Netherlands to build world's largest network of EV fast-charging stations

Green technology companies have encountered a lot of headwinds in the past couple of years, but the transition towards electric vehicles is till crawling forwards - Netherlands to build world's largest network of EV fast-charging stations.

By the end of 2015, residents of the Netherlands will be using the world's largest network of electric vehicle fast-chargers, with no charger further away than 50km from any of the country's inhabitants.

A new contract with Fastned and ABB will blanket the Netherlands with more than 200 fast-charging stations over the next two years, using ABB Terra chargers and Fastned stations, which will be covered with solar canopies. The stations will be equipped with 'multi-standard' fast chargers that are said to be capable of charging EVs from all major car brands, topping off the vehicle's batteries in as little as 15 to 30 minutes.

The ABB fast chargers are cloud-connected, offering drivers features such as an easy way to pay for charging, remote assistance and management, and tracking of data and statistics. Each station is said to feature a canopy covered with solar cells to help reduce peak loads on the grid and provide some of the power for charging the vehicles.

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RIP Better Place

While I'm conducting funeral services, I've been lax in noting the demise of electric car company Better Place, which has gone out of business - Better Place's Failure Is Blow to Renault. Tesla motors appears to be adopting some of their business model - Building an EV Ecosystem: Why Tesla Will Likely Succeed Where Better Place Failed.

The financial collapse of electric-car venture Better Place Ltd., which filed for liquidation over the weekend, is a blow for French automotive group Renault SA, RNO.FR +2.37% which helped the Israeli company develop its novel battery-switching system for electric cars.

Founded by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi in 2007, Better Place developed a system where electric-car owners could drive their vehicles into a network of stations around Israel ILCO.TV +0.05% and replace the car's battery with a new one in about the same amount of time it takes to fill a gasoline tank on a regular car.

The "quick drop" system was supposed to remove one of the main obstacles to the adoption of electric vehicles, namely the several hours it takes to recharge a flat battery.

Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn had championed Better Place's technology as one of the pillars of the French auto maker's ambitious €4 billion ($5.17 billion) electric-vehicle strategy. The first cars equipped with Better Place technology were Renault Fluence Z.E. sedans.

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A Chat With Elon Musk

PandoMonthly has an interesting interview with Elon Musk, one of the few unarguable cleantech success stories over the past decade - Fireside Chat With Elon Musk

Sarah Lacy talked to Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and SpaceX during PandoMonthly and went into detail on what other entreprenuers should do while raising venture capital, why he isn't going to be doing another Internet startup, his thoughts on CleanTech, the launch of SpaceX, and finally, his plans for the future.

On a related note, Technology Review reports that Tesla Automotive is now profitable - Even Without Accounting Gimmicks, Electric-Car Maker Tesla is Now Profitable.

As expected, Tesla Motors, the maker of the luxury Model S electric sedan, announced today that it was profitable for the first time in its ten-year history. During the first quarter of 2013 it had profits of $11 million. Total revenues were $562 million.

The profits came as Tesla cut costs and managed to sell more cars as it ramped up production at its factory in California. According to reports, Tesla’s Model S outsold electric vehicles from both GM and Nissan in the first quarter.

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MyDrive - Better Place and the Future of the Electric Car

MyDrive has a look at Better Place and their model for electric car ownership - MyDrive - Better Place and the Future of the Electric Car .

MyDrive's Ash Davies takes a close look at the current state of the electric car and the network that could very well bring them to the public. Working with the new Nissan Leaf and Better Place, this film looks into the revolutionary technology that could finally make the Electric Car make sense.

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Envia: Record Battery Energy Density in Context

Jamais at Open The Future has a look at Envia's advanced lithium ion battery technology - Record Battery Energy Density in Context. More commentary can be found at REnew Economy, The Falls Church News Press and Cryptogon.

A tech company called Envia Systems has announced that it is able to produce rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (Li-ion, i.e., the standard kind of rechargeable batteries that go in everything from phones to electric cars) with a world-record energy density of 400 Watt-hours per kilogram! (Gigaom has lots of info, and useful background material.) Cool, right?

Yes? No?

Energy density is one of those really important concepts that not many people know about; it's not an exaggeration to say that a viable renewable energy future depends upon boosting energy density of batteries.

But it's hard to evaluate the importance of an announcement like this if you don't have context, so here you go:

Okay, 400 Watt-hours per kilogram (henceforth Wh/kg) means that one kilogram of battery material will be able to pump out electricity at a level of 400 Watts for one hour.

According to Envia, the best commercially-available Li-ion battery has an energy density of around 245 Wh/kg, so this new technology almost doubles that. This is good. Moreover, most Li-ion batteries operate at about 100-150 Wh/kg. The batteries in the Nissan Leaf, for example, have an energy density of about 120 Wh/kg (24 KWh/200kg). Tripling that density would, in principle, triple the range of the Leaf, taking it from around 100 miles to around 300 miles, a range close to a typical gasoline-powered car. This is very good.

But it's not revolutionary -- it's a (significant) incremental improvement.

That's because, even at 400Wh/kg, batteries still don't have an energy density anywhere close to fossil fuels.

Gasoline offers somewhere around 12,000 Wh/kg, 30x the energy density of the Envia battery technology. A Nissan Leaf with the same mass of gasoline-equivalent superbatteries would have a range of around 9,000 miles. Alternatively, to get the same 300 mile range as with the Envia batteries, the Nissan SuperLeaf would only need around 3kg of batteries.

I'm not discounting the importance of this breakthrough, not by any means, but it's important to keep this in context. There's a good reason why petroleum has such a hold on the world of transportation, and it's going to take a lot more than a tripling of battery energy density to beat it. Or, more to the point, moving beyond the gasoline automobile is going to take more than simply chipping away at energy density comparisons -- it's going to take a complete re-thinking of what we mean by transportation.

[UPDATE:]

As has been pointed out to me, in comments and in direct communication (and with varying degrees of politeness), this isn't an entirely fair comparison. It would be more accurate to compare the combination of energy density + drive efficiency.

Most standard automobiles have an average internal combustion engine efficiency of around 20% -- that is, of the energy available in the fuel, about 20% is eventually translated into motive force. So that 12,000 Wh/kg is effectively "only" 2,400 Wh/kg.

Electric motors, conversely, are extremely efficient at translating available energy into motive force; at 90%, that 400 Wh/kg Envia battery is still effectively 360 Wh/kg.

So a gasoline engine system 6.67x better than the Envia, not 30x better. The difference isn't as gobsmacking, but it's still significant, and remains a reminder of just how far battery technology has yet to evolve.

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Daimler Tests Cordless Electric Vehicle Chargers

Technology Review has an article on experiments with inductive vehicle charging - Daimler Tests Cordless Electric Vehicle Chargers.

Having a few electric vehicle charging stations here and there isn't a big deal. But if they ever become common in cities, they'll be an eyesore, with their long, tangled black cords clumped onto their sides or sprawling across parking spaces to the outlet on the side of a car. Charging stations could also be a tempting target for vandals.

A much more elegant solution would be to bury inductive chargers under parking spots, a concept that Daimler has started testing. The chargers could be invisible and protected from vandals. And they could make charging easier—just pull into a parking spot, and the car can start charging.

Daimler, along with Conductix-Wampfler, a company based in Germany, has only recently started testing cars equipped with the inductive charging coils. But the initial results look positive.

The system is 90 percent efficient, which isn't as good as charging with a cable, but is better than some other inductive charging systems. The companies say that when you count efficiency losses within the car, the system is almost as good as plugging in.

In initial tests, after two or three practice runs, drivers have been able to successfully park their cars so that they're centered over the charging coils.

An object detection system is supposed to avoid the potential problem of the buried coils heating up a piece of metal left on the road. The prototypes are based on a wireless charging system developed for electric buses that has been operating since 2003.

It will be interesting to see how the cost of the system compares to conventional chargers, and whether it will still be necessary to install a post for communications gear, to allow drivers to pay for the charge with their credit cards, for example. Ultimately, cities will have to decide whether the better looks and convenience are worth the sacrifice in energy efficiency.

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