Article: Electric Cars Sell Faster than Hybrids did at the same point

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1085724_electric-cars-sell-faster-than-hybrids-did-at-same-point

Article: Debunking the "Electric Cars Aren't Greener" Myth

I've posted articles detailing electric car emissions by state, but this article is by country. An excellent read.

Debunking The “Electric Cars Aren’t Greener” Myth (via Clean Technica)

Update: Some very useful additional factors have been noted by commenters below. Have a look! One of the most common myths I see repeated in the comments here on CleanTechnica — perhaps the most common — is the myth that electric cars aren’t greener. That’s pure BS. As numerous studies have…

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UPDATED: Replacing my Chevy Volt Battery in 2020

Replacing my Chevy Volt Battery in 2020

Today's Chevy Volt Battery

I sure hope my Chevy Volt battery lasts for years and years. I keep my cars for a long time -- my 2012 Chevy Volt replaced a 20-year-old Toyota Camry with 175k miles. How long will the battery last? GM performed simulations that led them to conclude the battery will last many years past the 8-year warranty period. My old Camry lasted more than a decade after all its warranties expired, so hopefully my Volt and battery will last far beyond my 8-yr warranty period. Given the Volt only uses about 10 kWh of the battery's 16 kWh capacity, it is conservatively designed to last a long time. We know from the Toyota Prius design, which only uses 50% of its battery's capacity, that using only part of the battery's capacity allows it to last a lot longer. Given the Toyota experience, the Volt battery should last for many years. Additionally, I imagine GM may "unlock" more of the battery capacity with a future software update, enabling the Volt to keep the same driving range over time by using more of the battery.

For this exercise, lets assume I want to replace the Chevy Volt battery in 8 years (the length of the warranty). Since I purchased my Volt in 2012, that means it will be 2020 when I'm in the market for a replacement battery pack.

What will batteries be like in 2020? Globally, there are billions of investment dollars racing to invent the best car battery. What will the range, cost, size, and charge time be in 2020? To simply, I limited myself to four scenarios. I can come up with many more, but four is a nice number.

The first scenario is, in 2020, I purchase some type of improved Lithium-Ion based battery. The technology is essentially the same, but improved on a linear scale from now until 2020. We'll call this scenario: Linear Lithium-Ion.

The second scenario is all this investment results in a true battery breakthrough, like the Aluminum-air battery. A company named Phinergy mounted such a battery in a subcompact demonstration car that provided 1,000 miles of range. It should be noted the battery does require refills of distilled water every 200 miles. But that would be much cheaper than gas! Without the pollution too! As more evidence of this scenario, Tesla submitted a patent to use a similar battery. We'll call this scenario: Aluminum-air Breakthrough.

The third scenario is based on what Steven Chu, the former US Secretary of Energy, predicted. We will use his predictions from a speech at the Detroit Economic Club. We'll call this scenario: Steven Chu's Prediction.

The four scenario is based on a what the startup Envia Systems claims it will produce soon. I picked them because they have 3rd party tests demonstrating their claims.

For each scenario, I focus on 2 key factors:

1.             The range of the battery, based on its energy density.

2.             The cost of the replacement battery pack.

By 2020, we will definitely see improvement. The central question is: how much improvement will we see? Let's get to the scenarios.

Scenario #1 -- Linear Lithium-Ion

Many industry experts estimate that Lithium-Ion battery improvements will continue at the current pace. That pace is about a 7% improvement per year in energy density. We've seen this play out with small improvements in the 2013 Chevy Volt battery (going from EPA range ratings from 35 miles 38 miles). The Nissan Leaf Lithium-Ion battery also had a similar growth in range. According to Wikipedia, today's Volt has a 16 KW-hr battery that weighs 435 lbs (197 kg). So the pack-level energy density is currently:

16,000 wHrs

------------------     =     81.2 wH/kg

   197 kg   

Taking the 81.2 wH/kg figure and improving it 7% per year, you get 140 wH/kg in 2020. With a Volt you can drive 40 miles (I usually get around 40 in real-world driving) with 81.2 wH/kg so, with all else being equal, you should be able to go about 69 miles in 2020. Using the equation:

x miles              140 wH/kg

------------    =    -----------------

40 miles            81.2 wH/kg

Solving for x, you get 69 miles.

How much will the pack cost? Again, there are so many predictions out there. An article in AutoBlogGreen has GM stating the pack costs between $8000 and $9,500. I'm going to use $9,000 for a good round number. At $9,000, the battery pack has a cost of $563 per kWh ($9,000/16 kWh). The article above states GM "hopes" to hit a cost of $300 per kWh by 2015. That is quite aggressive. I'm being less aggressive and assuming that the battery pack cost goes down 5% per year, which will get to an energy density of $374 per kWh in 2020.

With these calculations, if you buy a 16 kWh battery pack, it will cost you $5,984 in 2020 (16 kWh x $374/kWh). If you select a battery with the Volt's 40 miles per charge, the battery pack will cost you $3,520.

The bottom line of scenario one is 69 miles per charge for $5,984 and 40 miles per charge for $3,520.

Scenario #2 -- Aluminum-air Breakthrough 

In my previous analysis of the future of Chevy Volt battery options, I used the IBM announcements around a new Lithium-air battery. According to an article in the New Scientist: IBM thinks it has a solution with a promising new lithium-air (Li-air) battery. According to the technology giant, a typical Li-air battery cell has a theoretical energy density more than 1,000 times greater than today's industry-standard Li-ion battery cell. Even better, Li-air batteries are one-fifth the size and they offer a lifespan at least five times as long.

For this version of the analysis, I believe a more likely possibility is an Aluminum-air breakthrough. The demonstration by Phinergy feels compelling. They showed 1,000 miles of range in a demonstration car -- however it needs distilled water every 200 miles. The Phinergy CEO, Aviv Tzidon, told Bloomberg TV that they signed a contract with a global automaker to deliver the battery in production volumes, starting in 2017. So if they stay on schedule, it will be ready by 2020.

This is the kind of breakthrough everyone is hoping for to enable the electrification of mainstream vehicles, and therefore, reduce global warming pollution plus reduce the US dependency on foreign oil. So what does this mean for our exercise? Phinergy demonstrated 1,000 miles of range, so we will go with that for range. 

I have no information on the potential cost of this battery. I don't know what to do here. So I will leave it with question marks in the summary table below.

Scenario #3 -- Steven Chu's Prediction

Chu, in a speech at the Detroit Economic Club, said that a plug-in hybrid-electric vehicle battery that can provide 40 miles of all-electric range will cost $3,600 in 2015, down from $12,000 in 2008. “That battery's cost will fall to just $1,500 by the end of the decade,” Chu added. "The advanced battery competition is a race the United States can and should win," said Chu.

So this means for $1,500 I can replace my Chevy Volt battery pack and go 40 miles per charge. It cost me more than $1,500 to pay for a tune-up and other maintenance after 8 years in an ICE car.

Scenario #4 -- Envia Systems

Envia Systems is a startup claiming to have a 400 Wh/kg battery in the works. I find their battery quite interesting because GM Ventures, the investment arm of GM, invested in them. Plus Envia has put their prototype to the test at a 3rd party lab, under the sponsorship of ARPA-E, and published the results. Envia claims "When commercialized, this 400 Wh/kg battery is expected to slash the price of a 300-mile range electric vehicle by cutting the cost of the battery pack by more than 50%."

For this analysis, the Envia battery weighs in at 300 miles of electrical range and we'll say it costs 50% less than the current $9,000 Chevy Volt battery.

Summing it all up

A summary of all scenarios is in the table below. The breakthrough scenario looks quite compelling. I hope it comes to fruition! The Steven Chu prediction looks quite exciting too, so does the Envia Systems solution. The only one that looks expensive is the linear progression. Only time will tell what the future holds.

In this analysis, I did not account for the cost to install a new battery pack. But that may be more than offset with how much the old battery could be sold for on the open market. There is talk about using it for Energy Grid Storage. Sorry to complicate things here at the end. Let's get back to the summary below: 

Scenario                        Pack Cost       Miles/charge   $/Mile

#1 Linear Li-Ion              $5,984                     69           $86.7

#1 Linear Li-Ion              $3,520                     40           $88.0

#2 Aluminum-air             $??                      1,000          $??

#3 Chu's Prediction        $1,500                     40           $37.5

#4 Envia Systems          $4,500                    300          $15.0

Thanks for sticking with me through these estimates. I don't know what to budget for my replacement battery pack. Maybe I can hold out until the breakthrough battery comes with 1,000 miles of range on a single charge. Then I could remove my ICE generator and cut down the Volts weight. Why would I need a generator if the car can go 1,000 miles on a single charge?

Let’s check back with each other in 2020 and see how this all turns out.

Chevy Volt #1 in Market Share in Q4 2012

Source: AutoblogGreen

AutoblogGreen did an article on the Q4 2012 Plug-in sales. And the Volt was number one in market share of the Plug-in segment. Impressive! Here is the list and the graphic:

#1 Chevrolet Volt             7,113
#2 Toyota Prius Plug-in   5,016
#3 Nissan Leaf                4,607
#4 Tesla Model S            2,400

The full article, that emphasizes Tesla was #4, can be      found here.

The Super Supercapacitor -- a battery that charges FAST

I sure hope this UCLA research can be turned into something real. Combining the high energy density of batteries with the fast charge of a capacitor would make a very compelling energy storage device for an electric vehicle.

Take a look at the 3 minute video here that spells out the basics of the research. The video headline is:

THE SUPER SUPERCAPACITOR is a Finalist in the $200,000 GE FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition. Learn more about the Competition and FOCUS FORWARD at focusforwardfilms.com

Ric Kaner set out to find a new way to make graphene, the thinnest and strongest material on earth. What he found was a new way to power the world.

EV Technologies very prominent in Car and Driver's 10 Most Promising Technologies

Reading Car and Driver's 10 most promising technologies article, I couldn't help notice the prominence of EV technologies. I think we are ripe for a breakthrough in a very efficient on-board charger to extend the range of electric vehicles. I also like the simplicity of the in-wheel electric motor. I saw this from Protean Electric at the Electric Vehicle Symposium and was quite intrigued with how simply one could add electric drive to a new car. It really gives OEMs options to add EV solutions based on their gas-equivelent cars. Free EV charging and improved regenerative braking round out the EV-oriented technologies. The "seeing through the rain" technology from CMU is quite cool.

2013 10Best: 10 Most Promising Technologies

And why, in the future, you'll love the parking lot at Walgreens even more.

• DECEMBER 2012
 
• BY CAR AND DRIVER 
• ILLUSTRATION BY PETE SUCHESKI

			SUPER PLASTICS Now that carbon-fiber composites are gaining ground, suppliers are investigating other hybrid materials capable of improving collision performance and saving weight. BASF, Bekaert, and Voest­alpine are collaborating on thermoplastics fortified with steel cord. Bumper beams, body members, and interior trim made of injection-molded, steel-reinforced plastic combine excellent energy-absorption and structural-integrity characteristics with low manufacturing complexity and cost. Some clever carmaker will surely add the chrome or faux woodgrain finishing touch.

			RANGE-ANXIETY RELIEF Fear of running out of juice on the road can be a deal-killer for prospective electric-car buyers. Improved charging ­infrastructure will help to relieve range anxiety, but electric cars could also benefit from onboard mileage extenders. Audi, BMW, Lotus, Mazda, and two European engineering firms—AVL and FEV—have experimented with compact, engine-driven generators (smaller and less integrated than, say, the engine of the Chevy Volt) that hum to augment electrical energy on the roll. The ultimate solution—not yet under development—is a portable hydrogen fuel cell you load with your luggage and attach to the battery pack, enabling highway range comparable to gas-powered cars. A possible solution to the hydrogen-fuel storage concern is on the next page [see “Not That H2”].

			WHEELING AND DEALING Ferdinand Porsche’s idea of building a hybrid’s electric motors into the wheel hubs leaves more space for passengers and batteries, but carmakers have hesitated to adopt this arrangement, fearing that major increases in unsprung weight will harm rough-road ride and handling. Challenging that assumption, Protean Electric contracted with Lotus Engineering to conduct extensive tests ­comparing a standard sedan with one propelled by wheel-hub motors. Lotus’s surprising conclusions: Average drivers won’t notice the performance degradation attributable to extra unsprung weight, and normal development tuning should overcome most steering, ride, and handling ill effects. Protean expects to start wheel-hub-motor production in 2014.

			GETTING THE LEAD OUT Shutting down an engine at stoplights to improve mileage is becoming standard operating procedure, though this strategy necessitates more robust electrical systems. Nickel-zinc battery chemistry (NiZn), patented by Thomas Edison in 1901, is a candidate to replace conventional lead-acid batteries because it can handle aggressive stop-start duty cycles without loss of performance or life span. NiZn battery maker PowerGenix claims that, compared with lead-acid batteries, NiZn batteries last twice as long, weigh 60 percent less, and are easier to recycle.

WIRELESS CROSSING GUARD Some 3000 Ann Arbor, Michigan, motorists are engaged in a Department of  Transportation study using wireless car-to-car connectivity to avoid collisions. Depending on the results, Wi-Fi could be mandatory in-car equipment by 2020. Taking the idea further, GM wants to help drivers avoid mowing down pedestrians. The underlying technology, called Wi-Fi Direct, allows a smartphone in a car to communicate with a phone carried by a pedestrian without routing the dialogue through cell-phone towers. The direct connection cuts the time required to identify a risk from eight seconds to one.

			DIMENSIONAL DISPLAYS Now that realistic three-dimensional images have leapt from the megaplex screen to the living-room television, 3D is bound for automobiles. Using thin-film transistor technology, Johnson Controls created an experimental 3D instrument cluster that displays critical information in the foreground with ­secondary data located deeper in the ­driver’s field of view. This technology could add realism to navigation displays and action-movie thrills to emergency lane changes.

			FREE JUICE Best Buy, IKEA, Kohl’s, Macy’s, and ­Walgreens have begun installing free electric-car charging stations in their parking lots. After a successful start in California, Walgreens now has 385 hookups across the country and hopes of doubling that count. Government subsidies cover most of the expense while the electricity to charge an EV or plug-in hybrid costs only pennies per hour. Tesla joined the club with six solar-powered Supercharger stations (all in California) capable of adding 50 percent of a Model S’s charge in 30 minutes. Tesla says it will have more than 100 stations open in 2015.

			RECYCLED MOMENTUM A major contributor to a hybrid’s efficiency is regenerative braking. But who says this trick has to be exclusive to hybrids? Starting with the 2010 5-series Gran Turismo, BMW has offered alternators programmed to charge mainly during deceleration, a fuel-saving measure called Brake Energy Regeneration. Mazda’s version, called “i-Eloop” (intelligent energy loop), stores captured momentum in a capacitor. The 2013 Mazda 6’s climate control and entertainment systems draw electricity from the capacitor instead of an engine-driven alternator.

			NOT THAT H2 Attempts to store hydrogen for fuel-cell cars as a 10,000-plus-psi gas or as a cryogenic (-423 degrees Fahrenheit) liquid have been disappointing. What’s left is hydrogen stored in molecular (H2) form at reasonable temperatures and pressures but greater density. California’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is studying how to do that using metal-organic framework (MOF) storage materials. These lightweight three-dimensional lattice structures attract and hold hydrogen like microscopic sponges. So far each potential storage site holds but one H2 molecule, but the U.S. Department of Energy is betting $2.1 million that the Berkeley team can develop MOF materials capable of adsorbing three or four times as much.

RAIN AND SHINE Driving through a heavy downpour or snowfall can be agonizing, in part because precipitation can cause light from your headlamps to reflect back at you. To part the curtain of impaired vision, Carnegie Mellon University researchers invented headlamps capable of looking between individual drops or flakes. In sync with a camera tracking the motion of falling particles, multiple LED light sources flash on and off to cut reflection by 70 percent. The flickering is so rapid that the driver perceives a continuous beam of  light. At this stage of development, lab systems can vary the illumination 77 times per second, but quicker flashes will be necessary for these headlamps to be effective at highway speeds.

EVs and more at the LeMay Car Museum

I made a trip to Tacoma Washington to see the LeMay Car Museum. You can find out more about this great museum here. It is really a treat to see this excellent collection of cars. Here are some of the highlights:

The EV1 with a Chevy Volt right behind it. GM killed it and then saved it! Thank you Bob Lutz.

The first Chevy Volt off the line. VIN #1 is prominently displayed in the window. History will show this revolutionary car started a new focus on electrifying transportation. Sales are picking up in 2012 and now approaching 2,000 cars per month placing the Volt in the lead when it comes to Plug-in Hybrids. I think GM needs to be more aggressive with new models based on Voltec. I know the Cadillac version will be out in 2013, but where is the small SUV version? The rest of the car industry is not standing still, as evidenced by, Ford's launch the new C-MAX Plug-in.

I was thrilled to see this 1967 MGB-GT. This is the first car I ever owned. I had a red one in high school and college.  It might be a sign of my aging that two cars I've owned are in a museum -- this one and the Volt. The museum signage said this MG was one of the first to have crumple zones to protect passengers in crashes. This was a fun car to drive, but I can't say it ever felt safe. I love British cars. But I've forgotten how undependable my MGB-GT was. I had to replace all the brake cylinder seals, the clutch (you have pull the engine to change it), the brakes, the head gasket, and the shocks. At one time I told everyone my goal in life was to make enough money so I wouldn't have to work on my own car anymore. I'm glad I realized that goal.

Jaguar XK140 coupe. Whether it is a coupe or convertible, this is such a masterpiece.

The Big Healy. I really like when people go with two-tone paint on these cars.

The Jaguar XKE. One of the most beautiful cars ever made.

The Sunbeam Tiger. These British cars with Ford engines are intriguing. It would be nice to have the easier-to-work-on-and-more-reliable Ford 289 than the British engines of the day.

A Detroit Electric connected to a charger for the garage. This was a scary looking charger -- exposed wires and a switch that looks like the one that brought Frankenstein to life. My Blink 240V looks and feels much safer.

A better shot at the Detroit Electric. LeMay had a whole section on Electric Cars that was a real treat.