Thursday, October 09, 2008
Renault Bets on Electric Vehicles
The French carmaker doubts that hybrids can reduce emissions sufficiently.
By Peter Fairley
 |
Hybrid killer: The Renault Z.E. concept car, showing at this week’s Mondial de l’Automobile, in Paris, relies on lithium-ion batteries alone to deliver 160 to 200 kilometers of driving. “Z.E.” refers to zero emissions of conventional air pollutants, as well as to next to zero emissions of carbon dioxide when the car is charged from renewable-energy sources.
Credit: Peter Fairley
|
Might the most fuel-efficient vehicles in mass production--powerful hybrids, such as Toyota's Prius, that can run on either gasoline or electricity--already be destined for the science museum? That's the argument that French carmaker Renault is making at the Mondial de l'Automobile, the giant auto show running in Paris this week. Renault says that it is engineering a pair of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs), to be produced starting in 2011, that it claims will be cheaper to build, cost markedly less to power, and produce far less carbon dioxide.
Renault's vision for electric cars is small vehicles principally designed for commuting. At the Paris show, Renault unveiled a concept car showing the design of a compact EV commuter car: an EV version of its Kangoo utility van, with startling acid-green windows to minimize air conditioning and a lithium-ion battery that carries the van 160 to 200 kilometers on an average charge. That range "really covers the usage by our customers, who are using their cars only for commuting and maybe short trips during the weekend," says Renault EV project director Serge Yoccoz. As a result, he predicts that such EVs could capture from 10 to 15 percent of the European car market as early as 2015. (Hybrids currently command just 2 percent of auto sales worldwide.)
Renault won't be the first to test the commuter market with battery EVs. Mitsubishi Motors announced in Paris last week that it will begin testing its i-MiEV minicar in Europe next month with a view to commercial sales by 2010. Daimler, meanwhile, said that a battery version of its popular Smart Fortwo, in testing in London since last year, will be sold starting at the end of 2009.
Renault says that EVs are a necessity because hybrids cannot deliver the level of gasoline use and emissions reductions that governments and customers are demanding of automakers. The EV is the breakthrough required because, according to Renault, driving the EV Kangoo displayed in Paris generates zero carbon dioxide when charged with renewable energy, and no more than 60 grams per kilometer when charged on today's coal-heavy power grids; when charging in France, carbon-dioxide emissions would be somewhere in between because nuclear power provides 80 percent of France's electricity. Any of those scenarios compares well with the more than 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer coming out the tailpipe of Renault's diesel-fueled Kangoos, which are relatively efficient vehicles for their class.
Lithium batteries for Renault's first round of products, at least, will come from a joint venture of Japan's Nissan, with which Renault is partnering on EV technology development, and NEC. Newer lithium technologies have eclipsed the performance of the joint venture's manganese-based lithium-ion chemistry, but Yoccoz says that the Nissan-NEC process is one of the cheapest.
Audio »
Share »
Digg this
Add to del.icio.us
Add to Reddit
Add to Facebook
Slashdot It!
Stumble It!
Add to Newsvine
Add to Connotea
Add to CiteUlike
Add to Furl
Googlize this
Add to Rojo
Add to MyWeb
Favorite
Print
E-mail
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
Roy82 on 10/09/2008 at 1:50 AM
1
Mapou on 10/09/2008 at 3:14 AM
12
Better yet, cities should buy whole fleets of small electric cars, park them everywhere and offer them as a utility service. City dwellers could use subscription or prepaid cards to unlock the nearest available EV and use it for personal transportation. This would encourage carpooling too.
mkogrady on 10/09/2008 at 12:35 PM
118
Gaetano Marano on 10/09/2008 at 6:29 AM
71
http://www.gaetanomarano.it/articles/033cellphoneCAR.html
it's very sad that I haven't the funds to do (at least) some basic researches about my Energy and Space ideas! :(
Mapou on 10/09/2008 at 1:32 PM
12
Come to think of it, even long distance driving could use the same approach. It's kind of like the days when the horse was the primary transportation system. Long distance messengers and transportation companies (Wells Fargo comes to mind) used horse change stations to get fresh horses on the way. Until battery technology improves to the point where they can be charged instantly, this is a viable compromise, in my opinion.
gabrielg01 on 10/09/2008 at 8:30 PM
314
If we had a standardized system in place, the swap could be done in less than 5 minutes.
PS - ignore this Gaetano dude, he always writes about "his" ideas - every good idea in the world is "his", and everyone else is just out there stealing "his" ideas. muhahahahaa...
Mapou on 10/10/2008 at 2:55 AM
12
Unattended charging stations installed all over the place and the use of public vehicles would be a simpler and more economical solution in my opinion, at least for cities, if only because it will alleviate congestion by eliminating the need for so many cars. Most vehicles are idle most of the time anyway.
Having said that, I think that both ideas should be carefully studied for advantages and disavantages.
Gaetano Marano on 10/10/2008 at 9:48 AM
71
yes, swap batteries requires complex infrastructures, but, until we'll have (maybe, in the next 10-15 years) lighter, cheaper, powerful, and VERY FAST charging batteries, the battery swap system is the ONLY way to allow the electric cars to perform very long (gasoline-cars-like) trips!
low autonomy electric cars will never succeed not even if they'll cost less than a gasoline-only-car, that since many people can't buy, manage, parking, etc. a second car!
that's why all peoples and families need SIGLE electric cars able to do ALL the things of today's cars
.
Gaetano Marano on 10/10/2008 at 9:35 AM
71
you just repeat a description of MY "swappable batteries" idea...
and, about MY ideas, I always do a search BEFORE writing an article on my website (and dozens posts on several forums and blogs) about MY new ideas!
.
MakeSense on 10/11/2008 at 12:25 PM
77
KenCAD on 10/17/2008 at 2:39 PM
1
amgillard on 10/09/2008 at 8:48 AM
9
I could also see myself being able to "unplug" the rear bumper (say with the assistance of couple of fold-down legs/rollers), and "plug in" another unit that contains a small internal combustion generator to supply additional power to recharge the batteries and so extend the range (say 500-1000 km) for those occasional long trip requirements. It would be like turning the hatchback design into a sedan.
The generator would be optimised to operate at a peak efficiencies for generating the required charging power, it could be diesel as it provides better options for supporting alternative renewable fuel sources, and could be quickly and easily refueled to provide additional range.
It would give us the best of both worlds !
The standard rear bumper could then be reattached to reduce vehicle weight for normal short range driving.
NorthernPiker on 10/09/2008 at 10:09 AM
5
Gaetano Marano on 10/09/2008 at 10:25 AM
71
a second (gasoline powered) generator or (worse) a very expensive fuel cells generator add too much costs to the (already too expensive) electric cars while they need to cost LESS than a gasoline-only or hybrid car if we want the electric cars market to succeed soon
.
Gaetano Marano on 10/10/2008 at 9:38 AM
71
the "inductively coupled power unit that draws power from a wire buried in high charging lanes" is a good idea but I doubt it could be enough efficient to avoid the leak of great part of the energy
.
kbillet on 10/09/2008 at 1:49 PM
3
Add retractable wings to the car, so that for long trips it can fly. Build take off lanes with takeoff ramps from highways. For both take off and landing. Eliminate the need for driving as we know it for long trips.
schkayalogy on 10/10/2008 at 11:38 PM
1
ryuuguu on 10/11/2008 at 8:26 PM
9
ArtInvent on 10/13/2008 at 1:18 PM
18
Hybrids allow the auto industry to install much less battery, yet still significantly improve efficiency in affordable real world cars, now. (It also gets them working on electric drive motors and power electronics on a significant scale, which they've NEVER done before.) This means that the battery industry can slowly ramp up production and quality, while gradually bringing cost down, way down. At that point - and <i>only<i> at that point - will pure battery electric car start to make sense for the mass market.
Without hybrids, and lots of them, there basically is no industrial bridge to the massive numbers of large, good, cheap batteries we'll need.
gabrielg01 on 10/13/2008 at 5:58 PM
314
I hate people who say that hybrids are not worth it, because they are "too expensive and do not break even in gas savings"...It's not about gas savings. It's about supporting a technology that will eventually get us off oil.
Saying that hybrids are too expensive, is like saying that education is too expensive. How expensive is ignorance?...
dollardragon on 10/17/2008 at 1:38 PM
3
bartosis on 10/24/2008 at 11:39 AM
1
France with it 80% nuclear power will easily transition into a productive low carbon economy. Their reactors can run at capacity through the off peek hour charging charging cars and other items. No fuss, no smog and the fuel is recyclable.
The 'W' and his minions need to step aside and let the fossil fuel lobby painfully die. The tree huggers will have to finally understand that nuclear power is a friend and Detroit executives have to build EVs despite what Exxon and BP dictate.