Automobilwoche editor: widespread electric cars will take 15 more years
The long wait for the electric car (remember, they've been "just around the corner" for over 100 years) will continue. That's the verdict of Automobilwoche editor Guido Reinking, who wrote an article this week that predicted that we won't be getting serious numbers of electric cars on the road until, get this, 2025. All of the fancy prototypes, he says, won't mean squat until consumers get behind EVs in a big way. Reinking then makes the fairly absurd argument that just because there are studies that show that 46 percent of all motorists want electric drive cars, we can't trust that number because studies that showed that people liked Toyota hybrids and the VW Lupo but those models didn't gain a 46 percent market share. He then tops himself with this:
Greenpeace has calculated that each of the 50 electric Minis tested in Berlin emits 133.5 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometer driven, because the electricity used to recharge the vehicles' batteries is generated by coal-burning power plants.
That's 29.5 grams more than the Mini Cooper D. In the US, where 450 Minis Es will soon take to the road, the estimated carbon dioxide emission is expected to be even higher.
Look, I'm totally OK with saying that electric vehicles are not really "zero emission" unless you're using renewable energy, but c'mon. Automaker CO2 emissions numbers are based on what comes out of the tailpipe. If Reinking wants to count what happens before the energy/fuel gets to the car, then he needs to add in all the CO2 that is generated by producing and shipping the fuel for the Mini Cooper D. EVs have their problems, and they are certainly not magic rides that will make everything perfect. But mistakes (or intentional muddying of the waters) like what Reinking does here don't help. Although, maybe this is exactly what Reinking needs to make sure he's right about that 2025 date.
For more on the long wait for electric vehicles, see our 2006 post on the history of EVs and the gallery below.
[Source: Automotive News Europe (subs req'd)]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ian 8:27PM (2/20/2009)
LOL@Greenpeace. They are good at what they do: get press coverage for their fabricated crisis of the week so people will not rightly think they are irrelevant.
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ryan 8:54PM (2/20/2009)
Hmm.. as far as I am aware, there should be fully electric offerings from quite a few major manufacturers in the next 2-3 years. Ford has already confirmed their Transit van will have an all-electric option. Mitsubishi is known to be ramping up for production of their i-miev later this year. Subaru is following suit with an electric version of their Stella. The Tesla, as expensive as it is, is sold out for about a year. There are certainly others that I am just currently forgetting.
Point is, electric cars WILL be coming soon. Overwhelming adoption shouldn't happen for quite some time, but their numbers will start to climb.
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GoodCheer 9:38PM (2/20/2009)
Actually greenpeace's numbers are a bit pessimistic, but not that far off.
The US electric grid produces roughly 600gCO2 per kWh, and 1 kWh will move an EV for 5-6 km (except of course for the Aptera, which ghost along more like 12-15 km/kWh). So the numbers in the US are something like 100-120 gCO2/km.
I don't know what the power generation distribution in Germany is like... I was under the impression that it had more nuke and wind than we do which would make the emissions smaller, but I don't really know.
As for the CO2 emissions for extraction and processing of fossil fuels, I'm afraid that argument is weak, since a) coal and oil BOTH have upstream emissions, and b) the extraction and processing of oil consumes a fairly small fraction (6-12%, though more for Canadian tar sands) of the total energy of the fuel.
In life-cycle (or well-to-wheels) analysis, an EV powered by the US electric grid has the carbon footprint of a car getting about 50mpg. This number can be calculated very simply from the data put out by the EIA.
On the other hand, unlike an ICE car, your EV will get cleaner and cleaner as more and more wind and solar come online, less of your money will leave your pocket to buy energy for it, and much less of that money will leave the country.
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paulwesterberg 8:52PM (2/21/2009)
I buy my wind powered electricity for an extra 1 cent per kwh, costs me about $5 extra a month and I know that the money I pay on my utility bill goes towards wind turbines and farmers leasing land.
jake 9:45PM (2/20/2009)
I don't think that is even the biggest issue with these types of calculations, but also they almost always assume the worst case for EVs (namely 100% coal), when in fact it is rare that you don't find a mix made largely by other much cleaner sources.
They also don't consider the demographics of the people buying the EVs, with CA being one of the largest markets and having some of the cleanest electricity. This means some areas won't benefit from EVs, but some will benefit greatly, a point that is almost never made about EVs that I feel should be made. It is up to the consumer to do the research (and it's not that hard to look up the CO2 levels of your local power company via the EPA website), but he posts this misleading number as if it applies everywhere.
I did my own calculation using the 167km combined range & 35kWh figure from the Mini-E spec sheet to get 0.21kWh/km (this is to be fair since the brochure gives a 0.14kWh/km number for city driving only) and the 724lbs/MWh = 328grams/kWh from my local power company and I get
68.9 grams/km of CO2 emissions. That's 35.12 grams/km less than even the MINI Diesel automatic (104 grams/km, the one he referenced), which is already low!
Using the US national average CO2 emissions of 1329lbs/MWh = 603grams/kWh, I get 126.6 grams/km. 22.6 grams higher than the Mini diesel manual, but still lower than his estimate (which is probably for Europe, so his claim the CO2 emissions are expected to be even higher in the US is probably untrue) and the diesel automatic, which comes in at 134 grams/km.
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/how-clean.html
http://www.miniusa.com/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_13382CB3DE5965A128742ED5AF950647FC510200/filename/Mini-E-spec-sheet.pdf
http://www.mini.com/com/en/ecom_rfi/_download/MINI_Cooper_D_September2007.pdf
All the Mini Es are also going to large cities where the pressing issue is local pollution and air quality, and that certainly should have been a big consideration beside from just CO2, especially compared with diesel.
Another thing is that unlike the diesel Mini, the EV version is likely to get progressively cleaner as we gradually update our existing electricity generation. That's one of the main benefits of EVs that doesn't really get pointed out.
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jake 9:49PM (2/20/2009)
Whoops, the 104 grams/km number is for the Mini Diesel manual, I said automatic instead of manual by accident here:
That's 35.12 grams/km less than even the MINI Diesel automatic (104 grams/km, the one he referenced), which is already low!
Ben 9:54PM (2/20/2009)
Thank you, GoodCheer for your post! It is absolutely important to do lifecycle analysis here, especially when talking about CO2. Tailpipe emissions are relevant when talking about NOx and SOx because they affect local air pollution, but not CO2. This article belittles the importance of lifecycle analysis, and I think it's important to understand the facts rather than half-truths.
The fact is that electric vehicles could displace a lot of petroleum, but without the clean grid, they are no magic bullet for solving global warming.
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jake 10:05PM (2/20/2009)
Of course, without the clean grid, we will never solve global warming anyways. EVs/PHEVs will be the ones that will benefit the most from the fact a clean grid is a necessary step to solve global warming.
And as I showed, the amount of CO2 an EV can displace varies a lot by region. If you are in a region with fairly clean electricity, then an EV, even now, before we have made great steps to clean our grid, can help the progress.
Nixon 11:00PM (2/20/2009)
The average CO2 from power generation won't even come into play for a number of years. Because most early electric car buyers will either go all the way and buy solar or wind generators for their homes, or purchase 100% green electricity from one of many green sources available across most of the US.
So while electric cars are being bought by true believers, the majority of the early electric cars will see their green house gas emissions completely eliminated compared to the gas burning cars they replace.
Personally, I've already got my entire house running on wind power through Exel Energy's WindSource program. Any car I plug in at home will operate purely on the force of the earth's rotation (wind power).
These programs are available to millions of people across most of the US. So until millions of electric cars have already been sold (and the average electric car buyer is no longer the true believers who will power their cars from the greenest power they can get their hands on) the majority of electic cars will beat even low green house gas emitting gas/diesel cars hands down.
Find your own green electricity sources here:
http://www.epa.gov/greenpower/pubs/gplocator.htm
If you can find a source for you, YOUR new electric car will completely eliminate the green house gases of your old gas car.
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RAN 1:21AM (2/21/2009)
It was my understanding that power plants run 24/7 because it's too costly to shut generators down overnight and it takes too long to bring them back on line in the morning. That would mean that a lot of power is being wasted at night when the (present) demand is greatly reduced, but the power is still being generated. Therefore, if most EVs were charged overnight, there would be NO net increase in the amount of CO2 from the use of coal to generate the electricity, since it's being generated anyway (with the resultant pollution) and not being used. This would be true until the number of EVs grew to the point where additional power generating facilities would be needed, and by that time hopefully the increased demand will be met with clean, renewable sources of energy.
Am I missing something?
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Herm 7:54AM (2/21/2009)
You got it right, power generators use a mix of plants to generate the power needed. Nuclear plants run 24hr, they are not easy to throttle down/up and if shutdown can take a week to restart, I would imagine large coal burning plants are similar but may take a day to get going at full blast.. this is called baseload power generation, and it is designed to take the load at night (day too).. during the day fast reacting plants (load following power generation) is used to meet the demand, usually by releasing more water if it is a dam or turning on natural gas powered turbines.
One of the basic problems of wind turbines is that they are inconsistent, messing up the mix of power generation methods. Solar power is better since it works at the time of high demand.
ziv 8:26AM (2/21/2009)
Herm, Ran, you are both right on about peak power and base power plants. Nuclear expecially, and to some extent coal, stay fired up 24/7, with peaker plants, usually natural gas but sometimes hydro, kicking in during the day at peak power use times. So electricity use at night is not even close to capacity. The extra expense that gas peaker plants suffer from due to their more energy intensive nature is a bit of a problem. And the relatively less reliable forms of energy, i.e. wind and to some extent solar, are more reliant on the peaker plants. But if the wind generation is less than a certain percentage, (originally thought to be 15% I think, but Colorado has shown that number to be pessimistic), and the wind sources are dispersed, wind doesn't need nearly as much backup power as was thought earlier.
The big issue I think is building a smart grid with super conducting power lines when and where feasible, and using a diverse set of energy sources, large and small, all increasingly green, but also increasingly domestic, rather than foreign in origin. We need to get off foreign oil, and we need to start dispersing the sources of electrical generation more and more to the individual user. A small wind generator, or an individuals solar array will never have as high an EROEI as a large nuclear power plant, but it will make the grid much more robust while being reasonably green at the same time.
Stan Wellaway 5:03AM (2/21/2009)
Are these naysayers and doubtmongers the same ones who told us the cellphone would never catch on, and that home computers would never be more than a dream? And came up with various calculations to show why.
We now have electric bicycles, electric mopeds, electric scooters, electric motorbikes for road and dirt-track. Just google to see how many. We have several brands of small electric cars, albeit with limited performance. We have one higher performance electric car (Tesla) and others nearing production. On the dragstrip we have world records being set by electric cars and electric bikes (try googling Killacycle). In the commercial vehicles field electric vans and trucks are well established (see the Case Studies page at http://www.smithelectricvehicles.com ). Electric buses have been used in Italy and France for 20 years (see http://www.tecnobus.it ), and this week we saw electric bus stories from Korea and China. We have electric trains. Electric boats are long established (see http://www.electric-boat-association.org.uk ). Electric ferries have always existed and new ones are appearing. We even have experimental electric light aircraft.
Mr Reinking can play King Canute if he wishes, but he'll be washed away by the tide. I bet he'll be driving an electric car himself within 7 years.
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BlackbirdHighway 9:43AM (2/21/2009)
I'm still wondering how all those coal power plants can put out clean power without emitting any kind of pollution or CO2 when they supply our homes, but when you plug in an electric car they suddenly start dumping all sorts of nasty stuff into the atmosphere? How does the power plant know what's plugged in?
Because if the power plant dumped out pollution all the time, regardless of what is plugged in, then the power plant is the problem, not the electric car. I don't see anyone pushing for gasoline powered stoves, refrigerators and washing machines because the electricity from coal is so dirty.
I strongly favor phasing out all the coal plants and replacing them with some mix of cleaner alternatives like nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, tides, hydro, natural gas.
I'm still waiting for someone to show me the panels that I can put on my roof to turn sunshine into gasoline.
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Mike Z 7:41PM (2/21/2009)
2025 seems optimistic. It took 10 years for hybrid powertrain cars to get 2.5% market share from introduction.
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boo 6:05AM (2/23/2009)
yeah, but let's face it. Hybrid cars aren't really that great. I hear people all the time saying "why should I pay $8,000 more for a car that gets a little better mileage, and unless you drive it right, is actually the same mpg?"
Hybrid cars still give money to foreign oil, they still produce emissions, and you still are affected by jacked-up gas prices (plus gas taxes).
Also, the technology can only improve so much before you start getting into electric hybrid territory.
Therefore electric cars will probably catch on much more quickly cus they are just empirically better. The Tesla is already in the territory of awesome, and there are some super cheap EVs that are so-so. It's only a matter of (not much) time before we can have both. EV technology has much more room for improvement that any car with an engine. They've had 100 years to perfect the ICE and it still ain't that great, while battery tech is improving every year now that people are getting serious about it.
Also, solar power is becoming cheaper/better/more mainstream. Who wouldn't want to power their car with the energy that they are making themselves?
(Not to mention that anyone who has ever sat in an EV as it accelerates is never going to want to drive anything else!)
Paul 5:09AM (2/22/2009)
What a CLOWN!!!
These old boys just write any biased rubbish that pops into their head... The good news is these articles are rapidly reducing in number and frequency.
I'd put $100 on the fact this self appointed 'expert' has no idea that a petrol powered ICE is 15% energy efficient at the wheels. None of these idiot naysayer stop for 10 milliseconds to wonder WHY an EV costs 1/10th t0 1/20th the cost of an ICE per mile to run..... errrr they use 90-95% less energy to do the same work.
Honestly, it doesn't require much imagination to predict the mass-market response to a car that is 90% cheaper to run....
Someone needs to email this page to this old foggy so he wakes up to the fact that it's not the old days where people believe any crap they read.... quite often many readers are actually more knowledgable that the writers.
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