What matters is whether or not you can build a great electric car, not whether or not you feel anxious driving it because there aren’t enough places available to charge it, yet. Would you judge a gas-fueled car by the availability of gasoline if there were not a national infrastructure already in place to provide it?
We’ll need (and get) electric powering stations when people create the demand for them. First come the cars.
On a related tangent, just because I thought it was interesting when I learned it…
Do you know how people get gas in countries where there isn’t a great national infrastructure to provide it? When I was in Cambodia last year, I did some traveling around outside Siem Reap. There are gas stations in the major cities, but you can travel around a great deal outside of them and never see one. Instead, people will ride their scooters to the nearest gas station and fill up a number of ad hoc gasoline containers (usually empty liquor bottles, I saw a lot of old Johnny Walker bottles used for this purpose). Then they bring them back, and sell them at “roadside stands” set up outside their houses.
Here’s a picture of one. This was near a popular set of ruins, so it’s very well stocked – many of these impromptu gas stations are no more than a single shelf with bottles on it. Those bottles you see on the shelf towards the right hand side of the picture are gasoline bottles.
I love Elon Musk. How can one not love a billionaire who’s not about personal gain but making the world a better place. I’ve driven my wife’s cousin’s Model S. The acceleration was incredible. Not as much fun to drive as my Mazda MX-5 and, when Musk gets around to making an affordable roadster, I’ll be all over it.
Well, it also matters how you’re generating the electricity, because an electric car is only as green as the power source. Personally I suspect it’s a mistake to think we can just switch from internal combustion to electric engines and carry on as before. We’d need enough clean electricity to meet not only the whole world’s existing demand, but the additional demand from God knows how many millions of electric vehicles. If more electric vehicles just means more coal-fired power plants, that’s no improvement.
It’s of course best if the electricity is generated in a clean way. But even if coal fired plants are behind the scenes there’s still huge savings because it’s so much more efficient to generate power in a central location than in the engines of millions of separate little power plants.
Transitioning to electric vehicles makes it easier to transition to renewable energy resources for vehicular transportation.
At least, unless some bright folks figure out an economically and ecologically feasible way of producing gasoline directly from sunlight.
I’m fairly certain that coal burning power plants are considerably more efficient than gasoline burning internal combustion engines.
Distribution tilts the balance even further in the favor of electric, because gasoline needs to be extracted, transported, refined and distributed. That’s a fairly long supply chain.
Yes, that makes sense. But of course it’s even more efficient if you use coal-fired electricity to run trains.
I do think electric vehicles have a place, they just need to be part of a larger strategy. I think that’s sort of what Bearpaw is getting at, because we don’t just need to meet the existing demand for electricity, we have to meet a continually growing demand. In fact, it’s growing at a staggering rate. Just look at the number of new cars China has put on the road since 2000, for instance.
However efficient you can make it, that is a hell of a lot of coal.
There’ already more of an infrastructure than most realize. Here in Washington state I noticed just this summer that along one of the scenic routes the hotels and restaurants along the route made a big ad buy pointing to their refueling stations as a draw. AAA also is including articles on refueling stations. Smat
Where are you in Washington? I’m up in Bellingham, though I’m originally from New York and have lived in a number of places through the years.
The private sector is totally capable of meeting whatever demand comes into being for electric car re-charging stations. While at a national policy and environmental level we would prefer a fast conversion away from gasoline powered cars to electric cars, public interference, usually some form of financial subsidy, at the micro-individual purchase level isn’t a good idea. Remember in the late 90s and naughts when SUVs were subsidized?
Public dollars spent on public transportation, including infrastructure, would reduce CO2 emissions faster and be more sustainable in the long run.
No subsidies. Just nationalize the whole business of charging electric cars. The ‘profits’ can be used for roads and other infrastructure. Are we going to really depend on the market to get us out of fossil fuels? If so, good luck with that.
Not fond of having government make widgets.
Who can say what such an infrastructure should look like a hundred years from now? Proposing to build it now, a very expensive initiative if we’re too be democratic and make it available to all, assumes that there would be no major tech breakthroughs and discourages innovation.
At this time, electric cars comparable enough to internal combustion engine cars are beyond the means of most people. Not everything gets more affordable over time and therefore, they may remain unaffordable for most. Why are we so locked into the notion that transportation = cars and trucks? Most people today spend far too much, as a percentage of income, on cars. And do so because the alternative is (a million and one excuses here). Yet, there is such a thing called public transportation.
We also overlook all the energy inputs with the CO2 outputs required to build electric vehicles. Maintaining and limiting use of an old vehicle is environmentally less harmful than over some period of years than replacing it with a new electric vehicle. Getting out of our cars more and using public transport would also be good for our national health by reducing the rate of obesity. etc.
If old vehicles are like old appliances, maintaining and operating them outweighs the one-time energy cost of manufacture and distribution relatively quickly.
Relevant link: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2008/07/green_beaters.html
Do US Sat Nav systems list re-charging locations and how many are free at any point in time?
To some extent the development of a national re-charging structure needs to be public policy as well as market led, because it would otherwise simply not be feasible to run an electric car in many rural areas if there are no charge points available.
Electric vehicles are particularly suitable for intermittent sustainable power sources like wind and solar. as re-charging can generally be done at night when demand is otherwise low. The national electric vehicle fleet can become one giant decentralised electricity storage facility which predominantly sustainable electricity systems need to balance out peaks and valleys in supply and demand.
Why doesn’t Obama announce a 10 year target for the US to become completely energy independent – like JFK’s race to the moon? It would mean a reduction of imports, a reduced carbon footprint, and no further need to meddle in middle east politics.
“Why doesn’t Obama announce a 10 year target for the US to become completely energy independent – like JFK’s race to the moon?”
Remember when Obama was trying to get health insurance reform through Congress? The backlash would be fierce. The plan will be demonized and our citizens aren’t the most discerning lot. The mainstream media will lead the charge against such an announcement. People on the ground are going to have to make that happen. The Federal Government is too sorry to work for citizens at this point.
Martin O’Malley was talking about going all the way renewable by 2050 as if that was ambitious.
One problem to overcome is standards for recharging equipment. Tesla too a big step that direction by making their approach open for others to use.
But in reality, it is still a very open question about how to power cars. Fuel cell (invented for the Apollo program) very likely is a better approach than batteries. Toyota announced I think just yesterday they are betting on hybrids and fuel cells.
And you could charge a fuel cell with nothing but water and solar panels on your roof and heat/power your home via the car fuel cell when you get home.
Fuel cells make water.
Generating pure hydrogen gas is the tricky part.
Fuel cells get hydrogen and oxygen from water. Solar and wind power in each home can recharge a fuel cell with hydrogen and oxygen to store power for a vehicle and/or home.
Trust me, you have it backwards.
The electrolysis of water requires energy. That’s how you get hydrogen and oxygen. If you take a bath of water and run current through it, you’ll get the following (very slow) reactions:
2H(+) + 2e(-) = H2 at the cathode (where electrons are being pumped in)
2H2O = O2 + 4H(+) + 4e(-) at the anode
If you add an electrolyte, the reaction goes much faster.
This is why processes like electroplating and rust removal via electrolysis are very dangerous — they accumulate large amounts of pure hydrogen gas.
No I don’t. Of course it takes energy to decompose water. That is 8th grade science class stuff. See http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/fuel_cells.html
And http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.php?year=2013&month=4
Toyota envisions fuel pumping stations to refill cars with hydrogen from some source (decomposing water or extracted from some other hydrogen source). Others see localized energy sources (e.g., home solar panels) decomposing water to charge energy STORAGE devices (i.e., fuel cells) to run homes and cars. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/14/nasa-fuel-cell-technology-al-gore-london Gore’s system uses gas to get hydrogen for economic and scale reasons but technically could use solar to decompose water. Natural gas extracted hydrogen is more cost effective (now) but still not competitive and produces CO2 but that may be overcome. The best answer would be for free sunshine to convert water into usable and storable hydrogen at the home to power homes and vehicles that produce no emissions.
Counterargument from Elon Musk and thinkprogress author:
Just a minor addendum:
Hydrogen is a source of energy.. in space, where pure hydrogen is (relatively) abundant. That’s why space ships use fuel cells. You can collect hydrogen from space, and the oxygen from the breathable air supply. The output is potable water.
Fuel cell Hydrogen and oxygen is stored in cryogenic tanks on spacecraft. That’s what exploded on Apollo 13
I told my husband that I had decided to get a Honda Fit as our next car. Our 4 year old, over-hearing me make the announcement proclaimed: “NO MOMMY!!! We are getting a SELF-DRIVING car, not a Fit!”
I’m not quite sure why she is so adamant, except to think that she wants to use it herself.
As to your question, yes. Yes I would.
The challenge for the last 30 years hasn’t been building them – the basic technology has been around, though obviously it’s gotten better. And refueling stations follow demand. The problem has always been distribution. In that regard, the fact that some major manufacturers are investing in the technology is most encouraging.
If the experience of hybrids is any guide, though, another problem will be price. Even used hybrids are financially out of reach for a lot of people. That’s a problem.
Well, I might gamble and say out of reach for most people.