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“A Conference with
A Night to Remember”
Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS 20)
Long Beach, California, November 16-19, 2003
by Nigel Fitzpatrick, D.I.C., Ph.D.
After
last attending an EVS meeting
at Anaheim in 1994, it was a thrill to be at EVS
20 to see the real commercial progress. The event
was superbly organized by the Electric Drive Transportation
Association’s Jennifer Watts (jwatts@electricdrive.org).
On Sunday we, the media, were treated to a series
of conferences beginning outside with a demonstration
of a hydrogen refueling station by Bill Crilly
(bcrilly@stuartenergy.com) of Stuart Energy.
Inside the display hall, it was difficult to move
the media away after the opening 20-minute session.
This was on the new hybrid Prius, which David
Hermance of Toyota (www.toyota.com) described
with convincing energy. His energy, perhaps, results
from market capitalization of Toyota being greater
(Business Week, November 17th) than the sum of
the market caps of DaimlerChrysler, GM and Ford.
This primarily comes from conventional vehicles,
but the wealth generated underpins Toyota’s
ability to be a leader in hybrid vehicles. The
Prius carries a preliminary EPA rating of 60mpg
in city driving and 51mpg on the highway. The
reversal in these numbers is because the drivetrain
is optimized for maximum efficiency in stop-and-go
driving.
Hermance’s problem, he said, was that demand
was exceeding the supply. In October, 4,000 vehicles
were needed and he was only allocated 3,000 per
month. He talked of the Lexus RX400h which would
be available as a hybrid in 2004. He could not
confirm that the Highlander would be a hybrid
but advised us to watch for it to be announced
at the Tokyo Motor Show.
“We see the hybrid as an enabler for the
fuel cell vehicle,” Hermance said. The fuel
cell hybrid, which Toyota calls the Toyota FCHV,
is developed in parallel to the hybrid and uses
exactly the same NiMH battery pack, motors and
electronics. Two FCHVs are already in operation
at University of California Irvine (www.nfcrc.uci.edu)
and UC Davis (http://its.ucdavis.edu).
People from Dynasty Electric Car Corp., were displaying
their new NEV offering both inside and at the
Ride N Drive. The vehicle is targeted for the
same market as the DaimlerChrysler GEMs. Dynasty
was also displaying a model that is better suited
to rain than the DaimlerChrysler product. I had
already driven both vehicles and thus, when I
talked to Dynasty’s Richard Clarke
(rclarke@itiselectric.com), I was more into batteries
and such matters. The last time I had seen the
Dynasty vehicle it had a flooded battery and I
was pleased to see it was now sealed.
Max Gates (mg145@daimlerchrysler.com) ran
the DaimlerChrysler media conference which featured
the F-Cell FCHV hybrid and the GEM NEV. I was
interested to hear that there are 28,000 GEMs
now on the road in the U.S. Later Wolfgang
Weiss (wolfgang.weiss@daimler chrysler.com)
outlined the F-Cell vehicle to me and confirmed
that it would be deployed in Detroit and California
with various “customers” that were still
being identified.
Richard Schaum (rich.schaum@wavecrestlabs.com)
of Wavecrest described battery management, motor
and, indeed, battery management technology. Though
the Wavecrest concepts were showcased in a road
vehicle, their present product is a bicycle originally
developed to U.S. Army specifications. The battery
is NiMH and is neatly packaged on the front wheel,
which, of course, can be quickly changed. I enjoyed
riding one of these later.
Sankar Das Gupta, CEO of Electrovaya (sdasgupta@electrovaya.com),
presented his long range Li-ion battery vehicle.
The MAYA 100 drove, but did not complete, the
Tour del Sol and is a five-passenger SUV developed
on a CAMI chassis. (CAMI Automotive is a joint
venture between Suzuki Motor Corp. and General
Motors of Canada Ltd.) (www.cami.ca/main.htm).
The projected vehicle range is 150 to 220 miles,
and Sankar talks of the system’s energy density
being able to exceed 200Wh/kg. Electrovaya announced
a $2.95 million NASA order for an EMU (Extravehicular
Mobility Unit); one can surmise they are leaders.
As the conference concludes we’ll give you
the opinion of one of the world’s leading
electric vehicle developers on this technology.
Sadeq M. Faris, CEO of eVionyx, Inc. (faris@evionyx.com),
spoke eloquently on the subject of harvesting
and carrying energy with metal fuels, particularly
zinc. He described and showed magnesium-air, zinc-air
and nickel-zinc products. The latter has always
intrigued me since I visited Don MacArthur,
then at GM, in 1984 to discuss it. I recall MacArthur
saying that NiZn would struggle to get past 200
cycles. Here was Faris saying that he could even
get zinc-air to 1,000 cycles. He attributes his
success to a membrane that prevented dendrites
shorting out the cell.
Soo Whan Kim (sswhan@hyundai-motor.com)
showed me the Hyundai FCHV with which they were
helped by Enova (www.enovasystems.com). The Hyundai
information kit is one of the most pleasant to
look at and it returned to Canada with me intact.
Phil Chizek of Ford (pchizek@ford.com)
showed me around their stand. This included the
hydrogen engined hybrid H2RV, their FCHV and the
new Escape HEV which will be on sale in July 2004.
Here we might note that the range on 5,000psig
for the two hydrogen vehicles was actually similar
to the range for an Electrovaya Li-ion vehicle.
The hydrogen vehicles can attain 40% more range
by going to 10,000psig, but readers will know
that this comes at an extra energy and dollar
cost.
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