Are you people even listening? What kind of argument is, "If it doesn't apply to every person in every situation with today's technology, it applies to nobody in any situation"? They simply cannot *make* EVs fast enough to take up more than the low-hanging fruit in the next decade or two. Two decades from now, even low-end EVs will have hundreds of miles of range, and rapid charging stations will be common. Where's your objection then?
In short, if you have an atypically long drive with no breaks and only one vehicle, guess what? You're not a good candidate for an electric vehicle at this point in time. Now can we focus on the tens of millions of Americans who are *actually* the market for today's EVs?
Which is why I provided the average, the extremes, and various other breakouts of trip lengths. If you don't know how to interpolate, that's your problem. Example:
Your "stretch commute" is 100 miles round trip - not the 40-50 mile commute that was being discussed.
Mean: 16 miles (32 round trip) 1%: 50+ miles (100+ round trip) 0.1%: 100+ miles (200+ round trip) If you go with a reasonable gamma function for the distribution and match it to the data provided, you get somewhere in the ballpark of 80% of American households having a round trip commute of under 50 miles.
Why you picked a round trip commute of 50 miles, BTW, I have no idea. If you've done a round trip, you're back home and can charge at your liesure, and you still have half your charge left. Heck, most businesses allow you to charge while at work if you just ask (I know many people who've asked, and only a small fraction have ever been turned down)
Basically, to sum up, you're making an argument that is totally in contrast to:
A) Scientific research on the topic of how far people actually drive. B) The real-world experience of people who drive EVs C) The way EVs are actually used (I.e., not everyone in the country will be using an EV as their sole mode of transportation by tomorrow; multi-car households use them as a second car, and it'll take a decade or two to saturate that market -- which, by then, will leave the technology and charging infrastructure well advanced beyond where it is today)
Our "aging coal fleet" is headed to the scrapyard, and the plants that are sticking around are increasingly adding cogen. And furthermore, when you're talking about increasing the amount of electricity being consumed, it's only fair to talk about what sort of *new* generation would be installed to fill it. People aren't going to be installing 1950s tech power plants to meet new power demand.
Anyway, it's a silly debate, because this has already been studied extensively in peer-reviewed research, with very favorable results.
Apparently you didn't read the post *you're* responding to, and wanted to just say the same thing over again. Hmm, who to listen to -- multiple studies on typical driving habits, or "JeffAtl (1737988)" on Slashdot? Someone who can't even read enough to pay attention to the primary point re. the absurdity of "one size fits all" vehicle demands judged on current technology states when we couldn't even begin to pick the low hanging fruit for a decade or two.
You know, I think I'll stick with the scientific research, thank you.
Blah, I accidentally mixed up Wh and kWh. I deserve that;)
Okay, let's correct it. Let's say we need 6 hours of storage for 200,000 houses (25kWh/day). That would require 1.25GWh, or a 400m rise with a reservoir that's 200m by 200m by 40m (or less rise and more area, or vice versa). To put it more consicely, something like this little "Bailey Lake" could provide 24 hours of power to Grand Junction, CO (the largest city on the western side of the state). Note that this is going with your (rather poor) efficiency assumptions in your 500,000 liter-meters per kWh.
Outside of a few places (like southern Florida), there are features that fit the bill for conventional pumped hydro all over the place. Let's pick somewhere that sounds challenging -- Kansas, for example ("Flat as a pancake"). Power can be readily sent hundreds of miles (thousands if you use HVDC). So the western side of the state can use the Rockies, while the eastern can use the Ozarks.
Let's take the pessimistic side and go with the much smaller Ozarks. At a maximum, how much could this (relatively poor) region store? And let's not go with the bigger hills further south -- let's go with the shallower ones up in northern AK. According to Google Maps, there's about 250m between the tops of the ridges and the valleys below. This area of nonstop ridges appears to stretch about 150 miles long and averages about 30 miles wide. That's about 1.17e10 square meters. Now, let's count only the area at the peaks -- let's say it makes up 10% of the area, and the river valleys below handle the bottom reservoirs. So you have a surface area of stored water of 1.17e9 square meters. Let's go with relatively shallow 20m reservoirs. That's 2.35e10 cubic meters, or 2.35e13 liters. Times 250, that's 5.87e15 meter-liters, or ~12 TWh storage - enough to run 800 million households for 6 hours. Or to put it another way, if you wanted to use it as 30-minute standby for all of the United States (4k TWh annually / 365.24 / 24 / 2 = 230GW), you'd only need to use 2% of that 10% of the area we're putting reservoirs on in that fraction of the ozarks.
From this, a small section (northern AK) of a low mountain range (Ozarks), calculated with relatively shallow reservoirs (20m).
2% of a small, poor-target choice to provide standby to all of the US too much for you? Then try underground pumped hydroelectric energy storage (UPHS). You use an aquifer (natural or artificial) as your lower (or even both) reservoirs.
Nuclear and the most efficient other power stations provide the base load. Other stations provide spinning reserve where their alternators are syncronised to the grid, turning at grid frequency but with little or no power input. The boilers of spinning reserve fossil fired stations are kept hot but with little energy flow. There is not much wasted energy - despite some crazy theories here about dumping electricity to resistor banks and even light bulbs, ffs!!!! Spinning reserve stations can be brought on-line in minutes.
This says that the UK's reserve requirements cause the emission of 8 MT of CO2/year. That's about 3% of the country's electricity-related CO2 emissions. Not huge, but not trivial, either.
The GP's last paragraph was perfectly logical. Currently electricity is sold cheap at night (to local distributors, factories, railways and some end consumers) because of the otherwise wasted capital and attendance costs of the spinning reserve, not because much fuel is being wasted. However if there were greater demand for night electricity, the price of night electricty (and I believe the GP meant night electricity) would go up with market forces.
So your logic is as follows: Let's say that Company A spends $500M on a 1GW power plant with a marginal cost of $0.05/kWh. They sell 800MW during the day (16h) at $0.10/kWh and 300MW at night (8h) at $0.06/kWh. So they're making $664,000 profit per day before recouping capital expenses. Now let's say EVs come on and they can sell 800MW day and night. Let's say that they keep the same rates. They're now making $704,000. They're making *more* money at the *same* rates, and your argument is that they'll respond by *further* raising rates?
That's only possible if there is no competition. Now, they might change their rate structure -- say, raising their night rates but lowering their day rates. But the simple fact remains that they're making more money with no new capital expense. Unless there's anticompetitive practices going on, overall, per-kWh rates will average going downward.
But latest plants doesn't really matter that much. Most of the plants are still old 40-45%. Yes in 30 years, we can talk about average 60%, but not now.
Why do you say that? If we're talking about building new plants to provide the extra electricity, then we need to talk about today's tech, not what's out there providing the electricity we're already consuming. Not to mention that the increasingly strict regulations on power plants are forcing upgrades. You can turn single-cycle plants into combined cycle without having to rebuild the entire thing -- for example, adding a steam turbine after the gas turbine. And it doesn't take much of a push, economically, to cause this to be the optimal financial choice for most operators.
Also, consider that the average vehicle on the road today is nearly 10 years old, implying a projected lifespan of nearly 20 years. And that EV production rates won't become sigificant for a decade or two. So the long-term picture is absolutely pertinant.
Second thing, around 50% of electricity in US are produced in less effective coal plants.
A number thats dropping, as building new coal plants is becoming seen as too risky of an investment. Coal power being as cheap as it is relies on them being able to strip mountaintops (strong public opposition), dump the tailings into river valleys (strong public opposition), where heavy metals leach into the water (Clean Water act violation that's been ignored for quite a while but has been going under increased scrutiny of late), storing the ash in huge ponds (increasing public opposition and regulatory scrutiny), being able to emit all the carbon you want at no cost (huge question mark over that), and not having to pay for the health effects of your non-CO2 emissions (depending on the coal plant, one study I saw pegged that at 2-12 cents per kilowatt hour).
And if you put the numbers together (with 45-50% for power plant efficiency), you will get something around 30-35% That is exactly same as hybrid.
Ah, but you're looking at tank-to-wheels, not well to wheels. And well to tank for gasoline gets worse every year as we keep having to shift to less and less accessible sources -- bitumen, coal gassification, deepwater, etc. Meanwhile, the grid keeps getting cleaner and more efficient. Most of the new power being added to our grid these days is NG, followed by wind. And solar is getting poised for a big ramp-up. EGS is a massive dark horse in this as well.
btw any sources for the petrol / diesel efficiency numbers?
There are an awful lot of studies out there. Off the top of my head, "Well To Wheel Study of Passenger Vehicles In The Norwegian Energy System" might have what you're looking for (although they may only have the well-to-wheels numbers, rather than tank to wheels).
Faster you charge (or discharge) less efficiency you get. right ? And the same for charger. Higher the power, means usually less efficiency. right ? I don't know much about batteries, but this is how it usually works in almost everything.
Correct. The 94% was for rapid charging with a particular chemistry. I've never seen a li-ion chemistry that gets below 96-97% efficiency in normal slow charging, although there might be something out there lower than that. The 92-93% efficiency was for slow charging (~15-80A). If you want to get to the really high power chargers, I've seen as low as 90% charger efficiency.
And in cars, what you need are deep discharge batteries, witch can be charged and discharged really really fast. right? So as I understand it. You can have battery good in almost everything, but at cost of efficiency. Or good batteries in each aspect (including efficiency), but with really high price tag.
Not necessarily. Yes, there are some very high end batteries that carry a hefty price tag, like A123's latest absurdly over-engineered prismatic cells (picture a cell with a dozen or so Ah taking a 300A charge and barely heating(!) It's insane). But you can already get cells in the $300-$500/kWh range (ie., very competitive pricing) that can take quite a bit of abuse in their own right. These are the type of cells that the mainstream automakers (with the possible exception of Toyota, given their new Tesla partnership) are pursuing (Tesla took an unusual approach of using standard 18650-format cobalt-based "laptop cells" -- although they really didn't have a choice back when they started, as the alternative li-ion chemistries were much more expensive back then and not nearly as good as they are today).
A 40-50 mile round trip work commute is hardly rare for those in the US. Adding anything like a seeing a doctor, picking your kid up at school, visiting friends or family, running some other errand or even going on a date can easily put the total over 100 miles.
The average US commute is 16 miles, and the percent of people driving further drops off geometrically with increasing distance, to where only about 1% of Americans "stretch commute" 50 miles each way. Tacking on errands doesn't even come close to what you're describing unless you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
Driving habits have been *extensively* studied by the auto industry. They don't need you telling them what people do. Over half of all trips, *counting multi-stop trips*, are 1-10 miles. Only 1% are over 100 miles, and these are almost always "planned".
The Atlanta airport is around an 80 mile round trip from the heavily populated northern suburbs. Picking up or dropping off a friend at the airport would hardly considered a extraordinary event.
Then you park here. There are *already* charging stations at the airport, and there's almost no EVs on the road. What do you think it'll be like when there are hundreds of thousands or millions on the road?
On the weekends, spontaneously deciding to take a day trip to somewhere more than 50 miles away isn't rare either.
So you're driving somewhere that's more than an hour away, but you're not staying there long enough to get a quick charge? Who the heck does that?
---
From a more fundamental level... of course you can come up with hypotheticals wherein some imaginary person might have trouble. "What if you had some guy in Bairol, Wyoming who daily needs to deliver a load of manure to Cheyenne, huh? What would they do???" But this belies the fact that according to actual studies, such people are very rare. And, from a more fundamental perspective, you're making an even bigger error: the notion that "A single electric vehicle using today's tech must meet the needs of every last American, or it's worthless". Which is just plain absurd -- do you apply that standard to any other vehicle? Do you drive to work every day in a moving van in case you have to move some large object? Different vehicles meet different needs. At this point in time, an electric vehicle is an ideal second vehicle for the 60 million two-car households in America, providing them with a way to have clean, cheap, low maintenance, fun, sustainable transportation. For a few tens of millions of households, it will work as the sole mode of transportation as well. With today's tech. That's way, way more than enough, since it will take at least a decade, probably more like two, to produce that many electric vehicles. But batteries increase in energy density by about 8% per year. Two decades of advancement means 4.7x more range for the same-sized pack. And it also means two decades of rapid charger deployment. So when you're talking about expanding beyond this initial market, you're not talking about doing it with today's EVs; you're talking about doing it with EVs that drive hundreds of miles on a charge and can get a full charge in ~10 minutes almost anywhere in the country. That's an entirely different argument.
I did some quick reading on (LiFePO4) batteries here and while they have great potential they seem to also have some high associated costs.
Not really any more. I can import them from China for under $400/kWh -- *without* some kind of industrial-scale bulk order.
As to the "Long Tail Pipe Theory you might want to check here at various times of the day to see what our current electrical load is and theory aside contemplate shifting of the gasoline load to the electrical load.
Why would I merely look at a graph when I can read the many peer-reviewed papers studying the potential impact?
Your correct but the environmentalist want every car on the road to be either electric or hybrid, preferably electric. Hmm about 25,000,000 cars registered in CA give or take, so at a 2kwh charging load thats 2,000 & 25,000,000 = 50,000,000,000 or 50 gigawatt hours and that is more then the entire supply that the state of California has available and thats a combination of all available fuels we have on line.
Yeah! And my gasoline car burns about two gallons per hour of driving. Hmm about 25,000,000 cars registered in CA give or take, so 2 gallons per hour times 24 hours * 365.24 = 440 billion gallons of gasoline per year, three times what the whole US consumes!
(I.e., the problem with your calculation is that people's cars don't charge nonstop; they charge intermittently and in a staggered manner, whenever people or a smart grid tells them to. Never will they all be charging at the same time)
The next problem is that gigawatt hours are a measure of energy while 2 kilowatts (not kwh) is a unit of power.
That is the myth if the electric car, if we shift to all electric we simply shift the fuel consumption to another type of engine.
That's the "long tailpipe myth", and it's a myth. All peer-reviewed studies on the subject show that it's much better to switch to electric.
Now an electrical generating plant is more efficient then an internal combustion engine but you have to build out that capacity and keep a lot of it on hot stand-by because it takes a long time to spin up from cold to generating electricity
Wrong; utilities love EVs because the stabilize and even-out the load, meaning *less* need for peaking and spinning reserve.
Additionally no one is really talking about the insanely toxic batteries that will have to be disposed of on a regular basis.
You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. You can literally, legally throw discharged A123 batteries into municipal trash. The CEO of BYD likes to show off by *drinking* his batteries' electrolyte. As for "regular basis", we're talking ~80% capacity in 10 years.
Technology can move fast but we are pushing the limits of known technology as far as electrical storage is concerned
Not even *close*. I could list about a dozen cathode techs and two dozen anode techs, each of which could increase the density of their respective electrode ~50% to ~1000%. Will all of them make it to commercialization? Not a chance. Will *none* of them make it to commercialization? Likewise, not a chance. The rate of battery energy density increase has been a pretty steady 8% per year, but it's actually *increasing* of late.
There is a lot of progress being made in Electric double-layer capacitor "EDLC's" but even those are still experimental and cannot provide the kind of power you would need to run say a Tesla car
That's backwards. Capacitors have huge power density but poor energy density.
The biggest heat sources in an electric vehicle are the inverter and the motor. Li-ion pack efficiencies vary a lot depending on the particular chemistry choice and operating conditions. I've seen as low as 94% and well over 99% (some chemistries really are absurdly efficient). There's also some losses in the cabling.
Chargers are not "80-90%" efficient. They're usually 92-93% efficient.
1) No, the more frequently you charge your batteries, the better it is for them. Li-ions like to be charged frequently.
2) Rapid charging does shorten battery lifespans, but not catastrophically with most non-cobalt chemistries. Given that even -today's- -low-end- mass-market highway-speed EVs have (nominal) 100 mile ranges, you don't need rapid charges very often.
3) Non-cobalt-based li-ion batteries are generally non-toxic and can be disposed of in standard municipal waste streams. They can also be recycled, like Tesla does with their cobalt packs.
4) Yes, heavy AC and heater usage will cut 10-20% off your range in typical driving.
5) Gas station pumps don't work during power outages, either.
And the latest NG plants are now up to 60%, NOT counting that you can reuse the waste heat for industrial heating. 60% just for the electricity generation.
The grid is ~93% efficient, chargers ~92-93% efficient, li-ions 94% (inefficient rapid charging) to over 99% (efficient slow charging) in efficiency, and the drivetrain averages 85-90% efficiency in normal usage.
Non-hybrid gasoline ICEs average about 20% efficiency since the engine runs out of its optimal operating envelope most of the time and much energy is wasted through braking. Diesels average about 25% (their mileage numbers look even better, but part of that is due to the greater density of diesel fuel). Gasoline hybrids can get 30-35% efficiency (diesel hybrids even more, but the added weight and complexity is rarely considered justified by manufacturers).
So, if we want to cap off a maximum change of a mere 0.5 meter of height, and assuming that such a small amount has basically no affect on the surface area, that's 41.2 cubic kilometers. There's 4 meters height difference between the lakes; let's assume we average maintaining that difference. That would store about 350 GWh after losses -- more than the total generation of all hydroelectricity in the United States for an entire year.
But want an even crazier one? The Panama Canal is a (proportionally) thin canal that goes over the terrain via locks. But imagine if you had pipes connecting Atlantic to Pacific. It just so happens that the western and eastern coasts of Panama have opposite tides, and the magnitude of the tides is *far* greater on the Pacific tide -- averaging about 3 meters (the Atlantic side averages under half a meter). So you have basically limitless (oscillating) tidal power available.
Look up the term "spinning reserve". It's absolutely real. It's one of several types of operating reserve.
Your last paragraph is completely illogical. Your argument is that power companies, suddenly finding themselves able to make more money (by selling more off-peak power) without having to build new infrastructure, will *raise* rates? That the leveling out of the grid by using off-peak power will require *more* peaking?
.. make fun of Chu, but I am such a Chu groupie. A surefire way to draw me to a conference is to announce that he'll be speaking there.;) I just loved him during his confirmation hearing, how he perked up when finally asked a question that was even remotely technical. "Now we're getting to Science! I love this!" I had read some of his papers before he was even tapped for the position; I was so thrilled to hear he was picked. He really knows his stuff.
His big weakness is that he's no politician, and he sometimes has trouble keeping is mouth shut from speaking politically inconvenient things. For example, dealing with the hydrogen people...;)
Considering that Tesla has the only production electric vehicle with a battery other than a lead-acid battery, that is a pretty bold statement to make
Correction: only production electric vehicle on the road; virtually all automakers are working on making at least one commercial electric vehicle (i.e., not just a concept), for sale within the next couple years. I could list about three dozen models for you. And they're essentially all li-ion, and none of them (except Tesla and their partners) are using laptop cells. It's virtually all phosphates and manganates. And even that refined statement is not really true. BYD and a number of electric motorcycle and freight truck companies are already on the road with li-ion vehicles. Again, not using laptop cells.
My point is that the safe charging of an electrical power storage device that is to absorb well over 25 kilowatt-hours of energy in less than 4 minutes is hardly a trivial application
Trivial? No. Doable? Absolutely. Doable en masse? Absolutely.
Assuming this is a 220 Volt circuit
It's not. This is level 3 charging, which is DC, variable voltage which tracks the pack's optimal charging voltage (for li-ion EVs, generally in the 300-500V range). Supply is generally 3-phase 480V.
Comments about having access to a neighborhood power sub-station seem very appropriate when viewed from this perspective.
Neighborhood? What are you talking about? Why would you ever put one of these in a house?
To safely recharge an automotive battery, it takes time.
Wrong. Rapid charging has been used in various demo programs (for example, Hawaii had one) for over a decade. It's perfectly safe, so long as you have a proper charger, connector, and vehicle design. There are all sorts of safety features used -- anti-arcing connectors, electrodes that remain non-live until the data pins have confirmed a secure connection, a steady ramp-up, safe break-away cables, instant termination on any sign of a short or damage to the sheath, etc.
I certainly think extreme skepticism is very much in order here and the burden of proof that this is a safe procedure is something that would have to be furnished by the group asserting that this is a safe process
And I'm informing you that this is nothing new. It may be the first time *you* have heard about this, but this is a technology that has been being developed for decades and is already in commercial use in a number of major warehouses for rapid charging of forklifts.
Any time electrical energy on this magnitude is being switched at a power sub-station or for something like an electrified train, it happens in either a place with a locked door or behind a chain link fence with barbed wire on top and at least a ten foot perimeter from any potential on-looker from even being close to that equipment.
Want to see what a real-world rapid charger looks like? Here. Ooh, scary!
And you expect me to believe that you would let a two year old hang out in a car where electrical connections to a vehicle are being connected within inches of that kid's car seat with those same voltages and power ratings?
And you expect me to believe that you would let a two year old hang out in a car where toxic, explosive gasoline-air fume mixtuers are being forced from a tank by inflowing gasoline within inches of that kid's car seat where any static spark could (and does) set them off?
Oh, right -- "the devil you're used to," and all of that.
Oh, and I should also ask: if you're talking a 50 mile ROUND TRIP, why would you be going to a commercial charger? If you just did a ROUND TRIP, you're back home.
False, you are forgetting MILLIONS of apartment dwellers
By the time we get to the point where we're not just talking about early adopters, apartment dwellers will have no shortage of power outlets. Even today, apartment dwellers own EVs; if they don't have their own power outlet, they -- like Chelsea Sexton -- charge at work (that's slow charging, btw).
, and the fact that not everyone is going to remember to charge every day.
Huh? "Remember to charge"? That's like saying "Not everyone is going to remember to close the car door when they get out."
Everyone used the pumps before you and the caps are drained. You have to now wait 20 minutes for the trickle charging to fill up again enough so you can refill.
Which, as mentioned, will not happen due to proper station pack sizing. Because people aren't idiots.
Dude, the story was about a FIFTY MILE chargeup being 3 minutes. Many people travel farther than that, round trip for work.
No, as a percentage of the American public, they don't. The average commute in the US is 16 miles. It drops off exponentially with distance. Charging at work is surprisingly easy if you've ever asked. Why the heck would you feel the need to charge after only 50 miles when even low end EVs today have 100 mile ranges (high end, over 200 miles)? And finally, if you're not talking about early adopters, but general adoption, you're talking decades from now. Batteries increase in energy density by about 8% per year.
You seem to keep hitting on the same thing over, that A) today's EVs should B) meet every need for every person, C) right now, or they're irrelvant. But that's just plain stupid. We couldn't give every person in the country an EV in the next decade or two if we *tried*. And even if you assume that EVs will never get any better than they are today, that argument would still be like saying that everyone should drive a subcompact car or an SUV -- as though every vehicle must fit all needs or it's worthless.
Since I actually drive so have I - and I'm correct. You need to think about what the level of cars moving through them actually means.
You're either lying or have the worst memory ever. I check them out all the time specifically because of my interest in EVs. They're virtually never full. Pick a random gas station on bizbuysell.com. I randomly picked one -- this. 114,000 gallons/month, 5 pumps, 18 hours/day. That's really busy for a gas station. That's 540 hours for 22,800 gallons per pump, or 42 gallons per pump per hour. Assuming that they dispense at the maximum permissible rate of 10gpm, they average dispensing 4.2 minutes per hour, or 7% of the time.
Let's take the next station on the list with all that sort of info: here. Hmm, seems like this one is a lot less busy. 50k gal/mo, 8 pumps. They don't say how many hours it's open, but they note that it's not 24; let's assume 18 also. That means that pumps average busy 2% of the time.
Let's do one more: here. Let's see: 75k gallons/mo, 6 pumps, about 17 hours/day. That's busy about 4% of the time.
I could keep going, but in short? You're full of it. Gas pumps spend the overwhelming majority of their time idle. Combine this with there being no "rush hour" for rapid charging. The closest you get are that there are busier travel days (say, labor day weekend), but that's spread out over a whole day; it's not concentrated in a short period of time.
In short, it's just about statistics, and the size of the buffer is eminently affordable.
I'll grant you those points (especially the buffering) but it's still not enough. It's still too slow, and too little charge.
Oh, and as for the Rav4 EV: heavier, more primitive drivetrain, and dramatically lower range than the Roadster, but the same weight increase. That's what a decade of tech advancements gets you.
I really shouldn't downplay the advancements in the powertrain, by the way. Modern power electronics have allowed for huge advancements in AC induction motors for EVs. Look at the Roadster itself -- it's 0-60 time was supposed to require a two-gear transmission to achieve. They ultimately found out that they couldn't affordably source such a transmission that wouldn't break under the stress. But by then, IGBTs had advanced enough that they could just soup up the inverter enough to compensate (along with other changes to the motor and cabling). Most of the hardware remained unaffected -- almost like plugging in a faster CPU.
Slashdot Mirror
1) Yes, see above.
2) I think you need to recheck *your* math. 50m * 50m * 10m * 1000l/m^3 * 100m / 500000m*l/kWh = 5000 kWh = 5MWh
Are you people even listening? What kind of argument is, "If it doesn't apply to every person in every situation with today's technology, it applies to nobody in any situation"? They simply cannot *make* EVs fast enough to take up more than the low-hanging fruit in the next decade or two. Two decades from now, even low-end EVs will have hundreds of miles of range, and rapid charging stations will be common. Where's your objection then?
In short, if you have an atypically long drive with no breaks and only one vehicle, guess what? You're not a good candidate for an electric vehicle at this point in time. Now can we focus on the tens of millions of Americans who are *actually* the market for today's EVs?
Also:
Averages tell you nothing
Which is why I provided the average, the extremes, and various other breakouts of trip lengths. If you don't know how to interpolate, that's your problem. Example:
Your "stretch commute" is 100 miles round trip - not the 40-50 mile commute that was being discussed.
Mean: 16 miles (32 round trip)
1%: 50+ miles (100+ round trip)
0.1%: 100+ miles (200+ round trip)
If you go with a reasonable gamma function for the distribution and match it to the data provided, you get somewhere in the ballpark of 80% of American households having a round trip commute of under 50 miles.
Why you picked a round trip commute of 50 miles, BTW, I have no idea. If you've done a round trip, you're back home and can charge at your liesure, and you still have half your charge left. Heck, most businesses allow you to charge while at work if you just ask (I know many people who've asked, and only a small fraction have ever been turned down)
Basically, to sum up, you're making an argument that is totally in contrast to:
A) Scientific research on the topic of how far people actually drive.
B) The real-world experience of people who drive EVs
C) The way EVs are actually used (I.e., not everyone in the country will be using an EV as their sole mode of transportation by tomorrow; multi-car households use them as a second car, and it'll take a decade or two to saturate that market -- which, by then, will leave the technology and charging infrastructure well advanced beyond where it is today)
Our "aging coal fleet" is headed to the scrapyard, and the plants that are sticking around are increasingly adding cogen. And furthermore, when you're talking about increasing the amount of electricity being consumed, it's only fair to talk about what sort of *new* generation would be installed to fill it. People aren't going to be installing 1950s tech power plants to meet new power demand.
Anyway, it's a silly debate, because this has already been studied extensively in peer-reviewed research, with very favorable results.
Apparently you didn't read the post *you're* responding to, and wanted to just say the same thing over again. Hmm, who to listen to -- multiple studies on typical driving habits, or "JeffAtl (1737988)" on Slashdot? Someone who can't even read enough to pay attention to the primary point re. the absurdity of "one size fits all" vehicle demands judged on current technology states when we couldn't even begin to pick the low hanging fruit for a decade or two.
You know, I think I'll stick with the scientific research, thank you.
Blah, I accidentally mixed up Wh and kWh. I deserve that ;)
Okay, let's correct it. Let's say we need 6 hours of storage for 200,000 houses (25kWh/day). That would require 1.25GWh, or a 400m rise with a reservoir that's 200m by 200m by 40m (or less rise and more area, or vice versa). To put it more consicely, something like this little "Bailey Lake" could provide 24 hours of power to Grand Junction, CO (the largest city on the western side of the state). Note that this is going with your (rather poor) efficiency assumptions in your 500,000 liter-meters per kWh.
Outside of a few places (like southern Florida), there are features that fit the bill for conventional pumped hydro all over the place. Let's pick somewhere that sounds challenging -- Kansas, for example ("Flat as a pancake"). Power can be readily sent hundreds of miles (thousands if you use HVDC). So the western side of the state can use the Rockies, while the eastern can use the Ozarks.
Let's take the pessimistic side and go with the much smaller Ozarks. At a maximum, how much could this (relatively poor) region store? And let's not go with the bigger hills further south -- let's go with the shallower ones up in northern AK. According to Google Maps, there's about 250m between the tops of the ridges and the valleys below. This area of nonstop ridges appears to stretch about 150 miles long and averages about 30 miles wide. That's about 1.17e10 square meters. Now, let's count only the area at the peaks -- let's say it makes up 10% of the area, and the river valleys below handle the bottom reservoirs. So you have a surface area of stored water of 1.17e9 square meters. Let's go with relatively shallow 20m reservoirs. That's 2.35e10 cubic meters, or 2.35e13 liters. Times 250, that's 5.87e15 meter-liters, or ~12 TWh storage - enough to run 800 million households for 6 hours. Or to put it another way, if you wanted to use it as 30-minute standby for all of the United States (4k TWh annually / 365.24 / 24 / 2 = 230GW), you'd only need to use 2% of that 10% of the area we're putting reservoirs on in that fraction of the ozarks.
From this, a small section (northern AK) of a low mountain range (Ozarks), calculated with relatively shallow reservoirs (20m).
2% of a small, poor-target choice to provide standby to all of the US too much for you? Then try underground pumped hydroelectric energy storage (UPHS). You use an aquifer (natural or artificial) as your lower (or even both) reservoirs.
Nuclear and the most efficient other power stations provide the base load. Other stations provide spinning reserve where their alternators are syncronised to the grid, turning at grid frequency but with little or no power input. The boilers of spinning reserve fossil fired stations are kept hot but with little energy flow. There is not much wasted energy - despite some crazy theories here about dumping electricity to resistor banks and even light bulbs, ffs!!!! Spinning reserve stations can be brought on-line in minutes.
This says that the UK's reserve requirements cause the emission of 8 MT of CO2/year. That's about 3% of the country's electricity-related CO2 emissions. Not huge, but not trivial, either.
The GP's last paragraph was perfectly logical. Currently electricity is sold cheap at night (to local distributors, factories, railways and some end consumers) because of the otherwise wasted capital and attendance costs of the spinning reserve, not because much fuel is being wasted. However if there were greater demand for night electricity, the price of night electricty (and I believe the GP meant night electricity) would go up with market forces.
So your logic is as follows: Let's say that Company A spends $500M on a 1GW power plant with a marginal cost of $0.05/kWh. They sell 800MW during the day (16h) at $0.10/kWh and 300MW at night (8h) at $0.06/kWh. So they're making $664,000 profit per day before recouping capital expenses. Now let's say EVs come on and they can sell 800MW day and night. Let's say that they keep the same rates. They're now making $704,000. They're making *more* money at the *same* rates, and your argument is that they'll respond by *further* raising rates?
That's only possible if there is no competition. Now, they might change their rate structure -- say, raising their night rates but lowering their day rates. But the simple fact remains that they're making more money with no new capital expense. Unless there's anticompetitive practices going on, overall, per-kWh rates will average going downward.
But latest plants doesn't really matter that much. Most of the plants are still old 40-45%. Yes in 30 years, we can talk about average 60%, but not now.
Why do you say that? If we're talking about building new plants to provide the extra electricity, then we need to talk about today's tech, not what's out there providing the electricity we're already consuming. Not to mention that the increasingly strict regulations on power plants are forcing upgrades. You can turn single-cycle plants into combined cycle without having to rebuild the entire thing -- for example, adding a steam turbine after the gas turbine. And it doesn't take much of a push, economically, to cause this to be the optimal financial choice for most operators.
Also, consider that the average vehicle on the road today is nearly 10 years old, implying a projected lifespan of nearly 20 years. And that EV production rates won't become sigificant for a decade or two. So the long-term picture is absolutely pertinant.
Second thing, around 50% of electricity in US are produced in less effective coal plants.
A number thats dropping, as building new coal plants is becoming seen as too risky of an investment. Coal power being as cheap as it is relies on them being able to strip mountaintops (strong public opposition), dump the tailings into river valleys (strong public opposition), where heavy metals leach into the water (Clean Water act violation that's been ignored for quite a while but has been going under increased scrutiny of late), storing the ash in huge ponds (increasing public opposition and regulatory scrutiny), being able to emit all the carbon you want at no cost (huge question mark over that), and not having to pay for the health effects of your non-CO2 emissions (depending on the coal plant, one study I saw pegged that at 2-12 cents per kilowatt hour).
And if you put the numbers together (with 45-50% for power plant efficiency), you will get something around 30-35% That is exactly same as hybrid.
Ah, but you're looking at tank-to-wheels, not well to wheels. And well to tank for gasoline gets worse every year as we keep having to shift to less and less accessible sources -- bitumen, coal gassification, deepwater, etc. Meanwhile, the grid keeps getting cleaner and more efficient. Most of the new power being added to our grid these days is NG, followed by wind. And solar is getting poised for a big ramp-up. EGS is a massive dark horse in this as well.
btw any sources for the petrol / diesel efficiency numbers?
There are an awful lot of studies out there. Off the top of my head, "Well To Wheel Study of Passenger Vehicles In The Norwegian Energy System" might have what you're looking for (although they may only have the well-to-wheels numbers, rather than tank to wheels).
Faster you charge (or discharge) less efficiency you get. right ?
And the same for charger. Higher the power, means usually less efficiency. right ?
I don't know much about batteries, but this is how it usually works in almost everything.
Correct. The 94% was for rapid charging with a particular chemistry. I've never seen a li-ion chemistry that gets below 96-97% efficiency in normal slow charging, although there might be something out there lower than that. The 92-93% efficiency was for slow charging (~15-80A). If you want to get to the really high power chargers, I've seen as low as 90% charger efficiency.
And in cars, what you need are deep discharge batteries, witch can be charged and discharged really really fast. right?
So as I understand it. You can have battery good in almost everything, but at cost of efficiency. Or good batteries in each aspect (including efficiency), but with really high price tag.
Not necessarily. Yes, there are some very high end batteries that carry a hefty price tag, like A123's latest absurdly over-engineered prismatic cells (picture a cell with a dozen or so Ah taking a 300A charge and barely heating(!) It's insane). But you can already get cells in the $300-$500/kWh range (ie., very competitive pricing) that can take quite a bit of abuse in their own right. These are the type of cells that the mainstream automakers (with the possible exception of Toyota, given their new Tesla partnership) are pursuing (Tesla took an unusual approach of using standard 18650-format cobalt-based "laptop cells" -- although they really didn't have a choice back when they started, as the alternative li-ion chemistries were much more expensive back then and not nearly as good as they are today).
A 40-50 mile round trip work commute is hardly rare for those in the US. Adding anything like a seeing a doctor, picking your kid up at school, visiting friends or family, running some other errand or even going on a date can easily put the total over 100 miles.
The average US commute is 16 miles, and the percent of people driving further drops off geometrically with increasing distance, to where only about 1% of Americans "stretch commute" 50 miles each way. Tacking on errands doesn't even come close to what you're describing unless you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
Driving habits have been *extensively* studied by the auto industry. They don't need you telling them what people do. Over half of all trips, *counting multi-stop trips*, are 1-10 miles. Only 1% are over 100 miles, and these are almost always "planned".
The Atlanta airport is around an 80 mile round trip from the heavily populated northern suburbs. Picking up or dropping off a friend at the airport would hardly considered a extraordinary event.
Then you park here. There are *already* charging stations at the airport, and there's almost no EVs on the road. What do you think it'll be like when there are hundreds of thousands or millions on the road?
On the weekends, spontaneously deciding to take a day trip to somewhere more than 50 miles away isn't rare either.
So you're driving somewhere that's more than an hour away, but you're not staying there long enough to get a quick charge? Who the heck does that?
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From a more fundamental level... of course you can come up with hypotheticals wherein some imaginary person might have trouble. "What if you had some guy in Bairol, Wyoming who daily needs to deliver a load of manure to Cheyenne, huh? What would they do???" But this belies the fact that according to actual studies, such people are very rare. And, from a more fundamental perspective, you're making an even bigger error: the notion that "A single electric vehicle using today's tech must meet the needs of every last American, or it's worthless". Which is just plain absurd -- do you apply that standard to any other vehicle? Do you drive to work every day in a moving van in case you have to move some large object? Different vehicles meet different needs. At this point in time, an electric vehicle is an ideal second vehicle for the 60 million two-car households in America, providing them with a way to have clean, cheap, low maintenance, fun, sustainable transportation. For a few tens of millions of households, it will work as the sole mode of transportation as well. With today's tech. That's way, way more than enough, since it will take at least a decade, probably more like two, to produce that many electric vehicles. But batteries increase in energy density by about 8% per year. Two decades of advancement means 4.7x more range for the same-sized pack. And it also means two decades of rapid charger deployment. So when you're talking about expanding beyond this initial market, you're not talking about doing it with today's EVs; you're talking about doing it with EVs that drive hundreds of miles on a charge and can get a full charge in ~10 minutes almost anywhere in the country. That's an entirely different argument.
I did some quick reading on (LiFePO4) batteries here and while they have great potential they seem to also have some high associated costs.
Not really any more. I can import them from China for under $400/kWh -- *without* some kind of industrial-scale bulk order.
As to the "Long Tail Pipe Theory you might want to check here at various times of the day to see what our current electrical load is and theory aside contemplate shifting of the gasoline load to the electrical load.
Why would I merely look at a graph when I can read the many peer-reviewed papers studying the potential impact?
AeroVironment sold a 800kW charger to TARDEC ;)
Not like you'll hook a mere car up to *that*, but it shows how powerful these things can get.
Your correct but the environmentalist want every car on the road to be either electric or hybrid, preferably electric. Hmm about 25,000,000 cars registered in CA give or take, so at a 2kwh charging load thats 2,000 & 25,000,000 = 50,000,000,000 or 50 gigawatt hours and that is more then the entire supply that the state of California has available and thats a combination of all available fuels we have on line.
Yeah! And my gasoline car burns about two gallons per hour of driving. Hmm about 25,000,000 cars registered in CA give or take, so 2 gallons per hour times 24 hours * 365.24 = 440 billion gallons of gasoline per year, three times what the whole US consumes!
(I.e., the problem with your calculation is that people's cars don't charge nonstop; they charge intermittently and in a staggered manner, whenever people or a smart grid tells them to. Never will they all be charging at the same time)
The next problem is that gigawatt hours are a measure of energy while 2 kilowatts (not kwh) is a unit of power.
That is the myth if the electric car, if we shift to all electric we simply shift the fuel consumption to another type of engine.
That's the "long tailpipe myth", and it's a myth. All peer-reviewed studies on the subject show that it's much better to switch to electric.
Now an electrical generating plant is more efficient then an internal combustion engine but you have to build out that capacity and keep a lot of it on hot stand-by because it takes a long time to spin up from cold to generating electricity
Wrong; utilities love EVs because the stabilize and even-out the load, meaning *less* need for peaking and spinning reserve.
Additionally no one is really talking about the insanely toxic batteries that will have to be disposed of on a regular basis.
You clearly have no clue what you're talking about. You can literally, legally throw discharged A123 batteries into municipal trash. The CEO of BYD likes to show off by *drinking* his batteries' electrolyte. As for "regular basis", we're talking ~80% capacity in 10 years.
Technology can move fast but we are pushing the limits of known technology as far as electrical storage is concerned
Not even *close*. I could list about a dozen cathode techs and two dozen anode techs, each of which could increase the density of their respective electrode ~50% to ~1000%. Will all of them make it to commercialization? Not a chance. Will *none* of them make it to commercialization? Likewise, not a chance. The rate of battery energy density increase has been a pretty steady 8% per year, but it's actually *increasing* of late.
There is a lot of progress being made in Electric double-layer capacitor "EDLC's" but even those are still experimental and cannot provide the kind of power you would need to run say a Tesla car
That's backwards. Capacitors have huge power density but poor energy density.
Who spontaneously drives 100 miles (nominal Leaf range) and considers that a normal day?
I'm sure there are *some* people out there, but that's not at all typical.
The biggest heat sources in an electric vehicle are the inverter and the motor. Li-ion pack efficiencies vary a lot depending on the particular chemistry choice and operating conditions. I've seen as low as 94% and well over 99% (some chemistries really are absurdly efficient). There's also some losses in the cabling.
Chargers are not "80-90%" efficient. They're usually 92-93% efficient.
1) No, the more frequently you charge your batteries, the better it is for them. Li-ions like to be charged frequently.
2) Rapid charging does shorten battery lifespans, but not catastrophically with most non-cobalt chemistries. Given that even -today's- -low-end- mass-market highway-speed EVs have (nominal) 100 mile ranges, you don't need rapid charges very often.
3) Non-cobalt-based li-ion batteries are generally non-toxic and can be disposed of in standard municipal waste streams. They can also be recycled, like Tesla does with their cobalt packs.
4) Yes, heavy AC and heater usage will cut 10-20% off your range in typical driving.
5) Gas station pumps don't work during power outages, either.
And the latest NG plants are now up to 60%, NOT counting that you can reuse the waste heat for industrial heating. 60% just for the electricity generation.
The grid is ~93% efficient, chargers ~92-93% efficient, li-ions 94% (inefficient rapid charging) to over 99% (efficient slow charging) in efficiency, and the drivetrain averages 85-90% efficiency in normal usage.
Non-hybrid gasoline ICEs average about 20% efficiency since the engine runs out of its optimal operating envelope most of the time and much energy is wasted through braking. Diesels average about 25% (their mileage numbers look even better, but part of that is due to the greater density of diesel fuel). Gasoline hybrids can get 30-35% efficiency (diesel hybrids even more, but the added weight and complexity is rarely considered justified by manufacturers).
Actually... I'll go ahead and do the math. Surface areas:
Superior: 82,400 km^3
Michigan-Huron: 59,600 + 58,000 km^3 = 117,600 km^3
So, if we want to cap off a maximum change of a mere 0.5 meter of height, and assuming that such a small amount has basically no affect on the surface area, that's 41.2 cubic kilometers. There's 4 meters height difference between the lakes; let's assume we average maintaining that difference. That would store about 350 GWh after losses -- more than the total generation of all hydroelectricity in the United States for an entire year.
But want an even crazier one? The Panama Canal is a (proportionally) thin canal that goes over the terrain via locks. But imagine if you had pipes connecting Atlantic to Pacific. It just so happens that the western and eastern coasts of Panama have opposite tides, and the magnitude of the tides is *far* greater on the Pacific tide -- averaging about 3 meters (the Atlantic side averages under half a meter). So you have basically limitless (oscillating) tidal power available.
IF you can harvest it.... ;)
Look up the term "spinning reserve". It's absolutely real. It's one of several types of operating reserve.
Your last paragraph is completely illogical. Your argument is that power companies, suddenly finding themselves able to make more money (by selling more off-peak power) without having to build new infrastructure, will *raise* rates? That the leveling out of the grid by using off-peak power will require *more* peaking?
To put that another way, a 100m rise with a reservoir that's 50m by 50m by 10m stores 5 MWh, enough to run 200,000 houses for an entire day.
Is this supposed to be problematic?
Want to see a TON of storage? Run the numbers on pumping a couple meters of water back and forth between Lake Superior and Lakes Michigan/Huron. ;)
.. make fun of Chu, but I am such a Chu groupie. A surefire way to draw me to a conference is to announce that he'll be speaking there. ;) I just loved him during his confirmation hearing, how he perked up when finally asked a question that was even remotely technical. "Now we're getting to Science! I love this!" I had read some of his papers before he was even tapped for the position; I was so thrilled to hear he was picked. He really knows his stuff.
His big weakness is that he's no politician, and he sometimes has trouble keeping is mouth shut from speaking politically inconvenient things. For example, dealing with the hydrogen people... ;)
Considering that Tesla has the only production electric vehicle with a battery other than a lead-acid battery, that is a pretty bold statement to make
Correction: only production electric vehicle on the road; virtually all automakers are working on making at least one commercial electric vehicle (i.e., not just a concept), for sale within the next couple years. I could list about three dozen models for you. And they're essentially all li-ion, and none of them (except Tesla and their partners) are using laptop cells. It's virtually all phosphates and manganates. And even that refined statement is not really true. BYD and a number of electric motorcycle and freight truck companies are already on the road with li-ion vehicles. Again, not using laptop cells.
My point is that the safe charging of an electrical power storage device that is to absorb well over 25 kilowatt-hours of energy in less than 4 minutes is hardly a trivial application
Trivial? No. Doable? Absolutely. Doable en masse? Absolutely.
Assuming this is a 220 Volt circuit
It's not. This is level 3 charging, which is DC, variable voltage which tracks the pack's optimal charging voltage (for li-ion EVs, generally in the 300-500V range). Supply is generally 3-phase 480V.
Comments about having access to a neighborhood power sub-station seem very appropriate when viewed from this perspective.
Neighborhood? What are you talking about? Why would you ever put one of these in a house?
To safely recharge an automotive battery, it takes time.
Wrong. Rapid charging has been used in various demo programs (for example, Hawaii had one) for over a decade. It's perfectly safe, so long as you have a proper charger, connector, and vehicle design. There are all sorts of safety features used -- anti-arcing connectors, electrodes that remain non-live until the data pins have confirmed a secure connection, a steady ramp-up, safe break-away cables, instant termination on any sign of a short or damage to the sheath, etc.
I certainly think extreme skepticism is very much in order here and the burden of proof that this is a safe procedure is something that would have to be furnished by the group asserting that this is a safe process
And I'm informing you that this is nothing new. It may be the first time *you* have heard about this, but this is a technology that has been being developed for decades and is already in commercial use in a number of major warehouses for rapid charging of forklifts.
Any time electrical energy on this magnitude is being switched at a power sub-station or for something like an electrified train, it happens in either a place with a locked door or behind a chain link fence with barbed wire on top and at least a ten foot perimeter from any potential on-looker from even being close to that equipment.
Want to see what a real-world rapid charger looks like? Here. Ooh, scary!
And you expect me to believe that you would let a two year old hang out in a car where electrical connections to a vehicle are being connected within inches of that kid's car seat with those same voltages and power ratings?
And you expect me to believe that you would let a two year old hang out in a car where toxic, explosive gasoline-air fume mixtuers are being forced from a tank by inflowing gasoline within inches of that kid's car seat where any static spark could (and does) set them off?
Oh, right -- "the devil you're used to," and all of that.
Oh, and I should also ask: if you're talking a 50 mile ROUND TRIP, why would you be going to a commercial charger? If you just did a ROUND TRIP, you're back home.
False, you are forgetting MILLIONS of apartment dwellers
By the time we get to the point where we're not just talking about early adopters, apartment dwellers will have no shortage of power outlets. Even today, apartment dwellers own EVs; if they don't have their own power outlet, they -- like Chelsea Sexton -- charge at work (that's slow charging, btw).
, and the fact that not everyone is going to remember to charge every day.
Huh? "Remember to charge"? That's like saying "Not everyone is going to remember to close the car door when they get out."
Everyone used the pumps before you and the caps are drained. You have to now wait 20 minutes for the trickle charging to fill up again enough so you can refill.
Which, as mentioned, will not happen due to proper station pack sizing. Because people aren't idiots.
Dude, the story was about a FIFTY MILE chargeup being 3 minutes. Many people travel farther than that, round trip for work.
No, as a percentage of the American public, they don't. The average commute in the US is 16 miles. It drops off exponentially with distance. Charging at work is surprisingly easy if you've ever asked. Why the heck would you feel the need to charge after only 50 miles when even low end EVs today have 100 mile ranges (high end, over 200 miles)? And finally, if you're not talking about early adopters, but general adoption, you're talking decades from now. Batteries increase in energy density by about 8% per year.
You seem to keep hitting on the same thing over, that A) today's EVs should B) meet every need for every person, C) right now, or they're irrelvant. But that's just plain stupid. We couldn't give every person in the country an EV in the next decade or two if we *tried*. And even if you assume that EVs will never get any better than they are today, that argument would still be like saying that everyone should drive a subcompact car or an SUV -- as though every vehicle must fit all needs or it's worthless.
Since I actually drive so have I - and I'm correct. You need to think about what the level of cars moving through them actually means.
You're either lying or have the worst memory ever. I check them out all the time specifically because of my interest in EVs. They're virtually never full. Pick a random gas station on bizbuysell.com. I randomly picked one -- this. 114,000 gallons/month, 5 pumps, 18 hours/day. That's really busy for a gas station. That's 540 hours for 22,800 gallons per pump, or 42 gallons per pump per hour. Assuming that they dispense at the maximum permissible rate of 10gpm, they average dispensing 4.2 minutes per hour, or 7% of the time.
Let's take the next station on the list with all that sort of info: here. Hmm, seems like this one is a lot less busy. 50k gal/mo, 8 pumps. They don't say how many hours it's open, but they note that it's not 24; let's assume 18 also. That means that pumps average busy 2% of the time.
Let's do one more: here. Let's see: 75k gallons/mo, 6 pumps, about 17 hours/day. That's busy about 4% of the time.
I could keep going, but in short? You're full of it. Gas pumps spend the overwhelming majority of their time idle. Combine this with there being no "rush hour" for rapid charging. The closest you get are that there are busier travel days (say, labor day weekend), but that's spread out over a whole day; it's not concentrated in a short period of time.
In short, it's just about statistics, and the size of the buffer is eminently affordable.
I'll grant you those points (especially the buffering) but it's still not enough. It's still too slow, and too little charge.
Oh, and as for the Rav4 EV: heavier, more primitive drivetrain, and dramatically lower range than the Roadster, but the same weight increase. That's what a decade of tech advancements gets you.
I really shouldn't downplay the advancements in the powertrain, by the way. Modern power electronics have allowed for huge advancements in AC induction motors for EVs. Look at the Roadster itself -- it's 0-60 time was supposed to require a two-gear transmission to achieve. They ultimately found out that they couldn't affordably source such a transmission that wouldn't break under the stress. But by then, IGBTs had advanced enough that they could just soup up the inverter enough to compensate (along with other changes to the motor and cabling). Most of the hardware remained unaffected -- almost like plugging in a faster CPU.