Vol. 3, No. 2. | Fall 1996 |
Clean Fuels Florida is produced quarterly by the Alternative Fuels Information and Training Center at the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR) to inform public and private fleet operators about the opportunities and risks of conversion to alternative fuel vehicles.
CUTR was created by the Florida Legislature, the Florida Board of Regents, and the University of South Florida to find cost-effective, state-of-the-art solutions to transportation problems. CUTR's expertise in planning, engineering, economics, safety, and communications offers innovative solutions to public and private sector clients nationwide.
The First Vessel of Its Kind
The Tampa BayWatch, Inc. is pleased to present the first ever compressed natural gas (CNG) powered outboard boat. This versatile boat will be used for aquatic monitoring and educational purposes in Tampa Bay. In addition, the performance of this innovative monitoring boat will be used as a field test to determine the feasibility of converting the City of St. Petersburg Police Department and the Florida Marine Patrol's vessels from gasoline to CNG.
In addition to state-of-the art CNG converted Honda 75-horsepower engines, this boat boasts a Sabre Cat catamaran hull selected because of its low weight, shallow draft, and zero bilge design. This hull features an 11-inch draft, allowing easy access to shallow sea grass environments, an open deck with center console, hydraulic steering, custom dive platform, t-top, and stainless steel propellers. Custom cabinets were also installed to hold the CNG cylinders. The CNG cylinders, installed by Peoples Gas, are equipped to store 27 gallon equivalents of CNG. This capacity will fuel four hours of cruising speed operation. Peoples Gas also installed a FuelMaker natural gas compressor (donated by Trillium USA) for home base refueling. This boat will truly be an environmental showpiece.
The sponsors of the Tampa BayWatch CNG Boat are the Florida Energy Office, Peoples Gas Systems, Honda Marine, Sabre Cat, Trillium USF, City of St. Petersburg, and Tampa BayWatch, Inc.
We currently live in an age of increased air pollution due to the burning of fossil fuels, declining oil resources, and increasing fuel costs. Tampa BayWatch sees the use of CNG in our monitoring boat as an opportunity to prove the viability and efficacy of alternative fuels in everyday applications, while simultaneously reducing the amount of air and water pollution produced by our boating activities.
Non-Profit Stewardship Program for the Tampa Bay Estuary
Tampa BayWatch is a non-profit environmental stewardship program for the Tampa Bay estuary and is devoted exclusively to the charitable and scientific purpose of restoring and protecting the marine and wetland environments of the bay. The goal of the program is to monitor, protect, and restore bay resources, making a positive impact on the quality of life for everyone who fishes, boats, or swims the bay waters.
The Tampa BayWatch program is managed by the Tampa BayWatch Board of Directors and its Technical Advisory Committee (BAYTECH). A trained professional staff is utilized to monitor and protect the bay and to coordinate public restoration and protection activities. Recently, the Tampa Bay National Estuary Program (TBNEP) provided funding to establish a Conservation Corps Volunteer Network to facilitate restoration projects utilizing community volunteers. So far, thousands of individuals from community groups, scout troops, high schools, and elsewhere have joined Tampa BayWatch in salt marsh plantings, shorebird nest site protection, storm drain markings, wildlife rescue, and resource monitoring.
Peter Clark, a marine biologist and director of Tampa BayWatch, is the former director of the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council's Agency on Bay Management. His expertise and leadership provide him with excellent insight into the problems facing Tampa Bay. While Mr. Clark was director for the Agency on Bay Management, he initiated the process that ultimately led to the designation of Tampa Bay into the National Estuary Program. In 1994, Mr. Clark received the Outstanding Environmentalist of the Year Award from the Florida Marine Research Institute.
Tampa BayWatch constantly seeks to demonstrate environmentally low-impact equipment and methods in the daily implementation of their program. For example, the jet propelled monitoring boat eliminates damage to sensitive sea grass beds caused by propellers, and has been a useful example to other boaters in demonstrating how effective and fun an environmentally friendly boat can be.
The Southern Coalition for Advanced Transportation (SCAT) announced that it had signed an agreement with the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to add $5.2 million in jointly funded projects to its ongoing work in electric and hybrid vehicles. The agreement combines $2.2 million in DARPA funds with almost $3 million in matching funds provided by SCAT members to the projects.
The newly-funded projects include efforts to develop advanced batteries and propulsion systems for buses and trucks, devise new computer tools for vehicle designers, and test containment strategies for flywheel batteries, among others. The new agreement brings to over $35 million the total value of the portfolio of DARPA- sponsored research being pursued by members of the southern-based consortium through teams of universities, corporations, and government laboratories.
"Our members are thrilled to be starting on these R&D projects and hope to bring the results to market in the very near future," said SCAT president John Wilson. Several of the projects involve components or systems for electric and hybrid buses, a market that is already emerging at transit agencies and school districts across the nation. Another project involves sophisticated computer modeling and analysis tools, designed for access via the Internet, to help speed the work of vehicle designers and component makers working in different locations across the nation.
One of SCAT's major research forces is in the area of flywheel batteries, where energy is stored in the motion of spinning disks and converted by generators into electricity. "Our containment and safety project unites several competing flywheel developers in a cooperative effort to understand possible failure mechanisms and develop safe, affordable containment systems," said Wilson. Another project will address the commercial viability of flywheels by developing key structural components from lower-cost composite materials.
The award to SCAT also highlights the growing importance of the Sunbelt region in the developing market for electric vehicles and the technologies that comprise them. "We are already producing electric buses and the batteries that power them here in the South," added Wilson. GM will soon be producing electric pickup trucks at a factory in Louisiana. The batteries and drive trains for Chrysler's EPIC van and the batteries for the TDM/Ford Ranger have also been designed and are being built in the region.
Source: Press release; Atlanta, August 20, 1996. For more information, contact, John Wilson, (404)526-7228.
The South Florida Station Program has two phases--Pilot starting in 1996, followed by a larger Demonstration. The Pilot Program is a relatively low risk means to develop and promote the Demonstration. It is the first step in a learning process of integrating stations cars and mass transit in South Florida. The Demonstration will utilize 400 to 500 EVs and will be the real test to see if the concept is viable.
Pilot Program
The Pilot Program will begin in Fall 1996, with 10 to 12 battery-powered electric vehicles--upgraded Geo Prisms--to be used by commuters in connection with the MetroRail system. Eight to ten cars will be placed at the North Dadeland Metro station and two at the Civic Center Metro station. The North Dadeland station is in a south suburb of Miami, Kendall. The Civic Center station is north and west of downtown Miami and serves a Medical Complex with 35,000 employees, from whom the station car users will be selected. The two station cars at the Civic Center will be used by the station cars users as pool cars during the work day. The cars at North Dadeland will be used by the users between home and transit station. The two stations are about ten miles apart, but the roads between the two places are quite congested during rush hours. Alamo Rent-A-Car will own the cars, provide all related services, including interactions with the uses, and have a kiosk at the North Dadeland station that will be attended each morning.
Users of Electric Cars
Users will enjoy preferred parking with recharging at the North Dadeland station. They will join the program for 30 days paying a nominal fee to cover insurance and direct charges. A MetroRail pass is included in this once-a-month charge. All cars will be equipped with cellular phones and have free on-call emergency service. The cars have a range of about 50 miles on a full charge, will operate at speeds up to 70 mph with excellent acceleration, and can be recharged in 4 hours.
Working Partners
The Pilot program is a working partnership of Florida Power and Light, the Florida Alliance for Clean Technologies (FACT), Metro-Dade County, Alamo, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, and other local organizations seeking improved transportation and lower air pollution. These partners are coordinating with the National Station Car Association to plan the pilot, and to prepare a proposal for funding the next phase--the larger Demonstration Program.
Miami Beach expects to charge up its electric shuttle system in South Beach in less than six months. The City Commission approved the $1.4 million purchase of seven 22-seat shuttles--six for continuous use and one for backup. According to City Manager Jose Garcia-Pedrosa and Judy Evans, executive director of the Miami Beach Transportation Management Association, the route is expected to be completed by the end of September, and President Clinton may sign legislation that would boost the program with $1 million in federal funding.
According to Evans, once the shuttle program begins running in February or March 1997, it should ease traffic congestion in South Beach by encouraging Beach employees, visitors, and residents to park in outlying lots and take a free ride through the Art Deco district. "The 17th Street Garage is one of our main focal points right now and it's only being used at 12% capacity," Evans said.
Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue, on the other hand, frequently have traffic jams and more cars than parking spots available, continued Evans. "We want to fill up what we as taxpayers have been paying for. . . garages. Only then, can we justify building more."
The shuttle system, which is now more than four years in the planning stages, began in earnest with the vehicle purchase, according to Garcia-Pedrosa, because the vendor Advanced Vehicle Systems Inc., builds one at a time. It will take six months to get them manufactured.
The City is paying for the shuttles with $566,497 from the City resort tax, $202, 356 from a future grant, $650,000 from the Florida Department of Transportation, and $200,000 from a Gold Coast Clean Cities Coalition Grant.
Florida Power & Light will donate equipment for a charging station, but the City has not selected a site for the station. The route, still unconfirmed, will go north to 17th Street and south to Fifth Street, according Evans. "We're not sure if it will run along Alton Road [but] we know it will run one length along Washington Avenue." The Florida Department of Transportation and the Metro-Dade Transit Authority must approve the route.
Once it's approved, according to Evans, the Transportation Management Association will begin marketing the system. Shuttles will stop at designated locations throughout South Beach every 8-10 minutes and take people to specified parking areas. During the shuttle's pilot period, area chambers of commerce, hotels, business associations, and FP&L all plan to advertise the shuttle, called the Electric Wave. If it proves successful, we would like to expand as far north as the Fontainebleau and Doral so they can connect into South Beach. This first phase is giving us an opportunity to get the bugs out.
City officials apparently feel confident in the system's future since the city has already applied for a state grant to buy more shuttles for the second phase.
Source: Excerpt from Jeffrey S. Solochek, Miami Today, Thursday, September 19, 1996.
As more electric vehicles (EVs) enter the market, the Alternative Fuel Data Center (AFDC) is working to add public charging stations to its refueling site database. Although most EVs are expected to charge in personal residences during off-peak hours, cities like Sacramento and Los Angeles are already installing public charging outlets.
Five major automobile manufacturers--General Motors, Honda, Toyota, Ford, and Chrysler--have all announced plans for EV production models during the next two years. These plans are sequentially listed in the accompanying table in terms of announced dates of EV availability.
Several cities targeted for EV marketing are developing public charging sites, but many are already in place. The Electric Vehicle Association of the Americas lists 295 public charging outlets at 43 sites in its directory, most in California, but a few are also in Virginia, Vermont, Washington, and Arizona.
EVs introduced by Ford, Chrysler, Honda, and Toyota will all be charged conductively (via a yet-to-be-determined conductive contact-type connector assembly--a conductive plug inserted into a receptacle in the vehicle's inlet).
Although Nissan Motor Company has announced it will use inductive charging when it begins demonstrating its electric Prairie Joy EV in Japan, so far GM is the only domestic auto manufacturer to produce inductively charged EVs. This type of charging uses a high-frequency transformer-coupled interface (a plastic paddle assembly that houses the transformer's primary side that is inserted into the vehicle's inlet, which incorporates the secondary side of the transformer and completes the magnetically coupled charging-power transfer system). Each method has pros and cons, but many in the industry compare it to the VHS versus Beta videotape contest in which the VHS format eventually took over the marketplace based on consumer preference. Most of the existing sites are for conductive charging, but there are still many sites with inductive charging or both available.
Although the auto manufacturers have adopted different charging methods, they have all proposed and/or adopted standard systems for the home charging infrastructure elements and three power levels for charging EVs. Other industry standards are being developed or finalized through the Society of Automotive Engineers, Underwriters Laboratories, American National Standards Institute, National Electric Code, and four regional building codes and standards organizations. Closer cooperation with international standards and code-making bodies is evolving to make an internationally marketable EV available. However, many of the existing charging sites were installed before current and ongoing standards were established. These particular standards have now been established.
These standards will play a critical role in siting a public recharging station, but EV owners can be sure of getting a full charge by "filling up" at their home overnight. Most residences and buildings can be equipped with EV recharging facilities for $200-2,000, depending on the adequacy of existing wiring in addition to the cost of an off-board charger if required.
To check out EV charging sites in the AFDC, click on the "Refueling Site Database" on the Web site, http://www.afdc.doe.gov. "ELEC" is now a fuel option when setting up a search.
Source: AFDC Update: News of the Alternative Fuels Data Center, Volume 5, No.2, Summer 1996.
| Maker | Model | Battery | Range | Where | When | Contract |
| Ford | TDM Ranger pickup | lead-acid | 50 miles | To fleets in California and selected U.S. markets |
Summer 1996 | 800-ALT-FUEL |
| General Motors | EV1 | lead-acid | 70 miles city, 90 miles highway | To Saturn dealers in Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego, and Los Angeles | 1997 Model Year | 800-25- ELECTRIC |
| General Motors | Chevrolet S-Series pickup |
lead-acid | 40 miles cities, 45 miles highway |
To fleets nationwide | 1997 Model Year |
800-222-1010 |
| American Honda Motor Co. | Honda EV | nickel- metal- hydride | 125 miles city |
300 leased to fleets in California | Spring 1997 |
310-783-3164 |
| Toyota Motor Sales Co. | RAV4-EV sport utility |
nickel- metal- hydride |
118 miles city/ highway combined |
320 leased to fleets in California | 1998 Model Year |
800-331-4331 |
| Chrysler | EPIC minivan | lead-acid | 60 miles | To be announced |
1998 Model Year | 800-255-2616 |
| Ford | Ranger pickup | lead-acid | 50 miles | To fleets nationwide |
1998 Model Year | 800-ALT-FUEL |
AUTOBIKE brings automatic transmission simplicity to cycling. Its patented six-speed derailleur system uses centrifugal force to shift the rider effortlessly to the right speed at the right time. You always start in the lowest, easiest gear. AUTOBIKE is designed to keep you pedaling at a steady 65 revolutions per minute, and the automatic six-speed derailleur helps you handle hills or wind resistance. Enjoy the scenery or watch out for traffic, while hands stay safely on the handlebars and brakes. The extra wide, spring cushion seat can easily be adjusted with the quick-release adjustment. The all-terrain tires of the AUTOBIKE with its 26" aluminum rims and weighing only 34 lbs is great on the street, back roads, or for trail riding.
Power Assisted Products: e-mail larryow@mindspring.com
ZAP, Inc. brings back the "Retro" look with a futuristic "ZAP" to it. Introducing their new ElectricCruiser featuring an eye-catching frame style of rugged, hi-tensile steel, equipped with hi-quality, six-speed, index, grip shifting and front and rear cantilever brakes. Wide, semi-slick, white wall road tires and a springy contour saddle help smooth out even the bumpiest of roads. The curved handlebars make for a comfortable upright riding position. Accessories include the front and rear fenders, baskets, rear racks, lights, and horns.
Excerpt from Zap Website: http://www.sonic.net/zap
Conference Objectives:
Conference topics will include:
The pre-conference fleet manager's workshop is dedicated to answering questions and improving knowledge of how propane can benefit fleets as well as the environment:
For more information on the conference, please call 1-800-722-4156.
