Would you still buy an electric car if you knew you wouldn’t be able to resell it in the future? That’s the latest hurdle potential buyers are contending with, and it’s bound to become a big driver of demand.

The expenses of owning an electric vehicle have always stood in the way of mass adoption, even in China, which has an extensive subsidy program.

Starting from the cost of the battery to how far a charge will take drivers, not to mention the shortage of points where they can plug in, there’s a lot to grapple with before green cars can overtake those powered by internal combustion engines.

Much of the anxiety stems from batteries – the price, technology, density, and where to charge them. Manufacturers have worked for years to bring down the price on a per kilowatt-hour basis. Technology has improved, with different materials helping cars run longer and further, thus needing less charge. The chemistry has become more stable. In May, for instance, Svolt Energy Technology Co., owned by the parent of China’s Great Wall Motor Co., launched the world’s first battery that doesn’t use the controversial yet once-essential cobalt. It costs less than the mainstream competition and has higher density, meaning more energy is packed into the same volume.  

So the good news is, battery prices are dropping, down to 1.1 yuan ($0.13) per watt-hour in 2019 from 2.1 yuan per watt-hour in 2016. That also means that the cost of electric vehicles is coming down (though the good ones still aren’t that affordable), since batteries typically account for 50% to 60% of their value.But therein lies the trap: As the technology evolves and drives prices of new vehicles lower, existing owners are taking a disproportionate beating in the secondhand market. The average resale value of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids is less than 40% of the original purchase price, versus 50% to 70% on conventional cars. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts note that consumer concerns about the quality and reliability of “old batteries appear to weigh on used cars’ prices.” That doesn’t really help make the case for current new buyers, either.

Then there are underlying demand trends. Sales of all cars were falling even before Covid-19. The market for batteries has been inching lower across the U.S., China and Europe. Installations fell around 30% in June from the previous year in the world’s largest auto market, China. Driven by regulatory pressures, vehicle manufacturers are tying up with and taking big stakes in battery makers to push forward ways to make greener cars. But confidence to buy them hasn’t picked up in most countries, despite subsidies in some shape or form to encourage sales. Meanwhile, the auto market in China is maturing and that has changed preferences, too. 

Post-pandemic, the last thing consumers will want to buy is an asset that depreciates faster and is more expensive than its main competition, in this case, cars with internal combustion engines. Buying behavior in China shows as much: Purchases are being delayed until automakers drop their prices for electric cars below 300,000 yuan to qualify for the government’s rebate program.

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July 30, 2020 at 08:46AM

In his new paper, Ed Calabrese reports that the ever-fraudulent National Academy of Sciences ignored data showing no genetic damage among the Japanese atomic bomb survivors because it would expose the limitations of extrapolating from animal data. Here is Calabrese’s new article: Here is the full NYTimes article.

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July 30, 2020 at 08:40AM

What the EU is promising in this area is nothing more than tax expenditure for a solution that no one in the world will adopt.

The European Commission presented its hydrogen strategy in July 2020. It is convinced that it will be possible to make ‘clean’ hydrogen a viable solution for a climate-neutral economy and to build a dynamic value chain for this resource in the EU. It is even convinced to do that over the next five years. The European Commission is convinced that “from 2025 to 2030, hydrogen needs to become an intrinsic part of our integrated energy system, with at least 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolysers and the production of up to 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen in the EU”. For 2030 hydrogen produced with renewable energy should be deployed across all the EU. In doing so, it follows the example of Germany, which launched its hydrogen strategy a month earlier. The Commission know that this will be a conflict with the market law and propose therefore to create a value chain by boosting the demand for hydrogen that does not exist presently; this will require a “supportive framework” i.e. an imposition to the market by policy.

A false solution to a real problem

Since more than 40 years, the EU is promoting renewable energy first in supporting the development of new technologies and since 2001 obliging by legislation the production of renewable electricity and from 2009 also for others renewable energy. Since 2000 the EU and its Members States have spent more than €1 million millions to reach with wind and solar energy 2.5% of its primary energy demand. The aim now is to reach 100% by 2050. Despite a strong development during 2008-2015, investment in intermittent renewable electricity in the EU is not keeping pace. But some Member States are continuing their headlong rush towards a stillborn solution. Let’s also remind that for the EU renewable energy means practically wind and solar. For them, hydropower, which is the flagship of the permanent, controllable, economical and clean renewable energies that were massively installed in the 1950s, is a taboo subject. Wind and solar energy production being by nature intermittent, in case of insufficient demand, the excess must be disposed of by paying to get rid of it, and this cost is borne by all consumers, and particularly the domestic consumers. 

Storing this excess of electricity is therefore a must, but the utopian promises made by politicians and certain industrialists regarding batteries have not and will not be kept for intrinsic reasons linked to electrochemistry but also to geopolitics, because China controls the battery market through its stranglehold on rare earths. It remains the solution to convert into hydrogen the electricity that the market does not want. This is the rationale behind the strategy: to find a solution to the problem of intermittency of wind and solar electricity.

A very inefficient solution

The conversion of this unwanted surplus electricity into hydrogen will be realised by electrolysis of water and then either use it as fuel or convert it back into electricity in fuel cells. That is a marvel: clean electricity producing clean fuel that only produces water when it is consumed. As a bonus, this will be an alternative to electric vehicles in case this other imposed strategy doesn’t work either! Let’s observe that Germany, Japan, South Korea and even Russia have just announced major investments in hydrogen-powered mobility, so as not to depend too much on rare earths and Chinese batteries. Enthusiasm is at its height: trains, ships and even aeroplanes are going to run on hydrogen. They haven’t yet thought about hydrogen-powered bicycles and trotinettes, but it won’t be long before they do!

This goes far beyond the utopia of biofuels at the beginning of the 2000s, imposed by the EU despite common sense and scientific data, and whose echo of failure remains very discreet. In 2008, the EU had decreed a 10% production of biofuels for transport by 2020 but in 2018, the same EU decided to move from a “minimum” to a “maximum”. They could not ban it despite the negative impact on the environment because their 2008 directive had led industrialists to invest in the sector. So, we continue to subsidise a production that is bad for the environment. With the new hydrogen strategy, we are rushing towards the same failure and the same waste of subsidies because it is totally inefficient from an energy point of view.

Here is the proposed mechanism: 

1. 1. Produce intermittent and therefore sometimes excess electricity using wind and solar power.
   2. Transform this electricity into hydrogen by electrolysis of water.
   3. Compress or liquefy the hydrogen to store and transport it.
   4. Burning it to produce electricity.

None of these steps require new technology, they just need the investment to be realised. But industrial chemical processes are never 100% efficient. Step 2 is at best 80% efficient, and step 3 is 70% efficient. Step 4 with fuel cells – an expensive technology that is not yet mass-produced despite 30 years of public support in the EU and the USA – is 50% efficient today. The efficiency of the whole process is therefore 0.80 x 0.70 x 0.50 = 0.28. Of the 100 units of energy produced by wind turbines or solar panels, not even 30% remains. The process is totally inefficient and therefore will not have any industrial application without subsidies. The inefficiency is, of course, translated into a higher cost.

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July 30, 2020 at 08:39AM

CELL PRESS

As sea ice in the Arctic retreats further and melts faster every decade, scientists are racing to understand the vulnerabilities of one of the world’s most remote and unforgiving places. A study appearing July 29 in the journal Heliyon details the changes that occurred in the Arctic in September of 2018, a year when nearly 10 million kilometers of sea ice were lost over the course of the summer. Their findings give an overview at different timescales of how sea ice has receded over the 40 years of the satellite era and show how the summer’s extensive decline is linked to global atmospheric processes as far south as the tropics.

At the peak of its melting season, in July 2018, the Arctic was losing sea ice at a rate of 105,500 square kilometers per day–an area bigger than Iceland or the state of Kentucky. “On the ground, I am sure it would have looked like an excellent summer month in the Arctic, in general, but over the past four decades, September sea-ice loss has accelerated to a rate of 12.8% per decade and 82,300 square kilometers per year,” says co-author Avinash Kumar, a senior scientist at the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR) in India.

The researchers followed the warm water currents of the Atlantic north to the Arctic Ocean and tracked the ice as it subsequently retreated through the Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev, Kara, and Barents seas. Thanks to higher temporal resolution and greater satellite coverage than had previously been available, they could also measure the ice’s decline through variables such as its thickness, concentration, and volume in addition to its extent throughout the Arctic. This dramatic loss of sea ice culminated at the end of the boreal summer, when in September, the ice had been reduced to a mere third of its winter extent.

Then, the team compared the decline to the previous four decades of data. “In the summer of 2018, the loss of sea ice was three times higher than the reported loss at the beginning of the satellite era,” says Kumar. “Our study shows that both the minimum sea-ice extent and the warmest September records occurred in the last twelve years.”

“Every year, news pops up of a new record of high temperature or fastest loss of sea ice in the Arctic region, but in the global system, each portion of the planet receiving climate feedback will lead to changes in the other parts as well,” Kumar says. “If the sea-ice decline continues at this pace, it can have a catastrophic impact by raising air temperatures and slowing down global ocean circulation.” These global impacts are partly why he became interested in trying to decipher the mysteries of the polar regions as a doctoral student studying the coastal zone in India. Now, he works at NCPOR, whose scientific programs, he says, are “truly trans-hemispheric, cutting across from north to south.”

The researchers also turned their attention to the atmosphere, where they were able to gain insight into the processes that contribute to the loss of Arctic sea ice. They found not only that September of 2018 was the third warmest on record, but that there was a temperature difference within the Arctic itself: the temperature of the air above the Arctic Ocean (~3.5°C) was slightly higher than that of the Arctic land (~2.8°C).

Their findings provide further evidence that ocean warming around the globe has influenced the natural cycle of the wind and pressure patterns in the Arctic. El Niños, or warm phases in long-term temperature cycles stemming from tropical regions, have long been known to drive extreme weather events around the world and are occurring with greater frequency as the world warms. El Niño cycles in the equatorial Pacific Ocean can carry warm air and water from tropical circulations to the Arctic, spurring the sea ice to melt. As the ice retreats, it cascades the Arctic into a positive feedback loop known as Arctic amplification, whereby the reduced ice extent gives way to darker ocean waters that absorb more of the sun’s radiation. As it retains more heat, temperatures rise and more ice melts, causing the Arctic region to heat up faster–about four times so–than the rest of the world.

“If the decline of sea ice continues to accelerate at a rate of 13% per decade in September, the Arctic is likely to be free of ice within the next three decades,” Kumar says. And just as sea-ice retreat is largely the result of anthropogenic pressures from across the globe, its impacts will be felt worldwide: this work adds to the mounting body of evidence that changes in the Arctic sea ice could be detrimental to weather patterns spanning the globe. He says, “The changes taking place in the Arctic can lead to other changes in lower latitudes, such as extreme weather conditions. The world should be watching tropical countries like India, with our research center saddled close to the beaches of Goa, and trying to understand–even in a small way–more about climate change and the polar regions.”

###

This work was supported by the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, Goa, the Ministry of Earth Science, New Delhi, and the University Grants Commission, New Delhi.

Heliyon, Kumar et al.: “Global warming leading to alarming recession of the Arctic sea-ice cover: Insights from remote sensing observations and model reanalysis” https://www.cell.com/heliyon/fulltext/S2405-8440(20)31199-3

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July 30, 2020 at 08:36AM