Big Oil takes another stab at killing the electric car

[wtmusic]

If you've seen Who Killed the Electric Car? you know all about how Chevron/Texaco snapped up the patent to the NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) battery -- capable of delivering 160+ miles of range for GM's ill-fated EV1-- and is essentially sitting on it, forcing the world to gobble more oil until a suitable replacement is found.

Enthusiasts saw a ray of hope with the development of Lithium-Ion technology for batteries, which has an even higher energy density than NiMH. The problem with LiCoOOH, or Lithium Cobalt (a variety of Lithium-Ion) chemistry is it's high volatility -- batteries which are abused or overcharged can spontaneously ignite, exploding or spewing flames which could easily prove deadly in a relatively minor car accident (video).

Enter LiFePO4 -- which replaces a cobalt cathode with an iron one, and you have nearly the same energy density in a much safer format (some say as safe as conventional lead-acid batteries). A123 Systems recently licensed their LiFePO4 technology to Black and Decker for powering a new line of DeWalt power tools, and was promptly served with a lawsuit. By whom? The Regents of the University of Texas (you know, that big state that digs oil out of the ground) claiming that a 2003 patent makes LiFePO4 technology their own.

Was it really UT that was behind the patent? Of course not -- research funding was paid for by The Welch Foundation, which claims to be "the United States’ oldest and largest private funding sources for basic chemical research". It is named after Robert Alonzo Welch, who made his fortune in not just any chemicals but specifically oil and minerals -- and the board of Welch is almost exclusively made up of oil men.

Though the petrochemical industry may not be innovating any energy solutions, you can be confident that they will be at the forefront of squashing the solutions which might deprive them of the filthy livelihood in which they have invested so much.

[BayCityProgressive]

1. My solution

"If you've seen Who Killed the Electric Car? you know all about how Chevron/Texaco snapped up the patent to the NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) battery -- capable of delivering 160+ miles of range for GM's ill-fated EV1-- and is essentially sitting on it, forcing the world to gobble more oil until a suitable replacement is found."

Elect socialists, take the patent from the company because of national security interests and create a public/private joint venture and get these cars on the road.

[Erika]

2. Corrupted Capitalism as we now have it will do no public good

I agree with you totally.

[wtmusic]

3. That works for me

especially when a company is so blatantly preventing progress, by exploiting the rules that were supposed to encourage it.

[BayCityProgressive]

4. I bet you

could get Sanders to introduce a bill doing something like this. He isn't afraid to say he is socialist and he has proposed radical things in the past. In Vermont he created city-run daycare, co-op boat housing, community trust housing ect. The Democrats are good and all, but we should really focus on getting people like Feingold and Sanders who don't take corporate cash, to propose radical changes.

[happydreams]

14. A Clear and Present Danger to our existence...

the oil companies are.

[Canuckistanian]

32. There should be a "Use It or Lose It" law

If you're going to sit on a patent that has potential to benefit society, you should have to forfeit that right.

In these cases, especially. If UT And Chevron/Texaco aggressively seek to retain patent rights, yet make NO effort to market (or license) the technology themselves, you could argue that they are using patents to impede commerce, not to protect any future exclusivity.

[wtmusic]

34. Exactly

We passed a law forbidding "cybersquatting" (snapping up domain names and ransoming them to companies who have a legitimate use for them), and there seems to be no fundamental legal difference between the two.

[Canuckistanian]

35. Hi, wtm

How's the car going?

[wtmusic]

36. Hey CK

Great...got the motor, getting motor mounts next week.

I found some LiFePO4 batteries at about half the price of other suppliers, they're actually being manufactured, but there's a catch--they're in China:

http://www.thunder-sky.com/home_en.asp

If I can figure out the thorny little problem of how to recharge them, I think I'm going to get them. I've read some great reviews...will keep you posted.

[Cobalt-60]

5. We'll have to start producing electric car kits

using the batteries we have.
There must be a way to break this off in their greedy *sses

[BayCityProgressive]

6. I don't see why we allow

private for-profit business to hold things that could protect our country, the world, or the environment because they may not make money off of it. This is totally wrong and a limit should be put on this kind of "hostage capitalism". These elites are holding the world hostage, literally. If we could get a bunch of REAL leftists elected we would have a bill giving the gov. the power to take patents in events like this and create public/private ventures if the holding company is unwilling to release it. I bet that would make them think twice. Same with preventative medicine...I think we get a lot of expensive stuff to treat the symptoms rather than inexpensive (less profitable stuff) that would stop certain illnesses from happening.

[cdsilv]

7. Couldn't we get someone like Soros to sue them for 'abuse of patent'? n/t

[wtmusic]

8. Apparently there is some doubt as to whether it (the patent)

would hold up in court -- the claim includes cathodes made of every "first row transition metal" including chromium, titanium, iron, magnesium, copper etc without actually indicating the specific benefits of each. I'm not an attorney but it logically seems this is overreaching.

[w4rma]

9. Without bribes, I don't think their patent can hold. (nt)

[drm604]

11. Even so

they can probably tie it up in the courts for years.

[Gregorian]

10. Edited post. Just plain incorrect thinking.

But still, my final thought is valid. We need to stop thinking in terms of "Car".

My advice- ride a bike.

[wtmusic]

12. In CA driving an electric car is 85% - 90% cleaner

per mile and on average, than its internal combustion counterpart. Not to mention it costs about 1/6 as much for the energy.

In the eastern US it's somewhat less than that, but still cleaner by a clear margin.

BTW I always ride a bike when possible and for recreation as well. I average about 100 mi/week.

[Gregorian]

13. Oops. Pardon me. I was thinking hydrogen.

I guess I'm still raging mad after moving to a place where I have to hit the road on my bike. I can't believe it. It's been years. People in this country are just insane. They don't give bikes any room at all.


At any rate, I was confusing power generation with hydrogen generation. I'll edit my post.

I wish there were more people like you. The numbers are growing. 100 miles per week is respectable. Good for you! I admit it's one of the single most important topics to me. And rightly so. If we biked we wouldn't need oil in great quantities, and we'd be healthier. And that's saying a hell of a lot.

[NNadir]

15. Well if we must have cars, electric cars aren't really a bad idea in most cases.

I'd rather we didn't have cars at all.

If electricity is made from coal - and in this country most of it is - this might prove dubious in any case.

[gravity]

16. If there is an electric car that can be profitable

it would be out by now. Why would any sane businessman turn that down?

NiMH batteries aren't effecient and don't have nearly the energy densities to give cars the range comparable to their gas cousins.

[wtmusic]

17. Because the sane businesspeople at GM realize

their parts and service businesses are at stake. And the sane businesspeople at the American Petroleum Institute realizes their entire sector is at stake.

Pretty big incentive, don't you think? $125B for Exxon alone last year -- the largest corporate profit of any business in history.

Have you seen "Who Killed the Electric Car?" In it an ex-GM board member admits that other boardmembers did not want the EV1 to succeed, plain and simple. It doesn't get much clearer than that, until you ask yourself why 1,300 brand new cars (which had buyers) were ground into little pieces...

Re: not having the range of their gas cousins, I will quote from the film: "Yes, it's true that the electric car is not for everyone. Given its limited range, it is only suitable for 90% of the population."

[gravity]

18. Why doesn't honda, toyota, ford, or any car company produce an electric car?

It's not profitable. This is what capitalism is about, if there exists an opportunity to make money, someone will exploit it.

[wtmusic]

19. You need to see the movie

They did. The Ford Think, the Honda EV Plus, and the Toyota Rav 4 all disappeared within two years of each other.

It's very profitable, but would require a major, expensive shift in their assembly lines and virtual elimination of their parts and service businesses. Right now, the environment is propping up antiquated technology as well as GM's bottom line. Is that the way it should be?

Seat belts were unprofitable. Air bags were unprofitable. Catalytic converters were unprofitable, yet somehow all the automakers seemed to weather the storm just fine--after being forced, by regulation, to take some responsibility.

[gravity]

20. And why did all those cars disapeared in two years?

To state it bluntly, they suck. They are too expensive, too small, offer limited range, and takes a long time to charge. No one is going to spend $30,000 for a two seater car that can only go 100 miles, and takes 4 hours to recharge.

GM also sold the geo metro, which is about the same size as the ev1 and got 50 mpg. They stopped selling them because they couldn't sell enough even when they cost only $10k.

Electric cars were around for over a hundred years and they never took off for the same reason. Batteries have lower energy densities by a factor of 400 to 1. In other words, 10 gallons of gas is the equivilant to 32,000 lbs of batteries. The technology has improved over the century and new batteries have higher densities, but it still has a long way to go before it is any where near the compacity of liquid fuels.

The only thing they have comparable to gasoline in terms of energy is fuel cells, which have their own problems that keep it from being a viable solution.

There is no magic technology out there now that allows us to store massive amounts of electricity in a car. If the technology ever exists and is at a decent price, then car companies will be jumping all over the opportunity to produce it. There is no grand conspiracy behind it.

[NNadir]

21. To put it more bluntly, the only reason that there are gasoline fueled

cars is that their external cost is subsidized, mostly by human flesh.

When the automobile was invented, it's range was nothing like a hundred miles, mostly because there were no paved roads. Most automobiles broke down at least once or twice a day.

Every automobile that operates today exists only because of the massive hidden automotive subsidy. If there were a real market based on real costs, the automotive industry - including the gasoline powered automotive industry - would collapse.

I don't necessarily believe that there was a conspiracy to stop electric automobiles, but on the other hand, I don't believe that electricity is an unsuitable approach to transportation.

It would not surprise me to learn that the Board of Directors of GM are quite clubby with the boards of energy companies, though. The trend in recent times has been toward a smaller oligarchy, and not a viable competitive struggle between broadly based economic ideas.

The fastest land based commercial vehicle on the face of the earth - and one of the most efficient - is powered by electricity, not gasoline.

Electricity <em>can</em> be, under the right circumstances, the cleanest form of energy there is.

If one doubts the vast improvement in batteries, not that I necessarily adovcate <em>cars</em> one should try to kill an annoying toy by waiting for the batteries to die.

The land speed record was powered by electricity that released almost no greenhouse gases.

I suspect that the main reason electric cars are not more popular is that there are no public outlets. There should be such outlets.

Another wise choice would be time variable electricity rates. This would allow for the leveling of the electrical load.

[wtmusic]

22. You drive more than 100 miles/day?

Then what can I say, the car's not for you. It sucks (just not for the vast majority of American drivers, who never had a chance to own one).

10 gal of gas is equivalent to 32,000 lbs of batteries? The EV1 had about 2,000 lbs of batteries, went 160 miles, and had better 0-60 acceleration than a Turbo Porsche. By your math, you're getting about 256 miles to the gallon.

You don't know what you're talking about.

[whopis01]

23. Exactly which Turbo Porsche are you talking about?

and had better 0-60 acceleration than a Turbo Porsche

<P>
The EV1 could do 0-60mph in 7 seconds (for the parallel hybrid model - the others were slower).
A turbo Porsche can do 0-100km/h (0-62mph) in about 3.9 seconds (3.7 with the right transmission).

Honestly, I don't know why anyone needs anything like that anyway. However, it does not help an argument to make up false 'facts' to emphasize your points.

[wtmusic]

24. One with the air let out of its tires

My mistake--I was confusing it with performance for Tesla Roadster

A list of 2007 model cars which EV1 acceleration beats or meets:

Pontiac Grand Prix
Volkswagen Eos
Chevrolet Impala
Dodge Magnum
Volkswagen Passat
Chevrolet Malibu MAXX
Chevrolet Monte Carlo
Ford Crown Victoria
Saturn Aura

http://www.autos.com/autos/rankings_acceleration?cat=passenger_cars&segment=midsize_cars&rank=acceleration&year=0

and many others. Point being: though it wasn't a sports car, the car hardly "sucked". It's performance specs were on the good side of other mid-size passenger cars.

[IDemo]

27. May have been referring to the "TZero"

Shown here out-accelerating a Ferrari, a Porsche Carrera, and a Corvette. The TZero is from AC Propulsion, one of the early developers of the V2G concept I mentioned in another post here.

[Strelnikov_]

25. So making a profit is man's highest calling?

Preservation of resources and the environment for future generations is of no concern?

The only way ICE vehicles are 'profitable' is by ignoring the external costs of the liquid fossil fuels we consume. Think ICE's would still be 'profitable' if the cost of 'protecting' the petroleum supply ($5 - $13/gal) were factored into a gallon of gas?



rfkrfk by any other name.

[IDemo]

26. Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G)

V2G (pdf!) is something I feel compelled to bring into electric vehicle threads, where generally the debate revolves around: battery technology; cost, energy density (range), weight, recycling issues, or power sources; coal, nuclear, natural gas, or alternative. Most new EV's, such as the Obvio 828e now include V2G capability or are planning to. This enables them to plug into the grid not only as a load (power draw) but potentially as a source, specifically 'spinning reserves'. The technology could be applied in plug-in hybrids, fuel-cell vehicles, and battery electric vehicles, but the latest thinking is that it would best be applied in battery powered vehicles (EV's).

While vehicles could generate plenty of power - studies show they sit idle 90 percent of the time - it would be far too costly to use as simple "base-load" power. Their main value would be in supplying spurts of peak and other specialty "ancillary" power for which utilities pay premium prices. It would be far cheaper for utilities to tap the batteries of thousands of cars, say, than the current practice of keeping huge turbines constantly spinning just to supply power at a moment's notice, studies show.

On the future of electric cars-

"All cars will be electric eventually. It’s only a matter of when. In 20 years they will be the predominant vehicles people buy. This will happen because the technology is becoming radically more efficient, and our ability to make cars cheaply will get better with time. Already we can go 250 miles, and cells are increasing capacity by 8 percent per year. The efficiency doubles every 10 years— like a slow Moore’s law. In 10 years, the power plant will be smaller than an equivalent gasoline-powered engine. It will go 400 to 500 miles on a charge and it will last at least 100,000 miles. In 20 years, it will be a no-brainer. It also will happen because electric cars are the ultimate multi-fuel vehicle. We generate electricity with all kinds of different fuels. With electric cars, the country will be free to adapt its energy supply." - Tesla Motors CEO Martin Eberhart

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. Who killed flywheel?

Cars should use dynamic braking, not send their energy back over the wires.

[IDemo]

29. You've apparently confused the concept

Regenerative braking and Vehicle-to-Grid are not mutually exclusive. Both are included on most current production EV's. The first is employed only when the vehicle is moving (decelerating), the second only when it is parked. Both technologies help increase the efficiency and economic viability of battery-electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids.

Of the usual objections by many to EV's; they "just move pollution to the smokestack", and "they represent too big a load on the power grid", it can be shown that neither needs to be true.

Electric-drive vehicles can become an important resource for the California electric utility system, with consequent air pollution, system reliability, and economic benefits. We refer to electric power resources from vehicles as "Vehicle to Grid" power (V2G). The economic value of some forms of V2G appear high, more than enough to offset the initially higher costs of electric-drive vehicles, thus having the potential to accelerate their introduction.

[Kolesar]

30. Does "huge turbines constantly spinning " refer to natural gas fired or coal->steam->steam turbines?

And, yes, I think there is something elegant about intelligent use of automobile batteries for peak power management.

[IDemo]

31. They meant any combustion turbine; coal, oil, NG

But the term "spinning reserves" is also applicable to non-combustion sources, hydro, solar, wind. It simply means any power source which is not connected to a load (the grid), but can be in short order.

[Kolesar]

33. Ok, thank you..eom

[razzleberry]

37. battery wear-out cost, makes V2G a bad idea

using today's batteries.

a major breakthru in battery life,
is needed

[IDemo]

38. Batteries are currently the weak point for EV's and V2G

Nobody would deny that there is a lot of work remaining to do on battery technology, but the type of regulation services provided by a V2G vehicle doesn't generally involve 'deep discharging', the type of usage that contributes most to battery wear-out. Also, the owner is given the option to specify the minimum acceptable state of charge. The age of a lead-acid battery is probably more of a factor in how long it will last than its usage in a V2G vehicle.

From a 2002 report done by AC Propulsion, one of the primary innovators in V2G, Vehicle-to-Grid Demonstration Project: Grid Regulation Ancillary Service with a Battery Electric Vehicle:

The value created by the service exceeds the battery wear out costs under most operating assumptions. The long term effects on battery life were beyond the scope of the study; however it was noted that battery capacity increased by about 10 percent during the testing.

[wtmusic]

40. Disagree

I would pay $30K in an instant for a car that got 100mi to a charge and cost 4¢/mile. And I'd bet there are millions of other Americans like me.

Drive during the day, charge at night. Second car for long trips. What's not to like about that?

Battery technology is here--the only thing that isn't here is the commitment from large auto companies. Though there are NEVs (neighborhood electric vehicles) that serve a similar function, they aren't crash-tested for highway use, and are limited by law to 35mph. It takes a big company to be able to cough up tens of millions of dollars for crash testing.

[IDemo]

41. Not saying there are no current solutions

But an increase in energy density, with or without weight reduction, would absolutely make the EV more marketable to a majority of consumers. For folks like me who drive very little, even a twenty mile range would suffice. Most believe they need considerably greater range, however (whether they actually do or not).

If I had the money, I would love to buy any of the more popular current production EV's. If I had the garage space, I'd even consider converting a vehicle and running it off lead-acid batteries.

The point I was making to the previous poster was that battery wear costs, even with current technology, should not be considered a killer for V2G.

[skids]

39. Or a major breakthrough in ultracap energy density and price...

...those already have the cycle problem licked.