Bay Area To Install Electric Vehicle Grid 388
Mike writes "Recently San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States. The Bay Area will be partnering with Better Place to create an essential electric vehicle infrastructure, marking a huge step towards the acceptance of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to those that run on fossil fuels." Inhabitat.com has some conceptual illustrations and a map showing EV infrastructure, such as battery exchange stations, stretching from Sacramento to San Diego — though this is far more extensive than the Bay Area program actually announced, which alone is estimated to cost $1 billion.
The Gold Coast (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the consumers just need to do their part (Score:5, Interesting)
Vehicle standardization? (Score:5, Interesting)
110v...220v...different plugs...different acceptable recharge times.
Replacement batteries will require some sort of mechanical/robotic system to do it. Your grandmother is not going to wrestle a 100lb battery pack out of the car. And none of the elec cars I've seen have easily (no more than 5 mins) replaceable packs.
Finally, we have the apartment problem. If I live on the 4th floor, how do I ensure my car won't be unplugged overnight by some miscreant on the street.
All of these can be overcome. But spending billions to build out a grid for this without the standardization in place will fail.
I really, REALLY want this to succeed. But this effort may be premature.
let's give an inconvenient answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's anticipate a common response (Score:4, Interesting)
You lose efficiency when you transfer the power into the batteries and back out again. If you do all the math, using a coal fired plant to power an electric car uses almost the same amount of chemical energy (it's about 26% efficient, 40% for the coal plant and 72% for the battery/motor, and 90% for the power inverter, while a conventional engine is around 20%) but generates more CO2. The 60% you cite is for a combined cycle natural gas plant, but that's not where we get most of our power.
I'll bet that Big-3 Auto might interfere (Score:2, Interesting)
While it would seem they are "on the ropes" so to speak, Big-3 Auto often has a lot to say when it comes to getting their will. They had a lot to do with the failure of competing technologies including passenger rail. The next argument may be "now we REALLY can't compete because we don't have an electric car! give us more money and time to sell off the rest of our SUVs and we will consider making an electric car provided it has a high enough profit margin and a controlled 3rd party parts market."
Why not bikes, for (*&%@'s sake??? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Bay Area would be perfect for bikes. They are far more energy-efficient than EVs (by like 2 orders of magnitude), the Bay Area is largely flat, it suffers from massive congestion (EVs don't even begin to address that), it doesn't get too warm, it doesn't rain much all summer long, the societal cost of maintaining the facilities to park a few million cars are devastating, a few of the people who live there could use some exercise...
I like bikes even in hilly, rainy country, but there they have some disadvantages. It's utterly absurd that somewhere as perfect as the Bay Area doesn't encourage cycling.
Re:Wrong again (Score:3, Interesting)
See, if you are content to only go to destinations that CalTrain services, things are better than BART. Especially the old-but-slightly-bumpy gallery cars where those of us who wanted to engage in quiet intellectual pursuits like reading or sketching can do so upstairs without a person to rub shoulders with, life is good.
After losing 20 lbs and actually reaching a fairly good level of physical fitness for the first time in my nerdly life, I'm fairly convinced that it's not just about mass transit. It's about bike-friendly mass-transit and other transit-multipliers like cabs or things we have yet to properly engineer. Because I don't drive, even though I could afford to. Instead, I bike and take bike-friendly transit.
The problem is that Americans embracing bikes and walking and such is hard. Because we'd rather be fat and lazy.
But one should note that the Greater Tokyo Area is also more bike-friendly than the San Francisco Bay Area....
Re:Something for the Buck (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a masters degree in business. What's yours in? The "sub-prime" problem is named that because it is an attempt to blame poor people. It was all old rich white men that used deregulation to hide bad investments. Bad loans were made by brokers. They were quickly sold off to smaller organizations who bundled them and sold them. The bundles were traded. They did not have accurate risk numbers associated with them, and the bundles were hard to untangle to get an idea of the real risk. The crisis wouldn't have happened if the greedy brokers stopped loaning money to people they believed couldn't pay it. It wouldn't have happened if the greedy bankers hadn't packaged loans to hide the fact they were underperforming and then sold them off in bulk. But for the people getting loans, blamed for this (and hurting more than anyone else)? They are mostly blameless. The worst that can be said of them is that they believed a mortgage broker when it was explained to them that an ARM was risk free in the current housing market. The broker lied in order to make money. The person with the debt believed the paid professional's assessment of their area of expertise. And yet, the people taking the loans get blamed much more than those making them. I'm still confused by that.
Bad Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wrong again (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Vehicle standardization? (Score:5, Interesting)
put a rectenna in the base of the car, and charge by induction from underneath the pavement (pick a frequency that meat doesn't absorb very well). As an added bonus, if your electricity is cheap enough, you can design highways to deliver wireless power so the cars only need batteries with 30 miles or so of capacity.
Billing and activation based on transponder identification, of course.
Re:Doomed by its creators (Score:3, Interesting)
Combined with balanced use of solar thermal and tapping Americas northern and offshore oil and natural gas reserves, it presents us the option of becoming completely independent of both foreign energy and dirty coal
Have a look at Geodynamics in Queensland, Australia. They're new, and they generate lots of energy from hot rocks. You could tap the hot rocks near Yellowstone and make Montana and Wyoming the energy centres for your country.
Re:Wrong again (Score:3, Interesting)
From my time in the U.S. suburbs, I'd say it's closer to 100%. And from my time in Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago, I'd say it's still closer to 100%.
Now, bear in mind, I'm a suburbanite. I was born in the suburbs. I've lived there my entire life. I find the crowds in cities very much not to my taste. The majority of Americans feel this way, if their population distribution is any measure.
I remember sitting on a bus out in Seattle, traveling from U of W's campus back to my hotel on the water front, wondering if the group of loud, obnoxious thugs whose every third word was "nigger" were going to shoot someone for looking at them the wrong way. I was on the Metra in Chicago a few weeks ago, while some drunk guy puked all over the floor. Repeatedly. Out in San Francisco, it seemed like I couldn't get on a bus for more than a couple minutes without some bum asking for money.
See, I've now lived in London for five years and have hardly seen anything like that, and I use public transport most days, and most weekends, and often at night at the weekends. I assume you don't use it very often, yet still saw trouble? The problem is with American public transport, and it's because only the poorest people use it and no one cares to fix it.
I've once seen someone puke on public transport -- it was actually in the lift going back to street level after I got off the last subway train to go through that station. I've maybe once felt uneasy on a bus, again at night, when some drunk people were really rowdy. Someone asks me for money on the subway about every month, I think tourists must actually give them money.
I don't mean to be snarky, but I find it impossible to comprehend why anyone would actually like public transportation (or big cities, for that matter). And it seems to me that based on what I've seen of private vehicle traffic in big cities, there are still enormous gains to be coaxed out of more efficient road and traffic flow designs before trying to jam people onto those disgusting, dirty, smelly public buses and trains is the answer.
I think the American transit companies should employ some cleaners, more police and on-train/bus ticket checkers to kick the vagrants off, because that's not how public transport has to be.
People like big cities because there's lots of stuff to do outside work. At least, that's why I do. (Stuff = bars, pubs, nightclubs, theatres, museums, parks, galleries, concerts, lectures, shops, gigs, sports facilities, sports matches, etc etc.)
I like the public transport here because it goes where I want to go, it's faster than driving or walking, cheaper than owning a car and driving, relatively comfortable off-peak, lazy (I don't have to concentrate), alcohol friendly (no one has to stay sober to drive the others back on a night out), there's no need to find parking, eco-friendly, I can read a book or newspaper during the journey, and I'm not responsible for anything that goes wrong (unlike a car breakdown).
I dislike: peak time crowding (but I tolerate it for the short time), and when I get used to excellent service and forget to allow 10 minutes extra "just in case" and something goes wrong (e.g. suicide).
Re:Wrong again (Score:3, Interesting)
It also pisses me off to think that, here I am stuck with thousands of other people, all heading the same direction, but all in their own inefficient vehicle. Why can't I just be on a train? At least then I could read a book or check my e-mail during my transit.
It really depends on your definition of inefficient. Go ride the train sometime. It's as "stop/start" as the highway in peak hour, no matter what time of day it is.
Not really. It only stops at stations, which seems to me to be less stopping than cars, which have to stop at most junctions, many traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, and for other cars (i.e. traffic).
The train also tends to go the long way around to where-ever you want to go..
So do the big highways...
Part of the reason I live where I do is it's near a railway line that means I don't need to change trains to get to work. I expect people also choose to be near a major road so they can drive to work more directly.
taking longer even if it wasn't stopping every 3 minutes.
You want to read your book or check your email during the transit? Do you want to sit down while you're doing this? You can scratch that idea, if everyone else is catching the train too then there's a good chance that you'll be standing.
That doesn't stop most people from reading or checking their email.
And that fancy email accessing device may just get stolen,
What, when you're holding it?
and the person who steals it might just knife you to get it.
...on a train so full of people that you have to stand? Crazy.
Re:Wrong again (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No fossil fuels involved? Uh, how about coal? (Score:2, Interesting)
Electric cars are not a solution by themselves, no, but that doesn't mean it's not a good idea.
Part of the reason the US is starting to slip when it comes to new technology is because of the attitude that "oh it won't solve our problems, so we shouldn't do it." Keep in mind that in science (and arguably anywhere else as well), it's very rarely one project that solves a dozen problems at once. Rather, it's a dozen smaller projects that are combined to solve a single problem.
That said, might this be a colossal waste of money? Quite possibly. HOWEVER, if somebody can demonstrate that this infrastructure is feasible, it could solve all of our problems when combined with true renewable energy.
There are a lot of energy projects going now that are very promising. My personal favorite is Bussard's Polywell reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell). While it's possible/likely it won't culminate in a true fusion reactor on its own, they (as well as other similar groups) have made serious progress toward a true energy solution. If and when we get that in place, I'd prefer to have the infrastructure ready for electric cars rather than having to build from the ground up while still relying on gasoline. The world-wide energy problem has to be fixed just as much if not more than the vehicle/transport problem. With well designed electric cars and appropriate infrastructure, we solve both problems at once.
Re:Wrong again - yes, you are. (Score:3, Interesting)
Bay Area geography doesn't really favor Mass Transit. It's why BART basically sucks for commuting. With the exception of MUNI linking well to BART, most of the Public to Mass links suck.
I'm an Australian, and I've traveled a bit and spent a lot of time in San Fran, using the BART and MUNI to get from my relatives place in Pacifica to various places around.
I agree it sucks for commuting, unless the place you want to go happens to be on a connected line on the BART/MUNI lines. Fortunately most of the places I've been going to have been (well, not Pacifica - it's a fucking $40 cab fare from there to Daly City which I discovered last time).
I almost totally agree with the GP. I agree with some of what you said, but I think the Bay Area could (logistics aside - those fucking hills are a killer, not to mention quake-proofing everything) definitely benefit from improved public transport (using your nomenclature) around the city area. At the moment its a bit of a chore.
I've just come from spending 3 months in Europe and have been reminded again of the awesomeness of properly done transport systems. I think there's enough people in and around SF to justify a system (again, ignoring logistics, which I think would be the biggest roadblock there).
From the time I've spent in the US though, it'll be a long, long haul to get people out of cars onto public transport. It needs to be made cheap, clean, safe, and (most importantly) useful by having those links you're talking about.
I'd love to come to the US and see Euro/Japan style public transport to get around in. I really do not look forward to repeat visits and the fact that to get anywhere I have to drive or get a taxi.
Re:Doomed by its creators (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you understand what this new electrical grid is all about. This project is about a dynamic grid, one that uses constant-update price changes and continuous feedback systems to self-stabilize.
Let's say that you plug your car in when you get home, at about 6:00 PM. You know, when everybody and their uncle is busy burning power for home heating, TVs, and getting ready for dinner. The price of electricity is high, and your car, in constant communication with the grid, doesn't begin charging until the price of electricity drops around 10 PM.
This continuous feedback loop can tie in through your home heating, your refrigerator, etc. so that they shut off during periods when the electricity is in peak demand, and work extra when juice is cheap.
This reduces strain on the power grid, and makes better use of existing resources which are today massively overbuilt simply to handle the 10 minutes during the year when load is at its highest.
This solves a number of very real problems. For example, Wind power is very bad for power grids when it supplies more than about 10% of the total power fed into the grid - wind gusts cause voltage surges and low-grade brownouts that destabilize the power grid.
However, if you had a large number of distributed, high-amperage charge/discharge power storage units (such as a bunch of electric cars!) you could use them to act as electrical inertia to absorb sudden spikes in power.
The net effect will be a cheaper, more reliable power grid, one that could even stay running for short periods of time even if the mains to the power plants are cut, simply because the affected area would see a dramatic spike in the price of electricity, causing everything non-essential to shut off, while the electric vehicles would start backfeeding electricity, earning a profit for their owners.
This is for real!
Re:Wrong again - yes, you are. (Score:3, Interesting)
So why not rearrange the cities? The Bay area is still growing rapidly, it would seem, and the newer bits (I'm at the north edge of San Jose, for example) absolutely suck as places to live, because the population density is so low that there are no services. Nada. It's a thirty minute walk to buy groceries, a 50 minute walk to eat supper (with the possible exception of a Spanish language sports bar that sells quasi-pizza), there's nominally s Starbucks here, but it closes at, what, 8PM or something. The city planners are clearly retards. They need to draw lines and say NO MORE CONSTRUCTION OUTSIDE THIS LINE. Then they need to tear up every second street inside that boundary and make them pedestrian areas with light rail down the middle instead. Remove whatever zoning restrictions are separating the residences and the services. Charge for road use and make the light rail free, instead of the other way around.
There's no downside. The current arrangement is insanity.