What We’ll Drive in 2016
There have been lots of opinion pieces about Obama’s newly proposed Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, and I’ve weighed in with my own views on the topic. Even though I dislike the full-employment-for-bureaucrats model to curb oil consumption and would prefer a simple, market-driven solution like higher fuel prices, the fact is that our future vehicle fleet will change dramatically.
Radically improved fuel economy isn’t necessarily the end of the world for performance enthusiasts. For as long as I can recall, new cars have gone through growth spurts like an athlete on steroids. It seems that every new model is bigger and more powerful — even the newest 50 MPG Prius and Scion’s xB offerings grew in size and power.
When cars downsized after the 1973 oil embargo, the former Big Three automakers’ small car offerings were hardly competitive with innovative models like Honda’s fuel-efficient Civic and Toyota’s durable Corolla. Chevy’s Vega had lots of innovative technology, but the aluminum engine without steel cylinder liners easily failed while Ford’s little Pinto was fun to drive until it either caught fire or rusted away.
Today, there’s a lot less arrogance in the corner office of a major automaker. Everyone knows that to survive in a universe of overproduction, intense competition, and lackluster demand, you can’t just be good. You had better be brilliant. And if an automaker makes the right moves, it will enhance its chances for survival.
These thoughts occurred to me as I watched the reaction of affluent people to the Northern California unveiling of the Fisker Karma S, a hardtop/convertible version of the company’s extended range electric luxury car. The cool looking Karma sedan was also a big hit with well-heeled residents from California’s Marin County who like the idea of driving green without sacrifice. If Fisker can deliver the car that’s promised on the website, his startup company will be wildly successful.
Ready or not, pure electric vehicles along with “extended range” or “plug-in” electric vehicles are well on the way to a showroom near you. GM is thrilled that the preliminary city mileage specifications for its Chevy Volt under the new “draft” EPA standard is 230 MPG. The company is confident that the EPA combined rating will remain in triple digits.
Electric vehicles recharged by low cost nuclear power plants. This is the way to go! We won’t have to burn any coal or enrich the Saudis!!!
Like all liberal pipe-dreams, the electric car fantasy is just that – a fantasy that will never come true. The Administration has declared war on any type of power plant that can produce large quantities of electricity (coal, oil, nuclear) and our current generation and transmission grid simply won’t handle widespread use of electric cars. To any reasonable person “Cap & Trade” and electric vehicles would seem to be conflicting goals.
Slightly more reasonable emission standards for diesel engines would allow car makers to meet the CAFE standards with cars that actually work and people are willing to buy. Instead, we’ll probably waste $100 billion or so building electric cars nobody wants then bail out GM again.
Right. Wverytime energy is converted into a different form of energy (as in oil to electricity) from 30% to 50% of the starting energy is lost. So, we burn coal or oil or gas (shudder if you’re thinking nuclear or wind or solar) a minimum 30% is lost. Then transmission loses more. Then going through a charger loses another 30% to 50%. Then using the battery will waste another 30% to 50%.
Presume your electric rates stay the same and imagine running your AC at full power for an additional 8 hours a day or so. Your electric bill is going to double with just one car. How’s that working for you?
Oh, and for sure your electric rates are going to increase by at least 50% to 100% under Obama power and energy plans regardless of the disaster cap and trade will cause. You’ll be better off getting a vehicle that uses grass. The Amish can help you there.
Brian:
Have you seen the Lightning, a British sports car with batteries from Altairnano? The Nanosafe(tm) batteries are said to provide over 12,000 recharge cycles wile retaining most of their ability to hold a charge. With a fast-charge connection the battery pack can be recharged in 10 minutes. The innovative electric motors, from UK based PML Flightlink Ltd, are in the wheels.
http://www.lightningcarcompany.co.uk
The Phoenix SUV / SUT also uses the NanoSafe batteries from Altair-nano.
http://tinyurl.com/568o7w
Electric cars are the future, but just which future depends on continued improvements in battery and super-capacitor technology, and how we generate electricity. Thorium reactors seem to fill the bill for safe nuclear power. As a bonus, they can consume the nuclear waste from conventional nuclear reactors. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348/
http://www.thoriumpower.com/
@ #3 Cedarhill:
“You’ll be better off getting a vehicle that uses grass. The Amish can help you there. ” – Nope! My home town is out of water (unlimited growth, no planning) and we are not allowed to water our lawns. NOTHING is free!
Old Soldier:
Yep, those newfangled electric cars just won’t ever work. And even more ridiculous, I hear some folks are talking about horseless carriages that fly!
Granted the left/liberal/greenie approach to electric cars is messed up. That doesn’t mean they can’t be done right. That’s what I tried to illustrate in my earlier post. Electric power is more efficient; electric motors are easier to build and more reliable than reciprocating internal combustion engines.
Please check out the links to thorium reactors in my earlier post. They are a whole new approach to nuclear power. Meltdowns are impossible and residual radiation is minimal. Designs exist for self-contained units which can be placed close to the neighborhoods they serve, eliminating the need for long range power lines.
As for the left/liberal/greenie contingent: It looks from here that the country has had just about enough of their nonsense. I don’t know about you, but I think its time to stop bitching and start acting.
Rudemeister, You are spot on, that should be our future but that is not what the current crowd in Washington is planning. Their plans include a glorious greenhouse gas free future all as a result of glorious electric vehicles. However, their plans do not include increasing electric power generation. Nuclear power is not even on the table. Natural gas plants, well, not with any of our own natural gas because we are not allowed to drill for it. Coal or clean coal, Obama said his plan would bankrupt any utility who builds a new coal plant (though he did humbly concede that they could build them). But don’t fret too much because there will be lots of glorious solar panels and windmills; it’s just those sources of energy, when working, will not be hooked into the grid bcause enironmentalist in Congress (see Diane Feinstein et al.) said doing so would spoil pristine landscapes (not to mention the lawsuits by the enviro crowd). So solar panels and windmills spoiling pristine landscapes is good, but the infrastcture to connect them to the grid – not good.
The Washington crowd has a three step approach to fix our energy problems: one step forward and two steps back. That way they will never really solve the “issue” and can continue to use it as a “moral” cudgel to force through their glorious, utopian decrees.
@ #3 Cedarhill (again):
When you said that my electric bill is going to double, was that a literary device, or is it based on hard numbers? This is neither a criticism, nor a suggestion that it’s wrong, but rather a request for information. The most important datum in this whole fraud is harder to find than Obama’s original birth certificate: How many kilowatt-hours of electricity do I have to buy from the outlet in my garage to drive my electric car one mile?
Electric vehicles are only suitable for urban driving. There is no such thing as a fast charge battery that doesn’t require a huge power source to re-charge. Batteries only store power and if you have a 100Kw battery you must put 100Kw worth of power in it from an external source. Actually, you have to put more then 100Kw into the battery because of losses. The faster you put the power in the more heat you generate and the less efficient the charging process becomes. This heat buildup limits the maximum charge rate because it can cause he battery to explode.
You can calculate the range of your $100k Tesla roadster the same way you calculate the range an airplane: (0.9 X Range) / 2. You cannot drive farther away from your point of origin then that. The cost of charging infrastructure including the power source to make electrics equal to ICE range and convenience is astronomical I will leave the calculation of the number of charging stations required per interstate rest stop to the reader as an operations research exercise.
Battery performance is also highly dependent on temperature and accessory use. Your 240 mile Tesla in San Francisco in July approaches zero range in the -25 degree temperatures in Minneapolis in January. Running the air conditioner at night in Phoenix in the summer will also severely reduce its range; and please keep your radio turned off
The utility of electric vehicles are limited by the laws of physics. Like the 100 mpg carburetors of the 70′s all this talk of “new” battery technology that will make electrics equal to ICE is merely wishful thinking.
the only answer is all electric rickshaws
Electric cars will probably be the future, but NOT with BATTERIES. The Bunny just doesn’t have enough FooFoo Dust in its secret sock to power any practical automobile through its daily rounds under all conditions of weather and traffic.
No electric car running an air-conditioner or heater (not a ton of free engine heat to keep from freezing one’s assets off in the winter), and a stereo-vehicle entertainment system, and a GPS, and a few IPODs and a clock, and… whatever else we plug into our cars to, can get anywhere near some advertised idealized mileage. (Heck, it might not make it out of the neighborhood.) And what happens if you run out of power? Is there a hotel room with that recharging station?
The only way an electric car will ever work is to have it powered by fuel cells, and though now feasible and of sufficiently long range, they have serious drawbacks… like heat generation (guess the winter thing is less of a problem), but summer will be a blast – literally. Then there is the problem of producing and delivering enough hydrogen to fill the cell up to the point where it has a power conversion range to be useful.
Those are engineering problems, and market problems, but the physics problem is undeniable. Regardless of how the Energy is stored, converted, or used, there must be ENERGY. Even fuel cells will need nuclear power to feed them… or coal… or natural gas…
There is no magic FooFoo Dust awaiting some greenie “scientist” to find in some miracle pseudo-scientific government granted research project.
Electric cars powered by fuel cells will be the future, 50 years down the road, and with a copious amount of nuclear power added into the system to produce the fuel for the cell. Or… at this rate, Bill N.’s Amish grass burners will be the only option. BUT, I do live on the edge of the Virginia Hunt Country, and the smell is a tad more than folks are used to.
Wellies, shovels, and extension cords might be a lucrative business in 2050.
r/John TMF
Jack Okie: I’m a strong proponent of nuclear power. So…
Please tell me about some thorium reactors (or any other kind) under construction here in the U.S. Or, any planned reactors with an approved application that might be online in the next decade.
Building electric cars now to be powered by imaginary reactors built in the future seems kind of silly.
John:
Wind power is actually the best way to generate the hydrogen because it takes much energy to produce seperate water into fuel then you get out of it. The input to wind power, i.e., is free so it doesn’t really matter how much loss there is in hydrogen production.
Pickens has it all wrong. Wind does not generate baseload power when attached to the grid and therefore cannot replace fossil fuels or nuclear plants. However, it can be used to create “hydrogen refineries that store power for distrubution as motor vehicle fuel.
If we take this approach we could probably replace a good deal of our vehicle fleet with electrics in one or two decades.
PULEEZE stop repeating this LIE! The EPA and GM are conspiring in the most audacious consumer fraud in history. Madoff has nothing on these crooks. The number, and the methodology used to calculate it are 100% pure bunkum.
Jeezus freeking Crumpet on a pogo stick.
OK, Johnny boy, and what is the efficiency of commercial-scale electrolyzer cells (hint: ohm’s law is very unforgiving when you have kiloamps running through a square meter)?
I’ll be driving my Ford Explorer.
Pardon my being a units Nazi, but that’s 100 kWH worth of energy stored in a battery. It’s an important difference. People usually get it mixed up the other way around, and use energy when they mean power.
13. jerryofva: Your idea about using wind for electrolysis makes good sense. Since wind generated power is so variable, it can only supply a small fraction of the grid’s power. Rather than spending money to upgrade the grid for 750KV transmission, use the wind power where it’s generated.
Cal:
I stand guilty as charged of abuse of units. electricity is a flow and therefore must be measured in units of time.
1) Let’s pack the wife and 3 kids into the new Clean Machine and drive from Miami to Salt Lake City over the continental divide through the scenic canyons and back on a summer vacation about a 6200 mile round trip. The five of us weigh 800 lbs total, and we have about 600 lbs of luggage. Our new Clean Machine weighs in at 3200 lbs. We’d like to take the pop-up camper and bicycles, the extra weight is about 1300 pounds with the bikes stowed on top. We made the trip last year in the old SUV and burned 375 gallons of gasoline. If we are powered 100% by electricity, how many kilo-watt hours do we need to complete the trip? How many hours will be spent charging the batteries? Can we make it to 14000 feet on one charge?
All these discussions of technical solutions are entertaining, but tend to distract from the single fatal flaw in this fraud. Why not just install a power strip down the middle of the road? For you technoweenies, make it a totally enclosed induction system so the kids playing on the freeway don’t get electrocuted. Then we just have cars with electric motors that run like a child’s toy train. Have a battery to allow the car to travel from the garage to the road and charge it while you are driving. A GPS device would calculate miles driven and automatically charge your account the amount of electricity your particular car uses per mile, or go socialist and make the taxpayers foot the bill.
Why has nobody made this proposal? Because it would then be impossible to explain why we don’t do it. You can’t moan and groan about the lack of technology, that technology has been around for a hundred years. You would have to make the unacceptably un-PC admission that there is no Al Gore approved generation ability that would generate enough power. THAT is the only barrier to electric cars.
Yes, you obviously aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to “technoweenie” matters.
The car is $87,000!! Please…
@ #22, Calvin Ball
“Yes, you obviously aren’t the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to “technoweenie” matters.”
Probably not. Could you explain your objection and enlighten me rather than merely launch a drive-by insult?
We will be driving cars that use gasoline in 2116. What nonsense. This is just the lollipops and unicorns of the liberal “intelligentsia”, and they are likely to be booted out in 2012 and never get to power again in a generation. (Oh, and when I see the limo-liberals consistently driving around in electric limousines, I might give it just a tiny bit of credence, but not much more.)
Of course, Government Motors will blink the public out of a pretty coin before this fraud fails, and when it fails, GM will be history.
The Left thinks that they can price fossil fuel out of the market. Good luck with that. They will not last a quarter of $20 a gallon gas prices. There will be public lynchings on street corners. What utter stupidity is their “green agenda”. It will be over before it starts, but not before it does much damage. When we get back to real market forces, gasoline and desire will be the most common source of transportation fuel.
As with all they “think” about, the moonbat intelligence are completely decoupled form reality. They have a grip on reality consists of the tip of their left pinky finger.
If this were viable, it would e happening and happening in a commercially viable, free market.
A great many consumers are going to get reamed on this.
It is a silly as cap and trade, and least for the next 40 years gasoline will be the most fuel efficient fuel.
I will be driving around in a computer-less jeep that I can maintain myself.
See you guys out the rear view mirror.
gasoline and desire= gasoline and deisel/
A huge infrastructure cost that has been totally ignored – transformers.
It is the almost universal in this country that domestic power distribution is based on 10 average houses per “pole pig” – the final transformer that transforms 2400v to 115/230. Any practical electric car will increase power use per house by 33%. If electric cars become common then the whole electrical distribution system will have to be revamped – street by street.
“the fact is that our future vehicle fleet will change dramatically.”
That is NOT a fact, but a theory. One that lacks evidence to support it and is based mostly on wishful thinking by modern day Luddites. Hydrocarbon powered vehicles REPLACED electric powered vehicles because they were more efficient.
That’s correct, electric automobiles preceded hydrocarbon powered ones.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarselectrica.htm
Now Battery technology has improved since 1832, but not nearly as much as internal combustion technology. The ICE still wins the prize for efficiency, cost and availability.
We have a democratic Congress, maybe you should get them to stop spending taxpayers dollars long enough to pass some new Laws of Physics! Or at least change the Laws of Physics that make the ICE the powerplant of choice for the next several centuries.
PS. Ever wonder why the US Postal Service doesn’t use Electric Vehicles? DOT did a study that pretty much removes Electric Vehicles as a transportation option for the rest of this century.
If you had avoided the drive-by insult of “technoweenie”, you wouldn’t have opened yourself up to that.
To make a long story short, an inductive system would be both very expensive to install, and very inefficient.
27. Roy Lofquist:
And here’s why that won’t matter. GM claims that they can make 70,000 per year. That means that after 10 years, there will be less than a million of these in the US. That’s less than one per 100 homes. And presumably, they’ll be charging at night, when the transformer is loafing.
The reason why we don’t need to be investing large sums in the “smart grid”, or any other grid for at least a decade is that it’ll take at least two decades for these things to represent any kind of significant demand on the grid. That should be plenty of time for the utilities to see it coming, and build for it.
Except California, where they don’t do planning.
Oh, and those CAFE numbers will be repealed by then. All of this left wing lunacy will be packed away in the attic were it belongs by then. Seriously this all is a combination of the usual fake and manufactured crises we get out of the Left.
Let us see:
1) There is no “Peak Oil” crisis. That is baloney. there will be plenty of Oil.
2) America, if allowed to, can meet fossil fuel needs for generations. This is just another fraud (and treason) perpetrated on us by the Democrats, and for various and nefarious reasons.
3) There is no “environmental crisis”. See above.
4) Market forces work; Government fiat does not. It is the former that drives real and lasting innovation, not the latter.
And lastr but not least:
5) No, the “elites” do not know what is better for us. They may not know this, but the rest of us do. If they continue on this lawless disregard for the Constitution, this war on Common Sense and this snotty attempt to set themselves up as a new aristocracy, there will either be Civil War, or there will be a complete economic meltdown, or both. No glib “Policy wonk”, no lying politician, no Democrat union thug and no left wing academic has any notion of what is “good for us”, and, moreover, they really do not care about what is “good for us” in the first place. They are completely detached from an honest days work, and have been so for generations now. This need to end, and pronto. If we are to survive, it must end.
What is it with Communists? Why do they always think that they understand the Auto business better than anyone else? The record of Collectivist intervention in the auto industry, with the possible exception of the Volkswagen (and here there are some rather, er, ah, extenuating circumstances, to say the least), is one of damning failure.
The whole “green economy” BS which they are trying to force on us will be much more politically and economically explosive than any of their other “domestic policy issues” (read “assaults on America”). It may finally expose them for the nincompoops and charlatans that they actually are. It will be their final undoing, barring a large attack on the USA. And none too soon.
What we need to do is look for better technological solutions to extracting fossil fuels our of our own natural resources. Not screwing around with “cars with chords”.
Let me clarify something: the FRAUD that I referred to in 14 was the bogus method used to calculate 230 mpg. The car itself is feasible. The 230 number is nonsense, and an insult to the intelligence of anyone who passed grade-school arithmetic.
They’re cheating by using miles that were driven with electricity to calculate miles driven with gasoline. The great physicist Wolfgang Pauli had a phrase for that kind of BS: “not even wrong”.
If we stop using gas and diesel, what are we going to do with all that oil in the ground? We don’t need that much plastic. Seems a waste. Why don’t we just burn it in our cars and houses?
I will be driving my 4 wheel drive GMC Jimmy 262 cubic inch Vortec 6 cylinder at 23 miles per gallon.
None of the vehicles being made or planned give the range or power needed to be worth the cost. Not to mention that when the batteries go bad (which they will) they will be upwards of $7,000 to replace. How much power is required to propel these vehicles, if you double you electrical energy bill to run an automobile is it really worth it?
What is the actual fuel efficiency of the Volt in terms of miles per gallon-equivalent?
@30 – Calvin
You are quite correct. I was commenting on the general expectations of the greenies that there will be lots of electric cars. I learned about the 10 transformer from an article about an energy conference where an electrical utility executive made a presentation about it.
As for the production figure of 70,000? Yeah, but I’ll bet they can only sell about 123 of them. The batteries cost $6,000 each. This price can only go up because of the scarcity of usable lithium deposits – a couple in South America and China. Secondly, lithium-ion batteries decrease in storage capacity about 20% per year. That gives a useful life of 3 years at best. After 3 years its another six grand. It is impossible to make up the cost by reduced fuel consumption unless a gallon of gas exceeds $30. Not only that, but they’re almost immediately unsaleable on the used market.
@33 Old Soldier
You don’t see huge railroads or trucks carrying waste away from refineries. They use just about every drop in the barrel. There are well over 10,000 distinct products that are petroleum distillates or petroleum is a major ingredient. Amongst the are diesel, aviation fuel, heating oil, lubricants, asphalt, plastics, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics – long, long list. The only way to reduce petroleum consumption is to proportionately reduce the consumption of all the other products. If the entire fleet were converted to electric tomorrow they’d just have to burn off all the useless gasoline. Hey, I’ve got an idea! We can take all those clean burning motors we scrapped and use them to burn off the gas.
The battery powered electric car is a long way from a new idea. My great-grandmother drove one before World War One.
The fundamental problem remains the batteries. In most cases it takes about two generations for a technology to reach a plateau. The airplane was invented in 1903. The 747 flew in 1968. The transistor and the computer were invented about 60 years ago. Batteries are an even older technology. They were the first form of electric current generation dating back more than 200 years. The biggest problem with improving batteries is that there is only so much chemistry. We can surmise that every plausible combination of compounds has been tried and that the ones we have are pretty much it.
Another fundamental issue is charging times. They are constrained by the relationship Watts = Volts * Amps. Even a recharge through a 240 V 30 A line (electric ovens and dryers) is only four times faster (7.2 kWh/hr) than a standard 120 V 15 A line (1.8 kWh/hr).
GM claims the Volt will be able to go 60 mi. on 12 kWh*. Recarging it will take almost 7 hrs on a regular line and almost 2 hours on a 240*30 line. Anything that would make recharge on the fly tolerable would require insulated gloves and shoes and safety eye wear, and a liquid nitrogen cooling system for the battery. Further, a vehicle that carries 72 kWh (300 mi range) would take 6 times as long to fill-up. No problem, just use it every other day.
*Just because GM says it does not make it so. I am skeptical. see:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2008771363_danny22.html
Of course the real question is why. We can manufacture liquid motor vehicle fuels out of anything with carbon in it such as coal or garbage. So, theories about petroleum imports or limits on petroleum supplies are not a reason to spend money on bevs. Global warming is a possible issue, but the easier solution is to replace coal and gas burning power plants with solar or wind or (”gaia forbid”) nuclear.
Please do not call for a “Manhattan Project” to make better batteries. In 1942 when the Manhattan Project began, the phenomenon of nuclear fission had been known for less than 10 years. At the time, Henri Becquerel’s 1896 discovery of radioactivity was less than 50 years in the past. A lot of brand new physics had been developed in the first 30 years of century XX. There was enormous intellectual headroom for important technological advances. And who knows? perhaps one day we will use those advances instead of regarding them as bad ju-ju.
The Manhattan Project was able to exploit the discovery of previously unknown fundamental forces of the universe. Batteries are in a very different position. They were a century and a half old when the the first nuclear reactor was started, and are now two hundred years old. There are no new physical forces lurking out there to make batteries more useful.
And please keep the Apollo project analogies to yourself as well. You can see the moon from here, the Saturn V was just a scaled up V2. It was a neat hack, but kind of a technological dead end, unless you like Tang. You cannot see a battery that is less than 30″ * 12″ * 12″, weighs less than 300 lbs, and holds 72 kWh. And I don’t think you will.
Note to the fuel cell fan above: Hydrogen, even liquid hydrogen, is so light that any given volume of it carries very little energy. One liter of liquid hydrogen contains 71 grams of hydrogen. One liter of gasoline contains 118 grams of hydrogen, and one liter of diesel, 130 grams. Of course liquid hydrogen costs lots of energy to make, is difficult to store (it will leak out of any container in a matter of days), and is 423 degrees F below zero, so be careful when handling it. Compressed hydrogen is less dense than liquid, and kaboom.
Tinker Toys! Yay!!!!!!
Oops. Who turned the lights out?
The real point about the “Manhattan Project” model is that the real “Manhattan Project” was a wartime crap shoot. Nobody, not Groves, not Oppenheimer, not Szilard, not even Einstein could guarantee that it would work. They just needed to be ahead of the Germans just in case.
This is the exact opposite of the other red herring that’s frequently trotted out; the Space Program, where the science was all done, and all that was left was some relatively straightforward (thought hugely expensive) engineering.
The practical automotive battery is neither. It’s not mystery leading-edge string theory, and it’s not old school electrochemistry, either. It may be helped by nanotechnology, but maybe not. It may be helped by other technologies, but there’s no guarantee that there will ever be anything that will compete with internal combustion, ever. It’s not going to follow Moore’s law! It’s not a crap shoot, a la the Manhattan Project, it’s a series of small evolutionary crap shoots, of the sort that private capital so effectively seeks out.
The prize is there. It’s up to the people with the money and the knowledge to chase it. The government can add billions to the prize, but in the end, that’s chump change. The party, or parties who can make this work will make Gates look like a pauper. If it’s possible to do, anyway. And there’s no guarantee that it is.
Delia! Long time no see. Didn’t I ask you to marry me once?
@ #29 Calvin Ball,
Oooops. My colleagues and I have been wearing the “technoweenie” label as a source of pride for so long now, that I just forgot that the feeling might not be universal. To everybody I inadvertently insulted, my deepest apologies. You may refer to me as an (unspecified) weenie from now on, many do. What I need from you sharper knives in the drawer, please, is to provide some hard numbers to back up your general “inefficient” statements. How can I decide what is feasible or not unless I know the necessary parameters. Specifically, I need the following:
See #8. To be more specific, I want to drive a 1-ton vehicle (car plus passengers & cargo), in 100 degree F weather with the air conditioning providing a constant 74 degrees F inside, accelerating from zero to 70 MPH in 60 seconds, driving at a constant 70 MPH for 100 miles, then decelerating to a stop. How many kilowatt-hours of electricity will I consume? Unless I know that how am I to know that an inefficient system won’t work just fine? Or, if you prefer; how many KWH do I need to consume to drive a Chevy Volt at 55 MPH with only one 200-lb driver, no cargo and without air conditioning, for 230 miles in order to consume exactly one gallon of gas?
How many kilowatt hours will have to be generated at the power station for me to use the above amount? Assume a direct power station to roadway delivery system to avoid the difficulties associated with storage apparatuses. Calvin, assume an induction system (i.e., what percentage of available power is lost by using one?)
What is our current transmission capability (i.e., how many kilowatts can be delivered to the roadway assuming an unlimited amount available at the source and an entirely new transmission system installed for the purpose?)
How many electric cars are likely to be in use at any given time?
Anything else I need to know to determine how many generators we would need to construct in order to provide for the above? THAT IS THE CRUCIAL QUESTION! Once we know that we can determine how many wind turbines we need to erect, or how many nuke stations we need to build (and how much uranium, plutonium or thorium we need to have on hand to fuel them). Once those numbers are available we can then state, with authority, just how ridiculous the whole fraud is. Or is it?
jerryofva, one proposed method of charging infrastructure — which received a handsome VC funding — is battery swap-out stations. You drive in, they swap out your depleted battery for a freshly charged one, and off you go in a few minutes. Like changing the propane tank on your BBQ.
Dave:
The battery for a Tesla is 900lbs. It woun’t be like swapping out a propane tank. It will be a major operation.
I thought 0bie was going to come up with a car that can run on fairy dust, oat fiber and unicorn flatulence? I’m holding out for the ‘jiffy pop’-mobile myself. I’ll leave the Pinto bean powered ‘Wise Latina’ clown car for 0bama, Pelosi & Gang.
~
40. Roy Lofquist:
“Delia! Long time no see. Didn’t I ask you to marry me once?”
Nahhhh. You just wanted a dance. Are you imbibing in the bathtub gin again? You know this here brawd is married! Nawty-Nawty.
1. Fuel cells don’t use hydrogen to convert energy to mechanical force directly. The cell generates electricity which powers motors…etc. So, it’s functional use is a bid different and a tad slower than using it as fuel for a reciprocating engine.
2. There are, now three car companies, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan, who have brand new, high density fuel cells that in a CRV/Civic sized chassis have gone well past the 300 mile barrier on a fill up.
3. I directly noted that the infrastructure for the production, transport, and storage of hydrogen fuels had yet to be developed. The fuel cell is there and works. It will only get better with time. For which I was projecting 2050, not 2016. (If we can’t get off that dime by 2050, then we are functionally doomed anyway… Amish grass burners anyone?)
4. By 2050 you won’t even be driving (I will God willing, be 91 years old so I’d better not be driving…) No one will be allowed to drive in 2050. The insurance companies, government, and sheer immesity of the death toll on the roads will eventually push the automotive functional economy into computerized automated operation.
In 2050 a driver will get into a comfortable carbon fiber body, four wheel electric motor, fuel cell powered Honda, surrounded by impact absorbing upolstery and seats… He will tell his car “Good Morning, please take me to Wal-Mart for some boredom relief.”
The car will reply that the traffic report says that the Wal-Mart nearest to the house is full, but there is a nice one in the next town over that isn’t so crowded.
The owner will thank the car… tell it to please drive there, and take the scenic route… and play Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony on the way through horse country… The car won’t have an accident on the way, and the sound of the music uncorrupted by engine noise… so he can idly watch the Amish hayburners fuel up.
@41 – Bill N.
“The battery pack’s volume is 100 L, one-third as much as the lead-acid batteries in GM’s 1990s-issue electric car, the EV1. GM’s targeted maximum weight for the pack is 180 kilograms (400 pounds).”
That get’s you 40 miles in a light vehicle.
Under the conditions you specify you’d be lucky to get 20. To travel 100 miles you’d need 2,000 pounds of batteries with a volume of 500 Liters. Course, that’s another ton of weight, so you’d need more batteries …
Let your imagination run on this one.
Rechargeable batteries; yes, that’s the way to go. Good grief, haven’t these people ever had to deal with these batteries after numerous re-charges. How much will it cost to replace these batteries? Maybe they intend to install lightning rods on a massive scale like wind turbines.
The fuel cell also has to be kept at over 1000 degrees when it’s not in operation. That’s going to make it impractical for anything but commercial service.
That, and we don’t know how to make H2 electrolytically with any more than ~50% efficiency. Making it from hydrocarbons, we know how to do. Even coal. But the climate change congregation won’t allow that.
Ain’t gunna happen.
First, as a few have pointed out – and rarely the media – the 230 mpg figure for the Volt is less than worthless. It’s based on a 51 mile circuit – the first 40 miles running on battery, the last 11 using the gas engine, and not counting travel under charge! So go ahead, put one gallon into your Volt before that 230 mile trip to grandma, but plan on five recharging stops along the way. Seriously, I’m waiting for someone to come up with the miles per dollar cost of energy that takes all sources into account.
Few people mention that even the Chevy Volt costs more than an Audi A4 or BMW 3 Series, while the Teslas and Lightnings are even more costly . That won’t cut it for the common man. One alternative approach that *may* prove more viable is the Better Place system now being prototyped in Israel with a few more test sites (Hawaii being one) to come. It is the only offering I’m aware of in which you don’t own the battery, which allows for quick swap-outs of batteries at filling stations (all automated), charging at parking meters, etc. But NO all-electric is suitable for long distance driving, however extensive the infrastructure.
Barring major improvements in the power grid and 3-5x improvements in battery technology, I would not be surprised if by 2020 the vehicle of choice will be … clean diesel.
There is a demand for electric cars. So far the only highway cabable electric, the Tesla Roadster, has a long waiting list in spite of its price (I really want a Tesla, any of you fine folks willing to give me $120,000?). If the demand is there, and the product is feasable it will be produced. If the costs are high then it will be a nich market rich person’s toy. But if the demand can be met at a reasonable price then it becomes mainstream.
All automobiles were considered toys for rich people before 1900. But when cars became inexpensive, like the Model T Ford, everyone had one.
If someone makes an affordable functional electric car we’ll find out if the demand is really there. But for right now electric cars are playthings for rich people.
No matter what happens we will never fully replace the ICE. But in the future people might only rent one if they have a family, a trailer, and plan a 1000 mile trip. Long distance trucking is another case where I can’t see electric vehicles working. But most people drive less than 100 miles a day and electric cars have proven themselves capeable of that. The real problem is that everyone seems to want to announce new miracle electric cars but nobody is selling them yet.
Calvin Ball: Er um… no.
Please note that the Honda FCX uses a stacked hydrogen fuel cell, has a current range of 240 miles, and will eventually have a much greater range as the fuel cell improves, which is being done very rapidly.
240 miles isn’t huge range now, but Toyota is also working on a cell, and the rest of it will be, as they say, history. Or Engineering and Economics.
Check Honda’s web site or plug Honda fuel cell into any search engine.
It isn’t a joke. It works, it still needs some refinement, and a fuel production and distribution infrastructure.
I have been working in the high tech world since 1982. When I graduated from computer school (History Degrees are great and all but one must make money) I was laughed at for getting a job working with micro computers teaching people BASIC, word processing, spread sheets, and tiny databases. The biggest computer we had was a TRS80 Model 16, it had a miracle 16 bit CPU instead of an 8bit, it ran a Microsoft offshoot of UNIX called XENIX, and it supported two serial terminals. It had a massive amount of 256 Kilobytes of memory, and a 16 meg 8inch external hard drive that took at least one minute to spin up. The entire rig cost somewhere on the order of $12,000.
My current computer would swamp the entire computer room in NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center circa 1977. I have SIX of them in various configurations. All six cost me less than $3,000, and 3 are laptops. Which in 1982 wasn’t even a word. Though in 1983 you could get a portable Osborn..
Technology is changing, and the market will eventually drive the automobile into a semi-autonomous computer controlled fuel cell powered vehicle. It will be quiet, comfortable, and probably only drivable in manual mode at low speed, and still under partial computer control.
50 years is a stretch, at the current rate of technological improvements it will probably be less than 20.
Maybe I’ll go into the closed circuit antique vehicle driving track business… give folks a chance to actually drive a car sort of a Watkins Glenn for the average Joe and a 2008 Mustang.
Regards, the times are changing… John – TMF
49. Raymond in DC, and to reiterate, what annoys me the most about that is the sheer dishonesty of it. I refuse to believe that the EPA and GM are that stupid. They’re just breathtakingly dishonest.
And BTW, paging Ralph Nader! Telephone call for Ralph Nader! GM is attempting to hoodwink the American public (this time with the complicity of the EPA). Wasn’t your career built on advocating for the consumer against the big, bad, GM corporation?
C’mon, Ralph. I double-dog dare you to issue a statement criticizing GM for this blatent consumer fraud. Ralph? Buhler? Anyone?
Ok, Johnny boy. I’m impressed with your computer programming skills. Not. What part of “Moore’s law doesn’t apply to energy” don’t you get?
I don’t want to get into a “my wiener is longer than yours” contest, but suffice to say that I have had careers as both a chemical and electrical engineer. And that’s leaving a lot of other stuff out (including a lot of computer programming).
And btw, you didn’t address the specific issues that I raised.
I wish more auto makers would use solar pannels to run electrical function in cars. I wish I could put one on my house but my association has banned them. Oh well.
@51 John,
I hate to point this out but you’ve got your apples and oranges in the same sack. The improvements in computers and electronics were anticipated – the theoretical path to where we are now was well mapped long ago. It was then and still is a practical problem in applied chemistry and lithography. A long time ago Seymour Cray built the first “super computers”. They didn’t involve new semi-conductor technology but rather an advance in mechanical engineering. He shortened the connection paths with a new geometry and came up with an innovative way to cool the machines. Right now the major roadblock to faster, more compact semiconductor devices is cooling them.
Where the apples and oranges thing comes in is that with automobiles where dealing with the laws of physics. I won’t try to get into a long explanation but rather point to a couple of examples. The B-52 strategic bomber entered service in the 1950′s. It is anticipated that the fleet will remain in service until 2050. Think about it. We spend an enormous amount of money on new military technology yet a bomber that entered service 60 years ago will be the best thing in the air for its mission for 100 years.
The highest performance aircraft in the world, the SR-71, entered service in 1964 – 45 years ago.
The point is that we understand thermodynamics, chemistry and metallurgy well enough to know the limits of our capabilities. All of the proposed new technologies – electric, hydrogen, solar, wind – look good in power point but fall apart quickly when you get out the trusty slide rule.
btw, I was programming in about my 4th computer language about the time you were born.
Roy
No, No, No ! ! !
Forget about electric cars. Too expensive and the battery technology isn’t there. Lack of distribution (grid) and electric generation capacity are also problems.
We need CLEAN power for vehicles. Electric generation produces CO2, particulate, or radioactive byproducts.
Clearly, we need autos to be propelled by SAILS.
Wind power is the answer today, just like was for thousands of years for sea transport.
56. Roy Lofquist, thank you for spelling out what I didn’t have the patience to. But the bottom line, as I said, is that Moore’s law doesn’t apply to non-nano technologies.
Nano may, as I said earlier, help us make better electrodes, and thus may provide some supporting role in better batteries and fuel cells. But it’s still way too embryonic (actually it’s in the technological zygote phase) to say for sure, and how much it will help, and by when.
Bottom line: sit down, shut up, wait, and see what develops. The future never does what the futurists predict. Where’s my flying car?
Ditto for solar, btw.
In vivid contrast, ZAP, a veteran California electric car builder, secured $25 million in private financing to develop and build its newest electric car.
ZAP doesn’t build electric cars. They buy them from China and they have very very poor build quality. They are a three wheeler to avoid automotive safety regulations. Some say Zap is more of a stock scheme than a car company.
One of the first things I learned when I went to work in the R&D end of the auto industry three decades ago (for a non-US auto manufacturer) was that the the internal combustion engine would be around in some form or another until 2050. The car companies know this and everything else is just posturing and PR while the natural evolution of the automobile takes place behind closed doors. Evolution takes time and cannot always be rushed no matter how much of your money the government throws at it.
60. Chuck
Of course, microturbines qualify as internal combustion. There’s yet another evolutionary path (as part of a hybrid train) that gets very little press (because it’s not as environmentally sexy as electrochemical). And unlike a lot of that “just around the corner” stuff, we basically know how to do that now.
53. Calvin Ball:.. a double-dog dare? My leg tingled when I read that.
#59 Ronnie Schreiber. RIGHT ON! I have noticed that there are people and companies out there that promise the moon (“We have a battery, it will drive an SUV 400 miles on a single charge. It recharges in 15 seconds. It is coming next year”). They make a lot of noise and sell a lot of stock. The only problem is the miracle technology never appears and a lot of people lose their investments. ZAP is one of the worst offenders. They have conned people into buying their stock. They have conned tens of thousands of dollars from people who wanted to own dealerships. They have taken deposits on vehicles that they couldn’t deliver. At one point ZAP claimed they were going to be selling Smart Cars. It wasn’t until they were threatend with lawsuits by Smart (I think it’s a division of BMW but I’m not 100% sure) that they stopped selling Smart Car dealerships.
It may be that a noticable percentage of people will be driving electric in the next few years but I’d be surprised if any of the cars people will want are ZAPs (the ZAP Zebra is a piece of crap golf cart).
Such as these Silicon Valley Wyle E. Coyotes who think that technology is magic, and all we have to do is throw some of the same magic technology dust that drove the silicon boom at energy and transportation, and magic money making windmill-and-unicorn powered hydrogen sucking groovymobiles will make them all rich and green.
Moore’s law does not apply here. These Silicon Valley VC types will learn that lesson, either the easy way, or the hard way.
Interesting information, especially about that “bureaucratic slight of hand” — can’t say I’m surprised, though. The biggest problem I see at the moment is that while most folks seem to think that electric cars are the future, the future currently appears overpriced and underdeveloped. To offset the Volt and a few others the only “affordable” cars being developed are from companies like ZAP (who has the Alias). The more US-based competitive EVs we have the better, but the industry just hasn’t reached that point yet, and probably won’t until a little while after 2016.