Nanobus Blog - Tracking the Rapid Charged Hybrid Bus Industry

Proterra releases their first fast charged system to Foothills Transit in LA

roger@sylvanascent.com — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:00:00 GMT

The Proterra bus is a fast charged 100% electric bus that uses Altair Nanosafe batteries - very nice and Congratulations to Dale Hill! Here's a nice article:

I recently saw this bus and it is very impressively designed and built. Personally I prefer the combination of a fast-charged hybrid, because then you don't need to oversize the battery so much, and you never have to worry about the bus stopping due to a lack of charge. You can just start up the backup diesel generator and go all day.

TBus.Org.UK Article on Wireless Electric Buses

roger@sylvanascent.com — Mon, 17 May 2010 23:00:00 GMT

The respected trolleybus advocacy website tbus.org.uk just released an article about wireless buses. A little slanted towards Trolleybuses perhaps, but interesting reading nonetheless.

Here is a rebuttal to some of the things mentioned in the article:

"Comparative running costs are 174 euros/day for a battery system, 162 euros/day for diesels and 54 euros/day for trolleybuses."

Seems a bit misleading, as they have not added in the costs of installing and maintaining the overhead lines and power stations. Not quite apples to apples. Also, being called the "latest fad" seems a little unjust, when this sort of system has been attempted several times in the past ('50s, '80s), but is just now becoming feasible due to enormous advances in battery and supercap technology. I'm sure rubber tyred Trolleybuses were called a 'fad' by tram people back in the day...

My main thrust is to get from petrol to electric transport as quickly as possible. Removing the necessity of having to install overhead may be able to move things along more rapidly in some cases. Politically, getting people to agree to just add a couple charging stations may be a whole lot easier than agreeing on a full overhead system. Besides, once you get them hooked on electricity, upgrading to a full Tbus system may be an easier sell. Also, you can start very small, just one route, then add to them gradually. I agree that Trolleybuses are wonderfully efficient things, and should be promoted wholeheartedly. However, they may not be the solution for every city. I propose that we work together in the grand scheme of getting rid of diesel buses wherever possible, and not battle amongst ourselves. If a technology works well, let's use it!

Toshiba SCiB to be used in Honda Neo

roger@sylvanascent.com — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:00:00 GMT

This is great news on the LTO battery front, as it gets more of these batteries out into the wild. We will get much more familiar with their characteristics (plus I can justify buying a Neo!)

The little battery on the Schwinn Tailwind was just a start, using the SCiB in a moto will be much more real world.

Perfect buses for Rapid Charging - Mercedes-Benz Citaro G BlueTec Hybrid

roger@sylvanascent.com — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Two of these are now actually on the streets in Hamburg. These would be perfect for adding rapid charging. They have everything you need, just replace the batteries with fast charging LTO batteries, and a charging station, and voila. They can run on battery only most of the time, with the diesel kicking in only when needed as a backup. Practically no additional engineering, with a much bigger payback, instead of getting just 20-30% better fuel economy (still uses diesel you know!) , you could shift to almost 100% electric operation. What's the hold up?

Electric operation with hybrid drive system
20-30 percent lower diesel consumption and CO2 emissions
No emissions and practically silent during some stretches along the routes
One of the world’s largest lithium-ion batteries in use in a vehicle

How much money can we save by converting to electricity vs petroleum?

roger@sylvanascent.com — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Here is a back-of-the envelope analysis of how much money the US could save by converting completely all vehicles from petroleum to wind and solar.

"One way to imagine this is that we taxpayers pay for the systems each year through taxes. Meanwhile, we pay less for our electricity and gasoline, without the charge for burning fuel. By 2024, our outlay is smaller than our savings, and we then start making money and have energy self-sufficiency, guaranteed steady energy prices, no energy blackmail from the Middle East, and have avoided the greater part of the CO2 we would otherwise produce."

Somewhat pie in th sky, but a better investment than the war in Iraq IMHO.

Embedded charging strips

roger@sylvanascent.com — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:00:00 GMT

This article is promising. I've seen a couple of references to this sort of thing, also in Japan. Still, it is a fairly substantial infrastructure investment, you'd need a lot of buses to pay it back. A single charging station like in Nanobus is much cheaper, and gives most of the benefit of this approach.

"The first public demonstration of the Online Electric Vehicle, or Olev, was, however, as much about the road on which it travelled as the prototype bus itself. Electric power strips have been buried 30cm (12in) under the surface and connected to the national grid. They provide electromagnetic power to the vehicle, wirelessly, charging an onboard battery and powering the bus’s electric motor. The power strips need to be embedded in only 20 per cent of the length of a road to keep the vehicle running."

Another Peak Oil Prediction - this time 2015

roger@sylvanascent.com — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Many peak oil predictions have been made, here's another one from the UK that puts it in the future a little bit. I personally think peak oil already hit us once in 2008 and was one of the main drivers of the economic "crisis". The big spike in prices heralded the fact that there was no production reserve cushion for high demand. Of course as production starts to actually decrease, prices will spike again, no matter what is the state of the economy.

Summary of the RCH industry, Jan 1 2010

roger@sylvanascent.com — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Well, it's New Years Day 2010, time for a sum up of the RCH industry. 2009 was an incredible year for RCH. First, (and most importantly IMHO), I presented a paper on RCH at EVS-24 in Norway in May. Personal triumph, global non-starter. Looking around EVS-24, I saw lots of EVs, H2 vehicles, etc, but on the highway outside the convention, not a single one.

Second - ProTerra introduces their Rapid Charged Electric bus. Huge news. Nanobus now actually exists. I think they've shipped at least one, but I'll be visiting them in March to see for sure.

Third - Ebus introduces their RCH, with less fanfare than ProTerra (apparently the CEO of Proterra used to work for Ebus?). All in all, fantastic news all around. I especially like the Ebus battery pack. I'll be going there in March as well.

Fourth - I've started a new company OPBRID S.L. in Spain that will specialize on RCH systems. Hooray - red tape in Spain is pretty amazing, took over a year to get the company started. Also, I've got a nice office on Calle Recogidas 15, fifth floor, Granada if you would like to visit. No elevator, so be prepared for some stair climbing!

Fifth - Some interest from European bus companies, but still nothing concrete. I've been talking it up at UITP in Vienna, and Busworld in Kortrijk.

Sixth- While AltairNano is still struggling somewhat, Toshiba has been forging ahead with their SCiB Lithium Titanate batteries with big investments.

Seven: At EVS24 AeroVironment introduces their fast charger - 250kW. Nice. Also, it looks like Aker-Wade has their own version. Now, for a European fast charger?

90-200 g/km CO2 for electric cars? Yikes!

roger@sylvanascent.com — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

While roaming around the Siemens site, this article I thought was very enlightening. I especially loved the photo of the first trolleybus! However this quote disturbed me:

"That's because power plants in the global electricity mix emit some 600 g of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour, which corresponds to 90 g for every kilometer driven by an electric car. That's a lot less than the 120 to 160 g of CO₂ emitted per kilometer by a typical mid-range automobile with a combustion engine"

This actually sucks. 90g is what the Polo Bluetec will emit. So why would anyone go electric at all? Well, hopefully the grid will get greener. Also, the displacement of emissions to outside the city is generally healthier.

A tiny bit more research got this analysis from Paul Chefurka showing similar numbers (135-200g/km) in the US, but only 45-70g/km in Ontario Canada. This shows that greener grids are better investments for electric cars.

But unlike the mechanical systems of the past, the drive systems of the future will have brains. Intelligent electronic systems will manage components, charging and discharging procedures, as well as the brake energy recovery processes. And all of this will be designed to ensure that the energy efficiency, and thus the environmental soundness, of electric cars is much higher than the values achievable by combustion engines. The well-to-wheel efficiency (from energy source to operation) of a good electric vehicle today is over 70 % – based on renewable energy sources –, whereas the efficiency rating of most combustion engines is only around 20 %.

Even if the power for electric cars isn't generated from renewable sources such as wind and sun, the level of CO₂ emissions from such vehicles is still much lower than that of any combustion engine. That's because power plants in the global electricity mix emit some 600 g of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour, which corresponds to 90 g for every kilometer driven by an electric car. That's a lot less than the 120 to 160 g of CO₂ emitted per kilometer by a typical mid-range automobile with a combustion engine.

Siemens Working on fast charging of cars, Grid "Contamination"

roger@sylvanascent.com — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 07:00:00 GMT

Siemens has an interesting article and some nice pictures about how they see fast charging evolving. I especially liked this bit about how a lot of fast chargers might destabilize the grid. This likely won't apply to a bus system, since there will be only 10-100 chargers in a city, not thousands.

"In addition to Siemens, the EDISON consortium includes the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and its Risø-DTU research center, as well as Denmark’s Dong Energy and Østkraft power utilities, the Eurisco research and development center, and IBM. In the EDISON project, various working groups are responsible for developing all the technologies needed for electromobility. Here, Siemens is mainly responsible for fast-charge and battery replacement systems. "Siemens’ portfolio already contains many components that we are now adapting and reprogramming," says Sven Holthusen, who is responsible for the EDISON project at Siemens’ Energy Sector.

Contaminated Grid? One of Holthusen’s jobs is to study how the grid will be affected when millions of electric vehicles are plugged into it and disconnected every day. He is therefore carrying out his research at the Risø research campus, which has its own electricity grid. "This enables us to monitor the effects of such a situation on a small scale," he explains. In this context, things become particularly tricky if harmonics occur when batteries are hooked up to the 50-Hz grid, as these can resonate and unbalance the grid frequency. Such disturbances, which are referred to as "grid-quality contamination," can lead to failure of the entire network if large waves form."