THE FIGURES...
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Figures have a way of clarifying an issue, in fact, any issue. So let us look at typical figures. What sort of figures? Not the 36-24-36, though they hold their own attraction, as anybody will admit; but the figures people have a way of trotting out to justify their arguments.
Conventional wisdom goes like this.
The electric car cannot be a practical reality and a solution NOW for most of us.
The reasons?
Their limited range of less than 100 km on a single charge. The 'fact' that conventional batteries are not good enough to meet present day requirements, and so we have to wait for the emergence of some 'miracle' battery technology, when we can think of looking into the viability of the electric vehicle or the EV. The hoped-for reduction in the 'carbon footprint' is a myth, as carbon(dioxide) will anyway be produced by the thermal generating plants producing the grid electricity from which the EV's will be charged.
There are a lot of other sillier points often made by our 'well wishers' in industry and government who want to 'safeguard' our interests above everything else. But let us ignore those minor issues for the moment and address one by one the above--from a purely practical point of view.
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.....AND THE FACTS
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What are the facts of the case?
The 'range' dilemma
You look at yourself and your friends, enemies and relatives and second cousin living in Chennai or Bangalore...sorry, Bengalooru or even Mumbai. I for one asked around/ looked around / sneaked around a bit. What is the 'range' that you have typically? In an average car with a full tank of 'gas', and a mileage varying from 10-- 20 km per litre, your range is an impressive 300 to 400 km.
Good. In fact, GREAT!
But tell me honestly, how much gas you had the last time you used your car or, for that matter, your two-wheeler? It is a fact of life that MOST people drive around with just enough to take you about less than 100 km! What a coincidence!
The confidence about the 'range' comes from the certainty of being able to fill up any time from the omni-present petrol pump. But then for the average city driving for a whole day, range is NOT a problem for most of us--unless of course, you are living in an American suburb from where you have a daily commute of a few hours. In our country, despite casting the net far and wide, I have not been able to 'net' a commuter who drives say, about 200-300 km daily.
FACT: The typical range you need / use is very much less than 100 km a day.
As a kid I remember the preparations for an 'adventure' (nothing more than a couple of hundred miles) by car back in the 1950s. The two things every intrepid driver carried were two large 'jerry cans' of a few gallons capacity each. One for water and the other for fuel; the much-needed fuel that assured you an extension of 'range' in an emergency. As recently as the late 1980s when a few of us undertook a pan-Indian drive in the small, cute Maruti-800, again the 'trunk space' was taken up by two plastic-wrapped 'jerry cans' of you know what!
FACT: 'Recharging' with gas at the pump takes three minutes; on the roadside with your jerry cans and rubber tube and the 'help and advice' of co-passengers and passers-by, it takes anything from fifteen to thirty minutes! Recharging an EV's batteries will take considerably longer--at least with the current battery and charging technologies.
We will look at this later in detail. But, for the present, it is not an issue as we are staying well within the one-time-charged range of about 100 km.
The battery issue
Now, what about batteries? Lead-acid batteries are the ‘staple’ of the battery department--the kind we see in our cars and trucks, in home inverters and nestled below railway coaches. Of course, they are heavy. So when you look at the energy that it can give per kg of its own weight, well, it may not look very attractive. Currently we have lighter batteries with better capacities and recharging characteristics like the Lithium battery. But their cost per watt is rather on the high side. Then there are other newer and more exotic batteries under development. But let those come in their own sweet time.
Let us not say that the humble lead-acid is not 'good enough'. They are the current workhorses of heavy industry and the railways, not to speak of the many institutions that rely on day-long battery back-up of their computers and other mission-critical equipment. From telephone exchanges to mobile phone towers to the data centres and the humble homes, lead-acids are holding their own, and capably too. Just because the technology is the same as yesteryear's batteries does not mean that today's lead-acids are shy of heavy duty performance or reliability.
A case in point is the batteries used in railway coaches. They run day in, day out, often getting abused when trains get held up for long intervals, when they get discharged to zero without the running dynamos/alternators to charge them; yet they give a better than average performance overall. The situation is much worse in the air-conditioned coaches as there the load is much greater. Visit the local data centres, banks, large internet cafes, department stores, in fact any mission-critical institution, talk to the techie in charge and ask him about back-up times, reliability etc. Take a look at the batteries too, if they will let you. Ten out of ten, they will be the sturdy old lead-acids. Surprised?!!
Try to visit any 'heavy' factory or industrial centre and you will see that small runabouts 'carrying' things around. They are the forklift trucks--you can recognize them by the 'forks' that stick out in front and which carry the loads. They are sturdy, they can 'turn on a 50 paise coin' (heh heh... who wants to use the phrase 'turn on a dime'? Mini quiz: What is a dime? If you know what it is, how much is it worth? Does its value have anything to do with the turning radius of a vehicle? No, no, you can’t look at the dictionary or ask your friend...) and they carry heavy loads. And in factories they usually work all the shifts, often round the clock.
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| An electric forklift truck |
What drives them? A motor + a controller + lead-acid batteries! In most factories when one set of batteries get exhausted, they do a quick 'battery swap' with a charged set, and in minutes the forklift can get back to work. This scenario has been part of everyday reality for so many years right here in our own country. All the while the naysayers have been repeating themselves hoarse that the EV is not practical. The EV is running in every 'heavy' factory floor. No need to believe my words; you can arrange a visit and speak to the operators (yes, the 'drivers') and the engineers there. They may not be built for speed like the street car. But when you tote up the load + the speed + the total time of running, you will see that it is a practical EV.
In fact many EV enthusiasts abroad look for old forklift motors and controllers when contemplating a 'cheap' EV conversion of their old cars. Today you can just 'Google' for phrases like 'EV conversion' and bring up hundreds of hits on the Web. Try it today. You will see that so many enterprising and eco-conscious people abroad have converted their ordinary cars into practical EVs with simplicity and ease using parts from a forklift! What is preventing us from doing that--NOW?
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| Typical forklift motor being installed into a car |
FACT: Practical EVs are possible with existing technologies.
The'carbon footprint' reality
Education is sometimes a double-edged sword. What prepares you on the one hand for tackling the problems of today's world in a positive manner can also give you the tools to 'twist' reality. The 'carbon footprint' fallacy is one such.
What is this carbon footprint? Simplified, it means the overall amount of carbon dioxide that is emitted into the atmosphere by a particular process. So the argument of the 'experts' is that say, a million cars burning fossil fuels spew xxxx tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Charging a million EVs require xxx units of electricity, and generating that much electricity takes burning xxx tonnes of coal or oil in thermal power stations, which creates xx tonnes more carbon dioxide than burning fossil fuels. Oh, that is atrocious!
This is when the old saying 'lies, damn lies and then statistics' has to be remembered. This is the way figures can be manipulated by an 'educated' expert to support his --or his sponsor's-- viewpoint.
Even if we accept the 'expert's' figures as 'Gospel Truth', let us ask a few questions.
What are the figures of the carbon dioxide emission of the engine that you have taken? The ‘best’ ones, when the engine is at its optimum? We all know that the typical vehicle engine produces its best efficiency and least pollution at only an optimum RPM or speed. In practice, a vehicle undergoing the 'start-stop-idle-start-crawl' drill and at times on an up-grade in the road, produces much much more pollution products. Nothing has been invented yet to tackle that.
How much of the power grid electricity is produced by thermal generating plants? In Kerala, for example, we have only clean hydel power. I spoke to a power engineer and he told me that today huge power plants are designed for efficiency. They meet stringent pollution/emission standards. And it is easier to design and operate such a plant for an optimum performance, both in output and in pollution. The expertly-monitored power plant is not running like the typical car caught in a mad traffic jam, with the driver revving the engine, wanting to ‘escape’ quickly.
And what about the increasing relevance of renewable technologies like solar and wind solutions? These days even home owners are investing money in solar and wind generators to escape the clutches of the greedy power companies. Wind and solar power is the 'cleanest' that man had learned to generate..correction, extract, from nature.
FACT: The 'carbon footprint fallacy' is a 'created myth'.
FACT:
Your EV will make a big DIFFERENCE.
It will make a difference to the carbon footprint.
It will make a difference to the 'air quality' of cities.
And surely, it will make a difference to your 'pocket'!!
And surely, it will make a difference to your 'pocket'!!
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| Converted cars ..... |
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| ...with batteries and motor replacing gas engine. |
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WINNERS... AND LOSERS
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In any situation, if one is dispassionate, it is interesting to watch both sides of an argument. When the situation moves such that one side has good and solid answers for everything the other side brings up, the stridency of the arguments go up. There usually is then a 'barrage of proofs' why something is not good or viable
I always think: if something is not really good, why waste your breath shouting against it? It will die a natural death because it just is not good enough to survive. Why bother to 'kill' it, put it safely in a coffin and drive in the last nails???
It is because of fear. Fear that you are going to LOSE.
This is the no-win situation in which the oil and car companies find themselves. They ARE afraid of the future trends. If they have some sense and any civic responsibility left, they would do well to side with the customer ready and willing to make a change for the better, and offer him a new choice that he prefers. I have found that even those who consider themselves as 'pretty ordinary' and not at all tech-savvy, display an extraordinary level of common sense when it comes to spending their hard-earned money on something. I am firm in my belief that the average man in the street has more principles than the top executives of multi-nationals when it comes to civic good and eco responsibilities. He will put his money on solutions that he thinks will mitigate the dire situation. I have faith in his goodness to do that; he surely will, PROVIDED he has a clear choice before him.
What are the choices before him now? To exercise a choice you need at least two kinds of something. What we have before us is only a choice of colours and shapes and 'options'. Like the grand-daddy of the auto industry Henry Ford said, '...you could have any colour--so long as it is black...''. A wise business man, he produced his Model-T in only one colour –black-- because it made economic sense. That is what companies bother about--does it make economic sense FOR THEM; not whether it makes ‘sense’ in the broader context.
What is our benign Government’s stand on the need to offer the man in the street a choice of at least one humble model of an EV against a 'bevy of fossil-fuelled beauties'? What is their idea about encouraging at least those with the knowledge and the initiative and the money to go the electric way? What about legislation as the ‘carrot and the stick’ to take care of the situation?
None that I have heard of....
We will look at what the wider world is doing in the field of EVs, and cast our eyes on some really 'fab' EVs that are now beginning to be available, in our later posts.
Until then remember to check out the things that you have learned about and form your own opinions and choices.
And keep those mental batteries charged!
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more to follow
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