A Test Drive in a Prototype Electric-Only Car

Let me tell you how I ended up test-driving an electric car today. Yes, an electric car running on a battery and electric motor. Not gasoline or diesel. Not even a hybrid.

It all started last month when the company that will market these cars, Better Place, opened its visitor center to the public, and I decided to go there with all the guys (and gals) from work, to get some questions answered as well as to see the prototype vehicles. As a side bonus, I got to drive one of the prototype cars.

It seems that the visitor center is still under heavy construction. A D-9 bulldozer was moving mountains of land around, and many construction workers were hard at work, probably building more showrooms and infrastructure.

Some of you probably haven’t heard about this company and their electric vehicles (EVs), or about their business model. In short, their short-term goal (~15 years) is to transform small countries to EV-only, and thus make whole countries independent of foreign oil.

Sounds a bit pretentious? Well, their plan is very detailed and seems to be well on its way, at least in their “pilot” countries, Israel and Denmark. With the help of the governments and some private investors, as well as the European car manufacturer, Renault, this company seems to be headed for a revolution in the transportation energy market.

The electric cars

Let’s start with some details! I am a beginner physicist and a professional programmer, so bear with me if I juggle some numbers from time to time. The technical data was taken from the company and its representatives.

What we saw were prototype cars, which used to be regular Renault models like the Megane and Laguna, and were converted to electrical ones by taking away the gas tank, replacing the engine with an electrical one of 115 horse power, and putting a large 250kg 250Liter Lithium-Ion battery pack in the trunk.

They told us that the first consumer model (the Renault Fluence) will be available to customers during 2011. These models will be specially-designed, so that the battery pack is at the bottom of the car, just under the seats. An equivalent of a gas station will have a device to replace the battery pack in under 5 minutes.

A new, fully-charged battery pack (supplies 400V, and holds 24kWh) under average Israeli-driving conditions has enough juice for a range of at least 100 miles (160km) of driving. They did not know how much the battery pack’s capacity degrades over the years, but that is not too important because of the business model.

How it works for us, the drivers

Their business model revolves around customers becoming subscribers for travelling from place to place. You don’t buy the battery charger, you don’t buy the electricity itself, and you don’t even buy the car or pay for mechanical service. You just pay as you go, per mile, and that is it.

When you subscribe, you get a new car and free installation of two charging sockets anywhere you want (for example, at your home and at work). The socket is a three phase 220V 50Hz AC, just like the regular mains, with 5 leads (2 for communication). It seems quite sturdy and simple. I would say even the least tech-savvy drivers will be able to handle it.

Charging is done at 3kW and it takes around 7 hours to fully charge a battery, in a process carefully controlled by the car’s computer. It comes out as less than 8 hours because the car’s computer prevents you from emptying the battery completely, so it won’t die before its time.

The subscription includes as much charging energy as you like, and as many battery replacements as you like. The only thing you pay for is distance travelled. If you think about it for a moment, it makes a lot of sense, because the travelling distance is the most important thing you actually get from using the car. It will not cost you more if you use the A/C, turn the radio on, go uphill all the way, or choose to drive especially slow or fast (within the limits of traffic law, of course).

The tour guide told us that the price per mile is not yet decided upon, but that it will be competitive to what people are used to today. Most cars is Israel are either privately owned or leased through a car leasing company.

On the way back we did some calculations. I own my car, while my colleague leases his via our company. He drives a bit more than I do, but running all the numbers, we came to the conclusion that the total cost of travelling with either of our cars is pretty much the same. We took into account (for me) the price of my car, its licensing and insurance fees, and car value degradation, (and for him) his monthly leasing fees, and of course fuel for both of us.
It sums up to around half a dollar per kilometer, or 75c per mile. If their subscription fee would be around that price per mile, it would be worth it even without taking the environmental-ideological aspect into account. I know some people who would be willing to pay a bit extra for that noble cause alone.

Environmental impact

The company emphasizes the idea of saving the planet and repeats that idea many times in the videos we saw. Let’s try to dig into that:

An electric car creates almost zero air pollution when it operates compared to gasoline cars. It’s not a 20% reduction; it’s more like 99% reduction. And it also makes much less noise (more on this in a moment). But it still requires a lot of energy to make it move, and this electrical energy has to be created somehow. Creating it in a power plant generates air and noise pollution, but elsewhere… not where the car drives. The environmental benefit for highly populated areas like city centers is considerable. We will breathe fresher air, no doubt. But the question still remains: Does the system as a whole really reduce overall pollution in order to save the planet?

Israel is a small country and has very little spare energy to waste on charging cars. The total electricity usage on hot days (when many people turn on their A/C around the country) can reach 96% of all the power plants production capacity combined (10GW out of 10.6GW). None of the various power plants are nuclear, so all of them are big polluters. The few solar and wind plants (in the Negev desert and in the Golan Heights, respectively) are not producing much energy, if at all, and are mostly for research purposes. If another coal/natural-gas power plant is built just for the purpose of supplying enough charge to the cars, the environmental benefit of electric cars might be lost completely.

The company’s answer to this problem is a smart charging system which profiles users according to their usage. If a driver (e.g. an IT worker) parks her car at work every weekday at 9am and usually only uses it again at 5pm, then her car’s charge cycle will be delayed a bit, and it might be 1pm or 2pm before her car starts charging.

Another driver (e.g. a sales agent) who drives a lot all day, will get priority every time she hooks the car into the socket, because she needs the energy more readily.

On the other hand, if the first driver has some unusual urgent matter to attend to (say, she has to fix a problem in a client site), and needs to use the car at 10am, she can instruct the system to “charge me now” and she’ll get priority, as well as a more rapid battery charge.

This is an interesting mechanism, which attempts to utilize the grid to its full potential while prioritizing customers according to their profile and/or other needs. I am eager to see if this will work as planned and if it will be too much of a nuisance to users or not.

My colleague asked them about the reduction of noise pollution. The prototypes we saw were just as quiet as a brand new “out of the factory” car, but not much quieter. On the other hand, when the engine is under load (such as going uphill) you could really feel the difference, as the electric motor is much quieter than a screaming internal combustion engine.

We were told that the consumer model will be fitted with a speaker and a “drive-tone” (an extended word play on ring-tone and true-tone), so that pedestrians will notice it and be less likely to get run over. In other words, the sound of a car that we are used to, will be artificially generated for the sake of safety. This makes sense, but I believe that eventually, if the whole industry converts to EVs, this feature could be taken off (not in the following 10-20 years though).

I asked them about the environmental impact of dead batteries, and in the behind-the-scenes operation required to periodically charge as many as 2 million cars, assuming all cars in Israel are replaced with their electric counterparts.

As with any lithium-based batteries, their lifespan is limited to around 10 years. This is longer than your standard cell-phone battery because of special sealing techniques. However 2 million cars still needs at least 2 million batteries (plus spares for changing), so the dead batteries might pile up to become a serious environmental threat.

When a battery dies, its contents (the electrolyte, the anode and cathode) can be recycled just like any other Li-Ion battery. However, I am not aware of any such recycling plants for these batteries in Israel, and when I asked them about that, they did not know where the recycling would take place either. Nor did they know how much energy it takes to recycle each battery.

It will be interesting to investigate this further, because off-shoring the recycling process might prove to be not economically worthwhile. Meanwhile it would be a big loss for the environment if the batteries are not recycled.

The test drive

The tour included a lengthy presentation (around 23 minutes) which included a hologram of the lead entrepreneur Shay Agassi, as well as colorful eye-candy entrance of a model car. It was too kitschy for my taste, and packed full of buzzwords and slogans.

Then we finally got to see a prototype car up-close and even drive it for a bit. They would not let us look under the hood. Apparently their refusal has something to do with a contract with the manufacturer, Renault.

When not moving, the engine is dead-quiet, but I could still hear a small hum from some ventilator, even after turning the A/C completely off.

Driving the EV felt just like driving my gasoline-drinking car. The gas and brake pedals, as well as handling the steering wheel felt just like any other car. It also accelerated nicely; there was no sign of it being “weaker” than a regular car.

One difference was on the dashboard: Instead of an RPM gauge, there was a power gauge. The scale runs from around -50kW to +200kW. Don’t be alarmed, negative power is still not defined. The scale works like that because when you let go of the gas pedal, the engine works as a dynamo to charge the battery! The negative values are there to indicate that the power is used to decelerate instead of accelerate (hence charging instead of discharging).

Another difference is in the gears, as in… there are none. The engine can produce the maximum torque at any RPM, which means that gears are not needed at all. One gear fits all. This is also why there is no “clutch” mechanism either (manual or automatic). It does boggle the mind a bit at first.

So there you have it. I believe this is a start of a revolution in the global car industry as well as the oil industry. I have a feeling that this will make a lot of headlines in the near future, and I am planning to be an early adopter of this technology, if the price won’t be too high.

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