Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 21 May 2008 18:29:07 GMT | no comments
BlueSky Motors in Sacramento periodically sells EV Ford Rangers on eBay.
When I contacted them about the reserve price for a previous EV Ranger, here is what they said:
The reserve on the vehicle is $26,998 + License, Calif. sales tax, doc fee, and registration. The total cost with a PSC charger ($600.00) ends up close to $29,000. You can call for a test drive – (916) 929-7508 ask for Scott.
Paying almost $30,000 for a Ford Ranger seems pretty expensive – is there a way to justify this? One way is to think about the extra cost as just “pre-paying” for your gas.
The gas 1999 Ford Ranger gets a combined mileage of 16 MPG, so this is about $0.25 per mile at $4 per gallon. Assuming electricity will cost $0.05 per mile, you will save $0.20 per mile with the EV Ranger. (The EV Rangers NiMH batteries will likely last for the life of the car, or about 150,000 miles, so you don’t need to worry about battery replacement costs.)
So one way of looking at the extra $20,000 that this EV Ford Ranger costs is that you are just pre-paying for gasoline at $4 per gallon for the next 100,000 miles and after that, it is like getting free gas. And when gas goes up to $6 a gallon or more, this will seem like a real bargain!
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 19 May 2008 16:04:49 GMT | no comments
When driving an electric vehicle (EV), it is important to know how far you can go on a full charge. On flat ground, the range will be pretty consistent and the only variable will be if you are driving around town or on the freeway. But how will your range be affected when you are driving up a hill?
This is an important question to me because I like to go surfing in Santa Cruz which is about 30 miles away and requires a climb of 1500 feet over a mountain range.
As a rule of thumb, you can add 10 miles for every 1000 feet you climb. So to take the Santa Cruz example, the peak is 15 miles away and a climb of 1500 feet, so it would actually take 30 miles of energy to get to the peak.
Going downhill of course, won’t take as much energy and will actually add some energy if you have regenerative braking. So the total trip to Santa Cruz is likely to take about 37 miles worth of energy.
RAV4 owners have reported that it takes less energy to climb a hill, only 6 miles per 1000 feet. One owner reported driving to Mt. Baldy which was 20 miles away and a climb of 6000 feet. He used about 60 miles worth of charge to get to the top. However, coming back down he added 20 miles of charge, so the round trip only took 40 miles of charge, or only the linear distance disregarding the climb. Ref
Bottom line is that while you need to be aware that it takes extra energy to climb hills, EVs can handle them with no problem.
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 14 May 2008 18:21:05 GMT | 6 comments
While Altairno batteries have demonstrated 25,000 cycles, my Zapino batteries are starting to weaken after less than 500 shallow cycles.
This was evident in a ride I took today to Los Gatos to get a new battery for my MacBook. (Yes, even the lithium-ion battery in my MacBook gave out after less than 300 cycles! But this was likely just a manufacturing problem, not an inherent limitation.)
I knew the Electier batteries in my Zapino batteries were getting weak, so I rode in the “economy” mode the whole way, accelerated slowly and rode 25 MPH or less. There were some small hills but I took it really easy going up them. Nonetheless, by the time I was approaching home, the needle was dipping into the yellow upon acceleration and even starting to get in the red. The entire ride was 14 miles, and I probably could have nursed it another 3 to 5 miles, but this was still only about half of the 30 mile range that we got when the Zapino was new.
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Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 13 May 2008 02:01:13 GMT | no comments
The electricity to power an electric vehicle costs very little – usually around 3c per mile. A bigger cost is the wear-and-tear on the batteries, which will cost 8c a mile or more.
For instance, if an electric car has a range of 75 miles with a 25kWh lithium-ion battery pack that has a life of 2,000 cycles, then the car could go 150,000 miles on the battery pack. If the batteries cost $25,000, this adds about 17c per mile to the cost of operating the car in addition to the electricity.
But what if the batteries lasted longer – much longer? Then the total cost per mile would be a lot lower.
For instance, lets say that instead of 2,000 cycles you could get 25,000 cycles out of the batteries. Maybe these batteries cost twice as much, but this would still bring the cost per mile down to about 3c per mile.
Well it appears that Altairnano might have done this. In their recently released 2007 annual report, it states that in January 2007 they completed 25,000 deep charge/discharge cycles of their batteries and they still retained over 80% of their original charge capacity.
The batteries are not cheap – it appears they are selling them for about $2,000 per kWh, about twice what other lithium-ion batteries sell for. But if they can really go 25,000 cycles in the field, it will be an exciting breakthrough!
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 12 May 2008 16:04:32 GMT | no comments
Here is another illustration of how expensive hydrogen is. Popular Mechanics looked at how much it would cost to drive across the country in vehicles using different types of fuel. As a baseline, a car getting 33 MPG would cost $213 (with fuel at $2.34/gallon). A hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle would cost $804, while a battery electric vehicle would cost only $60!
Popular Mechanics: Fuel of the Future
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Thu, 01 May 2008 17:36:35 GMT | 1 comment
Once everyeone realizes that oil production has peaked, the main factor on whether the world can make an orderly transition to renewable energy depends mainly on how fast production falls. If oil production falls slowly, we will be able to build up our alternative energy infrastructure with only major inconveniences. However, if it falls rapidly, dire consequences could result including recession, famine and war.
The best way to tell whether the decline will be fast or slow is to look at existing large oil fields that are in decline. If we base this on Cantarell, the news is not good.
Cantarell was the second largest producing oil field in the world. It peaked in 2004 and production fell 31% in the following 3 years. This year, it will likely decline by 18%. At this rate, production from Cantarell will drop by 80% in just 5 years.
Let’s hope that Cantarell is not indicative of the other super-giant oil fields, or the world would be in for severe trouble.
Posted in Peak Oil
Posted by Max Dunn
Thu, 01 May 2008 15:51:51 GMT | no comments
Thomas Friedman, author of ‘The World is Flat just wrote a very intelligent op-ed piece for the New York Times titled: ‘Dumb as We Wanna Be’. Here are some edited excerpts:
Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy – this is money laundering. The idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away.
Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.
The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.
Posted in Global Warming, Peak Oil
Posted by Max Dunn
Thu, 01 May 2008 14:55:26 GMT | no comments
Yesterday, I shook the hand of the man whose company might just save the world.
He is Martin Roscheisen, CEO of NanoSolar. He alluded that they are producing solar panels at about $1 per watt with a complete system cost of $2 watt when installed in municipal scale of 1MW to 50MW. This is about the same cost as a coal-fired power plant!
Furthermore, their panels can be installed at the rate of 1MW per day, and need 5 acres per MW, which means a municipal sized system of 50MW can be installed in about two months. This contrasts with coal-fired plants that can take 4 years or more to build.
Drawbacks? Their German plant is producing only about 420 MW of solar capacity per year and their San Jose plant which will open in 2009 will produce about the same.
While this is very high by normal PV standards, it would help the world greatly if this went up by several orders of magnitude.
Just think – instead of building more coal plants we can start building clean solar power systems at about the same cost!
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Posted in Global Warming, Peak Oil
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:49:49 GMT | no comments
Wind power can now produce energy as cheaply as coal, about 5c per kilowatt hour (kWh). Solar power is almost to the point where it can produce energy at the marginal electrical rate of about 10c kWh. So with oil prices over $100 barrel, natural gas prices doubling, and all the concern about CO2 and other noxious emissions from coal plants, why aren’t more wind and solar projects being built?
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Posted in Global Warming, Peak Oil
Posted by Max Dunn
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:18:39 GMT | no comments
Last night I attended a seminar put on by the Going Green! meetup group and the speaker was Craig Lewis who is VP Government Relations with GreenVolts. GreenVolt’s goal is to “deliver power to utility companies at fossil fuel costs”.
Craig talked a little about the GreenVolts product, which is a concentrating solar collector system with advanced tracking and is designed to be interconnected at the 12kv distribution level in sizes ranging from 1 to 20 mega-watts (MW). However, his main topic was “Accelerating the Transition to Smart Energy.” His conclusion was that to make alternative energy sources take off, the government needs to shift the subsidies paid to oil companies into long-term feed-in tariffs, i.e. requiring the electric companies to buy power at a set price for the next 10 to 15 years. This would allow alternative energy projects to have a guaranteed return and thus enable them to get long-term financing.
While Craig wouldn’t divulge the cost of their system, he did say it was about half of a typical flat-panel installation, so I am guessing that the cost is about $4 per watt, which would mean they could produce power at less than 9.5c per kilowatt, which is the rate they would be selling it to the utilities.
He also threw out some other interesting numbers:
- Their system requires 3 acres per MW or 100 MW per square mile, which is a higher power density than other systems
- Oil imports comprise more than half of the U.S. deficit
- Oil companies received about $17 billion last year in subsidies while solar industry only got $200 million.
Here are the complete notes:
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Posted in Global Warming, Peak Oil