Simon Butcher

The Electric Car

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Who killed the electric car?I recently watched “Who Killed the Electric Car?” which offers an interesting perspective on what happened to GM's EV1 — possibly the first practical electric car to appear. By its final generation, the car boasted the lowest drag co-efficient of any production car in history, clocked a top speed of nearly 130km/h (but was in reality limited because of gear design), and had a maximum range of 120–250km per full-charge.

The EV1 was amazing technology for its time, and not a bad looking car either, but for various reasons GM destroyed the cars and moved on to much more important things like the producing gas guzzling pile of junk known as the Hummer, and joining the Global Climate Coalition to help sway negative Kyoto Protocol sentiment. They had to do something special since they destroyed several tram-ways last century.

So, what happened to the electric car anyway?

Well, the EV1 was actually the 3rd time that an electric car made it on the market. History tells us that the electric car, in fact, preceded the internal combustion engine car, being invented in the 1830's and persisting for around 100 years. In their final days, they had an average top speed of 30km/h and had a range of bugger-all.

The 2nd time the electric car appeared in any sort of major way was in the late-50's–mid-60's, in particular with the Kilowatt. This under-developed car had a top speed of around 60km/h and could only drive for an hour at top speed after a full charge. Needless to say, it didn't sell well, with only 47 built.

Since 1987, Australia's gruelling World Solar Challenge has vehemently inspired innovations in solar panels, electric motors, light weight chassis, powerful batteries and energy efficient battery controllers. Ultimately, the event has helped inspire the 3rd era of electric cars.

General Motors sparked the modern era of electric cars with their outstanding EV1 in 1996, with other models appearing in the late-90's from big brands such as Ford, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, and Peugeot. Most came in limited manufacturing runs, and were considered unsuccessful commercially.

Somewhat-of-a resurgence in interest has been sparked by Tesla Motors, named after the amazing and under-rated electric genius Nikola Tesla. They've designed an amazing sports car that is 100% electric; The Tesla Roadster, originally code-named “Dark Star”, is a nice looking car with some amazing specifications — presently a top speed of just over 200km/h, a range of around 325km on a single charge, and 0–100km/h acceleration in under 4 seconds. The car also has a build-in charger so that with a special cable you can charge it anywhere there's a power point, but it will take longer.

The Roadster is a lovely piece of engineering with a surprising price-tag of just under USD$100,000 (presently ~EUR€75,000/~AUD$125,000), which seems steep until you consider the new technology and class this car is in. This isn't a Bugatti, but it still proves that electric cars are not a compromise compared with internal combustion engine cars.

As Tesla ramp up production of the Roadster, they are developing a new model, code-named WhiteStar, which aims to be the electric equivalent of a BMW 5-series, coming in with a reasonable target price tag of around USD$50,000 (~EUR€40,000/~AUD$60,000). Comparitively, the EV1 was estimated to have had a street-price of USD$40,000–$50,000.

Other manufactures are appearing on the market too now, so the next decade should be very interesting in terms of competition and development.

At the turn of this millennium, though, it looked like a pure electric car was practically doomed. The USA declared hydrogen as the future fuel of choice and since then hybrid cars and hydrogen cars have unfortunately become the goal of major manufacturers.

Personally, I believe hybrid cars are simply delaying the inevitable and stagnating innovation while providing a great deal of positive “marketing fluff” for the automotive industry. It also keeps the oil companies in business, and will help increase the price of fuel because of lower demand. Ultimately this will impact everything else because of rising transportation costs and our expanding reliance on imported goods.

Hydrogen isn't an ideal fuel source for the future either. It is clean to use, and produces water as a waste product, which is fantastic. The CSIRO with the collaboration of RMIT announced in January that it would be possible to generate your own hydrogen using a small device that slowly collects and stores hydrogen at home, ready to be used in a car.

The problem with hydrogen is that it is not a harvestable energy but rather an energy carrier. In layman's terms, we can't go and simply extract hydrogen without expending a lot of energy in the conversion process. I see hydrogen as being an obsolete fuel before it even took off: Battery technologies are overtaking hydrogen in so far as energy storage per cm², the energy requirements of large-scale hydrogen production still hasn't been overcome, and the investment required to create yet-another distribution network for a new energy source is enormous.

Common complaints about electric cars include the “longer exhaust pipe” argument, which does have some truth behind it. Essentially, it's believed that electric cars simply shift pollution from roads to power plants, where coal is common, particularly in Australia. Unfortunately little Johnny has committed Australia to nuclear power, which further exasperates environmental concerns, albeit in the longer-term though (something politicians never understand). This is a shame, since we were going to build the world's largest solar tower.

Ultimately we need to find alternative energy production, in harvestable form, on all levels, which presently is heading towards primarily solar, hydro and wind, in that order. If used, existing solar power technology alone could provide us with several-thousands of times more energy than we presently use. Spain have taken the solar-tower challenge from Australia and made it a reality with their mighty (but still unfinished) Seville Tower, of which the BBC were lucky to receive a guided tour.

Giant Panasonic R14G (‘C’-size) batteryIronically while walking back to the office today from lunch I spotted a giant battery in a skip. It probably would have been funnier if it was a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 battery, but it did remind me of Toshiba who announced in 2005 a Li-Ion battery that can be charged to 80% capacity within a minute, compared to the usual 2–3 hours. This will solve the charging-time problem with electric cars, and should appear in the market soon; it proves that our increasingly mobile lifestyles are hastening development of battery technologies.

I've never owned a car, because I've never needed one, but I've always said that it must be 100% electric and something more substantial than a crappy golf-cart inside the body of a plastic Smart. It looks like this will soon be realistic!

Now, what happened to the flying car we were promised…?


Categories Geek, Rambling

Comments

  1. Telsa motors has a competitor the Velozzi! The good thing about the electric car is that is centralises power production this is a good thing. The problem with solar and wind is that they are inconsistent, behind every renewable energy source in Australia, there is a coal fired power station on standby. The other issue with solar in particular is the sillicon shortage. That being said renewable energy such as wind, solar ( furnace variety not panels ) are good for peak loads. Solar for example is usually around when we need 'extra energy'. Conventional wind power is a dead end, as it is extremely expensive and extremely unreliable at the 300ft altitude of the modern 'turbines towers'. This is not to say all wind is bad, there are some unique helium balloon kite designs ( eg. www.magenn.com ) that raise the turbine to 1000ft.. at that altitude wind is very consistent and predictable. Other renewable energy sources such as tidal and wave hold great promise for the illusive 'base load' renewable power. Currently their are only two renewable energy source that is not just for the 40% peak load: Hydro, which is cheap to build if you happen to be building a dam! And geothermal, while extremely cost effective, is insanely expensive 'upfront' and thus over looked unless their is obvious area suited to it. The two other main base load supplies are coal: Coal is abundant, unfortunately it takes days to 'heat up' and 'cool down' the furnaces and all the emissions. That aside, the real damage done to the planet by coal isn't the smoke stacks, it's the land ravaged by mining. Which brings me to nuclear, while it has a stigma about it, it is one of the cleanest forms of base load power ( The cleanest by far is the geothermal, then hydro ). The downside is it's waste is very toxic and concentrated, and it is difficult to mine for uranium which is already in short supply, and has to be 'enriched'. Modern nuclear reactors can use liquid metal or gas for cooling or alternate fuel supplys such as thorium and thus have different fuel cycles with different waste life cycles and different levels of toxicity of the final waste. Including reactors that operate at sub critical levels. Nuclear is one area that is definitely worth further investigation and research, particularly in the area of closed loop fuel cycles. All this aside however, and back on to electric cars, our society is entirely based on oil, this is what really killed the electric car. in 2005 we hit the PEAK OIL and unless massive new quantity's of oil is found, OIL is in decline. The unfortunate aspect of this is that oil is used to make plastic, used in medicine and OIL usage is increasing exponentially. Obviously this is going to cause MAJOR problems, as farming equipment, transportation, mining equipment, turbines etc.. ALL use OIL, hell even our roads are just rocks in oil ! So here we are on the dawn of a new area, with two major problems, climate change and a massive energy crisis. Fundamentally, these two problems have the same root cause: Our impact on the planet.

  2. (Author)

    Wow, that's a long comment! Nuclear is great when you consider that even today most of the spent fuel can be recycled into new fuel, but ultimately there's still a waste by-product that's going to take a long time before it's safe. We still have no solution to that problem, but again there's this feeling that it's not an issue because it's so far into the future. Crap. Wind isn't too bad as an energy source when used properly, but unfortunately it's not. Remember on the road-trip the self-sufficient petrol station in France with its own tiny wind turbine, water recycling, and so forth. Current trends seem to have isolated wind turbines linked to a diesel genset to add a boost when production is low rather than storing energy when production is higher than demand. Solar wouldn't be too rediculous if more solar towers were built. Australia really dropped the ball there, and I'm disappointed about that. Solar PV panels are great in low quantities and should be encouraged for houses in suburbia, along with solar hot water which is already a booming Australian export. I'm curious about geothermal power plants, in particular those using deep-sea hydrothermal vents which have the potential of producing a surprising amount of electricity. Deep sea exploration needs to advance before this becomes viable, however similar land-based geothermal models have been put to paper for a very long time: Nikola Tesla even came up with plans. Some more exotic ideas have come up, such as one that involves giant solar stations tethered in geosynchronous orbit to convert solar-radiation into electricity. I'd be curious to see the cost differential between a nuclear plant and a geothermal plant. I wonder what the environmental concerns will be for obtaining zero-point energy? :)

  3. The long half life vs short half life thing is a bit of a misconception. After all.. stable matter is merely matter with an unmeasurable half life ! The long the half life the less radioactive it is.. ironically depleted uranium is actually 5 times better at radiation sheilding than lead! While a hotly debated topic, nuclear waste is not that difficult to store, their are 100's of natural nuclear reactors around the world that are controlled by the boiling of ground water. That being said, my biggest concern with nuclear IS the storage of the waste, as the Australian governments idea of importing depleted fuel, and storing it in a ditch to make a quick buck, was a little scary. Although Australia dropped the ball on the worlds largest tower, the solar thermal vent. Atleast, they are building a solar furnace in Victoria near Mildura. What i wonder, is why we have a power source that gets power from the electromagnetic field of the earth? I mean the core of the planet is going anywhere soon. And by the time it does, earth will be like mars. Nikola Tesla was way before his time. The funny thing about ZPE is they are asking the same question they work asking about nuclear.. If we tap into it.. will it cause a chain reaction if we lose control and tear a hole in space time. Apparently if this happened, in theory, not only would we not no about it, but either would our neighboring galaxies ! That's a rather large environmental concern ;)

  4. (Author)

    You're not thinking like a politician. ZPE is _fantastic_ when you consider a minor disaster would theoretically wipe out half our solar system! They've been using depleted uranium in military armour for quite some time because of its characteristics like shielding, as you mention, but also its strength/density. Apparently it's difficult to market though. Hmm, curious. Depleted uranium can't be used in Belgium though, since they enacted a blanket-ban on such stuff back in March. The ban is designed to stop the proliferation of uranium based weapons, even though Belgium had none in the first place! Long story… While nuclear waste isn't difficult to store, it still remains dangerous for a long period of time. How to do you communicate this fact well in the future? Are you sure civilisation as we know it will understand what was written or drawn? How do you guarantee the maintenance and security (safety not pilfering) of the storage site? Hmm.

  5. That sounds like typical Belgian politics ! As for storage, if the depleted waste is encased in glass then put in a metal container and buried deep underground. Then the waste is quite safe, infact, safer than before we took it out of the ground ! Most of the danger in nuclear fuel, is not in the reactors or long term storage. But in the enrichment process! :( They just have pools of the stuff in warehouses getting "enriched"

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