IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

ARE WE READY TO PLUG IN?-------Carl Schwab

This title really in the form of a question is quite appropriate to the Electric Car status as of mid-July 2013. The writer has composed several BLOGS comparing the pure electric vehicle, EV, to the Hybrid and now to the PHV, Pluggable Hybrid Vehicle. We are defining an EV as a pure electric drive vehicle with no ICE (Internal Combustion Engine)and are dependent on commercially available recharging stations and in particular the existence and operation on a cost effective basis on a 24-7 basis i.e. 24 hour a day and 7 days a week. This can be helped by the owner providing charging station in his garage etc. but that is another matter.

Currently here on LI there are 5 Plug-In hybrids: 1) the Chevrolet Volt, 2) the Ford C-Max Energi, 3) the Ford Fusion Energi, 4) Honda Accord Plug-In, and 5) Toyota Prius Plug-In.

A second group is the Pure Electrics or EV and includes 6 offerings. 1) Ford Focus Electric, 2) Honda Fit EV, (3 Mitsubishi i-MiEV, (4 Nissan Leaf, 5) Tesla Model S/Roadster, and (6 Smart For Two Electric. A hard sell on SUV-loving Log Island, are finding new buyers as automakers offer new models and sweetened deals. In the next 18 months, six of the models listed will join the 11 already available here now.

Sales of EV, Electric only have been hampered by shortened driving ranges, high prices and few public recharging stations. But the steady pressure of gasoline prices makes the interest continue to grow.

Brief Recap: The first Prius did not have plug-in capability, at least as offered by Toyota. Recognizing this limitation from a selling point several groups, particularly in California offered the “California Option” as an aftermarket item. The way this was done was to replace the original NiMh battery with a Li-ion design. Toyota immediately made no bones about it—all warrantees were void for the vehicle. Even so many, many conversions were done and the plug-in performance quite good. Frequently the owner of the converted Prius charged overnight and the range of nearly 100 miles on the first charge made the “drive by day—charge by night” work well. Excellent for LOCAL driving. It was the success of “California Prius” that pushed the Plug- in Hybrid to the front.

AN ASIDE: The original PRIUS made no provision for externally recharging the NiMh pack from 120-240 VAC. The original thought was that charge could be put into the NiMh by the ICE burning gasoline, to power an alternator put charge into the NiMh. The theory was that the NiMh would be charged during regenerative braking. Indeed testing by Toyota showed that about70% of the braking energy normally lost to heat could be recovered. In this manner, Toyota engineers had good control over how the NiMh pack was charged and discharged and they restrict the SOC (status of charge) from the 20% to the 80% range and achieved excellent life for the NiMh pack. Warrantees for NiMh cover 8 years and 150,000 miles. It was the warrantee concern that caused Toyota to go very slow on the PHV (Pluggable Hybrid Vehicle).  The California PRIUS definitely on a daily basis put the SOC above 80% and as near to 100% they could go without ANY overcharge. This worry to the driver of the PHV was a serious concern.

Well now the PHV feature is in solidly in place and the anxiety about the SOC of overcharge will destroy the warrantee is not real.

THE SECOND CAR: From the writers experience using the EV as a second car works well. The implication here is the second car will be used for LOCAL driving and experience says that the daily mileage will be between 20 mile per day and perhaps up to 60 miles per day. In the writer’s experience a 240 VAC charger was installed in my garage and plugged in overnight. Fully discharged the battery would require about 3 hours to recharge. Partial recharges took less time. A display on the garage wall by the charger case displayed the SOC at that instant in time so the driver knows how much range he had. A scheme is being offered for buyers of the Nissan Leaf as a packaged deal.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?; Experience with these several offering will on average steer in some particular direction so far as how the market will develop. The significant driver is the fact that electric power even at the very high prices of LIPA on LI still can provide the energy to charge a LI-ion battery capable of giving up to 100 miles range. It works out that the energy cost in electricity to provide the battery charge is about $3.50 at LIPA rates or the equivalent of a gallon of gas. This is pretty amazing and almost assures the car designers are going to try hard to use as much electric power as possible. But it does seem that the PHV, which can drive the car on electric OR gasoline has a huge physiological (anxiety) advantage. Marketing people are betting a lot on that.

INTERESTING--

Which Is Larger, The Pound or The Kilogram?

We have mnemonic memory aids of all kinds, but sometimes they can fail us. Remember "I" before "e" except after "c" except ...... ?

As to the pound versus the kilogam, if you have trouble remembering which way the 2.2:1 ratio of the one to the other goes, take a look at this URL and you will never again forget.

http://www.gocomics.com/bc/2011/11/25 

DEA Number - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Here's a shocker for you.

This is a picture of the header of a prescription that was given to one of my family members upon discharge from the hospital. When I presented this prescription at a local pharmacy, they would NOT honor it.

The prescription had been written for a "controlled substance" and therefore, the "DEA number" as shown, being associated with the institution, with the hospital, was unacceptable to the pharmacy. The pharmacy said they needed to have the DEA number of the prescribing physician. Without that, I should go away.

The doctor whose name was shown on the prescription could not be reached and nobody else at the hospital would act on this problem. To me, that was nothing less than patient abandonment.

Fortunately, we were able to reach our own physician who telephoned the pharmacy with his own DEA number on which basis the prescription was filled.

The take-away (how I hate that phrase) is the following:

If you ever find yourself in a hospital discharge situation and you are being given instructions to get prescriptions filled, bear in mind this horrid incident and be sure to get the physician's own DEA number, not just the institutional one.

FISKAR SAYS ’PLUG-HYBRIDS MAKE MORE SENSE THAN PURE ELECTRICS’-----Carl Schwab

In the April 26th, 2013 issue of the LICN BLOG the writer had written a BLOG entitled,"EV AND THE HYBRID", comparing the EV to the Hybrid--- EV is Electric Only. This present BLOG is based upon an article written by Henrik Fiskar who has worked to produce first the KARMA (expensive) and now the Atlantic which will price in at about ½ the $100,000 price for the Karma, The earlier article leaned in the direction of using one type car and compared it to the case wherein two different cars, one a pure electric or EV against a second which is a pure hybrid. Henrik Fiskar goes much further placing the emphasis on the plug-in Hybrid. Henrik has put up considerable effort in promoting the Karma which costs over $100,000 and now feels they are in position to promote the Atlantic which IS Plug-In Hybrid but designed and manufactured to sell for $47,000 to $50,000. The specifications call for an electric range of 30 to 50 miles and the extended range to 350 miles. It is Henrik’s feeling that this is the basis for family sedan replacement AND will have excellent MPGe performance. It will not be intimidated by the lack or location of fast recharge battery sites.

Now Henrik believes that the $50,000 price-tag with this type performance meets the requirement for a “quality family” car. According to the Worldwide Auto Industry the industry is taking the wrong path to environmental friendliness. According to Henrik. “Every big car company is making one little EV car mostly for satisfying its overall fleet average. Fiskar at an Economic Club of Chicago stated we will have far too many pure electric cars. But if you look at plug-in hybrids, there are a lot fewer of them and a lot more potential buyers.

Fiskar, whose company builds the plug-in hybrid Karma and the forthcoming Atlantic said consumers want stylish vehicles that can be easily identified as “economy friendly”, but are also practical. Fiskar chides the automotive press for not taking care to distinguish between plug-in hybrids and pure electric cars—EVs. The result, he said, it that the low demand for pure electrics is being interpreted as a bad sign for plug-in hybrids. “A lot of people—journalists too, are putting this all in one big bowl and saying there is not a lot of demand for pure electric i.e. EVs. But hybrids are on the rise and plug-in hybrids will be the next big step.” Fiskar’s comments are consistent with those of industry analysists who have said plug-in hybrid sales over the next few years while the pure EV will fall over the next few years.

To recap---from a pure cost angle the EV has much to offer. But, and these are big “butts”, the batteries will be larger, heavier and replacement cost very high and will likely stay that way. What Toyota has done with the PRIUS is make the battery smaller (meaning less cost and less weight) and devised a strategy that discharges and recharges the smaller Li-ion pack several times during the driving scenario. It certainly seems there is a place for a car that can run up to say 25 miles on a charge at the start of the day and on many days that will be sufficient for that day and can be recharged over night. Under these conditions the car will be free of emissions since the ICE is not started or idled. On those occasional days that the trip length goes well over the electric range, then the ICE comes into play and the extended range performance takes over. Now this is where Henrik Fisker and his new Atlantic fit perfectly. The hybrid mileage for that day will be near 35 to 50 MPG. But no anxiety about finding a fast recharge facility and spending the time for a few recharges each day even if the driving is near continuous.----------INTERESTING

 

The Smart Phone Conundrum - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

The other day, I was in Manhattan near Macy's at 34th Street and was waiting for the traffic light to turn green in my favor when I looked around. I saw easily a dozen people standing all around me with smart phones open in their hands, tapping and caressing their phones' touch screens and/or intensely staring  at heaven only knows what. I felt like everyone else was somehow headed out on the parkway while I was still in the parking lot.

This isn't anything new though as I've never been one to follow the leading edge of consumer electronics technology. We didn't by a VCR until 1988, a CD-player until 1990 and we still don't own an HD-television or a DVD player. We use a converter box for our CRT based, NTSC television set and still use an on-the-roof television antenna.

My wife's cell phone's plastic case cracked the other day. After some number of years of service, a piece of plastic on one side of the phone cover's hinge fell away and that was that. The phone had to be replaced. We've been using Verizon, so off to the nearest Verizon store we went.

Neither she or I have ever actually used a "smart phone". The few times I've ever tried to use one, or even tried to make any sense of one, I've had nothing but frustration. All I can see is an oblong box that's too small for me to see the display properly and too big to fit into my shirt pocket. Every one of them is both too small and too big at the same time.

In any case, there we were in the Verizon store and immediately some salesman came over to ask if I wanted to sign up for FIOS. I just walked away from that guy and went over to a display shelf where what looked like a couple of dozen models of smart phones were positioned. While standing there, I had the following thought.

These phones differ in price quite substantially from each other which infers that their capabilities differ quite substantially from each other. How was someone like me who has experienced nothing but frustration and failure in trying to manipulate smart phones owned by other people ever going to figure out which of these phones on display would be capable of doing things I might want them to do without carrying excess baggage and cost for capabilities that would be of no use to me whatever?

How too was I going to accomplish that under the onslaught of this fool who was now standing next to me again, still wanting to sell me on FIOS? We left the smart phones all there, untouched and unexamined.

With the assistance of a different sales clerk, my wife's replacement phone ended up being the same kind as my own, the very bottom of the product line.

I think things are going to stay that way.