There’s a round table discussion of the prospects for electric cars in the United States going on over at the New York Times that I wanted to commend to your attention. Opinions range from “this time it’s really, really different” and electric cars will succeed to “no way, no how”.
Although they might make more sense in some European countries, in South Korea, or in Japan, I think that electric cars will remain a niche product in the United States. Even if Nissan were able to ramp production up rapidly to 150,000 vehicles a year, that still won’t make much of a dent in the U. S. fleet. The U. S. fleet is about 250 million vehicles. If it were to be replaced over a 20 year period, that would require production in the vicinity of 12.5 million vehicles per year, many orders of magnitude about Nissan’s target.
IMO the key obstacle is batteries. To date producing batteries adequate for use in passenger vehicles in anything resembling true production quantities has proven elusive. As I’ve said here before, I have doubts that it can be done, at least not economically. It’s only the subsidies that render the electrics viable now.
Even if the mass production problems could be licked, the grid would still remain inadequate to the load required for significant numbers of electric vehicles.
A century ago there were many different ways in which passenger vehicles were powered. There was the internal combustion engine that eventually became king of the hill and which most roadworthy vehicles these days employ but there were also external combustion engines, the most famous probably being the Stanley Steamer, heat exchange systems based on the Stirling engine, and electric cars. The internal combustion engine won because of its low cost, high power to weight ratio, the very low price of oil, and good advertising. I suspect those factors will maintain the internal combustion engine’s primacy for many years to come. The Otto engines are already more efficient users of oil than the hybrids and there are probably more efficiencies to be realized in them.
And when oil gets too expensive there’s always the Stirling.
It hinges on an unknowable. We know that with $3/gal as a long term avg, people will treat MPG as a secondary factor. We don’t know at what MPG the bulk of people would move to Prius-class hybrids, let alone beyond.
Now, if you assume $3/gal and ask electrics to beat the system (car + fuel) price … fuggetaboutit. Physics are against it.
I meant to say “at what price/gal the bulk of people would move” of course
Batteries are a toxic nightmare – production, storage/use, disposal, and many of the metals will need to be imported (China anyone). Until we perfect the matter/anti-matter engine, the discussion is beyond silly.
Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (AKA Golf Carts) have been around for a long time, and proven themselves for their role. If gas were suddenly $10/gal, a lot of people would realize a golf cart could get the kids to school, bring in the groceries. No new tech or exotic materials required.
We wait for magic-level technology because at $3/gal its a whole other deal.