I found out about Global-E after team leader Carl Guichard was featured in City Business’s Innovators of the Year award issue. I was new to the New Orleans region, and looking for a way to get involved with local projects. I’ve long been a car fan, and also have recently taken an interest in the green movement. I had no idea anyone was producing electric cars in the New Orleans region! I thought that it sounded too good to be true, but sent a quick note off to the email address listed with the article. I didn’t expect to hear back, but Carl gave me a call within hours. His excitement and passion for the project were immediately obvious, and we found a way for me to get involved and help out. I have a finance background, and did a little bit of work with a financial model, but I was also able to get my hands dirty prepping the G1 for the SEMA show. It was a great experience, seeing the team spring to action to do what needed to get done in order to keep everything on track and to get the car loaded onto the trailer in time. That’s what I love about Global-E – no matter what tasks are required or the resources available, people rise to the occasion and work within those constraints to achieve what an outsider might have thought was the impossible.
Jeremy Hunnewell
12 May
A Note from Team Member Jeremy Hunnewell
5 May
An electric car…from 1918?!
On my way home from the Shakedown stage of the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE, I decided to stop off in Dearborn at the Henry Ford. This is a beautiful museum that represents a collection of American culture as it has developed through the past 250 years. My favorite exhibit was obviously the collection of cars, and I managed to come across a gem of a car hidden in the back corner of the museum. Tucked away in a dark corner behind another exhibit is a 1918 Detroit Electric Car, and I would say that this car has a more important story to tell than any other car on exhibit. Electric cars were in fact produced and sold at the dawn of the automobile. These cars were even favored by many people, who didn’t want to worry about hand cranking an engine to life. They also didn’t like how loud engines were, nor did they like the smell of exhaust or the vibrating felt by the passengers. Electric cars, on the other hand, were smooth, quiet, and didn’t smell. The Detroit Electric was a widely known car back in the early 20th century. Even Henry Ford and Thomas Edison owned them! Although the top speed may have only been 20mph, this was average for any car of this time period. Better yet, these cars got up to 80 miles on a single charge!
No one seems to be certain as to why electric cars eventually succumbed to the gasoline engine. Plenty of conspiracy theorists will tell you that oil companies had something to do with it, or that automakers saw more money in fixing the less reliable gas engines. Whatever theory you choose to believe, we know this as fact: electric vehicles were around and viable 100 years ago. Why can’t they be viable now? Also keep this in mind: The Ford Model T had a fuel economy of 13 to 21 mpg. US DOT statistics show that the average US passenger vehicle fuel economy was only 17.4mpg in 2008. Have petroleum engines really progressed, or is it time to try something new? The decision is yours.
29 Apr
Top EV Myths Busted
Here are the top 10 EV myths, busted (Content courtesy of Think Global):
1. You are just moving the pollution out of the cities to the countryside.
Electric vehicle motors are three-to-five times more efficient than gasoline-powered vehicles. While it’s best to power EVs from renewable energy sources (which are growing quickly), the efficiency of EVs makes them cleaner, producing less carbon, under any situation—even when they are charged using coal-fired electricity.
2. Customers will never buy a car with less than a 200 mile range.
So-called ‘range anxiety’ diminishes when people get used to driving EVs on a daily basis. It’s just like charging a cell phone overnight. You plug it in, and in the morning it’s ready to go, fully charged. As more EVs hit the road, businesses and cities will add charging points to encourage EV use.
3. The battery won’t last.
EV batteries are designed to last at least 10 years and more than 100,000 miles. Modern lithium ion batteries meet or exceed that target.
4. You’ll need to build a lot more power plants.
Actually, there’s enough off-peak electricity in the U.S. to power 79 percent of U.S. driving demand. As more EVs are deployed, it’s important to ensure that the smart-charging (time-based charging management) and vehicle-to-grid connectivity progresses as well. A connected network of millions of micro energy storage devices—which EVs would become—provides significant opportunities to improve the stability and performance of electric grids and better balance peak demand.
5. We’re going to run out of lithium—and isn’t it poisonous?
Lithium carbonate today comes from dried salt lakes in South America (Chile, Argentina and Bolivia) and China. There are also other huge sources for lithium, although these are more expensive to develop. Lithium can even be extracted from salt water and projects are under way to do this. The industry will not have a shortage of lithium for the next decade. It is also possible that new battery technologies will be based on other light metals like zinc or nickel. Lithium from used batteries will be recycled in dedicated recycling plants. Lithium batteries contain no poisonous heavy metals like lead in lead-acid batteries or cadmium in NiCd batteries.
6. The infrastructure has to come first.
The best way to deploy EVs is to get cars on the road first, then add infrastructure. If there’s no EVs to use those plugs and parking spots, people see it as wasteful. Infrastructure is a component of good policy at a federal, regional and local level to support EV early adopters.
7. They’re not safe.
Highway-certified EVs must meet all the same safety and crash test requirements as regular production cars with some important extras. For example, new European Union regulations require EVs to conform to the European CE electrical standards for plugged-in appliances, with the toughest electrical safety requirements.
8. The technology is too complicated.
A modern electric car has only about five main moving parts compared with hundreds in an internal combustion engine. There are no regular visits to the dealership for an EV. No oil changes, no filters–even brake pads last two-to-three times longer than in conventional cars, because EVs use regenerative braking to recapture the energy that would otherwise be lost while braking. Your first trip to the dealership with an EV for scheduled maintenance will probably be around 40,000 miles to check brake pads. Eventually, you’ll need new wiper blades and tires. But that’s about it!
9. Fast charging EV batteries in 15 minutes will wear them out quickly.
Modern prismatic lithium batteries can be developed with fast-charging in mind. The critical technology is in the cell design to manage battery temperature during charging. Limiting fast charging to the zero to 80 percent range also protects battery life. The majority of EVs will be charged during overnight off-peak periods when electricity is cheaper and readily available. Fast charging locations provide reassurance and peace of mind for those occasional days where more than 100 miles are required.
10. Plug-in hybrids represent the best solution.
Carrying around the extra weight and cost of two powertrains makes little sense. In some ways, a ‘hybrid garage’ (where one car is an EV and the other a relatively fuel-efficient ‘normal car’) is probably most economical for a typical family. As plug-in hybrids get bigger and heavier, they need more batteries and stronger gas- or diesel-powered generators or engines. It becomes a ‘vicious circle’ of more cost and more weight to achieve acceptable range and performance in both modes.
18 Apr
High Performance Driving school at BMW
“Understeer of biblical proportions…” Hard to believe understeer of anykind on a bimmer that is not AWD!!
15 Apr
Ultracapacitors
As the electrification of the automobile emerges, ultracapacitors are finding numerous applications in vehicles, including in Global-E’s PULSE vehicle. One early application that has emerged is ‘engine starting’; in particular, large diesel engines require high power for 50 ms or so, especially in cold temperatures. This power profile is not well suited for batteries which perform poorly at cold temperatures and exhibit poor reliability due to stresses induced at high power levels. Nippon Chemi-Con (NCC), Japan, has developed ultracapacitor modules for this application. They range in size weighing 12kg-15kg and can deliver between 39kW to 90kW of power for up to 2 seconds. In Europe, automobile manufacturers are using ultracapacitors for engine starting as well – for start-stop – in order to adhere to strict requirements for reducing emissions and improving fuel efficiencies – otherwise they face penalties.
In addition to engine starting, ultracapacitors are used for regenerative braking in hybrid electric vehicles whereby kinetic energy is recaptured during the short (5-8 seconds) braking period. This energy is then used for power assist during the acceleration mode. Here again, the power profiles are not suitable for typical batteries and hence, the addition of ultracapacitors extend the battery life and reduces the weight of the vehicle since less battery power is required.
Global-E is at the forefront of this technology by using Pulse as an example of how ultracapacitors can be used in Electric Vechicles.
12 Apr
From Dreams to Reality Part II – By Pietro Giovenco
A few short years ago I began to follow the development of the green auto industry. I found blogs devoted to the subject and read every article I could find trying to learn as much as possible about these new technologies. I was on the SAE Clean Snowmobile team at my school, and we were trying to see if any of these new developments could help us clean up our pollutive and inefficient snowmobile. We looked into hydrogen injection and thermoelectric generators, and in the midst of all this research, I realized what I wanted to pursue as a career. Like my teams’ snowmobiles, modern cars are unnecessarily pollutive and inefficient. I want to change that.
There is a huge market gap for alternative powered vehicles right now. Companies like Tesla and Fisker are proof that a car company can enter what was previously a market dominated by massive companies. The problem is that no company currently offers a mainstream electric vehicle. Major automakers are afraid to put forth significant effort in developing an electric car because by building and marketing an EV to its full potential, these auto giants must acknowledge that everything else they build is obsolete.
I recently had the opportunity to drive Pulse, Global-E’s fully electric vehicle. With only a little more development and refinement, this car is a perfectly viable alternative to any mainstream gas powered car on the road today. Not only is this car mechanically viable, it makes perfect economic sense. This car will not cost much more than any other car its size, and it obviously doesn’t require those ever-so-costly trips to the gas station every week. Also, this car has significantly fewer moving parts and requires much less maintenance (oil, oil filter, air filter, fuel filter, etc). So in other words, electric cars can be better than internal combustion cars in just about every way and Pulse could be the first mainstream electric car available for purchase by the masses.
So back to my original point: I see a huge opportunity to get involved and make some significant contributions to the alternative energy field in the auto industry, regardless of whether or not a ‘major’ automaker will embrace me for that. I have set my goals and I’m working like hell to make them reality. I am actively pursuing a career in the auto industry and through some serious networking I’ve managed to become involved with Global-E. Consider this my opportunity of a lifetime. As a Junior in College I’ve managed to stumble upon a startup car company that shares my vision and my values. I now have the chance to put my interests, my enthusiasm, my knowledge, and my desire to make a change to good use in the best possible setting. So here’s for all you people out there who have a dream, that if you work hard enough and look in all the right places, you’ll be able to attain anything imaginable. I’m making mine happen, are you?
8 Apr
From Dreams to Reality Part I – By Peter Ward
When I first met Carl Guichard I thought to myself, this guy has a dream and he is going to do whatever it takes to make it happen. I was attending Delgado Community College in New Orleans taking Autocad drafting courses. My teacher told us we would have an engineer coming to class to teach us real world applications for our skills. Carl came to the next class and gathered a group of the best students and recruited us to help him design parts for an electric hybrid vehicle. We all thought this was just something for school. Carl explained later that we were able to take part in a project that included students from all over the region to collaborate on a few cars being designed for development and entry in to the Progressive Automotive X-Prize competition. I wanted to help in any way I could. This was an amazing opportunity. It takes someone with vision and drive like Carl to present opportunities like this to so many people. Now we can all take this dream and make it a reality.
31 Mar
Identify this component
This is a component on the G1 vehicle. Hint: Pulse vehicle doesnt have one.
What is it?
Recent Comments