Who Killed the Electric Car? It died on its own

[Chuck]

LiON batteries are too valuable to waste and it takes 200 lbs of them to equal 6.4 lbs of gasoline

John Petersen - SEEKINGALPHA - Jan 21, 2010

Obviously does not have stock in Tesla --Ed.

In November 2006, a slick issue-oriented documentary asked the provocative question "Who Killed the Electric Car" and argued that General Motors' EV1 project was terminated because of collusion between the auto and oil industries. The truth is nobody killed the electric car. It died in infancy from congenital birth defects and the same flaws that killed the EV1 will probably kill Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive, Nissan's (NSANY) Leaf and GM's Volt. This is not a question of cost, performance, abuse tolerance or cycle-life. It's a fundamental flaw in the economics of using batteries to replace a fuel tank; a flaw that will cost investors billions before the current round of electric car hype fades and the rotting corpse of an idea only Hollywood could love is buried with a silver stake through its undead heart.... [Read More]

[WriConsult]

Originally Posted by John Petersen

Second, it takes a couple hundred pounds of batteries to store the useful energy found in a gallon of gas that weighs 6.4 pounds.

Um, you only have to put the batteries in the car ONCE. You have to put another gallon of gas in your ICE-powered car every 10 to 50 miles. I've heard some idiotic, inane arguments, but this one's a doozy.

Originally Posted by John Petersen

HEVs are masters of fuel efficiency that have proven themselves over the course of a decade in over a million vehicles worldwide. GEVs [Grid Enabled Vehicles, this guy's label for BEVs and PHEVs] use fuel substitution techniques that have no meaningful track record in the real world, promise more than they can hope to deliver, and are a shameful waste of limited and expensive natural resources.

This perpetuates the same old myth that BEVs and PHEVs merely transfer pollution from one place to another. What makes it a myth is that electric motors are 3-4x more energy efficient than ICEs at their best. Even factoring in transmission, transformation and charging losses, BEVs are much more efficient than conventional cars. Most BEVs on the horizon get 140 to 200 MPGe, nearly 3x better than a Prius. And THAT is why they are worth pursuing.

Originally Posted by John Petersen

When you start looking at the less plentiful metals that are used to make batteries, annual production rates plummet to ... 1.6 million tons of nickel, 0.124 million tons of rare earth elements and 0.027 million tons of lithium

OK, he found a rational argument here. Actually this is a good argument for what I've been advocating some time: seizing Cobasys' NiMH patent for the public domain so that we can start driving affordable BEVs already. Even if the automakers were to refuse to offer NiMH BEVs, breaking the patent blockade would open the floodgates for hobbyists currently stuck with not-worth-its-weight lead-acid. If the option were legally open to me, I'd have converted a late 90s Civic to NiMH BEV by now.

[drimportracing]

The comments on the article are entertaining. - Dale

[Bruce]

Until some real breakthroughs in battery technology are brought to market, BEVs will be playthings of the rich. The one in six families in America having trouble putting food on the table can't afford a $10,000 car, let alone a $40,000 one.

[Butterfly Mage]

I totally don't buy the idea that the EV1died a natural death. The car was, indeed, killed. I still wonder how much closer we would be to energy independence if GM had spent as much time developing a practical electric car as it had convincing the public that they needed Hummers and Escalades.

[Right Lane Cruiser]

Man. Some people just don't get it, do they?

[phoebeisis]

According to my calculations, if 1/2 the lithium production was devoted to cars, and the cars used 270 lbs of Lithium, them we could build 100,000/yr.
What he ignores is you can use the lithium OVER AND OVER AND OVER. Once you get 20 years worth of production in use you can practically stop using "newly mined " lithium and rely on old recycled lithium.The recovery rate in recycling should be very high-90%or more.You could have 2,000,000 battery only cars on the road with no new Lithium production.

Just how long will this patent- Cobasys??- be protected?? Is it really THAT good? Why isn't it being used??

Lots of folks have put 1000-1500 lbs of LA batteries in beaters, and gotten 50-100 miles out of them. Why is that such a bad thing? Yes, you have to haul 600 extra lb around, but...LA batteries are cheap??For 5-10-20 mile city runs..??So your Corolla weighs 3500 lbs-big deal, my Suburban weighs-a lot more than that, and it frequently has one passenger.Yes, I know it is inefficient, but dropping $7000 off the price of a car might be worth hauling 600 lb more around-especially if you can't afford that extra $7000.Cheap to buy initially is GOOD!
Charlie

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Originally Posted by phoebeisis

According to my calculations, if 1/2 the lithium production was devoted to cars, and the cars used 270 lbs of Lithium, them we could build 100,000/yr.
What he ignores is you can use the lithium OVER AND OVER AND OVER. Once you get 20 years worth of production in use you can practically stop using "newly mined " lithium and rely on old recycled lithium.The recovery rate in recycling should be very high-90%or more.You could have 2,000,000 battery only cars on the road with no new Lithium production.

This is a very important point that many nay-sayers ignore. The recycling process doesn't (currently) save energy but it saves resources. The way I look at it 2 batteries per car is more than enough: the one it's using and the one it will use next.

The recycling is part of the reason why the government is happy to pursue electrification: theoretically, you could fully electrify your fleet and then stop importing lithium and other expensive metals shortly thereafter.

[Butterfly Mage]

One would think that, after a certain point, new lithium and new nickel would only be required to replace batteries that have been utterly destroyed ( like in an automotive fire).

[jimepting]

I try to keep an open mind on the subject of BEV. I found the article thought provoking and as Dale said, the comments that follow it are extremely interesting.

No doubt that an electric motor avoids many of the parasitic energy losses of the ice. Whether that overcomes the other economic problems isn't clear to me. But, with Leaf on the near horizon, we are going to start getting some real data soon.

I'm not dogmatically commited to BEV. I'm much more commited to light weight, small, conservation, and HEV. But I keep reading and listening. I changed my mind on HEV versus pure gasoline. I may change my mind again ;-)