GM/Chevy Volt introduction. Photo: westmidwestproductions

Revenge is sweet for electric car enthusiasts.

Less than seven years after GM recalled, and destroyed, most of its EV1s, there are now more than 20,000 electric cars on the roads and new releases on the way. Gasoline prices in California are creeping up toward the five-dollar mark and this year California passed the toughest clean car standards in history. The federal government is considering similar standards.

Nissan Leaf

It's this revolution in the auto industry that filmmaker Chris Paine tries to capture by following four industry pioneers in his 2011 film "Revenge of the Electric Car", now out on DVD. This time around the doors of GM seem to be wide open for filmmaker Chris Paine who also directed, "Who Killed the Electric Car." In his latest documentary former GM CEO, Bob Lutz and Paine seem to actually be on friendly terms as Lutz explains his hopes for the plug-in hybrid GM/Chevy Volt. We visit Nissan's Carlos Ghosn to hear about the company’s mass market play with the Nissan Leaf, we hear from Tesla's risk taking CEO, Elon Musk, and visit an underground electric car converter in Los Angeles.

It's an interesting look at the auto industry's reversal on electric cars although it could use some editing and a bit more of an investigative look at the next gen EV revolution. A lot has happened since the film wrapped up in late 2010. If you are in the Bay Area, you can check out a screening of the film and timely discussion to follow. KQED and ITVS Community Cinema are presenting the free event.

WHAT: Screening of "Revenge of the Electric Car." Discussion, with panelists, to follow
Where: San Francisco Public Library
WHEN: Tuesday, March 20th
TIME: Doors open at 5:15. Screening starts at 5:45

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As if range anxiety wasn't enough, do I also have to remember to keep my car charged — even when I am not driving it? The answer is yes, but since I drive a Leaf, it's not quite as serious as owning a Tesla. A recent blog about Tesla's cars turning into "immovable bricks" if the battery ever becomes completely discharged, has set off a firestorm in the blogosphere. The claims say some Tesla owners have left their cars for as little as a few weeks and found their EVs could not be re-charged.

Tesla has been applauded for having some of the most advanced battery technology but it seems that there is one design flaw that can cause serious problems. If the charge in a Tesla’s lithium-ion batteries is fully depleted, the batteries are essentially destroyed and the car is left immobilized. The repair can be costly, some estimates say around $40,000 dollars for a new battery.

Tesla is downplaying the issue. In a statement released this week the company doesn't deny that the "brick problem" could happen but says its unlikely because they offer several safeguards against it including low charge warnings. "All automobiles require some level of owner care. For example, combustion vehicles require regular oil changes or the engine will be destroyed. Electric vehicles should be plugged in and charging when not in use for maximum performance. All batteries are subject to damage if the charge is kept at zero for long periods of time. However, Tesla avoids this problem in virtually all instances with numerous counter-measures." Tesla says its cars can be unplugged for weeks without reaching zero charge. But now who wants to test that claim?

Good news for Nissan Leaf drivers, the company says the battery shuts down completely before it fully drains. GM says its Volt plug-in hybrid has a buffer at the lower end of the state of charge to prevent it from being fully depleted. Right now the problem seems specific to Tesla. However, from what I have learned, keeping an electric car charged is not only part of good maintenance but also part of keeping a battery warranty valid. Nissan recommends charging up to eighty percent for better battery life. To prevent damage to the battery the company also says owners must not leave the car parked for more than 14 days where the battery available charge gauge reaches a zero or near zero state of charge.

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The new all-electric Nissan Leaf. (Photo: Josh Cassidy)

This week, California officials are voting on the toughest new regulations in the country to promote cleaner cars. If passed, by 2025, 15% of new cars and trucks sold in the state would have to be powered by batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or other technology that produces little or no air pollution.

These kind of tough mandates have been tried before and they failed. But officials are confident that era of electric vehicle as finally arrived in California. That’s becoming the case in the Bay Area, which has been a strong market for advanced cars since the first Prius came out a decade ago.

“This is a Prius V,” says Joe Testa at Downtown Toyota in Oakland, showing one of several new Prius models that Toyota is releasing this year. “It’s the longer, wagon style, so it has a little more room.” Testa says there’s already a waiting list for the new Prius Plug-in, which comes out in March.

Toyota came out with hybrids ahead of other carmakers, maybe because the company anticipated changes in the market. Or, as some believe, it was due to a California state agency.

“We have been at the forefront of encouraging, and some would people would say forcing, new technologies. The Prius hybrid electric vehicle is an example of that,” says Tom Cackette. Chief Deputy Director of the California Air Resources Board.

California’s Clean Car History

Cackette says to see California’s legacy of shaping national car policy, you have to go back to 1975. The state had a growing smog problem, so the air board required cars to have catalytic converters. The federal government followed. California then tightened air pollution rules for cars. And tightened them again. “And almost in every case, the federal government would follow two, three, four, five years later.”

Today, new cars emit 99 percent less smog than cars did in the 1960s. “It’s probably the most successful environmental program in the world,” says Cackette.

Now, California has a new goal: dramatically cutting greenhouse gas emissions to fight climate change. Transportation accounts for 40% of the state’s emissions. “The number one strategy to reduce greenhouse gases is these car standards,” he says.

The proposed standards would cut greenhouse gas emissions from new cars in half by 2025. “We actually worked very closely under the federal government under the Obama Administration and we’ve jointly developed the standards. So they won’t just apply in California. But they’ll apply nationwide.”

Meeting these tougher standards will raise car prices by about $1900, but Cackette says those costs would be offset by fuel savings.

Jumpstarting Electric Car Sales

On top of that, California is taking an even bolder step, requiring automakers to sell increasing numbers of clean cars in the state. By 2025, they’d have to sell almost a million and half vehicles that run on electricity or hydrogen fuel cells.

The thing is – California has tried this before. And it didn’t work. “I guess I would call it a little too visionary perhaps,” says Cackette. In 1990, the Air Resources Board mandated that 10 percent of new car sales be “zero emission” cars by 2003.

“Obviously that didn’t happen. The price of gas was cheap in those times. The price of the technologies were high,” he says. The air board loosened the rules to include hybrid cars and cleaner gasoline engines, which he says drove carmakers to develop them faster.

Now, Cackette believes that technology has come of age. Nissan is selling the all-electric Leaf and Chevy is selling the Volt, a plug-in hybrid. And there’s another big difference.

Automakers Onboard

“The car manufacturers were adamantly opposed to the concept of government telling them they needed to build a new type of technology. That’s changed.”

“You are seeing more agreement between automakers and California and the federal government,” agrees Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers in Washington DC.

“Automakers have invested billions of dollars in these technologies. And so in some ways we have similar interests. Our interest in recouping our investment is now aligned with the societal imperative to get more of these vehicles on the road,” she says.

Bergquist says meeting the mandate calling for carmakers to sell a certain number of clean vehicles will ultimately depend on consumers. “There’s still a concern about what the consumer acceptance of these technologies is going to be and that can make a mandate very scary.”

Groups Push for Tougher Rules

“We think California could be bolder,” says Don Anair is with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit group that supports even stronger clean car rules.

“We need that technology to advance for the technology cost to come down and make these vehicles accessible to more and more consumers. By having a more aggressive standard, that gives more certainty to investors that California is committed.” Anair wants to see tougher standards sooner rather than later, since it takes 15 years on average for the entire fleet of cars on the road to turn over.

If the new rules are successful, electric cars could be adopted at a much faster pace. Tom Cackette of the Air Resources Board says they’re doing all they can to encourage consumers to buy them, including funding a popular rebate program and working with companies to build an electric car charging infrastructure.

“Right now, you’ve got to sort of have a jumpstart to this whole process and in the absence of a jumpstart, there’s a chance that it will fail,” he says.

A projection of how zero emissions vehicles like electric cars will be 87% of all cars on the road in California by 2025. Source: California Air Resources Board.

Like many folks, I was counting on a number of tax credits and rebates to help me afford the Nissan Leaf. I have already received the state of California’s 2,500 dollar rebate (it took a little over two months). Also, Nissan sent me a $700 rebate to pay me back for having a fast charging port installed on my Leaf. Although there are no fast chargers out there yet, I guess it’s going to come in handy one day. But what I might not get is the federal tax credit.

I thought the clean car federal tax credit of $7,500 for EVs was like the home buyers' credit from last year or like California’s solar panel credit — but it is not a refund credit. You have to set it up so you owe the federal government an amount, then they will take if off. I didn’t do that so after an early December tax appointment I rushed to increase my exemptions for my last two paychecks of the year. I scrambled to see where I could get some other income. Anyway, I am probably not going to even get half the credit which makes my Leaf much more expensive than I originally planned for. I blame myself for not researching this but it’s all a bit confusing. I also had not planned ahead on a home charger. I had PG&E come out to do a required EV inspection but I did not buy a charger before I bought the car. Thus my new shiny Leaf sat in my driveway, unused, for a few weeks.

Monday I’ll explain how I picked my home charger and how I got it and the installation for free.

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The 2011 Chevy Volt at the 2010 Plug-In Conference. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Originally reported for KQEDnews.org.

After years of stops and starts, electric cars and plug-in hybrids are on the cusp of a new era of mainstream acceptance, starting this year.

That was the message this week from automakers, government officials and utility operators at the Plug-In 2010 conference, a major international gathering of alternative vehicles at the San Jose Convention Center.

“Now the rubber hits the road”, said Craig Childers, an air resources engineer with the California Air Resources Board. “This is the last conference where we don’t have the cars. When we do this again next year, there’s going to be thousands of people driving these cars and it’s going to be great to see how that happens. We’ll learn from it and continue to evolve.”

A large amount of attention at the event went to two vehicles: the battery electric Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid. Both groundbreaking cars will begin appearing in showrooms in December.

At Tuesday’s conference, GM announced the Volt’s sticker price will be $41,000. A federal tax credit will bring the cost of the vehicle down by $7,500. The Volt also be available to lease for $350 a month for 36 months, assuming a down payment of $2,500.

GM calls the Volt an “extended-range electric vehicle,” which means that the car can go 40 miles on a single battery charge, using no gasoline. An additional 300 miles can be driven as the car uses gasoline to power an on-board generator to make more electricity and power the engine.

Tony Pasowatz, the Volt’s Vehicle Line Director, said that distance is key for getting consumers to overcome their “range anxiety” and trust that the Volt will get them where they need to go without being stranded with an empty battery.

“The Volt gives you an extended range capability that no other electric vehicle can provide you,” Pasowatz said. “So we have a good, solid confident proposition of 340 miles, whereas many electric cars will not achieve the range that they claim because their range is on a city cycle which no one drives, it doesn’t account for running the heating and air conditioning, and it doesn’t account for the degradation of the battery. And if you really only get 50 miles, the question is can that be your everyday car?”

The Nissan Leaf, an all-electric vehicle, which has a range of 100 miles on a single charge, will be made available to consumers by December in five states initially, including California.
To date, there have been 20,000 pre-orders for the Nissan Leaf, with more than 3,000 of those orders coming from prospective buyers in the Bay Area.

Mark Perry from Nissan standing next to the Leaf, an all electric-vehicle. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

For Mark Perry, Director of Product Planning at Nissan, the consumer acceptance of the new generation of electric cars in the state resonates nation-wide. “If there was a barrier to adoption called affordability, that’s been knocked over. If there was a barrier to adoption called charging infrastructure, it’s been knocked over here in CA. There are no barriers now. The entire country is looking at California as a lead.”

The Leaf will cost $32,780, but after the federal tax credit of $7,500, and a California state rebate of $5,000 – which the Volt is not eligible for – the actual price will be $20,280. The Leaf also will be eligible for drivers to take into California’s carpool lanes without having more than one passenger, while the Volt will not.

Ginny and John Pauksta of San Jose paid $99 to reserve a Leaf. “The tipping point for me was the BP oil spill, the frustration of what we’re doing to the environment,” said John Pauksta. “It made me very angry. The fact that we’re fighting wars to protect our oil reserves just got to me. Electric cars were like toys, like glorified golf cars and now major car companies are coming out with electric cars that look like real cars.”

“You can fit five people in it and haul stuff around and the driving range is within a level of tolerance”, added Pauksta, who commutes 44 miles daily to his job in Palo Alto.

Instead of the lead acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries that powered the first generation of electric cars like GM’s EV1 in the 1990s, today’s electric car batteries are made of lithium-ion cells, which are now small enough that they can be easily assembled into battery packs and charged using a simple 120-volt outlet, as Pasowatz did with his Chevy Volt, charging it overnight at the conference center.

With the purchase of a Volt, consumers will get a 120-volt portable charge cord set and the option of GM’s 240-volt cord set, which would cut the charging of the vehicle in half, from eight hours to four hours.

Apart from the advancements in battery technology, a perfect storm of factors seems to brewing to usher in a new, more hospitable climate for electric cars, experts at the event, which runs through Thursday, said.

“The technology is moving ahead. The recognition of getting off of oil is important and I think the car is part of the larger energy environment ecosystem, it’s come to that realization that it is time to solve these problems in a systemic way”, said Pasowatz.

According to the Air Resources Board, there are roughly 20,000 pure electric vehicles in California, including roughly 15,000 small neighborhood electric vehicles that aren’t designed to drive on highways.

Utilities, regulatory agencies and environmental organizations expect those numbers to rise as long as gas prices continue to be high, which makes electricity as a fuel source a particularly attractive option.

“Gasoline is about $3, plus or minus, per gallon,” said Sunil Chhaya, a senior manager at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto. ”Electricity is about 75 cents per gallon, so when you compare operating costs per mile, it’s about a fourth or a fifth the cost of gasoline.”

As the economy improves and worldwide demand for oil grows, gasoline prices may not stay at the current level.

“We’re not sure what gasoline prices are going to look like in the next five to 10 years and it’s widely expected that those will get on an upward trajectory again and start climbing up and beyond four a gallon,” said Childers. “In that case, we’re talking about a very big price difference for electricity. We actually need that because these electric cars are more expensive to build and buy and the only way consumers can afford it is by saving money on fuel."

Moreover, California’s grid, with its mix of hydroelectric power, nuclear power and renewables like solar and wind power, is also cleaner than the nation’s grid — which relies more heavily on power from coal-fired plants. So environmental benefits accrue when drivers plug-in to the grid to charge their vehicles. Chhaya said that “50 to 60 percent of the CO2 emissions can be reduced by using a battery electric vehicle plugged into the state’s grid.”

Still, a big factor for consumers is the sticker price of electric cars. Palo Alto-based Tesla motors offers currently only one electric vehicle line, its sporty Roadster that retails for more than $100,000.

Availability of public charging stations has also been a challenge.

Earlier this year, however, Campbell-based Coulomb Technologies received a $37 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to build 4,600 charging stations in nine metro areas, including San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and Los Angeles by September 2011. The charging stations will also feature a new connecting standard adopted in January by the Society of Automotive Engineers so that any electric car can be charged at the charging stations.

For consumers like Kadife Besir-Dunlap, a schoolteacher from Woodland, neither the Chevy Volt nor the Nissan Leaf can compare to her beloved EV1 which was reclaimed by GM in 2002 when her two-year lease expired and GM refused to renew the lease for her or other EV1 owners.

“The Volt is a plug-in, it’s not full electric,” she said. “The car of the future is powered by the fuels of Jurassic time. My frustration is renewed right now. GM could have produced another electric vehicle. They had the technology and a really nice car with the EV1 and they could have reproduced something like that, a more affordable full electric car. A hybrid car is not progress, it’s stagnation.”

Since the tow truck took away her family’s EV1, Besir-Dunlap has been driving an all-electric Toyota RAV4. Earlier this month, under a partnership with Tesla Motors, Toyota announced plans to start production up again on the all-electric RAV4 in 2012 at the NUMMI auto plant in Fremont.

Still, some people at the conference couldn’t wait to plug-in and drive.

“I see nothing but increases in gas prices so I want to get out of the polluting, expensive internal combustion world and into the less expensive, less polluting world of electric vehicles,” said Jared Alaqua, a 28 year-old Novato resident pursuing his M.B.A. “And I hear that they actually perform better.”

Check out these QUEST resources for related information:

Waiting for the Electric Car

Plug-in Hybrids

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Hourly energy use data, now online.

I've never paid much attention to my electric meter. For most of us, it's just that box on the side of the house with a small white disk spinning inside, keeping track of our energy use. But over the next three years, all the meters of PG&E customers will be getting a major upgrade to a new, digital SmartMeter.

I met one customer, Ken Kube in Castro Valley, whose meter has already been upgraded. Since the new meters track his home energy use digitally, Kube can log into his PG&E account and see his real-time energy use. On one level, it's really the ultimate tool for parents who like to remind their kids to turn out the lights. But it's also a powerful conservation tool. Kube could see how much energy he uses at night, when his appliances are drawing power in stand-by more (what's known as "vampire" power).

These meters are just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to a smart grid. Just what the smart grid is depends on whom you ask, but most people agree it comes down to one thing: communication. The energy landscape is changing rapidly. In addition to increasing demand, there's more renewable power like large-scale solar and wind coming online – which are often far from urban areas and are available intermittently. There's also small-scale solar on building rooftops – which means energy consumers are becoming energy producers. There will also be plug-in electric cars, which need to draw power from grid.

To manage all this, utilities and grid operators need more information than they have. And that's where meters come in. But as Kurt Yeager of the Galvin Electricity Initiative describes, it's a huge networking challenge – and a huge market opportunity.

A number of companies have jumped into the smart grid market as a result, from Silicon Valley start ups to international corporations. As Eric Miller, the Chief Solutions Officer for Trilliant describes, managing the information flow in smart grid will be the biggest challenge.

Other smart grid companies are banking on the consumer market. Google is developing the PowerMeter, an online tool that tracks home energy use. They're partnering with GE, who is positioned to work with utilities, with its meter technology, and with consumers, with smart appliances, as Sunil Sharan, the Director of the Smart Grid Initiative explains.

More on the smart grid: check out the Smart Grid at Home radio report and a slideshow of grid technology, old and new.

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In fact, Darell Dickey is even more hard core about this stuff than the piece reveals. Darell powers his Rav4 EV – as well as his entire house – on 100% solar power, and he took pains to tell me that he considers even the EV a compromise. Most of the time, like so many Davis dwellers, he rides his bike.

Today if you're driving a full size EV, you're likely either extremely devoted, extremely wealthy, or both. The Tesla Roadster retails for about $100K; another car we mention briefly, the Scion eBox (converted from gas versions by LA-based AC Propulsion) sells for $70K. Most everyone I spoke with hopes this will soon change.

Make sure to check out our photo set on Flickr which includes: photos of all the cars discussed in this report. You can also hear our radio story on electric cars online and find additional links and resources.

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