BY Robert W. Poole Jr.
Despite the tall tale in the 2006 film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” General Motors Corp.’s EV1 was not ready for prime time.
I was one of a group of opinion leaders invited to take the car for a test drive on a hot summer day in 1996. While the EV1 was nice and peppy for a short drive, I noted with dismay that the cars available for us to test drive were all being pre-cooled from an external air conditioning source.
The vehicle’s own lead-acid battery pack was unable to cope with summer air conditioning loads, in addition to moving the vehicle the 60 to 80 miles that one charge would take it.
So no, it was not an auto/oil industry conspiracy that led the California Air Resources Board to rescind its 1990 mandate that 10% of all cars sold in the state by 2004 must be zero emission. Rather, the board was simply acknowledging the reality that the technology was not yet there to produce such vehicles.
Recent articles in The Economist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review recount the remarkable progress in battery technology in the past 10 years. For a while, it looked as if nickel metal hydride was going to be the replacement for lead-acid batteries,easier to recharge and more energy per pound, but at a higher cost.
But more recently, engineers have been figuring out new ways to scale up lithium-ion batteries like those we use in our laptops and cell phones. It looks to me as if one or two versions of this approach will prove to be commercially viable for the first successful generation of plug-in hybrids.
First-generation hybrids like the Toyota Prius use the battery to supplement a gasoline engine. But plug-in hybrids have enough battery power to handle short trips (typically 30 to 40 miles) entirely on battery power, needing the gasoline engine only for longer trips. For a typical commuter, such a vehicle can handle the daily round-trip commute, then recharge at night.
GM has contracts with two competing lithium-ion battery makers in the hopes that at least one will prove to be good enough to use in its Chevy Volt, scheduled for late 2010 introduction.
New Technology in Time?
These developments spark several thoughts. First, there’s a sobering lesson for government agencies such as the California Air Resources Board about the perils of trying to force technologies into being. Whenever you see mandates for hydrogen fuel cells or ethanol cars, be very suspicious, because the government has a lousy track record in picking winners and losers.
Just because the catalytic converter came along in the nick of time to enable automakers to comply with tough federal tailpipe emission standards does not mean that any and every energy or emissions mandate can be met,at all, or at an acceptable cost to consumers.
Second, how successful plug-in hybrids will be in reducing carbon dioxide emissions depends hugely on the source of the electricity used. A table in MIT’s Technology Review compares the same vehicle’s emissions for a whole variety of power sources. Compared with conventional gasoline propulsion at 452 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, a current-day hybrid would produce 294 grams of carbon dioxide per mile.
But a plug-in hybrid using electricity from conventional coal-fired power plants produces 326; only with coal gasification and carbon dioxide sequestration (a costly proposition) would the car get down to 166 grams per mile. Using conventional natural gas electric power, the plug-in hybrid gets 256. But using nuclear electricity, that figure drops to 152,essentially just the carbon dioxide produced by the small amount of gasoline used.
Third, while I’m excited by the whole raft of startup electric hybrid car companies (such as Lake Forest-based Fisker Automotive Inc. and Northern California’s Tesla Motors Inc.) and would love to see them succeed, I would not put my own money into them.
Mass production of reliable, cost-effective automobiles is a very different thing than producing a brilliant prototype, as numerous entrepreneurs such as Malcolm Bricklin and John DeLorean found out the hard way. My money is on GM, Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and the others that really know mass production.
Off-Peak Recharging
Finally, one key to the success of plug-in hybrids as a “green” solution to carbon emissions is how and when they recharge. The ideal is for them to do so at night, when electric utilities’ inexpensive base-load generators must keep turning and they have lots of spare, cheap capacity.
The worst impact would be if huge numbers of people try to recharge their plug-in hybrids during peak hours, when costly peak-power units have to come on line to meet the demand for building air conditioning and other uses.
The answer to this is “congestion pricing” of electricity. And fortunately, utilities in California are gearing up to meet this challenge. The three big ones,PG & E; Corp., Edison International and San Diego Gas & Electric Co.,are installing $5 billion worth of smart electric meters between now and 2012. These meters make it easy to charge variable rates, based on the time of day.
SDG & E; is already offering half-price night-time rates for plug-in car recharging. (One idea that does not make sense is for helpful governments to install charging stations at places like park and ride lots or workplaces. That charging would take place during peak electricity usage times, precisely when electricity costs the most. Unless they use pay-meters that charge a peak price, such charging stations would be ill-advised.)
So the prospects for practical electric vehicles,as plug-in hybrids,are really looking up.
Poole is director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation in Los Angeles. His comments are excerpted from his regular column.
