News and Information
SAN ANTONIO – For the second year in a row, VIA Metropolitan Transit has received a grant from the Federal Transit Administration.
The $2-million grant will be used to purchase battery electric buses.
The FTA is making more than $84-million available nationwide as part of its Low or No-Emission Grant program.
VIA’s president said the federal dollars are boosting efforts to convert their fleet to alternative fuel sources.
For evidence of just how big Toyota Motor Corp.’s bet is that hybrid cars will dominate new-energy vehicles until at least the end of the next decade, look no further than its battery supplier.
Primearth EV Energy Co., despite the name, doesn’t make batteries for the pure electric vehicles that are emerging as a newer rival to gasoline-electric hybrids, which have been around for more than two decades. Owned 80.5 percent by Toyota and 19.5 percent by Panasonic Corp., PEVE, as it’s also known, only makes cells for traditional hybrids, and the vast majority of those are of the older, heavier nickel-metal hydride variety instead of lithium-ion.
The company isn’t in any hurry to change tack either, aiming to make a decision by the early 2020s on whether to produce the more energy-dense batteries needed for plug-in hybrids and EVs, PEVE President Shigeki Suzuki said in an interview. Waiting longer than that though would likely mean missing out on the opportunity, he said, pointing to the rapid rise of Chinese competitors Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. and BYD Co.
“We are still playing catch up in those technologies,” Suzuki, who led next-generation battery development at Toyota until taking his current position in 2013, said at PEVE’s headquarters in Kosai, Japan, on Friday. “Toyota’s strength is hybrid, and right now Toyota is counting on us for hybrid batteries. We have our hands full just keeping up with that demand.”
Toyota President Akio Toyoda is putting hybrids at the center of a goal to sell 5.5 million electrified vehicles by 2030, half its total projected deliveries then. Toyoda, who has admitted being late in pursuing the battery-only cars increasingly being embraced by rival automakers and policy makers, wants 4.5 million of its sales target to be hybrids — either the traditional variety or their plug-in variants. PEVE currently has capacity to meet only about a third of that.
To bridge the gap, the battery manufacturer is expanding aggressively. By 2021, it plans to ramp up capacity in Japan to near 2.5 million packs a year. It will also double China production to about 210,000 packs annually when a second factory comes on line in 2020.
For now, sales of hybrids are outpacing pure electric cars because they are typically more affordable and aren’t subject to anxiety over driving range, Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Steve Man and Kevin Kim said in a research note last month. Plug-in hybrid deliveries rose 160 percent in China in the first half, compared with a doubling for pure-electric EVs, according to BI data.
“Hybrids will be China’s low-emission vehicle of choice in the coming years, rather than battery-electric cars,” the analysts said.
To be sure, PEVE hasn’t neglected EV batteries entirely. It has produced several prototypes, although Suzuki said the quality isn’t yet where it needs to be for commercialization.
If PEVE does enter the market, it’s likely to make the batteries in China with its existing local partners, according to Suzuki. Toyota plans to launch a pure EV in the country in 2020, on its way to offering at least 10 battery-only cars by the early 2020s.
With plans to launch 20 new electric vehicles globally by 2023, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the automaker will make “major enhancements” to its battery lab in Warren, Mich.
Automotive News reports the expansion to GM’s Global Technical Center will cost the Detroit-based automaker $28 million. Barra made the comments in a Sept. 5 blog post to LinkedIn in which she further details GM’s progress on its path to an “all-electric future.”
The automaker has said it plans to launch 20 new EVs globally within the next five years, as it works toward its goal of “zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.”
“We’re now able to complete nearly all battery testing under one roof, reducing development time and cost,” Barra writes in the blog post. “The significant expansion of this lab, already one of the largest in the world, brings the facility to more than 100,000 sq. ft. and includes new heavy and mild battery-abuse test areas.
“Over the last decade, this lab, located at our Global Technical Center in Warren, Mich., helped bring the Chevrolet Volt, Spark EV and Bolt EV to life, and now it’s paving the way for an all-electric future.”
Barra says expansion at the Warren facility will begin this fall, and include the addition of new test chambers and “advanced equipment to accelerate our next-generation battery architecture.”
The GM CEO also said in the post that the automaker will start using battery packs from a new LG Electronics facility in Hazel Park for its all-electric Chevrolet Bolt. Automotive News reports the new Michigan-based LG facility will supplement an existing one in South Korea for producing the battery packs.
Barra also mentioned that the automaker will deliver a prototype capable of a 180-mile range with less than 10 minutes of charging needed to Delta Electronics as part of a U.S. Department of Energy initiative.
The Detroit-based automaker also confirmed it will introduce two new all-electric vehicles in the next 18 months to add to its some 20 all-electric vehicles due out by 2023. GM also made a point to say it would further support the production of hydrogen fuel cells for commercial or military use in the next three years.
GM’s 2017 Chevy Bolt EV starts at around $37,000 — also eligible for federal tax credit — and comes with a battery-only range of 238 miles, top speed of 93 mph and 200 horsepower. The 2017 Bolt EV, GM’s first all-electric car, was named both the North American and Motor Trend car of the year.
Harley-Davidson has been dangling its electric motorcycle concept in front of us for years, and has confirmed a 2019 release for the project.
While some have speculated about how committed the company is to an electric future, Harley-Davidson may be assuaging some of those concerns with news of their new Silicon Valley research and development center.
Harley-Davidson just announced today that it will establish its new R&D facility in Northern California in order to support its future product portfolio, including the company’s first complete line of electric vehicles.
That portfolio comprises up to five different electric vehicles over the next few years, including not just electric motorcycles but also an electric dirt bike and electric bicycle.
The electric vehicle portfolio is part of Harley-Davidson’s larger plan to shift its focus towards a new market of younger, more urban riders – an inevitability considering the company’s current aging ridership.
According to CEO Matt Levatich:
“Recently we shared with the world our accelerated plans to build the next generation of Harley-Davidson riders globally. This new R&D facility in the heart of Silicon Valley will help us deliver on those plans and demonstrate our commitment to lead the electrification of the sport.”
The new Silicon Valley R&D center, which is slated to open by the end of this year, will function as a satellite facility for Harley-Davidson’s current production facility in Wisconsin.
The facility’s initial focus will consist of electric vehicle research and development including battery, power electronics and electric vehicle design, development and advanced manufacturing.
In the long-term, the company says that the new facility could be tapped for a broader range of development, including what the company describes as:
“…further advanced technologies that uniquely leverage the rich talent in the Silicon Valley and support its most comprehensive and competitive lineup of motorcycles across a broad spectrum of price points, power sources and riding styles.”
Coded as that may be, the company isn’t just all talk. Hiring has ramped up to staff the new facility. Harley-Davidson has been looking to hire engineers across various electrical, mechanical and software disciplines – all critical for electric vehicle development.
According to Levatich:
“This is an exciting time in Harley-Davidson’s incredible history, and it’s also an exciting time to join our company and help shape our future.”
Ford is currently working on its first all-electric vehicle built to be electric from the ground up.
The American automaker has now released the first image of the vehicle, which it describes as a ‘Mustang-inspired fully-electric performance utility’ vehicle.
Last year, Ford said that it was going ‘all-in’ on EVs following the ousting of CEO Mark Fields and appointment of Jim Hackett.
Hackett formed a new internal team, called ‘Team Edison’, to oversee electric car programs. He also shifted one-third of internal combustion engine investments to electric cars, but the company is still investing more in the former than the latter.
Last month, Ford confirmed that its first next-gen electric vehicle will be inspired by the Mustang.
Ford reportedly dropped its original plans for the vehicle and started from scratch when Hackett took over.
Palmer commented:
“We’ve been tasked to move fast and come together quickly to solve common problems — what we like to call “cross-functional sprints,” and we’ve embraced a “no stripes mentality” to encourage that ideas come from different viewpoints.”
Not much is known about the vehicle at this point other than it will be a crossover inspired by the Mustang with a targeted range of 300 miles.
It doesn’t even have a name at this point.
The vehicle was first codenamed Mach 1, but Jim Farley, Ford’s president of global markets, confirmed that they dropped it after having a “strong reaction” from Mustang fans:
“We put that out there to evaluate it. There are pros and cons. I don’t want to handicap it at this point, but we got a very strong reaction from people.”
It has been rumored to be potentially called the ‘Model E’.
Tesla first wanted the call the Model 3 – Model E. It would have joined the models S and X in Tesla’s lineup to make “S-E-X” with the Model Y to follow later.
The name stuck for a while, but during the shareholders meeting in July 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company had to drop its “Model E” trademark after Ford threatened to sue over having a similar naming scheme. At the time, Musk said that “Ford tried to kill sex.”
The automaker could aim to use the name for its own electric vehicle.
We should see in the next two years as Ford works to bring the vehicle to market by 2020.
U.S. utilities increased their battery energy capacity 68 percent to 1.3 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by year-end 2017, according to a utility survey conducted by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA). While the increase in battery power capacity, measured in watts, was just 31 percent, the installation of longer-duration batteries last year helped produce the bigger jump in battery energy capacity, measured in watt-hours.
The use of longer-duration batteries, able to discharge for several hours, has enabled balancing of solar with widespread storage, as in California and Hawaii, and with co-located solar + storage installations, as in Hawaii and Florida.
California utilities remained far in the lead in storage energy capacity, in response to state storage policies that support renewable goals. California added 75 percent of the nation’s incremental battery energy capacity in 2017, and was home to nearly 60 percent of the cumulative energy capacity.
Illustrating the concept of “dispatchable” solar + storage, where storage adapts to micro-variations in solar generation in order to firm solar output, the SEPA report shows a sample daily profile for the first solar + storage installation by the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC) in Hawaii (Figure 21). This system, “with 13 MW of solar and 13 MW/52 MWh of storage, stores power during the day, and sends power to the grid in the morning, evening, and during cloudy periods throughout the day” (Figure 21).
SEPA calculates that KIUC had 2,036 watt-hours of storage per customer at year-end, compared to 151 for San Diego Gas and Electric, the top utility in California on this measure. KIUC continues to add solar + storage, helping the utility forge ahead on its high-renewables path.
The report noted four other utilities with planned or operating solar + storage installations (here linking the pv magazine story on each): Florida Power & Light, Arizona Public Service, the Salt River Project serving the Phoenix area, and Vistra Energy in Texas (adding storage to an existing solar power plant).
The SEPA report flags FERC Order 841 as a primary driver of near-term growth in storage. FERC Order 841 directs RTOs/ISOs (regional transmission organizations and independent system operators) to allow a storage resource to sell into the wholesale market all capacity, energy, and ancillary services that the resource is technically capable of providing.
The Brattle Group, which co-produced with SEPA the report’s discussion of FERC Order 841, has projected that FERC Order 841 could spark profitable storage investments ranging from 7 GW/ 20+ GWh, with storage “participating in grid-level energy, ancillary service, and capacity markets,” to 50 GW of storage “if all benefits can be captured, but [that would] require states to unlock T&D [transmission and distribution] and customer benefits.”
Either way, such tremendous growth would give utilities more experience with storage, helping pave the way for wider use of storage to balance solar and wind generation.
FERC Order 841 was issued as a final rule in February, and RTOs/ISOs must submit compliance filings by December, as shown by a timeline in the report:
Asked about the motions for rehearing shown on the timeline for April 2018, Energy Storage Association Vice President for External Relations Marissa Gillett explained that “The FERC has not yet issued a decision on the rehearing requests, and a timeline for doing so is not known. Regardless, the requests for rehearing are limited in scope with respect to Order 841 and do not seek to revisit most of the major directives of the decision, with which the RTOs and ISOs are still planning to comply.” She added that “RTOs and ISOs … continue to work diligently on compliance filings that are due by December 3, 2018.”
A list of the top ten utilities by cumulative energy storage capacity, shown in Table 13, includes several of the many utilities that have begun installing storage, to attain a wide range of storage benefits.
SEPA’s 2018 Utility Energy Storage Market Snapshot reflects survey responses from 137 electric utilities, which serve 58 percent of customer accounts nationwide. While focused on battery storage, the survey included flywheel storage (discussed in one case study) as well as supercapacitors and compressed air energy storage (not discussed). In addition to solar-related storage markets and FERC Order 841, the report covers the use of storage to defer transmission and distribution investments, and other topics. The report was written by SEPA staff members Nick Esch and Maclean Keller, with The Brattle Group partnering on the discussion of FERC Order 841.
