The economics of solar for this use look pretty good for some areas of Australia.
If you take Nanosolar's idea of building Municipal power:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/04/solar-thermal-municipal-power.html

Then you have a reasonable 2-10MW power system, which can be built on the ground and so would have easy maintenance and erection, and which would not need transmission to distances or even stepping down.
If we then throw away some of the first advantages, and build the solar arrays as a roof structure then you have garaging shaded from the sun.

First solar quoted a cost of $1.29/watt some time ago, so by the time you have put it in a system you might come out to $3/watt or so.
EV's do around 3miles/kwh, so if you allow 20 miles as the average two-way commute you might need 6kwh or so.
At 30degrees from the equator this is the pattern of solar incidence over the year:
http://www.powerfromthesun.net/chapter1/Chapter1.htm

See figure 1.6
So at that latitude just eye-balling it you might get around 40% of the rated capacity over the course of the day at the spring and autumn solstice.

If you rated the system at 1.5kw per car that would give the needed 6kwh at those times of the year, with a shortfall in the winter balanced by a surplus in the summer when it is most valuable and of course a power supply to the grid over the weekends when the office would perhaps be closed.

Putting the numbers together that is around $4500 per car, over 7 years or so that is about $650 per year, or $3.5 per working day (200days)

A lot of people would pay that to park their car in a shady spot anyway! - and the fuel is then 'free'

I've never really understood the belief that we will just abandon suburbia entirely if there is any feasible alternative open to those who have their life savings sunk into it.

Electric cars are a feasible alternative, and thus their adoption seems inevitable to me.

In my day job I'm frequently in the position of proposing options for projects that aren't able to generate a good enough business case to get funded - and often have to settle for second-best alternatives that acknowledge dismal BAU reality.

That's life unfortunately - no one has an infinitely large amount of money and our starting point is what is out there today. Better place will make suburbia a better place if it succeeds - its not an enemy of Transport Oriented Development and the like - just an alternative which will be necessary for a lot of people - at least for the next couple of decades.

I expect that you are right Neil in that people won't abandon their homes in the suburbs. What they might junk is tripstothe mall, endless weekend sport trips for kids, road trip holidays, long commutes to far flung jobs, large scale home improvement projects, and generally all the other discretionary lifestyle car trips that can be avoided. Given that we are not going to run out of oil, there will still be fuel for ICE cars and probably plenty of them for the next 30-40 years. We can retain the existing vehicle fleet and use it much more efficiently for a lot less investment than this EV proposal. Doesn't it make much more sense to go down that road first? Getting traffic off the roads will assist with longevity of them and we may just find new ways to make suburbs more inhabitable so that people don't have to travel as much.

I don't know about you, but I live in a commuter suburb that is essentially abandoned on a daily basis and it's a weird palce to be on a weekday. I have developed a plan for my immediate neighbourhood which would transform the place into a workable self reliant village in a fairly short timeframe. I now believe that it won't be an oil shortage that kickstarts the plan but widespread unemployment in the next few years. The net effect will be the same. My neighbours and I will have a shortage of money to buy energy to transport us out of here each day so we going to be stuck here. In that situation nobody is going to have the money to even buy a bicycle let alone an EV. We do have plenty of cars though and there is still petrol to be bought and I expect that we will do a lot of car pooling for essential trips. We're going to have an awful lot of bloody good rolling stock that could be mothballed for decades and brought out one by one as we need them.

Not quite sure why think the market is going to just jump at EVs rather than evolve to less driving unless they are forced by some dictator? Thats the great thing about the free market: people are free to choose and once people realise that happy motoring is going to be increasingly expensive (or lame) they will make other choices in how they live. Even if EV's are an alternative, I still think that many people will start to rethink the whole commuter lifestyle.

I appreciate your right to advocate for this new and as yet unproven technology. But as Einstein said "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." I suggest that this fantasy of EV's is simply an extension of the thinking that has created the problems of a society completely dependent on cheap motoring. It is an attempt to treat the most obvious symptom of a much greater systemic disease and as such is doomed to ultimate failure.

yes, that can be true, but it's a potential cost.

like the wounded soldiers coming from war, people crippled or killed in accidents are removed from the "productive" society. they will not earn (and spend) wages, they will not pay taxes (if dead), they will be added to healthcare costs. on top it all, there's the money multiplier effect, you know, one buyes bread, the bread maker buys flour, the flour maker buys gasoline, and so on :)

I think Kiashu's figures refer to Australian statisitics. Ironically as cars have become safer,you are much less likely to die ina car accident than you are to suffer serious injuries. The lions share of the $17Bn quoted would go towards treating and rehabilitating th injured.

I was unclear; the total cost of all road accidents in Australia is $17 billion and there are 1,750 or so deaths. The cost comes from a University of Queensland . Or you could consider this South Australian look at it.

Costs soon add up.
- destruction of vehicles, and lost time of operation
- Overtime for police, fire and ambulance
- trauma & intensive care
- rehabilitative care
- lost work income of injured and killed people
- coronial and police inquiries

Perhaps you're unaware that in addition to the 1,750 or so dead, we have 70,000 severely or permanently injured people. Brain damage, lost or crippled limbs, and so on. The ongoing treatment of those people is very expensive.

I don't think the station would be unattended (the battery replacement process doesn't require an attendent, but neither does filling your petrol tank).

I expect people would be on hand to sell all the other stuff you buy at petrol stations, keep the gear maintained, manage the battery inventory, clean toilets etc etc

So it wouldn't be a looters paradise.

Better Place has talked about working within a standards based framework, which would presumably allow other companies to offer batteries and power to appropriately equipped vehicles.

I'd assume in the long run we'd end up with different chains of charging and battery replacement stations, just like current petrol station setup (and possibly using the same sites - which would probably result in the oil companies getting in on the game - at the retail level).

I would guess the power supplier to Better Place would also allow charging at home if you used them as your power retailer - so maybe the various power retailers would end up owning charging networks, just like the oil companies do today - but you'd be able to use their services at home as well.

Of course, we'll see PHEV's as well, which you'd charge at home but don't have as many options out on the road, other than using petrol.

There are a few misconceptions embedded in this one :

- The range for the EV is 160 km, not 60 km.

- You only have to exchange batteries if you don't have time to wait for a recharge at a recharge station (ie. the trip to Brisbane scenario).

- It would be a litttle annoying to swap batteries say 8 times on a trip to Brisbane (vs one petrol refill) but its not the sort of trip most people do on a regular basis. If it only takes a minute or two its not an insurmountable hassle in my view.

It will take about 6 years to replace half the VMT since new cars do more km per year. New vehicles are being purchased anyway so its not necessarily an additional cost. The savings in fuel importation will be spent in other areas of the economy. EV cars are part of the solution in a post peak oil world.

The assumptions behind your sums seem false to me. If we are indeed going to have to make do with much less oil, and this is accompanied by a financial crash, then there is no way anything like traditional numbers of cars will need to be made, nor could there use be financed, at least for many years.

What you are looking at then is a choice between in some way managing to do without advanced transport, which would pretty much mean game over from the POV of transporting goods from any railheads to the shops, and mean huge areas of land set aside to grow crops for draft animals alone, or as much of the infrastructure as is practical could be run by the use of electric and hybrid vehicles.

EV vehicles will also not need to suddenly take over from ICE vehicles in one move, as there will be oil available, albeit more expensive.

If you think in terms of EV's being produced at perhaps 100,000 a year, mainly used as taxis etc, and many different bikes and trikes run by EV with hybrid batteries and a re-emphasis on trains, then this is perhaps on the right lines.

This would be a far more survivable world than one without EV's, although not having the same convenience as today.

This world should not be compared for transport with that of today, but with the desperate world that would result in not having a working though greatly reduced transport system.

This is likely exactly the same as for the roads, where instead of 6-lane asphalt you might have one lane each way of concrete, with gravel in the suburbs and minor roads.

Reasonable, but not great, transport is available at a fraction of today's energy cost.

In this EV solution, the customer does not own the battery. So the vehicle costs much less, perhaps $15K. The miles (or km) driven cost more than just the cost of electricity for recharging though. As long as the total cost for transportation is coming down, this solution should have some appeal. It should be noted that even with declining oil, people will still buy cars so the money is going to be spent anyway.

Chris

Isn't it interesting how a few observations about the feasibility of an EV project can degenerate into ideological hyperbole?

There's no way to make the word "ignorance" pretty. That's a pig which your semantic lipstick doesn't help.

"Ignorant" means "unaware or uninformed". This is not a value judgement or semantics, just basic English comprehension.

Of course you are one of the very few who absolutely know what the top priorities must be for every citizen.

Maybe you can provide a quote where I have made this claim.

No chance in the world you may be wrong in your evaluation of the relative importance of oil. Not even after the humiliation of a price drop from $145 speculative highs which you claimed proved the significance, but which in fact simply proved the level of speculation.

A half-century correlation between growing world oil production and world economic growth is good enough for me. See for example Jeff Rubin's latest analysis, including the observation that four of the last five recessions were triggered by oil price shocks.

I'm not sure what you mean by "humiliation of a price drop from ... highs which you claimed proved the significance ..." Maybe you can provide a quote. What I have been saying publicly for a couple of years is that the long upwards price trend and high price volatility would continue, causing serious economic consequences. The fact that a seven-fold oil price increase in as many years contributed to an economic shock which most mainstream commentators are calling the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is a reasonable vindication of this. The Campbell/Laharerre "bumpy plateau" thesis is now an observed phenomenon rather than merely a 'thesis'.

I think it makes plenty of sense. If EV's are so great why is it that even the electrcity companies don't use them? There must be a reason.

I saw the following elsewhere (I've edited it lightly:

"The economics of making hydrogen from electricity is well known. Assuming wind power at 6 cents per kWh and 50 kWhs for a kilogram of hydrogen, that is $3 for hydrogen with an energy equivalent of four litres of gasoline.

Now, hydrogen is expensive to handle, so even though the cost seems competitive with gasoline, it really isn't at current prices. Now, there are suggestions to react CO or CO2 with hydrogen to make methanol, which is a much nicer liquid fuel. What efficiency/cost would we expect in going from hydrogen to methanol?

If the conversion is only 50% efficient, you'd have $6 for the methanol equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. Under the same assumption, a 3 MW wind turbine should be able to produce electricity enough to produce 7 barrels of oil equivalent methanol per day. Thus, to replace the entire world consumption of oil, one wind turbine per 500 people would suffice, at a cost of about $8000/capita. This is about the same figure as the current world GDP per capita. So, if we need to renew investments every 20 years, 5% of world GDP need to go into wind powered production of liquid fuels. "

I haven't gone through the calculations - any thoughts?

What I can't work out is why in the world you would want to.
Trams are fine, but that is for high density areas, which is not where most people live, and the capital costs of building them is substantial.
Biofuels use huge amounts of land and water for their production, although to be sure they have their place, mainly in running heavy duty agricultural equipment, where it is easiest to get biofuels anyway.
Draft animals typically need a third of agricultural land to provide fodder.
Why convenient and cheap electric transport should not be used in your view escapes me, and seems to be allied to a dislike of suburbia in your own personal system of preferences.
Suburbia seems likely to be on the decrease, but it would seem preferable to me not to have total collapse and people being forced into cramped multi-shares of city centre apartments.

I can't understand the criticism. Yes, we do not have a full roll-out yet, yes, we are at a relatively early stage, but that applies to any endeavour at some time.

As for concrete plans, aside from Better Place there are infrastructure plans going ahead from Paris to Berlin to London.
Massive resources are being devoted to battery production, for instance in BYD in China where Buffet has recently taken a 10% stake.
Almost all car manufacturers have cars in the works, with Mitsubishi likely to be one of the first of the mass-producers through the gates:
http://www.japancorp.net/Article.Asp?Art_ID=19542

As for the issue of using electric transport at all, there are 60 million electric bikes on the road in China,

"We need to see concrete, substantial action."

The guy is fundraising, which IS a concrete action that makes the next steps possible. It happens with most startups. He's described his plans, as far as that goes.. why not credit that with being 'Wet Concrete'? It still has to be formed and to harden.. your challenge seems to be impetuous and not much more than that.

It's like the guy who stops the barber in the middle of the haircut to look, and says "Is this what it's going to look like ?!"

Life of Brian..
"Something's actually HAPPENING, Reg!"
"Right. This calls for immediate discussion!"

Fair enough.
The information I have come across indicates that early stage investment is in place, and they are currently doing prototype roll-outs of a trial 1,000 charging points:
http://green.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081008/us_nm/us_summit_electric.html

I wouldn't normally expect firm commitments to be made by the financiers until the results of these trials are in, and falling oil prices might delay them, although the security situation for Israel gives me some confidence that a re-charging network of some kind will go ahead in that country.

The Nissan/Renault backing is also significant for the Better Place initiative.

Tasman - what more "backing" from the government (or in the form of "firm business contracts") do you think they need ?

The company is a startup that has proposed a business plan, arranged 4 key suppliers to make the business viable (Macquarie - funding, AGL - clean power, Renault - cars and batteries - AESC and A123).

There are bottlenecks that need to clear regarding manufacturing of cars and batteries before they could roll anything out, so 2012 seems like a realistic timeframe - whereas 2009 wouldn't be realistic at all.

The idea has only been around for something like 2 years - I really can't see how they could make progress any faster than they have.

If 2 years pass and they still haven't raised capital and started constructing their infrastructure, then it be fair to criticise lack of progress and doubt the likelihood of the project occurring - but at this stage it seems to be a pretty professionally run effort.

Those figures are in the right kind of ball-park. Batteries start to make financial sense with petrol at around $4/gal.
If you are talking about a pure EV as opposed to a hybrid though the simpler system means that you can make further savings by lower maintenance costs.
In addition if you just want sort of golf-cart to get to the shops and back then more economies should be possible.
At the moment costs are still relatively high as the batteries are not being produced in volume, so it is a chicken and egg situation.
Delivery vehicles with their short runs are the very best market for EV vehicles, and tiny city cars next.
Japan would also be very favourably placed to roll out EV's quickly.
The US and Australia are a lot tougher with their longer distances, and in the US relatively cheap fuel.

Jeppen - "Batteries cost about $300/kWh, and a kWh takes you about 4 miles. Now, how much could you utilize your battery capacity in a year? Let's say you dimension your battery pack to your average commute and do 3 miles (utilizing 75% of charge) per installed kWh about 500 times per year (twice a working day and then some)."

You are neglecting cycle life here. The problem with your analysis is that batteries have a definite cycle life that changes with the Depth of Discharge(DOD). Lead-Acid batteries only have a life of about 300 cycles@50%DOD however will give up after <100 cycles@100%DOD, Nimh (in the Prius) can go about 1000 cycles@75%DOD and the new Lithium Ion can go up to 2000 cycles @90%DOD. AltairNano batteries promise a cycle life of 7000 cycles@100%DOD however not much has been heard of them lately.

In your analysis you could size your batteries to last the lifetime of the car. I only work 200 days of the year as do most people that do not work on the weekend and have 4 weeks of holidays per year. Probably a more accurate estimate is that a average person driving will drive approx 20 000 km per year. For a 20kW battery pack that will require, given than 1kW takes you 10 Km, 20000/200 = 200 cycles@100%DOD or 400 cycles at 50%DOD. A well managed ThunderSky lithium battery pack in a real world EV will last at least 2000 cycles@50%DOD if not more, so 20 000km/year will mean that your battery should last 2000/400 = 5 years at a minimum however with the low DOD it could easily last 10 years. An EV with a 200km range can be expected to only use 50% of its battery more than 90% of the time. If you have a longer commute than 100km then an EV is not for you or you need a larger battery pack. (The same battery if subjected to constant 100% discharges could only last 500 cycles so it is always better to size the batteries around 50% to 75% discharges to preserve cycle life)

The battery problem becomes more a resale value problem rather than paying for the cost of the batteries. Given that IC cars currently depreciate at least half their value in the first 5 years of operation selling a second hand EV with 2000 cycles on the clock will be a salesman problem not a technical one. There will be, I am sure, capacity testers available by then to help consumers decide.

Given that the new batteries will last the life of the car and are part of the purchase price why should the cost of them determine the economic viability of the electric vehicle?

In reality mobility is likely to be much restricted compared to current ICE transport, just as it is when you catch a train compared to a car.

So if mobility is going to be much restricted, doesn't it also make sense to start planning for more localised living?

End of posts on this thread now. I'm off to watch the US election result.

Most people most of the time only go short distances - particularly those for whom buying an EV is worth while.
That means that your estimate of a spare battery for every car is way too high. on removal they would only need a few hours recharging, so for perhaps the 10% of cars that are on a long journey on a given day, you might need a 6 hour or so recharge.
Call it 3% or so of the total stock as spares, 5% to be on the safe side.

Your estimate of battery costs is low for the moment, according to the links I have given.
At $500/kwh 20kwh comes out to $10,000, but that still amortises out fine against an ICE car if you assume petrol at $4/gal or so.

If you live 60km from the city, an EV does not make much sense. A hybrid or ICE fits the bill for the comparatively small part of the population who have that sort of use.