A little political ranting.

My blog is not about ranting or venting. It’s more about facts, real numbers and educated conclusions, than it is about opinions. Yet recently I’ve felt compelled to write something political. So here it goes.

Last month I went to the Sea-Tac airport and as I get to the top of the escalator inside the terminal I see this huge poster of a Toyota Tundra right in front of me, advertising nothing but the POWER that vehicle offers.

Why is it that in the age of Peak Oil and Global Warming we are still with the mentality of buying vehicles that have POWER? Why is it that auto manufactures (in this case Toyota) are still using POWER as the element to make their cars appeal to the American public?

Sometimes I think we in the US are such a backwards culture. We are so behind the times.

A few conclusions have been made, which are almost indisputable:

1. Oil (and all fossil fuels) are a finite resource. They will run out at some point. And we have the ability (maybe not the political will) to calculate how much time the remaining known oil reserves will last. After that, the people left on the planet will have to figure out how to carry on without relying on oil, and eventually all other fossil fuels.
2. The US has been the biggest consumer of oil, well ahead of any other country. Americans consume about ¼ of the world’s oil while Americans are about only 5% of the world population.

So how come we still allow corporations to continue to encourage people to be more wasteful with a finite resource that we know is dwindling? Well, clearly we lack leadership.

Speaking of leadership, I made another conclusion a while back. After speaking to many people, and most of my friends, I observed that the majority of the people around me have made, at one point or another, a statement to the effect of “well, things are this way but I’m not responsible – I did not vote for this president”.

My conclusion is that all American voters are responsible for the current state of affairs. Your not voting makes you an accomplice of all the crimes against humans and the environment that have been and continue to be committed.

And the same applies to the people who “did not vote for this president”. You are still an accomplice on this war for cheap oil if you are still wasting energy and consuming more oil than everyone else on the planet. Do you get it? You say you didn’t vote for the guy and yet you’re enjoying all the benefits that come from his actions. “I didn’t vote for him” is nothing but a cop-out so you can still live in your usual comfort and convenience that is not sustainable.

We are on a destructive path and no one is doing anything about it other than to get on the green bandwagon just to look good. All of the major auto manufacturers ought to be ashamed of themselves. In their insatiable desire for profit they continue bigger and inefficient cars to sell to the American public. No one wants to give up a little money in order to lead the way towards protecting our environment and creating an industry that is sustainable. Everyone is raping the planet until there’s no resource left for anyone, and then we’ll all sink together – be this in our lifetime or in future generations.

We know it’s time to give up wanting power for the sake of humanity. We know our wasteful consumption of energy means the next generation will have less time to find alternative solutions.

Major automakers have the power and capacity to produce a decent, safe and efficient EV in a year or two. The hydrogen prototypes are another scheme for companies to continue to control the supply of fuel so they can maximize their profits. Electricity is available in every home in America. Unplug your toaster and plug in your car. It’s that simple, and electricity is much cheaper than gasoline. But if you live off the grip and collect your energy from the sun or wind, you are giving no money to the oil companies because oil companies become useless in an new era of electric vehicles. Gas stations would disappear and something to be seen in a museum.

So it’s no wonder that there’s all this hype about vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells, even though hydrogen technology has some major issues that probably won’t be solved for decades to come. The oil companies are powerful and want to maintain their power. They have been making absurd profits.

We cannot expect oil companies to change the world for us. Solutions have to start with the consumer, that is, you and I. You ought to demand the product that companies will then build for you. Start slowly – drastic change doesn’t usually work, but walking in the right direction is crucial. Start demanding more fuel-efficient vehicles. Then switch to other fuel alternatives if you can: biodiesel or ethanol. Electric Vehicles are not yet an option, but I trust that they’ll come into the picture in time. Ride a bicycle and walk more. Exercising will prolong your life. Another way to look at it is “driving reduces your life”. Use mass transportation systems whenever you can. You bus and train fare supports these companies, and their service will improve if there’s more demand for mass transportation.

And last, but probably the biggest difference you can make: remember to vote, and vote wisely. Our leaders represent who we are as people, for we elect them.

Peace, and thanks for reading.

- Ricardo Parker

Reasons why YOU WANT an Electric Vehicle (number 1)

Reason #1:

You will save LOTS and LOTS of money.

You know all that money you spend on gasoline every week? You may be asking yourself “what money?” If you’re not feeling a pinch in your wallet or bank account every time you stop at the gas station, then that means you have become conditioned to an unnecessary expense in your life and you’re no longer aware of it! Keep in mind that driving does not need to cost you as much as it does now.

There was a time when using gasoline to drive cars was a good alternative because oil was plentiful and we didn’t have as many cars on the planet as we do today. The United States did not need to import oil until some time in the 1970’s. Ever since then, the US has been importing oil, and a large reason why the US is dependent on foreign oil is that the cars we drive use gasoline (or diesel). And boy, do we drive a lot, and do we drive big cars! Bigger cars are heavier, so they require more energy to move - gasoline in this case. The estimated number of automobiles in the US is somewhere around 400 million. The US population (according to a census done earlier this year) has reached just over 300 million people. That means we have more cars than people in this country!

This is not hard to imagine: if you look around you’ll see that it's not uncommon for people to own more than one car; sometimes 3 or more. And we’re not talking about affluent people, even people of lower income can often afford several vehicles. Look around in any US city and you'll see that we have cars parked and moving everywhere. The problem is that all these vehicles have the internal combustion engine (ICE), which uses gasoline or diesel.

Just to give you an idea of how much money you’re probably spending on fuel: my last car was a 1994 Acura Legend. That car gets between 20 and 27 MPG (in city and on the freeway). Because I drove it mostly in the city I got 20 miles per gallon of fuel consumption pretty much all the time. Even when I drove it on the freeway I was in stop-and-go traffic, so the fuel consumption remained the same. I know this because I have always tracked the gas mileage of all the vehicles I’ve ever owned.

20 MPG at the current average price of gasoline in the US of $3.25 a gallon gives us the following numbers for the cost of fuel of that Acura Legend:

• $0.16 spent on gasoline every mile I drive

• $2,031 spent on gasoline every 12,500 miles I drive (12,500 is an average mileage per year per car in the US)

• $16,250 spent on gasoline every 100,000 miles I drive (typically when the warranty on the engine and transmission expire).

• Over $50,000 spent on gasoline for the lifetime of that vehicle. That Honda gasoline engine is known for reliably getting over 300,000 miles, perhaps even 350,000 miles before it needs to be replaced.

So, this opens up a whole new discussion for us. Remember that the amounts of money above are based on the average $3.25 a gallon for gasoline. The cost of gasoline will only go up. This is because oil (as with any fossil fuel) is a finite resource and we’ve already used over half of it. Oil Industry Experts will say that we have not discovered a new major oil reserve in several decades. We have drilled for oil pretty much everywhere on the planet, used the most advanced technology for oil discovery, and it looks as though all of the oil that is underground was already found almost 40 years ago. Just like a glass of water gets empty when you drink it, oil reserves are dwindling and oil will eventually become nonexistent. Less oil available means higher gasoline prices from here on, even if demand stayed the same.

So the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a car will likely greatly increase from now on due to the predictable higher cost of gasoline at the pump. I.e., pumping gasoline will only cost you more and more. By maintaining the need for gasoline for driving you are at the mercy of the oil companies, and the oil companies know that the world production has already peaked. They will never sell gasoline or any other product at a loss (and neither would I or you if we were in their place).

Now, let’s speak about Electric Vehicles and focus on reason # 1: “you’ll save LOTS and LOTS of money”. EVs do not use gasoline to move. Instead, they use electricity. Electric motors are about 90% efficient. What that means is that about 90% of the energy in your battery pack gets transferred to the wheels. EVs are very energy efficient.

ICEs, on the other hand, are very inefficient. Gasoline engines are about 30% efficient (diesel engines are about 43% efficient). That means about 30% of the energy contained in gasoline gets transferred to the wheels. The rest 70% is wasted. The ICE is one of the most inefficient ways to transfer energy.

In practical terms, I think it’s fair to say you are spending less money on electricity because you are using most of the energy you're paying for, whereas with gasoline you’re wasting most of it. That is one aspect why you end up spending less money on “fuel” for your car with an EV. I say "fuel" because you're not putting fuel in your car, but instead, charging the battery pack in your car that is used to move it. So you have a battery pack on an EV, but you do not have a gasoline tank or exhaust pipe.

The other aspect is that the source of energy for EVs is different from gasoline. Electricity can be generated through a variety of different sources, and it ends up being delivered at your house, cheaper in terms of dollars, than the current cost of gasoline. Electricity can come from renewable energy sources, something we’ll discuss later. But for now, let’s just say that our electricity can come from coal, nuclear power, wind power, solar power, biomass, hydro power, geothermal, natural gas and even, oil. The truth is that any energy source can be converted to electricity, which makes EVs even more appealing as an alternative. You can't convert electricity to gasoline, however. So when we run out of oil (and we will), the ICE will probably be good only in museums.

Power Supply Profile of Puget Sound Energy (PSE) - Washington state's largest and oldest energy utility company

In some countries like Japan, about 50% of their electricity is generated from oil which they have to import since they produce none. In the US only a small percentage of our electricity comes from oil, which is a good thing because we have a real need to learn to rely on renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuel.

I dare say that we’d make more efficient use of oil if we burned it to produce electricity and then used that electricity to charge EVs, rather than what we do now which is to produce gasoline out of oil to power ICEs.

The cost of electricity to power a vehicle the size of the Acura Legend is about 4-5 cents per mile. It’s hard to estimate this number because such a vehicle does not exist. But with new EVs coming out and electric conversions being done, we’ll probably get a more accurate number. However, this number is safe to use, and it’s derived from light electric vehicles that are already in operation, such as the Kurrent. The Kurrent weighs about 1,750 pounds and costs about 2 cents of US electricity to drive.

5 cents of “fuel” per mile is a lot cheaper than 16 cents. It changes the total cost of ownership of a car. It lowers the cost of fuel for the same car (battery powered) to about 1/3.

And we’re not even talking about the damaging effects of ICEs through emissions and the contributing factor of carbon dioxide to Global Warming. We’re not even talking about what the money you spend on gasoline is ultimately funding in the countries it’s going to. So far, we’re only looking at the benefit of the money you will save for yourself by driving an electric vehicle. Heck, what can you do with 2/3 of the money you currently spend on gasoline? I honestly want to know!

EVs offer so many advantages that it's difficult to list them all. The lower cost of fuel is one of them. Keep in mind the TCO of a vehicle, which includes fuel and maintenance. A gasoline Hummer H1 or H2 will burn over 30,000 gallons of gasoline throughout its lifetime (it gets 10 MPG). Just the cost of all that gasoline is over $90,000 at current gas prices. That’s enough money to buy a Tesla Roadster, which is 100% electric. Some of the [wealthy] people buying the Tesla Roadster already have solar panels in their homes, which means they get to drive their EV without ever having to spend any money on fuel and without ever having to stop at a gas station.

Many people will say that the Tesla Roadster is an expensive vehicle, and that the current EVs that are available are “too expensive”. The cost of EVs will decrease with mass production, but I disagree that they are “too expensive”. When you consider the TCO and analyze all the numbers you start realizing that you owning and driving an EV costs a lot less than the gasoline and diesel cars we drive now. Most of the cost of an EV is up front, but once you buy one you don't have to spend so much.

Have the oil companies been successfully at training you to not notice that they are taking your money little by little every time you fuel your car? How badly do you want an alternative to gasoline? Please, do post your questions, your thoughts and your knowledge on the subject.

- Ricardo Parker