2010 Electric Drive and Transportation Association Conference Blog

The Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA) 2010 Conference and Annual Meeting

The Electric Drive Transportation Association (EDTA) 2010 Conference and Annual Meeting takes place in Washington, DC this year from January 26-28, 2010. The meeting is co-located with the Washington, DC Auto Show. Alleyn Harned (pictured on right), Virginia Clean Cities’ Program Coordinator, will be at the conference and Washington Auto Show, and will blog about the action. Check back on January 26th to hear the latest in battery, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and fuel cell electric drive vehicles.

Fuel Cell Vehicles and Infrastructure

By Alleyn Harned | January 28, 2010 at 06:23 PM EST | Even with the switch to an all fuels approach from hydrogen specific goals of the past, a number of excellent commercial vehicles have experienced considerable testing and are moving towards commercialization. Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, and GM are expecting to commercialize and sell tens [...]

Public Policies for Sustainable Transportation

By Alleyn Harned | January 28, 2010 at 06:27 PM EST | A policy discussion was held at the end of the day on Wednesday. The bottom line was that as a country, we need to dominate alternate fuel technologies and components in this challenging budget environment. Much of the discussion revolved anticipation for the [...]

The Gas Tax

By Alleyn Harned | January 28, 2010 at 06:56 PM EST The featured speaker for the closing luncheon was Mike Jackson, Chairman and CEO of AutoNation, an organization of dealerships. Mike had some excellent comments on the consumer reality of advanced vehicle technologies and clean fuel alternatives. Namely, Mike advised that without the price driver [...]

Fuel Cell Policies and Technology

By Alleyn Harned | January 28, 2010 at 06:45 PM EST | Many vehicle technology improvements go together and continue to advance the goal for more efficient vehicles. Fuel cell technology has the potential to move much larger vehicles than batteries can realistically move. Over the last 7 years, the fuel cell stack at Honda [...]

Unlocking the Grid

By Alleyn Harned | January 28, 2010 at 06:40 PM EST The consensus of many here is that “dumb charging” will be a liability to electric cars and to the electricity grid. Great presentation from eTec on their massive deployment project. deploying multiple models of electric vehicle infrastructure in five states throughout the country, this [...]

Powering the Next Era of Transportation

By Alleyn Harned | January 27, 2010 at 12:15 PM EST | Senator Orrin Hatched opened today’s activities with a note that costs will downscale over time, and that the mass produced Model T came out at less than half of the cost of early models. EDTA continued a collaborative approach to enhance the electric [...]

Washington Car Show – Alt Fuel Vehicles

By Alleyn Harned | January 26, 2010 at 07:23 PM EST | In some down time I visited the show floor for the Washington Auto Show to take a peek at some of their advance technology vehicles. It was a huge carpeted expanse of polished beautiful cars, and a special section showcasing alternative fuel vehicles [...]

EDTA / SAE Joint Opening Session

By Alleyn Harned | January 26, 2010 at 04:39 PM EST The Joint Opening Session had an interesting and divergent mix of speakers including Congressman Fred Upton of Michigan, to David McCurdy of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Jack Basso of AASHTO, Roland Hwang, Senior Policy Analyst at NRDC, and Thomas Kuhn, President of the [...]

Growth Workshop

By Alleyn Harned | January 26, 2010 at 04:06 PM EST | Frost & Sullivan led a workshop outlining their analysis of the potential market for electric vehicles and how we can identify new market opportunities for these alternate fuel vehicles. Carpooling, carsharing, and mobility service organizations are on the rise and the manner that [...]

Funding Opportunities Workshop

By Alleyn Harned | January 26, 2010 at 11:00 AM EST This morning began with funding opportunities workshop at the DC convention center. We heard from the venture capital investment and the government side of the alternative energy investment coin. The Recovery Act remains the main government funding stream through various sources until further climate [...]

Green Car Summit 2010

As a prelude to EDTA, on Monday 1/25/2010 Green Car Journal hosted a Green Car Summit on Capitol Hill to discuss realistic strategies to advance commercialization and adoption of next-generation clean fuel vehicles. This policy discussion highlighted and re-emphasized that green vehicles are more important today than ever.