For Detroit residents who get power from DTE, the Michigan Public Service Commission announced this week that it has approved the state’s first experimental rate for residential customers to recharge their electric vehicles.
DTE will offer two rates, a low, off-peak rate to charge plug-in vehicles overnight or a monthly flat rate of $40 per vehicle (how will they identify a single vehicle, though?). Also, DTE will pay up to $2,500 for customers to get a “separately metered circuit with a charging station” installed or just pay for a station’s installation. MPSC approved the rate to let DTE see how plug-in vehicles will impact its grid. The experimental rate goes through the end of 2012 and will be available to the first 2,500 customers who sign up. Read more at green.autoblog.com
The fastest way to reduce America’s dependence on oil imports is to convert petroleum-driven miles to electric ones by retrofitting the SUVs and pick-ups now on the road with rechargeable batteries. Here’s how.
Every president since Richard Nixon has vowed to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil. None has succeeded. Imports—and thus America’s vulnerability to disruptions—have increased to where now they supply two-thirds of consumption. As former Secretary of State George Schultz asked: “How many more times must we be hit on the head by a two-by-four before we do something decisive about this acute problem?”
Our aim should not be total independence from foreign sources of petroleum. That is neither practical nor necessary in a world of interdependent economies. Instead, the objective should be developing a sufficient degree of resilience against disruptions in imports. Think of resilience as the ability to absorb a significant disruption, bigger than what could be managed by drawing down the strategic oil reserve.
Our resilience can be strengthened by increasing diversity in the sources of our energy. Commercial, industrial, and home users of oil can already use other sources of energy. By contrast, transportation is totally dependent on petroleum. This is the root cause of our vulnerability.Our goal should be to increase the diversity of energy sources in transportation. The best alternative to oil? Electricity. The means? Convert petroleum-driven miles to electric ones.
Electric miles do not necessarily mean relying on all-electric cars, which would require building an extensive and expensive infrastructure. They can be achieved by so-called plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs). (Since many plug-in cars are modified hybrid automobiles, they are sometimes called PHEVs.) PEVs have both a gasoline-fueled engine and an electric motor. They first rely on the electricity stored onboard in a battery. When the battery is depleted, the vehicle continues to run on petroleum. The battery then can be charged when the vehicle is not in service.
The engineering and organizational issues involved in retrofitting on a large scale are far from trivial. The biggest problem, however, is the availability of batteries. The most suitable battery technology, which offers both a sufficient range and enough power to provide the acceleration required by today’s drivers, is the lithium-ion battery system. Current battery-manufacturing capacity is limited, and nearly all of it is dedicated to supplying batteries for the nearly 200 million laptop computers and other handheld electronic devices built each year. Making the batteries required for one million vehicles would mean doubling current manufacturing output.
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NOTE:
TransportGooru is proud to share Andy Grove’s keynote address on the critical importance; and business opportunity and viability; of moving transportation from oil to electricity.
GM Defends the Volt’s Design
A recent Carnegie Mellon University study (pdf) challenged the real-world gasoline savings and cost effectiveness of plug-in hybrids like the Chevy Volt. GM’s Vice President Global Program Management, Jon Lauckner, who has been involved in the Volt project responded on the company’s blog. Find out what he had to say below.
All-Electric Range
The first thing is the electric range of the car. Somewhat strangely, the CMU study found that “for urban driving conditions and frequent charges every 10 miles or less, a low-capacity PHEV sized with an AER (range) of about 7 miles would be a robust choice for minimizing gasoline consumption, cost and greenhouse gas emissions.”
7 miles? Really?
Well, Jon Lauckner responds:
I’ll cut to the chase; for starters, the study’s endorsement of plug-in vehicles with only a “token” electric-only range (seven miles) overlooks the inconvenience of recharging for the vast majority of drivers (approx. 90 percent) with a daily commute that exceeds seven miles. I mean, honestly, how many customers are going to stop every seven miles and wait at least 30 minutes (if a car has a high-capacity charger like the Volt with the same level of electrical energy to match it) for their battery to be recharged? […] And, if customers don’t recharge during the day, these “token” plug-ins will run primarily on gasoline. How is that consistent with reducing green house gas emissions and our dependence on petroleum?
