Is the Developing World Poised for an Electric-Vehicle Boom?

Anupam *Bhattacharjee*.... seriously? Surely someone's made that name up!
He may as well have been called Patak Elechrickaree.

I have two problems with electric cars. 1. They have no range. 30-40 miles gets me someplace maybe, but then how do I get back? 2. When the battery goes the vehicle is junk! The cost of battery replacement is so high the vehicle is essentially totaled when the battery fails. So I guess I really only have one problem with electric cars after all. Power storage.

if you drive more then 30-40 miles a day then you have issues. Maybe instead of investing in an electric car, you consider moving closer to work. These cars are for city drivers, people who run errands, or people who just don't drive more then 30miles a day. I think the issue with filling stations will be solved very quickly. Every business with a parking lot literally can be turned into a filling station. These car companys should also be trying to develop a filing station that can be installed anywhere. You should be able to fill up your car at the supermarket, any fast food restaurant with a parking lot, mall, whatever. You should be able to put $5 in, connect your car, go shopping, and when you return your car is fully charged. Voila! I live in NYC and I am very happy to see these e-bikes everywhere. It's a sign a things to come, and hopefully quick.

Battery technology is comparable to chip technology. Who would have thought 5 years ago that we'll have 128GB memory cards the size of a stamp?
I think this area will evolve equally fast, if not faster.

Maybe in Asia there is just less of an attachment to the combustion engine and that's why they see electric vehicles more objectively as we do in the US.

"Learn to Live & Live to Learn"
Alexander von Humboldt

China laid 11,000 miles of high-speed rail this year. The USA laid zilch.

If we are going to compete in the 'new world' we are going to have to embrace new energy initiatives, and start producing more tangible goods.

In my country, Serbia/Europe one liter of gasoline costs 1.25 EUR it is $6.3 per 1 U.S. gallon. It is similar in the rest of Europe and the prices will rise. So we need as soon as possible to find a more efficient mode of transportation and electric vehicles is one of the solutions.

Get real folks. I was there in 1972 the first time that gas went over a dollar. Two years ago diesel hit five. Neither government nor business has delivered an answer. Folks we are important we have to answer the demands of change or continue to live with buggy whip technology. Electric cars have spleen rupturing acceleration, it the battery issue and recharging infrastructure that is important. People used to have to walk in front of cars with flags. We will either participate in the beginning or the end our way of life.

Wether we like it or not, we don't have unlimited oil. Thus prices go up, and we will be forced to purchase electric cars. Technology changes and I am sure we will find ways to increase ranges. It is absolutely ridiculous that we use almost as much energy alone, then the rest of the world.

I think people are missing the big picture with electric car .. even if they had equal range to gas cars ... even if the batteries lasted 20 years and were environmentally friendly ... the US power grid could not supply millions of cars charging their batteries. Take California which just a few years ago could barely keep the power on with too many AC units running. Then, the last thing is where do you think the power comes from, for the most part it will still come from fossil fuels being burned at power plants unless people don't mind more nuclear power plants being built. Wind/Water/Sun power will not generate enough electricity to keep up with the demand that would be created by an electric car replacement for gas.

Now I am not saying electric cars are a bad idea, I think it is a great idea, but I just think there are bigger issues that need to be resolved before the electric car can be a success. I am crossing my fingers for Fusion Power plants and better batteries for the environment.

Oh, and when people say that the cost of gas will force people to electric cars .. the more electric cars will place a larger demand on electricity .. which will lead to the need for more investment in infrastructure to support that demand aka building more power plants, upgrading the entire countries power grid, etc which will force the price for electricity up as well. When one wants to look at the cost of local fossil fuel burning (say in an engine) vs power distributed from a power plant the best example would be to look at heating a home. In most cases electric heat is a lot more expensive than say Oil/Natural Gas/Propane. It is the same situation for charging an electric car vs burning the fuels in an engine under the hood.

No matter what we do, there will be a price. Doing what is best for the environment will most likely never be what is best for our pockets. Any change in the status quo will cost money because it will require an investment in infrastructure on a grand scale (to cover the needs of 300 million people). The $$$ is why things will not change fast, it will be an incremental change over decades.

The electric vehicle revolution requires a dirt cheapo clean and green nuclear power revolution to fuel it.

Cheap oil and jobs could happen simultaneously with a massive increase in nuke power builds just like FDR's new deal and hydro was in the 1930's. The costs would be paid for by eliminating oil imports.

A US conversion from fossil fuels to mass produced nuclear reactors would eliminate most air pollution saving millions of lives annually, end the global warming/ peak oil problem within a ten year time frame, provide a huge job producing boost to the economy, and require only a small part of our industrial capacity.

The US would need 2500 gigawatts of mass produced nukes at $2500B financed by the $800B paid every year into the coffers of Big Oil/Coal for their deadly products.

Currently Asian nukes are under $1.5B/Gw and 1.5 cents a kwh and AECL and Westinghouse are predicting less than half that for their new mass produced Gen 3+ units. Current nuke US operating cost is 2 cents a kwh less than coal or NG.

Google "china-leverages-learning-curve-cost"

Public power giant TVA has announced it is replacing its coal plants with nuke at its current less than 5 cents a kwh cost for new nukes despite the enormous and soon to change millstone the NRC represents to American nuclear.

Like FDR's TVA and Bonneville, Obama needs to start a giant public power nuke corporation charged with replacing all of America's coal plants on site with a single national license.

NG electricity and heating applications would immediately convert to nuclear electricity. The freed up gas would be available to make CNG, methanol, DME (propane), and synfuel transportation fuels as we transition to nuclear produced synfuels and electric vehicles.

Call it the nuclear Picken's plan.

Nuclear has the support of fascists and deniers even Repugs as well as a significant percentage of progressives. The nuclear conversion is politically possible.

The 30000 American's who die every year the coal to nuclear conversion is delayed would appreciate Obama speeding up efforts.

The only way any of this would work is to reinstate the Civilian Conservation Corps from the 30's and have them build solar, sea, and wind power installations throughout the country as well as recharging stations on every road at 3-5 mile intervals, that power drawn locally from local power supplies. Then reforest every unused surface until our topsoil makes a comeback. While they are at it, begin making roads and highways that are solar panels and have the corps. repaint every roof with reflective paint to reduce the heat absorbed in major metropolitan areas.

Americans should be showing the world what we are made of, responsible and powerful people, not deadbeat morons, who don't care.

Battery swapping would seem to be a viable solution. You pull into a battery swap station, they take out your old uncharged battery and put in a freshly charged battery and you're off again.

Companies could offer battery charging areas in their parking lots as an employee perk. For that matter, I worked at a company which didn't have a cafeteria but did allow a canteen truck to come by every lunch hour and park in the company lot. I can see companies allowing a vehicle battery charging concession in their parking lots too.

Yes, to nuclear power.
No, to radio-active waste.
There is a solution, it is the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.
LFTRs are a proven technology, research was terminated in 1975. New advances with better heat exchangers and the Brayton cycle turbines make this a highly desirable option. LFTRs can burn our stockpile of radio-active waste from existing nuclear power plants. (Because LFTRs are so efficient it would take over 100 years to do this). LFTRs produce little long term radio active waste, or products suitable for making bombs. The radio-active waste produced has a short half life and requires only 300 years of storage as compared to the uranium waste which has to be stored for 10,000 years. There is also much less radio-active waste, 0.3% for equivalent power from uranium. Thorium is plentiful, there is enough in coal ash and mine tailings to power the country for 100 years, and a million years supply can be dug out of the earth. LFTRs would also be much less costly to build than conventional LWRs because they run at atmospehric pressure so do not need a large containment building. They are inherently safe and do not need or use any equivalent of control rods. Thorium for LFTRs does not require expensive enrichment like uranium. Cost of electricity from an LFTR plant is projected to be less than from a coal plant. See:

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2008/11/thorium-at-googles-tech-talk.html
and also:
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/

We should build a factory to build these in a size small enough to ship on trucks (200MW) and an assembly line will bring down costs. These could be set up all over the world (no worries about nuclear proliferation) and first locations should be to replace coal and oil fired electrical generating plants, because there is already power distribution set up at these locations. Pollution from these sources will be terminated.

The revolution in the transportation has already started. Almost all cars and trucks will be running on electricity instead of gas or diesel in 15 years. Industries currently dependent on oil for energy can be converted to use electricity.

The point of this article was not the electric car in the USA, where we all know that there are signifigant issues. We are a large country with a well distributed population.

The point was that in developing countries, this is not the case. In places like China and India, where the population is already dense and infrastructure is still being built for the first time, EVs make more sense.

Increased demand from places where the EV's range limitation is a nonissue (local, urban daily travel and effective high speed rail for distance travel).

Remember as well, that this is a lithium convention, not a hippie green hug-fest. A mass adoption of EV's in China is anything but green (considering their massive and filthy coal plants).

@everygamer

Actually, millions of electric cars could be charged at night, with the surplus base-load capacity in the grid.

There are two types of generators feeding into the grid -- to handle the base load, or peak loads. Nuclear, coal, hydro, and large natural gas plants are built to handle the base load. Nuclear, coal, and hydro plants have to run all the time -- therefore, there is a surplus of capacity at nights. For peak loads, more expensive generators (gas turbines, diesel) have to be operated. These cost much more to operate than base-load generators.

The grid is used to "ship" some of the surplus base load capacity across time zones, to where it is needed for peak loads. This results in transmission losses, so it cannot completely smooth out demand and supply.

Electric cars could be charged at night -- when there is a surplus of base-load generating capacity. Smart metering will ensure that there is a financial incentive to charge up during off-peak hours. Electric cars could also be used to feed power back into the grid, during peak load periods.

So, electric cars would actually help improve the efficiency of the grid. These improved efficiencies would help reduce the cost of electricity.

Alright im seeing a lot of comments on here where people just are not thinking.
First off: 30-40 miles to work is normal where i live (AZ) there are plenty of people who need a range much higher than 40 miles. There is no problem with this it is just that in a place as spread out as the western U.S. this happens a lot

Second: There ARE electric cars that get more than 40 miles to the gallon, dont just go off of crappy cars like the chevy volt which is not even a fully electric car. The Nissan leaf is actually a decent example, 100 miles per charge, that is plenty i think for anything you need to do, the only problem would be charging time and charging stations.

I think the main problem is people who expect an electric car to let them travel 400 miles into another state to go on vacation, there should be bullet trains for that, not personal cars, people cant drive well anyways, and for intercity travel there needs to be rental car companies with electric cars made for tourists, its really all about marketing products and wether or not the companies and the government would be willing to work together to make it happen

I only wanted to say that building more power plants does not mean increased cost of electricity. The power plants will be built to meet the demand of the consumer and it is supply and demand that determines the cost of things as a general principal. Yes much of the power will still come from fossil fuels(which i do not like but is the truth at least for a while) but at least it will come more from coal than oil which the Us has an abundance of.

Several people have made comments based on a lack of information, such as assuming that EVs will cause the price of electricity to rise, or that they'll only be able to drive 80 miles or so between charges, or that batteries will be very expensive and need to be replaced in just a couple of years. If you look for the answers, they're out there. EVs are the only logical answer.

The Tesla Roadster will give you about 250 miles between charges, even more if you drive with a light foot. A Tesla is more expensive than most people can afford, but it proves that range is simply a number that can be dealt with in compromise: with a smaller battery pack, the car can be more reasonably priced and still give adequate range. And with economies of scale and a few technical breakthroughs (there are ALWAYS significant breakthroughs as new technologies mature) the cost of batteries will drop significantly, and range will increase. It is sheer folly to try to take measurements in today's world, and expect that those same measurements will hold true even two or three years down the road: e.g., the price of gas is often quoted as a stable datum in coming to the conclusion that EVs will not be economically competitive with ICE cars, when anyone can see that gasoline prices are anything but reliable. If anything, we can only rely on the price of gasoline to RISE-- and RAPIDLY.

Everything about the transportation landscape is composed of shifting time elements, and unless you make the effort to adjust for time, you're bound to come out with some wildly inaccurate forecasts. So yes, today's grid cannot support a large increase in energy load, but here in California, for instance, there is a huge push for residential solar power that is more than capable of offsetting the electric load imposed by EVs. And, as stated before, EVs will have the effect of leveling the peaks so that new generating stations will not be needed. In fact, as more homes are "solarized", our power becomes decentralized and far less vulnerable to terrorist attacks or "acts of God" that could otherwise cripple the country in emergencies.

Companies such as Altair Nanotechnologies and A123 are working frantically to provide huge battery sinks for stationary storage-- places such as hospital emergency rooms and electric vehicle charging stations. Any advances in such storage technology can be directly applied to EV batteries, reducing the cost, increasing vehicle range, etc., for such vehicles. Such localized battery storage can decrease the charging time, and the inconvenience often associated with EV use.

Often people will make absurd comparisons between EVs and ICE cars-- that because it may take much longer to charge an EV than to fuel up an ICE car, that EVs will never make it to the Big Time. EVs cannot be compared so easily-- for instance, it's EVs that have the convenience once you actually start using them. Rather than spending a mandatory few minutes inhaling noxious, carcinogenic fumes every couple of days to gas up, with EVs you just get up in the morning, unplug your car, run to the bank, the school, the dry cleaners, supermarket, etc., and then head back home to plug your car back in, a far more convenient routine by far.

And EVs do not require the dreaded tune-ups, oil changes, tranny maintenance and other attention that ICEs do. EVs are nearly problem-free. The early adopters of EVs are the ones that come out ahead-- in a year or two, after gasoline prices have crept steadily upward and cost consumers more and more to operate their cars, it will be the EV owners that will be smiling.

The sooner everyone sees the future for what it is and stops trying to point out non-existent stumbling blocks to the implementation of EVs, the sooner we'll be able to see a tomorrow.

One more thing: as I point out at every opportunity, we MUST change to EVs as soon as possible-- we spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year buying foreign oil from our ENEMIES-- countries like Libya, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The leaders of these countries do not sell us their oil because they LIKE us, but because they are making money off of us--if we drive EVs, that is hundreds of billions of dollars that can be better spent on our educational system, our health care, our roads and bridges, and paying off our crushing national debt. It is INSANE to be putting our money in the pockets of our enemies!!!