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Making Green Cars Rational Introduction: Aiming High Presidents Obama of the US and Hu Jintao of China now rank clean energy directly after economic recovery as their greatest mutual interest. Energy comes before other issues like the US trade deficit with China, global financial stability, the US dollar's world role, nuclear nonproliferation, war on terror, and other themes (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-07/28/content_11782759.htm). Downstream from the policy goal of rapidly developing non-fossil energy supplies to mitigate dwindling oil supplies and higher capacity costs, and to limit growth of CO2 emissions, both leaders give pride of place to near-term future, massive growth of electric cars and vehicles (EV). Very simple reasons exist for this. The current world car and light vehicle fleet (below 2.5 tons weight) is about 98% oil fuelled, counts more than 900 million units, and is growing at about 55 to 60 million units a year, only just behind human population growth. Fuel consumption varies with factors like annual mileage, vehicle weight and power, but worldwide average light vehicle oil demand is probably well above 9 litres per 100 kms (around 25 miles per US gallon). Long-run data shows fleet wide fuel demand in the last 25 years only weakly responds to fuel price rises. One reason for this is high average lifetimes of light vehicles, in Europe, Asia and USA, of about 13 to 15 years before their replacement. As Henry Ford and Lord Keynes both knew, economic multiplier impacts of the car and vehicle industry are one of the strongest which exist. These impacts stretch from road building to the insurance industry, and deliver high or extreme 'knock-on' supply and user chain growth impacts across the economy. This is explicitly recognized in, for example, the June 2009 EU-27 economic recovery measures and policies voted to create or save car-dependent jobs, of course including a large place for Green Car development (click link for PDF attachment). Study of complete infrastructure and operating energy costs for cars and light vehicles raises the system wide, real energy cost of vehicle operation, to well above the typical fleet averages cited above, to as high as 14 litres per 100 kms. Detailed study shows that even where annual distances run per vehicle are low, infrastructure and system energy costs result in high final oil demand-per-vehicle. Average annual distances run are close to 10 000 miles or 16 000 kms in major world regions and countries (http://www2.lut.fi/~kklemola/dontfly/carsof2006.htm). Depending on country and its economic structure, geography, its urban density and culture, land transport can take as much as 80% of all petroleum used in that country. On a worldwide average basis, about a quarter to one-third of total oil consumption or about 9 to 10 billion barrels/year, on a total of about 31 bn bbl/year, is used by light land transport vehicles. This estimate is relatively coherent with official institutional estimates on CO2 emissions from land transport, a close tracker for fleet oil consumption. Using estimates from the IPCC we find land transport emits about 22% of anthropogenic CO2 (http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=106), the IPCC however using very low figures for world transport fleet numbers. This IPCC report, we can note, was careful to point out the unlikelihood of vehicle fleet average efficiency gains, delivering lower CO2 output per unit distance run and therefore lower fuel demand per vehicle, compensating the world car fleet growth impact. IPCC estimates are that fleet growth impacts are roughly 2 times the impact of rising fuel efficiency through the last 25 years. Increasing total CO2 emissions have therefore closely tracked increasing global oil demand for light land transport. Crisis-bred Forecasts These background, real world facts and figures are however swept aside by the present rush to save the world car industry, reduce job losses, head off Peak Oil and generate epic investor returns in a single operation: Creating and rationalizing the Green Car boom. One primary rationale is that, at least in popular imagination, electricity is clean, but oil is dirty as well as supply limited and geopolitically dangerous. Trifling facts like China's 75% of national electricity being coal-based, or nearly 50% in the USA, are given short shrift. Forecasting how fast and how much EVs will penetrate and replace the world's car fleets is now similar to the 2005-2007 boom and bust in hopes that biofuels could replace oil fuelled transportation while generating massive investor returns. To be uncharitable, present day offerings on the near unlimited upward growth potentials for EVs are close to copy-paste remakes of 2006-vintage hopes for biofuel output and clean biofuel car growth, now downsized to a small scale background alternate energy role. Current EV sales and fleet growth forecasts, like those of biofuel cars in 2006, are of near straight line upward growth. The EPRI forecast, below, for US fuel-based hybrids and plug-in electric hybrids (PHEV) is typical Cheap Fuel Nirvana Car makers never fail to underline that EVs will be so cheap to run they return car users to 1950-level fuel and energy prices, for example publicity by Chevrolet for its Volt model, and Renault Nissan for its Leaf model, claiming 230 to 330 "miles per gallon equivalent", or better. Depending on a host of factors, including the type of driving, city or country, sporty or not, the EV types that gain mass market dominance, their weight, maximum speed and battery charge, future fleet wide average electrical energy demands are hard to estimate with any precision. Using data for Warren Buffet's most recent investor coup, the Chinese BYD's future volume PHEV the F3DM (http://www.byd.com/showroom.php?car=f3dm), we can take a probable average for larger-sized EVs of around 16 kWh per 100 kms or 4 miles per kWh. Smaller and lighter models, to be sure, will consume less. Rightly subtitled Build Your Dreams, BYD like other Chinese car makers is resolutely targeting nearly straight line upward growth in its total vehicle output, currently over 95% oil fuelled. This real world market driven orientation is underlined by March 2009 monthly sales figures of the electric F3DM, of about 80 units in its home Chinese market, against 20 000 monthly sales of the all-fossil F3 version of the same car. (http://autonews.gasgoo.com/auto-news/1009994/Sales-of-BYD-Auto-in-March-2009-by-model.html). Like the early century Hydrogen Car hopes, and more recent biofuel boom and slump, the outlook for EVs is surrounded with doubt and speculation. Apart from the untried and untested image of EVs, factors such as a lack of city or highway recharging plug-in points, or battery switchover stations, and uncertainty over choosing between all-electric and "conventional" hybrids like Toyota's Prius model - and the high price of current EVs and hybrids - all combine to create a widening credibility gap.
Mineral and Energy Limits Upstream from the comforting image of PHEV cars soon being available that deliver "200 miles per gallon", or more, there is the distressing reality of a coming Lithium Pinch. This previously almost unknown light metal with restricted, smaller scale but growing demand for cellphone and laptop PC batteries, is now the target of feverish investor speculation. Typical copy is as follows: "Lithium is one of the best ways to play President Obama’s energy agenda. The Office of the President of the United States will be backing the Eco-Energy Revolution and billions of dollars will be given out to develop the technology behind the lithium-ion battery. This energy revolution is a serious investable long-term trend. We as investors have to take advantage of the opportunities being presented in the coming global rush to green electricity" (Source: Aheadofthecrowd.com). In the technical domain we can note that for cost, as well as safety and environmental reasons, EV makers are tending to choose lithium iron carbonate, rather than lithium-ion batteries. The basic objective is clear: Trim the weight of lithium metal needed to produce each EV, but incompressible minima are reached. This is well discussed with its car industry, and lithium mining industry impacts and implications by William Tahill in his rightly titled 'The Trouble With Lithium' (http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/Lithium_Microscope.pdf). This study, like any taste of reality disturbing the EV fantasy future has been heavily criticized, to be sure, by the green energy and green car finance and investment lobbies. Lithium supplies will surely be a constant brake on extreme growth of world PHEV fleets, if not 'conventional hybrids', which use an onboard fuel burning engine to recharge vehicle batteries. Like the science-based appeal to "second generation" non-food biofuel feedstocks, what could be subtitled the "algae revolution", which has yet to materialize, battery breakthroughs fill today's hopes that science and technology can break easily-described future limits on lithium supply. Turning to energy and electric power limits for a fully-fledged EV boom, and ignoring car making industrial investment and logistic needs for producing perhaps 50 million EVs a year by around 2020 on a worldwide basis, we find estimates of national electricity consumption for coming EV fleets at present couched in reassuring mode. US EPA and DOE estimates, for example, show only a small bulge in national electricity demand from around 2020, but a simple calculation shows these estimates utilise low estimates for total EV numbers, and low annual electricity consumption per vehicle (see eg. http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/005067.html) Real World Limits The EPRI forecasts charted above claim it is possible that by around 2018-2020 some 45% or 50% of new car sold in the USA could be PHEV. Assuming any recovery at all in US car sales, as ardently hoped by the Obama administration, this implies annual PHEV sales of at least 5 or 6 million a year. By 2025, the US PHEV fleet could or might attain 25 to 30 million units - each of them needing periodic recharging. Electrical energy consumption per unit would be around 2750 kWh a year, but the likeliest real world limit will be power plant capacity needed for peak recharging periods, like Sunday evenings before travel to work on Mondays. This weak point for EV promoters is, to be sure, well covered by proposals for "smart grids" making large use of intermittent renewable energy supplies. It is also addressed by proposals for in-city charging centers with solar photovoltaic roofing, minimised battery replacement and changeover (also to trim lithium needs), and continuing technology progress limiting any growth in electricity consumption, and recharging power needs for each vehicle. As with lithium metal needs, however, base line minima are soon attained. Average EV users will likely want, and need at least 25 kWh at each recharge, equivalent to the energy content of well below 1 US gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel. To obtain that charge in 6 hours, power rating of the charge cord must be above 4 kW, but for an 8-hour charging period some 3 to 3.5 kW would suffice. Translating this to an PHEV fleet of 25 or 30 million, below 15% of the USA's current almost all oil-fuelled car fleet, would imply extreme needs for new electric power plant capacity. Worse still, the new capacity would be fatally constrained to peak-trough demand swings of the most un-smart or unintelligent kind. Sunday evenings, for example, US power demand for PHEV recharging could attain 75 to 90 million kW, or 75 000 to 90 000 MW. The simple question will be: Who builds these plants, needed only a few hours at a time, in extreme peaked demand contexts ? The current outlook, in 2009, is that a surely short-term, but nevertheless 3-year to 5-year long global bulge in LNG supplies, and low prices, will dictate a de facto rush to natural gas power plants for recharging future "clean and green" EV fleets. Very simply in this case, the direct use of natural gas fuelled smaller vehicles starting with CNG or compressed gas, would be a better light vehicle energy solution than using the same gas to produce electricity, with incompressible energy conversion losses, to produce power for all-electric car fleets. Rational Solutions Coming lithium supply and electric power plant capacity limits on a one-for-one replacement of current auto fleets with conventional hybrids and PHEV should not limit the real attraction of EVs. This is replacing and substituting fossil energy-based land transportation in specific, and large user contexts, and specially in urban areas. Several key reasons exist. Around 52% of world population in 2009 is urbanised, and forecasts for 2030 indicate continuing growth, to 60% or more of the estimated 7.75 billion world population at that date. This means that around 400 to 450 million cars and light vehicles operate in today's cities, and current fleet growth trends could continue despite the heavy economic diseconomies of light vehicle numbers growing faster than additional passenger miles delivered, in city areas. Apart from oil substitution and climate change mitigation, the target of cutting urban utilisation of light vehicles carrying few persons over short distances and taking valuable urban space for intermittent use of that space is reinforced by clear and evident environmental and safety considerations. This makes EVs the best choice for future and rational multi-user vehicles operating in urban areas. Our problem is finding the entry formats for rational penetration of this huge, almost open-ended market. Starting with what already exists, we can note that trams, suburban rail and underground trains, all of them electric or diesel-electric hybrid, are also all multi-user, collectivized transport solutions making intensive use of the space they use. One vector for finding marketable solutions will therefore be levering up daily person numbers transported, and passenger mile transport capacities of rational EV solutions for urban light vehicles not running on fixed tracks. Achieving greater personal utilisation of vehicles, a faster growth of transport passenger miles delivered than growth of vehicles in circulation, is the basic challenge. Avoiding outright legislative means to that end demands innovative and creative proposals and solutions. Multiple Solutions In urban and urban regional environments there are a large range of potentials for rational growth of EV fleets. These potentials extend from technological, through operational and organizational, all targeted at the goal of increasing urban utilisation of EVs. City and municipal authorities aware of fossil energy resource limits, climate change mitigation needs, public interest and support for 'ecological' goals, the need to create or maintain jobs in city areas, and the pursuit of efficient and rational use of urban space through urban planning and management, will all find interest in setting programmes for the rational use of EVs in their city areas. My own advisory to a major Chinese corporation with urban realty and alternate energy interests pursues the above track. First entry advantages can accrue in the short-term, through targeting the lowest risk entry options. Technological parameters for EV development are outside the scope of near-term market entry goals, but operational and organizational planning for rational EV fleet development in urban areas offers large scope. Urban transport studies over the last 25-35 years show that concentric or radial pattern transport dominated urban geographic urban systems have tended to be replaced, in the most transport-intensive economies and societies, by much less differentiated 'urban tissue', without nodes and natural foci (see eg. http://www.irows.ucr.edu/conferences/globgis/papers/Chase-Dunn_Weeks.htm). This however does not apply to central city areas, nor to cities that for reasons including local geography and environment, economic history and culture, remain relatively node-dominated. Where transport and population nodes and centers exist, or can be created, these serve as bases for urban regional and central urban EV fleet operation, from defined nodes and centers. Rational utilization of EV transport in urban areas can target several, coordinated entry strategies, starting with urban node, park-and-recharge centers where day users of EVs can hire and utilise vehicles with an approximate 100 kms (60 mile) range. This entry concept is already operated by several major companies and corporations, worldwide, but at present only in small scale or pilot level operations. Operating with pro-active city and municipal authorities, this entry strategy can be rapidly developed and expanded. Operations can include EV collectivized minibus operation, for example transport for schools and offices, EV goods delivery fleet operation, municipal and emergency service vehicle operation. By increasing density of EV utilisation, the same park-and-recharge centers can become viable. As discussed above, one key problem for mass ownership but only intermittent use of EVs will be electric power capacity needs for recharging. For private ownership in large city areas this will surely become a major problem - due to cost and physical infrastructure barriers for power cabling city areas, to enable 'recharge anywhere' use of private EVs. Through defining and creating EV nodes and centers utilised on an intensive basis, these new 'central stations of the EV age' can be the focus of planning for rational electric power supply to urban EV fleets. All low carbon and no carbon energy potentials can be considered, including municipal waste energy recovery, offering large scope for business partnerships and for city authority initiatives. Under any scenario, rational development of urban EV systems will be the most economically viable.
contact information Andrew McKillop | Author & Consultant | Email |
