Full disclosure: I own an electric car, and I think they are useful for city transportation. However, having owned one for a decade, I can say that it hasn’t been practical or cost-effective. John Hardy believes they are the future, I’ll let you, the reader, decide. – Anthony Watts
The demise of the Western auto industry: Part 1 – the basics
By John Hardy
Preamble
In the West, almost all climate change activists consider Electric Vehicles (EVs) important because they are believed to emit less CO2 per mile. In contrast, many (but not all) climate sceptics consider them a waste of space because they regard them as a solution to a non-problem: they believe that all that EVs are good for is virtue signalling.
Actually, and quite regardless of “the environment”, EVs are poised to inflict the mother of all disruptions on the automotive industry. This can’t be explained (or dismissed) in a soundbite, so this is the first of three posts setting out why this might be so. This first post is mostly background. The second addresses the problem for the established automakers. The third addresses some misapprehensions about EVs.
The LA times reported in 2009 that the outgoing CEO of GM said that the biggest mistake he made was to kill the electric EV1 and throw away the technology lead that GM had acquired[1] , [2]. It isn’t just GM. The turgid response of all the big Western automakers leaves them at risk of being overtaken by agile Eastern competitors in the same way that the Swiss (mechanical) watch industry was overtaken in the 1980s by agile Eastern competitors making cheap accurate quartz watches[3]
What is so great about electric motors?
The internal combustion engine (ICE) is a complex beast which needs lots of air, lots of cooling and which generates large volumes of smelly exhaust. It has a high parts count, is a high maintenance device, and is plagued by noise and vibration. Worst of all it has an absurdly narrow torque band and won’t run at all below (typically) 500 r.p.m. or so. A lot of the complexity and expense in a modern ICE car is focused on minimizing these deficiencies.
By contrast, an electric motor is a model of flexibility and simplicity. Figure 1 shows the floor pan of the Tesla Model S.
The entire drive train consists of two metal cans, sandwiching a fixed-ratio final drive. The motor revs to about 15,000 r.pm. It produces good torque at zero r.p.m. and (in some models) peaks at over 400HP. No clutch, torque converter or variable-ratio gearbox is needed. The motor is an ordinary AC induction motor. It has no brushes and (apart from the bearings) one moving part. It contains no rare earth magnets. The inverter is solid state. No exhaust system, turbocharger, oil pump, coil, distributer, intake air filter, complex vibration damping or heat shields; no pistons, valves, pushrods, camshafts, lifters, catalytic converters……….
The end result is smooth, seamless but ruthless acceleration and whisper-quiet cruising. Some models have a smaller drive train between the front wheels. The two together can accelerate a 4,000lb car at around 1G from standstill to 60 m.p.h. in under 3 seconds.
There is more. The inverter can adjust the motor torque in milliseconds so traction control is far more accurate than for a piston engine. (Elon Musk once Tweeted “Tesla dual motor cars are also all-wheel drive. Main goal of dual motor was actually insane traction on snow. Insane speed was a side effect” [4] ).
The motor can also act as a brake, which recovers energy (much of the energy used to climb a hill is put back into the battery rolling down the other side). The same characteristic makes it possible to drive on just one pedal; press to go, release to stop. It also saves on brake wear (one example was an electric taxi that did over 100,000 miles on the original brake pads).
Why now?
Electric drive dominated the early years of the automobile, and the electric motor has never ceased to be vastly better than a piston engine for driving a vehicle. There were however two big snags and one lesser one with electric drive. All three have been solved in recent years.
The first problem was energy storage. Piston engines may be inefficient, but motor fuel packs a huge amount of energy into a small volume. Once a distribution infrastructure is in place, the fuel is easily and quickly replenished which allowed essentially unconstrained travel. By contrast the lead acid batteries that dominated electric traction until recently were totally outclassed on both counts; too little energy and too much time to replenish.
Enter the lithium ion battery. Compared with lead-acid, this stores maybe three times the energy per unit of weight or volume (some a bit more, some a bit less). It has a far longer life than a lead-acid battery, is tolerant of partial charging, has no significant memory effect problems and (critically) can be charged very fast. 20 minutes for 80% charge is easily achievable with little effect on cycle life using modern batteries if you can suck power out of the wall fast enough [5]
The second big change has been the development of power electronics. Until the 1970s, electric motors were hard to control [6]. At worst they were either on or off. At best, control was lethargic. That all changed with so-called Vector Control. Inside a modern motor controller (sometimes called an “inverter” if the motor is AC) there are a number of huge transistors, capable of switching hundreds of amps. With cunning and some capacitors these can produce virtually infinitely variable output. A modern EV can be inched along at a creeping pace with far more precision than an ICE car equipped with a clutch, and with less effort: no clutch slipping needed.
The third, lesser, but still important change has been the growing capability of digital processors to do complex calculations in real time. Until quite recently, electric motoring has depended upon series (brushed) direct current (DC) motors. These work well at low speeds but they tend to run out of torque at high r.p.m. and are more difficult to cool. The advent of modern microprocessors has made it possible to synthesise three phase alternating current (AC) at the necessary power levels from a battery. This in turn allows the use of simple induction motors – no brushes to wear out and better cooling. An induction motor is essentially a hunk of iron on a stick inside a tube containing some electrical windings. Machines don’t come much simpler. [Some manufacturers prefer permanent magnet motors. They are smaller and lighter yet, but rely on rare earth magnets which creates supply issues. These motors can also terminate themselves in a sudden melt-down if they get too hot. I am not a fan.]
What remains to be done?
Several things need to happen before EVs become acceptable as a complete replacement for piston engine cars: broadly price, range and fast-charge
Firstly price. This is partly an issue of scale. If you make a million of the same model car, cost per car is a lot less than if you make 10,000. The financial services company UBS recently tore down and analysed a Chevy Bolt. Their conclusion? “total cost of consumer ownership can reach parity with combustion engines from 2018” [7]
Secondly range and thirdly fast charge. The average private car in the UK does about 21 miles a day. In the US, it is about 30. Most people do most of their driving either commuting or local driving. The problem is the half-dozen trips a year to visit granny or go on holiday. There is also a small percentage of users who do a high daily mileage as part of their work.
My personal opinion is that a 300 mile range should work fine for almost everyone, so long as fast charge to 80% capacity takes no more than about 20 minutes. This is just based on the idea that I wouldn’t want to drive more than 300 miles without a coffee and a potty stop.
Tesla’s high-end cars are well past 300 mile range. Even the (relatively) humble Renault Zoe which initially had a 130 mile range has (or soon will have) a 250 mile range option. Fast charge has some distance to go yet in practice, but there is no intrinsic problem in reaching a 20 minute charge.
Price, range and fast charge. EVs are a “whole system” problem that goes far beyond just making a better box for the punter to sit in.
Conclusion
This has been a quick run-through of the theory of EVs. If you are not convinced, go and drive one. Trickle along at three miles an hour listening to the birds sing then floor it. By the time you reach 30 you will be convinced.
Part 2 of this series looks at the problems this creates for the established Western automakers, and part 3 considers common misconceptions which lead some people to conclude that EVs will not be viable in the near future.
References
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F#Response_from_General_Motors
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_crisis
[4] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/560900676453433344
[5] Tests run by the author using a 3C charge rate and lithium iron phosphate cells showed a rate of capacity loss only slightly steeper than similar cells at a 0.5C charge rate [1C is a charge rate numerically equal to the Amp-hr capacity of the battery e.g. 40 Amps for a 40 Amp-hr battery]. A 3C is nominally a full charge in 20 minutes (1/3rd of an hour)
[6] http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1325757
[7] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/05/19/electric-vehicles-cost-conventional-cars-2018/
Not to mention that in the US the price of gasoline stripped of taxes is on average $1.50 per gallon. If EVmarket penetration were to hit 10 to 20% of the overall vehicle market the price of gas could change to $.50 per gallon therebyfurther changing the overall cost comparison.
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Enter the lithium ion battery. Compared with lead-acid, this stores maybe three times the energy per unit of weight or volume (some a bit more, some a bit less). It has a far longer life than a lead-acid battery, is tolerant of partial charging, has no significant memory effect problems and (critically) can be charged very fast.
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Except, lead-acid batteries are tolerant of partial charging and have no memory effect problems. I think the author is confusing lead-acid batteries with nickel–cadmium batteries.
Jim
Unless they are deep cycle battery, you should never run them down passed 50%. They freeze and really can’t take too much heat.
Jim lead acid continually part charged sulphates
“F1 designer Gordon Murray unveils lightweight city car”
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-11301831
Click the link for more detail.
Sounds like a death trap to me, especially if it hits a high speed of 100MPH.
Have you seen what happens to a small car like that if it hits a rough spot or a piece of retread tire in the road, when it’s going a mere 70MPH? I have, Roger. The car was hanging upside down on the concrete lane separator and the driver was hanging halfway out of the car, either unconscious or dead.
Murray’s construction technique can be used for large cars as well, something the article mentioned. The cost savings in car-making are enormous, enough to undermine the attractiveness of public transport considerably.
The small versions would be accident-prone at high speeds in an encounter with some road debris. But that is likely an acceptable risk in most poor countries, where 70 mph speeds would be rare anyway. And the numerous EVs China intends to build will (I assume) be small and vulnerable to the same risks, so Murray’s smaller versions would probably be OK there. His low-cost construction technique would be appealing. His use of recycled materials would appeal to some people.
PS: IIRC, Murray’s cars can use any type of engine. ICE versions would, I assume, be more practical for small cars, there not being enough room for a big batter bank. Their gas mileage would be high and their emissions-per-mile low, reducing the attractiveness of EVs relative to ICEs.
“Imagine a car so narrow that two can drive next to each other in one lane”
Unfortunately, I am not that narrow.
I kind of agree that if the cost is reduced, the range increased in the charging time cut down to a few minutes the vehicles would be popular. But that’s sort of like saying if we had some bacon we could make bacon and eggs if we had some eggs.
What are the chances that building millions
instead of thousands of EV batteries (1200lb)
will cause an INCREASE in material costs?
no no no, sustainability logic does not allow for supply/demand arguments. Your must live in one of those flyover states where they haven’t learned how things work yet.
20 minutes to fill up my car? Seems rather 19th century “gotta feed the horse”.
On the long range this is 3X20 minutes and you do no good for the battery with this.
And if there are 5 people ahead of you in the line for charger station…
Americans drive approximately 11 billion miles a day. So let’s see what would be required in terms of electric generating capacity, based on the actual numbers (I’ll use the Tesla S with 70 kW-hr battery), to have an all-electric automobile nation.
The best range for the Tesla S with 70 kW-hr battery is 265 miles. So there needs to be enough electric generating capacity in place. This would mean about 41.5 million charges to full capacity per day. If everyone insists of fast charging, they’ll have to settle for the 120 kW Super Charger, which does the whole charge in 37.5 minutes.(30 minutes to 80%).
Now comes the tricky part. In planning for installed capacity, one would have to figure out the time of day at which the maximum number of charges go on at any one time. Presumably not all 41.5 million charges would all take place at once, but the capacity has to be there for what would be the worst case average observed, plus 3 sigma to cover both fluctuations in the number of charges at once and power outages.
Let’s take a simple case, in which the charges take place at uniform time spacing. So we’d be looking at 1.73 million charges going on at any given moment, cars would be taking 184.4 MW out of the grid. That doesn’t sound too bad. It’s about 208 GW. capacity requirement. Figuring 0.5% for operational outages, and 1.5% for planned outages, you’d need to have 213 GW capacity. The US has about 1,064 GW capacity at present, so the best case is that we’d have to add 20% more.
But the likelihood is that charging patterns would be vastly different from uniformly spread, is very, very high. In fact, it isn’t spread equally over days of the week. 16% of daily travel occurs on Fridays, That means that installed capacity would have to be 239 GW to cover Friday’s departure from the average. And in all likelihood, people would likely plug in at the end of a work-day, and so a large percentage of charging would be in the early evening. It’s this clustering that would actually drive total capacity requirements. Let’s say that 30% of charging takes place between 5:30 pm Eastern and 9:30 pm Eastern time. That’s an average of 12.45 million charges at any given time.requiring a capacity of almost 1.5 TW – 50% more than we already have.
Gasoline is storable, and this provides a buffer between supply and demand for the motive juice that electric cars can never achieve. It’s not a small thing.
What most fail to understand is that from a low charge is when maximum amps are used and the closer it gets to full charge the amps can reduce to under 10 amps, because charging causes heating of the battery that is read by the fast chargers to reduce damages to the battery. In other words the amount of amps is not a constant.
johchi7 “What most fail to understand”
Hang about! Didn’t you just get through telling us upthread that a flywheel can run a generator to keep the battery charged while defying the second law? Get some sleep.
As a durability test driver for a major automotive manufacturer for over 20 year’s. I know things that I cannot divulge do to secrecy clauses in my contract. That aaid. Anybody that has ever watched an EV fast charging knows that the screen shows the rate of AMPS and KW and the state of battery charging. That is how these Fast Chargers work in communications with the EV. Just as the EV’s have onboard dash monitoring of power usages and rate of discharging and the temperature of the battery pack. While testing vehicles, what we do places higher demands than normal drivers would do in the real world conditions…where 1 mile we drive is equal to multiple miles – according to the testing being done – to normal driving conditions. For EV’s a cold battery heats up faster and mileage is reduced with each fast charging, that takes longer to charge from 20% to full charge, from 1.5 to 98% over 2.25 hours to get 93% charge on a hot battery. Where each charging reduces the Amperage starting point and finnishes with a lower amperage going in.
Like most know-it-all’s you failed to take my challenge to look up free energy. One of the U-Tube video has a man in an obviously depressed country that is building and selling such a device. A smaller electric motor is turning the flywheel and the bigger generator is then engaged. He demonstrates how by connecting the electric from the generator to the electric motor – after unplugging it – keeps the momentum of the flywheel going that keeps the generator running. Then he connects his shop light and several power hand tools to the system all running simultaneously to it. Showing that no other external power source is needed. That is just one of many ways to show it works. Many other people have done this on different scales.
Take your law’s and trash them. This can be done in many ways of your choice.
What you fail to realize is that not only have you not refuted the point, you have actually strengthened it.
The above calculation assumes a constant charging rate.
You have shown that the initial charging rate is faster than average, slowly dropping down to below the average.
The stress on the system comes from the highest charging rate, and thanks to your info we now know that this number is well above the average rate.
johchi7
“A smaller electric motor is turning the flywheel and the bigger generator is then engaged. [Then] by connecting the electric from the generator to the electric motor – after unplugging it – keeps the momentum of the flywheel going that keeps the generator running. …no other external power source is needed. Take your law’s and trash them.”
I’m pretty sure I watched that video (and several others) a few weeks ago, and could not imagine how he can make energy from nothing. If he has really trashed the laws of thermodynamics, as you advise me to do, then we can all happily go off grid. So I’m wondering if you have constructed such a system in your own garage. Perhaps you could supply some mathematical proof to boost my confidence. I just want to see where the power comes from.
Slacko I a not a mathematician and I have a 9th grade education that got great grades, but life has a way of throwing us curve balls and mine was having to go to work to help my family. But simple physics of having a counterbalanced heavy flywheel provides the inertia by taking a little horsepower input to keep it turning and increase the output horsepower. The only requirement is having the RPMs match the requirements of the generator and determining the horsepower needed for it that the weight of the flywheel would have to be as well as how big the electric motor needs to be and the size of the pulley’s. Once that flywheel is spinning and the weighted side falling by gravity, you are just helping to get the weighted side to the top with minimal input, but the draw of the generator under a load would stop it from turning if there isn’t enough power input.
That these EVs are already supplying power to the wheels at high torque and horsepower diverting a fraction of that to a flywheel to a generator as an onboard power source to charge the battery, as it is needed, while moving…would not be that difficult to figure out. And even adding a small electric motor that draws a fraction of the battery power with a generator that inputs more while just sitting at a traffic light should not be that difficult either. Because these EVs have everything controlled by a computer, the regulating of this would take a little tweaking. Because EVs usually shut down when exterior charging is connected and just turning the system on will disconnect the charger. Yet, braking and going down grade generates power returned to the battery.
I wish I had the time to take one of my 50 lb iron weight lifting weights to experiment with this myself. Just by grinding a little iron off one side is enough to make it a counterbalanced flywheel. That is what I did with the steam engine I made, I used a 25 lb weight flywheel to run the generator for it and a much bigger generator can be added to that system than the one it is using now. So I’ll use that one for this project…if I get the time and a little cash it will take for materials.
Horses for courses.
Scott of the Antarctic realised too late that he had sent a man to do a dog’s job.
They’re great for large congested asian cities where the idling of a hundred cars at red lights and stalled traffic is a smelly pollution hazard for pedestrians and for bicyclists like myself. The evidence of that is Bangkok and Chongqing. The other technology that also works is natural gas not just cars but for heavy trucks as well. The evidence for that is Dhaka Bangladesh, one of the most congested cities in the world but with zero smelly pollution because EVERY vehicle there runs on gas.
Especially in high-density, closed-space population centers.
The value of electric cars is in shifting the source of pollution. This may be a significant criterion when characterizing energy consumption.
Except most of the pollution isn’t coming from cars.
Here’s a link to PBS’s history of the electric vehicle. It’s never had the popularity or offered the real freedom of the gasoline-powered car, for a very good reason: batteries aren’t particularly practical. http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html
In regard to my rant earlier, I’d like all those promoting batteries and how practical they are to remember that batteries have a lifespan of use, including rechargeability, before they become useless. At some point, the galvanic reaction required to make them useful is so diminished that the battery is useless. I have flashlights with lithium batteries that become completely useless after XXX recharging cycles and have to be disposed of, period. They will no longer accept the recharge at all. As a result, they become pollutants.
All of these things are made with materials that are as polluting as an end product can get. China is awash in dumps with acres and acres of dumped computers, dumped and useless computer parts and unusable batteries and other such things. They have become polluting trash that will not go away, but can’t be turned into something else. I don’t have to make that up. You can find it yourselves.
You can run all the formulae you want to, expound as many ‘recycle this’ and ‘recharge that’ as you want to, but it will not alter that fact that battery-powered vehicles have less practicality than their petroleum-powered counterparts, and at the end of their usefulness, are certainly more polluting and less practical than my 2001 Ford Escape.
And here’s one more thing: I doubt that any of you have been involved in a car fire caused by a battery. Well, I have.
There is NO WAY to stop it, short of disconnecting the leads from the battery terminals to the sparkplugs. It happened to me in 1969 on the way to work from my apartment in Alexandria, VA, to NAS Anacostia, WDC, in the middle of the George Washington Bridge on the Beltway. I had no fire extinguisher and even if I’d had one, in an electric fire it is USELESS. I could not get the lines loose, either. The battery continued to send a charge thru the distributor to the ignition/combustion system in the engine. The only thing that stopped this was someone I worked with yanked the lines off the battery terminals and that cut the power to the fire. The engine was completely ruined. I had to buy a new car.
My insurance company would not cover the cost of the damage or replacing my car, either. And that is something else you need to think about: your insurer may and likely will refuse to cover your electric vehicle, period, especially with the battery fires that seem to be so common in electric vehicles. In those videos we keep seeing, the battery fire consumes the vehicle entirely, leaving you with a payment for nothing, in addition to which, you may be trapped in the vehicle because you can’t get the doors unlocked and get to safety.
So if you think electric vehicles are the big answer to everything – well, they are NOT.
So you have a electric fire in an gasoline-powered car and you still drive them? Wow.
That was a Dodge and it was almost 50 years ago and Chrysler products were junk.
I drive a Ford. End of story.
Also, skeptical, you just let everyone know that you are completely uninformed as to how internal combustion engines work.
You figure out yet where the heat from your fridge or A/C goes yet Sara? When you answer that question, I will take you seriously on batteries.
Considering the fantasies you’ve been trying to sell E2, you have no room to complain about anyone else’s understanding.
We have two cars, and use one of them most of the time to drive to work and back. We work together and have less than 10 miles to work. If we had an electric, we would only visit the gas station when we travel out of town to the other side of the state, to visit the kids, or when we pull the trailer out west. So an EV could work for us. I am waiting for a little more diversity in consumer choices. If there was a EV that looked like a Honda Fit, we would buy it.
One interesting thing about EVs in a snowy environ is that all 4 wheels are under traction control, and I wonder how that improves things, both for acceleration and braking. Maybe this year, I’ll do a test drive in a snow storm…
RS …. unless u have a really weird couple of cars you already have brakes on all 4 wheels and likely antilock brakes. Further you may live in a snowier spot than me (last year 1050 cm …. two years ago just over 1100 cms) but I doubt it and trust me the 4 wheel drive or brakes don’t matter in the real slick and deep stuff. What works are the best snow tires money can buy and a good shovel!
The other thing that u want is a really good heater that can make your car feel like a sauna when it is -20C or colder. Electrics just can’t do that.
car heaters don’t seem to work much in just 10 miles, so that doesn’t matter. And, I don’t doubt electric car have brakes on all 4 wheels, but I wonder how them might work compared to conventional brakes, so I will test them.
Really? Even with our diesel VW Golf, the heater’s working inside 2 miles.
“The council is also offering residents and businesses $5,000 to install their own charging points and will consider installing faster super chargers around the city in the future.”
Upmarket Tesla owners would be smiling in a State that has to install diesel generators because it hasn’t got enough reliable power so go figure with these sticky fingered slushfunders and their pet peccadillos-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-23/adelaide-city-council-rollout-40-electric-car-charging-stations/7958074
First they want their purchase of the car to be subsidized.
Then they whine that their fuel of choice isn’t subsidized enough.
Now they are demanding that other people pay for their charging stations as well.
The increase in health care costs due to automobile emissions are paid for by those who drive EVs.
So how many years will it take me to tow my 20,000 fifth wheel home from coast to coast. I’m a full time Rver, doing contract work for major companies..
For some, an EV may work, but not me…
Did you consider the massive loss of highway and infrastructure maintenance funding when all cars are EVs?
In California now, the gas tax is 20c per gallon.
Another free subsidy we’re paying for the elites driving their fancy electric toys.
No thanks.
How one dimensional. Did you consider that there are other ways to get funding other than gas taxes?
“How one dimensional. Did you consider that there are other ways to get funding other than gas taxes?”
Yeah, I feel your pain. Reality tends to limit the dimensions available for dreaming in!
Sure, you could tax unicorn manure, fairy turds, and other fanciful items.
In the meantime, here in this dimension, many EVs are bought for the subsidized free ride provided to the Musk-worshippers: free use of our roads, free charging stations, direct tax credits for their unicorn-mobiles, access to HOV lanes, and much, much more.
As many others have pointed out, here and elsewhere, without those free rides, demand for EVs collapses.
Sign me up for the unicorn gas tax hike!
you know that you apply once a year for a registration that could have an odometer reading on it. And…
Like most of your ideas, this one is too simplistic.
Yes, they could charge based on total miles driven, but how would that money be distributed?
Which cities get a share, which counties, which states?
Not everyone does all of their driving inside a single city or county.
“Yes, they could charge based on total miles driven, but how would that money be distributed?
Which cities get a share, which counties, which states?
Not everyone does all of their driving inside a single city or county.”
Like most of your posts, this one is wrong.People cross city and county lines all the time in cars using gas purchased elsewhere. So whatever problem you have envisioned already exists in the ICE world, and we’ve managed to get by.
I just took part in a pilot program in California that automatically monitored my mileage and sent me a (fake) monthly bill for the miles I drove to cover highway maintenance, etc. As EV’s become more popular, you can bet that the Government will find an effective way to tax their use to cover highway maintenance. They’re already working on it.
Great. But as mentioned above, a huge part of the allure of EVs is that you now DO NOT pay for your use of the highways like us drivers of IC vehicles do.
It’s the point of government coercion and subsidies–I’m coerced to pay for your highway use, and you’re subsidized for buying Elon’s toys.
Same with access to HOV lanes for EVs.
When these subsidies and coercive tactics are removed, who’ll drive an EV?
Electric motors are wonderful. Simple, efficient, and powerful.
The problem is the low energy density of batteries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#/media/File:Energy_density.svg
Along with battery R&D, Japanese car companies are working on hydrogen fuels cells.
And failing!
Toyota is very good at green washing.
Citation, if you please.
Hydrogen also has a very low energy density. Especially when you consider the weight of the tank.
Coincidentally, on last Friday 3Nov2017 I took my first test drive in a Tesla Model X SUV. Why? Because my young daughter wanted to, and I have always liked the torque-speed characteristic of electric cars.
I must say the Tesla Model X was a marvel of engineering – a great achievement for any car company with ~100 years of experience, and a truly remarkable achievement for a new company – to build a new model with this quality and sophistication.
The recharging power source is a problem due to inadequate power lines, but I have written previously about generating one’s own electricity from a household natural gas generator – getting off the grid would allow huge savings in electricity that have been allowed to skyrocket due to costs of grid generation (especially wind and solar), transmission, distribution and administration.
Cost is very high – about Cdn$150,000, but this will be solved over time.
I liked it and I hope to see electric cars become a commercial success.
“I have written previously about generating one’s own electricity…”
But Allan has not done it.
Allan…a Nat Gas stationary fuel cell would be revolutionary, (no moving parts) and would give Govt’s a kick in the rear end about raising electricity and ‘delivery’ charges. I just wonder if Gov’t and utilities would allow this since you would be able to net meter the grid (say up to 100 Kw as per some jurisdictions) and charge your own EV, as well as provide Distributed Generation to the local grid. As you know, we have enough Nat Gas in NA to last for at least 100 years, if we don’t give it all away via LNG. Using NG as you suggest, would be a solution in not having to oversize the grid, at least not the high voltage Transmission grid or or build additional local generation assets. And NG is as clean as it gets for a fossil fuel and still sense enough fuel to be valuable via a very small gas line to every house as we do in many locations. The waste heat would heat houses in winter, and if a house did have an EV, that could also be a grid load/demand leveller.
Please ignore my comments on old engineers upthread…I think you have hit the nail on the head. Localized generation and distribution is the holy grail of what we need to do cost effectively. Solar rooftop was a lame inefficient try, but the subsidized cost was too much, and the energy density too low to make a 24/7 difference. Good to see you at least want to see EV’s become a commercial success.
Hi Earlthling.
There are several methane fuel cells in the market. Here is one:
http://www.bloomenergy.com/
Not sure how good they are yet, but…
_____________________________
Hi Donald,
I can see no rational reason for natural gas rationing in California – it appears to be a result of bad politics.
When toxic greens and idiot politicians fool with energy systems, bad things happen. The anti-pipeline crowd caused the incineration of ~47 people in Lac Megantic Quebec when an oil train derailed.. This is a tiny fraction of the many tens of millions of lives that have been destroyed by toxic greens over past decades.
Regards, Allan
For a very long time, decades, we have had natural gas rationing in Southern California. Going big on gas means you get hit will all sorts of excess use fees.
“We’re gonna need a bigger battery”
How quick is the quick charger when you’re 4th in line waiting to charge ?
“I doubt anything will ever replace electricity since it is 100% efficient at point of use, at the speed of light.”
Far from it. When current flows, electrical components get hot.
BEV ignore that motors are less efficient at higher power. Fast charging produces more heat and therefore less efficient.
Houses in use gas heat where it is available. much more efficient.
Nat Gas is cheaper is why it is used. If talking about NG efficiency, then you have to add the compressor stations, the drilling for the gas etc, and a long supply chain including the pipe to get it to you. Yes, there is losses in getting electricity transmitted, (there is no free lunch for anything) but when you finally use it say in a electric heater in your house, it is 100% efficient in so far as converting the elections you get to thermal heat. But of course there is losses, all the way back to the generator including wire, multiple transformers. And so on. But electricity is as pure an energy source as you can get, and I don’t think it will be replaced by anything in our long term future as humans. And it is at the speed of light.
The lower cost to the home user of natural gas is an indication that it is more efficient, all things considered, than electricity.
Roger,
Correct homes with electric heat in the NE are expensive to heat with electricity. Nobody wants it today.
The most efficient motor system made so far uses steam. To run distillation and other operations at refiners, they don’t use electricity, they don’t use fuel they make, they make steam and pump it around to where it is needed to run motors.
Interesting point, I don’t know the split but often a steam turbine is used with a backup electric motor in case there is a loss of steam or to do periodic maintenance on the pump or driver.
Predictably, most of the comments here are critical and narrow-minded; thus the unsurprising lack of facts and the stubborn repetition of canards about EVs as if these are intractable problems inherent to the technology: expensive batteries, poor range, high cost subsidized by government, lack of infrastructure, dearth of rate-earth minerals for motors, etc. The author addressed all of these but apparently none of the critics actually read the article for comprehension. All of these technical problems are solvable. There is no doubt that the power density, charge rate and cycle life of batteries will rapidly improve while the cost goes down. Just because EVs are relatively expensive in 2017 doesn’t mean they will be by 2022. With inevitable technological improvements, it is possible that they will eventually be cheaper than ICE vehicles. It will not surprise me at all if EVs dominate the market in the next two to three decades. I don’t currently own one but I also don’t buy new cars for economic reasons. I would like to own one because my typical travel falls well within the current battery range. It’s the cost that still dissuades me. Eventually they will be cheap enough and I will enthusiastically buy one.
You, on the other hand, ignore the current performance of batteries, and the historic rate of improvement in batteries. Sure, someone could come up with a new battery chemistry with the energy density of gas or diesel fuel, but no one has, and those who know potential battery or other energy storage technologies do not expect that to happen anytime soon.
What the critics of EV’s are addressing is that the advocates act as if EVs were viable for general use now. It is sheer wishful thinking to require something that does not exist.
Stinkerp: Excuse the “Stinkers” above—it was the result of an autocorrect.
EVs are viable now. For 80% of vehicle drivers, a 300 mile range is more than adequate.
That 300 mile range is nominal, and about as real as the nameplate rating of wind turbines. Actually using heat, or air conditioning, or driving fast on a hilly road will reduce that to something about as real as the portion size on packaged food.
“All of these technical problems are solvable.”
Could be just like we might be able to double or treble the miles per gallon out of our current fuels so why don’t we invest all that taxpayer dough into that? Get the picture with sponsoring noble causes?
The enviro eco dream — a battery that works under large loads for a long time. Dream on, it is bed time.
Did the author or I suggest “sponsoring noble causes”? You made an assumption and you know what they say about assuming things….
Unlike the vast majority of commenters here, I pay attention to the technology involved in EVs. Batteries are the weakest link. There are numerous labs that have already demonstrated working batteries with much higher power storage density and cycle life but none have made it to market yet because they are a.) new, b.) in some cases more expensive, and c.) require developing a method to scale up manufacturing en masse, which takes time. The current manufacturing lines are designed for Li-Ion technology and need a large capital expenditure to modify them for the newer technologies coming out of labs. The ones likely to be most successful initially are the ones that require fewer changes to the manufacturing process. The fact that there are a bunch of labs showing promising results means a lot of people are working on this and, unlike nuclear fusion which always only a decade away, the labs have demonstrated actual working batteries. Whether or not batteries will ever exceed the power density of petrol is beside the point. Simple economics dictates that if they can be made cheap enough and powerful enough to compete for any applications where ICE power plants current prevail, EVs will take over. Which, by the way, is why so many automakers are jumping on the bandwagon even as subsidies are beginning to expire.
Stinkers: You could have written your comment above ten years ago. There have been promising breakthroughs in batteries for decades, but they don’t seem to pan out, which suggests that today’s lab results are likely more of the same dead ends.
Stinkerp: Excuse the “Stinkers” above—it was the result of an autocorrect.
All of the technical problems with fusion energy are solvable.
All the technical problems with anti-matter are solvable.
Glad to see to you are finally making sense MarkW. Maybe there is hope for you yet. A PET scan is indeed cutting edge technology utilizing antimatter, which is a bit more complicated than induction coil charging.
Antimatter is used practically in medical imaging. A PET scan stands for Positron Emission Tomography, and as we know a positron is a particle of antimatter. During a PET scan, a molecule very much like glucose (sugar) called FDG or Fludeoxyglucose (18F) is put into the body. This molecule is like glucose, so it goes where ever glucose would go. However, it has a fluorine-18 isotope in it, which emits positrons.
So positrons leave the FDG, but positrons are antimatter and annihilate anytime they encounter an electron (which is matter). This happens, and gamma photons are produced. These gamma photons can be detected outside the body. So, the annihilation event between matter and antimatter can be used to map where the FDG goes and how much of it there is.
Thanks stinkerp
Probably the most energy efficient mode of land transportation (aside from the bicycle) ever devised is the railroad train. An ad by CSX, back in 2013, claimed that a train could move 1 ton of cargo 436 miles on 1 gallon of fuel. That was unbelievable to me, until I looked at the engineering handbooks for train design, and did some calculations with the actual power output of locomotives. Turns out, it is true for travel over flat land. But the overall average considering terrain is not that much worse. It’s due to the fact that rolling friction of steel wheels on steel track is almost vanishingly small, and the form drag is against a shape with an equivalent ballistic coefficient of over 50,000 pounds per square foot.
Diesel electric locomotives, however, are designed differently than hybrid cars. The battery bank in a locomotive is limited in size to that required for short power excursions. The diesel engine itself runs at almost constant power, and through the generator-motor pair drives the wheels with no mechanical transmission loss. Hybrid cars seem to be designed to run on electricity until the battery charge is too low, then start the engine to recharge them.
That’s nuts. Cruising in an automobile at 60 mph requires about 12 hp (8,940 W). The hybrid design point should be cruise plus enough power to run all accessories (air conditioning being the highest at about 5 hp). An engine that runs efficiently at between 12 and 18 hp would suffice. Battery power sufficient to handle excursions of up to a few minutes. For example, climbing a 6% grade in a 4,000 pound car would require 30 hp at 60 mph (roughly). So the added power requirement would be another 12 hp (with A/C running), or 8,940 W. If the grade lasted for 20 miles (a 6,325 foot elevation change), the battery requirement would be 2.98 kW-hr. That’s one heck of a lot less than what either hybrids or full EVs have. Oh, in those passing situations where you need blinding acceleration, a 2.98 kW-hr capacity could deliver 480 hp for 30 seconds. I’ve never used full power for that length of time.
The best solution is a hybrid that is more like a diesel locomotive, where the electric part is merely a much, much more efficient way of delivering engine power to the wheels. And a much smaller electrical energy reservoir is then sufficient for transients. On top of all that, you retain the time-damping advantages of the petroleum supply line, and need no new electrical infrastructure.
hybrids certainly have a place … as they already do in the current car inventory mix … they aren’t EV’s …
Except of course, the “20 minutes recharge” is likely to be much longer, because you will have to wait for the people ahead of you in the line.
Other things missed in this one-sided analysis:
– cost of battery replacement
– the fire risk of sitting right atop a huge mass of one of the most reactive elements there is
– the lack of an adequate power infrastructure to charge these things
– most people don’t have the need or desire to go 0-60 in 3 seconds. My ICE car will do 0-60 in 6 seconds they tell me, but I’ve never attempted it.
– the massive torque of EVs wreaks havoc with tires. I have heard that Tesla owners go through a set of tires a year.
– ICE vehicles are today pretty darned refined and reliable. Sure, lots of moving parts, but as long as they are reliable I could care less. I change the oil every 10,000 miles, plus do a few minor maintenance tasks after long intervals and I’m fine through 100,000 miles.
Hmmm. I wonder how long we had to wait for 4 car lines to disappear in gas lines.
Maybe a month?
John :”A lot of things missing…”. There is a part 2 & a part 3 if Anthony choses to post them
How do you get your fast charge in Oodnadatta, assuming you can make it there in the first place? I guess the road house has to install a large Diesel generator(s), or maybe you could just tow your own trailer mounted generator and fuel supply?
Likewise with renewables madness already forcing the shutting down Australia’s existing reliable coal power stations don’t even think about building the new ones that would be needed to charge the burgeoning electric fleet. Oh, so it’ll be windmill or solar power? Say no more.
the reason we have been perfecting the ICE (and we have perfected it, its now not uncommon for engines to be able last 200-300 thousand miles) is because they burn the most energy dense fuels in the world, gasoline and diesel. Electric car batteries will never get near the energy density and SAFETY of gasoline, ever.
Actullay Uranium is probably the most energy dense fuel in the world.
Anti-matter beats that by a long shot.