"Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix and several California cities are now setting up recharging infrastructures for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles. Paris, where Toyota is testing plug-in hybrids, has over 80 recharging stations in the city and suburbs. And London is installing upwards of 40 recharging stations around town. Pictured: the charging port for a Plug-in Hybrid Saturn Vue."
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Dear EarthTalk: With plug-in hybrid and electric cars due to hit the roads sometime soon, will there be places to plug them in besides at home? And if so, how much will it cost to re-charge?
-- Nicole Koslowsky, Pompano Beach, FL
Gasoline-electric hybrids, like the Toyota Prius, are all the rage due to their fuel efficiency, and consumers have been clamoring for carmakers to up the ante and give these vehicles a plug. This way the batteries can be charged at home and not just by the gas engine and other on-board features, thus greatly reducing the need for gas except for long trips. And purely electric cars, like the Tesla Roadster already on the market, will be making more appearances on the streets as greater production brings the costs down.
So what’s an electric or plug-in hybrid driver to do when they need a charge and they’re nowhere near home? Plug-ins are expected to reach up to 60 miles on a charge (great for a commute but not for a longer trip); and though the Tesla reportedly went 241 miles on a charge in a recent European road rally, its everyday stop-and-go efficiency will likely be less and drivers will need “pit stops” far from home.
A few forward-thinking large companies have installed electric outlets accessible to employee parking, but most plug-in hybrid and electric car drivers will be looking for help well beyond the scope of their commutes. In the U.S., several cities in California, as well as Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix and others are now setting up recharging infrastructures. Paris, where Toyota is testing plug-in hybrids, already has over 80 recharging stations throughout the city and suburbs. Across the channel, London is working with the nonprofit Environmental Defense to install upwards of 40 electric recharging stations around town.
According to the California Cars Initiative (CalCars), which promotes plug-in hybrids, Americans recharging their plug-ins via a regular 120V outlet should expect to pay about $1 per gallon equivalent. “Using the average U.S. electricity rate of nine cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), 30 miles of electric driving will cost 81 cents,” the group maintains. “If we optimistically assume the average U.S. fuel economy is 25 miles per gallon, at $3.00 gasoline this equates to 75 cents a gallon for equivalent electricity.”
For its part, Toyota has already released a few hundred plug-in Priuses in the U.S. to university and commercial fleet customers. The company will monitor the vehicles’ performance and use the data to tweak the design for a consumer-friendly version sometime after 2010. Pricing on the vehicles, which get 65 miles per gallon or more in combined gas/electric mode and can run on electricity alone, is as yet undecided. But chances are the car will command a premium of several thousand dollars over the cost of a regular hybrid Prius. The fact that such a feature might obviate the need for gasoline entirely—save for long trips away from charging facilities—may well make it worth the extra up-front cost for some buyers.
Those unwilling to wait for a mass-market plug-in can have their existing Prius or Ford Escape hybrid converted accordingly by any of several “aftermarket” companies at a cost of $6,000 and up. CalCars provides a comprehensive listing of vendors across the U.S. and elsewhere that can do the conversions, and also offers its own instructions for those engineering-savvy hybrid owners who can do it themselves.
CONTACTS: Tesla Motors, www.teslamotors.com; Environmental Defense, www.edf.org; California Cars Initiative, www.calcars.org; Toyota, www.toyota.com.
EarthTalk is produced by E/The Environmental Magazine. SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.
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17 Comments
Add CommentCouple plug-in hybrids with local generation (photovoltaic, wind, etc.) and it will really make a difference.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn following up -- are there any plans or designs for solar recharging stations? It seems like a win-win to have electric vehicles recharged using solar power. I can imagine that when buying a car, one could also purchase a station for use at home.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey there KEW100! You just talked right over the head of the three big US auto makers. I saw a tv commercial and the foreign made care had a solar panel on top to run the air conditioner. Now if it can run an air conditioner; why can't it put a charge into the battery. Telsa has a beautifully designed electric can that can actually get 340 miles per charge and they say that it can be recharged in 45 minutes from any home outlet. The three big auto makers should take some pointers from Telsa and start mass producing that vehicle. Norway makes a recharging station about the size of a large UHF/VHF tv that can be quickly placed anywhere that you can get a power line to and it costs about 2 cents per kw per gallon of gas. Like President Obama said, "if Japan can do it, America can do it." Well, if Norway can do it, America can do it. These recharging stations can be mass produced and be all over America in less than a year and then at every home in America.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is because of these three big US auto makers that America became so dependent on gasoline. They should wake up and get their heads out of the sand and do what's right for American and do it quickly.
I think the *need* to couple charging stations with plug-in hybrids is a bit over stated. Surely there needs to be plug-ins on the road to justify building charing stations but given that the plug-ins are hybrids means charging stations are conveniences not necessities. The immediate advantage of plug-ins is the option to recharge at home overnight. Longer term, they create an opportunity to build a charging station network.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI still don't understand the $/mile claims attributed to electric vehicles. Given the fuel costs above and using an energy equivalence of 130 MBTU/gal for gasoline and 3.413 MBTU/KWH for electric, gasoline is $0.0231/MBTU and electric is $0.0267/MBTU. Can an electric vehicle really be four times more efficient than a gasoling vehicle?
Surely if plug in cars become common thee will be a need for a large number of outlets in car parks.? "Refuelling" with electricity is a much slower process than filling up at a gas station. The battery swap option sounds a more practical proposition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe accounting for efficiency is different for electric and combustion-engine propulsion. The gasoline engine runs up against fundamental thermodynamic limits on its efficiency while an electric motor does not. Conventional cars have to dump waste energy in the form of heat in the exhaust and from the radiator. A battery does not return all the energy put into it (some lost as heat) but can come close.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, most electricity, so far, is generated in a plant that uses it's own kind of thermal cycle which has it's own thermodynamic limitations. The waste heat in that case is up the stack and into a cooling tower or river, ocean, etc.
Considering the electric car in isolation makes the efficiency appear very high. But overall, the cost advantage comes from the fact that a large utility plant can convert heat to useful energy without the space and weight limitations of a vehicle, and it has advantages of scale in purchasing fuel.
This is not an argument against plug-in cars, just a perspective that attempts to look at a bigger picture, but it still does not account for externalities of both approaches.
The marvelous thing is this: we are all familiar with the reasons, geo-political and environmental, for weaning ourselves from fossil fuels in general and petroleum in particular. The plug-in hybrid opens an avenue that is cost-effective even in the short term with existing power sources.
First of all I would like to state that automobiles will never run off solar power, and charging stations will be dependent on other sources of electricity. I am not saying that solar does not play a crucial role in the future of energy, rather solar does not have feasibility in the automotive sector. Solar flux is roughly 1300 watts/m^2, assuming the solar panel charging your car is the same surface area of the car and is operating at 25% efficiency (typical good solar cell) the best we can do is power the on board electronics let alone drive a 50+kw motor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCharging stations will also fail to catch on as a main stream way of charging automobiles. They will be useful for short commutes and will be available at every home. For longer commutes the battery swap option will become necessary. Given the option to spend 8 hours charging my car during the work day (peak hours) or swapping my battery for a lesser cost when the batter is depleted, most choose the swapping option.
Finally I would like to say not all blame can be placed on the three major automotive industries. As American we like to point fingers at people other than ourselves. Though I agree far too little has been invested in EV technology, we can also blame the American public for our poor automotive choices. The EV-1 was canceled due to a variety of reason one including a lack of demand, thus the Hummer series reigned.
In response to phoneyfarmer electric motors are much more efficient than internal combustion. Most internal combustion engines have a theoretical limit of 37% efficiency due to the laws of thermodynamics, but in the real world most run at roughly 20% . Electric motor convert around 90% of the stored charge into mechanical energy, thus joule for joule electricity in an electric car will take you four times as far as a joule of gas in an internal combustion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe efficiency of the electric car can be confirmed on the Volt site, where they give a figure of around 250watts/mile.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of the lighter weight EV's get around 125watts/mile.
Even if you are generating the energy with coal, the overall efficiency is much higher than for ICE motors.
In France where most baseload electric is nuclear the cycle is more efficient still with the 90% capacity of nuclear plants.
UW-Madison Engineer:
EV's are being built with the facility to quick charge up to 80% in 20 minutes or so - see for instance the Mitsubishi MiEV.
Standards in Europe centre on a new 400volt 3-phase charger, with similar standards being developed in the US.
Obviously this is for non-residential use.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/05/elektromotive-mennekes-20090515.html#more
DaveMart: Though charging quickly is great option, and probably will be more prevalent than I suggested, it is a inferior method compared to the swap system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. 20 minutes for an 80% charge is too long
2. the swapping system will level peak loads as batteries can be charged off peak and increase the over efficiency of producing electricity
The disadvantages of the swapping system.
1. Battery sizes need to be standardized.
2. The infrastructure will require high initial capital
This video is very clear and convincing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b0T5NUHyxs
Hi UW-Madison Engineer,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you need to travel distances in something like the new MiEV you would have to recharge after around 70 miles, assuming 80% fast recharge.
Batteries are improving though, and if something like silicon nanotube technology catches on, we can expect an early improvement of range, although even at fast rates charging might take longer.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071219103105.htm
Your concerns about a hit on the grid due to recharging on long runs would seem to me to be possible to deal with, as most journeys are not long enough to need a fast recharge, so only a small proportion of total energy for the system would arrive that way.
This is even more the case when one looks at the real limits of EV's.
By far the simplest way to travel long distances on holidays or if you are a commercial rep would be to own or hire an ICE.
There are proposals to bundle reduced-rate hire for holidays with EV cars.
I doubt the practicality of 'Better Place'
At the moment battery technologies are changing rapidly, and it also seems likely that a variety of capacities will be developed to offer cheaper costs to those who only usually do small runs.
It boils down to how many different batteries of different types a charging station would have to carry, and the not insignificant costs of having spare batteries as overhead.
The pace of introduction of EV cars would seem likely to be slow enough, and improvements in battery capacity fast enough, as to make swapping technology unnecessary.
My take is that it will be a messy and imperfect changeover, With ICE perhaps in a series hybrid form hanging around for a long time for long-distance journeys on the motorways.
Wow. Even the writer of the article completely missed the fact that most of the electricity we use is just gas in a different form. There is no true environmental benefit to hybrid automobiles. There is increased mileage. That's it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnless solar cars become feasable (which they won't for a good long while), electric cars mean nothing more than putting an extra step into the process of consuming fossil fuels.
Why doesn't anyone ever talk about that?
Can the grid handle this? Ever heard of brown outs and transformer fires from too much power being used from air conditioners?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHey Obama, hire a bunch of people to fix the grid, theres your stimulus
Most of the electricity 'we' use - assuming the we you are referring to are the Americans - is not gas, but coal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven using the current energy mix of the US, vast energy and CO2 emission savings can be made by using electric vehicles, as their efficiency is around 4-8 times that of an ICE motor.
The savings would grow as the switch is made to renewables and nuclear.
The strain on the grid would be limited, as for a start you would not instantly replace the entire fleet, secondly wind power is growing very fast, and if the upgrade is made to smart charging - varying the rate you pay, according to how fully loaded the grid is, then for many years the extra load is very small.
Here is a study which was done on it:
http://www.oemtek.com/pdf/phev_feasibility_analysis_combined.pdf
Henry Ford thought we should go for EV's! - it was just that the technical problems at the time were large, and electricity costly.
Standard economics tell us, (as did Ford when he made his model T), that mass production brings down costs. Yet car manufacturers offer us a bewildering range of models, most of them being very expensive because of high profit margins.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPoor people want small, cheap, economical mass produced cars which the market does not cater for. We are all manipulated as a result by the lack of any real competition.
I'm taking the historical perspective and expecting none of those renewables to be embraced for at least another decade.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, coal and gas may not be the same thing, but they're both fossil fuels and they both have harmful byproducts. Don't turn this into a war of semantics.
The recharging problem may best be served by using all three methods, selecting the method that best suits the condition of the battery. A battery close to full discharge would be swapped for a fresh one. A partially discharged battery might be "fast" charged at an electric service station where a waiting room or fast food service accommidation would make a 15 to 30 minute wait acceptable. An overnight "slow" charge at home or at a motel equipped for this service would satisfy either condition when time and the situation permitted. Once the battery is removable it is no longer a permanent part of the automobile and need not be a part of the original cost of the vehicle. The battery cost can be paid for over time by a surcharge, applied in each of the three methods of refreshing it, in a way proportional to the the total charge over its useful life. Swapping batteries can be made more efficient by borrowing from the assembly line and dividing the process into several equal time intervals. First the credit card is inserted and approved. Second the mounted battery is removed. Third the fresh battery is installed. Finally an electrical plug is inserted to check out the installation for final acceptance. If each step took thirty seconds the entire process would take two minutes. But the vehicle throughput in the station would be thirty seconds per car making a ten-car lineup only a five minute wait. There are also ways of moving vehicles to the side at each step in the event of some delaying problem allowing the processing to continue as before. The overall benefits of the electric car are many and every possible means should be considered to assit in its acceptance by the general public.
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