The revolution is on hold for BYD
Once they get this right, we’ll no longer need personal loans for petroleum-based fuels…
The race to build a mass market electric car has had its ups and downs. Companies like Tesla are pushing at the doors of innovation, but they have yet to break out with a winner. Other companies continue to test out their ideas for new hybrid vehicles, but the question “What happened to the electric car?” remains.
Well, here’s another story to feed the flame. Domenick Yoney reports for Auto Blog Green that Chinese company BYD Auto has a vehicle called the BYD F3DM. That’s the good part. But this Dual Mode (range-extended) electric vehicle hasn’t sold in numbers that would challenge comparable American counterparts like the Chevy Volt.
Price, performance, reliability
How bad are the BYD electric car sales numbers? It has been reported that since its December launch, only 80 units have sold, and 20 of those were to China’s government. High price, concerns over how long the battery will last and reliability issues are largely to blame. Currently the BYD F3DM costs 149,800 yuan ($21,915) and is available only to Chinese fleet buyers. If the deal to replace China’s taxi fleet had gone through, that would have made a huge difference. As it stands, the F3DM is still looking for market share.
BYD’s gasoline-only counterpart to the F3DM is the F3, and it is available to the Chinese public. In March 2009, Yoney reports that 20,940 F3 cars sold.
What’s the plan?
BYD CEO Wang Chuanfu is planning to lower the price to 109,800 yuan ($16,062) once they can begin to mass produce the BYD F3DM. That would likely convince buyers that the company is prepared for a long life cycle with the vehicle. The number of available charging stations for electric vehicles in China is another important issue that needs to be addressed. Independent studies and marketing spin should help ease concerns over whether it’s true what they say about battery life and vehicle reliability.
But let’s think about this for a moment. Electric cars will reduce dependency on gasoline, but the production of electricity is still a concern. I’m holding out for a perfected hydrogen-powered car.
Related Video:
What did ever happen to the electric car? Big oil, mostly. Electric car technology has been around for a lot longer than most people realize. In the infancy of auto racing, at the end of the 19th century, the faster and more reliable racing cars were actually electric, believe it or not. The other interesting thing is that electric motors have a far higher degree of mechanical efficiency than gasoline motors – 95% or greater compared to 33%. One of the earliest automobile designs ran off steam, foreshadowing the hydrogen car by decades.
That is very interesting, Peter. Thanks for sharing. I believe it’s just a matter of time when they will come out with an electric car that will mass produce like no other. I wonder who will break through first, though; U.S. or Japan?
Regarding the comment about waiting for a hydrogen-powered car:
Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is merely a means of storing energy (chemically, by breaking its bonds to oxygen and/or carbon, and reducing it to H2 gas), not unlike a battery, which is another chemical energy storage device.
Using H2 gas to store energy does nothing to address where you might get the energy from in the first place (our big problem). Also, most battery technologies are more efficient at storing & extracting energy than the means for doing so with hydrogen (fuel cells or combustion for extraction).
Because of this fact, a “hydrogen battery system”, which is all we are really talking about here, is not the best choice for a vehicle, although the range (energy density) is good (but less than gasoline). Current technology lithium batteries have comparable energy densities and operate at higher efficiencies, and are cheaper than fuel cells (although not cheap), and far more efficient than any practical H2 combustion technology.
I agree with Franrose. The other benefit with the electric car is that breaking can be regenerated, providing a massive boost to the efficiency. The hype around hydrogen cars or fuel cells is flawed as you need to produce hydrogen, this takes energy, better to charge a battery. Also there is a big problem in storing and transporting hydrogen, for the same energy it takes 18 times the space to store as gasoline. Bring on the electric car
Stephen Walls says:
I agree with Franrose. The other
benefit with the electric car is that breaking can be regenerated, providing a massive boost to the efficiency. The hype around hydrogen cars or fuel cells is flawed as you need to produce hydrogen, this takes energy, better to charge a battery. Also there is a big problem in storing and transporting hydrogen, for the same energy it takes 18 times the space to store as gasoline. Bring on the electric car.
=================================
If a battery can store as much electricity as hydrogen per unit weight and per unit space, then battery will be a better store of electricity for electric cars. But either way, electricity is the power source for electric cars and battery and fuel cell are just different ways of storing electricity.
Hudrogen can be produced by electrolysis or by other means such as produced by algae. Hydrogen can also be produced by breaking down water with high heat in a nuclear power plant that uses very high temperatures. So using hydrogen can be cheaper than battery depending on how it is produced.
In the end, which way is the best depends on how cheaply batteries can be produced and how effectively they can store electricity; it also depends on how cheaply hydrogen can be produced and how cheaply it can be pumped into the fuel tank.
There are many advancements being made in both batteries and fuel cells. Either way, it is ultimately good for the consumers and the environment.
What’s interesting about the electric car debate, aside from the infrastructure needed, is the issue of cheap electricity. Almost every country except France and maybe Japan gets most of it’s electricity from coal, even the United States. But, many companies are ramping up their forecast for nuclear power plants. Even China is constructing 29 more reactors by year 2020 from their existing 11 and are seriously considering upping their forecast by 50% more. The base load for more energy to accomodate things like electric cars is coming. Question is whether we in America will be leaders or followers.
China certainly should increase its nuclear power plants. But China should build the new generation of nuclear breeder reactors that can convert fertile thorium and U-238 into fissile U-233 or plutonium respectively. China has huge potential stores of thorium as well a respectable provent store of uranium.
Another power source is wind. China has developed a new type of wind turbine that relies on permanent magnets to reduce friction. Such new type of wind turbine can use wind speed of only 3 mph and occupy smaller areas. A really big one can produce as much power as a nuclear power plant. The problem with wind power is that it is unreliable where the wind could die for days at a time. So there should be some kind of storage device to store the wind generated at night and release it steadily during peak hours.
China should go 60% nuclear breeder reactors and 40% renewable sources like wind, solar, hydro, hot rock, etc. Then the power for electric cars can be perfectly clean.
This is clearly an ongoing debate, maybe there is
no single answer, maybe most of the exisiting
options will stay in the race for years to come.
How does Warren Buffet vote? Well he cast his
vote for the electric car and electric battery, by
over a year ago buying 10& of BYD, the largest
in China, the great market of the future, with
more sales than the USA,
Long term companies like BYD will be the future. They are selling some all electric cars which is more that can be said for GM which has yet to produce one car. The new cBYD ar is very expensive by Chinese standards especially for taxi companies, who can buy a new Chery for $4K. However the price will come down in time. The market for electric vehicles is fairly well established here in China, where I live at present. Half of all motorbikes are powered by plug-in at home electricity. Easy to charge and easy to repair compared to gas versions. Same for cars, image repair bills 1/4 of you pay now on a gas engine car. The Toyota Prius is the hybrid leader and it took them a few years to break into the market, but go to Vancouver my home city and almost every taxi is a Prius. In addition to nuclear plants china also has more hydro dams coming on stream in a few years. They know the future of energy is electric power for people and manufacturing and are preparing for it.
China can’t afford to stop developing advance batteries for electric cars in three folds:
1)car industry will employ many people
2) to show the world that china will be one of the future leader in the auto industry
3) and lastly the most important of the three, china can not sustain the polution from millions and millions of cars because of its huge population. Carbon dioxide pollution will put hundreds of millions of people at risk. workers in urban areas will be forced to return to their villages to make income and thus create instability to the economy.
By the way, E6 is not powered by lithium battery. it is FE battery originally developed by Thomas Edison.
Grace, yes the E6 is powered by an FE-Battery, aka LITHIUM ION-IRON PHOSPHATE…. which, I’m sorry, however badly you want to understate BYD’s advancements in the automobile industry, was NOT developed by Thomas Edison…. unless of course you want to claim that every automobile on the road today was originally developed by Karl Benz.