Can battery electrics disrupt the internal combustion engine? Part 1: “No”

The fresh Quantino EV with flow-cell battery, introduced in Geneva 2016

Battery electrified vehicles (BEVs) will do well to take more than 10% of global light duty vehicle market share by mid-century, writes research scientist Schalk Cloete. This is because BEVs with the large battery pack needed for broad consumer acceptance will remain more expensive than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. According to Cloete, this price premium is unlikely to be accepted by the mass market even under optimistic future BEV integration screenplays. He adds that presently emerging data is embarking to support this argument.

Electrical drive has numerous advantages over the internal combustion engine such as high efficiency over a broad range of power output, regenerative cracking and no tailpipe emissions. These advantages make electrified drive very attractive, particularly when it comes to stop/go city driving. This promise combined with rapid cost declines has led to excellent optimism about the future of BEVs, spearheaded by the excellent success of Tesla motors.

However, BEVs will always have to deal with a large competitive disadvantage: the battery pack. Even under optimistic assumptions of future technological developments, a adequately large battery pack will make a BEV substantially more expensive and stronger than a similar ICE or hybrid vehicle.

Much of the cost saving hype surrounding electrical vehicles is based on oil exceeding $100/barrel with some strenuous gasoline taxes added on top

Ultimately, unspoiled electrified drive should be about Two.5x more efficient than an ICE vehicle. As will be illustrated below, this efficiency advantage does not bring significant savings when accounting for real energy provision costs, whereas a reasonably large battery pack will proceed to put BEVs at a cost disadvantage. For this reason, BEVs do not suggest a large scale solution to the global sustainability problems we must (very rapidly) overcome during the 21st century.

Cost analysis

BEVs will have to achieve a range exceeding two hundred miles as standard before broad consumer acceptance can be achieved. Another less often stated requirement is that this range will have to be maintained after at least ten years of driving and through all seasons. Modern ICE vehicles can operate sleekly for twenty years without bringing any range anxiety issues with age or temperature.

As a result, future BEVs will have to come tooled with a battery pack of about eighty kWh which will cost a hefty $8000 even assuming optimistic future Li-ion battery pack costs of $100/kWh (figure below). This $8000 is a good proxy of the expected price difference inbetween an ICE vehicle and a BEV which will be accepted by the mass market.

An argument can be made that the BEV drivetrain (motor, ordinary transmission, inverter, step-down converter and charger) will be cheaper than an ICE drivetrain (engine, transmission, stop & go system and harass). According to numbers in this paper, the total two thousand thirteen costs of a seventy kW electrical drivetrain is about €2640 while a gasoline drivetrain will cost about €2950. However, the electrified drivetrain costs could decline to €1600 with future technological advances. The potential future BEV could therefore love harshly $1500 price advantage over an ICE vehicle due to the plain drivetrain. For most people, however, this advantage will be cancelled out by the fully installed costs of a home charging station, so we will consider the $8000 cost difference in this article.

Just imagine the queues during rush hour at packing stations taking 6x longer to give cars a 3x shorter range than conventional packing stations

A high-BEV future will also feature a large number of extra chargers to further reduce range anxiety and enable longer travels. Many parking catches sight of will include public ten kW level two chargers (providing about thirty miles of range per hour) for about $5000/charger. Highways will also require regular one hundred kW level three chargers (providing about three hundred miles per hour) for about $60000/charger. (Costs from this link.) Let’s say that we need one public level two charger for every five BEVs and one level three charger for every one hundred BEVs. This will add another $1600 per vehicle (without charging station maintenance costs).

On the positive side, conventional wisdom states that a BEV should have lower fuel costs than an ICE vehicle because it is so much more efficient. However, ICE vehicles still have a lot of headroom for efficiency improvement and are projected to exceed fifty miles per gallon by two thousand twenty five (see below). Further improvements yield steadily diminishing comes back (as will be shown in the calculations below).

In addition, much of the cost saving hype surrounding electrical vehicles is based on oil exceeding $100/barrel with some mighty gasoline taxes added on top. When looking at real energy production and distribution costs (which must be done when considering the disruptive potential of a technology), gasoline is actually remarkably cheap. As discussed in this article, the actual production cost of oil is about $35/barrel and we can still extract substantially more oil than the human race has extracted to date below this price point. When assuming a rather high value of $1/gallon for refinement and distribution costs, the actual production and distribution cost of gasoline amounts to only $1.83/gallon. Electrical play, on the other mitt, costs about $0.13/kWh (US residential electro-stimulation prices – tax free), about half of which is transmission and distribution costs. When accounting for 10% charging losses, this amounts to $Four.83/e-gallon.

It therefore becomes clear that, when accounting for total direct costs carried by the overall economy, BEVs need to be about Two.6 times more efficient than ICEs to break even – almost exactly the projected situation in two thousand twenty five (figure above).

Wireless charging roads and parking spaces sound very cool, but also rather expensive

Real fuel cost savings from the BEV of the future are therefore negligible, but the up-front cost difference will remain. In other costs of ownership, lower maintenance costs are cancelled out by higher insurance costs. Furthermore, BEVs may well depreciate significantly quicker than ICE vehicles because the battery pack will degrade swifter over time than the ICE drivetrain.

The figure below shows the ownership costs (insurance and maintenance excluded) of future ICE, hybrid and BEV technologies (with fuel efficiencies as projected for two thousand twenty five in the figure above). Costs assumed were $25000 for the ICE, $27000 for the hybrid and $33000 for the BEV. Capital costs were calculated over a five year ownership period (with a 5% discount rate) during which the car depreciates by the percentage indicated in the graph (60-80%). Fuel costs were calculated for fifteen thousand miles driving per year.

The graph shows that the yearly ownership costs of a BEV acceptable for the mass market (>200 mile range in all seasons even after ten years) would cost $1140/year more than an equivalent ICE vehicle under similar depreciation assumptions and as much as $2660/year more if it depreciates quicker. The law of diminishing comebacks with regard to fuel efficiency is also clearly illustrated by the puny contribution of fuel costs relative to capital costs.

This price premium should be acceptable to a significant percentage of consumers in developed nations, but this will not be the case in the developing world which will increasingly predominate the global car market over coming years. For example, even after decades of incredible growth, average Chinese wages are still under $10000/year, making a $1000-3000/year price premium unacceptable. It is not surprizing that the most popular car in China starts at $7000 – a price that will be doubled by a battery pack large enough for broad consumer acceptance.

In case the self-driving car ideal becomes a reality, ICE vehicles are likely to benefit more than BEVs

Lastly, a carbon price will also not have a sustained positive influence on BEV sales. The largest current and future car markets (US, China, India) have electro-therapy mixes where a carbon price will make EV charging more expensive than ICE refuelling, especially if ICE efficiency moves towards fifty MPG. See the map below. It is true that the carbon power of electrical play will step by step reduce in the future, but this will increase the tens unit price swifter than the unpreventable stable increase in the real extraction cost of oil. The possibility of carbon-neutral synfuels for ICEs should also be kept in mind for the long-term future.

Justifying a BEV price premium

For BEVs to disrupt ICE vehicles, people will have to be willing to pay this substantial price premium. Tesla has shown what can be achieved with electrified drive in terms of spectacle and driving practice and this is something that customers may be willing to pay extra for. Wireless charging also offers a potential BEV future where you never need to think about refuelling or charging (e.g. wireless charging roads).

However, even however the EV driving practice may fetch a price premium, it is doubtful that this will count for much outside of the puny luxury/spectacle vehicle segment. Wireless charging roads and parking spaces sound very cool, but also rather expensive and, if you think about it, it does not suggest such a meaningful improvement over two visits to the packing station every month.

In the absence of a very rapid and convenient charging solution at almost no extra cost, ICE vehicles will maintain a price premium over BEVs. Even Tesla’s supercharging stations will need to become much quicker before they can suggest a real solution to this challenge. Just imagine the queues during rush hour at packing stations taking 6x longer to give cars a 3x shorter range than conventional packing stations. Yes, home/public charging can substantially reduce this cargo, but this adds the costs of home and public level two charging stations to the costs of a vast supercharger network.

BEVs may also be able to fetch lower fuel prices by charging only during off-peak hours, but, as shown in the above graph, even a substantial reduction in fuel costs for BEVs will not truly alter this situation. In addition, a baseload-dominated power system is the only indeed practical way in which this can be implemented. Clever charging with politically popular, but variable solar/wind will most likely be impractically sophisticated and expensive.

Even however this article paints a bleak picture for the future of BEVs, I’m actually fairly optimistic about this technology. I just think that the greatest potential for disruption comes not from cars, but from smaller vehicles

Lastly, in case the self-driving car ideal becomes a reality, ICE vehicles are likely to benefit more than BEVs. As discussed above, actual fuel costs are similar inbetween BEVs and ICEs, thus suggesting no enhancing value with enhanced use. In fact, much more free-flowing traffic resulting from a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles will significantly boost the efficiency and longevity of ICEs relative to BEVs. Slick traffic flow combined with an optimized computerized driving style may well permit ICEs to exceed highway economy in town and rack up half a million miles before being scrapped. Furthermore, ICE vehicles will be able to refuel much swifter, thus providing them more time on the road and lower refuelling infrastructure costs.

Evidence to date

The US most likely offers the best example of the attraction of BEVs in the real world. Gasoline is not taxed at such high levels as most other developed nations and electrical play is not taxed, thus providing a fairly good fuel cost comparison. The federal and state incentive programs also combine to cut more than the aforementioned $8000 price disadvantage from the cost of fresh BEVs (most sales are in states with extra incentives such as California). BEV sales as a percentage of the total are given below (data available here). The black line is a twelve month moving average.

As shown above, even however sales are enhancing, the current market invasion is low, even with generous incentives. It should also be noted that only about half of BEV sales come from models in a price range targeting the mass market. The other half are up-market offerings from Tesla and BMW which cannot cause significant disruption in the overall auto industry.

The data therefore shows that, when incentives eventually fall away, sub-100 mile BEVs will have to drop $10000 in cost to achieve a fraction of a percentage point of market share. In addition, they will have to contend with much more efficient ICEs ultimately coming in the notoriously inefficient US vehicle fleet. Higher-priced BEVs with a longer range might be able to secure larger market share, but it is difficult to see market invasion exceeding 10% in the affluent US market – let alone the developing world where per-capita GDP is an order of magnitude lower.

Disruption of a different kind

Even however this article paints a bleak picture for the future of BEVs, I’m actually fairly optimistic about this technology. I just think that the greatest potential for disruption comes not from cars, but from smaller vehicles where the advantages of battery electrical drive over the internal combustion engine indeed come to the fore. These vehicles are fully compatible with a future where the global middle-class quadruples in size while environmental and space constraints force society to do away with blatant inefficiencies like short-distance-single-person-in-car travel. More about this line of thought in part two of this article, which will go after soon.

This article is a slightly modified version from the original version published earlier on The Energy Collective. Modifications include:

• Assuming future fully installed battery pack costs of $100/kWh instead of $125/kWh.
• Discussion about consumer price sensitivity in developed vs. developing nations.
• Mentioning of carbon-neutral synfuels in a low-carbon future based on ICEs.
• More discussion on the advantages of ICEs in slick autonomous vehicle flow.

Schallk Cloete describes himself as “a research scientist searching for the objective reality about the longer-term sustainability of industrialized human civilization on planet Earth. Issues surrounding energy and climate are of central importance in this sustainability picture and I seek to contribute a consistently pragmatic viewpoint to the ongoing debate. My formal research concentrate is on 2nd generation CO2 capture processes because these systems will be ideally suited to the likely future screenplay of a much belated scramble for deep and rapid decarbonization of the global energy system.”

About Schalk Cloete

Comments

Mike Fletcher says

I’m not sure about some numbers here. My practice with a Ford C-max Energi

– one hundred km on gas costs C$ 6.20 with gas at $1 per litre vs. C$ Two.40 on electro-therapy (I live in Ottawa, Canada)

– My home level two charger cost C$Two,000 installed, without subsidy including a fresh breaker in my panel.

Also, I don’t agree that $8,000 for a battery pack equates to an $8,000 differential for an electrical car. The battery, displaces the engine, tranny, fuel system and battery in an ICE vehicle – lots of stuff.

Eventually, I question the requirements of the number of chargers. As EV’s get to have more range, I believe that a larger percentage of the fueling will happen at home, as the instances where people run low on charge away from home will decrease. Also, level two chargers are more a source of “leap charge” for EV’s with petite batteries – I think we’ll see its less critical as batteries get thicker.

Schalk Cloete says

So, your C-max consumes 6.Two l per one hundred km (38 MPG)? That is pretty poor for a hybrid. The fresh Prius gets north of fifty five MPG. What is the electro-stimulation price used in the C$Two.40 per one hundred km calculation?

I don’t know much about Canadian energy pricing, but I guess gasoline is also taxed more than electrical play. The actual cost of gasoline is about $1.83/gal with most of the remainder being taxes. These taxes are significant for things like maintaining road infrastructure, limiting congestion and incentivising efficiency. If EVs become much more common, some mechanism will have to be found to levy these taxes on EVs as well.

Anyway, my calculations used tax-free gasoline and electro-stimulation prices. It was also carried out for a future screenplay when battery pack costs might be only $100/kWh. By that time, average ICE efficiency will be about fifty two MPG (EIA projections in the article). If you had such a car, your cost per one hundred km would reduce to C$Four.50, very likely about C$1.50 of which is paid to the government to maintain the roads you drive on (and other uses).

Your home charging station cost is in line with the costs I mention ($1500). I agree that the electrical power train should be cheaper than an ICE power train, hence the paragraph about this cost advantage (about $1500 for seventy kW power) being cancelled out by the cost of a home charging station and many other public charging stations.

The question of the number of public charging stations needed is an interesting one to which any reliable answers exist at the moment. However, I think my estimate of one public charger for every five BEVs and one supercharger for every one hundred is at least reasonable. What would you say are reasonable estimates?

Mike Fletcher says

I’m using C$ 0.12 for electrical play (my overnight and weekend rate). I’m considering non – winter driving. Gas and electrical efficiency is way worse in a cold snap. The highway mileage is poor for a hybrid; six months after I got the car Ford sent me a cheque for $1,000 to compensate for the difference inbetween what they promised and what the car actually does while on gas. City driving panned out as advertised, but again highway not at all.

As for the number of charging stations, I agree this is a raunchy question. With regards to level two chargers I think a charger for every five EV’s or PHEV’s is reasonable where EV’s congregate (such as workplaces) and when people install infrastructure. But these are two conditions that typically don’t apply.

Quebec is the most developed EV market in Canada with about 8,000 cars (and a few school busses). There are toughly seven hundred level two chargers and thirty two DC quick. The organization installing most chargers (part of the provincial electrified utility) has some valuable skill:

– they are not observing fine financial comebacks with level two chargers as the value proposition of such a charger is not much greater that what someone can do at their home (provided home includes access to power for a car). Their thinking is evolving and even inward City chargers (intended for condo owners with minimal charging at home) are better as DC prompt.

– At one DC for every two hundred fifty EV’s only one location is presently suffering from periodic line ups. It’s notable that some of the very first DC prompt chargers were put in remote areas the get rid of range anxiety and as such have very low utilization. The utility estimates that when a DC swift charger hits fifteen percent utilization (based on every hour of every day), periodic waits for use are beginning to be an issue.

If we keep in mind that the best deal anyone can get on electric current is at home, it becomes clear that the degree to which EV’s will be powered by public chargers will be puny. Especially as range increases, level two chargers will be increasingly used as loss leaders at retail, a green attribute on LEED buildings and perks for employees and public transit riders. DC quick will be critical as intercity energy sources to make EV’s feasible as something other than a town car. But again as EV range improves, they’ll provide a smaller proportion of the EV fleet’s total power, meaning that might not need so many of them. Also, I at times see discussion of quicker DC charging (150 kW +). If the vehicles top up swifter, then we’ll need fewer chargers.

All of these items suggest to me that you should have you give your charger requirements a fifty percent haircut. Also, you should give the EV fleet a credit for reducing the amount of petroleum infrastructure required. Packing stations and everything upstream. Maybe one day the US sixth fleet in the Persian Gulf?

Schalk Cloete says

It seems like you have some good skill on the subject, so I agree with the 50% haircut. This brings public charging infrastructure capital costs down to $800/car.

About the displacement of petroleum infrastructure, I’m not so sure however. It strikes me that the net effect might be more of a capacity under-utilization penalty (like wind/solar with thermal plants).

Mike Fletcher says

I hear you on displacement of petroleum infrastructure. Certainly true now, but at some point this will embark to have tangible impacts. My very first candidates will be packing stations in cities where EV invasion is high and land is valuable. I wonder if Oslo has any practices yet?

Schalk Cloete says

Good point about the closure of packing stations on valuable land. I quickly checked Norwegian news if there is anything about a packing station being closed because of EVs, but I could not yet find anything. Only about 3% of the current Norwegian vehicle fleet is electrical at this time, but this is enhancing at about 1% per year, so we should learn more about these kinds of effects soon.

Mike Fletcher says

Here’s a little more info. This very first link from Hydro Quebec, underscores that Level two charging is less strongly used than DC Rapid. Schalk, I agree with the rough haircut that you gave the required charging infrastructure, but this data may me something to observe. My gut tells me that that the public level two infrastructure might eventually deserve a further haircut, but we’ll see. http://news.hydroquebec.com/en/press-releases/989/the-electric-circuit-an-essential-part-of-the-shift-to-electric-transportation/

The other article of note states that Quebec will begin mandating 240V outlet in garages of fresh homes (I have also heard of Paulo Alto CA doing this). This will lower the marginal cost of putting in a home level two charger to

Jenny Sommer says

The significant metric in comparing cars is €/km (€$£¢₱¥/km or mile) over holding time.

Range does matter but will be weighted against cost just like acceptable battery degradation in used cars.

Average cost in Europe is 46€ct/km.

A Tesla Model III would run under 19€ct compared to a 25k ICE after 15yrs/200.000km. Depreciation to 2k€ for both (tho’ the ICE would be essentially worthless then).

Phasing out of ICE cars will be policy driven on top of that.

Fresh ICE cars will also fail emission standards much swifter than they have. As the technology involved in curbing emissions gets more complicated the engines get more expensive and failure prone. We see a lot of cars today with under 200k km that are not worth repairs.

EVs eliminate that uncertainty.

The low price segment around 10k€ might has to do with 60-120km of range till the mid 2020ties but will love lower lifetime cost also.

I also challenge your assumption on autonomous vehicles. Fuel cost is the most expensive part of taxi driving just after the driver.

We will have to see how reliable EVs will be. My guess – very reliable in comparison to ICE cars. The benchmark are Priuses running over 1.000.000 km in Taxi duty without major repair cost.

The 4l/100km Audi is a joy story but I rather prefere more realistic data (from Spritmonitor.de)

Average 2010-2016 Audi consumption by fuel/100km

Autogas (LPG) 9,98(kg)

And that data is from “aware” drivers not the average Autobahn pundit. Real fuel consumption and cost is higher.

Another point. Don’t expect the highest efficiency engines in lower market segments. Again real world data.

Dacia 2014-2016 averages over 8l/100km.

Cost of ownership will go up with higher emission standards.

The cost of a used EV will be determined by the market. A used EV might sell for more than a used ICE but will be cheaper in the long run even for the used car buyer.

20 year old ICE cars? The cheapest cars in lifetime cost for my driving have been cars around 8years old,

140k km, repairs done tax-free. Those are usually dead beyond repair before 250k km.

The exception was a Toyota Avensis Verso that did over 400.000km…13l/100km tho’. 0.39€/km.

That’s 156.000€ over 10years finish cost of ownership (The car was in the family from fresh to finish).

My point is that you can’t just compare car prices, you have to donks the user case to get the finish cost.

I don’t know if you have wielded cars before or if you have done a finish cost analysis but that would be a point to begin.

Schalk Cloete says

The calculation is done based on a future screenplay where battery pack costs are $100/kWh and fresh ICE efficiency is over fifty MPG (EIA estimates). I appreciate that the average real-world spectacle of ICEs today is around thirty MPG, but the average battery cost is around $350/kWh. Also note that I used tax-free energy costs. This will have an especially large influence on calculations done for Europe where gasoline taxes are very high.

About car age, the average car in Europe is aging even swifter than the average European (http://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/average-vehicle-age). If vehicles were getting increasingly unreliable as you seem to suggest, this is a rather strange trend.

I don’t indeed get the reference to the Prius. I don’t know of any Priuses without internal combustion engines. The good longevity of the Prius just shows how many miles you can get out of an internal combustion engine operated more uniformly (as should be the case in fully autonomous vehicle flow).

Jenny Sommer says

Growing average age does not necessarily correlate with more reliable cars, rather higher maintainance cost over the cars lifetime. You would also need to look at the average use. Do people drive more or are older cars just bought by people that don’t drive much and would have bought a fresh car back the for any given reason. My grandmother bought a fresh car but drove 3km a day only.

We need to look if a two thousand sixteen car is cheaper per km over it’s lifetime compared to a two thousand car.

The Prius is a very reliable car and therefore very cheap per km over lifetime. The 1.000.000km are the benchmark for the cars life and I believe will be lightly hammered by EVs.

You can deduct tax from fuel prices but that doesn’t make any sense for the consumer. I pay taxes. If the taxes are lower somewhere you could just compare those on a separate sheet.

The 1.000.000km Prius would cost 56650€ in gas (1.10€/l and real world average Five.15l/100km).

That’s even above 50mpg but I truly doubt that will be archiveable in a unspoiled ICE, both reliability and mpg.

That’s gas only. No oil, no brakes (lasting much shorter in unspoiled ICE without recuperation), no belts, seals, car batteries or any other maintainance only associated with IC engines.

Would you buy a car above 300.000km? I would only if it was an EV, we had some more stats about reliability excluding the batteries but you would know that these could be switched and you would know in advance what you would have to pay.

Other than that you would know what range the used batteries are able to provide.

In the end I simply want to know which car is cheaper per km now, including taxes.

At which point does the EV pay? Aftet 200k km, 500k km or never?

If I buy that 40.000€ Tesla and charge 1.000.000km for free Toyota would need to pay me Ten.000€ or more for driving their Prius to match that lifetime cost of am I mistaken here?

Schalk Cloete says

As far as I can see, (rapidly) growing European vehicle age simply shows that it is much cheaper to keep old cars for longer than to buy a fresh ones. Everyone likes a fresh car, so if costs were comparable, we’d see many more fresh cars, drawing down the average car age.

If EVs displace ICEs at scale all those fuel taxes will have to come from somewhere to maintain the roads, limit congestion, etc. As discussed in other comments, EVs will therefore also need to be taxed as they scale up. When considering the disruptive potential of BEVs, it is therefore significant to work with unspoiled energy costs (taxes excluded). Also, totally free charging for EVs is not a viable solution at scale, so assuming one million km of free fuel for a Tesla is not relevant when considering the disruptive potential of EVs.

I don’t know if you have seen Part two of this article (http://www.energypost.eu/can-battery-electrics-disrupt-internal-combustion-engine-part-2-kind/). As discussed there, I see potential for petite EVs (not highway-worthy) to displace a lot of ICEs for city use. These low speed vehicles will hopefully drive more and more ICEs out of the city onto the highways where they are naturally much more efficient (both in terms of fuel consumption and longevity). This will make Prius-like efficiency and longevity achievable for standard ICE cars.

Jenny Sommer says

There are other proven concepts of raising tax revenue for road maintenance. Road tolls and km tax. Those apply to alle vehicles again. They have the added benefit of moving mighty vehicles from road to rail making road maintainance even cheaper.

Building back roads and lanes helps also with cost.

I can’t see a script where fresh taxes will only apply to EVs/NEVs to protect ICE cars.

Now if we account for tax free electro-therapy in your system that doesn’t switch anything. There is more money to be made from business opportunities at charging catches sight of than on selling violet wand anyways. I doubt that there will be relevant cost associated with charging your EV.

Your last assumption also includes another serious caveat for future ICE car owners. They won’t be permitted to drive into most cities and very likely some other regions.

The Prius like consumption on highway driving alone is not enough. Longitivity will lock you into the costly fuel habbit. You won’t be able to recoup the value of the car by selling it on because people won’t buy ICE any more.

Like you say people like fresh cars. How do you imagine them buying 3-4l cars when they can own an EV with much better spectacle?

Especially in autonomous fleet driving the EV will hit the comparable ICE in TCO anytime.

I also doubt that unspoiled ICE drivetrains can archive the longitivity of a unspoiled electrified drivetrain. The middle, a plugin Hybrid (ICE-EV bastard), will also be weighted down by the extra cost of fuel, the ICE power train and ICE associated maintainance cost.

If they indeed have to pay you Ten.000$ for driving that Prius, fuel prices would have to be raised to compensate Toyota for their loss. But then again they would have to pay you even more to drive that Prius…

I haven’t found the time yet to read the 2nd part but it is open in some of these uncountable tabs on my phone…

“future BEVs will have to come tooled with a battery pack of about eighty kWh” Why? Nissan Leaf does over one hundred miles with twenty four kWh and the Model S does two hundred fifty five miles with seventy kWh. These are real cars on the market today. Seems to me fifty kWh is a more suitable number for a light-duty car to achieve a 200-mile range.

Regarding home charger costs, again you assume the most high-end screenplay. If you want prompt charging that will cost you a premium, but for overnight charging a standard high power butt-plug is sufficient and that does not cost $1500.

This article goes a long way around to arrive at a questionable result. I did a much simpler calculation a while back:

Average miles driven per year in U.S. – 13,476.00

Average fuel economy mi/gal – 30.00

Gasoline price USD/gal – Two.00

Annual fuel cost – 898.40

EV based on Leaf

EV range miles – 100.00

Battery capacity kWh – 24.00

EV fuel economy mi/kWh – Four.17

Annual energy requirement kWh – Trio,234.24

Electric current price USD/kWh – 0.13

Annual electric current cost – 420.45

A car is on average wielded for seven years so the overall fuel savings will be over $3000. This fuel savings isn’t enough to absorb the purchase premium, but I don’t think it’s far off. That’s assuming that gas stays a $Two which it’s unlikely to do, so there is a futureproofing element to EV ownership. I think this is the kind of kitchen table calculation a typical car holder will do.

Schalk Cloete says

As I state in the article, my estimate is at least two hundred miles range after ten years and in all seasons. Battery capacity reduces over time and can reduce a lot during winter. Supercharging is also often only done to around 80% capacity. I therefore estimate that, for BEVs to treatment the level of freedom given by an ICE car, a Tesla-size battery pack will be required.

Charging a eighty kWh battery pack at home will undoubtedly require a level two charger. I agree that fully installed costs of such chargers might be below $1500, but not much.

As stated in my comment above, this article is for a future script where both battery technology and ICE efficiency have improved substantially. ICE efficiency of fifty two MPG (EIA estimates) is therefore assumed.

The official Leaf fuel economy is one hundred fourteen MPG (297 Wh/mile). Adding 10% charging losses, you will be able to go Three.06 miles per kWh charged to your utility bill, not Four.17 as you assume.

About the future oil price, I see several reasons why it should hover closer to current normal levels for the foreseeable future. Enhancing sales of electrified vehicles is one of these reasons (note that I don’t say EVs will not grow, I just think that they will not totally revolutionize/disrupt the car industry as many people think). Other more significant reasons for lower oil prices are switching car usage habits, tightening fuel efficiency standards and fracking technology.

It is also significant to look at the real world data. Only about 0.2% of mass market car buyers (Tesla excluded) are presently swayed by the kitchen table calculation you introduced despite

$10000 of incentives.

I have been looking for a total report of the BNEF report for some time to get some more info about the details behind their graphs. Even so, they also don’t truly predict a BEV disruption (about 30% by mid century with a flattening trend). Their low oil price screenplay (one which I think is more likely especially if EVs reduce oil request as in their projections) only estimates about 20% BEVs. My 10% estimate is therefore not so far from theirs as far as multi-decade estimates go.

The author makes some good rationale arguments against EV takeoff.

Some observations: the best selling luxury car in the USA – Tesla, the best selling BMW series three equivalent – looks to be Tesla. This is where rationale argument runs up against marketing – & loses every time (think of 4x4s – zero reason to purchase them -plenty do – mostly for spurious marketing reasons – ditto EVs). Also: in Europe cities have a specific pollution problem so I see EVs playing a role there. If the author wants a knock-out argument he need only cite – power to gas.

Schalk Cloete says

I think BEVs will do very well at the high end where the EV driving practice is very valued and battery costs are a rather puny fraction of the total car price. The closer you get to mass market, the stiffer it will become for BEVs since the battery pack will be a substantial fraction of the total cost and people will value practicality over driving pleasure (especially in the rapidly growing developing world market where the median car price is about half that of the developed world). We’ll have to wait and see how the Model three performs, but I doubt that it will predominate low end luxury like the Model S predominates high end luxury, especially after incentives expire.

I agree with power-to-gas potential in the long term. Carbon neutral synfuels are mentioned in the article.

“I agree with power-to-gas potential in the long term” I think that is where we would have to disagree – since my work suggests a “right now” potential – not “long term” – these comments being applied to Europe and possibly Japan. I cann’t comment about the USA in that respect..

Schalk Cloete says

I’m interested to hear more about this. Do you have some credible economic analyses suggesting that power-to-gas is a near-term possibility? If so, please provide me with some links.

I have lots and lots of detail, spreadsheets, etc etc – all generated by myself and my business fucking partners. I & my business fucking partners are very very interested in doing business. If you want to do business i.e. projects – very blessed to talk. We can bring, funding, tech, etc etc. You know how to contact me.

I feel like this article operates with fantasy numbers, namely the official fuel efficieny of ICE cars (which are an utter joke and have nothing to do with real world values), pessimistic guesses for the longevity and spectacle of EV car batteries (which so far have outperformed previous negative guesstimates), no residual value for battery packs (which can be used in stationary storage applications after their EV life), no consideration of the the higher ICE maintenance cost and the far greater life of the EV drivetrain, no consideration of the totally fresh car architecture in EV cars that are designed from the ground up with the inherent safety benefits, no consideration of the health cost associated with the harass fumes, especially diesel that won’t be tolerated much longer and that will add further costs for fume treatments to ICE cars beyond the cost to improve MpG, no consideration of the convenience of EV charging at home, no consideration of further charging improvement which current goals eyeing three hundred kW until 2020, no consideration of the ever falling electro-therapy prices from your own PV on your own roof and eventually with the current exceptionally low oil and gas prices.

I agree, if you do all that ICE cars seem to stand a chance. In the real world, noone outside maybe the the poorest in the developing countries will still buy an ICE after 2030.

Schalk Cloete says

“In the real world, noone outside maybe the the poorest in the developing countries will still buy an ICE after 2030.”

Wow, incredible statement. Hopefully then you have done the brainy thing and put your entire life savings in Tesla stock 🙂

True, US official MPG figures are often inaccurate and real world spectacle is better: http://www.autoblog.com/2015/06/17/aaa-study-real-world-fuel-economy/. Personally, I normally achieve even European fuel efficiency numbers in the real world. The Audi A3 I normally rent generally costs me less than four l per one hundred km (59 MPG).

Like solar PV, soft costs will also be an significant factor in stationary batteries which will indeed have to become mud cheap to become economically viable (see my prior analysis here: http://www.theenergycollective.com/schalk-cloete/421716/seeking-consensus-internalized-costs-energy-storage-batteries). Soft costs related to getting used batteries out of the car and installing them correctly in some stationary storage application (where they will last significantly shorter than fresh batteries) will very likely not make financial sense.

The article states that lower maintenance costs are cancelled out by higher insurance costs. https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/insurance/car-insurance-quotes-electric-cars/

Tesla scores high on safety, but it is hard to see a consistent difference in safety ratings of budget EVs and ICEs.

Local emissions is a valid point (depending on where EV violet wand comes from). IMF estimates (https://www.imf.org/outward/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15105.pdf) value oil outer costs from local air pollution at about 20c/gallon. This includes lots of old cars on the road today. Fresh cars are far below this level and will be lower still in the long-term view of this article.

Charging vs refuelling convenience is discussed in the article.

300 kW. Not bad. A elementary gasoline fuel pump dispenses fuel at about twenty MW.

Please see my response to Aloysius above for my views on the oil price.

Mike Fletcher says

The comment that battery spectacle declines in winter is not true. Li ion is fine with the cold, the issues are enlargened explosion with air density, cabin heating and rolling resistance of snow and winter tires. These items, with the exception of cabin heating influence ICE spectacle as well, it’s just that with their longer range, these issues are noticed less. Also, poorer winter mileage gets blamed on winter gas (not sure if this is true).

“Winter spectacle” and “degradation” are strenuously carried over from lead acid batteries

Schalk Cloete says

Correct, sorry for the statement that battery capacity declines during winter. I meant that range reduces, requiring larger batteries to achieve the two hundred mile target. Here is a nice infographic about the spectacle of EVs and ICEs during winter: http://www.fleetcarma.com/cold-weather-fuel-efficiency/. It shows that ICE range reduction is about 60% that of EVs. Here in Norway, average EV range reductions in winter are substantially more (42%): http://www.tu.no/artikler/derfor-far-elbilen-kortere-rekkevidde-om-vinteren/276419

Greetings. Your cost per eGallon is fairly far off. As calculated by the Dept. of Energy, the eGallon cost is half the gas cost national average, even with our current low gas prices. http://energy.gov/maps/egallon There’s no reasonable way you got $Four.83 with $0.13 / kWh.

Fuel cost savings help shove the total cost of ownership toward parity, but you’ve got it exactly backward here.

Schalk Cloete says

Greetings. The eGallon is the equivalent price of fuel if an EV had the same efficiency as a typical American car (most likely around thirty MPG) to make it lighter for the average car user to understand.

My calculation is very elementary: 0.13($/kWh)*33.21(kWh/gallon)/0.9(charging efficiency) = $Four.83/gal.

Violet wand is much more expensive per unit energy than gasoline, but EVs are much more efficient than ICEs. These two factors cancel each other out.

Your method is fundamentally misapplied. You’re equating the energy content of gas and electro-therapy without providing EVs one bit of credit for their much greater efficiency.

It takes one gallon to take a typical ICE car twenty five or thirty miles. The equivalent energy (including charging losses) can take a Nissan Leaf one hundred fourteen miles. The EPA method is a “wall to wheels” method that captures all round tour efficiency losses into and out of the battery. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?act=sbs&id=34918

Said another way, it would cost a twenty five mpg gas car about $1000 to gas up for 12,000 annual miles at $Two.08 / gallon.

It would cost a Nissan Leaf $468 to do those same miles at $0.13 / kWh.

Any method that doesn’t display around $500 / year in fueling savings on ICE vs. EV is fundamentally wrong.

Schalk Cloete says

JJ, as specified in the article, the calculations are for a future script when batteries cost only $100/kWh (optimistic screenplay in the Nature Climate Switch paper cited) and ICEs achieve fifty two MPG (EIA projections). I use the tax-free gasoline cost of $1.83 since US electro-stimulation is tax-free. If EVs become more commonplace, methods will need to be found to levy taxes on them as well in order to pay for road maintenance, limit congestion, etc.

12,000 annual miles under these assumptions cost: 12000(miles)/52(miles/gal)*1.83($/gal) = $422.Three.

A future BEV achieving one hundred thirty MPGe (again EIA projections) would cost the following if we assume $0.13/kWh and 10% charging losses providing $Four.83/gal as calculated above and in the article:

Thus the fuel costs are essentially the same. Of course if you assume thirty MPG (due to Americans’ love for large trucks with large engines) ICEs cost more to fuel. The rest of the world is fairly different however and CAFE standards are now also pushing the US in the right direction, hence the EIA projections.

Mike Fletcher says

One comment about the cost of batteries. If they remain expensive then it seems to me that an EV at end of life has a substantially higher value than an ICE

Schalk Cloete says

It depends on whether anyone would want to buy expensive, reduced-capacity batteries. But even so, if batteries do not come down in cost as the optimists assume, we don’t indeed need to have this conversation since the up-front cost of EVs with adequately large batteries will simply be too high.

Mike Fletcher says

Diminished capacity end of vehicle batteries could have a use in stationary electrical play storage. Even is they could fetch $50 per kWh that’s $4000 at end of life – worth more way more than most cars at end of life where I live.

Schalk Cloete says

I’m a bit worried about the soft costs related to getting old batteries out of a car, repackaging and fully installing them for some stationary storage application (especially puny scale distributed storage). As rooftop solar PV has shown, soft costs are fairly significant. Batteries truly have to be filth cheap to make sense for stationary storage and such enlargened soft costs on a battery with an already diminished lifetime will likely not make sense relative to a fresh specialized stationary storage battery with a longer lifetime. I did a prior analysis on this here: http://www.theenergycollective.com/schalk-cloete/421716/seeking-consensus-internalized-costs-energy-storage-batteries.

Used batteries could have some recycle value, but this depends whether raw materials can be more economically extracted from old batteries than mined. Otherwise, there may well be some added costs related to safe disposition at end of life.

Gas taxes are used for road maintenance and road construction. BEVs don’t us gas; so they pay no gas taxes. Gas taxes average over $0.50 a gallon and this money is essential and fair for road maintenance. Average car today gets twenty four mpg and travels about 12,000 miles per year. The use is about five hundred gallons per year and a gas tax of $250 per year.

As BEVs become more common; we will have problems maintaining roads. Georgia instituted a $200 annual fee for BEVs to go for road maintenance. This fee has to be included in calculation costs of BEVs.

Schalk Cloete says

Correct. That is why I worked with tax-free gasoline prices in this article. In this way BEV and ICE fuel costs can be compared directly.

It is interesting to hear that some road use taxation on BEVs is already levied in Georgia. I can imagine that it will be very complicated to charge a tax on the electric current used by the BEV (like gasoline taxes) since you would need a separate meter for charging an EV. The vapid yearly rate sounds like a nice and plain alternative.

However, fuel taxes are also levied to limit car use to reduce congestion (especially in more densely populated regions like Europe and Japan). This aim would not be achieved by the vapid yearly rate you mention, implying that traffic could become fairly bad in a high BEV future. I guess in that case, you would also need the extra expense of electronic toll systems installed at regular intervals to charge a fee for using the busiest roads during rush hour.

Mike Fletcher says

One suggestion I’ve heard is more road tax on tires. It’s basically a charge based on distance driven albeit more open to evasion I suppose.

Schalk Cloete says

Not a bad idea. It may make people drive longer than specified on a set of tires, bringing some safety concerns, but if this issue is tightly monitored, it should work fine.

Paul Martin says

Too pessimistic in a few areas, but more accurate than some of the hype-driven rubbish that has been spewed on the subject recently.

A few quick points:

– a substantial fraction of taxes on gasoline and diesel are road taxes, which will inevitably budge to EV drivers one way or another. Roads do need to be maintained, and the likelihood that the vehicles which do the most road harm (powerful trucks) will actually have to pay their “utter freight” one day is regrettably petite

– an EV doesn’t need a two hundred mile range to become a viable 2nd vehicle intended for commuting. That switches the math- a lot. In a decade, when I predict you’ll be able to buy a one hundred mile range two seater commuter BEV for $10k and realizes that they need virtually no maintenance and essentially last longer than you’d ever want to own one, the puny ICE/hybrid commuter EV will be dead in the water. That isn’t 100% of the ICE vehicle market, but it’s more than 10% in the next thirty five years

– you might be able to own an ICE vehicle and drive it without “range anxiety” for twenty years, but virtually nobody actually does- people get bored and stir on before they need to substitute an engine or something else major. The lifecycle is closer to ten years, and even existing BEV technology is good enough for ten yrs without substantial capacity loss. Figuring in battery replacement cost as an O&M cost is therefore not something that should be considered for a BEV, any more than an engine replacement should be figured into the O&M cost of an ICE vehicle

My converted EV recharged from Ontario’s green electrical grid uses 80% less energy from source and emits 3% of the CO2 it did pre-conversion- that’s based on accurate calcs, using the GM/Argonne well to wheels investigate as the basis for the gasoline well to tank efficiency. Break even on the stationary cost of my battery pack versus the “fuels” cost differential over Three,000 charge/discharge cycles is possible even now, but only on off-peak recharges. With a $150/tonne carbon tax in the equation, BEVs in Ontario win hands-down. Ontario is unusual in the world, but the world is moving in our direction more and more. In ten years, energy generation is going to look very different than it does now.

Schalk Cloete says

Agreed on the taxes. This has also been discussed in a few of the other comments.

Part two of this article (hopefully published next week) looks at the much larger potential of Puny Electrified Vehicles (SEVs) such as the petite two seater commuter you mention. On that point I also agree with you. However, I don’t include these vehicles in the 10% estimation at the top of this article. This estimation is for electrified cars which are capable of longer distance highway travel (like a standard gasoline car).

About the lifetime of cars, I should point out that the average age of the US vehicle fleet is now 11.Five years and climbing steadily (http://press.ihs.com/press-release/automotive/average-age-light-vehicles-us-rises-slightly-2015-115-years-ihs-reports). This implies that twenty is fairly a reasonable estimate of car lifetime. The used car market is almost triple the size of the fresh car market and this is where EVs could run into problems due to sustained battery degradation.

” This estimation is for electrical cars which are capable of longer distance highway travel (like a standard gasoline car). “

All this talk for a less than 10%. You are attempting to loser people.

Oil can’t be obtained from your roof. Tens unit can! How many times do you use your fully fuelled tank, in a year?

Don’t tell me you drive seven hundred km to work everyday?

What about maintenance costs? How much does it cost to maintain a ICE over a ten year period.

Tom Hiorns says

Its good to be critical on this and obviously backlash is expected but also I don’t want to repeat what has already been said. One thing about pessimism as mentioned before tho’, you make a pessimistic vague statement about charging from variable solar and wind being to expensive and complicated but you make an optimistic vague statement about increase in traffic fluidity from autonomous driving. I see both as similarly sophisticated and challenging, with many knots and variables. So to disregard one and not the other shows a slight bias towards ICE’s.

For me, I would choose cost comparison inbetween electro-therapy and gasoline in $/kWh instead of $/eGallon, then less assumptions are made from how electric current is produced.

In the analysis have you used international driving cycles such as the WLTP or NEDC? From efficiency kinks and reasonable assumptions you can get a more comprehensive look at efficiency and thus fuel costs.

Assumptions on EV fleet efficiency is much more trivial than ICE fleets as efficiency variation with vehicle spectacle varies hugely with ICE’s (i.e. a five litre ICE consumes more fuel at idle than a one litre ICE). How have you taken this into account?

Schalk Cloete says

The reference to autonomous driving was not attempting to state that this will be effortless. Personally, I think it will take fairly a bit longer to be realized than most of the optimists think. I just attempted to address the perception that autonomous vehicles are tightly linked to EVs by pointing out the advantages that ICEs will bring to a fully autonomous vehicle fleet.

The electrical play price I used is $0.13/kWh – the average US residential price.

I agree on the large influence of various factors on ICE efficiency, including the driving cycle. The EIA projections used in the article are very likely based on the EPA cycle which generally comebacks MPG estimates on the low side. Fortunately the EIA projections included estimates for both BEVs and ICEs, so both could be evaluated based on efficiency estimates from the same source.

SILVIA BURGOS says

I respect your points, but it is not all about the money, but also about the health, environment and people.

Sustainability = People + Planet + Profit

Profit of course, but also People and Planet.

I will not discuss economic questions (already discussed), albeit I recommend the article from Bloomberg (http://about.bnef.com/press-releases/electric-vehicles-to-be-35-of-global-new-car-sales-by-2040/) and the movie about the fuel station of the future by Nissan and Foster ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLs7YOjC2mE#t=156 ).

My comments regard only one aspect of Sustainability (People – the most significant):

• Air pollution is a enormous problem in some cities. Most of population will live in cities in the coming years. According to the WHO the economic cost of deaths from air pollution is enormously high (http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/276956/PR_Economics-Annex_en.pdf?ua=1)

• In many cities in Europe, you will not be able to inject into the city with a pollutant car.

Once you drive an electrified car and you see all those cars polluting our air, you feel like if you are putting the rubbish into the bin and your neighbours are throwing away the rubbish on the street… you feel like if you do not even think about smoking and your neighbours are smoking in a close area… Why smoking is banning and driving a pollutant car into a city is not yet. Tobacco produce cancer and pollutant cars too…

Schalk Cloete says

Agreed about the importance of health, environment and people. I think you should like part two of this article which hopefully shows up this week. It basically discusses how electrified drive can achieve all three outcomes (people, planet and profit) using puny electrified vehicles (SEVs).

I discuss the BNEF report in the latter half of my reply to Aloysius above. My views are not so far from the BNEF conclusions. Regarding the Nissan movie, all the things they are telling in that nice advertisement have been talked about for many years. Unluckily, the techno-economic challenges to making that happen at any significant scale are fat even in the affluent developed world. Personally, I would like to see that movie with much fewer cars (electrified or otherwise), but obviously Nissan will not make such an advertisement.

About the deaths from air pollution, note that, even tho’ such numbers often assign unrealistically large monetary sums to one death, cars are not the main contributor. This is best illustrated by noting that the Scandinavian nations with clean electrical play have very low air pollution costs even tho’ essentially all their cars are fossil fuelled.

Silvia Burgos says

Recently I attended a Conference about Urban Air Quality: Problems and possible solutions. You can see all the presentations in http://airuse.eu/en/event/calidad-del-aire-urbano-problemas-y-posibles-soluciones/ (Sorry some of them are in Spanish…)

Main conclusions were:

In cities like Madrid:

• Road transport is responsible of the 64.5% of the NOx emissions

• Road transport is responsible of the 76.9 of the PM ten (particulate matter less than ten micro).

• Road transport is responsible of the 78.6 of the PM Two.Five emissions (the most dangerous for human health).

When there are high pollution gigs, Madrid town hall will not permit pollutant cars come into the city, so many citizens are already thinking about getting an electrified car… Some companies like Nissan are selling electrified cars with the option of providing you one ICE car for fourteen days/year for your annual long distance trips. This measure will liquidate many cars in Spain where normally families have two cars. You could use the electrical car every day for going to work (puny distances) and switch it for a ICE car for your holidays (until the electrified vehicle market gives you the sufficient autonomy to arrive to the beach ).

This initiative and others, like Car2Go, could eliminated many cars in our cities.

Also in Europe, Dutch politicians have voted through a movement calling on the country to ban sales of fresh petrol and diesel cars kicking off in two thousand twenty five (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/Legitimate/netherlands-parliament-electric-car-petrol-diesel-ban-by-2025)

I still reminisce the two thousand six smoking ban… One year before nobody believed that smoking in restaurants, bars, offices… could be ban … One year later everybody respected the law…

Most likely electrified car is not a market for the United States, a country with oil and gas reserves and long distances. In Europe, with scarce oil or gas reserves, we have to import those fuels from other “unstable countries”, the electrical car could be a better solution if we use renewable and autochthonous energy (wind, solar, hydro) avoiding outward taxes and improving our Gross Domestic Product.

Regarding the unrealistically monetary sums to one death, in Europe (where an significant sum of our taxes go to the Social Security/Health Department), I think those figures from the World Health Organisation should be correct.

In relation to the future electro-therapy prices, I just find today this interesting article:

Moreover, another interesting one:

A record $286 billion invested in renewables in 2015, sends a strong signal to investors and policymakers that renewable energy is now the preferred option for fresh power generation capacity around the world. http://www.irena.org/News/Description.aspx?NType=A&mnu=cat&PriMenuID=16&CatID=84&News_ID=1446

I hope some of this information could be useful for your next article.

Schalk Cloete says

Thanks for the data Sylvia. I would believe the numbers you gave for Spain, given its relatively clean electrical play mix and generally service-oriented economy. It is also fairly low on the WHO air pollution list you linked previously.

Yes, Europe will be a good indicator of future transportation trends, but care should be taken to not create any more economic headwinds. GDP per capita has been vapid in this century and problems related to aging populations are only just commencing. It is significant to note that smoking has no economic function, so banning it had no meaningful economic influence. Affordable cars providing accomplish freedom of mobility is a very different story however.

Richard Corley says

I agree with many of the above criticisms and will add a few observations about your assumptions based on my practice as the proprietor and driver of an EV for the past three and a half years in Canada.

1. The statement that: “pure electrical drive should be about Two.5x more efficient than an ICE vehicle” understates by at least a factor of two the actual efficiency advantage of electrical cars over gas cars. The efficiency of energy usage in electrical cars is typically about six times greater than in gasoline cars. I have averaged more than Five.25 km per kWh in year-round driving of a two thousand twelve P85 Tesla (including road trips as far as to Florida) for the past 78,000 km. The more latest four wheel drive Teslas with nineteen inch wheels are approximately 10% more efficient. I will use five km per kWh as the reasonable average figure. The fuel consumption of generally comparable (size and spectacle) gasoline cars ranges from around eleven l/100km to fifteen l/100km (for example, Dodge Charger Srt (Mds), Porsche Panamera Turbo S Executive, Dodge Charger (Mds), Maserati Quattroporte Sq4, Mercedes-Benz Amg S 63, Jaguar Xjr Lwb, Jaguar Xjr, Hyundai Equus, Kia K900, Dodge Charger Awd (Mds), Dodge Charger Ffv, Chrysler three hundred Ffv, Maserati Quattroporte Gts, Hyundai Genesis Awd, Audi A8l Quattro) from http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/fcr-rcf/public/index-e.cfm?submitted=true&sort=annual_fuel_use_metric+asc&searchbox=&year=2016&class=L&make=all&model=all&trans=all&FT=all&cylinders=all&unit=0&kmPerYear=&cityRating=&fuelGas=&fuelPremium=&fuelDiesel=&onSearchLink=%231&pageSize=100&btnSearch=Search#aSearch

I will use thirteen l/100 km as a reasonable figure. The calculation demonstrating 6.Trio times greater efficiency for electrified cars goes after:

35,000,000.0 Joules per litre of gasoline

0.130 litre / km comparable gasoline car

Four,550,000.0 Joules / km gasoline car

Trio,600,000 Joules per kWh of electro-stimulation

0.Two kWh / km comparable electrical car

720,000.0 joule / km electrified car

6.Trio Numerous of efficiency of electrical over gasoline car

Two. The assumption that an EV must have a two hundred mile range and an eighty kWh to be acceptable is also incorrect. Based on our practice with our very first electrified car, we realized that twenty five kWh of battery storage would more than suffice for our 2nd car. Since most North American families have more than one car, the market for 2nd or third cars with a dramatically lower range is massive and could in fact comprise a majority of vehicles in North America. See: http://www.autospies.com/news/Study-Finds-Americans-Own-2-28-Vehicles-Per-Household-26437/

Three. The assumption that the cost of batteries will not fall below $100 per kWh flies in the face of our practice with exponential growth and the continually falling costs of manufactured products as volumes increase. Our practice with computers, solar power, wind power and other similar technologies demonstrate the operation of the virtuous cycle where enhancing volumes drive learning, resulting in lower prices and higher spectacle which in turn drives yet greater volumes, and so on. The capability of research and process improvements to improve the cost effectiveness of battery technologies is immense, and that industry is now only in its infancy. The practice with computers, where Moore’s Law has exceeded all expectations in its continuing, relentless driving down of costs and enhancing capacity. The same is true of solar. A few years ago solar PV was $Ten a Watt installed, and $1 per Watt for solar panels was viewed as an unachievable objective. Today the cost of panels is approaching $0.40 per Watt and $1 per Watt installed price is viewed as a realistic brief term target. See: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/First-Solar-CEO-By-2017-Well-be-Under-1.00-Per-Watt-Fully-Installed

Four. The rapidly falling costs and growing invasion of wind and solar also invalidate your assumption that: “a carbon price will also not have a sustained positive influence on BEV sales”. A growing majority of fresh electrical power generation is renewable. Unlike gasoline cars, which cannot improve their output of GHG emissions over time, electrified cars will proceed to get cleaner over time as more and more renewable energy is added to the grid. In addition, many electrical car owners also purchase solar panels. Where we live, in Southern Ontario, a ten kW residential PV system produces enough energy to power four EVs with effectively zero GHG emissions. At $200 a Tonne for CO2, a typical gas car would incur an extra cost of $20,000 over its twenty year life, which will make gas cars entirely uneconomic relative to electrified cars. Ultimately, a latest investigate has found “that battery electrified cars generate half the emissions of the average comparable gasoline car, even when pollution from battery manufacturing is accounted for.” See: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions#.VxuNROT2bTs

Five. Government recognition of the substantial climate switch benefits of EVs are leading to government programs to promote EVs which are driving up adoption (and driving down costs and prices as volumes increase. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_incentives_for_plug-in_electric_vehicles

6. Electrified vehicles also provide substantial benefits to the electrical grid, primarily through rate and request management, and ultimately by providing dispatchable energy request and supply. We presently purchase electro-stimulation at $0.049 per kWh under a program with high peak power prices where our energy consumption is managed based on information from the utility about upcoming prices. “Progressive electrical utilities are realizing that enhanced adoption of electrified vehicles (EVs) have the potential to help produce reliable, balanced, and cost effective electric current distribution for their customers through a number of direct and indirect grid services.” See: http://www.fleetcarma.com/supporting-electric-vehicle-adoption-as-electric-utility/

7. The assumptions about the costs of installing chargers and the need for public charging stations in order for EVs to achieve invasion are also flawed. In many cases owners can charge at home using existing one hundred twenty V fifteen Amp outlets where they are driving only modest distances with no extra cost for infrastructure. It may also be possible to convert a one hundred twenty Volt outlet to two hundred forty Volt (thereby doubling the charging rate) without running fresh wires by switching the breaker and ass-plug at minimal cost. As volumes increase, the cost of charging stations is now well below $500 and will proceed to fall. The cost of connecting these low cost charging stations is typically a few hundred, rather than thousands of dollars. See: http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Automotive-Electric-Vehicle-Charging-Stations/zgbs/automotive/7427415011

Schalk Cloete says

1. The quoted sentence was for a future script based on the EIA projects (cited in the article) when fresh ICEs achieve fifty two MPG and BEVs achieve one hundred thirty MPG. Today, the Two.Five ratio is only achievable in terms of highway efficiency, but substantial headroom for improvement still exists. In addition, my projection is that petite EVs (not highway-worthy) will increasingly displace ICEs in cities (see part two of this article: http://www.energypost.eu/can-battery-electrics-disrupt-internal-combustion-engine-part-2-kind/), shifting ICE traffic more towards highways. This will substantially increase average ICE efficiency.

Two. I agree. However, as I argue in the 2nd part of this article referenced above, I think this 2nd car will be an SEV in most cases. America could be an exception to this due to urban sprawl, but the vast majority of the world is built with much less sprawl, permitting for convenient use of SEVs.

Trio. Your guess is as good as mine here. The best I can do is to take the word of peer reviewed papers in prestigious journals like the Nature paper cited in the article. For a latest probe of electro-therapy prices based on the latest reputable sources, see my prior analysis here with links to all the individual energy cost estimates: http://www.theenergycollective.com/schalk-cloete/2221441/internalized-costs-results-seeking-consensus-study

Five. Sure, this article assumes very large EV cost reductions.

6. As mentioned in the article, I agree that this is an advantage, but I think large scale realization of this advantage is limited to a baseload power system. Future power systems with high invasion of intermittent renewables will require clever charging which I think will be more elaborate and expensive than it is worth. This is especially true for solar power which will require most EVs to be charged during the day. In addition to the complexity of wise charging, this will become fairly expensive in terms of the required build-out of public charging stations and extra electrical play distribution capacity.

7. The hardware costs in the link I used for my charging station cost estimates (http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2014_04_29_pulling_back_the_veil_on_ev_charging_station_costs) is not so different from those in your link. Note that I am looking at 32A and above. a 32A two hundred forty V charger will need twelve hours to charge a Tesla. BEVs will need Tesla-size batteries to truly disrupt the ICE.

Richard Corley says

Thanks for your response. I have good difficulty reconciling your statement that:

“Battery electrified vehicles (BEVs) will do well to take more than 10% of global light duty vehicle market share by mid-century”

with your acknowledgement and agreement that:

“Since most North American families have more than one car, the market for 2nd or third cars with a dramatically lower range is massive and could in fact comprise a majority of vehicles in North America” (where these cars are clearly less expensive on a life cycle basis than gas cars).

The public’s growing understanding of the massive spectacle, as well as environmental, advantages of electrified vehicles (reflected in 400,000 reservations for an electrical car which won’t be built for at least two years) combined with the growing economic advantages of electric current for brief range vehicles, seem destined to take electrified vehicles to much higher market shares.

Your article seems to have underestimated the impacts of the following mutually reinforcing and synergistic economic, psychological and policy factors, and market trends:

1. Exponential growth and declining costs of technology products. Fifty years ago, Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, predicted that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits would dual every year (the period for doubling, was subsequently revised to eighteen months) and Moore’s Law has held true for five decades. The inability of experts to predict the technological advances that would enable the continued operation of Moore’s Law has had no influence on its successful and uninterrupted operation for five decades. Your prediction of the limited invasion of electrified cars seems likely to fall victim to the same fate as AT&T’s one thousand nine hundred eighty prediction that the total market for cell phones for the year two thousand would be only 900,000 subscribers (which was wrong by more than a factor of 100). Electrified cars are today where cell phones were in 1980.

Two. Networks effects, which apply to technology markets and which make the value of a technology increasingly valuable to all users, as the level of adoption increases. Positive network effects, together with exponential technology improvement, drive exponential growth which drives yet further technological and price improvements, and network effects. More electrified cars drive construction of more charging stations, drive more purchases of electrical cars, and so on.

Trio. Bandwagon effects. The fact that the Tesla Model S, without any advertising, outsells all directly competitive luxury cars (see: Can You Guess 2015’s Top-Selling Large Luxury Car in … ) demonstrates a widespread recognition of the compelling advantages of electrical vehicles (confirmed by the reservations of the Model Trio, and the fact that electrified vehicles, namely the Volt and Tesla, have captured the highest level of customer satisfaction, as measured by Consumer Reports, for each of the past five years). See: http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-owner-satisfaction-2015/?rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.consumerreports.org%2Fcars%2Fcar-owner-satisfaction-2015%2F http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1095745_tesla-model-s-tops-consumer-reports-customer-satisfaction-index-again http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/owner-satisfaction/index.htm http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090615_heres-why-electric-cars-will-succeed-owners-just-adore-them http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1070076_chevy-volt-electric-car-owners-most-satisfied-consumer-reports-says This “cool” factor, coupled with enlargening concerns about the environment and climate switch, and rapidly falling prices, are creating a bandwagon effect in favour of electrified vehicles.

Four. The ongoing development of autonomous driving. Electrical power systems and autonomous driving technology will work synergistically together to enable automated ridesharing services which make better use of renewable energy, battery storage, parking, road and human resources. The economic benefits will be so compelling that the technology is expected to totally convert the automotive and transportation industry over the coming decades.

6. Government support for electrical vehicles. Over its twenty year life span the average car (using the North American fleet as the reference) will emit approximately one hundred Tons of CO2. These emissions principally result from the consumption of fossil fuels. In order to avoid locking in further automotive emissions, many jurisdictions are suggesting substantial economic incentives for purchasers of electrical vehicles. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_incentives_for_plug-in_electric_vehicles

I am worried that your note and responses suffer from a lack of real world practice with electrical cars and consequently fail to accurately reflect the actual requirements or market conditions. For example, in point 7, you state:

“Note that I am looking at 32A and above. A 32A two hundred forty V charger will need twelve hours to charge a Tesla. BEVs will need Tesla-size batteries to truly disrupt the ICE.”

While your calculations are mathematically correct, the assumption that a user will need to charge a Tesla-sized battery pack from empty to utter is flawed. In practice, if I go one hundred km in any direction (north, south, east or west) I will be passing a Supercharger (either outgoing and/or incoming). Consequently, I don’t need to have the car fully-charged when I leave, nor will I ever arrive home with a fully discharged battery.

My daily range requirements are approximately one hundred km (which are substantially above North American averages). This range requires that daily charging provide harshly twenty kWh of power (not eighty kWh) within a reasonable period of time. At fifteen Amps and two hundred forty Volts (which is the charging rate we use), twenty kWh is delivered in five and half hours. In practice, each day when I arrive home from work, even however I still have approximately three hundred km of range remaining, I ass-plug in the car. At midnight, it starts automatically to charge and by Five:30 am it reaches the set charge limit, around 80% or four hundred km, and stops charging. This level of charge is far more than that required for daily driving (or to get to a Supercharger, for purposes of a longer journey).

I am aware of other owners who are using the standard North American wiring (for a fifteen Amp service) to supply twelve Amps at two hundred forty Volts (which supplies twenty kWh in under seven hours). Consequently twelve or fifteen Amps, at two hundred forty Volts, will suffice for the vast majority of users. This means that most European users require only access to a standard sixteen Amp, two hundred thirty Volt outlet, and that charging infrastructure is much less of an impediment than your article would suggest.

Similarly your assumptions about the need for workplace chargers or other public chargers is inconsistent with the assumption that electrified cars will have larger batteries (which would mean that they would never have to be charged anywhere other than at home or along the road at “Supercharger” type chargers).

In closing, for all of the foregoing reasons it seems unlikely that electrical cars will not achieve a more rapid rate of adoption than that predicted by your article.

Helmut Frik says

To add some informations from germany to this point: most people here already have, or have no problem, to add sixteen A 230V three phase or 32A 230V three Phase outlets in their garages. (Houses for one family are – depending on region- usually connected with Three×63, sometimes 3x100A/230V, old houses (>60years) sometimes 3x35A/230V. So overnight charging with 20kW is possible when a fresh cable to the location of the car is built.

2nd topic would be synchronity of loading (-> clever grid), and another topic charging at work. (legal issues especially)

Matt Bohlsen says

Schalk – Excellent work, even I don’t agree with your conclusions and some of your assumptions, but I admire your efforts to get to a result.

In particular I would never believe EIA estimates. “ICE efficiency is over fifty MPG”. Seems very unrealistic. Also I agree with commentator Mike that the ICE engine and hundreds of associated parts would cost a lot more than the plain electrified engine. I put that difference closer to USD Five,000.

Also most people will charge at home overnight, so very cheap.

According to Tony Seba, once battery prices get below $200kWh, EVs will be cheaper to own as a total package. Once at $100kWh, EVs will be cheaper to buy.

On a individual practice, I have had an electrified motorbike that I use for city commuting. I have possessed it one year now, and have spent next to nothing. No registration, no service, no gasoline…..charging costs fifty cents.

Schalk Cloete says

An significant point of contention is the cost difference inbetween ICE and EV drivetrains. I looked long and hard for a good peer reviewed reference on the topic, but the one cited in the article ($1500 price advantage for EVs) was the best I could find. Do you have good references for your assumption that the EV drivetrain will be $5000 cheaper than the ICE drivetrain?

About the EIA’s fifty MPG by two thousand twenty five number, I agree that this is unlikely with only increases in engine efficiency. However, the EIA includes mild hybridization (very likely with regenerative braking) in this category. The fresh Prius gives a peek at what is possible in terms of engine efficiency. The fresh engine reportedly achieves a peak efficiency of 40%, versus 25% for most gasoline engines. The trick is then to get the engine working close to this number as much of the time as possible. Even a little bit of hybridization can help a lot in this regard. All the moving parts might sound elaborate, but maintenance costs of a Prius are about the same as that of a Leaf and there are reports of Priuses covering half a million miles and still going strong.

I’ll witness your Seeking Alpha prediction of a sustained 100% p.a. growth rate closely over the next five years. Are your numbers for unspoiled battery electrics or all plug-ins? If it is for unspoiled battery electrics, H2 two thousand sixteen will need a pretty incredible spike to reach 1%, since sales remain stuck at 0.4% year to date.

On smaller electrical vehicles, it shows up that we are in agreement. If you have not yet done so, I urge you to read part two of this article. http://www.energypost.eu/can-battery-electrics-disrupt-internal-combustion-engine-part-2-kind/

Matt Bohlsen says

As a comparison – electrified motorbikes with lead acid batteries can be purchased a lot cheaper than ICE motorbikes today. One can argue that the lithium battery can become the same price as the lead acid battery. We will see Li-ion battery prices under $50kWh before 2030. Tony Seba’s excellent movie and book says it all…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxryv2XrnqM

You will see an ICE vehicle has over Two,000 moving parts and the Tesla Model S has only eighteen moving parts…..over 100x less. So over 10x cheaper to maintain, and in time cheaper to buy.

Robert Lee says

Thinking of the relative costs inbetween BEVs and ICEs as remaining static relative to each other can’t work for future calculations. Look at what happened to Kodak as they approached a tipping point with digital photography. The supply chain for film camera supplies collapsed, end of story.

Schalk Cloete says

I assumed low battery costs ($100/kWh for the fully installed battery pack with all the required electronics, temperature control and charging equipment) in order to get a reasonable future projection.

Self driving cars are the future, due to unspoiled economics.

Electrified Vehicles are the future due to unspoiled economics.

Solar energy is the future due to unspoiled economics and that’s without including the world ultimately requiring a cleaner, healthier planet !

The tempo at which technology is advancing in producing the cheapest forms of the above will ensure all the above will be fully in place by no later then 2030. The global self driving car industry will save an enormous amount of money and also generate an enormous amount of money for the likes of real estate as cities will not require the parking space as the masses wont own a car, they will simply order one when required. We will not require the presently wasted amount of roads due to our poor use of it presently. What is so hard for people to understand is (a) the enormous switches coming and (b) the tempo at which they are coming purely due to the big leap technology is making over the next five to ten years IE in that time framework technology will leap what would have previously taken forty to fifty years because that’s how technology has advanced through out history, case in point it took not much more then ten years to go from all pony transport to all combustion engine transport.

I can reminisce as a child, a grand father listening to the radio when humanity made it to the moon, telling I cant believe it happened, I used to read about it happening in comics.

Perhaps in our children’s children’s time cars will be like they are portrayed in the Jetsons. We don’t use roads at all.

Related movie: