EV World video of Toyota Senior Engineer Bill Reinert's Meeting of the Minds presentation.
Open Access Article Originally Published: October 23, 2007
Editor's note: Bill Moore informs us that today he drove one of a dozen Toyota plug-in Priuses at the company's Mount Fuji proving grounds and will be reporting on it in the near future. With him was Mr. Reinert, who has long championed electric drive vehicles at Toyota.
Bill Reinert is known for his candor. For example, he showed little reticence in the highly acclaimed documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" in telling a television crew that fuel cell vehicles may be decades away, if ever.
So, we shouldn't be surprised that he would stand up at the Meeting of the Minds conference in Oakland in September and say that fuel availability and global warming will be important issues in the upcoming U.S. presidential campaign. Or that Toyota's product planning and engineering efforts -- as well as other carmakers -- are driven by four key issues: fuel availability and energy diversity, carbon dioxide reduction, air quality and urban congestion.
Using what he stresses is public domain data, Reinert, who heads Toyota's advanced alternative fuel vehicle engineering efforts in North America, makes the case that the world simply isn't going to be able to meet the projected demand for petroleum in the coming decade. Sounding more like a peak oil proponent than an auto industry executive, he notes that the world is continuing to pump more oil than it is discovering and what it is discovering is harder to get to and less of it can be extracted than conventional fields.
He cautions that while higher oil prices will drive investment in technology to extract more oil, even this has its limit in terms of its economic viability as the cost of production (EROI) approaches the value of the oil produced. It also runs up against limits in terms of the geopolitics involved, the carbon dioxide emitted and the water used, especially in developing non-petroleum resources like shale oils and tar sands. [See Forget Your Silver Bullet].
Citing the work of Dr. Peter Wells, Reinert explains that the current volatility in the price of oil [at $79/brl at the time of this speech in mid-September, 2007] is being driven by the peaking of the North Sea and Cantarell oil fields, putting geopolitical pressure on both OPEC and the Former Soviet Union (FSU). But this is only the first such period of volatility. The second will begin when the FSU's fields peak and begin to decline sometime around 2015. This will lead to calls in the U.S. Congress for serious efforts at energy security.
Complicating the energy issue even more is a 25% shortfall in oil infrastructure investments among OPEC nations and the looming shortage of qualified petroleum geologists and engineers as most of them near retirement age.
The result is that the world simply won't be able to meet the projected need for 125 million barrels a day within the 2020-25 timeframe.
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Reader Comments
3 comments so far...
15-Nov-2007
59186
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He's not talking about the kind of EV that an enthusiast would drive. He's talking about a vehicle that someone wants because it's a car that lasts 150,000 miles with no hassle, drives really well, is comfortable and convenient to use and by the way, gets great "mileage".
That is a big challenge right now. The current flavour of the month battery technology just doesn't have the track record that a car manufacturer can base its product release dates on.
Posted by: Gordon Day
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23-Oct-2007
58871
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'Reinert cites Dr. Menachem Anderman that it may be another 5-10 years before such a battery can be developed and even then the PHEV will only have a 20-mile EV-range.'
That is a load of crap, plain and simple. Tesla can make an EV right now with 200+ range using laptop batteries. Not to mention Altairnano and others.
'He also notes that how the PHEV is used also governs how efficient it is. Both he and his wife drive Priuses, and while she would benefit from a PHEV, he would not because of the distances and type of driving he has to do.'
What? A PHEV with 20-40 mile range will still provide anyone with that 20-40 mile battery only range no matter how far you drive. That's 20-40 miles of gas free driving. Sure shorter range drivers would benefit more, but longer range drivers still benefit.
Posted by: John X
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25-Oct-2007
58894
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Talk about lowering the bar! Does he realize the mileage that the EV1 units had years ago on the simple technology of the time??
As far as battery technology, lead acid may give the best bang for the buck. Take that $20k for lith-ion cells put it into a bank and use the interest to buy replacement lead acid batteries forever - without touching the principle.
Posted by: dave h
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