Motavalli’s Book Navigates Bumpy Road to Electric Car Future

By Brad Berman · December 28, 2011

Jim Motavalli checks out the Nissan LEAF, during the May 2010 ground-breaking ceremony for Nissan's Tennessee electric car battery plant. (Photo: Brad Berman)

In the final pages of Jim Motavalli’s excellent 2011 book, High Voltage: The Fast Track to Plug In the Auto Industry, he turns to EV advocate Chelsea Sexton to characterize where the plug-in car movement is headed. Chelsea—like Jim, a contributor to PluginCars.com—sees a “couple of rough years” in our immediate future, with “deployment missteps, changes in policy and negative media stories, whether earned or not.”

High Voltage is a wonderful chronicle of these rough years. If you’re looking for a pro-EV rant—or a plug-in advocate’s tract that redacts the missteps and shortcomings from electric car history—this ain’t it. In fact, what makes this book so much fun to read are Jim’s behind-the-scenes personal anecdotes. The “fast track” of the book’s subtitle is really more of a misadventure.

For example, in August 2010, when Jim traveled to Irvine hoping to meet Henrik Fisker. The famed designer-turned-CEO wasn’t there. Jim’s calling card—as a writer for New York Times, NPR’s Car Talk, and PluginCars.com—couldn’t even land him a meeting with Fisker’s vice-president of sales and marketing who was “too slammed” with meetings. Instead, Jim settled for lunch at a local Whole Foods with Russell Datz, a company PR guy. (Datz told Jim that Fisker would produce 15,000 Karmas in 2011, one of the many overblown promises not realized by upstart electric carmakers.)

Then there was the time at the Detroit Auto Show in 2011, when Jim tried to drive a prototype of the Ford Focus Electric, only to have it stall out. A Ford technician muttered something about a “reset,” and was able to get it going again. Daimler-Chrysler engineers weren’t so lucky, when Jim tried to drive the company’s Dodge Sprinter Plug-in Hybrid truck, at a high-profile event in New York City way back in September 2006. The New York Power Authority and the Electric Power Research Institute sponsored the pilot project and the event. “With all those people looking on, I twisted the key—and nothing at all happened,” explains Jim. “A squad of German engineers with laptops couldn’t get the Sprinter going either.”

Challenges and Caveats

Jim balances these mishaps with mostly positive, but equally balanced, descriptions of his time behind the wheel of more successful electric cars, like the Nissan LEAF. In his first extended drive with Nissan’s electric car, he writes, “The LEAF was truly a delight to drive—smooth, tight, responsive. It accelerates plenty fast enough for me…There was a whooshing noise on fast takeoff that my wife compared to an airplane.” Jim writes in an effortless breezy style. He’s a great storyteller. But the real charm of the book is that Jim, while clearly believing in the benefits of EVs, doesn’t shy away from the challenges and caveats. “I loved everything about the LEAF except the range challenges,” Jim writes. “I’d probably develop ways around them if I actually owned the car.”

Jim does a lot of blogging to make a living, but he’s not of the ilk that simply regurgitates what others have written. He picks up the phone and jumps on airplanes—to see things for himself and speak directly with auto industry insiders. And people talk to him. Through the book, we tag along the journey, and eavesdrop. Jack Nerad of Kelly Blue Book, told Jim, “There’s not a good deal of uncertainty about [carmakers] selling the first 25,000 [electric] cars. They’ll find that many environmentalists and technology-oriented customers in a country of 300 million.” After that, Nerad questions what might happen. “Is this a consumer product with legs, or will the demand dry up?”

The book chronicles the attitude influential industry analysts, like Maryann Keller who throws her own wet blanket on the EV industry. She believes the $1 billion in government money to support Tesla and Fisker were not good investments. “While the startups may pioneer the use of some technology, any successes will be copied by the larger manufacturers, which have greater resources, including government support, as well as an existing infrastructure,” Keller said. “The startups will fail or remain neglected to niche markets.”

Facts versus Opinions

We might want Jim to shout back at Ms. Keller and Mr. Nerad: “You’re wrong. EVs kick ass. Global warming and oil dependence sucks.” But as our thoughtful and friendly narrator, Jim replies, “I can’t answer Nerad’s questions because the important factors—the price of oil, the state of the economy—aren’t reliably predictable.”

At the same time, when reality dictates, he’s ready to take on the uninformed with facts, technical assessments, and historical context, as in this excerpt:

“I’ve had dozens of people, at forums and across dinner tables, wave their hands dismissively when I tell them I write about electric cars for a living. “They’re just replacing the tailpipe with a smokestack—how can they be clean when the power comes from coal?” That analysis is lacking in anything akin to facts, but that factor hasn’t stopped Americans from holding opinions from the past.”

He then lays out the case with government and university studies, interviews with industry analysts and utility executives, and common sense logic.

Motavalli’s High Voltage goes a long way to displacing uniformed opinions—and replacing them with hard-earned facts and realizations about electric cars. I wholeheartedly recommend the book to anybody who drives an EV or is thinking about it. Don’t expect the journey to be as smooth and silent as an electric car’s acceleration. Yet, sometimes the bumps in the road make the drive more fun.

About the author

· Brad Berman

Bradley Berman is the editor of PluginCars.com. Brad writes about alternative energy cars for The New York Times, Detroit Free Press, Reuters and other publications. He is quoted in national media outlets, such as CBS News, ABC News, CNBC, CBC, and MarketWatch. Mr. Berman is a tireless researcher of the green car market. He is the transportation editor at Home Power magazine.

Full bio · 939 posts

Comments

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

I've always found Motavalli's articles to be fairly well informed and reasonable, I'd expect the book to be the same.
Though she isn't listening I'll respond to Keller by saying the efforts of the start ups, meaning specifically Tesla, have pushed the larger OEM's into motion, so even in the unlikely event that they fail the money was well spent, certainly more so than the billions spent on hydrogen in the last 20 years or so. Last I checked it was a loan to Tesla anyway.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

...They’re just replacing the tailpipe with a smokestack...

...He then lays out the case with government and university studies, interviews with industry analysts and utility executives, and common sense logic.

The case he lays out is crap. The fuel for electric cars is the current electric grid supply mix, and the main benefit of that is a reduction in oil imports. The Leaf, Volt, and Electric Focus all use just as much energy as any car before them, and that is the primary problem with automobile transportation.

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

Um, no. When you consider all fuel inputs for ICE's as well as EV's EV's use less fuel by far than ICE vehicles. EV's also have a reasonable potential to run emissions free from hydro, wind, nuclear, and solar.

· tterbo · 20 weeks ago

JRP3: Yeah I agree. Tesla and Karma probably will get bought off into other companies in the future. Their real lasting benefit though was in getting larger companies to voluntarily make EVs.

That's good insight. Hopefully the public will connect those dots.

· tterbo · 20 weeks ago

Worst case scenario for EVs, they some how find the cheapest smoke stacks, 1/4 the price of gasoline smoke stacks, narrowly missing wind/hydro/solar/geo, and then pass the savings on to the consumer.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@JRP3: Like so many others, you don't know what you're talking about, and you don't recognize the truth when you hear it. I'll try again: Cars of about the same size and weight, with the same tires and roads, use the same energy to overcome rolling and wind resistance. Today's EV's use about the same energy as today's reasonably fuel efficient gasoline cars. As far as chances to be powered from generation fuels that you like, adding load to the electric grid is not going to reduce the need for generation, and right we don't have the capacity to carry the grid without any of the big sources: coal (~50%), nuclear(~20), natural gas(~20%), or hydro(~8%), though we could get along without solar and wind, as these provide less than 1% of US electricity.

· Tmac · 20 weeks ago

1) you are correct moving any 3000 or 4000 lb vehicle will require you to overcome the same forces friction air resistance. You are correct that no matter what energy one uses ;gas, diesel, fuel cell, whale oil, biodiesel, electricity the physics of moving the car demand the same amount of energy.
2) you are incorrect in the wildly illogical conclusions about efficiencies.
The ice is terribly inefficient with only a fraction of energy in gas directed to move car forward
The rest is wasted heat and you Need radiator water pump etc to cool down the engine
The great majority of ev owners power up at night when there are plenty of excess electrons
The average EV draws about as much as plasma TV or clothes dryer! Should we ban more than one plasma Tv per house?

THe majority of ev owners own solar or purchase renewables
With vehicle to grid capability we can use wind and solar to charge Ev then trickle some power back to the grid when the wind or sun is not active

Renewables are clean with no need to mine drill spill frack pipe ferry
Let us not even talk about fighting wars in the middle east Iraq Libya etc to ensure the flow of oil

By 2013 San Diego residents will be better off with solar install than purchasing grid electricity

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

@Robert DeDomenico: Like so many others, you don't know what you're talking about, and you don't recognize the truth when you hear it. I'll try again:
You are of course missing a large part of the equation and proving your ignorance while trying to appear knowledgeable. If you are going to track EV power usage back to the generating plant, as is appropriate, you must do the same for ICE vehicles, which means at least tracing the power usage and efficiencies back to the refineries. There huge amounts of electricity, coal, steam, NG, and other fuels, are used to reform crude oil into usable fuel. That fuel is then pumped, trucked, and pumped again, all with efficiency losses, just to get it into your fuel tank. It does not just magically appear in your car. Then about 80% of that final fuel is lost to friction and heat leaving maybe 20% left to move the vehicle. So even you should be able to clearly see how the entire chain involved in moving an ICE vehicle is nowhere near as efficient as an EV and therefore ICE's use much more energy to travel a given distance than EV's.
Finally, your numbers are not surprisingly off, coal was less than 45% of the grid last year and likely to decrease in the future. The grid needs to get cleaner, with or without EV's. Areas where EV's are likely to catch on fastest, the east and west coast, and the south, already have lower than grid average amounts of coal generation.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@tmac: I didn't assert anything about efficiency, but since you mentioned it, I suppose I should clue you in on what it takes to generate and distribute electricity. Fuel is used to produce heat, and about 30% of that (US fleet average) becomes net output electricity. Only 93% of net output electricity makes it to a meter for billing, meaning distribution losses are about 7%, so only 28% of the fuel energy makes it to your meter. After the battery charger losses of typically 5% and battery losses of at least 5% for Lithium chemistries or 30% for NiMH chemistries, and about 15% total motor and controller losses (primarily controller & motor), you wind up netting a bit less than with an efficient gasoline engine, or if you consider oil recovery, refining, and distribution, about the same. Charging at night should theoretically cause a bit less bit less line loss in the distribution, but doesn't use any less energy to generate. Too bad there isn't more of that waste heat from electric generation & distribution to keep that battery pack warm in the winter, not to mention the car's occupants. Now I don't suggest banning anything. I just recognize that today's electric cars save no energy, but do waste money. The biggest waste of all would be the fantasy of using charged up electric cars to boost the grid when it needs the power! The annual US electrical output comes to about 25 quadrillion BTU's. A 25 kWh battery holds about 85 thousand BTU's, so you could power the whole country with about 294 billion battery cycles. With that kind of backup reserve together with solar, you should be able to divorce from the grid there in sunny San Diego. Good luck with that, and buy all the damn EV's and plasma TV's you like... I'm not suggesting banning anything. Just scattering a few sirloin steaks of truth... apparently to vegetarians.

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

Coal plants may be about 30% efficient but NG plants are 40-60% efficient, and hydro is essentially 100% efficient since there is no combustion. Same is basically true of nuclear since there is no combustion, so your 30% generating efficiency is quite wrong considering it only applies to less than half the grid.

· Londo Bell (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

Does anyone know that any modern day ICE, in its BEST condition, aka pretty much brand new with NO wear & tear occurred, and driven insanely smooth, i.e. no lead foot or stop and go traffic, can achieve, AT BEST, roughly 30-35% efficiency?

Whatever formula one used to calculate how much energy to extract gasoline in the form suitable for automobile use, multiply that by 0.3, will ALWAYS have a lower energy efficiency than the energy you can get from the plug.

ALWAYS.

That's why it's not a smoke stack replacement. Oh, I almost forgot - gasoline use also include smoke stack too, because after all, you'll need electricity to pump, transport, refine, and store gasoline too.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@JRP3: 45% - 50%... yeah that's way off. LOL. You might appear knowledgeable to the ignorant yourself when you call electricity and steam fuels, except that they are not. And since you brought it up and claimed it is so big, why don't you tell us just what fraction of petroleum energy is taken up in production, transportation, and refining in the petroleum provision stream? I would tell you myself, but you wouldn't take it from me... after all I'm just ignorant and trying to appear knowledgable. So I'll just stick to defending my first and main point, that so far today's EV's (Leaf, Volt, Tesla S, Fisker Karma, Electric Focus) use just as much energy as other cars. Remember that grade school riddle ... which weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of lead? What I said in my original post was true, and remains so. It takes just as much energy to move the car, and that is the problem to solve. EV's are being adopted by the wishful thinking but naiive few, thanks in no small part to those ridiculous subsidies. How's that Solyndra doing? I'm sure they'll pay back their subsidy, after all, it was only a loan. Schools out son, I'm going to bed.

· Steve Harvey · 20 weeks ago

Okay. Three things.
First - Another way to measure efficiency is "miles per dollar". A dollar of fuel will take an electric car about 40 miles. And a dollar's worth of gasoline will get you about 7 miles. So from that standpoint it is clear which is more efficient.
Second - When you combust gasoline -- a small fraction of that energy goes toward making the wheels turn. When an EV drains energy from it's battery -- more than 90% of that goes toward making the wheels turn. Yes yes, there are other inefficiencies along the way -- since the coal plant producing the electricity is less than 100% efficient and so forth. But still, even an EV fed purely from coal is more efficient than a typical gasoline car.
Third - The main idea of EV"s is not so much "more efficient" as "less gasoline". I would rather pay for American coal than Iranian oil. Right?

· ex-EV1 driver · 20 weeks ago

@Robert DeDomenico,
How come you don't total up the efficiencies you throw out and then dig up a few for ICE instead of just drawing a conclusion without even finishing the math?
My understanding is that a pure mobile ICE is about 25% efficient in ideal conditions but averages less than 20% efficiency (let's use 17%). With an HEV drivetrain, you get maybe a 20% improvement so you get close to the 25% efficiency (let's say our overall HEV efficiency is 21%). There's also upstream petroleum efficiency of around 90%.
JRP3 is correct with the 40 - 60% efficiency of Combined Cycle NG plants. He's wrong about nuclear (no combustion but there is heat wasted - hence the big cooling towers) but I'm not sure how that's relevant since it has different problems). The important thing is that the comparison between the 40 - 60% efficiency of a stationary Combined Cycle NG plant fed EV and a 17% efficient mobile ICE we see:
Mobile ICE: 17% X 90% = 15% (for HEV: 22% X 90% = 20%)
EV: 50%X 93% X 95% X 85% = 38% - I generally consider 150% (90% for HEV) improvement to be pretty good.
Granted, if you only consider the worst case archaic 30% efficiency coal plant and assume nothing will ever improve, you do get 22% for the EV - close to parity but still a win if you compare it with the most modern, highest efficiency way to use an ICE (HEV). It really isn't fair to compare the most modern ICE vehicle with the worst power plant is it? Grid averages are a lot better and perhaps a bit of projection about where the grid is going would be more reasonable for those of us who are trying to leave a little for future generations.
How does your math work? Do your best ICE numbers beat your worst EV? I, of course, didn't even mention regenerative braking recovery that counters some of the vehicle mass issues.
Of course, the ICE still makes you beholden to those who own the oil and it is running out. Coal is American, so is solar and wind so while your efficiencies are better for the EV, your sources aren't - they are much worse.
EVs are a way to a clean, sustainable future. Petroleum isn't. Period.
Regarding Solyndria - big mistake. Government will lose money if they start funding risky startups just as VCs do. Unfortunately, being composed of politicians, they aren't smart enough or risk tolerant enough.
There are a lot of us conservatives who realize that the important part of being Conservative is "Conserve" ("ative" doesn't really mean anything)
How did I do in school grandpa?

· Norbert (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@Robert: "today's EV's (Leaf, Volt, Tesla S, Fisker Karma, Electric Focus) use just as much energy as other cars"
---

Many who criticize EVs, then support fuel cells, but if fuel cells use hydrogen generated from electricity, they are 3 times as inefficient as EVs. However battery electric cars (which is what we usually call "EV"s) have good efficiency, already today. Since not all electricity is generated from coal, EVs are usually considered to produce much less CO2 than average gasoline cars (those using explosives to move forward). However not *that* much less than a modern hybrid.

Still, they use zero oil.

In the view of many, EVS go together with solar and other renewable energy. By the time EVs will have a significant percentage of all cars, solar will have reached grid parity with coal (it is already very close to NG).

Then, the EVs of today will use the solar of tomorrow. The same EV you buy today. Those who are willing to spend money (be it their own, or from the taxes they paid), are also willing to spend money on solar.

In that sense, Evs will produce zero CO2. One could even argue *negative* CO2, since EVs seem to have the effect to motivate the purchase of solar.

· Norbert (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

... therefore EVs use zero oil and produce zero CO2 !

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

RDD, claiming it takes the same amount of energy to move a certain vehicle obviously paints only part of the picture and distorts reality, which you seem determined to do. How much energy is used to fuel the vehicle in the first place before it moves an inch obviously has a large impact, to suggest otherwise is ridiculous. My numbers are quite accurate, you can check them if you wish, which you won't because it means your argument falls apart completely. LOL all you want, you're still wrong, laughing in your ignorance. You focus only on the 20% or so efficiency of the final part of the ICE supply chain, ignoring all the rest, yet focus entirely on the entire supply chain for the EV. Obviously electricity and steam are not fuels but they are energy inputs used to create gasoline. 46,227,000,000 kWh's of grid purchased electricity were used in 2010 by refineries in the US, not including on site generated electricity and purchased steam. Look it up: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/PET_PNP_CAPFUEL_DCU_NUS_A.htm
If you actually want to have an honest comparison of the energy used to move an EV vs an ICE and if you are going to trace the energy inputs for the EV back to the generating plant then you have to do the same for the ICE, which means tracing the energy inputs back to the refinery. Obviously you aren't actually interested in honesty, or learning anything new.
Ex-EV1, I realize that heat is wasted in nuclear generation but since there are no fossil fuel inputs it's irrelevant. There are also losses with hydro, frictional for example, but again, irrelevant.

· Londo Bell (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

RDD is obviously confused.

I wonder if grade school education is all he had? The way he was saying energy, and the examples that he used about solid matters, indicated that he might not have engaged in university level physics course (or good high school senior level).

He confused energy with particles (or matters). 2 different things.

Just because the same amount of energy is needed, doesn't mean the same amount of particles (or matters) are used the same amount of energy. In short, a whole lot of matters are needed for gasoline, used in an ICE, to generate the same amount of energy then that of an EV.

Maybe he can understand this example. I need $1000 in my wallet so that I can shop at, say, ToysRUs. Which is the best way to carry around in the wallet for that $1000?
100000 pennies?
1000 $1 biill?
10 $100 bill?
1 Credit Card?
Gasoline/ICE is similar to that 1000000 pennies, whereas EV is similar to that credit card. They both require the same energy, or in my example, the pennies and credit card will produce equivalent of $1000 amount, but the amount of materials required are totally different.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

So, you say 46.23 gWh's of electricity went into petroleum refineries, that's about 158 billion BTU's. The annual output of those refineries was at least 25 quadrillion BTU's, so the refinery overhead in electricity comes to about 0.00063%. Oh my gosh, if the losses due to steam (often provided by cogeneration plants onsite) are just as massive, the two taken together would exceed one thousandth of a percent! Wake up kid. Do a little math to the bitter end yourself. I asked for the loss percentage from wellhead to gas tank. You just threw out one loss amount, and that didn't answer the question.
All this to defend a statement of fact: today's electric cars use just as much energy as today's reasonably fuel efficient cars, and that's the big problem. That's the low hanging fruit when it comes to solving the problem. That's what I'm saying. I don't want to issue any grades yet, because I still have hope that you might come around and be able to get a passing grade. You all have the motivation. You just need the knowledge. Keep digging. I've got some chores to do.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

Hey Londo, how about when your next medical emergency comes up we'll come and get you with an electric ambulance? After all, it's sooo cumbersome having a tank of gasoline powering your vehicle. It's much easier to go the distance with a battery (that holds the equivalent of 2/3 of one gallon.) I'd hate to see where you went to school! LOL.

· gotmyleaf (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

RD - 1 gallon of gas = 36.6 kwh. Less than 24kwh takes me at least 80 miles in my Nissan LEAF. The LEAF will not allow the depleation of 100% of the battery.
So, can we agree that no production ICE car can consistantly match the minimum of the Nissan LEAF's distance to energy use, i.e. efficiency? In response to your statement " All this to defend a statement of fact: today's electric cars use just as much energy as today's reasonably fuel efficient cars."

· abasile · 20 weeks ago

It sure costs way less money to charge our LEAF than we were previously spending on gasoline. And we are in California on a standard residential electric rate plan. Keeping our energy dollars in the USA and out of the hands of our enemies is quite gratifying.

Just because 100% electric propulsion might not be the best fit for some applications today, such as ambulances, doesn't mean it isn't practical for our family's personal transportation. Ever since purchasing our LEAF eight months and 8000 miles ago, I've been surprised how rarely I've needed to drive a gasoline car.

· dutchinchicago · 20 weeks ago

If this Iran thing escalates to a new oil embargo than I would like to reserve my spot on that electrical ambulance in advance please.

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

Since an ambulance spends most of it's life not moving or idling I'd be quite happy in an EV ambulance, as happy as one can be in an ambulance that is.
RDD misses the obvious metric of cost per mile, which is a direct reflection of energy used. There is a reason EV's are so much cheaper on a per mile basis than ICE's, because they use less energy to travel the same distance. If the true unsubsidized price per gallon were displayed at the pump this would be even more obvious. I'd also suggest the face of a terrorist or dead US soldier should also be displayed at each pump.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

Electricity costs me 17 cents per kWh. It takes at least 25 kWh to fully charge an empty 24 kWh battery, if you do it slowly. For a fast charge it takes significantly more. So that comes to at least $4.25. I'll allow as much as 53 miles range from the leaf for driving in the circumstances of my area of the country. This comes to 8 cents per mile fuel cost.
Instead, I drive a Camry stick shift, and get 36 mpg. Gas in my area is $3 per gallon. This costs me 8.3 cents per mile in fuel. Admittedly, I do have to replace my car battery for about $70, every 6 to 8 years. How's that work out on that Leaf? Oh yea, my Camry cost me just a little over half the cost of that a Leaf would even after the federal subsidy, so I guess that messed up my per mile calculations.
You folks don't need electric cars, you need walking sticks, because you are so blind to facts it's amazing you can drive at all. Do you have a license? They must not be hard to get in California.
Oh well. Good luck with your electric ambulances and fire trucks. Maybe you can move on to electric medical helicopters and coast guard rescue boats. We'll just build twice as many power plants as we already have to supply the electricity.
Do me the courtesy of spending your own money on your ridiculous toys though. They're so cheap you shouldn't need to be stealing tax money.

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

You shouldn't be stealing tax money with oil subsidies to keep your price per gallon artificially low. You drop your subsidies and pay the actual price, probably close to $6 per gallon or more, and I'll be glad to drop EV subsidies. Just because you pay too much for electricity and not enough for gas doesn't mean everyone does. Not sure where you live that you think a LEAF will only go 53 miles when most people get 70-80 miles, especially if you are getting 36 mpg from a Camry, that means your driving is not somehow more taxing than average, in fact it must be less so.

· abasile · 20 weeks ago

Even with inefficient driving and cold, it isn't hard to average 3 miles/kWh wall-to-wheels in the LEAF; living in the mountains where we have snow, I personally do much better than that. 53 miles, at $0.17/kWh (a high rate), would cost $3 in electricity. At 36 mpg and $3/gallon over 53 miles, gas would cost $4.42. Go on a TOU (time of use) electric rate and charge at night, and your electricity cost for 53 miles would probably be more like $1.50.

Yes, there is no doubt that the LEAF is more expensive initially. Most new technology is. This is the first generation of mass-produced automobiles to use lithium-ion batteries. The point of the government subsidies is to increase the size of the market and thus hasten the further improvement of the technology.

Keep in mind the huge amount of money spent in the Middle East to keep the price of oil from skyrocketing. As we speak, our Navy's 5th fleet (may God bless and protect them) stands ready to stop Iran from blocking the Strait of Hormuz, key to Gulf oil exports.

· Londo Bell (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

Hey, if one can get 36 mpg on a beat up Camry, that's good for that person.

RDD may be dumb and stubborn, but at least he's doing his part saving the environment by not driving a gas guzzling vehicle.

· ex-EV1 driver · 20 weeks ago

@RDM,
Are you silly enough to think that gas will still only be $3/gal in 6 - 8 years?
Personally, I don't appreciate folks like you wasting all of our petroleum on your trivial personal life when we should be saving it for our farm vehicles, aircraft, military vehicles, and ships that we need and will need make our country strong. Our precious gasoline should also be conserved for farmers who actually do need fuel that can be carried to travel the long distances they must cover in sparsely populated areas.
EVs work just fine for urbanites on the coasts and large cities who consume the majority of our oil.
By the way; walking sticks are used for walking - something we'll all have to do if we run out of oil without a backup plan. The blind use white canes.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@JRP3: Neither of use is in charge of oil, gas, or electricity prices. Where they are right now it just costs me much less to drive a gas car. There was just an article in the Tennesean about a fellow driving from Nashville to Knoxville in a Leaf. He hit a charging station no less than every 45 miles, and had only 10 miles indicated range left at one stop. Freeway speed takes power, and cuts range. It took him 5 hours to make the 160 mile trip. And all that fast charging is not going to help that battery last longer. The Leaf owners manual recommends not using rapid charge (level 3?) more than once per week. I'll put my orginal statement in slightly different terms... it is a big problem that today's EV's still require the same horsepower, because it means they are still consuming too much energy. Check out the newest Japanese all electric that is designed to target 300 km at 100 kph using only a 24.5 kWh battery. That's almost twice as energy efficient as a Leaf, and I'm sure that the efficiency could be doubled at least 4 more times by some clever engineer.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@abasile: We don't get any time of use discount here. If we did that would start to make a difference, but it wouldn't tip the scale. There is still the limited battery lifetime and replacement cost, on top of the much higher sticker price, limited range, and long time to refuel (charge.)
And the national defense actions aren't going to change based on my energy usage. I don't fly a jet like John Travolta or have a big yacht like a big shot. Also, the next world tension could easily be over neodymium supply as demand for this metal is skyrocketing with electric motor production, and apparently over 90% is being supplied from China.

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

Yes I've seen that car, it's ugly as hell. Certainly cars need to get smaller, more aerodynamic, and lighter, but I don't think they need to look like crap.
Last I checked Nissan recommended not using fast charging more than once a DAY. Of course freeway speeds cuts range, in any vehicle, but that guy must have been driving like a nut to use that much energy and probably would have made the trip faster if he had slowed down and only charged twice. Still it's foolish to take a trip like that in a LEAF, and if that's your normal type of driving you should not own one. For most people with average driving habits the LEAF gets much better per mileage energy use than that and is much cheaper on a per mile basis.

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

China supplies most of the rare earths because they do it at the cheapest rates, but REE prices have dropped in recent months because of the big push for alternatives and the opening/re-opening of REE mines in other areas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/business/global/prices-of-rare-earth-m...
Plus you don't need REE's to build good EV motors, Tesla's AC induction motors are REE free, as was the EV1, the BMW MiniE, and I think the Renault Fluence.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@Londo: Actually, it's the first new car I ever bought for myself, and I've had it 4 years, and it's the 4 cylinder with the stick shift. The best commuting mileage I've ever been able to get was probably about 45 mpg by coasting 14 miles of a 24 mile trip, and accelerating the other 10 miles. I've never owned a V8, because I never needed one and so it would have been a waste of money (and fuel.) And I still stand by my first assertion... today's EV's don't do enough (for me) because they take the same Hp (kWh) as today's reasonably efficient gas cars, so they aren't saving any energy. I know that much more is possible and I consider these high prices for this incremental progress a waste. It is worth experimenting with and developing, but this is not the technology worth scaling up and commercializing.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

Tesla totally sucks.

· Robert DeDomenico (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@exEV1: Well, it's too bad for you that you get pissed off about not being able to control the everybody's personal life. You probably could benefit from some professional help there. I thought we were discussing these ridiculously expensive, wasteful, and useless electric cars. I'm sure the price of electricity is never going to change, but if it does, let's bet it goes down... (kind of like a Navy Officer.)

· abasile · 20 weeks ago

While I haven't yet had an opportunity to Fast Charge my LEAF, my understanding is that multiple fast charges per day should not be a big deal as long as the battery temperature is not too high. The limit of one fast charge per day might apply during a Phoenix summer, though.

@RD: You seem to be a much more efficient driver than most. While EVs do save energy (the EPA gave the LEAF a 99 mpge rating, after all), I agree that more could be done to improve efficiency. Consumers would have to want to buy the finished product, though. Although the LEAF could be more efficient, I do appreciate its generous ground clearance and headroom.

By choosing to reduce the use of petroleum-based transportation, combined with better efficiency when we do use petroleum, Americans collectively have the potential to improve our national security. Also, I'd love to see an end to American presidents kissing up to Saudi royalty.

Today's EVs aren't *that* expensive. Many, many people choose to spend $30-$40K on gas guzzlers that depreciate very quickly. At least with my LEAF ($37K out the door before tax credits/rebates), I won't have to spend tons of money on fuel. It's fun to drive, and quieter and smoother than a typical luxury car. I'm expecting the battery pack will be good enough for our day-to-day driving for the next 10 years or so. No regrets here.

· Londo Bell (not verified) · 20 weeks ago

@RDD,

Let me be frank and blunt with you. YOU LOGIC IS WRONG.

Here's what you are saying. 1kWh of energy (ICEV) = 1kWh of energy (EV). That's the lowest denominator form based on your posts. It is meaningless, just as I told you earlier - $1 = $1. What does that mean?

Your assumption is that just because an vehicle - ICE or EV - require the same amount of energy to "push" it, then everything else is irrelevant. Everything else means how those energies are being obtained, how much is being wasted, the conversion efficiencies, their environmental impact, and the cost of human lives...

The importance of EV is not about how much energy is needed to push a vehicle. That's pure physics. You take into mass, acceleration, friction, plus a little bit of assumption (constant value in the equation), then that's the energy required. There's no importance to this number. As far as one is concern, you can ask 100 horses to pull your vehicle, and they will provide the same energy as gasoline or electricity. IT IS JUST A NUMBER.

The importance is HOW you obtain that energy. From gasoline? Food? Horses? Ethanol? Electricity?

This is NOT the forum or the proper medium to educate you. Even more importantly, I don't know the level of education you have - because you seem to know some part of it, yet you display ignorant on others. More importantly, you are throwing stuff out with no support from any reputable source - something not a well-educated scholar would behave. Even now, I still see nothing from you to prove your claim, you know ;)

Here's all I'll say to you: do a web search, and you will find at least 3 research papers that tackle energy efficiencies comparisons, environmental impact, cost, etc. - for EV, worst case scenario (coal power), and for ICE vehicles, best case. Research papers were written by Stanford, UC Berkeley, and others.

Read them carefully, and see if they will open your eyes and minds...

· JRP3 · 20 weeks ago

RDD is either ignorant or a troll, or maybe an ignorant troll, not interested in rational discussion. Tesla sucks? Navy officers go down? Really? I'm done.

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