# So, If We Gave Every Household In The USA A FREE Electric Car **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 19, 2013, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960 "2013-07-19T17:44:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2013, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/81 "2013-07-24T17:19:56Z")
Rechargeable battery packs are probably the way to go. Recharging at a recharging station is prohibitively time consuming. Just recharge your battery when you are home at night and swap out your battery packs when you run out of juice on the road. Maybe even keep an extra one on your garage. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2013, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/82 "2013-07-24T19:15:34Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Rechargeable battery packs are probably the way to go. Recharging at a recharging station is prohibitively time consuming. > > Just recharge your battery when you are home at night and swap out your battery packs when you run out of juice on the road. Maybe even keep an extra one on your garage. Do you have any idea how much these battery packs weigh? The Nissan Leaf’s battery pack weighs 660 lbs. Are people going to have hydraulic lifts in their garages and move 1200 pounds around before leaving for work in the morning? No one is going to carry a ‘spare’ battery - it weighs far too much and takes up too much space. And batteries are too expensive to justify keeping a spare - especially since a battery sitting unused degrades and will eventually fully discharge and not work well any more. Modern EV batteries need to be carefully managed - their charge not let to go too low or two high, the battery kept from freezing or stored in cold temperatures for a long time, etc. The packaging of these batteries in cars is also very careful to maximize space, and the batteries have a number of connections to the car for sensors, power, etc. In the leaf, to even get at the battery you have to remove both the front and rear seats. And the battery can’t just be lifted out vertically - you have to get inside the car, lift it, then pull it horizontally through the hatch. Not easy. The Leaf actually has well designed modular battery. It’s a single sealed pack that sits in its own bay. It’s about as easy to get out as you could expect, but it’s still not something you’re going to do at home every day. This is why ‘hot swapping’ batteries like filling up with gas will not happen. Taking a battery out of a car is closer to removing a transmission than just putting a new AA cell in your flashlight. In addition, the lifespan of a battery will depend on how well it was cared for. People will be about as willing to swap out their own battery for a strange one as they would be to swapping out their own engine for a random engine in a shop. And there’s an adverse selection issue here - the people most likely to want to swap their batteries will be those with poor performing batteries for whatever reason. If your battery pack is new or behaves like new because you take excellent care of it, you will not want to swap it out for a random one. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2013, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/83 "2013-07-24T23:42:20Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Argh. Now I am more confused. How does that then translate into the “rejected energy” portion of the petroleum box? Is that waste heat of combustion? Or does it include other inefficiencies as well? I usually only look at Sankey diagrams of the electrical grid. I think that diagram is referring to lost energy from engine inefficiency (since it’s about 79%) but it could include other losses. ---
**Author:** ![PatriotGrrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/9dc877/32.png) [@PatriotGrrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PatriotGrrrl)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/84 "2013-07-25T00:45:16Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Taking a battery out of a car is closer to removing a transmission than just putting a new AA cell in your flashlight. Do try to keep up. [Tesla battery swap video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY) ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/85 "2013-07-25T00:49:14Z")
> [@PatriotGrrrl](#): > > Do try to keep up. > > [Tesla battery swap video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY) Sweet…and you only need to lay down $70k for that too! You should definitely get one. Hell, get two! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/86 "2013-07-25T01:29:08Z")
> [@PatriotGrrrl](#): > > Do try to keep up. > > [Tesla battery swap video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY) A far cry from keeping a spare in the garage. Albeit more like a gas fill up than a transmission change. OTOH Tesla is doing a go it alone approach. Battery swap stations with batteries to fit all brands and models? Not all that feasible. That said this objection > [@](#): > > People will be about as willing to swap out their own battery for a strange one as they would be to swapping out their own engine for a random engine in a shop seems likely to fade, IMHO. The battery is more like fuel than engine. Pay much less for the full EV and instead have an ongoing contract to always have a battery that is guaranteed to be at least 80% of new capacity for a modest monthly fee for however you own the car. Eliminate the anxiety of a big expense possibly awaiting you just outside of warranty (or not). Pretty attractive even without the fast swap on the road option, depending on the figures involved. Not so far off from what Nissan is doing as their optional [replacement plan](http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084937_nissan-to-offer-leaf-battery-replacement-plan-100-a-month). I’m sorry though, even with rapid charge or fast swap, most of these would be poor road trip cars. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/87 "2013-07-25T10:08:35Z")
> [@PatriotGrrrl](#): > > Do try to keep up. > > [Tesla battery swap video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY) Did I see four people working on that? Did they have specialized tools? A lift? They must have - the Tesla S battery weighs somewhere between 800 and 900 lbs, I believe. Have fun wrestling with that every day. It’s always possible to design a battery that can be relatively easily swapped. But ‘relatively’ is the key word. What four trained mechanics can do with specialized tools in four minutes is something that might take the average homeowner an hour to do. And even if it takes 30 minutes, do you think people are really going to want to spend 30 minutes each day doing car maintenance? Most people can’t even be bothered to change their own tires or windshield wipers. I’m not trying to knock EVs here. I really like them, and if I had a shorter commute I might consider one. I also like plug-in hybrids. But in my opinion, swapping batteries to extend range is a non-starter - at least so long as batteries are so expensive, so heavy, and so finicky. I’d much rather see the development of other ways to extend range, like a small turbodiesel generator in a series hybrid. Better yet, create a standard architecture for a range extender ‘module’ which could be populated with a gas or diesel generator, a fuel cell, or even an extra battery to extend all-electric power. Make it easily dealer-swappable. Then I can choose to change my car to a diesel range-extender vehicle, or if I find I rarely need the diesel I could replace it with an extended-range battery or even leave the bay empty to save weight and add storage space. There are lots of solutions to the range issue - we just have to be patient and see which one shakes out of the marketplace. You can bet there are thousands of people out there working on many different solutions - better batteries, more efficient rolling chassis, “car trains” like we’ve talked about before, hydrogen fuel cells… Maybe even hot-swappable batteries for all I know. Maybe there’s a genius idea percolating out there that will surprise us all. But one thing is sure - so long as people want electric cars and really wish they had more range, there will be R&D money spent on solving the problem. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2013, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/88 "2013-07-25T10:15:23Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > A far cry from keeping a spare in the garage. > > Albeit more like a gas fill up than a transmission change. Maybe like an old-style fill-up where a team of people run out to service your car. If you could ever get battery mountings and physical packages standardized, maybe you could do that. However… > [@](#): > > That said this objection seems likely to fade, IMHO. The battery is more like fuel than engine. Pay much less for the full EV and instead have an ongoing contract to always have a battery that is guaranteed to be at least 80% of new capacity for a modest monthly fee for however you own the car. If you can get a deal that takes the battery out of the purchase price and then leases swappable batteries separately, and you never own the battery and it’s never part of the resale value of the car, then maybe that will work. However, it will also raise the cost of battery power, because batteries that are not owned will not be maintained well. Maybe that’s not a huge issue if the car itself is designed to make sure the battery is not mistreated, as most of the EV’s now are. But it still doesn’t seem likely. What would be the capital investment for an electric service station? It would seem to me that it could be a lot. You’d need to have enough batteries for every type of vehicle so that you wouldn’t run out during the period that you are charging the batteries that you swapped out. Say it takes 8 hours to charge a battery. That means you have to have enough batteries on stock for 8 hours’ worth of customers. What’s that, hundreds? At 10K a pop? For each vehicle type you service? And what’s your profit going to be? You’re going to have to charge a certain amount over the cost of electricity to make a profit, and that could really cut into the economic efficiency of electric vehicles. Eliminate the anxiety of a big expense possibly awaiting you just outside of warranty (or not). Pretty attractive even without the fast swap on the road option, depending on the figures involved. Not so far off from what Nissan is doing as their optional [replacement plan](http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084937_nissan-to-offer-leaf-battery-replacement-plan-100-a-month). I’m sorry though, even with rapid charge or fast swap, most of these would be poor road trip cars. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2013, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/89 "2013-07-26T04:07:17Z")
If a battery is $70,000, and has a five year life-span then every time you swap the battery you’re not just paying for power, but subsidizing $70,000 in battery costs. This is _significant_ and certainly exceeds the cost of dinosaur juice. Presumably that five year life span includes a limited number of charges, and so you may be subsidizing that cost in, say, one year. If you swap 260 times per year, you’ll have to pay $270 every time you swap! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Niply\_Elder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@The\_Niply\_Elder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Niply_Elder)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2013, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/90 "2013-07-26T08:48:40Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Did I see four people working on that? Did they have specialized tools? A lift? They must have - the Tesla S battery weighs somewhere between 800 and 900 lbs, I believe. Have fun wrestling with that every day. > > It’s always possible to design a battery that can be relatively easily swapped. But ‘relatively’ is the key word. What four trained mechanics can do with specialized tools in four minutes is something that might take the average homeowner an hour to do. And even if it takes 30 minutes, do you think people are really going to want to spend 30 minutes each day doing car maintenance? Most people can’t even be bothered to change their own tires or windshield wipers. > > I’m not trying to knock EVs here. Wow you are reaaaaaly reaching for the nonsense there. No you didn’t see four people doing a battery swap. It was an automated machine. And it did the swap in 90 seconds. The estimated cost to Tesla owners will be 60-90 dollars as long as they agree to swap back to their original battery later on. Otherwise you get billed or refunded a prorated amount based on the differential charge capacity between the old and new battery. Of course doing this swap will not be needed to be done by the average driver all that often, probably less than a dozen times a year if that. Still the most convenient way to charge up will be at home. And I might add that Tesla will produce a car to compete with a BMW 3 series ($35-45k) in two years, and 500 mile battery packs are coming in 4 years. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2013, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/91 "2013-07-26T13:16:14Z")
> [@Rachellelogram](#): > > And how are you proposing we deal with the millions of unemployed workers after tanking\* the demand for domestic oil? Those 9.2 million jobs aren’t going to be magically replaced by something with equivalent pay. Auto manufacturing is a pretty goddamn miserable and low-paying industry by comparison. > > \*heheh There’ll still be a world market for oil. Those jobs won’t be lost, just turned into export jobs. But anyway, it is a highly impractically idea. It’s unlikely that it would be possible to scale up the production of electric cars to such massive numbers in a realistic time frame, and then comes all the work required to upgrade the electric grid. Electric cars will come, a few years earlier or later won’t make a big difference for the environment. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2013, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/92 "2013-07-26T13:37:30Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > There’ll still be a world market for oil. Those jobs won’t be lost, just turned into export jobs. But anyway, it is a highly impractically idea. It’s unlikely that it would be possible to scale up the production of electric cars to such massive numbers in a realistic time frame, and then comes all the work required to upgrade the electric grid. Electric cars will come, a few years earlier or later won’t make a big difference for the environment. Indeed, new technologies have always adversely affected other existing industries. But we didn’t outlaw automobiles to save the horse and carriage industries and we’re not going to outlaw self-driving cars, for example, that will save 30,000 lives every year in order to save jobs in the car insurance industry. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/93 "2013-08-09T16:38:27Z")
Some updates: [Southern California Edison](http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/08/sce-20130806.html)’s current experiences with EV adoption: > [@](#): > > Currently, SCE customers lease or own more than 12,000 plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs), both battery electric (BEVs, for about 35%) and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs, for about 65%)—about 10% of national EV sales. (SCE estimates that by 2020, there will be about 350,000 PEVs in its service territory.) Because California leads the nation in EV adoption, other utilities and stakeholders in the auto industry may find the information from the white paper useful, SCE suggested. … > > … “A residential circuit handles something like 7-10 homes; adding a plug-in is like adding an extra home to the circuit. We’re finding a very low incidence of infrastructure upgrade required because of plug-ins. There is nothing like doing upfront preparation to ensure that things go according to plan. When we anticipated the cars were coming, we did a huge amount of work analyzing the circuits, and anticipated where we’d see clustering of the vehicles. We incorporated the load analysis into our overal daily infrastructure actions. We’ve got a very good handle on the increased load from transportation—that’s just being incorporated into daily activities as we upgrade the system. … There is no question that we need to address the multi-family dwelling challenge. It’s not easy. Getting the infrastructure into those buildings, unless its brand new construction, is difficult. But I’m not sure fast charging really compensates for that—the cost to fuel the vehicle will be more expensive or comparable to gasoline. We’re talking about 480 volts—a big circuit. And you’re probably looking at demand charges on top of the basic cost. … One of the advantages of this load from PEVs is that it is malleable. You can ramp it up, ramp it down, turn it on, turn it off. We have these large off-peak windows we deal with—9 at night to noon, say. I think that the utilities have the ability to manage this load at scale across the system. I do think that grid services will be important piece. We are a ways away yet, we are still building out the smart grid, and then ultimately getting to the point where the energy is omnidirectional. But there is no question that the cars have an important role to play.” Meanwhile Tesla has an [8.4% market share](http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/07/teslas-8-4-market-share-beats-audi-a8-bmw-7-series/)in the luxury segment, selling more cars in their segment than Audi does the A8 or BMW does the 7 series. They are [expanding production](http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/07/tesla-sold-5150-models-s-evs-in-q2/) and the next Tesla entry is expected to be about $35K and have a 200 mile range. [The Leaf’s](http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/08/nissan-ready-to-increase-us-leaf-production-if-the-sales-are-th/) sales are up and price is down with increased production in the Tennessee plant likely to ramp up. The Volt is dropping its price too. YTD plug-in sales are up over 75% not counting Tesla’s numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960/94 "2013-08-12T22:42:10Z")
…Then I wouldn’t have to fill up every five or six weeks. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-if-we-gave-every-household-in-the-usa-a-free-electric-car/663960.md?page=4)