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Forget hydrogen. You can mostly ignore natural gas. Even diesel may not grow much.

The two fuels that will largely power us for the next 20, maybe 30, years are already here. They are gasoline (with some ethanol in it), and electricity.

That’s it. That’s all she wrote.

First, gasoline

Those hallowed green visions of a gasoline-free future in our lifetime will not come to pass. We’ve spent a century building a global economy around oil, and it will likely take most of another century to change it.

In other words, gasoline will power some of our vehicles for a long, long time to come. It won’t power 90-plus percent of our vehicles, as it does today–but far more fuel-efficient gasoline and diesel vehicles will be the single biggest contributors to reducing vehicular energy use for at least the next 20 years, probably longer.

Then, grid power

After that comes electricity. It’s widely distributed, the cars that use it are quite pleasant to drive, and within 10 or 15 years, the battery technology will have improved to the point that compact electric cars will have ranges of 200 miles or more. That’s enough to make them vastly more acceptable than today’s common ranges of up to 100 miles.

Natural gas will probably increase its share, but it may be limited in use, and possibly regional. India and Iran are increasing their production of natural-gas vehicles (NGVs), and the U.S. has domestic supplies in some regions and pipelines across much of the country.

In North America, however, it may become more common for large commercial vehicles than for passenger cars. Globally, Pike Research projects that sales of NGVs will expand at a compound annual growth rate of almost 8 percent, to total 20 million vehicles by 2016.

Goal: carbon neutrality

The end goal should be getting as close as possible to fuels that have a neutral “wells-to-wheels” carbon footprint, which is to say they release no net carbon into the atmosphere.

Today, we’re a very long way from that point. But getting solid data on the wells-to-wheels carbon impact of driving one mile using different fuels (and working toward promoting fuels with the lowest carbon impact) is the right way to start.

Today, with U.S. fleet average fuel economy around 25 mpg, a mile driven on electric power is virtually always lower-carbon than one driven by burning gasoline. And that will remain the case until U.S. fleet average fuel economy doubles to 50 miles per gallon, when the gasoline car is better than power from a handful of the dirtiest grids.

But that change will take decades. And that’s a major reason plug-in vehicles of all sorts (plug-in hybrids, range-extended electric cars, and battery electric vehicles) make the most sense for the next decade or two.

All about the fuel

Right now, more than 90 percent of a vehicle’s carbon footprint is the fuels involved in powering it. According to M.A. Weiss et al., in their 2000 report from the MIT Energy Laboratory, On the Road in 2020: A Lifecycle Analysis of New Automotive Technologies, fully 75 percent of a vehicle’s lifetime carbon emissions come from the fuel it burns over its lifetime.

Another 19 percent is from the production of that fuel. Extraction of the raw materials that make up the vehicle adds another 4 percent, and only 2 percent of lifetime carbon is due to the manufacturing and assembly process.

So the fuel used to power the vehicle is key.

Who are the players?

In our view, the two most viable types of fuels for the medium term are petroleum products (gasoline, diesel, natural gas) and electricity, which already has a distribution system in place.

As for hydrogen, it has enormous challenges to overcome: There’s no distribution infrastructure, and it takes enormous amounts of energy to separate out hydrogen molecules from the substances they bind to, whether the source is water, natural gas, or something else. That makes its wells-to-wheels energy balance highly dubious.

Back to gasoline. In the future, it may well be blended with ethanol in higher proportions than it is today. The maximum since 1978 has been 10 percent ethanol, but the EPA last October approved a 15-percent blend (E15) for cars from 2007 to the present, and just last week extended the approval to 2001-2006 models.

But don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Carmakers, small-engine manufacturers, and others launched a lawsuit asking that the first approval be overturned.

Over time, we think ethanol will become part of our liquid-fuel mix–perhaps at higher proportions yet, as much as 20 percent. But as currently manufactured, ethanol has several major issues to overcome.

Ethanol

Currently, the corn-based ethanol used in the U.S. is not economically viable without massive government subsidies (the same could be said for electric vehicles). Gasoline prices will have to rise substantially before it becomes competitive.

Nonetheless, in 2007, the U.S. Congress passed a mandate that the U.S. must use 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. It’s not entirely clear how this will happen.

There are also serious questions about the wells-to-wheels carbon balance of corn ethanol, as well as other concerns over its water usage (as high as 8 gallons per gallon of fuel), displacement of food crops, and other concerns.

Canes & grasses

The sugar-cane ethanol used in Brazil is now twice as productive per acre, but import tariffs prevent us from buying it for U.S. gasoline supplies.

The ultimate promise lies in biomass ethanol from things like switchgrass, as well as custom designed algae that gain energy from photosynthesis and actually excrete ethanol compounds. All of those technologies, however, are still in the research and prototyping phase, and they’re unlikely to have a noticeable impact for 10 years or more.

Automakers, however, like ethanol. Adapting vehicles to run on it is far less costly than engineering electric vehicles from the ground up, and consumers don’t have to change their habits. They just have to get used to fewer miles per tank, since a gallon of ethanol contains less energy than a gallon of gasoline.

Electricity better on carbon

At the moment, electricity (even from coal-burning powerplants) has the best carbon footprint per mile driven. Compared to a 25-mpg car, fueling an electric car even on the dirtiest power grid in the country emits less carbon per mile than burning gasoline.

When you double the bogey to 50 mpg, you get a handful of edge cases where burning gasoline is marginally lower-carbon than driving the same mile on grid power.

A 2007 study jointly authored by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council provides the details. The first volume looks at greenhouse-gas emissions, the second volume at U.S. air-quality analysis.

Engines get way less thirsty

By 2020 or before, electric cars are likely to be cost-competitive with gasoline vehicles (depending on oil price, of course!) as the price-performance of lithium-ion cells falls at 6 to 8 percent a year, as it has in the consumer Li-ion cell market since 1989.

It’s worth noting, however, that gasoline and diesel vehicles will get far, far more fuel efficient with significant doses of advanced technology: turbocharging, direct injection, variable valve timing, and better transmissions.

J.D. Power predicts direct injection will be fitted to 25 percent of U.S. vehicles in 2015; industry analyst IHS Automotive predicts the number will be 38 percent the following year. Almost 9 out of 10 vehicles will have variable valve timing in 2016, IHS says, and turbochargers will comprise either 12 percent (IHS) or 25 percent (J.D. Power) by then.

The full-size sedan of 2025 (e.g. Ford Taurus) might weigh one-third less, have a drag coefficient as low as 0.22, and be powered by a 1.8- to 2.0-liter direct-injected turbocharged engine putting out 300 horsepower–which could conceivably return 35 to 40 mpg in regular use. That’s just half the carbon output of a similar car today

What that means is that gas cars will get more efficient fairly quickly, and that’s the bar that electric vehicles will have to compete with in 2020 and thereafter.

The infrastructure question

We’ve spent 100-plus years building a retail distribution infrastructure for gasoline to fuel cars, and that’s the strongest.

After that, all households, multiple dwellings, and businesses at least have 120-Volt electricity widely available onsite. While 240-Volt power is needed for recharging battery electric vehicles in practical timespans (6-8 hours vs. 12-16 hrs), that’s a much easier problem to solve than building a brand-new distribution infrastructure for another fuel.

Natural gas probably has the most potential beyond electricity, since it’s widely used and there is at least some household availability in some regions. Building natural-gas fueling stations with any kind of comprehensive coverage, however, would be a major challenge.

Some analysts expect NGVs to be limited to certain duty cycles: Long-haul truckers who can fill up at regularly spaced Interstate rest stops, for example, or local commuter vehicles in areas like the LA Basin.

Ethanol tough, hydrogen very tough

Ethanol in its most concentrated E85 form cannot be distributed through the current gasoline system (it eats rubber seals and other components, as it does in engines that aren’t designed for Flex-Fuel use) so it must be carried in separate trucks, kept in separate tanks, etc.

That’s one reason it’s much easier to distribute ethanol blended into gasoline (as E10 or the upcoming E15 that the EPA has just approved for certain models) than as E85. (The number after the “E” indicates the overall percentage of ethanol in the liquid.)

And hydrogen, though energy-dense and emissions-free, has the worst distribution problems of all. General Motors found that it took more than 2 years and close to $2 million to get permission to build a single hydrogen fueling station in White Plains, NY.

Multiply that by the 15,000 stations you’d need for minimal national coverage, and you’re getting into the tens of billions of dollars–without even asking where the hydrogen might come from.

In other words, nothing’s easy.

Which wins on price?

It’s almost impossible to predict the relative costs of driving a mile on gasoline, a gas-ethanol blend, natural gas, or grid power 10 years hence. That’s because it largely depends on the price of oil, which will make the default fuel–gasoline–more or less attractive.

In the short term, government subsidies play a large role in kick-starting sales of alt-fuel vehicles. The Bush and Obama Administrations have instituted various programs of low-interest loans and grants to encourage investment in fuel-efficiency and lithium-ion cell technology.

There are also tax credits up to $7,500 for buyers of plug-in cars, and state, regional, and corporate entities offer various additional incentives on top of those.

If oil rises gradually but steadily, there may be less desire by consumers to switch than if it spikes as it did in 2008, then collapses. Some evidence indicates that the volatility of oil-price change is more important than the actual level. Think of it as the “frog in a pot of cold water” theory.

No energy plan

In the U.S., what’s lacking is a long-term vision on how we can reduce our dependence on oil for transportation. Decades from now, for example,
oil may have higher and better uses (like being made into plastics) than being burned for vehicle fuel.

Right now, ethanol backers (largely Midwestern agricultural interests) have one vision, natural-gas backers (e.g. T. Boone Pickens) have another, the growing electric-vehicle lobby has a third, and no coherent policy exists to coordinate it.

We have no national goal, no space-shot effort, no pledge to cut energy use 5 percent in one year and 30 percent in a decade. The best time for such a goal–when the nation was willing to do anything in the weeks after 9/11–was utterly wasted by an administration that urged its citizens only to resume shopping as normal.

So?

Perhaps the free market will sort it out in the end. But that would be easier with accepted metrics to evaluate the results of tests, new technologies, and incentives. If policymakers and the public could weigh the efficiency of alternatives, look at results, compare and weigh the costs, results, and prognoses, we might make progress quicker.

But the current political climate in the U.S. would seem to preclude enactment of a comprehensive long-term energy plan. Instead, we now have various mandates (e.g. the ethanol requirement), subsidies (e.g. the plug-in tax rebates), research programs, and other Federal and state regulations.

Instead, we’re likely to see a slow evolution to more efficient gasoline vehicles. Plug-ins will increase in numbers, reaching noticeable percentages by the end of the decade, and natural-gas may be an option for some buyers. But if you’re an average U.S. driver, don’t expect to give your gas station a miss any time soon.

[Automotive News (requires subscription); Pike Research]

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Another in our irregular series of answering questions from readers, this one from John Q of Eugene, Oregon:

Question: I was wondering how an electric car provides heat and defrosting. Using batteries to generate the heat will drain them pretty fast. Maybe with the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the internal combustion engine is run for heat? But what about the battery-only 2011 Nissan Leaf?

Answer: In brief, cabin warmth on cold days is provided via resistance heating, which–as you note–uses a lot of current.

However, the  Chevy Volt offers heated driver and front passenger seats.And the Cold Climate package offered for the Nissan Leaf includes not only heated front seats but a heated steering wheel as well.

Those items turn out to make occupants FEEL warm enough that the cabin heat may not be necessary, or can be used at lower temperatures. But simply heating seat surfaces and a steering wheel requires much less current than heating volumes of air and blowing them around the cabin.

Under some circumstances, especially if the battery pack has been cold-soaking, the Volt may switch on its engine when started until the pack has warmed up enough to be in the appropriate operating temperature range. Then it will switch off again until the pack is depleted–which is essentially how today’s hybrids work.

The Leaf, of course, does not have that option. But when either car is plugged in to recharge, some energy may be diverted to keep the pack at its ideal operating range–either cooling via fans (Leaf) or liquid cooling (Volt), or heating via elements inside the pack.

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

First shown at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, the Fisker Karma has led a typical life for a performance plug-in hybrid concept: delays followed by reassurances, followed by more delays. Originally to be in production and on sale by late 2009, the car will finally start rolling down the line in March according to an Orange County dealer.

Fisker of Orange County, based in Irvine, California, announced the production date this week. As the cars will be built by Valmet in Finland, the first deliveries won’t arrive until about a month later, in April. According to Fisker OC, “improvements are still being produced for [the Karma’s] public unveiling.”

The news confirms earlier word from Fisker itself, though official missives from Russell Datz, Fisker’s communications chief, were careful to leave a window of dates ranging from late February to April for test drive opportunities and first deliveries.

Pricing for the Karma will start from $95,900, about $16,000 more than first expected and $7,900 more than the initial MSRP announced in 2009. With the $7,500 federal tax incentive, however, the final price of the Karma checks in at $88,400. Though it’s a steep entry into the world of luxury/performance hybrids, there’s likely to be no shortage of buyers for the sleek green sedan.

Read on for more coverage of the Karma.

[Fisker of Orange County]

This story originally appeared at Motor Authori

Earlier this week we heard from Sergio Marchionne, the demanding CEO of Fiat-Chrysler, that a hybrid version of the new 2011 Chrysler 300 sedan would arrive sometime in 2013. Now, at Chrysler’s Windsor plant in Canada, Marchionne has revealed that the hybrid 300 will be joined in 2013 by a new hybrid minivan model.

Marchionne was on hand at the Windsor plant to celebrate the production launch of the new 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country, the latter being the most likely recipient for Chrysler’s latest hybrid technology.

That brings us to another point. Chrysler will no longer rely on the aging Two-Mode hybrid system co-developed with GM, Daimler and BMW and last used on its Dodge Durango and Chrysler Aspen SUVs in 2008. Instead, Marchionne boasted that Chrysler will use its own in-house developed system.  

The hybrid minivans will almost certainly be based on Chrysler’s next-generation minivan design, which will stick with a sliding door and offer all-wheel drive as an option.

The story doesn’t end there, as Marchionne also used today’s meeting in Windsor to confirm that a replacement for the Dodge Neon would arrive in April of 2013 and be the first model in Chrysler’s lineup to feature a new nine-speed automatic transmission.

[Allpar]

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Ford was clearly one of the stars of last week’s Detroit Auto Show, launching green vehicles and concepts across a wide range of fuel-saving technologies.

The company unveiled just a single concept, the Vertrek crossover, but it’s an important one. The production version of the Vertrek will be the replacement for both the Escape crossover in the U.S. and the similarly-sized Kuga crossover in Europe.

We don’t yet know if it’ll keep the Escape name for the U.S., shift to a new name–Vertrek, perhaps?–or even convert over to the European Kuga label. Regardless, this is the hybrid crossover that Ford will offer, along with a raft of other non-hybrid fuel-saving technologies.

Partying like 1999, no more

The 2011 Ford Escape Hybrid is the last year of a model whose basic design dates back more than a decade to the launch of the original 1999 Ford Escape. The hybrid model, added in October 2004, was both the first hybrid sport utility and the first U.S.-built hybrid of any kind.

Now we know what the 2012 Ford Escape Hybrid will look like: Imagine a Vertrek with slightly smaller wheels, and with door handles added.

Add or subtract a few of the flashier trim elements and design cues, and there you have it: a fully modern Escape, with the company’s MyFord Touch audio control system and all the electronic goodies you could want.

‘Kinetic design’

The new crossover sports a raked-back windshield and carefully shaped body surfaces, both to lessen aerodynamic drag. The trapezoidal lower front grille offers a family connection to the 2012 Ford Focus compact.

Ford calls this its ‘kinetic design’ theme, and it will be used across most of Ford’s lineup of global vehicles. Following the Fiesta and Focus, the first two cars Ford adapted from their European roots to sell in the States, the Vertrek will be the third truly global design to be built and sold all over the world.

The swoopy design resembles the current Kuga far more than than the upright and slab-sided Escape. But the dimensions of the Vertrek are much closer–especially in the all-important wheelbase–to today’s Escape, meaning it should have more legroom and interior volume than the slightly smaller Kuga.

The Vertrek show car shows off a panoramic glass roof, which–in light of stringent new rollover roof-strength requirements–may give way to more conventional rectangular moonroof panels.

Fuel-saving technologies

There’s also a power bulge on the hood, which on the concept car is meant to highlight Ford’s 2.0-liter EcoBoost turbocharged four-cylinder engine.

That will be one of two engines offered, and may replace the optional 3.0-liter V-6 offered today. The other engine is likely to be an evolution of the current Escape’s 2.5-liter four.

One or both of the gasoline engines may be offered with the engine start-stop technology Ford has said it will offer on various vehicles to eliminate gasoline wasted in idling at stop lights.

Best MPGs of all

But the hybrid is likely to offer the best fuel economy of all. Today’s 2011 Ford Escape Hybrid is EPA-rated at 34 mpg city, 31 mpg highway in front-wheel-drive form (30 mpg city, 27 mpg highway fitted with all-wheel-drive).

If Ford stands by its promise to offer ‘best-in-class’ fuel economy on every new vehicle it sells, those numbers are likely to rise for the new-generation hybrid.

Among other changes, the Escape/Vertrek Hybrid will switch to a lithium-ion battery pack from today’s nickel-metal-hydride technology, which holds less energy per pound.

Hybrids emigrate to Europe

By building and selling a C-Max Hybrid and Energi plug-in hybrid in Europe, Ford is expanding its hybrid models outside North America.

Ford is also likely to create a luxurious Lincoln version of its new crossover, complete with hybrid option as well. The 2011 Lincoln MK-Z Hybrid midsize sedan made news in July when it was offered at the same base price–$35,180–as the V-6 gasoline-engined version of the MK-Z.

Ford’s other green offerings at the Detroit Auto Show included the 2012 Ford Focus Electric and the pair of C-Max hybrids.

[Ford Motor Co.]

Ford provided airfare, lodging, and meals to enable High Gear Media bring you live reports from the 2011 Detroit Auto Show, including this feature.

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

The Pacific Northwest is a remarkably scenic corner of the continental United States. The striking coastal ranges of Washington and Oregon offer dramatic vistas, temperature (if often damp) weather, and dozens of outdoor activities within a few hours’ drive.

Now those drives can be done in electric cars, courtesy of the country’s first scenic byway and tourism route designed specifically for electric cars.

Washington State and several businesses together plan to install a series of charging stations along U.S. Route 2, starting in Everett (just outside Seattle) and reaching 120 miles over the Cascade Mountains to Wenatchee, in the north central area of the state.

The state and the private EV Project are already building a network of charging stations within Seattle and in the surrounding region of greater Puget Sound. The new route is a linear extension from the urban and suburban concentration through less populated areas, albeit areas that are consistently popular with visitors.

Many businesses along the route are coordinating to install quick chargers, reasoning that the 30 minutes tourists will spend in their establishments are likely to generate revenue many times the cost of the electricity they provide.

And at rates as low as 3 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity from clean hydroelectric sources, those businesses pay some of the nation’s lowest rates for green power.

Sleeping Lady Resort in Leavenworth, Washington, is one of the businesses planning to install a air of charging stations. More than half a dozen others are expected to participate by the time the charger network is up and running this spring.

Among the participating businesses are auto dealers who sell electric cars, including Town Nissan of Wenatchee. It will let members of the public use its 240-Volt charging station, including drivers with plug-in vehicles other than the 2011 Nissan Leaf battery electric car.

Tom Goodfellow, Town Nissan’s New Car Sales Manager, says EV drivers will just have to come inside the dealership and ask permission to use the publicly accessible charging station.

As well as the chargers installed by private businesses, funds from last year’s Federal Recovery Act will pay for two or three DC quick-charging stations along the route that will be installed by the State of Washington by the end of the year, perhaps earlier.

Such fast chargers will let a 2011 Leaf–or, for that matter, a 2012 Ford Focus Electric and other battery vehicles–to recharge to 80 percent capacity in roughly half an hour.

Two or three such charges would permit a Leaf to make it all the way over the mountains, depending (of course) on driving style, weather conditions, and a few other factors.

The Route 2 journey is known nationwide for its beautiful scenery, with the stretch from Everett to Wenatchee renamed the Stevens Pass Greenway.and designated a National Scenic Byway.

More than 3 million travelers a year pass along the route, where fishing, winter sports, camping, hiking, rafting and kayaking, hunting, and winery tours proliferate.

If you’re tempted by the prospect of an emissions-free trip through scenic Washington State, the region helpfully maintains a website to let you sort through these diverse activities.

[Plug-In Center]
This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Ford’s Volt and Leaf rival has been revealed, making its world debut last week at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and then reappearing again this week at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show. We are, of course, talking about the 2012 Ford Focus Electric, the Blue Oval’s first mass-produced electric car and possibly the pick of the bunch out of the Ford-GM-Nissan trio.

Below is a video of the new model’s unveiling in Detroit this week, with Ford’s product chief Derrick Kuzak and chairman Bill Ford touting all of its benefits.  
 
The 2012 Focus Electric is set to go on sale towards the end of this year but you can check out our road test of a prototype version by clicking here. And, if you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, catch up on all of the car’s details by clicking here.  

This story originally appeared at All Cars Electr