Government Regulation Is the Driver in a Great Deal of Cleantech Development
The common wisdom among those following the migration to electric transportation is that large commercial vehicles will be the very last to make that transition. Here to challenge that notion is my colleague Jon LeSage, whose current edition of Green Auto Digest brings us up to date on the developments by Mercedes, Tesla, Nikola Motor, BYD, and Smith Electric Vehicles.
What’s the driver behind all this? Well, as usual, with very few exceptions, it’s regulation. It’s very clear that without government intervention, the private sector would be making feeble progress in the direction of alternative fueled vehicles and sustainable transportation in general. For example, with its Sustainable Freight Action Plan, California is playing a leading role in forcing the development of clean solutions for the historically filthy arena of cargo shipping.
While we’re on the subject of government involvement, it’s worth noting that several of the cleantech business plans that we support here at 2GreenEnergy are based squarely on regulation—and I have no problem with that. The two most notable examples of this might be Efficient Drivetrains, with its proprietary approach to hybrid electric drive in larger trucks, and EcoPas, a way (I believe the only way) to recapture the gaseous ethanol, an ozone-generating volatile organic compound, that results from the fermentation of grapes into wine.
It’s clear that most if not all of the eco-friendly technologies making their way to full scale will eventually do so with no government support. In fact, that’s the premise of my most recent book, “Bullish on Renewable Energy—Fourteen Reasons that Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose.” The plummeting costs of solar, wind, utility- and residential-scale energy storage, EV batteries, efficiency solutions, etc. will very shortly mean the end of things like coal-fired power plants and dependency on liquid hydrocarbons as fuel for our cars and trucks.
For now, however, it’s a very good thing for all of us with lungs that our government plays an active role in ushering the private sector along in the direction of clean energy and transportation.
Craig,
John Le Sage seems to have developed the unfortunate method of writing all his articles based on press releases.
Electrification of heavy vehicles involves very complex and difficult technology. I was an early investor in the Tanfield Group who initiated the electric Smith Truck project from what had been a venerable old company producing electric milk floats.
Unfortunately, the project failed in the UK, and was eventually sold to a US company.
I watched my friend Lord ‘Jamie’ Borwick lose his entire family fortune heroically trying to produce the Modec EV delivery vehicle and EV taxis. The Modec technology was purchased out of administration by the US truck manufacturer, Navistar while his Electric Taxi was purchased of of administration by the Chinese car maker Geely.
Curiously, John Le Sage fails to mention the most successful hybrid EV truck manufacturer Hino of Japan. Hino, a Toyota subsidiary, has been successfully manufacturing and selling a range of hybrid trucks for nearly 10 years.
The problem with re-reporting press releases, is inevitably ‘hopeful optimism’ becomes accepted fact.
The technical difficulties and limitations of battery technology become far more evident in heavy vehicles than cars. Every negative becomes magnified. Aero-dynamics, weight distribution,load variations, gradients, recharging regimes, speed variations, and a conservative market which buys solely on economic factors, not emotion.
All of these factors make producing heavy vehicles with EV technology a challenge. While it’s true that EV technology can be viable in hybrid form, it’s not feasible to extrapolate that to a BEV heavy vehicle.
As a community project, I converted two small (26 seat) buses in Australia to EV’s. The vehicles are designed to serve as community buses to carry passengers between the towns and villages of our valley a round trip being about 140 miles.
We also equipped the buses with small LPG back up generators and created strategically placed 3 phase charging stations. These buses are used for charity events, excursions for the elderly, social activities etc.
They’re owned and operated by a trust, with volunteer assistance, and some corporate sponsorship.
Over the last 5 years the buses have performed splendidly on the flat, but gradients rapidly defeat the limitations of the batteries. Next year I will have sufficient data to compare the effectiveness of the vehicle fitted with NiMH batteries and it’s stablemate running Lithium.
(I tried to replicate the project in the UK, but the cumbersome bureaucracy and red tape defeated me.)
Equipping urban buses with EV technology is easier than other heavy vehicles. The combination of low speeds, lighter loads, flat gradients and fixed routes, helps mitigate some of the problems encountered by heavy vehicles.
Ian Wright is a very good engineer, but he would be the first to admit the technology to convert most heavy vehicles to BEV’s simply doesn’t exist.
John Le Sage also failed to mention Goupil of France, now owned by Polaris of the US who have been making small EV commercial vehicles for years, or Mitsubishi’s FUSO 6 tonne E-cell tip truck.
All of which brings me to such government initiatives as California’s Sustainable Freight Action Plan etc, .
It’s true governments can greatly assist innovation by regulation and other incentives. But governments can also create disasters and massive white elephants paid for by consumers and taxpayers.
John Le Sage enthuses at a press release from ” Nikola Motors” just as he did about the long forgotten Coda Automotive EV car that was to take America by storm only a few years ago.
Nikola Motors does not have “$2.3 billion in confirmed orders” for it’s trucks. Nikola Motors appears to be little more than a Tesla wannabe. It’s technology appears to be old Isuzu hybrid designs modified to use CNG as the hybrid component. (Although I like the sexy graphics).
The $2.3 million in orders is very vague and difficult to confirm. The claim seems to be based on 7000 unidentified potential buyers have paid(or pledged) a deposit of $1500 dollars. Now apart from this being only $10.5 million, (if paid) it’s difficult to determine the veracity of these buyers.
It appears to be an attempt to duplicate Tesla’s amazing stock raising phenomenon.
I hate to say this, and I hope to be proved wrong, but closer examination of the Mercedes project reveals a vehicle of very limited use.
The worst part about this sort of hype, is it will inevitably be misreported by advocates arguing that electrification of heavy vehicles is not only possible, but prevented by government inaction, oil company conspiracies, the Koch brothers etc, etc ad nauseum !
Craig, it’s a hard balance for governments. On the one hand governments have a duty to encourage beneficial innovation, on the other hand governments also have a duty to avoid creating unrealistic regulations and encouraging unpractical, wasteful schemes.(or even scams).
Most of this is true–and very insightful. In particular:
Governments DO have the responsibility who mention at the end, and it’s not an easy one to discharge.
There HAVE been many failures in government-backed cleantech.
Coda WAS an abject catastrophe from its very onset (though it was not government-backed, as far as I know)
Most importantly, electrifying large buses and trucks is an extremely difficult endeavor currently (though we’re getting closer to it every day)
Craig,
Coda was a real mystery. The odd and quite sinister people behind the cam would make a really good plot for a movie !
The really sad case of Vectrix, a real pioneer in many ways destroyed by slightly immature technology, and an incompetent, dishonest, megalomaniac CEO. ($1,5 billion of investor money wasted).
Bright Automotive, (not so bright, $285 million DOE money lost, and $200 mil + investor money).
Aptera Automotive. This was the most imaginative (and least practical) with a investors, management and workforce that had been too long in the Californian sun ! Millions lost and many deposit holders defrauded.
I could go on and on listing these failures, but what’s the point.
Correct; there is no point. The development of tech companies, cleantech and otherwise, has always been–and will always be–littered with corpses of companies whose ideas didn’t pan out.
You’re also correct about Coda. I was down there (in Santa Monica, CA) about seven years ago trying to talk them into sponsoring EV World.com, and I was immediately taken by how completely incompetent and unprofessional they were in their thinking and behavior. If it was that obvious to me, an outsider, how on Earth this they raise hundreds of millions of dollars? They raised $76 million after my visit, when it was clear that their product was a completely dog. I still don’t get it.
Hi Craig,
Ah, Coda ! Miles Rubin and his merry band of scallywags.
A group of shifty Wall Street manipulators and speculators in partnership with a serial bankrupt, and some shadowy PRC corrupt military arms manufacturers, taking advantage of an over hyped “green market” and available government funding,….
What could possibly go wrong? 🙂
Wow. Miles Rubin is hardly a household name. Do you Google the stuff I write about, or are you a walking encyclopedia? 🙂
Hi Craig,
I always research my comments, but in the case of Coda, I was personally involved in researching the investment on behalf of a client.
Over years I built up quite a rogues gallery of less scrupulous or deluded clean tech promoters and projects, especially EV technology.
Some are real rogues, others are just deluded dreamers or good at only one aspect of the proposed business.
I’m fortunate to have access to a team of dedicated and enthusiastic research employees to focus and condense information into a manageable format.
(also explain technical stuff in layman’s terms:)
I also find outlets like http://realclearenergy.org/ very useful to help sort through media releases. I also invest in subscriptions to a number of information providers not available to the general public.
I’ve discovered the widest perspective possible is an essential basis for any objective analysis.
Very interesting post Marco as I have been writing about electric transportation for almost 10 years and you mentioned some aspects with which I wasn’t familiar.
Writing from press releases is an essential function of media. It is why the press releases are written. So I wouldn’t be too hard on one individual. Media functions to get the word out.
However, the industry has evolved where too often the language of articles are a direct copy of the press release. I would have to agree that is kind of a “lap dog, I will repeat anything you tell me,” kind of writing. It is a writer as purely a technician and not a researcher let alone a “thinker.” Some don’t even work from an original press release and will make a few modifications to an existing article and call it “curating” to call it their own. So very little of what is available is a fact checked, researched, thought provoking , or even an original article.
There are privately funded research articles but these are not generally available to the public. (And not everything that is available privately is worth the cost.) Otherwise the industry is set up in such a way that there are not sufficient funds to researchers/writers who would make such an effort. So it can be frustrating to both readers and conscientious writers. I could go on … sorry to go off a bit. But you could see why this would lead to articles where all the tech sounds hopeful and bright and completely lacks depth, context or thought.
Craig, to Marco’s point there are other efforts in the electric vehicle field that may not be immediately apparent. For several years truck manufacturers were loath to use the terms “electric vehicle” or “hybrid.” The very largest “vehicles” to move earth, tunneling [machines] and digging have for some time shifted to electric drives because of the torque requirements. Mechanical transmissions required for ICE operations become too massive and costly and so we see a switch to “electric transmissions.” This is essentially a series hybrid with a diesel engine and generator providing electricity for an electric powered drive train.
GM electromotive division built train locomotives on this principal for 70 years until they sold it off in 2005 prior to bringing out the “new” “range extending” technology in the Volt.
All subways are all electric drive. You wouldn’t want an ICE exhausting in a tunnel.
We have seen a more widespread use of tunneling machines. They are also all electric drive (grinding and moving) And then the electricity is either fed directly from the grid or they use their own little diesel power station outside the tunnel.
So if we are not afraid to understand the component processes. Electric drive for transportation has been around for decades. (all elevators) The problem has never been electric drive, which is certainly superior to ICE in many applications, but getting electricity to the drive.
Electric transportation became widespread when we could transmit the electricity to the drive. (most street cars were electric drive [private companies] with many thousands of miles of routes in the early 20th century) We could today electrify roadways like this California experiment for trucks. http://w3.siemens.com/topics/global/en/electromobility/Pages/ehighway.aspx or using induction/tuned capacitors in the roadway http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/the-allelectric-car-you-never-plug-in Overall it would be cheaper and kind of a public option, but now we are crazy for batteries which is the private option.
Often we choose private options, especially in the US because we believe that they will be cheaper as competition drives down prices. That is not always the case and there are also valid arguments for some public monopolies. This is where technology meets politics once again, sometimes without the economics component. Generally it seems easier or more effective for politicians to “regulate” an industry into existence than to fund and govern one, like an energy distribution network for vehicles. Although this is the path that is taken in communities outside the US that may also be more concerned with overall economics (South Korea.)
The hybrid supply scheme that Marco mentions, using high energy supply at bus stops plus batteries is a third option and has been used in several locations. This might also be easily applied to taxis and shared vehicles. http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/battery-topped-electric-buses-flash-charge-in-15-seconds/
As a general note, I think that breaking apart a consideration of the electric drive and its electrical supply is fundamental to understanding electric transportation. It is an unusual position where most lump the two technologies together into the present technological answer “box” of “batteries.” This tends to lock our thinking into assumptions about “electric cars (or trucks) which are not true when you are not using batteries to supply electricity (hybrid, solar, fuel cell, transmission and even atomic batteries are all alternative options.) Also the articles cited are intended to be illustrative and could inspire further reading, not “proof” of the validity, acceptance or economics of a concept.
@ Marco and Breath on Wind and craig
Very informative insights to the real world challenges to EV vehicles and the technical barriers to heavy duty vehicles becoming EV. Interesting.
I had forgotten about that failed CODA auto co.
So Marco you have done some Pioneering work in this area. keep those buses going sounds Cool!
Breath it seems that perhaps if the media had the money resources they could have the technical support to interface and collaborate with the writers so they could focus on good technology and know the difference or at least temper the story so people don’t get carried away with concepts that need much more work.
Takes funding and the profit driven media outlets don’t seem to value getting hard facts like once they did.
Thanks Interesting
Marco well said and all markets always attract the Bottom feeders and Integrity deficient hackers feeding on the public trough, the investment community and over hype .
You seem to have been Real Engaged in the advance of new technology and have dodged your share of Arrows and Daggers from the dirty players
carry on
Hi Silent,
Oh, I’ve had my share of mistakes and loses !
As I commented to Craig, I must be very careful when I assess any new business or technology since I’m always very aware of the responsibility when recommending or investing a client’s money.
I also must be sure I’m not be too cautious. Not taking advantage of a valuable opportunity is just irresponsible.
Most entrepreneurs are not bottom-feeders, just stubborn and incapable of analyzing the negatives.
But, you’re right, some are just flim-flam artists and criminals seeking and opportunity to cash in on a boom.