Fleet drivers don’t need to carry small families or cart lots of stuff. They tend to have predictable routes. They are not using the car to go cross country. GE can install rapid chargers in their homes and at the workplace - even a 70 mile daily round trip commute can be all electric.
No, I don’t know. Do you have a cite to share?
Btw, GE is not the only large company investing in alt-fuel vehicles, even if their particular bias is self-servingly EV. Years back ATT committed to 8000 CNG vehicles and 7100 HEVs. Currently they are also “deploying all-electric and extended range electric vehicles.”
A123 overextended. You knew they were going to have a tough go of it from the moment they did not get the Volt account. South Korea’s LGChem is the 500 pound gorilla in the EV battery space. Note that A123’s automotive purchaser, Johnson Controls, also was a grant recipient, as were many other companies big and small. And they are the ones coming up on LGChem. Agree or disagree, the Feds have been functioning as venture capitalists in this space, and like any venture capitalists they lose quite a few. This Pike research Report from earlier this year called it well when they noted that there would be an industry shake out and that A123 was at most “a contender.” This development is not bad for America’s position in the global EV battery space as it makes Johnson Controls much more competitive with LGChem. Smaller companies will end up dropping out and having their assets bought up for pennies on the dollar. EV battery prices drop as a result.
So why does the US Government (the taxpayers) have to wind up losing billions? Let the market decide…if electric cars are truly viable, investors will fund companies that make them. If not, you can throw any amount of money away, and people will not buy them. It is not as if US manufacturers would lose out (if all of a sudden, electric cars became competitive).
My belief is that as gasoline prices rise, the auto industry will respond by making cars with smaller engines and lighter bodies-this would save far more energy than trying to get people to buy short range electric vehicles.
The argument made by Democratic and GOP administrations alike has been that it is in America’s best interest to bootstrap the research, development, and early phase deployment of technologies that serve our nation’s greater good. Sometimes the focus is on energy independence, sometimes global warming, sometimes on high tech jobs and not losing a future industry to Asia. Money has been thrown, sometimes with good return by those metrics and sometimes not, at oil and gas exploration (tax cuts galore), nuclear power plants, “clean” coal, hydrogen fuel cells and infrastructure, natural gas vehicles, ethanol, biodiesel, algal-based fuels … and on and on. Have the returns on those investments been worth it? Depends on who you ask and how you value the returns but none of them have consisted of picking only winners that’s for sure (even oil exploration, which hardly needs the help it gets, drills and misses sometimes).
(I was expecting A123 to merge with a China company actually.)
Oh. Another critical revisit to that study that pointed out full life cycle analysis EVs might be not be better on full coal power generation electricity, things like
Sorry for the multipost but to be fair in that last cite it could also be stated that in over half the country the best hybrids would result in less CO2 than EV s would. As far as CO2 goes per fueleconomy.gov, once I get my C-Max Energi, I am not doing any better on that count running it EV than I am as a hybrid. For energy independence issues though (and cost savings over time) as much EV as possible is best.
Well now we agree on something. I’ve always argued that we should forward energy research on a “Manhattan Project” scale for energy security. Huckabee even suggested it during a debate. We need a number of things to make it work:
bio-based fuels
better batteries
long distance energy transmission upgrades so we can connect remote energy sources to the places electricity is used.
I question hydrogen fuel cells or anything hydrogen because the by-product is water vapor. not sure how that would work under the greenhouse affect.
Btw, ICEs produce water too (we’ve done a thread on it some time before). Maybe not quite as much per unit energy but then the FCV is more efficient by a long shot.
My issue with hydrogen is that it costs a lot of energy, and unless renewables are used, life cycle CO2, to produce it before it ever gets to the car. One analysis as an example: “Study Indicates Hydrogen Cars’ Lifecycle Emits More Carbon Than Gas Cars” Depends on the source of the energy to produce the stuff. Natural gas as the source ends up being marginally better than HEVs … but of course EVs powered by a natural gas plant do even better. Assuming a renewable or low CO2 energy source to produce the hydrogen upstream is no more reasonable than assuming such for all EVs.
yes. It’s been field tested to the point it’s certified as an aviation fuel. A fuel that can be grown around the world and be burned using current engine technology solves all our short term needs. All of them. No expensive niche car needed. No changes in fueling nodes needed. It works in trains, plains, trucks and cars.
Check out this project where they are rendering coal-power generation cleaner by making it more efficient by employing municipal-scale batteries:
The batteries are constructed modularly, in cells. If the cells can be individually discharged, it looks like one of these things could amount to an ev charging station.
And let’s look at what other companies are doing with batteries in the service of renewable power generation:
If you can build this large a battery for power delivery, you can build them for ev ships and trucks (think how stinky a coal-powered cargo ship is). The costs for both will fall faster if you push both at the same time.
In the meantime, lithium batteries are very expensive. Can’t we incorporate some NiMH batteries into these things? ~40 miles is apparently enough ev range for a phev. If you make half the thing a NiMH, maybe you could bring down the cost and also conserve what is, in the short term, scarce lithium commodity.
I still don’t understand why people don’t trust the free market. When electric cars make sense, industry will make them. Despite all the trillions $$ in taxpayer money wasted on these things, electric cars haven’t reached 1% of the market.
I I see it, we are not ready for them yet-gasoline or CNG powered vehicles are better, more economical, and less expensive at the moment. When battery technology allows for a 300 mile range, EVs will be made.
well you can try eliminating the direct subsidies but it’s a small number which benefits the public.
This is in contrast to the subsidy money wasted on alternative energy companies with little return to the public. It’s pointless to back loans on companies that are not viable.
Now the indirect cost of oil subsidies is a huge amount. We could save a large chunk of change by not babysitting the Persian Gulf. I think it’s time China took over that job. It will still be our money paying for it but it would be voluntarily handed to them.
In terms of American sales and share of sales that are fleet sales (such as to GE or to governmental agencies at levels from local villages to state to Federal), this update.
Total plug in vehicles sold YTD is a bit over 36K, a bit than the 17K that were sold all of 2011 and with an increasing majority to retail customers. Still small numbers compared to the overall car market but in comparison three years after worldwide introduction total American hybrid sales were only just over 36K for the entire year and the Volt in year two has sold more units YTD America than did the Prius in its entire year two. So plug-ins are, two years in, already beating the rate of increase that hybrid sales had by a good margin. Meanwhile more brands are introducing plug-ins of their own.
I’m sure it’s encouraging, but even if they were selling those 36k number per month instead of YTD it would be a drop in the bucket compared to conventional car sales. New cars sales in the US alone for last year were over 12 million…and that doesn’t even count the used car market. And, BTW, sales are up for all types of cars from what I recall reading last week, so it makes sense that hybrid and AEV sales would also be going up as well.
Yes as noted. Hybrids, even this many ears out, are also still, relative to all car sales, a drop as well. I do not think however that many consider hybrids a failure as a technology. To be fair if hybrids are considered a reasonable success then plug-ins should be judged by how they compare to that metric. By that metric they are doing better than hybrids did this soon after global introduction.
Also of note is this months Consumers reports which notes excellent reliability reports so far for the BEVs and plug-ins.
I agree…just pointing out how much of a niche market this stuff still is, and will remain for the foreseeable future. That’s not a knock on hybrids or AEVs, just the reality of the situation.