Tesla and Toyota Join Forces

From Ecogeek: http://www.ecogeek.org/component/content/article/3172

These two automotive companies from opposite extremes of manufacturing scale are starting a 'joint project' to build electric cars together. Somewhat like the Geely/vovlo/PML merger I blogged; upcoming new-tech companies being assimilated or formally backed by the powerful existing market leaders.

Toyota-Tesla should have a sizeable lead over Geely et al, with the Prius already dominating the hybrid market, not to mention Geely currently produce less than 4% as many cars as Toyota (the world leading manufacture). However, looking at it from another angle: Geely's vehicle sales shot up 59% in 2009, outstripping their own targets during a global recession. Also, they are China based. China overtook the US to be the country producing the 2nd most road vehicles in 2008. By the end of 2009 they had almost doubled Japan's yearly figure; that's more than the US and Japan combined.

I don't see as much raw technology innovation within Tesla (as with PML's drive system), and the Prius still has fairly modest capabilities. My prediction is that the Toyota-Tesla partnership will either:

- Come up with some equally advanced electric drive train advances.

- Loose market share, perhaps even market dominance, in the longer term.

Of course, pretty much every car manufacturer has *something* electric due out in the next few years: Plug-In Vehicle Tracker: What’s Coming, When

+ Of the worlds most fecund manufacturers:

- GM's volt is due out this year. It has offerings for Israel and Denmark too, which is significant because they are trial locations for ubiquitous electric car infrastructure rollout. Renault and Nissan are partnered up for that already. See YouTube video explanation, or Shai Agassi's inspirational TED speech.

- Nissan's "Leaf" has sold out in for 2010 (though no production until 2012/2013).

- VW has good solid diesel cars, which are going to be more environmentally friendly over for some time, but the company could get left out if their 'halo' electric concept cars don't start rolling of production lines too.

- Honda has hybrids out, right now, that presumably square up to Toyota's. However, no plug-ins with release dates, and they've wasted a lot of effort on hydrogen powered research.

+ Source for Automotive Industry figures (with pretty graphs): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_industry

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.

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!