Electric Vehicle Sales Bottom Out

[goldstar]

An article in the Los Angeles Times newspaper suggests that electric vehicle (EV) sales are declining with no current prospect of recovery. According to senior analyst Jessica Caldwell of the automotive research company, Edmunds, sales of EVs stand at about 3.6% of all new car sales for 2014. This is below the 3.7% market share for 2013 and is not likely to grow at all before the end of this year.

This decline is occurring during a particularly strong sales season with total figures for August being higher than any time in the last decade. About 1.6 million vehicles were sold in the U.S. in August, an increase of about 3% from august 2013.

"The whole automobile market has grown," Caldwell said. We're not seeing electric vehicles as part of that growth."

According to Caldwell, the numbers are surprising to automobile forecasters who predicted that EV sales would continue to expand as more manufacturers came on line and costs came down. But this hasn't happened despite dealers offering increasingly better deals on financing and incentives.

Caldwell went on to say that relatively stable gas prices and increasing good fuel efficiency levels of gasoline-powered cars generally have led to a slackening interest in non-gasoline electric hybrid and plug-in vehicles. Buyers are looking at the higher average price of EVs and deciding that "the math doesn't really work out."

Caldwell thinks it's not likely that strong fourth quarter sales could reverse this trend. "The latter part of the year, as the weather gets colder, there tends to be more SUV and truck sales," Caldwell said. "So I don't expect to see a run on electric vehicles."

For the full article, go to:

http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-electric-vehicle-sales-20140903-story.html

Happy Motoring!

[1st Gen]

I see a couple things happening here. Gas prices have stabilized so people are feeling more secure about buying gas cars. We only have until the next crisis in the Middle East before that sense of security is blown apart, which is always just around the corner. Also, electric cars are an exclusive market because they are so expensive. Until they manage to bring the prices, and complexity down, sales will have to level off. This is of course temporary.

Electric cars will be with us for a long time to come. The last 10 years has seem more R&D than the last 50,(estimating), and there have been payoffs. New battery technology for one. Competition for oil from China isn't going away any time soon, and global warming is only going to get worse.

It's unfortunate that the act of buying an EV has been turned into a political statement, but I think that too will change. For people who don't like the current administration, just wait. The concern for me is, unless we have progressive leadership, EV won't get any attention, and I very much want this to work.

The internal combustion engine may go the way of the external combustion engine, which is to say, they may become obsolete. Electric cars can be charged by the sun, and there are a whole range of advantages to using electrons instead of carbon based fuels.

[goldstar]

EVs suck, big time.

SkyActiv technology rules.

Happy Motoring!

[1st Gen]

Compared to a diesel locomotive, yea. We have all kinds of electronic devices in our lives that work incredibly well. I have every reason to believe that EV's will eventually become the go-to for local commuting, and maybe more. It would certainly take a lot of pressure off.

[goldstar]

The Limits of Energy Storage

The following article, "The Limits of Energy Storage Technology" is taken from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. I have excerpted from the article only the parts relevant to the present discussion and I have tried to be as verbatim as possible so as not to inadvertently misrepresent the authors' viewpoints, but interested parties will want to read the whole article which can be found at:

http://thebulletin.org/limits-energy-storage-technology

The authors make the following points:
In regard to fossil carbon, the energy densities of natural gas and coal, around 55 mega-joules per kilogram and 20 to 35 mega-joules per kilogram respectively, are similar to those of crude oil. Biofuels such as ethanol and biosynthetic diesel can have volume and mass energy densities equal to that of fossil carbon, but since they're regularly harvested, their real energy densities are substantially lower.

Renewable energy, unlike fossil carbon, is harnessed dynamically from the environment. therefore it won't be as useful as fossil carbon until it can be stored and transported with similar ease.

Many companies and scientists are diligently trying to improve energy storage technologies, and we're confident that substantial progress will be made. We can, however, use thermodynamics to calculate the upper limits of what's possible for a variety of technologies. And when we do this, we find that many technologies will never compete with fossil carbon on energy density.

Since batteries are key to EV operation, let's start with them. Today's lead-acid batteries can store about .1 mega-joules per kilogram or about 500 times less than crude oil. Those batteries, of course, could be improved but any battery based on the standard lead-oxide/sulfuric acid chemistry is limited by foundational thermodynamics to less than .7 mega-joules per kilogram.

Due to the theoretical limits of lead-acid batteries, there has been serious work on other approaches such as lithium-ion batteries which usually involve the oxidation and reduction of carbon and a transition metal such as cobalt. These batteries have already improved upon the energy density of lead-acid batteries by a factor of about 6 to around .5 mega-joules per kilogram. A great improvement but, as currently designed, they have a theoretical energy density limit of about 2 mega-joules per kilogram. If research regarding the substitution of silicon for carbon in the anodes is realized in a practical way, then the theoretical limit on lithium-ion batteries might break 3 mega-joules per kilogram. Therefore, the maximum theoretical potential of advanced lithium-ion batteries that haven't been demonstrated to work yet is still only about 6% of crude oil.

But what about some ultra-advanced lithium battery that uses lighter elements than cobalt and carbon? Without considering the practicality of building such a battery, we can look at the periodic table and pick out the lightest elements with multiple oxidations states that do form compounds. This thought experiment turns up compounds of hydrogen-scandium. Assuming that we could actually make such a battery, its theoretical limit would be around 5 mega-joules per kilogram.

So the best batteries are currently getting 10% of a physical upper bound and 25% of a demonstrated bound. Additionally, given other required materials such as electrolytes, separators, current collectors and packaging, we're unlikely to improve the energy density by more than about a factor of 2 within 20 years. This means hydrocarbons, including both fossil carbon and biofuels, are still a factor of 10 better than the physical upper bound, and they're likely to be 25 times better than lithium batteries will ever be.

Finally, let's look at storing energy in electric fields (such as capacitors) or magnetic fields (superconductors). While the best capacitors today store 20 times less energy than an equal mass of lithium-ion batteries, one company, EEstor, claims a new capacitor capable of 1 mega-joule per kilogram. Whether or not this claim proves valid, it's within about a factor of 2 of the physical limit of the bandgap of the dielectric material. Electromagnets of high-temperature superconductors could in theory reach about 4 mega-joules per liter similar to our theoretical batteries given a reasonable density; existing magnetic energy storage systems top out around .01 mega-joules per kilogram, about equal to existing capacitors. Here again, both the realized technology and its ultimate physical potential are far behind the energy density of common hydrocarbon fuels.

In conclusion, the authors state that nature has given us hydrocarbons in the form of fossil carbon and biomass, and their energy-mass and energy-volume densities are superior to the thermodynamic limits of nearly all conceivable alternatives. Thus, in their opinion, it's quite likely that hydrocarbons of one form or another will be humanity's primary energy storage medium for quite a long time.

I hope you enjoyed reading this material as much as I enjoyed researching it, although some may find it quite shocking.

Happy Motoring!

[jay92gt]

Oh now I get it

[1st Gen]

Nice
It comes as no surprise that gas is more potent than just about everything else on the planet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS_2JD5whRY

I'm unclear as to whether your excellent research article also includes the latest developments in Lithium Ion battery development?

http://www.21stcentech.com/energy-update-today-lithium-ion-batteries-tomorrow-lithium-air/

"Better still would be a solution that no longer requires an oxidizer. Instead the battery would breathe in oxygen from the air. And that is precisely what is being developed by a team of researchers at IBM who in January 2012 announced a breakthrough in lithium battery technology. Called the Battery 500 project, the technology is a lithium-air (Li-air) battery capable of storing as much as 1,000 times more energy than current lithium-ion technology."

[goldstar]

Thanks, Jon.

In answer to your question, the article I referenced did not specifically mention lithium-air batteries by name but since it was published in 2009, I'm sure the authors must have been aware of the technology. They did however refer to ultra-advanced lithium batteries that use lighter elements than cobalt and carbon which I assume included lithium-air technology. With this in mind, the authors stated that could such a battery actually be produced, its theoretical limit would be around 5 mega-joules per kilogram.

Since I was unfamiliar with lithium-air battery technology I had to do further research. I looked first at your informative 21st Century Tech reference and noted that it was expected that the lithium-air battery would yield 10 times the energy storage density of the lithium-ion battery.

Next, I went to the Wikipedia article on Energy Density which contains a table listing (among other parameters) the specific energy in MJ/kg of various storage materials. Go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Gasoline/Diesel/Fuel oil: ~ 46 mega-joules per kilogram

Lithium-ion battery: .36 - .875 mega-joules per kilogram
Note that the authors in the article I cited about the limits of energy storage reported this figure as about .5 mega-joules per kilogram which is approximately in the middle of the range given in the Wiki table.

Now, given that a lithium-air battery might have 10 times the storage capacity of a lithium-ion type, the resultant output would fall in the range of 3.6 to 8.75 mega-joules per kilogram, still far under the potential of gasoline.

But there's still more troubling news. In the course of my research I came across the Quartz website which discusses the current research in this area. Go to:

http://qz.com/214969/two-big-labs-most-promising-next-generation-battery-electric-car

According to the article, in 2009 IBM announced plans to develop a lithium-air battery named the Battery 500 Project. In 2012, the U.S. Dept. of Energy set up the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) by funding the Argonne National Laboratories outside Chicago.

Apparently, however, the challenges that must be overcome to develop the lithium-air battery have so far been insurmountable.
In a little remarked article in Nature magazine in March of this year, IBM's Winfried Wilcke, director of the Battery 500 Project announced the project would be dropped in favor of a new technology involving sodium. Wilcke said a sodium-air battery would have a better chance of competing economically with conventional cars.

About the same time, the government-funded JCESR dropped its lithium-air project entirely and like IBM did not announce the decision publicly. Kevin Gallagher, a JCESR manager said it was concluded that the challenges were too overwhelming to resolve any time soon. "The penalty of using gaseous reactions overwhelmed any advantage," he told Quartz.

Undoubtedly, research continues in this area but when, or if, it will become a viable technology remains to be seen.

Happy Motoring!

[1st Gen]

There's a conversion issue between watts and joules that I find a bit confusing. It does appear that the new direction in research has dramatically revised the previous estimates for theoretical limits.
With Tesla releasing their patents on batteries technology to the public domain, and with no less than DARPA also weighing in on research, I'm still hopeful. Clearly, there are still some heavy hitters in the game.
I think it would be Pollyanna for us to believe there aren't power interesting looking to derail progress in this area. I'm not sure what that would look like, or how to differentiate it from actual research limitations, but we should be cautious with our judgments either way.

[FE3-323]

Gasoline/Diesel/Fuel oil: ~ 46 mega-joules per kilogram

Lithium-ion battery: .36 - .875 mega-joules per kilogram
Note that the authors in the article I cited about the limits of energy storage reported this figure as about .5 mega-joules per kilogram which is approximately in the middle of the range given in the Wiki table.

Now, given that a lithium-air battery might have 10 times the storage capacity of a lithium-ion type, the resultant output would fall in the range of 3.6 to 8.75 mega-joules per kilogram, still far under the potential of gasoline.

While im noting this.... Why have I not heard any mention of the limited ability to fully capture the Mj/kg from gasoline in an internal combustion engine.
In comparison- The high yield of electric motors ...

[goldstar]

While im noting this.... Why have I not heard any mention of the limited ability to fully capture the Mj/kg from gasoline in an internal combustion engine.
In comparison- The high yield of electric motors ...

The maximum efficiency of gasoline-powered internal combustion (IC) engines with direct injection is currently about 35-36% (although some turbocharged, direct injection diesel engines can approach an efficiency of 50%). This is due primarily to the unavoidable heat losses and mechanical friction inherent in this type. Note that the Mazda SkyActiv-G engine is characterized by direct injection, extremely low internal friction and a very high thermal efficiency all factors responsible for its outstanding fuel economy without sacrificing power or engine displacement.

The efficiency of electric motors, on the other hand, can be as high as 90%. Furthermore, they are capable of developing maximum torque as soon as they start to rotate obviating the need for a gearbox in a motor vehicle or perhaps requiring just a simple gear reduction set. However, unlike IC engines electric motors are not prime movers and, in a motor vehicle, require a battery or an IC engine with an alternator to provide their electricity. When the entire drivetrain (including the resistance losses in the connecting wiring and controls is taken into account) the overall efficiency drops well below the theoretical maximum efficiency of the electric motor alone.

Happy Motoring!

[1Mazda323Fan]

I, for one, am happy to hear (read) this. I've never been a fan of EVs, save hydrogen fuel cell cars. I've been saying for years that until we get a major breakthrough with the battery technology, recharging technology and an upgrade to the power grids they will never be a true alternative to a normal, fossil fuel powered vehicle. Judging by the info above, those improvements are a ways off yet. I say, cut back on the battery development and put that money into hydrogen instead. There is one downside to this news, however. It will become increasingly difficult to play my new favourite game: Unplug the Electric Car. Guess I'll have to go back to Tip the Land Rover.

EVs suck, big time.

SkyActiv technology rules.

Well said as always, goldstar. Well said.

[goldstar]

It does appear that the new direction in research has dramatically revised the previous estimates for theoretical limits.

Actually, I don't think your statement is correct. The theoretical upper limits for energy storage density of any given substance or technology are determined by the physical laws of the universe as we currently know and understand them and are not subject to manmade change nor dramatic revision. For example, the energy storage density of gasoline is ~ 46 MJ/kg and there is nothing we can do to change that. This is not to say that we can't discover new technologies or improve the efficiency of those that currently exist, as in the case of the IC engine, or more closely approach the theoretical upper limit of any technology - but the theoretical upper limit remains just that and is not subject to the manipulation of man.

With Tesla releasing their patents on batteries technology to the public domain, and with no less than DARPA also weighing in on research, I'm still hopeful. Clearly, there are still some heavy hitters in the game.

I certainly agree. I'm all for research in any area of genuine scientific interest and look forward to any new breakthroughs that obtain. At this point, I don't hold out much hope that any technology will ever supplant fossil fuels as an energy source for the great majority of motor vehicles but, hey, one never knows.

I'm always reminded of that old adage, however, "If wishes were horses a kingdom I'd ride."

I, for one, am happy to hear (read) this. I've never been a fan of EVs, save hydrogen fuel cell cars. I've been saying for years that until we get a major breakthrough with the battery technology, recharging technology and an upgrade to the power grids they will never be a true alternative to a normal, fossil fuel powered vehicle. Judging by the info above, those improvements are a ways off yet. I say, cut back on the battery development and put that money into hydrogen instead. There is one downside to this news, however. It will become increasingly difficult to play my new favourite game: Unplug the Electric Car. Guess I'll have to go back to Tip the Land Rover.



Well said as always, goldstar. Well said.

I agree with your analysis of the current situation in the EV research field and I, too believe that fossil-fuel powered motor vehicles will be with us for a long time to come. The thought of an automotive future where my mileage was limited by the capacity of my battery, interspersed with lengthy recharge times, is too unpleasant to contemplate. For me, it would take all the fun out of driving and turn it into an unpleasant chore. But that's just me.

And thanks for your kind words.

Happy Motoring!

[1st Gen]

This looks promising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLxkO0w6B4 Solid state batteries

[FE3-323]

very cool!!