Economy cars

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and John Kerry (D-MA)

A mix of electric cars, natural gas and offshore drilling. Can it pass?

If the American Power Act becomes law, it could mean a whole new round of subsidies and tax credits for green cars, and aggressive cuts to emissions. The bill would aim to gradually slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least 4.75 percent by 2013, 17 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050.

But the legislation also includes an offshore drilling expansion that many thought was all but dead in the wake of an explosion at a drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana that killed 11 workers and sent millions of gallons of oil gushing into the ocean. The agency in charge of regulating offshore rigs now stands accused of illegally rubber-stamping some drilling proposals, including the approval it gave to the Deepwater Horizon rig involved in the recent spill.

The repeal of a ban on offshore drilling off the Eastern seaboard has led to threats from congresspeople like Sen. Bill Nelson to vote against the bill, and highlights a discrepancy in the administration’s energy goals.

On the one hand, President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have been fervent supporters of electric vehicles and have backed up their words with billions of dollars in grants for the fledgling industry. On the other, the administration seems to think that more drilling, increased supply and cheaper oil are, at the very least, political necessities to a successful energy policy. While government incentives may be capable of helping to get the first EVs rolling off of the assembly line, many analysts expect the general public to remain ambivalent about hybrids and electrics until gas prices rise significantly.

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A guide to the technologies, battery companies and carmakers that are bringing our electrified future here faster than you think. Plus: 7 promising electric cars on the horizon

How Electric-Car Batteries Are Built
1. Mixing
Lithium-ion batteries—the dominant technology in forthcoming electric cars—begin when active battery ingredients are combined to form an electrode slurry. A liquid solvent, electrode powder (for the negative electrode, a form of carbon; for the positive, a form of lithium-containing metal oxide or phosphate) and a chemical binder are blended into a paste in what look like industrial pizza-dough mixers.

2. Coating
The coater, a machine reminiscent of a printing press, paints the electrode slurry onto long sheets of metal foil (copper for the negative, aluminum for the positive).

3. Curing
The freshly coated sheets pass through an oven for curing at 200ºF. The oven can be a bottleneck; its size and speed determine the rate of production.

4. Shaping and Cleaning
To make rectangular, “prismatic” batteries, machines chop the long reels of electrode material into paperback-size pieces, which are then compressed, brushed, and vacuumed.

5. Stacking
With a piece of porous separator material (it looks like white trash-bag plastic) between them, the positive and negative electrodes are sandwiched together into stacks. The separator prevents short-circuiting while still allowing the electrodes to exchange ions. The stacks go into plastic pouches that are then filled with liquid electrolyte and vacuum-sealed shut. The result is a cell, the building block of a battery.

6. Formation
After pre-charging (just enough juice to start the chemical reaction), the cell is opened, vented, and resealed. Next the cells are charged to 60 percent, then aged for 14 days.

7. Module and Pack Assembly
Cells are bundled together (along with cooling and heating mechanisms, the voltage-monitoring circuitry, and other control systems) to form modules. Modules are then bundled together in a case and wired with additional monitoring circuitry to form the final battery pack, the box that powers a car.

The Rust-Belt Battery Boom
The Department of Energy spent $2.4 billion last year to launch an American EV-battery industry. These are the biggest winners

1. Johnson Controls
Through its partnership with the French battery company Saft, Johnson Controls builds lithium-ion batteries for Mercedes, BMW, Ford and others. A $299.2-million DOE grant goes toward a new factory in Holland, Michigan.

2. A123 Systems
A $249.1-million grant will help the Boston-area company build a cell factory near Detroit, from which it hopes to supply GM, Chrysler and others.

3. Dow Kokam
The Dow Chemical joint venture banked $161 million for a new Michigan lithium-ion factory.

4. Compact Power
A $151.4-million grant will help build a Michigan factory to supply batteries for the Chevy Volt.

5. EnerDel
EnerDel, a supplier for Volvo and Think, is using its $118.5-million share to build a third EV-battery factory in Indianapolis.

Click here for details of seven electric cars hitting production soon

Emerging Electric-Car Hotspots: The East
CHINA
The Chinese government has a goal: rule the global electric-car market by mid-decade. Of China’s 47 car companies, the Shenzhen-based BYD, which says it will begin selling its e6 EV in the U.S. this year, gets the most buzz. Fresh off a $230-million investment by Warren Buffett, BYD wants to surpass Toyota as the world’s largest car company by 2025, and it has an army of 30,000 workers living in high-rise dorms on its four-square-mile campus to make it happen.

JAPAN
Japanese companies have dominated lithium-ion manufacturing since Sony first commercialized the technology in 1991. Those companies have joined Mitsubishi, Nissan and Toyota in the scramble for a place in the new electric-car industry.

SOUTH KOREA
An American arm of the Korean company LG Chem will build batteries for the Chevy Volt.

Emerging Electric-Car Hotspots: The U.S.
SAN FRANCISCO
An intellectual hub for the American electric-car movement, the Bay Area is home to Tesla Motors and various electric-car infrastructure companies. San Francisco is already installing charging stations for the early-adopter market. Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory help supply the EV scene with brainiacs, while the Bay Area’s venture capitalists keep the funding flowing.

LOS ANGELES
Luxury plug-in-hybrid start-up Fisker Automotive is here, along with Coda, an American company scheduled to bring Chinese-built electric cars to the States later this year.

DETROIT
The Big Three automakers are still standing, and at least the two biggest among them, GM and Ford, are betting on electrification. In addition to the Chevy Volt, GM’s Cadillac has designed a plug-in concept that may become reality. Ford’s all-electric Focus and upcoming plug-in hybrid are due out in the next two years. At least four battery companies are building automotive-grade lithium-ion cell factories in Michigan, and GM’s new battery-pack assembly plant began producing Volt batteries in January.

INDIANAPOLIS
The CEO of the Indianapolis-based lithium-ion company EnerDel calls greater Indy the “Silicon Valley of the auto industry.” EnerDel, which makes EV batteries for Volvo, Think and others, is building a third factory here, and electric-drive-component suppliers such as Delphi, Allison Transmission and Remy are also in the area.

SMYRNA, TENNESSEE
Nissan will build up to 150,000 Leaf electric cars per year at its plant in Smyrna by 2012. It will make the batteries for those cars in a Tennessee factory it’s building with a $1.4-billion loan from the DOE.

BOSTON
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a hotbed of advanced energy-storage research, and its professors have a knack for turning lab work into companies. The best known is the lithium-ion start-up A123 Systems. A123 lost its bid to build batteries for the Chevy Volt, but it’s still involved in development projects with GM, and it’s selling batteries to Cessna (for starting jet engines), BAE Systems (for hybrid city buses in New York, Toronto and San Francisco), Fisker and electric utilities, which it supplies with shipping-container-size “grid batteries.” Boston Power, another battery start-up here, is developing EVs with Saab and the Swedish government.

Shanghai already employs supercapacitor buses in its regular Metro system. Supercapacitors have the advantage of incredibly fast charging compared to a standard lithium-ion battery, which allows Shanghai’s super-cap buses to quickly top off every time they coast into a stop. A special electrical connector extends from the roof, making contact with an awning to recharge. It takes about 30 seconds, ideal for a vehicle making frequent and regular stops. Sunwin, the maker of the buses, is a partner of Volvo in China–more info on the super-cap buses can be found here.

Also on hand are more traditional electric buses running on Li-ion batteries. To keep constant service, the batteries can be swapped when empty and recharged overnight, keeping stocks fresh.
Among the numerous smaller electric vehicles, these sightseeing buggies (which are everywhere) run on hydrogen fuel cells.

Check out the rest of our World Expo coverage from Shanghai here:
Photo Guide: The Architecture of the ExpoI Want To Live in the Seed CathedralWorld Expo 2010 Shanghai: We’re HereA Brief, Buttery Ride on Shanghai’s Maglev Train

And if so, what does that future look like?

China’s seemingly unstoppable auto power over the years has worried Detroit, Japan and Europe. Now, their concern may be warranted. China’s budding domestic manufacturers and their 100-percent Chinese-made cars are now poised to enter the export market. So what does that future look like?

Less than thirty years ago, Chinese citizens were forbidden to buy cars. China lifted its control on car purchases in the mid 1980s, and the demand for personal-use automobiles has risen steadily since. Between 1990 and 2000, annual car production grew from just 50,000 to more than 600,000 vehicles. In 2009, the country pumped out 13.8 million cars and sped past Japan to become the world’s largest automobile producer.

Last month, China set a new record for passenger car sales. Sales in March rose to 1.26 million vehicles, a 63 percent jump from a year ago, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. These record sales follow an impressive 2009, when China’s market grew 46 percent to 13.6 million vehicles, compared to a mere 10.4 million in U.S. sales.

While Detroit slowly recovers from poor sales that lost the U.S. its top spot in the industry, it may never again be able to catch up to China. Chinese government incentives and tax cuts are driving first time Chinese buyers, and those already looking for an upgrade, to auto dealerships. And as car manufacturing plants in China are ramping up production to keep up with domestic demand, they’re preparing for what looks to be the next frontier—exports.

The Chinese auto industry has made calculated moves to get to this next step. Numerically, the country is home to far more auto producers than the U.S. or Japan, and many of those are joint ventures with foreign automakers. By law, foreign car companies are required to partner with a Chinese company to do business in China.

Joint ventures in China include Volkswagen, General Motors, and Honda. Despite the famous foreign brand names, most cars made in China today are sold to Chinese consumers. China exported a mere 369,600 vehicles in 2009, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

In May 1983, Chrysler’s Beijing Jeep Corporation became the first joint venture for manufacturing complete vehicles. In 1997, Shanghai General Motors was formed, and a year later the first Buick sedan rolled off the production line there. Of the country’s 47 auto manufacturers today, 26 of them are joint ventures, according to Automotive News.

“By forcing foreign companies to do joint ventures, they have been getting a free education on how to build cars and they are getting better at it,” says T. Russell Shields, a founding officer of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America.

That’s not to say foreign automakers haven’t benefited from sharing their trade secrets.

This March, General Motors sold more cars in China than in the U.S.. Chinese domestic sales for General Motors and its joint ventures in China jumped 66.9 percent in 2009 to a record 1,826,424 vehicles. GM China holds an estimated market share of 13.4 percent and the company predicts sales in 2010 could top 2 million. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company’s joint ventures and wholly owned entities in China delivered record sales of 440,619 vehicles in 2009, an increase of 44 percent from 2008.

While many components used in U.S. cars are already manufactured in China—including the V6 engine in the Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain—this explosive growth of wholly Chinese-made cars could soon mean U.S. showrooms will be filled with “Made in China” bumper stickers. The first of these vehicles to make it to the U.S. will likely be familiar American brands, mostly manufactured in China.

A General Motors document leaked last year suggested the company could be the first to import Chinese-made cars to the U.S., as early as 2011. If it goes through, the GM plan would do little harm to American autoworkers; virtually all of the lost jobs in this case would be Canadian.

You can also expect to see inexpensive, wholly domestic Chinese brands like BYD and Geely imported to the U.S. soon. But first, the cars need some tinkering. “They’re not yet up to our safety standards,” says Shields. “But it’s certainly the case that the Chinese will be selling cars in the U.S. in a few years.”

The trick will be to not to repeat mistakes made by the Germans, British, Japanese and Koreans. “Those early attempts showed the companies were immature in terms of style, content, quality and reliability,” says George Peterson, president of the marketing and consulting firm AutoPacific. “It takes decades to really understand the American market.”

Still, a significant number of Americans are already willing to buy Chinese, according to market research conducted by AutoPacific in 2009. Of new car and light truck buyers in the USA, 16 percent of respondents said they’d be willing to consider a brand from China. “This is a very high number,” Peterson points out, only 11 percent said they’d consider a brand from India. “And those people are younger, more affluent and more highly educated than the typical new car buyer. If a Chinese brand could attract these people it could cause a huge ripple effect among not only the Big Three, but also the Japanese manufacturers selling in the USA.”

In March, China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group set itself up for the ultimate safety challenge. The company purchased the famously secure and boxy Volvo brand for $1.8 billion. The Washington Post reports that the acquisition risks tarnishing the brand without giving Geely the global boost it seeks.

In addition to improving safety records, the Chinese government and automakers are aiming to make the China auto industry a leader in greener cars. Billionaire Warren Buffett first shined the spotlight on the promise of China’s green auto industry in 2008 when he invested in BYD, a Chinese battery and electric car manufacturer.

Aside from the export value of greener vehicles, the Chinese government has a huge domestic interest in cutting fuel use and emissions. Thanks to the auto boom, China is now the second largest consumer of oil, behind the United States.

“China’s vehicle population is going to continue growing rapidly, possibly becoming the largest in the world sometime this decade,” says Vance Wagner, International Policy Adviser at the Vehicle Emission Control Center for the Ministry of Environmental Protection, China.

To help curb fuel use and emissions, China now has more strict fuel economy standards—36.7 miles per gallon—than the U.S., Canada, and Australia. “Gas guzzler” taxes also encourage Chinese buyers to purchase cars that get better mileage.

Meanwhile, manufacturers hope to jump on the global green trend set by Toyota’s Prius.

Last year, Chinese automaker BYD announced it had plans to sell its 5-seat electric car, the E6, in the U.S. in 2010. But The Street reports a more recent press release suggests the company has rolled back its ambitious plans to produce a mere 100 E6 vehicles in the company’s home town of Shenzhen.

Regardless, analysts say electric cars are bound to gain popularity and momentum soon and BYD and other Chinese electric vehicle and battery manufacturers have set themselves up to catch that high-tech wave. Before we see BYD or other Chinese-brand and Chinese-made electric cars in the U.S., we’ll likely see Chinese-made electric batteries in American, European, Japanese, and Korean branded vehicles.

On the forefront of this move is electric carmaker Coda Automotive, which may soon open assembly plants in Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Although the company is Santa-Monica based, the Coda all-electric sedan would be manufactured primarily in China. The car’s chassis and other parts will be assembled in Harbin, and the batteries will be put together in the port city of Tianjin as part of a joint venture with one of China’s biggest battery manufacturers. The car and battery would then be shipped to the U.S. for assembly and sale, with a price tag of about $40,000.

Detroit will keep watch over its shoulder for China’s imminent move onto American home turf. From their own operations in China, they have a good view of what the Chinese are up to. Of special concern are the inexpensive, energy-efficient markets, where U.S. companies have lagged behind. But until a distributor is set up to begin selling Chinese cars, Peterson says, “it appears the Americans aren’t really concerned.” Perhaps they should be. American consumers are already primed to purchase Chinese cars when they finally do arrive.

Still, China is not entirely the evil enemy. Business is booming for Detroit-based companies in China today, and those partnerships are paying off at a time when sales in the U.S. have been less than stellar.

“We’ve helped educate the Chinese and they’re going to be a big force,” says Shields. “And that won’t be too long from now.”

And if so, what does that future look like?

China’s seemingly unstoppable auto power over the years has worried Detroit, Japan and Europe. Now, their concern may be warranted. China’s budding domestic manufacturers and their 100-percent Chinese-made cars are now poised to enter the export market. So what does that future look like?

Less than thirty years ago, Chinese citizens were forbidden to buy cars. China lifted its control on car purchases in the mid 1980s, and the demand for personal-use automobiles has risen steadily since. Between 1990 and 2000, annual car production grew from just 50,000 to more than 600,000 vehicles. In 2009, the country pumped out 13.8 million cars and sped passed Japan to become the world’s largest automobile producer.

Last month, China set a new record for passenger car sales. Sales in March rose to 1.26 million vehicles, a 63 percent jump from a year ago, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. These record sales follow an impressive 2009, when China’s market grew 46 percent to 13.6 million vehicles, compared to a mere 10.4 million in U.S. sales.

While Detroit slowly recovers from poor sales that lost the U.S. its top spot in the industry, it may never again be able to catch up to China. Chinese government incentives and tax cuts are driving first time Chinese buyers, and those already looking for an upgrade, to auto dealerships. And as car manufacturing plants in China are ramping up production to keep up with domestic demand, they’re preparing for what looks to be the next frontier—exports.

The Chinese auto industry has made calculated moves to get to this next step. Numerically, the country is home to far more auto producers than the U.S. or Japan, and many of those are joint ventures with foreign automakers. By law, foreign car companies are required to partner with a Chinese company to do business in China.

Joint ventures in China include Volkswagen, General Motors, and Honda. Despite the famous foreign brand names, most cars made in China today are sold to Chinese consumers. China exported a mere 369,600 vehicles in 2009, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

In May 1983, Chrysler’s Beijing Jeep Corporation became the first joint venture for manufacturing complete vehicles. In 1997, Shanghai General Motors was formed, and a year later the first Buick sedan rolled off the production line there. Of the country’s 47 auto manufacturers today, 26 of them are joint ventures, according to Automotive News.

“By forcing foreign companies to do joint ventures, they have been getting a free education on how to build cars and they are getting better at it,” says T. Russell Shields, a founding officer of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America.

That’s not to say foreign automakers haven’t benefited from sharing their trade secrets.

This March, General Motors sold more cars in China than in the U.S.. Chinese domestic sales for General Motors and its joint ventures in China jumped 66.9 percent in 2009 to a record 1,826,424 vehicles. GM China holds an estimated market share of 13.4 percent and the company predicts sales in 2010 could top 2 million. Meanwhile, Ford Motor Company’s joint ventures and wholly owned entities in China delivered record sales of 440,619 vehicles in 2009, an increase of 44 percent from 2008.

While many components used in U.S. cars are already manufactured in China—including the V6 engine in the Chevrolet Equinox and GMC Terrain—this explosive growth of wholly Chinese-made cars could soon mean U.S. showrooms will be filled with “Made in China” bumper stickers. The first of these vehicles to make it to the U.S. will likely be familiar American brands, mostly manufactured in China.

A General Motors document leaked last year suggested the company could be the first to import Chinese-made cars to the U.S., as early as 2011. If it goes through, the GM plan would do little harm to American autoworkers; virtually all of the lost jobs in this case would be Canadian.

You can also expect to see inexpensive, wholly domestic Chinese brands like BYD and Geely imported to the U.S. soon. But first, the cars need some tinkering. “They’re not yet up to our safety standards,” says Shields. “But it’s certainly the case that the Chinese will be selling cars in the U.S. in a few years.”

The trick will be to not to repeat mistakes made by the Germans, British, Japanese and Koreans. “Those early attempts showed the companies were immature in terms of style, content, quality and reliability,” says George Peterson, president of the marketing and consulting firm AutoPacific. “It takes decades to really understand the American market.”

Still, a significant number of Americans are already willing to buy Chinese, according to market research conducted by AutoPacific in 2009. Of new car and light truck buyers in the USA, 16 percent of respondents said they’d be willing to consider a brand from China. “This is a very high number,” Peterson points out, only 11 percent said they’d consider a brand from India. “And those people are younger, more affluent and more highly educated than the typical new car buyer. If a Chinese brand could attract these people it could cause a huge ripple effect among not only the Big Three, but also the Japanese manufacturers selling in the USA.”

In March, China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group set itself up for the ultimate safety challenge. The company purchased the famously secure and boxy Volvo brand for $1.8 billion. The Washington Post reports that the acquisition risks tarnishing the brand without giving Geely the global boost it seeks.

In addition to improving safety records, the Chinese government and automakers are aiming to make the China auto industry a leader in greener cars. Billionaire Warren Buffett first shined the spotlight on the promise of China’s green auto industry in 2008 when he invested in BYD, a Chinese battery and electric car manufacturer.

Aside from the export value of greener vehicles, the Chinese government has a huge domestic interest in cutting fuel use and emissions. Thanks to the auto boom, China is now the second largest consumer of oil, behind the United States.

“China’s vehicle population is going to continue growing rapidly, possibly becoming the largest in the world sometime this decade,” says Vance Wagner, International Policy Adviser at the Vehicle Emission Control Center for the Ministry of Environmental Protection, China.

To help curb fuel use and emissions, China now has more strict fuel economy standards—36.7 miles per gallon—than the U.S., Canada, and Australia. “Gas guzzler” taxes also encourage Chinese buyers to purchase cars that get better mileage.

Meanwhile, manufacturers hope to jump on the global green trend set by Toyota’s Prius.

Last year, Chinese automaker BYD announced it had plans to sell its 5-seat electric car, the E6, in the U.S. in 2010. But The Street reports a more recent press release suggests the company has rolled back its ambitious plans to produce a mere 100 E6 vehicles in the company’s home town of Shenzhen.

Regardless, analysts say electric cars are bound to gain popularity and momentum soon and BYD and other Chinese electric vehicle and battery manufacturers have set themselves up to catch that high-tech wave. Before we see BYD or other Chinese-brand and Chinese-made electric cars in the U.S., we’ll likely see Chinese-made electric batteries in American, European, Japanese, and Korean branded vehicles.

On the forefront of this move is electric carmaker Coda Automotive, which may soon open assembly plants in Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Although the company is Santa-Monica based, the Coda all-electric sedan would be manufactured primarily in China. The car’s chassis and other parts will be assembled in Harbin, and the batteries will be put together in the port city of Tianjin as part of a joint venture with one of China’s biggest battery manufacturers. The car and battery would then be shipped to the U.S. for assembly and sale, with a price tag of about $40,000.

Detroit will keep watch over its shoulder for China’s imminent move onto American home turf. From their own operations in China, they have a good view of what the Chinese are up to. Of special concern are the inexpensive, energy-efficient markets, where U.S. companies have lagged behind. But until a distributor is set up to begin selling Chinese cars, Peterson says, “it appears the Americans aren’t really concerned.” Perhaps they should be. American consumers are already primed to purchase Chinese cars when they finally do arrive.

Still, China is not entirely the evil enemy. Business is booming for Detroit-based companies in China today, and those partnerships are paying off at a time when sales in the U.S. have been less than stellar.

“We’ve helped educate the Chinese and they’re going to be a big force,” says Shields. “And that won’t be too long from now.”

Nissan has announced pricing for their all-electric Leaf, due to go on sale here in December: $32,780. Although the deal sweetens when you factor in the applicable income tax credit of $7,500–which effectively brings the price down to $25,280, or about as much as a new Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. Check out our test drive of the Leaf here.

The NAS research panel will look into how electromagnetic interference, computer error, hardware and software design, human error, and a host of other factors can influence sudden acceleration and deceleration in cars controlled by computer. The NASA side will concentrate solely on how electromagnetic interference, not floor mats, human error, or faulty gas pedals, may have led to the sudden acceleration that instigated the recall.

Overall, the investigation will cost around $3 million, and ensure that Jay Leno has monologue fodder for the duration of the study.

[The Wall Street Journal]

Without a doubt it’s an interesting idea, and as such the company has poured 1.5 million euros into developing the concept into a working prototype. According to the company, solar panels on the roof could deliver enough power to propel a single three-seater 12.5 miles before the other power source needs to kick in, and its small design would certainly make it no less viable a city car than the Smart Cars that dot the curbs of many European burgs. But a car that docks with other cars? The benefits are dubious, to say the least.

To answer (or not) a few of your questions: we’re not really sure exactly how this automotive merging is supposed to take place (nose-to-tail? side-by-side?). And we’re not really sure if the car will be sold as a set of two or as individual three-seater units. But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves; we’d actually be pretty surprised to see something like this go to market, Voltron-esque style points notwithstanding.

[Autopia UK]

The concept of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration would do away with simply considering hybrid electric cars as energy consumers that require stations or places to plug into the electric grid and recharge their batteries.

“Cars sit most of the time,” said Jeff Stein, a mechanical engineer at the University of Michigan who leads the NSF-funded effort. “What if it could work for you while it sits there?”

Such future vehicles would essentially double as mobile holding tanks for electricity while sitting unused in their garages. That could prove especially useful if the electric grid begins to rely more on renewable sources of energy such as solar or wind power, which provide intermittent energy that requires storage.

But major challenges lie ahead for this vision. Stein’s team has made some progress in understanding how battery health and life is affected by constant charging and recharging, because “what’s good for the battery isn’t necessarily good for the grid,” and vice versa.

The engineers also want to understand how future ownership of hybrid electric vehicles affects the electric grid, and specifically the reliability and stability of the grid. Our advice — take a look at Google’s project to create “smart charging” software for electric cars.

[via ScienceDaily]

A private plane carrying three employees of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc., crashed this morning in a residential East Palo Alto neighborhood, killing all those aboard and damaging several local homes. Shortly after taking off from Palo Alto Airport at 7:55 am PT, the twin-engine plane went down in thick fog, hitting a PG&E tower near the Dumbarton Bridge. Nobody on the ground was injured.

The plane was a Cessna 310, registered to a company owned by Tesla’s senior electrical engineer, Doug Bourn. Though the names of the passengers are being withheld at the moment, early speculation is that all three were Tesla executives. CEO Elon Musk, who was not involved in the crash, released a statement shortly after. “Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company” said Musk. “This is a tragic day for us.”

The crash comes just a month after the company filed papers with the SEC in anticipation of a $100 million initial public offering.

Update:: Sources told Edmunds.com that the dead were Doug Bourn, 56, of Santa Clara; Brian M. Finn, 42, of East Palo Alto; and Andrew Ingram, 31, of Palo Alto. All three men were engineers for Tesla.

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A retooled Nissan factory is expected to create up to 1,300 jobs in the U.S.

The 2011 Nissan Leaf won one of PopSci’s “Best of What’s New” awards last year, and for good reason. Nissan’s vehicle may is the first truly mass-market electric car aimed at commuters, with a 100-mile range on its lithium-ion batteries and a price tag supposedly under $30,000. A PopSci test drive showed that the small car is surprisingly highway-worthy. And Nissan plans to eventually ramp up production to 150,000 electric vehicles annually.

Nissan represents the third vehicle manufacturer to sign a DOE loan agreement — Ford and Tesla Motors each received $5.9 billion and $465 million, respectively. Ford has its electric Focus lined up for next year, and Tesla has also been working on its Model S electric sedan for a 2011 debut.

The DOE also throws in the fun fact that Nissan’s loan-backed efforts should save 65.4 million gallons of gas per year, or about six times the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez back in 1989. But somehow that leaves us just feeling mildly angrier about the oil spill rather than inspired by the fuel savings … at least until we can ditch the hybrids.