After Disaster Hit Japan, Electric Cars Stepped Up

WITH deep-tread tires and ample ground clearance, a rugged 4-wheel-drive Hummer or Jeep might seem the best choice for navigating through the wrecked cities of northeastern Japan. The areas pummeled by the earthquake and tsunami in March would surely be inhospitable for an electric vehicle.

Yet in the days and weeks after the horrific one-two punch of natural disasters, wispy battery-electric cars — engineered for lightness and equipped with tires designed for minimal rolling resistance — proved their mettle.

These welterweight sedans, including models from Mitsubishi and Nissan, turned out to be the vehicles that got through — not because of any special ability to claw their way over mountains of debris, but because they were able to “refuel” at common electrical outlets.

With oil refineries out of commission and clogged roadways slowing deliveries, finding gasoline had become a challenge. Shortages were so acute that Japan’s Self-Defense Forces had to truck in gasoline; donations of diesel fuel were accepted from China.

Yet in Sendai, about 250 miles northeast of Tokyo, and other cities ravaged by the earthquake, electricity returned within days. Taking stock of the situation, the president of Mitsubishi Motors, Osamu Masuko, offered dozens of his company’s egg-shaped i-MiEV (pronounced “eye-meeve”) electric cars to affected cities.

Despite their image as light-duty runabouts best suited for trips to a nearby shopping mall, the electric vehicles were immediately put to use. They were pressed into service ferrying supplies to refugee centers, schools and hospitals, and taking doctors, city workers and volunteers on their rounds.

While the i-MiEVs could not help out with tasks like hauling building materials or towing stranded vehicles, the assistance from Mitsubishi was much appreciated. In all, 89 i-MiEVs went to the recovery effort, including 34 to Miyagi Prefecture, 33 to Fukushima Prefecture and 18 to Iwate Prefecture.

“There was almost no gas at the time, so I was extremely thankful when I heard about the offer,” said Tetsuo Ishii, a division chief in the environmental department in Sendai, which also got four Nissan Leaf electric cars. “If we hadn’t received the cars, it would have been very difficult to do what we needed to.”

Mr. Ishii and other officials in Sendai assigned the cars strategically. Two were used to bring food and supplies to the 23 remaining refugee centers in the city, while two others served doctors. Education officials have been using another two vehicles to inspect schools for structural damage. Others helped deliver supplies to kindergartens around the city or were loaned to volunteer groups.

Once the most pressing needs are met, the city may use the cars to help in the cleanup of damaged homes, as fuel shortages still limit the availability of trucks. For now, though, the cars are driven an average of 30 to 45 miles each day, about half the distance that they can be driven on a full charge.

“One charge is perfect for us, because it allows us to drive around during the day with no trouble,” Mr. Ishii said. “We’re not that big of a city.”

Most of the cars, he said, returned each night to city hall, where they were recharged at 200-volt outlets. Fast-charging stations, which replenish batteries to 80 percent of capacity within 30 minutes, are used where available. Standard 100-volt outlets can also be used, but the recharge then takes more than 12 hours.

Slightly over five feet high and less than five feet wide, the i-MiEV is cozy, to say the least, and at just 2,400 pounds it is relatively light. Its battery, the size of a tatami mat and weighing about 400 pounds, is under the floor, which helps give the car a lower center of gravity.

The cars’ unexpected sturdiness and utility has pleased Mr. Masuko, who, like other automobile executives, has been battling skeptics who see electric vehicles as expensive and impractical.

“I am most impressed when I hear the words, ‘I felt electric vehicles were unreliable at first, but now, the vehicles are being integrated into daily life,’?” he wrote in an e-mail. “I am so glad I heard that our electric vehicles are contributing to the recovery of the affected areas.”

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Study Emphasizes Importance of China’s Transition to Electric Cars

 

Seventy percent of Beijing’s carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions come from transportation sources. China’s oil consumption is expected to rise to 11.6 million barrels per day by 2020, from 7.6 million in 2007. Half its oil currently is imported.

“This was recognizance,” said Shomik Mehndiratta, lead transport specialist at the World Bank. “Usually, we focus our urban transport work on walking, cycling, public transportation and land development to minimize auto travel, and we leave technology completely out of it. But all the analysis suggests that 50 percent of global carbon reductions in transportation will come from technology.”

Any financial support from the World Bank would be dwarfed by the Chinese government’s commitment to spend $15 billion on building and selling electric cars in the next five years.

“The money is not the key here,” said Oliver Hazimeh, head of the global e-mobility practice and a partner at PRTM. “The bigger notion of this report is helping China figuring out what else needs to be addressed in the overall ecosystem to make E.V.’s work. It is a technical, business-modeling, policy-setting support role more than a financial one.”

As dire as the need to go electric is for China, the challenges in making the transition to electric vehicles are even more monumental, according to the PRTM study, and similar to the situation in the United States. The first several hundred plug-in cars started rolling on to American roadways earlier this year, but availability of vehicles is just the beginning.

The long list of challenges in China (and the United States) includes uncertainty about how much car charging infrastructure is needed; lack of standards for how and where vehicles will be charged; and the need for industries that have traditionally not worked together — utilities and auto companies, for example — to forge partnerships.

Then there’s the elephant in the room: how to gain consumer acceptance for battery-powered cars when their driving range is shorter than gas or diesel vehicles but their costs are significantly higher. Helping China to reach massive scale of electric car production is expected to bring down those costs in the next five to 10 years.

According to Mr. Hazimeh, in both China and the United States different regions and constituents are each developing their own standards for vehicle and battery production, charging infrastructure and related business models.

“In China, you can’t just go in as we do in the U.S., and say here’s the money for parts solutions without looking at connecting the elements,” he said.

The study recommends roughly $50 million in loans for pilot projects, from building charging infrastructure and related information networks to evaluating the commercial feasibility of re-using E.V. batteries in secondary markets.

The consequences extend beyond national borders, as China is now the world’s largest auto market and is expected to become the world’s largest producer of electric car batteries and drive systems. The Chinese automotive market is expected to grow to 30 million vehicles per year by 2030, from 12.9 million vehicles in 2009.

“The next stage is to take the lessons learned, and put it into a more coordinated aligned roadmap,” Mr. Hazimeh said. “Otherwise, you face a fragmentation of solutions.”

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Behind the Wheel of the Electric Rolls-Royce

The Rolls-Royce 102EX Phantom Experimental Electric is the most extraordinary EV yet.

The list of superlatives you can apply to this car is as long as its wheelbase. The first electric Rolls-Royce is big. It is smooth. It is mind-bogglingly luxurious. And the torque just keeps coming. It has the largest battery ever installed in a passenger car, a 71-kilowatt-hour monster that would power your iPhone until Armageddon.

The 102EX is a one-off prototype to test the waters, a $3 million bet on the future. And it is bloody brilliant. Combining the peerless chassis engineering of a Rolls-Royce with a pair of silent electric motors in a vehicle that defines opulence yields what is arguably the most refined automobile, electric or otherwise, ever built.

And Rolls-Royce built it because its customers haven't asked for it.

The people who spend the kind of money required to buy a Rolls-Royce have no interest in Goodwood building a hybrid or an electric vehicle or anything else "green."

It isn't that they don't care about such things, it simply isn't what they want from a Ghost or a Phantom.

This worries the venerable British marque. Rolls-Royce knows that it if it is to survive its second century, it must adapt to the times. Its customers may not be particularly concerned with things like fuel economy and emissions, but regulators on both sides of the Atlantic sure are.

The brass at Rolls know they have to start developing an alternative to the beautiful, but remarkably thirsty, 12-cylinder engines that power their automobiles. And they have to start developing it before customers start asking for it.

Electric power is a natural fit.

High-torque electric motors offer seamless, refined power delivery, which fits perfectly with the brand's values. The 102EX, unveiled last month at the Geneva Motor Show, will spend the next year touring the world, being tested like any other prototype but also being driven by the well-heeled folks who already own a Rolls.

If it's something they could see themselves buying, something very much like it might appear in showrooms within a decade or so.

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