Ford, Daimler AG, and the Renault-Nissan alliance will jointly a develop a fuel-cell system for eco-conscious motoring, with the first mass-market, “affordable” model tipped for 2017. The pact – which follows a similar agreement by BMW and Toyota, also concerning fuel-cell technology – will see a single fuel-cell stack and system that will form the basis of a new range of cars from each marque, with the same underlying technology rebranded to suit different consumer segments.
Fuel-cell electric vehicles, or FCEVs, power their motors by combining hydrogen and oxygen, with water the only physical byproduct. A high-pressure tank contains the hydrogen, while oxygen is extracted from the air.
The three companies involved have, they point out, a cumulative total of over 60 years of fuel-cell vehicle development, and more than 6m miles in test driving and demonstration models. Work on the homogenized stack will take place in multiple locations around the world, while teams from the three companies will also look at collaborating on other components FCEVs will require so as to achieve further economy of scale.
Unlike the BMW-Toyota partnership, however, which will take an active role in pushing the development of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure, Ford, Daimler, and Renault-Nissan instead hope that their work “sends a clear signal” to existing hydrogen network stakeholders that they need to pull their finger out and get working.
Still, that focus means today’s deal may result in a workable car – or cars – before BMW and Toyota have something ready for the forecourts. The trio today claim 2017 is the earliest a fuel-cell vehicle may be on the market, whereas BMW and Toyota gave themselves a little more wiggle-room, estimating that they would have something prepared by 2020.
Renault‘s first Alpine sports car will arrive before the end of 2015 the company says, as much as two years ahead of the initial schedule, and promising a driving experience roughly in line with a Mazda Miata. The project – a joint effort between Renault and Caterham announced back in November – will not “betray the DNA of Alpine” Renault marketing chief Stephen Norman told Autocar, saying that the car “must be light and look different, and have a touch of French dash.”
Think serious driver’s car yet without too much compromise or discomfort, however. “It won’t be more hardcore than a Mazda MX-5 [Miata]” Norman said. “What we do will not be soft, but not hardcore like a Peugeot 106 Rallye.” Under the hood will be a roughly 250bhp Renault engine.
Alpine interest surged back in 2012, when Renault revealed the A110-50 concept, a fiftieth-anniversary rethink of the original A110 that proved its merit on an aurally-pleasing lap of the French Alps. The new Renault/Caterham Alpine may not be quite so extreme, however; Norman says it will be priced at under £50,000 ($81,000) and be positioned as a Porsche Boxster or Audi TT rival.
“It’s not a car for dandies, though” Norman says. “We know who the buyer is: he’s either French or a Francophile. And the car has technical innovation as part of its DNA.”
The first Alpine model is unlikely to have the garage to itself for long. “Renault and Caterham will combine their skills to build models in large and small volumes” the two companies said back when the project was revealed.
Wireless charging has made headlines in recent weeks, but a new Qualcomm Halo trial kicking off in the UK is targeting the devices that live in your garage rather than in your pocket. Just as Google’s Nexus 4 and Nokia’s Lumia 920 each support wireless charging, rejuicing via simple desk pads rather than the fumble of slotting in a microUSB cable, so chip and wireless specialist Qualcomm sees the future of electric and hybrid urban mobility being wire-free. There’s a big difference, though, between a fifty buck charging plate for your phone and a way of cutting the cord for electric vehicles and potentially opening up the road as a dynamic power highway. SlashGear caught up with Qualcomm and some select partners to find out what makes Halo special, and why it’s just as much at home on a 200mph racing car as it is your city runabout.
Qualcomm’s trial scheme – in association with Renault and others – kicks off a two year project in London, UK, to see the feasibility and issues around wireless rather than traditional conductive charging. It’s based on Qualcomm’s Halo technology, which puts special inductive coils in both the road and the chassis underneath your car and, when the two line up, can fire across power with much the same efficiency as a regular cable might deliver.
Inductive systems of this sort aren’t new – in fact, industrial facilities have been using similar technology, running automated machinery around factory floors fueled by powerline tracks embedded in the concrete, for more than two decades now – but they’re yet to spread in any effective way from relatively closed systems.
London’s busy and convoluted streets are anything but a closed, controlled system, but that’s exactly why the city was selected by the Qualcomm-led project. It offers a mixture of road conditions, weather types, and usage scenarios, and a combination of sedans, taxis, vans, and other vehicles are expected to take part over the two year period.
Halo is a big step away from plugging in your EV (electric vehicle) to a mains electric point. Instead, you simply drive up to a power-embedded parking space and – being guided in, either by a dialog on the dashboard display or on your smartphone – roughly line up the coils in order for the electricity to start flowing. Early iterations only supported the sort of power you’d get from a slow, overnight charger – around the 3 KWh point, good for a full charge in around seven hours – but the technology now offers a 3hr charge with 7 KWh versions, and even a 1hr charge with the fastest 20 KWh standard.
Qualcomm Halo and Renault Fluence demo:
Renault is the big partner, or at least the one most likely to be seen on roads, with its specially crafted Fluence EV carrying Halo technology (along with a set of regular charging plugs). Citroen is also taking part, with a compact EV, while the more esoteric Delta E-4 will be a rarer sight though probably more eye-catching thanks to its gullwing doors. The Delta also has the most entertaining dashboard, a Tesla-style full touchscreen for navigating through charging programs and efficiency reports. In contrast, the Renault shifts Halo duties to a smartphone app – which we played with on a Samsung Galaxy S III – which helps position the car over the pad as well as begin, end, and monitor charging. The Citroen has a cutesy pod on the instrument binnacle that shows power status.
Unfortunately, the general public won’t be able to snap up a Halo-enabled car during the trial. Instead, they’ll be limited to select fleet users, including cab company Addison Lee, with a further cab deployment planned for sometime in 2014. In fact, the team behind the trial see cabs as being ideal customers for wireless charging, with each waiting period in a taxi rank the ideal opportunity to top up a battery. Initially, though, partner Chargemaster will be adding Halo to six of its London based privately-run “POLAR” EV charging locations, though the goal is to upgrade all 4,000+ points across the UK.
Nor will those with existing EVs be likely to see an upgrade. Qualcomm tells us that the cost of retrofitting Halo – as well as the regulatory and safety hurdles – means the relatively small userbase of current drivers isn’t really a target. Instead, the company is aiming for more widespread adoption with OEMs and upcoming models. It’ll also need to convince buyers to tick the EV box at the point of ordering; Renault says it is attempting to price its models at roughly the point of the diesel-powered equivalent, but there’s infrastructure required for the wireless charging pad if you want one for your garage at home, and you can’t simply plug Halo into a regular power socket. That’s currently along the line of roughly £2,500-3,000 ($4,000-4,800), not including the background infrastructure, though to be fair that’s roughly akin to a wired setup.
In the future, though, your Halo-equipped car may not even need to stand still in order to be recharged. Right now, fixed charging points make sense, from a cost-of-infrastructure standpoint as well as given that most cars sit unused overnight and for several hours during the day. However, Qualcomm also envisages a time when dynamic charging is used: Halo embedded in continuous strings along the roadway, with EVs constantly being powered as they drive over them.
Qualcomm Halo official video:
It’s cost not technology holding back such deployment today. In fact, the current Halo pads support dynamic charging already; right now, though, actually ripping up the road to bury them in place is unfeasible. Qualcomm and others will need to successfully position Halo as a standard, too, in order for the technology to be so broadly adopted that ubiquity makes commercial sense. There are more partners in the trial to be announced, the company told us, and other car manufacturers have been invited to take part, but it’s far from an industry standard yet.
The first evidence of that is likely to be in FIA Formula E, the freshly-announced EV racing cousin to F1. Set to begin in May 2014, it will see new EV racetracks in ten cities across the world, with ten teams pitting their all-electric cars against each other. Right now, the plan is for a relay race setup of sorts – each team would have two cars, driving one for roughly 20 minutes, before leaving it in a pit-stop to recharge while a second car was driven for a further 20 minutes, and then finally returning to the first, “refueled” car for the final 20 minute dash – but the closed environment of a racetrack makes it ideal for dynamic installation.
And don’t doubt that EVs can deliver when it comes to high-speed performance. Drayson Racing Technologies showed us its B12/69 EV, a 200mph+ Le Mans style race car equipped with Halo charging and good for a 3.0 second 0-62mph sprint. The racing team used the B12/69 EV as a Halo testbed during the last Goodwood Festival of Speed, setting a new hill climb record back in July and relying solely on the Qualcomm system for recharging during the entire weekend. In fact, the EV version of the car out-performs its predecessor, which hid a 5.5-litre biofuel engine at the rear instead.
In the end, Halo is a play for a growing market: one where EVs are looked upon more favorably by governments and regulators than traditional gas-guzzlers; where the infrastructure and driver-awareness exists to support them; and where consideration for the environment matches enthusiasm for the independence of having a car. Qualcomm and its partners make a pretty convincing argument for the Halo system specifically, however.
Rather than rely on the sluggish improvement in battery efficiency, or trying to squeeze more batteries into a vehicle to increase range, Halo targets ease of use and ubiquity. By topping up your EV multiple times during the day – without having to fiddle with a power cable or in fact do anything more than park on a certain spot – you can extend your range while also trimming the number of heavy batteries you’re carrying. We’ll have to wait to see how the data crunches at the end of the trial to know if the reality matches the Halo hyperbole, but just as smartphone users are being told they should simply drop down their handsets to recharge, so one day might we just park-up to top-up our zero emissions car.
Renault and Caterham have announced a partnership to create a new Alpine sportscar, resurrecting the iconic brand and hopefully translating concepts such as the Alpine A110-50 to the road. The deal, which will see the creation of The Société des Automobiles Alpine Caterham in January 2013, could have sports tires on tarmac within the space of 3-4 years, though details of what exactly will bear the abandoned Alpine badge are currently couched in mystery.
“The future vehicles will be distinctive, differentiated, and carry the respective DNA of Alpine and Caterham Cars” is all the two companies would say today, though it’s clear that this isn’t just a collaboration on a single model. “Renault and Caterham will combine their skills to build models in large and small volumes,” they say, “in order to widen their positioning on the sports car market.”
New models made as part of the partnership will be produced at the Alpine plane in Dieppe, France, saving it from closure. The Caterham Group will also grab a fifty percent share in Automobiles Alpine Renault, which until now is entirely held by Renault SAS.
At present, the Dieppe facility produces Renaultsport cars, the French firm’s niche performance models, and indeed The Société des Automobiles Alpine Caterham will be managed by Bernard Ollivier, who previously led the Renault Sport Technologies team. Since 2011, Ollivier has been VP of Transformation at Renault.
Renault Alpine A110-50 concept:
If the first Alpine-branded car is anything like the A110-50 concept Renault showed off earlier this year, the two companies could be on to a winner. Channeling the original Alpine A110 “Berlinette” of fifty years previous, the concept borrowed F1 transmission and aerodynamics expertise for a car that – as Renault’s Alps assault proved – was as good on the road as it was on the car show stand.
Renault’s electric-powered Twizy city car has gained an set of windows ahead of the winter, an unusual option for what’s already an oddball vehicle. The twin-seater EV – which sits driver and passenger in a line, rather than side by side – usually lacks anything on the sides beyond a simple safety bar that hinges across the door. That may be practical for sunnier climates, but those facing a wet winter were unsurprisingly less convinced, and so Renault has some optional windows.
Renault previously offered a lower-door add-on, which blocked up the bottom half of the gap, but this new accessory provides full coverage. The system is in two parts, firstly a metal frame which clips on to the door-bar, and then a transparent panel which zips into place.
If you’re thinking this all sounds a bit like the hood you might find on a children’s stroller, you’re not alone; we thought that too. The advantage, Renault says, is that the whole thing can be fitted or removed without tools, and without affecting the standard bodywork. When the weather starts to get better – or when you decide it’s easier to drive while wearing a wetsuit and earmuffs- then you can whip it all off again in short order.
There’s a gap for access to the door handles and vents to prevent everything from misting up inside, and the whole kit will come in at £295 ($473) when it goes on sale at the end of November. Until then, we recommend gloves and a wooly hat.
Car manufacturers aren’t betting the farm on all-electric and hybrid cars; gas engines are still going to be around for a while, and Renault-Nissan and Mercedes-owner Daimler plan to squeeze the very best out of them. A freshly inked collaboration between the firms will see them double up on a new, turbocharged powerplant that – despite using gas not hydrogen fuel-cells or batteries – will deliver “a significant improvement in fuel economy as well as low emissions.”
Technical details on the new engine are scant so far. Described as a 4-cylinder gasoline unit, with direct-injection and a turbocharger, it will supposedly be “compact” and show up in the first cars from all firms in 2016 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Nissan has also grabbed a license to manufacture automatic transmissions using Daimler technology, which Nissan has said will take place in Mexico. Daimler gearboxes already help waft-friendly autobahn cruisers like Mercedes’ sedans shuttle through eight gears, and Nissan’s versions will use “park and shift by wire” and “start and stop” tech the German firm has developed.
The new ‘boxes will be used in both Nissan and Infiniti models, also from 2016, likely tuned for various degrees of efficiency, smoothness, and performance, depending on the specific vehicle and target audience.
Daimler and Renault-Nissan are still in discussions regarding fuel-cell powertrains, the companies confirmed, as well as a cross-supply program for battery and powertrain components for zero-emission compact models. City-car manufacturer and Daimler subsidiary smart showed off a concept all-electric model, the forstars, last week at the Paris Auto Show, which pairs battery power with smartphone remote control and an integrated projector for impromptu movie screenings.
Qualcomm will be trialling its wireless charging system in London later this year, adding two names to turn Qualcomm Halo from a Australian science project into reality. It’s teaming up with Delta Motorsport, which will add the induction platform to some of its E-4 electric sports coupés in preparation for the city-wide trial. It’s also signed a memorandum of understanding with Renault, paving the way for the French auto maker to investigate adding the tech to future EVs. As part of the deal, both companies will get a seat on the steering committee for the project — maybe the company will let them sit in the passenger seat and change gears.
When it comes to performance cars and heritage, it’s not just Italian marques that have all the history: Renault has some pretty impressive cars in its garage too. To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Renault Alpine A110 ”Berlinette”, the French company created a new concept, the Alpine A110-50, and sent old car and new galloping around the Alps in a breathtaking short film you can see after the cut.
At the wheel of the new car is Jean Ragnotti, who has been racing for Renault on and off since 1973. Renault’s ploy with the video is to pretend that he’s competing against his younger self in the original A110, though in reality it’s Erik Comas behind the wheel for the external shots.
The concept has been given a few visual clues to link it to the original Alpine, including echoing the hood-mounted lights only now brought bang up to date with yellow LED rings. The blue is a new shade, again inspired by the original, while inside there’s a Formula Renault 3.5 steering wheel with an integrated LCD screen.
Renault Alpine A110-50 Design:
As for the engine feeding those flame-spitting tailpipes, it’s a Renault V4Y engine block, a 3.5 litre 24-valve 400hp V6 mounted in a mid-rear position and with custom crankcase (semi-wet), moving parts (pistons, connecting rods, crankshaft), valve train (camshafts and valve springs) and exhaust system. It’s paired with an F1-style semi-automatic six-speed sequential gearbox, with paddle shift and a twin-plate clutch.
Sadly Renault isn’t talking about the possibility of a production version, which is a shame since we reckon Ferrari, Lamborghini and the other supercar companies could do with a swift kick, Alpine-style.
Renault Alpine A110-50 – The movie with Jean Ragnotti:
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