Guest post by David Middleton
The purveyors of greenschist (a geologically inspired euphemism for green sh!t) seem to have an obsession with a phrase that they clearly do not comprehend: Tipping point.
Electric Cars Reach a Tipping Point
David Fickling
Sep 10, 2017
Say goodbye to gasoline. The world’s slow drift toward electric cars is about to enter full flood.
China, one-third of the world’s car market, is working on a timetable to end sales of fossil-fuel-based vehicles, the country’s vice minister of industry and information technology, Xin Guobin, told an industry forum in Tianjin on Saturday. That would probably see the country join Norway, France and the U.K. in switching to a wholly electric fleet within the lifetime of most current drivers.
[…]
Tipping Point…
Electric Cars Reach a Tipping Point? Only in Fantasy Land
Electric cars have not reached “a tipping point.” Even using Bloomberg New Energy Finance Fantasy’s insanely optimistic forecast, the imaginary “tipping point” is still a decade away.
The announcement by a Chinese bureaucrat that their government will at some point in the future establish some sort of timetable for phasing out the sale of ICE (internal combustion engine) passenger cars can hardly be described as a “turning point.”
China Fossil Fuel Deadline Shifts Focus to Electric Car Race
Bloomberg News
September 10, 2017
[…]
Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology, said the government is working with other regulators on a timetable to end production and sales. The move will have a profound impact on the environment and growth of China’s auto industry, Xin said at an auto forum in Tianjin on Saturday.
The world’s second-biggest economy, which has vowed to cap its carbon emissions by 2030 and curb worsening air pollution, is the latest to join countries such as the U.K. and France seeking to phase out vehicles using gasoline and diesel. The looming ban on combustion-engine automobiles will goad both local and global automakers to focus on introducing more zero-emission electric cars to help clean up smog-choked major cities.
“The implementation of the ban for such a big market like China can be later than 2040,” said Liu Zhijia, an assistant general manager at Chery Automobile Co., the country’s biggest passenger car exporter that unveiled a new line for upscale battery-powered and plug-in hybrid models at the Frankfurt motor show last week. “That will leave plenty of time for everyone to prepare.”
[…]
Deadline: “a date or time before which something must be done.” The timetable, if it ever materializes, may or may not contain a deadline. China’s fossil fuel deadline resides alongside the PEV (plug-in electric vehicle) tipping point in fantasy land.
What can explain this “irrational exuberance” for electric vehicles?
BNEF (Bloomberg New Energy Finance Fantasy) sees li-ion batteries declining to $73/kWh by 2030. I guess that’s good. How many kWh does a PEV need to have in order to have a useful range? The average PEV consumes 30 kWh per 100 miles. So, a 60 kWh battery should be good for at least 200 miles. At $73/kWh, a 60 kWh battery should sell for $4,368. A brand new crated Chevrolet 350/290 Deluxe V-8 Engine has an MSRP of $3,448. By 2030, a 60 kWh battery will only cost 27% more than an 350 cubic inch V-8 internal combustion engine… if BNEF is right.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch… Or a Moore’s Law for PEV’s or any other greenschist
There seems to be a fantasy land assumption that PEV’s and other greenschist will follow the same sort of growth trajectory as integrated circuitry.
AUG 21, 2017
Electric Vehicle Prospects: Bad Analogies Are Worse Than No Analogies
I analyze petroleum economics and energy policy
[…]
Any number of pundits from Al Gore on down have compared adoption of electric vehicles to the history of the cell phone, which, some note, was not predicted by McKinsey in 1980. Others point to the rapidity with which the Model T gained favor with consumers.
But this is not necessarily more valid than using the laserdisc as an analogy for pessimism or the repeated previous failures of the electric vehicle to become a mass market item: why is always the pertinent issue. And this is something that so many pundits do not consider. In the Financial Times, John Dizard makes the poignant point: “Batteries, though, are not atomic bombs, integrated circuits, or penicillin. With a great deal of effort on the part of engineers, you get progress, not breakthroughs.”
Because electronics are not a good analogy for batteries. Batteries are chemistry, and, as Dr. Fred Schlachter, a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, stated it quite clearly. “There is no Moore’s Law for batteries.”
[…]
Disagree? In 1981, you could buy 5 and ½ inch floppy disks that held 128k of memory, a box of 12 was about 20 dollars. Now, a 4 Gb memory stick is not only smaller but costs about $6. For the same amount of money, you get roughly 100 billion times more memory in a smaller package. A 12 volt, lead-acid battery for your car costs roughly the same today as it did in 1981 with slightly improved performance.
Indeed, the most optimistic projections for lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles has improved in price by only about 15-20% per year, compared to the 100% per year for memory. And even that appears exaggerated by comparing the costs for batteries when production numbers were small. Most forecasts are for continuing, but relatively slow, declines in cost.
[…]
As Mr. Lynch points out, there’s…
No Moore’s Law for batteries
The public has become accustomed to rapid progress in mobile phone technology, computers, and access to information; tablet computers, smart phones, and other powerful new devices are familiar to most people on the planet.
These developments are due in part to the ongoing exponential increase in computer processing power, doubling approximately every 2 years for the past several decades. This pattern is usually called Moore’s Law and is named for Gordon Moore, a cofounder of Intel. The law is not a law like that for gravity; it is an empirical observation, which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unfortunately, much of the public has come to expect that all technology does, will, or should follow such a law, which is not consistent with our everyday observations: For example, the maximum speed of cars, planes, or ships does not increase exponentially; maximum speed barely increases at all.
Cars require a portable fuel, preferably one that is widely available, low in cost, and with a high energy density. Gasoline is nature’s ideal fuel. A full tank of gasoline contains as much energy as 1,000 sticks of dynamite. However, cost, national security, global climate change, and pollution lead to a national need to wean ourselves from powering cars with gasoline. There are not many alternate candidates. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel, and hydrogen can presently be produced only at a high energy cost and has low energy density. And then there is electricity. We power our mobile phones and our laptops with lithium-ion batteries—why not power our cars this way? We already have an infrastructure for generating and distributing electricity. If only we had batteries that could store enough energy to power a car several hundred kilometers and that were not too heavy and would not cost a fortune.
Sadly, such batteries do not exist. There is no Moore’s Law for batteries. The reason there is a Moore’s Law for computer processors is that electrons are small and they do not take up space on a chip. Chip performance is limited by the lithography technology used to fabricate the chips; as lithography improves ever smaller features can be made on processors. Batteries are not like this. Ions, which transfer charge in batteries, are large, and they take up space, as do anodes, cathodes, and electrolytes. A D-cell battery stores more energy than an AA-cell. Potentials in a battery are dictated by the relevant chemical reactions, thus limiting eventual battery performance. Significant improvement in battery capacity can only be made by changing to a different chemistry.
[…]
In addition to increased performance and lower cost, batteries need to be safe. Of course gasoline is not safe, there are hundreds of thousands of car fires every year in the United States. Nonetheless, the public is more wary of electricity than of gasoline, and the recent safety issues of lithium-ion batteries on Boeing 787 aircraft have done little to reassure the public about the safety of such batteries. Consumers are questioning the practice of putting into cars batteries that can burst into flames.
[…]
Improving the energy efficiency of cars is not a long-term solution to the problems related to combustion of fossil fuels, as cars will still be powered by gasoline. However, improved energy efficiency can happen and is happening. A good example of improved energy efficiency is hybrid cars, which can be considerably more energy efficient than traditional cars. We must take this pragmatic direction while awaiting that terrific breakthrough in battery technology we all so desire.
Moore’s Law started out with the observation that the number of transistors per square inch of integrated circuitry was doubling every year. That pace has slowed to roughly one doubling per 18 months. This “empirical observation” enabled the explosive growth of computing and communication technology over the past 40-50 years. We may not have Warp Drive, Phasors or Transporter Beams… But we do have far superior information technology today than could have even been imagined by Gene Roddenberry.
The energy density growth rate for batteries over the past 60 years has been about 3% per year (Zu & Li, 2011)… a doubling period of about 24 years. The inapplicability of Moore’s Law pretty-well covers the full gamut of greenschist tech.
So, neither the decline in battery prices nor the energy density of batteries can genuinely accelerate. That said, batteries will slowly become less expensive and the energy density of batteries will slowly increase. This will certainly lead to continued slow growth in PEV sales. This coupled with improvements in fuel efficiency could eventually lead to a peak in oil demand. Peak oil demand will probably happen long-before we actually reach Hubbert’s Peak Oil (unless we already reached it). However, neither Peak Demand, nor Peak Oil, constitutes “goodbye to gasoline” or supports the idiotic notion that “oil’s future is grim.”
Why Fantasy Land turning points aren’t going to put a dent in petroleum consumption
Why The Oil Industry Shouldn’t Fear Peak Demand
By Peter Tertzakian – Dec 01, 2016
[…]
The notion behind peak demand theory is fairly simple: some time over the next five-to-25 years many of us will hang up the gas pump nozzle for the last time. When that happens, the world’s insatiable consumption of more and more oil, growing year over year, soon to exceed an energy-obese 100 million barrels a day, will plateau and then start trending down.
Every pundit has an opinion about when peak demand will happen. Articles, podcasts and snappy videos mostly debate in what year our 150-year addiction to the product will begin to wane. Some think it’s as early as 2020; the authoritative International Energy Agency conjectures 2040. So there is a wide range of views.
Anybody with a spreadsheet can juggle cells and posit when the last growth barrel is likely to occur, but the real question is, “So what then?”
What does a peaking of oil market growth mean to producers? To investors?
[…]
In any maturing business environment, flat-to-declining markets make the battle for consumers’ business hyper competitive. In response, producing companies get rid of their unproductive assets (baggage) and shift their sole focus away from price. The emphasis moves lower down the income statement, toward how to cut costs, be more efficient in production and how to be profitable at lower prices. Conveyor belts become more efficient and the manufacturing emphasis shifts to just-in-time delivery and not being burdened with too much inventory. Leading companies place additional emphasis on how to improve their product offerings too – improving proverbial, “bells and whistles.”
Inefficient laggards who don’t adapt to the new competitive realities don’t survive the Darwinian cut.
Am I missing something? This sounds a lot like the oil business today.
[…]
Producers in the U.S. and Canada are already leading the way. So when peak demand sets in, today’s progressive light, tight oil producers in North America will already be positioned as “lean manufacturers” that are able to respond to price signals much faster.
There will benefits to the era of peak oil demand even though there is no sign that it’s happening yet. When it happens, the industry’s emphasis will be on profitability and a leaner carbon product, not so much on growth at all costs. Ironically, the industry is already adapting to the inevitability of peak demand, whenever that may be.
PEV’s may one day actually have a measurable impact on crude oil consumption; however the International Energy Agency doesn’t see that happening any time in the near future because growth in demand for petrochemicals, aviation, freight and maritime use will dwarf any savings in passenger cars, buildings and power generation.
Freight, as in big trucks carrying heavy loads over long distances, is not amenable to PEV conversion, despite Telsa’s latest Ponzi scheme…
Tesla is revealing a semitrailer this month that it won’t deliver for years — here’s why
Matthew DeBord
Sep. 6, 2017
Tesla is expected to reveal a design for a semitrailer this month. CEO Elon Musk has been heralding this move into the freight business since last year, when he rolled out his “Master Plan, Part Deux.”
According to Morgan Stanley analyst Ravi Shanker, the vehicle will be what’s known as a Class 8 truck — a great big old over-the-road semi designed to haul large amounts of stuff. Despite that, Shanker doesn’t think the Tesla semi will have a long-range battery delivering 600 or more miles of range; something like 300 miles is more realistic, because of battery costs, and Tesla will deal with the range issue by swapping batteries or enhancing its charging capabilities.
In a note published Wednesday, Shanker suggested that Tesla wouldn’t start selling the semi until 2020, but that won’t prevent the company from lining up customers.
“We expect Tesla to start taking orders for the truck from the day of the event (we estimate a refundable $5,000 deposit),” he wrote. “We believe this could set off competition for intelligent trucks in the industry.”
Shanker calculates that the truck business could add up to almost $12 billion in business by 2028.
This all sounds pretty good, but remember that Tesla has taken something on the order of 500,000 deposits for its Model 3 sedan, at $1,000 a pop. As of August, just more than 100 vehicles had been delivered as Tesla ramped up production. But even with an aggressive ramp, it will take Tesla years to fulfill those preorders.
Shanker expects Tesla semi deposits to be refundable, and by now everyone knows that putting down some money to get a place in line to buy a Tesla can mean a bit of a wait. But in the short term, if Tesla debuts the semi alongside some industry partnerships and can encourage a healthy pace of preorders, it will have another funding stream at a time when its cash needs are rapidly intensifying.
[…]
What size battery could propel a semi 300 miles? Cummins has already unveiled a concept vehicle with a 100-mile range.
Cummins Aeon concept beats Tesla to the all-electric semi punch
AUTOMOTIVE
Scott Collie August 31st, 2017
While the world waits for a Tesla long-haul truck, Cummins has swooped in with the Class 7 Urban Hauler EV concept demonstrator. The all-electric Urban Hauler, which also paves the way for range-extender hybrid long-haul vehicles, hints at a cleaner, greener future for heavy haulers.
The new Class 7 Urban Hauler EV, also known as the Aeos, eschews the usual diesel engine for a 140-kWh battery pack and electric motors. That means peak range is about 100 mi (160 km) and gross vehicle weight (GVW) is capped around 75,000 lb (34,020 kg). Extra battery packs could extend that to around 300 mi (483 km).
According to Cummins, the base battery and electric motors weigh about the same as the engine, gearbox, emissions treatment system and fuel tank in a conventional tractor. The company hasn’t said how much the battery packs weigh individually, but logic would suggest adding extra cells to boost the range will also add some serious weight.
[…]
A 140 kWh battery pack, which weighs as much “as the engine, gearbox, emissions treatment system and fuel tank in a conventional tractor,” yields a 100-mile range… presumably hauling a 75,000 lb load. At $200/kWh, that works out to $28,000 worth of battery. Triple that price tag and weight for a 300-mile range ($28,000), sextuple it for a 600-mile range and you get a semi with a $168,000 worth of batteries that can’t haul much more than its own battery packs… Brilliant! A new diesel tractor trailer runs “anywhere from $110,000 to $125,000 for a new tractor and $30,000 to $50,000 for a new trailer.” A tractor trailer averages around 6 mpg and has a total fuel tank capacity generally between 100 and 300 gallons. This yields an unrefueled range of 600 to 1,800 miles.
If we use an average fuel capacity or 240 gallons (2 x 120-gallon tanks), a typical tractor trailer can haul a heavy load 1,440 miles. If a 140 kWh battery yields 100 miles of range, it would take 14.4 140 kWh battery packs to yield a 1,440-mile range. Even if the cost of batteries falls to $73/kWh and the energy efficiency doubles by 2030, the 1,440-mile battery pack would cost $146,765 (2,016 kWh @ $73/kWh) and it would weigh 7.2 times as much as “the engine, gearbox, emissions treatment system and fuel tank in a conventional tractor.”
So… Neither Red China’s nebulous deadline, nor Tesla’s latest Ponzi scheme is not going to put a dent in petroleum demand anywhere outside of fantasy land.
Here is a land of imagination, hopes and dreams. In this timeless land of enchantment the age of chivalry, magic and make-believe are reborn and fairy tales come true. Fantasyland is dedicated to the young and the young at heart, to those who believe that when you wish upon a star your dreams do come true.
— Walter E. Disney, July 17, 1955
About the author
In the interest of full disclosure: I have been employed in the U.S. oil industry as a geophysicist/geologist since 1981, with a six-year exile into management (2007-2013). I have always worked for “little oil” (as opposed to BIG OIL). I am a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) and Houston Geological Society (HGS). Despite my penchant for ridiculing greenschist, green is actually my favorite color… Oil is colored green on maps and well logs and I am a life-long New York Jets fan (argh).
I like oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear power and I even kind of like wind power…
Peak Oil is real but not really very relevant, abiotic oil is possible (despite a total lack of evidence for it) and is also irrelevant. Neither the reality of Peak Oil nor the lack of evidence of abiotic oil are part of a conspiracy to keep oil prices high. If it was, it would be a pretty p!$$ poor conspiracy because oil prices have been low for most of my career. And, no, ExxonMobil is not hiding the secret formula for turning (fill in the blank) into oil… But they did know all about Gorebal Warming waaay before Al Gore invented it… They knew it was wrong. When it comes to Gorebal Warming, I am a “luke warmer”… Gorebal Warming is just as irrelevant as Peak Oil, Abiotic Oil and Peak Demand.
As usual any and all sarcasm was purely intentional… except where it wasn’t.
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Does anybody really believe a word that comes out of China? Guess they are saying goodbye to gasoline powered cars and replacing them with coal powered cars.
One of the things I have noticed about the Klimate Krazies is that there a near-universal inability to perform basic mathematical operations ( i.e., addition, subtraction, multiplication and division).
They are, by and large, completely innumerate.
I don’t know if that is explanatory of the disproportionately large number of poets, English majors, art history majors and “artistes” present in the greenschist or not. It is a hypothesis.
I believe nothing out of China. They say anything they think the world wants to hear, because we have no way of monitoring what they will actually do. Stop even quoting what they say – it is a joke.
In fairness to the ChiCom’s, they didn’t really say much of anything. This story is 95% media spin on a nebulous comment.
“We power our mobile phones and our laptops with lithium-ion batteries—why not power our cars this way?”
Can’t argue with that logic. Also, propeller hats are powered by wind, so why not helicopters?
A wind-powered helicopter! Brilliant!!! Oh wait… A wind-powered helicopter is also called “autorotation.”
It also tends to go one direction only.
Since wind powered helicopters must be pushed by an IC powered propeller, the analogous situation for EVs would be an on-board IC generator.
SR
@Bruce Cobb Original question is correct. EVs work today, and though slightly more expensive than equivalent gasoline cars, pricing is coming down. 40 solar panels on a south facing roof can power your entire house and generate excess power for driving. Excess power generated can also be stored in batteries. Why can’t we power our cars that way? You can, and some are already doing it today.
stephenpace
Show me “that math” for 30 degree north in the high, clear, dry Mojave desert air. (1% of the country.)
Then for the hazy 32 degree southeast 1/4 of the country.
Then for Ohio plains.
Then for the NY upstate country.
For get the 30% of the population that lives in stacked apartments and cities who need cars as well in the real world outside of Manhattan, central Chicago, central Boston, and north Alexandria (Washington DC). “They” don’t matter in your utopia, do they?
That depends entirely on where you live.
The further north you go, the more panels you will need more.
If you don’t have sun for 100% of the day, you will need more.
If you get dust on them, you will need more.
After the first year, you will need more.
And if you don’t have a south facing roof, well you’re scr#ewed from the get go.
Does this mean China will no longer claim the entire South China Sea as its territory in order to exploit oil and gas? And will it give back it militarized man-made island to the rising seas meme of CAGW?
I don’t think so.
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/SCS1_zps4815b89f.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/SCS2_zps81b69352.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/SCS3_zpsead5bdc7.png
Scary, isn’t it?
Perhaps I’m naïve, but where are the EVs getting their power from? Surely, or quite likely, off in the distance there is a power plant churning through coal, oil, nat gas… Hard to see how this eliminates the fossil fuel economy. Of course there may be significant efficiency gains in an EV relative to ICE, but still…
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/motors/2017/08/18/greener-electricity-generation-makes-evs-cleaner-than-ever/
“Electricity used to charge electric vehicles (EVs) is now cleaner than ever before, a study has revealed.
The Electric Insights report, which was produced by Imperial College London researchers and Drax Power, found that electricity generation between April and June this year contained 199g of CO2 per kilowatt hour – 10 per cent less than last year’s minimum set.
This decarbonisation of electricity generation in the UK means that EVs are now cleaner than ever, as the energy used to charge them is increasingly coming from greener sources.”
Due to the topography of the land my house sits on, I do not have the luxury of parking my car immediately adjacent to my house and can see no future point when I will be able to plug my car in and charge it up. It’s worth noting that many people live in high rise buildings or in terraced houses where there are similar difficulties.
On average, 9 times per year, I make a 600 mile round trip that I complete in one day. I leave at 07:30 and return at 23:00. I cannot see a short to medium term time when that will be possible with a battery powered car.
At present, I often see difficulties with finding parking spaces. If we ever do get to the point where there are charging points at every parking space, some of these charging stations will breakdown and await maintenance. It is inevitable that some unfortunates will not be able to find a charging point.
There are so many problems with this technology that I do not see it being a realistic option until we reach science fiction levels of development. Sadly, due to the green enthusiasts and their desire to wipe out much of our existing ways of life, I don’t think we’re going to reach our full potential for development.
We must use our currently popular resources to get us to the next stage of development.
And EV advocates like to point to “free” charging stations, on lampposts and such. “Free” so long as only one or two cars per day charge there! We’ll see what happens when the number starts rising.
Free ain’t free.
As always, they are being subsidized by those who can’t afford to buy such toys.
Andrew
I like the idea of electric cars but with an excellent local bus service around here it would be an expensive luxury as a second car.
To be successful it needs to make the leap from second car to reliable family first car.
As well as the charging problems you mention, that means the vehicle being able to go x miles up hill and down dale, loaded with a family of four, luggage, with the heater, windscreen wipers, radio and lights on.
At the moment in those circumstances x is likely to be much less than 200 miles, and then you need to add in ‘y’ which is the time needed to recharge. Which probably means an expensive overnight stay ‘z’ somewhere with a recharging point, or to restrict yourself to less than 200 miles.
In which case it becomes an expensive second car with limited uses….
tonyb
City dwellers, the people most touted as being able to benefit from electric cars, are also the people least likely to have a place to charge those electric cars.
Well, London looks to be installing these widely… this pilot puts chargers in lamp posts:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-street-lamps-electric-car-charging-points-ubitricity-tech-firm-hounslow-council-richmond-a7809126.html
Yet another subsidy for wealthy people paid for by working people.
Sounds more like a Chinese PR exercise than any real goal.
I have a nice, comfortable car that my wife usually uses to commute, my daily commuter car that rarely goes over 100 miles per day, and a play car. I could see replacing my commuter car with an electric, except for one fatal flaw. They cost ~$15k more than a comparable gas car (Bolt vs Sonic). Not gonna happen.
Even the BBC report on this pointed out that China would have to drastically increase its coal fired power stations in order to provide the energy needed for the vehicles. Good news for Aussie coal exports?
In other news, Lithium mining starts in Cornwall England with new £1 million mine being opened with private investor and UK Govt support
tonyb
Of course China wants to convert to electric cars. They’re producing lots of cheap electricity from coal imported from N Korea. Although, now that coal imports from N Korea are part of the latest sanctions, will they change their minds? Probably not since they’re getting even more cheap coal from Australia, which by its ironic deference to pseudo green is phasing out coal for producing electricity.
Bingo. It makes sense for China to convert coal into electrons to power urban autos instead of using ICE powered cars in heavily polluted urban centers. China is also a country where everybody is equal but some are more equal than others, and only those elites more equal make up most of the driving public.
Doesn’t mean it makes sense anywhere else though. Tipping points? Ha!
those coal imports are down to temporary conditions. Chinese coal use has peaked.
China is building 600 new coal plants in the next 10 years.
Griff,
Not likely. They’re continuing to build coal plants and buying record amounts of coal from Australia. Anything the Chinese say about ‘climate change’ is purely for propaganda purposes to fool people like you who think CO2 is a driver of the climate. Keep in mind that if the world followed the Paris accords, the biggest beneficiary relative to global competitiveness would be China. If you can’t see why China would give lip service to this issue while otherwise ignoring it internally, your global warming goggles are even more foggier than usual.
@David Middleton Clearly this is an issue you have a lot of passion around. Since you are in Houston, I invite you to the Lightning on Wheels Electric Vehicle Panel on Thursday evening to share your wisdom:
Sept 14th, 2017 at 6 PM – 8 PM
Rice University BioScience Research Collaborative
6500 Main St, Houston, Texas 77030
https://www.facebook.com/events/112633849410757/
If you can’t make that you are welcome to stop by the National Drive Electric Week event at IKEA on Saturday:
Day: September 16, 2017
Time: 9:30 am until 12:30 pm
Location: IKEA Houston TX store at I-10 and Antoine Dr.
7810 Katy Fwy, Houston, TX 77024
https://driveelectricweek.org/event.php?eventid=904
We’ll have one of almost every current electric vehicle there plus some conversions.
Stephen,
Thank you very much for the invitation. However, I live in Dallas and work in Houston. I’m usually in Dallas on Saturdays… And, perhaps unsurprisingly, I’ve never set foot in an IKEA store… 😉
This week, I’m off on Friday. So, I will be on my way back to Dallas Thursday afternoon.
Maybe at some point in the future, I can make it to one of these events. Even though I view PEV’s as “toys,” they are cool toys. When Tesla had their showroom open at the Houston Galleria and Dallas Northpark Mall, I always stopped in to “window shop.” They are cool cars.
Electric vehicles have a value in high-density population centers, where limited utility and scope assure a design that is fit to purpose. So, this returns us to the question of environmental impact, including source, storage, and reclamation. The problem with grey technologies stems from political and scientific myths spread by industry, investors, lobbyists (e.g. environmentalists), and other stakeholders, which force an artificial perspective of their nature in isolation (e.g. laboratory a la CO2 re-radiative effective a.k.a. “greenhouse” effect) and in the wild.
I think you folks are missing the key word — HYBRID. That’s an ICE, a battery, and (an) electric motor(s). Toyota has sold a lot of Priusen (what’s the plural of Prius?) in North America. They warm up in cold weather without draining the battery. They get very good mileage in town and reasonable mileage on the highway. Their owners mostly don’t seem to hate them. Probably not what you want to tow a boat trailer, but apparently a more or less acceptable vehicle for lots of folks.
Last time I visited NYC, most of the taxis were hybrids.
The other key word is CHINA. Huge population (4x US). Large area (about the same size as the US or Canada Crowded cities. Rapidly growing GDP — lots of folks want cars. Notorious air pollution problems. Petroleum and natural gas reserves not known, but possibly not all that large. Seems not unreasonable to encourage the use of vehicles that use fuel sparingly when they use it and can operate as EVs for short trips using electricity generated hundreds of Km away. It’s probably easier to move electrons to town than to move tailpipe emissions out of town.
Lots of green schemes seem nutty to me. This one however looks like it might be rational.
The pollution problem in China isn’t coming from cars.
“The pollution problem in China isn’t coming from cars.”
Treble the number of vehicles on the road and move the coal plants away from the big cities, and it will be.
It is also from cars
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/china-to-scrap-millions-of-cars-to-ease-pollution
Don, no it won’t. Cars produce very, very little pollution.
Even in Los Angeles, most of the pollution is not coming from cars.
The taxes that would have to be pilled onto these electric vehicles to replace what comes from fossil fuels will put these electric vehicles out of reach for the majority. As it is now, they run up and down the road for nothing. That can’t last.
Policy-makers or wannabe policy-makers pushing electric cars are overlooking the obvious–where does the electricity come from to recharge the batteries? Most likely from a power plant which is burning natural gas or coal, which account for about 70% of the electric power generated in the United States. This means that using electric vehicles instead of gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles does not reduce emissions of CO2 or any “real” pollutants (such as carbon monoxide, or sulfur or nitrous oxides), but merely shifts the emission points from millions of cars on the road to a few hundred centralized electric generation plants.
A typical gasoline engine is about 35% efficient, meaning that about 35% of the energy obtained by burning gasoline is converted to the work required to move the car against friction, including air resistance. A typical natural-gas fired power plant is about 40% efficient, and an electric motor is about 80% efficient, meaning that about 32% of the energy from the natural gas would be converted to the work done by an electric car, not counting energy losses over high-tension transmission lines.
A gallon of gasoline has a heat of combustion of about 125 megajoules, or about 35 kWh. If 35% of this energy is converted to useful work, a gallon of gasoline provides about 12.2 kWh of work to a car. If an electric car motor is 80% efficient, about 15.3 kWh of electric power is needed to recharge the batteries with energy equivalent to one gallon of gasoline. At an assumed 10 cents per kWh, it would cost $1.53 of electric power to obtain the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline, which currently sells for about $2.50.
The owner of an electric car might save the equivalent of $1.00 per gallon, or about 3 to 5 cents per mile driven in fuel costs (depending on the miles per gallon of the gasoline-powered car), compared to a gasoline-powered car. So, if the electric car is driven 100,000 miles, the owner saves about $3,000 to $5,000 in fuel costs, which is probably much less than the extra cost of buying an electric car over a gasoline-powered car, and then there is the inconvenience of the short range and long recharging times of the electric car.
This calculation may shift if electric vehicles become more common, since this would increase the demand for electric power (and the coal and natural gas required to produce it) and decrease the demand for petroleum, meaning that gasoline would become cheaper and electric power would become more expensive. This would tend to shift the demand toward gasoline-powered cars, and away from electric vehicles.
@Steve Zell Actually, gasoline engines are typically less efficient than 35%. Try 20%. (Though diesel engines are higher–potentially 40%.) Toyota has one they claim is 38% but it is only 1.3L so probably isn’t in any US cars yet:
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1091436_toyota-gasoline-engine-achieves-thermal-efficiency-of-38-percent
All this said, if you do a complete well to wheel analysis, EVs always come out on top. That makes sense, too, given we need to account for pumping oil from deep underground, shipping it across vast oceans, refining it, pipelining it to market, reblending for local requirements, and trucking it to your corner gas station where you promptly waste 80% of it and it is gone forever. By contrast, EVs use domestic power sources, get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner (which it is since coal is being killed by cheap natural gas), plus you have options to generate your own power via solar. These guys have done the comparison, feel free to point out where their math is wrong if you disagree:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions#.V4-0jPmANBc
Well for one it’s from the Union of Concerned “Scientists” who have issues with contaminating their precious bodily fluids with GMOs. For another they make some pretty convenient comparisons (84mi range EV to a midsize gas-powered car). And finally, I’ll go with a real paper published in PNAS:
“In 1981, you could buy 5 and ½ inch floppy disks that held 128k of memory, a box of 12 was about 20 dollars. Now, a 4 Gb memory stick is not only smaller but costs about $6. For the same amount of money, you get roughly 100 billion times more memory in a smaller package.”
Those Forbes guys sure are good at that arithmetic thing.
4,000,000,000 / 128,000 = 31250.
Multiplying by 20/6 (to buy $20 of memory sticks) only gets you to ~100k.
So just a mere 1 million times short of the “100 billion” they claimed.
You are also off. 12 x 128k for $20 = 76,8k for $1; 4,194,304k for $6 = 699,051k for $1. It’s only 9,102 times.
I can foresee the day that there are only electric cars. Of course, there won’t be many human beings around to drive them and no real places to go, but I can see a day when only electric cars would be needed. It is likely, of course, that they will not work, because there probably won’t be electricity that day, either, but they will make nice places to shelter from a storm.
I can’t imagine why anyone would shell out a deposit to tesla….the balance sheet looks more like a company in bankruptcy. In the meantime Elon will be take his sizable cut and make the company go bellyup
$1000 refundable loan to Tesla makes sense if you factor in the federal $7500 subsidy that will run out in another year. If you’re early enough on the waiting list, you buy the car, take the subsidy, and sell it for $5000 less than MSRP. You make money and get to drive the car for 6 months in the meantime. Tesla has always sold for MSRP and there are fans that think this is a good thing compared to haggling with a dealership to get a price well under MSRP. .
@Jamie: I’ve been hearing the same “Tesla will go bankrupt” for 10 years. People said the same thing about Amazon when they were losing money. Both invested to get to scale because they knew they had a limited window. It is a vision and trust in that vision. Sure, it’s scary, but look how many people said it was impossible. Elon has succeeded in two very difficult businesses, rockets and cars. I wouldn’t bet against him.
Is this before or after the Great Chinese Financial Crisis?
If the Chinese Government decides something the people will obey.
They had better get their electrical system in place with enough capacity to handle all the demand when everyone plugs in every night to charge. The question becomes: what is worse/better coal generated CO2 or combustion engine CO2? Pick your poison.
The better choice by far is coal plants. Going to ultra-supercritical boilers at 600 C reduces CO2 emissions about 35%. The stacks can have scrubbers for SO2. From a scale standpoint, cleaning up coal is enormously more efficient.
The battery turning point each year is a decade away. China perhaps for urban areas wants to get control of suffocating smog that makes city life miserable. However, no batter car works in mountains or hilly terrain for very long. The mileage is for dead flat ground.
This is the worrying point. Presently the use of an EV is being heavily subsidised since EVs are not paying the equivalent of fuel duty which makes them appear cheap to run. But this certainly will not last.
How will the government deal with the loss of tax revenue taken from fuel? In Europe about 65% of the pump price is tax. According to Wikipedia, for the UK
Will the government put tax on electricity, or will it impose a very hefty licence fee on EVs. If electricity will be taxed then that would be very concerning especially for the poorer sections of society who might not even own a car.
Until such time as an EV costs approximately the same as its IC equivalent (say within $1,500 to $2,000 of the like for like model), I cannot see who would wish to waste money buying an EV.
Further, I envisage that EVs have considerably lower 2nd hand value. That is a problem not simply because depreciation is always the biggest overhead for the car buyer, if the car has a low 2nd hand value it becomes difficult to obtain finance secured on the vehicle, or leasing deals etc.
I bought a couple of 2nd hand cars nigh on 35 years ago that I still own. They are no longer used for daily transport, but I have driven approximately 600,000 miles in them and spent no more than about $250 on the engine of each. I have rehoned the block replaced piston rings and shells, reseated the valves, changed timing chains a few times, but that is all. Obviously, I have changed service parts (oil filters, air filters, exhausts, brake pads), but apart from that very little mechanical work has been needed.
In the UK you can buy a reasonable 2nd hand car for about £2,500 to £5,000 and expect to get 10 years of use out of it with little expense.
Who is going to be interested in buying a 3 to 5 year old EV, when it is likely that a new battery pack is going to be required in the immediate future? Especially when you can buy a 2nd hand IC car for less than the cost of the replacement battery pack!
You gotta pity the poor environmentalists. They just keep dreaming of a battery world where the battery works reliably and with high sustained output. Many have been dreaming this for 150 years. They keep dreaming. Environmentalism goals cannot advance without battery advances, which are not happening. It is the pretense the brick wall that does not exist. In fact, I don’t even think the earth has enough lead reserves to mine to convert China to electric cars. Certainly not enough rare earths.
Tesla cars use 3-phase induction motors without rare earth permanent magnets. Some other manufacturers do use PM motors. That battle has yet to be won in the marketplace, and availability of rare earth elements (mostly Neodymium) may be a key factor.
@Donald Kasper Actually, batteries have been improving 5-8% steadily since smartphones took off. Tesla actually doesn’t need batteries to get any better to put out a base $35k that will easily compete with a BMW 3 series. And there are no rare earth metals in a Tesla unless you count the Neodymium in the premium speaker package. Try again.
Well, consider all the components you need to maintain in a gasoline engine/car…
for a fleet owner, the total cost of ownership on EVs is likely to be lower…
http://www.fleeteurope.com/en/features/ev-and-traditional-car-reach-tco-parity-2018
Only if you pretend that your batteries are going to last forever.
Seems to me that taking deposits for the next next Tesla-mobile is a pretty good banking business. I bet there are a few vaporware producers who wish they could do it as well as Tesla does.
It’s a masterpiece or experimental financing.
@Michael hart I ordered a Tesla Model S “vaporware” car and provided one of those free interest loans to Tesla. I also bought the stock at $26.55. What did I get out of that? I had to wait two years, but I received a Motor Trend Car of the Year and was able to sell some stock and get a free car. Was it a risk, sure, but what investing isn’t? I could pull out the same Inigo Montoya quote David used for you. What product has Tesla made or promised to make “vaporware”? Some said Model S would never ship. Then they said Model X would never ship. And now even Model 3–but few believe that now. Model 3 is not only shipping, it is a game changer for ICE and they will sell every one they can make.
The Model 3 will make or break Tesla. The inverse relationship between revenue and cash flow is unsustainable.
http://www.capitalmarketlabs.com/blog_images/TSLArevfcf_915.PNG
Tony StarkElon Musk will eventually run out of OPM and the corporate welfare checks will soon be a thing of the past. Tesla’s Federal tax credits will begin to phase out after they deliver they 200,000th PEV. Based on current forecasts, that will occur in Q3 2018.“Current Expectations For $7,500 Federal Credit Phase-Out For Major US EV Makers (*aprox). Grey shaded areas are expected cumulative future sales in 000s. Colored blocks indicate stage of the Federal credit a particular OEM is at.” (Inside EVs)
When other automakers sell enough EV’s in California, the ZEV welfare checks will go away. Within 1 year of Model 3 full production, the Federal tax credit will start to phase out. Tesla has yet to even come close to generating a annual profit, despite massive corporate welfare.
The question is: Will the government allow Tesla to go broke?
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/09/elon-musk-shows-off-first-production-tesla-model-3.html
And the Model 3 is already falling short of the hype…
http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2017-sales-chart-August-vfinal3-714×800.png
16,624 total US PEV sales in August, 75 of which were Tesla Model S… Meanwhile Ford sold 77,007 F – Series pickup trucks in the same month. The bottom of the top 20 list, the GMC Sierra pickup truck even topped total PEV sales with 17,254 units in August.
http://www.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html
@David Middleton: Falling short? They’ve just configured the line and starting to make cars at a very low volume which increases every week. Wait until the ramp progresses. These types of numbers are why the shorters keep losing money because they read the headline and don’t know the next level behind that. They are then surprised when the ramp happens and the cars start roaring into town. The only disappointment is 450k people wanting their car today and some having to wait two years for it. But I’m on a Model 3 site and enjoy seeing the photos coming out every day of new owners. I’ve personally been to the factor and seen the new line. Much more automated than the old lines.
75 is 25% short of 100… I doubt they will deliver “more than 1,500 by September.” However, Tesla’s penchant for missing production guidance hasn’t slowed the flow of OPM. Their debt offering was so well received, that they bumped it to $1 8B from $1.5B, despite being well below investment grade.
As I stated earlier, the Model 3 will make or break Tesla.
@David Middleton The shorts got hung up on this for Model S. The week my Model S was made in Sept 2012, Tesla was making 50 cars per week. They ended 2012 with 2,650. The next year they made 22,477. In 2016 they made 76,230. If the ramp happens sooner, they’ll make a lot more cars for the year. If it happens later, they’ll make a lot less. Doesn’t make a bit of difference because they have the money in the bank to complete the ramp and it will happen regardless. Suppliers believe it too, unlike in Model S time when Tesla said “okay, we need the stuff now” and the suppliers panicked because Tesla exceeded the IHS projections by a TON (e.g. no one believed they would sell as many as they did). Fast forward to today, Tesla has sold 230,632 cars as of the end of Q2 2017. Still small by most OEM standards, but the numbers are about to grow a lot bigger with Model 3 about to take off. For every cancelled reservation, Tesla is replacing it with 2.
August 3, 2017…
http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-cancellations-how-many-2017-8
1,800 per day from Friday through Tuesday. Even if they took orders on Sunday, that’s only 9,000 orders… 1 new order for every 7 cancellations.