With 400 miles of range on $6 of electricity who wouldn't love it! But my old Promaster with a Colorado camper van now must go. Cheap.
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JohnForde
Hi,
Please keep us posted on how the build goes and how your experience using it works out.
Or, if you do that on another forum, please let us know where.
Lots of us here thinking about a change to an electric van.
Its great to see someone taking the leap!
Gary
Please keep us posted on how the build goes and how your experience using it works out.
Or, if you do that on another forum, please let us know where.
Lots of us here thinking about a change to an electric van.
Its great to see someone taking the leap!
Gary
Hi RV,
The Texas Public Policy Foundation (who authored your first article) is a group of climate change deniers and fossil fuel fans - I personally would put them as far from trying to get the truth out as its possible to be. They manage to uncover and exaggerate the subsidies that the EV industry gets while conveniently ignoring the billions and billions and billions in subsidies that the fossil fuel industry gets each year - and have for many many decades.
I pay 12 cents per KWH (which is not subsidized for EVs - its the price everybody pays). It takes 80 KWH ($9.60) to fill my EV, and it gets about 300 miles on this. But, I have solar, so my fuel cost for drives within range of home is zero. When on road trips, I'be been paying about 36 cents per KWH, or $30 for a fillup.
All of this stuff fundamentally comes down to whether you believe climate change due to burning fossil fuels is a serious problem or not. If you do, then getting rid of fossil fuel emissions is a must and in order to do a timely transition away from fossil fuels is a must and when you want to change massive industries (like transportation) over to electricity, its going to take subsidies initially to make it happen. If you don't believe in climate change as an urgent problem, then all the emphasis on moving people to EVs is going to look stupid.
Gary
Its John's chart,Reduce the speed to 40 mph carry and carry no payload, he posted a graph somewhere.
The e-Transit gets good range when driven at low speed.
But not very practical
It actually crosses 400 miles at about 50 mph, which is not too horrible.
And, crosses 300 miles at 65 mph.
It would be nice to know where the graph comes from.
Gary
Hi RJ,All good points.
Even if you didn't care about using your car in such a way as to minimize battery degradation and didn't have to worry about charging infrastructure concerns, I would still be more nervous about running down as low as an ICE vehicle. Running out of gas is a lot more manageable of a problem than running out of charge or to find that the only one you can make it to is super busy or only partially working (though maybe your car app can tell you that). A busy gas station will still get you out of there pretty quickly. A busy charging station will not. I can only imagine getting stuck behind some jerk who insists upon charging all the way to 100%.
Its pretty hard to run out of juice on a Tesla. I can't speak for other brands, but I suspect the same is true.
As soon as you tell the Tesla Nav system a destination it will suggest charging stops along the way. It sets them up and the charge times up to bring you in around 10% to 15% SOC when you arrive. These are not rough estimates - they take into account, elevation gains/losses, wind, your driving habits, speeds, HVAC use, ... It tracks your juice use during the trip and compares it to its projection - if at any point you are getting in trouble, it tells you and suggests alternatives (maybe an earlier charging stop). By the time you actually run out of juice, you are going to receive many of these warnings.
You can also keep track yourself on how you are doing relative to the Tesla projection via the Energy App that displays on the main screen.
A little hard to read, but the dark line is the Tesla projection for the trip, and the orange/green line is how you are actually doing.
The up and down jogs on both lines are things like hills, speed limit changes etc - you can see how detailed the estimate is.
It also tells you where the juice is going: Driving, HVAC, Battery conditioning (for an upcoming charge), Elevation changes.
In the end, you know exactly where your next charging station is and how you are doing in terms of getting there with juice left.
AAA when EV's first started getting popular invested in some generators on wheels to rescue out of juice EV owners. They have dropped these because its so hard to run out of juice in an EV.
I have run out of gas in my van (due to my stupidity), but I don't see this ever happening in my EV.
Gary
Hi RV,
I suppose its true that you never know anything with absolute accuracy - even the acceleration due to gravity has a bit of uncertainty.
I think people don''t appreciate how much work has been done on the subject of climate change. There were 51,000 scientific papers published on climate change in 2020 - each one involving a lot of work on the part of the authors then peer review for good methods then publication.
These are not opinions of politicians or government or industry operatives - they are work done in compliance with the scientific method (which Einstein said is our spices greatest accomplishment).
This is obviously a lot more data than any one of use can review and digest. But, there is an organization whose job it is to do digest all these findings and turn it into likely impacts on our species and to recommend fixes. This is the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ) formed in 1988. It is made up of career scientists from 254 countries. There job is to read and review these roughly 51K papers each year and turn it into what is happening to our climate, what will happen to it under various emission scenarios, and what to do about it.
Every couple years the IPCC publishes updates on the status of climate change for the world - one shortish (42 pages) for policy makers and us, and a long one for all the details. The summary report has to receive unanimous approval of all of the 254 scientists that make up the IPCC - none of whom get paid for this work.
On every prediction they make from the data they also provide a level of uncertainty estimate - over the years, these level of uncertainty estimates have gotten more and more certain.
Even the short report is not the easiest reading. One book that I have found helpful is Dire Predictions, Michael Mann. It basically interprets the IPCC report in pretty readable (not dumbed down) English. It is based on the last IPCC report cycle, so its not right up to date, but things have not changed a ton. The author, Michael Mann is a well known career scientist and shared in the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change.
In the end, you have to choose who you are going to believe in - you can choose to believe in industry or politics folks or media personalities who have have agendas, or you can listen to scientists and engineers (who may also have agendas), but who are required to work within the rigid framework of the Scientific Method - where mistakes are found and lies are punished.
I'd just pass on a small experience I had when I first started working for Boeing. The early 737 was having a problem with the nose gear torque links failing in landing. I was by no means in charge of this investigation, but I did work on it. Everyone had a theory on what the cause was. Bad link design, bad material, vibration damper design, faulty dynamics analysis ... my boss had a pet theory, the airlines had theorys, the pilots had theorys. All very confusing to a young engineer. Luckily the other engineers on the team knew how to tackle the problem and disagreements - you do analysis on the proposed causes, do lab testing, do airplane testing and repeat - eventually it gets nailed down to a cause that all parties can agree to and fix. This has pretty much happened in the case of climate change - its just that we are not listening.
Gary
You could just as well ask why are Tesla superchargers so reliable - better than 99.5%?
Gary
Hi @JohnForde ,
I'm wondering if you have thought about these things in your conversion...
- Are you going to keep the partition between the cab and the back part?
- Are you planning to replace the passenger side jump seat with another seat?
- Do the walls/ceilings have insulation behind those nice white panels? If not, can you take them off, add insulation, and put them back?
- Does it look like its possible to add windows in the same sort of way you can add them to the PM?
- Its a bit different not having the sliding side door, and having the rollup back door - has this figured in your conversion plans?
- Do you plan to have a more or less conventional van house electrical system that is independent of the Brightdrop system, or do you plant to integrate the two in some way? Any thoughts on using the Brightdrop battery to supply camping power?
- You have driven both the PM and the the Brightdrop. How do they compare on noise, handling, performance, etc.?
I hope you are planning to do a build thread - ideally here, but if not, please let us know where.
Its so nice to have someone actually doing a practical electrical camper van! - thanks!
Gary
I'm wondering if you have thought about these things in your conversion...
- Are you going to keep the partition between the cab and the back part?
- Are you planning to replace the passenger side jump seat with another seat?
- Do the walls/ceilings have insulation behind those nice white panels? If not, can you take them off, add insulation, and put them back?
- Does it look like its possible to add windows in the same sort of way you can add them to the PM?
- Its a bit different not having the sliding side door, and having the rollup back door - has this figured in your conversion plans?
- Do you plan to have a more or less conventional van house electrical system that is independent of the Brightdrop system, or do you plant to integrate the two in some way? Any thoughts on using the Brightdrop battery to supply camping power?
- You have driven both the PM and the the Brightdrop. How do they compare on noise, handling, performance, etc.?
I hope you are planning to do a build thread - ideally here, but if not, please let us know where.
Its so nice to have someone actually doing a practical electrical camper van! - thanks!
Gary
Hi RV,
The point I was trying to make on who's data to trust (and did not do a very good job of) is that while everyone has their own set of biases and their own agenda, scientists have to work within the rules of the scientific method, and before any paper is published in one of the scientific journals, the work is peer reviewed and if the authors of the paper got sloppy and let their biases creep into the paper, they will be called out on it and the paper won't be published. No scientist wants to be put in this position - its not career enhancing. Scientists who falsify data to try to make some point lose their jobs and will have a very tough time finding another within the scientific community.
The other sources of info like politicians, media folks have none of this discipline - they can and do lie and make up stuff all the time.
Its a good point that while EV's don't produce any CO2 when driving, they are (mostly) charged on grid electricity that in part comes from fossil fuels that do produce CO2 emissions.
If we are to get to no CO2 emissions world, the grid has change to solar, hydro and nuclear generation. I think this is the biggest challenge - bigger than converting cars, vans and trucks to electricity. As some of the graphs you have posted show, this is happening - coal generation for example is way down.
Even without a clean grid, EV's reduce CO2 emissions. The Union of Concerned Scientists does a detailed study on this for the US and updates it every couple years. It shows for each region of the country what MPG a gasoline powered car would have to get to be as clean as a typical EV being charged on grid power. In my area (60% renewable grid now), the gas car would have to get 102 MPG
to match a typical EV. The study is cradle to grave and includes the (for now) greater CO2 emissions associated with making an EV vs and ICE car.
The full study is here...
Gary
Hi,
I would gently disagree with some of this.
There is Li all over the world - whats lacking is Li refining plants, and companies are not going to invest a billion or so dollars into new plants until they see real and sustained demand. Lots of EV buyers provide the demand.
The Union of Concerned Scientist study (posted above) considers current grid generation and EV's even at the current state of the grid result in far less CO2 emissions (including generation and transmission).
If people don't buy EV's in numbers, than none of the things that need to happen to Li production and the grid, ... will happen.
Its a few people like John that get things started.
Gary
Hi RJ,
The Scientific Method has a multi century track record of butting up against strongly held political and religious views and winning - that is finding the truth. This dates back to Copernicus and Galileo.
If you don't trust the Scientific Method with all its safeguards weeding out bias and finding the truth, where do you go for the truth? Where do you get information that you trust?
I disagree that scientists can't find funding that opposes the idea current thinking on climate change. The energy industry can and does fund lots of these kinds of studies. Any scientist that actually found that all the current thinking on climate change is baloney would be in for a very well paying industry job and a shoe in for a Nobel prize.
Gary
Hi,
I don't see any drop for Tesla - except maybe in the very last quarter..
Tesla Quarterly Sales Growth From 2012 to 2021 — Like Climbing Mt. Everest - CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. We’ve been covering Tesla sales for the past 9 years, since the Model S arrived. At many steps along the way, I’ve thought the quarterly sales chart has shown amazing growth. Looking back to those points now, they look...
cleantechnica.com
But, agree that the high interest rates, high car prices (EV average prices are actaully not much different that IC cars now - especially with the tax credit), and unreliability of the charging network (except for Tesla) are going to put a damper on things.
Gary
Attachments
Hi RV,
The study by the Union of Concerned Scientists comparing EV to IC car emissions posted above takes into account fossil fuel use to generate charging electricity and also the (currently) higher carbon emissions associated with manufacturing and EV (due to batteries) and TOTAL FOSSIL FUEL USE AND CARBON EMISSIONS FOR AN EV CHARGED ON GRID ELECTRICITY ARE SUBSTANTIALLY LOWER THAN FOR IC CARS - THIS IS TRUE EVERYWHERE IN THE US. THIS IS ONLY GOING TO GET BETTER AS THE GRID GETS CLEANER.
You can buy an EV today and be sure you are reducing carbon emissions now, and by the end of the life of the EV be sure that the carbon emissions will be even quite a bit lower - probably close to zero.
Rusty makes a good point that most of the people motivated to buy an EV are probably also interested in making or buying cleaner power.
Gary
Hi Harry,
True, but gasoline is not so cheap either!
We were just out there and gasoline was $5.70 a gallon! Compared to $3.70 back home in Montana.
We drove back home in the EV up the east side of the Sierras on US395 through Bishop and Mammoth - what an absolutely beautiful place.
Gary
Hi RV,
I think you might be making this more complicated than it is.
If you take this plot...
It shows what a gasoline powered care would have to get in MPG to be equivalent to an average EV on emissions.
On average for the whole US, the gas powered car would have to get 88 MPG to be the same in carbon emissions as an average EV on today's grid.
The average new US truck gets 21 MPG and car gets 30 MPG - so you might say the average new US gas car/truck gets about 25 MPG. So, and average new US car/truck uses 88/25 = 3.5 times more fossil fuel than an average EV - and emits about 3.5 times more carbon than an average EV.
In my area (which has a bit more renewable in the grid mix), it would be a 4.1 times reduction in carbon emissions.
These numbers will only get better as the grid improves.
-----
An alternative, back of the envelope, calculation.
Figure out how many lbs of CO2 an EV and an gasoline car emit per 100 miles.
An average gasoline car gets 25 MPG and produces 19.6lb of CO2 for each 25 miles. For 100 miles, the gas car would emit 78.4 lbs of CO2.
An average EV uses about 280 watt-hrs per mile, or 28 Kilowatt-hrs per 100 miles.
If the 28 KWH is generated on the grid, how much CO2 is produced by the generation and transmission?
Per your numbers, on average 40% of this is clean generation (wind, solar, hydro, nuclear), so 11.2 KWH is emission free.
This leaves 16.8 KWH to be fossil fuel generated on the grid.
This ref says for NG generated grid electricity, there 0.97 lb of CO2 per KWH. This varies with the generator and all, but 0.97 is the average. Add 10% for transmission losses and say its 1.1 lbs of CO2 per KWH.
So, the generation of power for the EV for 100 miles is 16.8 KWH * 1.1 lb CO2 /KWH = 18.5 lbs of CO2 per 100 miles
So, by these very rough numbers:
The average gasoline car emits 78.4 lbs of CO2 per 100 miles.
Grid power for the average EV emits 18.5 lb of CO2 per 100 miles.
The EV generates 4.2 times less CO2 than the average EV.
So, this is a bit more optimistic than the Union of Concerned Scientists study, but they likely do a much more detailed analysis that covers more things.
----------
As you say, EV's do have to heat using battery power in the winter.
Just as a very rough guess.
If the EV needs about 3000 BTU/hr in COLD weather. That would be 0.87 KWH per hour.
Most EV's use heat pumps for heating - if you assume a COP of 3, then the battery drain is would be 0.87/3 = 0.3 KWH per hour.
So, if cruising at 70 mph at 280 watt-hrs/mi or, about 19.6 KWH/hr. Then heating is an about 1.5% in added energy use for the EV.
Hard to say how close this is - but probably not a big deal.
------
Now, its time to forget all this theoretical stuff and go get a demo drive in a Tesla - I'm guessing you will be a fan
Gary
Hi RV,
I just figured since coal has become a small part of the grid power and is decreasing to keep it simple and ignore it.
From what I understand there are zero new coal generation plants being built in the US. Coal plants are much more expensive to build than NG, and the investors really need to see a 30 plus year life out of them to make it worth while, and they just don't see that for coal now with how heavy they are on emissions.
But, if included it would make the EV dirtier as coal produces about twice as much CO2 per KWH as NG. That's probably why the Union of Concerned Scientists numbers come out a bit higher on EV emissions than mine.
They do come in white, but blue is cooler. That car looks a bit meaner, but I bet it does not get to 60 mph any faster than a Tesla
Gary
Hi RV,
I just figured since coal has become a small part of the grid power and is decreasing to keep it simple and ignore it.
From what I understand there are zero new coal generation plants being built in the US. Coal plants are much more expensive to build than NG, and the investors really need to see a 30 plus year life out of them to make it worth while, and they just don't see that for coal now with how heavy they are on emissions.
But, if included it would make the EV dirtier as coal produces about twice as much CO2 per KWH as NG. That's probably why the Union of Concerned Scientists numbers come out a bit higher on EV emissions than mine.
They do come in white, but blue is cooler. That car looks a bit meaner, but I bet it does not get to 60 mph any faster than a Tesla
Gary
Hi RV,
Well, the beauty of the Union of Concerned Scientists map shown above is that it done for the exact mix of generation for each state. It has no fuel bias at all.
For the worst state on the map, a gas car would have to get 39 mpg to have the same emissions as an average EV. Since an average gas car gets about 25 mpg, there is still a considerable reduction in emissions for the EV over the gas car - that's the worst state.
I don't understand the emphasis on coal. Its going away as a generation source. There are no new coal generation plants being built in the US. Coal plants are very expensive to build, less efficient and generate a lot CO2. As old coal plants (many built in the 70's) age out, coal will disappear as a generation source. Some places are dropping coal plants early just because they are such heavy polluters.
The last large coal generation plant was built in 2013. There was some interest in doing coal plants with carbon capture, but this seems to be dying out.
Gary
Hi,
I guess you are saying that with a power outage you won't be able to refill your EV battery and that's the problem? You lose transportation?
On the other hand if we have our EV in the garage with 80% charge (which is typical), we have 64 KWH in the battery - for just trips around town to the grocery store and back that can be a couple weeks of driving.
If more of the EV makers supported running your house off your EV battery (eg the Ford Lighting pickup) this could be backup power for your house for quite a few days.
We are in a rural area and have a backup propane generator. Its sized big enough to run the essentials like the well pump and furnace. I could also use it to charge the EV in a pinch, but don't really see that happening. We have a big propane tank because our heat is propane, so we could go many weeks without grid power. As a practical matter, in 23 years of living here, we have never had a power outage lasting more than a couple hours. About the time I start getting the generator hooked up, the power comes back
Gary
Hi RV,
Here is a blurb about this from Panasonic...
"The results demonstrate the clear relationship between electric vehicles and solar power with over 38% of EVs being charged by a combination of home and public photovoltaic charging systems. Natural gas is used to charge 21.96% of EVs, hydropower is 11.88%, and nuclear is 6.07%. "
They don't give a lot of detail on where the numbers come from, but Panasonic seems like a pretty credible source.
Gary
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