The Electric Vehicle Truly is the Future

Electric vehicles are the future.  Anyone can generate electricity and on a small scale, using renewables is just as easy as using the traditional methods, easier in some cases.  Electric vehicles provide the range the vast vast majority of us need on a daily basis and in the winter time, they heat up faster too.  But like everything, they have their downsides.

The first downside and the most important one in my book is the human resistance to change.  We've had fossil fueled vehicles almost exclusively for a hundred years.  We have some electric buses and trains in and near big cities, but many of us don't live in big cities.  There's the concept called "range anxiety" where people are supposed to be concerned about how far their EV can go.  There's the time it takes to recharge, and the availability of charging locations away from home.  And for some reason (obvious source when you think about it) fear is drummed up about the cost of replacing the battery.

First let me address the battery.  There's a fundamental difference between electric and FF cars.  A gas engine can be expected to last around 300,000 miles or so with a few repairs along the way.  After that, it will need a rebuild, or depending on the car, it might have already had one.  But in any case, it will be worn out.  There will be metal inside the engine which will no longer be there.  That's why oil turns black, it's carrying the little pieces of metal that have worn off from the inside of the engine.  A diesel can be expected to last significantly longer because it's built far more competently.  Some diesels can last longer than a million miles.

But an electric vehicle is different.  There is essentially only one movable part in the "engine."  There's a rotor that spins around on the inside of the motor casing inside the coils.  Virtually all production electric vehicles utilize AC motors which have no wearable "brushes" to transfer electricity from the non moving to the moving parts.  What does this leave us?  The only wearable parts are the bearings which are replaceable, and the transmission which unlike a car transmission will not likely have any gears, clutches, or sensors.  An EV has no emissions equipment to go bad, no exhaust system to rust out, no fluids to change, no fan belts to squeak, and because of regenerative braking, the brake pads may last the life of the car.  Typical repair costs will be minimal at most.

But the battery, what do we do about the battery?  Latest estimates have the battery costing between $3000 to $10,000 in an electric vehicle and supposed to last 150,000 miles in California and estimated to last 10 years elsewhere.  But there's an aspect that you don't get if you don't go in depth.  At the end of a battery's projected life, it doesn't just die one day.  The end of a battery's life is 70% capacity.  That means instead of going 100 miles, it goes 70.  Instead of going 300 miles it goes 210.  It's obviously not the end of the world.  There's another aspect that bears investigation as well.  If in ten years you do decide you need a new battery, the batteries available will be far better than the one you have now.  And since your electric car is far from actually wearing out anyway, it will be worth the investment, like doing that engine rebuild.  In fact, it may be worth it to replace the seats, some or most of the interior, maybe even upgrade the motor.  A car can be more like a house as far as capital investment goes because it's not quite so much of a consumable product any more.

Let's talk about range.  This is where my big solution comes in.  Right now, the major electric car available is the Nissan LEAF.  The current LEAF comes with about 100 mile range, more if you like to hypermile.  Aside from the fact that this range easily covers the daily commute of over 90% of the population, think about charging at work.  I would consider it a perk of a job to be able to plug my car in (slow charge of course) at work.  Even if you do charge from dead to full (not likely to happen) with the whole 25 kWh, that's still between $2 to $5 anywhere in the US.  It's just not that big of a deal.  Even if your boss is a tight-@$$, maybe he'll let you drop a fiver for the privilege or do a monthly fee.  Better yet, park nearby at some nice local business who will let you charge.  There are options.  It's doable even if it does put you out of your comfort zone.  Better yet, in two years or so, the second generation Toyota Rav4 EV is supposed to have a range of 300 miles.

But what about long trips?  First, I doubt there will be many households with only all EV's.  I plan on commuting on a motorcycle the majority of the year, an electric motorcycle.  So for long trips, you could keep a vehicle around, it should last a long time since you won't be using it much.  Or you could rent one for trips. 

But I have an idea.  You likely have heard about the Chevy Volt which has a range extender built in, a generator to maintain charge after the battery has run low.  However, this adds considerable weight to the car which you'll have to drag around when you don't need it.  What if you could put the generator on the trailer?  better yet, what if you could rent the generator on the trailer?  What if you could go to UHaul and rent a generator trailer for your electric car?  Or, you could build one out of spare parts.  It can be done.

And it has been done.  Check out this picture of the generator trailer developed for the first Rav4 EV and the tZero.  It uses a two cylinder Kawasaki motorcycle engine and has special steering so that when you back up, you don't have to worry about knowing how to back a trailer.

Here's a Polar Power DC generator that I have been looking at lately.  It uses a Perkins 4 cylinder diesel engine with a permanent magnet alternator.  Since most EV's today use battery packs with voltages below 400, it's no problem to match voltages with the generator.  Check them out at http://www.polardcmarine.com/polarpower/products/dc-generators/ they have several smaller models as well.

Coincidently, the LEAF already has a DC quick charging plug.  It's the one on the left.  Not sure, but I think this could be useful.

You may have read about (or saw on YouTube) my recent generator project where I used a car alternator and a rototiller engine and an inverter to make a cheap fixable generator.  Next on the docket is the Parker Engineering Mark II DC Generator.  I have purchased a used 6 hp Lombardini diesel engine and I'm building a full frame and enclosure for it to make another generator.  If I can find another higher amperage alternator, it I should be able to make a significantly better overall machine, with higher sustained power output, better fuel economy and longer run time, not to mention quieter.  Electric start will be a bonus as well.  Look for it soon.

My point with all of this is that there are a lot of great options with a bit of good ol' American engineering.  An individual with just a little know how and an internet connection can figure out a whole bunch of solutions to use a variety of machines and technologies to produce power.  Modern electric cars will make that even more possible.  They will also bring about cheaper battery technology which will make it easier to build custom electric cars and for homes to be off grid.  Off grid means lower energy usage all around.

With energy, less is better.
WiredForStereo

Pro-EV Propoganda

I did an extra credit presentation about electric vehicles today in Transportation Engineering class. No, that's not really what you're supposed to be studying in TE, but my professor really likes them, and who is to say that he can't offer me extra credit for letting me do a presentation on a subject I love anyway? It was 26 PowerPoint slides, about 12 minutes it ended up being, alot of information about electric cars, mostly pros, a few cons, and a bunch of pictures of the best and brightest in the EV world. I wish I had a bit more time, but we still had a test to do and only 50 minutes in the class period. I hope I did some good, we are in Arkansas after all, and not all CE's are as environmentally conscious as I am, though most of them are, even in Arkansas.

Also this week, I had my catalytic converter re-installed on my truck. I have been thinking about this for a while, and as a matter of conscience it bugged me somewhat. You see, I care very little about CO2 emissions because I don't think they are really all that substantial. On the other hand, emissions such as CO, NOx, SOx, and hydrocarbons are a much more dangerous simply because they are directly poisonous or cause measurable and visible damage to the environment. A cat does nothing for CO2 but helps with the others, though it may decrease performance and fuel economy slightly. It also makes the truck a bit quieter which the jury is still out on. The doofs at Midas welded it on, they must have had the new guy do it because it wasn't that good of a job. I know because I am a decently accomplished welder. There's still a hole in it which I'll have to take back and have redone. The good news is that the tail pipe definitely has a different smell than it did before, and now that the engine no longer burns oil, the cat should live a long life.

Car nooz. GM is death rattling. This is a problem for me. What if we never see the Chevy Volt hit the road? This is a problem. There is nothing like it on the market, especially in America. If any important people read this, Obama especially, we need higher import tariffs, our local producers, especially car manufacturers are suffering. Japanese car companies are what they are today due in large part to the tariffs and production laws that benefit Japanese car manufacturers. We must raise tariffs so that American cars can compete with foreign cars. It's not that they can't compete now, so much as Japanese cars have broad advantage. Plus American cars generally suck, so that will have to be remedied too. The only American car I'd think about buying is the Volt, and it doesn't exist yet. Hopefully if GM does fail, it will get sold to some other company and will still see the road, it is a very important stepping stone toward the full electric highway capable car. Hopefully things will get bad enough with trade to be able to get someone who will fix it.

Complicated Situation,
WiredForStereo

An American Electric Car on the Horizon.

What you see to the left is the Chevy Volt, GM's new range extended electric vehicle set to be released in November 2010. I say good. With GM's stock price hovering at about $6, they better finally do something right. You can't lose tens of billions of dollars a year forever and expect to stay in business, unless you're the US government, in which case, that would be a time known as the "good years."

Why do I own Toyotas? Because in my opinion they offer a superior product. I would be happy to be a supporter of all-American products, but there aren't many that are worth buying. I took care of a small fleet of vehicles containing Toyotas, Fords, a Mercedes, and a GM. Which vehicles had problems and Toyotas ever had a problem, whereas every on of the others did, in fact, we sold one of the Fords because we had to fix it so often. We haven't had to take our own Toyota in for anything other than being struck by large objects moving at speed.

So while I'd absolutely love to have a moderately sized efficient reliable American vehicle, I just haven't seen one around lately. And the only people I hear advertizing for GM on the radio all drive Escalades, a vehicle which I feel represents a great number of things wrong with our country. Anyway, I hope that GM can pull it off, and just a stock tip from me, buy GM stock, it's REAL cheap and it can't exactly go down any further.

I think a lot of good things could happen if vehicles like the Volt become popular. I was thinking about one of them this evening. The Volt is supposed to be able to go 40 miles on a charge before using any gasoline. That means I think that trips will get on average shorter than that, our wasteful habit of travelling all over the place will hopefully diminish. Maybe we'll form tighter knit communities and be more interdependent on one another. And I was thinking that the gasoline preserver companies will probably make a few extra bucks because there is a much bigger chance the people's gas will go stale while it's not being used, and they'll have to use gas preserver.

Great cars change the world, look up some history.
WiredForStereo

Gas prices jump $1.50 before second hurricane THIS MONTH!!!

I'm just gonna go ahead and say, good. Good good good good. You skittery shifty cock-eyed consumerists can pay all the money in the world for your go-juice, and I'm loving it because it will get me that much closer to electric cars. I'm not loving it for the prices, but I'll sacrifice to reach my ideals, the American people don't seem to be much into that these days.

Every few minutes my wife comes in and tells me the latest news about runs on the gas station, prices up to $5. The gas stations are raping you in the back seat of your own car and you're lining up waiting for your turn.

Let me explain is this way. If your car gets 40 miles per gallon (I'm being real generous here because likely 3% of you reading this have a car that can do that,) you are spending about 35 cents to travel four miles at yesterday's gas prices. An average electric car gets somewhere around 4 miles per kWh, which means for that same 4 miles, they're not paying 35 cents, but more like 9-11 cents in this area. That means if you travel 400 miles, you're paying $35 in a gas car, while you're only paying $10 in an electric car. It adds up perty quick. Just think, if your car gets 20 mpg, you're paying $70 for 400 miles, and you're paying 18 cents per mile.

Electricity prices aren't going to rocket up like gas prices every time someone gets scared of a storm or terrorism or whatever. I can't make gasoline in my backyard, but I can make electricity, in fact, there's a little solar panel charging a battery in the shop as we speak on this bright sunny day before the hurricane ever even hits. I'd also like to mention that we just had a hurricane LAST WEEK and nobody panicked then. Electricity prices are very stable compared to oil because there are many diverse sources of electricity. In fact, when all else fails, we have backup generators. If one plant goes down, you can divert power from another one, and you may only just barely have a blink in your power, or you may not notice at all. There are 66 nuclear power plants many with more than one reactor, nearly 500 coal plants, 2000 hydroelectric plants and tons of natural gas plants. Oil pretty much only comes from one place, and once it's gone, it's gone. And let me be the one to tell you, it's almost gone. Prices will go up. Prices WILL go up.

One good note on the hurricane, Texas is going to reap a boatload of wind energy from this storm.
WiredForStereo

GM Closing Four Truck and SUV Plants!

In a move that I have been waiting for, for a long time, GM is closing four plants according to the Associated Press in a story out this morning.

Rising gas prices have precipitated a dramatic switch from larger vehicles to smaller ones, and American car companies have been left out in the cold in a sense because their gas sipping options are far less populous than those of foreign car makers.

GM, the one responsible for attempted murder of the electric car not five years ago can now be seen as making amends for that. It now appears that the Chevy Volt just may actually happen. The shift away from bigger vehicles is even more dramatic when you understand that switching from a 10 mpg vehicle to a 20 mpg vehicle saves approximately 600 gallons of fuel per year while switching from a 50 mpg to a 100 mpg saves only 120 gallons. Think if someone switches from a Hummer to a Prius, they would save approximately 750 gallons of fuel a year, and at current prices, that's a hunk of change.

Speaking of Hummer, GM has decided to reevaluate the brand, possibly even selling it. This is the thing I am glad of the most, because Hummer means so much more than just a big SUV, it really represents something to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees Hummers as small tanks, and here our moderately wealthy drive them as family cars or commuters.

GM says the change is permanent, let's hope so, and let's hope that other car manufacturers do the same. Toyota needs to get rid of Sequoia.

I think with the right impetus, we can transition away from fossil fuels without having a huge crash.
WiredForStereo

Emails to Phil Valentine

I was listening to the Phil Valentine show recently because he had an American car company representative on talking about gas mileage. As you might expect, this guy was giving all the normal nonsense about the car companies not being able to do what the government wants and only selling what the people want.

So I wrote Phil a letter. Here is the whole back and forth in it's entirety:

That guy you had on talking about gas mileage was lying through his
teeth, wow, what a load of crap.

Car makers can make what ever they want, or are told to. They just
don't want to make efficient cars. You think they can't make a pickup
that will get 35 mpg? Daimler Chrysler was advertising that they could
before the sale of the company went through. Why was there such a boom
in light trucks and SUV's? The car companies decided that's what
people SHOULD want, not what they did want. Advertising did that.
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh both are now advertising Cadillacs while I
now have to listen to whiney commercials about gas mileage that the car
companies have made.

Why did Honda drop the Accord Hybrid? Because the Accord Hybrid SUCKS.
It gets 27 mpg while my non-hybrid Toyota Corolla gets 35. You don't
see Toyota complaining about the Prius, they are making money hand over
fist off that car, and as gas prices rise, they'll be making even more.
Toyota plans to offer the Hybrid Synergy Drive in all it's cars, and
people will buy them, because they work, and they work well. American
hybrids barely get 2-3 mpg better than their non hybrid brothers.

You think car manufacturers can't make a car that gets 52 mpg? The
Prius already does if you take it easy on the gas, and the third
generation Prius, out next year or the year after, is said to be able
to get 30% better than that.

Technology travels faster than B.S.

Bottom line, that guy was so full of crap his eyes were brown. And you
bought every minute of it.


Phil replied:

Bottom line: Auto makers make what they think people want.
If their research showed people wanted cars that get 52
miles to the gallon you don't think they'd make them?
What would be their motivation NOT to make them?

Phil


To which I replied:

Thanks for responding,

It's monetary motivation. It costs hefty amounts of money to retool to
make new cars. In fact, it costs more to create a new line of cars
than it does to launch an ad campaign to make people like the cars that
already exist. There was a significant amount of time, money, and
effort that went into making the Prius, as well as the EV1, and will
also into the Chevy Volt.

True, car companies make the cars people want. But if a car company
wants the people to want a car, it's a simple task of telling them what
car to want. Appeal to machismo, add some sex appeal, and slap the
word "new" on it. Not hard. It's been done for millenia, and it costs
less than actually making something new.

American car companies will continue to slide into the back seat in
sales and popularity as long as they continue to push the status quo.
I personally am an American, and proud of it, and I'd absolutely love
to buy and American car. But every American car I've owned has been a
piece of crap, and every Toyota I've owned, I still have. Right now,
there are no American cars beside the Chevy Volt that I would consider
buying, and the Volt is still years off.

American cars will also not win the car wars when they advertise "high"
mileage as 30 mpg while there are a great many Asian cars that get
above 40, and most European cars (not sold in America) get above 40.

If Toyota meets it's goal of producing the third generation Prius drive
train at 50% of current costs, there will be no way American cars will
ever catch up. And when gas gets to $7 a gallon, suddenly that ugly
little aerodynamic pod car starts to look mighty enticing.

Thanks


Unfortunately with his show hosting duties to fulfill, Phil was not able to reply. I can only expect that he remains unconvinced and continues to tow the party line.

I shall try again another day,
WiredForStereo