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Electric and hybrid electric vehicles are in the fast lane to wider adoption, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers.
The researchers analyzed the present status of electric vehicles in the U.S., their life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, and progress toward lifting barriers to broader acceptance. The study is a literature and technical review that synthesizes and analyzes recent findings from many sources.
"We feel that within the next decade, electric vehicles are positioned to be more suitable for most drivers to use on a daily basis," said Brandon Schoettle, project manager at the U-M Transportation Research Institute. "That's due to recent improvements such as longer driving ranges, faster recharging times and lower vehicle prices."
[...] Schoettle and colleague Michael Sivak, a research professor at UMTRI, found that sales of plug-in electric vehicles in the U.S. have increased by more than 700 percent since 2011.
[...] Other key findings include:
- Availability: The number of individual electric vehicle models that consumers can choose from has increased rapidly, nearly doubling from 13 in model year 2016 to 23 in 2017. Recent price trends make plug-in hybrid vehicles more affordable and more similar in price to the average internal combustion engine vehicle.
- Charging infrastructure: The number of public charging stations has grown rapidly since 2010, with approximately 16,000 now available across the U.S., supplying approximately 35,000 individual connections (for comparison, there are roughly 112,000 gas stations).
- Driving range: The driving distance between charges of battery electric vehicles continues to improve. The range of all electric vehicles has increased to an average of 110 miles. Several studies the researchers cite estimate that a range of 120 miles can cover 99 percent of household vehicle trips.
- Fuel prices Compared to gasoline, electricity prices have been low and stable over the past decade or more, and they're projected to remain that way over the next several decades.
Getting Americans to give up their cars for public transportation may be a tough sell, but if the study is right getting them to switch to electric cars won't be.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Saturday June 24 2017, @12:29PM (6 children)
My knowledge of American geography might be a bit hazy, but surely you don't need to drive coast-to-coast to top 120 miles? I live in little ol' Britain and even I often do >120, in fact over twice that in a day, going to sites in connection for work and visiting relatives.
This range thing would be easily solved if battery packs were made exchangeable in a few minutes at road-side stations en route, but the EV fans don't like that idea because it looks too much like stopping for fuel as now. They think it would not be cool if EVs did not do everything in a completely different way. It would also require standardisation of battery packs, but hipsters think that any form of standardisation is not cool either.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Saturday June 24 2017, @01:31PM (2 children)
I think the actual problem is that battery packs, unlike car fuel tanks, degrade with time and use.
The example I give is phone batteries, because everyone is familiar with them. You buy a new phone, and the battery may last 2-3 days on a charge, maybe even 4 if you don't use it much. However in a year or two of charging and discharging the battery would be lucky to last a day. My phone had reached the point where it needed to plugged in every 3-4 hours otherwise it dies.
EV batteries are no different. Yes, they have vastly more intricate and complicated charging systems, and temperature control systems (heaters/coolers) etc... to make sure the batteries are always at optimum environment conditions for use and charging, but batteries still wear out, and with them the EV cars range decreases.
You buy an IC car and an EV car with equal range of 120 miles when new, if you give both of them top of the range maintenance throughout their life, in 10 years the IC car will still do around 120 miles, but you would be lucky if the EV can do half that.
So when it comes to battery swapping, how do you know the quality of battery you are trading for? you have a battery with a good 90 miles of range, you charge overnight at home, top up at work, etc.. works fine for your daily commute. then one day you need to make a sudden detour for an errand or whatever, you don't have enough range and can't wait 6-14 hours to recharge your car, so you stop at the battery swap station and get a fully charged battery. All great, but this battery ends up more degraded then the one you swapped with, maybe you can only do 60 miles on it.
So now you have a battery of lower capacity then the one you swapped it for. Can you go back to the station and request your old battery back? What if they had charged it up over the period and gave it to someone else? You can try swapping batteries again, but you might end up with an even worse battery. Now you are worse off then before, and might not even be able to do your original full day commute with the new battery. Who then would pay for a replacement battery? Seeing as batteries are one of the largest costs in an EV, the state of the battery would very much dictate the cars second hand value.
Liquid fuels don't work like that, they pretty much all have the same energy per litre, and are consumed. So it doesn't matter at which pump you fill up at, your cars range is not affected.
Personally, I think EV's would work a lot better if they didn't use batteries at all. If they could get a decent ethanol fuel cell for example. then this entire problem is side stepped. The EV's fill up on E100 at the station (as most of the EU already has E85 on tap, not a stretch to provide E100 as well). They can be filled up as fast as an IC car. They extract more energy out of the cycle due to the increased efficiency of energy conversion, they keep the same range as long as they are well maintained, you don't have to worry about capacity and range anxiety, you don't have to build out charging stations and all that extra power infrastructure, just use what is already there.
Not to mention you can run on closed carbon cycle fuels, side-stepping the issue of adding CO2 dug out from the ground.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2017, @02:58PM
Use your imagination. You wouldn't buy the batteries, just the power in them. Swap battery pack. If your car's diagnostics say the battery is less than you paid for, have the battery tested and swapped out the at the next "Electigo" station that you pass. The Electigo company has a reputation for good batteries, same as Texico company has for liquid dinosaurs.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday June 24 2017, @04:06PM
In addition, battery technology is one of the main areas where new electric cars improve over their predicessors. Will the swap station throw away and replace all the batteries each year with the latest version? If so, it would be way too expensive. If not, I'm keeping my own new high tech battery pack thank you very much.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Whoever on Saturday June 24 2017, @04:05PM (1 child)
Perhaps it says something about the viability of battery swapping if actual EV owners don't think that battery swapping is a good idea.
Battery technology is improving at a fairly rapid rate. More improvements are needed. Battery swapping would slow down that progress, while providing little benefit. Most EV drivers mostly charge their car overnight at home. What could be more convenient than this?
If an EV can travel for 4 hours on the highway, how inconvenient is it to stop for a meal or a coffee while the car charges?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday June 24 2017, @06:07PM
Very. Especially if I am trying to get between work meetings at two sites. I do need to take time for meals, but at my convenience, not my car's.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Saturday June 24 2017, @09:29PM
Thing is, here in the UK you ought to be able to make Land's End to John O'Groats (the proverbial "length of Great Britain" journey) in daylight at this time of year. Hardly comfortable, but that's close to the upper limit for a road trip here.
Pick two British cities at random and more often than not it'll be a day trip.
Pick two US cities at random, and it's likely to be a multi-day road trip that you'd only contemplate if you wanted to make a holiday of it or had a pickup full of gear to transport.
So I have a theory that because we can drive almost anywhere in GB (certainly England) in a day, we're more likely to want to. Its certainly why internal air travel isn't a big thing in GB. In the US context, if its further than 120 miles, it's quite likely to be 1200 miles. 120 miles will get you to an airport - and since you can't take your car on the plane, you hire another one at your destination.
One problem is that the current state of the art is "battery pack" == "the entire floor area of the car" - and making batteries quickly removable wastes valuable battery space. Tesla did demo a system for doing it, but I think it was quite complicated...
I think its more the case that "EV fans" are currently the people for whom the logistics of the EV already works well: charge at home, and that gets them to work and back, or to the airport and back. They're well-off, so they have driveways and garages so they might have a second vehicle for long road trips, and if not their business trips have left them with a wallet full of car rental loyalty cards and airmiles if they want to rent for the occasional long trip. These are not the people that want roadside recharging stations.
Its important to realise that in the shiny new EV world, 90% of charging will happen at home, at the workplace or at the destination. The "gas stations for EVs" will be needed, but they won't have the same business model, or volume of demand, as actual gas stations.
Of course, what the gas stations would like is for everybody to use hydrogen because (despite being difficult to handle and transport) it would mean the survival of the good 'ol gas station business model (special offer: 2-for-one on hydrogen atoms! Plus, free buggy whip with every 10 cubic yards!)