Sebastian James

Stories By Sebastian James

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  EVs and Transportation

  EVs and Transportation By Sebastian James

  Don't Believe the Hype: Tesla's Model 3 Doesn't Mean Gasoline is Dead. Yet

  So...Elon Musk stands on a stage in front of a $35,000 Tesla Model 3, and people lose their damn minds. You've read about Model 3-mania. How 276,000 pre orders (after 4 days) mean billions in sales for the new kid on the block. How the number of pre-orders is confirming some people's faith in our ability to fend off corporate influence. How the Model 3 should kill off Chevy's Bolt electric car. And how the Model 3 is spinning the automotive industry into an existential crisis. But here's a piece of breathless rhetoric that caught my eye came from Green Business: "Why Tesla's Model 3 sales surge should make the oil industry sit up and take notice". Trust me, the oil industry has already been paying attention. And they're not quaking. They're not quaking now, and they won't be for awhile. But they know their day is coming, like a horse-drawn buggy maker who saw his first Model T in 1908. As a person who writes about green automotive and technology in general, it would be easy to join the hype machine. But as a level-headed Midwesterner, I understand that the despite the popularity of hybrid, electric and diesel cars, they are nowhere near toppling the gasoline internal combustion engine as King of the Car. Why am I not ready to claim the green car as King of the Future? Actually...I am ready to claim that. But the numbers tell us that the green car won't be king of the present and near future. Let's take a look. Below is a screenshot from a really cool interactive data feature I found at the Annual Energy Outlook, a publication of the Energy Information Administration. It's on US Light Duty Vehicle Stock from 2012 projected to 2040. Here's where they get their data. We will look at 2014-2020. I use the image instead of the embed, because it tells more at a glance. I encourage you to click through and look at the chart live. As of 2014, there were 122.72 million conventional cars in America, broken out by gasoline and diesel. Moving down, you see the breakout of alt-fuel cars (hybrids, electrics, fuel cell, etc). "100 mile Electric Vehicle" means electric vehicles with a range of up to 100 miles. "Plug-in 10 Gasoline Hybrid" means a gas hybrid car with an all-electric range of up to 10 miles. And so forth. Take a look, and you'll see some things that the "breathless rhetoric" types tend to ignore, forget, or don't think to include: By 2020, conventional car stock will flatten and decrease to 121.82 million. Alt-fuel car stock will grow to almost 10 million between 2014 and 2020. Gasoline already has a big lead. They forget about Ethanol/Flex-fuel cars. In 2014, Flex fuel cars accounted for 2.97 of 6.2 million alt fuel cars. By 2019, gasoline hybrids stocks should surpass Flex-fuel. After that, alt fuel stocks will grow faster than flex-fuel. If you project out to 2040, there will be 135 million conventional cars, 20.9 million green cars, and 156.27 million cars total. It is safe to say gasoline will be king for awhile. At the same time, declining market share is the future of gasoline. These projections don't take into account new vehicles, technological innovations, marketing and buyer incentives. If you make it easier for people to buy alt fuel cars, whether through design, innovation or price--they'll do it. Another thing not leveraged into the data is the impact of China and India. China is already looking to clean up their air through more EVs. India is just beginning to look seriously at alt fuels. These two countries are the future of the automobile, no matter the power train. If these two countries embrace alt fuel technology, the market for green cars will explode. We will see economies of scale in place for hybrids and EVs that cost a lot less than the Model 3. Consumer tastes in emerging markets will also heavily influence sales growth of alt fuel cars. When it comes to status symbols, the emerging markets take their lead from the West. As the West shows off with green supercars and SUVs , so will the entrepreneurs and salarymen in these newly-minted free markets. So the next time you read or talk to someone about the Model 3, or green cars in general, understand that great gains are being done. But the gasoline engine will still be around. For now.

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  EVs and Transportation

  EVs and Transportation By Sebastian James

  How Anonymous Data Can Help Americans Accept Connected and Self-driving Cars

  Connected cars and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) will lower the number of accidents and incidents, forcing insurers to rebuild mechanisms currently used to measure risk and generate revenue. Local and state governments will also feel the pinch of safer driving, through declining revenue from speed and other moving violations. The general thinking is that as technology increases safety, insurers will shift the search for premium revenue to automotive manufacturers from drivers. Accidents become product liability claims. But I wonder if insurance companies can maintain their stock prices in this brave new world. From the link above: According to forecasts released by KPMG this week, a decline in accident frequency due to safer vehicles and the adoption of autonomous vehicles could shrink the US personal auto insurance sector by 60% within 25 years. For FY 2014, Progressive Insurance alone took in $18.4 billion in gross revenue from premiums. What is the amount that the entire US auto industry insurance would need in order to stay at current levels? $200 billion? $750 billion? $2 trillion? I'm crazy about the benefits of what connected cars and ADAS can do. I'm not crazy about what tinpot government and insurance company dictators could do with vehicle information. I am certain that insurers do not want to be your co-pilot. But record low stock prices have a way of making organizations think differently. I think a knee-jerk response would see them try to exploit the technology to find lost revenue. The best way to accomplish that is to create schemes that make people feel comfortable with exchanging vehicle and personal information for lower than normal fines and premiums. The scheme is already underway in the insurance industry and is called "usage-based insurance (UBI)". Over a million Americans are holding their nose and plugging insurance company OBD-II data collectors into their cars, exchanging privacy for lower rates. There hasn't been a stampede to adopt UBI. This might be because people don't want insurers as back seat drivers, and vice-versa. Or because insurers have yet to market an offer that people can't refuse. Either way, self-reporting should continue to grow. It makes sense that the detail provided from self-reported data would help establish a new baseline for traffic safety. However, as insurers get comfortable integrating streams of almost real-time traffic data into their risk calculations, the question is whether consumers would benefit from the new baseline or whether it is a new starting point for existing rates. I am sure we will never know. But we will pay. No matter, self-reporting sets consumers up for a new kind of rate increase. If you choose to enroll in these usage-based insurance plans, you plug an OBD II dongle in for a month and your insurance company bases your new custom premium on a set of factors. There is nothing keeping them from asking you to plug in again so they can add new factors going forward. The "snapshot" becomes a "movie", where you'd ultimately leave the dongle in place. There is also nothing keeping them from manipulating your custom rate based on your driving behaviors and how they relate to the baseline. If your average speed is 26 mph, and the new baseline is 22 mph, say hello to a possible increase. If you pass a lot and the baseline says others do not, get out your wallet. How else could we be tracked and charged? Let us start with a common example, tollway information. My state, the State of Illinois, collects tolls through a system called I-Pass. Your state probably has something similar. A car equipped with a small mobile transponder unit communicates with a fixed reader as the two pass each other. Readers are located at tollway entrances, exits and "open road tolling" areas where masses of them are suspended above a portion of roadway capturing toll information at whatever speed the driver is doing. In a future where governments receive 50% less revenue from motor vehicle penalties, I can see an intrepid politician or two take up the cause of using the system to ticket and fine the vehicle owner. Prior to building open road tolling stations, Illinois sidestepped an tsunami of outrage when they legislated that readers would not capture the speed of I-Pass equipped cars. I-Pass is in a category called V2I, or "vehicle to infrastructure". V2I could be used for great purposes, like giving you proximity to twisty turns, railroad crossings, or public safety vehicles stopped at the roadside. Reflective V2I devices embedded into the centerline of a road could increase the quality of lane markings—-as well as be a way to track VINs and fine you for passing illegally. This information would naturally be forwarded to your insurer, meaning higher rates. V2V is for "vehicle to vehicle", and is another category that can be used for good or folly. Under ADAS, cars would transmit data containing speed, direction, operating condition and other key functions to approaching and passing vehicles, significantly lessening the chance of impact. If an oncoming car could tell you that it's brakes are out, then you could be warned ahead of time. V2V could make for some really ingenious ways to save lives. V2V could also be used to identify the behavior and VINs of vehicles around you, match it with insurance company data and become an indirect way to penalize or reward drivers. As well as fine the vehicle owner. The solution to the problems above is anonymous and aggregated data. During the routine exchange of information, whether V2I, V2V, or V2 whatever, the VIN must stay close to anonymous. Anonymized data means we continue to follow the current convention of investigating accidents and incidents. If fault is found, only then would the VIN and owner identity be revealed to the government and insurance companies. If we need to track a bad guy based on travel patterns or activity, a court order could unlock that information in the same way as it does today. Aggregating the data means the government would pass on behavioral information without specifically identifying a VIN. For example, the government uses V2I to measure 60 minutes of driving behavior at an intersection. In that hour, 5000 vehicles pass through an intersection and exhibit a number of behaviors. Most normal, some horrible, a few dangerous. Aggregation would conceal the VINs of the individual vehicles and still allow for the measurement of behavior. The adoption of anonymized and aggregated data means the insurance benefits of real-time traffic information can be spread across all drivers, whether they are in a 1996 Pontiac Sunfire, or a 2017 Volvo S90 with all the semi autonomous bells and whistles. The market experience is unchanged for the consumer, but much more reality-based for the insurer. Consumers may not need to self-report to get a better rate, as the risk profile is much more accurate, and could be refreshed quickly. The road to mass adoption of self-driving cars is a long time away. The age of semi-autonomous cars, where we have the choice of when to drive or be driven, is upon us. Connectivity and data privacy are important issues that will drive the adoption rate. No one wants an insurance company looking over their shoulder while they drive. Nor do they want to self-report themselves into violations or fines. Legislated rules around data anonymity and aggregation are the only way citizens will understand that they are the ones doing the driving.

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  EVs and Transportation

  EVs and Transportation By Sebastian James

  What is the Fuel Station of the Future? Ask Nissan

  At the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, Nissan and Foster + Partners concluded a 12-month collaboration by sharing their vision of where autonomous electric cars could take society. Called "Intelligent Mobility", it builds on themes of connectivity, urban planning, the modern workplace, and community. Before we go any farther, you have to watch this video. Unless you like reading without context. Intelligent Mobility is the grand vision encompassing Nissan's Intelligent Driving System, or IDS. Introduced last year, IDS is their take on semi-autonomous cars. We have been very big on it over at the Hybrid and Electric Car News. The system is an ingenious way to onboard people to semi-autonomous driving. Under human control, an IDS vehicle uses an algorithm to learn the best of how a person drives. The car mimics that behavior in autonomous mode. Think about that. If the self-driving experience is seamless from one's normal driving habits, a logical barrier to adoption could be overcome. "Technology holds many of the answers for the challenges we face in our cities today," said Paul Willcox, chairman, Nissan Europe. "However, the true power comes when those technologies are integrated with each other and the world around us. We've been at the forefront of zero emission technology since 2010, but our vision does not stop there. We believe that the future of transportation is reliant on both infrastructure and the environment. We're looking for real, workable solutions that go beyond the product." Watch the video. Intelligent Mobility implies a virtuous cycle between electric cars and the infrastructure of the local utility. Cars contribute battery power to the grid, mitigating household and business electrical usage. In turn, the local utility replenishes battery charge. I would imagine that there is some kind of staged draw/replenish in their vision, allowing each vehicle to contribute a certain amount of power back to the system. Whether the donation would come before or after topping off the battery is one of many good questions to ask. The world of Intelligent Mobility utilizes more alt energy sources. I would imagine that the Nissan Leafs and IDS's in this future depend heavily on solar charging to help replenish onboard batteries. Which addresses some of the questions in the above paragraph. I am led to think that EV batteries and charging stations are significantly more powerful than today's models. The idea of cars self-driving themselves to and from a charging station while owners sleep is really cool. My question is how long it takes to charge versus the number of cars in the scheme. Think of a city street with 24 cars and 2 chargers on each side. If the charging system takes more than 20 minutes to fill a battery from 25% full, then the scheme will run out of time. If you let your mind go you can see the big challenges to government. If you install 2 wireless induction chargers on each side of a block, how does a moderate sized municipality budget for the cost of construction and maintenance? Does Intelligent Mobility see a reformed highway and infrastructure plan funded by miles driven instead of gas taxes? Who decides what neighborhoods get the wireless chargers first? Gentrified areas? Areas where college grads live? Or where blue-collar, service and retail-class families live? Remember when the car drove into the building, past the cube farm and into a parking carousel? I understand the point Nissan was making. But do the cars drive in during a snowstorm? Torrential rains? What is the impact on a buildings HVAC with cars coming in and out all day? How do you work with cars coming in and out all day? How do you get out if the carousel breaks? Who will pay for brownfield mitigation when we start plowing over gas stations and gasoline distribution facilities? In this scenario, Big Oil has probably been reduced to Little Puddle, and won't have big bucks to pay to clean up their messes. Don't get me wrong, I would love to live in an Intelligent Mobility city. However, I am as pragmatic as I am a dreamer. This, along with all imagined futures, are filled with engineered outcomes built on the best of intentions. I think over 40% of Nissan's vision can be accomplished with current technology. The tech will improve and get cheaper, lowering the threshold for the rest. But new tech can only go so far. The "last mile" of making Intelligent Mobility real will depend upon technology reliability, usability and politics. Not the most stable 3-legged stool a person could stand on....

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  EVs and Transportation

  EVs and Transportation By Sebastian James

  JD Power: 20% of All Owner Complaints are About Bad Car Tech

  On February 24, 2016, JD Power released their Vehicle Dependability Study for 2016. In the pages of this report, there is the usual news and the real news. In the "usual" news, JD Power, a consumer ratings agency cites Lexus, Porsche and Buick as the 3 marques with the lowest number of problems per 100 vehicles. The report identifies the 3 most reliable cars by vehicle segment, and you'd be surprised to see the mix of domestic and foreign names. Now for the real news. Technology usability and reliability issues represent 20% of all customer reported problems. The report accurately describes a daisy chain of misery for a car owner. They buy a new vehicle full of audio, communication, entertainment and navigation tech (known to the industry as ACEN). Soon, elements of the ACEN do not work properly. The owner rarely takes the time to get issues resolved at the dealer, or figure it out on their own. At the end of the term, the owner buys another vehicle full of tech, and the cycle repeats. "The increase in technology-related problems has two sources," Renee Stephens, vice president of U.S. automotive at J.D. Power, noted. "Usability problems that customers reported during their first 90 days of ownership are still bothering them three years later in ever-higher numbers. At the same time, the penetration of these features has increased year over year." Think about that quote. Owners report that ACEN doesn't work, or they can't understand how to make it work within the first 90 days of ownership. THREE years later the same problems are still unresolved. What makes it worse, additional problems--real, imagined, user error or not--lower the chances for repeat business even more. ...The problems most often reported by owners are Bluetooth pairing/connectivity and built-in voice recognition systems misinterpreting commands. Navigation system difficult to use and navigation system inaccurate are also among the 10 most frequently reported problems...Among owners who experienced no problems with their vehicle, 55% purchased the same brand again. In contrast, only 41% of owners who experienced three or more problems with their vehicle stayed with the same brand for their next purchase. Additionally, only a third of owners who had to replace a component outside of normal wear items said they would definitely repurchase or lease the same brand again.... I have seen this firsthand. My wife leased a 2015 Mazda CX-5, complete with Technology Package. First, the bluetooth is slow to load. What do I mean by that? It is slow.....to.....load. Next, the voice recognition is horrible. Had I said the previous sentence to the car's unit, it might interpret that as "The velvet pizza is commendable". Third is the navigation system. It's brilliant--as long as you're not moving. Programming a route is like going back to the early days of GPS devices. You need a Zip Code to start the programming process, which most people don't readily have. It would be nice if we could use the voice recognition to program the navigation. But...see the paragraph above. And the technology experience lazily augurs into the ground from there. Otherwise the CX-5 is great. It is a peppy and fun drive. We have found the car to be pretty reliable. Save for the technology. Yes, the two of us need to get some wine, the manual, some Mazda YouTube videos and figure out once and for all how to use the car. But if I'm getting a glass of wine, heading to the garage is not the next thing I want to do. So what can be done to bridge this usability gap? I've made some suggestions before at the Hybrid and Electric Car News. Those are a few solutions, what are others? One is pretty simple. On the test drive, buyers need to use the technology. Program the navigation, talk to the voice recognition, connect your phone via bluetooth, stream music and everything else you think you will do with the new car. Leave no button un-pushed, no screen un-tapped. This will drive the salesperson insane. To which I say "so what". Another obvious solution is for automakers to think even more about usability. Just as icons and functions are generally the same between Apple and Android, perhaps carmakers should coalesce around a similar presentation of icons and functions. If you have a problem with something in your vehicle, you should be able to use your phone or an on-board device to access diagnostic video. You should be also able to use the electronics of your vehicle to chat with a service representative. Think of it like OnStar, but for figuring out how to use the voice recognition. I don't know how often automakers push software updates, but the pace needs to increase. Or start. The evolution of automotive tech--ACEN and more--is driven by the pace of change we see in consumer electronics. But, unlike a lot of consumer items, car tech it is not that easy to use, and doesn't work reliably. The impact of usability, reliability and customer acceptance is even more important these days given the massive changes in driving and mobility. How can we trust a self-driving car with our families if vehicles don't recognize what we are saying? How can we trust autonomous driving if we don't trust the nav to take us to the destination via our favorite route? What are your tales of ACEN woe? The button that no longer does anything? The feature you most wanted that doesn't function right? Has it affected your opinion of the automaker? How do you plan to address it in your next vehicle purchase?

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