Blogging will be light as I’m in Paris for an “electromobility” conference at the ESSEC Business School. I’ll be presenting on Friday on the case study of electric vehicle deployment in Hawaii, the subject of a report I co-authored last year called Electric Vehicle Paradise: How Hawaii Can Lead The World In Deployment. Au revoir! (That’s sadly the extent of my French language skills.)
In case you’re in the market for a super-expensive, environmentally beneficial vehicle, Teslarati does a convenient side-by-side comparison of the Model S with the Toyota Mirai. The cars actually come out pretty even, with one glaring exception: the ease of fueling.
In our view, one of the major benefits of BEVs [battery electric vehicles] is that you refuel them at home, overnight, while you’re sleeping, so that your Model S is “full” every morning. Unless you travel long distances on a regular basis, you will rarely need a Tesla Supercharger or any other refueling source away from home. That’s huge, and often get’s lost in the discussion of “range anxiety” that always seems to invade the thinking of those who don’t own a Model S. Although fuel cells are sexy, it seems odd to us that Toyota has returned to a 20th century fueling station paradigm. In essence, there is little difference between refueling a Mirai and refueling a Camry. Sure, the fuel is different, but you have to hunt for a specific refueling station as your Mirai slowly depletes its hydrogen. No charging at home—ever.
Not to mention that the hydrogen can be energy-intensive to generate and may not come from clean sources. As I’ve written before, there are big question marks about the long-term environmental benefits of investing in hydrogen fueling. It may be necessary for some big cargo trucks that can’t otherwise be powered efficiently by batteries, but we shouldn’t look to it as a panacea for passenger vehicles.
Either way, we’ll need the prices on both vehicles to come down significantly in order to make a dent in our transportation emissions.
And the honor goes to Erik Belmer of Ohio:
Erick Belmer is the proud owner of a 2012 Volt.
As Belmer tells InsideEVs, the Volt was purchased on March 28, 2012. Since then, it’s seen a daily commute of 220 miles there and back, with a single longest trip of 430 miles in a day.
Oil changes come every 38,000 miles and tire rotations every 10,000 miles. That’s basically all the maintenance that’s been required on Belmer’s Volt.
The particularly good news is that Belmer has seen no loss in battery capacity after all that driving:
“Volt is holding up flawlessly! No noticeable battery capacity loss. Used 9.7 kw because it’s a 2012. I am so pleased with this vehicle!”
“The Volt was always my dream car! To get to drive it everyday is a dream come true! This car is Wonderfully engineered!”
Erick Bellmer and his 200K mileage Chevy Volt
One important note is that the Chevy Volt has a gas engine that kicks in after about 40 miles of electric driving. So we won’t see this kind of mileage accrue in such a short period of time in an all-battery electric like the Nissan LEAF or BMW i3, which don’t have the range of the Volt on a daily basis.
But if all-battery EVs have their batteries hold up like Belmer’s, that bodes very well for the long-term value of the car. It would be reassuring to customers, many of whom are opting to lease the vehicles, in part out of doubts about long-term battery life. It also bodes well for the quality of second-life batteries, which can be reused outside of the vehicle for different energy storage options.
It’s an unsubstantiated rumor, but the Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger site in the Central Valley (off I-5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles) may be getting the first one in the “modern” era. Here’s an eyewitness account:
While charging at Harris Ranch on the way back from the shareholder meeting I was chatting with the employees at Subway inside the Shell gas station market, I was told by someone (not a Subway employee) who works there that Tesla is putting in the battery swap station where the car wash is currently located, I guess the car wash is broken & they don’t want to get it fixed so they struck a deal with Tesla & plans have been drawn up to build the station where the car wash is currently, best guess is should be open in about 6 months or so & will be manned with Tesla personal for awhile until they get the kinks worked out, several times Elon has mentioned the first station will be on the I-5 & this area is perfect.
We know that Tesla batteries can be swapped faster than it takes to get gas. If you could “refill” your Tesla battery for another 250 miles or so in just a minute or two by swapping in a fresh one, it would solve the range anxiety/charging time issue completely.
This Harris Ranch carwash could soon be California’s first EV battery swap site.
There are really no technical barriers to pulling this off, but in practice it can be complicated. The battery is the most expensive part of the vehicle (tens of thousands of dollars in a car like the Tesla). So if you just drop the battery off for a new one every time you’re out and about, who is going to own it? And how are you going to know the quality of the new battery you’re receiving? And how will it affect the purchase price of the vehicle?
The EV charging company “Better Place” introduced this battery swapping business charging model a few years back, but the company got crushed. Bottom line is that the automakers didn’t want to give up possession of the battery ownership for a swapping model.
But given Tesla’s ambitions to be an energy storage company as much as a car company, it may make sense for them to retain ownership of the batteries. It solves the range and potentially the cost issues of the cars, and it also gives Tesla an opportunity to flip the batteries for energy storage whenever they need to.
If the Harris Ranch swap station is happening, it’s likely a pilot project for the company to evaluate. But it could portend a new era in how electric vehicles are engineered, operated, sold, and — most importantly — experienced by drivers.
New information on Tesla’s Nevada gigafactory indicates that the company is making a major play for the stationary storage market (i.e. backup battery systems for homes and businesses and maybe stacked batteries for bulk energy storage. According to CEO Elon Musk:
“Stationary storage is a vital element for going to sustainable power generation and we are currently assuming that somewhere around 30 percent or so of the Gigafactory output would be aimed at stationary storage, that’s a rough guess, says Musk. But, one way or another, stationary storage is going to be a really huge thing that needs to be done.”
30 percent is a pretty staggering figure for a company making such great headway on the vehicle side. Of course, we need both types of energy storage, for transportation and for decarbonizing the grid. Meanwhile, plans for the factory are coming along, with some production possibly beginning as soon as 2016.
I hope they hurry up — I’ll be in line to get their mass-market Model 3 as soon as it’s available.
A satire waiting to happen:
A Tesla driver reports on his epic (11,000-mile) all-electric US road trip this summer. The driver went from his home in Seattle to national parks in California and then out to Maine. His only real challenge was the “Great Montana Supercharger Desert” between Rapid City, South Dakota and Ritzville, Washington — a distance of 916 miles with only a single Supercharger in Billings, Montana.
First of all, it’s great to know that such a road trip is possible, although at this point it’s only for the most economically successful among us who can afford a Tesla. Second, this is the result of Tesla’s investment in a nationwide supercharger network, so they should be congratulated on providing this level of service for their customers. And finally, it’s a nice window into the future road trip possibilities for electric drives, once the costs come down and the infrastructure improves in the coming decade.
But more importantly, this driver offers a common sense list of requirements for a functioning public charger network, and it’s a list that could apply even to Level 2 chargers for less expensive electric vehicles (I recommend reading the whole thing). I hope policy makers and charging companies alike take notice. The obvious prime factor is:
Reliability. There is no way around this one; it is key – the charger has to work when you get there. In fact, unreliable chargers are WORSE than no chargers – without chargers, the owner will have made other plans for the trip; but with an unreliable charger, they may encounter a long unexpected delay.
As an EV driver, I don’t really have “range anxiety” about running out of juice on a big drive, but I do have this kind of “charger anxiety.” Will the charger I expect to use be functional when I arrive? And relatedly, will it be available or will there be a long line?
The driver makes another important point about what he calls “usability.” No key fobs, please, or complicated charging company networks that you have to sign up for in order to use the charging equipment. We need to make the transaction as smooth as possible, just like a gas station credit card reader.
Once we solve these seemingly minor but significant hurdles, more of us will be in a position to take the kind of all-electric road trip that this driver got to enjoy.
The California State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) issued proposed new building code standards last month that vastly promotes electric vehicle charging infrastructure in new home construction. It’s much more costly to wire a home for “Level 2” or 240V charging once it’s already built, while relatively cheap to do it when the house is already under construction:
The new code will ensure that the conduit and service panel capacity is already there, making installation a simple matter of running wires and bolting charging stations into place. By one estimate, the average cost of compliance will be around $50, a fraction of the potential savings to residents who choose to install charging stations. For one- and two-family dwellings, the service panel must have capacity for a 40-amp circuit (sufficient for a 32-amp charging station), and conduit that can support wiring for an 80-amp circuit.
The new standards also call for parking lots with 100 spaces to have conduit and service panel capacity to wire at least 3 percent of the parking spaces.
This change is welcome news for future EV drivers and home buyers/renters in California. A Level 2 charger offers a lot more convenience than the traditional 110V wall outlet. For example, when I plugged our electric vehicle into a regular wall outlet, the battery charged at about 5 miles an hour (one hour of charge gave me an extra five miles of driving). But after we installed a Level 2 charger, we could get at least 20 miles of range for every hour of charge. It means we never need to worry about the battery being too low and having to make sure to plug in every night before bed.
I hope California’s actions inspire other states, as the country moves to electrify passenger vehicles at an increasing rate.
Back in 2011, California regulators banned the state’s electric utilities from owning and operating electric vehicle charging equipment. Part of the logic was that utilities would crowd out innovation, using their monopoly power and capital resources to dominate the market.
But so far, electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the state is rolling out poorly. eVgo, the company that received a $100 million state mandate to deploy charging infrastructure, is way behind schedule. Many existing charging stations are crowded and too few and far between, while the equipment is unreliable and often unavailable when you need it. Meanwhile, competing charging companies have developed cumbersome “networks” that you have to sign up for in order to access their chargers, instead of just having a simple, universal payment method like a gas station credit card reader.
So is it time to call in the cavalry (i.e. utilities) to flood the market with cheap charging? San Diego Gas & Electric would certainly like to get that call. The company recently proposed a “pilot project” that looks more like a large-scale EV charging effort:
The [vehicle-grid integration] pilot is an “innovative hourly time-variant rate and associated grid-beneficial charging infrastructure,” SDG&E said, calling for authorization to develop 5,500 charging stations targeting multi-family dwellings and workplaces between 2015 and 2025. The VGI pilot would require approximately $59 million in capital costs and $44 million in operations and maintenance over the life of the project.
The California Public Utilities Commission has punted consideration of this pilot to the larger proceeding dealing with the question of electric utility involvement in charging more generally. That proceeding may issue a ruling in December.
From my perspective, the current charging infrastructure is inadequate and frustrating. Limited involvement by utilities might be welcome, provided that it’s done on a small scale to make sure we don’t unleash a beast. Perhaps the SDG&E pilot, or a smaller version of it, could be a good first step. The ultimate resolution of these issues will of course depend on careful fact-finding at the proceeding and input from stakeholders. But the bottom-line focus should be on the provision of cheap, reliable, ubiquitous, and easy-to-use charging for EV drivers.
Auto dealerships may be falling down on the job when it comes to selling electric vehicles. A new policy brief by UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and Economy analyzed consumer surveys and conducted interviews with automakers and dealers. The report reveals:
large across the board deficits on every facet of the [electric vehicle] purchase experience, notably salesperson knowledge and expertise about the vehicle.
Tesla was the notable exception. The company has made headlines fighting state-level policies that restrict automakers from direct sales to customers, and this survey indicates why: Tesla can do a much better job selling their cars than a disinterested franchise dealer. As the report notes,
Tesla’s elimination of steps that add little or no value at the retail facility (e.g. price negotiations, paperwork, and waiting) shifts efforts toward more PEV-specific support that likely bolsters customer satisfaction scores.
I’m not surprised by the negative findings. I found a similar dynamic when I researched electric vehicle policies in Hawaii. Many sales reps there were unfamiliar with electric vehicles and not motivated to sell them. They couldn’t answer basic questions about how the vehicles perform. In one case, a dealer owner on the Big Island was apparently openly hostile to the idea of electric vehicles and refused to sell them at all, despite the strong economics there (he’s since reversed course and is now selling them). By contrast, when I leased my electric vehicle from a California dealer that was a top-seller for EVs, the salespeople were very knowledgeable and helpful.
If automakers are serious about selling electric vehicles, they need to work the carrots and sticks to get their dealers familiar with the cars and motivated to sell them. At a minimum, at least one sales rep on-site needs to drive one for an extended period of time. Only through consistent use can they 1) understand the challenges and options available and 2) develop a feel for the positives these cars bring to the driving experience.
