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Are We Reaching the Electric Car Tipping Point?
HughPickens.com writes: Geoff Ralston has an interesting essay explaining why it is likely that electric car penetration in the U.S. will take off at an exponential rate over the next 5-10 years rendering laughable the paltry predictions of future electric car sales being made today. Present projections assume that electric car sales will slowly increase as the technology gets marginally better, and as more and more customers choose to forsake a better product (the gasoline car) for a worse, yet "greener" version. According to Ralston this view of the future is, simply, wrong. — electric cars will take over our roads because consumers will demand them. "Electric cars will be better than any alternative, including the loud, inconvenient, gas-powered jalopy," says Ralston. "The Tesla Model S has demonstrated that a well made, well designed electric car is far superior to anything else on the road. This has changed everything."
The Tesla Model S has sold so well because, compared to old-fashioned gasoline cars it is more fun to drive, quieter, always "full" every morning, more roomy, and it continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements. According to Ralston the tipping point will come when gas stations, not a massively profitable business, start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. When that happens even more gasoline car owners will be convinced to switch. Rapidly a tipping point will be reached, at which point finding a convenient gas station will be nearly impossible and owning a gasoline powered car will positively suck. "Elon Musk has ushered in the age of the electric car, and whether or not it, too, was inevitable, it has certainly begun," concludes Ralston. "The future of automotive transportation is an electric one and you can expect that future to be here soon."
The Tesla Model S has sold so well because, compared to old-fashioned gasoline cars it is more fun to drive, quieter, always "full" every morning, more roomy, and it continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements. According to Ralston the tipping point will come when gas stations, not a massively profitable business, start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. When that happens even more gasoline car owners will be convinced to switch. Rapidly a tipping point will be reached, at which point finding a convenient gas station will be nearly impossible and owning a gasoline powered car will positively suck. "Elon Musk has ushered in the age of the electric car, and whether or not it, too, was inevitable, it has certainly begun," concludes Ralston. "The future of automotive transportation is an electric one and you can expect that future to be here soon."
At least that is my hope. The concept of car ownership is archaic. I look forward to the offloading all the associated penalty costs of car ownership in favour of a service model.
I have a relative who is a part owner of a truck stop. I have heard how low the profits/margins are for selling gas. He tells me all the profit at those places is from the junk food inside... Apparently the deals they make with the gasoline/diesel suppliers are so bad there is almost no profit in selling gas.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
EVs cost significantly more than gas cars, don't have the range of gas cars, and apartment dwellers have no way to charge them overnight.
A friend has an electric, she loves it. She also drives 20 miles to work, charges the car in her garage overnight, and her road trips are with her kids and grandkids, who drive their gas vehicles.
The move to electric is a natural evolution, and will have a significant impact. The economies of scale in terms of pollution mitigation at power plants will utterly dwarf anything cars have ever been able to do themselves, transmission losses nonwithstanding.
Even if they only displace urban drivers (fewer per-trip miles, more population density facilitating more charging stations), the impact will be transformative. Watch the AQI loop around New York, and you can see air pollution rising and falling along the commuter roads into the City in lock step with the morning commute. I can't even imagine a New York with 50-80% fewer gas-powered cars on the road.
But that's still just evolution. Electric is just a natural step.
Driverless cars are the revolution. Electric makes existing car use patterns better. Driverless makes an entirely new paradigm. It may eliminate mass car ownership. It might eliminate parking lots. It might eliminate light rail in suburban areas. Taxis. Deliveries. Shipping. Police reponses.
Electric makes things better in well-projected ways. Driverless changes everything forever in ways we can't yet even imagine.
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How reliable are they in winter driving conditions? How is the battery efficiency affected by temperature? What about cabin heating? I'm having a hard time seeing any of the current crop being adopted for year-round use in areas that get more than a smattering of snow, or a few days below freezing per year.
Again, this works in the US with big suburbs where everyone has a parking lot with an electric outlet. In other countries (like good old Europe), where most people live in apartments and there is just no way you can plug your car at night, it doesn't work. It is just impossible until you can refill your car in 5 minutes like with gasoline...
Oh, and many Europeans travel 1000+km on a single streak with their cars on holidays. Again, if the cars you want to sell have to wait 2 times 4 hours to refill in such travel, you're not going to sell many of them.
Ecars are good for commuters that live in houses. There are not many of them outside the US.
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Some folks believe the key to Electric car adoption is better batteries. The Powerhouse by Steve Levine follows the quest for better battery technology. It's not written as well as it might be, but it's still an interesting read...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/...
According to the article, many gas stations will close once 10% of cars are electric, to the point of inconvenience.
Bullshit. I drove a vehicle with one of the most damn inconvenient fuels out there: Propane. In my province, 0.2% of vehicles run on Propane. In my city are alone (population: ~500,000), there's still 4 fueling stations and I'm never more than 15 km away from one. As I said, it is inconvenient because if you're not somewhere populous, it's rare to find somewhere to fuel up, especially in the US. But it was far from "sell it right now!" levels.
And that's with just 0.2% of vehicles using a particular fuel. At 90% I would expect my average drive to refuel for my gas powered vehicle would go from perhaps 2 km to 2.1 km. Wake me when we hit 30% of cars on the road being gasoline powered, which would make the amount of gas sold equal to the amount of diesel sold right now. Those with diesel cars *STILL* don't worry about being able to fill up, despite being at that level of popularity. I figure when gasoline cars hit 5% it will actually require some small amount of planning to refuel. That's a LONG way away.
Living in Los Angeles, the age of the electric car has been upon us for quite some time. everyone from BMW to nissan makes popular electric cars and sells them for a reasonable price here. The problem comes when you aren't in the second largest city in america.
During a business trip to an office in Ohio I learned firsthhand how awkward it must be to own one of these vehicles. In Blue Ash, Ohio I saw one or two teslas, but Ohio doesn't have a tax incentive like Los Angeles gives people to buy them. So, owners in Ohio aren't exactly the average joe. It seemed a status symbol, as though they mostly buy the car out of a desire to be perceived as 'elite' and progressive. Charging also seemed cumbersome. In LA we charge at parking garages for low cost, or free. most employers offer ChaDeMO charger stations as a perk in their garage. taking your car into the shop? its charged when you get out. Finally dedicated charging ports at some gas stations are also prevalent. None of this infrastructure existed in the cities I visited in Ohio because none of it had to. Gas was $3 a gallon, or less. Traffic was smooth flowing and quick, and mileage largely adherent to highway driving conditions above 50 miles per hour. There is also no public transit, no park and ride to charge the car at while you commute the rest of the way in by light rail.
Ohio also has winter weather to contend with. Most people owned larger SUV's or cars with all-wheel-drive in anticipation of snowy or icy roads, and temperatures well below those we're accustomed to in southern California. The car has to warm and cool much more actively, which im not sure is something electric cars can handle.
Disclaimer: I own a tesla. owning it in the midwest would seem to be a chore.
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Indeed, the slower fill times on even 10-minute fast charging stations would probably give a much better rate on converting energy-customers into convenience store customers. It could even be a loss leader, so long as there's enough market penetration to justify the capital costs.
Also, I can kill you with my brain.
Kinda like how finding a convenient electric charging station is nearly impossible to find?
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the tipping point will come when gas stations, not a massively profitable business, start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold,
This idea is simply bogus. Here's a good analysis of the argument, but a choice quote sums up the problem with the argument:
Consider that in 2009 there were 246 million motor vehicles registered in the United States. A 10% reduction would be 221 million vehicles but that is how many vehicles there were in 2000.
Gas stations didn't go extinct in 2000 because there were fewer gas vehicles, and they won't do so now. In fact, there are already fewer gas stations now, mostly because gas-powered cars are more efficient. However, no one started yelling tipping point because gas-powered cars became more efficient, an effect which is probably more important than electric vehicles in the foreseeable future. There still so many that the gas-station-tipping-point hypothesis is BS.
I can get a brand new, gasoline powered car for under $20k that goes 400 miles on a tank and gets 40 miles per gallon. I don't see an electric car coming anytime soon that would be a better alternative to that considering that gas prices are reasonable (where I live at least). Create an electric car that can go at least 300 miles, is under 20K and can be charged in a few minutes and maybe we'll talk.
I expect a hybrid sort, which is more like a Flying-J travel center. Restaurant(s), convenience store, a couple of service bays, and the refuelling stations. Sometimes there are some stores like a small shopping mall, usually with supplies that someone might have neglected to remember to bring, like beach supplies if on the way to California, or heavier jackets and boots if on the way North.
The restaurants are acceptable even if not great. The convenience stores and retailers are overpriced but can be useful in a pinch. The service area can deal with tires and other things that need to be fixed quickly.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
EVs cost significantly more than gas cars, don't have the range of gas cars, and apartment dwellers have no way to charge them overnight.
All of which are solvable problems. With scale EVs eventually could be cheaper than gas cars since they have fewer parts. There already are EVs with range competitive with gas cars (see the Model S) and they are only getting better. As for apartment dwellers, eventually apartments will end up providing charging infrastructure though I fully expect this to happen late in the game because the cost isn't trivial.
Electric vehicles will probably reach a tipping point when either A) recharge times get to less than 15 minutes with a 200 mile range or B) EVs with a 500+ mile range are developed and economically feasible. Until that happens we'll see hybrids serving as a technology test platform until such time as the battery technology matures sufficiently. I fully expect most luxury cars to be plug-in hybrids within the next 10-15 years. I think you'll start to see semi trucks and long haul vehicles becoming hybrids with a power train similar to locomotives (diesel with electric motors driving the wheels).
EVs won't reach the tipping point tomorrow or even probably 5 years from now but I do think they are the likely future with hybrids being a stepping stone to get there.
And frankly, current ranges on EV's make them pretty much useless for trucks. Who really wants to stop for a couple hours a couple times a day?
You won't see pure EV trucks for a long time. What you'll see is a power train similar to that on locomotives. Diesel engine charging electric motors with a battery bank to deal with the excess. It's very efficient, huge torque and the technology is well understood. I'm kind of surprised we aren't seeing it already.
But why would I go to my local gas station in the middle of suburbia to charge my vehicle when I can just charge it at home?
Because "home" is an apartment or condo and there are no charging stations in the parking lot.
I Allways wondered why everyone who thinks that flywheels are viable for vehicles forget about the giroscopic effect, a flywheel with a inertial mass huge enough to power a vehicle would present a huge new set of problems to think about. Keep in mind that even if you mount it horizontally to avoid the effect when turning, any lateral force, like when making turns at high speed, or hitting a speed bump would create a very noticeable backlash from the flywheel.
At night? Of course. Better yet, at some time between midnight to 7 am. Why do you ask? The power grid capacity is sized for peak hours as there is usually no way to store the electricity generated by big power plants for later use. These peak times occur as people leave home and when they return from work. When everyone is sleeping that generation capacity becomes idle, and then It can easily be put to other uses.
Disclosure: I am a developer, but also a power plant technician.
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Have you not heard of "gimbals"?
The important question is: How often do you actually drive far enough in one day to drain the battery and need to recharge away from home.
I know in my own life & commute, the answer is "not at all" - being able to gas up on a long trip just isn't a use case. On the other hand, with an Electric, never having to stop at a gas station is a big advantage/selling point.
Batteries are becoming cheaper very quickly with cost parity expected in less than a decade. The ability to charge faster is also improving dramatically, so those disadvantages of electric cars are rapidly vanishing. It's already a lower cost per mile to drive electric, and maintenance costs are lower on electric cars compared to cars powered by ICE's.
I suspect for an increasing number of people (especially those living in cities or suburbia), the advantages of electric cars will soon be more than sufficiently compelling to warrant a switch to electric.
"Green" has little to do with it. Convenience and cost per mile are big advantages of electric vehicles.
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Yes.
As far as efficiency, you fell on your face. Sorry man. The 35% for the car is the engine. That's the max possible, real IC engines in consumer cars are closer to 25%. Your novel idea that that is higher than electric cars get is funny, but no. Also, battery charging using the battery technologies already used in cars is closer to 85% in the worst case, and over 90% average. Nobody is building cars with lead acid. And "battery discharge" is not 75%, the average is over 90%. 75% is the lowest efficiency, which you get briefly at the end of the cycle when the battery is already charged and you're only using a tiny bit of current to top it off. The main part of the charge that uses most of the power is at the higher end of the efficiency range for the battery. You're whacking battery efficiency down twice with made-up numbers and pretending to be science-y.
Battery charging efficiency is actually near 100% below 70% charge. Remember, you're not doing much work here, physically. There is no reason to desire there to be an extra loss here. ;) Discharge loss is also normally only a few percent, not 25%. Almost all the losses in your "equation" are from made-up numbers that are nowhere close to reality.
Fuel cell storage efficiency is only 20-60%. No surprise, because hydrogen atoms are larger than electrons, and so filling up the cell requires vastly more physical work.
Flywheels are super-heavy. The funny part about what you say there is that small flywheels used the same way as electric regenerative braking can increase fuel efficiency in a city, with frequent start/stop, but the mass of flywheel you'd need to be useful at a 50+ mile range would be really heavy, and have huge friction losses. It can be done, it has been done, but you get a slow tank that is inefficient, not a fuel-saver.
Not having better numbers is no excuse for just making them up as if a guess what you use when you can't be bothered to look any of it up, and don't already know about the technologies.
Consider replacing the electric commuter-car battery with a flywheel. We have the tech to do this for ranges of 50 miles or so.
Why would you, though? Flywheels have atrocious energy densities.
We should be thinking about replacing batteries with "fuel cells", because, like hydrocarbon engines, only fuel (most agree hydrogen is best) needs to be carried around, and the waste (H2O) can be dumped.
Wrong. A fuel cell car also needs a sizable battery, because a fuel cell capable of providing sufficient output for acceptable performance would be massive and expensive. A battery needs to be included to provide the peak power and the fuel cell basically acts as an on board generator to keep it topped off.
And given that, it's a waste. For all the solar energy you collected to make and process the hydrogen, you could have put that directly into an EV's battery and come out way ahead.
=Smidge=
And then you have to create a transmision to get the energy out of the damn flywheel without fucking up the gimball wich seems to be not so trivial considering the movement that the flywheel would have inside said gimball.
Not a problem really. With a small flywheel for in-town, it does pull to the side a bit when you engage, but not worse than wind, and people adjust to it easily.
The real problem regarding the forces are the accident danger. If you crash it can really tear your car apart.
My friend had flywheel assist before he went electric. That was in the early 90s. Trust me, the reason you don't see it around very often isn't because of viability concerns; mostly cost/result/accident danger. It is expensive to install, uses up limited space, and isn't a miracle at all.
And how do you get the energy out of such an arrangement, because a mechanic transmission to a flywheel rotating freely inside a gimball sounds dificult to me.
Ever notice how electric car backers seem to assume everyone owns a garage for their car where a charging station can be installed?
With charge times measured in hours, what are all the people who rent or park on a street going to do?
Yes, the danger of a broken flywheel has always been a concern. The recommended solution was to put it inside a shell that can "take it" --which is much easier to do if the flywheel is made of carbon fiber instead of steel. Also, the shell can be somewhat evacuated, to reduce air-resistance losses.
EVs are not necessarily cleaner or better because they need batteries. Mining of the rare earth metals required for the batteries is mostly monopolized by China, and is an unregulated ecologically damaging industry. A shift to electric will move the US from a being energy independent with fossil fuels to being dependent on Chinese rare earths. At any point, China could make our lives miserable by cutting off exports of rare earths, making it very expensive to make or buy batteries. The cost to restart rare earth mining in the US is in the tens of billions, and a decade or more away after all the lawsuits by the eco-lobby.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
3.75 billion kwh/night * 365 nights = 1369 billion kwh/year, or almost exactly 1/3 of our yearly energy production of 4093 billion kwh.
One third of our energy budget going into automobiles is certainly a significant portion of yearly production, but not nearly as impossible as the above math made it sound.
Add solar and wind power, new generating stations, etc., plus not everyone will switch over to electric immediately.
Both the heavy battery pack and the motor-generator-plus-flywheel (I never called it magical or weightless, but this data suggests it can weigh a lot less than a battery pack) need at least one electric motor to drive the car wheels (did you know one electric motor can drive a pair of wheels without a mechanical differential?). If the battery charges/discharges at 90% efficiency, while the flywheel does it at 95% efficiency, guess which is superior? (And "rare earth" metals are not actually all that rare; the problem has been chemically separating them from each other, to get the particular ones we actually want to use, and the pollution associated with the process. Obviously that technology needs to be improved.)
Another poster has claimed that modern lithium batteries can have better-than-95% efficiency, making them better than a motor-generator-flywheel. If accurate, the only advantage a flywheel would have is a very fast charging time.
Flywheels can be charged up lots faster than batteries. But actually, my personal preference is for supercapacitors, with almost perfect charge/discharge efficiency, rapid charging rates, AND they never wear out. But so far as I know, nobody offers supercapacitors potent enough to be used in cars, even if only for acceleration-power and regenerative-braking energy storage (while a fuel cell is still superior to batteries for long range). That's why I never mentioned them in any of my prior posts here. Does anyone know if the supercapacitor total-capacity situation is likely to change soon?
What I've seen are two horizontal flywheels spinning in different directions. Theoretically nulls out the force -- there's always a bit left, but usually manageable and a mere fraction of just the one rotating.
You may only care about "total power," but you have to actually deliver the power at the motor voltage.
And you design the motor for whatever voltage you want.
Boosting the voltage that much is going to have large switching losses and require a lot of factory-grade power supply parts.
Are you at all familiar with how modern electric vehicles work? Because that's essentially how they work... that take DC from the battery and convert it into AC. That requires "a lot of power supply parts."
How many lithium cells can you fit into a box the size of a 12V battery, limiting yourself to the same total weight? 200V or so, with way more total power,
You missed the point of the mental exercise. It doesn't matter what kind of battery you use - you can configure it to favor voltage or current. What matters is the total energy stored because that's going to drive the weight and volume of the pack.
How many lithium cells can I fit in the volume of a 12V car battery? A hell of a lot more than 200V! For the same weight I can replace a 20KG lead acid battery with 5,000 4-gram CR2032 lithium cells and get either 18,000 volts at 15mA or 3.6 volts at 75 amps. (And yes, that will just about be the same physical size too, based on rough calculations)
Switch you prismatic lithium cells and I'm sure you can do even better!
A flywheel can provide direct mechanical force using any of a variety of standard coupling methods.
Wrong. At least wrong for any energy storage flywheel worth a damn. These things are spun at 60K+ RPM in vacuum flasks on magnetic bearings - that's the only way you'll get the energy density needed to not get laughed out of the design department. You're not going to extract energy from that using "standard coupling methods." You're going to use magnetic coupling.
You do know that on-board flywheel storage has actually been tried, right? Manufacturers abandon the idea at the prototype stage because it always ends up being more trouble than it's worth compared to batteries.
=Smidge=