Dr Automotive Design and Tools

A further arrest has been made in a spying scandal that has seriously damaged the reputation of Renault.

The move comes after an investigation by French police concluded that three of Renault’s top executives, fired in January after being accused of selling information on the brand’s electric car programme, are completely innocent.

Private investigator Michel Luc has been charged with fraud and criminal conspiracy. According to the police he received more than €300,000 from Renault’s own security unit for information showing that the three executives had been paid to sell secret information about the electric car programme.

Police have concluded that the information was falsified. Earlier this month Renault’s own security agent Dominique Gevrey was charged with fraud, police saying he had taken money intended for the informant and put it in a Swiss bank account.

Renault has fully accepted that its three executives are innocent. They have all been offered their jobs back and the manufacturer is trying to organise compensation.

At one point during the scandal there were suggestions that the information was being passed to China. The clearing of the three executives led to a national outcry particularly amongst the French Government, Renault’s biggest shareholder.

Some have called for Renault head Carlos Ghosn and his deputy Patrick Pelata to go – Pelata offered his resignation but Ghosn refused to accept it.

Both have turned down bonuses due to them, but only last week French ministers were still calling for heads to roll. “We cannot just let this pass – There will have to be consequences for the incredible amateurism,” said Budget Minister Francois Baroin.

President Barack Obama announced today that the U.S. government will buy only advanced technology vehicles — such as hybrids and electric plug-ins — by 2015.

The government already has doubled the number of hybrids in the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet.
At a speech at Georgetown University, Obama unveiled his strategy to cut U.S. oil imports by a third by 2025, by stepping up domestic oil production and requiring a major increase in fuel economy for the 2017-25 model years.

"Here's the bottom line — there are no quick fixes. And we will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we get serious about a long-term policy for secure, affordable energy," Obama told a crowd of several hundred at McDonough Arena. "We cannot keep going from shock to trance on the issue of energy security, rushing to propose action when gas prices rise, then hitting the snooze button when they fall again."

The reduction would be more than the 11 million barrels of oil a day the United States imported in 2008, the White House said today. Obama noted that the U.S. has just 2 percent of the world's proven oil reserves. The U.S. consumes about a quarter of the oil.

In 2010, the government purchased 23,000 more fuel-efficient vehicles for the federal fleet, including almost 9,000 hybrid-electric cars. This year, the government will buy more fuel-efficient vehicles, including its first 100 plug-in electrics.

Last year, the U.S. imported less than half of the oil it used for the first time in more than a decade.

White House aides said the president's plan to reduce imported oil relies on improving efficiency for half of the anticipated reduction, but they said the government hasn't settled on a proposed increase for the 2017-2025 timeframe.

A new report from GTM Research offers some interesting insights into where the electric road might lead. The report, “The Networked EV: The Convergence of Smart Grids and Electric Vehicles,” predicts there will be 3.8 million electric cars on the road worldwide by 2016, with about 1.5 million in the United States, 1.5 million in Europe and 760,000 in Asia.

“It is the hope of this industry that just as cellular phones and laptops before them, EVs will begin as luxury products but will eventually become widely affordable,” wrote David J. Leeds, the report’s author.

Leeds notes that it took a decade and three generations of the Toyota Prius hybrid to capture five percent of the California automotive market. He expects it’ll take a third generation of electric cars, likely to be introduced around 2018-2020, for carbon-free driving to break out of Berkeley, Portland, and other early adopter cities.

It’ll come as no shock that Leeds estimates that 20 percent of electric cars will be sold in California, which currently accounts for 11 percent of total auto sales in the U.S. New York will follow with nine percent of electric car sales with Florida, Texas, and Illinois rounding out the top five.

Predicting such numbers is a guessing game, of course, and electric cars sales will be determined by a multitude of factors, including vehicle cost, advancements in battery technology, gasoline prices, government subsidies, and the fickle tastes of car buyers.

The early adopters of electric cars that will like drive the industry aren’t so much all those Prius owners but corporate accountants looking to keep a lid on the cost of company fleets of cars and trucks.

“Electric vehicles make great sense for fleets due to their highly predictable routes, as well as the fact that these groups tend to excel at logistical operations,” wrote Leeds. “More than any other sources, commercial and government fleet purchases have the power to accelerate the adoption curve of this market.”

He noted that fleets account for 15 percent of miles driven in the U.S. and that many of those vehicles travel fewer than 100 miles a day, the range of many current electric vehicles, and can take advantage of centralized parking and charging stations as well as lower electricity rates negotiated by big corporations.

General Electric, which will buy 25,000 electric vehicles over the next four years, is aggressively promoting EVs among its corporate customers.

“We can’t forgot the importance of scale,” Luis Ramirez, chief executive of GE Industrial Solution, told me earlier this month when he came to San Francisco to promote electric vehicles and GE’s various services for them. “An average delivery truck makes 10 deliveries a day in a city like San Francisco. So when you think of electric vehicles, that creates a whole new blueprint that’s more efficient and uses less energy.”

Clarence Nunn, chief executive of GE Fleet Services, noted that a big cost of operating delivery trucks is the fuel wasted when idling in congested urban areas. Noise ordinances also can restrict delivery times for fossil-fueled powered vehicles. That’s not a problem, of course, for electrics.

The blogosphere had been buzzing over reports of low sales so far of the electric Nissan Leaf and plug-in hybrid electric Chevrolet Volt. That, however, may be more of a production than a demand problem. Leeds noted that nearly 250,000 potential Volt buyers had registered on GM’s site.

“We’d like to buy more than they can build,” said Ramirez of the Volt and Leaf.

Petrol and diesel-engined passenger cars should not allowed in European city centres by 2050, the European Commission has proposed.

The proposals, outlined to EU governments today by EC transport commissioner Siim Kallas, are designed to help cut Europe’s carbon emissions and reduce dependence on oil by up to 60 per cent. They are not an attack on personal mobility, the EC claims.

Also included in the radical transport plan is a proposal for the majority of journeys of 190-miles or less to take place by train.

“The widely held belief that you need to cut mobility to fight climate change is simply not true,” said Kallas. “Competitive transport systems are vital for Europe's ability to compete in the world, for economic growth, job creation and for people's everyday quality of life.”

The EC wants 50 per cent of Europe’s vehicles to be zero emissions by 2030 and conventionally fuelled vehicles to be banned from cities altogether by 2050.

There are also plans for a fully integrated European travel network, known as ‘Single European Transport Area’, linking all airports with core railway lines to “allow for a profound shift in transport patterns for passengers and freight”.

The EC wants Europe to "move close to zero fatalities in road transport" by 2050, with an interim target of halving casualties by 2020.

The Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal off shoot Barron's recently assigned female reporter Naureen Malik to test drive the Nissan Leaf with a brief to go for maximum tabloid sensationalism.

Despite the in-car systems verbally nagging this woman for 20 miles to either drive slower (i.e not as filmed in the left lane driving at 65 mph) or charge the vehicle, this inept reporter just continued to drive until the over dramatic grand standing finale of a flat bed truck needing to be called to remove the all-electric Leaf from the middle of the road, hood up, hazards flashing.

This feat was achieved in the very district that gave birth to the era of electricity with Thomas Edison's Pearl Street Station, where the density of electrical power outlets per square mile would possibly out rank any other area on earth.

According to this reporter, it was all Google's fault (a dig at a regular Murdoch adversary) as Google maps allegedly underestimated the length of the trip and failed to list 'about a dozen' potential charging stations en-route.

This is the sort of quality 'journalism' we have come to expect from any 'news' source owned by the king of the tabloids, News Ltd.

Something that might be of interest - the official theatrical trailer for Carbon Nation.

A movie for those who DON'T believe in climate change. There have always been a long list of issues behind the move towards EVs and one of those happened to be climate change. Unfortunately, most marketing efforts post-Gore have focussed almost exclusively on the climate angle and it has proved hard to move opinion in certain, usually older, generations.

So here's a docu-movie attempting to shift the focus and list all the 'other' reasons to go green.

Opens in theaters this month! www.carbonnationmovie.com

Alleged spying at French car maker Renault may have targeted the costs involved in making electric cars, its chief executive said in an interview published Friday.

Renault and its Japanese partner Nissan have staked their future on electric vehicles and plan to launch several models by 2014 to meet rapidly rising demand for more environmentally friendly methods of transport.

Renault has sacked three top managers in the past month over alleged industrial espionage and has launched legal action. The three executives have denied the allegations and struck back with lawsuits for defamation.

It has so far not given details on what the men allegedly disclosed, saying only that the case concerned the economic model, rather than the technology, for electric cars.

"The most interesting information I can have about a competitor is the cost," Renault chief executive Carlos Ghosn said in the interview with the Wall Street Journal.

He was answering a question on why information about the economic model was so sensitive.

"For example for a battery, the most important element is the cost per kilowatt. From the cost per kilowatt I may guess what kind of technology you're developing," he was quoted as saying by the US business daily.

"All that action that has been taken by the company is designed to protect the company," Ghosn said.

He added that it was now up to prosecutors to figure out exactly who was responsible for what.

"Who did what and how exactly, it's not up to us to decide," the Renault chief said. "Today, all the elements are in the hands of the justice department and it's for the prosecutor to determine the different responsibilities."

Renault and Nissan, of which Ghosn is also chief executive officer, are aiming for annual capacity of 500,000 electric cars by 2015 at the latest, the Wall Street Journal said.

But much uncertainty remains over how fast the cars will take off, as the batteries that power them are still prohibitively expensive for most consumers, the paper said.

It added that though Nissan's Leaf electric vehicle went on sale last year, Renault is still waiting to release its first models later this year.

The latest startling revelation to come via documents leaked to Julian Assange's website and published by The Guardian should give pause to every suburban SUV-driver: U.S. officials think Saudi Arabia is overpromising on its capacity to supply oil to a fuel-thirsty world. That sets up a scenario, the documents show, whereby the Saudis could dramatically underdeliver on output by as soon as next year, sending fuel prices soaring.

The cables detail a meeting between a U.S. diplomat and Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration for Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, in November 2007. Husseini told the American official that the Saudis are unlikely to keep to their target oil output of 12.5 million barrels per day output in order to keep prices stable. Husseini also indicated that Saudi producers are likely to hit "peak oil" -- the point at which global output hit its high mark -- as early as 2012. That means, in essence, that it will be all downhill from there for the enormous Saudi oil industry.

"According to al-Husseini, the crux of the issue is twofold. First, it is possible that Saudi reserves are not as bountiful as sometimes described, and the timeline for their production not as unrestrained as Aramco and energy optimists would like to portray," one of the cables reads. "While al-Husseini fundamentally contradicts the Aramco company line, he is no doomsday theorist. His pedigree, experience and outlook demand that his predictions be thoughtfully considered."

Tim Stevens over at Engadget has written a post today about the death of the internal combustion engine (ICE), using cigarette smoking as a example of how trends can change.

Good to see the 'word' is finally getting out about the gross inefficiency of ICEs. The information referenced by Tim is actually fairly conservative as he's quoting 30% energy efficiency for petrol fueled ICEs but that is when measured at the flywheel. The real figure for an ICE vehicle is closer to just 15% total energy efficiency when measured at the wheels.

Yet even that may be over-stating energy efficiency as much of the remaining 15% used to get the vehicle rolling is also converted into waste heat when braking.

With an electric motor, most of which are 90+% efficient, energy converted into inertia when accelerating a vehicle can be regenerated during braking and reused in the next acceleration cycle.

In some cases, such as in urban stop-start traffic, regen can extend battery range by as much as 50%. This brake regeneration is the principle used in all hybrids to improve overall vehicle fuel efficiency, although it does absolutely nothing to improve ICE inefficiency.

Due to the fundamental energy efficiency of electric motors in both propulsion and braking, the ICE-less Nissan Leaf can to be equipped with a battery having a maximum capacity equivalent to only 0.65 US Gallon (approx 2.5 liters) of gasoline, yet still have the torque of a V6 and 100 miles (160 kms) range. If the ICE version of the Leaf (the Versa) had the same sized fuel tank it would barley cover 20 miles.

In the same way incandescent light bulbs are now banned for sale in countries like Australia, based on the fact that they convert 95% of the energy they consume into waste heat, for that reason alone (and there are PLENTY of other valid reasons), it would seem the shift away from ICEs and towards EVs is fairly inevitable.


Source: Engadget

The British motor industry is in line for a £7bn boost from electric cars between now and 2014, according to a survey of 5,000-plus drivers by GfK Automotive.

The survey found 1.8 per cent of people would "definitely" buy an electric car by 2014, equating to more than 300,000 electric cars if extrapolated over the total car-buying population of 19.8 million households.

Using the newly released all-electric Nissan Leaf as a benchmark, the market will be worth £7.2bn by 2014, GfK Automotive says. And another 3 per cent of respondents – equating to 500,000 of all car-buyers – say they would consider going electric in the future.

Another UK survey conducted in December found that 53 per cent would consider buying an electric or hybrid vehicle as their next car. That equals 10.5 million hybrid / EV sales in the very near future.

Source: The Independent

General Motors Co. is announcing today it will end its request for as much as $14.4 billion in loans from the Energy Department's $25 billion retooling program.

GM had applied for $14.4 billion in loans to retool plants and build more fuel-efficient vehicles, including about $4.4 billion in applications by operations that were reacquired from Delphi, its former auto supplier.

"This decision is based on our confidence in GM's overall progress and strong, global business performance," said GM chief financial officer Chris Liddell. "Withdrawing our DOE loan application is consistent with our goal to carry minimal debt on our balance sheet."

Liddell said the decision won't delay any of its product planning. It "will not slow our aggressive plans to bring more new vehicles and technologies to the market as quickly as we can."

GM has more than $20 billion in liquidity on its balance sheet and is in a much stronger position in the wake of its bankruptcy restructuring. GM is confident it can pay for the programs on its own.

GM's been debating dropping the request -- which it first made in late 2008 -- for months. Last week, the company's board of directors approved the decision to withdraw the application.
The move means that the Energy Department will have about $10 billion left in its program to award to other applications.

Stephanie Mueller, an Energy spokeswoman, said the decision was a sign of GM's health," she said.

"GM's decision to produce the next generation of efficient vehicles without a government loan is yet another milestone in the turnaround of America's auto industry," Mueller said.
GM's withdrawal will allow the government "to support a number of other innovative automobile technologies."

To date, the Energy Department has awarded about $8.5 billion, including $5.9 billion to Ford Motor Co. and $1.4 billion to Nissan Motor Co. Two start-up electric vehicle firms, Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive, each received around $500 million.

"You are seeing the fruits of the program," said Ziad Ojakli, Ford's group vice president of government and community relations, pointing to the Ford Focus electric vehicle that's coming out later this year. "We used the DOE to speed production and move forward on fuel economy."
More than 100 companies initially sought $42.7 billion when the program was launched in late 2008, but many in Congress have criticized the slow pace of awards.

The only supplier to receive approval for a loan, Tenneco, also withdrew from the program after it had spent nearly six months working to close its loan.

Auburn Hills-based Chrysler Group LLC initially sought $8.55 billion, but has pared its request to around $3 billion.

Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said he hopes to receive the funds by the end of March. The automaker is going ahead with fuel-efficiency projects, expecting it will receive the loan to help pay for them.

"I can't stop the machine," Marchionne said recently. "So far, I have been able to manage it (without the loan), but there will come a point in time when I have to go into the kitty and use other cash for this."

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, said Chrysler's request would help protect 10,000 jobs in nine plants in four states, including Michigan.

The projects on which it is working "would save 520 million gallons of gasoline between 2011 and 2016," Stabenow said. "This is all about innovation and increasing fuel efficiency and technology." The low-cost retooling loan would allow Chrysler to reduce the $1 billion in annual interest it is paying on its federal bailout.

Ahead of its initial public offering in September, GM put its request on hold. GM officials have been signaling for months the loans weren't a top concern.

Then GM-CEO Edward Whitacre Jr. said in August that the loans were a "priority, but not a super priority."

President George W. Bush approved funding for the program in September 2008. GM and Chrysler urged Democrats to tap the program for a bailout and the House agreed in December 2008, but the Senate failed to act.

Bush opted to use the Troubled Asset Relief Program to rescue GM, Chrysler and their finance arms with about $25 billion.

The Obama administration put GM and Chrysler through bankruptcy and added about $60 billion to the bailout.

A survey has revealed that the number of people considering buying a plug-in hybrid or battery electric car has risen from nine per cent to 53 per cent.

The December poll, carried out by vehicle valuation company Glass’s, sought to discover motorists’ views of the government’s £43m Electric Vehicle Plug-in Car Grant.

According to a statement, it first asked respondents whether or not they would consider buying an electric or hybrid vehicle prior to notifying them about the government incentive, to which 36 per cent said they would.

This figure rose to 53 per cent as a direct result of being told about the scheme. When asked if they would consider buying an electric or hybrid vehicle as their next car in July last year, 0.5 per cent of respondents said they would buy an electric vehicle and eight per cent said they would buy a hybrid.

‘This is a phenomenal increase in a very short space of time and represents a fast-growing acceptance of the emergence of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles into the mass market,’ said Andy Carroll, managing director at Glass’s. ‘It is also clear that the government’s Plug-in Car Grant is making an impact on figures and could be the deciding factor for people already considering buying a plug-in hybrid or battery electric car, as well as appealing to those who would not previously have considered it.’

In addition, the survey revealed that of those still unwilling to consider buying an electric or hybrid vehicle despite the Plug-in Car Grant, almost half said that this was not due to cost.

‘This is also a significant finding as it indicates that people need to be reminded of the benefits of running a plug-in or battery electric car and also the reassurance that there will be a better recharging network if they are considering purchasing an electric vehicle,’ said Carroll. ‘Encouragingly, the government has just announced plans to relax planning permission laws for charging points, and has also urged councils to promote their installation, which is another step in the right direction for consumers.’

The government’s £43m incentive programme, which offers buyers of electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles up to £5,000 off the purchase price, was rolled out on 1 January 2011 and so far nine models are eligible for the grant.

If someone told you there was a way you could save 2.5 million to 3 million lives a year and simultaneously halt global warming, reduce air and water pollution and develop secure, reliable energy sources -- nearly all with existing technology and at costs comparable with what we spend on energy today -- why wouldn't you do it?

According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.

"Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. "It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will."

He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.

The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.

Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters -- no more natural gas or coal -- and water would be preheated by the sun.

Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.

The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well.

"We wanted to quantify what is necessary in order to replace all the current energy infrastructure -- for all purposes -- with a really clean and sustainable energy infrastructure within 20 to 40 years," said Jacobson.

One of the benefits of the plan is that it results in a 30 percent reduction in world energy demand since it involves converting combustion processes to electrical or hydrogen fuel cell processes. Electricity is much more efficient than combustion.

That reduction in the amount of power needed, along with the millions of lives saved by the reduction in air pollution from elimination of fossil fuels, would help keep the costs of the conversion down.

"When you actually account for all the costs to society -- including medical costs -- of the current fuel structure, the costs of our plan are relatively similar to what we have today," Jacobson said.

One of the biggest hurdles with wind and solar energy is that both can be highly variable, which has raised doubts about whether either source is reliable enough to provide "base load" energy, the minimum amount of energy that must be available to customers at any given hour of the day.
Jacobson said that the variability can be overcome.

"The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle," he said. "If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand."

Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.

"One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites," said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.

"With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can't use normal methods for matching supply and demand. You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management," he said.

Another method of meeting demand could entail building a bigger renewable-energy infrastructure to match peak hourly demand and use the off-hours excess electricity to produce hydrogen for the industrial and transportation sectors.

Using pricing to control peak demands, a tool that is used today, would also help.

Jacobson and Delucchi assessed whether their plan might run into problems with the amounts of material needed to build all the turbines, solar collectors and other devices.

They found that even materials such as platinum and the rare earth metals, the most obvious potential supply bottlenecks, are available in sufficient amounts. And recycling could effectively extend the supply.

"For solar cells there are different materials, but there are so many choices that if one becomes short, you can switch," Jacobson said. "Major materials for wind energy are concrete and steel and there is no shortage of those."

Jacobson and Delucchi calculated the number of wind turbines needed to implement their plan, as well as the number of solar plants, rooftop photovoltaic cells, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal and wave-energy installations.

They found that to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world's land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world's land (mostly wind-turbine spacing), Jacobson said.

One of the criticisms of wind power is that wind farms require large amounts of land, due to the spacing required between the windmills to prevent interference of turbulence from one turbine on another.

"Most of the land between wind turbines is available for other uses, such as pasture or farming," Jacobson said. "The actual footprint required by wind turbines to power half the world's energy is less than the area of Manhattan." If half the wind farms were located offshore, a single Manhattan would suffice.

Jacobson said that about 1 percent of the wind turbines required are already in place, and a lesser percentage for solar power.

"This really involves a large scale transformation," he said. "It would require an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system."

"But it is possible, without even having to go to new technologies," Jacobson said. "We really need to just decide collectively that this is the direction we want to head as a society."

Jacobson is the director of Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday he remains committed to a campaign goal to flood America's highways with plug-in cars and will ask Congress for new programs to support sales and development of electric vehicles.

"With more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015," Obama said during his State of the Union address.

The president plans to ask Congress to approve a budget that includes improved consumer rebates, investment in research and development and other programs to encourage communities to invest in electric vehicle infrastructure, according to a fact sheet provided to the Free Press by the White House.

The automotive industry has been investing heavily in hybrid and electric cars with the support of federal loans and grants and has been making progress towards Obama's goal.

Between 2007 and 2010, more than 1.2 million hybrid, plug-in and electric vehicles were sold in the U.S., according to J.D. Power and Associates. But most of those sales are from conventional gas-electric hybrids -- such as the Toyota Prius and Ford Fusion hybrid -- and only a few hundred plug-in or electric cars have been sold.

Still, by 2015, J.D. Power and Associates forecasts the number of plug-in and electric vehicles -- such as the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf -- will grow to about 700,000, or about 300,000 short of Obama's 2008 campaign pledge.

Obama's proposal to continue to encourage development of electric cars also reflects a campaign promise he made when he visited Lansing in 2008.

U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., welcomed Obama's renewed pledge on Tuesday.

"Advanced technology manufacturing is extremely important to our state's economy," she said in an e-mail to the Free Press. "We need to build on this success to create even more jobs."

Currently, the Volt and the Leaf are supported by federal tax credits of up to $7,500. The development of hybrid and electric vehicles also has been supported by loans and grants from the Department of Energy.

So far, the department has awarded about $8.3 billion out of a $25-billion loan program to Ford, Nissan, Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors. Loan requests from General Motors, Chrysler and other companies are pending.

In 2009, Michigan benefited from a separate Department of Energy program that awarded about $1.36 billion in grants to firms with advanced battery manufacturing plants in the state.

U.S. Rep. Dave Camp, a Midland Republican, however, said the federal government should focus on streamlining regulations and energy policies that will create real consumer demand.

"The auto industry is making great strides in bringing these new technologies to the market," Camp, the new chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, said

China has brought 11 rare earth mines under state control as Beijing consolidates the industry -- a move analysts said Thursday could drive up prices of the elements, used in mp3 players and hybrid cars.

Authorities have targeted mines in the eastern province of Jiangxi, which is rich in heavy rare earths, as it seeks to strengthen "protection and reasonable development" of the sector, the land and resources ministry said this week.

China, which produces more than 95 percent of the world's rare earths, has tightened control over the metals by slashing quotas for overseas shipments, hiking export taxes and cracking down on heavily polluting mines.

The moves have raised concern overseas that China was abusing its market dominance of the 17 elements used to make everything from wind turbines to flat screen televisions.

The ministry said Monday the 11 mines covering an area of 2,534 square kilometres (978 square miles) were the first batch of "state planned mining zones" for rare earths.

Analysts said the move to bring the mines under state control was a key step towards consolidating the fragmented industry in the south and would likely increase the cost of the elements.

"Prices will go up once (mining) concentration rises and the state strengthens control," said Sang Yongliang, an analyst with Guotai Jun'an Securities in Shanghai. Sang said the government may be targeting heavy rare earths, which are more expensive than the light elements because of their scarcity.

Japanese industry said last year China temporarily cut off exports of rare earths in the midst of a diplomatic row. Beijing has denied any political motivation for its control of the elements and has insisted the issue is an environmental one.

The commerce ministry said last month it had slashed rare earth export quotas by about 35 percent for the first six months of this year.

While Tesla Motors have used AC Induction motors from day 1, Toyota recently announced it was developing AC Induction motors as an alternative to their current range of hybrid electric motors that are manufactured using rare earth materials.

A former top Renault executive is suing over allegations he sold industrial secrets and is taking the French car maker to court for sacking him, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Michel Balthazard is one of three executives sacked last week after the firm accused them of industrial espionage reportedly involving the company's key electric cars programme.

Balthazard is taking the legal action "to sue the persons ... who have seriously damaged his honour in a context of media over-exposure," his lawyer Pierre-Olivier Sur said in a statement.

The lawyer added that his client, who denies any wrongdoing, was taking Renault to an industrial tribunal to contest his sacking. The defamation suit targets "persons unknown".

Another of the three sacked executives, Bertrand Rochette, has begun similar legal action.
Renault itself has launched legal action for industrial espionage after it sacked the three managers.

The company said on Thursday it had lodged a complaint for "industrial espionage, corruption, breach of trust, theft and handling stolen goods."

State prosecutor Jean-Claude Marin said the charges alleged that "elements concerning France's economic secrets" had been leaked "to a foreign power."

The French daily Le Figaro has reported that Chinese interests stood to benefit from spying on Renault's electric car programme, on which it is staking its future.

China has angrily denied any involvement.

The three executives deny involvement and were not named in the company's judicial complaint on Thursday. Under the French judicial system prosecutors can investigate allegations without a defendant being named.

Renault and its Japanese partner Nissan have staked their future on electric vehicles and plan to launch several models by 2014 to meet rapidly rising demand for more environmentally friendly methods of transport.

In the first episode of Fully Charged for 2011, Robert Llewellyn introduces a fellow EV enthusiast who is driving a Tesla Roadster from London to Edinburgh to counter the ludicrous anti-EV reporting at the BBC by reporter Brian Milligan.

You may recall Mr Milligan wrote a piece of anti-EV propaganda in August last year where he juggled the numbers to make the cost of owning a Mitsubishi iMiEV look more expensive than a ICE powered Fiat 500 when the truth was the iMiEV worked out to be 16% cheaper.

This time Mr Milliagn has set out to exaggerate the negative aspects of charging an EV. To do this the BBC has selected a trip that most commuters would only attempt perhaps for their annual holidays.

Mr Milligan will drive a test fleet BMW eMini (i.e not a full production EV) while recharged en-route using only low current car park based public charging stations that are designed for top up or all day charging.

Sounds like the kind of job Clarkson would have jumped at given half a chance.

You can follow the trip on Twitter@dpeilow

An international network may have obtained data about Renault's electric car programme, but its vital technology secrets are safe and production of the vehicles will not be held up, the French carmaker said on Saturday. Skip related content

Three Renault executives, including one member of its management committee, were suspended on Monday over the leaking of data, which prompted the government to warn of a widespread risk to French industry.

"This is the work of professionals," Chief Operating Officer Patrick Pelata said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper's weekend edition. "Renault is the victim of an organised international network."

The executives are suspected of leaking information related to the high-profile electric vehicle programme, a key plank of the carmaker's strategy in which it is investing billions of euros together with Japanese partner Nissan.

Pelata said information may have been leaked regarding the costs and economic model of the programme, but not the "golden nuggets" of its technology, including some 200 patents that are being lodged.

"It's serious, but not as bad as if it had been the technology," he said. "Whether it's the chemistry of the electrodes, the structure of the batteries, the different elements of assembling, be it the charger or the engine itself, we feel ok."

He added that the electric programme was on schedule: "We have not lost one day to launch our four electric cars.

Pelata said the three employees would face a preliminary hearing before facing a likely dismissal. The company was studying all legal options that would probably lead it to press criminal charges.

None of the suspended executives has a high profile among investors or in the media.

Thibault de Montbrial, a lawyer for Matthieu Tenenbaum, deputy head of Renault's electric-vehicle programme and one of the three suspended employees, called the affair "surreal."

"My client is now portrayed as an international spy when so far he still doesn't have any material information explaining why Renault is accusing him."

CHINESE LINK, THOUSANDS OF CASES

Intelligence services are investigating a possible Chinese connection, a government source said on Friday.

Industry Minister Eric Besson played down the Chinese link on Saturday, saying he could not confirm anything for now.

"Renault will press charges and then the DCRI (internal intelligence service) will in all likelihood be asked to investigate," he told Europe 1 radio. "At that point we will know a lot more on the backers, beneficiaries, etc."

Renault is 15 percent owned by the French state.

In 2007, a Chinese student on a work placement at car parts maker Valeo was given a prison sentence for obtaining confidential documents. A court stopped short of an industrial espionage verdict, instead finding she had "abused trust."

Relations between France and China hit a low two years ago when French President Nicolas Sarkozy criticised Beijing's policy on Tibet.

A visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to Paris late last year helped improve ties. France wants Chinese support for reform of the global monetary system under its presidency of the Group of 20 club of economic powers.

A government official dealing with corporate espionage, Olivier Buquen, told weekend paper Le Journal du Dimanche that there were thousands of industrial spying cases in France in the recent years as firms and countries seek technological edges.

"The number of incidents on French territory -- and these are reviewed over five years -- is alarming," Buquen said. "It amounts to several thousand," he said.

"All sectors, all regions and businesses of all sizes are affected," Buquen said. "The number of countries whose nationals are engaged in corporate espionage is also increasing."

Buquen said a draft bill was in the works to strengthen the legal protection of trade secrets.

Christian Harbulot, head of France's School of Economic Warfare which trains students in corporate intelligence, said the difficulties encountered by car producers during the financial crisis, coupled with the shift to electric technology, had made the sector even more competitive.

"There is huge tension in the strategies undertaken by the groups, and competitors are trying to find out what the others have decided to do."

France will prolong electric-car incentives beyond 2012, Industry Minister Eric Besson said at a press conference in Paris today. He said the reduction of the bonus on electric cars will be gradual.

“There will be no abolition of the bonus after 2012,” he said.

Source: Bloomberg

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced that it has started commercial operation of eco-friendly full-size electric buses on the Mt. Namsan circular routes as of December 21. It is the first time in the world that battery electric buses have been put into commercial operations.

SMG has worked on the project to develop full-sized electric buses with local technology over the last one and a half years, since it signed an agreement with Hyundai Heavy Industries and Hankuk Fiber for the development of electric buses in September 2009.

Electric bus services will not only improve air conditions in the city but also lead the technology of large-sized electric vehicles in the global electric car market, the City said.

The electric coaches serving on the Mt. Namsan circular routes are 11.05 meters long and run up to 83km with a single charge. They can be fully charged in less than 30 minutes with a high-speed battery charger. The electric bus, with its maximum speed of 100 km/hr, has a low floor and a 322-horsepower engine. It adopts a high-capacity lithium-ion battery and an energy saving system that can collect and reuse energy generated from brakes when running downhill.

Its body is made of a carbon composite material, not of iron plates, which considerably reduces the vehicle's weight while reinforcing durability. The electric buses are also equipped with automatic slant boards for wheelchair users. The bus is shaped like a peanut and decorated with designs symbolizing the Namsan Tower and landscapes of Mt. Namsan.

SMG has replaced five buses on the Namsan circular routes with electric vehicles. It plans to gradually substitute all 14 buses with electric coaches to minimize any inconvenience of citizens that may be caused by the introduction of the new buses. It also plans to build two more battery chargers on Namsan by March 2011, increasing the number from two to four.

SMG expects that the electric bus service has enabled Seoul City to move one step further toward a "Green-Car, Smart City." SMG has set a goal of putting a total of 120,000 electric vehicles in use in the city by 2020, which will account to 50 percent of all public transport vehicles, 10 percent of sedans and 1 percent of trucks and vans.