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The Swedish automaker recently introduced a new technology into its C30 electric car which will enable it to fully charge in only 90 minutes.
Most current generation electric cars require several hours to fully charge their batteries. The electric Nissan Leaf for example takes anywhere between seven and 21 hours to recharge. Volvo started testing a new super fast-charger that it says is up to 6 times more powerful than conventional electric car chargers.
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The new Volvo charger uses a three-phase 440-volt, 32-amp power supply to fully charge the C30 in about one and a half hours while 30 minutes of charge time should be enough to carry the C30 about 50 miles. If you compare this to the charge time C30 users currently have with a 220-volt power which takes about 10 hours to fully charge - this is a dramatic improvement.
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The electric version of the C30 is currently being tested in small quantities around Europe and China. The C30 which has been on trails since last fall has a 111 horse power electric engine and a lithium-ion battery pack capable giving the C30 a range of over 90 miles per charge.
You buy one first. Let me know how this "super fast" charge affects the battery life..
There are two trends that are making the EV inevitable. One is the increasing power density of the batteries at the same time the cost is decreasing. The other is the decreasing cost of solar. While the consumer has no way to make gasoline or diesel, he can make electricity on his property with solar. With a grid parrallel installation, he puts power on the grid during the day when it is most in demand, and takes it off the grid at night, during times of least demand. Win-win for everybody.
Hyundai to introduce world's first production fuel-cell electric vehicle - San Jose Mercury News
Posted: 09/25/2012 0153 PM PDT
September 25, 2012 8:29 PM GMTUpdated: 09/25/2012 01:29:31 PM PDT
Hyundai, which has lagged its rivals in battery-powered electric cars, aims to leapfrog that technology and roll out what it calls the world's first production fuel-cell electric vehicles at this week's Paris auto show.
The South Korean automaker is betting that fuel-cell electric vehicles will be a more realistic future auto technology than pure battery electric cars such as Nissan Motor's Leaf.
Those models have struggled to win over drivers as the batteries are expensive, take hours to recharge and can only drive short distances. Toyota this week scaled back plans for its all-electric eQ minicar, saying it misread the market.
A fuel-cell converts hydrogen and oxygen into water and generating power to drive an electric motor. Fuel-cell vehicles can run five times longer than battery electric cars on a single power-up, and it takes just minutes to fill the tank with hydrogen, compared with 8 hours or so to recharge a battery.
Hyundai, which has watched Toyota make the running with its hybrid Prius model, wants to jump ahead in the fuel-cell market.
But it will offer just 1,000 FCEVs, based on its Tucson crossover, from December through to 2015 in Europe as it looks to more than halve production costs to $44,700.
Trade media have put the initial sticker price at around $88,000, a hefty price tag for a brand that made its name with cheaper, feature-filled models.
While fuel-cell electric cars may go further, manufacturers still have to wrestle with the high cost of production -- double or triple that of battery-powered electric vehicles -- and a lack of refuelling infrastructure.
"We aim to reduce prices of fuel-cell vehicles to match battery cars by 2020-25," Lim Tae-won, the director in charge of fuel-cell research at Hyundai and its affiliate Kia Motors , told Reuters ahead of the Paris auto show.
He said fuel-cell cars would overcome the "range anxiety" -- or fear of running out of power far from a charging point -- of battery-electric cars if the refuelling issue was resolved.
A 2008 McKinsey study of 11 global carmakers predicted as many as 1 million fuel-cell electric cars on Europe's roads by the end of the decade, but industry experts caution demand will depend on customer acceptance of the technology, government aid and, crucially, the availability of hydrogen filling stations.
German industrial gases producer Linde is investing tens of millions of euros with Daimler to build 20 hydrogen filling stations by 2015. For now, Germany has only seven.
The aim is to bring down the cost to that of a natural gas filling station, around 300,000 euros, or $387,500, from around 1 million euros today, said Ulrich Buenger, a coordinator at the European Hydrogen Road Tour 2012, which is funded by industry and the European Commission.
"Battery electric car makers entered the market too early without resolving problems such as range anxiety and costs," Lim said. "It was a hasty approach. The battery electric cars may have helped raise brand value for a couple of years, but ended up slowing down the take-off in the market."
Hyundai's production-ready fuel-cell electric vehicle can run as far as 588 kms (365 miles) on a full charge, similar to traditional gasoline vehicles, Lim said, while Nissan's Leaf can drive only up to 73 miles per charge.
Toyota slashed its plans for the eQ to sales of just 100 in Japan and the United States from previous forecasts of several thousand, saying battery technology could not live up to consumer demands. "The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it's the distance cars can run, or the costs, or how long it takes to charge," said Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's vice chairman, adding that fuel-cell vehicles looked to have more potential.
"The biggest problem is how automakers bring down costs and how much infrastructure will be in place," he said.
Hyundai hopes to get a jump on its rivals by offering 1,000 of its FCEVs, overtaking Daimler and Honda Motor, which have leased only small numbers of their fuel-cell vehicles -- the Mercedes B-Class F-Cells and FCX Clarity, respectively. By 2015, Hyundai aims to have the capacity to build 10,000 FCEVs, rising to 100,000 in 2020, when it expects the loss-making business to achieve "economies of scale," Lim said.
Toyota plans to launch sedan-type fuel-cell electric vehicles from around 2015, and predicts sales in the tens of thousands by the 2020s. Nissan is working on a fuel-cell vehicle with Daimler for 2016 and will also unveil a concept fuel-cell sport utility vehicle, the TeRRA, in Paris.
GM shifted funding from fuel-cells to push Chevrolet Volt electric car with range extender, but sales have been sluggish.
In a KPMG global survey of 200 auto executives, one in five expected fuel-cell electric cars to attract more consumer demand than pure battery electric cars in 2025. Sixteen percent went with battery cars. Hybrids, including plug-ins, provide the best mid-term solution, the survey, published in January, showed.
Carmaker Volvo has said all new models will have an electric motor from 2019. The Chinese-owned firm, best known for its emphasis on driver safety, has become the first traditional carmaker to signal the end of the internal combustion engine. It plans to launch five fully electric models between 2019 and 2021 and a range of hybrid models. But it will still be manufacturing earlier models that have pure combustion engines. Geely, Volvo's Chinese owner, has been quietly pushing ahead with electric car development for more than a decade. It now aims to sell one million electric cars by 2025.
'PR coup'
"This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car," said Hakan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo's carmaking division. "People increasingly demand electrified cars, and we want to respond to our customers' current and future needs," he said.
Analysis: Theo Leggett, BBC business correspondent
Volvo's announcement sounds dramatic, but the reality is it simply reflects the direction much of the auto industry is travelling in. The internal combustion engine is not dead - and won't be for a while at least. It still offers a relatively cheap and well-proven means of getting around. The problem is that emissions regulations are getting much tighter. From 2012 for example, carmakers in the EU will have to ensure that across their fleets, average CO2 output is no higher than 95g of CO2 per kilometre. That's a lot lower than current levels.
Volvo car, Shanghai Auto Show
Carmakers are reacting by developing fully-electric models. Some are already pretty impressive. But developing mass market cars that are affordable and have the right levels of performance is a research-intensive and expensive process, while persuading consumers to buy them in large numbers may also be time consuming. In the meantime, hybridisation - fitting electric motors to cars which also have conventional engines - offers a convenient way to bring down emissions without harming performance. And there are plenty of different kinds of hybrid systems to choose from. Volvo is making headlines, but other manufacturers are doing much the same kind of thing.
Tim Urquhart, principal analyst at IHS Automotive, said the move was a "clever sort of PR coup - it is a headline grabber". "It is not something that moves the goalposts hugely," he said. "Cars launched before that date [of 2019] will still have traditional combustion engines. "The announcement is significant, and quite impressive, but only in a small way. The hybrids they are promising to make might be mild hybrids, anything as basic as a stop-start system."
A stop-start system is one where electricity from batteries restart a car's petrol engine, after it has shut down when the car has come to rest at a junction, or in stationary traffic. "However, Volvo are probably looking at something more sophisticated than that, but we don't know what as yet."
Tesla targets
20 years ago, that is what I thought. In the meantime, batteries have made enormous strides, and fuel cells have essentially gone nowhere.There are two trends that are making the EV inevitable. One is the increasing power density of the batteries at the same time the cost is decreasing. The other is the decreasing cost of solar. While the consumer has no way to make gasoline or diesel, he can make electricity on his property with solar. With a grid parrallel installation, he puts power on the grid during the day when it is most in demand, and takes it off the grid at night, during times of least demand. Win-win for everybody.
You've got a theme -- but it's a faulty one.. Actually EVs are a spectacular idea. But they should be powered by FUEL CELLS and hydrogen, not chargeable batteries.. So many advantages -- it's not funny. Solves the charging time issue. Solves the range issue. Solves the energy independence problem. Doesn't REQUIRE a doubling out of grid capacity. Doesn't require more grid generators. They COULD run off Nat Gas as an intermediate step..
They WILL eventually win the market. And these battery buggies will be curiosities in 4th of July parades..
Hyundai to introduce world's first production fuel-cell electric vehicle - San Jose Mercury News
Posted: 09/25/2012 01
September 25, 2012 8:29 PM GMTUpdated: 09/25/2012 01:29:31 PM PDT
Hyundai, which has lagged its rivals in battery-powered electric cars, aims to leapfrog that technology and roll out what it calls the world's first production fuel-cell electric vehicles at this week's Paris auto show.
The South Korean automaker is betting that fuel-cell electric vehicles will be a more realistic future auto technology than pure battery electric cars such as Nissan Motor's Leaf.
Those models have struggled to win over drivers as the batteries are expensive, take hours to recharge and can only drive short distances. Toyota this week scaled back plans for its all-electric eQ minicar, saying it misread the market.
A fuel-cell converts hydrogen and oxygen into water and generating power to drive an electric motor. Fuel-cell vehicles can run five times longer than battery electric cars on a single power-up, and it takes just minutes to fill the tank with hydrogen, compared with 8 hours or so to recharge a battery.
Hyundai, which has watched Toyota make the running with its hybrid Prius model, wants to jump ahead in the fuel-cell market.
But it will offer just 1,000 FCEVs, based on its Tucson crossover, from December through to 2015 in Europe as it looks to more than halve production costs to $44,700.
Trade media have put the initial sticker price at around $88,000, a hefty price tag for a brand that made its name with cheaper, feature-filled models.
While fuel-cell electric cars may go further, manufacturers still have to wrestle with the high cost of production -- double or triple that of battery-powered electric vehicles -- and a lack of refuelling infrastructure.
"We aim to reduce prices of fuel-cell vehicles to match battery cars by 2020-25," Lim Tae-won, the director in charge of fuel-cell research at Hyundai and its affiliate Kia Motors , told Reuters ahead of the Paris auto show.
He said fuel-cell cars would overcome the "range anxiety" -- or fear of running out of power far from a charging point -- of battery-electric cars if the refuelling issue was resolved.
A 2008 McKinsey study of 11 global carmakers predicted as many as 1 million fuel-cell electric cars on Europe's roads by the end of the decade, but industry experts caution demand will depend on customer acceptance of the technology, government aid and, crucially, the availability of hydrogen filling stations.
German industrial gases producer Linde is investing tens of millions of euros with Daimler to build 20 hydrogen filling stations by 2015. For now, Germany has only seven.
The aim is to bring down the cost to that of a natural gas filling station, around 300,000 euros, or $387,500, from around 1 million euros today, said Ulrich Buenger, a coordinator at the European Hydrogen Road Tour 2012, which is funded by industry and the European Commission.
"Battery electric car makers entered the market too early without resolving problems such as range anxiety and costs," Lim said. "It was a hasty approach. The battery electric cars may have helped raise brand value for a couple of years, but ended up slowing down the take-off in the market."
Hyundai's production-ready fuel-cell electric vehicle can run as far as 588 kms (365 miles) on a full charge, similar to traditional gasoline vehicles, Lim said, while Nissan's Leaf can drive only up to 73 miles per charge.
Toyota slashed its plans for the eQ to sales of just 100 in Japan and the United States from previous forecasts of several thousand, saying battery technology could not live up to consumer demands. "The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it's the distance cars can run, or the costs, or how long it takes to charge," said Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's vice chairman, adding that fuel-cell vehicles looked to have more potential.
"The biggest problem is how automakers bring down costs and how much infrastructure will be in place," he said.
Hyundai hopes to get a jump on its rivals by offering 1,000 of its FCEVs, overtaking Daimler and Honda Motor, which have leased only small numbers of their fuel-cell vehicles -- the Mercedes B-Class F-Cells and FCX Clarity, respectively. By 2015, Hyundai aims to have the capacity to build 10,000 FCEVs, rising to 100,000 in 2020, when it expects the loss-making business to achieve "economies of scale," Lim said.
Toyota plans to launch sedan-type fuel-cell electric vehicles from around 2015, and predicts sales in the tens of thousands by the 2020s. Nissan is working on a fuel-cell vehicle with Daimler for 2016 and will also unveil a concept fuel-cell sport utility vehicle, the TeRRA, in Paris.
GM shifted funding from fuel-cells to push Chevrolet Volt electric car with range extender, but sales have been sluggish.
In a KPMG global survey of 200 auto executives, one in five expected fuel-cell electric cars to attract more consumer demand than pure battery electric cars in 2025. Sixteen percent went with battery cars. Hybrids, including plug-ins, provide the best mid-term solution, the survey, published in January, showed.
Bet on it.. Pick up some Hyundai stock.. I'm gonna be right on this one and it's got NOTHING to do better batteries or solar RoxyMan...
Hydrogen was the future for GM. Glenn Beck was given a hydrogen powered Equinox. He loved it. Then they became slaves to the Obama administration who seemed determined to push battery powered vehicles over obviously better options. I hope they take another look at hydrogen.There are two trends that are making the EV inevitable. One is the increasing power density of the batteries at the same time the cost is decreasing. The other is the decreasing cost of solar. While the consumer has no way to make gasoline or diesel, he can make electricity on his property with solar. With a grid parrallel installation, he puts power on the grid during the day when it is most in demand, and takes it off the grid at night, during times of least demand. Win-win for everybody.
You've got a theme -- but it's a faulty one.. Actually EVs are a spectacular idea. But they should be powered by FUEL CELLS and hydrogen, not chargeable batteries.. So many advantages -- it's not funny. Solves the charging time issue. Solves the range issue. Solves the energy independence problem. Doesn't REQUIRE a doubling out of grid capacity. Doesn't require more grid generators. They COULD run off Nat Gas as an intermediate step..
They WILL eventually win the market. And these battery buggies will be curiosities in 4th of July parades..
Hyundai to introduce world's first production fuel-cell electric vehicle - San Jose Mercury News
Posted: 09/25/2012 01
September 25, 2012 8:29 PM GMTUpdated: 09/25/2012 01:29:31 PM PDT
Hyundai, which has lagged its rivals in battery-powered electric cars, aims to leapfrog that technology and roll out what it calls the world's first production fuel-cell electric vehicles at this week's Paris auto show.
The South Korean automaker is betting that fuel-cell electric vehicles will be a more realistic future auto technology than pure battery electric cars such as Nissan Motor's Leaf.
Those models have struggled to win over drivers as the batteries are expensive, take hours to recharge and can only drive short distances. Toyota this week scaled back plans for its all-electric eQ minicar, saying it misread the market.
A fuel-cell converts hydrogen and oxygen into water and generating power to drive an electric motor. Fuel-cell vehicles can run five times longer than battery electric cars on a single power-up, and it takes just minutes to fill the tank with hydrogen, compared with 8 hours or so to recharge a battery.
Hyundai, which has watched Toyota make the running with its hybrid Prius model, wants to jump ahead in the fuel-cell market.
But it will offer just 1,000 FCEVs, based on its Tucson crossover, from December through to 2015 in Europe as it looks to more than halve production costs to $44,700.
Trade media have put the initial sticker price at around $88,000, a hefty price tag for a brand that made its name with cheaper, feature-filled models.
While fuel-cell electric cars may go further, manufacturers still have to wrestle with the high cost of production -- double or triple that of battery-powered electric vehicles -- and a lack of refuelling infrastructure.
"We aim to reduce prices of fuel-cell vehicles to match battery cars by 2020-25," Lim Tae-won, the director in charge of fuel-cell research at Hyundai and its affiliate Kia Motors , told Reuters ahead of the Paris auto show.
He said fuel-cell cars would overcome the "range anxiety" -- or fear of running out of power far from a charging point -- of battery-electric cars if the refuelling issue was resolved.
A 2008 McKinsey study of 11 global carmakers predicted as many as 1 million fuel-cell electric cars on Europe's roads by the end of the decade, but industry experts caution demand will depend on customer acceptance of the technology, government aid and, crucially, the availability of hydrogen filling stations.
German industrial gases producer Linde is investing tens of millions of euros with Daimler to build 20 hydrogen filling stations by 2015. For now, Germany has only seven.
The aim is to bring down the cost to that of a natural gas filling station, around 300,000 euros, or $387,500, from around 1 million euros today, said Ulrich Buenger, a coordinator at the European Hydrogen Road Tour 2012, which is funded by industry and the European Commission.
"Battery electric car makers entered the market too early without resolving problems such as range anxiety and costs," Lim said. "It was a hasty approach. The battery electric cars may have helped raise brand value for a couple of years, but ended up slowing down the take-off in the market."
Hyundai's production-ready fuel-cell electric vehicle can run as far as 588 kms (365 miles) on a full charge, similar to traditional gasoline vehicles, Lim said, while Nissan's Leaf can drive only up to 73 miles per charge.
Toyota slashed its plans for the eQ to sales of just 100 in Japan and the United States from previous forecasts of several thousand, saying battery technology could not live up to consumer demands. "The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society's needs, whether it's the distance cars can run, or the costs, or how long it takes to charge," said Takeshi Uchiyamada, Toyota's vice chairman, adding that fuel-cell vehicles looked to have more potential.
"The biggest problem is how automakers bring down costs and how much infrastructure will be in place," he said.
Hyundai hopes to get a jump on its rivals by offering 1,000 of its FCEVs, overtaking Daimler and Honda Motor, which have leased only small numbers of their fuel-cell vehicles -- the Mercedes B-Class F-Cells and FCX Clarity, respectively. By 2015, Hyundai aims to have the capacity to build 10,000 FCEVs, rising to 100,000 in 2020, when it expects the loss-making business to achieve "economies of scale," Lim said.
Toyota plans to launch sedan-type fuel-cell electric vehicles from around 2015, and predicts sales in the tens of thousands by the 2020s. Nissan is working on a fuel-cell vehicle with Daimler for 2016 and will also unveil a concept fuel-cell sport utility vehicle, the TeRRA, in Paris.
GM shifted funding from fuel-cells to push Chevrolet Volt electric car with range extender, but sales have been sluggish.
In a KPMG global survey of 200 auto executives, one in five expected fuel-cell electric cars to attract more consumer demand than pure battery electric cars in 2025. Sixteen percent went with battery cars. Hybrids, including plug-ins, provide the best mid-term solution, the survey, published in January, showed.
Bet on it.. Pick up some Hyundai stock.. I'm gonna be right on this one and it's got NOTHING to do better batteries or solar RoxyMan...
