Transforming Gas Guzzling Fleets: The Time is Now
Jay Giraud, Founder and President, REV, October 9th, 2009, Gas2.org
REV Electric Vehicle
Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution by the Founder and President of Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV).
This past week I have spent considerable time traveling throughout California, Oregon and Washington discussing the transformation of fleet vehicles to electric. My company, Vancouver-based REV (Rapid Electric Vehicles), has created a fully integrated solution to transform existing fleet vehicles including the Ford Escape into a 100 percent electric vehicle with long-range AC drive systems, integrated data management, charging stations, fleet charging management and Vehicle 2 Grid.
I met with municipalities, city fleet managers, energy companies and government officials about the immediate need to transform gas-guzzling fleets into green driving machines. There is much talk about the preverbal chicken and egg problem—what will come first the EV’s or infrastructure. Indeed, according to Felix Kramer at CalCars.org, ‘new plug-in vehicles won’t arrive quickly enough to achieve the vital goal of near-term (next 10-15 years) reduction in petroleum use to gain energy security and greenhouse gas benefits.’ The fact is EV fleets can be a reality today through innovative measures. The City of Inglewood, California is leading by example by committing to transform existing fleet vehicles to 100 electric. Other California cities are doing the same and encouraging their peers to go green and save green.
Benefits to transforming gas guzzlers include:
* Compliance to clean air mandates through the elimination of emissions
* Savings in fuel and maintenance costs and increase fleet-service life (a fleet could replace $200 of monthly fuel expenses per vehicle with a $20 increase in their electric bill per vehicle).
* Taxpayer dollars saving and decreasing emissions that affect air quality
* Significantly reduced operating costs
* Simplification of how fleet managers track and calculate emission reductions
* Reusing existing fleet vehicles that saves over 20 tons from manufacturing
CalCars.org is encouraging organizations to “fix” a large fraction of the existing 250 million U.S. vehicles and 900 million globally to run partly or fully on electricity. This will enable millions of cleaner, more efficient vehicles that cost less money to operate, and create thousands of jobs that will provide new revenue streams to automakers from vehicles they have already sold. For the past year CalCars.org has been working to develop a campaign to promote promising designs about conversions and spread the word about US tax credits. If you would like to learn more, visit Calcars.org. Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV) is a leader in electric vehicle solutions for fleets, delivering a fully integrated solution for transforming and electrifying fleets. The complete solution provides everything fleets need to transform their existing passenger vehicles into 100 percent electric vehicles including: fast-install AC drive technology, integrated data management, charging stations, fleet charging management and V2G. The REV product eliminates vehicle emissions with a systems-integrated approach designed specifically for fleet operations while saving fuel and maintenance costs and increasing fleet-service life. For more information on REV visit http://www.rapidelectricvehicles.com.
REV Electric Vehicle
Editor’s Note: This is a guest contribution by the Founder and President of Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV).
This past week I have spent considerable time traveling throughout California, Oregon and Washington discussing the transformation of fleet vehicles to electric. My company, Vancouver-based REV (Rapid Electric Vehicles), has created a fully integrated solution to transform existing fleet vehicles including the Ford Escape into a 100 percent electric vehicle with long-range AC drive systems, integrated data management, charging stations, fleet charging management and Vehicle 2 Grid.
I met with municipalities, city fleet managers, energy companies and government officials about the immediate need to transform gas-guzzling fleets into green driving machines. There is much talk about the preverbal chicken and egg problem—what will come first the EV’s or infrastructure. Indeed, according to Felix Kramer at CalCars.org, ‘new plug-in vehicles won’t arrive quickly enough to achieve the vital goal of near-term (next 10-15 years) reduction in petroleum use to gain energy security and greenhouse gas benefits.’ The fact is EV fleets can be a reality today through innovative measures. The City of Inglewood, California is leading by example by committing to transform existing fleet vehicles to 100 electric. Other California cities are doing the same and encouraging their peers to go green and save green.
Benefits to transforming gas guzzlers include:
* Compliance to clean air mandates through the elimination of emissions
* Savings in fuel and maintenance costs and increase fleet-service life (a fleet could replace $200 of monthly fuel expenses per vehicle with a $20 increase in their electric bill per vehicle).
* Taxpayer dollars saving and decreasing emissions that affect air quality
* Significantly reduced operating costs
* Simplification of how fleet managers track and calculate emission reductions
* Reusing existing fleet vehicles that saves over 20 tons from manufacturing
CalCars.org is encouraging organizations to “fix” a large fraction of the existing 250 million U.S. vehicles and 900 million globally to run partly or fully on electricity. This will enable millions of cleaner, more efficient vehicles that cost less money to operate, and create thousands of jobs that will provide new revenue streams to automakers from vehicles they have already sold. For the past year CalCars.org has been working to develop a campaign to promote promising designs about conversions and spread the word about US tax credits. If you would like to learn more, visit Calcars.org. Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV) is a leader in electric vehicle solutions for fleets, delivering a fully integrated solution for transforming and electrifying fleets. The complete solution provides everything fleets need to transform their existing passenger vehicles into 100 percent electric vehicles including: fast-install AC drive technology, integrated data management, charging stations, fleet charging management and V2G. The REV product eliminates vehicle emissions with a systems-integrated approach designed specifically for fleet operations while saving fuel and maintenance costs and increasing fleet-service life. For more information on REV visit http://www.rapidelectricvehicles.com.
Tags: electric_cars, fleets
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by SJC on -
This is something that COULD be done, RAV4-EVs are still in service at Southern California Edison after more than 10 years. However, the cost is the main factor. Why should they spend a lot per vehicle to convert used Escapes, when they could just run them and replace them? Gasoline would have to go above $4 per gallon and stay there to make this pay off. They could put on a 10% oil import fee and encourage this now, but that is not likely to happen.
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Permalink Reply by neil cox on -
Jay did not tell us how fast rapid vehicles are. 80 miles per hour top speed? They can complete the instalation in ten vehicles ten days after the contract is signed? Jay did not tell us what kind of batteries they instal. Maybe they instal super capacitors. The consensus seems to be that batteries reduce the pay load, weight and volume and the range of vehicles greatly, unless they are very expensive batteries such as used in the Tesla motor car.
V2G = vehicle to grid typically implies that the vehicle will supply power to the grid when the grid has a short fall. AC does add a mile or two to the range over dc systems, but inital cost and maintenance are more costly, mostly because almost no technicians are trained to service ac electric vehicles.I appologize. Unlike most we sites lots of details. Powertrain and Charging Specifications
REV's drivetrain is engineered around a state of the art AC induction motor mated to a specialized eGear transmission designed specifically for electric vehicles. This pairing provides the vehicle with high efficiency (> 90%) energy transfer between the battery pack and the wheels and a very responsive (high torque) driving experience. The drive system can be configured to work for maximum efficiency by maximizing the system’s regeneration capabilities or, conversely, for maximum performance by minimizing regeneration from breaking.
AC induction, 90kw motor
Lithium-Iron phosphate battery packs
Advanced Battery Management System
Charger: 90-260 VAC input, 250-410 VDC output, 6.6 kW at 220 VAC
Performance and Handling Characteristics
110 hp equivalent, and up to 400 ft. lbs torque at zero rpm
Improved weight distribution
Improved center of gravity
Improved low-end towing capacity and traction
eGear Drive transmission Features
High efficient, helical gear and bearing design
Low system backlash
Compact and low weight
Integral electronic pawl actuation. Neil
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Permalink Reply by neil cox on
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90 kilowatt for how many seconds without motor and/or battery damage on a hot day? What is typical zero RPM torque for a vehicle with clutch and internal combustion engine in low gear?
Battery voltage is about 300 volts under light load? How much backlash occurs in typical internal combustion cars? What is backlash? Neil
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Permalink Reply by Scott Baker on -
I hate to sound like a broken record on this, but you really have to solve the three 'R's to get any traction with electric vehicles. They are, again:
1. Range anxiety - am I going to have enough 'charge' to make it to the next recharge station?
2. Recharge availability - IS there even anywhere nearby to charge my vehicle?
3. Recharge time - can I recharge my vehicle for the next 300 miles in 5 minutes, or do I have to check into a motel and come back in the morning?
Without solving these problems, pure electric vehicles will remain a niche product as a second car for short hops from the home, as celebrity feel-good purchases, and as experimental cars. Hybrids are a different matter, because there is always the gas engine to fall back on. Hybrid electric/flywheel, electric/compressed-air, electric/fuel-cell would be even better, but there are none of these, probably because the makers of these innovations don't' talk to each other, rather than any technical difficulty.
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Permalink Reply by Mekhong Kurt on -
Scott -- your correct about all three concerns, of course.
But answers to those pitfalls might come to pass sooner than we might think. For instance, on range anxiety, I read a day or two ago about a team of researchers working on a battery powered by radioactive material, plutonium, as I recall. What they're working on now is quite small -- about the size of a penny -- but I assume it might be scaled up for vehicles. And it has -- they claim -- 6-7 times the power of more traditional batteries. Of course, some people are going to scream "I'M not gonna carry a mini-Chernobyl anywhere NEAR me!"
As for recharge times, I'm reading more and more about batteries that can recharge to about 80% full in minutes, so that shouldn't be a problem much longer.
Finally, places to recharge. Perhaps the toughest of the three; after all, some people live in apartments, sometimes on a high floor, making a plug-in set-up impractical, at best (and maybe impossible).
I wonder if there are electric meters, inexpensive ones, that could be installed on a wall socket. What I'm thinking is maybe a service station owner might install a number of plugs if he could see exactly how much electricity I had used to recharge my EV (if I had one, which I don't) then charge me an appropriate price. I could also see parking garages doing that. Maybe anyplace with a parking area or building could have another revenue stream. But I plain don't know if such meters are available at a price that would be attractive.
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Permalink Reply by SJC on
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Even if you sold or converted 1 million EVs every year for 10 years we might just keep the amount of oil we use per year constant. There are 200 million vehicles using 140 billion gallons of fuel each year. Each year we use around 1% more oil than the year before and motor vehicles take 1/2 of the oil we use. So in 10 years we would still use more than 20 million barrels of oil per day and import about 14 million of those barrels of oil. I mention this to show the size of the situation that exists now.
It would help decrease the growth in oil usage, but not reduce it. DME and methanol for trucks and cars made from renewable methane could be used in existing vehicles. The fuel could be made at the station from methane delivered through natural gas pipes that already exist. If we are to make a reduction in oil used, we must find a way to get millions of vehicles off oil each year. Hoping that everyone will drive HEVs. PHEVs. and EVs real soon will probably not get us to that goal.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Espeseth on -
Want it to happen?
Show me the money....
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