CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine - Iss 23 JAN/FEB 2016

ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE

ISSUE 23 | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016 | CHARGEDEVS.COM

2016 AUDI

A3 SPORTBACK E-TRON Audi’s first plug-in delivers performance and practicality

p. 52

GRADING BATTERY PACKS FOR A SECOND LIFE

A CLOSER LOOK AT ELECTROLYTES

RETROFIT E-BUSES: GOING ELECTRIC FOR LESS

SIX LESSONS LEARNED FROM NORWAY

p. 22

p. 30

p. 44

p. 70

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THE TECH CONTENTS

22 | Starting a second life

22

Spiers New Technologies develops advanced battery classification techniques

30 | A closer look at electrolytes current events

30

10 Gallium nitride power diode shows near-ideal performance

Material shuts down batteries at high temperatures

11 Sony working on Li-sulfur and magnesium-sulfur batteries 12 DOE announces $58 million in funding for advanced vehicle tech

Panasonic will spend up to $1.6 billion on Tesla Gigafactory

13 Crumpled nitrogen-doped graphene sheets for Li-sulfur batteries 15 New BMW plant in China will eventually produce high-voltage batteries

17

16 DINA consortium develops standards for EV diagnosis and repair

Separion P20 – a new flexible ceramic separator

17 Two-level cathode structure improves battery performance

Self-heating lithium-ion battery aims to conquer winter range anxiety

18 Texas Instruments introduces integrated battery monitor and protector

19

New electrolyte for solid-state batteries combines polymer and glass

19 3M introduces new magnet bonding adhesive system for motors 21 Study: Low rolling resistance tires increase fuel economy by up to 6.3%

THE VEHICLES CONTENTS

44 | Electric for less

44

Complete Coach Works offers a remanufactured electric bus for the cost of a new diesel

52 | A3 Sportback e-tron

Audi’s first plug-in delivers performance and practicality

86 | BYD

The Chinese company sold the most PEVs in 2015

current events

52

36 Chevrolet unveils the 2017 Bolt EV 38 Plug-in Porsche 911 on the drawing board

Chrysler’s new hybrid minivan has a plug

39 Faraday Future unveils its Variable Platform Architecture 40 Jaguar returns to racing with Formula E team

Hyundai releases some details of upcoming Ioniq hybrid

41 FTC panel considers direct-to-consumer auto sales

36

42 Ford unveils 2017 hybrid and PHEV Fusions

Renault tops European EV sales in 2015

43 DOT announces major push to advance autonomous vehicles

Volkswagen reveals an all-electric van concept

IDENTIFICATION STATEMENT CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine (USPS PP 46) January/February 2016, Issue # 23 is published bi-monthly by Electric Vehicles Magazine LLC, 4121 52nd Ave S, Saint Petersburg, FL 33711-4735. Application to Mail at Periodicals Postage Prices is Pending at Saint Petersburg, FL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine, Electric Vehicles Magazine LLC at 4121 52nd Ave S, Saint Petersburg, FL 33711-4735.

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70

70 | Learning from Norway

Six infrastructure lessons from the world’s EV market share leader

78 | Less is more

78

Telefonix makes the case for free Level 1 workplace charging as the best way to encourage EV adoption.

62 China State Grid opens station to charge 30 e-buses at up to 360 kW

Oregonians argue about energy plan

63 Stationary storage enables a quick charge without straining the grid

65

65 Federal transportation bill includes a few EV goodies

Audi to launch wireless charging in 2017

66 Dutch buyers get four years of fast charging with Nissan EVs

BMW and Nissan partner to deploy dual-standard fast chargers

68 SCE to offer incentives for 1,500 charging stations

Schneider Electric and EverCharge collaborate on multi-unit charging

66

Publisher’s Note The will of the people (eventually) People outside the industry often ask me if this electric car thing is going to stick.

My typical response is to explain why the governments of most industrialized countries want more EVs. When policy makers look at their energy and economic landscapes, it’s quite clear that their positions in the world would be stronger if their domestic transportation systems were powered by diverse and local energy sources (i.e. electricity). Combine that with the fact that plug-in vehicles are also much better products that drivers love, and the answer is a resounding yes, it’s going to stick.

Christian Ruoff Publisher Laurel Zimmer Associate Publisher Charles Morris Senior Editor Markkus Rovito Associate Editor Jeffrey Jenkins Technology Editor Erik Fries Contributing Editor

Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn made a similar point to a group of journalists at the 2016 Detroit Auto Show. Ghosn acknowledged that governments, not consumers, are leading the way towards electrification, and that it may be some time before buyers “jump into it,” but he seems quite confident that car buyers will eventually come around to EVs.

Nick Sirotich Illustrator & Designer

He included a very interesting example of how the will of governments can lead to mass consumer adoption: diesel vehicles. Ghosn pointed out that in Europe, the market for diesel has been growing for many years, to more than 50% today. “I don’t think that was because there was a market demand for diesel,” he said. “In fact the regulators and the governments put so much incentive behind diesel that it ended up being 50% of the market. You can’t say it was consumer-driven. It was generated by… good direction provided by different European governments.”

Contributing Writers Michael Kent Charles Morris Markkus Rovito Christian Ruoff

Buyers may be conservative, says Ghosn, but they do anticipate future trends in the auto market and act accordingly. “When you start to see the infrastructure put in place, the range of electric cars going up, the cost of electric cars going down, I can bet that you’re going to see a major shift towards electric cars,” he said.

You don’t need a crystal ball to see this future - in fact, that ball is already rolling and gaining speed. Many governments - including in the US - have enacted efficiency and emissions rules that get stricter over the next 10-20 years. And, as Ghosn points out, everything “is pointing to the fact that it is going to be impossible to reach the [emissions] levels which are required without a strong contribution from zero emission. I think electrification is not a question of ‘I want it or don’t want it.’ Electrification is happening.”

Ghosn also warns that other automakers will ignore EVs at their peril. “We can’t just say there is a risk behind electrification - the risk is not to partner or not to participate, or to contribute, or to understand. The trend is coming.”

EVs are here. Try to keep up.

Christian Ruoff Publisher

ETHICS STATEMENT AND COVERAGE POLICY AS THE LEADING EV INDUSTRY PUBLICATION, CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE OFTEN COVERS, AND ACCEPTS CONTRIBUTIONS FROM, COMPANIES THAT ADVERTISE IN OUR MEDIA PORTFOLIO. HOWEVER, THE CONTENT WE CHOOSE TO PUBLISH PASSES ONLY TWO TESTS: (1) TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE THE INFORMATION IS ACCURATE, AND (2) IT MEETS THE INTERESTS OF OUR READERSHIP. WE DO NOT ACCEPT PAYMENT FOR EDITORIAL CONTENT, AND THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY OUR EDITORS AND WRITERS ARE IN NO WAY AFFECTED BY A COMPANY’S PAST, CURRENT, OR POTENTIAL ADVERTISEMENTS. FURTHERMORE, WE OFTEN ACCEPT ARTICLES AUTHORED BY “INDUSTRY INSIDERS,” IN WHICH CASE THE AUTHOR’S CURRENT EMPLOYMENT, OR RELATIONSHIP TO THE EV INDUSTRY, IS CLEARLY CITED. IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANY OPINION EXPRESSED IN THE CHARGED MEDIA PORTFOLIO AND/OR WISH TO WRITE ABOUT YOUR PARTICULAR VIEW OF THE INDUSTRY, PLEASE CONTACT US AT CONTENT@CHARGEDEVS.COM. REPRINTING IN WHOLE OR PART IS FORBIDDEN EXPECT BY PERMISSION OF CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE.

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Contributing Photographers Deborah Austin Norsk Elbilforening Zongyang Hu Ming-yen Hsu Mark Mastropietro Windell Oskay Horia Varlan Chao-Yang Wang Cover Image Courtesy of Audi AG Special Thanks to Kelly Ruoff Sebastien Bourgeois For Letters to the Editor, Article Submissions, & Advertising Inquiries Contact Info@ChargedEVs.com

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CURRENTevents

10

Image courtesy of Zongyang Hu

A team of engineers from Cornell, Notre Dame and the semiconductor company IQE has created gallium nitride (GaN) power diodes capable of serving as the building blocks for future GaN power switches that could replace silicon-based semiconductors.

GaN is prone to defects and reliability issues, and current GaN-based devices often operate at a fraction of what GaN is truly capable of. In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the team describes how they worked with devices based on GaN with low defect concentrations to probe the material’s performance limits.

The researchers developed a “diode ideality factor” to quantify the deviation of the device’s current-voltage characteristics from the ideal. “One parameter we used to effectively describe the defect level in a material is the Shockley-Read-Hall (SRH) recombination lifetime,” said co-author Zongyang Hu. “The lower the defect level, the longer the SRH lifetime.”

The team found unexpectedly low differential-on-resistance of the GaN diode. “It’s as if the body of the entire p-n diode is transparent to the current flow without resistance,” he said. “We believe this is due to high-level injection of minority carriers and their long lifetime, and are exploring it further.”

This work is the first report of GaN p-n diodes with near-ideal performance in all aspects simultaneously.

Stanford researchers have invented a new technology that could eliminate thermal runaway in high-energy-density batteries. In “Fast and reversible thermoresponsive polymer switching materials for safer batteries,” published in Nature Energy, Professor Zhenan Bao and her colleagues describe a lithium-ion battery that shuts down before overheating and then restarts when the temperature drops.

Techniques that have been used in the past to improve battery safety include adding flame retardants to the electrolyte and smart batteries that provide a warning before things get too hot.

The Stanford researchers developed a plastic material embedded with nanoparticles of graphene-coated nickel with spikes protruding from their surfaces. Bunched together, the particles conduct electricity. When the battery overheats, the particles separate and current stops flowing. When things cool down, the particles reunite and the battery starts producing electricity again.

“We attached the polyethylene film to one of the battery electrodes so that an electric current could flow through it,” said lead author Zheng Chen. “To conduct electricity, the spiky particles have to physically touch one another. But during thermal expansion, polyethylene stretches. That causes the particles to spread apart, making the film nonconductive so that electricity can no longer flow through the battery.”

“We can even tune the temperature higher or lower depending on how many particles we put in or what type of polymer materials we choose,” said Bao. “Compared with previous approaches, our design provides a reliable, fast, reversible strategy that can achieve both high battery performance and improved safety,” said Cui.

Image courtesy of Stanford

New material shuts down batteries at high temperatures and restarts when it cools

Gallium nitride power diode shows near-ideal performance in all aspects simultaneously

THE TECH

Image courtesy of Deborah Austin (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Sony working on high-capacity lithium-sulfur and magnesium-sulfur batteries Sony, the company that introduced the world’s first commercial lithium-ion battery in 1991, is already well along the road to a Li-ion replacement, according to Japanese media outlet Nikkei Technology.

The company is reportedly developing high-capacity lithium-sulfur and magnesium-sulfur batteries, aiming for a 40% increase in volumetric capacity to 1,000 Wh/l, and plans to commercialize the new chemistries by 2020, initially for the smartphone market.

The Li-S battery uses a sulfur compound for the positive electrode and metal lithium for the negative electrode. Metal lithium has been the subject of much research, but so far has hardly been used for rechargeable batteries because of several difficulties, including its tendency to generate dendrites (root-like lithium growths that can cause a short circuit).

Nikkei Technology reports that Sony considers Li-S a promising technology despite the challenges, and that other manufacturers are also hard at work developing batteries with sulfur-based electrodes.

CURRENTevents

The DOE has announced a Funding Opportunity Announcement that makes $58 million available for the development of various types of automotive technology advancements. The DOE will fund cost-shared projects with private industry, national laboratories, and university teams.

This FOA contains 11 Areas of Interest, several of which relate to electrification: • EV Everywhere Plug-In Electric Vehicle (PEV) Local Showcases.

• Grid Modernization for Electric Vehicles. Develop PEV technologies that enable efficient grid integration, including: bi-directional power flow; load control using vehicle-to-grid (V2G) communication; and impact of grid services on PEVs. • Low Cost Electric Drive Vehicle Motors. Develop advanced electric machine technologies with a focus on motor design, material, and production pathways to significantly lower cost.

• Advanced High-Voltage Electrolytes and Additives, Conformable and Self-healing Solid State Electrolytes, and Lithium Metal Protection.

• Advanced Material Characterization Techniques.

Develop in situ microscopy and spectroscopy tools capable of identifying physical and chemical changes of Li battery components during charging and discharging.

• Advanced Battery Materials Modeling. Develop advanced models to assess emerging Li-ion and beyond Li-ion systems in order to understand the challenges impeding their full potential.

The concept paper submission deadline is February 18th, 2016, and the full application submission deadline is March 28, 2016.

12

Panasonic has been involved with Tesla’s Gigafactory from the beginning of the project, but until now, it hasn’t said exactly how much it plans to invest.

Now Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsuga has told Marketwatch that the company will invest up to $1.6 billion, hoping to secure its future in automotive electronics.

Sales to carmakers represented about 15 percent of Panasonic’s revenue in 2015, but the company aims to double that over the next four years. That objective is highly dependent on Tesla’s ability to meet its goal of selling 500,000 cars a year by 2020, as batteries are expected to provide the lion’s share of Panasonic’s automotive-market sales.

“We are sort of waiting on the demand from Tesla,” Mr. Tsuga said. “If Tesla succeeds and the electric vehicle becomes mainstream, the world will be changed and we will have lots of opportunity to grow.”

Tesla and Panasonic plan to build the factory in eight phases, and are currently in the first phase. So far, the Japanese company’s investment has been small, but by the time the Gig is fully up to speed, Panasonic will have provided between 1.5 and 1.6 billion dollars, out of a total price tag of 4 to 5 billion, Mr. Tsuga said.

Panasonic employees were expected to arrive in Nevada at the end of 2015 to prepare for the start of cell production. The factory will begin producing batteries this year for Tesla’s Powerwall energy storage business.

Image courtesy of Tesla Motors

DOE announces $58 million in funding for advanced vehicle technologies

Panasonic will spend up to $1.6 billion on Tesla Gigafactory

THE TECH A possible key to Li-sulfur batteries: highly crumpled nitrogen-doped graphene sheets Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed a promising new technique that may be able to overcome some of the challenges inherent to lithium-sulfur batteries.

In “Advanced Sulfur Cathode Enabled by Highly Crumpled Nitrogen-Doped Graphene Sheets for High-Energy-Density Lithium-Sulfur Batteries,” published in Nano Letters, Jiangxuan Song and colleagues explain how they synthesized highly crumpled nitrogen-doped graphene (NG) sheets with ultrahigh pore volume and large surface area, enabling strong polysulfide adsorption and high sulfur content for use as a cathode material in Li-sulfur batteries.

“Practical applications of Li-S batteries are hindered by the low electrical conductivity of sulfur and the diffusion of soluble lithium polysulfide intermediates

generated during cycling, which lead to lower utilization of sulfur, loss of active material from the cathode, and polysulfide shuttle phenomenon,” write the researchers.

“As a result, Li-S cells experience fast capacity fading, low coulombic efficiency, and poor rate capability. To address these issues, various types of cathode materials, including porous carbon-sulfur, low-dimensional conducting material (such as carbon nanotube and graphene-sulfur), and conducting polymer-sulfur composites, have been exploited to improve the overall electrochemical performance of the Li-S cells.”

Lithium-sulfur battery cells using these wrinkled graphene sheets as both sulfur host and interlayer achieved high capacity (1,227 mAh/g) and long cycle life (75% capacity retention after 300 cycles) even at high sulfur content (≥80 wt %) and sulfur loading.

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THE TECH New BMW Brilliance engine plant in China will eventually produce high-voltage batteries

Image courtesy of BMW Group

BMW Brilliance Automotive (BBA), the joint venture that produces BMW vehicles in China, has opened a new engine plant with a light metal foundry in Shenyang. The new BBA plant, which has a capacity of 300,000 engines per year, will supply the company’s Dadong and Tiexi automotive plants in Northeastern China.

BMW said that, in addition to legacy combustion engines, the new plant will also produce high-voltage batteries for future plug-in hybrid models, but provided no further details.

The light metal foundry has a capacity of up to 15,000 tons of aluminum per year.

Both the engine plant and the foundry incorporate a variety of sustainability-enhancing technologies. Machining work uses a water recovery system that enables

wastewater-free production, and the aluminum casting uses a process that reduces combustion residues by 98% and allows 90% of the sand used for casting to be recycled.

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CURRENTevents Separion P20 - a new flexible ceramic separator

16

Litarion, a subsidiary of Electrovaya Inc, has introduced a new, thinner flexible ceramic separator for utility-scale and EV applications.

The separator is a cell component that prevents contact between the electrodes while permitting the free transport of ions within the cell. Its properties are closely related to cycle life and cell performance in general.

Separion is a flexible ceramic separator in which ceramics and a porous polyethylene terephthalate (PET) non-woven form a homogenous single-layer network.

With the addition of Separion P20 to the product line, Separion separators are now available in nominal 21 micron (P20) and 28 micron (P30) versions.

Separion claims to outperform trilayer polyolefin and other ceramic-coated separators, and is designed for high temperature stability, which enables cells to improve their safety performance, especially on the nail test. Due to Separion’s unique structure, the company says it provides mechanical integrity up to 240° C and low shrinkage of <1% at 200° C, even when applied for several hours.

Separion is designed to save time and costs in the manufacturing process. Cell stacks containing Separion can be dried at high temperatures without melting or shrinking, and Separion’s wettability characteristics are meant to minimize electrolyte filling time and pressure.

According to the company, Separion has been used in more than two million large-format lithium-ion cells, and the new P20 is now being qualified with several customers with positive results.

Image courtesy of Litarion

A consortium led by the Bosch Group aims to establish standards for the diagnosis and repair of high-voltage systems in EVs. The DINA group, which also includes several German automotive firms and research institutes, has developed a standardized diagnostic system designed to enable service techs to clearly identify defects in an electrical powertrain, from the high-voltage battery and inverter to the motors and charging system.

The idea is to allow auto shops to carry out modularized repairs, pinpointing and replacing defective parts individually instead of replacing whole systems. This is especially important when dealing with high-voltage batteries that consist of numerous independent cells.

The study also includes specific suggestions for how to design future battery systems to make them easier to repair, and discusses new measuring devices and equipment for workshops and test benches.

Image courtesy of DINA Group

DINA consortium develops standards for EV diagnosis and repair

THE TECH

As the search for a better battery grinds on, a lot of the attention is focused on potential cathode materials.

Nickel is one possibility that shows a lot of promise - its drawback is that it is unstable and tends to have destructive reactions with the electrolyte.

Now a team of scientists from the Brookhaven and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory say they’ve found a way to avoid this problem. In a paper published in the journal Nature Energy, the researchers explain how a battery cathode with a hierarchical structure can protect the reactive material from degradation.

Brookhaven Lab physicist Huolin Xin described “a particle structure that has two levels of complexity where the material is assembled in a way that it protects itself from degradation.”

The scientists created a powder composed of lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt. Repeatedly heating and cooling the powder triggered the formation of nano-size particles that self-assembled into larger spherical, sometimes hollow, structures.

“The manganese layer forms an effective barrier, like paint on a wall, protecting the inner structure of the nickel-rich ‘bricks’ from the electrolyte,” said Huolin Xin. How were the lithium ions still able to enter the material to react with the nickel? The scientists found that the particles had facets like the cut edges of a crystal, which allowed them to pack tightly together to form coherent interfaces. But there was a slight misfit between the two surfaces, with the atoms on one side of the interface being slightly offset.

“The packing of atoms at the interfaces between the tiny particles is slightly less dense than the perfect lattice within each individual particle, so these interfaces basically make a highway for lithium ions to go in and out,” Xin said.

One of the drawbacks of lithium-ion batteries is that they tend to suffer power loss in cold weather. At temperatures below freezing, charging is slower, regenerative braking is restricted and vehicle range can be reduced.

Now researchers from Penn State and spin-off company EC Power have developed a battery that avoids these problems by self-heating if the temperature drops below 32° F. In “Lithium-ion battery structure that self-heats at low temperatures,” published in the journal Nature, Chao-Yang Wang and colleagues describe an “all-climate battery” (ACB) cell that can heat itself from -22° to 32° F in 30 seconds, with no need for external heating devices or electrolyte additives.

“It is a long-standing problem that batteries do not perform well at subzero temperatures,” said lead author Chao-Yang Wang. “This may not be an issue for phones and laptops, but is a huge barrier for electric vehicles, drones, outdoor robots and space applications.”

The all-climate battery is designed to weigh only 1.5% more and cost only 0.04% more than an ordinary battery, and to consume less than 5.5 percent of the cell’s energy capacity.

The ACB uses a 50-micrometer-thick nickel foil with one end attached to the negative terminal and the other extending outside the cell to create a third terminal. A temperature sensor attached to a switch causes electrons to flow through the nickel foil to complete the circuit, rapidly heating up the nickel foil and warming the inside of the battery. Once the battery reaches 32° F, the switch turns off and current flows in the normal manner.

“Next we would like to broaden the work to a new paradigm called SmartBattery,” said Wang. “We think we can use similar structures or principles to actively regulate the battery’s safety, performance and life.”

JAN/FEB 2016

17

Image courtesy of Chao-Yang Wang / Penn State

Two-level cathode structure improves battery performance

Self-heating lithium-ion battery aims to conquer winter range anxiety

CURRENTevents New electrolyte for solidstate batteries combines polymer and glass

Texas Instruments (NASDAQ: TXN) has introduced what it calls the industry’s first integrated battery monitor and protector. The enticingly-named bq76PL455A-Q1 provides cell-voltage monitoring for large batteries with up to 256 cells in a series.

The bq76PL455A-Q1 is designed to reveal a pack’s state of charge and state of health by precisely measuring cell voltage, and also provides active and passive cell-balancing support (in conjunction with TI’s EMB1428Q switch-matrix gate driver and EMB1499Q bidirectional current DC/DC converter). Passive cell balancing compensates for charging voltage mismatches, while active cell balancing maximizes the amount of each charge.

The bq76PL455A-Q1 can monitor 16 stacked cells. It features an isolated differential UART, allowing designers to eliminate the need for a controller area network (CAN) and isolators. Its integrated features are designed to replace as many as four devices for a 48 V system, reducing the space needed on a printed circuit board.

The product comes in a thin quad flat pack (TQFP) 80 package and is priced at $14.95 in 1,000-unit quantities.

18

Image courtesy of Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments introduces integrated battery monitor and protector

Scientists at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a novel electrolyte that addresses many of the problems of solid electrolytes by combining the two primary types - polymer and glass.

There are two kinds of solid electrolytes - polymer and glass or ceramic - and each has its own set of challenges.

Polymer electrolytes don’t conduct well at room temperature, whereas ceramic electrolytes require a great deal of pressure to maintain contact with the electrodes. “It needs something like one ton over every square centimeter, so you need a big truck sitting on the battery as it cycles,” said senior author Nitash Balsara (also one of the co-founders of battery startup Seeo).

In “Compliant Glass-Polymer Hybrid Single-Ion-Conducting Electrolytes for Lithium Batteries,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers explain how they developed a glass-polymer hybrid by attaching perfluoropolyether chains to the surface of glass particles, adding salt, and then making a film.

“The electrolyte is compliant, which means it can readily deform to maintain contact with the electrode as the battery is cycled, and also has unprecedented room temperature conductivity for a solid electrolyte,” said Balsara.

Although the conductivity is 10 to 15 times lower than that of a liquid electrolyte, “it’s probably good enough for some applications,” Balsara said. “We don’t necessarily need to match a liquid electrolyte because nearly all of the current in the hybrid electrolyte is carried by the lithium ion. In conventional lithium electrolytes only 20 to 30 percent of the current is carried by the lithium ion. Nevertheless, it is likely that playing around with different glass compounds, particle size, and length and concentration of the polymer chains will result in improved conductivity.”

The researchers also demonstrated that their hybrid electrolyte should be stable with two of the most promising next-generation cathode candidates: sulfur and high-voltage cathodes such as lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide.

THE TECH

Image courtesy of 3M

3M introduces new magnet bonding adhesive system for electric motors The race is on to develop more efficient electric motors. One way to improve efficiency is to improve the method of bonding permanent magnets to rotors and stators.

3M has announced a new magnet bonding adhesive system that’s designed to virtually replace messy liquid adhesives, to simplify magnet positioning and to achieve high bond strength with bond line thickness control.

The 3M Magnet Bonding Adhesive AU-205 system combines a modified structural epoxy adhesive with a thickness control system, configured in a low-tack double-sided tape product. It claims to offer strong bond strength and chemical resistance in an easy-to-convert

tape form that is RoHS & REACH compliant and contains no volatile organic components.

3M’s new wonder adhesive is designed to reduce the sort of magnet misalignment that can occur with liquid adhesives, which can move in an uncontrolled manner if inconsistent pressure is applied during the application and adhesive curing process. Because AU-205 comes in a tape form, magnets can be precisely positioned or repositioned, because the adhesive can be “metered” through slitting and cutting or die cutting to reduce that pesky adhesive “squeeze-out.”

3m says that AU-205 also improves control of the permanent magnet bond line thickness, which is critical to motor performance. This distance, which is located between the inside diameter of the stator and the outside diameter of the rotor, is known as the air gap. Precisely controlling and minimizing the rotor/stator air gap can help a permanent magnet motor deliver greater efficiency.

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THE TECH Study: Low rolling resistance tires increase fuel economy by up to 6.3%

Image by Charged EVs

A new report by University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute researcher Dr. Michael Sivak has found that tires with minimal rolling resistance can deliver up to a 6.3% improvement in fuel economy.

In “Benefits of Using Tires with Low Rolling Resistance,” Sivak explains how he measured the rolling resistance of 49 tire models to calculate the fuel consumed annually by an average driver. He then calculated the difference in fuel economy between the most and least roll-resistant tires.

The US Transportation Research Board estimates that a 10 percent increase in tire rolling resistance results in about a 1-2 percent decrease in fuel economy.

The rolling resistance of the tires Sivak examined ranged from 8.1 lbs to 12.1 lbs, which translates into a maximum fuel economy of 22 mpg and a minimum of 21 mpg.

The difference in fuel economy between the easiest and hardest rolling tires worked out to about 6.3 percent.

“At the average 2015 price of

regular gasoline, the obtained fuel-consumption extremes result in a $78 difference in the annual cost of gasoline per light-duty vehicle,” Sivak said.

STARTING A

SECOND LIFE

Spiers New Technologies has developed advanced battery classification techniques that major automakers have begun to adopt.

By Christian Ruoff

Dirk Spiers

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Images courtesy of Spiers New Technologies

S

piers New Technologies (SNT) is just over a year old, but its founder has been focused on developing the market and technology for secondaryuse batteries as long as anyone in the business.

Dirk Spiers is one of the more passionate figures in the EV industry. Like many entrepreneurs, he seems to have a clear view of where technology is headed and a burning desire to make it happen quickly.

Since the launch of the Nissan LEAF and Chevy Volt in 2010, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve heard a lot of talk about the possible applications for reusing battery packs once the useful life of the car has come to an end. Second-life EV batteries in commercial applications offer the potential for highly-capable energy storage products at substantially lower costs. After about 10 years on the road, a lithium-ion battery pack still

THE TECH

SNT is one of just a small handful of companies we’ve seen actively developing technology for repurposing batteries. has as much as 70-80 percent of its original capacity. This offers a great deal of value for many non-automotive applications, including storage for intermittent renewable energy sources like solar and wind, back-up power and load-shifting for commercial buildings, and large-scale demand management for the grid.

SNT is one of just a small handful of companies we’ve seen actively developing technology for repurposing batteries. One of the company’s core goals is to streamline the process of moving the batteries from the car to their next application, which will be critical if systems are to deliver on the promise of low costs. SNT’s customers already include several of the major plug-in vehicle manufacturers.

John Junger, Algorithms Research Engineer (right) and Bryan Schultz, Head of Engineering (left)

To get a better idea of SNT’s capabilities, Charged recently talked to President Dirk Spiers, Head of Engineering Bryan Schultz and Algorithms Research Engineer John Junger.

Charged: Can you describe where SNT fits into the process of moving battery packs from the vehicles to their next applications? What exactly is your relationship with the automakers?

Dirk Spiers: We call it lifecycle management for advanced battery systems, and we offer the “4 R” range of services within that - repair, remanufacturing, refurbishing and repurposing.

It starts with the recovery of the core, which is the battery pack that comes out of a vehicle. We help the OEMs to bring all used cores to a central location and check them for any safety issues. Today, most of those packs are coming from dealers who have done warranty replace-

JAN/FEB 2016

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ments and from things like test projects that have concluded.

We collect all of the batteries’ data in the background, and have built some pretty advanced database management software.

If the pack came out of a vehicle because of a warranty issue, we start with a root cause analysis to determine what the issue is and then repair it.

The next step is to choose between remanufacturing, refurbishing, or repurposing. Remanufacturing is to restore a pack to its original specification, refurbishing is to restore it to a later specification, and repurposing is to determine the second-life opportunities for a pack as it is.

In each case, classification of the state of the cells, modules and pack is very important. This is the grading step, and it’s critical because it gives the foundation for determining what is the best future use of the batteries.

So we’ve spent a lot of time and resources developing a very robust and advanced grading engine for the packs.

We try to do it as quickly as possible, because the more

efficient we are, the better it is, as volumes will be ramping up over the next few years. The grading tells us which packs are good enough to go back into a vehicle and which are better suited for the second-use market, which is almost exclusively some form of stationary energy storage.

And, finally, when a pack has significant wear and no useful life left (or the OEM tells us they don’t want it repurposed for whatever reason) we tear it down to its smallest possible parts, and recycle everything.

We also handle all the outbound logistics to get the packs back to either the dealer or OEM for another vehicle, or to the next customer.

So we have this complete spectrum of services like a buffet. Some customers want us to handle all aspects for them, and others are just looking for one or two items.

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Charged: What exactly are you testing for during the classification and grading process?

Images courtesy of Spiers New Technologies

We’ve spent a lot of time and resources developing a very robust and advanced grading engine for the packs.

THE TECH

Bryan Schultz: We test for a range of things, including capacity, internal resistance and response. Those parameters can change a lot depending on how the battery was originally used. We look at what applications a specific set of battery packs are going to next, and then create a custom set of weights to figure out which of those parameters are important for reuse. All of this is dependent on the specific chemistry of the cells in the pack, and we work with a variety of chemistries for both nickel-metal hydride and lithium-ion packs.

We see packs that are still really good except for one problem that caused a system error. It’s not usually an independent cell that fails, because they’re manufactured to such a high standard. It’s usually a thermistor failure or a bolt on the bus bar that came loose, which are good candidates to be fixed and sent back to the original application.

On the other hand, we also see a lot of packs that have cell degradation across the board. These are usually still fairly strong batteries but not quite good enough to justify going back into a vehicle. This is usually a drop in capac-

We look at what applications a specific set of battery packs are going to next, and then create a custom set of weights to figure out which of those parameters are important for reuse. ity due to normal aging. Imagine a battery that’s been on the road for 80,000 miles, and something unrelated to the battery cells fails, say a thermistor. Because it’s been on the road so long, all of those cells have aged a certain amount. If a dealer is going through the effort of replacing a pack in a car, they’re typically going to use a pack that’s closer to brand-new. So the pack in this example would be headed to something like a grid-tied system for shifting load away from peak demand or doing frequency regulation.

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THE TECH

Not all stationary applications are equal. Smoothing out the output from a large solar array is a pretty demanding job for a battery because of how quickly the output can change. So if you have a battery that is more degraded, there are easy applications for the second use, for example in a building that does a little bit of energy shifting and occasionally acts as a backup power source during outages.

John Junger: We’re also moving into the aftermarket parts market. We can remanufacture packs for the original application and basically supply parts that you would go to the parts store to buy. Some NiMH hybrid systems are now becoming more commoditized, so you can work on them yourself if you’re comfortable around relatively higher voltage, and they are selling parts in the aftermarket. That’s a big avenue for second life because you can supply good batteries for a significant reduction in cost.

So they would be labeled as remanufactured batteries and warrantied either through us or the final distributor.

Dirk Spiers: What is very important with advanced battery packs is that everything is in harmony. In a way it’s better to have 10 mediocre modules that are always

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in harmony than to have an assembly of 10 in which 8 are terrific and 2 are not great. That’s another reason why grading is so important, because it allows you to put something together again where everything is in balance and in harmony and therefore will have a much longer life.

A lot of credit goes to our team that developed these very advanced mathematical models that allow us to analyze what we see and translate it into a process which is really accurate and quick. I think that’s what really sets us apart.

Charged: You mentioned that you’re constantly improving the grading process. In what ways?

John Junger: The main thrust is to continually reduce the amount of time we spend on a channel and maximize throughput. To grade batteries requires you to take mea-

Instead of tying up a testing channel for 12 to 24 hours, we can use it for only one to two hours and get the same results within a statistical significance.

Image courtesy of Spiers New Technologies

The main thrust is to continually reduce the amount of time we spend on a channel and maximize throughput.

surements while cycling - charging and discharging. That’s usually done at low currents to increase the accuracy of the measurements.

We’ve been able to develop ways to do it at higher currents and save a lot of time by deriving a linear relationship between charging at higher and lower currents for different chemistries. This allows us to arrive at the same values quicker.

So Instead of tying up a testing channel for 12 to 24 hours, we can use it for only one to two hours and get the same results within a statistical significance.

Bryan Schultz: Basically we’re trying to take the gold standard test that the OEM provides for their specific cell chemistry, then look at either lowering the SOC window or speeding up the cycling. We’re trying to find the boundary where it begins to break down on the curve and then determine where we can speed up the test as much as possible without losing accuracy. This process is customer-specific and model-specific. So if a customer came in with a different chemistry or battery packs from a different vehicle model, we’d have to start the optimization process over.

When we get the initial batch of batteries from the same source, we’ll test them and develop these optimizations. To begin building up the algorithm, we start on cell level, then module and pack level.

Then we’ll periodically verify that the grading optimizations are relevant for the ongoing population of packs that we’re receiving. Things can change over time, of course, so we continually verify that our original process is adequate statistically with the current batch of cells that we’re testing.

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THE TECH

We recently had some very long discussions with one OEM about the accuracy of our process before they came around.

Over time we’ve built different methods for different chemistries of both Li-ion and NiMH.

Image courtesy of Spiers New Technologies

Charged: How do your OEM customers feel about you building upon their testing standards?

standardizing for these measurements.

That was very rewarding to be able to talk to top OEM engineers at their level and convince them of the efficacy of our work. To hear them say that, when it comes to this we are ahead of them, is very encouraging to a team of our size.

SNT now has over

70,000 square feet dedicated to its advanced pack services

Dirk Spiers: That can take some convincing. We recently had some very long discussions with one OEM about the accuracy of our process before they came around.

OEMs know their battery packs really, really well.

They’re really smart engineers and they know their stuff.

But I like to think of them as being like early mothers.

They give birth to their battery pack and they know it better than anyone else. But at some point the batteries go out into the real world and things start to change. So we’re a bit like a daycare center that needs to prove that we’ll take care of their battery packs. Eventually we need to test them to be able to compare them to others, and because our testing methods may be different from the OEM’s, we need to explain why they are just as effective.

We went back and forth with one OEM that wanted us to continue to use their methodology - which I completely understand. However, we were certain that our process was better, so we didn’t relent. After many discussions, they eventually came around. Actually, they told us that they’re now using our method too, and have it in their documents as the “SNT method,” which they are now

John Junger: The statistical analysis really carried the argument. I put together a bunch of data to show that what we were finding was an equivalent result to what they had shown. Basically, the issue was that they are trying to sell the residual capacity in the batteries and wanted us to use the slower testing method to be certain it’s measured accurately. We’re also concerned with accuracy, but at the same time we want to process the pack quickly. So only when we can show the tests are equivalent will the OEMs sign off on it.

We also get a lot of insight from the different OEMs, and we always try to make improvements based on their input.

Charged: It seems like the secondary-use market, and SNT in particular, is poised for a lot of growth as the first-gen EVs begin to reach their end of life. Do you think that’s correct?

Dirk Spiers: Yes. I think it’s safe to say we already do more second-life management than anyone else in a commercial setting. We now have over 70,000 square feet dedicated to all of our advanced battery pack services we’re also building and testing stationary energy storage systems. The one-stop-shop concept really resonates with the OEMs because it saves costs and it makes it much easier to manage and coordinate for them.

We have groups from all over the world visiting us on a regular basis to discuss what we do and how we do it.

More than one of them has told us that we’re the leaders by a mile, based on others they’ve visited.

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A closer look at

ELECTROLYTES

By Christian Ruoff

T

he electrolytes in advanced batteries are based on incredibly complicated formulations. If you calculated all of the possible combinations of solvents, salts and additives while trying to find the optimal ratios for just one electrolyte formulation, it would add up to an extraordinary number of possibilities.

Because it plays such a critical role in battery design, the science of electrolytes continues to advance at an encouraging clip.

Charged recently chatted with Dr. Dee Strand - our go-to battery tech expert at Wildcat Discovery Technologies - to learn more about the complicated mixtures that transport those little lithium ions.

Wildcat is a very active research group at the forefront of the race to find better battery materials. Its high-throughput combinatorial chemistry techniques can build and test prototype batteries up to 100 times faster than a standard lab - a process that’s ideally suited for optimizing materials with seemingly endless formulation possibilities.

“Commercial electrolytes have a lot of components,” explains Strand. “Depending on the application, they consist of at least two solvents (and usually more co-solvents), a salt (or multiple salts), and a package of about five or six different additives.”

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THE TECH

Dr. Dee Strand, Wildcat's Chief Scientific Officer

Commercial electrolytes have a lot of components.

Test Tubes Image courtesy of Horia Varlan (CC BY 2.0)

Solvents Electrolyte formulations start with a solvent that has a high dielectric constant to help dissolve the salt. Often these high-dielectric-constant solvents have a high viscosity, so they are blended with a low-viscosity solvent. Then, other co-solvents are added to help improve various properties like low-temperature performance or power performance.

Salts Lithium salts are dissolved in the electrolyte solvents.

Solvent molecules surround the lithium ions as they move back and forth between the cathode and the anode. The salt’s anions can play an important role in how strongly it binds to the lithium - ideally you want it to be totally dissociated.

Additives There are many different categories of additives that are designed to do all sorts of things. Some common additives, like vinylene carbonate, help the solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layer form on the anode. Another category of additive is a redox shuttle, which creates an intrinsic overcharge protection mechanism that improves safety.

Two additives may show improvements on their respective metrics when tested separately, but put them together and they’ll actually hurt each other’s performance.

“When developing an electrolyte, you want to start with fairly simple formulations,” explains Strand.

“Say, for example, you take a certain solvent and one additive and test to see how that performs. Then you add another additive and see what that does. Perhaps Additive A helps the battery at high temperatures, Additive B helps at high voltage, and Additive C does something else. You really want to map out the effects of each component. When you start combining them you see that some are synergistic, but more often they’re antagonistic. Two additives may show improvements on their respective metrics when tested separately, but put them together and they’ll actually hurt each other’s performance. So you’re looking for those cases where the performance of A and B together is greater than the sum of A and B separately.”

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When the battery is exposed to higher voltages, you need to have an electrolyte that can tolerate it without breaking down, or at least form a passivation layer on the cathode.

More energy, more problems The battery industry, in general, is looking for higher energy density, whether for EV applications or to make our cell phones last longer. A lot of high-energy-density research is focused on cathodes that have higher capacities or that can be charged to higher voltages to improve overall energy.

“Many high-energy cathodes, however, have a high nickel content which is very reactive with the electrolyte,” explains Strand. “Also, when the battery is exposed to higher voltages, you need to have an electrolyte that can tolerate it without breaking down, or at least form a passivation layer on the cathode. That layer also helps you at high temperatures where all of those problems - from electrolyte oxidation to its reactivity with the nickel - become much worse. So it’s critical to stabilize that cathode surface with electrolyte additives in order to get high cycle life at high voltages and high temperatures.”

High-nickel cathodes also tend to generate a lot of gas. Gases can lead to safety issues and are often related to the formation of high-impedance or high-resistance layers that reduce power performance. “As you go to these more reactive and higher-voltage cathode materials, it really affects all performance aspects of the battery,” says Strand. “So, finding better electrolyte formulations becomes very important to minimize those effects.”

Another growing application for lithium-ion batteries is start-stop vehicles, in which energy density is less important, but you need high cycle life and the ability to supply high power over a wide temperature range. The battery needs to be able to operate from a cold stop, but it also tends to be near the engine - under the hood - so it must tolerate high temperatures.

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Strand explains that for those electrolyte formulations, you need to be very mindful of keeping low-viscosity formulations and low-impedance SEI layers.

You also need to stabilize the surface of the electrodes.

So, the electrolyte can play a role at both sides of the temperature spectrum, and that’s due to solvents and additives.

Solid electrolytes Another promising area of research for increasing energy density is solid electrolytes. This technology has the potential to allow the use of lithium metal for an anode, as opposed to graphite. The benefit is that the entire anode is active material with a much higher specific capacity. One of the challenges with lithium metal is that as you charge and discharge, the lithium ions tend to dissolve and redeposit in the form of dendrites - long growths that resemble needles. Eventually the dendrites can puncture the separator and short the battery. It also

THE TECH

One of the problems with solid electrolytes is that it’s harder to move lithium through them compared to liquids. results in a high surface area of lithium, which is very reactive.

The promise of using a stiff solid electrolyte is that it can prevent those dendrites from growing simply as a mechanical barrier. There are also safety benefits, because instead of the flammable and volatile liquid organic electrolytes, you could have an inorganic solid.

So, if the battery ever finds itself in a very hot environment, you wouldn’t have to worry about the build-up of high vapor pressure.

“One of the problems with solid electrolytes is that it’s harder to move lithium through them compared to liquids,” explains Strand. “That being said, there have been really significant advances in material discovery for solid ceramics that can move lithium almost as well as liquids. The challenge is integrating them into a battery.

They are typically hard, brittle ceramic materials that are difficult to manufacture in thin sheets and put into the cell assembly without breaking.”

Solid-state batteries have a lithium metal anode, a ceramic membrane that conducts lithium (you no longer need the plastic separator) and then the cathode. So the membrane needs to be thin, about the thickness of a separator, otherwise you’re losing space in your battery to something that’s not active material.

“Finally, the last challenge to creating commercial solid-state batteries is in the cathode,” says Strand.

“Today’s cathodes are a bunch of solid active materials held together with binder and pores in between the material. Those pores are important because it allows the liquid electrolyte to infiltrate and move lithium in and out of the cathode. So once you find a great solid electrolyte separator membrane that conducts lithium ions well, what do you do about your cathode? Without a liquid to fill in the pores, how do you access the active material throughout the whole cathode?”

One of Wildcat’s many research projects involves a combination of ceramics and polymers, both lithium ion conducting materials that could be put into the cathode’s pores and also be used as a separator electrolyte. “The polymer gives you better mechanical properties in terms of flexibility,” says Strand, “and the ability to laminate layers together so that you can help reduce that interfacial impedance between layers. The challenge with these types of materials is getting high ionic conductivity, because the polymer tends not to be great. That’s the direction of our research.”

Semi-solid electrolytes Some companies have been working on gel-like electrolytes, often referred to as semi-solid. Essentially, they add solvents to a polymer, like polyethylene oxide (PEO), to vastly improve the lithium ion conductivity. The solvents swell the polymer, and a lot of the ion transport then occurs in the solvent. The technique can improve the safety aspects of a battery because the solvent is trapped in a gel. Semi-solid electrolytes do

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One could spend a PhD thesis studying the SEI for a single electrolyte formulation, then you put in another additive and it changes it. not work well with lithium metal anodes, because the swollen polymer gel is too soft to prevent the dendrite growth. However, they can be used with traditional electrode materials.

Testing is tricky On top of all of the possible combinations of solvents, salts and additives, there are also challenges in testing sample cells with new electrolytes. It is very difficult to open up a battery and collect samples to test the chemical makeup of an electrolyte or the SEI layer. “As soon as you open up the battery, things change,” explains Strand. “A lot of the techniques that exist to study the SEI layer are under vacuum. This will evaporate any liquids and the SEI is kind of a fluid layer. These analytic techniques themselves are a great area of science, but one could spend a PhD thesis studying the SEI for a single electrolyte formulation, then you put in another additive and it changes it.”

“So, we look at the effects of new formulations. Our methods probe the properties of the SEI in an indirect fashion based on their effect on the cell performance.

When additives react with either the cathode or the anode, the layers that form tend to increase the impedance of the battery. We look for additives that keep the impedance low. But, on the other extreme, if you did not form any layer there would be zero impedance, which is very bad for high-temperature performance because there is nothing to stop the reactivity. So we want a balance of low impedance and high thermal stability for the battery.

This indicates that the battery most likely has a thin uniform layer with good ionic conductivity to protect that surface.”

Combine, test and repeat - the Wildcat edge Every component that makes up a commercial electrolyte is included for a very specific reason. So the scientists striving to develop better formulations for the next generation of batteries spend their time determining what role a new material could play in the compositional space. This requires many experiments to map out characteristics, try different combinations and look for those synergies that get the optimal performance out of the electrolyte.

This type of work is what Wildcat prides itself on.

“We can formulate lots of electrolyte variations and make batteries with enough replicates to get good statistical results,” explained Strand. “Traditional electrolyte companies have a portfolio of additives that they will mix and match - it’s usually a pretty slow process, and they may only try a few different concentrations.

Because of our high-throughput techniques, we can try dozens. They may try two ratios of solvents, for example, where we could try 20, then map out a phase diagram to compare them. The experimental rounds for these tests - depending on the C-rate used for cycling - might be as long as four to six weeks before you have results. So wouldn’t you rather do 1,000 experiments on different formulations than a few dozen?”

Wildcat also has a large additive discovery program looking for new molecules to offer to the industry.

There are other companies that do this, but Wildcat says its proprietary techniques give it the bandwidth needed to greatly increase the probability of finding the optimal formulation to fix a problem, without messing anything else up.

A few of Wildcat’s recent electrolyte-related discoveries (that it can discuss with us), include: SuperFilm additive A new modular additive concept, which Wildcat calls SuperFilm, is used to bind to the molecular core of other additives, enabling uniform deposition on the electrode surface.

The company says that attaching conventional additives to the core molecules provides improved SEI stability, resulting

Our methods probe the properties of the SEI in an indirect fashion based on their effect on the cell performance.

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THE TECH in increased coulombic efficiency, cycle life, and thermal stability.

“For example, perhaps you want a nice uniform passivation layer to help you at high voltage, but you don’t want to add too much impedance to your cell,” says Strand. “Our SuperFilm additives are very helpful at stabilizing those very high-energy high-nickel containing materials, like NCA and NCM. Also, by decoupling the requirements for uniform coating and chemical stability, new classes of additives can be used, so there is a lot of room for exploration in this area.”

very successful at making more mechanically and electrochemically robust SEI layers on the anode.

So as volume changes occur, the SEI layer doesn’t crack. “We’re now getting much longer cycles on the particular silicon anode materials that we’re using,” says Strand. “It’s very exciting.”

We’re now getting much longer cycles on the particular silicon anode materials that we’re using.

It’s very exciting.

Wide temperature-range electrolytes Wildcat reports quite a few innovations that could encourage the use of Li-ion batteries in the quickly growing stop-start market. The company has developed electrolyte formulations that improve power performance at low temperature and improve or maintain the high-temperature cycle life relative to baseline electrolyte formulation for both NMC/graphite and NMC/ LTO electrode chemistries.

Novel non-carbonate electrolyte formulations for silicon anodes Many researchers in the battery industry are looking for ways to replace the graphite anode with silicon. Silicon is widely considered to be the next big thing in anode technology, because it has a theoretical charge capacity ten times higher than that of typical graphite anodes.

This allows you to use less anode material and fill up that extra space with more cathode material - effectively increasing the overall energy that is contained within the same volume.

The problem with the current state of silicon anodes is that repeated expansion and contraction during charging and discharging leads to drastically reduced cycle life, due to two big failure mechanisms: problems with the electrode itself and cracking of the SEI layer.

One solution to the SEI layer problem might be found in a DOE-funded project that Wildcat has underway to develop better electrolytes and additives for silicon anodes. Wildcat says the project, named EM4, has been

Gas-reducing efforts Gas generation is especially problematic as cell markers push toward increased voltages. Wildcat has identified a lot of additives and formulations that have reduced gas significantly even at voltages of 4.9 V, like the nickel-manganese spinel chemistry, which is a very severe environment for an organic electrolyte.

To increase the speed of gas-reducing discoveries, Wildcat developed gas-sensing channels that can simultaneously measure gases released by cells, along with the normal electrochemical measurements of capacity, coulombic efficiency and cycle life. This allows for precise detection of gassing directly inside the cell.

The new method enables continuous gas measurements while cells cycle.

When coupled with the company’s other techniques, this approach lets its speedy scientists rapidly evaluate gas evolution for thousands of electrolytes in full cells, dramatically accelerating the development of improved additives and electrolyte formulations. With such a tool, it’s possible to start discovering very interesting correlations. For example, if certain materials have poor coulombic efficiency, do they also have a lot of gas generation? Or if materials have poor high-temperature cycle life, is that accompanied by a particular gas being released?

Science for hire Wildcat’s high-speed discovery techniques are so unique that over 60 companies have turned to it for help since its inception in late 2006. In addition to working on many problems brought to them by battery companies from around the world, Wildcat is licensing several of their recent internal discoveries and actively seeking new electrolyte research collaborations.

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CURRENTevents

GM CEO Mary Barra introduced the 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV in a dazzling sound-and-light show at CES in Las Vegas. The company has earned the right to a little pomp: the Bolt is the first EV to offer a 200-mile range at a price tag “around $30,000” after tax incentives, and it will be a historic moment when it goes on sale later this year.

The sleek five-door hatchback is built on its own dedicated platform (though it shares some suspension components with the Sonic), so GM’s designers were finally able to dispense with the compromises inherent in adapting a gas burner.

Like other native EVs (Tesla Model S, BMW i3), the Bolt has a flat battery pack located under the floor, so its interior space is “two segments larger” than its exterior size suggests, quipped Pam Fletcher, GM’s Executive Chief Engineer for Electrified Vehicles.

The passenger cabin measures 94.4 cubic feet - would you believe that’s a fraction more than that of the much larger Model S? GM says there’s room for 5 passengers, but some reviewers found that to be a bit of a squeeze.

Cargo volume is 17 cubic feet with the rear seats up, which compares favorably to the Nissan LEAF and Kia Soul EV. The Bolt features DC fast charging, something that buyers are increasingly demanding. There are several new high-tech features, including self-sealing Michelin tires that are designed to ignore minor punctures.

A digital rear-view mirror linked to a rear-facing camera gives an expansive 80-degree view (almost four times that of a conventional mirror), and Surround Vision provides a bird’s-eye view of what’s around the car - handy for low-speed driving and parking. The new MyChevrolet mobile app provides info such as charge status, and allows remote start and cabin pre-conditioning. OnStar 4G LTE turns the Bolt into a WiFi hotspot.

Reporters were able to take development versions of the Bolt for a short test drive, and were pleased with the peppy acceleration (0-to-60 in 7 seconds), crisp corner-

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ing and steering, smooth regenerative braking and of course, an electric specialty: amazingly silent ride.

“Being the leader in range and affordability means nothing if the car isn’t going to excite you each time you get behind the wheel,” said Josh Tavel, Chevrolet Bolt EV Chief Engineer. “That’s why the team was tasked with delivering a propulsion system that would also make the Bolt EV an electric vehicle that owners would love to drive.”

Images courtesy of GM

The first of a new generation: Chevrolet unveils the 2017 Bolt EV

THE VEHICLES

The Bolt EV’s motor cranks out 266 lb-ft (360 Nm) of torque and 200 hp (150 kW) of power, delivered via a shift-by-wire system that requires less packaging space than a traditional mechanical shifter. The Bolt’s 0-60 time is less than 7 seconds, which won’t frighten the Model S or Mustang in the next lane, but should at least enable you to smoke a Prius (which gets there in around 10 seconds).

“You usually have a battery cell that delivers either the

desired levels of energy or power, but not both. With this cell design and chemistry we were able to deliver a battery system with 160 kW of peak power and 60 kWh of energy,” said Gregory Smith, Bolt EV Battery Pack Engineering Group Manager.

The Bolt’s 60 kWh battery pack has 288 lithium ion cells and weighs 960 lbs. Like the Volt’s pack, it uses active thermal conditioning to maintain an optimum temperature. A 7.2 kW onboard charger is standard, and CCS DC fast charging is available as an option. The regenerative braking system allows the driver to choose either one-pedal driving or the more traditional less-aggressive regen.

During her star turn, Ms. Barra praised the Chevy dealers who will be the gatekeepers to electric bliss for US consumers. Saying that GM believes strongly in the dealer model, she took a little dig at Tesla: Bolt buyers will “never have to travel to another state” to buy or service their EVs.

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Chrysler’s new hybrid minivan has a plug

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Chrysler holds an enviable position atop the popular minivan segment, and the less respectable distinction of being the leading electrification skeptic among major automakers. So the company’s new plug-in hybrid minivan, which is scheduled to arrive in showrooms in late 2016, is something of a milestone.

The Pacifica Hybrid, which Chrysler calls the industry’s first electrified minivan, features two electric motors, both capable of driving the wheels, a new 3.6-liter Atkinson cycle Pentastar engine, and a new electrically variable transmission (EVT).

The 16 kWh LG Chem battery pack is located under the rear seat, and is paired with a 6.6 kW onboard charger.

Chrysler estimates an electric range of 30 miles and an EPA efficiency rating of 80 MPGe. Bizarrely, Chrysler doesn’t seem keen for anyone to know that the new minivan has a plug. Its official name is the “Pacifica Hybrid,” and the company’s press release says not a word about its plug-in capabilities.

Autoblog asked Kevin Mets, Chief Engineer for the Pacifica Hybrid, whether Chrysler developed the vehicle in response to customer demand or government regulations. “That’s a tough one to answer,” Mets said. “Certainly you have to meet all the requirements. You also can pick what vehicles you want to do it on. You pick which vehicle is the best opportunity and this is the one we chose. It’s a little bit of both.”

Image courtesy of FCA Group

How fast the EV market will grow is anybody’s guess, but there’s no question that the vehicles themselves are getting faster all the time. Porsche is accelerating its Mission E project, which aims to launch a new EV by the end of the decade.

Now we hear that Porsche’s iconic 911 may eventually acquire a plug.

As Porsche unveiled the fastest-ever 911 Turbo at the Detroit Motor Show, 911 engineering boss Dr. Erhard Mossle told Auto Express that the next-generation car, to be launched within the next four years, may be available with a plug-in hybrid powertrain. “We are discussing plug-in solutions for the 911, but there are a lot of things to solve with packaging in the car and other things. It will maybe be in the next generation…we’re also working on an all-electric car.”

Mossle quickly reassured Porsche fans that the plug-in 911 would still be a performance vehicle, probably with a six-cylinder engine. “As far as I can see we will stick with six-cylinder engines…when we see the 911 we see the plug-in hybrid as a performance car - it will always be for performance.”

Image courtesy of Porsche

Plug-in Porsche 911 on the drawing board

THE VEHICLES

Image courtesy of Faraday Future

Faraday Future unveils its Variable Platform Architecture - a modular chassis to build an EV on EV startup Faraday Future’s carmaking prowess has yet to be tested, but it has already revealed some impressive marketing talent. After milking several months of mystery, the company unveiled its FFZERO1 supercar concept at the recent CES in Las Vegas.

The event was one of the hottest tickets at a show that has reinvented itself as a venue for the latest automotive tech. By all accounts, the presentation delivered a healthy helping of hype, but a dearth of details about the company’s “complete rethink of what mobility means.”

The car itself is a single-seat racecar that more than one reporter compared to a Batmobile. It boasts 4 motors, with total power of 1,000 hp, a 0-60 time under three seconds, and a top speed over 200 mph.

Futuristic features include “aero tunnels” that run through the vehicle to reduce lift and cool the batteries, a steering wheel-mounted smartphone, several touch screens and augmented reality views that can be projected onto the road.

The company hopes to produce its first production vehicle by January 2018 - the media was shown a couple of images of a modern fastback utility vehicle. Senior VP Nick Sampson said that the production car will be something more practical than the FFZERO1 but still a premium-priced vehicle, perhaps a sedan or SUV. FF did provide some details about its Variable Platform Architecture (VPA), which underpins the FFZERO1 and will be used to build its production cars. The basic idea is a Teslaesque chassis with a flat battery pack that can be fitted with motors on one or both axles.

“The VPA will enable FF to minimize production costs, deliver exceptional quality and safety, dramatically increase its speed to market, and could easily support a range of vehicle types and sizes,” said Faraday in a press release.

“The skateboard-style chassis can be adjusted by changing the lengths of the rails and other relative structures to accommodate the number of battery strings per each configuration. There are structural benefits to the design as well, such as larger crumple zones that improve safety by centralizing and protecting the battery pack.”

“We can change the number and power of the drive systems,” Senior VP Nick Sampson told The Verge. “We

can change the physical size and electrical size of the battery packs.”

Faraday spokesperson Stacy Morris compared the design of the battery pack to a Hershey bar: rows of batteries can be added for the desired capacity. The placement of motors can also be shifted for a front-wheel, rear-wheel, or all-wheel-drive vehicle.

Meanwhile, the company has committed to building a billion-dollar assembly plant outside Las Vegas that will cover 3 million square feet and eventually employ 4,500 workers.

Nevada lawmakers awarded FF a $335-million incentive package, a little over a year after Tesla scored a $1.3-billion haul for its Gigafactory.

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CURRENTevents Hyundai releases some details of upcoming Ioniq hybrid

Jaguar returns to racing with Formula E team

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The company claims that the 1.6-liter, 103 hp four-cylinder engine delivers 40 percent thermal efficiency, rivaling that of the current king of hybrids, the 2016 Toyota Prius.

A 43 hp electric motor, 6-speed dual clutch transmission and Li-ion polymer battery round out the powertrain. Fuel economy is estimated at 52.7 mpg (on the Korean testing cycle).

The hybrid Ioniq will go on sale in Korea later this month, starting at 22.9 million won ($19,145). It will be followed by the electric and plug-in hybrid versions.

Image courtesy of Hyundai

Hyundai has a phased plan for the electrified future.

With its Sonata PHEV is now on the road, the Korean automaker plans to turn up the voltage another notch with the Ioniq, a five-door hatchback that will be offered in hybrid, PHEV and EV models. Hyundai has just released a couple of photos of the hybrid version, along with some details of the hybrid powertrain.

The Ioniq is built on a new platform shared with the 2017 Elantra. It makes use of many aluminum components, which Hyundai says provides a weight reduction of as much as 45 percent, compared to an all-steel vehicle.

Image courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar has a long and illustrious history in auto racing, but it got out of the sport in 2004, when its Formula One team was sold to Red Bull. It’s a sign of the electrifying times that the beloved British brand’s return to global motorsport will be as part of the FIA Formula E Championship. Jaguar’s team will enter the third season in the fall of 2016.

“Electric vehicles will absolutely play a role in Jaguar Land Rover’s future product portfolio and Formula E will give us a unique opportunity to further our development of electrification technologies,” said Nick Rogers, Group Engineering Director for Jaguar Land Rover. “The championship will enable us to engineer and test our advanced technologies under extreme performance conditions.”

“It is my belief that over the next five years we will see more changes in the automotive world than in the last three decades,” Rogers added.

Williams Advanced Engineering, which builds the battery system for the current Formula E racers, will be a technical partner to the Jaguar Formula E Team. Jaguar and Williams have a long-standing relationship - they worked together to develop the Jaguar C-X75 plug-in hybrid concept car.

“We looked in detail at alternative ways of returning to motorsport,” said Jaguar Team Director James Barclay.

“With our future EV plans, Formula E was the obvious choice and we believe that the benefits are enormous.

The FIA and the promoter have exciting plans for the future of the championship and we are proud to be one of the first vehicle manufacturers to commit to the series with our own team. We have a lot of work to do ahead of the first race but it is a challenge we relish.”

THE VEHICLES

Working across the supply chain

Image by Ming-yen Hsu (CC BY-ND 2.0)

FTC panel considers direct-toconsumer auto sales

to accelerate the commercialization

of wide bandgap power electronics.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently assembled a panel of experts in auto manufacturing and marketing to consider the question of whether automakers should be allowed to sell cars directly to customers.

For several years, Tesla has been waging a war with auto dealers’ associations over this issue - the company’s direct sales model is currently allowed in about half of US states. In the past the FTC has sided with Tesla, calling for legislation to revisit existing regulations.

At the panel discussion, representatives from Tesla, as well as Elio Motors, a company that has plans to manufacture cheap three-seater vehicles, told the FTC that new car companies shouldn’t have to follow the dealership model.

Tesla’s lead lawyer, Todd Maron, argued that Tesla customers have a lot of questions that can’t be outsourced to third parties. “Our customers take a long time to study the car,” Maron said. “It takes hours and hours of a patient education process that only we can afford them and a traditional dealership model cannot.”

Maron also argued that Tesla dealerships couldn’t coexist with the company’s direct sales model. “If we hypothetically used a franchise dealer in a certain state, we would still be selling online and in neighboring states. If a franchise dealer marked up the price of our car, no customer would ever buy it from them, they would simply go to us and buy it for less.”

On the opposing side, auto industry analyst Maryann Keller and dealership attorney Paul Norman argued that the dealership model is good for consumers because it promotes “intrabrand competition” between auto dealers within the same city.

Keller also argued that cars aren’t like other consumer products.

“There are simply costs associated with the distribution of objects that weigh 4,000 pounds, occupy 50 square feet of space and are sold to consumers with varying needs including trade-ins, credit issues, etcetera,” she said.

“Independent dealers also act as advocates for consumers and provide a local presence which is a convenient place for customers to go to solve their problems,” said Mr. Norman. “Independent dealers add an extra layer of accountability.”

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Renault tops European EV sales in 2015 Ford unveils 2017 hybrid and PHEV Fusions

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Renault sells three EV models in Europe: The Zoe compact hatchback (which sold 18,453 units in 2015), the Kangoo Z.E. small commercial van (4,325 units); and the Twizy, a quirky-looking urban two-seater.

The Zoe performed particularly well in France, thanks to the “superbonus” incentive set up by the French government in April.

Image courtesy of Renault

Image courtesy of Ford Motor Company

Ford’s Fusion Energi plug-in hybrid has been one of the top-selling PHEVs since its February 2013 debut (it sold 9,750 units in 2015, second only to the Volt).

Now Ford has released some details of the 2017 Fusion Energi (also available in hybrid and legacy gas versions), which is scheduled to arrive at dealerships this summer.

Upgrades to the 2017 Energi include new software and a more efficient electric motor.

The 7.6 kWh lithium-ion battery remains the same, delivering an electric range of 19 miles.

Smart features include the EcoGuide system, which coaches drivers to maximize fuel economy, cabin preheating and cooling, and the ability to time charging to take advantage of off-peak electricity prices.

The Fusion also has hands-free parallel and perpendicular parking capability, lane-keeping assist and an optional Blind Spot Information System that provides audible and visual warnings if traffic is detected in a driver’s blind spot.

The EV markets on the two sides of the Atlantic look very different. Tesla tops the bestseller list in the US, followed by Nissan. In Europe, Nissan’s partner Renault rules the roost.

Some 97,687 pure electric vehicles were sold in Europe in 2015 - that represents 0.61% of the overall European car market, and an increase of 47.8% compared to 2014.

Of those, 23,086 units were from Renault - a market share of 23.6% (or 25.2% if you include the Twizy). EVs represented 1.4% of the company’s total European sales.

THE VEHICLES

Image courtesy of Tesla Motors

DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx introduced a new federal strategy to help develop autonomous driving technology at the Detroit auto show, joined by execs from Tesla, Google, Ford, GM, Delphi and other automotive firms.

“If the government doesn’t change its ways, drivers in the future will not be moving on the highways - they will be crawling in traffic,” said Foxx. “In 2016, we are going to do everything we can to advance safe, smart innovation. We are bullish on automated vehicles.”

The Obama administration’s next annual budget will propose $4 billion over the next 10 years to support testing and pilot programs. Perhaps more importantly, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will work with companies and states over the next six months to start developing consistent regulations for autonomous driving technology.

The NHTSA will work with industry and other stakeholders to develop guidance on the safe deployment and operation of autonomous vehicles, and to develop a model state policy that offers a path to a consistent national policy.

Secretary Foxx encouraged manufacturers to submit rule interpretation requests to help enable technology innovation. For example, NHTSA responded to an interpretation request from BMW confirming that the company’s remote self-parking system meets federal safety standards.

VW’s BUDD-e concept, which attracted a lot of attention at CES in January, was built as a showpiece for future technology. In February, the company’s Head of Electrical and Electronic Development, Volkmar Tanneberger, said that “a car that looks a lot like this” is planned for production around 2020.

VW constructed the BUDD-e using a new scalable architecture and EV tech that was all developed in-house.

The dream van features a skateboard chassis, two electric motors and a flat battery pack believed to have a capacity of around 101 kWh. VW has bandied about some impressive range numbers - 373 miles on the European cycle (about 233 miles the way the US EPA figures such things). However, as Autoblog reports, these numbers don’t represent current technology, but rather VW’s projections about battery technology a few years in the future.

More range necessarily means faster charging capability, and in this area the Volkswagen Group has made substantial progress. Porsche has developed an 800 V charging system (as well as wireless charging) for the Mission E concept, which debuted at the Frankfurt Motor Show last September. If this system goes into production, VW is likely to use it in other EVs. 800 volts is double the voltage of the current CCS standard, and would allow charging a vehicle like the BUDD-e to 80 percent of battery capacity in 30 minutes.

“We expect that the current CCS standard will be upgraded to 800 volts,” Tanneberger told Green Car Reports. “Of course it’s a question of standardization…

Porsche is forcing that along in Europe and in Germany, and we will use the same technology.”

JAN/FEB 2016

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Image courtesy of Volkswagen Group

Volkswagen’s electric van concept points the way to faster charging

DOT announces major push to advance autonomous vehicles

GOING ELECTRIC FOR LESS Complete Coach Works offers a remanufactured electric bus for the cost of a new diesel

By Charles Morris

44

THE VEHICLES

Image courtesy of Complete Coach Works

JAN/FEB 2016

45

U

rban transit buses represent a prime opportunity for electrification. Their typical duty cycles allow them to be conveniently recharged at terminals, and the savings on fuel and maintenance can be enormous. Furthermore, cities around the world are revitalizing and beautifying their downtown districts, so getting rid of noise and diesel smoke is a welcome benefit.

Battery-electric buses are operating in pilot programs in dozens of cities in North America, Europe and Asia, and in EV hotspots such as California and China, they’re already being phased into regular service.

However, municipal transit authorities face the same dilemma that individual car buyers do: while an EV may save a lot of money over its lifetime, the purchase price can be almost double that of a legacy vehicle. Fortunately, there’s an elegant solution.

Complete Coach Works (CCW), founded in 1986, is one of the country’s largest remanufacturers of transit buses. The California company is now offering remanufactured buses with electric drive at prices comparable to new diesel buses, with the additional environmental benefit of recycling the chassis and many of the parts.

There are several reasons that a transit agency might choose to remanufacture vehicles, from replacing wornout engines to modernizing older buses with new technology, such as accessibility features to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. These days, a growing number of transit authorities are remanufacturing buses in order to upgrade legacy diesel drivetrains to more modern options.

CCW’s Zero Emission Propulsion System (ZEPS) battery-electric buses fit We’re re-using the bill perfectly. Charged recently spoke with ZEPS chassis that Sales Manager Ryne Shetare in perfectly terly about the advantages of taking the remanufacgood working turing route. condition.

“We really like to stick to our model of sustainability,” says Shetterly. “By remanufacturing vehicles that are already in service, or that have already gone through a useful life period, we’re saving about ten times of raw materials, and that’s something that we take great pride in. It’s having a big impact on the environment. We’re re-using chassis that are in perfectly good working condition.”

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Images courtesy of Complete Coach Works

THE VEHICLES

CCW built its first prototype ZEPS bus about five years ago, and now has electric buses in operation in about half a dozen US cities, with several more on order.

CCW’s biggest order to date (and the largest fleet of electric transit buses in the country) consists of 21 buses it sold to the Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation (IndyGo), which operates approximately 157 buses on 31 routes in Indiana’s capital.

“A lot of people are looking at that project as kind of the indicator of success,” says Shetterly. “For us to actually execute and deliver a successful project like that has really heightened interest, and we’re getting calls from all over the country.”

CCW remanufactures a lot of Gillig, New Flyer and Orion buses, but it works with anything and everything in the transit world. The team has worked with other

We’re always trying to stay on the cutting edge of clean technology, but now we’re all in on electric. alternative fuels in the past, including LNG, CNG, and “clean diesel” technologies. “We installed one of the first hybrid packages that was available way back in the day,” says Shetterly, “but that’s not a viable option anymore.

We’re always trying to stay on the cutting edge of clean technology, but now we’re all in on electric.”

Shetterly wouldn’t say exactly what percentage of

JAN/FEB 2016

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Image courtesy of Complete Coach Works

CCW’s standard pack has

delivering about

kWh of energy storage

miles of range

311 150

We’re coming in at about $580,000. That’s about $200,000-$300,000 less than a brand-new electric bus from one of the OEMs that are currently in production.

CCW’s business the electric buses represent, but said that it is “a healthy portion...and we do see it being a much larger portion of what we do in the future.”

An offer cities can’t refuse The cost of a remanufactured battery-electric bus is in the neighborhood of what a new diesel bus would cost with all the options, Shetterly tells us. “We’re coming in at about $580,000. That’s about $200,000-$300,000 less than a brand-new electric bus from one of the OEMs that are currently in production.”

Savings on fuel and maintenance are expected to add up to about $440,000 over the useful life of the bus.

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THE VEHICLES

The ZEPS on-board charger (100 amp, 50 kW), is designed to require no special charging infrastructure beyond 480-volt, 3-phase electrical service, which would normally be installed at an overnight depot.

Some transit authorities send CCW their buses to be completely refitted, an option that is not only cheaper, but faster than buying new vehicles. “You can go buy a brand-new bus for X amount of dollars, or you can come to CCW and spend a fraction of that, and have a bus in six months, versus the standard 18-24 month lead time that you see with the OEMs.” Another advantage of a remanufactured bus is that many of the components are already familiar to maintenance staff. “We’re taking a bus that has been on property for the last ten years or so, and the maintenance team is already familiar with how to take care of the preventive maintenance,” says Shetterly. “None of the parts are going to change, so there’s not going to be any new parts inventory required. The drivers are already familiar with the buses. We keep the OEM build

The fact that it’s a refurbished bus with a chassis we currently operate in our fleet makes it practical in terms of interchangeability of parts, it’s a great benefit to us. as close as possible to where it was when it came off the line. We rebuild what we can rebuild - obviously some of the essential parts get swapped out for the electrical components, but mostly everything is going to stay the same.”

“The fact that it’s a refurbished bus with a chassis we currently operate in our fleet makes it practical in terms of interchangeability of parts - it’s a great benefit

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A key feature of many electric bus routes is some form of en route charging. Being able to partially charge at a short stop along the route increases the effective range of the bus, and/or allows the battery pack to be smaller, saving on upfront cost. CCW uses a wireless charging system from a Utah company called WAVE (Wireless Advanced Vehicle Electrification).

WAVE’s system is fully automated, requiring little or no driver intervention. It operates at a charging power of 50 kW, and an efficiency level greater than 90% (a typical wired connection might achieve efficiency of 92-95%).

The system uses a charging pad that lies flush with the pavement and is sturdy enough to be run over all day without damage. Another pad is mounted on the vehicle’s undercarriage.

“It depends on where the agency is comfortable putting the charging pad,” says Shetterly. “But, basically what would happen is that they have a central location that the bus is going to be intercepting every hour, and it’s going to be there for about five to ten minutes for loading and unloading. At that point, the driver would go over the charging pad, an electronic handshake would occur between the charger and the WAVE system, and a few minutes later, you’ve absorbed enough energy to keep going on your way.”

Some other electric buses use an overhead catenary for charging, but CCW prefers WAVE’s pavement-mounted pad. “The problem with overhead charging is it’s invasive and it’s expensive,” says Shetterly. “There’s not a lot of companies out there who want that - it’s cumbersome.

What we’ve got is basically built right into the pavement. If you were standing on the street, you wouldn’t even know it was there. There’s no moving parts. It’s the most efficient way to go at this point. And, on top of that, when you get rid of moving parts, you’re also eliminating the opportunity

50

for driver error or equipment malfunctioning. We’ve seen some scenarios where some of the overhead charging systems have been hit, and if that charging system is down, you can’t run your bus on that particular route anymore.”

“The trolley that we’ve got running up in Monterey-Salinas is capable of doing up to 200 miles on a single charge, with WAVE,” says Shetterly. “Monterey is not huge - it’s not a very large route that it runs. They have incorporated their WAVE technology right in the middle of town, at one of their pick-ups. I think they’re there for about five minutes.”

McAllen, Texas is also using the WAVE system. An embedded charging pad has been placed in the asphalt at one of the stops so that the bus route will be unchanged. The flat 3-foot square pads seamlessly blend with the asphalt, unnoticed by cars and pedestrians passing over it.

“The bus will arrive over the charging pad every hour, initiating a layover of about 10-15 minutes so that the bus can charge, causing no disruption to the route,” said Mario Delgado. “The predominant reason [this project] made sense for us was that it will allow us to charge our buses while they are in service. We will be able to complete one full day with the inductive charging, so it’s just very convenient. The WAVE en route charging roughly doubles the range of the bus on a given day.”

On the other hand, the WAVE system could allow an operator to serve the same route with a smaller battery pack - either way, it delivers big cost savings. WAVE, which is also working with other electric bus-makers, including BYD and Gillig, believes that savings is what will seal the deal for a transit company to go electric. “That’s been our business model all along.” WAVE CEO Michael Masquelier told Charged. “Without us, the clients wouldn’t be able to have those buses operate on an entire daily route - they would have had to buy an additional bus, or buy a bus with a larger battery pack.”

Image courtesy of WAVE

A wireless WAVE

THE VEHICLES to us,” agrees Mario Delgado, Transit Director of McAllen, Texas, which bought two ZEPS buses. “The response from the drivers so far has been very good.

They are excited about how quiet and smooth the ride is.”

The rebirth of a bus The transformation of a bus begins by dismantling it down to the chassis level. The diesel engine, transmission, radiator and belt-driven accessories are removed, and the differential is remanufactured to a taller gear ratio of 6.1 from the existing ratio of 5.4. Shock absorbers, air bags, tie rod ends and wheel hubs are replaced with new parts.

New composite flooring, seating, an electric air compressor and a power steering pump are installed.

Several upgrades help to maximize the vehicle’s operating range, including lightweight flooring and seats, lightweight aluminum wheels, low rollingresistance tires, energy-efficient heating and cooling, and LED lighting.

The ZEPS bus has a 131 kW liquid-cooled electric motor. “The torque on it is just absolutely amazing,” says Shetterly. “You’re looking at about 1800 pounds of torque. So, it’s great for pulling grades - it operates really well on an intercity route, where there’s a lot of start and stop.”

CCW uses Samsung lithiumion battery cells, and offers a couple of range options. The standard pack has 311 kWh of energy storage (250 usable), which delivers a range of about 150 miles. It also offers a half-pack option: a 154 kW hour pack coupled with WAVE inductive charging technology (see sidebar).

Battery-electric technology is not suitable for every bus route. “You’ve got some transit buses doing 300 miles a day,” says Shetterly. “Right now, there’s really not an electric bus that will meet those needs. But with the progression in technology, and where the market is heading, it may be something that’s available in the not too distant future.”

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2016 AUDI

A3 SPORTBA 52

THE VEHICLES Image courtesy of Audi AG

Audiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first plug-in delivers performance and practicality

ACK E-TRON JAN/FEB 2016

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he selection of plug-in vehicles available to US buyers continues to grow steadily - it now stands at 27 models, with several more expected this year. The latest entrant to the market is the 2016 Audi A3 Sportback e-tron, the German luxury brand’s first plug-in model available in the US. Every time a new plug-in car goes on sale, the EV press pours out the pixels pontificating on whether it will end up being an electric success story, or be written off as “just another compliance car.” The ranks of the former are few, and it’s becoming more and more obvious that this has little to do with the relative quality or value proposition of the vehicles in question, and much to do with an automaker’s commitment to marketing them, and producing them in sufficient quantity.

Of course, it will take a couple of years to tell if Audi’s new PHEV is destined for stardom or not, but as it arrived in US dealerships right around the turn of the new year, there were already some encouraging signs.

The A3 e-tron went on sale in Europe about a year ago, and has been moving quite well. According to the EV Sales Blog, it sold 11,711 units in Europe in 2015, earning the #7 spot among all plug-in models, and handily beating PHEVs from Volvo and Mercedes. Audi tells us that its new plug-in represents over 1% of the

T

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the A3 e-tron is rolling out to all 50 states, with only a small price premium over a comparable non-plug-in Audi. brand’s total sales in Europe - and a whopping 25% in EV-friendly Norway and the Netherlands.

Here in the US, the A3 e-tron is rolling out to all 50 states right away - unlike many competing plug-ins. Of Audi’s 287 US dealers, all but 6 have opted to sell the etron, which requires special training for mechanics and sales staff (less encouraging: reports that some dealers have asked Audi to produce a non-plug-in version).

Another reason for optimism - again, unlike so many other plug-ins on the market - is that the A3 etron carries only a small price premium over a comparable non-plug-in Audi. MSRP starts at $37,900, and the e-tron is eligible for a federal tax credit of $4,158, which brings the net cost to within $3,000 of the base MSRP of the legacy A3.

The A3 Sportback is the first of several models planned for the e-tron sub-brand. Charged spoke with

THE VEHICLES

Images courtesy of Audi AG

JAN/FEB 2016

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One of the biggest engineering efforts that we put into this car has to do with the transition of the electric to combustion and back.

204 8.8

Total system power:

Battery capacity:

horsepower

kilowatt-hours

Images courtesy of Audi AG

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THE VEHICLES Ajay Chawan, Audi of America’s Electric Mobility Program Manager, about the company’s plans for the plug-in Audi. Chawan has worked in the auto industry since the 1990s, and before joining Audi, he was the US Production Launch Manager for the Nissan LEAF. “The goal for this vehicle was to make it, first and foremost, an Audi,” said Chawan. “It has the profile an Audi customer expects, as far as finish, overall performance, handling, look, feel, touch. So, to that end, when the decisions were being made about what kind of hybrid systems we wanted to go with, we decided to go with the parallel hybrid, and that enabled the car to have the performance and driving dynamic that it does.”

Close cooperation Audi designed the e-tron’s two power plants to work together as a seamless system - and judging by the first drive reviews, it succeeded admirably.

The disc-shaped electric motor is integrated into the six-speed S tronic transmission, which drives the front wheels. The motor develops peak torque from zero to around 2,000 rpm, and the gas engine’s maximum power kicks in between 1,750 and 4,000 rpm. The electric motor starts the combustion engine via a clutch.

“One of the biggest engineering efforts that we put into this car has to do with the transition of the electric to combustion and back,” Filip Brabec, Audi of America’s Director of Product Management, told Green Car Congress. “When we start the engine with the electric motor, we increase the output of the electric motor to accommodate starting the engine. We have a clutch that engages and connects the two, that gets the engine going. Once the oil pressure builds up to a sufficient level, we run the engine at zero load, at which point we disconnect the two again. Once the engine catches up with the electric motor, we engage again. That’s how we make sure the transition is very smooth throughout.”

The battery pack is made up of 96 prismatic cells arranged in eight modules of twelve cells each. The e-tron is designed to be driven on electric power in broiling summers and sub-zero winters. The pack features a liquid cooling system that can also cool the power electronics and charger if necessary.

Audi deserves kudos for the portable charging unit that comes as standard equipment with the e-tron. Some automakers may steer plug-in buyers to custom-installed home charging stations, but most A3 e-tron drivers will find the portable charging unit quite adequate. It has a control unit with a graphical display, and two power

Specs and pricing Gas engine: 150 hp, 1.4 liter turbocharged four-cylinder Electric motor: 102 hp (75 kW), liquid-cooled permanent magnet Total system power: 204 hp (152 kW) Total system torque: 258 lb-ft (350 N·m) Drive: front-wheel Transmission: six-speed S tronic Battery capacity: 8.8 kWh (7.0 kWh usable) Charging power level: 3.3 kW Electric range: 16-17 miles EPA estimated fuel economy: 35-39 mpg combined; 83-86 MPGe in electric mode Cargo capacity: 13.6 cu ft (rear seats up); 39.6 cu ft (rear seats down) Curb weight: 3,616 pounds Zero-60 mph: 7.6 seconds Top speed: 130 mph (80 mph in electric mode) There are three trim levels: Prices start at $37,900 for the Premium version, which has 12-way power leather front seats, dual-zone automatic climate control, a panoramic sunroof, Bluetooth phone and audio streaming, a back-up camera with front and rear parking sensors, and the fuel-saving 16-inch summer tires.

The Premium Plus, starting at $42,000, adds LED headlights, aluminum exterior trim, heated front seats, the Audi music interface with full iPod integration and the less-efficient 17-inch all-season tires.

The top-of-the-line Prestige, which starts at $46,800, adds the Audi MMI user interface, a Bang & Olufsen 14-speaker sound system, and several autonomy features, including adaptive cruise control and active lane assist.

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We wanted to make the A3 e-tron a mainstream car. We didn’t want this to be a niche car. cables with 120 V and 240 V plugs. It can be mounted in an optional lockable wall box.

The A3 e-tron illustrates the difference that tires can make to fuel economy ratings. Equipped with the standard 17- or 18-inch all-season tires, electric range is 16 miles, and combined fuel economy is 35 mpg. The optional Ultra package includes 16-inch low-rollingresistance summer tires, which increase the range to 17 miles and fuel economy to 39 mpg.

Four ways to drive electric The A3 e-tron features four user-selectable driving modes. “When you start up the car, it’ll start in EV mode, where it’s operating purely on the battery,” Chawan explains. “The second mode is Hybrid mode, and that’s what I call the ‘set it and forget it’ mode. The car will automatically change between electric or gas, or electric plus gas, depending on how you’re driving.”

“The third mode is Hold Battery. This is designed for a lot of city driving. For example, I live in the suburbs and I drive into Washington DC. I’ll use my gas motor on the highway, but once I get into Washington gridlock, I’ll switch it over to EV mode. If you’re sitting in traffic idling, you’re not burning fuel - you have a battery pack that you’re minimally draining as you’re waiting at a red light. Hold Battery enables me to tell the car what I want to do.”

“The last mode is Charge Battery. So, if I’m working late in DC, I drive home on the highway, my battery’s depleted because I’ve been driving around in DC all day, I can use the gasoline motor to charge my battery while I drive home. Once I get into my neighborhood, I can put it into EV mode and quietly sneak into my driveway without waking people up.”

Dealing with the dealers By now, it’s been well documented that conservative and EV-skeptical auto dealers represent a major obstacle to plug-in sales success. Any automaker that’s serious about selling its electrified models needs to find a way to bring its dealerships on board. Chawan told us what Audi is doing to get its dealers excited about the e-tron sub-brand.

“This was an opt-in program, where we presented the vehicle and the program to our dealers, and we invited them to participate,” said Chawan. “I’m exceptionally pleased that just about everyone is carrying the car.”

Audi did a combination of regional training, bringing dealership staff to venues across the US, and local training at individual dealer locations.

“We would get them behind the wheel of the car, just so they would understand what it was like to drive it, Images courtesy of Audi AG

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THE VEHICLES

and what were the key differences between an A3 etron and a conventional vehicle - what were the unique selling propositions about this car. We took a car to dealers, so that everyone at the dealership - from the receptionist to service techs to porters - could see the car, put their hands on it, and take it around the block.”

The attractive price point is no accident. “We wanted to make the A3 e-tron a mainstream car. We didn’t want this to be a niche car. We wanted to make sure it was priced competitively in the space. So, it fit well within the Audi portfolio, as far as the price goes, and also within the overall marketplace.”

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“Plugging in changes everything, and there’s no looking back.”

On the advertising front, Audi has already attracted some attention with a clever campaign that compares its decision to plug in the A3 to Bob Dylan’s historic decision to plug in his guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (Audi was a sponsor of the 2015 festival). A promotional video features interviews with aging festival founders who recall that, while some of the crowd may have booed the new technology, others recognized it as a force to be reckoned with.

Taking a page from the typical EV-maker’s playbook, Audi has also been organizing events to market the e-tron to selected trendy demographic groups that seem likely to be interested in plug-ins. “For a pre-market introduction, we went on an 8-city tour with a fleet of 30 cars, with the mission of getting as many people as we could behind the wheel,” said Chawan. “That’s what’s going to convince people that this is a viable car to drive.”

“We have an experiential marketing team, and we’ll work with them to find a venue and have an event. We’ll set up a program for a day or a couple of days - we have professional drivers available and then, most importantly, have a list of prospective customers that we would reach out to directly, and invite them to come out [for a test drive].”

“This is a different driving experience, and you can’t really describe it to somebody. It’s something that a consumer has to experience firsthand. So what we tell them is get behind the wheel of the car, and just see what it

This is a different driving experience, and you can’t really describe it to somebody.

It’s something that a consumer has to experience firsthand

is to drive an electrified car versus your conventional combustion engine car, and you can see and feel the difference. Then, on paper, you can quantify it costs less per mile. It’s usually 4 cents per mile to drive electric, versus 16 for gas.”

Images courtesy of Audi AG

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THE VEHICLES Autoweek It offers pretty much all the fun-to-drive-ness of an A3. If you’re set on getting a plug-in hybrid, this one is certainly a lot more satisfying to drive than, say, a Prius or a C-Max Energi.

With that hatchback/Sportback configuration, the A3 is perfectly practical for everyday driving tasks. Push it a little harder, and it rises to the occasion better than any other plug-in hybrid out there anywhere near the price.

One thing we appreciated was the glide function - when you let off the gas the e-tron coasts, rather than immediately slowing the car with regenerative braking, a tactic that extends range.

First drives Green Car Reports The e-tron’s powertrain occasionally whined during full electric acceleration, but it’s not unpleasant. The engine switching on was only perceptible in the background - you can feel it, but it’s miles away from the urgent howl of some other plug-in hybrids.

On the road, the A3 e-tron’s added weight made it feel slightly more solid than the A3 sedan we drove last year. It drives very much like you’d expect a compact European sporty hatchback to drive. It’s a nice, competent European compact hatchback that’s enjoyable to drive.

But its dilemma is that range. Sixteen miles would have been good in 2013, but it’s at the lowest end of the field for 2016. With the 2016 Chevy Volt offering a 53-mile range, it’s hard to make the case that the plug-in A3 competes on a lot more than its brand identity.

Green Car Congress The car is tightly engineered, and drives, as one would expect, like an Audi. The A3 e-tron is very comfortable and fun to drive, especially given its power, handling and smoothness. Its cargo space and split fold-down rear seats enhance its general utility.

It’s a great EV when it’s in electric mode, and a terrific hybrid when in that mode. The engine, one of the smaller displacement engines currently used in PHEVs, never sounds as if it is straining to deliver, even on kickdown for some aggressive passing in hybrid mode, for example.

[Because of the e-tron’s specially optimized suspension], steering is light, and higher-speed cornering is firm, without any wallowing from the extra weight of the battery pack in the rear. On a drive along tightly winding roads, the A3 Sportback e-tron stayed planted to the pavement on its line through tight curves taken at speed.

One of the more striking driving characteristics is the remarkably seamless transition between the motor and the engine...seamless to the point of not being detectable aside from the engine sound.

Audi engineers achieved this through the design of the drive unit itself, and through the control software.

Edmunds Apart from the silence, the e-tron’s general comportment gives off a typical A3 vibe. The steering feels familiar, and the reassuring feel of the brakes never reveals whether the car is slowing because of magnetic repulsion in the generator or traditional pads and rotors.

Even the recalibrated A3 suspension makes it hard to tell that it’s toting some 300 pounds of added electrical bits.

The level of sound comes up as we floor the throttle and spur the engine to life, but it’s appropriate because it comes with a rush of acceleration. The odd part is the length of time it takes - something like a minute - for the engine to go dormant and resume EV mode.

The engine runs most of the time once the battery runs down, and here the A3’s six-speed DSG transmission proves far more direct and pleasant than the continuously variable transmissions in competing PHEVs.

Autoblog Accelerating to 60 miles per hour takes 7.6 seconds under the power of both the gasoline and electric motors, yet it feels peppier than that number suggests.

Despite the e-tron technology, this car very much drives like your typical A3. Once underway, it’s easy to forget there’s all that fancy, newfangled technology at work. The gas engine and electric motor work together seamlessly.

PC Magazine The 2016 e-tron uses the Audi MMI infotainment interface that consists of a rotary dial surrounded by four buttons. As on the A3 sedan, two toggle switches in front of the controller are used to select Navigation, Phone, Radio, and Media, making it much easier for drivers to access these functions without looking down.

The Audi connect system offers cloud-connected features such as Google Earth maps and local search, the ability to create a Wi-Fi hotspot in the car, a Twitter app, and information on traffic, weather, parking, and events, but it requires a paid subscription.

Unfortunately, the system doesn’t have in-dash apps for popular streaming services like Pandora and Spotify like most competitors, and it uses Audi’s frustrating proprietary portable device interface instead of a simple USB port.

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CURRENTevents Oregonians argue about energy plan China State Grid opens station to charge 30 e-buses at up to 360 kW

Xiaoying Terminal originally supported a natural gas hybrid bus fleet. At least 10 city bus routes have now converted to battery-electric buses. For example, route 13 is using Foton buses with battery technology from Microvast. Recharging takes 10-15 minutes, and takes place 2-3 times per day, during driver breaks, with several route loops between each charge.

There are already plans for the facility to be expanded as more bus routes convert to EVs.

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Image courtesy of Microvast

China is now the capital of big things, especially when it comes to EVs. China State Grid has opened the world’s largest ultra-fast EV charging station in Beijing. The 26,500-square-meter charging complex at Xiaoying Terminal has 25 360 kW chargers and five 90 kW chargers, and can charge 30 electric transit buses at a time.

Lawmakers in Oregon are considering an energy initiative that sets some modest goals for phasing out coalbased generation and encouraging renewable energy sources. The plan also incentivizes the rollout of EV charging infrastructure by allowing charging station owners to sell clean-fuel credits.

A recent editorial in The Oregonian lambasted the Oregon Clean Electricity & Coal Transition Plan, saying it would do little to reduce carbon emissions, and would force all state residents to subsidize EVSE. In a rebuttal to the Oregonian’s editors, Jeff Allen, Executive Director of the EV advocate group Drive Oregon, wrote that in fact, if the proposal becomes law, EV owners will more than pay back the cost of investments in charging, and Oregonians will actually see lower power rates.

Allen’s arguments may be relevant far beyond Oregon.

Utilities around the country are encouraging EVs, which they see as an opportunity to sell more electricity (and doing their best to kill rooftop solar, which they see as a threat). Are EVs a net positive or a negative for electric ratepayers?

“There is ample evidence that growing numbers of electric vehicles will lower rates for all Oregonians,” writes Allen. “Utilities invest in power plants, transmission lines and other infrastructure to provide us all with electricity. When this infrastructure is used more efficiently, to deliver more kilowatt-hours of power, those fixed costs can be spread, lowering the cost of each kilowatt-hour for all ratepayers.”

Allen goes on to point out that EVs can provide load-levelling and regulating services to the grid. “Since electric cars tend to charge at home, overnight, they provide a lot of value to utilities. One California study found that each electric car was worth between $2,788 and $9,799 to the utility and its ratepayers. Work in Washington State found similar results: electric car drivers subsidize the grid and lower power rates for everyone else.”

“Electric vehicles also stimulate Oregon’s economy by returning money to owners that would otherwise be spent on imported gasoline,” writes Allen. “One study found that every dollar shifted out of gasoline spending produces 16 times more jobs.”

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Image courtesy of mariordo59 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Stationary storage system enables a quick charge without straining the grid A team of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne has developed an intermediary power storage device that can quickly charge a car without putting a strain on the power grid. Their goal is to make charging an EV as quick and easy as filling a legacy vehicle with gas.

“With this buffer storage, charging stations can be disconnected from the grid while still providing a high charge level for cars,” said researcher Alfred Rufer.

The storage device is a lithium-ion pack the size of a shipping container that constantly pulls power slowly

from the grid. The device can currently charge a typical EV battery in 15 minutes.

“Our aim was to get under the psychological threshold of a half hour,” said Massimiliano Capezzali, Deputy Director of the EPFL Energy Center. “But there is room for improvement.”

Researchers built models to predict the ways gas stations will need to adapt as dinosaur burners are phased out and replaced by large numbers of EVs. Their numbers suggest that a station charging 200 cars per day would require a buffer storage capacity of 2.2 megawatt hours, which corresponds to a storage device about the size of four containers.

“Electric cars will change our habits. It’s clear that, in the future, several types of charging systems, such as slow charging at home and ultra-fast charging for long-distance travel, will co-exist,” said Capezzali.

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6th Annual Knowledge Foundation

April 18-20, 2016 | San Diego, CA CONFERENCE TRACKS: APRIL 18-19

SYMPOSIA: APRIL 20

TRACK 1:

Mobile Power SYMPOSIUM 1:

TRACK 2:

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Lithium Batteries for Large-Scale Applications

TRACK 3:

Stationary Energy Storage

SYMPOSIUM 2:

Flexible Batteries

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Uncle Santa left a few small presents under the tree for EV advocates last year, in the form of provisions included in a federal transportation bill that was approved in mid-December.

The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST), signed into law by President Obama, authorizes a vast array of highway and public transportation projects, including a mandate for the DOT to designate corridors for EV charging and hydrogen, natural gas, and propane fueling on US highways.

The corridors, which will be chosen based on strategic importance, expected demand and the location of existing infrastructure, must be designated by December 2016, after which officials will set goals for the actual deployment of infrastructure.

Another measure authorizes the General Services Administration to install charging stations at its facilities for use by federal employees and the general public, who will have to pay fees for charging, with the aim of eventually making the stations self-sustaining.

The federal tax credit of up to $1,000 for home charging stations (and 30 percent of the cost for businesses, with a maximum of $30,000) has been renewed.

The existing tax credit of up to $7,500 for plug-in vehicle purchases remains unchanged.

Audi to launch wireless charging in 2017 Audi’s e-tron quattro SUV, due out in 2018, is one of several planned EVs that will offer American car buyers more space and more range.

Longer ranges mean bigger batteries, and that means either longer charge times or higher charging power levels, and there’s no question which of those consumers will prefer.

“Progress in charging technology is crucial to the success of electromobility,” says Audi in a press release, announcing plans to deploy DC fast charging infrastructure with at least 150 kW of power in 2017 (today’s norm is 50 kW, but the new CCS standard allows for up to 350 kW). With 150 kW charging technology, an SUV such as the e-tron quattro could charge its 95 kWh battery to 80% capacity in less than half an hour, enough for a cruising range of around 250 miles.

Audi says that such high power levels require cooling of the charging connector to prevent thermally overloading the pins.

Also in 2017, the company expects to launch Audi wireless charging (AWC), an inductive AC technology for home charging. AWC uses a floor charging plate with an integrated primary coil and an inverter. The first-generation system offers charging power of 3.6 kW, and Audi hopes to raise power levels to as much as 11 kW in the next version.

When the car approaches to within a few meters of the charging plate, radio contact is established, and the driver sees the precise position of the plate on the car’s display screen. Prior to charging, an electric motor in the floor plate raises the primary coil to minimize the distance to the secondary coil, which is integrated into the front section of the Audi e-tron’s floor pan.

Audi is also developing a system that lets the car position itself. The driver can get out of the car and initiate the parking procedure via smartphone.

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Image courtesy of Audi

Federal transportation bill includes a few EV goodies

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Fastned, a charging network operator in the Netherlands, has partnered with Nissan to offer a free charging package to Nissan EV drivers.

Fastned currently has a network of over 50 public charging stations, and says it is building an average of one new station per week.

Every Dutch buyer of a new Nissan LEAF or e-NV200 will now receive the Nissan e-Four package, which includes not only unlimited fast charging at Fastned stations, but also a free rental car for long trips (12 weeks total), free maintenance and a free charge point at home or at work.

“With this Fastned subscription Nissan drivers can fast-charge for free throughout the Netherlands, and soon throughout Europe,” said Michiel Langezaal, CEO of Fastned. “This partnership not only makes electric driving economical, it also makes electric cars accessible to those without their own charging points at home.”

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Image courtesy of Fastned

Dutch buyers get four years of fast charging with Nissan EVs

BMW and Nissan have teamed up to deploy a network of 120 public dual-standard DC charging locations across 19 states.

Each of the new locations will offer a 50 kW DC fast charging station with both CHAdeMO (used by Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Kia ) and CCS Combo (used by BMW and most other US and German automakers) connectors, to serve EV owners of both persuasions. Drivers can locate the stations using the smartphone app of their choice, including BMW’s ConnectedDrive and Nissan’s EZ-Charge. The chargers are compatible with Nissan EZCharge cards.

“BMW continues to pursue new ways to support the development of a robust public charging infrastructure that will benefit current and future BMW i3 owners across the country,” said Cliff Fietzek, Manager Connected eMobility, BMW of North America. “This BMW-Nissan project builds on BMW’s ongoing commitment to participate in joint partnerships designed to expand DC Fast charging options nationwide for all EV drivers.”

“Nissan takes a three-pronged approach to growing public EV charging options for LEAF drivers by installing quick chargers in the community, at corporate workplaces and at Nissan dealerships,” said Andrew Speaker, Nissan’s Director of Electric Vehicle Sales and Marketing.

Image courtesy of Nissan

BMW and Nissan partner to deploy dual-standard public fast chargers

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has authorized Southern California Edison to develop a pilot program to incentivize the deployment of around 1,500 EV charging stations and to conduct education and outreach activities.

Edison will spend $22 million on Phase 1 of its Charge Ready and Market Education Programs.

Participating customers will own and operate the charging stations, while Edison will pay for all paneling, conduits, and wiring up to the station itself, and also provide rebates to site owners - 25% of the base cost for non-residential locations, 50% of the base cost for multiunit dwellings, and 100% of the base cost for stations within disadvantaged communities.

Stations are to be deployed at locations where drivers typically leave their cars parked for four hours or more: workplaces and fleet facilities, multi-unit dwellings, and destination locations such as parks and shopping malls.

Single-family homes are not eligible.

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Image courtesy of Southern California Edison

SCE to offer incentives for 1,500 charging stations

Schneider Electric, a specialist in energy management and automation, and EverCharge, a provider of EV charging solutions, have announced a collaboration that aims to accelerate the build-out of EV charging infrastructure in multi-unit buildings such as apartments, condominiums and office buildings.

One of the challenges of adding EV charging stations to multi-tenant facilities is sharing a finite amount of power when multiple vehicles need to charge at the same time.

EverCharge’s SmartPower technology intelligently manages charging to get the maximum benefit from a complex’s existing power capacity. The company says that its system can increase charging capacity up to 10 times through proprietary power management technology.

Under the new collaboration, EverCharge will integrate Schneider Electric’s EVlink Home EV Charger with its SmartPower system.

“We started EverCharge with the mission of helping multi-tenant buildings overcome the challenges of installing EV charging stations,” said EverCharge CEO Jason Appelbaum.

“With most charging done at home and rapid urbanization happening globally, having EV charging in apartments and condominiums is critical to the continued success of EV adoption,” said Pierre Sacré, Schneider’s Director of Electric Vehicle Solutions.

Image courtesy of EverCharge

Schneider Electric and EverCharge collaborate on EV charging in multiunit buildings

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Numerous panel discussions and technical presenta.ons, full exhibi.on, 600+ a8endees

FROM

LEARNING NORWAY 6

infrastructure lessons from the world’s EV market share leader

By Michael Kent

“W

hen you get off the plane in Oslo, Norway, it is like entering fairytale land for people in the EV industry,” says Rami Syväri of charging network operator Fortum.

Thanks to hefty government incentives - including zero import taxes, charging incentives and bus lane access - Norway has quickly catapulted its EV market from early-adopter status into mass-market acceptance. As much as a quarter of all new cars sold in Norway are EVs or PHEVs, and some dealers report over 90% EV sales. Today, the country has about 80,000 plug-ins on the road, and with a population of just 5 million, that puts Norway at the top of the global market share list.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Photo courtesy of Norsk Elbilforening - CC BY 2.0

JAN/FEB 2016

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25% 80

Norway has about

of new cars sold in Norway are EVs or PHEVs

thousand plug-ins on the road

Companies that operate in Norway’s EV-topia are years ahead of other world markets in terms of lessons learned and processes improved. Syväri is the International Expansion Manager for Fortum’s Charge & Drive charging services. As the leading fast charging service provider in Norway, the company has a unique glimpse into a future where EVs are mainstream.

“Charge & Drive is the largest player in Norway’s quick charging,” Jan Haugen Ihle, Fortum’s Country Manager for Norway, told Charged. “There are about 280 rapid chargers in the Norwegian market and we currently own or operate approximately 150 of them.

We also won a new contract in December to deploy 77 fast chargers in 44 locations along six major transport corridors in Norway.” The typical Charge & Drive location includes two 50 kW CCS and CHAdeMO ports and a double 22 kW Type 2 port.

Fortum - an energy company with areas of operation in the Nordic and the Baltic nations, Russia and Poland - also operates its Charge & Drive network in other countries that are in various stages of EV market development.

“At Charge & Drive we have the benefit of observing and learning from three different market stages at the same time,” explained Syväri. “Finland is in the early stages with about 5 million people and 1,500 plug-in vehicles, Sweden is a bit more developed with 10 million inhabitants and around 15,000 vehicles, and Norway is leading at the mass-market stage with 5 million people and 80,000 vehicles.”

Being involved in these three markets at three different stages of building fast charging networks gives Fortum a clear view of the different challenges that are faced at each stage. So, we asked Syväri and Ihle to describe some of the top lessons learned.

1: Develop great user guides and 24/7 hotlines Early adopters are people who know exactly what they want when they go shopping. They are typically tech-

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At Charge & Drive we have the benefit of observing and learning from three different market stages at the same time savvy and want to be part of the movement. “Early on in the game they could even educate us on the subject,” said Syväri. Most EV markets in the world are still in this stage, in which drivers tend to be the trend-setting sort.

However, in a mass market, like Norway’s, essentially everybody becomes an EV buyer. More and more people buy EVs because it’s the best solution for them, but they do so without as much research or self-education as early adopters. When they drive off the car lot, they often expect charging to be as simple as refueling a gas car.

“When new mass market buyers arrive at the charging stations, they really need to have detailed and simple-to-understand instructions,” said Syväri. “And you

Photo courtesy of Fortum Charge & Drive

As much as

THE INFRASTRUCTURE Photo courtesy of Fortum Charge & Drive

Photo courtesy of Fortum Charge & Drive

also need to have a 24/7 skilled hotline to help out.”

Charge & Drive describes times when, even with clearly displayed charging instructions, people go inside retail stores at charging sites to ask employees for help. “We’ve had reports of drivers asking McDonald’s employees to show them how the charger works,” said Syväri. “So, great user instructions are definitely needed, but it’s also important to clearly display a hotline number to call if you need further assistance.”

2: Tag all customer calls

To continually improve the customer experience, Charge & Drive emphasizes the importance of tagging all customer service calls that come in to the service hotline. This allows the network operator to analyze trends and determine what areas of the user interface need to be improved.

“In March, for example, 43% of the calls to our hotline were about text message payments,” explained Syväri.

Text message, or SMS, payments allow users to pay for products via a mobile phone. EV drivers are instructed to text a certain code to start the charging session, and to

More and more people buy EVs because it’s the best solution for them, but they do so without as much research or self-education as early adopters. text another code to stop. The payment is then applied to the customer’s mobile phone bill.

“While we thought that text messaging would be an easy way of identifying yourself to a charger and paying for the session, it turns out it’s not, because 43% of the customer support calls is too much,” said Syväri.

When Charge & Drive noticed this trend in its tag records, it began to work on easier payment options to reduce the friction for new customers. It quickly launched payment options within its charge point locator app.

Now, regular users can easily save their payment options and tourists can input their credit cards into the same app that they use to find the charging stations.

3: Mitigate queuing anxiety

We’re all familiar with the notion of range anxiety, but unless you’ve spent time driving in one of the few EV-dense markets, you may not be aware of queuing anxiety. Simply put, it’s the fear of having to wait in line to use a public charging station.

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Photo courtesy of Norsk Elbilforening - CC BY 2.0

Looking at their session data, Charge & Drive noticed that locations with two or three charging stations had higher average usage rates than locations with just one station. By engaging its customers, the company learned that regular users were avoiding sites with just one charging station, for fear that they would have to wait in line.

“These situations occur where the market is hitting mass,” said Syväri. “To avoid queuing, people tended to drive to where they assume there is a lower chance of waiting in line. In early-stage markets, station redundancy isn’t an option because of limited resources. In Finland, for example, where we are just starting to build corridors, the focus is on getting the first chargers in place. To start a new market from zero, you need to use your resources for showcases. First you want to build the ability to drive on a long corridor, and do it with the least amount of chargers possible in the beginning. However, as the market grows you need to realize that redundant chargers are very important, because drivers will favor those locations.”

4: High-quality charging hardware is critical

This may seem like common sense, but until you’ve experienced the headaches of lower-quality hardware it’s hard to appreciate. The cost of repeated service calls to charging stations can quickly exceed any up-front savings on cheaper units.

“We learned that we really need high quality and good designs,” said Syväri. “The reason is that low quality ends up driving costs up. Sending out a technician is extremely expensive, and the same is true for user interface designs.

If the UI is bad, the customer calls the help center.”

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Norway has about

Fortum operates about

rapid chargers installed

of them

280 150

To avoid queuing, people tended to drive to where they assume there is a lower chance of waiting in line.

5. Keep good fault logs

As well as tagging customer service calls to see trends happening from the user’s perspective, Charge & Drive stresses the importance of good bookkeeping for any technical problems that arise with the chargers. The company keeps detailed fault logs of any issues experienced with the system, as well as communications between the chargers and the back end.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Photo courtesy of ABB

JAN/FEB 2016

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“There will always be challenges over time with any hardware,” said Syväri. “With good fault logs we are able to immediately go deep in analyzing the data to find what is wrong with the charger. It’s not always obvious what the problem is, but with more information you can send out technicians that already have a good idea of what the problem is. This reduces both system downtime and service costs.”

6. Know your business case and stick to it

Navigating the new EV industry is tricky for any company attempting to build a long-term business model.

In the past few years we’ve seen many small companies come and go, and large corporations announce EV charging initiatives only to scale back the scope.

The good news is that as the infrastructure market develops, there are now great examples of some models that work well and some that don’t. It’s a good idea for any company in the market to examine these case studies, stay lean, and focus on what has proven to be a sustainable business.

Consumer facing Like many other infrastructure trailblazers around the world, Charge & Drive experimented with payment schemes on the consumer side, and settled on the view that they are selling a charging service.

“We are primarily selling a charging service,” said Syväri. “A retail location could allow an EV driver to plug into a normal outlet, and they could get the same amount of electricity as using one of our DC fast chargers. However, what we are offering is a high-tech solution that enables someone to get the energy in a much

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Photo courtesy of Norsk Elbilforening - CC BY 2.0

With minute-based pricing the cost per benefit is growing over time and the user will occupy that charger the absolute minimum amount of time needed. shorter time. So the benefit we’re offering is access to the technology and the service. It’s the whole package - the speed, instructions, customer service, easy payment functionality, etc.”

Because it’s selling a service, Charge & Drive sets prices per minute and not per kWh. This has the added advantage of incentivizing drivers to use the chargers for only the minimum amount of time needed. “The charging rate gets slower over time, and eventually reaches zero when the EV is fully recharged,” explained Syväri.

“So the motivation of the user to free up the charger is slowing over time with per kWh pricing. With minutebased pricing the cost per benefit is growing over time and the user will occupy that charger the absolute minimum amount of time needed. This means the average charging time drops, which increases the availability of the station. And, in fact, that availability is the largest

THE INFRASTRUCTURE Photo courtesy of Fortum Charge & Drive

benefit that the users want from the service.”

In the beginning, the company received some critical comments from drivers who thought paying for the amount of electricity used was the fairest pricing structure - similar to the way we’re used to paying for gasoline by the gallon. However, Syväri said that after the market begins to mature and queuing becomes an issue, the benefits of paying per minute become clearer to drivers and they’re eventually happy with that pricing model.

Business-to-business On the business management side, Fortum zeroed in on a few different models that worked for them. It invests in chargers, installs, operates and offers end-user services.

It also operates and maintains chargers owned by other companies. And, finally, it offers a cloud-based softwareas-a-service system that others can use to operate their own chargers.

“To have a good EV charging business, you really need to know how many charges a day you’re going to need to be profitable and have the ability to optimize that,” said Syväri. “So, you need to have a system which tells you this kind of basic information, and we offer that as well.”

Photo courtesy of Norsk Elbilforening - CC BY 2.0

In fact, that availability is the largest benefit that the users want from the service.

More mass markets A lot of EV industry watchers have high hopes that the $30,000, 200-mile EV will be the tipping point that brings a lot of the early adopter markets into the mass adoption phase. The Chevy Bolt EV will be the first to hit the US in a few short months, so the transition could be here before we know it.

In the meantime, there is a lot we can learn from studying Norway, where the mass market has arrived not because of range increases but because of government incentives. Ihle told us that he was recently at a charging site in Norway where a couple drove up in their Nissan LEAF, and both of them were over 70.

“That gives an impression of where a market is,” he said.

“They were not the most tech-savvy people, or interested in the nitty-gritty of the EV industry. They just want to buy a car and have everything work smoothly.”

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77

LESS IS

MORE

By Markkus Rovito

Telefonix makes the case for free Level 1 workplace charging as the best way to encourage EV adoption.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE Salt River Project Telefonix installation in Tempe, AZ

E

veryone who watches the sketch comedy show Portlandia knows that the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland. Our dream of the 90s was vehicle electrification, and we hoped the GM EV-1 would kick-start the trend more than a decade before the Tesla Roadster actually did it.

Well, the vehicle electrification dream is alive in Portland, and when you go there, you can witness it as soon as you step off the plane. As of August, Portland International Airport (PDX) sports 42 Telefonix L1 PowerPost Level 1 charging stations, all of which are free to use for airport employees and visitors.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute. Level 1?

Free charging? Those really are concepts from the 90s,” then you’re thinking along on the lines of LEED certification and most government incentive programs, which don’t have a lot of regard for L1 charging. However, Bill Williams, Business Development Manager at Telefonix, EVSE division, sees a reckoning on the horizon for public Level 2 charging.

Photo courtesy of Telefonix

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The level playing field Williams, who has been beating the drum for L1 workplace charging at Telefonix for about two years, talks frequently about the progression of EVSE coming to a fork in the road, where in one direction you have public charging moving toward paid DC fast charging, and in the other you have free L1 for “long-dwell” locations, such as workplaces, airports and hotels. Even though L2 public stations are extremely common at the moment, a growing mound of evidence indicates that L1 charging may be more suitable for many applications that encourage EV adoption.

A large survey from March 2015 by PlugInsights found that only 5-7% of total monthly EV charging was happening at either paid or free public L2 stations. The survey also showed that 58% of public L2 station users have been unable to charge at some point because the equipment was out of service. Often the service shutdown was due to the networked payment equipment. PlugInsights’ conclusions at the end of the document included a recommendation for public fast charging instead of public L2.

Another 2015 study from the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project (SWEEP) showed that public L2 charging in Boulder, Colorado - a region with an EV adoption rate second only to California - was greatly underutilized.

The report recommended shifting public charging to DC quick charging and offering L1 for free workplace charging.

“Those findings have also been corroborated by cities like Copenhagen,” Williams said, “where significant EV adoption and charging infrastructure development efforts have found that home and workplace charging have by far the biggest impact on EV adoption and use.”

The SWEEP study’s recommendations sound like they could have come straight from Williams’ mouth. He’s on a crusade to supply the $1,495 MSRP Telefonix L1 PowerPost charging station to workplaces - one hospital, school or office block at a time. The L1 PowerPost charger can replenish 20 miles of EV range - about the average length of a commute - in about four hours for less than $1 at today’s average rates. That makes for an employee perk that’s on par with free coffee, and the low-power charging likely won’t boost electricity rates to levels that would incur demand charges from the utility. While Telefonix can supply a metering solution for its PowerPost units, by making the charging free to employees the employer saves on monthly metering fees and keeps the cost lower.

“A lot of employers get sticker shock from quotes by the larger networks, who say the chargers are as much as $6,000-7,000 each, and the monthly fees are $25-$30 per

80

Photos courtesy of Telefonix

THE INFRASTRUCTURE Telefonix Level 1 charging stations at Portland International Airport

handle,” Williams said. “They walk away thinking, ‘well if this is charging, then I’m not going to offer it.’ To make this really go mainstream, all the law offices, veterinarians and office buildings out there could easily put in two to four chargers, without all the complicated network stuff, and just pay a one-time fee for the equipment.”

Using the Portland Airport as an example, Williams said that for what PDX paid for 42 L1 PowerPost EVSEs, it could have bought 10 L2 networked stations. However, Williams points out that L2 is overkill in “long-dwell” parking lots like at airports, hotels and workplaces.

“Why use a microwave in a crockpot situation?” Williams asked. “Level 1 is just more bang for your buck. 78% of people commute 20 miles or less. That’s a quarter of an EV’s range; if the battery pack is 24 kWh, that’s replenishing 6 kWh at 10 cents a kWh: 60 cents.”

Free coffee and free juice At such a low price, more employers may opt to consider charging as a free employee perk, especially if the company has any sustainability goals to reduce workers’ greenhouse gas emissions. Williams understands that businesses giving away free charging could receive complaints from non-EV drivers. “The perception can be that EV drivers are not only getting free electricity, but also premium parking, but one of the things we always educate customers about is that EV drivers are happy with charg-

Level 1 is just more bang for your buck. ing anywhere at the facility and the closer to the panel, the less expensive the installation. At the end of the day, you don’t stop offering free coffee to employees because you have a small group that prefers tea,” he quipped.

Williams has been working on vehicle electrification for 20 years, going all the way back to selling the Trans 2 “goofy looking golf carts” in the 90s. He also spent years as an executive for the Zenn (Zero Emission, No Noise) Motor Company in the 2000s, when the Prius hybrid was at full strength.

“About 50% of people buying the Prius at that time owned three or four cars,” he said. “That shows the Prius was going to be dad’s work car, or mom’s car to drive to school. They were buying it specifically for commuting. I think the industry’s trying to shoot themselves in the foot by always talking about the ultimate range EV that we can drive to Vegas.

To move EV adoption forward at a quicker pace, I prefer a commuter-targeting sales pitch. I focus on EV adoption 24 hours a day, and the simplest way for us to have the biggest impact is in the workplace. Workplace charging surveys have shown an employee is 20 times more likely to consider a plug-in vehicle if they’re offered charging at work.”

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Level 1 misconceptions There are misconceptions not only about how much it has to cost to provide free workplace charging, but also about how Level 1 charging stations work. Customers aren’t clear about how long they take to charge, and may wonder whether you might as well just use regular power outlets.

For one thing, a particular plug-in car may have its own settings for how fast it charges over L1. For example, Chevy Volts since model year 2013 have defaulted to charging at 8 amps over 120 V, and not everyone knows that the user can set a preference to charge at 12 amps when they’re at home.

“In fact, our Level 1 charges at 16 amps, and we deliver a 1.92 kW charging rate, which is more than a Chevy Volt can take,” Williams said. “Also, the misinformation on how long it takes to charge with L1, that’s starting from a totally depleted battery. People rarely are totally depleted, especially if we’re talking about commuting. We’re just replenishing what it took to get there.”

Williams said he often uses outlets to charge his car, bringing his own cord charger with him to long-term airport parking lots, for example. However, when most people are going to the airport, bringing their own charging cords is not going to fly, and Williams knew just how to explain it to PDX. “Outlets were the first conversation I had with them, and all we had to do was talk about liability,” he said. “When people bring their own cords, there’s a chance of theft or damage, so then you have the liability of a $500 or more cord set. Also, the outlet itself is not designed to be plugged into and unplugged 365 times a year.”

Also, PDX won’t have the safety hazard of cords lying around on the ground, because the Telefonix PowerPost uses the company’s most famous innovation, its patented retractable cord reel. You’ve probably used it before. The company’s cord reel technology first became commercially

82

Outlets were the first conversation I had with them, and all we had to do was talk about liability. When people bring their own cords, there’s a chance of theft or damage. recognizable on airplane phones about 25 years ago, and it is still found on 80% of long-haul commercial aircraft for things like entertainment system handsets or control units.

In fact, the cord reel’s utility is what inspired Telefonix to go into the EVSE business. Their ubiquity means that most EV drivers instinctively understand how to use them, and they automatically retract back into the PowerPost EVSE, keeping the ground around EV charging stations nice and tidy.

Williams said the PDX board was convinced that the cord reel cords were more durable and that L1 PowerPost EVSEs made the most sense for them. However, they didn’t even know there were commercial L1 chargers available until they looked around and saw that airports in Denver, Tampa, Reno, Cincinnati and North Carolina had already adopted Telefonix chargers.

Sensible incentives Telefonix struggles a bit with the lack of awareness of commercial L1 charging, and Williams’ mission includes spreading that awareness, in part by lobbying for commercial L1 to be added to incentive programs. Currently, L1 charging gets short shrift when it comes to govern-

Photos courtesy of Telefonix

THE INFRASTRUCTURE ment clean energy programs and LEED green building certification. Williams puts himself in front of influential people to try to change this situation whenever possible.

He’s talking to the Green Parking Council, which collaborates with the Green Building Certification Institute - the certification body for LEED green buildings. He’s talking to Robert Graham, the head of the DOE’s EV Everywhere program, which includes the Workplace Charging Challenge that aims to increase the number of US employers offering workplace charging tenfold by 2018. He’s also hopeful about convincing Colorado, which currently doesn’t offer grants for L1, to add it to a workplace charging program that the state is planning.

“I’m barking up the tree,” Williams said. “I’m not going down silent.”

After its L1 PowerPost EVSE launched in May 2013, Telefonix followed up with the L2 PowerPost charging station ($1,795 MSRP) in August 2014. Does Williams’ railing against the logic of L2 argue against the Telefonix L2 product? Not really, because there’s a twist to the L2 PowerPost station. It’s a low-current Level 2 charger designed for outdoor use. It operates at 208-240 V, but only requires a 20-amp circuit, meaning that many facilities can install the stations without upgrading their existing electrical supplies, and there’s less risk of triggering expensive demand charges from the utility.

Since the Level 2 chargers will replenish the commute range in half the time, he still recommends the practice of installing these lower priced single-port L2 chargers, rather than dual chargers, between 2-4 parking spaces.

This enables the practice of “Moving cords, not cars.”

You don’t want a nurse, a teacher, or a high-salaried programmer leaving in the middle of their workday to go move a car when it’s done charging.

Having an L2 product also lets Telefonix customers take advantage of grant money that doesn’t apply to L1 chargers.

One of the first L1 PowerPost customers, Denver International Airport, recently came back to Telefonix for an order of 10 L2 PowerPost chargers so that it could use Colorado grant money that doesn’t cover L1 chargers. The airport could have had 12 L1 PowerPost units for the same price, but it wouldn’t have received incentive money to do so.

Leveling up Airports have been very good to Telefonix so far, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg for workplace and long-term charging. “There are millions of employers out there that could have charging stations overnight if we do this right,” Williams said. “And that’s really what needs to happen.”

There are millions of employers out there that could have charging stations overnight if we do this right.

In June, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston ordered six L2 PowerPost EVSEs to offer free charging to employees. An MD Anderson manager noted that the center’s decision to make workplace charging free helps to promote public air quality, which fits in with its mission to eliminate cancer.

That promotion of public health is just one of the reasons why Williams loves the potential to promote workplace charging within the medical community.

“Seven out of 10 of the highest paid jobs are in the medical profession,” Williams said. “And who’s buying an EV? It’s the upward end of $130K-200K a year households.

Hospitals want to promote clean air and healthy living, and they tend to be more interested in new technology.”

Williams said that part of his sales pitch is the publicity that comes at the end of the deal.

“I always talk to customers about putting your green foot forward out there,” Williams said. “Let’s do a ribbon cutting. I always volunteer for that, and my company supports me. If I need to fly to Boise to do a ribbon-cutting, they’re behind it 100%. That’s the fun side of it.”

Perhaps that’s part of what keeps Telefonix EVSE customers coming back for more.

Repeat PowerPost customers have been common, and Williams doesn’t mind doing the piecemeal approach, where a customer orders a few chargers here, and another couple there.

“Every school could have two chargers put in for their teachers who have adopted EVs,” he said, “and my pitch to them is that I’ll come in and speak and turn it into a curriculum. I’m meeting with several school districts about an education program I’ve developed. We’ll teach the kids about that teacher’s commute, how much CO2 was saved from the air and how their renewable energy program is working with the new EV chargers.”

Williams concludes, “If we want EV adoption to increase, workplace charging is the best and most efficient place to focus our efforts. If we expect this sustainable effort to go mainstream, then we need to make it more sustainable and cost-effective.”

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BYD Tang PHEV

Image courtesy of BYD

By Charles Morris

BYD

A DRAGON FLEXES ITS WINGS hich automaker sold the most plug-in vehicles worldwide last year? Well, ‘twasn’t Tesla, which sold just over 50,000, nor was it Nissan, which moved a similar number. No, the best-seller was BYD, a Chinese company that says it sold 61,722 plug-ins in 2015.

BYD is no newcomer to the EV trade - it launched a plug-in hybrid called the F3DM in December 2008, exactly two years before the Volt made its debut. These days its two top-selling models are PHEVs: the Qin compact sedan and the Tang SUV. BYD also sells the e6 compact EV, most of which are in service as taxis, and produces the Denza electric hatchback under a joint venture with Daimler.

BYD isn’t so well known in the West, probably because it sells most of its vehicles in China. However, it’s beginning to make forays into other markets. It has been selling plug-ins in Costa Rica since 2013, and more recently placed a few EVs with taxi and rideshare companies in Brussels, London and San Diego. Last May, Uber announced plans to test 25 BYD e6s in Chicago.

BYD is a major player in the growing market for electric transit buses. The company says it has sold over 5,000 of its e-buses, which have been evaluated by 110 cities in 36 countries. Several of those cities are in California, where BYD has two bus assembly plants (local production is pretty much a necessity to sell buses to US transit agencies). In 2015, BYD opened a new factory in Brazil to manufacture e-buses and battery packs.

Like Tesla, BYD is not just an automaker but a battery manufacturer - it hopes to increase global production by 6 GWh per year and reach 34 GWh by 2020, putting it about even with Tesla’s Gigafactory.

According to Lux Research, BYD is currently the sixth-biggest global manufacturer of vehicle batteries. A recent report from Navigant Research calls BYD a “contender” in the market, a rung below leaders LG Chem, Panasonic and Samsung SDI, and on a par with companies like Johnson Controls and A123.

BYD is also a player in the mushrooming stationary storage market. It demonstrated a home energy storage system in 2010, long before Tesla got into the game. Although it never established a foothold in the residential market, today it sells large energy storage systems to utilities and businesses - around 70 MWh of storage projects in the US in 2015, with another 130 MWh on the table.

BYD e6 EV

BYD has been talking about selling a passenger EV in the US retail market since 2009, but no vehicle has appeared, and the company has cried wolf so many times that most of the press seems to have written it off. However, this dragon isn’t sleeping, and it could come marauding in the West sooner rather than later.

BYD is the biggest of the Chinese EV-makers, but it is not alone.

BAIC and Geely/Kandi are the other major players, and between them, these firms dominate their home turf - Western automakers are a minor presence in the Chinese EV market, where even the bold and daring Tesla has had trouble gaining a foothold.

The scale of projects in China tends to boggle the Occidental mind. For North American and European cities, a pilot of a dozen electric buses is considered a major initiative. Meanwhile, the city of Hangzhou ordered 2,000 e-buses and 1,000 electric taxis back in 2014.

If and when BYD establishes a major presence in the West, its experience producing EVs in large volumes could make it a formidable competitor.

Image courtesy of Linuxthink (CC BY-SA 3.0)

BYD Qin PHEV

Image courtesy of BYD

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