Hi Craig
I'm not trying to convince everyone to "go electric," but I feel I should
set the record straight...
>There are good reasons why we are not all driving electric vehicles.
>First, when the cost of electric vehicles is compared to the cost of
>gasoline-powered vehicles, replacement batteries are usually left out
>of the calculation.
Battery cost is not as bad as you think. The 16 batteries in my electric VW
should last 10,000 miles at the very least, and it costs around $800 to replace
them all. The car gets 2.5 miles per kwh, and where I live (CA central coast),
a kwh costs about 15 cents. The total ($800/10,000 + $0.15/2.5) is around 14
cents per mile.
The local gasoline costs about $2.30 per gallon. As I mentioned previously,
an average 2004 car in the USA gets 20.8 mpg. The total for that ($2.30/20.8)
is around 11 cents per mile.
Now, although an electric car does need regular maintenance (brakes,
suspension, etc.), it does NOT need oil changes, tune-ups, or radiator work.
If you spend $300 on the latter in 10,000 miles, that's 3 cents per mile right
there, and the electric and gas-powered cars cost the same.
All these figures will vary from place to place and vehicle to vehicle. I'm
not saying that electric and gas vehicles always cost the same to operate, just
that there is generally no big cost difference. Of course, if you start
getting into the more exotic batteries like lithium and NiMh, they can be a lot
more expensive. Mine are just golf-cart batteries.
> If the total costs of ownership over the expected
>life of the vehicle are compared, gasoline-powered vehicles actually
>come out ahead on resource consumption. They are not the wastrels they
>appear at first blush.
Are you kidding?
Because so much of the total resource consumption associated with a car was
spent on its initial production, converting an old car to run on electric power
is the "highest form of recycling" (www.seattleeva.org). Other than some
ridiculous street-legal golf carts, the vast majority of "new" electric
vehicles available today are converted old cars. (For some examples, go to
www.austinev.org/evalbum and scroll down to the list of makes).
Power plants are way more efficient than car engines, in terms of all major
pollutants except for sulfur oxides (yes, SOx causes acid rain... but CO2 is
the bigger problem, IMHO). Even after you figure in the energy losses due to
power lines, battery charging, and the electric drive system itself, my car
gets the equivalent of around 40 mpg in terms of CO2 production. GM's EV-1
went about twice as far per kwh, for an equivalent of 80 mpg. VW's 1.2-liter
Lupo TDI is the only production fossil-fuel burning car that can beat that, and
it's not sold in the USA. (Ironically, the current version of this engine
would not work here anyway, because our diesel fuel contains too much sulfur.)
>Second, there is the problem of range.
My car's range is at least 45 miles in the hills where I live. My commute
is 14 miles each way. The vast majority of people in the USA have a commute of
30 miles or less. If you need to go farther, take the other car.
Rant mode off.
-Nick
nwolf@u.washington.edu
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