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.
Has anyone else noticed how much a Tesla
Model S looks like a Jaguar XF (pictured below)? One of my neighbors
drives a Tesla Model S. I was following him down the street a few weeks
ago and heard his tires squeak three times in two blocks. Adequate
acceleration to maneuver in traffic can enhance overall safety but too
much acceleration potential can be dangerous, especially in the wrong
hands. Not sure I’d want that temptation.
Tesla is dead on with their promotion of fast charging stations.
The ubiquitous 240 volt chargers are next to worthless simply because
they take too long. A high voltage fast charger can provide a
significant charge in a matter of minutes. I recently deliberately drove
my Leaf beyond its range because we needed two cars to get supplies to a
wedding. My plan was to stop at a charge station on the way home for a
few hours to get enough charge to finish the trip. The rest of the
family came home in our Prius.
I had obtained my code to use a given
company’s charge station but it turned out that the station I chose was
owned by a different company so I had to move to the next closest charge
station, which was occupied by a Chevy Volt. So, I moved to the next
closest station, also occupied by a Chevy Volt! There was a Volt at the
fourth station as well but luckily, there were two chargers. However,
they were owned by yet a third company. Luckily they were in a municipal
parking lot so their use was free. By calling the number on the charger
I was able to get the operator to unlock it for me. Don’t invest in any
company providing 240 volt public charging stations.
Crash Safety
From the Tesla website: NHTSA Reaffirms Model S 5-Star Safety Rating In All Categories For Model Year 2014
That’s all well and good but a 2003 car safety study titled “An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model”
concluded what insurance companies have known for a long time: “…sports
cars, as driven, are extremely risky to their drivers…”
Personally, I never consider crash safety ratings when purchasing a
car. Why? Even with new, more stringent standards in 2012, roughly 95 percent of all cars tested by the NHTSA
received a four star rating or better (out of five). About 25 percent
received a five star rating. Although there are other organizations
that do safety ratings, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration) ratings are much less likely to contain bias. Five star
ratings are inevitably used for marketing, but if you were to buy a new
car that has a four star rating, the odds of being injured purely as a
result of not having that fifth star are very low. All new cars today
have safety features not dreamed of decades ago (three way restraints,
airbags, anti-lock brakes, crush zones, safety glass and on and on).
In reality, when it comes to crashing into other cars, the
overarching difference is mass; heavy cars crush lighter ones. If a
three star truck hits a five star economy car, the occupants of the
higher rated car are at greater risk of injury. But that does not
necessarily mean that heavier cars are safer. The vertical axis on the
above chart ranks risk to the driver of the other car. The horizontal
axis debunks the myth that trucks and SUVs are necessarily safer than
smaller cars. In a nutshell, driving a truck or SUV may not only put you
at greater risk but the greater mass also puts other drivers at greater
risk.
The Tesla is a heavy car for its size, thanks to its batteries
(roughly half-a-ton heavier than the Jaguar XF). On July 6th a Tesla (4,600 lbs) rear-ended a 2004 Corolla (2,500
lbs) at high speed, killing one adult and two children. However,
largely thanks to the five star crash rating, the Tesla driver had minor
injuries.
Obviously, a five star crash safety rating can only do so much. On
July 5th a stolen Tesla crashed into a pole during a high-speed chase and broke in half.
The batteries in the front part of the car caught on fire and the back
half of the car ended up jammed in the doorway of a synagogue, I’m
guessing, about 100 feet away from the front end of the car. The driver
was thrown clear but is in critical condition. You can see video of the
carnage here.
In response to the car fires earlier in the year, Tesla has
reinforced the car’s underbelly. Although Elon Musk said that additional “…underbody shields are not needed for a high level of safety”
(i.e., to reduce the risk of a Tesla being engulfed in a fiery inferno
after hitting road debris) …he did it anyway. The NTSB investigation did
not mandate a fix.
The U.S. government’s auto safety watchdog has closed an
investigation into Tesla electric car battery fires after the company
said it would install more shields beneath the cars.
To avoid the stigma associated with the word “recall” Tesla does not call this retrofit a recall (although, for the record, it is by definition a recall).
This is reminiscent of when extra “non-mandatory” reinforcement was
voluntarily added to the Chevy Volt after some caught fire as a result
of side impact. GM called it a “customer satisfaction improvement.”
The Tesla engineers looked under their car to see where they could
bolt more hardware on under the already existing quarter inch thick
“ballistic grade” aluminum plate. They cobbled together a titanium plate
along with a couple of aluminum extrusions. The Tesla website has three short videos of the car running over junk (which you can bet represent the best examples out of the 152 tests they ran).
They also did a software tweak that limits how much the suspension
will lower the car at highway speeds. Lowering the car at high speeds
does two things: it drops the CG for better handling and less ground
clearance can also improve range by reducing drag.
Tesla was quick to point out that the extra weight of the fix did not
meaningfully affect range but made no mention of the aerodynamic impact
of higher ground clearance.
Electric cars (including Tesla) have so far proven to be far less
susceptible to catching on fire than conventional cars. On the other
hand, not all electric cars will necessarily be equally less
susceptible. Although there are far more Leafs on the road than Teslas
(due to the lower price tag) I am unaware of any of them catching on
fire. The simple fact that Tesla uses quarter inch thick “ballistic
grade” aluminum plate to protect its battery pack is all the evidence
you need to know that Tesla was concerned about what could happen when a
car hit the wrong piece of road debris.
On Tesla’s own website forum, dozens of owners weighed in
with their tales of drive unit woes. “Every car in my area has had at
least one DU replaced,” noted one. “I’m on my fifth drive train at
12,000 miles,” reported another. One poor fellow was on his sixth–as far
as we know, the record for drive-unit futility.
The Gigafactory
Tesla will eventually run out of customers who can buy $80K cars. To
keep selling them, they have to get the price down. The only way for
Tesla to do that is to get the battery costs down. Because their car is
designed around their choice of battery cell, they are stuck with the
battery they have so the only way to get prices down is with greatly expanded mass production of the battery.
Aside from other concerns, the problem as I see it, is that they are
going to commit themselves to mass production of a soon-to-be obsolete
battery.
Unlike the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, and Ford Focus Electric, which
all use a larger, flat, prismatic shaped battery, the Panasonic
batteries used by Tesla have been around for a long time (I wrote an
article about them long before there was a Tesla). Their cylindrical
shape wastes a great deal of space and their small size necessitates the
use of thousands of them in a car which can lead to thousands of
potential problems. Buying off-the-shelf Panasonic batteries was the
best Tesla could do at the time of its development.
In Conclusion
All companies eventually fail, or get bought up. That does not mean a
company was not successful. Tesla is a success. However, it is also a
monopoly of sorts. It is the only electric car in its price and
performance range. They can and do charge whatever it takes to cover
costs. How long will Tesla survive when a car with the same performance
arrives with a much lower price tag, as would be the case with a car
that has cheaper, more modern batteries?
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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Hi Russ, congratulations! Your vehicle is scheduled to arrive at your Nissan Dealer in the month of September 2011.
As your Nissan LEAF™ is being built and shipped, we will continue to update your vehicle's status. So make sure to sign in to "my account" to stay current with your estimated delivery date.
Please be aware that it is normal for delivery dates to fluctuate by a few days as production is finalized. Should your delivery date change by more than two weeks, we will send you an email to notify you of the change.
In an earlier post I was pondering which electric car to buy. I have not heard back from Mitsubishi after plunking down (a refundable) $299 dollars to reserve a place in line.
My neighbor just bought a brand new diesel Jetta wagon. These cars get far better mileage than the American average. Three months from now there may be a Prius, Jetta, and Leaf parked in front of my house representing the most efficient car technology available. The Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid will be missing but not for long I suspect.
According to this website, Nissan is about to start taking reservations again.
Beginning May 1, Nissan will reopen reservations to selected US customers who were registered before April 20, 2011 in states currently selling the Nissan LEAF™ (Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington).
Following this early-reservation period, reservations then will open to the general public in those launch states. More details to follow soon regarding other markets.
It will cost me $99 (which is refundable if I don't buy a Leaf) to get in line to purchase one. Before actually purchasing one at a dealership, I'm expected to spend another $99 to have a Nissan approved electrical contractor send an electrician to my home to tell me what it will cost to install one of their 240 volt, $700 chargers in my garage, which will require a dedicated circuit similar to that used for a clothes dryer.
Mitsubishi is also now taking reservations for its MiEV electric car. However, they want a $299 refundable reservation fee, which they claim will apply to the purchase price of the car (but I suspect the MSRP has already been jacked up by that amount so don't think you're getting a deal). They are waiving the $99 electrical inspection fee for the first batch of customers to sign up. I also doubt if they will be using the same electrical contractor as Nissan.
So, anyway, I ponied up for the MiEV and will also pay to reserve a Leaf on May first. I need help deciding which one to get.
I would rarely need to drive beyond the range of either car and because we are already a three car family (wife and two driving children) I can always use one of the other cars for longer trips.
My youngest daughter thinks it would be dumb to pay an extra $5,000 to be able to haul a fifth person about twice a year.
I test drove a Leaf and was very impressed. My biggest concern about the MiEV is range at highway speeds. The official ranges given are for a mixture of city and highway. Note that the Leaf has a much lower drag coefficient. This means it will get better mileage at high speeds than the MiEV.
But in all seriousness, that would only mean driving a regular car about half a dozen more times per year if I chose the MiEV. For two car families, the range difference is largely irrelevant, and for one car families as well come to think of it because you never want to stretch your electric car to its limits.
Before Mitsubishi dropped their price below that of the Leaf I could see no reason to buy it instead of a Leaf. Why pay more and get less of everything? Although, that logic hasn't stopped Smart car owners. Maybe they should change the name ; )
I also wonder if people will spring for the Leaf just because it has better performance in the same way people spring for a Prius over the Insight?
Which should I buy?
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Justin Lemire-Elmore is a founder of a very small Canadian company that sells electrical supplies for do-it-yourself electric bicycle enthusiasts. His website contains a wealth of information that many thousands of DIY builders have put to great use (myself included) like this hub motor simulator. He also has a degree in engineering physics from the University of British Columbia.
Justin is a bit of a legend in the hot-rod electric bike community. He has personally designed and manufactures several gadgets to meet the needs of DIY electric bike builders.
He recently gave a 2 hour talk titled "Lead Free Since 2003" to the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association (VEVA) about his seven year struggle with different battery technologies, which was video taped (poorly) and can be viewed by clicking on the following links (in sequence). Oh, and the battery on the video camera pooped out five minutes before the end, which explains why there are no concluding remarks:
He sums it all up below (taken from a post on Endless Sphere):
...it was an almost therapeutic experience to get all that off my chest too! It gave some closure to this whole chapter of trying to work out custom ebike packs with all the various Chinese cell and pack assembly companies. From now on it'll be just eZee batteries with Samsung / Sanyo / Panasonic cells and programmable O2micro BMS circuit. Don't care what's the price at this point. Just want reliability.
My own personal feeling is that unless the cells are coming from a long standing big company with years and years of expertize and R&D and internal know-how in battery manufacturing, then they're not going to come close to the standards needed for a consumer industry. Almost all the new companies eagerly selling larger format EV batteries fall way short of this category. I mean we got 4 sample 48V headway packs earlier this year, and have already had to do cell replacements in two of them. A hobbyist can put up with those kind of statistics, an industry can't.
BionX was smart and used Sony cells in their lithium packs. Much as some might begrudge them charging $1200 for a replacement 36V 9Ah lithium pack, at least their users almost always get 3-4 years of regular use from the batteries before they start to wear down, and virtually never have cell problems. Sony can't afford the risk associated with their cells having problems. In hindsight I would have so happily paid twice as much for our packs to have those kinds of statistics, and at the end of the day our customers (assuming they weren't put off by sticker shock) probably would have too.
For now, we're taking a gamble on Samsung being able to deliver a reliable LiMn ebike cell, and they are assembled into packs for eZee at the same facility that does the BionX pack assembly. It's only been 6 months that we've been dealing with them though, so too early to say if that typical lifespan will be 12-18 months or 3-4 years. I'm sure hoping it's the latter because ebike users really deserve it.
For all the talk of LiFePO4 lasting 5-10 years and thousands of cycles, we've yet to see anything firsthand that comes close to consistently delivering this in practice with the ebike grade LiFePO4. I'm sure A123's are up to the task, but I have sincere doubts about all the other manufacturers.
As for the house burning down at the end of the slides (video cutoff just before I got here), that occurred to my very close friend just this summer. She happened to have a battery pack that had all the EU ebike certifications, including the stringent UN38.3 shipping tests, with a UL/CSA certified charger. Went to walk the dog for 15 minutes with the battery charging by her door and came back to the suite in flames, with the battery pack and charger (which had been beside her coat rack and a wicker basket) right at the epicenter. The fire investigation that followed was inconclusive at determining the exact cause or event sequence that lead the pack to do this.
Just 4 months before that I was actually on a tour of this very battery facility and saw the test rooms where they drive nails through the cells, heat them up to 100oC, charge them to 10V, pound them with a sledge hammer, etc. and in all cases the cells wouldn't fail with flames. So what happened that would cause a 2 year old battery that hadn't shown a single sign of strange behaviour to suddenly burn down a house? I have no idea.
Following are a number of links documenting my experience with an electric bike I have been riding since 2005:
Nissan is touring the country with a dozen or so electric Leafs to let people test drive them. It was exciting to be sitting in the first viable mass-produced electric car from a major car manufacturer. This car has the backing of Nissan dealerships for maintenance, warranties, and the quality control you can expect from a Japanese company. This is history in the making.
See this Treehugger article on the American version of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV due out next year.
The Drive:
The quietness and total lack of engine vibration was noticeable.
The steering was effortless. I don't know if that had anything to do with it being electric but I already own two cars with electric power steering, a Prius and a Yaris, and they are both harder to turn than the Leaf I drove. Maybe there is less weight on the front wheels. Even though the electric motor, controller, battery, and gear box are located there, the combination may weigh less than a front wheel drive engine with its attendant transmission, radiator, starter motor, and alternator, although the difference must not be very big. Or maybe they just tuned the steering to be that way for the test drivers.
Cars tend to be rated by how fast they can accelerate from zero to sixty because that is what you have to do to safely merge onto an interstate. Nobody talks about accelerating from zero to thirty, which is what you have to do to dodge other cars here in Seattle traffic.
I goosed it while in economy mode (computer softening the gas pedal) and was shocked by how fast it got up and went. That's the beauty of an electric motor's torque characteristics. A gasoline engine has to spool up to achieve peak torque.
There didn't seem to be enough regenerative braking compared to a Prius. It's possible they had it turned down for the test drives.
Under the Hood:
The tour guide claimed that the top of the motor controller was intentionally made to look like a conventional engine valve cover to give customers a sense of familiarity. I find it hard to believe than anybody would care about a detail like that but then, what do I know about mass marketing? I bought a station wagon just like everyone else when they started calling them SUVs.
There are still brake fluid, window washer, and coolant reservoirs. The coolant is used for the controller and motor. The batteries (under the car) are air cooled.
There is still the same old lead-acid car battery sitting there even though there is no starter motor. It's still used as a low voltage source and power reservoir for most of the electric things like wipers, radios, headlights, etc. The Prius does the same thing.
However, the alternator that is normally spun by a belt off the engine to charge that battery was nowhere to be found. I'm sure it has been replaced by something though, or maybe I just missed it. Miscellaneous observations:
I spotted a Tesla doing a drive by. I'll bet that every Tesla owner in the area test drove a Leaf to compare it to their $100K version. You can't blame them for checking out the competition.
One test driver asked the tour guide why the car doesn't just charge itself up when moving rather than have to be plugged in.
I didn't catch the standard answer they must all give. It certainly wasn't, "Because we would have to rewrite the laws of physics to do that ...you idiot. Next dumb question?" Or, maybe, "Snap! A perpetual motion machine! Why didn't Nissan think of that?"
Just before I got in the car I heard tires screeching and looked up to see a Leaf skewed sideways with an octogenarian in the driver's seat. He might have been testing its handling limits and ABS braking, or maybe he just confused the brake pedal for the gas pedal. Everyone survived.
There were two large tractor trailer rigs nearby with full body shops and maintenance facilities. The dozen or so Leafs being driven were all test cars that had been used to develop the production version although you could not tell by looking.
There was also a large generator on a flatbed truck that was being used to charge the cars.
I envision companies springing up to assist Leaf drivers who are worried they won't have enough charge to get home. All they need is a pickup truck and a couple of large battery packs that can be used to put enough charge in the car to get home. Maybe they can drop the battery pack off to charge the car for several hours as a kind of rental deal.
Electricians are going to get real busy installing plugs and chargers.
Charging:
There are three types of charging. The cars all come with a trickle charger that will take about 20 hours to top off a fully depleted battery. Because you will rarely, if ever, fully deplete your battery just as you roll into your driveway, you will mostly just be topping off a partially discharged pack and should have no problem doing that overnight.
The power cord that comes with the car looks like a giant version of the one for your laptop and plugs right into the same 15 amp, 120 volt outlet.
The level II charger will top off a dead battery in about eight hours. The charger itself isn't very expensive. Most of the money goes to the electrician who will install it in your garage.
The level III charger is for people where cost is no object. It will blow a charge into your pack in about 30 minutes i.e., a carefully controlled explosion. However, you are not going to find any of these chargers out in public for quite a while. There isn't even a standard plug for them yet here in the States. I will also wager that fast charging will tend to wear your batteries out faster. This is a special factory ordered option. You can't have this plug installed at the dealership after it leaves the factory. I imagine it involves extra cooling fans and God knows what else.
Local governments are spending a lot of time and money trying to figure out where to put public chargers. Personally, I think they are wasting most of that time and money as any government worth its salt is expected to do. Imagine taking a trip that is beyond your car's range so you plan to park it at a charging station. But when you get there, somebody else is charging. Snap!@? And what are the odds that a station is where you want it to be?
Range on all cars is highly variable depending on how you drive, city or highway, air conditioning etc. You just don't realize it until you drive an electric vehicle. Do eighty miles an hour and you won't go very far. In general you can expect somewhere between 80 and 120 miles on a charge, depending.
The only heavy metals used are in the old style lead acid battery that is in every other car.
The batteries will be recycled.
Lithium is not a rare earth and supplies are plentiful.
The Leaf uses an induction motor which does not need rare-earth magnets.
A representative from a local power utility was there selling green power credits. For a few bucks a month you can blow off critics who claim your car is burning coal, or better yet, you can Photo-shop an image of your car into the following picture:
The competition for greenest car is really heating up. My favorite is the Bolloré Bluecar, which will be available as a lease option in several European countries next year. That's OK with me because I am not an early adapter. People who willingly act as guinea pigs by paying exorbitant prices to be the first to purchase gadgets do us all a favor by helping manufacturers flush out bugs in new technology.
This car has in addition to an advanced solid-state Lithium Metal Polymer battery, a large ultra capacitor to handle regenerative braking and acceleration. If I were the engineer in charge of designing an electric car, this is just what I would be shooting for. It has a 150-mile range on a 6-hour charge. Purchase of a fast charger will let you get fifteen miles on a five-minute charge.
You have probably already heard about the low cost Honda Insight that will hit the U.S. market this summer:
Honda has received more than triple the 5,000 orders a month it was expecting…[Japanese sales of Insight].
Toyota is responding by keeping a lower cost Prius in the lineup but more importantly:
Chief Designer Akihiko Otsuka said Toyota is planning a smaller, cheaper hybrid based on its Yaris platform to take on the Insight.
"Converting a Yaris into a plug-in Hybrid--Toyota may have something up its sleeve."
The trick is to call a lot of shots but only highlight the ones that panned out.
My oldest daughter absconded with my Yaris when she decided to come back to Seattle to finish college. I have been working on a 91' Tercel instead. Results of that conversion will be discussed in a future article, but don't hold your breath. Progress is painfully slow.
Outgreen: To be more active with respect to environmental concerns, or to be more environmentally conscious, than another.
I created a Wiktionary entry for this word just before writing this piece, which has already been edited and improved upon. It will eventually be removed if someone decides that it doesn't meet the criteria for inclusion. In theory, it should, assuming Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded is considered a well-known work.
I'm not sure I like the definition as it stands. My first attempt at a definition was "To have a smaller environmental footprint or impact than a competitor." How would you define it?
The battery and capacitor of the blue car were developed by a French company called Bolloré. I have seen some wonderful stuff developed by French engineers. Boeing designed and analyzed the 777 in three dimensional Boolean solids using software developed by Dassault. It was an order of magnitude better than any other CAD software on the planet at the time (although it required a large complex of mainframes to run). It set the bar until it was eventually eclipsed by a competitor in the United States with even better software that ran on a PC platform, which Dassault immediately bought out.
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