April 11, 2013

Special Press Conference begins at 2pm inside Henry Ford Museum 

(Dearborn, Mich. – April 5, 2013) –Edison2, the winners of the 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE, will unveil their latest Very Light Car (VLC) architecture on Thursday, April 11, 2013 at The Henry Ford. This special press conference will begin at 2 p.m. next to the organization’s original winning VLC on display inside Henry Ford Museum’s Driving America exhibit. 

After their 2010 X Prize victory, Edison2 went to work designing the next VLC. The new prototype is designed to address to consumers' needs and incorporates lessons learned from the prestigious X Prize competition. 

Edison2's new VLC has remarkable handling, structural integrity and aerodynamics, made possible by its unique modular architecture. This architecture gave birth to the world’s most efficient four passenger vehicle, one of which now resides inside Henry Ford Museum’s Driving America exhibit. Many core technologies have been improved in new prototype, including a newly designed in-wheel suspension system, a more efficient aerodynamic shape with beautiful aesthetics and more interior space, and other refinements throughout the vehicle. Edison2's architecture has a promising future in domestic and international markets; it makes low investment, U.S. manufacture possible, and has applications in suspension and vehicle segments far beyond Edison2's current designs. 

“We are proud to unveil our new VLC architecture here at The Henry Ford, directly next to our history making X Prize VLC,” Edison2’s CEO and founder, Oliver Kuttner remarked. “The auto industry has been refining the same architecture for more than 50 years, and Edison2 has created a new path - a new way of building a car that has many environmental and economic benefits. Much of this relies on Edison2’s in-wheel suspension which can be seen on the VLC prototype we will be displaying.” 

Oliver Kuttner, a Charlottesville, Virginia entrepreneur and lifelong auto enthusiast, founded Edison2 LLC in 2007. He assembled a top-tier team of racing and aerospace engineers, designers and mechanics for the X Prize competition. For Hi-res photos visit the Edison2 website www.edison2.com/for-media/.

About Edison2

Edison2 combines sound physics with innovative design to produce workable and sustainable transportation solutions. They won the top prize ($5 million) in the 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize with the Very Light Car (VLC), an unprecedented combination of light weight and low aerodynamic drag. Weighing 830 lbs and with a drag coefficient of 0.160 – lowest ever recorded at the GM Aero Lab for a 4 passenger car – the X Prize VLC achieved 110 MPGe (combined) and 129 MPGe (highway) at the X Prize, using a 250 cc internal combustion engine. In 2011, an all-electric VLC was rated at 350 MPGe in the EPA combined cycle, demonstrating the importance of platform efficiency. Since winning the X Prize, Edison2 has been working in their Lynchburg, Virginia facility on a stunning new version of the VLC. Although the next generation VLC uses the same architecture and virtues of efficiency that won Edison2 the X Prize, it is a completely new vehicle. It is designed to be capable of meeting regulatory requirements (beyond 2025 CO2 and MPG regulations), and will have production-car fit-and-finish, safety, comfort and handling at an affordable price. 

It takes two to collide. But in official crash tests, only one vehicle is instrumented to measure impact forces and damage. What happens to the opposing car and the people inside it? 

In accidents, people are killed by acceleration forces and how they arrive. Edison2 is very serious about occupant protection. Serious enough that we created a new automobile architecture which reduces these fatal forces by deflecting their crash energy. We recently achieved exceptional results in an official Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) 40% offset head-on crash test. In that crash, the human test dummy in our Very Light Car experienced less than half the acceleration forces imparted by conventional cars with crash test ratings of “good”.   

Because it’s designed to deflect crash energy, our VLC provided twice the protection in this IIHS test. Did we kill the dummies in the other car? That’s hard to answer with certainty because, as we said above, the opposing vehicle is not instrumented. 

In fact, there is no another vehicle. In 40% offset head-on crash tests, the “opposing vehicle” is a standardized target made of aluminum honeycomb. When crashed into, this target deforms in a way that realistically and repeatedly mimics how the “opposing vehicle” is damaged. In the IIHS test, this target is mounted on a concrete block weighing 1000 tons. The test car is driven into the target at 40 mph, and the results are recorded by very precise instrumentation. 

What isn’t recorded is what happens to the target, which for test purposes represents a real car with real people. But consider the evidence in our photograph: it shows two identical IIHS targets; the one on the left was hit by an ordinary compact car, the one on the right by a VLC. The difference is not subtle. The ordinary car absolutely slammed its opponent and the people inside it. In contrast, by deflecting away from the collision, the VLC protected its own occupants and, as our photo suggests, greatly reduced the impact suffered by people in the other car. 

The phrase “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” was invented by American boxing legend Muhammad Ali. And like Ali himself, the record-breaking efficiency, exceptional handling and crash deflecting design of our Very Light Car means it too floats like a butterfly – in all the right ways. 

And if there’s an accident, the VLC does what the best conventional cars do, it protects the people inside. But it also provides a level of safety others can’t. These crash-test targets illustrate something unique to our VLC: it protects occupants without generating huge accelerations on the people in the opposing car. We float – and sting – like a butterfly. 

It’s less well known but Muhammad Ali also said: “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.”  At Edison2, we do our best to pay rent in advance. 

With feedback from running to date in hand, we decided to change the steering rack from the Option 1 to Option 2 bearing configuration. This involved completely dismantling the rack to reconfigure the bearings. While inside the unit, we had the opportunity to inspect the primary components and were pleased to see that all operational signatures appeared good. In its new guise, the rack is back on chassis 18. 

In the light of a complete strip and inspection of the front suspension, revised ball bearing kingpin thrust washers have been incorporated in the new front axle build. Combined with the rack development work described above, the steering now displays a particularly smooth action. 

Further development includes new front wishbone carrier assembly pieces that are already on the car and the imminent availability of new front damper spring platforms. 

The rear suspension and driveline continues its gratifying absence of problems. With accumulating experience of Chassis 18’s electric motor characteristics, the decision has been made to make revised gearing available for test. New parts offering a 4.5% shorter overall ratio are now in process. 

Production questions continue to be explored with procurement work this week concentrating on the car’s roller bearing wheel hubs.

Driver comments and feedback are encouraging and match expectations given the car’s present build. This finding allows us to make development decisions with good confidence. In short, knowledge of the new car, its performance and operation is accumulating rapidly.

Meanwhile, work in the machine shop continues on development parts for future testing and assessment. As they become available, these new parts will be sequenced into the program for proper evaluation.

Edison2 community outreach continued this week. Visits included a party from Central Virginia Community college whose machine shop trainees are already working on production evaluation parts for our future cars.

On April 11 we are unveiling the consumer production prototype at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. Preparations are well under way for this exciting event featuring the vehicle we’re currently testing and inspecting. 

PROGRESS REPORT – 2013 Week 9 - 2/27/2013

A good week. The first VLC 4.0 rolling chassis stood on its wheels this Monday and has gained favourable responses for all who have seen and sat in it. In the hands of our founder, Oliver Kuttner, chassis #018 was driven for the first time today.

 An extensive test program is being planned and will be under way in the next few days but early impressions gained in the Lynchburg shop parking lot are favourable. The car drives particularly smoothly and has already demonstrated much improved refinement from the competition cars. 

It was gratifying that first-estimate spring and damper settings yielded excellent ride quality over rough blacktop. Suspension anti pitch vector action met design expectations and permitted full acceleration and hard use of the powerful new brakes while maintaining a nearly level attitude. This is an additional step forwards from the X-Prize cars. 

From the absence of harshness transmitted to the main frame, the isolation function of the new compliant axle beam mounts appears successful. Although it is too early to say whether the mounts’ stability enhancement function is working as hoped, it is already fair to say they cause no harm. 

While of course work remains to be done and matters arising will continue to emerge, a post-running inspection has turned up no problems worth the name. This is an encouraging start indeed for an entirely new car. 

Next steps include beginning a ride, handling, motor control and regen strategy scan.

Welcome to the first in a series about the EPA's new CO2 regulations. Our first entry is a compelling overview and expose of powerful new regulations the media is not covering. In the coming months we'll explore why these regulations matter. And we'll reveal, innovation by innovation, why Edison2's game-changing solutions are the best fit for this regulatory vision of an efficient, planet-friendly transportation future. Please join the conversation and enjoy our new series!

CO2...This is important.

#1. Overview

Many are not aware of this, but the United States had two Super Bowls in February 2012: The first, Giants vs. Patriots, lasted three hours. The Giants prevailed. The second, 100 industry giants and fifteen states vs. the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), lasted two days. This epic showdown combined twenty-six appeals from a deep bench of lawyers over ten pages long. [1]

The giants did not prevail. In June 2012, the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from mobile sources – the cars we drive – was upheld by the DC Court of Appeals. On October 15, the EPA and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued their joint final rule. [2] In short, mobile source CO2 regulation, AKA The Tailpipe Rule, is here to stay.   

Starting in 2017, if automakers fail to meet EPA limits for CO2 emissions four years in a row, the EPA now has the power to make it illegal for manufacturers to sell their vehicles with the highest CO2 tailpipe emissions. [3] [4] In other words, the heaviest, sportiest, most luxurious vehicles – iconic brands like Mercedes 500, Camaro SS and Range Rover – could be banned from entering commerce in the United States. [5] 

In 2009, a presidential memorandum directed the EPA to coordinate with NHTSA on CO2 and MPG requirements. This convergence of regulation was created to help the United States address oil consumption and climate change. [6]

What this means is automakers are now in a regulatory vice that closes more each year; CO2 limits get lower and MPG requirements get higher, and the rate of change is increasing. MPG requirements that went up 9.5 MPG in 31 years [7] will now shoot up twice that amount in less than half the time. [8] This is the 2025, 54.5 MPG requirement the media is covering.    

What isn’t being covered are the new CO2 limits and EPA’s power to remove cars from commerce. Automakers taking this threat seriously are scrambling for solutions in technologies they or their partners own. The EPA combined these technologies into 47,000 unique packages and ran analysis to determine which were most effective at reducing vehicle CO2 emissions. [9]

There are two problems with this approach: physics and cost. The decades-old chassis and suspension design (architecture) in our modern cars is inefficient and heavy. As efficiency requirements go up, physics makes it increasingly difficult to meet those requirements with incremental solutions, and automakers end up throwing significant capital at inefficient architecture. Stacking incremental technologies like advanced downsized turbo diesel and gasoline engines, gasoline direct-injection and start-stop, and eventually more effective but pricy Plug-in and electric drivetrains and batteries, exotic materials and more onto legacy architecture...it starts to resemble lipstick on a pig - expensive lipstick.

If automakers succeed in complying without addressing inefficient architecture, the lipstick-on-a-pig approach could make cars bought by average consumers expensive enough to create real problems. [10] Affordable cars could shrink to unsafe sizes; consumers could shun compliance cars in favor of cheaper gasoline-only cars or pre-regulation cars; CO2 compliance would fail as a result; and the EPA would ban well-known vehicles. Some of this near-future exists today in the low sales of high-tech compliant cars and the new automakers who are either struggling or extinct. 

The silver lining to this is scattered throughout the EPA/NHTSA final rule, studies that show Edison2's credo of lower mass and lower aerodynamic drag is effective, and affordable. [11] [12] [13]

Together, Edison2's patented in-wheel suspension and new chassis design offer a true leap in automotive efficiency and a viable solution to the regulatory vice. Our vehicle is compliant beyond 2025 regulations today, and is designed from the ground up to be economically feasible for automakers and consumers. This is because our platform innovations enable expensive drivetrains, batteries, components, total vehicle parts and material input to be downsized to cost-efficient levels. We accomplish this without costly, exotic materials, and without sacrificing the performance, ride, safety and handling that consumers are accustomed to. Efficient architecture makes all the difference.

Rapidly implementing solutions like Edison2's is critical if automakers hope to create affordable, desirable passenger vehicles that keep pace with increasingly stringent CO2 and MPG requirements.

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Reference help: The links beside EPA/NHTSA require copy/pasting the link into a new window and take up to 10 seconds to load the page and cue to the correct paragraph. Clicking or right-clicking opens the page, but it can cue to the wrong paragraph. 

[1] USCA Case #09-1322 http://bit.ly/TZNo6T

[2] EPA Regulations and Standards: Light Duty http://1.usa.gov/RrJlha

[3] EPA/NHTSA final rule http://1.usa.gov/TSrXb7

[4] EPA/NHTSA final rule http://1.usa.gov/W3sGVI

[5] EPA/NHTSA final rule http://1.usa.gov/STz3LT and http://1.usa.gov/S5PINZ

[6] Whitehouse press release http://1.usa.gov/n69isg

[7] NHTSA “Summary of Fuel Economy Performance” (PDF download, pg 3) http://1.usa.gov/qcdF35

[8] Center for Climate and Energy Solutions http://bit.ly/R64pPI

[9] EPA/NHTSA Final Rule http://1.usa.gov/Yndcjq

[10] NADA study, pg 5, paragraph 2 http://bit.ly/HxHQtF

[11] EPA/NHTSA Final Rule, phase 2 Toyota Venza mass reduction study http://1.usa.gov/11vpYh0

[12] EPA/NHTSA Final Rule, conclusions of current mass reduction studies http://1.usa.gov/13w8Bvh

[13] EPA/NHTSA Final Rule, see bottom of CO2 reducing technologies chart http://1.usa.gov/WjvbmM WR20% = 20% weight reduction, Aero2 = aerodynamic treatments

These links are part of our patented in-wheel suspension and they control and constrain the movement of the wheels as they go up and down over the bumps in the road. They’ve been very thoroughly considered and analyzed and they incorporate everything we learned with our early cars.

If you know machine shop methods, you’ll see straight away these parts are milled from aluminium plate. That’s not economically viable for a production car but – and this is the significant thing - they have been designed to resemble forgings. Forging is absolutely a volume production method and so these new parts represent a step along the road towards being able to buy a Very Light Car.

Now we are collaborating with open source community Local Motors and Siemens PLM on an exciting design competition. Anyone can join the Local Motors community to create an aerodynamic new door handle for the Next Generation VLC, using Siemens Solid Edge Design1, part of the software suite used at Edison2. The competition begins August 1, and the submission deadline is August 12. As with their other design challenges, Local Motors provides a downloadable “ignition kit”, to give entrants the tools and assets needed to work on designs.

Our work on the Next Generation VLC actually started before the ink was dry on our $5 million X Prize check. The X Prize VLC was purpose-built to demonstrate the importance of platform efficiency ... and to win the competition.  

Designed to meet the letter of the rules, it is an uncompromising vision of light, aerodynamic efficiency. We knew that as we moved toward a production model we would make improvements.

The sleek new shape of the Next Generation VLC is an aerodynamic improvement over the angular X Prize design, helping to offset requirements such as bumpers and mirrors, while also improving driver visibility. Larger wheels allow more in-wheel suspension travel, improving ride quality. The interior will have simple but sophisticated fit-and-finish. With an eye towards eventual mass production, the chassis is now aluminum sheet metal instead of tubular steel.

Finally, getting into the VLC will be easy. The car will have a lower door sill, an improved door swing mechanism and, with the help of the Local Motors community and Siemens Solid Edge, an aerodynamic and effective door handle. 

Ron Mathis lectured on the Very Light Car at NASA Langley and the NASA Goddard Space Center.  Brad delivered the keynote address at the worldwide launch of Siemens Solid Edge ST4. Oliver was as panelist in the Jefferson Innovation Summit, and spoke to the Society of Allied Weight Engineers and at the Automotive Weight Reduction Conference. The VLC visited the Detroit Auto Show, the DC Auto Show, the Louisville Auto Show and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and was accepted into the permanent collection of the Henry Ford Museum. Edison2 was written about in the New York Times and featured on CNN International.

But it was in the shop, on the track and in the test lab that the Very Light Car really shone in 2011.

Edison2 won the XPrize through extreme platform efficiency and in 2011 we demonstrated how important a light-weight, low aerodynamic drag car can be. We fitted a Smart Car driveline into a VLC, and the 41 mpg (EPA highway) Smart engine tested at 89 mpg as a VLC. It is a fast, fun, very efficient machine. Ron Cerven, who led Li-ion to an X Prize Alternative class victory with an electric 2-seater, joined Edison2 in 2011, and helped create an electric Very Light Car. As expected, an eVLC combines acceptable range (114 miles), short recharge time (<7 hours) and outstanding efficiency (350 MPGe) with a small battery pack (10.5 kWh).

We also began safety testing of the Very Light Car. We ran numerous crash simulations using industry-standard software, and in November conducted our first actual crash test. These all confirm what we know from racing, where it is not uncommon for drivers to walk away from very high-speed crashes: that with the right architecture a very light car can be a safe car.

And we made a lot of progress in 2011 on the design of the next version Very Light Car. This prototype will be a car with bumpers, mirrors, production fit and finish, and more interior space. Wind-tunnel tests at Virginia Tech showed that the next-version shape is even more slippery than the X Prize car, so bumpers etc can be added without sacrificing efficiency.

2011 was a very good year… but 2012 promises to be even better. Stay tuned.

Suppose at some point on the test the car draws 53 Amps at 107 Volts, the power is 53 x 107 = 5671 Watts or 5.671 kW. There’s a direct conversion from this to horsepower: 1 hp = 0.746 kW so in our example we’re using 5.671/0.746 = 7.6 horsepower.

The voltage and current readings taken by the lab allow us to plot the power consumption in different ways and study and learn from the results. Consider the graph below which plots power against speed for the FTP75 EPA City test

Speed in miles per hour is on the X-axis and Power in Watts is on the Y-axis. Inspection tells us lots of things. For example, the maximum speed of the test is about 56 mph, second, the maximum power required is just over 15 kW (about 20 horsepower), the majority of the test is run below 40 mph and, because the power is sometimes negative, we are using regenerative braking (regen).

On closer inspection it gets more interesting. The City cycle involves 23 stops and starts and each launch is reflected by its own loop in the power/speed trace. There is only one excursion above about 36 mph and the power required to accelerate the car is much greater than that required to maintain it in the cruise portion at about 50 to 55 mph.

Where it gets really interesting for an engineer is the convergence to a sloping line beneath zero power, meaning it’s to do with our regenerative braking. That this is a straight line indicates there is a torque limit to our regen: our relatively simple controller has a limit on how much it can cull from the motor and put back in the battery while the car is slowing.

Could we improve the regen and thereby make our numbers even better? That’s where the art comes in. Consider the graph below which is of exactly the same data as the first chart but with the measurements presented as points rather than a line.

Inspection shows us something interesting that’s not obvious in the smoothed line format – there are many more data points above zero power than below. Since the data points are taken at even time intervals, it becomes clear that even on the City cycle where you’re stopping and starting all the time, it’s how much energy you spend that dominates, not how much you recover through regenerative braking.

This has a number of profound implications for the design of the car, which have been a theme through everything Edison2 does - and you’ll see this if you read back through the various papers we’ve presented on this blog.

First, let’s consider whether we could do better if we had a better motor/regen controller, one that allowed us to recover the energy that might be available below and to the left of the present torque limit. The answer is, we could, but at what price? Right now we’re using inexpensive, off-the-shelf components and we’ve put up the best official EPA test numbers ever, by far. One of the core points we make at Edison2 is that we have superb performance with here-and-now technology. If we had a gold-plated, mil-spec controller we could do a bit better still but you’d have to be rich to afford it.

Second, the relative lack of points below zero power indicate that you can’t make great numbers, even with best in the world regen, if you’re spending energy like crazy to move a heavy square box along the road. The secret is to not spend it in the first place and that’s what the Very Light Car is all about

Third, regen has consequences. Most electric cars are front wheel drive because, since that’s where the weight goes when the car brakes, that’s where you can recover the most power. Front wheel drive has the disadvantage that the driving wheels must also steer so you have to move the power through articulating couplings in the driveshafts. This causes mechanical drag and it puts extra parts in the airflow, causing aerodynamic drag. At Edsion2 we realized the car spends much more time being driven than slowing so we deliberately chose rear wheel drive because we could package everything better for aerodynamics and it’s mechanically more efficient.

So, once again, testing by an impartial lab to a recognized standard has produced results that demonstrate the fundamental correctness of our methods and approach. We know we are on the right path and the results confirm it.