Electric Vehicle Limitations

Continuing from my post yesterday…

The electric vehicle doesn’t come without its limitations. The researchers described their challenge as answering these questions: “How far, how long, how much?” As in: How far can I go on a single charge, how long does it take to charge, and how much does this thing cost?

How Far: With the best battery technology out there there’s enough to almost go from Seattle to Portland and back on one charge. Lower cost batteries can still get you to Tacoma and back. In other words, it’s enough for your everyday commute, but it’s not going to scale to a road trip. For that you’d want a separate vehicle (or maybe do something like FlexCar). Which means an electric vehicle not a comprehensive solution for your all your transportation needs, instead it’s something that will satisfy the common case (daily commute, shopping, etc.).

How Long: The numbers here vary wildly depending on the battery technology. Nothing is going to be as quick as pumping gas is today, although some of the non-linear recharges get pretty close (something like 80% charge in 10 minutes). But this is offset by the fact that you could charge anywhere there’s electricity: home, work, wherever. You’d want charging stations for longer trips, but in your normal routine you could go indefinitely without having to divert to a fueling station (which depending on your viewpoint makes it more convenient). We’ve all become used to plugging in our cell phones every time we come home - it’d essentially be the same thing with your car.

How Much: Definitely the cost is going to be higher as long as these are specialized hand-built automobiles. The real question is how much they could come down in mass production. And I haven’t found reliable data on that yet. But as a hand-crafted vehicle (about 4 per day) the GM EV1 cost $40,000 (without subsidy). Which isn’t a cheap car, but neither is it an overly expensive car. With manufacturing improvements it seems that could come down a decent amount. But regardless, you have to ask yourself if the bottom line is what’s important about moving to electric vehicle technology, or if it’s something else.

Which is the real question, isn’t it? What’s the motivation?

It can’t be to find the most convenient and economic solution. That criteria leads us to where we are today. That logic will also lead you to live off of McDonald’s and Top Ramen. No, the motivation has to be to find something that’s better in the long term. And that’s almost never the easy way. There are certainly compromises we’d have to make to adopt this technology. But in my opinion they’re reasonable compromises, given the benefits.

Anyway, check out the movie. It was well presented and definitely promotes some discussion :)

Who Killed the Electric Car?

This past weekend I watched Who Killed the Electric Car? (links: NetFlix, Wikipedia). And I’m having a hard time categorizing my thoughts, primarily because I have so many of them. I may have to break this up into multiple posts, so bear with me.

Coming into this I couldn’t claim to know much about battery electric vehicles. I intuitively know that producing energy in a dedicated facility that feeds the power grid seems a lot more efficient (both in economy and in environment) than having to produce power in a space and weight constrained vehicle (i.e. via the internal combustion engine). Seems obvious. I also can guess that employing a non standard technology on the complexity of an automobile is going to be more expensive until the economy of scale kicks in when components get mass produced. But beyond that I didn’t know much.

I had no idea that California had implemented a zero emission mandate in the early 90’s and that multiple major car manufacturers had actually rolled out consumer quality electric vehicles (complete with recharging stations). This wasn’t pie in sky - this was real technology available today (or rather, a decade ago). And the whole thing got scrapped (quite literally), for completely dubious reasons.

I liked how the film explored multiple possible suspects for this failure, and in the end deemed most of them guilty. This wasn’t some over the top Michael Moore pathos where the root of all evil is Charlton Heston: it was far more reasonable. Which in the end made the movie all the more effective, because you didn’t feel like you were the target of emotional bottom feeding. The movie did conclude leaving me feeling disappointed - not with the film but rather with our society as a whole. It angers me that we are so obsessed with convenience, and so resistant to change, that we’ll cannibalize progress.

I’m not prone to conspiracy theory, but you don’t have to be to understand the sketchy behavior by the automobile manufactures and oil companies. Because honestly their behavior makes sense. They’re out there to preserve their profits. The oil companies would suffer greatly if we pursued truly alternative automobile energy options. The car manufacturers have less to lose, but change is risky business and they are content with how much they own of the pipeline. It makes sense for them to be a little wary. But their behavior is borderline criminal. And I’d be more skeptical of a documentary’s depiction of this if it weren’t for previous infractions on the part of the accused. Fool me twice…

But overall I’m most frustrated with our inability as a society to suck it up and realize that our way of life is unsustainable and that we have to make some changes. No one wants to make a compromise. We’re all content to live out our life and leave the barren wasteland to our descendents. Which is bullshit. It’s our duty as citizens and consumers to demand better for ourselves. Better food that doesn’t make us fat, better entertainment that doesn’t make us stupid, and better transportation options that keep us breathing for many generations to come.

Bitter Sweet

This last Friday I caught Bitter Sweet at the Triple Door. I first heard the band up on Zune Arts, which if you haven’t seen yet you should totally check out - there are a lot of cool animations up there. Bitter Sweet’s debut album, The Mating Game, is really solid; varied, yet cohesive. I wasn’t surprised at all when I heard that one of the Bitter Sweet duo was also one of the founding members of Supreme Beings of Leisure. There’s a lot of similarities in the grand instrumentation and the quality of the vocals (although it’s a different singer).

Anyway, when I spotted the poster that said Bitter Sweet would be at the Triple Door, I was pretty excited. The Triple Door is a great venue: super classy with excellent food. It’s a great place to go if you’re really interested in listening and won’t mind not being able to dance. Bitter Sweet has a lot of funk in them, so they didn’t really fit into that “sit and listen” bucket most of the time, but I was busy munching on tasty schezwan green beans so I didn’t really mind.

I had a good time at the show, but I have to say that Bitter Sweet is a lot better in the studio. The actual band is only two people. This performance had six people. The actual required instrumentation of most of their songs is more on the order of ten or more. It’s hard to get into a performance where almost half of what you’re hearing is prerecorded. Which you would think would keep the integrity of the songs up to the quality of the studio recordings, but it didn’t. The show had a very rough start with the levels being way off and the tempo being rushed. They found their stride a couple songs in, but it never quite had the impact of their fine tuned studio recordings. You may just think I’m a stickler for production, but generally I actually prefer the grit of live performances. I spent a lot of the show watching the added musicians to try and figure out what they were actually contributing to what I was hearing. I never did figure that out, partially because the show was just so darn short. Bitter Sweet really needs to cough up another album to fill out their sets. I may sound pretty critical of the performance here, but I was happy to support the band and I’d snatch up any second album in a heartbeat.

Apparently I would have been better off never having heard that debut album before coming to the show. A friend that we (the already initiated) invited to the show had never heard the band before. And she promptly bought the album the next day. So if you had never heard how good the band was in the studio, apparently that show rocked.