As far as these EVs, industry reports over the last several years have indicated that all of these new PVs and Hybrids cost up to a Billion in Development costs and the initial models cost (not including development) the companies more than they were selling them for because of the relatively low volumes they were/are making. The car companies are subsidizing the costs to get their models accepted. Once the volumes go up, the costs to the manufacturers will go down, but not to the consumer, which is why Toyota is now making a profit on thier current generation Prius.
Development costs include alot of things, design is just one part of it. They should spend more time on design. Anything can be improved if more thought is put into it.
It is clear that you prefer all electric cars with many battery swap locations, which is strange as you do realize that there is a large capital cost to the swap station owning many batteries which somehow the drivers of electric cars must pay for. Yes. That is the tradeoff he faces: Bear the capital cost for all the slowly recharged batteries he may need to swap the next day vs. be less efficient with rapid recharge so that the first he swaps out in the AM can be given to a driver arriving at noon time for a battery swap. To tell that late in the day driver with a nearly discharged battery: “Sorry we don’t have any fully charged batteries that will fit in your car, but I can let you have one with 35% charge which probably will get you to another swap station.” will not be very attractive as user pays twice for the swap (in both time and money).
There are dozens of battery swap stations being built in Israel, Denmark and Japan. They managed to secure the financing. Plus the business model is a subscription based on miles driven per month. Drivers don't pay for each battery swap.
This also makes clear that there must be several different capacity batteries, all standardized in design. I.e. the capacity needed in a small light weight car is not same as in the bigger EV station wagon. Thus there would need to be at least three different standardized battery sizes.
You're getting ahead of yourself. I'd deploy these stations for compact cars first, and see if business is brisk enough to justify upgrading later.
Thus the typical size swap station will make about 6000 swaps per day, but be prepared for the occasional 10,000 swap day. That is a hell of a lot of battery capital the EV drivers will pay for in some way.
You're comparing the energy consumption of gasoline cars to electric cars. If you equate them you end up with an inflated value for battery swaps. But electric cars are much more efficient than gas cars. But let's say you have a point, in principle... all the swap station owner would need is a delivery service to bring more batteries from somewhere else. Trucks deliver gas to gas stations like this all the time.
To make this same point quickly in a different way: The capital cost of a gallon of gasoline at the gas station, including the cost of fuel pump and a 20 year large in ground tank, is less than $5. That gallon will provide about the same driving range as $5,000 worth of batteries will. Thus, if there is no reduction in the number of miles driven, the battery swap system requires about 1000 times more capital investment. Even if different analysis reduces that factor to 500 times more – it clearly show the battery swap system is not feasible economically.
What was the cost of all the infrastructure needed to refine the gas? Don't tell me it cost 5 bucks!
I think China's new super heated steam coal fired electric plants can get 60% of the fuel energy converted into electrical energy, but very much doubt any in the US can as they operate at lower temperatures - There is no way around the Carnot conversion limit. If you can document US coal plant can, please do so. Also I think the modern fuel injected IC does better than 20% efficiency even without heat recovery from the exhaust. (That could provide the AC, etc. but does not as too much added capital cost for a heat power AC unit.)Sure they are very directly related if energy source for charging batteries is fossil fuel. – Cut the efficiency in half in that case doubles the CO2 release.
I've read many times that constant speed turbines can achieve 60% efficiency. If American powerplants aren't achieving this, it's time to upgrade. I wish governments would stop giving out massive grants for this kind of stuff and incorporate replacement costs into their financing. Jeesh! Similarly I've read many times that the basic efficiency of the typical gasoline car engine is between 20-24%.
Consider this:
Annually you burn X-billion barrels of oil in gasoline cars that have an efficiency of 0.20 roughly. Imagine instead that the entire country converted to electric cars, but continued to burn gasoline in the stationary powerplants that provide the electricity. Well, the system now has an overall efficiency of 0.45, so you end up importing and burning just half the oil you did before, to move the same number of cars, and you haven't even changed the ultimate source of the energy! Think about it. And think about how many other types of fuels could be burned in stationary powerplants. Doesn't have to be gasoline, but at a minimum you will have cut your imports of foreign oil in half.
Two, the automated nature of the swap requires a very much more expensive robotic operation than a simple gas pump, indeed it's a drive in building like a car wash and so it is not likely that you could have nearly as many "swap lanes" as there are pumps. This combined with the peak demand function is likey to create a line at the swap stations and a finite limit on how many cars you could service in an hour. For instance a two lane swap station could handle about 60 cars per hour tops. If you had a peak afternoon swap period that lasted 3 hours or so, the best you could handle would be about 180 cars, but adding more lanes would not likely be worth it because of the low utilization the rest of the time.
Arthur
Better Place timed their battery swap station at 1 min 10 sec per swap. The last time I filled up the tank it took me over 7 minutes. That gas station had two rows of pumps with four lanes and could handle 8 cars simultaneously. Because it's so quick, a battery swap station could handle nearly the same number of cars with just one lane, and they would all be back on the road in the nearly the same timespan.
BTW, if another nail in the battery swap coffin is needed, let me tell about my 14 year old calculator. When not in use, it sits in a sun facing window to keep battery charged. It has four small solar cells, nice big keys and display.
Really? I have a 25-year old solar-powered calculator that has no battery at all, and only needs ambient light to function. I literally have to cover the solar cells completely with my finger to get the screen to dim. Even then it doesn't lose the data. As soon as I lift my finger away from the solar cell, the screen powers back up and displays the same answer as before. You must have bought a lemon.
All batteries have a "self-discharge" rate (different for different chemistries) which grows worse the more they are used (or just by time). The battery in that calculator will now self discharge in less than 30 minutes. The owner of a car with an old battery in it will soon know that self discharge has drained most of it capacity, if parked for 8 or so hours, so he will swap it out to be someone else's problem. The battery swap station may not know it is a "bad battery" with high self discharge rate ( certainly not when he is charging it). Thus in all innocence he will put it into your car and if you drive it to work and park it 9 hours, it may be nearly dead when you want to go home.
That would never happen. These batteries wouldn't be generic like you buy at Walmart. Each battery would have an ident code telling the network how old it is, and whether it should be taken out of service and reconditioned. The service provider would have a simple database showing how old each battery is. Their basic financing would require them to track the age of their batteries, to get the best salvage value, etc.
You can't use the value for the most efficient generation as the AVERAGE efficiency of generation. A more reasonable value would be ~45%, but you also left off the ~5% losses in Transmission and Distribution, so Billy's original figures of .40 x .93 x .85 x .95 = .30 are more realistic for the real world we live in.
And .30 is low nowadays for advanced IC engines
http://www.sae.org/events/pfl/presentations/2009/RolandGravel.pdf
Arthur
I'm impressed with the results they got in their DOE lab. But read your pdf again. You know how they achieved the higher efficiency for the advanced IC engine? They ran it at CONSTANT SPEED. Specifically, they ran their base model light duty diesel engine at 2000 rpm because that was the peak efficiency point for that engine. And this is "future" technology for cars & trucks? I don't think so. Cars & trucks don't run their engines at constant speed. That's the main reason their efficiency is rock bottom around 20%.
Besides, turbines in stationary powerplants already do far better than their "advanced" reciprocating diesel engine. As I said earlier, if we burned all that oil in power stations instead of cars, and made all the cars electric, we would consume half the oil we do now.
CORRECTION !!!
Currently many cars burn E10, or gasoline mixed with 10% ethanol. If an electric transportation sector used the stationary powerplants to cut total energy consumption by half, but also injected the same total amount of ethanol as cars consume now, then oil consumption would be reduced to just 44% of current levels.
Eg. According to this model the fuel of the stationary powerplants would be E40, with 60% gasoline in the mix. That's the same amount of ethanol as consumed now, but with the gasoline fraction reduced by 56% from current levels. MORE than half!
