The Los Angeles Times had a pretty good piece this weekend profiling the inventor behind A123 Systems (based in Boston), and the tremendous hurdles that now exist for any US company that wishes to manufacture in the United States. Fighting for ‘Made in the USA’ therefore is an excellent portrait of how we lose a couple of ways, when the manufacturing process bleeds out to the developing world. It’s not just the jobs. Worse, we give away techniques. This only lengthens further the timeline, before we eventually resurrect a competent manufacturing base domestically. Towards the end of the article there was a small ray of hope offered in that A123—after building most of its capacity so far in China—will open its first plant in Detroit.
In March I spent some time talking with an A123 representative at the MIT Energy Conference in Boston. I like what A123 is doing, and am particularly interested in their utility scale storage solutions. That said, battery technology for electric vehicles faces more hurdles than are presently encountered in the sorry state of US manufacturing. In short, there are sobering limits to car batteries that box them in either by weight, price, or life-duration. And progress, unfortunately, over the past 100 years in battery technology–despite the hype–has been slow. I’m not universally negative on the prospect for EVs, however, and I anticipate owning one myself at some point. But for those who are thinking there will be widespread adoption of EVs or that they’ll replace the oil powered vehicle fleet, you should think again.
Low Tech Magazine has an exellent review this month of the past century’s developments in batteries, and the electric vehicle. Some of the issues touched upon there were also covered in mine and Chris Nelder’s shared Notes on The October 2009 Deutsche Bank/Sankey Peak Oil Report. In that Deutsche Bank report, an adoption model for the global uptake of electric vehicles was put forth that I think is totally unrealistic. But it was Chris Nelder, in the above link, who put up some quick and helfpul numbers to that flawed model and who clarified the problem more fully.
As we depart the domain of extreme power density afforded by oil and the internal combustion engine, it is simply not possible to make machines that combine the same power, distance, and speed via stored energy. This is not necessarily bad news. As we go through energy transition, falling away from a world of peak energy-density to a world of diffuse, lower energy-density, it’s simply important to see EVs as a tactic to mitigate and not replace the loss of high-powered transport. In addition, it won’t be possible economically to effect wide adoption of these higher-priced vehicles, especially during a long period in which the societal wealth afforded by cheap fossil fuel energy is in broad-based withdrawal. The bulk of the population will therefore transition to electrified public transport, where electricity will be distributed more efficiently–mostly owing to the lower rolling resistance of rail. Accordingly, it’s difficult to see where a rich growth market will develop for battery makers such as A123. My best guess now is that the crucial area of storage, as part of new power transmission, will produce the bigger challenge for these technologies to confront.
-Gregor
Photos: 1910 Waverley Coupe electric car.
