We had great coverage of the 2012 EV Rally on Friday. Here are a few links for your viewing pleasure.

KARK – Channel 4 :  http://arkansasmatters.com/fulltext?nxd_id=537182

KATV – Channel 7: http://www.katv.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=7172089

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette: http://www.arkansasonline.com/galleries/15792/album/429071/?page=2

Many more photos and the list of winners will be posted on www.aecc.com later this week.

Also, look for an article in an upcoming edition of Arkansas Living magazine.

Here are the 2012 winners:

Overall

First:                      Corning 3

Second:                Hillcrest

Third:                    Corning 2

Cabot

Orals

First:                      Corning 3

Second:                Corning 2

Third:                    Springdale

Quiz Bowl

First:                      Corning 3

Second:                Cabot

Third:                    Paragould

Acceleration

First:                      Hamburg

Second:                Fayetteville

Third:                    Hillcrest

Range

First:                      Fayetteville

Second:                Viola

Third:                    Central Junior High (Springdale)

Autocross

First:                      Hillcrest

Second:                Corning 1

Third:                    Arkansas Tech – Ozark

Thanks.

Rob Roedel

Arkansas Electric Cooperatives

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The UC? from Rinspeed, a subcompact two-seat electric car, was designed to reduce emissions and the need for gasoline, eliminate or shrink traffic jams, and to fit on trains. Consumers could take their UC?s along on long-distance train trips for use at their destinations. (Rinspeed even designed railcars that could onload and off-load UC?s quickly.) The electric motor gives the car a top speed of 75 mph with 96 lb-ft of torque, and a 65‑mile range. The transmission has three positions: forward, neutral, and reverse. On the inside, the driver uses a joystick to steer. And the UC? name? It stands for Urban Commuter, or the rhetorical, You see?

Aside from quick-charge consumer electronics, batteries that can store a lot of energy, release it fast, and recharge quickly are desirable for electric vehicles, medical devices, lasers, and military applications.
“This system that we have gives you capacitor-like power with battery-like energy,” says Braun, a professor of materials science and engineering. “Most capacitors store very little energy. They can release it very fast, but they can’t hold much. Most batteries store a reasonably large amount of energy, but they can’t provide or receive energy rapidly. This does both.”
The performance of typical lithium-ion (Li-ion) or nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable batteries degrades significantly when they are rapidly charged or discharged.
Making the active material in the battery a thin film allows for very fast charging and discharging, but reduces the capacity to nearly zero because the active material lacks volume to store energy.
Braun’s group wraps a thin film into a three-dimensional structure, achieving both high active volume (high capacity) and large current. They have demonstrated battery electrodes that can charge or discharge in a few seconds, 10 to 100 times faster than equivalent bulk electrodes, yet can perform normally in existing devices.
This kind of performance could lead to phones that charge in seconds or laptops that charge in minutes, as well as high-power lasers and defibrillators that don’t need time to power up before or between pulses.
Braun is particularly optimistic for the batteries’ potential in electric vehicles. Battery life and recharging time are major limitations of electric vehicles. Long-distance road trips can be their own form of start-and-stop driving if the battery only lasts for 100 miles and then requires an hour to recharge.
“If you had the ability to charge rapidly, instead of taking hours to charge the vehicle you could potentially have vehicles that would charge in similar times as needed to refuel a car with gasoline,” Braun says. “If you had five-minute charge capability, you would think of this the same way you do an internal combustion engine. You would just pull up to a charging station and fill up.”
All of the processes the group used are also used at large scales in industry so the technique could be scaled up for manufacturing.
The key to the group’s novel 3D structure is self-assembly. They begin by coating a surface with tiny spheres, packing them tightly together to form a lattice. Trying to create such a uniform lattice by other means is time consuming and impractical, but the inexpensive spheres settle into place automatically.
Then the researchers fill the space between and around the spheres with metal. The spheres are melted or dissolved, leaving a porous 3D metal scaffolding, like a sponge. Then a process called electropolishing uniformly etches away the surface of the scaffold to enlarge the pores and make an open framework. Finally, the researchers coat the frame with a thin film of the active material.
The result is a bicontinuous electrode structure with small interconnects, so the lithium ions can move rapidly; a thin-film active material, so the diffusion kinetics are rapid; and a metal framework with good electrical conductivity.
The group demonstrated both NiMH and Li-ion batteries, but the structure is general, so any battery material that can be deposited on the metal frame could be used.
“We like that it’s very universal, so if someone comes up with a better battery chemistry, this concept applies,” says Braun, who is also affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois. “This is not linked to one very specific kind of battery, but rather it’s a new paradigm in thinking about a battery in three dimensions for enhancing properties.”
The U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the Department of Energy supported this work. Visiting scholar Huigang Zhang and former graduate student Xindi Yu were co-authors of the paper.
Source: University of Illinois
Published April 2011

The speech built on the theme of January’s State of the Union address, in which Obama called clean-energy development “our generation’s Sputnik moment.” Back in January, Obama urged the nation to “break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.” In the news cycle following the speech, there was some debate over whether the million-EV challenge was likely to be met—indeed, whether meeting it was even possible.

Just two months after the address, world events have brought the proposition into stark focus. Oil-rich nations of the Middle East and North Africa are beset by brewing revolution; EV technology leader Japan is reeling from a devastating quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. These events, as they play out in the coming months and years, have the potential to influence America’s timetable for weaning itself off oil and building out an EV-friendly transportation system.

The debate over Obama’s million-EV target hinges on myriad supply and demand factors. Pike Research (Boulder, Colo.) projects the United States will miss the mark by about 160,000 vehicles. Its figure includes both plug-in electric and hybrid electric vehicles. Still, the research firm forecasts that between 2010 and 2015, the United States will field more EVs and hybrids than any other nation or region of the world, including China.

One caveat: “Our forecast was done before the earthquake in Japan, and the probability of hitting those numbers now is somewhat lower,” said Pike Research analyst John Gartner.

That’s because Japan is the world leader in lithium-ion battery production, followed by South Korea. Supply chain disruptions in Japan are having a short-term impact on battery and EV production. Toyota has delayed the planned April launch of its new wagon-style Prius in Japan. And while Nissan has resumed battery production and assembly of its all-electric Leaf, the company said production levels would depend on the frequency of rolling blackouts.

Others are more sanguine about Obama’s challenge. “One million EVs is a doable target,” said Oliver Hazimeh, director and head of the Global e-Mobility Practice at PRTM, an international management consulting firm. Still, he admits it won’t happen on its own. “There are a lot of things that have to come together.” Oil prices; the health of the U.S. economy; the mood of lawmakers in Washington; Li-ion battery availability, cost and technology development; investment in the refueling infrastructure; corporate and governmental fleet sales; the pace of Japan’s recovery—the list goes on.

Some of those factors are potential tipping points that could spur demand to increase dramatically—or to drop off a cliff. For instance, if the price of gasoline climbs toward $5 per gallon and remains high for an extended period, the positive impact on EV demand would be “significant and material,” said Pike’s Gartner. But if gas prices fall, the economy sputters and sinks back into recession, or the $7,500 federal tax subsidy for EVs is cut or eliminated, sales would retreat.

Indeed, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s March 8 forecast raised the average cost of crude oil to $105 per barrel in 2011—up $14 from its previous projection—because of unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. Others predict oil prices could reach $130 to $150 a barrel by the summer, partly as a result of growing uncertainty over the stability of the supply from oil-producing countries hit by political upheaval. And peak oil is a concern for the longer term.

So forget that this is a highly engineered Tesla Roadster. Assume that a day will come when this performance is easily achievable. Let’s say this future EV is designed to give a 300-mile range, equivalent to what you’d expect from an ordinary car today. In that case, forget my Prius tank. You’d only need to store
300 mi x 1 kWh = 95 kWh
3.12 mi
That would still take over 50 hours from an extension cord thrown out the window, but a fill-up would be faster from a single-phase at 240 v, and faster yet with a full 3-phase industrial drop.
Faster yet, but still not even close to my Prius’s 3 minutes.
But now lets look at vehicle-owner psychology. Like most drivers who don’t have a gas pump at home, I don’t fill up every day. That would be too much of a hassle. Same for you, right?
What if you had a gas pump, even a relatively slow one, in your garage?
Consider that hypothetical car with the 300-mile range. (You’re going to want that range for big trips.) Let’s give you a long daily commute, 50 miles each way. Every night when you pull into the garage, you’ve only got to replace a little over 30 kWh. With a dedicated drop, you could do that in an hour or so.
Now I can imagine scenarios where you could be an electricity mogul. Sell some of surplus in your battery while electricity is dear, i.e., while everybody in the continent is cooking dinner, doing homework and watching plasma TV. Then buy it back cheaply later at night and still start the day with a car that has a 300-mile range. (Okay, you’re still paying something for the juice. There is no free lunch. But you’re paying less.)
Suddenly, the business model that I couldn’t buy into starts to make more sense. Of course, you would need some more infrastructure for remote charging. And it’s probably reasonable to keep the hybrid option for as long as possible. But the idea of using personal vehicles as a distributed energy storage pool, with a strong economic incentivizer, doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
Comments welcome. I’ve probably missed some important points pro and con. (And annoyed the Red Baron’s fan club.)

BMW co-sponsored the JEC composite exposition here this year here to call attention to its job openings. Engineers and staff from the auto maker’s human resources department shared the BMW’s booth.

Carbon-fiber bodies long have been used for Formula 1 race cars and supercars, such as the Mercedes SLR McLaren Roadster, and carbon-fiber components such as roofs and spoilers are not rare on sporty cars.

However, the i3 will be the first high-volume car using the technology, which is based on a material costing as much as E20/kg ($13/lb.). BMW’s one-shift capacity is about 12,000 units annually for the electric i3.

The push to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions is behind BMW’s strategy.

“People are seeing that something has to change, and there are people who are willing to change their behavior,” says Hanno Pfitzer, a BMW process development engineer for CF bodies. “In 2050, 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. People need mobility, but they want to do it in a sustainable way.”

BMW launched its Project i in 2007, but it began building experience with carbon fiber in 2003 for series production of individual parts, such as the roof panel on the M3.

Now it will expand on that knowledge with the launch of the compact i3 EVC, previously referred to as the Megacity Vehicle, and the larger i8 plug-in hybrid, based on the Vision Efficient Dynamics supercar introduced at the 2009 Frankfurt auto show.

BMWi3 at JEC show in Paris. Tape conceals joints to prevent competitors from learning about vehicle’s adhesive strategy.

When BMW made an electric Mini E variant based on the Mini Cooper S, Pfitzer says it added 221 lbs. (100 kg) to the weight of the vehicle.

For an electric city car, BMW decided to compensate for the extra mass of a battery by reducing the weight of the car body, “and there is no lighter material than carbon fiber,” Pfitzer says. With lighter weight, the i3 will share the handling characteristics that are part of the brand’s heritage.

BMW’s design strategy harkens back to earlier days of car making, with a body-on-frame design. The powertrain will be part of an aluminum chassis that BMW calls its Drive Module, and the Live Module body will be a carbon-fiber structure resting on it.

The i3’s carbon fiber body-in-black is structural, made from preformed fabric pieces impregnated with resin injected in the resin-molding transfer method. Painted thermoplastic panels will be the visible skin of the car, but the roof will be a black carbon-fiber panel with a visible pattern, textile engineer Franz Maidl says.

The side panel on display in Paris has no B-pillar, suggesting the four sedan-style doors will incorporate the B-pillar function, similar to the Ford B-Max introduced at Geneva this year.

BMW has formed a joint venture with German carbon-fiber producer SGL Group. Its subsidiary, SGL-Automotive Carbon Fiber, in Moss Lake, WA, will produce the fibers, the rovings made with 50,000 fibers and the unwoven cloth used to make parts.

The U.S. plant begins production in the third quarter. BMW will make the body parts, itself , with tools and processes it has designed.

Having the JV and controlling the process from beginning to end is essential to the success of the program, Pfitzer says.

“The impregnation of the fibers by the resin is a highly complex process full of conflicting requirements,” he says in a written presentation. “On the one hand, the resin must reach every area of the material with minimal delay, impregnating every fiber right down to microscopic level.

“(But) as soon as it has impregnated all the material, the resin needs to harden as quickly as possible. Thirdly, a release agent is required that will allow the resinated components to be parted from the molding tools without the components being damaged. Resolving all these conflicting requirements simultaneously is a highly complex task.” At the JEC event here, BMW says it is recruiting staff for conception and design of car bodies and undercarriages, process planning and process engineering, prototype construction, complete vehicle design and seat design.

Seat design likely is related to BMW’s effort to develop ways to recycle the large amounts of scrap in the carbon-fiber process. Pfitzer says an in-house process to recycle carbon-fiber waste is “in the final stages.”

DETROIT – General Motors wants to crank-up output of the Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle at its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant to take advantage of an expected rise in gasoline prices, but the unique car’s supply chain may not be ready for primetime.

Micky Bly, GM’s executive director-electrical system, hybrids, electric vehicles and batteries, says doubling production of the Volt will not be as easy as turning a dial.
GM’s long-held target for Volt production is 15,000 units this year, with 5,000 cars earmarked for export. The auto maker has said it wants to build 45,000 Volts in 2012.

But GM Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson in recent weeks has spoken of wanting to more than double the 2-year total, as many experts anticipate sharply rising gas prices in the coming months.

“We don’t want to miss the opportunity,” he told journalists during the North American International Auto Show in Detroit last month.

Bly confirms GM would like to meet such an uptick in demand, but also delineates on the many factors that could stand in the way of higher volumes for the one-of-a-kind car.

“As you build more, you go from manual operations to automated operations,” he says, referring to supplier parts meticulously built by hand for early production models to those done by machine with the risk of slight variations.

GM “years away” from shrinking Volt’s Li-ion battery pack, electrification chief says.
“You go from one set of tools to two sets of tools,” Bly adds. “You can easily introduce quality issues if you are not diligent during the process. We could crank the knob today, but we would put risk into the quality of the product.”

GM also faces financial constraints to raising Volt production. Put simply, it is an expensive car to build with all of its advanced technology, especially the 16 kWh lithium-ion battery pack serving as the backbone of its propulsion system.

So the more Volts GM makes, the greater its investment in a program the auto maker admits will not be profitable in its first generation.

“We’re working hard right now on cost reduction,” Bly says. “More volume on the same set of tools (and) the cost goes down. You get scale. You get bulk (parts) purchases. The good news is you build one, you can build two, three, four…”

GM also continues to look for technical alternatives to the Volt’s current battery, evidenced by its recent worldwide licensing agreement to use patented composite cathode material from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to make Li-ion batteries.

Argonne’s material promises to extend the operating window of a Li-ion battery between charges, extend overall battery life, improve safety and allow charging at higher voltages, leading to higher energy-storage capacities.

A smaller battery would mean a less-costly battery, and that would help create the margins necessary for successful high-volume production of the Volt.

But to maintain the car’s current battery-power range of between 35-50 miles (56-80 km), Bly says GM remains “years away” from shrinking the battery.

“It’s not ready for primetime production yet,” he says of the Argonne chemistry. “I’ll say it’s at the end of R&D and moving into the production range. That’s why we want it.”

GM’s investment in Argonne reflects a new, post-bankruptcy strategy by the auto maker to target emerging technologies sooner, Bly says. “If we were the old GM, we would stay away from it, sit back and wait until it was fully developed and somebody else has it in production.

“Instead, we’ve gone proactive to get this license up front and start developing it up front, to be a leader with the introduction of the technology and take advantage of that faster than anyone else.”

Bly estimates the industry is about five years away from a major breakthrough in battery technology capable of delivering twice the energy density of today. But that’s better than two years ago, when the duration looked more like 10 years.

He notes the sudden influx of federal money meant to push the U.S. to President Obama’s goal of 1 million EVs on the road by 2015, as well as other global research and development initiatives in the space.

He cites as an example Ann Arbor, MI-based startup Sakti3, a developer of high-powered automotive batteries that received $4.2 million from GM and Itochu Technology last year. Sakti3 works with solid-state materials for Li-ion batteries that are showing promise.

Meanwhile, LG Chem, the Korean supplier for the Volt’s battery, is working on a new cathode material for Li-ion.

“It’s there,” Bly says of a pending breakthrough. “We’re starting to see the samples. We’re starting to see parts from these companies. So I think we’ve seen almost a 4-year pull-ahead.”

Spreading the Voltec propulsion system across more vehicles than the Volt and European-market twin, the Ampera, also would bring down production costs. All GM C-segment vehicles and smaller are candidates, Bly says without objecting to the idea of a Chevy Sonic EREV.

GM introduced the ’12 Sonic hatchback and sedan, a replacement to the Aveo B-segment car, at the Detroit show. Production begins early in the third quarter at the company’s Orion Twp. MI, assembly plant.

jamend@wardsauto.com

By Jim Mateja
WardsAuto.com, Feb 9, 2011 11:02 AM
Special Coverage
Chicago Auto Show
Regal with eAssist hits market in August.

CHICAGO – Buick has set its sights on a new group of potential customers: those who want to save fuel, but want to save money at the same time.

“We’re going after bringing in the hybrid buyers but without the hybrid price,” says Tony DiSalle, General Motors vice president-Buick Div.

The ʼ12 LaCrosse sedan will be first up with the auto maker’s eAssist mild-hybrid technology in June, followed in August by an eAssist-equipped ʼ12 Regal, unveiled here in conjunction with the Chicago Auto Show.

While an eAssist version of the upcoming Verano is expected, DiSalle declines to confirm the new compact car will get the system.

With eAssist, a small lithium-ion battery pack lends an added boost to help the 2.4L Ecotec 4-cyl. gasoline engine under hard acceleration, such as when passing. The system also shuts off the engine when as the car decelerates or comes to a complete stop.

It isn’t a full hybrid system in which the batteries either help start and power the vehicle for brief periods in electric mode only or provide added power boosts whenever accelerating.

“The battery pack contributes only about 15 hp during hard acceleration, not every time you accelerate,” DiSalle says.

GM’s previous attempts to market mild hybrids, such as versions of the Saturn Vue and Chevrolet Malibu, met with little success.

“That’s why we’re calling it eAssist and not calling it a mild hybrid,” DiSalle says. “We want eAssist to communicate what the system does, assist the regular and fundamental gas-engine powerplant.”

The beauty of the system is “no hybrid premium and no consumer tradeoffs,” DiSalle adds.

“The consumer will get both better vehicle performance and better mileage. We estimate both the LaCrosse and Regal eAssist sedans will get 37 mpg (6.4 L/100 km) highway.”

Stephen Poulos, global chief engineer-eAssist, says both the LaCrosse and Regal models will get low-rolling-resistance tires to help boost fuel-economy ratings.

“They won’t be as firm as the tires on the Chevy Volt, only about halfway like the Volt tires,” he says, noting the necessity to preserve Buick’s ride character. “They’ll be more energy efficient, but not extreme.”

DiSalle declines to predict how many LaCrosse and Regal models will be built with eAssist, saying market demand will determine volumes. He also doesn’t comment on the price of the system, noting only that an eAssist LaCrosse will sticker at about $30,000, while Lincoln and Lexus hybrids start at about $35,000.

LaCrosse gets e-Assist as standard, because those buyers are less price sensitive, GM says. But the system will be an option on the Regal.

Buick is the lead GM division when it comes to eAssist, DiSalle says, declining to reveal how long the brand will have the system as an exclusive.

Jackie Cross, Associate Editor

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has confirmed the development of the 102EX, a one-off, fully electric powered vehicle that debuted at the Geneva Motor Show on March 1. The car will tour during 2011, serving as a test bed to gather a bank of research data that will be crucial in informing future decisions on alternative drive-trains for Rolls-Royce (see the figure).

The 102EX, also known as the Phantom Experimental Electric (EE), will be the world’s first battery electric vehicle for the ultra-luxury segment, and Rolls-Royce plans to use it to test the opinions and reactions to alternative drive-train options of a range of stakeholders including owners, enthusiasts, members of the public, and media.

The car will serve as a working test bed for a global tour that takes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America. Through test drives, owners will be given the opportunity to experience an alternative drive-train technology and to provide their experiences, thoughts, and concerns directly to Rolls-Royce.

While there are no plans to develop a production version, as one of the company’s EX models, it will serve to begin a dialogue with existing owners and stakeholders, posing as well as answering questions of its audience, which include the car’s ability to deliver an acceptable range between recharges and to operate in extreme weather conditions.
Rolls-Royce has created a Web site, www.electricluxury.com, to serve as a portal to fuel a wider global debate seeking views on the question of electric luxury from media, VIPs, and stakeholders. The site will also deliver regular updates of the car’s progress while on tour.
Rolls-Royce Motor Company
www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com/

Doug Smock, Contributing Editor, Materials & Assembly — Design News, March 9, 2011

German extreme sports enthusiasts Dirk Gion and Stefan Simmerer made a 17-day journey across Australia in late January powered by wind and lithium-ion batteries.

The Wind Explorer weighs just 176 lb without the batteries and wind turbine. Source: Evonik
The electric-powered two-seat car, developed in Germany, weighs just 441 lb and has a range of 249 miles. The body of the Wind Explorer is made primarily of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite that surrounds a lightweight structural foam core called Rohacell. Its lithium-ion batteries are charged by a mobile wind turbine or-in exceptional cases-in the conventional way from the power grid.

The wind turbine and a 6-meter-high telescopic bamboo mast can be set up within 30 mins. In addition to wind power, the vehicle was propelled partly by parasail-style kites. The kites pushed the Wind Explorer to a top speed of 50 mph on the approximately 3,045-mile stretch from Albany on the Indian Ocean to Sydney.

If trees came close to the edge of the road, Gion was able to steer the kite directly above the car and Simmerer provided control through acceleration.

The wind turbine carried on board produced enough energy for the full range of the vehicle (249 miles). In comparison, that’s enough electricity to wash and dry two loads of laundry. The turbine charged the batteries during rest stops.

Rohacell technology from Evonik is a polymethacrylimide (PMI) rigid foam that is used in aircraft, helicopters, trains and ships, and is gaining ground in automotive construction. It allows weight savings of 60 percent compared to standard steel parts.

“And every gram of weight saved reduces CO2 emissions in conventional fuel vehicles and increases the range of the electric vehicles of the future,” says Stefan Plass, who is responsible for Rohacell business at Evonik, a chemicals and plastics producer based in Essen, Germany.