This is a large part of what I had in mind when I asked the question.
Even a small battery takes a long time to charge, particulaly with household current. The 2023 Nissan Leaf claims a recharge time of 2-5 miles per hour with a Level One charger. and 10-25 miles per hour with a Level 2 charger.
So I drive a car with a 50-mile battery for 30 miles, and I have to charge it for at least an hour with a Level 2 charger just to get it back home. If the only charger available is a Level 1, figure at least twice that time for a recharge.
That trade-off may be fine for someone who only uses their car to run to the grocery store, but it’s not going to be adequate when a car is the primary means of transportation for someone who has a long daily drive, particularly in a cold climate where battery performance diminishes. Plug-in hybrids are a far better choice than a limited-range EV.
If we can’t get electric cars that do what we expect them to, that is hold four passengers and plenty of stuff, drive on the freeway, and take road trips, then the likely scenario is people refusing to buy them, and pushing back against any attempts to ban ICE cars since they can’t buy an electric car with the same utility as their old ICE car. I personally don’t drive more than two hours without stopping, so 150-200 mile range, as in realistic range on a real road with the heater or air conditioner running enough to make me nice and comfortable, would be enough for me, although I know plenty of people that drive longer than that at a stretch.
Plug in-hybrids seem to be an idea solution since yeah, most driving is under 50 miles and it makes sense to prioritize batteries for those trips, where air pollution is probably also a concern. Except that they’re still ICE cars so government bans would affect them.
In 2019 my wife’s Jetta VR6 got totaled. And that VR6 is a nice engine! To replace her car she bought a used 2012 Leaf that gets only 45 miles range on a full charge. The Leaf cost only $5,000.
She loves the Leaf! Yes it’s ugly but she loves the instant torque and that it costs next to nothing to maintain. She charges it on regular 110V AC and she’s fine with that. She rarely needs 35+ miles on any given day.
It’s the perfect car for her. PHEVs still have the ICE and that is a major downfall — expensive maintenance.
if indeed it became obvious that PHEVs are the direction of least resistance and greatest adoption, I’d certainly expect any ICE bans to be retooled with that in mind. Perhaps not permanently, but at least a halfway house on the road towards full electrification.
There is a big chance the Lithium batteries will become less important in cars soonish. A fairly big breakthrough in Aluminum-Sulfur Batteries were made and might hit production within 5-10 years. Big bonus is being far cheaper, made from abundant materials and uses a relatively low temp electrolyte. Use for excess power generation storage will hopefully be sooner yet.
I think the closest car to what the OP is thinking of is the Mini Cooper SE, which has a rated range of 110 miles. It starts at $35k, before tax credits, so $27.5k before any state tax credits. It is a fully performant road car, that can do all of the things a regular Mini Cooper can, just only for a shorter distance.
The reviews I’ve seen suggest that it is an excellent commuter car. The whole point being that if the goal is to transport one person the average commute, a car with this limited range is perfect. The range is low, but as long as you can charge it at home, then the car is ready at its full range every morning. The car avoids the expense and materials of a larger battery.
If you do frequently drive more than 100 miles in a day, then this is not the car for you, and don’t worry about it.
Actually, we wouldn’t. We don’t have nearly enough copper. Proven reserves of copper are only about 20% of the amount needed to electrify the car fleet. There is a lot of copper in EV motors and electrics. And copper mining is not easy to get past NIMBYism. Copper is also a big problem for windmills and general increased electrification. A hugely underrated issue for ‘the great transition’.
But to your point, before we run out of copper we will run out of nickel, lithium, vanadiam and cobalt for battery manufacture, all of which have proven reserves less than 10% of what we would need to electrify the fleet. So it’s certainly worth talking about cars with smaller batteries.
The problem with a ‘lightweight’ street legal car is that it’s very hard to certify them for crashworthiness. Cars are heavier today than in the past in large part because of regulations - rollover protection, side impact protection, etc.
The lightest standard, road legal car available for sale in the U.S. appears to be the Mitsubishi Mirage, at 2,095 lbs. An EV version of that with a ‘low range’ battery would likely be around 2500 lbs.
This brings us to the lightest EV currently on the road - The Mitsubishi I-Miev. It’s 1200kg, has a range of 62 miles, and a battery of only 16 kWh. It sounds like exactly what the OP is asking about. I’m not sure they are still being made, but there should be used ones about.
There’s also the Volkswagon E-up, and if money isn’t the problem you can get a BMW I3 with a 22 kWh battery. Those are the lightest, lowest range EVs you can get that you can drive anywhere.
If you want a small EV that isn’t fully road legal but can be driven around on low speed community roads. there are some incredibly cheap Chinese electric mini-trucks available that you can have delivered for under $10,000.
That is more or less the point. Yes there are people who drive more than 100 miles in a day with regularity. But most are more like me: less than once a year driving a road trip, in my case, from Chicago to NJ, and with most days Iess than 30 miles a day, and few days as much a 50 miles in a day. Many never drive more than 100 miles or more in a day. They fly from city to city. I could too. Yet I and they each are demand new EV cars with battery ranges that exceed our reasonable needs, with batteries sized for rare possible use circumstances and way oversized for our typical use.
Getting a complete ICE added as in my PHEV (I own a ten year old C-Max Energi) to allow a rare use circumstance also seems silly.
We’d be better off selling me and others on the idea that we should buy a car that fits how we use our car 99% plus of the time, not that is the best choice for our rare possible use circumstance.
Nickel and cobalt are used in NMC batteries, which is what were in allTeslas at one time. But they’ve switched the battery type for their most popular models, the 3 and Y, to LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries, which do not have those two metals in them. Vanadium is used in flow batteries, but AFAIK, no EV has flow batteries in them.
So besides copper, the main limit for high volumes of EVs is lithium. Fortunately, there is a way to get that without strip mining. That is, to extract it from brine. There are two projects to do that in the Salton Sea area, where they will be extracting it from brine already brought up for geothermal power. Also, there’s a project to extract it from brines in Arkansas:
ETA: the brines in Arkansas are already being brought up for bromine. So like the Salton Sea brines, they aren’t doing more drilling or other environmentally damaging operations.
Relative to the need for full electrification, is that enough?
Unsure how much range per EV they use for the 8 kg of lithium per EV figure.
But using those estimates it is a significant amount, and importantly located not in China, yet it seems no where near enough to meet estimated demand of rapid expansion.
I suspect new chemistries will emerge, but that takes time.
Those of us who really only use our cars to commute really should be buying cars right sized for that and maybe rent something for the rare cross country drive. I say that but will that keep me from getting a long range when I am eventually ready? I don’t know.
They already are, I mentioned the break though in Aluminum-Sulfur batteries above.
I see several stories about break through battery chemistries and manufacturing techniques every year. That’s great, we need them. Most of them don’t seem to go anywhere though, so I don’t get excited until the new batteries are commercially available.
Like you’re quote says, “might hit production within 5-10 years.”
Existing market trends say no, you will not. That is why Telsas are selling better than any other car in the EV market and its the standard that manufacturers are striving to met demand for. Its where they will make money selling cars under the existing concept.
What needs to happen is a change in how we utilize our vehicles. If self driving EV’s with small batteries can be reliable enough, available enough and cheap enough for enough people to consider using them as a ride share over owning a car full time then that will be a game changer.
I believe this is going to happen in my lifetime. If you can place a small fleet of these in every little town I can see them being used for the things you actually use your family car for on a daily basis. And like you say, if you need something for long haul you should be able to rent one cheaper than owning one full time.
We already have electric rental cars, but they aren’t cheap. The problem with fleets of vehicles available for use everywhere is that they get abused unless you have strong controls, such as check-ins where humans inspect the vehicle for additional damage. That drives the price up.
I adhered to the philosophy that even though I might need a truck once or twice per year, it would be smarter to rent one when I need it rather than buy a truck that is suboptimal for everything ex ept those one or two times per year. Makes sense.
Then I tried to actually implement this. I got a great deal on a freezer, but it needed a truck to pick it up. So I checked out rental prices… Renting a truck was $1100 for a day! I had to pass on the freezer.
I see today they are back down to $150-$200 per day, but when demand is high, truck rentals are going crazy.
Wow, I haven’t had to rent a cargo van or truck for a couple of years now. Used to be $50 plus mileage around here in Michigan and I would rent one when I went to an auction when I knew I was going to buy furniture. Haven’t need a truck since.
I could see a local car dealer renting out self driving EV’s since they already have the infrastructure to support servicing the vehicles. Someone just needs to develop a business model that makes money for everyone and still provides a low cost option for the end user.
My brother and mom live is a town of about 15,000 in a county of about 30,000. No taxi service and Uber and Lyft do not go there. A self driving EV with a 50 mile range would work in those kind of places.
If resources were an issue build the cars to be able to accept a longer-range battery when needed… One large battery could theoretically be spread out among 50 cars possibly.
I paid $70 a month ago to rent an 8’ tall 20’ long box truck for half a day. It held far more than any pickup and at that price for that much capability it was substantially free.
We really do need more rental infrastructure in this country for everything. When I was a kid, nobody owned a pressure washer or steam cleaner. You rented that stuff from the rental agency that every suburb had. Nowadays one heck of a lot of comfy suburbanites have one or both that they use 3 days per year. Home Depot is laughing all the way to the bank.
Those are all very important points
Renting a car different than the one you own isn’t going to be an option until it becomes a lot less of a hassle than it is now. It might be cheaper to by a Yaris and then rent a bigger or more capable vehicle when you need one, but it’s not anywhere remotely close to as convenient. There’s a reason most people don’t do it, and it’s not because they enjoy having a pickup truck in sitting in their garage.
I’m also skeptical that TaaS is going to become a reality. Right now HourCar and the like seem to be priced that it doesn’t make financial sense if you need the car on a daily basis. I’d be skeeved out at the thought the person sitting in that car right before me might have COVID-19 and been coughing up a storm, or had a used syringe fall out of his back pocket, or had a kid that threw up in the back seat.