Michael Kanellos
CHIBA, Japan — LEDs are energy efficient and they last far longer than conventional bulbs. And companies are progressively improving the light quality to make them “warmer.” Too bad about the price.
The LED lights Toshiba has released over the last few months, on display here at the technology trade show Ceatec taking place outside of Tokyo, sort of underscore the problem. The E-60 light, on the left, puts out as much light as a 60-watt bulb, but it only consumes 7.8 watts. The bulb on the right, the E-100, is equivalent to a 100-watt bulb, but only consumes around 12 watts. (The light shining on the bulbs, by the way, is produced by the same kind of bulbs. The E-60 has been tweaked to give it a light more similar to conventional household lights.)
Unfortunately, they cost about $100 and $150, respectively, in U.S. dollars.
Toshiba has also released a dimmable version of the E-60. It works just like a regular dimmer bulb. It sells for close to $350.
Still, the LED switch is coming over the next decade. Because LEDs are chips, the prices will likely drop by 20 percent to 50 percent a year in the future. Startups like Luminus Devices, meanwhile, continue to receive venture funding.
Michael Kanellos
CHIBA, Japan — It won’t blow up and it charges rapidly. Conceivably, you could have a an electric car that charges in a few minutes. Those are the some of the reasons that Toshiba says the Scib battery will become popular in electric vehicles in the coming years.
Scib (which stands for super-charge ion battery) is a lithium-titanate battery – similar to the ones being put together by tiny Altair Nanotechnologies – that can be used in a wide variety of applications. Conventional lithium-ion batteries have a lithium-cobalt cathode. (In batteries, charged lithium particles move from the cathode to the anode and back again). Unfortunately, lithium-cobalt batteries can break down and cause a “thermal runaway reaction” or explosion. Lithium-cobalt batteries also degrade over time: The more they get used, the less power they can hold. If you want to buy an electric car today, battery replacement is an issue you have to consider.
Developing new batteries remains to be one of the big challenges in electronics. Batteries roughly improve 6 percent a year in performance. Silicon chips improve by around 60 percent a year. The key part to remember with Scib is that this is Toshiba, one of the major supplier of components to the electronic world. The cafeteria at corporate headquarters probably employs 35 times more people that Altair has in total. NEC and Nissan are also working on batteries for electric cars. This is good news for electric and plug-in car fans: when large mass manufacturers begin to show strong and positive interests in new technologies, the odds of that technology making it to market increase dramatically.
But it is also bad news for startups that have been touting novel batteries for the last few years. Pretend you are a manager at a car company. Who are you going to buy batteries from?
Scib doesn’t have the same energy density as a lithium-cobalt battery, but it’s got a lot of other things going for it. For instance, you can drive a nail through it without it blowing up. A single cell (that blue thing pictured) also recharges in five minutes, compared to 30 minutes for a standard high-quality lithium-cobalt battery. Thus, an electric bike with 15 Scib cells in it can be recharged rapidly. In lab tests, Toshiba says that Scib cells only lose about 10 percent of their capacity to hold energy after 3,000 charge-discharge cycles, which is quite low.
You could theoretically charge a plug-in hybrid or an electric car in five minutes, but because any car using these would have hundreds of cells, you’d need a really powerful charger. Still, a car with a Scib-based battery pack would likely charge more rapidly than a car with a conventional pack even at a regular charging station.
Toshiba came out with Scibs for notebooks and the battery packs for electric bikes this year. Next, it will aim for scooters.
Michael Kanellos
CHIBA, Japan — Hitachi has been taking off weight.
The Japanese conglomerate – a company in energy circles mostly known for its work in nuclear – has been conducting an experiment with a software application that delivers health advice and dieting tips.
In a trial with its own employees, Hitachi employees lost a collective 5.1 kilograms (11,200 pounds), said Etsuhiko Shoyama, chairman of the company in a keynote speech at Ceatec, a large technology convention taking place outside of Tokyo this week. (It is similar to CES, but in a foreign language. Panasonic discussed its green home strategy here.) On average, the application works on about 67 percent of the people who try it and testers have typically been losing around 5 percent of their body weight in 90 days.
As a follow up, Hitachi is testing another technology called Life Microscope, a wristband that monitors vital signs such as heart rate and sleeping time and downloads it to a computer. If you’ve been getting up slightly later, Life Microscope will confirm it.
The idea is that all things are interconnected. If software and hardware like this can make people healthier, it starts to erode the demand for more expensive healthcare down the road. Is it green technology? A lot of investors insert the health and lifestyle category under the clean- and greentech umbrella because it fits in with the concept of sustainability. The customer base also overlaps quite a bit.
Other interesting technologies at Hitachi: Geomation. The application crunches satellite data to determine the optimum time to harvest wheat and rice. In tests on the island of Hokkaido, farmers saw carbon dioxide output during harvesting reduced by 30 percent.
The company also has two datacenter technologies – Harmonious Green and Cool Center 50 – that aim to reduce CO2 emissions and power consumption by 40 percent to 50 percent, respectively. The two technologies revolve around ways to centralize datacenters.
By 2025 Hitachi wants to reduce its carbon output by 100 million tons annually from current levels.
Michael Kanellos
CHIBA, Japan — The VentureOne from Venture Vehicles isn’t alone.
Japan’s Phiaro has concocted a three-wheeled, two-seater car that tilts like a motorcycle, which is pretty similar to the VentureOne. In fact, the two cars are based around the same technology initially devised by a company in the Netherlands. Teruhiko Iwasaki, president of the company, showed the Eternity off during a presentation at Ceatec, a technology trade show taking place this week outside of Tokyo.
Venture Vehicles is much further along: It has raised capital from Ngen Partners and plans to come out with cars in 2010. Phiaro has designed a prototype and is now hunting for manufacturing partners, Teruhiko said.
The idea behind these cars is to open up the category for urban commuter cars, smaller vehicles that can fit in tight parking spaces and won’t see much time on the freeway. Because they have three wheels, these cars are classified as motorcycles, which means the process to make them street legal in most countries is shorter and easier. The cars also tilt like motorcycles, which makes them more fun to drive than regular cars. The smaller size of the autos means they should sell for a lot less than a standard car: Venture will try to bring out its vehicles for around $25,000.
The downside? There haven’t been a lot of successful three-wheelers out there since the demise of sidecar. Myers Motors and Zap have been plugging away at it for years with their own three-wheelers, but they haven’t got much past the novelty stage.
The prototypes from both Venture and Phiaro also right now run on gas motors. The versions that will be released to the public will be plug-in hybrids or all-electric cars. Right now, though, batteries are somewhat expensive. Venture, in fact, decided earlier this year to start with a plug-in hybrids and move to batteries later because of the expense of batteries.
Michael Kanellos
CHIBA, Japan — For years, TV makers competed over price and screen size. Now they’re beating each other up over who is the most green.
The environmental friendliness of TVs is the new battleground for set manufacturers, at least from my interviews at Ceatec, a technology trade show taking place in the Tokyo suburb this week. Sony, for instance, has a 42-inch LCD TV from 2005 on display that consumes 131 watts while showing programs. Next to it is a 2008 set of the same size consuming 57 watts to show the same program.
Sharp also has two experimental TVs that run on solar power. One, a prototype 26-inch LCD TV, consumes only 40 watts of power, less power than a conventional light bulb requires. It functions on two solar small panels. Sharp is also showing off a 52-inch LCD TV that runs on a larger panel. It consumes only 220 kilowatt hours of solar power in an average year. (See photo below of the 26 inch.)
Sharp has come out with an application for its new slim LCD TVs that display family pictures or paintings from the Old Masters while in sleep mode. Running this screensaver-like device only consumes 60 watts. (See photo below.)
Meanwhile, Panasonic says it will reduce the power consumption in its plasma TVs by two-thirds by 2010 or 2011, said Toshihiro Sakamoto, president of Panasonic’s AVC Networks group in a meeting. The power consumption reduction will come in two ways. First, Panasonic will reduce the number of components in a plasma TV. Plasmas, which create images through chemical excitation, need more components than LCD TVs.
Second, Panasonic will try to direct more of the light coming from the light source to the screen itself. Doubling the luminance halves the electricity required to paint images on the screen, he said. Tripling it cranks down power to one-third.
“If the luminance effect is enhanced, we can dramatically reduce power,” he said.
Power consumption isn’t the only trick. Many TV makers continue to slim down their sets. Panasonic showed off a demo plasma that is under 27-millimeters thick, while Hitachi and Sharp have already released (expensive) LCD TVs that are in the same range. Sony has an organic light-emitting diode TV that is far thinner, but smaller.
Smaller TVs require fewer materials, which cuts down on petroleum in the manufacturing process. And they’re lighter, making transportation easier, said Etsuhiko Shoyama, chairman of the board at Hitachi during a keynote presentation at the conference.
Hitachi earlier this year released thin LCD TVs in Japan that act as a convection oven, which dissipates heat better than fans or other devices. That allows the TV to be made thinner.
Michael Kanellos
CHIBA, Japan — Startups that make green homes be warned: Panasonic is coming. It will take a few years, but it’s coming.
The Japanese electronics giant has assembled a strategic plan to start making modular homes in about three to five years that will combine green construction along with sophisticated electronics to curb energy consumption, according to executives during a roundtable discussion at Ceatec, a large technology trade show taking place near Tokyo this week.
In a Panasonic demo at the show, sensors embedded in the ceiling adjust the air conditioner and lights depending on whether or not people are present. The sensor system (based around a technology called Beam Steering) also tries to determine which members of the household are in the room. If grandpa is there, for example, the heater might get cranked up.
“House to total solution, Panasonic is the only company to propose that,” said Ohtsubo Fumio, president of Matsushita Electric, which will officially change its name on a global scale to Panasonic on October 1.
This being a Panasonic demo, plasma TVs play a big part in the home of the future. That window in the back of the room in the photo? It’s a series of plasma TVs creating the illusion of a wonderful day. Another TV on a robotic track follows the models/occupants as they go from room to room so they won’t miss a minute of “America’s Got Talent.”
There is also a full-length mirror that turns into a TV that can also beam yoga lessons.
The scary part for green building startups is that Panasonic has the money and technology to pull this off. The company already has a construction division that makes modular homes in Japan. It also sells several upscale household appliances. It sells them in Japan, but will soon market them in Europe. LG, the South Korean conglomerate, has reaped huge amounts of revenue off of its upscale white goods over the last five years – take a look at the Best Buy supplement in your Sunday newspaper.
One of its marquee products is a sleeping system that slowly dims bedroom lights and plays soothing nature sounds as you go to sleep. The company also has a bathtub with insulation that can keep the water warm for hours. Energy and personal health (i.e., home exercise equipment and health monitors) are two of the four major areas of research for the company. Many of Panasonic’s appliances are on permanent display at a green home the company has erected in its showcase in Tokyo.
Other green housing companies just don’t have these kinds of resources. Building modular home factories is expensive. The industry in the U.S. is also in its infancy. This is the kind of news that can give VCs second thoughts.
On the other hand, Panasonic is a conglomerate and that can be a tough place to incubate new businesses. Additionally, the U.S. could be the last market it approaches, so everyone does have some breathing room.
Ohtsubo said that it will be at least three years before Panasonic will be ready to move forward.
