Tesla Model S, Third Fire

[G7PSK]

If climatology goes with any ism. it's Thatcherism. It was Margaret Thatcher who first started to throw money at any one who could show in any way form or fashion that CO2 was bad for the environment, especially if that CO2 was produced by burning coal. She was having a little war with the miners union who were shall we say a little to the left of where she stood politically.
Somewhere along the road she came across a Swedish scientist who published a paper on the greenhouse  effect of CO2 and had been proclaiming doom since the early 60's on this matter.
Any way to cut a long story short she effectively put a bounty out for the head of the coal mining industry in the UK in order to have an excuse to close the mines and get rid of the coal miners union and especially its leader at that time Arthur Scargill.
Well she won the mines closed but she created a monster that would do anything for the next fix of research grant.

There are plans to build a 49.9 mega watt solar farm on an old airfield near where I live so close that I can see it, but is that 49.9 MW on a clear sunny day or in a thick fog, we don't get many really sunny days here in Norfolk UK stuck out as we are in the north sea. The only way it makes money is from the subsidies.

[Corporate666]

The DOE has been spending around $2 billion a year on hydrogen and fuel cell research for the last decade..

http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/budget.html

$20 billion and 10 years later did they come up with a useful hydrogen fuel cell - no. If something is not possible it doesn't matter how much you want it or how much you spend it remains not possible.

I don't know if the future holds some technological battery breakthrough and neither do you or anyone else. I am not dumb enough to think we should plan and invest in energy generation, transport and infrastructure based on the assumption that it does.

Perhaps you misunderstood my position.  I am not a proponent of hydrogen fuel cells, so arguing against them with me is preaching to the choir.

However, you are wrong that we do not know what the future holds for technological breakthroughs.  The advancement of technology is predictable and reliable.  It can even be charted and relied upon and exactly that is done in many industries and fields, vehicle emissions, electricity generation, computing power, transistor size, etc.   And it's really no different for battery technology.  We can chart energy density, size, cost and other factors in exactly the same way.

We don't even have to rely on potential future developments that may not happen.  There are discoveries that already work in the lab and are proven, and are now in the process of commercialization.  For example, chemical etching of battery electrodes to drastically increase surface area, which gives a 10x increase in capacity and/or a 10x reduction in charge time.  Not pie in the sky, because it already demonstrably works... same with nanotube technology in Li-Ion batteries, new chemistries, supercapacitors, and more.  If you chart battery performance/technology, it follows a similar trend to any other technology.

It's not even worth debating when you consider that today you can buy a car that goes 300 miles on a charge and can be fully charged in one hour... when just a few years prior you could only go 20-30 miles on a charge and it took 8-12 hours to charge.

Pretty much end of story.

[Corporate666]

That is exactly how they do that over here and in many other countries as well. So yes, it can be done and it does help to keep cars stay as clean as when they left the factory.

I am not saying it can't be done.  I'm saying it's not cost effective, nor efficient, nor reliable.  It's burdensome on the people who must get the annual testing and it is infinitely more difficult to mandate, maintain and regulate tens of millions of emissions devices in the hands of the public than to do the same on a large scale at the point of production.  Not to mention a massive disparity in cost.  It's like suggesting we have each person build and maintain the piece of roadway in front of their house vs. doing it on a large and centralized scale

BTW the Volt needs 225Wh per km so per your examples it produces 116grams of CO2 per km in the UK and 139 grams per km in the US (average). Ofcourse my 14 year old car is less efficient. Its ICE technology from the 90's! I could cheat though and put 100% bio-diesel in my car lowering its CO2 output to 50 grams per km. All it takes for me is to get in my car and drive to a gas station selling bio-diesell about 5km from my home (its just not along the routes I normally drive).

The Volt will go 40 miles (64.4km) on a charge, which is 12.8kW (80% of a 16kWh battery).  That's just under 200Wh per km.  My example shows that in the UK, it's 1551kg of CO2 for 3300kWh of power = 0.47 grams per watt-hour.  That would be 94 grams of CO2 per kilometer according to average UK CO2 pollution rates.  If you look at the data I posted, there are no petrol engine cars anywhere close to that number, and only a handful of diesels (like the Smart and Clio Eco) are "greener".  But a Smart diesel eco model is not comparable to a Chevy Volt in terms of size, amenities, etc. 

So it proves what I said.  The Volt is "greener" than virtually every car on the road, unless you take a particularly dirty area for electricity generation and compare it with a particularly clean car.

For most British people, the Volt is going to be much cleaner than just about every other car on the road, with the exception of a few micro-sized diesels that are greener, but not comparable vehicles in terms of size and features.  Or, more bluntly, you can't buy a car that is comparable to a Volt (in size/amenities) that is any greener.

And making the equation even worse, is that we are talking about CO2 emissions from the combustion cars alone.  It does not include the additional CO2 pollution caused by mining the fossil fuels, refining them, transporting them to the gas station, etc.  All of which makes it and even worse case for combustion engine cars.

And perhaps coal/gas power plants are more efficient by themselves there is still a large amount of losses. From the plant to the wheel you have transport, conversion, battery, conversion and motor losses: 0.92 * 0.95 * 0.90 * 0.90 (Prius drive train data) * 0.95 = 0.68. So that is 32% loss between the power station and the wheels. If the power plant has a remarkable efficiency of 60% then the overall efficiency is still only 41%. The problem with electricity is that it needs to be transported and converted several times. While each 'link' is efficient in itself (and thus hard to improve!) the whole chain is not very efficient.

Your efficiency numbers are way off.  First of all, from generation to the outlet, it's about 7%.  Secondly, the efficiency of generation->outlet is getting better every year.  Normal coal plants were 30% efficient years ago.  45% was the standard for newer plants, and the newest are over 60% efficient.  And that's coal. 

http://www02.abb.com/global/seitp/seitp202.nsf/c71c66c1f02e6575c125711f004660e6/64cee3203250d1b7c12572c8003b2b48/$file/energy+efficiency+in+the+power+grid.pdf

And trying to "work back" into the numbers by inflating all the losses along the way is disingenuous, especially when you minimize all the numbers on the combustion engine side.  The data is already out there, and the truth is your 41% number is about 40% low.  The real number is that EV's turn 59-62% of grid power into motive force (source: US Dept of Energy http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml).    And in a combustion engine?  17-21%.  And don't talk about 40% efficient diesels... a number achieved in a specific engine at a specific RPM are irrelevant, unless you drive at 1800RPM in a direct-injection diesel all the time... what matters is the actual measured efficiency, and that is 17-21%, vs 59-62% for EV's.

And why is it that people love to talk about transmission and generation losses for electricity, but willfully ignore the cost of drilling for oil, refining it, transporting it to the gas station?  Because they aren't looking to understand the numbers, they are looking to further an agenda. 

Fact is, EV's are much greener than almost all combustion engine cars, with the exceptions being particularly efficient diesel cars (the quantity of which you can pretty much count on your fingers), and/or people who live in particularly dirty areas for power generation - and even then, the comparisons don't hold up unless you compare well appointed cars like the Tesla/Ampera to econo-boxes like the Smart and Clio - hardly a fair comparison.

[JoeyP]

If climatology goes with any ism. it's Thatcherism. It was Margaret Thatcher who first started to throw money at any one who could show in any way form or fashion that CO2 was bad for the environment, especially if that CO2 was produced by burning coal. She was having a little war with the miners union who were shall we say a little to the left of where she stood politically.
Somewhere along the road she came across a Swedish scientist who published a paper on the greenhouse  effect of CO2 and had been proclaiming doom since the early 60's on this matter.
Any way to cut a long story short she effectively put a bounty out for the head of the coal mining industry in the UK in order to have an excuse to close the mines and get rid of the coal miners union and especially its leader at that time Arthur Scargill.
Well she won the mines closed but she created a monster that would do anything for the next fix of research grant.
...

Thank you G7PSK. That may literally be the most interesting bit of information I've ever read in this forum (I am not being sarcastic). I had no idea that Maggie was behind the beast under which we all now suffer. Ironic example of extreme unintended consequences. She won the battle, but created a new and much larger war. I did notice years ago that (at that time) Brits seemed to be the most staunch believers in global warming, but I had no idea why. So many things make sense now.

[Corporate666]

The data is out there. Enjoy.

Neat link, thank you!

If we believe that analysis (which is probably more data-driven than most here), EV's have a "net environmental impact" of 9% to 29% less than combustion (gas and diesel) vehicles based on current battery technology and use trends - and that savings includes the inherent negatives associated with production of EV's (plastics/batteries/whatever).

The downside is the potential for pollution from heavy metals used in EV's (batteries).  Looks like that book came out a year or two ago - IIRC, some of the newest Li-Ion chemistry is a fair bit greener than what might have been included in that report.  Nevertheless, another datapoint that proves EV's are greener than combustion engine cars.

[zapta]

We should split this thread into two. One for the technical aspects of EV and one for the political aspects. Both are fascinating but very different.

[Corporate666]

Some of this falls into the untrue-urban-myth category...

2. Battery technology has not evolved very much in the past 100 years.  There has been zero "milestone" improvements in 30 years - just slight increases in capacity and charge-ability.  Your mobile phone battery has not become a lot better fast - but low power electronics has come far in lower power consumption.  But a battery "revolution" would be nice. There is a lot of "promising" research results announced all the time - but so far none of them seem to get to the commercial (usable) stage.

This one is definitely not true. 

http://www.akbars.net/images/battery%20energy%20density.png

It's an often repeated falsehood and often supported by charts that show CPU power/speed, disk storage, transistor size.  When you normalize the numbers for those other metrics, it makes battery energy density appear flat.  But if you dig deeper, it's because there was virtually no money being dumped into battery technology for decades, while billions was being poured into disk space, computing power, etc.  If you look at the charts more recently, there have been huge advancements in batteries, especially in the past 20 years.  We can see this is true as I bet many of us had laptops powered by NiCD, then NiMH and now Li-Ion

3. Fossil fuels are sourced from many places. But many rare earth components for a lot of battery types - are mostly only mined in China who has more than monopoly on those rare earth minerals. So to drive your EV in the future - all your "fuel" storage mediums must be sourced from China.

This isn't true either.  Half of the worlds lithium is in Bolivia, and the biggest producers of lithium are Chile and Argentina.  1/3rd of all lithium for batteries comes from one mine in Chile.  I believe Japan and South Korea have over 75% market share on lithium ion battery production.  It's likely the factories that make the actual batteries are more often located in China, but the elements used in the batteries aren't mostly or only mined in China.

5. Any electricity grid in the world right now - is NOT ready for millions of consumers suddenly plugging in their cars to charge the 60-85 kW batteries overnight. The amount of money and resources needed to expand the grid to cater for even 10% EV cars on the road is staggering.

This is also definitely not true and is another oft-repeated falsehood regarding EV's.  While it is true that if everyone bought an EV and plugged it in, it would overload the grid, that's not really relevant because that's not how products enter the market.  If everyone bought a new 60% flat screen TV tomorrow, it would also overload the grid - but that doesn't mean big screen TV's are a danger to our livelihood.  There are studies out there that analyze increases in grid efficiency (something like 2% per year) and additional electrical demand from EV's.  It works out that the increase in acceptance of EV's does not really change the increased electrical demand curve at all, and that is already accounted for in existing models for grid upgrades, built-outs and efficiency improvements.  The overloaded grid thing is a non-issue.

[dr.diesel]

The downside is the potential for pollution from heavy metals used in EV's (batteries).  Looks like that book came out a year or two ago - IIRC, some of the newest Li-Ion chemistry is a fair bit greener than what might have been included in that report.  Nevertheless, another datapoint that proves EV's are greener than combustion engine cars.

I didn't read it word for word, but combustion vehicles pollute in many other indirect ways likely not considered, just to name a few:

 - Residual oil in oil filters/quart containers by the millions, of which many end up in land fills
 - Oil leaking on pavement, via crankcase, diff, tranny etc
 - Heat pollution
 - Fuel vapors that escape during use/fill ups

And many others I'm quite sure.

[Corporate666]

The downside is the potential for pollution from heavy metals used in EV's (batteries).  Looks like that book came out a year or two ago - IIRC, some of the newest Li-Ion chemistry is a fair bit greener than what might have been included in that report.  Nevertheless, another datapoint that proves EV's are greener than combustion engine cars.

I didn't read it word for word, but combustion vehicles pollute in many other indirect ways likely not considered, just to name a few:

 - Residual oil in oil filters/quart containers by the millions, of which many end up in land fills
 - Oil leaking on pavement, via crankcase, diff, tranny etc
 - Heat pollution
 - Fuel vapors that escape during use/fill ups

And many others I'm quite sure.

A most excellent point - and very true.

I said once before that, as engineers, if we were presented with two possible solutions to the "transport humans around" problem - and one proposal was for an electric vehicle, the other for gas... we would all sit around ridiculing the insanity of the gas proposal.  It is just such a complex beast, and decades of brilliant engineers have come up with truly genius solutions like power steering pumps, brake boosters/hydraulics/master-slave cylinders, ABS systems, lubrication and cooling systems and such.  It's also amazing that we're pretty much on generation 1 of EV's and they are already so competitive with gas powered cars.  I can't even fathom what we'll be driving in 50 years. 

The scales will tip in favor of EV's very, very quickly... it's really like the digital camera example i used before.  I think I bought my first digital camera - a Kodak DC-25 around the mid 1990's and it had about 600x400 resolution, cost me well over $1k and would take about 10 or 12 pictures on a set of AA batteries before their voltage dropped too low to operate it.  I was big into photography then, and people would argue that digital cameras would never replace film cameras.  Purists said the art of photography would be lost because the skill of composition would no longer matter.  And they also said that digital cameras would never match the resolution of 35mm film, and if they did, would cost tens of thousands of $$.  That debate raged even a decade ago, IIRC.  Now, 10 years later, when you can go to Amazon and buy a Canon Rebel T3 with more megapixels than 35mm film could ever dream of for a cheaper price than a 35mm SLR of 10 years ago, the debate is over.

Will be the same with EV's soon.

[nctnico]

If climatology goes with any ism. it's Thatcherism. It was Margaret Thatcher who first started to throw money at any one who could show in any way form or fashion that CO2 was bad for the environment, especially if that CO2 was produced by burning coal. She was having a little war with the miners union who were shall we say a little to the left of where she stood politically.
Any way to cut a long story short she effectively put a bounty out for the head of the coal mining industry in the UK in order to have an excuse to close the mines and get rid of the coal miners union and especially its leader at that time Arthur Scargill.

Nonsense. Just like everywhere in Europe state owned coal mines where costing money because natural gas was much cheaper. In the NL they closed the coal mines much earlier laying off about 60000 people in a few years. Ofcourse shutting down an entire industry causes grief but its unfair to have other people work & pay for an industry which is basically subsidised labour.

@Corporate666: First generation EVs? Get your facts straight. Someone else already posted a picture of the first EV and it predates the Ford model-T!

[elgonzo]

If we believe that analysis (which is probably more data-driven than most here), EV's have a "net environmental impact" of 9% to 29% less than combustion (gas and diesel) vehicles based on current battery technology and use trends - and that savings includes the inherent negatives associated with production of EV's (plastics/batteries/whatever).

The downside is the potential for pollution from heavy metals used in EV's (batteries).  Looks like that book came out a year or two ago - IIRC, some of the newest Li-Ion chemistry is a fair bit greener than what might have been included in that report.  Nevertheless, another datapoint that proves EV's are greener than combustion engine cars.

Yes, they can be (and hopefully they will). While the numbers in the report are based on European Energy Mix (where electricity production is only 30-something% on coal/lignite, compared to 40% world-wide), still the numbers will hold, demonstrating the potential of the technology (although there is a hot debate here in the forum about usability of EVs with current battery techs where both proponents and critics have valid points)

Now, while battery technology certainly has an usability/utility and an environmental impact, it is the smaller of the challenges to make (or keep) EVs green. The report puts the finger right where the pain is. From its conclusion: "However, it is counterproductive to promote EVs in regions where electricity is produced from oil, coal, and lignite combustion. The electrification of transportation should be accompanied by a sharpened policy focus with regard to life cycle management, and thus counter potential setbacks in terms of water pollution and toxicity. EVs are poised to link the personal transportation sector together with the electricity, the electronic, and the metal industry sectors in an unprecedented way. Therefore the developments of these sectors must be jointly and consistently addressed in order for EVs to contribute positively to pollution mitigation efforts."

And the energy sector is particular problem that is difficult to tackle. Germany's Green Energy Initiative ("Energiewende"), in a pathological interaction with the emission trading scheme, led to a situation that despite the "Energiewende", CO2 emissions in Germany are rising the 2nd year in the row. Yes, there was Fukushima and in its wake the shutting down of 8 German nuclear power plants - and renewable energy cannot compensate for this. But this is only half the truth. Here comes the stupid part (or smart bit, depending on your POV): The emission certificates "generated" by the "Energiewende" allow energy corps to keep running large cheap Multi-Gigawatt coal power plants (yes, in Germany) without being penalized. This leads to a situation where coal power plants are not being shutdown despite Germany "going green", and electricity exports are being increased. This is the situation we have right now. The way out of this disaster would be harsh: Get rid of the emission certification trading scheme as it is now. And don't haste the program, since the costs involved are huge, and if you rush and brute-force the costs over your citizens then they will just hate you and don't give shit about green-clean-whatever. Arguably, in different countries with different initiatives, scenarios can play out differently.

However, generally the situation regarding electricity demand and green energy initiatives will become more exacerbated when imagining a world where all petrol cars are replaced with EVs.

Take Berlin as an example. It has approx. 1.15 million registered passenger cars (which is on the low end compared with other big cities, so i am not really going for the worst case here). Lets just assume, that all of these vehicles were EV and approx 0.4 million of them (roughly 1/3) would recharge about 20kWh during a 4-hour window during night (i guess that is a realistic scenario, admittedly simplified to allow back-on-the-envelope 'calculations'). This would equal to a power need of 0.4 million x 5kW = 2 Gigawatt!!! For the EVs in Berlin alone.

With this in mind you basically are left with 4 options: (1) Bring me back my beloved somewhat clean atomic work horses, and hope that only one on average will go boom every 25 years or so. (2) I will rather stick with getting additional fossil fuel power plants. Lung cancer from pollution is preferable over testicular cancer from radioactive contamination, or so i think... (3) I will spend all my money, my grandparents and my faith in god on the journey to find new awesome clean risk-free ways to produce/store electricity non-intermittently at a large scale, and hope for the best. (4) I will stick with renewal energy as i know it, i will keep my money and my beloved grandparents, so, sorry, but no EVs for the mass market or much less individual transportation in general.

[Rufus]

and one proposal was for an electric vehicle, the other for gas... we would all sit around ridiculing the insanity of the gas proposal.

Of course that was already done around 1910 in America when there were more vehicles powered by electricity than internal combustion.

The engineers looked at the 60:1 difference in energy storage density and the speed with which that storage could be refilled and came to the conclusion electric vehicles are relatively very crap and relatively they are still crap today.

[nctnico]

Meanwhile POET-DSM is collecting agricultural residu to start their first commercial scale bio-fuel factory: http://poetdsm.com/pr/farmers-now-harvesting-biomass-liberty
I need to buy a different car next year but I think I'll look for one which can run on mixtures consisting of mostly ethanol. I don't need to source real green electricity and pay for an expensive battery pack to go green. Picking a different nozzle at the gas station is al that is required.

[NiHaoMike]

and one proposal was for an electric vehicle, the other for gas... we would all sit around ridiculing the insanity of the gas proposal.

Of course that was already done around 1910 in America when there were more vehicles powered by electricity than internal combustion.

The engineers looked at the 60:1 difference in energy storage density and the speed with which that storage could be refilled and came to the conclusion electric vehicles are relatively very crap and relatively they are still crap today.

Then they realized that using both largely reduces the disadvantages of each. Hybrid makes a lot of sense, except many of the efficiency benefits of hybrids actually don't really have anything to do with the hybrid system itself. Stuff like better aerodynamics and Atkinson cycle can be applied just as well on a non hybrid with basically the same result. The problem with that is if you marketed a non hybrid with MPG ratings almost as good as the hybrid version, few would buy the hybrid.

If they really wanted to cut down on oil use, they could require all new cars to get at least 30 MPG highway. They should also require some sort of real time MPG feedback and eco driving indicator, which has no effect on EPA ratings but does have an effect in the real world. But that would narrow the gap between gas and electric, even more so as gas prices drop due to lowered demand.

[Corporate666]

and one proposal was for an electric vehicle, the other for gas... we would all sit around ridiculing the insanity of the gas proposal.

Of course that was already done around 1910 in America when there were more vehicles powered by electricity than internal combustion.

The engineers looked at the 60:1 difference in energy storage density and the speed with which that storage could be refilled and came to the conclusion electric vehicles are relatively very crap and relatively they are still crap today.

When your argument is that electric cars and combustion cars of 1910 are the same as electric cars and combustion cars of 2013, it's analogous to admitting defeat.  All that is missing is a Hitler reference.

We both know the score, only one of us admits it though. 

[mtdoc]

If climatology goes with any ism. it's Thatcherism. It was Margaret Thatcher who first started to throw money at any one who could show in any way form or fashion that CO2 was bad for the environment, especially if that CO2 was produced by burning coal.....
...

Thank you G7PSK. That may literally be the most interesting bit of information I've ever read in this forum (I am not being sarcastic). I had no idea that Maggie was behind the beast under which we all now suffer. Ironic example of extreme unintended consequences. She won the battle, but created a new and much larger war. I did notice years ago that (at that time) Brits seemed to be the most staunch believers in global warming, but I had no idea why. So many things make sense now.

Hilarious!   I never would have thought that an engineering forum would also have some of those types so blinded by ideology or political agenda so as to deny basic scientific facts....

[Corporate666]

@Corporate666: First generation EVs? Get your facts straight. Someone else already posted a picture of the first EV and it predates the Ford model-T!

You telling me to get my facts straight is so dripping with irony that I'll have to put my waders on before coming back to this thread! You haven't admitted any errors in your facts despite being corrected about a dozen times in this very thread.  You always switch topic something else when proven wrong on any given point.  And six months from now when the next EV thread comes up, you will repeat all the same debunked arguments despite having the correct information given to you many times.

As for my statement, when you want to argue semantics, you've already lost.  We both know that I am talking about the first of the modern EV's.  Not the EV1 from 18 years ago, or the Henney from 50 years ago or the Baker from 90+ years ago.  We're talking about the first modern Li-Ion powered EV's that offer real competition to combustion vehicles, because they are much greener, much cheaper to operate and offer many advantages over combustion engines.

[kaz911]

Some of this falls into the untrue-urban-myth category...

2. Battery technology has not evolved very much in the past 100 years.  There has been zero "milestone" improvements in 30 years - just slight increases in capacity and charge-ability.  Your mobile phone battery has not become a lot better fast - but low power electronics has come far in lower power consumption.  But a battery "revolution" would be nice. There is a lot of "promising" research results announced all the time - but so far none of them seem to get to the commercial (usable) stage.

This one is definitely not true. 

http://www.akbars.net/images/battery%20energy%20density.png

It's an often repeated falsehood and often supported by charts that show CPU power/speed, disk storage, transistor size.  When you normalize the numbers for those other metrics, it makes battery energy density appear flat.  But if you dig deeper, it's because there was virtually no money being dumped into battery technology for decades, while billions was being poured into disk space, computing power, etc.  If you look at the charts more recently, there have been huge advancements in batteries, especially in the past 20 years.  We can see this is true as I bet many of us had laptops powered by NiCD, then NiMH and now Li-Ion

3. Fossil fuels are sourced from many places. But many rare earth components for a lot of battery types - are mostly only mined in China who has more than monopoly on those rare earth minerals. So to drive your EV in the future - all your "fuel" storage mediums must be sourced from China.

This isn't true either.  Half of the worlds lithium is in Bolivia, and the biggest producers of lithium are Chile and Argentina.  1/3rd of all lithium for batteries comes from one mine in Chile.  I believe Japan and South Korea have over 75% market share on lithium ion battery production.  It's likely the factories that make the actual batteries are more often located in China, but the elements used in the batteries aren't mostly or only mined in China.

5. Any electricity grid in the world right now - is NOT ready for millions of consumers suddenly plugging in their cars to charge the 60-85 kW batteries overnight. The amount of money and resources needed to expand the grid to cater for even 10% EV cars on the road is staggering.

This is also definitely not true and is another oft-repeated falsehood regarding EV's.  While it is true that if everyone bought an EV and plugged it in, it would overload the grid, that's not really relevant because that's not how products enter the market.  If everyone bought a new 60% flat screen TV tomorrow, it would also overload the grid - but that doesn't mean big screen TV's are a danger to our livelihood.  There are studies out there that analyze increases in grid efficiency (something like 2% per year) and additional electrical demand from EV's.  It works out that the increase in acceptance of EV's does not really change the increased electrical demand curve at all, and that is already accounted for in existing models for grid upgrades, built-outs and efficiency improvements.  The overloaded grid thing is a non-issue.

1. You call a battery increase in Li Ion from 1995 of 140 Wh/kg to 2005 (??) of 200 Wh/kg a milestone? (dependent on how you read the graph - it could be a 20 year span...) that is a growth of 6 watt / kg per year = 4% per year. When I check until 2012/2013 maximum is 265 Wh / kg (Panasonic) - the growth is STILL 4% year year staring 1995 with a base of 140 Wh/kg. So absolutely no milestone increases from 1995-2013. A milestone is a HUGE jump - not a predictable scale.

2. Japan has ZERO lithium mines. They buy from Bolivia and China when they can. But you are right that lithium - Bolivia has the largest reserve. But China is No 2. It is not about who makes the batteries. It is about where the raw materials come from.

3. You can't compare a 60" TV to a Tesla home charger that uses 208-240v and 40-70 Ah = minimum 8320->14560 watt.  A typical home solar setup generates 4000-8000 watt in PEAK hours. A typical US home uses 4000-8000 watt peak. So you are talking doubling to quadrupling the potential Amps delivered to each house when the car is charging. And as most working people follow the same schedule - so loads hits about the same times for each home even with smart communicating chargers. Peak in the US is from 6pm -> 2am. Which is also the same time residential power consumption normally takes off and people uses peak amount of electricity in the home. Before you spit out more unresearched statements - go and have a chat with your local power company and ask them what times they shit their pants due to consumption. I promise you they are on their toes from 6pm onwards until 12am. There are "studies" saying that you can power your EV with a 1.5-3 kW solar panel setup - and while that is true - you would need to leave the car at home during sunlight hours - or store the charge in batteries. When you store energy in batteries - you loose 5-35% of the power - before it even hits your car.

4. 2% growth per year on the grid - fine - but EV's and Hybrid sales double every year for the last few years. Again - go and talk to your power company and ask them what their biggest fear is. And I promise you they will say EV's in the home.

But try for once to do the maths yourself and don't rely on what other people tell you. I trusted in the "government studies" - until I read them and the assumptions they made. Most assumptions are made with little background in how humans live and work - and uses idealised figures for consumption patterns. Then I went and spoke to power plant operators - and they told me that despite their many "reports" to government officials - their input was always ignored since it is currently not politically correct to say anything bad about EV's.

As I said - I like renewable energy - and I like EV's - but realistic for the next 5-10 years - unless we have breakthroughs in energy consumption pr mile driven - it is not the big benefit it is hailed to be. In my book - the only good thing right now is that a lot of research is going on. That is great. And hybrid cars or natural gas powered cars -  so far to me seems like the most sensible "middle road" until we have some technology breakthroughs.

[SeanB]

Meanwhile POET-DSM is collecting agricultural residu to start their first commercial scale bio-fuel factory: http://poetdsm.com/pr/farmers-now-harvesting-biomass-liberty
I need to buy a different car next year but I think I'll look for one which can run on mixtures consisting of mostly ethanol. I don't need to source real green electricity and pay for an expensive battery pack to go green. Picking a different nozzle at the gas station is al that is required.

Buy one made in South Africa or Brazil, where alcohol blends are used. We got the bugs out decades ago, which were mostly materials reacting with the fuel. So a base model BMW 3 series, VW base models or Ford/Mazda.

[Corporate666]

1. You call a battery increase in Li Ion from 1995 of 140 Wh/kg to 2005 (??) of 200 Wh/kg a milestone? (dependent on how you read the graph - it could be a 20 year span...) that is a growth of 6 watt / kg per year = 4% per year. When I check until 2012/2013 maximum is 265 Wh / kg (Panasonic) - the growth is STILL 4% year year staring 1995 with a base of 140 Wh/kg. So absolutely no milestone increases from 1995-2013. A milestone is a HUGE jump - not a predictable scale.

I never said 140->200 Wh/kg was a milestone.  I just said that it was untrue that there has been essentially no progress in batteries in 100 years, because that statement is simply untrue.  I posted the chart to back it up, but even without the chart, we all know it ourselves - we probably all have numerous Li-Ion batteries in our devices that drastically outperform what we had just a decade earlier.

2. Japan has ZERO lithium mines. They buy from Bolivia and China when they can. But you are right that lithium - Bolivia has the largest reserve. But China is No 2. It is not about who makes the batteries. It is about where the raw materials come from.

Nope, still wrong.  Bolivia has the largest reserves, about 50% all lithium reserves are there.  Chile is #2.  Combined, they have over 60% of all the world's lithium reserves.  China is a distant 3rd at 16%, about tied with Argentina at 15%.  Next is the USA, Russia, Australia and the rest.  You said was "are mostly only mined in China who has more than monopoly on those rare earth minerals". That is not true. 

And I never said Japan has lithium mines.  I said Japan/SKorea have market share of over 75% on Li-Ion production - because they do.  There was an article in the WSJ just a week or two ago about the Japanese/SK virtual lock on Li-Ion production.

3. You can't compare a 60" TV to a Tesla home charger that uses 208-240v and 40-70 Ah = minimum 8320->14560 watt.  A typical home solar setup generates 4000-8000 watt in PEAK hours. A typical US home uses 4000-8000 watt peak. So you are talking doubling to quadrupling the potential Amps delivered to each house when the car is charging. And as most working people follow the same schedule - so loads hits about the same times for each home even with smart communicating chargers. Peak in the US is from 6pm -> 2am. Which is also the same time residential power consumption normally takes off and people uses peak amount of electricity in the home. Before you spit out more unresearched statements - go and have a chat with your local power company and ask them what times they shit their pants due to consumption. I promise you they are on their toes from 6pm onwards until 12am. There are "studies" saying that you can power your EV with a 1.5-3 kW solar panel setup - and while that is true - you would need to leave the car at home during sunlight hours - or store the charge in batteries. When you store energy in batteries - you loose 5-35% of the power - before it even hits your car.

Sure you can compare EV's to flat screen TV's.  I never said the power consumption was the same, I said the strain of everyone buying either product simultaneously would be comparable.  There was a report I read a year or so ago by some consortium of power companies who noted that flat screen TV's was the primary reason for electricity usage over the past decade, but that annual efficiencies in the power grid made up for the added demand.  The same report had an analysis of EV adoption rates and concluded that the strain on the grid from them would not affect the standard usage curve increases that have been going on for years.  The bottom line is that EV adoption will be gradual and predictable, just as all other increased demands are, rendering the "strain on the grid" issue moot.

But try for once to do the maths yourself and don't rely on what other people tell you. I trusted in the "government studies" - until I read them and the assumptions they made. Most assumptions are made with little background in how humans live and work - and uses idealised figures for consumption patterns. Then I went and spoke to power plant operators - and they told me that despite their many "reports" to government officials - their input was always ignored since it is currently not politically correct to say anything bad about EV's.

The studies I posted from the DOE include all the assumptions and metrics they use to get their numbers.  Which specific metrics do you disagree with?  Some other posters have made rash assumptions that they do not include biofuels, or they unfairly weight old inefficient cars... neither are true - all of the assumptions are clearly stated.

As I said - I like renewable energy - and I like EV's - but realistic for the next 5-10 years - unless we have breakthroughs in energy consumption pr mile driven - it is not the big benefit it is hailed to be. In my book - the only good thing right now is that a lot of research is going on. That is great. And hybrid cars or natural gas powered cars -  so far to me seems like the most sensible "middle road" until we have some technology breakthroughs.

I am not sure what you mean "not the big benefit it is hailed to be".  The claims about EV's are that they pollute significantly less and their operation costs are significantly lower.  Both claims are provably true.  I am not sure what other claims are made that are untrue?

I disagree about CNG cars.  They essentially have all the problems of gasoline cars, with a few more added in for good measure (lower inherent power in CNG vs gasoline, high-pressure storage/transport dangers, energy required to compress the gas), yet they offer nothing compelling over gasoline cars.  That's why CNG vehicles have been a flop in the market other than specific uses like buses or other fleets where maintenance and refueling can be done centrally. Not to mention the fact that we already have the infrastructure required for EV's, whereas we don't for CNG's.

[zapta]

CNG allows to use the huge gas reserves of the US which will provide us independent energy for the next 100 years.

[tom66]

CNG allows to use the huge gas reserves of the US which will provide us independent energy for the next 100 years.

Does that include additional demand from new vehicles or only at the current rate?

The engineers looked at the 60:1 difference in energy storage density and the speed with which that storage could be refilled and came to the conclusion electric vehicles are relatively very crap and relatively they are still crap today.

Well back then it was mostly lead acid batteries, so around 400:1. So not practical beyond about 30 miles.
Nowadays it is less than 50:1 so the engineering solution is to put a massive battery in the vehicle.

Again, from an engineering perspective, what is wrong with putting a large battery in a vehicle, if it works well, like in the Tesla's case? If you do it like the Roadster or Prius and put it all at the rear, you can create problems with the handling.  Flat to the floor works well.

[kaz911]

The studies I posted from the DOE include all the assumptions and metrics they use to get their numbers.  Which specific metrics do you disagree with?  Some other posters have made rash assumptions that they do not include biofuels, or they unfairly weight old inefficient cars... neither are true - all of the assumptions are clearly stated.

Again - please try to calculate yourself..

Peak charge rate starts at 6pm-02am. What cables do you have running to your house today?

I know in Europe you most likely have 3 phases of 16 Amp 220v to a 3 bd villa - or one 220v 50 Amp which is then split. In the older days you would have had 380 Volt line in - but that is becoming unusual now as brown goods runs 220v and not 380v any longer. So what is typical power inlet to a villa in the US? Certainly not much more. So to charge your EV with a fast charger - you would need to at least DOUBLE your power capacity.

Right now the US have about 1,930,000 MW electricity capacity in total. If there are 100.000 active EV's today in total - they only use 0.009% of the capacity in the peak charge hour. But if you add the 2% power added to the grid as you say per year - but EV's in use continues to double - then in 2023 the EV's will consume 7% of the TOTAL expanded grid capacity at the peak charge hour.

Total US Residential Energy consumption today (INCLUDING HEAT) is 22% of total energy consumption. I can't find a reliable number for how much of that is pure electricity - if you know where I can find those numbers let me know.

My guess is that residential peak energy consumption will double in 10 years if EV growth continues as it does now.  I know the growth will not continue at the same pace as now. But if it did - EV's would have a 40% market share in 10 years based on the 2007 study saying the US have about 250 million vehicles.

But researchers says EV 7% market share in 2020 [http://evworld.com/news.cfm?newsid=31359] which is actually more than a doubling per year as per my calculations. So if their predictions are correct - then the 2013 EV energy PEAK charge consumption will be above 11% of total EXPANDED energy production in the US.

So just try to figure out how you are going to transport all those extra amperes down to your home and residential area. 10 years is not a long time - and it is definitely not long enough to double the capacity to each residential area in the US.

But again - do your own maths.. The ONLY thing that will keep make EV's viable is locally produced cheap electricity that does not need to be transported from a power station.

[mamalala]

Peak charge rate starts at 6pm-02am. What cables do you have running to your house today?

I know in Europe you most likely have 3 phases of 16 Amp 220v to a 3 bd villa ...

That's not correct, at least for Germany. Basically the minimum is around 3 x 20 Amps (14.5 kW), quite often you have old installations with about 3 x 50 Amps (34 kW). Since 2009 the usual "input" line is  3 x 63 Amps (43.5 kW) or 3 x 100 Amps (69 kW). Check DIN 18015-1 for more information about that.

3 x 16 Amps is simply not feasible. A regular stove here runs on 3 phase power, requiring a 16 Amps breaker on each phase. It may be sufficient for very small single-room appartements with central heating & warm water, but anything beyond that has a better supply.

Greetings,

Chris

[kaz911]

Peak charge rate starts at 6pm-02am. What cables do you have running to your house today?

I know in Europe you most likely have 3 phases of 16 Amp 220v to a 3 bd villa ...

That's not correct, at least for Germany. Basically the minimum is around 3 x 20 Amps (14.5 kW), quite often you have old installations with about 3 x 50 Amps (34 kW). Since 2009 the usual "input" line is  3 x 63 Amps (43.5 kW) or 3 x 100 Amps (69 kW). Check DIN 18015-1 for more information about that.

3 x 16 Amps is simply not feasible. A regular stove here runs on 3 phase power, requiring a 16 Amps breaker on each phase. It may be sufficient for very small single-room appartements with central heating & warm water, but anything beyond that has a better supply.

Greetings,

Chris

sorry - my bad - it was 3 x 16's amps when I left europe 10 years ago - for small 3bd villa's plus a single 380v. In our UK 3 bd villa we have 4 phases - no 380v - but gas stove.