I have done the analysis for Ontario a couple of times in the past few years. Assuming that most electric car charging is done at night (to qualify for lower off-peak prices), the difference between daily peak and lowest demand in Ontario (weekdays) is sufficient to charge approximately 7,000,000 vehicles, with no increase in generating capacity needed. That is more vehicles than are currently licensed in Ontario. For a Canadian analysis, see the Electric Mobility Canada backgrounder I wrote.

Won’t wind and solar generate a lot of the power needed for electric cars?

Wind and solar generate less than 1 per cent of Canada’s power supply, and most provinces have subsidies aimed at increasing that portion. The most spectacular example of the sky-rocketing 16 times as much for solar power, and three times more for wind, as the current average electricity rate. Ontario’s 20-year power plan calls for $23-billion in subsidies to the wind and solar industry, supposedly allowing coal-fired power to be phased out. But its own numbers show that with wind and solar capacity available less than 30 per cent of the time, these costly projects still won’t bring about the end of coal. Meanwhile, electricity consumers will be hit with price increases of 46 per cent over the next five years, making Ontario industry uncompetitive with almost all provinces and American states. No wonder Premier Dalton McGuinty’s green dream is turning into a nightmare as an election looms.

Renewables (other than hydro) are the new kids on the generation block, but they are the fastest growing segments. Governments in Canada subsidize the oil industry as well, and they’re a mature industry making historic profits. Wind and solar are intermittent energy sources, but the fuel is free, zero emissions and does not require tailings ponds or billions of dollars to be spent on clean-up. With its large hydro resources, the Ontario grid is not at any risk by accommodating large amounts of wind and solar electric generation. In fact, solar generation is highly sought after, as it produces maximum supply at the time of maximum demand – hot summer afternoons. If Ontario has to buy electricity on the spot market at such times, the price is very high.

In the meantime, we will continue to import oil to keep the internal combustion fleet running in the eastern half of the country, while exporting western oil to the U.S. At least we produce electricity at home, creating jobs here instead of Venezuela and the Middle East.

Are electric cars really “green”?

That depends on how the electricity is generated. Water generates most of the electricity in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Manitoba and B.C., while Alberta and Saskatchewan generate nearly all power from coal and natural gas. Overall, about 75 per cent of Canada’s electricity comes from water and nuclear power, and 25 per cent from fossil fuels. When measured by fossil-fuel emissions, use of electric cars in Canada can generally be considered green. The situation is the reverse in the United States, where fossil fuels, mainly coal, generate 75 per cent of electricity. So operating an electric car there would account for more fossil-fuel emissions than a conventional gasoline-powered vehicle (thus making GM’s Chevy Volt a tougher sell to eco-conscious consumers, the target market for electric vehicles).

Studies (1,2,3) show that even in areas where electricity comes 100% from coal, electric cars are still better for air quality and greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline powered cars. It is easier to clean up 1 smokestack, than 100,000 tailpipes. Individuals have the option of making sure their personal electricity consumption is off-set by green generation.

Perhaps the natural gas used to extract crude from the tar sands in Western Canada should be used instead to help create greener electricity by using it to replace coal with natural gas as a fuel in the thermal generating plants throughout North America. Is it more lucrative for the natural gas industry to burn this relatively clean (compared to coal) fuel to produce crude oil?

Are electric cars practical in Canada?

Besides of their high price tag, limited range and the inconvenience of long charging cycles, there’s another factor that even the greenest Canadians need to consider before buying an electric car: our northern climate. Anyone who has had trouble starting a car in cold weather knows that battery performance plummets with temperature. In our dark, cold winters, we also need battery power to heat the car and run headlights. The combined result is a much shorter driving range than they’ll be touting in the electric-car showroom.

Practicality, like beauty, rests in the eye of the beholder. I have been driving electric vehicles since 1979 in Ottawa, where we know something about cold. We have a solution for keeping the batteries warm – insulation. Driving range is reduced somewhat in winter (about 10%), mostly because of additional drag due to snow and slush. Ironically, the way we keep the gassers ready to start in cold weather conditions is to plug them in (so the block heaters can keep the oil in the engine sump from turning to frozen sludge).

As for the high price of electric vehicles, that will come down with volume production, like it has for consumer electronics and advanced batteries that power portable devices. The limited range is a non-issue for typical urban driving. For occasional longer trips, people can rent a gasser or use a plug-in hybrid. Fast charging facilities exist, although they have not yet been installed in quantity. Personally, I find that recharging my car overnight (while I am also recharging) works very well, and eliminates the need for regular additional stops for gasoline fill-ups. How long does it take to recharge my electric car? About 10 seconds: 5 seconds to plug it in when I get home; and another 5 seconds to unplug when I’m ready to leave.

The green-car race is imploding as beleaguered citizens, struggling to deal with tough economies, see their electricity rates soar and expensive wind and solar power missing in action when most needed. Other jurisdictions are rapidly changing direction, but Ontario keeps whistling merrily in the wind, bound for uncompetitive green oblivion.

The current state of economic mismanagement has nothing to do with the desirability of cleaner cars. Other jurisdictions with plans to green their grids are doing just fine economically, e.g., Germany, Denmark. If Ontario can stop importing coal, that would likely be beneficial for the provincial balance of trade, not to mention health care costs associated with asthma and respiratory diseases.

Just last week, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the development of an electric-car battery to be competitive with the internal combustion engine might be five years away. “The storage capacity of [electric] car batteries needs to be increased by six or seven times, their lives need to be extended by 15 years, and their cost needs to be reduced by a factor of three,” he said at the UN climate conference in Cancun, Mexico. I think I’ll sell my GM stock while I’m ahead.

Actually, the current state of electric vehicle technology looks pretty competitive now. Range of 400 km or more per charge, fast recharging stations, maximum speeds in excess of any legal speed limit on the continent, less expensive to fuel, less expensive to maintain, can be charged at home while I’m sleeping, and no tailpipe. Even so, battery technology will continue to improve, as Secretary Chu says. All that remains is to find the courage to proceed. Innovators all over the world have worked on perfecting the technology, and somewhere in the near future, electric cars can possibly replace regular cars.

Darryl McMahon
Author, The Emperor’s New Hydrogen Economy
Member, the Electric Vehicle Council of Ottawa
Owner, electric car, electric tractor, electric boat, electric bicycle

1) http://www.electroauto.com/info/pollmyth.shtml
2) http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/Executive%20Summary%20final%20with%20cover%20secured.pdf
3) http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es702178s

June 1, 2010

It's a pleasure to read an article by a good writer, that just lays out the facts and without an axe to grind. So, herewith, please enjoy [Site no longer exists: http://www.emcarnprior.ca/20100527/lifestyle/Electric+transport+has+arrived+in+the+region] Brian's article from May 27th where he covers several topics related to electric vehicles that appeared in some editions of the EMC weekly newspaper in Eastern Ontario.

May 12, 2010

[Link has bit-rotted: http://www.metronews.ca/ottawa/live/article/523938--canadian-made-electric-car-charges-ahead--page0] Today's Metro Canada free newspaper features the Toronto-based A2B electric prototype in an article. This is a hot-looking, super-compact 2-seater electric, that will turn heads, and then give whiplash to onlookers as it blasts through urban commuting missions.

If you want to see a vibrant electric vehicle industry in Canada, producing vehicles that people want to buy, then you want to support the innovators that put cars like this together, and all the components and gadgetry that makes them possible, right here in Canada. Of course, if we took this car to an Ontario licence bureau this week, we would not be allowed to license it, simply because it runs on electric power.

May 7, 2010

For more information on the Ontario electric vehicle licensing ban, visit the 10n10.ca Web site.

April 23, 2010

Natural Resources Canada has accepted the Final version of the Demonstrating Electric Vehicles in Canada - Project Guidelines report prepared by Electric Mobility Canada and the Centre National du Transport Avancé. This is a solid step forward in Canada's strategy to foster a domestic electric vehicle industry via the EV Technology Road Map.

April 22, 2010

This AOL article examines the fanciful GM claim for fuel economy for the Volt design. By extension they also take on the Nissan equivalent claim.

Is the poor American consumer so dumb they really can't understand anything other than the frequently questioned EPA numbers?

In my experience, real-world EV drivers completely understand the concept of km/h per kWh, or in the U.S. miles per kWh. They also tend to have a very good sense of what a kWh costs them, including any green premium they are paying to ensure that electricity comes from a clean energy source. Without exception, they then do a simple division operation to arrive at a unit that any car owner understands: cents per km (or mile). Of course, that's a bit of math the gas-guzzler makers don't want us to do. Because if I can buy my electricity at night for $0.06 a kWh, and get 5 km to the kWh, my fuel cost in my EV is 1.2 cents per km. On the other hand, our fuel-sipping gasser, which gets about 8 litres / 100 km on its best days, with gasoline at $1.00 per litre, is sucking back 8 cents a km, in fuel cost alone. So, 1.2 cents a km with zero emissions or 8 cents a km with a witch's brew of toxins, carcinogens and greenhouse gases spewing out behind. If comparably priced, which do you think consumers will find more appealing?

Canadians don't need to worry about this decision anytime soon, as GM won't provide any commitment to Volt sales in Canada, and Nissan's most optimistic date is at least a year and a half away - leaving plenty of time to find another reason to not provide this solution to Canadians.

Happy Earth Day!

April 13, 2010

A fascinating juxtaposition: the federal government publicly announces its electric vehicle strategy while the government on Ontario continues its covert campaign to make electric vehicles illegal.

April 4, 2010

Today, Nissan announced that it will put its Leaf electric car on sale in the U.S. in December 2010, and provided pricing. The MSRP will be US$32,780, before rebates. Available rebates include $7,500 from the federal government, and $5,000 for California residents - dropping the effective price to about $20,000. That compares favourably with hybrids currently on the market, and the rumoured price point for the GM Volt.

Sadly, for Canadians, a Nissan Canada representative indicated that sales of the Leaf in Canada will not begin until the autumn of 2011 at the earliest, and pricing for the Canadian market is not yet known.

March 9, 2010

The decision was apparently made in late January, but news is just getting out now that GM management has elected to cancel their plug-in hybrid project within the Cadillac division, based on the Volt technology platform. The decision was made on economic grounds - the same reasoning GM used to kill the EV-1 battery electric and previous hybrid technology projects. (GM execs were widely quoted around 2000 as saying that the Toyota and Honda hybrids were money losers and would drive those firms into bankruptcy. Yet, if I recall correctly, it was GM that required government bailouts to survive last year.)

The argument that the Cadelectric would be too heavy to perform well smells off to me. With an extra $30,000 per unit to play with, I'm sure real automotive engineers would have found a way to lighten the vehicle - say with carbon fibre shell parts, aluminum structural members, etc., to resolve that issue.

If GM stays true to its history, it still has time to kill the already much-delayed Volt, likely by many small measures. Holding out the possibility of real production for as long as possible will keep the competitors out the market longer, as investors will be skittish about going head-to-head with a government-financed venture with the resources of GM behind it.

Still, if the Volt does get short-circuited, there may be many orphaned LiFePO4 batteries looking for homes come early 2011. Of course, GM may also choose to simply use our tax dollars to eat the cost of scrapping everything related to the Volt. They did not hesitate to shred everything associated with the EV-1.

March 3, 2010

I'm pleased to announce the resurrection of Dale's Web pages dedicated to the transformation of his CitiCar. (now hosted here) Check it out.

February 25, 2010

I guess if you want free advertising on my Web site, this is the way to get it. It was nice to finally see one of these in real life. Coca Cola announced the vehicles late last year. Kenworth (the manufacturer) says the vehicles save 30% on fuel costs in urban operations.

Coca Cola also uses full-electric small trucks in places like Uruguay, but apparently has no plans to bring real EVs into use in Canada. Pity.

Save fuel - save money - save the environment. If a company as financially hard-nosed as Coca Cola can figure out it makes sense, why are so many others seemingly so mired in the hydrocarbon trap?

February 10, 2010

As one who has been driving electric for over 30 years, I have long wished we could just put people into full-function electric cars for a day so they can actually experience it, and really get what they're about at a visceral level, not just as an esoteric theoretical "good thing to do". Tyler drove one for a day, and now he really gets it.
Zero-emission Tesla always draws a crowd

February 6, 2010

Fred Green's Obituary in the Ottawa Citizen

January 28, 2010

Today, I had the pleasure of addressing the Friends of the CRC about the history of the electric car, and why it is poised to make a major comeback on our roads. They were kind enough to record the presentation, and provide me with a copy. If you would like to view it, you will need RealPlayer. The presentation, The Rise, Fall and Rise of the Electric Car runs about 50 minutes. I hope you enjoy it.

January 27, 2010

Tesla Web Site

January 11, 2010

Whither ZENN for 2010? They have announced the end of production of ZENN LSV in the next few months. It appears that plans for a highway-capable EV have evaporated. The focus now appears to be EV drive trains based on the EESTOR technology. What's the outlook for EESTOR? This Autoblog Green article about EESTOR may well of interest.

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