Friday was another red-letter day for PHEV
supporters hoping carmakers will accelerate their
move toward PHEVs. As we noted Saturday in
CalCars-News as part of our round-up of
California State news,
http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/874.html ,
Toyota delivered the two PHEVs to UC Irvine and
UC Berkeley that had been announced July 25. You
can also read about it in the Toyota Open Road
Blog posting by Irv Miller
http://blog.lexus.com/2007/11/let-the-studies.html
, where the first four comments all basically say, "I want one."

Bigger news came Friday when Ford delivered its
first prototype PHEV to Southern California
Edison -- eagerly-awaited since its July 9
announcement, which had no schedule for when SCE
would get the first of 20 vehicles. At a time
when a standard Ford Escape/Mercury Mariner/Mazda
Tribute gets 19/24 city/highwy and a hybrid gets
34/30, it's refreshing to read about one
journalist's initial estimates of this car's
50-60+MPG of gasoline (plus electricity).

We're looking for more technical specs, but
here's the start: a battery that's much larger
than Toyota's first prototypes: 10 kilowatt-hour,
280-volt lithium ion battery pack that replaces
the standard Escape hybrid's 2 kWh, 300-volt
nickel metal hydride battery pack. Using the
power-dense lithium ion batteries "gives us five
times the power with just 20 percent more
weight," said Tamor. The batteries weigh in at 120 kilograms – 264.5 pounds.

The story below includes a graphic showing Ford
partner Southern California Edison's vision of a
grid-connected future: advanced metering,
grid-connected solar power, a consumer control
interface, all in a "Home Area Network."

This week, Ford gave car enthusiast Jay Leno a
quick peek and test drive of the car,
http://www.prdomain.com/companies/F/FordMotor/newsreleases/200711848807.htm
as a prelude to a feature story on the car in
Popular Mechanics (where Leno writes). And on
Oct. 24, the popular blog Jalopnik noted that
Ford had trademarked the name "Extend" and
speculated it might be part of its future
branding plan for PHEVs
http://jalopnik.com/cars/la-auto-show/ford-files-trademark-for-extend-plug+in-hy\
brid-314827.php


http://blogs.edmunds.com/GreenCarAdvisor/93
Ford's Plug-In Escape Hybrid Arrives for SoCal Test
John O'Dell, Senior Editor Nov 9, 2007 4:00 pm

It won't go very far at speed in an all-electric
mode, but Ford's prototype plug-in Escape hybrid
will go a long way on a gallon of gas.

You have to try hard to get much under 60 mpg
fuel economy on a short trip in the pearly white sport-ute.

Ford has a little graphic in its information
package suggesting that a typical driver
commuting 30 miles a day and plugging in for an
overnight recharge each evening could average
around 50 miles per gallon. That would be an
impressive 750 miles on the SUV's 15-gallon tank of gas.

(A note for those who just have to know: A real
featherfoot who doesn't mind keeping it below 35
miles an hour might be able to eke out 40 miles
in electric mode from a fully charged battery.
After that, the plug-in Escape would revert to
regular hybrid mode, delivering a combined
city-highway average of almost 30 miles per gallon.)

If you live in a region of Southern California
that gets served by the Southern California
Edison Co., you might even be able to drive one someday.

Over the next two years, Ford will place 20
plug-in hybrid Escape SUVs into the electric
company's fleet for real-world testing.

First Look, First Drive

The initial vehicle was delivered this week, and
Green Car Advisor was there for an exclusive look
at the vehicle and a test-drive -- albeit a very
brief one -- in the utility company's parking lot
and on a few nearby residential streets.

Most of the plug-in Escapes will stay in the
electric company's fleet, but SoCal Edison will
be selecting a few of its residential customers
to be test drivers as the program wears on, said
Ed Kjaer, manager of the utility's electric vehicle transportation division.

When, and how, hasn't been decided. Edison won't
be getting all 20 vehicles at once because the
purpose of the test program is to identify bugs
and ways to improve the vehicle's operation and
to use that data to make improvements.

"They'll probably be coming in throughout the
whole two years, because we'll be updating and
improving as we learn things," said Mike Tamor,
head of hybrid research for Ford.

Ford likes the idea of rechargeable
battery-electric vehicles, he said, "because of
all the alternative fuels we all talk about,
electricity is the only one with a nationwide
infrastructure already in place."

The tall, bearded engineer beams like a new
father when he talks about the plug-in Escape.

It is a pretty baby, sporting a gleaming white
paint job and bright grille and set apart from
other Escapes by the "plug-in hybrid" legend on
the rear fascia and emblazoned on a chrome badge on the tailgate.

Other clues that this isn't a production -- and
plug-less -- hybrid include the two brushed
stainless fuel doors on the driver side -- one on
the rear haunch for gasoline, and one just
forward of the front door for the plug. Both are
backlighted with electric blue LED lighting -- a
treatment repeated on the flush-mounted, pop-out
door handles that Ford intends to use exclusively
on its high-tech "HySeries" family of fuel cell
and electric vehicle prototypes.

Inside, the plug-in Escape looks like its more
traditional brethren, except for yet another
"plug-in hybrid" legend, this time across the top
of the center stack's power management display screen.

Li-Ion Makes It Possible

There's a big change under the cargo area,
though. That's where Ford has tucked a 10
kilowatt-hour, 280-volt lithium ion battery pack
that replaces the standard Escape hybrid's 2 kWh,
300-volt nickel metal hydride battery pack. Using
the power-dense lithium ion batteries "gives us
five times the power with just 20 percent more weight," said Tamor.

The batteries weigh in at 120 kilograms – 264.5 pounds.

"The extra energy and power lets us run in charge
depletion mode rather than charge-sustaining" so
the batteries can be drawn down quite a bit more
than in a typical hybrid: up to 70 percent
depleted versus 30 percent to 60 percent for a charge-sustaining pack.

Tamor cautions, though, that the batteries aren't
ready for mass production yet, that there's still
a lot of work to be done on reliability, and cost
reduction, before a retail lithium-ion battery
pack from Ford is feasible. It's the same caveat
almost all carmakers give as they step up their
plug-in hybrid research and development work.

The plug-in Escape handles and rides with the
same competence the standard Escape hybrid has
displayed. The principal difference is that the
rechargeable lithium ion batteries provide power
enough to drive a substantial distance at
residential district speeds without ever kicking on the gas engine.

A 133-horsepower, 2.3-liter gas engine and
94-horsepower electric moor combine to give the
plug-in hybrid a top speed of 102 miles an hour,
same as the plug-less Escape hybrid.

Ford has programmed the power management to run
the plug-in Escape pretty much as a
gasoline-assisted electric drive vehicle. In most
situations the electric motor provides more of
the power than the gas engine. Exceptions are
when passing, climbing hills or any instance when
the driver demands rapid acceleration of the
3,900-pound, five-passenger vehicle.

Two indicators on the instrument panel point this
out: Give the plug-in Escape's accelerator pedal
a jab and the battery power meter jumps farther and faster than the tachometer.

"We've designed it so the gas runs at constant
power in the most efficient range," Tamor said.

"We want you to deplete the batteries every day,
so you have a reason to plug in at night and
recharge, that's the design. Otherwise, you're
hauling around a lot of expensive battery that's not being used."

Battling Battery Philosophies

That philosophy is in tune with hybrid leader
Toyota Motor Co., but at odds with rival General Motors Corp.

GM is developing a series hybrid system -- which
it prefers to call an extended-range electric
drive system -- in which rechargeable, or
plug-in, batteries would provide power to propel
the vehicle, at highway speeds for up to 40 miles
before an internal combustion engine turns on.
The gas, or diesel, engine would work only as a
generator to produce electricity to continue
powering the car's electric traction motor while recharging the batteries.

Motorists who drive less than 40 miles a day and
plug the car in to recharge its batteries each
night might never use the gas engine, GM Vice
Chairman Bob Lutz has said. First use of the
system could be in a car called the Chevrolet
Volt that GM is expected to begin producing by the end of 2010.

The GM vehicle requires more battery power than
the Ford plug-in, but would deliver better fuel
economy. GM has suggested that many drivers would
average nearly 100 miles per gallon. GM also has
said it is confident it can bring the Volt to
market for $30,000 or less. Ford hasn't priced a
potential plug-in Escape and won't say whether it
intends to develop a retail model.

In tests using the EPA's city cycle driving
program, Ford found that the plug-in Escape "uses
about 20 percent of the gas that the regular
Escape uses," Tamor said. "That's not zero, but
we're a good long way to using 100 percent less
fuel, and without having to engineer an entirely new vehicle."

Potential Beyond Transportation

Kjaer said Edison will use the cars in its fleet,
racking up miles and experience with the various technologies on board.
Much of the "magic" of the plug-in system is in
the software that runs the power management
system, and Edison's charge in the test is to
figure out the best ways to link the car and the power grid.

That covers a lot of territory, including the
best times to charge, the best method of
physically connecting car and grid, the best metering and monitoring systems.

About the only thing that's been resolved so far
is that charging should be done with common
household current -- 120 volts -- rather than
with the 240-volt charging systems used on
prototype batter-electric vehicles in the late 1990s.

Edison, which stands to become the next
Exxon-Mobile if rechargeable batteries become the
standard fuel for car and trucks of the future,
also wants to examine the plug-in hybrid's
ability to use stored energy as backup power for individual households.

The utility also is interested, Kjaer said, in
ways the automotive battery packs could be
recycled and scaled up -- and perhaps linked to
solar- or wind-powered generating stations -- to
become powerful stationary power storage devices
for homes and businesses after their automotive life was over.

Add bi-directional capabilities, he said, and
"batteries in a box" could put unused energy back
into the grid when power demand was high.


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Felix Kramer fkramer@...
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html
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