With oil prices so high, how much would it cost to convert every registered car in America to an electric vehicle? Nothing, according to computer scientist Philip Greenspun. Well, nothing more than we are spending already in oil.
He figures that if we took the $400 billion that Americans spend every year on oil that goes into cars, we could use that money instead to pay the interest on an $8 trillion loan. That would be more than enough to swap out the 250 million registered cars in the country with electric vehicles, and still have trillion of dollars left over to start building new power plants based on renewable or nuclear energy. (But even if we stick with coal plants, they are still more energy efficient than car engines). Here is his math:
* total oil consumption in the U.S.: 21 million barrels every day (CIA Factbook)
* cost per barrel: $130
* days in year: 365
* total spent per year: $1 trillion
* percentage of oil consumed by passenger cars: 40
* total spent per year on oil for passenger cars: $400 billion
* at 5 interest, how much we could we borrow and pay $400 billion every year in interest: $8 trillion
* number of registered cars in the U.S.: 250 million (Wikipedia)
* cost of a new electric car, if mass-produced: $20,000
* value of a used car, if exported to Latin America or China: $5,000
* cost to upgrade average existing American car to a brand-new electric car: $15,000
* number that could be converted for $8 trillion: more than 500 million cars (i.e., twice as many as we have now)
Okay, so that wouldn’t pay for the $100,000 Tesla electric sports car pictured above (even assuming that it fixes its transmission problems). But with a $15,000 to $20,000 subsidy, we should get electric cars that are a little bit sexier than the one pictured at left.
Why he wants to export our carbon-spewing junkers to China and Latin America, though, is beyond me. That’s just a recipe for speeding up global warming. They need electric cars too.
I’m sorry, what’ s wrong with oil?
$3.84/gallon is pricey, but I don’t mind it.
A government-subsidized car? No thanks.
At $130-a-barrel (not $160?), even bin laden was wrong (he said $100 when it was $30)
Sure, but electric cars still suck.
Maybe we’ll start to get rid of pick-up trucks that are driven 95% of their miles within the city or SUV’s with big wheels to haul back a pack of milk from the groceries store…or… I guess we’ll make electric versions of those to, including a sound generator that blasts out a roaring wrrrruuuuuuuuum when you step on the switch. ridiculous.
“Why he wants to export our carbon-spewing junkers to China and Latin America, though, is beyond me. That’s just a recipe for speeding up global warming. They need electric cars too.”
Awesome final comment. True. A global strategy is needed and in this case other oil related products will go cheaper and we will have both a good environment and additional competitive markets.
I love the Nissan ad below this article.
Exporting the cars glosses over the main problem, the waste of gas cars as we move to alternative fuel sources. Someone is going to make a killing by figuring out how to convert existing cars to better fuel sources.
And, what does this have to do with tech start-ups? You guys are really really really trying hard to expand into anything but tech start-ups. I’m skeptical.
@8 - that’s a paid advertorial for our brand!
Electric cars don’t suck. Aptera’s first model is sexy, feature packed, entering production, and will cost less than $30k.
Here’s the perfect car: Fisker Karma…beautiful looking hybrid plug-in luxury that can travel 50 miles on it’s battery and 100 mpg.
Even have a nice site, check it out: http://www.fiskerautomotive.com/
Thanks,
Jaafer
i am hoping for plus 200 a barrel, petrol, gas, at plus 10, so that these sorts of suggestions in this article aren’t sneered at. and dont forget all the external costs, tire disposal, pollution, etc.
it’s not if, but when
$200 certainly no problem, pretty soon.
To make electric cars sexy, we just need the Hoff to create a music video with one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgX-hiQdfFw
I like the Tesla. Nice design and good autonomy for an electric car. I want one.
Better than electric cars for short distances?
The 75hp (!) Air-Powered Car will be sold at $17,800. : zeropollutionmotors.us
Tremendous loss over looked: taxation per gallon of gas. The feds, state, and local government depend on those taxes. Not to mention the job loss in the oil distribution industry.
I did the math: on a $4 gallon of tax the oil companies make about 30¢ while the feds, state and local gov makes a total of 72¢ (Santa Clara County, CA) … note: if you think oil company profits are outrageous, government gets TWICE as much.
@16 - particularly in Hong Kong.
I for one applaud new initiatives to replace oil powered transportation.
In 50 years we will see the benefits and look back thinking “what were we thinking about oil?”
Erik,
I firmly believe that in the next few years you’ll be seeing a slew of companies that are making “add-on” products that people will be able to install into their cars to considerably improve gas mileage.
Our local news station recently tested out one of those products, and they took an SUV that was getting 9 MPG and installed a Hydro-4000 cell into it, and an hour later that same SUV was getting 23 MPG. The tests were performed on a car treadmill to ensure accuracy. The only catch is you have to top off the cell with 1 liter of distilled water every time you fill your tank.
But, hey… you could save hundreds of dollars a year in gas, and you don’t have to wait for the auto industry to get around to making the electric car mainstream.
As I said before… I bet you’ll be seeing a lot of third-party add-ons for cars that people will be selling to hack gas mileage. The market will demand it!
@16: Good point, now we can see the real motivation behind keeping gasoline in play. Not sure if your point is that the tremendous loss in jobs and revenue is a bad thing. I think that ANYTHING that steers us away from CO2 emission is a good thing. Government will find a way to make up the loss, maybe even decide against waging costly wars:) It’s free to talk, expensive to fight.
I’m in. Love it.
But can you Prius people stop driving around like pansies to try and keep your engine off? Just drive normal, k?
I’ll take my $15K as a tax credit. You can stick with oil, randy.
Now do the math and explain where the money will come from to pay for the government-subsidized retrofit every parking space in existence with an electrical outlet to charge said cars.
Now add in the cost of retrofitting every coal-burning electric plant in America to generate instead from wind, water and nuclear sources.
@1: At what point will you start minding? Perhaps $10/gal? That’s just a couple of years away, mind you. Just wait …
I think the move away from oil needs to be our new Space Program for this coming decade. Nothing against developing the technologies that will allow us to leave Earth, but the truth is we don’t have enough time to do so as we have yet to identify a suitable destination yet, let alone figure out how to get there.
So we’ll be forced to fix this planet first.
Yeah, because lending another 8 trillion and spending it on electric cars will do your weak dollar any good.. haha..
electric car is just not economically feasible and way over-hyped. Increasing mpg using hybrid makes more sense. Beside Electricity in U.S. is produced from dirty sources(coal, natural gas etc). $10 gallon gas would still be cheap. Remember milk costs almost $4 a gallon. oil is much more precious and limited commodity. Complain as much you can but our superb lifestyle is fueled by oil.
I like the math, but there are some fallacies in the logic. What happens when you take a 500 mile road trip and you run out of battery halfway through? Even if battery technology was far along enough to fully recharge a vehicle in five minutes, where would you do such a thing? There are two major hurdles to overcome such problems:
1. Current battery technology just isn’t good enough. Batteries take too long to recharge and they are too bulky.
2. The U.S. infrastructure needs to be able to support the new technology. Having to build new recharge stations all around the country represents a significant capital investment that he does not account for in his calculations.
Is it possible? Most certainly yes. However, I think fuel prices need to continue to climb in order for there to be sufficient return on the investment necessary to support electric vehciles.
@26 - that is insight.
Or in other words, we could have made a nice little 16% down-payment on this amount with the money we’ve wasted in Iraq over the past five years. But no, we’d rather blow holes in the ground than do anything constructive and actually SOLVE our problems.
And who expects the current administration to spend money on REDUCING oil consumption???
@23 - I totally agree.
The author must believe in some sort of magical electricity that requires no cost to generate nor results in any carbon emissions.
Now if you want to talk about Electric Cars + Mass Nuclear Generation of Electricity (Next 30 years) + Mass Clean Generation of Electricity (30+ years away) then I think that is a far more realistic solution…and one that we should aggressively pursue even if it COSTS money to do it. We are talking about the health of our planet here…
… and who is going to pick up their date in one of those fugly things? Do they make a Mitsu 3000 GT that is electronic? Thought so. I’ll stick to the auto I already own.
Erick,
I like the idea, in theory. But there are a couple major kinks in the armour.
The first and most obvious of these is that cost-effectiveness has never really been the main issue preventing mass adoption of eco-friendly vehicles (cf. Who Killed The Electric Car.</a) Rather, the extremely powerful lobbies of both the automotive and big oil industries have stunted this progress on many fronts.
My second point of contention is that regardless of political realities, the fairy-tale math employed here doesn’t really hold up. Just because people will lend you money doesn’t mean they should, and doesn’t mean you should borrow it, either.
The US has already Iraq’ed up quite a nice national deficit for itself, after all. To say that by aggregating all the money Americans spend on gas (I assume by some new tax?), the US could afford to keep its head above water on a new debt of 8 trillion dollars to fund this fleet replacement is a fundamentally ludicrous proposition. And that’s before even considering the fact that Americans will not condone a tax of that size, regardless of the promised outcome.
This is a real problem, and with gas prices so high , one people are anxious to solve. But unfortunately, I don’t think this is a practical solution.
Daniel Smith
Smithereesnsblog
Wow, did that comment ever get borked up….
The two links up there should have been:
1) Who Killed The Electric Car on Wikipedia; and
2) A post on my blog yesterday about ways to beat the bumps in light of the high gas prices.
Note to Techcrunch: Comment previews = good.
Note to Self: Close link tags.
Daniel
@29
BTW, the “current administration” is almost over. Are you going to keep complaining when the “next administration” is in office, albeit the party you will probably vote for? I can’t wait to see…
Sigh… pumps, not bumps. I’m just going to go back to bed.
so when will people stop caring if the car is sexy or not? if we don’t get off oil soon, we’ll be riding horses to work. (if there’s any jobs to go to).
the last half of the 20th century will be the era that we got to wear the fancy shoes before we had to go back to sensible footwear.
Umm, where does the electricity to charge the millions of new cars come from? That nice clean electricity you use today may come from a coal burning plant in the next town. Not a step forward.
Nearly every river that can have a dam on it already does. Somebody can do the math on what percent of the country we’d need to cover with solar cells or wind turbines to power 250 million cars.
We can figure out the electricity needs with solar and wind. Sign me up! Also, you would need some that kick into gas as some point ,so you can take long trips, but anything under say 200 miles you only use electric. Or there are still gas powered cars that you can rent for trips.
Why don’t we fill ever scene with windmills, windmills everywhere, windmills for everyone
the negligence past generations committed by not preparing for my generations energy needs is unforgivable. You want an electric car buy one, but for people to neglect an energy infrastructure that would meet modern needs just so they could force their vision on people is almost criminal.
35 years of an energy plan designed to force you onto a bus is why we are in this current situation.
Hows that Owl doing? Why don’t silicon valley companies let people telecommute more?
This is, uh, stupid. In the end, there is that 8 trillion dollars that has to be PAID BACK. Let me guess - this guy is a liberal who doesn’t think about the consequences of debt.
I just saw this ad on drudgereport.com about 2 minutes ago..
On june 12, do your part to save the planet. belch http://www.carbonbelchday.com/?pid=16633418
Probably a smarter plan that most I’ve seen or heard on the presidential stump these days.. Especially when more and more rational people are questioning the ‘man made global warming’ phenomenon..
By the way, California is running on a grid that’s barely capable of running its own air conditioners… The last thing you need is a bunch of electric cars plugging into it. Could you imagine the EMF rates then? Bye bye clean energy tax rebate. All the profits on this blog go right back into the TechCrunch data center cooling bill..
The solution to the ‘energy crisis’ is getting more energy… The people who protested nukes in the first place have reputations to protect and have about another 20 years to go before they turn to dust..
June 12 is the day.. Be there and make a difference…
Typical American thinking. Take your shit and dump it on someone else, or invade.
1. An all electric car is not the answer, a plugin-hybrid is the answer. Battery technology just isn’t up to snuff.
2. Ummm, did you forget to calculate how much pollution and global warming will be created by manufacturing an additional 500 MILLION CARS? Upgrading existing cars is far better for the environment.
3. Electricity isn’t free. More electricity demand these days means more coal, partly because imbeciles killed nuclear power, partly because adding 250 million cars charging on the grid requires a huge amount of electricity production, and even if we wanted to build solar/wind or nuclear, we couldn’t build em fast enough.
4. Our grid can’t handle the load. Sneaker-net still rules. It is easier to ship electricity in the form of gasoline into a hybrid electric vehicle, and use that to buttress the batteries, than to ship a full charge to 250 million cars.
Who killed the electric car? No one. It simply couldn’t scale at the time it existed. All the leftwingnut conspiracy theories to the contrary.
Electric Car Addict
I walk outside in the morning, unplug my car, drive to work, park my car, drive home after work, plug in… it’s not magic. If I could plug in at work, that would be nice, but it’s not necessary.
The last time I went to buy gas felt like an unsavory experience compared to my electric car. Not to mention the $$$!
Just curious. How many people on this board drive electric cars?
@44
It may be nice but not necessary to plug in at work but it is necessary to plug in at home, which tens of millions of apartment/condo dwellers in this country can not do.
Electric cars or other modes of transportation neither suck nor blow. They are used all over the world, don’t believe me go check out the trolleys that you take in major metropolitan areas or the trains you take on the subways.
As for the advances in manufacturing if Hybrids is what corporations and governments want then that is what people will use but don’t hold your breath because there will be mods out there ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_hybrid ). There will also be electric vehicles that will support a 100-200 mile drive per charge. It’s just that with every new technology there will be larger costs.
And btw make sure you watch the DVD of “Who killed the electric Car”.
Just an FYI,
Here are some electric bikes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bikes
Check out http://www.afstrinity.com/index.htm. They took a standard Saturn Vue and fitted it with their technology ans now it gets 150 MPG AND more horse power. Too bad they are trying to sell it to a major car company instead of making kits. They have a few videos from local news stations.
Problem with his calculations:
Electricity is not free …