batteries

It was sobering to learn that the financial crisis that has paralyzed the domestic auto industry has now spread to Japan, where Toyota is projecting a $1.66 billion operating loss for the year that will end in March. This is a company that made $25.2 billion last year. Honda is also revising its sales projections and profit figures downward.

Management shakeups are also in the offing at Toyota, and the grandson of the founder is under consideration for the presidency. (This has echoes of William Clay Ford, Henry’s great-grandson, riding in as the white knight chairman in 1998.)

Two thousand nine will undoubtedly be a tough year for Toyota, but its losses pale compared to Detroit’s. And the company is in a good position to lead a repositioned, leaner and greener auto industry.

The 2010 Toyota Prius reportedly looks like this.

Toyota will offer some impressive new products at the Detroit Auto Show in January, including an all-new Prius (still with nickel-metal-hydride batteries). Styling is an evolution rather than a dramatic change, but the nose is more angular. Early indications are that the car is going to be slightly bigger (three inches in length, and one in width), with the engine growing from 1.5 to 1.8 liters. It will have a higher top speed, and some sources say a 10% fuel economy improvement. That’s a neat trick -- bigger, but with better mileage.

Toyota spokesman John Hanson says that Toyota will also be debuting a “dedicated” Lexus hybrid, the HS 250h, in Detroit, and according to Japanese sources it will have nickel-metal-hydride batteries (later to be replaced with lithium-ion in 2010) and a 2.5-liter gas engine, possibly a V-6. My guess is that this combination will not yield Prius-killing fuel economy numbers.

Lexus already has two hybrid sedans, both of them performance rather than economy cars, so I’m not sure why it needs another entry there. Honda is making a smarter move with its new Insight hybrid, which is designed to sell for under $20,000, with better fuel economy than the combined 42-mpg Civic Hybrid. That car will debut next spring.

Also very cool from Toyota is its ultra-compact iQ, which has unique four-passenger seating (one of the quartet has to be a child). The cute-as-a-button iQ is on the market in Japan, and could come here if the company is convinced there’s a market for it.

A Japanese magazine displayed this possible design for the Lexus HS 250h.

Finally, Toyota is bringing out its plug-in hybrid car. That car, with lithium-ion batteries, will be offered to fleet customers in Japan, Europe and North America in late 2009. Toyota is seriously into batteries, and Hanson points out the company owns 60% of a Japanese factory in partnership with Panasonic, and is building a second plant. By 2010, Toyota will be able to produce a million battery packs annually. Conventional Toyota hybrids are so far sticking with generally reliable nickel-metal-hydride batteries, he said.

“The rosetta stone is the battery,” Hanson says. “We’re now looking beyond lithium, and we think we’re further along than anybody. We have a million hybrids out there already, and we’re concerned about customers’ durability expectations when we introduce any new battery technology.”

So Toyota is wounded, but the medical team is positioning it for a full recovery.

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The annual auto shows are usually an opportunity for the world's carmakers to put on the ritz, but these are straitened times. I've seen carmakers set up indoor off-road courses and let thrill-crazed journalists romp through them in mud-splattered Jeeps, but this was not one of those years.

Ford's Fusion Hybrid: a car of the future.

General Motors, whose CEO was in Washington begging for a $25 billion bailout, decided that it would not, after all, introduce its new Buick LaCrosse and Cadillac CTS Coupe at this week's Los Angeles Auto Show. GM is burning through $2 billion in cash a month, and could run out of money early next year. Its sales declined 45 percent in October.

Chrysler, also burning through billions, declined to showcase any new models in Los Angeles or hold the usual gala press conferences.

Ford, with sales down 18 percent this year, could afford to debut new models because it just earned $540 million selling the lion's share of its stake in Mazda. The 2010 Mustang may get the headlines, but probably more important to the future of the company are a pair of hybrid sedans, the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan.

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The Stirling heat engine was invented by a Scotsman in 1816, but that doesn't stop Dean Kamen from using this new-old technology to create a unique hybrid vehicle.

Dean Kamen is probably best known for the creation of the Segway personal transportation device. And when he talks, people tend to listen. In addition to the somewhat whimsical Segway, his New Hampshire-based company DEKA Research has invented numerous breakthrough medical devices, including the AutoSyringe (a wearable device that dispenses medications on schedule), and Hydroflex, an irrigation pump for laproscopy and other procedures. He's won numerous awards for his inventions, including the Global Humanitarian Action Award from the UN, and numerous honorary doctorates.

The Deka Revolt: Best of both worlds?

But the 2008 DEKA Revolt is something else again. The basic car is a 1999 or 2000 Think City, a plastic-bodied two-seat electric car built in Norway. The company was briefly owned by Ford (1999 to 2003), and the Kamen car dates from that era. Under the name Think Global, the now-independent company has been infused with new venture capital and is once again operating internationally from a base in Aurskog, Norway. It is now selling battery cars in Scandinavia and soon to the rest of Europe. A decision on the U.S. will be made next year.

Against this backdrop, Kamen said he contacted Think approximately a year ago with the idea of turning a small battery electric EV into a mild hybrid equipped with a rear-mounted Stirling engine. The Stirling, which works by heating and cooling pressurized gases, can run on a wide variety of fuels, including gasoline, E85 ethanol and other biofuels, propane, natural gas and methane.

The next thing he knew, Kamen says, a large crate arrived on his loading dock. Inside was a disassembled Think, which he retrofitted with a two-kilowatt Stirling engine (soon to be replaced with a much larger 10-kilowatt version), a small fuel tank, a custom-made 18.3-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack using Kokum America batteries, and a 55-horsepower Azure Dynamics electric motor.

After some head scratching at the New Hampshire Department of Motor Vehicles-was the car a 2000 or a 2008? -- the car was finally registered as a brand-new 2008 DEKA Revolt and began running around Manchester, New Hampshire. And soon it was Dean Kamen's personal transportation.

The Stirling engine does not power the wheels; instead, it provides heat and defrosting and powers accessories to avoid depleting the batteries. And, even better, it can trickle-charge the battery pack so that the driving range can be greatly extended. At speeds below 40 miles per hour, Kamen said, the Stirling should be able to recharge the batteries at the same rate as they're being depleted. Getting stranded with dead batteries won't be a problem, either, because you can run the Stirling for a short while and recharge them.

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Can you feel the electricity? There's a growing consensus that the next generation of automobiles will, to one degree or another, be powered by batteries. The most likely scenario is that a fling with plug-in hybrids will lead to a serious romance and eventually marriage to pure battery electrics. Yes, to make this sustainable we'll have to shift some of our electric grid from its current 50 percent dependence on coal power, but that is an achievable goal.

It may be that the batteries themselves will be harder. The marketplace has arrived at a consensus that the lithium-ion (li-ion) battery is the only real choice for the coming electric cars. But li-ion is also kind of problematic. Sony commercialized lightweight lithium-ion batteries for electronics in 1991; since then, most of us use them every day in laptops, mobile phones and other devices.

The Th!nk City: a 110-mile range.

The great advantage of li-ion (aside from the fact that it's relatively non-toxic) is that it has twice the energy density of, say, nickel-cadmium batteries. But what works great in your relatively coddled cellphone is a challenge in the automotive environment, where the batteries will have to withstand extremes of temperatures and go through really fast charging cycles. Li-ion has also had stability issues -- remember those Sony laptop fires? Well, that company just recalled 100,000 more laptop li-ions because of fire hazards.

I hear that some of the most interesting approaches to li-ion car batteries increase energy storage using the controversial engineering of tiny materials known as nanotechnology.

The li-ion contenders are mostly small companies contracting with automakers. Johnson Controls/Saft has worked on batteries for the Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid. A123 had been a frontrunner to deliver batteries for the forthcoming Chevrolet Volt plug-in, but it now appears that the contract is going to the South Korea-based LG Chem.

A bit of a wild card is Ener1, whose subsidiary EnerDel builds li-ions in a factory in Indiana using technology developed at the Argonne National Labs. "The company's new, highly reliable and safe batteries are designed to be lighter in weight, occupy less space, provide more power, more energy, and have a longer life than the nickel-metal-hydride batteries found in today's hybrid vehicles," Ener1 says. But it would say that, wouldn't it?

Since Korean technology is key here, Ener1 just bought a controlling interest in one of that country's biggest li-ion producers, Enertech International. In announcing the deal, CEO Charles Gassenheimer says he sees a potential market for automotive li-ion batteries at $20 to 30 billion, dwarfing the $7 billion spent annually on consumer electronics.

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Though he didn't have much to say about it at the just-concluded Republican National Convention, where most of the energy talk concerned offshore drilling, John McCain went on record last June as favoring a $300 million federal prize to deliver an automotive battery with "the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrid or electric cars."

The constantly evolving Chevrolet Volt: Whose batteries will it use? (General Motors photo)

McCain also said he would stiffen fines on automakers that play fast and loose with Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, and pump up incentives for developing alternative fuels.

Remember, he said all this back in June when prices were over $4 a gallon. With the tiny easing of prices since then, perhaps the McCain campaign has back-burnered this bright idea. Besides, he makes more headlines when he talked about offshore drilling.

But, wow, $300 million, that's a lot of money! I agree with McCain that this kind of competition can foster a lot of useful innovation. But I'd have to be convinced we could quickly develop technology to "leapfrog" what is going into prototype electric cars and trucks right now. And the fast-moving global race to develop clean cars may be all the incentive cutting-edge companies need.

The state of the art for batteries today is lithium-ion. And a leading player is Massachusetts-based A123 Systems, which the Department of Energy (presumed host of McCain's contest) would not have to go far to find -- they're already working together. A123 is well connected both at DOE and the auto companies with batteries for the next generation of hybrids, as well as plug-in hybrids.

A123's battery technology is being considered for what I would call General Motors' most important project: The Chevrolet Volt, which is tentatively scheduled for showrooms in 2010. The Volt is a new kind of hybrid, with a gasoline motor that's not connected to the wheels -- instead, it's there to keep the batteries charged and provide much greater range than is possible today with conventional electric cars.

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