None of those apply.
Indeed, many of those processes were developed in the highly competitive world of auto-manufacturing, which is already pretty much the pinacle of our manufacturing ability.
These cars are built the exact same way any other of their cars are manufactured, the fact that the drive train is somewhat different doesn't change the highly efficient manufacturing techniques GM, Toyota or Nissan apply to these cars.
The batteries used in EVs are already mass produced in massive quantities and there is not likely to be any big change in the price of Li-ion batteries (except upward) as materials represent from ~90 to 95% of their cost.
So any big cost reduction in batteries would be from a technical breakthrough, not an evolutionary process.
Arthur
I disagree. I'd conjecture that if they spent more time on the design process they could substantially reduce the costs, and that the high cost is a result of the short business cycle driving car makers to deliver a new unoptimized vehicle to the market.
I'd propose that they create a concept car line with a 5-year or longer design cycle, with the sole purpose of achieving the lowest possible price for the consumer, rather than any particular sales gimmick, artistic style, etc. that probably inflates the prices considerably. Even such things as an aluminum or composite frame might lighten the vehicle, possibly reducing the mass of battery needed, in turn reducing the material cost of that major component. In fact, with battery swapping stations the car owner wouldn't own the battery, and therefore the car price itself wouldn't include the cost of that component at all.
Furthermore, I cringe whenever I hear that cars today are still made using steel. And that's a pretty easy criticism. Get into the details, and there's probably a list a mile long of design improvements that could be made. Today's cars are not optimized, they are a mishmash of features somewhat randomly attempting to appeal to the largest population.
I think you have neglected a significant loss: When you charge a battery, you must supply higher terminal voltage, Vt, than the battery produces, Vb, when there is no charging or discharging current. The difference Vt-Vb is greater the faster you want to recharge and is 100% loss. I.e. the fraction of the energy applied that is being converted to heat is: (Vt-Vb)/Vb and can be 10% with charging at the typical not over night recharge. (Slowly recharging is more efficient.)
I admit I hadn't considered that. However, with the battery swapping scheme the service provider has every incentive to charge overnight during off-peak hours, and would probably use the slow charge due to low demand for swaps during the night. In other words, off-peak electricity prices occur simultaneously with off-peak driving.
On the other hand, if the service provider decides it's cheaper to stockpile fewer batteries and fast-charge them, you might be right that the losses could be 10% instead of (a much lower) %. By the way, what are the typical losses during slow-recharge?
Likewise due the fact that the battery has "internal resistance" when you take energy out, more heat is generated (the RI^2 loss). As is clearly evident in that expression this loss is quadratic in the rate of discharge. (Actually greater than quadratic as the internal resistance, R, also increases with rate of discharge. - Crudely, as a typical case, pulling 2I instead of only I from the battery when the car wants more power, will increase the losses by at least a factor of 5.) If you have a "light foot" on the accelerator most of the time, this loss may be only 3 or 4% of the stored energy; but if you like the fact that an electric car has high torque capacity, even when just pulling a way from the stop light, and "burn a lot of rubber" then to impress others and you do a lot of passing, then the high current discharge losses can also eat up 10% of the stored energy by heat production.
Fortunately most people don't drive like that. Some do, but they pay for it. And I should point out that electric cars can recover alot of energy during braking. I didn't account for that.
SUMMARY: Perhaps for the "typical" driver the total "in&out" of battery losses are ~15%, which you have neglected. Thus, over all efficiency in use of the fuel energy at power plant is: 0.4x0.93x0.85x0.95 = 0.30 (bold factor is the one you forgot) so there is little, if any, energy saved compared to just burning a liquid fuel in an IC motor.
You made a mistake. Stationary powerplants have been known to be upwards of 60% efficient, so the first term should be 0.60. The corrected overall efficiency would be:
0.60x0.93x0.85x0.95 = 0.45
Again, regenerative braking might recover alot of that 0.85 loss term. And even if they don't, 0.45 is still a huge improvement over any kind of mobile, variable speed, internal combustion engine with a end-user efficiency of just 0.20, and that's pretty much what you get whether you burn gasoline, diesel, propane, natural gas, ethanol, etc, and it still doesn't account for the energy used in production (fractional distillation of petroleum, transport). The specific energy of the fuel may vary, but the engine efficiency sucks. Even hydrogen fuel cells are only 0.40 efficient for the end-user, and that's not taking into account upstream losses caused by electricity production, electrolysis, compression, etc. The way I figure, if you're using electricity anyway, why not just use batteries?
Battery-powered cars look pretty good to me against any alternative, just the price needs to come down.
The all electric car could reduce the CO2 release to the extent that the wind, sun or nuclear are generating the recharge power, when compared to any fossil fuel (gasoline or natural gas) but the sugar-cane alcohol fuel reduction in CO2 is much greater. The net energy gain for that fuel is about 8, so about 12% of its produced energy was used to produce it and released CO2 (assuming that fossil fuels were used to plant the cane, harvest it, and haul it the fermentation / distillation plant). One should note; however, that there is much more energy released by burning the crushed cane than needed to run the distillation process. This excess energy is increasing used in Brazil to make electric power - about 4% of all Brazil's electrical energy now, but soon to be at least 5% as more distillation plants add electric generation capacity.
Net energy gain? Sounds fishy to me. It's biofuel: you have to grow it (tilling, planting, fertilizing, irrigating, herbiciding, pesticiding, harvesting); crops are at the mercy of the climate; fuel crops compete with food crops and drive up prices for both (land is a finite resource). After you harvest the crop you have to process it (fermentation, distillation, drying); transport it to gas stations. I don't know what the efficiency of all those steps are, but others have tried to determine it, and I vaguely recall that the "net energy gain" idea pretty much falls flat. Ultimately though, ethanol is used in cars with internal combustion engines (poor efficiency). That pretty much kills it.
Brazil clearly has a large domestic biomass resource, but other countries can't expect to tap into it to any great degree. That's not to say that E10 isn't a good idea.
To make a numerical comparison for better understanding, assume assume solar & nuclear generation produced 50% of the recharge energy. As far as the CO2 release is concerned, that is like doubling the overall efficiency from 0.30 to 0.60 so compared to the fossil fuel IC car's 100% CO2 production form the carbon in the fuel (not as much carbon in the fuel for same energy if fuel is natural gas) we have at 60% effective efficiency (for CO2 considerations) or 40% reduction in CO2 with the electric car vs the fossil fuel IC car; however an 88% reduction if that IC motor is running on sugar cane alcohol, not even including the 4% reduction of power genertion in the CO2 released to make electricity (because that 4% saving, in Brazil does not displace much fossil fuel as most of Brazil's electric power is hydro-electric power)
I don't get this argument. CO2 production and energy efficiency aren't related. They are different contexts entirely.
Again, I point out that if the global mobile fuel were mainly tropical alcohol, many low skill jobs would be produced, but sending billions to Arab oil producers produces very few jobs, except it does pay the wages of a lot of terrorist (opium production may pay a great fraction - but that has additional cost to western societies and greater efforts should be directed towards elimination of opium production.) I again also note, that even with clearing of some tropical forests, etc. it is not possible for sugar cane alcohol to support the current inefficient transport system. More public transport, and much more "telecommuting", special express lanes for 3 person car pools, less heavy cars, and far fewer of them, with regenerative breaking, etc. are essential before the world can get off the petroleum tit and reduce the CO2 release more than twice as much as is possible with 100% switch to expensive electric cars, many of which would still need a liquid fuel, which should be tropical sugar cane alcohol, not gasoline.
Well, with battery swapping stations, we can go with pure electric cars and ditch hybrids altogether. We won't even need ethanol, although it might be a good backup fuel for stationary powerplants since it is a monofuel and turbine engines can be highly tuned for monofuels.
Personally, I prefer nuclear, wind, etc. as a primary energy source.
