Think about your desktop computer, your flat-screen TV, or your smart phone.

At first, they seemed like a novelty. A few years later, everyone had them.

Think about your desktop computer, your flat-screen TV, or your smart phone.

At first, they seemed like a novelty. A few years later, everyone had them.

Will electric vehicles be next?

The question is hotly debated among car manufacturers, lawmakers, scholars, and electric vehicle (EV) aficionados. But with so many factors influencing car buyers’ decisions it’s not an easy one to answer.

Until recently, Georgia was poised to lead the way on EV adoption as one of the top states in the country for sales. However, advocates for the technology believe Georgia has been moving backward since last July, when a new law (House Bill 170) took effect that revoked a state tax credit of up to $5,000 and imposed a $200 annual registration fee. Since then, sales of electric vehicles have plummeted.

A loose coalition of Georgia utility providers, fuel station builders, EV advocates, waste and logistics industries and automobile manufacturers is currently lobbying for the creation of a legislative study committee to examine the financial impact eliminating the tax credit has had.

“I definitely think there is a role for the state to be involved,” said State Rep. Don Parsons, R-Marietta, who chairs the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee and supported HB 170. “The question is how much do you do? What do you do? And how do you impact the people who may never use these vehicles?”

January 26, 2016 Decatur – Don Francis, executive director of Clean Cities Georgia, charges his electric vehicle using DC Fast Charging station at Agnes Scott College electric vehicle charging station on Tuesday, January 26, 2016. DC fast charging provides a rapid recharge of battery electric vehicles, generally in less than 30 minutes. Interest in the factors that influence the adoption of electric vehicle technology has grown in Georgia following the Legislature’s decision to eliminate a $5,000 tax credit and impose a $200 per year registration fees. EV sales have plummeted 90 percent since last June, when the law took effect. HYOSUB SHIN / HSHIN@AJC.COM

Gas v. electric vehicles

Incentives and fees aren’t the only factors influencing mainstream adoptions of electric vehicles.

A global glut of oil supplies caused average gas prices in the U.S. last week to drop to their lowest level in more than 12 years. The result: electric car sales have slowed, while purchases of sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks have risen.

Elon Musk, the CEO of electric car maker Tesla, said this week on CNN that the EV industry will likely suffer, at least until gas prices rise again.

Another big factor is the sale price of the vehicle, and the ongoing maintenance costs.

The battery life on an electric vehicle is limited and can cost more than $13,000 to replace. But improvements in battery technology are likely to extend battery life significantly in coming years. At the same time, electric vehicles don’t require periodic maintenance like oil changes and don’t have components that can break down on gasoline-fueled cars like transmissions and fuel pumps.

Stanford University Professor Tony Seba believes improvements in batteries will be the catalyst for the changeover to electric vehicles by bringing down ownership costs. He predicts that by 2026, all new cars sold in America will be electric vehicles.

Seba, who studies disruptive technologies, spoke earlier this month at an annual State of MARTA breakfast about electric and self-driving vehicles.

He said companies are investing heavily in the development of cheaper lithium batteries and building mega-factories to ramp up production. These new batteries will be more powerful and increase the range of electric vehicles (which can be 80 to 100 miles for a Nissan Leaf) to more than 200 miles on a single charge.

Right now only luxury auto maker Tesla can offer that kind of range, at a premium price upwards of $71,000. But by 2017 or so, more affordable car manufacturers including GM and Nissan will begin offering these higher-range vehicles, Seba said. Tesla also intends to introduce a car that can travel 600 miles on a charge by 2017.

The median car price in the U.S. today is $31,000.

Electric vehicles tend to be higher-priced than similar gas-powered models. But when EVs drop below a retail price of between $35,000 and $45,000, “then, no gas car above that price will be worth it,” Seba said, because the new breed of electric vehicles will cost only one-tenth of what it costs to fuel and maintain gasoline-powered cars.

Professor Jeremy J. Michalek, who leads the vehicle electrification group at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks a 10-year time frame for going all-electric is too optimistic. Even when all new car sales are electric, it will take decades more for the entire fleet to turn over.

Michalek points out that foreign policies, technology improvements, fluctuating oil prices and other factors will influence EV adoption.

“It is certainly possible electrics will disrupt and take over gasoline,” he said. “But it’s also possible that they won’t.”

The complete article can be found here.

Assalamualaikum w.b.t & Salam Sejahtera,

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Thank You

Published Tue, 2016.01.19 | By

Nic Lutsey

The original article can be found here

A few times a year, a news story appears about electric vehicles having high carbon emissions, throwing doubt onto electric vehicles’ ability to play a major part in any low-carbon transportation future. With the New Year still young, let’s resolve to assess the data, get to the bottom of things, and stay well informed on all our low-carbon technology options.

Electric versus gasoline vehicles

Stories like this one highlight how power from coal-fired generating facilities partially powers electric vehicles, suggesting that clean electric vehicles are not quite here yet. That story focused on the Netherlands, which gets about 29% of its electricity from coal. And it’s true that coal-generated power flows through the electricity grid most everywhere. But the story could have done a much better job in answering the real question, which is whether (and where) electric vehicles are cleaner than their non-EV counterparts.

Luckily, there is a lot of data available to answer that question. The case of the U.S., where the electricity supply is even more coal-dependent in many areas than in the Netherlands, is quite instructive. A recent Union of Concerned Scientists study added up the carbon emissions through the vehicle life cycle and estimated U.S. vehicle carbon emissions as averaging 68 miles per gallon fuel economy equivalent, about two and a half times better than average gasoline cars. In places like California, the Pacific Northwest, and New York, where coal is a relatively small proportion of the energy mix, EVs were even cleaner. Even in regions of the country that are still big coal users, electric vehicles handily beat the average car on carbon emissions. This is true because electric vehicles are typically 3 to 5 times more efficient in using energy than combustion vehicles.

We took a look at the recent US EPA “eGrid” data on electricity generation carbon emissions. Then we combined this with data on where new electric vehicles are registered state-by-state. The figure below shows carbon emissions versus the percentage of electricity generation from fossil fuel sources for each state. The size of the bubbles represents electric vehicle sales in 2014. California is highest with almost 60,000 vehicles, and the other top-10 electric vehicle sales markets are also labeled. We use electric vehicle efficiency of 0.3 kWh per mile, which is the efficiency of the popular Nissan Leaf, and include factors like transmission losses and upstream energy emissions as EPA does.

Electric vehicle carbon emissions and fossil fuel energy source (and electric vehicle sales as size of bubbles), compared to gasoline vehicles in the U.S.

What we see, quite clearly, is that electric vehicles’ average carbon emissions tend to vary with the amount of fossil fuel (mostly coal and natural gas) in a state’s electricity generation mix, but they are reliably lower than conventional gasoline vehicles. The chart also plots various US average gasoline vehicles from US EPA “Trends” and fueleconomy.govdata. Based on these data, the average U.S. electric vehicle has about 60% lower carbon emissions than the comparable 34-mpg conventional vehicle and about 70% lower emissions than the average 28 mpg car. And another way to show how much cleaner electric vehicles are than conventional cars is by comparison to highest-mpg gasoline-only car – theestimated 56-mpg 2016 Toyota Prius. Considering that light trucks are now over half of US light-duty vehicle sales, the average 20 mpg light truck is shown for context. As shown, the average U.S. light truck emits about twice as much carbon per mile driven as a Nissan Leaf in the states that have the highest coal generation.

Getting cleaner with age

Beyond already having lower emissions from the start, electric vehicles are the only vehicles that get substantially cleaner with age. How is this possible? Whereas conventional vehicles must burn whatever the oil industry refines and delivers to fuel pumps, with some ethanol blended in, electric vehicles are powered by a dynamic electric grid that keeps shifting to lower-carbon energy sources. The grid continues to get cleaner, shifting to more renewable sources, due to states’ renewable power regulations, carbon trading schemes (like RGGI and California’s), and, going forward, the federal Clean Power Plan. Of course, there are places that are also working to de-carbonize the vehicle fuel supply with low-carbon biofuels too, but the grid is de-carbonizing much quicker.

So the grid itself is turning over a new leaf. The primary energy generation that is transmitted on the U.S. electric grid, the world’s second largest, is shifting one power plant, wind farm, and solar array at a time. The data in the figure below from U.S. EIA show how, in just seven years, the U.S. grid has (1) reduced its share from coal by about a third, (2) increased its share from natural gas by 60%, and (3) steadily increased its share of low-carbon renewable plus nuclear power. The changes are coming fast enough that even the analysis and figure above (and really all other analysis) does not yet incorporate the lower 2015 CO2 emissions yet. Furthermore, as pointed out elsewhere, electric vehicles will enable and accelerate ever further greening of the grid.

U.S. electricity generation from 2008 through September 2015

Perhaps society at large is turning over a new leaf on electric vehicles. Consumers in many markets are increasingly turning to EVs. Electric vehicle sales are about double in 2015 versus 2014 in auto markets like China, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. And while electric vehicle sales are up, the grid emissions keeping getting lower.

So let’s resolve to track how this trend continues to keep further cleaning up electric vehicles’ already-low emissions. Perhaps we are all closer to accepting that electric-drive vehicles are not just the future’s low-carbon transportation option, but are also the lowest carbon option available in today’s vehicles.

I was walking along the street when I saw this sweet smiling lady with a big bottle of water on her head. No hands ok

click on image to enlarge.