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8 US States Pushing For 3.3 Million Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes "A coalition of eight U.S. states, including New York and California, have announced a plan to get 3.3 million zero-emission electric vehicles onto their roads by 2025. 'The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.' An editorial in Quartz says that while the initiative itself is fine, the states should really take cues from Tesla if they want to plan out an infrastructure that will convince people to switch. ' For longer distances, [Tesla drivers] can stop at "Supercharger" stations strategically placed along highways that let them add 150 miles of range in as little as 20 minutes. Currently, [government] money is being spent on installing much-slower chargers at stores, shopping malls and other urban locations in the hope that drivers will use them. Tesla says it will blanket the US with its Superchargers for a fraction of the cost, because it studies the driving patterms of its customers and installs charging stations only where they tend to travel. This isn't hard; most other electric cars also record their drivers' habits. If privacy concerns could be addressed and automakers would be willing to share that data with government transportation planners, the rollout of public charging stations could be more targeted and cash-efficient.'"
You can be sure that Texas is not one of those eight states.
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Yes if you are standing around waiting for it. If they had slow charging stations in parking locations it doesn't matter, and at some locations a 20 minute gas stop is normal even for gasoline cars. Last time I took I-80 westbound we had to wait for 15 minutes to get to a pump, then 5 minutes to pump with another 10 minutes to wait for traffic to get out of my way so we can get back on the highway. Instead, if there was a charging station at the oasis I would plug in, go inside to use the bathroom, get a coffee, and walk back out in those 20 minutes instead of sitting in my car while the guy with the F950 pickup truck fills both his 300 gallon gas tanks.
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Large fossil-fuel power plants can be made a lot more efficient than internal-combustion engines, even counting transmission and distribution losses (especially if you count distribution costs for gasoline). Running a car on energy from the electric grid is greener than running on gasoline, even if your power comes from coal plants -- and in most places, not all grid power is derived from coal.
Yes, they are still sub-optimal for long road trips. However, as long as you can get a full day of normal driving in on a single charge, and recharge overnight in your own garage the picture looks much better, especially as a primary car where the second car where the other is gasoline powered. Weight it largely irrelevant to most people - once you can't pick it up it's just one more factor in the efficiency and performance characteristics. And cost, well that is what it is for now, the early adopters always pay a premium.
As someone said "There's nothing wrong with electric cars that batteries with twice the capacity at half the cost wouldn't fix", and there's plenty of promising new battery technologies on the horizon, we just need one of them to make it out of the lab.
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Running a car on energy from the electric grid is greener than running on gasoline, even if your power comes from coal plants.
Not true. In city driving Tesla claim a 292 mile range off a 85kWh battery, or 651kJ/km. Adding in battery manufacture and allowing a generous 1000 cycles, that goes up to 923kJ/km. Allowing for losses in electricity generation (40% at best) and transmission (~7%), the overall consumption is 1653kJ/km.
A medium size diesel gets about 60mpg (UK gallons), equivalent to 1690kJ/km. The difference is just 2%.
Running a car on energy from the electric grid is greener than running on gasoline, even if your power comes from coal plants
To put some numbers to this, the EPA says that the average car emits 423 grams of CO2 per mile, and that the average US coal plant emits 1216 lb (551 kg) of CO2 per megawatt-hour produced, which is 551 g per kwh. My Nissan LEAF gets about four miles per kwh. Assuming pure coal power, and ignoring line losses, that means my car causes 138 grams of CO2 to be emitted per mile I drive.
Now, the LEAF is a very small, very efficient car, significantly more efficient than most gasoline-powered cars (mainly for range reasons). So comparing 138 to 423 straight up isn't a fair comparison, but even if you assume a normal car is half as efficient as the LEAF, it's still 276 grams per mile vs 423 grams per mile. Throw in some line losses and the gap closes further... but it's pretty clear that electric vehicles cause less CO2 production than gasoline vehicles, on a per-mile basis, even if all of the electricity comes from coal.
For me it's even better because although Colorado is primarily coal-powered, I mostly charge my car only at the office, and my employer (Google) pays a little extra to buy "green" power, mostly wind and hydro, I think. So my car's carbon footprint is much lower. This highlights another aspect of electric vehicles: if we switch to EVs (where appropriate -- they don't work for everything), it is at least possible to replace coal generation with something cleaner. Wind, hydro, wave, solar, nuclear, geothermal... there are lots of clean ways to generate electricity.
I should also note that I, personally, don't care that much. I bought a LEAF not because I was anxious to save the planet, but because it's cheaper to own and operate than a gasoline-powered car, at least for my driving patterns. The fact that it's cleaner is a pleasant bonus. It's also a lot of fun to drive because electric motors have awesome torque and I love how quiet it is. It's a great little car, and I'm very happy with my decision to buy it (lease it, actually... I think EV tech is changing fast enough right now that there's value in being able to upgrade regularly).
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Given the current state of the US electrical grid, I'm not confident it would fare well against a sudden increase of large battery packs being plugged in at once.
Actually, having a large distributed storage capacity could (if the utilities had any will to take advantage of it rather than just do the absolute minimum necessary to keep the PUC from shutting them down) vastly improve the grid's overall resiliency. Each one of these cars stores roughly the same amount of electricity as a typical house uses in three or four days.
It actually surprises me that Tesla hasn't actively promoted the idea of using the car itself as a necessarily well-maintained whole-house UPS. "Does the thought of losing power overnight cost you precious sleep? Never again! With Tesla's patented bidirectional charging station and crossover inverter, Mother Nature will need to throw more than a few flakes or gusts of wind or downed trees your way to keep you from enjoying the big game!".
And that ignores the possibility of actually tapping into them to help smooth out the peak demand curve - Our baseline consumption would cost us around two cents per kWh, if not for the fact that normal residential rates average that against insane on-demand spikes of 30-60 cents for a few hours a day.
All this blather and government planning and so on.
I said nothing about government planning. I'm not sure your comment was directed at me?
What I said is that it's not feasible to put charging stations in every parking spot. It is insane. There's no way you will ever make a return on that investment.
Electricity is the future of autos; but not the kind where your car needs charging via electric cables to every home or parking spot.
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10 m2 * 150 W/m2 * 8 h/day / (150 Wh/km) = 80 km/day. (*)
That covers the average commute quite nicely some of the time. In winter or inclement weather, not so much.
Still, the smugness of travelling gratis - abstracting investments - is seducing.
(*) Conversion to other units, including but not limited to BTU, miles (your pick), square feet and 1/32nds of a fortnight left as an exercise for the reader.
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IF you have your car in a garage and charge it overnight, then you may rarely ever need to charge it away from home -- only for road trips, really. Depending on your driving habits, you may go months without visiting a charging station.
Even then, if you have a Model S and stop at a Supercharger station, you'll have the option of paying for a battery swap, which can get you back on the road in about two minutes.
Finally... Remember that even 3 million cars is only about 1% of the cars in the USA. Today's electric car technology can't meet everyone's needs, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine it meeting the needs of 1% of the population. Things can grow from there as the technology continues to improve.
You're not reducing the capacity of a parking lot when you hook up spaces at places people already go. I've noticed libraries with electric car charging parking spots -- most people stay inside a while, so good spot. Grocery stores or all kinds of stores would be an obvious spot. It doesn't have to provide a full charge in the time people are shopping either, it just has to be a simple routine that tops off the battery in the course of normal activity.
As far as long distance highway trips, existing highway rest areas would be an obvious spot.
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That's fine if 0.05% of cars around are electric. But it's totally unrealistic to think anything justifies the expense of putting an electric charging unit into every single parking spot.
No, its not unrealistic.
If the shopping center can put in electric charging spots gradually as the demand increased, the investment might be easily manageable.
Further, if they make a few cents on the electricity/b they sell you, these slots will pay for themselves, unlike current parking spots which
usually generate no revenue themselves, and are funded by increased prices in the stores.
Places like Fairbanks Alaska have plugins for headbolt heaters so you can get your car started after sitting out in 50 below
while you shop. Lots of these are free as well, but then the draw is way less than required to charge.
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You're already solving that problem just getting the juice in. The issue is really moving some packetry atop the 'trons.
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But it's totally unrealistic to think anything justifies the expense of putting an electric charging unit into every single parking spot.
The expense is paid by the person sliding his card through the reader on the charging station, you think you're going to get free electricity? A charging station should be a lot cheaper than a gas pump, there are few parts needed and nothing mechanical to assemble. And in the right climate a parking lot could have solar panels shading the cars, free money for the parking lot owner.
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Unlike you, I know where this equipment comes from.
There are only a few (less than 9) providers of gas pumps in the US, and they all compete.
Fast delivery is key to profitability of gas stations in busy areas.
The reason the EPA had to limit delivery rates was to prevent tank venting from blowing right by the
recovery system. The EPA insisted they dial back the deliver rate.
10 GPM is not difficult to achieve.
How GPM A 1/2 inch pipe can deliver per minute depends on the pressure. If you have low pressure (flowing out of a slightly elevated tank), you can get about 7 gallons per minute. For average pumped pressure, you can assume you will get around 14 gallons per minute. If you have it set on a high pressure, you can easily get 21 gallons per minute. The nozzle of an unleaded delivery hoze is 0.840 inch, the inside diameter is slightly larger than 1/2 inch.
However the vapor recovery systems can't handle the vent fumes coming out of the tank when it is being filled that fast, so stations were required to dial down the pressure. This is one of the things a State weights and Measures inspector checks.
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A lesser known fact involving the economics of electric cars is that by using electricity you typically are using a locally generated energy source. If this is combined with renewable energy sources such as solar panels on your house the economics become even more interesting. The key to all this being that money normally spent "fueling" traditional vehicles often leaves the country or even the continent completely. By switching to a more local source of energy this money is freed to be potentially spent on local goods. While this sucks for the oil producing areas and countries it really works for the vast majority of countries that import massive amounts of vehicle fuel.
The above only applies to those areas that are able to source their energy locally.
Why this economic fact is important is that it must be taken into consideration when looking at the cost of improving the grid or even putting solar on people's houses. The benefits of not exporting your money can easily outweigh a fairly sizable margin in the cost of fueling the vehicles.
Some small countries with bounties of sun and no fossil fuels will really win when the combination of cheaper batteries and better solar cells become available.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the concept of an oil war will be gone in 20 years.
It costs tens of thousands to add more gasoline pumps. An electrical charging spot costs less than $900 and are trivial to install.
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Sigh. Then you push the big 'start charging now' button on the dash. I know this is Slashdot where perfect is the enemy of good, but for the majority, charging the car in the wee hours of the morning is perfectly fine, and is the solution to the OMG THE GRID WON'T HANDLE IT response.