Featured The Dirty Truth About Combustion Engine Vehicles

Given a choice:

• 2017 Prius Prime - 25 mi EV, 615 mi gas
• 2014 BMW i3-REx - 72 mi EV, 78 mi premium (can increase to 94 mi with coding)

We found the Prius Prime EV range was hindered by obscure control laws that would trigger engine operation even when not needed. In particular temperatures below 50-55 F would turn on the engine for obscure reasons. So we would park the car and turn it off. Then we could restart and continue in EV mode. Getting +54 MPG on the highway was nice traveling beyond EV range. In contrast, the BMW i3-REx was predictable.

With or without coding, the BMW i3-REx with one exception, does not run the gas engine as long as there is enough EV battery charge. The exception is every 60 days, it has to run a ~10 minute maintenance cycle. So the BMW i3-REx has 72/25 ~= 2.88 times more EV range than the Prius Prime. Yet even on a highway trip, the BMW i3-REx does well.

At EPA highway speed, the BMW i3-REx gets 39 MPG versus 54 MPG Prime, about 1.39 times higher fuel consumption of Plus although Premium is recommended. Based on EIA metrics:

• $2.33/gal - regular
• $2.92/gal - premium

So each gallon in the BMW i3-REx is $2.92/$2.33 ~= 1.26 times more expensive. So combining the two: 1.39 * 1.26 ~= 1.75 more expensive gas miles for the BMW i3-REx. So how does it work for a 700 mile trip to my Mom:

• 17.9 gal ($52.27) - BMW i3-REx
• 13.0 gal ($30.29) - Prius Prime, ~$12.00 cheaper

The problem becomes the relative ratio of EV to gas miles per the NRC:

• 68% of Prius Prime commutes can be EV - 29% + 22% + 17%
• 92% of BMW i3-REx commutes can be EV - 29% + 22% + 17% + 10% + 7% + 5% + 3%

The BMW i3-REx remains the commuter preferred car which matches our experience. However, what about long distance trips?

This is extremely personal as there is a distribution of distances. So I'll define my set of profiles:

• 6,720 mi annual day trip - 2 hours each way @70 miles, 280 miles total, twice per month
• 3,360 mi annual week end trip - 3 hours each way @70 miles, 210 miles, twice per three month quarter
• 3,920 mi annual week long trip - 14 hours each way @70 miles, 980 miles, twice per year

Now the math gets complex but the rules are: (1) each trip exhausts the EV range each way, and (2) the rest is gas. It turns out the BMW i3-REx, 72 mi EV range significantly reduces the gas miles for the day trips; significant reduction of weekend gas miles, and; no impact for the week long trips.

It is a fair criticism that the BMW i3-REx requires more fueling stops. But it turns out the ~1:15 between refueling also means frequent biology breaks that some prefer. So it made sense to trade-in the Prius Prime, driveway queen, versus the BMW i3-REx for our Std Rng Plus Model 3. I could not afford to keep $18,300 trade-in Prius Prime sitting idle on the driveway.

Bob Wilson

 

Aside from the reasons stated in the manual, I've had mine start exactly once in 4 years when the battery is between 5% and 95%.

 

The point of mentioning that chinese car was that you can make a perfectly usable BEV that uses far fewer natural resources and which has far less range than is common in the cars sold to an urban family in America.

What you are talking about is the industry's desire to make one car body (examples are Clarity, Prius prime and Rav4) that can handle multiple drive train options. It lets you capitalize on a popular model to sell to different markets. Packing a larger battery into an existing design requires that you make some concessions. To make a long range BEV you typically need really big batteries weighing thousands of pounds.

That's how you end up with a Ford Mustang BEV when it should be a sports car. If you want it to look and feel like a 1970's Mustang you will have to sacrifice what little luggage space you started with.

Unfortunately, even cars that are designed from the ground up to be a BEV suffer from the need to be able to add more range as an upsell gimmick. The Tesla Model 3, for instance, uses the same body and running gear for the standard range and long range. It has to have voids big enough for larger batteries and suspension to handle it.

Dan

 

Once the obscure control laws were mapped, it was possible to avoid ICE operation. But I was part of those discovering and sharing how these control laws worked.

Bob Wilson

 

As I said, I was only talking about the reasons stated in the manual and, no, I'm not including the catch-alls at the end.

 

I agree with "The gasoline engine may also operate in circumstances other than those listed above, depending on conditions." Those were the obscure control laws. In contrast, the 2014 BMW i3-REx was binary.

Bob Wilson

 

You forgot to mention what that graphic represents. It's a 2003 study of commuting to work. It does not take into account the cars used by people who don't commute, such as housewives, telecommuters and retirees. Even so, nearly 70% of commutes can be covered by the range of a Prius Prime. And that's with the objective of never using gas.

Dan

 

We have higher crash test requirements too. I would be astonished if the Chinese electric vehicle had the equivalent of even a 3 star crash rating. As for the issue of buying a Chinese car for less money. That's the reasoning that would pigeonhole poorer Chinese buyers onto an electric scooter, because they don't need to go as far. No, that's not the reason. It's all they can afford. As affluence grows, so does personal transportation.
As for the article above touting the 100 mile Chinese car outselling the model 3 - by the date, it would be likely that a Year's worth of tesla sales fell prior to tesla's China Factory ramping up to full production.
.

 

Yes, they can make such a BEV, but that does no good if no one buys it. I was being generous comparing it to the Spark. It is closer in size to the smart fortwo, which is no longer for sale in the US because of poor sales. It's top speed is 62mph, and likely has the acceleration to match. The 100 mile range is based on a more generous test that the EPA.

It's a city car, but the US doesn't have the tightly packed urban and suburban areas that allows such cars to be successful in other countries. The Kandi K27 car is perhaps the closest you can get to it in the US in terms of specs and size. It is $18k with 59 miles of EPA range. Kandi Electric Vehicle - Model K27

I agree people can live with a shorter range BEV in the US. The Ioniq Electric was a good start for such a car. MSRP was under $30k, and the 120+ miles of range is plenty for most peoples needs here. Hyundai put a bigger battery into it because the people willing to buy a BEV want more range, even it means higher price. Until the public realizes they don't need the long range, few companies will try to sell one.

No, I was talking about the supporting equipment to the fuel cell. A lower power one will be a lot smaller than the high power ones in the likes of the Mirai, but it will still need the air intake and exhaust system. true, that'll will also be smaller, but their needs might put limits on packaging in the car.

My comments in that post were under the assumption of a platform designed for a FCEV plug in.

The Mustang BEV is a SUV because that is what is selling. Using the Mustang name instead of one from a SUV is a marketing decision.

Tesla has shown you can have a long range BEV that is a sedan without sacrificing space.

That's been true for cars since before plug ins made a come back. Most models have had a larger engine option for the upsell. Doing so mean having the engine bay, structure, and suspension to support it, which is just added weight for the car with the base engine. The Prius originally lost the middle rear seat and cargo space in order to get the Prime version.

Up side is that the company can satisfy more customers for lower cost. If Tesla had designed two separate models in order to optimize for each battery pack size, it would have cost a lot more to develop, which would mean higher price tag. It would also mean they couldn't do in China, that they might do in other markets.

The Chinese Model 3 SR uses LiFePhosphate batteries. These are cheaper, safer, and have longer life than Li-ion. One of its down sides is that it can't charge as fast, but people planning on needing to fast DC charge often will likely opt for the long range model. The other down side is lower energy density. Without those empty spaces, which likely would have been empty on any car, in the pack area, they couldn't get enough LiFePh cells into the car to match the standard range of ones using Li-ion.

 

As I said, it's done that once on mine in 4 years. Once.

 

And without being able to charge at work. It goes up a lot if you can.

 

I'm not sure why you are shouting that you keep bringing up a point most people don't agree with.

There are no phev hydrogen/battery light vehicles. The companies that were developing them - mercedes and ford - decided that they would not be desirable. So problem one - how do you make such a vehicle and make it desirable to a large enough segment of the population that it would have an environmental impact versus a gasoline - battery phev? Say gasoline is used for 25% of the miles (statistics from volt), then a phev will only use 20% of the gasoline as the regular ice version of a similar vehicle (clarity phev vs accord, rav4 prime vs rav4 ice).

Problem 2 is low utilization of hydrogen stations in that scenario. That means more of the capital costs will contribute to the price of unsubsidized hydrogen. In small markets like japan or south korea its possible the government will just pay for the difference in price compared to gasoline. Those 2 countries account for only 6% of the new car market. China and the North America are the 2 largest car markets and these governments are not about to pay for all these hydrogen stations for a nationwide market. Building these hydrogen stations will not provide any help for vehicles that can't plug-in. According to porsche it currently costs $37/gallon to make green gasoline from renewable electricity, water, and CO2. They are building a plant with siemens including wind turbines in chile where they hope to bring the price down bellow $10/gallon including shipping from south america to Europe. And of course hydrogen is an intermediate, but they can do high utilization for the equipment and it there are many places around the world where cheap renewables can be built, and gasoline is much cheaper to transport than hydrogen. Japan is making blue hydrogen in saudi Arabia - made from natural gas with sequestered co2 converted to ammonia for shipping. It sounds like this process is much more expensive per kg of hydrogen dispensed than the green gasoline will be per gallon. Green methanol which can be used in a flex fuel car, is about $2.50/gallon with 2 gallons of methanol needed for the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline, that makes it about $5/gge - before transport and taxes. We don't produce much because methanol from natural gas or coal is much less expensive, but....

 

They're wrong.

That doesn't mean there shouldn't be.

Build them and the infrastructure to support them - the same as BEVs.

More like 15% (the hybrid system also makes them more efficient) but whatever.

You build small stations only in between towns and on the edges of major cities.

No. Because hydrogen is easily stored (for stationary applications), the station itself can be around 1/10th the power of a supercharger station, and because hydrogen fueling is 10 times as fast as charging, you only need 1/10th the stations. A typical station between towns might contain one wand and perhaps 30-75kW of electrolysis. This *massively* reduces the capital cost. It also reduces the demand charge *massively* and it reduces the running (core) losses in the transformer.

Example. I was at a supercharger station in Las Vegas, NM. This is a very small town at the edge of the supercharger network. There were 6 stations powered by a 300kW (kVA, actually) transformer. For sake of simplicity, let's assume core losses are 1% or 3kW. That's a 3kW load, 24/7 or 72kWh a day wasted - every day.

Now, let's say the utilization of that transformer is 5% (this is a guess but consistent with my observations that these out-of-town superchargers are rarely used). That's 360kWh of charging done each day but at a cost of 360/90% + 72 = 472kWh. Plus you have to pay a demand charge based on the peak 15 minutes of each month. Let's say that's 150kW. You have to pay, say, $15/kW * 150kW = $2,250 a month to keep that station open.

Now, let's say you do that with hydrogen. You'll need around 20kg a day of H2 production. You can get that from a 50kW transformer + electrolyzer. Your core losses are reduced to 500W or 12kWh a day. You'll also need about 1,000kWh of electricity per day but your demand charge will now be around 40kW*$15 = $600.

The 50kW transformer will cost around 1/5th of the cost of the 300kW transformer, you'll need one refueling station instead of six, and 1/5th the power electronics.

So, which will come out on top? It's not so obvious. The chargers are cheaper than the refueling station but you need six instead of one. The transformer and demand charges are cheaper for hydrogen but the electricity is more expensive (but only about double, not the triple that most people assume based on round trip efficiencies). The car will weigh 300kg less or so because of the fuel cell's greatly superior specific energy compared to batteries, and you can refuel it in 5 minutes.

 

It becomes much more obvious when BEV sales are 10% or 20% of the market instead of 2% and the typical BEV is being used for long trips rather than mostly around town driving (i.e. like nearly all of the non-Tesla EV cars)

The truth is that H2 for personal transportation has lost. Notice that there are a dozen or two EV startups, plus Tesla plus all the traditional car makers behind EVs (even laggard Toyota). How many "new" entrants to H2 have there been lately?
I'm thinking this number is ZERO; and for very good reasons.

That is not to say that there aren't some potentially interesting use cases where H2 and fuel cells make some sense.
But EVs win in terms of day-to-day (home charging) fuel costs. Making a car with small batteries plus a fuel cell and H2 tanks for long trips makes no sense since you are adding complexity and taking away luggage storage needed for long trips.
EVERY car startup company sees this.

Mike

 

I know - and it makes me mad because that's the reason that EVs suck so badly.

 

Why would it take away luggage storage? Does having the extended range battery in the model 3 decrease the luggage storage? No, because it's designed for the larger battery in the first place.

Every car maker seems to be enamored of the idea that a basic frame and drive train can be made to fit all needs. The Chrysler K-car of the 80's comes to mind as a pretty poor example of that mindset.

If you design from the ground up, there is no need for compromise.

Dan

 

You make a good point. But Toyota has made a statement about this. They believe there need to be some fully hydrogen vehicles in order to advance the fueling infrastructure.

 

Seems more and more people are disagreeing with you every year.

 

You can fit a lot of batteries in a small vertical space down low. You can't fit significant H2 storage tanks in that spot...thus you need to take away trunk space, for example. And you tend to eliminate fold down seats. Lots of batteries are easy to design in many configurations -- just see what choices are starting to show up. Now look at the vast array of H2 fuel cells choices -- NOT.

Note that I am talking about personal cars, not semis or industrial vehicles.

It is pretty clear that the battle is over. Look where all the venture capitalists, SPACs and traditional car companies are putting their chips.

Mike

 

Who? Who will do this? How much will it cost? Until there is nationwide infrastructure how many will chose a hydrogen phev over a flex fuel gasoline one? Will people that buy a car like a rav4 prime want to be taxed for infrastructure of hydrogen phevs? How much more would you pay for your prius prime, if it used hydrogen instead of gasoline?

We know that It will cost very little per car to build the infrastructure for long distance bev travel. Companies and governments are committed to this over the next decade. Long distance phev travel, well that is already provided for. Battery technology is moving so that charging 200 miles on a 400 mile bev will only take about 10 minutes, of course its likely that unsubsidized that cost will be much higher than gasoline in a phev but if its not that many miles, bev owners won't mind. The problem for phev and bev penetration is more about the local charging - to get chargers installed in my apartments and businesses. But this is also a problem for fuel cell phevs.

My assumptions are different than yours, but 15% makes the case for hydrogen phevs even worse versus flex fuel phevs.

Again doing phev fuel cell vehicles does reduce how much you need to build, but if you are going to provide enough for holiday weekends then utilization will be very low and unsubsidized cost per kg dispensed will be very high based on capital costs. With gasoline phevs like your prius prime, all the infrastructure is already built.

Lets work the numbers here a bit. Say a station has 6 plugs and has a battery buffer of 200 kwh and can fill 3 cars @once at 250kw (25 minutes on a tesla model 3) until that buffer is cleared and has 300 kw power from the grid. If the average car takes 185 miles of charge (48 kwh, about the amount to produce compress and dispense efficiently 1 kg of hydrogen), that station can service 6 cars/hour continuously but some will slow down, and in the first hour with that buffer it can service about 9 cars. Now you are saying a hydrogen station is going to service 60 cars per hour continuously and needs 75 kw. Then perhaps you can make, compress, dispense 37 kg of hydrogen a day. Lets say somehow you get 75 miles/kg (higher than any fuel cell car in existence) then at 185 miles of hydrogen per car you fuel 15 cars in a day. But the other part of your story problem is that this magic station is cheaper than the plugs (charging station with 6 plugs is about $600K, 200 kwh battery is about $400K, we are talking about $1.5M for this station after land, permits hook up, etc. You can do the 9 cars in the first hour given 1 pumps with 2 nozzles, then 6 cars in the second hour. Given the inefficiency of hydrogen you are going to if you are going have fewer stations people are going to need 400+ mile tanks and fill them up completely making throughput per day much smaller. If each vehicle takes 5 kg and you service just 30 cars a day, far less than that other station can do, then you need 350 kw service to that station and the electrolyzer running 24 hours a day on some days. It won't be cheaper to build, and unsubsidized cost per mile is going to be much higher as will pollution from electricity if the electricity is not renewable. Now I'm saying pollution will not be much less than a gasoline phev. So who will pay to build these stations and who will make the cars.