Posted on 11/25/2015 5:07:47 AM PST by thackney
In the next 60 months the automotive industry will see more change than in the last 60 years. European car manufacturers should commit to electric cars now or Europe will be in economic trouble
Once in a while a new technology comes along that profoundly changes the way humans relate to energy and transport. Wheels, steam engines and airplanes are all step changes that put humanity on a new trajectory. When I first drove the full electric Nissan Leaf back in 2011, I realized I was sitting in such a technological breakthrough.
An internal combustion engine peaks at ~30% efficiency. This is the result of a century of continuous improvement and trillions of dollars in research and development. The room for improvement that's left in combustion engines is minimal. Yet there I was, driving the first generation of a car that comfortably hit 85-90% efficiency! Immediately I understood the tremendous potential of the electric car: fast acceleration, no noxious emissions, three times as energy efficient -- and it could be driven on pure sunlight.
Since the introduction of the Nissan Leaf, more electric cars have hit the market. But this is just the beginning of a massive shift from fossil fuels and combustion engines to electric cars powered by renewable energy. At Fastned we call this the Autowende.
Here's why I think the European automotive industry has to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine and put all their effort and funds behind the electric revolution.
Combustion engines cannot compete with electric motors
As battery prices continue to fall and more people start to appreciate electric cars, the internal combustion engine and the traditional European car manufacturers are facing the perfect storm. They have to comply with ever stricter emission regulations and deal with a changing public attitude towards exhaust emissions.
There are three reasons why I believe electric motors are the future.
1. 100% Electric is the new normal for "Freude am fahren"
"We're a V-12 engine company. Project that into the future. Do I go the way of the rest of the industry and downsize the engine? Do I see Aston Martin with a three-cylinder engine? God forbid. You've got to do something radical. Electric power gives you that power. It gives you that torque."
-Andy Palmer, CEO of Aston Martin
The joy of driving -- "Freude am fahren" as BMW calls it -- is no longer possible with internal combustion engines. The internal combustion engine has reached the limits of physics. It may be able to meet stricter emission regulations for the time being, but this results in a dull driving experience.
In the coming decade emission regulation forces cars to become even cleaner, which will in turn make fossil fuel cars more expensive. In the EU for example, car companies will have to comply with an average CO2-emission throughout their fleet of 95 grams per km in 2021. This means that within six years the entire fleet sold by Daimler should have exhaust emissions similar to a Fiat Panda. So car companies can still build a growling flat six cylinder Porsche, but they have to offset this with a zero emission car. In other words, to comply with emission regulations car makers don't have many options left but to sell serious numbers of fully electric cars.
Electric cars have massive torque from the moment you hit the pedal, which makes them better than gasoline equivalents. And they can deliver hundreds of horsepowers without any emission scheme to worry about.
Soon you'll face the choice between a fun, quickly accelerating electric car, which can be charged on pure sunlight and which might earn some tax breaks -- and a dull, heavily taxed fossil car which is banned from city center and packed with expensive emission controls.
This may well be the reason Volkswagen resorted to cheating the emission tests. Building cars with an internal combustion engine that combines great performance and low emissions simply wasn't possible at low costs.
2. Electric cars are more affordable
"I would be disappointed if the price per kWh was not in the $100 dollar range by 2020."
-J.B. Straubel, CTO Tesla Motors
Digital cameras and solar panels were once expensive. Not anymore. These technologies followed a steep 'learning curve' and declining costs. A similar fate awaits the electric car.
In 2010 -- when the very first Nissan LEAF came to market -- lithium-ion battery prices were around $1000 per kWh. In 2013, at the time of Tesla introducing its Model S, analysts concluded that battery prices had dropped to around $400 per kWh. GM announced a price of $145 per kWh for its all electric Bolt which will be introduced in 2016. Tesla Motors expects to produce batteries in the range of $100 in 2020.
he trend is clear: the price of batteries is declining at an annual rate of around 20%, while the internal combustion engine is getting more expensive in order to comply with emission regulations.
It may be hard to imagine today, but we'll soon see the day that electric cars are cheaper to purchase than comparable gasoline cars. In markets with high taxes on polluting vehicles, electric cars will be competitive even sooner.
3. The 'cigarette moment' for the internal combustion engine
"Twenty years from now, the smell of exhaust will be as rare (in cities) as the smell of cigarette smoke is in a restaurant today."
-Sir Richard Branson
The vast majority of EV-drivers will tell you that they will never go back to petrol. Internal combustion engine technology feels old and obsolete once you've driven an electric car. These people realise that cars do not necessarily have to be polluting.
It is only a matter of time before society sees gasoline cars as an irresponsible technology, simply because they are hazardous to the health of others and imperil our climate.
Think about what happened to smoking. Just thirty years ago people used to accept smoking virtually everywhere -- smoking in airplanes, smoking in schools, smoking in hospitals. People smoked in the presence of babies and the elderly. Pregnant women smoked, doctors smoked, sick people smoked. With hindsight, it is crazy!
In 61 months the scolds will be dreaming up ways to force people out of their electric cars and into mass transit.
America is a large country.
That is the part of the equation, which is (strongly) now for gas engines.
Americans need to travel. Sometimes long distances. Very long distances.
Electric cars are not currently able to do that efficiently, so most Americans don’t yet buy them.
Electric cars are either coal powered, or nuclear powered, both greatly hated by the greenies.
Electric cars are not now nor will they ever be “clean”.
An electric car is no different than a spring or rubberband powered car, the power must be produced somewhere else, then stored in the car for later use.
Except that the generation of electricity is at best ~30% with the steam turbines used regardless of the heat source. Solar and wind have much lower efficiencies.
In the US, some months it is more Natural Gas than any other source of energy.
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve driven the Tesla (the P90D’s acceleration is literally mind-blowing) and can see a day in the next 15-20 years where 30-40% of all cars sold will be electric.
The biggest issue will be keeping up with the needs of the electric infrastructure - and perhaps raw materials for battery technology.
You can blow all sorts of pink smoke all over electric cars and fill the public's ears with bullsh!t, but the inescapable facts remain that the batteries do not have the capacity to do anything except short commuter runs, and that they take a long time to recharge. Not to mention that the electric generation capacity doesn't have enough reserves to handle any serious numbers of the tax wasters
“The 85~90% efficiency claim is ignoring what it took to bring the electricity into the vehicle.”
I thought they brought it in on a pack train of unicorns.
Fuel cells will do to electric cars what downloads did to music CD’s
You beat me to it.
Solar and wind have much lower efficiencies.
Efficiency doesn't have the same meaning when the "fuel" is delivered every day for free. Capital cost are the real impact in those tech.
A lot of rhetoric, a few quotes from people “in the know”.
Real facts are in short supply.
In short, electric vehicles are going to have to get a lot cheaper while their range increases to what is expected of the infernal combustion engine before they will be even considered a viable transportation source.
Thank you for your EXCELLENT illustration. A car engine uses energy only when it is turned on, a power plant has to generate enough to anticipate what will be turned on. Until we all have our personal Toshiba mini-nuke plants in our neighborhoods we cannot possibly have great efficiency at the plant level.
The BMW i3 can go 81 miles on a single charge.
For an additional $4,500 you can add an internal combustion engine with a 1.5 gallon fuel tank and extend the range to 150 miles.
That is the state of electric cars today.
They suck.
Last time I crunched the numbers it took 20 parking spaces worth of panels to get to and from work. Add more area if it is winter or cloudy. For any longer trips, juicing up an electric car in any reasonable time will always require fossil or nuclear.
Lots of truth in that. But I see methane powered fuel cells more viable than hydrogen.
We’re going to need a bunch of nuke plants, quickly, to meet the new demand.
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