Inexpensive Electric Cars May Arrive Sooner Than You Think

catchblue22 writes According to an article in MIT Technology Review, a new peer reviewed study suggests that battery-powered vehicles are close to being cost-effective for most people: "Electric cars may seem like a niche product that only wealthy people can afford, but a new analysis suggests that they may be close to competing with or even beating gas cars on cost. ... The authors of the new study concluded that the battery packs used by market-leading EV manufacturers like Tesla and Nissan cost as little as $300 per kilowatt-hour of energy in 2014. That's lower than the most optimistic published projections for 2015, and even below the average published projection for 2020. The authors found that batteries appear on track to reach $230 per kilowatt-hour by 2018. The authors found that batteries appear on track to reach $230 per kilowatt-hour by 2018. If that's true, it would push EVs across a meaningful threshold."

Comments

Re: The authors found that batteries appear on tra

[haruchai]

All 85 kWH Model S cars have an 8-year, infinite mile warranty on battery & drivetrain. If you buy one today, you can drive the hell out of it worry-free, except for what it costs to replace tires, until 2023.
By then, Tesla should have one, possibly 2, Gigafactories in operation and the economics of EV batteries will be very different and in the driver's favor.

Re:Missing the point.

[geoskd]

I think that Toyota hydrogen fuel cell is far more practical and cleaner (because electric batteries are charged with coal fire plant electricity made 500+ miles away from where it is used).

How exactly do you think they get the hydrogen??? They use electricity by way of electrolysis. This is a hideously inefficient process. Not to mention the complete lack of a hydrogen infrastructure, and the hazards of compressed gases. Hydrogen is dumb. It was when it was conceived, and still is. a Hydrocarbon fuel cell might be a good idea, but you would still get significant greenhouse gases out of it. Better still would be.. wait for it... electric batteries or super-caps. Uses the existing infrastructure, the ultimate source of the energy can be swapped for whatever the hooch-du-jour is without the end user ever even knowing or caring. On vehicle storage was the only real limitation, and thanks to portable electronics, the research into making good batteries got done in spite of the powers-that-be wanting to kill electric cars at any cost. Now that the energy density of batteries is getting competitive, and the cost is coming down thanks to economy of scale, we are seeing the tipping point where gasoline vehicles go from a trillion dollar industry to a niche market. In 20 years, gasoline vehicles will be manufactured and purchased for very specific markets, and everything else will be electric.

Re:Missing the point.

[catchblue22]

I think that Toyota hydrogen fuel cell is far more practical and cleaner (because electric batteries are charged with coal fire plant electricity made 500+ miles away from where it is used).

Really? Hydrogen? Ok. First off, hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a source. Most hydrogen for transportation these days comes as a bi-product of fossil fuels. So that's not really so clean.

So what if we make the hydrogen from H2O using electrolysis...that means we split 2 H2O molecules into 1 O2 and 2 H2 molecules. There is going always going to be some heat generated in this process, which is by definition waste.

The real and fundamental flaw in this process comes next. In order to transport and use the hydrogen, you have to compress it. This takes energy. Extra energy. And when you compress a gas, it gets warmer. This is a fundamental law of physics. So we have compressed hot gas. What happens to that heat energy? It will certainly not be used to power the car. It will likely be wasted.

Next, you have to transport the compressed hydrogen gas. This also takes energy. Energy that will be lost.

Another large problem with hydrogen gas is that the molecules are small. Why is that a problem? Because it will be difficult to contain the gas. It will tend to escape. The gas will be lost in compression, in transport, and in storage. It is likely that if you fuel your hydrogen car up and park it, you will lose most of your fuel to the air in several days.

Finally, we have to change the energy in the hydrogen back into electrical energy to power the electric motors. The efficiency of fuel cells is an engineering problem, but I suspect there is some intractable physics in there that will cap the efficiency. Let's assume a best case scenario of perhaps 50% efficiency for the cells. That is still a lot of waste. However if you factor in the losses from electrolysis, compression, storage as well, you will have an overall efficiency less than 50%. Probably quite a bit less. So let's say for the sake of argument that the entire process is 30% efficient, which I suspect is generous.

It is well known that the electricity transmission system is highly efficient. Some easy research should tell you that the transmission system is more than 90% efficient. When we charge a battery, there are come losses. But they aren't that high. Let's assume the charging system is 80% efficient. Overall then, that process would be 72% efficient (I think it is higher than that actually).

So, if you have 100J of energy that you wish to use to drive the electric motors in a car, you can use hydrogen, and get less than 30J to the motors, or you can use the electrical grid, and get 70J to the motors. Honestly, why would you use hydrogen? Especially since the fuel cells would be complicated, expensive, and of unknown reliability. Hydrogen as a fuel is flawed at the level of fundamental physics. These problems cannot be engineered away.

Re: The authors found that batteries appear on tra

[Ol Olsoc]

And how many owners have had to replace their battery pack? This is not really an expense that owners plan to encounter, though it is an expense that goes in to making the car. That said, the $20k battery pack is a significant part of the cost of the drivetrain. You can't replace the drivetrain on a brand new BMW 3 series for $20k.

Very, very few, as it turns out. The Toyotas seem to last about forever, and you know darn well that the haters will be braying about any Tesla failures.

Slashdot, once upon a time, would be agog about an electrical vehicle, Now the site is so reactionary, it's starting to read like Fox News for people who hate anything new.