Electric Vehicles, part 2

In September 2008 I first wrote here about electric vehicles and my plans to make my next car an EV.  After over a decade of pining for one that was good enough, the market is finally coming around and within a year or two there should be lots of choices.

The 800-pound gorilla is Tesla Motors.  They are a pure EV company, which really isn't quite what I'm looking for -- the systems engineer in me really likes the redundancy aspect of having a gasoline generator in a hybrid vehicle (aka an REEV), so that I can plug-in normally but in a pinch I can gas up.  Especially for long trips.  On the other hand, it's kind of silly to make a purchasing decision based on the 2% usage scenario.  For long trips, rent a car!  Anyway, this is all kind of pointless handwringing right now.

The Tesla Roadster is a slick, beautiful machine, and after 3+ years of salivating it is f i n a l l y reaching the streets.  In the last few months they've finally started delivering units to their long-suffering customers, and they're now up to about a 100 deliveries per month.  With each unit getting them over $100K in revenue when they deliver, that's going to very quickly get them in the black, and suddenly Detroit will have a real problem developing for them in sunny California.

Earlier this month I visited family in the San Francisco area and I decided to try to get down to the Tesla dealership (in Menlo Park) to get a look in person.  Actually I wanted to see the Model S (more on that below) but I knew they wouldn't have any so I settled on just looking at a Roadster.  Since they've finally cranked up the volume on production, they have more units to set aside for sales ops so there was a chance I'd be able to actually sit in one and maybe drive it around the block.

So I gave them a call and made an appointment.  We showed up (thank you family :) )  right on time, the salesman had me sign a waiver, gave me a map and the keys, and said "have fun".  Wait, what?  Yes, he was letting me just take it out on the road by myself.  Uhhhhhh ... OK!

I quickly snagged my brother-in-law for passenger seat ballast (kidding!) and we got familiar with the vehicle.  You can read all about it everywhere else, but it definitely is a pocket rocket.  Bolting from 0 to 60 MPH in four seconds, it's like acceleration isn't an issue anymore -- you just decide on a speed and BOOM you are there.  One thing I had wondered was how annoying the braking feel woiuld be, since it uses regenerative braking for light to medium braking effort, and it was suprisingly unobtrusive.  It just didn't bug me.  What was noticeable was the coasting behavioir, because they have it dialed in to brake slightly when you take your foot off the accelerator.

I actually fit in it, too, (I'm 6' 2") which was a nice surprise.  But visibility was pretty rotten -- I kept having to duck to see traffic lights.  Anyway, at $109K it's not like I am seriously considering one of these, but it was really nice to get actual experience.  Because I am quite serious now about making my next car an EV.

Which Tesla will be happy to supply.  On March 26th they announced their second design, the Model S.  Instead of a tiny sports car, this will be a sports sedan that can carry 4-5 adults, basically competing with luxury sports sedans like the BMW 5-series.  It's also priced in that category at $57K, a number which will certainly get "refined" as they get closer to production.  It got lots of attention:

on LeftLaneNews

on Jalopnik

on Metafilter

on Slashdot

But what was unveiled was just a prototype -- literally, there is ONE of these on the planet.  Really what they are doing is getting the prototype out there so that the federal government will be unable to ignore it and will have to release some funds from the advanced car tech program that Congress approved last fall.  I mean, if Tesla doesn't qualify for this, I don't know what does.  Update 23-Jun-2009:  Tesla has indeed today received the ATVM funding, all of the funding they requested!  See press releases from DOE and Tesla.  I love Steven Chu.

New Roadster owner Scott Painter wrote recently about Tesla's distribution model:

"[Tesla] also shirks all the traditional industry baggage by deciding to sell directly to buyers, rather than through independent dealers. Tesla owns its stores in Menlo Park and West Los Angeles, and everyone who works in the stores is a Tesla employee – no one works on commission. Although this doesn’t allow Tesla to open locations as fast as through a franchise dealership, it does allow Tesla to own 100 percent of the customer experience. This is one of the biggest frustration of traditional auto industry executives – they can build great products, but if customers have a bad experience at their local dealer, they often blame the automaker."

Very true! This is the #1 reason why I've ignored GM/Ford/Chrysler for all of my car purchases up to now. No matter how good the car is, I'm still going to have to deal with the local dealership, at least through the warranty period, and that's a deal breaker right there.

And it'll be a major hurdle for me to get over if I'm faced with choosing a domestic model (e.g. the Volt). I wonder if GM might try to handle the Volt at the corporate level like they did with the EV1 a decade ago, bypassing the dealers ...

Here's an interesting blog post by a Tesla VP summarizing all of the tax incentives in place (from both the federal and state governments) for people considering purchase of EV/hybrid vehicles.  And here's a Georgia EPD page detailing one particular tax credit for ZEV's, including contact info for the guy at EPD who probably knows the most about that and any other tax credits available.

This past weekend the very first public charging station for Tesla opened up in Northern California. Here's a local newpaper article about it.  It's probably going to take a decade before this is widespread, but it's a start.

If anyone here lives in the New York area, the Model S prototype is debuting in Manhattan on Thursday morning April 30th at the Plaza hotel (5th Ave and Central Park South).  And Elon Musk is appearing on David Letterman on Wednesday night!

In the end, though, I'm still not sure if I want to go with a pure EV.  I really wanted my next car to be a hybrid, so that I can gas up if needed and won't have problems with a long road trip a couple times a year.  In another few years I think the technology will be there to support pure EV for long haul trips (better battery tech, battery swapout standards and stations, public charging stations, high voltage fast charging, etc.) but we're far from that right now.  So I'm still going to be looking at the other hybrid options that start coming to market late this year and next.  But I'll probably continue to spend far too much time keeping up with the news at the TeslaMotorsClub forum.

I leave you with two entertaining little nuggets:

Tesla vanity plate ideas

Hitler gets angry about his Tesla Roadster order

Comments

[Chris C.]

More time wasters:
http://planettesla.com/
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=tesla+model+s&m=text

And a thought: electric motors are inherently simpler and more reliable than internal combustion engines. Could we be on the verge of dramatically cheaper cars and much higher performance? And the corollary to that: is the Tesla going to look hugely overpriced 5 years from now when EV prices plummet with scale?

[Chris C.]

When I have time to immerse myself in this some more, here's an EV podcast:

http://www.evcast.com/members/evcast

[Chris C.]

A few links that show how far ahead California is from the rest of us, especially us yahoos in the Deep South:

http://www.evchargernews.com/

http://www.evchargermaps.com/

http://evclubsouth.org/ or http://www.evclubsouth.org/ (sad sack local Atlanta EV guys)

[Chris C.]

An interesting concept that I came across this week: gasoline engines are so wildly inefficient (i.e. waste heat) that those cars are LESS sensitive to other inefficiencies such as aggressive driving, high speeds (wind drag), operating all the accessories, etc. Electric motors are VERY efficient, so when you size the motor to the car, you actually end up with LESS margin for all the other things -- you have less of a monstrous energy machine to throw around. So you become MORE sensitive to things like driving behavior affecting your range.

Also, this means that the impact of all these EVs to the electric grid will be less than I've written about (either in this entry or in Part 1). We wouldn't need to convert all of those imported oil joules to electric generation and transmission -- only 20-30 percent.

[Chris C.]

Interesting article in the New York Times:

Toyota: Plug-in Hybrids Will Have Limited Appeal
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/toyota-plug-in-hybrids-will-have-limited-appeal/

Some argue that Toyota is dismissing PHEVs because its next Prius will have little to no plug-in capability.

[Chris C.]

To illustrate one way that electric motors are so much more efficient than internal combustion engines, check out this picture of a DIY electric conversion that this guy is doing to his 1974 MG:

http://members.cox.net/petesmg/frontsupportsfinalized.JPG

[Chris C.]

Here's a nice little piece by a new Tesla Roadster owner about life with his new car:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/tesla-roadster/2920-so-youve-got-new-roadster.html

[Chris C.]

Public charging stations for electric vehicles are starting to become more widespread, especially in California. Here's a site that maintains a database of locations:

http://www.evchargernews.com/

The biggest problem is, there are half a dozen different charge connector standards, such as the inductive paddles as used in the late/lamented GM EV1, or the conductive connector used by Tesla.

Fortunately, all the major (current and future) makers of plug-in EVs have this year agreed on a new connector standard, called SAE J1772.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772
http://www.tuer.co.uk/charge-connectors.htm
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/04/21/sae-2009-sae-j1772-plug-standard-could-be-finalized-by-this-fal/

Tesla has even committed to retrofitting its existing cars when the new connector standard is finalized.

[Chris C.]

I don't recall if I've made this point in the post above or in Part 1, but all this electric vehicle activity is very reminiscent of the internet buzz in 1992-1993. That was well before nearly anyone reading this had heard of the internet, much less actually used it (I got into it in mid 1993). So what we're seeing here with the Tesla Roadster is like UIUC/NCSA's Mosaic, and perhaps the Tesla Model S is analogous to the Netscape browser that would storm the world a year later. Does that make GM Volt analogous to Internet Explorer, with bugs and broken standards but backed by an enormous marketing operation and a corporate behemoth prone to dirty tricks?

[Chris C.]

Further to the SAE J1772 plug standard that I mentioned above, it has cleared another hurdle in the bureacracy involved in making it an official international standard. Underwriters Laboratories has completed its certification testing on the connector, verifying the safety and durability characteristics of the 5-pin connector. Now that the UL testing has been completed, the standard specification will be put to a vote of the SAE committee in July.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2009/06/28/underwriters-laboratories-approves-sae-j1772-charging-plug/

[Chris C.]

Another good analogy, if perhaps overreaching:

"The electrification of the automobile has been called the auto industry’s 'moon shot,' an analogy that works because of both the technology involved and the cost to develop it."

Comments on how important final price is to the entire enterprise ...

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/07/ev-moon-shot/

[Chris C.]

Nice, short interview of Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the opening of their London dealership:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1WrV_QjLnQ

[Chris C.]

Here's a GREAT series of blog posts about a guy picking up his Tesla Roadster in Menlo Park (south of San Francisco) and immediately taking it on a long drive back to his home in Seattle. See the August 2nd-4th posts:

http://highspeedcharging.wordpress.com/

Which indirectly led me to this EV drag racer called "White Zombie", 0-60 in 2.9 seconds and the quarter mile in well under than 12:

http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php

[Chris C.]

As I continue to struggle with pure EV (aka battery EV aka BEV) vs hybrid EV (aka plugin hybrid aka PHEV), I'm struck by this quote from Bob Kruse, GM Director of EVs and Hybrids, talking about the 100-200+ mile range of BEVs versus the 40 mile (or less) electric range of PHEVs:

"Its analogous to a flat screen TV. What is the diagonal? 52 inch. It replaced something with a 25 inch diagonal. So if you spent all this money on a flat screen television could you imagine only using a quarter of it and displaying a 25 inch picture on it? If you buy a 200 mile range electric vehicle and you're only going to drive 40 miles a day that's the equivalent of watching a 25 inch picture on a 52 inch TV."

So most of the time you're wasting energy lugging around the unused dead weight of 160 miles of battery. On the other hand, with a PHEV most of the time you're wasting energy lugging around the unused dead weight of a gas engine.

http://gm-volt.com/2009/08/10/are-pure-electric-car-programs-having-a-negative-effect-on-volt-marketing/

[Chris C.]

Martin Eberhard writes about his design of the Tesla Mobile Charger, quite detailed and technical:

http://teslafounders.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/the-roadster-foundry-mobile-charger/

However, he mentions "the old 'Avcon' J1772 charging standard". Some googling reveals a mention of a J1772-1996 standard, in apparent contrast to the J1772-2009 standard now being developed.

It's all rather hazy and I hope it gets cleared up soon. There are a lot of charging stations that are getting installed lately and it would be best to have the final J1772 connector on all of them ...

[Chris C.]

Great overview article in the New Yorker, very readable for the average non-technical person:

http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/NewYorkerArticle.pdf

[Chris C.]

Update to the August 6th note above on White Zombie: here's a GREAT piece from Oregon about the car and how it's flattening the opposition at the drag strip.

http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/videos/view/56-Electric-Drag-Racing

[Chris C.]

Looks like we're getting incrementally closer to the holy grail of motors in each wheel hub (4 small motors in a car instead of 1 big one). BMW just unveiled their concept car which has a motor for each AXLE (so, 2 motors total), and the new 2010 Lexus RX450h has a similar layout. This neatly avoids the "unsprung weight" problem with vehicle dynamics that would be caused by hub mounted motors.

Also it shows how quickly electric propulsion is evolving, and how incredibly flexible it can be ...

[Chris C.]

Electrics all over the Frankfurt car show:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/news-articles-events/3258-frankfurt-iaa-show-2009-a.html

[Chris C.]

Fantastic and technically detailed interview with the CEO of eTec, a charging-infrastructure company:

http://gm-volt.com/2009/09/28/interview-with-ceo-of-etec-on-charging-infrastructure/

He details their plans on the trial/study that they are doing in 5 cities with Nissan on the new LEAF EV car. Atlanta EV guys are trying to get the Tennessee part of the trial moved (or extended) to Atlanta. GREAT info also about the challenges in general of designing a charging infrastructure.

[Chris C.]

Long feature article in Inc magazine about how the electric car will revolutionize our domestic manufacturing economy, transform our electrical grid, and even how the humdrum SAE J1772 plug standard will itself jumpstart new businesses. This piece really sings, of "technologies so transformative that it seems a privilege to be alive just to witness their diffusion." Read it!

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/the-connected-car.html
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/the-connected-car_Printer_Friendly.html (single page version)

It also mentions the SAE J2847 communications standard, which not only enables smart charge scheduling, but in the future could enable reverse power flow from the car to the grid. This is heady stuff and illustrates why I'm so excited about it all. I'm telling you, this is like the internet in 1993 ...

[Chris C.]

Listings of USED electric vehicles for sale:

http://www.evfinder.com
http://www.evtradinpost.com

If I don't like what's on the market come late 2010 or 2011, I might get a used EV. Today I was at an auto repair shop full of old Porsche 911's and thinking about getting an EV conversion of one of those ...

[Chris C.]

SAE J1711 is a proposed standard for determining the miles-per-gallon of an electric vehicle.

http://www.google.com/search?q=SAE+J1711
http://www.sae.org/technical/standards/J1711_199903
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/pdfs/merit_review_2009/vehicles_and_systems_simulation/vss_05_duoba.pdf

[Chris C.]

NY Times article on the rare earths situation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/business/global/26rare.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

[Chris C.]

EVAmerica is trying to put together a listing of EV conversion shops nationwide:

http://www.evamerica.com/evconversionshops.html

but there's only one shop listed in Georgia and its website doesn't work. I may do a drive-by the next time I'm up there.