CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine - Issue 46 NOV/DEC 2019

ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE

ISSUE 46 | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019 | CHARGEDEVS.COM

2020

PORSCHE TAYCAN The Germans respond to Tesla with an excellent new Porsche and a valiant EV effort p. 54

Q&A WITH

RIVIAN’S VP OF PROPULSION

p. 36

UNDERSTANDING ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY

MOTOR SHAFT BEARINGS: ONE OF THE FEW MOVING PARTS

ZEAL PUTS CHARGERS ON AUTOPILOT

p. 26

p. 32

p. 76

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THE TECH CONTENTS

26 EMC for EVs

Understanding electromagnetic compatibility

32 Motor shaft bearings

36

CoorsTek argues ceramic bearings are the best fit for EVs

36 Q&A: Rivian’s VP of Propulsion current events 10

ExxonMobil launches new suite of fluids and greases for electric vehicles

11 12

12

Delphi and Cree partner on silicon carbide devices

South Dakota university to create international center for solid-state batteries Bosch reports €13 billion in electromobility orders

15 16

Motor maker YASA closes £18-million funding round Wallner Expac launches Microform expanded metal for batteries and EMI AKASOL introduces new battery packs for commercial vehicles

18

Wacker Chemie acquires stake in silicon anode specialist Nexeon

Delphi begins production of 800 V silicon carbide inverters

14

16

Wildcat Discovery Technologies raises $20 million in Series C funding

Cree to build silicon carbide device manufacturing facility in New York BorgWarner’s dual-clutch system enables torque vectoring with a single motor

19 Millbrook opens EV driveline test site in California 20 Audi orders bdtronic impregnation machines for e-motor production

Webasto starts battery production, prepares to enter Chinese market

21 Freudenberg launches new conductive seals for electric powertrains 22 Littelfuse launches new high-speed semiconductor fuses

Eaton launches Breaktor high-voltage protection device for EVs

24 Bitrode introduces new high-voltage battery pack testing system

22

Report: Battery cost and performance improving much faster than forecast

25 Bel’s new inverter for commercial EV accessories

THE VEHICLES CONTENTS

54

54 2020 Porsche Taycan

The Germans respond to Tesla with an excellent new Porsche and a valiant EV effort

current events

46

46 Ford bets big on the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV

Toyota accelerates its electrification plans

47 Dyson drops out of the EV race

Tesla to build European Gigafactory near Berlin

48 Volvo unveils XC40 Recharge electric SUV

Trump backs down on fuel economy standards, proposes compromise

49 Miami transit agency buys 33 Proterra electric buses 50 Bollinger’s rugged hand-built electric trucks will be pricey

48

Go electric on the water with the Taiga Orca electric watercraft

51 New report: 33% of buses will be electric by 2030 52 Tesla unveils Cybertruck 53 GM finalizes sale of Lordstown plant to Workhorse-affiliated EV builder IDENTIFICATION STATEMENT CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine (ISSN: 24742341) November/December 2019, Issue #46 is published bi-monthly by Electric Vehicles Magazine LLC, 2260 5th Ave S, STE 10, Saint Petersburg, FL 33712-1259. Periodicals Postage Paid at Saint Petersburg, FL and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine, Electric Vehicles Magazine LLC at 2260 5th Ave S, STE 10, Saint Petersburg, FL 33712-1259.

52

THE INFRASTRUCTURE CONTENTS

72 EVmatch

A simple, low-cost way for residences and businesses to monetize their charging stations

76

76 Zeal

Putting workplace and MUD chargers on autopilot

current events 64 Kia and Hyundai invest in IONITY, plan to up EV systems to 800 volts

66

Report: Public charger deployments encourage EV adoption

65 Electrify Canada to install chargers at Canadian Tire stores 66 BMW to install 4,100 new charging points in Germany

EV Connect secures $12 million for cloud-based charging software

67

NYPA and NYSERDA to install over 70 charging stations in New York Plug&Charge to enable charging sans cards or apps in 2020

68 Electrify America launches Level 2 home charger

67

Proterra’s new multi-dispenser charging system for heavy-duty EV fleets

69 Lightning Systems launches range of AC and DC fast charging stations

Brugg Cables to launch 850-amp liquid-cooled cable

70 Circontrol introduces new Raption 150 charger for e-buses

New study: 10 percent EV penetration could shift utility’s entire peak load

71

68

UK supermarket chain plans network of 100 ultra-fast chargers PREMO launches high-efficiency secondary coils for wireless charging

Good news and bad news

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There’s a lot of good news to celebrate in the EV world these days. New plug-in models are being announced at a steady clip, and a few are especially exciting.

The Porsche Taycan, which you’ll read about in this issue, looks like the first EV that can seriously challenge the performance of Tesla.

The Ford Mustang Mach-E has been aptly described as Detroit’s most serious electric offering to date. A moderately-priced electric crossover is just what the market needs, and Ford is putting its prestige on the line by giving it the Mustang name. It’s a bold design and a risky business move - exactly what many believe is needed for a major automaker to finally build a widely popular EV. We hope the company’s enthusiasm continues next year as the vehicle goes on sale. There is still plenty of time for Ford to retreat to the typical safe position of a major automaker: not trying too hard to sell EVs except in small quantities in ZEV states.

Commercial EVs are beginning to graduate from pilots to serious deployments. Our daily headlines are filled with encouraging developments: Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from startup Rivian; the former GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio will have a new life producing an electric pickup for fleets; and Los Angeles has ordered 130 BYD electric buses.

On the infrastructure front, more and faster chargers continue to be rolled out around the world. Networks like IONITY and Electrify America are quickly connecting coastlines with fast charge corridors, and startups such as EVmatch and Zeal, both profiled in this issue, are coming up with innovative solutions for every conceivable charging niche.

Now for the bad news: much of the electric activity is bypassing the USA. Global automakers are investing huge sums, but the lion’s share of the money is going to China, with Europe in second place and our country a distant third.

Volkswagen is beginning to reinvent itself as an electric automaker, but its focus is firmly on Europe and China. Tesla is going from strength to strength, but its sales growth is increasingly taking place outside its home country. In the booming global market for electric buses, two Chinese firms absolutely dominate.

As we discuss in this issue’s Charging Forward column (page 82), it’s hard to deny that the reason for this is the lack of our political will to compete. Federal fuel economy standards have been the biggest driver of EV adoption, and now they’re on the chopping block. The auto industry is as divided as the rest of the country - four automakers have agreed to a compromise that would mostly preserve California’s stringent standards, and three have signed on to the Trump administration’s plans for a rollback.

Reasonable people may disagree about the theory of whether governments should support new technologies. However, the global reality is that governments in China, the EU and elsewhere are supporting electrification with a heavy hand, and automakers make their investment decisions accordingly.

Throughout our history, the US has been at the forefront of every major technological advance, and this one is slipping away right before our eyes.

If we are to have any hope of maintaining our lead in automotive tech innovation, we need a comprehensive federal plan to counteract China’s strategic EV initiatives. And that seems far away.

Christian Ruoff | Publisher www.hesse-mechatronics.com

EVs are here. Try to keep up.

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PLENARY KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS 2019 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry The Li Battery: From its Origin to Enabling an Electric Economy M. Stanley Whittingham, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Member, National Academy of Engineering, Director, NECCES EFRC at Binghamton, SUNY at Binghamton An Unavoidable Challenge for Ni-Rich Positive Electrode Materials for Li-Ion Batteries Jeff Dahn, FRSC, PhD, Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, NSERC/Tesla Canada Industrial Research Chair, Canada Research Chair, Dalhousie University The Fast-Changing World of Battery Applications Bob Galyen, Chief Technology Officer, Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. (CATL)

An Intrinsically Flexible Li-Ion Battery for Wearable Devices Avetik Harutyunyan, PhD, Chief Scientist and Research Director, Materials Science, Honda Research Institute

InternationalBatterySeminar.com

Publisher Associate Publisher Senior Editor Associate Editor Account Executives Technology Editor Graphic Designers

Christian Ruoff Laurel Zimmer Charles Morris Markkus Rovito Jeremy Ewald Jeffrey Jenkins Tomislav Vrdoljak

Contributing Writers Paul Beck Jeffrey Jenkins Charles Morris John Voelcker Contributing Photographers Nicolas Raymond Cover Images Courtesy of Porsche, Rivian Special Thanks to Kelly Ruoff Sebastien Bourgeois

For Letters to the Editor, Article Submissions, & Advertising Inquiries Contact: Info@ChargedEVs.com

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION. 1. PUBLICATION TITLE: CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE. 2. PUBLICATION NUMBER: 18170. 3. FILING DATE: SEPTEMBER 25, 2019. 4. ISSUE FREQUENCY: BI-MONTHLY. 5. NUMBER OF ISSUES PUBLISHED ANNUALLY: 6. 6. ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION PRICE (IF ANY). 7. COMPLETE MAILING ADDRESS OF KNOWN OFFICE OF PUBLICATION: CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE, 2260 5TH AVE SOUTH, #10, ST PETERSBURG, FL 33712. CONTACT PERSON: CHRISTIAN RUOFF. TELEPHONE: (727) 522-0039. 8. COMPLETE MAILING ADDRESS OF HEADQUARTERS OR GENERAL BUSINESS OFFICE OF PUBLISHER: CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE, 2260 5TH AVE SOUTH, #10, ST PETERSBURG, FL 33712. 9. FULL NAMES AND COMPLETE MAILING ADDRESSES OF PUBLISHER, EDITOR, AND MANAGING EDITOR: PUBLISHER, EDITOR, AND MANAGING EDITOR: CHRISTIAN RUOFF, 2260 5TH AVE SOUTH, #10, ST PETERSBURG, FL 33712. 10. OWNER. FULL NAME: CHRISTIAN RUOFF. COMPLETE MAILING ADDRESS: 2260 5TH AVE SOUTH, #10, ST PETERSBURG, FL 33712. 11. KNOWN BONDHOLDERS, MORTGAGEES, AND OTHER SECURITY HOLDERS OWNING OR HOLDING 1 PERCENT OR MORE OF TOTAL AMOUNT OF BONDS, MORTGAGES, OR OTHER SECURITIES: NONE. 13. PUBLICATION TITLE: CHARGED ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE. 14. ISSUE DATE FOR CIRCULATION DATA BELOW: #46, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019. 15. EXTENT AND NATURE OF CIRCULATION. A. TOTAL NUMBER OF COPIES (NET PRESS RUN). AVERAGE NO. COPIES EACH ISSUE DURING PRECEDING 12 MONTHS: 10250; NO. COPIES OF SINGLE ISSUE PUBLISHED NEAREST TO FILING DATE: 11000. B. LEGITIMATE PAID AND/OR REQUESTED DISTRIBUTION (BY MAIL AND OUTSIDE THE MAIL): (1) OUTSIDE COUNTY PAID/REQUESTED MAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS STATED ON PS FORM 3541: 8372; 8621. (2) IN-COUNTY PAID/REQUESTED MAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS STATED ON PS FORM 3541: 0; 0. (3) SALES THROUGH DEALERS AND CARRIERS, STREET VENDORS, COUNTER SALES, AND OTHER PAID OR REQUESTED DISTRIBUTION OUTSIDE USPS: 0; 0. (4) REQUESTED COPIES DISTRIBUTED BY OTHER MAIL CLASSES THROUGH THE USPS: 0; 0. C. TOTAL PAID AND/OR REQUESTED CIRCULATION (SUM OF 15B (1), (2), (3), AND (4)): 8372; 8621. D. NON-REQUESTED DISTRIBUTION (BY MAIL AND OUTSIDE THE MAIL): (1) OUTSIDE COUNTY NONREQUESTED COPIES STATED ON PS FORM 3541: 0; 0. (2) IN-COUNTY NONREQUESTED COPIES STATED ON PS FORM 3541: 0; 0. (3) NONREQUESTED COPIES DISTRIBUTED THROUGH THE USPS BY OTHER CLASSES OF MAIL: 38; 65. (4) NONREQUESTED COPIES DISTRIBUTED OUTSIDE THE MAIL: 603; 880. E. TOTAL NONREQUESTED DISTRIBUTION [SUM OF 15D (1), (2), (3) AND (4)]: 641; 945. F. TOTAL DISTRIBUTION (SUM OF 15C AND E): 9013; 9566. G. COPIES NOT DISTRIBUTED: 1237; 1434. H. TOTAL (SUM OF 15F AND G): 10250; 11000. I. PERCENT PAID AND/OR REQUESTED CIRCULATION (15C DIVIDED BY 15F TIMES 100): .9288; .9012. I CERTIFY THAT 50% OF ALL MY DISTRIBUTED COPIES (ELECTRONIC AND PRINT) ARE LEGITIMATE REQUESTS OR PAID COPIES. 17.

PUBLICATION OF STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP FOR A REQUESTER PUBLICATION IS REQUIRED AND WILL BE PRINTED IN THE ISSUE OF THIS PUBLICATION: ISSUE 46, NOVEMBER/ DECEMBER 2019. 18. I CERTIFY THAT ALL INFORMATION FURNISHED ON THIS FORM IS TRUE AND COMPLETE. CHRISTIAN RUOFF, PUBLISHER, SEPTEMBER 25, 2019.

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Wildcat Discovery Technologies raises $20 million in Series C funding Wildcat Discovery Technologies, a company that uses high-throughput methods to develop next-generation battery materials, has raised more than $20 million in a Series C financing round led by Flint Hills Resources and IPM Group in consortium with InoBat. The new funds will be used to improve and expand Wildcat’s research platform, hardware, modeling, and artificial intelligence capabilities.

The financing round follows a $1.2-million grant awarded to Wildcat by the DOE in September.

Marian Bocek, Managing Partner at IPM Group and Executive Chairman at InoBat, said, “Our investment marks an important milestone for the InoBat Auto project, a joint venture between Wildcat and InoBat, laying the ground for the construction of a Slovakia-based €100-million battery production and R&D line starting in 2020, with the aim of commencing operations towards the end of 2021.”

Mark Gresser, Wildcat’s CEO, said, “With our investor Flint Hills, we gain the financial backing of an enterprise with deep ties throughout the energy and automotive industries, and with IPM’s and InoBat’s support, we have the ability to partner with an emerging European-based battery manufacturer who can expand our strategic reach to Central and Eastern Europe.”

10

ExxonMobil launches new suite of fluids and greases for electric vehicles ExxonMobil has launched a new suite of fluids and greases, named Mobil EV, to meet the drivetrain requirements of electric vehicles.

ExxonMobil says the Mobil EV suite of products contains molecules carefully selected and blended to help EVs travel farther between charges, extend component life, and operate more safely.

The Mobil EV product range includes: • Mobil EV Therm: thermal management fluids for batteries, electric motors and power electronics • Mobil EV Drive: lubricants for EV reduction gearboxes, designed to protect gears and bearings from wear for a longer service life • Mobil EV Cool Drive: fluids for EV reduction gearboxes with integrated electric motors, designed to lubricate gears and bearings while providing the necessary cooling for electric motors and power electronics • Mobil EV Grease: products designed to ensure protection, performance, and reliability for applications like motors, bearings, and CV joints “Mobility is changing and electric vehicles are becoming a greater part of the mix,” said ExxonMobil VP Russ Green. “Customers and OEMs are looking to optimize the range and safety performance of their electric vehicles. This is just the start of the product and service solutions we’ll be developing to support the evolving needs of our customers.”

Image courtesy of ExxonMobil

Image courtesy of Wildcat

THE TECH

It may be the quietest revolution in history.

Wacker Chemie acquires stake in silicon anode specialist Nexeon Munich-based chemical company Wacker Chemie has acquired a 25% stake in Nexeon, a UK company that develops, produces and sells silicon-based anode materials that can enhance the performance of lithium-ion batteries.

Wacker has conducted research in this area since 2010, and cooperated with Nexeon previously in 2013. The companies have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.

“Today’s agreement is a key step in strengthening our activities in silicon-based anode materials for next-generation batteries by putting them on an even broader base,” said Wacker Executive Board member Christian Hartel. “Wacker is ideally positioned to develop and produce these innovative materials, given our decades of in-depth expertise in silicon chemistry.”

You barely hear it coming and it leaves virtually nothing behind.

The electric vehicle may just change everything – bringing with it the promise of smart, economical transportation while leaving virtually no impact on our environment. At BorgWarner, we’re proud to be part of this exciting movement, developing new technologies for electric vehicles along with other innovative automotive propulsion systems. We’re leading the way to a cleaner, more energy-efficient world.

Delphi and Cree partner on silicon carbide devices Delphi Technologies and Cree have partnered to use Cree’s silicon carbide semiconductor technology in Delphi’s electronic systems for EVs. The partnership will combine Cree’s silicon carbide-based metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) with Delphi’s traction drive inverters and DC/DC converters and chargers, with the aim of extending vehicle range and enabling faster charging times.

To start, Cree’s MOSFETs will be used in Delphi’s 800 V inverters. Production is scheduled to ramp in 2022.

Richard F. Dauch, CEO of Delphi Technologies, said, “Our collaboration with Cree will create a significant benefit to automakers as they work to balance meeting stricter global emissions regulations with consumer appetite for electric vehicles. Overcoming driver anxiety related to electric vehicle range, charging times and cost will be a boon for the industry.”

Gregg Lowe, CEO of Cree, said, “This partnership with Delphi Technologies will help drive the adoption of silicon carbide in the automotive sector. As the world leader in silicon carbide, Cree is continuing to expand capacity to meet market demands with our industry-leading power MOSFETs to help achieve a new, more efficient future.”

12

Image courtesy of Delphi

Image courtesy of Cree

THE TECH

Delphi begins production of 800 V silicon carbide inverters Delphi Technologies has begun volume production of an 800 V silicon carbide (SiC) inverter. The component uses silicon carbide-based metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) technology.

The start of production follows Delphi’s announcement of a recent partnership with SiC semiconductor manufacturer Cree, which will combine Cree’s MOSFETs with Delphi’s traction drive inverters and DC/DC converters and chargers.

Delphi’s new inverters are supported by the company’s Viper power switch, which replaces conventional silicon with SiC and allows its inverters to be 40 percent lighter and 30 percent more compact than those of competitors, according to the company. Launch is scheduled for 2022.

“Doubling the voltage from today’s typical 400 volts brings a substantial range of benefits, both for the vehicle user and for the vehicle manufacturer,” said Delphi CEO Richard F. Dauch. “We have designed this technology to simplify vehicle manufacturers’ multi-voltage strategies as they extend their electric and hybrid vehicle ranges.”

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26/02/2019

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THE TECH

Bosch reports €13 billion in electromobility orders

South Dakota university to create international center for solid-state batteries The South Dakota School of Mines & Technology plans to establish an international center to develop solid-state batteries.

Associate Professor Alevtina Smirnova says the solid-state batteries developed at the new Center for Green Solid-State Electric Power Generation and Storage (CEPS) will be ideal for portable and medical applications, electric grids and the automotive industry.

The university recently held a conference to coordinate support for CEPS. Industry attendees included Ford (which is working on an electric F-150), LafargeHolcim, Garmin, Caterpillar, the Naval Air Systems Command, Solvay of Belgium, Collins Aerospace, L3Harris Technologies, 3M and Parker-Hannifin.

“We welcome these companies to our campus and look forward to sharing this exciting research with them,” Smirnova says. “Solid-state is the future of energy storage.”

The conference was the second step in the process of bringing CEPS to its fully-funded fruition. In January, Smirnova secured a $60,000 planning grant from the National Science Foundation to create an Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) on campus.

SD Mines will be the lead center, and three other universities (South Dakota State University, the University of South Dakota, and Northeastern University in Massachusetts) will work on specific pieces of research. Each institution received $15,000 from the planning grant, and each will now secure three business partnerships and partner with national labs for research assistance.

14

Since the beginning of 2018, Bosch has won electromobility-related orders worth roughly €13 billion, including production projects for electric powertrains for passenger cars and light trucks. The company is fast-tracking electrification, as well as developing higher-efficiency ICEs and investing in fuel cells, automated driving and technology for mobility services.

At the beginning of 2019, Bosch forecasted €5 billion in sales of electromobility components for passenger cars and light trucks by 2025. Now it expects to exceed that figure.

Each year, the company invests €400 million in emission-free mobility. However, Bosch estimates that in 2030, 75% of new vehicles will still have conventional engines, so it’s also working on more efficient gas and diesel engines.

The company is also working to minimize particulate emissions from braking. Its iDisc brake disc generates as little as 10% of the brake dust produced by conventional brake discs. Its regenerative braking system can cut brake dust by over 95% in EVs. By 2022, Bosch plans to invest €4 billion in automated driving tech. For the US and Asian markets, it is currently developing Level 2 systems that allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel on the freeway. In Germany, Bosch and Daimler were recently granted approval for a Level 4 system – automated valet parking in the parking garage of the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart.

Bosch is working with mobility service companies DiDi, Lyft, and Uber. DiDi, a leading Chinese provider of mobility services, is using Bosch’s cloud-based battery services to help increase the service life of their vehicle batteries. Bosch also entered into an alliance with chassis and automotive specialist Benteler at the beginning of 2019 to manufacturer a rolling chassis for mobility service shuttles.

Volkmar Denner, Chairman of Bosch’s Board of Management, said, “Whatever the technology that brings about emission-free mobility, we have to get the market to accept it. We will only manage that with affordable solutions. If we don’t offer them, we won’t help stop global warming.”

YASA, a manufacturer of axial-flux electric motors and controllers for hybrids and EVs, has closed an £18-million funding round. YASA says the new funding will enable it to scale to meet growing customer demand from the automotive and aerospace sectors.

Investors include Oxford Sciences Innovation and Inovia Capital, which join existing investors Parkwalk Advisors and Universal Partners.

YASA says its axial-flux electric motor and controller designs offer best-in-class power and torque densities, and are ideally suited to both hybrid and fully electric applications.

YASA CEO Dr. Chris Harris said, “This funding round

Image courtesy of YASA

Motor maker YASA closes £18-million funding round

is helping prepare the company to meet the rapidly increasing volume of demand for our electric motors and controllers from our automotive customers.”

3kW BCI Bi-Directional DC/DC Power Converter • Provides stabilization of 12 VDC system voltage and back-up of 48 VDC power for emergency fault scenarios • 96.5% Efficient • Ruggedized IP67 enclosure options • Industry’s smallest and thinnest profile, allowing for integration into the battery pack Calex Manufacturing Co., Inc., a division of Murata Power Solutions, offers cutting edge DC/DC power converters. Located in the Silicon Valley region of California, Calex has been serving the electronics industry for more than 50 years. Our products are designed and manufactured in the USA.

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Image courtesy of AKASOL

THE TECH

Wallner Expac launches Microform expanded metal for AKASOL introduces new battery batteries and EMI shielding packs for commercial vehicles Image courtesy of Wallner Expac

Expanded metal developer Wallner Expac has added to its product line MicroForm, an expanded metal for applications such as support foils for batteries, EMI/RFI shielding and microfiltration.

MicroForm can be manufactured in light- and heavygauge variants. The LWDs (long way of designs) can be expanded from 0.125 inches down to 0.05 inches using materials with a minimum thickness of 0.002 inches. Wallner Expac also provides post-production services, such as flattening, slitting, cutto-length and stamping.

Sean Flora, Wallner Expac Design Engineer Manager, said, “This new product offering has unique properties which afford us the opportunity to enter new markets and expand our corporate footprint. Accomplishing this required the combination of technical innovation and experience gained from decades of expanded metal manufacturing.”

Mariana Orozco, Wallner Expac President, said, “The team leveraged its many years of experience to optimize our operations for the production of MicroForm.

Each and every employee played an intricate role in the creation and introduction of MicroForm, including the manufacturing of all the required equipment and tooling that was designed and fabricated in our state-of-the-art on-site tool room.”

16

German battery maker AKASOL has announced several new Li-ion battery solutions which it plans to begin mass-producing in the next 6 to 12 months.

The company’s new flagship battery, the AKAModule CYC, features liquid-cooled battery modules, and claims specific energy of 221 Wh/kg. AKASOL says its new modules are scalable and can be integrated into various system designs at the pack level. The system also supports fast charging up to 1C, which meets the C-rate requirements of currently available fast chargers for commercial vehicles.

AKASOL will start sample operation for the AKASystem AKM CYC by the end of 2019, followed by serial production in summer 2021. EV makers can equip EVs with battery capacities between 600 and 1,000 kWh, depending on the vehicle size.

In mid-2020, AKASOL will also begin serial production on the second generation of its AKASystem OEM PRC. The company says the new generation offers over 33% higher energy density and achieves approximately 400 kWh of installed capacity, all in the same installation space. The system can also achieve charge rates of 2C and handle fast charging up to 500 kW. AKASOL will also begin manufacturing AKARack, a new 48 V battery solution for construction vehicle and marine applications. The AKARack is a small 19-inch liquid-cooled battery system that comes with 6.5 kWh of capacity, and can achieve C-rates of up to 2C. AKASOL plans to make the AKARack available as a high-voltage solution at the end of 2020.

Developing the Future of Safer & More Efficient EV Technology • High capacity electrical contactors and fuses • Precision motor sensors for efficient performance • Battery runaway detection • Sensors for electronic control

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Image courtesy of Cree

Image courtesy of BorgWarner

THE TECH

Cree to build silicon carbide device manufacturing facility in New York Silicon carbide manufacturer Cree plans to build a new manufacturing facility in Marcy, New York. The fabrication facility for 200 mm power and radio frequency wafers, which will have a footprint of 480,000 square feet upon completion, will help increase capacity for the company’s Wolfspeed SiC and GaN business.

The facility is the result of a partnership that includes Cree, the office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, and other state and local agencies. Cree will invest around $1 billion in construction, equipment and other related costs. The state of New York will provide a $500-million grant.

Cree CEO Gregg Lowe said, “Silicon carbide is one of the most pivotal technologies of our time, and is at the heart of enabling innovation across a wide range of today’s most groundbreaking and revolutionary markets, including the transition from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles and the rollout of ultra-fast 5G networks. This state-of-the-art, automotive-qualified wafer fabrication facility builds on our 30-year heritage of commercializing breakthrough technologies that help our customers deliver next-generation applications.”

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BorgWarner’s new dualclutch system enables torque vectoring with a single motor BorgWarner has developed a system that enables EVs to use torque vectoring with just one electric motor instead of the traditional two. The Michigan-based parts supplier says its solution is cost-effective, light and compact. The company will start producing the system in the first half of 2022 for an unnamed auto manufacturer.

Traditional torque-vectoring systems require two e-motors, but BorgWarner’s Torque-Vectoring Dual-Clutch unit features two clutches – one inner and one outer – that replace the conventional differential in an electric driveline.

The Torque-Vectoring Dual-Clutch system commands torque independently, distributing torque to the left and right wheels from its position on the rear axle. The system connects to a single electric motor and features two reversible GenVI actuators (one per clutch) to transfer the torque. The system has a capacity of up to 2,600 Nm per clutch. To reduce energy losses and increase range, the system can also disconnect the rear axle when allwheel drive isn’t needed.

“Our new Torque-Vectoring Dual-Clutch system, which minimizes wasted torque, conserves energy and requires fewer components, exemplifies how our existing internal combustion engine and driveline expertise complements our work with electric vehicles,” said Stefan Demmerle, BorgWarner President and General Manager.

Millbrook Revolutionary Engineering has opened a new EV driveline test facility in the San Francisco Bay area. The 25,000-square-foot facility will offer testing of inverters and vehicle-in-loop capabilities, battery simulators and e-machine testing at speeds of up to 20,000 rpm.

The company has installed four electric drive unit test stands with a combined capacity of 2,880 testing hours per month.

“The opening of our new facility represents a step change in the local testing and development support available to EV engineers,” said Allen White, President of Millbrook Revolutionary Engineering. “The new facility is truly world-class, with our high-speed input motor testing equipment offering greater capacity and capability than ever before.”

Image courtesy of Millbrook

Millbrook opens EV driveline test site in California

Alex Burns, President of Millbrook, said, “The latest engineering challenges, such as electrification, connectivity and automation, require vehicle manufacturers to innovate at a faster rate than ever before, despite budgets being put under increasing pressure. Millbrook’s expansion into a number of markets allows us to offer consistent independent test services internationally.”

Image courtesy of bdtronic

Image courtesy of Webasto

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Audi orders bdtronic impregnation machines for e-motor production Audi plans to install e-motor manufacturing equipment from bdtronic, a German mechanical engineering company, for its Premium Platform Electric (PPE) architecture in the coming years. bdtronic manufacturers impregnation equipment, which closes and seals the cavities in windings and coils within hybrid and electric motors to provide better insulation and vibration resistance. bdtronic CEO Patrick Vandenrhijn said, “bdtronic has delivered and installed several high-volume machines at German Tier 1 automotive suppliers and several low-volume impregnation machines to German OEMs. We are proud that Audi has chosen us to deliver the first high-volume production machine for impregnating e-motors.”

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Webasto starts battery production, prepares to enter Chinese market German automotive supplier Webasto has begun producing EV batteries at the company’s manufacturing plant in Schierling, Germany. The first battery packs will go to an unnamed European bus maker.

Three years ago, Webasto decided to branch out of its core business of roofs and heaters and expand into electromobility, with charging solutions and battery systems.

Webasto has invested €11 million in a multi-product line at the Schierling site, and a further €18 million to establish a prototype construction and validation center at its site in Hengersberg, Germany.

The Hengersberg site manufactures aluminum boxes for the battery systems, which are then sent to Schierling for completion. Webasto sources its battery cells from Samsung SDI, which it has partnered with since 2018.

Webasto is currently preparing to enter the Chinese market. It will manufacture both battery systems and roofs at a new production site in Jiaxing, which it expects to open at the beginning of 2020.

Dr. Holger Engelmann, Chairman of Webasto’s Management Board, said, “We have successfully entered this market, and the first buses with Webasto batteries will shortly take to the streets of major European cities.”

Freudenberg Sealing Technologies is launching a new line of conductive seals that are designed to allow for durable connections between housings and shafts, while preventing bearing damage from electricity and electromagnetic radiation. The first functional models should be available within the next few months.

Tim Leichner, Head of Strategic Product Advance Development at Freudenberg, said, “Our goal is to achieve constant resistance values over a long period of operation, even in adverse conditions.”

Francois Colineau, Head of Development of the new product line, said, “There is the possibility of doing even

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Circuit protection manufacturer Littelfuse has added 275 new fuses to its line of POWRSPEED PSR high-speed fuses. The new fuses come in various sizes and amperages, and feature bolted and DIN rail mounting options.

Littelfuse designed its PSR series fuses for use in power conversion and conditioning equipment for critical semiconductor devices such as diodes, triacs, IGBTs, SCRs (silicon-controlled rectifiers) and MOSFETs. The company says the fuses are ideal for EV charging stations, high-power DC systems, and battery protection in energy storage systems.

The PSR series also offers: • Different mounting terminations, including bladed and flush-mount options • Silicon sealant that prevents filler leakage, increasing fuse reliability • Up to 20% more DC voltage in standard package size than existing products • Up to 70% more DC interrupting rating than existing products The square design of the fuse body accommodates up to 2,000 amps with up to 70% DC interrupting rating.

“Modern day power semiconductor devices are especially vulnerable to thermal surges and overcurrent conditions,” said Littelfuse Project Manager Sakthidharan Krishnamoorthy. “PSR series fuses are engineered to optimize protection and reduce the amount of short-circuit current to extend the life of these power semiconductor devices.”

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Image courtesy of Littelfuse

Littelfuse launches new highspeed semiconductor fuses

Eaton launches Breaktor highvoltage protection device for EVs Power management company Eaton has launched a high-voltage circuit protection device called Breaktor.

The new circuit protection device for EVs combines the function of fuses, pyro switches and contactors into one solution for high-power battery and inverter systems.

Breaktor features less than 5-millisecond actuation up to 1,000 volts and 30,000 amps. The device is also resettable, allowing it to be reactivated following functionality checks.

Other features include: • Self-triggering device capable of sensing a current spike and interrupting the circuit • Limiting feature in the case of a short circuit • Independence from current direction • Multiple voltage levels and multi-pole configurations Jeff Lowinger, President of eMobility at Eaton, said, “In the event of a collision, Eaton’s Breaktor can work in tandem with a vehicle’s safety systems. This allows Breaktor to quickly disconnect the high-voltage battery from the rest of the vehicle for unparalleled protection and safety in the event of any unsafe condition.”

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New report: Cost and performance of batteries improving much faster than forecast Bitrode introduces new highvoltage battery pack testing system Image courtesy of Bitrode

Bitrode, which manufactures equipment for the charging and testing of batteries, has added a new high-voltage battery testing system to its line of FTF High Power Packing and Testing systems.

The new FTF-HV high voltage test system can handle 1,500 volts and 600 amps per channel, and boasts a maximum power capability of 450 kW. The system features two circuits, but can handle four, thereby bumping up the maximum current to 1,200 amps and maximum power to 900 kW. A regenerative system fully powers the units, which are 92% efficient and have a 0.05% current accuracy. The systems boast a 30 ms rise time (10% to 90%) with zero overshoot for accurate lab battery testing.

Bitrode designed the system to test batteries within EVs, UPSs, and generators. It can perform battery cycle testing for hybrid and electric vehicle systems, vehicle drivetrain testing, and testing with bi-directional DC power supplies. A battery simulation mode (BattSim) allows users to perform electric motor testing and specify voltage, internal resistance and maximum power.

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A new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) finds that improvements in the cost and performance of batteries are quickly outpacing forecasts, due to massive investments in battery manufacturing and steady advances in technology.

According to RMI’s Breakthrough Batteries Report, venture capital firms invested over $1.4 billion in battery tech in the first half of 2019 alone. Total manufacturing investment – both previous and planned through 2023, amounts to around $150 billion. By 2023, the capital cost for new battery manufacturing capacity is expected to decline by more than half compared to 2018. Battery costs could drop to $87/kWh by 2025 (in March, Bloomberg estimated the current average cost at $187/ kwh).

RMI expects lithium-ion to remain the most important battery technology until 2023, after which newer formulations will come into use for specific applications: solid-state batteries (including zinc alkaline, Li-metal, and Li-sulfur) for heavier vehicles; low-cost, long-life batteries (including zinc-based and flow batteries) for grid balancing; and high-power batteries for fast charging of EVs. The rapidly increasing penetration of stationary storage will begin to make natural gas plants uneconomical, and much fossil fuel-related infrastructure will become stranded. According to RMI, declining battery costs are already causing cancellations of planned natural gas generation.

RMI predicts that many aspects of the transition will be happening outside the US – EV adoption will proceed more quickly in countries such as India, Indonesia and the Philippines, where smaller vehicles (which need smaller batteries) are popular. Americans’ love of big cars may hold us back in the Oil Age for some time.

Bel Power Solutions has launched the 700INV60-120240-9G, a DC-AC inverter for powering accessories on commercial electric and hybrid vehicles. The inverter converts a DC power source into split-phase AC power at 120/240 volts to power auxiliary equipment such as air conditioning.

The 6 kW inverter has an efficiency of 93 percent, according to Bel, and can be paralleled into a single-phase configuration for an output of 36 kW. Liquid cooling enables the inverter to operate at temperatures of -40° C to 85° C with no power derating.

A Controller Area Network (CAN bus) can be used to control the inverter, which features minimum vibration

Image courtesy of Bel Power Solutions

Bel’s new inverter for commercial EV accessories

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EMC FOR EVS UNDERSTANDING ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY

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By Jeffrey Jenkins

E

ngineers who design power electronics supplied by the mains have had to contend with meeting various electrical noise and safety standards for decades now, but their counterparts in the automotive industry were mostly free to do as they pleased. This was mainly because 12 V isn’t considered a shock hazard and cars are effectively rolling Faraday cages, so they’re well shielded against both emitting

and receiving electromagnetic interference, or EMI. As vehicle electronics got more sophisticated, the automotive OEMs developed their own set of electrical noise and safety standards, but the focus was on such things as surges from alternator “load dump,� rather than getting struck by lightning, or making sure the infotainment system didn’t crash when the engine was revved, rather than not obliterating the reception of TV and radio for miles around (as the traction inverter in a EV could easily do if given half a chance).

Furthermore, compliance with the nascent automotive safety and noise (or EMC, for electromagnetic compatibility) standards was initially a mostly voluntarily affair: no OEM would use any non-complying product, of course, but it could probably still be sold in the aftermarket. Products like high-energy multi-spark ignition systems and custom engine management ROMs are freely available, and one is unlikely to be penalized for installing them unless the vehicle has to go through an annual exhaust emissions test. A similarly cavalier environment also pertained

NOV/DEC 2019

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THE TECH to OEM EVs in their early years, but it was only a matter of time before the safety and EMC regulations that applied to mains-powered equipment were adapted for EVs. So far it appears that complying with the safety standards is relatively straightforward (these standards are developed by committee, after all), but for many engineers, achieving EMC compliance still seems to involve more dark art and mystic incantation than science. That’s not true, of course - it just seems that way most of the time.

One key concept about EMC that is sometimes overlooked is that an electromagnetic field, or EMF, is comprised of both an electric (E) and a magnetic (H) field, which only come together as an EMF some distance away from the source (and, for a bit of trivia, with a fixed V/I relationship of 377 Ω). The distance at which this combining occurs is not formally defined, but is usually considered to be 1-3 λ (wavelengths). Closer in (aka the “near field”), one or the other will dominate depending on circuit conditions: E-fields arise from fast changing voltages (high dV/dt) while H-fields result from fast changing currents (high dI/dt).

As with many complex problems, there is an overwhelming desire to look for a simple explanation or solution (echoing H.L. Mencken here), and in the case of EMC issues, that would arguably be: don’t make accidental antennas. While this is certainly true, it’s not particularly actionable advice all on its own, as almost anything conductive can be turned into an antenna, and even some things you wouldn’t think could cause any problems can become the biggest headaches of all, such as a seam in a metal enclosure! A more useful, albeit still general, set of guidelines would be: • Minimize the loop area of any conductors (wires, traces, bus bars, etc) which handle high dI/dt or are low-impedance.

• Minimize the surface area and/or shield any conductors that experience high dV/dt or are high impedance.

• Don’t switch any faster than you need to for reasons of data rate (digital logic) or efficiency (power conversion).

• Any hole, slot or seam in a conductive surface can become an antenna, too.

Not adhering to the first bullet point is the one that seems to cause the most problems, though it is sometimes unavoidable when equipment grounding requirements are factored in (forming the dreaded “ground loop” - a case in which the safety regulations often conflict with

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One key concept about EMC that is sometimes overlooked is that an electromagnetic field is comprised of both an electric and a magnetic field, which only come together as an EMF some distance away from the source. the EMC ones, unfortunately). Minimizing loop area simply means keeping the forward and return pathways for any circuit as close together as possible, and this applies to everything from CAN bus and Ethernet cables to battery wiring to the bus plates in an inverter. In all cases the point is to get the magnetic fields of the forward and return pathways to cancel each other out, which reduces both the emission and reception of H-field noise.

In the specific case of CAN and Ethernet, twisted-pair cable is most commonly used because it ensures each wire has the same overall magnetic environment, so that any external H-field noise is induced on each wire equally; the noise is common-mode, in other words. Differential

signaling - driving equal but opposite polarity currents on each wire of the pair - then ensures that the H-fields produced by the wires will cancel each other out nearly completely, preventing noise emission and crosstalk. This combination - differential signaling and ensuring all induced noise is common-mode - allows for excellent rejection of noise by the receiver even at high data rates and over long distances. When signals are single-ended and distances aren’t too long - for example, board-to-board interconnects then a ribbon cable with every other wire dedicated to ground/ common can work nearly as well as twisted pair. In this case every signal conductor (except for the outer two) is surrounded by a return conductor, so suppression of both the emission and reception of H-field noise is quite good, but if it isn’t quite good enough, then adding a

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ferrite “clamp core” across the cable will usually suffice (those cylindrical lumps often seen on round multi-conductor cables represent precisely that solution, in fact).

The same principle of placing the forward and return conductors in close proximity can be applied to PC boards by dedicating an entire layer to ground/common, and in bus structures by using plates with a large surface area separated by a thin insulator instead of individual bus bars (aka a “laminated bus structure”). In both applications, high-frequency (high dI/dt) currents will automatically mirror themselves in the planar conductor surfaces, which tremendously reduces noise emission itself, and also reduces ringing, which can be a major source of EMI, as well as voltage overshoot, which can kill semiconductor switches but quick.

Addressing bullet point #2 - E-field emission from rapidly changing voltages - requires a somewhat different (though not mutually exclusive) approach. One of the most prodigious sources of E-field noise in any switchmode converter are the drain/collector tabs of low-side switches (for example, the bottom switches in a 3 ph inverter), because they experience the full voltage swing every switching cycle. An electrical insulator must be inserted between the active die and the heatsink - either an external insulator like a Sil-Pad or an internal one as used in modules - which then forms a capacitor that will couple current in proportion to the area and the dV/ dt across it. These noise currents can radiate from any unshielded metal surfaces (e.g. a board-mount heatsink) or else exit through external, unshielded wires (that have become antennas) and cause the product to fail radiated or conducted emissions, respectively. In extreme cases, an additional screen connected to the circuit common (not chassis/earth ground) might be needed between the device and the heatsink/enclosure.

A similar solution is used in every coaxial cable, and one which partially embodies the first objective, too forward current travels along the center conductor and is both shielded by and returns via the outer conductor/ shield. Coaxial cable effectively suppresses the emission of both H- and E-fields, but the magnetic environment is not the same for both conductors, so external Hfields can induce noise into them. Metal enclosures also effectively shield E-field noise, of course, and can even provide some H-field shielding, either from being made of a ferromagnetic material like steel, or via Lenz’s law - any current induced into a conductor sets up a magnetic field that opposes its source. The aforementioned

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If this all seems a bit overwhelming, you’re in good company, because most power electronics engineers rely on the expertise of compliance engineers to get them through EMC certification. technique of making an entire layer on a PCB ground/ common also provides considerable E-field shielding, so you get a twofer here. This usually means going with a more expensive 4-layer board, but at some point, power and/or complexity will be high enough that no amount of clever routing or ground pours on a 2-layer board will get you through EMC compliance, anyway.

The third bullet point touches on almost all aspects of power electronics, from the digital logic controlling the switches to the switches themselves to perhaps the largest potential source of both E- and H-field noise in an EV: the three-phase cables between the inverter and motor. The output of the inverter is a chopped voltage with very rapid transition times to minimize the switching loss. Unfortunately, as the transition time is reduced to improve efficiency, the effective bandwidth of the noise produced goes up according to the approximation f = 350 / t, where f is in MHz and t is ns. It must be emphasized that it is not the PWM frequency, rather it is the time it takes for voltage to slew up or down. For example, if the inverter uses stateof-the-art SiC MOSFETs and a laminated bus structure so that a transition time of 25 ns is possible, then the effective bandwidth of the E-field noise produced will be 14 MHz, and given that EMC compliance regulations typically start looking at emission as low as 150 kHz, it’s easy to see how pushing switching speed can eventually cause more trouble than benefit. The H-field produced by these cables will be intense mainly because of the high currents involved, rather than the absolute rate of change - the motor inductance will integrate the chopped voltage waveform produced by the inverter into a sinusoidal current with a fundamental frequency that’s unlikely to exceed 400 Hz, after all. However, achieving perfect cancellation of the H-fields from three cables is impossible without braiding

Attractive Mobility. them, and you simply aren’t going to braid 2/0 or so cables. The only good solution to minimizing H-field emission from these cables, then, is to minimize their length - something Tesla takes to the extreme by putting the inverter right next to the traction motor.

The final bullet point is the maddening menace of slot antennas, which can form any time an aperture is cut into a conductive plane, including a seam between enclosure halves that does not have good electrical contact along its entire length (e.g. anodized aluminum and powder-coated steel).

As with most other antennas, optimum radiation (or reception) for the slot antenna occurs when the element (i.e. the slot) is half a wavelength long. To find the frequency that a slot will pass EMF most efficiently, use the formula f = 150 / λ, where f is MHz and λ is the long dimension in meters. For example, a 60 mm wide opening for the popular Amp-Seal connector will be optimally tuned for 2.5 GHz, a frequency used by some 4G LTE cellphone carriers (and we’ve all seen the effect a ringing cellphone can have on nearby electronics). If this all seems a bit overwhelming, you’re in good company, because most power electronics engineers rely on the expertise of compliance engineers to get them through EMC certification. The trick is to involve the experts early on in the design process, rather than waiting until the product has failed testing.

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MOTOR SHAFT

BEARIN ONE OF THE FEW MOVING PARTS

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By Paul Beck

CoorsTek argues that ceramic bearings are the best fit for EVs

T

GS

he less moving parts in a machine, the better. That’s one often-heard argument for the superiority of electric powertrains over internal combustion engines (ICEs), in which the number of moving components is dramatic. Sure, EVs have a lot of electrons moving this way and that, but ICE vehicles have gears, pistons, valves and crankshafts galore. The more parts that move, the more parts that can wear out and cause your vehicle to fail.

Of course, an EV powertrain does have a few moving parts, and some of the most important are the bearing balls used on the motor shaft. Bearing balls may be relatively simple components - hard, tiny spheres - but they can have many effects on an EV’s performance.

Today, most bearing balls and rolling elements are made of steel. But some advanced materials specialists are convinced there’s a better option: ceramics, specifically silicon nitride (Si3N4). We spoke with Roman Czarniecki, Senior Product Manager and Steve Pawlowski, Global Director of Strategic Marketing at CoorsTek, to learn more about why ceramic bearing balls may be the best fit for EVs.

Ceramics: harder, better, faster, stronger When it comes to bearings, the lighter the better. Silicon nitride is lighter than steel, and ceramic bearing balls are less than half the weight of their steel counterparts. EV engineers like to shave off weight wherever possible, but that’s not the only benefit. Ceramic bearing balls cause less friction within the bearing assembly, meaning they require less lubricant, experience less wear, cause less raceway stress, and have a lower operating temperature.

“An application that’s linked to electric vehicles would be the traction motor shaft bearings,” Czarniecki explained. “In those instances, the bearings can be exposed to really high speeds. At high rotating speeds, the mass savings benefit is amplified due to inertia.”

Ceramic balls aren’t just lighter than steel - they’re stronger. Ceramic bearings are twice as hard and more

NOV/DEC 2019

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THE TECH than 60 percent stiffer than steel, which makes them less prone to deformation. “[Ceramics] are very, very hard,” Czarniecki said. “This plays in extremely well when you think about bearing life and bearing efficiency.”

Ceramic balls can actually “heal” metal races. Metal races have inherent surface imperfections due to their manufacturing process. These imperfections are removed over time thanks to the very hard, very smooth surface of the balls.

Another advantageous property of ceramics is their ability to withstand high temperatures. Ceramic bearing balls can operate at temperatures up to 1,000° C, far exceeding typical automotive operating requirements.

“Because we can handle much higher temperatures before we have mechanical property breakdown, we can survive oil drought far better than steel,” Czarniecki explained.

Oil drought refers to a lack of sufficient lubrication in the bearings, which can occur in cold start and other situations. Improperly oiled bearings mean more friction and more localized heat, which can cause the bearings to break down faster. Ceramics also prevent “cold welding” between the rolling element and the races due to lack of lubrication. The dissimilar materials do not attach to each other as metal on metal might do.

Resistance and longevity For EVs, one of the biggest benefits of ceramic bearing balls is that they’re electrically resistant. You don’t want current running through your bearings. For one thing, it’s an unintentional short circuit, and for another, it hastens the breakdown of the bearings.

“Silicon nitride is electrically resistant, which is generally a benefit in almost all bearing applications,” said Czarniecki. “This one really hits home with electric drivetrain applications. When you think of high-voltage traction motors in a car, there is high propensity for electrical pitting to occur inside the bearings due to current leakage that can ultimately lead to early failures.”

Image courtesy of CoorsTek

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For EVs, one of the biggest benefits of ceramic bearing balls is that they’re electrically resistant.

If you’re set on steel bearings but you still require electrical resistance, the only option is to coat the steel in an insulative material. However, this adds complexity to the manufacturing process and presents the opportunity for quality contamination. “Generally, simpler manufacturing processes for automotive quality and volumes are preferred, and silicon nitride has the property built into the material,” Czarniecki said.

Finally, ceramic bearings last longer than steel. Bearings can be replaced when they wear out, but who needs the hassle? For Pawlowski, the added longevity of ceramic bearings is an important consideration for the business models springing up alongside EVs. “What it means is you eliminate a maintenance schedule, especially for things like robo-taxis or ride sharing applications, where vehicles might be trying to get hundreds of thousands of miles out of them,” Pawlowski explained. “Maybe they have a 100-thousand-mile bearing change-out if they go with steel…but perhaps you can keep your single set of hybrid ceramics for the life of the vehicle and get half a million miles.”

The cost of ceramics Ceramic bearing balls aren’t exactly a new idea. In 2001, NASA used silicon nitride balls on the Space Shuttle’s redesigned hydrogen turbopump. The performance advantages of ceramics have been known even longer, since the early 1970s. Yet steel bearings remain commonplace for a simple reason: cost. Ceramic bearings are more expensive than steel, though the price is on a consistent downward trajectory.

The situation reminds Pawlowski of battery cells, which have been consistently falling in price, and thus spurring the EV industry’s explosive growth. “This is not battery cells,” Pawlowski was careful to clarify.

“But, like other technologies that aren’t mainstream in vehicles today, there’s a scale tipping point that really makes things economically feasible.”

In Pawlowski’s view, that point is approaching for

Properties of silicon nitride-based ceramic balls

ceramic bearings.

“I have yet to meet with a customer or prospective customer that would say, ‘No, we think steel serves the purpose, performs better from a technical standpoint.’

I think that historically, the barrier has been cost, but with the EV market growing we’re seeing that barrier begin to decrease,” he said.

CoorsTek Cerbec CoorsTek, which considers itself a pioneer of ceramic bearing technology, offers a premium ceramic product line called Cerbec. The most popular Cerbec bearing element type is a ball, though the company produces many shapes. Cerbec balls range from 0.5 mm to 50 mm in diameter, and are used in a variety of applications, including aerospace, medicine, energy, and of course, automotive.

In practice, most ceramic bearings can be considered hybrid bearings in the sense that they combine ceramic balls with steel raceways. A purely ceramic bearing is possible, but because ceramic is so smooth, there wouldn’t be enough friction in the system. “You don’t roll, you slide,” Pawlowski illustrated.

Even in hybrid bearings, the smoothness of ceramic can prove problematic if not controlled. If the bearing balls are too smooth, they become resistant to lubrication.

“We actually have to control and make sure we don’t get smoother than we want,” explained Pawlowski. “It’s undetectable with a human eye, but on a molecular level, we can get so smooth that there’s no room for oil film.”

To manufacture ceramic balls, CoorsTek formulates raw silicon nitride powder, carefully controlling for properties including particle size, density, symmetry, and moisture content. After some chemical binders are added, the powder is formed in a blank before moving on to grinding, tumbling, and polishing. CoorsTek also puts the balls through a process called hot isostatic pressing for proper

microstructural development, which results in greater hardness and toughness, and less rolling contact fatigue.

“That, in addition to our control during the finish process, are probably the reasons why Cerbec has become the gold standard in the industry,” Pawlowski said.

Balls, cylinders, and more Though balls are the most common shape of CoorsTek’s ceramic bearing elements, the company also produces shapes such as cylinders and tapered rollers (which look like a cone with the tip sliced off). The shape depends on the specific application, but no matter the shape, the benefits of ceramics apply.

“With all of the major Tier 1 driveline motor manufactures and vehicle OEMs we’ve chatted with, most of the time we’re talking about bearing balls,” Pawlowski said.

“But we also do other rolling elements. The processing is a little bit different, the way that we form the shape is different, but beyond that, everything we talked about before applies.”

Other things being equal, ball bearings generally can’t support as high a load as cylindrical bearings can, because the contact between raceway and rolling elements is smaller (a point instead of a line). However, this also means that less friction is created, so ball bearings are typically better at sustaining higher speeds than cylindrical bearings.

In certain applications, tapered rollers and other rolling elements provide better performance than either balls or cylinders.

The EV industry is still nascent, and it will undoubtedly find ways to innovate and improve on its key technologies: batteries, chargers, and electric motors. But as we’ve seen, even the oldest and seemingly simplest of technologies - hard, tiny spheres - can be a part of the EV revolution. And for that revolution to revolve best, ceramic ball bearings could be critical.

NOV/DEC 2019

35

Q&A

WITH

RIVIAN’S VP OF PROPULSION

Images courtesy of Rivian

THE TECH

By Christian Ruoff

RICHARD FARQUHAR 36

he electromobility revolution is gathering speed, but the world’s EV-makers have fallen behind popular tastes in terms of the form factors auto buyers want, and this has emerged as a roadblock to mass adoption. Buyers love SUVs and pickups, and automakers love the high profit margins associated with these models. Electric SUVs are starting to appear at the high end of the market, but so far no one has built a viable electric pickup.

The word on the street is that any automaker that can bring a compelling electric pickup to market will have a hot product on its hands - and just possibly deliver the killer app that will push ICE vehicles over the ridge and down the slope to extinction.

Pickup kings Ford and GM, disruptor Tesla and startups Workhorse, Havelaar and Bollinger all have pickups in the pipeline. However, the company that has really grabbed the attention in this space is Rivian Automotive, which came on the scene in November, 2018 after nine years in stealth mode to present prototypes of a pure

T

Rivian has been garnering substantial amounts of investment, including $700 million from a group of investors led by Amazon and $500 million from Ford. electric pickup truck and an SUV, both with specs that rival those of the gas-belching, money-printing trucks currently on the market.

Since that head-turning reveal, Rivian has been garnering substantial amounts of investment, including $700 million from a group of investors led by Amazon and $500 million from Ford, which plans to partner with the startup to build a new EV. In September, Amazon changed the game for Rivian by announcing a historymaking order of 100,000 electric delivery vans.

Things are so busy at Rivian these days that Charged

NOV/DEC 2019

37

THE TECH

drive unit assembly has “Etwoachelectric motors - four total - independently connected to the driven wheel with a fixedratio single-speed gearbox.

felt lucky to score an interview with VP of Propulsion Richard Farquhar to learn more about the design and development of the company’s unique electric platform.

Farquhar spent his engineering career working on propulsion systems for high-performance vehicles designed for the road and the racetrack. He spent 15 years as Powertrain Director at McLaren Automotive. From day one he was given the engineer’s dream of designing and developing some of the highest-performance propulsion systems in the world for sports cars, supercars and hypercars - first internal combustion engines, and more recently hybrid and electric.

For the next chapter of his career, Farquhar “desperately wanted to be at the forefront of electric propulsion systems for electric vehicles, which is undeniably penetrating our industry right now.”

So, he joined Rivian as VP of Propulsion to work on high-performance electric propulsion systems for premium electric adventure vehicles. Farquhar now leads all of the engineering teams for the company’s powertrains, batteries, power electronics and thermal systems.

Q Charged: Rivian calls its electric drivetrain a

skateboard platform. What systems are included in that skateboard architecture?

A Richard Farquhar: The skateboard is at the heart of all

Rivian’s vehicles, and we can build different vehicle types off of that platform. It consists of the energy storage unit - the battery - positioned low and center between the axles for great dynamic control of the vehicle, low center of gravity and great polar moment of inertia. On each axle of the vehicle we have symmetrical electric drive unit

38

assemblies. One driving assembly in the front, one at the rear. Each drive unit assembly has two electric motors - four total - independently connected to the driven wheel with a fixed-ratio single-speed gearbox. We have independent fast-acting, accurate torque control to every contact patch, so dynamically it doesn’t get any better in terms of on-road handling and ride of the vehicle. But also - really important for us - is off-roading. Independent torque control to every contact patch gives the best off-roading capability possible.

The skateboard also includes the full thermal system.

There are three thermal control loops to manage the heat energy in the drive unit assemblies, the battery, and the passenger cabin. To bring the best out of battery electric vehicles, we need excellent thermal control and thermal management, and that’s something we focused on a lot to really maximize performance and efficiency.

The last element of the skateboard is the chassis systems.

We’ve got full ride height control in terms of air suspension, and adaptive roll control on a hydraulic system front to rear, corner to corner. So, in terms of engineering dynamics, it doesn’t get any better to have this degree of control of both propulsion and chassis systems.

Images courtesy of Rivian

”

e designed a dual power “Winverter device integrated into

the drive unit assembly, which allows very efficient control of two electric motors from one inverter assembly.

”

Q Charged: You said that there are symmetrical drive

units, so you have four identical sets of motors and drives?

A Richard Farquhar: That’s correct - we have four identical motors, left and right, front and rear. Every wheel has the exact same amount of torque and power available to it to maximize performance. We achieve over 14,000 Newton-meters of grounded torque at the wheels combined and 125 miles per hour maximum speed. With the fixed-ratio single-speed gearbox there is no need to change gears, no need for twin speeds. This maximizes efficiency in terms of losses from gear meshing while achieving all of our performance targets.

The inverters are one of the jewels in the crown of this

NOV/DEC 2019

39

Images courtesy of Rivian

THE TECH

V system design is always “Eabout trade-offs and propulsion system, and are fully designed in-house. We designed a dual power inverter device integrated into the drive unit assembly, which allows very efficient control of two electric motors from one inverter assembly. We focused a lot on electrical efficiency from the battery to the inverters to the motors and on to the wheels. Having one dual combined inverter per axle allows us to maximize that electrical efficiency and therefore use the energy to maximize the vehicle’s range.

Q Charged: Was the motor designed in-house as well?

A Richard Farquhar: For the e-machines, we work with a partner to design the core electromagnetics and motor assembly, and then package them into our drive unit. It’s similar to battery modules in that we work with partners to source the cells and then design and develop the modules and pack in-house exactly as we want it.

So, the electric motors are unique to Rivian in terms of how they’re integrated into our drive unit assembly, how they’re mounted, how the inverter connects with them, how the cooling connects with them, and how they’re oriented in our gearbox.

Q Charged: You said that getting maximum EV performance is all about thermal management. Could you elaborate on which areas of performance have thermal issues as the limiting factor?

40

optimization, and thermal management always comes right to the top of the list.

”

A Richard Farquhar: EV system design is always about

trade-offs and optimization, and thermal management always comes right to the top of the list. In terms of the corner cases of EV performance, whether it be DC fast charging, power deployment at a constant rate, or towing and high torque, it comes down to thermal limits in the electric motors, the inverter and the battery.

So, by separating the three cooling systems and having some intelligent valve control within the cooling system, we can look at the consumers of energy - the heat being generated - and maximize the cooling very intelligently so we can achieve the highest performance.

The battery has a dedicated circuit with heating and a chiller so we can intelligently prepare the battery for the optimum temperature for whatever it needs to do. If we’re in a very cold environment, we can heat up the battery temperature to maximize its efficiency and therefore the vehicle’s range.

The same principles go into the separate circuit for the traction system to keep the motors and inverters at an optimum temperature. The motor and inverter has a

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water-glycol circuit to cool the stator and the power electronics.

Then the third loop is for the passenger cabins and the heating, ventilation and air conditioning circuit. So, for those three separate circuits, we’ve got intelligent valves and control systems to optimize their performance.

There is also an intelligent controls element in the thermal system.

We can intelligently - through our connected car controls - think about where the vehicle is heading. If you’re on the way to a DC fast charge, for example, at a very high power rate, we know what the optimum temperature is and we can pull down the temperature of the battery using the chiller.

It also goes beyond just the thermal system itself. We’ve developed the complete module and battery pack in-house as a mechanical-electrical system, and we produce it in our brand-new Normal, Illinois assembly plant. In addition to the hardware for controls of the battery management system, we also developed the software, the algorithms and the control strategies and linked it all to our connected car platform (also developed ground-up at Rivian). So, we can not only control the functional performance of the battery for optimized life and performance, but we can vary the parameters of the battery management system tailored to individuals and how they use their vehicles, whether that be charging preference or energy throughput. We can tailor how we use the battery to optimize life and efficiency to give you the best performance that we can. So we have really intelligent control of the BMS linked through our connected car platform and how the user will use the vehicle.

We’ve developed the complete module and battery pack in-house as a mechanicalelectrical system, and we produce it in our brand-new Normal, Illinois assembly plant.

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have what we believe “Wisecurrently the highest

volumetric energy density modules and pack in the world.

It’s about 20-25% greater energy density in watt-hours per liter compared to anything on the market today.

”

Q Charged: Can you tell us about the design of the

close together. This allows us to get the highest volumetric energy density available today.

Q Charged: Are you using a thermally-conductive

battery modules and pack?

interface material between the cells?

A Richard Farquhar: If you zoom out, we have what we

A Richard Farquhar: No, just air. We don’t need to put

believe is currently the highest volumetric energy density modules and pack in the world. It’s about 20-25% greater energy density in watt-hours per liter compared to anything on the market today.

What has allowed us to achieve this is the construction of the module. Each module has two layers, each containing 21700 type cylindrical cells. So, we’ve got 15 kWh of energy in each module. There are 9 of those modules in our standard pack, and we have 12 of those in what we call our premium pack of 180 kWh, which gets us over 400 miles of range.

At the heart of the module is a cooling plate between an upper and lower cell layers. That allows us to control the cooling of those cells in their most efficient medium, which is cooling axially. We pull the heat out of the cell through its center, which is the most efficient way to do it as opposed to radially. It allows us to pack those cells really

42

anything between the cells that are packed together. Their spacing is designed to ensure that, in any scenario you can think of, this module in itself and the pack and the vehicle is as safe as possible. Safety is very much on our agenda.

These are off-road vehicles that can go anywhere with that independent torque control of each wheel. I’ve already had a lot of fun driving in some off-road places. We need to think about those scenarios, when you’re rock crawling, for example, and falling off rocks on a steep descent. We need to protect the pack structurally so it’s very much integrated with our body structures. There is a ballistic shield underneath the bottom of the pack as part of the primary vehicle structure to protect from any ground strike events.

The pack itself is surrounded by an aluminum structure of extrusions to protect it in crash events, whether that’s frontal crash or side-pole crashes. Passive safety is of the highest standard for us and within the pack

it’s protected from shocks and vibrations that you get from offroading for long durations.

Also, the packaging of the pack is designed in such a way that it’s very well protected. For example, in those 9 modules, inside the pack, all the high-voltage, low-voltage and cooling systems are packaged in the spine of the pack right up the vehicle centerline. So it’s as far away from the outside as possible for any crash event. The components are well-protected at the center of the pack. A lot of thought has gone into that integrity from a passive safety crash and an offroad scenario perspective.

Q Charged: Rivian has said the

vehicles can drive in up to one meter of water. So, all of the drivetrain components would be submerged? Can you talk about the engineering challenges of a submersible system?

A Richard Farquhar: Yes, that’s

right. One of our big requirements was to be able to drive the vehicle in one meter of water for a period of time. And so, if you sweep through the vehicle from front to rear, everything - our cooling system, our HVAC cooling modules, the battery pack, the drive unit assemblies that I’ve mentioned with electric motors and inverters, they all come into that category of being submersible. And so how they breathe, how they operate, and changes of temperature [from] being submerged in water for a period of time have all been considered as part of our vehicle design. Any deeper and the vehicle will actually start to float

THE TECH

Q Charged: With the official start of production announced for the end of next year, what stage of the development process are you currently in, and what stages are next? Is there a point at which you will freeze the design, or do you continually manage major design changes through production?

A Richard Farquhar: We operate on what we call the RDP, Rivian Development Process, where we very clearly lay out for ourselves a set number of gateways we need to start production. We lay out what deliverables, what milestones we need to achieve by each gateway to be on time. And we worked through four main phases: the concept phase, the development phase, the validation phase and then ramp up into production. We’ve built a number of prototype vehicles, and we’re doing component and systems tests. We use processes within Rivian, which are maturing all the time, to allow what is now well over a thousand people to come together and to deliver these products. So, this is a very defined process with those milestones along the way.

In terms of your point about how we manage design changes, in the early phases we want to maximize attributes of the vehicle. We’ve defined what performance, functions and features we want this vehicle to have. And there’s a lot of creativity, a lot of innovation to achieve those in the most efficient way, whether it be in mass terms, energy terms, cost terms, or other. I guess you could say we move out of that truly creative and inno-

44

Images courtesy of Rivian

- it’s mass itself that prevents it from going any deeper.

The engineering challenge is really thinking about the laws of physics. Whenever you have a hot running vehicle going into cold water, you’re going to have thermal expansion and thermal contraction, so there are delta temperatures to overcome as an engineering problem. And how things breathe with that change of temperature. Then, obviously, you’ve got to seal things to water through every aperture. Whenever you’ve got a dynamic pressure as well as a static pressure of water, those are parts of the design criteria and test criteria. Venting and drains are really important. It’s definitely provided interesting engineering problems to overcome in our development process.

“

Whenever you have a hot running vehicle going into cold water, you’re going to have thermal expansion and thermal contraction, so there are delta temperatures to overcome as an engineering problem.

”

vative phase through the development and validation phases. Then we’re focused on reliability and performance and high quality in the maturation of the product.

We’ve built several test vehicles already. We’re in the teens of development vehicles, and we’re building more prototype vehicles to test more attributes with higher levels of production-ready components. We’re all focused on what we call our validation phase. Here we will build tens of validation vehicles, which are production-intent, to complete all of the validation, reliability, durability testing, and start the certification process to go through the quality maturation for production launch at the end of next year.

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Ford bets big on the Mustang Mach-E electric SUV Is Ford’s new Mustang Mach-E the killer app, the tipping point, the savior of the US auto industry? “We’ve pushed all our chips to the middle of the table,” Chairman Bill Ford told the New York Times. “I hope this will show we are now deadly serious about electrification.”

Ford has committed to investing $11 billion to add 40 electrified vehicles, including 16 pure EVs, to its global stable through 2022 (one caveat: many of these will debut in China). What’s more, it has put one of its most valuable assets – the Mustang brand – on the line. As the Times puts it, the Mustang Mach-E represents “Detroit’s biggest bet yet on a mass-market future for battery-powered cars.”

Bill Ford admits that the Mach-E started out as another compliance car. However, in 2017, with the advent of new CEO Jim Hackett (and of Tesla’s Model 3), the suits at Ford decided to take a bolder path. “What if we could deliver a vehicle that’s a rocket ship?” Mr. Ford asked.

Soon a group called Team Edison was working on a fast and sporty electric SUV. Designers spent hundreds of hours in VR trying to improve on the generic crossover form by adding a dose of equine excitement. And at least from the design standpoint, they triumphed – all the car mags agree that the new EV’s visual cues say ‘Stang: a long hood, rear haunches, and instantly recognizable headlights and three-bar taillamps.

The Mustang mystique is designed to make Ford’s new EV stand out from the current crowd of ho-hum plug-in cars, and the company is determined to do its flagship vehicle proud. “You don’t mess with an icon,” Bill Ford said at the launch party. “It’s gotta drive like one, feel like one, have the soul of a Mustang.”

46

Ford’s designers didn’t neglect the sound. They analyzed decades’ worth of fantasy automotive sounds, from the Batmobile to Blade Runner to Formula E, and eventually settled on a “throaty acceleration note.” There’s also an unobtrusive hum at low speeds for pedestrian safety.

Tesla’s influence is clear, from the under-floor battery pack to the front storage compartment to the doors that open with a button push to the 15.5-inch touchscreen that controls most vehicle functions. Also clear is Ford’s challenge to Tesla, particularly to its upcoming Model Y, which is expected to offer similar specs and pricing to the Mach-E. (Another dimension in which legacy automakers are learning from Tesla: the Mach-E project went from design sketches to production tooling in just over a year, warp speed compared to the old auto industry norm.)

The unveiling event just happened to take place at the Los Angeles Jet Center, next door to the SpaceX HQ and Tesla design center in Hawthorne, California (a smiling Bill Ford said the choice of location was just “a coincidence”).

A presumably smiling Elon Musk tweeted his compliments: “Congratulations on the Mach E! Sustainable/ electric cars are the future!! Excited to see this announcement from Ford, as it will encourage other carmakers to go electric too.”

THE VEHICLES

Tesla to build European Gigafactory near Berlin Dyson drops out of the EV race The commercialization of new technologies often follows a trajectory that looks something like this: a startup brings the new tech to market, surprising everyone and catapulting the company to corporate stardom; industry incumbents realize they need to embrace the new tech, but find themselves unable to do so, thanks to the pesky Innovator’s Dilemma; other startups, and companies in other industries, decide to get into the new tech too, saying “How hard can it be?”

In the case of electromobility, the answer to that question explains why the wave of would-be Tesla imitators that reared up a couple of years ago is now crashing.

Building automobiles is pretty hard. Selling automobiles in volume is orders of magnitude harder, and selling them at a profit consistently is almost impossible.

Apple seems to have figured this out, and a handful of Chinese-backed startups probably will soon. Now we learn that vacuum cleaner innovator James Dyson has given up the quest.

Dyson said the failure was one of economics, not engineering. The company built “a fantastic car,” but “though we have tried very hard throughout the development process, we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially viable,” Sir James wrote in an email to staff.

“We have been through a serious process to find a buyer for the project which has, unfortunately, been unsuccessful so far,” he continued.

In 2015, Dyson acquired solid-state battery pioneer Sakti3, and was apparently counting on its innovative battery tech to give it an edge in the EV game. Although it’s giving up on EVs, the company says it will continue to develop solid-state batteries, presumably for use in its consumer electronics products.

In 2017, Dyson said it had committed some $2.7 billion to its EV program. Media observers noted that Volkswagen has announced 80 billion euros of investment in its tentative EV efforts, and that Tesla has burned through many billions since its 2003 founding and, despite the phenomenal success of its brand, has yet to achieve consistent profitability.

Now that Gigafactory 3 near Shanghai is almost ready to begin production, it’s time to start work on the next one.

Speaking at a recent event in Germany, where he received a Golden Steering Wheel award from the German tabloid Bild, Elon Musk announced that Tesla has chosen the Berlin area as the location of Gigafactory 4.

“Everyone knows that German engineering is outstanding, for sure. That’s part of the reason why we are locating our Gigafactory Europe in Germany,” said Musk.

“We are also going to create an engineering and design center in Berlin, because Berlin has some of the best art in the world.”

Musk said the factory will be located near Berlin’s airport, but declined to offer more details.

Several European countries and regions mounted campaigns to woo the California carmaker. In 2018, Musk said that Germany was the “leading choice,” but the selection of Berlin came as something of a surprise.

Musk told Auto Express that England wasn’t considered as a site: “Brexit [uncertainty] made it too risky to put a Gigafactory in the UK.” Earlier plans for an R&D center in Britain, which ironically is an e-mobility leader, were also shelved.

Some noted that Germany has some of the highest labor and energy costs in the world, but for Tesla, access to modern infrastructure and world-class engineering talent plainly outweigh such considerations. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas recently wrote that Germany would be the logical choice for the new Gig, noting that it is “the heart of the global luxury-auto market, with an economy dependent on internal-combustion tech and a government focused on climate change.”

Germany’s auto industry has fallen out of the lead lap in the electrification race, but the Volkswagen Group has a convincing strategy to take the lead. With Tesla racing on their home track, the Germans will be forced to compete, cooperate or (hopefully) both. As the Detroit News put it, Elon Musk is “sending a stark message to some of the world’s most prestigious automakers that he’s headed for their home turf.”

Tesla has reportedly begun listing jobs related to Gigafactory 4 on its web site. Musk said he expects the new European plant to be in service by the end of 2021.

NOV/DEC 2019

47

Image courtesy of Volvo

THE VEHICLES

Volvo unveils XC40 Recharge electric SUV This electric version of Volvo’s popular XC40 small SUV will be the first of a family of fully electric Volvos to be built on a dedicated modular platform.

Recharge will be the new brand name for all plugin Volvos. Over the next five years, the Swedes plan to launch a new fully electric model every year, eventually offering a Recharge variant of every model in the Volvo stable.

The XC40 Recharge has an AWD powertrain with a 150 kW motor on each axle (total power output 408 hp); a 78 kWh battery pack that delivers a range of “over 250 miles” (on the WLTP testing cycle); an 11 kW onboard charger and standard 150 kW DC fast charging. She’ll do 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds on the way to a top speed of 112 mph.

The new ESUV will feature over-the-air software updates and an Android-powered infotainment system that’s integrated with the Volvo On Call digital connected services platform.

Volvo is expecting plenty of demand for its Recharge models, and plans to triple its production capacity for electrified vehicles. The company expects pure EVs to represent 50 percent of global sales by 2025.

“We have said this several times before: for Volvo Cars, the future is electric,” said Chief Executive Håkan Samuelsson. “Today we take a major new step in that direction with the launch of our fully electric XC40 and the Recharge car line.”

Volvo hasn’t offered any information about pricing or availability. Electrek speculates that prices will start around $60,000.

48

Trump backs down on fuel economy standards, proposes compromise figures The War on Fuel Economy Standards took another twist, as the Trump administration backed down from its plan to freeze fuel economy standards. “People familiar with the process” told the Wall Street Journal that the administration is now considering calling for a 1.5% annual increase in corporate average fuel efficiency. This target would be a compromise between the 4.7% annual gains under the existing Obama-era rules and the freeze at 2019 levels of around 37 mpg that the administration had proposed.

The progress of the war so far: immediately following Trump’s election, US automakers sent a letter urging him to “reform” federal fuel economy, emissions and safety standards; the administration enthusiastically complied, announcing plans to water down the standards, and set up a conflict with California, which enforces its own, more stringent regulations; in 2019 the automakers decided Trump had gone too far, and sent him another letter warning that an overzealous regulatory rollback threatened their profits; Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW struck a compromise with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) that would allow them to improve efficiency by 3.7% per year; GM, Toyota and Fiat Chrysler announced that they would side with the Trump administration, and endorse its radical rollback after all.

Got all that? So now it seems that we’re in a bargaining phase – the administration will settle for a 1.5% annual increase, while California and the other 14 states that follow its standards will try to hold out for 3.7%. CARB responded to the administration’s proposal, saying that a 1.5% annual increase wouldn’t be enough for the state to meet federal air quality standards.

The administration’s rules are expected to be finalized by the end of this year, and some still hope for a compromise that will avoid a legal battle that could end up in the US Supreme Court. “I’m…the eternal optimist,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Once everybody sees our final CAFE regulation, everybody will see that it makes sense and maybe we won’t have litigation on that part of it.”

Miami-Dade Transit has ordered 33 40-foot Proterra Catalyst E2 electric buses and up to 75 Proterra plug-in chargers. The purchase is part of the agency’s plan to electrify at least 50 percent of the county’s buses by 2035.

Proterra will work directly with the county to design and install the charging infrastructure.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez said, “Deploying electric buses is one of the best actions we can take to improve our environment and our community’s public health. We are looking forward to working with Proterra to deliver clean, quiet transportation to Miami-Dade.”

Proterra CEO Ryan Popple said, “Miami-Dade has shown exceptional leadership in supporting transporta-

Image courtesy of Proterra

Miami transit agency buys 33 Proterra electric buses

tion innovation and environmental sustainability. With their commitment to EV technology and their long-term vision to reduce fossil fuel dependence, they are helping to create the future for North American mass transit.”

Image courtesy of Bollinger

Image courtesy of Taiga Orca

THE VEHICLES

Bollinger’s rugged hand-built electric trucks will be pricey Bollinger has revealed pricing for its rugged electric trucks, announcing on Twitter that the B1 Sport Utility Truck and B2 Pickup Truck will each be priced at $125,000. Production will begin in the US next year, and deliveries are to start in 2021. The company is now taking reservations with $1,000 refundable deposits.

These trucks are no fashion statements. With 5,000 pounds of capacity, a hydraulic winch and up to 20 inches of ground clearance, they’re designed for work and for off-road adventures. Tesla may have made electric sexy, but Bollinger set out to “make electric strong.” Also unlike the California trend-setters, Bollinger has no plans to target the mass market. Bollinger told us he envisions a low-volume operation that delivers vehicles directly to customers.

Despite the clear indications that this was going to be a pricey product, many were surprised at the company’s announcement. Electrek’s Fred Lambert called the price “shockingly high.” The masses on Twitter responded with the usual assortment of childish memes, colorfully proclaiming that they won’t be buyers.

As should have been obvious, this is not the mass-market electric pickup truck that everyone is waiting for, and that the EV market sorely needs. Hopefully that torch will be taken up by Tesla, Rivian, Ford, Lordstown or GM. However, we’re confident that Bollinger’s boutique EV will find a market. It’s a unique, almost hand-built vehicle that will absolutely delight certain buyers. The auto industry produces all kinds of low-volume, astronomically-priced oddities, and as an auto exec once said, “you can sell a thousand of anything in this business.”

50

Go electric on the water with the Taiga Orca electric watercraft Montreal-based startup Taiga Motors began life in 2015 as a spin-out from the racing team at McGill University, where co-founders Paul Achard, Gabriel Bernatchez and Sam Bruneau worked on electric powertrains.

The company has developed a line of electric snowmobiles, and has now announced an electric watercraft. The Taiga Orca features carbon fiber construction and a 23 kWh battery pack, which the company says will power about two hours of fun on the water.

“The performance package-equipped Orca can generate over 134 kW (180 hp) for incredible acceleration and a top speed up to 104 km/h (65 mph),” says Taiga. “With a sub-five-millisecond response time, the drive delivers incredible control on any terrain. Precision impeller speed control is achieved to maximize efficiency and reduce noise levels under varying conditions. Unlike many electric vehicles, a high power output can be sustained thanks to Taiga’s advanced thermal management system. The innovative closed-loop cooling circuit running through the battery, motor and inverter has been tested to maintain temperature regulation from arctic to tropical conditions.”

The onboard charger is compatible with standard automotive connectors and chargers - it offers 10 kW level 2 charging, as well as optional DC fast charging “for commercial operators.”

The Orca is scheduled to go on sale in 2020, starting at $24,000. The company says it will build only 500 units.

In the future, Taiga will “enter the recreational personal watercraft segment with models priced below $14,000.”

New report: 33% of buses will be electric by 2030 E-buses will make up nearly 33 percent of all buses worldwide by 2030, according to a recent report from Navigant Research. The Electric Buses report finds that China will continue to be the global leader in e-bus sales, maintaining 74 percent of the market share by 2030, while North America and Europe will make up only 14 percent.

The report analyzes the global market for electric bus powertrains, including PHEVs and EVs, broken down by vehicle weight, type and region. The report also analyzes charging technologies and prominent markets for e-buses.

Navigant Research Analyst William Drier said, “Fleets can take advantage of increasing government support

to help surmount the high upfront costs associated with e-buses. Transit, coach, shuttle and school fleets can use e-buses to achieve their emissions and air quality targets, while improving their bottom lines. These market conditions can enable e-buses to lead the way on the electrification of other commercial vehicle segments.�

Tesla unveils Cybertruck Tesla’s newly unveiled Cybertruck is definitely the company’s most radical-looking vehicle, and perhaps the most radical-looking production vehicle in automotive history.

It may be a pickup in terms of functionality, but in terms of aesthetics (always more important in the auto trade) it’s simply not a pickup, because it doesn’t look like any pickup we’ve ever seen.

In fact, it looks like no other car or truck that’s ever existed outside of a movie set. The stainless steel finish invites a superficial comparison to the Delorean, and Elon said it was influenced by the Lotus S1 Esprit. However, the vehicle it resembles most is the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter. Several pundits said it looks like a military vehicle, and a couple said it looks like a house, not like a vehicle at all Amid the firestorm over the new product’s appearance, almost nobody is talking about its features, some of which are quite amazing. Whereas most pickups and large SUVs consist of a body on a frame, the Cybertruck is built around a rigid exoskeleton that “puts the shell on the outside of the car and provides you and your passengers maximum protection.”

The “Ultra-Hard 30X Cold-Rolled stainless-steel” body is designed not only to keep occupants safe in a collision, but to eliminate trips to the body shop. If Franz von Holzhausen couldn’t dent it with a sledge hammer, what’s a shopping cart or a carelessly opened door going to do? (It’s back to the drawing board for the windows, however.)

Unlike a pickup truck, the Cybertruck doesn’t have a bed, but a 6.5-foot, 100-cubic-foot vault, with a builtin lockable tonneau cover that Tesla claims is strong

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enough to stand on. Standard air suspension offers up to 16 inches of ground clearance, as well as the ability to raise or lower either end of the vehicle, making it easy to load smaller vehicles such as ATVs or motorcycles.

The Cybertruck has room for six people, can haul 3,500 pounds, and has a towing capacity of 14,000 pounds. Tesla claims a 0-60 time of 2.9 seconds and says that the vehicle can outrun a Porsche 911 in a drag race, and outmuscle a Ford F-150 in a tug-of-war…uphill.

The Cybertruck’s appearance is far from the only revolutionary thing about it. And the second-biggest surprise of yesterday’s launch was the starting price of $41,100 (including $1,200 destination fee). Of course, if Tesla’s history is any guide, the first units to be delivered will sell for much more.

Elon and company understand perfectly well that their new vehicle won’t be for everybody, but here’s another thing they understand: how to stage a marketing coup.

The love-it-or-hate-it Cybertruck was instantly the talk of every newspaper, mag, blog, and podcast, and probably will be for some time to come, sucking publicity oxygen away from the electric truck efforts of Rivian, Lordstown, Ford and GM.

THE VEHICLES

GM finalizes sale of Lordstown plant to Workhorse-affiliated EV builder Lordstown Motors (LMC) has formally announced its acquisition of the former GM manufacturing complex in Lordstown, Ohio. LMC, a spin-off of Workhorse Group (NASDAQ: WKHS), plans to begin production of an electric pickup at the Lordstown plant starting in late 2020.

Lordstown Motors and Workhorse are two separate companies. However, Workhorse owns 10 percent of Lordstown, and former Workhorse CEO Steve Burns is the new CEO of Lordstown. Lordstown will license components of Workhorse’s electric drive technology, and will also take over 6,000 existing pre-orders for Workhorse’s prototype W-15 pickup truck.

Workhorse is one of five bidders on a contract to provide the US Postal Service’s next-generation delivery truck. The deal, which has been under consideration for several years, would involve delivering as many as 180,000 trucks, and could be worth as much as $6.3 billion. A decision is expected by the end of the year. The possibility of building the new trucks in Lordstown has been raised, assuming that Workhorse wins the work.

“We are committed to the people of Lordstown, we will locate our headquarters in the Lordstown plant, and we plan to build the Endurance pickup truck utilizing experienced workers who helped produce millions of vehicles in this very same plant,” said LMC CEO Steve Burns.

It’s obvious that GM has a big stake in making this venture successful, but the nature of its financial commitment is unclear. The company has discussed building a battery cell plant in the Lordstown area, which might create about 1,000 jobs. “GM is committed to the future investment and job growth in Ohio and we believe LMC’s plan to launch the Endurance electric pickup has the potential to create a significant number of jobs and help the Lordstown area grow into a manufacturing hub for electrification,” said the automaker in a statement.

Reaction to the news from former Lordstown workers was mixed. A few still seemed to be clinging to the hope that GM would restart production of the retired Cruze sedan. However, union authorities sounded cautiously hopeful.

“Nothing’s ever going to replace the 5,000 jobs in the GM plant and all the spinoff jobs,” said Tim O’Hara, President of UAW Local 1112. “For the Mahoning Valley, any job is a good job, but we don’t know what the jobs will pay and how many will be offered. If these turn out to be union jobs, it’ll be good for the valley from that aspect.”

Neither GM nor LMC has met with the union, nor have they yet indicated when tooling, hiring and production would begin.

“If they’re going to be union represented, we’d like Local 1112 to be their bargaining agent when that time comes,” said O’Hara. “We don’t want the local to go away and that was a fear of ours after the contract ended.”

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54 Images courtesy of Porsche

THE VEHICLES

2020

PORSCHE

TAYCAN The Germans respond to Tesla with an excellent new Porsche and a valiant EV effort

By John Voelcker

NOV/DEC 2019

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THE VEHICLES

robably no manufacturer felt as stunned and threatened as Porsche by the 2012 arrival of the Tesla Model S - and the acclaim that followed. The German brand enjoyed an unparalleled reputation as the maker of fast, sleek, and pricey sports cars, and had lately expanded into high-end SUVs and then sedans.

In early 2013, when Porsche got its hands on a Model S to tear down, analyze, drive, and evaluate, it was faced with an unpleasant reality. A group of arrogant startup types from Silicon Valley had built a car that looked good, performed well, handled decently, and did it all with zero tailpipe emissions. Oh, and Tesla had started to roll out a national and international network of DC fast charging stations solely for Tesla owners, letting them cover hundreds of miles at high speeds with a few half-hour stops along the way - something no other EV in the world offered.

P

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The Taycan is already offered in a range of three models, facing off against the Model S lineup - typically for Porsche, at much higher prices than the competition.

Threat response Porsche had nothing in its product line to equal the Tesla Model S. In fact, it had nothing in its long-term plan through 2030 that could match the 2013 California car. Its approach to electrification was to consist

Images courtesy of Porsche

of plug-in hybrid versions of its standard products.

Then came Tesla.

In September 2015, the company’s threat response broke cover at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

The Porsche Mission E was a fast, all-electric, very low and sleek “four-door coupe” that stole the show.

It was to do not only everything Tesla could, but improve on it in one crucial way: the Mission E’s powertrain operated at 800 volts, allowing DC fast charging at speeds up to 350 kilowatts - providing 80-percent recharges of a large 80- or 100-kWh battery pack in just 15 or 20 minutes.

Four years later, the 2020 Porsche Taycan is the production version of the Mission E concept. It is already offered in a range of three models, facing off against the Model S lineup - typically for Porsche, at much higher prices than the competition - and there will be more versions to come.

Arguably, amidst a yearly set of new “Tesla com-

The Taycan is the first credible vehicle to match everything the Model S can do. petitors,” the Taycan is the first credible vehicle to match everything the Model S can do. Befitting its performance-first credentials, Porsche also claims a few firsts of its own for the car beyond its charging speed (limited at launch to 270 kilowatts).

Firsts of its own One, for instance, is repeatable performance. Owners of the very fastest Tesla Model S version (previously dubbed the P100D with Ludicrous mode) know they can get only a small number of back-to-back full-speed runs before the battery-management software dials down the acceleration to protect the pack from overheating.

Porsche claims the Taycan delivers more than a dozen such runs with identical times, and no doubt one of the

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THE VEHICLES

enthusiast magazines will put that promise to the test.

Another first: some of the world’s most powerful regeneration on deceleration, despite the car’s 14-inch bright-red disc brakes. With a battery capable of charging at 270 kW, the company suggests that even in performance driving, the vast majority of “braking” will be provided solely by regeneration - with the sexy and very visible brakes reserved largely for emergencies.

The Taycan also offers its owners on-the-road access to the full Apple Music library of master files, underscoring its owners’ almost slavish devotion to the Cupertino company’s products. A full 80 percent of Porsche owners use Apple devices, the company said.

The sad remaining fifth who use Android phones are out of luck, however. Porsche doesn’t include Android Auto on any of its cars, and has no plans to do so.

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Just like any other Porsche This doesn’t mean the Taycan drives like other electric cars. Porsche has gone to extraordinary lengths to position the Taycan as just another Porsche in the lineup, with similar driving experience, controls, and cockpit feel to the rest of its lineup.

In practice, that translates to an adamant refusal by Porsche to provide lift-off regeneration through the accelerator pedal. If you lift off, the car will simply glide, with no power delivered or braking applied. If you want to slow the car, you have to press the brake pedal - with most of the slowing provided by that powerful regen. One-pedal driving? Porsche execs firmly and repeatedly said no: That’s not how a Porsche driver wants the car to operate.

Thus far, the Taycan lineup has the 4S at the bottom

Images courtesy of Porsche

One-pedal driving?

Porsche execs firmly and repeatedly said no: That’s not how a Porsche driver wants the car to operate. (starting at $103,800 with a 79.2 kWh pack), the Taycan Turbo in the middle, and the Taycan Turbo S at the top end. Want a Turbo S with its 93.4 kWh battery and all the options? You’re looking at well over $200,000, a price level no Tesla model has ever attained.

Oh, and that “Turbo” business? Once more, that’s a model name Porsche owners know and understand. They can place Turbos in the Porsche lineup - above the base models, below the ultimate performance machines - and it aligns perfectly with every other Porsche model, from the Macan small SUV all the way up to the 911 that crowns the range. Never mind that no electric car actually has a turbocharger. The word is a signifier, not an engineering promise.

Outperforming humans We already know there will be a second allelectric body style, the Taycan Cross Turismo “shooting brake,” first shown at the 2018 Geneva motor show. In the VW Group’s mandated spirit of cross-brand cooperation, Taycan underpinnings will be used for the future Audi e-tron GT, with entirely different bodywork and interior, but the same electric drivetrain.

Porsche itself will launch further variants, likely including some with even higher performance. But there’s a problem: the cars may well outperform the ability of their drivers to tolerate their capabilities.

During a March interview at Porsche’s technical headquarters with Joachim Kramer, who leads highvoltage electronics for electrified vehicles, he noted that the company already had much more capable prototypes on the road.

Taycan Cross Turismo Concept

Audi e-tron GT Concept

“We can go higher” than the current cars’ performance, but such a car “becomes hard to drive” because it has so much power.

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“We can go higher” than the current cars’ performance, he said, smiling. But such a car “becomes hard to drive” because it has so much power, let alone the g-forces occupants must tolerate.

Tesla is now testing the next iteration of its highestperformance Model S version - known as “Plaid,” in a reference to the movie Spaceballs (don’t ask) - at the famous Nürburgring track in Germany. The speed and acceleration duel between the two companies over the next year or two promises to be fascinating, because Porsche has no intention of losing. It can also draw on the resources of a company that sells 10 million cars a year.

How important?

For what it is, the Porsche Taycan is an impressive

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The speed and acceleration duel between the two companies in the next year or two promises to be fascinating. vehicle. Odds are the early versions will be better built than early Teslas were, and it’s backed by a very large automaker with 75 years of experience.

But it’s not the most important electric car since the Tesla Model S.

Images courtesy of Porsche

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That honor, which has yet to be awarded, will go to the first 250-mile battery-electric compact crossover utility vehicle that sells for $25,000 before incentives. Such a car doesn’t exist yet, and may not for several more years.

While the Taycan is an excellent Porsche that happens to be electric, it does little to broaden the appeal of electric cars. Which, to be frank, is not Porsche’s role anyhow.

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THE VEHICLES Images courtesy of Porsche

Porsche’s Kramer hinted that 800-volt charging might prove sufficiently inexpensive to use in the company’s mass-market EVs during their first mid-cycle refresh.

Porsche tech, mass buyers?

The Taycan’s technology will undoubtedly migrate down the chain into far more affordable and mass-market EVs from other brands within VW Group. In fact, in his March interview, Porsche’s Kramer hinted that 800-volt charging might prove sufficiently inexpensive to use in the company’s mass-market EVs during their first midcycle refresh.

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That is likely to happen in 2025 or so. And the possibility opens up a host of new markets, including drivers who live in multiple dwellings and have to park on the street. If they could go to a DC fast charging station once or twice a week for 15 or 20 minutes, that would cover their week’s driving without any need for a Level 2 station at which they could plug in overnight.

Porsche Taycan drivers likely won’t concern themselves with such issues. They’ll simply drive very fast with zero emissions, backed by a mighty brand inside a very large company - and use the fast-growing network of 350 kW DC fast charging stations for road trips as needed.

There are worse things than that.

Why go to the trouble of designing

an 800 V EV?

By Jeffrey Jenkins

How higher-voltage battery packs enable faster charging ecosystems Porsche took on a considerable engineering challenge when it decided to design an 800 V EV system, because nearly every other hybrid and EV in the world operates at 400 V or less. There simply was not a wide range of high-voltage off-the-shelf parts that have been rigorously tested for the high demands of the automotive world (operating every day, in any climate on earth, for 10 to 15 years without issues). So, Porsche reportedly worked very closely with suppliers to design and qualify everything from the power semiconductors to the insulation.

But why go to the trouble? The answer comes down to heat generation along the charging current path from the electrical grid to the cells - in particular, the heat generated in DC fast charging cables and connectors. In fact, this is the limiting factor of the 400 V EV fast charging ecosystem.

Claiming that a higher battery voltage allows for faster charging doesn’t sound right at first. After all, an EV battery has a certain energy capacity in kWh, and it really doesn’t matter if that is achieved with 200 V * 200 Ah, 400 V * 100 Ah or 800 V * 50 Ah. A 100 kW fast charger isn’t going to cram energy back into a battery any faster at 800 V than at 400 V or 200 V; charging time is, quite simply, battery capacity divided by charger power.

However, other things being equal, the heat energy generated in a conductor is related to its cross-section and the level of current.

In the case of DCFC cables and connectors, they are already quite bulky and increasing the size (or cross-section) is not possible if everyday humans are expected to handle them practically. This is why we now see a lot of companies working on liquid-cooled charging cables and increasing the overall system voltage.

That may seem like convoluted logic for Porsche to consider when designing a new vehicle - after all, the automaker doesn’t manufacture DC fast charging stations. Why would it care about those engineering problems?

Here’s another way to look at the history of higher-voltage EVs. In the early days, EV fast charging was limited by the cells. They could only accept limited high-power charging at the ideal temperature, or it was unsafe.

Slowly but surely, battery tech is improving. Cells can accept much higher charge rates at wider temperature ranges. Large battery packs maxed out at 50 kW, then 100 kW, then 150 kW, and higher rates are expected in the future that will exceed first-gen-

eration CHAdeMO and CCS maximum specs. So CHAdeMO and CCS developed next-gen specs, which went from about 500 V to 1,000 V max - to cram more power through the same size cable without increasing heat generation (because, again, you can’t make the cables any bigger, so you have to increase the voltage if you want more power: P=V*I).

So now, if Porsche or any other EV maker wanted to use these future ultra-fast charging stations, they would have to build EVs with higher pack voltages.

The Taycan’s 800 V pack doesn’t rely on any revolutionary battery tech. The cells are arranged in a sequence of series and parallel connections that increases the overall pack voltage. The same cells could be arranged in a 350 to 400 V pack sequence with the same overall pack capacity as the 800 V arrangement.

The big engineering challenge, however, is that using a higher-voltage pack affects the design of many other systems in the EV. Because increasing the battery voltage from 400 V to 800 V requires substantial modifications to every device in the drivetrain, this needs to be implemented at the earliest point in the design process: motors need more turns, conductors need more insulation, inverters need 1,200 V rated components in the power stage, etc. And since Porsche’s typical suppliers weren’t producing higher-voltage automotive grade components (i.e. no MOSFETs or IGBTs to make a higher-voltage EV inverter) the automaker had to work with its suppliers to solve that problem too.

But the whole reason it went through the 800-volt effort is that conductive parts get too hot along the charging current path from the grid to the cells - mainly the DCFC cable and connectors, which can’t be made any larger.

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Image courtesy of IONITY

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Kia and Hyundai invest in IONITY, plan to bump up EV systems to 800 volts Kia and Hyundai have announced investments in IONITY, the European charging network established by BMW, Ford, Daimler and VW. Hyundai Motor Group, which includes both Kia and Hyundai, will obtain a share in IONITY equal to those of the founding partners.

Starting in 2021, Kia and Hyundai will equip EVs with 800-volt charging systems to accommodate IONITY’s maximum charging power of 350 kilowatts. Customers will be able to use IONITY’s HPC (high power charging) facilities.

IONITY currently has nearly 140 charging stations in Europe, and 50 more under construction. The company plans to expand its network to 400 fast charging stations by 2020, with an average of at least one site every 120 kilometers along major European highways.

By 2025, Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy 44 “eco-friendly” models, including EVs, hybrids, PHEVs and fuel cell vehicles.

“Our participation in this joint venture reaffirms the Group’s commitment to future electromobility,” said Thomas Schemera, Executive VP at Hyundai Motor Group. “I am confident that our work with IONITY will open a new era of high-power charging experiences, where charging will be seamless and easier than refueling for our customers.”

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Public charger deployments encourage EV adoption, says Navigant report A new report from Navigant Research has found that public charger deployments are positively affecting plugin vehicle adoption, although the sustainability of the business model is in doubt due to low utilization among early EV adopters, which makes private investment difficult.

The report, “Leveraging Charging Infrastructure to Accelerate EV Sales,” analyzes the relationship between public charger deployment and EV demand.

EV markets have grown considerably since 2010, thanks to government policies and advances in battery technology. However, purchase subsidy programs in major markets are beginning to be phased out, and Navigant says EV ownership largely remains an option for select consumer groups rather than the mass market, due to an insufficient public charging solution.

To propel deployment of public charging, Navigant recommends that stakeholders use subsidies to shape and standardize public charger deployment. They should encourage interoperability and flexibility, and clarify a role for the electricity transmission and distribution sector. Also, opening additional revenue streams for charge point operators can aid in market advancement.

“This finding is encouraging for EV market stakeholders, and should be considered when designing policies to speed EV adoption,” said Navigant Senior Research Analyst Scott Shepard. “There are many ways to support public charging, and a growing collection of solutions are emerging on behalf of steady progress, with technology standards and innovative approaches using communication protocols and energy storage technologies.”

Electrify Canada will install EV chargers at more than 20 Canadian Tire stores across the country. The charging stations will offer 150 to 350 kW DC fast chargers with liquid-cooled cables, and will be compatible with both CCS and CHAdeMO. Rob Barrosa, COO of Electrify Canada, said, “Canadian Tire is one of Canada’s most recognizable and trusted retailers, making this collaboration a natural fit. We are thrilled to be entering into a relationship with a company that has strong Canadian roots and shares the same values and core beliefs of providing convenience and reliability of services to users.”

Canadian Tire Senior VP Andrew Davies said, “As a

Image courtesy of Electrify Canada

Electrify Canada to install chargers at Canadian Tire stores

trusted Canadian brand that is a part of communities from coast-to-coast-to-coast, Canadian Tire is responding to Canadians’ desire to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, through initiatives that include making EV charging stations available at select locations across the country.”

Image courtesy of BMW

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

EV Connect secures $12 million to scale cloud-based charging network software BMW to install 4,100 new charging points in Germany BMW plans to install 4,100 charging points at its German locations by 2021. The charging points will include AC and DC fast chargers, and will be powered by renewable energy. Most of the stations will be installed around Munich - other sites include Berlin, Leipzig, Regensburg, Landshut, Wackersdorf and Dingolfing.

BMW anticipates that, by 2021, one quarter of its vehicles sold in Europe will be electrified. The automaker expects that number to increase to one third by 2025 and one half by 2030.

BMW Board Member Klaus Fröhlich said, “A good charging infrastructure is one of the fundamental prerequisites - alongside range and competitive costs - for the acceptance and growth of electric mobility. This is why the BMW Group is again making progress and investing systematically in the expansion of the charging infrastructure at our German locations.”

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EV Connect, which builds cloud-based software for managing charging networks, has closed a $12-million Series B funding round, led by Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co and Ecosystem Integrity Fund. This funding round brings the total capital raised by EV Connect to over $25 million.

EV Connect is based on international open standards, so customers can use a wide range of charging equipment. It works with a large selection of Level 2 and DC fast chargers from various manufacturers.

The software can provide key insights into EV charging to help protect grid assets through demand response management, usage monitoring, and assurance that capacity requirements are met. The EV Connect platform also offers EV drivers real-time access to charging station status through a smartphone app.

“Charging infrastructure needs to be easy for drivers to use and manageable for utilities and site owners,” said EV Connect CEO Jordan Ramer. “The EV industry cannot afford to continue on a path of building a fragmented EV charging ecosystem on closed platforms. We look forward to working with our new investors to bring truly flexible, open standards scalability to electric transportation.”

Image courtesy of Electrify America

Plug&Charge to enable charging sans cards or apps in 2020

NYPA and NYSERDA to install over 70 charging stations in New York The New York Power Authority (NYPA) and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) will install more than 70 dual-port charging stations at locations across the state. The project is part of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s Charge NY initiative, which is designed to accelerate the installation of EV charging stations in New York.

NYPA and NYSERDA will fund the program with up to $4,000 per charging port. Among the groups involved is non-profit integrated healthcare network Northwell Health, which will install 24 stations across five of its facilities.

Network operator Electrify America and Berlin-based Hubject, the creator of a roaming platform for charging networks, have announced a significant step towards the upcoming launch of the Plug&Charge system, which will enable EV charging with no need for a membership card or smartphone app.

Using Plug&Charge, EV drivers will simply plug their vehicle into a charger, and the charging session will begin automatically. EA and Hubject performed live testing of the new system and say that it will be fully operational in 2020, when Plug&Charge-compatible EVs are expected to be available.

Hubject’s North American V2G Root and Certificate Authority, based on the company’s already established European system, is designed to enable encrypted communication for a seamless customer charging experience.

The system incorporates ISO 15118, an international standard that outlines a secured communication protocol and enables simplified charging functionality for CCS fast charging.

“The Plug&Charge technology will streamline Electrify America’s charging experience,” said Cliff Fietzek, Director of Technology at Electrify America. “We work every day to offer current and future EV owners advanced technologies in charging to help make electric vehicle ownership a reality for both their local and long-distance mobility needs.”

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Image courtesy of Proterra

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Proterra’s new multi-dispenser charging system for heavyduty EV fleets

Electrify America has launched its first level 2 home charger. The charger features charging power of up to 7.6 kW. It comes with a standard NEMA 14-50 supply power plug, colored lighting to indicate charge status, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a threeyear warranty. Electrify America also aims to add a home charging section to its mobile app.

Nina Huesgen, Senior Manager of L2 Operations & Program Management at Electrify America, said, “We recognize that many of today’s EV drivers do more than 80 percent of their charging at home, and with the introduction of our L2 home chargers, Electrify America is providing consumers with a more convenient and reliable option that should help increase the appeal of EV ownership.”

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Image courtesy of Electrify America

Electrify America launches Level 2 home charger

Proterra has added a new offering to its charging solutions - a multi-dispenser system that enables Proterra stations to have up to four low-profile charging dispensers paired to a single Power Control System (PCS).

The solution enables automated, sequential vehicle charging, which allows multiple vehicles to charge one after the other automatically and at full power. To optimize space, dispensers can be installed up to 500 feet away from the PCS. Multi-dispenser charging is available for Proterra’s 60 kW and 125 kW systems, and serves the Proterra Catalyst transit vehicle as well as the Proterra Powered SafT-Liner C2 Jouley electric school bus. Customers who already have Proterra chargers can retrofit the multi-dispenser solution onto existing PCS units.

Proterra chargers use standard CCS Combo plugs and overhead pantograph technology, which enables fleet operators to charge a variety of heavy-duty and light-duty EVs with the same chargers. Proterra chargers are also vehicle-to-grid capable and smart-grid ready.

“One of the biggest challenges with full fleet electrification is managing a complex energy ecosystem and charging infrastructure,” said Proterra Chief Commercial Officer Matt Horton. “Proterra has consistently designed and developed both products and services that help lower upfront costs and provide flexible, scalable charging solutions to meet customer needs.”

Image courtesy of Brugg Cables

Image courtesy of Lightning Systems

Lightning Systems launches range of AC and DC fast charging stations Colorado-based Lightning Systems, a developer of zero-emission drivetrains for commercial fleets, has launched a range of charging stations called Lightning on Tap. The stations range from 7.2 kW AC chargers to 100 kW DC fast chargers.

Lightning Systems CEO Tim Reeser said, “With more fleet operators making the switch to electric trucks and buses, planning and installing charging systems has brought a whole new set of challenges for our customers.

We can now help overcome that challenge by delivering a full suite of charging hardware and software options. We know first-hand that fleets need timely and specific help with charging solutions for their commercial vehicles.”

Brugg Cables to launch 850amp liquid-cooled cable Swiss cable maker Brugg Cables has announced a new high-performance charging cable, the Alligator-HPC, that can deliver DC electricity at 1,000 volts and up to 850 amps. The company plans to launch the cable in early 2020.

Today’s conventional cables typically max out at 550 amps, but thanks to an in-wire cooling system, the Alligator-HPC was able to manage currents of up to 1,000 amps under laboratory conditions at an ambient temperature of 40° C. The cable’s core is a strand arrangement in which finely-layered hollow structures allow the flow of coolant.

The water-based cooling fluid is non-toxic and largely biodegradable. Utilizing a newly-developed CCS2 connector, the coolant can be routed directly to the contacts. The cooling system allows cable lengths of up to 7 meters.

Brugg says that employing this active cooling in both the charging cable and at the contacts permits a massive reduction in charging time. The fast-charging capability opens up the opportunity to charge next-gen high-capacity EVs within 8 minutes or less. In comparison, conventional 125-amp fast-charging stations can take up to an hour to charge the same battery to 80%.

Brugg Cables Product Manager Albert Martinez said, “Thanks to the innovative cooling technology, our charging system delivers twice as much power as previous high-performance cables - with higher flexibility at extremely low weight. The Alligator-HPC is ready for the powerful new generation of e-vehicles.”

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

New study: 10 percent EV penetration could shift utility’s entire peak load

Circontrol introduces new Raption 150 charger for e-buses Image courtesy of Circontrol

Spanish charging station maker Circontrol introduced a new 150 kW charger for e-buses, called the Raption 150, at the 2019 Busworld bus exhibition.

The Raption 150 can charge at 600 volts, a voltage suitable for charging e-buses. Thanks to its modular system, Circontrol says the charger enjoys a high uptime and is scalable from 100 kW to 150 kW. It also allows simultaneous DC charging by splitting the available power.

The Raption 150 is designed to work in tandem with Circontrol’s Raption 50.

The Raption 150 is powerful enough to top up buses at the terminal station between routes, while the 50 kW Raption 50 can fully charge the vehicles when not in use.

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Electric utilities around the world are exploring the potential of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems, which can reduce peak loads by using EV batteries to store renewably generated energy during the day and discharge it during peak consumption periods in the evenings.

A new study from Jackson Associates analyzed 5,000 Southern California Edison (SCE) customers’ hourly loads and commuting behavior, and concluded that, if just 10% of them had EVs hooked up to a V2G system, the utility could shift its entire residential peak load to nighttime hours (as reported by Utility Dive).

The study found that using vehicle batteries to reduce peak residential load could save SCE as much as $560 per EV customer per year. “We were surprised both at the relatively small 10 percent EV market saturation required to completely clip the SCE residential peak and the large annual savings…even after paying for nighttime recharging,” Jackson Associates President Jerry Jackson told Utility Dive.

The findings support the conclusions of a recent report from the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA), which predicted that increased EV deployment could result in a “trillion-dollar EV opportunity for prepared and proactive utilities.”

Image courtesy of PREMO

Image courtesy of GeniePoint

UK supermarket chain plans network of 100 ultra-fast chargers Supermarket chain Morrisons has plans for what it calls the UK’s largest network of ultra-fast chargers. This week, Morrisons unveiled its first 50 GeniePoint rapid chargers at stores across the UK. It plans to install a further 50 by 2020.

Customers must join the organization, which is free, to use the GeniePoint chargers. There is no monthly fee, and drivers only pay for the electricity they use, which costs 30p ($0.38) per kWh. Morrisons will install the chargers around the perimeters of the parking lots to ensure they are available to those who need them and not obstructed by other customers.

French utility ENGIE purchased the UK firm ChargePoint Services, the owner of the GeniePoint charging network, in 2019. The majority of the electricity will come from the utility, which buys from zero-carbon energy sources like hydroelectricity, biomass, bio-gas, wind and solar.

Alex Bamberg, Managing Director of ENGIE EV Solutions, said, “Providing convenient fast charging facilities is essential in ensuring drivers have the confidence to switch to electric vehicles. Morrisons supermarkets are ideally situated in communities as drivers go about their day-to-day activities, and will make an important contribution as we build the most reliable rapid charging network nationwide.”

PREMO launches highefficiency secondary coils for wireless charging PREMO, a Spanish manufacturer of inductive components for the automotive market, has announced a new series of compact secondary coils for wireless charging, the WC-RX-Series, that boast high efficiency and durability.

In Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) systems for EVs, the secondary coils (also known as receiver antennas) are installed on the vehicle, and the primary coils are installed on the floor. When the EV is parked in the correct spot, electricity flows from the primary coils to the secondary coils, allowing the vehicle to charge.

WPT is convenient, but conventional ferrite cores found in high-frequency transformers are too fragile for EV applications. Over the past three years, PREMO sought to create a technology than can support EV WPT in the range of 90 kHz. It sourced €1 million in public and private funding and gathered a team of scientists from various universities and research institutes to join its own team of materials scientists.

The result, PREMO’s WC-Rx-Series, provides high-efficiency power transfer (above 95%) by combining and optimizing the coil (composed of Litz wire) with a flexible-core configuration that avoids air gaps and reduces heating areas. The magnetic core itself combines Flex-Ferrite blocks with PBM (Soft-Polymer Bonding Magnetic).

PREMO says the secondary coil boasts a high Q-factor and high reliability. The 7.7 kW model see a 94.5% efficiency, 20% K-factor, and 12 uH mutual inductance.

Samples of the 7 to 11 kW models will be available by the end of 2019. Samples of the 22 kW model will be available by Q1 2020.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

A simple, low-cost way for residences and businesses to monetize their charging stations

By Charles Morris

E

lectric vehicles are a perfect fit for the sharing economy. Teslas and other EVs are some of the most popular vehicles on peer-to-peer car rental platform Turo. Many of the new car-sharing platforms that are popping up feature EVs. In the near future, EV owners could be earning money by letting utilities use their vehicle batteries as a tool to stabilize the grid, or conceivably by renting out their cars on the Tesla Network.

Peer-to-peer charging services are another way that EV owners can work together to accelerate the spread of electromobility, while possibly earning a little money in the process. The most established player on the emerging charger-sharing scene is California-based startup EVmatch.

I recently spoke with EVmatch founder and CEO Heather Hochrein, a long-time clean technology advocate and energy efficiency expert who started the company in 2016, based on ideas she developed for a master’s thesis project at UC Santa Barbara.

“I and my research team were focused on reducing the barriers to electric vehicle adoption and making electric vehicles more accessible to multifamily dwellers and renters,” Hochrein told me.

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EV

MATCH The platform has grown quickly, and now boasts a network of over 400 peer-to-peer charging sites in over a dozen states.

The platform has grown quickly, and now boasts a network of over 400 peer-to-peer charging sites in over a dozen states.

Hochrein expects to find many customers among apartment dwellers and others who have difficulty charging at home: “individuals who park on the street, for example, or who cannot convince their landlord to install EV charging infrastructure.” She notes that, in major cities, these private-charger-less souls can represent 30 to 40 percent of the population. (The figures are even higher in Europe and China - in London, 78% of residents have no private parking.) “That population will grow significantly as EVs become more affordable and we have longer-range electric vehicles,” says Hochrein, “so that’s one core target.”

Charging your EV So, how does it work? Let’s say I’m an EV driver and I’m looking for a place to charge. “You download the app (available in the Apple App Store and Google Play),” Hochrein explains. “It’s free to download the app and create an account. You list the specific EV you want to charge, and then you find a charger on the map that aligns with your destination. Typically, people are using our service to book in advance. So you make a reservation and you select a specific time that you want to charge - that’s a benefit to folks who have range anxiety.

You receive the specific address after booking, then you go to the location and activate the charging station via the mobile app. You have a button on the phone to turn Image courtesy of EVmatch

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Images courtesy of EVmatch

THE INFRASTRUCTURE on the charging station. That’s for the connected devices - there are also some residential peer-to-peer locations where you get the access information and you simply go and plug in at the location.”

Users are expected to leave their cars while charging - not hang around in the driveway - and are not allowed to enter hosts’ garages or homes.

According to EVmatch’s web site, the average cost of a charge is from $1-2.50 per hour, depending on the time of day, your charging speed, and the markup the host chooses to add. The price for each transaction is always clearly displayed before you submit a charging request.

Charging your customers Let’s say I’m a home or business owner, and I’ve got a charging station I want to share. How does that work?

Hochrein explains: “You create a listing on EVmatch through the mobile app or on EVmatch.com, and you input some basic details about your charging equipment - the make and model, the voltage and amperage - then you set a price and you set availability, and we create a listing on the map with those specific parameters.”

Hosts can choose to make their listings “instant books,” in which case there are specific hours that the charger is available, and those reservations are immediately accepted by the system; or hosts can choose to approve each reservation in advance. “Hosts have the option of charging an access fee in addition to the cost of electricity. For a few states - California and Colorado - we built in a very specific pricing calculator to help folks understand how much they pay for electricity. So that helps them set the price more accurately.”

Hosting profits vary widely based on locations, electricity rates, and designated prices. Hochrein told me that hosts earn an average of $60 per month in profit, and some are bringing in $200 per month.

Commercial hosts are averaging $120 per month, and can earn up to $500.

Charging more EVmatch’s peer-to-peer charging network is getting the headlines, but the company offers much more than just a system for sharing chargers. “We also see EVmatch as a low-cost solution for small businesses and lodging destinations that want to offer EV charging to their guests or their customers,” says Hochrein.

EVmatch offers payment processing and a reservation feature, which is “particularly valuable for lodging destinations, where people want to book in advance.”

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“

You set a price and you set availability, and we create a listing on the map with those specific parameters.

”

EVmatch provides payment processing and booking, but offers lower-cost hardware than a traditional network such as ChargePoint. “We’re sort of in between a non-network charging station that has no payment processing and a highly-featured public charging station,” Hochrein explains. “What we’re doing is leveraging lowcost Wi-Fi-enabled charging hardware and our software application in order to provide [a full suite of] booking, payments and access control services at a low cost.”

EVmatch can offer business owners a turnkey package that includes hardware and installation. “EVmatch doesn’t directly do the installations, but we work with a number of installers, and we have three different charging vendors that we recommend that are compatible with our software [Enel X, ClipperCreek and AeroVironment], which means that we can do the access control,” says Hochrein. “So we can turn the charging equipment on and off when there’s a booked reservation. And we’re leveraging the Enel X [formerly eMotorWerks] JuiceNet platform, so all of the compatible chargers we have on our network can utilize that platform.”

tinues. “Some people don’t have all the adapters, so you can filter [the listings] to see exactly what kind of plugs are available. Site hosts can also indicate if they have adapters available. For example, some of them will keep their Tesla wall connectors plugged in at all times for their guests.”

“

We’re sort of in between a nonnetwork charging station that has no payment processing and a highly-featured public charging station.

”

EVmatch is not considered a reseller of electricity, so it isn’t regulated as a utility. All charging is paid for on a time basis (by the minute), so there are no worries about falling foul of the rules in the few states that restrict charging for electricity by the kilowatt-hour.

Charging a Tesla EVmatch’s system includes details about every charger and every vehicle, so Tesla drivers can seek out Tesla chargers, or verify that the appropriate adapter will be available. “If you have a Tesla charger, you would create a Tesla listing,” Hochrein explains. “The port type is indicated on the listing and [if you are driving a Tesla], you could filter to see only the Tesla ports or, for example, a NEMA 1450 outlet, which you can plug your Level 2 Tesla connector into.”

“Tesla drivers can pretty much use anything, because they typically have an adapter for the J plugs, but you can filter for port type on the platform,” Hochrein con-

Roll your own network EVmatch is in the process of rolling out an interesting new feature that it calls a “subnetwork.” This allows a customer to create a small EVmatch network within their property. “An apartment complex or hotel can provide exclusive access to their charging stations for their subnetwork, and then at certain hours they can also make it available to the public,” Hochrein explains. “It’s an added access control feature that we’ve had a lot of demand for from groups that want to have exclusive access or exclusive tracking for a subgroup of users, but are also interested in making their equipment available to the public at certain times.”

The subnetwork feature has several promising applications. If an apartment complex installs chargers, they can use the feature to make them reservable. “We’ll be deploying charging stations in multiunit properties, and our software [allows] tenants to share efficiently among themselves and pay for their charging. The property manager can decide if they want to make the chargers available to the public at any time.”

A business that offers workplace charging could use the subnetwork feature to make its chargers available to the public outside working hours. “They could say, for example, Monday through Friday, nine to five, it’s only available to our employees or our customers. Then on the weekends it’s available to the general public, and they can set different prices for different user groups.”

Other applications: A membership organization could set a lower price for members and a higher price for members of the general public, or a business could offer free or reduced-price charging as a customer loyalty program.

EVmatch is currently running funded pilots of its subnetwork feature with two utilities in Vermont - Burlington Electric and Green Mountain Power.

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Image courtesy of Zeal

The basis of Zeal’s Charging Management Platform is to makes charging at workplaces and multi-unit dwellings like apartments and condominiums as orderly and automated as possible.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

ZEAL PUTS WORKPLACE

AND RESIDENTIAL MUD CHARGERS ON

By Paul Beck

N

AUTOPILOT

ikhil Bharadwaj was sitting in his office, pondering his personal mission in life: to solve climate change “without bothering people.”

After graduating as an energy engineer from Penn State University, that mission brought him to California, where he led the Transportation Innovation Team for Schneider Electric’s Energy and Sustainability Services department.

For the umpteenth time that day, Bharadwaj noticed a colleague looking out the window, as if searching for something. Inquiring about the odd behavior, Bharadwaj learned that his boss was scouting the parking lot for available EV chargers so he could plug in his car.

“That’s when the light bulb went on,” Bharadwaj reflected. He realized that, despite the great strides being made towards EV adoption, charging continued to be a suboptimal experience for many drivers. “I’d see all these Teslas self-parking and changing lanes. But when it came to the charging experience, people were looking out of windows, trying to see if a charger was available.”

Being unable to find a charger at work is annoying, but being unable to find a charger at home is even worse. EV

drivers who live in apartment buildings are at the whim of building owners when it comes to access to EV charging.

“Almost 57% of Americans do not have a private driveway, and that is something that needs to be addressed for us to all move to a 100% electric future,” Bharadwaj explained.

Bharadwaj thought he could do better. He shared his vision with investment banker Alexander Isaacson, a fellow Penn State graduate whom Bharadwaj had met, fittingly enough, at an entrepreneurship class. The two knew they needed an individual with deep software development experience to bring the entire platform together. That’s when Gaurav Chauhan, a seasoned full-stack software engineer, traveled 200+ miles to meet the team in Nikhil’s dorm room and was immediately sold on the vision. Together, the three founded Zeal, a company that hopes to fix the user experience of EV charging.

Charging communities and the loads they create Zeal started by developing a scheduling engine that creates charging sessions of varying intervals, which are posted on a rolling two-day calendar. Instead of sticking their heads out of windows to hunt for an open charger, drivers join

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Image courtesy of Zeal

a self-managed “charging community” and reserve their charging sessions in advance, reducing both anxiety and friction among users competing for a limited number of chargers. This is the basis of Zeal’s Charging Management Platform or CMP, which makes EV charging at workplaces and especially at residential multi-unit dwellings (MUDs) like apartments and condominiums as orderly and automated as possible.

Bharadwaj and Isaacson soon realized the CMP could provide an additional service. EV charging requires a lot of energy, but there’s only so much energy available, and it comes at a cost. Draw too much current and you can blow a fuse; draw too much current during peak demand times and you can blow your budget. To avoid both of these problems, most charging providers offer services that manage the EV charging load on the building’s electrical system.

There are several load management techniques, but they all share the same goal: limiting the current used for EV charging to prevent electrical system overload and utility peak demand charges. Most charging networks use a technique called load balancing, which divides a building’s current limit - say 100 amps - evenly among every charger that is actively charging a vehicle. If there are ten active chargers, each would be limited to 10 A. Another method, load switching, only activates the number of chargers that corresponds to the electrical system’s current limit for a short period of time and then

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switches those chargers off and activates a different set of chargers. Using the same 10 chargers, each with 32 A of output, three stations would charge for 10 to 20 minutes, and then those chargers would be turned off and another three chargers would get their turn, and so on until every vehicle battery is fully charged.

While load balancing and load switching make property owners happy by keeping energy costs to a minimum, they can be a major inconvenience for EV drivers. Imagine your frustration after plugging in your EV for several hours, only to return to a half-charged battery because the charger was artificially throttled to a mere trickle of current.

Bharadwaj and Isaacson recognized this problem and developed a new load management technology that benefits drivers and property owners alike. Since the CMP knows the make and model of each EV and charger in the community, it calculates the output of each charging session when it is reserved, and then deducts that amount of output from the total available output. Dubbed Empirical Load Management because it uses predictive models rather than live system data, the platform automatically keeps the charging output below the system limit. Now both owners and drivers are happy.

The Zeal founders knew that many MUD owners, especially owners of smaller complexes with fewer than 20 units - which make up over half the apartment stock in the US - were not impressed with the high cost and low return on investment of current EV charging systems. “We

THE INFRASTRUCTURE Dubbed Empirical Load Management because it uses predictive models rather than live system data, the Platform automatically keeps the charging output below the system limit. created predictive algorithms that use advanced machine learning to know exactly when a building is going to hit peak capacity,” Isaacson explained. “We leverage this data to shape our reservation app in such a way that ensures drivers gain a 100% charge while the building still pays the lowest-cost rate plan for electricity.” Bharadwaj and Isaacson believe that driving system costs down and improving apartment owners’ ROI is the key to unlocking the biggest segment of the MUD market.

The Airbnb of private EV charging Charged has come across several software companies that liken their platforms to the Airbnb of EV charging, including Zeal with its mutual benefit to both drivers and charging providers. What sets Zeal apart is its focus on private, shared communities such as office buildings and apartments where it can offer EV charging to tenants and earn income from the service. EV drivers can schedule charging sessions to ensure they always have access to the charge they need.

“We created a two-sided marketplace, where the charger host can earn passive income streamlining chargers on our platform. And on the other side, drivers gain an enjoyable and reliable charging experience at an affordable rate,” Isaacson said.

The Zeal Charge mobile app includes several features to provide a premium charging experience for drivers, without requiring oversight from providers. As Isaacson explains it, the goal is for providers to be able to “put their chargers on autopilot.”

For instance, the Zeal app includes a chat room where drivers can communicate directly with one another. A driver at the end of her scheduled time slot can notify the next driver that she’ll be five minutes late to move her vehicle. “We want to enhance charging communities and virtually eliminate local staff involvement,” Isaacson said.

The app also has a reporting function so that drivers can flag problematic chargers. The reports are sent to Zeal

and the building managers and can also be sent directly to third-party maintenance providers to notify them that the chargers need repair. The platform also includes measures to ensure that only the drivers who are scheduled for a session can access their reserved charger.

For buildings with existing chargers, one of the main benefits of Zeal is its ease of adoption, according to Isaacson. There’s no need to replace existing charging equipment.

“We’re the only software right now that can integrate with any charger model to upgrade its functionality, similar to an iOS update for an iPhone,” Isaacson said.

Zeal collects a building’s utility information in order to customize its algorithms for the building’s charging requirements. Zeal then provides a dashboard where the charging providers can monitor their energy usage and charging revenue in real-time.

Hitting the blue ocean “The issue is drivers switch to electric when chargers are readily available, but buildings tend to only install chargers when EV drivers populate their property, so it creates this inefficient marketplace that’s dependent on the early adopters,” said Isaacson. “That’s why we made it our mission to hit the broader blue ocean by making chargers a profitable, sustainable, and practical asset to own in order to encourage buildings to expand EV charging infrastructure.”

Today, Zeal is still in its infancy, and the company is primarily focused on piloting its technology. One such pilot project was with Bharadwaj’s former employer, Schneider Electric.

“They had two electric car chargers shared by 16 drivers, and the building could not take any more chargers without upgrading their service panel, which can be upwards of $12,000,” Isaacson said. “So we came in and nearly doubled the utilization of the chargers, while putting more e-miles on the road to substantially improve the building’s carbon impact.”

Zeal has also piloted programs with the California Department of Transportation, EV charger manufacturer ClipperCreek, and multiple property management groups.

The platform is currently live in 7 cities, but Zeal has grand plans to expand in the next year.

More recently, Zeal was recognized as a Startup Finalist at CoMotion LA and awarded a round trip to the UK to meet with London city officials and the Department of Transportation to discuss long-term innovation plans for the future of electric mobility.

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Is EV adoption

By Charles Morris

being sabotaged by our politics? he pieces of the plug-in puzzle are in place: the performance of EVs has equaled, and surpassed, that of legacy vehicles; current EVs have plenty of range for most drivers; infrastructure is rapidly being built out. However, we don’t see any sign of a tipping point or a killer app, much less a hockey stick. In the US, monthly sales have fallen short of the previous year’s figures for the last three months, ending over three years of uninterrupted growth. In China, EV sales dropped 34% in September amid a broader auto-industry slowdown.

There’s a sense that the revolution has stalled, both on the supply and the demand sides. Automakers are pumping the brakes because they foresee lower profit margins in the electric world, and because they perceive that US government support for EVs is ending. Consumers are more enamored of SUVs and pickups than ever, and there are currently few electric options in these vehicle classes.

In the middle are auto dealers, who fear losing repair revenue in the brave new plug-in world.

Some Western governments are having second thoughts about promoting EVs. Currently in the US, all things green are now anathema at the federal level, and pro-oil groups are beginning to flex their political muscle to influence state regulatory issues as well. In Germany and in the US, some are painting electrification as a catalyst for massive job losses. The threat of lower demand for labor in the coming electric world was one of the motivators for the recent UAW strike against GM. In certain European countries and US states however, official support for electrification is strong. Pro-EV policymakers understand that government measures must address both supply and demand. Policies such as the ZEV mandate and fuel economy standards are intended to coerce automakers to produce popular EVs that consumers will desire, and purchase incentives are supposed to encourage consumers to buy them. In a free society however, such measures are blunt instruments at best. Companies and consumers will always find ways to get around the rules and do what they perceive is in their economic interest. Automakers produce enough EVs to comply with the regs, but don’t advertise them (then say buyers don’t want ‘em). On the consumer side, few car buyers can take full advantage of the US federal tax credit - high-income taxpayers get most of the benefit, and used car buyers get none.

It may be tempting to say that more stringent regulations are the solution: Force automakers to build electric pickups, and to stop advertising gas guzzlers; slap hefty taxes on dinosaur burners to make auto buyers do the

T

right thing. But even if such measures were politically feasible, going too far down that road is probably a mistake: we don’t want the government micromanaging companies’ decisions, much less dictating what consumers can and can’t buy.

There is a far better way to guide our society down the path of emissions reductions, one that preserves consumer choice and unleashes the power of the free market. A wellhead carbon tax, which taxes fossil fuels when they are pumped, mined or imported, is an efficient, flexible solution. Everyone in the value chain - producers, refiners, retailers and users of energy - shares the burden. All decide for themselves how much of the cost to pass on to their customers, and it’s in their interest to find the best ways to reduce carbon costs. Government doesn’t pick winners - if you can get more tax savings by choosing a more efficient ICE vehicle over an EV, so be it (we’re betting you won’t) - and consumers are free to buy whatever they choose. You want a Hummer, you can have one - but you’re going to pay the full cost.

Most of the world’s large industrial nations now have some form of a carbon tax, (although, thanks to industry lobbying, most are weakened by loopholes). Here in the US, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act had, at last count, 73 co-sponsors in the US House of Representatives (including one Republican!). The revenue would be used to offset reductions in other taxes, making the carbon tax largely revenue-neutral. To win support from the anti-regulation crowd, much of the current patchwork of EV and renewable energy incentives could be eliminated in exchange for a tax that bites hard enough to incentivize emissions-reducing changes.

Another political and moral imperative of any carbon tax is that some of the proceeds must be earmarked for programs (pension support, adult education) to help the millions of workers whose livelihoods will be affected by the huge economic changes ahead.

Unfortunately, such a tax is a non-starter under the current administration, and will be a tough sell even if a Green New Deal someday becomes law. Politicians always prefer tax breaks to tax increases, and grand headline-generating projects to incremental improvements.

While some of our political and business leaders try to hold back the tide of advancing technology, the Chinese government is promoting pro-EV policies that are designed to rip the global auto industry from our grasp.

If the US and Europe remain behind the curve for a few more years, most of the EV factories, supply chains and top talent will be in China. The Chinese strategy is to leapfrog the West and become the center of the automotive world - and it looks like it’s working.

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