by Rebecca Wetherbee
Dec. 1, 2008
Imagine the soundscape of New York City. Maybe you’ve never been there, but you can guess what it would be like: horns blaring, breaks squealing, the grunt and exhale of a bus coming to a stop.
Now imagine another city almost 3,000 miles away on the United States’ west coast.
Los Angeles is famous for its traffic and you have likely seen the pictures: miles of winding highway bedazzled by thousands of shiny, metal shells. Heat waves rising from the pavement that blur the image and give it a surreal look, enveloping the city in a hot bubble of smog.
Every year, new technologies emerge through the smog. Engineers all over the world are creating vehicles with decreased gasoline dependency, and therefore significantly decreased emissions.
Electric and hybrid electric vehicles—cars which power themselves partially, or entirely, with electricity rather than gasoline—are gaining commercial popularity.
Living and Driving in North Carolina
Maybe you feel vindicated living in North Carolina. This is the land of Appalachia, of the Outer Banks, of blue skies and vast countryside, not of world-famous traffic and infamous consumerism. But this state is not immune to the environmental and health damage caused by fuel-burning vehicles.
In fact, 24 counties in North Carolina do not meet national air-quality standards for ground-level ozone and particulate matter, according to the North Carolina Solar Center.
“Vehicles are getting cleaner and cleaner each year, but we’re outstripping those benefits because we’re also driving more and more,” said Anne Tazewell, program manager for the NC Solar Center’s clean transportation sector.
Data collected by Dr. Dennis Grady and Jason Hoyle of the Energy Center of Appalachian State University show that in 2006, North Carolinians drove on average 1,500 miles more than other Americans.
Exposure to ground-level ozone, particulate matter and fumes from gasoline and diesel fuel can pose serious health risks to the lungs and heart.
In the 2007 State of the Air report, the American Lung Association states that 36 percent of North Carolina residents are at serious risk for health concerns due to poor air quality. Additionally, the transportation sector in the U.S. is responsible for more than 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions— the chemical culpable for global warming.
So what is the solution? How can North Carolinians clean up the air and still drive to work, taxi the kids, run errands and live their lives in this state?
Hybrid Electric Vehicles
Tazewell, author of the article “Transportation, Energy and the Environment in North Carolina,” said that sales of hybrid cars have increased from just 9,000 in the year 2000 to 350,000 in 2007.
This popularization is due in part to the fact that hybrid electric car manufacturers are becoming more and more mainstream. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Ford, Chevrolet, and several other companies have hybrid cars on the market today.
Unlike standard fuel-burning vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles harness energy that is usually lost during breaking and coasting. Regenerative breaking reroutes that energy to the car’s battery, effectively recharging the battery without wall sockets or plugs.
Many hybrids use less than half the gasoline of their traditional counterparts. Say, for example, that you drive a Honda Civic with an automatic transmission, and that gas costs $3.50 per gallon. If you are an average North Carolinian, then you drive about 12,000 miles per year.
The gas mileage impact calculator at HybridCars.com predicts that if you were to switch to a Honda Civic Hybrid, which is touted as one of the most efficient hybrids, your annual gas consumption would drop from 414 gallons to 285 gallons. You could save more than $450 at the pump. You would reduce your greenhouse gas emissions by 31 percent and your nitrogen oxide emissions from 8 pounds to 6 pounds.
It seems like a no-brainer: hybrid cars save gas, save the environment. But here’s the problem: a 2009 Honda Civic sedan with an automatic transmission starts at $16,205. A 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid starts at $23,550. Many consumers are still having trouble justifying the extra costs.
For many hybrid car owners, environmental and political factors influenced their decision.
“The hybrid, you pay a little bit more for it,” said Phillip Lyons, a CFO from Chapel Hill who has been driving a Toyota Prius for the past two years. “But it makes me feel good knowing I’m in a car that is not wasting resources when I see all these people driving around in these humungous [sports utility vehicles].” Lyons’ Prius averages about 46 miles per gallon, but starts using gas at speeds higher than 32 mph.
Electric Vehicles
The real struggle for engineers is perfecting the electric car, which does not use any gasoline. Battery-powered vehicles can be charged with a traditional household outlet of 110 volts, or with the 220 volt outlet used for larger appliances.
While there are few commercial options for electric vehicles, enterprising North Carolinians are converting cars in their own garage.
Joe Adcock, an engineer from Cary, converted his 1970 Volkswagen Beetle in 2002 for about $5,000. The conversion took nearly 10 months, and Adcock said he couldn’t have accomplished it without his experience in engineering.
“It takes someone who has the know-how and the gumption to do it,” he said. “You really have to know about electricity and how it works and you have to be handy. It’s not just a plug-and-play kind of thing.”
The Beetle uses lead-acid batteries, which are significantly less expensive than lithium-ion, and has a range of about 57 miles. Adcock charges the Beetle for 12 to 13 hours in order to reach full capacity, and says that he spends between 50 and 75 cents per day on electricity.
Jim Bartlett is a mechanical engineer from Cary who has been driving a 1994 Chevrolet U.S. Electricar S-10 pickup for the past year. The car, which has 1,600 pounds of lead-acid batteries under the hood, has a range of 50 miles and costs about $2.40 to charge.
“The vehicle is not for the average driver because it needs some care and feeding to keep it going,” Bartlett said. “But it’s been very reliable since I got it going… it drives like a regular vehicle.”
The pickup, which is Bartlett’s only car, needs to charge for as much as 24 hours if the batteries are fully drained. Fortunately, he can charge it in the parking lot at Cisco Systems where he works.
Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles
Car manufacturers have a growing interest in vehicles that combine the technology of the traditional hybrid car with the plug-in feature of an electric car.
Like traditional hybrids, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles use both a battery pack and a fuel-burning engine, but the battery pack can be charged with an outlet rather than with regenerative breaking. The plug-in technology allows for a greater range on the battery, therefore decreased use of fuel, and supports a lighter battery pack.
PHEVs will not be commercially available until 2010, but eager hybrid car owners can buy a conversion kit for their cars.
“Folks that want to do this can order a kit and take a regular Prius, for example, and modify it so it can be plugged in,” said Tazewell. “But it will void your original warranty. If you have problems with the hybrid system, Toyota can say they’re not responsible for repairs because the vehicle has been modified. There’s a little bit of risk.”
Also, the modification kit can be extremely expensive. “The minimum cost is an extra $10,000 dollars,” said Lyons. “And you never recover it.”
Advanced Energy, a nonprofit organization based in Raleigh, has already created 15 plug-in hybrid electric school buses that are in use across the country.
According to Ewan Pritchard, who heads the hybrid program at Advanced Energy, school buses account for 78 percent of the total mileage driven by buses in this state. The particulate matter emitted by diesel bus engines is a major contributor to the high levels of air pollution in North Carolina.
Fortunately, school buses with hybrid technology have a 95 percent increase in fuel economy for the first 45 miles of their trip and a 40 percent increase after that.
Of the 15 hybrid buses in the country, one is in Mecklenberg County and one is in Wake County. But according to Pritchard, Advanced Energy and its manufacturing partner International Truck and Engine hope to increase the fleet.
“We have a goal of getting 100 more purchased within N.C.,” he said. “And combining that with purchases in the U.S.”
Preparing the Infrastructure
Earlier this year, Gov. Mike Easley announced the opening of North Carolina State University’s Advanced Transportation Energy Center. ATEC, which has formed a partnership with Duke Energy and Progress Energy, will spend the next five years researching, creating and testing a lighter, less expensive lithium-ion battery for use in electric vehicles and PHEVs.
At present, the batteries that power most electric cars only have a range of 50 miles fully charged. ATEC hopes to create a battery pack that is efficient enough to power a car for 100 miles.
“The power requirements of those batteries are not there,” said Pritchard, who will become program manager of ATEC in January. “We cannot get nearly enough power out of them as we would like… Over the next five years we will develop batteries that will have better performance in terms of life, in terms of power and in terms of cost.”
So if ATEC accomplishes their goal, and if commercialized PHEVs become mainstream after 2010, then how will car owners charge their cars when they’re on the move?
That’s where Duke Energy and Progress Energy come in. The companies need to prepare the state for a potential influx of electric vehicle and PHEV drivers. That includes setting up charging stations across the state, which will consist mostly of parking spaces equipped with a traditional outlet.
“Our job is to make sure that the electric grid can support all this additional load,” said Scott Sutton, a spokesman for Progress Energy. “The goal is to keep it simple, safe and convenient. If it’s a hassle for people to charge their vehicles, then they won’t do it.”
“We want to make sure that shopping centers have as many plug-in stations available as possible,” said Dave Scanzoni, a spokesman for Duke Energy. “In homes they already exist. In apartment buildings they would have to be added. It won’t happen all at once, but it will grow rather quickly over the next few years.”
Most importantly, the companies need to create a billing system that will allow them to charge car owners for the energy they use and a standardized software that will account for the energy used during each charge.
“The big challenge will be coming up with the industry standard,” said Scanzoni. “There are a lot of competing technologies.”
There will also have to be a nationwide standard for plugs and outlets. “We need to make sure that… whether you’re in California, New York, or North Carolina, you know that if you buy a car, you will be able to charge it wherever you go,” said Sutton.
Soon, charging stations in North Carolina may be as prolific as gas stations. The positive financial and environmental impact of this conversion could be enormous.
According to Tazewell, North Carolinians spent almost $12 billion dollars in 2005 on gasoline and diesel fuels ranking it tenth in the country for gasoline expenditures. Considering how many billions of dollars are pumped into the oil industry, spending a few thousand on a hybrid system hardly seems like a sacrifice.
Instead, it is an investment in a cleaner, greener North Carolina.



















