Toyota will debut ultra-frugal plug-in Prius

Toyota Motor Corp. will unveil an ultra-frugal, plug-in hybrid version of its Prius compact car at the IAA in Frankfurt next month.

The car will be the cleanest and most technically advanced Prius built to date, Toyota said on Monday.

According to the automaker, the plug-in Prius has a fuel consumption rating of 2.2 liters/100km (106.9 mpg US/128.4 mpg UK).

It will have CO2 emissions of 49 grams per kilometer, almost half the emissions of the standard Prius, and will be the first Toyota EV to use a new compact lithium-ion battery that offers a driving range of 20km in electric mode, a significant improvement over the 2km range offered by the current model.

Previous Toyota electric vehicles have used nickel-metal hydride batteries.

The Prius plug-in hybrid has the same 1.8-liter gasoline engine and electric motor setup as the hybrid Prius. Toyota said the battery can be charged in 90 minutes using a domestic mains connection.

Next summer, the Prius will join an expanded Toyota hybrid range in Europe that will include the Auris hybrid, the new seven-seat Prius+ and the Yaris hybrid.

GE to buy 25,000 electric vehicles from GM, rivals by 2015

DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co. will buy 25,000 electric vehicles, almost half of them from General Motors Co., by 2015 in the biggest such order ever.

Electric autos will make up at least half of GE's 30,000-car fleet, as well as leased vehicles from its GE Capital unit, the company said in a statement today. GM's portion of the order is for 12,000 vehicles including the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

GE's order is a boost for the Volt as GM prepares for an initial public offering after its 2009 restructuring in bankruptcy.

“Wide-scale adoption of electric vehicles will also drive clean-energy innovation, strengthen energy security and deliver economic value,” GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt said in the statement. GE's equipment generates one-third of the world's electricity.

“Electric vehicles are a real-world technology that can reduce both emissions and our dependence on oil,” GM CEO Dan Akerson said in the statement. The company plans to deliver Volts by the end of this year, he said. The sedan has an electric motor to drive the wheels and a gasoline engine to recharge the batteries once they're spent.

Immelt is positioning GE to benefit from more energy-efficient technologies by producing batteries, car-charging stations and smart-grid systems. GE said it's in a “strong position” to help 65,000 leasing customers convert to electric vehicles and sees the electric-car market adding as much as $500 million in sales in the next three years.

In the U.S., the Obama administration has committed more than $11 billion in taxpayer aid to help car and battery makers start producing electric vehicles.

Battery power

Other automakers preparing to sell vehicles powered solely by batteries in the next 18 months include Nissan Motor Co., which starts delivering Leaf hatchbacks late this year; Ford Motor Co., readying electric versions of its Transit Connect delivery van and Focus compact car; and Toyota Motor Corp., which will sell a rechargeable RAV4 SUV.

By buying so many vehicles, GE is helping drive down their price, which will spur production and increase demand for battery plants and other parts makers, Fred Smith, chairman of the Electrification Coalition, a Washington-based organization of transportation and energy executives, said in the statement. Smith is CEO of FedEx Corp.

The move will “make electric vehicles more visible and acceptable to the public at large,” Smith said. “This is good for GE, good for our economy and good for our nation.”

GE will open two customer centers to evaluate vehicle-charging, driver experience and maintenance requirements and to display an array of models and manufacturers. One will be near Detroit in Van Buren Township, Mich., as part of a new technology center GE announced last year, and the other in Eden Prairie, Minn., where GE Capital Fleet Services is based, according to the statement.

GE is investing $10 billion in the next five years in clean energy across its business lines. Its products include lithium ion batteries for cars and trucks via a venture with A123 Systems Inc. and sodium-based batteries for use in large vehicles such as locomotives.

GE Energy Infrastructure is the company's biggest industrial unit, accounting for $37 billion of the parent company's $157 billion in revenue last year. GE is also the world's largest maker of locomotives, jet engines, medical-imaging equipment and related information technology systems.

GM defends Volt while critics say it's not a pure electric car

Chevy Volt

DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- General Motors Co. is disputing accusations that its low-emission Chevrolet Volt is a hybrid and not a true electric vehicle a month before the car goes on sale.

Auto critics Edmunds.com, Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics and others have said that during heavy acceleration the Volt uses its gasoline engine to augment power from the electric motors to drive the wheels.

On its Web site, GM says the car is an extended-range electric vehicle, not a hybrid like Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius.

“GM's insistence that the car is fully electric is hard to understand in light of the fact that the gas engine provides direct motive power under certain conditions,” the New York Times said Monday.

Doug Parks, a global electric vehicle executive for GM, told the New York Times that the automaker chose not to publicize the high-speed gas-engine assist feature previously to protect the technology during the patent application process.

'A PR problem'

The Volt debate illustrates the marketing challenge for automakers selling new technology in cars that don't fit standard classifications and whose performance is difficult to measure.

GM and Nissan Motor Co. have both made claims about their new models' fuel economy and driving range that not all consumers may attain because electric performance varies greatly by driving habits.

“You have a PR problem with any one of these vehicles,” said Jim Hall, principal of 2953 Analytics Inc., an auto consulting firm in suburban Detroit. “GM had this sort of schizophrenic thing about doing its best to manage perception and at the same time going off into traditional old-style GM hype.”

GM has promoted the $41,000 Volt as an electric vehicle to give it an image boost over hybrid-electric cars such as the Prius.

“The Chevrolet Volt is not a hybrid,” GM said in materials distributed this week to journalists. “It is a one-of-a-kind, all-electrically driven vehicle designed and engineered to operate in all climates.”

The Detroit automaker has said for three years that the Volt would always run on electric power and more recently said it would average 230 miles per gallon. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn't rated that number, and GM said many consumers may get lower fuel economy.

Series and parallel hybrid

GM said Monday that the engine does assist in driving the car through an electric generator.

Critics at Popular Mechanics and Edmunds both wrote they consider the Volt a plug-in hybrid and not the electric vehicle that GM has touted for years. The Edmunds review of the car had the headline: “GM Lied: Chevy Volt is not a true EV.”

According to the editors at AutoWeek, an affiliate of Automotive News, the Chevrolet Volt is an electric vehicle, series hybrid and parallel hybrid all rolled into one.

For the first 25 to 50 miles it's an electric vehicle, running on the battery pack alone. Once the battery pack reaches its minimum charge, the 1.4-liter engine kicks in and turns a generator to feed electricity to the two electric motors -- or a series hybrid.

At speeds of about 70 mph or more, a clutch pack engages which lets the 1.4-liter engine lend a hand and mechanically help turn one of the electric motors, while also generates electricity for the electric motors. That would make it a parallel hybrid by using two power sources to help move the vehicle.

The new claims have arisen in recent days following the formal media launch of the Volt. For the first time, journalists are getting the opportunity to drive the Volt in all modes and driving conditions.

Up until now, GM had allowed journalists to drive the Volt in electric-vehicle mode only.

“GM has kept the complete functionality of the Volt a closely guarded secret until now,” said Bob Gritzinger, executive editor of Autoweek.com and who was among the journalists that drove the vehicle this week.

Nick Richards, a GM spokesman, said the Volt always runs on electricity and has no mechanical link from the gasoline engine to the wheels.

The car's four-cylinder gasoline engine powers a secondary electric motor, which turns the wheels, Tony Posawatz, the Volt's vehicle line director, said in an interview. The car's gas engine doesn't directly power the wheels, he said. GM never disclosed that fact because the engineers saw it as a benefit that boosted the car's fuel economy, he said.

‘Very different'

“I keep telling people that this is a smart solution,” Posawatz said. “It drives very different from a hybrid.”

Hall, of 2953 Analytics, said there are some similarities between the Volt and the Prius.

“In a Prius, there is no mechanical linkage between the engine and the wheels -- it goes through a motor,” he said. “They use the engine to drive a direct-drive generator to drive the motor. The Volt does the same thing, it's just that the Volt can run with electric power without an engine longer than pretty much any hybrid right now can.”

GM said previously that the Volt would go 40 miles on a fully charged battery before the gasoline engine starts to recharge the battery, giving the vehicle a total range of 340 miles.

The company said this week it will go 25 to 50 miles in electric drive and 310 miles on one charge and a tank of fuel.

Nissan and GM both will have marketing challenges when consumers experience lower range or fuel economy, Hall said. With hybrids and electric cars, they can drive farther in stop-and-go city driving than on the highway because braking recharges the battery.

Company claims

That means many Volt owners won't get 230 miles per gallon in the Volt and Leaf drivers won't get the 100 miles on a single charge that the companies have claimed, Hall said.

Consumers probably won't care whether the Volt is a hybrid or electric car, said Eric Noble, president of The CarLab, an auto consulting firm in Orange, Calif. Potential buyers will be more concerned with the car's price, the fuel savings and how far they can drive before needing to plug in or refuel.

“Consumers don't care what we call it,” Noble said. “In our research, most of the questions from consumers are about battery life and recharging.”

The Volt's emissions are more important than what people call it, said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, an environmental lobbying group in Washington.

“I don't think purity is the issue,” Becker said. “What comes out of the tailpipe is the issue. If it's a little, it's green. If it's a lot, it's not.”

Chrysler's all new Peapod - neighborhood electric vehicle, or NEV

Chrysler Peapod

The car is built on a 102 inch wheelbase with an overall length of 143.6 inches. It is 56.5 inches wide and 70.5 inches tall. For contrast, that's just two inches shorter in overall length than a MINI Cooper with a longer wheelbase. Its turning circle is 32 feet curb-to-curb. Base vehicle weight is estimated to be 1,290 pounds, and with a rated payload capacity of 910 pounds the maximum gross vehicle weight is 2,200 pounds. The Peapod is built on an aluminum spaceframe that's supported by dual A-arm front suspension with coil-over shocks and rack-and-pinion steering.

Buyers will have a choice of either six flooded electrolyte 12-volt lead acid batteries or optional maintenance-free batteries. The Peapod's 72-volt electrical system will have an onboard charger that will top off the batteries in six to eight hours from a standard 110-volt outlet. No details have been released on the electric motor, but the platform will be front-wheel-drive and feature regenerative braking. A full charge will yield approximately 30 miles of range, depending on terrain.

Raser debuted a plug-in hybrid version Hummer H3 that gets 100+ mpg

Utah's Raser Technologies debuted a plug-in hybrid version Hummer H3 that gets 100+ mpg, nearly doubling the 51 mpg of the Toyota Prius in the city. And it goes from 0 to 60 in 8.5 seconds — faster than the smaller Hummer H2 with a V-8 gasoline engine and within the under-10-seconds goal of the next-gen Prius. As Raser calls it, this "Chevy Volt on steroids" comes with a 260-horsepower 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder EcoTech engine that drives a powerful 100-kilowatt generator that recharges its 600 pounds of lithium-ion battery packs. Those batteries are the bugbear of hybrids because they're bulky and heavy. But when you've got a Hummer H3, you've got the room. With a range of 400 miles, this green Hummer will go 40 miles on electricity only, well within the typical seven-mile drive of most Americans.

Electric Mini Cooper - MINI E

MINI E: All-Electric Plug-In MINI Cooper with 204HP Revealed!

Over the next year or so, BMW will produce around 500 units which will be leased to selected private and corporate customers in the U.S. states of California, New York and New Jersey, giving the Bavarian automaker the chance to evaluate the viability of a full-scale production EV. MINI said that it also considering the possibility of leasing the vehicle in Europe.

The battery can be fully charged through a standard outlet in about eight hours. However, MINI will offer each buyer a wall-box with higher amperage that will be installed in the customer's garage enabling a full recharge in just 2 1/2 hours. The MINI E also features a brake regeneration system that transforms kinetic energy to electricity replenishing the battery. According to BMW Group officials, the lithium battery offers the MINI E a driving range of more than 240km or 150 miles. Read more

Chevrolet Volt - Electric Plug-in Hybrid

The Chevy Volt, due out in 2010, is an Electric Plug-in that will run entirely on electricity. One nice added feature to the Chevy Volt that was not implemented on the old Chevy EV-1 is its small on board gasoline engine that can recharge the battery without plugging it in. This added feature will insure your ability to get home and not be stuck dead in the middle of some unforeseen bumper to bumper traffic. The Chevy Volt is said to go 40 miles before the auxiliary generator is needed to charge the battery.

Not yet confirmed, but Chevy also intends to deliver the Saturn Vue Plug-in Hybrid. The Vue Plug-in won't be as revolutionary as the Volt, but it will probably cost a lot less. (The Volt is expected to cost about $40,000.) For starters, the Vue Plug-in will be an enhancement to an existing vehicle, the Vue Two-mode Hybrid that's expected to go on sale next year. As planned, the Vue Plug-in will be a parallel hybrid. That means that, like a regular Toyota Prius or Ford Escape Hybrid, it will be powered by a gasoline engine with significant assistance from electric motors Starting with a full charge, GM expects to have an electric-only range of about 10 miles. GM expects overall fuel economy twice that of any current SUV.