The electric car is in deep trouble. Why is that? The New York Times just pulled the plug.
Yes, the New York Times. I know, until a few weeks ago, there was hardly an EV the Times did not like.The Times even drove a pre-not-production BYD F3DM plug-in hybrid, and liked it. Never mind the “wobbly storage compartment between the front seats, subpar floor mats, squishy handling.” If it had a plug and four wheels, an adoring review in the NYT was pretty much guaranteed. No more.
Now, suddenly, the lady in grey disses EVs with the vitriolic verve of a thin-lipped, lockjawed Upper East Side co-op board chairwoman who denies a gangsta rapper’s application to buy the penthouse.
“The state of the electric car is dismal, the victim of hyped expectations, technological flops, high costs and a hostile political climate. General Motors has temporarily suspended production of the plug-in electric Chevy Volt because of low sales. Nissan’s all-electric Leaf is struggling in the market. A number of start-up electric vehicle and battery companies have folded.”
Yes, that’s the New York Times writing. And it’s not a guest piece by Op-Ed Niedermeyer. The man who asks whether this is “the beginning of the end of the latest experiment in the electric car, whose checkered history goes back to the dawn of the automobile age” is none less than John M. Broder, the NYT’s chief drummer of the green beat. Broder having second thoughts about the viability of EVs is as momentous as Obama running a budget surplus.
After garroting, drawing, and quartering an already pretty lifeless EV, Broder blames the death of the electric car on the same people that had conspired against the miracle carburetor and Stanley Meyer’s water fuel cell: Big nasty oil. Being a good journalist, Broder does not blame himself. He outsources blame to Chris Paine, of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” fame:
But one possible culprit still stands to gain if the electric car is killed yet again, Mr. Paine suggested.
“Not too hard to guess,” he said. “With Americans paying $250 a month to fill up on gasoline when electricity can do the job in a Volt for $50 a month, why are we being told electric cars are failures? Who could possibly be behind this?”
Sorry, discussions were blocked due to system malfunction. Fire away.
50 dollars a month? Did NYT conveniently forget about the unique amortization on-costs associated with an expensive Volt?
The average guy doesn’t do fully-accounted costs associated with buying oil from unsavory types, and probably doest think in terms of opportunity costs either, but he sure knows that other kinds of cars are cheaper to buy and operate…
Seems like they want to really indict Big Oil, but instead of using all the good arguments available to them, they resort to using a non-realistic non representative non-starter non-fully-accounted operating cost argument… Dumb…
Maybe the coal, nuclear, hydro, and natural gas industry could use their sway to promote electric cars. Seems like a no brainer to me since they would surely profit from people buying more energy from them. At night time when demand is generally low.
Actually it’s the wind industry which will benefit most from electric cars on line.
At the moment there’s not much profit to be made in late time electricity generation and the wind often blows more at night. Bringing a lot of EVs on line will create a new market for off-peak wind, create profits and attract more investment.
Additionally EVs are great for load shifting. The average EV will need power 1.5 hours per night. That means that those EVs that get driven 30 miles or so can drop off (via a smart metering system) when the wind is down and resume charging when supply spikes.
EVs on the grid will reduce the amount of electricity storage we will need to build as we modernize our grid.
It’s time to re-elect Da Boss, and the NYT — the Left’s chief signal-giver — is sending code to the rest of the team to get on board with the theme that the Administration’s brave explorations into alternative energy sources and uses are falling apart only because they these visionary initiatives are opposed by foul, knuckle-dragging, short-sighted reactionaries.
For the Chicago Gang, it’s better strategy to misdirect attention than to prepare to answer questions about $billions slushed through energy ventures run by big campaign doners, the shut-down Volt production line, crawling into bed with GE (a.k.a. Government Electric), or why all those Green Jobs haven’t shown up to rescue the floundering economy (suggesting that the “stimulus” cash has simply vanished into pre-selected pockets, just like it was supposed to). Yup, it’s all someone else’s fault.
I hate to break this to you, but GE was “Government Electric” decades before Obama was elected.
Electric cars are like little kids right now and everybody wants to criticize what clearly needs some time to grow up. Everybody just calm down gasoline trucks/cars/suvs are still readily available and in the meantime California will happily harbor the Leaf and Volt as they learn and grow.
“Electric cars are like little kids right now”
This is not true. the battery powered electric vehicle (BEV) was a major part of the automobile market a century ago. My great grandmother owned a Baker Electric back then. The BEV became less popular after WW I.
The new ones are not that different:
2012 Mitsubishi i / 1917 Detroit Electric – There and Back Again
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-capsule/2012-mitsubishi-i-1917-detroit-electric-there-and-back-again/
How much research and development have gone into electric cars? How much into gasoline-powered cars? You can’t really compare the two unless they’ve had equal time and money put into them. Just because something was popular 100 years ago, doesn’t mean that it has been undergoing continuous development.
This site is becoming way too political.
Nothing is more political than the purchase decision of a vehicle. No other industry supports the spin offs in technology, systems design, resultant patents and intellectual property. Then there is the employment from many other types of industries that support the auto industry. How about national prestige?
There is not one member of the G20 that is not clawing and fighting for its share of the auto pie. China, Brazil and India understand very well that this goes beyond letting local states fight over subsidizing a foreign transplant slapping a few vehicles together on their soil: they are now demanding transfers of technology.
You have a choice: a Sonata or a Cruze. One is made in Michigan, most of its parts come from within a few hours drive of Michigan, it was partially designed in Michigan, the profits will go to New York. This from a company that (for better or worse) has a 103 year history of building the nation. Does this not sound like a better deal than a few factory jobs in Alabama (from a plant that the taxpayers of Alabama forked over millions to help build), using some parts that are American sourced, but the profits and intellectual property are all on the other side of the Pacific. But I guess if you want to help pay for their kids to go to university to learn how to take away your kid’s jobs, then – no, automobile forums should not be political.
“You have a choice: a Sonata or a Cruze… but the profits and intellectual property are all on the other side of the Pacific.”
I’m assuming by intellectual property you mean the engineering and design. Hyundai does have engineering facilities in Michigan. In fact, they have about 4 1/2 pages worth of job listings if you’re interested:
http://hatci.submit4jobs.com/index.cfm?cid=85350
“the profits will go to New York.”
It’s stunning how little that folks in your camp know about finance.
“Profits” are a tiny part of automaking. Most of the revenue pays for expenses. Most of those expenses tend to be in close proximity to whereever the plants are located, as suppliers are usually nearby and, of course, that’s where the workforce is. In other words, most of the benefit flows to where the plants and the suppliers are located.
As for the tiny piece that’s left that is “profit”, most of that goes to purchasing assets. That means plant and equipment.
If you want to follow the profits, then follow where the factories are being built and expanded. If GM is sending its profits to build Chinese plants, while Hyundai is building them in Alabama, then take a guess which one is doing more for the North American economy. (Hint: It isn’t the one that you think it is.)
@mcs: Lots of car companies have engineering offices here, in Michigan. If nothing else to facilitate localization. Also, Michigan is still the center of the automotive world in the US. If you want to do business in the US, you will want some sort of presence in or around Detroit.
@PCH: From your post, it seems there would be no profit in assembling cars here. Of course, folks forget about the sweetheart deals that transplants get to establish an assembly plant here.
When Mercedes was hunting for a place to build the ML series, the southern states almost started a war to get MB to locate in their states. There were some (more) hard feelings between Georgia and Alabama when Alabama announced the prize. Other states have followed suit, and now even domestic car companies are getting better deals than they once were.
Georgia got their Kia plant only after losing the GM and Ford plants in Atlanta. A swap of two for one. I hope it was worth it.
Building them where you sell them IS the right strategy when costs are prohibitive to import cars into an area. Like from the US to China. But it doesn’t seem to be that way with Korea.
“From your post, it seems there would be no profit in assembling cars here.”
I didn’t say that.
What I said is a basic fact — most of the money that an automaker collects from revenue goes back out the door in the form of expenses. Most of those expenses are spent on parts and labor in the localities where the cars are built.
A Honda Accord built in the US is good for the US. A Toyota Camry built in the US is good for the US.
A Ford Fusion built in Hermosillo does the most good for Mexico. A GM car built in China will do the most good for China. When over 90 cents of every dollar paid for a car is going toward expenses, and when most of the expenses are parts and labor, then that’s naturally what is going to happen.
I agree, I think it needs to get back to its theological roots!
Would the truth also include the fact that there’s a waiting list for the Nissan Leaf? That Nissan cut off new additions to the list because they had more names than they could satisfy in a year?
How about the fact that Leafs are selling better during their first 14 months than did the Prius?
Or how about shutting down vehicle assembly lines is common procedure?
Then there’s the fact that Volt sales slowdown came when the media launched very loud cry over Volt battery fire, burying the facts in small print. Is that part of the truth arsenal?
The New York Times published a trash piece. They do that from time to time.
I’d hope that a site that calls itself “The Truth About Cars” would have done a much better job pointing out what a POS Broder produced.
How many people will buy Leafs this year, and how many additional people would have bought them if Nissan hadn’t taken their names off the list? And what percentage of the automotive population is that?
It would be great if batteries were cheap enough, had enough range, and charged quickly enough to make a significant percentage of the population willing to buy them–without huge subsidies of $7,500 or $10,000.
No more people would have purchased Leafs if Nissan hadn’t taken their names off the list. Nissan is on tract to sell as many as they are able to produce. The list was cut off because there was no way Nissan could produce that many units.
Production will increase, probably late this year, when the new Nissan plant comes on line in Smyrna, Tennessee. It is designed to produce 150,000 Leafs per year. I believe Nissan plans to have the ability to produce 500,000 Leafs per year worldwide within the next year.
That number will, obviously, be a small percentage of all vehicle sales. But everything starts small before it becomes large.
Obviously the price of EVs is too high. Prices must come down before people will flock to them. However, even at $35,200 (no subsidies) you save enough in gas over a ten year period that it costs about the same to drive a full priced Leaf as a $20,000 30MPG gasmobile burninng $4/gallon gas. A Leaf is a few thousand dollars cheaper over 12 years. (Again, that is without any subsidies.)
The MSRP for the 2013 Leaf should be lower than the 2012. Battery prices have apparently fallen from $600 to $400 in the time between now and back when purchase contracts were signed for 2012 delivery.
Battery prices will come down over the next few years. That’s almost guaranteed. It’s a matter of getting battery factories operating smoothly, supply chains established, and new designs into production. There are no super-expensive materials in EV batteries. (Consider the materials in a modern internal combustion engine. Just the price of the platinum in a catalytic converter is worth noting.)
The Leaf is, I think, a great car for ~25% of drivers. Those households that have more than one car and one of those cars almost never drives over 60 miles per day. Let the person who drive the furthest each day (within the Leaf range) drive the Leaf and save buckets of money on fuel. Take the gasmobile on the Thanksgiving trip to Granny’s.
Give the rest of us an EV that costs about the same as a similar model gasmobile and has a 175 mile range and most of us will switch to electric. Saving $100 to $200 or more each month will be too attractive.
Give us 175 miles and <20 minute 95% rapid (Level 3) charge points along our travel routes and we can drive all day with two short stops. (175 + 166 + 166 = 507 miles. Gotta stop to eat and pee anyway.)
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The Toshiba SCiB lithium-ion batteries used in the Honda Fit EV will take a 95% charge in 18 minutes.
We're installing Level 2 and Level 3 chargers from Canada to Mexico along Interstate 5 right now. The first section in Southern Oregon is already up and running. The Seattle to Canada section is next.
Let me throw some more stuff into this discussion…
Henry Ford introduced the Model T in 1908. The Model T Runabout sold for $825. By 1926 the price had fallen to $260. 32% of the original price.
Between the 1908 and 1926 year models Ford added opening doors for the driver, electric starters replacing the crank, electric lights, oil pumps, water pumps, fuel pumps, non-primitive transmission, and a vacuum powered windshield wiper.
The early Model Ts could not drive up steep hills. Lacking a fuel pump they relied on gravity feed and had to back up hills in order to keep the gas tank higher than the engine.
EVs will also get better. And cheaper.
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BTW, the first computer hard drive I purchased (30 megs for >$8,000 in 2012 dollars) figures out at $266,667 per gig. You can now buy a gig of HD for under a dime.
EVs won’t drop anything like that much, the car part is already a mature technology. But battery prices will come down.
Given the fact that the cost of lithium ion cells has leveled off for the last several years, I’m not sure why people think battery prices will drop. All we’ll see – maybe – is savings in manufacturing costs, but with low volumes on these custom packs, economies of scale will be hard to realize.
Lithium ion batteries were $1,200/kW in 2008.
This year they are $400/kW.
Strange sort of leveling….
NYT blames failure of electric cars on the big oil establishment? I’m shocked, shocked!
“NYT blames failure of electric cars on the big oil establishment?”
No, it doesn’t. One individual interviewed for the piece did, but that was just one of several people who were quoted in the article.
It’s a far more balanced article than this blog post would suggest. Read it for yourself, and judge it on that basis: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/sunday-review/the-electric-car-unplugged.html
I’m confused.
I thought nobody read newspapers anymore.
The New York Times is like the Toronto Star – only with more money.
I think GM & the power companies should colaborate with a campaign that says “NO RESIDENTIAL ELECTRIC BILLS FOR A YEAR” with the purchase of a Volt.
It could stimulate sales and get more people hooked on charging. That would benefit the power company long term. Heck the power company should offer that on any plug-in.
BTW: My team designed and manufactures that charging connector for BYD (along with some other bits) that you see in the video.
Problem is, I really can’t argue much with the quote pulled from tne NYT. Expectations were hyped, the Fisker battery was bricked, many vocal politcos are openly hostile, and GM did suspend production of the Volt for 5 weeks.
The quote, however, did get it wrong about the Leaf.
Given the massive engineering challenges involved in building a cost-effective EV (if such a solution space even exists at present), does anyone really think Big Oil is either a) worried about EVs or b) motivated to somehow “kill” EVs? Or that the EV industry isn’t doing a fine job shooting its own foot off? And how exactly would a Shell or Exxon “kill” EVs? And even if they could, why would they risk the massive negative publicity (if their dastardly conspiracy were uncovered) for the sake of killing off a powertrain that even the most upbeat forecasters expect to have no more than 5% of the market in a decade or two or so? Big Oil going after EVs seems to me along the lines of the NFL trying to bust up touch football games down at the Junior High School. I must not be paranoid enough. Wait… someone’s at the doo–
The same reason that the NRA fights the smallest law that could reduce the ability of anyone to have access to firepower that would make police departments jealous. It’s a “foot in the door”.
The oil companies don’t want electric vehicles (yet).
And the price of nat gas is too low to entice oil companies to look at that revenue stream – right now, it’s about drilling as many holes as possible while the laws are still lax.
ExxonMobil has a large chunk of the natural gas reserves in the US.
More and more electricity is produced by the combustion of natural gas in this country.
ExxonMobil is not worried about electric cars.
+1. So much for another conspiracy theory.
Exxon also owns patents to & makes the materials in EVs.
Other oil & gas companies are heavily invested in all forms of energy. (Shell & BP used to be the largest producers of solar panels in the world.)
They are successful companies not because they are evil, but because they are smarter than the average reporter. They will be more than ok regardless of the transportation policies we make.
More to the point, they’ll continue to sell however much oil they can produce at whatever price they wish to charge. We’ll probably never see the absolute end of oil, just the end of cheap oil.
@protomech:
Oil companies can’t just charge any price they wish. They charge the price the market will bear, just as with any product.
Pricing collusion among the oil companies has been investigated repeatedly, with no evidence found for it.
Numerous small oil companies exist who could put the lie to collusionary activity by offering a cheaper product, but they don’t because they can’t.
Face it: Gasoline costs US $4/gallon because you pay it. If you don’t like the salaries of your favorite athletes, then don’t buy season tickets.
Bertel: You did not link the article you were writting about. I think it is this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/sunday-review/the-electric-car-unplugged.html
I hope that the Volt, Leaf and other Electric cars, along with the Hybrids, remain available to any and all who want to buy them (and can afford to buy them).
For me, they hold no appeal. For me, gasoline is the way to go. But for those who fancy Electric cars to be the answer to questions never asked, I say “go for it”!
Even the Lefties in our society are beginning to see that Electric cars are not as much in demand as they had hoped they would be. But that is what happens whenever you try to force any ideology on the masses.
You can fool some of the people all of the time. You can even fool all of the people some of the time. But you can never fool all of the people all of the time.
And that is what Obama and the ‘crats tried to do with their policies promoting EVs and green tech along with renewable sources of energy. It would have been better to let the technology evolve on its own in due time rather than try the force-majeur approach.
Losing the Gray Lady’s endorsement is a blow, make no mistake about that.
We just spent a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives protecting Saudi Arabia from its neighbors and otherwise trying to control the Middle East (mostly for the benefit of keeping oil available for Europe, China, and India) and Highdesertcat is mad that we are spending a few million checking to see if there might be alternatives for our energy requirements.
The US used whale oil for 100 years, then we switched to petroleum for 100 years, and now we are thinking about what might be next.
Change happens, learn to live with it. Stop being afraid.
10-4
Lynn E., there are not going to be any alternatives to our energy requirements until we, as a planet, run out of oil. And that won’t happen during my lifetime or yours. Not for several hundred years yet. Just ask the Canadians about their shale fields or the folks in ND, SD, NM, OK, TX and WY.
If change is going to happen it will be because necessity is the mother of invention. What we do need is more refineries and more nuclear plants.
The sun doesn’t shine 24/7 and the wind doesn’t always blow. And the problem is matching supply and demand with transmission lines. The US electric grid sucks! NIMBY syndrome.
Trying these idealistic approaches like EVs should indeed be done, but not at public expense, nor with taxpayer-funded credits.
If there was any profit in these green-weenie idealistic ideas, the capitalists would have already thought about it. Closest thing is the Prius. The Volt, not so much. The Leaf, even less.
I would like to see these alternative modes of transportation, EVs and Hybrids, remain available to anyone who wants to buy one, just not funded with public money.
Electric golf carts are available to anyone who wants to buy one, ditto with EVs like the Leaf, or Hybrids like the Prius and Volt.
If change were to happen it would have happened a long time ago. Change may happen at some distant future time but EVs will not be the answer.
I suspect that Hydrogen generation/regeneration will hold the most promise, primarily because it is the truest form of renewable energy with the end product being water.
I’ve always been an early adopter. I relish change, if it is for the better. EVs are not for the better because the grid can’t support increased demand.
That’s why I have two 120-amp Ingersol-Rand gasoline-powered AC generators behind my house to offset the power failures and brown-outs we have to endure. Yes, I run them every weekend. They suck a lot of gas going full bore.
Along with many of my neighbors, I refuse to be a victim of power failures, if I can help it. Once I run out of stored gasoline, the point is moot. I’ll have to fall back to my diesel Kubota generator in my RV.
My brother owns a Leaf but he and his wife are forced to drive their Camry and their F150 a lot more than the Leaf. All sorts of reasons for that including range anxiety.
That’s why EVs, the Volt among them, are a failure, and that’s why even the Libs at the NYT are backing off endorsing this fanciful flight to change our transportation infrastructure.
As long as I have my forms of transportation, I’m happy. My guess is that most people feel the way I do and that’s why EV’s don’t sell well. They’re not practical. It’s doubtful that they ever will be.
“there are not going to be any alternatives to our energy requirements until we, as a planet, run out of oil.”
Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Let me share an opinion of someone who sees a different path ahead for us…
“(Dr. Alexander MacDonald, Director of the Earth System Research Lab at the) U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was in Vancouver on Friday for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual convention and mentioned in a talk there that clean, renewable energy (not even including hydroelectric) could cheaply supply 48 states of the continental U.S. with 70% of its electricity demand by 2030. The other 30% would be half from fossil fuels and half from nuclear and hydro.
“NOAA embarked on the renewables project three years ago, collating 16 billion pieces of weather data derived from satellite observations and airplane observations and weather station reports,” Scott Simpson of the Vancouver Sun writes.
“Then it designed a program to filter the information to remove unlikely venues for wind or solar power arrays – such as national parks and urban areas – and came up with a map showing robust wind resources in the middle of the continent and decent ones in the northeast Atlantic states, as well as strong solar production areas in the desert southwest.”
But here’s where the NOAA researchers stepped beyond the good to the great, research-wise: they balanced potential power production and electricity demand to determine, how, where, when, and to what extent clean energy could produce the electricity we need. The end result — 70% of electricity demand….”
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/20/clean-energy- could-supply-u-s-with-70-of-electricity-by-2030-no aa-director-says/
“Cheaply” and based on 16 billion pieces of data.
Now, I’m not sure why we should continue to burn oil and coal if we have cheaper alternatives. Not at all sure why we should ship a boatload of cash off to foreign countries every day when we could make all the energy we need to run our cars right here the US, creating a lot of good American jobs and profits for American companies.
And, yes, EVs are not quite to the point where they work for everyone. But to assume that they will not improve requires an incredible leap of imagination.
What technology now in your life has not improved over time?
Bob Wallace, interesting post! Good info, too.
Those alternatives may indeed develop over time and in coming decades but not any time soon since oil, coal, and natgas are plentiful and cheap.
Just because our national policy is to artificially jack up the price of oil by not developing our own natural resources on public lands, doesn’t mean that privately owned lands can’t go gangbusters. And I hope that the privateers step up production to the max, all over the nation.
Steam the shale. Frack the gas. Mine the coal. It creates jobs and furnishes us fuel for industry and expansion.
We’ve already seen that America is now a net-exporter of oil-based products in spite of the fact that much of that oil is imported from outside the US, because of national economic policy.
There are currently no cheaper alternatives to burning oil, coal and natgas. If there were, you can bet the farm that the energy companies would have already staked their claim to it.
Solar, wind, wave, bio, etc are all fanciful visions for the future but they have no practical application in the real world. You cannot substitute these expensive alternatives for much cheaper oil, coal and natgas and expect growth.
For electricity-generation, nuclear would be my first choice, but others may object. So there is no happy medium to the dilemma. We will continue to slog on with what is most plentiful and cheapest – oil, coal and natgas.
Oil is not plentiful, at least not at a cheap price. We burned the cheap, easy to extract/refine oil years ago. We’re now going into very deep water and into remote locations to find oil. At some point there are no more remote locations left.
We’re drilling US lands as fast as we can. The US just does not have significant amounts of oil left. Drill faster and we run out faster, leaving ourselves even more at risk of international supply disruption.
We’re refining “sludge” from wells off the South America coast and cooking tar sands in Canada to get gasoline and diesel. We’re using almost as much energy to refine those sources as what we get back in usable fuel.
The North Sea fields are running dry. Prudhoe Bay is running dry, they are down to 1/3rd of their peak flow.
Coal, good clean coal, is running out. We’re burning more soft brown (worldwide) and the price of coal is increasing.
Natural gas is temporarily cheap. We had a drilling bubble a few years back and punched a bunch of holes in the ground. That created a supply bubble, more supply than demand, and the price fell. Right now the wholesale price of natural gas is not high enough to make drilling a new well profitable.
The futures market anticipates a doubling in the price of natural gas over the next few years.
How long a supply of natural gas do we have? That’s a hard one. Low end estimates (known reserves and probable reserves) are around 20 years. High end estimates (lots of speculation included) are around 100 years. Both of those estimates are based on 2010 ‘rate of burn’. If we keep on building more NG power plants, burn some in our vehicles, and export, as we are getting ready to do, we could cut the 20 – 100 to ? -?. Double our burn rate and it’s 10 – 50.
Will there be oil and coal available in 200 years? Probably so.
But the reason will be because it will be so expensive to extract it that we’ll just abandon it. You can’t afford to use 1.01 units of energy to extract 1.00 units of fossil fuel energy without going bankrupt.
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Now, cheaper than oil/coal/natural gas? Sure wind is cheaper than coal and oil.
(Remember, the cost of burning coal and oil is not only what we pay at the meter/pump but what we also pay in tax dollars and health insurance premiums because of the side effects of burning fossil fuels.)
Solar, top of large buildings in the sunbelt, is cheaper than new coal. Same for geothermal. And we’re getting close to affordable storage to make wind and solar 24/365.
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Let’s look more closely at the “cheapness” of oil.
A 0.35kWh/mile EV like the Leaf running on $0.08/kWh electricity costs $0.03/mile.
A 50MPG gasmobile running on $4/gallon gas costs $0.08/mile.
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Yes, EV prices are still too high. They almost certainly will come down.
Yes, EV ranges are too short for a lot of drivers. Ranges will almost certainly increase.
EV < half the cost per mile than a very efficient gasmobile.
“Steam the shale. Frack the gas. Mine the coal. It creates jobs and furnishes us fuel for industry and expansion.”
Install the solar. Build the wind farms. Convert existing dams to hydro production and pump-up storage. Build large scale battery storage. Drill geothermal wells. Install tidal turbines. Grow biofuel crops in ways that don’t impact food supplies.
It creates jobs and furnishes us fuel for industry and expansion.
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“Solar, wind, wave, bio, etc are all fanciful visions for the future but they have no practical application in the real world. You cannot substitute these expensive alternatives for much cheaper oil, coal and natgas and expect growth.”
But solar, wind, geothermal and tidal are viable technologies which are in use around the world today. For example, wind provided 3% of all US electricity last year. Other countries are producing much larger percentages of their grid supply with wind.
(Don’t forget, at one time coal provided 0% of our electricity. It grew over time. Other technologies also start low and grow.)
Overall renewables are less expensive than new coal generation and using oil for transportation. Natural gas is temporarily cheap as I pointed out in an earlier comment. NG may stay somewhat cheap, but not likely as cheap as it is right now.
New nuclear and new coal are the most expensive ways to make electricity.
I don’t think we’ll slog along. We’re closing over 100 ‘dirty’ coal plants in the next few years and building almost no new ones. Another 2-3 dozen coal plants are likely to close because they are being forced off the grid by cheaper wind.
I’m guessing – guessing – that we’ll see much cheaper and longer range EV batteries within the next five years. (Basing my guess on a few facts.) When/if that happens then a lot of our new car sales will flip to electric. EVs are just too cheap per mile for gasmobiles to compete. Oil powered vehicles will become a niche – some farm equipment, airplanes, people living way, way rural….
Thanks Bob Wallace and Lynn E. You’ve defended EVs better than I could, although I do appreciate highdesertcat’s thoughtful responses.
I just wanted to add EV stimulus and alternative energy research by the government is also a matter of national security. The less we rely on foreign oil, the more secure we’ll be. Right now, it feels like oil flows through our veins and the middle east is our carotid artery.
It looks like the big Windmill/Solar generation to EV plan isn’t working out quite as expected. The current administration bet the ranch on it and the media have tried oh so hard. They even had a major car company in their back pocket and the Treasury department to exploit.
I think the “hyped expectations” is the most to blame for slow sales. The thing is, people want a car that they can pack up the family in, go about 300-400 miles, fill up in about 10 minutes, and continue for another 300-400 miles, and so on and so forth. The reason electric cars haven’t caught on is because they aren’t mainstream enough. The people who want to buy an electric car are people who either care about the environment or want to save on gas. People aren’t buying electric cars for the sake of having a car. Until the technology is able to provide the consumers’ expectations with respect to range, refueling time, and performance, electric cars will be the exception, not the rule.
Let’s say we have an electric car like the Leaf. For it to have a 300-mile range, the battery will have to be about 4 times the capacity (let’s assume that sometime in the future, a fourfold increase in energy density allows us to quadruple the battery size without significant weight penalty). Let’s say a family packs up and goes on vacation, and they stop at the end of their range at a charging station. Now, for Dad to be able to “fill up” in about 10 minutes, that battery will have to have a current flowing to it of something on the order of 1600 amps, which is an accident waiting to happen.
I think you’re partially correct.
Current EVs are not cars for everyone. Something like the Leaf is a great option for multi-car families or someone who rarely takes a long trip in their personal vehicle. They are really good options for someone who can live with the limited range and care about the environment or want to save on gas.
No stopping at the gas station. No oil changes and all that other ICE maintenance stuff. Great performance and ride.
We don’t need 300 mile range EVs. We can do quite well with ~175 mile range and 95%, <20 minute rapid (Level 3) chargers.
(The Toshiba SCiB lithium-ion battery used in the Honda Fit EV can be 95% recharged in 18 minutes with no appreciable damage to the battery.)
Drive 175 miles, charge, drive 166 miles, charge, drive 166 and you've done a 500 mile drive with only one more stop that you would have had to make with a 300-400 mile range gasmobile.
There are already over 1,000 Level 3 chargers installed around the world. The first section of the electric highway from Canada to Mexico along Interstate 5 was just completed. The Seattle to Canada section is being built and money was just purposed to build the California section (including I5 to the eastern boarders).
Charging accidents are far less likely than accidents at the gas pump. Power will not turn on until the connections are firmly in place and EVs can not be driven while plugged in (there's a engine disconnect while plugged).
Driving off with the filler hose in your gas tank, fires from smoking while filling – that sort of stuff happens with gasoline.
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BTW, Level 3 chargers are higher voltage which means lower amperage for the same number of watts. Level 3 starts at 480vac. Level 1 is normal North American household 120vac. Level 2 is 240vac, like electric clothes dryers and ranges.
There are reasons american homes don’t get more than 240V.
The higher the voltage the higher the potential for arc flash, and harder to “let go” if you are being shocked. Quick charging will either require high amperage with more expensive charging stations or higher voltage with higher risk of death from Arc flash or electrocution.
The equipment may have safegaurds but people can damage equipment or bypass safegaurds.
Often I read “but gas burns too”. I would be much more afraid of an electrical arc than a gas fire.
No one is talking about wiring homes anywhere with greater that 240vac. 480vac (and higher voltage) chargers are “along the highway” chargers where people have a need to take on a lot of charge in the least possible amount of time.
The 6.6kW ‘on board’ Nissan Leaf charger (plug it in like a clothes dryer) should mean a about 5 hours for a 100 mile charge. Hard to imagine that there are many people who need to charge faster if they are charging where they sleep.
If you do need quicker you can get a 240vac charger that has a 20kW output. A couple of hours and you’ve got your 100 mile charge.
Additionally, there is no arc flash if you’re plugging in with the system disabled. No one would be grabbing a live wire and plugging directly to their batteries. Chargers do not provide power until the connection is complete.
I can’t get into the ” people can damage equipment or bypass safegaurds” stuff with you. I’ve seen people filling their gas tanks while smoking. I’ve seen gas cans with rags used for missing caps.
As for being afraid of electric arc vs. gas fire, I’ve seen a gas station burn down and two car fires (I was trapped inside my vehicle as one started). I’ve also seen a lot of electric arcs no more than an inch from my fingers. Give me the arcs, any day….
“I think the “hyped expectations” is the most to blame for slow sales.”
The problem with that explanation is that Leaf sales are not slow. Nissan had to cut off their waiting list because it would take them a year to fulfill the number of customers they have waiting for on of their EVs.
Volt sales were doing pretty good until the media got going with the bogus “EV battery fire” story.
Yes, there was a smoldering fire in a Volt battery three weeks after it had been severely damaged in a test crash. The fire would not have happened had procedures been followed and the battery charge drained.
But the facts were buried and “ELECTRIC CAR BATTERY BURSTS INTO FLAMES FOLLOWING WRECK” became the story that was jammed into people’s heads.
BTW, GM has redesigned their battery cooling system so that if someone fails to drain the battery following another wreck it will not short out later when the cooling system dries out – which is what happened in the previous incident.
Did you see that news getting any play in the media?
Yes, it is much safer to have Dad pump 20 to 30 gallons of flammable liquid into a holding tank that sits inches below his kids feet.
I think that they can engineer charging stations to be at least as safe as a current gas station. Plus, I think that the last application that anyone is thinking for an electric vehicle is for a road trip with the family-which accounts for maybe, what, 5% of trips?
There are already fully automated gas pumps which can remove your gas cap, pump your gas and replace the cap/shut the door.
http://singularityhub.com/2009/09/16/dutch-gas-station-has-robot-pumping-gasoline-video/
Think how simple it would be to make robotic EV chargers.
Just locate the inlet on the front of the vehicle. Pull into a designated parking spot. The access door on your EV opens and your EV sends a signal to the charger (along with the amount of charge you want and your billing info).
An arm extends and plugs into your EV port. The arm just needs limited right/left/up/down/in/out movement abilities and a bit of feature recognition so that it “sees” your plug.
Charge happens. Arm retracts.
About 5 minutes before finishing (or whatever notice you want) you get a message on your cell phone that it’s about done. All you’ve done is park, select the amount of charge, and taken care of other business.
The dog really appreciates getting to take a few minutes walk….
“About 5 minutes before finishing (or whatever notice you want) you get a message on your cell phone that it’s about done. All you’ve done is park, select the amount of charge, and taken care of other business.”
That would be nice. We’d have a good 10-12 hours to go run a few errands, visit some friends, have a couple of meals, take a class at the local college and see a double feature at the movies, so that the car gets enough juice to travel for an hour and a half.
Sure we don’t “need” 300 mile range, but the thing is people expect at least that much in a car. Yes, some households have two cars, but some don’t, and those that don’t need something more versatile. And about the charging stations: Yes you’re right, and I suppose I should have thought about the fact that gas can be more dangerous. Touche’. However, the real problem is the lack of quick-charging infrastructure. The point is, electric cars will never be mainstream until one can replace a gas-powered car without any changes in the driving habits or lifestyle of the owner.
You and I are not that far apart, but I disagree about the ‘market switch’ point.
I was very involved in the film -> digital transition. The larger market gave up film long before digital equaled film in its ability to make large prints at an affordable price. People switched because the digital option gave ‘good enough’ quality with a significant price and convenience advantage.
Right now EVs are roughly the same price as ICEVs over ten years even without taking advantage of subsides. Soon we should see EV prices fairly close to the price of ICEVs even without subsidies.
EVs let you plug in when you get home. No more dealing with gas stations. With inductive charging all you have to do is to park over the charger, nothing more.
With EVs you don’t need to take your car in for oil/filter changes and brakes will last 2x, 3x longer. Another convenience.
Once people understand that range anxiety is an unrealistic fear they will look more closely at the convenience of an EV. When there’s no big purchase price penalty I think the market will quickly switch.
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For those who need more range from time to time there are plug in hybrids. Right now the Chevy Volt and soon the Toyota Prius PHEV. Other manufacturers are bringing PHEVs to market.
If you want range along with style there’s the 300 mile range Tesla Model S.
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There’s a new battery technology that has proved itself in independent lab testing which promises 3x the range/capacity for the same battery weight.
There are other technologies in the pipes but this looks like it could be the first to make it to market….
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/envia-claims-breakthrough-in-lithium-ion-battery-cost-and-energy-density/
This is a reply to PCH101 above…
The Nissan Leaf can be 80% recharged in 30 minutes from a Level 3 fast charger.
The Honda Fit can be 95% recharged in 20 minutes from a Level 3 fast charger.
Make sure you watch only the cartoon….
I think I failed to make my point to Highdesertcat.
Our government is spending a few million dollars on several types of alternative energy sources compared to the TRILLION dollars we spent on trying to protect, move, and clean up oil supplies.
This research will improve the batteries we might use in EVs but also in our computers and in back up systems you might like to have for protection from your brownouts.
I agree that the world may have enough oil to last for a long time but does that mean we should just burn it up in 18% efficient internal combustion engines? We almost wiped out whales before we switched to petroleum for lubrication. Now we also need oil for plastics. Should we suck up every last barrel of petrol and just burn most of it before we look for alternatives?
The research money we are now spending on batteries, natural gas, solar, wind, wave, hydrogen, propane, etc could give us a nice quiet and cleaner world.
The encouragement money we now offer early EV adopters is tiny compared to what we spent on wars, pipelines, and clean ups. Petroleum burners got their huge subsidies now lets encourage some new ideas.
Lynn E., your point was made and understood, but your contention that government should fund exploration into future sources of energy is detached from reality.
Blame our national economic policy for the stunting of oil exploration on public lands in America. Oil exploration continues on a wide scale all over the globe, except in America.
That’s why we lost six rigs out of the Gulf. They’re now in different places all over the globe, still drilling for oil and making money.
Who needs America when there are tons of unexplored areas all over the globe? There’s money to be made there. Not here. America will pay to import it, instead. Makes sense only to the environmentalists and green-weenies. Not so much to the majority of Americans. To wit, the sales of the Volt and the Leaf. Epic fail!
There’s no money to be made in alternate energy sources. If there is a market for alternate sources of energy in the real world, it will come.
Right now it is neither practical nor desirable to switch our oil-based global economy to other sources. And it won’t be for hundreds of years yet, or until the world runs out of oil, whichever comes first.
For industry to develop alternate sources of energy there has to be a profit in it. There isn’t. That’s why you want we, the people, to fund these idealistic projects like the Volt and Solyndra.
The Prius was an industry-driven project and seems to have done real well. The others, not so much. The others were a waste of money and a foregone conclusion at the onset.
You can’t beat oil. What you can do instead is develop it further until all its sources are depleted. Then, alternate sources of energy on the same scale as oil is now, make sense. Not before.
The majority of people on the planet do not share the ideals of visionaries like yourself. That could be because they have to live their daily lives in the real world, a world that is often a nightmare of epic energy-cost proportions, like $5/gallon gasoline.
All that you can hope and wish for will come, in due time. But not for decades yet. Not in your lifetime.
And it will be funded by industry, when it comes, not by government. And industry will make a handsome profit on it, just like the oil industry is making handsome profits now. Sun, wind, wave and nuclear simply cannot come close to the efficiency of oil, coal and natgas.
If you are concerned about wars, we’ll be in yet another one real soon, and within 20-30 years in yet another one. Look back into history for the interval between conflicts. It all boils down to national interests and national priorities. Right now it is oil. Viet Nam wasn’t about oil, neither was Korea, and certainly not WWII or WWI.
The availability of oil is existential to the planet. Other sources of energy, not at all.
If I’m not mistaken Nissan has sold more Leaf EVs in their first 12 months than Toyota sold Prius hybrids in their first 12 months.
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We lost drilling rigs in deep water because the companies doing the drilling had no effective way to deal with spills. They were forced to stop operation until they came up with adequate plans and equipment. During that period shallow water drilling continued as usual.
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“Right now it is neither practical nor desirable to switch our oil-based global economy to other sources. And it won’t be for hundreds of years yet, or until the world runs out of oil, whichever comes first.”
Were I a betting man I’d put some very heavy money on you being wrong on that one.
That’s because I’m paying attention to what is happening around the world and it’s really clear that wind and solar are on their way to becoming major industries in the very near future…. ;o)
Bob Wallace, my brothers sold Prius out of their Toyota dealerships on the West Coast and I know they sold a bunch of them. As far as I know, those dealerships still sell a lot of Prii after my brothers sold their ownership in them.
One of my brothers owns a Leaf he bought in California and hauled it on a flatbed behind his F150 to Manhattan, NY, where he now lives.
He tells me that they drive their Camry and their F150 a whole lot more than the Leaf for a variety of reasons, range anxiety being one of them, and a 120v outlet in the parking garage being another one.
I don’t know the exact numbers of Leaf vs Prii sold but that brings us back to that argument about GM’s version of the number of Volts sold vs the number of Prii sold in the first year.
In the case of Leaf vs Prius we can at least exclude the US of A, since both were introduced in Japan first.
If your vision of the alternative sources of energy is correct, it must have eluded the major speculators in industry who normally finance these future trends.
It may work in developing countries that do not have an existing industrial base as yet and may wish to build an infrastructure based on new tech, like solar, wind, wave or nuclear.
But in the US? Nah, not a chance. At least not for the foreseeable future.
And that High Speed Rail for California? Nah, not a chance, unless Obama and the ‘crats finance it for Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. Little chance there as well.
Here’s what I found on gas hybrid vs. electrics first year sales…
“Figures this week showed that the first mass-produced electric cars in the United States, the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt, had total sales of 17,345 in 2011, the first year in which they were available. Compared with sales of 9,350 gas-electric hybrids in 2000, the first year the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius were offered in the U.S.—where total hybrid sales have now topped 2 million—17,000 might seem like a decent start for EVs.”
Those are US sales.
Now, I don’t know why your relatives choose to drive their other vehicles and spend more per mile to do so, but that’s their choice. If they can’t get past their range anxiety or if they drive long distances almost every time they go out they should just sell the Leaf to someone who would use it. I’m hearing that some dealers are charging a multi-thousand dollar premium to buyers.
As for investing in renewable energy, ever hear of Warren Buffett?
His utility subsidiary, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, has made a number of large investments in renewable energy over the past few years. Recently they invested $6 billion in wind and $3 billion in solar.
And he’s not doing that because he’s a greenie. He also has money invested in coal and he’s worked to block carbon control.
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“You can’t beat oil. What you can do instead is develop it further until all its sources are depleted. ”
Oh, but you can. Look up the page a bit where I showed the math that says 3 cents per mile with an EV and 8 cents a mile with a very efficient gasmobile. Saving a nickle a mile is a winner in my book.
And look up the page a bit for where I laid out the facts on oil.
The big fact is that we have used up the cheap – the easy to extract and easy to refine. We’re having to use more and more energy to produce a gallon gas. The price can only go up.
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High speed rail? I hope so. It makes so much more sense than building larger airports and trying to find fuel for even more planes.
I’m heading to France in a couple of weeks. One thing that I really want to do is to ride HSR some and get a first hand experience. People I’ve talked with who have ridden have nothing but good things to say about HSR as opposed to airplanes for moderate length travel.
“On Monday, BMW announced it is recalling 1.3 million cars worldwide because the battery cable cover in the trunk might be incorrectly mounted.
When that happens, BMW says the electrical system can malfunction, meaning the vehicle could fail to start, or in the worst cases, the system could char or catch fire.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/03/27/big-bmw-recall-affects-1-3-million-cars-worldwide/
Wonder how many times this story will get attention from the media?
In other news…
“BMW is recalling 89,000 Mini Coopers in the United States for the same sort of problem that led to earlier recalls of BMW and Rolls-Royce luxury cars.
The problem, in all the recalls, is that a computer circuit board controlling a turbocharger cooling system can fail. The result: a smoldering water pump and, in some cases, a fire in the engine compartment.
… some turbocharged Mini cars have caught fire in the same way the larger cars did.”
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/16/autos/mini_cooper_recall/index.htm
“Volvo has issued out a recall for 2,742 of its 2012 S60 sedan and XC60 crossover for a potential fire risk. The NHTSA recall report cites that an incorrect mixture of underbody coating could have been over applied, resulting in “rigid, icicle-like areas hanging from vehicle’s undercarriage.”
Those icicle-like areas can penetrate the fuel lines causing leaks, increasing the likelihood of a vehicle fire.”
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2012/03/volvo-s60-xc60-recalled-for-possible-vehicle-fire-risk.html
“For decades, Ferrari sports cars have been known and loved for their quality and their design. However, the new Ferrari Italia model is being recalled from around the world after dozens of sports car owners reported that the back ends of their luxury cars has burst into flames while on the road.”
http://www.chandlerlawgroup.com/library/ferrari-car-recall-car-fire-injury-lawyer.cfm
“A Nissan recall will affect nearly 250,000 vehicles worldwide over a potential fire hazard with certain models’ fuel sensor.”
http://global.christianpost.com/news/nissan-recalls-250000-cars-over-fire-hazard-problems-70198/
“Ford Motor Company — the second-largest U.S. automaker — has announced a voluntary recall of millions of its popular pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles due to a fire risk.
Ford is recalling the vehicles because their cruise-control switches could short circuit and start a fire under the hood while parked, the automaker said Thursday.
“This is a ticking time bomb ready to go off and something needs to be done,” Bob Garcia, owner of a Ford F-150, told NBC News. Garcia’s pickup caught fire nine hours after he parked it at his home. The fire destroyed his truck and part of his home before firefighters arrived.””
(This one has a great picture of a bright red Ford truck in flames.)
http://www.ennislaw.com/ford_fire_recall.html
“It’s been a bad week for Japanese carmakers. First Toyota (NYSE:TM) gets backhanded by the NHTSA over its ongoing unintended acceleration issues–and associated multi-million-car recalls–and now the Honda Fit faces recall over a fire hazard.
Honda (NYSE:HMC) today announced a recall of 646,000 Fit (Jazz in some markets) compact hatchbacks due to a faulty master switch that could allow water to enter the power window switch, potentially causing a fire. Of those, 140,000 cars in the U.S. are subject to the recall.
While not as wide-ranging as the Toyota recall, the Fit recall, which affects 2007-2008 model-year cars, is no less dangerous. The car fire could potentially start at any time, causing property damage and personal injury–especially if while the car is driving down the highway, or parked in a garage. Already several vehicle fires have been reported, prompting Honda to issue the recall.”
http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1042115_honda-fit-fire-recall-646000-cars-globally-140000-in-u-s
Makes you wonder why so many news agencies made so much to-do about the one Volt battery fire in a test situation.
Things that make one go “Hummmmmmmmm…….”.