Brad Krug and Seth Richardson discuss the practicality and potential of EVs

Brad Krug: The problem I have with the electric car is the myth that it produces zero emissions.  The fact is that these vehicles require electricity and the majority of our electricity is produced using coal.   This means this clean car is really powered by coal; it’s just that the coal has been converted to electricity.

Since coal is converted to electricity using steam the best conversion rate possible is 33 1/3.   Once converted the electricity is transmitted to the vehicle with a transmission loss of 6-8% , and finally the conversion to and from battery storage results in another 20% loss.  This results in about 20-25% recoverable energy, about the same as an internal combustion engine.

The transmission of electricity required for these vehicles can also cause problems.  Research shows that if these vehicles are recharged at night our current infrastructure should be able to handle the load.  However with emerging technology these cars could be recharged in 10 minutes instead of the original 8 hours .  This would allow recharging anytime.  This new bursty load would require massive upgrades of both our power plants and electrical grid.

Battery storage is also a challenge.  Vehicles with a short 40 mile range would require battery storage costing roughly $5000; a reasonable cost.  However a vehicle with a 100 mile range would require battery storage costing $12,500, a cost greater than the rest of the vehicle.   Note these costs are for the cheaper Lead Acid batteries not the environmentally safer Li-on batteries which are far more expensive.

Seth Richardson: I think that it is probably less of a myth than you might think, but I concede that the public does not yet clearly understand the complexities of vast numbers of fully-electric vehicles in the U.S. fleet. The benefit of urban electric vehicles is that both the carbon emissions and the air quality issues can be removed from dense urban areas and dealt with using the economies of scale. It’s easier to control emissions from a power plant than from a million individual vehicles. It’s also cheaper.

The advent of new, practical superconductor technologies, such as those being installed in New York City today, offer infrastructure improvements that may make concerns about grid overload moot. Smart-grid technology also offers options for controlling grid load and demand. There are even proposals afoot to use battery-powered vehicles as grid-tie “producers” by tapping the stored energy to smooth out peaks.

And of course, the solution to coal-fired power plants is to go nuclear. New micro-nukes under development in New Mexico offer interesting possibilities for distributed-production grid systems that would lessen the need for large-scale transmission-line upgrades.

The most exciting technology however, is the advent of the truly practical electric vehicle, the Tesla Motors Roadster Sport, which has a practical range of up to 230 miles, recharges from a standard outlet in about two hours. This vehicle is very expensive, but once the technology has matured, the costs will come down, and one must compare the costs of manufacturing and maintaining an internal combustion engine, with all it’s moving parts, to the simplicity of an electric motor with only a few moving parts.

Brad Krug: It appears you are putting our future in yet unproven technologies when you talk about these, “new, practical superconductor technologies”.  First this “practical technology” is still in the lab and “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) seeks to install and field test HTS cable in New York City’s electrical power grid by 2010”.   Then this project is being partially funded by the DHS implying it otherwise would be cost prohibited to even attempt a field trial.

Micro-nukes are a pipe dream for commercial power production. My research tells me that “Hyperion power modules are buried far underground and guarded by a security detail”.  So between the trained security detail and the cost to store the spent fuel these units will prove uneconomical for anything other than government projects; defense or space.

The exciting Roadster Sport starts at $128,500  primarily due to the cost of the lithium-ion batteries.  Yes Lithium-ion cells store more energy than the current nickel-metal hydride batteries but they can be tricky to work with and far more expensive. They have also been known for manufacturing defects which cause them to catch fire without warning.  Then there is a report from the DOE,  “Lithium-ion batteries are not ready for prime time.”   This report says the principal cost drivers are the high cost of raw materials and materials processing.  The laws of economics tells us that the price of raw materials increases when demand for those materials increases. Since approximately 70% of finished Li-ion battery costs are due to raw materials I have to ask where the savings will come from.

Seth Richardson: Clearly the future must be left to the future, and all new technologies are unproven until they are proven. I see hope for alternative fuel vehicles including fully electric ones as technologies mature. Your original claim was that electric vehicles are not zero-emission, but we seem to have shifted the context of the discussion to economics instead. But the economical value of electric vehicles will change as the fossil-fuel conundrum is resolved, one way or another.

Whether micro-nukes are economically feasible or not, regular nuclear plants are in our future because they offer the only practical and available option to coal and gas-fired electric plants.

From the perspective of emissions, however, electric vehicles offer practical utility for dense urban areas even with limited range, not because their emissions are net zero, but because they allow for the emission effects to be isolated from the urban areas and treated with the economies of scale.

But the long-term question is not whether EVs are zero emission, it is whether they can effectively supplement or replace gasoline-powered vehicles, at least in urban areas, within the time-frame we have to find new transportation technologies before gasoline becomes too expensive to burn as motor fuel. In that regard, EVs appear to be a technology worth pursuing with vigor, even if the current state of the art is not economically practical.

Energy Information Administration, Electricity Net Generation by Fuel, 1990, 1995-1999 Colorado

CleanTechia.com, Power Plant Efficiency Hasn’t Improved Since 1957

Seeking Alpha, Heard Enough about Alternative Energy? Think Energy Efficiency

Earth2tech.com, Epyon: 10-Minute Electric Car Charging

Seeking Alpha, Why Long Range EVs Can Never Be Cost Effective

Project HYDRA Launched in New York City December 2, 2008 – 02:20

Businesswire.com, Tesla Motors Introduces Roadster Sport

Alt Energy Stock, DOE Reports That Lithium-ion Batteries Are Not Ready for Prime Time

~

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.