New Fuel Economy Rules Win Broad Support

Excerpt from January 18 New York Times article with the above title.

Not everyone is so enthused about the new mileage standards.  See the January 10 post.

New Fuel Economy Rules Win Broad Support

By NICK BUNKLEY

DETROIT — Writing new regulations that will require cars and trucks to have significantly higher fuel economy by 2025 prompted years of fighting among automakers, environmentalists, regulators and consumer groups.

But now that the standards have been proposed, nearly everyone involved in the process is on board with the results, as a public hearing held Tuesday in Detroit showed.

More than 90 people who spoke throughout the day asserted that the stricter fuel economy requirements would create jobs, reduce oil consumption, create cleaner air and save drivers money, all while helping automakers increase their profits.

“We’re celebrating something that has taken a long time to reach,” said Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who helped quash previous efforts to impose higher mileage standards. “There appears to be no significant opposition amongst responsible persons.”

The National Automobile Dealers Association, however, did speak out against the idea of setting requirements for vehicles made more than a decade from now until more is known about the strength of consumer demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Don Chalmers, a Ford dealer in New Mexico and the group’s government relations chairman, said he worried that vehicles would become too expensive for some consumers to afford. “Before rushing headlong into a set of new mandates aimed at doubling today’s fleet fuel economy, we need to understand better the potential ramifications,” Mr. Chalmers said. “If our customers do not purchase these products, we all lose.”

The proposed new standards call for automakers to increase the average, unadjusted fuel-economy rating of their vehicles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, up from about 27 miles per gallon today. Because of the way testing is done, the 2025 requirement correlates to a window-sticker rating of about 36 miles per gallon, according to the automotive information Web site Edmunds.com, or roughly what Toyota’s tiny new Scion iQ car achieves today.

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As Electric Vehicles Take Charge, Costs Power Down

From blog of U.S. Dept. of Energy:

As Electric Vehicles Take Charge, Costs Power Down

January 13, 2012 

  

Thanks to a cost-sharing project with the Energy Department, General Motors has been able to develop the capacity to build electric and hybrid motors internally. That capacity has made cars like the upcoming Chevy Spark EV (above) possible. | Image courtesy of General Motors.

Patrick B. Davis

Vehicle Technologies Program Manager

The record number of electric-drive vehicles on the floor of Detroit’s North American International Auto Show this week sends a clear message – the American auto industry is dedicated to driving innovation and delivering advanced vehicles to consumers here and around the world. We’re working with them every step of the way to help make that vision a reality. One of the keys to translating the trade show excitement around electric vehicles into widespread consumer adoption is driving down costs, and one area that continues to be a focus across the industry is reducing the cost of electric motors.

In addition to further research and development, increasing the domestic manufacturing capacity of electric motors is one of the keys to accomplishing this. Upping capacity will not only help meet growing consumer demand, but also help drive down the cost of both the motors and the vehicles that use them.

To help achieve this goal, the Energy Department has undertaken a variety of projects with industry partners to find innovative ways to design and manufacture electric motors. On one such project, the Department teamed with Delphi Automotive Systems in an effort to reduce the cost, size and weight of electric motors by using patented semiconductor packaging technology. The result of this cost-sharing partnership is new packaging that is smaller, lighter weight and allows more power to be produced than previous methods.
Additionally, Delphi also received a competitively-awarded $89.3 million award under the Recovery Act to expand its manufacturing of power electronics for electric-drive vehicles. Delphi is matching these funds dollar-for-dollar and the funding has allowed them to retool a formerly vacant manufacturing facility for the project and build a new testing and engineering laboratory. The result? Delphi is currently increasing production of their power electronics and already has enough orders on file to account for total production through 2015.

Delphi is just one example of the competitively awarded, cost-sharing projects that the Department is undertaking with automakers and their suppliers. A similar projects has allowed Magna E-Car to manufacture the electric vehicle motor control unit and motor for the recently unveiled Ford Focus EV in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Ford’s Van Dyke Transmission Plant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, is building the electric drive transaxles for the 2013 Focus C-MAX hybrid and plug-in hybrid models. And GM, thanks to $105 million in Energy Department support, now has the capacity to develop and manufacture electric motors for hybrid and electric vehicles such as the recently announced Chevy Spark.

These cost-sharing projects are helping to turn innovative advanced vehicles that might have otherwise been merely trade show concepts into a consumer reality. They are creating jobs while lowering costs for consumers and pushing the auto industry forward -- helping American manufacturers lead the way with innovative, efficient vehicles. So while cutting-edge cars like the Ford Focus Electric and the Chevy Spark might be relegated to the auto show floor for the moment, it won’t be long before they become a familiar sight on car lots and roads across the country.

Wanted or Not: Alternative-Fuel Cars Flood Auto Show

The following is an excerpt from a January 10 New York Times article with the above title.  It highlights a real problem as the U.S. tries to cope with GHG emissions through greater vehicle efficiency.  That problem is that Americans love their big cars.  Muscle cars from the '60s and '70s are still considered glamorous.  Try picking up chicks in a Smart car or hybrid and see how far you get.

The New York Times

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Wanted or Not: Alternative-Fuel Cars Flood Auto Show

By NICK BUNKLEY

DETROIT — In the race to claim ever-higher fuel-economy numbers and keep up with government regulations, automakers are rolling out hybrids and electric cars aplenty at this week’s Detroit auto show.

If only buyers were arriving as fast as the cars.

Hybrid sales waned as gasoline prices ebbed in 2011, declining to 2.2 percent of the market from 2.4 percent a year earlier, according to the research firm LMC Automotive. Meanwhile, sales of the Nissan Leaf electric car and the Chevrolet Volt plug-in each fell short of expectations.

Analysts do not expect the segment to grow significantly this year: the combination of gas prices below $4 a gallon and higher upfront costs for the cars is not attracting consumers.

 But that is not deterring Toyota, Honda, Ford Motor and several European carmakers from introducing new hybrid and plug-in models.

“The market is going in one direction and fuel-economy regulations are going the other direction,” said Jeremy Anwyl, vice chairman of the automotive information Web site Edmunds.com. “Just because people start building more of something doesn’t mean the segment grows.”

Regardless, the automakers have little choice but to develop and try to push more hybrids as they prepare for fuel-efficiency requirements that call for significant increases later this decade. Advances such as Ford’s EcoBoost technology have increased mileage for gas-powered engines — the new Fusion midsize sedan it unveiled Monday can get 37 miles to the gallon, Ford said — but bigger gains are needed.

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(Archived Article) Wind-Power Experiment Planned on Brooklyn Plot

The following was gleaned from an article with the above title published on November 19 and 20, 2010 by the New York Times.

Wind-Power Experiment Planned on Brooklyn Plot

Debra Salomon was on her way to the new Fairway market in Red Hook, Brooklyn, when she took a wrong turn and found herself on a windblown pier that had two 90-foot Eiffel-like towers rising into the sky for no apparent purpose.

Ms. Salomon quickly saw a purpose. She is a designer and teaches design at the City University of New York, and she has been interested in finding ways to economically adapt wind energy to individual buildings. So her mind took a turn of its own.

“That looks like it should have a wind turbine on top of it,” she remembers telling herself.

The towers were located on property owned by Greg O’Connell, who, among other things, is curious about harnessing the power of wind. He was willing to let Ms. Salomon borrow the towers for her brainstorm.

The towers, were so situated that the gusts blowing off Upper New York Bay were striking them at an average of 13.5 miles per hour, double the city’s average wind speed and fit to spin the contoured blades of a small turbine consistently. The surrounding buildings were low, posing no obstructions to the wind.

Now Ms. Salomon, with a $12,500 grant from the city’s Economic Development Corporation and the collaboration of a couple of start-up entrepreneurs, wants to build an experimental 15-foot-tall, butterfly-shaped turbine atop those towers. It would produce three kilowatts of electricity to power a charging station for electric cars.

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