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1. How Fiat's Chrysler Stake Could Be a Boon for EVs
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2. Two Coasts Need to Rally Over Clean Power
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3. Garbage Eating Machines Go Small-Scale
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4. GM to Spend $30M on Volt Battery Assembly Plant
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5. Dong Energy Puts Some Cash into Battery Technology
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6. Cleantech Crowd Cheers Obama's Inaugural Speech
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7. Daily Sprout
How Fiat's Chrysler Stake Could Be a Boon for EVs
Josie Garthwaite - alfa romeo
A new partnership between Italy’s Fiat Auto and Chrysler is no Renault-Nissan. It involves zero infrastructure deals or grand electric vehicle schemes. As Chrysler chief Bob Nardelli said today when he announced Fiat’s 35-percent equity interest in the smallest of the Big Three, the automakers’ markets line up nicely: Fiat with small and midsize cars in Europe and South America, Chrysler with minivans, pickups and SUVs in North America. But that’s unlikely to be enough to keep two struggling automakers alive through a bloody industry shakeout.
Even a short-lived partnership, however, could be a boon for U.S. fuel economy, and possibly electric vehicles. It would allow Fiat to expand into North America — where it has already planned to re-introduce its Alfa Romeo luxury sports cars with support from BMW. The sixth-largest automaker in Europe by unit sales, Fiat’s stake was acquired not with cash, but an agreement to retool one of Chrysler’s plants, which would provide it the benefit of technology and expertise needed to compete with next-gen vehicles like Daimler’s electric Smart and BMW’s Mini E. (Fiat’s new Alfa Romeo subcompact, the MiTo, shares enough architecture with the Mini that the companies have discussed joint use of components and systems.)
Giving subcompact Fiats electric drive and decent battery range would be less complicated than Chrysler’s plans to electrify its heftier fleet. With help from Fiat, Chrysler could also roll out some of its own fuel-efficient subcompacts to boost the average fuel economy of its fleet, a workaround for tightening efficiency standards. As the Wall Street Journal explains, the deal could also serve as evidence of Chrysler’s viability as it seeks additional loans from Congress.
One thing is sure: Chrysler will need capital from somewhere, and that’s one thing Fiat — which carries billions in debt– can’t offer. For Fiat and Chrysler, massive debt, low sales volumes (2.5 million and 2 million vehicles last year, respectively), and a recession expected to last for years could keep the partnership from growing into the big EV player it could be in sunnier economic times.
Until then, there’s always Renault-Nissan. Analyst Mike Omotoso with J.D. Power and Associates told us last week he considered Nissan a possible buyer for at least Chrysler’s ENVI divsion. He’s not alone: Center for Automotive Research chairman David Cole told BusinessWeek today, “Even after this, we could see Renault-Nissan, for example, come into it. We shouldn’t jump to premature conclusions that this would be an end, it could just be a beginning of more to come.”
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Two Coasts Need to Rally Over Clean Power
Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups
And it’s fitting that the conference kicks off on the same day that Obama takes office. The 44th President highlighted the importance of addressing the problems of energy and global warming in his inaugural speech, stating that we need to "harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” Now we wait, to see both if the stimulus package that includes $54 billion for clean power will pass, and if the campaign promises — which include a national renewable portfolio standard, a carbon cap-and-trade system and $150 billion for clean power — will be kept.
The investors at the summit are certainly hoping Obama follows through. In 2008, it became clear that cleantech investors saw major opportunities in an energy policy penned by Obama. According to campaign contribution data that I looked at last July, cleantech investors were found to have backed Obama 6 to 1 over John McCain. A group like Cleantech For Obama raised more than $1.6 million to support his campaign.
Of course the investors in Palm Springs largely have one goal in mind — making money from their investments in cleantech startups or clean power projects. The Obama administration and policymakers on the other coast have a myriad of others, among them to please Americans (get re-elected), fight global warming, and make the U.S. look better in the eyes of the international community. While their respective goals can at times conflict with one another, how successful the two sides will be in reaching their goals will depend heavily on how closely they are aligned.
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Garbage Eating Machines Go Small-Scale
David Ehrlich - Big Green
Burning garbage is so yesterday — now you can gasify it. And Waltham, Mass.-based IST Energy wants to bring the waste-to-energy technology to the masses. The business masses, that is.
The Green Energy Machine, or GEM, which IST is launching today, is about the size of a large garbage dumpster — and apparently very noisy. Designed to be parked at the back of an office building, mall or college campus, a GEM can turn up to three tons of trash per day, including paper, wood, plastic, food and agricultural waste, into 120 kilowatts of electricity, as well as the equivalent of 240 kW of heat.
While there could be a significant reduction in emissions related to the transport and landfilling of all that garbage, as well as savings on garbage collection costs, it’s not an emission-free system.
The garbage is broken down with downdraft gasification, which uses high heat to decompose the trash in a controlled process that produces no emissions, according to the company. Small fuel pellets are then created from the decomposed trash, with gasification used again to convert the pellets into syngas. The syngas is then used in a traditional generator, and that generator, like most generators, produces emissions when the syngas is burned, although the company claims those emissions are offset by the other, emission-reducing parts of the system.
IST, part of research, development and engineering company Infoscitex, isn’t the only company working on a small scale waste-to-energy system. The U.S. Army is testing out a similar size unit that was developed by McLean, Va.-based defense contractor Defense Life Sciences, Purdue University and the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland. But the TGER, or Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery, has to tackle a bit more than just garbage. It also has to stand up to the extremely hot and sandy conditions in Iraq.
But unlike countries like Iraq, in the U.S., IST’s system will have to go up against an already available recycling and composting infrastructure in many states. And composting doesn’t make any noise at all.
IST, which has received funding through the federal government’s Small Business Innovation Research program and an angel investor, said the GEM system is currently being demonstrated at its headquarters. It’s scheduling customer demonstrations of the technology and expects deliveries to start this summer.
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GM to Spend $30M on Volt Battery Assembly Plant
Josie Garthwaite - Automotive
General Motors plans to invest $30 million into building a plant for assembling Chevy Volt battery packs, the automaker said today at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit, Reuters reports. GM revealed earlier this month that it would manufacture the packs in Michigan with lithium-ion cells from South Korea’s LG Chem (s LGCL Y). The facility is just the latest development in a race between A123Systems, which lost the Chevy Volt cells deal, and GM to create a large-scale lithium-ion battery plant in the United States.
Although it will be a significant step for the emerging domestic EV battery industry, GM’s $30 million play for assembly-only (rather than manufacturing cells, too) contrasts with the $1.84 billion battery factory that A123Systems hopes to build in southeastern Michigan with loans from the Department of Energy. The difference highlights an opportunity for economic development that escaped Michigan when GM decided to have the Volt’s lithium-ion cells manufactured overseas (a point lost in many early reports, which hailed the move as a major Michigan win), rather than in its home state — despite up to $335 million in tax incentives for battery development, manufacture, and assembly.
That’s for the time being, at least. Brett Smith, assistant director for manufacturing, engineering and technology at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, remains hopeful that cell-making will eventually come stateside. "With pack assembly in Michigan as the first step for G.M.,” he told the New York Times, “hopefully we'll start to see a lot more activity on the cell manufacturing side as well."
Of course, GM is hardly in a position to make big, long-term investments like the ones Michigan and A123 (on the federal buck) have planned. The company has said that it may need additional loans to survive an extended slump in demand, and Treasury Department loan requirements mean slowing progress on the Volt (which has already faced factory construction delays) is not an option.
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Dong Energy Puts Some Cash into Battery Technology
David Ehrlich - Automotive
Dong Energy of Denmark unveiled a deal this week to invest in Dutch battery management system developer Lithium Balance. The company didn’t reveal how much it was investing, or how big of a stake it’s getting in Lithium Balance, only that it joined a group of unnamed investors. The new funds will allow the battery technology company to expand its operations, with sales forecast to reach into the millions in the coming year.
Lithium Balance makes battery management systems that can control the charge and discharge of battery packs, as well as the temperature. Such a management system could come in handy in cold weather, with the company touting that its system can heat the lithium-ion cells automatically to maintain high performance in the cold.
The “balance” part of the company’s name is in reference to its management system’s cell balancing, in which each cell is controlled independently, a configuration it claims can improve the life of the batteries.
Lithium Balance, which also makes smart chargers for batteries, is already working with German scooter maker e-max, electric car developer ElCar Norway, and Santa Rosa, Calif.-based electric vehicle manufacturer Zap. And it’s developing battery applications for boats and recreational vehicles, as well as for uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, systems.
Dong Energy inked a deal last year with Palo Alto, Calif.’s Better Place to bring electric vehicles and a charging infrastructure to Denmark. Under that deal, Dong Energy will work with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, Better Place’s partner on a number of projects, with Renault providing the electric cars and Nissan, through its joint venture with NEC, supplying the lithium-ion battery packs.
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Cleantech Crowd Cheers Obama's Inaugural Speech
Jennifer Kho - Big Green
After being ignored in the last two inaugural speeches, the issue of climate change got plenty of attention at U.S. President Barack Obama's inauguration Tuesday. As an estimated 1.4 million watchers looked on in the mall alone, by far the largest attendance at an inaugural event, Obama said that "the ways in which we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet" and that the country cannot "consume the world's resources without regard to effect."
He promised to "restore science to its rightful place," a move that likely will be seen as an admonition to the Bush administration, which had been accused of interfering with scientific work related to climate change (see stories here and here). He pledged to build electric grids, "harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories" and work with other countries to "roll back the specter of a warming planet."
The cleantech industry applauded the speech for underlining the new president's commitment to the climate change fight.
"We're certainly encouraged," said Susan Preston, general partner for the California Clean Energy Fund's angel fund. “It gives us an understanding of the priority [clean energy]'s been given, and it's one that it's never been given before."
With the Obama administration’s focus on climate issues, Preston said she believes green technology will be one of the key factors to revitalizing the economy. She also said she understands that it will take time to craft new legislation to support clean technology and indicated her willingness to have patience, a good sign for an administration that has made hefty promises.
While Preston would, for example, like to see a federal renewable portfolio standard as soon as possible, she said it would likely take some time to put together and doesn't expect it to happen in the first quarter.
She added that a carbon cap-and-trade program might happen first. "In listening to the conversations in Congress, there's a lot of difference in opinion, but there's absolutely no question in my mind that Obama is fully and utterly committed to having a federal renewable portfolio standard and considers it one of his highest priorities," she said.
Gary Mull, V-P of marketing at Akeena Solar, called the event "amazing" and said Obama's ability to stir the crowd and offer hope to the nation was "very impressive." Aside from Obama's direct references to the environment and clean technology, Mull said that his call to the nation for service and his reminder that everyone has a duty to work to address the nation's challenges was relevant to addressing climate change.
Mull also referred to the new presidential limousine — a Cadillac hybrid — as another sign of Obama’s commitment to the cause. The car choice "is a statement of his out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new message," he said. "He's leading by example. We're off to a great start."
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Daily Sprout
Josie Garthwaite - Misc
Planet-Cooling Plants: New research suggests planting crops that reflect more sunlight could deliver summertime cooling of about 2 degrees Fahrenheit across central North America and a wide band of Europe and Asia. — New York Times
Tesla Jacks Up Roadster Price: Tesla Motors has informed customers who pre-ordered Roadsters that they must pay for previously standard features and re-select options or else lose their slot in the much-delayed production line. — Autoblog
Financial Crisis Slows Energy Investment: From Bahrain to Ontario, companies are scaling back spending and delaying projects, with expensive ventures in the Canadian oil sands hardest hit. — Reuters
“Drill, Baby, Drill” No More: Governor Sarah Palin has unveiled a plan for Alaska to get half its electricity from renewables by 2025. — NYT’s Green Inc.
No PHEV Love from the Taxman: Although the government gives tax breaks for hybrids and alternative-fuel vehicles produced by major automakers, it doesn’t provide any relief to those who convert their existing cars to plug-ins. — Wired’s Autopia
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