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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

All they need to work on next

[stretchpuppy]

Is making GM cars not TEH SUCK.

Just imagine, a Electric Cavalier, sweet!!!

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: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: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.

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

[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.

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.

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?