Passing The Survival Test

Angelica reacts with exasperations to the tale of the EV1. She says she doesn't know whether to pity or bitchslap humanity. I personally go for bitchslapping, because while it's effectiveness may be low, the effective change accomplished by pity is zero.

I know this is starting to get tiresome, but I'd like to write just a bit more about the advantages of electric cars. I think some people see battery-electric cars (BEVs) as a technology that is the poor, retarded cousin to the athletic, witty hot bod on campus that is fuel cells, or maybe hybrids. And these are the environmentalists! I'd ask you to imagine what Detroit thinks about BEVs, except we already know that story.

(For an excellent review of the story of the EV1, read this fella.)

In case it's not clear, a BEV is a car that gets all of it's power directly from the electrical grid - same as your house. This is opposed to all currently mass-produced cars, which get their power entirely from gasoline - even hybrids just convert their gasoline to electricity. It is also opposed to plug-in hybrids (a technology that I've also been vocal about) which get some part of their power from the electrical grid. Finally, BEVs are similar in a sense to a theoretical fuel-cell car, in that their energy is electrical. However, there are a number of important differences.

First off, unlike plug-in hybrids and fuel cell cars, BEVs actually exist, and have been made in large numbers. This is a big, big plus. A here-and-now shantytown is better than a make-believe palace. Compare the existence of BEVs to the total non-existence of fuel cell cars (some wags are beginning to call them "fool's cells") and exactly one existing plug-in hybrid made out of a Prius in California.

Ah, but conventional hybrids exist too, and in far larger numbers than BEVs, right? True. But there's a problem with incremental improvements to gasoline cars. The improvements are more likely to be used to add power to the cars, rather than fuel efficiency. This is a process we've seen in conventional cars and SUVs for two decades now, and we're beginning to see it again with hybrid cars. Linda McQuaig has summed up this process as inevitably leading not to cars that run forever on fumes, but on 18-wheelers that accelerate like race cars. Also, as someone pointed out in comments to a previous post, incremental improvements to gasoline consumption can't realistically keep up with increasing demand. If each American was driving a Prius-equivalent car today, America would buy a respite for less than a decade until consumption (and therefore prices) caught up.

On the topic of oil supplies, it should be obvious now that neither of the conventional options presented to the public (conventional gasoline cars or hybrids) can realistically address the problem of global oil consumption. Even if America weren't besotted with the SUV, demand from China and India is liable to keep growing and therefore keep pressure on prices. Add the fear of peak production to the mix, and the world needs an escape hatch, pronto.

So what are the options? Well, the most popular non-gasoline option these days if fuel cells. But there's a number of problems with hydrogen as a power supply for cars. First off, the fuel cells themselves are still to expensive by a factor of 100. The hydrogen they run on can't be made cheaply or efficiently yet, it can barely be stored at all, and the best fuel cells convert hydrogen to electricity with an efficiency of about 50%. In case you're wondering, this is the short list of complaints. A longer version was written by former US DoE official Joseph Romm, called The Hype About Hydrogen. Don't get me wrong - long-term, hydrogen makes some sense. But I wonder whether it will ever be able to compete with batteries for some very simple reasons: Fuel cell's efficiency will always be lower than batteries, and it's questionable whether it will ever be price-competitive with batteries.

I don't mean to dismiss hydrogen fuel cells entirely - I continue to keep up as best I can, and I do try and post the good news with the bad. But I'd like to make the case for battery-electric cars here. So what the big deal about BEVs? It's hard to know where to begin. They're entirely clean on the user's end, dead simple to maintain, (should be) cheap to buy, obviate the need for gas stations and Exxon, and are blessedly quiet. I say they're clean on the user's end because it obviously depends on where they get their energy from. But it's sobering to note that a BEV powered by a dirty old coal plant would still emit less CO2, CO, and Nitrogen Oxides (while slightly increasing the sulphur) then a gasoline powered car.

Obviously, a BEV that's charged from a solar panel is the holy grail. And here again it compares favourably with hydrogen. The hydrogen future's dream is making H2 from water and renewable electricity. The problem with this scenario is that the current best technology can only operate at about 50% efficiency on both ends of the equation, meaning that before you've even turned on your hydrogen car you've lost 75% of the energy you put in to it. Meanwhile, batteries can store electricity with 80% efficiency. But the picture doesn't get better if we account for fuel cells getting better in the future. Even if our water-to-H and H-to-energy efficiencies are 90% (this is certainly unrealistic) the overall efficiency is 81% - a 1% margin over current commerical batteries. Hardly enough to notice.

Now, there are some technical shortcomings to BEVs. Their range is shorter than gasoline cars (200 miles versus 3-400 for gas) and they take longer to "refuel" (45 minutes for an 80% charge on an EV1, versus say 5-10 minutes for a gas station.) But compared to the alternatives, these technical hurdles look like the molehills they are. There are already batteries that can be near-fully charged in 5 minutes, and some limited-edition BEV cars have already gotten 300 miles on a full charge. In short, from a technical point of view, there's no reason to believe that BEVs can't deliver the performance people believe they "need". (How often people actually need to travel more than 300 miles is an argument for another time.)

The dealbreaker for me is the simple fact that we already have an electrical infrastructure, unlike the proposed alternative fuels that are bandied about. If required, you could literally plug your BEV in to the 3-prong outlet in your wall - though it would take hours to charge. Better to use a 240v plug - something so arcane you only find it in every home with an electric clothes-dryer. We need to find some more electricity for our cars, but less than you'd think. Engineer-Poet has argued that the entire US car fleet could be run on less than 200 GW. Now, this is a lot of energy, no doubt about it. But it's equivalent to adding 20% more to America's existing electrical generating capacity - or saving an equal amount through conservation. Frankly, it's almost inconceivable that we couldn't save 10% quickly, and add another 10% of new capacity just as quickly. (We only need to add new electricity as quickly as we're making BEV cars, remember. This will take at least a decade, and probably closer to two.)

And what would we get for that? (I swear I'm wrapping this up soon.) Well, first of all our air gets much clearer and easier to breathe. We dramatically cut our CO2 output. The price of oil falls earthward as the US (and presumably, other large-consumer nations) suddenly free up tens of millions of barrels of oil each day. China and India get to continue growing at a brisk pace for a while, and maybe some light finally begins shining again in Africa as energy prices decline for a while. And those of us who despise the House of Saud can chuckle as oil prices plummet. Even if they don't fall too far, it will be the largest single step we could take in protecting ourselves from the danger of Peak Oil. In short, we pass the test of the 21st century - can industrial civilization survive?

The problems, of course, are more human than technological. Will people accept cars that are so different from what they're used to? Will the state step in to force them? My personal belief is that when push comes to shove, the answer to both questions will be yes. We'll have to accept BEVs, or at the very least plug-in hybrids, because there aren't any better options.