THINK Goes Myth Busting for Earth Day

[xcel]

Top 10 Myths About Electric Vehicles—Busted! At least according to THINK!

Wayne Gerdes - CleanMPG - April 21, 2010

Think City BEV – 28 kWh pack allows 99-miles AER and a top speed of 62 mph.

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Richard Canny, CEO of pioneering electric car company THINK, is setting the record straight on electric vehicles. Here are Canny's top 10 EV myths, busted:

1. "You are just moving the pollution out of the cities to the countryside." – Busted: Electric vehicle motors are three-to-five times more efficient than gasoline-powered vehicles. While it's best to power EVs from renewable energy sources, the efficiency of EVs makes them cleaner, producing less carbon – even when they are charged using coal-fired electricity.
   
   
2. "Customers will never buy a car with less than a 200 mile range." – Busted: So-called 'range anxiety' diminishes when people get used to driving EVs on a daily basis. It's just like charging a cell phone overnight. You plug it in, and in the morning it's ready to go, fully charged. And THINK recently announced a new standard for fast charging – zero to 80% charged in just 15 minutes – to help cover those rare situations when an EV will be needed for more than 100 miles in a single day.
   
   
3. "The battery won't last." – Busted: EV batteries are designed to last at least 10 years and more than 100,000 miles. THINK has cars on the road in Europe with batteries approaching the 10-year mark and brings that experience to modern Li-Ion batteries to ensure they meet that target.
   
   
4. "You'll need to build a lot more power plants." – Busted: There's enough off-peak electricity in the U.S. to power 79% of U.S. driving demand. As more EVs are deployed, it's important to ensure that the smart-charging (time-based charging management) and vehicle-to-grid connectivity progresses as well. A connected network of millions of micro energy storage devices – which EVs would become – provides significant opportunities to improve the stability and performance of electric grids and better balance peak demand.
   
   
5. "We're going to run out of Lithium – and isn't it poisonous?" – Busted: Lithium carbonate today comes from dried salt lakes in South America and China. Lithium can even be extracted from salt water and projects are under way to do this. The industry will not have a shortage of lithium for the next decade. It is also possible that new battery technologies will be based on other light metals like Zinc or Nickel. Lithium from used batteries will be recycled in dedicated recycling plants. Lithium batteries contain no poisonous heavy metals like lead in lead-acid batteries or cadmium in NiCd batteries.
   
   
6. "The infrastructure has to come first." – Busted: In our experience working with more than 20 cities across Europe, the best way to deploy EVs is to get cars on the road first, then add infrastructure. If there are no EVs to use those plugs and parking spots, people see it as wasteful. We think infrastructure is a small part of good policy at a federal, regional and local level to support EV early adopters.
   
   
7. "They're not safe." – Busted: Highway-certified EVs like the THINK City meet all the same safety and crash test requirements as regular production cars with some important extras. For example, new European Union regulations require EVs to conform to the European CE electrical standards. THINK City is the first to meet those requirements.
   
   
8. "The technology is too complicated." – Busted: A modern electric car has only about five main moving parts compared with hundreds in an internal combustion engine. There are no regular visits to the dealership for an EV. No oil changes, no filters – even brake pads last two-to-three times longer than in conventional cars, because EVs like the THINK City use regenerative braking to recapture the energy that would otherwise be lost while braking. Your first trip to the dealership with an EV for scheduled maintenance is at 40,000 miles to check the brake pads. Eventually, you'll need new wiper blades and tires. But that's about it!
   
   
9. "Fast charging EV batteries will wear them out quickly." – Busted: Modern prismatic Li-Ion batteries can be developed with fast-charging in mind – like THINK's EnerDel battery solution. The critical technology is in the cell design to manage battery temperature during charging. Limiting fast charging to the 0-80% range also protects battery life. THINK's view is that 95% or more of all EV miles will be driven on EVs charged during overnight off-peak periods when electricity is cheaper and readily available. Fast charging locations provide reassurance and peace of mind for those occasional days where more than 100 miles are required.
   
   
10. "Plug in hybrids are the best solution." – Busted: Carrying around the extra weight and cost of two powertrains makes little sense. In some ways, a 'hybrid garage' (where one car is an EV and the other a relatively fuel-efficient 'normal car') is probably most economical for a typical family. As plug-in hybrids get bigger and heavier, they need more batteries and stronger gas- or diesel-powered generators or engines. It becomes a 'vicious circle' of more cost and more weight to achieve acceptable range and performance in both modes.

THINK City is a purpose-built, all-electric car designed for urban environments. It is capable of highway speeds and can travel more than 100 miles on a single charge with zero local emissions. THINK City is currently in production in Finland and sold in select European markets. Sales in the U.S. will begin later this year. The company recently announced plans to begin manufacturing the THINK City in Elkhart, Ind. beginning in early 2011.

While the Spare Grid Capacity, Range anxiety and the PHEV discussion are beyond just a stretch, the rest makes perfect sense…

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

2. It's not like a cell phone, at least with a decent charger: you go home, you plug in the car and then your charger programming charges the car appropriately. A cell phone is either with you or turned off. If you care about consumption and battery life you specifically don't plug it in when you're not using it.

They should say it's easier than a cell phone.

4. Aarrgghh! Vehicle-to-grid is too unreliable and expensive to be built into a generation plan. The point about smart charging and spare off-peak capacity still stands though. Distributors are rubbing their hands with glee knowing that they're going to make more money without any extra generation.

[Bruce]

Assuming my current ~125 gal/yr and a 10-year payback, gas would need to be about ~$15/gal to make a BEV economical for me...and when it comes to that, I'm going to be a lot more concerned about how to scrape together ~$40K/year for food alone.

If it takes 15 min to charge every 100 miles, that's the equivalent of 75 min/tankful just spent charging on a long trip...and that doesn't even count the time spent getting on and off the highway and finding a charging location 5 times. Granted, you can use some of the time for bathroom breaks, but it will still make a dent in your overall average speed.

A BEV that becomes a slot car would make more sense for long trips, but it'd take a lot of infrastructure modification.

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Originally Posted by Bruce

Assuming my current ~125 gal/yr and a 10-year payback, gas would need to be about ~$15/gal to make a BEV economical for me...and when it comes to that, I'm going to be a lot more concerned about how to scrape together ~$40K/year for food alone.

If it takes 15 min to charge every 100 miles, that's the equivalent of 75 min/tankful just spent charging on a long trip...and that doesn't even count the time spent getting on and off the highway and finding a charging location 5 times. Granted, you can use some of the time for bathroom breaks, but it will still make a dent in your overall average speed.

A BEV that becomes a slot car would make more sense for long trips, but it'd take a lot of infrastructure modification.

Well, a lot of people with low annual mileage are better off using public transportation and cycling: I'm expecting an e-bike revolution parallel with the EV revolution.

It's the high-commuters in more sprawling urban settings without public transportation alternatives that will benefit from BEVs.

[Bruce]

Well, a lot of people with low annual mileage are better off using public transportation and cycling: I'm expecting an e-bike revolution parallel with the EV revolution.

My low annual mileage is because of cycling, not in spite of it.

I periodically reconsider an e-bike whenever I'm overtrained...but I already have a vehicle, and it has the side benefit of keeping me dry when it rains....

[wxman]

1. "You are just moving the pollution out of the cities to the countryside." – Busted: Electric vehicle motors are three-to-five times more efficient than gasoline-powered vehicles. While it's best to power EVs from renewable energy sources, the efficiency of EVs makes them cleaner, producing less carbon – even when they are charged using
coal-fired electricity.


Actually it’s more like moving the pollution source from what is essentially spread-out line/area sources to a relatively few large point sources. That would potentially be beneficial for urban locations (assuming the coal-fired electric generation plant is far enough away from an urban location), but would potentially be a disbenefit for whoever lives downwind of the electric generation plant, especially if recharging occurs mainly overnight.

There is a plume dispersion scenario known as "fumigation" which occurs when surface-based nocturnal inversions grow to well above the stack height of the emission source (power plant stack in this case), not an unusual occurrence. Inversions are very stable and inhibit dispersion of stack emissions. This allows pollutants to become relatively concentrated over a small area. The following morning as the inversion breaks from the surface up, the high concentration of emissions that have built up aloft, along with the stack plume itself, can mix down to the surface. However, vertical dispersion is still inhibited by the inversion aloft until it completely break, thus "fumigating" surface receptors for many miles downwind.

Since coal-produced electricity has relatively high conventional emissions per unit power (especially NOx and PM2.5, which the regulators have been obsessing about ironically), I'm not convinced we will see a significant net emissions benefit, even at substantially higher efficiency of BEVs, at least not unless/until we move substantially away from coal to renewables for electric generation.

[Right Lane Cruiser]

Don't forget all the electricity that is currently used to produce that gasoline in our refineries. We can run all of our electric vehicles on that... further than vehicles will travel on fuel produced by that power.

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Originally Posted by wxman

... disbenefit ...

Malefit. That is all.

[wxman]

Right Lane - true but you also have to take into account the fuel used to transport coal to the power plants, among other energy consumption processes in the cycle. I guess a rigorous life cycle analysis needs to be performed.

I didn't mean to imply that I support "business as usual". I'm just not convinced personally that moving to BEV will necessarily result in significant reductions of conventional emissions overall at least under the present electric generation configuration.

[Right Lane Cruiser]

Coal is typically brought in on trains and fuel is transported via trucks -- the trains win by up to a factor of 4 in terms of efficiency (and thus emissions). Several hundred smoke stacks are also easier to regulate (both due to number and the fact that the "scrubbing" equipment doesn't have to be light weight and portable) than several million tailpipes, too.

The case looks pretty compelling to me.