Yeah, but....

What about the Chevy Volt? Extended range!

Will be out 2010! 6,000 vehicles!

(just have to figure out the Battery and propulsion)

Did Neil have to pay for the trip himself?

Sam Zell wants to sell the L.A. Times building, after all.

If price is no object to a wealthy blogger, why not get a Tesla Roadster.

Why not go for an Aptera? They're just down the road from you, they'll deliver in 2009, get 300 mpg, seat 3, allow you to use the carpool lane even if you're along in the car, have lots of nifty technology, and you can reserve one now for $500 (fully refundable).

$35,000 sounds like a lot, but think of what you'll save in gas. At $4 a gallon in a car that gets 25 mpg, a 100,000 mile lifespan works out to $16,000 in fuel costs. Your electric car on the other hand will use about $2000 in electricity over the same lifespan. So you're paying $35,000 but saving $14,000. A $21,000 car isn't so bad.

The "leasing the battery" idea has another great advantange. The EOL disposal costs get centralized and internalized.

The real reason GM killed the electric car was the battery cost. Hopefully the costs will continue to come down. There are some experimental techs that will make leadacid batteries last longer (ultracapacitors and/or foam electrodes) that might make cheaper (but heavy and bulky) alternatives for those not willing to pay upscale prices. Until then hybrids make the most sense. Then I think hybrids with very small plugin range (say ten miles).

"If price is no object to a wealthy blogger, why not get a Tesla Roadster."

The Think Car manufacturer was going to buy their batteries from Tesla Motors, but the deal seem to have fallen through.

A comment on the Tesla Roadster...

It has a range of between 200-250 miles. And the battery has a targeted life of 100,000 miles, at which time it should be at 80% of it's capacity, which is still pretty darned good.

And, for what it's worth, Tesla is shipping cars now. Yes, not very quickly, but still they are in production today.

Don't know if it's just hype but Zenn motor company is supposed to be coming out with a car using ultra capacitors from eestor. Could never happen but if it does it will change every thing. 80 mph, 250 miles per charge and 5 minutes to charge.

Getting the SUVs off the road is a necessity before many people choose to drive these smaller cars. When I saw the Aptera, all I could think of was what it would look like after it met the new Ford Extinction.

Steve, that's not the right way to do the calculation. Consider two alternatives: a Ford Focus at $15,000 or so, or the Think City at $35,000. What's the interest rate on a car loan in the USA at the moment - 7%, maybe? That's $1400 annually just in interest, before you take into account depreciation. Even at $4 per gallon, that $1400 is enough to drive the Focus over 10,000 miles per year.

MattD: When I saw the Aptera, all I could think of was what it would look like after it met the new Ford Extinction.

Not a problem. When a drove an Aptera prototype I ran into that very situation. I just went head-on towards the Ford and played chicken. The Ford driver, presumably fearing for his insurance rates, did a last minute swerve. It resulted in what SUV's do best - flip over. I drove on my way.

My IBM Stinkpad with a new battery got 4 1/2 hours on a charge six months ago. Now it gets 2 hours. Hint.

Following up on a blog post of Kevin’s earlier this week, and the battery issue, curb your enthusiasm for plug-in hybrids, especially with lithium batteries.

What is the Think car rated as? A lot of electric cars in the US are rated as neighborhood cars with speed limited to 25 mph and use to local community roads. No freeway, etc. The odd trip to LA takes on a totally different character if indeed that it could be done at all. Something needs to be done about what we allow electric cars to do. This would change the way we think about electric cars and perhaps spur better answers to the issues of speed and range.

Skip the battery, install solar panels on your roof, get a Honda FCX, and produce your own hydrogen to power it.

The best Li-ion polymer batteries about about 0.25 MJ/kg. Gas is about 47 MJ/kg. The other huge issue, and why you want to lease batteries in the near term, is the low cost batteries used in electrics (including the Tesla) only get 500 or so charges until they need to be replaced. This can give you some frightening operating costs.

Pure electrics don't make very much sense for most people - especially with the current battery technology. PHEVs are a much better idea.

Model 62, what a fucking laugh.

First, how much are you going to pay out of your pocket for the hydrogen infrastructure?

Second, what are you going to do when you find out that production of hydrogen for vehicular fuel is energy-negative, which it definitely will be when made from seawater. (We can't afford to use natural gas for that.)

Read Joseph Romm's "The Hype About Hydrogen."

Steve, I think even PHEVs are iffy right now, at least with lithium batteries.

Chevy Volt numbers are 10K in 2010, 60K in 2011. Direct from Lutz.

1SG, and you really believe K(Lutz)?

Toyota has already responded that it will advance the rollout date of its PHEV Prius.

Molten Sodium Battery!!!!!
I have this image of a car equipped with one and it looks like the Hindenberg at Lakehurst.
Anyone know the temperature required to liquefy sodium? Google says about 130 degrees (373 degrees Kelvin). Not as hot as I expected. Damn reactive metal however.
Batteries will be a good option when their energy storage capacity is a significant fraction of that of liquid petroleum fuels. Batteries have a long way to go.
Considering that very smart people have been doing a lot of head scratching about batteries since Edison, I am not an optimist.

SocraticGadfly: curb your enthusiasm for plug-in hybrids, especially with lithium batteries.

An assertion you make based on one white paper, by a party with a vested interest in other battery technologies, and which is highly debatable.

Besides, the white paper doesn't say that EV's or PHEV's aren't practical, just that other battery technologies (which by an astounding coincidence their customers are researching) are better than lithium.

much of the lithium is on the altiplano; little roads, high altitude, etc. Short of Tibet, it’s about the worst inhabited place in the world to try to mine commercially.

Which probably explains why nobody has ever successfully mined, say tin, in the Altiplano.

While we're at it, did you know that we ran out of iron ore in the 1940's?

What's the deal on compressed air vehicles? From what I've read, albeit limited in volume, they seem like a great answer. No batteries, very little additional infrastructure needed, and with an compressor onboard they could have great range. What are the negatives?

On the other hand, I'm exciting by the notion of moving our society away from single passenger vehicles toward a transportation system that builds social bonds. Public transportation, pedestrian, and bicycles all promote personal interaction. Moving from one energy source (petroleum) to another (fill in the blank) that allows people to drive around in their own bubble doesn't do any good on this score.

look at this

http://www.zenncars.com/

Wait until 2010 and get a PHEV. Several companies (even Japanese ones) have promised delivery by then and PHEVs are much more practical than a pure EV, and at least some of the promises will be kept (don't count on GM though).

Hold on to your seats.
The Think City goes all the way back to the early 2000s. Ford bought Think in 1999, and put a lot of money into developing the Think City - because CA laws demanded that carmakers have alternative drivetrain vehicles in their offering to the market.

Then Bush got elected, and the applicable CA requirement vanished. Which had Ford losing interest in Think, and GM losing interest in their EV1.
Imagine how things would have looked today for US carmakers, if they had followed that lead and developed sensible, hybrid vehicles?

Instead, Think languished for years under the "management" of the person Ford unloaded the company to, one Kamal Siddiqi, until it was bought back by Think's original founder and his backers.

Two things worth thinking about:

1. 75% of all trips by car are made by one person.
2. The average length traversed each day in a vehicle in the U.S. is 30 miles.

Now tell me why we need the six-seater, V8 cars?

The really bad news about the Think is that, AFAIK, it is not available with air-conditioning.

Battery life time is simply one of the build/manage issues to be solved to get practical EVs and higher mileage PHEVs.

Toyota already solved that for the Prius - the battery pack in my '01 Prius is still going strong after 8 years of use (and I still have 2 years on the warranty on that particular component). One of Toyota's discoveries that made the Prius practical was how to manage lead-acid batteries so that they didn't degrade significantly over a long charge/discharge lifetime.

I suspect that when Toyota releases it's PHEV they'll have solved or at least finessed the battery life issue.

BTW - the story of how Toyota wound up creating the Prius is an interesting look into thinking long term instead of always looking at short term profit. Unlike a lot of car manufacturers, Toyota didn't stop research into alternate power sources and drive trains after the '73 oil crisis but kept on plugging away (so to speak) at the various problems.

Battery life time is simply one of the build/manage issues to be solved to get practical EVs and higher mileage PHEVs.

Toyota already solved that for the Prius - the battery pack in my '01 Prius is still going strong after 8 years of use (and I still have 2 years on the warranty on that particular component). One of Toyota's discoveries that made the Prius practical was how to manage lead-acid batteries so that they didn't degrade significantly over a long charge/discharge lifetime.

I suspect that when Toyota releases it's PHEV they'll have solved or at least finessed the battery life issue.

BTW - the story of how Toyota wound up creating the Prius is an interesting look into thinking long term instead of always looking at short term profit. Unlike a lot of car manufacturers, Toyota didn't stop research into alternate power sources and drive trains after the '73 oil crisis but kept on plugging away (so to speak) at the various problems.

Highflyer - try 35MPH. The newer neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs) are rated for that. (If they get up to 45MPH I'm good for at least two of my potential commute routes.)

Alex:

Yes, the altiplano is HUGE producer of iron. We see Bolivia ahead of China in steel production as we speak.

Mining some iron is a LOT different than being a major commercial miner.

B. So what if it's a commercially-oriented paper, if it is still factually-based thought-provoking.

C. Other people mentioned the other issues with lithium, which I didn't need to mention.

D. Contrary to an offshoot of American exceptionalism, technology does not always save the day.

That said, I didn't say any of this was impossible; I just said curb your enthusiasm.

James Kunstler, author of the book The Long Emergency about peak oil, made what I think is a good point in a recent essay:

That those of us in the USA who recognize the need to phase out fossil fuel use (because of peak oil as well as global warming) should stop obsessing about how to keep the cars going. It isn't going to happen. The mass automobile culture is a unique manifestation of abundant, cheap, easily extractable, high-quality oil, and when that energy source is gone, the cars will go with it, because there is effectively nothing that can "replace" it.

Nor is this a bad thing. Kunstler argues that instead of trying to figure out how to keep the cars running, that we should be figuring out how a post-automobile society will function. Obvious things to focus on are public transportation systems (mainly electric rail) and changes in land-use and community design practices to reduce the need to move around so much just in the conduct of day-to-day life to begin with. Both of these approaches can arguably create a higher quality of life for everyone.

I like electric cars and hope to have one someday -- I expect it will be small and have limited range, speed and power, and that's totally cool with me. We would all be better off if all cars were smaller, slower and less powerful, completely apart from the energy and pollution issues. But the more important and more far-reaching approaches are those that Kunstler recommends: improving and expanding public transportation and redesigning our communities to reduce the need for transportation in the first place.

As for those who say that Americans will never abandon the automobile because they like the "freedom" it gives them, the reality is that for the majority of Americans that "freedom" consists of the "freedom" to waste hours and hours in gridlock traffic, breathing toxic fumes and burning increasingly expensive fuel for no good reason.

$25,000 + ($200 / month x 12 months x 8 years) = $44,000. not including interest. $5,500 annual payout (not including electricity from coal). $.46 per mile cost to average city driver. I'd go broke saving money on an electric car.

Not really a good deal, and I'm one of the people who REALLY WANT an electric car.

Damn! Almost every time I read an intelligent posting around here it has SecularAnimist at the bottom.

Electric bicycles and scooters are another option. Think small. The mpg of all gasoline powered vehicles is directly and linearly proportional to the weight of the vehicle and its cargo. So a 7000 lb. Extinction gets 1/20th of the mileage of a 350 lb. scooter and rider. (Ignoring speed, wind resistance and rolling friction.) Someday every city will be serviced by commuter trains with room for scooters and bicycles.

With the resale value of SUVs plummeting, now is the time for entrepreneurs to buy up used SUVs, store them for later use, and create livery services to haul people from their neighborhoods to shopping centers, malls and commuter stations.

in the winter, if i plug in a engine block heater regularly, say 4 hrs a day, for 20 days of the month (the car is garaged, and the heater is ~1200W, and has a thermostat..), my electric bill jacks up by at least $100 USD, and easily becomes my largest monthly expense. the electric rate here (CO) is approx $0.105/kwh; (close to the natl average).

i can only imagine plugging in an electric vehicle would be much worse. folks in the Northeast would have it almost twice as bad. (and Hawaii, far worse)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

For anyone pinning their hopes on the Chevy Volt, here is a very interesting article from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/general-motors

The key graf:

Given the challenges, standard procedure dictates first building and testing the battery, and only then designing a car around it. That process, however, would take until 2012 or 2013—time GM does not have if it wants to beat Toyota. The only hope of meeting the 2010 deadline is to invent the battery while simultaneously designing the car. Just-in-time inventory is common now in the car business, but just-in-time invention on the Volt’s scale is new to GM and probably to the modern automotive industry.

With the resale value of SUVs plummeting, now is the time for entrepreneurs to buy up used SUVs, store them for later use, and create livery services to haul people from their neighborhoods to shopping centers, malls and commuter stations.
-slanted tom

I was looking through employment ads a few weeks ago and noticed an employment ad by a temporary employment agency for a chauffeur to pick up temps and bring them to and from work. I guess that "reliable transportation" isn't needed for temp jobs anymore.

Steve, that's not the right way to do the calculation. Consider two alternatives: a Ford Focus at $15,000 or so, or the Think City at $35,000. What's the interest rate on a car loan in the USA at the moment - 7%, maybe?

Actually, if you have good credit, you can get a new car financed at 0%. And since Drum is a wealthy blogger, he'd be paying in cash.

But the general point you're making is correct. A lump sum payment now, whether cash or credit, is more costly than many smaller payments made over a period of several years. Exactly how much more costly depends on your assumptions.

I'm just trying to point out that fuel costs are now HUGE and must be factored into the overall price of the car. One of the great virtues of EVs is their low fuel costs -- somewhere between 1/5th and 1/10th that of an ICE depending on the mileage. I think Kevin had a post a few weeks ago in which he suggested putting the lifetime expected fuel costs on the sticker of every new car. The reason being that most people don't take that into account (there's a cognitive bias for thinking short-term) so they don't realize that what seems cheap now isn't as cheap as they think.

By the way, I saw a number of the ThinkCity cars that were produced when Ford briefly owned the company. They were at the Solar Decathlon exhibit on the Mall in DC. For those unfamiliar with the Solar Decathlon, it is a competition where various university groups design and build houses that are powered 100 percent by solar energy -- electricity, heating, cooling, everything. It is quite a challenge since the houses also have to be transportable by truck, so they can be brought to DC for the Decathlon.

One of the requirements is that each house must produce enough electricity to power an electric car -- which was the ThinkCity. Each house in the competition had one, charged exclusively by solar energy. They were very cool little cars.

I also had the opportunity a few years ago to test drive one of Toyota's battery-electric RAV4 compact SUVs. It was totally awesome.

SocraticaGadfly: Yes, the altiplano is HUGE producer of iron.

You're thinking is confused. I referred to the fact that the Altiplano is a major tin (and copper) producing region, thereby showing how absurd it is to claim that it's not a practical area for mining.

Mining some iron is a LOT different than being a major commercial miner.

Obviously. Hence the reason for developing practical ways of smelting taconite. That was my point.

So what if it's a commercially-oriented paper, if it is still factually-based thought-provoking.

And highly debatable, which you didn't bother to mention because the paper's conclusions are to your liking.

Contrary to an offshoot of American exceptionalism, technology does not always save the day.

The idea that technological improvements are possible and often desirable is hardly uniquely American. Your suggestion that it is is itself highly America-centric. Or would you prefer to ignore the hopes and efforts of all those Japanese, European, Indian, Chinese, etc., etc., etc. folks who are working on technological fixes to the same problems?

technology does not always save the day

Must you waste electrons by stating the obvious? Ben Franklin was right about there being only two real guarantees.

A question was raised about using compressed air to power a car. While compressed air would pollution-free there is little energy per liter in compressed air compared to batteries or gasolene. Also the tank for the compressed air would be very heavy and need to be well protected in case of a collision.

As for Kevin's situation, I would recommend that he forget electric cars and hybrids entirely and shop around for a used Geo Metro, one that gets 50 mpg (highway) The car would be cheaper and have as small a carbon footprint as a Prius

Secularanimist, I think the Think City, for all that it's uncompetitive with conventional vehicles at the moment, shows that you're wrong.

The Think City - or even a $50,000 version with more space and better battery, is way more affordable than a 1950s Chevy or Ford was.

bLCoIc comment3 ,