Electric Car News

This article originally appeared at Consumer Energy Report.

Some test drive reports for the electric Ford Focus are out--fake radiator grill, optional leather seats, looks like a regular car, blah, blah, blah. Other than superficial appearances, it's almost indistinguishable from a Leaf in performance, costs a few grand more. One was used as the pace car at the NASCAR Sprint Car Series race last week in Richmond so at least they are marketing the thing and the Leaf really could use some competition. Then again, I also thought the Prius would have met some stiff competition from American hybrids by now. The latest episode of the sitcom 30 Rock was about an American engineered couch that was so uncomfortable the government bought them to torture terrorists ...I think I have one of those couches.

If you are looking for another made-in-America electric car, this may fit your bill, although I honestly don't know how much of it is made in America. Nissan has a factory in Tennessee that will be able to produce 150,000 Leafs a year.

The Society of Automotive Engineers recently declared that:

Barring an unforeseen breakthrough that significantly drops the cost of automotive batteries, fully electric cars and plug-in hybrid vehicles are likely to remain confined to a niche of under 10% of the market through 2025 and beyond.

Visionaries, these guys are not. The article also mentions that:

A conventional, gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine and transmission make up about 10% of the cost of a $30,000 car, or about $3,000

That's right. Today's almost unimaginably complex assemblies known as engines and transmissions, consisting of thousands of precision machined metal parts, presently cost four times less than the bags of powder that constitute the Leaf's batteries. That's the power of the economy of scale. It's only a matter of time before the price of batteries plummet as well. Automotive engineers are not soothsayers, and don't seem to like electric drive systems--too simple, elegant, little to tinker with, fix, or improve.

Honda just announced that they are building a recycling plant to process nickel-metal hydride batteries collected from hybrid cars. These are not the same technology used in electric cars but similar recycling will eventually exist for lithium ion batteries as well. The critique that there will not be enough rare earth metals for electric car batteries has just been dealt its death blow.

The Union of Concerned Scientists and Citizens (UCS&C) recently released a study that came to the same conclusion as the first half-dozen studies on the same subject that proceeded their version; the carbon emissions associated with your electric car depend on your source of electricity. However, they also created a very easy to understand graphic to explain the concept to a public that does not know a kilo-watt from a tuna sandwich.

Another point of interest that came from that study is that nuclear power produces less GHG emissions than solar.



On the other hand, their press release made no mention of nuclear energy, which is the main reason electric cars have such low emissions.

My Leaf continues to hum along flawlessly. I ruined a tire in a pot hole last week. Called the number in my owner's manual and got a free tow to a local dealer. The tire wasn't cheap but the dealer also didn't offer me any deals on oil changes or engine tune ups while they had me at their mercy. The intermittent problems with my charger have been fixed with a free upgrade as well.

Nuclear Energy is Not a Mature Industry

Article originally appeared at Consumer Energy Report

Senator Bernie Sanders is using Grist Magazine to lobby against government assistance for nuclear energy on the grounds that it's a mature industry. I might agree with him if it really were a mature industry and if renewables really could carry the day without it. But it isn't, and renewables can't. Always irritates me to watch ignorant politicians screw with my children's' futures. As sometimes happens with my long-winded comments, the one I left over there got large enough to convert into a post over here.

Senator Sanders may have good intentions, but what's new? We don't need any more roads to hell paved by those. He's just another member of the generation that has been systematically misinformed by "the end justifies the means" anti-nuclear lobby and our sensationalist for profit lay media.

An earlier article on Grist recently (and inadvertently) demonstrated with a simple graph that the most optimistic estimates for renewable energy do not come close to meeting our energy needs, all cost issues aside.

Do government subsidies ever pay off? The poster child for government subsidies that have paid off royally would have to be those for nuclear energy. There are presently about 60 nuclear power plants under construction around the world. Just off the press:

Westinghouse Electric Company and Ameren Missouri have entered into an agreement to respond collaboratively to the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for developing and licensing the Westinghouse Small Modular Reactor (SMR).

Bernie and/or his co-writer said:

Whether you support nuclear energy or not, we should all be able to agree that with record debt, we cannot afford to continue to subsidize this mature industry and its multi-billion-dollar corporations. If the nuclear industry believes so fervently in its technology, then nuclear companies and Wall Street investors can put their money where the mouth is. Let them finance, insure, and pay for nuclear plants themselves.

I can't think of a more promising technology to subsidize. With all of the new nuclear technology coming down the road, you can't seriously call this a mature industry. Where's the legislation to end government mandated consumption of food-based corn ethanol (moonshine) which may quietly be starving hundreds of thousands to death annually?

Nuclear may be expensive up front, but it certainly has proven to pay off over time. I'm a big fan of renewables, but they are going to need a lot of help from nuclear, and never mind that renewables receive even greater subsidies and are even more expensive than nuclear per unit energy, not that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Nuclear energy has been around for about half of a century. Aircraft technology has been around for about a century. By Senator Sander’s reasoning, a Sopwith Camel is the equivalent of an F-22 Raptor. There would be no F-22 raptor without government funding.

Rough Skinned Newts and a Starfish

Close up of starfish that was plucked from a pier post

Remy holding a starfish ...in the pouring rain

We spotted three rough-skinned newts  crossing a snow-covered road

Remy holding a newt ...in the pouring rain

Remy is a friend of mine. His little sister was diagnosed with leukemia on Christmas Eve. We decided to take a nature trip out to my forest property. The weather was typical for this time of year, forty degrees and pouring rain.

There was a lot of snow on the ground and ice on the lakes and ponds. This is the time of year when rough-skinned newts go into a terrestrial stage and migrate out of the lakes to new ones where they return to their aquatic stage. Migration is a way of finding better digs and nature's way of keeping the gene pool mixed. Many amphibians have evolved the ability to use the cool temperatures of winter and early spring to do their reproductive thing because that is when one of their main predators, snakes, are hibernating. These newts are quite toxic if you try to eat one but many garter snakes have developed resistance to their poison.

We saw three newts within a few feet of each other crossing a snowy road, all going in the same direction. There must be thousands of them migrating through the woods but until they hit a white patch of snow on a road they are very difficult to spot.

The frogs will be out in about a month and we may make another visit then.

While waiting for a ferry we went down to the docks to explore the piers and moorings. There were gates protecting each dock but we found one that was unlocked. I reached down a few feet into the water to retrieve that single starfish from the riot of sea life clinging to the sides of the piers.

While at my forest property we had stumbled upon a car and lots of beer cans that did not belong there so we quietly walked off to explore other areas. We later backed out of another trail because we heard the sound of an automatic weapon in the distance. Such is human nature.

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Nissan Leaf Update I

I took that picture of an oil slick in the street in front of my house left by a car that had parked there for less than an hour. This is another advantage electric cars have. That oil washed down a drain ten feet away and from there into a lake just a few blocks away.

The tar shingles on your roof dump a lot of petroleum products into lakes and streams as well. See Reflective Metal Roofing--Cost Effective Guilt Relief.I didn't drive my Leaf for the three days Seattle was shut down by a two inches of snow (watch that video). I just didn't want to worry about getting stuck somewhere and running low on power. I drove my wife's Prius ; ).

A month ago I made the unspeakably stupid mistake of overextending my car's range. I had programmed the car to charge only to 80%. The next morning my daughter wanted a ride to a nearby city but it turned out that she wanted a ride well past that city into the countryside for a 4H meeting. I didn't have enough to get us home even though I plugged in for the two hours we were there. I had to stop at a Nissan dealer and call my wife to pick up our daughter. I went to a bar to eat, drink, and watch basketball until the car had enough charge to get me home.

Lesson learned ...charge the car all the way. You never know when you will need it.

The Blink 240 volt charger that I got for free for letting the DOE monitor my energy use over the internet craps out fails to perform as designed a few times a month. I have to unplug it to get it to reset and then recalibrate the screen. It has never stopped working during a charge cycle. The problem is that it won't start charging. Don't plug it in and walk away without making sure you have blinking blue lights above your dash.

My local Fred Meyers store has two 120 volt chargers. I use the parking spaces but never bother with the charger because it isn't worth a few cents of electricity.

A few weeks ago both spots were taken up by Leafs. The security guard told me that they regularly park their cars there all day and sometimes all night. Apparently there are some idiots citizens out there with Leafs who didn't buy chargers for them.

The temperatures have been dropping below freezing and of course the car range is dropping, as it does for all cars in cold weather. My range has not been impacted significantly. I may have 20-30 percent left in my battery by the end of my commute and errands on a typical day in instead of 40 percent or so. The car has had no maintenance issues.

Other electric car posts:

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2011/07/orphaned-nissan-leaf-finds-new-home.html

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2011/06/electric-car-purchase-update.html

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2011/04/leaf-or-miev-which-should-i-buy.html

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2011/02/nisan-leaf-meet-ford-pinto.html

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2010/12/nissan-leaf-as-emergency-power-source.html

http://biodiversivist.blogspot.com/2010/11/nisson-leaf-test-drive.html

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Poachers Kill 448 African Rhinos

I took a screen shot off my TV of these carved rhino horns and elephant tusk while watching the PBS Antiques Road Show. Write a letter/email to PBS asking them not to show these items because by doing so they become coveted status symbols. By refusing to show them, they become symbols of shame.

The old guy who brought in the rhino horns had invested about $1,500 in them. They are now worth up to $1.5 million dollars. These are nothing but status symbols. The demand for these items by the newly wealthy in Asia has sent the price through the roof.

The Javan rhino was declared extinct in Vietnam last year when the last one was found dead with its horn removed.

From Extinction Countdown:

Poaching of elephants and the illegal trade in their tusks and related ivory products were out of control in 2011, with more than 2,500 animals confirmed killed and thousands of kilograms of tusks seized by customs officials around the world. This was the worst year on record since the international ivory trade ban was established in 1989, according to TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.

Most of the poaching—which is increasingly conducted by well-armed gangs from Asia and almost exclusively targets the elephants’ valuable ivory tusks—takes place in Africa...

In my book, Poison Darts--Protecting the Biodiversity of Our World, I proposed the establishment of an international wildlife protection service analogous to the United Nations Peace Keeping Forces. Maybe it's time to consider something like that for real.

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