The reality of hydrogen as an energy carrier for transportation remains a painfully slow development, particularly the distribution of H₂. The total number of publicly-accessible hydrogen stations in the United States remains in the few dozen range. In spite of that, there are small signs of progress, including a new station that opened up this week in the Bronx in New York City.

The station, the third in the area , is operated by Shell Hydrogen and joins facilities at John F. Kennedy airport and in White Plains outside the city. New York is one of the three areas that has been part of GM’s Project Driveway field test that has allowed ordinary drivers to accumulate over a million miles in fuel cell powered Chevy Equinoxes over the past two years.

The Indian conglomerate Tata has snubbed Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, rejecting a £10m loan for a technical centre in the Midlands.

Mandelson announced the loan last month, saying that Britain was backing Tata’s research into electric cars. The money was awarded as part of his Automotive Assistance Programme (AAP), a scheme that was designed to help the car industry over the worst of the recession and foster investment in new technology.

Senior motor industry sources said that Tata, one of India’s biggest business empires and the owner in Britain of Jaguar Land Rover and Corus, the steelmaker, has in the past few days told the government that it doesn’t want the money. It has decided it can get better terms from commercial lenders, the sources said.

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Go to just about any American airport and you will see many Lincoln Town Cars, mostly black, picking up and dropping off passengers. Now, these upscale taxis have a much more environmentally-friendly competitor – the Royale Hybrid Electric Livery Vehicle (HELV). Royale Limousines, a Cabot Coach Builders Company in Haverhill, Massachusetts, is a Certified Lincoln Qualified Vehicle Modifier and Cadillac Master Coachbuilder. Besides building many stretch limousines and limo buses, starting in 1998 it also added six inches to many Lincoln Town Cars, thus creating the predecessor to the now factory-built Town Car Executive L.

The new HELV is basically a stretched Ford CD338 platform so it’s available now in hybrid Ford Fusion form or as a Mercury Milan version next spring. Royale has developed a method to cut the hybrid cars in half and then stretch overall length and wheelbase by six inches. The company also adds many luxury upgrades.

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This sounds like GM’s Voltec technology. If it is, it’s a curious direction for an Asian manufacturer since PHEV’s running solely on electric power are considered the better option for their market as opposed to GM’s Voltec which gives a vehicle greater autonomy compatible with North American driving patterns.

[From Green Car Congress]

Delta Electronics Targeting Electric Powertrain Market; Series Hybrid Test Vehicle On the Road

Taiwan-based Delta Group, the world’s largest provider of switching power supplies and DC brushless fans, as well as a major supplier of power management solutions, components, visual displays, industrial automation, networking products, and renewable energy solutions, is entering the electric powertrain market.

Taiwan-based Delta Electronics has integrated existing automation, motor, servo-motor and electrical electronics technologies to develop its own gasoline-electric series hybrid propulsion system—the first gasoline-electric hybrid propulsion system developed by a Taiwanese electronics company. The design includes battery pack, power inverter, power control unit, traction motor and vehicle control unit.

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More electric car news from Taiwan. Two Chinese automakers are ready to develop and sell electric cars there. Chery, for instance, has announced the creation of an R&D center in the upcoming "Green Energy Intelligent Vehicle Innovation Park (EV Park)" in central Taiwan. This would give Chery access to Taiwan’s EV technology. Geely Auto has announced sales in Taiwan of the electric version of the Panda model (pictured above) thanks to Yulon Motor Co, which would develop the EV with lithium-ion batteries. The model, to be ready for 2011, will be sold under Yulon Motor’s Tobe brand.

[Source: Gasgoo and Gasgoo]

[Source: Reuters]

Aside from fuels, one of the biggest uses of petroleum is in the production of polymer materials like plastics. Just as automakers have attempted to reduce the use of petroleum-based fuels, researchers are also working on reducing the other dino juice applications.

One of the best known applications of bio-plastics to date is the soy-foam seats used by Ford that debuted in the 2008 Mustang. The new foam cushioning material has since been added to other cars in the lineup.

A new study from Utrecht University in the Netherlands indicates that bio-plastics, while a small business today today, could expand rapidly in the next decade. The researchers estimate that these new materials could supplant 90 percent of all petrochemical plastics over time. No specific timing is given for when that level might be reached, but it will likely take many years. In the meantime, we could make a huge difference by just eliminating all the blister packs used in product packaging.

[Source: GreenCarCongress]

One of the reasons that a vehicle powered by something other than gasoline is such a popular idea in the U.S. is that it helps us become less reliant on other countries for our transportation needs. To this end, biofuels and electric vehicles offer great potential to use local sources of energy in our vehicles. To get a handle on how much green electricity – wind, geothermal, solar, etc. – is available in the U.S., the Insitute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) has conducted a study on renewable energy potential and came away with some amazing figures. The Energy Self-Reliant States study found that 31 states have the potential to produce more renewable energy in-state than they currently use and that another ten could make more than 75 of the amount. The state with the worst potential, Kentucky, could still meet 24 percent of its electricity needs using renewable energy.

The big problem with all of this potential is the cost of setting up the renewable energy production devices. Solar panels are not cheap, and wind farms have their own opponents. While no one expects Texas, for example, to make 533 percent more energy than it needs using renewable sources, ILSR shows that it’s at least possible, and that should give hope to EV proponents (no more coal-powered grid!) and hydrogen vehicle fans (electrolyze water with green energy!) alike. Download the PDF of the study and see for yourself.

[Source: ISLR via Treehugger]

General Motors has been awarded $2.7 million by the Department of Energy to create a working prototype engine using Shape Memory Alloys (SMA). The idea is for the prototype to use SMA tech to capture heat energy from engine exhaust gasses via an electric generator and transfer that energy to recharge batteries for hybrids or electric vehicles.

SMA tech can also theoretically power electronic devices like power seats and windows in a standard gas- or diesel-powered car, perhaps even replacing the power-sapping alternator. The GM press release, which is pasted after the jump, doesn’t go into much depth explaining how memory alloys work, but the basic principle is easy to understand.

"When you heat up a stretched SMA wire, it shrinks back to its pre-stretched length, and when it cools back down it becomes less stiff and can revert to the original shape" said Jan Aase, director of GM’s Vehicle Development Research Laboratory. "A loop of this wire could be used to drive an electric generator to charge a battery."

While $2.7 million isn’t a lot of coin in the realm of GM finances (the General seemed to shed about $2.7 million every ten minutes pre-bankruptcy) the grant was significant in that it was the only monies awarded by the DOE given to an automaker. GM is working with partners from outside the auto industry to make the concept a reality, a practice that the General says is imperative to get breakthroughs like this to market. No timetable was given as to when GM’s SMA concept would see the light of day.

First, there is already serious concern at the U.S. Department of Transportation regarding a steady decline in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) which began at mid-decade. In fact, the current Highway Trust Fund is expected to come up short for the first time since the fund was created at the inception of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. The decline in the Trust Fund is related to a number of changes in our society, i.e. driving habits and demographics, all of which are causing Americans to drive less each year. These trends are not expected to reverse, therefore relying on a tax to reduce gasoline use will succeed as it simultaneously saps revenue from needed programs. Currently less gasoline is being consumed without a tax increase, thus an increase will only speed up the process and transport us more quickly to a point where generating revenue to support the transportation system’s infrastructure will become a critical issue.

Second, as more private and commercial vehicles transition to alternative propulsion there will be an expected decrease in gasoline use. In order to deal with this change, increasing taxes on fossil fuels will initially seem like an attractive option in light of the Trust Fund’s dwindling revenue and as a method of speeding up the transition to EVs and other technologies. The problem in choosing this route is that it will take us to a point in time where there will be less sources of revenue, i.e. gasoline, for our transportation system (e.g. highways, bridges, transit, etc.). This may lead to prolonged neglect of infrastructure which will further decrease VMT. Public transit will not be an option under this scenario as it also relies on revenues generated by taxes on motor fuels.

In the end, the public needs to start thinking now about new ways of generating revenue for the transportation system in order to continue making it more efficient and environmentally sustainable. For example, taxes could be based on the extent of a vehicle’s use of the road network. This could be achieved using GPS to track vehicle miles traveled and calculate a charge for that usage.