LONDON Reuters Sun Apr 4, 2010. Electric cars are riding high, as incentives and new models make them a realistic option, but the fresh attention may highlight flaws compared with gasoline and alternatives such as biofuels.

Gasoline may beat off both alternatives for decades as the least-worst option, with wider adoption of more efficient conventional cars helping to curb carbon emissions and oil dependence.

The uncertainty is striking for a $5-6 trillion global auto and fuel supply market, where there is agreement only that the number of cars will keep rising, perhaps doubling to 2 billion by 2050.

Battery electric vehicles (EVs) are expensive.

Mitsubishi Motors and Nissan Motor Co last week announced prices for their i-MiEV and Leaf battery-only electric cars, in production already or about to debut, at 3.98 million yen ($42,520) and 3.76 million yen respectively before state subsidies, several times the cost of equivalent cars.

Reality bites with driving ranges of about 100 miles, far less than for a petrol car which U.S. customers expect to exceed 300 miles.

And electric cars have to contend with the multi-billion-dollar cost of a new charging infrastructure, although they benefit from running costs at about a quarter of gasoline at today’s prices, according to electric car advocates.

Success depends on drivers accepting limitations on range and on re-charging time, which takes several hours, said Pierre Gaudillat, research and development manager at the UK-funded Carbon Trust.

“I don’t see any major breakthrough on the horizon,” he said. Customers may have to compromise on what they expect from a car, perhaps tailored for commuting, and from ownership, for example buying the car but renting the expensive battery.

Battery-powered, all electric vehicles (EV) will only amount to about 20,000 units, but by 2015 could reach a 0.3 percent market share. The International Energy Agency says EV and hybrids must reach at least 7 percent of global car sales by 2020 to hit targets to avoid more dangerous climate change.

Gasoline may continue to dominate both, especially if oil price rises are muted by efficiency drives. Automakers are already making smaller engines more powerful and transmissions more efficient, while the carbon emissions savings of both electric and biofuels are disputed.

ZED COMMENT: The MFC (multi-fuel capable) ZED engine can burn any fuel with greater efficiency and lower emissions. ZED powered vehicles do not require a new re-fueling infrastructure, are inexpensive to make, and have power equal to or exceeding that of conventional engines. ZED is the only engine which can be scaled to any size vehicle, replacing any conventional engine in any application. For more information contact: corpcomm@zedpower.com

The Hydrogen Journal - February 18, 2010

- Honda has started operations for a solar powered hydrogen fuelling station, at the Los Angeles Center of Honda Research and Development Americas.

The power station is intended to used in people’s homes, so they can fill up hydrogen vehicles themselves. The unit will fit in a garage.

The system has been designed so it does not need a compressor (the compressor was the largest and most expensive component).

The hydrogen (created by electrolysis of water, using electricity generated by solar power) will already be at a high enough pressure to transfer it into a vehicle’s fuel tank, although it will take 8 hours to fill the fuel tank with 0.5kg hydrogen, enough for to propel the vehicle 27 miles, considered a typical there and back daily commute or vehicle use.

By removing the compressor, the overall system efficiency is increased by 25 per cent, and the size of the system is reduced.

The solar array would be 48 panel, generating 6 kW, using thin film solar cells composed of copper, indium, gallium and selenium, made by Honda Soltec Co.

ZED COMMENT: As the only “fuel” with the power to replace gasoline and diesel, advances in hydrogen research moves it forward as the only long term solution to energy independence and environmental responsibility. Other than the MFC designated bottom-cycle ZED engine however, no powertrain can match the power of a conventional engine using hydrogen as a fuel. For more information contact; corpcomm@zedpower.com

New York Times January 7, 2010. DETROIT — As General Motors began assembling batteries for the coming Chevrolet Volt on Thursday, a new study cast doubt on the likelihood that electric cars will be widely popular in the near future.

The study, conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, said battery costs were not expected to fall as much as automakers have projected, making electric vehicles too expensive for most consumers even 10 years from now.

The firm predicted that electric cars would account for just 6 percent of the global market in 2020, or about three million of an estimated 54.5 million vehicles sold over all.

The energy secretary, Steven Chu, said the vehicles were critical to helping Detroit’s automakers become successful again.

“We urgently need to change how we power our cars and trucks,” Mr. Chu said. “America has fallen behind in the race to build cars of the future.”

The Boston Consulting Group study, however, forecasts that most gasoline-powered cars will remain most popular for many years. It forecasts that they will represent 62 percent of sales in the United States and 58 percent of sales worldwide in 2020.

The main factor, the study says, is price. It predicts that the cost of a battery pack about the size of the Volt’s will fall by $10,000, or 64 percent, from 2009 to 2020. But even then it would take about 15 years for the cost of owning an electric vehicle to equal that of a gas-powered car.

“We’re going to show those foreigners how you make cars, and we’re going to have success,” Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said.

ZED COMMENT: Show those foreigners how to make cars? VW, the worlds largest manufacturer, recently declared the electric car “hype”. Mitsubishi predicts a Lithium shortage by 2015 and a sharp increase in price. The BBC asks if we are trading Saudi oil for Bolivian Lithium, an unfriendly country which holds 80% of the world’s reserves. If it takes 15 years for electric to reach (not exceed) the same operating cost as gasoline, and the average USA car is 12 years old, most electrics will be scrapped before they become financially viable.  Alternately, ZED engines are built from 100% recyclable materials on current assembly lines using current processes, at a cost 1/3 less than conventional engines. When fueled by hydrogen the ZED engine is more powerful than electric, has a significantly greater range in any application and has zero emissions. Respectfully, Mr. Chu has identified the problem, but not the answer.

DETROIT (Reuters January 12, 2010) - Daimler (DAIGn.DE) and BMW (BMWG.DE) are feuding over just whose test fleet of small electric cars is closest to serial production in an attempt to ditch their image of thirsty, high-performance luxury cars.

Long reliant on hulking V8s like the BMW X6 sports utility vehicle or sporty coupes such as the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG gullwing, both are now quick to emphasize their efforts to develop zero emission vehicles.

In July, BMW even went so far as to sell its exit from Formula One following a dismal season as part of a “strategic realignment” to channel resources for the development of new sustainable powertrain technologies.

In fact, no carmaker has sold anything but a miniscule number of electric cars. Full scale industrial production of zero emission cars is largely expected around 2012 and market shares of over 5 percent are unlikely within this decade.

Audi says fewer than 1,500 electric vehicles are currently registered in Germany, corresponding to only 0.035 percent of all registered vehicles.

“Some manufacturers are already releasing their e-cars on customers. We are only using test fleets,” VW brand R&D chief Ulrich Hackenberg, who called the technology a “hype.”

ZED COMMENT: Following a detailed global technology search, NERAC advises that they are unable to find any engine technology like ZED. It is the only engine which can run on any fuel, but in particular zero carbon hydrogen. Using hydrogen fuel and patent protected Berk-cycle heat scavenging, the ZED engine can produce twice the horsepower and torque of a conventional gasoline engine of the same displacement. It is the only true zero emissions engine which can match or exceed conventional engine performance in all applications. As VW rightly assesses electric – e-cars as a zero emissions solution is “hype” and will never achieve broad market acceptance.VW is the world’s largest car manufacturer, overtaking Toyota in 2009.

The automaker dance cards were full in 2009, with many producers just looking to survive. Other companies in China and India though had a one-time opportunity to acquire technology worth billions for a fraction of the cost it took to develop. Here’s a look at the year in review:

March 18 - BAIC said to want U.S. auto parts maker Delphi Corp’s DPHIQ.PK non-core assets.

June 3 - Little-known heavy machinery maker Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery unveils tentative deal to buy GM’s Hummer.

June 11 - BAIC interested in Ford’s (F.N) Volvo car unit, a newspaper says.

July 6 - Italian automaker Fiat (FIA.MI) agrees to 50:50 joint venture with Guangzhou Automobile Industry Group Co Ltd GAIGPA.UL to produce car engines in China.

July 23 - GM rejects BAIC bid for its Opel brand; keeps talking to rival bidders.

Aug 1 - BAIC will pay up to $117 million for a 40 percent stake in Fujian Motor Industry Group’s 50:50 commercial vehicle venture with Daimler (DAIGn.DE) in southeast China.

Aug 30 - China’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd (0175.HK) is sole bidder for Ford’s Volvo unit, a Swedish business daily reports.

Sept 9 - Geely says its parent wants to bid for Volvo, with privately-held Geely Holding Group seeking full ownership.

Sept 9 - BAIC agrees to take minority stake in Koenigsegg as part of the Swedish firm’s purchase of Saab.

Sept 15 - Cash-strapped South Korean automaker Ssangyong Motor (003620.KS) proposes capital writedown that would slash the stake of SAIC, its majority Chinese shareholder.

Sept 15 - Volvo Car CEO says Geely denied preparing a bid.

Sept 16 - Geely shares suspended pending $250 million bond and warrant issue. Geely says not related to Volvo. Geely announces on September 23 that Goldman Sachs will invest $334 million.

Sept 17 - Geely approaches Magna International about possible stake in Opel; Magna refrains for now from any such partnership as negotiations with GM to buy the unit continue.

Oct 9 - GM signs deal to sell Hummer to an investment partnership headed by China’s Tengzhong.

Oct 12 - Tengzhong seeks regulatory approval for Hummer buy, aims to close purchase by early 2010.

Oct 28 - Ford chooses Geely as preferred bidder for Volvo. No sale price disclosed, but media reports put it closer to $2 billion than the $6.5 billion Ford paid for Volvo in 1999.

Nov 3 - GM opts to keep Opel.

Nov 24 - Koenigsegg pulls out of talks to buy Saab.

Nov 30 - BAIC says may still be interested in buying Saab after Koenigsegg talks collapse.

Dec 4 - GM and SAIC to set up 50:50 JV to make small cars and commercial vehicles in India. GM also to sell 1 percent stake in existing China JV with SAIC to its partner, giving SAIC control.

Dec 7 - GM in talks with BAIC about a partial sale of Saab assets, including tooling and technology.

Dec 14 - BAIC buys Saab assets, including intellectual property for its 9-5 and 9-3 sedans as part of a push to develop its own-brand cars

Dec 22 - Sources say Ford is making headway in Volvo sale talks with Geely and will announce progress in a statement during the week

Dec 23 - BAIC says it will launch an aggressive campaign to develop its brand both at home and overseas after buying Saab technology

– Ford says it has settled all substantive commercial terms for its sale of Volvo to Geely, and expects the deal to close in the second quarter of 2010.

WASHINGTON (Reuters Tue Jan 5, 2010) - According to a new report by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI) the United States scrapped 14 million autos while buying only 10 million last year, shrinking the country’s car and light duty truck fleet to 246 million from a record high of 250 million, according to the report to be released on Wednesday by nonprofit group the EPI.

The United States, the world’s biggest petroleum user, “is entering a new era, evolving from a car-dominated transport system to one that is much more diversified,” said Lester Brown, the president of the EPI.

In addition, market saturation of autos, urbanization, high oil prices that reached a record $147 a barrel in 2008, and the uncertain economy have helped cut car sales, Brown said. Given those forces, sales may never reach the 17 million per year level they were between 1999 and 2007, he said.

A continued drop in auto purchases could cut long-term oil demand and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. he said. It could also lead to increases in steel supplies as big cars get recycled, Brown said.

Brown used data from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and R.L. Polk & Co to write the report.

ZED COMMENT: The United States may be decreasing the number of vehicles on the road, but globally the demand for cars, and petroleum fuel, brings us ever closer to a permanent fuel shortage. Emerging countries with large populations and high demand, such as India and China, are more than offsetting American decreases. Unless alternate engines and fuels are phased in immediately, experts concur that a crisis is imminent.

Dec. 17, 2009. Washington - The Pentagon has an evocative term for the level of spending on a war: burn rate. In Afghanistan, it has been running at around $5 million every hour for much of the year. The burn rate will begin going up next week when the first of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops arrive.

Once they are all in place, the burn rate is estimated to exceed $10 million an hour, or more than $8 billion a month. Much of that is literally burned — in the engines of American jeeps, trucks, tanks, aircraft and power generators. On average, each of the 183,000 soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq requires 22 gallons of fuel a day, according to a study by the international accounting firm Deloitte.

Because of a difficult and dangerous supply line that runs more than 1,200 miles through Pakistan, fuel for the troops in Afghanistan is considerably more expensive than for those in Iraq: an average of $48 per gallon counting the cost of transport and protection. Flown by helicopter to positions on remote Afghan front lines, the cost can reach $400 per gallon.

The staggering cost of the war highlights an aspect of asymmetric warfare which is worth noting: the insurgent has a huge advantage on the financial front. While a Marine Corps combat brigade, for example, burns up around 500,000 gallons of fuel a day (or $24 million, at an average of $48 per gallon), the marines’ insurgent enemies use a tiny fraction of that. They ride around in pickup trucks, or walk. They do not move in Humvees that average four miles per gallon.

Both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have so far been financed with borrowed money that makes up part of the country’s deficit. The 2009 budget year, which ended in September, set an all-time high with $1.42 trillion. In 2010, it is expected to reach close to $1.5 trillion.

OVERSTRETCH AND INDEBTEDNESS

One way or the other, it’s difficult to see how the administration could balance the books in the absence of a war tax – an idea pushed by several influential Democrats – or painful cuts elsewhere at a time of high unemployment (10 percent) and economic hardship for millions of Americans.

Does that mean the United States is drawing closer to a tipping point, a level of military overstretch and indebtedness that sapped empires in the past?

In an essay at the beginning of the year, a few days before Obama took office, the Harvard historian Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, commented that no country on earth had “anywhere like the staggering array of overseas military commitments and deployments” as the U.S.

That is more true today than it was at the beginning of the year. Along with more troops, there is more reason to wonder how right Kennedy was in saying in his essay that U.S. dependency on foreign investors resembled “more and more that state of international indebtedness we historians associate with the reigns of Philip II of Spain and Louis XIV of France…”

If Obama read that, he should have been worried. Under the reign of Philip II from 1556 to 1598, Spain reached the peak of its power, a global empire controlling territories from Europe and the Americas to Asia. It sank to second-rate status through a combination of factors that included wars and massive foreign debt. Louis XIV was involved in four big wars and on his death in 1715, left France deep in debt.

ZED COMMENT: Experts agree that the world is running out of petroleum. Further, to fuel the military and the economy with petroleum is no longer sustainable, and threatens the collapse of our economic power as it currently exists. No politician will state that the national debt can possibly be paid off in part or in whole as long as the United States continues to consume fuel oil. The only solution is the ZED engine, which is fully scalable to any application. It is the only engine which can burn any carbon or non-carbon based fuel without modification, other than the fuel tank. With hydrogen fuel, the bottom-cycle heat scavenging ZED engine has double the power of a similar sized current engine. This transitional fuel capability from carbon-based to non-carbon fuel means that the ZED engine can be used now in both civilian and military applications, which would significantly improve the economy.

SHANGHAI Dec 11, 2009- China will subsidize sales of green vehicles in five cities selected for a pilot programme as the government steps up efforts to promote environmentally friendly vehicles in a bid to cut fuel emissions.

A statement on the main government website (www.gov.cn) late on Wednesday said Beijing would hand out rebates to private car buyers for the first time. It did not provide further details.

Beijing will also expand its pilot scheme to subsidize the purchase of clean-energy vehicles for public transport fleets in 13 to 20 cities, it said, without giving a timetable or naming the cities.

The trial scheme, first unveiled in February, will promote the use of electric, hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles by public transport operators, taxi firms and postal and sanitary services.

Subsidies will be based on the gap in prices between more energy-efficient vehicles and those with traditional engines, with subsidies running up to 600,000 yuan ($87,880) for fuel cell powered large commercial buses.

Many Chinese automakers, such as BYD Co — 10 percent controlled by U.S. billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc — have unveiled their self-developed electric or hybrid models.

But it is difficult for the industry, still in its infancy, to take off without aggressive government support, industry executives and analysts said.

ZED COMMENT: ZED engines are derived from current Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) design so they can be manufactured using existing foundry, machining, and assembly systems. With fewer components than an ICE, the cost of manufacturing is less. The result is clean air, equal power to ICE engines, without government support.

HONG KONG (Reuters Thu Nov 5, 2009) - The Philippine government aims to approve contracts to explore and develop the country’s massive geothermal energy resources, which could attract more than $2.5 billion in private investment, an official said.

Philippine power producer Energy Development Corp and Envent, a unit of Geysir Green Energy, one of Iceland’s biggest geothermal energy companies, were among groups vying for contracts to tap the country’s geothermal resources, he said.

Geothermal power accounted for 17 percent of the country’s total power mix at the end of 2008, with installed capacity close to 2,000 megawatts, energy department data showed.

The government was issuing tenders for the development of 10 geothermal sites and negotiating nine more deals directly with various companies, Oanes said. Combined, the deals could harness more than 620 megawatts of geothermal energy.

ZED COMMENT: To re-charge electric car batteries, or make hydrogen by electrolysis for ZED powered vehicles, an efficient, environmentally benign method of making electricity is needed. Alternate sources such as wind farms are expensive, a danger to birds, visually displeasing, require extraordinary service when exposed to a salt water environment, and only work intermittently when the wind blows. Coal is a carbon fuel and therefore will always produce carbon pollution when burned to produce electricity. The same can be said for natural gas power production. The ONLY electrical power production which is inexpensive to maintain, requires no fuel and runs 24/7 is geothermal.  ZED supports geothermal power production as the ultimate environmentally friendly solution, and an integrated part of the ZED engine paradigm change in transportation. The United States is the largest producer of geothermal power in the world.

NEW YORK (Reuters Mon Oct 19, 2009) - Electric cars will not be dramatically cleaner than autos powered by fossil fuels until they rely less on electricity produced from conventional coal-fired power plants, scientists said on Monday.

“For electric vehicles to become a major green alternative, the power fuel mix has to move away from coal, or cleaner coal technologies have to be developed,” said Jared Cohon, the chair of a National Research Council report released on Monday called “Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use.”

About half of U.S. power is generated by burning coal, which emits many times more of traditional pollutants, such as particulates and smog components, than natural gas, and about twice as much of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Pollution from energy sources did $120 billion worth of damage to human health, agriculture and recreation in 2005, said the NRC report, which was requested by the U.S. Congress in 2005 and sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Electricity was responsible for more than half of the damage, the report said.

Electric cars have other benefits such as reducing imports of foreign oil. But they can also have hidden costs.

Materials in electric car batteries are hard to produce, which adds to the energy it takes to make them. In fact, the health and environmental costs of making electric cars can be 20 percent greater than conventional cars, and manufacturing efficiencies will have to be achieved in order for the cars to become greener, the report said.

Emissions from operating and building electric cars in 2005 cost about 0.20 cents to 15 cents per vehicle mile traveled, it said. In comparison, gasoline-powered cars cost about 0.34 cents to 5.04 cents per vehicle mile traveled.

The report estimated that electric cars could still cost more than gasoline-powered cars to operate and manufacture in 2030 unless U.S. power production becomes cleaner.