Are you gonna get an electric car anytime soon? (Or do you already have one?)

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Guys, I think the best correction is to wait about ten years for safer battery technology to be developed.

[Leo Enticknap]

I'm hoping that it won't take as long as ten years, but the current technology is definitely a bigger than acceptable fire risk. I am sitting above my garage, inside which are parked two ICE cars containing around 20 gallons of gas between them. Our insurer does not consider that a big enough risk to exclude coverage, or want to increase the price. Quite the opposite - they give us a discount for parking our cars inside the garage overnight, and our policy does not cover theft of or from the cars if they're parked in the driveway or the street outside our home. So the insurer considers the risk of criminal activity a much bigger risk than that of fire when it comes to ICE vehicles. In contrast, insurers do not want to provide cover for EVs parked in residential garages overnight. Someone who lives a few doors down got a Hyundai Kona last year, and she had to pay $300 more on her policy for fire coverage with the car parked inside the garage.

So the li-ion thermal runaway fire risk issue is not paranoia or cover for political resistance to EVs. It's a real problem. I suspect that it's being focused on Tesla because (a) Teslas have sold in greater numbers than any other brand of EV, and (b) they have been aggressively trying to increase the energy density of their battery packs, to address range anxiety resistance to buy. But either a fundamentally new battery chemistry is needed, or ways of managing the risk of li-ion batteries down to an equivalent level of risk to that of driving around with 15 gallons of gas 3-4 feet behind you.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

A Prius has a tiny battery pack compared to a Tesla... But holy Cow!

[Lyle Romer]

It merely represents what people have taken to doing if they take the Tesla on a long trip.

But these next two pictures are not staged... Tesla obviously has some serious design flaws in their battery packs. And never ever get a Tesla battery pack submerged in either fresh or salt water. Even the dealerships are going up in flames...

I actually witnessed a Tesla fire near my house a few years ago. A guy somehow crashed into a tree in the median and caused a battery fire. He was killed by the fire, not the crash. The first responders couldn't get close enough to get him out.

[Lyle Romer]

Yeah, but as Kenneth notes, in a Prius (and any other hybrid, for that matter) you have both a li-ion battery pack and a gas tank - so from a risk management perspective, you have both a Tesla and a Ford Pinto rolled into one!

That having been said, I read stories about hybrids going up like the Hindenburg a lot less often than pure EVs, which may suggest that the thermal runaway risk increases in proportion to the size of the battery pack. I also can't remember ever reading about a Nissan Leaf blowing up, and they have very small battery packs, with about the same capacity of those in a modern hybrid.

Statistically, the more battery cells that are contained in the vehicle, the more likely it is to have one fail. With the thermal runaway, once one cell fails it ignites the rest of them. The only way to prevent that would be isolating the cells from each other which would make the pack impractical.

It's the same statistical concept as the counterintuitive fact that if an airplane has four engines there is more likely to be an engine failure on a given flight than if the plane has only two engines.

[Gordon McLeod]

The better battery is the Lithium Iron Phosphate battery (LiPO) they have better energy storage and run far cooler and a proper BMS will lock out a cell very effectively. I have been using them in my bike (80amphr) for several years with no issues and after 5 years they still charge to the same level. They are the choice for most off grid solar installations but they are far heavier and more expensive than the standard LI

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Can't wait to see what these do in a high speed crash...

[Geoff Jones]

You're Being Lied to About Electric Cars

MOTORTREND
Dec 6, 2022

I've heard all the supposed arguments. It seems every time anything even tangentially related to electric cars is published, certain people feel compelled to share their own research. You've probably heard it all, too: A Prius is worse for the planet than a Hummer. EVs are coal-powered cars. Electric cars produce more CO2 than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Lithium mining is uniquely bad for the environment. Cobalt mining relies largely on slave labor, if not child slave labor. Actually, that last part is sadly true. But the rest? Lies. And I'm not even going to get into the hypocrisy of posting anti-EV rhetoric from a lithium-ion-battery-powered phone or laptop.

The first thing we should talk about is direct versus indirect emissions. Gas-powered vehicles have both direct and indirect emissions, while electric cars—I'm specifically talking about battery-powered vehicles, or BEVs, but we will just call them EVs—only have indirect emissions. How so? Both types of cars/trucks/SUVs are manufactured, and the process of building cars involves a global manufacturing effort that uses energy from all sorts of sources. This includes everything from the diesel fuel used to mine and transport metal to the electricity used to manufacture tires. A big knock on EVs is that because most battery production is centered in China, itself a notorious coal-burning country, battery-powered cars begin their service lives with more indirect emissions to their credit.

The above is true. If you take an ICE vehicle and an EV and lock them in a room, by the time the world ends the undriven electric car will have already resulted in more bad stuff than the undriven gas-powered car. But here's the crazy part: Cars are driven. Wild, I know, but it's true. The more EVs get driven, the cleaner they get. This last part would be especially true if the energy used to power EVs is itself CO2-free. But even if it's not, EVs still lead to less emissions over time than cars that burn gasoline.

How Long Does That Take?
Not so long, it turns out. The New York Times published an article called "E.V.s Start With a Bigger Carbon Footprint. But That Doesn't Last." To quote the Gray Lady, "the pollution equation evens out between 1.4 to 1.5 years for sedans, 1.6 to 1.9 years for SUVs and about 1.6 years for pickup trucks, based on the average number of vehicle miles traveled in the United States." So even if you sign just a two-year lease, by the time you turn in your EV, it has released less CO2 than the equivalent ICE vehicle.

But That's Just, Like, Your Opinion, Man
No, it's not. The Yale School of the Environment conducted a study published by Nature Communications that explains how even with indirect emissions due to battery production, EVs release fewer greenhouse gases over the course of their service lives than ICE vehicles. As one author, Stephanie Webber, said, "The supply chain for combustion vehicles is just so dirty that electric vehicles can't surpass them, even when you factor in indirect emissions." This is a comprehensive study you should read for yourself, but please allow me to single out one thing:

Taken together, indirect emissions accounted for [approximately] 26% of the 1.5 Gt CO2 caused by the US LDV fleet in 2020. "

Yes, light-duty vehicles in America release 1.5 gigatons of CO2 per year! As terrible as it is to burn coal to produce batteries, nearly three quarters (about 74 percent) of these CO2 emissions come after the vehicle is built. In other words, about three quarters of all light-vehicle emissions come from the fuel that powers them. Remember, the 26 percent figure is all the indirect emissions for all vehicles—mining the iron, producing the plastics, stitching the fabrics, etc.—not just those from EV batteries, which are but a portion of it.

It's a bit of a red herring to only focus on the CO2 released by burning coal to make batteries while ignoring the CO2 released by all the other parts of the manufacturing process. I find it particularly grating when people willfully ignore the CO2 released by drilling, transporting, refining, and yes, even pumping oil/gasoline. Sure, more EVs will mean more batteries, but unlike gasoline, which always has to be burned, battery production can become (and is becoming) greener. Another way to look at it is the energy required to produce an average EV's battery is equivalent to about 74 gallons of gas.

But What If You Burn Coal To Power EVs?
This is the crazy part. Even if you only ever burned coal to create the electricity to power EVs, that's still less CO2 than is released by burning gasoline. How is this possible? Simple: efficiency. I beg you to check out this article by Karin Kirk about the efficiency differences between ICE and EV propulsion. In simple terms (and the simpler the better for me), she explains how ICE vehicles only send between 16 to 25 percent of the energy created from burning gasoline to the wheels. The other 75 to 84 percent is lost due to inherent inefficiencies. Most of the loss is heat and noise, although about 10 percent is sacrificed to stuff like drivetrain losses, essentially the difference between crank horsepower and wheel horsepower. I should point out that diesels are more efficient (30 to 40 percent of the energy created goes toward forward propulsion), but they spew noxious particulates with serious health consequences and still aren't particularly efficient compared to EVs.

Electric vehicles (eventually) send 87 to 91 percent of the energy in the battery to the wheels. I say "eventually" because 22 percent of that energy needs to be "recaptured" through regenerative braking. Put another way, 31 to 35 percent of the energy stored in the battery is lost for various reasons, but 22 percent can be regenerated by the "brakes." Kirk goes on to say, "Replacing gasoline-powered cars with EVs saves energy, regardless of the energy source used to recharge EVs." Please take note of the word "regardless," as that's how "coal-powered cars" are in fact cleaner than gas-powered cars. Efficiency: EVs have it, ICE cars don't.

To summarize, replacing gasoline with coal (which, for the record, is an abysmal idea) would reduce energy usage by 31 percent. Another way to think about it: Right now, Americans use about 9 million barrels of oil a day for our automotive transportation needs. Magically switching to EVs charged via burning coal would result in only needing the equivalent of about 6 million barrels. That's a big reduction. Replacing gasoline with EVs charged via natural gas would use 48 percent less energy. Green energy (hydro, solar, wind, etc.) instead of gasoline would reduce the amount of energy needed by nearly 75 percent, or 6.7 million barrels of gasoline equivalent, as only 2.3 million barrels equivalent would be needed. That's massive.

What Powers The Power Grid?
In 2021 the U.S. power grid's makeup was 38 percent natural gas, 22 percent coal, 20 percent renewables, 19 percent nuclear, and 1 percent other (like petroleum). This means that if all cars in the U.S. were suddenly powered by electricity, at most only 22 percent of them would be fully coal-powered. If you lump nuclear in with renewables because atomic energy produces no CO2 emissions, 39 percent of the grid is emission free. However, coal use is declining. As recently as 2008 America burned more than 1 billion short tons per year. In 2021 it was 501 million short tons. You should also know the percentage of renewable energy is expected to grow. Projections say 22 percent of power in 2022 will be from green sources, 2023 will see the figure grow to 24 percent, and the percentage will continue to increase.

Why Are You Being Lied To?
A massive question beyond the scope of this rant, but one way to explain it is by what my former colleague Jamie Kitman calls The Scientific Uncertainty Principle. It works like this: Scientists at research institutions discover smoking causes lung cancer. Tobacco companies counter by hiring their own scientists who say the opposite. In the car world, this began with leaded gasoline. Harvard, for instance, said it was a terrible poison. GM and Standard Oil disagreed. Millions of people died with millions more poisoned. Often there's a profit motive behind the lies, yet sometimes the disinformation comes from culture wars. Sadly, we live in the age of alternative facts; in my view, it's the latter at play here. I admittedly spend too much time reading comments on stories about this subject, but I find the massive volume of anti-EV hysteria alarming. Then I remember something my father always told me: Truth is a defense.

[Mike Blakesley]

Well I skimmed over that article. I suppose I'm a fairly (well sort of) normal American male citizen, and as one of those I can tell you that "the environment," while I would love to save it, I still need to get around. That's a given. So when I do buy an electric car, it won't be due to my trying to save the environment. It'll be because I need a new vehicle. The EV simply has to check these boxes to get me to buy it.

1. It's got the features I want
2. It isn't a gigantic pain or time-suck to refuel it
3. It isn't going to leave me stranded in the middle of nowhere unexpectedly
4. It isn't going to break my bank account or trash my credit rating trying to repair it
5. It isn't going to kill me by exploding accidentally in a minor accident
6. It's going to stand up to Montana winters and summers
7. I can afford it

Every gas vehicle I've ever bought has met all those requirements, so I'd expect the same and maybe a little more from something that's supposed to be newer and better.

[Leo Enticknap]

Cost, range, and safety, are the three areas in which EVs are still nowhere close to competitive with ICE-Vs when comparing like with like.

[Lyle Romer]

Cost, range, and safety, are the three areas in which EVs are still nowhere close to competitive with ICE-Vs when comparing like with like.

My gas powered F-150 with 36 gallon tank has a range well in excess of 550 miles on the highway, can be fueled from almost empty to full in 5 minutes or so and won't spontaneously combust. The most range available on the F-150 lighting is 320 miles (and it won't get anywhere near that on the highway without regenerative breaking going on). The lower range version takes 41 minutes on a "fast" charger to charge from 15% to 80% which will be even longer on the 320 mile range version. It will take close to an hour to charge 200 miles worth of best case range.

I realize that over time you will save significant cost in fuel using electricity vs. gasoline but you have well over $10,000 in additional up front cost. Plus, if you keep it long enough the battery will eventually need replacement and will cost more than some small gasoline powered cars. You'll be investing this money into a vehicle that is 10-15 years old.

Honestly, a step change in battery cost per kWh needs to happen before EVs are really competitive with ICEs. Improvement in energy density would help as well.

If the goal is to eliminate CO2, we'd probably be better off investing in synthetic fuel production using "green" energy to produce it and burning it in the existing, cost effective and well developed ICE engines.

[Mike Blakesley]

I wonder if EVs won't cause the "lease" model to come to the fore, for used cars as well as new. They'd have to build the cost of battery replacement into the lease somehow. Nothing is free, that's for sure.

[Leo Enticknap]

Like the radical new super battery, synthetic liquid fuel and algal biofuel is something one reads an exciting article about every now and again, but it's the usual story - scaling it up from a lab experiment to volume production seems to be the gotcha.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Until batteries are made safe, I think the best thing is to stick with Natural Gas. People can have fill connections installed at home and then they don't have to go to some remote fuel place every week. The one really good thing about running on Natural Gas is that the oil in the engine stays very, very clean. I have yet to hear of a Natural Gas explosion in a vehicle, although I'm sure it has happened some where. Gasoline tanks have exploded too, But N.G. is a lot cheaper than gasoline. It's as low as $1.68 a gallon in Salt Lake City right now..

[Harold Hallikainen]

Are there road taxes on natural gas used as a motor vehicle fuel? As there is a transition away from gasoline and diesel for vehicle fuel, there will have to be some other way to pay for road maintenance. I'm thinking a fee for mileage would be reasonable. This could be by users putting their odometer reading on their tax return. Here in AZ, we have periodic emissions checks, so the mileage can be verified at that time.