The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a bunch of venture capitalists are now backing Norway’s Think electric-car company. Their plan is to bring the company’s Think City car to the U.S. in 2009 and build it here as well.
I drive a 2002 Ford Think electric car, the open frame model. I’m pretty happy with it, at 3 cents a mile, and I’ve put about 300 miles on it around town since buying it 3 weeks ago. It has gotten a lot of attention in my hometown of Chico, and people are constantly asking me how much it cost and where could they get one? The town is blessed with many alternate back routes, so I don’t have to travel the main congested roads.
The U.S. version is expected to travel 110 miles on a single charge and kind of resembles Smart’s ForTwo. The company expects the car to be priced under $25,000. It’s looking for a site in the U.S. to build U.S.-spec models because it’s cheaper to build an entire line here than it is to ship from Europe, thanks to the weak dollar. Maybe Michigan politicians should be making some calls to Oslo.
The Think City is already in production in Europe, and the company is rushing to produce 10,000 units this year for sale there. One of the people behind the VC funding says they could sell 30,000 to 50,000 Think City cars in the U.S. See Norway’s Think to Produce, Sell Small Electric Cars in U.S. (from WSJ.com)
There is another car that Think has in the pipeline, and it is pretty cool looking, see it below:
Its new concept, called “Ox”, looks to be a much more mainstream vehicle than any of the minicars the company sells overseas.
But the name needs to change, because I don’t want my friends teasing me that I’m driving an “Ox car”. I think they were shooting for some spin on “Oxygen” but missed the mark.
Roughly the size of a Scion xB, the front-wheel-drive Ox MPV will have a 60-kW electric motor and a range of 124 miles on a full charge. It can be charged via a normal household outlet. Charging the car to 80% will take just an hour using a special charger, while a full charge will take 12 hours.
The company is planning to use either sodium or lithium-ion batteries, and there’s a strip of solar cells running down the center of the roof. The Ox is built on an interchangeable platform, so a coupe body style with a larger motor and batteries or a taxicab configuration could also be manufactured.
Unfortunately, the Ox looks to be a true concept, with no firm date on when we could expect to see it on the road. The other unfortunate part is that Think doesn’t have a presence in the U.S. General Electric recently invested $4 million into Think, though, so don’t give up hope of one day seeing the “Ox” on the street. More photos here.
Bring a production version of the Ox with a different name, though, and I’d expect people to line up.
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110 miles on a single charge, times 30,000 to 50,000 vehicles. How much additional electricity needs to be produced by power plants to cover this extra usage? How much more coal will have to be burned to make this happen?
What is the net energy cost? How much will your car insurance increase due to a much lower crash survivability?
REPLY: Here’s the thing, we have SCADS of excess generation capacity at night, when most of these will be plugged in, parked in the homeowners garage.
Power plants have to throttle back at night as it is. I don’t see this being a big imapct.
One of those would fit nicely in the back of a Hummer in lieu of a spare tire.
I once calculated that it would take 43 San Onofre sized nuclear plants to generate the equivalent of gasoline consumed in California. This is the same problem as with biodiesel. As long as it is only a small fraction of demand is incorporated then the scaling impacts are not obvious.
Power plants also benefit from economies of scale. You can make an ‘engine’ far more efficient in a stationary environment designed for a constant RPM – not to mention that you can pass from piston oriented designs to turbine oriented designs.
From a sustainability standpoint, this leads to more nuclear power plants anyway when we actually start reaching electrical generation capacity.
I’m hoping the Chevy Volt comes out in 2010 as currently planned by GM. 40-50 miles on a charge, plug-in at night, gasoline engine does not drive the wheels, it only comes on when the batteries need charging. I never drive more than 15-20 miles during the week (5 miles to the Metro lot and back with occasional side frays to the grocery or computer store, Aikido dojo is on the way home). It would be perfect for me.
I’m looking forward to fuel cell powered electric cars with mind blowing torque.
Not that I care, but they will produce only H2O as a waste product.
Look for heat-pollution as the ultimate environmental scare or perhaps education pollution.
Anthony, I’m not sure the vehicles would only be plugged in “at night” (what qualifies as “at night”?) If one gets home from work, lets say at 5pm, you’re going to plug it in right away, not wait till it gets dark.
REPLY: Most utilites recognize peak load hours as noon to 6PM, so if it’s plugged in at work at 8AM, by noon it should be mostly charged, and after the drive home with stops for groceries or bank errands, it is about 6PM in many cases. That’s how it works out for me anyway in my electric car.
How about a car the rest of us poor people can afford to buy.
REPLY: Thats the Tata Nano, enviros don’t like that either.
Instead of “Ox” how about “NoCo2”?
Is that a giant horseshoe magnet on the side?
REPLY: Here’s the thing, we have SCADS of excess generation capacity at night, when most of these will be plugged in, parked in the homeowners garage. Power plants have to throttle back at night as it is. I don’t see this being a big impact.
Ok, so we have the capacity to do this, you still need to use that capacity by burning coal to produce the electrical energy to recharge. So again, what is the net energy cost? Is it a savings across the board or just to individual end users? BTW, I am all for going nuclear, we should have done it years ago.
It’as good for city driving, to & fro work and grocery store.
I wonder what the battery life time is?
I was researching lithium as it might be good to invest in it but it’s not publicly traded, something to do with thermonuclear weapons, or some such. Most of the world’s lithium is produced in S. America, I believe.
60KW works out to about 80 HP. That should give reasonable performance. Charging it to 80% in an hour seems optimistic. It has to have about 15 KWh of cabacity, 80% is 12 Kwh. You need at least 12Kw. 120V at 100 amps isn’t quite a ‘normal’ outlet. A 240 v outlet could supply 50 amps, that assumes 100% conversion (input to output), so still stretching things a bit. Many utilities offer lower rates at night, would help operating costs. Assuming 15Kwh in and 100 miles out, at $0.10 per KWh, 1.5 cents per mile.
Batteries are still the problem. Tesla puts over 6,800 (!) Li-Ion C-cells in their roadster. Hard to get all of them to play well together. Passing U.S. safety standards could be another problem. If they can sell the ‘Ox’ for $25k, that’s a lot better than Tesla’s $100k. Sign me up.
It’s good to be shilling for what is obviously a death trap on wheels.
Too bad this car can’t meet anyone’s transportation needs, but why would that stop you from conning the public. Your denial of this car’s obvious flaws would make a used car salesman look like Mother Theresa. Notice that those 120 miles are when no AC/heat or hills are encountered and with new batteries (which will cost you $15,000 in five years when replacement is due). After 4 years, expect 85% capacity, or a realistic driving radius (rather than advertised)
of less than 50 miles. Gee, I hope you never plan on getting 50 miles from home
in this can’t-do vehicle. Nice of you to spread the lies found in this rosy scenario press release. You also forgot that a fast charge of 80% reduces the lifespan of the battery pack enormously. Figure a 12 hour recharge if you want these batteries to last 5 years. And cross your fingers.
I saw a Smart Car in town yesterday. Interesting that it was parked perpendicular to the curb in a parallel parking area and was not poking out into the road. haha
Not familiar with them, I came home, Googled around and found some stuff. There’s a few road tests at Youtube. But, here’s the spec page…
http://www.smartusa.com/smart-car-technical-specifications.aspx
And, here’s a picture of one hiding behing a girl…
http://jschumacher.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/judy_smart_car.jpg
Gasoline powered but gets
goodgreat mileage. It has Interstate hwy speed and power. But, it’s so small I’d feel vulnerable out there with the big boys. Backroad travel is more fun and scenic anyway…and that’s where the cheap Mom-n-Pop motels are.Another problem with the electric vehicle is the disposal of the vehicle battery at the end of its useful life though there will be recyclers. Does one pay a deposit on purchase for battery disposal?
The crompressed air engine offers a better choice. Say 180 km on a tank of air, it is old technology, is recharged at night and the fuel at full compression weights way less than the battery in the electric car. I am unclear as to how overall vehicle weight compares to the Think or the Ox but I will look for the data.
REPLY: I have lead Gel-Cels, and they already recyle such batteries all over the world. Lead is very highly recycled. No worries.
First post for me – this blog is great btw!
Anyway, with the progress on renewables, particularly PV solar, it would seem a good idea to start moving to electric cars. Sticking with petrol/diesel cars, we’re never going to be able to shake off our oil thirst.
More questions: Forget about the air on hot days, what about some creature comfort like HEAT on those windy, cloudy, -5F days….where will it come from? How’s its snow performance?
JOE S, the combined mpg for the Smartfortwo is a mere 40 for a two passenger vehicle weighing in at 1600 lbs. A four cylinder Camry carrying five and weighing in at 3200 lbs gets better than 30. I say that makes the Smart mediocre at best, hardly “great.”
Just about all lead is recycled. I don’t think there’s enough lead left to be mined to supply a new generation of electric cars.
The states may have to make electric car owners pay a much higher yearly licensing fee so as to make up the difference normally paid out in fuel taxes.
Ever forgot to charge your mobile phone, got a heart attack, Dam forgot to charge the car.
A couple of weeks ago a friend and I did a rough calculation on compressed air energy storage. We got around 4 Kw-hours on a reasonable size tank at 3000psi.
How efficient is compressing gas? Figure how much heat you need to get rid of.
I suspect this is terrible.
I suspect the only reason Anthony’s vehicle appears cheap (even in the ball park) of a gasoline powered vehicle is that he’s comparing apples and oranges.
Basic thermodynamics tells you that you can only extract on the order of 30% of the energy from oil by burning it, regardless of whether this is at oil fired power plant or in your car’s gasoline powered engine. (There are a few ways to increase this, but not by a whole lot.) Then, you have significant power transmission and distribution losses before the electricity gets to you and then losses in the batteries.
Your comparing a very stripped down car against an average small car. The taxes on the fuel/power are probably very different and the initial costs, maintenance costs (replacement batteries) and then disposal costs aren’t considered.
A good rule or thumb is if it really were that much cheaper, we’d all be doing it now.
On another note, there is no feasible heating or A/C for an electric car right now, which rules the car out for about 98% of drivers.
MikeEE
What a great post! I’m beginning to think I actually have a home here.
It’s hard to be pithy and complete at the same time. And I doubt I will achieve either objective. But I think there are a few fundamental concepts worth keeping in mind…
1) At present, on-board transportation energy (e.g., gasoline, diesel, ethanol, or whatever) is much more expensive than grid (electric) energy.
2) At present, cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels for grid energy are much closer to realization than they are in the transportation sector.
3) Any transfer from on-board transportation energy to grid energy has to take account of the loss in efficiency the transfer represents.
4) Any substitution of one on-board transportation energy to another likewise has to take account of the loss in efficiency the transfer represents.
5) Both 3) and 4) require careful and complete cycle analyses, including external impacts that are close to home (e.g., pipelines, transmission lines, and other infrastructure elements) and others further away (e.g. fishing industry, tourist industry, water quality and availability, and health effects of various sorts).
Those are (some of) the fundamentals. But there are also secondary considerations that are also relevant. Most obviously, without a significant change in our (here in the US, that is) grid network, optimizing alternative sources is pretty close to hopeless. For reasons of brevity I hesitate to get into details (though I’d like to discuss them if pressed), but I don’t see the issue as a partisan red/blue one. I see it as more dependent on the relative success (or failure) of power, priviledge, and big buck promoters. The only defense we have against all that is strong populism. And in that regard I find it both indicative and reassuring that the states, both individually and collectively, are leading the charge. The US is a big country, both geographically and economically. And thus, just like the EU, it is inadvisable if not downright unrealistic to try to impose a “one size fits all” solution. Still, it seems to me, that their efforts will require a strong national umbrella under which more limited, regional initiatives can best thrive. What the nature of that umbrella will be is open to question. But the first question is… is the notion of a national umbrella completely out of the question? If so, you might want to start trying to eliminate the various national umbrellas that already exist — and come to grips with the consequences. If not, then what are the restrictions that you would find acceptable? The confluence of those last questions always seem to trip up all but purest of ideological thinkers. Then again, the purists don’t tend to rely on logic.
Novoburgo, the Camry is an efficient auto. The bottom line is, though, a gallon of gas would get me ~10 miles further down the road vs. the Camry. You can say “mediocre at best”. Eye will continue to say great.
To follow on from MikEE’s comment, I posted the basic calculation a couple of weeks back and a mains charged electric car uses about 3 times as much energy as a comparable (same weight) modern petrol car. It’s more like 4 times for a diesel car.
Thermodynamics means that ratio will never be significantly improved.
The Think car is being peddled as being energy efficient, which is grossly deceptive, but unfortunately par for the course for Green/Eco-friendly products.
On a related point, I live in what seems to be the electric buggy capital of the world (inner suburb of Perth, Australia). I see them everywhere. Older and invalid people use them to get around.
I realize the combination of factors that makes my suburb suitable (no ice or snow, wide sidewalks on every street separated from the roadway by a grass verge and few pedestrians) won’t occur in many places, but these vehicles can be a cheap and energy efficient alternative to cars for those who mainly drive short distances to the grocery store etc.
BTW, I assume people who need these buggies move here precisely because it is suitable for them. What is needed is planners deliberately designing suburbs to be buggy friendly. Unfortunately, most newer suburbs here are built without sidewalks and you rarely see these buggies.
Remember fuel cell power cars will require a large investment in Hydrogen infastructure fill stations and more safety designed into cars $$.
Natural gas would be a much easier conversion but then there is those nasty hydrocarbon exhausts and still safety concerns.