Plug-ins and electric cars are a core climate solution, since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline, even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“). I think the Volt was overdesigned (see “CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid“), but very much hope it succeeds. Our guest blogger, Kate Tecku, Energy Policy Intern at the Center for American Progress, has the latest updates on the Vote (first posted here). See also “So what is it like to actually drive the Chevy Volt plug in hybrid electric car?“).
On Tuesday, after weeks of buzz from a viral media blitz, GM finally answered its own marketing spin, “What is 230?” Apparently, the new Chevrolet Volt – set to hit show room floors in 2010 – will achieve an astounding city fuel economy of 230 miles per gallon.
GM Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson exclaimed in a press release on Tuesday that the Volt is sure to be a “game changer.” He went on to note that “based on the results of unofficial development testing of pre-production prototypes, the Volt has achieved 40 miles of electric-only, petroleum-free driving.” This, taken in conjunction with the Department of Transportation’s findings that nearly 8 in 10 Americans drive less than 40 miles per day, means that “many Chevy Volt drivers may be able to be in pure electric mode on a daily basis without having to use any gas” – unlike other hybrids such as the Toyota Prius.
The Volt, however, could cost about $40,000, putting it out of reach of many middle income consumers. GM believes that government incentives and battery warranties can make this new PHEV model an appealing option to climate- and cost-conscious consumers, despite the Volt’s high production costs. Prime among these government measures is a $7,500 consumer rebate in the 2009 stimulus package for purchasing qualifying electric plug-in vehicles such as the Volt. The Volt will become more economically attractive when oil and gasoline prices rise during the worldwide economic recovery. In contrast to their conservative predictions in 2008, the Energy Information Agency now expects oil prices to increase to $110 a barrel by 2015.
Critics say the 230 mpg claim for GM’s new plug-in is misleading – and even if it does live up to the hype, the Volt’s fuel range will pale in comparison to Nissan’s new plug-in model, the Leaf, due out in 2012. In a show of industry competition for most fuel economy supremacy, Nissan’s EV Twitter feed posted this yesterday: “Nissan Leaf = 367 mpg, no tailpipe, and no gas required. Oh yeah, and it’ll be affordable too.”
Japanese auto makers aren’t the only competition GM will have in the PHEV market. China announced last December it’s new plug-in, the F3DM, which will only cost an estimated $21,000 and has a battery range of an estimated 63 miles. Though it is unlikely that this model meets other U.S. safety standards, it is yet another sign that China wants to dominate the development and sale of clean energy technologies.
General Motors hopes the release of the Volt will signal to consumers the company is heeding the call for a new generation of super fuel efficient vehicles. The Center for American Progress hosted auto industry executives and independent engineers back in 2008 at an event to discuss the future of plug-in electric technology where GM Vice President Jonathan J. Lauckner acknowledged that “the automobile industry can no longer exclusively rely on oil as fuel for our vehicles.”
GM and the Volt may notably affect the electric car battery industry as well. Bob Kruse, GM’s executive director of global vehicle engineering, said on Friday that lithium-ion batteries – the kind that powers the Volt – are expected to come down in price and weight as the Volt is brought into mass production: “Getting the energy density up, getting the weight out, getting the cost out, that’s all part of what we are going to be challenged to do,” said Kruse.
Efforts to design the long range batteries of the future got a boost on August 5th when President Obama announced at a speech in Elkhart County, Indiana that the Department of Energy would invest $2.4 billion in advanced battery research. The funding is from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and is expected to save or create tens of thousands of jobs in Indiana.
In addition, investments in a new smart grid will also be pivotal to the full scale deployment of PHEV’s. Britta Gross, General Motors’ manager of Hydrogen and Electrical Infrastructure Development spoke at length in an interview last November about the partnerships GM has built with utility companies such as Duke and Edison and her confidence that these companies are more than prepared for the wide-scale deployment of the Volt.
This announcement by GM is sure to please the White House, considering then-candidate Obama’s pledge last August to put 1,000,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015. The Volt and other super efficient cars are an essential element to meet President Obama’s new fuel efficiency standards that the White House believes will “result in savings of 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of vehicles sold in the next five years alone.” Plug-in vehicles like the Volt are essential to cutting our nation’s addiction to foreign oil and reducing global warming pollution. It may just be the “game changer” GM – and America “” needs.
Related Posts:
- Has GM overdesigned the Volt: Is a 40-mile all electric range too much?
- Everything you could want to know about the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle announcements at the Detroit auto show
- Plug in Hybrids are Green (Duh!)
- Hybrid production costs may drop two-thirds within 10 years
- World’s first mass-market plug-in hybrid is from “¦ China, for $22,000?
- The energy tax credits in the bailout bill, Part 1: Solar power and plug in hybrids win big
- All things Chevy Volt, including the new House tax credit for plug ins
- Chrysler, Mazda, Hyundai, and Nissan announce plug-ins “” Honda stands alone against PHEVs
- Why I don’t agree with James Kunstler about peak oil and the “end of suburbia”
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The Chevy Volt and Tesla Roadster get all the media attention, but I think the Aptera is the most likely to succeed. Aptera “gets” the critical importance of efficiency in an electric vehicle. As a result, the Aptera is smaller, lighter, more aerodynamic, and less costly than either the Volt or Roadster. The electric is a 100 mile range 85 mph capable vehicle. The PHEV (due later) is expected to have 50 mile all electric range with 300 mpg mixed electric/hybrid drive.
The conventional approach to many climate/energy challenges is to find ways to tweak the existing ways of doing things. The Volt and Roadster represent this conventional approach, as they are conventional size/shape cars with an electric drive. This is not enough to meet the challenges of climate and energy. We have make radical changes. The extreme efficiency of the Aptera reflects this.
The Aptera design started with the most efficient design possible as a prototype, then made practical compromises according to consumer demand. The result is a vehicle with triple the miles per watt-hour of battery capacity, compared to Volt or Roadster. The Aptera deserves more mainstream media attention.
Check this out: http://www.desmogblog.com/oil-lobbys-%E2%80%98energy-citizens%E2%80%99-astroturf-campaign-exposed-launch
There is some confusion and controversy over the “300 mpg” claim of the Volt. For a PHEV, It is much more appropriate to quote two numbers: electric-only range and gasoline-only efficiency.
The electric-only range figure is the same standard used by all-electric vehicles, and is useful for such comparisons.
The gas-only efficiency is the miles per gallon achieved on a tank of gas, starting with an empty battery. This figure is comparable to the fuel-efficiency figures for conventional gasoline vehicles.
These two numbers would give the consumer all the information they need to know to figure out how the PHEV will perform in their individual usage.
While the Volt may be “overdesigned” it is simply unrealistic to expect companies to provide charging at work. When I commuted to work for a well known company the response one of my coworkers got to a request for charging stations was that it was not going to happen with an emphasis on NOT. My roundtrip commuting distance was exactly 43 miles. A 20 mile all electric range is not realistic for me unless I won’t get taken to the cleaners when the gasoline engine turns on. Still I’d rather be driving in electric mode at all times.
[JR: I don't think companies will provide charging by themselves (except maybe those like Google). I DO expect the local utility will -- or some third-party facilitator. Not every company, of course, but those with a large parking areas and garages. I also expect that by 2020, WalMarts will we give away the electricity -- and it'll be 100% renewable!]
The “230 mpg” figure is indeed misleading, especially if by stating that the Volt uses no gasoline in electric-only mode, GM is implying that it’s not using any energy at all. Instead of gasoline, the car is fueling those sub-40 mile commutes with electricity from a mix of coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydropower generators. There’s a cost to that, in both carbon and money.
Even so, the Volt comes out between 40% and 60% ahead of the competition when looked at in terms of CO2 emissions per mile or cost of energy per mile, respectively. You can find my calculations here. These numbers only get better as the grid supply gets greener or the price of gasoline rises relative to electricity.
We may need something from out of left field to facilitate the EV…
today’s electric car technology
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-08-09-the-limits-of-todays-electric-car-technology/
We will likely ship a billion new cars worldwide in the next 15 or so years. The key question is not whether hybrid or EV cars/batteries will be successful financially (they probably will), but rather what it will take to get 80% of these billion cars to be low-carbon cars. The most important thing to remember is economic gravity: the cheapest thing ends up winning. Our hope is to win that battle over the long term, because it will take these breakthroughs to change the overall carbon trajectory for passenger cars.
With electric cars, there is yet another major risk: in the foreseeable term, China/India and even the US will be “plugging into a lump of coal” for years to come. And though renewable electricity from wind and solar is a good goal for these cars, it will likely be much more costly (about 5X higher currently in India where a new coal plant costs 4c/KWh), so economic gravity again dictates high-carbon electricity to power these expensive electric cars. Another breakthrough is needed there.
Not relevant to this post, but Joe and Climate Progress are featured heavily here:
http://www.pointcarbon.com/polopoly_fs/1.1189174!CMNA20090814.pdf
Such pre-existence display and titillation is a mark of such a slow moving, dinosaur-like industry. It has to measure the excitement and response – and belies the lack of confidence about taking such an important step forward.
Always – the market will be owned by mfgrs that can change and adapt quickly to the rapid changes ahead.
With predicted climate scenarios unfolding faster than expected, I would want to see a faster response from transportation sectors.
Paul,
The claim that electric cars run on coal is inaccurate at the least and misleading at best. Coal currently provides 49% of the country’s electrical generation. That percentage is going down even further this year with the projection that coal generated electricity will decline by 7.9% in 2009.
There are many areas of the country where coal plays almost no roll in electrical generation like in the northwest in Washington state where hydropower plays a dominant roll. It produces about 87% of total electrical generation. Coal accounts for about 9% by 2007 estimates. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept05wa.xls Even in the dirtiest state, North Dakota where 95% of electrical power is generated by coal and even there electric cars would reduce CO2 emissions between 0% to 59%. http://www.sherryboschert.com/Downloads/Emissions.pdf on page 3.
I need to make one correction. Washington State produces 74% of its electricity from hydro and not 87%. Coal still accounts for 8% by 2007 estimates.
I believe the article was referring to the more global aspect of electricity generation.
My local kroger-owned chain of grocery stores, Fred Meyers, recently did a huge remodel of one of their larger stores at 39th and Hawthorne in Portland, Oregon.
As part of the remodeling process, two EV recharging stations magically appeared, no fanfare, publicity … they just appeared.
Apparently this remodel is part of a nationwide upgrade plan for kroger-owned grocery stores, so maybe they’ll be adding recharging stations to all of the stores they remodel?
Paul,
The post I was responding to was from another Paul that was deleted but regardless, when you compare EVs to gasoline powered cars there is no comparison. The emissions range from 0% reduction to 59% reduction in CO2 levels. Charging an 8.8 kw hour pack pales in comparison to A/C use. I could use up the power to rcharge one Volt battery in about 3 hours with my A/C here in Texas even with the thermostate set to 80º F. whick is my normal setting.
“Even so, the Volt comes out between 40% and 60% ahead of the competition when looked at in terms of CO2 emissions per mile or cost of energy per mile, respectively.”
One reason it costs so much less is that electricity prices are controlled (based on the average cost) while gasoline prices are not controlled and therefore are based on marginal cost. Is it really a benefit to provide below-market-cost energy to drivers? The lower price will increase the amount that the average person drives by about 20%.
In response to the comment immediately above, I will say that I myself don’t have either an air conditioner or a car. If I lived in Texas, I would undoubtedly want an air conditioner, but I think it is possible to dramatically reduce its energy use by weather-proofing the house.
My electric car is plugged into a lump of solar panels, not coal. I sure wish Vinod would tell me where to buy panels for my roof that turn sunshine into gasoline.
In its death throws, the “old” GM finally got something right: The Chevy Volt is the first mass-production vehicle to properly implement the hybrid concept. It employs a small gasoline engine not to spin the wheels (as the Prius and others do) but only to spin the on-board 53 kW generator to make more electricity As You Drive for the motor and battery. This is a far more efficient use of the gasoline, since the generator always spins at one constant speed and the so the gasoline engine never has to speed up or slow down to accommodate always-changing driving conditions. The gasoline engine can be designed and tuned for super-optimal fuel consumption running at that one constant speed and achieve an mpg rating previously unheard of. We’re still waiting for the EPA to issue its findings, but the indications are that the Volt will turn in at least 62 mpg when the battery is almost empty and the car is running on electricity produced by the on-board generator. But even though the battery is discharged, the car will continue to turn in the same performance it did when the battery was fully charged. This is a critical factor for acceptance by American drivers: There will be no performance penalty for going past the first 40 miles and draining the battery, only the cost of sipping a little bit of gasoline to generate more electricity and keep on driving at speed.
Even if they do come up with a new way of figuring the mpg specifically for the Volt, no matter how you figure it, that the first 100 miles driven will only require about 1 gallon of gasoline. With no performance penalty. Try to do that in any other automobile. And unlike other designs, the Volt’s technology can be scaled up to work in larger, heavy-haul vehicles.
I never understood why Toyota and the others didn’t go with this approach to hybrid technology in the first place. It was always the obvious way to do it. Even with the Volt’s steep price tag (which is softened by the $7500 Federal rebate credit), I’m certain it will be a sell out because it is the right technology at the right time (OK… it’s actually 20 years late, but whose counting beside the guys monitoring CO2 at Mauna Loa?).
The Volt’s correctly-implemented hybrid design is a perfect “bridge technology” to allow the manufacturing sector (and the driving public) to gear up to using all-electric engines to turn the wheels all the time. And it will provide a huge incentive to develop and build bigger, better batteries that charge faster. It also eliminates the need to install a couple million stand alone “public charging stations” which was never going to happen on a large scale anyhow.
Heck, even Big Oil gets to continue to sell their crude (just less of it at 62 or 100 or whatever mpg. But they’ll make up for that by raising prices, so even they won’t feel any pain). I don’t see any downside unless you were under the false impression that gasoline engines were going to completely disappear in the next 20 years.
The competition between GM and Nissan for title of most fuel efficient car can only be a good thing. Once people start buying and driving the cars and find out that they can’t actually get 230 miles per gallon I’m sure the hype will die down.