Will the EV survive in America?

Since it is US national interest to use less oil and since 70% of US oil us used for transportation, the best solution is for government to offer tax credits to promote sales and the tax credits on electrics funded by a gasoline tax. Reward the behavior we want to see, discourage the damaging behavior.

 

The problem is that the gasoline tax is often used to fund transportation things like road maintenance, and thus as hybrids and EVs become more popular, there are moves afoot to recover the lost gasoline tax revenue some other way, like requiring that cars report the miles traveled to the government so that a per-mile assessment can be made, or somehow have a special tax the electricity used to charge EVs.

 

Unfortuneately, many elec utilities are only giving lip service to lower rates. They pretend they are involved. If they saw things correctly, they could become the major supplier of "fuel" for EV and HV vehicles. However, they are too short sighted and stupid to make the move. My public utility. SMUD, HAS A PROGRAM if, you are willing to spend more than $ 1000 for a new line and a new meter. That's not a incentive. Pure greed, stupidity and lack of foresight. Smart meters are installed now, but they are as stupid as SMUD.

 

utilities are getting smarter. some faster than others. competition helps, and public pressure helps. we have both circumstances here in Texas. Some areas like Houston have competition and utilities are competing for customers by offering things like "free nights". Other areas are municiple owned, like Austin, and have voters that want more renewables and plug-ins, so there are EV subscriptions like what I have ($25/6 months of unlimited charging), EV residential meters, smart tou net meters, and solar condominiums (offsite net metering). Pecan Street Project is a entire residential development being used to test and verify "smart grid" technologies and approaches. PSP was an early test bed for PHEVs, something like 60 vehicles were purchased by residents to understand the impact and driving cycles of plug-in vehicles.

 

That is great to hear. My son worked in Austin recently and he told me a lot of good things about the City. Thank You for your post. Progress is being made, at turtle pace.

 

As long as it's kept on the battery in the current style it will have the same overall effect. Battery capacity displaces gasoline miles and that's what matters. If PHEVs are successful and sustainable, BEVs will be too because both depend on reducing battery costs and the lower battery costs get the more financially compelling BEVs will become.

The original question was "Will the EV survive in America?" My answer is yes, for three reasons:
- There is global political will to develop PEVs in a way that CNG can never match because of the fungibility, domesticity and grid synergy.
- I think we'll keep seeing falling battery prices
- People enjoy driving them: selfish consumers don't make sacrifices, and that limits the hybrid market; PEVs enjoyable a performance advantage

 

Another thread had under "dumbest news of the day" was a proposal in one state to drop the gasoline tax in favor on a hybrid vehicle tax... I myself would love to know which state has the most hybrids and/or the most Prii...

 

CA...progressive state and people generally...higher gas tax to encourage smart decisions.

 

The cheapest Chevrolet Cruze here is $23.2k The diesel version (rated 62MPG, probably 40MPG on EPA) is $27.1k. The cheapest Prius is $35.2k. Ouch, $8,100 buys a lot of gas, even at $8.40 a gallon. In fact you can drive the diesel Cruze 38k miles on the price difference. The Leaf is $41.8k (after incentives). $14.7k more than the diesel cruze, you can drive the cruze 70k on the price difference. The Volt is $48.3k (after incentives), the Cruze goes over 100k on the price difference.

To put it in perspective, average national wage is ~$33.8k, minimum wage for an adult is $19.4k

Yes, fuel is crazy expensive here, but to fight that we drive smaller more efficient cars, so the saving swapping from gas to electric is less than if we were driving tahoes and explorers.

Second hand EV's are a better prospect, but of course for there to be second hand ones available someone has to buy them new.....

 

See America? How great we have it! Most informative, TY.

 

Then, why cap it at 16 kWh battery capacity? There is no incentive to displace gasoline beyond that. Might as well throw in an off-the-shelf gas engine for additional range, rather than put more battery.

In a level playing field, 85 kWh Model S should get $36,277 tax credit (never mind anyone would owe that much tax) and 24 kWh Leaf should get $10,840.

 

The easy answer to why cap at 16 kwh is because giving a $36K tax credit to someone is just giving money to the rich. I'm against the class warfare and the whole tax-the-rich-more mentaility but I'm also against giving them big tax credits like this.

My plan:
We are now (essentially) in Phase I of the EV/PHEV rollout. Mostly we are all early adopters and eco-conscious. It isn't clear that we save money in aggregate (but free charging, carpool stickers, etc all help).

Phase II should not end the battery rebates, but should be about solving the daily commute in EV for ~50% of the population...not trying to build a car and battery that can go on a 2 week family vacation and all in EV. These cars should cross the threshold in terms of economics (with rebates) for a large part of the population as a second car in the famliy (EV only) or an only car (PHEV). Maybe we enter this phase in 5 years or so.

Phase III is where everyone wants to suddenly jump to. This is where you have an EV, like the Tesla models, that are mainstream priced, go 300-400 miles per charge and recharge in 15 minutes at 100K convenient locations just like current gas stations. IMHO, we are 15-20 years away from this, at best.

Mike

 

...people/bloggers keep saying EV/Plug-In cost is too high but apparently they are not aware steep discounts and credits allowing for example buying PiP @ ~$15000 in WV, which I think was our 2012 low cost record. Admittedly the low cost is due to large gov't subsidy, but that's besides the point if I am a pragmatist I am going for low cost I don't really care why the cost is so low. I made the mistake myself on posts here, until about Aug_2012 I was questioning PiP due to high price, until I realized I was wrong about it based on what the folks here were paying.

 

My opinion of the Pip has been similarly altered.
When they first came out, I thought they were little more than a very expensive play pretty for well-heeled eco geeks and HOV enthusiasts.
Probably due to a combination of first model year whoop-de-do settling out and other factors.....prices are softening on Pips and there's (still) the government kickbacks.
With these...they're starting to look a little more tempting to me, since I'm 10 miles from work and I can charge @ home and @ work. It's still out of my depth band, but I'm tempted now where I was rolling my eyes and laughing before.
Caveat: My company is tighter than bark on a tree....however (comma!) I did get a hypothetical verbal up-check for doing L1 charging @ a GFI outlet at work. This means that I could drive to/from work at will using nothing but coal.

This tells me that once the non-recurring engineering costs (R/D) shake themselves out, one could theoretically field a more cost efficient PHEV for the 99 percenters out there. This isn't "purely" an EV....or EREV, or whatever the purists call a 'real' EV but it's pretty clear that the ball is moving down the field towards the right goal.

It's going to be fun to watch either way....and who knows?
Maybe with some more competition I might be driving a PHEV of my own some day.
It’s a step….

 

Free is not a very good business model. Reasonable: that depends on one's definition of reasonable.

If it's going to be the same price as charging at home (or so), it might be a money loser. And if being billed by time instead of kwh, then it might not be worth it w/cars w/slow chargers (e.g. 3.3 kW Leaf or PiP). It'd be more worth it for cars w/faster on-board chargers (e.g. 6.6 kW charger cars like the FFE, '13 Leaf w/optional 6.6 kW charger, Rav4 EV w/10 kW charger, etc.)

 

there are several tiers in the business model of re-charging EVs, something similar to the tiers of the gasoline/petroleum industry. Based on the results of EV adoption in Austin and San Antonio, a cost+ subscription model for the consumer seems to work very well, for the consumer, the municiple utility, the EVSE equipment manufactures, and the local businesses.

lets understand that new electric generation is largely a capital cost, especially for renewables (solar, wind, hydro) so having a bunch of subscribers with manageable (interruptable) demand paying your cost of capital to install renewables aligns very well.

a large part of the charging infrastructure (EVSE stations) is a relativly expensive piece of capital equipment but with a reasonable lifespan regardless of utilization (it doesn't wear out per se). a business that sponsors a station attracts consumers to their locale for years by making an upfront capital spend.

the manufactures of the EVSE equipment make good money as manufactures, along with the distributors and installers.

the charging station network (Chargepoint, Blink, etc ) make good money for managing and maintaining the network, and probably for reselling the data acquired from managing the network.

my conclusion: the gas station model for charging stations might not work as well as the free parking model.

 

EV will thrive in the future. The huge natural gas supply will not be used to power many LNG cars but will be used to convert electric power plants from coal to NG. That should stabilize or lower electric power costs. Especially if alternative solar and wind power evolves. No monopoly on power sources will help. The free market may may increasingly make electric more efficient than gas. As the differential increases, it will make more and more sense to go EV. ICE will always be here because of the innate fun in raw power. If we can keep government to keep their grubby hands off taxing EV usage, that alone will be enough to gradually move toward EV. Formula--get government out of the picture. End utility monopolies. Let energy sources compete within ecologically balanced guidelines. Allow profit driven energy development with environmental safeguards and the EV advantage will emerge. It is innately more efficient and electric power is much cheaper to produce on a large scale. But the utility monopolies do not now need to compete and efficient companies are not allowed presently to expand into those areas that are gouging. Rates are not set by a competitive market. If government can just set reasonable environmental rules and stick with them and then get out of the way, we will see EV eventually emerge with an authentic and stronger economic and sustainable model.

 

I am just pointing out that the cap is causing disadvantage to achieving the goal (invest in battery industry).

Some have stated that the purpose of the plugin tax credit is not to reduce emission but only to invest in battery industry. Well, that's not the case because the max is capped at 16 kWh. At that size, it is really an investment for plugin hybrids (without strings attached to gas efficiency). The sales of Leaf now lagging shows the effect.

Will the success of PHEV lead to the next step into full EVs? Perhaps. I think it'll depend on a breakthrough in battery technology.