The Tube & Pipe Journal

TRADING HORSEPOWER FOR WATTS, OLD PROBLEMS FOR NEW ONES

If you follow automotive trends, you probably have heard of Tesla Motors® Inc. Named after engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla, the company makes an electric car, the Tesla Roadster®, a beauty that uses lithium-ion battery technology to power a 375-VAC induction motor that redlines at 14,000

RPMs and develops 288 peak horsepower (215 kW). And it is unbelievably quick; it accelerates from 0 to 60 in 3. 9 seconds. Top speed is 125 MPH. Wow!

Gasoline has been the automotive fuel of choice for decades, but it wasn’t always so. When automobiles were commercialized a little more than a century ago, steam, gasoline, and battery were contending for first place. In fact, the first official land speed record was set by an electric car (it was a whopping 39. 24 MPH, set in 1898).

Internal combustion engines nudged out the others and ruled the industry for decades, but the oil shocks of the 1970s opened the door to new technologies. Enter the hybrid vehicle, which uses some conventional fuel (either gasoline or diesel) and electricity. Hybrid owners rely less on petroleum products than do owners of conventional automobiles, and therefore get some protection from petroleum price volatility. It also helps reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

The next logical step is a purely electric car. Formally known as electric vehicles (EVs) or battery electric vehicles (BEVs), they have been around for decades, but they haven’t caught on in a big way. According to the Energy Information Administration, just 56,000 were in use in the U.S in 2007. By contrast, hybrid car sales in the U.S. hit 293,000 in 2009.

Are we ready for electric cars? I don’t think so. Using the Tesla model as an example, the advantages of an EV are obvious, but the drawbacks are considerable.

First, I scoured the company’s Web site for information on charge times, the voltage

and amperage needed to charge it, and so on; I combined that with the average cost of residential electricity (courtesy of the Energy Information Administration, which is part of the Department of Energy), and came up with $8.00 to charge it. I should mention that Tesla claims that it takes “about” 3. 5 hours to charge, so I rounded that up to 4

hours. The car goes 244 miles on a charge, so by my calculations, it costs 3. 3 cents per mile to drive one. (That might sound low, but it’s about right; Tesla says that driving the car costs 2 cents per mile in fuel.) I compared that to my trusty Ford Escort®, which gets 30 MPG. When gasoline costs $2.75 per gallon, it costs me 9. 2 cents per mile to operate. I went one step further and figured my annual savings if I traded up. Based on driving 14,750 miles per year, the Tesla Roadster would pay for itself in just 127 years.

More questions remain. First, how much additional electricity-generating capacity would the U.S. require if everyone switched to electric vehicles? Using the Tesla car as an example and figuring on three per household, the impact on the grid would be substantial, a 39 percent increase.

Would this transition be a big help in cleaning up the environment? Not necessarily. In the U.S., 40 percent of our electricity comes from coal. How about energy independence? That would improve somewhat, but not a lot. We get 20 percent of our electricity from nuclear power plants; in 2008, 86 percent of the uranium we used was imported.

Switching completely to EVs wouldn’t solve all of our problems; it would reduce some but make others worse.

ericl@thefabricator.com

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF FMA’S TECHNOLOGY ASSOCIATION: THE TUBE & PIPE ASSOCIATION, INTERNATIONAL® ( TPA)

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STAFF

President & CEO,
FMA Communications Inc./FMA – Gerald M. Shankel
Group Publisher – Edward Youdell
Editor-in-Chief – Dan Davis
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STAMPING Journal and Green Manufacturer
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Statement of Policy

TPJ–The Tube & Pipe Journal’s objective is to disseminate new and complete information relating to the producing and fabricating of metal tube and pipe. The main editorial text consists of articles and news releases designed to assist owners, managers, manufacturing engineers, supervisors, and foremen in the evaluation of new methods and techniques. The policy of the publisher is to be nonpartisan, favoring no one product or company. The representations of facts and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the publisher and this journal. By including information on new products, new literature, and industry news, etc., this impartiality is strived for and extends to the mention of trade names. Unless product identification makes reference unavoidable, the generic name is used when feasible. We acknowledge that on occasion there may be oversights or errors. The editors regret such oversights and re-emphasize their policy to be impartial at all times. The publisher reserves the right to refuse advertising it deems inappropriate for publication in TPJ–The Tube & Pipe Journal, including ads for classes of products and services not considered of significant interest to the readership.