I’ve heard some good arguments against electric vehicles (EVs): The technology is still too expensive; if the electricity you charge the car with was generated by coal it’s, worse for the environment than gasoline; they take too long to recharge. They’re all relatively logical arguments that, at least for the short term, have some merit.
The past few weeks have seen the introduction of three new 2016 models of electric vehicles: the Chevy Volt, the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Model X crossover SUV.
One simple slide in a PowerPoint presentation by a Tesla official at an auto convention in Washington this month did almost as much damage as Elon Musk’s rocket blowing up soon after liftoff.
JB Straubel, chief technological officer and co-founder of Tesla Motors, put up a slide on June 15 indicating that Tesla’s Model 3 would not “begin production until 2018.” This apparent delay set the new vehicle back from the previously announced deadline of 2017 and almost knocked the company for a loop. The website Inside EVs broke the story, as it were, and word of the PPT slide was repeated in countless news stories. The interpretation was clear: Once again, Tesla had been forced to postpone key product rollout.
Within hours, Tesla had assured investors and analysts that it was not changing its schedule. The $35,000 Model 3 will be available in 2017, as previously planned. “Contrary to speculative blogger reports, we still plan to show Model 3 in 2016 and begin production in 2017,” Ricardo Reyes, vice president of communications, tweeted. The statement about production in 2018 was said to refer to “full production,” an attempt at back-filling that many analysts viewed with a grain of salt.
Whether the reference to 2018 was just a typographical error or an inadvertent peek under the kimono, the controversy showed how delicately balanced Tesla’s position is, both in terms of meeting customer expectations and in raising money to continue its projects.
Missing deadlines would certainly be nothing new for Tesla. In February 2012 the company said its crossover Model X would be available by the end of 2013. In February 2013, it said it would be late 2014. In November 2013 the company announced that a small number would be available by the end of 2014, but actual deliveries would not begin until the third quarter of 2015. Everyone is waiting to see if this deadline will be kept. Meanwhile, speculation has increased that any delay in the debut of the Model 3 may be due to the resources that have been spent trying to get the Model X out the door.
The Model 3 is Tesla’s bid for the big time. The car is projected to have a range of 500 miles and would be priced at the aforementioned $35K, less than half of the $79,570 MSRP of the 2015 Tesla Model S. The Model 3 is intended to be a mass-market sedan that’s well within the reach of the average car buyer. Musk, Tesla’s flamboyant co-founder and CEO, hopes to sell 500,000 versions of the Model 3 by 2020, a feat that could put Tesla on a firm financial footing.
But there are pending obstacles. One is the Chevrolet Bolt, a plug-in all-electric that is the successor to the Volt, a plug-in hybrid. GM demonstrated the Bolt in a sample model this month and will also be priced in the $35,000 range. GM promised to have the Bolt on the market by early 2017, which would beat Tesla’s Model 3 out of the gate.
Whether electric-car buyers will be attracted to the Bolt – or whether they will wait for what will almost certainly be a superior product from Tesla – is a hotly debated question. “GM is ramping up to make 20,000 Bolts. Tesla is ramping up to make 500,000,” said one commenter to a Wall Street Journal story. “When a company names its new car the ‘Bolt,’ Tesla has little to worry about,” said another. But other readers cited GM’s superior service network, and the company’s long history of making money, while Tesla has only lost money.
One thing is certain: Tesla is building brand loyalty. A survey of 145 Tesla owners by automotive analyst Dan Dolev of Jeffries found that 85 percent said their next car would also be a Tesla, and 25 percent wouldn’t even consider another brand. Eighty-three percent said they would recommend Tesla to their friends, and a remarkable 89 percent said they would still buy a Tesla without the $7,500 federal government tax break. The owners also turned out to be not nearly as rich as expected. Almost 70 percent had previously owned cars that cost less than $60,000, including ones as modest as a $15,000 Toyota Highlander. They paid an average premium of 80 percent over their previous car when they bought a Tesla. As a result of the survey, Jeffries raised its target price for Tesla stock to $350 from its current $265.
The battery-producing Gigafactory outside Reno is moving ahead on schedule, with the first phase of the structure near completion and machinery is about to be moved in. The current phase represents only 14 percent of the planned layout. Once completed, the Gigafactory will be the largest building in the world, with a footprint of 5.8 million square feet and two stories of manufacturing totaling 10 million square feet. Panasonic, Tesla’s battery partner, is expected to send hundreds of workers to the site this fall to prepare for full-scale production. The factory will also employ hundreds of local workers.
Wall Street Journal columnist Charley Grant threw a wrench into the works recently when he wrote that Tesla is still burning through cash and probably will run out of money if the Model X does not sell as expected. He says the company should sell another issue of stock while the price is still high. He suggested that a price of $200, 25 percent below the current market rate, could raise $750 million and carry the company over to the introduction of the Model 3.
Whether the company will dilute ownership or take a chance that Model X sales will reverse its cash flow is just one of the many decisions Musk will be facing in the near future. One thing is certain: He will be balancing atop that high wire for several years to come.
So we’ve heard from Americans who say high gas prices have disrupted their lives and their work. Let’s shift to the people who are more than mad as hell. They’re mad enough to turn their energy into action.
Among these 10 ideas, what’s the most practical for your life?
“I just ditched my old 1998 Volvo S70 for a used Prius, and it is so much more fun to fill a 10-gallon tank than an 18-gallon one. And have it last more than a week of heavy Los Angeles commuting. It’s still new to me, so I still kind of giggle every time I fill up the tank. I’m thrilled to put the money I save toward better things.”
— Jennifer
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“We save a lot of money in the summer because my wife takes the bus to the south side of Madison to go to work, and I pick her up in the afternoon, about 4 miles south of our home. If I was to take her to work and pick her up, it would be 48 miles round-trip, morning and afternoon. The bus is cheaper.”
— Laverne F., Madison, Wisconsin
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“As gasoline was so high for so long, I made a bio-diesel processor from a old electric water heater and made my own fuel for the oil furnace and my old 1984 GMC van with a diesel engine. I still received 21 mpg. Begging for grease was the hard part.”
— Willis W.
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“I wish I had a good story for you, but my wife and I drive a plug-in Chevy Volt. We hardly ever stop at a gas station, except perhaps once every 6 weeks or while on an occasional trip. When we top the tank, it seldom takes more than 5 1/2 gallons, i.e. less than $20 worth of premium fuel. The main reason that we stop at gas stations these days is to get an automatic car wash.”
— David and Barbara G., Gaithersburg, Maryland
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“Still wondering how to convert my 99 Ford Expedition to NG?”
— Gary S., Laguna Woods, California
(We’re checking around to find a SoCal CNG conversion business. Will update later.)
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“I have not visited a gas station since September 2014, when I took delivery of my Tesla. However, I still pay for my daughter’s gasoline, suffer the financial cost, and contribute to the oil industry’s wanton environmental degradation. Savings at the pump could help me fund her college education.”
— Dr. George
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“Go electric. I did and am receiving my Tesla next week. No more gas at all.”
— Bob
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“Today we bought a 2014 Ford Focus, a flex-fuel vehicle which enables us to use E85 for fuel. A small contribution to energy independence.”
— David
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“We need a blender pump [for ethanol] in every station.”
— Melvin M.
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“I top off my cars with E85 when I can. I fill up once a month with a discount at Kroger. I am really pushing to get Kroger to provide ETHANOL pumps and shop at the same place!”
— Gerard R., Stone Mountain, Georgia
Incidentally, here’s a handy guide to flex-fuel vehicles on the market.
The seven-month-long plunge in oil prices appeared to be enough to re-establish gasoline as the default fuel for motorists, while stunting the progress of replacement fuels.
But attendees at last month’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit would have thought differently. Prominently displayed were various alternative vehicles that have been making headway and are just building momentum in the auto market, so they may be able to shrug off the precipitous fall in oil prices.
Also exhibited in Detroit was the first generation of hydrogen vehicles from Japan, which are challenging both the gasoline monopoly and the electric car, which is much more popular in America and Europe. The Honda FCV concept car boasts a driving range of about 300 miles and a refueling time of just three minutes, marking another step forward for the hydrogen fuel industry. California, where the cars are to be introduced later this year, is already preparing its “hydrogen highway,” which will make the cars feasible for drivers. Toyota’s fuel-cell offering, the Mirai — which also runs on hydrogen — is also scheduled to hit showrooms this year.
Chevrolet has had middling success with its electric-gasoline hybrid the Volt, but the maker has another generation planned with its concept car, the Bolt. The car will be made of extremely lightweight material and will have an all-glass roof and aluminum wheels for further weight reduction. Its lithium-ion battery will give the car a range of 200 miles and a recharging time of 40 minutes for an 80 percent charge. The price of $30,000 is likely to expand the market for electric cars.
Analysts note that oil is not used much for electricity anymore. The 1980s are the benchmark and generally remembered as the “Valley of Death” for renewables. Wind and solar were undercut by falling oil prices and lost their place in the generation of electricity. At the time, oil was providing 17 percent of our electricity. Now it provides barely 5 percent, and wind and solar energy have not felt any effect from oil prices.
Of course, natural gas has largely replaced oil, and a drop in gas prices could cut into the advance of renewables. Gas prices have traditionally been between one-sixth and one-twelfth of oil prices but have uncoupled themselves in recent years. This could work both ways, since gas prices have not fallen by the same degree that oil prices have.
Gas still holds its edge, however, and this means the attempt to use natural gas as an oil substitute may not slow. T. Boone Pickens has had some success in switching long-haul trucks to compressed natural gas, and this effort may be slowed only a little by gasoline’s new low price. However, if natural gas prices fall as well, then it may be able to keep pace with lower oil prices. The possibility that cheaper natural gas might encourage the conversion to methanol as a gasoline substitute would also be encouraged by falling natural gas prices.
That leaves the big question of whether ethanol can survive in the face of falling gasoline prices. In the first place, low gas prices are not likely to last forever. Some analysts are predicting crude oil prices will probably bounce back to $75 a barrel in the near future. Second, ethanol is protected by the federal mandate that says each gallon must contain 10 percent ethanol. If falling gas prices encourage the purchase of more gasoline – which it already has – then ethanol consumption must climb as well.
Ethanol has been under fire recently from studies that say it competes with food resources. The latest is a report from the World Resources Institute in Washington, which argues that “There are other, more effective routes to get to a low-carbon world.” But the rapid development of cellulosic ethanol severely reduces the possibility that ethanol will compete with food crops. And the possibility that natural-gas-based methanol might begin substituting for ethanol makes the threat of competing with food crops even less.
Altogether, it appears that renewable energy and alternate vehicles are going to survive the dramatic fall in oil prices. Alternative vehicles and other related technologies are now too far along to be crushed by falling oil prices the way they were in the 1980s.
(Photo: The Toyota Mirai at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. Credit: Vision Automotriz, Flickr)
General Motors CEO Mary Barra has sent a strong message to the auto industry: It’s serious about producing electric cars for the middle class.
One of the most talked-about vehicles unveiled Monday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit was GM’s Bolt, an all-electric concept car that could go on sale in 2017, the Detroit Free Press reported. The company also officially unveiled its redesigned Volt, a plug-in electric-and-gasoline hybrid that got a first glimpse at CES in Las Vegas last week.
The Bolt’s price tag is $30,000, including the $7,500 federal tax incentive, GM North America president Alan Batey said. It would get about 200 miles on one battery charge.
As the Detroit News reported, GM is positioning the Bolt as an affordable EV option:
“This is truly an EV for everyone,” Barra said. “For most people, this can be their everyday driver.”
Batey said the Bolt isn’t aimed at Tesla, noting Tesla’s current average transaction prices are above $100,000.
“They are for the rich and famous. This is for the people,” Batey said of the Bolt. “I would probably counter and say I haven’t seen Tesla with anything like this.”
Despite what Batey said, Forbes took the unveiling as a direct challenge to Tesla:
The Bolt is a clear shot at upstart rival Tesla, which has said it is working on a less-expensive version of its $70,000+ Model S. Dubbed the “Model 3,” it would cost somewhere between $30,000-$40,000, a clear attack on the most popular segment of the automobile market.
Barra is clearly looking to meet the challenge. The Bolt, she said, would be an “all-electric vehicle for the real world.” Tesla CEO Elon Musk is scheduled to appear at a related auto industry conference in Detroit on Tuesday afternoon.
As for the revamped Volt (with a “V”), the biggest news is that the battery range has gone up to 50 miles. At that point, the gasoline engine, a 1.5-liter “range extender,” kicks in, pushing the limit to 400-some miles before the vehicle needs a charge or a fill-up. With the electricity and gas range combined, mpg on the highway is about 41. In all-electric mode, however, it’s 102 for a gallon-of-gasoline equivalent, thanks to the new 18.4-kilowatt-hour lithium battery.
Auto Blog notes:
To compare, today’s four-seat 2015 Volt has a 38-mile range from a 17.1-kWh battery in a powertrain that offers 37 mpg and 98 MPGe. So, across the board, there are notable improvements.
The blog has much more about the dashboard improvements, and the Verge has a bunch more photos.
The Volt is expected to be in showrooms in the second half of 2015 as a 2016 model.
(Photo: General Motors)
One narrative for 2014 is that cheap gasoline reduced the incentive for energy-efficient vehicles.
Tell that to all the people who bought electric cars during the calendar year.
With sales data still coming in, it appears certain that U.S. sales of EVs, including both all-electric and plug-in hybrids, surpassed 100,000 units.
That marks the third straight year of sales increases, since the electric vehicles we know today first went on sale in December 2010, according to Green Car Reports. The growth rate won’t come close to 2013, however, when 97,000 EVs were sold, nearly doubling the 2012 total of 53,000.
Nissan is emerging as the sales champion for the year, having moved 30,200 all-electric Leafs, a new U.S. record for an EV. That’s up nearly 34 percent over 2013, when 22,610 Nissan Leafs were sold.
Compare that figure to the Chevy Volt, of which 18,805 were sold — down 19 percent from the previous year, when 23,094 were sold.
According to the Auto Blog, Volt sales really tailed off in December, with just 1,490 units, a 38 percent falloff from the same month in 2013. Nissan sold 3,102 units for the month, up 23 percent from December 2013. The federal government’s $7,500 sweetener might have played a role, as new-car buyers sought to grab that tax savings before the calendar turned.
More Auto Blog:
The Leaf outsold the Volt every month in 2014. The closest gap was 215 units, in February. The biggest was 1,612, in December.
One theory for the Volt slowdown is that potential buyers are waiting for the redesigned 2016 model. Although the car won’t be officially unveiled until the Detroit Auto Show next week, Chevrolet opened the kimono to allow journalists a peek Sunday night at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Check out stories here, here and here.
What about sales of the Tesla Model S, you ask? The company doesn’t post monthly sales reports, so we’ll have to wait until later in the winter for its annual report. But Inside EVs mentions both Nissan and Tesla “hitting it out of the park” in December.
Inside EVs also has a breakdown of how other anticipated models sold during the year. For instance, Cadillac moved 1,310 units of its plug-in ELR. And BMW moved 6,092 units of the i3, “not bad considering it was only available for 7 full months in the US.”
Also:
Current owners got some good news this month as earlier, long standing issues surrounding the onboard chargers being muted to avoid failure incidents has now been rectified and BMW has a recall/repair bulletin out for owners to now get new units installed. 7.4 kW charges again for everyone!
[Blog] Until recently, the Chevy Volt was the only range-extended electric car available in the U.S. I’ve driven a Volt for almost three years now, and it’s been a splendid car–quiet, smooth, peppy, and amazingly economical
The Energy Information Administration has done us an enormous favor by producing a simple chart to make sense of where the development of energy storage technology is going. Energy storage, as the EIA defines it, includes heat storage, and a quick look at the chart reveals that those forms that involve sheer physical mechanisms – pumped storage, compressed air and heat reservoirs – are much further along than chemical means of storage, particularly batteries.
The EIA divides the development of technologies into three phases – “research and development,” “demonstration and deployment” and “commercialization.” It also ranks them according to a factor that might be called “chances for success,” which is calculated by a multiple of capital requirements times “technological risk.”
As it turns out, only two technologies that could contribute to transportation are in the deployment stage while three more are in early development. The two frontrunners are sodium-sulfur and lithium-based batteries while the three in early stages are flow batteries, supercapacitors and hydrogen. The EIA refers to hydrogen as one of the ways of storing other forms of energy generation, particularly wind and solar. But hydrogen is also being deployed in hydrogen in hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles that have already been commercialized.
Other than building huge pumped-storage reservoirs or storing compressed air in underground caverns, the chemistry of batteries is the most attractive means of storing electricity, which is the most useful form of energy. Batteries have always had three basic components, the anode, which stores the positive charge, the cathode, which stores the negative charge, and the electrolyte, which carries the charge between them. Alexander Volta designed the first “Voltaic pile” in 1800 by submerging zinc and silver in brine. Since then, battery improvements have involved finding better materials for all three components.
Lead-acid batteries have become the elements of choice in conventional batteries because the elements are cheap and plentiful. But lead is one of the heaviest common elements and becomes impractical when it comes to loading them aboard a vehicle.
The great advantage of lithium-ion batteries has been their light weight. The lithium substitutes for metal in both anode and cathode, mixing with carbon and iron phosphate to create the two charges. Li-ion, of course, is the basis of nearly all consumer electronics and has proved light and powerful enough to power golf carts. The question being posed by Elon Musk is whether they can be ramped up to power a Tesla Model S that can do zero-to-60 with a range of 300 miles.
Tesla is not planning any technological breakthrough, but will use brute force to try to scale up. Enlarging li-ion batteries tends to shorten their life so the Tesla will pack together thousands of small ones no bigger than a AA that will be linked by a management system that coordinates their charge and discharge. Musk is betting that economies of scale at his “Gigafactory” will lower costs so that the Model X can sell for $35,000. According to current plants, the Gigafactory will be producing more lithium-ion batteries than are now produced in the entire world.
In the sodium-sulfur battery, molten sodium serves as the anode while liquid sodium serves as the cathode. An aluminum membrane serves as the electrolyte. This creates a very high energy density and high discharge rate of about 90 percent. The problem is that the battery must be kept at a very high temperature, around 300 degrees Celsius, in order to liquefy its contents. A sodium-sulfur battery was tried in the Ford “Ecostar” demonstration vehicle as far back as 1991, but it proved too difficult to maintain the temperature.
Flow batteries represent a new approach where both the anode and cathode are liquids instead of solids. Recharging takes place by replacing the electrolyte. In this way, flow batteries are often compared to fuel cells, where a steady flow of hydrogen or methane is used to generate a current. The great advantage of flow batteries is that they can be recharged quickly by replacing the electrolyte, rather than taking up to 10 hours to recharge, as with, say, the Chevy Volt. So far flow batteries have relatively low energy density, however, and their use may be limited to stationary sources. A German-made vanadium-flow battery called CellCube was just installed by Con Edison as a grid-enhancement feature in New York City this month.
Supercapacitors use various materials to expand on the storage capacity devices in ordinary electric circuits. They have much shorter charge-and-discharge cycles but only achieve one-tenth of the energy density of conventional batteries. As a result, they cannot yet power vehicles on a stand-alone basis. However, supercapacitors are being used to capture braking energy in electric trams in Europe, in forklifts and hybrid automobiles. The Mazda6 has a supercapacitor that uses braking energy to reduce fuel consumption by 10 percent.
The concept of “storage” can be also be expanded to include hydrogen, since free hydrogen is not a naturally occurring element but can store energy from other sources such as wind and solar. That has always been the dream of renewable energy enthusiasts. The Japanese and Europeans are actually betting that hydrogen will prove to be a better alternative than the electric car. Despite the success of the Prius hybrid, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai (which is Korean) are putting more emphasis on their fuel cell models.
Finally, methanol can be regarded as an “energy storage” mechanism, since it too is not a naturally occurring resource but is a way to transmit the potential of our vast reserves of natural gas. Methanol proved itself as a gasoline substitute in an extensive experiment in California in the 1990s and currently powers a million cars in China. But it has not yet achieved the recognition of EVs and hydrogen – or even compressed natural gas – and still faces regulatory hurdles.
All these technologies offer the potential of severely reducing our dependence on foreign oil. All are making technical advances and all have promise. Let the competition begin.
