Is the Tesla Model X the Hummer of electric cars?

Another Tesla goes up in smoke. I've written about some of the other incidents here and here.

When I built my electric bicycle back in 2007, I had been waiting for a battery that was less volatile than what had been available. I didn't want to risk having a fireball under my seat. Tesla traded volatility for power density.

2007 cell phone photo of Hummer and Cherokee

I think electric cars are great for all kinds of reasons, which is why I bought one in 2011. But like any car, they are not created equal, and as marketers begin the process of differentiating them to get us to buy them, that inequality will grow and diversify as it has for conventional cars. And for any fellow electric car enthusiasts out there who think electric cars are going to make a significant dent in carbon emissions in the foreseeable future, read Robert Rapier's article on that subject. Even a strongly biased study by the UCS shows that electric cars, on average, presently produce about half of the emissions of conventional cars in a cradle-to-grave analysis. Eliminating fossil fuels (instead of nuclear) from our energy mix will improve that over time.

Update on the Progress of the Electrification of Transportation

Graph from Study in Nature Energy Modified by Me to Add Timeline

 Cross posted from Energy Trends Insider

I found this study on Nature Energy, which I subscribe to: Moving beyond alternative fuel hype to decarbonize transportation.

Although I disagree with the study's main conclusion, the above chart they put together (which I have modified) was of interest to me because it suggests that things are finally starting to happen when it comes to electrification of transportation.

The study authors combed through the New York Times archives for stories on energy topics. They summed up negative and positive articles to calculate the number of net positive articles about a given technology which they define as hype.

Had they mined the entire internet instead of just the Times, I suspect the hype about biofuels would have been off the chart, literally. Stories about students piling into biodiesel powered buses to spread the gospel had become a worn out cliché.

They lumped corn ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, and biodiesel into one category. It would be interesting to see which was generating the most hype.

Nissan Leaf Replacement Battery for $5,500

 Cross-posted from Energy Trends Insider

Provision of an after-market battery pack is another electric car first and an all important step for electric cars to gain greater market share. Leaf owners now have the option to upgrade to a new battery (with new, more heat resistant chemistry) when the old one wears out, or of selling their car and letting someone else put a new battery in it. An electric car with a worn out battery wouldn’t have much resale value if you couldn’t replace the battery. The existence of a reasonably priced battery replacement might stimulate sales by putting at ease any prospective customers concerned about how they would sell their electric car once its battery wore out.

All automotive lead-acid batteries have a core charge to make sure they get recycled (parts store will pay $5-$10 for your old battery). The core charge for the Leaf battery is $1,000 (new battery would cost $6,500 without it). And you don’t have the option of keeping your old battery. Nissan wants them back to recycle or possibly become part of a study that uses old batteries for other energy storage applications. Nissan may not want to be sued by tinkerers who burn their garages down (like may biodiesel tinkerers have) trying to use the old batteries for solar back-up and such. Modern lithium battery packs require sophisticated charging and discharging controllers to keep them safe.

It should take two or three hours for a dealership to replace a battery and if you own a 2011 Leaf, you need to purchase a retrofit kit for a few hundred more dollars as well. This cost is comparable to having a dealership put a new engine in a conventional car, and certainly no more than the cost of putting a new engine and a new transmission in a car (it isn’t advisable to put a new engine in a high-mileage car without also replacing the transmission). Having only one moving part, the electric motor may last longer than the car.

It may come as a surprise to many, but there are still only two electric car manufacturers that sell (and can maintain) your electric car at any of their dealerships: Nissan and (of course) Tesla. The Ford Focus electric and Mitsubishi MiEV are low volume cars. I just called my local Ford dealership and was told that they had a Ford Focus Electric on the lot about a month ago but wasn’t sure when there would be another one. The Fiat 500e, Chevrolet Spark EV, Honda Fit EV, and Toyota RAV4 EV are even lower volume cars sold in states like California primarily to meet zero-emission vehicle mandates. For this reason they are sometimes referred to as compliance cars. Unfortunately, with an $80,000 price tag the Tesla is relegated to a niche market. Tesla can only sell them to a relatively limited number of people willing and able to pay that much for a sports car.

Nissan may provide an option for  a 150 mile range battery pack in the next year or two. Considering the Leaf’s passive battery cooling system, I suspect that this upgrade is technically possible thanks to the more heat resistant battery chemistry. A reasonably priced 150 mile range electric car along with fast chargers sitting next to the coin operated tire pumps at most 7-Elevens could be the beginning of the end for market dominance of internal combustion engine automobiles.

Chevy Volt--Mechanical Engineer Perspective

Chevy Volt Plug-in Hybrid

1926 Model T tractor conversion

I took the above photos at the county fair this summer. The Volt and Model T tractor conversion are both the result of ever present engineering compromises that tend to be exacerbated when designing a multipurpose machine. With the Model T kit you could convert your car into a tractor for planting season. Although the idea of combining two machines into one was appealing, the kit was not very successful because the resulting tractor preformed poorly compared to real tractors.

With the Volt, you get an electric car and a gasoline car all in one. The electric car is inefficient because it has to lug around an inert gasoline engine, fuel tank, fuel pump, fuel injectors, radiator, oil filter, muffler, catalytic converter and other attending air pollution devices for when you run out of charge.

The gasoline hybrid mode for the Volt is inefficient because it has to lug around a large depleted battery and  two large electric motors in addition to the gasoline motor and its attendant hardware. This explains its dismal 33 mpg performance for a four-seat gasoline hybrid. The lack of a fifth seat is yet another compromise.

Another example of engineering compromise would be those pocket knives that combine just about anything you can imagine into one handy package. However, none of the tools contained in that knife work nearly as well as a separate tool designed for a specific use. Picture trying to measure something with that knife's ...measuring fish hook remover thingy. This explains why car mechanics and carpenters have thousands of dollars worth  of tools at their disposal instead of just one of these babies in their pocket.






Volt owners can also expect higher than average maintenance costs (lower than average reliability) thanks to the complexity of having two drive systems--an internal combustion engine driving an electric motor that in turn drives yet another electric motor.

Powered by electricity without being tethered to electrical outlets, the Volt does everything a great car does ...?

True to America's modern corporate culture, GM attempted to baffle consumers with BS rather than give them a product that earns its market share with superior engineering and performance (like the Prius and Leaf). To this day, journalists are still lumping the Volt in with electric car reviews instead of with other plug-in hybrids. GM's marketing machine had managed to convince the public that the Volt is an electric car. The latest commercials are an attempt to cool the hype because a small consumer backlash was growing ...not to mention Chevy needed a comeback for this Nissan Leaf commercial (look for the Chevy Volt in it). The gullibility of the American public isn't boundless after all.



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Saddles To Replace Seats In All Electric Cars

[UPDATE 9/12/2010]
Picture above from Gas 2.0. Beautiful example of good marketing. But to tell the truth, it would be more accurate to have a whale hug the Leaf owner.

As I write, I'm watching the above video of a test drive of the Nissan Leaf (you can right click on the video to watch the full sized version on YouTube). Also see this article about the Leaf by Todd Woody over on Grist, and this one by Sami Grover at Treehugger. Today, car dealerships make most of their money from car maintenance, which is why electric cars will spell the end of a lot of car dealerships and car repair shops. They will also shrink the car industry in general.

This will result in the loss of jobs--but only in the car manufacturing and repair industries because it will free consumer dollars up to invest in other things, like solar panels to charge their electric cars. Same thing happened to saddle makers and if they had a lobby as large and powerful as the oil and corn ethanol lobbies, we would probably have government mandated saddles instead of seats in our cars today.

On the other hand, an industry may spring up to convert used cars to electric if a standard motor, controller, and battery pack can be purchased by third parties.

And for all of you Luddites, the used batteries will be too valuable to throw away and they also don't require the mining and smelting of nickel.

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