Beyond Zero talks to Dr Peter Pudney from the University of South Australia on solar & electric vehicle technology

Beyond Zero Emissions' Scott Bilby speaks to Peter Pudney from the University of South Australia about the TREV electric car, solar racing and solar & electric vehicle technology in general.

Beyond Zero speaks to Peter Pudney

download

Transcript

Scott Bilby:              Hello. Welcome to Beyond Zero. My name’s Scott Bilby, and this is Beyond Zero, a show covering issues relating to climate change, including the latest news, science and solutions. Now we’re speaking with Peter Pudney, and he’s a senior research fellow in the Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment at the University of South Australia School of Mathematics and Statistics. And we’re going to be talking to him today about a great little car called the TREV, and it’s powered by renewable energy, and it’s been entered in the around the world Zero Race. Now hopefully we’ve got Peter on the line now, so I’ll just give it a go. Hello Peter?

Peter Pudney:         Yes I can hear you.

Scott Bilby:              Ah, that’s great. Now Peter, can you just tell us a little bit about how the project started and, because it started in around 2003 I recall.

Peter Pudney:         Yeah, well, we used to race solar racing cars at the University of South Australia and I used to race with Aurora Vehicles. And after a particularly sunny race from Adelaide to - through Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, we found that we were doing 300 kilometres a day in our solar racing car and still ending up at the end of the day with energy left in the batteries. And we figured if we can drive that far using only solar power, and, you know, if you can drive solar racing cars across Australia without using petrol, you should be able to drive to work and back without using petrol. That’s only 30 kilometres or so, and so in fact it was in 2002 we hired an industrial designer to take classes of industrial design students to see if they could design us a vehicle that was suitable for driving around town - had to carry two people, because we sort of looked at the cars around us and saw that most of them on the roads only had one or two people in them. And we wanted a car that would run without using fossil fuels, so at the time electricity seemed like a good idea, and it still is.

So we had two industrial design classes, spent about a year designing various concepts for the car. We chose a three-wheeler because, well it was a little bit different and we didn’t want people to confuse our car with something that you might want to hitch a caravan up to and tow it across Australia, so, it’s just a small three-wheeled vehicle with two seats and a range of about 150 kilometres. So our industrial design students designed this car and we then got our mechanical engineering, electrical engineering students to build it for us.

Scott Bilby:              OK, and it’s a great looking car. And people can kind of see that at – well, they can go to zero-race.com and they can check that out. So what did it look like before the design students, industrial design students, came up with such a funky little design. Was it just like one of those ones with lots of panels on the roof, solar panels, really flat looking thing like a beetle or something? What did it look like?

Peter Pudney:         Yeah. So the solar racing cars that we designed were the ones that race from Darwin to Adelaide and they have very large surface area, flat with solar panels on the roof. And they’re fantastic vehicles for demonstrating that you can actually drive at, you know, 100 kilometres an hour across the outback without using fossil fuels. And they’re powered just by sunlight, and they’re terrific for demonstrating technology. But they’re not at all practical for driving around town. And a lot of people at the time were looking at converting conventional cars to try and make them cleaner. We took a different approach and said, ‘well, let’s take a clean car, a solar racing car, and see if we can make it practical’. So we learnt from solar racing cars that vehicles have to be – if they’re going to be efficient they have to be low maintenance and have very good aerodynamics and be very efficient.

Scott Bilby:              OK. And so you say you took a – rather than taking a conventional car and making it cleaner as, I assume people would kind of visualise the Toyota Prius in that respect, you went the other way. So what advantages do you see - or what advantages have there been taking that different development path?

Peter Pudney:      Yeah. Well the main advantage is whereas a conventional car, stamped from steel is - you’re looking at around about 1200 kilograms for a small four-cylinder car and up to two-and-a-half tonnes for a large four-wheel drive. Because we were starting from scratch we could select materials that were easy to work with and also very lightweight. And we ended up with a car that weighed, when we first built it, about 300 kilograms. Now recently we’ve upgraded the battery, and we’re up to about 350 kilograms but it’s still about a third of the weight of a normal car. So that makes it a lot easier to push along the road and so it uses a lot less energy.

Scott Bilby:              And but – so what would you say then to people who – ‘cause we have just so many large vehicles – inefficient sort of SUV-type four-wheel drive things that are running around Melbourne, Sydney and all these other places in Australia. And people – one of the reasons people give for buying those things is safety, because they reckon they feel safe behind the wheel of those things. What would you say to them?

Peter Pudney:         Well, there’s no doubt that if you were in a collision between a large vehicle and a smaller one, then you’re probably going to come out better in the larger vehicle. And in fact it’s more the size of the vehicle than the weight of the vehicle that makes it safe. But, it’s kind of like an arms race for vehicles. Everyone’s getting into bigger and bigger cars and it’s not making the community as a whole safer, it’s just making individuals in bigger cars perhaps slightly safer. There are also disadvantages to those vehicles. They generally have a higher centre of mass and so they’re more prone to roll over and so on. So our view is that you need vehicles that are appropriate for the task, that they’re being useful. And, but there’s certainly a place for large vehicles if you need to tow something long distances, then they’re the appropriate vehicle. But for driving short distances to work and back, and if you’re too lazy to pedal a bicycle, then something like TREV is more suited to the task.

Scott Bilby:              And Trev would be ideal for that commuting thing I guess too because – I do ride a bike, but it’s, if you’re in an area that’s quite undulating it can be a quite a pain to be hopping on the bike and, yeah, and also on a rainy day, so I guess the Trev looks like it could be really good. So you say – what is the range? About 150 kilometres before you need a top-up, recharge?

Peter Pudney:         When we – we originally designed the car our plan was to have a vehicle that could travel between 100 and 150 kilometres. We first demonstrated the vehicle, not by driving it around town, but by driving it from Darwin to Adelaide, which was not really what it was designed for, but we did it. And we were travelling around about 120 kilometres on a charge. Now, just recently for the Zero Race around the world, the race required us to travel up to 250 kilometres between charging. So we’ve just recently put a larger battery into the car, and at the moment we’re getting a range of up to about 250 kilometres.

Scott Bilby:                   And what sort of batteries does the Trev run on?

Peter Pudney:         We’ve got lithium-ion polymer batteries. So they’re the same type of battery that’s found in mobile phones and so on, only a lot larger. So, our battery is around about 80 kilograms of cells at the moment.

[Music 08:06]

[Interview resumes at 09:41]

Scott Bilby:              Now we’re speaking with Peter Pudney. He’s senior research fellow, Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment at the University of South Australia School of Mathematics and Statistics, and we’re talking about Trev, a 100 per cent renewable energy vehicle. And Trev stands for the Two-seater Renewable Energy Vehicle. So if you’ve got the Trev and you’re driving around – I read somewhere on your website you once did a trip, you guys did a trip from Darwin to Adelaide, which is over 3000 kilometres, for a cost of $33 in electricity.

Peter Pudney:         Right, yes.

Scott Bilby:              I’m assuming it’d probably cost you $500 bucks or so to go in a standard vehicle, or a, you know, a Territory, Ford Territory or something.

Peter Pudney:         Yeah, well that’s right. When we drove down from Darwin to Adelaide, we used around about $33 worth of electricity and the petrol vehicles that were accompanying the event - so, for that particular race we had to have support vehicles travelling with us - and they were using hundreds of dollars worth of fuel. So the cost of electricity for Trev, and that’s the cost of green power, is about a tenth of the cost for a normal vehicle.

Scott Bilby:              OK, yeah. And again, I guess if we – if I kind of refer it back to the Prius, ‘cause I guess that’s a very common sort of you know, that’s at least a hybrid electric vehicle people are aware of. Trev is obviously a plug-in electric vehicle, 100 per cent powered by electricity. What would you like to point out as the other main points of difference between yourself and the Prius?

Peter Pudney:         Well, the main point of difference is that we don’t have any petrol engine at all. As you say, it’s a pure plug-in vehicle. And so there are no fossil fuels at all burnt when we power our car from renewable energy. And renewable energy is very easy to buy. You just ask your retailer and they’ll quite happily sell you clean energy. The other main difference is the amount of energy. So as well as being clean energy we’re using a lot less energy than even a Prius or even the most efficient petrol cars. We’re using considerably less energy to push the car along the road – you know, about a third of the energy of Prius.

Scott Bilby:              OK. And so that means, I guess, if Prius, I think have they made some…..Toyota have made an announcement that they might release a 100 per cent plug-in version of the Prius at some stage. So what would this mean for the Trev project?

Peter Pudney:         I think – I mean, all of the automotive manufacturers now are developing electric vehicles and Mitsubishi has started bringing electric vehicles into Australia; Nissan’s not far behind Renault. So they’re all planning electric vehicles, but they’re all based on the same style of vehicle that we’re used to seeing. So they’re typically at the small end of the range, but they’re still four or five-seater cars and they’re still, you know, a tonne-and-a-half of machinery to transport people around town.

There’s a place for those vehicles, and they’re going to be very good for cleaning up our cities, because they can be powered by renewable energy. And all of the automotive companies are pushing renewable energy as the way to go to power these vehicles. But I think there is still room for a vehicle that’s somewhere between a motorcycle and a car. That sort of fits in that gap, but it uses – it still uses about a third of the energy of one of these electric vehicles.

Scott Bilby:              Now, can you tell us a little bit about the race that it’s been in recently and - the 2010 Zero Race – and has that just been completed, that race?

Peter Pudney:         No. We’ve only just started.

Scott Bilby:              OK.

Peter Pudney:         In fact we started in Geneva a month ago. And there were four vehicles. Initially - at the beginning of the year there were about 12 vehicles that signed up for the race. Four vehicles actually made it to the start line, and they left Geneva on the 16^th of August. And they’ve headed through Switzerland, Germany, Hungary. We’ve now gone through Kazakhstan – sorry, we went through the Ukraine and through Kazakhstan. We’re about to leave Kazakhstan tomorrow morning and into China. So, so far we’ve travelled around about a third of the way around the world in these vehicles, and we’re just driving, you know 200 kilometres or so, plugging in, recharging while we have lunch and then driving again. We’ve got large media events in two towns a day. So it’s a bit of a hectic schedule. But it’s been a fabulous experience for the guys that are over there driving. They’re meeting lots of people and getting a huge response to these vehicles that are driving around the world on renewable energy.

Scott Bilby:              And so, can you tell us, has there been any country or countries in particular that have shown an especial sort of interest in the renewable energy car race?

Peter Pudney:         I think there’s been a really good response all the way through. We’ve been struggling a bit to get detailed information back just because of - communications has been our biggest problem. But the Zero Race has got a blog that’s got a day-by-day description of what’s been happening. And it’s really been a really big response. I know in particular we’ve got a photograph of Trev in Berlin with the minister for the environment sitting in the car, surrounded by photographers and so on, so there was a huge response there.

[Music 15:26]

[Interview resumes at 16:55]

Scott Bilby:              Now we’re speaking with Peter Pudney. He’s senior research fellow, Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment at the University of South Australia’s School of Mathematics and Statistics. And we’re talking about Trev, a 100 per cent renewable energy vehicle. And Trev stands for the Two-seater Renewable Energy Vehicle. So that race is – how long have we got to go with the 2010 Zero Race?

Peter Pudney:         So, we’ve done about a third of the race at the moment. We’ve gone from Geneva through to – well, we’re just about to leave Kazakhstan into China. We’ve got another month, so – the end of September we reach Shanghai. So then we put it on a boat for 35 days. And we ship across to Canada on the west coast and then travel down the west coast of the US, arrive in Mexico at the end of November, just in time for the climate change conference. And then once again from Mexico we stick it on a boat again and it goes back to Spain and we drive from Spain back to our starting point in Geneva.

Scott Bilby:              OK. Fantastic.

Peter Pudney:         We finish up around about the end of January next year.

Scott Bilby:              OK. Excellent. And the – so the other vehicles in the race – because they’re not all, one of them’s a motorcycle I think? Can you tell us a little bit about them and, you know, are they all essentially the same kind of ideas, kind of design that’s just by different teams?

Peter Pudney:         No. They’re all quite different, actually. At the beginning of the year there are a lot of entries, and there are a lot of sort of standard looking cars that have been converted to electric, and so on. They seem to have all dropped out, and I suspect it’s because they just couldn’t make the range with such heavy vehicles. You really need a specialist lightweight vehicle in order to be able to travel, you know, 200 and 250 kilometres on a charge.

So, the team that’s doing really well is a team called Zero Tracer. They’ve got an enclosed motorcycle:      a very high performance machine. It’s got very high top speeds, a very good range, and that’s a two-person vehicle. So that’s doing really well. So Trev is just another two-seater three-wheeled vehicle. There’s a Vectrix electric scooter that’s had its batteries replaced with lithium-ion batteries and it’s got another big pack of batteries sitting on the back, and that’s doing quite well as well.

There was a custom car – a custom built car – from Korea that had some problems in the early part of the race. They’ve pulled out to do some repairs and they’ll be rejoining the race in Canada. And so at the moment there’s a very diverse set of vehicles.

Scott Bilby:              And is it just – I would assume that they’re kind of standard type vehicles designed for, you know, just conventional road surfaces and stuff like that?

Peter Pudney:         Well, yeah. We were warned at the start of the race that some of the roads were going to be a bit rough. Apparently we’ve passed the roughest bits of the road and we’ve survived pretty well.

Scott Bilby:              [Laughs]

Peter Pudney:         But, yeah, they’re standard registered road vehicles, but I guess they’re not, they’re not standard looking cars at all, because we’ve got – you know, the motorcycle’s probably the most standard looking vehicle, and then there’s the Zero Tracer enclosed motorcycle that looks a bit like a two-wheeled rocket or something, but well worth having a looking on the website. And then Trev is a three-wheeled vehicle. So, they’re certainly attracting a lot of attention as they drive along the highways and the roads around Europe and Russia and so on.

Scott Bilby:              And so at the end of the day, there’s been a long day out there driving, the team’s pretty tired. At what point do you stop? Is there one stop-off for everyone and you just plug into the nearest, you know, wall socket or something to – how does that work?

Peter Pudney:         Yeah. So the stops are all planned. So the typical day would be – there’d be a media event in the morning at breakfast. The cars turn up to that and they’re all fully charged and ready to go for the day. Once that event’s finished off they go to the next town. And then they have a lunchtime event. And then in the afternoon they then drive – and the afternoon might be sort of late into the night, they drive to the next town, ready for the media event the next morning. The accommodation has been organised by the race organisers. And so it’s typically been hotels, and the power has been organised so that when they get there they can just plug in and charge overnight, ready for the next day.

Scott Bilby:              And is it – do you need special equipment to plug these things in?

Peter Pudney:         No, it’s just a standard power point. Because we’re trying to – we have very limited time for recharging, Trev has got two battery chargers in it, so we plug into two different power points so we can charge at twice the rate as if we were just driving around town in Australia – just plug into one power point….

Scott Bilby:              OK, and, sorry…...

Peter Pudney:         [indistinct 22:17] and charge up in about four hours.

Scott Bilby:              OK. [Laughs] You now answered that question. So four hours – so if you were just plugging into one power point, it’d take you like eight hours you say, that about right?

Peter Pudney:         Yeah, actually it’s not quite that many. I think it’s about five hours to do a full charge from a 15-amp socket. And we’re doing it in about two-and-a-half.

Scott Bilby:              Oh OK, OK. Excellent. And so the – what’s your development path beyond the 2010 Zero Race and, you know, in the next couple of years or so? Is that your ultimate aim:      is to have a little commuter vehicle that’s running around ultimately, you know, Melbourne and Sydney?

Peter Pudney:         Yeah, well the car is now – in order to get it in Zero Race, we had to have it roadworthy and registered. So the car is actually registered in South Australia, so when we come back we can drive it around and use it for commuting.

Our aim in the beginning was not to build lots of cars, but just to show that it could be done and to design a prototype of a car as a – this is the sort of car that I want, so we could show people what we were talking about. We’ve had a little bit of interest from companies around the world that are interested in seeing if they can manufacture it, but I think the way forward for us is probably to develop it as a kit car, and so we’ve got a website for people that are interested in helping us design the next version of the car so that we can get it as a kit car for enthusiasts.

Scott Bilby:              Yeah, I notice that website, it’s Trevipedia.net? And so have you had much interest from enthusiasts – car enthusiasts and stuff like that?

Peter Pudney:         We had an initial rush of interest and I guess people at the moment are waiting to see how Trev goes around the world and we’ll – once we’ve had a bit of time to relax from getting Trev ready we’ll start putting details of – more details about how we designed the car – and what it’s current configuration is. But there are other people that are working on similar concepts that are – you know, working on their own versions of Trev as well. So Trev’s not just a car, it’s more the idea that we’re interested in promoting, of a small lightweight electric vehicle that’s appropriate for the sorts of tasks that it was designed to do. So, even though we are driving around the world, that’s not what it’s designed for – it’s really designed for short commuting around town.

Scott Bilby:              Which is, yeah, it’s pretty much designed for a lightweight vehicle commuting around town, 100 per cent electric that would probably suffice the vast majority [laughs] of all trips by most people around the world?

Peter Pudney:         Yeah. That’s right. We’ve done some research with the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Automotive Technology – that’s a bit of a mouthful, but – looking at electric vehicles and how they might be used in Australia. And one of the things we found was that in Adelaide something like 97 per cent of trips are less than 100 kilometres a day, and in Sydney it’s 80-something per cent are less than 100 kilometres a day. So a lot of people could use electric vehicles for a lot of trips, and it would really clean up both CO2 emissions and also other airborne pollutants that come from conventional cars.

Scott Bilby:              Yeah. We’ve certainly heard the stats about how far people drive per day and stuff like that. You know, the whole commuting statistics – not just in Australia but around the world – and it really is high time that we get a few Trevs on the road to kind of sop up that need, because it sounds like a very good fit. Now, we’re running out of time, but how are you guys going with sponsorship? Like who’s sponsoring you guys, and in the project and in – you know, the Zero Race, et cetera, and stuff like that?

Peter Pudney:         Yeah, so the initial project was mainly sponsored by the University of South Australia. We had a few other sponsors that helped us in the World Solar Challenge. The Zero Race – we’ve got Google onboard, Galaxy Resources is a lithium miner in Western Australia that are making the lithium that goes into lithium-ion batteries. And we’ve got ABN Newswire, they’re the newswire service that’s been really good at helping get our message out, mainly across Asia. And we’ve got a local electrician who is actually currently driving across Kazakhstan in the car.

Scott Bilby:              [Laugh]

Peter Pudney:         Just a local business that’s helped support us.

Scott Bilby:              Yeah. That’s fantastic. Now, Peter I’d like to say thanks very much for talking with us today about the Trev.

Peter Pudney:         You’re welcome.

Scott Bilby:              We’ve just been speaking with Peter Pudney. He’s senior research fellow in the Division of Information Technology, Engineering and the Environment at the University of South Australia’s School of Mathematics and Statistics. And we were just talking about the renewable energy vehicle called the Trev, the Two-seater Renewable Energy Vehicle. And if you want to know more you can go to – there’s a couple of places:      zero-race.com or you can go to Trevipedia.net. Thanks for listening.

Transcripts by Jenny