Honda Shows Wireless Charging System at Smart House

Honda Motor Co Ltd disclosed a new experiment using a wireless charging system to the media June 16, 2014.

The experiment is conducted at a smart house that the company is testing in Saitama City, Japan.

In the experiment, Honda charges its "Fit EV" electric vehicle (EV). The wireless charging system transmits electromagnetic waves from the power transmission coil installed on the floor of a garage to the power reception coil installed under the floor of the EV. The company expects to commercialize the system in 2016.

This time, Honda combined the smart house and EV with a wireless charging system that IHI Corp prototyped using patented technologies of WiTricity Corp. The system consists of power transmission and reception coils, and power is transmitted from the transmission coil to the reception coil by using the magnetic resonance method.

The magnetic resonance method is one of electromagnetic induction methods. It can efficiently transmit power by using a specific frequency even when the power reception coil is not located right above the power transmission coil or when the two coils are away from each other. When the positional error of the EV is ±10cm in the horizontal direction, ±5cm in the vertical direction and ±2° in angle, the charging efficiency of the system is 80-90%, Honda said.

The output of the power transmission coil is 2.2kW. Technically, it is possible to increase the output up to 3.3kW, which is equivalent to the output with a normal charging method. However, because it requires new legislations, etc, Honda limited the output of electromagnetic waves in the test.

The power converter installed on the side of the smart house increases the frequency of residential electricity (50-60Hz) to 85kHz, and the electricity is transmitted to the power transmission coil. The gap between the transmission and reception coils is designed to be about 10cm. But when the two coils are covered, the gap becomes about 5cm.

Honda considers that, if wireless charging makes it easy to charge EVs, they will be more frequently charged, enabling to reduce the capacity of EV battery. 

 

Source;

http://www.houseofjapan.com/auto-moto/honda-shows-wireless-charging-system-at-smart-house

Many 'green' cars carry greenhouse gas

America’s electric cars are better for the environment, but they share a dirty little secret.

The Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf and Tesla Roadster all use a super greenhouse gas known as HFC 134a as the refrigerant for their air conditioners. The liquid coolant is so potent that when it leaks into the atmosphere, it traps 1,400 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 100-year time horizon.

For automakers and advocates of green transportation, it poses an uncomfortable truth: Vehicles touted as a solution to climate change carry a hairspray-sized canister loaded with a chemical that significantly contributes to warming of the earth’s climate. As much as half of current HFC emissions, a small but fast-growing source of global warming pollution, come from leaks out of the air conditioners in cars.

Already a number of Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac gas-powered cars use an alternative climate-friendlier coolant called HFO 1234yf, as carmakers confront growing pressure from environmentalists and as regulations are developed by governments. Climate experts say it’s clear that all electric automakers should get on board soon. “It makes sense for electric vehicles to use (alternatives), and to reduce their overall global warming potential,” said Don Anair, deputy director of the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science advocacy group.

But among 16 EV models on America’s roads, only two — Chevy’s newest model of its all-electric Spark and the leasable Honda Fit — have ditched the super greenhouse gas HFC 134a for the climate-safe alternative so far.

Many automakers of both electric cars and conventional ones have expressed reluctance to commit to the switch, citing the cost and limited supply of new alternatives. The European Union has banned HFC 134a for any newly redesigned or re-engineered vehicles this year, and for all vehicles in 2017 — though the industry elsewhere is not rapidly adopting the EU’s lead. The United States has no such mandate yet. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering one.

How countries got to this point is a classic case of unintended environmental consequences. Under the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 treaty that zeroed out substances harmful to the earth’s ozone layer, HFC 134 was chosen by nations as the best alternative at the time to replace ozone-depleting CFCs. The result today is that most of the billion or so cars on the world’s roads use the HFC refrigerant — but while the ozone layer has rebounded, HFC 134a is exacerbating the global warming problem.

So far, HFC 134a and other types of hydrofluorocarbons have contributed to less than 1 percent of total global warming, according to a study published in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics scientific journal. But the use of these damaging gases is climbing generally, as developing world economies use and produce more HFC-spewing cars, air conditioners and refrigerators, and as they make more foam insulation that uses the chemical during manufacture.

Emissions from HFCs are growing at a rate of 10 to 15 percent per year, the study says. Left unchecked, HFCs alone could add up to 0.5 degree Celsius of the global average temperature rise by the end of the century, about a quarter of the 2 degree Celsius rise that nations are struggling to stay within through international agreements.

Electric vehicles are touted for producing zero tailpipe emissions and being a critical force in reducing fossil fuel use and curbing climate-changing pollution — which could make their use of the super greenhouse gas HFC 134a all the more hypocritical.

The Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf and Tesla Roadster represent about two-thirds of the roughly 180,000 EVs sold in recent years in the United States.

Kevin Kelly, a spokesman for General Motors, wouldn’t say if or when the hybrid Chevy Volt, the biggest-selling U.S. EV, might switch to HFO 1234yf.

The auto giant in 2010 said it would be the first U.S. carmaker to voluntarily phase out HFC 134a from many of its passenger cars. So far, only its Chevy Spark EV, which had sold 703 units as of February, and its conventional Cadillac XTS luxury sedan use the new refrigerant. Kelly declined to disclose which other GM models have or will soon follow suit.

Spokespeople for Nissan Motors in the United States were not immediately able to provide more information. Tesla Motors did not respond to repeated requests for comments.

David Doniger, a policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council who has worked on ozone issues since the 1980s, noted the hypocrisy, but said he is “more concerned about getting the overall transition to occur as quickly as we can.”

All car manufacturers “have the opportunity to switch refrigerants, and they should do it as quickly as they can,” he said. “From an environmental point of view, if you want to get the changeover happening at a large scale, I wouldn’t focus first on electric cars _ I’d just be focusing on volume.” Nissan Motors, for instance, sold 1.2 million gas cars in the U.S. in 2013 and just 23,000 all-electric Leafs.

Source;

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140406/AUTO01/304060013/0/auto01/Many-green-cars-carry-greenhouse-gas

New Civic, Hybrid Accords Key for Honda in 2013

by Aaron Foley of www.wardsauto.com

The revamp of the Civic not only is unusual for Honda but also the auto industry as a whole. Midyear model changes generally occur within two to three years of a product’s lifecycle.

Honda is covering all the bases with key improvements to its Civic compact and Accord midsize sedan this year, with extra scrutiny paid to the smaller model.


The much-derided ’12 Civic is being replaced with an almost all-new model in dealerships now. Chief among complaints was the previous model’s spartan interior, replaced by a new one that features soft-touch instrumentation and other premium-feel add-ons.

“We miscalculated a little bit of where the market was headed,” Honda Chief Engineer Art St. Cyr says. “And we recognize it. What we tried to do with the '13 Civic was give it a more sophisticated and high-class appearance. Not to say that the '12 was bad. It still looked like what we were going for.”

There is no cost difference between using softer materials over hard plastic, St. Cyr says. Hard plastic is commonly used because it can be cut to fit multiple cabins regardless of trim level. ”A soft instrument panel gives you the ability to cut some of the hard lines. You don’t worry about how things are mating.”

American Honda President John Mendel says he has received only two letters from concerned customers wondering about the resale value of their ’12 Civics and that he is not worried the previous model will lose its value.

“We’d say, ‘You made a smart choice. The car retained its value, and you have something to look forward to next time you change (vehicles).’ It’s not as if this one obsoletes the old one.”

The revamp of the Civic, referred to as a “minor model change” by Mendel, not only is unusual for Honda but also the auto industry as a whole. Midyear model changes generally occur within two to three years of a product’s lifecycle and are planned well in advance, whereas the turnaround with the new Civic was executed in less than a year.

This won’t become an industry standard, Mendel assures, but it does demonstrate how a car company can change with the market.

“I don’t think a minor model change is going to come every 18 months now,” he says. “Short model changes don’t cost any less than long model changes. It’s how you amortize them. I think that it has awakened the organization to the potential that we can do this faster than we’ve ever been. It doesn’t mean it should be the norm.”

For the Accord, a variety of powertrain options keeps consumer interest piqued in the car, Mendel says. Drivers have warmed to the new continuously variable transmission option, which is helping keep the midsize model “neck and neck with (the Toyota) Camry.”

Honda designed its new CVT (in-house) to feel like an actual gear-change transmission, he says.
“We’re not getting feedback (that it’s) whiny, rubber-bandy. CVT had built that reputation.”

The Accord also is offering a hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions of the ’13 model, with sights set on the former.

“I think that the Accord hybrid will put us firmly competitive in the 2-motor midsize class,” Mendel says. “(The) plug-in hybrid, we’ll see. It’s expensive, and we’ll see what the consumer adoption for that will be.”

He expects the plug-in hybrid to see smaller volume than its hybrid counterpart. “We can expand or contract production on that to the degree that we wish to.”

Honda was dogged with recalls in 2012, issuing about 16 notices potentially affecting an estimated 2,593,627 U.S. vehicles. But Mendel says the number of callbacks – only Toyota had more last year, affecting a potential 5,327,394 vehicles – doesn’t equate to the number of problems each vehicle had.

“Recalls kind of fit into the quality process,” he says. “We as readily identify stuff that we need to fix quicker in most cases than anybody else. I can’t speak for Toyota, but for us certainly we look at that as…the customer has a problem and (we) fix something.”

Driving into 2013, Honda is looking to tweak its strategies for its smaller, alternative-powertrain offerings that include the Insight hybrid-electric and CR-Z mild hybrid compacts and the Fit electric vehicle.

Mendel says the auto maker is eyeing a 1-motor electric powertrain for future small cars, putting current 2-motor systems in the CR-Z and Insight in question. “We have some plans for both those vehicles we’re not ready to share,” he says. “(But the) CR-Z is going to have some significant upgrades.”

The Fit EV, available as a lease-only vehicle in California, could be expanded beyond that market, but there are no firm plans.

“(The Fit EV) is an answer for electric vehicles from a market that is evolving, as we’re trying to figure out what an EV vehicle is supposed to be like in this country,” St. Cyr says.

Source;
 http://wardsauto.com/north-america/new-civic-hybrid-accords-key-honda-2013