The Pragmatics of Electric Cars

Biodiesel, fuel cells, hydrogen combustion — what do they have in common, besides the hype? They need painful, massive overhauls of the way we get our personal transportation moving. The guys over at Tesla Motors have given all of this a lot of thought and explain why they went with straight-up electric. Here’s a quick look:

• Infrastructure: the so-called “hydrogen economy” is burdened by a few very heavy problems, a significant one being lack of infrastructure (transport and fueling stations). The electrical distribution grid in the US is already in place and far more efficient in total at 92%.
• Production capacity: Electrolysis of hydrogen from water is extremely inefficient, and is most easily produced from natural gas — yet another fossil fuel. Why not just put that electricity right into the grid? The amount of acreage needed for adequate production of biodiesel is staggering, and solar needs only a fraction of the area to produce the same unit of energy.
• Flexibility: Electricity is source-neutral. You can generate it from coal-fired plants, nuclear reactors, hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and solar panels. The end result is energy that is available everywhere. Oh, and you can put a solar panel on your carport to charge your Roadster. Any excess you generate over what the car needs gets credited to your electric bill. Imagine being payed to drive your car around.
• Net total emission reduction: using one step from source fuel to electricity means that even though the emissions are “shifted,” they are still greatly reduced. In addition, new technology from a Georgia company promises to handle that last pollutant from coal-fired plants: carbon dioxide. Scrubbers take the CO₂ from the smokestack and turn it into crop fertilizer, sequestering the carbon dioxide. And it’s easier to reduce pollutants at a relative few power plant smokestacks than it is at millions of exhaust pipes.
• “A world of 100% hybrid vehicles is still 100% addicted to oil.” — Mark Eberhard, CEO Tesla Motors. Hybrids may be a viable stepping stone to independence from fossil fuels, but they are not the answer to that independence. More pros and cons of hybrids are in the article “Hybrids, Plug-in or Otherwise” at Tesla Motors’s site.

Tesla has come along and shown us that you can build an all-electric car with performance, in this case better than most gasoline automobiles, and have the range of gasoline-powered cars. The technology that is enabling this more than anything is the lithium-ion rechargeable battery, just like in your laptop or iPod. Though auto aficionados are already well aware of the Tesla Roadster, Tesla has yet to make themselves known to the general public, great press coverage notwithstanding. That will change when Tesla’s family sedan appears in 2008-2009. I have a hunch that they’ll sell out of those too, and suddenly GM, Ford, and all the rest will stop wasting time with natural gas, hybrid systems, and fuel cell automobiles for the general car buyer. That day can’t come soon enough. Wanna know more? Check the Tesla Motors White Papers and read “The 21st Century Electric Car” (PDF).