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China’s Push for Electric Cars Flows Through Grid Operators

December 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

With only about a week to go, it is clear China will fall far short of that target. Despite dozens of electric-vehicle demonstration projects around the country, analysts put China’s actual annual production capacity at only several thousand hybrid and all-electric cars and buses.

“It’s pretty trivial at this stage — they hardly sell any,” said Lin Huaibin, the manager of China vehicle sales forecasts at IHS Automotive, a global consulting firm.

Obstacles include continued technological hurdles, disputes over technology transfers by multinational automakers, and a broad wariness by the Chinese public regarding alternative-technology cars.

But it would be shortsighted to count out China’s electric car efforts just yet. Only a few months ago Prime Minister Wen Jiabao called for Beijing to create a new “road map” for energy-saving vehicles.

Unlike in other nations, where automakers are leading the push for electric vehicles, in China the effort is being led largely by one of the country’s most powerful industries — the state-run electric companies that operate the national power grid. With China expected to surpass the United States in the number of all vehicles on the road by as early as 2020, the government-run utilities see it as their job to provide an alternative to imported oil as a way to power several hundred million cars, trucks and buses.

This month in this sprawling southern industrial city, for example, the giant China Southern Power Grid company opened a sales and service center for electric cars.

The new three-story building, resembling a giant lizard egg of lime-green glass, is a showcase for technology supplied by Better Place, a start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif. Under the Better Place business model, customers do not recharge their electric cars but instead periodically stop at an electric filling station to swap their nearly depleted batteries for freshly charged ones.

And just because there are no customers kicking the tires now doesn’t mean China Southern Grid, as it is commonly known, isn’t in the electric-vehicle game for the long haul. The power company and Better Place are in talks to sell electric cars to the Guangzhou municipal government and to taxi fleets, according to Shai Agassi, Better Place’s founder and chief executive.

The demonstration project showcases imported Renault Laguna sedans and Nissan Dualis crossover utility vehicles whose gasoline-fueled power trains have been replaced with electric motors and swappable batteries. But the companies are in talks with Chinese automakers to produce battery-powered cars, for which no price has been set.

In a separate bet, meanwhile, China Southern Grid has also built recharging stations in another big southern industrial city, Shenzhen, for electric buses and cars made by a Chinese automaker, BYD, which has Warren E. Buffett among its investors.

Though automakers in other countries have supplied charging equipment to be installed at homes and parking lots, China’s power industry has already made it clear that it wants to dictate when and how plug-in gasoline-electric hybrids and all-electric cars are charged, by owning the charging equipment and setting technical standards.

“It is more and more difficult to manage the grid; we need more flexibility,” by controlling how cars are recharged, said Zhang Diansheng, the deputy general manager of China Southern Grid.

After initially seeking to leapfrog Japan and the West by moving straight from internal combustion engines to cars powered only by batteries, Chinese policy makers are now paying more attention to hybrids that combine gasoline engines with electric motors. (As battery-fire problems with the Chevrolet Volt in the United States have recently indicated, technical problems still bedevil electric automotive technology.)

Even some of the Chinese companies like BYD that have bet most heavily on all-electric cars are now investing in plug-in hybrid cars that have gasoline engines as well as batteries.

“More and more companies are certainly going to do it like this,” Wang Chuanfu, BYD’s founder and chairman, said in an interview at his company’s headquarters in Shenzhen. But he quickly added, “there is still tremendous potential in the Chinese market for electric cars.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=6417046afc6257cf81b397de1ef74ef5

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China Carmakers Are Told to Seek Fuel Efficiency, Not Sales

September 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A succession of government officials at a weekend conference called for China’s automakers to shift their focus from making ever more cars and toward producing more fuel-efficient and more advanced models, including gasoline-electric hybrids and all-electric cars.

“The government must take the leading role in controlling unrealistic growth” of the auto industry, Jiang Kejun, the influential director of the Energy Research Institute at the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planning agency, said Sunday during a speech at the conference.

Li Shize, the director of pollution control at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, echoed Mr. Jiang, saying that “for the auto industry to develop, we should not try to sell more, but to improve the units sold.”

The government officials did not say how they would restrict growth. But growth has already slowed partly because of limits on the number of new cars that can be registered each month in Beijing, and mostly because government incentives expired at the start of this year. Those incentives were subsidies for rural buyers and a two-year reduction in the sales tax on new family vehicles.

The officials’ remarks strongly suggested that the Chinese auto industry’s lobbying for the reinstatement of the incentives would fail and that restrictions on registering new cars would be extended to more cities.

Any slowdown in growth is likely to shock the world’s automakers. Practically every American, European, Japanese and South Korean automaker is expanding in China, including General Motors, Ford Motor, Nissan Motor and PSA Peugeot Citroën. Chinese automakers are building assembly plants even faster.

Years of double-digit expansion have increased Chinese auto production to almost 17 million cars, minivans, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles last year, from fewer than two million in 2000, making it almost twice the size of the United States or Japanese industries and far larger than any European country’s auto manufacturing sector.

Growth in China culminated in a burst of sales in 2009 and 2010 as the government cut taxes on car sales to stimulate the economy during the global economic downturn.

J.D. Power Associates, the global consults, estimated last month that China would have a manufacturing capacity of 31 million vehicles by 2013. Yet the domestic market has decelerated sharply this year, with sales of family vehicles up just 5 percent in the first seven months, compared with the period a year earlier. By contrast, sales had soared 33 percent in 2010, compared with 2009.

Much slower sales growth this year has prompted strong lobbying by the auto industry for a renewal of government incentives. But if anything, policy makers seem to be leaning toward more limits to address China’s steeply rising dependence on imported oil and its traffic jams, air pollution and shortages of land in many areas for more road construction.

Officials in Beijing have urged the industry to improve technology for years. But they clearly shifted their tone at the conference this weekend in calling for curbs on the industry’s overall growth in sales and production.

Many Chinese automakers are partly or entirely owned by municipal or provincial governments, however, and these lower tiers of government have pushed their manufacturers to expand as fast as possible to maximize jobs and economic output.

But limits on car sales in big cities may pressure Chinese automakers to slow down. The municipal government of Beijing, China’s largest single market with 4 percent of sales last year, stunned the industry last December by imposing stringent limits on the number of new-car registrations each month, effectively imposing a decline in sales of close to 70 percent.

Industry executives argued that this was purely a response to severe traffic jams in Beijing and lobbied for the central government not to let other cities take the same course.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d7685d4ad761b1c47976296104028ef8

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Fancy Batteries in Electric Cars Pose Recycling Challenges

August 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Yet even as automakers vaunt the ways these cars can benefit the environment, they are divided over how best to handle the refuse: recycle or repurpose.

That is worrying some companies involved in “urban mining” — a voguish term that refers to extracting valuable metals from all kinds of discarded electronics, from power tools to mobile phones. They have already begun spending money to build an infrastructure to handle the flood of partly depleted battery packs that are expected to enter the waste stream; Frost Sullivan, a consulting firm, puts the number at about 500,000 a year by the early 2020s.

“There is no green car without green recycling,” said Ghislain Van Damme, a manager at Umicore, a company based here in Hoboken that is one of the world’s largest recyclers of precious and specialty metals from electronic waste.

Companies that fail to plan for recycling face “brand damage” at the very least, he said, as well as potential fines and legal action if the batteries end up being illegally incinerated or dumped in landfills. In many cases, automakers will be responsible for final disposal of the batteries — even if they did not actually manufacture them — because of stricter laws governing recycling, especially in Europe.

Any sense of urgency in developing recycling capacity has been dampened, however, by the cost factor. The newest, most-powerful lithium-based batteries are also less valuable to recycle than earlier ones.

Lithium is plentiful compared with the nickel and cobalt found in hybrid and all-electric car batteries developed earlier, even if the main sources of the metal, in countries like Chile and Bolivia, are far from auto production centers.

“You can count on a constant and growing thirst for metals including lithium,” said P.Aswin Kumar, an analyst with Frost Sullivan. “But lithium still costs about five times more to recycle than to mine, so environmental laws will drive recycling for now.”

Shoebox-size, lead-acid batteries have powered ignition and lighting in gasoline- or diesel-powered cars for decades. They already are widely recycled, mainly because lead is such a health hazard.

The batteries for hybrid and all-electric cars are far more powerful and much larger, with some weighing up to around 250 kilograms, or 550 pounds. They also can be the car’s most expensive component, mostly because of the complexity in making them, rather than the value of the materials.

Complicating the question of disposal, a large amount of energy remains stored even in partially discharged batteries. These could deliver harmful shocks and pose a serious fire hazard if mishandled.

For now, automakers are going their individual ways.

Toyota Motor, whose experience goes back to 1998, shortly after the introduction of the RAV4 all-electric vehicle, has established partnerships in Europe and the United States to recycle batteries, including from the hybrid Prius. This year, it began shipping some batteries from Prius models sold in the United States to Japan to take advantage of a more-efficient recycling process at home.

Honda Motor recycled nearly 500 batteries during 2009 from the electric hybrid models it began selling in Japan more than a decade ago. But it still is exploring ways to structure that part of its business as it rolls out models like the Insight and the CR-Z.

General Motors and Nissan Motor, whose Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf are newer to the market, are taking a different tack. They have agreements with power companies to develop ways of reusing old batteries, perhaps for storing wind or solar energy during peak generating times for later use.

Bayerische Motoren Werke, known for its premium BMW line, still is carrying out research on whether to recycle or reuse the batteries from its Mini E, an all-electric car it began leasing on a limited basis in 2009.

Meanwhile, some governments have begun to get involved to ensure their car industries are not undermined by sourcing or safety issues.

In the United States, the Department of Energy has granted $9.5 million to Toxco to build a specialized recycling plant in Ohio for electric vehicle batteries. It is expected to begin operations next year, handling batteries from a variety of makes and models.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b3f556573a8644ba870002a0e53ffacd

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Hertz to Begin Renting Electric Cars in China

August 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

HONG KONG — In the West, electric cars appeal to a do-it-yourself environmentalist personality, one who believes in taking individual actions to help address the collective problems of air pollution and global warming.

But when Hertz starts renting electric cars in China later this week, it will offer the vehicles with chauffeurs — a nod to China’s resistance to recognizing other nations’ driver’s licenses or the International Driving Permit.

Hertz executives said they planned to announce on Wednesday afternoon in Shanghai that the company would begin renting electric cars to individuals and companies in three Chinese cities, the latest sign of Western interest in working with the Chinese government on advanced technology vehicles.

Hertz will start by renting just two electric cars each in three cities — Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen — said Richard Broome, a senior vice president of Hertz. The cars will be E6 midsize sedans that have just rolled off the assembly lines of BYD, a rechargeable battery manufacturer and automaker based in Shenzhen.

MidAmerican Energy Holdings, controlled by Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, took a nearly 10 percent stake in BYD three years ago.

Hertz plans to have 25 to 30 electric cars available for rent by the end of this year and is mainly limited by the production available from BYD, Mr. Broome said. General Electric will supply many of the charging stations for the cars, but the exact number has not been determined, he said.

The Chinese government has been energetically promoting the adoption of electric cars for several years. But automakers have continued to work on ways to extend the cars’ range.

BYD says the E6 can go up to 300 kilometers, or 190 miles, on a charge, if the air-conditioning is not running and the speed is kept around 70 kilometers, or 45 miles, an hour. BYD says that driving 80 miles an hour with the air-conditioning on reduces range to 240 kilometers, or 150 miles.

Electric cars on sale or under development from Chinese automakers tend to be fairly light and simple at a time when Chinese consumers have been moving toward larger, heavier and more options-laden models. A wide range of subsidies for electric vehicles has not yet proved adequate to offset this.

“It’s not about the subsidies, it’s about the technologies themselves — a lot of the companies are not ready,” said Yale Zhang, the managing director of Automotive Foresight, an automotive consulting firm in Shanghai.

Initial price tags for electric cars in China appear to be double those for gasoline-powered cars of comparable size, and market research has suggested that most Chinese consumers will resist paying extra. The government offers a national subsidy of 60,000 renminbi, or $9,400, to buyers of each electric car.

In the last year, the municipal governments of Beijing and Shenzhen have offered an additional subsidy of another 60,000 renminbi for buyers there, while Shanghai has offered an extra 40,000 renminbi, said Jack Hidary, Hertz’s director of worldwide electric cars.

BYD’s E6, the only electric car that a Chinese automaker has put into production so far, retails for 299,800 renminbi, or $47,000, before subsidies.

Beijing and Shanghai have also exempted buyers of electric cars from their controls on the issuance of car license plates, which are aimed at limiting traffic jams and air pollution. Beijing has started a lottery system for issuing plates, reducing the number issued by two-thirds from last year, while Shanghai auctions license plates, with prices often exceeding 40,000 renminbi.

Mr. Broome said Hertz had qualified for the national and municipal subsidies. The daily rate for renting the electric cars has not yet been set, but it will be based on the reduced price of the cars after subsidies, he added.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=39d9d71c9771318b37e53f8b84a455b3

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Greentech: Plug-and-Play Batteries: Trying Out a Quick-Swap Station for E.V.’s

July 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

THERE may be fewer than 500 electric cars on Danish roads, but signs of progress in building an infrastructure to support a larger population of E.V.’s. are already evident.

The first electric car battery swapping station in Europe opened here last month, the initial site in a network of 24/7 fully automated drive-through stations. There, the lithium-ion battery packs, which weigh about 600 pounds, will be removed from specially designed cars and replaced with a fully charged pack. The swap takes five minutes.

Is this plan — a solution that could make E.V’s practical for long trips — some sort of utopian E.V. fantasy? I thought so until I experienced the process myself.

I was in the second car to do a battery swap after the ribbon was cut on June 28. Passengers in the first car included Lykke Friis, Denmark’s minister of climate and energy, and Johnny Hansen, chief executive of Better Place Denmark, the local branch of the Silicon Valley company. It is building the swap stations and related businesses in Australia, China, Denmark, Israel (where the world’s first swap station is) and eventually, the United States.

Better Place has 19 more battery swap stations in the works for Denmark. “By the first of April, we will cover the whole country,” Mr. Hansen said, referring to 2012, with stations no more than 40 miles apart.

At this point, only Renault is making cars designed for quick battery swaps. The company stretched the gasoline-powered version of its Fluence, a Corolla-like sedan, by five inches to accommodate the suitcase-size 24-kilowatt-hour battery pack. The resulting Fluence Z.E., for zero emissions, goes into full production later this year, available in either swappable or fixed-battery versions.

My 20-minute drive in the Fluence Z.E. from the Better Place offices in Copenhagen to the swap station in the suburb of Gladsaxe, was pleasingly uneventful. The swap station adjoins a filling station, where a gallon of gasoline was priced at the equivalent of $9.15 and diesel was $8.40.

The battery swap was also uneventful. Swipe a membership card at the entrance and the garage door to the battery-change track, similar to a carwash tunnel, opens. Pull forward and the robot takes over — the driver simply shifts into neutral and lets go.

As the car is guided forward, it’s lifted a few inches. Inside the car, you hear buzzes and hums and feel vibrations, but there’s no view of what is happening below. About a minute into the experience, the dashboard message indicates empty battery — meaning it’s gone — after which there’s no air-conditioning, although music and other functions continue. During most of Denmark’s year, the brief lack of climate control would not be a problem, but during my trip, on a hot summer day, the sealed cabin quickly became steamy.

That small discomfort did not mar the significance of the occasion: four and a half minutes after entering the station, the car had a fresh battery. The sedan was lowered and we pulled out of the tunnel ready to drive another 100 miles or so, according to Renault’s range estimate. The Better Place robot worked.

Better Place subscribers purchase their cars, but not the expensive battery packs. For a fixed fee of about $350 a month, they will lease access to the batteries, swap stations and charge points.

Renault says it intends to produce more than 100,000 Fluence Z.E. sedans through 2015, although availability in Denmark will be limited. Another battery-swappable model from Renault, the Zoe Z.E. — a smaller hatchback more suited to Danish tastes — is expected next year. But it could be a number of years before other carmakers produce models that work with the Better Place stations.

The economics are challenging. Each station costs “a couple of million Euros” — about $3 million — to build, Mr. Hansen said. That is a big investment for stations that might barely be used in the next couple of years.

The Better Place business model is a top-down, central-office approach to electric car charging infrastructure. Whether that plan will work may be uncertain, but its Danish swap station does deliver as promised.

When E.V.’s finally arrive here, Denmark could be one of a few places in the world to have eliminated limited driving range and insufficient charging spots as potential obstacles to the adoption of electric cars.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/automobiles/a-plug-and-play-plan-for-ev-batteries.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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