Electric cars are all the rage today, but some of the smartest people I know believe that moving towards electric vehicles is a terrible idea. Looking casually as an outsider at the unappealing economics of electric vehicles (the need for a new and immensely expensive infrastructure, cars that cost much more than either traditional gas engines or hybrids, limited ranges and long recharging times), I find it hard to understand why the Obama administration is pushing electric cars.
One argument I’ve heard is “national security,” the idea being that electric vehicles would make the United States less dependent on imported oil. Be careful what you wish for, however, because if electric cars become a mainstay, we may be trading one dependence for another that is even more troubling. Ninety-five percent of the world’s output of rare-earth metals today comes from one country: China. By some estimates, demand will outstrip supply within five years. At least with oil we know there are fifty years of oil reserves readily available. Moreover, oil is produced all over the world, limiting the monopoly power of any one country.
Katherine Bourzac’s interesting piece in MIT’s Technology Review profiles the plight of the only active rare-earth producing mine in the Western Hemisphere.
It is quite possible that scientists will figure out alternatives that lessen the need for rare-earth metals. If not, add the words dysprosium, praseodymium, and terbium to your vocabulary, because you will be hearing a lot about these elements in the future, and the news is not likely to be good.
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The Feds think that electric cars, ethanol and all the other contraptions they push will keep us from spoiling the air and they are will to rat hole unlimited tax money trying to prove it. Do-gooding is always a self serving pleasure, especially for the economically illiterate.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Apologies for trivia, but apparently they built the Sun City Casino and entertainment resort on top of South Africa’s most viable monazite (rare earth) deposit.
I’m not sure who should be kicking whom.
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good way to keep them in the ground for 30 years until they’re *really* valuable, I would say!
Even if other countries start mining for rare earths (which mind you are not actually rare), I wonder what the environmental impact of that is going to be. We’re still going to be excavating stuff out of the ground and dispersing it around the world. It’s just going to be like oil.
Joe, asteroids are not known to contain high levels of rare earth metals. They are however rich in rare asteroid metals. I believe Aperture Science looked into mining them but found it unfeasible during the late 90s.
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Should have gotten your facts straight before writing.
“new and immensely expensive infrastructure”? It’s called an electric plug: my house has dozens.
“cars that cost much more”? Nissan Leaf MSRP: $33720. Chevy Volt MSRP: $40280. Average new car price, 2010: $29217. Tell us again how electric cars cost so much more.
Of course there’s the Tesla, but consider the market it’s selling in. Porsche 911: $77800 to $245000. Ferrari California: $192,000. Bugatti Veyron: $2250880. In its market, the Tesla is a low-end economy car.
As others point out, rare earths aren’t all that rare. It’s just that China has monopolized the limited market thanks to low labor costs and lax environmental regulations. And where’s your vaunted human ingenuity? If we can’t get rare earths, won’t we just figure out how to build good electric motors without them?
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@James: “new and immensely expensive infrastructure”? It’s called an electric plug: my house has dozens.
So when you drive from Cleveland to Chicago, are you going to bring a really long extension cord?
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I can imagine no set of circumstances that would result in me wanting to drive from Cleveland to Chicago. Me even being in either place would take serious coercion
But seriously, there are only a couple occasions a year when I drive more than 100 miles at a stretch, so an EV or plug-in hybrid would suit me just fine as a primary vehicle. Nor would it be so different than what I have now: a Honda Insight that gets driven most places where there are paved roads (or fairly smooth dirt). When I go someplace where there’s rough dirt, or more that about 6 inches of snow, I drive the pickup.
Dear James,
““new and immensely expensive infrastructure”? It’s called an electric plug: my house has dozens”
You and a majority of the world think that the electric outlet plug in your house is connected to an infinite supply source. No, tapping that plug is not like tapping the sea.
On the other side of your outlet is a panelboard, sized proportionately for residential loads (as opposed to commercial and industrial loads). On the other side of the panelboard is a transformer, a substation, and all the way back to power generation, and all the wires and cables that are SIZED.
If every house on your neighborhood has 1 electric car to charge daily, the residential load would go up, and maybe additional power generation would be required, the sizes of the substations and other equipment would DEFINITELY increase, as well as the cables.
In other words, NEW and immensely expensive INFRASTRUCTURE.
that electric plug is not magic, you know. its not like elves are making electricity behind your walls.
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And nor is every house in the neighborhood going to magically get an electric car next week. We’ll get the necessary infrastructure the same way we upgraded the electric distribution system to handle the demands of e.g. central A/C, or indeed, the way we built that system in the first place, or the gasoline distribution network: one bit at a time.
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Another James agreeing with @James.
1) Electrification will not happen overnight.
2) Especially in the land of the SmartMeter, people will adjust their recharge times, for the most part, to the overnight window. Already, the grid has vast excess capacity at night. Charging cars at night will actually help balance the load between day and night and help utilities generate evenly and continuously — the most efficient, least costly scenario for them.
3) At the rate we can expect EVs to replace internal-combustion vehicles, any additional grid capacity needed can be installed gradually.
4) EVs can run from any primary fuel source: liquid petroleum, coal, hydro, thermal, wind, solar, compost methane, etc., once it has been converted into electricity. The “greener” that utilities make their power mix, the greener EVs become.
“that electric plug is not magic, you know. its not like elves are making electricity behind your walls.”
– Well, maybe not in your house.
Rare earths aren’t rare, they’re just expensive to process. During the cold war, the US lead worldwide production. Then we found it was cheaper for China to mine and process the minerals, so our production dried up.
While there are some minerals I’m concerned about long term for electric cars, the rare earths aren’t among them
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My favorite stock-picker has been hammering me for years to get on the REE bandwagon, but I really believe that REE-alternatives are easy develop. As has been noted, the fact that China supplies 95% of the REEs is a matter of cost, not a lucky distribution of RE elements.
“UFO physicist” Stanton Friedman tells the story that a few years after the “Roswell” incident, the nascent Air Force “materials” lab located in hanger 59 at Wright Patterson AFB announced the discovery of samarium-neodymium-GodKnowsWhat-cobalt magnets. This seemed to come out of nowhere and shocked the physics community. Suspicious….
At the risk of a sharp rebuke (since I posted it yesterday), you really need to see this: check out this 1916 Chevy Volt!:
http://www.periheliondesign.com/downloads/Gas_Electric_Automobile.jpg
Anyone interested in an electric vehicle charging time breakthrough should read this:
http://news.illinois.edu/news/11/0321batteries_PaulBraun.html