Major Car Companies have EV's for California

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Each of the major automobile companies has set their course for the California ZEV requirement in 1998. It will provide us with a wide variety of electric vehicles options from which to choose. We have almost none right now unless you make your own car. Here's the lineup from Detroit, Europe and Japan as of last week:

GM: A team is forming and now building 2 Impacts per week in the Lansing, Michigan plant, to support its field testing and growing Proving ground test fleet. GM will be ready to ship the required number of these high performance sports cars to California. Right or wrong it is a terrific car, and will have high performance sealed lead acid batteries, probably from the old Gates battery company in Colorado (350 volts DC).

Ford: building and testing pickup trucks. Minimum risk for Ford, minimum investment, capable of carrying almost any lead acid battery type and meeting all tests and gross vehicle weight rules. Ford likes to sell trucks anyway, and will supply gliders to many others. They will have a large number of Ford EV trucks so they can buy credits for California with minimum investment. Ford Sodium Sulfer battery a dead issue, expensive, thermal cycling problems. They will wait and see what happens.

Chrysler: An electric minivan with Westinghouse three phase AC motor and control along with the Horizon sealed lead acid battery. Like Ford, this approach also minimizes Chrysler's commitment until they see which way the ball bounces.

Honda: An electric Civic 2 door ev with lead acid batteries to start. Already seen in California. Remember Honda won the last Australian solar car race, and so they really understand the issue of low rolling resistance, high efficiency motors and batteries. They can probably triple the range of this type of car with Lithium Ion batteries being developed by the Japan Lithium Battery consortium and Sony.

Toyota: They have shown the Prius small hybrid sedan prototype at the Frankfurt show recently, they also won this year's Scandinavian Electric Car Rally with an electric RAV4 vehicle. I don't know if they have made up there minds what to do.

Nissan: Latest Tokyo Auto Show revealed a lighter weight FEV II with the Sony Lithium Ion Battery, which they said "are three times more powerful than lead acid, giving FEV-II a 124 mile range". This looks like a more producible electric car.

Volkswagen: At the Tokyo Auto Show VW also revealed the latest Concept 1 "retrobeetle" as it nears production (in Puebla, Mexico). Their work at VW with hybrid/electric using direct electronic injection diesels is already well advanced. The VW developed Daug/Hopke fiber nickle cadmium batteries are probably the best in production at 50 whr/kg energy density and 200+watts/kg power density. These batteries,also made by ACME in Tempe, AZ will last the life of the car and provide 95% power at 0 degrees F. unlike lead acid.

Daimler Benz: Mercedes testing electric and hybrid/electric and fuel cells in their new type "A" small sedan. Batteries would be under the floor of their new van type car. The Swatch microcar will be built in France as a Mercedes and be sold as a "city car" like the Tulip. It will be available as an electric and can be brought to California so MB can sell large powerful sedans. Each Swatch would count as one ZEV.

BMW: These guys need electric cars to sell in California and are developing the ultimate small EV. The prices and technology in both the MB and BMW's electric vehicles will be high.

Peugeot: Not coming back to America, but commiting to production of the "ION" small EV for Paris "taxi service". With France 85% powered by nuclear energy, they are going to small electric cars in the cities.

FIAT: Not coming back to America, but producing small numbers of new electric Cinquecento's in Poland, and Panda Electrica's in Italy.

This is the competition a government sponsored venture like CALSTART is facing. I happen to think the Japanese are taking the California market requirements for ULEV's and ZEV's seriously, witness Honda's qualification of a ULEV by changing to a 32 bit microprocessor on the engine controls. They are quietly doing their homework, and the invention and production, by Sony, of the Lithium Ion battery will make the California Electric Car (ZEV) a real event.

EVs in the News

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