US Aid Expected To Bring Cost of Electric Cars Close To $30,000.

[Dr Stan]

Bloomberg News (10/21, Green, Ohnsman) reports, "General Motors Co. and other automakers may be moving closer to the $30,000 electric car, $10,000 cheaper than it has estimated, as Obama administration subsidies cut battery costs by as much as half." In all, companies will receive $2.4 billion in federal grants. A $7,500 federal tax credit per car would reduce the cost of a $40,000 car to $32,500. Aid is expected to reduce the cost of a battery pack from about $16,000 to closer to $8,000. "Michigan has four projects aimed at electric-vehicle battery-cell production that were funded by the Obama administration, including joint ventures backed by Johnson Controls Inc., A123 Systems Inc. and Dow Chemical Co."

The Wall Street Journal (10/21, A27, Moffett, Shirouzu) reports that aid from governments is expected to increase the market for electric cars and to reduce their price to consumers. Besides the US, China and France have pledged tax credits and subsidies to reduce the costs of electric cars. The cost of batteries is seen as the greatest problem for makers.

[ColoradoBoy]

Originally Posted by Dr Stan

The cost of batteries is seen as the greatest problem for makers.

And for consumers if they keep the car until battery replacement is needed.

[SeymourDumore]

Originally Posted by ColoradoBoy

And for consumers too if they keep one until battery replacement is needed.

Yes, for consumers too, in addition to the electric bill that they'll find at the end of the month.

I know I will be poopooed upon ( again ), but I still don't get where we're gonna get the results needed when our current electrical generation still depends on fossil fuels to the same extent???
I'm in no way against electric vehicles and certainly not against any and all possible R&D in the subject, but I am questioning the carriage before the horses approach.

[dp]

Subsidies don't cut cost of production - they cut the price to the consumer at the expense of the tax payer, often the same person. It is a subsidy many consumers don't need or deserve. Don't you just love the way government efficiency works.

[greyghost]

"Michigan has four projects aimed at electric-vehicle battery-cell production that were funded by the Obama administration,"

Should read "funded by the American Tax Payer whether you like it or not."

Ken

[The Energy Rebel]

Originally Posted by SeymourDumore

Yes, for consumers too, in addition to the electric bill that they'll find at the end of the month.

I know I will be poopooed upon ( again ), but I still don't get where we're gonna get the results needed when our current electrical generation still depends on fossil fuels to the same extent???
I'm in no way against electric vehicles and certainly not against any and all possible R&D in the subject, but I am questioning the carriage before the horses approach.

You've got the problem isolated. The solution is more power generation from wind, solar and other sources. Even nuclear if we can figure out the waste.
Anything is better than foreign oil and thinking we can drill and strip mine our way out of this.

[The Energy Rebel]

The battery problem is significant. I think a new approach is needed.
Check out EESTOR company some time.

[Racer Al]

Originally Posted by dp

Subsidies don't cut cost of production - they cut the price to the consumer at the expense of the tax payer, often the same person. It is a subsidy many consumers don't need or deserve. Don't you just love the way government efficiency works.

Yup, and it costs something every time money changes hands.

[motion guru]

It is much easier to produce electricity on a massive scale from non-petroleum resources than it is to produce non-petroleum fuels for an internal combustion engine.

A plug in hybrid would be the answer for a significant percentage of the transportation need in the world. If a vehicle like a Prius had a 40 mile battery range and the ability to plug into a 120V outlet - and it were used on a wide scale - this would create a huge drop in the use of petroleum based fuels.

Over 95% of our electricity in the US is from non-petroleum based fuels - and our ability to add to this capacity from a technology standpoint has never been better. How many nuke plants have we built in the last 30 years?

[SeymourDumore]

Originally Posted by motion guru

It is much easier to produce electricity on a massive scale from non-petroleum resources than it is to produce non-petroleum fuels for an internal combustion engine.

A plug in hybrid would be the answer for a significant percentage of the transportation need in the world. If a vehicle like a Prius had a 40 mile battery range and the ability to plug into a 120V outlet - and it were used on a wide scale - this would create a huge drop in the use of petroleum based fuels.

Over 95% of our electricity in the US is from non-petroleum based fuels - and our ability to add to this capacity from a technology standpoint has never been better. How many nuke plants have we built in the last 30 years?

Motion

That is my point about the horse before the carriage.
We're subsidizing the electrical vehicle industry, while the power generation remains the same.
The following chart:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...tablees1a.html
shows that most of our generation comes from coal and natural gas.
OK, it is mostly from domestic source, but imagine if we start increasing our electricity demand? Won't be much liked by the environmentalists.
I for one much more prefer spending the current bullshit subsidy money on R&D for alternative, cleaner electricity generation and distribution.
Not to mention that the latter would immediately result in US job creation ( unless we import a bunch of Chinese to climb the poles )

[jim rozen]

"A plug in hybrid would be the answer for a significant percentage of the transportation need in the world. If a vehicle like a Prius had a 40 mile battery range and the ability to plug into a 120V outlet - and it were used on a wide scale - this would create a huge drop in the use of petroleum based fuels."

They had one of those. GM leased them out, and then grabbed them all back and
crushed them. I think there is one left in a museum. Apparently they worked out
way too well.

Jim

[ColoradoBoy]

Originally Posted by jim rozen

They had one of those. GM leased them out, and then grabbed them all back and
crushed them. I think there is one left in a museum. Apparently they worked out
way too well.

Jim

The people who had one to test liked them very much and several tried to buy the test vehicle from GM when the program was in closure. There is a documentary about the GM program, 'the electric car', or something similar. The test drivers looked like normal people who used the cars to commute to work or shopping.

A lot of the cars spent the night being recharged which is not peak demand time for electric utilities at least here. We have one utiility using excess capacity at night to recharge their recirculating hydro generating plant and pump water back uphill for generation the next day.

[jim rozen]

"Who Killed the Electric Car" was the name of that film, and I obviously saw it recently.
The folks did look like normal drivers but one thing struck me, none of the drivers
had anything bad at all to say about the vehicles. Maybe a one-sided portrayal?

Jim

[motion guru]

Jim,

I did a fair amount of design work for the test dyne that was used for durability testing for the Impact 140HP electric motors that eventually found their way into the EV1. They were far from cheap to build. One of the earliest proto-types had one of these motors on each of the front wheels in a highly modified GEO Storm. I remember them running up Pikes Peak racing against an Acura - they gave the Acura a 1/4 mile head start and the Electric GEO smoked the Acura getting to the top. Of course the batteries were dead but they could do some recharge on the way back down.

Based on discussions that we had with Delco / Hughes / GM - the project was equivalent to sending each car out the door with a $60k? $160k? (I can't remember the exact number except that it boggled my mind) check taped to it. Even after lease payments and subsidies - they bled out a huge amount of money on this project which is why they shelved it.

The EV1 was more like the Lotus bodied Tesla Motors car as far as inverter design and power density - except even more expensive as it relates to how the car is built. The Tesla is more like a go kart while the EV1 was more like a modern vehicle with all the conveniences.

[jim rozen]

Thank you for the update on the EV1s. It was apparent that the 'full story' was not
being displayed in the documentary, but I did not expect the answer to be, they
cars simply were too pricey to produce. Given the apparently rave reviews from
the users, this makes a good deal of sense.

I still wonder however given the development costs (which become smaller and smaller
when you amoritze over many cars built) and the economy of scale that mass
production might bring, and the option of scaling back on some of the performance
specs, they might not be able to produce those cars now for a lot less then
the 60+ K check taped to them when the experiment was originally done.

Jim

[ColoradoBoy]

I'm sure the first electric light bulbs were pretty pricey too. Weren't they a novelty for the rich at first?

[jim rozen]

I thought for a while, in some places, they were provided for free.
In the very early days, that is.

Jim

[The Energy Rebel]

Originally Posted by ColoradoBoy

I'm sure the first electric light bulbs were pretty pricey too.

You know what's funny about that too?
Check out when the first electric car was made sometime.

[jim rozen]

A friend of mine in high school actually *owned* one of those, made by
Cadillac. It had wooden wheels.

Jim

[ColoradoBoy]

Originally Posted by jim rozen

I thought for a while, in some places, they were provided for free.
In the very early days, that is.

Jim

Don't know. Maybe it was the electrician costs and the bulbs were free as you say.

The house my parents bought in 1950 was built in 1918 and had exactly one bare light bulb hanging in each room and one elect. outlet for each room. The bulbs all had the teat on the end. The entire house had two fused circuits (one for each floor) each using a bare wire as overload protection so before screw in fuses. I suppose the exposed wire melted when overloaded.

In contrast a very deluxe home two houses away had more hanging bulbs in large rooms, hallways & covered front porch.

Good qualty though those early elect bulbs, same screw in base as the newer frosted. One survived on the front porch ceiling for decades and still there 50 years later. Who knows how old it was.