Dr. Donald Hillebrand is the director for transportation research at the Argonne National Lab, a pivotal government organization involved in testing and deployment of plug-in cars. He is also a very intelligent and highly insightful man. We had an extensive and interesting discussion which can be heard in the player below the post. The file also be downloaded here or found on iTunes as a podcast.
Argonne lab grew out of the Manhattan Project, portions eventually looking at the peaceful uses of the atom. Then the mission became to look at things that are threats to competitiveness of the U.S. economy. The biggest threat right now is recognized as the importation of and dependence on petroleum, with the biggest use being transportation. So Dr. Hillebrand’s lab looks at technology that will enhance displacement of the use of petroleum, and this represents about 10% of Argonne’s overall activity.
His lab is 80% funded by DOE, and 20% through contracts with individual companies. His lab relates to the big three automakers though FreedomCAR, a consortium working to coordinate government and industry resources and efforts. Ideas and challenges, data and information are shared. Some competitive things are not shared, but may be for some individual entities through confidential contracts. In some cases they work with foreign companies as exceptions if they have a technology that will benefit the U.S.
The lab enables the car companies by relating to groups the companies cannot, such as in making fuel economy standards, or giving them access to U.S. grid data. He significantly notes that people should not charge electric cars during the day, that it should not even “enter people’s minds” to top off the battery during the day. He tells us that charging the Volt will have the same current draw as running two plasma TVs for 6 hours. He cautions about maintaining a “slow slide” to the electric car to not overwhelm the grid.
He thinks it could take about 15 years to get to a 5% penetration of the auto fleet by plug-ins.
We talked about GM and the Volt, the idea began 2 years ago. Like everyone else who is very knowledgeable, he is convinced about how real and realistic the program is, and how committed engineers are truly involved.
We also discussed an interesting method Mike Duoba in his lab developed to calculate fuel economy in electric range extended cars like the Volt. In this method the car is driven repeatedly through federal city cycles (6 miles) until the ICE kicks in, then it is driven one more. The fuel economy would then be calculated as the amount of gas used divided by the miles and controlling for electric consumption.
ANL’s site: (LINK)
Part 2 of the interview will be forthcoming
