Electric car charging from public solar panels

Electric car owners in Zurich who want to charge up with green energy can have their battery communicate with a local utility’s solar panels and find out whether the panels are producing at that point in time.

If they are, the battery can instruct the utility to send electricity.

It’s part of a small trial between IBM and Swiss utility EKZ involving an app, cloud computing services and a phonebook sized data-recording device installed on “several” EVs including a Renault Twingo, an IBM press release states.

The device was developed by Zurich University.

The app also lets the car owner hand over charging responsibility to EKZ, which can schedule charge-ups when sun and wind power is available, and better manage its peak load generation.

One knock on EVs is that they’re only as green as the form of electricity that feeds them – coal-base electricity does not reduce a car’s carbon footprint as much as renewable electricity does. But wind and solar sources do not furnish constant electricity the way coal does.

The app can help assure the car charges only when the sun shines or the wind blows. (Although the bigger step will come when utilities switch to 100 percent renewable, taking the guesswork out).

The app runs on mobile devices, tablets and web browsers.

In addition, owners can read the app while they’re away from their car – say, in the office or even thousands of miles away – to check how much charge remains.

All the more reason why cars might could one day come for “free” as part of a service package from a utility, a mobile phone company or an internet provider.

Photo: BP Solar

China: Surge in Luxury cars sales for Audi, BMW & Mercedes

Strong Chinese luxury auto sales have lifted the prospects of German luxury car makers which were left behind in an earlier rush to buy cheaper models with 'cash-for-clunkers' subsidies, analysts say.

Audi, BMW and Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, all reported better sales in November on a 12-month basis, with China clearly the fastest growing market for all three.

"China is outstanding right now," Metzler Bank auto analyst Juergen Pieper reports.

Already the biggest market for Audi's parent group Volkswagen, "within five years it will be the most important country for Daimler and BMW and in the next three or four years for Audi," Nord LB analyst Frank Schwope forecast.

Schemes approved by governments worldwide to boost the auto sector with credits for junking an old car mainly benefitted makers of cheaper autos, including VW which aims to overtake Toyota as the biggest automaker by 2018.

Budget conscious auto buyers shunned the kind of powerful cars that Germany is best known for and luxury auto sales slumped sharply early this year.

November deliveries thus compared favourably with what were already weak sales one year earlier, with Daimler reporting a gain of 16 percent, BMW one of 11.5 percent and Audi one of 8.9 percent.

"Since September, sales have been back on the growth track," BMW sales director Ian Robertson said in a statement. "We intend to continue this trend in December and continue to exploit the increasing demand in China," he added.