Who wants to end the electric car? Apparently a lot of people do. During the 1920s, Milburn electric cars were popular, particularly with ladies who didn’t like cranking gasoline engines to start them. In 1928, General Motors bought Milburn and disappeared. In 1996, EV1 electric cars appeared on the roads of California. They were quiet and fast and produced no exhaust gases. They were manufactured by GM under a mandate to reduce vehicle emissions. Ten years later, these futuristic cars had almost completely disappeared. in the documentary, Who killed the electric car, determined that batteries were not the problem, but that the culprits were mainly oil companies that would lose huge profits if EV sales took off, and GM, which did not think it would make enough profit from the car. If GM had developed and improved the EV1, they might not have gone bankrupt.
house of cards: Much of the damage to the EV1 was due to misinformation directed at politicians, regulatory agencies, and the consumer. The same campaign is being used against the new crop of electric cars. In a recent article, Why the electric vehicle house of cards must fall, John Petersen continues with the tactic. First, Mr. Petersen determines the value of an electric car by starting with a $19,000 gas-powered vehicle, deducting the costs of internal combustion engine components, and then adding the costs of necessary electric car components. This analysis found a cost of $38,800 for an electric vehicle. That cost isn’t unreasonable, but the analysis is sort of like taking a conventional oven, taking it apart, and adding parts to turn it into a microwave. There are plenty of hybrid and electric cars on the market that have an MSRP well under $38,800, like the 4-passenger Mitsubishi MiEV that is rated at 112 MPGe and lists for $21,625. The price of vehicles will certainly come down, as Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu said at the Detroit Auto Show, and he expects the cost of electric car batteries to drop from $12,000 in 2008 to $3,500 in 2015 and $1500 in 2020. There are currently waiting lists to buy many electric and hybrid cars due to high demand, so there is little scope for price negotiation.
Mr. Peterson’s article continues: “Proponents of electric transmission are selling a house of cards based on fundamentally flawed assumptions and glowing generalities that have nothing to do with real-world economics. Their elegant theories and justifications don’t hold up on paper.” , pencil and a four-function calculator. .” However, Mr. Petersen bases his economic analysis on his cost of $38,800 and a list of allowances for what he calls an extraordinary item, The real costs of alternative energy by Alex Planes. Fortunately for the future of electric cars, Mr. Planes’ actual costs are extraordinarily misleading.
Grants: Mr. Planes says that we and our political leaders need a clear look at the actual costs of energy sources, and examines subsidies for alternative energy sources to determine their true costs. Using data from the US Energy Information Administration, Mr. Planes calculates subsidies to energy sources in terms of dollar equivalents per barrel of oil. The subsidies he proposes are Coal: $0.39, oil and gas: $0.28, solar: $63, and wind $32.59. Based on his values, he says the costs of renewable energy to the government are so high that the government should buy the power and give it to taxpayers. Subsidies, however, are a poor way to estimate actual costs, as they are more indicative of the perceived future value of the resource to society.
True cost? The reason Mr. Planes’ article is extraordinarily wrong is that it doesn’t actually give you the true cost of using fossil fuels. The true cost of a resource includes not only the price but also the cost of cleaning up the environment and removing waste. Fossil fuels remove their waste by releasing it into the air, causing environmental damage and health problems for many Americans. In fact, we are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry for the cost of allowing them to freely dump their waste into the environment. Any effort to determine the true cost of subsidies must include health and environmental costs. Mr. Planes says in the comments section of his article that he should perhaps rewrite his article to include what he calls external costs. Meanwhile, many people are using his incomplete analysis to dismiss sustainable energy sources.
a real cost: It is difficult to arrive at an exact value of the actual subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, but it is possible to estimate their magnitude. Top economists like Britain’s Nicholas Stern, using the results of formal economic models, estimate that if we don’t limit our carbon emissions, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year. . , now and always. If a broader range of risks and impacts is taken into account, damage estimates could rise to 20% of GDP or more in the future, and we would run the additional risk of an environmental catastrophe.
Using 5% of US GDP for 2010 would give an environmental cost of $727 billion. The American Lung Association estimates that the EPA’s proposed guidelines for particulate matter could prevent 38,000 heart attacks and premature deaths, 1.5 million cases of acute bronchitis and aggravated asthma, and 2.7 million days lost from work or school. They estimate the economic benefits associated with reducing soot exposure to be as high as $281 billion annually. Those two add up to about $1.01 trillion, and when divided by the 13.541 million barrels of oil equivalent given in the Mr. Plans article for coal, gas and oil together add up to an additional $73.9 per subsidy. barrel of oil equivalent. Subsidies for wind and solar power don’t look so bad if it’s actually used fossil fuels: $74, solar: $63, and wind: $32.59. The calculations do not include all health and environmental costs, but they do give an idea of how much we are subsidizing fossil fuel industries by ignoring the damage to human health and the environment. Then there is the added risk of an environmental catastrophe.
Mr. Petersen, using Mr. Plane’s analysis, finds: “The law of economic gravity cannot be ignored and will not be mocked. Shiny new electric vehicles from General Motors, Ford Nissan, Toyota, Tesla Motors and a “Lots of would-be private companies like Fisker Motors and Koda are doomed to catastrophic failure. Their component suppliers will fare no better. No amount of political wishful thinking or wishful thinking can change the inevitable outcome.” When Mr. Petersen was asked about the omission of environmental and health costs in a commentary on his article, he replied that he was only interested in hard figures.
Obscenity? Mr. Petersen continues: “The ultimate obscenity is that a conversion from gasoline to electric drive will not reduce the total amount of energy used in transportation. It simply shifts the energy burden from lightly subsidized oil and gas to more heavily subsidized energy.” coal, nuclear and renewables. Not really. The amount of energy used would be reduced even if electricity from traditional coal-fired power plants is used to charge the electric vehicle. Coal-fired power plants have a thermodynamic efficiency of around 30%. Electric motors are now about 90% efficient in converting electrical energy to work, and when accounting for friction, power line transmission losses, energy lost when charging the batteries, and energy gained by the regenerative braking, the overall efficiency of using coal to run electric cars comes out around 20%. Internal combustion engines have a thermodynamic efficiency of around 15%, but drive train losses reduce this to an overall efficiency of around 10%. These efficiencies are reasonable according to a paper available at Stanford University comparing power to wheel efficiencies, rated the electric Tesla at 1,145 km/MJ and the gasoline-powered Honda Civic at 0.515 km/MJ. At today’s prices, that works out to about 5 cents a mile for the Tesla and about 12 cents a mile for the Honda.
The use of sustainable energy sources to charge the batteries would be the ideal case, since the efficiency of the energy source for the wheels would be close to 80% and carbon emissions would be greatly reduced. There would be substantial savings in energy and carbon emissions even if electric cars charged by coal-fired power plants were used. Electric vehicles have the added advantage that the infrastructure to charge the batteries already exists. The electric car doesn’t appear to be built on a house of cards as Petersen’s article suggests.
An article titled Investors see a climate opportunity to make money and create jobs, reports 450 large institutional investors who control more than $20 trillion worldwide, agree that “climate change is a risk to be avoided and also an opportunity for good investment returns.” It reports that “global investments in clean energy reached $260 billion in 2011, about five times the $50 billion in 2005.” Our energy needs will be best served by a mix of traditional and alternative energy sources and we must not allow downbeat analysis to prevent us from investing in and developing alternative sources.
(c) 2012 JC Moore