Recently a friend sent a write up about Tesla Motors. Tesla is a glamorous American company promoted by Elon Musk, of the improbably exotic name, to make glamorous and sexy electric cars. Musk made his megabucks when Pay-Pal was sold to eBay. Tesla gets him the admiration of the greenerati, the glitterati, the literati, the chatterati and the ignoranti.
Closer home, in Bangalore, Reva Electric Car Co. has mounted a mis-shapen plastic biscuit box on a golf cart and are touting it world-wide as an electric car. The Maini family, promoters of Reva, have been dining out on it for years now. In Europe the Reva is classified as a quadricycle and enjoys all kinds of fiscal and operational incentives. In India it just gets occasional press coverage.
Since so many otherwise sensible people suspend thinking just to be on the correct side of socially and politically sensitive subjects, and some have even bought them, I thought I should put down some real hard facts about electric cars. No opinions.
1. Electric cars, electric car companies, electric car designers and finally electric car entrepreneurs are not about cars. They are all about battery technology. More accurately, about storage battery technology.
2. EC's run on storage batteries. In simple words, put in X kw into a magic box. Put the box and an electric motor in a chamber on wheels. Draw power from the box to drive the motor to turn the wheels. What you get from the box is Y kw. This is inevitably less than X and depends on battery efficiency in absorption, sustainment and discharge.
3. No one has yet got a battery design which begins to be viable even at reasonably large volumes, say 5% of all cars. At least not without major state subsidies and a complete disregard by the customer of personal cost benefit analysis of ownership and running costs.
4. The second element of an EC is the electric motor. A lot of incremental work is happening but no one is even talking about making great breakthroughs in motor technology.
5. The third element is the chamber-on-wheels or the car itself. Here many improvements happen regularly or await commercialisation pending the car makers' idea of customer acceptance. Traditional car makers have been working forever on new materials, fabrication techniques, friction reduction, safety factors, chamber design, drive transmission and braking systems etc. Most of these, as also peripherals and accessories, are independent of the motive force. When developments occur, they benefit cars of all types.
6. Finally, the ultimate deal buster – the electric car by itself is not the solution to anything. Electric power has to be generated somewhere. Much of it comes from pollution spewing coal burning plants. The best of coal plants are worse than the best of internal combustion engines. Much worse after the cost of transmission, transmission losses and factor Y mentioned above in battery loss is taken into account. A smaller portion of grid power is produced also by ecology destroying hydropower plants or potentially earth destroying nuclear technologies. Some power is, of course, also generated by petro-product plants, rather like the old car that you drive around.
Apart from power generation issues, providing the logistics and creating the infrastructure for wide-spread recharge facilities 'away from home' and 'at home' could be a nightmare. No sensible estimates exist of costs and resources needed.
There are also, of course, largely unexplored, but major pollution issues with fabrication, transportation, usage and disposal of storage batteries. I could write a book on the subject but enough said.
All said and done, Electric cars are nowhere near being viable or anywhere near as green as they are made out to be. I would very much like someone to come up with solutions. Some day soon.
Closer home, in Bangalore, Reva Electric Car Co. has mounted a mis-shapen plastic biscuit box on a golf cart and are touting it world-wide as an electric car. The Maini family, promoters of Reva, have been dining out on it for years now. In Europe the Reva is classified as a quadricycle and enjoys all kinds of fiscal and operational incentives. In India it just gets occasional press coverage.
Since so many otherwise sensible people suspend thinking just to be on the correct side of socially and politically sensitive subjects, and some have even bought them, I thought I should put down some real hard facts about electric cars. No opinions.
1. Electric cars, electric car companies, electric car designers and finally electric car entrepreneurs are not about cars. They are all about battery technology. More accurately, about storage battery technology.
2. EC's run on storage batteries. In simple words, put in X kw into a magic box. Put the box and an electric motor in a chamber on wheels. Draw power from the box to drive the motor to turn the wheels. What you get from the box is Y kw. This is inevitably less than X and depends on battery efficiency in absorption, sustainment and discharge.
3. No one has yet got a battery design which begins to be viable even at reasonably large volumes, say 5% of all cars. At least not without major state subsidies and a complete disregard by the customer of personal cost benefit analysis of ownership and running costs.
4. The second element of an EC is the electric motor. A lot of incremental work is happening but no one is even talking about making great breakthroughs in motor technology.
5. The third element is the chamber-on-wheels or the car itself. Here many improvements happen regularly or await commercialisation pending the car makers' idea of customer acceptance. Traditional car makers have been working forever on new materials, fabrication techniques, friction reduction, safety factors, chamber design, drive transmission and braking systems etc. Most of these, as also peripherals and accessories, are independent of the motive force. When developments occur, they benefit cars of all types.
6. Finally, the ultimate deal buster – the electric car by itself is not the solution to anything. Electric power has to be generated somewhere. Much of it comes from pollution spewing coal burning plants. The best of coal plants are worse than the best of internal combustion engines. Much worse after the cost of transmission, transmission losses and factor Y mentioned above in battery loss is taken into account. A smaller portion of grid power is produced also by ecology destroying hydropower plants or potentially earth destroying nuclear technologies. Some power is, of course, also generated by petro-product plants, rather like the old car that you drive around.
Apart from power generation issues, providing the logistics and creating the infrastructure for wide-spread recharge facilities 'away from home' and 'at home' could be a nightmare. No sensible estimates exist of costs and resources needed.
There are also, of course, largely unexplored, but major pollution issues with fabrication, transportation, usage and disposal of storage batteries. I could write a book on the subject but enough said.
All said and done, Electric cars are nowhere near being viable or anywhere near as green as they are made out to be. I would very much like someone to come up with solutions. Some day soon.
Very interesting perspective Anil -
ReplyDeleteit seems like the push for electric cars is towards ensuring the 'local area' is not affected - the power can be generated far away, batteries can be disposed off in underdeveloped countries !
Science has been known to take 'quantum' leaps just when you wondered what more is there to be discovered.
ReplyDeleteComing to the E-vehicle space, batteries for sure present the biggest challenge in the complete drive chain. Various chemistries are on the nets out for trials. However, one needs to note that there have been substantial increases in the energy density of the batteries in the recent past. Just take some of your old cell phones of yore and compare the AHr rating printed on their batteries. Though the processors and electronics are getting thrifty, nevertheless the time for which one can run one’s iPod or a smart phone on a single charge is a testimony to the increasing energy densities of the batteries. Further, new advances-drawn from better understanding at the atomic levels, nano-level construction promise us even better energy densities. With battery technology being at last federally declared as a strategic technology to be mastered and bettered within the geographical boundaries of the US, it is now being seen as something which will be as important as the petro-chemical technology. With the focussed attention of the world the problem of battery will yield to a solution for sure-call me an inveterate optimist ;-)
Coming to the motors which will drive the EVs. Silently since past 2-3 decades a revolution took place-in the world of magnets. We now have permanent magnets which were unthinkable some time ago. These would be the deal clinchers. We now have these motors working trams and few odd EMUs. The power density of these contraptions are quite satisfactory.
Then there is another black-box which magically marries the battery output, duly modulated by the driver’s commands to the motor’s inputs. This is the power electronic component. They have become smarter and more efficient. Little known is the fact that this power electronic-motor combination powers some of the very heavy mining trucks and almost all the diesel locomotives manufactured today.
This brings us back to the battery. Here it needs to be noted that batteries are no where close to offer the flexibility offered by the liquid fossil fuels. However, we need to note that the petrol/diesel at an outlet is a product of trillions of dollars spent over a century-to divine it, refine it and transport it (not to mention the trillions spent in developing IC engines which would use these fuels), we are no where close in terms of the investments when it comes to E-Vehicles. Also we need to note that different modes of transportation have their own requirements-so if price to fly is to have investments in airports, cars have called for roads and trains need expensive lay of steel rails with expensive bed preparation all along. The problems of distribution surely need to be tackled in batteries. Mistakes would be made, but ways would be found. As the economic meltdown taught us-momentous changes beyond our control would call for life-style changes and no matter how well insulated we may be, when taps start to increasingly go dry we have to learn to live without watering our lawns or filling our pools.
fyi, Ebay bought paypal, not google.
ReplyDeletenice article.
Hi Anil, Great article. A minor comment. While discussing limitations of EC and storage batteries, good to distinguish between KW (power)and KWh/ Ahr (energy). Former determines acceleration and the latter range / endurance. Perhaps power and energy limitations of EC have different implications to Indian road users. Any thoughts? - KG
ReplyDeletehi KG,
ReplyDeleteenergy density is a big issue. it concerns everyone, everywhere as it, ceteris peribus, determines distance between charges.
what is specific to india is that there is no investment in sight in either charging infrastructure or r&d in battery technology, or for that matter, any of the other technologies crucial to electric cars.
china on the other hand is the biggest investor internationally.
the u.s., through arpa-e, it's agency charged with the mandate to bring about energy breakthroughs is also investing significantly in many projects some of which will benefit electric cars. see http://arpa-e.energy.gov/
currently the biggest progress, however, seems to be happening in hybrid cars. which suits all auto-makers as it protects their investment in internal combustion.