Electric vehicles go 'Beyond Oil'

SEATTLE (AP):

If you believe Bob Lutz, one of the auto industry's best-known executives, come mid-century we'll all be driving around in lightweight electric cars that can go hundreds of miles between charges.

Electric-car technology is improving rapidly, he said, while internal-combustion engines are as good as they're ever going to get.

Lutz, developer of the Chevy Volt, was at Seattle Centre, USA, on Friday for a conference called 'Beyond Oil' - an event that showcases green and high-tech transportation advances. Sponsored by local think-tank Cascadia Centre, the city of Seattle, VIA Motors and others, the conference drew transportation execs, state officials and electric-car enthusiasts.

They showed off or peered inside an assortment of energy-efficient vehicles on display - everything from plug-in Nissan Leafs to an aerodynamic Viking X car built by students at Western Washington University and something called a Firefly, for use by parking enforcers and security patrols.

For now, electric cars remain a niche market, with price being a huge factor - typically US$35,000 to US$40,000 for a basic passenger car.

Lutz guessed that unless electric cars can be priced as cheaply as gasolene-powered cars, only about five per cent of the public will pay extra for green cars. For now, he said, the most cost-effective use for electric motors is in trucks and delivery fleets that burn lots of gas.

He's a board member at VIA Motors, which showed off a white van brought from Utah. Like a Volt, it runs all-electric during a normal workday, with gasolene as backup power for trips longer than 40 miles.

VIA plans to deliver 2,000 of the vehicles to government and business fleets around the country next year.

More mainstream

Still, plug-in cars have become more mainstream since 2006, when scientists and amateur mechanics at the Beyond Oil conference here spent time explaining how to retrofit a hybrid Prius so it could be plugged into a regular household power socket. Since then, Nissan, Chevrolet, Toyota, Ford and Mitsubishi have all developed plug-in models.

The next big advance? The experts say it will be automobile bodies made of lightweight carbon fibre that will help cars run on less energy, much like the Boeing Dreamliner.

That, in turn, will enable cars to be propelled by smaller batteries and powertrains, according to Amory Lovins, chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, which does research into efficient technologies.

A carbon-built auto industry is already getting under way, Lovins said, noting that carbon fiber made in Moses Lake is being sent to BMW in Germany, and a company called Fiberforge is negotiating with US automakers about how to build carbon-fibre vehicles.