We Don’t Need No Stinking Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy 19 Comments

The Guardian;

Nearly three years ago, the mayor of London told fellow international mayors in Seoul that he would ensure 100,000 electric vehicles were in London “as soon as possible”. But the London assembly’s environment committee found that since Johnson’s announcement, only 588 extra electric cars were registered in London.

Clearly the word we Canadians pronounce as “journalist” means something quite different in English;

The more experienced London journalists have developed a naturally sceptical eye which they cast over untrustworthy mayoral press releases. For example, on the subject of electric charging point infrastructure, the media did a wonderful job of correction in response to a mayoral press release of 14th February 2011 announcing that there would be 1,300 electric charging points by the end of 2013.
This was actually the same 1,300 charging points from which the mayor achieved very positive coverage for when he announced the previous February that they would be built over the subsequent next twelve months – something which clearly didn’t happen.

h/t Maz2
Meanwhile, across the pond….

19 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Sparky Cars”

  1. I wonder where the kippers are going to get the juice for all these electric cars? Is their power distribution system robust enough to handle this huge increase in demand from fog town?
    Oh, wait…. only 2300 or so electrics in a city of 3 million cars? Never mind, they can handle that with Radio Shack alkaline batteries.

  2. Investigative journalism.
    They don’t know what it means – and they lack the curiosity to look it up.

  4. Fox news just discussed this car.
    News reporter has stock with GM,
    loves GM cars,
    but hates the Dolt/Volt.
    After charging the car two days for 12 hours each day,
    He was promised 40 miles to an electric charge but only got 18.
    All around driving mileage was 30 miles per gallon,
    but costs 46,000 dollars..
    Oblamer could use it as his Clown Car.

  5. I wonder where the kippers are going to get the juice for all these electric cars?
    Posted by: AtlanticJim
    –
    Its called electricity from coal.

  7. Meanwhile the Truth About Cars reports the following about the new Toyota compact hybrid:
    “Someone at Toyota told The Nikkei [sub] today that the company “received about 120,000 orders for its new Aqua compact hybrid between its Dec. 26 release and Jan. 31, 10 times the monthly sales target of 12,000 vehicles.” Toyota markets the car as the Aqua in Japan. In the U.S. and other markets, it will be called Prius C.”
    http://tinyurl.com/7szm6bg

  8. Atlantic Jim, when you look at a modern country’s total energy use, like Canada, you find that transportation is about 30 per cent of the total use. Energy use from electricity is about 40 per cent of total use.
    So, a very quick estimate is that if you want to convert all of your ground transportation into electric based, the additional demand will be somewhere between 50-100 per cent of current demand.
    Can our existing systems handle a near doubling of electricity generation, transmission and distribution? Not a prayer. Every time you see a transmission line, now you need two. Lines going down residential streets? Now you need about double the capacity. Ontario needs about 18 nuclear reactors to meet daily load requirements? Now it will need about 30.
    All of this can indeed be done over time, but the total expansion of the electricity system required is enormous and can only be accomplished incrementally over decades.
    There are several unsolvable problems with electric cars, all of which comes down to batteries.
    1. as FearlessLeader points out, energy density is very low, and there’s no possible solution to this.
    2. battery recharge time is impossibly slow, and there’s no reasonable solution to this.
    3. battery packs are hideously expensive compared to fuel tanks, and there’s no possible solution to this.
    4. Electricity is enormously expensive compared to fossil fuels, and there’s no solution for this. Renewable sources pushed by ENGOs and government only make this problem much worse. To get the cost of electricity comparable to that of say gasoline, you need to reduced the cost of electricity to about 0.5 cents/kWh. Or have the price of gasoline go up by more than a factor of 5 (say $8/litre instead of $1.20).
    Since electricity from fossil fuels is limited mostly by the raw cost of the fuel, this cannot be done with any electricity system powered by fossil fuels. Total cost of a coal plant is about 50% fuel purchase. Total cost of a gas plant is about 90% fuel purchase. The only possible technology which can produce that kind of low electricity cost is nuclear because its fuel cost is so low, but not with any nuclear technology that exists today.
    In short, total electrification of transport is not possible until electricity is literally as cheap as dirt.

  9. Wow . . a coal powered Volt actually gets 18 miles on a 12 hour charge.
    Now is the moment the oceans stopped rising and the temperatures cooled down.

  10. ” GM sold just 603 Volts ”
    Years ago,I worked the line at Chryslers. Back then we put out 60 vans an hour. Using that production rate,GM sold enough Volts in January to run the line for 10 hours . Unless they have a very slow line line nowadays(3 or 4 per hour) there must be parking lots full of these cars somewhere,or some very idle production lines. Possibly though.the Volt may be produced on a line along with another GM car that is similar in size.

  14. Hey, he said “as soon as possible”, not “by ___”.
    As soon as it’s possible to convince people they’re a good idea, they’ll be registered, ’cause people will buy them.
    Well played, I say.

  15. cgh: Re: “Can our existing systems handle a near doubling of electricity generation, transmission and distribution? Not a prayer. Every time you see a transmission line, now you need two. Lines going down residential streets? Now you need about double the capacity. Ontario needs about 18 nuclear reactors to meet daily load requirements? Now it will need about 30.”
    The utility of electric cars is based upon their recharging during eveing off peak times. This works quite well with nuclear power and run of the river hydro (e.g. Niagara Falls). One problem with nuclear power is its suitability for base load only hence any usage that can be shifted to off peak evening will help the viability of nuclear energy. OTH – if you generate power by coal or natural gas …
    Regarding the cost of electricity vs gas: a Nissan Leaf costs about $2.15 to charge (http://tinyurl.com/777e3br) for a 160 km. range – but let’s be conservative and give it a 100 km. range. A Prius may get 5.5 lites/100 km; at $1.25 per litre that 100 km. will cost $6.88 or more than three times the cost of electricity. My Mazda3 costs just over $10 per 100 km. Keep in mind though that there is no exise tax on electricity as there is on gas.
    I agree about charge times unless you opt for a 220 volt charger which costs over $2,000. IMO, the big weakness in electric cars is the battery pack which, as you say, is very expensive and has a life span of about 160,000 km.

  16. John, at this time and for the foreseeable future, all marginal power supply is fossil fuel, coal or gas. If it’s going to be a gas-fired car, then it’s far more efficient to simply burn the gas in the car with an IC engine than convert it to electricity first. Even worse if it’s coal, because there you have the 60 per cent thermal losses. It may indeed combine well with nuclear, but nuclear is fully utilized just meeting existing demand.
    And there’s virtually no run of river undeveloped at this time for all practical purposes.
    For all practical purposes, base load and peak load considerations don’t matter. It’s all about kWh. To power Canada’s vehicle fleet electrically, you need something on the order of an additional supply of 80-100 TWh.
    With the cost numbers you’re right, but apply the tax to both fuels and the electricity one goes out the window. And of course it will be taxed if it’s on a sufficiently large scale. Governments have to raise revenue somewhere.
    About the battery lifespan, we don’t really know yet. We’re going to have to wait for quite some years yet to find out what the actual lifespan in service is. I’m betting that 160 k is way on the high side, but time will tell.

  19. John, you cherry picked that TTAC article, and it has been pointed out that those “orders” are mostly vapor/impulse over the web.
    As for off peak load, what happens when off peak as you state becomes max peak when a few hundred thousand 240 volt car chargers turn on @ 30 Amps a piece?
    Brownout,

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