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EVs Make Direct Assault on NGV Niche Market
A newcomer in the electric vehicle (EV) sector is making a direct run at part of the natural gas vehicle (NGV) sector’s niche market, light-duty fleet pickup trucks, with the introduction Tuesday of an extended-range EV model at the nation’s premier automotive show in Detroit.
San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) and the start-up EV manufacturer, Orem, UT-based VIA Motors, made the announcement at the auto show as part of a now four-year-old partnership in which PG&E has been operating two demonstration pickup trucks as part of its fleet of 3,500 light-duty vehicles.
VIA’s technology allows for what it bills as a 400-mile range between chargings while carrying onboard power so that the truck itself can be used by the utility service person as an auxiliary source of power in performing restoration or maintenance work at customers’ premises. Trucks, from light to heavy duty, and various heavy equipment have comprised a growing market for natural gas-powered vehicles using either compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG), particularly in the wake of current burgeoning domestic supplies of gas (see Daily GPI, Dec. 29, 2011).
Former General Motors executive and developer of GM’s Chevy Volt electric passenger car Bob Lutz is on VIA Motors’ board and was in Detroit helping launch the new extended range (eREV) vehicles, which include pickups, SUVs and vans. It was Lutz speaking earlier in December last year at the Deloitte Oil & Gas Conference in Houston who pointedly said NGVs had no significant mass consumer demand and the fueling range of the vehicles is very limiting and a stumbling block for natural gas in the transportation sector.
VIA’s major marketing point is its range and exportable power as Lutz and PG&E officials emphasized repeatedly while never mentioning the cost of the new eREV trucks, whose batteries are only good for an initial 40 miles. Then with the help of a six-cylinder gasoline engine the vehicle transitions to what VIA calls a “continuous state of charging,” allowing up to a 400-mile range before the vehicle needs to be plugged into a standard household outlet for charging. Essentially, after the first 40 miles the hybrid vehicle switches back and forth between electric and gasoline power.
“As a hybrid, the vehicle is constantly recharging and that is why it is considered an extended-range, or eREV, electric vehicle,” said PG&E Senior Vice President Greg Pruett. “The combination of electricity and gasoline will give you the 400 miles.”
As a combination utility that historically has had a strong interest in using natural gas-powered fleet vehicles, PG&E sees the two technologies as “complementary” and not necessarily competing, Pruett said. “We also think there is a real place for NGVs. We support anything we can do as a country to diversify the fuel used in mobile transport, particularly utility fleets. It helps the country become more energy independent and reduce carbon emissions.”
Separately, Barclays Capital posted a research note Wednesday projecting that EVs will have what it called “a minimal effect” on power and gas demand through 2020, if current estimates for only modest growth in EV use prove to be accurate. Using sales forecasts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and its own equity research team that forecast power demand growth of 0.02% and 0.10%, respectively, from EVs over the next decade, Barclays estimated that natural gas consumption would only rise what it called a “modest” 7-27 MMcf/d.
In the VIA hybrids an onboard electric motor less than one foot square and weighing a little more than 100 pounds can generate 300 kW and the equivalent of a 402 hp V8 combustion engine.
“This truck has the potential to significantly transform the way we manage electrical outages for our customers,” said Pruett, who said the combination utility has more work to do with VIA in developing these vehicles from demonstration to fully commercial models. From the utility’s testing of the pickups so far, Pruett said it has been estimated that if its full light duty fleet of 3,500 vehicles were eREVs, the utility could lower transportation fleet fuel costs by $9.5 million annually.
VIA has developed a manufacturing facility in Utah, from which it expects to begin mass production of commercial vehicles later this year, said Pruett, noting that PG&E has been testing the first two demonstration vehicles produced by the start-up company. “They anticipate rolling through the beta stage [of further testing] very quickly and moving into full production, and as they do that, the cost of the vehicles is going to come down,” he said.
The anticipated cost of the first commercial vehicles is unknown at this point, Pruett said, conceding they would likely be more than a standard gasoline-powered pickup, SUV or van. “We are not the only energy utility in the nation that wants these, we know that others want these vehicles,” Pruett said. “I can go on and on about the real potential these vehicles have for fleet operations.”
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