GM, Utilities Partner To Advance Plug-In Hybrids

chareverie writes "General Motors is forming a team with utility companies nationwide to create a charging infrastructure for electric cars. Their goal is to improve the design of charging stations — making them weatherproof and child-proof, for example — in locations such as public garages, meters, and parking lots. They're also working on ways to avoid overwhelming the utilities during peak hours. Their goal is to have these improved charging stations implemented by 2010, when the Chevy Volt is introduced. Everyone recognizes however that a national car-charging infrastructure would be far from complete at that time."

Comments

We do.

[pheared]

Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?

With GMs luck.

[LWATCDR]

The volt will come out just in time for Oil to hit $45 a barrel.

Re:With GMs luck.

[gormanw]

No kidding, with GM's luck. Things might work better if they used ultra capacitors. Even better, use hydraulic hybrids instead of these expensive batteries that are a bear to recycle. One last point, won't charging a bunch of cars require all of the coal plants to go into overdrive? I read a great article about this at http://www.economicefficiency.blogspot.com/

Re:With GMs luck.

[eln]

If the Volt is everything it is rumored to be, I would buy it even if gas were back down at 50 cents a gallon. The reasons are simple: not only is it better for the environment, but it requires far less (maybe even none depending on how you drive) of a non-renewable resource like oil. So long as oil remains a non-renewable resource, any dips in price will be strictly temporary.

I would hope that at least some of us have learned our lesson from this most recent fuel crisis: oil is simply not a sustainable way to get our energy over the long term.

Re:With GMs luck.

[multipartmixed]

I don't know where you live, but where _I_ live, most power is either coal, hydro, or nuclear.

I checked the US as well, oil was the source of only 3% of the nation's power in 2005.

http://www.teachengineering.com/collection/cub_/lessons/cub_images/cub_earth_lesson08_figure5.jpg

Re:With GMs luck.

[Baddas]

... The reasons are simple: not only is it better for the environment, but it requires far less (maybe even none depending on how you drive) of a non-renewable resource like oil.

Neither of those is a decent reason in the face of hydrocarbon alternatives. Here's a good reason even with them:

Electric cars are simpler and more reliable than internal combustion cars, and will cost less for the same utility.

Re:With GMs luck.

[eln]

Sure, which is why we need to invest in renewable alternatives for large-scale power production. Getting the non-renewable fuels out of our cars is one step in the process, getting them out of our power plants is another step. Just because we haven't perfected the second step yet doesn't mean we should not be trying to solve the first step.

The Volt, as advertised, is a big step in the right direction. It is not the whole solution, but it's at least getting us on our way to part of the solution, which is better than what we've got so far.

Re:With GMs luck.

[Jonny_eh]

If you live in the US. In Quebec, almost all power is hydro. Ontario is a mix of nuclear, hydro, and coal. Many places in the US also use nuclear. France is almost completely nuclear. While nuclear is not 'renewable' it's at least not pumping out CO2 and smog.

Re:With GMs luck.

[MightyYar]

Even better, use hydraulic hybrids instead of these expensive batteries that are a bear to recycle.

I thought that GM tried and gave up on hydraulic hybrids?

One last point, won't charging a bunch of cars require all of the coal plants to go into overdrive?

Yes, but coal doesn't come from the Middle East, is a more efficient way to produce energy than burning gas in an internal combustion engine, is centralized and easier to scrub the emissions, and can be replaced by a different source in the future.

Re:With GMs luck.

[Anonymous Coward]

For your last point, my understanding is that you need to think about it in terms of point-source pollution. It's easier to mitigate 1000 pounds of pollution from one source than it is to mitigate 1 pound of pollution from 1000 sources.

Re:With GMs luck.

[LWATCDR]

They are going to use LI/ION so they are not a bear to recycle.
Most of the charging hopefully will be done at nite and not at peak. A lot power is wasted while base load plants are just idling.

Finally even if they are using coal there should still be a savings. Modern coal plants pollute less than a car per unit of energy.
Of course if you are on a nuke or hydro then you are even better off.

That being said I am not a big fan of hybrids but they are not as bad as you might think.

Re:With GMs luck.

[droopycom]

Maybe after the electric cars are working, we'll see electric trucks, electric trains, electric machinery...

We just need the oil to bootstrap the whole thing.

Oil might go the way of the punch card...

Re:With GMs luck.

[MightyYar]

No, just weapons-grade spent uranium. That's all...

Not unless you reprocess it. Good luck making a bomb using an old fuel rod.

Re:With GMs luck.

[stewbacca]

I would hope that at least some of us have learned our lesson from this most recent fuel crisis: oil is simply not a sustainable way to get our energy over the long term.

The only thing I've learned is that the price of oil has NOTHING to do with the actual supply or sustainability as a natural resource and is artificially set by non-sequitur geo-political issues. Unless you assume that there has been less oil pumped over the past year than previous years, or that we consume more oil than can be pumped (hint: both of these assumptions are false).

The other thing I've learned is that "crisis" is hyperbole. In the US, we've enjoyed cheaper-than-should-be fuel for decades. People still drive to work and still drive to the store, regardless if gas costs $4/gallon or $2.

Re:With GMs luck.

[MightyYar]

Making batteries isn't real enviro-friendly.

Cars are some of the most completely-recycled things on the planet. I have no doubt that the batteries will be recycled as a matter of course when electric cars become more common. Lead-acid batteries are already recycled.

Besides, we currently send hundreds of billions of dollars to places like Saudi Arabia... surely that factors into our energy policy?

Re:With GMs luck.

[mweather]

A bear to recycle? Compared to what? Surely not more of a bear than collecting and recycling everything a gasoline engine spits out over it's lifetime.

Re:With GMs luck.

[mweather]

The coal plant can be replaced with nuclear, fusion, solar, hydroelectric, etc. Have you ever tried replacing a car's engine with a Dam? It doesn't work so well.

Re:With GMs luck.

[LandKurt]

but for a lot of people the 40 mile limit will be kind of a barrier

That's 40 miles on stored electricity and then the gasoline engine kicks in and it acts pretty much like a regular hybrid. That's the beauty of the plug in hybrid concept: pure electric for short trips and no range limitations if you want to go across country using gasoline. I'd probably only need the gas engine 10 to 20 percent of the time, myself.

Re:With GMs luck.

[roguetrick]

But it looks AWESOME.

Re:With GMs luck.

[necro81]

A problem with ultra capacitors, however, is that they don't store nearly as much energy (Whr) for the same weight (Whr/kg) or volume (Whr/L) compared to batteries. Compared to Li-Ion batteries, the difference in energy density is an order of magnitude with current technology. There will undoubtedly be advances that could even that out, but nothing that you could use to design a production vehicle for today.

Ultracaps do have advantages, like almost unlimited cycle lives, very low resistance, and much higher power ratings compared to chemical batteries. However, unless you want to drive a 2-door compact hauling a trailer's worth of ultra capacitors, you are not going to be able to produce a plug-in hybrid with an acceptable electric range.

Re:With GMs luck.

[toby34a]

How does switching to natural gas help more then the plug in hybrid? It's still a nonrenewable resource. The tech isn't at assembly-line level (like the Volt is). There is still no infrastructure set up for CNG cars (only main bus lines in big cities). The easiest (and most forward-looking) strategy is getting the cars like the Volt on the roads. The Volt can take a charge or be filled up to be charged from the gasoline generator. As a better (or different) fuel source comes around, swap out the generator pack- it's just a provider of electricity to the engine, and can be hydrogen, compressed air, or pony farts. The charging tech can stay the same. Get better batteries? Great- put them in the car. The charging tech and generator can stay the same. Being able to swap out the "fuel cell" in order to utilize differing fuels is a large benefit to range-extended vehicles. We can then worry about other concerns in infrastructure when those fuels reach maturity.

Re:With GMs luck.

[smooth wombat]

Isn't that what Iran is trying to do?

No. Iran is trying to enrich uranium so it can be used in a nuclear reactor. It is not reprocessing SPENT uranium for nuclear weapons.

That said, uranium must be enriched to certain levels to be usable as fuel. This link provides a good synopsis of the processes involved in enriching uranium to be used as fuel. Note that the level of enrichment is only 3% - 5%.

By comparison, weapons-grade uranium is enriched to have at least 85% 235U, though if you're interested in a "dirty bomb", 50% will do nicely. The Wiki on the enriching process complete with the various levels of enrichment.

Re:With GMs luck.

[Sen.NullProcPntr]

If you want to totally fair with the comparison the battery is the fuel tank and most fuel tanks are made of steel. Way easy to recycle.

Yes, but that is a only part of the equation you really need to look at the whole system:
If your gasoline powered engine lasts you 200,000 miles (not unreasonable) and you do regular maintenance (won't last as long if you don't) changing the oil every 5K miles. You end up with about 60 gallons of used motor oil. Not counting any that you need to add between oil changes to compensate for what leaks on the floor or makes it past the rings and out the exhaust.

Motor oil also has a history of recycling but is it much longer than battery recycling?

The real question is which is worse the gas engine and all its byproducts or the electric and its byproducts.

Re:With GMs luck.

[kesuki]

They're already talking a matter of minutes, it's all in having a large array of Li/lip batteries. you can't change how fast you can charge each cell, but by having smaller cells, you charge faster by charging them all in parallel.

even the tesla roadster is talking about charge times in the minutes at special charging stations around california. The Tesla is a high performance electric that does 0-60 in just 4 seconds, top speed is 130 mph, no slouch there either.

Re:With GMs luck.

[darthdavid]

Which is where the last point comes in. I too support nuclear but I recognize that with our current political climate nuclear will be a hard sell to make. His points about coal are valid though and I guess it will have to do until A)The reality of the energy situation forces us to a fission powered grid with solar, hydro and wind supplements or B)Western civilization collapses and it all becomes irrelevant. Boy will B be a fun one to live through...

Re:With GMs luck.

[blueg3]

I'm sure you realize that's not true in a more overall sense. In any fission reaction, you permanently lose a part of the reaction materials that is unrecoverable. (Part of that is what you take out as usable work, for nuclear power plants.) It is still nonrenewable.

Breeder-reactors create a different sort of fissile material using byproducts of a fission reaction. I don't recall the reactions off the top of my head, but you could then react this new material in a breeder-reaction to produce more fissile material. Eventually, however, you'll end up with non-fissile material. There's a finite amount of energy extractable from, say, uranium, even including all breeder-reactor byproducts.

It's just that by comparison, current reactors are terribly wasteful.

Re:With GMs luck.

[GooberToo]

The real question is which is worse the gas engine and all its byproducts or the electric and its byproducts.

That's a great question. I saw a report on TV not long ago which sought to address this question. The report attempted to look at all factors including costs and environmental impact associated with batteries and the additional electronics/motors, etc. According to the report, only two or maybe three hybrids in current production are actually improvements over ICE. Two of which are made by Toyota. I forget what the questionable third one was.

These top three were the only ones that even had reasonable returns on investments (difference paid for hybrid verses non-hybrid model or equivalent). The top three had a ROI somewhere around for or five years. After than it started falling off to nine or so years. Around the mid park the ROI was somewhere in the twenty year range. The worst, was a Lexus, which had a 99-year ROI.

Long story short, for the vast majority of hybrid cars, ignoring the cool-factor, most hybrids actually do nothing for the environment other than change where the environmental impact is taking place. And don't forget, the majority, overall are actually worse for the environment than best of breed ICEs.

Hopefully the cool-factor will be enough (and it looks like it is) to spur a second and third generation of development. Each generation looks to better for mileage, environment, and ROI.

Re:With GMs luck.

[Red Flayer]

In the case of gas, it's really more expensive than it should be because of various taxes.

I'm not so sure about -- what about the billions we have spent, and continue to spend, to defend the interests of the oil companies? There are many indirect subsidies (such as tax incentives to refineries, for example) that often get missed.

I'd also add that pollution and resource depletion are externialities, so if they were factored in, I'd say that the cost of gas, in the US at least, is _FAR_ lower than it should be.

Re:With GMs luck.

[netsavior]

5 years??? the prius vs say the honda civic doesn't offer any savings if gas were 11 dollars per gallon... People see the price they pay weekly for gas but they fail to see the price they pay monthly for their car, insurance, gas, etc. Play around with the Edmunds True cost to own tool... it factors in gas for 75000 miles, payments for 5 years, insurance, scheduled maintenence, etc.

You will see that a civic costs $36,895 to own and operate for 5 years and a prius costs $41,051. Now take the 48mpg vs the 32mpg multiply it by a price hike per gallon, and you will see how much gas would need to cost per gallon before a prius did anything financial for you besides relocate your gas payment into your car payment.

At market plus 6 dollars per gallon, the prius costs about 500 dollars less to drive 75,000 miles in 5 years. So gas needs to be about 10 bucks a gallon before a prius makes financial sense over a civic... of course a civic isn't gonna help your green street cred like a prius will, and lets be honest a prius first and foremost a political statement. The numbers are much worse for a Camry hybrid vs a plane jane camry in case you wondered.

Re:With GMs luck.

[adamstew]

how about the fact that fully electric cars cost about $2.82 in electricity to go 100 miles? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Running_costs).

I drive a car that gets a very healthy 30 miles per gallon, and my 10 gallon tank costs me $40 to fill up and go 300 miles...The same 300 miles in an electric car would cost me $9.

As far as travel range, the wikipedia article I linked above mentions that cars running on newer lithium-ion batteries are going 250-300 miles per charge..about just as much as a regular tank of gas.

Re:With GMs luck.

[DavidTC]

The Great Smog of 1952 killed more people than Chernobyl will, and that's not even due to the radioactivity of coal, just coal smoke. If you're comparing 'disaster situations' instead of normal operations, that is.

Of course, if we're talking about situations that safety regulations could not allow at this point in time, it's worth pointing out that over 20,000 people lost their life in coal mines from 1900 to 1910, which means in a single decade coal killed more people than nuclear power ever has. Granted, coal mines are nowhere near as dangerous now, but, then again, neither are nuclear power plants.

Coal plants do not have disaster modes that result in radiation being spewed everywhere. Neither do modern nuclear power plants. Both of them release radioactivity in general, the coal plants a lot more than the nuclear ones. (That nuclear waste? That stuff people care so much we dispose of properly? That flies out the top of coal plants.)

Re:With GMs luck.

[DavidTC]

There doesn't appear to be any logical way to 'lock in' utilities when your car can plug into standard outlets and run off gas.

The second that charging your Volt on the road becomes more expensive than just buying a few gallons of gas and running it through the Volt's generator, no one will do it. People will just treat it as a normal car that gets the first 40 miles a day free, and then uses gas.

That's not to say that GM might not want a cut of the profits. But people would only say that if they didn't understand what GM is doing.

GM is literally betting their entire company on the Volt. The whole thing. They see other American car makers struggling, and they decided to roll double-or-nothing.

I seriously doubt they would endanger this by putting any obstacle in the way of making it cheaper for drivers. They're probably just going to add a 'supercharge' plug on the Volt, which can charge in five minutes, in addition to the standard 115V 15A plug, and hand out the specs to the gas stations, and let them build and operate pay version of them however they see fit.

And possibly sell a version that doesn't charge, for home installation, or even one that works like a vending machine for parking lots, taking cash.

Incidentally, for those two, I'm imagining systems that don't need special wiring. Essentially, they themselves have batteries in them, and slowly charge off the wiring. When a car hooks up, they dump all their power at once into it, and start charging again. It means they can only charge four cars a day, but that should be enough to start with, and is more than enough for a single house. This is assuming the same amount of batteries as a Volt...they could obviously have more, or run off 220, or 30 amps, or all sorts of stuff to charge faster and hold more.

I'm basically seeing fast-chargers as a step between the cheapest 'charge overnight' and the most expensive 'using gasoline to charge'. So if you drive, for example, 60 miles and back, the first 40 are from your car's overnight charge, the next 20 are from the gas generator, you fast-charge once you get there, the next 40 are off that, and the last 20 are from gasoline again.

Home outlet?

[maillemaker]

I believe we are approaching the era of the "commuter car". Things like this:

http://www.greenvehicles.com/specs/triac.html

80 MPH, 100 mile range. This will suit the majority of people's daily driving needs. We'll all still have our gas-burning minivan or SUV for weekend trips to granny's or the lake or whatever, but most of the time we'll be driving our electric covered motorcycle to work and back.

All you need for this is an electrical outlet at home.

Re:Home outlet?

[jfruhlinger]

All you need for this is an electrical outlet at home.

This to me is one of the biggest obstacles to our plug-in future. Those of you who live in the 'burbs where everybody has their own two-car garage may be shocked to hear this, but millions of us live in urban areas where we park our cars on the street, can't be gauranteed to find a spot in front of our houses, and wouldn't be able to run an extension cord across the sidewalk even if we could.

Re:Home outlet?

[pluther]

This to me is one of the biggest obstacles to our plug-in future. Those of you who live in the 'burbs where everybody has their own two-car garage may be shocked to hear this, but millions of us live in urban areas where we park our cars on the street, can't be gauranteed to find a spot in front of our houses, and wouldn't be able to run an extension cord across the sidewalk even if we could.

Cities could put charging stations right up to the curb.

San Francisco already does this in some places, where an outlet is built into many parking meters.

And several businesses and parking garages around the Bay Area have "electric car only" spaces next to the handicap spots that have charging stations there.

And that was all built just to support the EV-1, which doesn't even exist anymore. This kind of infrastructure is relatively cheap and easy to do. This isn't some kind of pie-in-the-sky pipe dream.

Remember Kids:

[flitty]

You'll need a GM Certified "Super VOLT-adapter" for just $499.99 for any non-VOLT electric car to use this grid. (Licensing and Taxes may apply, adapter not sold in California or Alaska).

Super Capacitors.

[plasmacutter]

The biggest barrier to pure electrics right now is the time it takes to charge a vehicle.

Super Capacitors are supposed to change that by allowing charge times equivalent or less than the time spent at the petrol pump.

Last time I heard about them was early this year as they were seeking to scale them to the industrial level.

That technology is what will make electric cars "feasible"

Re:Super Capacitors.

[Sponge Bath]

Most homes can't charge one of these things, at "pump speeds"

How about a super capacitor based charger in the home that slowly fills from the grid and can provide a quick charge to the car? It could double as a squirrel population control device.

Time for government to step in

[99luftballon]

Just as Eisenhower signed off on the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act to kickstart the roads system in the US so too should the government act to fund this.

We have to go electric in the future, gas power isn't a viable long term solution and oil is going to be too valuable in the future to waste on driving around. But the 'free market' isn't going to fund the kind of network we need in the short term. Sure, they'll build the cars but infrastructure costs are beyond them.

Without a national infrastructure program the move towards electric transportation will be slow and patchy. This really is a case of if we build it they will come.

Re:Time for government to step in

[praksys]

Time for government to step in...

Sure, that way we could a poorly considered proprietary solution that has never faced any actual competition or real world use. Then we could deploy it everywhere and be stuck with it forever.

Roads and highways had been around for a really long time, and were a mature technology before the interstate system was built. Here we are talking about technology that is in its infancy - they haven't even figured out how to make it safe and weatherproof yet! This is absolutely *not* the right time for the government to pick a system and inflict it on everyone.

Quick charge is all I want...

[OglinTatas]

I just read an article about the Lightning electric vehicle on elReg

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/22/lightning_fast_charge_supercar/

This may make electric cars practical.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7081
Imagine: 200 miles/charge and a 10 minute "fill up" at a commercial charging station (overnight at your house with 50 amp service)

I'd much prefer this over the "hydrogen economy" that people tout as the future. Also, it would be easier to build out a high voltage charging infrastructure than a hydrogen dispensing infrastructure. The only problem I see is everyone charging their vehicles during peak usage instead of at night causing even greater peaks, but there is no reason people (with garages) can't trickle-charge the car at night.

I may even give up my venerable diesel if I can drive coast to coast in the same time frame and same expense on batteries as on diesel.
(only slightly off topic because I was talking electric vehicles instead of hybrid)

Re:Would a plugin hybrid actually save money?

[The Iconoclast]

Yes, but 90% of the energy from gasoline ends up as heat, not in moving the car. Electric motors have much higher efficiencies.

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[MoOsEb0y]

Very, very few people will pay new-car prices for a car that will go 150 miles then require a 3-hour recharge.

Yeah, because my friends and I all drive more than 150 miles every day.

All they need to work on next

[stretchpuppy]

Is making GM cars not TEH SUCK.

Just imagine, a Electric Cavalier, sweet!!!

If it leads to a standard then I am all for it.

[Shivetya]

If it leads to a proprietary method which other automakers and utilities must license with fees then I am hoping someone else comes along and whacks them.

I still think while we are doing our typical over reaction; c'mon Europeans put up with prices higher than this; at least this over reaction is leading somewhere good. Granted it may mean life with even more SUVs as the technology will make their mileage acceptable. Since the majority of SUV/CUV don't do any heavy towing it can easily be adapted to their increased carrying capacities.

I guess giving up the "frivolous" luxuries was too much to ask

Re:Would a plugin hybrid actually save money?

[SchnauzerGuy]

Of course, this leaves out difference in conversion efficiency of gas v.s. electricity.

That is a pretty big glossing over of the realities, especially since the efficiency of a gasoline powered ICE is around 18% - not including additional losses in the transmission.

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[pluther]

Very, very few people will pay new-car prices for a car that will go 150 miles then require a 3-hour recharge.

Yeah, because my friends and I all drive more than 150 miles every day.

Right. And all those people had to have SUVs because of all the off-roading they do.

What people need doesn't enter into it.

Rates are the problem, not infrastructure

[silicon dad]

GM's finally seeing the light, I want a Volt. But PG&E's regulated rate structure will put me at 400% of baseline and US$0.35 / KWh to charge it. $5.00/gallon gas is still cheaper(!)

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[TheLazySci-FiAuthor]

Very, very few people will pay new-car prices for a car that will go 150 miles then require a 3-hour recharge...

Back in the late 20th century the EV1 had a waiting list.

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[jonnythan]

You don't need to drive 150 miles every day to need a car that has more than a 150 mile range. Just two days ago I drove 350 miles in one day while driving back from Canada.

I'd sure as heck rather own a car that has the capability of taking me where I want to go than own a car that can take me some places but be useless for other trips.

Re:Would a plugin hybrid actually save money?

[Retric]

Close a hybrid is around 25% efficient so at $.10/kwh it's closer to $0.90 or at 8c/kwh it's 72c.

Re:Would a plugin hybrid actually save money?

[gurps_npc]

Congratulations, you just compared the retail cost of electricity to the retail cost of gasoline. Retail prices are set by demand, and WOW, you discovered that the demand for electrical energy is pretty close to the demand for automative fuel energy. So Brand X is priced in line with Brand Y.

Which proves nothing.

And more importantly, it already effectively INCLUDES the conversion efficiencies of both gas and electricity, as it is the retail price, which is based on final use, not creation.

If you were talking about creation costs, that would be a different story.

Most importantly, there are areas in the US where electiricty costs as little as 6.24 cents instead of 10, and other places where it costs as much as 14.31 cents.

But most importantly, all those numbers are based on getting the electiricity at peak times (noon). Smart utilities offer discounts to those that buy from midnight to 6 AM, which would be the most intelligent time to charge your vehicle.

It doesn't work yet, that's why

[Kupfernigk]

Current solar panels have a cost to watt ratio that makes them unsuitable for domestic use on grid. The output depends on total solar flux and this varies very largely around the world. In fact, the most sensible thing would be to put every single generation panel in the places in the US or Europe which have maximum solar flux. I have been arguing for years that solar panels here in the UK are stupid, because every one generates less than half the lifetime output it would generate in, say, Southern Spain or Arizona. I can't remember which law of economics it is (Ricardo's?) but in business terms it is the expression "sweat the assets" - i.e. make capital plant work as hard as possible for the best return.

The main downside of solar panels at home and EVs, apart from the cost, is that the EV is usually at work in the daytime. So the obvious place to put solar panels is on business sites where they could feed into EV chargers during hours of maximum sunlight.

vandalism?

[weszz]

So in many of the pictures I've seen, there is a cord running from the car to the plug, normally in public areas since it's so wonderful to plug in and just leave your car to go shopping or to work.

What happens with some thug snips your power cord?

Will the cord be coming from your car, or from the outlet, and how easy and cheap is it to swap out cords?

Re:vandalism?

[actionbastard]

"What happens with some thug snips your power cord?"

First there will be a short, loud, buzzing sound. That will be simultaneous with a bright, blue-white, flash of light. Which will be followed by a shower of red-hot molten metal of several types. This will be followed by screams of pain as the vandal's flesh is seared by the molten metal droplets, hopefully they will mostly strike that person in the face, leaving an easily identifiable burn pattern. After that, there will be no more vandalism of 'car plugs'.

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[Cro Magnon]

I don't drive 150 most days, but I DO drive 150+ miles SOME days. And since I can't afford two cars, my one car needs to be able to go as far as I need to go, including vacation trips.

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[Sandbags]

OK, first, the Volt is larger than the Prius, faster, has better acceleration, and will only cost a couple grand more, easily saved on the back end with infinite MPG on trips shorter than 60 miles, and at 60-80MPG when running on the engine. Electric costs are increasing, but at a fraction of the rate of oil, and electric power is renewable (or at least, the renewable portion is increasing, and can eventually be 100% of energy used).

The lack of electric cars on the market? mostly, we've been waiting for slightly better CPUs to run the car on, and improved energy to weight ratios in the batteries. Li-Ion by itself could have done this, if it wasn't for the potential of catistrofic cell collape (aka, battery explodes). Li-Polymer, and Li-Tit batteries just recently developed do not have this problem, and additional safteys with on-battery chip technology further improve saftey.

Also, 2-3 hours is no longer an issue. Li-Tit batteries charge to 80% in 3 minutes, 100% in less than 10. A simple 3 phase 400 amp connection is required (available at almost any auto shop). Don't believe the hype about how much the cable weights for these either, look at the cable on an electric welder; same cable...

Sure, at home, 3-4 hours will be the norm, 8-10 on 110 volt outlets. Of course, saince the car will have a gas backup, and can go 360 miles on 10 gallons of gas AFTER the battery dies, who cares? On a side note, if you popped for the upgrade to rapid charge at home, hooking up a 220 volt 100 AMP cable, you can actually run your HOUSE off of your CAR in the event of a power failure, without needing a generator, for 3-5 hours, or just your fridge and AC for about a day.

People DO want them. Patents, mostly, and a few technical hurdles were standing in the way. I WILL pay 30K for a car that gets the USD converted electrical equivolent of 150MPG average for my driving habits and takes 3 minutes to recharge.

DO RESEARCH BEFORE SPREADING FUD NEXT TIME!

friction

[bugs2squash]

When I was a kid we had these 'friction' cars, you pushed them along the floor a few times while they "revved" up and then let them go.

That's the technology I want, with a big robot to "re-rev" them at every intersection.

The best cars made sparks too.

Re:alternate title:

[ivan256]

You don't do Big things without Big industry. Luckily for us, this generates Big economic impact, and creates a Big percentage of our jobs. The net effect on our quality of life, and our overall wealth as a society is Big (in a good way).

Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[ShibaInu]

Look, this is a straw man argument. If you NEED to drive more than the range of an electric car, don't get one, get a hybrid. For suburban and urban car owners, an electric car is a viable alternative. I'm married and my wife works less than five miles away. An electric car would be fantastic for her needs, and we have two cars anyway, so we have a hybrid for long trips. We may come to a time when your 350 mile trip is fantastically expensive as well.

SUVs make more organ donors

[Weaselmancer]

You're focusing on passive safety rather than active safety, which is primarily a North American way of thinking.

Here, read this.

Most of us think that S.U.V.s are much safer than sports cars. If you asked the young parents of America whether they would rather strap their infant child in the back seat of the TrailBlazer or the passenger seat of the Boxster, they would choose the TrailBlazer. We feel that way because in the TrailBlazer our chances of surviving a collision with a hypothetical tractor-trailer in the other lane are greater than they are in the Porsche. What we forget, though, is that in the TrailBlazer you're also much more likely to hit the tractor-trailer because you can't get out of the way in time. In the parlance of the automobile world, the TrailBlazer is better at "passive safety. " The Boxster is better when it comes to "active safety," which is every bit as important.

The safest cars are the ones that can dodge an accident, rather than plow through some obstacle and hope to survive due to sheer mass.

Re:SUVs make more organ donors

[GooberToo]

The safest cars are the ones that can dodge an accident, rather than plow through some obstacle and hope to survive due to sheer mass.

Which is very a very flawed way of thinking. In the US, most drivers are already distracted. The number one type of accident in the US is rear ending. You seem to advocate that a driver in front must evade the driver to his rear, but they must now constantly watch a 360' view, while distracted. Not realistic in the least.

In reality, passive protection is the only form of protection which reliably works. As a counter point, motorcycle accidents are frequent here and all studies cite smaller vehicles are more difficult for other drivers to estimate distance. This is one of the classic causes of vehicle-motorcycle accidents in the US. That is, the vehicle pulls out, cutting off the motorcycle rider. This normally results in two types of collisions; one, the cycle t-bones the car, two, the rider slides and/or falls off the bike, sometimes resulting in a nasty bike-rider mess which comes to a sudden stop against the vehicle. Either way, it's bad results for the rider.

Perhaps once riders get used to seeing small vehicles and cycles on the roads this will change, until then, passive protection is far and away the best protection drivers have today in the US.

Re:SUVs make more organ donors

[Weaselmancer]

I would counter that your line of reasoning seems to have a flaw. Namely:

In the US, most drivers are already distracted. The number one type of accident in the US is rear ending.

From the article I posted, which you may not have read:

The S.U.V. boom represents, then, a shift in how we conceive of safetyâ"from active to passive. It's what happens when a larger number of drivers conclude, consciously or otherwise, that the extra thirty feet that the TrailBlazer takes to come to a stop don't really matter, that the tractor-trailer will hit them anyway, and that they are better off treating accidents as inevitable rather than avoidable.

If you're distracted and look up and suddenly notice you need to stop in a hurry - if you stomp on the brake the SUV will take another 30 feet to stop. That's almost the entire length of a box trailer behind a semi, FYI.

Perhaps the rear-end phenomenon you are referring to is caused by gigantic SUVs rather than in spite of them.

Re:SUVs make more organ donors

[Solandri]

In reality, passive protection is the only form of protection which reliably works.

Passenger vehicle occupant fatality rate by type of car (PDF warning)

Fatalities per 100,000 registered vehicles:
17.76 Compact Cars
16.87 Compact Pickups
16.85 Subcompact Cars
16.16 Midsize SUVs
13.87 Standard Pickups
12.34 Full-size SUVs
12.16 Full-size Cars
11.49 Midsize Cars
11.09 Minivans
9.34 Large Vans

SUVs are not safer than mid- and full-sized cars. If you read the PDF, you'll see this is primarily due to lack of maneuverability and penchant to roll over, and a higher fatality rate in rollovers. Those increased risk factors more than swamp out any benefit of "passive safety." Yes compact and subcompact cars do worse, but I would argue anyone who could afford an SUV would be buying a mid- or full-size sedan, not a compact or subcompact.

What is so special about a "charging station?"

[SmoothTom]

I would think that a vehicle that could plug into any 50-60Hz, 90-260VAC source would make the absolute most sense.

Thinking of that, at a motel I recently stayed at in Montana, each parking spot had a regular AC outlet mounted about 7 feet high on the wall in front of the parking spot.

That kept it out of casual contact from kids, pretty much ensured that any water on the cord would run down-hill away from the outlet, and each outlet had a spring-loaded weather-proof cover for when they were not in use.

(Those were primarily for winter use: Block heaters to keep oil and fuel from gelling.)

With the addition of some way to simply meter the load on each outlet, and providing a key-switch so one could only use the outlet one is assigned, something like that could be an inexpensive, nearly universally available, simple to install and maintain charging grid for plug-in vehicle charging. (I've seen very similar things on parking meter posts, and they could even be coin/bill/credit card operated, just like modern parking meters...)

Still, though, my biggest problem with plug-in rechargeable vehicles is the length of time it takes to recharge and the very limited mileage between charges.

Driving from home to destination on that recent trip required about 600 miles/day, and is not something that any currently-being-discussed plug-ins can accomplish.

When electric vehicles were first being energetically discussed, one of the promising ideas was removable battery trays/packs that were "leased" with a full charge and rolled into the vehicle.

Instead of parking and charging to "refuel," each electric car service station would have a batch of charged batteries available on carts to be swapped in no longer than it takes to refuel a petroleum powered vehicle.

The discharged batteries would be charged overnight at off-peak times and be ready for the next day's needs.

That would also cover the cost of replacement batteries, as the lease or rental fees would cover not only the cost to charge and change the battery packs, but the cost of replacing them when they were no longer up to required minimum power retention levels.

At least doing it that way, stopping every 200 miles or so to swap batteries, would be better than stopping every 200 miles for several hours to recharge non-swappable batteries.

(It would also allow for some much needed standardization in battery packs and such...)

What bothers me is that idea is from reading magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science in the '50's and '60's... We don't seem to have come very far since then, eh?

--Tomas

Bigger picture please

[fiannaFailMan]

Tinkering with the means of propulsion is putting a bigger bucket under the leaking roof instead of fixing the leak. Why do North Americans have to make such an abnormally high number of car journeys in the first place?

The answer is single-use-zoning and suburban sprawl.

Daily needs are separated from each other so that you have to drive between home, work, shopping and entertainment. It's flat out illegal to build a corner store in a residential neighbourhood or build a building with apartments above retail stores, and developers are forced to set them back off the road behind enormous parking lagoons, just to make sure the cars are happy and pedestrians are prohibited.

This is a monumentally wasteful pattern of settlement. It's like building a 'house' with the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom all miles apart but connected by roads.

Bring back mixed-use mixed-income development. Bring back the humble 'street' that has served humanity so well for millennia ever since we started living in cities. This isn't the industrial revolution age anymore, the days are gone when every workplace spewed soot into the air and it made some sense to partition it off where people didn't live. An office in the same building as your apartment isn't going to hurt you, nor will a corner store that you can walk to. Write to your congressman and tell him to back the New Urbanist movement.

But before you do that, you have to get mad! I want you to go out to your window, lean out, and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!!"

Re:What Charging Infrastructure?

[goltzc]

It's a change of mindset but how often do you really drive > 150 miles in a day where a recharge wouldn't be practical? A few times a year? The cost savings of an electric vehicle would more than pay for a car rental when you need a long range vehicle.

Gas cheaper than it should be is total BS

[bl968]

The price of Gas in Dubai is 25 cents a gallon, Iran 42 cents, Qatar 83 cents, Saudi Arabia is 45 cents per gallon, Venezuela 11 cents. That is the real cost. What we in the western countries are paying is designed to generate huge profit margins for oil companies. They are fucking over the consumers, and yet you stand here saying, "Please sir can I have another!"

Re:Gas cheaper than it should be is total BS

[toddestan]

On the other hand, most of those countries have little to no facilities to refine the crude oil into gasoline. The real reason it's so cheap is that the governments in thouse countries are subsidizing the cost of the fuel.

More info

[shawn42]

Some more info on the Volt: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=126606
I am excited to see these type of advance to pull us away from our dependency on oil.

Electric infrastructure

[cdrguru]

Sure, charging stations are needed for rechargable cars. Only, there are a few little problems. The biggest one is that we aren't building power plants any longer. We are running on coal-fired plants from the 1950s and hydroelectric plants from the 1930s. Nobody is going to build a new high-efficency coal-fired power plant today. Where, exactly would they put it? How long would it take to get through the environmental impact studies? What community group would come out and say they need it, vs. all the groups saying it will kill children and ruin the landscape?

Nuclear? Sure, maybe a couple of plants might get fast-tracked in the next few years. But the electric boom is pretty much over.

Plan on more brown-outs. Supply exceeding demand? I don't think so, not in any future that I can foresee. Will there be more wind and solar generation? Absolutely. Will it keep up with growth in demand from cities? Today, right now, we could use a few hundred megawatts additional for every city in the US. It isn't going to happen.

Yes, they are going to build a huge wind farm in Texas. Only problem is, the transmission lines aren't up to carrying any massive increases, so a huge part of the project will be to increase transmission capacity. And this is happening in a small part of Texas. What about the rest of the states?

Reduce, reuse and recycle. Mostly, for electricity it is reduce. California and Florida both have home controls to turn off your electric consumption during peak demand periods. It is coming to other states as well. There simply isn't enough electricity to go around today in the US. We are not building power plants. We are not increasing transmission capacity.

Do you really think there is enough power to charge up hundreds of cars in a city of any size today?

Inductive "paddles"

[iroll]

GM's other electric car (EV1, the one that they killed because it worked too well) had a waterproof, childproof, and in fact idiot-proof charger. It looked kind of like a ping pong paddle, except the handle was gripped parallel to the paddle instead of perpendicular. The paddle had a cord that was reeled (coiled? been a while) up on a box that was bolted to a wall, or on a free-standing pedestal in front of a parking spot. You pushed the paddle part into a slot on the nose of the car, and induction was used to pump some juice into your batteries.

There weren't many EV1's on the road, but if you lived in CA or AZ and knew where to look, you could find charging stations for them, so clearly building the infrastructure isn't THAT hard: all you do is bolt down some charger boxes and plug them in to ordinary wall sockets. Generally you'd see them in parking garages near places that engineers worked :p Anyways, the charger boxes themselves are dead simple to build; it's a friggin' transformer and some heavy gauge wire. All of the fancy charge monitoring computers are already built into the car. If GM's smart, they'd license the design for a song, and use it as a marketing coup.

Natural Gas Home Charger

[Doc Ruby]

Natural gas pipelines feed many, perhaps most of the homes in US48, about 6m^3 per hour max. The energy in 6m^3 natural gas is about 6*39Mj = 234Mj:h, or 65 kilowatts. NG fuelcells already get at least 40% efficiency into electricity, so that would be 26KW peak. Which means that the average home at 2KW average continuous needs only 0.08% of maximum duty (the typical 5KW peak demand would be 0.2% duty).

Big SUVs have about 80KW max output engines. If a 40% efficient fuelcell drove a 90% efficient NEMA-B motor, 80KW kinetic would consume about 225KW in NG, which would still consume only 84% of the home's incoming flow. So overnight "charging" even a big SUV could still drive that SUV for as many hours as it spent charging. Since most people don't drive SUVs at full motor power all the time, even an hour charging is probably enough to refuel after a day's driving.

In April 2008, NG cost about $7:Gj, while direct electricity cost in February, 2008 about $0.09:KWh, which is about $25:Gj. Even at 40% efficiency converting NG to electricity, that's only $17.5 per Gj.

Another advantage of NG powering homes and cars is that very little energy is consumed/lost in the NG distribution, compared to double-digit (up to 50%) losses in electric distribution. Compared with gasoline powering cars, the distribution of gasoline is very wasteful, with not only tankers driving around to filling stations, but cars driving to (and lining up at) filling stations for every refill. While NG can refill along the car's normal route, at home. Meanwhile, any kind of energy storage at home, whether electric in batteries, or tanks of NG, or raising water to roof tanks, or heating water even into steam, all can let the home user buy more energy input only when prices are lowest, which also takes pressure off the distribution systems.

A NG home charger that is also a fuelcell for a 2-5KW (or more) home should cost under $10,000. That's about as much as a good new water heater that's part of a home (air) heating system, which the fuelcell can also supply to bring its efficiency closer to 100% total. In fact such a fuelcell should really cost $3-5K. Which that $7+ savings per Gj would repay in 9 years or less.

And as efficiencies go up, that 9 years could go down to 2-5 years pretty rapidly.

Mythbusting

[Rei]

As is usual whenever electric cars comes up, it's time for some mythbusting.

No, they don't increase pollution and overload the grid; precisely the opposite (more specifically, the only pollutant that goes up is particulate matter, and it's displaced away from population centers. NOx and SOx remain the same, CO2 drops, and CO and VOCs are nearly eliminated; the grid gets to make use of its surplus off-peak capacity and, with smart charging, can eliminate the supply/demand fluctuations that are currently so troublesome).

Yes, they are far more energy efficient than their alternatives.

No, modern batteries don't take forever to charge. The phosphates, titanates, modern spinels, and others can all charge in 5-20 minutes, given sufficient power.

Yes, fast chargers exist. The SAE J1772 standard covers Level 3 charging at hundreds of kilowatts. Yes, chargers as strong as 250kW exist. Yes, there's already a network of 60kW Level 3 chargers in place around Oahu. Install one yourself.

No, the batteries are not toxic. Current li-ions are only mildly toxic, and this only because of their cobalt-based cathode. The phosphates and spinels eliminate this cathode in favor of nontoxic elements.

No, lithium is not running out.

Yes, the batteries last a long time. The phosphates last 7000+ gentle cycles, having only 20% capacity loss after 1000 abusive cycles. The titanates? 20,000 cycles. Accelerated aging tests suggest LG Chem's packs will last 40+ years in typical use.

Yes, both rapid charging stations and EVs make financial sense.

Hmm, did I miss any?