Raleigh, N.C. to Install Plug-in Hybrid Charging Stations

Doesn’t the electricity come from coal-fired plants?

What is the battery capacity in terms of mileage?

How much energy and scarce materials go into making the battery? Is it not true that the battery’s raw materials and components are shipped back and forth across the Pacific to manufacture it? What’s it’s true cost?

How long does the battery last, and how much to replace it?

2.5 cents per mile? What are the energy calculations?

The lack of hard figures in this article make it very suspicious.

Just under half of Americas electricity comes from coal plants, the rest is a variety of cleaner fuels. Even if all of the electricity a Battery Electric Vehicle uses is coal sourced, it still has a smaller carbon footprint because a BEV is 80-90% efficient in its use of energy whereas an Internal Combustion Engine is 20% to 30% efficient. The battery capacity in terms of miles is pointless, tho the larger batteries will give their owners more flexibility. A PHEV10 (10 mile All Electric Range) will nearly double a cars mileage while using pennies worth of electricity. A PHEV40 will frequently go weeks without using gasoline. A PHEV10 and PHEV40 will need 12 pounds and 48 pounds of lithium respectively, which costs about $8 a pound and which is seeing a huge increase in production due to a doubling in its price in the past 5 years, lithium is growing increasing common. Batteries are made both here and abroad, and the energy required to transport a 100 or 400 pound battery pack is negligible, especially considering how much energy the pack will save over a 10 to 15 year life as a BEV power source, plus a secondary career as a backup power source, and then eventually it will be recycled. A useable 8 kWh will generally get a 4 passenger car around 35-40 miles, and a 2 passenger car much further. 8 kWh/36 miles is around 4 1/2 kWh total energy used, which costs 45 cents here in Virginia, though it will cost more if your state has high energy taxes. The ratio of 36 miles for 8 kWh is similar to what the Hymotion Prii, Tesla and the AC Propulsion Scion are getting and to what Saturn and GM are engineering, with the Tesla getting 244 miles from 53 kWh, and the AC Propulsion getting 160 miles from 35 kWh. For the new Volt prototypes the battery packs are 16 kWh total storage of which 8 kWh is used in order to avoid degrading the battery and to ensure a longer life cycle.

2.5 cents a mile may be a bit high, but it is a solid number that many owners will easily beat, anywhere but Connecticut or Hawaii.

GM’s supplier has state that the Volt’s 16 kWh battery will have a useable 8kWh for the life of the battery, which will be 10-12 years at least, and that it will still have 75% of its original power at end of life. Battery packs are getting much cheaper to build and much more compact and safe as well. BEV’s and PHEV’s will allow America, and Europe, to generate the power needed for much of its transport at home, instead of propping up thugs in OPEC, Venezuela and Russia. These cars will begin to be produced in significant numbers by 2011 and will be impacting the oil futures market in the years that follow. This is huge, this will change how the world economic model works in a fundamental way.

The “electricity comes from coal” canard is particularly untrue, though almost half does come from coal, the coal plants are so much more efficient than an ICE that even if an electric car drew all its electrical power from just coal plants and not a blend of hydro and nuclear as most of us would, even then the coal powered BEV would still be much more efficient on any sort of comparison that the ICE car is just not even close.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sources_of_electricity_in_the_USA_2006.png

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_production_battery_electric_vehicles

I hope there is not any power leakage while the outle is not being used.