Cybersam's Blog - Problems with electric vehicles

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Problems with electric vehicles

The Lemelson-MIT program made a press release yesterday citing that gasoline powered vehicles will become obsolete by 2015. This was mentioned on Tech Policy, a blog maintained by some current and past TPPers, so I am not going to elaborate on the same point again. Sure, the press release contains some forward-looking statements, but without sounding harsh to the teens, I say gasoline is here to stay. I am not here to belittle the teens but rather shed some light on why gasoline is still king since we talked about it in my Electrochemistry class.

Let's consider battery-powered cars since I am now more familiar with battery technology. I really think that battery-powered car is pretty much dead in the water. The current battery technology is impeding a successful debut of electric car in the marketplace. In terms of energy density, gasoline blows lead-acid battery away. Here are some numbers:

Energy density of gasoline = 2600 Wh/kg
Energy density of a lead-acid battery = 35 Wh/kg

Another constraining factor of electric car is the time it takes for it to refuel. When your car is out of gas, you go to the gas station to pump more gasoline to the car - typically a 5 minute endeavor. With lead-acid battery, this takes at least 3 hours to recharge. Then there is the question of price. Battery is very expensive. For example, a lead-acid battery costs about $4,000 and lasts about 2 years. Sure, there are more advanced battery technologies like NiMH and Li-Ion. They last longer, weigh lighter, and recharge faster; but they are also significantly more expensive. The bottom line is this: A 500 kg lead-acid battery costs $4,000 and takes 3 hours to recharge. Now compare to 1 liter of gasoline that cost $0.5 and takes about 3 seconds to transfer from the pump to the car.

There are other alternative fuel cars like fuel cell, bio-diesel; but they have yet to make it out of the lab. Call me a cynic, I highly doubt that any of these technologies will become cost-effective and reliable enough to replace gasoline technology in 9 years.

1/12/2006 8:22:16 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) Comments [3] Thoughts

1/13/2006 8:42:42 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

This is a great post, I enjoyed reading it. If you're interested in this topic, which seems to be the case, you should at least sit in on the first couple of lectures in 1.149 (http://web.mit.edu/1.149/www/) like I did last semester. They discuss this exact issue, and they start with an analysis like yours.

I won't repeat all of Professor Deutch's points, but the main one is that this analysis is not holistic enough: the role of economic incentives (tax credits, research grants, etc.), international priorities (other countries may value this much more than the US, and accordingly arrive at tech improvements years earlier), and increasing pace of tech innovation (you're making the classic analysis mistake that Kurzweil always rails against, assuming the pace of improvement over the next 5 years will be the same as over the previous 5), all will combine to make the necessary innovations and infrastructure come together much faster. Some, like fuel cells, are already out of the lab by the way.

There's only one guaranteed thing about forecasts: they're somewhat wrong ;) The Lemelson-MIT thing is a survey of what people think, not a scientific piece of research claiming gas obsolescene by a deductive method. Then again, as we know, markets powered by actual people outdo scientific research fairly frequently when it comes to predicting the future...

There's a lot more to this topic: you'd love 1.149.

Yoav Shapira |yoavsAT NOSPAMcomputer dot org

1/13/2006 9:14:53 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Here are two additional considerations: the kind we learned in Disruptive Tech last year and/or from Christensen's work.

Pick a metric or attribute, let's say the energy density like you did above. Chart the value of that metric over time for both technologies on the same graph. In this case, you'll see that the energy density of lead-acid batteries has been improving at a rate of more than two orders of magnitude per decade recently, whereas gasoline has not nearly improved as much. Project that to the crossover point assuming both constant (which Kurzweil says is wrong, but this is conservative) and geoemetric or exponential improvement in the disruptive technology (lead-acid) to predict when the latter will overtake the currently dominant technology. It will likely be sooner than you think.

The other relevant point from disruptive tech is that lead-acid won't have to match gas in either energy density or speed of filling up the tank. Those two attributes are dominant in the current technology, but may be replaced by others in the disruptive technology.

Environmental-friendliness may become more important than either: this is why early adopters are buying Prius faster than Toyota can make it, even though if you look at the car features for the $$$, they suck. Gas taxes or other economic incentives will skew this further. The alternative energy people are already planning alternative charging scenarios, e.g. overnight in your garage or cark park, or while at work, rather than going to the gas station as part of your commute.

One final point: obsolete is not the same as extinct. Gas and gasoline engines will be around long past our lifetimes. The question is whether they'll be the mainstream / normal method, or relegated to specialty cases like heavy earth movers or race cars...

Yoav Shapira |yoavsAT NOSPAMcomputer dot org

1/14/2006 5:07:01 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Well, I was thinking about the issue last week and the Lemelson-MIT announcement was the catalyst that made me blog about my thoughts. I hope that I didn't sound too harsh. I wasn't really trying to belittle the teens who made the announcement. You are right, it is a survey of what people think about after all.

Interesting application of the core concept of disruptive technology. Yes, you are right and I am not disagreeing with you but the magnitude of performance metric that battery (disruptive technology) has to overcome that of gasoline (incumbent technology) is astronomical. Just because it is low-performing and disruptive over sustaining technologies now doesn't qualify successful commercialization. Again call me a skeptic, I doubt that the current technological progress of battery will improved on an accelerated pace (be it geometrically or exponentially).

So far we have only focused on technology and assumed that if the performance metric cross over the customer expectation curve, we are likely going to have a "crossing the chasm" effect. In this context, there are other supporting technologies and infrastructures that need to be put in place before technology adoption can reach critical mass. Of course transportation and energy policies can shape the massive acceleration of alternative energy technologies.

But EV (and battery) is really a simple an uninteresting d technology that I used for my discussion. I was compelled to use it as an example to blog about how alternative fuel technologies still has much to catch up to the price and performance of gasoline. I think it is safe to assume that the industry has assume that EV is pretty much dead. There are other disruptive technologies, like fuel cell and hybrid engine, that I think are attractive. There are still challenging problems in fuel cell and I think fuel cell is not going to become mainstream till way after 2015. Hybrid car looks really promising right now. I was surprised how popular the Prius is.

Finally, I like your point that obsolete is not the same as extinct. That's a good point.

Cybersam