Because of America's decentralized pattern of residential development, this country will always be heavily dependent on personal rather than mass transportation. While I am lucky enough to live in Manhattan and do not need a car to get to work or for daily use, most people in this country drive everywhere. Over the next several decades we will see the revival of some towns and cities and some additional development of mass transit, but in this country the auto is here to stay. To reduce both costs and the pollution generated from motor vehicles, we will eventually turn to electric cars. Hopefully, these cars will be powered by electricity generated from renewable sources of energy. Electric cars may seem like a vision of the future, but clearly, a great deal of progress has been made in the past few years to make this vision real. The arrival of the Nissan Leaf, an all-electric car designed for the mass American market, is a sign that the electric car may finally have arrived.
Recently, Bill Marsh of the New York Times compared the cost of a hundred miles of driving in a Nissan Altima to an electric-powered Nisan Leaf. The Leaf cost $2.64 for fuel compared to $14.25 for the Altima, and its power needs generated 63.6 pounds of greenhouse gasses compared to 90.5 for the Altima. It's true that electric car owners face the inconvenience of charging the car, and the fear that they could end up on the side of the road without juice for the battery. Still, the electric car seems to have crossed the cost threshold and is closer than ever to becoming a real option.
Last semester, students I worked with in Columbia University's Masters of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy conducted an analysis of the feasibility of electric cars in New York City for the Mayor's Office Long Term Planning and Sustainability. While enhancing mass transit is the main method employed by the city to reduce the energy used and greenhouse gasses emitted from transit, most people in New York City live outside of Manhattan and are nearly as dependent on the auto as folks living in the rest of this country. For these New Yorkers, the electric car may be an important way to improve their transportation sustainability. In examining the issues of electric car implementation in New York City, my students observed that:
...the City faces unique barriers that may prevent its widespread adoption. Auto-manufacturers market electric vehicles to homeowners with access to personal garages and driveways for recharging, but nearly half of New York City drivers depend on street parking. Additionally, New York City's electricity rates are among the highest in the nation, reducing the savings offered by an electric vehicle.
To address these problems, they proposed that New York's electric utility, Con Ed, adopt and promote a lower evening rate for charging cars and that the city's government look into the feasibility of establishing or encouraging commercial charging facilities in neighborhoods where homes lack private garages.
It is possible that the issue of charging batteries may soon be solved technologically. As battery technology advances, it may someday be possible to simply drive into a convenience store and drop off a used up battery and pick up a charged one to replace it. While that type of battery technology is still being developed, when it is in place, the fear of running out of juice will be eliminated. Shai Agassi, an Israeli entrepreneur, has begun implementing such a system in Israel. This past May, his company, A Better Place, introduced the Renault Fluence ZE, the first all-electric car offered for sale in Israel. One of the most interesting elements of Agassi's business model for the electric car is the way his company approaches the pricing fuel. As Agassi recently wrote in the Atlantic:
Why then have we not seen the market tip toward the electric car? Because the acquisition cost of the car plus the battery is still too high for most consumers and the lack of wide spread infrastructure means the range of an electric car with a bolted battery inside is not enough to satisfy most drivers accustomed to refueling once a week, every 300 miles. At Better Place, our answer to this challenge lies with the infrastructure, not the battery. By separating the ownership of the car and the battery and providing consumers with the network and infrastructure to conveniently charge the battery when parked -or switch the battery in less time than it takes to refuel on longer drives - convenience is attained. Price the car without the battery at purchase, and the rest as you drive and the electric car enjoys the same buying model as a gasoline car - and the electric car proves cheaper today and progressively cheaper to own and operate with time. As an electric car is mostly a consumer electronic device, we know the trend line on its cost, much like we know where oil is headed. They are headed in opposite directions in favor of electrons.
Businesses and governments are beginning to view this new technology as a practical reality. The pace that electric car technology is adopted and gains acceptance will in part be a function of its reliability and cost. These factors will be influenced by public policy. The diffusion of new technologies into a society and economy is very difficult to predict. For example, who would have guessed that there would be 5 billion cell phones on the planet by 2011? Similarly, who would have thought that we all needed to carry around 3,000 songs in our pockets at all times?
There is enough petroleum on the planet to power our cars for another century, so why switch from gasoline to electricity? Maybe for the same reason the horseless carriage replaced the horse and buggy: It was more convenient, less expensive, and didn't leave the streets ankle deep in manure. The electric car is cheaper and cleaner to run than the gasoline-powered car. As Agassi indicates, this price distinction will become greater in the future. The question for the electric car may be -- when? Not if. The issue is how long will it take to overcome the momentum of sunk costs and old habits. Perhaps the cell phone provides a good model. Ask young people if they ever plan to own a landline phone. Look at the declining price per minute of phone time, and the increased use of phones, text messages and e-mail. These changes have been quite rapid and were not predicted by anyone. While an auto is far more expensive than a phone, and represents a major household investment, people seem open to new thinking about cars. I suspect that the transition to electric vehicles will happen suddenly and unpredictably; perhaps sooner than we think.
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As for recharging, I love waking up to a full "tank" of electricity in the morning - I never have to find the time to visit gas stations. (Though it's fun to drive past and look at the lines!)
Lithium battery making and disposal/recycling does not cause any great amount of environmental harm. You must be thinking about petroleum.
And by them hopefully we will have more power generating capacity – because we will need it
We are not decades away from a 300-mile range. A car called the T-Zero demonstrated a 300-mile driving range back in 2003:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Propulsion_tzero
And quick charge is already here. The Nissan Leaf has a 30-minute quick charge mode. Also, lithium titanate batteries can take a 10-minute charge. These batteries exist today, and are used in EV racing (they will show up in mainstream EVs soon.)
The upcoming Tesla Model S will have a 300-mile range, and a quick-charge mode. It's cost, not technology, that is holding both long ranges and quick charge back. The Model S is more advanced than the Tesla Roadster, but will sell for half of the Roadster's cost. Two or three more years will cut that cost in half again, while improving the next car even more.
Power generating capacity isn't a problem either, because EVs typically charge overnight - off-peak. Electric utilities are hot on promoting EVs for this very reason - it will enable them to sell tons of electricity overnight, when many of their powerplants are otherwise idle. Even if millions of Americans adopted EVs, it would still be decades before new powerplants are needed.
EVs are here to stay this time.
Sure as a pure commuter car for very short trips it will work – but not in places like the northeast where you need the heater and could get stuck in traffic during a snowstorm.
As I said we are a decade or more away from seeing more than a fraction of a % of these cars sold.
And power will be a problem when the mass market develops as people will need to power up at all hours of the day…….as that do now with gasoline
The projected life of my cells is over 20 years at 1 complete charge and discharge cycle a day., and then they will still have 80% of there capacity left. Of course nobody has tested them for that long yet so there may be other factors that effect their lifespan.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/clean-energy-apos-s-dirty-little-secret/7377/
Stumbled across this place offroading.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D-uhKHy7mk Amory Lovins Hypercar Video
But i agree weight is the issue and this car is light.
Lovins has proposed a Feebate system to make the cars cost competitive. The program would charge a fee on vehicles that get less MPG than the government standards and provide a rebate to the purchasers of composite thermo plastic vehicles. My bet is that it will be an Indian company. The majors will follow as gas prices demand super efficient autos. The car does not have to be powered by electric. Light weighting provides an opportunity for fuel cells or internal combustion engines. Fuel cells would only need to be a 1/4 to 1/3 the size required for a conventional car. The same is true with an internal cmbustion engine. More and power charging stations are being built every day around the country. As demand grows, so will the charging stations.
Now, I have a Chevy Volt. This car was developed and tested in Michigan winters, and performs great in snow and cold.
Electric motors actually have their maximum torque at very low RPMs. So snow banks are no problem at all.
You have some fuzzy math there. You have accounted for the entire supply chain for the electricity that powers the Leaf, but then only counted the CO2 produced from the gasoline that powered the Altima.
I have some news for you, gasoline does not spring magically from the ground, fully refined, right at the local filling station. Please include the energy needed to drill, pump, filter, transport, refine, more transport, etc. that went into making the gasoline.
Eventually science will breed up tame electrons that can be raised locally, so transportation and safety shouldn't be a problem.
Compare this to the final fuel transport step for gasoline - thousands of energy-guzzling and pollution-spewing tanker trucks driving gas to thousands of service stations.
But refining is the important step to account for. The amount of energy (including lots of electricity) it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline could power an EV 30 miles all by itself.
See, you're driving an EV already. You're just burning gasoline, too.
That being said, there still better power sources than others, even if they are more "inefficient". Power loss isn't the only externality.
This means that plugging in EVs - one, a thousand, or a million - won't change coal pollution.. But it sure will affect petroleum pollution!
RE: energy losses along the supply chain - gasoline has this too. In fact, gasoline has this much worse. The amount of energy it takes just to refine gasoline is enough to power EVs all by itself. And don't forget all the trucks it takes to distribute gas to stations - while electricity can be sent to cars via wire (this is over 90% efficient, by the way.)
The best way to tell that electricity is produced and used far more efficiently is the price. Miles driven on grid electricity cost about 2 cents. Gasoline easily costs 5 times this.
The only thing that took some getting used to was the wicked acceleration.
They are a bad idea because you know the automakers factor them into the pricing, effectively taking most of that money for themselves. Therefore, I believe the end pricing would have wound up in a similar place without the credits.
Also, I have to point out that gasoline has billions in subsidies - far more than EVs get. It would be nice if all this taxpayer funded corporate welfare at least got us cheaper gasoline - but i doubt it. OPEC pretty much dictates what prices will be, which means our taxpayer dollars just wind up in company profits.