37 thoughts on “Electric Cars”

  2. Apparently not when it comes to electric cars. Tesla is not doing well. I’ll be surprised if it lasts another year.

    1. Not doing well in what? The doom and gloomers said the Model S wouldn’t even roll off the line and the company would go belly up before delivering a single one of these vehicles. Musk proved them wrong and he is doing the manufacturing in California which is not exactly the cheapest place to do vehicle assembly. It is not easy to start a car company and a lot of the traditional heavyweights have been going bankrupt. I would say he is doing very well.

    2. There is a new Grasshopper video at the SpaceX website with a 6 ft hop. You can’t see a lot because of the dust cloud but its cool with me being a proponent of VTVL et all.

      2. Nevermind. I found it under updates. Poor camera location – you see the briefest of liftoffs before everything becomes obscured. Still, it’s a start.

      1. As I said he’s a smart guy so why is he worried about carbon? Plenty of very smart people with science and engineering qualifications in other fields have looked in to the climate change/carbon thing and concluded it was nonsense on stilts in very short order.
        The guy who owns my ISP fits the “guilty rich” profile nicely. He apparently knows Elon Musk, is likewise worried about carbon and bought two of the Roadsters – and had them airfreighted to Australia.
        He just bought himself a new private plane for fun as he’s sold the ISP business – a Pilatus PC12NG. The hypocrisy of the guilty rich.

        2. Elon used to own a McLaren F1 and an L-39 Albatros jet IIRC so it is not like he doesn’t like fast vehicles which use a lot of fuel.

  4. The CBO report makes for interesting reading. Its analysis puts the price premium for a small electric car at $19,000, and the price of gas at $3.60. The first is likely to go down with volume and advances in battery production (since batteries are the source of the price premium), and the latter is likely to go up over the lifetime of a car purchased today (cars on the road today are 11 years old on average; by the time a 2013 model car is 11 years old China and India will be using much more oil than they are today). Unless I missed it, the CBO model gives the electric car no credit for cheaper maintenance.

    One thing that I find curious is that electric cars are clearly cost-effective at the sort of gas prices you see in Europe or Japan today, but I haven’t heard of big electric car sales in those places. Is the problem the higher efficiency of their gas and diesel cars? The lack of garages? The price of electricity? It looks like a possible market opportunity.

    1. The biggest drawback everywhere they’ve been tried is the limited range combined with the long time to charge and lack of ubiquitous charging stations. A gasoline powered car can go 400 miles on one fill up. Within that range are lots of gas stations, and a refill from a gas pump takes only a few minutes. An electric car can go 40 miles. What’s worse, a refill takes a few hours (a gas pump puts energy into a tank at rate of 17 MW — that will never be achievable with electric recharging at any level of technology). The only hope for electrics is either battery-swap “charging” or ditching batteries in favor of fuel cells. Battery swapping would require 100 times as many “filling stations” as conventional gas stations to maintain the range convenience of gasoline powered vehicles. Fuel cells could offer nearly the range of gasoline power, but are limited (right now) to hydrogen as a “practical” fuel.

      The physics just don’t allow battery-powered cars to even come close to competing economically with gasoline cars, and no technological breakthrough can ever change that.

      1. is the limited range combined with the long time to charge and lack of ubiquitous charging stations

        True.

        What’s worse, a refill takes a few hours (a gas pump puts energy into a tank at rate of 17 MW — that will never be achievable with electric recharging at any level of technology).

        Wrong. There are fast charging devices and fast charging stations available:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_station

        These have been available since at least the 90s. They can fully charge a car in less than 30 minutes. Not hours. There are other ways of transmitting power than 120 V AC outlets. There are batteries in the market which can charge to 50% capacity in 5 minutes or less. Not all of the power you pump into the tank with gas is transformed into motive power by an ICE (you get like a fifth of it as useable energy) and that is not true for electrics where over 90% of the input energy is used as motive power. Electrics also have regenerative braking on top of that which means you can seriously reduce energy consumption in stop and go urban traffic.

        Fuel cells could offer nearly the range of gasoline power, but are limited (right now) to hydrogen as a “practical” fuel.

        Fuel cells have all sorts of problems. A fuel cell vehicle is more complex than an electric vehicle and is as a result more expensive to build. This is why you can’t buy any. The most reasonable FCV at the moment is probably the Honda FCX Clarity but you can only lease one. Honda is treating it as a research vehicle. They need to reduce the use of platinum further. Liquid hydrogen is a low density mess as we know here from following space technology. I think it could work if someone made a SOFC running on LNG that could be useable in a moving vehicle or something similar but this is not even in the lab let alone available in the market. The emission outputs are the same as a clean ICE (albeit with higher efficiency so you have less of them) and you have all the same issues with fuel supply that you have with an ICE.

        The physics just don’t allow battery-powered cars to even come close to competing economically with gasoline cars, and no technological breakthrough can ever change that.

        Not really. In the late XIXth century – beginning of the XXth century it wasn’t even clear if gasoline vehicles would take over the market or not. The electric vehicles had superior performance, required less maintenance, were more reliable and more convenient. Back then people broke land speed records on electrics. Eventually ICE vehicles became more reliable and started coming out with electric starter motors and this is why we came to the present situation.

        What Musk did is obvious to a lot of people. The electric battery market is evolving a lot faster than in the past because of mobile computing devices with advances both in price and energy density. This means we are reaching a point where a mass produced EV is possible. Just take a look at the differences between the top end Roadster (53 kWh battery) and the Model S (85 kWh battery). The 40 kWh Model S, without tax credits, has a base price of US$57400 while the 53 kWh Roadster cost US$109000.

        Electric vehicles separate the energy source from the vehicle fleet and allow the use of more energy sources. This means you can use whatever is cheapest at the moment to run the cars rather than having to rely on any given fuel. It also means that emissions are lower (nil) at the point of usage. I wouldn’t be surprised if the usage of electric vehicles eventually became mandatory in the centers of highly traffic congested cities. LA is probably a good case in the US of where such a ruling could be enforced.

        1. I wouldn’t be surprised if the usage of electric vehicles eventually became mandatory in the centers of highly traffic congested cities. LA is probably a good case in the US of where such a ruling could be enforced.

          Ha ha ha. Funny. You’re clearly not from the US.

    2. One thing that I find curious is that electric cars are clearly cost-effective at the sort of gas prices you see in Europe or Japan today, but I haven’t heard of big electric car sales in those places. Is the problem the higher efficiency of their gas and diesel cars? The lack of garages? The price of electricity? It looks like a possible market opportunity.

      The lack of garages can be a problem. In the case of Japan I think the market for personal electric vehicles is quite limited. Most of the market for EVs is probably in commercial delivery vehicles. Most people in large urban centers in Japan use the excellent mass transit services (which are already electric) to do their daily tasks and cars are only used to make long drives during vacation. Not exactly a use case where you want to use an electric.

      In Europe the situation is less dramatic for personal electric vehicles and many families have two cars or more however the prices are still too high and availability is still too low for EVs to make an impact.

  5. Electricity rates in Western Europe run around EU.20 / kW hour in most countries.
    http://www.energy.eu/
    Considering my rate is $0.085 kW hour the ratio electric rates is about the same as the ratio of gas prices. Which may help explain Europeans reluctance to purchase electric cars. Also the abysmal state of much of the household wiring might have something to do with it.

    1. The rates are not very high in France where they use nuclear power plants. In Germany with their renewable subsidies… well you can see for yourself.

  6. Aside from the practicality issues of electrics already discussed, I would guess that one reason they haven’t caught on even in Europe is that when gasoline prices are high people just buy smaller cars.

    Regarding whether you can make money selling electric cars, it is important to remember that many people will buy one even if it is not the most economical choice. They want to be green and/or trendy and they’re willing to pay extra for it. In a way it’s just another segment of the luxury car market.

  7. An electric car can go 40 miles.

    It’s not that bad — the Leaf, Focus and Fit electrics have 80-100 mile range, and the (expensive) Tesla Model S gets over 200.

    a refill takes a few hours

    Wired’s review of Elon Musk’s personal Model S mentions a fast charging system that they will be installing in California, “which can supposedly fill half the 85 kWh battery’s cells in around 30 minutes”. Not as fast as a gas fill-up, but not bad if you can coordinate your “refills” with food stops.

    I expect that for a while most electric cars will be bought by households that also have a gas car, for longer trips.

    The physics just don’t allow battery-powered cars to even come close to competing economically with gasoline cars, and no technological breakthrough can ever change that.

    That’s unnecessarily pessimistic. Battery-powered cars compete economically today in some places, for some customers. I can imagine all sorts of technological breakthroughs (e.g. Envia’s lighter and cheaper batteries) that would make them economical in more situations. If you could buy an electric with 150 mile range for a $5,000 premium, lots of people would do so, even with overnight charging times, because the per-mile operating costs would be so low.

    We should hope for such technological breakthroughs. If electric cars become mainstream we’ll be much more insulated from the global oil market.

  8. You’ll know when electric cars cease to be a waste of money: it’s the day they no longer require CBO reports.

  9. The last I heard, the fast charge damaged the batteries–too many fast charges and the batteries start losing capacity. Maybe this has been fixed.

    Per-mile operating cost has to include the cost of replacing the battery pack (I drove my last car 23 years). If the packs don’t degrade that’s obviously not a problem.

    If electrics looked a bit better I might have considered one for a third car (mainly because they’d be easier for my daughter to learn on than our current cars (manual transmissions)). In that case, the limited range might be a plus.

  10. One big cost for electric cars is replacing the batteries when the current ones go bad. the same is true for hybrids. And then there is the cost of disposal of the batteries. That is why they are referring to when they discuss the lifecycle costs of owning one.

    As for Elon Musk, his market isn’t those who do a cost analysis of their choices but ones who buy on emotion and have the money to risk.

    1. Which is what the Chevy Volt does. You go the first 40 miles on battery, then the ICE kicks in. Since the average American daily commute is less than 40 miles, you really only need the ICE for long trips.

      1. So I drive a Volt on a 35 mile commute. I park it at the office, work my day, go back in the car for the 35 mile commute back home, and it has a fully recharged battery for the drive home?

        1. If you work at a big enough guilt-ridden company they’ll have charging stations. Ours does, right next to the building the executives park at. I don’t know what would happen if a peon tried to plug into one of them.

          If your commute is anything over 15 miles one-way or if you drive somewhere with weather you should probably drive something other than a Volt.

          1. Ah, so I don’t need a gas powered electric generator following me around. I need a building connected to a gas powered electric generator.

          2. Most buildings are already connected to an electrical power system, so that shouldn’t be much of an issue. If the chargers were more than token appeasements to the Great God Gaia the company might need to increase its electrical capacity to cover them.

            If you’re relying on your building’s power to get you home at night, that might be more of an issue. Our company turns down lights a few days during the summer when the projected electrical demand exceeds capacity. If there came a time when anyone actually used the chargers, they would presumably also be shut down. With the Volt, I suppose that’s not much of a bother, you just drive home on the gasoline engine. With the Leaf, that’s more of an issue. I guess you could leave it at work and bum a ride with a friend who is ecologically unconscientious enough to own a vehicle that actually works.

  13. If there is one magic bullet that would make electric vehicles practical and cost-effective, it is not better batteries per se, but better energy storage in general. Batteries for small passenger vehicles are a poor choice for reasons listed above, but there are alternatives – ultracapacitors and flywheels. Over the next few years I am more sanguine about improvements in flywheel technology than I am about ultracapacitors, which will themselves likely progress more rapidly than battery technology.

    Flywheels are by far the most efficient energy storage medium. A couple of one-hundred-kilogram, 1m diameter flywheels spinning in opposite directions at 100 kHz is a heck of a lot of energy storage, assuming one can get materials that withstand the stress of a rim moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

    1. I wouldn’t know about that. Flywheels are indeed dependent on materials advances. Basically to increase the energy density either you make it heavier, which reduces vehicle performance, or you make it spin even faster since KE=0.5mv^2 and risk it breaking apart by delamination or whatever. Much of the requirements in materials are common with other things like armor. So there is certainly no lack of investment in the area but there haven’t been that many improvements either. Flywheels are mostly useful for stationary applications where weight doesn’t matter.

      Capacitors are interesting. Elon himself said he originally went to California because he wanted to get a PhD on capacitors. There are a lot of things which are theoretically possible to increase density however the devil is in the details. Like in the proposed battery improvements a lot of the work is in nanotechnology to increase surface area and things like that which have actually been moving forward.

    2. Flywheels got a lot more practical when higher tensile strength materials came on line. I’ve seen reports on flywheel-powered buses, but I’ve seen reports like that for forty years. So far they seem more gee-whiz than practical.

      I’ve seen claims that ultra-capacitors are nearly practical for real-world vehicles. I’ve only seen those claims for five years or so.

      It seems that equipping intercity buses (the ones that stop every block or two) with a diesel-electric transmission and with either ultracapacitors or flywheels to handle the starts and stops would be a win, but I suppose things are more complicated than I imagine.

    3. Better electrical storage would make many of the green dreams almost practical–windmills, solar power, tidal energy. Heck, if the storage were long-enough term even dams could get more efficient.

        1. There have been proposals to use electric cars as load-levelers. That would become more effective as we get more electric cars, but, as usual, there are problems as well.

          I suppose there’s no point in asking for more details. Load levelers for houses don’t need to store more than a few kW-hrs; there are some interesting battery technologies that, while too bulky for the roads, might be interesting for something like that.

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