Electric cars - The future?

[mendelman]

Many automakers work to develop and sell all-electric cars and also gain all the good PR. But the more it is discussed and the more I think and talk about it, the more I realize the buzz and hype for electric cars may be premature or misguided.

The basic truth is that electric cars (aka low/zero emissions) is great and good for the environment. The major issue I have is that we don't have infrastructure to support these vehicles. Where are all the charging ports? Who will provide them? What benefit is there to provide them? How do you pay for the service? And many more questions.

With all this talk about electric cars, I think that we may be missing the interim - make/require internal combustion engines be super efficient - all and every vehicle must have a minimum 30-40 mpg. I assume this is possible, but is just not done for whatever reason (choose your conspiracy).

So, what does Cyburbia think? Should we require super efficient IC engines or just jump headlong into fully electric cars and deal with the infrastructure after the fact?

[Maister]

Electric cars have been around for about as long as gas powered cars. The question is why did the gas powered car become so popular to begin with and not their electric bretheren? Are the same limitations and comparative disadvantages still present with our current state of technology? Seems like the limitations on the availability of electricity were far more more imposing a 110 years ago. Given the changes in our infrastructure over the last century I'm not so sure the adaptations necessary to convert large scale to electric powered would be anywhere near as daunting as they were back then.

[Tide]

I think you hit it on the head Mendelman, the infrastructure is currently not in place and not only would the infrastructure need to be overhauled, the way we think about electric generation and delivery also needs to be reconsidered.

Current peak demand for electricity is in the morning, when everyone wakes up and turns on the lights, hot water heaters, coffee pots etc. Then it levels out for the workday and then a slight peak when workers come home, but offices start to turn off their lights in time for the evening when most workers are home.

However, with plug in electric cars, peak demand will switch from AM to PM when everyone is home and plugs their cars in, and in a conservative estimate an electric company spokesperson once told me they expect the PM demand from electric cars to be twice what the current AM peak load is.

The lines cannot handle that kind of delivery and there are not enough power plants in the US to supply that kind of demand, so trigger the quick fix, coal power plants, which for the record is kind of against why people bought the electric car for in the first place.

Bottom line, US electrical generation, transmission, and delivery will all need to be overhauled a.k.a. smart grid technology for the electric car to really take off.

[mendelman]

Tide - that is a great expansion of my point. I was thinking more myopically at the source point of consumption (ie plug in which to plug my car) as opposed to the national generation/distribution grid/system.

Also, I can fill my gas tank with 12 gallons of liquid volatile potential energy in about 5 minutes and be set with enough energy for ~264 miles of driving, but, even assuming electric storage tech is greatly enhanced, I believe it would still require multiple hours to recharge an electric car.

That is a huge and fundamental flaw in the whole electric car system/technology.

Now, don't think I am advocating for more IC engine driving, I actually think/wish for overall much less driving (whether IC or electric), but that is a 10¹⁰ larger and institutionalized problem for the economy.

[Hink]

With our countries inability to financially support infrastructure, I do not see how we will ever fully move our grid to the 21st century, let alone put in place a new infrastructure requirement of electric stations.

I think the solution is in efficiency until we can convince the US Public that our infrastructure is broken and spending billions a year on highways isn't a good use of our transportation dollars. But I think we all know that isn't going to happen any time soon...

[mgk920]

I agree on the above posts in that in the earliest days of automobility, you name the technology for propulsion, it was tried in the market and I see no reason why straight battery-electric will have any more success now than it did over 100 years ago - and for the exact same reasons (range on a charge and turnaround time on refueling).

I am also most decidedly NOT turned on by ethanol, as it is very inefficient to produce (farm and distillery inputs), transport (MUST be trucked and/or railed, cannot be pipelined) and burn (62% of the energy content per volume as straight gasoline/petrol).

OTOH, I am waiting for those highly efficient Euro-diesels to come to the USA. Right now, diesels have at least half of the market for new cars in Europe and are nearly 100% unlike the crap that was sold here a generation ago, only sharing the same fuel.

There will ALWAYS be personal vehicles. At one time, they were mostly animal-drawn, or animals themselves, the only question is what will be the most cost-effective ways to propel them in various times in the future.

I look upon electric cars as being nothing more than a fad among some lines of the societal and political elite.

Mike

[DetroitPlanner]

All electric fleets will get a free pass on paying for the infastructure that they use as well. Cars like the Prius or Volt also don't pay nearly as much for the transportation infastructure that they use.

One of the assumptions is that stores or restraunts will supply people with charging stations. In Michigan the leading Super-Walmart competitor has announced some plans to offer these. However, it can take hours to sufficiently charge a car, leaving cars such as the Leaf at a competitive disadvantage due to their short range and long charging times. The best places to charge would be at work and home, but in reality how many worksites will offer this? Would it mean giving up another perk?

[Pragmatic Idealist]

Electric cars are part of a mix.

The ideal situation combines a comprehensive system of high-quality public transportation (including everything from high-speed rail to circulatory jitneys and freeway-running express buses) with transit-oriented development, as well as clean-energy car sharing (subscription-based car rentals) and clean-energy taxis. When autonomous cars come into being, car sharing and taxis will converge into the same mode, a "Personal Rapid Transit" system that does not require fixed guideways.

Pedestrian, bicycle, and N.E.V. facilities need to be improved and expanded, especially around the transit stations. N.E.V.'s, or Neighborhood Electric Vehicles, are readily-available and easily-deployable right now, especially where bicycle infrastructure exists. They are not as big, heavy, or fast as standard-size cars, and the mode has a limited range, which I think we all know is, ultimately, beneficial.

Larger vehicles with a greater range need to be limited because even the electric kind cause a whole host of problems, especially those that contribute to suburban sprawl. But, many people will probably be willing to recharge at home, as well as recharge at parking meters that also double as charging stations. The battery technology is improving, and the United States government is making significant investments to soon dominate the market, but battery exchanges may also be coming on-line, as well. In this scenario, stations along a transportation corridor rent fully-charged batteries, which are machine-installed into vehicles when they've depleted the charge of the battery that each is currently using. Such a system effectively addresses both the shorter range and the longer recharging (refueling) time that electric cars present.

[wahday]

I agree with PI in that the future of fuels is likely to look like a range of options rather than one single solution. There is safety in diversification as well. If something happens on the supply side to increase one fuel type, so long as there are other options, the overall societal burden will remain more stable. Regardless of the type of vehicle we are talking about (private car, ride-sharing, other forms of transit) they all need to be powered by something.

One thing that is not talked about much with respect to electric cars is that, of course, they DO create pollution. I mean, electricity is not made out of thin air. It would be interesting to know the contribution to air pollution made by an electric car as compared to other forms (internal gas combustion, diesel, other fuels). I realize this would be difficult as electricity is generated in different ways in different places, but I'm sure some nerdy environmentally minded person has spent copious hours trying to calculate such a thing (perhaps as a an average across the country?)

And there are other "invisible" impacts (at least invisible to us here in the US...) to consider as well, not the least of which is the use of ion for the batteries.

[mgk920]

As for various forms of transport and straight electric propulsion, it is my firm belief that the the most likely place that we'll see it extensively used in North America will be on the railroads. Common in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, the technology is over a century old and well proven in the field, needing only another major oil price shock like we had a couple of years ago (but worse and not going back down) to set it into motion in here. From the railfan grapevines that I follow, back in 2008 at least one of North America's big railroad companies was seriously studying converting its mainlines to electric power before oil prices moderated.

The beauty of straight electric on railroads is that the locomotives are far simpler and easier to maintain than diesels, that they can draw their tractive power from whatever source is most economical at any given time and in any given location and that they can even use regenerative braking to feed power back into the wire to be used by other trains.

Mike

[TerraSapient]

I am going to be on the market for a new car next year. I intend to investigate the Volt as a serious option. The way I see it, electric cars are designed for urban use, they are not well equipped for driving across the country at this time. As a potential electric car consumer, I do not see the range or charging time as a set back. I do understand, however, that for people who have longer commutes, the range could be an issue. For me, the 40-50 mile range is more than enough to go to work and run any daily errands. Personally, I think the need to have charging stations all over the city, at this time, is highly exaggerated. Most people should be able to plug in their cars at home and drive to work and back without issue.

Another potential mode of personal transportation I looked into was an Air Pod http://www.mdi.lu/english/cityflowair.php which runs on compressed air rather than gas or electricity. It has the same benefits and drawbacks as an electric car, except that as an American, it would be too difficult to obtain one and use it in the US.

I think that for 2-car families, an electric car is a very realistic option. We are considering 1 conventional gas powered vehicle and 1 electric or alternative fuel powered vehicle. This will ensure that all of our personal traveling needs are met.

[JimPlans]

One area of research I've been watching is supercapacitors/ultracapacitors. Supercapacitors are already in experimental use on buses in China.. Australian researchers have created a combination battery-ultracapacitor that is cheaper and more efficient in hybrid cars (in tests) than regular li-ion batteries.

Basically, if super/ultracapacitors work out, they will have the range of batteries but charge in seconds or minutes, not hours. Couple this with new, much lighter carbon fiber car bodies that could exist in the next few years (the technology is there, but the will to change manufacturing processes is not) and we could have a fleet of electric cars with reasonable range and reasonable charging times.

As for high-mileage combustion engine cars, current diesel technology as deployed by Volkswagen is responsible for the mileage record for a passenger vehicle on one tank of gas: 1,527 miles (or 90 miles per imperial gallon). As this is a diesel, it can run just as well on biodiesel. Just think what a plug-in hybrid diesel could get for mileage around town.

As for the energy grid, there are proposals out there to make plug-in hybrids a part of the solution, not the problem. The "smart garage" would allow the grid to pull electricity from car batteries that are docked for charging when needed, in addition to charging the batteries. This would require a completely upgraded smart energy grid, but we should be doing this anyway.

Electric cars are the future. They will keep getting better. Someday we will look back on the age of gasoline-powered cars and wonder what we were thinking.

[mgk920]

^^
How fast will the meter be spinning while it's plugged in and charging and at what rate?

Mike

[DetroitPlanner]

One area of research I've been watching is supercapacitors/ultracapacitors. Supercapacitors are already in experimental use on buses in China.. Australian researchers have created a combination battery-ultracapacitor that is cheaper and more efficient in hybrid cars (in tests) than regular li-ion batteries.

Basically, if super/ultracapacitors work out, they will have the range of batteries but charge in seconds or minutes, not hours. Couple this with new, much lighter carbon fiber car bodies that could exist in the next few years (the technology is there, but the will to change manufacturing processes is not) and we could have a fleet of electric cars with reasonable range and reasonable charging times.

As for high-mileage combustion engine cars, current diesel technology as deployed by Volkswagen is responsible for the mileage record for a passenger vehicle on one tank of gas: 1,527 miles (or 90 miles per imperial gallon). As this is a diesel, it can run just as well on biodiesel. Just think what a plug-in hybrid diesel could get for mileage around town.

As for the energy grid, there are proposals out there to make plug-in hybrids a part of the solution, not the problem. The "smart garage" would allow the grid to pull electricity from car batteries that are docked for charging when needed, in addition to charging the batteries. This would require a completely upgraded smart energy grid, but we should be doing this anyway.

Electric cars are the future. They will keep getting better. Someday we will look back on the age of gasoline-powered cars and wonder what we were thinking.

While the smart garage is an interesting concept, I think there are many technical hurdles to it. For example, how would the electricity get past the tires? Cars are built in a way to minimize impact of electrical jolts on the equipment. How can a current garage be retrofitted? Not all garages are attached and have electricity.

[nec209]

I don't see electric cars happing soon.What I see is hybrid cars!!! The US infrastructure is very bad like where do you charge the electric car and how long does it take to charge.

The electric cars will work good in Japan and Europe not in Canada,US or Russia the country is just too big and will take very long time for new infrastructure .Places like Japan and Europe are much easier .

Also cars are not answer give it other 50 or 100 years and suburb spwarl will be over .They cannot keep up with this suburb spwarl for much longer.The earth population is also out of control and in 50 or 100 years some thing will have to happen.

We need to go in space or stop having kids that is the answer.Cities should be less car-centric.

[ursus]

We need to go in space or stop having kids that is the answer.Cities should be less car-centric.

I agree. Please feel free to not have any kids, nec.

There will be answers. They will be diverse, and they will be brilliant. I still believe in humanity.
Population is a problem, to be sure, but zero-population doesn't seem to me to be a viable solution. Remember, it's only a fraction of the world's population doing most of the consuming. To simply say "stop having kids" is lame at best.

[Raf]

I don't see electric cars happing soon.What I see is hybrid cars!!! The US infrastructure is very bad like where do you charge the electric car and how long does it take to charge.

Some states like California have required electronic charging stations as a part of large scale developments since the late 90's. In my town alone there are quite a few charging stations in parking garages, the local U, and other high profile shopping centers.

The electric cars will work good in Japan and Europe not in Canada,US or Russia the country is just too big and will take very long time for new infrastructure .Places like Japan and Europe are much easier .

How so? The Nissan Leaf is a great car for your average commute. The average commute for Americans is 16 miles (mine clocks in at 24 miles) one-way. That's 32 miles two ways. The Leaf's average charge is approximately 100 miles. That is essentially 2 days of commuting, and you can throw in a few pass-by trips and go home and charge your car overnight. So again, how will it not work? (again, the infrastructure needs improvement yes i agree, but saying it won't work, uhh, ok).

Also cars are not answer give it other 50 or 100 years and suburb spwarl will be over .They cannot keep up with this suburb spwarl for much longer.The earth population is also out of control and in 50 or 100 years some thing will have to happen.

We need to go in space or stop having kids that is the answer.Cities should be less car-centric.

Get off your academic high horse. Until the market shifts for demand for more urban living, sprawl will continue. The only way in the states the market will shift will be a) another huge oil-shock that is sustained for a long period of time, not just a summer or b) the US does away with mortgage tax breaks.

example a will probably happen before example b, but then again, will that really change the American Dream that has been embedded of the ticky tacky house, yard, two-care garage lifestyle sold to us since the inceptions of levittowns?

[otterpop]

I see an electric car as a good choice for a second car. I need my gas-burner for out of town travel (camping, river trips, trips to cities in and out of the state). I could see having an electric car for in-town driving and near destinations.

The limited range and the time it takes to recharge an electric car that are the limiting factors, especially in a state like Montana where places and people are often far apart.

[cng]

Some states like California have required electronic charging stations as a part of large scale developments since the late 90's. In my town alone there are quite a few charging stations in parking garages, the local U, and other high profile shopping centers.

Although a suburban jurisdiction, we have homes in my city that are equipped with both solar PV panels and an electric vehicle battery and charging station, so that one can use an electric vehicle with a solar power source. KB Homes is the builder that is offering these features as options here.

[Linda_D]

I think that many here are underestimating the adaptability of all First World cultures to technology. We embrace new technologies rather than fear them as dominant cultures did in the past, and that's probably especially true of Americans and Asians. That there weren't many gas stations in the US in 1905 or paved roads in 1920 outside the cities didn't stop automobiles from developing. They started out as playthings for the wealthy, then as status symbols for the urban middle class, and spread from there.

[Cismontane]

Remember that electric cars aren't some sort of CO2e panacea. I don't understand why people think that they are.

If you plug in your car, you'll simply get the carbon intensity of the grid. This intensity may actually be worse than what you would get with a highly efficient internal combustion engine. For example, US grid carbon intensities vary by state from a low of about 0.3 tonnes/mwh to a high of just under 1 tonne/mwh. Primarily coal-fired states tend to average about 0.8 tonnes,, in which case it'll be much better just to keep on guzzling petrol rather than switch to electric cars. Primarilty LNG-fired states can have much lower intensities in the area of 0.3 tonnes are pretty much at the threshhold.. and new ULEV vehicles and hybirds would still do better than pure electric, even for the best states.

Canada and Brazil (with national grid intensities of less than 0.2 and 0.1 tonnes/mwh, respectively, can achieve huge gains by migrating their car and truck fleets to full electrical. The US, at 0.6 tonnes/mwh average, would actually get dirtier (and perhaps a lot dirtier) if it did the same, especially with improved fuel efficiency standards. To be blunt, Florida, Virginia, Texas, Georgia and the Carolinas may achieve better outcomes if they were simply to subsidize the worst gas-guzzling SUVs, than if they were to switch to full electric. The threshhold of pain seems to average about 0.3, maybe 0.4, tonnes/mwh for new cars.

Of course, switching to electrical, moves the dependence from Saudi/foreign hydrocarbons to a mix of primarily US domestic hydrocarbons (coal, LNG, etc), but that's a political issue more than anything else.

The bigger problem - how do we migrate the entire grid off coal and other hydrocarbons - won't go away. There are few achievable scenarios that have real renewables' share of US electrical generation going up much past 15% in the foreseeable future.

[Tide]

Thank you for that information Cismontane this is the type of data we all need to make educated decisions at the local, regional, and national level especially if we are asked if migrating a public motorfleet to electric is a sustainable move etc. I'm sure more of this type of "cost benefit" study will be needed and available in the near future.

[DetroitPlanner]

Thank you for that information Cismontane this is the type of data we all need to make educated decisions at the local, regional, and national level especially if we are asked if migrating a public motorfleet to electric is a sustainable move etc. I'm sure more of this type of "cost benefit" study will be needed and available in the near future.

Areas where electricity is generated through hydro really stand to make out. My cabin gets its electicity from dams, as does large cities like Buffalo or Las Vegas. Buffalo should have hydro electric for years to come. Vegas on the other hand is depleting Lake Mead at a rapid rate which will impact both how they power thier buildings and flush thier toilets!

[Cismontane]

Areas where electricity is generated through hydro really stand to make out. My cabin gets its electicity from dams, as does large cities like Buffalo or Las Vegas. Buffalo should have hydro electric for years to come. Vegas on the other hand is depleting Lake Mead at a rapid rate which will impact both how they power thier buildings and flush thier toilets!

yes, that and nukes. Canada's relatively low CO2e intensity because it mainly relies on hydro and nuclear. Unfortunately, from what I understanding nuclear's too expensive (nearly $5,000 per KW installed capacity versus $3,000 for most other mainstream technologies), and people are scared of it.

For some reason, the mass media focuses this debate on private cars and the problems they cause (all of 23% to 28% of our country's GHG emissions, depending on your inventory criteria), ignoring the much bigger slice of the pie that comprises the total M&I utility grid. The public sometimes doesn't understand that this whole debate over fuel efficiencies and alternative transport technologies has the theoretical potential to reduce emissions by 6% to 8% overall - hardly anything to get excited above.. and that's based on technologies that do not currently exist.

Some of the biggest problems are in the grid itself and our dependence on it. Build better buildings, increase appliance efficiencies, encourage basic "low tech" distributed renewables (like residential solar hot water and ground-source heat pumps) and favor higher density development, and other demand side manipulations you can potentially cut 25%+ off total emissions (based on the current M&I grid share, since you have to look not just at buildings use but the impacts of lowered buildings and industrial demand will have on the grid's own CO2e-cost of generation once buildings-related demand decreases.. another thing that the press and rightwing pundits ignore) without changing generation capacity at all.. all with fairly low hanging fruit and all with existing, proven technologies (or no technology at all, in the case of better buildings and land-use changes).

Start shifting out coal on the supplyside (and, no, I'm not talking about the perpetual motion engine that is the lobbyists' fiction called "clean coal"), and you can leverage your way into CO2e reductions that are far greater than anything you can achieve in the transport and transit arena...up to 40-45% of ALL US emissions if we were to become Canada, 60% if we were to become Brazil... and that's on top of the proportional gains on the low hanging demand-side fruit listed above.. all changes less glamorous than transport technology... but these changes will involve breaking the back of the political power of King Coal and the utility industry lobbyists.. and that is apparently more pain than anything our politicos are prepared to contemplate. It's kinda like - they're willing to fight Detroit, Rush and the homebuilders to win an agonizingly painful 8% reduction in emissions but we can't even dream of fighting Massey Coal to win a reduction 3 to 4 times as large. True renewables are unlikely to be more than 15% or so of total M&I grid capacity anytime in the foreseeable future, so the only way to do this is to kill King Coal.. and shift sharply to other hydrocarbons, probably LNG.... heck, maybe even shift to gas oil if we can get car electrification en masse (shifting the use of petrol from cars to the grid).. it'll still be better than coal.

[Cismontane]

I somehow duplicated my last reply to DetroitPlanner.. please ignore this.