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Electric Car – It Dies Anew!
In February of 2012 I wrote a brilliant, prescient, and far-too-early prediction of the death of the electric car.
A123 is toast. Fisker is toast. Tesla is done for. All these hyped battery and superduperhypercapacitor companies are running aground, on the hard ground of a simple reality: gasoline/diesel are far, far, far better energy storage media than anything else. It is not even close.
….
The upshot is that the industry is falling back: it will adopt only those technologies that pay. Start-stop technologies work. Perhaps a series hybrid will pay,
And May of 2017, I doubled down, admitting that I was still too early, but still right.
And now…. The Chevy Volt was just cancelled.
Six years ago, President Barack Obama promised to buy a Chevy Volt after his presidency.
“I got to get inside a brand-new Chevy Volt fresh off the line,” Obama announced to a cheering crowd of United Auto Workers activists. “Even though Secret Service wouldn’t let me drive it. But I liked sitting in it. It was nice. I’ll bet it drives real good. And five years from now when I’m not president anymore, I’ll buy one and drive it myself.”
Now it looks like Obama will not get his chance to make good on the promise. General Motors announced Monday that it would cease production of the hybrid electric plug-in Volt and its gas-powered sister car the Cruze. The announcement came as part of a larger restructuring by the car company as it seeks to focus production around the bigger vehicles in favor with U.S. consumers.
And if the government subsidies would be pulled, I think the original prediction will still hold true: the cost-benefit analysis for electric (not hybrid like the Prius, but pure electric) makes it a terrible business on the basis of utility. The market will remain for people who have enough money to overpay for an inferior product in order to show their superiority.
Published in General
i used to have meetings with the Saudis. They just loved my Jag. And why not? It proved I was a reliable petroleum customer. When I showed up in the Leaf, not so much. I hadn’t realized that pleasing the Arabs was such a big deal to Israel.
This post confuses the Chevy Volt, a hybrid that GM will stop producing, with the Chevy Bolt, an all-electric, that it will continue to make.
It is odd, especially considering the cost of gas. Priuses sell, but I think people just might not trust batteries all the way. For a variety of reasons, they tend to have very short lives here and that might make people nervous.
Which is why the government needs to be out of endorsing them so much. The technology can change and improve, overcoming the problems like digging up lithium and all that. Government tends to maintain the status quo.
Governments and Progressives really really like electric cars. Almost as much as they like trains. The thought is if the government and early adopters can fund the development of the technology, that electric cars will be competitive with gasoline or diesel. Not sure that will actually work.
Somebody should catalog all the subsidized businesses and products that eventually weaned themselves off the subsidies and stood on their own. Somebody other than me, because I can’t think of any offhand.
Best example: Phone companies.
Well now… turbine-powered cars died. There are a host of technologies that were tried and did not pan out for technical or economic reasons.
Electric cars fail for the economic reasons driven by the enormous gap between the energy storage in a pound of batteries versus the energy storage in a pound of gasoline.
Their monopoly was protected, but I didn’t know they were subsidized. Maybe that example is as close as we’re going to get?
Which is not the only relevant fact in the issue. Energy storage isn’t all there is. What do we do to get the energy? What does it cost to build an engine or a motor? What’s the intended use? A cross country moving van, or a neighborhood grocery getter? Those answers have everything to do with success and failure. Our car is a vast improvement on what we were paying for gas, with no drawbacks. Your mileage, of course, may differ.
Turbine cars were supposed to free us from oil, because they “could run on anything! Diesel fuel, kerosene”…both of which come from oil. Oh, and “Remy Martin and Chanel #5!” Like that was going to solve the 1970s gas crisis.
So battery technology which hasn’t advanced sufficiently in 150 years to make electrics competitive will somehow advance to that level in the next twenty? Color me skeptical. Some dreams remain just that, dreams, no matter how many subsidies are applied.
Better than trying to sell the legendary No Va in Mexico, though.
China has some interesting policies about electric cars: Small gutless ones (top speed around 30 or 40 m(I think)ph don’t need a licensed driver.
About Israel, wouldn’t living in a hot climate make an electric car less viable? I expect the A/C would drain too much battery. How long does it take an electric car to recharge its battery? How long does it take to fill your gas tank?
Range Anxiety. Not for me, thank you.
Or the 6000 SUX.
Cold, not heat, reduces driving range (although the Negev in August would probably be extreme enough to be an exception). Charging time differs. Most cars made after 2011 or so, including all Teslas, can be charged slowly with 120 or 240 volts, but also accept a DC charge in 20 minutes. (It uses a lot of juice, so DC is not for home charging). In the UK and Ireland, most gas stations have DC chargers as well. Range anxiety is real, but it’s also overblown for most people as an issue. Almost any electric car built in this century is good for 75 miles, but the newest ones are in the 120-and-up range, and of course the Tesla has colossal range at colossal cost.
Do they still make Wankel engines?
No electricity puts the gas stations out of service, too. Granted, if I have no gas stockpiled I can catch a ride and fill my gas can outside the effective radius, and bootstrap that way. Of course, last power outage the lightning took out the cell towers too, so catching that ride would have been a neat trick, too. The Tesla owner would just rent a car and driver or run his $5000 generator consuming whatever is available, petroleum, natural gas, kerosene, or whatever. Also, stored gasoline has a knack for degrading in long term storage.
According to a quick search, Mazda last made one in 2012 but Fox News says they expect to return to the market in 2019.
Not exactly. In CT my neighbor and I both have 1000 gal gasoline tanks in our yards, underground. The cost is minimal and the payback is rapid as long as you pay attention to the normal cycles of price. The pump can, and has been, powered by a very small portable Honda(!!) generator. Acre lots are the norm. During the last October storm(2011) that knocked out power for a week and longer the smart gasoline dealers in the area, admittedly a small minority as this is far leftie and strident Never Trump territory*, kept pumps running with backup generators. There was a groundswell of support for mandating backup generators at ‘critical’ fuel stations. Fortunately that quickly died in legislative committee.
In Texas we have dual 1000 gal propane tanks resting on the ground (concrete slab) and an elevated 1000 gal gasoline tank also anchored to a concrete slab. All are quite safe and serviceable and COMMON in the area. Gasoline is available by gravity feed so electric power is not needed. Backup generators are common.
Recharging an electric with a Honda generator is problematic in both situations. A home charger for a Tesla is rated at 100A. The backup generator is best utilized for keeping the fridge and furnace running, air conditioner in Texas and so on.
Gasoline deliveries, in my experience, include stabilizer. The jobbers who deliver are prepared to service the needs of homeowners and small business owners who must be prepared in case of lengthy weather disruptions.
For others, safe and convenient storage of one or two 30 gallon containers of (stabilized) gasoline, diesel, or fuel oil is not just possible but recommended for the occasional weather emergency.
For those of us who have a family need, or elderly neighbors, where home dialysis, breathing assistance and so on is in use preparation for emergencies is mandatory.
*Perhaps prejudicial, but my observation is that the far lefties and strident Never Trumpers tend to be unwilling to be prepared for emergencies and assist those nearby in the neighborhood. Possibly this is just a generational difference, since us old you-know-whats have tried to be good boy scouts as a consequence of our upbringing….
The biggest issue I have with electric cars is the “oh crap” scenario.
If you have a mass evacuation, with normal cars you can assume at least a couple of hundred miles of evacuation range with a full tank of gas – and a refuel time of a few minutes at most.
My beat up old Subaru Outback can do over 300 miles – and some car models can easily beat 500 on one tank of gas. A moderate number of tanker trucks can handle a heckuva lot of cars.
Electrics? Nope. You have, for the most part, 100 to 150 miles – and then they all either park their dead cars, or find one of the few places to recharge – overnight. Maybe.
One of those Armageddon-style “evacuate the coast” situations will end up with a lot of ecologically-minded people walking after the first hour or so. Sure, there will also be a lot of people who ran out of gas – but as a percentage, the e-cars will be dropping a lot more often.
This is why you should always carry a bicycle on your car. If you run out of gas, you just take it off the car and go get some.
Go with the motorcycle, instead. Great mileage.
Or just go pick up a new battery pack! Yeah…
Or haul one with you everywhere you go. And a crane to move the old out and drop in the new.
Because:
https://youtu.be/z0O_VYcsIk8
Another one came to me back in the rolling blackouts in California back in the Enron era. The legislature had mandated that a certain percentage of cars in California be electric. Nobody was making them or buying them in the required numbers.
I thought this was a good thing: if everyone drove their electric car back from work on a hot day and plugged it in to recharge the combination of that load and the need for air conditioning would have taken the whole grid down.
So since its time has arrived, it doesn’t need subsidies? Or is it the government in its infinite wisdom and lack of corruption just sees the future better than the rest of the technological and energy world?
Where do Israelis get the electricity to charge the cars? A unique problem with Israel is that they lack the land for a large nuclear power infrastructure.
Generation and transmission of electricity are also military vulnerabilities. a small hezbolla missile attack could knock those out for a year. Meanwhile gasoline tankers could dock at makeshift ports and offload to tanker trucks Overlord-style.
Here is some highly relevant information for those on the “batteries will get better” bandwagon:
So batteries are as good as they are going to be – at least using any chemistry we already know works.
Also note:
Source.
Note that this does not preclude some kind of unexpected breakthrough in energy storage. So electric cars might still, somehow, end up economically competitive on a level playing field. But not given what we know – and in the face of old-fashioned engines continuing to improve and be optimized.
A buddy of mine, quite conservative guy, bought a Lexus hybrid several years ago, when they were new. He got a significant tax break for buying a luxury automobile. Whenever we would ride to lunch in his car, he would thank me for buying part of his car.