Reasons to Rethink Electric Cars
By Mary Theroux • Monday March 5, 2012 1:36 PM PDT • 29 Comments
It's a "brick"
Here are a few good reasons to think about just how much more federal money ($5 billion and counting) should be poured into subsidizing electric cars:
A new study from the University of Tennessee finds that electric cars cause worse pollution in China than standard gas-burning cars. The bottom line is that one has to look beyond just the cars’ emissions—since they run on electricity, one must look at the effects of the production of that electricity. And in China, production of electricity for the cars results in much more overall harmful particulate matter pollution than if everyone drove a gasoline-powered car:
in terms of air pollution, electric vehicles were more harmful to public health per kilometer traveled than gasoline-powered cars in China.
It would be interesting to see a similar analysis done on a global basis.
A week or so ago, the owner of a Tesla Roadster found out that the battery of his sporty car had completely drained and could not be recharged. As it turns out:
The battery can be fully drained simply by parking the vehicle too long without charging it because of the vehicles’ always-on systems running quietly in the background and using minuscule amounts of power over the hours and days.
The owner in question had stored his Tesla for 6 weeks while his house was being remodeled, and the car for which he had paid $109,000 and waited 6 months for delivery is now a “brick,” totally non-drivable until he pays $40,000 for a new battery.
Tesla, which has received $465 million in federal financing, has responded that this is very unusual and its next model won’t have this problem.
It is apparently unusual, but not unheard of, including for the Prius whose battery “should” last 7 years. Fortunately, a Prius battery “only” costs about $4,000 to replace.
Fisker automotive, the recipient of $529 million of U.S. federal financing, has already recalled all of its cars—which are produced in Finland—because of a fire hazard.
And it now looks as if the U.S.-produced Volt may be next. In bad news for President Obama’s employment figures, GM will idle 1300 workers at its Chevy Volt production facility for 5 weeks as it hopes sales will draw down its current 154-day supply of unsold cars. Reports that the Volt—with a per-vehicle cost of $250,000 to American taxpayers—has a tendency to catch fire may account in some part for slow sales:
Tags: Bailouts, Employment, Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Government subsidies, Transportation 
I have always contended that the effects of generating electricity to charge electric driven vehicles should be used in computing cost/mile and also the pollution generated to charge tese cars. another item is the surge effect when everyone returns from work about the same time and plugs in their cars fr recharging. How many brownouts will this cause in the urban community.??Just a thought
Jerry Hattox | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
i have a 2002 prius & the battery works like new. i called the dealer & the battery is only $1800.00. china builds 1 new coal fired electricty plant a week so yes they do have smog...with or without electric cars.
.....bad reporting, bad facts, go back to your cave
david | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
There have always been some stumbling blocks with any new technology but that doesn’t mean it’s an all or nothing, throw the baby out with the bathwater thing. design changes and battery technology and costs will catch up, and price will come down and prevalence goes up it always does.
Manolete' Garcia | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
If you take purchase price of volt and competition ie ford focus $41.000.00 volt $20.000.00 focus that leaves $21.000.00 difference at current price 5250 gallons of gas and aproxamatly 200.000 miles you can drive with the focus to be equal with the volt purchase price ITS A NO BRAINER PURE ECONOMICS but our POTUS has shown he HAS no brain when it comes to ECONOMICS !
steve | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
Hi, David:
Did you ask your dealer for the cost, installed? The $4,000 price is not out of range when dealer installation is included. As I said, “unusual but not unheard of,” and I included the Prius tale directly as a result of a family member’s experience (including his being quoted $4,000 by his dealer).
And these costs are of course on top of what we taxpayers are being forced to “invest” in the firms.
Feel free to follow the links in my post to see how accurately I have reported the findings of University of Tennessee, the gargantuan costs of these subsidies to the politically well-connected, and the other items detailed.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
Yes the coal-power plants will be producing power with/without electric cars, but with electric cars on the road the power demand is even greater whether you are driving your electric car or not. Gasoline engines only produce a footprint if you’re driving it. Common sense.
carey | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
@David: I LOVE my Prius! Glad to hear yours is still using the original battery as mine is a 2005, and hubby was concerned how much longer the battery would last. We just returned from a 4,200-mile vacation, and our total gasoline cost was less than $300. We understood when we purchased this car that the new battery would cost $8,000, so it pleases me to know it will be half that price installed!
Sue | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
Hi, Manolete:
The problem, as our Senior Fellow William Shughart outlined in “Silicon Valley, Beware of Feds Bearing R&D Gifts,” is that “bureaucrats have no incentive to invest in the most commercially promising ventures.”
Thus, they are pouring millions of dollars into what is likely the wrong technology, and without the feedback mechanism of profit-seeking investors, there is no incentive for true innovation. Indeed, these perverse incentives need never produce a viable model. See, for example, “Energy’s Risky $1 Billion Bet on Two Politically-Connected Electric Car Builders,” detailing the complete disregard the Energy Department, Tesla, and Fisker have for the taxpayer money they are spending.
Venture capitalists reap huge returns on their investments that come to fruition. This offsets the fact that by far the majority of their investments don’t make it, and provides them the incentives they need to keep backing highly risky start-ups.
U.S. taxpayers, on the other hand, only get stuck with lowered lifestyles when the government uses their money to place losing bets on Solyndra, Fisker, or the politically advantageous gee whiz deal du jour.
If electric car companies had to raise all of their money privately, accountable to investors seeking rewards that will only be obtained through successful innovations, we’d see better and cheaper technology, sooner, than we will ever likely see from government-backed “enterprises.”
Which would you prefer?
With best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
From Wikipedia – “Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%” Electric motors on the other hand have an efficiency of over 90% in most cases. So even an electric car powered by a coal fired electric grid doesn’t add as much pollution as a gasoline or diesel engine, particularly when stuck in traffic. In an electric car in traffic, when you are stopped, you use virtually no electricity at all. You can’t say that with a gas guzzler. I agree with David on this point. “Bad reporting and bad facts.” Although I must say David, I would never be caught driving a Prius. They look like a potato on wheels. I’ll take my truck over a Prius any day.
Kevin | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
Hi, Kevin:
If you follow the link to the University of Tennessee study, I believe you will see that my blog post reports its findings accurately:
If you wish to dispute Prof. Cherry’s study, you will need to take it up with him.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
In 1994, a revolutionary new battery technology was invented by Stan Ovshinsky. Lacking the funds to develop it, he sold the patents to GM and then they were sold to Chevron. This technology is vastly superior to the LION battery used in the Tesla, Volt, and Leaf of today. Better range, lower cost, recyclable, no fires and longer life. But GM and Chevron have not and still won’t allow NIMH batteries to be used in electric cars. This crime against humanity has resulted in more pollution than 1000 Gulf Oil spills.
Stan Sexton | Mar 5, 2012 | Reply
Message to above drones–this is NOT “new” technology, they’ve been floating – and refloating – this crud for 100 years!!
Greg H | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
You’re quite right to demand that we look at ‘green’ solutions holistically. I’ve been saying for some time now that batteries are very nasty chemistry – both to make and to dispose of. Lots of umpleasant heavy metals such as cadmium and lead.
And the weight; batteries are mostly much heavier than gasoline per unit output of energy, so you have to push that extra weight around all the time you are moving. It doesn’t diminish as you use it like gasoline.
Even the new lithium ion batteries are horrendously expensive and where does the lithium come from? Mostly China I believe, where they are none too careful about their extraction techniques. Prius batteries are transported halfway round the world before they are installed and then the finished car is transported round the other half to where it is to be sold.
I’m not saying that electric cars will never beat conventional cars, but we do need to look carefully at all the consequences before turning what are essentially prototypes into full production.
John Harrison | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Computers in electric cars can schedule the actual charging for the middle of the night, when time-of-use rates are lowest (between midnight and 7 am at the California E-9B tariff). We typically spend $25 per month to charge our LEAF, and the meter charge is a significant part of that.
I don’t have the link handy, but I’ve read that even where coal is burned to make electricity (not here in California) doing so at night produces less noxious byproducts, because the atmospheric chemistry is different then.
Not that I’m defending coal. The charges against coal are largely the same, no matter what you do with it. It makes as much sense to complain about “coal fueled” computers as coal fueled cars.
Anecdotal stories about electric car failures aren’t much of an indictment. For every one you can find there have been hundreds of thousands of gasoline cars “bricked” or burned or totaled, for their own anecdotal reasons. By those lights, it’s time to “rethink gasoline cars”.
Stan– Most hybrids, like the Prius, use NiMH batteries. The switch to lithium ion in newer models is motivated by weight savings, not patent problems. Also note that a patent issued in 1994 would have expired in 2011.
Christopher Schmidt | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Our alternative is to wait? Gasoline technology was really bad when we first started using it. But as the tech became more available it became better, and I hate to say this, without government subsidies it took 30 years to develop. Once the government got involved (in the form of WWI) things progressed rapidly. I agree we should closely watch what is going on with the realization that movement has to be made at a cost. The fallout of batteries having problems is the cost of early adopters of new tech. Early adopters of the gasoline engine, enjoyed the challenge, and when it broke said “oh well”, and got it fixed, then the builders tried to prevent it from happening again, the whining was minimal. There is nothing sinister going on and there should be no surprise that setting up the foundation for a new tech will have cost, and there are going to be bad people that abuse it.
But 10-15 years from now when you have a laptop that has a battery that only needs to be charged once a week, and you have rechargeable batteries than can sit on a self for 5 years without needing a recharge, look out at your car because that is where the tech came from.
P Chatelle | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Is there a market for used electric vehicles? I doubt it. The true mpg can be approximated by multiplying the advertised figure by 0.365.What happened to windpower and boon pickens?
richard | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
P. Chatelle:
Again, please read, “Silicon Valley, Beware of Feds Bearing R&D Gifts,” by our Senior Fellow William Shughart. There is no good reason—and many bad ones—for taxpayer funds to be used to subsidize trials and error. There is tons of Venture Capital money drooling to reap the rewards of the technology(ies) that gets this right.
I too look forward to alternatives that actually are viable. But contrary to your contention that centralized bureaucracies are responsible for breakthroughs, as Dr. Shughart reviews, aren’t innovative solutions far more likely under the discipline of accountability to private investors than to politicians seeking ammunition for reelection?
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Thank you Mary for the post.
“The bottom line is that one has to look beyond just the cars’ emissions—”
Figuring a “cost benefit ratio” is like the dinosaurs, a thing of the past; who’s even heard of it?
Maybe part of the reason some folks do their green things is that it makes them feel good, regardless of the good that their green things actually accomplish. If I really wanted to fool myself and live in a dream world of false goodness I think I’d just self medicate. Whatever the source, it’s still self-delusion.
What you’ve said here needs to be expressed much more often.
cam | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
A lengthy, detailed article, published today by The Center for Public Integrity on the gov-backed energy firms, which gave huge bonuses just before declaring bankruptcy. Also, take a look at who started these firms besides the boon pickers.
richard | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Thanks, Richard.
I found the article you cite from the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News, and link it here, “Energy-backed firms award bonuses, file bankruptcy.”
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Here’s a concept charge your batteries with solar electric.
No carbon footprint period!! There are systems just for
Charging your batteries or convert your residence or
Business to solar electric.
Yes we all want to take the sinister approach but where
There are issues there are solutions. As Americans we
Need to extract ourselves from the drama and have a more
Proactive approach to energy conservation. Use our time to
Come up with solutions!!
JeffP | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Strange,
I find myself agreeing with part of your post:
There shouldn’t be the government subsidies to push electric vehicles (but they shouldn’t subsidize big oil either right?)
But I do like the alternative power and experience of my Leaf. With some of the cheapest electric rates in the nation (7.5 cents/watt) and a daily commute that just fits in the Leaf’s envelope I am saving enough on gas to almost make the payment. I seriously believe the Leaf is the model T of electric cars. In 20 years people will be amazed that anyone ever actually bought one of these clunky, expensive, slow and inefficient things. If nobody uses the first generation of any technology, there will never be a second generation.
Howard | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Howard,
I am truly glad that you like your Leaf and it suits your needs. I am all for innovation and new technology. But there has been and will be innovation—better and less expensive—in the absence of government subsidies. And there will always be early adopters like you, those who bought kit computers, and the Model T.
Perhaps seeing more of the pork doled out to these “green” companies will help you agree completely with my post: “Energy-backed firms award bonuses, file bankruptcy.” Does getting your second-generation Leaf really mean tax dollars should be used to pay $725,000 in bonuses to three executives—including $450,000 to the CEO—shortly before a firm that received a $118.5 million energy loan declared bankruptcy, losing it all?
And that’s just a drop in the bucket. Read it and see what you think.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 6, 2012 | Reply
Not on-topic, but I must say that Ms. Theroux is the most congenial blogger/writer I have ever encountered. She treats her critics with every courtesy, and always seeks to educate. I am most impressed by her attitude, and her work for The Independent Institute.
Best,
J Oxman
J Oxman | Mar 7, 2012 | Reply
Thank you, J. Oxman.
That’s very gracious of you.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 7, 2012 | Reply
Yet another serious drawback is energy density-say a battery system has a storage capacity of 100Kwh-far more than current batteries, but a reasonable amount for future endeavors. What happens in a collision or malfunction meltdown? This is a tremendous amount of energy to expel over a short time period and the current system of fuses on each battery element cannot protect against all crash modes. With future dc voltages ranging above 800v the danger for emergency responders becomes of real concern-not to mention the level of training/education required. Points to ponder...
Tom Blackwell | May 3, 2013 | Reply