The Washington Post just published one of its weekly anti-Electric-Vehicle (EV) screeds.
This thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/15/electic-cars-biden-epa-climate/
And, God help me, I just spent a couple of hours posting comments. I gotta stop doing that.
My wife suggest that I compile and post all my comments. Think of it as a collection of short, related essays.
Sometimes, thoughtful comments in the Post allow me to discover something new. As in red, below. But my main takeaway from all this is that I have to stop commenting on Washington Post articles.
On the opening sentence of the article.
“The Biden administration’s plan to remake how Americans travel by forcing automakers to rapidly shift to predominantly electric vehicle sales would strike a major blow against global warming — but only if federal officials can successfully execute it.”
Makes me itch to rewrite it, starting with the totally unnecessary split infinitive.
I guess what kills me about that the most, though, is the “forcing automakers” phrase. That’s literally wrong, though frequently repeated. The Administration can’t force automakers to switch to electricity. Nor are they mandating that.
What they have proposed is very stringent emission standards. The presumption is that this would be met by electrical transportation in some form.
The proposed rule would cut allowable C02 emissions in half. How car makers would choose to try to do that is still up to them. We already have a Ford hybrid truck that would meet that standard. As would most small hybrid sedans. It’s not clear that the proposed standard could not be met more efficiently with a mostly hybrid/PHEV fleet, supplemented with pure EVs if and as the market accepts them.
On restricting tax credits to US-assembled vehicles
Agreed, I think. We got a Prius Prime last year, and for us that was absolutely the sweet spot for electrifying transport. But no tax credit now, because that’s a Japanese-assembled vehicle.
OTOH, there’s been a lot of pressure to rebuild U.S. manufacturing. I guess the term-of-art is industrial policy. But it all boils down to old-fashioned protectionism. This time via buy-American clauses – for this, and in the infrastructure bill.
So it wasn’t arbitrary. They cut some manufacturers out of the subsidies in order to foster industrial capacity development on North American soil. (Because of NAFTA, cars assembled in Mexico or Canada count the same as cars assembled in the U.S., for those tax credits.)
It’s possible — in theory, I guess — that in the long run, by kick-starting U.S. industry in this direction, you’ll eventually end up with more people driving EVs in the U.S. Not proven, but not impossible either.
On the grid as a limitation to electric transport
I found the discussion of grid issues in this article to be lacking.
First, EVs are an issue because California had a brownout? Near as I can recall, California has been having brownouts since I was a little kid. A brownout in CA is no evidence of anything. Other than the fact that CA has long been subject to brownouts, and likely will be for the foreseeable future.
Second, if we instantly converted the entire U.S. fleet to electricity, the resulting 3 trillion electrical miles would require a 25% increase in total U.S. electrical generation, at an average of 3 KWH per mile for a typical EV.
But.
But, that’s going to take an incredibly long time. If we are a lucky, and all suns shine, we might have to up the rate of growth of electricity generation by a percent a year, to cover that entire conversion. It’s clearly do-able.
But, as importantly, EVs can mostly charge at night.
In fact, it’s vastly better for your lithium-ion batteries to charge them at night, so that they reach 100% charge just before you use them. Leaving Li-ion batteries at 100% state-of-charge leads to more rapid degradation.
So not only CAN EVs charge at night, EVs SHOULD charge at night. It’s in the owners’ best interest to do so
Depending on area and season, electrical demand is typically 25% below peak, or more, at night. So the additional electricity required to charge EVs does not necessarily mean that we need more generating capacity. We’d just use it at night.
In short, there are plenty of issues with electrifying U.S. transport. The grid issues are way down the list.
Sub-comment in response to somebody saying that people will have to recharge as they run their errands.
Sure, there may be some exceptions. But they are rare.
The average U.S. vehicle travels less than 25 miles a day, and you’d be extremely hard-pressed to find a U.S. driver who routinely puts on more than 150. (You can find one, sure, but that’s not typical.)
But say that you are that rare exception who routinely travels 150 miles a day by car. You can still typically recharge fully, overnight, with in-home Level II (240 volt) charging.
Here’s a chart for Tesla Model Y (grabbed at random). A Level II charger can give it 70% of a full charge in about 8 hours. The Model Y has around 300 miles of range, so that’s going to be somewhere around 200 miles of range in an 8-hour overnight charge.
Really, the only time an EV owner routinely needs an on-the-road daytime charge is for long-distance travel. Around town, if you drive a modest-sized car like a Tesla, and keep it charged, you ought to be able to cover 200 miles a day with overnight at-home charging.
I’m tired of people whining about how difficult it is to go electric.
At some very basic level, I’m sick of hearing how hard it is go electric. For most people, it’s comically easy.
One word: PHEV.
OK, four words: Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle. That’s a regular gas hybrid to which the manufacturer has added a small (e.g., 40-mile-range) battery.
My wife bought a Prius Prime last year, which (as we drive it) has about a 35-mile electric range. With that, we have converted more than 70% of our driving to electricity.
Zero change in lifestyle. Other than to remember to plug in the car, in a standard 120V outlet, in the garage.
Zero range anxiety. If we run out of battery on the road, the car seamless converts to being a standard high-efficiency gas hybrid.
Minimal use of exotic materials, because the battery is small compared to a full EV.
The secret is to realize that most driving, for most people, is well under 40 miles a day. You don’t need a huge battery to cover most of your driving. You need a modest one, and then some way to run the car when that battery is depleted.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Converting the U.S. fleet to PHEV would, at a minimum, cut our gas consumption in half. And likely would be more acceptable to the average consumer.
Sub-comment in response to somebody trashing PHEVs
Sure, if you want a sports car, drive something else.
I drive a Prius Prime and it is by far the best car I’ve ever owned.
In EV mode, it’s far more responsive than it is in straight-up hybrid mode. The zero-RPM torque of the electric motors is much “snapper” than that of the Atkinson engine.
I think the curb weight of the Prime is about 300 pounds — or 10% more — than the Prius.
So it’s like having an extra passenger in the car, or a full tank of gas, as you drive. That’s all. Not a big deal.
I’ve never had a handling issue with it, but then again, I just drive it like a normal car. Here in my typical suburban traffic. For which it performs beautifully.
On the highway, driving is even less taxing. Put in the cruise control and go. I certainly haven’t perceived any drawback to the EV side. On the highway, I choose to drive it as a standard hybrid, so the power train is that of the Prius, straight up.
I wouldn’t try to run it in Le Mans. But as a low-carbon-emission daily driver, with zero compromises for range, it’s as close to perfect at the market now offers.
Regarding apartment-dwellers and EV charging
Yes. That’s about one-third of the country, by the way — individuals living in other-than single-family housing.
Two additional important factors there that are always overlooked.
If you have to use commercial charging stations, you will pay much more for electricity than for (the equivalent mileage in) gasoline. So for that population, there are no fuel cost savings from going electric. To the contrary, they increase their annual fuel costs by switching.
Second, “fast charging” significantly reduces battery life. That’s why manufacturers recommend that you do that sparingly. You can’t use fast charging as your everyday charging mode, and expect your car to last.
If you then limit your use of those public charging stations to Level 2 (240 volt) charging, a) it costs even more, b) you need even more stations because it takes each car a long time to charge, and c) did I mention that it takes a long time to charge?
With my wife’s PHEV, we can get about 15 miles of range for every hour of Level II charging. In round numbers, if you drive an hour a day, you’re going to have to have your car sit at a public charger for a couple of hours a day.
The upshot is that this is almost totally impractical, right now, for people who cannot charge at home. Sure, it can be done, if you are willing to put up with all of that — time, expense, hassle. But it’s not going to take over the market.
And this is from a guy who mostly travels electrical miles, via a plug-in hybrid.
The fundamental dichotomy of comments about EVs
Yeah, I have to laugh at the comments to articles like this. They seem to consist of people who have actually used an EV and are completely pleased with how they work. And people who have never used an EV, and are convinced that they can’t possibly work.
You’d think that the commenters in the latter class would read the comments in the prior class, and get a clue from that. Sort of like reading the product reviews on Amazon? But that just doesn’t seem to be happening, or happening very fast.
To a retired couple thinking of trading in their gas cars for a hybrid
For a modest extra investment — or maybe for free, depending on the tax-credit situation — consider getting a PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) instead of a straight-up hybrid. A PHEV is a hybrid where the manufacturer added a modest-sized battery.
My wife went with a Prius Prime instead of a regular Prius. The Prius Prime has enough battery to get us about 35 miles. That covers all our around-town driving. Recharges in five hours on a standard 120V outlet.
With that, roughly 70% of our miles are now electric, and the only change in life-style has been to remember to plug the car in from time to time. No range anxiety, because when it runs out of battery, it’s just a standard gas hybrid Prius.
Best part is that, when she bought it, it had a $4K tax credit that covered the higher cost of the Prime model.
Basically, we got that 35 miles of electrical travel for free. And that is more than enough to cover our daily driving needs.
On fear of battery fires while recharging at home
OK, so I own two cars with big lithium-ion batteries, and yeah, I worry about this risk of in-house recharging.
Intellectually, I realize it’s incredibly rare. EV fires during recharging are almost unheard-of.
But what EV advocates downplay is that once those li-ion batteries catch, there is nothing you can do but let them burn. This tends to make EV fires both spectacular, and long-lasting, compared to gas-vehicle fires, which might typically be limited to the amount of gasoline in the engine compartment at any one time.
That said, I do recharge the cars as they sit in my garage. So I don’t worry enough about it to let it stop me. But I do think it’s a legit worry.
Regarding low adoption of hybrids
Couple of comments from a long-time Prius owner, now driving a Prius Prime.
Early on, there was a lot of hatred expressed toward the Prius. It sounds almost comical to say that now, because the Prius is just about as inoffensive as a car can get. But that’s the way it was. Lot of die-hard Otto-cycle gas-engine drivers feel threatened by new ways of getting from Point A to Point B and are not at all shy about taking that out on the early adopters.
Expect no less for EVs. And expect to see all the old arguments recycled. Back in the day, it was that the nickel in the Prius traction battery had devastated Sudbury, ONT. Now, it’s blaming artisinal mining for 5% of world cobalt on EV batteries. Same non-sequitur, different mineral ore.
And second, yeah, ain’t it the darnedest thing that, despite everything we now see coming to pass about climate change, so many people are willing to pour so much money into maintaining their totally unnecessary and excessive use of fossil fuels? When there are perfectly fine ways of getting about that use half or less of what the typical American vehicle uses?
I’m not talking sports cars and big trucks, I’m taking daily drivers and grocery-getters. It’s amazing, here in the ‘burbs, to see all those pristine F150s parked at the Safeway.
Here’s a stat for you: The typical SUV consumes its own weight in gasoline every year. (Do the math, you’ll see that I’m right).
If the sheer cost of all that gas doesn’t convince people, I bet that if they actually had to go to the physical effort of lifting those tons of gasoline into their gas tanks, we’d see a lot fewer truck and SUVs at the Safeway.
On using slave children for hard-rock mining
See my comment above.
Question: When you watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, did it never occur to you what lousy hard-rock miners children made?
So, if you could enslave people to do your mining, why on earth would you enslave children?
Oh, because they’re your children. Because it’s not enslavement, it’s subsistence mining in the third world, same as you see subsistence agriculture.
And, I bet if you asked those families to stop doing that, and to starve instead, they’d probably object pretty strenuously. Just as subsistence farming families would.
That “artisinal” ore accounts for about 5% to 7% of total world cobalt production. It’s a shame that it goes on. But it predates EVs by decades. And it likely will continue once EVs are a thing of the past.
On PHEVs having the same carbon footprint as EVs
As a PHEV owner, I’m not sure that’s true, but I find it plausible.
Two things make that PHEV vs EV comparison plausible.
First, the small battery in a PHEV allows you to electrify a large share of miles. (For the simple reason that most days, you don’t drive a huge number of miles.) In my case, my wife bought a Prius Prime, and that 35-mile battery has allowed us to convert about 70% of our vehicle miles to electricity.
Second, production of Li-ion batteries is quite energy-intensive, and so requires a considerable “payback period” before C02 emissions in battery production are offset by C02 reductions from less gasoline use.
Let me do the calculation for my wife’s Prius Prime. Would we have cut our C02 emissions by buying a full EV, or not?
The figure-of-merit I’ve used is 200 KG C02 emitted per KWH Li-ion battery capacity produced. That’s probably at the upper end of estimates, but let me run with that.
Doing a bit of math, using my wife’s car. Driving 10K miles a year means about 3K miles on gas, consuming 54 gallons (at the EPA rating), producing about 500 KG C02.
Converting that to electricity, in Virginia, in a Prius, would have saved about 70% of that, or 350 KG C02. Per year.
So I would save 350 KG C02 per year, from going from PHEV to fully EV, here in Virginia.
Needless to say, that doesn’t buy much battery capacity. That C02 savings is enough to “buy” about 1.5 KWH of battery capacity, per year of use.
If a typical EV has a 75 KWH hour battery, I’d never reach payback. I’d have to drive the EV for 50 years in order to pay back the C02 generated in the battery creation.
The moral of the story is that a small battery, used intensively (PHEV) just beats the heck out of toting around a big battery that you very rarely use.
