Who Killed the Electric Car?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ah, but we don't currently have a large demand for anything other than oil. Wars are typically fought over things that both sides want, when both sides want uranium for nuclear power rather than oil, will we fight over that instead?

Are uranium deposits evenly distributed throughout the world?

I'm assuming of course that other non-oil power sources won't be able to meet demand without nuclear.

Uranium is a separate issue given the enriched plutonium problem. Want to fight a war over wind or the Sun? Really, what's left? Will we go to war over arable land? The point is we are fighting oil wars now.

 

[Ziggurat]

According to the Wikipedia page on the EV-1 the range of the NiMH version was 75-150 miles with a full recharge time of 8 hours.

According to this page:
http://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/gasprices.aspx

in 2005 the average US worker drove 46 miles a day, the highest average being in Birmingham AL at 65 miles a day. Assuming most people are home 8 hours a day (midnight to 8am?) then the EV-1 already covered most driving in the US. That is quite a large niche.

No, it isn't a large niche, because you're not actually answering the questions consumers are going to consider. Like I already said, it's simply not enough that your daily commute is within this range. If you make weekend trips longer than that, or even want to be ABLE to make such trips should the desire arrise, then the EV1 is useless. If you want to drive to the next state to visit the grandparents (or grandkids), the EV1 is useless. And most people fit in that category. Most people do not have the money to spare on a car for commuting plus a car for vacations. An electric car simply doesn't make sense for most consumers. Advocates keep going back to energy efficiency arguments, but for individual consumers, that argument just doesn't make sense. Why try to personally save energy if it doesn't save you money? Why try to save energy if instead it COSTS you a significant amount of money? And you want to add drastically reduced utility (short range and long recharge times) on top of higher costs? The number of people who would decide to do that is a niche market, and nothing about commute distances being within range will ever change that. Consumers do not want the electric vehicles that it is possible to make, and they WILL not want them unless and until a MAJOR battery breakthrough is made. Don't hold your breath.

 

[Ziggurat]

You may be one of those consumers who have been sold the "electric cars are bad" message.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that. Are you saying I've been deceived by propaganda?

But in any case, I'm not claiming that "electric cars are bad". I'm claiming, and even the advocates concede, that they do not have ranges or refueling time comparable to gasoline-powered cars. For that reason, and that reason alone, the vast majority of consumers will not choose an electric vehicle over a gas-powered vehicle. No conspiracy needed. Given the option between a $20K gasoline-powered car that I can drive across the country if I want, and a $30K electric-powered car that I can't really drive out of my own metropolitan region, I'll take the gas-powered car any day, and so would most people.

 

[Pope130]

Ah, but we don't currently have a large demand for anything other than oil. Wars are typically fought over things that both sides want, when both sides want uranium for nuclear power rather than oil, will we fight over that instead?

Are uranium deposits evenly distributed throughout the world?

Uranium deposits are decidedly not evenly distributed. While it is found almost everywhere, deposits in central Africa, North America and Russia are far the most significant.
We have already had one uranium war. The Katanga seccession would not (in my opinion) have been of any great interest outside the Congo without the mines.

Robert

 

[jimlintott]

Why would they? We already know where the limitation is: it's the battery. No amount of engineering can make an electric car commercially feasible with current battery technology, and no battery technology on the horizon is going to change that soon. At this point, research into all-electric vehicles (as opposed to battery research, which is applicable for a lot more than just cars) is largely a waste of money. The big bet automakers are spending money on isn't all-electrics (GM got burned badly by wasting billions upon billions on EV1), but fuel cell vehicles, because there is a lot of car engineering that needs to be done which only they can do. For example, a fuel cell that can power a car produces less heat than an internal combustion engine, but it also needs to operate at a lower temperature, which means that the cooling actually needs to be more sophisticated and efficient than for an internal combustion engine (nobody will buy a car that won't work when the weather gets hot).

If a major battery breakthrough happens, car manufacturers can jump on it easily and quickly enough, but none of them are placing big bets on that happening.

Why would they? Well, Honda is the largest manufacturer of internal combustion engines on the planet. If a technology is going to replace that then they have a great interest in it being their technology. Sure the auto manufacturers can jump into the technology whenever it really shows up but imagine owning that golden goose. If they all have to buy that technology from you, KACHING$$$. I predict that there is a very good chance that the breakthrough will come from an auto manufacturer. (I predict a chance. That's pretty safe, eh.)

However I totally agree with most of your arguments. I fully agree that battery technology is holding it back but also feel that public attitudes are another major obstacle. I don't think that people are willing to switch to electric until it offers a complete functional equivalent to their fuel based vehicles at a similar cost. Otherwise it will take a complete paradigm shift in the way people think about their vehicles. The current SUV mindset won't be easily satisfied by electric. People want floating living rooms with luxury and doodads. When they start thinking of the vehicle as simple transportation and look seriously at their real needs then electric will make inroads.

Until a guy can load his 2.3 kids and his wife into the SUV, hook up the boat trailer and drive two hours to the lake and home again without fussing with batteries the electric vehicle doesn't have a chance.

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

I think the reason arises from a couple of sources that are more political and people in nature rather than technological in nature. Large corporations are like large governments -- they're primarily bureaucracies. If there is one thing a bureaucracy hates it's new things.

Switching to an electric car would simply change too many things for the big car companies. New engines, new manufacturing processes, etc....

Now ideally capitalism would dictate that a new small player would come into take advantage of the niche area, but the other thing a bureaucracy hates is competition. If a large threat actually arose they would either buy them out and shut them down, or use their large size against them (i.e. under cutting prices anywhere the competitor tries to sell their car.)

You are assuming no monopolies here. Also, the American public isn't the brightest when it comes to marketing techniques. If the companies who make billions in the oil industry want to campaign that electric cars are a flop, the public doesn't necessarily know they've been scammed. This was one of the issues Alan Alda recently noted in Scientific American Frontiers program on future cars. The program re-aired the other day. (It was a 2004 program).

I dunno. I'm very skeptical of the lack of electric cars being some sort of 'big oil conspiracy'.

OK, so maybe the big 3 in the US is slow to accept change. There would most certainly be a large change in the manufacturing process. But the biggest Auto manufacturers aren't all in the US!

What about Japan? Germany? South Korea? France? Are they all in on it too? They're all afraid of the gas and oil industry? They're all so reluctant of change that none will retool their factories to produce a car that theoretically is technically superior and majority of consumers would purchase?

Others have brought up very good points here.. It certainly sounds like more of a technical hurtle than a political one.

Also, the fact of the matter is that Toyota and Honda offer many of their vehicles as hybrids, but for the most part, it offers no distinct advantage considering the batteries need to be replaced fairly often, and it is expensive and damaging to the environment to do so.

 

[TjW]

You are assuming no monopolies here. Also, the American public isn't the brightest when it comes to marketing techniques. If the companies who make billions in the oil industry want to campaign that electric cars are a flop, the public doesn't necessarily know they've been scammed. This was one of the issues Alan Alda recently noted in Scientific American Frontiers program on future cars. The program re-aired the other day. (It was a 2004 program).

The electric cars in question were all leased to people who apparently really liked the cars.

Sort of a self-selecting sample, wasn't it? Now, my hobby is sailplanes. If GM offered to lease me a high-performance sailplane as part of their investigation of whether to go into the sailplane business, I'd jump on it. I'd probably also complain if they took it away. Would that constitute evidence that the sailplane business would be a profitable one for GM?

Then the auto company called in all the leases and destroyed the cars. Why would they do that? The cars were already produced and being leased. Why give up that profit and take the cars back just to shred them? You think managing the leases was an issue? Why not sell the cars to the people leasing them or anyone else then? No one had been sued for the cars posing a hazard. Is there any reason you can think of for canceling these leases?

Do you have evidence that they made a profit on those leases? They may have lost a little less money overall as a result of money coming in from the leases, but this would be the first I've heard that the EV1 project was profitable for GM.
At least one garage burned as the result of a fire due to charging. I don't recall if there was a suit or a settlement or not. I wouldn't count on no suit or settlement being the case in every future incident.
There are consumer protection laws (in California, at least) that if a car is sold, you must provide parts and service availability for a certain number of years after the car has ceased production. That would be a good reason for GM to only lease them in the first place, and an equally good reason to not sell them afterwards.

Take, for example, one side plot in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, based on real events.

More history of the Red Car Line.

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

Do you have evidence that they made a profit on those leases? They may have lost a little less money overall as a result of money coming in from the leases, but this would be the first I've heard that the EV1 project was profitable for GM.
At least one garage burned as the result of a fire due to charging. I don't recall if there was a suit or a settlement or not. I wouldn't count on no suit or settlement being the case in every future incident.
There are consumer protection laws (in California, at least) that if a car is sold, you must provide parts and service availability for a certain number of years after the car has ceased production. That would be a good reason for GM to only lease them in the first place, and an equally good reason to not sell them afterwards.

As an additional point to liability on the part of GM, the Wikipedia article states: "Over 100 people offered to purchase the electric cars and waive liability, but GM refused". Sounds like a conspiracy, unless you look at the fact that GM would not be allowed to be released from liability.

When you look at the facts, it's not at all surprising that GM cancelled the program and destroyed the cars.

 

[Ripley Twenty-Nine]

I don't think this has been posted yet, but GM has a response to the movie that I found interesting. It reiterates many of the points brought up here.

 

[fsol]

Why would they? We already know where the limitation is: it's the battery. No amount of engineering can make an electric car commercially feasible with current battery technology, and no battery technology on the horizon is going to change that soon. At this point, research into all-electric vehicles (as opposed to battery research, which is applicable for a lot more than just cars) is largely a waste of money. The big bet automakers are spending money on isn't all-electrics (GM got burned badly by wasting billions upon billions on EV1), but fuel cell vehicles, because there is a lot of car engineering that needs to be done which only they can do. For example, a fuel cell that can power a car produces less heat than an internal combustion engine, but it also needs to operate at a lower temperature, which means that the cooling actually needs to be more sophisticated and efficient than for an internal combustion engine (nobody will buy a car that won't work when the weather gets hot).

If a major battery breakthrough happens, car manufacturers can jump on it easily and quickly enough, but none of them are placing big bets on that happening.

This is it really. The battery tech just isn't there for a full on electric car. The car manufacturers are chucking money at fuel cells, because they satisfy the range requirements of the consumer and score green points. It really isn't a case of any anti-electric car conspiracy. It is just a case of looking at the options and seeing which is more viable.

 

[Cyphermage]

According to the Wikipedia page on the EV-1 the range of the NiMH version was 75-150 miles with a full recharge time of 8 hours.

How many times could you cycle the batteries before you had to shell out to buy new ones?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that. Are you saying I've been deceived by propaganda?

But in any case, I'm not claiming that "electric cars are bad". I'm claiming, and even the advocates concede, that they do not have ranges or refueling time comparable to gasoline-powered cars. For that reason, and that reason alone, the vast majority of consumers will not choose an electric vehicle over a gas-powered vehicle. No conspiracy needed. Given the option between a $20K gasoline-powered car that I can drive across the country if I want, and a $30K electric-powered car that I can't really drive out of my own metropolitan region, I'll take the gas-powered car any day, and so would most people.

The people who leased the electric cars in question which were then taken back by the motor vehicle company did not want to give them back and were very happy with them. The idea there was no market is refuted by these users. Whether an electric car meets everyone's needs is not relevant. I did not suggest the conspiracy first, Alan Alda's script included it in the program I mentioned.

You are assuming no market based on your personal preference. Can you site a market study that contradicts the S.A. Frontier's evaluation of the actual users in the test market? How big is the market for electric cars? How does the disseminated information that the cars are impractical and the lack of an advertising campaign touting the benefits impact that market size? Do you think the disseminated information was based on market research or intended to direct the market? In the case of the Red Car Line, Firestone was convicted of purposefully dismantling it.

 

[joe87]

This is it really. The battery tech just isn't there for a full on electric car. The car manufacturers are chucking money at fuel cells, because they satisfy the range requirements of the consumer and score green points. It really isn't a case of any anti-electric car conspiracy. It is just a case of looking at the options and seeing which is more viable.

To understand why this is true, look at the energy density of gasoline vs batteries. Gasoline stores 12,200 Wh/kg, lead-acid batteries store 25 Wh/kg. This means that a 20-gallon tank of gas (about 54 Kg) contains 654,000 Wh of energy. To store that much energy in lead-acid batteries would take 26,000 Kg of batteries. Even with Li-Ion batteries, which can store 150 Wh/kg, you need 4,400 Kg of batteries. There is no conspiracy, just the hard, cold realities of physics. Electric cars will never be competitive with gasoline or diesel-powered cars.

 

[Senor_Pointy]

Electric cars will never be competitive with gasoline or diesel-powered cars.

...barring any unforeseen huge leaps in battery technology...

 

[TjW]

The people who leased the electric cars in question which were then taken back by the motor vehicle company did not want to give them back and were very happy with them. The idea there was no market is refuted by these users. Whether an electric car meets everyone's needs is not relevant. I did not suggest the conspiracy first, Alan Alda's script included it in the program I mentioned.

You are assuming no market based on your personal preference. Can you site a market study that contradicts the S.A. Frontier's evaluation of the actual users in the test market? How big is the market for electric cars? How does the disseminated information that the cars are impractical and the lack of an advertising campaign touting the benefits impact that market size? Do you think the disseminated information was based on market research or intended to direct the market? In the case of the Red Car Line, Firestone was convicted of purposefully dismantling it.

I would say the idea that there is no market for electric cars was refuted by the fact that there were electric cars before the EV1, and there are electric cars available now.
AC Propulsion sells integrated motor-controller-charger systems. As I understand it, there are custom shops that will convert an ICE car to electric. There is a small used market in these electric cars. The Porsche 914, the GM Sprint, and the Honda Civic seem to be popular chassis for conversion.
All it takes is money. The size of the market speaks for itself.
What there isn't, is a subsidized electric vehicle. The EV1 got front-burner status because California was going to require that 2% of the cars that a company sold in California be electric cars. Under those rules, GM would have had to lower the price of the EV1 to whatever it took to sell the 2%, so that it could sell the remaining 98% ICE cars at a profit. And the price of the remaining ICE cars would probably have gone up, so the rest of the GM car-buying public would have been subsidizing the electric car.
At around the same time, Ford had a slightly lower-profile and lower cost electric truck program. Like GM, the trucks were on leases, and were recovered and scrapped.

 

[kevin]

Uranium is a separate issue given the enriched plutonium problem. Want to fight a war over wind or the Sun? Really, what's left? Will we go to war over arable land? The point is we are fighting oil wars now.

Anytime a substance is in demand and the supply is geographically restricted it's probably going to be fought over. If sunlight were the only power source available, I could see areas where the sun disappears completely for months wanting a better supply.

I could also see windfarms positioned along a border causing accusations of stealing energy from wind before it crosses the border (similar to water arguements these days).

But no, I don't expect any of that to be likely to happen for wind/solar mostly because I don't see the supply of wind/power to be enough to for the demand to put the supply under enough restrictions to start wars. Although we certainly need to use them, I don't seem them being efficient enough to support us.

 

[kevin]

There is no conspiracy, just the hard, cold realities of physics. Electric cars will never be competitive with gasoline or diesel-powered cars.

Currently electric cars can not substitute for all usages of gas/diesel powered cars. However the range of cars available certainly has some rather large niches that could support the use of electric cars.

Not everybody buys cars for the same reasons. I know lots of people on the east coast buy hybrids as a second car for commute-only because they can use them in the HOV lanes, as a commute-only option the electric is an obvious fit.

Although I get 400 miles on a tank in my hybrid, I won't be driving it to my family reunion later this year. I'll rent a vehicle that is either more comfortable to drive that distance, or cooler to drive (currently thinking convertable mustang). My prius is too small and noisy for that type of distance driving.

The prius in europe has a switch that allows them to drive purely electric without the engine. Many people in the states are activating this switch on their cars (mine is an older model without the option, otherwise I'd do this too.) More adventureous people are hacking their hybrids to add a plug charger.

I think it's pretty clear that a farily large niche does exist for the electric.

 

[Pidge]

To understand why this is true, look at the energy density of gasoline vs batteries. Gasoline stores 12,200 Wh/kg, lead-acid batteries store 25 Wh/kg.

Of the 12,200 Wh/kg available in gasoline, only about 25% is converted to mechanical power in ICE. So the target for electrical energy storage is more like 3000Wh/kg to match gasoline assuming 100% (optmistic, yes) conversion of stored electriclal energy to motive power.

Burning magnesium metal provides 16,732,000J/kg or 4647Wh/kg, so a Magnesium-based fuel cell (converts magnesium metal to oxide, collecting most of the oxidation energy as eletrical energy instead of heat) could probably match the energy required, at a 65% conversion efficency (of chemical potenial to mechanical energy) vs 25% for gasoline powered ICE.

The other advantage electrical and hybrid cars have over pure ICE is that they use regenerative braking to recover energy. So although you have less total energy storage, you can go further on the same intial energy charge as the car recaptures a certain amount of the initial energy.

Fuel cell cars would probably have a small amount of battery storage that the fuel cell tops up - although the car may have 70kW electric motors, the fuel cell only provides maybe 8kW continously, enough to maintain speed and top up the battery between acceleration. This is how the current crop of hybrid cars work.

You need 216Wh to accelerate a 1400kg mass to 120kmph. That's 2kg of Li-Ion batteries by your own figures. (m = 1400kg, v = 120kmph = 33.333m/s, E=1/2 mV², E = 777777J or ( 777777J / 3600s/h ) = 216Wh). There's air resistance to overcome to get to that speed, so call it 300Wh, and that would take a 8kW fuel cell 2.25 minutes to recharge.

These are all back-of-the-envelope calculations, btw. Feel free to refine. I'm just showing the feasibility. If it wasn't feasible, you would not be hearing the people complaining about having their leased electric cars taken off them almost by force, and hybrids would not be being made.

Also, there's a electric sports car around that embarrased numerous performance cars on a drag strip. It was only beaten was because the driver of the electric car left the park brake / hand brake on... I'll see if I can find an (internet) reference for that.


ETA - Heats of formation and chemical compositions
ETA - tzero is the name of the car, had here's the article/press release on the 1/8mile drags http://www.acpropulsion.com/Press releases/tzero_Beats_Ferrari.htm

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...
Also, the fact of the matter is that Toyota and Honda offer many of their vehicles as hybrids, but for the most part, it offers no distinct advantage considering the batteries need to be replaced fairly often, and it is expensive and damaging to the environment to do so.

It's my understanding the hybrids are indeed originating from outside the country and the US automakers are now having to at least go part electric after all.

As far as US companies though, the oil companies are big international giants. They can influence governments via lobby money and bribing corrupt individuals which there seems to be an endless supply; car manufacturers are not immune to oil company influence; and media manipulation has become a refined skill of all these corporate giants.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Sort of a self-selecting sample, wasn't it?...

Do you have evidence that they made a profit on those leases?...
There are consumer protection laws (in California, at least) that if a car is sold, you must provide parts and service availability for a certain number of years after the car has ceased production. That would be a good reason for GM to only lease them in the first place, and an equally good reason to not sell them afterwards.

While all of these are possibilities, I think the evidence is in the film and elsewhere pointing in the direction I propose.

Try the film reviews for starters if you haven't seen the film.