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Science Technology and the Economic Future edited by Susan Raymond
Victor Wouk
Principal, Victor Wouk Associates
Based on remarks delivered to the New York Academy of Sciences, October 17, 1995.
Electric vehicles were among the first automotive innovations in the United Sates. In fact, they even came complete with flower pots to decorate the door posts! Ironically, the early electric vehicles were put out of business by an electric device—the electric starter. The automotive owner no longer needed a crank and a set of well-developed upper body muscles to start the engine. Voila! The automotive age.
Automotive Innovation and Emissions
The automobile now represents freedom—freedom to go where you want to, when you want to, in a reasonable time frame, at a reasonable price, and with amazing reliability. Unfortunately, that freedom is accompanied by a complication: emissions that cause air pollution.
Emissions have been reduced enormously over the last two decades. Indeed, federal mandates and new technologies have now brought emissions of a new vehicle to one-twentieth the level Of 1968. But progress on a per unit basis does not always translate neatly into equivalent environmental impact. More and more vehicles are taking to the road, and they are being driven more and more miles. When more vehicles and more miles are combined with urban sprawl and, in a place like Los Angeles, geology, cleaner cars cannot tip the air quality balance.
Hence, there has been a renewed interest in electric vehicles. In their purest conception, such vehicles use no fossil fuels in their operation, and hence produce no emissions and no pollution. But, the renewed interest has also given rise to a new series of objections.
The Rise of Objections
On the environmental side, one of the most often-raised objections is that electric vehicles are really not pollution-free; they simply shift the source of the pollution from the tailpipe of the car to the smokestack of the utility that produces the electricity that powers the car. The arithmetic simply does not support that fear. Electric vehicles would use only a small fraction of the electricity generated by most utilities.
On the market side, the fundamental objection is that the vehicles will simply not go far enough fast enough. The early innovators thought if they built a car that would free the consumer from the cost of gasoline, that they would sell like hotcakes: Well, they sold like cold-cakes. The cars had an extremely limited range and merely crept along. Not to be discouraged, innovators tried to use efficient power electronics instead of electromechanical switches for speed controls, but that only increased the range from 35 to about 40 miles per battery charge.
So the question was raised, Was there a better battery than the lead battery for resolving the speed and distance problems? In 1963 Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, President of the California Institute of Technology, became so fascinated with the problem that he organized a mini-seminar of chemists, chemical engineers, physicists, and electrical engineers to consider the alternatives. In short, they determined that several potential electrochemical reactions would have much more energy density than lead batteries, even though the result would still fall short of gasoline energy.
Dr. DuBridge's insights were well founded. Today, batteries available to power electric vehicles are three times as efficient and powerful as those twenty years ago. Future batteries now in the experimental stage will be five times as good. Technology has turned the corner on the battery problem.
Furthermore, indications are that consumers have too. Surveys of customers of the General Motors electric car, EV1, show that buyers value electric vehicles for their own merits, Irrespective of environmental impact. They like not having to stop at the gas station. They like there liability of just plugging the car in at night and going in the morning. They are satisfied with performance and reliability. Improvements in power and distance will only serve to reinforce these views. If the environment based regulatory process can demonstrate sufficient patience, 1 technological innovation will produce electric vehicles that will appeal to a broad global market.
Endnotes
Note 1: Two months after the New York Academy of Sciences' policy meeting on the technological effects of mandated emissions regulations, the California zero emissions mandated were deferred and subsequently postponed until 2003. Back.
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