On this week’s show : Nissan and GM both
announce second-life projects for used electric
car battery packs, SpaceX launches the Hyperloop
Pod Competition, and James Bond tech becomes
reality with a car you can drive from your
phone.
These stories and more, coming up next on
TEN.
Enjoying today’s show on Youtube and and
want to read the stories we’re referring
to today?
Either click on the little information bar
at the top of this video on selected stories,
or head to our website at www dot transport
evolved dot com, where you’ll find the latest
future car news as well as our buying guides,
tech primers and of course, our weekly show
notes.
It’s Friday, June 19th, 2015. I’m Nikki
Gordon-Bloomfield, and there are just too
many stories to fit in today so hold on to
your hats!
As the old adage goes, you must speculate
to accumulate, and that’s exactly what’s
been going on this past week over at Tesla
Motors.
With many, many financial commitments in the
coming few years -- including the massive
Gigafactory, bringing the Model X to market,
those brand-new Tesla Energy products and
the upcoming 2018 Tesla Model ≡ -- Tesla’s
cash flow is a little… strained right now.
In Q1 for example, the company plowed through
about 500 million in cash just on operating
expenses and capital expendeature.
So it came as no surprise this week that Tesla
has secured a line of credit to the tune of
five hundred million dollars with some of
the world’s biggest banks to help it keep
itself funded while all those massive projects
mature and bring the bacon home. Good through
twenty seventeen, these funds will provide
Tesla with operating capital and could be
extended to seven hundred and fifty million
if certain criteria are met.
It’s also worth noting that Tesla signed
a deal this week to take over the former Solyndra
factory next door to its Fremont facility
where the Model S and Model X are made. If
we had to guess, we’d say that’ll be used
for Tesla Power products, keeping Tesla’s
Fremont facility free for all those new cars
it wants to make.
Last week it was electric trucks -- but this
week we’re bringing you news from Sweden,
where Swedish firm Volvo is electrifying Gothenburg
Route 55 with three brand-new, all-electric
busses that will help turn one of my favourite
cities a little greener.
Based on standard Volvo chassis, these new
busses come with an overhead power socket
that can be used a specially-built, fully-enclosed
bus stations to recharge the buses’ battery
packs in just six minutes with 8.5 kilowatt-hours
of electricity -- more than enough to get
to the next stop.
The buses also have on-board free wifi and
complimentary mobile phone charging for passengers,
which we’re sure is one reason why everyone
in this specially-filmed Volvo video looks
so darned happy. Even the drivers say it’s
nicer too, thanks to the instant torque and
smooth ride. Smiles all round!
Back to Tesla for this story. The Californian
automaker already makes the world’s most
powerful electric car charging station in
the form of its 120 kilowatt proprietary Supercharger
stations -- but as Tesla CEO Elon Musk disclosed
last week during the Tesla Annual Shareholder
Meeting, Tesla engineers have been busy working
on ways to make the Superchargers more conveninet
and even more powerful.
One such modification has been the introduction
of liquid cooling for the cable and charging
stall itself, resulting in a smaller, thinner,
and more flexible cable between the supercharger
stall and your car without compromising the
power that can travel down it. And as this
video from Chris Allessi II -- AKA KManAuto
on Youtube -- shows, those liquid cooled Superchargers
are already out and about in the wild.
We’re going to go into the full physics
of why this works -- or how Tesla could use
the cooling system to ultimately get the Superchargers
to deliver more power in the near future -- but
if you’d like to understand the science
behind it a little further, head to our site
at www dot transport evolved dot com where
you’ll find the science explained in plain
english.
No, we’re not talking about a future without
electric cars, we’re talking about a lithium-ion
battery packs’ life after it stops being
used in an electric car battery pack, because
while a lithium-ion battery pack has a finite
life inside an EV, it can be used for many,
many years in lower-current applications long
after the car it was first put in has headed
to the great junkyard in the sky.
And this week, both Nissan and General Motors
announced their own battery recycling programs
for lithium-ion battery packs in which old,
used battery packs are repurposed to help
provide battery backup, grid-connected power
smoothing and off-grid storage to various
projects across the U.S.
The first two -- a grid-smoothing project
at a Nissan facility somewhere in the U.S.
and a five-battery renewable energy storage
project at GM’s Millbrook test facility
in Michigan, are the first of many we can
expect to see in the coming years. And while
both projects are currently focusing on industrial-scale
storage, there’s no reason we’ll one day
see used LEAF and Volt battery packs powering
our homes too.
For as long as we can remember, Honda has
been kind of unsupporting of electric or hybrid
vehicles, focusing instead on hydrogen fuel
cell vehicles. And this week’s news that
Honda is about to ditch the Honda Civic Hybrid,
Honda Civic Natural Gas and Honda Accord Plug-in
Hybrid might be considered news that proves
that take on the company’s loyalties.
But if I tell you that this week’s announcement
also included the news that Honda plans to
introduce not only its fuel cell sedan, but
two brand-new vehicles in the coming years
-- one dedicated plug-in hybrid and one dedicated
fully-electric vehicle, you may have a different
take on this news.
There’s no specifics yet on what each of
the vehicles will include, but Honda has said
that it aims to produce each vehicle as a
unique model that isn’t a conversion of
an existing part of its Gasoline fleet, meaning
we should see some pretty impressive designs
in the coming months.
And it also means that Honda is finally coming
in from the cold and acknowledging after many
months of denial that electric and plug-in
cars have just as big a part to play in our
zero-emission transportation future as hydrogen
fuel cell cars. And we think that diversity
is the spice of life. Well done.
Staying with hydrogen fuel cell cars for a
moment, we brought you the news this week
that despite being on sale for two years,
Hyundais Tucson Fuel Cell CUV has only sold
two hundred and seventy three cars globally,
well under the one thousand vehicle production
target it had set itself for the end of this
year.
There are lots of reasons why the Tucson hasn’t
sold as well as some might have liked, but
it boils down to two: cost of the car itself
and really, really limited refuelling infrastructure.
Hyundai, which celebrated its one year of
Tucson FCV sales in the U.S. last week, is
trying to put a brave face on things, and
has even launched a new social media campaign
featuring some of its everyday heroes who
drive a hydrogen fuel cell car. But despite
the hype, those cars really aren’t shifting
off dealer lots as fast as Hyundai would like,
and for what it’s worth, we think that’s
going to continue until there’s a lot more
hydrogen refuelling stations around for people
to fill up at.
If we’re talking about the chicken and the
egg, we think the egg really does have to
come first this time.
A few years ago, Elon Musk, CEO of both Tesla
MOtors and SpaceX, released a paper online
describing a new mass-transit system he called
the Hyperloop: a series of partially-evacuated
tubes in which electrically-powered pods would
travel at incredible speed to offer society
a true alternative to carbon-intensive air
travel.
At the time, Musk said he didn’t have time
to devote any energy to the project, so opened
it up to the rest of the world as an open
source project. Since then, we’ve seen several
companies grow up from the idea, building
on Musk’s idea and striving to bring his
dream to reality.
Well this week, SpaceX announced that it would
be building a one-mile test track in Hawthorne
California for teams to test their Hyperloop
pod designs at. Moreover, it was going to
turn the whole thing into a competition.
Claiming no interest in building its own Hyperloop,
SpaceX and Elon Musk’s involvement is purely
altruistic at this point, but we’re really
excited to see just what will be built ahead
of next-years’ finals, which are scheduled
to take place some time in June.
And finally, If you’re of a certain age,
you’ll remember watching the 1997 James
Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, and staring
eagerly in disbelief as James Bond drives
his fancy spy-prepped BMW 007-series sedan
remotely using his mobile phone, thus avoiding
death at the hands of the baddies toting machine
guns, shotguns and yes, a grenade launcher.
Well this week, Jaguar Land Rover revealed
that it’s been working on that kind of technology
for real, demonstrating a Range Rover Sport
prototype that you can control from outside
your car using your smartphone.
Unfortunately, the prototype is designed for
slow-speed maneuvering and as such only works
at speeds of up to four miles per hour -- and
it's’ designed to help drivers navigate
tough terrain the couldn’t see from the
drivers’ seat. It’s also supposed to help
getting in and out of tight parking spaces
easier.
But hey, Bond tech. In a car. For real. This,
is. awesome.
I hope I fitted all those stories in, because
this week has been crazy!
We’ll be back next week at the usual time
for another show, but in the meantime, you
can find all the other news that’s fit to
print on our website at www dot transport
evolved dot com, chat to us on twitter at
transport evolve, or head to our YouTube channel
to catch up with our latest shows.
As always, there’s a lot we haven’t managed
to fit into today’s show, including Nissan’s
continued sponsorship of Plug In America’s
national Drive Electric Week, How electric
cars could be a status symbol that helps you
keep up with the joneses, the twenty sixteen
Mitsubishi Outlander Plug-in Hybrid gets spotted
in the wild, and BMW is rumored to be developing
a super-efficient plug-in hybrid like Volkswagen’s
XL1, purely for engineering purposes.
So when we’re done, be sure to head to our
site to read them all.
Thanks for watching, I’m Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield,
have a great week, and until next time, keep
evolving!
