Headline, June11, 2013

'''THE WAR OF THE CURRENTS''​'

Electrics were again dead, as car-makers had declared twice before : once in the 1970s. and after OPEC's oil squeeze eased, dooming a few halfhearted E.V. efforts, and a century ago, when E.V. lost to gas cars in the first place.

In their stead this time emerged Hybrids, with Toyota's Prius leading the way. Hybrids use gas for the energy drain of getting the car moving, batteries for cruising speeds; the most efficient applications for both energy sources, or so the new wisdom had it.

But hybrids still get filled at the pump, and as a few critics began to observe, a world in which everyone drove a Prius would still be a world dependent   -utterly on imported oil. Hybrids just delayed the reckoning. So, the insight was to begin looking for someone who saw the potential of ''lithium-ion-powered'' cars.

I think what excited everybody more than the concept was the market opportunity. The big car makers wanted little to do with electric vehicles. They didn't even want to look at the new battery technologies, lest California slap another mandate on them. And no one else in the world wanted to start a car company : Preston Tucker in the 1940s and John Delorean in the 80s had shown how ruinous that could be.

But lithium-ion batteries packed four times the energy density of lead-acid -a paradigm changing improvement. Then, one day, Elon Musk had lunch with an impassioned young engineer JB Straubel to gossip about new technologies. At his private company, SpaceX, Musk was building manned spaceships. But Straubell could top that: his friends at Alan Cocconi's shop had just put a lithium-ion pack into a T Zero with amazing results.

Musk's eyes lit up. At Stanford, before he'd dropped out from A Phd program to join the Internet Revolution as he'd intended to study the potential of high-energy density capacitors. He wanted to see this car. So, Cocconi brought his T Zero to SpaceX. As soon as Musk climbed into it, he realized that it was acutely uncomfortable, very likely a death trap, and hopelessly unmarketable.

''I want to but it,'' he said. Cocconi shook his head. ''It's not for sale,'' he said. ''Then put a lithium-ion pack in my car,'' Musk proposed. ''I have a Porsche. You can take the guts out of it and make it an electric. I'd be willing to pay you up to a quarter million dollars.''

But Cocconi had no interest in fancy cars like that. He wanted to electrify a Nissan economy car called the Scion.

The Scion retailed for about $20,000. That was the way, he felt, to make electric vehicles massmarket, as soon as possible. But Musk sighed when he heard the conversion would cost at least $ 45,000. ''Who wants to take an ugly $ 20,000 car and buy it for $ 65,000?  That's not a very viable strategy.''  ''Better,'' said Musk, to put a lithium-ion battery pack into a high priced, high-performance car such as a Porsche and make it even faster. That someone might buy.''

Eiberhard and his then 39 years old partner from NuvoMedia, Marc Tarpenning, had formed a company in 2003, for the car they hoped to make. Naming it was the easy part : Nikola Tesla, a hero to both men, was the tormented, Serb-born inventor who'd worked for, then fallen out with, Thomas Edison, going on to wage the, ''war of the currents.''

With his erstwhile mentor, Edison had pushed direct current, or D.C., for New York's first electrical grid. Tesla had championed alternating current, or A.C., and won the war because A.C. travels better than D.C. Among his 700 patents was one for an A.C. induction motor, now a standard component of any E.V. design.

Batteries generate D.C. electricity that gets chopped by the inverter into A.C. for the motor that turns the wheels. One little backtrack, I must mention: In the early 90s, the only market-ready battery technology was lead acid, but its energy density, sorely limited. In the best of weather, on the flattest of roads, it still traveled only 90 miles before running out of juice. 

Recharge time about 8 to 10 hours. Late in the game, a new kind of battery chemistry  -nickel-metal hydride- came along almost doubling the range, but a cost that was prohibitively expensive at the time.

The dream remained elusive to reality : No trips to the pump, no oil, no oil changes, no fuel filters, AND NO EMISSIONS.

Respectful dedication to the mystery and spirituality of the : Act Of Atonement.

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless