OVE- Everything you need to know about electric car-11

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Everything you need to know about electric car

The OVE books

May

Philippe BRENDEL

Electric vehicles set to boost mobilityConsumers’ and manufacturers’ decision makers’ expectations and behaviour are changing rapidly under the combined influence of several factors, including: - The rise in energy prices in 2008, which has made people realise that the world’s reserves of oil will be exhausted sooner or later, and that this form of energy will inevitably become more expensive.- The rising cost of raw materials and awareness these too are not in inex-haustible supply. - Growing awareness that global warming is a real threat, and that we cannot go on doing nothing about it. - Urban traffic congestion and the increasing frustration of just getting around town. - Awareness campaigns organised by persuasive and charismatic speakers like Al Gore and Yann Arthus Bertrand.Although we are still far from seeing 100% of decision makers wanting to convert their companies into producing less harmful forms of transport, the-re is already a huge groundswell of environmental issues within the public opinion and some manufacturers and public authorities are already planning changes. For example easy availability of multiple purpose vehicles for use on a short-term basis (e.g. a van used for moving furniture or for other family needs a few weeks a year) would leave more room for smaller, less polluting cars that meet drivers’ daily needs. For family holidays, or for driving longer distances, drivers could resort then to short-term vehicle hire, to car sharing or to com-binations of various forms of transport (e.g. train + car). Electric vehicles are well suited to meeting the needs of our now largely urban or suburban population, and considering all the other advantages at-tached to this type of vehicle this is likely to accelerate change. An electric vehicle means silence, no pollution, flexibility and an answer to daily travel, which mostly involves journeys of less than 40 km. Naturally all this will mean changing our habits, we will have to remember to recharge our cars more often that we used to refill them with petrol, but how satisfying! It is safe to bet that in twenty years time we will be wondering how we ever managed to put up with the noise and stench of today’s internal combustion powered traffic.

Philippe Brendel DirectorObservatoire du Véhicule d’Entreprise [email protected]


Table of contents

Introduction – Background 6 Electric power – a profound change in the automotive industry 7Short history of developments in the 1990s 9Categories of hybrid and electric vehicles 13Micro hybrids – the stop-start function 15Mild hybrids – a powerful electric motor 17Parallel hybrids 19Rechargeable, or plug-in hybrids 21“All electric” vehicles 23Electric cars – ideally suited to urban life 29Electric quadricycles, with or without a driver’s license 31Electric commercial vehicles, a segment in its own right 35Powertrain technology 37Electric currents, from socket to engine 43“Filling up” 45Carbon emission figures for electric and hybrid vehicles 47Short and medium-term prospects 49Vehicles available in spring 2009 51


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Introduction – Background Internal combustion cars in the light of rising petrol prices and pollution

A rapid change in the automobile market is underway. Increasing economic and environmental pressure is leading drivers to use less polluting, less petrol-hungry cars with lower running costs. This revolution in the market is due to several factors: • First factor: the inexorable rise in the price of fossil fuels linked with dwindling supplies. As the French minister Thierry Breton said in the autumn of 2005, “We have entered the age of scarce and expensive oil”. Whereas there was a sudden decrease in demand linked to the global economic crisis, this situation will not last. Fossil fuel prices will begin their inexorable rise again. • Second factor: climate change. Emissions of polluting gases and the greenhouse effect are changing the atmosphere’s self-protection system. • Third factor: the consequences of this pollution on human health. Particles of pollutants from the combustion of fossil fuels are a danger to man.

Restrictive measures for motorists

We have entered a critical era, a turning point with profound changes to come. We will have to take restrictive or even drastic measures in response to the dangers we face. Our economic and political decision makers are aware of the drawbacks and polluting nature of internal combustion engine emissions, and have begun to make decisions. These include limits on exhaust emissions (air pollution law of 30th December 1996), traffic restrictions in towns, speed limits, congestion charges and bonus/malus coefficients.

Solutions for urban traffic: electric and hybrid cars

Today, given current technical and economic realities, to provide a sustainable answer to environmental problems, the most efficient vehicle for short journeys and for urban and suburban traffic is the electric car. Electric propulsion is gaining rapid ground in the car industry. Following years of R&D the automotive industry is now making use of the advantages of electric propulsion. These advantages include energy efficiency, high levels of efficiency of engines, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, reliability and silence.

Everything you need to know about electric cars


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Electric power,a profound change in the automotive industry

Since the 1990s, following increased environmental and economic pressure, we have seen a significant change: elec-tric motors have become more and more common in cars, not only to drive luxury features like sunroofs, seats, rear view mirrors and air-conditioning, but to propel the cars. We are no longer surprised to see saloon cars such as the Toyota Prius gliding silently through town. Several thousand drivers, mainly institution and company employees, have been driving more than 5,000 “all electric” 106, Saxo and Berlingo cars produced by PSA between 1995 and 2002.

People in La Rochelle, France are familiar with “EVs” (Electic Vehicles). For the past ten years the town has had a pool of about 50 self-service electric cars available at seven centres. All over Europe, Asia and the USA, bold and innovative development programmes are turning experi-ments into practical applications. “Concept cars” and pro-totypes give rise to mass-produced models, and electric power is being standardised and extended.

All categories and all segments of the market are being transformed. A multitude of new players in the electric vehicle industry are appearing, including large investors, specialised research departments, new battery start-up companies and innovative small manufacturers.

All this activity has extended the range of supply and accelerated the demand for existing models. Every few months sees a batch of new products on the market, from micro urban vehicles to standard saloon cars, and from light commercial vans to medium-weight goods vehicles.

Electric power is transforming the current difficulties of an industrial sector into change for the better.

The rapid spread of electric engines

The trend towards electrification has accelerated since the year 2000, with the search for more efficient internal combustion engines with a view to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and lowering fuel consumption. To lower fuel consumption electric motors were added to “assist” the internal combustion engine, giving rise to the first “hybrid” cars.

The Toyota Prius I in 1997 and Honda Insight in 1999, followed by the IMA Civic, were the pioneers of this new technology on the global market. These hybrid cars, like the electric cars produced by small manufacturers, have one of the main advantages of electric motors, which is high energy efficiency. It is an undeniable fact that


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Electric power,a profound change in the automotive industry

modern electric motors perform much more efficiently than internal combustion engines, whether the latter be petrol or diesel driven, or use gas (such as LPG and CNG).

Energy efficiency to speed up change

In optimal conditions, internal combustion engines have a maximum efficiency* of around 35% for petrol driven cars and around 40% for diesels.

As a general rule, cars are used for short journeys in urban areas in far from optimal running conditions, which further reduce energy efficiency to levels of only 15% to 20%. By contrast, the efficiency of electric motors is over 80% and may reach 90%. The power electronics that control them are also highly efficient (nearly 100%).

Moreover, electric motors have other advantages: they are reliable, cheap, need little maintenance and are light. They produce tremendous torque as soon as the engine is started and have a very wide range of speeds, which in most cases makes transmission simpler. Electric motors are fed by high-performance batteries. These are the ve-hicle’s “energy reservoir” and have given rise to profound technological and economic changes.

The automotive industry, aware of these changes, is manu-facturing an increasing number of electric motors to drive a new generation of vehicles available on the market.

*The energy efficiency of an engine is calculated as a percen-tage of energy produced.In any engine, varying amounts of the energy used is transfor-med into heat.An efficiency of 15 to 20% means that 80 to 85% of the energy consumed by the engine is wasted and is not used to propel the vehicle.In terms of fuel consumption this means that out of a 50 litre tank of fuel only eight to ten litres are used to propel the ve-hicle. The rest is turned into heat and wasted in the internal running of the engine.



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Short history of developments in the 1990s

Electric vehicles of all times

The history of electric vehicles is as old as the history of the car itself. Ever since the beginning of the last century, elec-tricity has been used to drive vehicles. Now EVs are hot news after a period of neglect, but they are not entirely new. In the 1990s much attention was given to the possible future of electric vehicles, both by manufacturers and users.

Some major car manufacturers claimed to show an interest in EVs and studied ways of marketing them on a large scale as well as strategic concepts. The true inten-tions of these large manufacturers were revealed when those projects were suddenly abandoned for somewhat obscure and confused reasons.

USA – General Motors’ EV1

In the early 1990s the State of California set up the California Air Resources Board and brought in a range of laws intended to reduce air pollution. One of the measures adopted stated that from 1998 on, 2% of vehicles marketed in the State should be emission-free, rising to 5% in 2001 and 10% by 2003.

This objective forced manufacturers to start production of electric vehicles. Ford built 1,500 electric Ranger pick-up trucks intended for commercial use and bought up a small Norwegian manufacturer of electric town cars, Think. A few hundred two-seater cars, called Think 1, were sold then. Toyota transformed 4x4 RAV4s into RAV4 EV, and GM suddenly launched a superb electric car, the EV1.


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EV1 reserved to California

EV1 was a highly aerodynamic two-seater aluminum coupé that had a range of 160 km on a single charge at a maximum speed of 130 km/h, which was quite remarkable in 1998. The EV1, which had many of the features of a standard American saloon car such as air-conditioning and stereo system was not sold but rented for three years to customers selected by GM’s marke-ting department. More than 5,000 Californians applied for a car, but only 800 contracts were honoured. The signatories undertook, in spite of laws in force at the time, to return their EV1 at the end of the three-year contract, with no possibility of buying the car from the manufacturer when the contract expired. In this way GM’s bosses reserved the right to take the EV1s off the road, which they did in 2001. The team that had worked on the project was disbanded and all EV1s returned at the end of the contracts were stored temporarily in the Arizona desert.

Pressed by a group of drivers who wanted another EV1, the GM management decided to destroy the cars. All the EV1s were crushed instead of being recycled as had originally been announced. Only a few rare EV1s remain, in museums or owned by associations who managed to keep them. The reasons given by GM for withdrawing its electric cars from circulation were the same that were given by Ford and Toyota who simultaneously stopped marketing the Ranger EV and RAV4 EV: the law in Cali-fornia had changed, and with it the necessity to market emission-free cars.

2001: The USA gives up electric cars

The California Air Resources Board had indeed changed its policies as a result of intense lobbying by oil producers and car manufacturers. In 2004, governor Schwarzenegger launched the “California Hydrogen Highways Network“ project. Now the priority of the State of California is the building of a network of hydrogen highways and experi-ments with hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles, a project that cannot become a commercial reality for many years to come. In this way American car manufacturers and oil producers have managed to delay the advent of electric cars on their market for a few years.

France - Next, a prototype hybrid car designed by Renault

In 1995, in other words two years before Toyota laun-ched its Prius I, Renault unveiled a highly innovative “concept car” named Next.Next is a prototype hybrid vehicle, a research tool. The vehicle is a five-door, five-seater saloon car with three front seats and two back seats. Its body design foresha-dowed that of the Avantime and the Scenic. Driven by a three cylinder 750 cm3 petrol engine, pollution-free and equipped with a catalytic converter and regulated fuel injection. Next is a clean vehicle ahead of its time. The small internal combustion engine with a capacity similar to a 1980s motorbike engine, is coupled with two permanent magnet DC electric motors requiring no maintenance that run on three-phase current. A computer controls it all. The vehicle loads 120 kg of nickel-cadmium batteries lying flat under the floor of the car boot. Next is both safe and very light; the car on the road weighs 875 kg. Shock absorption is provided by aluminum structures at the front and back. The central structure of the car, made of carbon, has exceptional mechanical resistance. When starting and up to 40 km/h, NEXT runs in electric mode. Then the internal combustion engine takes over, at the same time recharging the batteries. When acce-lerating or going uphill the electric motors assist the internal combustion engine.

Why the Next programme was stopped: an unsolved mystery

Renault argued at the time that a standard car produces 80% of its emissions during the first kilometre over a four-kilometre journey. Next is one of Renault’s answers to the problems of urban traffic. A half baked answer if ever there was one, for Next was never marketed by the French manufacturer. Adopting a very different strategy than the Japanese manufacturers Toyota and Honda, who foresaw the popularity of hybrid cars, Renault stop-ped developing along that line. The Next project was abandoned, shelved in the filing cabinets of the Guyancourt Technocentre, leaving the field open to more farsighted manufacturers.



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PSA Peugeot-Citroën – the leading European manufacturer of electric vehicles in the 1990s

The Sochaux based group claims to be the leading European manufacturer of electric vehicles. They are right: the figu-res are there to prove it. More than 5,000 electric vehicles left the Peugeot and Citroën assembly lines between1990 and 2001.

• Sequence of events that enabled PSA to achieve this first place

- As early as 1990, 250 electric C15 and C25 cars were pro-duced for the car pools of companies and organisations. - In 1991, the electric Citella prototype was presented as a fun light (790 kg) modular and high performance (110 km/h) car.This prototype, which was intended to give the vehicle a dynamic and pleasing image, was never marketed. - In 1993, an experiment was launched in La Rochelle. Fifty local citizens were invited to be guinea pigs by dri-ving electric Ax cars around the town. - 1995, the electric Ax car was marketed to private individuals. More than 500 of the cars were produced between 1995 and 1997. - 1997, launch of the electric Peugeot 106 and its Citroën twin, the electric Saxo. - 1998, launch of the electric Peugeot Partner and Citroën Berlingo, both designed on an identical basis.

More than five thousand cars belonging to one of these four models, the 106, Saxo, Berlingo and Partner, were produced and sold mostly to large companies and ins-titutions. EDF bought 1,500 of them, the French Post Office 530; other major customers were French Railways, ports, airports, oil refineries and town councils. In 1999, the town of La Rochelle opened the Liselec service, a pool of 106 self service hire cars. In the same year Paris opened a network of recharging points for EVs, and many other French towns followed suit. • What suddenly made electric cars so popular?

- French laws on air pollution have since 1999 forced some bodies such as territorial associations and public corporations to replace 20% of their pools with clean vehicles, whether they be electric, CNG or LPG. ADEME* subsidises the purchase of EVs, and the cars are exempt from tax.

- The performance of EVs was attractive for daily use over short distances. With a maximum speed of 90 km/h, a range of 60 to 90 km without recharging, good ac-celeration (0 to 50 km/h in under 9 seconds), the EVs produced by PSA were perceived to be real cars. The vehicles were silent, comfortable, and required little maintenance and users found little fault with them.

- The high performance technology of the batteries used in these cars were a direct product of the aerospace in-dustry. The batteries, produced by the equipment ma-nufacturer SAFT, built of 6v – 100 Ah nickel-cadmium monobloc cells have proven to be very reliable.The theoretical life span of 1, 500 cycles of these batte-ries has been confirmed, and many vehicles are still on the road equipped with their original batteries.

• Why did the PSA group decide to stop production in 2002?

The then president of PSA, Jean-Marie Folz, said: ”We are stopping because the all electric saloon car is not the best product, or the best example of an electric vehicle”. This statement was not very convincing at a time when demand was rising, and just as manufacturers were


promising new technologies for producing even more efficient batteries.

Other reasons seem more likely: - The manufacturers’ distribution network was not geared to taking on an entirely new technology like all electric cars. Servicing a 106 or a Berlingo only involves checking the batteries and maybe topping up the water level or checking the brakes and tyres. An electric motor requires no maintenance, no adjustments, no oil changes, no replacement of air, oil or gas-oil filters, injectors or spar-king plugs, not to mention occasional changes of exhaust pipes or belts. Reduced after sales services means less busi-ness turnover for the manufacturer and his network.

- The technology of the NiCd (nickel-cadmium) batteries used at the time were subjected to strict European legisla-tion in 2002. The use of cadmium, which is highly toxic in all forms, is strictly regulated. Peugeot had been working on alternative solutions together with SAFT in the context of the VEDELIC programme**. As early as 2002 the P4 pro-totype, an electric Peugeot 106, had a range of 210 km without a recharge in normal conditions and a maximum speed of 120 km/h. The P4 uses lithium-ion (Li-ion) type batteries instead of nickel-cadmium (NiCd) batteries. The reason for which PSA gave up research in this very strategic area remains unexplained.

- There is a real risk of fierce competition for a major manufacturer between internal combustion and electric ve-hicles even within the manufacturers’ own range. In 2001, in other words shortly before announcing their decision to

stop production of EVs, the PSA Peugeot Citroën managers had decided to built a giant factory at Kolin in the Czech Republic to produce urban micro cars in partnership with Toyota. This factory now produces 107 as well as Citroën C1 and Toyota Aygo cars which have been marketed since 2005. All three cars are driven by engines supplied by Toyota. These are admittedly modern internal combustion engines, but they still require standard after sales services.

* French agency for environment and energy control** VEDELIC programme: 1995- 2000 Development of new battery and traction chain technology



Citella © Citroën

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Categories of hybrid and electric vehicles

Micro hybrids

The micro hybrid, or stop-start solution is the lowest level of hybridisation. It is a reversible system that fills the role of starter and generator in a standard car. The internal combustion engine is turned off automatically when the car stops, and is started again automaticallywhen the driver moves on.

Mild hybrids

Mild hybrids are a step up in hybridisation from micro hybrids. The stop-start function is of course still there, but with the addition of joint internal combustion and electric propulsion, both engines working together to drive the vehicle. The electric motor delivers its torque to help starting and restarting, and the electricity generated

produced in generator mode is stored in specific batteries. Mild hybrids are also able to store energy during braking. In this case the system works in generator mode and develops resistance which adds to the engine brake.

Parallel hybrids

Parallel hybrids are the best known of hybrid vehicles because they are the most common. The power of the internal combustion engine and electric motor is joint, as in mild hybrids. Moreover, these cars are able to run entirely on electricity when starting, at low speeds and when parking. The batteries have enough capacity to cover short journeys of a few kilometres without using the internal combustion engine.


Honda Insight 2009 © Honda Motors

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Categories of hybrid and electric vehicles

Rechargeable, or plug-in hybrids

Plug-in hybrids are an improved version of parallel hybrids using more powerful batteries. Plug-in or rechargeable hybrids are ones that can be recharged from an electrical mains supply, enabling it to be used on a daily basis in the same way as an electric car.

“All electric” vehicles

The category of all electric vehicles includes many diffe-rent designs from micro urban cars to vans. Their energy source is electricity, and they work on rechargeable batteries, like laptop computers, portable electric tools, wireless telephone handsets, etc..

The development of these vehicles is closely linked to the progress made in the last ten years in methods of storage of electric energy. There are great expectations of these vehicles from consumers who wish to reduce their dependence on CO2 emitting energy. They are now reaching technological maturity, and are becoming available on a wide scale.



Prototype QUICC © DuraCar

Système micro hybrid Stars de Valeo © Valeo

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How they work

Micro hybrids are standard cars powered by an internal combustion engine equipped with a stop-start function. The stop-start function temporarily turns the engine off whenever the car stops. This system reduces fuel consump-tion in urban traffic (during stops at traffic lights, traffic jams, etc.) by about 10% in urban traffic, by 6% in nor-mal mixed conditions, and up to 16% in dense traffic. The technology involved is quite simple: an alternator acting as starter, an electronic command system and a battery.

The more sophisticated systems can store energy during deceleration in a new type of capacitor called super-capacitor. This new generation will not only store energy when braking, but will provide extra torque to the engine. The Citroën C3 was the first car fitted with this innovation in 2004, followed by the C2. This technological advance was the achievement of the equipment manufacturer Valeo, which first developed the stop-start system.

Micro hybrids -the stop-start function


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Micro hybrids in 2009

Other car manufacturers now produce vehicles equipped with similar systems developed by the major equipment manufacturers. Bosch supplies the BMW group for their Mini and BMW 1 series, as well as the South Korean manufacturer Kia for its Cee’d. The MHD (Micro Hybrid Diesel) Smart, and Mercedes A Class are fitted, like Citroën’s cars, with Valeo’s Stars micro hybrid system. Fiat relies on its usual supplier Magneti Marelli for the stop-start system on its 500. The firm has announced that its Panda and Punto models will be marketed soon. Toyota has added a micro Auris to its range, and Renault, which had for a while opted out of the competition, is now focussing its strategy on micro hybrids.

The road ahead is clear: we are now heading for mass micro hybridisation

Alice de Bauer, Renault’s environmental policy manager, has declared the company’s intention of incorporating the stop-start system in all cars in the Renault range by about 2010. Speaking on behalf of his own compa-ny, Pascal Hénault, research manager at PSA, has an-nounced that the stop-start system will be included in all Peugeot and Citroën cars as soon as possible. The PSA group plans to sell one million vehicles fitted with the stop-start system in 2011 and over 1.6 million vehicles of this kind in 2012.



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Mild hybrids -a powerful electric motor

How they work

This category, also known as semi hybrids, first appeared in cars produced by Honda, who pioneered the techno-logy. Two engines, an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, work jointly. The electric motor provides extra power when starting and accelerating, but does not power the car on its own. The electric energy, which is produced continuously or during deceleration, is stored in a more powerful battery pack than the simple batteries used for starting in micro hybrids. A computer coupled to many sensors controls the distribution of power of the two engines and torque in real time. When driving in urban traffic the system works in the same way as stop-start. The amount of fuel saved in comparison with stan-dard cars naturally varies according to driving conditions, but ranges between 10 and 20% in urban traffic.

Three generations since 1999

Honda has marketed three successive generations of hybrid cars fitted with its IMA (Integrated Motor Assist) technology in Europe since 1999. Seldom seen, these

cars were not as popular as the Toyota models. However, Honda hopes to catch up with its main rival with the 2009 launch of two more competitive cars in terms of price and performance: the IMA Civic and IMA Insight.Other manufacturers followed Honda’s lead in mild hybrids. The German giant Daimler is going to market a prestige car in mid 2009, the Mercedes-Benz S400 Blue-HYBRID.Several new cars in the Mercedes range using this tech-nology developed by a partnership between BMW and Daimler have been announced.For its part, BMW presented two prototypes in 2008 which will be marketed in mid 2009. One of these is based on the 4x4 X5 and the other on a top of the range 7 series saloon - BMW’s mild hybrid technology is called Active-Hybrid Technology.The supplier of both the German manufacturers is the equipment manufacture Continental for the electric motors and command electronics, in association with the battery producer Johnson Controls Saft.

Mild Hybrid Honda Civic © Honda Motors


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Mild hybrids -a powerful electric motor


Mild hybrid Honda Insight 2009 © Honda Motors

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Parallel hybrids

How they work

Parallel hybrids are the best known and most common hybrid vehicles, mainly thanks to the world’s first manu-facturer of these cars, Toyota. As in mild hybrids, an inter-nal combustion engine is linked to an electric motor. The difference lies in the greater power of the electric motor which is able to power the car on its own with the inter-nal combustion engine switched off over short distances. Parallel hybrids run in electric mode when starting, at low speeds, in traffic jams and while parking. This involves a more powerful battery than those of mild hybrids, a special kind of transmission and a very efficient command computer. The transmission systems used in vehicles marketed so far are of the “CVT” (Continuous Variable Transmission) type, a system that enables both motors to run at the most efficient speeds.The engineers who design this type of car seek above all to increase the torque, which means increased flexibility and acceleration of a small, low emission engine instead of the usual engine/gearbox assembly.

Reduction of fuel consumption and emissions of pollutants

Fuel consumption is greatly reduced in these, by between 10 and 50% according to driving conditions, with the most spectacular gains being made in urban traffic.The reduction in CO2 emissions is proportional with the reduction in fuel consumption thanks to the high energy efficiency of parallel hybrids. A hybrid saloon car of the M2 segment (Laguna, 406, C5, Avensis, etc.), like the Prius, emits as much CO2 as a very small urban car such as the C1, 107 or Aygo, and performs better than the cleanest Clio. If one compares the emissions of saloon cars of the same category as the Prius over 20,000 km, the latter emits one ton less CO2 into the atmosphere. As to other pol-lutants such as nitrogen oxide (Nox) and hydrocarbons (HC), emissions are lower than in any other petrol powe-red car. Emissions of solid particles, a major drawback of diesel engines, are reduced to zero.This is where the superiority of hybrid propulsion really shows.

Toyota Prius II © Toyota


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Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive: the reference car in hybridisation

The first hybrid car marketed to the general public, and that in a few short years became THE absolute reference car, owed its success to a technological innovation, the Toyota “Hybrid Synergy Drive“.This exclusive system, which comes in several versions, is used first in Toyota cars: the Prius all over the world, and in Highlander and Camry cars in North America. It is also used in cars made by the Japanese manufactu-rer’s subsidiaries, including Lexus, which markets the RX 400 h, GS 450 h and LS 600 h.Other manufacturers use Toyota technology to produ-ce hybrid cars under licence. This is the case of Nissan, which sells Altima hybrids in North America. Ford uses Toyota patents for its Escape 4x4 hybrid, as does FAW (First Automotive Works) in the framework of a joint venture in the Chinese market.The strategy adopted by Toyota, which protected its inventions with over 1,000 patents, is paying off.More than ten years after the commercial launch of the first parallel hybrid car, no other manufacturer has ma-naged to overcome the barriers set up by the Japanese giant. Yet this considerable technological advance was not recognised as such when the Prius I was launched in 1997.

From Prius I to Prius III – a worldwide success

• Prius I – the pioneerIt is a remarkable fact that except for a very few specia-lists monitoring technological advances, the launch of the Prius I in 1997 went almost completely unnoticed. At its commercial launches in Europe and in the USA, the car received a very tepid welcome in the specialised press and in the automotive world in general. Journalists found its body design old fashioned and clumsy, its performances inadequate and its reduced fuel consumption did not appear to interest anyone but a few well informed users. This did not deter Toyota from producing 124,000 of these cars in the next five years and to go on investing in the technical developments needed for the second generation.

• Prius II – over a million cars sold The Prius II began its career in 2003 in the USA and in early 2004 in Europe, and was better received than the first version. Its advantages, highlighted by increasing awareness of the threat caused by global warming, won this new car real interest by the general public. To reassure potential buyers and remove doubts about the car’s reliability, Toyota issued a specific eight-year or 160,000-km guarantee for the whole hybrid part. It was voted Car of the Year in 2005 by the 58 motoring journalists (from 22 countries) on the Car of the Year jury. That is how the Prius went from being a technolo-gical curiosity to commercial phenomenon. More than a million Prius were sold in five years, making it by far the most widely sold electric/hybrid car of all time.

• Prius III - Confirmation of Toyota’s technological advance The Prius III, first shown at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2009, takes the hybrid technology of its forerun-ners to new heights. While Toyota’s competitors plan to enter the market starting in 2010, Toyota has entrenched itself as world leader and has brought yet another major change. As in the past, the manufacturer’s research de-partment has protected its new inventions with a whole lot of new patents and hopes to produce a million hybrid vehicles a year between 2010 and 2013. The car inclu-des many improvements aimed at further reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, with more torque for the engines, an improved air penetration coefficient, extra weight, optimised battery management, low consumption air-conditioning and ventilation powered by solar panels on the roof.



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Rechargeable, or plug-in hybrids

Prototypes as early as 2004

The first modern plug-in hybrids were thought up in the R&D department of a start-up company based in California. The next step had to be to demonstrate that the technology was now mature enough and the time was ripe for production by producing a prototype that would get the whole world talking. That was done back in 2004 by engineers at EnergyCS in association with Va-lence Technology, a Texan producer of lithium batteries. EnergyCS (Energy Control Systems Engineering Inc.) had already developed a very specific know-how in the field of electronics for the running of Li-ion battery packs for cars. They began with a simple question: how to in-crease the performance of the electric power of a Toyota Prius? The answer was to replace the original batteries by much more powerful ones and thus gives the car a range of 50 km without a recharge.

It is true that the autonomy of a Prius in purely electric mode is rather low, being only about three or four km. The American designers exploited this weak point, taking advantage of Toyota’s lack of initiative in the matter. They transformed two Prius cars, equipping them with a lithium battery pack of their own design, and created quite a stir when they presented them at the EVS 21* in Monaco in May 2005.

The concept gains ground

Three factors thrust plug-in hybrids to centre stage: - a strong demand from consumers dissatisfied with the performance of existing hybrids; - the reduced cost of batteries, increased performance and proof of their reliability;


Plug- In Hybrid prototype as viewed on Toyota Prius realised by EnergyCS, USA

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*EVS (Electric Vehicle Symposium ) are yearly international fo-rums for researchers and specialists in the electric car industry. They are organised by the World Electric Vehicle Association (WEVA). EVS 24 was held in Norway in May 2009. www.evs24.org

- the advent of major manufacturers on the market – General Motors with its Volt, Toyota with its own plug-in Prius, Ford, VW and others, which promised a rapid rise in battery production capacity.

To meet a strong demand in North America, some companies turned to providing approved kits ready to be installed. These have been marketed since 2008 by Hymotion, a subsidiary of the battery manufacturer A123Systems who also produce the integrators for the system developed by EnergyCS.

In Europe, EDF - in partnership with Toyota - became the promoter of plug-in hybrids. Tests have been car-ried out on a few plug-in Prius cars in France and in England. General Motors announced the launch of its Volt concept car starting in 2011 in several versions all over the world.

In China the manufacturer BYD, which makes its own batteries, markets models called “Dual Mode“, the F3 and F6 DM. BYD thus became the first manufacturer in the world to supply mass-produced plug-in hybrid cars under the very nose of the world’s leading companies.



© EDF

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“All electric” vehicles

How they work

In electric vehicles the parts making up the powertrain are arranged in the same way as in internal combus-tion vehicles. The energy stored on board is transformed by an engine and then used to power the wheels. The main difference lies in the simplicity of this powertrain compared with its internal combustion counterpart. It consists only of:- an energy reservoir consisting of a set of batteries; - one or more electric engines;- an electronic/IT command unit; - cables to connect them all.

The “peripheral” parts of an internal combustion engine have all gone, including water, fuel and oil and injection pumps. There is no filter, no exhaust system or sparking plugs. Turbo-compressor? Not needed. The transmission is simplified: no clutch or gearbox. The electric motors that power modern vehicles were derived from indus-trial motors. They are very simple to use and incompara-bly reliable. These engines, designed to run continuously for years without any maintenance, only require occasio-nal checks.

This mechanical simplicity leaves developers free to de-vote all their time to optimising energy consumption and ease of use. Many options are being studied with this in mind.*

Electric “concept cars” are hot news

Emission free cars are certainly drawing crowds to the world’s automobile trade fairs. The major manufacturers have understood this, and are using ZEVs (Zero Emis-sion Vehicle) to show off their designers’ and engineers’ ingenuity. Since the 1990s, many electric concept cars have exci-ted the imaginations of potential consumers and taken up much space in the motoring press. But showing cars that cannot yet be bought by drivers inevitably causes them to be perceived as products of the future, rather like unrealistic dreams, which is far from the truth, as many of these products are much more accessible than the major manufacturers would have one believe. It is true that some advanced concept cars never went into production.


Nissan FEV-II - Li-ion batteries © Nissan

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• 1995 – Nissan’s FEV-II ConceptWhen it was first shown at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1995 the FEV-II was already equipped with experimental Li-ion batteries which gave the car a range three times greater than cars fitted with lead accumulators at the time. This was one of the very first public appearances of a car equipped with this type of high performance accumulator.

• 1996 – Peugeot’s Tulip Tulip is an acronym of “Transport Urbain Libre Individuel et Public” (“individual and public free urban transport”).The system was presented PSA Peugeot Citroën, VIA GTI and Cegelec in 1996. Tulip provides its members with self-service two-seater vehicles at a number of centres around the city. Members are given a personal remote-control handset that enables them to borrow a vehicle for as long as they choose by entering a confidential personal code.

Another advantage of Tulip is that the cars are equipped with an interactive guiding system that gives the driver useful information about routes and traffic conditions, a forerunner of today’s GPS. This 2.20 m long and 1.40 m wide car has the handling qualities and liveliness (0 to 50 km/h in 8 seconds with a maximum speed of 75 km/h) that make it a pleasure to drive in town. It is built of an assemblage of five main parts that ensures strength and safety. The Tulip’s parts and materials can be recycled. • 2007 – Nissan’s MiximThe Mixim is clearly targeted at young drivers. Nissan’s engineers started from the premise that the young today are less and less interested in cars. Mixim is lighter than a Micra or a Twingo, and the interior design is inspired by the world of video games. The car is a lively three-seater, but has four driving wheels powered by two engines, one at the front and the other at the back. The Mixim is an interactive car with a top speed of 180 km/h and and a range of 250 km thanks to its lamellar lithium-ion batteries.

The Mixim was shown all over the world after its first official presentation at the Frankfurt motor show in 2007. Practically all the media commented on its futuristic ima-ge without mentioning the fact that the car will never be marketed.

• 2008 - Renault’s Z.E. ConceptAt the Paris Motor Show in 2008 the fluorescent Z.E. (“zero emission”) concept car drew quite a lot of atten-tion. An “all electric” car featuring as the main exhibit on Renault’s stand was a novelty but not much of a surprise. Since 1997 the Renault/Nissan group has made frequent announcements and set up partnerships to build an elec-tric car, as in the case of Israel, Portugal and Norway in the context of agreements with the Better Place project. Renault/Nissan has undertaken to supply electric cars to Better Place customers starting in 2011. Whereas eve-ryone expected to see a real, high performance electric car that would soon be available, Renault chose to show an unavailable “concept car”. True, the Z.E. Concept has some attractive technical features such as an insulated body with heat-absorbing paint and solar panels on the roof, but the car remains a study project and is not in-tended for production.

Experimental fleets It is a clear sign that we are rapidly moving towards sales on a much greater scale that some manufacturers are undertaking experiments using several hundred vehicles.

*See the chapter on powertrain technology.



Z.E. Concept Renault © Renault

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The aim is to test consumers’ reactions and the techno-logy in real conditions. These experiments, in most cases undertaken in partnership with energy providers, are carried out in limited geographical areas.

• Mitsubishi’s “i MiEV“ tested since 2007 in JapanThe Mitsubishi “i“ is a town car intended exclusively for the Japanese market. It is a small car, 3.4 m long, with four doors and four seats. The “i“ is versatile, designed with an adaptable chassis to enable it to be converted into an electric car. Its engine is in the centre of the car, lying flat under the passenger space in the raised floor. The electric version of the “i”, the MiEV (Mitsu-bishi innovative Electric Vehicle) weighs 1,080 kg and has a top speed of 130 km/h. According to the manu-facturer it has a range of 130 or 160 km depending on the batteries fitted. Mitsubishi has developed a ra-pid charger (20 minutes) at a specific charging point in addition to the onboard charger. This development was made in partnership with the energy providers who tested the MiEVs. About 20 cars are owned by Chugoku Electric Power and Kyushu Electric Power, the Japanese companies involved in the project. When the tests in

Japan proved conclusive Mitsubishi extended them in the USA in 2008. There, Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) have been entrusted with testing about thirty vehicles. These tests will enable Mitsubishi to gather a wealth of informa-tion about the cars in real conditions and also to decide whether to market them in the United States. The car is to be launched on the Japanese market in 2009, with a production of 2,000 MiEVs. • The Smart EV in EuropeThe Smart EV is in some ways a return to basics. The de-signers of the Smart, previously called Swatchmobile, had originally designed an electric version of the micro town car in 1996. The vehicle was judged too futuristic, and was not retained by the Smart management for mass produc-tion. It was not until 2005 that the first electric Smart made its appearance. A British company, Zytek, made the conversion and presented its prototypes at many motor shows before they managed to interest Daimler group, the owners of Smart. The electric version develops 30 kW, enabling it to accelerate from 0 to 50 km/h in 6.5 seconds, with a top speed of 110 km/h. It has a range of about


Smart EV © Smart - Groupe Daimler

120 km without a recharge. About one hundred Smart cars were produced and delivered to companies in Britain for a first phase of tests begun in late 2007. Another batch of one hundred cars is being built for a second series of tests in Berlin. For this venture Daimler has gone into par-tnership with the energy producer RWE AG. In the fra-mework of the “e-mobility Berlin”, 500 recharging points will be installed in company premises, on private property and in public parking lots. The initiative is supported by the German federal government. Smart EV is also the subject of a similar project in Italy. The cities of Rome, Milan and Pisa are all involved. The energy partner there is Enel Spa; more than 400 recharging points will be installed in the three cities to feed about 100 Smart EVs.

• An electric Mini in the USAIn the United States one category of EV is quite popular: converted vehicles. It’s very simple: just take an internal combustion car in good condition, or better still a new one, take out everything that is not needed to convert it to electricity, and replace the engine by a high efficiency electric motor and new generation batteries. The rules of approval and registration being simpler than in Europe makes these conversions easy, and hundreds of converted electric cars are now on the road in America. Businesses have entered this field, and one of them, EV Innovations (formerly Hybrid Technologies), has gradually established itself as a specialist. The founders of this company pro-duced a fleet of electric PT Cruisers (made by Chrysler) used as taxis in New York and have also made a spectacu-lar conversion of a Mini car. This Mini, powered by Li-ion batteries has achieved high performances; it has a range of 150 km and has a top speed of 130 km/h. In response to the interest shown in EV Innovation’s Mini E, BMW the USA decided to start production of 500 cars to be let to volunteer experimenters. The states invol-ved are New York, New Jersey and California.

Top of the range EVs

These cars are way out of most people’s reach and one seldom sees them on the road. Nevertheless there are such things as top of the range electric cars, and they receive a lot of media attention. Their manufacturers

market them in the usual way by appealing to a market of rich buyers. The main appeal of these electric sports cars already on the market is the many innovations in their designs, such as advanced aerodynamics, computer driven energy management, wheel motors, etc.. The cars are produced on a small scale, with care, almost like cus-tom-built items, with long waiting lists and high rates. These cars have a special image, being made by small manufacturers or start-up companies.

• The Venturi FetishVenturi was a small manufacturer of sports cars specialised in the GT category. Following successes at the 24 hours race at Le Mans and in Formula 1 racing, the company got into severe financial difficulty. Faced with closure, the com-pany was bought by an industrialist from Monaco, Gildo Pallanca Pastor. The new owner switched to the production of electric cars and thus gave the company a new lease of life. In 2004, Venturi exhibited an entirely new car, the Fetish, and with it a new segment of the car market: elec-tric sports cars. The Fetish concept is completely different from that of other sports cars, as it is the batteries and not the engine that are the focus of the car’s technological value and its performance. The Fetish is built entirely of carbon fibre. Its unique hull and chassis contains the batte-ries within the structure itself. The motor, ideally placed in the centre of the back, powers the car from 0 to 100 km/h in less than five seconds. Fetish can run for 250 km before a rapid complete recharge in one hour (under three-phase 30 kW) or in three hours from a standard socket. This su-perb car can be purchased to order in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Monte Carlo, Paris, London and Dubai for 297,000 € VAT excluded. It takes four months to build.

• Tesla Motors - CaliforniaNikola Tesla was a Serbian inventor and engineer specia-lised in electrics who settled in the United States. When he died in 1943 he was regarded as one of the grea-test scientist in the history of technology. He took out more than 900 patents (most of which were taken up by Thomas Edison) in new methods of energy conversion. His theories of electric energy led him to design alterna-ting current, of which he was one of the pioneers. The makers of a new high performance electric car together

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with marketing and new technology experts chose the name Tesla Motors in honour of one of the founding fathers of electric power. Tesla Motors was founded by a group of wealthy entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley in California. Elon and Kimbal Musk had earlier foun-ded Zip2 and Paypal, while their partner Steve Westly was one of the creators of eBay. They appointed Lotus Engineering in England to design and produce a mo-dern electric sports roadster. The car has been in pro-duction in Britain since 2007 on Tesla’s behalf, and the final assembly of the electrical components is done in California.

The entire production in 2008 (700 cars) was soled, and orders are pouring in for cars in 2009. The batteries de-signed by Tesla use the lithium-ion technology and are housed between the motor and the passenger space. They give the car a range of 300 km. The Tesla is availa-ble in Europe, where one has to pay 99,000 € VAT exclu-ded to become the proud owner of this car that powers its 1,150 kg from 0 to 100 km/h in four seconds.

• The Loremo - light and aerodynamic The Loremo (“Low resistance mobile”) was designed in Germany with the simple aim of consuming as little as possible while still delivering a reasonable performance. Eight years after the first designs shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2001 and a remarkable industrial story, Loremo AG is launching the first commercial version of its electric 2+2 coupé.

This little sports car, that uses previously known tech-nology and standard materials, is very light at less than 600 kg, and has an extremely low air penetration coef-ficient with a Cx of 0.20. To achieve this result the Loremo is very low slung, only 1.14 m high, and 3.80 m long. The car is said to have a range of 150 km and a top speed of 170 km/h. The Loremo is a fine example of in-novation from newcomers in the automotive world. The Loremo EV is priced very reasonably compared with other electric sports cars at under 30,000 €.


Loremo EV © Loremo AG

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Venturi Fetish © Venturi

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Electric cars -ideally suited to urban life

Traffic movement restrictions, which used to be limited to historic city centres and targeted heavy vehicles, are now increasingly widespread in most European towns. Driving and parking space, taken up by vehicles unsuited to urban use such as large 4x4s, has reached saturation point.

Aware of this problem, local councils are adopting poli-cies aimed at encouraging the use of vehicles that take up less space and reduce pollution. Microcars are one of the obvious solutions to easing traffic flow in towns.The average distance covered by urban drivers in a day is only about 20 kilometres. These facts all favour the use of small electric urban cars, and open up a large market for them. This new market, which has so far been ignored by the major car manufacturers, is being developed by some new enterprising and imaginative manufacturers.

Norway – a pioneer of small electric urban cars

Scandinavia has a harsh climate with long winters; tem-peratures remain below freezing for long periods, which causes problems when using car batteries. It was to meet the needs of the Scandinavian market that the first com-mercial electric cars were produced in Norway, and there are now several hundred of these cars on the road in northern Europe.

- The first of these manufacturers, Elbil Norge, has been pro-ducing a two-seater since 1991. Five generations of their “Buddy“ cars have appeared since then, and more than 1,000 cars have rolled off the assembly lines. This very basic, 2.44 m long microcar is often used as a family’s second car in Norway. It has a maximum speed of 80 km/h and can run for 60 to 80 km without a recharge of its lead battery.


© Think

VW Up © Volkswagen

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Electric cars -ideally suited to urban life

A version powered by a Li-ion battery has been available since 2008, making it possible to drive for 120 to 140 km before a recharge. Elbil Norge does not export cars to the rest of Europe, as its current yearly production capacity of five to six cars a week is absorbed by the local market.

- The second Norwegian manufacturer to market electric cars was Think, a company that is better known because it has marketed its products outside Norway. Think is also a larger company, with a factory that can produce 5,000 cars a year. Think has had a turbulent recent history. Founded in 1990 under the name Pivco, it was bought by Ford in 1999. Ford had intended it to be a subsidiary specialised in electric cars. Pivco was renamed Think, and its cars were marketed in a low-key way in California for two years before Ford suddenly abandoned the project in 2003. It was a change in Californian law that put an end to Ford’s ambitions. Think, with its brand new production unit financed by Ford, was sold then to a group of investors who decided to restart production.

In 2007 Think launched its new model “City”, this time a proper car, the production process of which was overseen by Porsche Consulting. The Think City’s roadworthiness and safety specifications are similar to those of internal com-bustion vehicles of the same category, including crash tests, airbags, ABS brakes, heated windscreen, sun roof, MP3 + USB stereo and Bluetooth. This car has been on the market in Norway since 2008, and is gradually marketed in other European countries in 2009.


Usine Think - Aurskog - Norvège © Planète Verte

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Electric quadricycles, with or without a driver’s license

European legislation allows two categories of four-wheeled vehicles on the roads, both of which are suita-ble for electric power.

These are light and heavy quadricycles:

- Light quadricycles are vehicles with an unladen mass of under 350 kg, powered by an engine that develops a maxi-mum power of 4 kW and with a maximum speed of 45 km/h. They come under the same category as mopeds and auto-cycles and may be driven with or without a driver’s license according to the laws in different European countries.

- Heavy quadricycles are vehicles with an unladen mass of under 400 kg for vehicles used to transport people, or 550 kg for goods vehicles, with an engine that develops a maximum power of 15 kW. They come into the same category as motor tricycles and motorbikes. Their speed

limit is 80 km/h. Light electric vehicles, which are de-signed for short distance travel, are either adaptations of internal combustion powered models or specifically designed to be electrically powered.

Italy – an innovator in this sector

Another major European player in the development of electric cars was Italy, where local regulations ban internal combustion powered vehicles in some historic city centres. As early as 2004 - 2005 small series of electric cars not re-quiring driving licenses came on the market from some of the many small-scale production lines in Italy. Start Lab and Maranello 4Cycle are two such manufacturers. They sell electric quadricycles with a range of 40 to 100 km depen-ding on the type of battery used. Ideally suited to towns, these vehicles can dodge in and out of traffic and park in a space only 2.70 m long.


BB1 © Automobile Peugeot

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Electric quadricycles, with or without a driver’s license

Indian competitors

The Indian automotive market offers huge opportuni-ties to local manufacturers. After distributing or imi-tating foreign built vehicles, these companies later in-vested in developing vehicles suited to local demand. This gave rise to the production of many low-cost light vehicles, including the Nano, built by Tata, a standard car powered by a small two-cylinder engine of the kind used in the Citroën 2CV.

Another manufacturer, smaller than Tata, who began operations in 2002, started production of a mini elec-tric car, the Reva. The car is a two-seater with an ex-tra single smaller seat at the back. About 3,500 Revas have been produced, both for the Indian market and for export. More than a thousand Revas are on the streets of London, where this small electric vehicle is exempted from the congestion charge. The basic version, fed by lead accumulators and with a range of 50 km, is to be backed up by a Li-ion version which will soon be availa-ble, and the manufacturers have announced production of a four-seater version in 2009.

The switch of “No driver’s licence” micro cars to electric power

It was thanks to Mr. Ian Clifford, a Canadian entrepre-neur, that the first electric version of a micro car for which no driver’s licence is required was produced in 2005. The car is based on an internal combustion model produced in France.

Zenn (Zero Emission No Noise), which has been mar-keted since 2006 in North America Feelgood Cars, is derived from the Microcar MC1 and MC2 models. The cars are delivered by the French manufacturer* without motors, which are then assembled in Canada. Five hun-dred of these micro cars have been produced so far. The car is fitted with European standard safety equipment, including shock absorbing engine support, retracting seat belts and airbag.

Zenn has set the example and French manufacturers of very small cars are now also turning to electric engines. At the request of its British distributor for London in 2007, Aixam/Mega has converted one of its leading

models, the City, to electricity. Its range is 60 km with a top speed of 60 km/h, and has been bought by a few London drivers.

Ligier and Microcar, now part of the same group, showed to electric prototypes at the 2008 International Motor Show. The first of these will be marketed in 2009.

EVs targeted at vertical applications

Research departments are turning their attention to vehicles designed for particular purposes. Examples of these niche cars have been given us by three players specialised in electric cars, the coachbuilder Heuliez, Venturi and Matra.

• Heuliez FriendlyAs Heuliez depends on major manufacturers for its conversion work on car bodies, the company is affected by the current deep crisis in the automotive industry, as

are other equipment manufacturers and sub-contractors. Having had to innovate to obtain new markets and at-tract investors, this company, based in Cerisay, France, has chosen to go into electric cars. With the support of the regional (Poitou-Charentes) authority it is preparing production of a new little car designed for urban and suburban use, the Friendly. The car’s standard 2.50 m long version has three seats and a loading capacity of 400 li-tres. The Friendly is to be produced in two other versions,

*Microcar, after having been a subsidiary of the Beneteau group, was bought up by Ligier



Prototype Heuliez Friendly © Planète Verte

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a short (2.10 m) and a long (2.90 m) version with loading capacities of up to 1,650 litres. The Friendly’s simple de-sign entails minimum maintenance. The onboard energy is provided by NiMH (Nickel Metal hydride) cell batteries. The car has a range of 100 km before recharging and a top speed of 110 km/h. Heuliez is staking its future on this new electric vehicle business and expects to announce availability of the Friendly some time in 2009.

• Venturi EclecticThe know-how acquired by Venturi during the design and production of its high performance Fetish was used to diversify its business. Since the company is based in Monaco, Venturi has naturally designed a new car desi-gned for use in southern climates. Eclectic seemed almost as strange as a UFO in the automotive landscape when it was first shown. The Venturi stand at the International Motor Show in 2006 exhibited the Eclectic wired to a solar panel system and a wind turbine. Keen interest by the public in the first version encouraged Venturi to go ahead and mass produce the car. The driver’s seat and controls are in the centre of the passenger space and the raised seats give the driver and two passengers good unobstructed views in all directions. Production is due to begin in October 2009 in a brand new factory near the town of Sablé-sur-Sarthe in France. The factory is built to advanced environmental standards and will in the long term be able to assemble 3,000 light vehicles a year.

• Matra GEMMatra Manufacturing Services, a subsidiary of the Lagardère group, has decided to switch its business to EVs. Matra MS, which originally designed the Espace for Renault, is developing a range of electrically assis-ted motorbikes and has turned to an American partner to produce four-wheeled vehicles. GEM, Global Electric Motorcars, a subsidiary of Daimler Chrysler, has develo-ped a range of light and heavy quadricycles designed for university campuses, leisure parks and the vast Ameri-can golf courses. GEM vehicles are also used on US army bases to carry personnel. 30,000 GEMs have come off the assembly lines since they were first marketed in 2000. The vehicles are assembled in the Matra MS factory in Romorantin in France. This is the factory in which the Espace cars were built until Renault decided to produce them on its own assembly lines. Matra MS has adap-ted GEM vehicles to comply with European regulations. They come in several versions, including two-seaters, four-seaters and an ultra-light version. All vehicles in the range can run for about 50 km before a recharge and the speed is limited to 45 km/h.


Matra GEM © Matra MS

Venturi Eclectic © Venturi

34www.observatoire-vehicule-entreprise.com

Venturi Eclectic © Venturi

Matra GEM © Matra MS

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Electric commercial vehicles, a segment in its own right

The full range of electric commercial vehicles covers small vehicles that do not require a driver’s license through all categories up to heavy goods vehicles with payloads of up to 7.5 tons. Many different types of bodywork are available, from chassis-cabs to vans, microbuses, cages and designs for other specific uses.

The technologies involved are similar to those used in other EVs, but with different dimensions, such as more power-ful battery packs, high efficiency motors, or electronically controlled regulation and loads. With few exceptions, all goods that need to be transported in towns can be carried by electric vehicles. Some small vans can carry pallets, and fork-lift versions can carry large loads.

There are also electric minibuses, and these can be equip-ped to carry disabled people. Vehicles like these have a very positive image, and demonstrate the commitment of authorities, institutions and corporations to implement strategies for sustainable development.

Electric delivery vehicles – a British tradition

The use of new electric goods vehicles follows on from a practice that has long existed in Great Britain. Ever since the 1950s and 60s, the British have been used to seeing their fresh milk and other dairy produce delivered in the morning on a uniquely British vehicle, the “milk float”.

These vehicles, which were designed to be reliable, very long lasting and able to move silently and without pro-ducing any pollution, are a national institution that have long made electric delivery vehicles a daily part of life there. Some of these milk floats that were first put into service 30 years ago are still on the road today, which shows just how hard wearing EVs can be. The original idea, which was “to produce a virtually indestructible vehicle”, has been applied right up to the present, ena-bling the manufacturers of those milk floats to specialise in electric power and to expand their range of products. Smith Electric Vehicles is one of the British manufac-


Contemporary milk float in Liverpool © all rights reserved

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Electric commercial vehicles, a segment in its own right turers. The company, founded in 1920, can claim to be

the world’s leading producer of electric goods vehicles. Several thousand of their four-wheeled vehicles are on the roads all over the world. Smith’s current range includes a 7.5 ton payload vehicle launched in 2006 followed by a 3.5 ton model produced in 2007, and a third one marketed in 2008, a small 2.3 ton van. All types of bodywork are available.

New urban logistics services

In urban transport the characteristics of journeys are well known to users. These data enable them to plan distances and routes and to choose the appropriate risk-free type of electric goods vehicle. A vehicle such as the Modec, which has a range of up to 160 km and carries a payload of two tons, shows that it is quite possible to replace many diesel vehicles by electric heavy goods vehicles. Modec was designed in the the United Kin-gdom by a company set up for the purpose in 2005. This small truck was designed from the start to be powered by electricity. Since production began in the spring of 2007, it has been adopted by many British businesses for their working fleets. In only one year more than a hundred electric goods vehicles have been delivered by Modec to clients such as Tesco, UPS, Network Rail and Hildon mineral water.

People-carriers in town centres

The chosen policy of many town councils to limit mo-tor traffic and noise and atmospheric pollution in his-toric town centres has lead to the use of light electric people-carriers. Used as shuttles or on regular transport routes, these vehicles have been an increasing success. From the tiny Porter manufactured by Piaggio to the 22 seat microbus produced by Gruau, a complete range of electric passenger vehicles is now available on the European market.

Electric commercial vehicles in response to inter-national consultations

At the instrigation of the French Post Office, which is heading an European project, major consultations have

been in progress since 2006. The European post offices intend to convert a large part of their fleets to electric vehicles. This market, which will amount to over 10,000 vehicles by 2011, has given an extra boost to makers of electric vehicles. Moreover, like the post office, many other large corporations are planning to equip themsel-ves with electric vehicles.

In the last few years new small and medium sized manu-facturers have started producing EVs based on internal combustion engine models. Platforms are supplied by Fiat or by PSA in some cases, or are imported from Asia for those who aim to produce cheap models. The milea-ge range of vehicles available in 2009 varies from 50 to 90 km in the case of ones fitted with lead accumulators, and from 80 to 140 km for those using Li-ion batteries. To give a few examples of marketed or available models in 2009: a Fiorino and a Doblo produced by Micro-Vett in Italy; a latest generation Berlingo designed by Venturi in Monaco; single or double cab chassis vehicles as well as nine-seater minivans made in the Netherlands by a new French firm, Electric-Road.



Electric microbus from Gruau © Planète Verte

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Powertrain technology

New technologies and industrial investments

The many new players in the market have created a strong demand for specific components of powertrains. Ever since 2004 - 2005 a considerable increase of invest-ment in R&D has been made in this emerging industrial sector. These developments preceded pre-industrialisa-tion phases and since 2008 mass production has been underway in the most advanced industrial units.

New components have entered the fray, including nano-metric scale materials for battery electrodes, supercon-densers, electronics directly incorporated in motors and composite materials to make vehicles lighter. These kinds of innovation are now in production and are available to designers.

A vital component of the powertrain: the energy storage unit

The energy storage unit has two vital functions, as ener-gy reservoir and as energy recuperator.

- The reservoir function is provided by batteries of dif-ferent kinds. The basic principle has been the same for many years and remains very simple: accumulator cells are connected and assembled in a sealed container – the battery. To provide the necessary power, batteries are grouped in one or more packs housed in various parts of the vehicle.

- The energy recuperation function is a more recent development. It consists in storing energy produced by


Nanometric particles of Lithium titanate. Such particles coat the anode of batteries produced by Altairnano, a company based in Nevada in the USA. 1 μm = 1micrometre = 0, 001 millimetre

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the engine in “generator” mode during deceleration. For the system to be efficient it must have accumulators accepting high currents from the engine. Few battery technologies make this possible. The most efficient com-ponents for this function are supercondensers. Because they can charge and uncharge in just a few seconds they play the role of energy buffer between the engine and the battery. Supercondensers are now out of the research laboratories and are being produced on a large scales by firms like Maxwell and Batscap, a subsidiary of the Bolloré group.

Range extenders

The solutions for increasing the mileage range of an electric vehicle are few but simple: increasing the capacity of the batteries, recuperating energy during deceleration, careful driving, or recharging the batteries while on the road. The latter option, using a small electric generator, has not recei-ved much attention from manufacturers until now.

Renault did try out this solution on about thirty Kangoo Electro-Road cars in 2002 - 2003. This was an electric Kangoo using NiCd batteries recharged by a small auxi-liary motor called a “range extender”. The principle can in theory be used in any electric vehicle providing it has enough space to house the auxiliary engine.

Very powerful and long-lasting batteries

To appreciate the progress made in just a few years in batteries designed for electric vehicles one must grasp a few basic technical notions.

• PowerThe power of a battery is determined by the amount of electric energy it contains in one litre or in one kilogram-me. Two units of measurement are used: Watt hour per litre (Wh/l) and Watt hour per kilogramme (Wh/kg). EV technicians also use another notion of power, the Watt per kilogramme (W/kg), which determines the maximal instant power supplied by a battery or battery pack.

• Lifespan Another key criterion in comparing battery performance is their lifespan. This is because a battery’s performance decreases with time and some technologies are more long-lasting than others. The criterion used is the num-ber of cycles, or times they can be recharged and de-charged, or in other words the number of times one can “fill up” before having to change the batteries.



Maxwell supercondensers © Maxwell

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Comparison chart of existing technologies

Since the first EVs were distributed in the 1990s bat-teries have undergone considerable technological pro-gress. Given a similar weight and size, the amount of electric energy produced has been multiplied by factors of three to five.

As a direct result of this the mileage range has leapt to 100 km per charge in all electric cars and 40 to 60 km in rechargeable hybrids. The lifespan of batte-ries, another vital factor, has reached 1,500 cycles in the case of four of the available technologies. Trans-lated in terms of practical results for users, this means that battery packs can now deliver considerable mi-leage before they have to be changed. In the hypo-thetical case of a battery pack designed to run for 100 km per recharge, a realistic figure for current tech-nology would be that the pack only needs to be replaced every 150,000 km.

The various technologies used

The batteries used in electric and hybrid vehicles are classed as traction batteries, also known as power batte-ries. Six different technologies are in open competition to equip electric vehicles. This diversity provides desi-gners with a wide range of choices.

• Lead/Acid - PbThese are the simplest in design and the easiest to ma-nufacture. Production procedures are well known, and manufacturers are busy improving them to compete with the other technologies. They are heavy and not very powerful, but have the advantage of being cheap.

• Nickel-Cadmium - NiCdOften been used in the last 15 or so years in porta-ble appliances, they were the type chosen by PSA for the 106 and other Saxo cars. They have two draw-backs, a “memory effect” that sometimes requires re-gular deep decharging, and strict European regulations governing the use of cadmium. They are very long- lasting, but are now little used in electric cars.

• Nickel Metal Hydride - NiMHThese batteries were first used in cordless tools and in telephones. They propelled the General Motors EV1 be-fore being chosen by Toyota for its hybrid cars. NiMH batteries are now standard in hybrid cars. They have been marketed since 1990 and have a large energy den-sity and low sensitivity to memory effect.


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• Lithium and derived productsSeveral technologies are used in the lithium family of batteries. They are the kind most often used in portable electronic appliances and are increasingly used in EVs.Their main advantage is high energy density (twice to five times higher than in NiMH batteries, for instance) and are not subject to memory effect. The different categories of the lithium family of batteries are as follows: - Lithium-ion - Li-ion – The most commonly used type in low power mobile communication applications. - Lithium Polymer - LiPo – Lighter than Li-ion, and also easier to use. - Lithium-phosphate- LiFePO4 - One of the major advan-ces of the last five years. They combine the advantages of Li-ion and LiPo batteries and have a long lifespan. - Lithium Metal Polymer - LMP – These run at an inter-nal temperature of about 85°C. This technology is in the process of development promoted by the Bolloré group. Manufacture has already begun.

• Zebra batteriesThis is a rather one-off technology, as it is used by only one manufacturer. It uses molten sodium chloroalumi-nate and its internal temperature is 250°C.

• Nickel-Zinc - NiZnThese are considered to be the new generation of bat-teries and are still being developed. They are similar to Li-ion batteries in terms of performance and should be considerably cheaper.

A great increase in battery production capacity

Since the EV1 with its NiMH batteries and since the 106 and Saxo cars with their NiCd batteries at the end of the 1990s, the manufacture of battery packs for EVs has mo-ved from experimental stages to mass production. The advent of lithium cell technology sparked an enormous growth in production capacity. To meet the demand in batteries for the “personal mobility* ” industry, the elec-tronic giants set up automated production chains. Their factories produce tens of millions of units a year and their manufacturing processes have been adapted to produce larger and larger batteries of the kind needed to power electric vehicles. The world leaders in this sector are in Asia, three in South Korea, five in Japan and about ten in China. All these manufacturers produce batteries for electric vehicles and they are preparing to increase pro-duction within the next two years. In the USA, 14 companies have united under the banner “National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture“. Their aim is to open giant production units to supply the North American market. New produc-tion units are also being set up in Europe. One of these, built in Nersac in France, is the result of a 15 million Euro investment made by the Franco-American joint venture Johnson Controls-Saft. The Nersac factory produces Li-ion batteries for electric and hybrid cars made by Ford and Daimler among others.

*Mobile telephones, laptop computers, MP3 players, GPS, electrically assisted bicycles, etc.



Johnson Controls-Saft , Nersac factory. Quality control during the installation of electrodes. © Saft-Didier Cocatrix

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Another major investment in Europe, amounting to over 30 million Euros, was that made in 2008 by the Evonik group in partnership with Daimler to set up a joint subsi-diary for the production of Li-Tec batteries.

Alliances in all directions among major manu-facturers

After years of expectation it looks as though the major car manufacturers have finally turned their strategy towards electric cars. To acquire the necessary know-how in batte-ries, a vital part of any EV, they had to set up partnerships with those manufacturers who had the skills and capacity for production, the giants of electronics and new genera-tion batteries. Indeed now it is the batteries, and not the engine, that lie at the core of an electric vehicle’s value. To ensure against any problem with future supplies the major car manufacturers formed partnerships with established electric energy specialists.

- Toyota signed a partnership with the Matsushita group to create Panasonic EV Energy. This new company also supplies Lexus, Honda, Ford and Mercury.

- Nissan set up a subsidiary with the NEC group, a giant in the field of networks and micro-electronics, called Automo-tive Energy Supply Corp. The company’s main business is the production of Li-ion batteries for cars.

- GS Yuasa Corp, another specialist in Li-ion batteries, signed two agreements, one with Mitsubishi in 2007 to create Lithium Energy Japan, and the other with Honda in late 2008. - The Volkswagen group chose Sanyo as its partner for the production of future Audi hybrids. For their supply of Li-ion batteries VW signed an agreement with Toshiba.

- General Motors made its arrangements for the supply of batteries for its future Volt car. The supplier is the Korean giant LG Chem through its subsidiary US Compact Power. LG Chem already supplies packs for the prototypes. Later GM will produce batteries in its own factory using components supplied by LG Chem.

Recycling batteries

Problems caused by used batteries are directly linked to recycling organisation and efficiency. The cost and sup-ply of raw materials also make it absolutely essential to recycle worn-out batteries.

It is the manufacturers and importers who have the res-ponsibility of informing users and of providing a recy-cling service. They are assisted in this by organisations set up according to the type of battery to be processed. Companies specialised in collecting and recycling dead batteries already exist for the following types: Lead, NiCd, NiMH and Li-ion. The collection of lead batteries is done at a national level through salvage specialists, garages, at waste sorting units and at car centres. For the other types of battery, including NiCd, NiMH and Li-ion, specific organisations have been set up to pro-cess accumulators from computers, mobile phones, etc. The considerable volumes generated, and therefore to be recycled, have led to the setting up of specialised companies or services. The specialists in France are SARP Industries, a subsidiary of the Veolia group, and SNAM, a subsidiary of the German company F.W. Hempel & Co. Recupyl, a start-up company based in Grenoble, has de-veloped and patented an operational method of pro-cessing lithium batteries. Used Zebra batteries are taken back and processed directly by the manufacturer.


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Geographic origin of raw materials

The meteoric growth of means of production of batte-ries involves a proportionate increase in the amounts of raw materials needed. Reserves of these materials, in-cluding nickel, cobalt, lithium and zinc, among others, exist in large quantities around the world. The geogra-phic distribution of sources of these materials, which is quite different from that of fossil fuels such as oil or gas, means that the economic maps of the world have to be redrawn. Other states have consequently become producers of strategic raw materials, which has greatly benefitted their balance of trade. Reserves of cobalt are owned by the Republic of Congo, Australia and Cuba. The largest nickel mines are in Australia, Cuba, France (New Caledonia), Russia and South Africa. Australia, China, Peru, Kazakhstan, the United States, Mexico and Canada own the world’s reserves of zinc. At the present rate of consumption, reserves will last for ± 43 years in the case of nickel, ± 95 years for cobalt and about 20 years for zinc.

Enough lithium to supply battery producers

Lithium is a special case. Traces of lithium exist in the world’s oceans, but are hard to exploit profitably. Lithium is also found in deposits of pegmatites (magmatic rock), in some clays and in salt deserts. The largest of these salt

deserts are in South America, in Argentina, Chile and Bo-livia, as well as in China and Tibet. One of these, which has so far not been mined, is in Bolivia, the “Salar de Uyuni”, the largest salt desert in the world, covering 10,582 km2.

Industrial groups such as Mitsubishi and Sumimoto in Japan and the French group Bolloré have approached the Bolivian government with proposals to mine this enor-mous reserve. The world’s resources of lithium, as estima-ted by USGS (U.S. Geological Survey), amount to about 4.1 million tons, which would make it possible to produce several tens of millions of battery packs for EVs without any major difficulty in supply.

Source of data: usgs.gov


Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt desert in the world. It lies at the southern edge of the altiplano and contains several million tons of lithium. © ESA - European Space Agency - Envisat - May 2008

43 www.observatoire-vehicule-entreprise.com

Electric currents, from socket to engine

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The technical features of electric vehicles are described in terms of electrotechnical units of measurement. The-se units of measurement, which are different from those used for internal combustion engines, may be difficult to understand. A few points need to be understood in order to decipher the technical specifications of EVs.

Charging batteries and connecting to a mains supply

EV batteries can be recharged from European standard mains supply sockets. In France mains electricity is 220 Volts (V) and delivers a maximum intensity of 16 or 32 amperes (A). 16 A sockets are standard, 32 A sockets being reser-ved for appliances with heavy consumptions such as ovens or electric burners. The maximum power* delivered is ex-pressed in Watts (W) or kilowatts (kW). The duration of use expressed in hours generates consumption expressed in Watts per hour (Wh) or in kiloWatt per hour (kWh). The time it takes to recharge a battery depends on the way they are constructed and the technology used. Lead batteries take a long time to charge (six to ten hours), whereas the most recent types such as NiCd, Li-ion or Zebra batteries can be recharged in four to eight hours. Electricity consumption is calculated according to the type of charger fitted in the vehicle. For example a light EV equipped with a 1,500 W charger will consume between 7 and 12 kWh for a complete charge. The variation is determined by the capacity of the batteries.

Battery capacity

The capacity of a battery is expressed in Ampere-hours (Ah); this is the amount of electricity the battery can supply. Depending on the voltage, the energy stored is measured by the following formula: Ah x V = Wh (or kWh).For example, a 210 Ah battery pack under 48 Volts sup-plies 10 kWh, whereas another 210 Ah pack under 72 Volts supplies 15 kWh. In practical terms the power loaded determines the ve-hicle’s mileage range depending on the power of the en-gine, the vehicle’s weight and the nature of the journey.

* The calculation formula is W = V x A,i.e. 220 x 16 = 3,520 W or 3.52 kW for a standard 16A socket.1 kW = 1,000 W

Engine power

The power of an engine is expressed in kW. Figures given as a general rule express nominal power, for example 4 kW for light quadricycles and a range of 8 to 30 kW for EVs. In some cases manufacturers also give the engi-ne’s peak power. This is a maximum value that lasts for a few seconds during starting or when going uphill. In all cases the engine’s power is regulated by an electronic variator which in turn is commanded by the accelerator pedal.

Consumption per kilometre

The way to compare the electricity consumption of EVs of a same category is to calculate the consumption per kilometre driven. This is expressed in Wh per kilometre or kWh per kilometre. Electricity consumption depends of course on the weight of the vehicle, its payload, the nature of the journey and average speed. Consumption values are therefore expressed in ranges. These are around 0.08 to 0.15 kWh/km for vehicles in the quadricycle cate-gory and vary between 0.10 and 0.25 in minicars. A simple extrapolation for 100 km makes it possible to compare the energy consumption of electric vehicles with that of internal combustion engine vehicles. Urban electric cars, from the smallest to the highest performers, consume 8 to 20 kWh over 100 km. This means that batteries charged at the “daylight hours” rate will cost 0.8 to 2 €/100 km. Batteries charged at night during“off hours” rate will vary between 0.5 and 1.15 €/100 km.



Electric currents, from socket to engine

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“Filling up”

Electricity is available almost everywhere. This fact is a major advantage for the development of electric vehi-cles. Added to that is the fact that an ordinary mains socket is all that is needed. Plug in an extension lead and the car is recharged in just the same way as we already recharge everyday appliances such as mobile telepho-nes, laptop computers or a cordless electric drill.

Recharging times vary according to the type of battery used. Lead batteries take a long time to charge (six to eight hours), whereas the most recent types of battery can be charged in five to six hours. Rapid recharges, which take one to two hours, partial recharges, top-up charges are also possible with these technologies. Provi-ded that one has the right sort of charger and access to industrial type mains sockets.

Recharging a vehicle in public areas and at work

Charging points have been designed to withstand the ha-zards entailed by installing them outdoors in public areas. There are more and more of these charging points in areas reserved for electric cars in parking lots. About 200 public charging points, each with several sockets, were installed in France in the late 1990s. There are about one hundred in Paris. In early 2009 the government launched a vast national programme to develop charging points that involves car manufacturers, energy suppliers, local authorities, builders and managers of public areas. The objective is to create a charging infrastructure (in homes, in workplaces, on public roads and also rapid charging points) to serve several tens of thousands of electric vehicles by 2012.


“Filling up”

This infrastructure is fairly simple to build, as the work required to install the points is light, indeed much lighter than the work required to build filling stations selling petrol, diesel or hydrogen.

The Better Place project

In late 2007 Shai Agassi, a wealthy entrepreneur in the IT sector, announced the creation of Better Place. This start-up venture has benefited from an investment of over 200 million dollars to organise the setting up of networks of recharging points for electric cars. His aim is to remove one of the obstacles to electric cars being adopted by the general public.

Shai Agassi is an unusual person. He left his job as ma-nager of the multinational company SAP to found Bet-ter Place (SAP is the largest supplier of inter-corporation software in the world, and the third largest supplier of software in general). His assessment is unequivocal: the automotive industry is undergoing profound change and is moving from the present model, the 1.0 Car based on the internal combustion engine to the 2.0 Car that runs on renewable energy.

By the end of 2008, Better Place had achieved a series of impressive results, including:

- A partnership with the Israeli government and Renault-Nissan for the building of a recharging infrastructure covering the whole of Israel. Israel will thus be the first country in the world to build a national network for electric cars.

- The signature of an agreement with Dong Energy in Denmark and an investment of 103 million Euros for the installation of a nationwide network.

- Better Place is associated with the Japanese automo-tive giants and with the ministry of the environment to develop a network of ultra rapid charging points in Japan. The system rests on a simple principle: the battery packs are interchangeable, so it will only take a few mi-nutes to change batteries before driving off again.

- A charging network in Australia exclusively using re-newable energies.

- The Irish government plans to have 10% of road vehi-cles replaced by electric ones by 2020. To this end it has invested one million dollars in an experimental project with Better Place.

- In North America, Ontario in Canada and California in the USA have chosen Better Place as partner to build their recharging networks.

The rapid success of Better Place can be reproduced eve-rywhere, because it is based on a simple principle: cars remain parked on average 23 out of every 24 hours; it should be possible to recharge cars wherever they are parked.

Future Better Place charging station © Better Place

Scooter Vectrix on an electromotive terminal © Elektromotive Ltd

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Carbon emission figures for electric and hybrid vehicles

It is a fact that electric and hybrid vehicles emit less CO2 into the atmosphere at the local level: zero emissions in the case of all electric cars and the lowest in each category for hybrid cars. These are undeniable advan-tages anyway, but when one adds the the consequences of global CO2 emissions from “well-to-wheel” for fuels derived from oil, the advantage of electric engines over internal combustion engines is much greater still.

Well-to-wheel efficiency

Global counts of “well-to-wheel” emissions take into account the CO2 emitted during energy production, transport (of cru-de oil from oil wells to storage facilities), during refining etc. as well as the CO2 emitted by the vehicle itself.

In the case of electric vehicles it is necessary to quantify the CO2 emitted during the production of electricity. This varies according to the form of initial energy used. Electricity pro-duced using renewable sources of energy (hydropower, wind turbines, solar panels, biomass fuel, etc.) has low levels of emissions. Electricity produced in power stations using gas, fuel or coal on the other hand results in high levels of emis-sions of CO2. Electricity produced in nuclear power stations occupies a position somewhere in between that produced by renewable energies and fossil fuel energy. Global counts the-refore vary according to country and the form of energy used to produce electricity. The notion of “energy mix” is used to compare the CO2 emissions from one country to another. That for Western Europe (figure 1) shows how much – more than 51% - electricity is still being produced using fossil fuels.

France’s energy mix (figure 2) consists largely of low emission energy, including both nuclear energy and renewable energy, and only 9.9% of fossil fuel energy. France, whose electricity production releases on average 75 grammes of CO2 per kWh, is the leading country in Europe for its low CO2 emissions figure. The calculation of energy efficiency in terms of “well-to-wheel” provided by ADEME (figure 3) show the overwhel-ming superiority of electrically powered vehicles over ones using other sources of energy.

The increase in fleets of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources

The progress achieved in terms of efficiency and profita-bility in the field of renewable energy, particularly wind turbines and solar panels, have led to an exponential growth of production capacity all over Europe. Europe’s objectives in developing renewable energy up to 2020 will continue to grow in this sector. For example energy production from wind turbines was 56,000 MW in 2007, and will rise to 89,000 MW in 2010. The objective set by the latest European directives is 180,000 MW by 2020. The trend is similar for energy produced by solar pa-nels. The 4,700 MWc capacity of installations in 2007 is projected to rise to 13,500 MWc in 2010. Expected increased sales of electric vehicles in the next few years, for example the objective of 100,000 “decarbonised” vehicles by 2012 set by the French government is syn-chronous with the development of low CO2 emissions energy production.


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Carbon emission figures for electric and hybrid vehicles

Figure 1- Eastern Europe (Source EurObserv’ER 2007)

Figure 2 - France (Source EurObserv’ER 2007)

Figure 3 - "From well-to-wheel" (Source ADEME)

Structure of electricity production - 2007

Structure of electricity production - 2007



Geothermal 0,3%

Wind 3,1%

Biomass 2,5%

Solar 0,1%

Non-renewable waste 0,6%

Hydraulic 15,7%

Nuclear 26,2%

Fossil 51,3%

Wind 0,7%Biomass 0,7%Non-renewable waste 0,3%Hydraulic 11,2%Marine energies 0,1%Nuclear 77%Fossil 9,9%

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Short and medium-term prospects

This change in the automotive landscape is set to continue, driven by many government programmes and thanks to the advent on the market of a host of new vehicles in addition to the existing range. Major initiatives involving energy producers, government authorities, the world of research, consumers and battery and car manufacturers are emerging in many parts of the world. The quantities involved, from a few thousand to a few million units, show that we are seeing a real change of scale in the market for electric and hybrid vehicles. The impact of some state programmes on production capacity is going to open the way to new players on the international market.

Colossal means in Asia

China plans to supply its internal market with a high per-centage of electric and hybrid vehicles. Following the launch in 2007 of a vast research and development programme cal-led “Initiative 863” involving universities, research institutes and manufacturers, the Chinese government organised a large scale demonstration programme in 2008. This pro-gramme involves thousands of vehicles and the building of a recharging infrastructure for EVs in the larger Chinese cities. To follow this up large funding has been set aside to build a vast network of electric recharging points to match the scale of the country.

In Japan, the prime minister’s office announced that by 2020 half the vehicles marketed in the country will be powered by energy sources other than fossil fuels. Japan encourages the use of EVs by means of substantial grants and converting the fleets or large corporations to electricity. The same is to be done with the Japanese post office’s 21,000 vehicles. The government supports a programme to install hundreds of recharging points involving industrial manufacturers, energy producers, builders and battery suppliers.

New players and established manufacturers

Every year manufacturers, whether new players or old established corporations, announce more and more new vehicles to go soon into production. For the USA, the world’s single greatest market, the big Detroit manufac-turers GM, Ford and Chrysler are preparing their switch to electric and hybrid cars.

• General Motors has attracted the most media attention since 2007 with their announcement of the Volt project, plug-in hybrid cars that are to be manufactured on a large scale starting in 2010, first in the USA under the Chevrolet brand and then in Europe by their subsidiary Opel.


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• Ford’s “electrification” plan centres on three new products:- an electric commercial vehicle which will be available in the US in 2010; - a small electric car for the general public designed in partnership with the Canadian equipment manufacturer Magna; - a range of new generation hybrid cars (including one plug-in) from 2012.

• Chrysler has come up with a new product in the US, the Chrysler ENVI. The group is to launch a new range of electric vehicles in the USA in 2010. The technology uses the internal combustion engine to recharge the batte-ries. Four models will be produced, the Patriot EV and Wrangler EV jeeps, a minivan, the Town & Country EV and a sports car, the Dodge Circuit EV. Global Electric Motorcars (GEM), the group’s subsidiary specialised in leisure vehicles, has announced production at the end of 2009 of the Peapod, a small urban car.

• Still in the USA, a new manufacturer, Fisker Automotive has raised more than $ 60 million in capital to build a top of the range sports car, the Fisker Karma. This is a high performance plug-in hybrid with a top speed of 200 km/h and an acceleration of 0 to100 km/h in under six seconds.

In Europe, new players in the industry have set out to compete with the large groups who do not plan to enter the market before 2011 or 2012.

• PSA The PSA group presented many diesel hybrid prototypes from 2006 on, including the 307, 308 and C4, before deciding not to go ahead with them. The latest of those prototypes, the Peugeot Prologue HYmotion, should have been the basis for a 3008 Hybrid4 in 2011, but the date has been postponed to 2013. For all electric cars PSA approached Mitsubishi with a view to marketing a model derived from the iMIEV around 2010.

• Renault/Nissan allianceThe group is planning to produce demonstration vehi-cles for their validation fleets before the end of 2009. The first country involved is Israel in the context of the Better Place project.

Mass production of a Mégane type saloon and a mo-del derived from the Kangoo is planned for 2011. A new mass produced all electric car is announced for 2012. It might resemble a concept car presented by Nuvu at the Paris Motor Show in Paris in 2008.

• BolloréElectric cars designed by the Bolloré group have been shown at European motor shows since 2005. These shows and many articles in the press generated a real interest among the general public. After working with the demonstrator, developed with the help of engi-neers at Espace Développement (the designers of the Renault Espace), the Bolloré group turned to the Italian coachbuilder Pininfarina to produce Bluecar, a five-door five-seater electric saloon car. Production is due to start in late 2009.

• FAM AutomobilesThis French company is a subcontractor to car manufac-turers. Specialised in the mass production of LPG kits and conversions of mass produced cars to four wheel drive, FAM turned in 2008 to designing an electric urban car, the F-City. F-City was designed to be a self-service urban mobility tool that does not require a driver’s licence. This compact car is only 2.5 m long and 1.6 m wide. Its top speed will be around 65 km/h, and it will have a range of 60 to 80 km depending on driving conditions.

• DuraCar This start-up venture based in the Netherlands is concentrating on a single model, an urban and suburban commercial vehicle called Quicc. The aim is to market a fully electric minivan by 2010. Duracar relies for this project on the production facilities of the German group Karmann, a German sub-contractor to the automotive industry.

• Think In addition to the Think City, production of which began in Norway, Think’s Scandinavian engineers have desi-gned an all electric five door saloon car. Think Ox was designed to be produced in several different versions.



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Vehicles available in spring 2009

Mild hybridsHonda Civic Hybrid

Insight 2009

Mercedes S400

BMW X5

7 Series

Parallel hybridsToyota Prius

Lexus RX400h

GS 450h

LS 600h

Electric commercial vehiclesSmith Ampere

Edison

Newton

Modec Modec Van

Piaggio Porter

Micro-Vett Fiorino

Doblo

Electric-Road ZX40 ST

AGV Truck

AGV Van

VEM Gigione

Orso

Scudel

Doblet

Micro hybridsCitroën C2 Stop & Start

C3 Stop & Start

Smart Fortwo mhd

Mini One

BMW 1 & 3 Series

Kia Ceed ISG

Mercedes A Classe

Toyota IQ Optima Drive

Yaris Optima Drive

Auris Optima Drive

Fiat 500 PUR-O2

Hyundai i10 & i30 Blue

Mazda 3 2.0 DISI

Suzuki Alto

Land Rover TD4e

Volkswagen Passat BlueMotion

Passat BlueTDI

Electric carsVenturi Fetish

Eclectic

Tesla

Motor Roadster

Loremo EV

Think City

Start Lab Street

Maranello

4 Cycle SCE electric

Reva Reva "i"

Mega City "e"

Matra M.S. GEM

Movitron Teener


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Type of technology Pb NiCd NiMH Li-ion LiPo LiFePO4 Zebra NiZn

Wh/kg (weight) 40 60 80 160 200 200 120 80

Wh/l (volume) 75 150 250 270 300 220 181 140

Number of cycles 400 1,400 1,200 1,250 1,800 1,500 1,100 1,000

Power pack 10kWh

kWh/kg 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.16 0.2 0.2 0.12 0.08

Weight in kg 250 167 125 62,5 50 50 83 125

Lifetime in kilometres

Base 140 km per charge 56,000 196,000 168,000 175,000 252,000 210,000 154,000 140,000

Hypothesis 1 - 2009

Price per kWh 450 1 200 1,400 1,600 1,750 1,600 1,250 n/a

Price pack 10 kWh 4,500 12,000 14,000 16,000 17,500 16,000 12,500 n/a

Price per km 0.080 0.061 0.083 0.091 0.069 0.076 0.081 n/a

Hypothesis 2- Estimation for the end of 2010

Price per kWh 450 1,200 1,300 1,400 1,550 1,500 1,100 n/a

Price pack 10kWh 4,500 12,000 13,000 14,000 15,500 15,000 11,000 n/a

Price per km 0.080 0.061 0.077 0.080 0.062 0.071 0.071 n/a

Comparison table: weight / power / price



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OVE- Everything you need to know about electric car-11