How Practical Are Electric Cars?

Last week, the Department of Energy released a new report on electric cars, sort of. It wasn’t so much about the cars, really, as it was about how the money the Recovery Act poured into electric car technology has done.

According to the report, that money has been spent wisely. In part, the report reads:

Investments in batteries alone, for example, should help lower the cost of some electric car batteries by nearly 70 percent before the end of 2015. What’s more, thanks in part to these investments, U.S. factories will be able to produce batteries and components to support up to 500,000 electric-drive vehicles annually by 2015. Overall, these investments will create tens of thousands of American jobs.

Batteries, chargers, components, tax credits, and even loans to car companies are among the vast array of investments under the Obama plan to kick start the electric vehicle boom. But, will this electric vehicle future actually arrive? Is this a fruition-filled, overarching plan of infrastructure brilliance like Eisenhower’s interstate highways, or an oddity that will plainly fizzle out like Bush’s hydrogen economy?

There’s little doubt of the facts: The money invested has created some movement, as any money invested would. If you give a man money and tell him he has to build X or he doesn’t get it, he’ll get up off his keister and build X faster than anything. So, 26 of 30 manufacturing plants have broken ground and started construction on new facilities or began updating old ones. Eight demo projects are up---if not actually running---with a projected outcome of 13,000 more electric vehicles plugged in and 20,000 more charging stations available, both public and private.

The most interesting bit of investment might be the green being funneled into research projects on batteries. Today’s lithium-ion EV batteries are restrictive and problematic. If that storage technology can be updated, leading to cheaper batteries and longer driving range, then, absolutely, electric vehicles are on their way to integration---potentially as fast as they can slap together charging stations atop or aside gas stations. (The same can be said for renewables getting a larger chunk of generation if they can clean up storage issues.)

But, if that tech doesn’t come to a fabulous breakthrough soon, electric vehicles’ lack of practicality may relegate it to that discard pile teetering atop the junked hydrogen economy.

Want to read the report? Click here.