Toyota to restart hybrid vehicle output in Japan

Toyota Motor Corp said it would restart production of three hybrid models after a massive earthquake this month disrupted output across the industry.

Production will resume for the Prius, Lexus HS250h and CT200h at the Tsutsumi factory in central Japan and Toyota Motor Kyushu in the south, spokeswoman Shiori Hashimoto said.

All 18 factories that assemble Toyota and Lexus vehicles in Japan, including those operated by group units, have been closed by the quake. An additional seven plants directly operated by Toyota that make engines and other parts are also affected. The production halt will result in lost production of at least 140,000 vehicles.

"We will monitor the situation of parts availability carefully in deciding the duration of production," she said.

Problems with power and parts have prevented other Japanese automakers restarting assembly lines.

Honda Motor Co said on Thursday it would suspend car production at its Japanese factories until at least April 3, extending the stoppage by a week.

Japan's No. 3 automaker said it would decide on plans beyond April 3, depending on the availability of parts. Honda will resume motorcycle and power product production at its Kumamoto factory in southern Japan on March 28.

Honda said it would also temporarily transfer some functions such as car development and procurement out of its R&D facilities in Tochigi, which was badly hit by the March 11 earthquake.

Suzuki Motor Corp said its three assembly factories in Japan will remain closed on Thursday and Friday.

Nissan Motor Co Ltd said on Thursday its manufacturing operations in the Americas would follow a regular production schedule at least until April 1.

It also said output of the all-electric Nissan Leaf resumed at the Oppama plant on Thursday as did battery production at Zama battery plants. Nissan said the ability to sustain this output is dependent on the frequency of rolling blackouts due to electrical shortages.

Nissan also said its Decherd, Tennessee, engine plant could supply V6 engines to Japan to supplant lost production from its Iwaki engine plant, but no decisions have been made yet.

Other manufacturers with dwindling inventories are looking at slowing production of low-selling models. For instance, General Motors Co has temporarily idled its pickup plant in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Toyota said on Wednesday it would slow some North American production because of supply disruptions caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Toyota told employees and dealers it was too early to determine the scope, timing and duration of a slowdown, but facilities in the United States, its single-biggest market, and in Canada and Mexico are all being considered.

A spokesman for the automaker's San Antonio, Texas, plant where it builds the Tundra and Tacoma pickup trucks said on Thursday the supply disruptions would likely force the idling of the facility.

Most parts for Toyota's North American-built vehicles come from about 500 suppliers in the region. The company said it continues to receive parts from Japan that were already in the pipeline, limiting the immediate impact of the disruption there.

Barclays Capital analyst Brian Johnson said in a research note on Thursday that his best-case expectation for the North American auto sector is sporadic production outages, with US automakers affected less than their Japanese rivals. In particular, Toyota gets many parts used on multiple models from single companies, he said.

In Germany, automakers and suppliers also are looking at cutting production due to bottlenecks. Several companies have asked about a government-backed program for shortened working hours.

Shippers avoiding Tokyo

Some merchant ships may be avoiding Japan's Tokyo port due to concerns of radiation exposure to crew members from the quake-crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, an industry official said on Thursday.

Should this be the beginning of a trend in the shipping industry, Japan could face major delays and seaborne congestion at ports, adding to supply chain bottlenecks and hindering recovery efforts in the wake of the March 11 earthquake. "I have heard from local agents that some vessels are not calling in Tokyo due to radiation fears. I'm not sure how many," said Tetsuya Hasegawa, operating manager at Heisei Shipping Agencies in Tokyo.

Lloyd's List reported on Thursday that Claus-Peter Offen, one of Germany's largest shipowners, had suspended calls for his company's entire fleet of 110 vessels to Tokyo and Yokohama because of radiation fears.

Tokyo is Japan's fourth-largest port, handling 145 million deadweight tonnes last year, mainly containers, according to Lloyd's List Intelligence.

2011 TOYOTA COROLLA ALTIS REVIEWS

Toyota is secretly planning to launch the Corolla Altis facelift this year. Cars which became the best-selling Toyota sedan was getting fresh with new faces and new machinery that is 1600 cc. As quoted from CAR India, Toyota Corolla Altis plans release Toyota facelift in April 2011 in India. Altis will experience a change in design stop lamp is decorated with the concept of lamp smoke. While face exactly the grille, color is now more in tune with the body color.

Outstanding news if Japan's largest carmaker also will provide Toyota Corolla Altis 1600 cc petrol engine capacity. The Toyota Corolla Altis 1600 cc gasoline to fight the Honda City. Honda has been selling Altis is trailing in the global market. Toyota Corolla Altis carrying the Super CVT-i technology on 3ZR-FE engine which claimed the softer the displacement trasmisi so no surges. With the technology, Toyota named Shiftmatic 7-Speed Sequential. Gearshift easier.

Simply transform the (push forward or pull back) stick transmission. As for the Corolla Altis 1.8 liter, manual gear can only be done by shifting the gear lever to the front and rear. Both machines are using the latest engine technology DUAL VVT-i (Variable Valve Timning-Intelligence) to 1.8 l (2ZR-FE engine) that complements the type of 2.0 V.

Electrode lets lithium batteries charge in just two minutes

Batteries can't move charge as quickly as some competing devices like supercapacitors, and their performance tends to degrade significantly with time.

That has sent lots of materials science types into the lab, trying to find ways to push back these limits, sometimes with notable success. Over the weekend, there was another report on a technology that enables fast battery charging. The good news is that it uses a completely different approach and technology than the previous effort, and can work with both lithium- and nickel-based batteries.

The previous work was lithium-specific, and focused on one limit to a battery's recharge rate: how quickly the lithium ions could move within the battery material. By providing greater access to the electrodes, the authors allowed more ions to quickly exchange charge, resulting in a battery with a prodigious charging rate. The researchers increased lithium's transport within the battery by changing the structure of the battery's primary material, LiFePO4.

The new work also gets fast charges, but by a rather different route. The authors, from the University of Illinois, don't focus on the speed of the lithium ions in the battery; instead, they attempt to reduce the distance the ions have to travel before reaching an electrode. As they point out, the time involved in lithium diffusion increases with the square of the distance travelled, so cutting that down can have a very dramatic effect. To reduce this distance, they focus on creating a carefully structured cathode.

The process by which they do this is fairly simple, and lends itself to mass production. They started with a collection of spherical polystyrene pellets. By adjusting the size of these pellets (they used 1.8µm and 466nm pellets), they could adjust the spacing of the electrode features. Once the spheres were packed in place, a layer of opal (a form of silica) was formed on top of them, locking the pattern in place with a more robust material. After that, a layer of nickel was electrodeposited on the opal, which was then etched away. The porosity of the nickel layer was then increased using electropolishing.

When the process was done, the porosity—a measure of the empty space in the structure—was about 94 percent, just below the theoretical limit of 96 percent. The authors were left with a nickel wire mesh that was mostly empty space.

Into these voids went the battery material, either nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) or a lithium-treated manganese dioxide. The arrangement provides three major advantages, according to the authors: an electrolyte pore network that enables rapid ion transport, a short diffusion distance for the ions to meet the electrodes, and an electrode with high electron conductivity. All of these make for a battery that acts a lot like a supercapacitor when it comes to charge/discharge rates.

With the NiMH battery material, the electrodes could deliver 75 percent of the normal capacity of the battery in 2.7 seconds; it only took 20 seconds to recharge it to 90 percent of its capacity, and these values were stable for 100 charge/discharge cycles. The lithium material didn't work quite as well, but was still impressive. At high rates of discharge, it could handle 75 percent of its normal capacity, and still stored a third of its regular capacity when discharged at over a thousand times the normal rate.

A full-scale lithium battery made with the electrode could be charged to 75 percent within a minute, and hit 90 percent within two minutes.

There are a few nice features of this work. As the authors noted, the electrodes are created using techniques that can scale to mass production, and the electrodes themselves could work with a variety of battery materials, such as the lithium and nickel used here. It may also be possible to merge them with the LiFePO4 used in the earlier work. A fully integrated system, with materials designed to work specifically with these electrodes, could increase their performance even further.

Of course, that ultimately pushes us up against the issue of supplying sufficient current in the short time frames needed to charge the battery this fast. It might work great for a small battery, like a cell phone, but could create challenges if we're looking to create a fast-charge electric car.

Nissan LEAF EV Now Available at Santa Monica Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Enterprise Rent-A-Car now offers customers the Nissan LEAF electric vehicle (EV) for daily and weekly rental at its 1702 Santa Monica Blvd. rental location in Santa Monica. Enterprise also has installed a charging station at the same location through Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) manufacturer ClipperCreek.

"We're making the Nissan LEAF available to local customers who are simply curious about the EV driving experience, those who are considering buying an EV, and those who want a fuel-efficient car rental option," said Greg Tabak, director of business sales in Southern California for Enterprise Holdings, which owns and operates Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Alamo Rent A Car and National Car Rental. "It's part of our ongoing commitment to be a leader in the electrification of the car rental and transportation industries."

Enterprise recently announced plans to add 500 Nissan LEAF EVs at select locations throughout its neighborhood network and through its WeCar car-sharing program throughout this year. In addition, Enterprise earlier this year became the first to offer rentals of Chevrolet Volt extended-range EVs to customers at its Ontario, Calif., rental location.

With more than 5,500 offices located within 15 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population, Enterprise Rent-A-Car offers a wide variety of car leasing, vanpooling, car sharing and hourly rental programs. With WeCar car-sharing technology, Enterprise offers an automated, membership-based and environmentally friendly transportation solution -- for an hour, a day, a weekend or longer -- thereby providing businesses, universities and government offices an opportunity to enhance their fleet management operations and sustainability initiatives.

Customers can visit Enterprise.com to learn more about the availability of EVs and hybrid rentals, or call 1-800-261-7331 to make a reservation.

Fisker Karma Enters Production in Finland

Three years after it was concieved, Fisker Automotive’s first car hit production yesterday. The Fisker Karma is being produced under contract by Valmet Automotive – the company that also build Porsche AG – at the Valmet plant in Uusikaupunki, Finland.

The Karma is powered by Fisker’s Q-DRIVE system, which constitutes two 201 HP electric motors powered by a lithium-ion battery pack. This innovative petrol engine/electric motor combination lets the car travel up to 50 miles without gasoline. Once the 50 mile range is crossed, a generator attached to a 260 HP turbocharged 2.0 liter Ecotec direct injection gasoline engine powers the vehicle for an additional 300 miles. The car accelerates from 0 to 60 mph in 5.8 seconds, recording a top speed of 125 mph.

Though the Karma’s price originally stood at $87,900, Fisker has announced that the figure will hit $95,000 before federal incentives. Currently, Fisker Automotive is the second company in the world, after General Motors rolled out the Chevrolet Volt, to produce an electric car that also combines the capability to extend its mileage.

Norwegian Post 1st Customer for Ford Transit EV in Europe [video]

Ford Motor Company and Azure Dynamics announce that Norwegian Post becomes the first European customer of the Ford Transit Connect Electric with order of 20 units

The all-electric, zero-emission Ford Transit Connect Electric van has a targeted range of up to 130km (80 miles) per full charge, and is ideal for fleet owners with well-defined routes

Transit Connect Electric is the first of five new electrified vehicles Ford is bringing to market in Europe by 2013, including the Ford Focus Electric debuting next year

Ford and Azure Dynamics Corporation have confirmed their first European customer for the zero-emission Ford Transit Connect Electric van. Norwegian Post today signed a contract to purchase 20 Transit Connect Electric vehicles, with an option to order more vehicles in the future. Norwegian Post is the largest provider of mail and logistics servicesand the biggest employer in Norway.

"The Norwegian Post will be an environmental leader in the mail and logistics industry by taking advantage of the latest technology available," said Dag Mejdell, CEO, Norwegian Post. "In signing a contract for delivery of the new Ford Transit Connect Electric, the Norwegian Post is taking an important step towards its goal of reducing 150.000 tonnes of CO2 annually."

Ford and Azure are introducing the Transit Connect Electric in summer 2011, as increasing numbers of fleet operators are demanding the benefits of efficient, clean alternative power for their vehicles.

With 28kWh of power to call on, Transit Connect Electric has a top speed of 120km/h (75mph) and a range of up to 130 km (80 miles) on a full charge.

"Transit Connect Electric was designed and engineered with customers like Norwegian Post in mind," said Scott Harrison, Azure CEO. "The ForceDrive(TM) powertrain excels under the types of urban driving conditions that the Transit Connect Electric is likely to encounter during postal delivery routes. We're honoured to have Norwegian Post as our inaugural customer in Europe and are eager to help them achieve theenvironmental, operational and performance goals that they seek."

Ford's Global Electric vehicle plan

The Ford Transit Connect Electric - Ford's first all-electric vehicle in Europe - is the first of five electrified vehicles that Ford plans to launch in Europe by 2013. Next comes the Ford Focus Electric in 2012, followed by the C-MAX Hybrid and C-MAX Energi plug-in hybrid, as well as another hybrid electric model in 2013.

"By providing a variety of electrified vehicles, we are making it easier for our customers to embrace this fuel-saving technology," said Thormod Skofsrud, managing director, Ford Norway. "This strategy is true to our heritage of making innovative technology available to as many people as possible and to our vision of developing great products."

Practical and affordable

Transit Connect Electric will offer European operators the opportunity to eliminate petrol bills in their small vans and help to lower overall maintenance and running costs.

Ford's Transit Connect commercial platform is an ideal choice for battery electric power thanks to its unique combination of car-like driving dynamics, generous cargo capacity, easy accessibility and low operation costs.

With a cargo volume 3.8 m3 and a payload of 500 kg, Transit Connect Electric will particularly appeal to operators who travel predictable, short-range routes with frequent stop and go driving. Transit Connect Electric can be recharged using standard European 220/240-volt outlets in approximately eight hours. Commercial van users generally return to a central location at the end of a driving cycle perfect for recharging over night.

Zero emissions

The Transit Connect Electric is a pure electric-powered version of the award-winning, long-wheelbase Transit Connect light commercial vehicle. Azure's proprietary Force Drive(TM) powertrain uses an advanced lithium ion battery pack designed by Johnson Controls-Saft to power the vehicle that produces zero tailpipe emissions.

Azure's ForceDrive(TM) powertrain has previously been deployed in more than 40 vehicle integrations and has more than 35 million miles of on-the-road experience.

Tried and tested

The Transit Connect Electric goes on sale in European markets this summer following its successful launch in North America in December 2010.

'Glider' units - complete vehicles except for the powertrain - are shipped from the Ford Otosan manufacturing facility in Kocaeli, Turkey, directly to an Azure-contracted up-fitter for final assembly. The completed Transit Connect Electric vehicles are then sold by Azure Dynamics through a specially-created network of dealerships. The European Transit Connect Electric will be badged with both the Ford Blue Oval and Azure's Force Drive logo.

Transit Connect Electric builds on an existing relationship between Ford and Azure and battery supplier Johnson Controls-Saft.

"Transit Connect Electric exemplifies how we are leveraging our relationships as well as our hybrid and advanced powertrain programs to bring energy-efficient technologies from the laboratory to the street," said Derrick Kuzak, Ford group vice president, Global Product Development. "Not only is this an ideal vehicle for eco-conscious fleet operators, it is an important part of Ford's future."

Transit Connect Electric Technical data

Body

'Glider' assembly at Ford Otosan plant in Kocaeli, Turkey

Final assembly by Azure Dynamics Corporation

Propulsion architecture

Siemens AC induction motor, Azure Dynamics inverter

Borg-Warner transaxle, Johnson Controls-Saft battery pack

System voltage range 260V - 380V

Electric drive system

Motor Siemens model 135, 3-phase AC induction motor, 300V nominal, liquid-cooled

Torque 158 Nm (continuous) / 235 Nm (peak)

Transmission Borg-Warner 31-03, single-speed

Gear ratio 8.28:1

IEC 62196 type 1

Battery

Johnson Controls-Saft lithium-ion pack

Capacity 28 kWh, 16 modules / (192 cells)

Voltage range 215V - 390V / charger - 3.3 kW

Weights and capacities

Maximum payload 500 kg

Curb weight 1791 kg (est.)

Cargo volume 3.8 m3

Performance

Driving range up to 130 km (80 miles) per full charge

Charge time of around 8 hours for full cycle using 230 V

Top speed 120 km/h (75 mph)

Acceleration 0-100 km/h (0-60 mph) in 12 seconds (based on kerb weight)

0-100 km/h (0-60 mph) in 15 seconds (based on gross vehicle weight rating)

Nissan Begins Delivery of Leaf to UK Customers

Nissan today began deliveries of the first 100% electric, mass produced, affordable family car, the Nissan LEAF, to customers in the UK.

Smooth FM DJ Mark Goodier and electronics engineer Richard Todd took delivery of their Nissan LEAFs today at Glyn Hopkin Nissan in Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire. This groundbreaking moment represents the start of Nissan's vision of bringing sustainable mobility to the mass market in the UK.

Smooth FM Radio DJ Mark Goodier has been driving electric cars for the last decade. "The great thing about electric cars is that the fuel distribution is already in place. We all have mains electricity at home. We have it at work and councils are already working on how to install thousands of charging points at the roadside. You can see why EVs make such sense, particularly in towns and cities.

The LEAF is a proper full size family car with a 100 mile range* - way more than most drivers do in a day. It's everything that people like me, who have been driving electric vehicles for a long time, have been waiting for. It's going to change our lives for the better," he commented.

Silicone chip designer Richard Todd from St Albans, Hertfordshire was the first customer in the UK to place his order for a Nissan LEAF when the order books opened last September. Today, he and his wife Jane took delivery of a black Nissan LEAF with the optional solar panel.

"As an engineer I have always wanted an electric car - I've just had to wait for the battery technology to arrive. Hybrids are good but the driving experience of an all electric vehicle is way beyond this. Of course, the lack of emissions in town is a big positive too," he commented.

"The Nissan LEAF is ideal for us as a family with the range and size being more than adequate for most of our driving needs. At evenings and weekends, we'll be using the Nissan LEAF mainly for local trips and transporting our two children between their many activities," he continued.

Paul Willcox, Managing Director at Nissan Motor GB, was on hand to witness the handover of the first Nissan LEAFs in the UK. He commented: "The Nissan LEAF is pioneering the electric car revolution in the UK. We first unveiled the car in August 2009 and we've been building up to this moment for over 18 months.

Today's deliveries mark the start of the introduction of the Nissan LEAF to customers across the country as our network of EV dealers will be delivering LEAFs to their pioneering customers later this week," he continued.

The Nissan LEAF is currently built in Japan, but will be manufactured at Nissan's award winning plant in Sunderland from 2013.

A comprehensive charging network is currently under development in the UK and Nissan's network of EV dealers - currently 26 sites across the country - will be equipped with a quick charger, which will charge the battery from zero up to 80% capacity in under 30 minutes. Across the UK there are programmes under way to install around 9,000 charge points by 2013.