entry.

Space-X is indeed a “loftier” performance target, and results in greater expense. It is a great way to pick up, where the Space Shuttle ends, to keep the Space Station work going.

I believe VG will evolve to eventually ferry passengers to the Space Station, and around the moon, in low cost, re-useable, quick turn-around craft. I believe Space-X will evolve to create high performance interplanetary vehicles. They really aren’t in competition.

Martin sez:

On the other hand, the VG prototype, Spaceship 1 achieved it’s design goal 3 times, whereas all SpaceX has done is make some interesting exploding fireworks…

Martin,

As for paintjobs onb vehicles, if we were playing cars with blocks of wood, I would prefer the block of wood with racing stripes. There are some cars whose forms are themselves a work of art and don’t require embellishments. White is an excellent color to show-off that shape, especially if you are driving under streetlights or through autumn forest roads, where light and color is reflected and moves across the vehicles form.

I saw a white Chevy Avalanche in which even the bed plastic was white, as with the Cadillac Escalade EXT, kinda like this:

http://thumbs.automart.com/imgs/ag/automart/cst/165/299/6/511/113/77/feed/thumb/10420031530011000.jpg

I was amazed by the form. For me, the paint should not create the look of the vehicle, but reveal it. That said, I do like those old white mustangs with the single blue Shelby stripe on them – kind of a best of both worlds thing.

Martin,

Are you and/or your wife going to book a flight on VG?

Regarding all the talk of Space-X taking us to Mars… Recent news stories have been saying that cosmic radiation will likely make such a trip too dangerous:
Article 1
Article 2

Also, EM has been to RB’s private island a few times now as far as I can tell. Those “Billionaires heading to space” RB & EM seem to cross paths frequently.
Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4

Re: Virgin Galactic
Their spaceship does not require heat shielding tiles because it doesn’t go fast enough. If they build future versions capable of orbital flight they will have to address the heat shield issue.
Elon said he bought a ticket on VG’s flight, he certainly supports their efforts.
Thanks, Mark, for the link to Ultraconductors. This is good news indeed and will certainly leave its mark in the EV business with smaller, lighter and more powerful motors made with ultraconductor wires.
There is also a company http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/ that is looking for research money because they think they can build a “Mr. Fusion”. I hope they find an Angel investor, because if it works it could be THE major solution to the world’s energy problems. All they are looking for is about $1M for proof of concept.

Roy,

If VG creates a launch design that doesn’t achieve high speeds until the craft is high above the atmosphere, wouldn’t the need for heat shields be eliminated? Perhaps the VG personnel vehicle could be enclosed in a large nose of a rocket, until the final stage high above the atmosphere, then emerge for orbital maneuvers and re-entry.

Also, couldn’t the VG ship use the “feather” approach to re-entry, so that the ship never achieves high speeds on the way down?

Martin sez:

I just don’t think the VG approach can carry enough energy to achieve orbital velocity. 7X is HUGE… Remember that not only does it need the energy, it also needs the energy to lift the the fuel.

Thanks, Roy, for your comment about our Ultraconductors.

The parent firm, Magnetic Power Inc. is developing power sources that we believe will soon demonstrate the ability to replace batteries.

A solid-state predecessor was demonstrated by Hans Coler, a German inventor, in 1926. This link is to an update on the Coler story on our MPI website:

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/partner/story?id=52006

The implications of this new energy resource for aerospace applications are very much of interest to us.

However, we do not expect anyone with a background in science or engineering will believe these new systems are possible until they can examine and test a unit.

We hope to have EarthTech international evaluate a solid-state, self-sustaining generator in the near future. Perhaps, with a bit of luck, by the end of April.

# Steve S wrote:
## My view is that the unmanned space explorations have been some of the crown jewels of human history, yielding information and photographs fascinating to every interested person on the planet. The manned flights (called “spam in a can” by the early astronauts) were and are a huge waste of resources and several lives with very little scientific return. That money could have been much better spent on unmanned missions, and on more and better space telescopes.

I agree. The “manned mission to mars” is a huge waste of resources in my mind. Billionaires may want to do it because they can get themselves into the history books. Governments may want to do it because they think the public excitement will justify the tax $ expenditures. Anyone who thinks we can ruin this planet, but then colonize mars is mistaken. Our planet is a wonder and we need to take care of it. Moving us to another planet is the stuff of fiction and not realistic. What little we might want to learn from exploring mars can be done by robots.

I would love to buy a Tesla Roadster, but have no interest in taking a joy ride on Virgin Galactic.

Martin,

Again, you are right. I am not expecting the VG craft to piggy-back like the space shuttle. I think it would be enclosed in a nose cone for the high speed portion of its journey within the atmosphere, then emerge from the nose cone above the atmosphere and remain sufficiently high drag for re-entry, so that it doesn’t heat up. I’ve seen rockets go up with nose cones of larger diameter than the rocket itself, so it should work.

I see VG taking it all in baby steps – first, they get Spaceship 2 performing daily or twice daily flights. Next they reconfigure the craft so that it performs a single Earth Orbit, which should still be able to use a mother-ship approach. Then they create a new configuration to stay in orbit, which may require a rocket instead of a mothership.

It might help to hear the explanations that go with these slides; the text, however, seems to have many mathematical errors. For instance, in the section on solar electricity, the kW/car varies from 1.35 kW/car (slide 35, California Desert Solar Thermal) all the way up to 2.8 kW/car (slide 34, Individual Choice). Similarly, the calculations on various slides assume 85% efficiency charging and 4.9 miles/kWh for the Tesla Roadster; however, the numbers from the November 2007 testing in an EPA certified lab show actual charging efficiencies of 71.4% (due to cooling the pack and other parasitic loads) and a motive efficiency of 2.98 mi/kWh (plug-to-wheel). Reality bites!

With all this talk about rockets in the comments I thought some of you might be interested in John Carmack’s take on the suborbital race:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=357

While looking for something completely unrelated I happened on another article about RB’s Necker island ‘elder’ sessions. Oddly in 2006 he indicated he was disillusioned with politicians like Tony Blair, yet Tony was one of the honored guests in his 2008 session.

RB has been pitching the idea of a ‘War Room’ to fight global warming. Here is a suggestion – how about a ‘Peace room’ to fight global war?

Hi Jason,

I was just wondering if you’d be willing to man the inaugural flight of VG’s Space Ship 2 first re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere after departing the ISS. I hear they’re looking for volunteers.

Just joking….

All the best,

Chris H.

Chris Harvery,

I think Spaceship 2 might be able to do one Earth orbit, but they would probably reconfigure for permanent Earth orbit. Perhaps they could get away with a thin spray coating of some heat resistant material? Perhaps there is a re-entry angle that makes sense for a high drag vehicle that wouldn’t heat up?

NASA, when confronted with the inability of ink pens to write in zero gravity, spent all kinds of money to develop a pen that could, while the Soviets just used pencils. I think the heat tiles might be a case of the same type of thinking.

Jason,

perhaps they could just teleport into a geosynchronous orbit and back, that way they wouldn’t have to bother about the heat resistant spray…

I think that you need to face the fact that VG is not designing these craft for orbital spaceflight, and, as far as I’m aware, they have no plans at this point to build a vehicle that is capable of reaching even low Earth orbit (160-2000 km). The VG craft are more like high altitude airplanes than they are like true space vehicles. They can barely make it past the Karman line (100 km or 62 miles), which is about ten times higher than commercial airliners fly at. I’m not trying to rain on your parade, but your argument is rapidly coming down to “perhaps if VG built an orbital vehicle, it would be capable of orbital spaceflight”, which is what is commonly referred to as “stating the bleedin’ obvious”. So, please, don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe we should get back to a subject that is related to the original blog post, or at least the category…

All the best,

Chris H.

Chris,

Don’t mind the toddler Steve S. who can’t stand when the conversation moves away from himself. He either tries name calling or mud slinging to prevent others from talking about things in which he has no interest. If you aren’t careful, he will have people do a google search on your name.

As for Spaceship 2, a simple thing for VG to do would be to do successively higher launches to determine how much stress and heating happens to the craft and its occupants, and make slight adjustments, just to see how far they can get. I bet it isn’t merely a simple case of “barely” getting to the Karman Line with that configuration. I think the VG approach would yield a better, more comfortable vehicle for re-entery than the shuttle or some capsule.

Jason: You obviously don’t have a clue about how difficult getting to orbit is so I strongly suggest you stay off the topic. It has gotten annoying.
I should apologise for my own earlier post promoting the Ultraconductor scam.
I believe the main theme of this blog is to help Martin choose his next project. I can’t think of anything more spectacular or more beneficial to the environment and economy than what he has already done. But I (and I expect Martin) would like to hear more ideas from all of you.

Incidently, it was others trying to bash Elon Musk by posting criticisms of Space-X that derailed the thread on Space-X and VG. I was just engaging in the same speculation of future goals / growth.

On the topic of “what to do”, were I addressing a senior engineering assembly at some university, I would simply remind them of the very old and very wise adage that “necessity is the mother of invention”, and to look around for “what needs doing”. They should look for things that are fundamental to human life and happiness, and build from a simple / solid foundation, both scientifically and economically. Slapping another solution, on top of other half-measures, etc., won’t solve things fully or fundamentally.

Start simply, prove it in the marketplace, then iterate for more performance or other markets.

Steve,

regarding your idea for the Subaru R1e and Larry/Sergey, or some other guarantor. I think that it’s a good idea in principle, but the execution might be a little tricky. I’m pretty sure that these kinds of people are not lacking for proposals on how they should spend their money. In fact, I would guess that they often suffer from proposal overload. I think that these kinds of people want to help, but they also do not want to appear to be “soft targets” for every scam artiste out there. Therefore, they set up elaborate filtering systems (like google.org), and who can blame them.

I’ve tried throwing in a few proposals, such as supporting the EnviroMission Solar chimney idea, but I’ve had no responses. It was like dropping the idea into a black hole. I’m not saying that this approach does not work, just that it didn’t appear to work in my case. Maybe I was one of thousands that sent in similar proposals and it just got lost in the crowd. I don’t know. About six months later google.org did anounce their RE<C initiative, but I have no reason to believe that anything I said or did had any influence on that decision. At this point I still don’t know what kind of technology they are backing to produce utility scale renewable energy for less than the price of coal generated electricity. Maybe they will take the multi-pronged approach, maybe they will be more focussed on one technology. I don’t know, I’m just glad that they’ve set this goal for themselves, and I really hope that they are successful in realizing this goal.

So, I suppose that what I’m trying to say, in a long winded way, is that good ideas don’t always get the attention that they deserve. Perhaps you could try submitting the proposal and see what happens. Perhaps you could suggest starting the project off on a small scale, say 1000 cars, just to gauge the demand and the viability of the business plan. The problem is that most business people tend to be risk averse, as you pointed out:

“My impression is that businessmen love investment protection contracts more than almost anything you could name. If you eliminate almost all of the downside risk, and a big upside is possible, it should make it very attractive.”

and there is downside risk in this idea (for the guarantor). What if the cars don’t sell? The U.S. is heading into what could be the longest, deepest recession since the Second World War, some pundits are even throwing around the word “Depression”. Sales of new vehicles are likely to continue falling in the near to mid term. I’m not saying that this will absolutely happen, only that this represents downside risk for the guarantor.

Anyway, I hope that some of the things that I’ve said will help you flesh-out some of your ideas, and if you do decide to submit a proposal to google.org, or anywhere else, I wish you the best of luck. Just watch out for those Angel (of Death) Investors… chuckle.

All the best,

Chris H.

Steve S wrote:
# I’d like some feedback on an idea
# …
# …a large number of commuter vehicles
# powered by the existing electrical grid.

How (connector standard, current draw) and where you hook to the grid would need to be worked out ahead of time. Many PHEVs are planning to use 120v 12amp standard house plugs which will recharge rather slowly. More serious EVs expect 240V 30amp+ which is currently much less ubiquitous. Do we need a widespread public charging infrastructure to “jump start” the demand for EVs? Shai Agassi’s Better Place project seems to think so.

# a small company can’t do that effectively
# because it would have to pay double what big
# companies pay for all the outsourced components,

Yes, it sure seems like you are right about that. I had hoped that Tesla would have been able to figure out cost reductions on their planned products, but every time I check back it seems their projected prices keep creeping up.

# Building a big company from scratch,
# although a noble and praiseworthy undertaking,
# is extremely difficult and takes a long time.

No argument there!

# Extremely wealthy individuals and philanthropic # organizations have expressed interest in doing
# something to help solve the problems above.

It is good to hear that there is such interest at that level for such ventures. Waiting for legacy big auto to deliver seems to be taking way too long, and many suspect that there interests are not so sincere as they can find bigger profits elsewhere.

# The idea is for any of them to approach
# a company like Subaru, which has a fully
# developed electric commuter car

Yes, along with Subaru, there are some others to consider like the Mitsubishi MiEV.
Again we might also want to keep an eye on Better Place. They claim that they will have huge quantities of EVs coming soon from Renault/Nissan with initial penetration in Israel with serious help from the government there. Perhaps their vehicle is the one that should be brought over here? Now, I don’t know just how real and complete their plans have come along by now. Anyone thinking of trying to use them as a supplier would want to do some serious due diligence to make sure that they can deliver. They have a good story so far but it might be advisable to see them in a action a bit before trying to count on them as a solution provider.

Don’t forget <a href=”http://www.acpropulsion.com/”AC propulsion”. Their Ebox Scion conversions are functionally decent US ready options. Currently they are rather pricey in part (I think) because they have to pay a good amount for the Scion chassis. If someone were to entice Toyota (and ACP) with sales quantity guarantees there might be an opportunity to lower the price substantially.

NUMMI builds Corollas right next to Silicon Valley. If someone were to work a deal to get Corolla chassis to convert with ACP drivetrains you could piece together a “completely made in California” small, practical EV. Perhaps the biggest hurdle would be convincing Toyota to take you seriously and go along with the idea.

The reality of the whole situation is that sufficient batteries to give an acceptable range (with reasonable safety and longevity) are rather costly and cause the electric vehicle to end up being much more expensive than an equivalent gasoline vehicle. That is one of the major roadblocks that is holding us back. We need another energy storage breakthrough to start making the decent EV more attractive. If someone (e.g.: government or philanthropist) wants to help get things going sooner rather than later then I would think subsidizing auto grade battery packs would be an obvious way.

Many of us are hoping so much that EEstor ultracaps end up being an answer, but it is yet another unproven technology at this point.

Perhaps the deep pockets should be chasing more battery breakthroughs (which have all sorts of uses beyond just EVs) rather than “private-sector” rocket companies and “soup-to-nuts” car companies.

# I promise not to make unsolicited criticisms of any remarks that result.

Have at it. I just dumped some opinions and observations off the top of my head. Feel free to cut them down or comment on anything you think makes sense. Also, being that this is Martin’s blog, hopefully he will add his viewpoint on all this.

# … The idea is for any of them to approach a
# company like Subaru, which has a fully developed
# electric commuter car with examples driving
# around on our roads,

Although this would be far less exciting and glorious compared to starting another car company from the ground up, but another option would be to buy already registered, street legal cars and convert them to electric. The conversion business is currently low volume, “home brew”. If someone approached it with a more assembly line, well financed methodology they could possible produce vehicles far more practical and desirable than the current offerings. A smart strategy would be to find a particular model that is otherwise fine design but has a “fatal flaw” in the drive-train that leads to low resale value. You send someone out to buy all the clean, accident free, low mileage examples at bottom dollar then you convert them to electric en masse.

I recall when Saturn first started up their manufacturing line there was a “goof” and the wrong coolant was put in the first production run. There was concern that the engine blocks would rust so the cars were not sold. Conversion people begged to get those chassis for conversion, but I recall they were all chopped in half to make sure they never got on the road in any form.

Oddly I found almost no mention of this story doing web searches, but I did find it here: “”Saturn recalled and destroyed all of the first cars they sold because ‘they were shipped with the wrong coolant, which could destroy the engine block’. Given that they could simply have issued new motors, this was an impressive waste of money.”"

In terms of cars with low resale value one could start looking a things like Ford Focus, Kia, Daewoo, older Hyundai, etc.

TEG,

I agree with this idea absolutely. It’s one that I’ve been considering for a couple of years now. The model that I like is the Mazda RX-8. Used RX-8s sell quite cheaply on ebay, the handling is good, the transmission (if you choose to use it) can handle high rpm (not so sure about the torque though), and it’s a relatively light car, especially after you get rid of the ICE, exhaust system, fuel tank, etc.. I’ve done many searches to try and find an EV conversion on this model, but I’ve never found any.
If you pulled out the rear seating you would have lots of room for the battery pack and power electronics, and still have a decent sized trunk. Some of the touring models even have pop-up Nav screens that could be used as a display that indicates SOC for the battery, etc., just like the Roadster.
AC Propulsion does something similar with the eBox, but you have to supply the Scion xB and about $25,000 for the conversion. It seems a bit steep to me. There are lots of good quality used vehicles out there with one “”fatal flaw” in the drive-train”, as you put it. That fatal flaw is that they are powered by ICEs, chuckle. I know what you mean though, something that everyone else sees as fatal flaw too. It’s funny how many of the RX-8 ads that I see on ebay say “New Engine!”, meanwhile the car only has 27,000 miles on it. I think that that’s the kind of fatal flaw you’re looking for. Sure, you get a new engine for free while the car is under warranty, but what happens after the warranty expires?
Another thing to consider is that the carbon footprint of converting an existing vehicle is going to be much smaller than it would be for building a whole new vehicle. Reduce, Re-use, Recycle! I think that the main reason why this hasn’t become an acceptable business model is that the margins (profit) would be relatively low. Maybe I’m wrong on that one. There could be other factors.

Anyway, all the best,

Chris H.

I don’t know if you are familiar with sea going vessals now starting to use para-sails, but here is the latest on how well the prototypes have done, and what the next iterations will do:

http://www.skysails.info/index.php?id=64&L=1&tx_ttnewstt_news=104&tx_ttnewsbackPid=6&cHash=db100ad2b6

Another link: “Renault, Nissan Weigh Lithium-Ion Battery For Electric Car Projects

Speaking of destroying otherwise okay cars. Honda had a massive ship nearly flip on the way to the us. This was 100% full of cars. A team righted the ship (the show on discovery was about this death defying act). In the end nearly all of the cars were fine. Every single one went to the shredder!!!! They could not predict how being on their side for a couple days would impact the cars and the liability issues were not worth it. What a waste!

I guess they sold those salvaged Mazdas as used cars

I haven’t seem much from AC Propulsion lately, after Tom Hanks’ car was delivered. They probably offer the functionally best conversions, if they in fact still do them.

One guy chose to convert an early Boxster, which seems to have some drive line issues so is relatively inexpensive, but is a nice car to end up with after spending a fortune on a good conversion. The best-engineered independent conversion I’ve ever seen was a Honda Insight with a very well done special inverter and a genuine beautiful EV-1 driveline, and lithium ion batteries. The cars are almost all aluminum and are already well engineered for efficiency.

A lot of good links and stuff are at http://evnut.com/
which I found at the metricmind site.

By the way, I believe the supercapacitor stuff is in Martin’s “don’t mortgage the farm” category (my words) instead of the “promising” category (and mine too). Paying attention to his brief evaluations along those lines could save a lot of mental gymnastics.

# Chris Harvey wrote:

# TEG,
# thanks for the interesting link to the “hybrid”
# energy storage systems.
# … from Metric Mind Engineering:
# http://www.metricmind.com/ac_honda/main2.htm

That CR-X conversion uses basically the same eMotor as in the Ford RangerEV I have.

There are lots of those AC motors leftover from the Ford/Siemens/Ballard/Ecostar fuel cell vehicle research projects. It might be a good place to start to use them for conversions. Most of the “home brew” conversions I see use DC (”permanent magnet”) motors, and the “Zilla” DC controllers, but I think a proper AC motor and controller would be a better way to go if you can afford it and can engineer it properly. If you can’t afford to create it yourself (like Tesla) then the castoffs from aborted fuel cell research projects might be a good alternative.

The original Ford Ranger EV prototypes were done by Troy Design and Manufacturing (TDM).

Some Ford workers were even thinking of making more Ranger EVs on their own.

TEG, ACP hasn’t updated their website in quite a while. The eBox model they convert has been thoroughly redesigned (for the better, I think, but still unsightly) and the original hasn’t been in production for quite a while. Do you think they plan to convert the new version, or any other vehicle? The Scion tC coupe comes to mind as something they might consider.

Sorry, I didn’t mention that I wasn’t thinking at all about conversions as a business opportunity. Martin mentioned long ago that he had no interest in being involved in that sort of thing. I highly respect the people who’ve done it, but I’m not looking for a business opportunity. I’m a potential customer, because I’ve gotten tired of waiting while the auto companies drag their feet (a factory plug-in Prius would suit me fine).

If I buy or convert a car myself, it would go one of four ways. One, buying whatever AC Propulsion would be willing to build. Two, buying an existing conversion from someone, ideally the converted Insight I mentioned. Does anyone know who owns that fabulous car? Three, converting a sports car like a Boxster or the last MR-2. If you’re willing to spend $25K and up for a decent EV driveline and batteries, cheaping out on the donor car might not be so good. Four, trying to come up with a commuter / city car that would resemble what I want the auto companies to build, albeit way too expensive for that market built as a one-off. I’d probably start with a Yaris two door.

Do you suppose ACP would consider building one for me? They’re too far away for me to make a personal appearance, to get a feel for what’s going on.

Incidentally, am I the only person that can’t get the least bit excited about a four door automobile? As a kid I didn’t want to be seen riding in one. Now it doesn’t bother me, but I much prefer two door sedans and wagons. I’d love to see something like a Chevy Nomad built again. The originals are too expensive.

Forget I said anything about supercapacitors. I was just trying to be helpful. I didn’t want to annoy anyone or try to spoil their fun.

# Steve S wrote:
## TEG, ACP hasn’t updated their website in quite a while.

Maybe Martin should make another trip down there and find out why they aren’t getting any traction. Tesla’s success in finding customers should have had some trickle down effect on them. It would be a shame if ACP doesn’t capitalize on the publicity wave that has come about recently.

MG,

from the way that you describe your ultraconductor material it sounds like it should be pretty easy to demonstrate. Room temperature, no cryogenics needed, just an ammeter and a power source should do the trick. So I look forward to seeing your picture on the cover of Scientific American. All the best,

Chris H.

# Steve S wrote:

## I wasn’t thinking at all about conversions as a business opportunity.
## I’m a potential customer, because I’ve gotten tired of waiting while the auto companies drag their feet (a factory plug-in Prius would suit me fine).

So why not just find a used Rav4EV like most of the “I can’t wait” people have done. 4 door mini-SUV just doesn’t do it for you?

I agree, there is a market for a “not so exotic” less expensive variant to the Roadster.

Perhaps you want something like this?

Check this out too

914 conversion WIKI

I don’t know much about them, but these guys in Florida seem to do a lot of high end Porsche conversions.

MG

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” – Carl Sagan

The ball, sir, is in your court.

Chris H.

Ultraconductors have been independently reproduced for the USAF by Fractal Systems.

They have been tested to 9 Tesla, the limit of their equipment, at the Bar Ilan University, with no loss of conductivity.

They have been reproduced independently at the World Renowned Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia. A paper by that team, translated by the Ameerican Institute of Physics, concluded they exhibited zero resistance.

Last year samples were evaluated at Battelle Memorial Institute with positive results.

They have been the subject of four successfully completed Small Business Innovation Research contracts, including a highly competitive Phase II with the USAF.

Papers have been published in refereed journals for some years about these remarkable materials. They include articles in the Journal of Superconductivity.

We are delighted to have the ball in our court.

Harsh (but true?) words, Mark and Rich.

If the Flying Lizards come your way with a rocket ride make sure to grab a parachute and don’t let go!

Hey Martin,

It’s 10th April, almost a month after “Tesla Motors Begins Regular Production of 2008 Tesla Roadster”.
I’d expect that you would at least get a firm date for the arrival of The Car if not The Car Itself.

Any news?

Martin sez:

No word yet…

Jason wrote:
# What is lacking is the vision and execution of all those who DON’T become wealthy.

Vision and execution aren’t all that is required. Being properly connected… Having some luck… Being in the right place at the right time.

Plenty of talented people in this world toil away unrewarded.

If we define toil as work not freely chosen, no matter how seemingly simple, all work we choose, no matter how difficult, falls under the psychological category of play. A wise goal is to encourage efforts to reduce the time people spend — at work they have not chosen — to twenty hours each week. The money earned during the remaining half of the nominal forty hour week will need to be replaced with diversified investment income, ideally derived from firms that hold to a high ethical standard.

We can think of a twenty hour week as five four hour days. Alternatively, as a thought experiment, examine the possibility of two ten hour days – with five days each week to employ and enjoy as we wish. Some of the positive implications are obvious. One small example would be a dramatic reduction in commute traffic.

Many, if not most, people are trapped by mortgage payments, car payments, etc., in jobs they do not love. There is a simple test: Would they continue to do the same work without pay?

Only a few fortunate individuals have the freedom to learn who they are, and more important, who they might become, given the time for both spiritual reflection and inner growth, as well as genuine opportunities to prosper and contribute to the greater material good of mankind; not just in a narrow financial sense. Such truly free citizens would also help to insure an ongoing, enlightened, political discourse, not easily manipulated.

The late Robert Edmonds, an iconoclastic economist, argued that excess wealth concentration is the root cause of inflation and recession, thus broadening the ownership of wealth may not simply be an ethical concern, but an economic necessity. He designed incentives that could create what he termed “overfull” employment, without inflation, accompanied by expanded ownership opportunities, such as those initiated by the late Louis Kelso and the Council for Economic and Social Justice, which can produce substantial second incomes. As a consequence the toil component of the work week would gradually diminish.

This American led accelerated evolution would initiate the most genuinely free society in human history.

(This is an extract from the article BRIDGEWALK on the Magnetic Power (MPI) website. MPI is the commercial affiliate of the not-for-profit AESOP Institute. The article is an AESOP Institute piece)

The conversation seems to have focused on the wrong green.

Martin sez:

Grin.

Pete,

Fisker also announced a European distributor this week.

Moreover, GM (and probably others) is looking to augment their falling domestic sales by using excess domestic capacity to build vehicles for foreign markets. Yes, you heard right, GM plans to build vehicles in the US for EXPORT.

The falling dollar has changed the dynamics of the industry, which is creating jobs in the US. Economic principles do work, if you let them.

**Right now, you can’t get within a mile of the
**wind farms; they are definitely not destinations!

I just put up some photos of our recent visit to
the windfarm at the North end of Big Island.
http://www.npcsolar.com/index.html
16 x 660kW Vestas machines for a total of ~10.5MW
Nominally about 5% of peak but often contributing substantially more than that to the Big Island grid. They were kept relatively low (just below 200′ total height IIRC) because there’s a small airstrip nearby and also to keep them barely visible from the nearest main road. Note that one blade per turbine is yellow and the almost-maxed-out power display of 627.4kW.

While I am pro-wind, perhaps the locals are skeptical of wind due the blight left at South Point when this farm was abandoned.
http://www.travelistic.com/video/show/829/Abandoned-Wind-Farm-on-the-Road-to-South-Point

TEG,

sorry that it’s taken me so long to respond. I started teaching evening classes this week, in addition to my daytime duties.

Anyway, you said:

“I agree that the Rx8 is an attractive package, but that longitudinal transmission and 90 degree rear differential is not the way to go for efficiency.”

And, of course, you’re absolutely correct on that point. The transmission’s internal friction and the rear differential is going to reduce the efficiency of the vehicle, compared to no transmission and direct drive from the motor to the wheels. However, I was thinking of the vehicle as more of a performance vehicle than in terms of absolute efficiency, or at least as a pretty good compromise between the two. Compare the characteristics of the Renesis rotary ICE with, say, the ACP AC-150 EV Power System:

http://www.acpropulsion.com/technology/gen2.htm

Renesis: 238 hp, 9000 rpm redline, 159 lb-ft max. torque.

AC-150: 150 kW (200 hp), 12,000 max. rpm, 220 N-m (165 lb-ft) max. torque.

As you can see, the specs are quite similar, but the ACP system has slightly more torque and a higher redline. One other important difference, of course, is that the ACP system is far more efficient than the rotary ICE that it is replacing. While this conversion would not represent the most efficient EV on the road, its performance should exceed that of the original vehicle, while improving its efficiency by perhaps as much as a factor of five (Renesis burns 12.8L/100km, or 22.1 mpg, around town). One more thing, the ACP system is far more reliable and should require less maintenance than the Renesis. After all is said and done, I think that you could end up with a very desirable vehicle (although not as desirable as a Tesla Roadster) for about $40k.

When it comes to absolute efficency, there’s not much that will beat a bicycle!

All the best,

Chris H.

Chris, yes, I agree that it seems like a good match on output for the AC-150 in an RX8. But who wants to lug around a close ratio 6 speed when you don’t need it (because you have flat torque).
Also, the efficiency is important for battery capacity $ vs range. I still think ditching the transmission and putting the AC motor between the rear wheels would be the way to go.

Have any of you seen that Lightening?
http://www.lightningcarcompany.com
Whats going on there? 700 hp! Is it some kind of joke, or feasable, or what Martin?

TEG,

you are right about the transmission, it would reduce the range (or increase the size of the ESS required). The only benefit that I could see would be that it would give a higher top speed, but on the whole it’s probably smarter to keep things simple.

I was thinking about the possibility of using pancake motors,
(http://www.pmlflightlink.com/motors/hipa_drive.html)

but instead of placing them inside the wheels it might make more sense to move them to the centre of the rear axle to the spot where the rear differential was in order to avoid the whole sprung vs. unsprung weight issue that Martin wrote about on the TM blog.

Martin wrote:

“I was all intrigued by the idea of wheel motors. What could be simpler? Mount a motor right in the wheels. Presto, no differential, no drive shafts, no CV joints, instant traction control and stability control. What kills the idea of wheel motors for road cars is unsprung weight.

Unsprung weight is the weight of the car that is below the springs – tires, wheels, brakes, hubs, etc. The higher the ratio of unsprung to sprung weight, the worse the car handles unevenness on the road. Tracking the road is so important that even inexpensive cars now commonly are sold with aluminum alloy wheels, alloy suspension components, etc. that knock a few pounds of unsprung weight off each corner of the car. Adding 30 unsprung pounds to each corner would mean abysmal handling.”

I think that this would avoid the reduction in efficiency due to transmission & rear differential friction, and also impart some of the benefits of in-wheel motors that Martin mentioned in his blog. The only concern (minor) would be the diameter of the motors. Depending on just how much room there is back there, it may end up intruding on trunk space. This design would further reduce the weight of the car as you could get rid of the drive shaft, transmission, rear differential, etc. The PML motors are also relatively light (18-25 kg, or 40-55 lbs, per motor, depending on power requirements). It would shift the weight distribution, which would affect the handling of the vehicle, but it should be possible to balance this out with the placement of the ESS and PEM. It should also allow for the possibility of keeping the rear seating…

Just a few ideas. Let me know what you think.

All the best,

Chris H.

I just noticed that my link to the pancake motors didn’t post properly. Here it is again:

http://www.pmlflightlink.com/motors/hipa_drive.html

Does anybody know if these motors are as good as the manufacturer claims?

Chris H.

Adam: The Lightning is nothing more than a Mustang with a new fiberglass skin. It is by no means in the same catagory as an exotic sports car. If I read their promo right the $90k price is with the original Mustang engine, and the PML Flightlink electric version is much more expensive. As far as I know, Lightnings are not production, they are a convesion done only after the order is received.
TEG: Your suggestion to put an AC Propultion motor beteen the wheels with direct drive is not pratical because of its 12k maximum RPM = about 800 to 1000 mph depending on tire size. It needs to have a differential to bring it to reasonable speed. The PML Flightlink motors are designed to be 2k RPM max.
About wheel motors. I agree with Martin’s comment about unsprung weight, but I think this is only really important for sports cars. Family sedans and SUV’s wouldn’t notice the weight as much. But I would still be conserned about the reliability of having electronics in wheels because of the constant vibration and shock loads from potholes etc.

Martin sez:

Most proponents of hub motors count among their benefits the opportunity to eliminate friction brakes, depending on regenerative braking by the motors only. (They depend on eliminating the brakes, because the hub motor would go where the brakes go in a conventional wheel.) I worry a lot about how to stop the car if a motor or electronics fail. A conventional friction brake system is very simple and also redundant – no (well, very few) single-component failure will cause a cause a complete loss of brakes, and the driver can be given ample warning of impending failure. This is not true for hub motors – the control system is quite complex, and there are many possible single-point failures that would cause a complete loss of brakes. Additionally, eliminating the friction brakes eliminates the hand-brake – eliminating yet another redundant stopping system and also eliminating the ability to prevent a parked car from rolling without active (power-consuming) action from the hub-motor system.

Goldes comment said : “excess wealth concentration is root cause of recession and inflation”-well the current recession sure was caused by rich Wall St. type chimps & their assoc. trying to get richer-foisting “subprime mortages” on as many Patton- style “poor dumb etcs.” (or something like that ) as they could. Then when they get rightfully trounced, per Bear Stearns, all of us also take the fall thanks to these turkeys. I read something recently that said the rich and corp. America skate on taxes big- time , percentage-wise, compared to middle and lower class people. There are also farm subsidies-particularly in Texas (what else is new ?) that pay “farmers” (not avg. farmers, but “bigtime corp. ones”) billions, when tallied up across the country, for growing nothing/doing nothing (per last Fri. PBS bILL Moyers report). These “farmers/scammers” fund the elected chimps in congress that foist this on us. Let me tell you, in many ways this country is corrupt clear to the top -as in also: CEO pay in U.S., as of 2005 , is 22 times, on avg., that of Japan CEO pay and 17 times the pay in Europe. Do you see our companies doing anything like 20 times better than these countries? -and congress had the nerve to even debate about raising the minimum wage, for the first time in years on end, no less. Let’s not even mention defense spending- I saw something recently on a whole bunch of weapons systems each costing multi-millions more than “first advertised”-and let’s not even go there re. the Iraq war costs and the TOTAL corruption and money-pilfering going on in the esteemed “free” (loading) govt. of Iraq. (per CBS 60 Minutes report tonight) . So while other nations, like China and Norway have extra cash called “sovereign funds” to invest in good things, we not only have no such fund, we have a gigantic deficit, thanks to halibutdroppings like the above. So when Obama sez that many avg. Joes in this country are frustrated with things as they are, it’s a case of “no halibutin’ kidding”. But he gets raked over the coals for being “elitist” . Even though Obama is on the “powers that be” farm team, other farm teams members, like Billary, should talk: coming out of “elitist Yale” and the elitist Rose Hill law firms in Ark. Also, I don’t see Obama coming from a rich family. Jeeezzz ! Speaking more of which: The latest Newsweek Magazine compares the proposed environmental programs and targets of Obama and Hillary, if they were elected. In 5 out of 6 categories their programs are totally, EXACTLY the same, down to the exact percentages and time spans. So you can chose farm team pre-selected candidate A or B and what you get is the pre-selected same result. The middle class is apparently paying the biggest percentage share in taxes to keep all this stupidity up and running-and there ain’t a thing in halibut we can really do about it- as in “go ahead and try”- except maybe in the very long run with a huge, continuing amount of concerted, slug-it -out style effort-and try to get that to materialize in the U.S. of A. This situation, friends and neighbors, is a “corrupt system at its finest” at work.

Chris, I was being a little tongue-in-cheek about the tire price, which was nevertheless real. I just did some searching; I can buy high quality name brand tires in that size for $15 each, from a mail order place or a big city bicycle shop.

I used to go to a GoodWill looking for obsolete computer and printer parts to nurse along some old scientific equipment that used that stuff. While I was there I saw a couple of high quality old ten speeds. There’s a saying, “Now and then an innocent man gets sent to the legislature.” Similarly, now and then a high quality old bicycle in someone’s garage gets sent to GoodWill, and needs to be rescued.

Bicycles are involved in a vast and serious development for environmental problems: bicycle commuting, once involving millions of people in Asia, is being replaced by automobiles. It’s a double whammy. The atmosphere is being polluted alarmingly, and the individuals are depriving themselves of daily aerobic exercise. But it’s irreversible, at least for another fifty years, so I don’t trouble myself by anguishing over it.

You were certainly on the right track about placing pancake motors at the center of the rear axle instead of inside the wheels. The Mini conversion mentioned and the Lightning concept do away with friction brakes completely, to allow room for the motors and to reduce unsprung weight. Something like that would require a major development program to be mass-produced, for no great benefit.

In fact, a lot of what is said and not said in the PML article is pretty shaky. The controllers / inverters being built into the motors is one example. Not an ideal environment for electronics. The serial input mentioned suggests that a separate computer and software would be required to control the power, versus just a throttle potentiometer for a conventional controller. The motors rotate at very low rpm compared to ones that use gearing to the axle, which deviates from accepted best practice. The power claims don’t seem to be in synch with the performance claims.

Personally, I would just forget about the PML stuff until they have a few hundred cars on the road that people rave about (unlikely). But that’s just an opinion, and I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun.

I wanted recently to thoughtfully acknowledge TEG’s conversion ideas, which have merit. Personally, I tend to think that any desirable, affordable and practical highway capable electric car produced in significant numbers will be necessarily done by an established large auto company. The idea of an investment protection contract made by an environmental philanthropic organization, or some other way to prod a car company into doing it in a timely manner, is the best I can come up with. Again, it’s just an opinion.

Good times!

Good article on history and current state of battery tech:

http://www.designnews.com/article/CA6551284.html

Jason-yeah, and speculators buying homes hoping to flip them for more in a matter of months didn’t help either. Goldes must be talking “dark energy”/ “dark matter”-the stuff that’s supposed to make up 90% of matter and that’s causing the universe to expand with increasing rapidity-our galaxy is going “outward” at something like 1.3 million miles per hour. Yes, we must tap this dark energy- figure that one out and join the Einstein Club overnight.

Woof:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/technology/15tesla.html

Roy wrote:

“But I would still be conserned about the reliability of having electronics in wheels because of the constant vibration and shock loads from potholes etc.”

I’ve always agreed with this. I think you can engineer around all of the other issues, but the hub is a bad place for a motor. There is just too much abuse below the suspension. Additionaly, as Martin has pointed out in the past, little is gained by in-hub motors. Similar performance could be achieved by four less exotic motors just inside the suspension. You could then still have drum breaks on two wheels for redundancy as well as having an emergency break.

Jason said: “Bottom line is, Fisker has a vehicle with appeal to a much larger chunk of the marketplace, because they opted for adding a range extender long before Tesla did, and now Tesla is trying to play catch up.”

You sure about that Jason? I’d like to review a clear timeline of events, but it seems to me that Tesla had been hinting at the option of a REEV drivetrain for Whitestar long before Fisker showed off the Karma.

A discussion about this on the Tesla motors club here: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/news-articles-events/1090-rumor-karma-originally-fisker-s-design-whitestar.html

I think sums up the lawsuit well:

http://jalopnik.com/379850/tesla-sues-fisker-designers-in-worlds-most-expensive-girl-fight

And another Tesla lawsuit, this time against them: http://earth2tech.com/2008/04/15/teslas-other-lawsuit-transmission-troubles/ . It brings to light a little information on the transmission story. Some day an interesting book will be written about all this stuff.

Speaking of which, any ideas about how I could locate a copy of Shnayerson’s The Car That Could?

wow this lawsuit seems very low. like a petty spoiled child that think it is owed total obedience by everyone around it. looks to me like Elon’s dastardly work again.
Martin, is it your impression that Fisker did poor work?
and it makes me wonder if your contract of silence have a testimony clause allowing you to testify or are you boned royally if you are called to testify?

“The other battery pack team includes li-ion supplier A123 Systems, whose founder Ric Fulop said “Somebody lit a fire under [GM’s] butt in 2006,” and “I’ve never seen a large company move so fast and put so many resources behind something.”"

I wonder who that was?

I think there will be shakeout for these smaller startups once the big players have viable alternatives (in particular Toyota). 2010 will be a very interesting year for EVs!

“Some Facts”-you’re right, it’s long past time the U.S. got with it, but meanwhile (while we wait for the Bush cabal to be history and hope the states step it up more) here’s the next problem, even IF we seriously dent our problem anytime soon: China and India have built-in huge populations, obviously, that formerly emitted not much co2 at all. Now China and India are going bananas on the co2 front-Tata Motors of India just stared making their ” Indian Model-T”-a car costing a little over $2000, pitched to “the masses”. These “built in masses” will soon swamp the planet with co2. As for Russia-they’re pumping oil like it’s going out of style and licking their chops about drilling in the arctic as the ice recedes. I read to the effect that oil is ultimately powering practically the whole rise of the Russian economy. I have read that part of the problem with rising food costs is that the Chinese are consuming more and more meat. No doubt the cost of oil rising is in part linked to China-there are already cement and metals shortages (like copper) due to China. If this country could be like Germany is with their solar program, we’d be moving fast and big. But here’s an example of “our little problem” in this corporate controlled country of ours. There was an editorial in my local paper yapping about how “the greens” (including the likes of the Sierra Club and their “Earthjustice” wing) are suing to stop every single new proposed coal plant in this country -and winning , as in Kansas. The editor was saying, like (get this, this is good): “lordy, lordy-we all’s gonna run out of power if these deluded treehuggers ain’t stopped- we need our precious fossil fuel power, green tech. can’t do the job-isn’t that obvious !?”. I wrote him an e-mail saying, in effect and in no uncertain terms, sans mincing of words, etc.: “yeah, right buddy-go lie to someone who can still be conned by your deliberate lying, manipulative halibut droppings”. The editorial said that “modern coal power is twice as clean” as in the past. What the liar full well knew and failed to tell (the gullible) was that the U.S. supreme court just called co2 an air pollutant, and the EPA is required to consider it as such-and coal power is the biggest single co2 emission source on the planet, by far. When the editor said green tech. isn’t reliable 24/7 and it’s not “mainstream viable yet” he also (as in: lied, by omission, again) failed to mention that our state, Nevada, officially has the biggest , most easily accessed geothermal potential of any state in the nation -and this source is sure as halibut 100% reliable and 24/7 (as is solar thermal for that matter, via soluable salt heat storage). Well-surprise-the joker at the paper actually e-mailed me back, being quite sarcastic-guess I hit a nerve. So I let the dirty (coal dust on his fur, you see) rat have it in spades this time. Cagney would be proud- more like him is what we need right about now in fact. I told him that his brand of “journalism” would get an “F” in a high school journalism class-yes, an exagerration I know-actually it might possibly get a “D”-at least in journalism classes when I was in school.Lately, with the U.S. educational system, stupdity and lying may be allowed to skate-just as cheating is much more prevalent. When I was in school it was practically unheard of. But now cheating and conning. lies and manipulation are more “de riguer” in our civilized, “free” country. Everyone should take the time to write “editors” when they deliberately lie and con us-it’s fun, it’s easy- it’s like shooting ducks in a pond -who cares if it’s duck season or not withh these guys: send in the labrador retrievers and order more !

Nanosolar CEO Martin Roscheisen’s statement about powering 1000 homes off of 1 ac. of Nanosolar and 5000 homes off of 5 ac. is pretty spectacular-an acre is only 208′ square (5 ac.= 467′ sq.)- that’s like powering 1000 homes off of 2 small corner mini-mart sites.

Brian H,

From your lips to God’s ear. Until that day, we should move forward with all those other renewable energy sources and drive plug in hybrid vehicles. That will prepare us for the switch to electric only power.

Hi Martin,

I have a simple solution for your silde-conversion problem: Don’t use powerpoint… get a Mac and use Keynote.

Keynote presentations are extremely simple to convert to pretty much anything: Pdfs, .mov-movie files, Powerpoint and (here comes the interesting part) into Flash files that autoplay on websites. If you want, you can also record a “soundtrack” and thereby simulate actually giving the presentation in person…

Greetings from Germany,
- Markus

Martin sez:

Now that I got to have my say, let’s not let this blog explode into a giant MS vs Apple debate!!!

The late Robert Bussard, who with his team developed the (Philo) Farnsworth Fusor into what Bussard dubbed “the Polywell,” claimed to have solved all key physics problems related to inertial electrostatic containment-style “hot fusion.” After a “confirmation project” to confirm earlier results, spending about $20M, Bussard estimated that solving the many engineering problems related to creating a working, full-scale reactor (occupying a space about 2/3 the size of my modest living room and generating 100MW) would take $200M.

You can see him discuss the work at Google, about a year before his death, here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606

As described, the Polywell reactor would minimize operating radiation, could not be a bomb or be used to produce bomb-making materials, and except for very short half-life waste products (40 years is the figure I heard him say), would leave no residual radiation behind. (”I could turn the reactor off and then sit on top of it afterward,” Bussard said in the video.)

The website for his company, EMCC, is here: http://www.emc2fusion.org/

Prior to his death, Bussard was successful in securing funding for the confirmation project, as well as a promise of funding for the full-scale, $200M reactor project, if earlier results were indeed confirmed. The confirmation project is reportedly underway, and we should know within a year, whether Bussard’s claims were valid.

If so, imagine that the driving reactor for powering 100,000 homes, or fully-fueling around 7300 Tesla Roadsters over a year’s time, would fit in a cubic area about 2 meters on a side.

If Bussard did not have the track record he did, and if he and his team had not won awards for the basic science they did in the experiments leading to the Polywell, I would consider this a crackpot scheme. But as it is, it seems like a fair gamble to wager that the project will at least yield the world and me personally $5 worth of benefits. So I sent his foundation $5 via paypal, as a hedge against future government wishy-washiness (or insolvency!) in the funding area. If anyone reading this is inspired to do the same, they will find the donation link on the EMCC webpage cited above. At a total projected cost of $200M (spent by a team that has already proven itself resourceful and frugal in spending other people’s money), this is one of the first promising energy research projects that might be fully funded by the proceeds of that Presidential campaign financing checkbox on the IRS Form 1040. Too bad there weren’t also (or instead) a checkbox to allow us taxpapers to do something positive to achieve energy independence and bring an end to wars for energy, instead of being merely the cash-cows who meekly enable more borrow-and-spend warmaking politics-as-usual by politicians of either major party.

Raser is now partnering with a major automaker to create an SUV:

http://www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2008/04/plugin_suv_on_drawing_board_of.html

The competition is getting tough.

Sorry about the mistake. I’ve seen other articles and websites that show the assembled unit:

http://www.physorg.com/news124631405.html

Hi Martin,
Have you heard anything updates on the delivery of P2 yet? Daryl made some comments about production progress here:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/tesla-birth-watch-44-tesla-talks-transmission-troubles-to-ttac/
“The second and third cars are in Hethel and will shortly be sent stateside for delivery, which will start in the coming weeks. Some of the cars have custom work specified which adds a little to the process.”

Apparently P4 will be in Monaco next week.
We’ve discussing it on the TMC forum here:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/news-articles-events/1099-some-delivery-info-siry-ttac-article.html

Martin sez:

No, Tesla has told m nothing about my car. Odd that Darryl tells this sort of thing to the press with no word to me…

England has their first hydrogen fuel station:

http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle/Honda-Concepts/232316/

The Nanosolar idea of mini-urban solar power farms could be spectacular, particularly in bigger cities where there is alot of blighted type land, with power lines there, in bad areas that no one has wanted for decades. Every bigger city has a lot of run-down area land- cities like Detroit no doubt being a prime candidate, but also southwestern & western cities as well. As for “establishment energy”-they’ve already made more than enough cash, “if they haven’t saved any of it by now, too bad”. Article in latest “Fortune Magazine”, titled “What’s Wrong with Wall St.-and How to Fix It” says this: “From 2002 to 2006 the five big independent firms”….(Wall St. firms like Bear Sterns)…”tripled earnings to more than $30 billion and, at their peak, achieved an average return on equity of 22%, rivaling such royalty as the pharmaceutical and energy industries” -bottom line, in each case, as usual : ” Caution: Weasels at Work”.

Regarding Polywell fusion, T.J. asked, “Wonder if there is much contrary opinion from physics types- who can understand this stuff ?” From what I understand, based on reading up on it a few months ago, there are very few physics types currently in the business who actually do understand it. Most people working in fusion research now have studied inertial confinement as used in tokamak reactors and its related issues, but electrostatic confinement is more like the technology used in some old vacuum tubes than anything anyone is using today. The people who studied that stuff are all retired, and no one has bothered really learning it well since then.

It sounds very promising to me, assuming that what they’ve been saying they’ve accomplished is really true. It really makes one sad to think that what we’re spending for one day of the Iraq war could pay for building a clean fusion power plant.

Keith

TJ wrote, “A lot of these mangy sites lie fallow for years and never sell.”

There are quite a few of them around Santa Cruz city and county, CA. It would be nice to see solar “minifarms” on these lots. On the other hand, with reference to Detroit, I note that our problems with gangs and tagging are rising, so I wonder how much security these installations would require, and how that would affect their margins of profitability?

James- my father worked his whole life for the Atomic Energy Commission- in NY, NM & NV (it was the “big new govt. thing” when he got out of college c. 1952)- he remembers the name Bussard, said he was around for a long time. My father was one of the “anti-bureaucrats” in govt.- as in: he did a good (make that great) job, worked overtime, took work home ( and a lot as I remember) and didn’t go for any govt.-style funnybusiness, or contractors trying to fleece the govt. He worked in the industrial relations section of the AEC (contracts, test site contractor relations and all of that) and was set to be promoted to head of this dept. at the Las Vegas branch- until the retiring head guy he was set to replace brought in some good old boy buddy of his out of Chicago, or somewhere. When my father worked in the N.Y. City office he said a lot of the people there only worked half day and like “played the stock market” the rest of the day, etc. -this being the norm. So between this type of thing and the Chicago guy coming in (who was about my father’s age, meaning he’d be stuck at #2 long term) my father took the 30 yr. retirement option and quit in disgust- this was when he was 55, he’s 90 now and still getting nice retirement money (adjusted for inflation too-guess he made a good move !). Too bad weasels filter to the top ( in pre-planned fashion) often in this country & the govt. There was a brief time when GOOD people were filtering to the top, with more no doubt on the way-and potentially a lot more over time-and this time was, I will say again at the risk of being repetitive: during the JFK admin. This, no doubt,was just one thing about his govt. that lot of the good old boy weasels (worldwide, in fact) couldn’t tolerate-AND, importantly, allow to take hold ( ! and ! ).

TJ,

Thanks for finding the Nanosolar update – I really respect how they keep quiet and just do what needs doing. Too many “green” execs make to many lectures and too many panel appearances, instead of making sure they do the job they were hired to do.

There are legitimate criticisms of many “green” techs – ethanol (from corn) impacts food prices and cultivated land use and doesn’t address CO2 production, BEV’s are significantly more costly to produce than other techs, solar requires large areas of land, etc. I recognize the importance of fossil fuels to both our security and our economy, and am just making sure that we follow the proper policies to yield the right solutions.

Jason- aha!-but geothermal has no drawbacks (land or otherwise) I can see, besides the rather small, low tech. inconvenient truth of having to get power lines to where it’s at. I’d take this over daily coal trains stretching like a mile long, and stretching out into the future too -indefinitely, in increasing numbers and lengths- let alone tearing up the landsape to get coal, using all those huge dump trucks-and let alone, but of course CO 2 ! (and mercury, etc.) Until recently I had no idea of geothermal’s real potential (especially in like 11 western states)- it’s almost as if “someone” were trying to hide this fact- maybe not, but the MIT study on heat mining puts geothermal squarely on the map now.

T.J.,

Nothing is perfect. Some of the geothermal sites produce toxic waste water and as far as I know all of them turn clean water into dirty water. (Why/how? Because hot water under ground is very good at dissolving whatever it touches.) Many of the western states that have good geothermal sites are already short of water.

There are a lot of good characteristics for geothermal. And the reduction of the number of “unit trains” of coal is a good thing all the way back to the source of the coal.

In my opinion the first best option is efficiency. In other words use energy as efficiently as you can, regardless of the source. And the second best option is flexibility. In other words be able to use energy from as many sources as possible.

Steve

T.J., you’re absolutely right about the value of geothermal power plants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy_in_the_United_States wherever the geology is appropriate for them. It’s a shame they haven’t gotten more ink. In their favor, the oil industry has developed geomapping and drilling to a fine art.

The interest in wind power, with all its problems, has been driven largely by its being the least expensive to implement. Cheap solar panels like those developed by Nanosolar could change all that, in areas with regular sunshine. I hope the technology is successful: a printing-type process instead of vacuum deposition opens the question of durability. It seems that the panels are less efficient and have only the advantage of being less expensive, but that’s enough for now. Concentrated solar plants seem to have promise too.

Areas under power lines, as has been pointed out, would be good for solar plants.

I have to say that Nanosolar raises some warning
signals, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosolar , e.g. getting rid of their well-respected chief scientist, the multiple production delays, and for me the slightly nut-case rhetoric about trying to auction off a solar panel on eBay. In any case, I hope the technology proves itself.

TJ,

Does that Nevada “per capita” figure mean anything, when Nevada sells electricity to California?

Note in Nellis Solar wikipedia article that Air Force saves $1 million on power bills per year with this- so who sez solar energy doesn’t pay ? (anyway, huh ?) )

Here’s a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellis_Solar_Power_Plant
to the Nellis solar plant wiki article.

Clever way of increasing the surface area of thin film dyes, with stunning results. There plans to use this approach for titania would creately improve the efficiency of solar hydrogen generators.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=52197

I bet that S. Korean cosmonaut wishes she came back to Earth in Virgin Galactic ship, as opposed to the “ballistic” re-entry she endured in the Russian capsule.

I bet that S. Korean cosmonaut wishes she came back to Earth in Virgin Galactic ship, as opposed to the “ballistic” re-entry she endured in the Russian capsule.

No, I don’t think she’d like being incinerated. =

A bit more on the boat full of Mazda’s that took on water:

“How to Destroy Brand-New Cars”

Another instance where it would have been a great opportunity to refurbish and rebrand the chassis as EVs…

Martin,
Tell us about your next projects, let’s the innovator move beyond the TM adventure.

Martin sez:

I will do so in the next month or two. I have spent a lot of time studying energy – from generation (e.g. solar) through to consumption (e.g. electric cars), with though towards storage, efficiency, and demand management. I am looking for that magical cross-section where there is a problem to be solved, the solution will make a difference, and I have something meaningful to contribute.

Roger wrote:
## what they told me was P2 (red, my planned on color selection.)

Um, hopefully they meant EP2, not P2.
P2 is Martin’s car you know…

So they were letting waitlist customers test drive a founders series car?

So,
EP1 and P1 are both black,
EP2 and P2 are both red…?

Martin sez: Argh!

Martin, really sorry to reopen the wound.

When Martin talks…
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/05/22/hawaii-governor-reports-talks-with-better-place/

OK, gotta give kudo to Shai too. His speech is sooo inspiring.

Governor Lingle of Hawaii has made a major announcement for a renewable grid.

October 20, 2008 Monday – States News Service – HONOLULU, http://www.heco.com/vcmcontent/StaticFiles/pdf/STATE_HECO_Energy_Future_Agreement_10_20_08.pdf

STATE AND HAWAIIAN ELECTRIC STRIKE SWEEPING AGREEMENT FOR HAWAI’I'S
ENERGY
FUTURE

The following information was released by the office of the governor of
Hawaii:

Governor Linda Lingle today announced a comprehensive agreement to
decisively move the state away from its dependence on fossil fuels for
electricity and ground transportation.

The historic accord – agreed to between the Lingle-Aiona Administration,
including the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism
and
the State Consumer Advocate, and the Hawaiian Electric companies – is an
achievement stemming from months of discussions and work on the Hawai’i
Clean Energy Initiative. This effort, which began in January between the
state and U.S. Department of Energy, seeks to move Hawai’i toward having
70 percent of its energy use come from clean energy sources by 2030.

The agreement will reduce by many years the process of moving the state
forward to a clean-energy-driven economy by accelerating regulatory
changes.

“This is a detailed plan to implement the Hawai’i Clean Energy
Initiative
with sweeping changes that are needed to reduce our dependence on
imported
fossil fuel and to achieve a more secure energy and economic future,”
said
Governor Lingle. “I feel strongly that the state and our major utility
can
and must continue finding common ground in moving forward and taking
decisive and bold steps toward an energy-independent Hawai’i.”

Major highlights of the agreement include:

A commitment to integrate as much as 1100 megawatts (MW) of already
identified additional renewable energy on the Hawaiian Electric
companies’
grids (700 MW to be implemented within five years).

The construction of an undersea cable connecting Maui, Moloka’i and
LÄna’i
into one electrical grid to allow the integration of an additional 400
MW
of renewable wind power generated in Maui County for transmission to
O’ahu.

A requirement that 40 percent of electric power come from renewable
resources by 2030, doubling the current Renewable Portfolio Standard
requirement law.

A “feed-in” tariff system designed to dramatically accelerate the
addition
of renewable energy from new sources by providing published purchased
power prices for renewable power providers, which would encourage
increased development of alternative energy projects.

Seeking prompt approvals from the Hawai’i Public Utilities Commission
for
the immediate deployment of advanced meters and for implementation of
time-of-use rates that reward customers with lower electric rates for
using power during off-peak times. This change will support the
development of a “smart grid” to allow customers far greater control of
their energy use and their electricity bills.

Changing the way Hawaiian Electric is compensated by moving away from a
business model that places reliance on increased electric sales.

Commitment from the Hawaiian Electric companies to retire older fossil
fuel powered energy generation plants as Hawai’i moves to a renewable
energy future.

Conversion of existing fossil fuel generators to renewable biofuels,
ultimately using crops grown locally and in a sustainable manner.

A prohibition on the construction of any new coal plants in Hawai’i.

Expanding the Pay-As-You-Save program under which customers can install
solar water heating systems without having to pay money up front, but
can
acquire energy-saving improvements through shared savings on their
electric bills.

Eliminating existing system-wide caps on net energy metering to allow
customers on each island to produce their own renewable energy and
obtain
credit on their electric bills for any excess exported to the grid.

Submitting a proposal to the PUC for establishment of “lifeline” rates,
which provide a cap for certain low income customers.

Committing the state and Hawaiian Electric Companies to a program that
will identify and implement incentives needed to encourage adoption of
electric vehicles for individual and fleet use, and also lead by example
by acquiring hybrid or electric-only vehicles for government and utility
fleets.

“With this agreement, Hawai’i moves to the forefront in energy
leadership
in the nation,” said Kevin Kolevar, assistant secretary of the U.S.
Department of Energy, whose office helped negotiate the agreement.
“Hawai’i’s vision will prove to be a boon to the local economy and
will
lead to more stability and long-term reductions in the cost of energy in
Hawai’i. It will provide future generations with significant
independence
from imported fuel.

“I applaud Governor Lingle for her commitment to pursuing the Hawai’i
Clean Energy Initiative. She has made it a personal priority, kept
everyone’s feet to the fire and made sure that the final result is in
the
public’s best interest,” Kolevar said. “Without her leadership none
of
this would be possible.”

“This agreement reinforces that Hawai’i is open for energy business,”
said
Ted Liu, director of the State Department of Business, Economic
Development, and Tourism. “It will require focused and upfront
investment
in order to get Hawai’i off its dependence on imported oil, but in the
long term, will lead to significant reductions in energy costs to
Hawai’i’s consumers. It is an investment in a healthy future for our
economy and for our environment. The path is not necessarily easy, but
it
will reward all of us in the end.”

“This agreement also includes measures to assist Hawai’i consumers,
providing options to help them reduce their electricity bills,” said
State
Consumer Advocate Catherine Awakuni. “Provisions include advanced meters
and pricing that will reward customers for wise energy choices,
no-money-down solar water heating installations, and an end to a utility
business model based on increasing sales rather than encouraging
decreases
and efficiencies in energy use. All of this will help utility ratepayers
in the days ahead.”

“We appreciate the opportunity to participate in this critical effort
led
by Governor Lingle and her Administration, in particular the
Department of
Business, Economic Development and Tourism’s energy division, and the
contribution of time and expertise of the U.S. Department of Energy,”
said
Constance Lau, chairman of the board, Hawaiian Electric Company.

“We are committed to making these plans a reality and working together
with the state to achieve a more secure, economically viable and
environmentally responsible energy future for Hawai’i,” Lau said.

While this agreement is with the Hawaiian Electric utilities, the state
and the consumer advocate are also working separately with Kaua’i Island
Utility Cooperative (KIUC). KIUC and Kaua’i County are active
participants
in the Hawai’i Clean Energy Initiative. Kaua’i has unique energy issues
such as a utility cooperative status, the lack of inter-island cable
potential today, the existing grid lay-out, and limits to some renewable
energy choices due to threatened and endangered avian populations which
compel a separate agreement. KIUC and the U.S. Department of Energy are
also working to model the KIUC grid to better understand the electricity
choices available to Kaua’i.

the agreement
http://www.heco.com/vcmcontent/StaticFiles/pdf/STATE_HECO_Energy_Future_Agreement_10_20_08.pdf

more reading:
http://tdworld.com/underground_transmission_distribution/hawaii-state-energy-plan-1008/

http://hawaii.gov/dbedt/info/energy/policy

Anti fuel cell sentiments ‘gaining steam’.