Interesting post, Josh. It was easy to predict that vehicles which could only go one quarter of the distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a single charge and that had all the torque of a motor - scooter would only secure a niche market. The lithium - ion battery technology sounds promising. And we are in trouble if automobiles cannot be made greener. I am all for mass transit but as I have told people for years and years, it is just a fantsy that we are going to trick people out of their cars. Cars are popular and will remain so. There is not - never ever - going to be the national equivalent, in our country, of London's Red Ken.

The fact that we are talking zero-emissions by 1012, and that with a question mark, that we could already have achieved this level, is a reflection of the bought-and-paid-for political system which repeatedly grants waivers and delays to the major polluters.  The question is not one of technology but of political will -- whether the consumer gives enough of a shit to light a fire under their corrupt representatives.  What to bet that even bin 5 will be pushed back from its 1010 deadline?

I'm involved in this business (power management).  I know a wee bit about battery chemistry and recharging algorithms since I've designed charger ICs.  Good luck to Nissan.  They'll need it.  Ghosn is known to be somewhat of a blowhard in the auto world.  Chemists and engineers the world over have been beating their heads on the battery problem.  Perhaps Nissan/NEC knows something but I doubt they're that much ahead of companies that have been dong batteries for years.  And NEC isn't a battery company and is a shadow of what it once was in the electronics business so I question how advanced they really are.

And jm_rice, it is a matter of technical problems.  You can have a 100-200 mi. pure electric right now.  Just be prepared to pay $50+k for it and get 2-4 years of battery life.  Oh, and a battery pack is a about 1/4 of the price of the car.  A pure plug-in hybrid is just not technically feasible nor cost effect compared to gasoline or diesel powered cars.

Don't get me wrong, I hope this all works.  Just based on my knowledge being inside the business for a few decades tells me that it's not an easy problem and there's lots of work ahead.

tnmats, I respect your expertise, but I've also been inside the energy business (steam coal for power plants, where contract price depends on output analysis), and I know enough about the politics to look at the energy issue with a jaundiced eye.  We had the EV's from GM and Honda and Toyota that were sabotaged by the makers, not because they wouldn't sell -- the drivers loved them -- but because of the unholy alliance between car makers and oil companies and the corruption, by both, of the political process (making California roll back its emissions standards).

Short range and long recharge are just red herrings.  As one Web site says, "If car makers had really tried to produce EVs, improving them each year, nurturing instead of killing customer interest, leaving them on the road, then we would have a big EV component in our everyday commuting crowd -- and gasoline would fall to less than $1, and there would be little need for imported oil." (RIght now I'd settle for $2.)

You're right, from a BTU standpoint the internal combustion engine is still the most efficient.  But if you are talking about carbon footprint and depleting resources, then the solution has been with us for years:  develop the EV while building out nuclear power, which would free us from fossil fuels.  Given the political will the technical side will indeed become secondary.

By the way, I don't think you mean "pure plug-in hybrid," do you?  If it's *pure* plug-in, then it's no longer a hybrid.

Can I throw something out there and get some thoughts?  This is something I've been thinking about for a while.  A major turn-off about mass transit is that, when you get to where you are going (approximately) you still need to find a way to get the rest of the way to where you actually need to be, usually by walking.  Also, you are tied to other people's schedules.  A car gets you around this, but electric cars are still mostly an expensive, short-distance statement, rather than a viable transportation alternative.  But what if you combined the two?  That is, what if you had electric cars capable of riding on light rail lines?  Whoa, don't scroll past yet, give me a minute here.

Every day I travel 30 mi to work and 30 mi back.  In between that time, my car sits idle in the company parking lot.  I am travelling burb-to-burb, so there is no mass transit available to me.  And every day I sit in horrible congestion caused by, more than anything else, human reaction times.  If I could drive my car to a rail station, I could get on a rail and have a computer take over for me.  It would take care of inserting me into the main line traffic, it would keep me a continuous distance from the car in front of me, and would take me to a preselected destination station.  I and all the other cars could nip along at 100 mph, not paying attention to driving until we were alerted that we were approaching our station.  

While I was travelling the rail, it would be charging my battery.  When I got to my destination, I could drive my fully charged car to my final destination.  Such a car would only need a top speed of 40 mph off the rails; without needing to drive on the highway, I wouldn't need that much acceleration, either.  And any long distance travel would be on the rails, so range is not that much of a problem.  Moreover, how much actual cost would need to go into such a car?  The highest cost would be the computer system, I think, if the batteries do not need to be that great.

This would essentially be a commuter car - it wouldn't replace the family car for long vacations, I think, though the idea of inter-city travel on such rails is appealing, no?  As an electrical controls engineer, I can tell you that the controls/networking side is doable.  I'm not so sure about the power side.  And the infrastructure costs could be prohibitive.  But it's an interesting idea, I think.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Lot's of truth in the comments here, but everyone is ignoring the fact that an all-electric vehicle is not zero-emissions unless the electricity source that charges them is zero-emissions.  Right now, that is an even bigger technical challenge than the power density and battery life problems that Nissan is working on.

There is an interesting study from Stanford here (www.stanford.edu/.../TeslaReading.pdf) comparing the carbon efficiency of an all electric car with hybrids and other technologies.  It is very encouraging (the Tesla Roadster is argued to have 1/3 the carbon footprint of the Prius, e.g.), but a read between the lines points out the challenge: they compared a Prius fueled by crude oil (in essence) with a Roadster fuled by natural gas (in essence).

But apply some basic calculations, and things get much fuzzier.  If the electricity had been produced by coal (far more likely, worldwide), the advantage would have been halved (so that the Roadster emitted 2/3 the carbon of the Prius), since coal has anywhere from almost twice the carbon footprint per unit of energy produced as does methane.

And, of course it compares a two seat "toy" car with essentially no cargo space, with an honest to goodness family car.  I can't do the computations on the difference that makes, but I suspect it eats up a fair bit of the remaining advantage.

All of which is to say,electric cars will solve the carbon problem, only if we solve the carbon problem in electricity generation.  This is no small task.  To get some idea of the magnitude, consider that US motor vehicle fuel use overall in 2006 was nearly 2 X 10^13 MJ equivalent, or roughly 10 billion MWH.  The net electric energy generated on the US grid in the same year was roughly 4 MWH.  In other words, in order to replace half the current US consumption of crude oil derived fuel that goes into motor vehicle use with electricity consumption, you need to at minimum  more than double current US electric generation capacity.  Today, 50% of US electricity is generated from dirty (from a carbon perspective) coal.

Or to put it yet another way (I don't do the detailed computation here, but it's not that hard), if we managed to halve our overall energy use for motor vehicles through improved design and greater efficiency, and meantime replaced them all with all electric vehicles (which I know isn't necessarily feasible - over the road trucks burn a lot of that fuel, and they are a long way from going all electric - but bear with me), and we kept our current mix of coal-nuclear-oil-gas and alternative electricity generation constant, there would be at most a very small net gain in carbon footprint , due to the replacement of huge crude oil consumption, with coal consumption (coal produces roughly 1.5 as much carbon per unit of energy generated as crude oil derived fuels).

So, again, electric cars contribute only if we solve the electricity generation carbon problem.

"...same year was roughly BILLION 4 MWH ..." obviously.

jm_rice, the problem with the EV1 was GM couldn't figure out how to make money on the vehicle; GM was hemorrhaging money on the EV1.  There was no conspiracy, contrary to the documentary.  NiMH batteries (used in the EV1) are very heavy and have several inherent problems (rapid self-discharge for one).  Li-ion technology wasn't ready for prime time when it was produced.   And one other reason they killed it was they didn't want to support the product.  Unlike a software company who easily leaves you high and dry, the car companies cannot do the same.  They have to provide parts and repair serviceability for years after the sale.  I'd like to see the owners scream and howl when their cars break and no parts are available.  Yet another reason the EV1 was killed.  If GM allowed the owners to keep them, they'd loose money for years on a small owner base having to build small batch maintenance parts.

I've been in the semiconductor/technology business going on 3 decades now.   I hear stuff like this all the time (conspiracy stuff), especially thrown at the car makers.  They do have their problems (boy to they ever), but often technology like this is not one they're stonewalling on.  Believe me, they'd love to have a true all-electric car out right now.  The car companies despise the oil giants.  I deal enough with the auto business and the car guys hate the oil companies.  If they could create a 100mpg car that also met NHTSA safety standards  AND gave the creature comforts buyers want for a low price, they'd do it.  But you CANNOT have it all.  As we engineers love to say, the  choices are good, fast, cheap.  Pick any two.  You cannot have all three.

The car guys have to fight competing demands; cost, reliability, safety, etc.  For example, the warranty costs on the all-electric car are stiff due to the short life of a battery when it's fully charged/discharged.  This is the reason Toyota doesn't sell the Prius in the US as an all-electric like they do in Europe.  The US warranty is 10 years (think gas engine longevity); in Europe, it's I think 5 or less (think cell-phone battery longevity).  Toyota's trick to keep battery life long is a very narrow window for charge/discharge of the battery packs.  In Europe they allow an all-battery mode BUT do that at your own peril.  The battery pack won't last 10 years in the least.  And you'll gasp at the replacement cost ($8k).  Again, engineering trade-offs.  I do this every day in my own designs.  Engineering ain't easy and unlike those who've never had to design a product for sale the balance isn't easy in the least.  I bristle when I hear those who's biggest engineering accomplishment is screwing in a light bulb using tripe like "conspiracy" when they don't get everything they want in a product for next to nothing.

There are technologies that (hopefully) promise the nirvana of great battery life and reasonable cost.  The most promising right now is A123 System's battery design.  That system along with what GM learned with the EV1 is behind the new Chevy Volt.  That's the closest plug-in hybrid to production.  I personally don't think much of Nissan and their claims.  From what I can tell it's hot air.  The battery issue is one that's perplexed academia and industry for years.  The chemistry is damned hard and there a lot of smart people beating their heads to improve the product.  It will take time but there may never be a solution that's as good/cheap/reliable as the internal combustion engine.  The engine guys have had over 100 years to get where they are today.  Think anyone will wait that long for the battery guys to get to the same point?

Oh, and plug-in hybrid is just that, a hybrid that you can charge up from a plug but also has an

internal combustion engine (ICE).  On short commuter trips, like around town, you charge it at home at night.  On longer freeway trips, the ICE kicks in when the battery packs are low to charge them up.  The difference between the Prius and a plug-in hybrid like the Volt is the Prius has parallel hybrid (dual input power sources , electric motor and ICE), the Volt is a serial hybrid (driven strictly off the electric motors and the ICE only is a generator when needed).  It's a similar set-up that you see in a diesel-electric locomotive.  No one has tried that to date.

sdemuth, you are correct on the carbon footprint, but one thing the hybrid or all electric has over the pure ICE is the greater mileage for a given BTU input.  The ICE is at best 15-20% efficient, an all electric is more like 50% efficient.  Plus the ICE car wastes power when idling, the electric doesn't.

One problem will be getting the fleet to switch over in significant numbers.  It takes about 8+ years to 'flip' the national fleet.  That's why in the late 80s you saw lots of small cars in the US as the oil shocks of the 70s taught everyone to buy small cars.  In the late 90s you saw the monster SUVs since in the late 80s gas was cheapcheapcheap.  Who cared about milage?  We wanted power, convenience, and all kinds of safety gear (all add mass and all cost fuel mileage).

We'll see a similar shift in the coming years, with the phuelhoggs going the way of the dodo.  You're already seeing it with the dramatic sales fall off in SUVs and pickups (no love in my book).

"The ICE is at best 15-20% efficient, an all electric is more like 50% efficient. "

Agreed, although from a carbon production standpoint, the difference is not  so dramatic.  The 50% efficiency for electric cars refers to the vehicle's efficiency, not the system's efficiency.  The system pays the "thermal tax" at the generation stage,  Unless it is a co-generation plant, for example, even a relatively new coal-fired electricity plant is only about 30-35% efficient at turning the energy in coal into electricity, and up to 10% of this then loss due to transmission inefficiencies.

You could think of it this way: Take two cars with the same weight, identical drag,  and driven in the same way.  One is all-electric, and one all gasoline.   Let the gas powered car's energy delivered to the drive train by 1.  The electric car gets up to a 20% benefit from never idling, so it's energy delivered to the drive train for the same use is .8.  The gas engine has  20% thermal efficiency, so it's energy consumption is 5.  The electric car's thermal efficiency may be 50%, so it its energy consumption is 1.6.  However, if the energy that went into its batteries was generated by a 33% efficient thermal generation system, and 10% of that was lost in transmission, the electric car's 1.6 must be multiplied by somewhere between 3 and 3.3, making its consumption of chemical energy between just less to slightly higher than the gas car's.  

And if the gasoline powered care used fossil petroleum, and the electric car was plugged into a coal fired plant, the electric powered care would have significantly higher net carbon footprint, because of the higher carbon content per unit of energy of coal.

tamats: By the way, other than my comment above, I think your post was right on.  Especially the part about engineering being hard.   Amen to that.

What a laugh.  Well - when I heard it's the batteries.  I watched the entire film about the GM's EV and only hints about a battery problem.

I am also connected to design.  We produce protection circiuits for Li-Ion battery assemblies.  

Here is the dope.  Hybrids work because they remain half half charged and only take on energy to dispense with it immediately like the ealier mechanical schemes.  As soon as you want to go electric only, you will want to fully charge and discharge the batteries - and that is the rub.  Li-Ion, (most companies hide here) have a cycle count only from 300 to 400.  That sounds wastefull and expensive to me.