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About EVs: Frequently Asked Questions

(Note: Most of what follows applies to the electric cars available to most of us today, not tomorrow or when it suits the automotive and petroleum industry. This means conversions to electric of conventional internal combustion vehicles.)


How fast?

How fast do you want to go?  At the Woodburn, Oregon Electric Drags every year since 1997, Dodge V10 Vipers are left in the dust behind home made electric dragsters. 0 to 125 mph in 10.5 seconds...and several times a year new quarter mile record times are being set.1  Articles detailing the exploits of EV drag racers have recently appeared in Wired (March 1999) and Top Gear (September 1999).  Speed is not an issue.  If it is what you want, certainly you can get a speeding ticket in an electric vehicle.  The important thing to consider is that range will be sacrificed if you design an EV with speed uppermost in mind.  It is enough to say that you can have a sane freeway speed and a respectable range with the right design.

 


 

How far?

In a conventional conversion of an internal combustion vehicle, using lead-acid batteries (still the only cost-effective batteries available), you can realistically expect to go between 25 and 50 real city miles on a charge.  A 25 mile range usually means you are using relatively light weight 12V batteries, which makes for an agile, fun-to-drive, car with a good payload capacity.  A car with a 50 mile range can really only be accomplished at this time with 6V batteries which (because you need more) end up weighing the car down, affecting acceleration and hill-climbing ability.  Nevertheless, you will still be able to handle severe hills and attain freeway speeds.  Another option is to use 8V batteries with a resulting range of about 40 miles and a performance midway between that of a vehicle with 6V batteries and one with 12V. 
     If the range numbers seem small to you, consider these facts: Conservatively, 70% of Americans in cities drive less than 25 miles per day; 90% drive less than 50.  Half of all urban trips are less than 5 miles.  The average urban car trip is less than 10 minutes; measured in time, an EV's range in typical city driving is about 60 minutes.  While certainly an EV is not for everyone, the overwhelming majority of us could meet our daily transportation requirements in an EV.

 


 

What about charging?

A fully depleted battery pack can be recharged in 8 to 10 hours or overnight. For the best performance, it is usually a good idea to charge whenever the opportunity arises. Most EVs have on-board standard 110 volt chargers, so you are never very far from an outlet and an opportunity.  220 volt chargers are available also.  They will permit a much faster charge, but are best left in the garage or in some other stationary location because of their size and weight.  As for the cost of the electricity, at our scandalously low rates (at least in the Pacific Northwest), prepare yourself for about $3 a month or less.

 


 

How much?

What does it cost to own a car size EV?  Your choices right now are: convert an internal combustion vehicle, find a used EV (there are a few available), or go to southern California and wait in line to spend $30,000 or more for a General Motors EV-1.  There will be more choices in the coming few years.  Just about every major car company in the world has a prototype EV, and some are more practical than the sporty General Motors car, though it is, by all accounts, very impressive.  For some time, no doubt, the prices on all new EVs will remain impressive too. 
       From the standpoint of cost, however, a new conversion or a used EV is still the best choice.  Used EVs can range from $4000 to $15,000.  The parts that go into a conversion, including conventional batteries, total $5000 to $7000+, depending on options.  (It is surprisingly easy to do all or part of the conversion yourself, if you have even slight mechanical skill.)  Labor usually runs $3000 to $5000+, depending on how custom the job is. For example, a good choice for conversion would be a late model Geo Metro which would cost, all told (including the cost of the donor car), around $14,000.  The operating costs of an electric car, including electricity and pro-rated battery replacement, are comparable to those of a gas car — but would actually be several times less if we paid the "true" cost of gasoline at the pump.2

 


 

Maintenance?

Very little.  Water the batteries once every couple of months.  Not even that, if you opt for sealed deep-cycle batteries.  Tires, brakes and suspension, of course, are not basically different from those on any vehicle.  No tune-ups, oil changes, coolants, mufflers, emission tests, etc.  Electric motors are expected to last over a million miles.  Consider that an electric motor has a handful of moving parts (the shaft plus bearings) while an internal combustion engine has hundreds. Once every few months battery connections should be checked for snugness. That's about it.

 


 

Are EVs really cleaner, or are they simply shifting emissions from the tailpipe to the power generating plant?

 
Except in the Pacific Northwest, where better than 90% of our electricity is from a renewable hydroelectric source, it is true that a very large percentage of electrical energy is from fossil-fuel burning power generating plants.  Two things need to be said about this.  One is that it is a well-documented fact that it is much easier and more effective to control emissions from a central source than from hundreds of thousands of individual tailpipes. Fuels can be combusted at much higher temperatures (extracting a greater proportion of their stored energy) in controlled power plant conditions than we can achieve in a typical automobile engine.  Another important consideration is the relative efficiency of electric motive power versus that of combustion.  In a recent test at the American Tour de Sol, an energy efficiency event held annually in New England, it was established that an electric Geo Metro could go about twice as far on the same amount of oil (converted to electricity) as a conventional gas Geo Metro.  Complete “well-to-wheel” efficiency was measured, taking into account generating, transmission, and charging losses, on the electric side--and refining, distributing, and the inherent wastefulness of incomplete combustion, on the gasoline side. 
       An EV is 70% efficient at converting the energy stored in its batteries to motion at the wheels.  Compare that to 20% (at best, when running hottest) for a conventional IC engine, trying to do the same with the potential energy in its gas tank.  Add one last fact: because most urban car trips are so short, the IC engine spends nearly half of its time operating below its optimal temperature, further compounding its wastefulness.

 


 

What about the lead in batteries? Is it recycled?

The lead in batteries is in a very stable form, unlike the trace amounts of lead in even “unleaded” gasoline.  It remains in the batteries.  Furthermore, 97% of battery lead is recycled; it pays to do so, given the cost of mining new lead, and we could only wish the petroleum industry were as tightly regulated.3  Only 63% of aluminum cans are recycled, 39% of newspapers, and 35% of glass bottles.

 


 

How long do batteries last?  Are there new developments in batteries?

It depends on type.  6V, “golf-cart” deep-cycle batteries (long the mainstay of the converted EV) can last 3 to 5 years, in some cases much longer depending on whether you drive less than the average.  12V deep-cycles may last half as long, but then you need half as many to equal the same voltage.  The cost of replacing a battery pack can run between $600 and $1500, assuming lead-acid chemistry (the only affordable choice at this time).  Factors that vary the price include high-performance voltages (in excess of the standard 120V) and sealed (no maintenance) designs. 
      As for new developments, there are many other battery chemistries and types being tested, but most promising, in the near-term, are nickel cadmium, nickel metal-hydride and lithium-ion. Hydrogen fuel cells and flywheel energy storage devices are also in development, but much further off from availability and affordability.  A new lead-acid design using absorbed glass mat (AGM) technology is the favorite among performance oriented converters. These batteries are maintenance-free (though requiring more elaborate regulation of finish charging) and are expected to outlast comparably sized conventional wet-cells. They can be twice or more as expensive as the wet cells, however.

 


 

Registration and insurance?

Except for the fact that you don’t need to worry about emission tests (though you do have to pay an excise tax because the state needs to collect its “gas” tax somehow and you don’t visit gas stations anymore), registration of a converted EV is routine.  Insurance is also unproblematic, though you may want to insure the EV for more than its conventional blue-book value to protect your investment, especially if you convert an older car.

 


 

What kind of car makes the best conversion?

The lighter, the better.  Given that so much weight goes into the conversion in the form of batteries, a car that starts out heavy is at a disadvantage.  That is, if you want to maximize performance.  If this is not a big issue with you--perhaps because you won’t be needing much range or don’t care about passing cars on the freeway--then just about any vehicle is possible. Geo Metros (as you might have guessed by now) and Ford Festivas are excellent choices. Small pickups are also acceptable candidates because they have plenty of room for batteries and their suspensions can handle them.

 


 

Why drive an electric car?

There are many reasons to drive an electric car, and not all of them are the obvious ecological, economic or socially responsible ones.  It was the preferred type of  motorized transport for those in the 1920’s and early 1930’s who could afford the best.  Billed as the only acceptable car to take to the opera, it was a special favorite of upper-class women.  Doctors, too, when they still used to make house calls, were partial to its quiet dependability.  Even after the electric car’s heyday was long past, Clara Ford, Henry’s wife—who could have had any car in the world—treasured most her Detroit Electric. 

      What most people who experience driving an electric car immediately notice is how elegant an EV’s ride can be.  By contrast, there is something terribly labored and—for lack of a better word—silly about using thousands of explosions per minute to make a large machine move horizontally when there are so much simpler ways.

 


 

Notes

1  Visit the web site of the National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) for more details: http://www.nedra.com/ 

2  A 1999 report by the International Center for Technology Assessment "divides the external costs of gasoline usage into five primary areas: (1) tax subsidization of the oil industry; (2) government program subsidies; (3) protection costs involved in oil shipment and motor vehicle services; (4) environmental, health, and social costs of gasoline usage; and (5) other important externalities of motor vehicle use. together, these external costs total $558.7 billion to $1.69 trillion per year, which, when added to the retail price of gasoline, result in a per gallon price of $5.60 to $15.14."

3  For a thorough discussion of the issues surrounding lead in batteries see "the industrial ecology of lead and electric vehicles", Robert Socolow and Valerie Thomas, Journal of  Industrial Ecology,  MIT Press, vol.1 issue 1, Winter  1997. Also available on the web at http://mitpress.mit.edu/JIE/sample-article.html  


 

References and Resources

Books

Brant, Bob.  Build Your Own Electric Vehicle.  Tab Books, 1994.  (An excellent introduction to the subject.  However, despite the title, the book is about converting, not really building.) 

Hackleman, Michael.  The New Electric Vehicle--A Clean And Quiet Revolution, Home Power, 1996.  (A good survey of the great variety of  EVs, especially the more exotic and experimental.) 

Schiffer, Michael Brian. Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America. Smithsonian, 1994. (A wonderful social history of the electric car and its place in the culture.) 

Wakefield, Ernest H. History of the Electric Automobile SAE International, 1994. (Full of interesting if little known facts, though somewhat poorly written.)

Organizations

To keep abreast of the rapidly changing EV scene, the Electric Auto Association’s monthly newsletter, Current EVents, is highly recommended. It is well worth the $39/year membership. Visit their website: www.eaaev.org

The EV Listserv, EAA's online discussion group, is a wonderful free source of information on all aspects of electric vehicles. To join e-mail the following message: "subscribe ev your name" to:

listproc@listproc.sjsu.edu

Be prepared for several dozen messages per day. More information about the EV discussion group is at: http://www.madkatz.com/ev/evlist.html

There is a searchable archive at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EVList/messages

The Seattle Electric Vehicle Association (SEVA) (my local chapter of the EAA) meets on the second Tuesday of the month. The club is comprised of EV enthusiasts at every level of sophistication, including backyard mechanics, tinkerers, environmentalists, mechanical and electrical engineers, and people who just want to know more about EVs.

Conversion Services and Component Suppliers

KTA Services, Inc.
http://www.kta-ev.com

944 West 21st St.
Upland, CA 91784 USA
(909) 949-7914

Cloud Electric Vehicles
http://cloudelectric.com

e-mail: Cloudelectric@qwest.net
16820 199th Place NE
Woodinville, WA 98072 USA
(425) 788-9293

Electro Automotive
http://www.electroauto.com

POB 113-W
Felton, CA 95018-1113 USA
(831) 429-1989

Wilde Evolutions, Inc.
http://www.wilde-evolutions.com

POB W
Jerome, AZ 86331 USA
(520) 634-8445

Electric Vehicles of America, Inc.
http://www.inc.com/users/evainc.html

POB 2037
11 Eagle Trace
Wolfeboro, NH 03894 USA
(603) 569-2100

E-bikes and E-Trikes

Electric Vehicles Northwest specializes in electric power-assisted bicycles and e-scooters.

EVsNW, Inc.
http://www.electricvehiclesnw.com

110 N. 36th
Seattle, WA 98103 USA
(206) 547-4621
e-mail: evsnw@halcyon.com

For an economical but powerful, all electric bicycle kit checkout EMB. (May not be legal as a bicycle in some states.)

More EV Links

Check out the vast collection at the Mid-America EAA page: http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Downs/4214/links.html


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 Victor Muñoz
rev 10/8/98