|
|
|
|
|
|
Extreme Hybrids AheadBy Bill Moore Open Access Article Originally Published: January 31, 2006
Edward Furia's AFS Trinity has been lying low, perfecting technology and building alliances, waiting for the opportune moment to pounce. That moment came on January 25, 2006 when the Bellevue, Washington company issued a press release announcing that it and world-renown auto engineering firm, Ricardo, had quietly joined forces late last year to not only develop a plug-in hybrid, but a vehicle-to-grid or V2G hybrid. The event that caused the Furia to surface with his announcement was the Plug-in Partners press conference the day before at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. I immediately contacted Furia and arranged to do an interview, which took place on Friday, January 28, 2006. I expected to talk with him for 20-25 minutes, but instead we went nearly an hour in one of the more informative and entertaining telephone discussions I've conducted for EV World. I will attempt to summarize the main points of our dialog, but I strongly encourage you to listen to it in its entirety using either the MP3 Player on this page or by downloading the file to your computer hard drive for transfer and playback on your favorite MP3 device.
EPA and Earth Day He explained to EV World that back in 1989, his former EPA press secretary, Tim Kent, introduced him to the concept of powering electric vehicles with advanced flywheels, rather than just batteries. "At the time, I declined to get involved", he said, "because with my experience in the government, I believed there was too much institutional inertia, both in Detroit and Washington for one to successfully introduce an alternative to the standard internal combustion engine-driven car." It would be a convergence of several different events including the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, the debut of the General Motor's Impact electric car, which became the all-too-short-lived EV1, plus Congress' amending the Clean Air Act in 1990 that would cause him to re-evaluate his views. "The thing that pushed it all over the edge was (Iraq's) invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. That rekindled concerns about the instability of that part of the world from which we were getting the oil and gasoline for our cars."
Reader Comments
A valid email address and confirmation is required before your comment can be posted. Comments not confirmed within
24 hours are automatically deleted.
5 comments so far...
|
a d v e r t i s e r
September ePOLL
Do you agree that the $100 billion invested in technology innovation was an appropriate expenditure by the American government?
RELATED ARTICLES
a d v e r t i s e r
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Learn How Your Organization Can Appear Here Too. Click the Advertising Link Below
| |||
|