Tesla breaks record for going the distance

•A record for a Tesla Roadster driven on a single charge was set at 313 miles (501 km) in Australia on Tuesday.
•Tesla Roadster owner Simon Hackett and his friend Emilis Prelgauskas drove his electric sports car from Alice Springs, Northern Territory, to Coober Pedy, South Australia, as part of an alternative-fuel vehicle rally called the Global Green Challenge.
•The Tesla's electric-charge port door was sealed shut at the start of the 313-mile journey and the trip was filmed for a documentary, as well as monitored by contest officials. The Tesla's lithium ion battery, which the company assures owners will last over 200 miles between charges under normal driving circumstances, had 3 miles to spare when the team reached its destination in Coober Pedy, according to Hackett's chronicles of the race experience on his company blog. (Hackett happens to also be the founder and managing director of Internode, an Australian national broadband and Internet services company.)
•Hackett said in his blog the achievement is actually a record for any production electric car, not just a Tesla Roadster, which is why his team was so careful to record it. To squeeze as much distance out of the Tesla's battery as they could, Hackett and Prelgauskas tried to drive at a consistent speed of 55 kph (roughly 34 mph) for a large portion of the almost 12-hour journey.
•"The security seal was applied to the charge port door when we started the journey. As this is being done as part of the Global Green Challenge, we have a full set of official verifiers here who will attest to the results and to achieving the outcome. We were followed along the journey by our support crew and a documentary film crew--so we have it on film," said Hackett.
•While Tesla Motors is not an official sponsor of the contest or Hackett, the company has shown support by spreading the news of Hackett's success. It's not hard to imagine why as Tesla poises for a major retail expansion.
•The stunt may certainly speak to consumers who likely drive nowhere near 313 miles in a single day, but are still reluctant to hem themselves in with a car restricted to a limited number of miles between recharges.

Tesla raises $82.5 million for new retail stores

Tesla Motors has garnered $82.5 million in "Series F" funding for the purpose of expanding its chain of stores in North America and Europe.
The deal was first announced Monday by participating investor Fjord Capital Partners. Tesla Motors then confirmed the deal to several news outlets on Tuesday. Daimler, already a 10 percent investor in Tesla, and Abu Dhabi fund Aabar Investments also contributed to the fund.
The California-based electric-vehicle manufacturer has had stores in Los Angeles and Menlo Park, Calif., for some time. It recently opened stores in New York, Chicago, Miami, London, Seattle, and Munich. It has plans to open a store in Monaco before the end of the year, and has said it's scouting for locations in Washington, D.C., and Toronto.
But don't call them dealerships.
Because the electric cars are light on service work, and don't need things like oil changes, Tesla plans to forgo the traditional dealership/service business model of yesteryear's car industry. Instead the company plans to maintain full retail control over its cars and brand, Tesla announced in early September.
"Tesla takes its showroom cues from Apple, Starbucks and other customer-focused retailers. Tesla stores provide a welcoming spot to surf the Web, test drive cars and learn more about Tesla, the only production automaker selling highway-capable EVs in North America or Europe," Tesla said in statement.
News of the latest funding deal also follows the unveiling of Tesla's production model of the Model S sedan, as well as a tuner version of its Roadster, at the 2009 Frankfurt auto show this week.
The prototype of the Model S was unveiled in March as a way to augment Tesla's lineup with a more "economical" option to its Roadster luxury sports car. The Model S is expected to cost around $50,000--about half the cost of the Roadster.

Smart meters coming to a utility near you

After 100 years, the lowly utility meter is poised for a digital upgrade, with the installation of up to 250 million expected over the next six years, according to a new forecast.
Pike Research published on Monday a research report on smart meters that predicts installation to ramp up at a 19 percent annual rate through 2015.
Smart meters use wireless networking to shuttle information back and forth between utilities and customers. So far, the communications link has been used mainly to report back usage for monthly billing, but there are new applications aimed at efficiency.
Consumers can, in some cases, get a real-time read-out of electricity consumption or see a graph of a full day's use. Smart meters are also designed to help consumers take advantage of off-peak rates. Utilities are generally interested in moving usage to off-peak times and running power plants more efficiently.
A person could, for example, schedule a dishwasher to run or charge a plug-in vehicle in the middle of the night. Information from the smart meter signals when cheaper rates are in effect.
Pike's forecast notes that the push to smart meters is global, driven by government interest in energy efficiency. The U.S. Department of Energy's smart-grid grant program announced last week is expected to result in 18 million smart meter installations across the nation. About 3.5 percent of the world's meters can be considered "smart," with the number set to grow to 18 percent by 2015.
Despite the spike in installations, there are a number of technical barriers to overcome, including a lack of standards. In particular, there is a "jumble" of different neighborhood-area networking technologies to carry data from homes back to utilities. The most advanced smart meters have the ability to connect to home-area networks.

Smart meters coming to a utility near you

After 100 years, the lowly utility meter is poised for a digital upgrade, with the installation of up to 250 million expected over the next six years, according to a new forecast.
Pike Research published on Monday a research report on smart meters that predicts installation to ramp up at a 19 percent annual rate through 2015.
Smart meters use wireless networking to shuttle information back and forth between utilities and customers. So far, the communications link has been used mainly to report back usage for monthly billing, but there are new applications aimed at efficiency.
Consumers can, in some cases, get a real-time read-out of electricity consumption or see a graph of a full day's use. Smart meters are also designed to help consumers take advantage of off-peak rates. Utilities are generally interested in moving usage to off-peak times and running power plants more efficiently.
A person could, for example, schedule a dishwasher to run or charge a plug-in vehicle in the middle of the night. Information from the smart meter signals when cheaper rates are in effect.
Pike's forecast notes that the push to smart meters is global, driven by government interest in energy efficiency. The U.S. Department of Energy's smart-grid grant program announced last week is expected to result in 18 million smart meter installations across the nation. About 3.5 percent of the world's meters can be considered "smart," with the number set to grow to 18 percent by 2015.
Despite the spike in installations, there are a number of technical barriers to overcome, including a lack of standards. In particular, there is a "jumble" of different neighborhood-area networking technologies to carry data from homes back to utilities. The most advanced smart meters have the ability to connect to home-area networks.

Zinc air battery maker looks beyond lithium

Start-up ReVolt Technology is developing rechargeable zinc air batteries, a technology it says promises longer runtime for consumer electronics and plug-in vehicles.

The Switzerland-based company, which was spun out of a Norwegian research institute five years ago, anticipates commercializing a rechargeable coin-size batteries next year. But the technology has the potential to be a cheaper and more energy-dense alternative to lithium ion batteries in consumer electronics, grid storage, and transportation, according to CEO James McDougall.
Zinc air batteries, which are already used in hearing aids, create an electrical current through a chemical reaction between zinc and the oxygen in air. Researchers have pursued rechargeable zinc air batteries for many years because zinc is relatively abundant and the internal chemistry, safe.
But there remain some technical challenges. After multiple charge-discharge cycle, the anode in zinc air batteries can become damaged and stop working. McDougall said ReVolt is trying to reach between 500 and 2,000 charge cycles, depending on whether the battery is used for consumer electronics or large-scale storage.
ReVolt engineers are working on a new design in which a zinc slurry is pumped through tubes that act as an air electrode, causing the chemical reaction that produces a current, McDougall explained. He expects it will take four or five years to commercialize the technology for large-scale applications, such as grid storage. The company has raised 24 million Euros in funding, including an investment from power generator RWE of Germany, which is looking at the zinc air for storage on the electricity grid. ReVolt has applied for an ARPA-E grant aimed at breakthrough energy technologies but was not chosen in the first round of awards.
For vehicles, it makes sense to combine the relatively large energy storage of zinc air batteries with other storage technologies, McDougall said. Power-dense lithium ion batteries could be used for boosts of acceleration and ultracapacitors could capture energy from regenerative braking. "You could increase the range of next-generation of electric vehicles with hybrid storage... You could get three times the range, eliminate the safety concerns, and cut the cost of the system," he said.