CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine - Issue 26 JUL/AUG 2016 by CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine

ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE

ISSUE 26 | JULY/AUGUST 2016 | CHARGEDEVS.COM

The inevitability of

ELECTRIC BUSES

The market continues to grow quickly as leaders work to remove the last barriers to adoption.

p. 40

Intelligent isolation monitoring

High-precision battery testing

Rimac invents the Croatian auto industry

WattZillaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s high-power EVSE serves all

p. 20

p. 24

p. 52

p. 72

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THE TECH CONTENTS

20 | Intelligent isolation

Bender launches a new off-the-shelf automotivegrade isolation monitoring device for EV builders

24 | High-precision battery testing

Arbin’s new battery testing equipment is capable of ultra-high-precision measurements, offering a better glimpse into the future of battery performance

current events 10

Intersil’s new 12-cell Li-ion battery pack monitor Xtrac’s EV transmission system features dual motors with torque vectoring

11 UQM, Eaton and Pi Innovo collaborate on electric drivetrain 12 Musk says Panasonic will be exclusive battery supplier for Model 3

DOE awards $16 million to 54 projects to commercialize energy technologies

13 Texas Instruments launches new motor drivers for performance powertrains 14 Johnson Matthey licenses CAMX-7 cathode materials

Researchers increase cathode energy density by controlling oxygen activity

15 Nanoscale probe offers a close-up view of chemical reactions in batteries 16 New papers cast doubt on lithium-air breakthrough

Infineon acquires Wolfspeed to strengthen its position in SiC power solutions

17 Swiss researchers enhance Li-ion batteries with improved electrode design 18 Powin Energy receives patent for battery pack operating system

Siemens 260 kW electric aircraft motor makes first public flight

19 Materials Project releases trove of battery materials data to the public

THE VEHICLES CONTENTS

40 | Electric Buses

Electric transit buses enter the fast-follower market stage as the leaders work to remove the last barriers to adoption.

52 | Rimac Automobili

The start-up that invented the Croatian auto industry

86 | Autonomy, safety

and responsibility

current events 30 GM/Lyft Express Drive rental program expands to California, adds EVs

BYD sells 16 electric buses in France, expands manufacturing in China

31 Colorado sweetens EV tax credit 32 Tesla reveals Master Plan, Part Deux 34 Geely Emgrand EV may foreshadow future Volvo models

Daimler invests 7 billion euros in plug-ins

35 Port of LA demonstrates electrified cargo handling equipment 36 Report: World fuel economy standards will require 16% EVs by 2020

Is V2T (vehicle-to-train) the next energy storage technology?

37 Columbus, Ohio wins $50 million in grants for DOT Smart City Challenge 38 Efficient Drivetrains selected for San Diego port electrification project

CARB approves XL Hybrids conversions to receive incentive vouchers

39 VW Group to launch 30 new BEVs by 2025 IDENTIFICATION STATEMENT CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine (USPS PP 46) July/August 2016, Issue # 26 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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JOIN US IN NORTH AMERICA CWIEME Chicago unites leading suppliers of machinery and components with high profile manufacturers from across the Americas.

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72 | One size serves all

WattZilla designs its high-power charging stations to be the first and last EVSE you buy

78 | Wireless charging and autonomous vehicles How the combination will mobilize the smart city

78 62 White House initiatives include $4.5 billion in loans for charging facilities 64 ClipperCreek offers “Ruggedized” charging station for extreme conditions

EV-Box installs 40,000th EV charging station

65 Australian utility plans to offer unlimited EV charging for a fixed daily rate

Swedish initiative lets EV owners share charging stations a la Airbnb

66 Ontario to build 500 public charging stations

Kreisel Electric’s MAVERO home energy storage system

67 Evatran forms joint venture to bring Plugless wireless charging to China 68 Sweden tests “Electric road,” with overhead catenary for electric trucks

Will Tesla redefine the gas station?

69 Sonic drive-in restaurant tests EV charging stations, solar panels 70 New Jersey launches grant program for workplace charging stations

APCOA and The New Motion partner to expand German charging network

71 Québec installing fast chargers along busy highway corridor

22 Tritium Veefil fast chargers to be deployed in Sri Lanka

Publisher’s Note Policy tweaking

During election years, it’s easy to forget that one of the most important jobs of government is to design public policy. The details are nuanced and boring, so why not focus on politicians calling each other names? Perhaps we can do both. A recently released federal report contained both good and bad news for champions of efficient transportation. The EPA and NHTSA released a draft technical assessment showing that automotive technology is advancing steadily and the industry is well on its way to meeting the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) targets for 2017. “Car makers and suppliers have developed far more innovative technologies to improve fuel economy and reduce GHG emissions than anticipated just a few years ago,” reads the report. The bad news is that automakers could miss the original 2025 target because Americans are buying more SUVs than originally expected. The 2025 CAFE goal of 54.5 MPG (which translated into a window sticker figure of about 38 MPG) was designed on a scale dependent on vehicle size. The report now predicts that, because of the growing appetite for larger vehicles, the actual overall achievement will be closer to 50 MPG. As the feds ponder whether or not to tweak the 2025 goal, environmental groups are calling for standards to be raised, and automaker lobbyists are complaining about “marketplace realities” and “excessive regulatory costs.” In California, regulators are also reviewing the state’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate. The progressive state requires automakers to sell some number of EVs or fuel cell cars in proportion to their overall sales, or else buy ZEV credits from automakers that have a surplus. The goal of the policy is to spur more EV sales, and it’s clearly working. In June, for example, 7,161 plug-ins were sold in California - more than the rest of the US states combined (the national total for June was 13,772). As sales grow, however, regulators now fear that there are too many ZEV credits available. The state previously predicted that ZEVs would reach a 15% market share by 2025. But because so many ZEV credits have been issued, automakers may now be able to comply with regulations even if ZEVs make up as little as 6 percent of their fleets. “The inclination here is to make the mandate tougher,’’ Dan Sperling of the California Air Resources Board told Bloomberg. The board could do that by raising the number of credits and sales automakers need to comply, and/or limiting the credits that each automaker can sell. The proposed changes are drawing criticism both from automakers that are selling ZEVs and from those who have chosen not to. “The industry asked for the midterm so we can lower the standard if necessary,’’ said CARB Chairman Mary Nichols. “We said ‘Fine, as long as there is also the possibility it can go higher.’” Meanwhile, in political name-calling news, the Presidential debates are coming up. I wonder if Tesla will be called a loser this year, as it was in 2 out of the 3 debates in 2012. 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.

Christian Ruoff Publisher Laurel Zimmer Associate Publisher Charles Morris Senior Editor Markkus Rovito Associate Editor Jeffrey Jenkins Technology Editor Erik Fries Contributing Editor Nick Sirotich Illustrator & Designer Tome Vrdoljak Graphic Designer Contributing Writers Alex Gruzen Michael Kent Charles Morris Christian Ruoff Shashank Sripad Contributing Photographers Mike Mozart Nicolas Raymond Pete Souza Extra Zebra (Flickr) Kmf164 (Flickr) Atomic Taco (Flickr) SounderBruce (Flickr) Cover Image Courtesy of Proterra Special Thanks to Kelly Ruoff Sebastien Bourgeois For Letters to the Editor, Article Submissions, & Advertising Inquiries Contact Info@ChargedEVs.com

SPONSORED EVENTS Electric & PASSENGER. Hybrid Vehicle COMMERCIAL. Technology Expo OFF-HIGHWAY. SEPTEMBER 13 -15, 2016

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Power management and analog solution provider Intersil has introduced a 12-cell battery pack monitor that provides cell balancing and voltage and temperature monitoring to safeguard Li-ion battery packs in electrified vehicles. The new ISL78610 monitors and balances up to 12 cells with accurate voltage readings and diagnostics, enabling system designers to make informed decisions based on absolute voltage levels, rather than simply an error message indicating an out-of-range condition. It includes a voltage reference, a 14-bit analog-to-digital converter and registers for control and data, and can connect directly to a microcontroller through its 2.5 Mbps SPI interface. The device also offers four external temperature inputs, and includes fault detection and diagnostics for all key internal functions. System designers can use the ISL78610 as a standalone monitor or as a redundant backup device when combined with Intersil’s ISL78600 multi-cell battery manager. Together, the ISL78610 and ISL78600 offer internal and external fault detection such as open wire, over and under voltage, as well as temperature and cell balancing faults to mitigate battery pack failures. Multiple devices can be daisy-chained to support systems with up to 168 cells using a proprietary communications system.

Photo courtesy of Intersil

Intersil’s new 12-cell Li-ion battery pack monitor

Xtrac’s new P1227 gearbox family was developed to address the growing demand for single-speed, lightweight EV transmissions. It can be integrated with motors from BorgWarner, GKN and YASA, all of which worked with Xtrac to integrate their technologies into the transmission. The P1227’s dual electric motors provide inherent torque vectoring capabilities, and the system is designed for maximum flexibility. It can be used in front-wheel, rear-wheel or four-wheel drive configurations, with an open or a limited-slip differential, and can also be used with a single electric motor. “There is substantial innovation and intellectual property in the design of this new transmission system,” said James Setter, head of Xtrac’s Automotive and Engineering unit. “Significant focus went into the integration of the gearbox with numerous proprietary traction motors, and in particular, reducing its mass by almost 20 percent compared with our previous P1092 electric vehicle transmission.” “The design draws on Xtrac’s precision design, analysis and manufacturing engineering capabilities, ensuring that the ground helical gear sets, necessary for road vehicle transmission systems, offer exceptional levels of NVH refinement for the most demanding silent driveline EV applications, as well as the durability required for this marketplace,” said Setter.

Photo courtesy of Xtrac

Xtrac’s new EV transmission system features dual motors with torque vectoring

THE TECH

Photo courtesy of UQM

UQM, Eaton and Pi Innovo collaborate on electric drivetrain UQM Technologies (NYSE MKT: UQM) has partnered with Eaton’s Vehicle Group and Pi Innovo to develop an electric powertrain system for the medium- and heavy-duty commercial EV market. Eaton will supply a 2-speed transmission, Pi Innovo will provide the transmission control unit, and UQM will contribute its current PowerPhase HD220/HD250 motor and inverter system. The complete electric drivetrain system will be called the UQM PowerPhaseDT. According to UQM, the 2-speed transmission provides a greater speed and torque range than what’s possible with a direct drive system, allowing a smaller electric motor to drive large vehicles. “Perhaps the biggest benefit is the fact that the 2-speed transmission keeps the electric motor operating in the highest efficiency region for a greater portion of the drive

cycle,” said Josh Ley, UQM’s VP of Technology. “This, coupled with the extremely high efficiency of the UQM PowerPhaseDT, will enable the highest overall vehicle efficiency, saving cost in batteries and increasing range.” “We have done extensive market research and believe that this offering will be the ideal drivetrain solution for electric and range-extended commercial vehicles,” said UQM CEO Joe Mitchell.” UQM expects to have prototypes ready by fall and to begin production early in 2017.

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DOE awards $16 million to 54 projects to commercialize new energy technologies The DOE has announced nearly $16 million in funding from its Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF), which has a mission to help businesses move promising energy technologies from the DOE’s national laboratories to the marketplace. This round of funding will support 54 projects at 12 national labs, involving 52 private-sector partners. EV-related TCF awards include:

Musk says Panasonic will be exclusive battery supplier for Model 3

Photo by ChargedEVs

Tesla has a long-standing relationship with Panasonic, as a battery supplier and a partner in the Gigafactory. So EV-savvy ears perked up at news that the California carmaker had met with a trio of Korean battery-builders. In fact, Reuters reported that Samsung SDI was “making progress” in talks with Tesla to supply batteries for Model 3, citing an unnamed source. Is Tesla looking to diversify its sources of batteries? Not for its new vehicles, as it turns out. “Would like to clarify that Tesla is working exclusively with Panasonic for Model 3 cells. News articles claiming otherwise are incorrect,” tweeted Musk. “S and X cells are also Panasonic.” In answer to a Twitter user’s question, Musk then confirmed that LG Chem will supply the batteries for Roadster 3.0 (as announced last October) and that Samsung SDI may be a supplier for Tesla Energy.

• Manufacturing of Advanced Alnico Magnets for Energy Efficient Traction Drive Motors (in partnership with Carpenter Powder Products) • Direct Fabrication of Fuel Cell Electrodes by Electrodeposition of High-performance Core-shell Catalysts • Nitride-Stabilized Pt Core-Shell Electrocatalysts for Fuel Cell Cathodes • Enhancing Lithium-Ion Battery Safety for Vehicle Technologies and Energy Storage • Large Area Polymer Protected Lithium Metal Electrodes with Engineered Dendrite-Blocking Ability • Thermal Management for Planar Package Power Electronics (in partnership with John Deere Electronic Solutions) • Assembly of Dissimilar Aluminum Alloys For Automotive Application • Development of Electrolytes for Lithium Ion Batteries in Wide Temperature Range Applications (in partnership with Farasis Energy and Navitas Systems) • Direct Extruded High Conductivity Copper for Electric Machines Manufactured Using the ShAPE Process (in partnership with General Motors R&D) “The funds announced today will help to accelerate the commercialization of cutting-edge energy technologies developed in our national labs, making them more widely available to American consumers and businesses,” said Lynn Orr, DOE Under Secretary for Science and Energy.

THE TECH

Photo courtesy of Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments launches new motor drivers for performance powertrains Texas Instruments (TI) has introduced two new automotive motor drivers that support high-performance powertrain applications. The DRV8305-Q1, an integrated three-phase brushless DC gate driver, and the UCC27211A-Q1, a high-current half-bridge gate driver, are designed to improve system performance and provide design flexibility for a range of automotive system requirements. For powertrain applications such as transmission pumps or engine cooling fans, the DRV8305-Q1 features a smart gate-drive architecture with programmable slewrate control that allows easy optimization of MOSFET electromagnetic compliance (EMC). It offers an operating temperature range of -40 to 150Â° C, and also operates down to 4.4 V to support start-stop functionality. The DRV8305-Q1â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s integrated 3.3 V or 5 V linear regulator, three current-sense amplifiers and smart gate-

drive architecture reduces board size and eliminates up to 20 external components, according to TI. On-chip protection features detailed fault diagnostics to guard against over-temperature, under-voltage lockout, MOSFET shoot-through and over-current events.

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Electric vehicle power systems are designed to be floating or ungrounded. This means that no high voltage is allowed to come into contact with the chassis. One of the major challenges is to detect potential insulation faults early. Causes for insulation faults during normal operation can be, for example: contamination, faulty connectors, shaved wiring, and component failure.

CAMX Power has granted specialty chemical supplier Johnson Matthey a license relating to its CAM-7 platform of nickel-based cathode materials for use in lithium-ion batteries. The CAM-7 platform covers a range of nickel-rich cathode materials that are designed to offer excellent energy density, cycle life, gassing and power handling, making them well suited to EV and PHEV applications. Johnson Matthey believes that its experience in the scale-up and manufacture of battery materials and its in-depth knowledge of nickel chemistry put it in a strong position to bring CAMX Power’s technology to market. “This license is another important step in our Battery Technologies strategy where we are building a broad portfolio of battery materials aimed at satisfying the most demanding performance requirements,” said Martin Green, Director of Johnson Matthey’s Battery Technologies business. “Access to CAM-7 will enable Johnson Matthey to accelerate its entry into the nickel-rich cathode material sector of the automotive market. The CAM-7 platform is highly complementary to our existing R&D programs.”

Photo by ChargedEVs

Johnson Matthey licenses CAMX-7 cathode materials

An international team of researchers has demonstrated a new way to improve the performance of lithium-rich cathode materials by creating oxygen vacancies at the material’s surface. In “Gas-solid interfacial modification of oxygen activity in layered oxide cathodes for lithium-ion batteries,” published in Nature Communications, Minghao Zhang and colleagues explain the importance of oxygen atoms in battery materials. According to the team, their process improved the energy density of the cathode material by up to 40 percent. “We’ve uncovered a new mechanism at play in this class of lithium-rich cathode materials. With this study, we want to open a new pathway to explore more battery materials in which we can control oxygen activity,” said Shirley Meng, one of the principal investigators. Meng’s group, in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, developed a way to introduce oxygen vacancies in a promising class of cathode materials called lithium-rich layered oxides. Treating the lithium-rich cathode particles with a carbon dioxide-based gas mixture created oxygen vacancies throughout the surface of the particles. “This is a mild treatment that allows us to make controlled changes in the material exactly where we want – near the interface,” said co-author Minghao Zhang. The oxygen vacancies allow lithium ions to move more easily throughout the cathode, leading to high discharge capacity and faster discharge rates. They also increase the material’s stability by inhibiting the formation of highly reactive oxygen radicals at the cathode material’s surface. “We can controllably utilize oxygen activity to improve the performance of the material and better control how it works inside the battery,” Zhang said.

Image courtesy of Minghao Zhang

Researchers increase energy density of cathode by controlling oxygen activity

THE TECH

Image courtesy of Ehsan Nasr Esfahani/University of Washington

Nanoscale probe offers a close-up view of chemical reactions in batteries Professor Jiangyu Li and his colleagues at the University of Washington have built a new tool that could provide a better understanding of how chemical reactions progress at the level of atoms and molecules, creating “new opportunities to engineer materials properties so as to achieve quantum leaps in performance.” In “Scanning Thermo-ionic Microscopy for Probing Local Electrochemistry at the Nanoscale,” published in the Journal of Applied Physics, Jiangyu Li and his team describe a nanoscale probe that they developed. The concept is similar to atomic force microscopy – a tiny heated cantilever causes fluctuations in temperature and stress in the material beneath the probe. As the material expands and contracts, the cantilever vibrates in a way that can be measured using a laser beam, yielding a nanometer-scale map of the material. The new approach has advantages over other types of atomic microscopy, and the team believes it will offer

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researchers a valuable tool for studying electrochemical material properties at the nanoscale. They tested it by measuring the concentration of charged species in Smdoped ceria and LiFePO4, important materials in solid oxide fuel cells and lithium batteries. “The concentration of ionic and electronic species are often tied to important rate properties of electrochemical materials – such as surface reactions, interfacial charge transfer, and bulk and surface diffusion – that govern the device performance,” Li said. “By measuring these properties locally on the nanoscale, we can build a much better understanding of how electrochemical systems really work, and thus how to develop new materials with much higher performance.”

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Back in October, Cambridge scientists wowed the battery world with an announcement that they had demonstrated a highly efficient and long-lasting lithium-oxygen battery. Lithium-oxygen, or lithium-air, batteries have a theoretical energy density ten times that of lithium-ion solutions, but suffer from poor cycle life. In a paper published in the journal Science, Tao Liu and colleagues claimed to have overcome this obstacle by using a porous graphene electrode and by using lithium iodide and water as mediators. Alas, several researchers from universities and national labs in the US, China, and Australia have now disputed the Cambridge team’s findings in two separate dissents, saying that the original results could not be replicated. The dissenters found that lithium iodide does not perform the function that the earlier paper claimed. “Based on a simple thermodynamic analysis, we show that iodide-mediated electrochemical decomposition of lithium hydroxide (LiOH) likely occurs through a different mechanism than that proposed by Liu et al,” writes Carnegie Mellon Professor Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan in one of the dissenting papers. “It is therefore possible that the system described in Liu et al may not form the basis for a rechargeable lithium-oxygen battery.” Another paper, from a team led by Yue Shen, reports similar findings: “We argue that LiOH cannot be oxidized by triiodide. The charge capacity is from the oxidation of I- instead of LiOH. The limited-capacity cycling test is misleading when the electrolyte contributes considerable parasitic reaction capacity.” “The breakthrough is not a breakthrough, and we are in a sense no further along in lithium-air than we were,” Viswanathan told Quartz.

Semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies has agreed to acquire the Wolfspeed Power and RF division of LED manufacturer Cree, for $850 million. The deal also includes the related silicon carbide wafer substrate business. Wolfspeed specializes in silicon carbide-based power and gallium nitride-on-silicon carbide-based RF power solutions. The deal also includes related core competencies in wafer substrate manufacturing for SiC, as well as for SiC with a monocrystalline GaN layer for RF power applications. Power management solutions based on compound semiconductors have several advantages over traditional materials. Renewable energy and EV applications particularly benefit from the technology’s increased power density and improved efficiency. “Wolfspeed’s and Infineon’s businesses and expertise are highly complementary,” said Infineon CEO Dr. Reinhard Ploss. “With Wolfspeed we will become number one in SiC-based power semiconductors. We also want to become number one in RF power.” “Wolfspeed will now be able to more aggressively commercialize its unique silicon carbide and gallium nitride technology as part of Infineon,” said Cree CEO Chuck Swoboda.

Photo courtesy of Infineon

New papers cast doubt on lithium-air breakthrough

Infineon acquires Wolfspeed to strengthen its position in SiC-based power solutions

THE TECH

Image courtesy of Juliette Billaud, Florian Bouville, Tommaso zagrini/Paul Scherrer Institute, ETH Zurich

Swiss researchers enhance Li-ion batteries with improved electrode design Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have developed a simple procedure that they say can enhance the performance of Li-ion batteries by improving the design of the electrodes without changing the underlying chemistry. In “Magnetically aligned graphite electrodes for high rate performance Li-ion batteries,” published in Nature Energy, Juliette Billaud and colleagues explain that a major limitation of existing batteries has to do with the crooked, or “tortuous” path that ions must follow in highly loaded electrodes. “The diffusion of charge carriers across thick graphite electrodes is often reduced by the high tortuosity of the porous anode structure, particularly when anisotropic flake-like particles are used,” write the Swiss team. “Aligning graphite flakes perpendicularly to the current collector could ease the transport of the charge carriers within the anode by creating short diffusion paths and exposing preferential insertion/extraction sites.” The researchers propose “a simple, up-scalable and inexpensive technique to orient graphite particles perpendicularly to the current collector by applying a low magnetic field during the electrode fabrication,” an approach that they have not seen reported before. By optimizing the graphite anode on a conventional Li-ion battery, the researchers were able to enhance storage capacity by a factor of up to 3, under lab conditions. In a commercial battery pack, they estimate that this could translate to an improvement of 30 to 50 percent. The concept doesn’t call for a new battery design or new materials, but relies on improving existing components. “We already have everything we need,” said Claire Villevieille, head of the Battery Materials Research Group at the Paul Scherrer Institute. “If a manufacturer were willing to take on production, enhanced batteries could be ready for the market within one or two years. The procedure is simple, cost-effective and scalable for use on rechargeable batteries in all areas of application, from wristwatch to smartphone, from laptop to car. And it has the additional bonus of being transferable to other anode-cathode batteries, such as those based on sodium.”

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Siemens 260 kW electric aircraft motor makes first public flight

Powin Energy receives patent for battery pack operating system

Siemens and Airbus plan to use the new motor as a basis for developing regional airliners powered by hybrid propulsion systems. “By 2030, we expect to see initial aircraft with up to 100 passengers and a range of around 1,000 kilometers,” said Anton.

Photo courtesy of Siemens

Siemens researchers have developed a new type of electric motor that delivers a continuous output of about 260 kW and weighs 50 kg. The new drive system, designed for a joint project of Siemens and Airbus to develop electrified aircraft, recently made its maiden flight in an Extra 330LE aerobatic airplane. “This day will change aviation,” said Frank Anton, Siemens’ head of eAircraft. “This is the first time that an electric aircraft in the quarter-megawatt performance class has flown.” The Extra 330LE, which weighs about 1,000 kg, is particularly well suited to serve as a flying test bed for the new propulsion system.

Photo courtesy of Powin Energy

Powin Energy, a maker of stationary storage systems, has been awarded a patent for its Battery Pack Operating System (bp-OS).The bp-OS uses an algorithm to actively and passively balance batteries down to the cell level, and also offers a picture of battery health through real-time monitoring, state-of-charge management and diagnostics. According to Powin, it is compatible with all leading energy storage chemistries. The bp-OS’s Battery Odometer feature measures capacity degradation and calculates remaining battery lifetime by keeping track of voltage, temperature, stateof-charge, charge and discharge times, and other critical data for every cycle of the battery. The Warranty Tracker feature is designed to maximize operational uptime by alerting operators to possible issues, isolating problem zones and automatically filing warranty claims. The bp-OS is a standard feature of Powin Energy’s Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), a self-contained 125 kW/250 kWh storage solution that’s built into a 20-foot long shipping container, and is designed to be scalable to meet the demands of any size project. “Using Powin Energy’s bp-OS that is made specifically for the needs of the energy storage industry, battery system owners and operators will unlock new levels of insight into the use of their batteries, have access to higher optimization schemes, and see noticeable increases in the total lifecycle value of their storage systems,” said Powin CTO Virgil Beaston.

Charged July 2016.pdf 1 7/14/2016 9:14:39 AM

THE TECH Materials Project releases trove of battery-related materials data to the public The Materials Project, a searchable database of material properties, was launched in 2011 by the DOE’s Office of Science. It uses supercomputers to calculate the properties of materials based on first-principles quantum-mechanical frameworks. The Materials Project is designed to save researchers time by predicting the properties of materials, eliminating the need to synthesize them in the lab. With a user-friendly web interface, users can look up the calculated properties, such as voltage, capacity, band gap and density, for tens of thousands of materials. Now the Project has released two new sets of data to the public: nearly 1,500 compounds investigated for multivalent intercalation electrodes and more than 21,000 organic molecules relevant for liquid electrolytes. C

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The sheer volume and scope of the data is unprecedented, said Materials Project Director Kristin Persson. “As far as the multivalent cathodes, there’s nothing similar in the world that exists. Experimentalists are usually able to focus on one of these materials at a time. Using calculations, we’ve added data on 1,500 different compositions.” The recent release also includes two new web apps – the Molecules Explorer and the Redox Flow Battery Dashboard – plus an add-on to the Battery Explorer app enabling researchers to work with other ions in addition to lithium.

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INTELLIGENT ISOLATION Bender launches a new off-the-shelf automotivegrade isolation monitoring device for EV builders By Michael Kent

raditional 12-volt automotive batteries are grounded to the metal chassis of vehicles for a few different reasons, mainly driven by cost. Using the metal frame as a common ground essentially reduces the number of wires needed for all of the 12-volt systems by half - saving money and reducing weight. For example, to power a tail light you only need to route one wire for the positive connection to the back of the vehicle, instead of two. Add in some fuses in case of problems, and you have a very safe and efficient system. The high-voltage battery packs in hybrids and EVs, however, are not grounded to the chassis for a very good reason: safety. Early on in the development of these systems, engineers realized that they needed more robust

EVs have ungrounded circuits with the battery packs floating in isolation while the vehicles are running. forms of protection for batteries that can reach a few hundred volts. So they decided to design ungrounded circuits with the battery packs floating in isolation while the vehicles are running. In theory, this greatly reduces the shock hazard. In reality however, unexpected paths can be established between the battery pack and other conductive surfaces,

Photo courtesy of Bender

THE TECH

Bender's iso165C isolation monitoring device

caused by things like contamination, salt, humidity, faulty connectors, or mechanical problems like a pinched or chafed wire. The early detection of insulation problems is a major challenge.

Close call For a scary example of the dangers of electrical issues, search YouTube for a video about a “Mechanic in KERS Shocker.” The video shows a Formula One racecar equipped with a Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) during testing in 2008. The KERS-enabled vehicle stores energy from regenerative braking in a battery pack that drivers can later access for a boost of power. In the video, you see a race car - using an early version of KERS - pull into the pit lane as mechanics surround the vehicle to perform the typical in-race servicing. The first mechanic to touch the body of the vehicle is violently

Everyone in the industry agreed that there was a clear need for an isolation monitor device. shocked and immediately falls to the ground. Luckily, as a spokesman for the race team told autosport.com, the man sustained only “slight injuries to his left hand and grazing on his left arm,” and “after a brief examination at the track’s medical center, he has returned to the test team.”

Constant monitoring Since those early electrification days of 2008, energy-dense battery packs in both racecars and production vehicles

JUL/AUG 2016

The specs

MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS • Universal for Voltage Class B systems iso165C: AC/DC 0-600 V • Patented measurement method for preventative detection of insulation faults 0-10 MΩ • Permanent monitoring of earth connection to electrical chassis • Detection of symmetrical insulation faults • Additional safety via automatic self-test • Short-circuit-proof outputs for: fault messaging measured value (PWM signal) • Available for DC 12 V and 24 V supply voltage • Automotive approval e1 according to 72/245/EWG/EEC 2009/19/EG/EC • CAN interface on iso165C RELEVANT EV ISOLATION MONITORING STANDARDS • ISO 6469-3:2011-12 Electric propelled road vehicles – Safety inspections – Part 3: Protection of persons against electric shock • ISO 23273-3:2006-11 Fuel cell road vehicles – Safety inspections – Part 3 – Protection of persons against electric shock • UL 2231-1:2002-05 Personnel Protection Systems for Electric Vehicle (EV) Supply Circuits: General requirements • IEC 61557-8:2007-01 Electrical safety in low voltage distribution systems up to 1000 V AC and 1500 V DC – Equipment for testing measuring or monitoring protective measures – Part 8: Insulation monitoring devices for IT systems. • FMVSS 305 Electric Powered Vehicles: Electrolyte Spillage and Electrical Shock Protection

Photo courtesy of Bender

The iso165C monitors the insulation resistance between the active HV components of an electrical drive system and the reference earth (chassis ground), both on the DC side and the AC motor side. It has been designed to meet strict automotive requirements (wide-ranging temperature, vibration, EMC, etc), and the iso165C interface allows it to be integrated into an vehicle’s existing CAN environment. The iso165C consists of two main components: the Vehicle Interface Controller (VIFC) and the Insulation Monitoring Controller (IMC). The VIFC consists of a microcontroller with a UART communication interface that translates and forwards requests from the HS-CAN bus transparently to the IMC. The corresponding IMC responses are returned to the requesting instance via the HS-CAN bus. The VIFC supervises the running state of the IMC via a signal known as “Alive,” and internally and cyclically requests the insulation value and the running state of the IMC. The IMC - which is galvanically separated from the car environment - generates internal alarm information from the measurement results, which is coded to produce the “Alive” signal and transmitted in parallel with the measurements and status information to the VIFC and then to the HS-CAN bus.

at any point in time the system knows that nothing is shorted to the frame and that the car stays electrically safe

Bender's IR155 isolation monitoring device

have come a long way. “Everyone in the industry agreed from the standards organizations to the automakers - that there was a clear need for an isolation monitor device,” Torsten Gruhn, Chief Engineer at Bender, told Charged. “Now engineers design battery packs in a vehicle with a circuit to continuously monitor the state of its isolation, so at any point in time the system knows that nothing is shorted to the frame and that the car stays electrically safe.” Bender has a 65-year history in providing electrical safety equipment to a range of industries, so as the car builders began to learn how to work with higher-voltage batteries, it was natural for them to turn to Bender for help. “We supplied a few companies with the first iteration of isolation monitoring hardware,” said Gruhn. “At that time it was basically hardware adapted from industrial applications that was pretty large and bulky. Over time, customers pushed us to develop a product that was smaller, simpler, and cheaper - as the auto industry tends to do.” Working closely with its new customer base in the world of hybrid, EV and fuel cell vehicles, Bender developed the IR155, an integrated monitoring circuit

THE TECH

mounted on a single printed circuit board. The company supplied that system to a lot of electric truck and bus builders that were developing new drive systems. “We also support a lot of university build teams with the IR155,” said Gruhn. “We’ve been pleased to find that the organizers of those events put a big emphasis on ground fault protection, because there are a lot of students working on the vehicles.”

Production-ready Recently, Bender released its latest-generation insulation monitoring device, iso165C. The new product was developed in partnerships with the HELLA group (a longtime manufacturer of lighting and electronic systems for the automotive industry), and Bender says that it is a “truly automotive-grade unit in a robust enclosure.” The new device is designed to be production-ready for the fast-growing world of custom hybrid and EV manufacturers. While some of the major automakers typically design their own isolation monitoring circuits in-house,

customers pushed us to develop a product that was smaller, simpler, and cheaper - as the auto industry tends to do. there are many niche EV builders who don’t have hundreds of engineers on staff, and they will gladly shop for quality off-the-shelf solutions when they are available. “Over the past few years, the EV industry has really come to life and more and more vehicles are out there,” said Gruhn. Bender currently supplies the iso165C to heavy-duty electric bus and truck manufacturers and other niche EV companies.

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THE TECH

HIGHPRECISION BATTERY

TESTING Arbinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new battery testing equipment is capable of ultra-high precision measurements, offering a better glimpse into the future of battery performance By Shashank Sripad

JUL/AUG 2016

utomakers are a notoriously conservative bunch. They go to great lengths to test and validate new designs before putting them into production vehicles. And, thanks to their cautious ways, todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vehicles are more reliable than ever. Recently, however, the addition of advanced Li-ion battery packs to vehicles has presented a major challenge to the auto industry. How can they be certain new battery technology will last the life of a typical vehicle? The general rule of thumb for automotive-grade

batteries is that an EV battery pack should retain about 80% of its capacity after 8 to 10 years on the road. The problem is that basic battery technology continues to advance quickly and cycle life testing is very time-consuming. Also, for many next-generation battery chemistries - like lithium-sulfur technology or silicon-heavy anodes - the major issue holding them back from commercialization is that they lose energy storage capacity too quickly (i.e. their cycle life is not suited for EVs). As scientists attempt to find solutions to the capacity fading problems, quick and accurate

Photo by ChargedEVs

At the most, from the time they choose a cell to use until it hits full production in a vehicle, they could have maybe 3 years of testing data.

THE TECH

The key to accelerating battery testing in a reliable way is using very accurate testing equipment.

The difference in what we wanted to accomplish was to develop a tool to see the effects of full power - 200 A running on the batteries.

Photo by ChargedEVs

cycle life testing has become critically important to the future of the industry. To perform battery testing, cells are placed in sophisticated test equipment and cycled (charged and discharged) while their degradation is continuously monitored. For use in EVs, automakers are looking for cells that will continue to perform well up to as many as 10,000 cycles. The problem is that running through thousands of cycles would take years. “The battery pack in an EV is usually warrantied to last for 8 to 10 years, but there is no way to actually test it for that long,” explained Antony Parulian, VP of Sales and Marketing for Arbin Instruments, a manufacturer of battery test equipment. “There just isn’t nearly enough time from inception to production. At the most, from the time they choose a cell to use until it hits full production in a vehicle, they could have maybe 3 years of testing data.” So the key to accelerating battery testing in a reliable way is using very accurate testing equipment. By measuring very small changes in the cell’s performance at the beginning of the cycling process, battery developers are able to extrapolate a trend line and have an idea of how the cell will behave in the longer term. It’s like an early detection system to evaluate a new electrode, electrolyte, separator material, or whatever part of the cell you’re trying to improve. The more accurate the testing equipment, the further into the future you can see. In 2012, Arbin Instruments, Ford Motor Company and Sandia National Lab set out on a multi-year ARPA-E project to develop a system that pushed the accuracy and reliability of accelerated testing to higher power levels. “At the time we started the project, Jeff Dahn of Dalhousie University [who recently began an exclusive 5-year research partnership with Tesla] had already come out with some great methodology for highprecision testing equipment,” Parulian told Charged. “The difference in what we wanted to accomplish was

JUL/AUG 2016

Photo by ChargedEVs

to develop a tool to see the effects of full power - 200 A - running on the batteries. At the time, all other highprecision equipment was designed to test small samples of battery materials - typically at an earlier stage of R&D. We set out to create a system that could test the performance of a production-size cell with ultra-high accuracy.” Three years later, the result is a new testing equipment product line that Arbin calls the Precision Series - capable of 50 PPM precision under high-power conditions of up to 200 A. “No other battery testing equipment currently on the market is capable of providing that high degree of precision at such high currents,” said Parulian. The system is built to obtain a precise measurement of an indicator called coulombic efficiency, among other characterization metrics.

More precision means more confidence The primary mechanisms behind the degradation of

The further off the system is with those measurements, the less confident you will be in the projection of the battery’s life. a battery are the parasitic reactions that occur during normal use, in which a small fraction of the energy that is put into a battery is consumed in every chargedischarge cycle. For example, suppose 1,000 units of energy are put into a battery, and 999.99 units are pulled out during discharge. The small difference is used up in side reactions at the electrodes, and the coulombic efficiency is the ratio of charge output to charge input. Without a high-precision testing device it is impos-

THE TECH sible to differentiate between a battery that provides 999.999 units Arbin’s Precision Series and one that provides test equipment is 999.991, for example, capable of but the latter would degrade faster since it is losing a larger amount of charge to parasitic reactions. With higher precision, you can dePPM precision at velop a trend in the coulombic efficiency with fewer cycles, and then compare different cells in a shorter duration of time. And, perhaps amps most importantly, the confidence bounds of the forecasting data obtained from high-precision systems are much tighter, which makes the data more reliable. “The idea is that if you can test the cell while controlling a whole bunch of parameters tightly with very little error, then you will be able to predict the failure with high confidence,” explained Parulian. “To do that, you need to eliminate any uncertainty, or error, coming from all the things not related to the cell itself. You want to have really high-fidelity data for the voltage, timing, current, etc. And if you don’t control all the possible errors really well, they will aggregate. When the system calls for 10 A, for example, how close to 10 is actually delivered to the cell? Is it 10 A, or is it 9.9991 A? This is really important, because to calculate the energy delivered (and then the coulombic efficiency), you actually do an integral of the voltage, current, and time. The further off the system is with those measurements, the less confident you will be in the projection of the battery’s life.”

50 200

Reducing noise, controlling temperature To eliminate measurement error, Arbin spent a lot of time on things like the design of its printed circuit boards, and minimized ripples in the control of the power supply to remove the distortion. “If you’re only testing at 100 mA, the scale of the complexity and difficulty is quite different,” said Parulian. One of the main differences in high-power testing of full-scale production cells is the heat generated

If you’re only testing at 100 mA the scale of the complexity and difficulty is quite different. by the cell itself during cycling. And therein lies the breakthrough potential for this new equipment. “You and I know that you generate heat when you charge and discharge a full-size cell,” said Parulian. “So the big question is, how does that affect the cell over time? High-precision testing of a small battery sample - like a coin cell - at lower currents will not reveal the longterm effects of heat. So our new Precision Series will open a lot of doors to learn new things at high power.” By the end of the ARPA-E project, Arbin delivered systems capable of 200 A testing to Ford Motor Company and Sandia National Lab, which was the target current rating from the project. They also recognized that there are a lot of testing applications that will not require power quite that high, so they developed 50 A, 5 A and 1 A systems as well.

Trickling down the product line Arbin is also in the process of taking what it has learned from the project and applying it to its legacy products. “During certain steps of the battery development process, our legacy testing equipment is still very valuable for the application,” explained Parulian. “And higher precision typically means more cost, so you will want to use it where needed and where it adds value. So we took a lot of what we learned working on high precision and added it to our laboratory (LBT) series product where it makes sense. We upgraded from 14- and 16- to 24-bit, we cleaned up the board design, and we re-evaluated a lot of the key components to modernize the design.” “But in a lot of R&D scenarios, or when you’re trying to qualify new batteries that will go into a production vehicle,” Parulian continued, “then you really want high precision and high power. For example, if you’re choosing between cells from five different vendors for your new EV, then precise equipment will be incredibly valuable.”

JUL/AUG 2016

GM and Lyft plan to expand their Express Drive shortterm vehicle access program to California and Colorado. California members will have access to the Volt, and the upcoming Bolt when it becomes available later this year. GM invested $500 million in Lyft in January. Express Drive, which began earlier this year in select cities including Chicago, Boston and Washington DC, allows Lyft drivers to rent GM vehicles on a weekly basis, including insurance and maintenance. Several automakers are hedging against a future in which some believe that many people will choose not to own cars, instead relying on ride-sharing services (Ford has a new Mobility division that has been experimenting with short-term rentals and ride-sharing). “Expanding Express Drive provides opportunities to hundreds of thousands of new potential Lyft drivers and continues to make car ownership optional for both drivers and passengers,” said Lyft President John Zimmer. “We are also excited to be adding electric vehicles to Express Drive, which is an important milestone for Lyft and the industry.” “The Chevrolet Bolt EV and Volt are a perfect fit for ride-sharing, offering very low operating costs and a wide range of connectivity features,” said GM President Dan Ammann.

Photo courtesy of GM

GM/Lyft Express Drive rental program expands to California, adds EVs

China-based bus manufacturer BYD announced several nuggets of good news at the recent Transports Publics event in Paris. The company has received orders for 16 battery-electric buses from French operators, and will begin a six-month e-bus trial in Paris. BYD also unveiled a new 12-meter e-bus optimized for the European market. B.E. Green of Yvelines, near Paris, has ordered three BYD electric coaches and one 12-meter e-bus to add to its 100% electric fleet. The Nedroma Group of Athis Mons ordered 12 BYD electric coaches. RATP, a state-owned transport agency that operates most of the public transport in Paris and its surrounding Île-de-France region, will begin trials of a BYD 12-meter e-bus in September. RATP, which has a network of 350 lines and a fleet of 4,500 vehicles, plans to convert its bus fleet to 80% electric and 20% CNG by 2025. BYD showed an enhanced and Europeanized version of its 12-meter single-deck bus in Paris. Improved battery technology means that only two battery packs are necessary, allowing increased passenger space in a typical European layout. The new bus on display is similar to the 35 e-buses now in operation at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Meanwhile, BYD’s new factory in Qingdao, China began production last week. Annual capacity is 1,000 electric buses, and will eventually rise to 5,000, said CEO Wang Chuanfu. The $457-million plant covers 66 hectares, and will also serve as BYD’s export center for electric buses and its R&D center.

Photo courtesy of BYD

BYD sells 16 electric buses in France, expands manufacturing capacity in China

THE VEHICLES

Photo courtesy of Nicolas Raymond (CC BY 2.0)

Colorado sweetens EV tax credit As auto dealer Heath Carney wrote in the March/April 2016 issue of Charged, EV purchase incentives might be more effective if buyers received them in cash at the point of sale, rather than having to claim them later as tax credits. Connecticut instituted such a program in 2015. Now the state of Colorado has acted on this idea. New legislation, which takes effect at the beginning of 2017, will simplify the state’s existing income tax credit for EV purchases, and make it assignable, allowing it to function as a point-of-sale rebate. The existing credit offers up to $6,000 per car, but the exact amount each buyer receives is based on a complicated formula that dealers have found difficult to explain. The average consumer has ended up getting about $5,000, and buyers of more expensive EVs can get larger tax credits. Under the new deal, it’s a flat $5,000 for the purchase of an EV (or a PHEV with battery size over 4 kWh), and $2,500 for a lease. The existing credit is fully refundable, so a consumer

gets the full value of the credit even if it exceeds their tax liability. The new bill also makes the credit assignable, meaning that a car buyer can sign the credit over to a dealer or financing agency and take an immediate discount on the sticker price. The concept of an assignable tax credit was proposed by the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, which worked with a coalition including GM, Nissan, and various environmental groups to pass the bill with bipartisan support from 99 of Colorado’s 100 legislators.

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With Model S in a vigorous prime and Model 3 gestating, Elon Musk’s first master plan is nearing completion. That plan, unveiled 10 years ago, is familiar to Charged readers: expensive, low-volume Roadster enables slightly less expensive Model S, which makes possible moderately priced, high-volume Model 3, as rooftop solar panels gleam in the background. In a blog post, the Seer of Silicon Valley recaps his journey so far: an “idiotic” quest whose “chances of success were so low that I didn’t want to risk anyone’s funds in the beginning but my own.” “Part of the reason I wrote the first master plan was to defend against the inevitable attacks Tesla would face… it pretty much completely failed that objective. However, the main reason was to explain how our actions fit into a larger picture.” The point, of course, is “accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good.” Here are the tasks Tesla has set out for itself in Master Plan, Part Deux: Integrate Energy Generation and Storage Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roofwith-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app. We can’t do this well if Tesla and SolarCity are different companies, which is why we need to combine and break down the barriers inherent to being separate companies. That they are separate at all, despite similar origins and pursuit of the same overarching goal of sustainable energy, is largely an accident of history. Now that Tesla is ready to scale Powerwall and SolarCity is ready to provide highly differentiated solar, the time has come to bring them together. Expand to Cover the Major Forms of Terrestrial Transport Today, Tesla addresses two relatively small segments of premium sedans and SUVs. With the Model 3, a future compact SUV and a new kind of pickup truck, we plan to address most of the consumer market. A lower cost vehicle than the Model 3 is unlikely to be necessary, because of the third part of the plan described below.

What really matters to accelerate a sustainable future is being able to scale up production volume as quickly as possible. That is why Tesla engineering has transitioned to focus heavily on designing the machine that makes the machine - turning the factory itself into a product. A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5- to 10-fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2-year iteration cycle. The first Model 3 factory machine should be thought of as version 0.5, with version 1.0 probably in 2018. In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year. We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate. With the advent of autonomy, it will probably make sense to shrink the size of buses and transition the role of bus driver to that of fleet manager. Traffic congestion would improve due to increased passenger areal density by eliminating the center aisle and putting seats where there are currently entryways, and matching acceleration and braking to other vehicles, thus avoiding the inertial impedance to smooth traffic flow of traditional heavy buses. It would also take people all the way to their destination. Fixed summon buttons at existing bus stops would serve those who don’t have a phone. Design accommodates wheelchairs, strollers and bikes. Autonomy As the technology matures, all Tesla vehicles will have the hardware necessary to be fully self-driving with fail-operational capability, meaning that any given system in the car could break and your car will still drive

Photo courtesy of cchana/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Tesla reveals Master Plan, Part Deux

THE VEHICLES itself safely. It is important to emphasize that refinement and validation of the software will take much longer than putting in place the cameras, radar, sonar and computing hardware. Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day. I should add a note here to explain why Tesla is deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future. The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability. According to the recently released 2015 NHTSA report, automotive fatalities increased by 8% to one death every 89 million miles. Autopilot miles will soon exceed twice that number and the system gets better every day. It would no more make sense to disable Tesla’s Autopilot, as some have called for, than it would to disable autopilot in aircraft, after which our system is named. It is also important to explain why we refer to Autopilot as “beta.” This is not beta software in any normal sense of the word. Every release goes through extensive internal validation before it reaches any customers. It is called beta in order to decrease complacency and indicate that it will continue to improve (Autopilot is always off by default). Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed. Sharing When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else en route to your destination. You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not. In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.

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7/13/16 1:48 PM

Geely Emgrand EV may foreshadow future Volvo models

Photo courtesy of Geely

Chinese automakers are selling large numbers of EVs at home, but so far, none has managed to crack the US or European passenger car markets. That could change before long – Auto Express reports that Geely, which owns Volvo, is rumored to be close to launching a new brand aimed at Europe, and that both EVs and hybrids are likely to be in the line-up. Geely has tried to break into the UK and Australian markets in the past, but its vehicles didn’t seem to appeal to Western consumers. Now, with former Volvo designer Peter Horbury in charge of design, Geely aims to deliver more exciting cars. The company has announced a plan that calls for 90 percent of sales to come from “new energy” vehicles by 2020. Auto Express managed to get a sneak peek at the Emgrand EV, an electric model based on one of China’s best-selling sedans. It includes tech that seems likely to appear in future Geelys for the European market, and possibly Volvos as well. The Emgrand EV offers 125 bhp of power, and has a price tag of 249,800 Chinese Renminbi (around $37,300). Geely claims a range of around 155 miles. Auto Express gave the car a mostly positive review, noting that (no surprise here) acceleration is much better than the gas version, but found that the range fell short in real-world conditions.

Daimler has cranked up the voltage several notches with a series of EV-related announcements. The German auto giant plans to invest €7 billion ($7.9 billion) in green tech R&D over the next two years. Mercedes’ seventh and eighth PHEV models, the GLC Coupé 350 e 4MATIC and the E 350 e, are to arrive in showrooms this year. In the pipeline is a Mercedes-Benz fuel cell vehicle with plug-in technology, to be called the GLC F-CELL. Mercedes is developing a dedicated, multi-model architecture for battery EVs, featuring battery packs from Daimler subsidiary Deutsche ACCUMOTIVE that are expected to deliver ranges of up to 311 miles. Meanwhile, the fourth generation of the electric smart, now available in three EV models, will make its debut at the Paris Motor Show in September, and will be launched in the US by the end of this year. “No other manufacturer offers a comparable range of electrified vehicles and solutions in the field of electric mobility,” said Daimler Board Member Dr. Thomas Weber. “The spectrum ranges from the smart city runabout and Mercedes-Benz passenger cars to buses, coaches, and trucks of the Fuso brand. We will electrify all Mercedes-Benz passenger car model series step by step.” Dr. Weber expects to see dramatic improvements in battery tech. “With the introduction of the post-lithium-ion technology, of which the lithium-sulfur systems are currently the most promising, we will have an entirely different playing field in the next decade.” “We are investing heavily in electromobility, and we are convinced that the market is now ready,” says Dr. Weber.

Photo courtesy of Daimler

Daimler invests 7 billion euros in plug-ins

THE VEHICLES Port of LA demonstrates net-zero marine terminal with electrified cargo handling equipment Ports are major sources of air pollution, but fortunately “It is exciting to see a project with so many emerging they are also excellent candidates for electrification. The zero- or near-zero emission solutions for handling and twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have been moving freight,” said California Air Resources Board testing various types of EVs for several years. Chair Mary Nichols. Now the Port of Los Angeles has launched the Green Omni Terminal Demonstration Project, a full-scale, real-time demonstration of clean technologies at a working marine terminal. As part of the project, Pasha Stevedoring, the company that handles vessel loading and unloading at the port, will deploy a fleet of new and retrofitted zero-emission EVs and cargo-handling equipment, including four electric yard tractors, two high-tonnage forklifts, two drayage trucks and a top handler. Two wharf cranes will be upgraded with new electrical drives and control systems. When complete, the marine terminal will be able to generThe TM4 SUMO™ systems ate all of its energy needs from use high torque / direct renewable sources. The project drive motors for optimal also features a microgrid that powertrain efficiency. includes a 1.03-megawatt photoControl voltaic rooftop array, a 2.6-megaUp to 300 kW / 3400 Nm watt-hour battery storage system, and bi-directional vehicle The TM4 NEURO™ 200 is a fully programmable charging equipment. vehicle controller designed The Chinese-owned firm BYD, to be used as the main which has a manufacturing vehicle management unit. facility in California, will provide technology for the electric yard Up to 4 CAN / 4MB flash / 514KB trucks and forklifts, as well as the battery storage systems. “This is a Wright Brothers moment,” said Pasha Senior VP Headquarters China Jeffrey Burgin. “We’re going to be 135, J-A Bombardier, No 3, Xiaopu South Street Boucherville, QC, Tongzhou District, Beijing the proving ground to change the J4B 8P1 Canada China paradigm of how large industrial +1-450-645-1444 +86 (133) 7012 3615 facilities can run on clean energy.” tm4.com

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Governments around the world have established aggressive fuel economy standards, and meeting them will require a substantial percentage of the planet’s vehicle fleet to be converted to electricity (despite the desperate hopes of many auto company execs). New research by the World Energy Council (WEC) attempts to answer the question of just how many EVs will be required. In “World Energy Perspective 2016: E-mobility: closing the emissions gap,” the WEC argues that EVs will need to increase their combined market share to 16% by 2020 in order to meet the targets set by regulators. That market share is currently less than 1%. The world’s three largest auto markets – China, the EU and the US – have a collective annual demand of over 40 million passenger vehicles. All three have set fuel economy improvement targets around 30%. The difference between those targets and the fuel economy increases that can be delivered by expected new ICE technology is what the WEC calls the “emissions gap.” For the US, the emissions gap translates to 0.9 million cars, or 11% of estimated 2020 sales. The comparable figure for the EU is around 10% of sales, and for China, 22% of sales. Reaching the 16% market share figure that would close the gap will obviously require automakers to radically rethink their electrification plans. But the auto industry is not the only sector that will face major changes. “To help close the emissions gap through more widespread adoption of EVs, utilities need to play a critical role,” said Stuart Solomon, Managing Director of Accenture Strategy, which collaborated on the report, “not only to ensure a reliable electricity supply, given the added pressure from plugging more EVs into an already stressed grid network, but also by making sure that any added demand for electricity to power EVs increasingly comes from clean power sources.”

The EV of the future will be just one component of an integrated transportation/energy ecosystem that includes private cars, public transport, renewable energy sources and stationary storage. Could trains and cars, both powered by electricity, share not only passengers, but also energy? The idea may not be as outlandish as it seems. EVs use regenerative braking to recover energy that would otherwise be lost to friction. Electric trains similarly lose large amounts of energy during their frequent braking, but there’s no practical way to capture and store this energy. Locomotives do not carry large batteries, and they are typically connected to an electrical grid that can’t handle quick bursts of energy. A new research project led by the University of Sheffield is exploring ways to harness this untapped source of energy. The recently launched TransEnergy project will investigate how battery storage solutions could be used to help power Britain’s railways. The concept is that energy generated during braking at a station would be stored nearby in stationary batteries, then used to accelerate the train when it starts up again. In one scenario, stationary storage would be augmented by the batteries of EVs parked at the station. Dr. Martin points out that within the next 10 to 15 years, train station parking lots could be filled with EVs. “Why not use the batteries that are on board those electric vehicles?” he asks. “Often at large train stations and tram stops, you have park-and-ride facilities where people are commuting to work. They leave their car at the car park, and they’re not returning for several hours. So you’re almost guaranteed a certain usage profile for the system.” The TransEnergy project plans to install a demonstration energy storage system, and a feasibility study is currently underway with the London Underground. The researchers are also talking to Merseyrail, which serves the Liverpool metro area.

Photo courtesy of Extra Zebra (CC BY 2.0)

Report: Meeting world fuel economy standards will require 16% market share for EVs by 2020

Is V2T (vehicle-to-train) the next energy storage technology?

THE VEHICLES

Photo courtesy of kmf164/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Columbus, Ohio wins $50 million in grants under the DOT Smart City Challenge The city of Columbus, Ohio has won the Smart City Challenge, a competition organized by the DOT to encourage cities to develop plans for a 21st-century intelligent transportation system. 78 cities submitted applications for the award, which will provide up to $40 million from the DOT and an additional $10 million from Paul Allen’s Vulcan, Inc. The Columbus proposal, which included a $90-million matching fund from local businesses, calls for the city to expand its municipal EV fleet, and for the area’s 50 largest businesses and institutions to purchase EVs and install charging stations for employees. Other elements include: improving low-income access to ride-sharing and other public transportation; enhancing smart grid technology, using EVs as distributed energy storage devices; and installing significant wind and solar power generating capacity over the next four years.

“Columbus is known as the test market of the USA, with retail stores and restaurants trying new concepts in Columbus before expanding across the country,” said Robbie Diamond, President of the Electrification Coalition. “Columbus [is] the perfect test market to reshape urban transportation.”

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Efficient Drivetrains, Inc. (EDI) has been selected as a drivetrain provider and vehicle integrator for an electrification program by the San Diego Port Tenants Association (SDPTA). Also selected were BYD and Transportation Power. As part of the program, EDI will create a series of electric port trucks, and electrify forklift vehicle accessories. The electrified port trucks will replace legacy vehicles of the same specifications, maintaining the same power and performance. Electrification of the forklift will eradicate emissions by eliminating engine idling. The initiative is being jointly funded by the California Energy Commission (CEC) through a $5.9-million grant, which will fund the development of 10 all-electric freight vehicles, together with $2.3 million in cash and in-kind contributions from the seven shipper members of the SDPTA. The CEC also recently awarded the Port of Los Angeles a $5.8-million grant for a similar project. Last spring, EDI completed a project for the world’s busiest container port in Shanghai, building a PHEV port truck for Shaanxi Automotive.

Photo courtesy of Efficient Drivetrains, Inc

Efficient Drivetrains selected for San Diego port electrification project

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has approved Boston-based XL Hybrids as a vendor under the state’s Heavy Duty Voucher Incentive Project (HVIP). Fleet buyers of XL Hybrids’ aftermarket van conversions will now be eligible for vouchers from the state: $2,500 each for the first 100 vehicles, and $2,000 each for the second 100 vehicles per fleet. XL Hybrids’ XL3 Hybrid Electric Drive System converts GM 2500 and 3500 passenger and cargo vans into hybrid vehicles. According to the company, the system increases mpg by approximately 25 percent, and can be installed in less than six hours. “It’s easy for fleets to take advantage of the HVIP program with XL Hybrids because we do all the heavy lifting,” said COO Clay Siegert. “GM vans can be conveniently and efficiently upfitted with our XL3 system through partner installation facilities across California. Once the conversion is completed, XL Hybrids submits the voucher paperwork on behalf of the fleet.”

Photo courtesy of XL Hybrids

CARB approves XL Hybrids conversions to receive incentive vouchers

THE VEHICLES VW Group to launch 30 new BEVs by 2025 The Volkswagen Group has presented a new strategic plan that places a special emphasis on e-mobility. VW and its sister brands intend to launch more than 30 battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) over the next ten years. The group estimates that by 2025, EVs could account for as much as a quarter of the global passenger car market, and its own BEV sales will be between two and three million units. Other new initiatives include investment of “several billion euros” in autonomous mobility solutions, and streamlining the company’s modular architectures to reduce complexity and increase efficiency. “We are streamlining our modular architectures to make even better and more disciplined use of their benefits,” said Volkswagen Group CEO Matthias Müller. “Instead of twelve variants as planned, we will work with just four major architectures: one each for economy vehicles, volume models, the premium segment and sports cars. This will cut complexity significantly and increase the commercial benefits.” The Volkswagen Group plans to develop battery technology as a new competency. “Battery technology is the key to e-mobility,” said Müller. “It accounts for 20 to 30 percent of value-added for fully electric vehicles. We will need 150 gigawatt hours of battery capacity by 2025 for our own e-fleet alone, which would make for a massive procurement volume.” Batteries aren’t the whole ball game, however. Legacy ICEs, which Müller thinks will still power two-thirds of new vehicles

in 2030, remain an important part of VW’s strategy, as do fuel cells. “The fact that we are now focusing so clearly on e-mobility and battery technology does not mean that we will scale down or even suspend our work on developing fuel cells. Here, too, we intend to stay on the ball, and will be ready when the time is ripe.”

Meet with Seal Methods at The Battery Show Booth # 1335 SEP 13-15, 2016 | Novi, Mi

THE INEVITABILITY OF

E-BUSES Q&A Electric transit buses enter the fast-follower market stage as the leaders work to remove the last barriers to adoption. By Christian Ruoff

Proterra’s Ryan Popple and ABB’s Daan Nap on the state of the market and charging standards in North America and Europe

ith each passing year, more decision makers are realizing that city buses are an ideal application for EVs. They drive predictable routes. They can easily be charged overnight in depots or at scheduled stops during the day. They constantly stop and go, which is ideal for EV drivetrains and regenerative braking. And the prospect of eliminating the noise and the clouds of black soot associated with legacy diesel buses is attractive to both riders and city planners. Best of all, e-buses save money. Lots and lots of money, thanks to lower fuel and maintenance costs. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars over the lifespan of just one electric bus compared to diesel. So it’s no wonder that companies in the electric bus market are very optimistic. From North America to Europe to China, the industry continues to mature quickly, and leaders are beginning to emerge, with strong business models. Charged recently caught up with a couple of those leaders to talk about the current state of the electric bus market, and learn more about developing charging standards around the world.

Photo courtesy of Volvo Group

THE VEHICLES

JUL/AUG 2016

Proterra is a clear leader on our home continent. The company claims over 50% market share in North America in terms of both customers and vehicle count. We asked CEO Ryan Popple where the EV transit industry is headed in the next few years. Q Charged: In 2015, you told us that Proterra’s sales

pipeline opportunities grew about five to seven times compared to the previous year. Has the fast growth in customer interest continued? A Ryan Popple: Yes, it continues to grow at a pretty

impressive clip. Last year we were planning on delivering roughly 1% of new transit vehicles to the US market, and we’ll hit that metric this year. What’s changed is that now we’re more capacity-constrained than demand-constrained. For 2017, we’re going to triple capacity over 2016. We’ll be shipping between 100 and 150 buses next year, and we already have all of those

orders on hand. We used to try to run the business with a six-month order backlog. Now we’re at about 18 From an economics months of backlog, and we’re selectively making perspective, we’re capital investments in running the table on our supply chain so we natural gas and diesel can bring the backlog hybrid. back down. If we don’t ramp even faster, the next order we take will be for early 2018 delivery. I spend a lot of time right now figuring out how to de-risk our growth rate. That means working really closely with a few key suppliers to make sure they can ramp, and also buying ahead on key pieces of inventory. We’ve realized that we won’t be accomplishing our mission if we get custom-

Photo courtesy of Proterra

Photo courtesy of SounderBruce (CC BY-SA 2.0)

THE VEHICLES with EVs. So it will happen. But at this stage there is really no way to skip the pilot orders and trial periods for electrification - not until the electric adoption rate gets closer to around 20% of the fleets. At that point you’re not going to get fired for buying a lot of EVs when all of your sister agencies already have them, and they work well and save a lot of money. Frankly, I think that is why SEPTA’s first order was 25 instead of 5, because they see it’s already working in other cities. That was the single largest EV order for the North American transit industry. Those aren’t options, that’s a Q Charged: What’s the state of EV awareness among single cash order. I think that if we had done this pilot order with SEPTA city officials and transit authorities? two years ago, even if they started with 5 units at that time, A Ryan Popple: On the transit demand side, I’d then they wouldn’t be forced to make that large of a commitment to buy diesel hybrids. But no say it’s become an emerging practice to look one is going to take the risk on hundreds of seriously at EVs when placing an order for Transit agencies EVs until they’ve done a significant pilot. new buses. It’s not quite a best practice are starting to pass And soon we’ll be announcing the start yet, but an emerging practice is still very resolutions that mandate of pilots with other large northeast powerful. At all of the transit conferagencies, which is great - it needs to ences, there are now multiple panels happen. and a lot of experts talking about EVs. I also predict that, for a lot of these We’ve also seen the first public tranhuge orders you see for 500 or 800 sit agencies in the country starting to diesel buses that include long-term pass board-level resolutions to mandate EVs in a certain options to buy more, those options are that their fleets will go to 100% electric amount of time not going to get exercised. They’ll probably in a certain amount of time, which is a ship the first third of that order, and then very powerful example for other agencies. the transit authority board, the city’s mayor, or From an economics perspective, we’re running even the transit staff are going to insist that they don’t the table on natural gas and diesel hybrid. We’ve also exercise the remainder of the options of the contract. This found ways for banks to finance the vehicles and deliver is because the backlash against fossil fuel is really building great rates of return on investing in EVs to replace diesels. from an economic perspective. As you run the numbers on So, like most industrial markets, it starts with a flat how much money they’re going to waste by deploying 500 adoption period with only a couple of early adopters, then diesel hybrids instead of EVs, you’re going to have taxpayer fast followers, and then full-blown mainstream accepwatchdogs start to come out of the woodwork and say, tance. Right now, we’re seeing a tremendous fast-follower “This is crazy!” The reason it’s still happening is because stage for electric buses. EV tech is still relatively young and we have to prove it out. Q Charged: We saw that SEPTA in Philadelphia So we’re currently proving that we’re not equal to diesel, we’re better. recently gave Proterra its largest order to date, for 25 There will also be environmental and social justice preselectric buses, which sounded great. However, about a sures. How do you deploy 25 zero-emission buses in one week later we saw that they also ordered 525 diesel part of the city, and then continue to emit diesel fumes on hybrids from another company, which added some all the other bus routes? There is a fairness aspect to that. discouraging perspective. When will the EV market I think that, in time, the neighborhood that is next to the reach that level of order sizes? one with EVs will ask, “When are you going to stop makA Popple: Well, we’re already seeing some transit ing me breathe diesel exhaust? If it’s cheaper to run EVs in the city, when are we going to get them in my neighborauthorities, both smaller and larger than SEPTA, putting hood?” together implementation plans on how to replace all buses ers excited about EVs and then tell them they can’t get vehicles until 2018 or 2019. So the focus has shifted over to supply. I’ve worked with a lot of tech companies in my career, and usually around the summer is when they inform the board of directors that the growth forecast is going to be a little lower than what was predicted in January. But we’ll be telling our board that we’re going to beat our forecast significantly this year, and our updated forecast will be higher than planned.

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JUL/AUG 2016

Photo courtesy of SounderBruce - CC BY-SA 2.0

That’s why we’re starting to see those roadmaps to go all-electric from transit agencies. They want to communicate the plan to the communities that are asking these questions.

for 100, 200, or 500 buses, we will be able to deliver it. This is very similar to what we went through at Tesla going from RoadHow do ster to Model S [Popple was an early employee of Tesla Motors, you deploy 25 zeroQ Charged: What about from a where he served as Senior Direcemission buses in one production point of view? tor of Finance]. No one in the part of the city, and then When will Proterra and the rest traditional auto industry thought continue to emit diesel of the electric bus industry be they needed to worry about Tesla fumes on all the other able to support orders for taking real market share. Then hundreds of buses? they woke up one day and Tesla bus routes? was shipping 50,000-plus Model S A Popple: At Proterra, we’re vehicles a year. In the top 25 car-buybuilding this business long-term to be ing markets in the US, Tesla was beating able to annually provide thousands of Audi, Mercedes, BMW and other cars in the buses to customers in North America. same price range. And exporting them to GerSo, in addition to our South Carolina manufacturing many. No American car gets exported to Germany. They’re site, we recently opened a west coast factory in California. proud of their technology. You don’t see Mustangs driving We’re thinking about it in terms of modules of growth. around in Munich, but you do see the Model S. We’re at about 50 vehicles per year now. Next year we’ll We think a similar thing is going to happen in the bus finish at a run rate of 200, a year after that 300, then 500, market. We want to get to thousands of units per year, and and so on. we know what that cookbook looks like. Over the next five We think we are leading the industry in terms of product to ten years that ripple effect is going to happen. efficiency and performance because we’re solely focused on Q Charged: In June, Proterra announced that it was EVs, and have designed our buses from the ground up to be electric. Our customers know that, which is why we have opening its overhead fast-charging technology to the well over 50% market share in the US in terms of vehicle transit industry on a royalty-free basis. What led to and customer count. So now they want to see our scale that decision? plans. They want to know that when they give us an order

THE VEHICLES Photo courtesy of Atomic Taco - CC BY-SA 2.0

A Popple: It’s really about removing the last barriers to adoption. Some transit customers have expressed concerns about vendor lock-in, because we use a proprietary overhead charging system. And there are currently no North American standards for electric bus charging. Last year one customer told us that, while they really liked our buses, they had been slowed down in implementing more EVs because a diesel bus manufacturer told them that if they chose EVs, they’d be forced to buy only Proterra vehicles in the future. So we had to find a way to remove that concern. That customer got us thinking more broadly about the industry. What everyone really needs is an open standard that is a proven and safe solution. So we want to step out from controlling the infrastructure and just focus on building vehicles as fast as we can. As the pioneer in North America, we had to come up with our own charging solution because there was really nothing off the shelf to buy. But a healthy market means competition, and we want to see more EVs from other companies. By officially sharing the technology, we want to reassure customers that we’re not interested in building

Photo courtesy of SounderBruce - CC BY-SA 2.0 Photo courtesy of SounderBruce - CC BY-SA 2.0

Photo courtesy of Proterra

a business by locking people into a hard network effect. We’re actually totally fine with the idea of them deploying competing EVs in the future that use the same charging hardware. We look forward to the opportunity to win a lot of market share by building the best vehicles. Also, we didn’t want other bus companies to have to buy the technology from us. This will allow us to get multiple vendors to be able to provide these chargers. Someone could start a new company based on building the equipment, or they could teach a vendor how to build it. As long as they use it safely, we don’t care. In the future, we want to have large competitive EV RFPs. So this is about market evolution, and the decision we had to make to enable electric buses to be a truly large market.

THE VEHICLES Q Charged: We’ve seen a lot of news recently about pilots that wirelessly charge buses at stops along the route. For example, WAVE, which we wrote about in our March/April 2016 issue, believes that wireless charging is the best way to go. Does Proterra offer wireless options to your customers?

honestly, we think that our overhead charger technology is much better than the pantograph-style chargers that those in the European consortium are still piloting. Our experience experimenting with different fast-charging systems goes back further than most EV companies anywhere in the world. We’ve tried many different systems, and we’re confident that the patented, single-blade overhead A Popple: No, not currently, but we keep our eye on charging design that we decided to open to the industry is wireless very closely. We have looked at a lot of wireless the most reliable and safest. systems, but when we dug into them, we realized the The biggest thing that we learned, working in alltechnology wasn’t as far along as we’d hoped, and the weather environments, is the importance of having fully proven charging levels aren’t high enough to perform enclosed high-voltage connections. Our system has an useful work in transit applications. insulated enclosed cap on the charge head that comes There’s a lot of good stuff about wireless from a condown, and the blade on the bus is also insulated. It has ceptual level, but our responsibility as a company is to very robust metallic plugs that are activated and inject into advance EV tech as quickly as possible. If a system is safe, the socket. It works in the snow and rain. For cold-weather high-power, cost-effective and reliable, then we’ll put it customers there is a de-icing capability - the blade can into our portfolio. But we’ve yet to see that in the wireless warm itself up. And the ergonomics of the charge head will market. actually plow the snow off the top of the bus. We set the power transfer bar really high We also think our system is superior in with conductive charging. We charge at terms of the sophistication of its user higher power levels than anyone else in interface. As far as I know, we’re the only the EV space - three times higher powcompany in commercial operation that er than Tesla superchargers, about uses autonomous drive technology to We had to come eight times higher than CHAdeMO. dock the vehicle. After 2.5 million up with our own And we do it in all weather, with EV miles, we’ve learned that you passengers on the bus. need to use software technology if charging solution because The technology areas where I’m you’re going to align the bus with there was really nothing not optimistic are hydrogen fuel the charger perfectly every time. off the shelf to buy. cells and battery swapping. For Once the bus is within range of the transit, I think they’re a waste of time overhead system, an identification - they don’t make sense economically, process occurs and the velocity of the given how BEV has advanced (I could go bus is controlled all the way down to the on and on about why that is). But I wouldn’t stop. The driver remains in full control of say that about wireless - it just needs more testing the steering and has the ability to stop the vehicle, and product development to be ready for wide adoption. but we wanted to prevent the driver from going into the charge station too fast or passing the charge point. It’s very Q Charged: In Europe, electric bus manufacturers dangerous to back up a bus. If you miss the location, you and charging system suppliers have agreed to work probably have to go around the block. And in cities, that together on developing an open charging interface can be a disaster for the schedule. standard. Are there any similar efforts in North Our philosophy is that anytime we see a standard that America? already exists, we’re going to use it. I’m optimistic that other truck and bus companies that are starting to experiment A Popple: There is an early effort underway to work on a with EVs will follow our lead in adopting CCS for plugging standard, and we believe that the starting point for that in the bus. But there are some companies that are trying kind of conversation is for companies like Proterra to open to create a separate plug standard for buses and trucks, up their technology to allow others to work with it. We and I think that’s going to fragment the market. We really have over a quarter million high-power overhead charge should be doing the same thing, and building upon what events, so we’re pretty confident in the system. And the auto segment is doing as much as possible.

JUL/AUG 2016

European cooperation

In March 2016, a large group of bus manufacturers and charging infrastructure providers announced that they have agreed to develop voluntary charging standards. The objective is to ensure reliability and compatibility across all bus brands and charging systems, as the number of European cities running EV trials continues to grow quickly. The European body CEN-CENELEC and the international standards organization ISO/IEC are currently working on charging standards, which are expected to take effect in 2019. However, with many cities already launching large EV deployments, the market leaders have an increased sense of urgency to meet the concerns of their customers. The consortium members include European bus manufacturers Irizar, Solaris, VDL and Volvo, together with charging system suppliers ABB, Heliox and Siemens. Charged recently talked to Daan Nap, ABB’s Global Sales Director for Electric Bus Charging, about the transit market and the standard conversations taking place among the group. The company ABB has supplied over is one of the world’s preeminent EV charging leaders, and has supplied over 4,000 of its DC fast-charging solutions globally. As a result, ABB works with most electric car, bus and truck makers worldwide - giving it a great perspective on market trends.

4,000

Q Charged: How is the general market for

DC fast-charging solutions globally

electric buses in Europe, compared to North America? A Daan Nap: There is a little bit more momentum in

Europe, but I see the US picking up very quickly now as well. I think in the future they will develop side by side. Many major European cities are now saying they will buy only electric buses only as of 2020, 2025, or 2030. So the existing fleet will phase out in the coming period, and all city buses will go electric. The cycle life for diesel bus replacement is typically 8-10 years. So I expect that in two to three cycles - about 16-20 years - the vast majority of the market for new vehicles, 80 or 90%, can be fully electric. And that is huge in such a short time frame. This will bring up the innovator’s dilemma. In the same way we could see a newcomer like Tesla get very big, very quickly. Today’s leading car and bus makers have a good position on the internal combustion engine technology. They are now facing the trend of vehicle electrification, which is a sort of disruptive technology. So I think there

Photos courtesy of ABB

THE VEHICLES A Nap: First of all, everyone agreed that will also be newcomers that will step out and say, “We don’t have a lot to lose, so it would be very confusing for the we’ll go full blast on electric.” We see market if companies decided to do this happening already. charging in different ways. CustomIn Europe there are a few big bus ers will be hesitant to adopt Many major European makers with multiple smaller playbecause they’re afraid to buy the cities are now saying ers. I think Volvo was one of the wrong system. So we decided to first global players to realize that sit down and try to find the they will buy electric electric buses are going to happen things we do agree on. buses only as of 2020, anyway, and they have stepped up Everyone agreed that if you’re 2025, or 2030 to become a leader in this field. in a depot and you’re charging In China, there are a lot more overnight, then charging will be electric buses than in the US and DC (Direct Current), using the Europe [some sources say there are same combo plug used for passenger already over 100,000]. I predict that we’ll cars - this is the CCS Type 2 connector see more Chinese companies beginning to in Europe and will be CCS type 1 in the US. export more, like BYD who have the benefit of As for the power level, we agreed that may vary volume on their internal market. So I think these developbased on the use case of the customer and normally will ments can change the player map in the coming period. be somewhere between 20 and 150 kW, which can be supported with the CCS standard. Q Charged: So what exactly has the European The second issue that everyone agreed on is that we cooperation for bus charging agreed to do? need to have common opportunity charging interfaces

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Photo courtesy of Volvo Group

It’s important that in the end we have a totally open and independent system, where buses and chargers are interoperable

as well. However, there were different ideas about how overhead charging is best implemented. Some prefer a pantograph system that is mounted on the bus and raises up to make contact with the overhead charging unit. Others prefer the opposite – an inverted pantograph system, where the pantograph is mounted on the infrastructure that comes down to the bus. So at this point, everyone has agreed to support a common interface for the inverted pantograph system, and part of the group also support the system where the pantograph is on the bus as well. Q Charged: Which open interface will ABB support for

opportunity charging?

A Nap: At ABB EV Charging,

we’ll focus solely on the inverted pantograph infrastructure, which is also referred to as OppCharge. We think it’s the most cost-effective solution when going into volume. The pantograph hardware costs money, and you always have more buses then charging infrastructure. Many bus manufacturers agree, and would like as little weight, complexity and costly systems on the vehicle as possible.

Q Charged: Do you have any specifications for the

standards?

A Nap: One goal is to reuse and comply with everything

that is already in the Combo spec for passenger cars. The main changes we have to make are that buses are higher voltage - instead of 300 to 500 V we need to go higher, 400 to 850 V. And instead of 50 kW, we will go as high as 300 or 450 kW and even up to 600 kW. Also, for the opportunity charging using a pantograph, we’re further developing the

Photo courtesy of BYD

THE VEHICLES

Opting out of overhead charging

Photo courtesy of Volvo Group

wireless communication protocols in the CCS standard to enable communication between a pantograph charger and a bus when it arrives at a station. These topics are being worked out at the moment among this group and also in other initiatives together with the more formal standardization bodies like UITP and CEN-CENELEC. So the challenge is to make sure they all cooperate and it’s done in a very effective and safe way. It’s important that in the end we have a totally open and independent system, where buses and chargers are interoperable. Then any transport authority can buy buses from brand A, B, or C, and then any brand of charging infrastructure to work with it and vice versa. We see that customers are keen to prevent vendor lock-in. They are asking for open standards that ensure interoperability between the various brands. So that’s the goal to enable the market. Q Charged: Do you think the US will adopt similar

standards?

A Nap: Yes, I think eventually there will be consensus

about reusing the CCS plug standard as much as possible and then converging onto a shared overhead charging pantograph specification. Soon we’ll be announcing some interesting projects in the US as well.

While many of the world’s electric bus makers are working hard on overhead charging systems and standards, there are some that think it makes more sense to skip it all together. For example BYD - one of the world’s most established electric bus builders, now with over 10,000 battery-powered buses on the road - doesn’t offer any overhead charging system to its customers. “We think the cost outweighs the practicality,” Ted Dowling, BYD’s VP for Canada & Pacific Northwest, told Charged. “There’s no reason to use it when you can get the range out of the vehicle that we already do. BYD builds a range of buses capable of servicing routes up to 200 miles in length in their final year of service [according to the US DOT standard, which is 12 years]. That meets 85% of the route structures and provides a solution that results in little to no adaptation whatsoever. BYD has made it a top priority to provide a product that does not interfere with business as usual.” “It’s much simpler to design the buses for the routes than to do massive alterations for infrastructure overhauls,” added Matt Jurjevich, BYD’s Director of Business Development in Canada. “We wanted to offer a solution to transit operators so that they would have to change as little as possible in their process. Our vehicle electrification strategy is based around helping cities become more efficient, and this goes beyond just the environmental and economic impacts.” BYD buses use a plug-in charging system with power levels up to 350 kW that it says is capable of recharging a bus in about three hours. “To us that’s the most manageable solution,” said Jurjevich. The Chinese company has been selling electric buses in North America since 2013, when Stanford University deployed 13 of its EVs. BYD reports explosive growth similar to that of other companies we’ve spoken to. It recently delivered its 10,000th bus worldwide, and already has over 7,000 orders this year. “In North America, we now have close to 300 orders (including long-term options), which is a massive jump in our market share over last year,” said Dowling.

JUL/AUG 2016

CAR

AND SUPERCAR Rimac Automobili invents the Croatian auto industry By Charles Morris

Photos courtesy of Rimac Automobili

THE VEHICLES

JUL/AUG 2016

2009 Born in a garage in a small town just outside Zagreb, Croatia etroit is gradually losing its position as the epicenter of the auto industry. Nowadays, news of cutting-edge developments is more likely to come from Silicon Valley, Europe or China. The Eastern European nation of Croatia is pretty far from the centers of automotive power, but it’s here that a highly innovative firm called Rimac Automobili is building electric supercars. The company was literally born in a garage in 2009, in the small town of Sveta Nedelja, just outside Zagreb, and named for founder Mate Rimac. It began attracting attention within a year, as a test mule based on a BMW M3 started winning races against legacy gas-powered cars (the e-M3 went on to set five Guinness and FIA world records for EVs). In 2011, the company showed its Concept_One electric supercar at the Frankfurt Motor Show. In 2014, the Concept_One achieved worldwide visibility as the official Race Director Car for the Formula E racing series. Let’s get the inevitable comparison with Tesla out of the way. Like the young Elon Musk, Mate Rimac has big dreams and a clear vision, and he has accomplished things in a short time that establishment figures would have said were impossible. In a country that had no existing auto industry, Rimac has built a company that’s selling cars and components around the world, and has been recognized as a great national asset. “We are a true engineering company, with about 50% of our 190-person team devoted to engineering and design,” founder and CEO Mate Rimac told Charged.

“A major challenge was to build that team in a country that never had a car industry and has only a few high-technology companies. That meant we had to go through a lot of trial-and-error iterations and learn from our own mistakes. That process bonded our team and created a family.” Rimac has been voted the best employer in Croatia, and is one of only a few high-tech manufacturing companies in the country, so it attracts the best talent in the industry. “What the local workforce lacks in industry experience is made up by their enthusiasm and drive,” says Mate Rimac. Rimac is following the time-tested strategy of developing technology for a high-priced, low-volume product, then using the lessons learned to build a higher-volume model. However, unlike the Californians, the Croatians have no plans (yet) to expand to the mass market.

Photos courtesy of Rimac Automobili

THE VEHICLES

The company revealed a production version of the Concept_One at the 2016 Geneva Auto Salon. Production will be limited to 8 units, but the company is working on a new, higher-volume model, to be unveiled in 2017. “We are a supercar manufacturer, so don’t hold your breath for a high-volume family car, but we do plan to go in the hundreds of units territory,” Mate Rimac told us. No details of the next-gen model are on offer at the moment. “We have decided to unveil new models only when they are ready for production and not as concept cars.”

If you want something done right... Rimac does not follow the usual auto industry practice of contracting with outside suppliers to design and manufacture components. Almost everything that goes into the Concept_One is developed inhouse, and built right in Sveta Nedelja. Perhaps this

policy was partly born of necessity (automotive suppliers are few in Croatia). Rimac’s web site explains its philosophy thus: “Painstaking attention to every detail requires high quality, which can best be maintained and controlled if the engineering and manufacturing teams are under the same roof. Thousands of metal, electric and carbon fiber parts have to be manufactured, assembled and tested for each Concept_One. Even the tools, jigs and molds are designed and produced by Rimac Automobili.” “At our core, we are a technology company,” says Mate Rimac. “Most technologies and components that you can find in our car are developed and manufactured on-site in our facilities. Other than the obvious electric vehicle components such as battery systems, we are also manufacturing all composite and metal parts, electronics, infotainment, chassis, suspension compo-

WE ARE A TRUE ENGINEERING COMPANY, WITH ABOUT 50% OF OUR 190-PERSON TEAM DEVOTED TO ENGINEERING AND DESIGN.

JUL/AUG 2016

THE VEHICLES nents, etc. in-house. We are one of the few places in the world where you can start with a blank sheet of paper and raw material and design and produce a whole car in one facility.”

Spreading the gospel Rimac also licenses its technology and engineering services to other manufacturers. “We provide a wide range of products and services to our customers,” says Mr. Rimac. “We are supplying components such as batteries, ECUs, and infotainment systems for some projects, while for others we handle the full vehicle development program, including small batch production runs for a range of applications and industries - from supercars to vessels to wheelchairs.”

Multiple motors, one team Designing things in-house enables Rimac to maximize the advantages of a nativebuilt EV. The Concept_One’s powertrain and chassis were developed in parallel by engineers working within the same team. The resulting automobile boasts a high degree of integration among components, near-perfect weight distribution and an extremely low center of gravity. EV designers are discovering the advantages of using multiple motors - after all, electric motors are compact and inexpensive compared to those noisy, belching things called ICEs. Whereas Tesla’s pre-

Many of these collaborative projects are top secret, but at least two are anything but. The Koenigsegg Regera, the brainchild of Swedish supercar designer Christian von Koenigsegg, is billed as the world’s most powerful car. With a V8 engine and two electric motors cranking out 1,500 hp of total power, and 2,000 Nm of torque, few would argue. Rimac supplied several components for this work of automotive art, including a 9.27 kWh battery pack that can deliver 500 kW of power and absorb 150 kW during regenerative braking, and weighs only 115 kg. Rimac also collaborated with Monster Sport to build a custom car for the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Legendary driver Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima drove the E-Runner Concept_One to win second place overall (EVs and ICEs) in 2015 and fifth overall this year.

mium models use two motors, the Rimac supercar has no less than four permanentmagnet oil-cooled motors (designed and built in-house, of course). There are two 500 kW (peak) motors in front, and two 600 kW units in the rear. All four deliver 12,000 RPM at up to 97% efficiency. “The Concept_One’s powertrain is divided into four sub-systems, each consisting of one motor, inverter, and a reduction gearbox,” Mate Rimac explained to us. “Each of the systems drives one wheel, completely independent one from the other. Sophisticated ECUs control each of those systems using the input of many precise sensors placed all over the car. This architecture allows a new approach to vehicle dynam-

Photos courtesy of Rimac Automobili

THE CONCEPT_ONE’S POWERTRAIN IS DIVIDED INTO FOUR SUB-SYSTEMS, EACH CONSISTING OF ONE MOTOR, INVERTER, AND A REDUCTION GEARBOX.

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ics, which is called Rimac All Wheel Torque Vectoring (RAWTV). We can control the torque on each motor, and thus on each wheel, 100 times a second. The result is incredible control and adaptability of vehicle behavior, a high level of safety and usability in every condition for all kinds of skills, maximized regenerative braking and fine-tuned traction control.” The RAWTV system calculates the optimum torque for each wheel, functioning as both traction control and stability control. It also controls the 4-wheel regenerative braking of up to 400 kW, and the carbon-ceramic brakes. Rimac says that RAWTV can distribute the brake force faster, more smoothly and with greater precision than conventional ABS systems, ensuring maximum vehicle stability. The settings of the RAWTV system can be adjusted to change the handling of the car. Driving modes include

WE CAN CONTROL THE TORQUE ON EACH MOTOR, AND THUS ON EACH WHEEL, 100 TIMES A SECOND.

Comfort, Control, Track and Drift mode, and drivers can also create their own custom settings. What are the pros and cons of Rimac’s 4-motor design compared to an in-wheel hub motor? “In-wheel hub motors add unsprung mass that results in higher stress to suspension components,” says Mr. Rimac. “Our motors sit low and inboard, close to the center of the car, which we consider to be better for vehicle dynamics. Inwheel motors have to run at the same speed as the tires, which is a limiting factor. High-speed motors tend to be lighter, so gearing the motors up to high RPMs gives weight advantages. While there are many advantages to a four-motor setup, it brings a high level of complexity in the development process and requires a talented vehicle dynamics and control software engineering team to get the most out of the system.”

Photos courtesy of Rimac Automobili

Mate Rimac, Founder of Rimac Automobili

THE VEHICLES Shifting gears Most EVs use a single-speed transmission, but Rimac points out that this forces designers to compromise between acceleration and top speed. Each of the Concept_One’s four motors is coupled to a proprietary gearbox system. While the front motors feature single-speed gearboxes, each of the rear motors has a two-speed double-clutch gearbox. A proprietary carbon fiber double-clutch system with Formula 1 clutch disks enables either extremely fast or smooth and comfortable shifts that are supported by synchronizing motor speed for uninterrupted shifting. Rimac assures us that the Concept_One can also be driven in one gear all the time, as it still has enough torque to smoke almost any sports car. The Concept_One’s proprietary battery pack consists of 8,450 battery cells, each individually controlled by the Rimac Battery Management System (also developed in-house). Rimac also developed a unique liquid thermal management and lowresistance conducting system for the pack. The pack is designed to deliver 1,000 kW of power, and can absorb 400 kW during braking. All functions of the Concept_One are controlled by a single unified computer system, which gathers information from over 500 sensors and can send telemetry data to the cloud, and thence to a smartphone or other viewer. Vehicle dynamics and powertrain functions are controlled by high-grade aluminum buttons (yes, even these are made in-house), while secondary functions are controlled through the central touchscreen.

Rimac’s roots are in racing “Racing affects technology like war,” says Mate Rimac. “You are encouraged to develop things quickly. You break stuff, improve and try again. It is a fast-track development process. If something works well on a racetrack, it should perform great on the road. The challenge is to bring the cost down for a non-racing application.”

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Photos courtesy of Rimac Automobili

“The Tesla Model S has great performance for a couple of 0-60 mph acceleration runs [but] many powertrain components face thermal challenges on the track. We want to make sure that our customers can have fun with their cars on tracks and perform well over a longer period of time. Our industrial customers often have the same requirement - the Koenigsegg Regera 9 kWh battery has to be able to deliver 500 kW of power for a long time, as the car carries basically a 1 mW power station in the form of an 8-cylinder biturbo combustion engine which constantly recharges the battery at high rates.” Lessons learned on the track are valuable not only for building supercars, but also for more mundane vehicles. “We are using our experience to incorporate

many of the design features of our high-performance battery systems for applications that require affordable systems, like our nautical, bike and wheelchair projects.” “The torque vectoring is a perfect example of a technology transfer from road cars to racing and back - we took the Concept_One torque vectoring system and adapted it for the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. There we learned so much, and improved the system on so many levels that we have implemented the racing system back into the road car.” Speaking of racing, Rimac has also built an even more powerful car that it calls the Concept_One’s Evil Twin. The Concept_S boasts a screaming 1,384 hp and 1,800 Nm of torque. It’s 50 kg lighter than the

WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT OUR CUSTOMERS CAN HAVE FUN WITH THEIR CARS ON TRACKS AND PERFORM WELL OVER A LONGER PERIOD OF TIME.

THE VEHICLES Concept_One, and features special aerodynamic elements - a front splitter, air deflectors, side skirts and a large rear spoiler - that enhance downforce by 34 percent. The interior has been stripped of sound insulation and equipped with racing seats with four-point racing harnesses.

Battery balance When we asked Mate Rimac what he thought about new types of battery technology such as solid-state electrolytes, silicon anodes, lithium-sulfur, etc., his answer was reminiscent of comments that Elon Musk and JB Straubel have made - so far, there’s nothing that beats Li-ion cells on all the parameters that are required in an automotive battery. “Since I started to get involved with electric vehicles, new technologies have been announced, but not much has happened since then. Lab-level tests demonstrate good results in some aspects such as the recharge time, but a good battery needs to offer excellence in power density, energy density, cycle and calendar life, safety, operating temperatures, cost, etc. People always focus on one thing at which new promising technologies are

The Rimac Concept_One Maximum power:

800 kW (1,088 hp)

Maximum torque:

1,600 Nm

Top speed:

355 km/h

Acceleration:

0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) 2.6 seconds; 0-200 km/h 6.2 seconds, 0-300 km/h 14.2 seconds

Weight:

1,850 kg

Power-to-weight ratio:

588 hp/ton

Battery pack:

liquid-cooled, 82 kWh, 650 V nominal

Range:

330 km

Charging:

22 kW on-board charger, DC Combo fast charger (up to 120 kW)

really good at, but we can’t know their true suitability for a vehicle application until we can get our hands on them and test them. We are leveraging the best technologies available and use different chemistries and cell suppliers depending on project requirements.”

The Obama administration, a reliable booster of electromobility, has announced a new package of measures aimed at helping to put more EVs on the road. While EVangelists may be disappointed that the package contains little in the way of new money or mandates, it will hopefully lay the groundwork for more cooperation among governments, private companies and other institutions in the EV ecosystem. Perhaps the most substantial part of the package is the expansion of a federal loan guarantee program to include EV charging stations. The DOE has issued a supplement to its Title XVII Renewable Energy and Efficient Energy Projects Solicitation, clarifying that certain commercial-scale deployments of EV charging facilities are now eligible for the program, which can provide up to $4.5 billion in loan guarantees. The DOE’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) has determined that EV infrastructure, including associated hardware and software, may properly be characterized under the Solicitation as Distributed Energy Projects that employ efficient electrical transmission or distribution technologies. There’s also a long list of other measures, some new, some previously announced: • 50 industry players, including automakers, utilities and charging providers, have signed on to a set of Guiding Principles to Promote Electric Vehicles and Charging Infrastructure. EVgo has committed to investing to invest $100 million in EV infrastructure over the next 5 years to expand its charging network. The investment will focus on providing customers with access to high-speed charging at charging rates significantly faster than what is available on the market today. ChargePoint has committed up to $20 million toward the deployment of a national network of high-speed charging stations as part of public-private partnerships. This includes R&D investments, site identification, smart city deployments and DC fast charger

Photo courtesy of White House Photo by Pete Souza

New White House EV initiatives include $4.5 billion in loan guarantees for charging facilities

corridors. In order to future-proof the network, ChargePoint plans to develop a line of high-speed DC fast chargers with 125-350 kW charging capacity, and to work with the broader industry to develop the standards necessary for interoperability. • The Energy and Transportation departments are teaming up to develop a guide for the federal government’s EV and charging infrastructure incentives, including available financing and funding. It will also list current tax credits and incentives applicable to EV charging. • As part of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, the DOT will solicit nominations from state and local officials to identify the best locations for EV charging corridors. In designating corridors, the DOT will (1) consider the nominated facilities, (2) incorporate existing corridors designated by states, and (3) consider the demand for, and location of, existing fueling stations and infrastructure. DOT will also evaluate applications based on their ability to reduce emissions and collaborate across the public and private sector.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

• State and local governments will be encouraged to join forces with federal agencies to maximize their collective buying power for fleet vehicle and charging infrastructure purchases. In doing so, the goals are to lower procurement costs, expand technology availability, and increase automotive manufacturers’ demand certainty. The federal government has already committed to purchasing more than 500 plug-in vehicles (although skeptics fear that many of these will be PHEVs that seldom get plugged in). • The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will host an EV “hackathon” this fall, where coders, data scientists and interested members of the public will collaborate to develop new electrification solutions. • DOE will partner with the National Laboratories and

other stakeholders to develop a study that will examine the vehicle, battery, infrastructure, and economic implications of DC fast charging at up to 350 kW, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2016. The implementation of DC fast charging has the potential to impact many technology areas and tackle key technological barriers associated with high rate charging. • The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is leading the Battery500 research consortium, which will receive up to $10 million per year for five years to drive progress on DOE’s goal to triple the specific energy (to 500 WH/kg) relative to today’s battery technology while achieving 1,000 charging cycles. This is expected to result in a significantly smaller, lighter weight, less expensive battery pack (below $100/kWh) and more affordable EVs. The Battery500 consortium will include four DOE National Laboratories and five universities.

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Photo courtesy of ClipperCreek

The HCS-40, ClipperCreek’s best-selling Level 2 charging station, is now available with a “Ruggedized” option, for stations that are subject to damage by extreme weather or other perils. The ruggedization consists of a rubber overmolded J1772 connector and a field-replaceable connector latch. The American-made HCS-40R and HCS-40PR operate at 32 amps and 7.7 kW, and are available with NEMA 6-50 or 14-50 plugs. Each includes 25 feet of charging cable and a wall-mount connector holster, and is backed by a 5-year warranty. “As the market matures, we have found that the electric vehicle connector can take a real beating in some environments,” said ClipperCreek President Jason France. “Customers have asked for an even tougher connector option. In response, we developed a new overmolded connector with a replaceable latch.” The Ruggedized option costs $100 in addition to the base price of $565 for the hard-wired HCS-40 and $589 for the plug-in HCS-40P.

EV-Box, an international EVSE manufacturer that has offices in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Paris, London and New York, has installed its 40,000th charging point, at a hotel in The Netherlands. The Hotel & Restaurant Central Park by Ron Blaauw, in Voorburg, strives to make all its operations as sustainable as possible. “Lending electric cars to our hotel guests and providing charging points to our visitors have been a logical step for us to take,” says Ron Blaauw, the culinary mind behind the establishment. “In this day and age, all hotels and restaurants should offer charging stations for electric vehicles,” said Central Park owner Carsten Klint. “They are the future, and it’s an excellent service we can offer to our guests. I think we can expect the number of charging points to double in the next few years.”

Photo courtesy of EV-Box

EV-Box installs 40,000th EV charging station

ClipperCreek HCS-40 charging station offers “Ruggedized” option for extreme conditions

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Swedish initiative lets EV owners share charging stations a la Airbnb

Australian electric utility AGL Energy has announced plans to offer its electricity customers an “all you can eat” EV charging service. “If you have an electric car and you have an AGL smart meter…you can get energy for that car, as much as you want, 24 hours a day, for a dollar,” said AGL CEO Andy Vesey (via RenewEconomy). He did not specify how the pricing will actually work (Is it a dollar per calendar day, or a dollar for each day on which a user charges an EV?), but said that the details will be revealed when the service is launched on November 1. Vesey presented the deal as a way for big utilities to engage with new technologies that threaten to disrupt their business models. Encouraging increased consumption of electricity is a good thing, because “we have a national energy market that is overbuilt…supply way exceeds demand.” “The nonsense of the utility death spiral and everybody getting off the grid makes no sense,” said Vesey. “It’s a much more expensive, less efficient outcome than this marvelous machine we have called the network. The bigger the network, the greater the efficiency.”

Photo courtesy of Renault

Photo by ChargedEVs

Australian utility plans to offer unlimited EV charging for a fixed daily rate

A recent survey conducted by Renault found that 60 percent of Swedish drivers would like to see more EVs on the roads. Renault’s poll also found (as others have) that a lot of people believe that a shortage of charging points is a major obstacle to EV adoption. In response to these findings, Renault has created a new initiative called Elbnb: a social sharing platform that allows Swedes to share their charging stations with other EV drivers (the name is a portmanteau of Elbil, the Swedish word for an electric vehicle, and the popular lodging sharing platform Airbnb). Using Elbnb, owners of charging points, or even regular power outlets, can tag their homes or workplaces as charging stops for EV drivers. Subscribers can use a map app to find participating charging points. Charging providers and drivers agree upon details such as time and potential reimbursement before charging starts. Although Elbnb is sponsored by Renault, it is open to all plug-in vehicle drivers. The service collects data on charging locations from Elbnb users, as well as existing public chargers, in collaboration with the charger mapping site uppladdning.nu. “Electric cars are a reality, but the infrastructure is lacking,” said Renault spokesperson Lars Höglin. “That is why we started Elbnb as an initiative run by locals, showing that the Swedes are ready to contribute when political actions are too slow. Swedes are used to the sharing economy in anything from cars to apartments.”

JUL/AUG 2016

Kreisel Electric’s MAVERO home energy storage system

The province of Ontario is working with 24 public- and private-sector partners to create a network of public EV charging stations. The plan calls for over 200 Level 3 and about 300 Level 2 charging stations. They will be located in cities, along highways, at workplaces and at various public places across the province. The entire network is to be in service by March, 2017. The province plans to invest $20 million in the charging network, one of several EV-related measures in the recently announced Climate Change Action Plan, which also includes cash incentives of up to $14,000 for EV purchases, and up to $1,000 for home charging stations. Ontario officials estimate that the province is currently home to about 7,000 EVs.

Austrian battery manufacturer Kreisel Electric has introduced the new MAVERO wall-mounted home energy storage system. The Li-ion battery packs are available in four different sizes, with usable capacity ranging from 8 kWh to 22 kWh. The system’s discharge power ranges from 4.8 to 9.6 kW, and voltage ranges from 288 to 384 V. Efficiency is 96%. (Kreisel offers a comparison with Tesla’s Powerwall, which offers 3.3 kW and 92.5% round-trip DC efficiency.) The MAVERO system is compact (41×55 inches), and is designed to be installed quickly by a single technician. The modular design allows additional capacity to be added later. MAVERO is designed to provide enough energy each day for the average household. The MAVERO 20 and 28 models offer higher capacity for charging EVs. First deliveries are planned for early 2017. The retail price is expected to be under €700 per kWh.

Photo courtesy of Kreisel Electric

Photo courtesy of Nicolas Raymond (CC BY 2.0)

Ontario to build 500 public charging stations

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Photo courtesy of Evatran Group

Evatran forms joint venture to bring Plugless wireless charging to Chinese EV market Evatran Group has formed a joint venture with Chinese auto parts manufacturer Zhejiang VIE to market the Plugless wireless EV charging system in China. Plugless is expected to be in series production and commercially available with a China-based OEM by 2017. The Plugless system went on sale in the US and Canada in 2014. It currently supports 3.3 kW charging for the Volt and the LEAF. The company is now taking reservations for its second-generation system, which will be released first as a 7.2 kW system for the Model S, then as a 3.6 kW system for the 2016 and 2017 Volt. “China is the fastest growing EV market in the world, and we see tremendous opportunities in bringing Plugless technology to the market,” said Evatran CEO

Rebecca Hough. “VIE is the perfect partner in this joint venture, working together toward another first with Plugless – series production of wireless EV charging.”

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Will Tesla redefine the gas station?

One solution to the problem of long-range over-the-road electric trucks could be electrifying sections of roadway with a system similar to that used by railroads. The Swedish Transport Administration recently inaugurated a two-kilometer stretch of “electric road” on the E16 highway in Sandviken. The test area is equipped with electric catenary lines over one of the lanes. The truck has a pantograph on the roof that feeds 750 VDC to the truck’s hybrid electric system. The conductor can connect automatically at speeds up to 56 mph. The agency also plans to test an alternate technology, which involves an electric rail in the roadway, on a closed road near Arlanda. The tests will continue through 2018. The Swedish government has set a goal of having a fossil fuel-free vehicle fleet by 2030. “Electric roads will bring us one step closer to fossil fuel-free transports, and has the potential to achieve zero carbon dioxide emissions,” said Lena Erixon, Director General of Trafikverket, the Swedish Transport Administration. “This is one way of developing environmentally smart transports in the existing road network. It could be a good supplement to today’s road and rail network.”

Photo courtesy of Swedish Transport Administration

“Electric road,” with overhead catenary for electric trucks, begins testing in Sweden

At this very early stage of vehicle electrification, no one can be certain of what an optimal public charging network will look like. Conventional wisdom at this point calls for DC fast chargers along highways, and Level 2 chargers at destination locations such as tourist attractions, shopping malls, etc. There is also a school of thought that believes existing gas stations are appropriate locations. Russia’s decree that all gas stations must be equipped with public chargers was greeted mostly with skepticism (and worse) in the EV press. However, gas stations in Indiana, Hawaii, Japan and other places have opted to install chargers. Trendsetter Tesla is including gas stations in the long list of locations for its ever-expanding network of chargers. Among other potential partners, the California carmaker is talking to Sheetz, a chain that operates hundreds of gas station and convenience store in the mid-Atlantic region. Eight Sheetz locations already feature (non-Tesla) EV chargers. “We’ve had discussions with [Tesla] about putting their chargers in our stores,” confirmed Sheetz Executive VP Michael Lorenz. The Washington Post reports that the gas station and convenience store industry may be catching on to the idea of offering EV charging. Jeff Lenard, a VP at the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), says that experts are advising gas stations to include electrical conduits for future charging stations whenever they install new fuel tanks or other equipment. Fuel retailers are already evolving from yesterday’s “service stations” into Sheetz- or Wawa-style convenience stores and eateries. With fuel consumption on the way down, gas stations will have to adapt or die, says John Eichberger, Executive Director of the NACS-founded Fuels Institute. “Those kiosks that just sell gallons and smokes are going to have to change. They’re going to lose gallons. The stores that feel most like restaurants [tend to] encourage higher rings.” Meanwhile, Tesla Supercharger Stations are appearing at Ruby Tuesday locations around the country. The first recently opened in Miner, Missouri, and more are under construction.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Photo courtesy of Mike-Mozart (CC-BY-2.0)

Sonic drive-in restaurant tests EV charging stations, solar panels Retro drive-in restaurant chain Sonic (NYSE: SONC) has become the latest retailer to jump on the EV charging bandwagon, installing stations at locations in Boerne, Texas and Westminster, Colorado. Charging is free for customers. Sonic VP of Facilities Wayne Brayton told the San Antonio Business Journal that the chargers are part of a pilot to see how well they are received by customers. “It seemed like a custom fit for us, so we’re excited to see what happens for us over the next few months.” EVSE vendor Sun Country Highway conducted market research, and recommended the two sites because surrounding areas had a high percentage of EVs. It installed the charging stations for $6,000 per location, each of which has two 40-amp chargers. Sonic’s drive-in design allows solar panels on the can-

opies above the auto stalls, and the company is exploring this with a pilot in San Antonio. Fast food chains are arriving at the charging party a bit late. McDonald’s is the leader, with 46 charging stations nationwide, followed by Starbucks with 4.

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The state of New Jersey has launched a $725,000 grant program to encourage installation of workplace EV charging stations. The It Pay$ to Plug In program offers grants for workplace chargers on a first-come basis: up to $250 for a Level 1 charging station, and up to $5,000 for a Level 2 station. DC fast chargers will not be covered by the program. Both public and private entities are eligible for the grants. According to the state Board of Public Utilities, there are currently 398 charging outlets at 181 locations in New Jersey. The state has also set up a new web site called Drive Green New Jersey that offers information about the new program, and about EVs in general.

Photo by ChargedEVs

New Jersey launches grant program for workplace charging stations

Charging solution provider The New Motion has formed a partnership with the APCOA Parking Group, which manages parking facilities at 8,700 locations in 12 European countries, including 30 airports. The two firms began rolling out EV charge points at APCOA’s German car parks in January, and they plan to have around 200 chargers in operation at 100 sites by the end of the year. “Electric car drivers can charge at a wide selection of sites across Germany and, if they use The New Motion’s app, they also benefit from a range of extra services,” said Sytse Zuidema, CEO of The New Motion. The company’s network already boasts over 30,000 public chargers throughout Europe. “APCOA has set itself the task of providing innovative solutions for urban mobility. Our partnership with The New Motion enables us to install intelligent EV charge points throughout our network, and to play a strategic role in the expansion of electric mobility in Germany,” said APCOA CEO Philippe Op de Beeck. “And this is just the start. APCOA’s collaboration with The New Motion will soon be extended into APCOA’s other European markets.”

Photo courtesy of The New Motion

APCOA and The New Motion partner to expand German EV charging network

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Photos by ChargedEVs

Québec installing fast chargers along busy highway corridor The Canadian province of Québec is systematically building a chain of fast charging stations along Highway 20, one of the region’s busiest corridors. Premier Philippe Couillard, Hydro-Québec CEO Éric Martel and other dignitaries celebrated the completion of a new phase of the project at the recent EVS29 Electric Vehicle Symposium. Public charging network The Electric Circuit has signed agreements with restaurants in Daveluyville and Laurier Station to install charging stations. They will join those already in service in Sainte-Julie, Drummondville and Lévis. A sixth charging station will open this fall in St-Hyacinthe. Later this year, a second phase of Highway 20 electrification will be completed between Québec and Mont-Joli. The new charging stations will be manufactured by the Electric Circuit’s supplier, Québec-based AddÉnergie. “Québec has all the elements needed for the development of electric vehicles. Sound public finances that instill investor confidence. Québec know-how, which is being developed at the college and university levels and in our research centers,” said Premier Philippe Couillard. “As a result, we have a talented pool of manufacturers, component assemblers and integrators who are specialized in electric transportation.” Québec’s Transportation Electrification Plan has set an ambitious target of having 100,000 EVs and PHEVs registered in the province by 2020.

22 Tritium Veefil fast chargers to be deployed in Sri Lanka Already familiar sights on rich-country roads, electric vehicles are now starting to appear in the developing world as well. Australian EVSE manufacturer Tritium has announced a distribution agreement with Sunrise Engineering of Sri Lanka. The local renewable energy pioneer has unveiled the first Tritium Veefil fast charger in the island nation’s capital, Colombo, and plans to install units in each of the country’s 22 districts. “For Tritium, the introduction of the Veefil to this part of the world represents another major export win and we are delighted to be working in a country where such important initiatives are being put in place,” said Tritium Commercial Director Paul Sernia. “Our focus is to encourage more and more people to change from traditional fossil-based fuel vehicles to eco-friendly, zero-emission electric vehicles,” said Sunrise Engineering CEO Daimith Maiarachchi. “The Veefil can add 50 km of driving range in 10 minutes, and supports both the CHAdeMO and CCS Combo charging standards, making it compliant with just about every EV available in Sri Lanka.” Meanwhile, the Australian state of Queensland has announced an investment of $2.5 million ($1.86 million US) in Tritium, the first investment under a new Business Development Fund (BDF) scheme established to encourage innovative businesses. The BDF investment has been matched by an additional $2.5 million raised from private investors, and will be used to expand the international market for Tritium’s Veefil fast charger. The Veefil is already operational in the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

JUL/AUG 2016

Photos courtesy of WattZilla

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

ONE

SIZE SERVES

ALL By Michael Kent

WattZilla designs its high-power charging stations to be the first and last EVSE you buy

hen interviewing the founders of technology startups, we often hear a common narrative as they recount the inception of the company. They go shopping for a product, find the available options lacking and then ask themselves, “Why doesn’t a better solution exist?” That’s Frank Gangi’s story. He bought a Tesla Model S and went looking for a high-power charging station. Tesla offered its Wall Connector, capable of 80 A (240 V) charging at home, but Tesla uses a proprietary plug and Gangi wanted something that he could also use with other EVs. At the time, he found only one product for sale in the US that had high enough power to charge his Model S at its maximum AC charging speed and used a J1772 connector (which will work with every plug-in vehicle, including his Tesla via an adapter). So, about three years ago Gangi joined Liquid Sky Tech-

JUL/AUG 2016

nologies and began developing its WattZilla line of 80 A J1772 charging stations. Charged recently talked to Gangi to learn more about the company’s philosophy, EVSE designs and future product plans. Q Charged: Other than Tesla, there aren’t any passen-

ger plug-in vehicles on the market today that are capable of charging at 80 A, 240 VAC (19.2 kW). So why design an EVSE with that much power? A Frank Gangi: We design WattZilla products to be the

last charging station you’ll ever have to buy, because we know for a fact that many more EVs are going to have higher power on-board chargers in the near future. We know this about some of the new startups building EVs, and companies like Porsche, Audi and Ford have all indicated that they will soon up the ante on AC charging. All the signs indicate that this is where the future is

We know for a fact that many more EVs are going to have higher power on-board chargers in the near future. headed, and it’s simple math. In order to get the faster recharge times, it’s all about kilowatts. If you look at it in terms of infrastructure in the US, most people’s homes have somewhere between 100 and 225 A service. So, you’re not going to be able to do more than 80 A charging. And we’re right there, already serving the market. If today you’re charging a Prius Plug-In at home and next year you’re going to buy a Tesla, either one is covered with our products. We’re unique in that we’re aiming for a part of the market that really wants a quality charging station that will never be obsolete.

Photos courtesy of WattZilla

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Q Charged: Do you design and build the products

in-house?

A Gangi: Absolutely. Before this I was in telecom

manufacturing, where I developed a strong belief that we can design and build anything in this country. It’s just a matter of will, not a lack of ability. We are based in the Northeast, where there is every skill set you need to help you build whatever you want. And when we tell people that our products are the only chargers you’ll ever have to buy, that’s from a qualityof-design standpoint as well as in terms of your future power needs. We use the best components we can find. For example, all our circuit boards are gold-plated for corrosion resistance, and our internal wiring is military-grade silverplated copper with Teflon insulation. We use nothing but high-grade 316 stainless steel to construct our enclosures for all-weather use. They are corrosion resistant in harsh environments, so you can actually plant them in seawater and they will not corrode. We cut our own silicon gaskets to seal the door, because we want it to be as impervious to water, oil and UV as possible. We also nickel-plate the door because it’s gorgeous, and we want you to be proud to have it hanging in the garage. It’s literally bulletproof. We have a video on our site of it being shot at a rifle range while it’s charging a car. We design products to a very high quality standard because we don’t want customers to ever come back and say our device failed under circumstances that it should not have. We have a 39-month warranty, and as far as I know that’s the longest in the industry.

If today you’re charging a Prius Plug-In at home and next year you’re going to buy a Tesla, either one is covered with our products. The term charger is used incorrectly for EVSE all the time. The AC charger is in the car. What we’re really designing is a piece of life safety equipment, so we also set out to be the best at safety. Most people agree that EVSE stands for Electric Vehicle Service Equipment, but we think it’s more accurate to define it as Electric Vehicle Safety Equipment.

JUL/AUG 2016

They said it was the fastest detection and mitigation they have ever seen. If you crack open pretty much any other EVSE on the market you will find fuses inside. Everyone that uses them does so in order to pass what’s known as the welded contact test, which you need to pass in order to gain UL certification. During the test, a big piece of metal is used to short the output of the EVSE’s relay. Then they command the charger to start charging, and when the contactor closes, all the electrons in the entire neighborhood are trying to rush through it because it’s a dead short and the path of least resistance. The system is supposed to detect that short and then open the relay fast enough that you do not weld the contact shut. If it welds shut, you are required to install a secondary means of protection - i.e. fuses. When our device was tested in the lab, it detected the short and opened so quickly that UL thought that the contactor had never closed in the first place. They said, we’re not seeing any current flow, and normally there will be something like a 600 A spike. They usually see big current spikes because devices are so slow to open that it allows it to build up. Thankfully, the guys from the third-party testing lab backed us up with more granular data and showed that we actually had a 20 A flow across the relay before it drops to zero when it opens. They said it was the fastest detection and mitigation they have ever seen. One of the technicians commented that we had passed a very difficult test on the first attempt, one that billion-dollar companies failed repeatedly. I told him that just because they had more money than us didn’t mean they were smarter than us. So, since it is a piece of life safety equipment, we feel we did a fine job detecting/ mitigating a fault that could have been lifethreatening as quickly as we did. but you also sell a control board for other people to build their own charging stations around. A Gangi: Yes. Our J1772 EVSE line

starts with the WattZilla - an 80 A unit that’s designed for interior use and is

Photos courtesy of WattZilla

Q Charged: You sell charging stations,

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Most of our customers are a special kind of buyer that looks at the products and right away sees the intrinsic value. flush mounted in between two studs in the wall. The WattZilla UNO is also an 80 A single-plug unit, but it’s designed to be wall- or pole-mounted for interior or exterior use. Then, we have the WattZilla DUO and QuadZilla units that can provide 80 A charging to two and four vehicles simultaneously. Those require one 100 A supply circuit for each plug. We also have a version of the DUO that works on a single 100 A feed and mixes the power so that it can put out as much as 80 A mixed between the two sides. It’s all done automatically through our current-sharing software based on the needs of each vehicle. On the industrial truck and bus side, we have the WattZilla Gorilla, with two receptacles and the ability to deliver 400-480 V 3-phase and 63 A per phase. Each of the receptacles can deliver 52.5 kW, for a total of 105 kW of power. We also offer a control board called the WattZilla C3 - Single Board EVSE. Customers use the board to design one EVSE that will pass European and American standards. It contains all the Command/Control/CCID20 functionality required by the NECA, IEC, UL and J1772 standards boards. This can help you to bring products to market faster, because you don’t have to do a bunch of the certification tests, saving time and tens of thousands of dollars. So people are happy to white-label it. Our newest product is what we call the WattZilla Black Mamba. It’s a portable power cord that looks like a snake that ate a rat. On one end is the wall plug (offered as a NEMA 14-50 or 14-60 for 40 A or 48 A continuous rated output) and then a tube that has a lot of magic in it. The tube is custom-made with an inner polycarbonate layer surrounded by aluminum - it’s completely isolated from the outside case. You can drive over it with a truck - it’s designed to withstand a two thousand-pound test. Then there is a high-current 25 ft cable that goes to a J1772 coupler. As far as I can tell, we’re the only 48 A in this power cord form factor in the market.

Q Charged: So you’re targeting both plug-in vehicle

owners and commercial customers like retail sites and parking garages?

A Gangi: Yes. Most of our customers are a special kind of

buyer that looks at the products and right away sees the intrinsic value. They understand that it’s a premium product that’s designed to a quality standard, and there are a fair amount of those customers. And then there are other people that need to be educated about why it’s the best value. So we explain that we designed these products because we were frustrated that we couldn’t find quality products made in America that were high-power and designed to last for a long time. There is so much talk about DC fast charging, and we understand why it’s important for very high power. However, most of what is being installed is not very high power, but it is very expensive. We’ve heard of some people paying astronomical prices for DC fast chargers. In one instance it was about the price of 18 of our units. So instead of installing 18 80 A charging stations, they went with a single DC fast charger. What we’re preaching is more power in more places, and we think it’s clearly the future of the charging industry.

JUL/AUG 2016

By Alex Gruzen, CEO of WiTricity

WIRELESS CHARGING AND AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

WILL MOBILIZE THE SMART CITY 78

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

The impact of the selfdriving car will not only dramatically alter transportation, it will paint an entirely new picture of city living.

JUL/AUG 2016

hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no question that autonomous electric vehicles are coming. From Google and Uber to Tesla, BMW and Nissan, the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most innovative brands are conceiving and bringing to market entirely new modes of transportation that will revolutionize the ways in which we travel. According to Navigant Research, by 2035 the number of autonomouscapable vehicles sold worldwide is expected to reach 85 million annually. However, the impact of the self-driving car will not only dramatically alter transportation, it will paint an entirely new picture of city living. The infrastructure that cities are built upon will need to be rethought. Autonomous vehicles will need power - and they in turn have the potential to become a moving power source for other connected devices. A fundamental part of the smart city of the futureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ecosystem: wireless power.

The autonomous future: what could be Autonomous vehicles will offer a new mode of personal transportation to people who do not want to own a car for financial or personal reasons, and will deliver the huge benefit of mobility for people who cannot operate a

Autonomous vehicles will need power - and they in turn have the potential to become a moving power source for other connected devices. vehicle - from children to the elderly to the disabled. More individuals will have the opportunity to be mobile and engaged members of their communities. When there is no driver, everybody will be a passenger and have the chance to use driving time to do work and be productive, or just nap and recharge. The entire vehicle layout could be re-imagined, too. The car of the future could feature inward-facing lounge seats. The vehicle will no longer be just a mode of transporta-

THE INFRASTRUCTURE tion, but an extension of the home or the office, creating a new environment Sales of autonomousto engage and add time to capable vehicles are the day. expected to reach Beyond those benefits, streets will be safer and fewer accidents will occur, as smart technology will allow vehicles to automatically avoid road million per year hazards. Public safety worldwide by could increase through the elimination of drunk driving. Traffic congestion may decrease as cars will move at the same speed at regularly spaced intervals. Less time will be spent finding parking spots, as cars will be able to drop off their passengers, then go off to park on their own. City centers will waste less valuable real estate on parking lots and garages.

85 2035

To optimize autonomous travel, add wireless charging While autonomous vehicles are sure to revolutionize personal transportation, a major question has been largely overlooked: how will these cars be fueled? Consider the irony of having autonomous EVs cart our youth to school, take the injured to their doctor appointments and escort our elderly to the park, only to require some person to plug them in after a trip is complete. There has to be a simpler solution. The charging process of the future must take people out of the charging equation, just as it takes them out of the driving equation. When a vehicle needs to charge, it will park itself over a wireless charging pad and automatically top up the battery without ever plugging in. Replacing the power plug is a bold task, and will require wireless technology that can efficiently transfer a vehicleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full power needs and that is flexible enough to work across a variety of vehicles. Perhaps the most promising technology is magnetic resonance. In fact, many automakers are already marching towards production in upcoming electric vehicles. Magnetic resonance offers a host of benefits, including flexible positioning, high efficiency, and the ability to transfer power through

With lower cost comes increased adoption, and a virtuous cycle is begun. materials like concrete and asphalt. Magnetic resonance technology allows wireless charging pads to be installed on the ground, in the floor of a garage or under the road. Remarkably, the latest designs can move power at the same levels as plugging in and with similar efficiency - there is no penalty for going wireless. Autonomous vehicles will simply park and charge to top off their batteries. Without the need for human intervention to recharge batteries, vehicle transport can become another expected basic service like the internet or the electric grid, and passengers can focus on other concerns, knowing cars will be ready and available when needed. As the technology matures and volume drives down costs, innovative companies can work with governments and infrastructure developers to create city-wide grids of wireless power sources embedded in streets. These embedded sources will wirelessly trickle-charge vehicles as they drive, allowing unmanned transporters to extend driving range or reduce the size and cost of batteries required to power the vehicles. With lower cost comes increased adoption, and a virtuous cycle is begun.

Moving the future: powering more than vehicles Looking ahead even further, wireless charging and autonomous vehicles are a great fit with the concept of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems. V2G describes a system in which plug-in vehicles communicate with the power grid to manage bidirectional charging. Charging times can be scheduled to take advantage of the lowest rates, and vehicles can serve as power storage devices. A V2G network could efficiently move power around to where it is needed, at the lowest cost possible. When combined with self-driving vehicles and wireless charging, V2G could become an automated process. Autonomous vehicles could deliver people to work or to their homes, connect to the power grid wirelessly, and return power to the grid to reduce overall usage. During off-peak hours, these vehicles could guide themselves to wireless charging spots to top off at reduced energy rates.

JUL/AUG 2016

The key hurdle to be crossed here is not developing the technology, but reaching a critical mass in EV adoption in order to make the infrastructure investments viable. V2G offers a unique solution to leveling out power usage and ensuring that additional capacity is always available, considering that at any given moment a vast majority of vehicles are idle.

The infrastructure to make it reality Manufacturing and selling autonomous vehicles, and replacing fuel stations with wireless charging infrastructure in garages and ultimately in roads, certainly wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t happen overnight. We can expect these changes to occur over the coming decade, starting with plug-in hybrid and pure electric vehicles charging through wireless transmitter pads in their ownersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; garages. From there, we can expect transmitter pads in office and mall parking lots before we will see them embedded in the roadways. Finally, once the infrastructure is embedded in the roadways, vehicles will be able to power-snack, store energy, and deliver it back to the grid. The key hurdle to be crossed here is not developing the technology, but reaching a critical mass in EV adoption, in order to make the infrastructure investments viable. For example, strong government intervention in favor of EVs in major Chinese cities, in part to reduce pollution, may in fact be setting the stage for this vision sooner than we would otherwise expect. However, in order for this vision to become reality, interoperability will be critical. The wireless charging industry must agree on an interoperability standard so that vehicles and charging infrastructure can communicate with each other, ensuring a convenient user experience. The Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE) and other standards bodies are leading this effort to establish performance and safety criteria for the wireless charging of plug-in vehicles.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

In order for this vision to become reality, interoperability will be critical. Already, some of the leading automotive brands, such as Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, Honda and Nissan, have announced plans to embed magnetic resonance charging into the vehicles they are creating. Tier 1 suppliers such as Delphi, TDK, IHI and Brusa are ramping up their capability to supply automakers with full solutions. As more follow suit and the SAE consolidates standards for magnetic resonance wireless charging, we’ll have the building blocks in place for the smart city evolution.

The new normal Can the availability of wirelessly-charged autonomous EVs truly become an expected service in our cities, effectively becoming the new normal? The answer is yes. Just look at the phones in our homes, for example. While the Baby Boomer generation may still refer to them as “cordless phones,” Millennials simply call them “phones,” never having known cords in their lifetimes. Recently, in the city of Austin, Texas, a referendum on driver fingerprint background checks resulted in both Uber and Lyft ceasing operations. It was remarkable to see how in just a couple of years the population had come to expect the availability of ride-hailing services, and how illprepared residents, visitors, and local businesses were for the sudden disappearance of this option for mobility. The city population had established new habits and embraced shared mobility faster than any of us could ever have imagined. In place of Uber and Lyft, Austin residents were quick to embrace alternatives such as Arcade City/Request a Ride – a Facebook group that enables users to find rides to and from their destinations – and new ride-hailing apps like getme, Fare and Fasten. With this perspective, it’s clear that the availability of autonomous electric vehicles will quickly become an expected service in cities, providing convenience, public safety and productivity, while dramatically improving the environment. The rapid advances in magnetic resonance wireless charging will play an exciting role in enabling this “new normal.”

JUL/AUG 2016

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SAFETY AND RESPONSIBILITY

By Charles Morris

AUTONOMY,

he revolution is just beginning, but the Triple Trend of vehicle electrification, autonomy and connectivity will eventually transform our transportation sector, and thus our entire society. A tragic but inevitable milestone on the journey was passed recently, as Joshua Smith became the first person to die in a partially autonomous vehicle. What followed was more or less predictable: the media stoked fear and looked for someone to blame, Tesla testily disavowed all responsibility, the full spectrum of opinions, informed and otherwise, were expressed, and the ultimate judge, Wall Street, delivered a verdict of “immaterial.” Now that the sideshow is over, we’re left with the same questions that the automotive press has been discussing (in the abstract) for some time: Does autonomy make vehicles safer? What level of autonomy is best? How can human drivers share the road with vehicles that have some level of autonomy? What will incidents like this one (it’s unlikely to be the last) mean for Tesla and other pioneers of autonomy? What sort of responsibilities do these companies have? Autonomy is an example of what writer Steven Johnson calls “the adjacent possible.” Automobiles already have enabling sensor technologies and wireless connections to the cloud, so it seems like a simple matter of putting the pieces together, developing better software and waiting for government regulators to catch up. Some have predicted that self-driving cars will take over the roads before electric ones. However, others point to the complexity of the realworld driving environment, and the kind of split-second judgements that humans handle so much better than computers do. Designing a system that can handle 99% of possible driving situations may be easy, but designing for that last 1% may prove to be almost impossible. Safer does not mean 100% safe. More people will die in vehicles with autonomy features, just as people have died while wearing seat belts, and in cars equipped with airbags (indeed, in rare cases, people have died because of seat belts and air bags). Of course, Tesla advises customers that Autopilot does not offer complete autonomy, and that drivers should keep their hands on the wheel at all times. But people don’t always read manuals or listen to warnings, and they believe what they want to believe. There are millions out there whose fondest wish is to be able to fiddle with their phones while driving. Tesla should strive to be as clear as possible about what Autopilot can and can’t do. The NHTSA defines four levels of autonomy. Level 1, at

which the vehicle can inform the driver of hazards, and 2, at which the vehicle can respond to hazards but the driver remains in command, are already in widespread use, and most folks agree that they make vehicles safer. In fact, the NTSB, along with Consumer Reports and other media, has called for collision avoidance systems, a Level 2 feature, to be installed on all new cars. At Level 4, a vehicle is totally autonomous, and occupants do not drive - Google’s self-driving prototype doesn’t even have a steering wheel, so no one will be tempted. Such vehicles should be quite safe if they’re the only ones on the roads - for example, in a closed campus situation. How safe they are when sharing the road with human drivers remains to be seen. Common sense indicates, and studies have found, that Level 3, in which a vehicle drives itself but hands off to a human driver in emergencies, poses a major challenge in keeping drivers alert. The National Association of City Transportation Officials has said that Level 3 vehicles should be banned on city streets: “Such vehicles have been shown to encourage unsafe driving behavior, with drivers reading more, texting more, and generally being inattentive, while still operating under the expectation that the driver will take over if the vehicle encounters a dangerous situation.” Tesla has already announced improvements to the Autopilot system, but has rejected suggestions that it should disable any features, saying that it would be “morally reprehensible” to delay the deployment of a potentially life-saving technology for fear of bad press or lawsuits. Other automakers are also unlikely to scale back their autonomy efforts, though they may try to be more conservative about managing peoples’ expectations. Another grim milestone lies ahead: the first lawsuit against a manufacturer of autonomous technology. NHTSA also understands that progress must continue. Agency head Mark Rosekind recently said, “No one incident will derail the DOT from its mission to improve safety on the roads by pursuing new lifesaving technologies.” Federal regulators are scheduled to unveil regulations for testing of fully automated cars this summer. Many questions remain to be answered, but one thing is certain: Like EVs, autonomous vehicles are here, and automakers, regulators and most importantly, drivers, must try to keep up.

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