… and the 800 EV1’s out of 200M total passenger
cars didn’t make a damn bit of difference to that.

“And yes, AC engine is not complicated, it doesn’t need much maintenance or replacement parts”

Neither do modern conventional cars with EFI and
computerized engine-management – especially
Toyotas. Change the oil every 5K miles, the brake
pads every 40K, and the timing belt every 60K.

If you’re talking GM cars, maybe it’s still a lot
worse than that … For myself I drive a 2000
Mazda Protege with about 70K miles and the only
non-routine maintenance it has needed was new
brake pads (which a hypothetical all-electric
car would have as well).

Don’t get me wrong: I’d like to see all-electric
plugin cars in volume. But it isn’t going to
happen until someone gets another 2.5x factor
in energy storage capacity. A poky 2-seater with
100-mile range isn’t going to hack it.

Anyway, getting back to the issue of elasticity
of demand for oil, today’s NY Times has a relevant
article, mostly about the rise in sales of
subcompact cars:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/business/02auto.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

“But there are some indications that the trend toward smaller vehicles will reduce the nation’s fuel use. In California, motorists bought 4 percent less gasoline in January than they did the year before, a drop of more than 58 million gallons, according to the Oil Price Information Service.

“That is an incredible year-over-year drop,” said Tom Kloza, the organization’s chief oil analyst. “Some of it clearly has to do with changes in the vehicle fleet.””

Hardly. We’ve had niche-market all-electric
vehicles based on lead-acid batteries for a
long time – milk delivery trucks, forklifts etc.
So there wasn’t much new about the technology;
and there sure as hell wasn’t anything “revolutionary” about its impact on the market.

But then I’ll agree with you that GM never took
it seriously: a combination of threats and bribes
from the government made them do it. US
automakers have been really badly managed at
least since 1980, always lagging behind Japanese
and even the Europeans in technology, quality,
and reliability. I just don’t see a conspiracy – pure incompetence is an adequate explanation for
anything GM did or didn’t do.

More than anything, the impressive thing about the Prius is that it is NOT an experimental, only for die-hards vehicle. Even if it is not a revolutionary miracle, it’s probably the biggest fuel saving advance since turbodiesels became widespread. And in the US, with less diesels, the advance looks even bigger.

But it just ain’t so. We just don’t have any
battery technology with the necessary energy
storage density (KWh/kg). Unless or until that
problem is solved, pure electric vehicles can’t
achieve the necessary combination of range and
performance to compete: if you have a bunch of
big heavy batteries you can’t get adequate
acceleration; if you have a smaller lighter
battery you can’t get the range beyond about
100 miles.

There are interesting developments – sodium-sulfur batteries, supercapacitors. But for the
moment – even with the inherent inefficiency of
internal-combustion engines – 10 gallons of gas
gets you a lot further than existing batteries.
No conspiracy theory needed.

Meanwhile, there have been massive efforts
underway to improve battery technology, in sectors
not heavily influenced by the oil companies:
cellphones, notebook computers, and the military
(carrying batteries around is a big issue for
soldiers on foot). And while those efforts have
improved batteries a good deal, they’re also
pursuing miniature generators driven by small
piston or gas-turbine engines (I read a paper
yesterday about a 100W-output 12mm-diameter
gas turbine made of silicon nitride). The smart
money says combustion engines will be powering
vehicles for a long time to come.

Some notes on Prius’s technology:

The engine has electrically-timed valves, something increasingly common in more conventional cars, but is otherwise no different than most other small ICE’s (other than the modified Atkinson cycle achieved by its unusual intake-valve timing). The transmission is mechanically much simpler than conventional cars: a single planetary gearset with the ICE on one shaft, a motor-generator on another, and the drive wheels and second motor-generator on the third. Effective gear ratio is changed by electrically moving torque between the two motor-generators. So computer-controlled MOSFETS and power inductors substitute for the mechanics and hydraulics of a standard automatic transmission. Battery power is applied and extracted as necessary.

The battery itself is carefully kept at a middle level of charge—between about 30% and 80%—which increases its life dramatically, to the equivalent of tens of thousands of charge cycles. It’s otherwise just conventional NiMH cells. Since charge is entirely controlled by computer algorithms, changing to a different battery technology would be relatively simple.

Electrically-controlled hydraulic modulators (such as those used in anti-skid systems) allow regenerative breaking to occur when the brake pedal is mildly depressed, with further pressure activating the wheel brakes (which will be activated by hydraulic pressure alone even if a compete electrical failure occurs). So the car is partially drive-by-wire—the throttle petal is a spring and position sensor, merely an input device to the car’s control computer.

The synchronous motor-generators are entirely unremarkable, 19th-century technology except perhaps for their use of niobium permanent magnets. Thus the only truly out-of-the-ordinary components are the MOSFET power inverters—handling more than 30KW at up to 500 volts in a liquid-cooled box a couple liters in volume. Complete computer control of engine and transmission function and even wired throttle are hardly unusual any more.

On the highway Prius mileage is exceptional only for a car its size—a sub-compact might do as well. In the city there is simply nothing that can touch it; I get 44 mpg on an urban commute (with lots of lights and speed changes) where I got 17 mpg in a VW Passat, with no change in driving habits (which were already pretty mileage-aware).

I consider hybrids to be transitional technology. They are an incremental improvement over non-hybrid cars, but they are also a proving ground for mass-produced automotive power electronics and advanced computer control—and whatever the future brings in terms of alternative energy, those are going to be a big part of it.

Imagine the amount of corruption $3.7 trillion/year business can (and does) create and how it can (and does) crush its enemies. You’ll be pessimistic too.

I’m not familiar with the terminology. But I think that abb1 and I agree that there is a demand curve. And I choose to emphasize the fact that we’ve seen quite a lot of medium-term elasticity of demand in the past (e.g. after the 1970s oil shock); where he emphasizes the short-term inelasticity of demand. But surely no-one thinks consumption patterns would remain the same at $500/barrel ? At some price level whole sectors of the economy just become unprofitable and have to shrink dramatically (e.g. airlines, selling SUVs). Think of the most inelastic commodity imaginable: air for breathing. Everyone would pay whatever they have for that. But even so, if the price is more than they’ve got, they’ll just die and thus reduce demand.

Indeed, a recession, with a total reduction in economic activity – with the heaviest reduction in oil-consuming sectors – is precisely the
“economic emergency” that we might be concerned about. Perhaps the real difference between abb1 and myself is that I see a lot of potential to reduce oil usage with little effect on GDP, whereas he seems less optimistic.

Notsneaky, actually, when I thought about it more I realized that in a pure one-firm/fixed-price/no-limit scenario you should probably see the product selling for exactly the asking price every time. If I own all the oil and I say the price is $500/barrel for as much as you want – then it’ll be sold for exactly $500/barrel. In reality we see people bidding higher than the asking price, and that is a good argument against the price-fixing theory. Now, retail gasoline is a different matter, you buy it for exactly the asking price, this could be a price-fixing situation.