Autos News

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The Prancing Horse has conquered the minds of gearheads everywhere for years with their innovation and Italian flare and passion for building supercars. The talk at Stanford University with Ferrari CEO, Lucia di Montezemolo, seems to indicate they also want to conquer the minds of potential tech fans too.

Montezemolo met Apple’s CEO Tim Cook as well as the heads of Google, talking in front of more than 600 students from Stanford.

”I’m not here to sell cars, but to communicate a dream,” he told under the applause of the guests at the conference which was titled ‘View from the top’.

The Ferrari Chairman encouraged the young students to follow their dreams and not break out of the box. ”Be creative, follow your goals, use technology, dominate innovation, but don’t become dependent on machines, you have to be in the driver’s seat of your lives. Never lose the curiosity for what is around you.”

In the world of technology and digital content the enthusiasm for the amazing supercars from Maranello, that feature avant-garde technology and the passion from those who build them, is enormous.

“Intelligence and innovative ideas can contribute to change and shape the future,” Montezemolo concluded. “Passion and attention for the smallest details are what makes our cars, those who create them and those who drive them so special, living continuous excitement.”

Ferrari of course in recent years has put lots of electronics into their cars and made many advances with computer technology. The beauty of Ferrari’s technology integration is that it doesn’t take away from the pure joy you get when you drive a Ferrari.

Many believe in Silicon Valley believe this is the way technology must be be. There to help aid, assist, and make our lives more efficient but doesn’t hinder us in enjoying the task at had, like driving a car.

For Ferrari America is still the most essential market in the world. Keeping on the forefront of emerging technologies and what companies like Apple and Goolge have to offer is a very good idea.
Passion was also the topic of discussion at the friendly meeting with Tim Cook: ”I was impressed by his availability and openness,” Montezemolo told leaving Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, CA after a 2-hour face-to-face meeting.

“We’re building cars, they build computers. But Apple and Ferrari are connected by the same passion, the same love for the product, maniacal attention to technology, but also to design.” commented Montezemolo.

Tim Cook of course wanted to see the Ferrari FF that Montezemolo had driven to Cupertino close up, admiring the shapes and the interior of the 4-door 4×4 from Maranello. Just like any gearhaed Cook was excited from the thunderous sound of the Ferrari 12-cylinder engine.

I bet Mr. Cook told Luci di Montezemolo he would happily buy one. With all that Apple stock Mr. Cook has, he probably could buy 50 without blinking an eye!

Ferrari that has excited people all over the world and in Silicon Valley the same is true.

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It’s Easter time which means communities around the country gather for parades featuring bunny rabbits, candy, and group after group of people showing community pride in one thing or another. This weekend in Campbell CA, one of these groups were members of the San Francisco BayLEAF’s group driving a contingent of 12 Nissan LEAF’s dressed up in bunny ears and whiskers. The BayLEAF’s is a Nissan Leaf owners group based in the SF Bay Area.

The event was the annual Bunnies and Bonnets parade held in downtown Campbell. Campbell is situated in a corner of Silicon Valley, next door to Los Gatos. Campbell itself is a small town, that borders on San Jose, and is a key node in the fabric of cities that comprise Silicon Valley. Coincidentally Campbell happens host the world headquarters of Coulomb Technologies, operator of the ChargePoint network of electric car charging stations.

Campbell recently installed several electric car charging stations, all part of the ChargePoint network. The stations are scattered around parking lots and parking garages in the Downtown Campbell area. These stations of course saw an uptick of usage yesterday with the BayLEAF’s coming to town.

One of the BayLEAF members had for years organized the Porsche club appearance in this same parade. This year, as a brand new release LEAF owner, he decided to organize the BayLEAF’s group to appear. Organization was done through the BayLEAF group on Facebook, and the goal was to have anywhere between 5 and 1000 Nissan Leaf’s participate in the parade. The 12 Leaf’s in the parade was well within the target range, and all had a good time.

The LEAF owners covered a broad spectrum of humanity, equally men and woman, young and old, united in a common dream of showing off their electric cars. One young man had tricked out his Leaf with extra lights and other doodads. A retiree coming all the way from Alameda with his LEAF had also built several electric car conversions over the years. He was using the CarSounds app for his iPhone, connected via Bluetooth to the car sound system, to make his LEAF make vrooming noises. Another not only owns a Leaf, but is one of the Electronauts in the BMW ActiveE program.

The appearance was essentially the same as any other car group in a small town parade, much like the muscle cars and Porsche’s featured later in the parade. The car owners doing their best to show off pride in their cars, the cars of course dressed up in bunny rabbit decorations. The bulging headlights on the Nissan LEAF actually makes a great base for eyelashes to start create a bunny motif, then with something resembling a nose on the charging flap up front, a fuzzy something or other on the rear window wiper, and attach some kind of ears into the windows or roof, creates the illusion of a giant bunny rabbit. The most appropriate ears were constructed by a LEAF owner from Santa Cruz, using the stiff 3-conductor wire used to wire electrical circuits in a house.

What this appearance means is a stage in the mainstreaming of electric cars in America. For a long time electric vehicles have been a fringe activity, with most of the few electric car owners either having built their own, or driving one of the electric cars left over from earlier era’s of electric car adoption. (Disclosure: I drive a beautiful 1971 Karmann Ghia that I converted to electric drive last year) Last years sales of electric cars vastly increased electric car ownership in the U.S. and considerably lowered the barrier-to-entry for electric car ownership. These factoids combine to start a wave of change that could be like dropping a pebble at the top of a snow covered mountain, that eventually causes an avalanche as the dropped pebble unleashes a chain reaction of forces that gather and build momentum.

A month ago we wrote about the Emerging Technology Hype Cycle and specifically the Trough of Disillusionment, describing how this is playing out with electric cars. Primarily those purchasing electric cars over the last year are thought to be the “early adopters.” These are the people who buy the brand new release thing because it’s cool. For the brand new release thing to become mainstream a second or third wave of purchasers must also decide to buy in, and those people look to the first wave purchasers before jumping on-board. The trough of disillusionment refers to the negative backlash that always strikes against brand new release products. With electric cars that backlash is taking the form of extreme right wingers deriding electric cars with the often outright false things being told.

An event like yesterday’s parade is an opportunity for the excited first adopters to reach out to the second or third wave purchasers and essentially say “come on in, the water is fine.” Put another way, it’s an opportunity for the LEAF owner to show the neighbors they aren’t so nutty after all, and that the LEAF is a perfectly fine, functional, car, that is worthy of being in a parade. In this instance, the BayLEAF’s apparently were invited to participate in Campbell’s 4th of July parade.

Electric car owner groups around the SF Bay Area are planning electric car showings at several Earth Day events over the next couple weeks, and are organizing what’s hoped to be a large contingent of electric cars at the Hybrids2Hotrods show in May.

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As promised, Coda Automotive today delivered the first of the company’s electric cars to paying customers. The milestone was marked in a trio of ceremonies, at Coda dealerships in San Diego and San Jose, as well as the Coda Experience Center in Century City.

Coda Automotive is a start-up automobile manufacturer focusing on electric cars. The company was founded a few years ago, and has developed the Coda electric car and, through a sister company, Coda Energy, has developed electrical energy storage systems based on the battery pack technology developed for Coda Automotive’s electric car.

The company’s electric car is assembled in Benicia CA using parts from several countries, including an engineless chassis manufactured for Coda by a Chinese automaker. Earlier this week Coda assembled its first production electric cars at the Benicia facility. Its style is that of a typical family sedan, other than the lack of a tailpipe and gasoline engine. As an electric car, Coda’s specifications are well above those of the Nissan Leaf and Ford Focus Electric, offering a longer driving range due to the larger battery pack, and a faster recharge due to the 6.6 kilowatt on-board charger. The driving range is EPA certified at 88 miles, but Coda claims a driving range of up to 125 miles, depending on driving habits. The company will soon offer a second model with a larger battery pack, and longer driving range.

The first customer delivery in Silicon Valley happened at the brand new releasely opened Coda Silicon Valley dealership owned and operated by the Del Grande Dealer Group (DGDG). DGDG is a large automobile dealership chain in Silicon Valley which already sells the Nissan LEAF through its Nissan Sunnyvale dealership. Shaun Del Grande, DGDG’s President, explained that last summer DGDG management got the idea to move into selling electric cars. After a couple months of research they settled on Coda Automotive, after meeting with Coda’s management and test driving the car. Coda announced DGDG’s selection as the first Northern California dealer in January during the Silicon Valley Autoshow. The Coda Silicon Valley showroom is located on the Stevens Creek Road Automall, at the intersection of Stevens Creek and Keily.

The event was well attended with perhaps 60 people looking on, including the Mayor of Santa Clara, a representative of Assemblyman Fong, and other government officials. Coda’s Charman “Mac” Heller addressed the group talking about how Coda Automotive is part auto manufacturer, and part “movement”. The company was founded by individuals with a deep commitment to a vision of ending the age of oil. While this is one of those impossible goals one might envision in a workshop, occasionally some people manage to take seemingly impossible visions like this, run with it, launch a company to implement the vision, and begin to change the world. Coda’s staff has always worn this goal metaphorically on their sleeve. During Heller’s statements to the gathering he noted the process of change beginning today, that each electric car sold to each succeeding customer is an increment of that change for which Coda Automotive was launched.

“Watching our dealers deliver the first vehicles to customers is an incredibly fulfilling milestone,” told Phil Murtaugh, CODA Holdings CEO. “All three customers share our conviction that advances in technology can help solve the energy challenges that have weighed down our economy and our environment for decades, and we’re thrilled to have them help bring us one step closer to fulfilling our founding vision.”

The first customer of Coda Silicon Valley was Randy Abraham, a United Airlines test pilot, and a “clean energy enthusiast”. Abraham saw the Coda Sedan at the Silicon Valley Autoshow, fell in love with the car, and due to his engineering background was capable to understand the driving range advantages Coda’s electric car has over the other electric cars on the market. Abraham explained he was looking forward to, with the extra range inherent in the Coda electric car, driving all over the San Francisco Bay Area expending no gasoline. He recognizes electricity is an extremely efficient “fuel” that costs much less than gasoline.

Abraham is also a shareholder in Direct Nu Energy, a Silicon Valley Startup developing a solar Strength carport that doubles as an electric car charging station. The concept is a straight-forward implementation of a “carport”, roofed with solar panels, and can optionally be integrated with an EV Charging station. Coda Silicon Valley plans to feature Direct Nu Energy’s carports to their customers.

“We’re delighted to offer the all-electric CODA to Randy and many more Northern California drivers in the near future,” told Del Grande. “As the first dealership in the area to offer the CODA, we’re excited to give Northern California drivers with what they want: a relicapable range, zero emission sedan and ultimately, the option to be independent from fossil fuels.”

Coda’s electric car has an MSRP of $37,250, and after Federal and California tax credits the net price is as low as $27,250. Test drives of the 2012 CODA are availcapable at the following CODA locations: CODA Los Angeles, CODA Silicon Valley, the CODA Experience Center at the Century City Westfield Mall, Fladeboe CODA at Irvine Auto Center, and the Marvin K. Brown CODA San Diego.

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Ford, like most other automakers, is heading towards a vision of the car as a platform for high tech wizardry and gizmos. Consumer electronics need not be limited to our living rooms or mobile computing devices, but can also be on-board the car. The OpenXC platform is a step in this direction, being an open source hardware and software stack allowing 3rd parties to connect gizmos to an OpenXC-compliant car.

Ford is positioning OpenXC as a channel for collaboration between Ford and 3rd party application developers. If “your car is as easy to program as your smartphone,” it stands to reason that future cars could generate as much innovation and excitement as todays smartphones are generating.

The company announced last week they were making the OpenXC source code availcapable, in beta form, to developers and universities around the world. Ford demonstrated a sample third-party mobile app created with the OpenXC toolkit at NASSCOM India Leadership Summit, held last week in Mumbai India. At NASSCOM the message was to not only open Ford’s vehicles for 3rd party applications, but to encapable development of market-specific applications for each country. The OpenXC source code is expected to be opened to the public via repositories on github, and documentation is availcapable today on the openxcplatform website.

Additionally to providing the OpenXC platform, Ford is opening a research laboratory in Silicon Valley in Q1 2012 meant to “ensure Ford keeps pace with consumer trends and aggressively prepares for the future by developing mobility solutions to harness the Strength of seamless connectivity, cloud computing and clean technology.” The lab is targeted at collaboration with high tech companies here in Silicon Valley including Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, HP, Ideo, Intel, Microsoft Sony, and Stanford University. The research focus of the lab was described as personal mobility, or “Mindful of consumer trends and the growth of megacities, Ford is researching brand new release business models that will help avoid the creation of global gridlock through a holistic approach to personal transportation”; open-source hardware and software developer kits, which is the OpenXC platform that Ford is developing in collaboration with BugLabs; and the car as a sensor, or “researching ways to utilize the multitude of sensors within the vehicle to improve the road for all drivers”.

The OpenXC platform is being developed in collaboration with Bug Labs, a brand new release York based developer of small computer hardware building blocks meant to help organizations build the “Internet of Things.” This concept looks toward a day if/when all objects will have embedded computerization, with ubiquitous connections to the Internet to share data and information enabling large scale applications to be built upon the data coming from all the connected gizmos. An example Ford gives is the weather information website, Weather Underground, which “is looking at ways to leverage vehicle windshield wiper activations to improve its weather proximity reporting.” If sensors on hundreds of cars reported activation of windsheld wipers at nearly the same time in nearly the same location, it’s a signal of a likely rainstorm popping up, right?

The documentation on the OpenXC Platform website describes installing small hardware module, attaching it to the OBD-II port so the module can read CANBUS messages. The hardware module interfaces the OBD-II/CAN bus to the more common USB interface, and sends data from the car to the software running on the OpenXC software platform. The software part of the OpenXC platform runs on Arduino or Android platforms, and gives to software measurements of vehicle operation such as brake pedal status, engine velocity, latitude and longitude, steering wheel angle, and vehicle velocity. The documentation does not give methods for the software application to send commands to the car, only to receive data from the car.

The most obvious use for this is to improve accuracy of location aware applications, but Ford suggests extremely creative developers could do something crazy like “generate a digital painting based on your steering wheel movements over the course of a day, and upload it directly to the web”.

The data coming from OpenXC could be useful to a RoboCar developer, but implementing a RoboCar would require that the software be capable to control the steering, brakes and velocity.

As of January 2012, OpenXC is supported on these Ford Vehicles: 2011 – 2012 Focus, 2012 Mustang, 2012 Fiesta, 2011 Figo. The OpenXC website suggests the OpenXC specification is availcapable for other manufacturers to implement. If that were to happen, a large market of compatible add-on gizmos could be developed for cars from not just Ford but other automakers.

This is unlikely to result in consumer applications right away, if only because interfacing to the OBD-II port is not exactly a user-friendly experience. Ford is positioning this as an outreach to application developers. Ford asks us to ponder these sorts of questions: What if “user-facing hardware and software” (such as the dashboard) was based on open software stacks, where car owners could purchase and install add-ons as easily as they buy smart phone apps today? What if the infotainment systems were easily user upgradecapable? What if you could transfer a high tech gizmo easily from car-to-car?

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One of the questions related to electric vehicles is the disposition of the battery packs after a few years when capacity depletes shortening the driving range. Will the battery pack just go to a landfill, or can they be put to another use? Today Nissan announced it was working with ABB, 4R Energy and Sumitomo, to evaluate the re-use of lithium-ion battery packs currently in use in Leaf models.

It’s known that after a few years of use, battery pack capacity shrinks resulting in shorter driving distances. When brand brand new release Nissan Leaf has a 100 mile or so range, but in a few years this will shrink to 80 miles range, which is still significant but many will want a brand new release battery pack. Especially if promised longer range battery packs come into existence and especially if Nissan implements a drop in replacement battery packs with brand new release battery technology. In any case, while the battery pack won’t have enough remaining capacity to be used for use in a car, it still store electricity. Many have noted over the years that electric car battery packs could, in principle, be reused for other purposes.

The companies aim to “evaluate and test the residential and commercial applications of energy storage systems or back-up Strength sources using lithium-ion battery packs reclaimed from electric vehicles after use.”

“It’s essential to Nissan that we manage the complete lifecycle of the electric vehicle battery pack, even beyond its use in a Nissan car,” told Ken Srebnik, senior manager, NNA Corporate Planning. “Innovations in energy storage systems are becoming more vicapable as the electric grid gets smarter, and Nissan is proud to work with ABB, 4R Energy and Sumitomo to help bring these possibilities to market.”

Energy storage systems are expected to become a key part of the smart grid, where it’s hoped to contribute to greater efficiency, reliability, performance and facilitate integrating rebrand new releasecapable energy into the grid. Energy storage systems can make intermittent energy sources like solar or wind Strength more feasible. For years small scale battery backup systems have been used for things like emergency lights and critical systems. As the smart grid is implemented, large scale energy storage systems are expected to smooth out electricity demand as it fluctuates during the day. A large scale energy storage system is essentially a large battery pack, along with technology to interface with the smart grid. The battery manufacturers are selling not just to the automakers but energy storage applications. For example A123 Systems, a battery supplier for several automakers, announced in December two smart grid projects including a 1 megawatt-hour system for the Maui Smart Grid Project, and a 2 megawatt-hour system for NSTAR.

We wish them luck but there are several issues to solve for this to become practical.

There is no consistency in the battery packs from different automakers. Each one has different battery chemistry, different battery management characteristics, different shapes (form factor) and so on. Reuse of battery packs from any automaker will have to accommodate these differences.

What is the residual value of a battery pack after ten years and it has 70% or so remaining capacity? Who gets the money for reselling the battery pack at its end of useful life? Can the residual value of the battery pack be used to decrease electric car purchase price? What will be the most economically feasible use for energy storage systems in general, not only the ones built out of electric car battery pack reuse?

About the reporter: After 22 years in Silicon Valley’s software industry David Herron is now writing about green transportation (electric vehicles) from Silicon Valley. David has built a number of electric bicycles, scooters, a motorcycle, and recently completed an electric 1971 Karmann Ghia conversion. He also runs the popular electric vehicle discussion forum, visforvoltage.org, and is the author of the book “Node Web Development”.

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