China's Geely buys Volvo for $1.8bn

So why does an automotive acquisition pique my interest? (on BBC or Telegraph)

Well, anyone who follows this blog shouldn't have failed to notice me preaching about how revolutionary PML's Quad Electric Mini is/was. PML (a small Hampshire based company) got caught in the recession, November 2008, and was split asunder. Now one company ("Printed Motor Works") continues their old line of "Printed Armature/Pancake" electric motors and another: "Protean Electric" (that employs 60, mainly engineering, staff). Protean Electric continue to develop the "Hi-Pa Drive" system, of in-wheel car motors and all electric drive train, working closely with Volvo. There's the link.

Volvo's been developing this technology in it's C30 ReCharge plug in hybrid (video below), though it has been dubious that it would actually feature in their forthcoming 2012 models. Development and testing costs are likely the issue here, as it represents a paradigm shift in car propulsion, and Volvo (car division) has been consistently loss making since it was bought by Ford in 1999 for almost 4 times the current valuation.

There's no question in my mind that regenerative hub motors will be the automotive norm by 2030, it's just a matter of how long is spent 'umming and ahhing' over them before they're accepted. The longer it takes for proper electrics/hybrids to take off, the longer it is before we start reducing environmental damage and the deeper we'll get into ugly realms of oil scarcity. Of course, it would also be nice to see the British company, that first developed this ingenious system, profit from it before everyone else rips it off.

Consumer nervousness over using regenerative breaking as the main/sole way of stopping a car will be a major challenge (perhaps the biggest), a conundrum perfectly suited to Volvo, with it's reputation for unimpeachable safety standards.

Hopefully Geely's cash injection will secure the research partnership with Protean. But I suspect Geely will end up being more closely involved in crafting an affordable product. Geely started in refrigeration in 1986 and has worked it's (his) way through motorcycles to being the premier Chinese owned car manufacturer, the only one that has managed to successfully produce it's own fully automatic transmission system.

I imagine that gaining ownership of all Volvo's intellectual property was more than just a bonus for Geely; hopefully they've recognised the particular potential there. They have already signed an R&D agreement with Tanfield Group (presumably to utilise the experience of Smith Electric Vehicles) to work on converting London's black cabs, thanks to co-owning Manganese Bronze. At the very least Geely comes replete with a cheap manufacturing base: China. (Though, oddly Geely's workforce is currently half that of Volvo's)

There is of course a 4th piece of the (successful, next generation, plug-in/series-hybrid car) puzzle still to fall into place: the battery technology. Lighting GT has a Hi-Pa Drive based product available for order right now, considered the Aston martin of electric cars (I'm still dying to see it on the Top Gear track). But the Altairnano lithium-ion battery it packs costs $70k alone. Fine for a ground breaking, limited production, high end, luxury sports car, but not for a family hatchback. However, there is already a huge amount of competition in the lithium battery research field; all car manufacturers are having to push this tech along as fast as possible. So Geely may not even need to bag an exclusive, battery producing, partner. Also, the HI-Pa drive system has an advantage here because of it's inherent efficiency: no transmission loss to lay down power, no transmission loss regenerating (10%-20% each way, repeatedly). If anything the system needs batteries with faster discharge times, rather than greater capacity.

Last Month in New Scientist (The Best of August 2009)

For all the articles in the magazine that I've found interesting but not thought worthy of an entire blog entry devoted to them. I was aiming to mention about 4 articles per issue, with a paragraph each. Naturally, I've elaborate significantly in places (the Noel Sharkey interview became a full blown piece on it's own), and there were 5 magazine issues this month (opposed to the more usual 4). I'd say that it is, at the least, worth a scan through the article titles listed below, in case anything jumps out at you too.

I've not provided links to individual articles online, just the issue's index page, seeing as most people won't have full access to many of the articles anyway.

** 29 Aug:

+ "It's a small world - in a healthy brain" p14 -

The neuronal structures (in human cortices) display behaviour consistent with their connectivity being finely configured to a state of 'self organised criticality'. Basically that means cascades of activity are as unpredictable as earthquakes and the neurons form a structure more like human society (where one's only ever 6 degrees of separation from anyone else on the planet), rather than merely relying on neighbouring cells to pass signals on to their neighbours, etc. This comes as no surprise to anyone who's up to speed with the revolution of network theory from the beginning of this decade. And it doesn't elucidate much further as to how we think, let alone what makes us conscious/sentient.

The sited study looked at brains with Alzheimer's (which were seen to have long distance connections that were too random) and Frontal Temporal Lobe Dementia (which had too few long distance connections).

So I now wonder if something similar might be the cause of dyslexia (rather than macro-scale variations, like a particular brain region being smaller). For me dyslexia has meant: very slow reading speed in particular (even more prominently than blindness to certain spelling transliterations). What if my current condition also represents a structural deviation in my brain?; A decline in cognitive ability, particularly higher order (conscious) thought that, presumably, requires the most widespread cortical co-ordination, making it most susceptible to such faults.

Of course, even in an optimally order brain, each cell's activation threshold has to be carefully tuned, so that the network operates in a region of chaos, rather than epileptic fit or coma (too low threshold & too high threshold, respectively). Neuromodulation (by serotonin, melatonin, dopamine, adrenaline, etc) and variations in oxygen and glucose concentration can also be responsible for moving the brain away from it's optimal operating range.

+ "Air travellers get a robot chauffeur" p19 -

I (and some of my friends) have thought for a while that we could have entirely 'self driven' cars on the roads by now, from a technical stand point. The (good) reason why we actually have none, is that

Top Gear's misrepresentation of Hydrogen Verses Battery Electric Cars

I'm referring to the most recent Top Gear - Series 12, episode 7, [previously] viewable here: 

James May's review of the Honda FCX Clarity (at the end of said episode) makes out that the very limited production (essentially concept) hydrogen fuel cell car is near perfect, ready to save us from the outdated uselessness of battery power cars. To really bang this home Clarkson has already demolished 2 Tesla Roadsters on the track earlier on.

What was plain ignored:

 - The hydrogen tank has the most flammable gas known to man stored at 340 times atmospheric pressure! I'm not scaremongering, this is still a huge issue holding back hydrogen cars; the gas is only a liquid at -250 degrees C (at standard pressure). Billions are being spent on developing storage substances that can hold and release the gas safely. So far they have efficiencies of about 0.1% hydrogen to substrate, by weight.

Above: 5000psi hydrogen storage tank being fitted to a Honda FCX Clarity.

 - Hydrogen gas has to be liberated from petrochemicals (oil) or electrolyzed from water using electrical energy. This process has much greater inefficiencies than with electrical battery storage.

Clarkson, and the "Top Plug" team, while continually pouncing on battery cars for refilling from power station electricity, appear to have swallowed the "hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe" line and presume it's just lying about ready to fling in your car.

 - There is *no* hydrogen distribution system in place and is not going to be one anytime soon because it is so difficult and expensive.

 - There is (and has to be) a sizable lithium battery in the Honda Clarity for energy regeneration under breaking and buffering the power from the fuel cell (because it is too slow on it's own).

In fact, this car uses identical technology to the Tesla, except that a hydrogen cell recharges the drive battery, instead of having a bigger battery or a high efficiency petrol generator topping it up (like the PML flightlink QED Mini).

What I can't wait to see is the all British Lightning GT driving around the Top Gear track after their first cars are produced in 2009. They use PMLs 'Hi-Pa drive' system of 4 in-wheel motors, which give the Lightning the same 0-60 time as the Tesla, but a slightly higher top speed, no overheating problems and 4 wheel independent drive for perfect handling.

 Above: Lightning GT

This technology has also been taken fully on-board by Volvo who have a serious plug-in hybrid scheduled for full roll out in under 4 years, and there is the Ford F150 pickup truck concept demonstrating that big vehicles can be made green just as easily.

[UPDATED 2014-03-26 - Refurbished with new pictures.]

The Lightning GT seem to have dropped hub motors some time ago, and this link (previously included) is officially dead - http://www.hipadrive.com/phev.html

But more recently, engineering CEO superstar, Elon Musk, called out fuel cell bullshit too.

Near future of automotive propulsion:

Lecture this evening by a guy from PML about their electric BMW Mini QED (quad electric drive):

0-60mph < 5 seconds
65-80 mpg with approx 600 mile range
zero emmissions for short to medium travel

Wheel hub motors (4 of): 750Nm, 15kg, 480A, 450V, 1800rpm.
Brushless permanent magnets, constant torque at all speeds.
Integrated inverter circuitry: 24 Phase sine wave (IGBT), water cooled.

Regenerative braking, dump resistors for excess energy.
No friction brakes!

Battery: 300V, 70Amp hour, Lithium Polymer (700A peak).
Therefore: 21kW hour, 75600000J=75.6MJ
(typical lightning bolt ~500MJ; thinking about accidents)
100 mile battery range @ 70mph

Ultra Capacitors: 350V, 11 Farad, 700A limited (3850 Coulombs)
Therefore: 0.67MJ

Generator: 250cc, 2 stroke gasoline, 15kW (at it's 7000rpm).
Power required to cruise at 70mph

Energy re-circulator: 1400A IGBT distributer.

Indipendent traction control via torque adjustment, yada, yada...

Thier inovation is in the compactness of the motor (their speciality) and the efficiency of the motor drive electronics (IGBT). The generator could be a fuel cell, or any other portable source, but battery/capacitor advancements look set to make everything else obsolete.

It's basically the prototype of the type of car comming off the line in the film Minority Report (i believe Tom Cruise gets trapped/built into a chasis during a fight, then escapes by driving it away!): Basically, new cars in the next couple of years (PML claim to be working with 3 large scale automotive manufacturers to bring out full products by the beginning of next year) will be the prototypes of car perfection: chasis with 4 integrated motor/wheels and a really big capacitor. They'll be charged up at home, in car parks, at *power* stations, probably by inductive coils (or wireless power transmission, when that technology properly comes of age) so u'll probly forget about this strange concept of fuel (!?) altogether...

All that's left is for the cars to drive themselves, then u have the perfect private/public transport system. Public transport with a driverless, pollution neutral fleet of vehicals of any size. Providing door to door, personalisal transport and dynamically reroutable busses for the busiest routes (to avoid rush hour/end of night, taxi rank style queues).

Can't wait to see if stanley pulls off safe town driving during the next grand challenge installment this November. But in a way i'd rather the problem wasn't solved too quickly, so that i personally have some time to work on solving it. Naturally there's always room for improvements.

I'd say this will all be realised in well under 20 years (for post industrial regions). Maybe that sounds too good to be true? Well, u'd better get used to lots of stuff sounding like that and then *actually* happening; it's the Singularity baby! Though i need not preach to a public that take for granted mobile phones and internet access, u now couldn't live without, when u hadn't even heard of such things 20 years ago!