The ports around LA have been under regulatory pressure to pollute less. They use a lot of older diesel tractor trucks that are especially polluting because those trucks aren't considered reliable enough for long range driving but are still reliable enough for shorter trips within the ports and to nearby warehouses. Well, custom electric trucks built for the Port of Los Angeles cut pollution and lower fuel costs at the same time.
The electric truck, which takes about three hours to charge, has a range of about 30 miles while pulling a 60,000-pound cargo container, and about 60 miles empty. Although that distance may not sound useful, much of freight hauling within the port complex is from terminals to nearby train yards.
It costs about 20 cents a mile to operate, or about four to nine times less than a diesel truck, depending on fluctuating fuel costs and operating conditions.
I do not find these results surprising. Electric vehicles lack range. But in applications where only short range is needed but where the vehicles are used heavily the cost per mile for the electric power is less than that of liquid hydrocarbons by a pretty substantial multiple.
What I wonder: How long does it take to run down the batteries on these trucks? The frequency and length of time needed to recharge reduces the number of hours per day available to operate the trucks.
I expect we will see the vehicle fuel market fragment with many more vehicles powered by batteries and natural gas than is currently the case. Fuel costs rise as we go from electricity to natural gas to diesel to gasoline. That slope is getting steeper from electricity to the other power sources. But the cost advantage of diesel over gasoline has shrunk some and it is not clear to me whether it will shrink further. You can track the trends in diesel versus gasoline prices here.
Of course, fuel cost is not the only cost in vehicle operation. Battery costs are still a big obstacle in the way of wider spread use of pure electric and pluggable hybrid electric vehicles. How fast battery costs fall will determine in very large part how easily we can adjust to the coming decline in world oil production. Battery technology is more important than wind or solar or nuclear technologies. Though the combination of wind, solar, and nuclear technologies matter more than battery technology.
Jonathan Rauch has written an article for The Atlantic about the development of GM's Chevy Volt pluggable hybrid entitled Electro-Shock Therapy. In the article he talks to GM electrical engineer Lance Turner who claimed in December 2007 that the battery picture looked great for the Chevy Volt.
During this visit, I found the technical center brimming with optimism, and the battery lab was no exception. One of two suppliers, a company called Compact Power (a subsidiary of a big South Korean chemical and advanced-materials company, LG Chem), had delivered two copies of its version of the battery, and on the bench they were testing brilliantly. “They may not look beautiful,” Turner said—the battery was a six-foot-long T-shaped object from which wires, clamps, and circuit boards protruded—“but as far as the data goes, they’re the best I’ve worked with.” Heat is a problem with lithium-ion batteries, but this one was staying cool even when run hard—and the cooling system had yet to be attached.
Moreover, improvements were being incorporated as fast as they could be conceived; the battery would be on its second generation in January, its third in June. “It’s incredible,” Turner said. “The design they’ve come up with for thermal changed 10 times before they delivered the first battery.” And all of this was before the arrival of a competing battery that might be as good or even better, designed jointly by the Massachusetts-based company A123 Systems and the German company Continental A.G. “We’re inventing and creating on the critical path,” Turner said. He was using the industry jargon for the countdown to production, when time is money and delays can cost millions. “I’ve got guys trying to release things before they’re actually invented.”
On the bright side the article reports that GM has lifted the bureaucratic process off of the Volt development team and they make much more rapid progress than the average GM car development team.
But by February 2008 the batteries looked like a big problem. By late March the chief engineer for the Volt still says the battery looks like the pacing engineering problem.
In late March, at the New York auto show, I checked back in with Andrew Farah, the Volt’s chief engineer, and asked for an update. “Still just as bad as before,” he said. When I mentioned that another executive had said the underbody was a well-proven design that didn’t need much testing, he shot me a look of disbelief. “There’s a big gaping hole down the center of this car where the battery goes.”
Is this delay a matter of months or years? Even if GM achieves their stated schedule only 70,000 Chevy Volts will be on the road by the end of 2012. That's not enough to make a substantial dent in the problem of declining oil availability.
Some people are optimistic about our ability to shift smoothly from gasoline to electric power for transportation. I'm not so optimistic. I expect we will be able to do so eventually. But I am reminded of the sinking Titanic. Other ships did come to help rescue survivers eventually. When there's a big time gap between when you need something and when you actually get it then you are going to suffer some pain.
Update: On May 14 GM Vice Chairman struck what sounds like a more optimistic note on the battery.
Lutz confirmed that in GM's dynamometer tests last week of the Volt's lithium-ion batteries, engineers raised ambient temperatures and shut off the cooling system. The result was what GM had hoped: The battery showed only a slight rise in temperature and the heat was consistent across all of the battery cells with no pockets of intense heat.
Challenges Other Than the Battery Remain
"I can almost say the battery is the least of our problems," Lutz told AutoObserver.
Without knowing how big the other problems are it is hard to interpret this.
On June 5, 2008 he admits the battery testers still do not know about the longevity of the batteries. So GM really does not know if they've got a battery solution.
Our battery teams in Warren and in Germany are working hard in our battery labs to determine that these batteries will work for the life of the vehicle. Still, the conditions in a real-world environment – where the battery is exposed to shaking, moisture and rapidly changing temperature conditions – are much more extreme than the controlled settings of the lab.
But I think it’s important to point out that in the six months since we’ve received the battery pack, we’ve tested it in the lab, then on the dynamometer, and now on the track.
In engineering you often do not know for weeks and months whether you've solved some problem. Testing takes a long time. That might be where GM is now. But they might even still be at the stage where they have known problems without potential solutions in testing. I would want to hear a fresh opinion of the battery test engineers to know where things really stand.
Some people who can't afford gasoline for commutes by car are shifting to motorcycles.
"As soon as [gas] hit about $3.50, it was no longer really affordable," said Watson, 27, who recently bought a 2002 Kawasaki KLR650 for $2,600, took a rider training course and started commuting via motorcycle two weeks ago. He gets to work in as little as 15 minutes, compared with the hour it could take in his 17-miles-per-gallon Jeep Liberty, thanks to the HOV lanes on Interstate 395. His bike gets about 50 mpg.
"I love it," Watson said.
Motorcycles cost less to buy and get higher fuel efficiency than almost all cars.
Motorcycles make simple economic sense, riders and advocates say. A new, stripped-down motorcycle cost an average of $8,290 in 2007, and motorcycles typically get 40 to 60 mpg, said Mike Mount, spokesman for the Motorcycle Industry Council.
Heyser Cycle, a dealer in Laurel Maryland, lists the scooters Yamaha Zuma at 123 mpg and the Yamaha Vino at 89 mpg. They list the motorcycles Honda CBR 600RR at 45 mpg and the Kawasaki Vulcan also at 45 mpg. These are disappointing numbers for the motorcycles.
The thought that strikes me about scooters and motorcycles: People who are driving longer distances are going to tend to do so on highways and will lean toward motorcycles for commuting. So the scooters probably get driven shorter distances and so their higher fuel efficiency has less impact since people who drive shorter distances do not use as much fuel anyway.
Why aren't motorcycle fuel efficiency numbers higher? Do their shapes generate more aerodynamic drag? Or are they mechanically less optimized than a car?
The Missouri Highway Patrol finds Harley ElectraGlides get about 34 mpg in the city. Not so impressive unless they are compared to a Ford Crown Vic.
The improved fuel economy of the bikes -- they get about 34 mpg in the city, compared to 16 mpg averaged in the patrol's Crown Victorias -- is a side benefit, he said. "That was not the initial reason (for the project) ... but it has turned out to be a fuel-saving venture for us."
Another article puts these Harleys at 50 mpg on the highway. Okay, but a Prius can get 45 mpg on the highway and the 2009 Prius might go 12% further per gallon by one measure. So that would put it at least equal to the Harley in fuel efficiency on the highway and far better in the city.
In our high gasoline price environment and rising unemployment sales are down for Harley.
Harley-Davidson, which sells only heavyweights (651-cc engines and larger), saw its U.S. sales fall 6.2 percent last year, its first decline since 1986. Industrywide, heavyweight bikes were off 5 percent in 2007.
Harley's U.S. sales were down nearly 13 percent in the first quarter of 2008, while industry sales fell 11 percent, to 173,922. For heavyweight bikes across the board, that decline is 14 percent. In response, Harley announced it would cut about 25,000 bikes, or 7-8 percent, from production plans and 730 employees, 10 percent of its North American workforce.
But with the economy down and people tight with their money sales are up for much cheaper and more fuel efficient scooters.
Scooter sales, on the other hand, are climbing. The industry council says motorscooters jumped 24 percent in the first quarter, though it doesn't release a number. Scooter sales have doubled since 2004 to 131,000 last year, accounting for 12 percent of industry sales.
Vespa's sales are up the most and Vespa owners I know assure me that the Vespa is the coolest scooter out there.
Kevin Foley of Yamaha's scooter division said that sales are up 65 percent over last year, while Vespa's sales shop up a record-setting 106 percent. The scooter industry as a whole climbed 25 percent in the last quarter. Honda scooters sales are up 30 percent over last year -- which were already up 20 percent from 2006.
A Yamaha scooter with an engine big enough for freeway speeds has fuel efficiency no better than a Prius.
Yamaha has released one new scooter for 2009. The Tmax has a 4 gallon tank that gets about 47 mpg. The nearly 500cc engine makes it the biggest scooter Yamaha makes.
Update: What I wonder: Will rising oil prices reduce road fatalities by reducing miles driven and by reducing the SUV threat to smaller cars? Or will so many people shift to more dangerous motorcycles and scooters that net fatalities actually go up? In any event, a mile not driven is a mile where you won't get in an accident.
General Motors Corp. aims to manufacture 10,000 plug-in electric Chevrolet Volts in 2011, the vehicle's first full year of production, and 60,000 the following year, Vice Chairman Bob Lutz told the Free Press in an e-mail Thursday.
So thru the end of 2012 only 70,000 will be on the road. Do not expect these cars to save you from $200 per barrel gasoline if the price of oil goes that high in the next 5 years.
GM will not make a profit on Volt sales.
Lutz said the first-generation Volt will retail for about $40,000 and generate no profit for GM. The company hopes to make money as it rolls out later versions of the vehicle and other plug-in models.
Tougher environmental and fuel-economy regulations make electric vehicles "the only path to salvation," Lutz said. These government mandates could also help keep the momentum if oil prices fall, he said.
Assuming all that, Lutz said, by 2020 or 2025 between a quarter and half of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. will be electric or hydrogen-powered.
That's a quarter of all new vehicles, not a quarter of all vehicles on the road. But it could happen quicker if battery prices fall fast enough. Wish I had insight on that one.
GM wants a $7k tax credit for buyers of the Volt.
General Motors is lobbying for a $7,000 tax credit for buyers of the
$30,000$40,000 2011 Chevy Volt — more than double that originally offered for Prius buyers.
GM argues that the battery in the Volt is at least twice the capacity of the one in the Prius (actually well more than double), saves that much more oil, and so deserves a bigger subsidy. Gotta say, a bigger tax credit for the Volt makes sense for another reason (and someone tell GM's lobbyists): The tax credit for a Prius buyer subsidizes Nickel Metal Hydride batteries that are a technological dead-end. Whereas GM will use some sort of lithium battery (maybe the A123Systems lithium nanophosphate batteries) which is the future of car batteries according to many experts. Better to subsidize the future than the past. GM is working on the future with this Volt.
My take on all this: People will have to reduce their oil demand by driving smaller cars and conventional hybrids and by reducing the number of miles driven. In the next 5 years few will be able to reduce their gasoline consumption by plugging their car into a wall socket.
My question: How high do gasoline prices have to go to deliver a large enough shock to cause a rapid decline in demand? I just did a post where I asked and most responders in the first day basically said they aren't changing very much. Basically, without explicitly saying so they are insisting on $5, $6 gasoline before they make substantial changes. Okay, so we are going to get $5, $6 gasoline. Your choice. So no complaints please.
Update: It is perhaps too early to judge how much consumption will drop due to current prices. SUV sales are tanking in the last 2 months. Also, As we head into the summer driving period gasoline consumption has actually dropped for 8 weeks in a row.
Record gasoline prices are causing consumers to cut back on fuel purchases. On June 17, MasterCard Inc. said U.S. gasoline demand fell 3.2 percent from a year ago, according to its weekly SpendingPulse report.
Consumers purchased an average 9.305 million barrels of gasoline a day in the week ended June 13, down from 9.614 million a year earlier.
Given that Gasoline consumption rose 3% per year from 1985 to 2004 American drivers have given back 2 years of that growth in the last year and most of that in the last few months. At least into April gasoline consumption hadn't fallen by much. But some sort of tipping point has been reached. At least in the United States I expect to see a continued decline in fuel consumption. But in China, India, and other developing countries demand will probably continue to rise as buying power increases.
American motorists continue to cut back in the face of high gasoline prices. The decline in driving in April was even larger than the decline in March 2008.
WASHINGTON – At a time of record-high gas prices and a corresponding surge in transit ridership, Americans are driving less for the sixth month in a row, highlighting the need to find a more sustainable and effective way to fund highway construction and maintenance, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters.
The Secretary said that Americans drove 1.4 billion fewer highway miles in April 2008 than at the same time a year earlier and 400 million miles less than in March of this year. She added that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on all public roads for April 2008 fell 1.8 percent as compared with April 2007 travel. This marks a decline of nearly 20 billion miles traveled this year, and nearly 30 billion miles traveled since November.
While miles driven have fallen only for the last 6 months the shift in driving habits looks even bigger when compared to an over 20 years run of 3% increase in vehicle miles traveled per year.
While total vehicle miles Americans traveled grew by nearly 3 percent a year from 1984 to 2004, the rate of growth slowed suddenly in 2005 and 2006 and has declined since then.
Transportation fuel costs as a percentage of after-tax income are almost as high as 1981.
Americans spent about 4.5 percent of their after-tax income on transportation fuels in 1981, according to Global Insight, a forecasting firm. As gasoline prices dropped and family incomes rose, that percentage dropped to 1.9 percent in 1998. Today, it is back to 4 percent or more.
The national price for unleaded gasoline would need to average $4.23 a gallon “to create the same economic pain as in 1981,” the Cambridge Energy report said. “Once unthinkable, such a level is now within view.” On Wednesday, gasoline averaged nearly $4.08 a gallon.
Gasoline prices have hit a tipping point for big vehicle sales.
Midsize SUV sales nationwide were down 24 percent for the first five months of this year compared to 2007. The decline for May was an especially steep 38 percent, according to Autodata Corp.
The June drop in big vehicle sales may be even steeper.
Sales of pickups and SUVs, the most profitable vehicles, may fall nearly 40 percent in June, said Michaeli, who is also based in New York. GM and Ford may report sales declines of 28 percent and 27 percent, respectively, he said.
Will the US domestic auto makers survive?
The huge shift away from SUVs and big cars has car makers scrambling to make more small cars.
Ford Motor Company, for example is running its Wayne, Mich., assembly plant on overtime and Saturdays in an effort to meet demand for the Focus.
General Motors had planned to add a third shift in September to its small-car plant in Ohio, but recently moved the start date up to August.
A Toyota spokesman said the Japanese automaker was limited by production to selling 175,000 Priuses in the United States this year, no matter how hot the demand.
Honda Motor will open a new plant in Indiana late this year that will increase its output of Civics by 200,000 a year. The automaker has already increased production of the car at factories in Ohio and Canada.
Supplies of smaller cars have shrunk.
Mr. Pipas said that Ford currently has a 20-day supply of Focuses nationwide, well below the 60-day supply that is considered the industry norm.
Ford CEO Alan Mulally does not think high oil prices are temporary.
"We view the move to smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles as permanent, and we are responding to customer demand," Mulally said. "In the near term, we are adjusting production to the actual demand - increasing small cars and crossovers and reducing large trucks and SUVs. For the long term, we are moving fast to introduce more small cars, crossovers and fuel-efficient powertrains -- including more hybrids -- and we will adjust our manufacturing facilities to match our updated product lineup."
$4 per gallon gasoline is serving as a powerful wake-up call for many Americans. The price shock will get even bigger at $5 per gallon. The vast majority would change their driving habits at $5 per gallon.
As the region's average price per gallon flirts with the $4 level, some Charlotte-area commuters like Gibson are discovering their tipping points – the price at which they say enough is enough – and are changing their driving behavior.
More drivers say they'll follow if the average price breaks through that psychological barrier, recent research shows. Nearly seven of eight said they would change at $5.
More car buyers are expected to buy diesel cars.
Automotive forecasting firm J.D. Power and Associates predicts clean diesel vehicles will comprise 3.5 percent of the U.S. light-vehicle market share this year, 4 percent in 2009 and 10 percent by 2015. It's also predicting the price gap with gasoline will shrink as refineries adapt refining processes to refine more diesel and less gasoline, increasing the supply of diesel and lowering the cost.
"It still makes sense to buy diesel instead of gasoline if all you're looking at is fuel economy," said Michael Omotoso, senior manager of global powertrain for J.D. Power in Troy. "At really the break-even point, if gas is $4 per gallon, diesel would have to be above $5.20 per gallon for it to make sense to buy gas instead of diesel.
Commuter rail usage is up in southern California.
Commuter rail ridership broke an all-time record this week, and Caltrans reported a dip in freeway traffic as commuters across California struggled with record gasoline prices.
Metrolink recorded its highest number of riders in a single day Tuesday -- 50,232 -- a 15.6% increase over the volume on the Tuesday of the same week last year. Metro Rail ridership has also risen, shooting up 6% last month over May 2007, with the downtown L.A.-to-Pasadena Gold Line setting an all-time ridership record, said Dave Sotero, a Metro spokesman.
Although the region's rail lines have seen more commuters lately, bus ridership in Los Angeles is slightly down compared to last year, Sotero said. More than 1.2 million passengers boarded Metro buses on an average weekday in May, but compared with all of May 2007, ridership is down 5.37%.
Public transit usage is up nationally.
A report set for release today by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) shows trips on public transit January-March rose 3% over the same period last year to 2.6 billion rides. Light rails saw the biggest jump: 10% to 110 million trips.
Early figures for April show ridership going even higher as gas hovers near $4 a gallon, says APTA president William Millar.
In 2007, he says, "we had higher numbers than we've seen in 50 years, and the trend is continuing in 2008."
A survey shows drivers willing to make changes in how they get around as gasoline prices rise.
In a survey released last month by IBM's Institute for Electronic Government, a total of 31% of commuters who normally drive to work said they would change their transportation habits if gas were to cross $4 a gallon.
IBM also found that a total of 66% of drivers would seek other means of transportation if gas hits $5 a gallon.
Before you get excited at the prospects for mass transit options such as commuter rail and buses check out Europe's experience with substituting mass transit for cars. At the following link see Figure 3: Overall mode share of distance travelled (%) in 2003 where it compares many European countries for public transport use. In spite of gasoline prices more than double that of the United States at least 80% of passenger miles traveled on the ground in Europe are done by car (with Denmark, Austria, and Ireland as exceptions). Driving smaller hybrids and living closer to work will do more to cut fuel usage than will mass transit.
In a few years an electric car for the masses will let you go at least 125 miles between charges.
An electrified people's car for the 21st century, the Ox is a preview of Think's next-generation production vehicle, due out in 2011. Roughly the size of a Toyota (TM) Prius, the Ox can travel between 125 and 155 miles before needing a recharge, and zips from zero to 60 miles per hour in about 8.5 seconds. Its lithium-ion batteries can be charged to 80% capacity in less than an hour, and slender solar panels integrated into the roof power the onboard electronics. Inside, the hatchback includes a bevy of high-tech gizmos such as GPS navigation, a mobile Internet connection, and a key fob that lets drivers customize the car's all-digital dashboard. Pricing has yet to be announced, but the company's current vehicles cost less than $25,000.
I wonder how it will do on crash safety tests. Also, its cost will depend heavily on the price of lithium batteries in 2011.
An affordable 125 mile range electric car would go far toward ameliorating the most damaging effects of declining world oil production.
Only 200 FCX Clarity hydrogen cars will get built in the next 3 years.
Honda says its FCX Clarity can be filled easily at a pump, can drive 280 miles on a tank, almost as far as a gasoline car. It also gets higher fuel efficiency than a gasoline car or hybrid, the equivalent of 74 miles a gallon of gas, according to the company.
But the technology has faced many hurdles, not the least of which has been the prohibitive cost of the fuel cells themselves. Honda says it has found ways to mass produce them, which promises to drive down costs through economies of scale. On Monday, it showed reporters its fuel-cell production line, which resembled a semiconductor factory more than an auto plant with its humming automated machinery and white smocked workers in dust-free rooms.
The production cost is going to plummet in less than a decade from several thousand dollars to below $100k. Whoever said hydrogen cars are impractical? Any hundred millionaire can afford one.
Mr. Fukui said the cars cost several hundred thousand dollars each to produce, though he said that should drop below $100,000 in less than a decade as production volumes increase.
We are going to be well past Peak Oil before hydrogen fuel cell vehicles become practical. Improved lithium batteries and synthetic and biologically derived hydrocarbons will each do more to keep cars moving in the next 10 years. Since hydrogen gets made from natural gas you could get a natural gas powered Honda and use the natural gas more efficiently for a much lower cost.
The FCX will go 72 miles per kg of hydrogen.
The car can get a combined (city and highway driving) fuel efficiency of about 72 miles per kg of H2 which, according to Honda's own estimates, is the equivalent of getting about 74 mpg on a gas-powered car. The car can be driven for about 280 miles before needing to be refueled.
For a point of comparison, a Lawrence Livermore Laboratory team modified a Prius to use hydrogen and claimed an equivalent fuel efficiency of 65 mpg. The standard Prius of course already gets fourty some miles per gallon of gasoline.
The Prius, which has a combination electric motor and small internal combustion engine, traveled 653 miles on a tank containing almost 40 gallons of liquid hydrogen. The overall fuel economy for the driving conditions used by the Livermore team was about 105 kilometers per kilogram of hydrogen, which is equivalent to about 65 miles per gallon of gasoline. Coincidently, 1 kilogram of hydrogen has about the same energy content as 1 gallon of gasoline.
Hydrogen is just a storage medium. If hydrogen gets made from electricity generated by solar photovoltaic cells or nuclear power then it could help us move beyond oil.
Honda has made some strides with the latest design.
The Japanese company has been able to achieve this milestone in fuel-cell car production thanks to significant advances in the specialized technologies involved. With curb weight down to that of a current V6 Accord but sitting on a unique platform, the FCX Clarity is a hydrogen-powered technological tour de force. Engineers have increased driving range by 30 percent up to 280 miles, added 25 percent to the fuel economy reaching 74 mpg, have significantly downsized the fuel-cell stack but raised its power output by 50 percent, and have even recalibrated the electric motor — over the FCX prototype — to generate 8 percent more power, now delivering 134 hp. That propels the car from zero to 60 mph in around 8.5 seconds on the way to a top speed of 100 mph.
BMW's experimental 7 series hydrogen vehicle stores its hydrogen as a cooled liquid. If the car just sits parked the hydrogen gradually warms up and boils off. So some of the hydrogen gets used to generate electricity to cool the remaining hydrogen to keep it cold and liquid. But that means in a few weeks all the hydrogen gets used up doing the cooling. But the Honda FCX sounds like it uses compressed hydrogen gas and therefore should store much longer.
Four kilograms of hydrogen (the equivalent of about 4 gallons of gas) are stored in a 45-gallon tank compressed to 5,000 psi.
I am expecting the cost of solar cells to plummet in the next 10 years. Given cheap batteries (and when will that happen?) we will be able to recharge our pluggable hybrid cars with power from the sun. But the expense of batteries limits vehicle range. If hydrogen vehicle costs ever come down then hydrogen vehicles might make sense some day for longer range travel. But hydrogen as a fuel will need to compete with far more convenient and highloy energy dense liquid hydrocarbon fuels made from genetically engineered algae and from purely synthetic processes.
Toyota doesn't want to get beat to market by GM's Volt.
Toyota, rightly or wrongly, is widely considered the greenest automaker, and the company hopes to solidify its hold on the title and move beyond oil through a sweeping plan to produce cleaner, more efficient cars -- beginning with a plug-in hybrid it will produce by 2010.
It's no secret Toyota's been working on a plug-in hybrid to compete against the forthcoming Chevrolet Volt, but Wednesday's announcement sets a firm deadline and makes it clear Toyota has no plans of ceding the green mantle to General Motors. It also underscores how quickly the race to build a viable mass-market electric car is heating up.
The initial pluggable in 2010 will be aimed at fleet customers. I take that to mean that you and I won't be able to buy it. Does this mean they can't afford to sell a large number of them for a loss (due to expensive batteries) and therefore plan to restrict sales?
Toyota is just now starting up an internal battery research department for this hybrid. That seems like a big risk in their plan.
A Fortune article highlights the problems that long distance freight rail faces in Europe with incompatible national systems. New train designs can operate over more national borders.
Engineers at Bombardier's facilities all over Europe set out to invent a new train that could traverse Europe's patchwork of voltage levels, signal systems and other local quirks - while keeping this feature-rich locomotive affordable.
Why am I doing a post about this? If this article is correct then an amazingly small percentage of freight in Europe gets moved by rail.
Bombardier and its chief competitor Siemens (SI), the German engineering giant, see a huge opportunity. In the United States, half of all freight is shipped by rail. In Europe, only 10% is carted by train. Meanwhile, European highways are clogged, and truckers now pay fees to help offset pollution.
Would you have expected this? Europe has a higher percentage of passenger movement done by rail than America. Yet Europe's use of rail for freight is lower.
High oil prices have begun cutting down the size of the airline industry in the US and Europe with bankruptcies and route cancellations. What we've seen so far is only the beginning. The big airlines are losing money on every passenger and a combined market cap of just $17 billion.
To fully appreciate the impact that soaring oil prices have had on the nation's beleaguered airline industry, consider that U.S. carriers will likely spend $60 billion on jet fuel this year—nearly four times what they paid in 2000. Because of the spike in fuel costs, airlines now lose roughly $60 on every round-trip passenger, a slow bleed that puts the industry on pace to lose $7.2 billion this year, the largest yearly loss ever.
Not surprisingly, Wall Street has become so dour about the industry's prospects—can you say federal bailout?—that the combined market capitalization for the six major legacy carriers and Southwest Airlines has fallen to just over $17 billion.
Southwest is crowing that they locked in most of their 2008 fuel costs at the beginning of 2008 with big options buys. But in 2009 Southwest will be in the same boat as the rest of them.
Some experts expect a big cut in capacity up to 25%. But their estimates are on the low side of what is actually going to happen as oil production declines.
This consolidation will come with a cost: Experts believe that for the U.S. industry to shrink to a size that would allow the surviving carriers to earn a profit will require hefty fare hikes and a 20%-to-25% cut in capacity. That means fewer routes, fewer flights, and even more crowded planes.
Here's a twist I didn't expect. To reduce the amount of fuel that airplanes must carry long range aircraft will land partway through trips to refuel just as aircraft on long trips used to do decades ago.
Coast-to-coast flights will change, too. With roughly 30% of the weight of any transcontinental flight consisting of the fuel alone, meaning airlines are burning fuel just to carry fuel, carriers can be expected to replace many of those longer nonstops with one-stop flights, intended largely for refueling.
You might be thinking politically correct thoughts about the virtues of fuel efficient rail transport. Not so fast. Here are credible numbers from David Lawyer for passenger rail in the United States (historical and recent) getting 40-55 passenger miles per gallon. Well, two people in a Prius or a VW diesel will beat that easily.
The question still remains: Why aren't passenger trains more energy efficient if their rolling resistance is so low? There are a number of reasons, the major one being that trains are usually much heavier than autos (on a per passenger basis). Previously, the units used were rolling resistance per unit weight. If one takes into account the weight of the train per passenger, and then examines the rolling resistance per passenger, the advantage of rail over the auto drastically drops. For a very heavy passenger train, it will even favor the auto.
Just how heavy are passenger trains? There are various types of trains, some pulled by heavy locomotives and some that are driven by electric motors under each car. The ones pulled by locomotives tend to be very heavy and estimates made from US government data for 1963 (the government ceased collecting such data after that date) indicate about 3.7 tons/passenger. Automobiles are roughly one ton/passenger with an average of 1.6 persons/auto in an auto weighing 3,200 pounds. Thus rail was (in 1963) about 3.5 times heavier per passenger.
If one compares a lightweight auto with a lightweight train car, the train car weighs about twice as much per seat. A lightweight auto will weigh about 2,000 pounds with 5 seats (0.2 tons/seat). The (mostly aluminum) BART car (for the San Francisco rail transit) weighed 30 tons with 72 seats (0.42 tons/seat). The percentage of seats occupied by passengers on trains, is often not much different than for automobiles.
The Acela electric trainsets introduced by Amtrak in the early 21st century, are 2.1 tons/seat. This is ten times higher than that of a lightweight auto.
The heavy weight of trains not only increases rolling resistance, it also increases the energy used for climbing up a grade or accelerating from a stop. If the weight triples, so does such energy use.
Still, trains have a potential big advantage: The ability to be powered by electricity on electrified lines. We face more of a liquid fuel shortage than an general energy shortage. The cost of electricity is not going to rise as fast as the cost of oil.
For a continental trip trains have important advantages over cars including much greater safety and 24 hour per day operation. No need to stop to sleep. But the sleeper cars lower the ratio of passengers to train weight and therefore reduce energy efficiency and increase costs.
Jeff Radtke has done a very thorough comparison of fuel efficiency of different means of transportation. Go down past the graph and look at the table. In particular, see the person-MPG column. Note that the high numbers for freight-carrying vehicles (freight trains, oil tankers, etc) show how much more efficiently mass is moved when the mass in question is not humans. He has several numbers for trains from different sources. Some of his numbers are more like David Lawyer's referred to above. Those numbers make me think that rail advocates overestimate the fuel efficiency of rail for moving humans around. He shows a 747-8 with a full passenger load as more fuel efficient than some passenger trains. Still, rail powered by electricity could be powered by nukes, wind, and solar.
Note that Jeff has a 1936 era airship in his table with 224.96 passenger-miles per gallon. That surpasses passenger trains and passenger airplanes. So will peak oil lead to a revival of floating massive airships?
For the last few years in some quarters I've read claims that American drivers will drive themselves to financial ruin before they respond to higher gasoline prices and cut back on driving. I'm more of the school that people will restructure their lives (change jobs, move to be closer to jobs, do less recreational driving, etc) out of necessity. My view is that Americans can cut their gasoline usage in half once the need arises (and it will arise as Peak Oil bites harder). Well, with oil north of $100 per barrel and price shocks biting hard American drivers traveled 4.3% fewer miles in March 2008 than in March 2007.
WASHINGTON -- Americans drove less in March 2008, continuing a trend that began last November, according to estimates released today from the Federal Highway Administration.
“That Americans are driving less underscores the challenges facing the Highway Trust Fund and its reliance on the federal gasoline excise tax,” said Acting Federal Highway Administrator Jim Ray. The FHWA’s “Traffic Volume Trends” report, produced monthly since 1942, shows that estimated vehicle miles traveled (VMT) on all U.S. public roads for March 2008 fell 4.3 percent as compared with March 2007 travel. This is the first time estimated March travel on public roads fell since 1979. At 11 billion miles less in March 2008 than in the previous March, this is the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history.
This is just the beginning. Note this comparison ends in March. Prices have gone much higher since then and still have higher to go this summer. So the cutbacks on driving will get even deeper. People will find lots of ways to cut back that take longer to do. They will move and choose jobs in order to cut back on commuter miles. Some will switch to buses and trains. Others will buy scooters and bicycles and give up cars for many uses.
Last time Americans cut back on driving was in 1979.
THE last time this happened Jimmy Carter was US president. In March, US driving fell an astonishing 4.3 per cent on a year earlier. It was first time driving has fallen in the month since 1979.
US driving began to taper off in November, according to Doug Hecox of the Federal Highway Administration, but at first it was thought the decline could be seasonal, because of bad weather. Then came March, and the largest year-over-year driving drop in the agency's recorded history, going back to 1942.
"We are beginning to see what we think is a very defensible trend beginning," Mr Hecox said.
People now get that the high gasoline prices aren't just a temporary spike. They've been hit hard enough for long enough that the psychology has shifted more toward fear. They don't want their road hogs pulling them down into poverty.
Cost of transportation fuels as a percentage of income is the really interesting number to watch. The portion of income going to transportation fuels is still below that in 1981. But that reflects a large growth in income and buying power that has taken place since 1981. In inflation-adjusted terms we are now paying more per gallon on gasoline than we were back then.
Americans spend 3.7 percent of their disposable income on transportation fuels. At its lowest point, that share was 1.9 percent in 1998, and at its highest, it reached 4.5 percent in 1981, said Ms. Johnson of Global Insight.
...
Also, Americans pay less to drive a mile today than they did in 1980, once the impact of inflation and gains in fuel efficiency are taken into account, said Lee Schipper, a visiting scholar at the transportation center of the University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Schipper estimates that the cost of gasoline for each mile traveled will be about 15 cents this year. That is nearly three times the low of 5.6 cents a mile reached in 1998, when fuel efficiency peaked and prices were at their lowest. But it is still cheaper than the record paid in 1980 of 17.1 cents a mile, adjusted for inflation.
A shift toward smaller and more fuel efficient cars will lower the cost per mile traveled. Plus, people will find more ways to reduce the number of miles traveled. How fast all that happens determines how far up prices can go. The more demand destruction at any one price point the less the need for a still higher price point.
If we hit $200 per barrel then gasoline will cost $6 to $7 per gallon in the United States. It already costs that and more in Europe now. So the Europeans will be paying $10 per gallon when Americans are paying $6 per gallon.
If oil hits $200 a barrel, which is the upper end of Goldman Sach's prediction for prices over the next six months to two years, the gasoline picture changes quite dramatically. At $200 a barrel, crude alone would cost $4.76 a gallon. Add on the costs of refining and distributing as well as taxes, and pump prices could rise to a range of $6 to $7 a gallon.
SUV and truck sales are tanking.
According to sales tracker Autodata, full-size pickup sales were down 22% in April compared to a year earlier, while and large SUV sales plunged 32% over the same period.
Meanwhile subcompact sales are booming.
Autodata Corp. reports that sales of large SUVs fell 28 percent in the first quarter this year at a time when subcompact sales rose 32 percent.
Even if some new oil projects can boost world oil production by a few more million barrels of oil per day in the next few years that oil is headed for Asia. Rising Asian demand combined with rising demand in oil producer countries means less oil available for Western industrialized countries. Next time you buy a car get the most fuel efficient one you can stand to drive. We are years away from the point where the crisis eases and energy for transportation starts getting cheap again.
Update: The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) environmentalists have done an excellent job of blocking oil drilling off the US east and west coasts, the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, and other US lands. I thank them for preserving that oil for when we really need it (granted that was not their motivation). Because they tirelessly worked to preserve that oil for the future the shifting political winds caused by high gasoline prices will eventually unlock a substantial chunk of US oil for development.
Mounting concerns about global energy supply are fueling a drive by the oil industry and some U.S. lawmakers to end longstanding bans on domestic drilling put in place to protect environmentally sensitive areas.
...
In a report last week, the federal Bureau of Land Management stated that at current U.S. consumption levels there are four years worth of oil and 10 years worth of natural gas under federal lands. However, more than 90% of that energy was under lands either closed to development or open with significant environmental restrictions. The federal Minerals Management Service said an additional three years worth of oil and gas is in offshore areas where drilling isn't allowed.
It does not matter whether the bans get lifted this year. If $4 gasoline isn't enough to lift the drilling bans then surely $6, $7, or $8 gasoline will do the trick. I can't imagine that $10 per gallon gasoline will be necessary to make people tell their elected officials that they want the drilling rigs unleashed.
Financially strapped airlines are cutting service, and nearly 30 cities across the United States have seen their scheduled service disappear in the last year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Others include New Haven, Conn.; Wilmington, Del.; Lake Havasu City, Ariz.; and Boulder City, Nev.
Over the same period, more than 400 airports, in cities large and small, have seen flight cuts. Over all, the number of scheduled flights in the United States dropped 3 percent in May, or 22,900 fewer flights than in May 2007, according to the Official Airline Guide.
For me the most surprising aspect of this trend is the level of traffic in January 2007 for airports that have now lost all commercial service. For example, Boulder City Nevada previously had 401 flights in January 2007 and now has none. Though big airports lost a much larger absolute number of flights. Chicago O'Hare lost 3,098 from 33,770 in January 2007 to 30,675 in January 2008.
The US Congress is in denial on the causes of high oil prices. Since less oil will be forthcoming we need to accept the need to use less of it. But rather than simply accept the need to use less fossil fuels in aviation some US Congress critters are trying to increase the amount of tax money allocated to subsidize commercial flights into rural airports.
Now, some lawmakers are pushing for more money for the air service program as part of a broader funding bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that is before the Senate. The House passed the measure last year.
This same Congress wants to sue OPEC for price fixing. This very same Congress puts obstacles in the way of Brazilian ethanol imports and also subsidizes US agriculture in other ways against foreign producers. But the hypocrisy is less important than the delusion underlying their stance: They at least pretend to believe that OPEC has control over oil prices. Almost all OPEC members are running at maximum capacity. They do not have pricing power.
Business executives face markets that force them to deal with reality. As a result more big cuts are in store for US passenger air transport capacity.
For now, we'll see more capacity-cut announcements. American said it will shrink its mainline domestic schedule in the fourth quarter this year by 11% to 12%. It had previously planned a 4.6% domestic reduction in the fourth quarter. American said it will retire about 75 jets – some regional jets, plus some wide-body A300s and some aging MD-80s narrow-body planes, the workhorse of its domestic fleet.
But I bet flights in China will continue to rise as the rapidly growing Chinese economy outbids the US economy for oil.
I'm actually encouraged by airline cutbacks and crashing sales of SUVs. People are making adjustments and using less oil. We need all that oil demand destruction, the sooner the better. Otherwise oil prices will need to go higher faster in order to force people and businesses to change their ways.
The latest new high for oil of $133.38 per barrel illustrates our need to start finding ways to use less oil.
Oil hits new record: U.S. light crude oil for July delivery rose as high as $133.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before pulling back. Oil prices reacted to the weekly supplies report which showed a surprise drop in crude oil and gasoline inventories and a weaker-than-expected buildup in distillates, used in heating oil.
If you start making choices that lower your oil usage before you are economically forced to cut back then you'll be able to make less costly and less painful choices.
Update: Some people are excited by the prospect for rail. I'm watching for good articles on rail passenger traffic growth in the US and might do a post on it. While looking I came across an LA Times travel blog post about why Amtrak's pacific coast route The Coast Starlight runs so slow which is instructive about rail's pitfalls.
How bad is it? The Coast Starlight ran on schedule 50% of the time in December and 51.7% of the time in November, according to Amtrak statistics. While not great, the numbers are better than in December 2006 (25.8%) and November 2006 (23.3%). Since January, of course, trains have run irregularly because of mudslides, since cleared, that covered tracks in Oregon.
Construction issues: Years of track work by Union Pacific in Oregon and Northern California have contributed to delays on the Coast Starlight, said Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham. By late last year, a major portion of that work was finished, helping on-time performance, she explained.
Bottlenecks: Although the Coast Starlight gets priority, it runs on the same tracks as freight trains, said Graham and Zoe Richmond, spokeswoman for Union Pacific. And much of its route is on a single track. So if any train stalls, especially if it’s not near a siding, it backs up traffic. It’s like being on a one-lane road without a shoulder. And of course, bad weather can also wreak havoc.
Breakdowns by freight trains, accidents with cars, or assorted reasons to inspect tracks can cause hours of delay each time. Adding a lot more double track rail sections and sidings would help. Upgrades of tracks to allow higher speed operations would help too. But passenger rail today has lots of problems. A train line that runs on time 50% of the time comes on top of the slowness of rail as compared to airplanes.
Worried about the coming energy crunch as world oil production starts declining? Here's one way to adapt to it: Spend $10,000 to upgrade a Prius to run 35-40 miles on a battery from A123 Systems.
Beginning this week, a company in the Boston area will be taking orders for what it says is the first mass-produced aftermarket conversion kit. The company, A123 Systems, is starting out with the Toyota Prius, with what it calls a range extender module. The module fits in the well normally occupied by the spare tire, with a charging port installed on the back bumper.
The A123 conversion will allow a Prius driver to substitute electricity, at about 3 cents a mile, for gasoline at three or four times that price.
In the United States electricity sells for an average of 10.64 cents/kwh (see the link for state level electricity costs). So a recharge would cost you about 55 cents (depending on the extent of heat losses). At 40 mpg and $4/gallon the Prius will cost you 10 cents a mile on gasoline.
The Hymotion conversion kit includes a 5000 watt-hours battery (as compared to the 300 watt-hours of the original Prius battery) that replaces the spare tire in a Prius. A123Systems is one of 2 front-runners to supply batteries for GM's forthcoming pluggable hybrid Chevy Volt which is also expected to do about 40 miles on battery.
Before you rush out to upgrade your Prius keep in mind that when using the standard electric motors in a Prius the top speed is either 35 mph or 42 mph (and can someone find an authoritative source on this?). I can't find anything on the A123 Systems web site for the Hymotion conversion kit that suggests they raise the speed limit with their conversion kit. So if you do a highway commute you probably aren't going to be able to cruise on only electric power. The coming pluggable hybrids such as the Chevy Volt probably won't suffer this limitation.
That 5000 watt-hour (or 5 kilowatt-hour) battery could push a pure electric big SUV about 10 miles. Getting that battery to push a Prius 4 times that far seems a bit of a stretch. Anyone have a good engineering reason to think under electric power a Prius would only use 125 watt-hours per mile? That seems low to me.
One of these conversion kits might make sense for a Prius used to travel many miles each day city driving. But the Prius's already high fuel efficiency makes it hard to earn back the cost of the upgrade. The battery takes 4 hours to charge up. If you travel 40 city miles to work every day (doing 40 mpg with gasoline power pre-conversion) and if you can charge up your car while in the office then you'll save 2 gallons a day. Well, that doesn't describe a whole lot of people. But if you could save 2 gallons a day then when gasoline goes to $5.50 per gallon you could save $10 per day (assuming $1 for the electricity to charge up twice a day) or $2500 per year.
Now, put the price of gasoline up to $11 per gallon and the pay-back period cuts in half. But if you wait to upgrade to a pluggable hybrid you'll get one once gasoline prices are much higher and battery prices much lower. Plus, cars designed from the start as pluggables will be cheaper and offer better performance than after-market upgrades. In other words, the economics of pluggables are going to improve a great deal in a few years time.
We really aren't ready for Peak Oil and we aren't going to be ready in a few years. GM's pluggable electric hybrid Chevy Volt was originally projected to cost $30,000. GM's latest estimate for the Volt's cost? $48,000.
Figuring out how to make wipers, a stereo and other accessories that don't kill the Volt's range has proven a tough nut to crack, and it's one reason the Volt's price seems to be rising. The Volt came with a $30,000 price tag when GM unveiled it at the North American International Auto Show last year. At this year's show, Lutz told us it could hit $40,000. Now he's saying it could hit $48,000 and it could be years before GM sees a profit from it.
GM wants the Volt to go 40 miles on electric power before switching over to gasoline. The 40 miles is enough to let most people drive to work and back. Then to avoid gasoline usage you'd have to plug the car in every day. Easy to do if you park in your own garage. Not so easy if you don't.
GM will probably start out selling the Volt at a loss. Though if oil production starts declining by 2010 then the demand for electrically powered cars might allow GM to sell the Volt at a much higher price.
"When GM brings out that electric car, they're going to be taking a huge loss on that for a number of years," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a speech to a business group.
Battery cost is a big problem.
The Volt's 300-pound battery pack will be among its most-expensive components. Menahem Anderman, a battery analyst based in Oregon House, Calif., has estimated each such lithium-ion pack may cost about $10,000.
GM is attempting to show the batteries will last 10 years.
"Production timing of the Volt is directly related to our ability to predict how this battery will perform over the life of the vehicle," said Frank Weber, Chevrolet Volt and E-Flex systems global vehicle chief engineer. "The challenge is predicting 10 years of battery life with just two years of testing time."
At 10 years life expectancy the cost per year for the batteries works out to over $1000 once interest on the money is considered. But maybe the batteries will last longer.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers claim if pluggable hybrids don't get recharged until after 10 PM then they will require little or no additional electric power plants.
In an analysis of the potential impacts of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles projected for 2020 and 2030 in 13 regions of the United States, ORNL researchers explored their potential effect on electricity demand, supply, infrastructure, prices and associated emission levels. Electricity requirements for hybrids used a projection of 25 percent market penetration of hybrid vehicles by 2020 including a mixture of sedans and sport utility vehicles. Several scenarios were run for each region for the years 2020 and 2030 and the times of 5 p.m. or 10:00 p.m., in addition to other variables.
The report found that the need for added generation would be most critical by 2030, when hybrids have been on the market for some time and become a larger percentage of the automobiles Americans drive. In the worst-case scenario—if all hybrid owners charged their vehicles at 5 p.m., at six kilowatts of power—up to 160 large power plants would be needed nationwide to supply the extra electricity, and the demand would reduce the reserve power margins for a particular region's system.
The best-case scenario occurs when vehicles are plugged in after 10 p.m., when the electric load on the system is at a minimum and the wholesale price for energy is least expensive. Depending on the power demand per household, charging vehicles after 10 p.m. would require, at lower demand levels, no additional power generation or, in higher-demand projections, just eight additional power plants nationwide.
Since I suspect the world has already reached Peak Oil I expect the shift to electrically-powered vehicles will happen sooner than this study assumes. Also, total electric demand will grow more rapidly as dwindling oil supplies cause a big shift toward electrically powered equipment of all kinds.
The great difference in power plant usage between the afternoon and late night is partly a result of a lack of dynamic pricing. If electric rates for homes varied by the time of day based on relative levels of demand then people and companies would shift more of their electric demand toward the late night even before significant numbers of hybrid vehicles hit the market. Such a shift in demand would cause higher utilization of power plants at night and therefore less excess power generation capacity available to charge electric cars.
Fortunately thermal solar and photovoltaic solar will drop in prices and will become cost competitive sources of day time power. Electric cars will then preferentially get recharged in the morning sun before the peak business demand for electric power in the afternoon.
Synthesis of liquid hydrocarbons from atmospheric carbon dioxide and water could be nuclear powered.
Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed a low-risk, transformational concept, called Green Freedom™, for large-scale production of carbon-neutral, sulfur-free fuels and organic chemicals from air and water.
Currently, the principal market for the Green Freedom production concept is fuel for vehicles and aircraft.
At the heart of the technology is a new process for extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and making it available for fuel production using a new form of electrochemical separation. By integrating this electrochemical process with existing technology, researchers have developed a new, practical approach to producing fuels and organic chemicals that permits continued use of existing industrial and transportation infrastructure. Fuel production is driven by carbon-neutral power.
The New York Times reports that using nuclear power plants as an energy source to drive the process will yield liquid fuel for only $4.60 per gallon which is much cheaper than gasoline is projected to get under various doomer scenarios for Peak Oil.
This plan has a minor hurdle, too; the electricity for driving the chemical processes, according to a white paper describing the overarching concept, would come from nuclear power. The proposal says it’d be worth it to have a payoff of steady, secure streams of methanol and gasoline with no carbon added to the atmosphere (and a price for gasoline at the pump of perhaps $4.60 a gallon — comparable to petroleum-based fuels as oil becomes harder to find).
At $4.60 per gallon we can switch to hybrid and diesel cars and keep moving around just as much as we do now.
I see this as good news because it puts a long term ceiling on liquid fuels prices and also puts a long term ceiling on grain costs. Once grain-derived ethanol and biodiesel get above $4.60 a gallon the demand for grain biomass energy will flatten out and biomass energy demand for grains will cease to grow. But since nuclear power plant construction takes years we could still go through a period with much higher transportation fuels costs.
Manufacturing costs for hybrids are dropping.
By the end of this year, Ford Motor Co.'s hybrid vehicle program is expected to be profitable for the first time.
Nancy Gioia, Ford's director of sustainable mobility technologies and hybrid vehicle programs, said that since production started in 2004, Ford has chopped about 30 percent of the cost out of making the Escape, Mercury Mariner and Mazda Tribute hybrid SUVs.
Yes, hybrids have been loss leaders. That they are becoming profitable is good news. The longer we go before world oil production starts declining the easier it'll be to handle it. Advances in hybrid and battery technologies as well as in wind turbines, photovoltaics, and nuclear technologies will all make the migration away from fossil fuels easier.
Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe says Toyota is already making money on hybrids.
To the amazement of many in the industry, Watanabe also declared that Toyota is making money on hybrids -- and could soon expect to make more. "As of today, there is no problem with the profitability of hybrids. Of course there is room for improvement. The next generation will be one-half the size and one-half the cost."
GM isn't just trying to produce a pluggable Volt hybrid by 2010. Turns out GM will also release a shorter range pluggable Saturn Vue by 2010 as well.
Meanwhile, GM executives announced this week that they hope to introduce the plug-in version of the Saturn Vue hybrid in 2010. The plug-in hybrid SUV would be capable of going 10 miles when fully charged before the gasoline engine kicks in, according to GM, and it would get roughly double the gas mileage of a typical SUV on the road today.
This Saturn Vue might beat the more radical Volt design to market just because the Vue is a smaller step. So ths PHEV Saturn Vue might turn out to be the first mass production pluggable hybrid car. How many people will want to put up with the hassle of recharging just about every day to maximize the use of cheaper electric power? I think it depends on where you live and where you park your car. If you park it in a garage then plugging it in every night would be a lot easier.
You might have heard that Toyota is trying to beat GM to market with a pluggable hybrid. Well, Toyota's 2010 release date for a pluggable hybrid is for a very low volume vehicle that would be sold to a small number of fleet customers (i.e. not in dealerships).
However, in another sign of the steep technological hurdles carmakers face to make the cars commercially viable, a Toyota spokesman said initial sales would be in "the hundreds", and the company did not say when it planned to mass-produce plug-ins for retail customers.
The 2010 Toyota pluggables sound like experimental vehicles.
Watanabe announced that Toyota will market a test fleet of rechargeable hybrid vehicles to companies or government agencies by the end of 2010.
Even though people in the auto industry do not know exactly when the lithium battery problem will be solved many in the auto industry expect to see high volume lithium batteries for cars in a few years.
"I think within three to five years you'll see lithium-ion hybrid electric vehicles out there in some volume," Ford's chief hybrid engineer, Sherif Marakby, said on Tuesday.
Rising gasoline prices boosted average fuel efficiency for new cars by 3.5% in 2007.
Amid record high oil prices and concerns about climate change, cars and light trucks sold in the United States hit a new mileage record for the 2007 model year, with average fuel economy improving almost 1 mile per gallon.
According to a report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released late last month, fleet-wide fuel economy in the United States averaged 26.6 mpg, up 3.5 percent from the 25.7 mpg averaged in the 2006 model year. Passenger cars averaged a new high of 31.2 mpg, while light trucks averaged a separate record of 23.1 mpg.
So which companies paid fines for going over US government mandates for Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards? Not American ones. Of course not Japanese ones. Germans: Daimler, VW, BMW, Porsche. They don't have the high European fuel taxes to incentivize their American customers to buy more of their smaller cars. Yes, even VW sells less fuel efficient cars in the US than the American big three. Also, Maserati and Ferrari paid fines too.
That average fuel economy on new cars was based on buying patterns over the whole year. I'm expecting a bigger shift in buyer preferences for the 2008 model year because where gasoline prices are at the start of 2008 and where they are likely to go by summer. Normally gasoline prices hit their bottom in winter and their top in summer. See this chart of weekly US gasoline prices from mid 2005 thru 2007. Note how starting in March each year gasoline prices surge into the summer driving season.
An LA Times article shows why we should expect higher prices this spring and summer:Kloza said that nationally for the last 25 years, the difference in the price of gas from the winter low to the spring high has been about 59%."I don't think we will see a typical surge, and we don't have to," Kloza said. With an increase of just 30%, he said, "you're talking about 75 cents a gallon more from where they are now."
A 59% surge would take California over $5 and Alaska over $6. I'm expecting demand destruction to start becoming a lot more visible though. So prices will probably stay under $5 per gallon in the lower 48 American states. But however high they go they'll serve as a wake-up call to the American car buying public. Expect to see a lot more hybrids, diesels, and subcompacts sold.
While fuel efficiency increases will help what we need as a more permanent solution is to stop using oil entirely. The first real step in that direction (and, no, corn ethanol doesn't count) will come in the form of pluggable hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). General Motors will probably be the first car company to release a mass market PHEV in the American market with their Chevrolet Volt. But GM chairman Richard Wagoner isn't sure that GM can get the Volt design done and into production by the end of 2010.
"We continue to put massive resources into production as soon as possible," said Wagoner, responding in writing during an online chat session to kick off the automaker's 100th anniversary. "2010 would be great, but (we) can't guarantee that at this time. We'll keep you posted regularly on our progress."
GM vice chairman Bob Lutz told Jerry Flint of Forbes a similar story on the timing of the Volt introduction. GM is not sure they will get the Volt out by the end of 2010.
GM's current schedule calls for production in late 2010 or early 2011.
"It probably won't be a flawless launch," Lutz warns. Interpretation: Expect delays and possible teething problems.
On a scale of 1 to 10, he says his confidence level is a 9.5 that GM can build the Chevy Volt, the name of this hybrid electric car. The production date is another matter; Lutz's confidence drops to a 5.5. "We're holding people's feet to the fire for the very end of 2010 into 2011. But that can slip, depending on how the development goes."
I think it extremely likely GM will produce this car. It normally takes 3 to 4 years to develop a new car design. They are trying to develop one that includes radical innovations. So a schedule slip is to be expected under the circumstances. They sound pretty committed.
DETROIT — General Motors is down to the details on the production version of the Chevrolet Volt, says Edward T. Welburn Jr., the automaker's vice president of global design. Welburn told Inside Line on Thursday that the "Volt is our absolute highest priority."
My worry: world oil production might start declining before PHEV vehicles become available in the millions. We live in a world where the development of problems and the development of solutions are in a race. How big will the problems get before the solutions reach maturity? When it comes to Peak Oil the answer is still not clear to me. But I expect things will get worse for at least several years before getting better.
A series of Popular Mechanics articles reviews the fuel efficiency diesels in very high fuel cost Europe and looks at diesels headed for sale in American showrooms. Like other makers Ford sells a lot of fuel efficient diesel cars in Europe.
FRANKFURT — Ford of Europe unveiled three new alt-fuel cars here, the first of which we’ll see is the Focus ECOnetic model in 2007. It combines the latest common-rail diesel powertrain and other engineering features to reduce CO2 emissions to the absolute minimum. Powered by a 109-hp 1.6-liter Duratorq common-rail turbodiesel engine with a diesel particulate filter, the ECOnetic is gunning for around 54 mpg.
We can see in the European car market how the United States could handle another doubling or tripling of oil costs. Smaller diesel cars would allow Americans to drive just as far to jobs and for fun. Granted, the bigger cars have advantages. But we don't have to abandon cars in order to double or triple our fuel efficiency. That we can afford to drive such big cars at today's gasoline prices means that we can still afford to get around (albeit in smaller and more efficient cars) once the world production of oil starts declining.
Prius is getting unseated as a fuel efficiency leader. The 2009 Jetta diesel is expected to get a combined 50 mpg city/highway when it comes on sale in the spring of 2008.
The new era of clean diesel in America will officially be ushered in by the new VW Jetta TDi when it goes on sale in a few months. Powered by a 2.0-liter four-banger that produces 140 hp and 236 lb.-ft. of torque, it will be the first automobile to meet the world’s most stringent emission control standards, California’s Tier II, Bin 5.
Those California emissions standards are one reason why we see fewer diesels in America than Europe. The Europeans lag on auto emissions standards and so the European car makers find it easier to create diesels that will qualify to pass European emissions regulations. The lowering of sulfur in US diesel fuel (to meet a US Environmental Protection Agency regulation) has made it possible to design diesel exhaust systems that can meet tougher US emissions standards.
A Popular Mechanics writer was more impressed by the Europe-only VW Polo which gets 60 to 70 mpg.
It’s also not the car that most impressed me. Nope, that honor goes to the Euro-only Polo, a Rabbit-like hatchback—only smaller—with plenty of room for four adults, a modest hatch that could swallow a weekend’s worth of gear, and a 1.4-liter, turbocharged diesel under the hood. Oh yeah, and a five-speed manual transmission.
Here’s the kicker: The Polo gets 60 to 70-plus mpg. And it’s really fun to drive. It’s got a good bit of turbo lag, so you need to keep the revs up for serious power, but once the turbo kicks in, acceleration is frisky.
The coming world decline in oil production, once started, will go on for decades and each year we'll see less oil produced than was produced the year before. As oil production declines liquid fuels will become more and more expensive. Therefore the use of diesels for commuting will be a transitional phase. In the long run I expect diesel cars to be used almost solely for longer trips and for freight hauling. For people who do average commutes (less than 40 miles per day) I expect rechargeable hybrid electric and pure electric cars to become the mainstays.
The wild cards in all this are methods to create liquid hydrocarbons. We can't get very far with biomass grain crops due to lack of land. But maybe other biological approaches such as genetically engineered algae for making diesel will become cost competitive. Though the capital costs of such an approach seem too high. Or perhaps nuclear reactors to produce hydrogen to then bind it to carbon will become cost competitive. Another possibility is that solar photovoltaics will become so cheap (and Nanosolar might make it happen) that solar electric could some day produce electric power cheaply enough to run processes to synthesize diesel fuel.
A study from the Rand Corporation finds that diesels pay off bigger than hybrids but both are net money savers.
Fuel taxes are excluded in the societal case, which is typical of benefit-cost analysis. And the costs are estimations that illustrate relative performance.
The results assume fuel prices of $2.50 per gallon for gasoline, $2.59 per gallon for diesel fuel, and $2.04 per gallon for E85 (including tax credit). The report also examines scenarios where fuel costs are much higher and much lower.
Among the key findings from the consumer perspective:
- For all three vehicle types, the advanced diesel offers the highest savings over the life of the vehicle among the options considered. These savings increase with the size and fuel use of the vehicle: $460 for the car, $1,249 for the SUV and $2,289 for the large pick-up truck;
- The hybrid option has smaller but still considerable savings for SUV applications ($1,066), moderate savings for pick-up applications ($505) but minimal savings over the life of the vehicle for car owners ($198);
- The vehicles operating on E85 cost all three owners more over the vehicle life, with a greater net cost burden for larger vehicles and increased fuel consumption: (-$1,034 for cars, -$1,332 for SUVs, -$1,632 for pick-ups).
Of course they found E85 ethanol to be a loser. But what is getting the biggest push in Washington DC? Ethanol of course. Stupid is as stupid does? Or corrupt is as corrupt does?
Both the hybrid and diesel vehicles are more fuel efficient than their gasoline-powered counterparts: 25 to 40 percent better for hybrid and 20 to 30 percent for diesel, depending on the vehicle.
These numbers suggest that from the standpoint of what is in the best economic interest of car buyers people seem to be underusing both hybrid and diesel technologies. After all, a number of SUVs and regular cars are available in hybrid versions yet most of those models are sold in non-hybrid configurations. Why is that? I can think of two reasons. First off, lack of knowledge. People lack the economic chops to calculate the economic costs and benefits of hybrids and diesels. Another potential reason is more problematic. People might have such high discount rates (preferences for quicker gratification) that they aren't willing to spend more on a car now to gradually derive benefits of saved gas money over a period of years.
If you are expecting still higher prices then the benefits of diesels and hybrids are even more compelling. When you buy a car try to guess what is going to happen with the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel.
If we can believe the information coming out of Mercedes Benz about their forthcoming E320 hybrid diesel then combination of diesel and hybrid technologies will almost double highway fuel miles per gallon. Beyond that additional efficiency can be achieved with lighter weight materials, aerodynamic improvements, and smaller cars. But at current prices in the United States of about $3 per gallon the value proposition for diesel hybrid as compared to diesel is likely to be negative. I say that because the value proposition for just plain hybrid above is not that big and adding hybrid to a diesel vehicle won't boost its fuel efficiency by as large a percentage as it does for gasoline vehicles. Until gasoline prices go much higher we are not going to see many diesel hybrids on the road.
On the bright side, when oil production starts declining we do have existing technologies to embrace can will provide large boosts in fuel efficiency. Plus, battery technology advances look promising. General Motors and Volt might manage to produce a pluggable hybrid electric vehicle in a few years time.
On the not-so-bright side, I see multiple reasons why even with current technological capabilities such as diesels and hybrids we are going to be economically hard hit if we come off of the world oil production plateau in a downward direction. First off, a decline in oil production will obsolesce an absolutely huge amount of capital equipment. Chemical plants, oil refineries, farm tractors, and huge numbers of other pieces of equipment will have less oil and oil-derived products to use as inputs. Plus, it will necessitate big shifts in spending toward insulation, newer cars (more like the cars in Europe) which are more efficient, and other measures. These shifts in spending will happen while economies shrink. So I expect drops in living standards, at least during the early years of the post-peak oil period.
An article in BusinessWeek surveys the pros and cons of hydrogen and argues that batteries beat hydrogen when compared for energy efficiency.
Electrolysis of water is the easiest method for producing hydrogen -- but only about 70% of the electric power used in the process gets stored in the hydrogen it creates. Hydrogen then needs to be either compressed or cooled to a liquid in order to store large enough volumes to be useful in a car -- gas compression is the more efficient of the two processes, but still costs a further 10% of the stored energy. The efficiency of the fuel cell storage unit itself is realistically estimated at around 36% under normal driving load -- leading to a dismal overall power-grid-to-wheels efficiency of less than 25%. That is, less than a quarter of the power used to produce the hydrogen is ever actually used to propel the car.
Batteries are a clear winner in the grid-to-wheels efficiency battle. Conventional Lithium-ion batteries charge at about 93% efficiency and operate at about the same efficiency, leading to an overall efficiency of over 85%. For the same energy input, you'll get three times the power out of a battery than out of a fuel cell.
If someone can explain how hydrogen as an energy source makes sense I'd really like to hear it. So much effort is going into a hydrogen push that I figure I must be missing something.
Time to start planning the infrastructure to support electric cars.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28 — Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley technologist who was in competition to become chief executive of SAP, one of the world’s largest software companies, has re-emerged with a grand plan to reinvent the world’s automobile industry around battery-powered all-electric cars.
Others are developing green cars, like the Tesla and Chevrolet Volt. However, Mr. Agassi is not planning to make cars, but instead wants to deploy an infrastructure of battery-charging
He's got deep pocket investors lined up to the tune of $200 million.
Maybe A123Systems isn't really ready to start selling next gen lithium nanophosphate batteries to GM. But maybe existing lithium ion batteries are good enough for electric cars. Big maybes.
“If you listen to the car companies, they suggest there is a fix, but it’s not there yet,” said Stephen J. Girsky, a partner at the investment firm Centerbridge Partners who formerly served as an adviser to General Motors.
However, the new venture, which Mr. Agassi has named, for now, Better Place, would be viable even with existing lithium-ion battery technology, he said.
To make this venture viable it seems to me pure electric cars are needed. People will recharge their pluggable hybrids at home and run them on gasoline for longer trips. They'll even recharge their pure electric cars at home. So why electric recharging stations? A few reasons: Long trips most obviously. Also, some people live in places where they can't easily recharge while at home. Some people live in apartment buildings. Some park on streets and can't be guaranteed to find a parking space in front of their house. Some live in neighborhoods bad enough that an electric cable running from house to car would pose security problems.
Maybe Agassi can make a business out of home upgrades to install home electric charging equipment for electric cars. That seems like a hard business to do well though.
GM is talking a good game on their Volt pluggable hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV).
The Volt’s most ardent supporters acknowledge that there is a lot at stake. G.M.’s environmental image suffered when it backpedaled on plans to build hydrogen-powered cars and stepped away from an earlier battery-powered car, the EV1.
“The company has taken a risk,” said Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for the Volt.
GM needs the battery technology to make this happen. They've hooked up with A123Systems as their battery supplier. But can A123Systems deliver? I haven't come across good public information that addresses just where they are at with their lithium nanophosphate battery.
GM is talking a really upbeat line on the Volt pluggable hybrid that they claim will go 40 miles between recharges.
“I’ve been unbelievably enthusiastic about this vehicle,” said Robert A. Lutz, vice chairman for product development at G.M. and arguably the vehicle’s most vocal promoter, despite his reputation as a fan of cars big and fast.
“I would be surprised, shocked and dismayed if we decide not to do it,” he said.
GM's expected battery supplier, A123Systems, has just got another round of VC financing. So are they ready? Have they solved the battery problem?
A123Systems, developer and producer of patent-pending Nanophosphate™ lithium ion batteries, today announced it has completed a $30 million round of funding, bringing the total capital invested in the company to $132 million. A123Systems will use these funds to increase production capacity for new contract awards for hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric and extended range electric vehicle design wins with major automakers including a contract to co-develop proprietary cells for the GM E-FLEX program. A123Systems continues to expand its fast growing power tool battery business with Black & Decker Corporation, the world’s largest manufacturer of cordless tools, where the company is helping drive the transition from nickel technology to doped Nanophosphate lithium ion technology.
Suppose GM manages to pull this off. I don't see the market for battery recharging stations. People could maybe stand to plug in their car when they get home every night. But they aren't going to go to an electric recharge station 3, 4, 5 times a week to recharge a vehicle that has only 40 miles range in pure electric mode. The Volts with 40 miles electric range will also have a gasoline burning engine to partially power the car and to recharge the batteries while cruising down the road. People will prefer filling up the tank for that engine at a much lower frequency.
Mercedes Benz is claiming 35 mpg on the highway for their new E class diesel car.
Since the nation-wide introduction of low-sulfur diesel fuel in October 2006, the E 320 BLUETEC has already been available in 45 U.S. states. The E 320 BLUETEC with its 165 kW/224 hp V6 engine has a fuel consumption as low as 6.7 liters per 100 kilometers (35.11 mpg) and covers a distance of up to 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) on one tank filling. These figures have been impressing American buyers – the proportion of the E 320 BLUETEC in E-Class sales in the U.S.A. is currently as high as 17 percent.
But even more impressive, Mercedes says they are going to come out with diesel hybrids in 2010 and the E class diesel hybrid will get as high as 46 mpg.
The combination of BLUETEC and modular hybrid drive will from 2010 tap additional potential in several Mercedes-Benz model series. This will start with the E-Class whose powertrain with a total output of 164 kW (224 hp) and maximum torque of 560 Newton meters will ensure unrestricted motoring pleasure. The fuel consumption of the BLUETEC hybrid in the E-Class will be as low as 5.1 liters of diesel fuel per 100 kilometers (46.12 mpg). The first gasoline hybrid – the ML 450 – will set a new benchmark among gasoline-engined cars in the SUV segment from 2009 with average consumption of 7.7 liters per 100 kilometers (30.55 mpg).
Granted, the Prius gasoline hybrid gets similar mileage burning gasoline. B
