GM, Utilities Partner To Advance Plug-In Hybrids 582
chareverie writes "General Motors is forming a team with utility companies nationwide to create a charging infrastructure for electric cars. Their goal is to improve the design of charging stations — making them weatherproof and child-proof, for example — in locations such as public garages, meters, and parking lots. They're also working on ways to avoid overwhelming the utilities during peak hours. Their goal is to have these improved charging stations implemented by 2010, when the Chevy Volt is introduced. Everyone recognizes however that a national car-charging infrastructure would be far from complete at that time."
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Home outlet? (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with those is they need a lot more development to become reality. They are so small they need excellent front, rear, and side impact protection; likely far exceeding anything in current production vehicles. The fact of the matter is, SUVs, trucks, and semis are still on the road. The problem with these vehicles is most are nothing but glorified go carts whereby one becomes a future organ donor the second they accept their key. Let's face it, most of the current generation electric cars are able to get by using tiny electric motors because they give up lots of weight which is currently preserved in ICE-powered vehicles. Often, once you add safety parity, your acceleration and range become significantly reduced - not to mention, cost tends to go through the roof.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:5, Interesting)
... The reasons are simple: not only is it better for the environment, but it requires far less (maybe even none depending on how you drive) of a non-renewable resource like oil.
Neither of those is a decent reason in the face of hydrocarbon alternatives. Here's a good reason even with them:
Electric cars are simpler and more reliable than internal combustion cars, and will cost less for the same utility.
alternate title: (Score:2, Interesting)
Detroit shifts gears from Big Oil to Big Electricity
Meanwhile, in other news, Big Pharma and Big Media cooperate to extend monopolies.
Obituaries: Net neutrality killed in a hit and run by Ma Bell++
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:5, Interesting)
For your last point, my understanding is that you need to think about it in terms of point-source pollution. It's easier to mitigate 1000 pounds of pollution from one source than it is to mitigate 1 pound of pollution from 1000 sources.
Re:Super Capacitors. (Score:5, Interesting)
Most homes can't charge one of these things, at "pump speeds"
How about a super capacitor based charger in the home that slowly fills from the grid and can provide a quick charge to the car? It could double as a squirrel population control device.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:5, Interesting)
Making batteries isn't real enviro-friendly.
Cars are some of the most completely-recycled things on the planet. I have no doubt that the batteries will be recycled as a matter of course when electric cars become more common. Lead-acid batteries are already recycled.
Besides, we currently send hundreds of billions of dollars to places like Saudi Arabia... surely that factors into our energy policy?
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:2, Interesting)
Where I live in Saskatchewan, you can buy 100kWh blocks of 'green power', which come from wind generators (and if you've ever been to Saskatchewan, you know we have lots of wind!). This is a great thing for individuals, because I pay an extra $15 per month, and power my entire apartment off of wind. I find $15 a reasonable rate.
I recognize that wind power is not a stable base-line power that we can rely on: what happens when there isn't a windy day? We currently need to fall back on the coal plant to provide the base-line power.
My car is currently sitting in the parking lot at work. When I go home, I will drive it for 15 minutes, then it will sit all night in my parking spot until tomorrow. Suppose my car were electric, and able to feed the grid? During peak wind times, my car would fill up with energy. During quiet times, my car could feed the grid and help the power company get through the quiet spell. So long as the car has some sort of internal control that stops feeding the grid when the car gets down to 85% charged (i.e. I just gave the grid 15% of the electricity from my car), I would have no problem with this.
Re:What Charging Infrastructure? (Score:3, Interesting)
Fuel cells will never be reasonable. Even best case estimates at this point put fuel cell costs at 100K per vehicle, once the government subsidies fall away, without a MASSIVE leap in nanotechnology. Besides, H2 is NOT a viable option. (either too dangerous (liquid H2 fill ups) or too heavy, bulky, and expensive for on-demand fuel. (you know that BIG SUV they run around on H2? It's a 2 SEATER! ...and NO, we can't make it much smaller... not for decades even with the best estimates.)
The future is in windfuels (www.dotyenergy.com).
Electric cars ARE viable, now, today. It's just a matter of vamping up production. The power grid? We can EASILY keep up with car demand added to the grid, since the average new car lasts 17 years on the road, and it will be 10 years before even a large percentage of new cars are electric (we've got 30-40 years to grow the grid, which is the same timeframe they ALREADY PROPOSED for the wind/water/solar/geothermal superconducting grid overhal, the first part of which came online in Long Island, NY in April this year.)
The Volt hybrid, on 14 galons of gas, goes 600 miles. Without gas, 60 miles. The average american drives 70 miles per day. At 60-80MPG, that means the AVERAGE person will get more than a MONTH on a fill up, assuming they charge at home nightly. If they also charge at work or on the run, it's possible we'll be talking about the gas SPOILING before you can use it all. (and charging on the run costs less, and is only a 3-5 minute inconvenience).
Plug-in Prius in 2009? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. The article is about charging stations, but the Volt and competitors will charge just fine on 220V in your garage overnight. Given the number of cars GM is talking about - up to hundreds of thousands, no grid upgrades are needed, especially since charging will likely be mostly at night.
I am a fan of the coming plug-in hybrids, since new battery technology [a123systems.com] can help them be cost-effective while reducing CO2 emissions and foreign oil imports. However, in the near-term, switching to natural gas cars like T. Boone Pickens wants, seems to make a lot of sense.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:2, Interesting)
There is a 26 megawatt coal burning power station about 2.5 miles from the house I grew up in. It is *unnoticeable*. There are big piles of coal near it much of the time, but I don't feel the need to drive to where I can see them and then stare at them.
Re:Home outlet? (Score:5, Interesting)
Cities could put charging stations right up to the curb.
San Francisco already does this in some places, where an outlet is built into many parking meters.
And several businesses and parking garages around the Bay Area have "electric car only" spaces next to the handicap spots that have charging stations there.
And that was all built just to support the EV-1, which doesn't even exist anymore. This kind of infrastructure is relatively cheap and easy to do. This isn't some kind of pie-in-the-sky pipe dream.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to totally fair with the comparison the battery is the fuel tank and most fuel tanks are made of steel. Way easy to recycle.
Yes, but that is a only part of the equation you really need to look at the whole system:
If your gasoline powered engine lasts you 200,000 miles (not unreasonable) and you do regular maintenance (won't last as long if you don't) changing the oil every 5K miles. You end up with about 60 gallons of used motor oil. Not counting any that you need to add between oil changes to compensate for what leaks on the floor or makes it past the rings and out the exhaust.
Motor oil also has a history of recycling but is it much longer than battery recycling?
The real question is which is worse the gas engine and all its byproducts or the electric and its byproducts.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the only answer that makes any sense is nuclear, but it seems like we're never going to get another nuclear plant in the U.S.
Relying on nuclear power is a small number of points of failure, requires the grid, and is not open for competition (unless you are a mega-corp with govt officials in your pocket). How is that so awesomely good ?!
Wouldn't it be better to make wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, hydro, and other sources efficient and cheap enough that villages in alaska, and farms, and your vacation cabin can power themselves? Even in the event of a world catastrophe like an asteroid or pandemic or government/market collapse? Seems to me like the benefits of efficient and cheap power from renewable sources that scale (ie, everything else) would be far better overall than nuclear.
Electric infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, charging stations are needed for rechargable cars. Only, there are a few little problems. The biggest one is that we aren't building power plants any longer. We are running on coal-fired plants from the 1950s and hydroelectric plants from the 1930s. Nobody is going to build a new high-efficency coal-fired power plant today. Where, exactly would they put it? How long would it take to get through the environmental impact studies? What community group would come out and say they need it, vs. all the groups saying it will kill children and ruin the landscape?
Nuclear? Sure, maybe a couple of plants might get fast-tracked in the next few years. But the electric boom is pretty much over.
Plan on more brown-outs. Supply exceeding demand? I don't think so, not in any future that I can foresee. Will there be more wind and solar generation? Absolutely. Will it keep up with growth in demand from cities? Today, right now, we could use a few hundred megawatts additional for every city in the US. It isn't going to happen.
Yes, they are going to build a huge wind farm in Texas. Only problem is, the transmission lines aren't up to carrying any massive increases, so a huge part of the project will be to increase transmission capacity. And this is happening in a small part of Texas. What about the rest of the states?
Reduce, reuse and recycle. Mostly, for electricity it is reduce. California and Florida both have home controls to turn off your electric consumption during peak demand periods. It is coming to other states as well. There simply isn't enough electricity to go around today in the US. We are not building power plants. We are not increasing transmission capacity.
Do you really think there is enough power to charge up hundreds of cars in a city of any size today?
Re:alternate title: (Score:2, Interesting)
actually i was kinda hoping for a +Funny mod, but struck a negative chord with the "overly sensitive regarding corporatism crowd"
it just seemed amusing to me that GM feels they need an energy industry of one sort or another to cuddle up with. It's also amusing to me that this transition is billed as big news: it's what they've been doing for 100 years. They've just switched partners. The only moderately interesting thing is the socio and/or economic pressure angle.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:4, Interesting)
The real question is which is worse the gas engine and all its byproducts or the electric and its byproducts.
That's a great question. I saw a report on TV not long ago which sought to address this question. The report attempted to look at all factors including costs and environmental impact associated with batteries and the additional electronics/motors, etc. According to the report, only two or maybe three hybrids in current production are actually improvements over ICE. Two of which are made by Toyota. I forget what the questionable third one was.
These top three were the only ones that even had reasonable returns on investments (difference paid for hybrid verses non-hybrid model or equivalent). The top three had a ROI somewhere around for or five years. After than it started falling off to nine or so years. Around the mid park the ROI was somewhere in the twenty year range. The worst, was a Lexus, which had a 99-year ROI.
Long story short, for the vast majority of hybrid cars, ignoring the cool-factor, most hybrids actually do nothing for the environment other than change where the environmental impact is taking place. And don't forget, the majority, overall are actually worse for the environment than best of breed ICEs.
Hopefully the cool-factor will be enough (and it looks like it is) to spur a second and third generation of development. Each generation looks to better for mileage, environment, and ROI.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. The article is about charging stations, but the Volt and competitors will charge just fine on 220V in your garage overnight. Given the number of cars GM is talking about - up to hundreds of thousands, no grid upgrades are needed, especially since charging will likely be mostly at night.
Which is great if you live someplace where you've got or could get 220V service near your parking space. But for anyone who lives in a apartment having suitable electric service installed at their parking space seems unlikely.
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:3, Interesting)
Try adding a zero and multiplying times ~2 and you have a better estimate. Which is just not cost competitive with even $4/gallon gas (average miles per year 15,000 average MPG 25 estimates to make the numbers easy) as it takes over 10 years to pay off the system by which time you'd have two and a half doublings of your money if you had invested it which makes the payoff time with interest 15+ years.
Rentals are just fine for special trips (Score:3, Interesting)
For starters, time is usually very precious when such a car is needed.
Huh? Picking up/dropping off a rental car takes about 30 minutes total tops. Less if you plan ahead. I do it all the time. In most cities in the US there is a rental car agency within a few miles of wherever you live.
Such proposals have the consistent flaw of valuing the driver's time at zero.
Time has value to be sure but it's not the only economic consideration. I've rarely met anyone who is so busy however that they find it impossible to rent a car when one would be needed.
I'm sure your needs are different than mine but I drive relatively small cars normally and borrow or rent larger ones as the need arises. I've done the math and for my lifestyle it works out much better economically. A single tank of gas for my VW is around $50 right now. For a large truck it would easily be double that. I can rent a large truck for a whole day for $50-100 so we're basically talking the price differential on one or two tanks of gas. You might have different needs than me and that is fine but it's easy to work out scenarios where renting makes a lot of sense.
Then there's the extra driving and related fuel costs to pick up and drop off the specialty vehicle.
Some rental companies [enterprise.com] make it a key part of their advertising that they will pick you up. This is a non-issue.
Then there's the enormously higher cost per passenger mile of a rental vehicle
As opposed to the enormously higher operating cost of using a Ford F250 as a daily drive so you can haul all your trailer and gear a few times a year? Yes if you rent every day that would be stupid but no one would do that. Buying an oversized gas guzzler for features you might need once in a blue moon is stupid from an economic perspective not to mention irresponsible.
Then there's the risk of the vendor not having a suitable car when you need
There are about a zillion rental car companies. If one screws up us another. I've done a LOT of vehicle rentals and it is rarely a problem to find a suitable vehicle even for unusual needs.
Re:What Charging Infrastructure? (Score:3, Interesting)
"The real problems with hydrogen are as follows: It has to come from somewhere, and you have to distribute it to people somehow. Every other problem (even embrittlement!) can be solved with existing technology. We still have no cost-effective way to produce and distribute hydrogen."
2008 called, 85% efficient electrolysis with the promise of 97% 'by the time hydrogen cars roll out' is here now, i'll forgive you for missing it, as it was a roland p /. article, so i'm linking directly to the article, not slashdot.
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801669 [eetimes.com]
now, you were saying? 85% energy efficiency makes hydrogen combustion look tasty, because of a number of things. 1. hydrogen, like gasoline can quickly refuel a vehicle, with a LOT of power 2. there are very few fueling stations, so making grids that can handle high voltages to make hydrogen is easy, doing this to each house is HARD. that's why we have 110 or 220 at home, not 6000 volts.
http://www.hybridcars.com/electric-cars/power-of-pump.html [hybridcars.com]
a really nice summary of why electric cars that plug in at home never panned out.
using the numbers in that article filling up a hydrogen car at 85% efficiency 4660 kilowatt hours. for the equivalency of 120 gallons of gas. or $466 for the equivalent energy of 120 gallons of gas, this assumes that hydrogen combustion/fuel cells is at the same efficiency of petroleum, sorry i'm bad at math so someone else will have to post a correction if they know the efficiencies of fuel cells/hydrogen combustion. BTW that's $3.88 a gallon. at 97% efficiency that's $3.20 a gallon.
battery based hybrids get better mileage, "In general terms... 1 kilowatt-hour--will move an electric car about four miles down the road." so $.10 for 4 miles, if 1 gallon gets you 33 miles, then $0.82 per gallon for an electric vehicle
but that doesn't compare the real story either, and this guy is comparing a household battery charger, compared to a plug in electrics hybrid charger. in his article, so i don't know how fast 19 amps at 110 V can charge (plug in will use charging arrays duh) or 39 amps at 220 v if you wire a special plug, then we have to consider if you have 2 plug-ins or not, and if you ran separate lines for them or not... well i won't do the math...
the point being, electric cars get great economy, hydrogen i don't know where it falls, but it doesn't make sense to promote hydrogen if battery tech has evolved to the point where electric cars are better for the pocket book, and don't take forever to store that power..
Re:Electric infrastructure (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not in Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
The Zenn isn't allowed on Canadian roads because it has more in common with a golf cart than with a real car, not because of government red tape. I believe the top speed of the thing is only about 25 mph. You sure as hell wouldn't want to allow one on your basic city street, where the speed limit is at least 30 mph, and often higher. People driving the thing would have to keep their windows rolled up to avoid getting wind burn from the bicycles whizzing past them.
Plug in Stations (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:With GMs luck. (Score:3, Interesting)
Mounted on the back of my house is a little box that gives the power company the ability to turn off my air conditioner during peak usage, should the need arise. As compensation, I get about $40 refunded on my electric bill at the end of every summer.
It's not hard to imagine a similar device that could be installed to only charge the car during off-peak hours. Hell, the same box could probably be adapted to the purpose. Well, except that it doesn't have a customer override switch, which would be necessary for vehicle charging so that you could choose to pay the higher price if you have an urgent enough need to use your vehicle sooner.