Feds Fail to Obey Own Laws for Electric Vehicles
22 October 1998
FEATURE/ Feds Fail to Obey Own Laws for Electric Vehicles, Says Design News; Electric Cars Remain a Distant Dream, Say Experts
--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Federal and state agencies have failed miserably in adding electric vehicles (EVs) to their fleets, says Design News in an exclusive report on the state of battery-powered autos (Oct. issue).
Of about 585,000 vehicles in the federal fleet, only about 200 are electric. The 1992 Energy Policy Act (EPACT) called for federal fleets to boost their percentage of alternate fuel vehicles (though not necessarily EVs). The Big Three automakers say they invested heavily in EV technology in the belief that such regulations would spur federal agencies to buy their early vehicles.
California, New York and Massachusetts have decreed that by 2003, 10 percent of all vehicles sold in-state must be electric. But state EV leases also are virtually nonexistent. California has only 37, and Massachusetts has none. (New York and Massachusetts told Design News that they planned to buy EVs in fiscal 1998.)
The U.S. government says it can't afford electric cars. "The cost differential between an electric and a conventional vehicle is $22,000. An electric pickup is $35,000, while a conventional Ford Ranger. . .costs us $12,000 or $13,000," says Denise Lenar of Government Services Administration fleet management.
But if government won't buy these expensive autos, who will? Consumers? Barbara Richardson, a research scientist at the University of Michigan's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation, says, "You can mandate that someone build the vehicles, but there's no mandate that says anyone has to buy them," she says.
Design News says, "Dreams of an electric-car revolution any time soon are dead. Despite more than four decades of development effort, the EV's most critical component -- the battery -- is nowhere near ready. And automakers don't expect it to be by the end of the century. Nor in 2010. And probably not in 2020."
A University of Michigan study predicts that the number of pure electric vehicles in service will inch from essentially zero in 1997 to two percent in 2007. Privately, many auto engineers consider even these dismal numbers to be optimistic, says the magazine.
The basic battery problem is simply one of weight versus power. A study by Chicago's Argonne Laboratory predicts moderate power increases for EV batteries during the next 20 years -- not enough to make a serious difference.
Design News' assessment comes from eight months of interviews with engineers, industry analysts and other experts. While executives at the Big Three auto makers continue to express optimism, many say privately that they're beginning to shift to the development of hybrids -- vehicles that run on a combination of battery packs and internal combustion engines.
Today, automakers pay exorbitant sums for EV batteries. A battery pack for a Ford Ranger EV costs more than $30,000, and Ford sells the truck for only $32,795. The battery pack for GM's EV1 costs about $45,000 for a car that sells for $33,995. Of course, these prices reflect very low volume and would come down if many more such vehicles were sold.
But in the real world, asks the magazine, who will buy an expensive, short-range auto that performs poorly in cold weather and in hilly terrain? As one EV engineer said, "Would you drive. . .a car that offered a 50-mile range?" Another asked, "Who are the 100,000 soldiers who will sacrifice themselves to drive EV prices down? Willing consumers aren't out there."
About the only people who are bullish are battery makers, says Design News. "If the battery maker doesn't promise to meet the automakers' goals, however ridiculous they may be, then they don't get any money," says Elton Cairns, professor of chemical engineering at the University of California - Berkeley, and a developer of EV batteries for GM in the 1960s. "So it becomes a sort of liars' contest. Whoever tells the most credible lie gets the money."
In the heady days of the late 1980s, there were predictions of battery packs that would provide 300-mile ranges and 15-minute recharges. Then reality checked in, despite more than $260 million in funding from the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium. Yet all this has been ignored by government bureaucrats who appear to believe that "wishing will make it so."
Big Three automakers told Design News that they had expected governments to fulfill their own promises to buy EVs for their fleets. "Many companies built their businesses around what they considered to be serious environmental measures that would most certainly be lived up to by government agencies," says J. Robert Thomson, GM's dir. of manufacturing for advanced technology vehicles. GM alone has spent somewhere just south of $1 billion.
Experts think that near-term, the hybrid electric vehicle could serve as a bridge technology, enabling battery developers to continue research, while greatly improving the environment. Hybrids use an internal combustion engine to charge the batteries for an electronic drivetrain, and provide more of the conveniences to which consumers have grown accustomed, says Design News.
"The electric vehicle with real potential today is the hybrid," says David Cole, dir. of the University of Michigan's Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation. "It has very low emissions and it eliminates the range and energy density (battery weight) problems." Yet, hybrids, which burn gasoline, don't qualify as zero emission vehicles under government rules.
Design News is read twice monthly by 335,000 engineers who design products ranging from autos to spacecraft. It is published by Cahners Publishing Co., Newton, Mass., the nation's leading publisher of specialized business magazines. In 1997, Design News won its fifth straight Folio magazine "Editorial Excellence" award as the top design engineering magazine in the U.S.
The article, entitled "Out of Juice!", was written by Chuck Murray, DN's senior regional editor. He can be reached at: 847.698.0488
