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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."
In some markets nuclear power is an option. If the NIMBY folks could only be placated, expansion would be rapid.
regardless of how much pollution is generated at a power plant somewhere, there will be a hell of a lot less pollution blowing in our faces in the street, in the cities. This means better health for citizens.
I think centralization of power production (that is, not produced in car) is the key. Get the electric car tech sorted, and have other solutions for producing the power dealt with else where. It's abstracted away, a power input at the service station works regardless of where/how the power is generated.
Now, if only we could get John Carmack working on fusion reactor technology...
Yes, it's interesting how Silicon Valley may be where new car tech breakthroughs will happen, but the comparison here is misleading. The reason Detroit was the automobile mecca of the US was because that's where all of the cars were made. That's where hundreds of thousands of people toiled to send car after car off the assembly line. Do you think that the same is going to happen in Silicon Valley? SV will be the same thing it's been for the past several decades . . . a place where ideas and technology are born. And like a lot of the technology invented in SV, it will get manufactured in Taiwan, China, etc.
Near where I work (New Forest, UK) there is a new housing development going up, and I happened to notice that they are having solar thermal fitted into the roofs as standard. I did idly wonder if in a few years time all houses would have solar panel roofs as standard and electric cars would automatically recharge when not being used. I don't know, you park the car up pops a small wind turbine and the entire top surface of the vehicle is covered in photo voltaic paint? Park it in the garage or near the house and up pops a cable to connect it to the house power wind/solar array.
Now, I realize that I am in Sci-Fi could cuckoo land here, but bear with me. There are some things that need to happen.. well I would like to happen..
1. Reverse the trend of people living 80miles from their workplace and seeing a >1hr commute both ways as normal. I realize this would require a society change - but if conventional cars cost too much and there is no reliable public transport infrastructures then this could happen.
2. Cheap, High efficiency solar cells mandated on all new builds. 3. Energy efficiency mandated on all new CE devices and proper OFF switches as standard.
4. Micro generation being normal, and grid "top up" being extra.
5. Smart housing that automatically switched off lights, water heating on demand from stored power, low power devices.
Sorry, I'll get off my soap box before I get carried away....
An all electric car is quite a paradigm shift that is very difficult for existing auto makers to pursue.
While similar in form and function, electric cars are monumentally different from gasoline and/or diesel powered vehicles. It's much easier for a company such as Tesla to start their production model making cars numbering in the hundreds and ramp up their scale than it is for a huge manufacturer to go from the large scale and start small.
However, it's still a matter of who meets the magic numbers. I submit that the first company to develop an all electric car that will travel 300 miles on one charge, can recharge in less than 30 minutes plugged in, will recharge slowly in the sun on its own and costs less than $40,000 will sell like hot cakes.
Whether that's an old and established manufacturer or a new one like Tesla remains to be seen.
The data is out there, electric makes senses for many people.
1) The environmental impact - depending on who you listen to (ignoring big oil financed studies) - an 1 well tuned contemporary gas car running after warm up creates about the same pollution as 25-50 electric cars charged by electricity produced by traditional coal fired plants. If you have hydro or wind production, it's cleaner. If you have nuclear, the air is fine but you'll eventually have spent nuclear fuel. I don't know how much more over the life of the plant, but you could figure it out. I think that it depends on how many electric cars. Right now, there are so few that they just soak up extra capacity at night rather than creating significant new demand. (Yes, that capacity still uses more powerplant fuel that if they weren't plugged in)
2) You can build or have built a conversion of a gas to electric today. I'm converting a Ford Escort myself at a cost of about $8000 including the car. I've seen them done for less than $3000. You can buy an appropriate care and spend $10,000-$14,000 and have a shop convert it for you in many parts of the country. This assumes you use old fashion lead-acid batteries. You end up with with a car with a range of 30-100 miles per charge depending on trade-offs you control (size car/payload/cost). Think about your ordinary day's drive. Do you really need 300 miles range? or would 50 do? Then you have to decide what you do for the times you do need a greater range. Rent? Own another vehicle that you drive on special occasions? Form a co-op? At $3/gallon and $0.10 kilowatt/hr, you can drive electric for less than 50% of the cost of gasoline, once you factor in the maintenance and replacement costs. So that leaves some head room for a solution.
3) In my case, (family with 3 kids), we're planning to convert both cars to electric for daily use. We plan to own a 3rd gas powered vehicle for occasion weekend trips and other exceptions. We expect the savings accumulated from driving electric to be completely eaten by the cost of the 3rd vehicle unless gas prices go up (hah!). However, that means we'll be driving clean and quiet and not subject to gas prices at our current cost. Seems like a good idea.
This wouldn't necessarily work for a traveling salesman, or a farm-call veterenarian. But if you commute more than 30-50 miles round trip, what are you thinking anyway? (I realize there are people for whom this is a necessity. I hope they get mass transit. For most people, commuting more than 30-50 miles is already a problem.)
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.