CARazed

Love this short clip featuring the Aptera. I’m very tempted to put down the $500 deposit myself on this car but it only has two seats and I need at least three. I emailed them the other day and this is what they said:

Once Aptera has finalized the initial production version of the typ-1, we will continue to revolutionize the transportation industry in other areas.

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I can’t say I blame them for giving me such a round-about answer; they must have their hands very full enough with the X PRIZE and their first car. But it sounds like they must be thinking of future buyer needs. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for more from Aptera.

Now this is a very unusual approach to green car technology. This latest technology experiment from Lotus is a tri-fuel car which can run on any mixture of gasoline, bio-ethanol and methanol. The real news is that the methanol can be made synthetically from CO2 and hydrogen extracted from the atmosphere. I’m not exactly sure how Lotus has done it but the claim sounds very exciting.

Unfortunately you can’t have it today. In fact this new technology won’t be ready for cars for another 4 to 5 years. Worse than that they expect it to take another 15 to 20 years to build out the supporting infrastructure. Bummer.

Which leads me again to the same conclusion. Any experimental car that uses hydrogen in any form should only be considered a long term solution. The only green technologies we have at our fingertips now are electric cars and gas burning range extended electric vehicles.

Luckily Lotus is onto this and have also started a research division for electric and hybrid cars. It’s cool to hear they are also making great strides in the hydrogen arena but it’s also great to see them staying on the electric car track too.

Aptera Motors, a small California based company is now taking reservations for a radical new 2, +1 passenger plug-in hybrid vehicle, the Aptera Typ-1. The price to get in line is only $500, and the cost of the vehicle is under $30,000 and production is scheduled for late 2008 for the Typ-1e (all electric) and 2009 for the Typ-1h (plug-in hybrid).
In the early stages of development the Aptera was an all electric vehicle design concept. In fact an all electric version will be available but we can’t imagine why anyone would want one. The plug-in hybrid version is much more usable and costs only a few thousand dollars more.To make the car more usable for long trips a small water-cooled EFI gasoline engine certified for California emissions has been added.

Fuel efficiency is very high but varies depending on the length of the trip because the driver can stay in all electric mode for up to 60 miles. But to give you an idea of how efficient this vehicle is, a 120 mile trip would yield about 300 MPG (that’s not a typo, that is three hundred miles per gallon!). Top speed will be 85 MPH and 0 to 60 acceleration will be accomplished in under 10 seconds.

Safety is a major concern for Aptera Motors and the Typ-1 exceeds requirements for a typical passenger car. The composite safety cage is similar to a Formula-1 race car, and provides occupants with 360 degree protection. Air-bags will be standard and can be deactivated for a children passengers.

The three wheel design and layout save weight and provide more aerodynamic opportunities to the vehicle and means it will be registered as a motorcycle, even though the safety standards implemented far exceed motorcycle and car standards. In other words, the Aptera Typ-1 is legally a motorcycle registered with DOT and CA DMV. Initially it will be only available in California to facilitate service and a variety of other reasons. But the plan is to make this vehicle available in all 50 states, Europe and other countries.

This vehicle redefines car. We’ve avoided using that particular word in this post simply because the Aptera is not legally a car but a motorcycle, but in all practicality it is a car, but who cars if it’s safe and gets you to where you’re going for 300 MPG!

Kudos to the folks at Aptera and whoever is funding this project. Please tell your friends about this and if you’ve got $30K for a cool new car reserve yours today.

Toyota will be showing off its new A-BAT Concept Vehicle at the upcoming North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit on Monday January 14, 2008. It’s a small compact truck hybrid truck that will use Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive® technology (4 cylinder gasoline hybrid) to deliver better fuel economy. It even has photovoltaic panels on the roof for… not sure what for… concept car kicks I guess.

From the press release it sounds a lot like Toyota looked to the Honda Ridgeline for inspiration. The A-BAT is said to have car-like handling, unibody construction, independent suspension (we think), and 19 inch rims.

The four foot truck bed is said to have more flexibility than a normal pickup with a two foot high (long) tail gate and a pass-through gate into the cab. The width of the bed can accommodate a 4X8 sheet of plywood. At first this truck might sound more suited for a weekend do-it-yourselfer than a contractor’s pickup but it also comes with AC and DC outlets for powering tools and other electronic devices. The battery pack that comes with the hybrid technology helps out with this.

No word on the exact MPG, price, availability, or even if this concept vehicle will make it to market. It looks pretty cool and far along in development so our bet is we’ll be seeing something like this in the Toyota showrooms in the near future. The Honda Ridgeline has definitely paved the way in this market segment and by adding a few more novel ideas and better fuel economy Toyota will probably have a winner. Comments?

In November 2007 Honda showed off their fuel cell production car at the Los Angeles Auto Show. This is a zero-emissions, hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicle based on Honda’s new V Flow fuel cell platform. This system give the car improved driving range, weight and power efficiency.

Honda also announced that some lucky Southern California drivers will be able to lease one this coming summer (2008) for about $600 per month for three years. The cost includes maintenance and collision insurance.

It seems Honda is limiting the initial lease to Southern California because the car needs specialized maintenance which requires that Honda set-up a service infrastructure to support the car. It also seems like a perfectly logical place to do a trial like this.

The V Flow system drives the car by generating electricity from a chemical reaction by combining air (atmospheric oxygen) with the hydrogen fuel cell stack. The exhaust is water. The electricity powers the drive system directly of in combination with a compact lithium ion battery pack. Regenerative breaking also puts electricity back in the batteries. The vehicles range is about 270 miles.

There are CO₂ emissions during the production of the hydrogen used to refuel the car. The emissions from this vary depending on the way the hydrogen is created. A common method of creating hydrogen is through electrolysis of water. As you know water is H₂O. There are two hydrogen atoms per oxygen atom. You can separate the hydrogen and oxygen easily by passing electricity through water, a.k.a electrolysis.

Unfortunately the most popular method of creating hydrogen comes from processing natural gas, a fossil fuel. Although this process creates about 50% the CO₂ emissions gasoline creates it still leave us dependent on fossil fuels.

Luckily Honda is clearly aware of this issue and has also been working on new photovoltaic solar cell technology designed to offer alternatives to the current preferred natural gas based method of creating hydrogen.

I personally think it’s ironic that a seemingly super green technology like hydrogen fuel cells actually still means we could be dependent on fossil fuels. If we could generate all our hydrogen without harvesting it from natural gas that would be great but it seems to me unlikely since all the production focus seems to be moving toward natural gas.

The top reserves for natural gas are in Russia, Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, United States, (see full list of countries with large natural gas reserves). In other words it seems that the current dependency on foreign oil problem could transform itself into a dependency on foreign natural gas if we’re not planning ahead now. Comments?