Blessed by the Potato

It’s not hard to see from my previous posts that I’m a fan of electrified transportation (which is a pretentious way to say electric cars and PHEVs). So I’m generally in favour of the announced rebate for electric cars in Ontario. These sorts of rebates are great ways to get the cars into the hands of early adopters — if you can bring the price difference of the desirable technology down to the point where there isn’t a significant premium over equivalent cars, it makes it a lot easier for people to swallow their doubts about the new technology and get out there to beta-test. A few people will be willing to take the chance on the new models, but certainly not everyone, not until there’s a decade or so of real-world data, and to get that you need as many early adopters as soon as possible. It also helps draw attention to the technology so people will look into it (free advertising, basically).

I’ve seen some arguments about the rebates cropping up on the net, and I’ll address some points, but first a few of my own:

– I think it’s coming too soon. In July 2010 there will be basically zero electric cars available — maybe the Volt will see the light of day, maybe the Tesla Model S will be starting to deliver to people on the waiting list and ready for regular buyers… but that’s about it until 2011 or later. In that light it does seem less like a “electric car rebate” and more like yet another “Government Motors handout”. I mean, even if they do manage to get the Volt/Model S out in 2010, face facts, they’re almost going to California dealers anyway — delaying the onset to 2011ish to give other manufacturers a chance to catch up would be decent.

– Like I said, generally, this sort of thing works. It may not be the best use of the money, but getting people to switch to electric cars will reduce smog in the downtown core (and greenhouse gasses, and possibly help stabilize the grid). However, where electric cars work best is in urban areas where people commute every day… and if you’re going to spend money to get people to stop smogging up downtown Toronto/Ottawa, why not instead put the money towards under-funded public transit? (My answer, to myself: because there probably won’t be even 500 cars sold per year under this program, and 5 mil is a drop in the bucket to the TTC, so we can do both).

The Globe’s auto editor had this to say in favour of the subsidy:

The Americans have put in place a $7,500 US subsidy for alternative propulsion vehicles like the Chevy Volt. The Volt is a plug-in hybrid, though General Motors calls it an extended range electric vehicle. The U.S. subsidy mean Canada simply must keep up here.

This is absolute rubbish. In fact, if the Americans are doing it, that’s a perfectly good reason for us not to — now we know that someone will get the cars in the hands of the consumers so we get that precious kick-start to industry and the real-world data (though of course, that won’t be quite the same as real-world Ontario winters).

Now, if you want to argue that we should support the manufacturers to bring jobs here, then ok, cool, that keeping-up-with-the-Jones argument works… but a consumer rebate does not get Tesla or GM to build an Ontario factory.

One way that the main goals of this could be accomplished for free is a CARB/CAFE type legislation: force the automakers to have a certain percentage of electrics/hybrids and a certain overall fleet fuel economy. If they miss their targets by selling gas guzzlers, you fine them (and unlike CAFE, make them real fines). Then the manufacturers will have to raise the prices of the gas guzzlers and sell their fuel efficient models as loss-leaders to make their efficiency ratings… the quasi-free market at work.

It’s a subsidy for the rich — these cars will cost $30k and up.

I don’t have a good answer to that… does it matter to the government incentive program that the pollution reduction will come from “rich” drivers? Most new-car feebates work that way, but in theory the subsidy should trickle-down as lower resale prices for the people who will buy the cars used.

[Poor] transit-riders or cyclists, who are way greener, will be subsidizing expensive cars…

Ah, but they’re electric cars.

We have made-in-Canada electric cars that aren’t eligible for any kind of government help — they’re not even legal on Ontario roads!

Yes, the Zenn situation is somewhat tragic. The government doesn’t seem to be looking hard enough to create a neighbourhood electric vehicle standard… but even if they were road-legal I’m not sure that they should be getting subsidies because that’s the model we want to move away from with electric cars: we want cars that are better than gassers. Safer as well as more efficient.

Although I am sure rebates will work to increase sales of electric cars, I believe preferential treatment to drivers of electric cars will provide better incentive.

That’s a good point — part of the reason why California has more hybrids than other states is that for a number of years they were allowed to use the carpool lanes (and park for free in some cities). Free/priority parking is likely to be as much of an incentive as the cash, and HOV access might be too, if you happen to live in one of the few places in Ontario that has HOV lanes.

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Well, it looks like my poor maligned Accord is nearing the end of its life.

So far this calendar year I’ve had about $1000 of work done on it: ABS Sensor, $450; Battery, $140; Wheel bearing, $390.

And while fixing the wheel bearing today they found an oil leak around the cam, which will be something like $1100 to repair, and that for some reason my brake rotors aren’t wearing evenly, so they’re suggesting $350 to take them off and re-machine them back flat. This is on top of the non-critical repairs I’ve already been deferring: the oxygen sensor that was acting up a fair bit last year (which prompted the purchase of my scanguage to clear the codes), and the leaky radiator. Actually [touch wood], neither of those have been a problem since the snow melted. I went through about a litre of coolant due to the leak in the radiator in the winter, and rightly figured that such a small leak was worth watching rather than replacing the radiator right away. Now that summer’s here, the leak has stopped completely (thermal expansion sealing something better?). The oxygen sensor tripped the CEL a few times through the winter as well, but always kept working fine after clearing the code, and likewise, hasn’t bothered me since the return of the warm weather. Both of those “pending” repairs have estimates of about $375 from the shop if I need to do them. If we include those I’m looking at $2200 of repairs “soon”, on top of the $1000 I’ve already spent this year.

The wheel bearing pisses me off, though. I had all four wheel bearings replaced between 175 and 200 Mm: they just kept failing, one after the other. At the time the car was 10 years old, I figured that was just life, and at least the new ones would last another ~200 Mm. But I’m not quite at 250 Mm; that’s at most 70,000 km on this wheel bearing, which is kind of disappointing. More worrying is the thought that the other 3 might fail in the next year or two: while the rears weren’t too pricey, the fronts were like $1400 each to replace!

This is all part of having an older car though: it costs money to repair. At some point the repairs get to be too much, and it’s time to replace the car. Exactly when to do that is a bit fuzzy: I’m already at the point now where the (proposed) repairs for the year are more than the car is worth, but the repairs are still not as expensive as the payments on a new car would be, which is further compounded by the fact that a nearly-worthless car is about 1/3 the cost to insure. And it may be naive, but I can always hope that the flurry of repairs could be over for a year or two: after all, the oxygen sensor and the radiator have been going along fine for a year now, and the oil leak isn’t hugely pressing at this moment. And since I’m in the fortunate position of not needing my car, I can afford to just keep driving it until the next repair does crop up. None of what I’m deferring is likely to get very suddenly worse, to the point where I’ll be stuck by the side of the road, but if it does I could wait until I find and purchase a replacement since the car isn’t essential to my every-day life.

Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze just one more winter driving season out of it… though now I think I know my threshold for calling it quits when the next repair does crop up.

Previously, I wrote about the fear surrounding hybrid cars, specifically the magnetic field exposure:

For the hybrid car issue, we have the question “what are the fields?” and we don’t even have a good answer to that, from which point some people fall into hysterics (up to selling their car). The real issue is then several steps removed: the Prius may have higher magnetic field exposures than other cars, and those fields have an unknown but probably small effect on human health, and that might outweigh the positive aspects of the technology.

I was understandably baffled that some people would make a mountain out of a hypothetical mole hill, especially in light of the fact that there are many other EMF “risks” that are obviously higher in everyday life, such as using a hairdryer, cell phone, or riding on a subway, which may not offer the benefits of a hybrid drivetrain. I was upset that the few people that have actually taken the measurements have not published or shared them in any way. I figured that when I eventually get a Prius for myself, I would have to borrow the magnetometers from the lab and do the job myself (and possibly get a published paper out of the deal!). (Un?)fortunately, someone has beaten me to the punch: G. Schmid and colleagues from the Austrian Research Centres in Seibersdorf have measured the fields in a Gen2 Prius under various conditions and reported the results at an international conference.

The exposure frequencies can go up to 1000 Hz due to some of the power switching. They found that near the floor in the backseat the exposure was highest, averaging 10% of the permissable general population chronic exposure according to the ICNIRP guidelines (which are frequency dependent), and could reach 30% in the maximum case (a switch from maximum acceleration to maximum braking). Even just at lap level the exposure is <5% of the guidelines (since children have short legs, this is perhaps the more appropriate measure).

They accounted for the effect of the tires (rotating tires with steel belts/cables in the makeup produces magnetic fields of up to 4% of the guideline exposure), which would be present in all cars. They also compared to some conventional cars — and the Audi A4 and VW Passat both had significantly higher exposures than the Prius! In fact, the Audi A4 exceeded the ICNIRP guideline in some conditions. The main source of exposure in those cars was from the air conditioning systems, which are “not as sophisticated” in their electrical management as in the Prius. One factor in particular that they mentioned was that the conventional cars tended to use the chassis as a current return, wheras the Prius has dedicated, shielded wiring loops that return to the battery.

In other hybrids it was found that magnetic field exposure does not correlate with installed electric motor power — the Honda Civic Hybrid has nearly 3X as much magnetic field exposure as the Prius does.

For comparison, another presenter looked at exposures on British Rail cars (not the underground — the motors are in locomotives separate from the passenger cars) and found that the fields were also in the 5-10% of ICNIRP guidelines range.

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Tim from Canadian Dream made a minor mistake last week in his thoughts on electric cars. “Where are you getting the power to fuel the cars? …Depending on…”

Ah, “Depending on”. I love those words, they open up so many possibilities for playing with numbers and outlining scenarios. They can make life so interesting.

Really the only factor Tim discusses is where the power comes from: coal is dirtier than other sources like hydroelectric or natural gas, so, he concludes, maybe you shouldn’t get an electric car if you live somewhere where there’s a lot of coal generation. After all, electric cars aren’t completely clean, they get their juice from the grid. The thing is, that’s one of the few variables that isn’t a factor in making the decision to go to an electric car — several studies I’ve seen have said that electric cars are so much more efficient that they always beat out regular gas cars, even if 100% of the power comes from coal [though other studies, such as the german WWF one, indicate that for real-world power mixes electric cars beat out gassers, but may narrowly emit more CO2 on 100% coal — but that’s with a highly optimistic 6.6 L/100 km fuel consumption assumed for the gas car; they figure an electric car on coal would produce 200 g of CO2/km, and a gas car only 160 g/km — but for the US, the average is 210-250 g/km, and probably higher for real-world driving]. With the really efficient hybrids it becomes more of a toss-up, but still not something you need to worry about with all the other factors to consider.

Why is that? Well, first off thousands of tiny internal combustion engines on the road is a fairly inefficient way to move people around: in the best case, a conventional car is only about 25% efficient (at most). That is, only about 25% of the energy in the gasoline gets translated into actually moving the car (and none of it when you’re idling/creeping in construction season). Hybrids do better (especially those with atkinson-cycle engines), topping 30%, to as much as 37% efficiency (and perhaps touching 40% for the 2010 Prius). Now, here’s where my numbers differ from Tim’s: I’ve heard that properly run coal power plants can top 50% thermal efficiency, whereas Tim says in the comments it’s 30-40% — if that’s the case then a hybrid can beat out an all-electric in cases with high levels of coal use.

Now of course, even if the thermal efficiency is higher, you have to consider that coal has more carbon emissions per unit of energy than oil does — but then, even Alberta isn’t a 100% coal-fired province (though it is up around 75%).

Plus there are other pollutants to consider beyond just carbon dioxide: just like having a tiny engine is inefficient, having a tiny exhaust scrubber is also inefficient, so you can generally get fewer bad things out of a centrally-managed power plant than a distribution of cars (pollutants like nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, etc). You also shift those pollutants from sidewalk level in the downtown core to a distant location where the power plant is — good for the people living in the cities, even if it’s a wash to the atmosphere. Coal may have more sulphur and mercury though. By charging off-peak, the extra demand can actually help improve the power grid by smoothing out the demand (and with a smart grid, electric cars could give back power when needed).

Now that’s sort of the worst-case scenario for electrics, and even there they might lose out to hybrids on some counts, but at worst it’s a wash with a gasser. But most provinces do have cleaner energy mixes than that in real life (and Albertans aren’t reading this anyway) — this a no-brainer factor.

So what are the other “depending on” factors?

Cost: hey, batteries are expensive, and at this point electric cars are limited-production items, so the up-front cost is often steep. Since electricity is cheaper than gas, joule-for-joule, in every locale I know of (or at least, mile-for-mile), you can do a lifecycle analysis and may find that in the long-term an electric will be a wash or even cheaper, but the upfront cost is a hill to overcome, especially if you need to install 220V service or a special charger in your garage. That analysis gets worse if you move a lot.

Access to charging: It might be nice to charge at work or the mall, but probably isn’t strictly necessary. However, if you live in an apartment building (or even a house with street parking rather than a driveway/garage), odds are an electric car won’t work for you just because you don’t have good access to charging.

Going Off-Grid: No one I know has their own oil refinery in their backyard (Reggie would, but it’s against the condo bylaws), but if you want to be self-sufficient (for instance, to get away from the coal use in your local grid), you can install your own solar panels or wind generator or other renewable energy source and charge your car at home.

Range: Electric cars will have a limited range, and until fast charging stations or battery swaps become common-place, that’s probably going to make range the #1 “depending on” issue for people considering an electric car. They won’t work for everyone, but the fact is most people do most of their driving in a very limited area: to work, to the mall, to the curling club, home again. For something like 95% of trips people make, the range on an electric will suffice. Many households also have more than one car, so an electric commuter and a larger, gas (or hybrid)-powered “cottage van” would probably work.

Practicality: Batteries have much lower energy density than gasoline, so they take up a fair bit of space. This makes the equivalent electric car slightly less practical than a gasoline one. Plus, electric cars tend to be tweaked for efficiency (small, often 2-seater commuter vehicles). This is not a requirement of electric cars — there’s nothing really stopping one from making an electric Cadillac Escalade, it’s just that the batteries and motors to make that behemoth move (esp. with any kind of decent acceleration) would be prohibitively expensive. Although it would greatly improve the handling and roll-over characteristics since you tend to put the batteries in the floor.

Maintenance: Even though it only takes seconds, some people just don’t like the idea of having to plug in every night. On the flip side, electric cars have much fewer maintenance requirements: no oil changes, no exhaust testing, no belts to replace, no spark timing to fiddle with, no air intake filter. You’ll still have to remember to do your cabin air filter and top up the washer fluid periodically, and eventually the friction brakes will need servicing, but they’ll likely last 4 or 5 times longer thanks to the reduced wear with regenerative braking.

Canadian Winters: I wish I could say for sure that batteries have no problem with Canadian winters, but unfortunately, your range will be cut down if only from the energy needed to run a heater (not a problem gas cars typically have since 75+% of their energy is lost to heat anyway). High-voltage batteries do look to perform better than the lead-acid starter battery in your car, and the car will run, but more real-world testing is still going to be needed. But other than that it doesn’t look like there will be any major problems.

Battery Chemistry: Nickel-metal batteries are a time-tested technology that have been working great in automotive applications, from the EV-1 and Rav4 EVs to the variety of hybrids on the road today such as the Prius, Insight, Civic, Escape, etc. They last essentially the life of the car with very few failures. However, due to some bad politicking, they are patent-protected by a company that seems to have little interest in selling batteries affordably, or possibly at all. So pretty much all electric cars are going with either older lead-acid batteries or new lithium-ion batteries. While lithium ion batteries are lighter and can put out more power, they don’t have the track record yet to say for sure that the heat issues have been solved or that they can last for a long time (they may have a time decay/aging as well as decaying with use/mileage).

Existence: For now, there really aren’t many choices for electrics. Most of the new ones (like the Zap and the Zenn) are “glorified golfcarts” or neighbourhood electric vehicles — low-speed cars that are not capable or safety-rated for highway speeds. That adds extra limitations, making it harder to settle for one — and of course, they’re only legal in two provinces. There are some Rav4EVs from the late 90’s CARB zero emission experiment rolling around, and from the sounds of things they seem to be in great shape still… but very few of them are offered for sale (hey, their owners were the fanatics who got an electric car in the 90’s!). The Volt, though a PHEV, is a powerpoint dream that’s perpetually just a year away… and that doesn’t look any rosier with GM in bankruptcy. Which pretty much leaves the Tesla. Their roadster has the usual limitations of a two-seater sports car, including a hefty price tag. They’ve unveiled their model S, a luxury sedan to come soon (and I desperately want to see how they wedged those kiddie seats in there to make it a 5+2 seater, ’cause I just don’t believe it from the exterior shots). A variety of others are in the works, such as a mystery car from Nissan (and I for one fully expect the Honda Clarity to surprise! come out as an EV in a few years, since it’s basically an EV now with a fuel cell where the battery should be… the hydrogen fuel cell test car is a clever smoke screen for the competition). There are a few do-it-yourself kits — I’ve seen a 1980’s-vintage Civic at Sunnybrook that was converted to electric, with the trunk and backseat replaced with an array of lead-acid batteries — as well as garages that will rip the gas engine out of a car for you and do a full conversion (a PriusChat member recently gave his Porsche that treatment).

PHEV: Plug-in hybrids, through conversions and maybe soon OEMs (Volt??) will let you have your cake and eat it too: you can have a reduced all-electric range (and reduced all-electric speed in the case of the Prius conversions), perhaps just enough for your daily commute, letting you run cleanly (and cheaply?) off the grid for most of your driving, while having the security blanket of a gas engine that gives you the essentially unlimited range our current cars and gas station infrastructure provide.

They’re not going to work for everybody, but if they work for even 50% of the 66% of families with more than one car then we’d off to a flying start.

Hmm, I don’t know how I have a whole post on EVs and didn’t manage to link to Darell’s EVnut page. There you go.

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A question for the group: have you ever had to change a tire?

During the crazy North York construction boom I seemed to get a nail in my tire every other time I visited my parents, but those were all repaired fairly quickly without a blowout, and I could still drive (short distances) on them with only a slow leak. Only once, over ten years ago, did we have to try to cram a tire inside the fully-loaded van, and it was actually the spare (it was mounted to the underside of the van, and the cable holding it in snapped after going over a gorge in the road so large it can only be described as scenic).

While a flat tire is a relatively common cause of side-of-the-road breakdowns in cars, and also relatively easy to fix yourself and continue on your way, it is a rare event (since side-of-the-road breakdowns are uncommon, so even the most common version of that is still rare), and seems to be an increasingly rare event (perhaps a combination of better tires and better roads). Since gas hit $1/L last year, more people seem to run out of gas trying to avoid fillups than are sidelined by flats. Having a spare though is a nice safety blanket, especially when travelling far out of the city where you might be faced with a several-hour-long wait for a tow truck to arrive, or worse yet, no cell phone reception. Even then, many people still wouldn’t change their own tire (and here I’ll stereotype and say that this group would largely consist of women and the elderly). For most of our driving though, we’re hauling around something like 50 lbs of tire and tools for an event that is very likely not to happen in the car’s lifetime. That’s an extra small suitcase worth of space one could use in the trunk (and believe me, Wayfare would find a way to use that space).

A more useful emergency gizmo that maybe should come with all cars, and that I have had to use a few times before, is the eliminator jump kit (with a 110-V AC inverter for extra convenience) — though just regular jumper cables should suffice for most cars. Rather than a road hazard, pure forgetfulness with the lights (or a door left open after some stupid thief broke in) can drain the battery. Of course, a dead battery isn’t going to stop you in the middle of nowhere unless you’ve stopped by the side of the road and made the mistake of turning your car off.

Spread across everyone, some measurable benefits in terms of fuel consumption could be had from ditching the spares (both from the weight reduction and the extra attention we’d pay to our regular tires without that safety net), but on an individual level I doubt you’d ever be able to notice the marginal change in your own car’s consumption (the extra cargo space would be a more likely benefit). Compact spares have been the norm for some time now, and a few models have tried to ditch them entirely (in favour of a can of fix-a-flat, a pump, and a 1-800 number) — the automotive press tends to frown on this move, though I doubt most owners would notice the lack.

Personally, I’m tempted to take the spare out now, and only put it back in for trips to cottage country. I could then put the eliminator and washer fluid in the void left by the spare, saving me from having that rolling all around. Of course, then I have to put a tire somewhere in the house and remember to replace it when I might be more likely to need it, which sounds like too much of a pain to bother.

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