Author: Green Car Online News

Series hybrids were the next big thing 100 years ago: Are they any more likely today?

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1916 Owen Magnetic Tourer – Bonhams Tupelo Automobile Museum Auction (2019)
The 1916 Owen Magnetic Tourer that crossed the Bonhams auction block last month was more than a beautiful snapshot from an obscure moment in American automotive history.

As one of the technological wonders of its time, the Magnetic Tourer didn’t have any mechanical connection between its big 374-cubic-inch (6.1-liter) inline-6 engine and the drive wheels. And it could store energy through regenerative braking, or use its battery power to drive the vehicle for short distances.

It was by today’s definition a series hybrid. The engine has no physical link to the wheels; it drives a generator, supplying electricity that powers a motor system, with a battery acting as a buffer.

DON'T MISS: Nissan e-Power series hybrid builds on electric-car expertise

Series hybrids have a long history, but outside of non-automotive applications like locomotives and submarines it’s mostly a history rooted in concept cars and research-and-development projects. No automaker has gone big with series hybrids in the way that Toyota has with its series-parallel systems in the Prius and many other vehicles, which can mechanically drive the wheels with both the engine and electric motor simultaneously.

Nissan Note e-Power hybrid

Nissan continues to say it has a lineup of series hybrids on the way—badged e-Power in upcoming vehicles—although that system hasn’t arrived yet in more robust form for the U.S. Although a few other vehicles like the Karma Revero (originally Fisker Karma) use a true series-hybrid system, the ones that have seen wider production, like the Chevrolet Volt (Voltec) and the Honda Accord Hybrid (i-MMD) have used a combination of series and parallel modes.

As pointed out by Hemmings, the Magnetic Tourer used a version of the so-called “electric transmission” that had been developed by Justus B. Entz as early as 1902, with a neatly packaged drive unit employing two identical motor-generators, plus a 24-volt electrical system.

CHECK OUT: Why two-motor hybrids are better than those with just one

The car had no clutch, but with a system of controllers providing five forward speed settings for the propulsion system via and a steering-column speed selector (and we suspect, with the throttle), the driver could choose the speed—and even use regenerative braking, which spared the mechanical rear brakes. There’s no clutch, and as with many vehicles from its time it may have taken some patience to drive it smoothly (and safely).

Some who have experienced the Owen have described it as locomotive-like—which isn’t all that surprising given how the technology is popularly used.

1916 Owen Magnetic Tourer – Bonhams Tupelo Automobile Museum Auction (2019)

This particular Owen Magnetic Tourer was part of the collection of the late Frank Spain and the former Tupelo Automobile Museum. At the Bonhams April 27 auction, selling the contents of the museum for charity, the Magnetic Tourer sold for $128,800, including the sale premium.

The car up for sale, one of about 800 examples built in 1916, had just 2,500 miles and was described as “in nice older restoration condition…with a high degree of originality.”

READ MORE: Will electric cars eliminate conventional hybrids from the market?

“Although they were popular with celebrities, they were ultimately a market failure and the company failed in 1921,” summed Bonhams.

Hybrids like the Magnetic Tourer could have become a larger part of the market during that time as they merged two technologies consumers were already familiar with. By 1916 gasoline had become widely accepted as the solution for getting the quantum leap in mobility—the personal automobile—to the masses, but that was a relatively recent development. In 1900, 38 percent were battery-electric.

Two things doomed the system then. It was abandoned at the time for being too heavy and expensive, at a cost of more than $3,000 in 1916 money—the equivalent of $70,000+ today.

2018 Toyota Prius

Today, the thing that has driven most automakers to series-parallel hybrids rather than pure series hybrids is a common scenario in U.S. driving: high-speed freeway driving. In such environments, multiple engineering teams over multiple decades have concluded that a mechanical connection to the engine offers better efficiency.

Nevertheless, this car and its technology can be cause for taking stock of what happened then and why certain technology is favored today. And today the current may be changing, with many automakers accepting electric cars as the future and, perhaps (like Nissan), seeing series hybrids as a cost-effective incremental technology.

Would electric cars have caught on earlier had this Owen been more popular and affordable? Would hybrids have taken a different preferred form in modern vehicles? Or would transmissions have existed in the same way? Some obscure models from the past, like this one, may yet help frame the future.

Hyundai system purifies cabin air, raises awareness about pollution levels

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Hyundai Smart Air Purification system
As virtuous as one might be in choosing a vehicle that doesn’t produce tailpipe emissions, there’s a hazy reality to traveling by car: That you’re stuck breathing emissions from other gasoline or diesel vehicles—especially fine particulate emissions, which are some of the most concerning for health and tend to linger within a few hundred feet of major roadways.

Hyundai Motor Group appears to have the right idea for those who don’t want to sniff others’ exhaust quite as much. Last week it revealed an intelligent Smart Air Purification system that monitors air quality in the cabin and operates a filtration system accordingly.

DON'T MISS: What are the 10 most polluted U.S. cities?

The system will even precondition your vehicle to clean up the cabin air before you enter, or automatically close the windows to speed up the purification process. “Combined with advanced filtering innovations, the technology can remove fine particulates before passengers enter the car, and purification of cabin air throughout a journey,” said the company, in a press release.

Hyundai Smart Air Purification system

It grades the air quality inside, from Poor, Fair, and Good to Excellent, and a display accessible through the infotainment screen shows a real-time 16-bar digital display. Quality is detected using a laser-based sensor that works independent of the fan or outside temperature, collecting 94 to 99 percent of fine particulates.

CHECK OUT: EPA panel questions health effects of air pollution

According to the EPA, exposure to fine particulates—those smaller than 2.5 micrometers (1/30th the width of a human hair)—are the main cause of visible air-pollution-related haze in the US, and they acidify lakes and streams, taint soil and groundwater, and contribute to acid rain. And according to the CDC, they can be inhaled deep into the lungs, where they can affect the hearts, lungs, and blood vessels, leading to higher rates of heart disease and heart attacks.

Larger particulate matter of less than 10 micrometers still might not be completely filtered out via a vehicle’s climate system and can aggravate asthma or cause other respiratory symptoms.

READ MORE: Why the future of electric cars depends on China's war on pollution

For example, four counties in California’s Los Angeles–South Coast Air Basin, with a combined population of 15.7 million, fall into the EPA’s Moderate risk category.

“Enabling our customers to breathe the cleanest air, even in highly-polluted areas, is a demonstration of how Hyundai Motor Group strives to care for its customers,” said YongSuk Shin, the lead of the Hyundai Motor Group engineering design team behind the feature.

Tesla Model X tested for fine particulates

The system, which hasn’t yet been announced for any of Hyundai’s vehicles—globally including the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands—could be well received in China, where there’s growing concern over the health effects of pollution. Tesla has also offered a HEPA filtration system in the Model S and Model X [above], with the claimed capability to reduce pollution levels in the vehicle to “undetectable” levels and even to scrub the air immediately around the vehicle of fine particulates.

Mercedes-Benz lays out plan for carbon-neutral future

2020 Mercedes-Benz EQC Edition 1886
Mercedes-Benz's CEO-apparent Ola Källenius laid out a plan Monday, just after the Norway launch of its EQC electric SUV, that outlines the development of an entire “carbon-neutral” passenger-car fleet.

Källenius, currently the head of product development at Mercedes, has been named future Chairman of the Board of management of Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz starting later this year.

Part of the plan, called Vision 2039, calls to make half the company's models plug in by 2030—either plug-in hybrids or all-electric vehicles.

READ THIS: First Mercedes-Benz EQC rolls off assembly line in Germany

According to a transcript of his speech, Källenius said, “Let’s be clear what this means for us: a fundamental transformation of our company within less than three product cycles. That’s not much time when you consider that fossil fuels have dominated our business since the invention of the car by Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler some 130 years ago. But as a company founded by engineers, we believe technology can also help to engineer a better future.”

He laid out plans to electrify the company's vans, trucks, and buses as well as its cars, and said the Mercedes is focusing first on building better electric cars, by bringing “EV performance up and costs down,” he said.

Källenius also doubled-down on Daimler's commitment to developing hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. “There’s also room and need to continue to work on other solutions,” he said, “for example, the fuel cell or eFuels…. Today, no one knows for sure which drivetrain mix will best serve our customers’ needs 20 years from now. That’s why we encourage policy makers to pave the way for tech neutrality: Let’s fix the target, but not the means to achieve it.”

He noted that in addition to electric buses, the company will also build city buses with fuel cells.

READ MORE: Mercedes joins forces with BMW to build an electric ecosystem

Källenius pointed to the company's car-sharing efforts such as Car2Go as a means to help customers reduce their carbon footprint, and said the company will be making new efforts to encourage its customers who buy EVs to charge them using renewable energy. The company launched an effort in March, in conjunction with BMW's Reach Now, to provide clean power to chargers, and smart home chargers, similar programs at Tesla and Volkswagen.

Of course, electric cars are only as carbon-neutral as the factories that build them. The company plans to convert all of its European factories to renewable energy by 2022, starting with an extension of its main plant in Sindelfingen, Germany, and including the factory in Bremen that builds the EQC and the Kamenz factory in Saxony where the EQC's battery is built.

By 2039, the year that gives the plan its name, the company intends to propagate the changes throughout its worldwide factories as well as its suppliers, using incentives as motivation.

Volkswagen says EV batteries to last “the life of the car”

Volkswagen ID Buzz Concept
In an announcement last month, Volkswagen joined Nissan and Tesla as the only automakers to explicitly warranty not just the batteries in its cars but specifically how much life it expects them to retain.

Frank Blome, the head of VW's Center of Excellence in Battery Cells, said in an outward facing internal marketing interview that the company expects the battery packs in its upcoming line of ID cars to last “the life of the cars,” he said.

READ THIS: Here's the battery pack behind VW's global electric-vehicle push

Of course, for a key component of the car that costs five figures to replace it's an open question whether a dead battery becomes a self-fulfilling condition of a dead car.
Volkswagen has previously said—at several points—that its batteries will retain 70 percent of their original capacity for 8 years or 100,000 miles. That's the standard time frame for an EV battery warranty, though not all companies go so far as to provide a definition of how much capacity the battery needs to retain at that point.

CHECK OUT: Volkswagen details the foundation for 10 million electric vehicles

Batteries for the Audi E-tron quattro, the first all-electric car from the Volkswagen Group's luxury division come from Korean supplier LG Chem. LG's South Korean rival, SK Innovation, which was just sued by LG Chem at the International Trade Commission, will supply batteries for VW's new products in Europe as well as the U.S.

SKI is building new battery factories in Hungary and the U.S. state of Georgia to supply the batteries. In China, VW will rely on local batteries from CATL.

DON'T MISS: VW Group has nailed down $25 billion of batteries for electric cars, it said today

Blome confirmed that Volkswagen continues to work with Silicon Valley startup QuantumScape to develop solid-state batteries for its next generation of batteries for electric cars sometime between 2025 and 2030.

He also affirmed that he expects VW's European Battery Union partnership with Swedish battery maker Northvolt to produce more and better batteries, and to promote more battery production in Europe. The EBU is expected to begin research in 2020. “This new consortium will cover the entire battery value chain,” he said. “The primary aim is to gain broader expertise in battery cell production.”

Volvo announces battery suppliers for upcoming EV lineup, including Polestar

Polestar 2
Volvo, one of the first automakers to announce it would add electric power to its whole lineup, on Wednesday took the unusual step of formally announcing who will supply the batteries for all those electric cars.

The company stated that it will source $1 billion worth of lithium-ion batteries from two suppliers, LG Chem and Contemporary Amex Technology (CATL).

READ MORE: Polestar will qualify for $7,500 electric-car credit separately from Volvo

While the supply contract with Chinese CATL may have been predictable (Volvo is owned by Chinese automaker Geely, and CATL is one of the biggest players on the global stage). As competition for battery supplies heats up among automakers, it's also logical to name two suppliers. LG Chem supplies batteries for Volvo's current plug-in hybrids.

“With today’s agreement we effectively secured our battery supply for the upcoming decade,” said Martina Buchhauser, senior vice president for procurement at Volvo Cars in a statement. “By having two suppliers available in each region we also ensure that we have flexibility in our supply chain going forward.”

DON'T MISS: Volvo’s US Polestar electric-car plans are in flux over China tariffs

The batteries will go into Volvos based on two of the company's platforms: The Compact Modular Architecture that underpins the Polestar 2 and the Volvo XC40, will be the first. Those are the first two electric models from the company, with online preorders for the Polestar 2 already open and deliveries expected to begin next year. The XC40 electric is expected to debut late this year with deliveries following the Polestar 2.

Beyond that, Volvo's Scalable Product Architecture 2 that underpins the XC90 and XC60 SUVs will get the new batteries sometime after 2020.

CHECK OUT: Volvo taking on Tesla with Chinese-built Polestar 2 electric car: details and photos

The company is building its first battery assembly line at its existing auto factory in Ghent, Belgium. Volvo has said fully-electric cars will account for 50 percent of its sales by 2025. Volvo also announced that it is opening a new electric-car engineering center for Polestar in Coventry, England, to take advantage of engineering expertise there, the company said.

“The future of Volvo Cars is electric, and we are firmly committed to moving beyond the internal combustion engine,” said Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson in a statement. “Today’s agreements with CATL and LG Chem demonstrate how we will reach our ambitious electrification targets.”

Mercedes-Benz EQC, VW’s battery factory, Hyundai’s electric sports car: Today’s Car News

2020 Mercedes-Benz EQC 400 – first drive – Norway, May 2019
We're among the first to drive the Mercedes-Benz EQC. Volkswagen plans to invest $1.1 billion in a new battery factory in Germany. Hyundai and Kia invest $80 million in Croatian EV startup Rimac. And our Twitter poll asks how EV drivers should contribute to road maintenance. All this and more on Green Car Reports.

In a first drive outside of Oslo (practically native habitat for luxury electric cars), the new 2020 Mercedes-Benz EQC electric SUV proved itself among the quietest and most luxurious EVs we've driven. But solid range measurements remained elusive.

As VW and other German automakers are scrambling to build local battery supplies in Europe, the country's largest automaker announced plans to build a new battery factory—along with a partner—in its home state of Lower Saxony.

Korean auto giant Hyundai, along with its sister company Kia, gave Croatian EV sports-car startup Rimac a big boost in its bid to become a Tier 1 supplier of electric drivetrain components to the auto industry, with a big investment and plans for a new Korean electric sports car.

Our Twitter poll this week asks our readers how electric-car drivers should contribute to road maintenance, traditionally funded by state gas taxes.

Volkswagen also previewed a new digital dashboard for its upcoming 2020 redesign of the Golf.

Finally, the NHTSA will give up on new requirements, first adopted in light of the Toyota unintended acceleration problem in 2011, to require brake override software on new cars.

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Porsche fined $600 million in Germany over dirty diesels

2013 Porsche Cayenne Diesel
German regulators Tuesday hit Porsche with a $600 million (535 million euro) fine, for its role in selling cars powered by diesel engines designed by Audi that failed to comply with European emissions requirements.

The cars, including the Cayenne and Panamera, used a 3.0-liter diesel V-6, exceeded European emissions standards for oxides of nitrogen, which contribute to smog.

READ THIS: Audi to pay $927 million fine over diesel scandal in Germany

An investigation the regulators conducted found that Porsche employees turned a blind eye to the emissions cheating starting in 2009. In a release announcing the fine, Porsche emphasized that investigators found the negligence “several levels below” executive positions.

The fine represents the last action against Porsche, and one of the last against VW, to close out the legal repercussions of the larger VW emissions cheating scandal. In September, Porsche announced that it will stop selling diesels altogether as it focuses on developing and selling new electric models such as the new Taycan electric performance sedan due out late this year.

READ MORE: German prosecutors find collusion between automakers over diesel emissions

Audi was fined 800 million euros (about $927 million) last October over its leading role in the diesel emissions cheating scandal, and last month in a separate case triggered by the ongoing diesel emissions investigations, European Union regulators found that German automakers colluded to withhold the most effective emissions control systems from European consumers.

Daimler, which builds Mercedes-Benz models, does not expect to be fined in that case, because it drew European investigators' attention to the issue. BMW says it will fight the charges in court but set aside $1.1 billion in case it needs to pay the fine.

Dyson patents show possible Tesla Model X competitor

Patent drawing for Dyson electric car due in 2021
Dyson, the maker of snazzy, high-tech vacuum cleaners, has said for two years that it will build electric cars starting in 2020.

Now the company has released patent drawings that give a hint of what at least the first one may look like.

READ THIS: Dyson plans to build its electric car in Singapore

The drawings show a long, low crossover SUV—call it a wagon if you must—reminiscent of the former Mercedes-Benz R-Class or the original version of the Chrysler Pacifica.
It shows three rows of forward facing seats in a relatively low-slung body that should allow it to move plenty of passengers relatively efficiently, within its sleek shape.

CHECK OUT: Dyson plans to build electric-car test track in Britain

That sounds a lot like the mission of the Tesla Model X.
Patent drawing for Dyson electric car due in 2021

James Dyson, the company's namesake founder, sent a memo to staff, obtained by Bloomberg, saying that the patents, “don't reveal what our vehicle will really look like or give any specifics around what it will do.” It went on to say, they do “provide a glimpse of some of the inventive steps,” the company is considering.

The patent shows a battery under the floor and large, relatively narrow tires that could be used to reduce rolling resistance.

READ MORE: Battery tech may be getting a big solid-state boost soon

Dyson, known as a somewhat eccentric inventor, has also said that the company will build a range of new models in the coming years.
Last year, Dyson acquired land in Britain to set up a test track at a former British air force base and announced it would build its new electric cars in Singapore at a new factory to be constructed by 2020, and start production in 2021. The company has committed to spending $2.6 billion to launch its automotive business and plans to hire 500 staff members.

In January, it hired former Infiniti executive Roland Krueger to head up its automotive operations and moved its automotive headquarters to Singapore.