Hyundai Blue-Will Concept PHEV a Test Bed of Tech Posted on January 17th, 2010
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In brief: Hyundai’s Blue-Will Concept Plug-in Hybrid
was on hand in Detroit, showcasing this test bed of future technology ideas.
Vehicle in the news
Make/Model: Blue-Will Concept
Manufacturer: Hyundai
The word
As Ross prected, 2009 seems to have shaped up to be Hyundai’s big year. The little Korean company rose to prominence during a bad year for most automakers, taking second place as the wold’s highest-selling automaker and debuting some radical concepts that were a definite turn from the company’s usual conservative stance.
The Blue-Will was introduced last year as a concept in Seoul, Hyundai’s home turf. It was considered unusual and compelling, and generated a lot of buzz, but most seemed to see it as strange mainly because it was coming from Hyundai.
The Blue-Will just made another appearance, this time in Detroit at the NAIAS, marking its first appearance in the U.S.
Filled with innovative new ideas, the concept car has roof-mounted solar cells, drive-by-wire steering, touch-screen controls, 40 miles of electric-only driving, and 106mpg in fuel economy. All from a decidedly sporty and muscular-looking coupe.
While its drive train is a dual-mode hybrid similar to the Chevy Volt, the Blue-Will most often runs in charge-sustaining mode (meaning the engine runes purely to send electricity to the motor).
Unlike the Volt, the Blue-Will incorporates an ingenious hot exhaust recapture system utilizing a thermoelectric generator in the exhaust manifold. This allows the vehicle to convert the engine’s heat into electrical energy, greatly increasing the efficiency. This energy is mostly keyed for use in auxiliary systems such as climate controls and the stereo, saving drain on the lithium-polymer batteries.
Many of the technologies tested in the Blue-Will have appeared in other upcoming models for production, such as the 2011 BlueDrive Sonata.
And so …
Definitely the car from Hyundai to watch, the Blue-Will is their future car test bed.
US NRC Report Says Plug-Ins Not to Make Headway in Market for Decades Posted on December 17th, 2009
In brief: A U.S. National Research Council report find that plug-in hybrid (PHEV) costs are likely to remain high and thus their impact on the market will remain low for decades.
The word
The costs of light-duty PHEVs is high, largely because of their lithium-ion batteries, and a decrease in those costs aren’t likely in the near-term. So says the report from the NRC.
The report looks at two configurations of plug-ins: a 10-mile range and a 40 mile range (all electric). Both have a larger battery pack than most standard hybrid electrics like the current Toyota Prius.
While the smaller 10-mile pack is much cheaper, it has little impact on the vehicle’s overall fuel economy and thus would be hard to rectify in any kind of return-on-investment scenario for consumers.
The cost difference between the average mid-sized sedan (gasoline ICE) rises by about $6,300 when it is instead manufactured as a PHEV with a 10-mile range and by $18,100 when fitted with 40-mile range batteries. That’s cost to manufacturer, not consumer.
The NRC predicts that it will take some time for the costs of lithium-ion batteries to fall enough to change this, as the chart above demonstrates.
And so …
While the study doesn’t look at battery electrics, the same scales of economy apply. While a BEV might recuperate its investment cost to the consumer faster, the total cost of these vehicles is still very high.
Photo credits: NRC
Bosch Says Electric Vehicles Won’t Become Pervasive for at Least 20 Years Posted on July 21st, 2009
Full electric power trains like battery electrics, hydrogen fuel cells, and so forth are coming, but slowly. Let’s face it: most of those on the market so far are nothing more than curiosities. The Tesla Roadster and the Aptera 2e, while they look really good and are desirable vehicles, aren’t exactly mainstream.
Whether it’s the price tag, the limited occupancy, or just the limited numbers available, full electric cars aren’t here yet. While the next five years promise to see many new models from several manufacturers hitting the streets of the world, it will be a long time before these vehicles are totally accepted and are available to everyone.
Read the rest of this at Zoomilife.com.
Designing a New, Super-Efficient Semi-Truck and Trailer System Posted on June 26th, 2009
This design incorporates a lot of the design elements that are popularly talked about amongst big truck and transportation engineers. It includes a much larger freight capacity, aerodynamic improvements, trailer skirts, etc. It also includes a few other things that are purely theoretical, but within the realm of possibility for future green tractor-trailer technology.
Designed by Arnold Kioko Muthui, a Kenyan design student with a passion for heavy commercial and transportation vehicles. He features this design, and a few other innovative concepts, at his website akmuthui.sythasite.com.
He calls this design the Highly Sophisticated Transporter, or HST for short. An apt name, I think, given the great number of practical and theoretical concepts included in the design itself. Having driven a big truck for a living before, I can attest that at least some of these are realistic while others would require a real overhaul of how over-the-road transportation takes place.
One of the largest and least theoretical of the concepts for the HAST is the multi-trailer, long vehicle, heavy cargo design. This is not a new idea in heavy transport and is a proven fuel and cost savings technique used in parts of the world now. Australia, for instance, has a long haulage trucking type called “trains” in which multiple trailers are attached to one truck for long, over-the-road movement. In the U.S., however, this would become a safety liability and presents other problems.
For instance, here in the States, our roads and Interstates are optimized (for the most part) for vehicles no longer than 50 feet or so. Most tractor-trailers are currently about 70 feet long in total. The Interstates were built to accomodate the longest military vehicles conceived in teh 1950s, which were theoretical “missile haulers” much like the Russians were using for portable ICBMs. In fact, the entire Interstate system was designed to accomodate the military, not commerce or vehicular traffic as we use it for now.
Another extremely practical design of the HST is its aerodynamics. From the way the tractor itself is designed, both tall and rounded at front, to the full-skirting from nose to tail of the rig is extremely smooth and would ad greatly to the vehicle’s “cut” through the hair. No numbers are offered, but I’d guess it has a much higher coefficient of drag than the average big rig of today.
Of course, a big truck with this number of trailers and joints (articulations) would be impossible to reverse for any length, neither are today’s two-trailer setups like you’ll see mail carriers and so forth using. Any double or triple setup is too articulated to reverse for very far before something bends where you don’t want it.
Muthui envisions this setup carrying a maximum load of about 65 tonnes and being about 29 meters long. To give you a visual on how big that is: a typical tractor-trailer today, which you’ll see on the freeway, carries about 20 tons of freight or roughly 44,000 pounds. Some go as high as 46,000 pounds, but not commonly.
29 meters is roughly 87 feet, which is only about 17 feet longer than current rigs (53-foot trailer plus cab). The trailers are more compact, howeer, in Muthui’s setup to accomodate shorter distances between axles to allow for heavier loads.
Now for the theoretics. Being a sort of alt-fuel afficionado with what I do at Zoomilife.com, I love this stuff.
It’s still diesel-fueled, like most rigs, but the engine powers an electric generator rather than the drive axles. That generator sends power to electric motors in both drive axles. This means that the diesel engine can run continuously at the most efficient speed (RPM rate) possible for maximum output efficiency.
That part isn’t all that theoretical, really, and is a concept being tested and proven right now in prototypes by several companies. The regenerative braking through the motors isn’t a new idea either. Even the solar panels on all of the roofs of the vehicle aren’t a very new concept.
An interesting detail is the battery packs. These are at the joints (called “dollies” in the biz) that separate the trailers and attach one to the other. The space in these joints house the batteries and as you can see in the photo here, the cargo containers are independent of the couplers, so the dolly is actually the rear axles of one container and the front axles of the next.
What that means is that the trailers themselves are independent cargo containers that are modular, so they can be swapped with others in the system, left at the dock, etc. Every professional truck driver knows that the #1 time waster on the road is sitting in docks waiting for load or unload. Many companies get around this by doing “drop and hooks” where the driver drops his trailer in a yard or at the customer’s dock and picks up a loaded trailer and leaves for his next run right away.
This isn’t always possible, however, and is sometimes completely impossible. What this system allows, which won’t necessarily remedy that situation, is the ability to have modularity between trailers–assuming everyone in the fleet has the same rig.
Regardless of how you look at it, Muthui is on the right track with this plan. I’d like to see something similar, but utilizing hydrogen fuel cells or a less design-specific modularity that can be shared amongst manufacturers and fleets. Something with more interchange between designs and less proprietary design.
Overall, though, I like Muthui’s work here and think this is a great concept of how the near-future of over the road transportation is going to become. The HST definitely shows off key concepts in efficiency for trucking’s future.
BYD Gains VW As Partner, Ford May Follow – Other Partnerships Also In the Works Posted on June 8th, 2009
A lot of exciting news has happened regarding corporate partnerships and alliances over the past week or so. Volkswagen and BYD, Daimler and Tesla, and others. Car makers are entering the new era of auto manufacturing by taking a lesson from the tech sector: you can’t do it all alone anymore.
Volkswagen and BYD’s Partnership
Volkswagen has signed on with China’s Build Your Dream (BYD), issuing a letter of intent for hybrid and electric cars. Ford and at least one other European automaker are said to be negotiating similar arrangements with BYD as well. Looks like Warren Buffet backed the right horse after all.
