Guest essay by John Hardy
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
Part 1 of this series expressed the view that regardless of “the environment”, EVs are poised to inflict a massive disruption on the automotive industry, and outlined the strengths of the technology and some of the reasons that it is happening now.
Part 2 discussed the main issues for Western automakers in handling this disruption
Part 3 below is devoted to common misconceptions which cause some to mistakenly conclude that EVs will not be practicable in the foreseeable future.
The demise of the Western auto industry: Part 3 – common misconceptions
Misconception 1: batteries will never get us to acceptable range.
The combination of a 300 mile range and fast charge should be plenty. How many people routinely drive more than 300 miles without stopping for toilet and/or food? For most people, most of the time averaging 20 – 30 miles per day [1], charging could be done once a week. “Fast charge” needs to be fast however: 20 minutes from empty to 80% charge. The batteries are well able to handle this. The infrastructure uses well-understood technology (300+ Kw charging stations already exist in Beijing for buses [2]). Several current production EVs have a range of over 200 miles and some over 300.
Misconception 2: if EVs take off, electrical distribution networks won’t cope.
With an average daily mileage for private cars of 20-30 miles per day and 3-4 miles per kW-hr the average charge needed is 5 to 10 kW-hr a day, equivalent to running a 7 kW electric shower for 40 to 80 minutes or warming up a few storage heaters over 5-6 hours.
Another mistaken assumption is that everyone will come home and charge at peak time in the early evening. Once again this is highly unlikely to become a problem. Incentivising people to charge off peak is trivial, as is the technology. I have my car set to start charging at 1:00 a.m. when my electricity price almost halves.
Misconception 3: EV charging will require rewiring all the houses in the land.
UK standard sockets handle almost 3 kW. Recharging an average day’s driving just from a wall socket might take 2 – 4 hours. Electric showers may run over 10kW, so adding a 10kW EV wall box is no more complex than installing an electric shower and would recharge an exhausted battery in a 300 mile range car in 7-10 hours.
Misconception 4: Generating capacity will be insufficient
It is sometimes said that if EVs take off, a huge increase in generating capacity will be needed. In the UK there were some scary (and ill-informed) press comments on a document published recently by the National Grid entitled Future Energy Scenarios (FES). The National Grid looked at four different scenarios. One of them concluded that additional demand resulting from an all-EV world would be about 5 Gw. On the face of it, this doesn’t seem to compute: to recharge an EV like the Chevy Bolt or the Tesla Model 3 takes about 75 kW-hrs. 5 Gw over 24 hours is 120 Gw hrs or 120 million Kw-hrs, so 5 Gw extra sounds like it would cope with maybe 1 – 2 million EVs rather than the 30 million or so that would be on UK roads today if all our piston-engined cars became EVs overnight.
There are two factors at work here. Firstly as discussed earlier, EVs used as private cars need an average 5-10 Kw-hr per vehicle per day, so 120 Gw-hr would in theory support a population of 12 million vehicles.
There is another critical issue though: exploiting the variability of demand. Let us do some mental experiments:
Figure 1 is a graph of UK power requirements on a typical working day in winter. (The pattern and the numerical values will be different in Australia or the USA, but the principle is the same). The area under the line (the blue area in Figure 1) is the total electrical energy required during the 24 hours – 965 Gw-hrs in this example. Note that the power requirement varies greatly from a low around 30000 Mw (30 Gw) in the early hours of the morning to almost 50 Gw at 6:00 in the evening.
If the system was capable of sustaining 50 Gw for 24 hours, an additional 230 Gw-hrs could be generated (Figure 2):
230 Gw-hrs is 230,000,000 kw-hrs. Recall that to recharge an EV that has covered the UK average daily private car mileage, 5 – 10 Kw-hours are needed. So if we could put all the available 230 Gw-hrs into EV batteries we could, crudely and theoretically, service a population of between 32 million and 46 million EVs without any additional capacity. At the end of March 2017 there were around ~37 million vehicles licensed in Great Britain, of which ~31 million were cars [3]
Of course this analysis is simplified. It ignores a myriad of variables such as pumped storage, power imported from other countries, battery powered trucks, capacity currently used to refine and distribute petrol and so on, but as an order-of magnitude approximation it is useful.
Is it possible to manage demand like this? Certainly it is. All that is required is to give the control of “normal” charge rate to centralised automated processes (with appropriate over rides, agreed contractual arrangements and financial incentives). The technology to achieve this is straightforward.
But there is an even simpler way: between midnight and 7:00 a.m. the cumulative “energy available” is about 133 Gw-hrs: sufficient (theoretically) to do an average day’s charge on between 18 million and 26 million EVs. My electricity almost halves in price during those hours and my EV is capable of starting to charge at any time I wish; so I do most of my charging in those hours (Figure 3).
There is another consideration here. One of the juggling acts that the controllers of any grid system must manage is spikes and troughs in demand. Electricity must in general be consumed as it is generated: so a sudden change in demand may require the start-up of additional generating capacity, the use of pumped storage, reducing supply to a flexible consumer, additional imports etc. If they do it right, voltage and frequency stay steady and nobody notices. If they get it slightly wrong we have temporary brownouts. If they make a complete mess of things, or are hit by too many variables at once the system can collapse as happened recently in South Australia.
Figure 4 is an example of just such a peak. It is half time in a televised football (soccer) match. Within a minute or so the demand goes up by around 1 Gw. This is about the total output of the Sizewell B nuclear power plant, or a quarter of the capacity of the Drax power station – largest in the UK.
Wind energy complicates this juggling act because the output of a wind turbine is intrinsically variable and can change extremely rapidly. A sudden storm hitting a wind farm such as the London Array (630 Mw) could take ½ Gw off line in seconds. With the right technology and the right contractual arrangements between householders and the energy companies, 30 million EVs provide a powerful and flexible tool for the unseen (and under-valued) grid jugglers.
Time for another thought experiment.
Suppose our 30 million EVs had a battery capacity of 75 kW-hrs (similar to today’s Chevy Bolt and entry level Tesla Model 3). Suppose the contractual deal was that the grid managers could help themselves to (say) 10% of that capacity any time the vehicle was plugged in, provided that it was fully charged by a specified time. That would theoretically provide a 200+ Gw-hr buffer which could be dialled up and down almost instantly. In practice of course it would be less (not all the EVs would be plugged in and some would be less than 90% charged), but even (say) 50 Gw-hrs would be handy: it far exceeds the UK’s current pumped storage capacity for example.
[As an aside, whilst this sort of buffer would be very helpful in managing short-term peaks and troughs, the idea of 100% wind/solar with battery back-up for days or weeks is infeasible with current technology in the foreseeable future. Vey roughly UK demand in winter is around 1000 Gw-hr/day. If the sun didn’t shine and the wind didn’t blow for ten days, the UK alone would need ~10,000 Gw-hr of battery storage. That is 4-5 times the total battery capacity of a fleet of 30 million electric cars, and more than 300 times the total world output of lithium ion batteries in 2014]
Misconception #5: EVs will be constrained by a shortage of lithium
There is not enough lead around to power a large fleet of EVs, but there is almost certainly enough lithium.
Two factors in particular help
- Lithium is not like oil. Oil is dug up, refined, distributed and burned. The supply requirements are ongoing. By contrast, lithium is extracted, made into batteries and, er that’s it for ten years or so. It is then (at least partially) recycled. Once lithium is in the system it will (mostly) stay there.
- Lithium is not like lead. Very roughly, 60% of the weight of a lead acid battery is lead [4] and the energy density of a lead acid battery is about 30 watt-hours per kg; so a 75 Kw-hr lead acid battery (Chevy Bolt size) would weigh about 2,500 kg, of which 1,500 kg would be lead (that explains why lead acid EVs are experiments, not serious transport). Estimates of the amount of lithium used in a lithium ion battery vary greatly from about 80 grams per Kw-hr to 250 grams per Kw-hr [5]. These figures translate to a lithium content of between 6 and 19 kg of lithium for our hypothetical 75 Kw-hr battery. Either way there is about two orders of magnitude difference between the weight of lead and the weight of lithium used to produce a battery of the same capacity.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) suggests that “reserves” of lithium globally are about 14 million tons (this is measured as mass of an equivalent amount of pure lithium), but suggests a “Resources” figure of about 40 million tons [6]. At 13kg per car, 1 million tons of lithium would be sufficient for 76 million cars. One estimate is that global car production in 2016 was ~72 million [7]. If we assume the “worst case” of:
- No lithium recycling (there are plants already up and running, but let’s be devil’s advocate and assume this)
- Only 25% of reserves available for cars (the rest going into ceramics, commercial vehicles, grid storage etc)
- No substitution of lithium by other metals in batteries
- Only the USGS “reserve” of 14 million turned out to be available (i.e. the 40 million “resources” never materialise)
- No substantial increase in efficiency of usage (i.e. Kw-hrs per kg of lithium remains unchanged)
If we make all these assumptions we can make the case that there is only enough lithium to support 3 or 4 years of car production in a world where all cars are electric. This is however a false picture for several reasons:
· The price of a finished battery is very insensitive to the price of the lithium raw material. This means that the price for lithium can increase greatly without having a noticeable effect on battery prices. This gives lots of financial headroom for exploiting reserves that are not economic at current prices. If the price goes high enough, it would in theory be possible to extract it from seawater. One estimate put the amount of lithium in the world’s oceans at 230 billion tons [8]
- Over the years, reserves of oil have gone up very greatly (see for example [9]). It is not unreasonable to expect lithium reserves to increase in a similar way
- As hinted earlier, lithium is in fact reclaimed from old batteries. Again, if shortages develop there is financial headroom to increase the efficiency of this process
- Lithium is used in the battery cathode because it is the “best” element electrically. If shortages developed alternatives could be used (see for example [10])
Misconception #6 – No I’ll stop here
There are dozens of arguments fielded against EVs; I have yet to encounter one which stood up under examination. It is going to happen regardless of “the environment”; and if the Western manufacturers can’t or won’t adapt, the economic outlook for the rising generation does not look good.
References
[1] Average daily private car mileage in the UK is about 21 [https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/632857/nts0901.ods. 7,800 miles per year for privately owned cars = 21 m.p.d. [Company cars 18,900 = 51 m.p.d. but they are a small percentage]. In the US it is about 30 [https://www.afdc.energy.gov/data/10309, 11,244 miles per year for cars = 30 miles per day]
[2] “…The new station at the Xiaoying bus terminal in the Chaoyang district is home to 25 electric vehicle (EV) chargers operating at 360kW and five chargers operating at 90kW. Reportedly all 30 chargers can operate at once….” From https://cbwmagazine.com/bus-charging-beijing/
[3] See table veh0102 accessed from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/all-vehicles-veh01
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93acid_battery
[5] http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1826 Note that this article is old and a bit dated
[6] https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/lithium/mcs-2017-lithi.pdf. Note the heading “Data in metric tons of lithium content unless otherwise noted”. This is important as the material mined, and the materials used in battery production are not metallic lithium, but lithium compounds. Lithium carbonate for example is less than a fifth lithium by weight
[7] http://www.oica.net/category/production-statistics/
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial
[9] http://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=oil&graph=reserves
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_battery#Overview
Personally, although I’m not an engineer, I think there are some valid points made here. The calculations seem reasonable.
My problem is, from a UK perspective, is that the British population is being dictated to by our government.
Now, whilst I would expect nothing less from a socialist government, I expect an awful lot more from a conservative government which maintains it’s all for freedom of choice, a small government and open market competition.
EV’s are few and far between because they can’t compete in an open market on either price or performance. If they compete on one, they can’t compete on the other. Which may not always be the case as technology moves on, but that’s the point of an open market. The best products for the consumer evolve over time and are invariably cyclical, they are replaced naturally with newer, better products displace them when consumers recognise the benefits.
And whilst technology frequently has government subsidies to encourage it’s emergence or continuation (Nissan, Toyota etc.) I suspect that the individual level of subsidy will be well below the level required by EV manufacture to crowbar it into a society at an accelerated pace.
This blog is well aware CO2 has no meaningful impact on climate, if any. We all know city atmospheric pollution is about as clean as it’s ever going to get in modern westernised cities. We have all watched the vilification of DERV’s, hand waved by our government away as an unfortunate mistake in promoting the technology because of lower CO2 emissions, only then to claim emissions are contaminated with other particulates, which they already knew of. But because of green influence the technology was, incorrectly it seems, encouraged, then because of green influence, discourage, nay, virtually banned.
So where in this scenario is anyone encouraged that government mandated, wholesale, overnight changes in an incredibly complicated transportation infrastructure, is the right thing to do?
They twice cocked up on one single element of it within ten years or so. why would anyone believe the UK government, of any flavour, can make a success of a change of this magnitude, in the mandated time frame, without screwing it up.
The problem here isn’t with EV’s, given enough time, they are the future; it’s incompetent governments.
Best said ….
The problem is that your political views are at variance with UK governments. Not the governments, I think.
And what would the conservative governments political views be? Admittedly they’re conducting themselves more like socialists, which is at odds with the general expectation of conservatism in the UK. They are, after all, supposed to be ‘right wing’, instead they’ve taken a giant step left.
So yes, my political views are at variance with theirs, but not of the rest of the conservative voting public.
We are right wing for a reason, to counter the blight on humanity of socialism.
‘The combination of a 300 mile range and fast charge should be plenty.’
Buyers will decide what is ‘plenty.’ Or not.
‘How many people routinely drive more than 300 miles without stopping for toilet and/or food?’
Buyers will decide if it is important to them. Betcha it is.
‘For most people, most of the time averaging 20 – 30 miles per day [1], charging could be done once a week.’
True. PEVs are suitable for some uses. If you ignore cost. You can buy a Honda Civic with the two-year depreciation of a Leaf.
“Fast charge” needs to be fast however: 20 minutes from empty to 80% charge. The batteries are well able to handle this.
Listen to you: 20 minutes IS NOT FAST.
Consumers used to a 3 minute fill-up are not interested in a 20 minute fill-up. Your calling it ‘fast’ is propaganda.
Consumers are not interested in embarking on a 300 mile journey not knowing if they will find an available charger. 3 times. On their way, at their destination, and during their return.
Not only is the cost of the vehicles prohibitive, the cost of your imaginary infrastructure is prohibitive.
PEVs will remain an expensive, niche application.
In order for a recharge station to have the same throughput as a gas station, assuming a 20 minute recharge, would require the recharge station to have about 7 times as many recharge points as an equivalent gas station has pumps (3 minutes to pump your car). So let’s say approximately 100 recharge points for a moderately sized station. That’s several acres of land. Plus it would require its own substation as it would require the electricity supply equivalent to about 1,000 homes (a small town). And that’s just one ‘gas’ station!
So air conditioning is the problem. Photocells? Windmills?
Consider that an adequate comparison for the Bolt/Tesla 3 is the Mazda 3. In order to go from 10 to 80% capacity it is 9.24 gallons. At 5 gal/min it takes just under 2 minutes. Say what you want about “fast charge,” gas is still 10x faster. Seriously though, 30 mile battery, phev, home charger. You get all of the benefits of an electric vehicle at 10% of the battery pack. The engine takes a lot less wear and tear, especially since it would never run at low rpm.
I personally think Mazda will have a killer product when they use their rotary as a range extender for a PHEV. For the average person the engine will likely run 10% of the time, so the reliability issues with seals on a rotary will be completely negated. Range anxiety is a non issue if they put in a 500 mile gas tank. The biggest problem will be with gasoline stability if you don’t empty the tank monthly.
Stabilizers will keep gas good for 6 – 12 months.
All well and good, but you now either have to require that stabilizers be added to every drop of gas in the country, replace one of the octanes at the pump with “stable,” or require owners to keep up with adding stabilizer. None of these seems like a good option to me.
chadb
Sorry, but if that’s not inconsequential nit picking, I don’t know what is.
If the Mazda concept is as cheap and effective as claimed, and can eliminate the mind boggling task of electrifying the whole world for EV’s, and abandoning every other technology we have relative to ICE vehicles, by adding a drop or two, by whatever means, of stabilizer to fuel, it’s the least of our problems.
chadb, out of necessity I’m already conditioned. I add Stabil to all of the gas that I put into canisters for all of my small engine toys. After a couple of months sitting unused it goes into the car. I don’t wait for it to age out, but I put in Stabil just in case I forget.
MISCONCEPTION (Lie) #6 (continued): It is going to happen regardless…
If it’s going to happen regardless then why put subsidies on the EV side, and the penalties on the IC side of the markets. Why the need to try to manipulate the markets if it’s going to “happen regardless”?
Sure, it may happen regardless … so, why force it in an inefficient manner then?
Let us assume for a minute that travel distances between cities and desired destinations in the UK are substantially shorter than in the US. So, the estimations provided by John Hardy are on the short side of the requirements of electric car travel distances for the US.
Let us also assume that there will be times when travel conditions are not ideal, rather: hot requiring air conditioning or cold requiring a heater. For those who travel during the summer, the Orange Barrel scene is familiar with stop and go bumper to bumper traffic and much extended travel times if not added miles. And, for those brave souls who travel during the winter, not only is the drain on batteries greater, there is also “black ice” accidents which are a reminder that travel times are extended as well. Now consider having an electric car and you are living in Key West Florida, a hurricane is coming and the Florida Keys are under a mandatory evacuation order. Everyone and their brother, sister, uncle and aunt is on the only road, a two lane affair, you are going to Miami (110) miles away where the Hurricane is predicted to hit with full force or you have relatives in Ocala (461miles) where your family wants to go. Again, on the Overseas Highway, bumper to bumper travel going at a snail’s pace in the heat of the day, kids are crying, wife is visibly upset talking a mile-a-minute about what might happen, etc. Here you are in your up-to-date electric car you purchased for driving around Key West. There is abundant sun for solar panels to charge your electric vehicle; you are going green; what’s there not to like? Possibly running out of electricity? blocking the highway while joining other electric cars on the side of the road? an inconvenient location where there are no hook-ups? or those facilities that do exist are now oversubscribed? or are no longer connected to juice?
Electric vehicles work when you know you will not need to safely travel outside the range of its batteries. Otherwise, you need a second non-electric vehicle. Of course, going to Yellowstone Park. Seeing the Grand Canyon. Being a “snowbird” going from Toronto to Tampa Bay (where you will need another vehicle) all are problematic destinations where you can only travel 300 miles at a time.
Distances really do matter.
“Being a “snowbird” going from Toronto to Tampa Bay”
Go Bolts!!!
With that travel, might have to add in some mountains and hills to the mix. Nothing much, mind you.
I enjoy this auto reviewer, that cannot review a Tesla, because they would have to deliver it by tow truck. I agree with his assessment, the Chevy Volt with an onboard genset makes sense, with the 50 mile battery range. Most commuting is covered, but you can make a regular IC car drip to get out of Florida when the hurricane is approaching. If they would only allow a small diesel instead of gas, it would be even better. Some day the EPA may stop the war on diesel.
The One Electric Car That Makes Some Sense . . . Chevy Volt
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2017/09/19/one-electric-car-makes-sense/
This concept that EV are OK because we mostly travel 50kms is nonsense. I want transport that does what I want when I want it. I don’t want one car for 50km and another for 1200kms. It reminds me of the heat pump vs oil fired boiler. My oil fired is 30yrs old. Costs 5€/week for hot water and ~700€ /yr for all heating and water combined. A heat pump will not supply hot water because, I was told, it’s not practical, and burns electricity at 3200 kwh. Electricity prices keep rising massively because of green crap.
Give me an electric car that behaves like a petrol and I’ll buy it and drive if the price is right, if the batteries don’t have to be changed every ten years, if I can do 800kms with a 5min charge and not waiting for a charge point to be available.
The focal point of this 3 part series is purebred EV’s. Not Hybrid that combines 2 or more technologies in vehicles.
EV’s are therefore limited use vehicles when long distance driving is part of a consumer’s daily routine, when on relatively flat roads and stop and go traffic that uses more kWh than is regenerated back to the battery.
That is where the Hybrid has an advantage to recharge as you drive by switching from ICE to EV on the go or for just charging the battery while the vehicle is in use. Making longer distance driving a better choice.
In parts 1 & 2 I gave another option that an onboard charging system would eliminate that problem for EV’s that uses only the EV technology and not a Hybrid. Because it only takes adding energy as it is used, a small onboard charging system is required. This could eliminate any outside charging infrastructure or drain on existing grids.
The only problem with your on board charging system is that it will kill the occupants of the car.
Mark W I feel you are fixated on some concept that a flywheel weighing under 100lbs can release enormous amount of energy to upset a vehicle weighing 2 – 3 tons. That is ludicrous. Even if it was a concern – playing along with your fear. There is such a device called a “Brake” that is known to stop things from moving.
“The only problem with your on board charging system is that it will kill the occupants of the car.” So now you are just trolling all of WUWT with ludicrous statements so as to stink the place up. You keep getting worse and worse every day MarkW. Yet you have fans…other low IQ information trolls.
Jonchi, it’s not the weight of the gyroscope, it’s the amount of energy stored in it that matters.
And yes a gyroscope of just a few hundred pounds could flip a car of several tons.
Earthling2, just because you are to stupid know basic facts is not evidence that others are wrong.
MarkW, you were saying in Part 2 of this series how a dedicated micro ICE generator in an EV might poison the occupants with carbon monoxide at a red light. As if the auto industry hasn’t already solved the issue of venting an exhaust pipe to the atmosphere without killing anyone. You just make stuff up out of thin air, like power line losses at 50% also in an earlier post or thread. Or exhaust air of an ICE engine is cleaner than atmospheric air just upthread from here. If you were funny or just being sarcastic, that would be one thing, but usually you are just plain stupid. And I don’t think you can fix your kind of stupid.
I believe that if little efficient ICE cars were subsidized like EVs, their popularity would sky rocket, and fuel consumption would dramatically. Most people don’t need the sedan or SUV they drive, and all that extra fuel is simply wasted. Why spend billions to develop and promote a marginal, complex and vulnerable technology, to save on carbon emissions at some vague future time when if you directed the same funds to subsidize the purchase highly fuel efficient ICE’s you could actually meet your goal next year?
The reason of course is obvious: no one is actually interested in reducing carbon emissions. This is all just a giant pantomime of virtue signalling. There is no substance to any of it. None.
… would * fall * dramatically …
Here you go (I’m reposting this from a couple of days ago):
“F1 designer Gordon Murray unveils lightweight city car”
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-11301831
Imagine a car so narrow that two can drive next to each other in one lane; a car so small and short that three can park in one parking space.
Now imagine that the car is built in a shed from glass fibre, recycled plastic bottles and steel tubes, using just a fifth of the material required to build a conventional car.
Such a vehicle would have the potential to prevent gridlock on the world’s roads as the number of cars quadruples to 2.5 billion by 2020.
It could also help hundreds of millions of people achieve their dream of owning a car, without depleting scarce resources such as water, energy or steel.
Well, that car has been made.
It seats three, weighs just 575kg, has a top speed of almost 100mph and is expected to cost about £6,000 ($9,000).
Click the link for more detail.
Roger Knights
Gordon’s been flogging this for years now. Sadly, that report is from 2010.
Great idea, but somehow he’s got lost in the production specifics of his iStream concept instead of the marketing. Take a look at his website http://istreamtechnology.co.uk the only thing you see is his production methods, not a car. And what’s he promoting now? TVR.
My old man built and raced cars designed like this in the 1950’s. Whilst Colin Chapman was building monocoque cars with fibreglass bodies (expensive) my old man stuck to tubular steel with fibreglass/aluminium bodies, inspired by the Maserati Birdframe, all built by Chinese ‘coolies’.
KTM and Ducati are racing cheap tubular framed motor bikes against Japan’s finest cast aluminium, eye wateringly expensive, cast aluminium, ‘monocoque’ frames, and winning.
I suspect it’s a case of a brilliant engineer finding the solution to a problem, when the problem has moved on, in this case politically.
I would buy one of Gordon’s small cars tomorrow, but sadly I believe he’s abandoned the concept to concentrate on reviving TVR.
I said over 30 years ago that the car of the future would look a lot like a Formula Jr vehicle.
Thanks for the info, HotScot.
Reinventing the wheel, as it were. 🙂
The commenters raise some extra concerns but this whole discussion about the disadvantages and benefits rests on the assumption of individual ownership. Millennials are already moving away from the car ownership model and renting for long distance trips. Let those be done with ICE cars. The rest of our transportation can be done with autonomous EV cars.
You may change your ideas when you have two or three children under the age of four.
I don’t care what you drive.
Do not raise my electric rates because you insist on using ‘green’ power to fill your I-car.
Do not engage in subsidies, write offs, tax breaks, etc to push electric cars, let the market actually decide.
Do not attempt to put a per mile tax on me because your electric car doesn’t use fuel. My fuel tax accounts for all variables inherently and automatically.
Other than this choose what you want.
Electric motors have many technical and practical advantages over internal combustion engines. Someday EVs may replace ICE vehicles. But right now they are not economically practical or convenient to be the primary vehicle for most people. If they were, there would be no need to defend them. They would replace ICE vehicles as quickly as ICE vehicles replaced horses as the primary transportation option.
I would never buy an electric car on principle, unless there was really no other choice. Hydrogen fuel cell cars look interesting though, and the new Toyota Mirai looks great – over 300 mile range, refill in 3 minutes, etc. Fuel cell technology is starting to look very good – I wouldn’t be surprised if it soon starts to make inroads on EV sales.
In this blog post, John Hardy elevates hand waving and half-truth salesmanship far above his previous 2 efforts. This ‘Part 3’ post raises EV zealotry to an art form.
If electric vehicles are not subsidized with tax payer dollar$ and are fairly taxed to pay their fair share of road construction and maintenance costs, they will need no dissembling, disingenuous ‘defense’.
If wind mills and solar panels are not subsidized with taxpayer dollar$ and are fairly priced for their inherent destabilization of the grid and need for conventional backup generation capacity, they will need no dissembling, disingenuous ‘defense’ either.
Free markets and informed, rational consumer are very good at deciding what provides the greatest utility for dollars expended!
Don’t hold back J, tell us what you really think. 😀
There are 4 things getting in the way of electrics cars replacing petrol powered cars:
– less energy density, the ‘range’ of electric vehicles is significantly less than petrol (especially given the fact if you want increased range with a petrol car, just bring along a full petrol can..)
– progressive reduction in useful range – you fill your petrol car up, its good for the same range as before, with electric you might get the same range, you might not – the batteries do degrade over time no matter how careful you are.
– charging time – as already mentioned the longer the range, the more power needs to be ‘pumped’ into the battery pack in an acceptable time period and in a safe way…
– if you run out of petrol, you just go get some and put it in; if the same happens with an electric car – the whole car has to bought to the charging point OR you have to take someone else’s charge (and hope they have enough to get home with); note: I haven’t seen any electric vehicle with the ability to transfer charge like this.
Myself I think its just the wrong solution and actually not that green.
Now batteries used in static storage, like time shifting power and reducing grid dependency – yes.
Long recharge-time described in this piece would “turn me off” to electric power for a car — assuming I had a choice.
I don’t believe fossil-fuel vehicles should be “forced off” the road. Rather, as one fuel becomes too expensive let the unsubsidized free-market decide on what replaces it and how that replacement is timed.
Beijing buses charging stations..filling up with coal power.
I do miss a quite important point: intrinsic losses and energy conversion efficiency.
The assumption is that a car just needs or consumes 10kWh per day. More than 90% of the electricity generated comes from conventional powerplants: nuclear, gas, oil, coal. A coal fueled powerplant has an efficiency rating of 40%, the loss at 60%. PV systems have an efficiency rating of roughly 15-22%, the loss at 80%. Transportation of energy, grid loss: about 6-8% depending whether over or under ground and upon distance. Charging losses: the heating of cables, charger and battery, plus the inevitable self-drain.
How much energy in total do you have to put in to get the desired 10kWh out and on the road?
„Quod rarum carum“ Li, Cu, Ni may be available, but the price is soaring and most probably going through the roof in the near future: the price of Li more than doubled since 2014. Crude oil (Brent) is almost stable with the inevitable ups and downs since the end of 2013.
It makes absolutely no sense to me to skip a well-oiled, well-running system of refineries to be replaced by a prestigiuous system of electrickery only the well-to-do can afford and the average bloke in the pub can‘t and doesn‘t like.
I don’t understand why people are so negative on the electric car’s future. It is just on its start of evolution. No, I wouldn’t go near one using today’s technology and infrastructure, but in the near future (say 10 years) it will evolve into a practical answer for many people – especially the city dwellers.
The weight of electric cars continues to drop. This means less mass to move around. This also has some negative side-effects – dangerous at high speeds or significant winds, more vulnerable to heavier cars, etc. But if the speeds are low (as in a city) this weight reduction helps to reduce battery requirements.
The electric motors that move the vehicle continue to evolve into lighter and more efficient drive systems. Energy recovery braking is also a great idea that extends range. Heating and especially cooling are problems – they consume a large amount of energy. Increasing the car insulation and decreasing the volume to be warmed and cooled seem like straightforward solutions (so tiny cramped quarters that only a kid could like).
You don’t need to recharge quickly if you can constantly low-rate charge (i.e. using a small gas engine). And you don’t need to only own an electric vehicle, but one for local driving isn’t a ridiculous notion.
Yes, a break through (or two or three) are certainly needed if the electric car is a pure one, but one can always put in a small gas generator to power the vehicle. It could be left running to recharge batteries so instead of supplying all power requirements, it supplies a steady base-load that supplements batteries when being driven and recharges batteries in-between. This would supply some heat when warming is needed inside the car. By tuning this little engine to a constant speed, you get maximum performance from it. You plug in the car into normal house current (say 220 volts, 20 amps) when convenient to save on gas. Hybrids like these seem to be the most likely successful answer in the near term, not hybrids with mechanical drive trains (which add to much weight and complexity).
If you have an electric drive system it is much easier to computerize the performance to get maximum benefit. Think more efficient starting and stopping (yes, boring starting and stopping, no race car here).
I am all FOR canceling the subsidies for electric vehicles – this just moves them into use before they are ready. Make them compete for business. If they can’t compete, they don’t ever move into the field. But I do think they are evolving into useful vehicles given enough time.
Not that I will ever own one… I like my cars with a roaring powerful gas engine. But young people who never knew muscle cars will likely adopt the electric vehicle – and likely want to buy the latest one every two or three years like a smart phone.
“I don’t understand why people are so negative on the electric car’s future. It is just on its start of evolution.”
If by ‘start’ you mean in its second hundred years of development, yes.
RoT,
You asked “…why people are so negative on the electric car’s future.” One answer is because some are acting like the Messiah has already come and want to ban ICEs and destroy an existing infrastructure in the near future.
I tend to agree, the EV has its place, esp as a hybrid. Awesome acceleration. But anything that takes even 20 mins to refuel after 200 miles or so is of limited use. There must be no subsidisation of production vehicles: That will ensure the market comes up with genuine improvements over existing tech.
What concerns me about large scale EV use is firstly the complication that it places on electricity demand – which is already a problem in Aus at least, secondly the fact this plays straight into the hands of electricity generators who will make money out of people at peak demand. Forecasts based on current demand and price are therefore meaningless. Thirdly, and I think most important and neglected, is the risk of becoming more dependent on the electricity grid. Grids were never designed to be critical infrastructure and are extremely vulnerable. Mass evacuation with EV (eg fire, earthquake, flood) will likely be impossible. Even preparation for disasters like hurricanes will be impossible because it will be impossibly to stockpile or resupply electricity the way you can with fuel.
We need to be building resiliance and redundancy into our complex systems and I don’t see how we can do that with existing grid tech. I reckon we are 30 to 50 years off mass market EVs or ICE bans (no matter what China says) and need an energy revolution first.
Oddly the authors claim that costs will be reduced by charging off peak , seem to conflict with their idea that majority of people will not try to charge at the same time and therefore spread the demand . In reality of course most will charge a the lowest cost time , as people will often seek out the lowest price for fuel.
Indeed lowest cost are a bit of myth all around , in reality it is the lack tax which makes EV cheaper not the low cost nature of the actual fuel used . And there is lies the problem , given the tens of billion gained through fuel tax of one type or another and given the way this money is used to cross-subsides many other areas of public spending . There would be simply no choice but to to tax EV in a manner similar to fossil fuel cars , once they reach significant numbers. Indeed this very thing occurred with LPG and it killed that market.
So you lost the cost advantage what is left , well even the authors ‘ideal ‘ model both refuel time and range , and it is not the ever day range which is the issue but the other day range, are still behind present models. Hence why more often they not in a very ‘ungreen’ way EV’s are merely a second car , not an only one for event those who are advocates of them.
Although the simpler engine reduces cost , these days 100,000 miles can be racked up on a car engine with little problem. So the difference is not as great has first supposed.
While running gear , such as tires, breaks , suspension , needs work according to usage, not the means of propulsion. Indeed the killing factors for increasing amounts of cars is the electronics, a dead ECU is a dead car no matter what else is good . And if anything EV have more complex electronics to deal with so may have more of an issue in this area .
So your left with the same , price , range , charging issue . You still not addressed where the power for all these EV will come from , other than some wishful thinking , and you simply not dealt at all with issues such as people with no access to their own land for parking and therefore charging facility.
And the greatest irony is even with full EV, congestion and traffic volumes are totally and utterly unaffected by the EV idea, and these are the predominate problems in many cases .
Don’t worry, the green fantasy includes parking meters with wireless quick charge capability like your cell phone and a street made of solar cells to power it.
/is that sarc, or not?
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-4607870/A-1-000-conversion-turn-lampposts-EV-chargers.html
the reality seems to include lamp post chargers deployed in London.
Mind you in my opinion you have be seriously deranged to want to drive in or into London!
1++++
The EV is only for niche occupiers, who are wealthy, have their own house with a charging station, which they can use during off-peak hours, and it does not matter if the load capacity after 1000 charging cycles is only 70 percent, because they only 10-20 miles per day drive and leave the rest by train and plane and after 8 years without batting an eyelid make a battery change, which loosely exceeds the residual value of the car. So not for the normal consumer. But who knows, in a dictatorial government, or soon World Government, all this does not matter. However, as you can see from the former Soviet bloc, such an uneconomic way of thinking can not last. That’s the good news on the many bad by EVs.
If everybody or the majority is charging at “off peak”-times, then there will be no “off peak” any longer. Prices go up, then, so, please do a recalculation…
Has anyone totaled up the equivalent KWHs presently produced by ICEs which would need to be generated and distributed to replace them?
This is not a new breakthrough technology, it is a rehash of old ideas, with attempts to neutralize it’s inherent stumbling blocks. It’s the small thinking that crowds out the real invention.
I have read all three parts. It’s pretty thin gruel. The arguments are sweeping, hand waving rationalizations, with a paucity of quantitative substantiation. And, just as indictments are not valid without exculpatory evidence, this series suffers from an honest take on some huge negatives. First, and perhaps foremost, is that if you support electric cars because you believe carbon dioxide is a problem, you are behaving contrary to your interests; electric vehicles produce more carbon emissions per mile than IC, when you consider the entire energy cycle, from generation to distribution to your auto. You might say that this won’t be so when we are on only solar and wind and nuke, but I would then say we can all live on Mars, so who cares. The more practical problem, though, is that the service time increase, from refueling an IC car to recharging an EV, is large; and the queues for charging will grow quite large, unless the number of GPEs (gas pump equivalents) is increased by at least an order of magnitude. So that service station on the highway will have to now be a parking lot full of charging stations, the corner gas station will have to be the whole block. I’m not sure people want to use real estate this way. I’m certain there isn’t non-subsidized incentive to capitalize this. Not to mention the millions of cars parked on city streets, usually in a different place each day, moved for alternate side of the street parking (for street cleaning), where there are currently no charging stations. If you deploy charging stations ‘statistically,’ people will be shooting each other over them.
Good post, JV. I hadn’t thought about the impact of greatly increased residence time at ‘filling’ stations. What a nightmare!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/07/in-defense-of-the-electric-car-part2/
Think you meant “suffers from a DISHONEST take on some huge negatives “