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markogts
About the CO2 efficiency of EV: Nissan Leaf is said to have 160 km range with 24 ...
kkersey
iniewski - your intuition is 100% correct, and (like me) you will meet with much ...
Keynoter: Family cars won't go electric
Rick Merritt
9/21/2010 5:58 PM EDT
SAN JOSE, Calif. – The average American family probably not replace its car with an electric vehicle, but some kinds of hybrid EVs will help some users save money and see significant adoption. That's the view of Ian Wright, an engineer, serial entrepreneur and self-described EV skeptic.
The high cost of batteries will keep pure electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt out of the mainstream consumer market, he said. Ironically, Wright co-founded Tesla Motors which has popularized EVs, and is chief executive of Wrightspeed which is building power train subsystems for medium duty fleet trucks.
"You will get early adopters with the Leaf, but you will not get to the mass market," said Wright in a keynote to the Custom Integrated Circuits Conference here.
EV batteries currently cost about $1,000 per kilowatt hour, and costs are projected to come down as much as half in the next several years. Today's Chevy Volt is well designed, but will cost about twice as much as a similar gas vehicle.
Gas prices will have to soar above $10/gallon to make such consumer EVs economical even at the lower battery costs, Wright said.
The good news is trucks, not passenger cars are the biggest consumers of gas. Wright believes medium duty trucks built with his hybrid power train design could pay back its owners investment in three years.
Using that market as a beachhead, hybrid EVs will then take off in taxis, police cars and pickup trucks—but never the consumer family car.
Lithium ion batteries will remain the preferred storage for EVs, not flywheels, fuel cells or ultra capacitors, Wright predicted.
"I don’t see anything outside lithium chemistry now," he said. "Anytime I've done the calculations you are better off just using more batteries than ultra caps," he added.
He also predicted efforts to create an infrastructure of battery charging and swapping stations proposed by Better Place and others will fail.
"We can't even afford to fix potholes in the road, so where are we going to get trillions for battery charge stations," he asked. "The economics don’t work without massive subsidies," he said.
Wright told CICC attendees EVs will shift the mechanical design complexity in today's cars into the world of silicon and software—especially in power electronics. He noted his hybrid design uses a maximum 600kW battery.
"There are probably people here counting milliwatts to get their processor to work," he said. But "there's a totally different black art" is driving EVs, especially in the complexity of power management subsystems that "have to monitor and balance every lithium ion cell," he said.
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iniewski
9/21/2010 7:47 PM EDT
I always thought the whole electric car idea makes little sense. First, as a principle there is nothing clean about it, the electrical energy has to be generated somewhere (in US that would mean burning coal). Yes, you shift emissions from A to be B so there is a small benefit to crowded places like Vancouver where I live but that is about it. Second, battery costs are staggering. Yes, you can cook up various schemes to move the cost to government or spread it over time but since you are not really gaining anything (see above) what is the point. Third, you need infrastructure on a massive scale. Disagreements anyone? Kris
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stumbirfi
9/22/2010 1:22 AM EDT
The coal pollution argument is a common misconception.
Traditional gas cars use more electricity then EVs. Using the electricity needed to refine a gallon of gas, the Nissan LEAF can go 30 miles.
Electric vehicle charging infrastructure costs a pittance compared to the hydrocarbon distribution.
Thanks!
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iniewski
9/22/2010 10:06 AM EDT
Stumbirfi: Would you mind explaining why electric car uses less electricity than gas powered one? That seems counter intuitive. As far as I am concerned I change my battery about every 5 years so use of battery derived electricity is negligible. Sure my car generates electricity from burning gas but its purpose (lights etc) would be the same as in an electric car...Kris
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garydpdx
9/22/2010 10:14 AM EDT
Thanks for the data on the cost of refining petrol. I can concur with Mr. Wright that Hybrid EV's can find a place in fleet vehicles that are in more or less constant operation. Police cars are usually left to idle unless officers are on a call that take them far away from their vehicle; on a recent NPR Car Talk, the guys told a caller to double the mileage on the odometer to figure out the true age of a used cop car. Police cars and taxis idling, a large chunk of consumption can be cut as well as wear and tear with a Hybrid EV!
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stumbirfi
9/22/2010 4:58 PM EDT
I'm only talking the electricity used to refine gasoline.
If you used the electricity you would have used to refine a gallon of gas to charge a Nissan LEAF instead, the LEAF would be able to go 30 miles on that electricity.
This does not consider the car at all, things get much worse after you start burning the gas in a car to move. Just by producing the gallon of gas, you've lost.
So for every EV mile traveled in lieu of a gas mile, the total load on the electrical grid goes down (and thus pollution).
Pretty cool, huh?
Thanks!
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Dave.Dykstra
9/21/2010 11:53 PM EDT
This is a fascinating arena. I agree with Kris that you need infrastructure on a massive scale to make it work. In addition, in many areas of the US and Canada, especially west of the Mississippi, there are vast open areas where you can drive for 100+ miles between gas stations (much less charging stations), and where people routinely commute in excess of 40 or 50 miles each way per day. In that environment, I question even how well hybrids can meet the requirements since their efficiency drops significantly when they are on the highway. If the electric power used to charge the batteries is wind or solar sourced, then maybe you are gaining something, but as Kris points out, much of the electric power in the US and Canada is still coal sourced (which needs to change, but that is another discussion).
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betajet
9/22/2010 11:52 AM EDT
Dave, you're right. As Ed Begley Jr. said in "Who Killed the Electric Car": "Electric cars aren't for everyone. They can only solve the transportation needs for 90% of Americans."
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walkerb
9/27/2010 2:41 PM EDT
Pure EV vehicles make more sense in the cities and there are large cities even in the western US. The vast majority of people living in cities drive less than 100 miles per day, so, a home charging station will work quite nicely. Even coal-fired power plants are much more efficient than internal combustion engines so the costs of producing, delivering and using the energy are much less. Now, if we can just do something about the cost of batteries.
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Buzz
9/22/2010 12:09 AM EDT
Wow. Judging by the comments here I thought this was "LudditeTimes". In SoCal the grid is 34% coal and going down. We "can't afford to fix potholes" but we can spend $1T on a war for oil. There just might be better ways to transport the 1.25 commuters/vehicle over the LT 40 mi per day 80% of the cars drive. Nissan's reportedly spending LT $500/kWh on the current battery and that price will come down with further with economies of scale. But I'm sure you're right. The oil companies will save us, nothing to see here, move along.
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tsport100
9/22/2010 12:44 AM EDT
If Ian Wrights entire argument rests on high battery prices which he says are $1,000 per kilowatt then discount this as an opinion piece.
The CURRENT cost of 18650 Li-ion batteries is $300 kWh with a further 25% expected this year as battles for early EV market share break out between Japanese, Korean and Chinese suppliers.
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Luis Sanchez
9/22/2010 2:38 AM EDT
The oil will run out in year 2125 or so(http://www.babeled.com/2008/02/15/when-will-the-oil-run-out/).
We definetily need new energy sources for our transportation. Actually today I just saw on TV the add for the GE car charger (http://gigaom.com/cleantech/the-details-behind-ges-wattstation-electric-car-charger/)
We are approaching the change... no doubt.
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stumbirfi
9/22/2010 5:01 PM EDT
This always felt like a silly argument to me.
The analogy I've heard is "The stone age did not end because humanity ran out of stones".
It seems like there are so many reasons to stop using gas, that we don't really need to consider peak oil.
Thanks!
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iniewski
9/22/2010 10:01 AM EDT
Luis, the fact the oil runs out (or not, I would not bet my money on it) has nothing to do with electric cars. Yes, in general we need sources of energy regardless of what cars we will be driving. GE charger and GM Colt will fail, they will not find widespread deployment.
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stumbirfi
9/22/2010 5:04 PM EDT
It has everything to do with electric cars.
The electrical grid is not run on oil, so if we faced an oil shortage, the electrical grid would be fine.
Thus using EVs in the US directly means less oil use.
You're obviously right that they still need energy, and they could run on oil, but they don't in the US today.
Thanks!
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pixies
9/22/2010 10:51 AM EDT
Luis, if oil can last till 2125 then we do not have to worry about running out of it. 115 years is a long time given the current speed of technology development. In addition, lithium itself is a limited resource it is more likely to run out by 2125 than oil.
The key problem is carbon dioxide, climate change, and pollution. If the entire production process of the is considered, I am not convinced that batteries, and even solar panels for that matter, are cleaner than oil.
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iniewski
9/22/2010 11:11 AM EDT
Pixies, excellent point. People somehow forget that each piece of machinery requires energy to produce it. Energy calculations should include that fact assuming average number of years in usage. For example I bought some garden solar powered lamps. They worked so so at the beginning (Vancouver does not get that much sun at times) but after one year they are basically dead so little light comes out of them. Not sure what happened but somewhat photo-efficiency dropped to ridiculously low level. Not this is junk. I bet you there was lots of energy used to produce them...Kris
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stumbirfi
9/23/2010 11:47 PM EDT
So what is the alternative?
We lack the technology to imbue a battery with the same amount of energy a solar panel would produce over its life, for the same weight so that's why we make solar panels.
I'm waiting for the antimatter factory myself. :-)
(Although perhaps a Li primary cell with a photo detector would have worked better for your lights in your case. Sounds like the lights you bought were pretty crappy. I hope you left a bad review on Amazon so other people will be warned away.)
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Sanjib.Acharya
9/22/2010 11:12 AM EDT
I think what we all are saying is that the electric car has to overcome challenges such as lowering battery cost, better infrastructure for charging/swapping stations, technological breakthroughs enabling solar energy to be used efficiently for charging batteries before it is accepted as the solution to replace fuel cars. In order to make that happen "sooner" lots of actions, initiatives, changes of policies etc. etc. needs to happen around the world. I'm not sure how that is going to happen till the cost of running a fuel car doesn't reach break-even with that of an electric car or a compressed-air car.
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joepah
9/22/2010 12:19 PM EDT
Common misperceptions continue, even from bloggers in an EE magazine.
1. Half the country's electricity comes from burning coal. Even with that the other half is natural gas, nuclear, hydro and a little oil. Combined electrical production is much cleaner than burning petroleum in cars.
2. Lithium is not scarce, and there is plenty in the Western Hemisphere. There is also a pilot program to extract Lithium from geothermal plant process fluid.
3. Even if you don't buy the Global warming argument you cannot argue the political, military and economic benefit of a diverse fuel source for cars, and take control. Those of us old enough to remember the Arab oil embargo of 1973 remember it was caused by our support of Israel from multiple enemies, including USSR. Now we have to send Billions per month to the Middle east to protect our gas addiction.
4. The author is right in that EVs are too expensive and too restrictive right now for some families. So what? Our free market system allows for it. Since the Feds subsidize oil, gas, corn and Nuclear,why shouldn't they support clean EVs?
5. Motor head should support EV market penetration, because they will have gas available to them longer and cheaper if demand stabilizes or reduces.
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kevingill
9/23/2010 3:22 AM EDT
I think the problem is largely down to culture - Americans won't give up their big car and drive a little EV. The other thing that's been pointed out is the cost of gas. In most other countries the cost of gas is already at $8 a gallon and hence the adoption of EV and hybrids is more popular.
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markogts
9/23/2010 3:05 PM EDT
The energy involved in producing a PV panel or a windmill is already well estimated, search for EROEI. The energy returned from building a windmill is already greater than that returned from oil extraction, and things will get worse for oil with time (anybody estimated the energy necessary to clean the Gulf, BTW?)
Surely, the long distances in the American continent will hamper electrical vehicles: in Europe things will be easier, also due to the strong fuel taxation.
However, a reversible buffer on board to recover braking energy, act the start&stop system and to optimize engine performance will be more and more common on any kind of vehicle.
The pure electric car will be useful as a grid buffer in case of huge increase in wind and solar generation, in order to dampen power variations. I can't say now if it's going to be a niche market or if it will grow greater, a lot depends on government policies. I totally agree that a charging or battery switching network won't work: I don't see a defined standard and the charging times implied are simply too long. Could work for daily work commuting, surely not for summer vacations: here the energy density of liquid fuels is still unbeatable.
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iniewski
9/23/2010 4:41 PM EDT
Markogts: Agree on most points. Pure electric car will be helpful IF and WHEN wind/solar energy becomes a significant portion of the energy being generated. Currently this is still significantly less than 1%. In my mind increasing this % by deploying more green energy sources would be much more valuable than focusing on building electric cars (in terms of government incentives, private industry will do what they feel they can economically sell regardless of what we all say here)...Kris
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stumbirfi
9/23/2010 9:13 PM EDT
iniewski: I though we'd figured out that every EV that replaces a gas car is a complete and unmitigated improvement on TODAYS power grid.
You describe steps which will make the situation even better.
The position that we should do one or the other does not make sense.
Do both.
Thanks!
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Mark Moulding
9/23/2010 9:59 PM EDT
I'm a bit disappointed by the cost of batteries, but not particularly surprised. I've used lead-acid extensively for EV applications (both small utility vehicles, and also marine applications). Ultimately, the cost of this technology approaches $100/kWh - about a tenth of vehicular lithium technologies. I completely agree that lithium is the most practical technology for average commuter applications, but I feel that its cost needs to approach this metric before wide-spread adoption becomes inevitable.
Note that lead-acid has long been proven practical for short range, low speed(less than 50 mi/day, less than 35 MPH) applications. Hmmm - that describes a significant number of commuters...
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stumbirfi
9/23/2010 11:41 PM EDT
I just bought a pack of LiFePO4 CALB batteries to upgrade my old Solectria Force.
They were $360/kWh for the batteries alone, and about $430/kWh once I added the BMS, new charger, battery mounts, etc.
So PbA batteries are still cheaper, the gap is not quite as bad as you state.
If you take the cycle life and compare usable capacity, LiFe cells are actually cheaper then the lead cells for EV applications. (Talking about Gel cells, and assuming the LiFe cells meet the rated cycle life).
Thanks!
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iniewski
9/28/2010 6:29 PM EDT
How is everyone feeling about something more radical: limit car use (of any kind) and use EV buses/street car for massive transportation within cities? That should be more planet saving than just adding EV cars as a second family vehicle...Kris
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Gasoline66
9/29/2010 9:44 AM EDT
Forget all this silly talk of .02/mile fuel cost, zero emissions, multiple alternative fuel sources, etc. Gasoline is the only way to go. Sure, we go into foreign lands, kill their people and steal their resources in order to drive our behemoths, but so what? We are entitled. It's all about U.S. exceptionalism. There are good reasons why North America consumes 86% of the world's natural resources, and, quite frankly, my producers own you and everything between your fill-pipe and Washington D.C. Every day the TV tells you consumption drives our economy. You should listen. Forget change. You're doing just great- please continue...
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selinz
9/29/2010 9:13 PM EDT
We need more nuclear power plants to charge up our lead acid batteries. Throw in a wind turbine and a solar panel for political reasons if you like.... :-)
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Nando Basile
10/1/2010 6:01 AM EDT
To gasoline66: that was the best comment I ever red, I think the Bush administration would have loved it!
Seen form outside US, the perspective is quite different:
1 - US cars are far from be efficient in terms of consumption
2 - The US automotive industry knows very well that Diesel (from Europe for example) is already able to provide US citizens RIGHT NOW, with the big, reliable and silent car we all love, reducing fuel X2 and environmental impact X4 at same car price and performances and ensuring high reliability and autonomy in urban and extra-urban cycle.
3 - The US automotive industry is lobbying to have US citizens believe that the only way to drop consumption is go to disruptive appoach, as HEV or EV, carefully missing to say that it will be 10 or 20 years before you get decent autonomy and refuel network as you have already for diesel.
4 - Europe an Japan car makers know they will have to go HEV sooner or later, not because of oil reserve do drop in 2125, but because of very high fuel price and city pollution right today! (Much more difficult and umpractical to organize wars to get oil, public opinion would kill you). So R&D on HEV/EV must be sponsored someway. Big opportunity: US guys are now interested to the business, so let's get US buy a lot of HEV and pay the cost of R&D to the rest of the world. After all, US guys rich: they can afford to get 2 cars instead of one: HEV to go to work an highly ineffcient gasoline to get on trip with the family. Please, don't tell US guys that Diesel is there, cheap and available the time that EV will turn into anything serious...
By the way, there is a parallel forum on the other EDN article on diesel vs. HEV that may be interesting to follow.(http://www.eetimes.com/design/automotive-design/4207375/Diesels-challenge-hybrids-for-efficiency--low-emissions?cid=NL_SmartEnergy&Ecosystem=smart-energy-design)
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DrQuine
10/10/2010 12:55 PM EDT
The clear solution is plug-in hybrid electric (PHEV) cars. Short trips could be powered by the batteries (10 miles may be the best balance between battery cost and mpg) while the gasoline engine would kick-in to enable the longer distances that families must travel from time to time. I've driven over 88,000 miles in my Honda Civic Hybrid with an average over over 50 mpg. The added cost of my hybrid was paid back years ago by the gas savings. My only regret is that it cannot run on pure battery and the short trips to the grocery store kill my average mpg. I can't wait until a PHEV version is available. As an extra bonus, I'd love to have a good vehicle to grid (V2G) power output available for when power fails. A friend of mine powered his country house for a week on an inverter off a his Toyota Prius battery after the big storms in Massachusetts a few years ago.
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WILLIAM CONSTANTINE
10/14/2010 12:16 PM EDT
I believe every one has neglected to mention the cost of an EV is about 18,000 dollars more than a conventional ICE. This a very important point, that is why Dr.Ferdinand Piech, the CEO of VW has completely stopped development of the EV because of the cost to set up production for an EV is 15 billion dollars and the additional cost to the consumer is ridiculously high and they could never recoup that investment until they owned the vehicle for 12 or more years.He has decided to pursue a better internal combustion engine.
There is also an engine development company called the Scuderi Group,LLC who has been working a on a new engine called the Scuderi Split Cycle engine, which they have been working on since the late 90's. Their engine reduces NOX by at least 80% and CO2 by 50% while increasing fuel economy by 50 to 100 %.The prototype engine has been running now 16 months at South West Research in San Antonio Texas and outperforming the computer modeling they have done so far. The Scuderi Group is now in negotiations with many of the major OEM'S around the world and hoping to secure licensing agreements with many of them over the next six months. The Scuderi technology has become so compelling that the OEM customers around the world are showinggreat interest in the technology and have signed non disclosures to have access to the data at SWRI in San Antonio. The Scuderi group has nda's fro the following company's around the world : Daimler in Germany, Honda in Japan, Nissan in Japan, Renault in France, Peugeot in France, Fiat in Italy as well as all the car companies in India.
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markogts
10/14/2010 1:12 PM EDT
100% increase of fuel economy? Did you realize this is a blog full of engineers? LOL
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kkersey
11/8/2010 8:52 PM EST
iniewski - your intuition is 100% correct, and (like me) you will meet with much disagreement by well-meaning but misinformed people about the merits of EV's. Pure EV's do almost nothing to reduce total energy usage or CO2 vs. hybrids, or even high efficiency (non-hybrid) turbodiesels for that matter. This is factual and can rather easily be proven. The FOCUS of the technical community should be to create renewable energy sources to power the grid. THEN (and only then) can EV's have a net positive effect. I prefer Solar Thermal powerplant technology, but we should deploy any kind of solar and wind power that makes economic sense. However, even then, it may not be the best course of action to change to EV's. A more practical leveraging of the (massive) existing infastructure is to create solar-synthesized fuels (such as Algae-based biodiesel or gasoline). This keeps all the advantages of today's ICE cars, gas stations, etc. but is renewable-based and net CO2 neutral. The coal, lithium and power company lobbies would really like everyone to believe EV's are a great near-term solution - but they are not (yet).
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markogts
11/9/2010 4:06 AM EST
About the CO2 efficiency of EV: Nissan Leaf is said to have 160 km range with 24 kWh. With the Italian average energy mix, there is about 500 g/kWh, so the Leaf is going to be somewhere around 70-80 g/km, which is in reach of the Prius (87 g/km) and some clever diesel. AFAIK, California is going to apply a 130 gCO2/mile for EV emission estimate. Of course, one could buy green certificates along, so he/she could actually claim to be driving at 0 grams per km. There are no green certificates for gasoline, so EV is nearly the only choice in this last case (except biofuels).
Suggest an interesting reading: http://www.transportenvironment.org/Publications/prep_hand_out/lid/568 (pdf 80 pages) about the impact of EV in Europe in the next ten/twenty years.
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