Comments on: Editorial: Why Not Electric Cars?

By: Seattle’s Transportation Carbon Footprint: Can Electric Cars Save Us? | hugeasscity

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:27:37 +0000

[...] cars are expensive (it’s all about the batteries). A new $30k electric car for every Seattle household would [...]

By: “Vehicle Miles Traveled” Tax Dead - Seattle Transit Blog

“Vehicle Miles Traveled” Tax Dead - Seattle Transit Blog — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:14:08 +0000

[...] the gas tax. It may be that in the far future most vehicles won’t burn gasoline. But I’m not holding my breath, and we can address that problem if and when it [...]

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:57:11 +0000

Um, they haven’t even finished manufacturing the first model year yet, have they?

I’m pretty sure they anticipated the early cars off the production line costing more than the later ones. The “unit cost” or “material cost” is not the marginal cost; it’s driven down by having a small, slow production line. Apparently they messed up on initial estimates, but from Musk’s letter it’s clear a faster production line would have brought the unit cost down significant; it’s even clear that costs due to bad contracts arranged by the prior CEO (!) amount to part of it.

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:41:55 +0000

Why do people sit in traffic instead of taking the train?

Because you “can’t get there from here”. Our rail network is deeply trashed, our buses are pretty trashed too, and there simply is no way to get to a lot of places by public transportation without *really* excessive waits.

I think #2 is the crucial point, yes.

By: Oran

Oran — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:34:38 +0000

It would be more than $60 trillion. As oil supply decreases at more or the same demand the price of it will go up dramatically. With less oil left and most of it in hard to reach places, the cost of extracting it also goes up.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:13:31 +0000

Ben, when I said “conspiracy theories” I’m thinking more of the nonsense about how the auto companies are in bed with the oil companies to keep high gas mileage and alternative fuel vehicles off the market. Also the ones about how car makers don’t want to build electric vehicles because they’d never break down.

Even if any of that was ever true for one automaker, I don’t think it has ever applied to all of them at the same time.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:47:36 +0000

From Elon Musk, this week:

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/tesla-says-it-will-turn-profit-next-month/

“an incredible effort by the development, supply chain and manufacturing teams has brought the Roadster material cost down from $140k to approximately $80k as of this month.”

That’s new. The whole first model year cost them $30k more to produce than they sold it for, because they took their orders before they could build them.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:45:36 +0000

Chris, none of these are conspiracy theories. Planned obsolescence is planned. That’s how companies make money.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:39:09 +0000

Planned obsolescence was never about building cars that broke down after a certain number of miles. Planned obsolescence was a response to cars lasting too long. After WWII the car companies did well satisfying pent up demand from the war years. In the mid fifties though people needed a new reason to replace what was a perfectly adequate automobile. That’s really when “styling” took off. A major change in look was accomplished for a rather mild investment in chrome and taillights. On a two or three year cycle the previous models could be made to look really old and obsolete.

Car companies are building better and better cars. Survival depends on it. Even GM is building better cars; they just haven’t kept pace with companies like Honda and Toyota. There’s lot of reasons; costs associated with union contracts, a corporate and management structure which is incentivized to overweight short term profit, unfair trade practices, etc. I think it’s just too complex for one or the other group to pull of any sort of conspiracy.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:30:48 +0000

Even if they covered the entire top of a vehicle, solar panels don’t generate nearly the power needed to provide any sort of meaningful supplement to the batteries for driving or any real charging capacity. Even with the best PV technology efficiency is only 4.5-6% which means at most 20 w/m^2. Say the upper surface on a vehicle is about 4m^2 which means only about 80w.

It would seem much more sensible to use solar panels to run fans to keep the interior cool while parked in the sun or run other accessories rather than to try to charge the batteries.

By: Chris Stefan

Chris Stefan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:08:12 +0000

I don’t buy the conspiracy theories. To a large extent what the automakers make is driven by the regulatory environment and consumer demand. When fuel is cheap nobody wants fuel-efficient vehicles and everyone starts buying SUVs and light trucks (why the heck else does every auto nameplate including Porsche have an SUV or light truck?). When fuel gets more expensive demand shifts to more fuel efficient vehicles like hybrids or various diesel technologies (TDI, CRI, etc).

Same thing with the whole “planned obsolescence” game. While companies like GM might still want a car to break down and be uneconomical to repair after a certain number of miles others like Toyota and Honda have pushed reliability. They don’t seem to have a problem with their vehicles lasting a long time if properly cared for.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:24:02 +0000

But if “its absurd” to sit in congestion why do so many rational people do it? You aren’t looking at the bigger picture. People are making a ration choice that car traffic is better than bus/train/street car riding. So what’s wrong with the picture?

#1) Time: It’s still faster to sit in traffic than take the current modes of transportation. We need to fix this by putting more mass transit in it’s own right-of-way to make it rapid transit.

#2) Connectivity: It’s not time wise possible to do some commutes. I’m sure we’d all like to live next to our work, but not if it’s a steel mill, or downtown if we have kids. We need more systems that are fast that connect to more places, just like our road network.

#3) Cost: We don’t charge people who drive for the environmental cost of burning gas and driving. Those roads don’t absorb water, so we have more flooding. Everybody pays by having farm land ruined by roads, but we all pay equally, and not just drivers. We also subsidize roads with property taxes, again not a direct cost so drivers don’t see it.

#4) Alternatives: bike lanes for instance are incomplete, and not sufficiently connected or safe in Seattle. They must be better in Portland because the climate is roughly the same but they bicycle to work more.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 19:16:34 +0000

It’s worse than that. These guys all sit on each other’s boards. They make money together. There’s a trillion barrels of oil left, at $60 a barrel that’s $60 Trillion! Not exactly pocket change. So if you saw that investment going to say $10 barrel because demand was off you’d do what was necessary to keep demand high too.

By: Ben Schiendelman

Ben Schiendelman — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:28:18 +0000

They do want you to buy new, more fuel efficient cars. They don’t want you to buy *too* fuel efficient of vehicles, because they won’t be able to sell you more later.

But if they sell you a car that doesn’t burn fuel at all – it won’t need replacing for much, much longer.

By: John Charles Wilson

John Charles Wilson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:22:04 +0000

I really doubt the auto companies want you to use more fuel. Simple reasoning: if you use less fuel, you have more money to spend on the auto itself. GM would rather you give your money to GM than to BP….

By: John Charles Wilson

John Charles Wilson — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:09:25 +0000

I have a better idea to make electric cars feasible. Dual input: both a plug-in system *and* solar panels. You can plug in the car at night to recharge. The solar panels keep topping up your charge when you’re parked in the sunlight (this might make open-air parking lots more valuable than ramps…) and slow down the discharge of the batteries while you’re driving in the daylight. I’m not sure how much this could extend battery range but it’s a thought….

By: Nathanael

Nathanael — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:36:35 +0000

(1) I don’t know who’s claiming that the Tesla Roadster is being sold at a loss, but they’re just making shit up. In fact, Tesla does make money each time they sell a car — they aren’t idiots.

(2) I am over *sixty miles* from the nearest train station and over a mile from the nearest bus stop. Out here in the countryside, electric cars seem very reasonable: a definite improvement over gasoline cars.

—
The crucial point was made not by the editorialist, but by the first commenter: if all the city dwellers get electric cars, they’ll all be stuck in gridlock. That’s the “why not” for electric cars.

Electric cars will do just fine replacing gasoline cars for people who live in uncongested areas; if you drive down two-lane roads and never get stuck in traffic, a train or even a bus is overkill.

For congested areas, relying on cars is simply absurd.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:24:25 +0000

Well, it’s interesting. Lockheed seems to think it’s at least got a chance. That’s a company that has brought things to “market” that nobody thought was possible; like an airplane with the RADAR signature of a bird. At the opposite end of the spectrum small bypass caps have shrunk by an order of magnitude (they’re like the size of a grain of sand now) so I don’t think it’s crazy to believe there will be similar gains in high voltage high capacity components. There’s certainly been impressive progress in the ultracapacitors that have been brought to market. Time will tell. Don’t dare to dream… but pinch yourself once in a while ;^)

By: Matt the Engineer

Matt the Engineer — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:55:15 +0000

Ultracapacitors aren’t a scam, but EESTOR may be. Ultracapacitors are great at quickly charging and discharging, leading to high power output. The problem is energy density – to be able to run a car with normal ultracapacitor would take something like a garbage truck sized capacitor. EESTOR says they’ve created one with 10x the energy density of the best batteries on the market – an amazing claim, to say the least. Of course, they made this claim several years ago and keep pushing off the promised date to show the world a prototype.

By: Bernie

Bernie — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:21:13 +0000

The actual article is in Fortune, Warren Buffett takes charge. I found it a fascinating read not just because of the electric car or battery technology but because of the man behind the company and the working conditions in China. BYD has lots of electric cars on the road. Up until now they’ve been equipped with gas engines for auxiliary charging because the infrastructure isn’t in place for recharging stations. That’s the next step in the evolution where they plan to start selling 2010 all electric vehicles to fleet operators like taxis. Gas stations were far and few between when Henry started selling the model T. You might be right, they may never catch on. But I’d put my money on Buffett.

BYD’s core business is selling batteries. They also make cell phones and GPS units. Just because those aren’t the major part of their business doesn’t make those technologies fringe. Look at a picture of NYC traffic and count the cabs. That many all electric vehicles would make a huge difference. It’s not going to replace the F150 in Montana but I wouldn’t be so sure you won’t start seeing all electric cars make significant inroads in many markets.