unless and until they are testing them in the states along canadian border down as far as Kansas, in the winter, it don't mean sh!t...
Posted on 03/31/2009 2:56:06 PM PDT by neverdem
Battery technology is still not good enough to jumpstart an electric car revolution
"I am absolutely committed to working with Congress and the auto companies to meet one goal: the United States of America will lead the world in building the next generation of clean cars," declared President Barack Obama this week when he announced his administration's plan to nationalize the American automobile industry. What does he mean by "clean cars"? During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama promised to enact $7,500 tax credit for new plug-in electric hybrid (PHEV) cars, vowing to "put 1 million Plug-In Hybrid cars—cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon—on the road by 2015, cars that we will work to make sure are built here in America." In February, the promised $7,500 PHEV tax breaks were included in President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package.
Americans are already familiar with gas electric hybrid vehicles like Toyota's Prius, which uses nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries to power an electric motor that assists its gasoline motor and increases its gas mileage. The batteries are recharged by both the gasoline engine and by capturing energy used during braking (regenerative braking). For example, the EPA rates the Prius at 60 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 51 mpg on the highway. Introduced in 1997, over 1 million have been sold worldwide, 600,000 of them in the U.S. Despite their improved gas mileage, however, current generation hybrid automobiles, including the Prius, are still essentially gasoline powered vehicles.
That's where plug-in hybrid electric vehicles come in. PHEVs flip the current hybrid formula—instead of gas-powered cars assisted by electric motors and batteries, PHEVs will be electric-powered cars assisted by gasoline motors. Ideally, PHEVs would mostly run on electricity from batteries using their gasoline motors as range-extenders to charge the batteries after they've run out of juice. In a world of PHEVs, gasoline stations would go the way of livery stables since cars would get most of their energy by plugging them in at home at night or at parking garages and meters during work hours.
If most Americans switched to driving PHEVs, imports of foreign oil would fall. So would emissions of the greenhouse gases thought to be warming the planet. But by how much? A 2007 study by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratory sketched out a scenario in which 84 percent of cars, light trucks, and SUVs (about 200 million vehicles) were PHEVs traveling an average of 33 miles per day on electric power. In that scenario the country would reduce its consumption of oil by 6.5 million barrels per day—which is equivalent to 52 percent of current U.S. petroleum imports. Greenhouse gas emissions would be cut by as much as 27 percent.
Will our freeways soon be clogged with high-tech cars propelled mostly by electricity? The floundering automaker, General Motors, has promised to bring its Chevy Volt PHEV to market by 2010. Not to be left out, Ford and Chrysler have also announced plans to sell PHEVs in the next couple of years. Big automakers around the world are also promising that consumers will be able to drive their plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles in the next 2 to 3 years. Among them are Nissan-Renault, Daimler-Benz, BMW, Mitsubishi, Toyota, and the Chinese manufacturer, BYD. In addition, numerous startups—including Tesla Motors, Think, Fisker, Aptera, Zenn, and Phoenix Motors—are hoping to do an end-run around the stodgy majors.
However, without a plentiful supply of reliable long-range batteries, all such promises of a glorious electrically driven future are just so much hot air. Conventional NiMH batteries are OK for the quick charge and discharge of today's gas-electric hybrids, but they can't hold enough charge to take a car very far on its own. For more distance, carmakers are looking to the same battery technology that animates our laptops and cell phones: lithium-ion batteries, which hold a much greater charge and weigh much less than NiMH or conventional lead-acid batteries.
Surveying the world, it is clear that foreign manufacturers are currently in the lead when it comes to making lithium-ion batteries. In January, GM announced that it would use lithium-ion batteries produced by the North American subsidiary of the Korean chemical giant, LG Chem, in its Chevy Volt. LG Chem beat out A123 Systems, a lithium-ion battery maker headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts. In February, Ford announced that the batteries for its PHEV and electric vehicles would be supplied by a joint venture between Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls and the French battery producer Saft Groupe SA. The actual batteries will not be manufactured in the U.S., but in Saft's factory in Nersac, France.
To play catch up, the Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus package authorized the Department of Energy to spend $2 billion on grants for advanced battery research. In addition, would-be American battery manufacturers can partake of the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program launched last September when the panic over the economic meltdown first took off.
Worldwide, this manufacturing optimistically adds up to—at most—enough to produce 1 to 2 million PHEVs per year by 2015. In 2007, automakers globally produced 70 million vehicles powered by standard internal combustion engines. The global fleet currently numbers 810 million vehicles, of which 240 million travel on American roads. Clearly, cars powered mostly by electricity will constitute a tiny proportion of the world's vehicles for some time to come.
What about further down the road? If Europe imposes stringent carbon controls on automobile emissions to address global warming, Wolfgang Bernhardt, a partner at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Stuttgart, Germany, told Automotive News in November, "I can see up to 3 percent of all cars being pure electrics by 2020, with a further 19 percent being plug-in hybrids." Alan L. Madian, director of consulting firm LECG, told The Washington Post that even with "heroic" assumptions that by 2030 new electric cars would only make up 50 percent of new vehicles being sold and only 8 percent of cars on the road.
The 2007 Department of Energy PHEV study found that when compared to 27.5 miles per gallon internal combustion vehicles, the break-even premium for a PHEV at $2.50 per gallon is $3,500 when electricity costs are $0.12 per kilowatt hour. At $3.50 per gallon, the premium rises to more than $6,500. Since batteries are expected to boost the average cost of each vehicle by as much $10,000, gasoline will have to cost more than $5.00 per gallon before PHEVs make economic sense to most drivers. Of course, generous federal subsidies can help overcome this financial disincentive. The government could also double or triple gasoline prices by imposing a substantial tax.
In 2006, an activist "documentary" about GM's ill-fated foray a decade ago into battery-powered cars, the EV1, asked, "Who killed the electric car?" The filmmaker offered an elaborate conspiracy theory involving oil companies, but the truth is that clunky inefficient batteries did the electric car in. And unless there is a spectacular breakthrough in electricity storage technology, clunky expensive batteries will likely kill the electric car this time, too.
Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent.
240 million US vehicles, many of which are larger, heavier, utility vehicles. They aren't going to be replaced with wind-up electric cars, anytime soon.
Democrats/Socialists really are insane. Many of them really believe that if they simply pass a law, requiring something to happen, then it will happen. Others of them know better, and are simply crooked - looking forward to the kickbacks from companies participating in the taxpayer-financed "Green Revolution".
I could never own an electric car. Like millions of Americans I don’t have a garage at all- much less one wired for electricity.
Not only is this a problem, but with coal fired plants and nukes off limits, there is a lot of doubt as to whether or not we’ll have the electric power available in years to come to handle these many new electric appliances. As it is, we’re definitely looking at brownouts and even blackouts becoming more frequent.
Maybe by clean cars, Ogabe means cars that never have to be washed. I think we’ve already achieved that, more or less, since I practically never wash my jalopy. As far as I’m concerned, with or without a fresh coat of wax, it’s a clean car - clean enough for me, anyway.
Does Zero think that the electricity for these Earth saving cars is just going to magically appear?
It must be generated by coal, nuclear or perhaps solar and/or wind that the NIMBY libs don’t want in their back yards.
And then it has to be transported through unsightly and environment-destroying electric lines built by huge trucks with gasoline powered engines, etc...etc...etc....
Every day this madness gets more jaw-dropping!!!!
unless and until they are testing them in the states along canadian border down as far as Kansas, in the winter, it don't mean sh!t...
When we were selling more than 15 million vehicles per year, the median age of automobiles and light trucks on the road was nearly 10 years. So, even selling at the rate we were in the recent boom years, it would take 10 years for just half of the vehicles on the road to be replaced with new plug in hybrids. And that median age is rising quickly as automobile and light truck sales have plummeted. With slower sales, it will take even longer to replace only half of the vehicles.
Combine that with the fact that manufacturing projections for batteries and for the plug in hybrids that use them will only allow less than 20% of the vehicles sold to be plug in hybrids or electric vehicles, and the realistic replacement horizon for half of the vehicle fleet moves out to several decades.
That's why we need to be developing more petroleum resources now. We aren't going to be eliminating the need for gasoline and diesel fuel anytime in the next 20 years. We won't even cut the need in half.
Oh, and this doesn't count the single largest fleet operation in the United States, the largest consumer of gasoline and diesel fuel. That fleet has an even higher median age, and will be much more costly to replace, and won't be able to use electric and plug in hybrids as much. The biggest fleet user of gasoline and diesel fuel is the United States Military.
I'm going to adapt a trick from our new Democrat masters. I'll buy one of these POS vehicles, take the tax credit, make a couple of payments, and let the bank have it back. Then loudly proclaim my love for Zero at a town hall meeting so I don't get in trouble. How can I lose?
All you people who think you should pay for what you buy. What a bunch of pathetic losers.
Another GW ping.
The biggest greenhouse gas of all is going to turn out to be the Government Assisted Suicide gas.
Someone should buy Hummer, concentrate on export, and to offset CAFE in the domestic market, buy SmartCar or build 40,000 units of the yet-to-be-designed LittleDinkyCar and sell them at cost.
Over-all I bet you could make a ton of $$$$
Nobody talks about the arsine problem with batteries...
Or Ozone...
Just so I can sell bumper stickers stating:
COAL POWERED CAR
Not to mention batteries suck, P E R I O D!
I sure everyone here has some horror story with batteries, eventually they all bite you in they a$$.
I have two regular old cars, each over 200,000 miles and going strong, comfy and free, except for replacing the damn batteries.
Electric Cars Will Not Decrease Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Says Federal Study
CNSNews | June 25, 2009 | By Monica Gabriel
Posted on 06/25/2009 12:17:11 PM PDT by MaestroLC
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2279384/posts
Not So Fast With Those Electric Cars
IBD Editorials | July 7, 2009 | Investor’s Business Daily
Posted on 07/08/2009 5:07:23 PM PDT by WhiteCastle
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2288463/posts
Not So Fast With Those Electric Cars
Townhall.com | July 8, 2009
Posted on 07/08/2009 6:11:46 PM PDT by Kaslin
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2288512/posts
GAO: Electric Cars Won’t Reduce Carbon Emissions
HotAir.com | July 10, 2009
Posted on 07/10/2009 11:38:59 AM PDT by WhiteCastle
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2289856/posts
Teen Sailor Nears End of Round-the-World Solo Voyage
People Magazine | July 9, 2009 | Johnny Dodd
Posted on 07/10/2009 10:48:33 AM PDT by La Enchiladita
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2289823/posts
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