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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."
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.
Perhaps some time after 2018 we will see editing of article summaries before they go to the front page as well? Nah, probably not.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The tesla is a bad example. The 85w has a range over 300 miles.
My gasoline car has a range of 250 to 265 miles (280 pure highway).
Also, it presumes the old battery has zero value. I'm not sure that's true.
There's also some math problem since a tesla owner site says
http://my.teslamotors.com/it_I...
"1. we know the cost to replace an 85 kwh battery is ~$12,000"
This is apparently with a trade in of the old battery...
Others in the same discussion mention 20 year life spans for well maintained batteries.
And others say that as long as the range exceeds 75 miles, it's usable for their daily driving needs ( so the tesla battery pack could lose 65% of it's capacity and still be fine. Some say 50 miles (which was typical of my usage for my ICE when I was working).
Just FYI...
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
there are no reserves of pure hydrogen. It has to be 'cracked' from molecules, typically hydrocarbons (nat. gas and oil!) or water, and getting it from water takes a lot of electricity...hello Mr. Coal! And once you create it, it has to be shipped. So it's no cleaner than running batteries, and has some serious downside.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
At the moment, the Tesla Model S battery pack is definitely expensive and likely costs consumers about $25,000 for the 85 kWh battery pack. It is likely to last somewhere around 300,000 to 500,000 miles. People are basically paying between $0.05 and $0.08 per mile for it. At a national average of $0.12 per kWh and you get 3 miles/kWh, the electricity cost per mile is about $0.04. With special time of use rates, it is possible to pay for electricity at half that price. Which means $0.02 per mile. That means the cost of electricity + the battery pack = $0.07 to 0.12 per mile.
Assuming super unleaded costs $2.50/gallon, here are some comparisons:
BMW M5, 16 mpg combined, $0.16 per mile.
Jaguar XF, 23 mpg combined, $0.11 per mile
Usually where electricity is expensive, gasoline is also expensive.
Of course, if you are doing this kind of comparison, you are basically removing $25,000 from the price of the car and placing it under the energy/fuel column. So looking at total cost of ownership makes the most sense. Most people aren't yet used to looking at the TCO for a vehicle so electric cars look more expensive up front but if you examine TCO, you'll see that, in many cases, they are less expensive.
Real life experience with my 2012 Volt (since Oct-2011) says yes, they get really reduced range in the cold (I get nearly 50 mpc in summer, around 35 in winter), when running the heater. So I don't - I preheat the car while on my off-grid power (the heated seats help a lot and don't draw squat in the scheme of things, they are a rounding error). The AC is killer-efficient and doesn't use diddly of the power, it's really effective too. I wish they had a heat pump for the cold times. Else, no issues. I'm not going to sell this one - I'll drive it till I can't anymore. For one thing, it's super fun to drive too - and surprisingly fast on the mountain twisty roads where I live. Sleepers are more fun sometimes...
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
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.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
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.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.