Debunking Hydrogen Car Lunacy: The Truth About Pollution

[Ivan Seeking]

Well as generating hydrogen generates carbon you are back to square one,

That is not how it will work. The plan is to pursue technologies such as...

Get the hydrogen directly from biomass, such as algae.

Make hydrogen it cracking natural gas with solar power; producing pure carbon powder and pure hydrogen

Collect it as a byproduct of bacterial activity and industrial processes.

Collect it from wind and other power sources in areas too far removed from the point of use for transmission to be practical.

You can learn much more about it here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=29373

 

[W3pcq]

Probably not worth the weight at the moment. You get about 100W/m^2 for available panels tilted at the sun - so even assuming panels on the roof and sides facing the sun you are only going to generate about 1Hp. If your car uses 100Hp then you are only going to recover about 1% of the energy.

In sunnier regions of the USA this would end up costing you energy as the absorbant solar panels would heat the car and require more air conditioning.

The world record for thin film solar cell efficiency was broken in march 2008, 19.9% of the suns light into electricity. Thin film cells are very light and flexible. The h. gen. would have some weight, which I hadn't fully considered, but with the hybrid style component, it might be worth it. Maybe not. I would think it could help.

For someone who only drives say 60 mn. per day, say they get 12 hour of sun per day, at one hp, they would over the coarse of the day save 12 horse power worth of fuel meaning maybe 5-10 percent. Cut your driving down to 30 min, and you've got 10-20 percent. Add the hybrid electric component, and tach on a little more. If you wanted to get real high tech, then somehow find a way to use the heat of the engine/exhaust and the body of the car, and use it to generate electricity too, while cooling the engine at the same time.

I know that I have seen solar cars on tv which were even semi kind of fast even, but they probably cost a million dollars, and they probably weigh next to nothing.

 

[Azael]

How did you get those numbers?

A report by a swedish research institute called elforsk. You can find it here http://www.elforsk.se/rapporter/ShowReport.aspx?DocId=638&Index=D%3a%5cINETPUB%5celforsk4kr9h8d%5cRapporter%5cpdf%5cindex&HitCount=3&hits=6b+6d+95+"

Press the link to the right of "Hela rapporten:" A popup window shows up, ignore the fields and just push the link to the pdf at the bottom of the popup window. At page 11 there is a english summary, unfortunaly the entire report isn't avaible in english.

The existing 100 nuclear power plants provide about 20% of our electrical power,
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec8_6.pdf
so in order to provide 5 times as much power in addition to the existing supply, we would need another 500 nuclear power plants of similar size. So if we built 100 plants in 30 years during the days of naive innocence wrt nuclear power, back when it was "too cheap to meter", perhaps 200 years to build 5 times as many is reasonable given the realities of nuclear power today – most people don’t want to live near a nuclear power plant.

Well if certainly is technicaly possible to build in a short timespan. Politicaly who knows. People living around the existing nuclear power plants like them and wants more,(se this http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/newplants/reports/nationalquestionnairefor10mileradius" ) so if they are placed correctly NIMBY can be avoided.

Anything can change quickly now that we are getting near peak oil. A big chunk of the reactors possibly doesn't even need to be light water reactors. Pebble bed reactors are a pretty close in the future technology that is inherently safe and much more efficient. Modular design might make it possible to factory mass produce them instead of as now having to build each LWR on site.

As a side note: Can you even imagine creating a failsafe system for the fueling, operation, and decomissioning of 500 commercial nuclear plants? I can't. No system is perfect. Sooner or later there will be a catastrophe. Also, what is the lifespan of a nuclear power plant? It's probably not even possible to build that many plants before the first ones built need to be decomissioned.

What do you consider a catastrophe? Even another TMI incident is extremely unlikely and another TMI isn't a catastrophe. A larger incident than TMI won't happen in a LWR and definately not in the generation 4 designs. There has never been a catastrophe in a western reactor and I can't imagine how one could happen either.

Fueling, operating and decomissioning even as much as 500 nuclear power plants will mean less risk than the risk of currently running the existing coal power plants that kill several tens of thousands of people yearly in the states. The 400+ reactors running today in the world kills no one, the coal power plants around the world kill 500 000 people yearly.

Lifespan for new reactors is 60 years, but its not unlikely that it can be expanded. The current reactors that where suposed to have a life time of 40 years is beeing uprated to 60+ years.

Also I don't se why we would expect that all electricity will be nuclear? A mix is always the best bet. Saying that it would be hard for one single energy source to do it all alone isn't a argument against the energy source itself.

 

[frogman]

Lurch,

Do you have a link, or source where I could get more info on the capacitor project?

thanks

 

[Ivan Seeking]

A report by a swedish research institute called elforsk. You can find it here http://www.elforsk.se/rapporter/ShowReport.aspx?DocId=638&Index=D%3a%5cINETPUB%5celforsk4kr9h8d%5cRapporter%5cpdf%5cindex&HitCount=3&hits=6b+6d+95+"

Press the link to the right of "Hela rapporten:" A popup window shows up, ignore the fields and just push the link to the pdf at the bottom of the popup window. At page 11 there is a english summary, unfortunaly the entire report isn't avaible in english.

Well, that link doesn't do me any good because I can't read it, but there is something wrong with your numbers. How do we get less than 25% of the demand by going to hybrid electric? Batteries are about 80% efficient, motors are about 90% efficient, which leads us to expect 72% efficiency over about 30% efficiency for a gasoline engine. So how do we get 10/45 from 28/70? Also, you said hybrids [not full electric] which are nowhere near 72% efficient.

Well if certainly is technicaly possible to build in a short timespan. Politicaly who knows. People living around the existing nuclear power plants like them and wants more,(se this http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/newplants/reports/nationalquestionnairefor10mileradius" ) so if they are placed correctly NIMBY can be avoided.

Anything can change quickly now that we are getting near peak oil. A big chunk of the reactors possibly doesn't even need to be light water reactors. Pebble bed reactors are a pretty close in the future technology that is inherently safe and much more efficient. Modular design might make it possible to factory mass produce them instead of as now having to build each LWR on site.




What do you consider a catastrophe? Even another TMI incident is extremely unlikely and another TMI isn't a catastrophe. A larger incident than TMI won't happen in a LWR and definately not in the generation 4 designs. There has never been a catastrophe in a western reactor and I can't imagine how one could happen either.

Fueling, operating and decomissioning even as much as 500 nuclear power plants will mean less risk than the risk of currently running the existing coal power plants that kill several tens of thousands of people yearly in the states. The 400+ reactors running today in the world kills no one, the coal power plants around the world kill 500 000 people yearly.

Lifespan for new reactors is 60 years, but its not unlikely that it can be expanded. The current reactors that where suposed to have a life time of 40 years is beeing uprated to 60+ years.

Also I don't se why we would expect that all electricity will be nuclear? A mix is always the best bet. Saying that it would be hard for one single energy source to do it all alone isn't a argument against the energy source itself.

That is fine and dandy except that you haven't considered terrorism. That is what has changed everything. Now more than ever we need to focus on the containment of nuclear materials; not a massive increase in the processing of these materials making them more available than ever before.

Did you see the recent vidoes of security gaurds at nuclear plants caught sleeping on the job? This is post 911!

I rest my case: No system is perfect. The last thing that we need is a hyperescalation in the processing of nuclear materials. Sooner or later something will go wrong, and when it does your numbers are all out the window. What we need is a safe and sane source of energy - one that doesn't require infinite trust in a bureaucracy.

Note that this argument doesn't apply to only to nuclear technology: Just wait until the Three Gorges Dam fails. That is another example of meteor-like risk: No one dies until millions die.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Also, I would like to see the public reaction to plans to build 500 nuclear plants.

I would also like to see a poll that doesn't have the nuclear power industry as a source.

 

[mheslep]

As well as being heavy, batteries are chemical nightmares. They have a limited life and at the end of that life must be disposed of, at which time they become very UNgreen. Currently they are just one more example of "feel good green".

Lithium Ion batteries are the current choice for plug-in electric cars. They have a much greater energy density (~1MJ/kg) than traditional lead acids though they're still far short of gasoline (47 MJ/kg). Example: The battery pack in the 220mi range Tesla weighs about ~900lbs. However, the plugin electric is spared the weight of s 200lb twenty gallon gas tank, a complicated transmission, a differential, and pumps for the combustion and lube. Environmentally, Lithium is not a heavy metal so Li-ion is not particular bad for the environment, no more so than the scrap from the car they ride in. I believe the main problems w/ batteries now for E cars are cost, life time, and charge time.

 

[mheslep]

...Right now Iceland has begun to convert entirely to hydrogen, but they have plenty of geothermal power.

Well they've begun to talk about it. :uhh: At the moment nothing sponsored by the govt is on the streets there. The three demo busses have been decommissioned after a 3 year run. Per Joseph Romm, Center for Energy & Climate, Iceland is perfect for geothermal electric generation and electric cars, not hydrogen:

...They've decided to go the hydrogen route. I'm a bit skeptical that that will work. I wouldn't be surprised if they woke up to the fact that they would be the perfect place for plug-in hybrids. I mean, the thing to realize about plug-in hybrids is that they use electricity from renewable sources three to four times more efficiently than you get if you run a hydrogen car off renewable power. And that kind of efficiency gain is very hard to beat in the marketplace.
...

The thing to realize about electric cars is that their only limitation is range and speed of refueling. So they are ideal in a small island that doesn't require cars to go, you know, 1,000 miles or 500 miles over a short period of time. So my guess is that electric cars will turn out to be quite attractive in Iceland. They're just going to have to realize that hydrogen isn't all that it's cracked up to be and electric cars are what— all they're cracked up to be.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/car/open/inte-romm-21.html

 

[mheslep]

We are showing about 1.4E19 joules of electrical energy produced annually.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec8_4.pdf

We use about 400E6 gallons of gasoline per day, so at 125,000 BTU per gallon, I get 1.9E19 joules per year.

Those number seem to check, but I am not sure you can go right do power plant shortage from there. Electric transportation proponents often speak of using the grid off-hours to charge the batteries. That is, most existing plants do not currently run at capacity throughout a 24 hr period, there is a lot of idle at night. So though the US generated 1.4e19 Joules/yr it should theoretically be able to able add substantially to that by running 100% at night as well. How much I don't know, but 30% seems reasonable which leaves 0.42e19 J/yr 'at night' just for transportation. Then to compare we need that debated electric car vs ICE efficiency increase: 2:1? 3:1? At a 3:1 improvement in efficiency of electric cars the energy demand is 0.63e19 J/yr or a shortfall of 0.21 e19 J/yr. Thats ~56 new 1200MW plants running 24/7, plus the new electric distribution to deliver the new 67GW required. Note that the 24/7 67GW could also be produced by each of the ~100M car owners adding ~2KW of solar to the roof.

Also see this energy flow chart which shows that by source, electric power is 38% and transportation only 27% of energy sources, suggesting some other efficiency games that might be plaid before breaking ground on new plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:USEnFlow02-quads.gif

 

[Azael]

Well, that link doesn't do me any good because I can't read it, but there is something wrong with your numbers. How do we get less than 25% of the demand by going to hybrid electric? Batteries are about 80% efficient, motors are about 90% efficient, which leads us to expect 72% efficiency over about 30% efficiency for a gasoline engine. So how do we get 10/45 from 28/70? Also, you said hybrids [not full electric] which are nowhere near 72% efficient. .

The summary on page 11 is on english and outlines the assumptions they have made so it should give you enough info about what they have done. The assumptions are all personal vehicles plug in hybrids, 70% of the distance driven is by electricity the rest is ordinary gas engine with 0.5 liter per 10 kilometer gas consumtion. I haven't read through the whole thing, but I know they are a respected source of information and its not my field so I haven't bothered looking into it more.

I thought the avarage efficiency of gas engines are around 20% though?

That is fine and dandy except that you haven't considered terrorism. That is what has changed everything. Now more than ever we need to focus on the containment of nuclear materials; not a massive increase in the processing of these materials making them more available than ever before. .

Not to sound disrespectful, but this is borderline scaremongering. There are few places in the world harder to hit than a nuclear power plant. Hitting it with a big plane is all but impossible since its so small, even if they hit the old containment buildings would most probably handle it and the containment buildings for new npp's are built specificaly to be able to hande a crash. So its not a argument against new nuclear power plants.

If by materials you mean materials usable in nuclear weapons I don't se what that has to do with civilian nuclear power? Unless a shipment of mox fuel is highjacked and the terrorist has acces to a chemical plant that can separate out the reactor grade plutonium and also has the technological competence nessecary to build a bomb out of plutonium with such poor isotope composition. I don't worry much about that considering it took the greatest minds in the world and countless of billions to figure out how to make a bomb with weapons grade plutonium.

Did you see the recent vidoes of security gaurds at nuclear plants caught sleeping on the job? This is post 911!.

Well what can the terrorist do if they gain entrance to the plant? They can't blow apart the containment building so no matter what they do it can't be made worse than the TMI meltdown and that wasnt a disaster in any sense of the word. People go to scared to realize it was a sucessfull demonstration of the containment.
Sleeping guards is unacceptable, but it doesn't mean a terrorist can just walk in there and cause a new Chernobyl. Thats not even physically possible.

In sweden the guards at nuclear power plants arent even armed. I still don't consider it a terrorist threat because there isn't a whole lot terrorist can do when inside.

In america maby they can steal some spent fuel rods from a fuel rod pool. But what to do with that? A dirty bomb? It would be impossible for them to transport it of the site, but even if they could the dangers of a dirty bomb is mostly from the pshycological impact on the population, not from any real health risk. http://hps.org/documents/RDD_report.pdf
To fix that problem just centralise the intermittent storage, in sweden its stored in pools 30 meter below bedrock.

The easiest place to steal material for a dirty bomb is from hospitals anyway and not highly guarded nuclear power plants. So once again what can terrorist do at a nuclear power plant? If they want to do damage it would be a lot easier to hit a chemical plant and cause a disaster(think Bhopal disaster that might have been the result of worker sabotage). They can highjack chlorine trucks and blow it up close to a arena during a big sports event, they can blow up a LNG shipment in new york harbor. There are so many other far easier targets that can cause far more damage.

I rest my case: No system is perfect. The last thing that we need is a hyperescalation in the processing of nuclear materials. Sooner or later something will go wrong, and when it does your numbers are all out the window. What we need is a safe and sane source of energy - one that doesn't require infinite trust in a bureaucracy.

You haven't really made a case, you have only hinted that a terrorist attack might be dangerous without explaining how it would be dangerous. Even if something goes wrong it doesn't mean a disaster. Nuclear is a safe and sane source of energy that kill far less people than fossil fuels, no other conclusion can be drawn. We could have a new chernobyl disaster every single year and it would still not be as damaging as coal power is during regular operation.

Note that this argument doesn't apply to only to nuclear technology: Just wait until the Three Gorges Dam fails. That is another example of meteor-like risk: No one dies until millions die.

But the risk is still very small compared to fossil fuels. Hydropower causes horrible accidents, just look at Banqiao that caused close to 200 000 deaths. But it is still insignificant compared to the deaths caused by fossil fuels.

Take a look at ExternE, its a life cycle estimate(probably the largest and most thourouh) of all the external damages caused by accidents, pollution etc due to different energy sources. http://www.externe.info/

 

[Mghanem]

car manufacters are trying to developed efficient fuel cells,which run on hydrogen.

this combines with oxygen,and the only emission is water in the form of steam.

however,hydrogen has to be manufacterd and this usually done by buring fossil fuels.This

takes us back to square one.

thancks.

 

[W3pcq]

car manufacters are trying to developed efficient fuel cells,which run on hydrogen.

this combines with oxygen,and the only emission is water in the form of steam.

however,hydrogen has to be manufacterd and this usually done by buring fossil fuels.This

takes us back to square one.

thancks.

Your argument is precisely meaningless. If we are to change over to hydrogen as fuel, we are going to need to at least double our power generation, that means many new power sources. We are not going to build new coal burning power plants. Natural gas will be unlikely for this as well because we can use natural gas in our cars at more efficiency anyways.

The other reason your argument is meaningless is: Hydrogen cars are on the drawing board because of the lack of fossil fuels now and in the future. The only alternative seems to be battery powered cars. Battery powered cars seam to have one advantage, efficiency, but, they are heavy, don't last, must be charged for very long times, pollute, perform badly etc.

I would argue that the future is in hydrogen because it is the cleanest fuel we have. If we can come up with good way to generate renewable electricity, then we can obtain it very cheap as well. If we start now, we can begin the shift with little problems. We probably have maybe 50 years left of consumer oil, and maybe 100 years left of consumer natural gas. By the time we cannot afford gas, we will have hydrogen. By the time gas is gone, we will have enough hydrogen.

It would also be nice to see a source of fuel which can be made by anyone as well. People with valuable land with wind, hydro, sun, geothermal, etc energy potential will be able to make and sell it. This would also lead to a competitive market, and lower prices. Right now they can highjack prices because it takes a large nations military to get a piece of the oil market.

 

[vanesch]

so in order to provide 5 times as much power in addition to the existing supply, we would need another 500 nuclear power plants of similar size. So if we built 100 plants in 30 years during the days of naive innocence wrt nuclear power, back when it was "too cheap to meter", perhaps 200 years to build 5 times as many is reasonable given the realities of nuclear power today

I don't know about the industrial capacity, but the money was there: the Iraq war cost you about the price of 500 nuclear power plants... spend in 5 years time.

 

[mheslep]

I don't know about the industrial capacity, but the money was there: the Iraq war cost you about the price of 500 nuclear power plants... spend in 5 years time.

At what, $5B/plant or $2.5T? Thats a rather large exaggeration. In any case as per above I believe the US could electrically power the transportation sector with existing idle capacity plus only 50 new plants.

 

[vanesch]

At what, $5B/plant or $2.5T?

I was rather around 1 billion Euro for a 1GWe plant, and I equated $ = Euro.

Probably my price for a nuke is a bit low.

 

[mheslep]

This paper in Science makes an interesting point on the comparative efficiencies of H2 - Fuel Cell Cars.

Hybrid Cars Now, Fuel Cell Cars Later
N. Demirdovenand and J. Deutch
13 August 2004, Vol 305.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;305/5686/974?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Hybrid+Cars+Now%2C+Fuel+Cell+Cars+Later&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT"
Subscription:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/sci;305/5686/974?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Hybrid+Cars+Now%2C+Fuel+Cell+Cars+Later&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT.pdf"

It compares Well to Wheel efficiencies of theoretical cars w/ a traditional ICE, a hybrid ICE+electric motor parallel drive train, and an H2 - Fuel Cell+battery buffer. They find the pure ICE has is 11.3% (no surprise), the H2-FC is 25.5%, but that the Hybrid is only ~1% less at 23.9%.

Assumptions:
-H-FC model: hydrocarbon fuel storage w/ a reformer (80% eff), fuel cell 50% eff., batteries 84% eff. If H2 is made available somehow without energy cost, eff jumps to 39%.
-Hybrid. Gas engine. If a diesel is used eff jumps 31.9%

The attached figure shows the relative energy flows. HICE = Hybrid ICE, AFC = Fuel Cell

 

[mheslep]

H onboard storage

The chemists are not holding out much hope for onboard H in cars in the near future.

Hydrogen storage targets out of reach
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2007/October/HydrogenStorageTargetsOutOfReach.asp

The DOE targets mentioned are 5kg of H2 (~735MJoules=204kW-hrs) in the volume of an 'average petrol tank'

I don't think there's a hope in hell of reaching the 2010 DOE targets,' said Peter Hall, a chemical engineer at the University of Strathclyde, UK. Hall, who has gradually focused his efforts away from solid hydrogen storage, spoke to Chemistry World at a special session on hydrogen storage at the ACS Fall meeting in Boston on 20 August.

'Right now we don't see how these targets can be reached, and that is also the opinion of car manufacturers,' agreed Ferdi Schüth, who works with General Motors and Opel on hydrogen storage at the Max Planck Institute for coal research, in Mülheim, Germany.

I vaguely recall the DOE storage target is intended to provide a range of ~300mi / tank. Checking: 204kW-hrs * 50% FC * 90% motor = 90kw-hrs traction. Assume 20kw required for highway level cruising 60mph = 270mi.

 

[mgb_phys]

Odd that fuel tank fires were an unforseen risk on Fords but H2 tanks are specified to something beyond nuclear waste containers. I wonder if 'vested interests' is hyphenated?

 

[mheslep]

Odd that fuel tank fires were an unforseen risk on Fords but H2 tanks are specified to something beyond nuclear waste containers. I wonder if 'vested interests' is hyphenated?

Hows that? What spec do you think is required on a 5000PSI tank sitting under your butt? A common 5000 PSI tank requires a little strength sitting safe and sound. Then put it in a vehicle and it should have some hope of not exploding in minor impacts. Since its under high pressure and highly rigid, it can not allow the deformations and even leaks that a unpressurized gas/diesel tank can often withstand without explosion. And BTW, 5000 PSI probably won't do it, you really need 10,000 PSI to make it to grandma's house.

 

[mgb_phys]

To be practical you will have to store hydrogen as a hydride or embedded in a matrix.
If you have safe, lightweight 10,000psi gas cylinders you could just use air and a turbine.

 

[mheslep]

To be practical you will have to store hydrogen as a hydride or embedded in a matrix.

Problem is per the link above hydride or solid storage (green circle) is not bad volumetrically but by weight it is worse than compressed H tanks and at least 10x worse than a tank of gas. That is, a hydride tank with the same mass as a 300 mi range tank of gas contains only 1/10 the energy. Regardless, the National Academy of Sciences report on H transpo recommended placing all research efforts in solid storage and abandoning compression or liquification.

If you have safe, lightweight 10,000psi gas cylinders you could just use air and a turbine.

10000 psi is starting to noticeably tax the energy content in compressing the gas. Then, metal tanks and piping are not lightweight. Composite tanks are made by Quantum Tech up to to 10k psi and they're much lighter, but they're also very expensive. They're being used by some of the prototype demo H cars. There's discussion that in mass productions these composite tanks can be made cheaply but I don't see how. Composite tanks have to be wound up from the carbon fiber so its got to take time and be expensive; I am not aware of any way to cast or press composites of this strength.

 

[mgb_phys]

Winding the tanks isn't necessarily a problem - I suspect it's more the cost associated with the fittings and testing.

I was being a bit cynical about the standards. There was one proposal that electric hybrids using 42V electrics should have to carry large warning signs so firefighters would be aware of the electrical shock risk in an accident.
They had nothing against hybrids but were thinking of the poor brave firefighters. Like firefighters are overjoyed at the current system of flammable gas tanks.

 

[mheslep]

From the DOE's 2007 H Storage Center:
http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/annual_progress07_storage.html#e
E. Advanced Compressed and Cryo Tanks
http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/progress07/iv_e_1_aceves.pdf

...Approach
The primary focus is to meet the cost goal of the DOE hydrogen storage technical targets. Quantum’s current 10,000-psi TriShield tank technology is close to meeting many of DOE’s targets, but the cost is still a major issue. Since the carbon fiber cost is a large portion of the overall cost, the approach is to reduce the amount of carbon fiber needed to build the storage system while maintaining equivalent levels of performance and safety. This will be accomplished by improving the fiber translation using non-conventional filament winding processes and integrating sensors to actively monitor tank health...

...Results
The first 10,000 psi hydrogen storage tanks developed by Quantum with DOE funding utilized high grade aerospace fiber to attain the high performance. This achievement came at a very high cost due to the premium carbon fiber used. Subsequent 10,000 psi designs were able to employ mid-grade aerospace fibers, but the costs were still too high for commercial applications...

 

[mheslep]

Plug in Cars Worry Electric Firms: WSJ

I think you are overestimating the electricity needs for the car fleet ...

We are showing about 1.4E19 joules of electrical energy produced annually...

...Electric transportation proponents often speak of using the grid off-hours to charge the batteries. ...

So the WSJ obviously has been following this PF thread and tried to catch up w/ this piece May 2:

Plug in Cars Worry Electric Firms
In general several of the car companies w/ pending plug-ins are working closely w/ the utilities to make sure there's that an ethanol type price disaster won't occur. Seems like every lab / think tank in the country has a study out on the subject: EPRI, Oak Ridge, NRDC, PNNL all have studies sighted in this article.

The

utilities view the cars with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. If drivers charge their batteries at night, when demand is low and the utilities have generating capacity to spare, utilities will increase their electricity sales and make more efficient use of their existing power plants. But if most drivers recharge their cars during the day, when demand is twice as high, utilities could have to make or buy extra electricity when it is most costly. They could even be forced to build new power plants.

The utilities are currently hedging their bets by pushing out smart meters that will heavily emphasize that night is the time to charge these cars.

the cars will need ready access to inexpensive, plentiful electricity. That means the new vehicles "will make utilities more important than the oil companies" to many drivers, says General Motors Corp. spokesman Robert Peterson. If utilities discourage the cars' proliferation by charging more for their electricity, the push toward plug-in cars could falter.

A study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory agreed that the number of plug-in vehicles in use and when they recharge could profoundly influence power-generating costs. Under some scenarios, electricity costs would drop, but under others, they could more than double.

The plug-in car's potential to slash fuel use is dramatic. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that existing U.S. power plants could meet the electricity needs of 73% of the nation's light vehicles if the vehicles were replaced by plug-ins that recharged at night. Such a huge shift could cut oil consumption by 6.2 million barrels a day, eliminating 52% of current imports.

Another study, by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council, concluded that electricity consumption would rise only about 8% if 60% of light vehicles in the U.S. were replaced by plug-in vehicles by 2050. That would also cut U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions by 450 million metric tons annually, equivalent to scrapping 82 million cars.

 

[vanesch]

I read about a study (don't have any internet source handy, it was cited in a book) that says that hybrid electric cars are a near-future possibility, as many car trips are relatively short distance. So relatively small batteries, charged at night, could replace the short distance displacements (commuting to work for instance), while the classical fuel engine would take over for longer trips. This limits the need for huge batteries, while nevertheless allowing most car traffic to run on electricity. An average of 2 liters / 100 km was a conservative estimate of the consumption of such a car.

 

[mheslep]

I read about a study (don't have any internet source handy, it was cited in a book) that says that hybrid electric cars are a near-future possibility, as many car trips are relatively short distance. So relatively small batteries, charged at night, could replace the short distance displacements (commuting to work for instance), while the classical fuel engine would take over for longer trips. This limits the need for huge batteries, while nevertheless allowing most car traffic to run on electricity. An average of 2 liters / 100 km was a conservative estimate of the consumption of such a car.

Yes that is certainly the plan for, say, the Chevy Volt - ~30-40mi per charge on the batteries w/ an engine for the long haul. That is the plan for numerous, high volume sales plug-ins coming out. Its not just a possibility, these plug-ins are definitely coming out in the ~2010 model year. So 100% of commute driving becomes all electric, zero emissions at the car. That is the reasoning behind the large reductions in oil imports and CO2 mentioned in the above WSJ links.

 

[mheslep]

Several new startup electric car companies in play

There are at several new/startup electric or hybrid electric plug-in car companies bringing out models between now an 2010. Many of the founders come from big car companies. These companies are going up against the competition from the models forthcoming from the large competitors Toyota, Ford, GM, Mitsubishi, Renault, and Daimler. The new car companies:

Tesla: sport all electric, 221mi range, out now

Fisker: sport hybrid 50mi electric, ICE backup, 2009

Think: all electric small commuter, 112 mi, 2008 (been around since '91 as Pivco)

Loremo: diesel hybrid 93mi electric, 600mi ICE, 2010

Mindset: hybrid, 62 mi electric, 498mi ICE, 2009

Gordon Murray Design: the McLaren UK race designer w/ experience in carbon fiber frame& body. 892 lbs lighter than other similar metal cars.

Start-Ups Race to Produce 'Green' Cars
Edward Taylor
May 6, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121003145304669169.html

Similar US News article on the these companies:
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.co...ild-Green-Car/?referer=sphere_related_content