BTW, I would still like to know if this statement is based on an actual published document of some kind, or if it’s just based on a (rather common) misapplication of the second law of thermodynamics.
Sorry, I forgot about this thread. It’s based on actual published studies.It doesn’t include “found” energy - ie., sunlight - if that’s what you mean.
That’s even a bit less than the usual quoted standard of $0.04/mile. And for a car that has 416 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque, a zero to sixty of 4.4 seconds, that can function as a dang minivan seating 5 adults and 2 kids along with a whole bunch of stuff at the same time. Not too many cars that can do any of that let alone and get 30 mpg.
Yes, one does need to prorate replacing the battery every eight to ten years (one assumes but no one knows) into that, which at this point costs more than most new cars by itself. A problem that. How much will battery costs drop by eight to ten years? Also no one knows. But then again the car otherwise needs virtually no maintenance and really should last many many decades and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of miles.
this sounds great…but I kinda doubt it. No Maintenance? Okay, an electric motor may need less maintenance the engine of my 12 year old car. But most of the maintenance on cars these days doesn’t go to the engine. There are lots of other parts, which I’m guessing are the same on an electric car as on a regular car. The brakes still have pads that are going to wear out, the air conditioner still has all the same parts as today’s cars, the windshield wipers are going to sometimes freeze up, the steering has linkages to the wheels, the suspension is the same, the widow mechanism will stick, and the body work is the same. In addition, there are complex electronics.
Buying an electric car is like running out to buy the next version of Windows, straight from the beta edition.
I prefer to wait a couple years till the Service Pack is released and I know I’m getting a product that’s been tested in the real world.
We could declare war on drugs and see how that works. What I’m saying is people in general are willing to put significant time and effort into projects that support their immediate needs. Nuclear weapons weren’t built to make the world a better place. Trying to convince people that they need to replace what works with something that is better for everyone in the long term (longer than their lifespan) is like telling a person in a casino that their money would be better if they invested in something else for 40 years down the road. The population gave up the horse and buggy because the automobile was better than riding 15 miles a day on a horse. They wont so easily give up easy gasoline in exchange for charging a battery every 80 miles… The thought is heading in the right direction but internal combustion engines won’t be replaced until a monumental breakthrough happens in the storage of electricity in the batteries.
Well you could run at least 2 cords into the adapter in your garage, right? I am imagining a battery divided into a number of cells (say, 8. Maybe 4 or 12 will work better) in the car. The car has a (universal) plug which really amounts to 8 inputs- not all of them will always be used, the electronics can tell which lines are hot and allocate the power in a logical way until all the cells are charged at about the same time. The adapter plugs into this, you plug any variety of things at home into the adapter and the car figures it out. Try not to bring down the neighborhood!
As far as the station goes, I am still imagining using one of those MW+ zinc bromine batteries. Solar charged of course, but also able to charge from the grid. If you want to get crazy, there is a solar condenser plant at the edge of town using heat from salt melted during the day to boil water to drive turbines to charge the station battery and give the rest to the grid (or a small nuke plant in places that aren’t sunny, though everywhere gets some sun). The overall grid doesn’t have to be overhauled if you are charging cars by discharging from giant batteries- I think it is easier to configure for such big discharges this way.
Maybe you have 4-16 of these batteries at the station. Half of them at any one time are dedicated to charging cars, the other half are busy re-charging. It sounds like a real pain but 1) oil drilling/transportation is kind of a pain and getting worse and 2) the fuel for solar powersure is cheap and getting cheaper.
Is that kind of experience very important?
Have the results in Pimentel’s paper been subsequently verified and accepted? He’s making quite a surprising and exceptional claim.
I found Pimentel’s actual paper (PDF here) - and from a cursory reading, it looks to me like he’s calculated an absolute worst-case scenario - that is, that the materials have to be transported a long way at every step, that the tractor falls apart after 10 years and you have to make another one, starting from iron ore, and that the cost of producing the farmer’s clothes and lunch must be included.
One thing I found interesting, although not directly pertinent to the efficiency calculations, is this statement, on the 9th page:
Isn’t that a bit intellectually dishonest? Comparing the efficiency of a leaf to that of a solar panel (each across its own area) would make sense, but Comparing the efficiency of a solar panel to the proportion of sunlight harvested by plants across a land area that isn’t entirely planted? WTF?
Another day dawns, now I can be bothered to do a little more.
The Smart ForTwo costs £9,200. The i-MiEV costs £28,990 (difference £19,790).
Assuming the cheaper electricity charging cost (and still ignoring some other details), the i-MiEV is about 6.7 pence per mile cheaper to run, so it pays for itself after 295,000 miles. That doesn’t seem like a good deal to me.
Of course, the high initial cost of the electric car is partly attributable to small production volume, new technology, etc - if the initial cost drops to only double the price of the ForTwo, it still only scrapes into break-even - 136,000 miles before it pays off (which is 10 years of commuting about 50 miles a day, 5 days a week)
Brake pads much less often, same as on hybrids. All that regen spares the pads mightily. The downside to that however is that Nissan ends up advising more frequent changes of the brake fluid due to fear that with such infrequent usage water might build up in the lines. And points about the AC and wipers noted. I still do consider those minor compared to the trans.
I have no charger or battery expertise but each cord does require its own 220 circuit.
Yes, because if you had, you would immediately see the problem with your idea. Divide the entire battery of say 8 cells into individual cells, and you have to use 1/8 the charging voltage of the entire set for each cell. Now you have to step down the voltage by 8, which requires additional parts, times 8. It also increases the amperage you have to supply to keep the same charge rate. Now you need much bigger wires. There are numerous other problems, which are difficult to describe without using lots of technical terms and major math, but those will do off the top of my head.
There’s basically no gain from doing it your way, but plenty of additional cost.
Did you factor in the time value of money? You have to put the extra £19,790 up front, for benefits you gradually receive over a long period of time. And if you’re taking out a loan to purchase the vehicle as most people do, you’re paying a higher rate of interest.
For example, let’s assume the vehicle has a 10 year lifespan, which is about average for modern cars. If you take out a 10 year loan for the car at 5% interest, that £19,790 becomes £25,188, or an additional £209.90 per month over the lifespan of the vehicle. That’s how much in gas - electricity you’d have to save each month to make the purchase worthwhile, and that doesn’t seem likely.
You also have to factor in resale value, which is relatively unknown - what will a 10 year old electric car with a weak battery be worth? We could find that the price of the battery exceeds the residual value of the vehicle, making it pretty much worthless. But since these electrics haven’t been on the road for 10 years now, that’s an unknown and has to be included as a risk factor when evaluating total cost of ownership.
I’d love to see electric vehicles become common - not just for environmental purposes, but because I think that by and large electric power is a superior engineering choice if it can be made practical. But the best way to help electric cars is to be absolutely honest about what they cost and what their tradeoffs are. If you push early adoption of electric powered vehicles before they are truly competitive, you’ll do more harm than good in the long run.
Cite? I think the average lifespan is closer to 15 years for new cars, and that’s for internal combustion engines. Wouldn’t be surprised if it were a bit longer for these.
What’s the life expectancy of my car?
Average Age of U.S. Auto Fleet Nears 11 Years
There is no doubt that there are lots of vehicles on the road older than 10 years. There’s also no doubt that lots of vehicles don’t make it that far before they become scrapyard-fodder. It depends on the vehicle, how it’s driven, its initial quality, the quality of maintenance, the region of the country, etc.
One problem for newer cars (and this may be why Consumer Reports is showing a lower 8-year lifespan) is that modern large components like engines and transmissions are extremely expensive. I drive a 2003 Ford Escape. It looks and runs like new, has been impeccably maintained, and currently has a residual value of maybe $5,000. I’m hoping to drive it for a few more years yet. However, a new transmission for it is $6,000, and even a rebuild is $4800. A new engine is thousands of dollars. So if either of those components fails, the vehicle’s going to the scrapyard as it will cost more to repair than it’s worth.
This has only gotten worse since, with the advent of wickedly complex 6-speed autos, computerized direct injection engines, stability control systems with complex differentials, etc. These parts are so expensive that if they fail in a used car that’s only worth a few thousand dollars, the car is generally scrapped even though it may look new and be in otherwise perfect working order.
Back in the day, cars may have been less reliable, but the simple engines and transmissions of the time could be rebuilt and replaced easily. You could buy a rebuilt transmission for a car for a few hundred dollars, and rebuild an engine for not much more. Some vehicles on the road could be on their second engine rebuild and third transmission. That’s not true any more.
As for whether electrics will turn out to be more reliable… no one knows because they haven’t been on the road long enough. Theoretical battery life is a lot different than actual real-world battery life. We don’t know how repairable they’ll be after a collision, how corrosion will affect them over years, how well their batteries will be maintained, and all the rest. We do know that the battery alone is often worth $10,000 or more, and that means the life of the vehicle is probably no greater than the life of its battery, because by the time the battery dies the vehicle won’t be worth enough to warrant replacing it.
Thanks for the info, Sam. I’m not sure I agree that the average age of the current fleet or the expected lifespan of a generic new car in 2006 is especially dispositive, but it’s still a helpful benchmark.
As you say, we don’t know what the average will turn out to be for electrics, and is likely to depend greatly on the battery life. So shouldn’t we be looking for the best evidence about battery life? (Was that already in the thread and I missed it?)
No, I didn’t factor any of that in - it was just a quick-and-dirty calc of very approximately when (best case) it might balance out. Another thing to consider (and this time, in the favour of the electric vehicle) is the possibility that petroleum fuels could ramp up a lot more rapidly than everything else.
It’s not that obvious to me. For most cars, when the engine conks out, the transmission and other mechanical components are likely to be not far behind. So the total value at the first major repair is likely to be pretty low. Electrics, OTOH, should be extremely robust aside from the battery. There just aren’t that many moving parts, and electronics don’t really wear out. Further, much of the cost in a battery is in the materials, so even a dead battery should have a reasonably high value (trade in or otherwise). Lithium isn’t cheap, but it’s easy to recycle in battery form.
Of course, it’s all just speculation until the market is more mature… I could see it going either way.
Electric cars have a lot of electronic components that can and will wear out. The car still has a suspension, steering, differential, and all sorts of other systems common to all cars. Electric motors have bearings that wear out and other moving parts. There are still brakes and tires.
When a vehicle gets old, it’s the sum total of the small repairs that do it in. There are plenty of cars that are scrapped that have perfectly good engines and transmissions. But if the car is 10 years old and only has a value of a couple of thousand bucks, even a brake job and a set of tires can be a dicey economic proposition.
But you’re right - we won’t know for sure until we gather the data. Perhaps they’ll turn out to be really cheap to maintain and hold their value really well, or perhaps they’ll turn out to have a lot of ‘black box’ components like power inverters and computers that are expensive and develop a reputation for early failure. Time will tell. But until that data is in, you should price in the risk factor of losing your residual value.
Ultimately, where I hoped we’d be with plug-in hybrids and electrics is that we’d start to see a shift towards unified rolling chassis with pluggable power options. The same chassis and motors should work with a battery electric system, a fuel cell electric system, or a gas generator. I should be able to choose the car I want to buy, then choose the power source for it. If we start to run out of gas for the gas generator, I could retrofit a fuel cell and keep on truckin’. In the meantime, having a standard rolling chassis would allow for better economies of scale.
The other thing I’m surprised electric makers haven’t done is offer a modular, plug and play battery system. Why not offer an electric with a 30 mile battery for a low cost, but have rails and connectors in the car for add-on batteries? I could buy an extra battery and plug it in and double my range when going far, or take it out and lighten the vehicle for short trips. For really long trips, maybe I could rent a large-capacity battery the way we rent cars, and turn it in at my destination, leaving my built-in battery freshly charged.
I suspect that if the technology sticks around and matures, we’ll see vehicles with options like that. Give me a $15,000 electric car with a 50 mile range, and with two optional battery slots that can take it up to 300 miles with high capacity batteries that can be purchased, leased, or rented as need be. Keep the initial purchase point low while addressing consumer fears that the vehicle they buy won’t have enough range for them.
According to the people I talked to at the Tesla dealer last Friday, their charging stations will get you 150 miles on a 45 minute charge and 300 on a 90 minute charge. Additionally, the charging stations are solar based and are expected to provide excess energy to the grid instead of taking energy from it. They currently have several in California and plan to open tons across the US and Southern Canada. Of course, all of this was told to me by a representative of the Tesla corporation, so take the info with a grain of salt.
The map of projected charging locations in the US is great, but it did leave me thinking that it’d be kind of annoying to have to plan a driving route that could take you an hour or more out of your way to find a charge.