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In order to build homes today, small operators can’t get land entitlements. The reason for this is because cities now demand private builders pay for roads and parks in advance, and build them at the same time as the homes are built. This is extremely costly, and hardly anyone can play this game. And what gets built with this “smart growth” is not a natural flow of landowners everywhere electing when to sell to a homebuilder, and the market pouring development into the natural nooks and crannies. Instead, our cities make painstakingly negotiated and litigated, massive leaps, each one involving massive compounds of densely packed homes, usually surrounded by 12 foot masonary walls. Each of these “planned communities”can involve hundreds of millions in financing and take many decades to realize a return, adhering to ever-changing, endless regulations determined by committees and bureaucrats and politicians. Is this any way to settle the wide and beautiful lands of California?

So within the “urban service boundaries,” city and county governments force “infill” developments that congest the roads and destroy rural suburbs, and outside of these arbitrary walls, you have to pay for a whole city in advance if you want to build. This is a perversion of natural growth. Plenty of people are still going to want to live in the new highrises of downtown urban centers, you don’t have to legislate and litigate everything to squeeze sixty million people into this huge state. In the good old days, cities widened the roads and developed the parks years later. Nobody had “Mello Roos” fees to pay – property taxes by any other name. So what if there wasn’t a park for thirty years, or ever, people had nice backyards to play in, and grow trees. With low density, the cost to build smart freeways is much lower. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect, just green.

Today it doesn’t matter if you are in a “planned community” outside the urban service boundary, or “infill” within, all of the housing has to be ultra high-density. Natural development would have “low density” followed by genuine low density followed by small ranchettes, then ranchettes and farms, and so on. Of course natural waterways would not be exposed to toxins, and housing would not pollute. But there could exist genuine amd myriad and painless new countryside developments where single-home lots were at least one acre each. This is not something everyone wants – that is a lot of yard to take care of – but homes with large lots – even small homes on large lots – should be available to those who want them. Eventually around crossroads in these low density suburbs town centers form on their own. This is how land is settled. It follows the contours of the earth, it spreads out evenly, not in litigated leaps.

Instead these planned communities and infill developments are walled compounds, with “low density” packing as many as 8 homes to the acre. The irony is the staggering opportunity cost of this mandated, inorganic growth, when totally green cars are just around the corner, and totally green buildings are pretty much here today, and off-grid living is taking off. California in general, and Sacramento in particular, has abundant open space that is currently floodplain, or farmland, or rangeland, or foothills, that could spread from Mt. Shasta to the Kern River, a great new sprawling city of greenbelts and green ‘burbs, gentlemen farmers on private land, moms and dads in homes on large lots. The finest low density megacity in the history of human civilization. Green cars will drive themselves in a few more years, and hitch rides on high-speed trains into the high-rise urban centers.

There is room for all of this in California’s future, smart high speed trains, dams, reservoirs, powerplants, aquaducts, canals, nuclear powered desalination plants, aquifer infrastructure, smart freeways, solar power, high rises and rail. But to finance this, we have to fiscally reengineer our government. We have to require all taxpayer, government administered benefits for all workers to be the same, regardless of whether one works in the public sector or the private sector. Every worker has to get the same deal. This would encourage cross-pollination of personnel between the public and private sector. It would make American private industry more competitive. It would alleviate much of the misunderstanding between the public and private sectors. It would pass the crucible of public policy to focus on immigration and demographic policy and what defines a working American citizen. It would ease the imperative for public agencies to enact policies that increase home prices to increase property tax revenue. It would restore fiscal solvency to public institutions and allow the financing of everything we need to rebuild in green our physical plant.

Denying every landowner the right to build homes on their land should end. All landowners should be allowed to build green homes. Low density development has a low carbon footprint and a cooling thermal effect, since cars are going green and large home lots have room for tree canopy. By allowing the “footprint” of cities to expand, the supply of homes is increased, and prices drop.

Unintended consequences are always part of any new scheme, and emissions trading is no exception. The European model ought to provide plenty of cautionary examples. Free market advocates claim emissions trading is preferable to outright taxation, but ignore the fact that in both cases, a huge and mostly arbitrary transfer of wealth is occurring. Emissions trading increases the prices to consumers just as much as taxes do, and if anything, result in less targeted application of the proceeds.

It may be a good idea to artificially raise the price of energy. Doing this stimulates investment in new sources of energy, thereby helping nations to achieve greater measures of energy independence. But where will all of this capital go? In the European model, much of the proceeds has been used to artificially create a market for biofuel, which in-turn has caused the most devastating rounds of tropical deforestation in history. While environmentalists continue to look the other way, the final destruction of rainforests in Asia and Africa rages unchecked, to clear land for biofuel plantations. It is a catastrophe.

In America, carbon trading will be sold as a free market mechanism to finance energy independence. But what will happen in practice? It has been proposed that communities will be able receive carbon offset proceeds if they enact ordinances that lower their “carbon footprint.” Since the overpaid, over-pensioned, unionized minions who control our local governments can no longer collect building fees – the demands of city governments combined with environmentalist lawsuits have finally managed to collapse the housing market – a “carbon offset” windfall will help them prop up their failing finances.

Don’t be surprised, therefore, when your local city forces you to throw out your incandescent bulbs, and live beneath the Guantanamo glare of unhealthy fluorescents, or bans backyard charcoal BBQs, or fires in your fireplace, or watering your lawn. Don’t be surprised as every beautiful semi-rural suburb is “infilled” into oblivion, as you choke on roads designed for far fewer residents, because the “urban service boundaries” have preserved sacred “open space.” These draconian measures will help earn carbon credit payments for local governments, which in turn will allow city employees to continue to retire in their early 50′s with huge pensions. This is the financial reality behind the propaganda onslaught. This is the hidden agenda.

If you don’t believe that anthropogenic CO2 has any significant role in causing global warming or climate change, and we don’t, then this huge transfer of wealth from the private sector to the public sector, accompanied by tyrannical edicts destroying our way of life, is nothing but tragic folly.

Last week Bill Moyers interviewed FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps, and throughout the interview, Copps decried the consolidation that is occurring in media, and insisted that preserving debate is essential if we are to preserve democracy.

There are a lot of changes today – on the internet there are literally billions of new sources of media – not just extensions of every traditional media source already out there – print media, television and radio, but additional hundreds of millions of websites that are little more than personal diaries, additional millions of video clips on YouTube, and millions more that are venues for commercial endeavors. Where is the genuine media? How do you cut through the noise?

It’s no secret that traditional media is dying. The only place in-depth investigations and reporting ever were feasible were in newspapers. For over a century, newspapers held a special place in media – monopolies only barely encroached upon by radio and television. Supported by local merchants, classified ads, and subscription payments, local newspapers were highly profitable enterprises, and the journalists who they could afford to pay were able to spend months, even years, on investigative quests for truth. Back then, there were tens of thousands of people in the USA and elsewhere whose profession was based on in-depth investigative reporting, and nothing else. Not only was there debate, there was depth.

Those days are gone. Today only a handful of newspapers can still afford to employ such reporting staff. Consolidation of the retail advertisers, proliferation of free print material containing advertiser-sponsored content, the advent of cable TV, and now the internet, has shrunk the advertising base for newspapers at the same time as it has shrunk the audience for newspapers. And nothing has replaced them.

Laws to prevent consolidation of media ownership exist for good reason, but they are in conflict with an even greater imperative – without consolidation, media properties can’t survive financially. So what great debates are not being met? What information is not getting out?

For starters, the conventional wisdom of mainstream environmentalists. Here are three examples:

We should continue the debate as to whether or not anthropogenic CO2 emissions is actually the primary cause of runaway global warming. But if you scan today’s mainstream media, we must reduce CO2 emissions at any cost.

We should debate as to whether or not our energy and water supplies should be deliberately constricted and rationed, in order to reduce our “carbon footprint,” even though energy remains abundant in the world, and the cure may be worse than the disease.

We should debate as to whether or not we need to restrict nearly all development into the “footprint” of existing cities, which causes congestion, nurtures crime, and drives housing prices into the stratosphere. If you scan today’s mainstream media – open space at any cost is an article of faith. So we blithely destroy every suburb in America with ultra high-density “infill.” This “smart growth” is more than simply ridiculous, it is a hideous crime that is destroying our American way of life.

How debate on this unassailed conventional wisdom will ever be joined is the distressing question. Only here? On one, small website, indistinguishable in the noise from just another MySpace page? It is hard to imagine how that might matter or make a difference, but it is equally difficult to suggest the alternative. How will credibility and influence be acquired by new media, and will it be enough to restore debate – which in-turn is necessary to preserve a functioning, healthy democracy?

There is a writer for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Marlo Lewis, whose work we republished (with permission) in December 2006 as an EcoWorld feature story. In his report, “Al Gore’s ‘Truth:’ One-Sided, Misleading, Exaggerated, Speculative, Wrong,” the author skewers the global warming alarmists. We find Mr. Lewis’s style to be a bit confrontational, and by no means are all of his assertions beyond debate. But we run work by people like him because it’s frightening and offensive that anyone might say we shouldn’t. We don’t think much of anything having to do with global warming is beyond debate, and even if it is, debate should always be permitted in a free society.

There is no doubt that people are going overboard with all this global warming hysteria. It is being used to justify anything by anyone. Most of the practical impacts so far are completely useless from a climate standpoint, if not catastrophically flawed, such as European carbon offsets financing rainforest destruction to grow biofuel crops.

So when someone tries to silence an author we have embraced, someone who isn’t automatically buying into all of this hype and hate and fear, we must expose the injustice. We’ve recently learned of an email sent by Michael Eckhart, the President of the American Council On Renewable Energy, to Marlo Lewis:

Marlo –

You are so full of crap.

You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.

Mike
Michael T. Eckhart
President
American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

We’ve heard this nonsense before. “The entire world has proven you wrong.” That is a strong statement, but offers no evidence.

I don’t agree with the policies being advocated by Gore and the rest of them. I think the role of anthropogenic CO2 in climate change requires vigorous debate. Moreover, I think the cost and benefit of doing something about anthropogenic CO2 is prohibitive compared to the cost to do something about rainforest destruction, an empty Aral Sea, collapsing ocean fisheries, and financing more coal scrubbers and clean coal plants. If you listen to Gore, we have to sequester CO2 from coal, when for far, far less money, we could clean nearly all of the pollution (except for the CO2) out of coal emissions. So we choke, and they build coal plants anyway, laughing at the environmentalists who wait for this dubious perfection, and who are no longer trying to make them simply install a better scrubber.

People like Mr. Eckhart should be challenged, because if you study the rhetoric of the global warming alarmists, it is becoming fascist. Among their leaders, accusations that global warming skeptics are “traitors” are being allowed to stand. This sort of rhetoric will escalate if it isn’t challenged, and will lead to ill-considered policies and possibly much worse. The idea that the U.S. Supreme Court has declared CO2 a “pollutant” is sinister. It is akin to declaring the earth is flat; it is just dead wrong. Plants love CO2.

As far as I’m concerned, Marlo Lewis can say anything he wants. The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a fairly small outfit, with a budget of a few million per year. When the torch-holders for skepticism are reduced to lone holdouts such as this small nonprofit think tank with a handful of writers, freedom loving people all over the world better wake up before it’s too late for more than Orangutans. Mr. Eckhart should apologize to Mr. Lewis, and ACORE should thrive on innovation and competitive excellence, not advance through Machiavellian personal attack and dire threats.

In many cases it’s that stark: Either you preserve and expand forests, or you deforest in order to grow biofuel. If you believe, as we do, that tropical forests are far better for the global climate than biofuel plantations – in terms of all three popular measures; global warming, extreme weather, and droughts – then this choice is one with epic consequences. And over the past ten years, with accelerating momentum, the tropical forests of this world have been ripped away, in order to plant sugar cane for bioethanol, and oil palms for biodiesel – while environmentalists look the other way.

Our concern for what we consider to be a global catastrophe is well documented, in posts such as Deforestation Diesel, Brazilian vs. Californian Ethanol, Biofuel Monocultures, Biofueled Global Warming, Biofuel is NOT Carbon Neutral, Biofueled Deforestation, Ethanol & Water, Biofuel or Biohazard?, When Green is Brown, Is Biofuel Water Positive?, and many others. Check all our posts in the Biofuel category, or the posts in our Global Warming category. We haven’t wavered.

Hopefully others are starting to wake up, too. Today on the BBC website, another story appeared entitled “EU Biofuel Policy is a Mistake.” In this story the author reported, in the most unequivocal terms we’ve yet seen, that tropical deforestation for the purpose of growing biofuel is an unmitigated disaster. Here are some quotes from this story:

“…forests could absorb up to nine times more CO2 than the production of biofuels could achieve on the same area of land.”

“The growth of biofuels was also leading to more deforestation… the prime reason for the renewables obligation was to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.”

“In all cases, the amount of CO2 sequestered (by forests) over a 30-year period is considerably greater than the amount of emissions avoided by using biofuels.”

Not mentioned, but equally significant, is the heat island effect caused by losing the reflectivity of tropical cloud cover, which forms over tropical forests, but doesn’t form over biofuel plantations. Also not mentioned is the heartbreaking impact this devastation has had on wildlife, if anyone in the environmental community cares.

Our mission when we launched EcoWorld in 1993 was to promote reforesting, and since then, particularly in the tropics where it counts, we have lost ground. Our skepticism regarding the role of industrial CO2 in climate change, our support of nuclear power, our refusal to demonize the auto industry or the oil industry (or the entire private sector, for that matter), and our derision for litigious fanatics who make it nearly impossible to build homes on sacred “open space,” in no way diminishes our commitment to the environment – to clean air and water (CO2 is NOT pollution), wildlife preservation, and rational progress towards sustainability in all things. But we are practical environmentalists.

Humanity – and the global ecosystem – would almost certainly be better off if we extracted and refined up to 2.0 trillion barrels of heavy oil from the Orinoco basin and the Athabasca Tar Sands, a combined area of only 75,000 square miles. That disruption – and apparently even the associated CO2 emissions – is far less than continuing to deforest the tropics for biofuel. There are only 3.0 million square miles of tropical rainforest left, down from 8.0 million only 150 years ago. We need to reforest the tropics, not deforest them. The very idea that European CO2 mitigation credits are financing tropical rainforest destruction to grow biofuel is one of the most obscene ironies in the history of the human race.

Everybody’s seen them; homes crammed so close together you can’t park a car in the driveway, you can’t put a trampoline in the backyard, and forget about planting a tree. This is the “smart growth” that Californians are having shoved down their throats, and there’s nothing smart about it. By contrast, in the rural communities north of the American river and east of Sacramento, streets without sidewalks wind through rolling hills, and homes on acre and half-acre lots are set well back from the road. Mature trees provide shade, and deer and wild turkey come up from the river to invade well-tended gardens. Nobody minds.

Want a yard with a garden? Well thanks to the “smart growth” fanatics, you’ll need to be rich, and your giant “footprint” will be an eco-crime.

But because “smart growth” requires leapfrog infill, this rural way of life is being relentlessly and needlessly destroyed. The reason for this is because an “urban service boundary” has been proclaimed, which prohibits any new housing developments on land beyond this boundary.

So as the population of California grows from 36 million to over 50 million in the next twenty years, we are going to squeeze all of these new people into existing “footprints” of cities.

Do you live in a semi-rural neighborhood within an “urban service boundary”? Because if you do, you’d better get ready for ten “detached homes” to get built on that one acre vacant lot across the street from you. These “cluster homes” are disgusting, ugly contrivances that would not make sense by any aesthetic standard – condominiums look better and provide more amenities, but they don’t qualify as “residential single family dwellings.” The “smart growth” cabal exploits the technicality that defines these eyesores as “detached” homes, so get used to them – and pity the poor souls who have to live in them. And enjoy trying to share the road with your twenty million new neighbors, since no roads get built under the “smart growth” mantra, either – they intend to force us all into busses and light rail.

Now a company headquartered in Iowa with operations in the Sacramento area has come up with a plan to build 14 detached homes on 3/4 of an acre. An article in the Sacramento Bee entitled “Downsizing Comes Home” has an image of this abominable plan. And all the powers that be, the media, the environmental lobby, and the politicians, enthusiastically support this destruction of our lifestyle – now claiming low density development causes more CO2 emissions (global warming alarm is probably the biggest scam in the history of the world), and in a larger sense, claiming we are committing some crime against the earth if we want a yard. Perhaps the most offensive aspect of the artist’s rendering of the 14 homes on 3/4 acre plan is all the open space surrounding the homes. But that makes sense when you understand the real agenda: This open parkland is owned and maintained by the government – while homeowners get nothing. That used to be called communism.

Volumes could be written about how a coalition of public employee unions, environmental lobbyists, trial lawyers, and opportunistic politicians and academics are destroying the ability of ordinary Americans to own homes on decent sized lots, but for now, let’s run some numbers. If you cram 14 homes onto 3/4 of an acre, then at 640 acres per square mile, and 3.5 people per household, you get 41,813 people per square mile. Factor in streets, parks and commercial districts, and you are still looking at 20,000 people per square mile. Basically, if the smart growth people have their way, the twenty million new residents destined to join us here in California over the next twenty years will be crammed into a mere 1,000 square miles – a square 31 miles on a side, divided into a million tiny pieces and stomped onto every former pearl of beauty, the untended vacant lot or doomed old house on a big lot, within existing cities. This is an absolutely horrific future, being foisted upon us by powerful vested interests and out-of-touch elites who couldn’t care less about you and me.

To provide comparisons, the Central Valley in California is 40,000 square miles! If the market were allowed to provide housing, instead running everything through government agencies and trial lawyers, there would still be high density housing, because lots of people like that, especially when it’s concentrated in the urban core of existing cities. If property rights were respected, and market-driven development were permitted anywhere (instead of a prison wall surrounding every metropolitan area, causing leapfrog infill to destroy every semi-rural suburb), additional semi-rural suburbs would be built, accommodating the dreams of those who want a little piece of this earth. There is plenty of room.

Last week General Motors announced they will co-develop a lithium ion battery for their “Volt” electric car in partnership with A123 Systems, one of the leading companies in the world developing these next generation batteries. In the announcement, GM stated “A123 is a forerunner in nanophosphate-based cell technology, which, compared to other lithium-ion battery chemistries, provides higher power output, longer life, and safer operations over the life of the battery.”

The GM Volt parked in front of A123 Systems headquarters.

This announcement signifies GM is moving forward to bring the Volt from concept to reality. Last week GM Vice Chairman for Product Development, Robert Lutz, said he was “personally as excited about the Volt as anything I’ve ever done.”

The Volt is an example of what GM calls “E-Flex” technology, where an all-electric drivetrain derives power from a variety of sources. The Volt is designed to have no more than 400 pounds of batteries, giving it a range on batteries only of about 40 miles. But along with the battery pack, the Volt is also equipped with an onboard internal combustion engine and generator that can provide 100% of the power requirement of the car when the batteries are depleted. This is a far more efficient way to use an internal combustion engine, since the motor will constantly operate at a constant RPM. For more specifications on the Volt, unverified but very interesting, refer to the Wikipedia “Chevrolet Volt” write up.

When we learned about the selection of A123 Systems by GM, we called GM spokesman Rob Peterson to ask him where this puts the Volt in terms of actually getting onto the road. He said the Volt should move from two concept cars to a few actual prototypes by early next spring. He said “because this has the eyeballs of senior leadership the timeline is being accelerated as much as possible,” and that “typically you need 2-3 years between engineering development vehicles and full production.” This assessment is consistent with the rumors as reported on Wikipedia, i.e., we could see Volts in the showroom by 2010.

Peterson’s comments about GM’s selection process that ended up with A123 Systems were encouraging for anyone who wants to see all electric vehicles any time soon. He said “when we put out an RFP in March 2007, we ended up getting 13 serious proposals. Up to that time we didn’t even know there were 13 companies in the world who believed they could make a 16 kilowatt-hour battery to our specifications!”

When literally millions of “strong” hybrids, plug-in hybrids, two-mode hybrids, and flex-fuel vehicles such as the Volt (which I still prefer to call a “series hybrid”) are on the road, it will be because these battery vendors have ramped up to produce safe, durable, affordable batteries with viable energy density. These will be batteries engineered to provide sustained power to propel a vehicle, not clever adaptations of batteries that were designed for something else entirely. And as Peterson put it, “nothing appears to be blocking the view, there’s a lot of hard work ahead, but no 100 foot wall.”

How can we introduce nine electric car models that exist today or could exist in the very near future? This photo essay is one good manner, and the message the EV industry is sending the world in 2007 is “electric vehicles are here to stay.” Nothing is ever going to be the same. Among the samples to follow, every vehicle relies exclusively on an electric motor for traction. Every one of them has a battery-only range that permits various uses. For an affordable car for a short freeway commute, the NMG (which means “no more gas”), a three-wheel all-weather motorcycle from Myers Motors. For a short-haul, freeway-capable utility truck with a range of 120 miles, Phoenix Motorcars already has hundreds on the road – as does Myers Motors.

The notion that electric vehicles have to avoid competing in the heavy vehicle or exotic sports car categories is pretty much unfounded. The Wrightspeed X-1, a prototype all-electric two-seat sports car that has been on the road for nearly four years, has done zero to sixty in 3.07 seconds. Electric motors deliver better horsepower per pound than gasoline engines, and they are far more efficient delivering this energy at variable RPM. They also have a superior RPM range, with over 10,000 RPM of variation possible within a single gear.

The Chevy Volt, a concept car announced in January of 2007 by GM, combines the strengths of an all electric vehicle with avoiding the weaknesses of a hybrid car. With only 400 pounds of batteries, the Volt can never be weighed down by discharged battery mass, like many all-electric vehicles with longer ranges, and even today’s hybrids. The Volt can operate at 50 MPG with no charge left in the batteries, thanks to an onboard flex-fuel engine that turns an electric generator. Because the RPM of this piston combustion engine is kept constant, it can operate at extraordinary efficiencies. The Volt is a breakthrough.

There are a lot of EV’s to choose from these days. The 200+ MPH speedster from Commuter Cars Corp., the “Tango,” or the ZENN car (zero emissions no noise), a practical neighborhood electric vehicle. And alongside niche products, there are signs of a looming explosion in EV manufacturing. AC Propulsion, one of the most respected architects of the electric vehicle revolution, has announced the “eBox,” a conversion of the Scion xB with an all-electric range of 120 miles. And Th!nk, a Norwegian electric automaker, has just announced new financing and plans to begin mass production. The next-generation automotive revolution cannot be stopped and has many movers. Around the world electric automakers are emerging.

Where the next generation car ends up is difficult to predict, but could be embodied in some combination of the qualities of GM’s Volt and the ZAP-X, announced by ZAP Motors in 2007. The GM “Volt” uses an onboard flexfuel engine to provide 100% of the power to an electric motor, with a limited but still very functional 40 mile range on a battery charge. The ZAP-X uses batteries only, but claims they can be charged in 10 minutes and have a range of 350 miles. This rapid recharge is technically possible, although very expensive. Other reputable electric automakers have made comparable claims regarding range. The ZAP-X also aspires to include in-wheel motors, an innovation that to-date has proven elusive but should soon be possible with electric vehicles. But whether ZAP builds it, or GM builds it, or others, this is what’s to come:

ELECTRIC MOTORS HAVE MORE POWER PER POUND

Wrightspeed’s “X-1″ Zero to sixty in 3.07 seconds. www.wrightspeed.com

E-FLEX: THE NEXT GENERATION HYBRID

The GM “Volt,” 100% electric motor traction with onboard gasoline generator. Fifty MPG with 600 mile range, 40 mile battery-only range. www.gm-volt.com

ZERO EMISSIONS NO NOISE

The ZENN car. An affordable neighborhood electric vehicle. www.zenncars.com

A PRACTICAL ALL-WEATHER COMMUTER CAR

Myers Motors’ “NMG” (no more gas) 75 MPH freeway capable, 30 mile range. www.myersmotors.com

A CAR FOR THE CITY

Think’s “Think” car A perfect vehicle for tight urban parking. www.thinkev.com

A HIGH SPEED MOTORCYCLE

Commuter Car’s “Tango” Top speed 200+ MPH, 4 wheels, classified as motorcycle. www.commutercars.com

ELECTRIC MOTORS HAVE PLENTY OF POWER

Phoenix Motorcars Truck Freeway capable, 120 mile range. www.phoenixmotorcars.com

A CAR FOR THE FAMILY

AC Propulsion’s “eBox” 120 mile range, good passenger/cargo capacity. www.acpropulsion.com

THE ULTIMATE ALL-ELECTRIC DREAM

The “ZAP-X” full size EV. 350 mile range, in-wheel motors, 0-60 MPH in 4 seconds, 10 minute full charge. www.zapworld.com

Interview with Tom Gage, CEO of AC Propulsion:

AC Propulsion has been around since 1992. Would you say your company is where the modern era of EV’s began?

Alan Cocconi founded AC Propulsion after working on the project that developed the General Motors Impact EV. GM went on to produce and then crush the EV1. AC Propulsion developed the AC150 drive system, the tzero, and now the eBox, so yes, we were there at the beginning and we’re still here.

Your “tzero” provided propulsion technology being used on the Venturi Fetish, along with several other prototypes and concept cars, including the DWRA “White Lightening” which was clocked in 1999 at a top speed of 254 MPH. How would you summarize this technology?

The key factor is high efficiency AND high performance. Electric power for cars is unique in this regard – you can have performance and still have very high efficiency and of course zero emissions from the car. So far, our drive system is the best embodiment of this concept and our technology and designs are being put to use by the companies you mentioned.

Why did your company decide in 2003 to limit production of the tzero to the three prototypes already built?

By the time we had built three tzeros, we understood that building cars from the ground up would divert us from our core skills – designing and manufacturing electric vehicle power systems. We decided that it was better to focus on what we did well and leave other aspects of car manufacturing to others. This approach bore fruit in 2004 when we began to license our technology, and again in 2006 when we started selling the eBox, an EV we build by converting an existing car rather than starting from scratch.

Describe the eBox and the basis of your decision to produce this vehicle. What speed, range and acceleration do you expect a standard eBox to deliver?

We chose to build conversions based on the Scion xB because it was light in weight, well-equipped, affordable, relatively easy to convert, and provided a lot of utility for the customer. Once we made that choice, the eBox name became an obvious choice. We are building about one car a month now. The ebox accelerates to 60 mph in 7 seconds, does 95 mph top speed and will go 120 miles on a normal charge, and 150 miles on a full charge.

The first eBox prototype hit the road in June 2006. Since then how many prototypes have you built, how many orders have you taken, and when – if ever – do you intend to go into volume production with this car. How much will it cost and when can I go buy one?

We have orders for eBox production through October right now. We expect to build 20 to 25 eBoxes in total through early 2008, and then start building a new EV based on an as yet undisclosed vehicle. The new AC Propulsion EV will be built in higher volume, but will still be very limited production. The eBox is $55,000 for the conversion plus the cost of the Scion xB, or about $70,000 total. The new EV will be priced the same or less.

If you were to pick a competitor’s electric vehicle as your favorite – aside from the eBox, of course – which vehicle would you choose and why? Related question – there are a lot of LEVs coming along and now a few high-performance EVs such as the Tesla Roadster and the ZAP-X. Do you see the eBox as fulfilling the demand for something in the middle, a practical, but freeway-worthy vehicle?

The eBox is intended to serve as the best current example of what people can expect from electric cars when, in the future, they become more broadly accepted and manufactured in much higher volume. What they can expect is superior performance, driveability, efficiency, and convenience, and that’s what the eBox delivers. Right now there is really nothing else available that represents what EVs can be. Over time, more and more people will come to understand that the limited range of an EV is easy to work around, and that the advantages and
pleasures of driving an EV are worth paying for.

What do you think of “range-extender” designs such as the Chevy “Volt” concept?

AC Propulsion has been building range extenders since 1993, first as trailer-mounted generators that we towed behind n EV to keep the battery charged while we accumulated test miles on our drive systems, then, in 2002, as a self-contained plug-in series hybrid based on a VW Jetta. The PHEV we built 5 years ago has almost exactly the same specs as the GM Volt concept. We recently upgraded it to Li batteries so it now goes 50 miles as a pure electric, and with the engine running can sustain 80 mph indefinitely without running down the battery. Having driven both our PHEV Jetta and our eBox, I prefer the eBox. Of course for long trips the Jetta is the better choice, but most of my driving around Los Angeles is less than 100 miles a day. With the eBox I can drive electric all day long. With the hybrid, I might have to run the engine some days. I think pure EVs or plug-in hybrids will both have a place in the market. In the long run, I think pure EVs will win out over cars like the our Jetta prototype and the GM Volt concept due to factors such as cost, complexity and driveability.

Do you ever see batteries being able to be recharged within minutes, as some aspirants to become volume EV manufacturers are claiming?

No, I think the idea of fast charging is an artifact of thinking that no car can be commercialized unless it operates just like a gas car. With that logic comes the insistance that 300 mile range and fast refueling are necessities. That dogma has led, in turn, to the mass delusion that a “hydrogen economy” was both necessary and feasible. A more realistic scenario is that electric cars will assume duties for which they are well suited, namely commuting and all manner of local driving, and combustion cars, both conventional and hybrid, will be in ample supply for long distance driving. In this scenario, there is no justification for the extremely high cost of 10-minute charging stations.

What do you see as the biggest challenge to getting EVs on the road in great numbers?

There are three barriers, perceptions, money, and time. First, people need to change their thinking about what they need from a car and what they are willing to pay to get it. For the past 100 years, the perceptions of the driving public in this country have been shaped by the US government’s policy of keeping gasoline cheap. When this policy changes, or when it can no longer fend off global energy realities, the driving public will start to look for alternatives which will include more efficient cars and alternative fuels. When they start looking, they will find electric cars are a good choice.

Second, conventional cars enjoy a cost advantage borne of a huge investment in productive capacity and an almost 2-billion unit learning curve. Electric cars will cost more to produce until economies of scale start to take hold. That cost penalty will slow commercialization unless offset by policies or energy cost factors that favor electricity over gasoline.

Third, the auto market is so large that it takes time to have a significant effect even with the most successful products. The tenth anniversary of the first Toyota hybrid is coming up and Toyota has produced about 1,000,000 hybrids in total. But in a world with over 500 million vehicles those hybrids represent a small fraction of a one percent of the total vehicle population. Even with enlightened market perceptions and reduced costs, electric transportation will take decades to become mainstream.

We caught up with Ian Wright last week to ask him about his “X-1″ prototype, an all-electric car that ought to be getting a lot of attention. After all, this car has already been around a few years, long enough, for example, to have beaten the Ferrari 360 Spider and the Porsche Carrera GT in drag races. The X-1 does zero to 60 mph in 3.07 seconds. Only the Bugatti Veyron – packing 1,000-horsepower with 16-cylinders – can do better. The Bugatti does zero to 60 in 2.7 seconds. But the Bugatti Veyron costs $1.25 million and gets 8 mpg.

WRIGHTSPEED’S X-1 PROTOTYPE

Zero to sixty mph in 3.07 seconds.

What Ian Wright wanted to talk about was not the speed of his car, but the efficiency. As electric cars begin to compete with gasoline vehicles, they have one huge advantage – the efficiency doesn’t decrease as the power capacity increases. As Wright put it “internal combustion engine cars have an intrinsic conflict: if they are built for performance, they are thirsty; if they are built for efficiency, they are slow.”

Compared to internal combustion engines, electric motors have a far greater range of usable RPM. The X-1, for example, can accelerate to 112 mph in 1st gear! Because of extraordinary torque at low RPM, or even starting from a standstill, an electric motor doesn’t have to have a low gear, and with over 10,000 RPM still within a comfortable operating range, you don’t need a lot of high gears, either. Many electric cars only have one forward gear, and two forward gears is usually more than adequate.

Electric motors also weigh much less than internal combustion engines, for the same amount of horsepower. What Wrightspeed’s X-1 is waiting for, along with all electric cars, is better batteries. But recent battery advances already make all electric cars feasible for shorter-range commuting applications.

Ian Wright emphasized that the niche for electric cars is not necessarily to displace economy cars. It is the gas guzzling cars where all-electric cars will compete successfully, at least at first. This may seem counter-intuitive until you think about the cost of driving a high-performance sports car or a heavy truck. If you can get the same performance from an electric car, and instead of getting 8 mpg, you get the equivalent of 170 mpg, what are you going to drive? Especially when in terms of power and performance, electric motors are superior to gasoline engines?

It’s interesting to note as well that in terms of eliminating dependence on oil imports, replacing one car that gets 10 mpg with an electric vehicle has the same impact as replacing five cars that get 50 mpg. This fact, along with dramatically lower operating costs and superior performance, suggests the age of the electric car is just around the corner. And they won’t be glorified golf carts. They’ll be the hottest cars on the road.