Electric cars could change everything for nation’s drivers
You may never own an electric car, but in a few years you may ride in one every day.
Many drivers are still dubious about today’s electric cars’ range and performance, while up-front prices remain higher than the average gas-powered vehicle. But those things are changing.
In fact, Bill Fox, director of the Boyd Center for Economic Research at the University of Tennessee, believes that not only improvements in electric car technology but related development of autonomous vehicles and connectivity will change almost everything about transportation.
He thinks companies such as Uber, Waymo or General Motors will own large fleets of autonomous, interlinked electric cars, on which people can buy time. Since most people are in a vehicle only a fraction of a day, some of
those cars can be charging at central stations while others are in use.
“The notion of ‘I need to get my car home and plug it in in the garage’ is going to be irrelevant,” Fox said.
A shared network of available vehicles will make public charging infrastructure less important, too, he said. That’s without even counting ideas like technology to charge vehicles on the go.
“Ultimately, it probably won’t look anything like we think of it today, and certainly it won’t involve having to plug in,” Fox said.
Moving from individually driven vehicles to sharing a centrally managed fleet will bring “massive” societal changes, as much as the invention of automobiles did, he said. Fleet ownership means fewer vehicles will be needed overall.
“People may ride more, but the cars will be used more intensively,” Fox said. And abandoning personal vehicles means the 15 to 20 percent of city space now used for parking will be freed up for other use, he said.
ELECTRIC FLEETS MAY END GAS STATIONS, DEALERSHIPS AND MORE
Electric vehicles need fewer parts and less maintenance, meaning fewer parts suppliers and repair shops. With a centrally owned fleet, public car washes, gas stations, dealerships and hired drivers could become sparse as well, Fox said.
“Just go down the line, and this range of support services that represent almost 5 percent employment in Tennessee are just going to disappear,” he said.
Robert Wagner, director of the National Transportation Research Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, doesn’t think the transition will happen overnight. A recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, with which industry studies generally agree, estimates that even in 2050 three-quarters of vehicles on American roads will still be gasoline-powered. Big trucks will take longer than cars to move away from internal-combustion engines, he believes.
Oak Ridge’s research facilities are providing some of the foundational science for electric vehicle improvements, from battery research to advanced manufacturing, Wagner said.
Two of the governmentowned cars assigned to his building are plug-in hybrids, and lab employees own a disproportionate number of Teslas, Volts and hybrid models, he said.
“The main campus actually has a solar charging parking area,” Wagner said. “Whenever I’m out there, it’s pretty full.”
For now, electric vehicles make up only a tiny fraction of cars on American roads.
Tesla Model 3 owner Mark Bishop, of Clinton, has always looked ahead, and thought the future was in hydrogen fuel, he said. But battery storage kept getting better, and then gas prices spiked.
“I just thought, you know, I need to look into getting something else,” Bishop said.
His first experience with electric vehicles came when his brother, John, who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, bought a 1959 Morris Minor which lacked an engine and transmission.
“I said, ‘Why don’t we try to make it an electric car?’” Bishop said. “We did, and it was so good. It was way better than the car was before.”
He started in 2011 with an electric motorcycle. Five years ago Bishop bought a 2000 Honda Insight hybrid and converted it to all electric, he said. In 2014 he bought a Tesla Model S, and last August added the Model 3 that will be displayed at the auto show, part of the Knoxville Electric Vehicle Association exhibit space.
Public adoption of electric cars has been slow, but is accelerating, Bishop said. That goes for car companies, too.
“The only company that’s totally committed right now … is Tesla, because that’s all they have. They don’t have a gas alternative,” he said. But Volkswagen and other European makes are getting on board now, he said.
“Dealers generally don’t like electric cars as much, because there’s no maintenance to them … outside of tires and wiper blades,” Bishop said. That’s why Tesla sells direct; it does have a service center in Nashville, but will need more in Knoxville and elsewhere as production grows, he said.
Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted in December that Knoxville would get a service center this year, one of many the company plans. There also is speculation a Tesla direct-sale lot may occupy the former Sears location at West Town Mall, based on documents filed with KnoxvilleKnox County Planning last year. But that remains unconfirmed, as mall owners and Telsa declined to comment.
Tesla, the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory aren’t East Tennessee’s only connections to the growing electric car industry. In January, Volkswagen announced it will build its first electric vehicle facility in North America at its existing Chattanooga plant. The $800 million project is expected to create 1,000 jobs and produce its first vehicles in 2022.
Volkswagen expects to sell 150,000 electric vehicles by 2020 and 1 million by 2025. The company is building three more electric vehicle plants in Germany and two in China.
HOPE, HINDRANCE AND THE NUMBERS
Patrick LaDue, Knoxville Electric Vehicle Association president and an automotive technology instructor at Oak Ridge High School, hasn’t been able to afford an electric car yet but is determined to get one eventually.
“I think this is definitely the wave of the future,” he said. India and China are heavily into electric vehicles for pollution control, while Great Britain has banned all but electric vehicles in some areas, LaDue said. Recently, Ford announced it will produce an electric version of its standard F-150 pickup.
Other club members drive Teslas, Chevy Volts, hybrids or vehicles they’ve converted to electricity themselves, he said.
He was impressed by electric vehicles’ power and performance, their lack of moving parts and their great efficiency. Electric vehicles are roughly three times as efficient as gasoline-driven ones, which lose power through light, heat and noise, LaDue said.
Improved technology means batteries no longer have to be replaced every few years, he said.
“I don’t have to ship or store or go get oil, gas, diesel fuel whatever; I can actually make it, through solar or hydro or whatever, on my property; then I can put it in my car,” LaDue said.
Last year, 361,000 batterypowered and hybrid electric vehicles were sold in the U.S., said David Greene, research professor in UT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and senior fellow of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.
“It’s almost 50-50, with a slight edge to the batteries,” he said. “Worldwide, 2 million electric vehicles sold last year.”
That’s still a tiny fraction of total vehicle sales, but it’s growing fast, Greene said. Yet surveys show a large portion of the public is still unfamiliar with electric vehicles, he said.
Greene also spent 35 years in energy and transportation research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Much of his current research concerns fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards.
“And I drive an electric vehicle, so I have some firsthand experience as well,” Greene said. He has leased a BMW i3 for nearly two years. Greene said he realized President Donald Trump would ease restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions, “so I thought, ‘Well, I’d better do something myself.” For good measure, he bought enough “green power” — produced from renewable, carbon-free sources and sold in $4 blocks — from Tennessee Valley Authority to run his BMW, he said.
“The license plate on my car says VOLZEV,” for “Vol zero-emission vehicle,” Greene said. It’s cost him practically nothing in maintenance, he said.
The most important factors for consumers are lowering battery cost and improving performance, Greene said. Increased production will soon help with that, but the main downside in the public mind is limited range and charging time, he said.
But that’s probably an exaggerated fear — most people don’t drive more than 50 miles a day, well within current electric cars’ range, Greene said.
However, he admits it’s a problem on longer trips.
“My car has a roughly 120mile range, so I cannot make it all the way to Nashville,” Greene said. A supposedly fast charger in Cookeville is out of service most of the time, so a long trip would take too many hours, he said.
“I can drive to Chattanooga no problem, and back, because they have DC fast chargers down there and they work,” Greene said.
ELECTRIC CARS ARE WIRED FOR GROWTH
Charging time for electric cars is still a downside, Bishop said. But in 20 minutes he can charge his Tesla Model 3 enough for 100 miles of driving, he said.
For local driving, the nighttime’s charge will last all day, Bishop said.
“Kind of like having a cell phone — plug it in when you get home and unplug it when you leave,” he said. “We have solar panels at our place, so we don’t even pay an electric bill. We get basically free travel, and that’s kind of nice, I think.”
On long trips, a full charge will last for several hours’ driving, Bishop said. He drove to Massachusetts for a wedding, then vacationed in eastern Virginia, stopping at Tesla charging stations along the way.
“It makes you stop every three hours, and it’s really good for you to get out and walk around a little,” Bishop said.
For now, Tesla’s on-board navigation will plan a route with charging stops along the way, even noting the expected wait at each one, Bishop said.
“You don’t even need a map. It just does it for you,” he said.
Other companies are trying to catch up with Tesla’s charging-station infrastructure, he said; Bishop predicts in a few years there will be as many charging stations as gas stations.
New chargers also are being built that work three times faster than Tesla’s already-speedy charge rate, Bishop said.
“There are no cars that can handle that kind of charge rate yet, but obviously they’re anticipating them,” Bishop said.
UT REPORTS ON ALTERNATIVE FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE, ‘RANGE ANXIETY’ AND COST FOR ‘FUELING CORRIDORS’
Asad Khattak, Beaman professor of civil and environmental engineering at UT, just sent a draft “Green Generates Green” report to the Tennessee Department of Transportation on existing alternative-fuel infrastructure. The state has 653 alt-fuel stations: electric, biodiesel, ethanol, natural gas, propane and others, the report said. Propane stations were the most numerous until 2011, overtaken by electric stations when major automakers started making more electric vehicles.
There are 455 electric charging stations in Tennessee, most of them near large cities.
“It doesn’t exist for longdistance trips as much, so there are big gaps,” Khattak said. That does make “range anxiety” a prime concern for drivers, slowing adoption of electric cars, he said.
One approach is developing “fueling corridors,” with signs pointing to stations within a few miles of the highway, according to the report. A few states are already doing so, and there are proposals for the same on interstates 24, 40, 65 and 75 through Tennessee.
The only gaps of more than 50 miles between charging stations on the I-40 corridor are around Jackson, while there is a 57-mile gap on I-75 between Cleveland and Lenoir City, the report said.
It can cost $3,500 to $80,400 to build a public charging station, depending on its speed and location, the report said; the average is about $7,000, according to Khattak.
That puts them out of range for most individuals, meaning government or companies will have to foot the initial bill. But each electric vehicle can save drivers $3,300 a year in fuel, and will keep 6 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air, Khattak said.
Volkswagen signed a $14.7 billion settlement in 2016, after being caught cheating for eight years on its vehicle emission reporting. More than $10 billion of that is going to vehicle buyback and modification, but the rest goes to other emission-reduction efforts, including purchase and promotion of electric vehicles.
Individual states have to submit a plan for using their allocations; Tennessee is to get $42.4 million, of which up to 15 percent — nearly $6.4 million — can be spent on new charging stations.
That settlement should result in more, and more reliable, charging infrastructure, Greene said.
ELECTRIC CAR FLEETS: ALL IN GOOD TIME?
It will take some time for shared-vehicle fleets to become common, but there are already ways around electric cars’ range limits, Greene said. Most households already have two vehicles, so one could be electric while the other has a hybrid or standard engine for long trips, he said. Or, since most people don’t take 100-mile-plus trips very often, they could rent, Greene said.
Electric vehicles are still only used for 1 to 5 percent of trips on campus, Jacobsen said. People still have “range anxiety” about electric cars, but can try them out to allay fears, he said.
Range really isn’t a problem for getting around the university, but if someone needs to travel to the Chattanooga campus the office will recommend a hybrid, Jacobsen said.
The only problem that has emerged is how quiet electric cars are — drivers can unintentionally sneak up on pedestrians, Jacobsen said.
FUTURE ‘SHOCKWAVE’ COMING?
Tennessee-based Shockwave Motors wants to bridge the gap between gas-powered personal vehicles and autonomous electric fleets with its three-wheeled, three-seat Defiant EV3 Roadster.
“Our goal is to make green affordable,” Shockwave founder John McMillian said. The Roadster’s base price is expected to be just under $20,000, counting the federal tax incentive.
The car isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough to produce and sell, like early model Teslas, McMillian said.
The Roadster is designed for the daily commuter, with a top speed over 70 mph and a range of 100 miles, he said. It differs from other electric vehicles by plugging into a standard 120-volt wall outlet, not a special cable or charging station.
Shockwave, based about 50 miles northeast of Knoxville in Russellville, has assembled about $395,000 from its founders, in-kind services, sponsorships, and prizes from pitch contests, McMillian said. He’s seeking grants and considering equity crowdfunding, but is still looking for investors. Those in Tennessee haven’t bitten, so he’s looking outside the state, at people who have invested in manufacturing startups before, he said.
Shockwave has taken about 110 preorders, worth $2.75 million, he said; potential investors ask why he doesn’t ask those people for $1,000 down payments, but McMillian said he doesn’t want to strain potential customers’ trust, citing cautionary tales of other vehicle startups that took prepayments but never produced.
Wagner thinks longer ranges and easier charging will be key to customer acceptance of electric vehicles. That’s already underway, he said: a recent U.S. Department of Energy report found electric cars’ maximum range jumped from 94 miles in 2011 to 335 miles in 2017, though the median range in 2017 was 114 miles.
“The other thing I think is really neat is wireless charging,” Wagner said. “That’s got a lot of infrastructure challenges, but who knows long-term what that might look like?”
Oak Ridge researchers recently sent 120 kilowatts of power across a 6-inch gap, at the same efficiency as over a wire, he said. Now they’re working on higher power and longer range.
Despite that technological progress, even Fox doesn’t think his envisioned upheaval is imminent. With something like 260 million light vehicles on U.S. roads, autonomous and human-driven vehicles — whether gas or electric — will drive side-by-side for a long time, Fox said. Maybe in a dozen years or so the transition pace will accelerate taking more personally owned and driven cars off the road, he said.
In a global economy those changes can’t be prevented, Fox said. But because the lifestyle and economic changes will be so big, U.S. politicians may try to slow them down, raising barriers to autonomous, interlinked and efficient vehicles, even as other countries surge ahead, he said.“The only issue is, are we going to be a leader in this, or are we going to be a follower and an also-ran?” Fox said.