Are EVs the Future of Transportation?

In 2024, you see more electric vehicles on the street than ever. When I was in California, I saw Teslas everywhere. Bay Area residents get a discount with Tesla. When I was recently in Miami, there were quite a few Teslas there too. Electric vehicles (EVs) have become mainstream, with many people wanting to adopt the future of automobiles. In fact, Rivian’s CEO has said that one day in the US, the only vehicle sold will be electric vehicles.

Is that really true?

That is what today’s article will discuss, whether or not that EV’s are the future of automobiles.

First, I have to define what I mean by electric vehicles. What is meant by electric vehicles are vehicles that use not only electric motors, but the energy for the motor is stored by batteries. You might wonder, why is a distinction necessary? Well there is another class of vehicles that use electric motors, but instead of all batteries there is a hydrogen fuel cell and hydrogen fuel which is burned that creates electricity that powers the electric motors. Therefore, cars which carry hydrogen fuel cells are called hydrogen cars, and are a separate category from battery powered electric vehicles.

What’s All The Hype About

Electric cars, electric trucks, and electric buses powered by batteries have been touted for over a decade as the solution to transportation that is sustainable. Visionaries like Elon Musk, and businesses like Rivian that are all in on EVs are responsible for perpetuating this narrative that EV’s are the next logical step in automobile technology. For believing that batteries like the early combustion engine will only improve as research and development proves the batteries can be more environmentally friendly, provide more economy, and ultimately more sustainable than any other type of vehicle. Though Elon Musk may complain of being criticized, he should say less. I’m not here to criticize anyone today, but the truth is that electric vehicles that are battery powered have some inherent problems that have yet to be solved.

The EV Battery Engineering Challenges

There are a number of engineering challenges that are associated with EV lithium-ion batteries. To visualize an EV battery, imagine a large number of stacked AA batteries with a protective shell around them.

The challenges associated with these batteries are:

1. Sensitivity to Temperature

2. Low Range at Low Temperatures

3. Degradation of the Battery Over Time

Sensitivity to Temperature

This is not too hard to think about as most of us have phones that have shut down due to it getting to hot or cold. The biggest problem of using lithium-ion batteries is the problem that is posed when the batteries change temperature due to operation or the environment. To solve this problem, electric vehicles have a heating and cooling system for the batteries that is designed to keep the batteries within 50 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The question is do they work. Look at the picture below and you be the judge.

EV Registrations by State (Credit to Axios)

According to the graph, the top three states with EV registrations are (1) California, (2) Florida, and (3) Texas. Is it a coincidence that the top three top states where there has been adoption of EVs all have milder climates than the rest of the country. The best example being California, where the Bay Area and Los Angeles climates are almost never freezing and really not too hot either. It does get hotter in texas, but there are alot of people in Texas which is likely a explains why they are third anyway. My point is that people in states that have wild swings in temperature from summer to winter, places like Ohio for example, are not good places to own electric vehicles. People know EVs are not economical for them and they do not buy them in general. They prefer the gas cars or hybrids which provide more fuel economy.

Low Range at Low Temperatures

My Toyota Camry gets 360 total miles per tank, many EVs are designed to be around this range, but in places with colder climates (many US states) an EV battery’s performance decreases leading to a significantly lower range. In other words, if the temperature is below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, the car is battery is going to perform poorly even with the temperature regulation systems. It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, but how the car battery temperature regulation systems works is that they run a fluid along the batteries to warm them up or cool them down. When it gets really cold or hot the current regulation systems can not handle it, and the battery performance is impacted. Battery run time could be cut by more than half depending in really cold conditions

I remember the story of my Dad telling me about driving an EV as a car at work in cold Ohio weather and the car battery life being cut by over half. Some companies do a better job a mitigating this problems than others, but take an EV in below freezing temperatures and try to drive from Columbus to Indianapolis. It will likely take you longer than expected.

Degradation Over Time

Electric vehicles have been designed well enough that the battery degradation, or the decreasing of the battery’s capacity to store a charge, remains low from year to year.

EV Degradation, Year 1

The problem though, is that this only holds up the the battery is an ideal environment where the operation conditions are optimal. When the the temperature is too high or too low, the battery quickly undergoes degradation much more than what is seen in the table above. I would venture to guess that the yearly degradation in most people’s garages in most states would be much more than 1 percent after the first year.

Other Problems With EVs

EVs also have had numerous other problems like availability of charging stations, the time it takes to charge an EV, and the fact that the energy used to provide electricity to electric vehicles is not clean energy (therefore besides low emissions it is not much different from the gas car). Charging networks are being developed, EV charging times though still significantly longer than gas cars are being reduced, and green energy production methods like wind and solar are being invested in. Therefore, although the are significant challenges, solutions are being developed, which provides promise for electric vehicles.

Map of US EV Charger Network

Solutions to Battery Engineering Challenges

Sodium-ion batteries are supposed to be the solution to lithium-ion batteries. Basically, these are salt containing batteries that do not contain an unstable rare-earth element like lithium. These batteries also function similarly to the lithium-ion batteries but contain a salt water compound instead of the lithium. How they work exactly is beyond the scope of this article, but the advantages are that they are cheaper, safer, and recyclable. They are also more resistant to temperature, especially hot temperatures.

The sodium-ion batteries have one major problem though, energy density. Energy density is essentially how much energy you can fit into a space. So the sodium-ion battery having a low density means you need more batteries to power something like a car. Currently, the density is not high enough to feasibly power a car. In addition to this, their life cycle is smaller because of problems with irreversible reactions in the battery. You do not want irreversible reactions in batteries because you need to be able to reuse them (an irreversible reaction is like baking a cake, you can not then turn that cake back in to cake batter).

So What Then

Japanese car manufacturers like Toyota, have not gone all in on electric vehicles like some manufacturers. They have been more cautious and have taken a wait and see approach. They will likely produce all varieties of cars until one solution emerges that is the permanent solution to clean transportation. One of those current solutions is the hybrid vehicle. Using both gas and electric provides high fuel efficiency conserving gasoline, which appears to be the most feasible while still being environmentally friendly solution currently. Alternatively, there is a solution that shows a lot of promise. The hydrogen car, is a solution that although has its own set of problems, I believe these problems can be solved. Toyota has tried to get the hydrogen car to gain traction in the US by paying for $10,000 of a buyer’s hydrogen if they buy a Toyota Mirai. This is not really working too well right now. My problem with current state of the automobile market is that if Elon Musk went all in on Hydrogen instead of battery EVs, there would be a network of hydrogen fueling stations, which there are not right now.

Toyota Mirai and Hydrogen Fueling Station

Hydrogen Cars

Hydrogen cars have many strengths. Once the fuel cell is warmed up, they operate fine in cold weather. Hydrogen would never freeze under natural conditions. Another strength is that exhaust of a fuel cell is water vapor, meaning there are zero emissions. In addition, when refueling it takes a similar amount of time to do so. Lastly the performance and range of the car is very close if not the same as gas cars.

However, hydrogen cars have one major weakness and that is that it takes a lot of energy to produce hydrogen gas (the other methods of producing hydrogen gas produce carbon). So much energy that it makes hydrogen fuel very expensive compared to gasoline. This is due to water electrolysis, running an electric current through water and creating the gases hydrogen and oxygen, taking a lot of energy. It takes energy to break down a molecule because there is energy that bonds a molecule like water (H20) together. This problem I see eventually fading away due to the advancements being made in nuclear reactors (another good topic), as they are becoming smaller and smaller. They have also become extremely safe. I say this because smaller nuclear power plants are a continual almost clean energy source that produces much more power than wind and solar combined, and can be sized for the application. In other words, the advancements in nuclear technologies is changing the dynamic when it comes to where the energy is going to come from for water electrolysis.

Hydrogen vehicles are complicated, and I will have to discuss them alone in another article.

The Verdict

An argument could be made that EVs could obtain their electricity from nuclear power, but there are problems with the technology itself which I mentioned. Hydrogen cars do not have EV’s engineering problems. Instead hydrogen cars perform fine, it is storage and production of hydrogen gas which is the source of its problems. Although, the hydrogen car can have an electrolyser at the gas station, eliminating the transportation of hydrogen challenges. It can also use nuclear power as an energy source. This would in theory make hydrogen cars feasible as realistic solution to making transportation feasible.

To answer my original question, I do not think EVs as I have defined them are the true future of transportation. I do believe they should apart of a short term solution of using both EVs and hydrogen vehicles and eventually adopting the better technology. In my opinion, if it is given a fair chance with R&D, hydrogen vehicles hold more promise because unless sodium-ion batteries are used, lithium-ion batteries are just to all around harmful to the environment.