President Obama Launches EV-Everywhere Challenge

@etcgreen
If it is true that you are going to meeting with Mr.Obama, I suppose You would not care to mention there is some inventor whose WindsSolars can produce electricity under 10€ per MWh in 24/365 mode, even able to produce double quantity of electricity at peak consumption time, without any Land Footprint, because You set Your goal at producing Biodiesel and earn money this way? No matter if it would fast and clean save the USA from any dependence on oil and would promote EV of all kinds...........

@John-Bronson

The EIA data on average kwh pricing has no significance here as all states except CA and OR use coal generated energy and few people in the colder climates will purchase EV's due to the radically lower performance in extreme cold weather.

Regarding rare earths... We have 4 mines that produce rare earth minerals today and you seem to be in denial. Motors that do not use rare earths are 10x heavier than those that do. Also, motors that do not use rare earths use a significant amount of electricity (electromagnets).

The same companies that are building EV's built SUV's that get 9mpg running gasoline. We talk with EIA and NREL Staff most every week - and they are very sharp people and I am on my way to meet with President Obama now to discuss renewable energy.

@etcgreen,

According to the latest EIA report,

http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/mer.pdf

the average retail price of residential electricity in the US was 11.82 cents/kwh.

For anyone in CA paying 38 cents/kwh, I would suggest looking into PV, because it's cheaper. Also, the price of PV has halved in the past 2 years, not the past 20 years.

With regards to "rare earths", this is another strawman. Rare earths are not really "rare", but expensive to produce. At any rate, motors can be built that do not require rare earths.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-07-japanese-ev-motor-reliant-rare.html

Although, I have no doubt that you are more knowledgeable than the engineers at Toyota, and the other major auto manufacturers developing EVs, the EIA, and NREL put together.

@John-Bronson

With respect, please take the time and make the effort to understand the world around you. Today, the average kwh rate in CA is about $.24 rather than your suggested $.12kwh (areas of CA are now peaking at $.38kwh). This is the result of clean air legislation and increased renewable energy sources. Should the rest of the country opt for the same level of clean air legislation, the kwh price in many parts of the country will be 3-4x this cost due to the lower number of photons, rain, hail, snow, ice, humidity, tornadoes, hurricanes, ..., in those areas. An alternative is the proverbial National Smart Grid where solar and wind power are long hauled from their optimum source to other parts of the nation. This plan by all estimates is a double digit $T something.

I will grant the cost of solar will come down - possibly as much as half over the next 20 years.

For the past 100 years, the cost of our roads and highways has been primarily paid for with road taxes. So add to this real-world EV/solar business model some new form of road tax, most likely in personal property tax for EV's and additional PUC/DoT fees (I sit on 2 of these committees) and the real cost of driving an EV will be a factor (x3-4) of what you are suggesting.

Been here, done the math. I was an Analyst for the DoD and DoE, I served as a university research engineer for years and I have run a renewable energy company for 4 years and I will go on record to state, "A rush into a solar/EV future will bankrupt our nation several times over."

Have you tracked the price of dysprosium over the past 10 years? Take the time to extrapolate and project the price of gallium and selenium based on the demand (2-3 orders of magnitude) your future vision is suggesting.

Join the Migration... This is real today - it is scalable, it is immediately economically viable, it is environmentally friendly and it is sustainable.

http://etcgreen.com Article: U.S. Migration

etcgreen wrote:

"It is not that we will run out of petroleum, rather biodiesel blends at about $3-$5/gal at the pumps will dominate the market."

Many people will be in the position to generate their own power for their vehicles, for half the cost you quote, and skip the gas pump altogether.

@etcgreen

Even if we use your number of 2.8 miles/kwh, the Nissan still costs 4 cents/mile @12 cents/kwh. Or 1/2 the cost of your converted Jaguar @ the national B100 average of $4.20/gallon.

@Brandon

No idea of your life experience or education, but biodiesel is my passion. I have personally planted tens of thousands of trees, set up irrigation systems for these orchards, installed wind turbines to power the irrigation, I have harvested, milled and worked in the refining labs. I am happy to share my experiences and perspective on these blogs to help people navigate their way through all the media hype.

It is not likely that you will still be able to purchase a gallon of what we now call "gasoline" in the U.S. in 10 years. It is not that we will run out of petroleum, rather biodiesel blends at about $3-$5/gal at the pumps will dominate the market. Are you driving your last gasoline powered car?

http://etcgreen.com/blog/general/are-you-driving-your-last-gasoline-powered-car

For perspective, BP is a client.

@ etcgreen - "If you have not embraced this fact, then you simply have not done the research." I am glad you are omnipotent and I apologize for not agreeing with you. If ethanol will be gone in 5 - 10 years, just what do you think is going to be used for an oxygenate and octane booster for all the SI vehicles that will be in use. Do you think diesel engines will become completely dominate in such a short period? How can we gear up to make diesel that quickly? Your good points are drowned out by your outrages statements. If you want to know how the big boys are doing it, just look at BP. They are hedging their bets on fuel type while locking in raw resources and varying conversion technologies. Maybe you should explain to BP where they are wrong.

@etcgreen
My WindSolar Power Stations would include Greenhouses so quality of land would improve and food of any kind could be grown there, even 24/365 with Solar specter lamps. Beside that there would be much greater power density, and at same place both Solars and Wind PSs would work. As I wrote, they would work 24/365 on or off Grid, so transmision lines would not be necesary as all production can be localized and so distributed everywhere. By producing Biodiesels you would just recycle some of CO2, but would not change level of polution produced by IC engines already, much less stop and reverse Global Warming process. Beside if I remeber it correctly, there is already raised food prices in USA and people are not happy with that, blaming biodiesel or ethanol crops used instead of food crops on the land.
Beside, my countryman Engineer Nikola Tesla has constructed 95% effective IC engine, so if just his invention would be used instead of otto motor, it would be great improvement in mileage and there would be much less polution as well.
He also invented electric car in 1938, which he was driving all day long with just common truck sized acumulator batery, achieving easily 90 miles per hour speed. Just to be able to find out special electromotor he used that was manufactured in Westinghouse factory would be great improvement over contemporary attempts to construct something similar. Since knowing that something is possible is half of result achieved, as soon as I would have enough money, I would try to reconstruct his wehicle, and possibly also the power source that he used. I believe this would remove all obstacles for everyday use of EV. For the time being, it would suffice to dig out some of burried technology that was invented by IBM laboratories in early 80's where high capacity dry battery was mentioned in article I have read. I hope you know that with cheap electricity it is possible to synthetise Methane and from it many other chemicals like diesel.

@John-Branson

While it brought a chuckle when I read it, one of my engineers suggested I should respond directly to your proposed business model.

"Now let's compare biofuel to PV. If we take the 180 billion gallons x 20 mpg average fuel ... "

The cost of building solar PV on a square mile is about $100M so roughly $150K/acre. This is in comparison to $3K/acre for biodiesel orchards. Also, while we like solar, it does not offer any additional products or services other than electricity while our orchards produce human and animal food products (higher market value than biodiesel per acre) and high CO2 conversion and particulate filtration which has real market value in carbon trading and cleaner air to breath.

Your baseline numbers are off by an order of magnitude. First, you did not calculate line loss or battery dissipation loss in your model. Also, the Nissan Leaf is well documented at 2.8mpkw (your Nissan hype quote suggests that you do not drive a Leaf). Also, we believe the typical mpbg for future vehicles is 40, not 20.

I recently had a discussion with Carl Pope (Sierra Club) on small cars vs. work trucks. EV's do not pull trailers and without a real-world understanding of societal business models for transportaion, one should not blindly crit mpg.

Finally, the cost of building 3.2M acres of solar would be $T.5 and the grid support for such a project would likely cost another $T and the distribution grid necessary to deliver this electricity to the 200M vehicles you are suggesting would cost an estimated $26T.

Finally, please research the amount of rare earth minerals and heavy metals necessary for your model - world-wide. This article will help...

http://etcgreen.com/blog/general/evs-and-hybrids-are-not-our-future

My firm was founded to help develop an EV future - we moved on to something more realistic and shorter term. We all continue to live in a petroleum economy - though at a more humble level.

@Brandon

A last comment... I am a 5th generation U.S. farmer with 2 engineering college degrees. I have 22 1st cousins who are currently farmers and a few of them grow corn for the ethanol industry (artificial economic motivation from our Federal Gov.). Yet none of them operate any vehicles - no farm equipment, no cars, no trucks, no boats, no utility vehicles, no generators, ..., nothing that runs on gasoline or ethanol - they run all diesel and various biodiesel blends.

We have recently completed the research for a paper that provides the economic models for the transportation of ethanol. Diesel powered trucks haul ethanol tanks. As the price of petroleum continues to rise, we may find that the low energy density of ethanol makes less and less sense against the cost of production and transport. Dedicated ethanol pipelines are expensive and have become a new target for the Sierra Club.

Biodiesel from 2nd generation feedstock is the only scalable, economically viable, environmentally friendly and truly sustainable petroleum replacement available today for transportation. If you have not embraced this fact, then you simply have not done the research.

@Phil Manke
In regard to Your remark that EV are too costly at present, solution is simple: use of cheap electricity in production - and it could be nearly free once investment is covered ny savings on electricity price, which should take at most 18 months. Since such cheap electricity could be utilized troghout industry, all components and subsystems can be very cheap if prices are lowered and still profit per piece would be greater than before. Next I would suggest new material for car body, and that is recycled plastic with addition of Carbon Nanotubes, which raise strenght to 40 times that of aluminium, but can cost at most 200$ per metric ton. Next, in my country some advanced electric cars and scooters are invented. Last component that is actualy biggest problem is battery, but that could also be made out of plastic and graphite as per IBM patent from late 80's that is expired by now, and capacity was 1 KW per cm3, number of recharges > 1 million times. Since those were dry batteries (if I remember it correctly) there is no danger of acid leakage, or Lithium polution, or any other environmental hazard.
Price should also be low because materials used would be cheap.
So there you have it, all achieved by use of my WindSolars.
However, someone has to invest in finalizing development and starting of production.
Unfortunately Americans seems to be not interested in anything not invented in US, regardless if it can solve all US and World problems and also stop and regulate Global Warming process.
They should remember my great countryman Engineer Nikola Tesla and his AC motors and generators and 200+ more of other patents, and realize that people who live in poor countries havre to think everyday how to best use resources they have, therefore are forced by necesity to invent things everyday. That saying "Necesiti is mother of Invention" may be from Croatia too.
Now just think what could be done with free or allmost free electricity.

@Brandon

We operated test jatropha orchards in 2 states and 2 foreign countries for 3 years before moving from this succulent to a hardwood crop. We are intimately aware of the numbers and research in the field as we author a considerable percentage of it. Ethanol from corn has a poor GHG footprint as the CO2 processing of a corn crop is virtually non-existent. It appears you have been reading Poet propaganda. We do not expect ethanol to exist as a product within 5-10 years due to the poor energy return, high toxicity, extremely high evaporation and most important - food crop displacement.

Join the Migration: http://etcgreen.com Article: U.S. Migration

@Brandon

Our team includes a dozen engineers who work directly with the U.S. and European car manufacturers. The primary reason a few European nations are purchasing less diesel vehicles is the result of Public Administrative Policy (tax structures). The new standard around the world for road tax payments is weight and advanced diesel weighs less than a comparable EV. Also, people understand longevity and advanced diesel has a proven track record of running for 300,000-500,000 miles without major repair.

@John-Bronson

Your comments do not reflect a knowledge of the technology or industry. Our properties include water rights for several hundred billion gallons. Actually advanced diesel engines with start/stop tech provides a higher efficiency rating based on energy conversion than EV's. Converting fossil fuels or even photons into electricity then powering a vehicle is almost absurd from an efficiency perspective. You seem to be a victim of all the marketing hype.

All it would take is to start building my WindSolar Power Plants that would produce electricity under 15$ per MWh and work 24/365 without need for backup, on or off Grid. Since there is no Land Footprint because of built in Greenhouses, then one 10 MW WindSolar could be put near every gas station out of the city. Next just kind of standard acumulators could be designed that would fit into any wehicle, so they are just swapped at gas station and then they could be filled slowly untill next wehicle come for electricity supply.

It would be helpful to be current in actual biofuel developments. In the past three or four years, jathropa has moved from the 'wonder crop' to the 'blunder crop' as many people rushed to plant 'improved varieties' based on premature evaluation from test plots. Actual field experience has found significant problems with pests with the need for fertilization and irrigation. Jathropa does grow naturally on arid land, but yields are very low. While jathropa may be good for developing countries where it can be grown in smaller plots using intercropping and more labor intensive agriculture methods, large orchards in developed countries may never prove feasible. Transesterfication of vegetative oils is a low capital, simple operation suitable for small scale operations which may be compatible with developing country needs, but other technologies may be better suited for large industrial scale fuel supply.

Even if 850 gallons/acre/year can be attained in the field per etcgreen's statement, it will barely match where corn ethanol will be in a few years. Accounting for the energy density ration of .61 for ethanol compared to biodiesel, 850 gallons translates to about 1400 gallons of ethanol per acre per year. Dropping out the corn replacement value of DDG's returned to the animal feed market, corn ethanol is at about 950 gallons/acre/year today. Producing ethanol from light corn stover will add about 200 gallons per acre per processes being installed by Poet at this time. To match projected jathropa energy production, corn yields only need to be increased by 26% which is well below projections for corn varieties now being field tested.

Other options are: Cool Planet which has money from Google, BP, GE, ConocoPhillips, and Constellation Energy among others and claims yields of over 3000 gallons of diesel per acre with their process. But this may pale compared to Joule Unlimited which may be 8 time greater and based on waste industrial gas.

Concerning etcgreen's comments here, he certainly holds his beliefs with the fervor of a religious zealot. I, on the other hand, don't believe in a 'silver bullet', neither in vehicle engine technology nor fuel nor feed stock. It is probably better to not put all your eggs in one basket. The CEO of Tesla has said he thought EV's could have a 50% market sales penetration in 30 years. The average life of a vehicle is about 10 years, and with a rapid ramp up to 50% in the immediate previous years, total vehicle fleet might be 7% or 8% in 30 years. Since these vehicles will probably be replacing high milage IC vehicles, this would be significantly less than fuel replacement from ethanol today.

I think it is apparent that the majority of our vehicle fleet will be IC power for at least 50 years, the question as to engine technology, fuel choice and source is important to discuss. While diesel engines have a high thermal efficiency, ethanol engines running on as low a blend as E70 can match those efficiencies with a spark ignition engine. In considering GHG tailpipe emissions, diesel is best now because of its higher efficiency over that possible with gasoline. But diesel is composed of long chain carbon molecules while ethanol has 2 carbons. Ethanol engines will have a much lower GHG foot print than diesel. While GM may be hedging their bets by testing the market for small diesel engines, it should not be confused to mean they are committed to move in this direction. The EU is actually backing off of diesel at this time.

If one were to actually believe that diesel engine technology will be best, or at least most probable, It would be worthwhile to be current in actual advancements in biofuels. (See my post below)

@etcgreen

I don't think you're going to be able to produce that much biofuel from the desert without finding more water. You're going to need at least 126 billion gallons/yr of water to extract hydrogen for the hydrocarbon fuel.

The problem with diesel and all ICE engines is that they're only about 20% efficient vs. upwards of 95% efficient electric motors. You would be better off to burn the biofuel in a thermal powerplant and use the electricity to charge EVs.

Now let's compare biofuel to PV. If we take the 180 billion gallons x 20 mpg average fuel economy (high number) = 3.6 trillion miles driven. Divide this by 3.4 miles/kwh (Nissan) = 1.058 trillion kwh. Divide this by 328,500 kwh/acre = 3.22 million acres (1/10 of the Mojave Desert). Contrast 3 million acres for PV with 148 million acres for biofuel. Also, a lot of that PV can be mounted on buildings, parking structures, etc. Lithium and other metals can be recycled when the vehicle is scrapped.

@John-Bronson

Thank you for your interest and number crunching. In 2008 a Nobel Laureate, through genetic engineering, increased the oil yield of a nut tree x4 to 850 gallon/acre/year.

Gasoline offers only 114K BTU/gal while biodiesel (B100) is at 126K BTU/gal. Also, running a 30% more efficient diesel engine over a gasoline engine significantly reduces consumption therefore demand.

So, the needed 126B gallons/yr of fuel can be grown on 148M acres. Though I expect another 20% increase in fuel efficiency over the next few years and an increase in the crop yields to over 1,000 gallons/acre over the next 20 years is reasonable. This brings the need to about 100M acres.

Are you aware that within the U.S. today we have over 55M acres of prime farmland dedicated to growing corn and soy/canola for 1st generation biofuels? These lands need to be returned to food production immediately.

We are planting our 2nd generation feedstock orchards literally in the desert. By definition, 2nd generation feedstock does not compete with food crops. We have identified over 200M acres of suitable and available lands in the southwestern states for our orchards.

This is a solution that is scalable, environmentally friendly, economically viable and most important - sustainable.

EV's just move the "Peak" from petroleum to rare earths and heavy metals. A B100 powered vehicle is less toxic than an EV. Did you notice the article on the car of the future?

http://etcgreen.com/biofuel/trident-70mpg-b100-supercar

Chevy is releasing their Cruze diesel in summer of 2012...

http://etcgreen.com/biofuel/chevy-announces-diesel-cruze

The Jaguar XF 2.2L is amazing...

http://etcgreen.com/biofuel/jaguar-diesel-52-4mpg-63mppg

@etcgreen

How exactly do you plan to replace 180 billion gallons/yr of gasoline and diesel consumption with biodiesel? @400 gallons/acre for Jatropha, it would require 450 million acres of arable land.

@phil-manke-79191

We salute your efforts. In a better world there would be millions like you who have the resources and desire to make this positive change for our environment. Unfortunately, that is not our reality so we spend most of our efforts for immediate, significant, environmental and economic gains - "the biggest bang for the buck" approach if you will. That is not EV's, but rather the U.S. Migration to diesel and biodiesel.

etcgreen, you may be insisting that the perfect be enemy of the good. I agree that current" state of the art" E vehicles are far too costly, and some reflect need for improvements. Hence my suggestion of much higher rebates for those solar advocates willing to check them out, as I would be. I have three small E vehicles now and the PV to charge them, but no will to fund the initial R&D recovery costs for the whole industry. BTW, not in CA.

@phil-manke-79191

If per/mile cost savings is high on your target list, then the purchase of an EV is not in the top 4 choices. If you are purchasing an EV to only operate inside of CA, or if you are generating electricity from your own solar or wind - great, but otherwise EV's source energy from coal power plants and their emissions are far worse than ICE vehicles. Don't buy into the EV hype until you have done a complete evaluation. Maybe this article will help.

http://etcgreen.com Article: EV Tech - Postmortem

This represents the stated bias of Steven Chu ("If it were up to me, I would put all our resources into electric vehicles"). While many of us believe that electric vehicles will be a significant part of our future, the practical question is how soon. As pointed out above, EVs are worse from a GHG standpoint until we have a significant greening of our electrical system. As a physicist, Chu has never been strong or well informed on biofuels. From a technical stand point, advanced biofuels are at our door with at least 18 commercial systems scheduled to be in production in the next two years. They however are meeting political and market resistance which results in financing difficulties. The fossil fuel industry is always glad to see political support and money going to a technology that won't make a dent in their market share for at least 30 or more years.

I believe it needs to be noted that some potential buyers of EV's, including me, wage or ongoing high income is not in the picture. For me, it will be an expenditure of one-time windfall and savings income, and will not benefit from tax breaks on the purchase. I would benefit much more with a cash rebate, as may be the case for many who are willing to buy an EV, but not in a fat cash stream (read: taxable). ..........I also would encourage a solar energy production credit such as SREC's with solar carve-out in all states....... The two venues, solar electricity and EV's, could be further incentivized with a cash rebate for purchasing new EV's at a much higher rate 'IF' the energy to re-charge the vehicle is from a solar source on a homeowners site. In this way, two efficiency standards are incentivised with one rebate. How cool is that!

@tracy-dahl-143498

Please share what EV you own or operate and the operational costs associated with the vehicle? We have a databases of real-world EV and Hybrid experiences and our data is not reflective of your statement.

Other than in-building applications which demand 0 emission, the added cost of EV's is never less expensive than alternatives. Unless the EV is exclusively recharged from NG or renewables, the harmful emissions of the EV are radically - exponentially - higher than advanced diesel.

Join the Migration - http://etcgreen.com Article: U.S. Migration

"ALTERNATIVE ENERGY INVESTMENT IS; "AS GOOD AS GOLD" WHEN DONE RIGHT"

TIME FOR BIG INVESTORS TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE LEAD AMERICA BY INVESTING IN AMERICA, WHEN YOU INVEST IN AMERICA YOU INVEST IN YOUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE ! !

"INVEST IN A LARGE PROJECT THAT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR OUR FUTURE"

In past history when the USA needed a Moral Boost to our
Country we built things as;
The Largest Bridges, Dams, Statue Of Liberty,
Worlds Largest Futuristic Fair, Landed on the Moon etc.

It's time for us time for us to build the Largest & Best Futuristic
CITY IN THE WORLD UTILIZING ALL OF OUR CUTTING EDGE TECHNOLOGY.

Find a location in the USA somewhere and build AMERICA'S

"FUTURE CITY MODEL "

Our Future City will Utilize all of the Newest and Cutting edge combined
technology using entirely GREEN TECHNOLOGY with ZERO POLLUTION !

Our City Could Have A NEW VERSION OF THE STATUE OF LIBERTY, holding the torch in one hand and our GREEN PLANET EARTH in her other hand, her head raised high looking Up at the sky.

"TIME FOR AMERICA TO CHANGE HISTORY"

Imagination how, GREAT THIS WOULD BE FOR AMERICA & OUR ECONOMY ! !

THIS COULD BE A HISTORICAL EVENT IN OUR HISTORY BOOKS FOR OUR NEXT GENERATION TO FOLLOW"

"DREAM BIG...DO BIG"

Thank You, Respectfully, Michael V. Caldwell, Proud American

Based on past practices Obama will simply use tax payer money to give steep tax breaks to purchasers of these vehicles.

Actually, electric drive vehicles are quite practical for numerous applications. Electric vehicles can deliver all of the performance of an internal combustion engine vehicle, cost far less to operate and have a significantly reduced carbon footprint - even when charged via a coal fired power plant. Where they fall down is range. That said, most Americans drive 20 miles or less each day. Ranges of 100 miles are attainable with current EV/battery technology, so building an affordable vehicle with half that range is certainly possible. There are ways to expand range more or less infinitely with quick charg stations and/or fast swap battery packs. Even without that, EV's are extremely practical comuters, city delivery vehicles, etc. One attractive scenario is if cities with public transportation systems offered EV rental at light rail and bus hubs. Seems like if folks had the option of personalized transportation from the public transit drop off points to where they actually want to go, these currently underutilized systems would be far more popular.

I am not saying that biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol and similar biofuels don't have an important role to play; they certainly do. However, like the future of power generation, the future of the transportation infrastructure is unlikely to be all one thing or another. It will be a mix of technologies that is ultimately sorted out by what works best and biomimicry of a free market economy - survival of the fitest.

While it is our dire desire to be rid of all dependency on petroleum for our transportation needs, current generation EV technologies are still far from viable per a list of issues... economically, environmentally, safety, human health, longevity, scalability and sustainability. These high-tech vehicles simply do not make sense for the vast majority of American drivers - not today and probably not in 20 years.

http://etcgreen.com/general/ev-tech-postmortem

Rather than to throw $B's of tax payer $$ into to R&D for this longterm target, we would be far better off if our government would join virtually every other industrialized nation's leaders and Join the Migration.

http://etcgreen.com/general/u-s-migration-to-diesel-biodiesel