Conference Report

Electric Drive for Climate Change
"The Art of the Soluble"
Report on the Electric Vehicle Symposium
(EVS 23)
December 2-5, 2007
Anaheim, California

• Nigel Fitzpatrick
• Azure Dynamics
• Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Read "The Art of the Soluble" by Peter Medawar, a co-winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in medicine. In 1970, the mature, stagnant $10 billion company I was with could see its growth slowing. It used Medawar's book to teach the need to use research for making change. The process worked. Medawar's approach can give guidance now to mature stagnant economies as we look for profitable solutions to tackle climate change.

There were research presentations at Electric Vehicle Symposium meetings that I had attended in 1988 (Toronto EVS9), 1990 (Hong Kong EVS10), 1994 (Anaheim EVS12) and for this magazine 2003 (Long Beach EVS20). It was interesting now in 2007 to see Medawar's thesis fulfilled in part by the lithium battery product and in part by new low cost driveline technologies on display at EVS23. It was also good to be in Anaheim again which has added an impressive conference center since the last time EVS was there.

At EVS23 the 32 countries represented at Long Beach in 2003 had grown to 37, the 107 exhibitors then had grown to 126 now, but interestingly the 74 vehicles in the ride and drive had reduced to 40. Perhaps the Long Beach show was simply easier for citizens to reach as instead of 2,000 drivers, there were only 800. What had certainly grown was the exhibit presence of the major automotive companies, the types of electric drive systems and the number of exhibitors. The British came with not one but four electric delivery vehicles. That was different. The focus on light or in the case of California's Governor, on unnecessarily heavy, passenger vehicles shifted slightly towards heavier electric fleet vehicles. These vehicles are bought on life cycle costing and used for many hours in urban traffic. Their incremental costs to tackle climate change can be paid for by fuel savings.

But first, let's cover the fuel cell. Fuel cell electric drive vehicles still draw interest from all over the world. Jonathan Williams of the University of Glamorgan presented a research project showing that when combined with ultra-capacitors tackling the regenerative braking, low cost lead acid batteries can be used to hybridize a fuel cell propulsion system for a shuttle bus. Wales, meanwhile, was pitching itself as a place where research thrives and also as an entry point to Europe, in which Ford and others already manufacture.

Honda has announced that the FCX Clarity will be leased to selected users in Southern California, and a vehicle was on their stand. What can we expect from these vehicles? In the proceedings, Alison Setton from Hydrogen & Fuel Cells Canada reports upon five Ford Focus FCV's with a 260-320 km (162 – 200 miles) driving range delivered in British Columbia in March 2005 that are part of a 30 vehicle fleet delivered by Ford to evaluation programs. The five vehicles that Ford has in BC have an impressive reliability and are fueled by three fueling stations. Until the beginning of September 2007 the total distance covered was 145,909 km (90,627 miles) over an average of 873 hours of operation per vehicle. One of the vehicles in Vancouver's fleet has the highest hours on the fuel cell stack of any in the entire Ford fleet, nearly doubling the expected hours of life.

I met with Chris White, the communications director of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. A key feature on their stand was the map of public and private fueling stations. These stations are clustered around Los Angeles and San Francisco. Unfortunately at this time there is nothing halfway between the two cities, so although the fuel cell vehicle would need only one stop, an intermediate fueling station is needed to accommodate them. The Honda Clarity's will be confined to the south.

But, where is Ford headed after three years of experience with 30 fuel cell vehicles? On display was one solution that they are pursuing, the Ford Edge plug-in fuel cell hybrid. It has a smaller fuel cell and a 130kg Li-ion battery packing 15.6kWh. The fuel cell reliability and life has further increased. In a release earlier this year Ford said "This provides another 200 miles of range for a total of 225 miles with zero emissions. Individual experiences will vary widely and can stretch out the time between fill-ups to more than 400 miles." Stretching is one way to deal with the gap between hydrogen fuel stations.

But, during the conference, Ford handed the keys of their first plug-in gasoline hybrid Escape to Southern California Edison, stepping ahead of Toyota on this continent in the "plug-in" field.

Certainly the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Workshop on Sunday was attended by over 500 people. Fuel cell stands and technical sessions were definitely less frequented than the battery stands and technical sessions, and I wondered if Ford's move meant that a turning point had been reached.

It was clear that pure electric vehicles were alive and moving. In the ride and drive I found ZENN's Bill Williams meeting with Brian Beck from the City of Vancouver, who was at EVS23 to explore building code standards to enable greater use of both neighborhood electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

In the opening plenary there were welcoming speeches from world EV leaders, which included Professor C.C Chan who was instrumental in organizing EVS10 in Hong Kong. James Goldstene, the executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, spoke. He told us that over the next decade, 50% of light vehicles sold will meet PZEV requirements. He thought the plug-in hybrid would be commercially viable before 2015. His numbers for 2015 were: ZEV 8300, Plug-in hybrid up to 16,700, alternative technology PZEV (hybrids) 112,800, and conventional PZEV 650,000.

Jon Lauckner, GM's vice president, global program management, gave a remarkable description of the timeline to get the plug-in Chevy Volt to market. The first battery Li-ion battery pack arrived at the GM battery lab in Warren, Michigan, on October 31st from Compact Power Inc., incorporating cells supplied by LG Chem. The second pack had arrived December 3rd. In early 2008 vehicle test "mules" would be on the road.

The battery sessions were packed, with people in the halls outside trying to hear. Li-ion companies present on stands or in person included Johnson Controls with Saft, Panasonic, A123 and Advanced Lithium Power (ALP), Valence Technology, Electrovaya, Delaware Power Systems and others. I tried three times to get to the ALP stand but each time, it was surrounded. Their CEO, Lorne Gettel and his team had their battery outside in a plug-in hybrid Ford Escape which, although not in the "Ride and Drive", was being driven by guests. The company is an integrator and packages cells from E-One Moli Energy (Canada) Ltd., which has mass production cell capability and currently uses a practical manganese dioxide spinel cathode in the cells for good thermal packaging and controls by ALP.

A medium duty shuttle bus driving 60,000 annual miles in a city puts out 20 times more carbon dioxide than a personal light vehicle, and it was good to see heavy vehicles well represented. Indeed, given the high market share that heavy duty hybrids have attained in the urban bus market, the further spread of hybrids in the urban heavy vehicle markets is likely. On the Tuesday afternoon I caught most of the session on heavy duty hybrid vehicles. There, Mats Alaküla from Lund University was standing in for Niklas Thulin of Volvo. Despite the reduced fuel saving of hybridization, Class 8 trucks cover so much distance and use so much fuel that Volvo will be introducing a pre-transmission hybrid. It will be in production in late 2009.

Truck market penetration by hybrids is dependent on fleet business cases. Bill Van Amberg estimated that the HTUF program had reduced the time to commercialization by two years. Volume reduces costs and helps business cases, and Bill was clearly delighted to be able to illustrate that medium duty truck and shuttle bus production announcements had been made in the past year. One example Bill mentioned was the Azure Dynamics hybrid StarTrans hybrid shuttle bus. It had been in the Ride and Drive where one learned it was newly tested at Altoona and eligible for Federal Transit Administration funding.

A paper on the final morning by Jon Lutz of UQM Technologies illustrated the rate at which volume reduces component cost at the heavy vehicle end. UQM's new 150kW brushless permanent magnet motor/controller system has a remarkable software interface which allows the user to change, for example, the negative torque to adjust the regenerative braking. UQM's tooling for this motor/controller system should be on line in 2008. While now the price for a single unit system is in the low $30,000 range, in the hundreds it would reduce to between $10,000 and $20,000, and in the thousands would be under $10,000.

Joshua Goldman of ISE Corp. followed. When Joshua described a two electric motor170kW system that used braking resistors in parallel with the battery, we could see the benefits of being able to adjust the regenerative braking as described by Jon Lutz.

But are hybrids the only end game in the heavy vehicle world? While Wales had played a fuel cell card to attract industry, England's industry, Smith Electric Vehicles and Modec Ltd., brought over pure electric trucks to Anaheim. Both companies were working with the sodium nickel-chloride ZEBRA battery but were anticipating moving to lithium.

The closing plenary was lively. Normally, speeches for such events are crafted well before the meeting and have trouble reflecting the dynamics of the conference. Brian Wynne of EDTA made this soluble by showing a video made during the conference. You can find it on the EDTA website at www.electricdrive.org. Particularly, watch for Brian in the discussion of the need for a green carpet rather than a red one at the "night to remember" delegates dinner.

After a description of the Automotive (100 mpg) X Prize by Cristin Lindsay of www.xprize.org, the closing ceremony included acknowledgment of successes in Asia, Europe and the Americas. In Asia, it was work by Mahindra and Mahindra in India that won applause; in Europe, it was the city of Bordeaux; and the Americas' crown went to Mexico City. Armando Quintero, Secretary of Transport there, described the air quality challenges in Mexico City, hampered, as it is, by its altitude. Amongst many other moves, there is a plan to replace 50,000 taxis with cleaner vehicles, and he said; "We as a city cannot wait for industry to provide a final solution."

There has been definite leap change since the 2003 EVS meeting in Long Beach, where lithium batteries were represented, and there was even a plug-in hybrid session. What was then being researched is now transitioning to production. At EVS23, there were numerous companies representing these fields, and with people in the halls outside trying to hear the papers. The research that "The Art of the Soluble" advises, as a remedy for stagnation, delivering product as we face climate change challenges.

But that's not the end of the story for these technologies; lets track back to a paper on "Market Deployment of Hybrid & Electric Vehicles: Lessons Learned" presented by Sigrid Muntwyler in behalf of the "The IEA Implementing Agreement on Hybrid & Electric Vehicles." The concluding slide says "Clean vehicle deployment is too much dominated by discussions on technology instead of market issues." We now have some large niches where electric drive technologies are gaining. After the shocks of the new battery breakthroughs, we will see business tools including new marketing and supply chain techniques developing billion dollar green businesses and giving Sigrid Muntwyler a more positive conclusion.

EDTA did a thorough job with this latest EVS conference. Some problems are soluble, the planet will benefit, and perhaps Brian Wynne's green carpet wish will be justified at EVS24 in May 2009 in Stavanger, Norway. For details, visit www.evs24.org/symposium.html.