The Non-Future Of Electric Cars

A controversy has broken out over what it costs General Motors (GM) to produce a Chevy Volt. A Reuters reporter got things going when he claimed that GM is losing as much as $49,000 on every Volt they sell.

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.

Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce...

The lack of interest in the car has prevented GM from coming close to its early, optimistic sales projections. Discounted leases as low as $199 a month helped propel Volt sales in August to 2,831, pushing year-to-date sales to 13,500, well below the 40,000 cars that GM originally had hoped to sell in 2012.

Spread out over the 21,500 Volts that GM has sold since the car's introduction in December 2010, the development and tooling costs average just under $56,000 per car. That figure will, of course, come down as more Volts are sold.

The actual cost to build the Volt is estimated to be an additional $20,000 to $32,000 per vehicle, according to Sandy Munro, president of Michigan-based Munro & Associates and the other industry consultants.

It's best not to get too lost in the cost details here. Critics of the Reuters report like Bob Lutz and Anthony Ingram say, with some justification, that the true cost of the Volt must be spread over the entire lifetime of the car's manufacture. However, this is not the 1960s, it is the 20-teens. In 2012 the economy has imploded. The middle class, which used to comprise the people who might have bought these cars 50 years ago, is toast.

The truth is that making Chevy Volts will never be profitable if the actual future costs of production (even if they are declining somewhat) are factored in, and these cars are sold at a retail price which reflects those costs without tax breaks, subsidies and giveaways. Americans can't afford this car now, and they won't be able to afford it in the future. The Volt has become politicized after the bail-out of GM, which means the bullshit flies everytime the subject is mentioned. Other manufacturers (like Nissan) are making electric cars, but they won't be affordable either, at least to a mass market.

A more damning critique comes from Fred Schlacter's report All-Electric Cars Need Battery Breakthrough.

Researchers agreed that the lithium-ion chemistry used in today’s generation of batteries for electric cars–and laptops and cell phones is reaching maturity, and that only incremental improvements can be expected in energy density, which needs to be higher, and cost, which needs to be lower, for widespread use in battery-electric vehicles (BEV)–cars which are powered only by electricity from the electric grid and stored onboard.

Lithium-ion batteries are adequate for hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) like the Prius, and marginally adequate for plug-in-hybrid vehicles (PHEV) like the Chevy Volt. However, the range of a fully electric vehicle such as the Nissan LEAF–powered only by electricity stored on board and without a gasoline “range extender” is too low for many drivers, who may use a BEV as a second car for urban trips while maintaining a gasoline-powered or hybrid car for trips exceeding the electric range of a BEV.

Lithium-ion chemistry in BEVs is reaching maturity, and only "incremental improvements" in energy density and cost will be made in the future. I think that says it all. As far I know, there is no miracle super-battery waiting in the wings which will replace lithium-ion batteries in automobiles. These cars will be high-tech toys for rich people, save-the-Earth types, and high-tech enthusiasts, and that's all there is to it. If you want to "save" the Earth, you shouldn't be driving at all. And then your job is to persuade the other one billion people who use cars to stop driving too. You could start with Bill McKibben...

My ridicule of those who tout technology as the solution to everything, including oil-based transport, does not also imply that I am denying that technological breakthroughs are possible. Obviously, some breakthroughs could occur. However, it seems to me that it's far too late now in 2012 to count on technological breakthroughs which can only marginally affect 21st century outcomes. That's like closing the barn door after the horse have left, and believe you me, the horse is gone.

Those of us who have followed these issues over the last decade have been subjected to a constant of barrage of techno-optimistic (and political) bullshit which flies in the face of Reality. We might just say same as it ever was and move on, and that's what I'm going to do today. Electric cars have no future, and even if they did, it's a case of too little, too late.

Bonus Video — A special treat, "Crazy Bill" McKibben talks up electric transportation. Whatever drugs Bill is doing, I want some too.

 

Comments

[PBD]

As I understand it Dave, I imagine you could do an entire additional posting on why - even if electric vehicles, in and of themselves, could be made viable – that the amount of electrical power that would be required to charge them all would totally overwhelm any existing (or realistically anticipated) electric power generation and distribution infrastructure.

And that’s not even accounting for the degradation of said infrastructure from global warming effects. ( http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22178-water-shortages-hit-us-power-supply.html )

Sadly, the idea of electric vehicles as a widespread solution seems to be totally screwed on multiple counts.

[adam]

Electric cars barely mitigate the problems of our society. They are part of extend and pretend. The car society destroys the earth and our health while sucking up resources like crazy, and making the cars electric doesn't change that, it only changes where the energy comes from. But fossil fuels are still the foundation of the grid, so it just shifts from one to another. So, we still have massive 6, 8, 10 lane highways, wide roads taking up precious real estate in the middle of cities and making walking and biking incredibly unpleasant, but now we've shifted from wasting oil to probably wasting gas and coal. Supposing we even power them with wind and sun, we're still bulldozing the planet, ruining our health, and generally making things worse. Victory!

I'm feeling pessimistic today, so I'll just say this: this game is winding down, and as it ends it is going to hurt for a lot of people. And they won't even admit why, even if they figure it out they can't see the implications. It will never sink in for most people.

Bill McKibben is just sad; he wants humans to be good but knows they are actively a force for destruction and death on planet earth. Now that it's too late for many things - global warming already showing up in nasty ways, which he warned about for years and years - and all of his life's work is for naught, he has to do something with what's left.

[don]

Electric cars depend on the continuation and constant maintenance of the existing transportation system: the network of roads, bridges, etc., rather than mass transit, the later of which isn't going to happen, admittedly, since it . . . just isn't political feasible.

Furthermore, McKibben ignores the cost to the earth in building electric cars. Whatever gain there may be from energy savings is largely overshadowed by the energy (in the form of natural resources) consumed in the production of electric cars.

[Bill McDonald]

The dirty little secret that McKibbon and the others like him don't want you to know is just how much wilderness will have to be paved over with wind turbines, solar panels, new transmission lines for it here; in addition to all the raw materials and fossil-based fuels that will have to be burned- in China- to make everything and ship it over here.

[Bill]

Individual transport - freight and personal - and all aviation - were an ecology the came about thanks to basically free oil BTUs. Investment in anything but a vast rebuild of rail rights of way and infrastructure, both intra-city and inter-city passenger and freight is simply a mal-allocation of remaining resources, financial and otherwise.

[Mike Roberts]

I think McKibben's heart is in the right place, sort of. But this video is ridiculous; he is talking like a person who has no real idea of the predicament we're in or of what it would really take to turn things around. Sometimes he does seem to have a firm grasp of our troubles but if this video was all I knew of him, I'd have to conclude that he was a total idiot.

By the way, someone mentioned the electricity generation needed for an all electric fleet (not that an electric car would ever use no oil in its construction). I remember seeing a calculation on The Oil Drum (I think), which showed that an increase of "only" a third, in generating capacity, would be needed for the US. This is a lot more than the optimists would state but a lot less than many of the pessimists.

[to-do]

Nice Post.The dirty little secret that McKibbon and the others like him don't want you to know is just how much wilderness will have to be paved over with wind turbines, solar panels, new transmission lines for it http://www.cellitused.com/