Electric vehicles as a clean technology movement have been in a holding pattern of late, if not a downright spiral. Sales are generally down from last year, battered by cheap gas prices and a lack of new models to excite consumers. Without advancements in the models, the broader consumer base is either unaware of EV benefits or cowed by perceived deficiencies (cost and range, mainly) of current EV options.
But that dynamic, I believe, is about to change.
New models are set to hit the roads this fall and winter that will likely start a new wave of EV buying. Most prominently, Tesla is finally talking to customers about designs for the new electric SUV, the Model X, set to release in limited production this month. The falcon-winged bad boy starts north of $130,000 though for the premium model, so sales will once again be aimed at the top 1% of us.
The Model X looks great if you can afford it, and most of us probably can’t.
Chevy’s new Volt will also arrive this fall, complete with a marketing blitz. Early reviews sound positive, as the car looks better, drives longer on the battery (over 50 miles), and gets better gas mileage the few times you actually need it. Not to mention the new Nissan LEAF should be out soon, with possibly 120-mile range — a significant boost from the current 85-mile range.
When you add it up, the major EV automakers are set to introduce major upgrades to their products. While it’s harder to compete with cheap gas, EVs offer inherent benefits of a better and cleaner drive, lower maintenance costs, and the ability to drive for virtually free if you have solar PV on your roof. Plus, it’s the most important thing you can do for the environment if you have to drive.
So my guess is we’re in a holding pattern before some good news comes out on EV deployment. EVs won’t get to mass-market level for maybe another decade or so, but we’re getting there in big leaps, and this fall we should start to see another one take shape.
Well, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out which industries stand to lose if California transitions to a low-carbon economy. Judging by the latest attacks on SB 350 and SB 32, sprawl developers and the oil industry are feeling a little panicked.
First oil. They sent out a deliberately misleading mailer claiming that SB 350, which seeks to reduce California’s oil consumption in half by 2030, will lead to gas shortages and higher prices. Under the fake pro-consumer-sounding group the California Drivers Alliance, they claim the following:
The Gas Restriction Act of 2015 (SB350) will restrict the use of gas and diesel by 50 percent. This law will limit how often we can drive our own cars. The state will also be collecting and monitoring our personal driving habits and tracking how much gas we use. They’re now reviewing regulations to force automakers to include data monitoring systems in all cars so that regulators will be able to penalize and fine us if we drive too much or use too much gas.
The Sacramento Bee then shot this lying fish in its barrel with a fact check:
The ad exploits a lack of specificity in Senate Bill 350 about what measures the California Air Resources Board could take to reduce petroleum use. But it misleads by suggesting gas rationing, surcharges and citations based on driving habits are in store.
Bottom line: California will be pursuing fuel economy measures, electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells and biofuels to meet these objectives — not gas rationing. With battery costs declining, battery electrics should be the dominant vehicles in production by then anyway.
Next comes big sprawl in the guise of the Building Industry Association. The BIA claims SB 32, to extend our greenhouse gas reduction goals to 2030 and 2050, will be an automatic “zero net energy” mandate, leading to an additional $58,000 in costs for each new housing unit, or a price increase of over 12 percent.
However, these numbers once again mislead. First off, the bill is no such mandate for new construction. The California Energy Commission will continue to develop new ways to reduce pollution from new buildings, but it will be on the same trajectory it’s been on for decades, which has saved Californians billions since the 1970s.
Second, most of the costs the BIA tallies are attributed to oversized, expensive solar PV arrays for each new home. Even if all new buildings had to have those arrays (which they don’t), prices will come down by 2030 significantly (80% in the last five years or so), while most neighborhoods would likely pool together on community solar rather than purchasing it individually. Finally, any increase in efficiency measures and solar will only save California residents in reduced energy bills.
For more on the BIA arguments, NRDC has a nice take-down here.
I guess it’s good news these industries are fighting back. If we have any hope of a cleaner, more prosperous and sustainable economy, it will only happen if these industries go the way of the fossils they help burn.
Tesla’s PowerWall will be leading the charge on cheap batteries.
A report from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency this month indicates it’s likely:
The 130-page report prepared by AECOM predicts a “mega-shift” to energy storage adoption, driven by demand – from both the supply side, as networks work to adapt to increasing distributed and renewable energy capacity, and from consumers wishing to store their solar energy – and by the rapidly changing economic proposition; a proposition, the report says, that will see the costs of lithium-ion batteries fall by 60 per cent in less than five years, and by 40 per cent for flow batteries.
This projection is more bullish than most analyses I’ve seen, which suggest price declines of 8-10% a year. If true, the impact on both our energy and transportation system will be enormous. Cheap batteries paired with solar will lead to customer “grid defections” from utilities, plus a proliferation of microgrids that can run independent of the grid. And of course electric vehicles will become ubiquitous with the cheaper price and better range.
Another reminder that batteries are the most critical clean technology right now in the effort to decarbonize our economy.
You can see a preview of the concept car, due hopefully by 2017, in this video:
I have to admit, the design doesn’t grab me. Why can’t EVs look cool instead of like strange insect cars? Tesla certainly pulled it off, and other models aren’t bad, like the Fiat or Chevy Spark. But the LEAF, Mitsubishi iMiev, and BMW i3 all look odd to me.
Still, this version seems to have some nice features, like plenty of interior room, lots of light, and some cool-looking seats. Nissan and Tesla will be competing with Chevy in this price and battery range, and those models can’t come soon enough. 2017 could be a turning point year for EVs.
Even used it’s still pricey
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the trend so far with the Tesla resale market:
An analysis of used Model S sales finds that while not many have hit the market so far — just 1,600 — they typically command prices well above $50,000. At the same time, they’re attracting buyers who are a little younger, a little less affluent and less likely to live in California than the typical Tesla driver.
“The way we think of the new Model S buyer is a wealthy tech executive living in the Bay Area — that’s the image in pop culture,” said Jessica Caldwell, director of industry analysis for the Edmunds.com auto information service. “If you have a lower price point, you’re going to get a larger, more diverse pool of people.”
Used EVs, including Teslas but also LEAFs and other models, will be cheaper and help to reach a much larger market. But they will also compete with cheaper, better-range vehicles that will be coming on-line in the next few years. Still, it will be hard to beat a cheap 200-mile used Tesla Model S for the foreseeable future.
You can drive it but you can’t refuel it.
Green Car Reports documents the challenges that drivers of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are having finding functional stations:
Last year, the state of California committed $100 million over five years to building 100 hydrogen fueling stations in the state by 2020, in partnership with Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda, and private companies like First Element Fuel as well.
Early lessee Paul Berkman of Corona del Mar, for one, is frustrated.
He’s paying $500 a month for a vehicle he hasn’t been able to drive for five weeks, because all three hydrogen stations within 20 minutes of his home or workplace have been down for more than a month.
Berkman told Green Car Reports that the closest station, five minutes away at a Shell site in Newport Beach, has been “struggling”–and that at best it can only fill his Tucson Fuel Cell to half capacity.
Ten minutes away, a station by the University of California–Irvine campus has been closed for upgrades.
The California Air Resources Board issued a testy response to the article, which Green Car Reports included in an update. They cite the early trouble with plug-in electric vehicle stations, too, as an example of what they hope are just short-term problems.
Trouble is, public charging stations for battery electrics are also unreliable, even after a number of years of widespread usage. So that’s not exactly confidence-inspiring. The state will need to get this issue fixed, for both fuel cell and battery electrics, if it has any hope of encouraging widespread adoption of these technologies. But at least with battery electrics, you can just charge at home.
Simply ludicrous.
Barry Ritholz at Bloomberg seems to think that Tesla just put the nail in the long-term coffin of the internal combustion engine:
What Tesla has done with its “Ludicrous mode” upgrade for the Model S is figure out how to put almost all of the power in its system to all four wheels at once without melting its engine-management components.
The Tesla P85D with the complete 90kWh “ludicrous” upgrade costs about $100,000. The upgrade gives it a 0 to 60 mph time of 2.8 seconds. To put that into context, to get that sort of acceleration from a car previously required a Porsche 918 Spyder (0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds) or a Bugatti Veyron (2.6 seconds) or a Koenigsegg One (2.5 seconds). They each cost $1.1 million, $2.9 million and $3.8 million, respectively.
You can save some money by buying a Lamborghini Huracan ($237,250) or the Ferrari 458 Italia ($239,340), but both are slower than the Tesla. That makes the McLaren 570s a relative bargain at $184,900, but it, too, is slower than the Tesla.
The bottom line for Ritholz, who proclaims himself one not to make bold predictions, is that the top-end market will soon fall to Tesla, followed by the rest of the car market:
My guess is that by 2035, if not sooner, the majority of automobiles sold in the U.S. and Europe will no longer be gasoline-powered.
Let’s hope he’s right, because the future of climate stabilization depends on it.
So says a new study by UC Berkeley economists Severin Borenstein and Lucas Davis. After looking at IRS data on tax credit programs like for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and energy efficiency improvements, they found that most of the benefits are going to top-income earners. In part it’s because lower-income renters don’t have access to property-based credit programs.
But they also found that the programs are inefficient at encouraging better energy usage:
What about efficiency? Although tax credits may initially seem like a good idea, they are actually quite a poor substitute for first-best policies like a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program. Probably the single biggest limitation of a tax credit is that it cannot achieve the efficient level of usage. Take energy-efficient windows as an example. A tax credit can encourage households to install better windows, but it cannot get households to use less heating and air-conditioning. A carbon tax, in contrast, would encourage households both to install better windows and to use less heating and air-conditioning.
One could argue in response that the inequities may even out over time — as high-income residents buy electric vehicles and renewables like solar, the costs are coming down and bringing the technologies within range of lower-income residents. And these programs are certainly better than nothing.
But in the long term, they should be replaced by the programs that Davis and Borenstein advocate: a carbon tax or rigorous cap-and-trade system.
Washed out bridge over the Texas Wash in Southern California
I’m just back from a vacation road trip through Southern California, Arizona, Nevada and the Sierra Nevada. Along the way, I saw evidence of our progress in transitioning to a cleaner economy, but also the impacts of climate change.
For starters, we were lucky to make it through the Southern California Desert before a freak July rainstorm destroyed another decaying piece of infrastructure — a highway bridge over the Texas Wash near Desert Center. Interstate 10 is now closed through that area. Hard to imagine a more powerful symbol of both our need for transportation investments and the likely future of severe climate impacts.
Corn Springs palm oasis
In that same area, we off-roaded to a beautiful campground at Corn Springs, a major stopoff and village site for local Native Americans and a very interesting canyon beyond the desert floor. The spring is now dry, presumably from dewatering related to local mining.
Meanwhile, we saw solar panels galore, including major solar installations north of Interstate 10. It seemed like almost every emergency roadside phone stand had a solar panel above it, evidence of the now-cheap cost of panels.
For electric vehicles, we didn’t see many, other than a few Teslas in Mammoth Lakes. It will be a while before remote areas of the U.S. are truly reachable and workable for EVs.
Boulder Dam featuring low lake levels (notice the white bathtub ring).
For further climate impacts related to drought, we visited Boulder (Hoover) Dam, and saw the ridiculously low lake level. Mono Lake also has not risen anywhere near the shoreline elevation required by the 1994 State Water Resources Control Board decision to restore the lake.
This part of Mono Lake should be underwater by now.
But if these July rains keep up, maybe the rain cycle will be reversing in California and throughout the west. Not that that would be a good thing for the climate and ecology here.
Finally, we visited the ancient bristlecone pine trees — the oldest living things on Earth — in the White Mountains past the eastern Sierra Nevada. One grove featured trees older than 4000 years. Always nice to put things into perspective. Let’s hope people will still be able to visit these trees in another 4000 years.
Bristlecone Pine Trees — oldest living things on Earth
Per legislation passed in 2013, California’s investor-owned utilities finally had to disclose and map their energy system needs and information at the distribution level (i.e. areas served by wooden electric poles). The plans the utilities filed this month will greatly assist clean technology purveyors of all stripes:
Mandated by state law AB 327, these DRPs are essentially blueprints for how Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric are going to merge rooftop solar, behind-the-meter energy storage, plug-in electric vehicles and other distributed energy resources (DERs) into their day-to-day grid operations and long-range distribution grid planning and investment regimes.
As more solar, energy storage, and electric vehicles come on-line, utilities will need both to plan for these resources and make it easier for clean technology companies to know where to place the resources for optimal value and ideally optimal revenue. While not perfect, the plans filed this month are an important step to a cleaner and more reliable grid.
