Electrifying Automotive News

The other day I was involved in a cross country dispute with a friend at Georgetown Law, Michael Rothstein. He said that electric cars (he actually thinks Tesla's are too impractical because of both cost and limited size, but who wants to get linked to a defunct EV-1 website?) should be the future of the auto industry because as energy production (hopefully) gets rapidly cleaner green house gas emissions would nose dive with the combined decline of dirty energy production and elimination of petroleum burning transportation. My problem was that when you're powering an automobile with electricity then you're stuck with dual layers of inefficiency: electrical generation inefficiencies and automotive use inefficiencies. In addition, there would be no rapid GHG reduction around the world because clean generation technologies are still rare and expensive, and there might even be a net increase in GHG emissions as developing nations pick up the increased burden on the grid from a shift to electrical transportation by building even more coal-fired plants. My solution: throw lots of money into a next generation technology: the hydrogen fuel cell, and a process to efficiently generate hydrogen. Of course this throws in a third layer of inefficiency in generating hydrogen, and generating hydrogen efficiently might not even be possible... So basically, the hydrogen economy probably won't become practical until someone figures out fusion power. But when someone does, the whole world would be able to implement clean transportation. Of course when someone invents fusion power the world's energy problems will probably become moot anyways. Does it bother me that my argument rests on the development of possibly impossible developments? Yes.

Well, Michael can stick a feather in his cap as BYD Auto recently announced that they're releasing a new all electric automobile in 2009 or 2010, and they would like to eventually bring the car to the US market. The WSJ reported an expected price of RMB 200,000. One of the main problems holding electric cars back has been their batteries, either capacity or tendency to explode. Back in January, I commented on an Economist article which brought attention to BYD as having "Global leadership in a narrow product category," batteries. They claim that their technology overcomes both hurdles. When a world leader in batteries is getting into the electric car business they must either have a killer product, or an overly ambitious business plan.

Michael has convinced me that the electric car combined with cleaner energy generation is the preferable intermediary technology between today and some future utopia full of cheap easy electricity and cars that leave behind a trail of water. I hope BYD succeeds in its venture. If so, expect these numbers to skyrocket.