Muzzled AFS Trinity Pulls Out of LA Auto Show

Detroit just needs to be allowed to die so that something good can rise instead. It is going to be lousy in terms of lost jobs and the pain in the economy. But saving that mess is just delaying the inevitable.

 

Thanks for the link...

 

From article...

"As dangerous as Detroit's problems may be, they also represent an enormous opportunity to reject antiquated attitudes and behaviors and create millions of new jobs and feed unprecedented economic growth, precisely because these problems are so large and so critical to address. Simply put," Furia concluded, "a stimulus package that allows current auto industry leadership to remain in control of the destiny of this critically important industry as it confronts this unprecedented crisis -- and opportunity -- is something that the new Congress and President-Elect Obama should really think twice about."

Not to turn this into a political thread...but both McCain and Obama talked "CHANGE". I wonder...how far will this idea of change will go?

 

What is the common thread in these three questions?

Who killed the electric car?
Who killed Rodger Rabbit?
Who is trying to kill widespread exposure of an alternative high-mileage SUV
at LA?...

Big, formerly filthy rich corporations acting in an outrageously callus and self
serving way, hell bent to "get theirs" irrespective of their effects on the
citizenry, economy, and well being of our country.

Can I get Three Cheers for a US auto industry bailout? :violin:

 

What has this to do with Detroit?

AFS Trinity displayed their vehicle and "150 MPG" banner at the Detroit auto show. Evidently the "Big 3" didn't mind this banner.

It's the LA Auto show that isn't allowing their banner...

Don't get me wrong - the Big 3 have problems, but don't blame them for everything.

 

Personally I don't think plug-ins should be allowed to advertise mileage claims since they really are ambiguous (ok they down right lie), now if they based their mileage on full charge to full charge I'd be fine with it, and not something as handwaving as "the first 20 city miles" or "equivalent cost of electricity conversion to gasoline"

Don't get me wrong, I love the ideas of plug ins, but their claims they're making are beyond deceptive

 

The L.A. Auto Show is acting ridiculous. I agree that the Big 3 may not know what's going on, but the folks who run the auto show are corrupt. (Absolute power corrupts absolutely...right?) As for Kentia Hall, I think in general, people who go to the Auto Show go to every exhibit area including Kentia. I know I do. Their concern about being stuck down in Kentia shouldn't really be a concern in my opinion. In fact, that's where they put most if not all of the experimental and prototype cars.

I'm thinking that if the CEO of this company were charming or developed some rappoirt with the LA Auto Show people, this would have never been an issue. Instead, it seems as though there is a contentious relationship, at best. Still...the auto show shouldn't have made a big deal about this. Maybe the CEO of this company is crazy like a fox...I would have never heard about this company if it weren't for this "bad" publicity.

What they should do now is rent some space on Figueroa right across the street from the Convention Center with a giant sign that says, "150 MPG! Banned from the Auto Show. Stop by before you leave to find out more!"

 

Hmm, that is a tough one. I think most of us here are big proponents of plugins and improved fuel economy, and I would hate to see that message being silenced. On the other hand, AFS Trinity has always had a bit of a snake-oily aftertaste to me. From what I can see they are currently much better at making view-graphs and promoting themselves than they are at introducing anything new to the party. Their "prototypes" appear to consist of a pair of stock Saturn Vues with an off the shelf electric motor, controller and battery added to power the rear wheels. This proves only that if money is no object you can build a mostly electric car that uses little gasoline until it runs out of batteries. Everything else on their website seems to be vaporware, and stacked comparisons showing how their PHEV is uses less gas than regular HEVs or the hobby converted cal-cars PHEV Prius+ (which costs under $5k using lead acid). In general it looks like a typical dot-com era startup, hoping to make a big splash and get a bunch of publicity ending up with a highly lucrative licensing deal or acquisition based on nothing more than dressed up and repackaged old ideas in pretty viewgraphs/websites.

The claims of corporate interests trying to keep down this revolutionary technology seem much exaggerated and more like a big publicity stunt to me. On the other hand I have to at least partially root for anyone out there helping creating demand for PHEVs.

Rob

 

It is a 'poke in the eye' that a GM product has become a PHEV by a relatively straight forward conversion of a 4-wheel drive SUV. When compared to the other GM hybrids:

• belt-assisted, mock hybrids
• two-mode, monster
• Volt, "Beta-ware"

AFS came up with a clever approach that means a substantial part of the existing SUV inventory could be made "less bad." In fact, depending upon parts availability, they could be quickly modified into desirable vehicles.

I don't fault AFS for their clever approach but rather a common problem of all 'plug-ins' that treat grid-power as "free" when looking at MPG. A similar problem is implied by "flex-fuel" treatment of gasoline as an energy solution.

One thing I like about plug-in is the energy comes from a fully warmed, optimized power source. There is a corollary called co-generation that gives a real improvement in energy efficiency by avoidance of vehicle warm-up and cool-down losses.

Bob Wilson

 

You could be right. There are just a number of factors that set off my sleeze detector. Anytime someone mentions ultracapacitors I'm instantly suspicious. The idea of combining the fast charge/discharge caps with high capacity batteries has been around for along time, and a number of people have already done it. It more or less works, but has been completely infeasible from a volume and cost perspective. As far as I can tell these guys don't make ultracapacitors, or have any specific plan for how to make them of sufficient density at a low enough cost to be feasible. They are just recycling the age old promise that someday ultracapacitors will revolutionize the electric car. In general it doesn't seem like this company has actually designed anything beyond the hybrid controller, which doesn't appear to be anything particularly unique. At least they make pretty much no effort to explain why their controller is unique. The controller and system architecture are obviously important pieces of the puzzle, I just don't see how what they are proposing is really any different than what people like Dr. Andy Frank and others have been doing for decades.

Instead they just seem to be taking credit for all of the generic advantages of PHEVs and implying that they are somehow unique to this system. On their "Plug-in Hybrids Compared" page, in the first slide they compare their design to several standard hybrids (rx400h, Vue Greenline, and Tahoe Hybrid), rather than other plug-ins. Further down they compare their design against a generic converted PHEV-20/30 Prius, and a cal-cars lead acid Prius+. The only advantages they claim over these designs is that they can run full electric up to 88mph, and have more range. Both are arbitrary design trades between the sizing of motors, electronics, and batteries vs. cost, rather than any inherent architectural difference. It should be of little surprise that a converted Prius, which was originally designed for HEV operation, is not optimal for PHEV operation, or that the Cal-cars conversion designed by hobbyists to be an under $5k do it yourself conversion using lead acid is less capable. They do not compare their design to any other PHEVs, claiming that the only other designs out there are just concepts. Of course, so is their design, which they point out in several other places. Again, this only shows that if money is no object, you can create a PHEV that operates full EV at high speed and for a long range. Because they do no manufacture the batteries, or the capacitors, or the motors they don't seem to be introducing any new ideas on how to make this economically feasible, which is the only real challenge at this point, just some hand waving on how in volume it will be affordable, meaning around the same $40k price point as the Volt.

Lastly, as to the nature and intentions of this company that seems pretty clear. They have been around for quite a while but appear to have no products, just some IP in the realm of flywheel storage and their hybrid controller. From their FAQ, "What is the next step for the company? We are currently exploring the option of licensing our XHâ„¢ system to major automakers or OEMs. Plan B would be to raise more capital, attract a few good partners and build and sell XH vehicles ourselves."

These guys could very well be on the up and up. While I generally like to support anyone trying to advance this sort of technology, I am equally wary because I know that historically this sort of major technological transition tends to bring out the less than ethical trying to cash in on the innovations of others. In the past some of these efforts have a net negative impact on the overall effort, due to their being highly oversold and under delivering. Maybe I should just not worry about it, but I do. To some degree I guess this is just how capitalism works, and mostly what matters is that we get more fuel efficient cars on the road somehow. Maybe its too much to hope that transition occurs in an equitable and altruistic fashion.

Rob

 

The $9k is their "projected" cost of what the real system might cost in volume production in 2015 based on their internal projections for which they give no supporting evidence. They give no indication of what the current conversion cost.

From their calculations, they seem to be assuming 30mpg in charge sustain mode, and ~3mi per kWh in charge deplete. Thats probably not an unreasonable estimate. For a 40 mile range they would need a usable 13.3kWh, or ~18kWh of raw capacity (suspiciously the same amount the Volt needs for 40 mile range). The cheapest "low-power" Li-ion cells I am aware of still sell for about $1/Wh in volumes of 100s, compared to up to $2/Wh for good quality high rate liFePo4 cells. So their off the shelf cost for the battery pack should be ~$18k. It should be noted that this price is for Chinese cells with no warranty and a very spotty reliability/safety record (IE Sony Laptop fires) and promised cycle lifetimes only in the 100s instead of 1000s. There are also a lot of challenges to pack construction using many small cells like this, as Tesla illustrated.

Next they need a BMS and charging system. Using EV converter/Hobbyist parts that would run about $5k, for industrial grade maybe $10k. The Volt needs a 111kW motor for decent performance. The Vue is heavier, bigger and less aerodynamic so I think its safe to say it will need more. An off the shelf ~62-67kW industrial AC motor appropriate for motive use cost in the neighborhood of $10k last time I had looked. They will need more than twice that power, so $15k sounds like a conservative estimate for the motor. The motor controller would run another $5-10k for industrial off the shelf.

That brings us to the Ultra Capacitors. Lets assume that we need ~500A@250V for a duration of ~10s for acceleration demands. I base that on a common EV conversion sizing of 1000A at 144V resulting in decent but not phenomenal performance. 2000A and a higher voltage is used for sportscar class performance. Anyway, 500A@250V for 10s would work out to 347 Wh of capacity. The Maxwell HTM125 or BMOD0063/P125 is a 125V, 63F ultracapacitor module capable of putting out a sustained 150A with a capacity of ~102Wh. So three of these modules would about meet the capacity requirement, but 8 would be required to meet the instantaneous power requirement. The only price sheet I can find is from Europe, where the cost is E3,340 each, or a little over $4k. So the capacitor bank would be somewhere between $12-32k. This brings us to another problem. 10s may be fine for accelerating up to speed, but does nothing to address another common high load condition, hills. The additional power requirement for climbing a 10% grade is 1/3 of that required to accelerate from 0-60 in 10s. So at 1/3 the current out, the capacitors will last 30s. Any significant grade of more than 30s will either require significantly more capacitor, batteries with a high current output (negating the need for capacitors) or require the ICE to start (which like the Volt, AFS would like us to believe will not happen ever in the first 40 miles).

So putting that all together, a rough estimate of building this sort of conversion out of off the shelf industrial parts is:

Battery: $18k
BMS/Charger: $5-10k
Motor: $15k
Motor Controller/inverter: $5-10k
Capacitors: $12-32k

Total: $55k-85k

Without a clear plan for how to turn that cost into $8-9k beyond hoping that the people that make all that stuff can bring the cost down I see very little value to their proposition. Its not really any different than the sort of projects being done by hobbyists all over the country, but maybe with a little better budget. IMHO investment and tax dollars should be going primarily to the companies that actually make all of these components to help them make them better and cheaper fast. Of course we also need investment in the companies that will actually build the vehicles, creating demand and volume for these components. As to where these guys fit in, who do neither, I'm not really sure.

I hate to be a ney sayer when it comes to anyone working on this kind of tech, but at the same time I think those of us who care deeply about this topic have a serious responsibility to make sure those promoting it are on the up and up.

Rob

 

The way they calculated the FE is faulted.
They assume 5 week day with 40 miles per day on EV only, then 60 miles per day on weekends, 40 miles on EV and 20 mile on ICE Total miles per week is 320 miles. Total gas consumption is 2 gallons for the 40 miles (@20mpg).

So calculated mpg is 320/2 = 160mpg.

This is the same mpg method GM try to convince EPA but got rejected.

I agree with LA Auto Show authority, this should not be promoted.

 

In the same vein then, I suppose Toyota can be called "liars", when they claim the Prius could get 60mpg. Just because I can get 60mpg (much less 71.6mpg) doesn't mean YOU will. But just because YOU get 38mpg, should that mean the ad should say 38mpg 'or better' ??

How picky should mpg ads get? 5% get 70+mpg / 15% get 60+mpg / 20+% get 50+%mpg .... but this rating is "if" the weather is above 70 degrees, with trips greater than 10 miles ... etc ?
then you move on to the 2nd car you're looking at ...

Kinda gets confusing, eh?
Yes, plug in's get varying mpg results, just like standard ICE ... your results may vary. Are people so dull that laws have to protect us from every contingency?

EDIT:
Don't forget, the original EPA mpg estimating formula was designed to cater to gas guzzlers, so as to make them look less horrible. All of a sudden, here come high mpg cars, so now we have to re-write the rule book so as not to make THEM look good. How come no one cried, "deceptive" a couple decades ago? (shaking head)