8 US States Pushing For 3.3 Million Electric Cars 327
An anonymous reader writes "A coalition of eight U.S. states, including New York and California, have announced a plan to get 3.3 million zero-emission electric vehicles onto their roads by 2025. 'The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.' An editorial in Quartz says that while the initiative itself is fine, the states should really take cues from Tesla if they want to plan out an infrastructure that will convince people to switch. ' For longer distances, [Tesla drivers] can stop at "Supercharger" stations strategically placed along highways that let them add 150 miles of range in as little as 20 minutes. Currently, [government] money is being spent on installing much-slower chargers at stores, shopping malls and other urban locations in the hope that drivers will use them. Tesla says it will blanket the US with its Superchargers for a fraction of the cost, because it studies the driving patterms of its customers and installs charging stations only where they tend to travel. This isn't hard; most other electric cars also record their drivers' habits. If privacy concerns could be addressed and automakers would be willing to share that data with government transportation planners, the rollout of public charging stations could be more targeted and cash-efficient.'"
Re:There is no Magic Energy Fairy (Score:5, Informative)
Large fossil-fuel power plants can be made a lot more efficient than internal-combustion engines, even counting transmission and distribution losses (especially if you count distribution costs for gasoline). Running a car on energy from the electric grid is greener than running on gasoline, even if your power comes from coal plants -- and in most places, not all grid power is derived from coal.
Re:Uh... anyone check electric grid capacity? (Score:5, Informative)
10 m2 * 150 W/m2 * 8 h/day / (150 Wh/km) = 80 km/day. (*)
That covers the average commute quite nicely some of the time. In winter or inclement weather, not so much.
Still, the smugness of travelling gratis - abstracting investments - is seducing.
(*) Conversion to other units, including but not limited to BTU, miles (your pick), square feet and 1/32nds of a fortnight left as an exercise for the reader.
Re:Electric cars are *not* more energy efficient (Score:5, Informative)
You can run the Tesla Model S on the amount of electricity used to refine the gasoline for an equivalent car. Or put another way: a gasoline car uses as much electricity as pure electric, PLUS the gasoline.
"Chris: It's funny they make that argument, because they're one of the largest users of electricity in the country, to refine gasoline. That's why the power cords go into refineries. Something like 4 to 6 kilowatt hours of electricity to refine every gallon of gasoline. They're pulling that electricity from the same source as they're critiquing on electric cars and they get much less result out of it.
Elon: Exactly. Chris has a nice way of saying it which is, you have enough electricity to power all the cars in the country if you stop refining gasoline. You take an average of 5 kilowatt hours to refine gasoline, something like the Model S can go 20 miles on 5 kilowatt hours. You basically have the energy needed to power electric vehicles if you stop refining.
BI: 5 kilowatt hours, that's to refine and transport one gallon of gas?
Elon: Chris, does that include transportation?
Chris: I think it's just refining. It does not include transporting it from the Middle East or Venezuela. The more efficient your refinery is, the lower that number is. The lowest number in the DOE study I read was 4, and the highest was 7, it depends on what your refinery is."
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-and-chris-paine-explain-how-the-electric-car-got-its-revenge-2011-10 [businessinsider.com]
Re:still doesn't compute (Score:2, Informative)
So long as most charging is done overnight when the grid has a lot of unused capacity I suspect it will take several decades before electric cars have become common enough to stress it, plenty of time for upgrades to be handled gracefully - we'll probably need those impressive new, cheap batteries before even half the population can afford to adopt them. Even if there were government subsidies subsidies we'll still need battery chemistrys that rely on fewer rare earths just to be able to produce the sheer number of batteries needed on that kind of timescale.
Re:still doesn't compute (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike you, I know where this equipment comes from.
There are only a few (less than 9) providers of gas pumps in the US, and they all compete.
Fast delivery is key to profitability of gas stations in busy areas.
The reason the EPA had to limit delivery rates was to prevent tank venting from blowing right by the
recovery system. The EPA insisted they dial back the deliver rate.
10 GPM is not difficult to achieve.
How GPM A 1/2 inch pipe can deliver per minute depends on the pressure. If you have low pressure (flowing out of a slightly elevated tank), you can get about 7 gallons per minute. For average pumped pressure, you can assume you will get around 14 gallons per minute. If you have it set on a high pressure, you can easily get 21 gallons per minute. The nozzle of an unleaded delivery hoze is 0.840 inch, the inside diameter is slightly larger than 1/2 inch.
However the vapor recovery systems can't handle the vent fumes coming out of the tank when it is being filled that fast, so stations were required to dial down the pressure. This is one of the things a State weights and Measures inspector checks.
Re:still doesn't compute (Score:5, Informative)
It costs tens of thousands to add more gasoline pumps. An electrical charging spot costs less than $900 and are trivial to install.
Re:Uh... anyone check electric grid capacity? (Score:5, Informative)