Tech Tuesday: Seven Stories from This Week's EV News

Photo courtesy J Dean via Unsplash

My comments in italics

TESLA VEHICLES GET A RECALL
Tesla is recalling almost all of its electric vehicles in the U.S. for a software fix as it faces heightened scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). 

When you read the details regarding this recall, it seems the recall involves something incredibly petty, though it will require Tesla to notify every car owner and schedule time to make the adjustment for each car. Is the government trying to disincentivize Elon Musk from selling cars to Americans? Did Ford or GM put a bug in the ear of the NHTSA? 

EVs Are Too Heavy to Be Stopped by Guardrails 
Results from crash testing in the US have raised concerns that electric vehicles may be too heavy to be stopped safely by guardrails on roads.

EVs must be heavier than we realized.... or guardrails flimsier. Is replacing guardrails part of the infrastructure plan?

Building EVs Impacts the Environment, Too
"As the world embraces electric vehicles as a solution to carbon dioxide emissions, there is too little discussion of the environmental harm associated with the metals needed to build them, says one of Japan's foremost researchers in the field."

This story from Tokyo draws attention to another side of the EV coin. In theory they are better for climate impact considerations, but there are other problems that the mining of rare metals exacerbates.

GM Went All In on EVs. Dealers Say Buyers Want Hybrids.
Some auto retailers worry GM is missing an opportunity to nab buyers who aren’t ready for EVs

This is what happens when there is a government-generated mismatch between supply and demand. Will GM need another bailout in a few years? 

More automakers are being forced to rethink their EV plans

EVs have been the shiny new toy in the auto industry, albeit an expensive toy, but the demand has not yet been generated for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest is the hassle of re-charging the batteries.

77% of Americans have homes, but only two-thirds of these have a garage. Finding re-charging stations can become massively annoying, and even moreso when travelling. One recent study found that 40% of all charging stations in California were broken. (or maybe it was in L.A.)

Why Americans Don’t Want Electric Vehicles

Not long ago, pundits were telling us that gasoline-powered cars would soon vanish from the streets, replaced by sleek, space-age vessels powered by electricity. But consumer demand for electric cars never matched the hype.

Why? Again, charging stations are a hassle. And in cold weather, it takes even longer.

Keep Politics out of the EV Debate and Listen to the People

People in Connecticut want to know the details of a plan: where will we get the extra electricity to power the thousands of new EVs, how will the transmission line infrastructure be built, who will pay for it all (your electric bill is already too high), where will people charge them throughout the state, will there be enough operational charging stations where people live and work, and will EVs be affordable? 

This last was a letter to the editor of the CT Examiner. Many questions. I drive by our university paking lots and see a thousand cars, but only a half dozen charging stations, if any. At UMD Saturday I only saw one Golf utilizing a charger. Will we one day have a totally electric transportation fleet? Maybe, but probably not in my lifetime.

Will Electric Cars Rule? If So, When?

1899 -- "La Jamais Contente"

"Nothing ages so quickly as yesterday's vision of the future."
~ Richard Corliss 

About two decades ago I was looking through the 36-page car section of a Popular Mechanics when the following article by Roger Huntington caught my eye: “How Far Can We Go With The Piston Engine?”  The article begins like this. “An early death for the age-old internal combustion piston engine is the prediction of some people.  They say the exhaust can’t be cleaned up enough to meet future air-pollution and antismog laws and that we’ll be running around with batteries, steam, fuel cells and atomic engines in another ten years.”  

This was written in 1969. Seems to me these words could have been written in ‘79 or ’89 or ’99.  Or even yesterday. Is this picture of the near future more relevant today than it was then? For sure the EV has come a very long way. 

IT’S ELECTRIC 

1895 -- The Thomas Parker Electric Car

One way to get a perspective is to look back to the first days of automobile transportation.  Did you know that electric cars were the rage then as well?  

When first developed, the internal combustion engine did not take the motoring public by storm.  Though many inventors produced various designs for this novel approach to mobility, Gottlieb Daimler is often credited with developing the first prototype of the modern gas engine, including a vertical cylinder with gasoline injected through a carburetor. A year later, in 1886, Karl Benz obtained the first patent for a gas fueled car and the horseless carriage was soon on its way out.  

During this same time period carriages were also being powered by fuel cells. As early as 1842 an electric road vehicle was powered by a non-rechargeable battery.  Improvements in the battery made battery powered vehicles increasingly practical, and by 1899  there were more electric cars on the road in Britain and France than there were gas powered vehicles. In the late 1890’s there was even a New York City taxi fleet composed of electric cars.  

Electric cars were quieter, cleaner, and offered a much more pleasant motoring experience. And they could run at a pretty decent clip as well. In 1899 a Belgian built electric car called “La Jamais Contente” was clocked at 68 miles per hour, setting a world land speed record. The gas-powered counterpart was a hand-cranked contraption that smelled, vibrated a lot and made a lot of noise.  The hardest part of all was changing gears, which you didn’t have to do in an electric car. 

EdNote: There were even some deaths caused when a car in a garage lurched forward, causing the man turning the crank to be crushed against the back of the garage.

Electric vehicles did have their limitations. First, they were expensive. Second, they had a range of less than 20 miles, which became problematic in a wide open country like the United States.    

END OF THE ROAD

It was only a matter of time before the internal combustion engine would overpower the electric motor. Times were changing and America’s sprawling highway network was beginning to unfold. Motorists needed a car that could go the distance. Gas power was also helped by the discovery of Texas crude oil, making gasoline abundant and affordable. Gasoline filling stations sprang up not because of government subsidies, but because people wanted to take advantage of this new opportunity to make a profit. 

Charles Kettering’s invention of the electric starter in 1912 had a big impact on the desirability of gas powered cars, and Henry Ford’s mass production processes brought the price down to where almost anyone could afford these vehicles. A gas-powered Ford, at $650, became far more desirable than an electric roadster that cost over a thousand dollars more.

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

I cite the Pop Mechanics article because it has a direct bearing upon our expectations regarding the future of electric vehicles. This past week Robert Bryce made a presentation to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee regarding EV hype in the media in general and some of the impediments to rapid EV adoption. By rapid I mean ten years from now. 

Bryce began by reciting the numerous examples over the past 100 years in which the media has announced the imminent death of gasoline-powered vehicles because EVs were on the rise. The last of these was Tony Seba's prophesy that "by 2025 gasoline engines will be unable to compete with electric vehicles."

Naturally our government wants to run roughshod over what the public wants, creating mandates to force this shift. It ought to be obvious that we're not ready.

Tesla sales have been dramatic, but who is buying Teslas? Wealthy people who can afford a second car to take vacations in because EVs still don't have the range that gas-powered cars have.

What prompted Bryce to speak up at this Senate hearing was an EPE mandate being proposed "that would require two-thrds of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be all-electric by 2032."

So, auto manufacturers will be forced, coerced, to fill their lots with EVs. But will Americans buy them? 

It's a solid, fact-filled read with lots of charts and data. I would encourge you to check it out. You can find it here: My U.S. Senate Testimony On EPA's EV Mandates: "Unrealistic And Unattainable"

Robert Bryce is author of Power Hungry: The Myths Of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels Of The Future,

Gas Taxes and Electric Cars

While in L.A. last week I was at dinner with someone in the auto aftermarket who made the comment that "the internal combustion engine will be with us a long time because gasoline is the cheapest form of power." Oil is a plentiful commodity still, and the research has led many to believe the center of the earth is full of it, hence in many places emptied oil wells have refilled afterwards.

This person said one reason gasoline is expensive, on the other hand, is because of taxes. I don't know how true that is, but I do know that any transition to electric cars will be exceedingly expensive due to the lack of infrastructure.

Most people do not recall that in 1900 there was a battle going on regarding the primary power source for cars. As many as fifty percent of all cars were electric. Did you know that? The problem is that they only went about twenty miles before needing the battery re-charged. And where would you get that re-charge if you tried to go from New York to Boston?

The first internal combustion engines did not take the motoring public by storm. Though many inventors produced various designs for this novel approach to mobility, Gottlieb Daimler is often credited with developing the first prototype of the modern gas engine, including a vertical cylinder with gasoline injected through a carburetor. A year later, in 1886, Karl Benz obtained the first patent for a gas fueled car and the horseless carriage was on its way.

The first battery powered carriages were introduced as early as the 1840's with a non-rechargeable battery. Improvements in the battery made battery-powered vehicles increasingly practical, and by 1899 there were more electric cars on the road in Britain and France than there were gas powered vehicles. In the late 1890's there was even a New York City taxi fleet composed of electric cars.

Electric cars were quieter, cleaner, and offered a much more pleasant motoring experience. And they could run at a pretty decent clip as well. In 1899 a Belgian built electric car called "La Jamais Contente" (image at left) was clocked at 68 miles per hour, setting a world land speed record. This very car was on display at the Detroit Auto Show last week. The gas powered counterpart was a hand-cranked contraption that smelled, vibrated a lot and made a lot of noise. The hardest part of all was changing gears, which you didn't have to do in an electric car.

Electric vehicles did have their limitations. First, they were expensive. Second, they had a range of less than 20 miles, which became problematic in a wide open country like the United States.

I am guessing that gasoline has another advantage. Because it can be taxed, it just might be the ticket for funding our universal health care program. When you look at the cost of hybrids and re-charging stations, a high gas tax on users of fuel just might make some dollars, and sense.

Just a thought.

It's Electric

I have a pet peeve and it's this. I find it annoying how some people, with a brassy personality and a measure of high-powered PR, can get a whole batch of publicity and dollars for ideas that are so full of holes they can't possibly float. No, that isn't quite the wording. It annoys me when people get publicity for very tentative things way off in the pipe dream realm while very real solutions, albeit incremental, are within our grasp.

Here's an example. Last fall the September 2008 issue of Wired magazine featured a cover story called The Future of the Electric Car, subtitled One man's audacious plan to change the way the world drives. The feature story was about an Israeli fellow named Shai Agassi whose idea is essentially an all-inclusive system of battery powered cars, re-charge systems and infrastructure that integrates computers, cars and GPS. It's a total system.

Here are a few clues to how things would work in a Better Place world.
1. Key fob tells how charged the battery is...
2. Driver unplugs and drives off...
3. During commute car locates three open parking spots to plug into during work day...
4. The car and energy control center connect and communicate...
5. While on the road, if re-charge needed, car OS locates best place for battery swap site...

Evidently it's this last item which is a central piece of Agassi's brainchild, I think. He envisions all these buildings around the country which operate like our car washes, where you drive in at one end and the equipment swaps the batteries so you can hit the road again quickly, efficiently, re-juiced.

But to be honest, I just can't picture it. First off, people hate waiting in lines. When I was growing up in New Jersey you had to go through annual vehicle inspections and if you weren't there a half hour before it opened, you could be in line for more than an hour, a line which sometimes stretched a block or more. Can you imagine having to wait in line to re-charge or swap out your battery every couple hundred miles?

The infrastructure issue alone for this system would be a nightmare. Converting enough parking meters and parking slots in cities like New York to accommodate a gazillion electric cars in need of re-charging would not be cheap or fast to implement. But this is not, as I see it, the biggest hurdle.

When I was at the New York Auto Show last year I saw a whole range of ideas for dealing with this issue, from hybrids to electric transmissions to hydrogen cells and the like. Before we see a technology become truly dominant, won't we have to see buy-in across the board to establish the infrastructure to implement it? Right now we have gas stations everywhere. There are so many gas stations that I almost never have to wait in line to fill 'er up. When we start a ramp up to one of these alternative technologies, how long will it take to put this infrastructure in place? Or more importantly, which infrastructure? Who is going to pay that kind of money to set up a system that may not become the dominant system of the future?

Video movies are a good example. VHS and Beta went head to head. Beta was better, I've been told, but VHS won out. In the automobile power game, a car wash costs about a million dollars. It takes time to recoup that investment. How much will these electric battery swapping stations cost to build or buy and own? Who is going to spend a million dollars on a technology that has a high possibility of not becoming the adopted system for tomorrow? The total rollout can be hundreds of billions... with no certainty of success either in implementation or adoption.

Well, Shai Agassi, on the force of his personal charisma alone, appears to have garnered $300 million seed money for the company he's called Better Place. But will Better Place become the better place he aims it to be? Some are already suggesting that the bloom is off the rose.

My prediction is that this guy Shai will be just another Mary Tolan.

In 2003, the mag Business 2.0 produced a laudatory article by Ralph King about a woman exec from Accenture named Mary Tolan who was pushing the notion that the U.S. could wean itself from big oil by 2015 by switching to hydrogen cell power. The article boldly stated, “Her ideas could help catalyze needed change.” (Mary Tolan’s Modest Proposal, Business 2.0, June 2003.)

Six years later, and where is Mary Tolan? Yes, she is still a connected exec with Accenture, but a zealous advocate for hydrogen cell batteries? Do your own research and you’ll see an impressive 2003 campaign that is just another blip in the history of the automobile.

This is not to suggest that I am opposed to electric cars or efforts to move toward green. If we're serious about being greener, there are certainly things we can be doing now if we wished. I just think there are too many unanswered questions with regard to going electric, straight up. How long will it take to get the power grid up to a level where it can juice all these cars? And when the power grid goes down, is it a paid vacation day or are we simply stuck?

Well, enough of that. Tomorrow's another day.