I covered the AFVI Expo last week and that trip was my first visit to Las Vegas. I've heard the stories, the advertising campaign that tries to sell Sin City as, well, Sin City that takes your credit card. What interested me the most, though, was how my environmentalist mind would react to being in a city that, quite honestly, celebrates excess and waste. I didn't expect to feel comfortable in an oasis of VIP come-ons and bright lights surrounded by a harsh desert. I arrived in town around noon and, during my lunch at a quite reasonable buffet (Indian food, not one of those with endless tables featuring every food ever), I happened to read Wendel Berry's essay Faustian Economics from the latest issue of Harper's. Whoops.

Berry, who wrote an astounding collection of essays called The Long-Legged House back in 1969, takes on biofuels in the Harper's essay. Well, he starts with biofuels and smoothly segues into a discussion of limits, reductions and how it will ever be possible to really come to terms with the way we're consuming the world's resources. More thoughts on this after the break.

Andrew Littlefair (left) and T. Boone Pickens

The majority of the attendees at the AFVI Expo's Fleet Day breakfast keynote seemed quite pleased to listen to T. Boone Pickens (just like last year). Pickens is the founder of BP Capital Management and had a sit-down discussion with Andrew Littlefair, the president and CEO of Clean Energy. Why do AFVI folks like this guy? He's got a lot of information (he's made billions in the oil and energy industry) and he sees a way to power the future (he's made a huge investment in wind power in Texas, for example. Littlefair said that without Boone, there wouldn't be an NGV industry in the U.S.

A few choice quotes:

• "We are importing 72 percent of our oil. ... We are now transferring $600 billion [a year] out of the United States to a few friends and a hell of a bunch of enemies. I can tell you, we are paying for the war against ourselves."
• "If they [China] had the Olympics today, in this smog, and ran the 100 meter dash, it would have to be a relay."
• "Diesel will never sell, again, below gasoline. It will always be more expensive than gasoline."
• "We're actually dealing with a huge shift of capital out to somewhere. We're going to be reduced to - I promise you it's going to happen pretty quick, too - we'll be reduced to something less than the superpower that we are."

Much more from Boone (including audio of his chat) after the break.

Project Better Place has been making lots of headlines with their plan to create a battery swapping and charging infrastructure in different countries. At the recently held Alternative Fuels and Vehicles conference, a panel of representatives from some American electric car makers suggested they would prefer to see a slightly different scenario for the U.S. market. Nay to the whole battery swapping thing, yea to fast-charging stations.

Here are some quotes from the participants as reported by Jennifer Kho of greentechmedia:

• Bryon Bliss of Phoenix Motorcars: "With the ability to do rapid charge, we see that playing more of a role than stations to exchange them." "There are a lot of complications [in exchanging the batteries]."

• Richard Kasper of Chrysler's Global Electric Motorcars said the investment that battery-replacement stations would require would be "very significant."

• Jeff Boyd of Miles Electric Vehicles: "Fast charging is here; it's available. You can put a station at a Starbucks for a cost of $125,000. There's no reason to wait [for something else]."

During the question and answer session after the panel, Dean Taylor, a senior technical scientist at Southern California Edison, brought up a point often raised in debating fast-charging. Specifically, that daytime charging by drivers would add to peak demand as well as put strain on the grid. That was countered by Bryon Bliss who stated that charging stations could pull the electricity from batteries, like those made by Altairnano, which could also be a boon to utilities by helping them with grid stabilization. Click the "read" link to learn more of this interesting discussion. [NOTE: AutoblogGreen's Sebastian Blanco moderated the AFVI panel]

[Source: Greentechmedia]

Michael Williams is a bold man. It's not because he wears a bow tie and cowboy boots; it's because he will publicly say he's a good friend of the President. Not many people around who will admit to being tight with George Bush these days. Williams, who is the chairman of the Railroad Commission of Texas, revealed this and many other things during his speech to the AFVI Expo crowd during fleet day last week about the power of propane as an alternative fuel. Now, why would the Railroad Commission care about propane? Well, in Texas, the Railroad Commission doesn't regulate railroads (anymore). Instead, it regulates the "state's oil and gas industry, gas utilities, pipeline safety, safety in the liquefied petroleum gas industry, and the surface mining of coal and uranium." Therefore, if you're involved in LPG or other gases in the state, then the Railroad Commission is your agency. But, if you don't want to hear about propane from Williams, then skip ahead to about minute 10:30 in the audio clip below and you'll hear a little joke about the AFVI and Moses.

Listen to Williams (15 min):



As part of the Fleet Day opening session, there were many keynote speakers who discussed alternative fuels for fleets. Read about and listen to them after the break.

There weren't a lot of astoundingly cool vehicles to drive at the AFVI Expo Ride and Drive earlier this week. Still, throw a handful of alternative-fueled cars, trucks and CUVs in a Las Vegas parking lot, and I'll check it out. As you can see in the video I made of the event, Bosch was heavily represented by a half-dozen or so clean diesel models. GEM and Miles EVs were easy to spot, and there was even a hybrid cherry-picker and a propane pickup or two. To kick off the event, Ed Begley, Jr. and Bobby Rahal cut a ribbon (see pictures below) and then took a short loop around the lot. Watch the video after the break, and thanks to Shotgun Musical Laboratories for the sounds.

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We first heard about the ZeroTruck, a Class 4 delivery truck powered by nothing but good old electrons, towards the end of April. Electrorides, Inc. brought the prototype ZeroTruck to the AFVI Expo in Las Vegas this week, trying to get fleet operators to sign up for an upcoming national tour the truck will make later this summer to show off its capabilities.

Tedd Abramson, the president and CEO of Electrorides, Inc., spoke to AutoblogGreen about the ZeroTruck and said that the truck will save fleets money not only at the pump but also in the back room, where maintenance billing is done. Down time at the fueling station is also reduced, so there are cost savings on top of the lower price for the energy needed to move the truck.

The ZeroTruck is a 2008 Isuzu N Series chassis converted to run on batteries. The vehicles uses a lithium polymer battery pack that offers a 100-mile range. The 14-foot truck offers very flexible options for the bed and, since Isuzu chassis makes up around 78 percent of the market, fleet operators are very familiar with what these options are, how the vehicle operates, and how it holds up in the field.

All of this does not come cheap. Abramson said that the ZeroTruck will have a cost premium of just over $100,000 a compared to the standard diesel version. All those cost savings, Abramson said, mean that the premium should be recouped in five years. Abramson said he expects the vehicle to offer about ten years of operation. If everything checks out, then that cost premium won't be a problem at all. We'll have to wait and see how many fleet operators pull the trigger on this truck to see if they believe the company's claims are accurate. Note: Electrorides gave AutoblogGreen permission to post the slides used during the company's presentation at the Expo. You can find them in the gallery below.

Listen to Abramson (10 min):

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This week, at the AFVI Expo, I moderated a panel on the roll-out of electric vehicle products from Miles EV, Phoenix Motorcars and GEM. The representatives were Bryon Bliss, vice president of sales and marketing for Phoenix, Jeff Boyd, COO of Miles, and Richard Kaspar, GEM's president and COO. Oh, and our friend Ed Begley, Jr. was there as well, continuing his relationship with Phoenix.

The purpose of the panel was for each company to present their case not only for EVs but for their particular products. Since these companies all offer vehicles with quite different capabilities and styles, they're not really competitors, and it was a congenial event. Since I expect our readers to be pretty familiar with the vehicle line-ups of these three companies, I won't go into details about them. There were a few things said during the 90 minutes that caught my ear, though, that I think you'll want to hear about.

• The Miles EV offices are in Santa Monica, CA. To commute to work, Boyd drives a prototype of the XS500, Miles' upcoming highway-speed battery-powered sedan. The price target is still $35,000 and deliveries should start in the third quarter of 2009. The sedan will be followed by an electric SUV. I told Boyd that the next time I'm in town, I'll be knocking on the office door, begging for a ride. I mean, it worked for the Roadster.
• Phoenix expects deliveries of its all-electric SUT to start at the end of June (yes, in six weeks). Certification should be finished June 1, Bliss said and the company has orders for 600 vehicles to fill as of today.
• GEM's big news is the addition of new options to the back cargo space of its work trucks. Since GEM vehicles have been selling for over a decade, GEM has had plenty of time to listen to customers and find out what they want/need. New covers and door types are now available, and you can see a list of GEM vehicle options here.

Greentech media was also in the room, and wrote up this account of what happened. Both Miles and GEM had vehicles on the show floor, and I've included galleries of their displays below. The Phoenix photos are from the 2007 AFVI Expo. For those of you keeping score, Zap and Dynasty were nowhere to be found at the Expo this year (unlike last year).

So, I'm editing together a short video of the Ride and Drive portion of the AFVI Expo that ended yesterday in Las Vegas. While we have (and often use) a piece of music we crafted ourselves as an intro and bed for our podcasts and videos, it really wasn't designed to be played in its entirety. And, since the video I'm working on has no comments, no talking heads, I thought you might want a change of pace this time. I figured at least one of our readers out there is a musician and would like to have his or her music, whether it's instrumental or have words that match out ABG theme, be the backdrop to this video.

Therefore, if you've got your music online in an easy-to-edit-in-iMovie format - along with (important) proof of either a Creative Commons license or some other way to guarantee that it's OK that we use the music - then post a link in the comments by 4 pm EST today. Alternately, if you know of come great Creative Commons music you think I should use, let me know that, too. I hope to post the video tonight, so don't delay. Thanks!

When Larry Burns, GM's vice president of R&D and planning, spoke at the opening session of the AFVI expo yesterday morning, he stayed on target to bring GM's message to the conference. Before he stepped onto the stage, we had a chance to sit down with him and ask a few question

One thing I wanted to follow up with him about was his recent speech to the Hydrogen Fuel Association where he called for more government support for a hydrogen refueling infrastructure. Burns told me that in the six or so weeks since that speech, he's heard a bit of discussion and seen some movement on this issue. There's nothing to announce, but it seems there are still lots of people in government who listen to what GM wants. As for the customer side of the equation, Burns said that buyers will get excited about hydrogen cars once they have the chance to take a ride or a drive in a fuel cell car. Just take a look at Project Driveway, he said. We also talked about the 1970s Oil Shocks and the problem of reduced oil supply (you can't think of it in cyclical fashion; you need to think long-term, he said). Listen for yourself (12 min)

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Remember the big deal it was when the "Here & Now" version of Monopoly came out and there was a Prius pawn inside? Well, there's Monopoly Prius standing guard at the entry way to the AFVI expo hall here in Las Vegas this week. The hybrid is totally decked out in Monopoly money decorations and has landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and the Seattle Space Needle painted on it. Aside from being a good conversation piece, the display takes care to note that the Prius is the first car in space - since the game's updated tokens were sent into orbit on the Space Shuttle at some point. Is this display a big deal? Not really, but when I get home from this trip, I'll post another batch of pictures I took a few months ago, just for fun. Who knew there was more than one person who wanted to decorate their car in Monopoly money?

Amy Myers Jaffe

Another year, another AFVI convention. At last year's show, which took place in Anaheim, California, we learned about Connaught's Type-D Hybrid, the Naro concept vehicle, and took a Smart Brabus diesel for a quick spin. The 2008 Alternative Fuels & Vehicles National Conference and Expo officially kicked off in Las Vegas this morning. Annalloyd Thomason, AFVI's executive director, gave the opening remarks and introduced the four people who would set the stage for the week. The speakers lined up for the opening session were not what I would consider the usual suspects for an industry conference like this; they were just a little bit more aware of issues outside the technical focus that sometimes defines these sorts of events.

Amy Myers Jaffe, for example, put the conference's topic into a global perspective. Myers Jaffe wears a lot of hats, but the two most pertinent for the AFVI crowd were her positions as associate director of the Rice University energy program and a strategic adviser to the American Automobile Association. Her speech focused on political instability and conflicts around the world and the challenges they bring to energy use. The tight oil market means that what she called small events (e.g., oil workers who go on strike in Nigeria - something that happened in the 1980s with out a real ripple) can now have a big, big effect on the world market. The new definition of energy security means having options in all of our energy sectors, transportation included, she said. Listen to her 15-minute keynote address:



Much more after the jump.

Electrorides Inc., a company based in California, will debut the ZeroTruck, an all-electric medium duty truck, at the 2008 AFVI National Conference and Expo in Las Vegas in mid-May. The ZeroTruck can go 100 miles per charge using an EIG lithium polymer battery pack and a UQM brushless permanent magnet elecgtric motor. The highway-speed truck can capture energy through regenerative braking and has an on-board charger to suck power from the grid. The first ZeroTrucks will be released in the Los Angeles area later this year - deliveries should start in August - with a national roll-out planned for 2009. More details after the jump.

The ZeroTruck is a converted Isuzu N Series and Greentechmedia.com says that the pure EV version will be joined by a series-hybrid version that uses a modified diesel engine that can burn biodiesel or pure veggie oil. Electrorides has invited AutoblogGreen to test drive the ZeroTruck at the AFVI show, so we'll have a much better idea about what this truck is about in a few weeks.

If you're involved with monitoring a fleet of trucks, then you may have considered using liquefied natural gas (LNG) in those vehicles. Wal-Mart, PG&E, and the California ports have all taken a look at the technology. If you'd like a window into how LNG can reduce costs and emissions when compared to petroleum products, check out the latest webinar (I still don't like that word) from the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Institute. On April 22, the AFVI will present the free "LNG as a Transportation Fuel" session (registration is required). AFVI says the webinar will preview the new course ""Driver, Technician and Fuel Handler Safety Training for LNG Vehicles" and cover:

• Brief history of LNG and future trends
• Characteristics of LNG
• Transportation application
• Fueling
• Safety

The last AFVI webinar was on Plug-in Hybrids.

[Source: AFVI]

While we can now easily see in great detail what General Motors thinks about plug-in hybrids vs. EVs with range extenders, what do others in the industry think about PHEVs? Anyone who can get online with a fast-enough web connection at 1:30 PM EST on February 26 will be able to find out. That's when the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Institute will present a free online seminar (ok, some use the ugly word "webinar") called "All Charged Up: The Promise of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles."

According to the AFVI page announcing the event, the speakers will be

• Mark Alexander, Manager, Vehicle Systems Analysis, Electric Power Research Institute
• Dave Modisette, Executive Director, California Electric Transportation Coalition
• Efrain Ornelas, Environmental Technical Supervisor, Pacific Gas and Electric Company

AFVI promises that "Webinar participants will receive a primer on PHEV technology, the benefits and applications. The environmental benefits and value proposition will be a focal point." Anyone can listen in for free, but you have to register first.

[Source: AFVi]

We've mentioned all of these green car rental companies before, but this is the perfect time to recap, what with the Anaheim Alternative Fuels and Vehicles National Conference and Expo starting Sunday. If any of our readers will be traveling to the LA-area for the event (or any time), consider this a heads-up that you can drive an alternative-fuel car during your stay.

The AFVI conference support crew sent out an email listing three green rental companies: Bio-Beetle, Fox Rent-A-Car and EV Rental Car. If you're signed up for the conference, you can get a discount at the latter two. I've put the contact info for these companies after the jump.

Also, check out my story on the Maui Bio-Beetle experience.

[Source: AFVI]