Brief news by Ryan Maue
The recent oil price shock likely hasn’t figured into the February sales numbers at GM or Nissan, which announced their electric vehicle sales numbers for the month. Actually, there wasn’t an announcement, but you can find the information buried in a PDF file:
GM “delivered” 281 Volts in February, which is a function of the extremely slow nationwide roll-out of the newfangled buggy. This is clearly the window of opportunity with the much higher gas prices to take advantage (of) consumers who may spring the cash for an electric car. Then, they can watch their new PG&E Smart Meter spin wildly in delight. Either way, it’s very early in the game.
Indeed, with gasoline prices soaring past $4 a gallon in California and elsewhere, the demand for the Volt and Nissan Leaf should continue to soar. Coupled with generous government subsidies provided by Uncle Sam, a new Volt may provide quite a charge to the US economy, or not. With the announcement of Ipad 2.0 yesterday by Steve Jobs, early adopters will be lining up again to buy a thinner, better version of favorite toy. It’s early in the game for the Volt, Leaf, and other electric buggies, but when supply ramps up to meet the burgeoning demand, we can expect the marketplace to expand with many more options. However, until then, outfits like Consumer Reports aren’t exactly enthused with the efficiency of the Volt of the Leaf, considering the sticker.
It gets worse. CR figures the cost of recharging the Volt would work out to about 5.7 cents a mile for electric mode and 10 cents a mile for gas. Yet a Toyota Prius, which gets about 50 miles a gallon, would cost 6.8 cents a mile to operate. A Prius costs half as much as a Volt.CR seems to feel a little better about the all-electric Leaf. It borrowed one from Nissan while it awaits delivery of its own. The $35,270 electric car had its range severely restricted by the cold weather that has gripped the East, much like the Volt. The range has been averaging 65 miles, not the 100 miles that Nissan bills. Plus the mileage gauge isn’t that accurate in the cold when electric heaters gobble up kilowatts. Instead of the 36 miles of range that the car said it had, one tester got 19.
Yet CR said other than range, it liked a lot of things about the Leaf. It accelerated rapidly and climbed hills well. It said it would be a good second car in urban area if it is in “a temperate climate.” Guess that rules out the Northeast, Midwest, deserts and a bunch of other places.
@Brad High energy density is its own hazard. If you have ever shorted out the terminals of a deep cycle marine battery, you can understand the problem. Gasoline and diesel burn relatively slowly. A high energy density battery must have low resistance if you are going to run a car with it. My NEV will draw 100A at 120V DC at normal speed 30/35 mph (top speed is 70, it is a real car not a golf cart). If I pulse the accelerator, I can get it down to a 50A average draw. But during the pulse, I can get discharge rates of 200A+. P=I^2*R Unless that R in your battery is low, you just lost. A short in your system will dump the power in the batteries in a spectacular fashion. I have no problem with electric cars, but I do have a problem with playing Dr. Strangelove and riding on a bomb.
A windturbine of one of zem carrz and you are laughing all ze way to ze bank.
should have been “on” of course
A few weeks ago, here in Maryland, we had a rush hour snow storm that caught the highway people off guard. Thousands of commuters were caught in massive traffic jams, some taking as many as eight hours to get home. It took me three hours to go six miles! In short, the current crop of electric cars wouldn’t have stood a chance. This country would be much better off improving the internal combustion engine and stop wasting its resources on impractical feel good crap.
Hmmm lets see — I bought a used 88 Subaru Wagon for $1200, spent $3500 putting a rebuilt engine in it. It gets 27 mpg average. This engine will give me another 200,000 miles, plus various minor maintenance issues like brakes and tires I will spend another $2000 or so on the car before it goes to the junk yard.
The electric car, that would cost me $35,270 + accrued interest on the car loan and the new car registration, and license fees, not to mention about 7% sales tax. Lets estimate car loan rates of 5%
That works out to cost of the 48 month 5% loan = $38987.52
sales tax at 7% = $2468.90
Total direct cost of the car would be $41456.42
subtract my car’s direct cost over 200,000 mile $ 6700
Difference in cost before fuel/electricity = $34756.42
If I get 200,000 miles out of my old wagon, that means I would buy 7407 gallons of gas over the life of the car. Divide that into $34756.42 and you get $4.69 as the break even cost of gasoline if electricty was free for the electric car.
This is ignoring the much higher registration rates, and insurance rates for the newer car, and the possibility I would need to spend $4000 on a new battery pack.
In short for average folks who only want a reliable commuter car and don’t care about “car status”, unless gasoline goes over $5-6$ a gallon (while electricity stays dirt cheap), my reliable old car beats the new electric car hands down in total cost of ownership.
When you add the “carbon cost” of manufacturing the new car and the generation of the electricity and the manufacture of necessary charging facilities, my carbon foot print (if you even care about that which I don’t) will still be smaller.
I suspect a lot of average folks have done the same math and realize that the life cycle cost of the electric will be significantly higher than just buying an economical used car and driving it until parts fall off.
Larry
Brian H – The Tesla roadster’s cute and all that, but 230 mile range is still an absolute best-case, and there’s many conditions you won’t get those numbers.
It also gets there by being a minimalist piece of hardware, minimal frontal area, two seats, no carrying capacity, top-on ingress/egress physically impossible for 50% of the adult population and profoundly embarrassing for the other 50%.
Brad, No battery chemistry is doubling its capacity in 18 months, and even if it did will the Early adopters be issued new batteries with every significant increase in battery capacity?
GM is now a health care company that also builds cars.
nimrod;
Brilliant. A used car costs less than a new one. Got any other gems to drop on us?
JEM;
Current owners range up to 6’6″, and it’s designed as a supercar. Very similar to other tiny “hot” cars. Takes about twice the cash to match it with a gasmobile. Owners frequently decide to use it as a daily commuter and park or sell the gasser after having it for a short while.
230 is not top of range; it’s routine for most owners. If they get less, it’s because they’re having so much fun with high torque acceleration. It’s the same in any car: floor it and you lose efficiency. But in pure city traffic it gets up to 400 mi./charge-up, because it uses very little juice when moving slowly or waiting for jams to clear or for lights, unlike gassers. And the regen makes braking rare, so much energy is conserved in stop-go situations. Record range on open roads was 313 mi. in a controlled competition in Australia.
The ‘S’ will hit the niche you seem to be talking about.
Justa Joe – Someone with industry experience feel free to shoot me down, but if the current state of Li-Ion represents commercially-viable state of the art, then I think it’s been about a doubling of capacity every ten years.
Power infrastructure/capacity?
At the risk of sounding like a cheerleader, I honestly don’t get this one. I would think that most electric cars would be charged at night, the exact time when we currently have the lightest load on our existing power infrastructure. Now if everyone wants to charge their cars during the workday, that would be an issue…
Is that a flawed assumption?
James
I see the car the President is sitting in is manufactured by GM. Isn’t GM a company the President did one of those government bailout/takeover things on? Yes it is.
If America reelects this man in 2012 it will get what it deserves.
David L says:
March 3, 2011 at 3:05 pm
I had a 1992 Pontiac Sunbird……Hybrids with all their fancy “Green” technology would love to get those mpg’s. What gives?
Your Pontiac Sunbird weighed 2,500 pounds. A Toyota Prius weighs over 3,000 pounds.
Over here in the UK I pay the equivalent of about $8.33 per Gallon for Diesel – so this alone makes EVs attractive as commuter vehicles. Add in the tax breaks – no road Tax, no congestion charges, no “benefit in kind” tax to pay if it is a company car, and best of all they have no way of stiffing you for fuel “duty”. The government are also subsidising the purchase price by over $8000.
Several of the large Supermarket chains have said they will put free charging stations in their car parks – about 45 minutes for a charge up. (Cant beleive they will stay free for long)
The iPhone app for the leaf looks pretty cool too – you can make sure the car is cooled or heated automatically in the morning before you set off, ie while it is still plugged in.
My company has ordered a couple to test them out so Ill let you know how it goes.
james, “Why all the negativity on electric cars?”
Because they are not economically viable and would not exist outside of prototypes without massive government subsidies.
The Chevy Volt which costs $41,000 takes 10-12 hours to charge to go only 25.8 miles at a cost of $4.16. They are a joke.
There is nothing new about electric cars, they are over 100 years old and were not economically viable then and are not now for the same basic reasons.
Anyone buying a hybrid or electric car to save money cannot do basic math. If you want to save money buy a Toyota Yaris. If you drive 10,000 miles a year it would take you over 30 years to break even with the “fuel savings” at $4 a gallon in a Prius ($23,000) over a Yaris ($13,000). I suspect we have a generation of people driving around in hybrids and electric cars who failed elementary math classes?
Check this out
If you happen to live in LADWP’s service area (ie LA) you have unlimited kwh costs of .072kwh (in the winter). In my service area (PG&E) your cost for a marginal kwh would likely be in Tier 3 ($.28+ a kwh) or in Tier 4 which will cost you $.38 kwh.
Which is better the leaf or volt was discussed over at Greentech media recently- http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-leaf-or-the-volt-which-is-better/
A comment in the post notes that some public charging places (and businesses) in the LA area are providing the electricity to charge your EV for free…………..
Yes it is — in some areas their highest peak load of the day is in the evenings when people arrive home from work, turn on the AC (in hot weather) or turn up the heat (in the winter), and start cooking dinner and turn on the TV.
Your assumption is true late in the evening but in the 4:00 pm to 10:00 window, all industrial load may not be gone, and you have lighting loads and all those electric accessories folks turn on when they first come home.
On very hot summer evenings here in Denver Colorado a few years ago, they were asking folks to go easy on those early afternoon start up loads to avoid brown outs and blackouts as they could not handle the surge load of everyone getting home, and turning on their air conditioning units when they got home.
Folks with electric cars will want to plug them in just as soon as they get home, and the initial current draw to charge a battery will be the highest load of the charging cycle. Unless the cars are smart enough to throttle their initial charging draw or a delay timer, once thousands of folks get these cars it will be a significant surge load.
Larry
I have nothing against the concept of electric cars. Electric motors are very efficient and versitile. The problem lies in the onboard energy storage system. On the basis of energy density (Joules/Kg for example), gasoline is several orders of magnitute denser than top of the line lithium-ion battery system. Look at it this way, a battery is not really storing “electricity” any more than a tank of gasoline does. It’s just a reversible chemical reaction, and not a very efficient one at that. It would be far better to use readily available fuels (gasoline or diesel) to generate electricity onboard than to plug into the electrical grid. There is more potential to a hybrid system than a battery powered system, of course it will be difficult to beat the engine driven drive system nearly all vehicles use.
When making comparisons between vehicles using conventional drive systems, hybrid systems, and electric/battery systems, it’s vital to compare apples to apples. A little tiny electric vehicle might look impressive on a cost per mile basis compared to an SUV, but not to a similarly sized tiny gasolne driven car of similar power.
Brian H, “Batteries will work fine. Users of the TeslaMotors Roadster have almost no problems with charging or range.”
By no problem you mean waiting 32 hours to charge your car?
32 hours needed to charge Tesla (Edmunds)
I can fill up in under 2 minutes.
Brian H says: March 3, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Makes TeslaMotors’ strategy look good. It started at the top end, with a sports/supercar (Roadster) worth over $100K, with 230 (real proven in use) mile range. Next up a $58K (minus any rebates etc.) 7-passenger sports sedan. Its range will vary with battery options, up to 300 mi. (‘Model S’).
Currently 15,000 Roadsters on the road(s) across the world, doing fine in snow and desert and mountain …snip
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Per Tesla’s press release of March 1, 2011, they have sold over 1,500 cars worldwide, not 15,000.
http://ir.teslamotors.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=553340
The real problem is the price of gas.
“Unless the cars are smart enough to throttle their initial charging draw or a delay timer, once thousands of folks get these cars it will be a significant surge load.”
You can’t delay charging: what happens if you have to go out because of an emergency of some kind and you set the car to start charging at 2am?
For most people electric cars only make sense as a cheap second vehicle; and the current crop are more expensive than a similar gasoline car.
When they say “range”, do they mean one leg of a round trip?