Palm Springs, California

Musk has talked about both cars before. Back in 2008, he was even hoping the mainstream electric car could go for as low as $20,000. And Musk spoke about the Model X SUV at a recent tour of Tesla’s recently acquired NUMMI plant. But as the company gets closer to launching the Model S, it’ll get that much closer to Musk’s original vision of making electric vehicles truly mainstream.

As far as how fast EVs will become mainstream Musk had some pretty aggressive predictions going. By 2020 it’ll be dirt cheap to have a long range vehicle battery, said Musk. By 2030, the only cars sold in America will be electric cars, and by midcentury the vast majority of cars on the road will be electric, said Musk. Those are tall orders, and mere decades away. All transportation is going electric, except — ironically — rockets, said Musk (Musk is the founder of rocket company SpaceX).

But first in line, the Model S. Coming in late 2012 or 2013 (if it’s on time), the Model S is being designed so that people would buy it even if wasn’t electric. “It’s arguably the most advanced car in the world.” The battery pack can even be swamped out in under a minute, said Musk — which I’m sure got the attention of the Better Place folks.

Several questions from the audience at the conference asked Musk for advice on running companies and competing in the marketplace. Musk advised entrepreneurs to build a useful prototype as soon as possible for their ideas, for the least amount of money. That’s the first thing we did with Tesla, said Musk, because only so many things can be explained by power point.

In addition, Musk said, allow for a certain amount of chaos in an organization — allow for failure. Google is pretty good at this, said Musk, and we plan to eventually implement time for SpaceX and Tesla employees to work on their own projects. Finally, let employees have some irreverence, said Musk. For example, for a SpaceX rocket launch SpaceX employees hid a secret wheel of cheese inside the vessel.

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To get an initial clue into what GM Ventures might be attracted to, just look at the companies it has backed: electric vehicle maker Bright Automotive, battery startup Sakti3, and wireless charging firm Powermat. Yeah, all over the map. But Lauckner explained how the investments fit in its five key sectors to focus on: automotive cleantech (electric and low-carbon cars), infotainment, smart materials (light weight, phase change, forming tech), other automotive tech (like advanced sensors), and alternatives to traditional business models (like car sharing). The mission statement of GM Ventures is basically a spinoff of the mission statement of GM: Help GM build the best vehicles.

Rather than compete with venture capitalists, Lauckner said GM Ventures would actually be more eager to invest in startups that already had some sort of venture interest. “Venture capitalists have a lot of valuable experience that we can learn from, including knowing when to cut things and move on, working with management, and doing due diligence,” said Lauckner.

In terms of startups, Lauckner said GM Ventures is commonly investing as a customer, so the startup wouldn’t only get equity but often, a commercial relationship, which could be crucial for an early stage company. In addition, Lauckner said if GM starts working on the technology with a company at an early stage, GM can likely help the startup “shave the lead time off of the product development process,” by months or more.

Other benefits (beyond the obvious equity) would include GM being able to raise the profile of the company. We can “de-risk the equity structure of the company. We can take a lot of risk out of that from the beginning.” As a bonus, automotive testing and R&D is also an expensive undertaking and GM can help startups use its facilities and expensive tools.

On the flip side, what does GM get in return? Lauckner said it’s not common for GM to demand exclusive deals, but GM wants “a head start,” or basically a 12-month to 18-month exclusive lead time, before the startup starts selling the tech to other auto competitors. “We’ve done that for a couple [startups] and it works pretty well.”

GM has also taken the unusual step of licensing cathode technology from Argonne National Labs, and Lauckner said “the national labs do some tremendous work. It’s intellectual property at this moment, so it has it be turned into a product, but it’s extremely promising.”

Will GM Ventures be able to invest $100 million into helping GM produce the best cars in the world? Well, it certainly won’t hurt.

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Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

The PRT pilot project began running last November, and it ferries people from a parking lot to the institute, which started classes two years ago and is co-developed with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Several pods waited at individual bays in a sleek station when we arrived, and a touch-screen kiosk allows users to summon them. Each pod seats four people and comes with a screen and a voice-over system to tell riders where they are headed. It also comes with an emergency button if you need to stop its operation on the track.

The pods can go can go up to 40 kilometers per hour, but they run at 25 kilometers per hour to go the short distance between the parking lot and the institute. The ride was a little bumpy, and I could hear the motor sound from underneath. We zipped around the ground floor of some structure to arrive at the institute, a 2-minute ride that covered 800 meters. There are also pods designed to carry freight.

Masdar City planners initially envisioned having a PRT network under a raised street level throughout the city, but that doesn’t seem to be the plan anymore. Since the government announced the Masdar City project in 2006, advancement in electric vehicles has prompted the planners to look at other types of electric rides, including buses, so how big a role PRT will play still remains a question. Masdar folks have talked about putting in a light rail system before as a primary way to transport lot of people at once.

The PRT is one of many ideas for creating low-carbon mass transit system for urban areas. Another idea that has gained popularity is the car-sharing network. Companies such as Zipcar have been expanding their service in the U.S. and other countries, though the cars in the sharing network have tended to be gasoline-powered or hybrids.

Research institutions such as MIT also have been coming up with newfangled designs for personal transport that can fill the last-mile gap in public transit by taking people from a subway station, for example, to their final destination. Google, too, has a keen interest in low-carbon transit technology and recently invested $1 million in Shweeb to develop a human-powered monorail system.

(Disclosure: I’m attending the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, a trip paid for by the emirate).

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The financing isn’t KLD Energy’s first. Last Summer the electric vehicle tech maker raised $4.9 million in equity, and then another $2.8 million in equity and debt earlier this month. KLD also announced a $1 million Series A financing round in 2009, and regulatory filings show a pair of $2 million equity raises during the first few months of 2010.

KLD Energy makes an electric drive system that includes a battery, battery management system, electric motor and motor controller. The company says its technology can give electric two- and three-wheeled vehicles speed and performance capabilities on par with gas-powered counterparts. KLD’s system has no transmission, has high frequency and low RPM, and uses a computerized controller.

Ferber told us last summer that KLD planned to build its business by first deploying its system in electric three-wheelers and scooters internationally (starting in Asia and South America), and targeting the electric scooter market in the U.S. through a deal with Vietnamese scooter manufacturer Sufat (with a starting scooter price of $3,288). KLD Energy offers the technology for licensing, while its subsidiary KLD Motors America manufactures electric motors using a nano-crystalline composite material at a facility in Vinh Phuc, Vietnam.

As we’ve noted before, companies that move early and fast to dominate the EV market in China — which has significant government support on its side and could reach $220 billion by 2030 — could use the country as a springboard for a broader international play.

But remember it’s not exactly easy to be a startup electric scooter maker. The business costs a lot of capital (as you can see by the fund-raising), and it’s a field that has no shortage of casualties (Vectrix closed up shop in 2009 but has more recently emerged). There’s also a lot of competition from players like Brammo, Zero Motorcycles, UltraMotors, Mission Motors, and Vectrix (and that’s only the startups).

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Well, those are the visions. However, there are major hurdles to implementing these ideas. Here are the road blocks:

Infrastructure Investment

First and foremost, there will be a colossal investment needed for both clean power and electric car infrastructure to make their way onto the market, and both will take a lot of time. Author and professor Vaclav Smil has explained in his recent book that an all-electric U.S. fleet would conservatively need 980 TWh of electricity per year to run, which was 25 percent of the U.S. electricity generation in 2008. Smil thinks utilities wouldn’t realistically be able to build that additional amount of electricity generation within two decades.

In addition, that extra generation would have to come from clean power to be carbon-reductive. As anyone who has followed the utility-scale solar market knows, it takes years for utility-scale solar projects to move from drawing board to supplying electricity. In the case of BrightSource Energy’s inaugural solar thermal project Ivanpah, it has taken over three years to just get regulatory approval, and now here come all the environmental protests.

California’s utilities have struggled to meet the state mandate that says they need to buy 20 percent of their electricity supply from clean power by 2010. Most utilities weren’t likely to make that deadline, but state regulation gives them until the end of 2013 to comply. Meanwhile, the utilities will have to make sure they line up enough contracts or install their own projects to meet the 33 percent goal by 2020. And this is just in California, which has an aggressive state mandate.

Utility scale wind is a more mature market, but wind installations slowed in the U.S. considerably in 2010 due to the slowed economy. In addition, because of intermittency, Smil and other researchers think wind could never be a dominant form of clean power. In fact, it’s far from clear if solar and wind will be able to provide baseload power (provides energy 24/7), and the U.S. will have to rely on other forms of clean power like nuclear, geothermal, and hydro.

From a plug-in vehicle market perspective, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that clean power will take such a long time to get built out. Because plug-in car adoption will take just as long. Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts there will be 1.6 million plug-in cars sold by 2015, rising to 7.6 million by 2020. In 2010, the U.S. had about 245 million passenger cars, SUVs, vans, and light trucks.

EV + Clean Power

Clearly, it’s going to take decades for both clean power and electric vehicles to make a sizable dent in the U.S. infrastructure. In the mean time, some utilities and companies are looking at ways to use or sell clean power for electric vehicle projects.

SAP and German utility MVV Energie are starting a pilot project using 30 corporate SAP electric vehicles that will be powered exclusively by the utility’s clean power. MVV Energie will be building and operating the smart charging stations that are capable of filling electric cars exclusively with certified green energy.

Better Place, the electric vehicle infrastructure company, plans to incorporate clean power into its networks, particularly in its launch region in Israel. In 2008, when Better Place CEO and founder Shai Agassi announced the Israel Better Place launch, he said the infrastructure will be powered by “batteries, that get their energy from green sustainable electricity sources.” (We’re thinking that’ll be mostly solar, given Israel’s climate).

Batteries as Aid for the Power Grid

While we’re waiting for EVs to be powered by the sun, electric car batteries could be an aid to getting clean power onto the grid. A network of electric cars could offer the potential of distributed energy storage and grid services like load balancing or frequency regulation.

The power grid works by constantly balancing supply and demand (generation and load) and must be kept at a 60 Hz frequency. That’s a complex and difficult task given today’s grid has little energy storage capacity. So if the frequency goes too high or low, the utility must respond by shifting generation and load. For example, PJM, a regional transmission organization serving a population of 51 million, pings generators to control regulation as often as hundreds of times per day. Electric vehicle batteries could act as the real-time, distributed intelligent frequency regulators, replacing generators.

PJM has a project with the University of Delaware using electric vehicles in a demand response program, but John Gartner, an analyst with Pike Research, says, “We don’t see this as a commercial application until at least 2015.” However, after the issues are resolved, the arrival of electric vehicles will provide greater flexibility for utilities to integrate higher percentages of wind and solar power, says Gartner.

Image courtesy of Better Place.

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In the telco world, this type of connectivity is called machine-to-machine networks, because there are no cell phone-toting consumers in the equation, but just pipes linking machines to the computers of service operators. Cellular companies are increasingly turning to machine-to-machine networks for a variety of reasons including that machine-to-machine services often have lower data needs (the SMS pill service in this instance), compared to, say, bandwidth crunching iPhone users.

Machine-to-machine connectivity is also a needed area of expansion in a saturated wireless market like the U.S. As Stacey on GigaOM reported, the nation’s two largest carriers added more connected devices in the second quarter of 2010 than postpaid subscriptions, according to data from wireless analyst Chetan Sharma. Cell phone penetration in the U.S. has surpassed 100 percent, if you discount children younger than five.

Along with smart meters and the smart grid, electric vehicles and EV charging stations will be a hot area for telcos in the coming years. Already, as we reported last Summer, Nissan has turned to AT&T to connect the digital services for the all-electric Nissan LEAF, one of the first mainstream EVs on sale in the U.S.

AT&T’s LEAF connection supports services like battery charge monitoring and being able to find the nearest charging station (to help with range anxiety). AT&T’s connection transmits information from the LEAF up to a satellite and then to Nissan’s data centers.

Ecotality will be using the Sprint network for billing, device and service management, and to manage information over the distributed Blink Network that Ecotality will be building across the U.S. Ecotality plans to install 15,000 Level 2 chargers and over 300 fast charging ports this year.

According to a report by Pike Research analyst John Gartner which we published on GigaOM Pro (subscription required), utilities and EV-service providers will steadily increase their investments in IT related to electric car management over the next five years. Gartner predicts that electric vehicle supply equipment — including wall-mounted charge points for homes as well as commercial charging stations — will grow to a nearly $400 million industry by 2015.

New internal combustion cars will also be getting increased connections. Vehicles are now “packed with up to 100 million lines of computer code,” and have “at least 30 microprocessor-controlled devices,” pointed out the New York Times last year. Many automakers already offer services based on network connections, like location-based navigation (enabled by a GPS system) or GM’s OnStar System which is based on a cellular connection.

The phone companies and the car makers will also have a battle on their hands when it comes to the in-car connection — or how the driver accesses connected infotainment services (from directions to news to music). Car companies want to attract drivers to an added vehicle-embedded services, like GM’s OnStar, while phone companies will want to center of the connected service to come from the phone itself, while the car is just the dock for the phone. Expect this relationship to get interesting in 2011.

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News about the layoffs emerged Monday, and company spokesman Patrick Wright confirmed it with us. Wright said the company laid off “a handful of people in Colorado and Georgia,” but declined to disclose the number or reasons. In the same email reply, Wright said that the company could possibly start producing ethanol this week at its plant near Soperton, Ga.

“The Soperton plant is running and is producing methanol and we expect to produce ethanol this week,” Wright wrote Tuesday. In a phone conversation, Wright said the company plans to meet a 2011 production goal set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He declined to answer more questions about the company’s ethanol production plan. We’ll update the story if we hear more.

Range Fuels is one of the five companies the EPA projected will be able to produce 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel in 2011. A 2007 law required the EPA to set mandates for different types of fuels that can be blended into gasoline and diesel. Those mandates are supposed to lead the country to produce 36 billion gallons in 2022.

Lawmakers nurtured ambitious goals to wean the country off the use of fossil fuels. But meeting those goals has proven extremely difficult, mainly because many biofuel companies with promising technologies ran into technical problems or were unable to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to build a commercial plant. Or both.

Congress initially set the 2010 target for cellulosic biofuel at 100 million gallons, but the EPA cut that to 6.5 million gallons. It appears the industry might have produced less than 1 million gallons last year, reported ClimateWire Tuesday, citing an estimate by a government analyst. EPA’s estimates are partly based on input from biofuel producers.

The EPA expects Range Fuels to produce 100,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol and 2.9 million gallons of methanol at its Georgia plant in 2011. Although methanol doesn’t meet the current definition of cellulosic biofuel, the EPA said it’s considering changing that. The agency already counted the projected methanol production for Range Fuels in its 2011 goal. The company is using wood wastes as the primary feedstock.

Aside from Range Fuels, the other four producers that could contribute to the 2011 pool are DuPont Danisco, Fiberight, KL Energy and KiOR.

Range Fuels began producing methanol last summer. At the time, Aldous said the plant had “less than 10 million gallons” of annual production capacity, but the plan was to expand it to 60 million gallons. Construction was to start this summer.

Aldous told Colorado newspaper the Daily Camera this week that the recession and what he called a “public apathy toward green fuels” have hampered the company’s progress. “The critical issue is really that there’s no mechanism to price carbon today,” he told the newspaper. The newspaper also reported that there was a “problem with the feed system at its plant.”

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Photo courtesy of Nancy Qian

Today’s new EV manufacturers say they have largely kicked the safety problem. But also, the reality is that they’d prefer not to talk about what can happen if a rare so-called “thermal runaway” happens (lithium-ion batteries blow up) because they don’t want to scare potential owners in such a new market. At the same time, because the market is so new, there hasn’t been much opportunity for any horror stories yet (Neil Young’s LincVolt fire not withstanding).

But some auto makers are trying to tackle the safety EV battery issue with design, technology and rhetoric. You can see some good examples at the Detroit Auto Show this week. In particular, Volvo, given its reputation for safety, has spent a lot of time discussing EV safety, and at the show this week, Volvo CEO Stefan Jacoby showed off a crash-tested C30 Electric (see our test drive below) that used an Ener1 EnerDel battery.

Volvo says this the first time a crash-tested EV has been displayed in public (shows you how new the industry is), and that the crashed C30 had a front collision, with a fully-charged battery, going 40 mph. The result, says Volvo, are that the batteries and electric system were still intact after the crash, and Jacoby said during a press conference that it is “vital to separate the batteries from the electric car’s crumple zones to make it as safe as a conventional car.” In Volvo’s C30, the batteries are split and one part is placed between the seats, and the other is under the rear seats (you can see in our video).

Volvo says Ener1′s battery management system — which maintains s steady temperature — is top-notch, which helps prevent battery overheating problems, too. Of note, in the event of a crash, a crash sensor cuts power to the C30 in 50 milliseconds, similar to how an airbag works.

Tesla is another EV maker that has been touting the safety features of its upcoming Model S EV sedan. In videos the car maker showed off last week, Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Peter Rawlinson points out an “advanced crumple zone,” a stronger body that can protect drivers in crashes, and a cooling system and a central heat exchanger that keeps the battery at a controlled temperature.

The batteries for the Model S sit dispersed underneath the floor of the vehicle, which Tesla says makes the body of the Model S more rigid than most cars and as rigid as a high-end sports car. And unique to the Model S is that the batteries make the underside of the Model S completely flat and aerodynamic. In this case, design for safety delivers performance, too.

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Skymeter CEO Kamal Hassan told me recently in an interview that he thinks Skymeter could change how people use their cars and could lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. Future-forward scenarios under the Skymeter scheme could include cities shifting toward pay-as-you-drive tolling for roads, and the not-that-far-away idea of SMS-based parking, which Hassan tells me is starting to catch on in Europe.

Skymeter works via a “black box” installed in the car that houses the network connection, computing device, GPS chip and software. Hassan tells me Skymeter’s customers — whether that’s a city, a parking service, or a car sharing company — determine where in the car they want the hardware installed. The cars that sign up for the customer’s service then can keep track of where they are in relation to whatever the customer is selling and can bill the driver accordingly.

For example, in the case of a Skymeter-enabled SMS parking service, a driver could park without using bills, coins or credit cards, and the parking operator could approve an automatic payment via text message. Or if your city implemented a congestion charge for its downtown area (to discourage driving during certain times), the city could automatically bill you when you drive into that region during certain hours. It’s like a more simplified version of the networked services that car-sharing companies Zipcar and City Car Share use today, and a more complex version of FasTrak.

Hassan tells me the company’s secret sauce lies in its software. However, at the same time, Hassan contests that while the company uses off-the-shelf hardware for the black box, the hardware is also not yet a commodity product. I think that’s probably the biggest hurdle for the company: the cost of making and installing the hardware piece. It seems like Skymeter could create a similar service more inexpensively, piggy-backing the GPS, software and network connection in the driver’s cell phone.

As I pointed out in my piece for GigaOM Pro, Car Data As the Next Platform for Innovation (subscription required), the center point for the network connection, software and computing in cars will ultimately either be embedded in the car itself via the automaker, or embedded in the cell phone. From a cost perspective, that makes the most sense, and Big Auto and the telcos of the world will be battling for which one will be the dominant scenario.

In the mean time, a third party like Skymeter could offer an alternative but will eventually have to pick one, or embrace both options, to play in a bigger market. Hassan tells me that he is talking to the big auto makers, and expects Skymeter to become an embedded car product in perhaps three to four years.

Founded in 2006, Skymeter has already raised around $5 million from angels, and Hassan tells me the company is currently looking to raise a second round of funding. Hassan says in 2011 Skymeter will be working on two large contracts — one for a parking company and the other for a rental car company that wants to do car sharing — in Europe that will include tens of thousands of cars.

Connected cars have been front and center at CES and the Detroit Auto Show over the past few days, but are our networked cars going to act as credit cards one day? Down the road, yes. It will probably be as easy to buy a song from iTunes from your car someday as it is today to buy it from your laptop (it’s already basically as easy via mobile). Companies have been showing stuff like that off at CES for years. Skymeter just combines it with the powers of GPS to open up the connected car to new services.

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Image courtesy of Alex 92287.

A new study out from IBM’s Institute for Business Value today offers some insights into consumer attitudes toward EVs, including disparities between consumers and auto industry executives on the relative importance of things like government incentives and oil prices, as well as clues into about how much consumers are willing to pay for charging equipment.

After surveying 1,716 U.S. drivers and interviewing 123 auto executives, IBM found that only about 19 percent of American drivers are likely to consider buying an all-electric car when shopping for a new vehicle. More drivers — about 30 percent of those surveyed — said they would consider switching to an all electric vehicle, however, if it could travel in the range of 100 miles or less per charge, compared to 50-100 miles per charge for many of today’s models.

Drivers are also not very keen on spending more for an electric car at this point, according to IBM’s survey, which found 51 percent of respondents unwilling to pay more money for an EV over a gas, diesel or hybrid model.

Auto executives surveyed by IBM ranked government incentives or regulations and higher oil prices as some of the most important ways to motivate consumers to switch to an all-electric vehicle. According to IBM’s summary of its findings, auto execs “place far greater weight than consumers on government incentives/regulations (73 percent to 41 percent) and significantly higher oil prices (76 percent to 51 percent).

Auto executives also undervalued the capacity for a green image and sustainability concerns to motivate drivers to go electric. Nearly half (48 percent) of drivers said a green image or sustainability concerns would motivate them to switch to an electric vehicle. Auto executives asked to rate the importance that consumers place on this factor, however, gave it only 33 percent.

The cost of installing charging equipment at home is a potential speed bump on the road to widespread adoption of electric vehicles. IBM notes that industry estimates peg the average cost of retrofitting a 220V outlet accessible to vehicles at $1,000-$2,000. Yet only 8 percent of drivers responding to IBM’s survey said they would even consider spending $1,000-$1,999 on a retrofit for home vehicle charging.

Nearly a third (31 percent) of respondents said they are not willing to invest in upgrading residential electrical systems for EV charging, and another third (32 percent) said they would spend only up to $500 on this project. A smaller portion (22 percent) said they would spend $500-$999 for electrical upgrades.

As Enid Joffe, president and founder of infrastructure installer Clean Fuel Connection has commented, putting in a plug may not be rocket science, but there’s a very complicated process for a simple job because of the amount of coordination that’s required. Down the road, General Motors’ Britta Gross (who heads up infrastructure commercialization for the automaker) has suggested, outfitting a home for electric vehicle charging should be more like cable or Internet installations: cheap, quick and low maintenance.

It’s important to note that a majority of IBM’s sample reported access to a private parking spot at home, with a full 83 percent saying they park their primary vehicle in the garage or driveway of their private residence — rather than in a parking lot, on the street or in a shared garage, which many urban car owners rely upon. (In total, the company surveyed 802 urban drivers, 469 suburban drivers and 445 rural drivers.)

But, in fact, IBM Vice President for Energy & Utilities Allan Schurr commented at a 2009 conference that as many as 80 percent of vehicles are not parked in a garage owned by the same person who owns the car. They could be parked in rented spots (where a landlord would likely need convincing to install charging equipment), on the street or in driveways.

Image courtesy of Juice Technologies

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The deal is the most recent in a series of partnerships on the plug-in vehicle charging front between large power companies and smaller players. General Electric, for example, has tapped smart charging software startup Juice Technologies for its WattStation charging system, and has more recently formed a multi-faceted relationship with battery-swapping startup Better Place. German engineering giant Siemens has a co-marketing deal with Coulomb Technologies to sell Siemens’ smart grid IT along with Coulomb’s charging station technology.

ECOtality will use the $10 million to support its work supplying chargers for The EV Project, an effort supported by the Department of Energy, Nissan and General Motors to install charging networks in six U.S. states. While the San Francisco-based company has installed about 6,000 chargers for forklifts, airport trucks and other private vehicles, ECOtality’s Blink charging stations are meant for consumer plug-in vehicles, with lots of communications options and units designed for both home and commercial use.

ABB also has a deal with General Motors to study using partly-depleted Chevy Volt lithium-ion batteries for grid energy storage applications.

ABB’s investment and strategic partnership delivers ECOtality a deep-pocketed partner with an enormous footprint in the electricity sector — important for vehicle charging networks that will need close cooperation and communication with utilities. ECOtality also plans to install its Blink fast-chargers at a dozen Best Buy stores on the West Coast this spring, which will open up the challenges of high-voltage, direct current, fast charging for plug-in vehicles — an area where ABB’s power grid expertise will no doubt be helpful.

ABB, in turn, will gain access to ECOtality’s Web portal and charging management network and its “Micro-Climate” system to design charging networks based on regional factors like traffic patterns, population density and zoning rules.

Maybe ECOtality and ABB will move toward an even closer partnership in the future? ABB has been one of the most acquisitive companies in the smart grid space over the past year, spending more than $1 billion for smart grid software vendor Ventyx in May and picking up electric motor maker Baldor and software maker Insert Key Solutions since then. ABB will gain two seats on ECOtality’s board of directors with Monday’s deal, making a future acquisition a definite possibility.

Whether ABB will form other charging partnerships in markets outside North America wasn’t mentioned in Monday’s press release, but given the potential technical differences that may emerge in those markets, other geographies could likely be on the table (for more on that subject, see my GigaOM Pro article from last week, subscription required).

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Image courtesy of Robfruth via Creative Commons license.

1. Ford Revs Start-Stop Tech for North America. Start-stop systems that automatically shut a car’s engine off when you come to a stop (conserving fuel), and quickly restart it when you hit the accelerator, have become commonplace in many hybrid vehicles. And in Europe, start-stop systems are frequently used in conventional cars — but not in the U.S.

Enter: Tighter fuel economy requirements for new cars and trucks starting with the 2012 model year, and hello, microhybrids. Ford plans to add start-stop technology to cars, SUVs and crossover vehicles in its North American lineup beginning in 2012, for fuel economy improvements of between 4-10 percent. This week in Detroit, the automaker will kick things off by featuring its patented Auto Start-Stop technology on a concept vehicle. Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Ford debuted its Ford Focus EV, and mobile smart car technology.

2. Heftier Plug-in from GM. For consumers who like the idea of the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt but want more room for passengers, GM may have just the thing at the Detroit Auto Show. The company is expected to unveil a “more refined” version of the Chevrolet Volt MPV5 concept vehicle that debuted last year at Beijing’s auto show.

3. North American Car of the Year: Will It Have a Plug? It wasn’t so long ago that the notion of plug-in vehicles being front-runners for an industry award like the North American Car of the Year would have seemed like a pipe dream. This year, two of out of the three finalists selected by automotive journalists are plug-ins. GM’s plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt and Nissan’s all-electric Leaf are competing against the Hyundai Sonata, which comes in three flavors: a 35 MPG standard sedan, a sportier turbo model, and a 37 MPG hybrid. The winner will be announced Jan. 10 at the Detroit Auto Show.

4. Porsche’s Spectacle: A Hybrid? After a 4-year hiatus, Porsche is returning to the Detroit show this year, and executives say the brand will debut something “spectacular.” Word on the virtual street is it will be a variation on the 918 Spyder hybrid.

5. Model S, in Alpha. Tesla Motors plans to show off a so-called “alpha build” of its Model S sedan in Detroit. The company has so far assembled at least three of these hand-built, pre-production versions at its facility in Palo Alto for track testing and testing components and subsystems. For some Model S Alpha porn, see these videos.

6. BYD Back for More. The Warren Buffett-backed Chinese battery maker and vehicle developer BYD plans to pull the wraps off its 2012 e6 Premier electric model, as well as its plug-in hybrid S6DM. The company says it will also reveal the schedule for a long-planned (and delayed) U.S. launch of “green-technology vehicles and products.”

7. Toyota Prius Spawn. Fasten your seat-belts, Prius fans; Toyota’s about to take us on a ride into hybrid land, where there’s not just one Prius, but a whole family of them under a new Prius sub-brand. Toyota plans to unveil its long-discussed Prius family (including the current third-generation Prius and the Prius Plug-in Vehicle, as well as a new, larger model and a new Prius concept) on Jan. 10. You can check out the live webcast (scheduled for 1:05 p.m. EST) at ToyotaNewsroom.com.

For more research on electric cars check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Car Data As the Next Platform for Innovation
  
• Report: IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management
• Why Microsoft’s Electric Vehicle Deal With Ford Matters

Image courtesy of Patricia Drury.

Here’s some of the stats you can expect from the Ford Focus EV:

• It has a range of between 80 to 100 miles on average, Gioia said.
• It will be able to charge in 3 to 4 hours with a 240 volt charger.
• It uses lithium ion batteries from LG Chem.
• It will be available in Europe in 2012.
• It has a liquid-cooled battery management system.

Overall it seems like a pretty competitive offer, in comparison to the Nissan LEAF (which has a similar range) and GM’s Volt. But absent from the discussion is price, and Gioia told me that the company hasn’t yet decided on the final pricing but that the Ford Focus EV will be “fully competitive,” with the other EVs on the market. Though, tellingly Gioia added in our discussion on price that the car will have “class leading features,” (which usually means it’s going to be on the higher end of the cost range.)

In particular Gioia was referring to the relatively-short 3 to 4 hour charge time, with a 240 volt outlet. Ford seems to be making a careful effort to make the home charging process convenient and low cost process. Gioia says that it will be working with Best Buy on its home charging service offering, and Best Buy will offer a home EV charging evaluation by its Geek Squad.

Ford says it is also working with Microsoft on a “ value charging feature” provided by Microsoft, which will enable consumers to charge up their vehicles at the lowest rate in conjunction with the local utility.

Gioia tells me that Ford electrified its Focus line because it’s the most popular, and the Focus will be on of five electrified vehicles that will come from Ford by 2013.

For more research on electric cars check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):

• Car Data As the Next Platform for Innovation
  
• Report: IT Opportunities in Electric Vehicle Management
• Why Microsoft’s Electric Vehicle Deal With Ford Matters