CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine - Iss 16 NOV/DEC

ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE

ISSUE 16 | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 | CHARGEDEVS.COM

Volkswagen e-Golf P. 52

VOLKSWAGEN

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AUTOLION’S UNIQUE BATTERY MODELING P. 22

ZEROTRUCK‘S ELECTRIC FLEET VEHICLES P. 46

MIKE CALISE ON THE RIPPLES OF DISRUPTION P. 72

THE DYNAMIC WIRELESS TEST TRACK P. 82

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THE TECH CONTENTS

22

22 | Super modeling

EC Power’s unique battery modeling technology

30 | Grounded

The EVSE GMI circuit: should the standard change?

34

34 | Pushing the power limits The new market requirements of automotive power electronics

current events 12 |

Joint venture to produce Li-ion cathode materials Supercapacitors could be embedded in body panels

12

13 | 14 |

ORNL shows solid-state battery with good cycle life Andromeda Interface launches new EV interface LG Chem breaks ground on Chinese battery plant

16 |

Midtronics expands battery equipment facility in China New carbon fiber joining tech used on BMW i3

17 | 19 |

Torque vectoring transmission maximizes regen braking Johnson Matthey acquires Clariant’s LFP business Celgard, Panasonic work on next-gen battery cells

20 |

17

Consortium to reduce carbon fiber costs by 90% Concept EV uses LEXAN windows to boost range

21 |

OXIS Energy achieves 300 Wh/kg with lithium-sulfur cell

THE VEHICLES CONTENTS

46 | ZeroTruck

46

Electric fleet vehicles offer compelling cost savings

52 | VW

e-Golf

Volkswagen’s all-electric e-Golf launches in the US

62 | Tesla’s batteries:

past, present and future An excerpt from the new book, Tesla Motors: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Sparked the Next Tech Revolution

52

90 | Hydrogen is here

Fuel cell vehicles trickle into the market

current events 38 | 39 |

GM releases more details of next-generation Volt

38

VIA Motors gets EPA-certified, begins deliveries Utilities launch initiatives to electrify their fleets

40 | 41 | 43 |

Automakers say they plan to go head-to-head with Tesla Air Force rolls out plug-in vehicle fleet with V2G Tesla, BMW to collaborate on batteries and carbon fiber?

Indy to deploy the country’s largest EV fleet

45 |

EV Fleet targets the commercial vehicle market Odyne delivers 6 plug-in trucks to Michigan utility

39

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72 | Ripples

of disruption EVs, renewables & energy storage: the unstoppable trio of energy’s future

82 | The dynamic road ahead

72

82

Utah State University builds advanced test track for dynamic wireless charging

66 |

Efacec introduces new compact DC charger BMW combines street lighting with EV charging

67 | 68 |

66

Tritium plans Australia’s largest fast charging network ChargePoint partners with solar installer Sun Edison Chicago and Atlanta get free LEAF charging

69 |

Nissan tests LEAF to Home power system British Columbia sees rapid growth in charging usage

70 |

ClipperCreek, Itron test EVSE with smart meters California may lift ban on utilities owning EVSE

71 |

Panasonic, Powertree partner on solar charging stations

71

Publisher’s Note ZEV wars The plug-in vehicle industry has real momentum - steady sales, falling prices and second-generation models around the corner. 2015 will bring us an all-new Chevy Volt, Tesla’s new Model X SUV, perhaps a look at the next Nissan LEAF and more.

Proponents of plug-ins have a lot to be excited about. However, when I talk to most EV industry insiders about the new fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) trickling into the market, I find concern, confusion and even contempt - but little excitement.

The debate usually includes a detailed back-and-forth about the market, infrastructure and energy efficiency. Ironically, many of these fuel cell criticisms from the pro-EV crowd sound strangely similar to those posed by early electric skeptics: There’s no infrastructure. The vehicles are too expensive. Who’s going to make a profit?

Let’s set aside the technical debate about the merits of batteries and hydrogen for a moment and try to clearly sum up the anti-FCV sentiment.

I suspect that five years ago, many of today’s die-hard EV fans would have been more open-minded about FCVs entering the scene. At the time there were essentially no zero-emissions alternatives to gasoline, and, despite some challenges, FCVs would have been viewed as “worth a shot,” at the very least.

Since then, however, EVs have made incredible progress. For the first time in a century there is a great alternative to driving on gasoline. And a large part of the fuel cell wariness comes from a fear of having that momentum derailed. The collective sentiment from the skeptics seems to be, “Why spend the energy to solve the challenges with FCVs, when there is a continually increasing chance that battery-powered EVs could make all other options obsolete? Isn’t it a waste of resources?”

A fair criticism or not, that’s an opinion held by a lot of people these days. And to end the debate, FCVs will need their own Tesla - a trendsetting success story that shows a clear path to FCV commercialization. The doubters need an example of how and where the technology will succeed as a complement to the batterypowered progress that’s been made and not a step backwards or replacement.

Succeed or fail, the future of FCVs will not be determined quickly. The worst-case scenario is that the zero-emission civil war divides and destroys like some sort of ugly alternative-fueled primary election. The best case is that the competition will spur innovation, bringing us a flurry of compelling fuel cell and plug-in options that are vying for an increasingly large market of gas-free drivers.

EVs are here. Try to keep up.

Christian Ruoff Publisher

Christian Ruoff Publisher Laurel Zimmer Associate Publisher Charles Morris Senior Editor Markkus Rovito Associate Editor Jeffrey Jenkins Technology Editor Eric Fries Contributing Editor Nick Sirotich Illustrator & Designer Contributing Writers Michael Kent Charles Morris Markkus Rovito Christian Ruoff Joey Stetter Contributing Photographers Tim Fuller Richard Kelly Arnold de Leon Maurizio Pesce Duncan Rawlinson Theron Trowbridge Robert S (green_t4me) Cover Image Courtesy of Volkswagen Group Special Thanks to Kelly Ruoff Sebastien Bourgeois For Letters to the Editor, Article Submissions, & Advertising Inquiries Contact Info@ChargedEVs.com

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ELECTRIC VEHICLES MAGAZINE

ISSUE 13 | APRIL 2014 | CHARGEDEVS.COM

Free

Fuel WILL NISSAN’S NO CHARGE TO CHARGE PROGRAM DRIVE LEAF SALES? P. 40

A CLOSER LOOK AT SEMICONDUCTOR SWITCHES P. 16

PHINERGY’S ALUMINUM-AIR BATTERIES P. 26

BC HYDRO’S FAST CHARGER ROLLOUT P. 48

400 MPH: THE BUCKEYE BULLET P. 78

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Supercapacitors could be embedded in body panels Image courtesy of BASF/Flickr

Joint venture to produce Li-ion cathode materials

Chemicals giant BASF and metal oxide specialist Toda Kogyo have agreed to form a joint venture for Li-ion cathode active materials (CAM). The firms will combine their respective CAM businesses, intellectual property and production assets in Japan.

The new venture, BASF Toda Battery Materials, will produce a broad range of cathode materials, including Nickel Cobalt Aluminum Oxide (NCA), Lithium Manganese Oxide (LMO) and Nickel Cobalt Manganese (NCM). These materials are used in lithium-ion batteries for the automotive, consumer electronics and stationary storage markets.

The new venture will have an annual combined production capacity for CAMs and their precursors of approximately 18,000 metric tons.

“BASF’s joint venture with Toda Kogyo will allow us to accelerate our growth and expansion in the global battery materials market,” said Kenneth Lane, President of BASF’s Catalysts division.

Dr. Joerg-Christian Steck, President of BASF Japan, added, “Japan is a leader in battery manufacturing and development. By forming the joint venture, BASF is strengthening its commitment to the Japanese market and increasing synergies for our existing battery materials business.”

“Because the lithium-ion battery market continues to expand globally, we concluded that we need a strong alliance partner that would enable us to create more value than simple consolidation, and to advance our cathode materials business synergistically,” said Toda Kogyo Chairman Tadashi Kubota.

12

Two teams of scientists, in Australia and Texas, have developed a way to make supercapacitors into a thin and extremely strong film that could be embedded in a vehicle’s body panels.

Researchers from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia and Rice University in Texas described their work in two new papers published in Nanotechnology and the Journal of Power Sources.

Queensland scientists combined exfoliated graphene and entangled multi-walled carbon nanotubes with plastic, paper and a gelled electrolyte to produce the flexible solid-state supercaps.

“We built on our earlier work, where we developed a solution-based technique to produce carbon nanotube films for transparent electrodes in displays,” said Francesca Mirri, a co-author of the papers.

“Now we see that carbon nanotube films produced by the solution-processing method can be applied in several areas.”

“We are using cheap carbon materials to make supercapacitors, and the price of industry-scale production will be low,” said Professor Pasquali.

“The price of Li-ion batteries cannot decrease a lot, because the price of lithium remains high. This technique does not rely on metals and other toxic materials either, so it is environmentally friendly if it needs to be disposed of.”

“Vehicles need an extra energy spurt for acceleration, and this is where supercapacitors come in. They hold a limited amount of charge, but with their high power density, deliver it very quickly, making them the perfect complement to mass-storage batteries,” said co-author Marco Notarianni. “Supercapacitors offer a high power output in a short time, meaning a faster acceleration rate and a charging time of just a few minutes.”

Image courtesy of Nunzio Motta/Queensland University of Technology

CURRENTevents

THE TECH

ORNL demonstrates solid-state battery with good cycle life Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a solid-state high-voltage (5 V) lithium battery with an extremely long cycle life (10,000 cycles) and high coulombic efficiency (99.98%). The solid electrolyte enables the use of high-voltage cathodes and lithium anodes with minimal side reactions.

The energy stored in a battery of a given size is proportional to its voltage. Conventional lithium-ion batteries use liquid electrolytes that have a maximum operating voltage of 4.3 V - operation above this limit can cause short cycle life and safety problems.

Using a solid electrolyte could circumvent the safety issues, enabling chemistries with higher energy densities, which is why many companies and research institutes (including GM-backed Sakti3, Toyota, and

Solid Power LLC) are working on solid-state battery technology. A 2013 report from Lux Research predicted that solid-state will rule by 2030.

However, achieving the required combination of high ionic conductivity and a broad electrochemical window in solid electrolytes is a major challenge, as members of the ORNL team noted in a 2013 paper.

In the latest study, which was published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials, the Oak Ridge team used a ceramic solid electrolyte of lithium phosphorus oxynitride (Lipon), with a LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 cathode and lithium anode at a charge voltage of 5.1 V. The battery retained more than 90% of its original capacity after 10,000 cycles, equivalent to more than 27 years of life with a daily charge/discharge cycle.

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THE TECH

CURRENTevents

San Diego-based Andromeda Interfaces has introduced its Electric Vehicle Interface Controller (EVIC), an integrated display device to monitor the operation and safety of an EV’s major subsystems. EVIC consolidates data from battery management and charger systems and motor controllers into one display device.

CEO Brian L Gallagher said, “With the increasing adoption rate of EV consumers making a shift from early adopters to early majority, we wanted to ensure we positioned ourselves to offer scalable, cost-effective and reliable electric vehicle display solutions to satisfy the needs of customers in the fast-growing EV aftermarket and OEM space.”

Andromeda Interfaces has teamed up with Ewert Energy Systems to certify EVIC’s interface with their products. “We are excited to add official out-ofthe-box support for Andromeda Interfaces’ EVIC display module to our Orion Battery Management System product line,” said VP Andrew Ewert.

14

Image courtesy of Andromeda Interfaces

Andromeda Interface launches new EV interface

Korean battery giant LG Chem held a groundbreaking ceremony in Nanjing, China, where it started construction on a new EV battery plant.

The new facility will be able to produce enough batteries annually to supply more than 100,000 EVs when it opens by the end of 2015. It will supply batteries to Chinese automakers such as SAIC, Qoros and others.

LG Chem set up a joint venture in August with two Chinese state-run companies - the Korean company owns half of the joint venture, and the Chinese partners share the other half.

The company has invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in the new factory, and expects it to generate a total of 1 trillion won in revenue by 2020.

CEO Prabhakar Patil predicts that the EV market is ready to grow. “We expect to have a 25% share [of the global battery market],” Patil told Automotive News in October. “We know that we will be producing batteries for several automakers that we’re talking with.”

Patil sees no replacement for lithium-ion batteries any time soon. “We’ll have lithium-ion for at least the next 10 to 15 years. Before you put anything on the road, you need five years to validate your technology. So if you want to have a proven technology by 2020, you need to solve all issues in the lab by 2015. I don’t see anything in anybody’s closet that is ready for that.”

Image © CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine

LG Chem breaks ground on Chinese battery plant

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CURRENTevents

Images courtesy of Midtronics

Midtronics expands battery equipment facility in China

It’s not just automakers who see China as the land of EV opportunity. Parts suppliers and service providers in the electromobility field are also greedily eyeing the Middle Kingdom.

Midtronics, a global provider of battery testing and management products, established a Chinese division in Shenzhen in 2003, and has since built a customer base in transportation and stationary battery management. Recently, the company announced the opening of a new, expanded China Headquarters facility.

The new Midtronics Shenzhen Technical Center has a larger footprint, including a laboratory with drive-in facilities. The company will also expand its China-based engineering and technology development teams, as well as service operations for system installation.

“The Shenzhen Technical Center will help Midtronics advance battery management with our customers in the Asia/Pacific region,” said Midtronics CEO Steve McShane. “Our investment in key resources creates value for our customers and drives our growth in these markets. We make it a priority to collaborate with our global customers to provide strategic battery management solutions.”

16

Assembly specialist Böllhoff and adhesive expert DELO have developed a new joining method for lightweight materials using a bonded bolt called ONSERT. The technology is ideally suited to carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP), and the companies have tested it in a pilot project that secured cables, claddings and other components of the BMW i3.

DELO points out that composite materials such as CFRP take established joining technologies (welding, screwing, riveting) to their limits. ONSERT combines bonding and screwing by equipping fastening elements, such as threaded metal bolts, with a transparent plastic base and bonding it to fiber composite materials.

The adhesive is cured in about four seconds using an LED lamp, and the process can be fully automated. Bonded bolts with a base diameter of 25 mm achieve a pull-off strength up to 2,000 N on CFRP. When applying higher forces, a predetermined breaking point in the base ensures that the laminate of the composite material remains intact and no fibers are torn out.

ONSERTs are designed to offer flexibility in design and production. The structural shape can be defined by the user, particularly in terms of rod length and base diameter, and bonded bolts can be attached to the raw body prior to final assembly of lacquered elements.

Images courtesy of DELO

New carbon fiber joining tech used on BMW i3

THE TECH

As part of Germany’s Visio.M electromobility project, researchers at Munich Technical University (TUM) have developed a torque vectoring transmission designed to improve handling and recoup the maximum amount of braking energy.

“While drive torque is normally distributed 50/50 to the wheels of the drive axle, our torque vectoring system doses the torque between the wheels as required,” explains engineer Philipp Gwinner of TUM’s Gear Research Center (FZG). When a vehicle accelerates in a curve, greater torque is applied to the outside wheel. The car steers itself into the curve, resulting in greater agility and safer road handling.

Even more important to the researchers, however, is the efficient recovery of braking energy. In curves, the recuperation of braking energy is limited, as the inside wheel bears significantly less load than the outside wheel.

The torque vectoring function adjusts the recuperation torque for both wheels individually, allowing more en-

ergy to be recovered.

The engineers developed a spur gear differential in which additional torque can be applied from outside via a superimposed planetary gearbox. Using a small electric torque vectoring machine, they can generate a large yaw moment at any speed to achieve the desired road handling dynamics.

“The elegant thing about the torque vectoring transmission we have developed is that it not only has a higher recuperation level, and increased driving range,” said Professor Karsten Stahl, Director of the FZG. “The transmission also improves road handling dynamics, driving pleasure and safety. The continuously improving optimization measures leave us optimistic that in the near future both the weight and cost will be able to compete with today’s standard differential transmissions.”

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Torque vectoring transmission maximizes regen braking

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THE TECH

Celgard, Panasonic work on next-gen battery cells Image courtesy of Celgard

Image © CHARGED Electric Vehicles Magazine

Johnson Matthey acquires Clariant’s LFP business

Specialty chemicals firm Clariant has agreed to sell its Energy Storage line of business to Johnson Matthey for $75 million. The division is the world’s largest producer of hydrothermal lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which is used in EVs and stationary battery applications.

The transaction includes a manufacturing facility in Candiac, Québec, and an R&D center and pilot plant in Moosburg, Germany. Johnson Matthey will gain rights to a number of patents on LFP and its use as a cathode material, as well as a portfolio of IP covering current and future battery materials.

In 2013 the Energy Storage business generated around $17 million in sales, but had an operating loss.

In September, Johnson Matthey acquired A123 Systems’ cathode manufacturing facility in China.

JM plans to integrate the two battery materials acquisitions into a single entity, Johnson Matthey Battery Materials.

“This acquisition provides us with a strong position in LFP from which to develop a broad portfolio of battery materials,” said Johnson Matthey CEO Robert MacLeod. “It further strengthens our battery technologies’ capability, which marks an important step in Johnson Matthey’s long-term strategy to establish new business areas.”

Celgard, a subsidiary of Polypore International (NYSE: PPO) and Panasonic have agreed to work together to develop coated and uncoated Celgard brand separators for Panasonic’s next-generation cylindrical battery cells. Upon completion of the development effort, the two firms expect to form a long-term supply agreement.

A battery separator provides a barrier between the anode and the cathode while enabling the exchange of lithium ions. Celgard’s current separators are polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) or trilayer PP/PE/PP electrolytic separator membranes.

“We are pleased to work with an industry leader such as Panasonic on this development initiative and to further solidify our partnership with them.

It demonstrates the commitment of both of our companies to improve lithium-ion battery technology and meet ever-increasing demands in high-performance applications,” said Polypore CEO Robert B Toth. “Together we are well positioned to meet future market demands and growth.”

“We are taking this step because we know Polypore is the leader in developing and manufacturing highly-functioning lithium-ion battery separators,” said Panasonic AIS Senior Executive Engineer Dr. Munehisa Ikoma. “Polypore will be a valuable partner because they are capable of meeting technology and capacity needs in support of Panasonic’s future growth globally.”

NOV/DEC 2014 19

CURRENTevents

Image courtesy of BMW

BMW has bet big on carbon fiber – it’s a key material in the groundbreaking i3 and i8 EVs, and the Bavarian automaker is steadily increasing production of the stuff. However, the miracle material is still too expensive for most automakers to take advantage of its strength and light weight - the average cost of raw carbon fiber is estimated at around $20 per kilogram, compared to less than $1 for steel.

MAI Carbon Cluster Management, a research effort supported by Germany’s government and a list of corporations that includes BMW, Audi, Airbus and Siemens, aims to change that. The consortium’s goal is to reduce carbon fiber production costs by 90 percent, and it’s making good progress, according to project head Klaus Drechsler.

“We’ve certainly reached a halfway point on our cost-cutting target for suitable carbon-fiber parts,” Drechsler told Bloomberg (via Green Car Reports).

“We’ll see a lot more carbon fiber use in the next generation of cars. The key is to really drive automation. There are different scenarios about how carmakers can use carbon fiber - extensively like BMW, with a carbon fiber chassis or with smaller components.”

Carbon fiber technology is already “very, very economical” in BMW’s i8, said BMW Head of Development Herbert Diess, and its use in cheaper vehicles “is going to develop over time. Mixed use of materials is a becoming a key term across the industry.”

In the US, the Oak Ridge Carbon Fiber Composites Consortium, which includes partners such as Ford Motor and Dow Chemical, is also working towards the goal of cheaper carbon fiber.

20

A German-based consortium including BMW and Daimler has built a concept EV with all-plastic windows that not only demonstrates gains in energy efficiency and range, but also delivers improved acceleration, vehicle handling and security.

The concept vehicle, developed as part of the Visio.M (Visionary Mobility) project, uses windows made of LEXAN resin, a polycarbonate (PC) material made by Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC). Compared to conventional glass, using the LEXAN windows reduces weight by over 13 kg and extends driving range by up to two kilometers. Polycarbonate’s superior insulating properties reduce demands on the car’s heating and air conditioning system, and make possible up to 15 additional kilometers in extended range. The concept EV weighs 450 kg (without battery), and has a 15 kW motor.

“A significant share of an EV’s energy consumption depends on its weight,” said Stefan Riederer of BMW Research & Technology. “A low vehicle weight allows for smaller and lighter battery designs, in addition to lighter designs of the electric motor, the chassis and other components.”

The reduced weight of the PC windows allows quicker acceleration, and contributes to a lower center of gravity, which improves handling and stability.

Furthermore, LEXAN resin has up to 100 times the impact resistance of glass, offering reduced risk from theft.

Current European regulations permit PC to be used for all automotive windows except the windshield. The Visio.M windows were designed to use PC or glass for testing and comparison purposes.

SABIC says that if the windows had been designed for PC alone, additional energy efficiency gains could have been achieved, because of PC’s greater shape flexibility, which allows for aerodynamic features that can minimize drag. PC could also be integrated with other components such as pillars, mirrors, cameras, rear lighting and spoilers.

Image courtesy of SABIC

Concept EV uses LEXAN windows to boost range

Consortium aims to reduce carbon fiber costs by 90%

THE TECH

Image courtesy of OXIS Energy

OXIS Energy achieves 300 Wh/kg with lithium-sulfur cell OXIS has developed its largest lithium-sulfur cell to date, achieving specific energy in excess of 300 Wh/ kg. The company has also increased cell capacity to 25 Ah, a twelve-fold improvement in 18 months. OXIS predicts that it will achieve a cell capacity of 33 Ah by mid-2015.

The OXIS scientific team expects to achieve its goal of specific energy of 400 Wh/kg by the end of 2016 and 500 Wh/kg by the end of 2018. According to the company, vehicle manufacturers are already reviewing and evaluating the cell technology.

“OXIS Energy is set to remain at the forefront of the world’s leading battery technology with these significant improvements,” said OXIS CEO Huw Hampson-

Jones. “They are being made in partnership with British and European academic and research institutions such as LEITAT of Spain, TNO of the Netherlands and the Foundation for Research and Technology in Greece. OXIS is on schedule to release commercial cells in the USA and Europe in 2015.”

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22

Image courtesy of EC Power

W

ith battery technology being one of the key bottlenecks slowing down the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, Pennsylvania’s growing startup EC Power proposes a tantalizing offer to battery developers: cut your product development cycle by around 20 percent, and reduce physical battery testing by as much as 75 percent. EC Power’s Vice President of Business Development Puneet Sinha, PhD, a five-year veteran of GM’s fuel cell and EV battery-development teams, estimates that it takes about two years on average to develop a commercial lithium-ion battery. He predicts that his company’s AutoLion Li-ion battery modeling and virtual testing software products can shorten that cycle by 4-5 months.

Such an appealing claim might arouse more suspicion if the company making it hadn’t already attracted the attention of major players in business, academia and government over the last three and a half years.

Puneet Sinha, EC Power’s VP of Business Development

NOV/DEC 2014 23

“

Modeling thermal success AutoLion offers its customers advanced and unique Liion battery modeling tools, but Sinha is quick to point We started with Newman, but we out that his company didn’t invent battery modeling.

John Newman, professor at UC Berkeley and author of changed the model in a way that Electrochemical Systems, pioneered the mathematical accounts for electrochemistry and modeling of lithium batteries more than 20 years ago in temperature at the same time. the early 90s. Sinha calls them “legendary” models.

“At that time the Li-ion batteries were largely developed for consumer electronics, and they were more like a button cell,” Sinha said. “Newman captured the physics of those small cells. Nowadays the ‘Newman model’ is the (TCB) model addresses the feedback loop between eleclaw of the land. If you talk to any other company, at the trochemistry and temperature in large Li-ion batteries. bottom of their technology is this great model. It is availThis also becomes critical for batteries with unconvenable for free for people. It works perfectly as long as the tional geometries or unique form factors. batteries are small, because then it is only a pure electro“That’s the key difference between our modeling apchemistry model - it has nothing to do with thermal.” proach versus the modeling approach of other softwares,” As applications of lithium batteries steadily increased said Sinha. “With automotive batteries, in cold temperaover the last 20 years, Sinha says, electrochemistry tures my battery doesn’t give me enough energy, and in became just one aspect of successfully modeling their a hot environment like Arizona, my battery is dying too behaviors. Larger batteries generated more heat, and as fast. With those two big challenges, the strong coupling large battery packs moved into automotive spaces, they between temperature and reaction is very important. were being exposed to much more extreme temperaDepending on how you operate the battery, you can get a tures and weather conditions than in simpler consumer substantially different amount of energy.” electronics.

“When Newman developed his model, it was for room temperature,” Sinha said.

“Now the cells have to perform at -20° or -30° C to 45° C. So we started with Newman, but we changed the model in a way that accounts for electrochemistry and temperature at the same time. The way batteries work, reaction generates heat, and heat gives back to reaction in a positive feedback loop. Under those conditions in the EV industry, the electrochemistry and temperature have to be very tightly coupled. That’s where we come into play and are changing things.”

With EC Power’s updated battery modeling technology in its AutoLion products, the company hopes to provide complete and reliable battery modeling that development teams at each stage of the process can trust above any other modeling Thermal management of a Li-ion battery pack software.

The company’s thermal coupled battery

24

Images courtesy of EC Power

”

THE TECH

30Ah NMC-LMO Mixture/C Cell 1C Discharge at -20°C

AutoLion vs Experimental Data 1C Discharge

4.0 25°C

Voltage (V)

3.5

3.0

Isothermal Newman Model

2.5

2.0

Capacity [Ah] Experiments AutoLion

20

-25°C

0

-40°C

3.0

-20

2.5

Natural Air Convection

-40

2.0

0

5

10

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20

25

30

Capacity [Ah]

40

Temperature (°C)

Thermally Isolated Cell

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15

20

Capacity [Ah]

Software as a team player AutoLion hit the market as a commercialized product in 2012, and EC Power has received several grants and awards from the DOE and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to further develop the software’s capabilities. Yet even now, Sinha said that most other commercialized battery models are what he calls “isothermal,” meaning they don’t take temperature into account.

“There are some others that have temperature treatment, but it is not coupled - it is more of the after-the-fact temperature treatment,” he said. “So especially where the coupling between temperature and reaction is very

“

There are some others that have temperature treatment, but it is not coupled - it is more of the after-thefact temperature treatment.

”

strong, they don’t capture the cell behavior very well.

They take temperature into account, but don’t take care of this feedback loop between temperature and reaction. Between 20° and 35° C, it won’t matter much. But at 0° C or lower or at 40° C and above performance is a very strong function of temperature.”

During his time on R&D teams at General Motors, Sinha was focused on materials and chemistries at the cell-design level, whereas other teams worried only about the system pack-level requirements. Considering that outside suppliers and customers sometimes used different modeling technologies that didn’t work together, it became a very disjointed process.

“You might have five different people doing five different things,” Sinha said. “So the models were not doing what they were supposed to do, and everybody at GM was feeling that.”

Sinha knew the founder of EC Power, and when he saw that its approach was to take into account all aspects of Li-ion batteries in one holistic model, he wanted in on the team. “It captures all the aspects of batteries,” he said.

“It’s not only for performance, but also for life, safety and system integration. Anybody in the whole supply chain, whether the material guys, cell guys or system guys, they can use our software to help their respective challenges -

NOV/DEC 2014 25

Cell fabrication

Controls/operating strategy based on testing data

Full system testing (hardware-in-loop)

AutoLionguided product development

Testing

Material & Cell design optimization

System architecture design

Pack design frozen

Final product

Raw materials

Cell design frozen

Experiment-only approach

Pack testing

Getting the product right with AutoLion Right battery material chemistry & cell design to minimize cost and meet system requirements

System requirements

Design/manufacturing constraints

Pack design

Manufacturing/testing Cell fabrication

Optimal pack configuration and thermal management strategy

Pack manufacturing

Optimum system architecture design and operating strategy

System assembly

Testing & validation

Testing & validation

Final system testing

Final product

Li-ion battery material options

Thermal management

all on the same platform. I don’t think any other company approaches,” Sinha said. “The two teams were not very offers this level of solution for the whole supply chain. strongly collaborative. AutoLion is a software suite with There are software products focused on system engineer- different programs targeted at different applications. You ing, but they do not communicate with the software for get all the software based on the same foundation, requircell-level or material-level challenges.” ing the same input and behaving in the same manner. If I Sinha added that the whole point of AutoLion is to am a system guy and you are a material guy, we can take give its users the confidence our simulation exercises and to make actual product make a collaborative decision decisions based on modelabout what material to use ing results, so they can or what kind of system to streamline their work. That’s develop.”

If software solves every exactly what various teams Bringing together formerly equation, but nobody can working at GM could not do separate teams is what Sinha rely on that information, effectively. calls “virtual collaboration,” “They were using two difand it’s the gap in the autothen what is the point? ferent softwares that require motive battery industry that different types of inputs and EC Power wanted to address relied on different modeling with AutoLion.

“

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26

THE TECH

External Short of a Cell 140

Cell internal temperature

Temperature (°C)

Images courtesy of EC Power

120 100 80

Cell surface temperature

60 40

AutoLion-3D Simulations Experiments

0

50

100 Time (s)

150

200

“We allow people to do analysis so they can unleash innovation, but also address things that are important to them so that they can rely on the simulation,” Sinha said. “I believe that garbage in is always garbage out. If software solves every equation, but nobody can rely on that information, then what is the point? Our capabilities are capturing the real data. That’s why we put a lot of emphasis on comparing our results with data and seeing how well we capture the real physics.”

Sinha wants AutoLion users to be able to “stretch” the results of the software, meaning that the results will not only apply to a “sweet spot” scenario, but will also be useful when applied to a whole range of scenarios.

The AutoLion line The AutoLion suite consists of three different but related products, all using the same platform. AutoLion-1D addresses the needs of material developers and cell manufacturers for Li-ion technology; AutoLion-ST targets Li-ion system integrators and control developers; and AutoLion-3D focuses on Li-ion cell and battery pack manufacturers. All different levels of the development process can work on and communicate with the same software products.

“The lithium-ion battery is very interesting. It is the perfect combination of chemistry, mechanical engineering with thermal influences, and also electrical engineer-

Nail penetration of a Li-ion battery pack

ing where the electronics come into play,” Sinha said.

Because new Li-ion chemistries, physics and capabilities are always being developed, EC Power continually updates its AutoLion products. Sinha said two or three updates will come out per year, adding new features, incorporating user feedback and/or making the product more user-friendly.

“The chemistries within a cell completely dictate everything that is happening with the battery,” Sinha said.

“There are so many chemistries already out there in the commercial space, and so many chemistries under development. Every time we look at a new software version, my directive to my team is, make sure people who have no modeling experience can still use the software and get the desired information. Also, people who are extremely experienced using modeling tools can use advanced features to meet their needs. Flexibility and user-friendliness drive all of the new features and new ways of doing things.”

A model saver Thermal runaway breaks out in Li-ion batteries based on a chain reaction that Sinha referred to earlier as a feedback loop. Rising temperatures can make a battery’s reactions happen faster and faster, contributing more and more to the temperature rise until it is out of control.

However, the benefits of AutoLion software can also

NOV/DEC 2014 27

Image © 2014 Apple Inc

EC Power and AutoLion may specialize in automotive battery technology, but that’s no reason that their capabilities can’t apply to the consumer electronics space as well. The CE world provides fertile ground for the company to show off the synergy between its modeling software and physical battery cell and prototyping capabilities.

As a recent example, just six days after the announcement of the Apple Watch, EC Power published some of its suggestions for increasing the watch’s battery life per charge by four times. The Apple Watch goes on sale sometime in early 2015, and while the specifics of its battery have not yet been disclosed, the accepted opinion in the press, due to hints from Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and speculation, is that the watch will last about one day on a charge.

“That’s not good enough,” Sinha said. “People want four to five days. So we started thinking, how do we increase the life of this battery in a way that is available now? Nobody’s going to wait for five years before a new chemistry is developed. Obviously Apple did not give us their specs, but we estimated the Apple Watch has a 300-400 mAh battery. So we came up with a design for this flexible battery wristband that gives you five-day life.”

Sinha said some customers are already using AutoLion for consumer electronics batteries, but they have many similar challenges to automotive batteries, such as how they will respond to temperature and the physical chal-

28

Concept Battery Wristband by EC Power lenges of designing a battery for a particular space.

“People are looking into bigger batteries and wearable batteries - flexible batteries that you are going to wear on your body,” Sinha said. “Safety challenges come from these batteries getting bigger and in unique form factors. Even the performance differs depending on the shape of the battery. Remember that the original Newman model was for a small, circular button cell.

Now as battery shapes change, the form factor also impacts how the performance will change all the threedimensional effects. We capture all that very accurately with AutoLion.”

Image courtesy of EC Power

EC’s flexible approach to CE

THE TECH feed back into each other in Lab and Battery & Energy a positive way for the batStorage Technology center tery. All the different battery on various joint projects. development teams using Right out of the gate, EC We are battery people AutoLion can make meaningPower won a couple of govdeveloping software, rather ful design decisions from just ernment-backed contracts than the other way around. one simulation’s results, leadin the summer of 2011: a ing to less need for physical DOE/National Renewable testing, which in turn means Energy Laboratory contract savings in time and money in for developing its Li-ion batan ideal scenario. tery design tool (AutoLion) “We can save them a lot of time,” Sinha said. “Systemin partnership with Ford, Johnson Controls and Penn level guys can use our software for system architecture.

State; and then in partnership with Penn State, another Before the system you need to have the pack. At the pack DOE contract for $5 million towards the development of level you have indicators for what kind of thermal manlithium-sulfur cells that combine high energy density and agement to use, how to connect different cells, and when smaller size with improved performance and life. they are going to be safe. We can do all the safety simula“The software unit is our main revenue stream, but tions at the pack level and all the thermal management we have other business units as well,” said Sinha, who design developments, using AutoLion. Should I have air completed his PhD from Penn State before departing for cooling in the cold places and maybe liquid cooling in GM. “We also have a lithium-ion battery technology that the hot places? If you come down to the cell level you see we call all-climate batteries. It addresses a very key pain what cell design to use, will it last, how will it perform point of lithium-ion batteries; it provides a very reliable people are answering all those questions with AutoLion driving range and power in all weather conditions. So we right now.” have a software unit, and also extensive capabilities for If AutoLion users are building packs, testing them, cell prototyping and testing.” breaking them and then re-tweaking them virtually beFor such needs, EC Power operates a Li-ion prototypfore testing, EC Power claims that those users can make ing facility in State College, PA. “My whole team - be it reliable product development decisions 10 times faster the software team or hardware teams - all of us are batand with a lot less physical testing. And Sinha thinks that tery engineers at heart,” Sinha said.

EC Power has made that possible because of the kind of The AutoLion software attracted big customers like people working on AutoLion.

Ford and Johnson Controls early in EC Power’s existence, “Our DNA is very different from other software comand the company also has a growing list of clients that panies who are modelers trying to model batteries,” he Sinha wants to keep secret for now (although he hinted said. “We are battery engineers. All of us at my company that three of the largest battery manufacturers and major are battery engineers doing things for battery people. I automakers are using AutoLion). can understand their problems…talk their language. I’ve “Right now we are getting a lot of interest and custombeen in that world before. We are battery people develop- ers from automakers in the US, Europe and Japan,” he ing software, rather than the other way around. My whole said. “Battery manufacturers are using the software. A team feels very happy to provide some missing pieces that lot of universities are using the software. We have been the industry is looking for. The whole idea is to provide working one-on-one with big companies, and I think solutions that really matter in the world.” now we are at a critical mass where we have a very good understanding of any kind of user you can think of and Virtual models to the physical business how they will use our software. I feel more comfortable as EC Power LLC was founded in 2011 in State College, VP of the company to go out and offer people solutions.

Pennsylvania, as a spin-off from Penn State University, The way I look at it is, if I can convince these big compaand enjoys close collaboration with the university’s nies to use my software, then I have something I can offer Electrochemical Engine Center, Energy Nanostructure to anyone.”

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”

NOV/DEC 2014 29

GROUNDED Leviton’s Director of Engineering explains the EVSE GMI circuit and why he believes the standards should be changed

O

The GMI circuit ensures that the ground path is connected from the vehicle chassis all the way to the electric service panel.

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By Michael Kent

ne of the many safety features integrated into EVSE is the ground monitor interrupter (GMI) circuit. The GMI circuit ensures that the ground path is connected from the vehicle chassis all the way to the electric service panel.

The purpose of grounding non-current-carrying metal parts of equipment is to provide an electrical connection between those parts and the earth. This limits the voltage imposed by things like lightning, line surges and contact with higher-voltage lines. It also provides a redundant low-impedance return path for fault current should the dead metal become energized.

“It’s important to have a grounded connection when you’re providing 240 volts and up to 80 amps of power to a vehicle with a metal frame and tires that cause a different ground impedance,” Kenneth Brown, Director of Engineering at Leviton’s Commercial and Industrial Business Unit, told Charged. “The chassis of the vehicle must to be grounded back to the building’s service panel, because that’s the best way to ground it.”

Figure 1 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid Trunk Charging Kit

Figure 2 Leviton’s Evr-Green® Electric Vehicle Charging Stations

Equipment grounding conductors provide a lowEVSE impedance path between non-current-carrying metalThe GMI circuit employed within EVSE monitors ensures lic parts of equipment and one of the conductors of the that the ground line is connected from the EV to the electrical system’s source. If a part becomes energized facility service equipment. The circuit is one of several for any reason, such as a frayed or damaged conductor, options required by Underwriters Laboratory (UL 2231-1 a short circuit will occur and operate a circuit breaker and UL 2231-2) for cord-connected EVSE. or fuse to disconnect the faulted circuit. The earth itself However, Brown believes that he has identified a potencan have a limited role in the fault-clearing process, since tial gap in the standard for safety. current must return to its source and not the earth. A The term “cord-connected” refers to EVSEs that feature short circuit drawing enough current to operate the a plug connection - like the charging cord sets that come circuit breaker is not always insured, depending on the in the trunk of many vehicles (Figure 1) and fastened in resistance of the inadvertent place Level 2 units that are connection. In traditional installed on a wall but can residential and commercial be unplugged and moved if The term “cord-connected” wiring, the earth could be needed (Figure 2). a valid return path to the “A GMI circuit has refers to EVSEs that feature a source since the neutral is always been required with plug connection. bonded to ground at the cord-connected EVSE with service entrance. a 20 ma trip level,” said

NOV/DEC 2014 31

Images courtesy of Leviton

Images courtesy of Toyota UK/Flickr

THE TECH

The standard gap “The issue is that the UL standard does not require a GMI circuit for all EVSEs,” explained Brown. “For example, if an EVSE offers a charge circuit interrupting device (CCID) that trips at 5 mA, as opposed to a 20 mA trip level, the GMI circuit may not be required by the standard.

In most cases this must be a hard-wired EVSE application, and a special UL investigation is performed on the grounding circuit to prove it to be reliable.” Note: The 20 mA level is also permitted by adding double insulation requirements for the CCID. The problem is that if a hard-wired system without a GMI circuit were wired incorrectly, the system could function normally even though it’s not grounded. And if somehow a line wire were then connected to either the metal housing of the EVSE or the metal chassis of the vehicle, it could expose that 240 V to human contact.

“There is the other safety circuit - the CCID,” said Brown. “Say your vehicle chassis is at 240 V and you touch the metal, the CCID is supposed to kick in and save your life. But why go that far? Why rely only on the CCID for the hard-wired systems when there are additional protections for cord-connected EVSE?” After Brown identified the issue, Leviton submitted a proposal to UL, noting that the ground monitor test should be added to all hard-wired EVSEs as well.

How GMI works The GMI circuit - in a Leviton charging station, for example - is tested three times prior to allowing the vehicle to transition into the charging state. “The first test is performed during the power-up self-test sequence,” explained Brown. When the EVSE is turned on, the ground impedance is measured. If the impedance measured is too high, the fault light will illuminate, and the EVSE cannot be used until the problem is corrected.

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Images courtesy of Leviton

Brown, “but it’s not currently required on all hardwire-connected EVSEs.” And there are scenarios, according to Brown, where removing that safeguard would unnecessarily increase the risk of a hazardous condition.

“

Why rely only on the CCID for the hard-wired systems when there are additional protections for cord-connected EVSE?

”

“Once the GMI passes the power-on self-test, the EVSE can be plugged into a vehicle,” said Brown. “Then the circuit is tested in two steps to ensure that the ground is connected all the way from the vehicle chassis to the service panel where the circuit breakers are.”

The first test determines whether the ground is connected from the EVSE to the facility service panel. This incorporates a portion of the pilot wire circuit. If the ground impedance is too high, the state voltage will change to an out-of-tolerance condition and the fault LED will illuminate, indicating out-of-tolerance. Once the fault LED is illuminated, the EVSE cannot transition into a charging state until the issue is corrected.

The second test determines if the ground is connected from the EVSE to the vehicle. If the ground is open prior

THE TECH

To Microprocessor

Figure 3: GMI Test Circuit +

300pF

-12V

+12V

+12V

10K

GND NC SB SA

VDD VSS D IN

L1

-12V

Control Pilot

1K

From Microprocessor

D2

1500pF

Control Pilot

EVSE D1

SW1

2.74K

“

SW2

Vehicle

SW3

1.3K

340

The ground monitoring circuit is a life saving device. We believe it should be standard on all EVSEs sold in North America.

”

to power-up, the Leviton EVSE will show a fault as a result of the power-up self-testing performed by the EVSE.

Grounding certified The existing UL test for GMI circuits determines the impedance on the ground path between the EVSE and the service equipment voltage. During the test, a potentiometer is placed on the ground path between the EVSE and the input voltage. Once the potentiometer is in place,

starting from zero ohms, the resistance is increased until the EVSE stops the charging process.

Leviton EVSE includes a ground monitor circuit that’s connected from line to ground.

The test sends a small current to ground, which is small enough to fall below the required maximum CCID current threshold of 20 mA. The transistor side of the opto-coupler is connected to a series of analog circuits that determines when the ground at the line side should be disconnected.

In Leviton’s case, the output ground monitor circuit is isolated from the main controller and it will function properly even if the controller stops functioning.

The circuit detects impedance, so when the impedance in the output ground path is increased, the expected state voltages required (per the J1772 Recommended Practice) are not achieved, causing the EVSE to disconnect charging to the vehicle from the service equipment.

Change is imminent Safeguards and life-safety devices are top priority for UL, and Brown believes that the recommended changes will be adopted soon. “I recently made presentations to the CANENA and to NEMA,” said Brown. “Most agreed that we should make this change and require GMI circuits for hard-wired EVSE. The ground monitoring circuit is a life-saving device. We believe it should be standard on all EVSEs sold in North America.”

Kenneth Brown is Director of Engineering at Leviton’s Commercial and Industrial business unit. He is Chair of the NEMA 5EV Technical Committee and Chair of the EVSE Embedded Metering and Communication working group. Ken is a member of the UL 1449 and UL 2231 Standards Technical Panel (STP), and a member of NEMA 5EV and 5VS Surge Protective Devices Technical Committee.

NOV/DEC 2014 33

Pushing the

PowerLimits Nitesh Satheesh, Semiconductor Application Engineer at Fuji Electric, on the new market requirements of automotive power electronics

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By Joey Stetter

ith each passing model year, the requirements demanded of automotive power electronics increase. Market forces are pushing Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) modules towards lighter, smaller, more powerful and more reliable technology. These switching devices are what power an EV or hybrid inverter, and with increasingly stringent emissions requirements, automakers are looking for more innovative solutions to power their next electrified products.

“We have yet to see the golden age of the electric car,” Nitesh Satheesh, Semiconductor Application Engineer at Fuji Electric, told Charged. “But that day is not too far away and we are preparing to serve it.”

Fuji Electric, first established in 1923, began mass-producing automotive IGBT modules in 2005. “Since then we have shipped close to a million units, with less than a 10 ppm failure rate,” boasts Satheesh. He says that the compa-

34

Photo courtesy of Fuji Electric

Figure 1 - Fuji Electric Intelligent Power Module for Honda Accord

“

We have shipped close to a million units, with less than a 10 ppm failure rate.

”

ny continually strives to achieve a zero-defect future and, to that end, is constantly implementing new combinations of design and process-control techniques, combined with screening and focused reliability engineering.

One size doesn’t fit all Choosing the right IGBT for the right application is no small task - there are many different configurations from many different semiconductor manufacturers.

Fuji Electric’s first mass-produced module was a 2-in-1 Buck-Boost for a major Japanese automaker. Since then,

the company has gone through numerous iterations, and currently has several standard offerings of automotivegrade modules, including 6-in-1 packages rated for 650 V, 400 A and 600 A. A system’s topology is what dictates the size and functional requirements of the power module. One-motor systems for hybrids typically have a parallel connection of the combustion engine and the electric motor/generator.

That means the power system can either be in motoring or generating mode, but not both. For one-motor system implementation, Satheesh recommends a combination Buck-Boost, 6-in-1 module (a total of 8 switches) to effectively produce the required output.

On the other hand, a two-motor system in a vehicle can be in generating and motoring modes simultaneously. In that case, Satheesh says a Buck-Boost, 6-in-1, 6-in-1 (a total of 14 switches) produces the required results. For example, Figure 1 shows a custom first-generation 14in-1 Intelligent Power Module built for Honda’s Accord Hybrid, in production since December 2012.

NOV/DEC 2014 35

THE TECH

Thermal Resistance Comparison 100 Relative Thermal Resistance [%]

Cooling Fin Grease

80

33%

Decrease

63%

Copper Base

60

Decrease

Solder

40 Insulated Substrate

20 Solder Die

0

With the new direct liquid-cooling structure on Fuji’s IGBT modules, the base and fins are integrated into one, and are in direct contact with the cooling liquid, eliminating the need for thermal grease.

To further decrease thermal resistance, silicon nitride (Si3N4) ceramic is used as an insulated substrate for the module in place of the traditional aluminum oxide (Al2O3) substrate. The combined result is a 63% decrease in thermal resistance compared to the conventional structure.

Based on internal data from Fuji Electric

Indirect Cooling with Al2O3 Substrate

Direct Cooling with Al2O3 Substrate

The next gen Fuji Electric is actively working with partners to optimize new solutions, and will soon announce its next generation of automotive power modules for the general market. The company has taken a two-pronged approach to quickly adapt to market requirements, with a portfolio of “standard” Automotive Power Modules built to automotive standards of reliability, and the “custom” Power Modules/IPMs.

Direct Cooling with Si3N4 Substrate

with performance equal to, if not greater than, that of its copper cooling system. “By implementing a new structural design of the cooling fins, the company was able to achieve a dramatic reduction in thermal resistance of its aluminum system,” explained Satheesh. This meant a 70% reduction in weight moving from the first-generation copper cooling to the first-generation aluminum cooling setup.

Lightweight High power density and high efficiency Design engineers always face trade-offs between cost and Ask anybody about his or her thoughts on EVs, and the performance, and creating conversation will quickly lightweight cooling solulead to the topic of range. tions for IGBTs is a classic Fortunately for the plug-in This meant a 70% reduction example, with aluminum vehicle industry, advances in competing to be a low-cost battery technology and more in weight moving from the and lighter alternative to efficient power conversion first-generation copper copper. are leading to great leaps in cooling to the first-generation Satheesh told us that all-electric capabilities. aluminum cooling setup. the challenge Fuji Electric In power electronics, faced was to develop an advancements have been aluminum cooling solution achieved by improving

36

IGBT Module Cross Section

and cost. Many different causes of failure can arise in a power module, Die Electric Metallization mainly due to the mismatch in the Silicon Gel coefficient of thermal expansion Aluminum Wire for the materials used in packaging.

Solder Under Die DCB Repeated thermal cycling stresses the materials, eventually causing Solder Under DCB Cooling Fin : Water Jacket them to fail, and manufacturers are expected to have a detailed idea of exactly when these failures will begin to occur. “It helps to have a model to accurately predict this time to failure,” said Satheesh. “Fuji Electric provides lifetime curves based on a combination of experimental results and extensive simulations.”

The trick in IGBT design is not Some of the common causes of failure, and Fuji’s new to over size - or over engineer solutions, include:

any of these components.

IGBT and Free Wheeling Diode (FWD) design. “With each passing Fuji Electric chip generation, a reduction in IGBT saturation voltage and turn-off loss has been realized,” said Satheesh. “We have also optimized the gate structure with the introduction of the Trench Gate in our fifth-generation IGBTs. Reduced conduction and switching losses were achieved with the thinner wafer - a result of the field stop optimization - and lifetime control, respectively.”

These improvements in chip technology effectively increase the module’s current density. “This may raise an important concern in the minds of the reader, that of thermal conduction,” Satheesh noted. “Logically, as the chip area reduces, the thermal resistance should increase, and that is true. However, this effect is nullified using advanced innovative cooling devices. Tight lifetime control in the diode has also resulted in significant reduction in the dynamic loss of the FWD, and the thinner wafer has reduced conduction losses.”

High-reliability packaging A power module, like any other component, is expected to last the lifetime of a vehicle. However, the lifetime of the module varies greatly with the drive profile. With IGBTs, there is a big trade-off between required reliability

1. Aluminum bond wire lift-off This is the most common failure mode at lower differences in junction temperature (Δ Tj). Failure occurs due to grain growth, which weakens the bond between the chip and the aluminum wire. Satheesh says that Fuji Electric addressed this problem by changing the re-crystallization temperature of the wire, limiting the growth of grains.

2. Solder layer cracking In the middle Δ Tj range, the common failure mode is cracking of the solder layer. Fuji Electric says it solved this issue by developing a tin-antimony chemistry, along with other elements, to suppress growth of cracks.

3. Electrode metallization This failure mechanism usually occurs in the higher Δ Tj ranges. To tackle the problem, Fuji Electric began passivating the Al-Si layer with a Ni layer.

The trick in IGBT design is not to oversize - or overengineer - any of these components, but to build modules that will last exactly the right amount of time for any given application. The automotive industry is an unforgiving one, and achieving a low-cost, high-reliability solution is no longer a goal - it’s a requirement.

NOV/DEC 2014 37

CURRENTevents

Chevrolet has been dribbling out details and teaser images of the next-generation Volt ahead of its debut at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

According to Volt Lead Engineer Andrew Farah, the primary goals for the second-generation Voltec electricdrive system were to improve performance, raise overall efficiency, and cut engine noise.

The new Volt has a pair of electric motors, either or both of which can power the car and/ or act as generators to maximize efficiency.

The two motors use the same stator, but different rotors. The two-motor drive unit is 5-12% more efficient, and 100 lbs lighter, than the existing system.

The 2016 Volt has five modes of operation - one more than the current model - including an all-electric mode and four different combinations of gas engine and electric motors/generators. The ability to use both motors helps deliver a 20-percent improvement in electric acceleration.

The range-extending engine is a 1.5-liter four-cylinder version of GM’s new Ecotec series, which has an aluminum block (instead of cast iron), and three features that are unique to the Volt: a 12.5-to-1 compression ratio for more efficient combustion; cooled exhaust-gas recirculation, which allows the use of regular unleaded gasoline while keeping nitrous oxide emissions low; and wideauthority cam phasers, which allow a broader spread of valve timing, boosting efficiency significantly.

In the new powertrain, the inverter and other power electronics are built directly into the transmission, achieving a weight reduction of 130 pounds.

GM workers who’ve tested the new powertrain said it was almost impossible to tell when the engine switched on.

LG Chem will continue to supply lithium-ion battery cells for the new Volt, but the new cells have 20% more volumetric energy density than the old, allowing

38

the number of cells in the pack to be cut from 288 to 192, while producing the same total voltage. The pack is slightly smaller, and 30 lbs lighter. GM didn’t specify the pack’s total energy capacity, but Larry Nitz, Executive Director of GM Powertrain’s electrification engineering team, said that it had higher energy capacity and used more of it, so presumably we’ll see at least a slight increase in the Volt’s electric range of 38 miles.

“It would have been simple for us to tweak our existing battery to provide nominally increased range, but that’s not what our customers want,” said Nitz. “So our team created a new battery system that will exceed the performance expectations of most of our owners.”

Meanwhile, GM CEO Mary Barra has confirmed that most of the Volt’s components will be built in Michigan: the drive unit at GM’s Powertrain plant in Warren, and the battery pack at its battery assembly plant in Brownstown.

The new Volt will also give owners greater flexibility for charging. The car uses GPS data to recognize when it is at home, and automatically adjusts to the home settings.

The new Volt uses improved charge-indicator lights and sounds a tone when charging begins, a different one if the charge port door is left open.

More details, including range estimates, will be revealed when the new Volt makes its debut at January’s Detroit Auto Show. The 2016 Chevrolet Volt will go on sale during the second half of 2015.

Images courtesy of General Motors

GM releases more details of next-generation Volt

THE VEHICLES

Utilities launch initiatives to electrify their vehicles

Photos courtesy of PG&E

Images courtesy of VIA Motors

VIA Motors gets EPAcertified, begins deliveries

VIA Motors has received official certification from the EPA for its eREV van, and has begun delivering vehicles to fleet customers. According to the company, 23 vans have already been delivered, with three more in transit and more on the way.

Based on a Chevrolet Express, the eREV van features VIA’s proprietary V-DRIVE plug-in powertrain, which consists of a 4.8-liter V8, 175 kW electric motor, and 22 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. According to the company, electric range is up to 40 miles, and fuel economy averages over 100 mpg. The van also features a 110-volt power takeoff for tools and other electrical devices.

“This all-important EPA certification validates our concept of integrating VIA’s proprietary powertrain into OEM vehicles to deliver both economical and clean vehicle solutions,” said CEO Pablo Acedo. “We see our eREV vehicles as an important part of the fleets of the future. This is just the beginning.”

“If we are going to see mainstream adoption of electric vehicles, the technology must deliver a good return on investment to the largest segment of the auto business, namely trucks and vans,” added Chairman of the Board Bob Lutz.

VIA is also working with the Electric Power Research Institute and the South Coast Air Quality Management District to deliver its PHEVs to electric utility fleets as part of a nationwide demonstration supported by the DOE.

Utility industry bigwigs joined Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz at the White House to announce two initiatives to promote electric transportation technologies.

More than 70 investor-owned electric utilities will increase investment by about $250 million over five years to add more electric vehicles to their fleets, starting in 2015.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) also announced a program to encourage EEI member utilities to participate in the DOE’s Workplace Charging Challenge and to help drive EV adoption among utility employees.

PG&E also unveiled a PHEV Class 5 bucket truck.

The truck, developed by PG&E in partnership with Efficient Drivetrains Incorporated, has a 40-mile electric range, and electrifies all onboard equipment, including the boom, eliminating the need to idle while at job sites. PG&E’s fleet already includes nearly 1,500 electric and hybrid vehicles.

“We are pleased that the Administration recognizes the unprecedented effort and commitment by our industry to lead by example and to drive innovations in the electric transportation market,” said EEI President Tom Kuhn. “Advancing plug-in electric vehicles and technologies is an industry priority, and we are proud to undertake our new initiative to encourage PEV adoption among our more than 500,000 employees.”

NOV/DEC 2014 39

CURRENTevents

Lately it seems that almost every EV-related headline has to include a reference to Tesla, however tenuous. However, there may be some substance to recent news, as four major automakers have at least hinted at plans to directly challenge Tesla with new high-end EV models.

In a recent conference call with Wall Street analysts, Ford CEO Mark Fields said the company has the expertise and ability to build a Tesla-style high-performance EV - but stopped short of saying that it had any plans to do so.

According to Fields, Ford bought a Tesla Model S. “We drove it. We took it apart. We put it back together and we drove it again.”

Of course, the majors’ ability to build compelling EVs is not really in doubt - it’s their commitment to doing so that is generally lacking. While Ford’s two plug-in hybrid models have been pretty successful, it has made little effort to market its Focus EV, which has sold fewer than 4,000 units.

However, Green Car Reports has uncovered a bit of evidence that Ford’s EV plans may be more ambitious than it is letting on. Apparently, Ford engineers have been lobbying to boost the future power level of the CCS DC quick-charging standard to as much as 150 kW. A source on the CCS technical committee told GCR that other participants didn’t understand why Ford insisted on such high power. Could it be because a 150 kW CCS charging network could rival Tesla’s Superchargers?

Meanwhile, German news sources report that Porsche, Mercedes and Audi have definite plans to produce “Teslafighters.”

According to the German magazine Manager, Mercedes and Porsche are each working on an electric sedan

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Image courtesy of Robert S - green_t4me/Flickr

Automakers say they plan to go head-to-head with Tesla

with a 250-mile range, in response to “top dog” Tesla’s success with Model S. Porsche chairman Matthias Müller said the company is working on an EV based on its Modular Standard Platform, which will boast comparable horsepower and a lower curb weight than Model S. The “Elektro-Porsche” will be a smaller version of the Panamera, and will reach the market by 2018 at the earliest.

Mercedes sources also told Manager that the company has a Tesla competitor in the works, along the lines of the E or S Class, but it won’t be ready until 2021 - the new EV can’t be built on a current platform, as Mercedes’ battery is too big.

The closest to fielding a “Tesla-hunter” is Audi, which plans to release its Q8 e-tron in 2017. However, the Q8, which is supposed to have a 250-mile range, is seen as a competitor not for the Model S, but for the upcoming Model X SUV. Far from quaking, Tesla welcomed the latest news. A spokesperson said this week that automakers “and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform.”

THE VEHICLES

Los Angeles Air Force Base has replaced its entire general-purpose vehicle fleet with plug-in vehicles. The 42-vehicle fleet includes 13 Nissan LEAFs, five Ford pick-up trucks with EVAOS PHEV kits, nine VIA Motors VTRUX vans, four Electric Vehicle International medium-duty trucks, and one Phoenix Motorcars 12-passenger bus.

Most are equipped with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability, allowing them to direct power both to and from the electrical grid when they’re not being driven. Thirteen V2G-capable CHAdeMO-compliant fast-charging stations have been installed at the base, delivered and commissioned by Princeton Power Systems based on its UL-certified bi-directional multi-port converter, the GTIB-30.

The V2G technology enables the vehicles to provide more than 700 kW of power to the grid, and enhances the power grid’s reliability and security by balancing demand against supply without having to use reserves or

Photo courtesy of EVAOS

Air Force rolls out plug-in vehicle fleet with V2G

standby generators.

“Everything we do to fly, fight and win requires energy, whether it’s aviation fuel for our aircraft or power to run the bases that support them,” said Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James.

The Air Force plans to expand the V2G demonstration to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey. The service is also looking into using used EV batteries as a form of on-base energy storage.

The New Book By Charles Morris

Tesla Motors

How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Sparked the Next Tech Revolution

???

Tesla Motors has redefined the automobile, sparking a new wave of innovation and unleashing forces that will transform not just the auto industry, but every aspect of society. Charged Senior Editor and popular EV blogger Charles Morris takes you through the Tesla story from the beginning, as told by the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who made it happen.

www.teslamotorsbook.com

Available at all major online retail sites

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Here, attendees will learn about technology applications of the manufacturers’ hybrid and electric vehicles, powertrain technologies and components, and about supporting technologies — such as advanced energy storage and charging systems.

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THE VEHICLES

CURRENTevents

In an interview with the German weekly Der Spiegel, Elon Musk said that the German auto industry should devote “much more energy to the development of batteries,” perhaps an allusion to Daimler’s recent decision to shut down Germany’s only cell manufacturing facility. He expects Tesla to establish a battery production plant in Germany “in the long term.”

He also hinted that Tesla has been talking with BMW about a possible alliance in batteries and lightweight components. “We are talking about whether we can collaborate in battery technology or charging stations,” said Musk. He described BMW’s production of carbon fiber body parts as “relatively cost-efficient,” and said that it “could be interesting for our body-builders.”

No details of the prospective alliance were offered, but the two companies could have much to gain by collaborating in these areas. BMW and Tesla executives met in June to discuss high-speed charging standards. BMW’s Herbert Diess recently said that carbon fiber technology is already “very, very economical,” and researchers are well on the way to making it even cheaper.

A spokeswoman for Tesla Germany put the brakes on the excitement, telling InsideEVs, “The conversation between Elon Musk and BMW has been a casual conversation, and not about a formal cooperation.”

Indy to deploy the country’s largest EV fleet Photo courtesy of Richard Kelly/Flickr

Images: Left courtesy of Maurizio Pesce/Flickr, Right © CHARGED EVs

Tesla, BMW to collaborate on batteries, CFRP?

The city of Indianapolis has announced plans to deploy the largest municipal fleet of electrified vehicles in the nation. The Indiana capital’s “Freedom Fleet” will consist of 425 plug-in hybrid and pure electric vehicles, including the Nissan LEAF, Chevrolet Volt and Ford Fusion Energi. The city will replace 100 vehicles by the end of this year, and 425 vehicles by the beginning of 2016.

A company called Vision Fleet partnered with the city to develop a financing structure that bundles together the expenses of purchasing, fueling and maintaining the EVs. Each of the Freedom Fleet vehicles will cost approximately $7,400 per year, including purchase, fuel, maintenance and insurance, compared to $9,000 per year for a typical legacy vehicle. The city expects to save $8.7 million over 10 years.

“This is a landmark step in revitalizing our aging fleet and replacing expensive internal combustion engine vehicles with cutting-edge EV technology, all while reducing our dependence on oil and saving Indianapolis taxpayers thousands in fuel costs each year,” said Mayor Greg Ballard. “America’s dependence on oil ties our national and economic security to a highly unpredictable, cartel-influenced global oil market. Diversifying the types of vehicles and fuels available to our drivers offers our city protection from often-volatile oil prices and better prepares us for the future.”

“This project will have enormous impacts on fuel consumption and fleet service costs,” said Vision Fleet CE

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11/21/2014 2:31:31 PM

THE VEHICLES

Odyne delivers 6 plug-in trucks to Michigan utility

EV Fleet targets the commercial vehicle market

Images courtesy of EV Fleet

Image courtesy of Odyne Systems

Several small companies hope to electrify the commercial fleet vehicle market. Most of them are taking what they see as the path of least resistance – converting existing trucks to plug-in hybrids. However, a North Carolinabased firm with the evocative name EV Fleet is going all the way, betting that companies will opt for the maximal fuel savings of a purpose-built electric vehicle.

The Condor is a US-made all-electric pickup truck with a payload of 1,000 lbs. It’s available with a 32 kWh or 50 kWh battery pack, and comes with DC fast charging capability. According to the company, it is “compatible with V2G technology.”

Top speed is over 85 mph. EV Fleet estimates the range at 100 miles at 65 mph, or 140 miles at 45 mph. Like Tesla’s Model S, it has a dry storage area under the front hood, where the engine isn’t.

EV Fleet offers a 10-year, unlimited mileage warranty on the drivetrain, and a two-year (replacement) or eight-year (prorated) warranty on the battery pack, which it says should last for 3,000 cycles.

Base MSRP is scheduled to be $49,995 before rebates and incentives. Options include several types of cargo box, including refrigerated; a solar power station for running tools and equipment; and a towing package with electric trailer brakes (maximum load 1,000 pounds).

Odyne Systems has delivered six new plug-in hybrid trucks to Consumers Energy, Michigan’s largest utility. The vehicles include three Terex Commander digger derricks, two Terex bucket trucks and an under-deck compressor vehicle with a Boss hydraulic lift and compressor.

All six trucks were manufactured by Milwaukeebased DUECO, an independent provider of trucks for the utility market, using an IHC chassis.

The Odyne plug-in hybrid system not only increases fuel efficiency while driving, but can also power the equipment on the trucks without using the engine, significantly reducing noise levels at the work site. The trucks feature smart-grid capabilities to charge the hybrid batteries at the most opportune time.

Odyne’s modular systems can be integrated into powertrains during the manufacturing process or retrofitted to existing truck chassis. Designed for trucks over 14,000 pounds, Odyne’s system can achieve fuel economy improvements of up to 50%, according to the company.

Odyne plans to deliver some 120 trucks for companies and government agencies as part of a $90-million program to produce about 300 plug-in hybrid trucks, supported by the DOE, the California Energy Commission and the Electric Power Research Institute.

“With delivery of these six vehicles, we continue to expand the applications where an Odyne plug-in hybrid system is providing the power and advantages that only the Odyne system offers,” said Odyne CEO Joe Dalum. “Our hybrid system is unique in the industry in delivering unprecedented highefficiency power both during drive time and at the work site across many truck applications.”

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Zero

Truck

Electric Fleet Vehicles Offer Compelling Cost Savings

Image courtesy of ZeroTruck

M

By Charles Morris

edium-duty trucks make perfect candidates for electrification, and the market would seem to be full of opportunities for small companies that build powertrains and components. It’s treacherous territory, however - several startups targeting this space have foundered. ZeroTruck founder Tedd Abramson told Charged about his company’s strategy to hang on for the long haul.

Abramson has broad experience in the transportation industry - he ran a limousine and bus business in New York, and also worked in several capacities for the airline JetBlue during its start-up phase. In 2005, when his department was tasked with finding a way to save money, he got excited about what was happening with biofuels, EVs and hybrids, and started working on converting diesel vehicles to run on waste vegetable oil.

Abramson saw the market for alternative fuel solutions gaining momentum, and made the rounds of the trade shows, checking out the motors, inverters, chargers, and other new technology that was coming out, a lot of it aimed at the conversion market. “As I started to see what was happening, I thought, this is exciting, you can be free of having to go to the gas pump. It’s a very empowering feeling, pass-

Images courtesy of ZeroTruck

“

Even though [the Isuzu platform is] built in Japan, it’s a very commonly known vehicle in the US.

”

ing the gas station. I realized pretty quickly that it’s not sustainable for us to run on biofuels completely, because of the amount of fuel we use in this country, and I started digging deeper.”

After about three years of going to shows and asking questions, Abramson, as so many others have, concluded that electrification was the solution to the problems of dependence on foreign fuel, pollution and climate change.

Smith Electric Vehicles, a British company that was one of the pioneers in the electric-truck market, captured Abramson’s imagination, and he thoroughly investigated its Newton electric truck. In 2007, after meeting with Smith, it occurred to him that it would make more sense

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to build a similar vehicle on the well-established Isuzu platform, rather than importing a Czech vehicle to the US. “Smith was bringing in a Czech cab, and I thought, why reinvent the wheel? Why not take the Isuzu product, and replace the engine and tranny with an electric motor and advanced lithium batteries? Even though it’s built in Japan, it’s a very commonly known vehicle in the US. At JetBlue and other companies, we had Isuzu trucks, and we knew that they were very reliable, and drivers liked them. Let’s take something that’s already known and electrify it.” That was the genesis of ZeroTruck, which opened in January 2008 in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Ana. “We hired an engineering team to build us a prototype with a small lithium-ion battery pack, so we could test the market and see what the response would be. At an alternative fuels show in May 2008 in Las Vegas, which was one of the first shows where a lot of fleets from around the country met, there were no other electric truck companies there. We got cards from every state in the country, saying, ‘When you guys have a vehicle, we’d be interested.’”

With the first prototype truck on the road, ZeroTruck set about refining its product, engineering, optimizing

THE VEHICLES

“

Our mission at that point was to find a battery solution that would get the cost down to about a six-year ROI.

”

2010. It’s a 14,500-pound vehicle with a 3,000-pound hydraulic crane. It’s still running as we speak. They use it to change water valves.” At that same time, Abramson brought in a management team, and switched from CEO to CMO to focus on grants and sales.

and testing different platforms. “The big challenge at that time was that cost per kWh was about $1,400. The truck would never be affordable without substantial incentives, so our mission at that point was to find a battery solution that would get the cost down to about a six-year ROI. That would be something that fleet managers would be able to afford.”

“At that first show we met Rick Sikes, Fleet Manager for the City of Santa Monica, and he said they’d like to get a truck with a service body for the Santa Monica fleet. They test a lot of vehicles, and are very open to new tech. The South Coast Air Quality Management District paid half the cost, and they ordered it in 2009. With all the paperwork, it took about 10 months to get the approval. We delivered that truck as a demonstrator vehicle in January

Follow the money In 2012, with the help of the non-profit technology consortium Electricore, ZeroTruck applied for and received a grant from the California Energy Commission to commercialize its platform. Subsidies were provided to offset the purchase price for California fleets, and by 2013, the company had sold 14 trucks under the program. California is the hottest market for electric trucks, but, with the help of state incentives, there’s also a lot of interest in New York, Texas, Washington and Oregon.

“In 2011, we were offered incentives to move to Pennsylvania, where the new CEO lived. With that funding we opened an 8,000-square-foot facility in Allentown - an old Mack truck plant - and stayed there about two years.

However, the real traction and interest in electric trucks remained concentrated back West in California.” In December 2013, Abramson returned to the helm as CEO and moved the company back to Los Angeles.

The system ZeroTruck’s Electric Drive Integration System (EDIS) features the company’s proprietary battery modules, which use lithium polymer cells. The liquid-cooled battery packs are offered in two sizes: 53 kWh, which yields a range of about 65 miles (on the UDDS cycle); and 80 kWh, which is designed for vehicles that will be running hydraulics or other accessories, and gives a range of up to 80 miles.

The motors come from UQM, and are offered in several configurations. Heavy-duty transmissions are available in single-speed, 3-speed and 6-speed versions.

NOV/DEC 2014 49

The system comes with a standard 3 kW charger, but that can be increased as high as 20 kW. Charging is Level 2 and 3, using the J1772 connector and DC Combo, with a CHAdeMO option under development. The company plans on testing Hevo Power’s wireless charging system as an optional charging solution once it receives UL approval, which is expected in early 2015. Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capability is also planned as an option for 2015.

“

Image courtesy of ZeroTruck

I’m as excited as I was six years ago that electric trucks will be everywhere.

”

Why did ZeroTruck choose XALT Energy cells? “The original relationship was with Dassault of France, the aerospace company, Dow Chemical and Kokam of Korea.

Kokam had some of the best results in reliability and efficiency of the cells, and they were already making largeformat prismatic cells for quite a while. So we did a lot of testing, we looked at a lot of the papers, and we felt that the Kokam cells, which became Dow Kokam and now XALT, have the best energy density and stability of all the cells that fit into our package.”

Customer flex ZeroTruck delivers all its vehicles through local dealers. “We work with the dealers because they have contact with the local customers. We train the dealer prior to delivery, so if something comes up on the truck the dealer can advise us. We also have telematics to be able to identify any technical issues.”

The company is talking with partners about expanding to international markets, especially Europe. “Isuzus are in every country, so they can just order the standard chassis, left-hand or right-hand drive, remove the engine, resell it, and then populate the truck with our EDIS. All of the wiring is standardized to be able to fit into the Isuzu platform. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly plug-and-play, but there’s a lot of plugging-in that gets done.”

While several other electric-truck companies are focusing on the delivery market, ZeroTruck is targeting

50

cities and local government agencies. “We’ve identified that there are 88,000 municipalities in the US, and that’s a nice market to incorporate the electric truck, because generally they don’t go more than 40-50 miles a day, and they want flexibility. Some companies offer one or two options, but one reason we went with the Isuzu chassis is because every medium truck company makes something for it, so you have literally hundreds of body options. You have a lot of flexibility, which you don’t get if you have a purpose-built vehicle.”

The 12 vehicles currently being built include a refrigerated box truck and a bucket truck with a lift for signal light maintenance. “The city of Irvine is getting a service body truck, and we’re building some for Google that have a stake bed that they use to repair bicycles around the campus, so they have a zero-emission truck fixing zeroemission bicycles.”

Staying power For commercial fleets, the cost savings from going electric are compelling, so why have so many companies targeting this market (including several profiled in Charged) gone out of business? As Abramson sees it, the potential is huge, but the industry moves slowly, and most startups aren’t prepared to hang on for the years it may take for profits to appear.

THE VEHICLES “I learned from the airline industry, you have to keep your costs in line with your growth. I feel bad for all the players that have tried to make it and aren’t here any longer, but it’s very difficult to explain to investors that this is going to be a slowly moving market. It’s a solid market, the demand is there. We don’t have to struggle to get orders - the trucks sell themselves. But the biggest challenge is that investors don’t understand that, yes it’s the future for fleets that are going under 100 miles per day, but it’s still going to be a few years before costs go down and profits go up.

“We constantly look to improve on the product, we look for ways to lower the cost, we look for ways to partner with other companies that are going in the same direction, and try to be realistic about opportunities versus how much you’re going to expand. It’s a capital-intensive business - you have to be really conservative with your overhead while you’re trying to drive the cost down, but I’m as excited as I was six years ago that electric trucks will be everywhere, eliminating pollution and reducing petroleum use for fleets. If you look at the whole picture, it makes perfect sense.”

Abramson calculates that the ROI period for ZeroTrucks is 3.5 to 5.5 years, not counting any government subsidies, for a fleet operator with service routes of up to 70 miles per day. That’s an attractive proposition, and it’s getting even better, as upfront costs continue to go down. “Since 2008, we’ve seen the price for battery packs go from $1,400 per kWh to the $500-600 range (with US cells, not Chinese). It’s quite a drop.”

Cell manufacturers are under a lot of pressure to reduce prices.

“That’s a business I would not

want to be in - you may have the next greatest thing in your lab, but somewhere across the country or across the globe, somebody will unseat you with a better battery, and that’s just the way it is. But when you get to the right combination of energy density and the ability to make these things reliably, you’re going to have a lot of customers knocking on your door.”

Photos courtesy of Volkswagen Group

One Drive Fits All

Volkswagen’s all-electric e-Golf has hit American shores, and its Modular Transverse Matrix platform could usher in the era of interchangeable electric drivetrains for every VW model.

e-Golf 2015

R

ising above the waters of the Mittelland Canal in Wolfsburg, Germany, four iconic smokestacks cut through an otherwise sparse skyline. These are the most recognizable - and among the last - vestiges of the original Volkswagen factory from 1938. Symbolically, however, the smokestacks represent much more than the symbols of a power plant that - along with the factory’s 4 GW solar farm - supplies about 90% of Wolfsburg’s power. They are the link from the past to Wolfsburg’s, Volkswagen’s, and even Germany’s future. In 2013, Wolfsburg ranked as Germany’s richest city per capita, with an average income of €92,600 (about $115,000), but without those smokestacks, the city of more than 120,000 people wouldn’t even exist.

The idea of a German volkswagen, or “people’s car,” dates all the way back to Henry Ford’s Model T, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that a statesponsored effort to mass-produce such an affordable car kicked off, with Ferdinand Porsche in charge of designing the first production model, later dubbed the Beetle. After Volkswagen’s founding (under the original name Gezuvor), a factory site was chosen for its central location on the recently completed Mittelland Canal, itself a notable work of German engineering. The canal stretches for more than 200 miles, connecting several rivers and cities with an important waterway.

The city of Wolfsburg was founded just weeks after the breaking of ground for the Volkswagen factory, and the town and the car company remain inextricably linked.

By Markkus Rovito

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up to 20 stories to quickly fetch it. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes it as the “fastest automatic parking system in the world.”

Yet the heartbeat of Wolfsburg and Volkswagen still emanates from the factory behind those smokestacks. At 6.5 square kilometers, it is to this day the world’s largest automotive factory under one roof. However, today it is a state-of-the-art example of modular car production. Beginning in 2012, VW integrated its bestselling Golf line with the Modular Transverse Matrix (MQB) platform, which enables the company to mass-produce its different car lines with nearly any drive system: standard gas, diesel, FlexFuel, CNG, plug-in hybrid (PHEV), electric drive and, sometime in the future, fuel cell. It’s this modular system that VW believes will give it a competitive advantage in meeting the demand for any and all drive systems in the transitioning automotive marketplace. The modular assembly kits can be incorporated into any factory,

Photos courtesy of Volkswagen Group

Today about 60,000 people, or around half of Wolfsburg’s population, are employed directly or indirectly by Volkswagen, and while its factory smokestacks still hark back to the grimy heyday of 20th-century industrialism, a thoroughly modern vision has sprung up around them.

Across the canal from the factory, a five-star Ritz Carlton hotel gives way to the manicured lawns and architectural wonders of the Autostadt, Volkswagen’s automotive Disneyland of sorts. The 28-hectare museum and park complex hosts several buildings of classic car exhibits, interactive installations and other entertainment. The Autostadt provides a destination for the estimated 25-33% of German Volkswagen customers who physically pick up their new vehicles from VW’s headquarters in Wolfsburg - averaging 500-600 pick-ups a day. The Autostadt’s two glass Cartowers store about 400 cars each, and when it’s time to retrieve one for its new owner, like a giant automobile vending machine, a hydraulic system ascends

With an EPA rating of 116 MPGe, the e-Golf is the most efficient compact EV of the 2015 model year. or any car line in the Volkswagen Group, including VW, Audi and Porsche.

A round of e-Golf When the Volkswagen Golf debuted in 1974, few could have predicted that it would eventually sell more than 30 million units, to become the bestselling European car ever. 40 years later in America, the fully electric VW

e-Golf debuted in 11 states this November (including California, Oregon, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont). It lures prospective buyers with its 116 MPGe efficiency rating (as well as an EPA range of 83 miles), which makes the e-Golf the most efficient compact EV of the 2015 model year. It’s priced at $35,445, in the range of the other EVs in its peer group: the Nissan LEAF ($29,01035,120 MSRP), Ford Focus Electric ($29,170), BMW i3 ($41,350-45,200) and Mercedes-Benz B-Class Electric Drive ($41,450). As an alternative, a 36-month US lease costs $1,999 down and $299 a month.

I had a chance to test-drive the e-Golf through the streets and autobahns of Wolfsburg and neighboring Braunschweig, as part of a group showcase for the e-Golf ’s American launch and a display of VW’s EV manufacturing base. Similar to other EVs, the e-Golf ’s available torque (199 lb-ft) kicks in immediately, so its

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using it as an efficient substitute for most braking other than complete stops. For safety, the regenerative braking activates the brake lights.

The dash display clearly shows the current drive mode, regen and other useful info like the distance traveled and remaining range. As a nice old-school touch, an analog “fuel� gauge shows you the battery’s state of charge (SOC) underneath the speedometer. You can get more detailed information on the range and energy flow, as well as the navigation capabilities and satellite radio, from the 8-inch touchscreen display above the shifter on the dashboard.

While driving the e-Golf was a little more stimulating, riding as a passenger in the front and back seats also proved to be pleasant. The four-door e-Golf has the same 93.5 cubic feet of interior space as the standard Golf, and it feels generously spacious for a compact EV. Families should appreciate its near-rectangular rear storage as

Photos courtesy of Volkswagen Group

pep off the starting blocks is matched only by the soothing silence of the ride. With the ample acceleration, it was tempting to keep the e-Golf in the Normal drive mode the whole time and let it rip on the autobahn whenever possible. However, I wanted to sample its Eco and Eco+ modes as well, which you can comfortably flip between from the steering-wheel controls. Those modes limit the available torque, top speed and air conditioning to varying degrees. The Eco modes are there to help maximize range, but they make the e-Golf a little less fun to drive the difference in available torque is apparent.

Regardless of the drive mode, the e-Golf has four degrees of regenerative braking available, ranging from none to extreme. Regen modes are controlled by tapping the shifter left and right, or nudging it down for B mode - the most extreme regen mode. I enjoyed finding my personal sweet spot for regenerative braking (level 3), and

THE VEHICLES The four-door e-Golf has the same 93.5 cubic feet of interior space as the standard Golf, and it feels generously spacious for a compact EV. well, rather than a geometrically odd-shaped boot.

I also got a chance to test drive the Golf GTE, the PHEV member of the Golf line. Driving it in all-electric mode, in which it has a 31-mile approximate range, was a nearly identical experience to the e-Golf, which is kind of the point of the MQB modular production - to produce the same model of car with different drive types.

Although the Golf GTE is not currently scheduled for sale in the US, it could be introduced there easily, according to Christian Buhlmann, of Volkswagen AG Product Communications. Because of VW’s MQB platform, the company can be fleet with its fleets, so to speak. “The e-Golf is made here in Wolfsburg,” Buhlmann said, “but it could be switched to North America if there is the demand.”

Inside the wolf ’s den The Volkswagen Wolfsburg factory feels like a world unto its own. It has its own roads with bikes, VW cars and in our case, modified Golf tourist carriers that traverse the endless blocks of busy robots, inventoried parts and thousands of workers. As Dr. Harald Manzenrieder, Head of e-Golf Production at the Wolfsburg plant, rattled off facts about the factory, the numbers painted a picture on a huge scale. Every day, the factory runs for 19.5 hours of production, using 2,600 tons of steel and producing about 3,800 cars - one car every 18.4 seconds.

All of that production represents only two main VW product lines, the Golf (2,200 cars a day) and the Touareg/Tiguan SUVs (1,600 cars a day). While the Golf already utilizes the MQB modular assembly kits, the Touareg/Tiguan line will be the next to adopt the MQB platform, opening the way for electrification, which VW plans eventually for all of its vehicle classes, including the other Volkwagen Group brands.

The circumstances behind VW’s headquarters - a town

2015 Volkswagen e-Golf Range 83 miles (EPA) Efficiency 116 MPGe Power 85 kW/115 hp Torque 270 Nm / 199 lb-ft Energy Consumption 12.7 kWh/62.13 miles Battery 24.2 kWh / 323 V Charge times (est.) AC 2.3 kW: 13 hr, 100% SOC AC 3.6 kW: 8 hr, 100% SOC DC: 30 min, 80% SOC DCFC Standard CCS socket (optional) 0-60 mph 10.4 sec (approx.)

Top Speed 87 mph Length/Width/Height 168.1/70.8/57.1 in Curb Weight 3,391 lb Base Price $35,445 (+$820 handling fee)

purpose-built to support a factory, followed by the long tradition of a successful company producing reputable vehicles - has made the Wolfsburg factory something of an anomaly today. “Nobody does this anymore,” Buhlmann said. “It doesn’t make sense for them.”

However, it does make sense for Wolfsburg, where production line 3 has been dedicated to producing the e-Golf and Golf GTE models. It has the capacity to make 1,100 cars a day. As of late October the factory was producing about 100 total e-Golf and Golf GTE units a day - 60-70 of which were e-Golfs, each car with 8,000 distinct parts.

“We have the scale we need to develop the components ourselves,” Buhlmann said, “and we are fine with however many orders we get for whichever powertrain.”

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e-Golf’s High-Voltage Battery System

Image courtesy of Volkswagen Group

A total of 264 25 Ah cells in 27 different modules for 24.2 kWh of capacity

A case of batteries While Wolfsburg takes care of vehicle assembly, certain components of the electrified vehicles are farmed out to satellite factories. As part of VW’s push toward electrification, it hired an additional 400 electric drive experts, and the e-Golf ’s motor/gearbox unit is made at the Volkswagen components plant, a two-hour drive away in Kassel.

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[We’re] relatively free to change from one cell supplier to another. It’s a great advantage that we have.

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Meanwhile, Volkswagen has battery facilities just 24 miles away in a Braunschweig factory. While VW used NiMH batteries for its early hybrids, the company switched to Li-ion for the Jetta hybrid in 2012. The e-Golf uses 25 Ah prismatic cells from Panasonic with nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry. VW packages the cells and integrates battery management controls at the Braunschweig factory, which employs 170 engineers. The combination of an outside cell supplier and in-house battery pack development leaves the company “relatively free to change from one cell supplier to another,” said Dr. Holger Manz, Head of Battery and Suspension Development at the Braunschweig plant. “It’s a great advantage that we have.”

The battery development team evaluated many different options, including small cylindrical 18650 cells (the same package size as the cells in Tesla’s Model S), and in 2012 chose to go with Panasonic’s larger-format 25 Ah cells. Dr. Manz said that the 18650 cells the company tested “do not have the safety levels of the cells we’re using now.”

THE VEHICLES

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The final production version of the e-Golf ’s battery pack was designed in such a way that it does not require any active cooling - neither liquid nor forced-air. Originally, prototypes did utilize cooling in the initial testing phase, but the team decided it had enough heat dissipation on its own. “It has enough size and surface area that it dissipates for the amount of power that it needs,” said Dr. Manz.

The e-Golf uses a total of 264 cells in 27 modules of either six or 12 cells, for 24.2 kWh of capacity. The 323 V pack weighs about 701 lbs, or 21% of the vehicle’s curb weight.

Some EV developers have enjoyed the freedom of an original chassis designed specifically for electrification (like BMW’s i3 and Tesla’s Model S), however the e-Golf battery team had a chassis restricted to the specs that would work with the Golf MQB system. “It was very difficult to fit all these cells into the package we had,” Manz said.

In the end, they worked with Panasonic on the particular cell size to fit the pack underneath the front and rear seats and middle tunnel. The VW team boasts that the final design not only reinforced the vehicle floor, but also lent the car extra heft thanks to its low center of gravity enhancing the car’s handling.

The Braunschweig battery plant - the only full battery factory in the VW Group - can crank out an e-Golf battery pack every 20 minutes. The process is highly automated, and the team is working on getting the individual time down to 15 minutes in anticipation of increased demand.

The fully assembled packs go through system function tests, mechanical tests, climate tests, thermal analysis tests and a Hardware in the Loop (HIL) test before they arrive at Wolfsburg with a 90% SOC.

states where they see the most demand are the ZEV states, where local mandates and incentives effectively create some demand, but if the automaker does nothing to market the car, sales won’t dictate an expansion of its reach, and the car will die on the vine.

So, while most automakers issue similar boilerplate on compliance, we eventually develop our own ideas about whether an EV is a compliance car (Ford Focus Electric) or not (BMW i3). In VW’s case, one of our PR contacts gave us the expected answer on compliance, so we’re left to wait, see and speculate.

Our speculation: Volkswagen is clearly investing in electrification, but so is everyone else beholden to compliance. We’re not sure if VW is investing more than other automakers, but with its drivetrain-interchangeable MQB system, it is investing differently. In 2013, 23.5% of all of the 300+ VW models sold in 153 countries were diesel, so even without the concern for a transition to electricity or the question mark of fuel cells, VW already had ample reason to perfect a drivetrain-agnostic approach to its product lines.

With MQB now in place and slowly spreading out to all of the VW Group’s lines, the automaker can invest in any and all drivetrain possibilities more efficiently, using effectively the same powertrain across several product lines and expanding to fulfill the need for whatever drive type takes off. It’s a different approach to the “wait and see what the demand dictates” strategy, but if it means faster availability for more EV models, that should be a welcome sign for EV believers. Sure, it may not be as exciting to see the same old VW models electrified as it is to see a brand-new EV-only design unveiled, but it should free up some R&D resources that can instead be used to spread around electric drivetrains and on marketing. After all, this is the “people’s car,” not the glitterati’s dream machine.

Also, the question of compliance has to expand out to the world at large rather than focus narrowly on the United States. As Buhlmann pointed out, CARB standards are not the only guidelines out there. China is working on similar rules, and while the specific requirements may not be the same, Europe also has ambitious carbon-reduction plans for its businesses.

It was very difficult to fit all these cells into the package we had.

Compliance or defiance?

With every new EV release, we can’t escape the inevitable question: Is this a compliance car? We’ve come to expect the automaker’s answer to that question to go something (exactly) like this: “Absolutely not. We’re rolling out this car initially in the states where we see the most demand, and we’ll expand its reach as sales dictate.” Of course, the

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NOV/DEC 2014 59

So for Europe’s largest carmaker, battery technology is ranking high on our agenda.

”

Golf GTE, the VW Passat GTE debuted at this year’s Paris Motor Show, and should start delivering to European markets in October 2015. It has a total peak output of 215 hp, a peak torque of 295 lb-ft and a 9.9 kWh battery pack, as opposed to the Golf GTE’s 8.7 kWh battery (but the two cars have the same all-electric range of 31 miles).

There probably won’t be a Passat GTE in the US until later in the decade, because VW uses a slightly different Passat design in the US, and it won’t be replaced yet.

Stateside drivers will have a chance to experience the GTE a bit sooner in the form of the 2016 Audi A3 e-tron PHEV, which has basically the same powertrain as the European VW GTE models. However, the Audi modular system is called MLB (Porsche’s is called MSB), rather than VW’s MQB. The Audi A3 e-tron, which Green Car Reports said featured “well-tuned responses and zippy performance,” and about a 25-mile all-electric range, should be on sale in the US in the summer or autumn of 2015.

In the meantime, those who would like to see more BEVs in the pipeline are anxiously awaiting the battery developments that would clear the way for more affordable long-range vehicles. Volkswagen says it has its hat in that ring - pushing the capabilities of current and nextgen technology simultaneously. At the Wolfsburg factory, Dr. Manzenrieder assured us that they are putting a lot of “brain power” and R&D into next-gen longer-range battery technology, and he expects to see something “in the very near future.” He said, “it’s not a think tank here; What’s next it’s a do tank.”

As we contemplate the depth of VW’s commitment In July, Volkswagen Group’s Professor Dr. Wolfgang to EVs, the Volkswagen Steiger gave a presentation Group’s plug-in vehicle in London revealing the plans roll on as e-Golfs roll company’s short-term road off the Wolfsburg assembly map to improving energy It’s not a think tank here; lines. density. Dr. Steiger said that it’s a do tank.

Using essentially the same VW sees a clear path from PHEV powertrain as the the 25 Ah cells in the e-Golf

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Photos courtesy of Volkswagen Group

“

THE VEHICLES to 28 Ah, 34 Ah, and 36 Ah cells in the near future, which customer acceptance will grow fast. We are reaching would increase the energy density of the pack from the out to the world of science to make all this happen. Of 170 Wh/kg in the current e-Golf to about 220 Wh/kg. course, these are complex challenges, and progress is not When combined with advances in weight savings, aeroattained overnight.” dynamics and overall efficiency, this could give VW’s EVs What does happen overnight: Wolfsburg pumping out a range of about 165 miles without any breakthroughs in car after car. And the only thing that decides whether exotic battery chemistries. those cars are plug-ins or not is demand.

However, the company is leaving no rock unturned, and is exploring advanced chemistry options like Li-sulfur and Li-air through its different organizations, including its research facility in Palo Alto, California.

At a Stanford University speech Electrification Evolution in November, Dr. Martin Winterkorn, Chairman of the Board of Volkswagen, dropped a hint as to what that next big thing may Hybrid be: solid-state batteries. ReplacStart / Stop ing traditional liquid electrolytes Electric with a nonflammable inorganic solid electrolyte simplifies battery design while improving safety and durability, and could boost EV range to as much as 435 miles, at a volumetric energy density of about 1,000 Wh/l. Solid states could also be packaged more efficiently in series stacks and bi-polar structures using largecapacity electrode materials such as sulfur and lithium metal.

“High-performance energy storage is key to big challenges of our times - namely, climate protection and a sustainable mobility,” Dr. Winterkorn said. “To really succeed with electric vehicles, we need batteries with a higher The automotive industry is changing fast.

With an engineering team dedicated to range, less weight and lower cost. advanced technologies and our close Only a few years ago, nearly every car working relationships with manufacturers, It is crucial for economies of scale used the same battery type and common Midtronics is committed to anticipating starting and charging systems. in purchasing and production. So and developing solutions to match That's all changing. for Europe’s largest carmaker, batthe complexity of these new battery and The market is rapidly accelerating from tery technology is ranking high electrical systems. only a few hybrid vehicles to broad on our agenda. If we also improve Our superior technologies and advanced electrification in several forms. From platforms enable Midtronics to offer reliability and battery lifespan, start-stop systems to full electric vehicles, ■ ■ ■

the number of battery types and systems continue to evolve.

products that match the needs and scale of transportation service markets worldwide.

www.midtronics.com

@Midtronics

Tesla’s batteries

past, present and future esla seems to make a point of doing things differently than other automakers, and its battery pack - the most critical component of any EV - is a prime example. While every other major EV maker has chosen to develop its own large-format battery cells, when the Seers of Silicon Valley developed the Roadster, they chose a small-format battery that was already being used in huge quantities for laptops and other electronic gadgets.

This may have seemed like a homemade hack at the time, but it later came to be seen as a prescient move.

Competitor Fisker’s dependence on a fellow startup, A123, as its sole battery supplier caused it some anxious moments. When a manufacturing defect caused A123 to recall a batch of batteries, Fisker risked a costly production delay. Tesla’s batteries are a tried-and-true format that’s readily available from Panasonic and other experienced and well-capitalized corporate giants, so the risks of any shortage are minimal.

Given Tesla’s ongoing success, it’s puzzling that no other automaker has followed its lead in the battery department - they all continue to use proprietary large-format cells.

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This article is an excerpt from

Tesla Motors:

How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool, and Sparked the Next Tech Revolution

by Charged Senior Editor Charles Morris

When Tesla designed the Model S, which, unlike the Roadster, would be engineered in-house, using few or no off-the-shelf components, many assumed the company would ditch the little cylindrical cells, and develop a large-format flat cell similar to what GM and Nissan were using for their EVs. Wrong again - Tesla opted to stick with the 18650 small-format cells. It wasn’t just the convenient size.

Panasonic’s nickel-based lithium-ion chemistry yielded the highest energy density available in a production

THE VEHICLES

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It always ends up being very controversial, for reasons I don’t totally understand.

Nobody gives a damn about the shape and size of your fuel tank!

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product, the cells were durable and long-lasting, and the company had many years of experience with the manufacturing process, which kept costs low and reliability high. However, Tesla did work with Panasonic to develop an improved version.

In January 2010, the two companies announced that they would collaborate to develop next-generation automotive battery cells, which JB Straubel said would be optimized for use in EVs, and would be “the highest-energy density EV battery packs in the world.” In October 2011, the two companies finalized a supply agreement that called for Panasonic to supply Tesla with enough cells to

build 80,000 vehicles over the next four years.

Aside from their size and shape, the cells used in Model S are unique, but some superficial observers continue to insist that they are “laptop batteries,” which Straubel seems to find a bit irritating. “For the immediate future we see 18650 as the most compelling,” he told the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) in 2013. “Believe me, we challenge it constantly. It always ends up being very controversial, for reasons I don’t totally understand. Nobody gives a damn about the shape and size of your fuel tank!

But for some reason the shape and size of what you put your chemicals in to carry your energy in an EV is supercontroversial. What people should really debate is the nature of the chemicals inside - that’s what determines the cost and performance.”

“At this point we really have heavily customized that cell. We’ve totally custom-engineered that cell, working jointly with Panasonic to create…an automotive cell, tested to automotive standards. It doesn’t go into laptops anywhere. What keeps us in that general shape and size is the production and cost efficiency. We’re seeing price points that none of the larger-format cells are able to meet.”

Naturally, Tesla is always on the lookout for new and improved battery technology. In fact, it’s widely believed

Approximate Cell Size of Popular Plug-In Vehicles (1st production models)

Nissan LEAF (2011)

Approximate Cell Size: 290 mm x 216 mm x 7.1 mm (192 cells per pack, 24 kWh total)

Chevrolet Volt (2011)

Approximate Cell Size: 177 mm x 127 mm x 6.3 mm (288 cells per pack, 16 kWh total)

Tesla Model S (2012)

Approximate Cell Size: 65 mm long x 18.6 mm dia (7,104 cells per pack, 85 kWh total)

“

What keeps us in that general shape and size is the production and cost efficiency. We’re seeing price points that none of the larger-format cells are able to meet.

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Image courtesy of Arnold de Leon/Flickr

Image courtesy of Theron Trowbridge/Flickr

that they are pretty far along. Next-generation batteries have already been demonstrated in the laboratory by several separate teams of researchers, and it would be strange if Tesla wasn’t already testing them at this point.

However, as of this writing, the company has made no announcement as to when an upgrade might be introduced. Tesla Product Planner Ted Merendino told me back in February 2013 that it would probably be about five years hence.

Range, range, range! That’s what the mainstream press harps on in any story about EVs, and the EV media also tends to focus on the quest for a better battery, breathlessly reporting every discovery of a new chemistry that could yield more energy density (the term “Holy Grail” gets tossed around a lot). However, capacity isn’t everything - other factors may be even more critical, as Merendino told me. “Tesla has one of the largest cell characterization laboratories in the world - we have just about every cell you can imagine on test. Energy density is one attribute that we’re looking at, but we’re also looking at durability, reliability, susceptibility to heat, discharge/recharge cycles - hundreds of different attributes that make the best cell for automotive use, not the least of which is price and availability in the marketplace. We don’t want to get into a situation where we’re dependent on one supplier.”

JB Straubel made a similar point in his interview with the SAE. “The first question we ask when we meet a new

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Tesla has one of the largest cell characterization laboratories in the world - we have just about every cell you can imagine on test.

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cell company is, show us your cost roadmap. Nobody wants to talk about cost - they always leave that to the end of the discussion. That’s silly. For EVs, there are some key safety and performance metrics that are foundational.

They have to be there. Beyond that the most important thing is cost efficiency of energy storage. So if anyone has a more cost-efficient cell architecture, we’d be all ears.

Right now nobody has proven they have a more costeffective cell architecture than ours.”

In May 2014, that still seemed to be the case, as Elon Musk said that while new developments on the battery front were being announced almost daily, “We have yet to see even a single example…of a cell working at the laboratory level that is better than the one that we have, or the ones that we expect to come out with.” Now, the way I parse this statement, he isn’t saying that there’s no improved battery technology in the offing - on the contrary, he’s saying that Tesla will be the one to develop it. Musk

THE VEHICLES and his merry men are masters at managing expectations for fun and profit, so just because Tesla has been playing down the possibility of a new magic battery doesn’t mean they don’t have one waiting in the wings, ready to be tweeted out on a slow news day.

A rumor that Tesla is working on a new type of hybrid pack that combines two different battery technologies to deliver a huge increase in range floated around the discussion groups in late 2013, and several outlets reported it as breaking news after a couple of stock analysts discovered the story (as TSLA set a new record, flirting with $200 a share for the first time).

Tesla has filed at least eight patents on applications of metal-air battery technology, as Green Car Reports’ John Voelcker reported in April 2013. One of these, “Efficient Dual Source Battery Pack System for an Electric Vehicle,” envisions two battery packs working together. An extract from the application: A method of optimizing the operation of the power source of an electric vehicle is provided, where the power source is comprised of a first battery pack (e.g., a non-metal-air battery pack) and a second battery pack (e.g., a metal-air battery pack).

The power source is optimized to minimize use of the least efficient battery pack (e.g., the second battery pack) while ensuring that the electric vehicle has sufficient power to traverse the expected travel distance before the next battery charging cycle.

Metal-air batteries have high energy density but low power density, while lithium-ion batteries offer the reverse, so a hybrid system could theoretically leverage the strengths of both to maximize range and performance.

Ultracapacitors, which feature virtually unlimited cycle life and great power density, could theoretically also be

“

Nobody wants to talk about cost - they always leave that to the end of the discussion.

That’s silly.

”

“

So if anyone has a more costefficient cell architecture, we’d be all ears.

”

added to the mix (remember that Musk planned to study ultracapacitors at Stanford back in ancient times). This idea parallels the paradigm of tiered computer storage, which employs expensive but fast cache memory, cheaper RAM and super-cheap high-capacity hard drives.

All of this was (and is) mere speculation, but it seemed particularly relevant at the time - the same week, a GM exec acknowledged that automakers are “in a race” to develop better batteries.

That race continues. Nissan recently announced that it plans to be “pragmatic” about obtaining the best and cheapest batteries available, whether that means producing them at its own battery plants, or buying them from an outside supplier such as LG Chem. Rumor has it that the Korean battery behemoth is also likely to provide the batteries for GM’s vaunted 200-mile EV when it hits the market in a couple of years.

The Quest for the Grail is surely bound up with the development of the Gigafactory. Several EV-watchers have opined that, in order to deliver Model 3 at the desired price point, Tesla will need to make a battery breakthrough. When the Gigafactory finally comes online, it’s a safe bet that it won’t be producing the same battery cells that are powering today’s Model S.

Battery technology is just one of the things that make Model S such an amazing automobile. Charles’s new book also includes lengthy quotes from Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen on the advantages of designing an EV from the ground up, and from Tesla founder Ian Wright about the company’s unique systems approach to vehicle software. For more information, see www.teslamotorsbook.com.

NOV/DEC 2014 65

CURRENTevents

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Image courtesy of Efacec

DC chargers are getting smaller and lighter, with commensurate cost savings. Portuguese electrical manufacturer Efacec has introduced its new QC24S, which provides fast charging for CCS-compatible EVs (VW, BMW, Daimler, GM). A CHAdeMO version is scheduled for launch by the end of this year.

“This new product is a breakthrough and will be a huge contributor to the adoption of EVs, being an affordable charger like never before in the market,” said Pedro Silva, Managing Director of Efacec Electric Mobility. “We have invested heavily during this last year in developing this new concept and in its design to make it easily integrated in any network.

We have also extended our slogan ‘choose the color of your energy’ even further by offering the possibility to customize the front panel to any customer, with a stylish design and attractive look.”

The 24 kW QC24S complements Efacec’s existing QC50 and QC45 models, both of which deliver 50 kW and can be equipped with multi-standard outputs. The company also offers the QC20, a 20 kW charger.

With a weight of 55 kg (121 lbs) and dimensions of 35.6x13x16.3 inches, the QC24S looks like a worthy competitor for BMW’s similarly compact DC charger. It can be wall- or pedestal-mounted indoors or outdoors.

BMW has developed an energy-efficient street light that is also an EV charging station. The Light and Charge unit combines LED technology with a standard Level 2 charging connector that’s integrated into BMW’s ChargeNow network.

“Light and Charge is a simple and innovative solution to naturally integrate a reliable network of charging stations in the city,” said BMW Board Member Peter Black Bauer. “With the ChargeNow map of BMW i, we are creating access to the world’s largest network of charging stations. We are pleased that we can join with our partners to promote the expansion of the charging infrastructure with the project Light and Charge.”

Two prototype units are now in service, and open to the public, in front of BMW’s Munich headquarters, and the company plans to launch a pilot project in the spring of 2015, using existing local lighting networks.

Street lighting and EV charging seem like a natural combination, as Green Car Reports noted - the ease of installation could make Charge and Light units attractive to other municipalities, and owners of expensive EVs are sure to find a well-lighted charging station appealing at night.

Images courtesy of BMW Group

BMW combines street lighting with EV charging

Efacec introduces new compact DC charger

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Brisbane-based Tritium, developer of the shapely Veefil Fast Charger, plans to build what it says will be Australia’s largest fast-charging network.

The proposed Fast Cities Network will comprise four Veefil fast-charging units in Brisbane, and eight near other popular destinations in the Southeast Queensland region, strategically located along major transport corridors.

“Australia, ahead of the world in so many areas, is lagging behind as a nation in the uptake of electric vehicles, which have been shown to make an enormous contribution to creating cleaner, healthier cities,” says Tritium’s Commercial Director, Paul Sernia. “We are launching this initiative as a global demonstration of how to operate and run a fast-charging EV network beyond just one population center. EVs are coming, and it’s something councils around the world need to deal with. We want them to be looking to Queensland to see how a great intercity charging network can be operated.”

You asked for White...

www.liteoncleanenergy.com

“In countries where there is significant growth in EVs, the availability of a fast-charging infrastructure has been critical,” continues Sernia. “Veefil fast chargers will be able to add 50 km of driving distance in just 10 minutes, enabling EV drivers to easily travel the region and address perceptions of range anxiety.”

“We are currently talking to a number of organizations about how they can become involved in the project,” says Sernia, “and we would be interested in hearing from any business, car club or civic association which would like to support the initiative or host a charging unit along the route. Our estimate is the cost of implementing the Fast Cities Network will be around 450,000 Australian dollars.”

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Image courtesy of Tritium

Tritium plans Australia’s largest fast-charging network

CURRENTevents

ChargePoint, which operates one of the world’s largest public charging networks, plans to extend its empire into the home, in conjunction with solar installer Sun Edison.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch, CEO Pasquale Romano explained the synergies between EV charging and solar energy. “The reason we partnered with Sun Edison is that they have a vision beyond solar they look at the whole energy-efficiency genre as a holistic problem-set for consumers. Together we can bring our drivers a pretty compelling offer - a ChargePoint home charger in connection with a solar installation on the roof.”

According to Romano, the package deal will be a strong incentive for EV buyers to go solar, and vice versa. “An electric car makes so much sense if you are making a lot of your own power, because if you are making electricity at a favorable rate, you might as well move your fuel costs into that category. Combining solar and an EV can give you some pretty dramatic economic benefits. Right now the economics on solar are so great for residential that if you have the ability to do it, it is a pretty easy decision.”

Sun Edison already has a well-established commercial solar business, and ChargePoint has a good beachhead in public charging, which should give the partners a head start on competitors. “Drivers know ChargePoint - they get introduced to it when they buy a car. We have auto partnerships with just about every major car manufacturer, and in many cases we are integrated right into the in-dash navigation system. They know about us the minute they buy the car, and they see us everywhere they drive around.”

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Nissan has added Chicago and Atlanta to its No Charge to Charge promotion, which offers two years of free public charging with the purchase or lease of a new LEAF. The program is now available in 13 of the EV’s top markets.

No Charge to Charge gives new LEAF buyers access to CHAdeMO fast chargers spread throughout retail stores, tollway oases and other strategic locations, as well as free one-hour charging sessions at some 140 Level 2 charging stations. Drivers can find eligible chargers online, or via the PlugShare app for iOS or Android.

Atlanta has been the number-one LEAF market since mid-2013 due to a variety of factors, including an available Georgia state tax credit, single-occupant access to high occupancy vehicle (HOV) and high occupancy toll (HOT) lanes and a number of major companies that now provide workplace charging for their employees.

In Chicago, LEAF buyers can quality for the Illinois Alternative Fuels Rebate of up to $4,000. “Adding free public fast charging in Chicagoland gives Nissan LEAF an even greater competitive edge over other vehicles, regardless of their fuel source,” said Nissan EV chief Brendan Jones.

Image courtesy of Nissan

ChargePoint partners with solar installer Sun Edison

Chicago and Atlanta get free LEAF charging

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Photo © CHARGED EVs Magazine

Nissan tests LEAF to Home power system

Nissan has begun testing its LEAF to Home power supply system, which aims to use EV technology to help power grids cope with peaks in demand, provide power during natural disasters, and make electricity from renewable sources more viable.

Energy management firm Eneres is conducting the tests, using LEAF EVs at several Nissan sales outlets.

Nissan launched the LEAF to Home system in 2012, and has donated 47 of the systems to local communities in Japan for use as backup power sources. Demand response, a scheme under which power companies pay aggregators to institute energy conservation measures, has been an important topic in Japan - since the March 2011 earthquake the supply and demand of electricity during peak use hours in Japan has drawn attention. By using the storage capacity of EVs and Vehicle to Home (V2H) systems, consumers can reduce their use of power at peak times without turning off lights and appliances.

This is particularly useful in commercial establishments where it is difficult to turn power off to save electricity.

Image courtesy of ABB

British Columbia sees rapid growth in charging usage

Powertech Labs, a subsidiary of local utility BC Hydro, tracks 350 of BC’s 550 public chargers, and reports that the number of charging sessions at those stations doubled between August 2013 and August 2014.

“Over 40,000 charging sessions were reported in the first year the network has been active,” said Mark Dubois-Phillips, Director of Smart Utility Services at Powertech Labs. “There were 1,684 charging sessions during the month of August 2013, and by August 2014 the number rose 120% to 3,745 monthly sessions. It’s off to a good start.”

Powertech created the evCloud tracking tool to report charging network data, and to assist research that relates to EV infrastructure. Station owners can log in to track their own data, and may also choose to have it displayed publicly on the site.

Jim Vanderwal, Senior Program Manager at the Fraser Basin Council, noted that there are some quieter stations that only see one or two people plugging in each week, but that is to be expected at this early stage. “The first electric car rolled out in BC just two years ago. There are now about 1,300 on the road and the numbers are growing steadily.”

Vanderwal says that BC’s position today is similar to Oregon’s in 2012, which at the time had about 1,400 electric vehicles, 700 Level 2 charging stations and 10 fast charging stations. Oregon now has one of the highest per-capita EV sales of all states, and the number of EVs on the road has increased by more than three times since 2012.

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CURRENTevents California may lift ban on utilities owning EVSE

In the charged world of the future, EVs will take energy from the grid when needed, and return energy to the grid when needed. This will require utilities to have a dependable way to measure the back-and-forth flow of electrons, so they can charge (or pay) their customers appropriately. In the industry, this is known as “revenue-grade” metering.

Utilities prefer to own or control the devices delivering revenue-grade data, but installing a smart meter just to keep track of EV charging, as some utilities in California have been doing, is an expensive proposition.

What if a revenue-grade meter could simply be included in a charging station? That’s what smart meter maker Itron and EV charging innovator ClipperCreek aim to find out. The two firms have launched a pilot project with the Maryland electric utility Pepco that will test demand response and variable pricing programs, using Itron virtual smart meters embedded in ClipperCreek charging stations and linked to Pepco’s network.

Pepco has been running its Plug-In Vehicle Charging Pilot for a year, offering customers either a standard time-of-use rate or a special demand-response tariff, using a second “socket meter” to separately measure EV charging. “The third option is using the Itron and ClipperCreek solution,” said Itron’s Stephen Johnson. “You have an EV-specific time-ofuse rate, and you also have demand response, both using the submeter in the charging station.”

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Image courtesy of ClipperCreek

ClipperCreek, Itron test EVSE with smart meters

Two California utility companies have requested permission to enter the EV charging station business, and a group of state legislators has recommended that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) lift a 2011 ban on investor-owned utilities owning EV charging infrastructure.

The original intent of the ban was to protect competition in what was then a nascent EV charging market, by preventing utilities from gaining monopolistic control. However, proponents of the change say that removing the ban would result in more EV charging stations becoming available, and even lead to lower energy prices for ratepayers.

One private-sector fan of the change is ChargePoint CEO Pasquale Romano, who did “a happy dance” when he heard the news. Romano explained that allowing utilities to participate enables them to reward station operators for installing equipment that is compatible with their grid management programs. Utilities can also lower the entry cost for independent operators, because a utility that helps an entrepreneur defray the initial cost of equipment can recoup that investment by selling electricity.

The two utilities - San Diego Gas and Electric, and Southern California Edison (SCE) - filed requests for permission to build $500 million worth of charging infrastructure. SCE wants to install up to 30,000 stations over the next five years, and proposes to provide a rebate to customers that install EV charging, who will be able to choose their preferred hardware vendor.

Romano likes SCE’s proposal, because the utility doesn’t seek to make decisions for charging station operators like ChargePoint, but does want to give those companies incentives for continued innovation. “Their recommendations take into consideration the need for driver adoption, sustained innovation, site owner choice, and installation practices using their own resources and expertise,” said Romano. “This allowance for choice will increase competition and spur private investment in new technologies and business models,” said Romano.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

Image courtesy of PowerTree

Panasonic, Powertree partner on solar charging stations Panasonic Enterprise Solutions has partnered with Powertree Services to build 68 EV charging stations at multi-unit residential properties in San Francisco. Each is part of a system that includes solar panels and battery storage. The installation will not only provide charging for vehicles, but also solar power to the buildings and load-balancing services to the grid.

When complete, the 68 stations will have a total capacity of 6.1 MW of power and 2.5 MW of EV charging capacity. Each station is configured to support up to 70 amps or 18 kW. “Panasonic is committed to driving new technologies and collaborating with entrepreneurs to help bring about renewable energy options and a sustainable future. Our work now will pay off in terms of future economic and other benefits for building owners, and a reduction in greenhouse gases,” said Panasonic Eco Solutions Managing Director Jamie Evans.

“Owners of multi-tenant apartment and mixed-use buildings face a rising demand from tenants, drivers and new regulations that combine to require them to install electric charging facilities and support electric vehicles,” said Powertree CEO Stacey Reineccius. “With Powertree Services owners can turn this potentially burdensome situation into new value and offer attractive new amenities for their tenants even in medium to small urban properties with no capital outlay by the property owner.”

The

Ripples of

Disrupt EVs, renewables & energy storage: The unstoppable trio of energy’s future

The concept of disruption is often discussed in the fields of semiconductors, the internet, data, computers and software. But what about the energy industry? The world has been largely generating and consuming energy the same way for over a century.

Charged talked to Mike Calise, Head of Electric Vehicle Solutions for North America at Schneider Electric, about the early-stage trends of an industry disruptor.

Charged: What’s the premise of disruption, what does it really mean, how is it defined?

Mike Calise: Disruption is typically when a product,

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technology, or business model innovation that works in one market is applied to a new market, and that causes a game-changing outcome in the new market. The technology or business model for the original market becomes so prevalent that the cost efficiencies gained can now be applied to other markets. Then the new market accepts this disruptive innovation, and even if it doesn’t fit perfectly at first, people begin to use it. Then proliferation occurs and it expands to the point where it becomes highly costefficient and well-suited for that new market. That’s kind of a classic view of a disruptive innovation.

To quote Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, “If you’re a little better, a little faster and a little cheaper, you’re dead.” The idea is that a disruption really needs to be a game-changer in an industry - at least an order of magnitude that is a 10x level of disruption - otherwise it won’t work. Unless it’s going to create a paradigm shift, it’s more of a sustaining innovation than a disruptive innovation.

When you look at examples of disruption, true disruptions disrupt the entire supply chain, not just one technology. There are many modern examples, like iTunes

What seems innocuous in the beginning... eventually can be an incredibly disruptive force.

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disrupting CDs, Amazon disrupting brick and mortar book stores, the smart phone, which is a sophisticated computer disrupting the cell phone, and the hand-held camera. Applying the laws of accelerated returns, you can see the impact of these exponential growth curves.

What seems innocuous in the beginning, or not quite disruptive, because it will take more time than expected, eventually can be an incredibly disruptive force. It only took 13 years for the modern car to completely disrupt the horse and buggy as the main transportation technology from 1900 to 1913. Long before Moore’s Law was understood, the laws of accelerated returns and disruptive innovations were prevalent.

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tion

Q&A

MIKE CALISE

Charged: And you see these trends happening now with EVs? Mike Calise: Absolutely. Rechargeable batteries were designed originally for things like laptops, power tools, hand-held equipment and cell phones. Not too long ago we were all plugging in our computers, and now everybody has a rechargeable notebook computer, tablet and smartphone. The cost of lithium-ion batteries used to power those devices is coming down very quickly as the manufacturing efficiencies increase. Disruption doesn’t necessarily mean that there has to be some technology breakthrough. It could mean that the costs are coming down because of a manufacturing explosion and scale.

Then the early EV innovators asked, “What if we apply this battery technology to a car? Does it make sense as a strategy for greenhouse gas reduction and energy security?” The answer at the time was, “No. It’s way too expensive. There’s no infrastructure, no unique business models, no market, etc.”

But early innovators can always see the big-picture potential, so they tried to put these modern-day batteries in

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cars as early as the 90s. In a-service model. fact, electric cars were comEV owners demandpeting with gas cars back ing charg­ing installations This is the beginning of the in the early 1900s. Classic where their car is parked is disruptive trend because the of early stage markets, a per­fect example of why cost of batteries decreases and there were a lot of fits and we’re in Market Phase II starts and failures. The first the “EV Willing” period. the accessibility of ubiquitous attempt at battery-powered Here people are willing charging increases. cars were not productionto buy these cars, which quality, and riddled with spawns more charger dechallenges. Charging mand, and then more EV companies with government funding put early electric demand again as we spiral up. vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) out there that was This is the beginning of the disruptive trend, because not ideal, some didn’t work well, and wasn’t in locations the cost of batteries decreases and the accessibility of where people needed it. Big companies and emerging ubiquitous charging increases. EV battery costs started at companies with great ideas and intelligent management $1,000 per kWh in 2010. In the first Nissan LEAF, for exinvested a lot of capital early on with little returns. Nothample, that 24 kWh pack cost about $24,000 to produce. ing much happens in the early days, but even so, that was But the expectation is that, in spite of early high costs, the an adequate start. cost of batteries is going to drop 10 times - down from There were early failures because rapid, massive growth $1,000 to $100 per kWh in time. was falsely expected, and this is the trap, because disrupToday you will hear some analysts say that batteries tive innovations take time. As the venture capital world will come down in a linear way. It is more likely we are knows, early failures are expected, but the innovative seeing the beginning of a step change. When we have a business models for EVs, energy storage and PV solar are ten-times reduction in cost, the EV approaches parity beginning to take shape as a big energy play with very with the ICE vehicle. We predict that will be sometime high stakes, and now the game is shifting to an energy-as- between 2020 and 2025, but maybe sooner. In fact you

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

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Our prediction is that, by the end of this decade, you’ll be able to charge everywhere without thinking... like your cell phone.

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Images courtesy of Schneider Electric

energy costs, lower maintenance costs, and innovative financing models. Tesla’s been paying for your vehicular travel miles with corridor Supercharging for the luxury class, and now even Nissan pays for your “fuel” (electricity) with their No Charge to Charge program. Zero cost per gallon for the first two years. That should be frontpage news. have parity today in the sport luxury class.

We’re not on a literal Moore’s Law for batteries, because that’s a reference to integrated circuits (functionality of silicon doubles about every 18 months for the same price). We’re not on that trajectory with batteries yet, but we’re certainly on a doubling trajectory. The question is, how many years does it take to double? With disruption trends, that doubling trajectory can actually change in time, and you’re accelerating the acceleration. So within seven years, we may have batteries that give you twice the capacity for the same cost, or the same capacity for half the cost. But then the battery technology may double again in the next five years. Then, it may double again in three years. So after 15 years, we’re on a three-year doubling trajectory. That’s highly disruptive.

Charged: We’re seeing the price of gasoline plummet lately; could this be a death knell for EVs? Mike Calise: The fact is the price of oil historically has always fluctuated, but it’s the spikes that take the toll on world economies. We get lulled into a sense of security, do nothing about it and then let the next spike impact us again. Even if we go below $2.00/gallon again, we may see delayed EV adoption from the late majority sector, but the early majority will still reap the benefit of even lower

Charged: Where does charging infrastructure fit into the EV disruption equation?

Mike Calise: It’s extremely important to create availability of charging infrastructure that impacts effective range.

We’re now in the period where people are willing to buy these cars, but they’re still not mainstream. We’re at 1% adoption nationwide, and maybe going to 5% adoption in major California cities, but they are growing in Texas, New York, Illinois and other high-population states.

Studies show that EV drivers are known to be very satisfied with their purchases. It won’t be long before the cat’s out of the bag on the EV experience centered around economics, performance and driving pleasure. But it takes time to educate the mainstream, and the mainstream wants more visible available charging stations to reduce range risk.

Our prediction is that by the end of this decade, you’ll be able to charge everywhere without thinking, that’s toward the end of the “EV Able” Market Phase III. That means you’ll be able to charge at home, at work and wherever your car parks or rests, including schools, retail malls, hospitals, destination centers, movie theaters, resorts, ballparks, libraries, civic centers and even gas stations. That means charging without thinking, like your cell phone. By that time you’ll likely have many 100-, 200- and even 400-mile-range EVs. At that time

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE we will see the creation of a market adoption tornado the beginning of true cost parity across multiple vehicle classes with ICE vehicles. EVs will have great range and the ability to charge everywhere, so overall, they will have excellent effective range.

Remember you can buy a cost-effective Chevy Volt today with 300-mile range that drives 90% of your typical miles on electricity, and can average 95 MPGe. It’s on the horizon that a domino effect will start to eventually make ICE vehicles the minority. We have some predictive models that suggest that by 2040 there may be full disruption, but it may be sooner, in 2030, about the same time it took for horse-and-buggy disruption (see Tony Seba’s book Clean Disruption). The internal combustion engine wastes 75% of its energy in lost heat. The electric motor is 95% efficient. The writing is on the wall.

Some people refer to it as the chicken-and-egg dilemma - it’s really a spiral-up rippling effect of ubiquitous charging and low-cost batteries. Eventually, when we’re able to charge everywhere, the batteries will be sized for the duty cycle of the vehicle. A lot of people ask, “When the batteries are cost-effective and you can get 200 miles out of a vehicle that costs the same as today’s Nissan LEAF, will you still need charging?” Of course you will, because ubiquitous charging will unleash even more adoption, and you can right-size your EV purchase to meet your family use cases. Think commuter, highschooler, weekender, etc…We’ll get duty cycle sized to the vehicle. That suggests you could buy a brand new very low-cost 100-mile-range vehicle, and that car company may even pay for public charging for you. You will get paid to drive.

You’ll have long-distance, more expensive vehicles like those that Tesla has built. You can pay for 300- or 400-mile range, but at 400 miles you’re done, because humans can’t drive that long without taking a break.

When that human takes a coffee, email or bathroom break, the batteries will charge so quickly that within twenty minutes you’ll get another hundred miles. Then you’re ready to go to sleep. So you see that the cost of batteries and the amount of ubiquitous chargers go hand in hand. The ripple effect of multiple disruptive innovations.

Our job at Schneider Electric is to put these chargers in everywhere. Today, we are meeting market demands for home, the workplace, retail, hospitals, universities, hotels, ballparks and destination centers. Once installed, drivers appear. Look at Google’s campus, for example. Every time

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“

Every time they put in 25 new charging ports 35 new drivers show up with EVs.

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they put in 25 new charging ports 35 new drivers show up with EVs. Charged: What do these disruption trends suggest about the pace of future EV adoption?

Mike Calise: We were roughly on the order of 1,000 vehicles in 2010. In 2011, when the LEAF and the Volt came out, we were on the order of 10,000. That was a step change, an order of magnitude more in just a year. And the skeptics said, “There’s only 17,000 plug-in cars on the road and 15 million ICE vehicles being sold. You really think you’re going to make noise with these?”

But then it only took a few years - 2011 to 2014 - to get to, effectively, 100,000 plug-in vehicles per year. That’s two orders of magnitude in just a few years. And there are more than 250,000 on the road now in the US, so we’re starting to get an aggregation effect. The biggest challenge now is to go from 100,000 to 1 million plug-in vehicles a year, and that’s not easy, but neither was going from 10,000 to 100,000. One could argue the toughest challenge was to go from 100 to 1000. Those involved in the EV1 do not take this for granted.

We’re predicting by the end of this decade you may see a million cars a year. Historically, disruptive trends take time, but you can already see the accelerated rate of return trajectory. It’s a tornado of integration between vehicles, energy and batteries. That’s really the sort of powerhouse combination that will disrupt oil and other fossil fuels for transportation. It’s all about efficient energy. That’s what Schneider Electric leads the world in.

Charged: So you think solar power is on a similar disruptive path?

Mike Calise: Definitely, and clearly the stakes are enormous. With photovoltaic (PV) solar you can see silicon technology, which is mainstream in the computer,

Swanson’s Law

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Images courtesy of Schneider Electric

telecom and smartphone industries, applied to the energy industry. The trajectory of solar has been a 14-year history of doubling the installed base every two years. Now energy is an IT problem! It’s on a silicon curve, and now Gordon’s part of the energy conversation, but admittedly it’s more accurately Swanson’s Law. At the same time, solar PV has a learning curve of 22%. That means that every time that installed base doubles (every two years) the cost of solar PV drops by 22%. Solar has dropped by a factor of 154 since 1970.

At the same time, every other source of conventional energy has gone up by 6 to 35 times. Unsubsidized solar is already cheaper than retail electricity prices in many markets around the world: Australia, Chile, Germany, Italy, India (according to Seba’s book Clean Disruption). As solar costs continue to drop and become cheaper than utility

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Graes, Germany Image courtesy of Tim Fuller/Flickr

Bunbury, Western Australia Image courtesy of Duncan Rawlinson/Flickr

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Australia is a prime example of what’s possible... from 1% to 20% adoption in less than four years.

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

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Globally, installed solar went from 1.4 GW capacity in 2000 to 140 GW capacity in 2013.

That’s 100x...in 13 years.

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prices in more electricity markets, we’ll continue to see the exponential growth curve in solar market adoption.

If you look at this curve, with a doubling occurring about every two years, that means that 16 years from now, solar will be 100% of the world’s energy generation. Disruptive innovation. Globally, installed solar went from 1.4 GW capacity in 2000 to 140 GW capacity in 2013. That’s 100x or 43% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in 13 years. At that same rate, we could be at 57 TW by 2030. Factoring in conventional baseload equivalents, that equals about 19 TW, about the same as the forecasted world demand for energy by 2030. There will be other factors that delay 100% PV crossover, but silicon-harvested clean energy can follow an explosive adoption trend based on low costs and exponential growth.

Australia is a prime example of what’s possible. Australia went from 1% to 20% adoption in less than four years.

By comparison, the US population is about 10 times Australia’s population, so the equivalent adoption rate would be 11 million solar installations to stay on the same order of magnitude. Is it possible?

The cost of putting solar on the roof isn’t cheap, but neither was the cost of putting a satellite on the roof for digital broadcast Satellite (DBS). But it took just five years for DirectTV rooftop digital broadcast satellite to go from 1 million to 10 million (10% market penetration), competing against incumbent landline cable companies.

The first year saw 1% adoption (sound familiar?). That was when cable was in full force, and a lot of people were still using antennas. That doubled to 2%, then 4%, then 8% and in five years 10% of the North American market went to digital satellite.

The energy market is large enough, and solar can achieve similar rates with new innovative financing models. PV is another disruptive element that’s going to bode well for EVs. So there will be disruption in battery

costs, disruption in the amount of vehicles people buy, disruption in the amount of chargers installed, and now we’re seeing the disruptive elements of the way energy is sourced and stored.

The timing of these elements is swayed by political motivations, policy-making, manufacturing realities, world economic trends and other things. So you can’t rely on the trends annually, you have to look at it across many years.

Charged: Are there similarities between EVs and the early days of the automobile?

Mike Calise: Absolutely. We said it took 13 years for the first vehicles to fully disrupt the horse and buggy as the primary means of transportation. I’m sure there were a whole lot of people during that time who would say, “There is no way you’re going to replace Ol’ Nelly. I’ll never afford that. That thing’s unsafe. The roads aren’t built. It’s a hassle to gas up.” If you look in the media over the next 10 years you’ll hear every reformation of those quotes for EVs, if you haven’t already.

Thirteen years for disruption, and what did it take?

Innovation first. A new technology was the first step - it’s similar to where we were in 2011 with EVs. But that’s not what causes the disruptive wave. It requires mass-scale manufacturing, infrastructure build-out, and innovative financing models. We’re seeing the same trends for EVs today. Great new EV models launched, battery manufacturing scale, charging infrastructure at home, at work and in public, and new innovative business models tied to loyalty, advertisements, leasing and energy exchange.

In the early 1900s, 100% adoption occurred when roads and gas stations were built and GMAC developed the first auto loan for the homeowner. That’s when it was cheaper to drive a car than it was to feed and pick up after Ol’ Nelly. And that transportation transformation made a huge impact on citywide pollution, because the horses in cities were an unsanitary mess. The parallels are evident, and we’re going to see a similar situation play out for EVs. Multiply all of this with mass growth in vehicle sensor technology and you see that EVs will be the ideal entry point for autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles.

When you get to autonomy, you’re going to see vehicles save lives and operate in highly efficient ways. They’ll lock in at highway speeds and maximize road use. Maybe even drop you off at the restaurant, go park and charge

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Osaka, Japan

4R Energy’s prototype commercial-scale storage system consists of 16 used EV battery packs Image courtesy of Nissan EV/Flickr

Ocotillo, CA Wind Energy Facility Image courtesy of slworking2/Flickr

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Contrary to those who say these batteries will end up in landfills, the second life of the battery is already predetermined.

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themselves, then come back and pick you up. And you’ll end up sharing that vehicle with other people and we’ll start to see real efficiency in transportation. That’s a vision many car OEMs share for the future.

Schneider Electric’s energy vision is a systemic approach to solve the global energy dilemma. The problem gets solved with a distributed clean energy solution to transportation and a digitized driver and host experience based on services. With a total system energy management approach, we can exploit the exponential growth of these respective disruptive technologies all working in unison. And we see a very different, clean, quiet, economically strong and efficient world improving decade to decade.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE Charged: Will the secondary use of EV batteries play a big role in price reduction?

Mike Calise: In fact, it’s an integral part of the strategy today. Car companies and energy storage companies realize the value of used EV batteries, and some car OEMs have already sold the future of them in contracts.

Contrary to those who say these batteries will end up in landfills, the second life of the battery is already predetermined. Again it’s a rippling of disruptions. After 8 to 10 years of using the battery in a vehicle, it may retain 60 to 80 percent of its original capacity. We hear some critics say, “These car batteries are not ideally suited for utilities.”

But we’re talking about millions of batteries coming to the market. They won’t be perfect, but they will be cheap and they will compete with battery systems for homes and commercial buildings. So you have a self-fulfilling disruption where contracts are made for second-life batteries, which brings the original cost of the vehicles down to the consumer.

This is where Schneider Electric is uniquely positioned with its strategy to tie buildings and homes to EVs, renewable energy and energy storage. When you’re over capacity with your renewable power sources, the buildings can now shift that load using energy storage, driving up efficiency and saving customers big money from utility demand charges.

Charged: Do you believe that vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and vehicle-to-building (V2B) technology will be widely adopted?

Mike Calise: When you look at the three-prong disruption that’s coming - renewables, energy storage and EVs you can see that those electrons are all fungible. They can be traded quickly among those three elements. All bringing costs down, all self-fulfilling the exponential growth.

And then you will have an expansion of a concept that we call “swarming energy.” Think of it as a “flash mob” of EV drivers. This is a disruptive business model that can go even further using V2G and V2B. In the future, your employer may incentivize you to drive a company fleet car. “Don’t buy your own car, use ours.” It’s great for employee retention, and there are trade-offs in terms of loyalty and currency - which is the distributed energy. Employees will say, “When I’m

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When you look at the threeprong disruption that’s coming...you can see that those electrons are all fungible.

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parked and plugged in at work at 4 o’clock, I don’t mind if the building uses 10% of my battery capacity. I have 200 miles of range and only a 30-mile commute.” Then you can begin to swarm energy by harvesting at night with wind or during the day with solar, and use it whenever you need it. Roaming energy on demand. This is still years away, but we have seen numerous pilots, so the trajectory has already started. Again, disruptive innovations take time.

Right now Schneider Electric is connecting the workplace and public charging with the homeowner through connectivity. We call it EVlink because we’re linking EVs in the home and in public with the connected home and building energy management systems, and it’s all reconciled in the cloud delivered in a service model.

The slow but steady disruption is already happening.

Once it gains momentum you can’t stop it, so you better be on the right side of it.

Charged: What can we actually do today with all these disruptive trends happening?

Mike Calise: Right now, the key is to stay inspired and don’t give up. The best thing you can do is stay focused on the now. If you’re on the supplier side, focus on this quarter. Sell, sell, sell. Finance, or donate charging equipment, electric vehicles, and solar. If you’re on the buying side, get chargers for your home or facility. Investigate the economics of rooftop solar and lease or buy EVs and PVs. The vision is intact, but without the day-to-day hard work, it may not become reality because some people cannot understand how we’ll get there. So, create your company or personal strategy knowing how the rippling effect of disruptive innovations can change the big game for good.

Connect with Mike Calise on Twitter and continue the dialogue:

@MCaliseEVlink

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The

Dynamic Road Ahead Utah State University builds the nation’s most advanced test facility for dynamic wireless charging

By Charles Morris

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THE INFRASTRUCTURE

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ireless charging is gradually making its way to the market. We’ve seen countless demonstration projects over the past few years, and a couple of OEMs have announced that they have wireless charging systems in the pipeline. Convenience is the most obvious reason to cut the cable, but wireless can deliver several other benefits as well (see What’s Up With Wireless? in our January/ February 2013 issue).

The first incarnations of commercialized stationary wireless systems will offer consumers a hands-free EV experience. The next step is dynamic wireless charging - topping up a vehicle’s battery while in motion, from pads embedded in the roadway. This would not only be a quantum leap in convenience, but it could reduce the need for large battery packs, especially for vehicles that operate on a fixed route, reducing vehicle weight and cost.

Research into this fascinating field is still in the early stages - researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) first tested their On-line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) system in 2009 (see On the Right Track in our February 2014 issue), and the Volvo Group is working on the possibility of developing a dynamic charging solution for city buses.

Academic advancement Utah State University has been studying wireless charging for some time. Its Energy Dynamics Laboratory built and demonstrated the Aggie Bus, a 20-passenger bus powered with a 20-25 kW stationary wireless charger, with efficiencies greater than 90%. That technology was spun out to a company called WAVE, which is currently conducting pilot projects with transit authorities in four US cities. Several USU graduates are now working in the emerging wireless power transfer (WPT) industry.

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Electric Vehicle & Roadway Research Facility • 4,800-square-foot highbay research building • Quarter mile electrified test track

Images courtesy of Utah State University

• Modular wireless charging pads embedded under the track • 750 kW capacity with ACto-track and DC-to-track provisions • Construction in progress, to be completed early spring 2015

USU recently began construction of the Electric Vehicle and Roadway (EVR) research facility. The EVR complex, the first of its kind in the US, will include a 4,800-square-foot research building and an electrified quarter-mile oval test track.

The EVR facility will enable research into a range of cutting-edge topics, including integration of renewable energy sources with electrified roadways and the grid, electric drivetrain design, energy storage systems, roadway materials and construction, and vehicle automation and security.

Charged spoke with Dr. Regan Zane, a USU professor of electrical and computer engineering and the overseer of the EVR project. Dr. Zane’s background is in power electronics, including power converters and battery management. He came to USU in 2012 to build a program in power and energy efficiency with a special focus on transportation applications.

“As I came on board, we started building an education program with undergraduate and graduate courses, and built up a lab here in the college,” Dr. Zane told us. “Over the last two years, we’ve built a new 2,500-square-foot lab, where we’re doing work in energy management, EVs and

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power electronics. A year ago, we hired Dr. Zeljko Pantic - his core expertise is in wireless power transfer.”

“Our goal is to build a program with a primary focus on transportation,” says Zane. “We’ve been successful in building the power program, getting new research grants and industry contracts in place. We’ve secured just over four million in research funding over the past two years, in individual major component areas. We have a program on EV battery management systems, to extend the life of batteries, and we have some military programs tied to very high power-density converters for electric ships, but

“

There are some major technical challenges, and we have some unique approaches and models on how to approach each of these.

”

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

“

WAVE has a commercial system running in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah campus, and they have contracts in California.

”

what we’re interested in now is going beyond the major power components, and getting into multidisciplinary systems integration and vehicle- and roadway-level demonstrations. That’s what this new facility is all about.”

“The EVR facility is going to be a collaboration across our college, together with industrial and other academic partners. We’re going to be taking not only the power electronics that I traditionally work in, and the wireless power transfer that Dr. Pantic is doing, but now we will build these into vehicles, and we will look at different techniques for embedding these in materials, construction techniques in the roadway and demonstrating full-scale systems.

“Key issues are the cost of the system, efficiency, reliability and safety. There are some major technical challenges, and we have some unique approaches and models on how to approach each of these.”

Stationary wireless charging is far from a mature technology, but it has been shown to be practical. “WAVE has a commercial system running in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah campus, and they have contracts in

California. There are other companies that are implementing these, so it’s proven that you can do this at reasonable efficiency, and the cost-effectiveness is getting better.”

Making the leap to a dynamic system however, complicates things in several ways.

“Now the vehicle is not going to be parked, where we can easily verify its position, but instead we have vehicles traveling perhaps at high speeds, and we have tens or hundreds of milliseconds available to activate and transfer the energy from the road to the vehicle. Some special challenges come up with regard to efficiency. The challenge is we can’t have the wireless coils continuously energized, or we have dissipation of power without power transfer, and that would directly reduce our efficiency.”

“There’s a program at KAIST in South Korea that has the largest-scale demonstration of dynamic charging in the world today. Their system is built in elongated segments in the road - those segments are energized the entire time as vehicles approach and pass over, and that’s hurt their efficiency, but they’ve been able to actually demonstrate operation. So, one of our challenges for efficiency will be, how do we transfer the energy only when the vehicle is over the pad, and we have some ideas on how to do that.

“Similarly, for safety reasons we don’t want to have large magnetic fields when there’s no vehicle over the pad - these roads have to be safe for anyone to walk over, for materials to be left, pop cans to be sitting there without anything overheating, so for safety it’s almost the same challenge - we would like to show how we can energize only when appropriate.

NOV/DEC 2014 85

Image courtesy of Utah State University

Dynamic Wireless Charging Test Track Power Grid

“

We see a couple of options - it might be autonomy assisting the driver...or the vehicle may take some control to optimize alignment.

”

“An additional challenge is how we can optimize the coil designs. We know that if you put a certain amount of ferrite to control the magnetic fields, and if we put some shielding in the bottom of the vehicle, which the vehicle largely has already, it can be safe and we can control the field and transfer the energy, but that can be expensive if you’re overdesigning the coil and overdesigning this ferrite.

“So, one of our key technical areas is going to be detailed physical-level modeling and optimization techniques to minimize how much material is required - ferrous material, coil windings and shielding - to meet all the requirements but minimize the weight and cost of that material.”

86

Auto-alignment USU has a program with two new faculty members working on vehicle autonomy, and Dr. Zane sees this field intersecting with his dynamic wireless work. “One thing that will have a direct impact on efficiency and cost is the ability to have tight alignment between the vehicle and the pads in the roadway as they pass over.

We can make it so we have wider tolerances, so you can get power transfer over a wide range, but that’s going to require more material, cost more and reduce efficiency.

If instead we assume that we have very tight tolerances, we can really optimize the system, and drop the cost, and we see autonomy as being an integral part of that. We see a couple of options - it might be autonomy assisting the driver, so as the driver comes over the pad, there may be a panel that shows them [the positioning] or the vehicle may take some control to optimize alignment.”

Efficiently competitive When discussing efficiency figures, it’s important to consider whether the power provided to the roadway is AC or DC. Converting AC power from the grid to the DC required by batteries takes a bite out of efficiency.

“We envision in the long run electric roadways having DC distribution,” says Zane, “so we rate efficiency from

THE INFRASTRUCTURE

“

A lot of things need to align to consider a change in infrastructure and technology like this.

”

DC directly to the battery or directly to the drive.”

The goal is to achieve an efficiency level that competes with current stationary charging systems. “We believe in the short term we could have efficiency in the high 80% range. Within 10 years, we could be demonstrating systems with efficiency in the 90% range. Achieving 95% would be an exceptionally high upper target.”

The facility will have a capacity of 750 kW, which should be sufficient to charge several vehicles at once.

“We’ll be experimenting with various battery pack sizes and charging power levels,” says Zane. “Our primary goal is to have the ability to test multiple vehicles in multiple zones. This is one challenge that we want to demonstrate that we’ve been able to overcome - we’re not just controlling a single vehicle. As vehicles go from pad to pad and zone to zone, most likely we’ll have a zone covering a length of roadway, and it’ll have a few drivers, then there’ll be another zone. There will be some interesting questions about the impact on the grid, if there is going to have to be some energy storage integrated in these power panels in the roadway so it averages things out.”

Hitting the road It’s still early days for dynamic charging, but there are a few groups around the world that are at or near the demonstration stage. “There’s a company that spun out from the OLEV project in Korea, and they have a division in the US. I understand that they have some contracts and are going to do some demonstrations,” said Zane. “The Oak Ridge National Laboratory did a small demonstration in the lab of dynamic charging at low speeds, with a small GEM electric truck, and a demonstration of stationary chargers on their campus, charging a Prius with wireless power.”

There’s plenty of work ahead for Zane and his team.

“Over the coming five years, the goal is to work from smaller vehicles to larger demonstrations, looking at optimization of these techniques, implementing them in realistic demonstrations to answer some of the questions.

We also want to build awareness of the challenges, from component level to system integration to community rollout.”

As the technology develops, building partnerships to commercialize it will be a priority. “I think there are opportunities for small companies at the component level, and for service companies that are into the interface between autonomy and charging, billing, safety, public acceptance, some of these things,” said Zane. “It would also be interesting to [work with] companies in the wired charger market, and see from their perspective how this would change billing and customer base infrastructure.”

Zane is also coordinating with USU’s civil engineering program, to investigate how dynamic charging would fit in with the construction and maintenance of roadways.

Zane’s group already works with several automotive OEMs on other programs. “Ford is a key partner with the battery management work we’re doing, and we’ve worked with Toyota and GM, and they’re both interested in what we’re doing with wireless power. We plan to launch an industry-funded center over the next year, and we anticipate having some of these companies on board.”

However, given the automakers’ typical timeframes, Zane doesn’t see them rolling out dynamic charging very soon. “It could be 15-20 years out before it works into their production schedules.” In the near term, the potential markets are more likely to be closed systems and fleet opportunities at such facilities as airports and national parks.

Dynamic charging has the potential to be much more than just a convenience for drivers - if a dynamically charged vehicle could get by with a smaller battery, that could alter the whole cost equation for EVs. “The big challenge that we see with EVs is the weight, cost and range anxiety with battery systems, none of which meet the 300-mile range of ICEs. So this is a good opportunity to consider significant reduction of overall cost and weight. Our vision is EVs that cost less to purchase, and less in cost of ownership per mile. We think this could make a big impact on the overall market penetration of EVs, but there are a lot of challenges. A lot of things need to align to consider a change in infrastructure and technology like this.”

NOV/DEC 2014 87

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CHARGING FORWARD

We’re used to EVs being controversial, but this time the controversy is within the EV community itself, as the spate of publicity around the launch of the Toyota Mirai has sparked some spirited discussions about the relative merits of fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs).

Technically speaking, an FCV is an EV, because it uses an electric motor to drive the wheels. It’s the use of hydrogen as the energy storage medium that distinguishes an FCV from a BEV such as the LEAF, Model S or i3, and therein lies the root of the disagreement.

The makers of FCVs point out that a hydrogen vehicle, unlike a BEV, can drive just as far, and be fueled just as quickly, as a legacy gas vehicle. Battery boosters, including Elon Musk, who has no time for what he calls “fool cells,” fire back that hydrogen is a less efficient way to store energy, and that mass adoption of FCVs would require building a vast infrastructure of fueling stations, whereas the fuel for BEVs is readily available at the nearest electrical outlet. Furthermore, limited range and long charging times are temporary problems that thousands of researchers all over the world are working hard to solve.

Be all that as it may, FCVs will soon to have a chance to show what they can do on the road, and in the marketplace. Toyota’s Mirai fuel cell sedan, which was unveiled at the recent Los Angeles Auto Show, is scheduled to go on sale in Japan and Europe early next year, and in California by fall. Hyundai quietly made its Tucson Fuel Cell available for lease in June, and Honda plans to launch its offering in 2016.

The Mirai will have a US sticker price of $57,500 (although Toyota is expecting to lease most of them, at $499 a month). It qualifies for an $8,000 federal tax credit and a $5,000 rebate from the state of California.

It’s also eligible for the coveted “white sticker,” which allows access to carpool lanes. The fuel cell components

are warrantied for eight years or 100,000 miles. Toyota will offer free hydrogen fueling for “up to three years” (as does Hyundai).

Toyota has partnered with a couple of companies to roll out the necessary infrastructure. FirstElement Fuel is building nine hydrogen fueling stations in southern California, and Air Liquide will develop fueling in five Northeastern states where the Mirai will go on sale by 2016.

“This is a car that lets you have it all with no compromises,” said Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda. “As a test driver, I knew this new fuel-cell vehicle had to be truly fun to drive and believe me, it is. It has a low center of gravity, which gives it very dynamic handling.”

So, will we be seeing multitudes of Mirais joining the legions of LEAFs and tons of Teslas on California roads?

Not right away. Toyota plans to produce just 700 units in 2015, of which 200 are destined for the US. However, Toyota VP Bill Fay said the company expects to sell 3,000 Mirais in the US by the end of 2017.

Each FCV qualifies for nine credits under the California Air Resources Board’s Zero-Emission Vehicle program, while BEVs with ranges of 100 miles or less earn only three credits apiece. So in a sense, the automakers have even less incentive to sell large numbers of FCVs than of their electric “compliance cars” (some suspicious souls have suggested that CARB’s generous credits are the main reason for the OEMs’ interest in hydrogen vehicles).

In 2018, the number of ZEVs that carmakers must sell will begin to rise substantially - by 2025, 16% of major OEMs’ California sales must be zero-emission. Toyota is presumably hoping that FCVs will be well established in the marketplace by then. We shall see.

Photos: Left courtesy of Toyota, Right top and bottom courtesy of Hyundai

By Charles Morris

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