Green Energy

Personal urban transportation, including one-person electric vehicles designed for cities, is a rapidly growing industry. Though cars are great multi-use vehicles for suburban and rural environments, commuters are now discovering that densely populated urban centers can be better served with smaller, purpose built transportation solutions such as electric bicycles and e-scooters.

Now with an increasing number of options in the market for affordable personal electric transportations, these little EVs are becoming popular alternatives in cities around the country.

Uber, best known for its ubiquitous ride-hailing service, has taken notice of the advantages that small and nimble personal electric vehicles have over cars in urban environments.

According to TechCrunch, Uber believes that 10 years from now, ride-hailing will be less than 50% of the company’s business.

Uber has already taken steps towards that goal, investing heavily in adding personal electric vehicles to its portfolio of transportation options.

This is all part of a strategy that Uber is undertaking to diversify their services and capitalize on the meteoric rise and success of electric scooter-share companies.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi elaborated on Uber’s strategy yesterday at Disrupt SF:

“We want to be the Amazon of transportation. And hopefully, 10 years from now, no one in the audience is going to own a car.”

To achieve that goal, Uber has its hand in multiple cookie jars. Uber invested $335 million in Lime earlier this year, one of the largest electric scooter rental services. That deal spawned a partnership between the two companies, allowing Uber users to rent Lime scooters through the Uber app. Not long after, Uber purchased the electric bicycle rental company JUMP in a $100 million deal that saw the company’s entry into the electric bicycle market.

Now Uber is expanding its scope even further with an eye on its own electric scooters. In addition to the big players like Bird and Lime, both Uber and Lyft have been attempting to gain a foot hold in the lucrative scooter wars.

San Francisco, one the largest cities at the heart of the scooter war, temporarily banned electric scooters earlier this year after Bird, Lime and Spin rolled into the city in violation of local ordinances. San Francisco created a permit system to allow companies to apply for permission to operate scooters in the city. Despite Uber being considered a front-runner in the contest, they were passed over for a city permit, with only two companies receiving the coveted prize to operate electric scooters in San Francisco: Skip and Scoot.

Uber was understandably disappointed with the result, as Khosrowshahi explained:

“We weren’t happy about the result of that process. The good news is that we have a lot of Jump bikes on the street now, so we have connectivity into the SF market. But you do have to put things into perspective. We are a global company. We are in 600+ cities all over the world. So while we weren’t happy with the SF decision, what I have found is that over a long period of time, local regulators do the right thing for people living in their cities. So if we continue to improve ourselves in terms of being a great provider, being a quality provider, being able to drive very high utility and utilization of our assets on the street, we will get there in SF and most other cities that we operate in.”

Like households and small businesses, Australian farmers are increasingly turning to renewable energy technologies to cut their power costs and shore up their bottom lines.

But a new report from Commonwealth Bank of Australia suggests the shift to solar and battery storage in the nation’s expansive agribusiness sector has only just begun.

According to the bank’s latest Agri Insights report, a staggering 76 per cent of all farmers, nationwide, are planning to tap solar and battery storage, as regaining control over energy costs becomes a major business focus.

“Four in five Australian farmers have told us that cost is a bigger issue than reliability and more than three-quarters of them say they feel like they don’t have control over energy costs on farm,” said Grant Cairns, regional and agribusiness banking executive general manager at CBA.

“In a bid to take back some control and better manage costs, farmers are looking to energy efficiency solutions, and especially to solar power.”

The survey reveals that farmers, nationally, reported an average of 11.4 per cent of their costs went on energy – this was highest for cotton growers (14.6%) and dairy farmers (14.1%).

Despite this focus on energy costs, just one in 10 farmers surveyed already had solar and battery storage, although nearly half (45%) were using solar on its own.

Other solutions farmers were considering included smart energy management measures, such as operating in off-peak time (24%), modifying and upgrading equipment (22%) and wind turbines (18%).

As we wrote here almost two years ago, the potential for solar – and now, battery storage – to power energy intensive farming applications like irrigation around the country is huge, and the need even greater.

“I see hundreds of irrigation pumps out there, connected to filthy diesel,” said Queensland-based solar installer Matthew Beech at the time.

“We firmly believe that the only reasons there hasn’t been more uptake (of solar) … is that it hasn’t been sold very well to the end user.”

But the transition is happening. In 2105, a cotton farmer in Moree, NSW, added a 70kW ground-mounted solar array with back-up battery storage to its diesel engine direct drive pump, with the aim of cutting its diesel consumption by 60 per cent.

And in June last year, fellow big bank NAB reported huge uptake of its Energy Efficiency Bonus loan offer, which offers customers a 0.7 per cent discount on the bank’s standard equipment finance rate for loans for solar PV, efficient irrigation and refrigeration systems and processing line improvements.

As NAB pointed out at the time, that loan scheme was particularly popular among farmers, with 87 per cent of the initial $120 million in finance used by the bank’s small and medium agribusiness customers, to cut grid power costs and boost productivity.

“After surveying 5,000 of our farmers for two consecutive years, 85 per cent told us they saw energy costs as a significant business risk,” said Khan Horne, NAB’s general manager agribusiness, at the time.

“So we’re helping our customers transition to more sustainable business models and, particularly for intensive agriculture significantly reducing their energy and water bills.”

In April this year, we reported that SA energy storage outfit 1414 Degrees was installing a 25MWh demonstration of its Thermal Energy Storage System (TESS) at the NSW processing plant of national poultry producer, Pepe’s Ducks.

And just last month, a trial led by business energy retailer Flow Power, with the UTS’ Institute of Sustainable Futures, showed how much a Victorian almond grower could save on energy costs using not just renewables, but demand management technology.

Most recently, as we reported on One Step, Australian cotton farming giant, Cubbie, announced the construction of a 3.6MW solar farm at Cubbie Station in Queensland – the largest irrigated cotton farm in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Cubbie Solar Farm will be owned by a subsidiary of Cubbie, and will generate enough electricity to supply 40 per cent of the Station’s energy needs during the peak cotton ginning season, running from April to September.

Ultimately, Cubbie plans expand the solar farm to 7.2MW and add battery storage, and at some point provide power to the nearby towns of Dirranbandi and St George in south-west Queensland.

“Energy costs have a significant impact on the bottom line for all businesses, and farms are no exception,” CBA’s Cairns said.

“We’re hearing from farmers that energy costs account for up to nearly 15 per cent of their farm input costs. That’s a major business outlay and something farmers are definitely keen to manage, to the extent that they’re able.”

As you can see in the chart below, the survey spoke to farmers of all types – from sugar cane and cotton growers, to sheep and cattle farmers, to dairy, grain and horticulture specialists – and got roughly the same response: we would like to invest in solar and battery storage.

And roughly the same numbers. Among the most keen on solar and storage were grain and livestock farmers (82%), sheep farmers (79%), beef growers (78%), and those in the horticulture business (76%).

Nationally, 79 per cent of sheep producers, more than any other commodity sector, want to invest in solar with battery storage.

The numbers are pretty consistent on a state by state basis, too, with the greatest interest in PV and batteries coming from farmers in Western Australia (84%), NSW (78%) and South Australia (76%) (see chart below).

“South Australian producers have historically relied on Victoria for coal-based electricity, and have experienced variability around both reliability and price,” said Natasha Greenwood, CBA general manager regional and agribusiness for SA.

“While South Australia really has pushed the renewable energy front, it has been intermittent over the last few years, which has encouraged lots of operations to get a Plan B into place,” she added. “For many, that Plan B is solar with battery.”

It was late last year when Dyson – yes, Dyson of vacuum and appliances fame – had announced that they were building an electric car to rival that of automobile manufacturers. While there still aren’t any details regarding the vehicle, the high-end appliance manufacturer turned electric vehicle (EV) maker recently announced that the car will be developed in a specially developed track in the United Kingdom.

The company’s new testing grounds is specifically located at Hullavington Airfield in Wiltshire. Around £85 million (Php 5.88 billion) have already been spent to develop the area. However, ‘Phase Two’ will see the site’s investment reach £200 million (Php 13.8 billion) as it will be spent on handling, rural and off-road test track for Dyson’s upcoming EV. All in all, the company expects to invest £550 million (Php 38 billion) in the area which will also house other building such as a sports center, cafe and visitor center. That said, the initial 400 people working on the EVs have already been transferred to the new facility already.

Despite the new announcments of a new facility Dyson has yet to reveal new information or any at all regarding their EV. For now, all we know is that the high-end appliance maker has been working on their electric vehicle for quite some time already. They are also focused on their development on new battery technology. With the announcement of a new high-end facility to test their upcoming electric vehicle and the money they’re investing, it would appear as if things are getting really serious with Dyson’s EV.

Dyson’s electric car is expected to debut in 2020. No details have been released to prevent any leaks regarding the upcoming vehicle, keeping all things confidential. That said, do you think newcomer Dyson has what it takes to blow the dust on its competitiors?

That’s partly because automakers are still simply not advertising their electric vehicles as shown by a new study.

The Sierra Club and the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM) have an interesting annual study of advertising instances and spending for electric vehicles by automakers.

The last one showed that they are pushing to sell EVs significantly less than gas-guzzling cars, and are not spending a lot of money to try to educate the public about electric propulsion.

It’s an issue because the lack of awareness is surprisingly still the biggest problem for electric vehicle adoption, as surveys have shown.

In a new update to the study released last week, it shows that the automakers that they tracked (General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen, and Fiat Chrysler) are still not spending much to advertise their electric vehicles – despite trending a little higher in some instances:

“The report, which looks at 2017 automotive ad spending, shows that in California and Northeast markets as well as in nationwide ads, FiatChrysler didn’t advertise the electric Fiat 500e at all, and Volkswagen didn’t advertise the eGolf at all either. When examining data from California and the Northeast, Nissan, Toyota, and Ford also spent NOTHING on ads for the plug-in Leaf, Prius Prime, Fusion, and C-Max Energi, respectively.”

Here’s a comparison of Nissan’s ad spending on the Leaf versus the Rogue in the US:

When looking at plug-in hybrids, we are seeing similar situations for Ford and Toyota with their respective vehicles:

One silver lining is GM with the Chevy Bolt EV. We are still not talking about incredible ad money in total spending like they spend on their trucks, but it is nonetheless starting to add up to a decent amount in CARB states at least:

“Chevy, which appears to have spent more than any other company on EV advertising, spent roughly $16 million in total advertising for the Bolt, looking nationwide and specifically in California and the Northeast — the markets where the “zero-emission vehicle mandate” is in place that requires automakers to sell increasing numbers of EVs.”

That’s actually a lot of money per car when you consider that GM only delivered about 23,000 Bolt EVs in the US last year.

That adds up to about $700 in advertising per car for the Bolt EV. In comparison, GM delivered over half a million Silverado trucks in the US last year, which results in just over $200 in advertising spending per truck.