We are moving to solar-powered-transport: below are pieces on two of those vehicles:

Excerpt from Tesla Motors, their website blog, January 31, 2007

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog5/?p=48#more-48

Powering the Tesla Roadster with ‘Green’ Electrons

We’re solar powered at our home and thus already make “green fuel” for the Tesla Roadster; we enjoy integrating neat zero-carbon solutions into our family’s home, and now into our cars too. We feel it is important to help to drive down costs so EVs grow more affordable. Plus, it’s simply great fun to apply solutions, all the while powering our home – and cars – without oil.

Over the years my family and I have become passionate about solar power (photovoltaics, or PV) and clean technologies. We have a pretty large 6.5 kilowatt (kW) PV system with lots of luxuries and so live well. We also have two large solar thermal water heating systems, use energy efficient LED (light-emitting diode) and CFL (compact fluorescent lamps ) lights as well as passive shading, and generally think about energy use. We have untapped wind resources and so may add more clean power in the future.

We have two types of PV to make “green” electrons. One has 21 monocrystalline solar panels on our roof for 3.85 kW, linked to a 3.5 kW inverter. The other has 24 polycrystalline panels that are ground-mounted, rated 2.8 kW, and run to a 2.5 kW inverter.

Given this solar-home, I’ve long felt if I could just find an excellent two-seater EV to plug into these electrons, as I’ve now found in the Tesla Roadster, there’d be lots of advantages over ordinary, undesirable and slow “gasoline-powered cars.” With the Tesla Roadster, we will get a car with great performance and it is an “American-Fueled Vehicle,” which feels great as a matter of patriotic pride.

There are also neat aspects that follow from the Tesla Roadster being powered to some degree by solar as a “green fuel.” If I charge the Tesla Roadster at home in the daytime, then my house is strictly being a power producer pushing electrons out into the grid, and so I’ll know these are purely solar-made green electrons. I think this is the most elegant fuel of all.

Even if I happen to charge in early evenings or when it’s cloudy with a mixture of “green” and “brown” (from the grid) electrons – or if I regularly charge at night with only “brown” electrons generated by natural gas-fired plants or out-of-state coal plants – those big thermal plants are still the considerably more efficient way to power a car than gasoline.

In the future, having an EV plugged in at home raises intriguing additional possibilities. Because we make our own power, we’ve switched our utility connection here to Time Of Use (TOU) metering. TOU is common in solar homes. It simply splits the day into two periods: one when electricity is cheap, from 6pm to noon, and the other when it’s more expensive, from noon to 6pm weekdays. This means we’re “paid” much more per watt for surplus power we generate in daytime, when in essence our meter spins backwards due to a shining sun, than we pay for the watts of power we have to consume at night. That peak coincides brilliantly with peak solar power, so our house is credited more richly for surplus daytime juice put into the grid.

An electric car is based around a large mobile battery and if that car is built with Vehicle to Grid (V2G) capability, it could also feed power back into the home. Potentially home-owners could arbitrage the difference between low cost for power of around 5 cents per kWh available at night when most plant capacity is just sitting idle – and the much more dear costs for electricity during the peak of day at maybe 15 cents or more per kWh. By charging up at night when juice is cheapest and being able to just regularly sell back into the grid by V2G, or if a signal sent from the Utility calls for it, an EV that’s simply sitting there plugged in to the garage can be a money spinner for the home owner.

While I imagine cars from Tesla Motors won’t have V2G capability for a few years, it might not be too far off. Today’s lithium ion batteries have rather limited cycle life, so it wouldn’t make sense to hasten a demise of those costly batteries for small nightly profit gains (a hardware issue). But batteries are improving quickly, and the software obstacles can be overcome. Plus Utilities will likely be very supportive, just as they are with notions of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles becoming new home power sources and new customers too.

With coming batteries and the utilities onboard, it’s conceivable that future EVs, including this fantastic Tesla Roadster, will typically have V2G. We innovative Americans just need to put our minds to it and treat energy as if it matters. It’s hard for me to overstate the significance of the Tesla Roadster as an agent of elegant change.

Back here today in our own home, we have a simple but fun web-based live system that monitors our ongoing energy demand, and charts it against our solar output. This helps us to be smarter in the ways we use power. In the future, in a rather similar fashion, there might be an optional uplink allowing a Tesla Roadster owner to review the day’s energy use from driving, and chart that against battery performance and even solar green fuel output. On the other hand, it’s something that one could simply ignore and just have the delight of driving, but being in touch with your power source can sometimes be fun!

In my career I’ve tried to help bring academic theories about clean energy solutions to real world applications. For instance, I launched with a colleague a WilderHill Clean Energy Index based on concepts like solar power, wind, energy efficiency, better batteries, ultracapacitors, superconductors, fuel cells, etc. To me, the lovely Tesla Roadster reflects in undeniable ways how when fast-emerging technologies are put together well, the sum is far greater than the parts.

Part of the beauty of the Tesla Roadster is it puts to rest the tired argument that electric cars must be ugly, undesirable, or golf-cart like. The Tesla Roadster is simply a better car, and it proves EVs don’t have to be slow and inelegant like typical gasoline-powered cars.

I think this Tesla Roadster is about to change everything – not just how we think about EVs, but how the future of cars is viewed. Plus, plugging it into our solar powered house and just driving on “green” electrons is simply going to give me endless enjoyment, at least when I can wrestle the car away from my wife!

 

Excerpt from Tesla Motors, their website blog, February 16, 2008

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog5/?p=59

Handing Over the Keys VI: Dr. Rob Wilder

With so many great posts already on first impressions driving the Tesla itself, I’ll instead focus on some of my own feelings, hopes & concerns going into the first — and it turns out rather surprising — test drive. Please excuse the fairly personal nature of this post.

Since sending them a check over a year ago, I reckon I’ve ‘sort of’ owned an early Roadster sight unseen. But it still was a tremendous leap of faith for the whole family, for me to have spent so much on a car that I knew so little about.

So when Tesla asked recently if I wanted to actually test-drive a near-production car, I jumped at the chance. First it meant that the car itself was probably for real: at least I wouldn’t need to endure years of teasing by my wife for buying a non- existent car!

Second with keys at last in hand, I was curious about what I’d feel in my heart and head behind the wheel driving this unique, entirely new kind of electric vehicle (EV)? I’d long been captured by the idea of wrapping a beautiful body around thousands of Li-ion cells, AC motor and regenerative braking. But still it was all merely a thought: could it really come together in a great driving car??

Nobody had pulled it off in production so Tesla was trying something pretty special.

Because I’m passionate about fast cars, the emotional feedback was no small matter to me. But before going into the test drive, I’ll share the thorny hurdle from when I first came across this car in concept long ago. I’ll admit straight off the hurdle wasn’t that it was electric. Rather it was the price: a calculation showed this would be not only the most expensive car I’d ever bought but roughly what I’d spent on all the cars before in my life … put together. Yet in my gut I felt an EV put together in this disruptive way absolutely could yield a car unlike any before. More than anything, that caused me to swallow and send a check … it was how much better an electric car could be, by integrating right parts and thinking. But whether Tesla could deliver when so many failed — still made this a leap of faith.

Mindful a Tesla might deliver superior ride, more thrills at speed and be better all-round to boot and profoundly change perceptions—or instead be the most expensive failure I’d ever known, I was going into this first actual test drive with a lot on my mind.

Walking up to this car the mid-size and curvy proportions do not appear extravagant to my eye from the outside, nor once I first sit at the wheel: happily it is not too showy for my tastes inside or out. I want it to be simply lovely; not over- the-top expensive-looking, nor like an awkward science fair project as some EVs have been in the past. I think its styling hits the nail on the head as elegant while singularly different, maintaining a nice sense of balance. Whew(!) a first key hurdle is cleared; it’s beautiful which is essential. It bears semblance to a lithesome Lotus Elise, or Exige though a bit longer wheelbase. However the Elise is evolving in appearance and a slightly larger Tesla seems more timeless to my eye.

 

Opening the door the doorsill is very high, making getting in not happy for non- limber me. To their credit Tesla lowered remarkably higher(!) doorsills of an Elise and so met added side-crash tests, but the high doorsill is my biggest complaint on getting in.

Turning the key creates buzzing and whirring but that’s not too disconcerting and soon stops. The seats (near-production versions I think) hold one tightly and I quickly adjust to their feel. Next, on putting the car into gear I see there’s creep programmed in so it feels like a gasoline-car (what I call a ‘gasser’). I lightly brake to prevent inching ahead. The GPS screen on the dash has been described as ridiculously small and I totally agree: with so much free dashboard real estate available, this screen ought to be much bigger.

Next allowing the car to gently move from the curb, I find the steering is pretty stiff at a slow speed: this could take getting used to compared to power-assisted steering. OK, deep breath… will this car meet my hopes when I tap the accelerator? I’m worried for example about a cogging feel, or this car at last giving the sensation of just a very expensive golf cart. I’m hoping for something from Tesla better than any EV I’ve driven. Remarkably then a surprising feeling of abundance flows as I pull away from the curb even at slow speeds. An abundance of available pulling torque, and horsepower, silence, elegant engineering, and careful design is what this car ‘is saying’ to me.

Steering lightens and my hopes for what Tesla could be begin to find some basis in reality… so far so good and I begin to feel some road feedback now behind the wheel. My apprehensions start to melt away. But I still need to push it and not treat this beast like something I’m glad can actually budge — but rather treat this as a real sports car. At my first green light I punch it: what really surprises me is how we pull away quickly with no flat spots in the motor’s power, followed by my mouth feeling funny… I then notice I’m actually grinning. The ‘EV grin’ and it is indeed pretty wild ( -: So despite conventional wisdom, EVs do not need to be slow like regular gassers.

I think about our solar-powered home: we make about 6 kW from sunlight that lands on our roof so no oil accident, terrorism, or huge petroleum company can hamper my drive. With ‘my Tesla’ (I’m beginning to really want this car!) I should get 100+ MPG… heck, better than one million MPG because I don’t need oil in the first place. I see no downside.

I now notice the speedometer says I’m going faster than I realize. I drive my gassers at high RPMs and lower gears using engine compression to slow which really telegraphs the speed changes to driver. Lacking any engine sounds and not always hunting for a gear, I now find driving here is a bit like a ‘game’ or Disney ride (remember Rocket Sled?!). A turbine-like sound whirring behind my ears is relatively quiet. Having a motorcycle as a youth and owning many noisy older gassers today, I thought I might miss the instructive revving sounds of fossil fuels furiously converting into mainly waste heat in classic (read: old) British engines, but I find myself liking EV silence quite well It strikes me that my long- term fuel costs should be different too; one expects gasoline to head upwards in cost. Yet for my Tesla the ‘fuel’ costs should amazingly enough, drop down towards zero. The solar panels sitting silently on my roof pay for themselves in 10 years or less; I’ve already had them for 4 years and so reckon in 6 years they’ll have paid for themselves — and thereafter for decades I’ll get green electron fuel for free. Imagine that: free fuel from the sun plus energy independence and a car faster than my brother’s 2008 Porsche Cayman S … wow. The stone-age didn’t end because we ran out of stones; combining elegant solar power with EVs just feels like a solution at hand.

A sports car needs competent brakes: a car is only as fast as its brakes. So I do a series of fast 0-50-0 stops/starts and detect no fade. Importantly, stopping distance is short, feel of the pedal excellent and degree of power assist just right for me. Next up are ascending curves and a chance for 20-50 mph bursts, to push handling closer to where I like to be. I was convinced before this test drive I’d stay near speed limits, not push matters. Yet I kind of like to throw out the rear wheels a bit in my Lotus 7. Mid-range acceleration and handling are my favorites. Tempted, I go into the first curve pushing matters a bit.

I’d note here probably the one trait I seek most in any EV, or gasser is lightness. Adding in lightness creates snowballing benefits like allowing for great handling, and also makes for a better car. Heaviness has an opposite effect. So I am keenly aware of weight .… To briefly illustrate how far cars today drifted into obesity, if my three+ decades-old 1969 Lotus Super 7 weighing about 1,200 lbs were stacked atop an identical one, both would still weigh less than a single Miata, considered among lightest of new cars. Likewise my two older classic Minis (British/Australian Moke convertibles) each weigh about 1,500 lbs. They’re great for a family & fun yet if stacked (as these were actually designed to do!) both would weigh well less than most any single 4-seater today. Thus I’d been encouraged early on to see the high priority Tesla was placing on lowest-possible weight, when I first saw the car’s specs. With an aluminum extrusion frame and by adding in still more lightness such as via Li-ion batteries and carbon fiber body, they clearly were being attentive to every pound and this was pretty impactful upon me.

So I went into this very first curve attentive to how heavy this Tesla Roadster would feel, and how it might handle. With the batteries alone adding about 950 pounds, I think, truly the pounds being put on elsewhere on this car would be felt and count. Aiming into my first curve at speed, I first hear a heavy thunking sound at the wheels as I drift a bit over ‘Botts’ dots’, those small raised yellow reflective markers in a centerline. Maybe it’s because the car otherwise is so quiet or batteries make it (I am guessing 500+ lbs?) heavier than a roughly 2,000 lb. Exige, yet that thunking is noticeable in my mind. As the car continues to drop into this curve, I hit the accelerator at the apex and boy, does the rush of this Tesla make those problems go away! Unlike a gasser one commands loads of torque in one gear without bogging the engine down or needing to downshift. It’s so cool; even though I am heading uphill it seems effortless to hug curves at a high cornering limit. It appears so balanced I don’t think my passenger sweats our speed. A fear I’d had driving other EVs, was this one too might feel like it needed to be pushed uphill — I now see that is totally unfounded here. And importantly this Tesla I’m driving isn’t ‘vaporware’ like EVs great in concept only, but that never come to fruition.

Likewise this battery solution here doesn’t require any unobtanium at all (a substance that’s great if only it existed at a viable cost, but doesn’t yet today): it’s 100% real.

I don’t notice its regenerative braking; I imagine it is dialed in not far from the feeling of engine compression slowing a gasser: the difference is instead of wastefully heating brakes and trying to vent heat, the energy captured in slowing this EV extends its range. How stupid a gasser now seems, to expend energy uphill but recapture none back down!

We take curve after curve and it’s a whole lot of fun. A funny thing too is all is happening in 2nd gear only: first gear for 0-60 only is disengaged I think for debugging. Ironically that would give more performance and feel for the 10,000+ RPM range. That also tends to reinforce the notion production delays so far are over the transmission, not batteries. I can see how full torque at 0 RPM (unlike Otto cycle gas engines) means vexing challenges for tranny designers, regardless of a 1 speed or 2-speed transmission. Yet to have robust reliability and durability, this I’d guess needs to be 100% fixed since tranny choice isn’t easily altered after production begins. Unlike a racecar that needs to only work brief periods, this EV and Tesla brand doesn’t need a permanent black eye. As my drive ends I’m surprised to find I now have much less of a ‘Zen’ attitude about actually getting my Roadster, compared to when I got in at the start of this drive. As others report, my feeling too is one of ‘hey, I want this car as soon as I can get it!’

When first getting in for this test drive, a bicyclist came over and asked if this was an EV Tesla… when I reply ‘Yes’ he said he’d heard they were the most expensive cars ever made! I chuckled (I cannot afford something like that!) but also groan inside since this Tesla still costs less than a German, British or Italian sportscar of like performance.

But this to me now is a crux of the matter: Tesla is changing perceptions about electric cars and importantly creating the future. I thus hope once the Roadster comes out they can move towards producing a more affordable Whitestar EV, then a more affordable EV soon after. This Roadster’s price mystique should soon dissipate as they come out and I look forward to that. But most of all I like the idea we could one day drive great such EVs, many running on clean energy and it’s gassers that will give us all a chuckle.

 

Excerpt from Q1 2007 WilderHill Clean Energy Index (ECO) Quarterly Report

http://wildershares.com/pdf/2007%20Q1%20ECO%20Quarterly%20Report.pdf

Growing Practical Experience with Clean Energy

As noted previously we predicted that gaining some practical, applied experience with the actual clean energy technologies might help too in our ongoing Indexing for this sector. We’ve found this hypothesis amply proven and thus we’ve gained over the past 4+ years quite beneficial working knowledge of solar PV for instance. More recently we added live monitoring to display exact performance for a second new array of 24 polycrystalline solar panels with 2.5 kW Inverter added in 2006 — the PV and live read-outs are in addition to our original 21 monocrystalline PV panels and 3.5 kW Inverter installed in 2003.

Having two different crystalline PV types is a bit interesting to us, as is comparing their genuine performance in the Detail tab, at We Are Solar Powered. (Ground-mounted poly panels are in green at Inverter 1, the roof-mounted higher-efficiency panels are in brown at Inverter 2; together this system is rated some 6.5 kilowatts and is performing well along with two solar thermal water heating systems; we can observe varying solar irradiance, PV cell temperatures and ambient temperatures, plus building demand all of which we are displaying live on the website for anyone interested).

Perhaps of interest too on the demand side is we’re gaining real experience with everyday energy efficiency. Items include white Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), daylight-spectrum compact fluorescent bulbs and ballasts, energy efficient ICs, displays, use of an Earthern clay that ‘breathes’ on interior walls, white foam atop a flat roof that reflects sunlight and keeps us better insulated on cold or hot days, passive interior cooling that replaces traditional air conditioning, active motorized shading, and in future passive outside shading as we’ve planted many young deciduous fruit trees in an organic garden on the building’s Southwest side (replacing water-thirsty grass lawn) to offer shade in summer — while allowing the sun in during Winter. We even have an electric (and thus mostly solar-powered) bike here as well, which has been a fun and healthy experience.

Below is one sample readout on the Detail tab view from a normal February day showing the two systems making some 20 kW/h with live data at http://wildershares.com/solar.php

 

 

Besides our experiences gained in generating clean energy, energy efficiency and reducing demand there’s other areas notably emerging for the sector broadly including alternative fuel vehicles, plug-in hybrids, cellulosic biofuels, battery electric cars, etc. Recognizing this fact and seeking to learn rather more in practice about hybrid and other technologies of the near future, we began last year a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) project for a hybrid 4-seater car. Partnering with engineers who are now building this car for us, we’ve gained some useful practical understanding of many technical matters here too.

We’re hopeful these engineers can complete the PHEV project in summer. By its design this plug-in car should run roughly 24 miles on electricity alone. Thus for shorter trip days the car will run without using gasoline — on ‘solar fuel’ alone if charged in daylight with ‘green electrons’ from the 6.5 kW solar on our building. Otherwise it runs on ‘brown electrons’ from the grid if charged at night but that too is more efficient than fossil fuel gasoline. This car has an AC controller, two small AC motors, regenerative braking, and it can use its small but sufficient 1-liter internal combustion engine for longer range.

Interestingly those kinds of innovative technology and techniques may also be anticipated to receive rather greater attention too, since the President is emphasizing alternatives and automakers may go current ‘weak’ gasoline-based hybrids to ‘strong’ plug-in cars. For those interested below is a schematic of this hybrid configuration: a hybrid electric drive is being added to what was originally a lightweight 1,500 pound 4 seat production car.

 

Drivetrain Configuration

 

 

In practical use we project achieving over 100 MPG in its charge depleting mode using both (‘solar’ green fuel) electricity & gasoline (a fossil fuel). Nicely too this PHEV doesn’t have to be slow, or utterly dependent on gas like an ordinary gasoline-powered car. However given our budget (under $30,000 total) for this project, engineers deleted items such as planned flex-fuel capability that might impact actual range. Simulations have been done (eg below) for twin AC motors/+ 1-liter engine configuration and we’ll post hard data on actual results on the web once completed for those who may be interested. Although this project has been unlike day-to-day work of Indexing, just as with our solar PV system it has been a useful experience that adds to our knowledge of clean energy technologies, and to ‘real world’ comprehension of possibilities in this emerging sector.

 

PSAT Simulation Results sample page