The Cocconi Factor

The Cocconi Factor

Straight talk from the prophet's mouth

Winter 1994

by Tim Considine

It's like a revival meeting. Crowded into the basement of a public library, they sit in awe as their prophet speaks, occasionally responding to his sermon with a collective groan of approval or amazement. They are "True Believers," united by a stubborn conviction that the electric vehicle is the future. Now, finally, Alan Cocconi and his remarkable car have come to validate their faith. (journal notes, Electric Vehicle Association meeting, Feb., 1992)

Alan Cocconi burst upon the electric car scene with the debut of GM's Impact at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January, 1991. His complex electronics controlled the Impact prototype's two high-power AC motors, thereby instantly lifting the EV above "golf cart" technology. Impatient with GM's delays, he quit the Impact program, only to resurface and stun the EV community with his own entirely new state-of-the-art 134 hp electric powertrain, which he mounted in a 1991 Honda CRX. Tests by the California Air Resources Board, public utilities, and several national magazines quickly established that vehicle, Cocconi's daily transportation, as the most advanced EV in existence in terms of power and range, including, ironically, GM's newest "Preview" Impacts. His latest effort, a 200 hp Honda conversion, will simply blow the doors off of any other electric vehicle for the street. As usual, Cocconi is on the leading edge. Even his university professors at Cal Tech recognized Cocconi's prodigious talents in the late 1970s.

The son of two Italian nuclear physicists teaching at Cornell University after World War Two, Alan Cocconi was born in Ithaca, New York, in 1958. When Switzerland's world-famous Cern Nuclear Laboratory opened in 1968, Cocconi's family moved back across the Atlantic to Geneva, where he lived from the age of four until he was ready for college at 18. Cal Tech was his school of choice, and Cocconi quickly got the attention of his teachers, several of whom he went into business with soon after graduating to work on advanced power electronics and circuitry in a company called Teslaco.

With savings from this venture, Cocconi took a year off to pursue a growing interest in electronic control systems for aircraft. "I lived very simply," he recalls, laughing, "and just spent a whole year building model airplanes." These were hardly normal hobby fare. Powered by five-hp modified chainsaw engines, Cocconi's "model planes" had an eight-foot wingspan, 30-pound fiberglass and carbon-fiber structures, and were capable of two-hour flights and speeds of 100 mph. More importantly, each carried a color video camera in the nose and a special Cocconi designed transmitter and telemetry system that allowed him to monitor and electronically guide their flights up to ten miles away from the interior of his black-painted van.

Mindful of certain FAA, uh, shall we say, sensitivities, Cocconi makes no claims about the altitudes his planes could reach or specific flight plans, but suffice to say, NASA became interested enough in his work to buy a control system from him. "They wanted a drone for getting quick aerodynamic data on different airplanes," he says now, 11 and they were mainly interested in the electronics I developed." Oddly, it was Cocconi's hobby that would steer him toward his future employers, AeroVironment, the company of California aerodynamics and power efficiency expert Paul MacCready.

"I had no job," says Cocconi, "so I went to AeroVironment and gave them a presentation of my capabilities with the videotapes from the airplanes. I said, 'Look, guys, I can do this kind of stuff. I don't want to do military work, but if you ever get some commercial project that needs this kind of electronics and hardware, let me know. I can help you out. I can get the stuff working.' And then, six months later, actually, I read in the L.A. Times that AeroVironment had this contract to build the pterodactyl." Sure enough, AeroVironment called him in to do the electronics on an incredibly difficult project for a film sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and Johnson Wax.

The problem was to get a life-size model of the Jurassic pterodactyl, a huge, inherently unstable bird-like reptile with a large head at the end of its long neck and no tail, to fly while flapping its wings. Even advanced "fly-by-wire" fighter planes don't require the two-axis active controls Cocconi engineered to stabilize the big bird. A series of electronically linked vanes, airflow sensors, gyros, and servo mechanisms automatically steered the bird's head into the wind and controlled its flapping wings. "It was about as airworthy as a weather vane going backwards," laughs Cocconi, "He wanted to fly backwards and if you turned off the electronics, would tumble like a dead weight. ' But the huge pterodactyl flew well enough to star in the movie, "On The Wing," and to impress AeroVironment enough to call Cocconi in to do the electronics on their first GM project (and his first electric vehicle), the multi-million dollar Sunraycer solar car.

In an amazingly short eight-month period, Cocconi and the AeroVironment team designed and built the most advanced solar car ever made. Another stunning success. GM's Sunraycer performed flawlessly, winning Australia's 1,867-mile World Solar Challenge in 1987 by more than 600 miles. Needless to say, MacCready's team gained a lot of credibility with General Motors. So, too, had AeroVironment's young hired-gun electronics expert. It was no surprise, then, when AeroVironment made a proposal to GM about a radical high-power electric vehicle-and they accepted that his one-man consulting company, Cocconi Engineering, would be given full responsibility for the Impact powertrain.

Once again, there was ample funding and an exciting project to peak Cocconi's interest. MacCready himself, while not directly involved in day-to-day technical decisions other than aerodynamic matters, was, according to Cocconi, inspirational, subtly guiding his team with encouragement. The result was nothing less than sensational. The Impact prototype, unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January, 1990, was a state-of-the-art electric vehicle that achieved unheard of levels of performance, efficiency and range. For the First time ever, an EV was a real car. What's more, in April of the same year, General Motors president Roger Smith proudly announced that the Impact was scheduled for production, the first 300 to 700 units to appear for the 1994 model year. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

While the prototype's two-motor driveline worked very well, it was somewhat noisier than anticipated, and the team had already concluded that a simpler single-motor drive would be better (the kind being used today in the 50 "Preview " Impacts). Cocconi agreed, but felt strongly that in order to meet their schedule goals, the new powertrain should be developed in parallel, while a limited-run of the "bird-in-hand" two-motor Impacts were out in the field being tested. After all, he reasoned, the power companies and government agencies that would be the first customers wouldn't care about the noise and could be giving GM valuable feedback on this brand new technology- General Motors did not agree and instead put the Impact project on hold until the single-motor drivetrain could be designed and integrated. It was becoming obvious to Cocconi that there was no way this vehicle was going to be on the road in the near future. Frustrated by what he perceived as fundamental changes in tile direction of the program as GM became more involved, Cocconi left the Impact project, one year after it had debuted at Los Angeles. "When I left," he laughs, "I had absolutely no intention of doing electric cars. I said, 'I've had enough of this. I've contributed what I can and it's time to do something different."'

But within weeks Cocconi found himself scribbling notes about EVs. Innovative solutions to old problems were coming to him. With Alan Cocconi, that means new technology. "I had some new ideas on how to do things," he says now, "I knew I could make a car better than GM could and quicker' " That's exactly what he resolved to do.

In his own lab, where, in fact, most of his earlier work on the Sunraycer and Impact had been done, Cocconi designed and built a 100 kilowatt (134 hp) AC powertrain. Together, the motor and controller weighed only 170 pounds. Integrated into Cocconi's inverter was a clever onboard battery charger, which could be plugged into either 120 or 240 outlets. At the higher voltage, a 336-volt battery pack could be recharged in one hour. Interestingly, a less sophisticated Cocconi onboard charger for the Impact prototype had been also been vetoed by GM for subsequent models in favor of a Hughes-developed offboard system. Another feature of Cocconi's powertrain was forced-air cooling rather than the water cooling used in later Impacts.

Without the benefit of GM's beautiful purpose-built chassis, Cocconi mounted his electric drive in a 1991 Honda CRX. For a production car, it was light, well made, and reasonably aerodynamic, with a drag coefficient of 0.29. A few modifications, including a full bellypan, brought this down to an estimated 0.24. Not as low as the Impact's slick 0. 19 Cd, but workable. Cocconi took his first ride on Halloween night, 1991. It had taken almost exactly eight months to go from blank page to what was arguably the first really high-tech electric car to be driven on the street. Though it was admittedly a test vehicle, with no permanent closed battery compartment (to allow experimentation with different battery packs), Cocconi's car made history. It's unprecedented performance, efficiency, and range, heralded in official government agency studies and national magazines, made the Cocconi CRX a beacon for EV proponents-and a thumb in the eye to nay-sayers. Remarkably, the car has been in use virtually every day, either in a test program or as Cocconi's personal transportation.

One of two or three jewel-like General Motors Impacts has been flown in with its impressive display, replete with video demonstrations and a three-man crew to answer questions. One of them jokes that this car has the world record for total miles for an electric car. "Of course," he laughs, 11 most of them have been in the air."

Alan Cocconi drove his electric car here today. He's giving demonstration rides outside to anyone who asks. There are more than 20,000 miles on the odometer of his CRX.

(Journal notes, Los Angeles AltranEx show, September, 1992)

Cocconi's booth at the show consisted of a small table on which one of his suitcase-sized inverters (closed) was displayed along with a few spec-sheet handouts. Most curious of all were engineers and executives from Hughes, the GM subsidiary made responsible for the Impact's electronics after Cocconi left. One smartly-dressed young woman from Hughes gushed, "I've always wanted to meet you. When I came into the program, I used to see you in the commissary. Then, one day you weren't there. The word was that you got pissed off and quit." Slightly embarrassed, Cocconi answered, "Well, I did quit, but I wasn't pissed off." Indeed, he went to great lengths to offer assistance to GM first, before anyone else. His only condition was that he no longer wished to be exclusive. No sale. In the month following AltranEx, Cocconi sold his first complete powertrain to Honda. General Motors, through its Delco subsidiary, was next.

Incorporated as AC Propulsion in 1992, Cocconi has to date built and sold 22 of the 134 hp drivetrains, ten of them out of the U.S. Individually handbuilt, they are expensive at $35,000 a pop. With an order of 1,000, however, Cocconi says the price would fall to $10,000 apiece. Any kind of true production would allow much greater unit cost reductions. Obviously, at these prices, most of the powertrains, and all of the seven complete cars he's built, have been sold to power companies, government agencies, or car companies (some of whom, understandably, wish to remain anonymous).

One Arizona power company, the Salt River Project, bought an AC Propulsion 100 Kw powertrain to put in a Ford Probe for lndy 500 winner Tom Sneva to race at the 1992 APS Electric 500 at Phoenix International Raceway. While Sneva easily set a new "stock car" lap record and led at will, battery problems prevented a victory. Of much greater significance, though, was the fact that Cocconi drove from Los Angeles to Phoenix, about 350 miles, and back, in his CRX-as a hybrid. Towing a tiny trailer-mounted Briggs & Stratton gas engine behind the Honda, Cocconi was able to maintain 55 to 60 mph without discharging his batteries. While the small gas engine was running (only on the highway), Cocconi averaged 45 mpg. There are now some 42,000 miles on Alan Cocconi's original electric car. Recently, with more than 15,000 miles on a set of Optima sealed lead-acid batteries, it went II I miles on Southern California Edison's difficult 19.4-mile urban test loop in Pomona. It will still do zero-to-sixty in under eight seconds. These efficiency and performance marks, documented by government agencies and achieved with an only slightly-modified converted stock Honda powered by commercially available lead-acid batteries, exceed anything ever accomplished or for that matter, claimed by any other high-performance electric car, including the Impact. Now he's created an even more efficient and more powerful 200 hp powertrain, and put it in a new car (see separate story on page 52).

The words come in machine-gun bursts, followed by an inevitable smile, then another burst, a fusillade of ideas and opinions. Alan Cocconi is not afraid to share either. Who better to ask about the electric car, now and in the future?

EC: There seem to be some doubts now. Are electric vehicles actually any cleaner in terms of air-pollution than gas cars, particularly in areas where coal is burned to generate electricity?

Cocconi: Well, it is better in California than, for example, on the East Coast, where there's some sulfur emissions from the coal-fired plants. However, most of the studies that were done were using the old-generation electric cars that had very high specific energy consumption in terms of watt-hours per mile, like four to five hundred watt-hours per mile. The vehicles we build, even if you drive them quite hard, are under 200 watt-hours per mile. Typically, 150. So, you can scale all those previously calculated emissions by a factor of three or so to the higher-tech vehicles. The figures that matter for the electric car are the energy use per mile. You keep that low enough, then the emissions from powerplants are still a factor of ten lower than any comparable form of transportation.

EC: Wasn't there a recent EPA report that questioned the value of EVs on the east coast?

Cocconi: If you know the full details of the EPA report, it's quite a different story. That was an internal report in the EPA that had notes in the margins saying, "These numbers are not correct." That was what was leaked to the press. And it was quoted ignoring the notes in the margin that the EPA themselves had not approved the report, because the numbers in it were not the right ones.

EC: Do you think the EPA is backing away from EVs?

Cocconi: I think politically they're under a lot of pressure to back away. And certainly, I've been through the numbers of the powerplant emissions on the East Coast and, yes, there is a slight increase in sulfur, but the rest is so much reduced that it's still worth doing.

EC: How about the cold weather, is that a problem?

Cocconi: Not if you control the battery temperatures like we do. If you're in an urban area where roads are generally clear, then you can put a propane heater in the car and an electric car can work quite well. Now, obviously, if you live somewhere where you have to plow through snowbanks all day long, electric cars probably wouldn't be the right choice under any circumstances. I think it's important to apply electric vehicle technology where it can work properly, so it gets a good reputation. You try and apply it where it's not appropriate, you hurt everybody.

EC: You've now made two hybrid modules for your electric cars. Why the interest in hybrids?

Cocconi: I think, right now, that hybrids are the only way to make an electric car have mass appeal. Because, after all, everybody wants a car they can drive across the country in, drive just like a gas car. You can stop and fill up and go on, and use existing infrastructure.

EC: So, you share the current enthusiasm for hybrids?

Cocconi: Well, there are a lot of people misrepresenting the role of hybrids as having double the fuel economy of a gas car. That's not the reality that I see from the numbers. If you run it on fuel, you'll be no better than a good gas car, especially with the newer cars. Because, after all, you're carrying battery weight, you're carrying an electric motor, you're carrying all this extra stuff.

EC: Then what's the rationale for having a hybrid?

Cocconi: Not to use it-for most of your driving. The idea of a hybrid is that 90% of your miles, you don't burn gasoline. You go off pure electricity. You recharge and drive off electricity. And then, occasionally on long trips it doesn't really matter if you get 20 or 40 mpg. It's only 10% of your total miles. The car gets an average fuel economy of several hundred mph over its life cycle.

EC: What kind of motor would be best for hybrids?

Cocconi: The tight thing is a propane engine, because there's no evaporative emissions from a propane engine. With a gasoline hybrid, the bad thing is you park it all year long and you get all the fuel tank emissions. Just like a gas car, even if you're not running it. So the right fuel to use is propane because it's sealed. And you still find it in all your gas stations, especially in remote areas. They always have propane for campers. It's very important to use technologies that have infrastructures in place. It's a pipedream, otherwise.

EC: Where are we with batteries, now?

Cocconi: The nickel-metal-hydride has the advantage that it's room temperature and it's relatively benign to use. And that's probably the most promising one that I know of. But it's still extremely expensive and has some serious draw-backs compared to the more readily available lead acid, which is evolving rapidly. And that's inherently a quarter of the cost of nickel-metal-hydride, even in large-volume production. If you want sports car-like performance, right now, the only choice is lead acid.

EC: Is enough progress being made with lead acid to make them viable soon?

Cocconi: Right now, we have Optima lead-acid batteries in our car with a life in excess of 20,000 miles. We already have 19,000 miles on one of our test cars and they're still working perfectly. So, the cost-per-mile of the whole vehicle is around ten cents a mile to operate, in terms of fuel and regular maintenance costs. Not counting the depreciation, just fuel and maintenance.

EC: But how about range?

Cocconi: With lead acid batteries, you'll see the range evolving. Right now, in our cars, it's roughly 100 miles for 60 mph freeway driving, with no special care for how you drive. And we'll see that moving up to probably 150 or so, and not long from now.

EC: How about the sodium-sulfur batteries Ford's using in the Ecostar? They had some serious overheating problems. Can they get past that?

Cocconi: I don't know. I think they're addressing the immediate safety issue, but I think long term, the battery won't be that good. I'm not a big proponent of that technology. Even when they work properly, those cars can't stay away from a plug for more than 10 hours, or else the battery gets colder than it should be and risks being damaged. I mean, that's totally impractical for a car. You can't park it for a week and come back to it.

EC: Lithium-polymer?

Cocconi: They have yet to show a complete battery with the right figures in terms of power density, life, and energy all combined in a real battery- But the small tests look very promising. And it could be that it blossoms into a real battery. One thing, Lithium is inherently an unpleasant material to have around. And again, it's one of those technologies that'll never be as (heap as lead-acid, but maybe they can make it so that over the life of the car, it's worth it. I mean, lead acid is basically inert. It's a very friendly sort of battery, in a sense.

EC: You're really a big lead-acid proponent. Why?

Cocconi: As a manufacturer of vehicles that has to buy a battery and see it work, it's the only one I can get.

EC: And what about flywheels?

Cocconi: We see that as largely being a big red herring to the electric vehicle industry. The flywheel car, you probably noticed it last year, there was a lot of fuss about it. Nobody's ever shown up with one that works. And I think the flywheel has a long way to come before they can even equal the performance of a lead acid battery. To get the power density and energy density of the lead acid battery on a flywheel is a major technical challenge. And it will basically double the cost of the electronics and motors in the vehicles. There's a whole other drivetrain.

See, in the flywheel you've got to have a motor that drives the flywheel, takes electricity from it or puts it in, two directions, and you need another motor to drive the wheels. So, you've got two drive trains in the car, both handling the same amount of power. And the flywheel side of the electronics is even more expensive than the motor drive. So, how much do you want to pay for flywheels? I mean, lead acid batteries are $2000 a set and are in mass production. You can write a check and get them. it's hard to beat that. It's a low-maintenance item. I mean, batteries are a very simple technology.

EC: If somehow, you were made responsible for transportation in the U.S. and given all the government's resources, how would you encourage the use of electric cars?

Cocconi: All right, I have very definite ideas about that. I think you should not give subsidies to any of t h e manufacturers or R&D people. That's the wrong way to do it. Because as soon as you do that, it becomes a pork barrel type atmosphere, where everybody's trying to scramble, saying they've got the hot project.

EC: Including you?

Cocconi: Including myself. Because it's so hard to separate reality from fiction. And the government people making those decisions aren't qualified to do so. There's nobody in the government offices who can tell who has the good technology. They always choose the worst one. Every time. It's almost better to do it at random. I think the solution is to create consumer incentives for electric vehicles, which makes them very desirable to consumers-so they're willing to pay a premium to get them. And that way, start-up companies like ourselves, with real products, can actually sell them and get going.

EC: Could you give some examples?

Cocconi: For example, you could open the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, the carpool lanes, to electric vehicles. You know, the Diamond lanes. it would give people a privilege they couldn't get any other way. You could allow 10 mph higher speed limit for electric vehicles. So you could drive 65 and not worry about a ticket. Everybody drives that speed anyway, yoga I d have this kind of special privilege. You'd be better off than the guy with a Ferrari, you know? You could provide parking downtown. Also, look at all the money going to study infrastructure now. If you spent that instead putting free outlets all over. Forget all the fancy schemes for billing your credit card. Just make' electricity free initially. And put charging outlets everywhere, in enough public places, enough shopping malls, and work places so these cars are actually practical. When you go shopping, you can plug it in. The cost of the electricity is so low that it doesn't make any sense, at first, to charge for it. You'll spend more money setting up the equipment to charge for the electricity than you'll ever recover, initially.

EC: Think you could get a power company to agree with that?

Cocconi: You can refund the power company through the federal program. They can put a power meter on it. Payem back. If your goal is to encourage electric vehicles, instead of doing these other programs, put the money there. The idea is to encourage people to drive the -electric car. It's not to build them. After all, your goal is to replace miles driven by a gas car with miles driven by an electric. It's the only way you'll reduce pollution. Just selling the cars doesn't do you any good.

Subsidizing manufacturers so they can make low-performance vehicles that never get used makes no sense at all. So, if you make all the incentives on the driving side, where the privilege is to drive it to work, you have convenient parking, you have all these privileges that gas cars don't have. And people who go out and spend $80,000 on a new Mercedes or Jaguar or Porsche, they'll think, "Heck, for that same money I can go out and get a high-performance electric that's as much fun to drive, and I can do all these special things." All of a sudden, there's snob appeal. You can take advantage of this resource we have, people with money to spend on cars. There's no reason to spend $80,000 on a car, but people do it all the time. So, give them a reason to do what's good for electrics and good for the environment.

EC: In your scenario, do you think there's a place for lower-power urban EVs?

Cocconi: It all depends on the city you're in. In Los Angeles, I can't see they're very useful. Maybe in European cities, or on the East Coast here, where a short-range car that can't go on freeways is more useful. But if you do sell them, it will not subtract a significant number of miles from the gasoline cars being driven. If you want to reduce smog, what matters is how many miles of gasoline driving you reduce per year. If you sell somebody a little toy they can go back and forth to the market with, it's great, but you haven't stopped the smog problem.

EC: But it would solve noise problems and static gas tank fumes, wouldn't it?

Cocconi: Not if you still have the other car for the long trips. I mean, you've got to replace the gas car, both in a significant number of miles driven per year and the number of vehicles to reduce pollution significantly. So, introducing a golf-cart type of thing that's great for going to the local grocery store may make you some money, but I don't think it's that significant environmentally. But if enough people in a city have a second car they just use for shopping, and it's enough to do all their daily needs, then that could be a significant step.

EC: What's the biggest hangup? What's holding the EV up the most?

Cocconi: The main point to remember is that the infrastructure will not happen before EVs are introduced in quantity. You know, once they become very popular, infrastructure will start to develop. I think a lot of people are trying to draw up an infrastructure and they don't even know what's needed. We should introduce cars that don't need anything beyond the existing infrastructure. That way, they can be successful right now. Later, It'll be obvious what will be needed to enhance the utility of the vehicles. I'm not saying there ought to be only one kind of vehicle, but I think it's important to make vehicles that can use existing outlets for re-charging, that don't need fancy charging stations. And it's also important that they can do long trips without any strange sort of support. That's why we push a hybrid for long trip applications. They fit right into existing gas station infrastructures. That's a very extensive network and it's important to take advantage of it.

EC: There seems to be a recurring theme here, from your experience with the Impact program to now. Are you saying we shouldn't wait for all the answers, but do what we can now?

Cocconi: Exactly, that's the way to get started. We do whatever simple things we can that are cost-effective and that do benefit the technology and build on that. You can't do it all in one shot.' If you do, it'll be wrong anyway. Undoubtedly, you'll be redoing it the year after.

Genius or dreamer? Are the two incompatible? There are those who disagree with Alan Cocconi, as do many, for instance, in the automobile and oil industries. But even his sharpest critics cannot deny that he, in the vernacular, "walks the walk Cocconi not only designed and built an extremely advanced electric car, but has driven it virtually every day for the last three years. In 42,000 miles, he has never been stranded. His car has never been towed or trailered-or flown or trucked to any shows.

We used to worry about Alan Cocconi. Not any more. I mean, what's he done with his stuff?

Well, without any kind of subsidy, he's built and sold 22 powertrains, several to car companies.

He has? Twenty-two? Hmmn, I didn't know that.

And he's built a new 200 horsepower motor and controller and put it in a 4-seater that he's driving around.

Really? Gee, two-hundred horsepower? All right!

(journal notes, phone conversation with Hughes electric vehicle engineer, 9/9/94)