Reinking: electric cars "could threaten some manufacturers' survival"
Electric vehicle pessimist – or realist, depending on your POV – Guido Reinking is back with another critical look at EVs. Earlier this year, Reinking wrote that it'll take 15 more years for electric cars to become widespread; this time his target is explaining how EVs hurt the auto industry as a whole. Here's how he comes to that conclusion: - Developing all the parts that EVs need costs money.
- That money "will not be available for the additional development that the internal combustion engine requires."
- Since ICEs will be "the definitive technology for individual transportation for decades to come," EVs are sucking money away from where the OEMs need to be putting it – making better liquid fuel vehicles.
Reinking also says that, "we are playing with fire if we bet solely on the electric car. It will remain insignificant in reducing carbon dioxide emissions for the foreseeable future because of low production volumes." Right, and the way to avoid the low production/sales volumes is to not spend money on it?
[Source: Automotive News (subs req'd)]
Photo by RachelH_. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tom 3:20PM (10/25/2009)
Heh, replace ICE in Reinking's criticism with "horses" and you get the picture.
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jmallx 4:43PM (10/26/2009)
Good one,
We shouldn't invest in any new technologies at all.
New age Amish all the way baby.
(sarcasm ends)
Change is inevitable, you can either change or get run over.
Mike!!ekiM 6:38PM (10/25/2009)
Huh? You can say the exact same thing about 500 HP V8's. They're Sucking the Development Money out of small efficient 4 cylinders and 4 cylinder diesel. Yet, I'm guessing, this author has never complained about the current POINTLESS Horsepower race going on Right Now.
As a matter of fact, it's the Horsepower race that is doing FAR MORE Damage Ecologically, and to our Trade Balance. Ford's "EcoBoost" joke, for example.
Zeph 6:12AM (10/26/2009)
The auto industry has grown fat and lazy on the ICE business model, which sells overcomplicated inefficient cars to an uneducated public, saddling them with increased cost of ownership over the cars life due to technological choices and programmed obsolescence. They don't want to make EV's, even in the worse case scenarios of electric clunkers they can't make the same amount of money they do with ICE cars. So they drag their feet endlessly, lie and manipulate and give some marginal improvement in ICE technology (usually nullified by vehicle weight and "safety" features enforced by legislation). Have you guys noticed how our much more powerful cars are getting similar performance and fuel efficiency figures to much lighter cars two decades ago? The auto industry has become entropic, it will not get anywhere out of it's own volition, it's happy where it is now. Money is making the decisions, and money makes really bad decisions.
The EV has to come out of consumer demand. Only by a lateral offshoot into computer technology and Li-Ion batteries did it become obvious to everyone that it's now viable to make them, were it for the auto industry and EV's would be branded undoable because of "science". It's all a crock. We have a band of psychopaths at the top of society that parasitise us, and they will never out of their own will do anything to make the status quo better for the middle class, they just don't have that goodness in them.
So people have to force the issue, or it won't happen. Even now, with a couple of years hype of EV's, we can hardly buy any of them and I have never seen a single one locally. We have to git er done.
jake 3:30PM (10/25/2009)
I'm pretty sure all the large automakers have an R&D budget big enough to do serious development in BOTH the EV and ICE space (as well as biofuels, hydrogen, etc). So far it seems they are spending the development budget of 1-2 cars on EVs, since they are coming out with 1-2 EVs at most. Most of their lineup will be ICE in the foreseeable future, so the bulk of the money will still be spent on ICE development.
Me thinks Reinking just doesn't want ANY EV development. By his argument the best way is to have NO EV development. With no EV development, we won't even have the initial low production volumes, and effectively EVs will never have a chance in the automobile market.
That's a very stupid approach any alternative/new technologies.
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Matt234 3:32PM (10/25/2009)
What a load of bunk! Manufacturers wouldn't do it if they didn't think they could make money at it. A lot of that money will come in the form of huge government incentives to the car buyer, similar to the "first time home buyer" tax credits.
And someone please fill me in: What exactly are the improvements we need to make to internal combustion? We are quite good at burning liquid fuel. If anything, we need to make improvements to collecting and storing energy, e.g. making solar panels & batteries cheaper, convincing algae to make oil. That's not something the auto manufacturers will help with (except possibly through increasing battery sales volumes).
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letstakeawalk 3:52PM (10/25/2009)
There are always improvements that can be made to any system. Relating to ICEs, improvements could come in forms such as omnivorous engines, homogeneous charge compression ignition, the scuderi cycle, the miller cycle, etc.
However, I agree that funding should go towards all potential technologies. Focusing too much on one tech at the expense of another is how we got overly reliant on gasoline ICEs in the first place.
Boyprodigy1 3:47PM (10/25/2009)
I just wonder which new parts he is talking about. The way i see it, the only significant parts developments that really need to happen are in the batteries, and pretty much everyone is getting their batteries from a third party supplier, who is in charge of their own research. Now it is in the best interest of the car companies to help along these developments, which in turn makes a win win for the consumer, and if the companies play their cards right, they can win too.
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Mike!!ekiM 6:41PM (10/25/2009)
Excellent Point.
The Electric Motor is Already Far Superior to the gas engine. It's just the battery that needs one more generation.
Tony Belding 4:52PM (10/25/2009)
If you look at what he's actually saying, it's not as extreme as the headlines and blurbs make it sound. Reinking estimates it'll take fifteen years for electric cars to achieve widespread success. Okay. . . What is his definition of widespread success? (caveat: I don't have access to the original article.) Fifteen years might be a pretty reasonable guess if we're talking millions of units (and the auto industry is indeed accustomed to think in terms of milliions). But you have to walk before you can crawl; a market of that size doesn't spring up overnight. Right now, if not sooner, is the time for car makers to get started working on it.
The computer revolution took just about 18 years to become mainstream, from the introduction of the Apple II to Windows95, just to pick a couple of arbritrary-but-plausible end points.
Also, I don't know what Reinking's assumptions are about Peak Oil and gasoline availability. If we get repeated oil shocks -- like the one last year, or worse -- then consumer demand could push things along faster. Put another way: You can't rely solely on some "egghead" analyst sitting at a desk calculating whether an R&D dollar spent on EV or ICE research is going to result in more grams of carbon saved. You also have to deal with what ordinary people want to spend their money on.
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DasBoese 4:59PM (10/25/2009)
Wow, it's like logical fallacy bingo.
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Ghen 8:04AM (10/26/2009)
Wip out the playing card, and don't forget the middle space is free!
skierpage 5:14PM (10/25/2009)
@Sebastian Blanco
"(Roadster sales have apparently slowed) "
Says who? If all you're doing is referring to your colleague Sam Abuelsamid's incoherent "Are Tesla Roadster sales dead?" post, that's really low journalism. You're turning a question into a hypothesis into received wisdom in your own self-referential echo chamber. All I took from that breathless low-content post is Tesla can produce 100+ cars a month, so they no longer have a big backlog, so you might be able to order a car for Christmas, which fails to answer its provocative title or even demonstrate slowing sales. Knock it off, you can both do better.
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skierpage 5:50AM (10/26/2009)
Uh, my comment should have gone with the "Daimler launches €600 million small car investment, A-Class BEV in 2010" story. Web gremlins.
skierpage 5:37PM (10/25/2009)
I don't have a subscription to Automotive News, but the facts are 1) the most fuel-efficient midsize and large ICE-powered cars are hybrids, and 2) lots of conventional cars particularly in Europe are all getting stop-start operation, which usually involves regenerative braking, a bigger battery, and electrically-powered accessories. This would all be happening if there were *no* electric vehicles. Manufacturers that can't deliver these features are welcome to the market of "technically backward, less fuel-efficient, pollute-at-a-standstill" vehicles.
All that activity in the large ICE-powered market benefits the tiny electric vehicle market; PHEVs and BEVs are simply further along the continuum of battery and motor size.
Besides, I'm not sure what improvements are possible to ICE after 100+ years of refinement. It seems manufacturers are moving to small flex-fuel turbodiesel engine run at a constant RPM and load... and using electric vehicle parts for bursts of power.
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Adisah 5:42PM (10/25/2009)
Summary
"I don't want to lose money, please don't make EVs popular"
That's basically all this says. But Hydrogen cars are the future, water is abundant. I think best Hybrids are the ones that are going to be using more than one system. It would be great if a car could harness electric, hydrogen, and wind energy all at the same time. It would mainly be electric but all the other sources would be there to generate electricity.
Or it could be that it runs on hydrogen but the other parts supplement it.
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DasBoese 8:57PM (10/25/2009)
First of all, in many many parts of the world (even developed countries) water is a very precious resource, and secondly, water is not hydrogen. You need to split it using either electricity or extreme heat, in any case it's not cheap.
It is in fact so expensive that nobody's doing it on an industrial scale, virtually all of today's hydrogen comes from steam-reformed natural gas.
Not to mention you then need to cool it down, compress and transport it, all so that you can turn it into electricity again, all with losses of course.
Even developing countries with little water can make electricity from wind and solar power and run cheap chinese EVs off of it, but no chance in hell they're going to be able to afford hydrogen and expensive hydrogen cars.
Andy 10:50PM (10/25/2009)
Is the hydrogen economy a logical fallacy?
letstakeawalk 11:49PM (10/25/2009)
Hydrogen will play a role in the future economy. At the moment there are infrastructure issues to deal with, but progress continues to be made on all aspects.
The same sort of arguments were put forth regarding batteries - too expensive, not enough power, to heavy/big - and those hurdles were overcome (to a certain extent). Just like it's foolish to kill EV funding to focus on ICEs, it would also be foolish to discontinue hydrogen research.
John Pelletier 1:12AM (10/26/2009)
ok well your comment makes little to no sense.. but none the less
don't you hydrogen people know your science? seriously an H2 powered economy will never be as efficient as a pure electric one. Do you really think we as a world have that much room to build 2-3 times the wind/solar/geothermal/solar thermal power? hell we will barely be able to power what we have now switching to renewable and electric cars let alone trying to produce twice that for a hydrogen based economy. If you are so concerned about the environment and h2 and want the wind/solar whatever economy (which I want too mind you) how do these non constant power sources factor into everything else. ok maybe use the extra energy to convert hydrogen and then use that in a fuel cell when power is needed, but why waste so much in efficiency lost! a smart grid with VTG tech will do the same thing with little efficiency lost. we dont have resources to waste on a clean h2 economy, or even a fossil fuel powered h2 economy, maybe some people want to be able to 750 miles a day now(h2 can do that if you are lucky and have a tax payer funded billion dollar h2 refuelling station, or a flat bed 16 wheeler making it as you go), ok well I want a pony, in 5 years battery tech and quick charge(or swap) will enable somebody to do this. I am really sick of the hydrogen crap for transportation, its inefficient, wasteful and a distraction. Fuel cells have some promise, not ones using hydrogen.
sigh I wonder why I bother responding sometimes