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New battery makes EVs 1/2 cost of gas vehicles
The end of oil!
Almost 10 years ago I began closely following fuel cells, believing the hydrogen economy was set to revolutionize America’s energy paradigm. Eventually, however, it became obvious that fuel cells, while improving, were still decades away from effective change. Thus, I became a fan of .
Not only can hybrids reduce fuel consumption today, they can also help develop plug-in and fuel cell technologies while providing a spectacularly important plug-in option to minimize the legacy effect of gas-guzzling.
Unfortunately, at just 3 percent of market-share, however, hybrid cars have accomplished little in the last decade, and the research is overwhelmingly suggesting that the plug-in market is facing the same slow hybrid trod into America’s energy paradigm.
But that was before today’s ground-breaking study that is set to turn the world’s auto industry upside down.
OK. Sadly, there is no such study. Instead, a growing and overwhelming amount of evidence is claiming, almost beyond any shadow of a doubt, that any combination of plug-in hybrids and EVs is going to have little impact on foreign oil dependence for decades.
Just today, , for instance, reported that there is much evidence that battery-powered vehicles might not even scale as much in price as what many are expecting. In a report written for the Seeking Alpha Web site, John Petersen, a lawyer specializing in alternative-energy clients for Fefer Petersen & Cie in Barbereche, Switzerland noted that backers of hybrids and electric vehicles ignore “fundamental natural resource development issues like location, economics, environmental impacts and the difference between known mineral resources and developed mineral reserves.”
For instance, while there might be enough lithium in the world to produce 100 million plug-in hybrids without any concern, most of that lithium has yet to be mined, refined or manufactured, and achieving the manufacturing capabilities to achieve such production could be vastly more costly than many are estimating.
Ironically, even those studies with the most optimistic price cuts – about 65 percent before commodity costs hit their threshold – still claim such declines won’t be enough to move battery-powered vehicles into the mainstream. And that’s the the consensus best case scenario, prompting researchers from the likes of Argonne, MIT, Oxford and a plethora of consultancies and analysts to pin the future of EVs on next generation batteries, such as lithium air.
Despite the negative cost-effectiveness of today’s battery technologies, 10 percent EV penetration might still be possible in the next 10 or 15 years, but 10 percent EV penetration will have a negligible, at best, effect on reducing oil consumption.
So, as I’ve been asking a lot lately, what is being accomplished? But even more important, isn’t it time to ask whether we can do better?
For decades, fuel cells were an excuse not to worry about better fuel economy and growing foreign oil dependency. Are EVs on the same complacency-breeding trajectory? For instance, if Ford sells 50,000 EVs per year, does that justify millions of 18 mpg truck sales per year?
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