Job figures are lagging indicators but nobody feels reassured right now. It is hard to imagine Americans returning to something like the full employment of the 1980s and 1990s without new industries like telecom and computers engendering a vast new ecosystem of entrepreneurial businesses; companies in which American technological talent can distinguish itself; companies that either require local workers for infrastructure projects, or, design and manufacture products and components whose labor content is too small for managers to consider outsourcing to the Far East.
The good news is that the electric car is around the corner. The bad news--which is the best news of all for the economy, ironically--is that the electric grid cannot begin to cope with the electric car's demands and possibilities. Layering in all the network technology that will smarten the grid, and preparing electric cars to communicate with it (and each other), will transform our economic and physical landscape. These changes will require a new role for government--something the Obama administration seems to understand. I explore the new ecosystem and its implication in the current Inc. Magazine:
At ground level, electric cars like GM's Chevrolet Volt -- due to be launched in November 2010 -- are pretty much everything the U.S. economy is banking on. The cars promise innovative engineering and a resurgence of the American auto industry. They mean an America that is manufacturing things rather than just bundling financial instruments. Cosmically, electric cars mean green technologies that will migrate to China, India, and Brazil, where they will allow for Western styles of personal freedom yet not threaten to overheat the earth.
And you don't have to be George Clooney to want one. Electric cars may be vaguely cool, but GM executives are counting on drivers with nothing more than a householder's logic, something like the good sense to refinance a mortgage when the 30-year-fixed drops more than 2 percent. Jon Lauckner, GM's vice president of global product planning, tells me that his team set out to trump gas-powered cars as a matter of straightforward economics, especially as economic recovery pushes the price of gas back over $3 a gallon. "At that level," Lauckner says, "the cost of running a Volt in full electric mode will be about one-sixth that of a gas-driven car of the same size, 2 or 3 cents a mile rather than 12 to 15 cents a mile. We figured that, for most people, this means a savings of about $1,500 a year." Sticker prices will be high; the suggested price of the Volt will be about $40,000. But federal tax rebates are anticipated to be as much as $7,500, not to mention various state incentives. So the actual price will probably be closer to $30,000 -- not a bad deal, given that borrowing costs will be low for some time.
When he speaks of "full electric mode," Lauckner is acknowledging another barrier he expects the Volt to take down, namely range anxiety, the fear of getting stuck with rundown batteries while driving in a snowstorm, bumper to bumper, on a 150-mile trip to the in-laws'. The Volt will come equipped with a small gas engine, unlike its forthcoming competitors: the smaller Nissan Leaf, BMW's plug-in Mini Cooper E, and Ford's electric Focus. This engine will not drive the wheels, as with the hybrids now on the market (actually, GM likes to call the Volt an "extended range electric car," not a hybrid), but will act as a dynamo to supply the electricity for the car after 40 miles of running on stored power.
The Volt's designers assumed, per Department of Transportation data, that nearly 80 percent of Americans drive 20 miles or less to work. This is why GM was able to make the technically true but sly announcement that the Volt earned a 230-mpg rating for city driving from the EPA. "Most drivers will hardly ever use this engine," says Tony Posawatz, the Volt's line director. "We may have to educate people to change their oil because it hasn't been used for a year! Anyway, when the range-extending engine kicks in, drivers can go up to 300 miles, like a conventional car. In a pinch, they can make use of the existing gas-station infrastructure."
And so, assuming these cars prove safe and reliable, American consumers will almost certainly consume them. U.S. auto companies will make them, and that's good for the planet, right? Yes, but.
Continue with the article here.
I wonder how many people will pony up $30K - $40K for a Volt. I make a good living, but the economy has me so spooked I won't even get into a loan for a Fit or Yaris costing half as much. And all those people out of work or making minimum wage certainly aren't going to buy one.
November 4, 2009 7:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Heck, I'm considering a Fisker Karma. (I'd rather have a Tesla Model S, but that requires waiting until 2012. The Karma is much better looking, but the price premium for style is steep, and I actually prefer the all-electric design.)
Then again, I'm ... atypical. :-) I like to zig when others zag. I did a lot of "consumer"-type spending this year, and I was saving like crazy in the 1990s when the American savings rate was aiming for zero-or-under.
November 4, 2009 7:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Take a look at this site
www.perfectioncarpetcleaningcorp.com
November 4, 2009 7:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
ZipCar founder Robin Chase talks about mesh networks and reducing our overconsumption of cars:
http://blog.ted.com/2008/01/robin_chase.php
Video and transcript
November 4, 2009 7:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
What a minute, here.
Are you telling me that battery technology has progressed that fast? That such a car will not require recharging after only 40 or so miles of city use? That they don't weigh in at a 1000 pounds? That such batteries will last for 100,000 miles and not cost 10 grand to replace?
Sounds to me like you've unthinkingly bought into GM's bs.
November 4, 2009 9:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Look, Spider, you are (thinkingly) missing the point. Gen-1 technologies are just that. All components are going to get better and cheaper. Compare the first cell phones to what we have now, or the first laptops. The question is, do we finally have an electric car that (given the price/performance advantages over gas, and a good-enough solution to the "range extension" problem of all fully electric vehicles) has a chance to cross the chasm to a mainstream market; and given others getting into the act, what will be the consequences for the grid? I think the answer is clearly yes, and so do the various start-ups that are betting their lives on it. Get 100,000 miles out of a battery and save at least 10 cents a mile--do the math. But 8 years from now, the electric car will be a new iPhone compared to an original iPod. what The GM team that is working on the Volt should not be confused with the ancien regime. If the mother corporation folded, their intellectual property would attract plenty of investors.
November 4, 2009 9:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Should I trust that you understand the technology well enough to see 8 years into the future? I don't.
November 4, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
"...since I'm not willing to do the research, I'll never know."
--Spider's Credo
November 4, 2009 10:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Dude. Just go check the development of lithium-ion cells in consumer electronics this past 15 years. Run a learning curve on it. It'd be the first time in modern history that an energy-related technology just suddenly fell off the learning curve and refused to budge. Not gonna happen. Even if the auto-guys all stopped work on batteries, the consumer electronics industry has such impetus they'd cut battery costs/unit in half this next decade.
November 4, 2009 3:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
November 4, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Where's all the new electricity going to come from? Even assuming that electric cars are significantly more efficient and less polluting than what's on the road today, we're still going to have to generate an awful lot more (we being the world, since the Chinese and others will continue to modernize). Chances are the new, still not yet invented batteries, will require rare earths as catalysts so an awful lot of very destructive mining will also be in the works.
Since I believe in peak oil and global warming, I think this whole endeavor is pie in the sky. What's needed, first and foremost, above all else, is drastic population reduction. Technology is not going to be able to save us from the bogeyman this time around.
November 4, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I find myself in the unusual position of mostly agreeing with this poster on this post. Electricity and batteries are means of transmitting and storing energy, they are not a source of energy. This does not mean that electric cars don't have a promising future ahead, but they are no solution to the fundamental challenge of finding a fuel supply that is abundant, cheap, easily supplied where needed, non-disruptive of the global climate, and not owned by oligarchical regimes with a nasty habit of passing the proceeds of energy sales on to unsavory recipients. I am inclined to think that we a long way from developing such a magical alternative solution, even an aggressive portfolio of alternatives to fossil fuels looks likely to fall far short of their scale, usability, and portability. And that leads to the need for other sorts of solutions, including ways to reduce consumption per GDP, one of which could certainly be significant medium term reductions in population growth, a slower but more palatable solution than significant short term reductions in population.
November 4, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
For the week ending 10/24, the US consumed 70,225 million kw-hrs, down from 71,659 the previous week and 72,073 for a year ago. Generally, we have been running 2% or so from a year ago.
The generation plants and distribution lines have to be sized to handle peak demand, which is typically during the afternoon and early evening in areas that use air conditioning. But in any case, the demand is highly variable during the day.
Charging of automobiles can be done during the periods between peak daily loads. In fact, early am hours are good for this. As noted in my original comment, it will take a long time to change over a significant part of the fleet to electric, and this early adoption can be easily accommodated by off-peak charging. If necessary, the use of high-efficiency LEDs for outdoor lighting, and a general reduction of outdoor lighting, can be implemented in order to provide more capacity to auto charging in the early am hours.
So I would not expect electric cars to require any additions to either generation or distribution networks in the first decade.
Total generation would increase, which would require more coal, oil, gas, and nuclear fuel. In particular, off-peak charging would increase the base load, which is particularly favorable for nuclear plants. They run best when operated continuously at full load. Wind power and solar are not useful in most areas, since they are highly variable.
The critical component of lithium ion batteries is the lithium. Lithium reserves are concentrated in Bolivia, Chile, and China. Nickel metal hydride batteries may be used longer than is currently predicted due to safety and materials sourcing concerns.
Rare earths are critical for the manufacture of high-efficiency, lightweight electric motors. At present, China is virtually a sole source for some of these, although mines are opening up in Australia.
The real solution is to live in denser, foot and bicycle-friendly communities, as well as use mass transit more. Furthermore, the widespread deployment of broadband digital networking reduces the need for physical face-to-face meetings. Web ordering and package delivery are more energy efficient than having everyone drive their own car to the mall. This reduces the frequency and distance of trips and makes the electric car even more practical.
November 4, 2009 2:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you on this Merrill, other than quick comments on the generating mix and mining potential. Wind's growth is constrained precisely because it produces a lot of juice at night, which has a lower value, right? So recharging vehicles at night, thus boosting that off-peak load, fits very well. In addition, we have an awful lot of gas turbines sitting out there whose fuel looks likely to be lower-priced than foreseen for the next decade or so. Those turbines can handle variability in supply or demand - certainly whatever EV or PHEV's can throw at the Grid this next decade.
As for mining, the province I'm in actually mines lithium (from spodumene.) Gotta say, there's an awful lot of metal out there that nobody hears about until final financial decisions are made.
There's good money to be made - and approvals to be fast-tracked - as long as the public/politicians believe there are shortages. (And yes, sometimes there ARE real shortages and constraints, but... just sayin'.)
November 4, 2009 3:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Even better, with "smart" grids, we can have supply-following load (instead of what we have today, "load-following supply", in which electricity generators are turned up when consumers turn on their appliances and lights). In other words, for large-scale wind generation, when the wind blows and the turbines spin (at night), we can signal all those electric cars that now is the time to draw the needed juice.
November 4, 2009 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. The Vehicle-To-Grid (V2G) stuff is pretty amazing. The main problem with it for those of us working to speed the roll-out of plug-in's and EV's is that a lot of players will use debate around V2G - and grid upgrades - to stall the next decade's worth of VEHICLE upgrade. And since the need for V2G services won't really kick in for 20-30 years, best to run ahead on the vehicle conversions, and work toward the VG in the longer-run.
November 4, 2009 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
There's a fundamental law of physics called conservation of energy. In plain English it's the no free lunch law. What that means is that if a generating plant is not running at full capacity it burns less fuel than if it is. So if you're charging cars at night, you're going to have to burn more fuel.
Calculating vehicle fuel use and efficiency is a complicated business since so many factors influence it - size, weight, fuel type, motor type, speed, acceleration, weather, etc. - but it can be done...and my guess is you won't be able to increase the fleet average to the equivalent of 40mpg, 50 tops, in the next 30 years.
Meanwhile the size of the fleet will double or triple in that time due to population increase and rapid industrialization in much of the third world...and that means a lot more roads as well as a lot more cars.
Most scientists believe that peak oil is either already here or less than a decade away. A Cal Tech physicist has done the numbers and published them in a small book called "The End of Oil" (or something similar). He calculates that no existing technology can replace oil. Not one. Not even one which is just a glimmer in someone's eye. None.
So we are going to have to drastically reduce fuel use, far more and far faster than can be accomplished by improving vehicle efficiency. My belief is that the process is going to be brutal. Very, very brutal.
November 4, 2009 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dude. You're throwing out guesses and fundamental laws of physics and mentioning some guy from CalTech and your belief that things are brutal, and I trust that you're a smart guy with a big brain, but right now it's trying to get traction on this subject, and it doesn't have enough fuel.
Here's a fast read, free, online, by a Cambridge Physicist. It's really worth the effort. David MacKay.
November 4, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/CaltechNews/articles/v38/oil.html
You showed me yours. I'll show you mine.
November 4, 2009 7:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have heard often that powerplants have "leftover" energy at night, which could be used for charging up EVs. Looking into this question a bit, I see that there are base-load power stations which operate most of the time at full power. Base-load power stations are mostly coal-fired – some are nuclear, a few are gas-fired. For a variety of reasons, it is more efficient to run them flat out most of the time.
Base-load stations only supply maybe 40% of load. Intermediate, or load-following plants, mostly natural gas-fired, do shut down or ramp down at night. And there are peaking plants that only turn on during anticipated peak loads, like summer air conditioning.
So while it is true that some powerplants never ramp down, it does not seem necessarily true that those plants will have all sorts of unused capacity at night. It might be true in some places, and untrue in others.
November 4, 2009 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not exactly "left over energy", but the picture is quite complicated.
Virtually all generation today is done by rotating machinery. (The one exception is solar PV, which is such a small amount of today's generation that it does not really matter.) You spin a turbine by having water at a dam fall through it, or by burning coal to boil water to drive a steam turbine, or by burning natgas to drive a turbine (directly and/or via steam), or by getting a nuclear pile hot enough to, yep, boil water and drive a steam turbine. Even concentrated solar power (CSP) plants generally boil a working fluid (such as Therminol) to drive a turbine.
The fancy new "integrated gasifier" (gasified-coal) plants work just like combined-cycle natural gas plants: you burn the gasified coal in a jet turbine, and then use the leftover heat to run a steam turbine, in what is called a "bottoming cycle".
The up-and-coming "building cooling, heating, and power" or "combined cooling, heating, and power" (BCHP, CCHP, or CHP) technology for distributed generation works by ... burning fuel in a turbine, which spins a generator, then using the leftover heat to run heating or air conditioning (you can use heat to run cooling systems; these generally use "double-effect desiccant" cooling—see here for an overview of desiccant cooling—to do the air conditioning). There are CSP plants that use the solar heat to run a micro-jet-turbine, and use the leftover heat for making building hot water, heat, and air conditioning.
In all these cases, though, the electricity generation step is done by spinning machinery.
At night, when demand is low, you can shut down many plants entirely. The ideal thing, from an energy efficiency point of view, is to shut down your least-efficient generators, and run your most-efficient ones to provide "base load". You also need some degree of "spinning reserve" (at all times, not just nighttime) so that you can handle the increased load if, e.g., someone wakes at night to go to the bathroom and flips on the lights to see what they are doing.
Power plants, however, are not run based on energy efficiency but rather on "dollar efficiency as defined by profits". In general, the most expensive generators are shut down. Ideally these are also the least-efficient generators. When incentives are perverted ("Enron-ed"), however, only the most expensive (generally the least-efficient) generators are used. So it's partly economic, partly political, etc., as to what actually happens.
As for those nuke plants ... well, with all thermal generation systems, there's a sort of "thermal inertia" effect, in which it not only takes time to heat up and cool down a power plant, it's also desirable to do it even more slowly to avoid thermal stresses on the pipes and machinery. So coal and nuke plants, which tend to have the biggest-and-slowest of these load-following characteristics, are ramped up and down slowly. The effect on nuke plants is so great that in some cases, nuke plants will actually pay customers to take electricity rather than try to ramp down the pile. There's also a minimum "pile burn rate" due to self-decay within the fuel (whether it's stored in rods, or "pebble beds", or whatever, it still has a self-decay heat emission rate).
In all cases, all plants have an efficiency range that depends on utilization level. In general, plants are most efficient when they are generating electricity at their maximum capacity. So your combined-cycle gas turbine, with a theoretical best efficiency of about 55%, will actually achieve 45 to 50 percent efficiency when it is running flat out. The more your ramp it down, the worse it gets. There's a rule of thumb (with some violations) that the faster a system can respond to load changes, the less efficient it is, too. Simple-cycle gas turbines are better at load-following than combined-cycle, for instance. (The big exception to this is hydroelectric, which is both near-instantaneous and enormously efficient.)
November 4, 2009 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is complicated, and I still don't see whether there is necessarily leftover energy for nighttime charging or or not, and if so how much. My sense is that there is some, because rates drop at night, but not necessarily so much that we can all switch to driving Fiskers and Teslas tomorrow.
November 5, 2009 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
This thread is out of control at this point (and you might not see this reply), but, short version: there's some "excess" energy (negative-dollar-cost, will-be-wasted-if-not-taken) sometimes in some markets, and there's a lot of very-cheap energy at night in most markets. A "guaranteed minimum load" would help a lot of utility-scale generation.
November 7, 2009 3:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yup, and the guy's arguments just aren't as good. I'm not arguing about peak oil, or rising demand, or that we shouldn't shift to other methods, ok? I'm just arguing that there IS enough electricity, without even straining too much, to replace oil in cars. The CalTech guy argues the following on wind:
There is also wind power, which many now see as a viable energy alternative. And it is, but only to a limited extent.... But there are relatively few places on earth where the wind blows strongly and steadily enough for it to be a dependable energy source, and people don’t really like wind farms—they’re ugly and they’re noisy."
See, he's just flat out wrong on that. It's a generalization, and to the public it might seem sensible, but it's wrong. North Dakota alone has more than enough wind, and land, to supply every damned gallon of oil the US drinks today. It's the same right down through the Central states and Great Plains. It is a massive, breath-taking resource, which is available cheaply (5-6 cents/kwh), and with huge local public support. Here, we have 600,000 cars. Our next wind-farm will be a 300 MW project. It will produce enough electricity to supply all 600,000 cars with juice. From one wind-farm.
The only issues wind really faces are transmission... and flattening out the variability. (Not the issues CalTech guy raises, BTW.) Transmission is not a great technical challenge, and nor do we need to haul in all our wind from the Dakotas - more local sources can be tapped. As for variability, well, that's what the smart grid and V2G from vehicle batteries and fast-reacting gas turbines are all about.
Plus, there will be solar, coming very soon. etc.
There's lots to be apocalyptic about, and lots to do to avoid collapse. This just isn't an end-of-world law-of-physics issue, that's all I'm saying.
November 4, 2009 8:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I remember CT's citation on wind farms that predicted the drag would have a sizeable impact... Further down in the study, however, and the researchers offer solutions on how to mitigate the threat.
And yet that clown threw the cite out there like gospel. And had the same "people gotta die" major premise.
Don't you find it interesting Quinn that the naysayers poo-poo potential technologies by citing how weak they are now? It is as if they never heard of advancement...
"Grog, it's a wheel. So what? How is that going to solve the predator problem NOW?!"
November 4, 2009 9:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
So far this thread has been free of personal insults. Why don't you try harder to keep it that way?
November 4, 2009 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gotta say, I gave up trying to discuss this stuff in the Reader's pages, precisely because of that issue. So, it's nice to have it opened here.
A really interesting thing for me - having come from an apocalyptic fundamentalist Baptist upbringing - is to see how widespread it is amongst my friends on the Left, amongst the Greens, etc. It's there on the Right as well, but it surprised me more on the Left/Green wing.
It's that whole searching for some natural, social, cosmic, physics, whatever LAW or FORCE which cannot be diverted, and which will force us into some awful fate, which will be cruel and hard and we'll all suffer, but... some may manage to change (in the appropriate ways) in time, and maybe, just maybe... people will see the light and change now.
There's really no difference in the structure of these worldviews than amongst Biblical apocalypts. We WANT to hold some theory that says, we're running out of oil, water, air... there's too many of us, so some must die... our ways are evil, and we're destroying the climate, our genetic code, or seed stock.... it goes on and on.
And I'm NOT saying some of these pressures are enormous, NOR that some of them may be impossible to divert or channel in time. But I will say, it's damned interesting how strong these views are, how immune to reasoned debate, and how they all hold the same damned structure.
November 4, 2009 10:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's the other side of it.
I've been around for 70 years, enough time to see how fast development has proceeded and how much is lost when forests and farms are replaced with strip malls and freeways.
When you realize that Theodore Roosevelt felt these same pressures more than 100 years ago you don't discount them because someone claims he has a new fix.
November 4, 2009 11:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Take a slightly longer view and you can see how many fast buck, motor-mouth lying promoters have successfully peddled their wares to the detriment of all of us. Freeways were going to solve our transportation problems. How long did that illusion last? Psychiatry and pills would bring health. Suburban life would allow everyman to achieve the American dream. America's resources were endless and uncountable.
I don't take your word on wind. Not for a single minute. California's hills and deserts are littered with dead and dying wind farms. Why should I believe you'll do better? You might...but I sure don't take your word for it. And your quick and superficial denigration of a Cal Tech physicist's views leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
November 4, 2009 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Spider; I have no problem agreeing that anyone promising a completely quick & painless "fix" is selling smoke. In fact, in some sense, nothing every gets completely "fixed." There are no great and grand technological cures.
But. Changes DO happen. Technological ones, pretty obviously. Cell phones. Computers. Same with energy. Gas turbines, for instance. Hybrid vehicles. And all I'm saying here is that we can use energy sources XYZ to replace energy source A. So try to bring it down out of the grand statements and let's just talk cars and electricity.
As for not taking my word on wind, hell, you've already shown you don't know much about batteries, or EV's, or the Grid - and nor do you want to take the time to learn more. Nope, you just want to keep telling us all how firmly you "believe" this or that will happen and how ultimately, mankind will topple into the sea. Well, that's nice and all, but try to serve up a fact from time to time, willya? As it is, we're learning a whole lot of nothing from you, except for how highly your regard your opinion and how tightly you hang onto it.
As to my "quick and superficial denigration of a Cal Tech physicist's views" and how that leaves a bad taste in your mouth? Pal. You threw down a link. And I read it. In it, the guy completely dismisses wind, in the space of one paragraph - which I quoted. HE offered ZERO figures or sources to back his claims up. People don't like wind-farms? Sure CalTechman. Haul your sorry ass out of school & let's go wandering the Plains, handing out $5,000 per turbine per year the way the wind developers do, and tell me how those people just haaaaate wind. It's an ASININE statement he's making Spidey, because there are tens of thousands of SIGNED CONTRACTS between developers and landowners.
Ultimately, you may get the vapours for CalTech engineers, but I guess they just don't mooooove me the same way. I'm trying to stay reality-based.
November 5, 2009 1:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
If lots and lots of $5000 contracts guaranteed the worth of something we wouldn't be in our present fix.
November 5, 2009 4:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
First. People like money, not wind farms.
Second. I referred you to an author and a book. The link was just an introduction. I don't have the book in front of me but, from what I remember, his consideration of wind and its potentialities consumed more than a sentence.
Since the publication of the book he's spent a lot of time considering and defending his assertions. His reasoning still may not satisfy you but his reputation and qualifications mandate a more considered response.
Third. I can't be an expert on everything. In fact, I'm not an expert in anything. But your responses to me so far are NOT impressive. You don't handle challenges very well. Real challenges, I mean. Not technical quibbles.
November 5, 2009 6:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're right. I'm grumpy and arrogant. However, the doctors told me many years ago that I couldn't be healed, and should just make the best of it. Since then, I've become a fabulous dancer, and learned to imitate a German Shepherd. So even these problems can be managed.
Have a good day, Spider.
November 5, 2009 10:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Did clearthinker change his moniker, or is this his dad or something? I'm confused...
November 5, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm betting cousin.
Kissing cousin. ;-)
November 5, 2009 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent book. Thanks for the link.
November 4, 2009 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nevada is loaded with dry lake beds, and there's a huge lithium deposit in northern NV near the OR border.
The dry lake bed in Bolivia is even bigger, but the point is, lithium is common and cheap to mine: there is plenty of it. It's the third most common element in the universe, in fact, behind hydrogen and helium; and unlike H and He, it does not escape via the atmosphere.
Rare earths are critical for the manufacture of high-efficiency, lightweight electric motors. At present, China is virtually a sole source for some of these, although mines are opening up in Australia."Rare earths" are not really all that rare either, but they are considerably more expensive and difficult to mine (in general) than lithium (since they're not just sitting there in the dry lake beds).
There are good rare earth deposits in equatorial Africa, which is probably a good thing for Africa since they are so poor otherwise, but (as with oil) it will be important to avoid government corruption. There are probably lots of rare earths mine-able in the US and Canada as well; it's really a question of price rather than availability.
November 4, 2009 9:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gah, my second "blockquote" there screwed up. If only I'd used "preview" first. Ah well, you can figure it out. :-)
November 4, 2009 9:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I suggest you read my article, and look particularly at the Oak Ridge Study. The point is not how much power, but how it is distributed. But you knew that, right?
November 5, 2009 1:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
A once over of the ORNL study indicates that night-time charging of plug-in electric vehicles(PEV) would not require an increase in generation capacity, since even the 6 kW charger option does not drive usage peaks above the generating capacity. If PEVs are charged in the evening, then an increase in generating capacity is required.
The PEVs will almost certainly have an on-board function that will allow owners to program the time and rate of charging, so that although the PEV is plugged in as soon as it comes home, the charging will take place at another time. Owners are likely to use this in order to not compete with electric ranges, clothes dryers, air conditioners, and water heaters used during the evening hours -- otherwise they may need to increase the amperage of their entrance service.
Power companies can adopt simple strategies to encourage or enforce this. My water heater is on a separate timed circuit that the power company cuts off during peak hours. Time of day pricing is a "softer" means that can be used to encourage PEV owners to charge off-peak. I don't think that there is any reason that the power company should price electricity for PEVs any differently than electricity used for other purposes -- "net neutrality" should prevail.
Measures such as time of day pricing may require improvements to the grid. However, these are generally valuable and not necessarily associated with PEVs. The "smart grid" may be driven more by the features needed to interconnect with alternative energy sources, especially if numerous, small-scale alternative energy sources are developed. Wind farms deliver highly variable power. Solar farms deliver power that is not only variable but starts out as low-voltage DC with no spinning reserve. Long distance transmission and trading of alternative power is likely needed, and perhaps high-voltage DC lines can do this efficiently with minimal impact on network stability. HVDC is used today, for example, between the lignite-fired plants in North Dakota and the loads in Minneapolis, St Paul.
It is easy to over estimate the opportunity for small entrepreneurial companies. Batteries, power electronics, connectors, digital networking devices, microcontrollers, etc., are pretty well developed technologies for other applications.
Rechargeable battery technology became a hot topic around '85, driven by the need for batteries in cellular handsets and to supply contiuous power to subscriber loop carrier systems. At this point, an entirely new battery chemistry would be a surprise. However, there may be steady improvements in battery design and/or manufacturing for packs of the size and capacity needed for PEVs.
Small electric motors and power electronics are also well developed technologies, in particular for manufacturing automation. Power conversion and distribution in data centers is another similar problem -- think of a PEV as a server. There are many existing companies with expertise in these areas.
The modularity of components and the sourcing from other suppliers means that GM will produce less value going into each car. The small gas engine will be its remaining part of what used to be the entire engine, transmission, and transaxle value package. The generator, battery pack, traction/regenerative braking motors, charging electronics, and vehicle control electronics may come from other suppliers. It will be "body by Fisher" and components from everyone else.
November 5, 2009 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
In response to quinn's jibe I'm rereading the article and posts.
First. Avishai's article is light on electric generation and its consequences. Very light.
Second. Your response applies only to America. The developing world doesn't have this huge electric generation infrastructure. It's going to have to build and fuel it...and its size is clearly going to overwhelm what exists in America today. China is using coal. Very dirty coal.
You talk about a 30 year time frame. My guess is
that the fleet average consumption of energy cannot be increased to the equivalent of 50 mpg in that time frame. In other words it can roughly be doubled. In that same time frame I estimate that the world wide fleet will increase by a factor of 3 or more due to population increase and rapid industrialization in the developing world. What that implies is a HUGE increase in energy consumption...which is unsustainable.
Those are pretty simple ideas. Care to comment on any of them?
November 5, 2009 6:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Avishai referenced a study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which I think is Potential Impacts of Plug-in Hybrid
Electric Vehicles on Regional Power
Generation. This describes generation impacts in the US in some detail.
Other developed countries may need additional generation, since they tend to produce about half the electrical power per capita as does the US.
Projections of vehicle production are somewhat problematic, since they depend on economic conditions. For example, in the ORNL study, Figure 1. "Past and projected vehicle sales in the United States" shows vehicle production in 2009 at around 17 million vehicles. The actual production is likely to be below 10 million vehicles despite the cash for clunkers. Fleet size depends on scrappage rates and vehicle life. The ORNL study uses 10 years for vehicle life, but that is inconsistent with an actual scrappage rate below 6%.
Global vehicle production had been around 70 million annually. It has dropped to about 54 million in 2009 (current projection). The current projection is that it will increase to about 85 million in 2017.
At an average production rate of 100 million/year and a 20 year life, the steady state fleet size would be 2 billion vehicles. This is 2.5 times the current vehicle fleet, and it is likely to be an upper-bound estimate. With the conversion from internal combustion engines to electric, most of the increase in vehicles can be supported by the increased efficiency. It is also likely that many of the new vehicles will be nano and subcompact vehicles and that they will be driven fewer miles daily than the existing fleet.
See also Is Mobility As We Know It Sustainable?
November 5, 2009 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm utterly amazed that Global Insight's detailed estimates of fleet size and fuel efficiency were even more pessimistic than mine; they estimate a fleet quadrupled in size running on engines with only twice by efficiency by 2035.
They continue to believe that there's some technological fix which will radically reduce fuel use. They don't even consider what it would take to reduce the fleet while maintaining mobility; a radical downsizing of world population.
November 5, 2009 3:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's an oddity Spider, but plug-in's don't take very much electricity (partly because electric motors are more efficient.) A Volt can only take 8 kwh's at a time. On average, say, 2,000 kwh's a year.
Since I've got a 2.3 MW wind-turbine a few miles down the road, which produces on average around 8,500,000 kwh's a year... it can provide the power for 4,000+ cars. A mid-sized wind-farm (250 MW's) would provide for 1,000,000 cars. So for large stretches of the country, simple small-scale expansions of wind-farms (since this will happen over 20-30 years) should cover it. Other places might want to use solar, or nukes or whatever.
November 4, 2009 3:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ack. Should be, "a mid-sized wind-farm (250 MW's) would provide for 400,000 cars."
November 4, 2009 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting piece, bit heavy on the hype in places, Bernard. I work in an office with 12 plug-in's being tested by staff, am up to the armpits in grid issues, etc. But on the Smart Grid issue - its economic value, job potential, etc. - I'd recommend reducing the hype. Yes, it's important, yes it'll happen, yet it'll be useful. But our friends the utilities & some associated corps are running a PR machine here, and looking to pick pockets to help pay their way.
Seriously, just look at the energy used by any of the dozens of other consumer technologies & compare them to the needs of a plug-in. A plug-in Volt, fully drained, will need 8 kwh/day. That's max. Have you compared this with the draw from big-screen tv's, hot water heaters, coffee makers, air conditioners, and dozens of other items? For those of us living in Northern States or Canada, we already impose this kind of draw on the Grid with our (uncontrolled) block heaters.
Secondly, there are economic fundamentals at play which are worth reviewing to see the potential size of an opportunity. So if the cost of a kwh of electricity is say, 10 cents/kwh, times 8 kwh's (a full Volt refill), you're looking at 80 cents/day. Now, no matter how you slice it, the costs of meshing with the grid are not going to be more than a fraction of that cost. (Because we're going to adding new generation capacity all through these coming decades, and expanding the Grid anyway, and a lot of that energy is going to be coming in at 5-7-10 cents/kwh - like wind, like (for the next few years) cheap natural gas, etc.) What I'm saying is that I'm not sure anyone expects that the value of sorting this stuff out is going to be $1 a day, or more like 10 cents/day. I'd be willing to bet it's the lower end, and that means maybe $25-$50 potential revenues per car-year. An amount worth saving, but let's not stretch it - this would create an industry that in 20-30 years would be worth a couple of billion a year in the US. In short, perhaps too much talk about cool Grid stuff.
I also think you underplayed - though I understand why you want to hold out job creation hope in the US - the extent to which electronics has been cannibalizing auto parts for many years now, and many of those new suppliers are in Asia. Power this and power that are already well-established in our minds, and most of those hardware suppliers come more out of consumer electronic manufacturing world, much of which is offshore.
Not saying there aren't jobs here, including upgrading local grids, making batteries and parts, and yes, in software and networking too. But while I think plug-in's and electrics are very much the real deal, there's an awful lot of hype around the economic stimulus and future growth that can flow from this.
November 4, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
The "top down" calculation is:
3 trillion miles traveled / year (in the US)
times .25 kw-hr/mile
divided by 52 weeks/year
= 14,400 million kw-hr/week
Which is a small fraction of the over 90,000 kw-hr/week consumption during heavy usage weeks of the year.
And that assumes that all 3 trillion miles / year are driven in electric vehicles, which won't happen for a long, long time.
Agnelli, the chairman of Fiat, was asked back in the '70s energy crises what the cars in the year 2000 would be like. He said they would be pretty much like the cars then being produced, simply because the time needed for amortization of manufacturing plants together with the number of years that a car is used following initial purchase meant that a quick conversion was not possible.
November 4, 2009 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
(You left out a "million" there.)
One can also see, via the LLNL "energy flow" diagrams (see, e.g., https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/energy/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2008/LLNL_US_EFC_20081.png) that "electricity generation" is a bigger energy sector in the US than "transportation" (and "transportation" includes all users, which means UPS and FedEx trucks, tractor-trailer trucks, buses, etc., not just consumer automobiles).
Moreover, the diagram makes it clear just how inefficient transportation is, as a user of energy: electricity generation takes in almost 40 quads of energy sources, and produces a bit under 13 quads of "useful" energy, for an efficiency of 31.7%. Transportation takes in almost 28 quads but produces just under 7 quads, for an efficiency of 25%.
Electric-drive cars are in general much more source-to-motion efficient than gasoline-powered cars, when run in battery mode (and still slightly more efficient when run in liquid-fuel-engine + generator + electric-drive mode). If we improve the efficiency of our electric generation (which is mostly a matter of ditching or repowering the 50-year-old coal plants that are at the end of their useful lives anyway), this only gets better.
(Incidentally, distributed electric generation, via the BCHP systems I mentioned above, runs in the 60 to 80 percent efficiency range, which means it more than doubles the useful energy output per input.)
November 4, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Many good points. The critical one is the (now) preeminence of Asian suppliers in making power-dynamic components. This is certainly true, but my point is that the nature of the competition does not give an advantage to Asian suppliers owing to labor costs. The competition is on know-how, where American entrepreneurs can at least assume a (more or less) level playing field. Also, many of these supplier companies (I mention LG Chem and Yazaki) are just as likely to open manufacturing facilities in the US, to be closer to assembly, since the labor content of components is so small. We need to shake off some old assumptions.
November 5, 2009 1:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
You may be right for the assembly of battery packages, and I'd be thrilled if it were so.
What I'm saying more widely is that Asian consumer electronics firms are very deep into auto parts, and part of their advantage is that "sticky" knowledge you get when you're manufacturing something. e.g. Consumer electronics, like automobiles, take an awful real-world physical beating, and it's not easy to come in - even as a very fast/smart entrepreneur - and knock down these issues.
So, your question becomes - even assuming no labour cost differential, will a shift to electric power sources, potentially with grid tie-ins, change the nature of the various auto parts and subs? I'm not convinced there's all that much room.
Looking ahead more, to pure EV's - not plug-in's - we face the problem that these vehicles have many many fewer parts. This may be great for the consumer, but cars that ditch ICE's and a whole world of mechanical complexity... well, tough to claim job gains here. We could end up gaining jobs back from Asia in EV's, but lose employment overall, as the ICE got once and for all pushed out of cars.
November 5, 2009 1:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
November 5, 2009 4:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
November 5, 2009 1:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
If you think the government (actually governments, plural) was (were) not heavily involved in cell phones, you have not studied your history.
November 5, 2009 4:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
One comment on the article itself (rather than the text here): you mention the homes-to-transformer ratio and give it as approximately 10:1. This is true for much of Europe (which is a less-voracious consumer of electric power), but in the US, it's generally in the 3-to-5 range (somewhere between 3 and 5 homes per pole transformer).
Two other things remain to be seen: whether home charging will really become the norm, and what energy capacities will be found in the average electric-motor vehicle. Perhaps, rather than charging the batteries at home, the industry may converge on a battery-swap-at-"gas-station" model. This has some advantages (greatly reduced purchase price for a new vehicle, for instance) and some disadvantages. Perhaps the biggest advantage is not technical but political: gas stations can get behind this model, as it means that consumers will continue to stop and drop into the convenience stores at which they—the gas stations—make all their money (by selling soda etc).
If battery-swap charge stations become the norm, the house-level distribution system needs no changes at all, and we might use distributed electricity generation to provide these "gas stations" with the needed megawatts. (Personally, I prefer home charging, but the politics of the threat of the demise of the corner gas station must be considered.)
November 5, 2009 5:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Consumer preference is likely to drive a progression from current hybrids to plug-in-hybrids that are charged at home. Charging overnight provides cheap miles for commuting and for the start of longer trips, while the gasoline or diesel engine provides the extended range. As these vehicles roll out, gas stations will continue to serve the need to refuel the engines. Plus the transition will be gradual enough that the consolidation of gas stations won't be politically difficult. They have already undergone a lot of consolidation as self-serve became the norm and as routine auto maintenance became infrequent.
November 5, 2009 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
From today's Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMSRm4r644kk&pos=9
Although my focus has not been on jobs or wind this ought to thrill you, Bernard.
36,000 acres for a single farm! How many acres do we plan to devote to wind and solar to satisfy our needs? How many acres will the rest of the world allocate? Do you really believe this stuff will have negligible environmental impact? I've already argued that in the next 30 years energy consumption in the third world will increase by a huge amount so how many acres - total - will we allocate in 30 years?
November 5, 2009 1:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
When they say "acres," they don't mean the wind-turbine takes up all that land. That's just a measure of the land around the turbines. 90%+ of it you continue to farm. Here.
And here.
November 5, 2009 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.us-reg.com/team
http://www.cielowind.com/about
Above is the info on the two American companies, the best I could come up with. I have no idea who these people are but its clear they come fully stocked with money and lobbying power and little interest in American jobs.
If quinn is right, and wind power is really the future, then the future of America is being determined right here, right now. Will we continue to be a more or less egalitarian country with a large middle class and well paid lower class, or will we return to the cruelest form of aristocracy (or meritocracy if the leaders of finance are willing to share with the best and brightest technological whizzes. no guarantee on that one since ivy league MBAs have proven to be the dumbest, most selfish, of greedy pigs).
Stop here if you are only interested in arguing this thread. Below I post a very mean spirited comment...but I think it accurate.
I spend much of my time arguing on Israeli Palestinian threads, but I often post to threads which deal with strictly American issues like this. On the I-P threads I often encounter M.J. Rosenberg who is always claiming he is a loyal American, and his opponents aren't. So where is he? Oil is running out and with it the relevance of the Middle East. What we need now are alternatives. So where is Rosenberg on issues like this? Off in Alaska telling Eskimos about how evil Israelis are. What a shmuck.
November 5, 2009 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.spoke.com/info/c3lMb1W/CieloWindPower
Additional company info. I had to do it this way to get around the software limitations.
November 5, 2009 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,658977,00.html
November 6, 2009 6:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,659721,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,659317,00.html
Alternative energy sources and more efficient uses of that energy are certainly the way to go. if civilization is to survive.
But bringing expensive, radically different cars, which are manufactured by small specialty companies or bankrupt large ones, to a market like this one is a huge, huge gamble. Not likely to succeed and very, very unlikely to generate American jobs.
Nor is this technology able to deal with overpopulation and all its problems. It doesn't even attempt to do so. It's proponents quite evidently believe in a magic which will make the problems go away.
November 6, 2009 6:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Spider. You do know that your last sentence makes you sound kindof... batshit insane, right? "The electric car... doesn't deal with overpopulation??? Hello? You were perhaps expecting Chevy to release its new model, "The 5th Horseman of the Apocalypse?" It "doesn't ATTEMPT" to deal with overpopulation because cars tend not to be an appropriate technology for contraception.
And as for that bit about its "proponents quite evidently believing in a magic which will make the problems go away?" Wow. You really ARE batshit. You're basically arguing that anyone doing anything that isn't reducing global population is into magical thinking.
So... ummm... yeah. That makes you batshit. Buh-bye.
November 6, 2009 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
The logic is;
Electric cars will consume much less energy, and the energy they do use is generated in much more efficient ways, and, ultimately, in sustainable ways which don't spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All this is a great step forward.
But it's useless if population growth and population are not reduced. It's neither fast enough nor big enough to counter population pressures. So, in effect, what you're doing is inventing a better toothbrush while the ship goes down.
The argument is relevant because Avishai's concerns are not technical but, in the short term, job creation, and, in the long term, the continued well-being of the United States.
If that makes me batshit, so be it. And you're right; you are arrogant...and self-important with a highly inflated opinion of yourself; Cool, man....trendy hand shake....and a lot of other nonsense...
November 6, 2009 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sorry, but from here on out, nothing you say matters, unless it directly, practically, leads to a reduction in population, now. See, you're arguing that absolutely nothing else on Earth matters, unless it reduces population. Not toothbrushes, not ships, not electric cars, not blogs. It's the same as demanding that the next generation cell phones resolve our global water crisis.
And why waste your time here flapping your gums about Israelis and Palestinians? Who cares?
As to your 2nd point... I'm into the trendy handshake? Sure bub. That's just me, to a T. By the way, for an example of your bright and shining moral light, perhaps I should note your gratuitous insult of Rosenberg on a thread which had nothing to do with him. This, after telling Zipper he should avoid personal insults. Riiiiight.
November 6, 2009 7:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
See, you're arguing that absolutely nothing else on Earth matters, unless it reduces population
Ultimately, that's true if my analysis is correct. But I can't be sure it is, and I don't know how to reduce population in a way which doesn't destroy humanity. So people have to continue doing the best the can with what is available to them. The purpose of my comments was to raise awareness, not to stop them.
I insulted no one on this thread. I thought the conversation was remarkably civilized, even though your comments to me pushed the envelope.
Rosenberg was not a contributor...and I warned everyone who was that I was making a gratuitous, mean-spirited comment.
November 6, 2009 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ok. If you really believe overpopulation is this big a problem, you're going to mention it. I believe it's in 7 of your comments on this thread. By the end, your critique of the auto/grid/energy technologies being discussed is that... they don't solve overpopulation. And you don't see this as dragging the issue away from its heart?
Now, in pure process terms. What if I had a similar view about climate change... or global water shortages... or the Muslim threat... or whatever. How many posts would you want me mentioning it in before you felt I was a Johnny One Note Fanatic. And how many times within a thread? You say I'm arrogant. I'd point out that you are one of a million fanatics who feels justified in dragging their pet peeve into every other issue on Earth, and flogging it.
I would also point out that you know very very little about the issue at hand, but you chose to make lots of highly emotive statements about how others have unthinkingly bought into BS (that as how you led things off)... then how you don't trust them... then told us all about your firmly firmly firmly held views that the process will be brutal... and then came back to your unwillingness to take my word for anything.
And you don't think the above-mentioned statements, methods of arguing and gratuitous mean-spirited comment about someone (someone whom I have no time for, by the way) is arrogant?
November 7, 2009 12:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're right. I should have made my case once and let it go. Thanks for introducing me - in an oblique way - to clearthinker. I belong on his threads, at least for awhile.
November 7, 2009 2:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bernard,
Because I didn't feel technically competent I e-mailed Dr. Goodstein, author of "Out of Gas"
Within a few hours he replied
so I now think quinn is a complete jerk and you've confused new age gobbledegook with real science.
I could still be wrong. Since I said I was not technically competent Goodstein replied in a very simple way. But he's very accessable and I'm sure he would respond in detail if you asked him, given your credentials. Be aware though, that you're dealing with a world-class physicist who cannot be snowed with technical cant.
November 7, 2009 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink