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Is the Future of the Electric Car Industry in Silicon Valley?
fiannaFailMan writes "The San Jose Mercury News is speculating about Silicon Valley's potential for becoming the Detroit of a future electric car industry. Among the valley's strengths is an ability to adapt to rapidly changing business environments and develop new business models, something that the Big Three can hardly be accused of. On the downside, it's a capital-intensive business and isn't like raising $40 million and having an IPO. Apparently there are five companies in the valley already pursuing electric car technology, most notably Tesla motors."
I Like http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/ because the car looks nice and those 10minute charge batteries are cool.
A lot of poeple call this the long tail pipe.
1. Detroit has a lot of good engineers, that don't get enough credit.
2. Detroit has a big manufacturing base geared for automotive production and it is definitely a cheaper place to operate. Even if the technology is developed in Silicon Valley, I doubt they would actually produce cars there.
3. Detroit has already gotten its ass kicked by foreign competition. They are going to fight for every piece of market share.
Commonwealth Edison aka Exelon have received heavy subsidies, including deferred taxes, artificially low limits on liability, fuel fabrication write-offs, nationalised disposal and management of waste and artificially low decommissioning costs. In addition, Commonwealth Edison's customers now pay the highest electric bills in the Midwest.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I have nuclear power in the Chicago area (www.comed.com). I've checked, and it's not heavily subsidized.
There's probably little subsidy in day to day operations. The building was subsidized in part, and cleanup (Yucca mountain) is more expensive than building it and entirely at government expense.
Infuriate left and right
I'm sure he's the recent phenomenon of blind people being hit by electric cars simply because they make so little noise and they cannot hear them coming. i mean honestly, what other reason could there be for his opinion that no engine noise sucks...?
No, I haven't any stats. The thing to keep in mind is that the 1000 internal combustion engines (gasoline, diesel, ethanol, whatever) moving 1000 vehicles are together less efficient and produce greater emissions than a single centralized plant providing electric power to move that same 1000 cars. There are economies of scale involved in utility-scale generation that aren't available in small packages.
The internal combustion engine, depending on whose numbers you believe, is something like 25-40% efficient. That is, 25-40% of the chemical potential energy stored in the fuel is converted to mechanical energy for moving the vehicle. A combined cycle power plant, where you burn a gas in a turbines, then use the hot exhaust to also create steam to drive more turbines, can be upwards of 60% efficient. In situations where co-generation is also possible (a rarity, since most homes and buildings aren't powered by utility steam), that efficiency can be raised closer to 70%.
The other benefit, as others have noted, is that it is easier to clean the emissions (i.e., remove particulates, reduce SOx and NOx, remove mercury, etc.) and, eventually, capture the carbon dioxide output, at a single large location than to try and outfit every vehicle with the same equipment.
You're totally right. Tesla are making a car that is small and doesn't use petrol. These are both factors that are far more attractive to europeans!
For the first Teslas, europe would be a far better market. (However, it must be noted that Teslas production runs are already sold out. Can't they ramp up production any more?)
http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/01-11-07_1/ Fisker Coachbuild, is making a four-door plug-in hybrid premium sports car. They have operations in and venture funding from the Valley. Unlike other startups, these guys have been in the car business for a long time.
Follow the energy:
Gas engine: Chemical Energy (gas) -> heat -> mechanical energy
Electric engine: Chemical energy (coal) -> heat -> mechanical energy -> electrical energy -> (step up transformer) -> (power line) -> (step down transformer) -> (charger) -> chemical energy (in the battery) -> electrical energy -> mechanical energy
Each link in that chain is less than perfectly efficient and wastes energy, so even if the last two or three steps (the actual car engine) are more efficient for electric, there's a lot of catching up to do.
So, while electric cars might make cities more pleasant, unless the upstream source of the energy is either renewable or nuclear* its not going to solve the problems associated with burning fossil fuels (i.e. global warming or - if you don't believe in that - the self-evident fact that we're consuming a finite resource at an accelerating rate).
They may, however make cities cleaner, and once they're in place at least you have the flexibility to change the energy source at will. However, you also need to factor in the cost of manufacturing enough electric cars to get everybody driving one (not just those kind people who buy a new car every 2 years, but all the sensible people who buy 2-year-old cars and run them until they fall apart).
No one gizmo is going to solve our energy & pollution problems unless its part of a coherent system.
(* nuclear is, of course, safer and cleaner than fossil fuels unless (a) it goes wrong, (b) the current sources of easily extractable fissile material run out , or (c) some asshat uses the byproducts for making bombs. Of course there's absolutely no reason to believe that a massive expansion of nuclear power would make any of those more likely, so that's OK then. However, its probably the only route out of our current hole).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Tesla Motors' has a chart on their website regarding well-to-wheel efficiencies, they even look at it in two steps. Well-to-station (not good for electric @ 52.5% vs. gas @ 81.7%) and overall well-to-wheel (great for electric 1.14 km/MJ vs 0.515 for regular gas car). I like the fact they are being open and honest about this slight negative instead of hiding it by just reporting well-to-wheel http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php
;)
It is true that power plants (even Natural Gas / coal) have very high efficiencies when compared to automotive, however transmission losses through power lines are the killer. This results in awful Well-to-station efficiency. What makes up for it though is the incredible efficiency of the electric vehicle. If you could combine the high well-to-station efficiency of "gas" cars with the electric drive train then that would give you the greatest distance for your gallon...
Amazingly GM seems to be looking at this "big picture" in the design of their series hybrid electric Volt concept car. This could of course be designed to be a plug-in-hybrid (if it's not already). If you know where your current source of power is coming from (nuclear, coal, NG) or can choose your supplier; you have more power to make an educated decision.
For example, If you live in California where smog is a killer and you know your power comes from nuclear you could choose to plug in as much as possible. If you live in Texas and want to support local big oil industry you could choose to only run on gas from a station and never plug in
You'd have to look at the big picture and see if having the on-board electric generation can be more efficient than current big generation facility + transmission losses.
The only solution is to put speakers into the outside of cars that play the appropriate noise for a petrol engine.
Hate to break it to you, but many modern cars are nearly as silent at low speeds as an electric could be. At higher speed wind noise is the significant contributer to noise levels.
I don't read AC A human right
Now, if you'd been talking about Solar Power, I'd be more inclined to agree with you with the viability only through subsidies. Nuclear power is as cheap or cheaper than coal, and it always has been. An average 1000MWe nuclear plant produces one contained 53' trailer load of vitrified rad waste per year, and all plants have been designed and approved for on-site storage for the duration of the plant. Over 50 years ago, our innovative American scientists developed a "stepper" reactor family design that actually consumes the rad waste, so in a total system, the 2N+2 radioactive family produces a full cycle with no long-term (more than 30 years) waste. Let's not forget that nuclear waste is also used for medical nuclear therapy and imaging.
Electric Cars + Nuclear power grid = 0 harmful energy emissions, nationally, except for the occasional campfire, gas stoves, and our entire space program.
I'll give anyone who currently agrees with the parent post a "by" on mass ignorance fed by the media and under-educated educators, but only a little bit longer. There's a big discussion tonight on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, during their green week. After tonight, you can't even blame the media for people having this wrong.
There's room for solar power, wind power, and deep-sea hydro power, but pound-for-pound, watt-for-watt, wind and solar cannot be our primary energy grid technology. For one, they depend on the weather, which is unreliable from a regional power grid perspective. For two, if you take a KWh from Solar and stand it next to the KWh from Nuclear, Solar produces a quantity of toxic waste during manufacturing (which is always toxic, forever), and Nuclear produces a quantity of rad waste during operation (enrichment takes over a dozen possible forms, including centrifuge, laser, and aerodynamics). Noting that solar cells eventually break down, but nuclear reactors in our grid today are being re-rated for now up to 60 years of operation, I wonder what the toxic waste to rad waste (and I've established it is reusable) ratio is, given a single KWh of electricity.
Small power generation, like solar and wind, is great from a grid management perspective, because a grid operator can shut down or bring up a solar or wind service more easily than a large power plant. They need to do this to control voltage fluctuations and meet demand.
Very interesting documentary on how big oil and the big three conspire to protect their interests.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10