Barriers loom on road to plug-in cars
DETROIT--For plug-in electric cars, it's no longer a question of if. It's a question of when and how.
After many years of buildup, plug-in vehicles aimed at mainstream buyers are set to come to the market starting next year. But even with the momentum around plug-ins, many questions remain unanswered over how this technology transition will impact the ailing auto industry and how the cars will received by consumers.
"You have the feeling that we're at the beginning of something that could be very special," said David Cole, the chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, which is funded by government and corporate sources, during the opening of the Business of Plugging In conference here on Tuesday. "There are a great many uncertainties, but we have to recognize that the key invention is here with the lithium ion battery."
The sold-out conference, which attracted about 600 people, represented the varied groups needed to deliver these vehicles: automakers and supply chain suppliers, electricity utilities, policy makers, tech entrepreneurs, and investors.
Regardless of the initial volumes of electric-vehicle sales, the stakes in this shift are high. Electric vehicles promise to reduce pollution from transportation, decrease oil imports, and provide economic opportunity for a broad number of businesses.
Compared to biofuels or hydrogen fuel cell technologies, the large automakers and several start-ups have coalesced around electrification, to a greater extent. But there still remains the question of how much money consumers are willing to pay and how easily they can adjust strong habits.
"We've placed big bets in this area...(but) the question is: will consumers want these vehicles?" Bill Ford, the chairman of Ford Motor, said during a Wednesday talk. "The short answer is, it depends on how many trade-offs they need to make...and I think customers aren't prepared to make many trade-offs at all."
Hybrid premium
Plug-in
cars come in various forms, but the larger battery means a higher purchase price than today's hybrids or equivalent gasoline models. If consumers are going to accept that up-front cost, automakers need to convince them that owning an electric car is cheaper in the long run. One idea that automakers are seriously considering is leasing batteries, which could make the monthly payments for a new electric car comparable to a gasoline version.
The actual prices for many cars aren't yet known, since companies have not yet decided. Nissan's all-electric Leaf sedan, set for its U.S. debut next month and availability next year, is said to be in the $25,000 to $30,000 range. Industry executives estimate that the electric Chevy Volt, due late next year, will be in the $40,000 range.
Fueling up an electric car is less expensive than running the equivalent gasoline-only vehicle, and auto industry executives say the maintenance is simpler on electric drives (no more oil changes, for example). Jonathan Lauckner, General Motors' vice president of global program management, on Tuesday said the cost per mile of the Volt could be a sixth of a gasoline car's, offering as much as $1,500 a year in savings. Those savings get better, if gas prices go up and if drivers can charge up more than once a day.
And consumers want this information. Surveys show that consumers are drawn to plug-ins for environmental reasons, but fuel savings are actually more important, according to a survey of U.S. drivers done by Ernst & Young. Safety, of course, is another high priority.
"We've always had a disconnect between the purchase price and the usage cost, where consumers way undervalue the usage costs, which will continue to be a problem here," Richard Curtain, of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan, said during a panel on Wednesday. "If it got to less than a $5,000 premium, that would allay many of the concerns of the consumer."
Industry executives say volume production, a goal of the Department of Energy's $2.4 billion grant program launched in August, will help bring down costs in the coming years, much the way hybrid components fell in price. But that up-front premium is tough to totally erase, given that electrification is competing with a deeply entrenched technology: the internal combustion engine.
Battery improvements will help the cost picture as well. Many companies are working on batteries--a new generation of lithium ion batteries and other chemistries--that can pack more energy. More "energy-dense" batteries means that drivers will get a longer driving range from a battery of a given size. Ultracapacitors, another storage method, have also been proposed as way to work with batteries in vehicles.
Technology horse race
The different routes automakers are taking to electrification affects costs. General Motors' Chevy Volt has generated plenty of buzz, but company executives say its design will make at least the first generation of the car pricey. GM hopes to wring thousands of dollars from the Volt power train, notably the battery and power electronics in the second generation of the car.
Fisker Automotive, a start-up that received a $528 million loan from the Department of Energy, is using a similar power train for its planned Karma and Nina high-end luxury cars. Called an extended-range electric vehicle or a series hybrid, these cars will run on battery charge only in the beginning--40 miles in the case of the Volt--and then use an internal combustion engine to operate a generator for the electric motor on longer trips.
A handful of automakers--Ford, Nissan, Think, and Coda Automotive among them--are making all-electric vehicles, also called battery-electric vehicles. Because of the limited range of about 80 miles to 100 miles, these cars are being sold as second cars in the United States or Europe or for city driving.
By contrast, Toyota, which has already sold millions of Priuses, believes that the way to sell large volumes of plug-in cars is to build on the existing hybrid technology, where batteries and the gasoline engine both propel the car.
"We think that blended (mode) is going to be the only way to reach the cost parity that the consumer is going to want," said Justin Ward, the advanced power train program manager at the Toyota Technical Center. "There (are) a lot of high-end cars, but how high do you go before it becomes unattainable for the general consumer?"
Infrastructure
Electric and hybrid cars aren't going to take over the market any time soon, because of cost and because they face competition from more efficient gasoline engines and diesels. Market researcher IHS Global Insight projects that pure-electric and range-extended electric vehicles will account for just more than 1 percent of the total market by 2014, with hybrids and plug-in hybrids being nearly 21 percent.
But even though plug-ins of various types will be a niche in the early years, utilities need to start preparing now. On a local level, utility executives are concerned that just a few plug-in cars, which can pull as much juice as a whole house when charging, will strain local power grids. That's particularly true, if consumers install faster 220-volt charging ports, which will cut charge time to about two or three hours, from six or eight.
The way to avoid stressing the grid is to charge cars at off-peak times, utility executives say. Pacific Gas & Electric, considered one of the most aggressive utilities in embracing new technologies, plans to offer customers a 220-volt charger that has a timer so consumers can take advantage of lower rates at off-peak times. Using a smart-grid technology, a car charger could pick its charge time and rate by communicating through a smart meter.
But what if someone can't charge at home? Like others, utility industry group the Edison Electric Institute advocates new building codes demanding that all new buildings are wired so that charging stations can be added in places such as underground parking garages in apartment buildings or retail areas, according to Anthony Earley, the chairman of the institute and CEO of utility DTE Energy.
A few charging stations will go a long way, according to people who spoke at the conference. "We act like this is a chicken-and-an-egg problem, but it's really not," said Mark Duvall, the director of electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute. "They are not enabling technologies, in my opinion, but they can help."
If plug-in electric vehicles are wildly popular with consumers and fleet owners, the industry will then face the challenge of having sufficient capital to scale up. During a discussion on battery technologies, academics said that even now, there isn't a sufficient workforce to do the engineering required for electric vehicles, with the most glaring hole in materials science.
Although higher manufacturing should significantly cut battery prices, there were regular questions about the supply of lithium at the conference. Overall, auto and battery company executives said lithium supply is not a pressing concern. Lithium could be extracted from different sources and can be recycled, said Yet Ming Chiang, the chief scientist of battery upstart A123 Systems and professor of ceramics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The U.S. auto industry has an opportunity to be reinvigorated with electric auto technologies, as its seeks to transition from the "rust belt to the green belt," Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm said Wednesday. China, meanwhile, is investing heavily in electric transportation, which national leaders see as a way to "leapfrog" to the latest technologies, said Yibing Wu, the managing director of Legend Holding, the company that makes Lenovo laptops and is moving into clean energy.
On an environmental level, plug-in hybrid cars have 30 percent lower carbon emissions, even if a car is fueled by coal-fired power plants, Earley said. That's particularly important on a global level, since hundreds of millions of cars are expected to be sold in the coming years in developing countries, said Ann Marie Sastry, a University of Michigan professor and a co-founder of a Khosla Ventures-backed battery company Sakti3.
"The small car is absolutely going to be essential for electrification and to all of us because it doesn't matter where the carbon comes from--whether we generate it or it comes from the emerging economies," Sastry said. "It's imperative (that) the United States play a role in this technology development because of our own interest in climate change."
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
electric vehicles particularity fully electric vehicles.
Since you must plug in these vehicles every night to recharge I can see disasters when the owner fails to do so and only to find out in the morning that they can't go to work because the car wasn't recharged. It's not like you can get a gallon of gas and dump it in and your on your way. AAA isn't going to be any help if you battery runs out of power while your on the road for the same reason.
I don't know why there isn't more effort in automating the recharge process so the consumer doesn't have to remember to plug something in.
Of course, charging a battery would use quite a bit of power, but the draw would reduce as the battery charges. Most people will not use a full charge every day.
Also, just about all the apartment buildings in Canadian cities also have plugs for block heaters. These heaters are just a fact of life in Canada. As for extension cord thefts, sure it does happen and I've known people it has happened to, however is is not common and I have never had mine stolen in over 25 years of driving. Also, if the cords are retractable and built into the electric vehicle they will be less likely to be stolen.
New facilities will be built with power at the parking areas. Once it is needed, and once people ask about it before renting, the building owners will realize the market is demanding it. It's no different from the power requirements of block heaters.
My biggest worry about electrics (although I'm dieing to own one) is the heat in the interior during the winter. You need quite a bit of heat to keep the windows defrosted and the inside warm. This is going to draw almost as much battery power as moving the car.
The "Useful" life of a battery pack in a car is very different than the life of a battery. The claimed range for these electric vehicles will only last a year or maybe 2. After 3 yrs, you will lose significant capacity. That's a big deal when the range isn't that great to begin with.
Of course there might be new technology to address these issues, but it might be a long while before it is practical.
If you live in a sales tax state, what's your choice- buy local and pay sales tax or buy out of state and don't?
I think they should slap an eco tax on all plug ins and hybrids since they don't pay their share of the fuel tax that funds the roads they drive on.
It was Federal polices designed to increase home-ownership, even at the expense of making loans the high-risk buyers, that helped fuel the collapse of the real estate. It's never a really good idea to help high-risk people further over-leverage themselves.
Many of these electric cars fail when considering the normal Californian commutes a lot more than their range allows. Until the manufacturers can meet 150 EV6 miles/charge the electric doesn't cut it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKA4GhVn0a4
The Portuguese electric company predicted the building of 3000 recharge stations (witch is a lot for a small country like Portugal , i think the idea is to fight the range anxiety witch is interesting since most of the people wont travel more than 20 miles a day).
Would this model work in a big country like US ? We just have to wait and see ...
One: Fast charging batteries. If you can recharge in 10 minutes, range is less of an issue. 200 mile range with a 10 minute recharge is a total non-issue.
Two: Battery electrics are not likely to be the only car a consumer owns. An EV makes sense now as a daily driver/commuter/grocery getter. A large ICE powered vehicle can sit in the garage until needed.
It works for me. I have a big SUV that spends 95% of it's life sitting in my garage. It only gets used when it's capabilities are needed. My daily driver is a 60MPG motorcycle. I'd like to replace that motorcycle with an EV which wouldn't need more than 100 miles range.
One hopes that bildan2 actually meant that multiple 10-minute charges would make it easier to attain a 200mi. range.
That said, if you have a 220v charger, you can charge the battery in 1-2 hours (the new MiniE is supposed to full-charge in 2 hours to it's 150mi average range).
We do need to see that externalities costs of the petroleum industry are carried by that industry instead of by all of the people as is now the case. When everyone benefitted from internal combustion engines and without viable alternatives, allowing oil producers to escape bearing the full costs did make sense. Gasoline makers and sellers should pay for the damage that their products cause the environment, which in turn cause so much human sociopathy, illness, incapacity and death. We need that tax on coal and oil dirtiness to allow the market to make wise decisions. If we continue to allow them to 'get away with it' we will never progress, we will atrophy, we will die.
Oil companies are doing everything to slow down this migration to electric, and are slowly buying up all the new technology that will be used to support electric cars. Don't be surprised if the batteries we are using in 5 years are made by shell, exxon, and mobil.
Other entities to be hurt will be the combination gas stations and mini-marts. They get the vast majority of their sales from gasoline-buyers that make "while I'm here" purchases. These places tend to cut their margins - sometimes to the point of (small) loss - so as to pull in more fuelers to make more, higher-margin "while I'm here" purchases.
That said, people still need to get around, and personally, I don't think pure electric power is the answer. More efficient hybrids that charge more efficient batteries will be the way of things until there's a breakthrough in power technology.
As to range: the vehicles that are geared to get 100-200mi/charge will get you in the 1-3 hour driving range before having to drive. I know that with something like the MiniE or the Tesla S, I'd be able to drive from my house in the Washington metro region to my parents' house in PA. While there, I'd be able to recharge for my trip back home (perfect for holiday trips to be with family).
- by Cobralord October 25, 2009 9:24 AM PDT
- Like they mentioned in the article, infrastructure is a major problem. Our electrical grid is at capacity, and our politicians are in the thrall of enviro-luddites who'd rather us all go back to horse and buggies rather than build another power plant. If we're going to switch to an electrical economy, we need to invest in electricity production, which means building power plants (of all types), and improving infrastructure. Increasing transmission lines, burying powerlines in storm threatened areas, encouraging home production of electricity etc. We already have the technology and resources to meet our energy needs. Cutting through the bureaucratic roadblocks to using them is the real challenge.
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- by Renegade Knight October 25, 2009 10:16 AM PDT
- The roadblock is in construction. That most utilities are publicly regulated monopolies is a huge benefit in funding and construction once you get through the roadblock.
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