[Video via The Auto Channel]

Ivan, one of my coworkers here in London, has a funny way to describe his admiration for his former employer BMW; he just paces back and forth muting they cover and master every single angle of the business, e.v.e.r.y single one, all while shaking his head in disbelief.

Proving Ivan right, BMW announced last week that they were starting a premium car-sharing program in Germany.

The news comes right on the heels of their February announcement of the i sub-brand, a division that wants to be to environmental vehicles what the M brand represents to performance, as well as the launch of i-ventures, their venture capital arm.

Why would a conventional car company move into such a fundamental threat to their core business as car-sharing? While the launch of the i sub-brand is understandable from a product point of view, creating a venture firm and a car-sharing organization might seem, at first glance, odd. I see three possible explanations:

1- The Conspiracy theory: eyeing car-sharing as an attack to the fundamentals of their business model, BMW has decided to start its own car-sharing company and get in the game, only to follow with a string of acquisitions (Zipcar?) that will ultimatly allow them to dominate the business. Full domination achieved, they will declare the division a money loosing operation and close it down. Very unlikely, but we have seen this movie before.

2- The Last-Man Standing theory: with oil getting back to record levels, an urban environment getting more and more hostile towards cars, and young people just not interested in car ownership (even in Germany), car companies will need to diversify from gasoline powered steel cans in order to survive. Some companies like Renault-Nissan are betting on EVs, while BMW seems to be betting on efficiency (pure electric or not) and services. With their impeccable reputation and global reach, they have, if anything, a better chance than anyone to stay relevant in the new mobility landscape.

3- The Who-The-Hell-is-Going-to-Otherwise-Afford-our-Products theory: hellbent in producing technological marvels, they have realized that their EVs are simply going to be extraordinarily expensive; if a conversion like the Mini-E was $850 a month, God knows how much they are going to charge for the carbon-fiber i family. Better then to let the unwashed masses rent them by the minute, so they can at least get a taste…

One can accuse German companies of prepotence and over-engineering, but not of short-sightedness. Unlike American car companies, obsessed over quarterly reports, German car companies (mostly family controlled) tend to follow a carefully charted long term strategy. In that light, the fact that one of the most admired brands in the planet, actively getting a pulse of the Mobility-as-a-Service world through i-Ventures, would own a car-sharing platform to deploy some of the most advanced high-efficiency vehicles in the planet at a price-per-minute that everyone can afford, sounds like a formidable formula not only to stay relevant, but to invent the future in the process.

World Domination indeed.

(Now if they could only stop saying Premium every twenty seconds… their introductions are starting to sound like The Big Lebowski, without the laughs).

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As the sole stockholder, president, CEO and employee of itMoves Design Limited, I couldn't help but LOL at the comic strip.

It brought back memories of the months I spent last year endlessly working on the P&L, Use of Cash, Revenue Model, Headcount & Labor Costs and other financial charts seemingly indispensable when going out the door looking for funding (a job I actually found enjoyable, to my surprise).

It also reminded me of how weird it felt, as a beginner, the first time one has to write down his own Exorbitant Annual Salary... ahahah, good times.

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It's been fifty days since I moved to the United Kingdom (many more since I last wrote a post) and changes have been, as anyone would imagine, substantial:

• At the personal level, I am getting to know one of the most vibrant cities on the planet. After more than a decade living (and why not, enjoying) Southern California, Central London feels like it is bursting at the seams. The people, the energy and the visual landscape are, at least in Soho where I spend most of my time, exciting, phenomenal, and at times, overwhelming. The downside of it all (the overrun subway system, the tourist crowds, the prices) has not yet managed to ruin it for me yet, and with the rest of the family joining me in August, the excitement of The New is going to stay with me for a while.

• At the professional level, I have been forced to (temporarily?) give up any startup adventure and get back to the corporate design world. As far as car design studios go, Ford's Strategic Concept Group at the old ingeni building is as good as it gets, mixing design, engineering, marketing and product planning in a promising new way, forward-looking but with our feet planted in reality. Along with the fantastic location, the fact that they still remember me from my past days at Ford helped me seal the deal.

So what to do with this blog? The logistics of the move, which included renting out and getting out of our apartment while packing my suitcases, simply sapped too much time and energy out of me for a few weeks; once I moved here, the excitement of the new, plus a small dose of guilt (how can this guy keep writing about new mobility when he is working for Ford?) conspired to create what I can only describe as writer's block (pretentious as it sounds). However, as days and weeks went by, I realized that different flavors of the same problems that made me quit and start itMoves (oil and commodity prices climbing up again, the rise of motoring China, the inescapable feeling that Times They Are A-changin' in the transportation world) are not only still here, but turning ever more complicated, as the recent events is Japan and the MIddle East certify.

The blog will continue. I will of course no comment on anything related with our internal studio activities for confidentiality reasons. I will also have to be careful around any Ford related topic, just for decency sake (after all, They pay the bills now). But other than that, it would be a shame to miss the opportunity to report not only from one of the most vibrant metropolis in the world, but also a city on the frontlines, in the gasoline-soaked battle between individual freedoms and the common good.

After all, if they managed to turn rainy London into an almost (almost) bicycle friendly city, anything can happen here.

So let's keep it rollin'

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Bjørn Lomborg, an interesting author who gained notoriety back in 2007 by writing the book Cool it!, and who had impressed me with a few articles (like this one) where he called for a different, more rational approach to global warming. His two main arguments were, succinctly, that hysteria will only produce a backlash, and that every dollar spent in R&D and basic science will go many times further than most of the expensive and inefficient solutions we are using today. So far, so good.

Feeling guilty for not having read the book, I finally purchased it a week ago; what a disappointment...

First of all, for someone who claims to agree with the importance of global warming, I found his tone weirdly confrontational. No wonder many scientist were mad at Mr Lomborg when the book came out. From page one, he seems intent on minimizing (almost ridicule) the seriousness of the issue. Here and there, there is a Global warming is real, sure, and it is serious, but..., as if to reassure the reader that he is not a member of the Flat Earth Society, only to go back to his central It's not such a big deal argument. Mr Lomborg promises a cold look at the facts, but he seems as one sided as the people he is criticizing.

Second, he constantly uses the argument that other important global issues should take priority, and that they will cost a fraction of what most global warming solutions are going to cost us. I am not sure about you, but when it comes to my two year old son, I want him both well fed and well educated; it is not an either/or argument. For the same reason, avoiding unnecessary deaths in Africa for lack of mosquito nets, providing access to clean water, or improving AIDS prevention, should NOT be competing issue with global warming. If, as Mr Lomborg claims, we can avoid millions of deaths a year by spending just $3 billion in malaria and $7 bilion in HIV/AIDS, then we should just do it; my reaction is not screw global warming, let's fight malaria but rather why the hell aren't we doing it NOW?. I can totally understand the argument (even if I don't agree with it) that second world countries deserve to grow, taking hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, before they take care of problems like global warming. But pitching starving African kids versus CO₂ emissions smells like cheap manipulation. Furthermore, in the era of the trillion dollar financial bailout, when $10 billion feels like a rounding error, we can and should be doing both.

The third disappointment relates to the weird, almost silly way in which the solution is proposed. I was expecting that after spending three quarters of the book dismantling common misconceptions about global warming, the last chapters would be dedicated to explain the solutions. Instead, Mr Lomborg dispatches with The Solution in, literally, a couple of pages by basically saying let's spend $25 billion a year in better R&D and call it a day. That's it. There is no talk about where, what kind or how. Is it better to push for solar research, or is it going to take nuclear power after all? No explanations whatsoever are given about these miraculous R&D projects. It almost feels as if the pages were ripped off the book (or the .mobi file got corrupted in this case).

Lastly, we have the astonishing revelation that melting glaciers will not increase sea level. If I was good at something in high school (other than drawing cars while in class) was Physics, so Mr Lomborg's explanation about how floating ice doesn't increase water volume when it melts, being so basic, made me feel like an idiot. How could have missed that one? I immediately set up the experiment you see in the introductory image; indeed, the water level doesn't rise when the ice melts. Shit. How could I have missed it? More importantly, how could Al Gore and every climate scientist been wrong about oceans rising? Well, it just takes two minutes at Wikipedia, plus another five at Google double checking, to find out the problem with Mr Lomborg's argument: ice already in the oceans won't raise sea levels, and most of the North Pole is indeed floating, but 98% of Antarctica is on land, and therefore above water. We can argue wether is plausible for the whole Antarctica to melt, and about wether we would have time to adapt since it will happen so slowly, but the numbers don't lie: if it were to melt, oceans would rise by around 70 meters (230 feet), a dramatic increase. This is not an opinion, this is simple math*, so it is outrageous that page after page Mr Lomborg continues to use the same argument (ice caps are floating therefore sea levels won't rise) when all we need is some high school Physics (and some Elementary school math) to prove otherwise.

Quite frankly, this is not the book I was looking for. I was expecting a somewhat centrist point of view, about how to avoid catastrophism, and how to use reason to move forward in the climate debate, mixing realism (which involves economic growth) with a sincere concern for where we are heading (a world jumping from three to eight or nine Americums by 2030). What I found instead was a text full of criticism (some of it bogus, like the ice melting is not an issue) and sadly, nothing in terms of solutions.

Having read the book, I think I'll save the $9 and pass on watching the Cool it! documentary. His interesting columns (which you can find here, and which I will keep reading) promised much more.

* The simple math goes like this (rounded numbers):

• Area of Artartica: 13,800,000 km²
• Mean thickness of ice: 1.8 km
• therefore Volume = 13,800,000 x 1.8 = 24,840,000 km³
• of which 98% is land based >> 24,840,000 x 0.98 = 24,343,000 km³ (volume of ice that will increase ocean level if melted).
• World oceans total surface = 361,800,000 km² (about 70,8% of the surface of the Earth).
• ...now we only need to divide volume of ice by ocean surface...
• 24,343,000 km³ / 361,800,000 km²= 0.067 km = 67 meters (or 220 feet)

Of course, this calculation assumes that ALL the ice would melt, something not expected even in the worst case scenario. It also assumes we believe the earth is not flat ;-)

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<div style="font-size: 11px;padding-top:10px;text-align:center;width:560px">Watch live streaming video from newintelligence at livestream.com</div>

My friend and mentor Dan Sturges is one of the panelists. What do they talk about? :

In the last 1.0 hundred years mobility was largely about automobile ownership.  The conversation now moves to the role of vehicles in a more complex mobility mix.  How must automakers adapt?

This webcast was live at 9AM PST on December 9th.

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I am not a big fan of subsidies, which tend to obscure market realities and generally benefit the incumbents (from agriculture to manufacturing) instead of leaner, more efficient newcomers.

Targeted, time-limited consumer tax credits are a different animal however. When well designed, they can be a decisive force helping new industries cross the chasm faster. The tax credit available for EVs is a good example.

Unfortunately, the other EV tax credit (the one that helps individuals and businesses purchasing charging infrastructure) was not that well designed, and because it comes from a different pot of money, it is set to expire by the end of this month. Ah, the irony, right when the first serious EVs in a generation are finally going to appear on the road, one of the main sweeteners for the consumer (especially if they are not too committed) is going to disappear.

There is still a chance that it can be extended, but for that to happen, action is needed. Please visit this Plug-in America link and sign the petition so it gets forwarded to your representatives in Congress (it only takes 30 seconds).

In another time this would have probably been extended without a glitch, but nowadays, with tea-lovers controlling one party and Compromiser In-Chief leading the other, I'm afraid anyy clean tech advance made during the past few years could be on the chopping block starting January.

Hey, they have to find the money somewhere to pay for the tax credit extension for the top two percent, right?

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I still remember the SolarTaxi, and the fact that solar was a relative term; unlike the ultra efficient racers at the World Solar Challenge, the taxi was topped up regularly from the grid. In theory, they had a solar power plant on a rooftop in Berne (Switzerland), from where the electricity was fed into the grid, offsetting electricity generated by using fossil fuels. Ok, I believe it, but I can't help but think that solar means powered only by the sun...in any case, it was a long drive in a pure battery powered vehicle, an amazing feat in itself.

While keeping the same offsetting trick (which allows them to get a four hours recharge in between two daily driving stints) the concept has been expanded this year to turn it into the Zero Race. Three of the four initial participants stopped by in Santa Monica a few days ago, on their way to Phoenix, Cancun, Lisbon and eventually Geneva. All in all, 30,000 kilometers in 80 days, which is more than 200 miles a day, in electric vehicles. Not bad.

Some guy from the Swiss consulate gave an unprepared speech, Chris Paine promised (again) that The Revenge of the Electric Car is almost done and the trailer is coming, and the drivers did their best to seem interested in telling the lines they had obviously repeated at every stop along the way. Event organizer Louis Palmer on the other hand was enthusiastic, passionate and engaging; this is his baby, and it was easy to see. When he declared that his dream was to have not four but one hundred and sixty nine teams in the coming years (one for each flag represented at the UN mission in Geneva, where the race started), it was obvious it was his new mission. This is someone who has found a way to mix his passion for adventure with a sense of purpose, a combination that can move mountains (or take you many times around the world).

Or maybe it's just wishful thinking.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

This is a $7,500 numberplate. Purchased at the border, it is the only legal way to drive a vehicle in China (no matter from which country), even when crossing as a tourist.

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Back in 2007 and especially 2008, with Toyota (based in Torrance, near LAX) taking over as biggest car manufacturer in the world, the Chinese market making another giant Leap Forward, the Big Three drowning in debt, and a thriving EV start-up scene ready to take over, it looked like the time had come to move the only US-based international auto show from Detroit to Los Angeles.

Two years (and $60 Federal billion) later, with an invigorated Ford, a stumbling Toyota, a very successful government IPO, and Californian VCs starting to think that perhaps social media is an easier bet than green-tech, the LA Auto Show seems to be going back to its previous, almost there status.

On the EV front, there is no doubt that this is a transitional period. Green champion Schwarzenegger is out of the picture, and the lingering recession is still present, so the activity looked to me a bit subdued. After several years of increasing EV buzz, everyone seems to be taking a breather. Nevertheless, several themes where clearly noticeable:

• Both Volt and Leaf were displayed as  production vehicles. The fact that both vehicles were present, but not overly so, only emphasized how far ahead of the game both GM and Nissan really are.
• Representing the We-know-we-missed-the-boat-but-we-are-trying-hard were both Honda and Toyota. As much as I like the Fit, the EV version just made me yawn (and why, why the big EV sticker?). Arguably, its most interesting feature was the key fob with a battery charge indicator. The RAV4 EV doesn't even deserve a yawn, Tesla batteries or not. Why would anyone mix such a highly inefficient package with an electric powertrain is beyond me. But hey, if Porsche can put their reputation on the line creating the first sports SUV and succeed, I guess Toyota can try too. As far as I am concerned, SUVs are just like reality shows: they are popular, and they are here to stay, but that does not mean they deserve to be talked about.
  
• Speaking of Porsche, here is how to make green technology cool. The energy recovery system in their racing 911 GT3 R Hybrid looked like something straight out of a Hollywood studio. Of course, if there is ever a production version of these things, it will all be covered in plastic (or leatherette).
  
• The Mitsubishi i-MiEV was also there, making its US debut, looking worse every time I see it. The fact that the fantastic Fiat 500 was literally a few meters away didn't help matters for the poor little thing. Like the Fit, this one had decals too to spice it up.
  
• Demonstrating what half a billion can get you (and quite frankly, what kind of founders both companies have), Fisker's stand was quite nice, while Coda's was more, well, subdued. Still, they both distinguished themselves as the only start-ups on the main floor, a quite important detail. My friend Mark has been sweating it in Finland the last few months, getting the final touches ironed out before the Karma production starts. Mark showed me around their first pre-production unit which (unfortunate paint job aside) looks as good as one would expect for such an expensive car.
  
• Lastly, in the We-are-still-here camp, Tango, Wheego and X-Prize winners Li-ion Motors shared a small space downstairs. It is quite hard for a small company to participate in a show of this level (Tesla was not even there), so their effort should be admired. Unfortunately, their lower floor location meant they were surrounded by blinged-out Lambos and Bentleys: certainly not the right place to be, for many many reasons.

Perhaps a good use for a small DOE loan would be to separate EVs into a nicer, distinct area, since it's in everyone's interest (big guys included) to further remove the DIY stigma from the industry as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, properly displaying unconventional and/or clean technology vehicles, like they do now with small luxury brands Lotus and Aston Martin, would be a good way to move the show beyond its not-quite-there status. Vehicles like the GM-Segway Puma (which I know for a fact were in LA this week) could have been displayed as well, in a proper environment. With a relatively small investment, the LA Show could then perhaps make a leap and establish itself as the premier EV and alternative transportation show in the planet, something  Motor City would probably never be interested in.

Design PS:

My friend Jussi Timonen and the rest of the team at GM Advanced Design in North Hollywood tied for the win at the California Design Challenge competition. I worked with Jussi a few years on both the Hummer O2 and the OnStar Ant, two well received competition entries. Although the theme this year was not green per se, it was one of its closest cousins: lightness. You can see the rest of the GM proposal here.

[Image credit: GM]

Also from the old friend department comes this small Cadillac introduced at the show (Autoblog's picture gallery here). Short of producing their own version of the Volt platform (which I assume it will happen someday), this is the closest one can get to a responsible Cadillac. I was still at the studio when the project started, so it was great to see Niki and Gael's work on display. Niki Smart, by the way, is one of the most articulated designers you will ever find, and he elegantly explains the vehicle theme in this interview with Frances Anderton, host of KCRW's design and arquitecture radio program DnA.

de_2010-11-16-191155-119-0-0-0.64.mp3 Listen on Posterous

After Niki's interview, keep listening for an interesting talk with Paul Taylor (around minute 11), deputy chief executive officer of the MTA, talking about the somewhat ironic LA-Beijing alliance and its shared efforts to reduce traffic (more info in this AP story via Yahoo-News).

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ME03_12Pasadena02d.m4v Watch on Posterous

This one just for fun.

While preparing a 3D environment for a client and friend, I couldn't resist the temptation to drop the ME geometry into this early fall Pasadena environment I photographed yesterday. Although Autodesk Showcase is a better tool for static renderings, there is still something magic about watching a design one knows slowly rotate inside a street composed of nothing more than 140 individual images.

It's not 100 percent perfect, but it's not too bad for just a few hours of work.

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[Video source: Cool It the Movie official website]

I have read a few late opinion pieces by Bjørn Lomborg (the latest one, The Return to Reason, via Project Syndicate), one of the most controversial figures in the climate change debate, and to my surprise, I have to admit his arguments are quite persuasive.

When I heard about Mr Lomborg, it was always in the context of his 1998 book (The Skeptical Environmentalist), and thought of him as nothing more than one of those scientist (he is actually a political scientist) on Chevron's payroll, denying climate change and creating more false debate. I am as innately bias as anyone (we are all more receptive to ideas we agree on, aren't we?), so I didn't pay too much attention. Proving again that my 7th grade Civics teacher was right, reading what the other side has to say has proven to be an interesting experience.

It turns out Mr Lomborg is not a denier, since there is nothing to deny about climate change. Data is data. What Mr Lomborg maintains, and the reason why he is vilified by the environmental activists (establishment?), is that first there is no point scaring our kids silly as if they will not have a world left to inherit, and secondly, that before dumping billion of dollars into inefficient technologies, it would be wiser to spend the money in R&D and find out real solutions that are both effective and economically feasible, while at the same time look for short term adaptation to the real changes that are already happening, changes that are too late to stop, and that will mostly affect poor people around the globe.

The first anti-fear argument might seem counter-intuitive; we all know how effective fear could be. But as fear reaches a certain point, it first breeds skepticism, which in turn transforms into irrational denial (irrational as long as one is not economically motivated, like the oil-industrial complex is). The backlash against climate alarmism is here, and we should be dealing with it whether we like it or not. Especially in a place like the US, positive can-do attitudes (there is a problem, let's fix it) are much more effective in the long run than fear and negativity (as the Party-of-No is going to find out soon).

The second argument, advocating for R&D development instead of wasting money in subsidies to inefficient technologies, is the one I find even more convincing. A big part of the argument behind itMoves was my radical distaste for conversions, from Mini-Es to Leafs, since conventional steel cars are not a suitable platform for what is intrinsically a very different energy source, with very different needs in terms of overall efficiency. Like the proverbial hummer that can only see nails, the auto industry has regarded electric power as just another powertrain option (do you want gasoline, diesel or electric, sir?), with the predictable result of overpriced and/or underwhelming products.

Of course, underwhelming beta products are part of any innovative enterprise; it's also true that subsides are another way in which governments are helping R&D (although indirectly, through the private sector). I am certainly aware of both sides of the argument.

Time will tell whose solutions are right. In the mean time, people like Bjørn Lomborg are bringing a necessary, realistic, middle of the road point of view to a debate that seems to became more and more political (hence polarized) every election season, and therefore tragically headed towards gridlock and inaction, precisely what no one who cares about our planet should want.

PS.- The film version of Mr Lomborg's book Cool it! has just been released in the US. Directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Ondi Timoner,it should make for an interesting counterpoint to both An Inconvenient Truth and Collapse. I'll try to watch it before its Nextflix release.

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Although the US elections dominated the media last week, there was another piece of news with probably bigger consequences to our global mobility world. Sure, sure, sure, the Republicans took over and the Tea Party movement got a few people in Washington, but so what. Now, instead of filibuster everything on the Senate, they simply won't pass it in Congress. The end result will be just the same gridlock we have enjoyed over the past couple of years.

Bypassing this gridlock, going along on its own, and under the cover of a media obsessed with analyzing the election results, the Federal Reserve pressed the Print button for the second time since 2008, this time pulling $600 billion out of our (future) behinds. This was, arguably, as important as who won the election.

Why did the Fed do it? You can read Bernanke's op-ed here, or simply look at this chart:

Scary, isn't it? Long term unemployment is (literally) off the charts, and the US economy seems unable to recover as rapidly as it used to do in past recessions.

To get the economy out of neutral, the Fed is flooding the system with freshly printed money, which should push the stock market higher, which should make people feel richer, which should help them spend more and therefore stimulate the economy. Or so the theory goes. It is nothing but another (undercover) stimulus package, something Tea Party members will certainly not be happy about.

Why is this a concern for a blog dedicated to mobility?

Everything being equal (basically if, and only if other countries don't push their currency lower too), more dollars in circulation means that they will be less valuable. This in turn should boost US manufacturing and exports, creating jobs. So far so good, for companies like Tesla or GM.

But since the dollar is still the world's reserve currency, important things like say, oil, are still priced in dollars, so changing its value has real consequences (beyond making traveling to Paris more expensive for Americans).This is how Barry Ritholtz describes in Bailout Nation the period between 2001 to 2008 when Maestro Greenspan kept interest rates at historic lows (another way to lower the value of a currency):

"As the dollar tumbled, anything that was globally priced in US dollars, including oil, gold, industrial metals, foodstuffs - in fact, most commodities - rallied dramatically in price. It still cost the same amount to produce/grow/mine these items, only the money use to buy'em was worth only half as much."

To put it in simple notation (on the consumer side):

• Fed Printing  = Lower Dollar = Higher Commodity Prices = Higher Gas Prices

On the manufacturing side:

• Fed Printing  = Lower Dollar = Higher Commodity Prices = Less Margins*

Hopefully chairman Bernanke is right, and the US economy wakes up after this latest shot in the arm, pulling along the rest of world. But the fact remains that the world is simply not set up for a low dollar; higher commodity prices are just an easy-to-understand consecuence of the new Fed policy, but we are getting into uncharted territories here, and the rest of the world is certainly not happy about it.

Of course nothing will happen overnight (although oil is again at 2007 levels) but if I were you, I wouldn't be selling that hybrid anytime soon (unless you are trading it in for a Voleaf).

* Auto is very susceptible to commodity prices, especially steel. Check this Financial Times article for their latest problems (via Sox First where subscription is not required). Since the global car market suffers from chronic overcapacity, and the competition is fierce, passing along higher costs to consumers is really not an option.

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See the full gallery on Posterous

[Image credit: itMoves]

My seventy eight years old father, with whom I still keep correspondence (the kind you write by hand, remember that?) sends me a couple of catalogues from a Daimler-Smart exhibition currently taking place a few blocks from the old neighborhood in Madrid.

Inside a tent, one can find the winners of the Smart Future Minds Award Madrid 2010, an exhibition that will display a selection of visionary projects that address the issues of future urban living and mobility (more info here).

Alongside the exhibition (mostly about architecture and urbanism), there are several Smart EVs for people to test drive which, according to my dad, are proving to be quite popular.

When he told me over the phone, my first and only question was Do they have the price?. No, he said. In other words, a dog-n-pony show.

What a surprise (insert sarcastic emoticon here).

Of all the vehicles on the market, I always thought the Smart ForTwo would be one of the first (if not The First) to be converted into electric power. Its small size, quirky personality and shameless urban character made it the perfect candidate. Add to it a country of origin where the Green Party actually has some power, and it looked like a done deal to me.

Alas, German manufacturers tend to drum at a different beat. I remember, back in the late 90s, a friend of mine working for VW Design North America telling me how they have been trying to explain headquarters for years (to no avail) that SUVs where the market to be in, if they wanted to sell in the USA. A few years later, Ford posted record earnings in great part on the back of Explorers and early Expeditions.

As much as I like projects like Car2Go (where Friend of itMoves Dave Brook has been an active participant on its development), their scope is just too limited (two cities only), and the ambition, well, lacking. Perhaps Smart is still limited (financially speaking) inside the corporation, since it hasn't been able to make a profit all these years. Perhaps they are waiting for the next generation ForTwo, so that the engineering work is worthy of their reputation (somehow conversions don't seem to fit with the idea of German engineering, don't you think?).

Or maybe they just missed the boat.

I hope they didn't. But in the Battle of the 2-Seaters, between the old, expensive Smart and the cheap-n-cheerful Twizy, I know which one I'd pick.

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The fantastic Renault Twizy is the most significant new vehicle in the lower end of the market since the introduction of the Smart ForTwo over a decade ago*. It is also the very first vehicle from a major manufacturer to be designed from scratch as an electric car (Leafs and Volts carry over many parts from other vehicles).

The little Twizy is, of course, a tandem two seater, which is one of its biggest assets but also, in my opinion, one of its liabilities. Let me explain.

Despite the fact that most of us do most of our trips alone, we still see driving as a communal experience. Solo trips tend to fade from our memory, and we prefer to remember the good rides: holidays with the family (as a kid or as a parent), romantic let's take the long road home, honey strolls, nights out with our friends... a minimum of two seats seems, therefore, essential. As essential, perhaps, as the capability to drive 300 miles any time any day (although the so called range anxiety should be a topic for another day).

It's no surprise then that when carefully studying the EU quadricycle legislation (page four on this pdf), Renault decided to produce a two seater. And what a perfect example of the spirit behind the quadricycle legislation, the Renault Twizy is: both its power (15 kW) and weight (350 kg before batteries) are at the limit of the law, a law that interestingly limits power and weight but not top speed; capable of 75 km/h (47 mph) the Twizy should be legal for highway use in the EU, where the minimum speed in motorways is 60 km/h (37 mph). SInce achieving such a low weight (at a decent price) was no doubt the main challenge, Renault decided against copying normal cars like the Smart and they went for a tandem configuration, allowing for an extraordinarily compact footprint, and hence a low weight. And low weight is key to achieve the overall efficiency needed for EVs to work well.

What a tandem configuration cannot do is to bend the laws of physics, and here comes the liability (from a US -centric perspective, I have to admit): the main reason for a manufacturer to produce a quadricycle is to avoid expensive crash regulations. With its ultra narrow body, and with the rear passenger head so close to the driver's, it's hard to believe that the Twizy would do good in the Euro-NCAP or FMVSS crash test. Its narrow track might also be an issue in the new US rollover test.

Is this a problem? I think it all comes down to consumer education and expectations. For many decades, people have been allowed to buy 100-plus hp motorcycles and kill themselves at the dmv parking lot, if they chose to do so. At the other end of the spectrum, most pick-up trucks and full size SUVs can only be considered irresponsible and dangerous crashing weapons, with their complete disregard for any other object on the road. It would be inconsistent to speak against vehicles like the Twizy when the aforementioned extreme examples are perfectly legal both in Europe and the US. For the big majority of people (who most likely drive in urban environments for short stints), cars like the Twizy are more than enough, providing the much needed link between quick but dangerous scooters and safe but inefficient automobiles, a link sorely needed if we want to move away from our obsolete ways of motoring. It goes without saying, the Twizy is the perfect vehicle for car-sharing organizations in the EU, and I bet Autolib is looking in looking into it.

What about the US? With a Medium Speed Vehicle legislation going nowhere (a flawed proposal anyway, since 35 mph is still too slow for highway use), there are only two ways to go (if we also want four wheels not three):  the 25 mph NEV way, or the serious way , getting FMVSS approval. Our goal at itMoves was always the latter, and by removing that extra passenger seat, we showed a way to combine safety (keeping the crash away from the driver) with high efficiency (330 kg before batteries is an achievable target, like the Twizy shows).

I still remember when I first saw the Twizy concept. I was at the beginning of pitching itMoves and ME, and my first thought was That's it, we are done. The vague concept images, with its tall and narrow body and outside wheels, said one seat EV to me. For a while, it looked like the small window of novelty that any start-up desperately needs had been closed, and not just by another startup, but by a major manufacturer **. But in the end, by deciding to go instead for a two seater configuration, Renault (and its partner Nissan) has very much admitted they have no intention of introducing anything like the Twizy in the US market.

The space for an ultra efficient, highway capable, personal mobility EV (for sale or for car-sharing) is still open.

I believe the need is still there.

* At the other end of the spectrum, Ford managed to pull off something similar with $140,000 GT, back in 2004.

** The fact that I felt, at the time, terribly paranoid about showing any image of itMoves didn't help either. Today, thinking about NDAs for just makes me laugh. Good ideas are worthless; only good ideas that get funded and developed are worth protecting.

Nov. 2 update: Nissan just announced the NISSAN New Mobility CONCEPT (from Autoblog), mixing a Twizy clone (in what looks like two lightly photoshopped images) with what they call 2-mode EV car sharing (allowing sharing of private vehicles during business hours). Of course, there is no word about the US market. They also mention it's just a proposal... Like with any other EV concept from a major manufacturer, I'll Believe it When I See it.

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Last week's widely publicized admission by Google that they have indeed a fleet of automatically driven vehicles goes beyond the anecdotal; it represents a small but very significant step towards clean mobility worthy of the XXI century.

I will not spend too much time on the details: seven cars, 140,000 miles, only one accident (caused by another driver rear-ending the Google car). Of those miles, at least 1,000 were covered without human intervention. Even more amazing, the vehicles were perfectly legal according to the California DMV, since a liable human was always behind the wheel ready to override any error (even if she was not necessarily holding that wheel at all times...)

Of course self driven cars are not new. The Japanese and Europeans have been working on it for many years (Wikipedia has of course some details). In the US, Honda, Toyota and GM were working together at the the National Automotive Highway Consortium back in 1998 (campy Popular Mechanics page here).

While working at GM Advanced Studio, we were a very close second at the 2007 California Design Challenge with our OnStar ANT. Two years later, we also participated on the Puma project, the self-balancing Segway two seater (which were intended to be shown as automatically driven at the Shanghai Expo, althought I am not sure if they accomplished the goal).

So if it's old news, why should we consider it significant?

First of all, because it is Google. Unlike Microsoft (which only success history outside Windows is the xBox console), they have demonstrated that they can expand beyond their core business of searching and do it well. Hubris and arrogance will no doubt take them down one day, but for the foreseeable future, they are on a roll.

Second and most importantly, automatic driving is a direct attack on the emotional basis underpinning the car business: car equals freedom, the empty highway, the road trip, yada yada yada. What the heck, manhood as we know it...

As I have mentioned before, I still consider myself a car-guy, and they will only take away my manual shifter from my cold, dead hands, but I'm part of a minority. For the vast majority of drivers, especially young people, driving is a chore, and the less friction in the system (i.e. accidents, tickets, parking problems, taxes, insurance premiums, etc) the better. And even for car guys like myself, let's not forget: commuting is not driving.

Once personal mobility is separated from driving (in a more efficient, sustainable, and economical way) many of the emotional attitudes attached to cars today (especially the illusionary freedom) become meaningless. Sure, personal expression will still be important, but Design is Cheap (and styling is even cheaper) so choice will not go away.

Furthermore, once personal mobility is separated from driving, a big part of the knowledge kept inside car companies (read barriers to entry) goes out the door: active and passive safety, ergonomics, handling, feeling. Add to it the disappearance of engines and transmissions (if the robot-cars are, as they should, electric vehicles) and what we have is a very different product, a product that finally (finally!) Henry Ford might not recognize.

Why wouldn't car companies simply jump into it? Because established players do incremental change, but rarely change business models, as The Innovator's Dilemma carefully explains. An automatically driven vehicle (preferably on-demand, certainly electrically powered) that doesn't crash becomes, make no mistake, a very different business for companies mainly dedicated to sell quaint ideas about freedom (as if a 500 hp German sedan gives you any advantage over any econobox when stuck in the 405 freeway).

Lastly, they have time on their side. For a company that barely existed twelve years ago, the eight years that will take bringing autonomous driving to the market might sound like a long time, but in Cardom eight years is just two model cycles away; in other words, Google's competition from major manufacturers will be a car 5% better than today's, maybe 6% if they are pushing.

Now if we could only get David Hasselhoff to be driven off the line by the first Google car...

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[Image credit: itMoves]

The recent AltCar Expo in Santa Monica gave me the opportunity to finally see, sit and briefly sample the Nissan Leaf. My opinion? In their effort to seriously undercut any possible competitor, and to firmly position the car as a mainstream model, Nissan might have pushed a little too hard in a couple of aspects of the vehicle.

It is undeniable that Nissan shocked many people when they announced their $32,780 price for the Leaf back in March. Following anecdotal evidence (Mini-e lease price, some rumors regarding the Smart EV, GM openly talking about a $40k Volt), I had been saying for over a year that $40k was going to be the entry price for any mainstream EV. The announced price, paired with the generous federal and state incentives (which drop the price in California to around $20k) was therefore a very nice surprise.

Unfortunately there is no free lunch, and since Li-ion batteries have not dropped their price 50% overnight, Nissan had to make certain compromises. Two stand out in my book, one technical and one emotional.

The technical compromise has to do with the lack of thermo management for the battery pack. Many people have complained; Elan Musk called them primitive back in August, and a recent chat with Coda executives confirmed that they see their bigger, actively thermo managed battery pack as a competitive advantage for their $44,900 sedan. On the other hand, the quite knowledgeable woman explaining the Leaf's technology at their Electric Drive Event pointed out that Nissan has been extensibly testing in Arizona, and that the chemistry used in their batteries is less sensitive to heat than some of their competitor's.

Whose PR is right? I personally find it hard to believe that Nissan would come out to the market with a battery pack that would perform so dramatically different in warm climates. Cars are not mp3 players, and although first adopters might accept limitations from companies like Aptera and Coda, I don't see Nissan risking their reputation that easily, specially since they seem to be betting the company's future on EVs. All in all, I am cautiously on Nissan's side.

The second compromise regards design, and as a professional I can't give Nissan a pass here. The thing is hideous.

The exterior starts well enough, with distinctive bug-like lamps, no grill (no thermo management, so no need for a radiator), and a big yet pleasantly disguised overhang. There is a reason why most blogs seem to pick this image.

As we turn around, however, things get (literally and figuratively) uglier. The side is heavy handed and ill-proportioned, aided in no small way by their decision to keep the Versa door architecture, and its unfortunate, almost vertical tumblehome. And then there is the rear... there are no words to describe one of the clumsiest rear ends in cardom today, the type of rear-end hastily done on a Friday afternoon, right before it's time to go home. I can take deliberate ugliness (see the previous generation Renault Megane, Leaf's first cousin), ugliness with a theme, but I find the Leaf's randomness simply offensive.

Other than in the obvious quickness to get the job done (with the subsequent lack of refinement), the exterior doesn't show the cost cutting too much. For that, you have to step inside. Here we might, if we squint our eyes, see a theme, (perhaps they worked over the weekend on this one?), but the execution and material choices are simply awful. When the most refined, elegantly element in a car interior is a Bluetooth logo, you know you are in trouble. The dashboard is an ill-formed blob no doubt outsourced to Rubbermaid, punctuated by a couple of very black, very shiny, very cheap plastic isles. Someone didn't get the memo that piano black only works well when the material is substantial enough as to avoid waves on the surface. The harsh plastic steering wheel (it's a $32k car, so c'mon) is a tactile assault, while the beige (beige!) seats scream rental every time you look around. With the possible exception of the cyborg gearshift knob, nothing inside is distinctive, well executed, or nice to the touch.

Is was hard not to compare with the Chevy Volt, also present at the event. After decades of being the laughing stock of the auto design world, American car companies have definitely stepped up their game, and many of their cabins are not just competitive but better than their Japanese competitors in the crucial feel good factor. Sure, the Volt is 30% more expensive but, white plastic console aside, the fit and finish and overall quality of its interior is years ahead of the Nissan's.

The only question is, why the hell it's a $40k Chevrolet when it really should be a $45-50k Cadillac?

Nissan has great designers. Their previous generation of vehicles (350z, Maxima, Armada, Murano and the whole Infiniti range) was arguably the reference for many designers worldwide, including myself. The original Cube was the perfect exponent of cheap-n-cheerful (good design doesn't have to be expensive), and the current one is not too far behind. Although perhaps not as refined, today's lineup is still quite good, veering towards a more muscular, almost animalistic language but retaining a lot of the refinement and originality of their predecessors. As much as I hate SUVs, I have to admit I stop to admire the neighbor's FX50 parked downstairs every time I see it. Why they have decided to do such a lazy job with such a significant product as the Leaf is a mystery to me, and a big disappointment.

Will the cost cutting ultimately matter? I don't think so. A very attractive price is a very attractive price, and the Nissan is ultimately the only game in town if one is not fond of startups. Along with me to the expo came a friend couple, both of them with good taste, one of them a product designer. Their verdict? They loved the airy, distinctive Leaf, didn't care about my crying cheap from the back seat and went home seriously considering getting one.

Despite all my grumbling, so did I.

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With frustration mounting over the inability of the Obama administration to fulfill many of their pledges and promises (helped in no small part by an irresponsible party of NO), why hold back from our modest EV side? There is little to lose, now that it looks like we'll be facing an even more paralyzed Senate (can you believe it?) after the November elections.

As it is well known, one of the first and most promising decisions by the Obama administration was to set aside $25bn in loan guaranties to support the President’s goal to create green jobs in the automotive and component manufacturing industries. Although a small amount (compared to a $3.8 trillion budget, of which some $226bn were dedicated to DARPA), it was certainly a move in the right direction, at a time when the nascent industry needed it the most. It promised companies (and more importantly, their early investors) that there was light at the end of their R&D tunnel, where money would be available to take promising new ideas past the pre-production stage and into the real world. By the time Congress appropriated the budget in fall 2008, the global capital markets had frozen (remember Lehman?), and with private funding all of the sudden gone, these DOE loans looked like the only game in town.

Alas, in a wonderful demonstration of lobbying trouncing common sense, the biggest chunk went to Ford for retooling (obviously as a consolation prize after GM got $50bn, or maybe just to shut them up), with the second biggest going to Nissan (really? does a company with $90bn in revenue need $1.6bn from the DOE?). Tesla also got their loan, not without some drama (including a sneaky price rise of $6k that angered many of their early customers) before they miraculously announced their one and only profitable month. By the time Fisker got their piece of the pie, back in September '09, something funny was happening (as Darryl Siry smartly exposed on Wired last December): investors were no longer interested in companies which have not been anointed by the Federal Government.

Which brings me to the original question: where is our money? This is a question that many innovative startups in the EV space have been asking for many many months. While itMoves was several stages behind to even think about applying for the loans, there are three senior startups which in my opinion deserve the vote of confidence from the DOE:

• Aptera: say what you want about their design, but this is innovation, and they have arguably contributed as much as Tesla to the idea that EVs are coming (if only by showing people what efficiency looks like). They used to have 4000 deposits, but they recently had management turmoil and decided to delay production. They also lost the Automotive X-prize...uhmmm.
• Coda: yes they are built in China, they are pricing themselves out of the market and their car doesn't look innovative enough. But then Fisker is also manufacturing abroad, a Tesla Roadster is also an expensive conversion*, and they are offering a vehicle that looks very similar to what the average Joe likes (remember, coma inducing Corollas and Camrys are consistently on the top five best selling list). They are here (Santa Monica), and they are ready to roll, what else do they need?
• Bright Automotive: listening to their founder John Waters speak at last year Plug-In conference was for me the highlight of the event. Weight reduction, cradle to cradle, efficiency, packaging innovation were all words that I could have said myself. Mr Waters is now out of the picture, but a recent (although small) investment by GM venture arm is supposed to keep the lights on until the DOE loan arrives. I certainly hope so.

Perhaps there are other companies that deserve some money (Wheego?), so the list is not necessarily comprehensive. I am also not going to claim better knowledge than faceless Washington bureaucrats. Perhaps they know many dark secrets inside these small companies and they are just doing their job, protecting the taxpayer. Unfortunately protecting the taxpayer would directly contradict the goal to support the development of advanced technology, since advanced technology by definition has a high failure rate (i.e. money needs to be wasted in dead ends in order for real innovation to flourish).

But let's not despair, since we might know soon if the Government really chose winners before the start. According to EV World, a California startup unknown to me (XP Vehicles) has filed a legal brief with the US Department of Justice alleging favoritism and discrimination against certain independent American alternative energy vehicle manufacturers.

Maybe all they needed were better lobbyists?

* A Lotus Elise cost around $47k in 2009 in the US. In the EU, you could get one for €34k (around $42k back then).

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[PS image credit: itMoves]

What would the world of electronics look like if Apple behaved like a car company? What products would Jonathan Ive dream up if he had to deal with the same compromises that car designers have to deal with on a daily basis, from carry over components to carry over managers to carry over imagination?

A friend of itMoves, Steve F, pointed me towards this Autoblog Green post where the recently departed BMW head of design Chris Bangle talks about avatars, EVs, golf ball shaped cars and even sharing (gasp!).

I don't want to single out Mr Bangle. I have many friends who worked for him, and unlike other personalities in the industry, I am not aware he left any trail of discontented subordinates. But since he spoke out, I will use him as an excuse to discuss why highly talented, even visionary people, get drown out inside the car industry. Let's start with the obvious question:

Why didn't he do anything about it while at BMW?

When Mr. Bangle came into the Bavarian company, he instigated a mini-revolution. Car enthusiast worldwide were outraged (outraged!) at how he destroyed decades of tradition and turned some of their most admired cars into ugly ducklings. At the time, I criticized him as much as anybody else did. Design speaking, I was raised in the Audi/VW school of simple yet highly refined styling: elegant proportion, exquisite surfacing and the believe that no detail is too small to fuss over. Mr Bangle's apparent randomness and intuitive approach crashed head-on with the considered German canon at the time.* As years went by, I got to appreciate the Zeppelin metaphor behind the so-called flame surfacing. I also have to admit that, even if they are still incomprehensibly random in certain areas, the latest batch of BMWs (ironically released after Bangle's departure) are finally starting to work for me.

So Mr Bangle perhaps started a revolution but let's be honest, at the end of the day this revolution was as shallow as one would expect from a business that has been doing the same for over a century. BMWs today are just like BMWs before Bangle: highly inefficient, painted steel and plastic, over-engineered, overweight machines. The fact that they are arguably the best cars out there does not change the fact that they are machines developed for a future of unlimited resources and no speed restrictions, a future that was wounded in the 70s and is certainly dying as we speak.

How could this happen? Why someone as fearless as Mr Bangle, with what looks like very advanced ideas not just about style but also about the business, ended up stopping at the skin?

The truth is that design organizations (even under someone as charismatic as Mr Bangle) have a very limited strategic role in car companies. Like women in the show Mad Men (who are supposed to look pretty and shut up), the role of car designers is to make cars look pretty and just shut the f up. Also like these women, for whom this is the way things have always been seems a curse and a relief, most of the top brass at car design organizations prefers to go along with the flow. Why rock the boat? Author Clayton M Christensen explains it in one of the many great pages inside The Innovator's Dilemma:

"Even when a serious manager decides to pursue a disruptive technology, the people in the organization are likely to ignore it or, at best, cooperate reluctantly if it doesn't fit 'their' model of what it takes to succeed as an organization and as individuals within the organization." (my emphasis)

In other words: Fat Chance.

Incidentally, one of the favorite excuses for conservative managers is the one used by Mr Bangle: the fallacy that cars are different. It reminds me of the novelists who clung to their typewriters back in the early 90s because a word processor will never have the same soul as my Olivetti. The truth is, no object is different, and nothing stops the clock of innovation. Sacred, seemingly immune objects and business models (and the industries that produced them) become obsolete all the time, taking down with them zealots who insist that people can't live without our gizmo. Cars were certainly different for my generation, but they are increasingly becoming just another hassle for kids who rather spend their time and money elsewhere.

Furthermore, what Mr. Bangle now proposes is nothing new to car design organizations. Every studio has several people talking and dreaming about these issues. Young, talented recruits would talk about it (some of them endlessly), ideas would be presented to management, pats in the back would ensue, and then everyone will shrug their shoulders and continue with The Program. Once in a while, a concept car would appear, hinting at a very different future before disappearing after its fifteen days of fame. And the next generation of vehicles would come out, only to be 2% better, again.

I am glad that Mr Bangle has decided to get out of the closet and say out loud what some of us have been saying for a while. Now free from the corporate PR machine, he is talking about the kind of disruptive services and technologies that attack the core of the car business. But let's be honest, now that he is an industry outsider, the value of his words is, I am afraid, quite limited.

On the other hand, real change will come to the car industry from the outside, never from within (like the music and phone business were changed by a tiny computer maker), so maybe Mr Bangle can be now more influential, after all.

Now when is that long rumored iCar coming out?

* It is good to remember that it was in fact Ford who arguably started the revolution, with a series of intriguing vehicles (Ka, Puma, Focus, Cougar) that still look incredibly modern, fifteen years after their appearance.

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[Photo credit: itMoves]

When he happens to represent a state where EVs are going to be built, of course.

Money, politics, hypocrisy, what else is new?

Minutes after reading that more that 95% of GOP senators are global warming skeptics (admittedly from the left wing Think Progress blog; for a very good conservative response, look here), I came across another piece of news (Bloomberg via EDTA newsletter) where US Sen. Lamar Alexander was asking for bipartisan agreement (!) so the Federal Government can help spur production of affordable electric vehicles (!!).

If a Republican seeking consensus these days is a shocker, a GOP Senator asking for federal help to develop EVs must be considered a little miracle.

Suspicious as I am, and since Tennessee somehow ran a bell, I decided to Google a bit further. Sure enough, Nissan headquarters are indeed in Tennessee, where batteries and complete Leaf production is supposed to start in 2012, aided by a $1.4 billion DOE loan (why do Nissan, Ford or GM need government loans to retool is baffling to me).

I know what you are thinking:

• Bringing home the bacon is part of their job description.
• It happens on both sides of the isle.
• One could be a global warming denier (or skeptic) and still be in favor of electric vehicles.
• Who cares if it is for what we consider a good cause.

I agree with all of the above, and yet sometimes, sometimes, the connection between narrow local self-interest, money and politics is so obvious that it really rubs me the wrong way. It is very easy to agree with Mr Alexander's petition*, but I would be dismayed if the nascent green industry (EVs in particular) becomes another unefficient, unaccountable jobs program like the Military-Industrial Complex has transform itself into (with dare fiscal and policy implications).

If they want to help the EV industry, the answer is very simple: substantially raise gasoline taxes, give the money back to the people so it is revenue neutral (a version of Amory Lovins famed feebates, a subject for a whole different day) and let the best companies, on the best states, using the best technologies, win.

But where, politicians would ask, do campaign contributions fit into all these?

Exactly, they don't, and maybe that is the problem.

* On the interest of fairness, I should point out that Mr Alexander seems to be one of the few senators consistently crossing the isle (at least according to this non-working Wikipedia link...). He also gave a very reasonable and interesting short speech on the Senate floor last June, in response to the BP spill; other than his position on nuclear power and ANWR, I have to admit I agree on all his other points, so maybe he is not that bad after all.

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[Image source: Kyocera Solar Grove™ via Envision Solar]

While researching some other project, I came across this recent Autoblog Green post where they talk about the installation of a solar parking lot with capabilities to charge electric vehicles, the first one of its kind on the Southeast according to Outpost Solar, the company responsible for the installation.

Solar car ports are of course nothing new (this one in Santa Monica has been there since 2005), but reading the upbeat quotes and press release made me think again about The Promise and The Delivery of solar as it relates to EVs.

Let's start with The Delivery:

One of the recurrent questions I got when presenting itMoves was: can you charge the vehicles with the solar panels? I explained many times that the solar panels were only there to keep the AC (or heating) running, in itself not a small feat since HVAC systems are real power hogs. By keeping the shared MEs at the perfect temperature, we could provide a nice touch to the costumer, and reduce the drain on the main battery pack (no need to turn the A/C to 11 when leaving the spot). Although not too many people complained, it always felt like everyone expected one equation to be true:

1 solar panel = 1 car.

To be honest, I felt the same way when I started itMoves, but unfortunately the mathematics do not work that way:

A great rule of thumb to calculate solar energy is that the surface of the earth receives every hour an average of 1kW per square meter (10.8 square foot). Solar panels on the other hand are quite inefficient, with the best commercially available units only able to harvest around 18% of that energy. Taking Outpost Solar installation as an example, the 96 panel array (measuring 144 square meters) will deliver a maximum of 26 kW (144 x 0.18 = 25.9), consistent with their claimed 2.25 kW per parking spot. Adding to the inefficiency chain, chargers only transfer around 85% of the energy, therefore cutting the available energy at the plug to around 22kW.

Since battery packs range from 16 kW (Volt) to 30 kW (Mini-e), with the Leaf in between the two at 24kW, this particular installation can charge one or two cars per hour. In other words, if all the twelve parking spots are filled with EVs, they can all expect to be filled up after an eight hours work day.

This is not bad, although it is far from the ideal one solar parking spot equals one car, specially when we consider it takes between six and eight hours to charge them all. The economics are not particularly favorable either, since at current rates, it will take around sixteen years for the daily savings to offset the quoted $180,000 price tag. In practice, the market is reduced to willing employers who want to offer a different kind of benefit, while looking good in the process.

Which brings me to The Promise:

Visible solar (whether in parking lots or in products) promises The Future. Yes, it is still too expensive, and yes it is still too big and impractical, but it will only get better and cheaper. Like the flawed yet exciting EVs of today, solar panels indicate the beginning of a promising journey, after many false starts. We will get there, that is The Promise.
[[posterous-content:giJkzoEwCGnpugdlgwra]]When designing the 4.ME parking modules, it was great to think about the kWh produced, but quite frankly, the main motivation to add the solar array was visual: it shouted the message that decentralized electric power for transportation is here, and it is as clean as it can be. Unlike omnipresent oil, the majority of solar is now hidden, either out in the desert or up in commercial roofs, and that represents a lost opportunity to engage the public and make them believe in real energy independence.

Of course, economic fundamentals will in the long run make or break The Promise, but we have China's growth to help create the ideal conditions, both by pushing up demand (and price) of oil, and by dramatically lowering the cost of clean technology. Let's just hope that, after destroying all foreign competitors, they do not turn into the OPEC of clean energy.

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[Image source (original): IUPAC]

Right on the heels of a recent post where I compared China with Golman Sacks, news came this past week that confirm how China sees the environment as a strategic race.

Rare earth elements are the ones at the bottom of the periodic table that seldom get mentioned in high school chemistry classes. As it happens, they are crucial for a myriad of modern technologies, from flat screen TVs and hard drives, to oil refining, NiMH batteries, and high efficiency electric motors (for both wind turbines and EVs).

Their extraction and processing is an environmental nightmare, which is the reason China gave when justifying its decision to cut exports by 72% by the end of the year. This would not be much of an issue except for the fact that China produces 97% of the worlds' rare earth oxides. Although the elements in question are relatively common, it will take at least five years to get any production facility elsewhere up to speed. Predictably, the immediate consequence has been a huge spike in their prices.

It looks like there are other strategic considerations (besides the environment) behind China's move: to force world producers of finished products (batteries, TVs, turbines, even missiles) to move their facilities to China (the production cut only affects exports), or risk sure shortages of these key materials.

This kind of hoarding sure looks like a breach of World Trade Organization rules, and in fact Japan is already planning to file a complaint. Market forces will also work against China in the long run, as other countries have already expressed interest in opening up old mines (the elements are rare because they are hard to separate, but they are relatively common and easy to find). The US Congress is also seriously looking into it, as you can read in this report (pdf here) by the Congressional Research Service from last July 28 (a recommended read for a complete overview of the problem). Since many military applications are also affected, it is likely that the US government will pressure hard on the issue.

In any case, it is another interesting battle to watch, between free markets and international trade, and the strategic will of the Party. In the mean time, China continues to position itself to profit both when CO2 goes up, and when it will eventually go down. Very smart, don't you think?

(Further read at Reuters and Telegraph).

PS.- As an interesting aside, Li-ion batteries do not use any rare earth elements. If NiMH production, the battery of choice for hybrids, gets disrupted, we might see a faster transition from hybrid vehicles to pure EVs (although magnets inside their electric motors will still need rare neodymium).

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