The electric revolution is coming fast!
Posted on July 29th, 2008 in environment, links, society, technology, transportation, urban planning, vancouver |
I’ve always been of the opinion that as our personal vehicles shift to greener fuels, they will be powered by electricity - not ethanol or hydrogen. Biofuels require more energy to produce than is gained through its usage, not to mention its impact on food production (something the public is only now realizing). Hydrogen as a technology is extremely expensive and has been called a pipe dream, not to mention the overwhelming task of converting all our fueling stations to said new infrastructure. Electric cars, on the other hand, are here right now!
As the legend goes, when personal vehicles were first being built in the 19th century, there was two technologies available - the petrol based internal combustion engine or the electricity based motor. For various reasons, gas cars won the battle, but as the tide has shifted, it looks quite obvious that they will not be winning the war.
As people may or may not know, GM created an electric vehicle, the EV, back in the 90’s. This technology is not vapourware! We can build these things today! And that’s why the car companies are making the shift. In the last few days, there’s been a number of announcements by various companies that they are about to produce electric vehicles - this tells me that a critical mass is being hit, and within the next few years, EVs will start showing up everywhere.
- Chevy Volt - 2010
- Toyota to boost Prius production by 70%
- Smart Car EV - 2010
- Mini EV - 2010
- Tata Nano EV - 2010
- Nissan EV - 2012
4 Responses
The biggest infrastructure challenge isn’t ensuring we have plugs available to charge cars, but that we have enough electricity generation capacity.
I don’t think EVs will be the saviour many people expect them to be (much like biofuelss weren’t). We’re still going to need lifestyle changes that stop people from driving around in single-occupancy vehicles for hours per day. It’s just inefficient, regardless of how the energy is generated.
EVs are still a good idea - we have ways of producing clean electricity (although we still use fossil fuels to generate a lot of electricity) and most EVs will be charged overnight, which smooths the demand curve and allows for more efficient electricity generation.
What annoys me the most is that GM is only going with green vehicles because it is what’s popular today. They had EVs as a leased vehicle in the 90s and they were demolished because GM invested in major oil companies.
I’m glad the City of Vancouver has taken that step to passing by-laws to accommodate EVs. That’s what I call forward thinking.
As far as I’m concerned, auto manufacturers either have to “get with the program” or die. It’s frustrating that after 10 years, or even 30 if you go back to when the concept of peak oil was introduced, we’ve still made no progress. It’s perhaps even the opposite (worse fuel efficiency in some heavier vehicles than 20 years ago). Well-timed with your post, Paul, was a Nova episode I joined my parents to watch. I think it was called The Car of the Future. I tuned in when they were doing an overview of the hydrogen fuel cell and tests/demos etc. in Iceland, where they have renewable resources for energy such as geothermal. Now, why… why would they use renewable energy to make hydrogen, an imperfect and surely doomed process, instead of powering EVs? I don’t know.
It sounds like the hurdles with getting EVs on the road is the battery technology, which seems like it’s improving, and energy generation. Lithim-ion is apparently recyclable, which is cool. Uh, that and government regulations :) Ultimately we still need to break free of car culture, for so many good reasons. Oil companies have a very strong grip…
A contact of mine said, “I can’t recall the exact ration, but isn’t 1/3 of the damage done at the time of the car’s creation?” I have to look into this. He’s probably referring to production and materials. If we spend our lives looking for the perfect solution, we’ll end up bypassing the ones that just need a little bit of work to make them sustainable. We need to make sure they pass the test.
What is really annoying is how they could have been doing this 100 years ago but they chose not to, seemingly to make more of a profit.
If you haven’t already, check out the movie “Who killed the electric car?”, it will provide some ‘electric’ insight.