Within the past 2 hours (it’s 7:40 PM EST) an article was published in the Financial Times of London. The articles focus is again on the theme of charging stations, only it is reported that Toyota will be teaming with French utility EDF to develop the electric architecture that will be required for future Toyota plug-in cars in Europe.
The article goes on to mention Toyota’s competitors and mentions GM and its plans to unveil the Opel version of the E-Flex which we’ve been discussing.
Whether inadvertently or intentionally the article calls the car the Opel Flextreme.
As far as I know this is the first mention on the internet of the name of this vehicle. Whether it’s true or not remains to be seen.
Be advised that I am only reporting on what can be found publicly online and I possess no pre-reveal knowledge or information otherwise.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Brand, Opel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Aug 31st, 2007 (7:24 pm)Lyle – Thanks again for this up-to-the-minute info. Great site!
As for electric pumping stations, let’s take a look at this. Imagine that we have the perfect electrical storage device (ultra-capacitor or whatever). First of all you’ll need to store at least 200 miles of EV range to eliminate the need for an ICE. Since the Volt gets 40 miles on 8kwh, I guess you would need around 40kwh of usable storage. Then you would need to deliver that 40kwh in about the time it would take to fill up a tank of gas – around 5 minutes. This seems to imply that the storage device will take in a 480kw charge rate. This could be around 32,000 volts at 15 amps, or 4800 volts at 100 amps. Any way you look at it, it’s a hell of a lot of power.
Then you would have to develop an infrastructure of charging stations – probably take around 15 years to roll out (after the perfect storage device is invented).
Any way you look at it, it will take 20 years or more to get mainstream. In the meantime, there is the Volt!
Aug 31st, 2007 (8:21 pm)Dave
Although not popular, automakers seemed to be headed more towards using hydrogen as the energy storage medium.
One could electrolyze out large supplies of hydrogen using either electric grid power, nuclear, coal, solar/wind, aluminum/gallium alloy, etc. This could then be delivered to fueling stations much like gas is today..look out for hydrogen tanker spills!!
Taxing the grid with high intensity rapid charges prob wont work out especially if you consider the ultraheat wave taking place on the West coast right now..grid already maxed. Things could be different in Europe.
Aug 31st, 2007 (8:39 pm)Don’t get me started on fool sells. First, you need electricity to make the hydrogen. Then the hydrogen is not as efficient as an electric car, so the carbon footprint is much worse. What’s more, you’ll need 15 years to fully roll out the infrastructure.
The only advantage I can see for fuel cells is with the oil companies:
1) They might be able control a single fuel soucre like hydrogen the way they control gas now.
2) It will take years to catch on (if ever), so their oil profits continue for a long time.
This is why they call them fool sells.
Aug 31st, 2007 (11:07 pm)wow Flextreme is a really stupid name. no offense Lyle, but I hope you’re wrong.
then again, those Europeans can be weird sometimes; maybe they’ll like it!
Sep 1st, 2007 (12:53 am)…well, I think flextreme would be ok in a descriptive phrase in an ad like “gas friendly or gas free”
“ChEVy’s new Opel: flextremely gas friendly” or something.
but as a name in itself, no.
Sep 1st, 2007 (4:50 am)Hello, Lyle and all of you.
Thanks again for this info.
In fact “Flextreme” is widely used in Europe as a make or slogan, just type the keyword “Flextreme” in Google and see.
To Dave G, not sure you have to use electricity to produce H2. A chemical reaction does it autonomously through oxydation of a metal.
Sep 1st, 2007 (9:46 am)I have never understood the push for hydrogen. Hydrogen basically sucks. Battery/ultra-capacitors are and have been right on the edge of giving us everything we need to switch over to full 100% electric vehicles.
Hygrogen on the other hand needs break throughs or improvements or infrastructure investements in the billions.
Fuel cells have come a long long way in the last couple of years though. Cutting the time to market projections way down. But still there are MAJOR hurdles for fuel cells to overcome still.
I just don’t get it! Storage suck, generation sucks, cost really really sucks, no infrastructure sucks. Remind me why we are spending so much on research here???
Sep 1st, 2007 (11:22 am)I am not a fan of fuel cell (or fool sells
) but if they can solve all the production, storage and etc issues with hydrogen it could be value solution. The value solution I see is that the fuel cell is only used in context of a range extender in a design of the E-Flex Volt. Electric drive is more effective but think there are real recharge issue with fully EV vehicles. No matter what inventions they come up with, having to recharge a full EV would require such huge transfer of power. A good balance is to have the plug-in battery for first 40 to 60 miles and then have a fuel cell for range extender. Would only require smaller amounts of hydrogen to replace current planned gas or diesel ICE.
Sep 1st, 2007 (12:56 pm)[quote comment="5758"]
To Dave G, not sure you have to use electricity to produce H2. A chemical reaction does it autonomously through oxydation of a metal.[/quote]
It’s true that certain metals can act as a catalyst to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen (I have heard of aluminum pellets being used onboard a car).
The problem with this is that you have to get the metal first, which is very energy intensive. Aluminum refining uses enormous amounts of electricity. And once it is used on the car, you have alumina (Al2O3) that you have to turn back into aluminum to use again, which again uses a lot of energy.
Producing hydrogen onboard a car would be a good solution to infrastructure problems, but it is a big loser in energy efficiency.
Sep 1st, 2007 (2:52 pm)OK Brian, but with such a way of producing H2 when you need it onboard of a car you avoid polluting at the place you drive (especially in towns), you avoid problems of distribution and storage of H2 as you wroteand displace (centralize) the pollution where it is the most efficient( and the least environmently costly) to produce and recycle aluminium (a “safe” nuclear power plant for instance).
I agree that we also need to find other ways to produce electricity.
Sep 1st, 2007 (3:48 pm)What I like about hydrogen is when electrolysis is accomplished using solar and wind power. Could avoid taxing the grid.
Sep 1st, 2007 (5:14 pm)Lyle – wind and solar sound great, and they may actually work well in many situations.
But why does this make you like hydrogen? If wind and solar are viable, why not use it directly?
In other words, why use the electricity from wind/solar to crack water and make hydrogen, when using the electricity from wind/solar for an EV/PHEV is so much more efficient?
What is it about hydrogen that make people think it’s so great? It’s less efficient than using electricity directly, so it’s more expensive. And if wind/solar isn’t enough to provide for the whole grid (do the math), then the carbon footprint of hydrogen is much worse.
What is it about hydrogen that has everyone fooled? I agree with omegaman66. Hydrogen basically sucks.
Sep 1st, 2007 (5:26 pm)By the way, Tesla motors also compared electric and hydrogen cars here:
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/twentyfirstcenturycar.pdf
The result: the Honda FCX fuel cell car was much worse than the Toyota Prius in every way (efficiency, cost, carbon footprint, etc.), while an electric car (or a PHEV in electric mode) is way better than the Prius in every way.
So, according to this report, Telsa thinks hydrogen sucks as well.
Sep 1st, 2007 (8:20 pm)Dave, thanks for the link. Good info.
Here is a link to a power point presentation which really trashes hydrogen and gives the numbers to prove it. It’s by Ulf Bossel, a respected member of the European Fuel Cell Forum.
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E17.pdf
Sep 1st, 2007 (9:02 pm)What am I missing? A range-extending EV is an excellent design because of its weight management (optimizing electric storage by limiting battery size) and flexibility (having the range-extender). That’s perferct under for most people. But the real question I have, when going on a long trip, why not use mass transit? And, no, I don’t mean a Greyhound bus. I mean a plane, train, or ship. Wouldn’t that be ideal: to have a car for normal driving, and use alternative transport for distance travel?
Sep 2nd, 2007 (1:00 am)Hydrogen might be useful for storing energy one day for later release when demand is up but it will be a long long time before fuel cells make it into any car you and I will drive.
Sep 2nd, 2007 (7:51 am)Whether we like it or not Big Oil and Big Auto are pushing hydrogen. For one thing it seems the idea of a substance moving around the country (and globe) and being put into vehicles at vending locations is already the widely accepted norm and infrastructure, and Big Oil can likely continue to make revenue in that manner.
There are certainly good arguments why hydrogen is illogical for energy.
It is true though that it allows “storage” so that when supply outweighs demand you can put in “in the bank” and use it later (when there is no wind and sun).
I am open to all possibilities, but when you see firsthand what GM and others are doing with fuel cells/fool sells, you get the idea the plans have already been made.
Sep 2nd, 2007 (9:29 am)Peter – thanks for the great presentation.
http://www.efcf.com/e/reports/E17.pdf
Pages 22 – 32 really drive home the points we’ve been making.
Lyle – Yes, I agree. Big Oil is definately pushing fuel cells, and politicians and auto companies seem to be following suit. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Big Oil started using every means at their disposal to kill the Volt and other PHEVs.
This is why I’m trying to get people used to the concept of embracing coal, at least in the near term. A PHEV running on electricity made from coal has 1/3 the carbon footprint of a regular car,
http://www.evworld.com/electrichybrid.cfm
When you look at the data, coal isn’t that bad. If PHEVs go mainstream, the coal industry would make a lot of money, so I’m pretty sure the coal lobby would be willing to back PHEVs.
If two powerful lobbies (oil & coal) are pushing opposite ways, then politicians and car companies won’t be so decisive, and PHEVs will have a chance. Once PHEVs go mainstream, then there will be much more interest in renewables, and the economics and land use issues of renewables will improve over time.
I guess what I’m saying is that the fastest way from point A to point B may not be a straight line, especially if you’ve got a big guy standing in the way. So coal may be part of the path that gets us there.
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Sep 19th, 2009 (8:58 am)Very unusual name