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 efficientâ--âand 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 drivingâ--â"Freude am fahren" as BMW calls itâ--âis 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 breaksâ--âand 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 2010â--âwhen the very first Nissan LEAF came to marketâ--âlithium-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 everywhereâ--âsmoking 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!
No thanks.
Maybe they can record a sports car’s engine.... and then put speakers in the back where the tail pipe would be.
The plan is to limit travel. I have to go to Bismark, ND today. That is a 300 mile round trip with about an additional 75 miles travel in and around Bismark. It is 24 degrees and snowing. Lets get the old Tesla or Leaf or what ever out and turn the heater on, defrost the windows and roll.... electricity?????
Kinda like ethanol.
Its great if you ignore the cost of preparing fields, planting, tending, harvesting, and transporting corn. That’s before taking distillation costs into account.
Don’t you just love Government. They don’t have any money, but due to the generosity of the American people, they have enough to make things happen.
...and we are left empty handed, and with the unintended consequences.
If I had an electric car, I would want the sound effects of a top fuel dragster for acceleration, but a steam locomotive for cruising.
Decades ago in Zermatt, Switzerland, they required all electric for vehicles due to the smog in the closed valley. After hitting many pedestrians with electric cars and buses none heard coming, they added the requirement of sleigh bells.
I have a cordless electric string trimmer with a NiCad battery. It's the most fantastic thing in the world. It starts at the touch of a button; it runs completely clean and virtually without noise. There's only one thing wrong with it, and that is, it doesn't work. Apart from that, I love it.
Sleigh bells??? Lol. I have a Corvette. It sounds pretty nice to me :)
Where’s that thread and article (WaPo?) from yesterday about how the Netherlands is having to build multiple new coal-fired electrical plants to keep up with the demands of EVs?
The “noise” was pretty cool for us tourists visiting during the Ski Season.
There were several horse drawn sleighs also working as shuttles.
But the city electric buses had horse collars mounted on the sides with bells.
Electric cars and the coal that runs them
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/electric-cars-and-the-coal-that-runs-them/2015/11/23/74869240-734b-11e5-ba14-318f8e87a2fc_story.html
I can see how that would work in certain situations.... :)
Awesome, thats it! Thanks!
I was intrigued by the propane fueled weed whackers that were on the market a few years back. No mixing fuel for the 2-stroke motors, no carb issues from the ethanol content.
But they disappeared pretty quickly, looked like from reliability issues.
There’s a lot of good stuff coming out of green tech. But building it and buying it just for the sake of being “green” is a nonstarter.
Fuel cell cars are still electric cars. Of course large scale hydrogen production and storage has its own problems.
Yep, for the holidays I’m going to do a round trip from Boston to Chicago. There isn’t an electrically powered vehicle existent (or on the drawing boards) that would do that in under 4 days. Oh yeah, it’s cold so I want to run the heater.
“Dunno what the author was smoking, but I don’t want any. Someone this delusional may never go back to reality.”
Well, I’m an IC engine guy, and I live over the hill to the east of the Tesla Plant. Where I live, there are a lot of Tesla’s, and with 200-300 mile range, they are an excellent executive “commute” vehicle with the Silicon Valley less than 40 miles away, so they do make a lot of sense in this environment. And from a fit and finish standpoint, they make German “luxury cars” look like crap. As some have pointed out though, the real issue is the availability of “clean” electric power. If we had stayed with nuclear energy generation, electic cars wouid make a whole lot more sense. As it stands they are about as polluting and “energy efficient” as IC engined cars today.
There's nothing like having all the power of Apollo 13 under the hood of your car!
* And cold weather in the Northeast and Midwest severely limits battery capacity and performance (See this Consumer Reports article —http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/02/winter-chills-limit-range-of-the-tesla-model-s-electric-car/index.htm — only 176 miles on a full charge in 45 degree weather! Heaven knows the range at 10 degrees.)
* And, of course, in a traditional coal plant,
only about 35% (45% in “supercritical” coal plants) of the energy in the coal ends up as electricity at the other end of the generator, minus 6% in distribution and transmission losses to get to the plug in a Tesla Supercharger station.
In other words, there is no global environmental benefit to electric cars — although an electric car would reduce smog in Southern California. And startup torque is nice.
Yes - this is the giant elephant in the room that eco-idiots so well work to hide.
But it’s the truth.
Give up my Porsche Cayman S? Same time I give up my two guns......... ;-)
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