Another FUD EV Article by David Booth

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

It's not FUD. it's pretty factual. And don't forget the big 3 already sell 3x as many electric cars as tesla...they're not conspiring against e cars. They're about to dominate the e car market. Tesla is about to be a niche player. Sure lots of those sold are PHEV but PHEV make more sense right now. They're evolving to bigger battery PHEV AND once a global charging infrastructure is there, they'll move to 100% EV.

PHEVs have two fundamental problems:
- they _add_ components, which add cost and take up space
- they're either EV performance limited, or work their batteries hard: it's harder to make a good battery

Booth is making the case that just buying an electric car isn't solving the world's energy or environmental problems in one swipe of a pen on the buy contract. Which is what some uninformed electric car drivers seem to think about their green cars. He's probably tired of the pious electric car owners who shove it in everyone's face, without much knowledge of the dirty elements of the big picture that goes into making their car move.

Electric cars _will_ help. They'll help because they have large batteries: 40, 50, 60, 75, 100kWh packs that can be charged at at least 6.6kW.
USA:
263.6M registered vehicles in the USA in 2015.
2015 total installed generation capacity was 1.0641TW.

263.6M * 6.6kw ~= 1.74TW.
In other words, if all motor vehicles were 40kWh+ 6.6kW BEVs the total possible charging demand would be greater than the current installed generation capacity. While some people think this is a problem, it isn't. BEV charging would have so much flexibility that it'd give the grid a massive demand-response system, which would allow conventional generation to be more efficient and cleaner, and allow much easier integration of variable renewable sources, particularly wind.

Plus ...
263.6M * >=40kWh >= 10.544TWh
That's a _massive_ amount of batteries manufactured. At that volume, the implication is that batteries would have become _much_ cheaper and that would imply cheap batteries available for frequency management and _static_ storage as well.

That would also imply easier renewable integration as well as obvious elimination of expensive marginal generation.

I do think he comes across as a bit of a dick head and those sunglasses on his headshot have to go.

It's OK. Journalism as a whole has always been a horrible business, based on exploiting peoples emotional weakness to sell stories. This stuff is nothing new and won't affect PEVs in the long term.

 

[sitter_k]

lol and are running between 20% and 100% leverage to meet their obligations...on that same theme.

A growing public sector isn't exactly a positive. Just way too many liberal party bungles, I hope they are not returned in 2018 even it means I could possibly be losing my rebate.

 

[skrenes]

You Albertans love your hydrocarbons. Here in Ontario 90%+ of our electricy comes from non-carbon sources and 9% from gas. And the gas share is falling all the time.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but natural gas is MUCH cleaner than nuclear fission!! Fission is THE MOST EXPENSIVE source of energy, mostly because of disposal, which is not only horrendously expensive, it's an unsolved problem since there isn't a geologically stable place to put the waste on Earth (need about 50,000 years of stability without the stuff getting into our water supply). So it's passing the buck to a future generation. That is why every place that has fission pays a fortune per kWh. I've run the numbers and let me tell you that coal is a better solution fiscally and environmentally (if you expand your perspective past a human life time) -- nevermind natural gas. The only place fission makes sense is where there's no oxygen (submarine, satellites, etc) or no safe/viable source of power (Arctic circle / Antarctica in winter).

Fusion on the other hand is great nuclear technology. Until we can harness it on Earth, solar PV is our only viable method.

 

[int32_t]

Haha, yeah, nuclear proponents are always crowing about the future when there'll be mini-reactors on every street corner generating free electricity. I can't help but think about the waste and where that goes, and what about natural disasters … anyways, we already have the ability to take advantage of nuclear energy in a micro-grid manner with little maintenance or risk: solar PV!

Back to the article for a moment, of course he leaves out the refining process! Batteries must be manufactured with great environmental cost, but everybody knows gasoline is siphoned out of the ground into a gas tank for free. Actually, it takes about 2 kWh of electricity to refine gasoline, and that's just one small step in the process of making oil in the ground into gas in your tank. A Tesla can go ~8-10 km on that. I can't be certain about this, but something tells me it's more efficient to transport electricity a long distance than it is to ship/pipe/haul a liquid too.

 

[wayner]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but natural gas is MUCH cleaner than nuclear fission!! Fission is THE MOST EXPENSIVE source of energy, mostly because of disposal, which is not only horrendously expensive, it's an unsolved problem since there isn't a geologically stable place to put the waste on Earth (need about 50,000 years of stability without the stuff getting into our water supply). So it's passing the buck to a future generation. That is why every place that has fission pays a fortune per kWh. I've run the numbers and let me tell you that coal is a better solution fiscally and environmentally (if you expand your perspective past a human life time) -- nevermind natural gas. The only place fission makes sense is where there's no oxygen (submarine, satellites, etc) or no safe/viable source of power (Arctic circle / Antarctica in winter).

I won't argue that fission isn't/wasn't stupidly expensive and it "bankrupted" the old Ontario Hydro, but it is a sunk cost in Ontario, for the most part, as the reactors were built decades ago. OPG also has a nuclear fund that currently has $19.4 Billion that has been set aside by OPG over the years.

But when it comes to ongoing pollution in the forms of CO2, SOX and NOX, coal is clearly far worse. The uranium will be encased in concrete or something else and left to decay over the millenia, but we may all have roasted by then anyhow.

 

[SmartElectric]

it is a sunk cost in Ontario, for the most part, as the reactors were built decades ago

Almost. The sunk cost requires significant upgrades over the next 10 years, to the tune of $20B to keep them running for 30 more years.
The Nuclear fleet will increase to a power price is 9c/kWh, that is wholesale, before fees, so more like 14c/kWh to consumer.

Anyone doubts solar+storage won't be 14c/kWh or less over the next 5-10 years? I'll take that bet! I'm deploying DIY solar without any incentive because my daily peak electricity rate is 24c/kWh, and if I shave that off in the summer, it's a 5 year payback without any help from the government.

 

[wayner]

I put in solar panels in 2015 thanks to the microFIT program. I paid about $32k for the panels and average revenue should be about $4500/yr at $0.381/kWh (2016 was better, 2017 will be worse). So my payback period, using a 0 discount rate is about 7 years. It is a bit tricky to calculate a total IRR as this depends on my marginal tax rate in the future as after my yearly CCA amount falls below my revenue then the income is taxable.

Part of the issue that causes what you are doing to make less sense is the meddling that the ON government is doing by reducing prices for political reasons.

My usage is currently very highly weighted to off-peak, due primarily to EV charging and moving other discretionary power usage to overnight. I would assume that most EV owners to be the same, and especially folks like you that have that $0.02/kWh rate from the government? Does your investment in solar still make sense given that? Don't forget that weekends are off-peak Are you sure your peak cost is $0.24? In Toronto it is somewhat less than that as it is $0.132 + overhead charges so all-in it is around $0.19/kWh.

 

[SmartElectric]

My plan is 2c overnight, 24c peak, weekends and off peak is 8c, 16c mid peak.

I absolutely 100% know exactly my payback period based on the xls spreadsheet hourly output of my usage downloaded from my energy provider.

 

[wayner]

I see - so the price that you pay for a cheap overnight rate is a higher rate during the day. Does that 24c include the overhead charges for distribution, transmission, regulatory, etc?

 

[SmartElectric]

Nope. Those are all wholesale prices, so add 5c/kWh to all of them. Of course, payback with ~30c/kWh price to me is pretty straightforward with a DIY 12 panel setup (ground mount, because I don't need to abide by the microfit restrictions).

 

[Ullrich]

It's not FUD. it's pretty factual. And don't forget the big 3 already sell 3x as many electric cars as tesla...they're not conspiring against e cars. They're about to dominate the e car market. Tesla is about to be a niche player. Sure lots of those sold are PHEV but PHEV make more sense right now. They're evolving to bigger battery PHEV AND once a global charging infrastructure is there, they'll move to 100% EV.

Some people seem to think these batteries are made of old leaves and the power plants that charge them (grid) are all hydro and wind powered. They're not.

Booth is making the case that just buying an electric car isn't solving the world's energy or environmental problems in one swipe of a pen on the buy contract. Which is what some uninformed electric car drivers seem to think about their green cars. He's probably tired of the pious electric car owners who shove it in everyone's face, without much knowledge of the dirty elements of the big picture that goes into making their car move.

I do think he comes across as a bit of a dick head and those sunglasses on his headshot have to go.

It is FUD. The charging time issue can be solved by swapping out batteries at strategically located stations around the world. There is a youtube video showing it takes 1m 38s to swap out a Tesla model X battery pack. That and the existing supercharger network make Tesla the indisputable leader in the BEV space. No one is suggesting electric vehicles will immediately solve the climate crisis, but they help even if the electricity they use is generated by coal fired plants because BEVs in general and especially Teslas are more efficient in their use of energy than ICE and even hybrid cars. ICE engines waste a huge amount of the energy in gasoline as heat not to mention the cost of schlepping all that gas to gas stations all over the place and the energy used to acquire and refine the crude oil to gasoline in the first place. It is literally insane to buy a new ICE or hybrid if you can afford a Tesla Model 3 or even a Bolt. Every dollar invested in fossil fuel infrastructure and in manufacturing, selling, and buying an ICE or hybrid car is "stranded value". That's a huge problem for the all the car makers except Tesla. If they make their BEVs as good as Teslas, they risk killing off the market for their ICE cars. They are hoping that by making crap BEVs and promoting FUD through shills like Booth, they can stave off the inevitable transition to BEV cars everywhere long enough to switch their manufacturing to the coming BEVs only world. Between the traditional car manufacturers and the oil cartels, there is about $10 billion "invested" in short positions on TSLA (Tesla's stock symbol). That money will vanish if Tesla's stock price refuses to drop below about $100 a share. The hope is that downward pressure on the stock price combined with relentless anti-BEV propaganda will drive Tesla to bankruptcy and everyone can go back to business as usual and pretend that the climate crisis is a hoax. So far that hoax is being disappointed. For the sake of life on the planet, let's ensure that those shortsighted psychos continue to be disappointed.

 

[Ullrich]

That short position was established when TSLA was trading at far below what it is now, not when it was high relative to when the short positions were established. That indicates that the point of putting on those shorts was not to make money but to drive the price of TSLA down. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a real conspiracy base on pretty obvious motivations of the oil and traditional car industries.

 

[wayner]

That short position was established when TSLA was trading at far below what it is now, not when it was high relative to when the short positions were established. That indicates that the point of putting on those shorts was not to make money but to drive the price of TSLA down. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a real conspiracy base on pretty obvious motivations of the oil and traditional car industries.

A bit of a necropost!

What do you mean by "...the point of putting on those shorts was not to make money but to drive the price of TSLA down" Aren't those two one and the same? If you drive the price of TSLA down then a short position will make money.

 

[sakimano]

It is FUD. The charging time issue can be solved by swapping out batteries at strategically located stations around the world. There is a youtube video showing it takes 1m 38s to swap out a Tesla model X battery pack. That and the existing supercharger network make Tesla the indisputable leader in the BEV space. No one is suggesting electric vehicles will immediately solve the climate crisis, but they help even if the electricity they use is generated by coal fired plants because BEVs in general and especially Teslas are more efficient in their use of energy than ICE and even hybrid cars. ICE engines waste a huge amount of the energy in gasoline as heat not to mention the cost of schlepping all that gas to gas stations all over the place and the energy used to acquire and refine the crude oil to gasoline in the first place. It is literally insane to buy a new ICE or hybrid if you can afford a Tesla Model 3 or even a Bolt. Every dollar invested in fossil fuel infrastructure and in manufacturing, selling, and buying an ICE or hybrid car is "stranded value". That's a huge problem for the all the car makers except Tesla. If they make their BEVs as good as Teslas, they risk killing off the market for their ICE cars. They are hoping that by making crap BEVs and promoting FUD through shills like Booth, they can stave off the inevitable transition to BEV cars everywhere long enough to switch their manufacturing to the coming BEVs only world. Between the traditional car manufacturers and the oil cartels, there is about $10 billion "invested" in short positions on TSLA (Tesla's stock symbol). That money will vanish if Tesla's stock price refuses to drop below about $100 a share. The hope is that downward pressure on the stock price combined with relentless anti-BEV propaganda will drive Tesla to bankruptcy and everyone can go back to business as usual and pretend that the climate crisis is a hoax. So far that hoax is being disappointed. For the sake of life on the planet, let's ensure that those shortsighted psychos continue to be disappointed.

wow, wall of text

sounds like someone forgot to tell you that Tesla killed off the battery swap plan. About 5 years ago.

Also the concept of short selling is widely misunderstood (as in this case). Short sellers are portrayed as nefarious neer-do-wells who are just trying to hurt stock prices for fun. People don't understand the concept of selling shares and buying them back later on at a lower price to earn a profit. Sounds like that's what happened with Ullrich

I think what you'll actually find is that many of those companies you're talking about actually are long Tesla and other businesses in the battery space. Not short.