From Green Right Now Reports

Enmeshed in the worst business conditions in decades, America’s auto companies are trying to envision the coming world of transportation. For Ford and Chrsyler, the future is starting to look electric.

Both companies are pushing for federal funds to develop new elctric vehicle programs. Chrysler LLC has submitted a $448-Million plan to the U.S. Department of Energy for the rapid development and manufacturing of electrified vehicles. And Ford has also proposed to the DOE a national pilot project to promote the use of electric vehicles.

Chrysler LLC said yesterday that it has applied for two initiatives established by the DOE — the Electric Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative and the Transportation Electrification Initiative. Both are designed to speed development, demonstration, evaluation and manufacturing of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs). The program would be a 50/50 partnership with $224 million coming from Chrysler and its partners, combined with a matching $224 million from the DOE.

“These initiatives represent how government and the automotive industry are answering the challenge of reaching common goals and demonstrate how rapidly this type of advanced technology can be brought to market in a collaborative environment,” John Bozzella, senior vice president of External Affairs and Public Policy at Chrysler, said in a statement. “Without U.S. innovation and production capacity, we will simply trade batteries for oil in the pursuit of transportation energy.”

If approved, Chrysler said it plans to use funds to build a test fleet of more that 365 PHEVs and EVs, as well as create a new-vehicle electrification technology and manufacturing center located in Michigan. The proposed vehicles include a Dodge Ram 1500 plug-in hybrid, a Chrysler Town & Country plug-in hybrid and an electric version of the Chrysler Town & Country.

Chrysler said it has established more than a dozen partnerships with city and local governments, research and development authorities, utility companies and universities to test the new vehicles. Through a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service, Chrysler plans to deliver 165 Chrysler Town & Country electric cargo minivans for daily mail service in four regions throughout the country.

Ford’s proposed national pilot project for electric vehicles includes a request for a grant under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support the project.

The automaker plans to supply a group of utility companies with plug-in hybrid electric vehicle and battery electric vehicles for use in daily operations. The utilities would develop and install “smart” charging facilities for the vehicles. The data from the vehicle use and charging systems will be shared and used to help shape the future power infrastructure needed to meet consumer needs.

You’d expect Doug Fox, the cordial co-chair of the North American International Auto Show, opening to the public on Saturday, to have some good spin on how this event will rise above the stench of economic panic in the Motor City, and the country.

Not only does he have the goods, by the end of our conversation Tuesday, I was convinced that this is a pivotal, but not hopeless time for the car industry.

Fox thinks this is not just an important, historic show, but “the most significant show without a doubt” in the 21 years since the NAIAS became a designated international show.

The automakers, he believes, are thoroughly jazzed by the technological road race in front of them and ready to turn out more energy efficient vehicles faster than “even they thought they could.” (Good point there. But then what are the alternatives for the American makers? Sell the remaining inventory of Navigators to the residents of Dubai and take early retirement?)

From his perch in the balcony above the convention, Fox pointed to the evidence supporting his premise: GM’s all-electric Volt, on target for market in late 2010 (as far as we know), and soon to generate new American jobs in batteries; the Prius, enough said; the Insight, back from the dead and touted as economical too; and the promised Chrysler EVs (Fox hadn’t spotted those on the floor, but suspected strongly that they’ll be surfacing).

And don’t forget China’s whimsically named Build Your Dreams (BYD) cars, keeping the pressure on our flabby U.S. flank to build hybrids and all-electric cars in big numbers, but with smaller price tags.

“I think clearly there were some people coming here, arriving thinking this would be a gloomy funeral like atmosphere,” said Fox of the NAIAS convention. “But when they walked into that hall and heard some of the announcements being made…there’s no other show anywhere in North America like this show.”

“The word I use is hope. That’s what this show has shown us. There is hope on the horizon,” he said.

So maybe all we have to fear is fear itself? We’ll see how that flies, or drives, in the months to come.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Don’t be fooled. Gasoline prices won’t be bumping around $2 a gallon for long. Driving a car with good fuel economy still makes sense. Higher mpg means lower operating costs for the household budget and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

Happily, car shoppers today have a myriad of options among fuel frugal 2009 cars. You can find something getting 30 mpg or better on the highway at nearly every dealer lot. In some cases, you’ll have to settle for a trim line with a smaller engine and manual transmission to hit the 30 mpg mark.

Here are 30 with 30 mpg:

Audi TT

Gorgeous lines, 200-horsepower and a crisp six-speed manual transmission make the Audi TT a swell sports car. The fuel economy of the base 2-liter model makes it an earth-friendly sports car.
EPA estimated mpg: 22 city/30 highway

Jennifer Drukker expected people would stare at her new car. What she didn’t expect was this: “I was at the first stop light after I’d driven off with the car. It was literally the first time I came to a stop after driving off with the car,” she recalls. “The driver of the car next to me rolls down the windows and starts shouting questions.”

If it seems an extreme response to a Chevrolet Equinox, a fairly mainstream SUV, consider that the paint job includes the word “fuel cell” on the sides.

Fuel cell vehicles that turn abundant hydrogen into electricity are one promising alternative to gasoline-burning, toxic-fume-spewing internal-combustion engines. Widespread availability of such cars – which emit water vapor instead of greenhouse gases and stuff that’s flat out unhealthy – is years in the future.

But for Jennifer Drukker, Jamie Lee Curtis (yes, that one) and a handful of other drivers, the future is now.

General Motors has 100 Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell SUVs on the highways as part of “Project Driveway,” an extended research program that puts regular drivers behind the wheel of these costly cars for a few months.

Honda this summer began delivery of the FCX Clarity through a special leasing program expected to put another 200 fuel cell cars on the road over the next three years.

When you boil it down, fuel cell vehicles (FCV, for short) are electric cars. The juice comes from that single-proton gas once used to make zeppelins float. Hydrogen and oxygen are used in a chemical reaction that creates electricity. Think of it as the flip side to the electrolysis experiment you did in high school.

“We’re using hydrogen to store electricity,” says Mark Vann of General Motors.

For drivers, that means an electric car with the range of a conventional automobile. The range of the Equinox FCV is 160-200 miles between fill-ups. The Honda FCX goes about 270 miles.

Hydrogen as a fuel offers several advantages over gasoline. When used in fuel cells, the byproduct is water. It’s abundant. Industrial volumes of hydrogen are produced from natural gas and used to refine petroleum. Enough hydrogen is now produced globally each year to replace 56 billion gallons of gasoline, according to the National Hydrogen Association.

And hydrogen is a fairly cheap fuel. “The cost of operating the fuel cell Equinox is equivalent to getting 40 miles per gallon and paying $2.50 a gallon for gas,” say Vann.

The high amount of torque an electric motor offers compared to an internal-combustion engine means even an SUV like the Equinox is delightfully quick off the line.

“It goes faster than you legally need to go,” says Gates Clark, another Project Driveway participant. “There are no performance compromises.”

Quick and quiet. Low impact and low operating costs. Why can’t I have one now?

Chrysler’s 2008 ecoVoyager Concept is a four-door, four-passenger vehicle that is simultaneously sleek, futuristic, and distinctively American. Its one-box design – and the absence of a traditional powertrain setup – allowed designers to make uniquely efficient use of the cabin’s parameters. The ecoVoyager also mates an advanced lithium-ion battery pack to an advanced hydrogen fuel cell, resulting in a vehicle with a range of more than 300 miles that emits nothing from the tailpipe but water vapor.

Source: Chrysler

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• Chrysler’s green machine

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Chevy may be stepping up on publicity for its upcoming Volt plug-in, but it isn’t the only American automaker finally throwing itself convincingly into the green marketplace.

In a surprise announcement yesterday, Chrysler showed off not one but three vehicles that, at least within a certain range, can get users around without using a single drop of gasoline.

The three models — a sports car called the Dodge EV, an EV Jeep, and a minivan named Chrysler EV — are touted in this promotional video in which chairman/CEO Bob Nardelli (citing the company’s “social responsibility” to provide environmentally friendly products) boasts, “we intend to deliver on that responsibility faster and more broadly than our competition.”

Chrysler hopes its ENVI initiative will beat its competitors to the punch by making electric vehicles that use existing designs instead of designing new models from scratch. Frank Klegon, Executive Vice President of Product Development, claims that “in 2010, we will deliver at least one vehicle model to consumers in North America, and then soon after that in the European markets.” But the company has its sights set on offering “a full-range of vehicle options” soon afterward.

There’s no word yet on details like pricing, and executives won’t even say which car will be offered for sale in 2010: the sports model, an all-electric that can run more than 150 miles on a charge and goes from 0-60 in under 5 seconds; or one of the other two, which are “range extended Vehicles” that (like the Volt) supplement electric systems with a small gasoline engine which kicks in after a certain mileage.

According to the New York Times, these ambitious plans may depend in part on the government saving some of its Wall Street bailout cash for environmental priorities: “While Chrysler is committed to electric vehicles, Mr. Nardelli said the project would benefit directly from a proposed $25 billion federal loan program for the United States auto industry.”

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

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