Guest post by Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
Last Friday, President Obama once again pitched electric cars during his presentation at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. At one point, he called for an end to gasoline-powered vehicles, “…but the only way to really break this cycle of spiking gas prices…is to shift our cars entirely―our cars and trucks―off oil.” The President has a remarkable faith in the value of electric cars, but this trust is not well supported by science or economics.
The very same day, Henrik Fisker, the chairman and co-founder of Fisker Automotive, announced he would be leaving his company over issues regarding “business strategy.” In 2011, Fisker Automotive introduced the Karma, a luxury plug-in electric car with a $100,000 price tag. The Karma was named “Luxury Car of the Year” in 2011 by BBC Top Gear magazine.
In 2010, the US Department of Energy (DOE) awarded a $529 million loan to Fisker Automotive for the development and production of hybrid electric cars. Former Energy Secretary Stephen Chu praised Fisker, “Not only will the Fisker projects contribute to cleaner air and reduced carbon emissions, these plug-in hybrid cars will help put American ingenuity at the forefront of automotive design and production.”
But lately things have not been so rosy for Fisker Automotive. Last year the DOE froze the loan after Fisker had received $193 million. The firm’s battery supplier, A123 Systems, declared bankruptcy in October of last year, after also receiving a DOE loan of $249 million. The Karma was recalled several times and Fisker has not manufactured a car in six months.
Plug-in electric vehicle (EV) sales are growing, boosted by government incentives and a consumer desire to purchase environmentally-friendly vehicles. EV purchasers receive a $7,500 tax credit from the US government and ability to drive in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane of most freeways. Charging stations are being installed in California, Nevada, Texas, and other states, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
Global EV sales are still a tiny part of the market. President Obama set a goal in 2008 to “put a million plug-in hybrid cars…on the road by 2015.” But US electric sales last year were only about 53,000 units. About 120,000 EVs were sold worldwide in 2012, only 0.15 percent of the 82-million global car market.
While President Obama would like to eliminate gasoline-powered vehicles, such vehicles still provide major advantages for consumers. Pound-for-pound, the energy stored in the chemical bonds of gasoline is about 100 times the energy stored in today’s Lithium-ion batteries. This translates into about a ten-to-one advantage in driving range for gasoline vehicles.
If electric cars succeed, look for magazine lounges at charging stations. Gasoline fill-ups require two to three minutes for small cars and four to five minutes for SUVs. The best 440-volt commercial charging stations require a driver to charge an EV for 30 minutes or more.
Electric car owners who drive every day are in for a surprise. Their battery pack will need to be replaced. Batteries are based on a chemical imbalance, a separation of charge that produces the electrical potential. The day an electric leaves the showroom, chemical reactions are at work to remove the charge from your lithium-ion battery. Faster charging, frequent charging, warmer temperatures, and storage at full charge degrade the battery more quickly. Either the owner or the manufacturer will need to pay $10,000 for a battery replacement about year four or five.
But can’t an EV purchaser take pride that his car reduces global warming? Well, not really. A study last year by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that, for a vehicle with a 100,000 kilometer lifetime (when batteries would need replacement), EV environmental impacts were “indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle.” The reason is that manufacture of an EV emits about double the carbon dioxide required to manufacture a diesel or gasoline car, primarily to build the metal batteries of the electric.
The study also found that “EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain.” In other words, production of electric car batteries may become a major source of pollution. Suppose we go slowly on promoting electric cars, Mr. President?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the new book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
I have used the energy density agument for more than 20 years to demonstrate that practical battery electric vehicles are not possible with current battery technology or with any battery that has been reasonably imagined. However, the graph comparing energy densities seems to be inaccurate. Checking with Wikipedia, I convert the units and get very close to the energy density given in the graph for gasoline and lead-acid batteries. For Li ion battery Wikipedia gives 202 versus the 120 in the graph. So the gasoline advantage is more like 50-1, not 100-1.
“The electric car was developed before the IC engine, in fact the range limitations of electric cars in the 1870′s was part of the inspiration for Mr. Benz and Mr. Diesel to develop the IC powered car.”
Indeed. I’m always amused when I see people talking about electric cars as though they’re new technology. Our ancestors had them and they sucked, they still suck, and they’ll continue to suck without a revolution in battery technology. To compete with a Honda Civic the battery needs a many times improvement in storage and a many times reduction in cost and the ability to pump massive amounts of power in to charge it in five minutes without melting.
Not likely to happen any time soon.
Nor are ‘battery changing stations’ likely to help the recharging issue, because some poor sod will always get the worn-out battery that suddenly drops from two hundred miles to five miles range when they’re fifty miles from the nearest battery change.
Lead by example.
If Obama expects the country to drive electric cars I would suggest he takes the money from one million dollar golf trip and convert the presidential limo to electric.
If you talk the talk, walk the walk.
Ack says:
March 19, 2013 at 3:05 pm
Replacement Batteries? Always room for another entitlement
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Don’t hold your breath………….
Look at comparable history, no?
From a marketing POV Obama should be threatening to ban electric cars.
After all the man has been the best advertising, that firearms manufacturers never had to buy.
[trimmed. Way overboard. Mod]
john robertson says:
March 19, 2013 at 7:58 pm
From a marketing POV Obama should be threatening to ban electric cars.
After all the man has been the best advertising, that firearms manufacturers never had to buy.
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Yup, amazing how the free world reacts to such, no?
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/8814
I did buy this puppy in the last couple months. Albeit, the tactical version with storage in the stock. Hey, we do have the 2nd amendment right to do so.
I will quote Thomas Jefferson,
“The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try and take it”.
The cards are marked, the dice are loaded and the house always wins.
Very Great Idea, Hope every thing goes success and thank you for giving good post.
klem said:
March 19, 2013 at 3:10 pm
You know, if the Chevy Volt were a regular car, GM would have discontinued it by now. Over three years only 50,000 have been sold, that’s half the sales of the Ford Edsel! The Volt’s a money loser, it should have been axed last year.
The fact that the Volt has not been axed is the reason I don’t own GM shares. It tells me there is still something amiss with GM management.
I can’t help but wonder, why is GM still building them?
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It’s not for the money – it’s the thin edge of the wedge of obama’s collectivisation programme.
Increasingly we shall see him taking businesses away from the greedy
ownersKulaks and handing them over to the heroic Workers.And we will all be driving them someday; if he can force us to buy med insurance, he can force us to buy the Cheby Volt.
But hey – it’s for the children (of the GM union members).
If cars ran on hubris, Obummer’s speeches would provide an infinite source of fuel.
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Does Obama realise where the electric energy in electric cars comes from – coal?
And does Obama realise, that to power all surface transport via electrical power, we would have to double the number of power stations?
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For a good overview of Renewable Energy, including electric vehicles, please see this UK government briefing paper.
http://www.withouthotair.com
However, even in this professional scientific tome, Prof Mackay included the grossely misleading claim that electric vehicles were five times more efficient than diesel cars. What he has done, of course, is to totally disregard the coal-fired power station that creates the electricity.
I took Prof Mackay to task over this, in the Sunday Times, and I got a sort-of apology, but the five times claim is still there in the report, ready to bamboozle and confuse the brain-dead politician with pseudo-science.
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@Rafellis – Obama not only realizes that electricity comes from Coal, he is trying to ELIMINATE it as a source of electricity. So he is trying a 2 pronged attack. Reduce the generating capacity of the country, while increasing the load on the generating capacity.
And he thinks that will work.
So let me get this straight:-
We mine for nickel in Canada, ship this to China where they make the batteries, ship these back to US and use them in a car these travel 100 miles, max, before needing 8 hours to recharge. Seems non environmental to me. Mental in fact.
“some poor sod will always get the worn-out battery that suddenly drops from two hundred miles to five miles range when they’re fifty miles from the nearest battery change”
This is what AAA is for!
As a previous owner of a conventional gas/electric hybrid, I can say they are not worth it. Not only do you pay a premium over an IC car when buying it, you either have to replace the battery at ~100,000 miles or trade it in for less than a IC car. When I finally got tired of mine, and wanted to trade it in, the dealer refused to give me anywhere near market price for it because he said the battery had to be replaced. So, not only did I pay a premium on the front end, I got docked on the back end as well. There is no way that the 15% increased gas mileage I saw made up for the buy and sell price discrepancies. I imagine this problem is even worse with fully electric vehicles.
None of this would be of interest to anyone but technology addicts and car fans, were it not for the globalist ambitions of the radical Left and their handmaiden, the Religion of Climatism, which has managed to demonize carbon dioxide and make its reduction the excuse for all manner of tyrannical government policies.
You know that all of The Puppet President’s blather about electric cars is just softening us up for the real body blow, the Carbon Tax.
When will this stop? Somehow we have got to get it through the thick heads of the media, the academics, and the Congress that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, the mantra has been so deeply ingrained that we’ll probably have to start with the kids in primary school and wait 20 years till they grow up. And how do we get around the enviro-left’s control of the school system?
/Mr Lynn
PS Check out the Climate Realist store! http://www.zazzle.com/climaterealist
Isn’t it obvious….our freedom comes from the Bill Of Rights and our ability to move about at will. Part of controlling the masses is to take away our mode of transportation by attacking C02 emitting engines. C02 is very hard to eliminate out of an internal combustion engine. Maybe this explains the CAGW propaganda.since the evidence does not.
Quote from the article:
“The study also found that “EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain.” In other words, production of electric car batteries may become a major source of pollution. ”
Well – exactly the same goes for compact fluorescent tubes – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp – which we will be forced to use disregarding, once the simple, straight incandescent bulb will have been banned completely from use worldwide by law.
We truly live in a brave new world.
# John Campbell says:
March 20, 2013 at 7:42 am
Take away combustion engines, the Second Amendment and a free internet from the people and all that’s left is a herd of sheeple, ready to be pushed about at will. Ain’t that an NWO-apostate’s wet dream come true?
Speaking of Bad Karma, O’s limo was apparently
topped-off with diesel fuel as opposed to the required lighter hydrocarbon (normally know as gasoline) today .. or was it yesterday … at any rate this required the 2nd limo flown into Jordan for another event be brought over for use by O in Israel.
Talk about ‘bad Karma’; the result of having selected “the ebst (sic) and the rbightest (sic)” (Kerry, Clinton, Van Jones, ‘Mao Zedong’ Dunn, Hagel et al) to surround you.
heh
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Just a few remarks on the responses to my comment about my experience with the Leaf.
David A. Evans (March 19, 2013 at 2:05 pm): A “grid tie” system means I provide power to the grid during the day and take it back at night at no net cost. My electric company does this because I provide power during peak use hours (day) where the cost per kWh is high (peaking generators) whereas the cost to provide power at night is low (idle main generators). I pay an “average” so the company makes out but so do I. Win-win. Not all consumers can use grid-tie systems or can get the electric company to provide the win-win scenario.
MarkW (March 19, 2013 at 2:09 pm) Indeed. But the substantial tax rebates for PV systems in some states may not be necessary any more. You can do much better than I did now. A 5-kW system similar to mine can be purchased from and sells for less than $10K (parts) with installation varying ($5K typical). This is with (preferred) Enphase inverters ($1.89/w) whereas a 9-kW single (Sunny Boy) inverter system is about $14K ($1.49/w) which is an even better deal. My OOP cost after rebates was a little less than $11K. However, at current prices I could install the same for about $15K (parts and labor) which, without rebates, brings the ROI to about 4 years since both house electricity and car (avoided) costs are included. I believe the lower cost of PV systems and the rapid ROI is an argument for removing (or reducing) the tax rebates. Of course, not all locations will give the same ROI – I am in an area where the cost per kWh is about $0.30. Areas where the cost is $0.08 will necessarily see a longer ROI especially if only electricity is used for the house. The combination of PV plus an e-car is certainly an economic winner even without rebates — for those who can afford to buy in now.
Riding the bus: So be it. I subsidize a whole bunch of things I don’t use: national parks, canals and waterways, space stations and space transportation, etc., etc. And a whole bunch of things I do use: GPS, airports and ATC, etc., etc. That said, I can see a need for e-cars to pay “road use taxes” probably based on miles driven each year and paid during yearly at vehicle registration. In that respect, a gas guzzling Escalde owner currently pays a much high percentage of road tax than does a Prius owner simply because the Escalade owner buys more gas/year and road tax is based upon the gasoline tax. I have seen no one complaining about that so far.
M. Jeff (March 19, 2013 at 3:58 pm ) As if all energy sources are not subsidized to varying degrees. I doubt you want to play the “life cycle cost” game when it comes to gasoline: for every $ of Li-battery subsidies I, and anyone smart enough to do the math, can find 10X $ for oil and gas. For example, one recent foray into protecting oil supplies in the ME cost the US $2T. Do we include the cost of the US Coast Guard protecting off shore rigs and the environment from their oil spills as a subsidy for oil companies? I am NOT arguing against gasoline powered cars or oil or gas! I am pointing out that the “subsidy” argument is not a good one to use against electric cars: The pot calling the kettle black.
Bad Karma or just incompetence His Limo broke down in Jerusalem someone put Diesel in it instead of Petrol
Show how much they know about the Internal Combustion Engine
Yes, the Presidential limo failed to start this morning, after being unloaded from the transport aircraft in Israel. It was incorrectly fueled with gasoline. The limo is powered by a 6.5 liter diesel engine, weighs 8 tons, and gets 8 mpg hauling one skinny little proponent of unreliable wind and solar power around. A second limo, in storage in Jordan, had to be hastily air transported to Israel for the occasion. Details at http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/20/obamas-limo-breaks-down-in-tel-aviv-after-gas-snafu-see-the-pictures/
MtK
JG says:
March 20, 2013 at 11:28 am
“I am pointing out that the “subsidy” argument is not a good one to use against electric cars: The pot calling the kettle black.”
I think it’s a splendid argument, drop the subsidies and see what survives, solar panels or the fossil fuel infrastructure.
Notice: I’m not angry if solar panels win… as long as I get electricity. Including at night, that’s how spoiled I am. Call me unfair.
JG says:
March 20, 2013 at 11:28 am, in reply to M. Jeff (March 19, 2013 at 3:58 pm )
… I am pointing out that the “subsidy” argument is not a good one to use against electric cars: The pot calling the kettle black. …
The “subsidy” argument relates to numerous government programns. A calculation of the true cost of various subsidizes would be of benefit in many instances. The core of the issue is whether or not the subsidy is doing more harm than good. There are numerous subsidizes that do more harm than good. I have supposedly been the beneficiary of such. Until this year have received subsidies of about $20 a year for about 10 years to grow or not grow certain crops on some jointly owned inherited land. The cost to the government for handing my account must be at least $100 per year. The politicians did not buy my vote with that subsidy. The extra work and forms and complexity required for filing income tax payments is many times more burdensome than the $20 was worth.
Many of the subsidies are pot/kettle equivalents. But as Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Washington, D.C. says: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472.html
“Spending instead on subsidizing electric cars is putting the cart before the horse, and an inconvenient and expensive cart at that.”