Posted on 02/03/2009 6:30:40 AM PST by shove_it
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A partnership between Johnson Controls Inc and France's Saft will supply a complete battery system for Ford Motor Co's first plug-in hybrid, due out in 2012, Ford said Tuesday.
Ford also said ahead of the Washington Auto Show that seven utilities, including Consolidated Edison Inc, American Electric Power Co and Michigan's DTE Energy Co, will join its ongoing research effort to test rechargeable plug-ins and assess their impact on the electrical grid.
[...]
Automakers are lobbying Congress to include battery funding initiatives and plug-in tax breaks in U.S. economic stimulus legislation now before the Senate.
[...]
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
So, what about “Buy American”?
That’s not a contract I would want to have, especially after EV sales tank for the ultimate (hopefully!) time.
Personally I would buy an electric vehicle if the technology is good at a reasonable price. I don’t however won’t them to be subsidized by the govmit.
Cart before the horse??
And we plug these in where?? I live in an apartment....and then there's winter here in Upstate NY...
And how much will a charge cost??
I’d love to have an electric vehicle........... with a 500 cubic inch V-8 to run the generator that runs the electric motors that propel the car.
Johnson Controls is an American company. They make among others the DieHard batteries sold by Sears.
Political Contributions by Johnson Controls Employees
Follow the money....
What you really want is a cost per mile comparison of gasoline and electricity.
And how much will a charge cost??
8************
estimated charge cost three cents per mile with fuel at two dollars a gallon.
I’d love to have an electric vehicle if I lived in Kentucky now .
By as early as 2009, our demand for electricity will exceed reliable supply in New England, Texas and the West and, by 2011, in New York and the mid-Atlantic region. A failure of a power plant, or a summer-afternoon surge in the load, could make for a blackout or brownout. “There really isn’t any excess in the system,” says Rick P. Sergel, chief executive at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC).
Price shocks are already occurring. In May, long before peak summer demand, the wholesale price of juice jumped twofold in Texas, to $4 per kilowatt-hour, 25 times the average retail rate in the country. Prices exceeded the allowed rate of $2 for seven days and threatened the viability of power resellers who contracted to deliver cheap rates to consumers. New Yorkers may suffer a summer of price discontent if regulators are right about peak wholesale prices jumping by up to 90%.
In the past few years, in dozens of utility regions such as Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio, price hikes have ranged from 20% to 80%. Overall, the cost of electricity, which declined (in real dollar terms) for the last two decades of the 20th century, has been relentlessly tracking up since 2001.
Brownout
Mark P. Mills 06.30.08, 12:00 AM ET
What happens when you don’t build more power plants? Get ready for spiking electricity rates, brownouts and even blackouts as demand soars.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2008/0630/038_print.html
I woman that works with my wife drives over 50 miles to work each day in her Ford Escape Hybrid...she fills up the gas tank twice a month. Try to find any story about this kind of experience either from Ford or even in the news. The failure of auto companies is not only their products - they are as bad at marketing as the Republicans.
And of course, this is precisely the result Obama said his plan would bring. Obama: “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” http://www.qando.net/Details.aspx?Entry=9612
I'm curious of how much energy will be lost in the conversion process from fossil fuel energy (heating value) to electrical energy (kwatt-hours) to mechanical energy (joules).
There will be huge conversion losses along the way. Not to mention transsmission line losses. It may turn out that the net effect is a much larger net "carbon footprint" per electric vehicle than a conventional vehicle.
The power plant losses are much greater than the line losses.
About 32% of the energy that goes into making electricity is delivered to the customers. Now multiply by the efficiency of the charger, batter, inverter, motor and controls.
Very instructive graphs, thanks for posting!
Just in my little research on solar energy applications...I’m realizing that converting solar energy into electrical energy and then to heat or mechanical energy is one of the most grossly inefficient things you can do.
You’d be way better off painting something black and sticking it in the sun; or pedaling the darn thing yourself!
Just as a side note, that’s a decent estimate for the power grid as a whole.
However, the conversion losses are dominated by the fact that we have, in many case, darn near ancient infrastructure. Modern turbines are MUCH more efficient than those of just a decade or two ago, so incremental capacity is significantly more efficient than this chart would indicate.
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