David Sandalow, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for policy and international affairs, said in a Huffington Post article about electric vehicles on Tuesday that “It’s strange that we are utterly dependent on [gasoline] for mobility.”
But in a market-based economy, it’s not “strange” that petroleum-based products remain the transportation fuel of choice; it’s a century of real-world economics. The fact is that petroleum-based fuels like gasoline are the most affordable choice for transportation, compared to any alternative.
And the reality is that there’s a faster, more economic way to reduce our fuel consumption: making conventional vehicles more fuel efficient. Technologies exist for our gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles that, when combined, could improve a vehicle’s miles per gallon by about 35 percent (see graphic below). History has proven the power of incremental efficiency improvements; consider, for instance, that today’s vehicles emit 95 percent fewer emissions than a car from 1970. We are working with automakers to develop new engine technologies and approaches based on increased efficiencies that will likely deliver emission reductions on greater scale than alternatives like electric vehicles, particularly over the next decade.
I don’t say all this because I am opposed to electric vehicles, despite what some people may think. In fact, ExxonMobil has developed polymers for a new generation of battery separator films for lithium-ion batteries that could help improve the safety and reliability of hybrid and electric vehicles.
What I’m really taking exception to is the Administration’s plan to forgo market-driven policies in favor of subsidizing uneconomic technologies. Right now, government data shows that the battery alone costs about $33,000 for an electric vehicle with a 100-mile range. But as the article indicates, stimulus funding and tax breaks – such as the Administration’s $2.4 billion in government grant programs to develop next-generation batteries – could potentially reduce the cost of electric vehicle batteries to $10,000, which is still more than some cars cost.
That’s $2.4 billion of American taxpayers’ money spent on cars that they don’t get to drive – unless they’re willing to spend thousands more for one of their own. Actually, it’s for the batteries of cars that you’ll never get to drive – don’t forget that tires, wheels and doors cost extra. And it’s also worth noting that these taxpayer-funded subsidies are in addition to the billions that have been spent on the unsuccessful effort to make corn ethanol commercially viable.
Research and development into electric cars and other alternatives is a good thing – we need to look at all options to make our transportation fleet more efficient over the long term– but the approach being employed right now by the Administration to do that just doesn’t make any sense.
There’s a lot more to this electric vehicle discussion than meets the eye. You’ve heard my thoughts – let’s hear yours.
Improving Today’s Vehicle
Clark McCollough wrote:
“Unlike conventional fossil fuels, where nature provided energy over millions of years to convert biomass into energy-dense solids, liquids, and gases–requiring only extraction and transportation technolgy for us to mobilize them–alternative energy depends heavily on specially engineered equipment and infrastructure for capture or conversion, essentially making it a high-tech manufacturing process..” (Source: ENERGY: Nine Challenges of Alternative Energy by David Fridley Published Aug 10, 2010).
For anyone who thinks simplistic solutions, such as an all electric car, is an answer to anything, I suggest they read David Fridley’s full article at http://www.postcarbon.org/report/127153-energy-nine-challenges-of-alternative-energy. Allowing free enterprise and technology innovation to solve our energy dilemma will be far more efficient and timely than anything a politician can mandate.
Wayne Bennett wrote:
You talk about gasoline and electric cars. What about Natural Gas cars? We have many years of Natural Gas here in the USA.
Madhav Acharya wrote:
The dominance of gasoline for transportation is very much in line with the paradigm in most other industries – for example, 90% of computer operating systems are Windows based. The choice of a dominant standard, in fact, goes back a few hundred years when the gauge for most railroads was set at 4 ft 8 1/2 inches. VHS for home video is another good example – even though it was regarded as inferior to Betamax, it still became the standard due to being more widespread in the marketplace.
Many people know that in the early 1900s, both electric and steam driven cars were competing quite favorably with gasoline – till Henry Ford came along and settled the debate. Had there been 21st century environmental and fuel economy regulations in place at that time, it is quite likely that the choice might have been different – so market forces alone are not the reason for gasoline’s prominence.
One could rephrase Sandalow’s statement as “Why are we utterly dependent on private automobiles for mobility?” After all, the reason we are so dependent on gasoline is almost entirely due to the fact that public transportation was all but wiped out in the US -… read more »
…take any European city, and their dependence on cars is significantly lower. The funding of the entire interstate highway system – the biggest incentive for people to buy a car and drive – was done entirely through taxpayer dollars. The situation might have been quite different if automobile companies had been asked to lay down the roads and charge people to drive on them to recover their cost.
The real concern behind Sandalow’s statement is that the longer we stay with one paradigm – gasoline – for cars, the harder it becomes to make a change. The reason electric or hybrid vehicles will have a hard time displacing their gasoline counterparts is because the latter are a moving target – every time there are improvements made to batteries, there are simultaneously improvements made to internal combustion engines. By the time batteries are cheap enough to run a car 300 miles on a single charge, it is quite likely that ICEs will also be performing at that level. That’s assuming every step in improving efficiency is not negated by adding features to cars that actually decrease efficiency.