Interesting calculations. I'm going to suggest that they may be weighted worst case for the EV though. I think it's very unlikely that you're going to see 100% of the fleet need battery replacement at 100,000 miles. What nobody knows for sure is what that number will actually be, but my gut tells me it'll probably be somewhere between 150,000 to 300,000 miles typically. But let's ignore that for a minute. The other assumption you used was 20K for the 85 kWh battery pack in the Tesla. But the Tesla is the luxury car of the EVs. I'd like to offer some other numbers (For my Honda Fit EV). Now, my car is a lease only, but I think the Leaf owners can comment that I think the Leaf will be pretty close. The Honda Fit EV has a 19 kWh battery. Let's assume for argument's sake that we prorate the cost of replacement based on the capacity, so $4470 @ 100,000 miles instead of $20,000. I'll still use the 100,000 mile figure even though I think it's way too conservative. I'm also going to work the calculations assuming $0.12/kWh which is what I pay. I've been seeing 100 miles in the summer and 50 miles in the winter, so I'll assume 75 miles from the 19 kWh battery, even though it's probably better than that (winter isn't 6 months, but we'll assume it is).
100,000 miles: electricity==$3040, battery replacement==$4470, total==$7510/100000 or $0.08/mile 150,000 miles: electricity==$4560, battery replacement==$4470, total==$9030/150000 or $0.06/mile
an ICE car assuming 30 mpg @ $3.00/gallon here in the US right now: 100,000 miles: gas==$10,000, oil changes==$1,000 regular 30/60/90 inspections==$1,000 total==$12000 or $0.12/mile
So, assuming the battery pack cost is proportional, a small EV like the Leaf or the Fit EV is cheaper to operate than the ICE car even assuming 100,000 mile battery pack replacement. But it's probably not even that bad, because as someone else pointed out, once EVs are popular there will almost certainly be shops that will replace bad cells in your pack for a nominal fee. If we assume that for half the cost of the battery pack we can get the car to make it to 250,000 miles (which I think it will probably make without pack servicing) then we see numbers more like:
250,000 miles: electricity==$7600, battery servicing==$2235, total==$9835/250000 or $0.04/mile.
I don't think that's overly optimistic, but it's certainly not pessimistic. I think the ICE numbers are overly optimistic - I don't think many ICE cars make 100,000 miles with only $2,000 of scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, but even if we go with those numbers, a smaller EV is substantially cheaper to operate than a comparable ICE car. I also think that if you rework your numbers to compare the realistic cost of operating a BMW M5 versus the Tesla, it will be a lot closer than your numbers initially indicate. I'd actually expect the Tesla to be moderately cheaper than the BMW when you figure in all the maintenance costs on the M5...
The thing that still makes EV expensive is the initial cost. Right now the small EVs are probably carrying $10,000 to $15,000 extra cost over the ICE version of the car, so if you add that into the equation for the Fit EV it brings the price up to around $0.18/mile which IS more expensive than the ICE car. If we can see manufacturers get the initial price down to be more in line with the ICE cars, then I think the EV can easily be price competitive.
In closing, I'm glad you worked out some hard numbers instead of the regular hand waving that's so typical on Slashdot, but I hope you'll consider that your equations might have been a bit skewed and that the reality is that even with EVs being brand new on the road, the operating costs are more than competitive with ICE, and hopefully we'll see initial prices drop to make them overall competitive with ICE cars.
BTW, the Honda Fit EV is a great car and I'm sorry that Honda doesn't seem to want to compete in the EV market (hydrogen is dumb, I think). I'm anxiously waiting to see what the Tesla Model 3 ends up looking like: if it's competitive with the BMW 3 series for $45K or so, I'm planning on buying one.
Do your calculations include the cost of a replacement battery?
No, and this is not well understood yet. When I was a kid cars seldom lasted more than 60,000 miles. Now 200,000 is pretty common. So, a good question is what's the average life of a gasoline car, and how many battery swaps might you expect in an EV over the same mileage?
Another thing to consider is that many people believe the cost of replacement batteries will decrease substantially over time, so how long it takes you to put 100,000 or 200,000 miles on the car may substantially change what you end up paying to replace the battery pack.
According to Wikipedia:
The Fit EV employs Toshiba's SCiB batteries that can be recharged to 80% capacity in 15 minutes and can be recharged up to 4,000 times, more than 2.5 times that of other Li-ion batteries.
So, that could mean up to 400,000 miles if you believe them, but I'm skeptical of hitting numbers like that. But it might suggest that 150,000 to 200,000 miles on a battery pack is a reasonable expectation. Unfortunately, because my Fit is a compliance/lease-only car I'll never get to find out - I'll need to return it long before I can put enough miles on it to see the battery degrade. But I'll get back to you after I put a couple hundred thousand miles on my next EV;-)
I think unless batteries get much better in capacity vs weight and someone can figure out how to recharge them a lot faster. We will never see EV's as a viable solution to the masses.
I have an EV (Honda Fit). I think that they're already useful for something like 3/4 of the population. Lots of parts to the equation. Right now they're better as the second car of a two or more car family, but they can be the only car depending on your driving pattern. They're great for someone who has a defined commute, as opposed to someone who drives to work and then drives around as part of their work. They're better when you have a garage or dedicated driveway, probably not so good right now if you have to park curbside. Right now some of them suffer pretty big range loss in cold weather (mine has about 50% range in the dead of winter compared to summer time and that definitely needs to be addressed, but I don't see why it can't be improved substantially).
Charge time is only an issue in rare circumstances; the problem is that people who don't drive an EV tend to think of recharging like going to the gas station; something you do when the tank runs low. That's not how most of us use the EV, though. Typically I use it on trips which I know I can make without recharging. (in warmer months I can drive 100 miles without recharge). The recharge happens at night, or between trips. A typical trip for me is to drive 50-60 miles and get home with 1/2 charge. I plug in to the dryer outlet in my garage and within 90 minutes it's full again. So, I may run some errands, go home and grab lunch, and by the time I'm done with lunch the car is fully charged again, ready for more errands. Or, if I commute to work I get home with 1/2 charge and again, within 90 minutes it's fully charged if I want to go out to dinner etc. Even if I use the full charge (which is very very rare) I typically recharge overnight so by the time I wake up in the morning it's ready to go. My point is that with a few exceptions you don't notice the charge time because it charges while you're doing something else. This means that I almost never have to wait for the car to charge. That said, if I had to do a road trip I could see myself doing it if I had to spend 20 minutes recharging every 200 miles. I'm sure high speed charging will improve, and by the time we hit 10-15 minutes to recharge after 200 miles of driving I think we hit diminishing returns, i.e. it'll be short enough I won't care whether they make it any faster or not.
Similarly, many non-EV people worry about the number of charging stations. Again, my typical use is that I don't have to use a charging station because I plan my trips so that I can make the full trip without recharging, but as an example if I need to drive into Boston (35 miles) I can make it there and back without a recharge, but if I also need to do another stop that's going to require more than another 20 miles of driving, then I'll plan to park in Boston at a charging station. If I've used 35 miles of charge, it only takes 20 minutes to fully recharge, so unless I'm running an especially short errand in Boston the car will be fully charged by the time I get back to it. One way to measure what percentage of my trips are EV friendly is to look at when I use the EV versus the gas car. During the summer, I find I use the gas car about once a month. That's about how often I have a trip to make that the EV doesn't have the range for. My next EV will have at least 200 miles of range and at that point I expect only 1 or 2 trips a YEAR won't fit the profile (and I'll just rent a car for those 2 trips).
All the calculations I've done show that my direct operating costs (i.e. cost to "fill the tank") is about 1/5th of what it costs when I drive a gasoline car. I also save on maintenance - there are no scheduled oil changes or tuneups... just a tire rotation that the dealership did for free. So, it's actually costing me quite a bit less than 1/5th of operating my gasoline car (Subaru Imprezza STi). Right
If electric cars become a reality, they will need to produce and distribute a lot more electricity to generate the energy currently generated by ICEs in the cars.
Keep in mind that ICE's are at best about 1/3 efficient with the fuel they burn while electric cars are around 90% or better with the electricity they use.
This is an important point. My electric car typically consumes 10kWh per day in the summer for a 50 mile commute. That's equivalent to leaving 4 100 watt lightbulbs on 24 hours a day. Not insignificant, but not huge from the electric company's standpoint. When my daughter uses the car all day just to get around town, she typically uses about 0.4kWh, or the equivalent of leaving a refrigerator light on all day.
Electric cars are very efficient.
I haven't measured it, but I probably use a lot more electricity running the electric dryer than the car (teenage daughters, don'tcha know?).
I don't think he's saying the airspace should be reserved for him, I think most of us think that those of us who fly deserve some regulations to prevent us from being killed because some idiot realtor caused a drone to strike our aircraft. I haven't heard anyone here say drones shouldn't be allowed. What we want is to be able to share the airspace safely.
Currently, a drone operator who causes a manned aircraft to crash has little fear for their own personal safety. They may have some liabilities (civil or even criminal) but they probably won't lose their life. I'd certainly like some regulations so that I'm not risking my life due to drone strikes every time I go flying.
You forgot to quote paragraph d: (d) Helicopters, powered parachutes, and weight-shift-control aircraft. If the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface—
(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA; and
(2) A powered parachute or weight-shift-control aircraft may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (c) of this section.
We frequently operate at 500 feet and below - it's one of the things that makes a helicopter useful. It's going to be a real issue when we start sharing the airspace with drones. Birds are already enough of an issue, but birds large enough to take down the helicopter are generally visible at the speeds we fly close to the ground. A maneuvering quadropter on the other hand is probably close to invisible to us - it's hard enough to see flying objects below the horizon, but one that can maneuver aggressively such as a model helicopter or quadropter is almost impossible to see and avoid. Usually we see RC Fields well before we see the RC Aircraft - the fields tend to look a certain way so when we see such a field we generally keep clear or at least are much more vigilant (and would be reluctant to go below 500 feet if we though an RC aircraft was being operated).
Anyway, there are lots of operations that legitimately take us below the altitudes specified in paragraph b & c.
I'd like to second this. If I go out flying I'm likely to see one or two fields where people are flying RC aircraft. Not too hard to avoid. (and they have maximum altitudes the keep them below most manned aircraft). When uses for commercial drones are found, it's likely to suddenly flood the national airspace with a huge number of drones, and at that point we're going to need to have safety regulations already in place. If anything, I think FAA has been a little slow to enact drone regulations. I hope they hurry up, but also make balanced regulations that protects the flying public (and public on the ground) but also does not hinder the development of what will certainly be a huge and useful capability - I'm thinking autonomous drones here......
The reason FAA has the concept of commercial operating certificates is so that:
a) it can make sure those operators are following regulations enacted for safety reasons. b) It can revoke the certificates of operators who for one reason or another violate those regulations.
The FAA has very little authority over an entity (person/corporation) who operates without a license or operating certificate. (I think it can levy fines against individuals but I'm not sure where their authority stops in that sense. I don't believe the FAA can act in a law enforcement capability, so it's not clear to me at what point a person can be arrested for violating FAA regulations).
By licensing drones, the FAA can enact rules to prevent them from endangering manned aircraft. For instance, if something akin to a type certificate is required by drones because FAA finds that certain equipment (like ADS-B) is required to insure separation from manned aircraft, how would they enforce that? Probably the way they will is by having certain equipment requirements for drones that want to operate in the national airspace.
Hopefully they will use a layered approach so that very small light drones will have little to no equipment requirements, but may have severe altitude restrictions, while larger/heavier drones, or drones that need to be operated at higher altitudes will have equipment requirements to keep them separated from manned aircraft.
We also have the issue of parts falling out of the air onto the public. In general this isn't an issue for manned aircraft, because usually when big pieces fall off the aircraft, the people on board are killed - it gives the crew plenty of incentive to make sure this doesn't happen. But what's to prevent an SLR carrying drone from falling out of the sky and killing people walking down the sidewalk? Since there's probably little to no risk on the part of the drone operator, we need a way to enforce some rules about how drones can be operated above people...
And I don't want people driving down my road disturbing my sleep at night, but I have to share the road with my neighbors and to some degree the same thing is true of the airspace above our property. There are lots of things that may take a helicopter low over your property - I've done utility inspection jobs that sometimes require us to fly quite low - while the noise may be a nuisance, it's an even bigger nuisance when your home loses electricity because the transmission wires weren't inspected.
I've flown traffic helicopters and we try to fly high so as to not make a lot of noise for people on the ground, but there are circumstances where we may have to fly fairly low so again, it's a nuisance, but does serve a useful purpose in helping to keep driver's aware of traffic conditions.
Another case I can think of would be a medivac helicopter making a low approach over your house in order to land nearby to pick up a critically ill person.
In general, the helicopter community works hard to be responsible about how and where we fly; we try to be sensitive to the noise we make and the fact that people on the ground have a right to feel safe, i.e. we need to operate the aircraft in a responsible fashion so that people on the ground are not exposed to risk due to our presence.
One worry I have is that crazy people with access to drones may try to enforce their desire to keep helicopters away from their homes by purposely crashing drones into helicopters. I'm thinking that there may be a market for armored civil helicopters in the not too distant future!. Or maybe a pod of anti-drone drones I can release from my helicopter...;-)
From what I've read so far, I have to agree. Like lots of people I first went to swift-lang.org and started reading and got really excited. Wow.. Apple has taken this dataflow language and adapted it as a programming language. What a cool way to keep all those cores busy! Finally, a parallel programming language adopted by the mainstream.
Then I realized my mistake. Now I'm pretty let down. Seems kind of lame, from what I've read so far. Also, I think I prefer the elegant way of handling nil in the runtime versus spreading ?'s all over my code
Really, solar power is as cheap as coal now. If that is true then why don't I see solar panels popping up everywhere?
OMH they are! I'm a helicopter pilot and when we fly around these days we're amazed at how many solar panels there are! We see two different forms: lots and lots of rooftop installations, both commercial and residential. They're *everywhere*. And then, solar gardens, i.e. 5-10 acres of land someone has installed solar panels on. Again, we see huge numbers of these around.
It's been an amazing thing to watch over just the last 2 years. Also, on a slightly different subject I was ferrying a helicopter across the country a couple years ago and was amazed by the number of windmills in Kansas. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them!
All this report shows is the the grid can handle a few EVs it says nothing about handling a lot of EVs.
Some quick googling shows lots of similar articles and studies. The utilities don't seem to be worried. My guess is that they are happily anticipating becoming the energy provider for transportation in addition to their current business. And, if BEV takes a decade to become commonplace they have a full decade to upgrade the grid.
"As the power grid stands right now, it can already handle millions of electric vehicles without bringing any further power plants online." ( http://science.howstuffworks.c... )
"Kjaer is less concerned about transmission or generation being overtaxed, as long as consumers are taught to charge their plug-in cars at night, during off-peak demand periods, to smooth the load. " ( http://www.scientificamerican.... )
"Doggett is CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas – which oversees the state’s electric grid. On Tuesday he told lawmakers on the Senate Natural Resources Committee that he doesn’t believe even widespread adoption of electric vehicles would have any negative effect on the transmission system." ( https://stateimpact.npr.org/te... )
"“Surprisingly, we found that in general, the electric utility infrastructure is already prepared to meet the President’s 2015 challenge. Our research revealed that utilities will not likely need to upgrade or expand transmission or generation capacity in the next ten years specifically to meet electric demand from EVs at projected adoption rates." ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe... )
And here is a paper from Southern California Edison which doesn't seem too worried about the impact of BEV on their grid: http://newsroom.edison.com/int...
Only downside, it's poisonous. On the upside, you can easily smell a leak at safe levels 1ppm.
I knew a guy who worked on Ammonia refrigerations systems. One day he told me they had a safety drill, simulating an Ammonia leak at the facility. The fire department was called, they drove through where the Ammonia cloud would have been, and he said that they figured 100% of them would have died if it had been a real leak. Granted because it was simulated they couldn't smell it, but he believed that by the time they would have smelled it, they would have been doomed. Just saying!
He also said that when they were working and the managers would hang around getting in the way, they would just surreptitiously vent a little Ammonia and the managers would scatter.
Seems like a nasty material for the general public to be pumping into their cars!
Even if that Carbon-Carbon battery turns out to be a scam, it's hard to believe battery technology won't improve dramatically in the next 10 years. It's not just EV automobiles driving the technology, it's portable electronic equipment and probably at some point home solar installations.
Battery tech needs to go up in power density at least an order of magnitude
That seems an exaggeration. I have a Honda Fit EV that will go about 105 miles on a charge (best case). I have a Subaru STi that goes 250 miles on a fillup. There are electric vehicles that have smaller and larger ranges, and the same is true for gas powered cars, but I don't think we need an order of magnitude improvement in battery capacity in order to be useful to the majority of people. The Fit EV is a lease (it's a compliance car) but my plan when the lease ends is to get a Tesla Model-E with 200 miles of range. Based on my experience with the Honda, 200 miles of range should be enough for all but a couple trips a year that I do.
With the Honda, I use about 50% of a charge on my 55 mile commute. It takes about 90 minutes to recharge that when I get home, i.e. I can commute to work and back home again, grab a bite to eat and have nearly a full charge before I'm ready to go back out that night. This is all without public charging infrastructure!
I think that when people talk about wanting to recharge their EV in the same time it takes to fill a gas tank, they're missing the point that the refueling of the two vehicles would typically be different, specifically that cars tend to sit for long parts of the day and installing a recharging network that can be used (say, while you are at work) is not an insurmountable barrier.
Long trips are indeed the one case that the EV struggles with, but I think that Tesla et al will come up with reasonable ways to deal with this, whether it be superchargers or towed battery packs
I maintain my gas car for just such trips, and I find that when I'm commuting daily with the EV, the gas car only gets run once or twice a month (seldom enough that I've had problems with the brakes rusting so that it's difficult to get the vehicle to move).
I have to question whether this is really the Toyota plan, or whether Hydrogen is a delaying tactic to be able to continue shipping their ICE cars, which let's face it, they have a large investment in. My gut tells me that Hydrogen powered cars in large numbers is decades away. If I'm right, why would Toyota be jumping on a technology that isn't likely to be useful anytime in the near future when we have a technology (BEV) that is already sufficient for a large number of people (the technology is, perhaps the price point isn't there yet) and it's a technology that is almost certainly going to greatly improve during the time frame necessary to bring Hydrogen automobiles to market.
Also, if the electric company offers off-peak discounts, people would almost certainly take advantage (my Honda Fit EV, and most if not all of the other major EVs can be programmed to charge at a specific time, i.e. I just enter into my smartphone when I want the car to charge and it will then delay charging until that time. You can force it to charge immediately if you think you'll need to use the car again that day before normal charging time).
I'm leasing a Honda Fit EV which has a quoted range of something like 84, but when not using heating systems during the winter I see about 105 miles per charge (which costs about $2.50 in electricity). Interestingly, if you encounter a traffic jam in an electric car your range tends to go up because higher speed causes higher drag and a loss of efficiency; the EV car loves low speed driving. It's only a 19 kWh battery, so it would be relatively easy for Honda to produce one with more range (and I think Tesla has the right amount of range). There are enough chargers that there is little chance of getting stuck, but it would be a pain to have to plug in and wait, so typically I would only charge near my destination (like, if I'm going shopping and the mall has a charging station). The charging station issue is fairly easily solved - certainly there are no technical hurdles to greatly increasing the number of chargers out there - there simply needs to be a large enough user base to justify adding more. The fact is, however, that it's very rare that I charge away from home. Most of the time the range is sufficient for all the driving I do in a day, and I can simply plug in at home. I have a dryer outlet installed in my garage so that I can recharge at the end of a typical day in about 90 minutes (about 50% of the capacity is pretty typical when I get home from my 55 mile commute). I've already decided that my next car will be a Tesla Model-E (200 mile range in a beemer 300 style chassis). I would guess that with that range, I might have to rent a car a couple times a year for long trips...
I commute about 2 miles to and from work each day.
But the Leaf is ugly, the Tesla S is expensive and neither is convertible.
I agree about the Leaf - I'd buy one if they weren't so darn ugly. I'm currently leasing a Honda Fit EV and love it My commute is 48 miles round trip and it can do that twice before recharging (but obviously I just charge it every night when I get home). Biggest drawback so far has been wintertime in Boston - the range drops by 50% when you have to run the heat (so I just drive my Subaru instead).
You have a good point, but there could be an advantage to your night vision with the camera - since you can limit how much light the screen emits, you won't be blinded by the reflection of someone's headlights But as someone else mentioned, it's important for the screen to properly dim (which seems to be something that eludes manufacturers).
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Interesting calculations. I'm going to suggest that they may be weighted worst case for the EV though. I think it's very unlikely that you're going to see 100% of the fleet need battery replacement at 100,000 miles. What nobody knows for sure is what that number will actually be, but my gut tells me it'll probably be somewhere between 150,000 to 300,000 miles typically. But let's ignore that for a minute. The other assumption you used was 20K for the 85 kWh battery pack in the Tesla. But the Tesla is the luxury car of the EVs. I'd like to offer some other numbers (For my Honda Fit EV). Now, my car is a lease only, but I think the Leaf owners can comment that I think the Leaf will be pretty close. The Honda Fit EV has a 19 kWh battery. Let's assume for argument's sake that we prorate the cost of replacement based on the capacity, so $4470 @ 100,000 miles instead of $20,000. I'll still use the 100,000 mile figure even though I think it's way too conservative. I'm also going to work the calculations assuming $0.12/kWh which is what I pay. I've been seeing 100 miles in the summer and 50 miles in the winter, so I'll assume 75 miles from the 19 kWh battery, even though it's probably better than that (winter isn't 6 months, but we'll assume it is).
100,000 miles: electricity==$3040, battery replacement==$4470, total==$7510/100000 or $0.08/mile
150,000 miles: electricity==$4560, battery replacement==$4470, total==$9030/150000 or $0.06/mile
an ICE car assuming 30 mpg @ $3.00/gallon here in the US right now:
100,000 miles: gas==$10,000, oil changes==$1,000 regular 30/60/90 inspections==$1,000 total==$12000 or $0.12/mile
So, assuming the battery pack cost is proportional, a small EV like the Leaf or the Fit EV is cheaper to operate than the ICE car even assuming 100,000 mile battery pack replacement. But it's probably not even that bad, because as someone else pointed out, once EVs are popular there will almost certainly be shops that will replace bad cells in your pack for a nominal fee. If we assume that for half the cost of the battery pack we can get the car to make it to 250,000 miles (which I think it will probably make without pack servicing) then we see numbers more like:
250,000 miles: electricity==$7600, battery servicing==$2235, total==$9835/250000 or $0.04/mile.
I don't think that's overly optimistic, but it's certainly not pessimistic. I think the ICE numbers are overly optimistic - I don't think many ICE cars make 100,000 miles with only $2,000 of scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, but even if we go with those numbers, a smaller EV is substantially cheaper to operate than a comparable ICE car. I also think that if you rework your numbers to compare the realistic cost of operating a BMW M5 versus the Tesla, it will be a lot closer than your numbers initially indicate. I'd actually expect the Tesla to be moderately cheaper than the BMW when you figure in all the maintenance costs on the M5...
The thing that still makes EV expensive is the initial cost. Right now the small EVs are probably carrying $10,000 to $15,000 extra cost over the ICE version of the car, so if you add that into the equation for the Fit EV it brings the price up to around $0.18/mile which IS more expensive than the ICE car. If we can see manufacturers get the initial price down to be more in line with the ICE cars, then I think the EV can easily be price competitive.
In closing, I'm glad you worked out some hard numbers instead of the regular hand waving that's so typical on Slashdot, but I hope you'll consider that your equations might have been a bit skewed and that the reality is that even with EVs being brand new on the road, the operating costs are more than competitive with ICE, and hopefully we'll see initial prices drop to make them overall competitive with ICE cars.
BTW, the Honda Fit EV is a great car and I'm sorry that Honda doesn't seem to want to compete in the EV market (hydrogen is dumb, I think). I'm anxiously waiting to see what the Tesla Model 3 ends up looking like: if it's competitive with the BMW 3 series for $45K or so, I'm planning on buying one.
Interesting article addressing why we're not seeing new chemistries/materials:
http://fortune.com/2014/08/15/...
Do your calculations include the cost of a replacement battery?
No, and this is not well understood yet. When I was a kid cars seldom lasted more than 60,000 miles. Now 200,000 is pretty common. So, a good question is what's the average life of a gasoline car, and how many battery swaps might you expect in an EV over the same mileage?
Another thing to consider is that many people believe the cost of replacement batteries will decrease substantially over time, so how long it takes you to put 100,000 or 200,000 miles on the car may substantially change what you end up paying to replace the battery pack.
According to Wikipedia:
The Fit EV employs Toshiba's SCiB batteries that can be recharged to 80% capacity in 15 minutes and can be recharged up to 4,000 times, more than 2.5 times that of other Li-ion batteries.
So, that could mean up to 400,000 miles if you believe them, but I'm skeptical of hitting numbers like that. But it might suggest that 150,000 to 200,000 miles on a battery pack is a reasonable expectation. Unfortunately, because my Fit is a compliance/lease-only car I'll never get to find out - I'll need to return it long before I can put enough miles on it to see the battery degrade. But I'll get back to you after I put a couple hundred thousand miles on my next EV ;-)
I think unless batteries get much better in capacity vs weight and someone can figure out how to recharge them a lot faster. We will never see EV's as a viable solution to the masses.
I have an EV (Honda Fit). I think that they're already useful for something like 3/4 of the population. Lots of parts to the equation. Right now they're better as the second car of a two or more car family, but they can be the only car depending on your driving pattern. They're great for someone who has a defined commute, as opposed to someone who drives to work and then drives around as part of their work. They're better when you have a garage or dedicated driveway, probably not so good right now if you have to park curbside. Right now some of them suffer pretty big range loss in cold weather (mine has about 50% range in the dead of winter compared to summer time and that definitely needs to be addressed, but I don't see why it can't be improved substantially).
Charge time is only an issue in rare circumstances; the problem is that people who don't drive an EV tend to think of recharging like going to the gas station; something you do when the tank runs low. That's not how most of us use the EV, though. Typically I use it on trips which I know I can make without recharging. (in warmer months I can drive 100 miles without recharge). The recharge happens at night, or between trips. A typical trip for me is to drive 50-60 miles and get home with 1/2 charge. I plug in to the dryer outlet in my garage and within 90 minutes it's full again. So, I may run some errands, go home and grab lunch, and by the time I'm done with lunch the car is fully charged again, ready for more errands. Or, if I commute to work I get home with 1/2 charge and again, within 90 minutes it's fully charged if I want to go out to dinner etc. Even if I use the full charge (which is very very rare) I typically recharge overnight so by the time I wake up in the morning it's ready to go. My point is that with a few exceptions you don't notice the charge time because it charges while you're doing something else. This means that I almost never have to wait for the car to charge. That said, if I had to do a road trip I could see myself doing it if I had to spend 20 minutes recharging every 200 miles. I'm sure high speed charging will improve, and by the time we hit 10-15 minutes to recharge after 200 miles of driving I think we hit diminishing returns, i.e. it'll be short enough I won't care whether they make it any faster or not.
Similarly, many non-EV people worry about the number of charging stations. Again, my typical use is that I don't have to use a charging station because I plan my trips so that I can make the full trip without recharging, but as an example if I need to drive into Boston (35 miles) I can make it there and back without a recharge, but if I also need to do another stop that's going to require more than another 20 miles of driving, then I'll plan to park in Boston at a charging station. If I've used 35 miles of charge, it only takes 20 minutes to fully recharge, so unless I'm running an especially short errand in Boston the car will be fully charged by the time I get back to it. One way to measure what percentage of my trips are EV friendly is to look at when I use the EV versus the gas car. During the summer, I find I use the gas car about once a month. That's about how often I have a trip to make that the EV doesn't have the range for. My next EV will have at least 200 miles of range and at that point I expect only 1 or 2 trips a YEAR won't fit the profile (and I'll just rent a car for those 2 trips).
All the calculations I've done show that my direct operating costs (i.e. cost to "fill the tank") is about 1/5th of what it costs when I drive a gasoline car. I also save on maintenance - there are no scheduled oil changes or tuneups... just a tire rotation that the dealership did for free. So, it's actually costing me quite a bit less than 1/5th of operating my gasoline car (Subaru Imprezza STi). Right
If electric cars become a reality, they will need to produce and distribute a lot more electricity to generate the energy currently generated by ICEs in the cars.
Keep in mind that ICE's are at best about 1/3 efficient with the fuel they burn while electric cars are around 90% or better with the electricity they use.
This is an important point. My electric car typically consumes 10kWh per day in the summer for a 50 mile commute. That's equivalent to leaving 4 100 watt lightbulbs on 24 hours a day. Not insignificant, but not huge from the electric company's standpoint. When my daughter uses the car all day just to get around town, she typically uses about 0.4kWh, or the equivalent of leaving a refrigerator light on all day.
Electric cars are very efficient.
I haven't measured it, but I probably use a lot more electricity running the electric dryer than the car (teenage daughters, don'tcha know?).
Probably not the same situation once the airline is a common carrier...
I don't think he's saying the airspace should be reserved for him, I think most of us think that those of us who fly deserve some regulations to prevent us from being killed because some idiot realtor caused a drone to strike our aircraft. I haven't heard anyone here say drones shouldn't be allowed. What we want is to be able to share the airspace safely.
Currently, a drone operator who causes a manned aircraft to crash has little fear for their own personal safety. They may have some liabilities (civil or even criminal) but they probably won't lose their life. I'd certainly like some regulations so that I'm not risking my life due to drone strikes every time I go flying.
You forgot to quote paragraph d:
(d) Helicopters, powered parachutes, and weight-shift-control aircraft. If the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface—
(1) A helicopter may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section, provided each person operating the helicopter complies with any routes or altitudes specifically prescribed for helicopters by the FAA; and
(2) A powered parachute or weight-shift-control aircraft may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (c) of this section.
We frequently operate at 500 feet and below - it's one of the things that makes a helicopter useful. It's going to be a real issue when we start sharing the airspace with drones. Birds are already enough of an issue, but birds large enough to take down the helicopter are generally visible at the speeds we fly close to the ground. A maneuvering quadropter on the other hand is probably close to invisible to us - it's hard enough to see flying objects below the horizon, but one that can maneuver aggressively such as a model helicopter or quadropter is almost impossible to see and avoid. Usually we see RC Fields well before we see the RC Aircraft - the fields tend to look a certain way so when we see such a field we generally keep clear or at least are much more vigilant (and would be reluctant to go below 500 feet if we though an RC aircraft was being operated).
Anyway, there are lots of operations that legitimately take us below the altitudes specified in paragraph b & c.
I'd like to second this. If I go out flying I'm likely to see one or two fields where people are flying RC aircraft. Not too hard to avoid. (and they have maximum altitudes the keep them below most manned aircraft). When uses for commercial drones are found, it's likely to suddenly flood the national airspace with a huge number of drones, and at that point we're going to need to have safety regulations already in place. If anything, I think FAA has been a little slow to enact drone regulations. I hope they hurry up, but also make balanced regulations that protects the flying public (and public on the ground) but also does not hinder the development of what will certainly be a huge and useful capability - I'm thinking autonomous drones here......
The reason FAA has the concept of commercial operating certificates is so that:
a) it can make sure those operators are following regulations enacted for safety reasons.
b) It can revoke the certificates of operators who for one reason or another violate those regulations.
The FAA has very little authority over an entity (person/corporation) who operates without a license or operating certificate. (I think it can levy fines against individuals but I'm not sure where their authority stops in that sense. I don't believe the FAA can act in a law enforcement capability, so it's not clear to me at what point a person can be arrested for violating FAA regulations).
By licensing drones, the FAA can enact rules to prevent them from endangering manned aircraft. For instance, if something akin to a type certificate is required by drones because FAA finds that certain equipment (like ADS-B) is required to insure separation from manned aircraft, how would they enforce that? Probably the way they will is by having certain equipment requirements for drones that want to operate in the national airspace.
Hopefully they will use a layered approach so that very small light drones will have little to no equipment requirements, but may have severe altitude restrictions, while larger/heavier drones, or drones that need to be operated at higher altitudes will have equipment requirements to keep them separated from manned aircraft.
We also have the issue of parts falling out of the air onto the public. In general this isn't an issue for manned aircraft, because usually when big pieces fall off the aircraft, the people on board are killed - it gives the crew plenty of incentive to make sure this doesn't happen. But what's to prevent an SLR carrying drone from falling out of the sky and killing people walking down the sidewalk? Since there's probably little to no risk on the part of the drone operator, we need a way to enforce some rules about how drones can be operated above people...
And I don't want people driving down my road disturbing my sleep at night, but I have to share the road with my neighbors and to some degree the same thing is true of the airspace above our property. There are lots of things that may take a helicopter low over your property - I've done utility inspection jobs that sometimes require us to fly quite low - while the noise may be a nuisance, it's an even bigger nuisance when your home loses electricity because the transmission wires weren't inspected.
I've flown traffic helicopters and we try to fly high so as to not make a lot of noise for people on the ground, but there are circumstances where we may have to fly fairly low so again, it's a nuisance, but does serve a useful purpose in helping to keep driver's aware of traffic conditions.
Another case I can think of would be a medivac helicopter making a low approach over your house in order to land nearby to pick up a critically ill person.
In general, the helicopter community works hard to be responsible about how and where we fly; we try to be sensitive to the noise we make and the fact that people on the ground have a right to feel safe, i.e. we need to operate the aircraft in a responsible fashion so that people on the ground are not exposed to risk due to our presence.
One worry I have is that crazy people with access to drones may try to enforce their desire to keep helicopters away from their homes by purposely crashing drones into helicopters. I'm thinking that there may be a market for armored civil helicopters in the not too distant future!. Or maybe a pod of anti-drone drones I can release from my helicopter... ;-)
I was talking about the Objective-C runtime making it safe to send messages through a nil pointer, i.e.:
MyFavoriteClass *mightBeAnObject = nil;
[mightBeAnObject pleaseDoSomething]; // effectively a noop
I think that's more elegant than mightBeAnObject?(args)
From what I've read so far, I have to agree. Like lots of people I first went to swift-lang.org and started reading and got really excited. Wow.. Apple has taken this dataflow language and adapted it as a programming language. What a cool way to keep all those cores busy! Finally, a parallel programming language adopted by the mainstream.
Then I realized my mistake. Now I'm pretty let down. Seems kind of lame, from what I've read so far. Also, I think I prefer the elegant way of handling nil in the runtime versus spreading ?'s all over my code
Just comparing my Honda Fit EV versus my Subaru STi (not the worlds most efficient ICE car):
Honda: 5.5 m/kWh = $0.12/5.5 = $0.02 per mile
Subaru: 22 mpg @ $4.05 (needs premium) $4.05/22 = $0.18 per mile
Really, solar power is as cheap as coal now. If that is true then why don't I see solar panels popping up everywhere?
OMH they are! I'm a helicopter pilot and when we fly around these days we're amazed at how many solar panels there are! We see two different forms: lots and lots of rooftop installations, both commercial and residential. They're *everywhere*. And then, solar gardens, i.e. 5-10 acres of land someone has installed solar panels on. Again, we see huge numbers of these around.
It's been an amazing thing to watch over just the last 2 years. Also, on a slightly different subject I was ferrying a helicopter across the country a couple years ago and was amazed by the number of windmills in Kansas. Thousands and thousands and thousands of them!
People are making investment in solar and wind
All this report shows is the the grid can handle a few EVs it says nothing about handling a lot of EVs.
Some quick googling shows lots of similar articles and studies. The utilities don't seem to be worried. My guess is that they are happily anticipating becoming the energy provider for transportation in addition to their current business. And, if BEV takes a decade to become commonplace they have a full decade to upgrade the grid.
"As the power grid stands right now, it can already handle millions of electric vehicles without bringing any further power plants online."
( http://science.howstuffworks.c... )
"Kjaer is less concerned about transmission or generation being overtaxed, as long as consumers are taught to charge their plug-in cars at night, during off-peak demand periods, to smooth the load. "
( http://www.scientificamerican.... )
"Doggett is CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas – which oversees the state’s electric grid. On Tuesday he told lawmakers on the Senate Natural Resources Committee that he doesn’t believe even widespread adoption of electric vehicles would have any negative effect on the transmission system."
( https://stateimpact.npr.org/te... )
"“Surprisingly, we found that in general, the electric utility infrastructure is already prepared to meet the President’s 2015 challenge. Our research revealed that utilities will not likely need to upgrade or expand transmission or generation capacity in the next ten years specifically to meet electric demand from EVs at projected adoption rates."
( http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe... )
And here is a paper from Southern California Edison which doesn't seem too worried about the impact of BEV on their grid:
http://newsroom.edison.com/int...
This study says that's not the case:
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...
Only downside, it's poisonous. On the upside, you can easily smell a leak at safe levels 1ppm.
I knew a guy who worked on Ammonia refrigerations systems. One day he told me they had a safety drill, simulating an Ammonia leak at the facility. The fire department was called, they drove through where the Ammonia cloud would have been, and he said that they figured 100% of them would have died if it had been a real leak. Granted because it was simulated they couldn't smell it, but he believed that by the time they would have smelled it, they would have been doomed. Just saying!
He also said that when they were working and the managers would hang around getting in the way, they would just surreptitiously vent a little Ammonia and the managers would scatter.
Seems like a nasty material for the general public to be pumping into their cars!
Even if that Carbon-Carbon battery turns out to be a scam, it's hard to believe battery technology won't improve dramatically in the next 10 years. It's not just EV automobiles driving the technology, it's portable electronic equipment and probably at some point home solar installations.
Battery tech needs to go up in power density at least an order of magnitude
That seems an exaggeration. I have a Honda Fit EV that will go about 105 miles on a charge (best case). I have a Subaru STi that goes 250 miles on a fillup. There are electric vehicles that have smaller and larger ranges, and the same is true for gas powered cars, but I don't think we need an order of magnitude improvement in battery capacity in order to be useful to the majority of people. The Fit EV is a lease (it's a compliance car) but my plan when the lease ends is to get a Tesla Model-E with 200 miles of range. Based on my experience with the Honda, 200 miles of range should be enough for all but a couple trips a year that I do.
With the Honda, I use about 50% of a charge on my 55 mile commute. It takes about 90 minutes to recharge that when I get home, i.e. I can commute to work and back home again, grab a bite to eat and have nearly a full charge before I'm ready to go back out that night. This is all without public charging infrastructure!
I think that when people talk about wanting to recharge their EV in the same time it takes to fill a gas tank, they're missing the point that the refueling of the two vehicles would typically be different, specifically that cars tend to sit for long parts of the day and installing a recharging network that can be used (say, while you are at work) is not an insurmountable barrier.
Long trips are indeed the one case that the EV struggles with, but I think that Tesla et al will come up with reasonable ways to deal with this, whether it be superchargers or towed battery packs
I maintain my gas car for just such trips, and I find that when I'm commuting daily with the EV, the gas car only gets run once or twice a month (seldom enough that I've had problems with the brakes rusting so that it's difficult to get the vehicle to move).
I have to question whether this is really the Toyota plan, or whether Hydrogen is a delaying tactic to be able to continue shipping their ICE cars, which let's face it, they have a large investment in. My gut tells me that Hydrogen powered cars in large numbers is decades away. If I'm right, why would Toyota be jumping on a technology that isn't likely to be useful anytime in the near future when we have a technology (BEV) that is already sufficient for a large number of people (the technology is, perhaps the price point isn't there yet) and it's a technology that is almost certainly going to greatly improve during the time frame necessary to bring Hydrogen automobiles to market.
I've read that the grid is already capable of charging large numbers of EV cars. For instance: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...
Also, if the electric company offers off-peak discounts, people would almost certainly take advantage (my Honda Fit EV, and most if not all of the other major EVs can be programmed to charge at a specific time, i.e. I just enter into my smartphone when I want the car to charge and it will then delay charging until that time. You can force it to charge immediately if you think you'll need to use the car again that day before normal charging time).
I'm leasing a Honda Fit EV which has a quoted range of something like 84, but when not using heating systems during the winter I see about 105 miles per charge (which costs about $2.50 in electricity). Interestingly, if you encounter a traffic jam in an electric car your range tends to go up because higher speed causes higher drag and a loss of efficiency; the EV car loves low speed driving. It's only a 19 kWh battery, so it would be relatively easy for Honda to produce one with more range (and I think Tesla has the right amount of range). There are enough chargers that there is little chance of getting stuck, but it would be a pain to have to plug in and wait, so typically I would only charge near my destination (like, if I'm going shopping and the mall has a charging station). The charging station issue is fairly easily solved - certainly there are no technical hurdles to greatly increasing the number of chargers out there - there simply needs to be a large enough user base to justify adding more. The fact is, however, that it's very rare that I charge away from home. Most of the time the range is sufficient for all the driving I do in a day, and I can simply plug in at home. I have a dryer outlet installed in my garage so that I can recharge at the end of a typical day in about 90 minutes (about 50% of the capacity is pretty typical when I get home from my 55 mile commute).
I've already decided that my next car will be a Tesla Model-E (200 mile range in a beemer 300 style chassis). I would guess that with that range, I might have to rent a car a couple times a year for long trips...
I commute about 2 miles to and from work each day.
But the Leaf is ugly, the Tesla S is expensive and neither is convertible.
I agree about the Leaf - I'd buy one if they weren't so darn ugly. I'm currently leasing a Honda Fit EV and love it My commute is 48 miles round trip and it can do that twice before recharging (but obviously I just charge it every night when I get home). Biggest drawback so far has been wintertime in Boston - the range drops by 50% when you have to run the heat (so I just drive my Subaru instead).
You have a good point, but there could be an advantage to your night vision with the camera - since you can limit how much light the screen emits, you won't be blinded by the reflection of someone's headlights But as someone else mentioned, it's important for the screen to properly dim (which seems to be something that eludes manufacturers).