My 1998 Toyota Camry is completely paid-for. I made the last payment almost a year ago and I’ve been loving it. Unfortunately, cars don’t last forever so I’m sure I’ll be shopping for a replacement before too long. With the continuous rise in gas prices (Yes, I know it’s still well below the global average but it’s frustrating nonetheless) an electric car or hybrid is starting to look very appealing. A hybrid seems to be the approach that’s gaining the most traction, but why? From what I’ve seen, you can get a Camry that does 30MPG, or a Hybrid Camry that does 35 or 40. woo. Where’s the 50,60,70 MPG cars? Where’s the fully-electric cars?

As an Electrical Engineer, the electric cars are intriguing. I can’t deny the allure of driving a completely gas-free car: No oil changes, no exhaust, no vibration (other than the bumpy Mississippi Roads). I also can’t ignore the problems: Battery Memory effects, extreme climates, low accelleration & torque. But honestly, are these really problems? They’re problems with other devices I own (Batteries decay over time, explode in heat, etc) but surely they aren’t insurmountable. With just a little bit of effort, I found a few answers.

In short, these problems are definately solvable. In fact, they were solved quite some time ago.
[tag:teslaroadster][tag:car][tag:electriccar][tag:hybrid]

In the 1900′s, at the very beginning of the automotive era, Electric Cars outsold Gasoline cars by a longshot. Gas cars were loud and vibrated so badly they were painful to drive. Soon afterwards, however, discovery of a large oil deposit in Texas drove gas prices so low that Gas cars became popular. And thus was the end of the electric car. Or was it?

Seeing the upcoming problems, and sensing an opportunity to garner some media attention, the California Air Resources Board stated that, in 1998, 2% of all cars sold in the state of California should be emission free, rising to 10% in 2003. Emission Free is a buzzword for “not-gas”, leaving Electric as the only reasonable alternative (There is, of course, Fuel Cells but they are a good ways off). Sounds good right? Well, the automotive companies fought hard enough to get 1 extra caveat in the final bill: They need only produce the maximum # of cars that the market requests. Sounds innocent enough until you realize that in the last 8 years since this started, how many commercials have you seen on TV for Electric Vehicles? In magazines? How many have you seen at dealerships? I bet you can’t even fill one hand with the answer. The automotive industry realized that if they don’t advertise the vehicles, then there will be no demand, and therefore no need to actually make them.

Of course, they do have to show effort. Thus, the General Motors EV1 was born in 1999, a fully electric car. Sales were low, but so was advertising, until GM literally buried them in 2003. Several groups fought to preserve the few cars that were left, but GM was intent on destroying the “evidence” and destroyed the remaining stock.

In more recent times, Toyota released the RAV4EV to the public in 2002. Another fully electric car, this time in a SUV form. These were sold for a whopping 8 months before being discontinued. Again, Toyota tried to destroy the remaining inventory but was finally convinced otherwise by a group of activists from PlugInAmerica.com.

There have been others, but you get the idea. For the automakers it’s been a simple process of:

  1. Get a few enterprising engineers to develop an electric car
  2. Patent all the technology
  3. Issue a Press Release
  4. Build the minimum required to meet the California Law
  5. Destroy the rest

The patents do a decent job of stopping other companies from developing a “gas-killer” car, and add to the value of the company. They can also be whipped out at a moment’s notice for a nice “See all the progress we’ve made in electric cars?”.

On the flipside, maybe there is a real reason electric cars don’t “take off”. Continue to next page…
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As an electrical engineer I’ve somewhat familiar with how batteries and electric motors work. As such, there are a few concerns of mine:

  1. Battery Memory – With the continuous charge/discharge cycles, how quickly do the batteries decay? When they decay, how hard is it to dispose of them? I’ld hate to buy one to “save the environment”, only to find I’m killing it through poor battery disposal.
  2. Temperature Variance – What’s the likelihood of a battery exploding if I leave the car sitting in the Mississippi Heat. What’s the likelihood of one not starting if I leave it outside in the freezing cold.
  3. High Voltage – Motors usually operate on extremely high voltages and currents. What’s the likelihood of getting electrocuted if I get stuck in deep water? What’s the likelihood of getting electrocuted in an accident when the motor casing is ripped open?

#3 I probably won’t hear anything about until the Insurance companies and government safety committees start looking at them more closely. #1 I can somewhat get an answer today.

Tesla RoadsterIn California, there is a small community of electric vehicle enthusiasts. One of them in particular, Alexandra Paul, wrote an article on CNN this week entitled “Who killed my electric car?” (An homage to the new documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?). She owns a Toyota RAV4EV, and she states “When I have to get new batteries, which I expect I’ll will be when my car is 10 years old, the old ones will be over 90 percent recyclable.” So, 10 years and 90% recyclable. That’s downright impressive. Why don’t my cellphone batteries last 10 years? That’s another topic I guess. Read the rest of the article and she talks about taking it on the interstate at 60mph with no problem, and an 80-mile range. There goes a few more issues.

Being in California, they definately have the heat. I’m not sure about the cold. So I suppose the cars hold up rather well to that. The only other issue is How many Kw/Hrs does it take to charge the car? That’ll vary some from car to car, I’m sure, but I’ld hate to pay more for the electricity in a month that I’ld wind up paying in gas. I currently drive 70miles a day, which takes my 1 tank of gas a week (~12 gallons, ~$40 per tank or $160 a month). Gonna have to do more research to really find an answer to that, but given that it would take (At the going rate of $0.12/kWh from Entergy Ensight Mississippi), it would have to require over 1,300kWh a month (roughly 65kWh a day) in order to exceed the cost. I doubt it would come anywhere close to that.

There is hope tho. With renewed interest in electric cars (because of gas prices) and new ideas like the Tesla Roadster, maybe we’ll see the automotive companies take one more crack at it. I really hope so. I suspect I’ll be buying a car in the next year or two, but it seems the only place in the US to buy electric cars is California. I suppose I could get one shipped over here, but I’ld have nowhere to service it. There’s a large bit of infrastructure missing before electric cars become mainstream, but it’s nothing that a major automaker couldn’t solve with just a bit of work.

I would love to drive to work every day in the near-silent, gas-free electric car.

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