Perhaps you remember the all-electric Silverado (above) we reported on a few months back. The company behind that truck is UQM Technologies, and the Silverado was converted to electric use for the Air Force. UQM also works with the Army, and yesterday announced it has received a "follow-on contract" from the Army's Tank - Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) for further development of an "advanced vehicle propulsion motor for application as a wheel mounted electric propulsion system." The idea is to crank more and more torque from smaller and smaller packages, and UQM thinks that permanent magnet propulsion motors are the way to go. The Army is paying UQM $244,608 (apparently 77 percent of the total cost) for this work. I'm telling ya, stealth motors.

UQM's full press release is after the jump. UQM also works with Phoenix Motors on that company's BEVs and announced PHEVs.

[Source: UQM Technologies, Inc.]

Sure, the government has spent a heap of money promoting hybrids and hydrogen fuel cells and other green car technologies. But it shouldn't come as a surprise to many that the federal government has a lot more to give away. One of the sessions at last week's EDTA conference was dedicated to find ways to pork out on these funds. Over 100 people came to listen to Kelly Carnes, of Techvision 21, give the skivvy on these grants, and here's what she had to say.

One of the most important sources of funding for advanced drive vehicles is the Department of Defense, Carnes said, "because the dollar amounts are quite large" (EDTA attendees UQM and Saft America have figured this out).

The next big thing the government is ready to roll out the funding red carpet for is nanotechnology, Carnes said. Nanotechnology is all about understanding and controlling matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. The funding for nanotechnology has gone from around $174 million to the billions since the Clinton era, and total U.S. government investment since 2001 is over $5 billion. But you can't just tell the government that you're working on nanotechnology and get a pile of money. Nothing is that easy. Carnes made clear that receiving federal grants is a complicated process, and because these funding opportunities are competitive and merit-based, there are a lot rules to follow. The grants need to be publicly advertised, and EV firms should look over broad agency announcements (BAA) and requests for proposals (RFP) for the notices. For example, in November, the Army put out a BAA in the vehicle technology area for the next five years. Alternatively, companies can try to arrange a Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADA) with the government.

The rest of this story follows after the jump.

The only new vehicle unveiled at the EDTA conference was the converted Silverado EV, which you probably read about on Tuesday. Since all I had to do was walk on over to the UQM booth for more information on this truck, I didn't miss my chance to learn more about how the Air Force, and now the Army, is looking to make their vehicles greener.

The Silverado on display is a one-of-a-kind vehicle built by UQM in conjunction with the Air Force as a test bed for two technologies: permanent magnet machines and lithium-ion packs, and how they work together. The truck has a 46 kWh pack with 27 Valence li-ion batteries that power a 120 KW propulsion system that offers 650 newton meters peak torque. This power is moved by direct drive to the rear transaxle. The UQM Silverado gets about 150 miles per charge and can do 0-60 in less than 10 seconds, the booth spokesman told me. The truck has bee in the works in Colorado for two years, but only about half that time was spent actually working on the truck. The rest of the time UQM was dealing with contract issue, like threats that the Air Force would cancel the program.

More text and pictures after the jump.