Department of Energy Opens Electric Car Stimulus Programs
The Department of Energy has begun accepting applications for two electric vehicle programs funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The DOE has allotted $400 million to establish development, demonstration, evaluation, and education projects “to accelerate the market introduction and penetration of advanced electric drive vehicles.” Applications are due May 13.
And the DOE also is accepting applications for grants to support the construction of US-based manufacturing plants for building batteries and electric drive components and has made $2 billion available for that program: the Electric Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative.
The grants represent the first two energy-related programs funded through the $787 billion federal stimulus package to take applications.
Both programs are through the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Office of Vehicle Technologies. The DOE has $32.7 billion in grant money to distribute from the federal stimulus package. That includes $5 billion for weatherization and $3.1 billion for state energy programs, $2 billion for advanced batteries manufacturing and $6.7 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy, $6 billion for environmental management, $4.5 billion for electricity transmission technologies, $3.4 billion for fossil energy research and development and other provisions.
Million Vehicles on the Road by 2015
In accordance with New Energy Policy, President Barack Obama announced a $2.4-billion competitive grant program to make the electric vehicles more widely available.
On the second day of his tour of Southern California, President Obama highlighted his environmental jobs agenda with a visit to an electric-vehicle testing facility in Pomona, where he announced a $2.4-billion competitive grant program to make the electric vehicles more widely available.
In his low-key speech before about 100 Edison employees and students from nearby Village Academy High School, Obama highlighted his recovery plan, which he says would create 400,000 jobs in California, and expressed concern about the "devastating impact" of the foreclosure crisis on the state.
But he focused primarily on his proposals to create new jobs in green technologies and to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, noting that the U.S. is importing more oil than it was on Sept. 11, 2001.
"Even as our economy has been transformed by new forms of technology, our electric grid looks largely the same as it did half a century ago," Obama said. "So we have a choice to make. We can remain one of the world’s leading importers of foreign oil, or we can make the investments that would allow us to become the world’s leading exporter of renewable energy."
The president renewed his commitment to doubling the country’s supply of renewable energy over the next few years — including spending $11 billion upgrading the nation’s power grid to ease the delivery of renewable energy across the country, and $15 million to help develop green technologies such as solar and wind power, and new coal technologies.
As a receptive audience of engineers and workers cheered his plans, Obama pledged to put a million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road by 2015, and highlighted his offer of up to $7,500 in tax credits for Americans who purchase electric vehicles.
The new $2.4-billion grant program, which would be part of his recovery program, would ask companies to compete for federal money to increase the manufacturing of batteries and parts used in the electric cars.
Before speaking to the crowd gathered on the factory floor of the Electric Vehicle Technical Center this morning, the president spent about 20 minutes touring the facility with Edison International’s CEO and a top engineer.
After viewing the company’s model for a "garage of the future" — where an electric car battery would be charged each night with energy drawn from solar panels on the garage roof — Obama toured the battery-testing center and questioned engineers about what government could do to help advance the technologies.
Benefits of Electric Car
What do you think of Barack Obama’s New Energy for America? Will Obama’s plan Doom the Economy?
It is hard time for America, it is a big chance for America, too!
Dr Andrew Simpson, who specialises in technology and policy for electric-drive vehicles (EVs) says that electric vehicles can solve a lot of problems.
1. Tailpipe emissions
While of course there will be some emissions if the electricity used by the electric vehicle is produced by burning fossil fuels, the emissions are no longer concentrated in areas of high traffic density. Furthermore, if the electricity is produced from renewable sources (hydro, wind, solar) there are no emissions at all.
2. Existing electricity infrastructure
For electric vehicles the ‘fuel’ distribution network already exists… and, furthermore, it is distributed widely on a house-to-house level. This is a huge advantage over other ‘alternative’ fuelled cars – compare it, for example, with hydrogen… a fuel currently available effectively nowhere. (More on electricity infrastructure in a moment.)
3. Near-equivalent functionality and performance
Electric cars can provide similar packaging, performance and styling to current vehicles. In most applications, their range is also sufficient. No one needs to be ‘sold’ on the concept of a car – unlike some other new technologies, the idea is familiar to all.
4. No oil
It’s a much overlooked point, but as this graph of Australian installed generator capacity shows, almost no electricity is generated by burning oil. Coal, natural gas, hydro, solar, wind – but oil, very little indeed. So if one of the aims of developing alternatively powered cars is to move away from a dependence on oil, electric cars immediately achieve that outcome.
5. Improved Greenhouse Gas Emissions
It’s often assumed that moving to electric vehicles does not give a clear-cut improvement in greenhouse gas emissions. After all, the logic goes, the power has to be generated somewhere.
But as this graphic shows, short range electric vehicles have immediate benefits, and in the future, long-range electric vehicles are likely to have considerable advantage over petrol-powered cars.
This graph shows that the modelled greenhouse gas emissions of a large Australian family car is about 280 grams of CO2 per kilometre, and a hybrid petrol electric vehicle of the same size produces 220 grams/km.
An electric car using lithium ion batteries and powered from a coal-fired electricity generator already has an improved greenhouse gas performance – 260 grams/km, if a 200km range is assumed. If a 500km range is factored-in, the heavier battery pack boosts greenhouse gas emissions to 340 g/km.
Power the same electric vehicle from a natural gas power station and there is a huge advantage over current petrol-powered cars – 100 grams/km (for a 200km range) or 140 grams/km for a 500km range.
And for electric vehicles, things will only get better. Deriving oil from shale or tar sands, or gaining liquid fuels from gas or coal, all have much worse greenhouse gas signatures than current oil production. On the other hand, use of renewable electricity energies like wind and solar have vastly reduced greenhouse gas emissions – the future even better suits electric vehicles.
6. Reduced Cost of Motoring
Andrew Simpson’s modelling has shown that, right now, electric vehicles have lower running costs than conventional petrol-powered cars. And that takes into account battery replacement costs!
Again working on the basis of a large sedan, the modelling used an electric vehicle with a 40 kWh battery, battery cost of AUD$12,600, and a lifetime distance of 445,000km (3200 battery cycles). He calculates a lifetime cost of 2.8 cents/km - depending on the price charged for electricity, a total cost of 4 – 8 cents/km. That compares with the modelled running cost of the petrol engine car of 10-15 cents a kilometre (the variation depending on fuel price).
In short, the running costs are about halved.
Now you can argue that, since the greatest cost of owning a new car is depreciation, and that very few cars of any sort travel over 400,00km, such a cost calculating exercise is full of holes – and there probably are some. However, in overall terms, the modelling clearly shows that it is quite likely that electric vehicles will have cheaper running costs than current cars.
And, when you add the vastly lower maintenance requirements of an electric vehicle into the equation, the electric car benefit will become even clearer.
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