Critique of the Pickens Plan – Part 3 – (Death of the Road Trip?)

Both the Pickens Plan and the various ideas for creating electric cars have a drawback that I’ve seen few people make notice about.

The lack of range for both natural gas and electric vehicles.

For pure electric vehicles, the current available range is about 50 miles. There’s talk of getting up to 120 miles with future technology.

Natural gas cars right now have a range of about 220-180 miles, depending on who you ask.

Compare this to current technology: gasoline automobiles can generally get about 400 miles per tank, which depends on the vehicle, but that a general range for most cars I’ve seen. Some get more, some get less, but an average of 400 seems about right.

Now, for most people who have taken road trips, it can be a pain in the rear to find gas and fill up. Alot of the time, you end up paying more because you’re not familiar with the area, so you end up buying at a station that may not be the cheapest. There’s also the situation where you end up needing to get gas, and then miss the station down the road that’s a couple of cents cheaper. But if you only need to fuel once, or not at all, then you don’t have these problems to begin with. Plus, there’s the delay of having to stop driving, get out, fuel, then get going again. It’s a hassle.

So a longer range means less of these problems. But that seems to be the last issue on the minds of car developers and those who want to prop up alternative fuels right now. Electric car people tend to focus on commuters. Which is fine, if commuting was the only thing that people did with their cars.

It’s not.

The same problem goes with natural gas. From a link provided by the Pickens Plan:

* Second drawback: since natural gas is a compressed fuel, the tank takes up some trunk space, and only holds the equivalent of 8 gallons of gasoline. Honda estimates the vehicle’s range to be 220 to 250 miles, although Consumer Reports claimed it was closer to 180 miles.

NGV enthusiasts are getting around range limitations (and vehicle scarcity) by converting their own vehicles to run on natural gas and adding spare tank capacity. Throwing extra tanks in the bed of a truck, for example, can boost driving range to around 600 miles. The best part about converting a vehicle (as opposed to the Civic GX) is that if you run out of CNG, the system automatically switches back to gasoline.

– Gas 2.0

Throwing extra tanks in is fine if you’re by yourself and you have room to spare in your trunk. But vacationers don’t have that liberty, especially if they have children. Which means they’ll need bigger cars (oh no, SUVs!) or fill up more frequently.

Finally, there’s the problem of filling up. Now, there is the option of refueling at home for both electricity and natural gas. But what about on the road? Especially in rural areas, there seems to be a dearth of natural gas and electric refueling stations. Now, there’s also a dearth of gas stations in rural areas too, but I’m even talking along highways. You’re going to need alot more stations if the fuel doesn’t get enough range.

And what happens if you run out of gas. Like I mentioned before, there’s the problem of bringing gas out to someone who’s stranded. But what about LNG or electricity. Maybe you can find a house where you can plug your car in, but you’d need a pretty long extension cord. Or maybe drain from someone else’s car, but LNG is a bit more problematic than that.

Nevermind that alot of the cars proposed are compact/sub-compact. Again, a problem for families or people who are of larger than average size. I would like to see what the results for a full-size/truck/SUV are before I can say that electric/natural gas vehicles will have mainstream appeal. And without mainstream appeal, we’re just talking in hypothesis.

It seems to me that alot of the focus on travel seems to be withing larger urban and suburban areas and commuters specifically. Which is fine, except that it neglects a significant aspect of driving for many people. The idea of going somewhere other than work. That something that all proponents of alt fuels will need to grasp and pay attention to as well.

Critique of the Pickens Plan – Part 2 (Transportation)

In Part 1, I looked at how the Pickens Plan has problems in his goal of converting natural gas electricity generation to wind and solar powered generation.  In this part, I’m going to look at the second half of his plan: using natural gas as a power source for transportation in the US to reduce reliability on foreign oil.

I have three issues with using natural gas as a fuel in transportation: economical, political and technological.

1. Political ProblemsWhile most people complain about gas prices quite heavily, the retail gasoline market is probably of the few markets today that fit the definition of a Competive Market. Illustrating this point is the fact that most retailers of gasoline make a very small profit on each gallon of gasoline, which is what economic theory would predict for a competitive market. So much that ExxonMobil doesn’t want to have anything to do with it anymore.

   So what problem do I have moving to natural gas distribution? We’re moving from a competitive market with lots of choices to a market with lots of monopolies and run at almost every part of the supply chain by government bureaucrats. Let me explain. Natural gas is lot like electricity where one company has dominion over a certain territory and controls all of the sales in the area. There are certain areas where you can choose whom you get the physical gas from but not who delivers it. That is controlled by the government. Contrast this with gasoline, where no one company has dominion over a territory (by anti-trust law) and there are many players in each market, from national brands to mom and pop stores selling generics.

   While government has involvement in the composition and selling of gas, it has very little say in the pricing of gas. This is not the case for natural gas, where local companies have their prices SET by the government. (This doesn’t apply to states that have open-choice markets, see a list here). So there would be further government involvement in the use and consumption of transportation fuel, with completely new territory of regulating the PRICE of these fuels. This will not be a positive transition for those who believe in limited government. Those who think consumers are getting shafted will welcome the change, no matter what the consequences (shortages mostly).

2. Technological Problems

   While using natural gas for propulsion is alot further along than, let say electricity, there’s still mostly infrastructure issues to be dealt with. Mostly the dearth of fueling stations, but also some safety issues. There’s a reason that natural gas has the rotten egg smell added to it. It’s a gas, and there’s the risk of explosions, which gasoline does not have. There’s a fire risk with gas, but not with natural gas. Also there’s the accident factor, which could make both filling tanks and collisions alot more… spectacular and less likely to survive in (just imagine the shrapnel). I’d imagine that the self-serve natural gas station may start off being the case, but is one or two high-profile accidents from making natural gas like gasoline in New Jersey and Oregon. Which will only serve to increase costs, both from wasted time and wasted money.

   Finally, there’s the running out of natural gas issue. The idea of running out of gas is problematic but solvable. You get a gas can and you bring it to the car, problem solved. Bringing a tank of natural gas might be a bit more of a problem. I could see it being like a propane tank, but there’s connection issues and how much would be needed to get the car to the nearest filling station (again bringing up the issue of the development of distribution infrastructure, especially in rural areas).

3. Economical ProblemsOne of the benefits that Pickens uses in his commercials to tout his plan is that natural gas is cheaper than gasoline, so moving to this technology will make things cheaper. However, it’s pretty ignorant to use today’s situation and pricing to extrapolate to what things will look like when everyone is using natural gas to power their vehicles. The transportation demand is extremely weak, and even suggesting that moving all of natural gas from electricity to transport will result in no net gain in demand is kinda silly. Especially if the technology takes off.

   In addition, there’s no current incentives for developing more natural gas in the US. Natural gas is found and developed in the same way that oil is. So when Pickens says “We can’t drill our way out of this problem,” he’s making the assumption that we’re not bringing more natural gas online, in the same way that we’re not bringing more oil online. So supply remains the same… well at least in the US.

   Which brings us to the other economic criticism of Pickens’ Plan, which is the transfer of money overseas. Combining increasing demand with non-increasing supply will mean a big gaping hole in the market. Which means that prices will rise further OR other suppliers will enter the market. Like those nasty foreigners that Pickens’ complains that are causing economic ruin in the US. Currently, 16% of natural gas consumption is taken in by imports and that figure has been rising along with oil imports. Of course, most of this right now is coming from Canada, but there’s only so much we can get from Canada. So this limited supply will only go to further increase reliance on foreign sources of energy in the future.

   So what’s the end result of the Pickens’ Plan? Definitely increased prices with increased government control of energy use, especially in the transportation sector, in exchange for cleaner emissions. If that’s the trade you want, that’s fine. But don’t think of Pickens’ Plan as a panacea to all things energy related.

Getting a consumer cost for Natural Gas Vehicles

I’ll have more to say about T. Boone Pickens’ plan on moving the US from an oil-based transportation infrastructure to natural gas based in a little bit.  But I first wanted to get the cost of Natural Gas to power consumers vehicles first.

In South Carolina, the gas cost for one million BTUs (MMBTU) of natural gas is $12.9787.  The only production natural gas vehicle is the Honda Civic, which has a fuel tank of 8.03 gallons of gas equivalent (GGE).  GGE is the standard unit for natural gas powered vehicles.  One GGE is 115,000 BTU so a fill up of a Honda Civic will involve 923450 BTUs of energy or .923450 MMBTUs.  So a fill up would be $11.95.  But that’s for 8 gallons equivalent, or a gallon of gas at $1.492.  Which puts us at where we were in late 2003/early 2004.

Keep in mind that this based on the local natural gas monopoly’s price for a vastly different market (primarily industrial use and consumer heating).  Very little is currently used for transport (other than the local bus system).  Moving to a mass consumption pattern like gasoline would be a very different animal indeed.