Lifecycle Analysis of EV v. Hybrid v. Conventional Gas

What!?

Seems this paper diminishes the value of battery and electric vehicles by drastically overestimating lifecycle cost... The lifespan of a vehicle and the vehicle's use is so highly variable and arbitrarily defining a set vehicle lifespan to create hypothetical numbers that California lawmakers will use to set policy/laws? I don't like it at all!!!

I mean it makes sense to apply set values to the manufacturing process because those are based on uniformity but that's not what happens when the car is owned by a teenager or owned by a 90 year-old grandmother.

Granted, there's some usable charts and graphs, but overall a vague speculative paper.

So much depends on driving behavior unique to each individual... Also $10k for replacement batteries after only 100k miles? That's silly, especially if the analysis is projecting 15 years into the future. Both the length the battery can go without replacement and the cost of the replacement battery will change drastically in the next 15 years.

While these numbers might be a good place to start, we all have much different driving needs than each other and I think future studies need to account for that. As in they need an actual sample size of real life vehicle data rather than a modified vehicle specs calculated by a spread sheet!

 

When 50% of all NHW11s have disappeared from the road and credible analysis of why is performed, I'll be interested. But my experience has been that "lifetime" anything reminds me of Mark Twain:

Source: Mark Twain quotations - Statistics

I deal in the 'real world' and have to make decisions about what I'm seeing being fact or false. Statistics has often been my hand-maiden, keeping me from chasing 'ghosts'. Yet I find so many cases where supposed 'experts' have violated every prerequisite or worse . . . I agree with Twain.

You are of course invited to investigate "lifetime energy" but how about starting with failure analysis? Go to the junkyards and find the 'dead' Prius and report what killed them. Go to the sales numbers and find out how many were sold. Then compare the odometer readings and calculate the 'fleet MPG' versus 'Prius MPG.'

Those of us who have done 'the heavy lifting' know the operational energy costs exceed all other costs by over a factor of five. We know the differences between the 1.5L Echo and the 1.5L Prius and know someone is lying when they make inflated claims of Prius costs outside of the operational life. I know because I actually 'hang' in the "Gen I" forum and help folks squeeze more life from these wonderful pieces of engineering art.

If you choose to believe the Prius is terrible, we'll send you a copy of the original "Dust-to-Dust" nonsense from CNW Marketing. We'll even send a copy of the Sunday Mail article claiming Prius batteries destroyed Sudbury Canada. But we have heard this nonsense before and frankly, I've come to realize anyone who 'claims' to have discovered something new is playing the same 'one trick pony' note and has either been snookered or came here with other expectations.

Bob Wilson

 

No problem, you've confirmed the diagnosis.

Bob Wilson

 

Bob's years of experience make his initial impressions more accurate than a less experienced person reading the whole document. And while I didn't read the entire document I did go thru every page and the usual bias of hybrid and pure electric powered vehicles costing way more over the life of the vehicle than real vehicle ownership experiences indicate is definitely present.

What bothers me most about the work is it was done by a bunch of nerds who sit in front of spreadsheets all their life and they're getting paid huge money by the state of California to move numbers around on their spreadsheet in a way that's devoid of real life cars ownership experience. Their data is borderline random guesses for all analysis after the vehicle leaves the factory. And the fact they don't even recognize that flaw in their analysis further diminishes their credibility.

And when it comes to all electric cars like the Leaf and the Tesla we have no idea how long they'll last. I mean we're just now learning that Arizona heat rapidly destroys Leaf batteries and that really cold weather is a bad time to get a New York Times reporter to test drive the latest Tesla. But other than that we have no idea how long these cars will last, not to mention how improvement in design of the vehicle each year will extend that lifespan. This could of been accounted for in the research but its not!

And then you get these people who get paid huge amounts of money to make predictions that even they don't even have a real life sample sizes for, instead they just make up fixed numbers. It's corrupt analysis at its finest.

Point being when Gen1 Prius arrived on the scene we had no idea that 12 years later many of them would still be rolling around with more than 250K on the odometer and still not needing a new engine or new HV battery. At the same time that might be statistically insignificant if you look at how many Gen1 Prius were sold and as Bob says above you do hard work of creating an honest sample size by going to the junk yard and seeing what parts are missing / what caused the death of the vehicle.

 

We may actually be at (or approaching) the time when half of NHW11s are out of the fleet. So the analysis may be feasible.

1. Are annual vehicle registration records public knowledge in 50 states? (I don't know the answer).
2. They'd reveal the model year, but not the current odometer, which is useful.
3. There are several independent ways to estimate the odometer of surviving 01/02/03 model years.
4. One could sample corpses at junkyards, but I'm not sure that would be required.
5. There are several sources for annual maintenance costs for these vehicles. They do not all agree! But one could take the median, or something.
6. History of gasoline costs in each state should also be easy to find.
7. Initial purchase costs are what they are, and financing costs should not much differ from 'comparables' (unless I'm wrong) so that one would fall out of the analysis.

Missing is the cost of these vehicles changing hands, but if I can get away with the assumption that the money passed directly from the new owner, to the previous, I think it's a wash.

With all that, one could gin up total ownership costs for NHW11, per year and per state Sounds pretty thorough to me. Throw in a sensitivity analysis related to the uncertainty in miles driven per year, and a reasonable range of maint costs. One could actually publish this, in the Journal of Something or Other. I would not guess where exactly, but it does respond to an aspect of the first-mentioned UCLA study. It certainly responds to dust to dust bluster. Toyota could publish it

Even if >50% survive, I don't see the magic of that value in when the study ought be done. I guess it hangs on #1 being public records.

If my other presumptions seems wrong, here would be the correct place to discuss them, if Ralleia doesn't mind.

 

Can I move to the mythland where gas prices remain constant, you can buy a car for $15,000 and ONLY pay for gas for its entire lifetime?

 

I confess I did not read the article, but only because the conclusions as stated in the OP absolutely match everything I know about this topic. In order of CO2 emissions, the options stack grid electric - hybrid - conventional, from best to worst. In order of lifetime cost, they stack hybrid - conventional - electric, from best to worst.

There's no free lunch. I own a plug-in Prius (Hymotion conversion). CO2 emissions, by my calculation, are modestly lower than the stock Prius. The stated 22% EV versus Hybrid CO2 differential is quite close to what I estimate, at the generation mix used in Virginia. And I'll have to drive it half-a-million miles to get back my investment and/or looking at the price of the commercially available electrics will give you the right stacking order for lifetime cost.

The results are completely sensible.

A few more points that probably don't get made enough.

1) Buy a big enough EV, charge it from a grid-connected system, and you'll be putting out more CO2 per mile than a Prius. A Prius-sized EV is about 3 mi/kwh, get that down to about 2.5 mi/kwh and at the US generation mix you're break-even with a Prius.

2) We assume that as the grid gets cleaner, the EV advantage will widen. But this assumes that hybrid efficiency remains static. It's possible that the current combination (Atkinson-cycle engine with hybrid drive train) is as efficient as it gets. It's possible somebody will figure a way to squeeze more out.

3) Right now, as near as I can tell, getting rid of EV Li-ion batteries responsibly is a real pain. I faced this with my Hymotion system, when it needed a major repair. There's one place in the US that designed for recycle of vehicle Li-ion batteries, DOE is working on building up capacity to recycle them, but as of now, it's like, I'd have to make an appointment to ship this hazardous material for disposal. Presumably that'll change as the EV market grows.

4) If you have solar panels, in a grid connected system, this analysis doesn't change one little bit. If you drive your EV, instead of your Prius, you reduce CO2 emissions by roughly that 22%, at the US average grid mix. (Because: If you burn the KWH in the EV, you don't put them on the grid, that forces your utility to make those KWH through conventional means.)

5) In terms of CO2 avoided per dollar invested, EVs are way down the list. Let me just take the figures as stated above and see if that squares with what I think I know. For EV versus hybrid, that's $12K to save 22% of CO2 emissions over 180,000 miles. At 50 mpg, saving 22% of CO2, I calculate that as about 15,000 lbs CO2 saved.

Assume the $12,000 would buy you a 3 KW rooftop PV system. So you buy a system that costs you $4K/peak KW, installed. Assuming 75% DC-to-AC conversion efficiency, over a 25 year lifetime, here in Virginia, that would generate about 82,000 KWH. In VA, each KWH avoids about 1.1 lbs CO2. So about 90,000 lbs CO2 avoided.

(But bear in mind that's over 25 years, versus the (say) 15 years to drive the vehicle into the ground. It also ignores the potential CO2 avoidance value of the degraded battery pack if used in some future grid-based electricity storage scheme. That said, it's still a big difference.)

So about 6 to 1, better bang for the buck with PV than EV. And, of course, PV isn't even your best bang for the buck (usually, it's stopping air infiltration into your home). If you have only so much money to invest in environmental improvements in your lifestyle, and you have the opportunity for (e.g.) a PV array, EVs are not yet even close to being the best use of your money.

 

The article ranks them Hybrid, Electric, Conventional from best to worst for lifetime cost.

But given that the electric includes battery replacement costs, while conventional includes ONLY gasoline, I am not putting any stock in that ordering.

 

It said Hybrid, conventional, electric in order of lowest to highest present value costs.
It has electric, hybrid, conventional in order of lowest to highest emissions

We can question the assumptions, which seems puzzling. The first is they are assuming 12,000 miles a year 15 years with a $10,000 battery after 8 years. I would assume that leaf owner might just sell the car for salvage, which will be higher than $0 after the battery loses some capacity, instead of paying that much for a new pack. The second bad assumption appears to be that the tax credit is not part of the equation - $10,000 in California where CARB is operating. Why would you do that? Perhaps for an analysis to carb you might ask is it worth it for the state to give a $2500 tax credit, but to a cars owner that credit is quite real.

Other assumptions seem strange also. Why isn't a phev compared? Why the prius c instead of a prius? The prius is definitely a more popular car, and more apples to apples with the leaf. The authors could then adjust prices for equipment levels, electric drive train etc. The authors also don't think a leaf owner would value anything more on the car than a versa owner. How bout at least buying them a honda fit. Include maintenance costs on those cars if they are going to go 180,000 miles. Adjust for those assuptions, use 2013 prices, and it may be a better analysis. By all means look at non-co2 emissions if you are using this document to give more state money to leaf buyers.