THE ADVANTAGES OF PLUGGING IN

Plug-In Cars; Powering America Toward a Cleaner Future
Siena Kaplan and Rob Sargent, January 2010 (Environment America Research & Policy Center)

SUMMARY
What we have now: A fleet of vehicles using a 19th-century internal combustion engine (ICE) that creates dependence on foreign oil imports, lung disease-inducing air pollution and global climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs).

What is coming: Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) that get their fuel from a regular electric wall socket, run largely or entirely on electricity generated from the domestic energy sources that power the grid and, because of the efficiency of the electric drive train, reduce pollution and GhGs even if they are charged from today's fossil fuel-dominated grid. Moreover, BEVs offer the hope of emissions-free personal transport, when society finally makes its transition to a New Energy economy and a grid powered by nature instead of by burning nature.

As Environment America’s Plug-In Cars; Powering America Toward a Cleaner Future makes clear, BEV technology is ready and will get better. A wide assortment of carmakers will, starting this year, compete over the next 5-to-10 years for a prominent position in the BEV marketplace. At the same time, the car-buying public will be re-educated.

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There are 2 types of BEVs: (1) Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) which travel a limited distance on battery power and have a small ICE that recharges the battery so that the vehicle can travel distances comparable to current vehicles before having to plug in again, and (2) electric vehicles (EVs) which travel entirely and only on the power stored in their batteries.

In the next 1-to-2 decades:

(1) The move to BEVs will have a major impact in the fight against the GhGs that are responsible for global climate change;
(2) The move to BEVs will improve air quality;
(3) The move to BEVs will reduce dependence on oil;
(4) The technology is already available for the move to BEVs and a variety of other advantages will be gained from the switch;
(5) BEVs will cost more than ICE vehicles in the short-term but be much less expensive to operate and, as battery technology and economies of scale advance, the cost will come down;
(6) The U.S. power grid is antiquated and vulnerable but nevertheless up to handling the increased demand for electricity that will come with the move to BEVs but, to take full advantage of the opportunities that will follow from moving the nation’s personal transportation fleet to electricity, the U.S. will need to build a new, high voltage, smart transmission system; and
(7) Initial resistance to change will prevent immediate widespread embrace of BEVs by the car-buying public that will require effective public policies to overcome if the U.S. and the world are to enjoy the many advantages of plugging in.

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COMMENTARY
In the years around 1900, just as Henry Ford and other U.S. entrepreneurs were perfecting the mass production of ICE-driven vehicles, the U.S. discovered it had seemingly unending supplies of oil. As a result, 20th century transportation belonged to oil and the ICE. Competing vehicle technologies, including electric power, were overlooked because no liquid fuel source was as cheap and abundant as the oil-derived gasoline that powered the ICE.

In the 1950s, European and U.S. oil producers used the experience gained by a half-century head start in drilling and refining to aggressively take control of much of the world’s oil reserves, especially those in the Mid-East, the South Pacific and Latin America.

As U.S. reserves peaked and fell off in the 1970s and 1980s, dependence on foreign sources grew. A socioeconomic system grew up around dependence on oil and the ICE. Use by a burgeoning affluent, middle class population became pervasive. The spew polluted cities throughout the world. Human health suffered. GhGs gathered.

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Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, international oil reserves are peaking. Competition for them is extremely expensive and too-often deadly. And an important forward-thinking portion of the world’s population is no longer willing to tolerate the respiratory disease and global climate change that come from tailpipe spew.

The first hint that were things were changing was when sales in the gas-guzzler-filled showrooms of the Big 3 U.S. automakers started collapsing while sales the svelte gas-electric Prius astonished the car markets. After a period of stubborn hesitation and now left with no other alternative, Detroit is finally responding.

The competition to get a piece of the BEV market emerging in 2010 will be a replay of the car's early years. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, the Big 3 automakers’ finest engineers, car companies across Asia, academic and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research labs and battery mavins from Beijing to Mumbai to Detroit are working frantically to make BEVs that are more affordable and can travel longer distances on shorter charge-ups.

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Hydrogen fuel-cell cars and cars that run on various types and combinations of biofuels are in the race but the lead belongs to BEVs.

Plugging in offers many advantages, including (1) the end of tailpipe emissions, (2) the per-mile creation of less GhGs even when running on electricity generated by dirty coal, and (3) the potential of running on electricity generated by emissions-free sources like wind, solar, hydrokinetics and geothermal. There are still, however, many unanswered questions about plugging in:

(1) Will the move to BEVs have a major impact in the fight against GhGs and global climate change?

(a) 40+ recent studies show that BEVs emit less carbon dioxide (CO2) than ICEs. One, by DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), found that EVs will emit on average 27% fewer GhGs, and will emit fewer GhGs than ICEs even in areas of the U.S. most reliant on coal for their electricity.
(b) The best improvements will, obviously, come when the grid is powered with New Energy sources. A University of California-Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology study calculated that total vehicle emissions would be reduced 62% in 2030 if 50% of the U.S. light vehicle fleet is powered by New Energy-generated electricity.

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(2) Will the move to BEVs improve air quality?

(a) Respiratory damage in urban areas from ICE-caused smog will be significantly reduced. According to the PNNL study, a BEV eliminates 93% of smog-forming
volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and 31% of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.
(b) An Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)/Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) study found that if 40% of U.S. cars are PHEVs in 2030, even with the current, coal-dominated mix of electric power sources, 61% of the people in the U.S. will have less smog and 1% of the people in the U.S. will have more smog. 82% will have less soot and 3% will have more.
(c) A grid powered by New Energy and a vehicle fleet powered by the grid adds up to the end of air pollution and GhGs from the personal transport sector.

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(3) Will the move to BEVs reduce oil dependence?

A PNNL study concluded that a shift of 75% of U.S. cars, pick-up trucks, SUVs and vans to BEVs would cut oil use by one third.

(4) Is current BEV technology up to the transition?

(a) Experimental and hobbyist conversions of conventional hybrids to PHEVs regularly work fine and get 100+ miles per gallon.
(b) Prototype EVs like the Tesla that go 200+ miles on a single full battery charge are already available on the niche car market.
(c) Prototypes, existing and conversion BEVs are typically charged at present from normal, unmodified home and garage wall outlets and rapid chargers are in use that fully recharge 100-mile range batteries in less than half an hour.
(d) BEV maintenance is simpler than ICE maintenance because there are fewer moving parts, no oil changes are needed and they need much less frequent servicing.
(e) Project Better Place has demonstrated prototype rapid battery-swapping stations that can replace a depleted battery with a fully charged one in less than 60 seconds.

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(5) Will BEVs cost too much more than ICE vehicles to be affordable?

(a) Battery technology is the Achilles Heel of plugging in. Contemporary lithium-ion batteries make BEVs marketable, though more costly. DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimated the short-term added cost of a PHEV due to the battery at $10,000-27,000, depending on the size of the battery (i.e., the range of travel on battery power). But long-term, with economies of production scale and anticipated battery technology breakthroughs, NREL predicted the added cost would drop to $6,000-
$13,000.
(b) Firstly, because electricity is much cheaper than gasoline, BEV operating costs are expected to be much lower than ICE operating costs. Electricity costs 3-to-5 cents per mile, or $0.75-to-$1.25 per gallon of gas (in equivalent miles travelled). Secondly, because BEV maintenance is so much simpler, maintenance costs for fully electric cars will also likely be much lower.
(c) Plugging in will come with new models of ownership. Project Better Place is pioneering a battery-leasing arrangement modeled on the cell phone contract in which drivers sign up for a designated number of miles instead of owning the battery. This eliminates the added cost of the battery as well as any concerns about the unfamiliar technology. It also allows for rapid battery-swapping to ease anxieties about long distance driving.

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(6) Is the antiquated and vulnerable U.S. power grid up to handling the increased demand for electricity that will come with the move to BEVs?

(a) The PNNL study showed the existing brittle and antiquated grid could charge up to 73% of the present U.S. personal transport fleet if it were electric, as long as the bulk of the charging were done during non-peak demand hours.
(b) A time-of-use pricing system can be implemented by utilities to drive the bulk of recharging to off-peak periods. With time-of-use pricing, the cost of electricity would be higher at the peak demand times when the utility wanted to discourage charging and lower at the off-peak times when it wanted to encourage use.
(c) Time-of-use pricing would work best with cars equipped with smart charging technology that reads the price of electricity and only accepts higher-priced peak demand charging when it is unavoidably necessary.
(d) Beyond smart charging, BEVs will facilitate the development of the smart grid and the addition of intermittent New Energy power sources through V2G technology that allows the BEV fleet to act as an (eventually) massive distributed and temporary electricity storage system. Such a system could smooth periods of peak demand and provide backup power when peak demand ramps up to near the level of a brown out.

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(7) Will the car-buying public at large embrace or resist the transition to BEVs and what public policies would be most effective in easing the acceptance of the unfamiliar technology of plugging in?

(a) Since Volta invented the first battery in 1800, the technology to chemically store electricity has slowly become more compact and potent. Battery technology cannot, however, store as much energy in as small a volume as the liquid hydrocarbons that fuel the pollution-spewing ICE. More than anything else, a smaller, more energy-dense battery that can be made less expensively tban today’s lithium-ion packs will advance the BEV and all its obvious advantages. Public Policy Number One, therefore, is research, development and deployment (RD&D) funding for a better battery.
(b) The price of batteries will keep the cost of BEVs high and slow their acceptance by the car-buying pulbic. Yet widespread use is vital to reinforce favorable public perception about the unfamiliar technology. The solution: Public Policy Number Two, financial incentives in the form of tax credits for early adopters.
(c) Public Policy Number Three is also in service to increasing early volumes: Federal directives to purchase BEVs for public fleets and business-oriented financial incentives to purchase BEVs for private fleets.
(d) A federal low-emissions fuel standard requiring vehicle fuel life-cycle GhG cuts of 10% by 2020 and allowing BEV emissions reductions to count toward the standard would also drive adoption.
(e) All initiatives aimed at creating a modern, high voltage smart grid will reinforce the value of BEVs.
(f) A Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) requiring utilities to obtain 25% of their power from New Energy sources by 2025 will increase the value and impact of BEVs and drive the building of a new, smart grid.
(g) A hard cap on U.S. emissions that cuts U.S. GhGs 35% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050 will also make it cheaper to make, sell and drive BEVs than ICEs.
(h) Local, state and federal public regulations, initiatives and private incentives for building charging infrastructure and installing chargers at public facilities will increase BEVs’ public profile and the perception of their convenience.

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QUOTES
- From the Environment America white paper: “Electricity is an attractive option for fueling cars because of its potential to reduce global warming emissions and other pollution, and because, in contrast to other types of alternative fueled vehicles, such as hydrogen, the technology can be applied today. Electricity has been used to power transportation since the early 1900s, and the infrastructure for delivering electricity to cars largely already exists.”

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- From the Environment America white paper: “America’s existing electric system has
enough capacity to supply power to most of the current fleet of cars in the United States if they were plug-in vehicles. If plug-in cars are charged at night, they could take advantage of unused capacity in the system—and potentially do so at lower prices. Even if most cars are charged during the day, it will be a long time before there are enough plug-in cars to be a strain on the system. To take full advantage of the potential of plug-in vehicles, however, American will need to move toward a cleaner electric grid. If America pushes forward with plans to build a “smart grid,” plug-ins could even help the electric system work better. “Vehicle-to-grid” (V2G) technology would make it possible for utilities to use the storage capacity in the batteries of parked cars to make the grid more reliable.”

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- From the Environment America white paper: “Changing the way our transportation
system is powered isn’t just a nice idea—it’s an imperative. As oil and natural gas become harder to come by and the pressure to reduce global warming pollution grows, Americans will eventually have to find other ways to get around besides in internal combustion engine vehicles. Plug-in cars are a promising alternative. We know how to build cars that run on electricity, we have a nationwide infrastructure capable of fueling them, and we know that they are environmentally preferable to the vehicles on the road today. Getting to a future of a vehicle fleet that is free from dependence on oil and produces dramatically lower emissions of global warming pollution, however, won’t happen overnight and it won’t be easy.”