Monthly Archives: June 2020

PHEV or not PHEV – That Is the Question

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Why I’m resuming testing cars that are not pure EVs.

By Steve Schaefer

2020 Niro PHEV

On April 25th of this year, with COVID-19 causing massive lockdowns and cars sitting parked, the skies around the world cleared up! This happy and unexpected news inspired me to declare to the world, in this blog, the following:

I have decided, after 28 years of automotive testing and writing, that I will now test and review only pure, all-electric vehicles. It completes the move away from testing gasoline-only cars that I made after my Climate Reality Leadership Training in August of 2018.

This bold, emotionally fueled statement meant I was giving up on hybrids, including the plug-in ones with chargeable batteries.

Well, since then, I have tested a single car—the delightful if range-impaired Mini Cooper SE. I’ve also had time to think about what is likely to happen in the 2020s. The fact is, regardless of how much I love EVs, barring some miracle yet to happen, they are not going to constitute 100 percent of new car sales anytime soon, except perhaps in Norway. In my home country, the United States of America, there will still be some people who choose not to drive electric, and there presumably will be some manufacturers willing to indulge them if profits can be made.

We don’t need a 100% electric fleet by 2030, as wonderful (and clean and quiet) as that sounds. We need a 50% electric fleet, with an eventual movement to 100% electric new vehicles, with the older ones eventually dwindling away as they are retired or massively disappearing if a program can be devised to do that.

Based on this line of reasoning, there is no reason why some people can’t opt for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) now instead of BEVs if they need them. And why would they need them? Perhaps they don’t have their own roof for solar and worry about access to public charging. Perhaps they need to drive long distances periodically, which in 2020 only a gas vehicle can do without stops that last under 10 minutes.

Although PHEVs are still saddled with not only a motor but a gasoline engine, fuel tank, radiator, and all that, because they have a chargeable battery, if driven locally within their much shorter range, they can serve nicely as EVs most of the time, only sipping fuel when needed. And that is MUCH better than a gasoline burner, or even a regular hybrid, which switches from gas to battery and back again and can’t be charged. Even a regular hybrid delivers twice the fuel economy of an internal combustion engine (ICE) car, which essentially takes half a car off the road. A PHEV can remove 90%, once again, depending on use.

Do I want to promote PHEVs, then? I’d rather entice someone to buy a BEV, because they are so silent and clean and wonderful, but realistically, we can still have some PHEVs in the fleet in the ‘20s until electric/gas price parity is achieved, the charging network is built out, and the 400-mile battery is invented. Instead of “all-or-nothing” thinking, this means looking at the overall goal of cutting our CO2 emissions in half by 2030 and finding a workable strategy for eventually making the fossil fuel industry history.

Yes, I would like to have a few more test cars, too, although I don’t need one every week. Many exciting electrified vehicles are arriving in the next couple of years that are plug-in hybrids, and it would be a shame for me to miss out on testing those cars.  I need to be able to guide readers to the best transportation solution for them now, and in the future.

For a great example of the wonders of plug-in hybrids, see this story on the Kia Niro PHEV by freelance auto writer Mike Hagerty. I’ll plan to serve up a few PHEV stories myself once I let my test fleets know my change of heart. Stay tuned.

Superpedestrian Builds an Advanced New Scooter

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By Steve Schaefer

Link scooter 01

Electric scooters are popular in congested urban spaces. Easier to use than a car, with no parking issues, they are also great for last-mile connections to public transit. However, scooters have some issues, including safety, reliability, and profitability for fleet operators. And, of course, there is the current concern of staying safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. But scooters have an important role to play in the future of urban mobility.

The weaknesses of scooters are well known—they’re easily damaged and maintenance is expensive and time consuming. What was needed was a better scooter, so Superpedestrian developed one.

I spoke with company founder and CEO Assaf Biderman about their scooter and the LINK application they are rolling out to access it.

Origins

BIderman moved to the United States from Israel in 2001 and co-founded the Senseable City Laboratory at MIT. Using his Physics background, he and the team focused on micro vehicles and the technology to make them safer and more cost effective. They used artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and robotics to address urban transportation problems in new ways.

Superpedestrian was spun out of MIT as a robotics company in 2013. They then spent more than four years developing their proprietary Vehicle Intelligence System (VIS) and introduced it in their first product—the Copenhagen Wheel. This product is an amazing red disc/motor that learns your biking style and adds power to support your ride. You can buy a bike with the wheel or add it to your own bike (they will custom-build it to fit).

Since 2018, Superpedestrian’s team of talented designers, developers and engineers has focused on engineering and validating a superior scooter for shared fleets.

The Urban Transportation Problem

“There will be two plus billion more people on the planet by 2050,” said Biderman. “Where can we put them? How do we share the road space? The only solution is multi-mobility.”

That means providing more one- or two-person vehicles, with autonomous capability and the ability to monitor themselves to prevent them from breaking down.

“It’s like an immune system,“ said BIderman. “Are they safe to ride before starting? What’s the chance of electronic failure before riding? There are hundreds of things.”

The ideal system avoids problems by diagnosing them in advance and fixing or preventing damage to key components before they break.

“For example, a cut wire can be identified and fixed before it leads to a bigger problem,” said Biderman.

The company had a three-part goal for their new scooter:

  1. Provide a safer ride
  2. Make them cost effective for fleets
  3. Create a scalable platform that brings sustainability to the city, integrating with public transit and plans the city makes for scooters, such as protected bike paths

What Makes the Superpedestrian Scooter Different

Although it looks similar, the Superpedestrian scooter is fundamentally different from regular scooters. It has a full-blown operating system (OS) onboard, developed over years of research and engineering by the company’s robotics engineers.

As Biderman explains, a basic scooter has motors and basic parts, but it can know what’s going on with the scooter itself and report back issues in the cloud so they can be fixed.

Superpedestrian has spent more than seven years developing their Vehicle Information System. Its more than 140 indicators monitor or provide:

  • Power from the motor, electric braking, and energy in and out of the battery
  • Vehicle encryption for cybersecurity
  • Decision-making ability in real time to prevent most safety hazards
  • Temperature/water penetration to help prevent component failure
  • Reporting ability – generate a repair ticket
  • A cloud data layer

Your basic scooter doesn’t contain any of this. Amazingly, the high-tech Superpedestrian scooter costs about the same to manufacture.

“This system enables you to scale micro vehicles to the millions,” said Biderman.

You’d expect that the system would use lots of sensors to detect vehicle behavior, as you’ll find in a car. But, per Biderman, they are expensive, need calibration, and can break.

“We found a way to do it without the sensors,” he said. “It’s a machine learning process, where we train the system to attribute functionality of components to failures upstream. It’s a very low-cost, reliable system.”

So, how does the scooter communicate when there’s a problem?

“Most data isn’t significant to the user,” said Biderman. “But if something goes wrong, the scooter will stop safely, and tell you why.”

With the data living on the scooter itself, Superpedestrian’s scooter can implement geofences in under one second.

The Superpedestrian scooter has a larger, 84-cell battery, for a greater range.  This reduces charging frequency, keeping the scooter in use more of the time.

Easier and Safer to Ride with a Lower Center of Gravity

While some scooters put the battery on the vertical part of the scooter, Superpedestrian installs it under the foot panel. A lower center of gravity makes it easier to control the scooter. Also, the engineers designed the scooter to work optimally for most people—the 50th-percentile man and woman as well as a shorter female and a 95th-percentile man. The angle of the upper section and handlebars is carefully planned as well.

The Superpedestrian scooter stops in a shorter distance than a standard scooter. One reason is that it uses a dual mechanical braking system. Each lever actuates regenerative braking, which helps charge the battery and reduce wear on the mechanical brakes. It’s a system used in electric cars.

However, in cars, when the battery is full, or the battery is hot or is below a certain temperature, regeneration is turned off. How to make it available all the time in a scooter?

“We found other ways to dissipate energy,” said Biderman. “For safe stopping, it’s important that the brakes feel the same all the time to the rider, so they don’t apply too little or too much pressure.”

Built to Last

Scooters are notorious for having short lives, taking abuse from various riders and rough handling. Per Biderman, the real problem with longevity isn’t mechanical as much as it is electronic.

“Our software ensures that the vehicle doesn’t experience any fundamental electronic issues,” he said. “Replacing batteries and controllers is where you get a total loss.”

The Superpedestrian scooter is designed to take at least 2,500 trips, far more than the average scooter. They also build the scooter to withstand much more stress than you’d expect. Their scooter can withstand one ton of vertical load, for example.

“If a big guy is riding the scooter and hits a pothole, it can create a lot of force—our scooter is able to tolerate that,” explained Biderman.

As for vandalism and theft, Superpedestrian is prepared.

“We can easily replace a plastic fender,” said Biderman. And the structure itself is sturdy enough to withstand vandalism. All of the cables and wires are hidden inside the vehicle for safety and security.

When and Where can I Ride One?

Superpedestrian has acquired the Zagster fleet management system and is offering their scooter to consumers via the LINK brand. The LINK app gives you access to the scooters, and it will be rolled later this year in cities in the U.S. and Europe.

To help solve the climate crisis and urban mobility issues, Superpedestrian is providing scooters that are safe, dependable, and scalable and profitable for fleets.

Link scooter 03

Power to the People! The People Power Solar Cooperative Opens Up Solar Ownership

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By Steve Schaefer

PEOPLE POWER SOLAR COOPERATIVE’S FIRST COMMUNITY-OWNED SOLAR P

With reputable reports telling us that we need to decarbonize quickly to slow global warming that leads to climate change, we have to make sure everyone can participate. And now, with greater awareness of systematic racism in the U.S. and around the world from the murder of George Floyd and countless others before and after him, it’s time to address the connections between racial justice and climate solutions in this country. This is a critical opportunity to rethink beyond decarbonization and include everyone in the urgent work to fight climate change.

We can’t address the social justice issues without addressing the racist system that is oppressing many communities daily. The key to defending these communities is to allow them to have control of their own livelihood. Allowing them to have community control also lets us to address the climate emergency.

The People Power Solar Cooperative provides the technical, legal, and administrative backbone for communities to have control of their own energy regardless of whether they own or rent. The People Power Solar Cooperative’s mission is to create a just and inclusive transition to renewable energy by enabling everyone to own and shape their energy future.

Crystal Huang, CEO of the People Power Solar Cooperative

Crystal HuangCrystal Huang is a grassroots community-builder and the leader of the People Power Solar Cooperative. She has more than ten years of experience in climate solutions and activism. As a climate activist, she served as COO of Powerhouse, a solar incubator, and founded CrossPollinators, which fosters collaboration among grassroots solutions. She was associate producer of a documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Charles Ferguson called Time to Choose.

According to Crystal, although the climate crisis is our biggest problem, there is a growing understanding of how the system we have in place excludes many people from working on climate issues. Climate change may actually be a symptom of a larger problem that causes the exclusion to begin with.

“In order for us to include everyone in the climate solutions, we need to open our hearts to see the injustice and oppression that are happening every day,” said Crystal. “We need to recognize our privilege and in order to create collective climate action.”

In a society where some people get killed simply for living their lives, it’s virtually impossible for some communities to participate in the urgent climate solution. The longer we don’t recognize their reality and provide resources to allow them to live their lives, the more we are delaying the exigent need to pull humanity back from the edge of climate catastrophe.

“We need to break out of the culture of separation,” said Crystal. “We need to change the state of mind from exclusionary to inclusionary and share resources with them to collectively solve the biggest issues facing humanity.”

Crystal has gone through her own growth of awareness. Born in the U.S. but raised in her family’s native Taiwan, she didn’t experience racism herself, but became aware of it when she returned to the U.S. as an adult. When she was trying to increase the adoption of climate solutions with fellow climate activists, she ran into the problem we always think about—how  do we close the gaps between the haves and the have-nots.

As a curious soul, she went straight to these communities to find out why the gap exists. To her surprise, she learned from community groups in San Francisco’s Hunter’s Point neighborhood that community gardens didn’t just provide nutritious food but also reduced neighborhood violence and offered a sense of community and belonging as well as resources to not just survive but prosper.

“Low-income communities actually have a lot of solutions we don’t know about,” she said. “They understand what needs to happen, but don’t have the resources.”

Meanwhile, many in the clean tech community live without this awareness, thinking from their own privileged viewpoint that technology alone can solve the problem.

“Climate change is not the core problem, it is a symptom of the underlying problem,” said Crystal, summing up the issue. “The main problem is an extractive economy that exploits people and the planet for others’ economic gain.”

People Power addresses root causes of this problem, not just the symptoms.

It’s easy for a middle-class person, sitting in their own home in the suburbs, to call in multiple solar bids, choose the best one, and have panels installed on their own roof. I know, because that’s what I did last year. But, according to Crystal, more than half of our population can’t own solar, including renters, low-income homeowners, and people with shared roofs. “This is a failure for climate action and for justice,” said Crystal. “We need to open it up to everyone to move as fast as we can.”

A cooperative is a way to do it.

“If we are connected with each other, we become the solution, using technology as a tool,” said Crystal at a presentation for the Climate Reality Bay Area Chapter recently. She was inviting the audience to recognize the resource disparity — that disadvantaged communities tend to have an expertise and wisdom that we don’t have. “We can solve the climate crisis if we share resources for everyone to collectively own and control resources in their own community,” she said.

Collectives Work for People

There are plenty of historical examples of how cooperative living works well. Indigenous societies are known for living this way. The kibbutz movement in Israel was very successful in settling the country in the early and middle years of the 20th century. And cooperatives were around during the Great Depression, too, although their success has been downplayed as various government programs, such as the WPA, are now celebrated.

So, how does the People Power Solar Cooperative make community energy projects possible? Their innovative Commons Model proves that we can disconnect the ownership of land from the ownership of power. The model can serve as a tool for the community to organize, building on resources that may already exist there.

The Commons Model

There are three models, or “states-of-mind” in our society. The Market state-of-mind, which is all too familiar, wants to sell the energy project to the highest bidder possible. This means if you can’t afford to pay, you don’t get to have access to energy even if you need power to live. The Charity state-of-mind is well intentioned—its goal is to give the community free or cheaper energy. However, this doesn’t enable the community to participate in the process to have self-determination. The Commons state-of-mind, however, is different. It enables people in the community to come together to gain control of their own energy while building their collective wealth. It’s easy to see that the Market state-of-mind is exploitive, the Charity state-of-mind perpetuates dependency, and the Commons state-of-mind is liberating.

People Power Solar Cooperative’s Commons Model offers many benefits:

  • Members don’t need to be property owners
  • Members can buy shares in a cooperative that funds the solar installation, from as little as $100 up to $1,000—and receive interest on their investment
  • The “offtaker” from the solar installation buys energy from the cooperative and saves on their electric bill
  • Members can participate even if they don’t have their own house
  • The cooperative provides mutual benefit and spreads the wealth in the community

The People Power Solar Cooperative provides technical, legal, and administrative resources, while the community project groups choose sites, build interest, and recruit project members. The community owns and runs the installation, and assets are returned to the community. The project is free to partner with anyone they choose to provide the actual solar installation work.

Crystal provides a great way to visualize the structure: If People Power is a galaxy, the project groups are solar systems in it, and the individual owners are each planets within it.

There are four types of owners in a solar cooperative, each with a different role to play.

  • General owners provide capital and other support
  • Anchor owners provide leadership and spearhead project development
  • Subscriber owners get electric power, benefits, or services from the cooperative
  • Worker owners provide technology, operational, and organizational support to the other owners

When communities have control of their energy, they tend to use it to address the environmental, economic, and social crises they are facing. The benefits of a collective project include:

  • The community receives wealth from sharing revenue
  • There is increased “energy literacy” in the community, encouraging smarter use of resources (if something belongs to you tend to treat it more carefully)
  • A microgrid connects households
  • Energy can be used for many shared benefits, including streetlights, refrigeration for access to fresh produce, or even shared EV charging stations controlled by the community

Electrical power is important, but it can be the start of something more—building economic and political power for communities who have been historically excluded.

Building projects in low-income communities has many challenges, and they aren’t just financial. There are issues of trust, for example, when an outsider comes in to help. Crystal described four of them:

  1. People who are working multiple low-wage jobs to make ends meet don’t have time to talk.
  2. Community residents may not trust outsiders. Unscrupulous salesmen prey on vulnerable populations, and people remember this.
  3. The way of life may be different, for example, multiple families living in one small house, so there are issues of privacy.
  4. A “home energy upgrade” may sound good, but residents worry that it might cause landlords to raise the rent, displacing them from their home.

Funding the Projects

This all sounds great, you may say, but where does the money come from for projects? There are three sources, roughly provided in thirds:

  • The community members
  • Donations and grants
  • Financial institutions

If community members are financially involved, it tends to remove financial risk, since they feel ownership, and are directly accountable. Donations from charitable donations are always welcome and allow outsiders to participate while leaving control of the project to the community itself. Financial institutions, such as foundation investments, credit unions, and CDFIs can provide financial management and creative guarantees and due diligence.

As we move to a post-COVID-19 world, Crystal wants the People Power Solar Cooperative to move forward with new projects that are designed and governed by the community.

In the end, solar cooperatives can be part of making people freer and more prosperous. “We want a future where all life on earth can thrive,” said Crystal. “We want to break out of a culture of separation and give people the resources they need to liberate themselves.”

To learn more and to help, visit the People Power Solar Cooperative’s website and click Sign Up to Get Involved.

On This Spaceship Earth, We Are All Crew

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By Steve Schaefer

blue marble

A week ago, Tim Rumage, a planetary ethicist and naturalist and co-founder of This Spaceship Earth, spoke to an attentive online audience from Climate Reality Bay Area Chapter about Climate Change and how we are all complicit in it. He made a point of stressing that it’s not just our actions, but our thinking that has gotten us into trouble.

“We don’t think about the effects of what we do,” Rumage started with. He used an example of how during our current pandemic, the air has gotten significantly cleaner, not from the actions (or lack of actions) of any one person or country’s part, but by all of us. “The damage is cumulative–all of us,” he stated.

“We need to think in terms of how the planet functions, not just me, city, country,” he said. The name of his organization, This Spaceship Earth, comes from the fact that the Earth, as far as we know, is the only place where human life exists, and we are an island, with limited resources. We are all responsible for taking care of it, making us all “crew” and not “passengers.”

Rumage talked about how in earlier times, people thought of the Earth as a vast, unlimited place and if you ran out, you just moved on. We need to make the mental adjustments–political and psychological–from thinking of the world as unlimited to instead to envisioning it as a closed sphere.

TSE-crew-Tim

Rumage says we confuse “exchangeable” with “interchangeble.” The products we make are not equivalent to the natural versions, from our food to our fuels to everything else. We are also out of balance, using up more resources than can be replenished. Earth Overshoot Day, which falls on August 22nd this year, “marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year,” according to the Earth Overshoot Day website.

That’s certainly not a good long-term strategy for survival.

Continuing with the theme of our thinking being the problem, Rumage said that we suffer from siloed thinking–not looking at the big picture. “We have a mental disconnect with our life support system,” he said. “We are a part of the environment and not apart from it.”

It’s well worth visiting the website to learn more about Tim Rumage and his team, and to find out how you can develop “crew consciousness” on This Spaceship Earth. And you’re welcome to join the Bay Area Climate Reality Chapter. It’s based on Al Gore’s environmental message and training–but you don’t need to be trained yet to be a member, and it doesn’t cost anything. If you want to take the first worldwide Climate Reality Leadership Online Training, it’s coming up starting on July 18th.

An old 1960’s slogan was, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” Today, you need to be a crew member, not a passenger.