Featured Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to electric vehicles

Toyota seems to be snowballing in the wrong direction at this point... The feedback loop they're falling into is going to be very damaging to them if they keep generating this kind of attention. And last time the economy fell apart all the weaker auto companies were in way more dire straights than Toyota. But at this rate, come the next downturn Toyota may get hammered way, way more than others because of how this PR keeps getting worse for them. Maybe Toyota should ask Detroit what is was like in 2008 when they were building cars nobody wanted to buy anymore?

 

they must have had a collective aneurism when trump got the boot. i hope they're enjoying texas

 

Texas has lots of cheep wind to make electricity. Toyota hopes to capitalize on that - storing it as clean hydrogen. Electricity is California is so high priced, it just makes their (fossil fuel created) hydrogen look that much worse. Now - with battery tech advancing so fast, even paying to build hydrogen reformation / storage infrastructure in Texas, to store electricity becomes less & less likely.
.

 

I would also favor slowing the push to all EV cars. Right now, there are millions and millions of apartment dwellers who would have no way to charge at home. I don't see the infrastructure being ready for all EV for a while yet.

 

So we should set the whole planet on fire and pretend like global warming doesn't matter anymore because people who live in apartments won't be able to charge their car? Did you notice that up here in the cool Pacific Northwest where Summer never gets too hot the city of Portland, Oregon now has an all time high temperature record ( 115' F ) that's higher than highest temp ever in Miami, Florida? Or how about the town of Lytton in British Columbia that hit ( 122' F ) just before it burned to the ground...

 

Plan should be to rapidly accelerate charging infrastructure that would support apartment dwellers, rather than slow BEV deployment. Neither can happen fast enough.

 

no worries, neither is going to happen quickly. there's more to it then joe bidens dreams. with any luck, he'll speed it up a little bit through incentives, and if possible, improve the electric grid as well.
it all remains to be seen.
people in apartments are the least of our concerns right now

 

It's true, we're not even close to being ready to replace our combustion vehicles with electric. Where do we get all that electricity from at night when millions of cars are plugged in? The electric infrastructure does not exist. This was recently in the news:

With Its Power Grid On The Verge Of Failure, California Begs Residents To Change Their EV Charging Routines | ZeroHedge

 

or the lithium...

 

That's pretty much an entirely false interpretation of the situation.

The vast majority of people and pretty much all journalists haven't got a clue how the power grid works. EVs have the biggest ability in history to *strengthen* the grid, if we do it right.

That, however, is closer to true. Increasing Lithium production by a factor of 40 isn't going to be easy or pleasant. Turning them into batteries isn't either either. And then there's an even bigger problem if they have nickel and cobalt in them.

 

Not a big problem.

Recommend following the daily and seasonal supply/demand changes at CAISO and it is clear there is plenty of grid capacity for years to come even without future grid upgrades. Transition is happening with demand management with increasing deployment of time-of-use (TOU) plans which the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is driving. This doesn't even include behind-the-meter (BTM) improvements that happen every time someone installs solar PV and can self consume to charge their BEV(s).

On summer days when the grid is stressed and maximum supply is deployed in the early evening, there is always plenty of reserve capacity earlier in the day or later that night. Add to that BTM solar PV.

California ISO - Today's Outlook

In our case, we have two BEVs and are on a TOU plan. We charge our vehicles when the grid has lots of spare capacity and/or when we are overproducing solar PV and hence self consuming our solar PV. Demand management/TOU/home Solar PV stabilizes the grid...

 

The evening electrical load is about 1/2 of the daytime load. That is why there are street lights on at night. My source, USA Energy Information Service.

Bob Wilson

 

First of all, the story is probably click-bait.
...mission accomplished.

I know, right?
I love asking EVangelists if their car is coal or nuclear powered.....

BUT...on a more serious note.....
There's a theory out there that any homeowners that are left after the next economic downturn could use their plugged-in cars as a part of a mesh network of available energy FOR the power grid since most cars spend a large part of their lives either hanging out at home or in parking lots at work. EVangelists with solar capacity can also help in "developing" states since in many cases their production peaks while owners are at work for those living the diurnal life.
One imagines that many many EVs plugged into chargers at work during the day or in their garages at night (when it's safe to do so) can actually smooth out some of the peaks and valleys in the electrical distribution system while they're putting amps in the can.
Several significant hurtles remain ( AC/DC loss, penetration resistant management, increased BEV charge/discharge cycles, owner buy-in, OSCAR-SIERRA planning, etc...)
BUT....it is promising.
If somebody ever nukes it all out BEVs could be the mother of all "power walls."
PROVIDED of course, we silly humans can source all of the pieces/parts without butt-raping the planet.
Maybe some pay-back for the one-percenter welfare that dot.gov is shelling out today.

Out of a tiny acorn....

Anytime you combine "government" with "push" slower is often better.....but EVangelistic crusading notwithstanding, infrastructure, technology, economic, and environmental challenges will keep the pot on a slow enough boil for now.

 

That is a silly argument, IMO. Besides, part of the EV plan is to provide incentives for chargers. This would include getting apartment owners to install charging stations. Near my house an apartment complex has two ChargePoint chargers and across the street there are more chargers at the curb. If your "plan" is to slow down, how slow do you go? Do you wait until all apartments already have chargers and then provide EV buying rebates and credits?

Note that where I live many companies have EV chargers...no need to charge at home. And then there are fast chargers as well nearby. There are 4 or 5 Tesla Superchargers with a few miles with a dozen or more chargers each. So people with a desire to get an EV do not have to have a charger at home -- desirable, but not required.

Mike

 

agreed - & ironically, some of the 1st vehicles capable of v2g (vehicle-to-grid) are finally coming into production - where they can either run part of the power for your home, and/or even backfeeding your service panel.

Just read an article that came out a couple days ago of a bunch of Chinese Nationals sent to prison in the Congo - for illegally mining Cobalt in Congo, & whiping/beating the mineworkers to motivate them to work harder. Gee - one wonders what china wants with all that Cobalt ......
.

 

Not saying that we have an energy deficit, but...

California is currently using 48 million gallons of gasoline per day. We can safely assume that most of that is for transportation. 48M gallons is equivalent to 1,584,000,000,000 watt hours per day. That's using the 33kWH per gallon that the epa specifies. Ok. That's the starting point if we were to convert to 100% BEV tomorrow.

(note: all numbers rounded for convenience)
Yesterday we had 51,000 GW max capacity available IF there are is no plant maintenance or generators off line. From 7 PM to 7 AM, the majority of the power came from NG (Natural Gas). From late evening to early morning the Solar contribution of abut 11.5 GW dropped to a drain on the system of about 43 MW.

My (California) TOU metering for EVs specify that I should not charge the car from 3 PM to Midnight. That's what they are calling Prime along with Near Prime time. They want you squish all the BEV charging into that 15 hour time span. Of course, if you are a commuter, you will only be able to charge from midnight till you begin your morning commute. That means that most of the energy will come from NG, which releases 71% of the CO2 that Oil releases when it's combusted. ( » Natural Gas and the Environment NaturalGas.org ) That sure doesn't sounds "green" to me. Don't forget that the "zero pollution" is for tailpipe emissions only. The average BEV will use a lot of energy that has resulted in a lot of GHGs on it's way to the BEV.

You might get lucky, and have an employer that allows you to charge during the day. I can envision the parking lot for 7,000 cars at the old Pacific Telephone company headquarters. If it's like the installation at the local grocery store, there are 8 charging stations (and auxiliary equipment) in the spaces that used to provide parking for 16 cars. That campus would end up with offices for 8,000 people, parking and charging for 3500 cars and 437 electric sub-stations to provide power to the chargers. I don't see that being really popular.

I was surprised to see that our energy sources from Hydro (2%) and Nuclear (6%) have dropped to such a low levels.

In closing, the real solution is to get rid of commuters and promote conservation via life style changes instead of mandating technologies that just move the pollution to another location.

 

It might be a starting point, but where you go from there is crucial.

ICE's convert *maybe* 20% of that to propulsive power on-average. Starting from the output of a power plant, your efficiency might be around 0.93 (grid) * 0.9 (charging/discharging) * 0.95 (propulsion) = 79.5%. So, in round numbers, you'd need around 1/4 the heat equivalent of gasoline in electricity to replace that gasoline. So don't forget to divide by 4.