What might work along the same line, is home-based battery systems tied to home-based generation systems. Homeowners could size their PV or wind or methane-digester generating systems and battery backup with grid-buffering capabilities. Coupling the storage/buffering system with a generating capacity, to me, makes more sense than using an auto which is only a consumer of energy and not a producer.

Might sound good, but I don't think it (V2G) will work.

The ultimate V2G grid will have noncontact charge/discharge ports at every stop sign and every red light.

As you brake, excess energy is moved to an on-board flywheel.
When you reach the stop sign and under-road, noncontact charge/discharge port, your flywheel energy is discharged into the grid. When you are ready to accelerate, the grid pumps energy back into your on-board flywheel. That energy could be coming from the cars and trucks braking at the very same intersection or at other intersections.

Maybe we need to stop counting pennies and start accounting for how we will save the (habitable) planet.

_________________
The planet will sustain itself fine, just not as a habitable habitat for those pesky human critters perhaps.

I suspect that the plug-in hybrid won't add that mcuh to the equation. In the end it will mean more coal burning as we are not going to solar ourselves out of this. In fact an energy audit on solar is overdue. Solar's cost suggest that it has the same problem as ethanol. I have a friend who is buying a 3kw solar PV system. The true cost is $30 a watt.

I think plug in hybrids and a grid based transportation infrastructure is a fantastic idea. Certainly, owners won't get rich selling credits back to power companies. But it may pay for lunch a couple of times a week. Furthermore, the overall reduced costs and availability of energy would have amazing benefits to overall society.

cjwirth said,
"The proponents of solar must study the real EROEI and how much oil, natural gas, and coal energy will be consumed in the process, and report on this before more good energy is wasted to get bad energy (ie electric power)."

Fair enough, if the proponents of oil will live by exactly the same counting method, and not discount the free ride that a century of investment and "sunk cost" has provided them. The research and development hours in how to utilize oil has been in the lifetimes!

What good would oil be without internal combustion engines, gas turbine engines, Diesel engines? Even small developments have revolutionized the consumption oil. The internal combustion engine was not practical until De Dion invented the spark advance, to allow the ignition to advance as engine speed advanced. The electric starter motor was THE device that gave the gasoline engine the jump on steam and electric cars in the early 20th century.

Who has ever billed the hours, the metals, the research involved in even the small advances against oil? And this is just on the ability to consume the stuff. How many lifetimes in man hours have been invested on the oil production side?

In many areas, solar PV and well designed solar concentrating mirror systems are already near grid parity with gas and coal based systems. But how can that be? There should be so many Btu's of oil in a solar panel that it could not dream of getting anywhere near grid parity, ever. Does this mean that the oil and gas companies are somehow secretly subsidising the solar panels by giving them energy?

The EROEI argument is an important one with any energy development, old or new.

But it must be said that the EROEI arguments are complex, and easily tortured to give up the results desired. Just look at the EROEI debate surrounding ethanol, in which well educated people can come to wildly different conclusions.

I have seen no educated persons come to the conclusion you toss out that the EROEI of solar is barely over 1 to 1!
We would need to see some very, very well vetted numbers to back that one up.

Somehow, what we see everyday is denied by such "black hole" math. The fact is that there are millions of kilowatts pouring down on our head, all over the world, everyday. If it is cloudy here, it is not there, and when it is night here, it is not there. The sun in the long view is the single most predictable source of energy we can dream of. Millions of species have had to rely on it for millions of years to get where we are.

It makes me think of the fellow who said of wind, "Show me an empire built on wind power, just show me!" To which he was pointed out a British sailing ship of the colonial/empirialist period...What would the empire have been without the wind powered ships that colonised the world? The wind simply had to be used in the right way, at the right speed, on the right scale, to extract the power to create an empire.

So it is with the sun. Hopefully we do not desire an "empire". Only a cleaner, more efficient world. Would anyone argue that we can stay with the status quo forever?

RC

"There is doubt that PV solar has an EROEI above 1.0 when ALL energy inputs are counted:.."

CJ, this point of yours is becoming increasingly fatuous. Make your ACTUAL claim in this regard. Either use 'There IS doubt..' and Show us who is saying this and how they got there, or if it's YOUR doubt, then take responsibility for it and say "I doubt..." and make your case.

http://www.nrel.gov/pv/thin_film/docs/20theuropvscbarcelona4cv114_raugei...
"The topic of this paper is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of modern CdTe PV modules."

"The performance of the analysed CdTe system is also compared to other examples of advanced PV systems based on
different technologies (CIS and mc-Si), which were also part of the PVACCEPT project."

"3 THE METHOD
"The analysis is consistent with ISO norms 14040 and
updates on Life Cycle Assessment, and makes use of an
in-house developed multi-criteria impact assessment
approach named SUMMA [5].
In this approach, the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is
followed by the parallel application of the following
environmental impact and thermodynamic performance
evaluation methods:
• Material Flow Accounting [6, 7, 8]. This method
looks at material resource depletion. The chosen
indicator is the Material Input Per Service
(abiotic), which is a proxy for the total amount
of abiotic matter (minerals, fuels, etc.) that was
directly or indirectly required to provide the
necessary inputs to the manufacturing process,
expressed per unit of delivered service [kWh].
• Embodied Energy Analysis [9, 10]. This method
accounts for the total amount of fossil fuel
energy that is exploited by the process. The
chosen indicator in this case is the Energy Pay-
Back Time, calculated as:
GER[kWhel/m2]/(Insulation[kWh/(m2*yr)]*η.

Best,
Bob Fiske

The transition would take at least a decade as cars have an average life of 10 years. When Peak Oil hits, the price tag on PHEVs will go sky high (it takes oil energy to make them), and the folks with the SUVs won't be able to trade them in, as their trade-in value will be very low.

It's true that cars have long 'half-lives', but you don't need to build a whole new car if you want an EV (or PHEV). Any existing vehicle with a body in good order is a suitable candidate for a convertion. Pull the engine, petrol tank, exhaust, ancililaries (including much of the wiring loom, as much of the wiring in a modern vehicle is purely for the Engine Management Systems), and replace them with a 50-kilo electric motor, 30 kilo Inverter (for AC, Controller for DC), and a 100 kilo Lithium (preferably LiFePO4) battery pack.

A number of us are getting very impatient with your repetitions of tendentious and downright false claims like this:

There is doubt that PV solar has an EROEI above 1.0 when ALL energy inputs are counted: mining, personnel transport for ALL operations for solar, processing of ores, silicon, glass, bauxite transport and smelting, materials transport, buildings where the PV panels are made, lighting/heating/AC for those buildings, and maintenance of everything over the lifetime of solar panels and infrastructure.

No, there is no such doubt.  The error bar on the projected time to recover invested energy is nowhere near the projected lifespan of today's panels (or the established lifespan of existing ones).  The time to recover invested energy is calculated at ~1 year for thin-film Si, ~2 years for crystalline Si; warranties for crystalline Si are running 25 years and useful life is probably closer to 50.

Let me restate this in 3 words:  YOU ARE WRONG.

Why waste fossil fuel energy to make solar panels and infrastructure, as well as electric cars that use oil/natural gas energy to build and waste the liquid fuels that we need for food planting, harvesting and transportation.

It's not a waste, and there is a very obvious reason to do it:  to prevent the collapse you claim is coming.

Or should I say, the collapse which you cannot admit may be prevented without destroying your business model?  I quote from your site:

Identifying sustainable locations requires special knowledge of environmental science. Irrigation systems will not function in the long term (see Peak Oil Report). Research on favorable locations begins by identifying regions that will have ample rainfall and good temperatures now and in the future. Knowledge of foreign countries and international politics is necessary for identifying politically stable regions. Relocating is just a beginning. We give advice on what to do when you get there.

All for a fee, of course.  And all totally wasted expense if it turns out not to be necessary... as it would be if PV and solar thermal and wind and nukes and biomass let people chug along just fine more or less where they are.

You're still morally superior to the penny-stock pump-and-dump spam scammers, but you're heading their way.

Using oil to manufacture new vehicles will not soften the decline, rather it will accelerate it.

Moving to PHEV's is investing in another energy black hole. We have to give up on the idea of personal transport larger than a bicycle (perhaps modifications to electric could be possible to sustain). there are just too many of us to be running around in cars no matter what they run on, the resources that would be dedicated to that senario are not sustainable.

Unless you are over 60 years old or under 10 you don't need electric bikes to travel 10 miles.
Pedal powered ones will do just fine. It amazes me that people are blinkered over how simple pedal powered bikes can be used to travel useful distances.
A decent 15 or 18 speed bicycle ridden by a person of average fitness should be able to be ridden at 15-20 mph.
My commute to the train (and back) is about 4 miles. It takes less time to cycle than it does to drive (admittedly the car park is 10 minutes walk to the station and the bike parking is right beside it)
If you are planning for the coming oil crunch, might I suggest a good bike and a few spares are probably more useful than fancy electric systems that you won't get spare parts for in 10 years time.

I'm not sure it actually increases commute distance. Commute distances in the US seem to be limited by time, which is affected mainly by traffic congestion, not by fuel costs.

The early adoption of hybrids in California seems to have slightly lowered the state's fuel consumption.

PHEVs transition well to all electric over a 5-15 year time frame.

First goal -- survive peak oil with civilization intact while transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Second goal -- continue to reduce carbon emissions to zero.

Also, since PHEVs are powered in large part by the grid, you can reduce total emissions by moving the grid to renewable energy sources (solar, wind, nuclear, geo, hydro etc) and through gains in efficiency in the PHEV system.

Many PHEVs are able to run in all electric mode for anywhere from 20 to 80 miles. This means zero internal combustion for many daily commutes especially if you plug in at home and at work.

I don't know. Can we have oil for hundreds of millions of cars though? Which is the tighter limit?

We already have batteries for hundreds of millions of cars.

21 mpg.

Americans really have a strange look upon the world.

That would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Maybe the US should try to export these "Stupid Useless Vehicles" to the rest of the world and see how many people want them and can afford to drive them. I can't think of enough derogatory terms to describe this travesty.

That's pretty sad.

A car for the utterly delusional society we live in.

Aside from the nonsense of considering 21 mpg to be 'good' mileage, a diesel engine would deliver roughly the same 30% improvement, at probably a lower level of technical complexity.

Better. But too little too late.

PHEVs can make a significant contribution but this Tahoe Hybrid is a nonsense -like putting headlights on a horse.

as to the coming decade I think our experience is going to depend very much on the shape of the supply/demand "gap" that begins to open up (it will be a virtual gap -the supply/demand lines have to co-incide of course).

Also, at first, we will see the "gap" shaped mostly on the demand side so this is going to be different from the 70s experiance in some subtle ways. High energy prices are going to wipe out countries from the bottom of the pile upwards. We are already seeing this in some parts of the World where the basics of life are being stripped away before our 50" HD Plasma TV eyes -from Mexican tortilla riots to 95% of the Nigerian population without electricity.

The grinding cost of energy price rises will hit low margin energy intensive industries first: air lines, trucking. Costs will initially be passed on to consumers hitting food and just about anything that goes from A to B. Price Inflation has to work its way into the system despite our governments desperate attempts to mask the rise from us.

Some lucky individuals will get a PHEV while the going is good, if credit hasn't dried up completly in this new financial paradigm (Stagflationary Economy?) people should be able to purchase a PHEV on credit to continue their communate if they are still employed.

I saw a lcture by Craig Venture last night -Biology will save us, he cried! I do hope it can help, the sooner we get started on those million bio-reactors the better...

Nick.

Wellsaid, RC. I'm waiting for someone to come up with a workable solar iron mine or steel mill or a plastics plant working from biological feedstock. Solar aluminum smelter. Somehow we don't get that the production side has to change too. Solar glass plants and sawmills and PHLT's - that's plug hybrid logging trucks! And a Li ion chainsaw. I don't see much out there that has a viable future with the oil and coal turned off. Do we have to start with cars?

And the vast majority don't even know there's a problem - yet.

RC,
Something you might consider:
Todays Honda Fit is by all standards a pretty small car.
4 passenger, 4 cylinder and it STILL fails to get 35mpg.
Large jumps in auto efficiency won't come easy or cheaply.

As for solar panelled/powered cars :)
I spent a Summer in the late 80's helping to develop University of Michigan's entry into some Sunrayce.
The pv cells they used were the best available at the time.
Every square cm on the exterior was plastered with 'em.
Every aspect of efficiency was covered, hard, low rolling resistance tires, titanium and carbon fiber construction, hours of wind tunnel testing, etc...
Travelling in the beastie was no picnic.
Prone driver position(aero), no suspension or air conditioning hit several of the drivers with heat exhaustion under the hot Australian sun, as I recall hearing.
Again, as I recall, the vehicle could never do more that 85mph.
85 might seem a pretty decent speed to some but its a poor return of the cost and resources that vehicle demanded.
That experience left me with the notion that automotive pv applications might be better suited for onboard systems rather than vehicle propulsion.

Greetings -

Let's talk about the 'heat issue' for one minute. I live in Fairbanks Alaska where yesterday it was -20F. I drive a Prius, and I happen to know something about fuel / heat conversion, being a partner in a very large company who designs and produces large scale portable heaters for construction and oil service companies. (We are also the Alaska distributor for Kub**a small engine America).

You are correct, I have experimented with fuel mileage by driving to work 'cold' vs. using the heater and the 'cost' in miles per gallon is vast. And this is perfectly logical if you understand that the ICE is a relatively inefficient creator of usable 'heat'. Likewise, it's a relatively inefficient converter of chemical energy (fuel) into mechanical force. In that regard think of it as an SUV, not efficient at anything but versatile enough to cover several needs. But I digress.

Clearly, for heat, vehicles should use a 'Webasto' type direct fuel to heat heater and I think you will see that in automobiles of the future. The Prius tries to compensate by having a 'thermos' to store some heated fluid but it really only preheats engine & emissions equipment and is no where near large enough to store usable cabin heat. And indeed, it would be a huge 'waste' of fuel, not to mention space & weight penalty, to heat enough water with an ICE, store it, then extract it for cabin heat.

Rant alert - Once you do the math and understand how much 'ENERGY' is in fuel (et al.) and figure out how much energy is required to transport weight. You start to understand how wildly inefficient modern automobiles are. Not only by their mechanics of operation, but also the way we utilize them. Just as an example. If the national speed limit were 25mph you would be driving a lightweight 'plastic' GEM electric car that would be perfectly safe, fun do everything you want and emit very little CO2 per mile equivalent. Roads would be built differently, and on down the line. (You also wouldn't have 80,000 pound tractor trailers delivering plastic swimming pools on the same roads.) But, as a Nation we feel that we NEED to have the ability to drive a 7,000 pound Suburban at 75mph. Well, you ain't gonna power that with solar....

D.

Praetzel is right, most people in Europe, the U.S., Canada, China need heat and defrosting from an ICE, and that is not even mentioning AC needs. Can anyone dispute this?

You are aware that both heat and AC can be efficiently generated from electricity via an air-sourced heat pump, right?

If not, you might want to look into it. There's basically nothing that an internal combustion engine is necessary for in terms of medium-range ground transport.

You have to appeal to peoples' inner Patriot.

Paul Revere didn't need a heated cabin. (Ok, his LOG Cabin was LOG heated..) Neither did Shakespeare, or Galileo. Or Jesus!

For the cold climate people, you can improve your batteries' range AND stay warm by just adding Pedals to each seat in the car. Other suggestions were offered for keeping the windows frost-free.

Anyway, as is becoming my habit, YES I do dispute it. There are many things that can be done towards this compound problem, and electric and hybrid vehicles can help solve it for a lot of people. Certainly not ALL, and that's not the goal for any one technology.

Bob

Can anyone dispute this?

No, but cabin heat can be provided by a ceramic element in place of the in-cabin radiator that most vehicles use to produce in-cabin heat. Every whitegoods store has small 'bathroom' heaters whos elements can be appropriated for vehicle use (and ceramic elements are self-limiting, iirc).

Go Burgundy go, I like it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At the ASPO-USA conference in Houston, there was a discussion of plug-in hybrids. Jim Kunstler stood up and registered a protest over the whole concept of being able to maintain personal transport vehicles to any meaningful degree, and he was met by a round of applause.

I think that the US is going to have to basically going to have to write off vast amounts of investment in suburban infrastructure.

I think this comment hits the nail on the head.

The irony is that it is likely to be transport for pleasure that will be the first to go rather than "maintaining the stupid economic paradigm" as maintenance is the only option for a lot of people.

Simple wins (and gain):

Sharing transport (x2-x4)
PHEVs (x2-x4)
Work from home 2 days a week via increased Teleconferencing (x5/3)
More localised food production (x2?)
Cycle to work (5 days fuel, or 3 if you work from home 2 days!)
Internet food shopping (1 mall trip per shop)

However I suspect that most people will just act like frogs in water that is slowly raised to the boil. I can state right now that one day soon people in the US will be paying $8+ a gallon and it will be interesting to see the effects on your society under a regime that we in the UK have become accustmed too. And yes, we do moan a lot about it but it is hardly crippling...

Nick.

Nice PHEV: www.aptera.com

Now this is exactly what I'm talking about! Delivery fleets can be phased in PDQ -much quicker than 10+ years for private transport, especially if governments give initiates

I think what we will see is a transition to all electric vehicles (via PHEVs) and grid recharged. Renewables will feed into the Grid in increasing amounts but initially increasing use of LNG, Coal and nuclear will be used as its the only option to provide the massive base load we need in the shorter term.

Short distance delivery (town and local suburb) will migrate to this type of vehicle for food (shopped online). Longer distance delivery poses a problem, perhaps a PHEV truck or move distribution centres nearer to rail access points.

Bio fuels can help with the PHEV trucks, genetically modified Algae -localised bio refineries, etc, etc.

OK, that's a lot of changes and we don't have much time. We are all getting fat, lazy and complacent -its about time we had a challenge to live up to. Bring on the hardship wake-up call.

Nick.

Movement of goods is of course necessary and no doubt that electric vehicles have a part to play in it. Although, I'd still question whether diesel fuelled trucks weren't a better proposition.

For arguments sake, lets say our economy was changed from a dysfunctional one, to something more intelligent. Extended families lived in the same locality, a small portion of which work in the money economy and used public transport to get to work. All amenities need for a wholesome life are within walking distance, local deliveries are available for bulky purchases and most consumables are produced locally much of it outside of the money economy.

There is no personal transport (FF, electric, hydrogen, etc ), roads are safe for local human or animal powered transport and there is a minimum of heavy goods transport, public transport is restricted to rail. Industry has been reduced considerably to a point were junk, useless and poor quality produce has been eliminated. Energy usage has reduced considerably leaving oil for essential tasks.

In such a scenario, would we need electric vehicles? Or would existing technology be sufficient?

http://www.electrictractor.com/index.shtml

Here is a small electric tractor which costs less than $10,000. Minimal maintenance, performance equivalent to a 18-20 hp tractor. It is made nearby here in Ontario, Canada.

And he's powered his house from it, too.

John Howe, in Waterford Maine

video 1 >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFYpNrbyKCA
SOLAR Electric Golf Cart, Farmall CUB Tractor and Sports Car

video 2 >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R26RdfqGvUE
Farmall Cub - also posted this link upthread.
(.. the reporter flubs a number saying the panels are $3k each, when I think they are more like $750, and $3k is the whole array price.)

Bob

Improvements in fuel efficiency lead to more miles driven if the price of gas remains the same. I thought this was TOD!

As others have already pointed out such improvements in efficiency will only foster increased driving.

Nothing is going to enable increased driving post peak. Concepts like this just allow the inevitable reduction to be less, marginally easing the transition. Oil will rapidly become supply-side limited, at that point the rebound-effect loses its bite.

Nonsense. PHEV's are not transition, they're an attempt to continue a trend far beyond its natural lifespan. We have everything we need for transition and the scientists, technicians, technologists and their corporate mentors can go retire to the sun as they're not needed.

We downsize, we use what we have, we get smart (or at least less dumb) and we rebuild society to conform to the new reality. That's not utopian, it's common sense.

Of course, no change can be instantaneous, but increased production of PHEVs on a massive scale isn't necessarily the first step that should be taken to get us moving in the right direction.

As someone mentioned previously, doubling the occupancy level of exisiting vehicles in an urban setting would do far more to reduce fuel consumption than the 25 or so percent reduction you would expect for a hybrid vs a non-hybrid. By encouraging car-pooling and by converting some existing SUV's to "vans" (by adding a small trailer, perhaps), the occupancy rate could be boosted significantly. Not much investment or time required for this.

Second, the only situation in which a hybrid has a significant advantage over a non-hybrid in "stop-and-go" driving. If you can reduce the number of "stops" per journey, by both reducing the number of vehicles on the road and adjusting the traffic patterns (my favorite is 15 min N/S driving, followed by 15 min E/W driving for a "grid" situation), you virtually eliminate the incentive for "private" hybrids.

Definition: Plug-in Electric Hybrid Vehicle. An electric vehicle which carries an ICE vehicle on its back for the first part of a trip, while the ICE carries the "electric vehicle" on its back for the return trip.

Whether we have hybrids or not, we need greater legal disincentives (taxes) for consuming liquid fuels, which most of us agree will be the first to die.

Finally, for you PHEV or all-electric (private or collective) vehicle fans, I don't understand why you're not all over a push to develop the AVE, which produces the lowest cost electricity possible, (discussed earlier on other threads) while eliminating the emission of GHGs.

HOG

Sorry, no substitutes for oil anytime, starts at page 16: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

The people advocating V2G aren't stupid. All your concerns are addressed in the calculations for V2G economics. Check this out, especially the paper entitled "Vehicle to grid power fundamentals...."

I want to try to put a nail into the coffin for the utilities wet dream of using PHEVs (or EVs) for load balancing. Why would I as vehicle owner want to do this?

Because they'll pay you, and maybe pay more than the cost of the lease on your battery pack?

My battery degrades after a limited number of charge/discharge cycles.

That depends on the battery technology, but your battery may also degrade with age even if you don't cycle it; if you fail to use it before it "dies of old age", you've thrown away services it could have provided (and paid you for).

The primary services a PHEV can provide in the short term are reactive power generation (doesn't involve the batteries at all) and regulation.  Regulation involves very short charge/discharge cycles, on the order of 1-2%.  AC Propulsion found that the capacity of their Panasonic lead-acid pack had increased slightly after their V2G regulation test.  You may refuse to let the utility pay you while improving your battery pack, but I think you'll not have much company.

Cars could be charged at night while demand for electricity was low, and discharged during the day while demand for electricity was high.

Of course one of the primary demands during the day when demand is high, are the millions of PHEVs plugged in to charge their batteries. The more I think about V2G the wackier it seems.

RogerK, I appreciate the reference to how the 'rest of the world' (i.e. third world) is going to get along in an age of declining energy. I cringe at the thought of Nigeria, for example, trying to run nuclear power plants, or large arrays of PVs with all those valuable aluminum components that could easily be scavenged by hordes of miserably poor people. Do we really think Haiti will have nukes?

Furthermore I do not suppose that you are proposing that Bangladesh and Botswana are going to fulfill their energy needs over the next couple of decades by purchasing huge fleets of PHEVs

The big problem in Bangladesh will be diesel supplies for their rice irrigation pumps in the dry season. I expect they will ask their muslim brothers in the Middle East for preferential shipments when the crunch time comes.

I think promoters of this idea are assuming batteries will get much better than what we have now.

There are some developments that look promising (like A123Systems batteries) but I think we have to wait and see whether these will make load leveling through V2G economic. Until then it is quite misleading that V2G proponents are advertising it for that.

However V2G could provide other, though less important grid services like spinning reserve and frequency regulation. I am sceptical though that this will be economic either - building V2G infrastructure won't be cheap and the value of these services is not so huge.

"charging your PHEV is another 50% efficient since the most power you can draw from the grid is 50% of the available power if you're perfectly impedance matched with the internal impedance of the power station and external grid. "

Where did that assumption come from?? That's not the case.

Keep in mind that about 30% of the US grid's kwh's come from nuclear/hydro/wind/biomass, and that wind was 20% of new generating capacity for 2006 (adjusted for capacity factor) and is doubling roughly every 2 years.

Also, charging at night will strongly facilitate nuclear/wind by accomodating their night-time production. Dynamic charging that schedules charging based on electricity rates will facilitate renewables by accomodating their intermittency.

dtbks

Please consider this

1/ Hybrids are a "distruptive technology" they are making a dent (albeit small) in one of the most entrenched industries on earth

2/ You have to factor in regenerative braking and hybrids like the Prius have an Atkinson cycle engine. The regen braking issue is interesting because I've read Toyota could have made the brake pads on the Prius "for life" of the vehicle (because of the low demand on them), but didn't because of consumer resistance

3/ You all assume fossil fuel based electricity (here in NZ 70% of ours is renewable), moving demand to the electrical grid is good because large scale renewable sources are closer to hand (solar, tidal, solar thermal) than any petroleum replacement.

4/ The VTG application is an ideal use for Zebra Batteries.

5/ There are multiple battery techs, I'd pump the Zebra as being a major player in electric vehicles.

The challenge is to change the mindset of governments that the electric grid is a "two way network" not a "distribution network"

Neven

well-to-wheels energy efficiency

gasoline vehicle 14%;
hybrid vehicle is 33%.
(Data from Toyota, in ref: http://www.evaap.org/pdf/environment.pdf)

gasoline vehicle 12-17%;
Electric vehicle 21-29%.
(Table I of ref: http://www.sealnet.org/seal/files/14.pdf?download)

Some of your calculations are way out. The socket-to-wheels efficiency for a BEV is actually closer to 70% (95% for the charger, 85% for the motor, 85% for the batteries (more modern battery chemistries have a better efficiency)).

In all, you'd be looking at 50% (power Plant) - 10% (line loss) - 30% (car) = 31.5%. That's not fantastic in and of itself, but if the Grid gets cleaner, so does your car.

Add to this that a BEV consumes approximately a fifth of the amount of Joules that an ICE does to cover the same distance (assuming that a vehicle uses 130W/KM, a BEV consumes 13KW/100KM, compared to a ICE which uses 85KW (8.8L/100KM).

So, I have some difficulty with this statement. Unfortunately I'm not knowledgeable about the "wells to wheels" research you mention

His statement is true. This works through an example numerically, and shows precisely how much more efficient the electric vehicle is.

(If you want to assume old coal plants instead of new natural gas ones, reduce the electricity generation efficiency to 33% from 60%. The US grid is roughly split between coal and gas, though, with about 20% coming from non-fossil sources, meaning assuming 50% fossil generation efficiency overall is probably reasonable.)

I am, however, a PhD physicist, and I'm having some difficulty in seeing how a plug-in hybrid is more efficient from the point of view of the amount of fossil fuel burned.

I'm a BS electrical engineer, and I'll explain it to you.

However, given these two assumptions, a steam turbine (that you might find at the power station) is roughly 50% efficient.

The average efficiency of US thermal powerplants, calculated from their collective heat rate, is roughly 33%.  Combined-cycle plants have broken 60% (based on the lower heating value of the fuel, which is a bit of accounting sleight-of-hand).

Then, charging your PHEV is another 50% efficient since the most power you can draw from the grid is 50% of the available power if you're perfectly impedance matched with the internal impedance of the power station and external grid.

If you're really a PhD physicist, you should know two things intimately (because they are part of the EE undergrad coursework):

• The impedance of the transmission system may be resistive, but it may be composed largely or entirely of lossless reactances.
• Even when the source impedance is resistive, the load may be a far greater resistance (e.g. internal resistance of a battery is far lower than the typical load).

You may consider yourself pwned.

To get back to your first question, why the PHEV is more efficient than burning the same fuel in an ICEV:

1. The plant which feeds the PHEV can be optimized for thermal efficiency and pollution control in a way that a vehicular engine cannot.
2. The powerplant can burn fuels that the PHEV cannot (converting coal to liquid fuel is perhaps 50% efficient, so the coal-fired plant + PHEV wins by 2:1 even if the thermal efficiencies are identical).
3. The PHEV can use energy from hydro, nuclear, wind, PV, and cogeneration.  The first four are unavailable to an ICEV, and the waste heat from an ICEV is effectively unavailable for other use.
4. Last, the PHEV can be part of a "smart grid" which optimizes the efficiency of the powerplants by adjusting the charging times and rates.  An ICEV does not have any meaningful interaction with its fuel supply chain.

"the most power you can draw from the grid is 50% of the available power if you're perfectly impedance matched"

I think you are confusing maximum power transfer with efficiency.

For a given source impedance maximum power is transmitted when the load impedance equals the source impedance. In this case the efficiency is 50% as you point out.

However the higher the ratio of load impedance to source impedance the greater the fraction of power that is deposited in the load.

The obvious solution is to just live closer to where you work, where you don't need a car. I knew one guy who worked on the 11th floor of a high rise (investment bank) and lived on the 28th floor.

So he used alot more energy going home than getting to work ?

People I know who now commute long time/distances want to live closer to work but around here (US, DC Metro area) it is alot more expensive for housing to live in the walkable areas. Everytime I get visitors to my humble bungalow, I get comments when we walk out to the theatre or restaurants about how they would like to be able to do that.

There are tradeoffs - small or no yard (we use parks for recreation), small house (benefit is lower heat and cooling), "commercial activity" which includes smells from restaurants, parking issues etc.

Every once in a while a new person will move in with "exurban sensibilities" and we have to go through a short training process. It usually starts with them complaining that they had a hard time finding a parking spot when they drove up to the main street to go shopping. You tell them- did you consider that it is a 3 block walk and you used to walk that far in the mall parking lot ? It's just habit for most of them. The funniest is when they initially drive 5 blocks to the gym - and complain about parking there (until you point out how stupid that is). They just never think about it.

Back on topic - Plug in/Electric vehicles could be useful in a compact urban environment. Besides being cleaner, they will be smaller. the hardest problem we have here is how to store the vehicles that people own. If the vehicles were smaller it would make urban design much cheaper/easier.

That would be a marvelous problem to have.

Ah Yes.

We can heat a house with electricity, therefore no problem in replacing the natural gas heating, or the east coast dependence upon heating oil, which is so much more valuable as fuel for motive power. We can build wind generators, therefore no problem in replacing the soon enough to be obsolete nuclear reactors, while keeping an eye on net coal BTUs plausibly already past peak. We can put batteries in a car and haul ourselves around as well, so there is nothing fundamentally flawed with a private transportation system, that even now consumes from 25% to 40% of our social endeavor, depending upon how warmongering is attributed.

Under conditions of declining net energy, the necessary efficiency gain will be achieved by doing away with the most inefficient, not by trying to replicate it even more inefficiently.

What are the targets for CO2 emissions comparisons? If a 2000 lb. compact car can typically get 36 mpg on the highway and 24 in the city, it will release 5.5 lbs of carbon in the gasoline it burns in the city, or will get 4.4 miles/lb C.

For comparison, I found this Myers Motors Car on the Web, which is a 3-wheel EV that looks like it might weight about 1000 pounds, or half what a compact weighs. It goes up to 30 miles on a charge and claims the driving cost is only $.02/mi when electricity costs $0.10/KWh. That is equivalent to 5 mi/KWh. About 1.2 lb of coal (which contains 0.9 lb. of C) must be burned to deliver 1 KWh of electricity to a house. Thus, based on the numbers given, the Myers EV gets about 5.5 mi per lb of C released to the atmosphere, or a CO2 reduction of 20% vs an ICE car.

Yet, when I do the calculation for recharging the vehicle, which requires 20 A service at 110 V for 7 hours, I get 15.4 KWh. Let's say only l2 KWh are needed for the 30 miles. That is only 2.5 miles per KWh, or half the 5 mi/KWh value given. With this number, the EV emissions would be eighty percent higher. Not very good in comparison to the gasoline powered compact when considering the fact that it weighs approximately half as much.

A lot depends on which of the two calculations is correct, unless of course, you can generate electicity cheaply without emitting carbon in the form of CO2. There is a way, you know. (www.vortexengine.ca)

HOG

Thanks!

PHEV's are much better than diesels, because you can transition to a plug-in, then to an extended range EV (ErEV) like the Chevy Volt, then to an EV.

Diesels will never achieve 100 mpg, let alone zero grams CO2 per kilometer which, of course, an ErEV/EV can do.

Secondly, your Aunt's Prius puts out a LOT less non-CO2 pollution than the vehicles you mentioned.

I like diesels because right here and now, when I take a $2600 jetta up against a prius, in the real world with my driving (long distances) the jetta actually has a proven marginal advantage in fuel use per km...Transition? Why not transition to a full electric when they work? Why the hybrid?"

You were thinking about an individual choice, I was thinking about public policy. It's good public policy to start a transition toward electrification, and hybrids like the Prius are about 1/3 electric. Demand is created for drivetrain components, power electronics, batteries, etc.

"PS that smart for two actually does make roughly 100 mpg, driven right they can achieve 3 l/100k"

3 L/100km is about .825 gallons/62 miles, or 75 MPG. That's a pretty tiny vehicle, and what do you mean by "driven right"?

I suspect that the hydrogen hype is being purposefully used to cut the mindshare of PHEV technology and keep it off the market as long as possible by making demand appear too small for manufacturers to make money.  This fits with all the rhetoric out of the Bush administration and the interests of the oil companies.

At one recent Bilderberg summit, the Bush rep said that hydrogen was not ready to help with the immediate fuel crisis; at about the same time, Bush himself was cutting the ribbon on a hydrogen station in Washington DC but never let out a peep about PHEV's.  The administration cannot claim ignorance; members of Congress and former CIA director R. James Woolsey are on the bandwagon.  I'm not a conspiracy theorist but this is just too blatant to ignore.