If you are like me and you are really interested in alternative fuel and energy you probably find yourself trying to read everything you can that is published on the subject. I try to stay in touch with all that is happening on alternative energy, so I read both non-biased articles as well as biased ones that are little more than press releases written from the dictates of the point of view of one or another organization or group. If you read enough of the biased articles they begin to form a particular tone and you develop an ear for the basic story tone that each industry and company keeps telling. If you read these reports and arguments enough over the years you become able to identify the school boy debate tactics that many of these reports incorporate into their arguments. It makes for good debate, however, it is not something you want to see in a report that the government would be using to make decisions with. That is why I was so disappointed with the NRC report.
When I heard that there was a report available from the National Academies Press on PHEVs I was looking forward to reading a report that didn’t have non-scientific nonsense in it and would not be heavily biased one way or another. I managed to find the report at http://books.nap.edu/... The report is titled Transitions to Alternative Transportation Technologies--Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles and was created by the Committee on Assessment of Resource Needs for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies; National Research Council (NRC). I didn’t bother to register that it is kind of odd to have a fuel cell/hydrogen group writing the report, I simply put it off as this was the group that was chosen to do the research and if the report is based on solid research what does it matter what the title is given to the group who does the research? These will be objective scientists and researchers, and truth is the truth, supported by evidence.
That is why I was really surprised, after reading the executive summary, that the report was so not to the standard that I had hoped. In fact it was very far from the standard. I would even venture to label the report as not objective, of poor quality in its argument and evidence, and, therefore not accurate. At the top of every page of the version I read the words, "Prepublication Copy – Subject to Further Editorial Revision," appeared. I would suggest that nearly the entire report needs to be revised significantly if not tossed out all together and started a new.
The report's major flaw was that it assumed that technology would stay static far into the future, and the numbers they used were so incorrect that I could only imagine that they must have gathered the information used in the report from some document published long ago. For those of us who follow these things the reports underlying numbers were so off base that it was disturbing to read. For example, one of the assumptions that was not supported by current evidence was the reports portrayal of battery technology. Let me quote you from the executive summary:
"The cost to the manufacturer of producing the first generation of the PHEV-10 (2010–2012) is expected to be about $6,300 more than that of the equivalent conventional midsize car (nonhybrid), including $3,300 for the battery pack. Similarly, the PHEV-40 with a $14,000 battery pack would cost about $18,100 more. These cost differences would be smaller if the PHEVs were compared to equivalent HEVs, but the fuel savings also would be smaller.
Costs will decline with technology improvements and economies of scale, but Li-ion batteries are already being produced in great numbers and are well along their learning curves. The steep early drop in cost often experienced with new technologies is not likely. The cost to manufacture these vehicles is expected to decline by about one third by 2020 but only slowly thereafter, as listed in Table S.1.
It is possible that breakthroughs in battery technology will greatly lower the cost.
At this point, however, it is not clear what sorts of breakthroughs might become commercially viable. Furthermore, even if they occur within the next decade, they are unlikely to have much impact before 2030, because it takes many years to get large numbers of vehicles incorporating new technology on the road."
I know that this is a long quote, but I wanted you to catch the "tone" of the report. I will talk about the tone later, but the tone you hear helps the reader identify the depth of bias in this report. For now, however, I want to talk about the so called "evidence" sited above. The pricing that is being stated above is highly inaccurate. A simple market survey (and by simple market survey I mean going on the Internet and looking up prices of plug-in lithium batteries) would have given the authors of the report some idea of where retail prices for the batteries and components are today. They would have immediately seen that even aftermarket PHEV kits at retail are no where near as expensive as the prices stated in the report. You don’t have to take my word for it go to Plug-in Solutions (http://www.pluginsolutions.com/order/) and check out the prices.
Look at the most expensive kit offered there for $11,995. This kit offers everything needed to turn a Prius into a long ranging plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) with 50 miles of all electric range, and this is the retail price of the kit sold at very low volume numbers. The price of the batteries can be estimated by taking the price of the kit with the batteries and subtracting the price of the kit without the batteries listed at Plug-in Solutions above. You get $5,000. The price of the batteries for a 40 mile PHEV in the report is stated as costing $14,000 COST. For the purposes of simplicity I am going to choose to value the battery pack from the retailer as if it were cost to point out the obvious. The NRC made an at least 180% error in its calculations of battery cost.
If the report was simply quoting prices that were available a year ago, when I imagine the report was being researched, then there has been a 64% drop in cost between then and now. This makes their statement that, "The cost to manufacture these vehicles is expected to decline by about one third [33%] by 2020 but only slowly thereafter..." seem somehow absurd. I haven’t looked at a calendar lately; it could be the year 2030. Maybe it is the year 2040; the report does say the declines would occur only slowly after 2020.
The fact is that there is no saving this report. This is not just a misunderstanding or a difference of opinion, but what can only be called an egregious error. What is frustrating to the reader with any sophistication is that a good portion of the report’s argument is built on this error. This speaks volumes when assessing the value of this report.
Now back to the tone that I talked about earlier. Remember the part in the quote above where it says,
"It is possible that breakthroughs in battery technology will greatly lower the cost. At this point, however, it is not clear what sorts of breakthroughs might become commercially viable. Furthermore, even if they occur within the next decade, they are unlikely to have much impact before 2030, because it takes many years to get large numbers of vehicles incorporating new technology on the road."
This is what I call a dismissive tone. This quote in essence says that even if there was a breakthrough in cost making their previously stated arguments null and void it will take at least 20 years for the technology to enter the market place enough so that it would have an impact on oil consumption. Go ahead and scratch your head. The prices of batteries today are already many years beyond the prices of where the report if projected out said they would be by the year 2030. I think the breakthrough has already occurred by the reports own standards. The report had been using the cost dynamic as the main part of its argument for the market penetration levels of PHEVs. Since pricing levels are far below those stated in the report, then wouldn’t market penetration be far faster than expected? I believe that what the report is getting at is that it takes approximately 17 years or so for the entire US fleet of vehicles to be replaced, the report was just rounding it up by three years to 20, I'm guessing. I also think they are confusing fleet replacement time with the impact that PHEVs will have in the intervening years on oil consumption. If you just look at the argument, understand that this is not a good one since any new technology would be subject to the same time table for impact. If your ears are tuned to this tone correctly you can hear the underlying bias in the report coming through loud and clear. It is saying, "We are hear to defend the status quo, don’t replace oil with a new technology, just reduce oil use and keep things the same, no matter how good the technology is."
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This is part one of a two part blog, however, if you read the report and feel as I do that it does not rise to the standard of the NRC. Please send an Email and ask them to withdraw the report and redo the research with another unbiased group. You can use the Email below as a model and send it to the email address below. Thank you.
Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone, President of the National Academy of Sciences and Chair of the National Research Council,
Dear Dr. Cicerone,
The report titled Transitions to Alternative Transportation Technologies--Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles created by the Committee on Assessment of Resource Needs for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies does not rise to the usual level of quality of National Research Council reports. There are some large gaps in research. One example is that the cost of batteries reported was overstated. A simple search of the Internet shows the retail price of Lithium batteries to be a third the cost quoted in the report. The report must have missed that prices of large size Lithium batteries has been coming down at a faster rate then they anticipated. The report states that battery prices will not drop more than 33% by 2030. It seems that the report has missed some important details in its research and for the reputation of the NRC to be preserved it may be best if it were withdrawn until a new more accurate report can be fully researched and published.
naspresident@nas.edu