It’s important to appreciate Better Place’s part in the scheme of things – they’re not inventing the batteries or making the cars, they’re just running the recharging scheme and financing the batteries to overcome the sticker shock.

They’re also a startup, and even successful startups are reknowned for being wildly optimistic on product schedules.

Bosch’s take on things is probably a bit pessimistic, but you’re not going to see significant numbers of electric cars for a few years yet – the battery tech just isn’t ready yet.

http://www.betterplace.com

It is worth a look – viable electric cars on green power in the near future.

At least that is what they claim.

I quite take your point about cartage (and one might add that in some cases the trips would probably involve mutliple persons, elderly or infirm etc) but the point is that out of that 40% there would be many that could be done by walking/biking or avoided through trip consolidation.

Part of this is a back end problem — we need to start redesigning cities to decrease the typical distances between residences and jobs and major services precisely so as to facilitate more rational driving practices, car pooling etc.

Also it’s gonna get really Darwinian as more and more electric cars silently hit the roads where more and more people are plugged into iPods and earphones. I can see the TAC ads now. “He didn’t listen.”

The car – or something like it – is with us permanently, and thank god for that. It’s probably the most liberating technology ever.

Forty percent of our car trips are less than two miles. If we can make these trips by walking or biking instead, we are already reducing congestion.

and

…Outside of the half-mile area, there would be single family homes. However, the central commercial district would still be within an easy walk or bicycle ride..

is that for a large number of these trips it is to get something that is not easilly transported on a bike. I am forever going down to the hardware shop – 2 kms away – to buy lengths of wood and whatnot for home projects. Other times its 5 or 6 bags of groceries. Or a large doona, or other heavy stuff. People just don’t want to have to lug this sort of stuff on the back of a bike or on public transport. You are going to have a really hard time getting people to give that sort of freedom up.

Interesting.

There is of course no proof that electric cars recharged by household solar panels will cause chaos and misery. That however, is not germane because you will never get a sufficient number of solar panels onto household and other rooves to generate the power needed to maintain the current car user ratio and usage patterns we have now, particularly when you map this onto the likely increases in population andf thus car use we are likely to see. You’re also ignoring the full energy lifecycle costs of all those vehicles, which also has to be generated someplace. And of course you’re ignoring the environmental costs of all those solar panels, the materiel for which also has to come from someplace.

The massive installed cost of all those panels has to come from some pool of funds too and of course they have to be maintained to do their job. The fully levelized cost of these is likely to be well at the upper end too.

You’re also forgetting the timelines — the schedule feasibility question. Given the huge time lag involved in switching vehicles and the considerable expense involved it’s unlikely that a substantial number of ICEs will be replaced anytime soon and if they start being discarded, their cost will fall creating a Jevons’ paradox-style drag on the transition.

That’s why the most energy efficient alternative at scale that could fit onto a timeline of rapid trasnport emissions reductions necessarily has a major switch away from individualised commuter transport at its heart.

That is a very strong statement Fran.

Where is your proof that e.g. electric cars recharged by household solar panels, is going to cause “chaos and misery”???

Mass transit can’t and won’t replace private vehicles, especially when the growth of mass transit has been suppressed over decades, to the point where massive investment is required to maintain current capacity let alone expand and extend routes

The objection is beside the point. Mass transit *must* substantially replace private vehicle usage if anything like sustainable living is to be achieved. Chaos and misery is the alternative to this future.

Yes investment required is massive, but not as massive as the levelized cost of doing what we do now publicly and privately. We are making rods for our own backs this way.

I will bet London to a brick thAT Better Place are asking for government handouts.

Who isn’t? Shame you won’t find anyone willing to bet against it, Robert.

As to who’s going to make a go of the car of the future, I’m not sure the analogy of the computer industry is the one I’d go for. I’d point to the aviation industry as somewhere where startups have an appalling record, because there are massive institutional and regulatory barriers to selling a new car

Aeroplanes are not mass-consumer items. Cars are, and so are computers, hence the comparison is valid, Robert. Look at how few regulatory problems there were in getting Hyundai and Proton set up here, and when the Tata Nano starts being exported the regulatory barriers will be swept away like chaff.

Consider that the next big export bonanza of vehicles powered by something other than the conventional petrol/diesel engine is going to come from either China or India (the superpowers of the future) or the US (perhaps even the same companies to which Australian taxpayers have given billions of dollars – do you seriously imagine that ‘regulatory barriers’ will stop us recouping our money?

My guess is that the existing car manufacturers will still be around in 20 years, but the powertrains will be manufactured as a unit by other companies. Whether these other companies are existing companies or startups is another question.

IBM stayed in the PC-manufacturing business long after it was tactically wise for them to remain there.

I don’t get where the value is in this Better Place play: it’s just a battery charge-and-exchange logistics scam isn’t it, not conceptually much different to tha gas bottles at the petrol station, nothing very smart or difficult, pure chutzpah, and working capital?

For the moment, Danny, for the moment …

There is no need for any further major technological development.

Yanked out of context, this is pretty funny. Any savings to the environment from small numbers of NGV conversions has been more than negated by the rise of the 4WD market, where a station wagon is replaced with a Hummer.

Even on a small scale, it’d make a lot of sense, as diesels are most efficient if you narrow the power band right down.

Thanks for this. I agree that this is certainly one attractive option, especially if

a) it’s a serial rather than parallel hybrid (since this would maximise the advantages the liquid fuel has by avoiding thermally inefficient cycles and making maximum effective use of the stored electrical energy.

AND

b) biodiesel from waste biomass or some other second gen feedstock (eg algae, ground fuel) were available widely in commercial volumes

Given tha b) is unlikely for some time and the likely development of renewables in staionary energy I’d like them to be PHEVs.

What you say of telecommuting is fair enough, but in the end, for quite some time, we are going to need people to work in retail, distribution, services and so forth. While the per-capita commuting traffic might decline, this side of redesign, the sheer volumes of traffic will increase.

We have that concept in mind for our late 70’s and onwards, when we are too old to look after our own garden. It probably also appeals to young DINKS with a full-on clubbing life.

The internet and home office should eventually reduce the need to drive to work at the same time, every day, in peak hour traffic. That is an overhang from the days of manufacturing and shift work. I think Australian companies are simply too old-fashioned to redesign the work model.

Furthermore, we have a large percentage of the population reaching retirement age, so they will not be needing to commute to work every day, and will not need to be in close proximity to the CBD.

Perhaps the current problems of peak hour commuting could abate without recourse to “dense living”?

More dense living doesn’t necessarily entail everyone living in “flats”, still less forcing them to do so. Nor should you assume that my vision of high density living corresponds with your recollections of life in a flat.

It would be entirely possible to design blocks of apartments and towenhouse villa living that had lots of adjacent green and open space, that were light and airy and yet retained significant private spaces where access was quite limited.

You are right in that we have, over the years, developed a cultural predisposition to freestanding dwellings surrounded by land, but I beleive that this is already beginning to shift as we test the limits of our infrastructure and are beginning a process in which we demand convenience. The fact remains that whatever one makes of the aesthetics of urban sprawl, it massively enlarges the unit cost of supplying and maintaining water, power, data, transport, health, transport and education services. Large sections of the populace every day drive away from their 1000sqm of mortgaged bliss, spending 10-15 hours each week doing nothing but sitting in traffic, burning petrol and getting stressed. If this piece of property is of value to them at all, its value is much diminished. Urban sprawl has also been listed as a cause of obesity and over-reliance on convenience food. It’s almost certainly a contributing factor in family dysfunction.

Higher densities strike a better balance between what people need and what is available with the existing resources to provide. And for those who still want their 1000sqm in Airds or Eaglevale? It will still be there, at a lower cost in initial capital and traveltimes.