OK, here's some research news on the EV front from my two weeks at the TRB and SAE meetings.
One issue that was getting a lot of attention is "equity/Environmental justice." The idea is that moving to EVs might have more emissions impact if they can get in the hands of the masses who have less money. Right now, EVs are basically a toy for rich people, but there would be great benefits to those with less wealth, as EVs save money on fuel (sone speaker mentioned an electric charge good for 300 miles costs about $12, as opposed to 10 gallons of gas at $30 -$40), plus they are less expensive to maintain. However, there's an issue of inadequate charging infrastructure in low-income areas, plus a lack of charging ports for people living in apartment houses. Thus, there seems to be a push to ensure that a reasonable ***** of the new public funds being appropriated for EV charging stations be located to serve these communities.
There was an interesting research paper that suggests that EVs won't have emissions benefits in all cases. (
How clean does the U.S. electricity grid need to be to ensure electric vehicles reduce emissions?, by Madalsa Singh (Stanford Univ.) et al. (This is probably behind a paywall.) What they did was use a
life-cycle assessment to estimate the total emissions from electric vehicles (a Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, and Tesla Model S), including those "upstream" due to the marginal emissions from electric power plants cause by charging of the EVs. They then compared these with the total life-cycle emissions from a Toyota Prius and Honda Accord Hybrids. Using national (USA) averages, they showed that the Leaf and the Bolt have a lower "emissions intensity" (grams CO2/km) than the Prius and the Accord, but the Tesla has a higher emissions intensity. But the US electric grid varies regionally in its emissions intensity. It seems that the grid west of the 100th meridian and in New England has low enough CO2 emissions that EV's perform better than the hybrids, and the upper Midwest, south and mid-Atlantic have CO2 emissions from their electric generation sufficiently high that the Prius and Accord are better bets than the battery cars if you really want to minimize your CO2 emissions. The Tesla S performs worse than the Hybrids in all the regions. Perhaps Mr. Musk needs to rethink the need to market a car that can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 2 seconds.
Another interesting paper was
When Will California’s Electric Distribution System Need to be Upgraded to Meet Electric Vehicle Charging Demand? by Yanning Li of UC-Davis. In this study, they estimated the electric grid capacity in 12 diverse neighborhoods across California, then used travel demand models and reasonable estimates of the growth of Electric vehicle sales to estimate the numbers of electric vehicles that will be charging in each neighborhood during the years 2026 - 2045. Then they estimated the charging loads based on existing charging data. These "charging profiles" are different for residential and commercial neighborhoods, with the residential neighborhoods having the highest loads during the night and the commercial neighborhood having the highest loads during the daytime. They then used all these estimates to calculate "EV charging loads versus remaining feeder capacity" during a 24 hour period in 2045. While 3 of the 12 neighborhoods have no problems with overloads, the other 9 apparently will have to deal with overloads at some times of the day, and a few of the neighborhoods clearly don't have the feeder capacity to handle charging of electric vehicles. I hope that electric utilities across the country, in addition to reducing the CO2 emissions intensity of their electric generation, are also starting to make serious plans to increase feeder capacity before we get to the point that nearly all new cars will be EVs. Otherwise, we're going to be taking the risk of having some serious electrical outages during the 2040s. Unless, of course, people start seriously driving a lot less than they do now.
Finally, my attendance at the SAE meeting included a free sneak preview of the 2023 Washington Auto Show, complete with an open bar (beer and wine only) and hors d'oeuvres. In the spirit of the priorities of AU, I do have to mildly complain about the free food served, the quality and variety served up by the Washington Convention Center has declined over the years, or the meeting organizers have specified lower quality for cost-cutting reasons. (This also applies to the official luncheons at the SAE meeting, the last time I attended one in 2019, the food was better. I mean, it's all rubber chicken banquet food, but there's good rubber chicken, and rubber chicken of lesser quality.)
As far as the cars on offer this year, I wasn't all that impressed. For one thing, all of the manufacturers seem to be emphasizing larger and larger cars, even for an even in a city where most people don't need big honking pickup trucks and SUVs to meet their mobility needs. Of course, they did have smaller vehicles on display, but they were sort of hidden away, and even some of the smaller vehicles are getting larger than they used to be. I also see some backsliding on fuel economy, even on some of the small cars, I mean a little Fiat 500 only has a combined fuel economy of 26 mpg, my new Toyota Corolla Cross (4WD, 2022) has a combined fuel economy of 30 mpg. Most of the small SUVs that I also looked at were less, about 26 -28 mpg, but at least they had more room than a Fiat 500. Of course, most of the manufacturers were touting their battery electric models, though I think their price will need to come down before they can really increase their market share. Unfortunately, with the exception of a Nissan Leaf, a Chevy Bolt, and a Hyundai Kona on display, all of the other EVs were sports cars (the EV Corvette), large SUVs or really honking big pickup trucks, the sorts of cars that might not really have any emissions benefits if you count the upstream emissions in the electric grid. (Oh, and don't forget these big EVs have really heavy batteries that are a drag on their power consumption and make the vehicles safety hazards, too.) No Teslas on display, as the show is sponsored by the Washington area Auto Dealers Association, and Tesla doesn't sell through dealers. But it was interesting seeing what the auto industry has on offer, plus there were some displays of classic cars and, weirdly for an auto show, a big display of e-bikes.
