No matter what it's called, it's got you firmly by the... Wallet

Chief executive Mike Bennetts said if the remaining 210 stations were rebranded, it was important to get the template right from the start.
“We’ll take a few more months for a true understanding of what the customer is looking for. I don’t want to roll out another 50 and realise the pie warmer needs a lip on it when I’ve ordered 48 units.”

Mr Bennetts, I think I can speak for all motorists when I say, “Call the new Shell stations whatever the hell you like, New Zealand motorists will continue to hate you, regardless”.

Now named “Z”, the company that owns the Shell petrol stations can only use the name of Shell until 2014 before it has to start shelling out $7 million a year in royalties.
Considering that the Z corporation have been so poor and struggling for so long, it’s inevitable they’d change their own name to avoid even the tiniest of flies in their massive jar of profit margin ointment. (Sarcasm Mode: off)

“It’s relatively more economical to use our own brand than someone else’s but we’re very conscious we want to use our money wisely because if we don’t the customer thinks we’ll charge them more because we’ve cocked it up.”

There are now three “Z” stations in Auckland, two each in Wellington and Christchurch and others in Waiouru, Turangi and Putaruru.

Raw data showed customers were valuing extra forecourt service and many who previously did not know the chain was New Zealand-owned, now did.

Bennets continued, “The last month has been a reasonably good one for us. August was noticeably different from the three months before that.”
Industry-wide fuel sales had been sluggish during winter as prices topped $2.20 a litre and Bennetts said it appeared the Z sites were bucking that trend with a “small uplift” in fuel sales and there were signs of a recovery.

Personally, I’d put it down to a lack of affordable alternatives such as public transport in both major and provincial towns (having lived in both) rather than the economy starting to boom again. People have no choice but to take their cars, and are forced into using petrol stations.

Or do they?

Of course, being an electric car advocate I’m going to suggest the obvious, and that people buy electric cars. They pay no road user charges in NZ, and the electricity usage is less than the average kettle. This means you could effortlessly drive 200 kilometres a week to work and back for less than $15 in electricity. How far does $15 in gas get you these days?

The problem with electric cars isn’t a short range (that problem was fixed in the late 90’s when NiMH and Lithium batteries came along). Instead the problem is cost. Nissan’s new all-electric LEAF will cost $60,000 NZD when it goes on sale next year. My own thoughts are that the car is priced that high (almost twice what it sells for in the USA) for a reason – to delay sales, in favour of their more lucrative internal combustion engined vehicles already on sale.

That leaves the average motorist with only four realistic options to get to work each day without blowing the budget:
1: Take public transport (if it exists in your area)
2: Ride a bike (if it’s not raining)
3: Convert an old gas car to run on batteries.

Option three is by far the most convenient, and the most fun. Download my full plain-English tutorial here to see how simple it is (you could have a car converted in only a single weekend if you know what you’re doing!) and an entire conversion can be done for the cost of one year’s gasoline – under $3000. No, I’m not kidding!

Driving silently past the gas stations is a feeling you have to experience to understand, so get in the garage this season and break your oil addiction!

Lithium Battery Prices for Electric Cars Are Heading South

London and New York, 14 September, 2011 – The total worldwide manufacturing capacity of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles will greatly exceed supply unless demand by automakers increases significantly in the short-term, according to new research by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. As a result of the overcapacity, battery prices are poised to fall.

Automakers have committed to producing up to 839,000 plug-in electric vehicles worldwide by 2013, up from just 124,000 to be delivered by the end of 2011. As a result, demand for lithium-ion batteries will reach 18GWh by 2013 from the current level of 2.4GWh – a sevenfold increase in just two years. In contrast, the supply capacity under construction by battery makers will reach 35GWh by 2013, enough to supply almost double the number of planned electric vehicles. As batteries have a limited shelf life, it is unlikely that battery manufacturers will produce more than market demand. Instead, they will reduce output to match contracted demand.

At the moment, electric vehicle batteries cost between $800-1000/kWh and make up about 30-50% of the cost of a typical EV. But the short-term overcapacity and the competitiveness in the field will push battery prices lower, improving affordability of electric vehicles – but also making life increasingly difficult for smaller pure-play EV battery manufacturers, according to Ali Izadi-Najafabadi, an energy-smart technologies analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

“In the short term the larger, mainly Asian, conglomerates can cope with limited demand and compete by lowering prices, but smaller pure-play battery makers will be left vying for an increasingly limited number of supply contracts. For the latter group, other applications such as grid-scale energy storage will be a critical source of demand,” said Izadi-Najafabadi.

Automakers with committed electric vehicle plans have secured sufficient supply for their programmes through close collaboration with just five lithium-ion battery manufacturers via commercial-scale supply contracts or joint ventures. However, there are currently over 20 battery makers with plants constructed or under construction, and it will take time for this excess capacity to be absorbed. In the long term, lithium-ion battery prices will continue to decline as the industry reaches scale. Electric vehicle sales are expected to increase and battery costs will continue to decline along an experience curve to hit around $350/kWh by 2020.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance publishes detailed analyses of battery demand and supply as part of its Energy Smart Technologies Insight Service.

Tesla Model S - Only Months Away from the Market

Panasonic Corporation and Tesla Motors finalized a supply agreement for automotive-grade lithium-ion battery cells to be used in Tesla’s premium electric sedan, Model S.

The agreement supplies Tesla with Panasonic’s lithium-ion battery cells to build more than 80,000 vehicles over the next four years. It guarantees the availability of enough cells in 2012 to meet Tesla’s aggressive production ramp-up and fulfillment of more than 6,000 existing Model S reservations. This supply agreement helps ensure Tesla will meet its cost and margin targets for Model S.

This agreement builds upon a multi-year collaboration between Panasonic and Tesla to develop next-generation automotive-grade battery cells and accelerate the market expansion of electric vehicles. In 2009, Panasonic and Tesla initially entered into a supply agreement. In 2010, Panasonic invested $30 million in Tesla to deepen the partnership and foster the growth of the electric vehicle industry.

Panasonic supplies cells with the highest energy density and industry-leading performance using its nickel-type cathode technology. Panasonic and Tesla together have developed a next-generation battery cell based on this nickel chemistry and optimized specifically for electric vehicle quality and life. These new cells will combine with Tesla’s proven EV battery expertise gained from more than 15 million customer miles driven in Tesla Roadsters and thousands of hours of cell and battery testing to create the most capable electric vehicle ever produced, Model S.

“It is a powerful endorsement of our technology that Panasonic, the world’s leading battery cell manufacturer, has chosen to partner with Tesla to advance electric vehicle performance and value,” said Tesla Co-Founder and CEO Elon Musk. “Incorporating Panasonic’s next-generation cells into Model S batteries will ensure unrivaled range and performance. We are very grateful for our great partnership with Panasonic.”

“Panasonic will supply lithium ion cells for EVs that can achieve longer range with large energy density. It is our pleasure to start supplying the cells for Tesla’s Model S and promote sustainable mobility,” said Masato Ito, President, Energy Company of Panasonic Corporation.
Tesla is a supplier of batteries and powertrains to Toyota and Daimler. Tesla is a comprehensive electric vehicle powertrain component supplier to the electric vehicle industry.

Mark Emon's electric Porsche proves Conversions are the cheaper option.

Mark Emon, owner of St. Michaels Winery, found out the last weekend in September that he had placed fifth in a competition of plans to convert a standard gasoline-powered car to electric power.

Emon’s proposal was to convert a 1973 Porsche 914 to electric power, and he had hopes of winning the contest and taking home the prize $20,000 worth of parts to finish the project.
“Out of 955 I finished fifth,” Emon said recently in a telephone conversation. “Unfortunately, it was a winner-take-all contest.”

The contest was sponsored by EVTV (Electric Vehicle Television) Motor Verks, and the winner was decided by votes cast on a website. The prize winner was announced Sept. 24 at EVCCON, a conference at Cape Girardeau, Mo.

“It was a great thing,” Emon said. “It was the first-ever vehicle conversion conference in the world.”
The conference drew people from all over the planet, Emon said, mentioning attendees from Portugal, the Netherlands and four or five from New Zealand. “People bought converted cars from all over the country,” he said. “It was a fantastic event.”

The conference also featured cars that had been converted. “They had all the cars outside,” Emon said. “They had a drag strip and a ‘Formula One’ course with all the turns. Everybody competed.
“It was all these people with the same notion in the same place. Like minds were sharing what worked and what didn’t.”

While Emon has been interested in electric vehicles for a few years he has an electric scooter and an electric forklift at the winery this is his first attempt at building an electric car. He said he bought the Porsche with the explicit purpose of converting it to electric power.

The project was delayed by more than a year, though, because Emon was “having so much fun driving (the car) around” with its original internal combustion engine. In fact, the car actually decided for itself when it was time to get moving on the conversion the engine died and burst into flames last spring, a result of dry rotting in the 38-year-old fuel line, Emon said.

One of the advantages of building an electric car individually, Emon said, is the vehicles become much more affordable in the $30,000 range as opposed to the $100,000 range of big-name electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors. Emon didn’t even consider the electric models recently unveiled by Chevy and Nissan as options, calling them “lame.”
“Tesla is the only company you can really buy from, and they’re expensive,” he said.

While a grassroots movement toward electric cars seems to be catching on, a few things are lacking, Emon said, namely educational programs and infrastructure.

Emon has plans to address both those deficiencies, though, by working with Calhoon Marine Engineers Beneficial Association to develop an intensive certificate course on building electric cars and encouraging businesses to establish charging stations by creating a phone app that maps the stations.

Within the app, Emon plans to designate the different tiers of charging stations, branding them “sipping,” “drinking” and “gulping” stations. Sipping stations would be basic electrical outlets that charge the vehicles, but not quickly; drinking stations would be the current standard electric vehicle charging stations, like the one at St. Michaels Winery; and gulping stations would be the next wave of charging stations, charging vehicles much more quickly, but needing a lot of power to do so.

“I can see this being a national thing,” Emon said of the app, which not only would allow business owners to post charging stations by taking a photo but let electric vehicle owners easily find a station within a certain radius.
Until more strides are made with charging stations, Emon said, “sipping” stations are going to be heavily relied upon, which many towns, including St. Michaels, have already installed on the streets for lighting purposes.
“You can’t swing a stick without an outlet anymore,” he said.

Meanwhile, the educational course also would be marketed nationally, and would target those who want to build a car independently, as well as those thinking of entering into commercial production, Emon said.

“I would think there would be people who would want to take this leap,” he said. “If they’re laying out $30,000, why not spend another $1,000 to take a course and build with confidence? You might easily save by just not damaging anything; those parts are expensive.”

Emon said he hopes he’ll be through converting the Porsche within a few months. He has the gasoline motor out of the car and the electric in, and the latest part of the job involved dumping the aluminum diamond plate pattern battery box and making a fiberglass one, instead. The battery box is a big part of the process. “Every square inch of the car has been crammed with batteries,” he said. The new version of the car will feature 24 battery cells in the engine compartment, 12 in the rear trunk and another 24 in the front trunck a total of 60.

“The aluminum diamond plate was just too close to the major electric connection to the motor,” he said. Instead of cutting in a piece of rubber insulation, he said, he decided to remake the battery box out of fiberglass, which is much lighter.
“The main focus of anybody who messes with cars and electricity is safety,” he said.
Emon said he was looking forward to the end of the conversion project, so he could be an “evangelist” for the cause of electric cars.
Would being an evangelist include letting other people drive the car?
“Oh hell, yeah,” he said. “This Porsche I’m converting will be dramatically better than the gasoline car in performance and efficiency.”

The difference between the gasoline and electric engines could be the main selling point for the electric version. “You have to understand that an electric motors have 100 percent torque from the first revolution,” he said. “You have to gradually over a half-second or so apply the pressure.”
Emon had to replace the flywheel clutch assembly on the car, using instead a stage 2 racing clutch, to handle the increase in torque.

That 100 percent torque will attract people, he said.
“It’s not the ‘green’ part that will make people want these cars,” he said. “It’s the mean part.”

10 minute fast-charging is on the way.

Thanks to some cutting-edge tech, charging the all-electric Nissan Leaf could soon be just as quick – if not faster – than refueling at the pump.

Nissan, in conjunction with Japan’s Kansai Nniversity, says it has created the necessary technology to charge the batteries needed by vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi iMiEV in a record time of ten minutes.

Most importantly, batteries charged using the 10-minute system should no noticeable effect on storage capacity or voltage, the reports said.

The findings, reported by Nikkei news agency last week, could represent a huge leap forward in public acceptance of electric vehicles, hindered to date by sluggish charge times — a full charge of common EVs today can take up to eight hours.

The breakthrough reportedly came by changing the electrode inside a capacitor from carbon to tungsten oxide and vanadium oxide to improve power, reports Asean Automotive News.

The down side? It could take a decade to commercialize the technology, due to the scale of such a roll out. This kind of significant breakthrough could dramatically boost public perception of electric cars however.

Last year, Pike Research warned that automakers could soon face pushback from consumers on the length of time it takes to recharge a vehicle, after some major names opted not to include charging hardware which could halve the time from eight hours to four hours.

“Some consumers are likely to feel they have overpaid for their charging equipment or were shortchanged with their vehicle,” the firm said.

Last month, Nissan launched a new fast charger in Japan costing less than Y1 million ($13,015), half the price of its previous charging unit.

The new model is nearly half the size in volume than previous incarnations and can charge electric vehicles from multiple automakers, Nissan said.