| Are all these trains really necessary? |
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| Centre Digests | |
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Dear Friends and Colleagues, Because I leave for Houston tomorrow I don't have time to put together a full Digest. However, the following points from Bob Poole's Surface Transport Innovations, are worth distributing, especially given the present frenzied enthusiasm for buying and building train sets. Many people seem to assume that expensive petrol means the end of private transport. The idea that New Zealanders, from Cape Reinga to the Bluff will suddenly make all their trips on trains, buses or cycles is a nonsense. We will not change our whole way of life because one source of energy becomes expensive. We would go back to horse back first. The Centre does not like to pick winners, and we are not picking winners here, but just drawing your attention to the thinking that is taking place where people actually do stop to think, and to the technologies that are waiting in the wings, waiting for the people to decide which ones shall finally "win". One reason I make the effort to attend the American Dream Conferences to meet with, and keep in touch with, people like Robert Poole, Director of Transportation Studies for the Reason Foundation and who puts together this Digest. These items are from the latest issue – number 55. I wonder if we are yet sufficiently mature to make the connection between, the electrified vehicle fleet, over-night charging, (Using our own technology developed by Prof John Boyes), smart metering, and nuclear power. (see last paragraph.) Electric Cars: This Time It May Be for Real Despite the tall tale told in the 2006 film “Who Killed the Electric Car?” the General Motors EV1 was not ready for prime time. I was one of a group of opinion leaders in Los Angeles invited to take the car for a test drive, on a hot summer day in 1996. While the EV1 was nice and peppy for a short drive near downtown LA, I noted with dismay that the cars available for us to test-drive were all being pre-cooled from an external air conditioning source: the vehicle’s own lead-acid battery pack was unable to cope with summer air conditioning loads, in addition to moving the vehicle and its payload the 60-80 miles that one charge would take it. So no, it was not an auto/oil industry conspiracy that led the California Air Resources Board to rescind its 1990 Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate that 10% of all cars sold in the state by 2004 must be ZEVs; rather, CARB was simply acknowledging the reality that the technology was not yet there to produce such vehicles. Recent articles in The Economist (March 8th Technology Quarterly) and MIT’s Technology Review (March/April and May/June) recount the remarkable progress in battery technology over the last 10 years. For awhile, it looked as if nickel metal hydride (NIMH) was going to be the replacement for lead-acid batteries—easier to recharge and more energy per pound, but at higher cost. But more recently, engineers have been figuring out new ways to scale up lithium-ion batteries like those we use in our laptops and cellphones. It looks to me as if one or two versions of this approach will prove to be commercially viable for the first successful generation of plug-in hybrids. First-generation hybrids like the Toyota Prius use the battery to supplement a gasoline engine. But plug-in hybrids have enough battery power to handle short trips (typically 30 to 40 miles) entirely on battery power, needing the gasoline engine only for longer trips. For a typical commuter, such a vehicle can handle the daily round-trip commute, then recharge at night. GM has contracts with two competing lithium-ion battery firms, in hopes that at least one will prove to be good enough to use in its Chevy Volt, scheduled for late 2010 introduction. These developments spark several thoughts. First, there’s a sobering lesson for government agencies such as CARB about the perils of trying to force particular technologies into being. Whenever you see mandates for hydrogen fuel cells or E85 ethanol cars, be very suspicious, because government has a lousy track record in picking winners and losers. Just because the catalytic converter came along in the nick of time to enable automakers to comply with tough federal tailpipe emission standards does not mean that any and every energy or emissions mandate can be met—at all, or at an acceptable cost to consumers. Second, how successful plug-in hybrids will be in reducing CO2 emissions depends hugely on the source of the electricity used. A table in Technology Review (March/April, p. 30) compares the same vehicle’s emissions for a whole variety of power sources. Compared with conventional gasoline propulsion at 452 grams of CO2 per mile, a current-day hybrid would produce 294. But a plug-in hybrid using electricity from conventional coal-fired power plants produces 326; only with coal gasification and CO2 sequestration (a costly proposition) would the car get down to 166 grams/mile. Using conventional natural gas electric power, the plug-in hybrid does 256. But using nuclear electricity, that figure drops to 152—essentially just the CO2 produced by the small amount of gasoline used. Third, while I’m excited by the whole raft of start-up electric hybrid car companies (like Fisker and Tesla), and would love to see them succeed, I would not put my own money into them. Mass production of reliable, cost-effective automobiles is a very different thing than producing a brilliant prototype, as numerous entrepreneurs such as Malcolm Bricklin and John DeLorean found out the hard way. My money is on GM, Ford, Toyota, and the others that really know mass production. Finally, one key to the success of plug-in hybrids as a “green” solution to CO2 emissions is how and when they recharge. The ideal is for them to do so at night, when electric utilities’ inexpensive base-load generators must keep turning and they have lots of spare, cheap capacity. The worst impact would be if huge numbers of people try to recharge their plug-in hybrids during peak hours, when costly peak-power units have to come on-line to meet the demand for building air conditioning, etc. The answer to this is “congestion pricing” of electricity. And fortunately, the investor-owned utilities in California are gearing up to meet this challenge. The three big ones—PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E—are installing $5 billion worth of smart electric meters between now and 2012. These meters make it easy to charge variable rates, based on the time of day. SDG&E is already offering half-price night-time rates for plug-in car recharging. (One idea that does not make sense is for helpful governments to install charging stations at places like park & ride lots or workplaces. That charging would take place during peak electricity usage times, precisely when electricity costs the most. Unless they use pay-meters that charge a peak price, such charging stations would be ill-advised.) So the prospects for practical electric vehicles—as plug-in hybrids—are really looking up. Quotable Quote “As the primary federal funding mechanism for our national highway system, the gas tax is increasingly outdated. When President Eisenhower envisioned our interstate system, he favored a user-pay method of financing its construction and maintenance. Unfortunately, he was limited by the technologies of his day. Now, however, we have exciting new financing mechanisms that are supplementing the gas tax while simultaneously reducing congestion. Through the broad deployment of high-speed open-road tolling technologies coupled with hundreds of billions of dollars of private capital, we can begin eliminating our dependence on a failed gas tax-based transportation model. It’s time for our country to embrace a far more efficient, clean, and technology-based approach to charging for road use. This new approach will dramatically improve the quality and performance of our transportation systems. It will also give businesses and families the type of predictable and reliable service levels to which they have become accustomed when making phone calls, running the sink, or turning on the lights. We can also eliminate Washington’s ability to use our transportation network as its own personal—and political—sandbox. --DOT Secretary Mary Peters, http://fastlane.dot.gov, May 2, 2008. If you want to get these weekly updates, which I find invaluable, go to: http://www.reason.org/surfacetransnews.shtml and log in for the weekly updates. |
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