Author Archives: Kevin Clemens

Electric, hybrid vehicles make their marks in motorsports

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Hybrid and electric vehicles are not necessarily renowned for their performance, but this summer, competitors in one of the country’s oldest motorsports events are hoping to turn that perception on its head.

An uphill battle

An electric Nissan Leaf competes in the 2011 Pikes Peak Hillclimb in Colorado. (Photo via Nissan)

This summer, at the 90th running of the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb, seven of the almost 200 entries will run on electricity.

Last year, two electric cars challenged the 12.42-mile course — a Nissan Leaf in the stock production category and a highly modified 268-horsepower two-wheel drive electric racer driven by Japanese driver Ikuo Hanawa setting a new class record of 12 minutes, 20.1 seconds.

In addition, Chip Yates took his 240-horsepower homebuilt electric superbike to a record time of just under 13 minutes, smashing the old electric motorcycle record by more than four minutes.
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GE’s Minnesota test track showcases electric vehicles

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Talk with car company executives and you will find most agree that the challenges faced in the adoption of electric vehicles are less about a need for better technology than they are about better educating the public.

Deb Frodl, chief strategy officer for General Electric’s Capital Fleet Services and the global alternative fuel leader for GE, agrees. That’s why she led the creation of the company’s Innovation Center for Alternative Fuel Vehicles and Solutions in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Electric and alternative-fuel vehicles available for test drives at GE's facility in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. (Photos by Kevin Clemens for Midwest Energy News)

The 6,000 square foot center, located on the campus of GE Capital Fleet Services’ headquarters has classrooms and showrooms, a large service bay to demonstrate electric charging and compressed natural gas fueling stations and infrastructure technologies, and a half-mile test track where fleet representatives can experience first-hand the operation of more than 20 alternative fuel vehicles that are kept at the facility.
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Michigan event puts electric snowmobiles to the test

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McGill University’s electric snowmobile on an endurance run. (Photo by Kevin Clemens/Midwest Energy News)

Each year in early March, teams of college students from across the country converge on Houghton, Michigan to compete in the Society of Automotive Engineers Clean Snowmobile Challenge.

The competition, which was first held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and included events in Yellowstone National Park, was developed to allow universities to address issues of noise and gaseous emissions from snowmobiles. In 2003, the competition moved to the 500-acre winter test track at the Keweenaw Research Center at Michigan Technological University — in an area of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula renowned for more than 300 inches of yearly snowfall and its excellent snowmobiling.

This year, with event sponsorship from the largest snowmobile manufacturers and a host of other corporate interests, sixteen college teams took on the challenge.

The majority of the teams compete in the Internal Combustion low emissions category. These snowmobiles must run on a biofuel blend that can contain between 10 and 39 percent ethanol. To ensure the sleds are truly flex-fuel vehicles, the teams are not told the actual content of ethanol in the fuel until after the event has ended. The machines are tested for design, noise, exhaust emissions, fuel economy, cold start ability, acceleration and handling. The objective is to develop concepts and ideas that can help improve current snowmobiles.

In 2006, a Zero Emissions category was added to the competition. Tracy Dahl, who works for Polar Field Services, a company that does contract services for the National Science Foundation’s arctic programs, convinced organizers to add the category because of the need for zero emission vehicles in atmospheric arctic research.

“The electric division of this competition was started in response to our specific needs at Summit Station in Greenland where the scientific focus is on atmospheric research,” said Dahl. “If you ride up to a sampling site on a regular snowmobile, everything goes off the charts and you have to throw out that data set.”

The winning zero-emissions snowmobile frequently is shipped to Greenland for use at Summit Station and the captain of the winning team is invited to spend a few days in Greenland to explain the machine to the support staff.

“The machine will stay for typically three months during the course of the summer research season and it has been a great success,” Dahl said.

Greg Smiarowski, captain of Michigan Tech’s electric snowmobile team. (Photo by Kevin Clemens/Midwest Energy News)

Beyond the development of new technologies, the Clean Snowmobile Challenge gives engineering students a chance to work on a project that stretches their design, fabrication and problem-solving skills. “You get to do a bunch of hands-on work and also problem solving and I love to do that,” said Greg Smiarowski, a senior at Michigan Tech who has worked on the team’s electric sled for two years.

Five teams entered zero emission machines this year. Although there has been continuous progress since the first electric sleds arrived in 2006, building one is still a daunting project.

Last year’s winner, the University of Wisconsin-Madison withdrew before this year’s competition began when it was determined that their battery pack didn’t meet the strict rules of the competition. The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology also had to drop out, Michigan Tech’s entry had a series of electrical problems and the University of Alaska in Fairbanks had burned out one motor and had their spare shipped in overnight from Alaska. The team from McGill University from Montreal had few problems and was actually the only team to officially finish.

An electric snowmobile, while not as eerily quiet as an electric motorcycle, is quite a bit less noisy than a gasoline powered machine. Most of the noise comes from the motion of the track on the snow and over the rollers as the sled moves forward.

Range capability of electric snowmobiles is still their biggest drawback. Last year the University of Wisconsin-Madison set a record with a range of 20.8 miles. In 2012, the McGill team went almost 8 miles on its fully charged batteries while the resurrected Fairbanks entry with its replacement motor unofficially went over 16 miles (the range requirements in Greenland are actually quite modest as the test sites are just a mile or so from the base).

As battery technology progresses, the range and performance of electric snowmobiles will continue to improve. The SAE is talking about adding a hybrid class to the Clean Snowmobile Challenge – creating a daunting technical challenge of combining both combustion and electric technology onto a small platform. But that’s what the competition is all about — finding solutions now may result in practical and more efficient snowmobiles in the future.

Kevin Clemens is a freelance journalist and author who trained as an engineer and environmental educator and has been an editor and contributor at some of the transportation industry’s most influential magazines. He lives in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

How plug-in cars can face up to winter’s challenges

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For gas-electric hybrids, cold weather can have a major impact on fuel economy. (Photo by Chad Kainz via Creative Commons)

January 18, 2012

Story by Kevin Clemens
Video by Rick Fuentes

Decades ago, plug-in cars were common in Minnesota.

For cars poorly suited for the upper Midwest’s frigid winters, a block heater plugged in overnight could keep the engine warm enough to start the next morning. Cars and trucks with electrical cords protruding from their grills were a frequent sight.

New technologies such as fuel injection, direct ignition, superior motor oils and better batteries have largely relegated that custom to history in all but the most frigid regions of the world. But with more than a dozen electric and plug-in car models due on the U.S. market in 2012, some Minnesotans will find themselves reviving the practice.

Shayna Berkowitz has some pretty strong opinions about how electric vehicles perform in Minnesota winters.

“Winter is very hard on this technology,” she said. “Batteries in winter do not equal success.”

Berkowitz knows something about the subject. Her company, ReGo Electric in Minneapolis, specializes in plug-in conversions for hybrid cars, adding additional battery packs to improve fuel economy while improving their all-electric range capabilities.

“To have an all-electric vehicle here in this climate is pretty radical,” Berkowitz says. “It’s a pretty dramatic thing to be able to do.”

However, there are some solutions that can make electric vehicles practical in cold climates.

Why cold weather is hard on batteries

There are several reasons why electric vehicles have special needs when it comes to operating in cold climates.

Batteries produce electricity through chemical reactions and these reactions slow as the temperature falls. A lead acid battery, like that used to start a normal gasoline engine, can lose almost 40 percent of its capacity as the temperature drops below zero.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2006 found nickel metal hydride and lithium ion batteries used in electric cars could see a drop of more than 80 percent in capacity (PDF) at temperatures around zero degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 73 degrees.

Conventional cars with block heaters plugged into an outlet in Finland. The practice of plugging in gasoline-powered cars is still common in frigid climates, like Scandinavia and interior Alaska. (Photo by Suvi Korhonen via Creative Commons)

Cold batteries also do not accept charging energy as easily as they do when warm, so the benefits of regenerative braking, which uses the car’s drive motor as a generator when slowing down, is much less effective. In addition, an all-electric vehicle must use some of its battery energy to power items like the cabin heater, seat heaters and the defroster.

Consumer Reports has noted the Nissan Leaf’s 100-mile range on a charge during the summer months dropped to around 65 miles in cold weather, and Berkowitz says that a Toyota Prius that normally gets 45-55 mpg will only get 35-45 mpg in winter because of diminished battery capacity.

Preparing plug-in cars for winter

ReGo developed ways of dealing with cold weather in its hybrid conversions right from its beginnings four years ago. ReGo’s system includes electric resistance heaters and insulation around its battery pack. The heaters are powered through the charging cable that plugs into the electrical socket in the owner’s garage.

“Without the winterizing that we do, [the batteries] wouldn’t function,” note ReGo’s Berkowitz.

The same strategy is used by major automakers, as well.

As with ReGo’s conversions, the Nissan Leaf uses an electric resistance heater to warm the battery when the car is attached to the home charging circuit. In addition, the Leaf can draw power from its lithium ion battery pack to heat itself, as long as the charge level in the pack is above 30 percent. The heater comes on automatically when the temperature falls below -4°F and shuts off again when the battery temperature rises above 14°F.

The Leaf, as well as the Chevrolet Volt, can pre-heat their cabins and batteries when plugged in overnight. ReGo offers a similar system, not just for hybrids but also for ordinary non-electric vehicles to help cut down on cold-weather idling while the interior comes to temperature.

And while the cold poses day-to-day driving challenges for EV owners in the Midwest, another NREL study showed that a battery pack operating in a cooler climate like that of Minneapolis will last significantly longer (PDF) than one that spends its life in a hotter city like Phoenix.

Car companies who are building electric vehicles do extensive winter testing to fully understand the cars’ limitations and adapt for them accordingly. GM, for instance, tested several pre-production Chevy Volts in Kapuskasing, Ontario, where temperatures can drop to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. But only when a significant number of plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles hit Midwest highways will the success of these adaptations be known.

Meanwhile, ReGo’s Shayna Berkowitz understands the need to make her company’s electric conversions as trouble-free as possible.

“When it comes to transportation, people want reliable, dependable, consistent, easy technology,” she said. “Change is hard for people. They don’t want their commute to be a science fair project.”

Kevin Clemens is a freelance journalist and author who trained as an engineer and environmental educator and has been an editor and contributor at some of the transportation industry’s most influential magazines. He lives in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

Rick Fuentes is a cycling writer and two-wheeled photographer.

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This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Is the Chevy Volt dangerous?

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(Photo via NHTSA)

November 29, 2011

By Kevin Clemens

For electric vehicle proponents, the timing couldn’t be worse.

With the extended-range hybrid Chevrolet Volt and all-electric Nissan Leaf finally available in all 50 states and a host of new plug-in hybrids and all-electrics ready for launch in 2012, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has announced that it is opening a “preliminary evaluation” of the Volt’s battery assemblies.

NHTSA’s concern stems from a fire in June that started in a Chevrolet Volt sitting in a storage lot, three weeks after the vehicle had been evaluated in a side pole crash test. The source of the fire was the Volt’s 400-pound T-shaped battery pack that holds more than 200 individual lithium ion cells.

Subsequent impact tests of just the Volt’s battery pack produced a fire a week after impact damage to one pack, a temperature increase from another pack one day after it was damaged, and sparks and smoke from a third pack.

The announcement has led to a surge in media coverage questioning the safety of battery-powered vehicles. The New York Times recently declared the news  “a setback for electric cars,” while Fox News has gone as far as to declare the Volt an “utter disaster.”

However, while there are as many as 287,000 vehicle fires in the U.S. each year, General Motors points out that there have been no “real world” fires caused by the Chevrolet Volt.

“The Volt is a five-star safety car. Even though no customer has experienced in the real world what was identified in this latest testing of post-crash situations, we’re taking critical steps to ensure customer satisfaction and safety,” said GM’s North American President Mark Reuss in a written statement. GM sent a letter to all Chevrolet Volt owners on November 28, assuring them that their cars are safe and offering to provide a replacement GM vehicle for owners to drive “until this issue is resolved.”

The NHTSA also said in a statement that Volt owners who haven’t been in a major crash “do not have reason for concern,” and the Detroit Free Press reports that Volt owners don’t seem to be nearly as concerned about the fires as the media is.

So what’s all the hype about? Do electric cars really post a fire hazard?

To answer that question, we need to take a closer look at battery chemistry.

Not all batteries created equal

Lithium-ion batteries have become a prime mover of our wired and interconnected society ever since Sony developed them in 1991.  They can carry six times the energy of old-fashioned lead-acid batteries and have three times the energy density of nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries like those in the Toyota Prius hybrid.

Containing all of that power, however, requires a certain amount of care when it comes to manufacturing, transporting, handling, charging and discharging these technical marvels. Get it wrong, and the magic can quickly escape from the bottle.

Although it is too early in the investigation for NHTSA or GM to report on exactly what is happening to the Chevrolet Volt’s battery pack, the mechanisms by which individual lithium ion cells can catch fire are well understood.

All batteries have negatively and positively charged terminals immersed in an electrolyte. When a battery is charged, an electrochemical reaction leaves an excess of electrons at the negative terminal.

When a battery is connected to a device such as an electric motor, electrons flow from the negative terminal, through wires to the device and back to the positive pole of the battery, where they recombine with positively charged ions that have traveled through the electrolyte to the positive terminal. In lower-energy batteries like lead acid or nickel metal hydride, the electrolyte is water-based and cannot catch fire.

However, because lithium compounds react with water, the electrolyte used in a lithium ion battery cannot be water-based. Instead, the electrolyte is an organic compound that happens to be extremely flammable.

Because lithium ion batteries are compact, the positive and negative poles must be kept apart by a permeable plastic separator. Early lithium ion laptop batteries could catch fire when impurities floating in the electrolyte damaged the separator, allowing electrons to flow from the negative to the positive poles and causing an internal short.

In the worst cases, this short would heat the battery, melting the separator and causing thermal runaway that would cause the electrolyte in the battery to catch fire. Critics of electric cars have been quick to point to Sony’s recall of millions of lithium ion laptop computer batteries in 2006-2007 after some fires were started by the compact high energy cells.

It is important to note that while lithium metal itself is highly reactive (it will spontaneously burst into flames if placed in water), there is no elemental lithium metal in a lithium ion battery, and the lithium compounds in the cell are not particularly flammable. It is the organic electrolyte, the plastic internal separator, and the carbon-based negative terminal that provide fuel for a fire. Once one cell has undergone thermal runaway, the chances are good that it will overheat adjacent cells, eventually causing a fire.

Volt’s gas tank drained, but not the battery

It isn’t just manufacturing defects that can compromise the integrity of the internal separators. In a July 2011 report (PDF), the Fire Protection Research Foundation found that damage to individual cells or packs of cells could result in internal damage that could result in a fire, and recommends that if physical damage is suspected the batteries should be quarantined and monitored for evidence of cell internal shorting.

The report also noted that the state of charge of a lithium-ion battery had a big effect on the chances of thermal runaway within the cell: cells with a low state of charge were unlikely to experience the kind of runaway that could lead to a fire.

That’s why GM recommends that the electric energy be drained from the Volt’s battery after a crash, something that was not done following NHTSA’s crash test in May that resulted in the June fire three weeks later (the NHTSA did, however, drain the Volt’s gasoline tank, as is standard procedure for all cars).

The Fire Protection Research Foundation study also noted that the fires caused by lithium ion cells are fed by the flammable electrolyte and plastic separator and packaging, and that both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Navy recommend the use of water for fire suppression with lithium ion batteries.

Different cars, different batteries

The exact chemistry of lithium ion cells varies between battery manufacturers and can be a factor in how well the batteries will withstand abuse. The nickel-manganese-cobalt, or NMC chemistry used by Korea-based LG Chem for the Chevrolet Volt battery is fairly standard within the industry.  Michigan-based A123’s lithium iron phosphate cell chemistry is considered by industry experts to be “safer” than the cobalt-based cells. Chevrolet has chosen A123’s batteries for its upcoming all-electric subcompact Spark, and A123 cells can be found in the newly launched Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid.

Unfortunately, it isn’t the first time that GM has been under investigation for fires caused by side-impacts. GMC and Chevrolet pickup trucks built between 1973 and 1987 had “side-saddle” gas tanks, mounted outside the frame, which could rupture in heavy side crashes. In court cases resulting from numerous lawsuits it was clear that GM knew of the problems with its vehicles, but was reluctant to make costly changes to its designs.

Meanwhile, the Volt and the Leaf will be joined by more than a dozen new plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles that will hit the North American market in 2012, all of them powered by some version of the lithium ion battery.

While the issues with the Volt’s battery raises some concerns, the bigger question for the automotive industry is developing proper protocols, standards and procedures for electric vehicles.

Mary Barra, senior vice president of GM’s Global Product development, says the company has established a senior engineering team to examine electrical fires and said, “This isn’t just a Volt issue.”

“We’re already leading a joint electric vehicle activity with the Society of Automotive Engineers and other automotive companies to address new issues, such as this protocol of depowering batteries after a severe crash.”

Kevin Clemens is a freelance journalist and author who trained as an engineer and environmental educator and has been an editor and contributor at some of the transportation industry’s most influential magazines. He lives in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.

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This work by Midwest Energy News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Not dead yet: Hydrogen cars

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Honda's FCX Clarity fuel-cell car, spotted in a parking garage in Los Angeles.

Ten years ago, the future for hydrogen-powered automobiles looked promising.

Hundreds of millions of dollars were being spent on research and development of fuel cells that could combine hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity with only a bit of heat and water vapor as the byproducts. But fuel cells were prohibitively expensive and the required infrastructure overhaul seemed beyond the reach of a nation addicted to oil.

By 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu claimed that hydrogen-powered cars wouldn’t be practical in the next 10 to 20 years and the Obama administration changed its focus to gasoline-electric hybrids and battery electric vehicles, a move further bolstered by the introductions of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf. Fuel cell research budgets were cut and hydrogen was placed on the back burner.

Over the past decade, though, progress has been made in cutting the costs of fuel cell stacks that convert hydrogen into electricity –- in part by using less platinum, an expensive metal needed to catalyze the hydrogen-oxygen reaction. Nissan, for example recently announced that it had developed a cell with 2.5 times the energy density of its 2005 stack at one-sixth the cost.

Meanwhile, Honda’s FCX Clarity fuel cell vehicle is available on a limited basis in California, and Mercedes-Benz has announced that it will have a fuel cell model in volume production by 2014.

One advantage of a strong emphasis on battery-powered electric vehicles is that they serve as a logical transition step on the road to a hydrogen transportation system. Because hydrogen fuel cells produce electricity, they will need the same electric motors, power management and control systems that have been developed for battery electric and hybrid electric cars. And building a plug-in hybrid that uses battery power around town and a hydrogen fuel cell as a range extender for longer trips could be the viable — albeit expensive — solution that finally replaces fossil fuels.

If fuel cells are edging closer to prime time, the issues of producing, transporting, and storing hydrogen onboard a vehicle remain formidable hurdles. Industrial processes that make large quantities of hydrogen tend to also produce large amounts of greenhouse gases. Hydrogen gas itself is a tiny molecule that tends to escape through seals and hoses and must be compressed to extremely high pressures to carry a sufficient amount on-board a vehicle for even a modest trip.

Still, none of this requires fundamentally new technology – there are even hobbyist education kits that allow you to build a small fuel cell at home. A concerted effort in the next couple of years could push hydrogen back into the big picture.

Photo by KayOne73 via Creative Commons

How copper could be key to EVs’ viability

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Photo courtesy of the Copper Development Association.

Cutting the price tag on electric vehicles will be key to their widespread adoption.

But the Chinese, who supply 97 percent of the rare earth elements like niobium and samarium that are used to make the powerful permanent magnets that are used in many automotive electric motors (like that in the Toyota Prius) are holding back supply and have raised prices by as much as a factor of four in the past year. China’s move has prompted a search for alternatives.

One that has emerged is what’s known as an AC induction motor. This design, which was used by Chevrolet in its EV-1 electric car in the late 1990s, does away with costly permanent magnets, instead inducing a magnetic field in coils in the spinning rotor through stationary field coils that are located in the motor’s housing. Most of the rotors in AC induction motors are made from cast aluminum but Bob Weed, Vice President of the Copper Development Association, thinks that copper could be a better choice.

“We looked at the AC induction motor. If you replace the aluminum rotor with a copper rotor, which has much better conductivity, you’ll avoid a lot of the losses,” said Weed. “You’ll also avoid the losses of a permanent magnet motor by not having a drag on the motor when it is in a high speed coasting situation,” he added.

The high-priced Tesla Roadster electric sports car uses a hand-fabricated copper and steel rotor to build a motor that weighs just 100 pounds and that can generate 300 horsepower while taking up no more space than a bread box. But building the rotor by hand is expensive, so the key is to develop the same kind of casting technology for copper rotors as is used to make the aluminum versions. The much higher melting point of copper when compared to aluminum makes this difficult, but the CDA has been working with companies in the US, India and China and initial production motors are in production.

Although aluminum is lighter, copper has higher conductance, which means the rotor can be made smaller and thus less expensive while producing a more compact motor with the same power, or can be made the same size, but with 25-30% more power, according to Weed.

“Using a cast copper rotor instead of a fabricated rotor then should be able to get much better performance for much less money.”

Electric cars not fancy enough for you?

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Editor’s note: Correspondent Kevin Clemens is blogging from The Business of Plugging In electric car conference in Dearborn, Michigan

So you want an electric car, but the Nissan Leaf is too small and the Tesla Roadster is too lavish? An Ohio company might have your answer.

AMP,  based just outside Cincinnati, is planning to sell Mercedes-Benz M-Class sport utility vehicles that have been converted to run entirely on battery power. The company, which is made up largely of former executives from Chrysler and GM, also plans to offer an electrified Jeep Grand Cherokee.

For either vehicle the gasoline engine is removed and replaced by a pair of permanent-magnet AC motors made by Remy Inc, a century-old Indiana company and longtime parts supplier to GM.

Lithium ion batteries made in China by GBS hold enough of energy to go 100 miles and provide the 380 volts needed for the 5300 pound vehcile to reach 60 mph in less than 10 seconds, according to AMP.

A brief drive in the M-Class showed the vehicle to be well finished and refined, benefiting from electric power steering and air conditioning systems developed by Mercedes for the hybrid version of the vehicle.

Pre-production models are currently undergoing crash testing and although the price for the Mercedes conversion hasn’t been announced, when it goes on sale in the spring of 2012 it is expected to be around $75,000.