The Electric Mismatch
Cheap, big, fast: pick two.
Business Insider successfully lured me with the clickbait headline “Electric cars are too expensive because Americans insist on having more car than they need.”
Americans tend to think a bigger car is a better car.
The most popular vehicle segments in the US are SUVs and pickup trucks. The Ford F-Series has been the country’s top-selling vehicle for more than 40 years — followed last year by the Chevrolet Silverado, Ram pickup lineup, and Toyota RAV4.
Not to be pedantic but, while it’s true that Americans like SUVs and pickup trucks—indeed, most companies have gradually been phasing out sedans for years—the fact that the Ford F-Series has been the most popular vehicle for decades doesn’t demonstrate that. There were, until relatively recently, only three options for those wanting—even needing—a full-size truck: Ford, Chevy/GMC, and Dodge/Ram. For whatever reason, Ford and Chevy long dominated that competition and Ford outsold Chevy (probably because some preferred the GMC twin).
Anywho,
So given that a large vehicle is what a good portion of the US population is looking for, it’s no surprise that rule applies to electric vehicles, too.
It’s one reason EV adoption has only been creeping up in the US, barely hitting almost 6% in 2022.
A lot of prospective EV buyers just haven’t yet found the types of EVs they’re looking for. They don’t necessarily need more luxury electric sedans — they want the trucks and SUVs they’re used to.
Well . . . yeah. If, for whatever reason—need, want, whatever—I have decided that a want to drive a vehicle that seats 7 comfortably or that can tow a mobile home, the fact that I’m interested in the idea of an electric vehicle doesn’t magically convert me into a customer for a tiny little car.
“Up until recently, we really didn’t have much optionality in that from an EV perspective,” Steve Patton, EY America’s mobility sector leader, told Insider.
I mean . . . I don’t own a car company. Yet I’ve known for . . . I don’t know . . . 20 years or more that Americans prefer trucks and SUVs to small cars. Indeed, the only time we “prefer” small cars is when gas prices go way up and make fuel economy a top concern. But that’s obviously a forced compromise since, the second gas prices drop, the revealed preference goes back to bigger and faster vehicles.
“It’s no surprise and no coincidence that most of the new models being introduced or planned to be introduced over the coming months are around that segment because that’s what we as US consumers want to purchase.”
The real surprise is that this wasn’t the case from the beginning. The oldest reference to electric vehicles I can find in the OTB archives is an August 2010 post on the Chevy Volt by Doug Mataconis predicting that it was likely a boondoggle. The first positive post on the subject appears to be my May 2013 post on the Tesla Model S, which held out hope that it would be the spark that got Americans excited about going electric but noting that it would remain a niche concept unless the price went down considerably. Nearly a decade later, that’s only just starting to happen.
Finally, we get to the actual problem:
That model availability compounds EV cost. The average new EV sold for $61,448 in December, Kelley Blue Book estimates.
And yet, a recent Deloitte study found that 70% of US car buyers won’t spend more than $50,000 to go electric.
Bigger vehicles are often just more expensive, largely because they require bigger batteries — the most expensive part of these new EVs. Popular EVs today include the high-end electric $100,000 GMC Hummer pickup, $75,000 Rivian R1T, and nearly $62,000 Cadillac Lyriq.
Emphasis mine. So, really, the problem isn’t so much the unreasonable demands of American consumers but that meeting said demands cheaply simply isn’t within the current reach of electric technology development. It’s true that we could sell more cheap electrics if more Americans were willing to drive small cars. But, heck, if more Americans were willing to drive small cars, the need to shift to electric from gasoline-powered vehicles wouldn’t be so urgent. It’s just that the internal combustion engine and its supporting infrastructure have about a 140-year head start.
Those wanting a cheaper EV may want to look at less expensive models like the $27,800 Chevrolet Bolt and the similarly-priced Nissan Leaf. That might require some sacrificing, though.
There’s no “might” to it. And, of course, if you’re willing to drive a tiny car, there are several on the market for under $20,000—so it’s a sacrifice in more ways than one to drive a Bolt or Leaf.
n the long run, EVs are generally creeping down in price, and more affordable SUVs are starting to come into play. The Volkswagen ID.4 and Kia Niro SUVs go for just under $40,000 each. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Toyota bZ4X SUVs are at about $41,000 and $42,000, respectively.
But those are tiny SUVs and $40,000 is still fairly expensive. There are several nice gasoline-powered 3-row SUVs in the same price range.
Plus, the new EV tax credits might be able to help out even more — in fact, those don’t even apply to higher-end EVs above certain MSRP caps.
We’re subsidizing vehicles Americans don’t want.
Important battery minerals, especially lithium, drove the cost of batteries up 7% last year. Increased demand for more and more battery materials has delayed the future of plummeting EV prices, but these drops are still in the works.
And over time, with scale comes lower prices.
“For this segment to be more than just a niche, it has to get more affordable, but it also has to operate across multiple vehicle types,” said Stephen Beck, managing partner of consultancy cg42. “That’s happening, and that leads to a competitive environment that’s a lot more dynamic.”
Watching this unfold in real time, it feels mighty slow. But 2010 was only 13 years ago. It took a lot longer than that for the gasoline-powered automobile to go from a niche product to one that was affordable to average consumers. And that technology didn’t have a cheaper, more convenient substitute already in place.
I don’t know that it makes sense to subsidize battery development. It looks like the industry is going to figure that out on its own. I’m especially pleased with things like Honda and GM collaborating on a hydrogen fuel cell system. My intuition is that what government should subsidize is charging infrastructure.
While we’ve been aware of battery and charging issues for years, the new problem we se as these vehicles proliferate is long-term sustainability. It turns out they’re really, really expensive to insure and repair.
The Toyota Tundra is a great large truck, even if it is a bit gas hungry.
We would not need to subsidize vehicles Americans do want, they would just buy them. We are trying to get people to change their perspective through financial incentives.
As it turns out, most electric vehicles are made by automakers that have poor quality across their product line. Tesla has roofs flying off and steering wheels breaking off, Chevy has never been a good brand for quality – well at least from the 1970s on. Ditto Nissan, Kia, etc.
Quality mass-market automakers: Honda, Toyota, and Subaru have “electrified” vehicles, but only Toyota has a pure electric car – and it’s a niche product with extremely limited production.
Where I live, Southern California, solar panels are everywhere and charging an EV would be trivial – with nearly zero impact to the grid for folks with panels.
California has a deadline for no longer selling IC engines – and it ain’t too far off. It will be interesting to see if that deadline has to be pushed back.
We’re also subsidizing the “vehicle that seats 7 comfortably or that can tow a mobile home” in that its owner is allowed to damage the health and property of the people around them without having to pay for the costs of that damage.
This three-legged stool is applicable to most things in life.
ICE cars/trucks too.
Building a house? Budget, finishes, size. You cannot have all three.
This x 1,000
“My intuition is that what government should subsidize is charging infrastructure.”
You mean, like this?
“The U.S. Departments of Transportation and Energy today announced nearly $5 billion that will be made available under the new National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program established by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to build out a national electric vehicle charging network, an important step towards making electric vehicle (EV) charging accessible to all Americans.”
Yeah… I’ll take the whining about subsidizing ev purchases seriously the instant that the 6500 lb gvwr tax incentive gets repealed or even discussed by the same parties. Writing off the entire purchase price of a 95k+ Escalade twice seems like a much bigger benefit and more expensive than a 7500 tax credit.
Present iterations of electric vehicles rely on current battery technology, which isn’t necessarily a plus for the environment. Electric vehicles only make sense for the average consumer, if such EVs meet their needs. As such range and utility are big decision points for a consumers when considering any vehicle, including a battery dependent vehicle. Unless we find a super battery technology that can be scaled up soon or until we have a significant number of electrified roads in the next decade from cleaner forms of power production, EVs really don’t make sense for most Americans. Until we can get better batteries or roadway upgrades, hybrids currently offer the best bet for auto manufactures and consumers, as well as the environmentally minded crowd.
For a long time we really had only 3 companies providing pick ups largely because there is a big tariff, 25% I think, on them. Once other companies built them in the US then we got more options.
Steve
Mass transit.
I’m one of those people who much prefer small cars. But something like the security dilemma of political science is operating: As vehicles get bigger and higher, one needs a bigger and higher vehicle to survive a crash. And many of the drivers most enamoured of those bigger and higher vehicles drive them very poorly indeed. Not to mention being able to see traffic at stops. I’ve just decided that if I can’t see the traffic coming from the left because one of those monsters is hogging the visual space, I won’t try to make a free right turn. The people behind me can live with that.
So yes, subsidies for smaller vehicles might help to end the security dilemma. Vehicle size, and the use of resources that go with it, have become ridiculous.
I would be happy with something the size of a SmartCar in town, but having two vehicles seems not entirely resource conserving, and in New Mexico, I do need to travel on the Interstate from time to time. Transit might help with both of these. As pointed out in other comments, individual cars are subsidized, and we might do better to subsidize mass transit.
I’ve got a medium-sized gasoline-powered vehicle, 12 years old and in good condition. I’m sticking with that until I see a better alternative or it falls apart.
The USA is an outlier. Sadly. And not in a good way.
Go to any major European city and most people get around on public transportation or mopeds/bikes. Paris. Lisbon. Barcelona. Additionally, foreign cars are smaller overall. We’re the only country that insists on driving massive pickups while living in a city, and giant SUV’s when we drive 90% of the time alone.
America! Phuck yeah!!!!!
A lot of this is regional. When I lived in Florida for many years, there were essentially no Subarus, for example, and a modest number of trucks. Now that I’m back in Colorado, Subarus and trucks are everywhere.
We moved to Florida and after having a second kid traded our Subaru in for a mini-van, which we kept until our first kid wrecked it two years ago (sigh). We had a 3-row SUV and after the mini-van went to car heaven, we acquired another 3-row SUV from my wife’s Mom.
So now we have two 3-rows SUV’s. They were, along with the minivan, great when we had 5 in the house and two large dogs. But now our oldest is gone to college, and our second is starting college in the fall. So we need to change our cars, and we’ve been waiting and hoping that prices will come down. We need to get a vehicle for the kid in college out of state and a good commuting vehicle for the one attending college locally.
It’s also worth pointing out that not all SUV’s are big. The RAV4 makes the most popular list and it’s a small SUV. And I think it’s been small SUV’s that have been replacing sedans because they have significant benefits over sedans, especially for those of us who live in places with snow or have dirt roads. My wife’s mom, after giving us her large 3-row SUV, got a RAV4. And she liked it because it’s taller, easier to see out of, has AWD and, at her age (70), it’s much easier to get in and out of than a sedan. The passenger and cargo space is much more flexible than a sedan. They are just all around better for many people.
We would love to get an electric vehicle for commuting/running errands car, but they are in very short supply. I have to wonder if the subsidies are even needed at this point because manufacturers currently can’t keep up with demand. And you can’t really negotiate on price because of the demand.
I would note that far, far more people decide they want a pickup or big SUV than need one. Having been a sports car guy all my life, the appeal of an F-150 or a Suburban completely escapes me.
@Andy:
Yes. A few decades ago hatchback sedans looked to be the wave of the future. And it turned out they are. RAV4s and other small and midsize SUVs are basically hatchback sedans. There isn’t really a lot of difference between a RAV4 and my beloved Mazdaspeed 3 five door hatchback. Well, OK, the speed has the fat tires and the turbo, and a manual 6 speed, but a regular Mazda 3
@gVOR08:
People basically keep reinventing the station wagon, but are always afraid to call it a station wagon. 😉
There is another issue no one really wants to talk about and that is paying for roads. Right now we all pay a per gallon state and federal tax with primarily goes to roads (but sometimes siphoned off to other requirements). The assumption is that this approximates a use tax for wear and tear on the highways. For example, small cars use less gas per mile but also have less wear and tear on the highways than 18 wheelers. I read somewhere that it is estimated by 18 wheelers have 16X the impact on roads than compacts.
With the increase of efficiency of vehicles, there is less money coming in but not a proportional reduction in wear and tear. The advent of electric vehicles will be huge on highway maintenance budgets. They are essentially using the highways for free.
I don’t think anyone has grappled with those issues yet. Since wear and tear is basically a function of weight and distance, the reasonable solution is to tax a vehicle on those measurements. Weight of a vehicle is easily obtained and a per pound tax would be reasonable.
However, I don’t see anyone accepting a state or federal government requirement to report mileage incurred.
Sooner or later, these issues will have to be dealt with.
Not me, I pick all 3. I bought a used p/u for hauling stuff. Gets only 14.2 mpg, so I don’t drive it unless I either really need it or have no choice. Whenever I can I drive wife’s Ford Escape which iirc gets 35 to 40 mpg. And she bought it used too. So cheap, big, and fast enough for me. (these days I see no reason to speed, unless someone were to chase me, which would be a really stupid thing to if I’m in my beat up, rustbucket p/u) (they know I don’t care about it.)
@Tony W:
Well, no. So, for example, Mazda is replacing the CX-9 that I drive with a slightly larger CX-90. They’re offering a gas and a plug-in hybrid version. I would much prefer the latter but not at what looks (the vehicle hasn’t quite come out yet) to be an $8000 or so price differential. But give me a $7500 subsidy, I’d take the PHEV version.
@Stormy Dragon:
I mean, I have a family of 7 and need to fit them into the vehicle. I pay more in taxes and insurance for the vehicle than I would in one that wouldn’t fit the family. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Moosebreath: Yup. I don’t know that it’s enough—and there is all manner of boondoggle in the program—but I support that program.
@steve:
Yes. But I literally don’t think there was a pickup truck made anywhere else on the planet before maybe 1980.
@EddieInCA:
Those cities were all built long before automobiles were invented. New York is very public transit friendly as well.
I’ve always found this an odd critique. My CX-9 seats six comfortably and can squeeze in a seventh if they’re small. I would guess that I spent 80% of my driving time in it by myself and another 10-15% of the time with just my wife, one of the kids, or the four of us in the vehicle. But what am I supposed to do for the 5ish % of the time when I need to get one or more of the three stepkids into the car? Rent another vehicle? Drive in two cars instead? It’s not like the fuel economy is that much different than in, say, a Toyota Camry.
@gVOR08:
I had sports or sporty cars (my favorite was my 2005 Nissan 350Z convertible) before I had kids. They’re much more fun to drive than a pickup or SUV. But, I would point out, fewer people “need” a sports car than need a truck or SUV by orders of magnitude.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
BTW…I drive a used Subaru…cheap, and not just big – but cavernous.
And amongst several fast motorcycles that I own, a Ducati that will stay with a Tesla S Plaid all day long.
I’ll get excited about EV’s when the range get’s better. Even then I’ll be hesitant to give up my ICE’s.
In re hydrogen fuel cells: this is pie-in-the-sky. It is not workable, the multiple issues of hydrogen are too fundamental. More plausible are some conversion system from a high-density bearing medium as ammonia for vehicle level conversion in an ammonia cell basis.
@Chris: No battery technology is going to be a plus for the environment from the aspect of the battery itself. Chemisty is chemistry.
Despite dreaming, battery technology is not a new area and revolutions on mobile batteries is not going to happen. Evolutionary progress yes, but not revolution.
Pure EV goals are likely to fail unfortunately, as excessively rigid and political conception, to the detriment of other low-carbon solutions.
That ain’t happening for a long, long time. Certainly not in the Democrat/Biden 2030 timeframe. To meet the EV goals would require doubling our industrial capacity for copper, lithium, cobalt, etc. in the next, to be generous, decade. That’s never happened before. And that ignores that cobalt and lithium mining have a high slave input in China and elsewhere.
One thing that does appear happening is that the “American” car companies are not producing base models to drive up the price of ICE vehicles to near their base EV prices in that model range.
We are already seeing the subsidizing charging infrastructure knock-on effects. There’s gov’t money for putting in new stations, but the companies are not putting money or effort into maintenance and repair. So the current trend is “out of order” charging location and long lines at what are working.
And this latter runs into the problem of the declining number of workers with troubleshooting and repair skills, in any sector. It’s a growth job sector, “robot” repair if you are looking for a career. Starting on diagnosing modern cars, even ICE, is a good way to get the base knowledge of sensors, actuators, control modules, etc. that is transferable to whatever come along in the future.
@JKB: I love how right-wingers have this newfound love and sympathy for people who mine minerals in 3rd world countries, now that the oil industry is threatened.
@Tony W:
Loads of “pure” EV’s available in Europe from mainstream manufacturers.
In addition to Teslas, there are –
Audi: E-Tron, Q4-E
BMW: i3, i4, iX1, iX3, iX
Citroen: Ami, A-C4, A-Berlingo, A-Spacetourer
DS (Citroen sub-division): 3Crossback-E
Cupra Born
Fiat 500-EV
Genesis (Hyundai sub): GV60,GV70, GV80
Honda E
Hyundai: Kona E, Ioniq, Ioniq 5
Jaguar: i-Pace
Kia: Soul EV, Niro EV, EV-6
Lexus: UX300e
Mazda: MX30
Mercedes: EQA, EQB, EQC, EQE, EQS, EQV
Mini Electric
Nissan:Leaf, Ariya
Peugeot: e-208, e-2008
Polestar 2
Porsche Taycan
Renault: Zoe, Megane E
Skoda Enyaq iV,
Vauaxhall: Corsa E, Mokka E
Volkswagen: id3, id4, e-Up
Vovo: C40-r, XC40-r
I’ve pretty certainly left some out.
And that’s just pure EV; there are even more plug-in hybrids and hybrids.
This is what sky-high fuel prices can get you. Average EU price equates to $7.5 per gallon IIRC.
And why I repeatedly say Elon Musk is going to find the the thundering herd eating his lunch in the near future.
@Tony W:
Thankfully, I was born with the “I don’t give a shit what you think about me” gene. Works 80% of the time, anyway.
In my experience a lot of people purchase / drive vehicles as an extension of their personal brand they want others to see as representative of themselves. I don’t care.
I want and need utility. Can you get me from a to b with as close to zero bullshit as is necessary? Can you do your job efficiently? Haul shit home?
Man, I fucking hate vehicles. Such a persistent pain in the butt. They have betrayed me, eventually, every time. Do not trust.
Above we have some mention of subsidies for EV purchases. Any such discussion should note that fossil fuels also receive a little bit of subsidy. The IMF estimated 5.9 trillion USD in 2020. 6.8% of global GDP. Let me clarify slightly – FUCKING 6.8 PERCENT OF THE WHOLE WORLD’S GDP!! Expected to grow by 2025 to 7.4%. And skimming the article, they don’t seem to include some minor indirect subsidies, like, say, Iraq War I and II. So besides destroying our climate and ecosystem, fossil fuel are bankrupting us.
@JKB:
There appears an increasing likelihood that lithium based batteries are going to be replaced with an aluminium/suphur design.
Innovation: we has it. 🙂
Or rather, you has it: cooked up by those clever chaps at MIT.
On the vehicle size issue, my entrenched opinion is, all thing being equal, a smaller car is a better car.
Better power to weight for given power, thus better performance to mpg ratio, more maneuverable, easier to park, etc.
Hence my affection for my zippy little Seat Ibiza FR.
Rather quick, and still returns 40mpg or better on a clear road run.
Of course, if you need lug a family, luggage and bales of hay, probably not your best bet.
Though experience has shown you can get one bale of hay in, at least, with the seats down and a bit of swearing. 😉
@Lounsbury:
Or in laymans terms: “service station go BOOM!”
🙂
@Stormy Dragon:
We’re on our sixth or seventh minivan. Some car magazine cracked that there’s nothing an SUV can do that something else doesn’t do better. In terms of seats and cubic feet that something else is a minivan, but driving and parking like a sedan. And enough tow capacity for my racecar trailer. Hugely practical, but no image. I’ve always wondered what would have happened had that (self declared) marketing genius Lee Iacocca called the first Caravan/Voyager/Town & Country something like a “sport-hauler” instead of “minivan”.
@JohnSF:
I’m not a fan of hydrogen, although it may make sense in some form for some applications. But I’m frequently reminded of an early prototype hydrogen powered car. Probably around the second oil crisis. It ran on liquid hydrogen. The TV reporter asked if it wasn’t dangerous running around with twenty pounds of supercooled liquid hydrogen. The company scientist replied, truthfully, that yes, it was. But not nearly as dangerous as running around with five gallons of gasoline. Unfamiliar risks feel way scarier than familiar risks.
I always liked Wankel engines. Light, simple, largely vibration free. Primary engineering virtues. I read somewhere that what killed the Wankel was emissions, I think NOx. The combustion chamber inherently has a large ratio of combustion chamber surface area to volume and that makes if very difficult to clean up. But the Wankel chamber is great for hydrogen. Maybe one of these days we’ll be back to, “Piston engines go “boing, boing,” Mazda rotary motor goes “hmmm…””
@gVOR08:
Daimler and Volvo are both working on hydrogen as the future fuel of heavy trucks, believing that the weight of sufficiently large enough batteries will be too large a penalty to allow battery trucks to be competitive. Not to forget the issue of recharge time. Other industries considering hydrogen are steel and cement manufacturing. But I suspect it will be a while before hydrogen either proves to be an answer or the idea is finally abandoned.
@JohnSF:
No, not hydrogen goes boom. Rather
(1) density and expense in achieving and maintaning density at normal temperatures (supercooling to liquid)
(2) hydrogen corrosion of metals
(3) broad containment engineering expenses for smallest atom
These are fundamental, non-trivial and non-changeable engineering issues – and not new ones, see the space industry.
Fundamentally hydrogen directly imposes expensive measures to render manipulatable, non-compressibly expensive as related to the fundamental physics.
@Sleeping Dog: and they will fail for their current approachs as both are unrealistic and not really intended in my opinion to be other than political. Supercooled Liquid hydrogen tanks for rolling stock is not serious.
The fundamental need is high energy density (per unit of volume) with non-extreme containment and storage metrics (as in notably not requiring supercooling from gaseous to liquid form and with a high normal temperture range energy density per unit of volume at normal [as in room temperature range] temperature).
I have at this time some hope for hybrid electric moteur with ammonia-to-hydrogen cracking. Ammonia systems have at least the advantage of a liquid state in normal temperature range and quite high per unit of volume energy density.
Direct hydrogen is a fantasy – rather like the Desertec Fantasy.
This leaves quite aside generating green hydrogen (green ammonia appears perhaps more practical from an economic view to me).
@gVOR08:
Agree with you on the minivan. We had one for 16 years before my daughter wrecked it. It was great for family hauling, had a crap-ton more cargo room and capacity than even a big SUV (I could, for example, take out the middle row of seats and haul 4×8 sheets of plywood with the rear hatch closed), got decent gas mileage considering. The only downside was the lack of AWD, which wasn’t an issue for Florida, Texas, and Ohio, but was more an issue in Colorado where we live at 7,500 feet with slick roads in the winter.
There is no technical reason that we can’t have an EV at the $40K price point right now that’s an SUV. The reason we don’t really have them is concern that they won’t sell well. That’s because the range of an EV is not that great and neither is the recharge time.
So one of the tasks families put to those SUVs is the family road trip. Whether camping or a visit to Grandma and Grandpa, it’s going to challenge or maybe blow out the usual ranges of EVs. And that’s not going to change all that quickly.
But honestly, we can have EVs that are cheap, fast and big. There’s some coming out in the next few years. For instance a Jeep Wrangler EV edition is due out in 2025.
Right now I think an EV is ideal as a second, commuter car. The one someone drives to work and never touches for anything else. They are so trouble free its amazing, and they are agile and quick, making them fun to drive. I’m talking about the Leaf/Volt type vehicle. Also the Model 3, but it isn’t as cheap.
@JohnSF: You should not confound stationary battery technology with the technology for vehicle batteries.
The stationary technology drive – not constrained by the needs of vehicles (that resemble although are not identical to portable devices) – has a way to develop as indeed it’s only recently returned to attention.
Grid scale stationary battery technology really should become completely and utterly different than Mobile Device (including vehicles in this category of things that need to have extreme energy density and stability at same time), and can plausibly use much less rare and constrained chemistries, even iron for example (as well as of course non-chemical batteries)
Grid scale battery storage based on lithium is expensive madness.
To the best of my knowledge (as non-engineer but as RE financier) the mobile device progress in batteries is less plausible in chemistry and most plausibly in internal engineering structure.
I want reliable. I want cheap. I want efficient.
I don’t care about style.
Get me a to b with minimal bullshit.
@Lounsbury: in respect to the ammonia to hydrogen concept, this brief gives a taste: https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/news/138161/db-developing-emission-free-ammonia-hydrogen-engine/ – the work on development is based on a cracking hydrogen from onboard ammonia fuel driving a modified but nevertheless standard diesel engine. For those with a technical interest: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmech.2022.944201/full
Focus of the conceptual path is on of course trucking and rail.
@Sleeping Dog:
Thanks for the reminder. Cement making is a huge carbon contributor.
I expect when my beloved twelve year old Mazdaspeed 3 goes south we’ll get a small electric for the 95% of our trips that are one or two people around town and keep the Honda Odyssey for larger groups, cargo, or cross country.
For one car families, I see a great future for the car rental industry. Rent a pickup the twice a year you actually need one. For family trips to grandma’s in Omaha, drop off your family electric at a “livery stable” on the beltway and either rent a gasoline vehicle or a longer range EV you swap out for another every X00 miles. (Get your Thanksgiving reservation in early.) Meanwhile Avis or whoever has a lot full of local customers’ city cars and recharging rental vehicles. I get a chuckle out of conservatives who express great love for the capitalist system but seem to feel it can’t possibly adapt.
Can I haz EDIT? I can.
@Sleeping Dog:
Apparently the reason steel making from pig iron likes coking coal or natural gas is that it kills three birds with one stone:
– heat, obvs.
– reduction chemistry, that is de-oxidising
– carbon source, as steel is a alloy of iron and carbon
Hydrogen gives you the heat, and with a bit of finagling the reduction, but you’d need a separate carbon source.
IIRC it’s also tricky to set up a even temperature in a blast with hydrogen.
So at the moment non-hydrocarbon steel is much more expensive.
Another reason why, in the not too distant future , embedded-hydrocarbon duties may become necessary
@Lounsbury:
I know there are also effective energy to weight and volume issues with hydrogen.
But BOOM! is nonetheless a serious issue
The normal form of hydrogen is the di-hydrogen molecule, H2, rather than monatomic.
But that is still the smallest molecule, by a fair margin.
So it can leak.
So BOOM!
It also has rather over-affectionate nature regarding combining with other materials; as you note, metals, but also standard pipe liners and seals, leading to contamination of the fuel itself (seldom good news) but also, more leaks.
And what do leaks often lead to?
BOOM!
The “boom” factor is also why I very much doubt occasionally mooted project for replacing natural gas with hydrogen are ever going to get off the ground.
Or if they do, a lot of other things will be getting off the ground.
Anyone interested in the details of hydrogen and its annoyingly recalcitrant physical and chemical properties may like to check out this paper: Hydrogen Storage for Mobility: A Review
IMO hydrogen may get used for bulk renewable energy storage, but not consumer markets.
@JohnSF: Exactly in that context, in the end I do not think steel is decarbonised. Carbon reduced but not decarbonised.
@JohnSF: Boom for me is less the issue – as gas can go boom too, that’s more readily engineered – than the extreme expense needed to render hydrogen manipulatable for mobile solutions. Boom risk is kind of a add-on.
Hydrogen corrossion of metals (over effectionnate nature as you put it): extremely serious and while mitigatable, adds serious expense (and you’re right also even mitigation in lining there is the contamination issue). It’s smallest-size factor by a big margin and thus containment challenge, again mitigatable but at severe expense. Add then that rendering it to a reasonable storage density by cooling natural most diffuse gaseous state to liquid is energy expensive to do and maintain and also adds on yet another layer of engineering expense and for mobile application, weight… It’s a fantasy objective, an utter dead end that anyone looking at clear-eyed sees right away.
Ammonia (for which there is a dual need for Agri applications, and a dual need to have Green ammonia) which is liquid at normal temperatures as well as very reasonably energy dense on its own, plus has several very well-mastered cracking technologies for the hydrogen boosted type engine applicaiton on diesel engine model basis – there at least for what has been presented to me while the engineering and tech needs real development we are not in a world of Green Fantasy, but reasonable engineering challenges that can be financed to resolution that is economical. Plus a pathway that is plausibly re-using and repurposing (plausibly, not certain) hydrocarbon infrastructure which is a significant investment burden reduction.
The Greeny Left loves plumping for either Hair Shirt (oh people should have little Reliant Robin putters boo on their preference….) or Pie In the Sky Stick It To the Man thinking (or even better both) but that’s not the path to effective decarbonisation.
Of course I am in a bad mood on this having just had to sit with some bloody French Green party leftist hair-shirt solutions idiots from Brussels maundering on about how our (my) financing to green energy needs to be more “democratic” and not “concentrated” – the innumerate gits think I should be doing covering fucking countries residential rooftops. We need to build fucking utility scale RE so that pricing is what people read as coal beating – and these assholes supporting extreme speed on permitting rather than blithering on criticising us for undemocratic access to RE.
@Lounsbury:
I recall a while back talking to a local Green pol, who was saying basically “all energy needs can be met by distributed wind and solar”
I thereupon asked her, setting aside grid stability issues, how are you going to run energy intensive plant like big smelters? There are good reasons why smelters and datacentres get put right next door to dams.
“Oh that’s just a technical issue, we can build more small smelters I’m sure…”
*eyeroll*
One thing to consider:
Folks that hate electric… ask them if they like “stuff” made of plastic.
After you get that confused dog look, remind them that if it wasn’t for oil, you wouldn’t have all the things around you made of plastic. floors, paint, planes, indoor plumbing… the list is endless.
Oil SHOULD be a strategic resource, reserved and sourced elsewhere when required. Because continued life as we know it (for good or bad) is dependent on plastics. and if oil goes away (or becomes outrageously expensive), then plastics as we know it are gone.
So the choice becomes: electric (or any renuable) or foreign oil.
One potentially keeps America’s weath here, the other sends it overseas to folks that likely do not have America’s best interest in mind (and can afford to spend $2 Billion just to influence a politician… guess from where that money came?).
Choose.
@JohnSF: Of course…. and of course we can, we can even go all Maoist China and have backyard smelting. That ended up so very well….
Economies of scale. Always economies of scale.
I can get the Levelised Costs on RE that are world beating if we have serious scale (and with permits in reasonable time), but not on bloody “democratic” fucking micro.
Stupid goddamn sloganeering, nothing democratic about impoverishing energy costs.
I am sure that with my kind of investment money flowing to RE, nuclear, and green solutions like a rational market adapted mix of EV, Hybrid, ammonia-hydro for trains and trucks – decarbonisation can occur and in an economically advantageous way. On Europe side the greatest risk is Greenpeace Lefty type innumerates. And sheer idiotic bureauracy that needs to urgently smooth the permitting. Fast track permitting.
USA of course has more of the troglodyte denialists Right (although Mr Farage & Co seem to be working hard to import this idiocy to that totally non European Island over there) blocking more than the greeny Left innumerates.
Um, you are seeing this through a media-coloured glasses that veer to the cough, left. But I think we otherwise agree as I come at this with an engineering background and detest the ” greeny Left innumerates.” I do what is to me a simple thermodynamic balance to say BS and they accuse me of witchcraft for opposing the official view (sorry, you want something for free and Congress doses not control the Laws of Thermo). They are righteous, and “how dare you.”
Um, you are seeing this through a media-coloured glasses that veer to the cough, left. But I think we otherwise agree as I come at this with an engineering background and detest the ” greeny Left innumerates.” I do what is to me a simple thermodynamic balance to say BS and they accuse me of witchcraft for opposing the official view (sorry, you want something for free and Congress does not control the Laws of Thermo). They are righteous, and “how dare you.” I see as much from the left, it just isn’t reported in hysterics.
@Richard Gardner: I am not often accused of having Left oriented glasses. It is clear in the terms of the USA, the more active barrier to decent, investment and economically rational investment in RE and green is the troglodytes, the MAGA idiots and their climate change denialism.
However I don’t underestimate the potential idiocy (perhaps quantifiable like potential energy) of the innumerate Greenpeace type green Left full of indeed magical thinking.
Particularly in respect to the burning need to smooth permitting and massively invest in your grid infrastructure in unpopular ways if one is to achieve electrification as well as enable real scale RE investment.
@Chris:
Compared to a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine? It absolutely is a plus for the environment.
@JKB:
Every product that you have ever bought, or ever will buy, has a social and environmental cost. I doubt if you ever gave it a second thought until conservatives started cutting and pasting little blurbs about the suffering and environmental damage associated with the extraction of materials used to make EV batteries.