Paper: Electric Vehicles in the US

***Preliminary***

By: Max Dunn, July 2008

Overview

Many challenges face the modern world. Overpopulation, resource scarcity, climate change and the end of easy oil are all problems that are becoming more and more acute and will have a tremendous impact on civilization worldwide. However, of all these problems the difficulty of obtaining increasing amounts of fossil fuels to meet worldwide rising demand (also referred to as "peak oil") is likely to create the most immediate and severe problems. To alleviate this problem, the best strategy is to rapidly increase our use of sustainable and renewable energy sources. 

Since over 50% of all oil usage in the US goes towards car and truck transportation, this is a productive area to look for savings. Already we have the technology to produce electric vehicles that would serve the majority of our transportation needs.

This paper discusses how electric vehicles can be increasingly utilized in the US to decrease our usage of oil and rely on sustainable energy sources.

Current Oil Usage

Over 50% of all oil in the US goes into cars and trucks. No other usage of oil is nearly as high. For instance, passenger air travel takes only 7%, plastics and chemicals take 10%, heating uses another 10% and agriculture requires only a little over 2% of all oil. So the best area to concentrate on to reduce our usage of oil in the US is in car and truck transportation.

(Ref: http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/01/23/oil-usage)

Electric Vehicles (EV)

People have been converting standard gasoline powered vehicles to electric power for years.

In addition, starting in 1995(?) many manufacturers produced factory-built electric vehicles to meet California's zero emission mandate. While most of these were taken off the roads and crushed when the mandate was rescinded in 2004(?), some were sold.

Owner Satisfaction

One of the most popular of these electric vehicles was the Toyota RAV4-EV. A 2006 survey of 116 RAV4-EV owners showed a high level of satisfaction with their electric vehicle. In addition, some RAV4-EVs are approaching 150,000 miles on the original NiMH battery pack, dispelling fears that current battery technology is not ready yet.

(Ref: http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/02/04/battery-electric-vehicle-user-experiences)

EV Limitations

Battery range and charging time are the primary constraints of electric vehicles.

However 90%(?) of the daily driving in the US is under 29(?) miles which is well under the range of EVs. Converted lead acid EVs can get 25 to 40 miles. RAV4-EV gets 100 mile range. Tesla and newer EVs get 150 miles and up.

New battery or supercapacitor technologies can improve this even more. Stanford is working on a lithium ion battery that uses silicon nano-wires that can theoretically store 10 times more energy. EEStor is working on a supercapacitor that they are hoping will cost 1/10 the price of lithium batteries and be recharged in 4 to 6 minutes. (Ref: http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/07/09/eestor-ultracaps-too-good-to-be-true)

In addition Project Better Place is working on the infrastructure to provide swappable battery packs.

Battery Cost

Electric vehicles cost more than the gasoline equivalents due to battery costs. Batteries are currently very expensive, lithium ion batteries can cost up to $1,000 per kW although bulk prices to manufacturers are are about $600. So a typical electric vehicle will cost about $20,000 more because of the batteries.

However, the extra cost of these batteries will be made up for in the savings on gasoline. Let's look at a specific example.

BlueSky Motors in Sacramento periodically sells used EV Ford Rangers on eBay. The total cost for these after tax, license, document fees and with a charger will be close to $30,000, which is about $20,000 more than the gasoline version. The gas version gets 16 MPG, which is $0.25 per mile with gas at $4 per gallon. The electric version will take about $0.05 of electricity per mile for a savings of $0.20 per mile. (Ref: http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/05/21/ford-ev-ranger-cost-analysis)

One way of looking at the extra $20,000 that this EV Ford Ranger costs is that you are just pre-paying for gasoline at $4 per gallon for the next 100,000 miles and after that, it is like getting free gas.

So the extra cost for the batteries in an EV will be paid for by the savings in gasoline cost.

EV CO2

Of course, while electric vehicles use no fossil fuels nor emit any CO2 directly, it is necessary to look at the complete cycle including electricity generation to determine the total impact of electric vehicles.

On average, electric vehicles will get about 3 miles per kWh (plug-to-wheels). In California, our clean electricity sources produce only 0.6 lbs of CO2 per kWh of electricity produced. This means that an electric vehicle will produce about 0.2 lbs of CO2 per mile driven. By comparison, gasoline engines put out 20 lbs of CO2 per gallon of gasoline burned, so an average car that gets 20 miles per gallon will produce 1 lb of CO2 per mile, or over 5 times that of an electric car. Even outside California where the electricity production produces an average of 1.3 lbs of CO2 per kWh, the electric car will still produce about 0.43 lbs of CO2 per mile - still less than half of a car. 

(Ref: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2report.html#electric) 

EV Fossil Fuels

How much fossil fuels do EV's use? In the US, here is the breakdown of electricity sources for 2001: (Ref: SE,33)

• 52% Coal
• 21% Nuclear
• 15% Natural Gas
• 8.7% Renewable Energy
• 3.5% Petroleum

There are several interesting observations here. One is that in the US, we use very little oil for electricity production. Second is that we use a lot of coal which, while dirty in many ways, is all mined in the US and there is a lot of it, so we are not reliant on unstable regimes to provide it or have to worry about it running out anytime soon.

This means that the US can be self-sufficient in powering a fleet of cars with electricity.

EV - Cleaner and Cleaner

Furthermore, over time our electricity supply will continue to get cleaner-and-cleaner and electric cars will continue to benefit from this. As an example of this, over half of the RAV4-EV owners surveyed have solar PV systems on their home which are used to charge their cars which means that these cars are run without producing an CO2 at all!

Sustainable Energy Sources

What will it take for sustainable energy sources to compete with traditional electricity supplies? One factor that would encourage sustainable energy is a CO2 tax which would likely double the price of coal-fired electricity. A less likely but also helpful factor would be a pollution tax, which would again hit hard on coal-fired electricity sources. To give this some numbers, coal-fired electricity currently has a wholesale price of about $0.05 per kWh and a CO2 tax would likely increase this to $0.10 per kWh. Natural gas plants are already fairly expensive, at about ?? and although they produce about half of the CO2 per kWh, a CO2 tax would still add about 2 or 3 cents per kWh to their cost.

Another factor that would dramatically encourage sustainable energy is to enact feed-in tariffs, similar to what Germany has. This would guarantee prices for different types of sustainable energy sources so that it would be economical to invest in them.

However, it would be even better if sustainable energy could produce electricity as cheap as the traditional alternatives so that they could compete directly without relying on short-sighted and easily distracted politicians passing laws to support it.

Wind power already is very close to competing with coal in cost per kWh. (### Example)

Photovoltaic (PV) solar power is getting close. Once PV is installable at about $2,000 per kW of capacity, it will be on parity with coal. (Ref: http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/01/01/solar-vs-coal-who-wins). Currently, residential systems cost about $7,000 per kW which includes PV panels, inverter and installation. However, thin-film solar panels can be produced and sold profitable at $1,000 per kW (Ref: Nano-solar) and in municipal-sized installations of 10-50 MW, the total cost would be $2,000 per kW which means it is competitive with coal.

One downside to solar power is that unlike coal, power is only produced when the sun is shining. (This load factor has been taken into consideration with the equations above.) However, this also coincides with the peak electricity usage during the day so that these solar installations can nicely complement coal and nuclear generation which are most efficient if run all the time.

So for the near future, adding PV electricity generation even without any storage capability is the best way to sustainable and cleanly meet increasing energy demands.

EV Additional Electricity Demands

Won't adding more EVs require more electricity which will cause more coal-fired power plants to be built? The answer is no and here is the reason.

Electricity demand peaks during the day and goes down considerably at night. EVs can charge up at night using this spare capacity. It has been estimated that in California alone, this extra capacity could support over 25 million EVs and that throughout the US, the existing infrastructure could charge 84% of the 250 million cars in the US.

(Ref: http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/06/02/powering-electric-vehicles)

EV Regulation Services

Another advantage of having a fleet of EVs is that they can smooth out 

(Ref: http://blog.maxdunn.com/articles/2008/01/30/vehicle-to-grid-v2g)

Phase In

A slew of electric vehicles are already starting to be available. Tesla is shipping their first electric car, GM, Miles, Zen, Zap have all announced plans to release pure electric vehicles soon. In addition, plug-in hybrids are being worked on by Toyota, ?.

(Discuss phase-in schedule and how much oil and CO2 it would save.)

How To Get There

How do we move the US to predominantly use of electric vehicles? 

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel who is now devoted to drawing more attention to electric vehicles, suggests providing tax incentives to take the risk out of battery development and help offset the costs of conversion kits. Utilities, he says, could subsidize the early adopters of plug-ins by providing free electric power to the vehicles for the first year to 18 months.

 

"I think it is a legitimate place for the government to fund, to accelerate it," he said. (Ref: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/environment/2008-06-30-grove-plug-ins_N.htm)

 

Conclusion

Electric vehicles are viable today and can greatly reduce the need for oil and the amount of CO2 produced.