Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future? | Hacker News Reader

Chevy Volt: Is This Our Future?

nytimes.com

59 pointscubix87 comments

I'm actually most concerned about the lifetime of the batteries. From what I've read, the batteries top out at 8 years, and presumably degrade before that. As the $20k Chevy Cruze is the same chassis as the Volt, I guess the batteries come out at ~$15k. That's a huge amount of money to renew use of your $40k car after 8 years (unless you see that $15k as some sort of investment in the environment).

The Volt design could/should succeed. But not with battery tech where it is. Those batteries need to do 10--12 years.

I wonder how the battery degrading will affect the depreciation of the vehicle which is usually the biggest financial drain of buying a new car.

Once the batteries die, you've basically got a Chevy Cruze + a bunch of weight dragging down MPG, as well as buyers saying "this doesn't work," so I'm expecting it will deprecate through the floor.

I think the better place EV business model will help alleviate that problem, since you are technically renting the battery and it will get replaced semi-regularly.

http://betterplace.com/the-solution-switch-stations

This will also allow the batteries to improve over time, without having to perform massive upgrades to your existing car.

If you crashed your 2002 BMW M3 ($43k new) and it was then useless to you, like an electric car with kaput batteries, you could be back in business for $15k (current used price of that M3).

Sure, but the insurance excess would only be $0–$2,000.

Good point. Let's say the engine just dies for some reason and insurance doesn't cover it.

i doubt it's all in the batteries - the volt is a substantially more complicated car. The volt can get away with a smaller battery than other EVs as it doesn't need such huge range - it'll still be a substantial cost, of course.

Its a punt for the future. I'd hope that in 8 years a replacement battery has twice the capacity at a quarter the cost. If it doesn't and nothing better has emerged, the electric car is probably screwed as a concept anyway. I'd then hope there's more oil than we think.

I'd hope so to, but battery tech hasn't exactly got a stellar record of improvement, likely because of fundamental chemistry constraints.

While I hate to be the depressive and I'd love there to be a better technology available, my understanding is that the resource requirements for battery production and disposal are sufficiently high that the whole life energy costs of such vehicles aren't actually very impressive compared with conventional vehicles, sadly. Hydrogen fuelled cars are a nice technology but effectively an energy storage medium rather than a fuel because the Hydrogen is sufficiently expensive to extract (though a late friend who was a former industrial chemist insisted that solar-initiated catalytic cracking of seawater to extract Hydrogen was viable), plus the molecules are so small that even the best vehicle fuel tank will leak itself empty within a few weeks.

My best bet would be that we'll end up with waste or algae derived biofuels driving turbines feeding ultracapacitors to drive electric motors. But, TBH, there seem to be nasty issues on pretty much all sides. It may simply be that personal transportation as we currently know isn't sustainably scalable with the information and resources available to us.

I would say that battery tech has improved enormously in the last few years. Look at the battery life of current laptops and mobile phones and compare that to a few years ago. In part, this is due to decreased energy consumption of the electronics, but in no small part this should be credited to improved batteries, too.

I felt this way too, at first, when looking into a Prius. But the batteries are usually warrantied for 100,000 miles. They're also about $2,500 + labor for a new one from a dealer. While this is high for a "maintenance" cost, it's not too bad. Especially considering most people trade their vehicles in every 8 years which would be when it starts to crap out.

> Especially considering most people trade their vehicles in every 8 years which would be when it starts to crap out.

You forget that they sell those old cars to someone who typically resells them to someone else who then uses that car for another 10 years. If the car has to be junked that can't happen. If the battery needs to be replaced, the amount of money you get goes down significantly.

I want to love electric cars, but I see two big issues: (1) if they go mass market, all that electricity will still have to be generated somewhere. Coal? Nuclear? (2) The batteries need rare-earth minerals, which are brought to market through environmentally-degrading open pit mining. Furthermore, at this point, most rare-earths are available almost exclusively from China.

#2 is not an issue for Tesla or Toyota. There are no rare-earth materials inside Tesla's motors [1]. Toyota is also using Tesla's common-earth motors [2].

[1] http://www.autoobserver.com/2010/10/tesla-opens-rd-labs-and-...

[2] http://alttransport.com/2011/01/toyota-is-developing-electri...

There are, however, plenty of rare earth minerals around. China is only supplying nearly all of them because they are mined nowhere else. A mine in California will, for example, reopen soon. It’s simple supply and demand, really.

I’m not terribly worried about getting rare earth minerals. I’m worried about the environmental impact. Looking into alternatives (which seems very possible) certainly looks like a good idea.

An internal combustion motor is, at best, about 20% efficient [1], whereas if you burn the same fossil fuel in an electric power plant using a combined cycle configuration you can reach 60% [2].

Now the electric company loses some of that by sending over wires to your house (or where ever the charger is) but its still a big win. What that means in mathematical terms is that if you took the same fossil fuel we burn today in cars and instead made electricity out of it and ran our cars on the generated electricity, we could either have nearly 3x the cars for the same fuel, or the same number of cars using 1/3 the fuel.

The win here is that if you have room to build a big heavy specialized machine to convert fossil fuel to electricity you can invest in all the things that make that really efficient. Whereas if you have to put an engine in every car, there is a financial and weight limit to how complex you can go (not that some of the extreme low sulfur diesels aren't wicked complex, they are).

Also you don't need rare earths. You only need them for permanent magnet motors. A fully electric car can by built with practically none, they are available locally if you need them[3].

[1] "Most steel engines have a thermodynamic limit of 37%. Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.[11][12] " - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine

[2] "In general in service Combined Cycle efficiencies are over 50 percent on an on a lower heating value and Gross Output basis. Most combined cycle units, especially the larger units, have peak, steady state efficiency efficiencies of 55 - 59%. " - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle

[3] The US used to be the world supplier of rare earths, China just did a Wallmart on us and drove domestic suppliers out of business, the DoE has put them back into business - http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/us-rare-earth-mi...

I agree with your point, though I guess its probably more like 2x the cars. Also, in colder countries / states, the equation doesn't look as rosy. In winter, you use the heat generated by the combustion engine. Hence, efficiency goes way up.

Without knowing any numbers, I would assume, that at the moment, an additional, fossil fuel based, heating system would do the best job for an electric car. Webasto [1] for instance sells those.

[1] http://www.parkingheater.com/

When calculating the efficiency of electric cars you must also take into account the losses from the battery. I'm pretty sure charging a battery is not 100% efficient.

Good point-my understanding is that you do lose some capacity with each charge over time. The one thing that the parent should've noted - which would support his point - is that oil must also be transported across oceans / highways to refineries and then transported again to individual gas stations, which is in itself a drain on resources. Being able to send power over power lines, I imagine, beats those as well.

Absolutely, the electricity -> chemical -> electricity cycle gets less power out than you put in.

The fuel cycle is still fossil fuel -> (stuffs) -> car moves.

There are many ways to change around the (stuffs) part of the equation. The claim is that converting fossil fuel to electricity in bulk is much more efficient than converting it into mechanical work locally through exothermic chemical reactions.

We could keep trying to detail efficiencies (or non-efficiencies) in the problem but as Glieck pointed out in his Chaos book, you can compute the length of the British coastline by drawing a line around the island and get one number, or you can zoom in and include the bays and harbors and protrusions and get another number, all the way to going around each grain of sand on the beach and getting yet another number. Clearly the closer you look at the coastline length the 'longer' it gets, but that extra length is misleading.

JEVONS EFFECT

> (1) if they go mass market, all that electricity will still have to be generated somewhere. Coal? Nuclear?

All of these alternatives are probably better than generating the same power, less efficiently, distributed over a fleet of small power stations ranging from fairly clean to horrifyingly dirty. There are large environmental advantages to centralized power generation, at least in the ease of regulation and emissions testing if nothing else.

The good thing about electricity is that it's fungible. You can convert everybody's electric car from coal to nuclear to solar without having to actually go and make alterations to every car.

The $7500 tax credit is getting gamed by some dealers who resell the car to other dealers and take the credit for themselves. I don't know how widespread this is, but it's the kind of thing that makes my blood boil: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43243050/ns/business-autos/t/som...

That turned out to mostly be a hoax: http://jalopnik.com/5806946/chevy-dealers-are-not-scamming-t...

Can someone explain to me, why, exactly, this should be better than a hybrid design?

A hybrid design can use a comparatively tiny combustion engine together with an electric motor, which saves fuel consumption and does not need to be plugged in ever.

The Volt needs both a full-fledged combustion engine and a full-fledged electric engine and needs to be plugged in after each drive. That sounds basically like combining the disadvantages of electric motors and combustion engines in one car. Why would anyone want that? (And electricity is not exactly free, either)

Well, 80mph as the article indicated.

Are you saying the Prius (for example) does not reach 80 mph but the Volt does?

Ahgh! 80mpg! mpg!

I hate it when I do that.

I don't think the idea is that it is better than a hybrid. I gather that idea is consumers get to "test-drive" the electric concept for the first 40 miles of every "tank", and that they will begin to realize that's all they need.

Currently a hybrid like the Prius is largely indistinguishable to the driver from a gas-only car. It sounds to me like GM is aiming to give drivers the electric car experience, with the gasoline as a safety net.

In discussions about electric cars there always seem to be two arguments that end up head-to-head:

1. That average or mode of distance traveled per day is less than X miles. (60 or something, a distance many electric car designs have no problem achieving) 2. That people won't accept a car that can't do long-distance trips.

The Volt/serial hybrid (which Volt actually isn't) design responds to both of these arguments. If we transitioned all cars on the road to this, the average drive wouldn't consume any gasoline at all but people could still take their infrequent longer road trips.

That's the premise I've seen at least.

Even better:

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

In the future, everything is gamified.

Actually, you know who really needs to gamify things? Banks.

We already have credit scores.

If you have to pay to see your score, it's not gamified, just quantified.

I use creditkarma, which provides a score for free (though it might not always be quite accurate; I think they reverse-engineered the criteria).

Have you used mint.com? You can set budgets for things and track your spending from month to month.

That sounds like a terribly neurotic, obsessive compulsive future.

I've always thought the Volt sounded way over-engineered. Why bother with a fancy hybrid engine rather than concentrating on making a lightweight, affordable all-electric car? The simple approach is always going to win. Zenncars.com was taking this approach but I'm not sure of their progress.

That's exactly the concept behind the Nissan Leaf, which they discussed in the article.

For me, the Leaf isn't the answer. I drive from Houston to Austin regularly. It's a 200 or so mile drive. The Leaf gets 70 miles to a charge. What good does that do me? I would barely make it out of Houston before having to recharge for hours.

Ultimately, Hybrids like the Volt are the best answer for the moment. They provide a practical, non-scary transition into eco friendly vehicles. Eventually, cars like the Prius and Volt will be commonplace, paving the way for more radical solutions.

Depending on how frequently you travel, renting a car may be much cheaper than the difference in depreciation between a Prius and a LEAF. And an all-electric makes even more sense as the family's second car.

It's all marketing. One day we'll look back and be amazed that people felt they needed to own two-ton 4WD land tanks with 500-mile gas tanks to buy groceries.

ZENN, however, won't be the ones to bring it about. Years back they abandoned producing vehicles for a weird penny-stock scam deal with EEStor.

The US should invest in high speed rails, better inner city transportation systems, and encouraging people to use bicycles . Electric cars aren't the solution.

What's the environmental impact of making the batteries?

The polymer in a li-poly battery is ethylene glycol. It's relatively stable, relatively non-toxic (don't drink it, its can kill you but not the way hydrochloric acid will). Its almost the same stuff used as coolant in ICEs. Unlike NiCad and NiMH its probably the most environmentally friendly battery around. The other anode and cathode is lithium and lithium-manganese. These aren't rare metals (which I find ridiculous when people think they are made of exotic materials) but manufacturing is high because of the cost of research and the quantities produced.

As far as recycling is concerned, over time the electrolytes breakdown and need to be replaced. So you delaminate it and attach the anode and cathode to a new PEG laminate. That is basically how a li-poly battery is recycled.

I've said before and I'll say again: Electric cars will not gain widespread acceptance until you can travel the equivalent of a tank of gas on one charge. Tesla motors is close, but you need at least 300 and closer to 400 miles per charge.

400 miles? You kidding? I have never driven anything that can go 400 miles per tank- I typically refill at 200-250, and some of my bikes I'd refill at 80.

When I'm on the highway, I tank my car up and it'll be roughly 200 miles at halfway and 300 at 1/4. Granted, I've never driven my car to vapors on the highway but it seems logical that a tank of gas will get me around 400 miles. It's a 14 gallon tank so that translates to around 30mpg highway. I don't think it's unrealistic to ask for an equivalent efficiency in an electric car.

What makes you think that's a realistic expectation?

30mpg highway is really good and does not reflect the average experience of a consumer.

That said, I think you're (sadly) right, but not for the reason you're stating. Because electric cars can't be recharged in five minutes, consumers will suddenly think they have to go even further on a charge. They will completely ignore the fact that they commute 15 miles each way, every day, and the fact that they already have that minivan they use for long trips anyway.

That said, your argument doesn't really apply to this car. "The EPA official all-electric range is 35 miles (56 km), and the total range is 379 miles (610 km)." (Wikipedia) That qualifies as, "closer to 400 miles per charge."

> 30mpg highway is really good

Depends on the car you drive. 30mpg is really good for a gaz-guzzler, but mid-range sedans can easily be driven into the 40s.

mid-range sedans can easily be driven into the 40s.

Really? Here are some numbers from Kiplinger's "best midsize sedan" list from 2009:

* Sonata 32mpg highway.

* Mazda 6 30mpg highway.

* Chevy Malibu 33mpg highway.

* Nissan Altima 31mpg highway.

http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/car/archive/2008/car1207.ht...

Cars.com mentions the best in each class for 2011, and it's the Nissan Versa and Sentra, each at 34mpg for the "Midsize Cars" class.

Looking at FuelEconomy.gov, listed by class ("family sedan"), the only midsize sedans I can find that break 40mpg are the Passat diesel (43mpg) and the Hyundai Elantra (40mpg), the next highest is 31mpg.

I have no idea what the official rating is, but my 1998 Buick Lesabre gets about 31 highway on a consistent basis, and it's not even vaguely designed for efficiency.

Of course, city, which is where I live, is closer to 19 or 20.

My 2011 Sonata is rated at 35 highway but I can and do get 40+ easily on long drives. The instant mileage gauge is definitely useful in terms of trying to get the highest 'score' fuel efficiency wise.

Daimyoyo was talking about actual mileage, not EPA mileage. Simply by holding 60mph or below, you can easily get 10-20% above the EPA highway rating; 15-30% if there's a lot of traffic around you going the same speed.

> Simply by holding 60mph or below

It varies from car to car really, depending on engine details, transmission gear ratios, transmission type and aerodynamics. With my previous car the best mileage was achieved around 110km/h (68mph). At this speed, it was in the high 40s.

It's funny you should say that, since I don't think I've ever known anyone to actually hit their EPA numbers. Then again, the EPA number calculations were recently revised.

That said, I don't consider driving <= 60mph to be 'easy'.

There's a good reason I said "simply" instead of "easily." I'm personally planning some mild aerodynamic modifications to decrease the 75mph cruising penalty.

But I was referring to the current EPA numbers; the pre-2007 EPA ratings are harder to exceed by such large percentages.

There's a good reason I said "simply"

Uh...

you can easily get 10-20% above the EPA highway rating

It appears I said both "simply" and "easily." Your witticism was correct; I'll take my next freeway trip at 75mph by way of apology.

What? 30mpg is around 7.8l/100km! All three cars I've driven so far consumed around 5 l/100km (gas) or around 4.5l/100km (diesel). All of them could seat four people and had enough room in the trunk to fit a week of groceries for four people.

That doesn't mean that American consumers expect 30 mpg from a family sedan on American highways.

For the main usage of the car that EVs are supposed to replace - commuting - the comfortable range can be far less than a tank of gas. Maybe a quarter.

For long-haul trips, it is of course a much bigger issue - in part because putting charge stations in the sticks (vs charging at home for regular commute) is so much tougher.

Drive more efficient cars? With bigger tanks? The small sedans I usually drive pretty much always have ranges of above 800km (500 miles), and my range record on a single tank was with a turbo-diesel 405[0], with careful driving and a 70L tank (huge for a mid-range sedan, I recognize this, most mid-ranges are around 50L these days) was above 1400km (870 miles).

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peugeot_405

I generally do drive somewhat efficient cars. My most recent car, an old Outback, is the worst I've ever driven at 28mpg typ.

It's just been my experience that more efficient cars have smaller tanks.

Euro perspective: My car's a 12 year old rusting hulk but it does 550 miles to a tank of diesel. I think more modern cars will get 750 or more. I don't think many people regularly drive more than about 400 miles without an overnight break though.

I have a 2011 Honda Accord (inline-4 engine) that gets, on average, 29 miles per gallon, and holds 18 gallons of fuel. I've easily done over 400 miles on a single tank, and have even come close to 500(though at that point I was kind of sweating bullets thinking I'd get stranded).

If you're worried about range, then there's a old-fashioned gas tank in there to extend the range.

It would be more accurate to say that you won't accept an electric car until it can travel between 300 and 400 miles on a charge. That is a fair statement.

However its unclear yet that "widespread acceptance" requires that. The Volt and the Leaf are out there, so its really going from theoretical to empirical. After they they have been in full production for a year, if they (and the other electric vehicles) are not gaining market share commensurate with the vehicle replacement rate, then you can say "See they just don't have widespread acceptance."

I don't see the range as the issue, but the lack of instant refueling.

I don't get too worried about my car's total range since I can just stop and get gas every 10 minutes in town. But the problem with electric is that it takes 10 hours to recharge. Is there a solution to that besides hybrid gas/electric?

It's essentially impossible to charge a battery in the same time as filling a gas tank. The currents involved would be immense, and besides requiring heavy-duty conductors and power electronics, such high currents would incinerate any lithium-ion battery on the market today in spectacular fashion.

Battery swapping is probably the most practical solution, but developing a standard battery pack that can be used in a variety of models and easily swapped - not to mention the logistics and tracking to distribute them nation-wide - would probably take longer than developing higher-capacity batteries.

Perhaps a breakthrough in capacitor power density? Otherwise, yeah, swapping seems like the most realistic option.

Nanosafe batteries charge in 10 minutes http://www.nanobus.org/dotnetnuke/Technology/NanoSafe/tabid/...

I really hope battery switching stations catch on (see betterplace).

I think you might be right when you're talking about a household's first car. We want to be able to take the car on long weekend drives or holidays. But many households have two or more cars, and considering that the typical daily usecase is more like a 40km round trip, current electric cars are more than capable of meeting this need. Households simply use the fuel-based car for longer trips, and the electric car is used for in-city usage.

In 20 years time we could hope that the battery problem will be sufficiently solved that we can start getting 500km trips out of a charge, and then even the first car of a household could be electric.

My wife and I each have a car. I'd be happy driving a short-range electric car for my commute as long as our other car can be used for long trips. I bet a lot of people are in the same situation.

Obviously that leaves a lot of gasoline cars on the road, but it's a start.

I'd like to see the reviewers electricity bill.

Coal-Burning cars (er.. electric) are the future!

I've never understood this argument. I mean, yes, I get that all you're doing is moving the energy production somewhere else; but isn't that a GOOD thing?

My response to the "you're just moving" argument is that you're doing more than moving it, you're CENTRALIZING it. It's much easier to replace one coal plant with a nuclear plant or a wind farm (or 10) than it is to replace the thousands of cars that plant powers.

Am I totally wrong here?

No.

There's two sides to the argument. On the one hand, centralizing is big. It allows huge gains in efficiency- steam plants fueled by coal are 99% efficient, and by the time the power reaches the wheels of your car you're still probably around 60-80% (Otto cycle is 25% at absolute best, not counting drivetrain losses) It allows flexibility in source- nuclear, coal, wind, solar- and the source can be 'hot-swapped'.

At the same time, it is important to remember the energy has to come from somewhere, and this is something politicians, media, and industry has made a habit of carefully ignoring, so it does seem like a good idea to remind less inquisitive folks electric cars are not powered by free, unlimited energy. (Crazy as it may sound, folks believed that was the case for anything driven by 'renewable energy' a handful of years ago. That's what they were taught; renewable = free/unlimited)

It’s a good idea to say that but many people will then immediately go to the next extreme: electric cars cannot possibly be useful at all unless all our energy production is already carbon neutral†. The right way to approach this is to offer a detailed explanation, not to only say that electric cars burn coal. It’s a true statement, but it leads to misconceptions.

I will say what I always say at this point: electric cars are about enabling large scale infrastructure change. A gas powered car will burn gas now and in twenty years. An electric car burns (mostly) coal now but it doesn’t have to in twenty years. That’s what electric cars are all about.

Now, an electric car you buy now likely won’t survive until a large portion of our energy comes from carbon neutral sources. We don’t even know whether we will be able to pull that off at all. Why then buy electric cars? Why sell them? Why subsidize them? The reason for this is that changing every gas powered car to an electric car takes time and requires a lot of infrastructure and testing. We really shouldn’t start building electric cars only in forty years, we should start right now.

—

† Whether we should work towards being carbon neutral, whether that’s possible at all and makes sense is certainly controversial. For the purpose of this article I just assumed that we should.

There are other possible benefits of switching to electric cars. For one it makes us less dependent on oil. Oil is not unlimited (so is coal but it is at least less limited), being dependent only on energy and not one specific energy source makes it easier to react to changing energy source prices.

A gas powered car will burn gas now and in twenty years. lectric car burns (mostly) coal now but it doesn’t have to in twenty years. That’s what electric cars are all about.

This is really the key point. Right now, if all cars were electric, in Netherlands you would be driving on natural gas, in Austria renewable energy, and in Spain Nuclear energy (http://bit.ly/m25JwE).

Each country / region has good reasons for basing their current energy supply on a particular resource, and they can adapt over time as new options become available, old ones less attractive, market incentives change, or democracy pushes for something new.

Not totally wrong. However, I don't like the idea of having my mobility tied to the grid at all times. Yes, oil comes from an economic grid of sorts as well (you can't easily produce it in your backyard) - but you can store gasoline more readily than electricity. I liken it to the problem w/ Walmart, i.e. the middle-men and distributed warehouses have been replaced by just-in-time (efficient) inventories. These systems are more efficient, but when/if they fail - they fail in epic fashion.

also, don't discount the Jevons Effect .. another complication that has to be taken into account.

Speak for yourself. My cars will be hydroelectric.

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