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The EVcast is a podcast dedicated to bringing consumers the latest information on electric vehicles in a non-technical, non-political, and entertaining way.
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July 2010 Posts
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My air conditioner works pretty good, but can't keep up with the how hot it is now. Is this global warming? This year in Washington, DC we are experiencing global weirding, from having lived through snowmageddon this winter to having to deal with record heat for April, May, June and it's only the 8th of July, but this month is already going down in the record books for the most record breaking hot days in a row. All this heat is pushing the grid to its limits. What would happen if you were to add EVs to the mix? We are simply going to need to build more infrastructure. We also explore Smith Electric Vehicles, which is the company the President visited today. This is an EV truck company ready to take your orders today. Also take a look at Nissan's DeZir. Another incredibly hot red electric sports car. How many hot electric sports cars do people need? Oh! Oh! Oh! I'll take one.
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Well infrastructure it is.....http://www.ecofriend.org/entry/11-charging-stations-designed-to-refuel-evs-with-renewable-energy/http://us.sanyo.com/Environmental-Solutions/Solar-Canopieshttp://us.sanyo.com/Environmental-Solutions/Clean-Energy-Parking-Solutionshttp://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/07/our-1st-week-with-solar-smiles-and-sun-milesMore to come.... I'm sure....
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The price of the sophisticated Li-Ion battery pack costs around $1,000 per kWh. You need at least 25-30 of them to propel any normal automobile = $25K to $30K for the power pack alone, not counting the replacement costs down the road (5 - 7 years? who knows). That is why nothing but luxury electric cars are coming to town.
I can get a sophisticated Li-Ion battery pack today for $500 per kWh retail. So you are already talking "retail" mind you are already talking $12.5K to $15k as a real starting point. How much less would you think a company that plans to put out 10,000 vehicles a year would pay per kWh? Now think about a company that plans on putting out 50,000 vehicle or maybe 100,000 vehicles over a multiple electric vehicle offering. You will be talking unit orders in the millions. The producers of the batteries can put volume orders for materials. Lithium maybe expensive if you are ordering only enough to purchase a few batteries, but it becomes down right cheap when you are ordering in volume such as using it in lubricants and caulk, which is what the only volume purchasers of lithium are doing with it now. And those lubricants and caulks are not expensive things and they can be found at your local hardware store. Efficient production, large scale resource gathering, mass production and time in the market will bring the price of lithium batteries down significantly. A123 batteries have been proven to last well over 10 years in power tools used daily by professionals, and California has mandated that electric vehicle batteries be warrantied to last 10 years. Yes, luxury cars are going to be the easiest entry into the market because they have the margins needed to bring this new technology into the market. However, it won't be long until lower priced vehicles enter. You just have to start somewhere and not kill it before it grows enough to be self sustaining.
That is something that we didn't discuss in the podcast and that is distributed energy generation. Eric touched on it and he is absolutely right. Just think of all those parking lots that could be shading passengers all the while producing electricity for them to drive on. This is the way to go.
