Guest satire by David Middleton
2017 was the best year ever for electric vehicle sales in the US
Electric vehicle sales were up more than 25 percent compared to 2016.
JONATHAN M. GITLIN – 1/4/2018
The good people over at Inside EVs have done their tabulating, and the numbers are in: in 2017, very nearly 200,000 electric vehicles were sold in the US. The actual number they calculate—199,826—is a significant increase on 2016, itself a banner year for EVs when 158,614 found homes. What’s even more impressive is that overall new car sales were actually down year-on-year for the first time since 2009. Still, to keep things in context, more than 17 million new cars were sold in 2017. So electrics have a long way to go.
Tesla on top
As expected, Tesla remains at the head of the pack. The Model S, now in its fifth year of sales, remains the nation’s best-selling EV with 27,060 sold, no mean feat for a vehicle that starts at $74,500. And the Model X SUV had a good year, too, finding more than 21,000 buyers to become the third-best-selling EV.
Despite this, Tesla garnered plenty of lukewarm press on Wednesday as it revealed that Model 3 production will remain far lower than Elon Musk had been promising for at least the next quarter. Musk had set a target of 5,000 Model 3s per week by the end of 2017, a figure he now says won’t happen until Q2 2018 at the earliest.
Chevrolet’s Bolt EV was a strong second. The Bolt notched up just over 23,000 sales in 2017, a strong performance considering it only went on sale in all 50 states halfway through the year. It’s the only non-Tesla BEV to break the 200-mile range barrier, doing so at a much more affordable price than the Model S or Model X (or even the heavily specced Model 3s that are starting to roll out of Tesla’s factory).
[…]
200,000 EV’s!
The top selling vehicle in the US is the Ford-F-Series pickup truck.
To note, Ford F-Series sales figures are comprised of the following vehicles:
- F-150 family, including the F-150 Raptor
- F-Series Super Duty family, including the F-250, F-350 and F-450
The figures do not include Ford Heavy trucks sales results such as the F-650 or F-750.
The growth in US electric vehicle (EV) sales has actually been slower than the growth of Ford F-Series pickup truck sales since 2012.
| United States Vehicle Sales | |||
| Ford F-Series | All EV’s | Ford F-Series minus EV’s | |
| 2012 | 645,316 | 52,607 | 592,709 |
| 2013 | 763,402 | 97,507 | 665,895 |
| 2014 | 753,851 | 122,438 | 631,413 |
| 2015 | 780,354 | 116,099 | 664,255 |
| 2016 | 820,799 | 156,614 | 664,185 |
| 2017 | 896,764 | 199,826 | 696,938 |
…
Stark Industries Tesla did manage to cobble together 1,060 Model 3’s in December.
“There are no fundamental issues with the Model 3 or the supply chain,” the company said in its statement. “We understand what needs to be fixed and we are confident of addressing the manufacturing bottleneck issues in the near-term.”
But the company did not give any new production targets to replace the earlier prediction that it would be making 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of the year.
- Q3 2017 Production Guidance: 1,500
- Q3 2017 Production: 260
- December 2017 Production Guidance: 5,000 per week (>20,000 per month).
- December 2018 Production: 1,060 per month.
Stark Industries Tesla missed the Q3 2017 guidance by 83% and then outdid themselves in December, missing guidance by 95%. At this rate, the next Quaternary glacial stage will save us from Gorebal Warming before EV’s do.
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I live in Adelaide South Australia where Elon has schmoozed himself into the hearts and minds of our State Government with the ‘WORLD’s BIGGEST BATTERY’ – please excuse the capitals but this term is always presented as a wondrous achievement requiring big letters.
I recently had a ride in a 7 seat Tesla X hire car with 4 other adults and a 16 year-old male.
– it is advertised in Australia as “seating for seven adults”. The rear 2 seats have minimal leg room and even my wife at 5′ 6″ had to sit sideways to not be pressing on the middle seats. 2 adults (6′ 2″ and 5′ 9″ both around 200lb) and the teenager (5′ 9″ and 140lb) in the middle seats were close to but not touching the front seats. Anyone taller would have a real issue with space
– the driver’s experience was around 4ooKm (250 mile) range on full charge
– a trailer was attached to hold our luggage and the driver stated that he loses 20% distance with it on
– Tesla are covering the cost of recharging and all maintenance for 5 years – good marketing strategy to attempt to get them onto the roads. The trailer needs a special electrical adaptor as the Tesla uses regenerative braking so there is no brake switch being used to turn on the trailer’s brake lights
– free charging points have been installed in Adelaide and tourist spots such as the Barossa Valley – a major wine/tourist region.
– Our driver had to finagle a half-hour charge recently in a tourist area as he was low on charge and all of the chargers were in use. Only slow-charge systems were available and these give him around 40Km (2 miles) range for a one hour charge. The fast-charge systems give full charge in one hour
– for home charging, there is (apparently) a system here whereby a charging system can be installed and the maximum cost to charge is $1/day. I haven’t validated this nor how long this low fee lasts.
– the power of the Telsa was impressive, even up the long gradient from Adelaide city into the Adelaide Hills. It was also very quiet, as expected.
– not much rear boot (trunk) space and I did not see the front boot
– lots of roof glass which could be an issue in an Australian summer as there did not appear to be any shades to cover the glass
– the falcon-wing rear door gave lots of headroom but it was difficult to exit from both the middle and rear seats as there are no grab handles
– on entering a short tunnel the wipers activated – apparently there is/has been an issue with the rain detection software. There may still be an issue
– this vehicle cost $150,000 in Oz
John.
This vehicle cost 150,000 in OZ. That means about 110,000 to 120 Large in USA money. The highest selling car in OZ is The Toyota Hilux….
‘Early iterations of Toyota’s most popular ute were an absolute staple of worksites across the country – so much so that it was at varying times named Australia’s best-selling car. Its popularity is helped by the fact it’s available with a choice of single or double cab layouts, in pick-up or cab chassis body styles, and with a choice of petrol or diesel engines. As a result, the HiLux can be configured to be as agricultural or as urban as its owners want, and is also available with rear- or all-wheel drive.
The HiLux Workmate starts off at $20,990, while the range-topping, HiLux SR5+ (4×4) is priced at $58,440. (Aussie Dollars)’. From CarsGuide.
219 of these Vanity Vroom Vrooms (Apologies Willard but I use the term to rile our Green Bandits Down Under ) were sold. About 1,180,000 new cars are bought each year. The cheaper Tesla3 will sell around $45,000/50000 in Australia. That is considered pricey as you can get a top notch family car at $30,000 or so.
EVs have a luxury car tax exemption over $75000 which saves 3000, while the Federal Government has subbed 100 million of Tax money for a cheap electric car loan scheme.
Without a direct subsidy of about 5000 to 10,000 of taxpayer dollars these Electric Cars will never sell in a big way Down Here.
Enjoy your driving Willard.
BERLIN – Germany’s would-be coalition partners have agreed to drop plans to lower carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, sources familiar with negotiations said on Monday — a potential embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Due to strong economic growth and higher-than-expected immigration, Germany is likely to miss its national emissions target for 2020 without any additional measures.
Negotiators for Merkel’s conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) told Reuters the parties had agreed in exploratory talks on forming a government that the targeted cut in emissions could no longer be achieved by 2020.
Instead, they would aim to hit the 40 percent target in the early 2020s, the sources said, adding that both parties are still sticking to their goal of achieving a 55 percent cut in emissions by 2030.
http://www.todayonline.com/world/germanys-conservatives-spd-want-tax-relief-high-earners-source
Yes, looks like they will only have reduced CO2 30% to 35% by 2020, with the major miss being in transport (went up slightly due to increased transport use and economic growth) and heating (not reduced as expected).
electricity is doing much better on its target…
Only 30% reduction is still a hefty reduction…
The base year for this reduction show is 1990. After 1990 most of the the dirty East German brown (lignite) coal power stations have been shut down and that was the biggest part of all the reduction. Big deal!
It seems to me that most people have missed the biggest problem with EVs: Charging. The bigger the battery and the faster you want it charged, the higher the charging current will be. This is based on fundamental physics and not even Elon can invent that away. You do the math, P=U*I! If I were to charge a TeslaS at home and over night, I would need a charging current of maybe 50 A at 230V. Even if I used 3-phase it would be stretch and I would have to refrain from other electrical activities during charging… As a comparison, I can typically ”charge” my gas fuelled car with about 50 litres in about 60-80 seconds. This corresponds to an ”energy transfer” of 30 MW which is 1000 times more than a 30kW ”rapid” charger for EVs. This is the biggest drawback associated with EVs.
50A @ur momisugly 230V is only 11kW. That’s nothing for a modern USA house–my house has two electrical panels for 400-amp service, fed from a 37.5kVA transformer that only feeds my house (I live out in the country, my house has all electric appliances except for a propane cooktop and a propane fireplace. Heating is from a heat pump, with 20kW of backup resistance heat. I turned off half of that so it’s only 10kW and then only when the outdoor unit is in defrost. Even with the record low temperatures recently, I haven’t needed to enable the aux heat for normal operation)
Typical US houses have been getting 200-amp service as a minimum for at least the last 30 years. This is all split-phase, very rare in the USA to have a 3-phase service feeding a residence.
Wow, that is interesting! Over here in Europe (Sweden) where I live, a typical one-family house is fed with 3-phases 400V with a maximum of 20A or so. What is the voltage going into your house?
It’s split-phase 240V (most common for residential in the USA) so you have coming into the house three wires:
L1: 120V
N(neutral): 0V
L2: 120V
Between L1 and L2 you get 240V. Between L1 and N or between L2 and N you get 120V.
So with a 200-amp service you could theoretically draw up to 200 amps from both L1 and L2, giving you 200 amps @ur momisugly 240V. Most houses do not have enough electrical appliances to even come close to pulling that much, but 200 amp service is installed regardless.
The highest I’ve ever seen in my own house is around 20kW because the following was running:
10kW strip heat (heat pump was in defrost mode, which lasts 10 minutes at most)
5kW water heater (had just finished taking a shower–probably runs about 10-15 minutes)
2kW heat pump condensing unit
3kW Chevy volt charger (warming car up in garage prior to driving to work).
My house would be fine with 200-amp service but the builder put in a 400-amp service. I’m glad they did because if they had installed a 200-amp service, the breaker panel would be close to full and I would not be able to easily add additional breakers. Since they installed a 400-amp service, it has two breaker panels each rated for 200-amp, giving plenty of empty spaces for additional circuits in the future. (Maybe I want to build a workshop with plenty of outlets and a place to plug in a welder?)
[The mods recommend you plan on a 240 volt welder with optional gas purge. And a second 240 volt line for your 3-way lathe-drill press-milling machine. .mod]
In light of the cold weather the US is experiencing at the moment, a question occurred to me.
How are electric vehicles heated? I’m aware that heating anything takes a fair bit of power. Is the range drastically reduced when the heating used ?
The 2013 Chevy Volt I paid a whopping $8500 for last summer (they have terrible resale value but are a far more interesting vehicle than the Toyota Corolla of the same year/mileage you could get for that price) can use either the gasoline engine or electric resistance heating to provide heat. The electric resistance heating really does drastically reduce the range. I rarely use it, however (except when it is plugged in and I am pre-heating it before driving to work).
The options for using the gas engine to provide heat are as follows:
1)Selectable setting to cause the gas engine to run automatically to provide heat below an outdoor temperature of either 35F or 17F. In this mode the engine is cycled on until the coolant temp reaches 150F, then is turned off until the coolant temperature drops to 120F, then cycled on again, etc. In this mode the engine seems to produce about 3-4kW of power when it is running, which is either used to charge the battery or offset what is used from the battery (either through one of the motor/generators or directly driving the wheels if above 40MPH).
2)Select hold mode which makes the engine run to conserve battery power, as it would if the battery were depleted. This mode gets the engine up to the full usual 190F operating temperature. The engine will still cycle in this mode, but it will only cycle off when the power demands are low or the engine has built up a charge in the battery (basically it operates like a hybrid in this mode).
Occasionally, owing to concerns that I have about the first mode of operation not running the engine long and hot enough to get all of the moisture out of the oil, I will select hold mode to get the engine up to it’s full 190F, then switch back to normal mode after a few miles. Maybe it’s no big deal but I really don’t like seeing “mayonnaise” on the oil cap.
EVs without a gasoline engine could use electric resistance heat or use a heat pump. Heat pump typically is 2 to 3 times more efficient than electric resistance heat, and would drop the range about as much as using the air conditioning.
Don’t think any commercilly available heat pumps have much ‘efficiency’ below freezing and certsinly not at -20 C. Small units for an EV would be even worse. (That’s why heat pump installations include spending big bucks to drill vertical wells (~150 m) with water circulating pipes to get higher heat sink temperatures).
EVs don’t cut it in cold climates and never will.
Have you looked at the performance data for any modern air-source heatpump? The Trane XR15 (which is a single-stage builder-grade model) has a COP of 2.0 at -15C. That’s not bad at all. These units also have demand defrost, so they won’t go into defrost unless it’s really needed, unlike the older units that would do so every 90 minutes. At -15C defrost cycles are rarely required, but with a older unit, the defrost cycles make the unit probably more expensive to run than electric strip heat.
I heard that GM considered using a heat pump in the Volt but decided against it. Defrosting a heatpump in an EV might be problematic–stationary units cycle the condensing unit fan off during defrost. There is also limitation on condenser size too.
“You can’t fix stupid”, Ron White
For example, “However, the author of this article is deluding himself if he thinks that electric vehicles won’t take over the auto industry. ”
amosbatto, January 8, 2018 at 12:46 pm
From the link,
“…the Gigafactory will consume between 3,229 and 4,688 GWh per year, which is between 8.3% and 12.0% of the total electrical generation in Nevada in 2016.”
Wow! That is a lot of power just to make batteries.
It is really stupid to make prediction based on assumptions without checking out actual performance. If EV fail as big as wind and solar, they are doomed.
As an engineer in the nuclear industry I would really love to grab market share from Dave M by building 1 nuke plant for every million EV. Maybe in France or South Korea.
Not in Nevada for the 400 years thanks to coal. Then David and his cronies keep producing too much cheap natural gas while producing oil.
Storing energy for transportation in batteries is a very bad engineering idea. It only works when we run out of oil.
Ronald Reagan as POTUS told us if you look for it, you will find it (oil and gas, that is). He was poo-pooed by the ‘experts” who said the jig was up in just twenty years (or twelve years in the case for gas). R R was such a simpleton. Guess who was correct.
Fast forward thirty years and we get polically correct dunderheads like Rex Tillerson at Exxon-Mobil and the big (green) wigs at BP voicing concerns about CAGW rather than noticing things like the seismic shift that was/is horizontal drilling / fracking or bothering to check and test the batteries on the blowout preventers on the Deepwater Horizon.
How is it with many smart guys in the oil and gas industry (such as David Middleton) we end up with idiots at the top?
And let’s not leave out the rolling financial disaster at Chevron that is the Gorgon money pit.
Rex Tillerson was one of the smartest guys in the business. He joined Exxon as a petroleum engineer right out of college and worked his way up to CEO of the best-managed oil company in the world. Tillerson’s comments about AGW aren’t significantly different from mine. The major difference is ExxonMobil’s endorsement of a carbon tax. In their judgement, carbon regulations were a fait accompli and a carbon tax was least harmful to the oil & gas industry.
Did ExxonMobil make mistakes? Sure they did. When Big Oil realized resource plays (shale/fracking), they jumped in at the peak. ExxonMobil acquired XTO Energy at the peak and probably paid too much. On the flipside, they have made some of the largest oil discoveries of the decade Offshore Guyana.
http://thehayride.com/2017/01/exxonmobils-guyana-gambit-is-a-good-reason-why-tillerson-is-trumps-secretary-of-state-pick/
Big Oil isn’t as nimble as Little Oil. BP’s Big Oil mentality definitely contributed to the cascading series of errors that led to the Macondo disaster. LLOG couldn’t afford to have a Big Oil mentality; and they successfully developed Macondo (now Delta House).
Gorgon was a great idea when LNG prices were ~$20/mmbtu. I’ve known a lot of smart people in this business… but I’ve never met anyone who was smart enough to forecast product prices very far into the future. (After-the-fact claims of accurate predictions don’t count).
Being in management is a lot tougher than generating prospects… and less fun. I spent six years in management as VP of Exploration. It was fun at times; but the additional stress wasn’t worth a little more money… particularly when we had to downsize in 2009 due to the economic crisis, collapse in oil prices and losing three months of production due to Hurricane Ike.
Five years ago, I played a key part in selling that company to my current employer… where I’m back to generating prospects… 😎
“How is it with many smart guys in the oil and gas industry (such as David Middleton) we end up with idiots at the top?”
Not all that smart. David is well informed about a narrow subject that few are familiar with but when he strays to topics like producing power. David writes,
“I’ve known a lot of smart people in this business… but I’ve never met anyone who was smart enough to forecast product prices very far into the future.”
Yet David likes to predict the economics over the life of a power plant.
“You can’t fix stupid”, Ron White
So how do you describe a geologist who writes about making power?
Actually Kit… I cite the EIA’s forecasts and then I usually note that the current economic advantages of natural gas power plants depend on low natural gas prices… And the EIA incorporates a price escalation factor in their forecasts.
When making economic decisions in the present, you have to factor in future price changes. These are based on simple inflation-pegged escalations of current strip or consensus prices. These price forecasts often turn out to be wrong, but they are better than assumptions like these:
http://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/18556-chesapeake-output-soars-ceo-sees-gas-floor-of-9-11
The “floor” turned out to be less than $2/mcf.
Aubrey McClendon was a really smart guy. The Shale boom probably owes as much to him as it does the late George Mitchell.
Here’s another failed prediction by a really smart guy…
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/19/pickens-oil-is-not-a-free-market-i-see-brent-above-100-forever.html
By February 2016, WTI was below $30/bbl.
Hubris is not synonymous with stupid… But there is a correlation.
“bothering to check and test the batteries on the blowout preventers on the Deepwater Horizon.”
I surprised that David is still alive. Do not forget Piper Alpha. The nuclear industry uses oil industry failures for lessons learned.
One of the key to safety is managers listening to the people who work for them.
On my first day at a nuke plant two years before going commercial, I met the plant manager. Tow thing I remember. He was wearing a golf shirt and said is door was always open if I had a problem. If there is something power plants have during construction have it is problems. That is why we test thing to make sure they work.
The interesting thing was that whenever I asked, ‘Is this a problem?’ heads snapped around and we got the problem fixed. I never had to use the plant managers open door.
The second trait of a good manager is publicly admitting a mistake. People make mistakes and lessons can only be learned by others if the mistake is shared.
The first task after getting an operating license for the NRC is to load 7 neutron sources in the reactor vessel. This was performed by another GE engineer and myself. There was an audience on the refueling floor including the plant manager who observed GE does not need experience our operators need experience. A few minutes later, I could be heard saying from the refueling floor, ‘I think they dropped the source’. My actual words were more colorful.
The next all plant workers received a mea cuppa from the plant manager discussing his mistake and the two week we would stop work to learn the lessons to prevent such mistakes from reoccuring. Basically we plant the work, work the plan and tell managers who interfere to go to hell. Considering that delays were costing $1 million a day in interest, this was significant.
We also needed a new plant, no one had experience recovering a dropped source under 40 feet of water.
Another good trait of the manger is getting out of the office and observing operations. I was days shift supervisor for testing. The turnover from night shift was a pipe plug had to be installed where hydraulic test equipment. The shop should have been standing by with a torque wrench for this critical path evolution. I left the control room to see why it was taking so long.
When the plant manager walked by at the two hour point, I could be observed climbing on equipment installing the pipe plug by hand while the operator watched. The plant manager kept on going. I wrote a non conformance report that was closed when the shop finished torquing.
“Actually Kit… I cite the EIA’s forecasts ….”
That is exactly my point. What does Dave, EIA, and T-boone Pickens have in common, they do not build power plants and make electricity.
“These are based on simple inflation-pegged escalations of current strip or consensus prices. ”
Do geologist check check their assumptions?
Nothing simple about inflation. I have been around a long time. Increases in oil and gas are a major cause of inflation.
David try this. Find a large coal plant, count the number of rail cars of coal needed each day. Figure out the same for natural gas. A very large percentage of electric power cost generated by fossil fuel is the delivered cost of fossil fuel.
Nuclear power reduces the demand for fossil fuel and lowers the cost. So what is the fight mix? It depends on where you are.
Making blanket statement about choice of power is childish. When an adult geologist from Texas does it is stupid unless you’re dishonest.
The correct response is yes Sir you are right.
“I don’t see the point : sales of electric vehicles were up 25% last year,”
The point is that 24% of insignificant is insignificant. For those engineers who started using a slide rule we only use three significant figures. We have to explain to young engineers to only write down what can be measured.
Engineers might also write a second order differential equation for predicting energy use. There would be a factor for adding demand and a factor for subtracting demand. For example, if the same number of EV and RV are added but EV only last 5 years on the road and RV 20 years.
So the steady state value of EV could be a a million and RV ten million.
Use has also be considered. I drove my 25 year old PU to work and bought fuel once a month. My short commute would be perfect for an EV. When I can find a EV for $1200 that will last another 15 years, I would consider it.
We drive the RV about 15k miles a year getting 1/3rd mileage if we driving our Corolla but is also where we sleep 95% of the time.
The assumptions about the future demand what people can afford to do and what they enjoy doing.
Before spending money on an EV, I will have a second sail boat where it is warm in the winter.
I just cancelled my preorder for a Tesla Model 3: Can’t see paying $50K for a car (base $35,000 model is grossly under-equipped and not likely to be purchased by anyone) with cold weather range cut in half, that requires a 30-min battery pre-heat in winter, and slow recharging capability (4 miles/hour charge or 25 mi/30 min supercharge). I don’t think I’m alone—500,000 in sales is looking to be a Musk mirage,