Lithium Supplies – Locked and Loaded

While some have asked where we’re going to get Lithium for the next generation of Lithium-Ion batteries for cars, others are actually mining for Lithium. Western Lithium of Canada (WLC) has announced their Kings Valley Nevada site has twice the amount of Lithium in their stage II lens as previously expected.

WLC, in a recent press release, also stated that their target for their stage I lens production is 27,700 metric tonnes per year of Lithium Carbonate (LCE, or chemically Li2CO3). The math to turn that into the number of EVs is easy – 27,700 metric tonnes is 27,700,000 kg of LCE. In 1kWh of a Lithium-Ion battery there is about 0.9kg of LCE. This means that 27.7M kg of LCE per year is about 30.8M kWh of batteries that can be produced. They have an expected 18 years at this rate of supply to mine (approximately 500,000 metric tonnes LCE total).

In a pure EV (like the Nissan Leaf) the battery is 24kWh, so from 27,700 tonnes of LCE comes 1.28M Nissan Leaf battery packs per year. In a EREV like the Chevy Volt, its battery pack is 16kWh, so 1.9M battery packs would be able to be manufactured for the Volt.

To put these numbers in perspective, in 2009 there were a total of 10.4M cars sold in the US, and in 2008 approximately 13M cars sold. So this single lithium mine could power up to 15% of all the US EVs and EREVs sold, if the automakers could build and sell that many (which they wont, at least initially).

So the question is, how many tonnes of LCE would it take to make every car sold in America a plug-in? From a small two-mode system that would allow for 8-12kWh batteries for 10-15 miles at speeds below 60MPH, all the way up to pure EVs with 50kWh batteries. If we assume that 70% of cars sold are two-mode at 10kW, 20% are EREV (18kWh) and the last 10% are pure EVs (35kWh avg), the total kWh for a year of 14M cars is 197.4M kWh, or 177.3M kg of LCE. So in order to produce enough LCE, we would need to produce about 180,000 metric tonnes of LCE, or about 6.5x the amount of stage I.

The stage II lens has approximately 1.365M tonnes of LCE, and at 180,000 metric tonnes per year, it would be exhausted after 7.5 years, assuming the production rate could be sustained.

Seven and a half years might not be a long time, however there are still several other stages to this mine area (stages three and four), plus there are other lithium mines in the Nevada and the US. It appears that Lithium supplies wont be a blockade on the road to electric cars. While Li-Ion batteries can also contain other precious metals that might be scarce, Lithium shouldn’t be an issue.

I-11: Building what we can now

In response to an article about getting the new I-11 highway done quicker, there are things we can do right now to get the project moving along. First is the Boulder City Bypass. At around $400M total (phase 1 and 2) it is a substantial amount of work, most of which is cutting through the El Dorado mountains east of BC. The good news is that the environmental work is already complete and the first phase of the project is about to get under way. Short of any lawsuits from environmental groups, work on the final design and construction could start pronto.

What we need is about $360M over the course of 3-4 years for a design-build phase 2. But this is a good starting point. Think of this project as the cornerstone to the entire I-11 corridor. While work is done on this project, the next project in the line, the Kingman I-11 & I-40 interchange is already under study and plan to finish their EIS in summer of 2013 be ready for detailed design and construction (pending funding). Smaller work, like replacing at-grade crossings with interchanges and frontage roads, should be packaged along with adjacent major work to reduce the number of times projects have to go out to bid and to consolidate design work. Design-build should be used throughout the project to speed things up (the only thing I don’t like about design build is that things get cut – a ramp from the D-street interchange on I-15 to 95 west was originally in the plans but was removed, and also a ramp from the frontage roads on I-15 to Blue Diamond east was planned but removed in design — both of which were useful to me in my travels).

The entire project, from Las Vegas to Phoenix can take 15 years instead of 30+ if we pipeline these projects together. When one project is in the design phase the next two are in EIS. We don’t need (and certainly won’t get given the current political climate) all 15 projects to start up at once to complete the entire shot in 5-7 years, nor do we need an abridgment of the EPA regulations, what we need is commitment from government and a funding schedule that is reliable. We need money to accomplish this (though I’m no help – I’ve paid $0 in gas taxes since I bought my Chevy Volt over three months ago, currently around 500MPG). We need $250M per year for the next 15 years to get I-11 substantially completed. We need the current Congress to approve this funding roadmap and commit to it, and for future Congresses to keep their damn dirty hands off it.

Good luck with that.

Batteries in Five Years

In Hypercritical Podcast #74, the topic of batteries came up, and it was asked what will batteries be like in five years (2017). Being a fan of the podcast and a battery geek I thought I’d write something up.

On the timeline, five years ago, the 18650 cell (the standard Li-Ion battery cell size, billions of cells manufactured annually) had a capacity of 2Ah. In 2012, the best 18650 cells have 3.1Ah of capacity. By 2017, I expect the standard 18650 cell to have a capacity in the range of 4.5-5.0Ah.

For lithium ion batteries the annual improvement rate in battery capacity is about 8%. This was pointed out publicly by Elon Musk, since he is running Telsa Motors I take his word for it (previously I’ve referred to this as Musk’s law, a la Moore’s law for integrated transistors). In 5 years you’re looking at 8% compounded, or about 47%. A laptop with the same sized battery will get almost 50% more battery life given the same power demands. This 8% annual rate might increase due to the tons of money being dumped into battery research and development, both public and private. Some forecasts have this annual rate increasing up to 18% starting in 2013 (page 16 of this PDF, which also has a lot of good information on the future of batteries).

But it is important to balance the energy supply from the batteries to the energy demand from the computer or handheld device to really understand what the battery of the future looks like.

Energy Supply

The capacity increase of the cells is driven by a few factors, the main two are manufacturing improvements and chemistry improvements. Chemistry improvements are the dominant factor and what everyone focuses in on. Large changes in chemistry (NiCad to Li-Ion) only come along once every 25-30 years. Meanwhile, smaller improvements in the chemistry occur throughout the interim until the next big shift happens.

In the next five years, a few technologies will come online that will improve energy storage capacity. Two specific improvements are the silicon anode (replacing today’s carbon anodes) and electrolyte improvements to allow for higher voltage batteries (4.5-5V, up from 3.7-4.2 today). These will contribute to the almost 50% increase in capacity mentioned above. In the long term, Li-Air batteries are looked upon favorably because their initial energy storage capacity will be about ten times today’s batteries (and possibly higher as time goes on), but they wont arrive until sometime in the 2020s.

Cycle life is dependent on the chemistry used to make the battery. Around 1,000 cycles that is probably the best we can expect for a leading edge battery. There are other formulations out there (Li-Titanate batteries) that can withstand 10,000 cycles, used for 8-10 years, and be recharged at super speeds, but they have less than half the capacity (per unit weight and per unit volume) of current Li-Ion batteries. If a vendor wanted to provide for more than 1,000 cycles they would need to reduce the depth of discharge of the battery to extend cycle life. This would mean oversizing a battery (100Wh instead of 75Wh) and artificially limiting the battery to operate between 15% and 90% full. Cycle life improves logarithmically with depth of discharge, so a battery that has a 75% depth of discharge would likely see its cycle life improved by 2.5x. But this battery oversizing takes additional space and weight…

Energy Demand

And therein lies the issue. I don’t expect anyone, let alone Apple, to keep the batteries the same size as they are now if the capacity is increased dramatically. Instead, I expect the battery size to be slimmed down to make that next generation iPhone, iPad or Macbook to be even thinner than the previous generation.

Likewise, I don’t expect the constituent parts of laptops, tablets and smartphones to consume more energy, rather less. One example is the pending switch to IGZO screens from LED LCD. IGZO screens let more backlight through the display, and reduce the power consumption of the device by reducing the power of the backlight. Figures estimate between 50-90% reduction in backlight power usage, which is one of the largest parts of the battery usage when it comes to mobile devices. The upgrade to the retina display for the iPad shows off how much power the backlight uses – the iPad 2’s non-retina display used about 2.7W of power, while the third generation iPad’s retina display used 7W of power for the backlight. By switching to IGZO screens, Apple could return to roughly the same power consumption level as they had before the retina displays. The resulting lower power draw would mean the fourth generation iPad for 2013 could return to a 25Wh battery found in the first two generations, instead of the larger and heavier 42.5Wh pack found on the third generation devices.

Other components in these devices will also become better at using less power, leading to a net drop in total energy use at the same time as batteries continue to increase in capacity. As discussed in the podcast, this means when companies make thinner and lighter devices that deliver the same usage time as the previous version, people will adopt. Those of us clamoring for 15 hour battery life on our laptops and iPads will be left wanting. The closest we’ll get is lighter and higher capacity secondary batteries.

Why I think the iPhone 5 will support T-Mobile (3G & LTE)

So I came across this article this morning, based on an FCC filing Qualcomm made with the FCC. It details their septa-band (7-band) radio. The radio will support 3 bands under 1GHz (700 Upper & Lower, Cellular), 3 between 1.0-2.2Ghz (PCS, PCS-G, AWS-1), and one high band (2.2GHz+, likely for Clearwire’s LTE).

In its filing, Qualcomm said it has accelerated development of its next generation RF chip, the WTR1605L, which it said will support a total of seven frequency bands–three below 1 GHz, three higher bands, and one very high band (such as 2.5 GHz).

In the filing, it is more detailed – this is the radio for 28nm chips (they specifically name the S4/MSM-8960, though the MSM9615, likely to be Apple’s baseband chip, is also 28nm). They list all the bands that are expected to have LTE deployed on them in the filing…

In the United States alone, operators have deployed or plan to deploy LTE in the:
700 MHz 3GPP bands (Band Classes 12, 13, 14, 17);
850 MHz cellular band (Band Class 5);
Original PCS band (Band Class 2);
PCS Block G (Band Class 25);
AWS-1 band (Band Class 4);
Potential AWS-4 band (Band Class 23);
Original 800 MHz iDEN band (Band Class 26); and<
BRS band (Band Class 41).

The carrier list that goes with that is as follows:

  • AT&T – Lower 700 (Band 17), possibly AWS-1, possibly AWS-4 (2015, if they team with Echostar)
  • Verizon – Upper 700, AWS-1
  • Sprint – PCS-G (2012), 800MHz SMR/iDEN (later)
  • T-Mobile – AWS-1
  • Clearwire – BRS (2.4-2.6GHz)
  • US Cellular – Lower 700MHz (band 12)
  • MetroPCS – AWS-1
  • Leap/Cricket – AWS-1, roaming with Cleariwre

I’m highly optimistic that, from a technical standpoint at least, said “The New iPhone”, were it to use the MSM9615 chip and be outfitted properly, could support all the bands necessary for LTE deployment in the US.

HARP 2.0 – Part 3: Hitting a Roadblock

The short version of this story is that I’ve hit a roadblock in refinancing my underwater house under HARP 2.0. I cant get approval from Fannie Mae, despite stellar credit ratings and a strong balance sheet. Fannie Mae has five levels of HARP 2.0 ratings – Approved, Extended Approval I, II, and III, and Ineligible. Most places are currently only refinancing Approved and EA-I ratings. Many folks are getting EA-III approvals however, and there is really no recourse – Fannie Mae wont be able to tell you why specifically you’re getting that rating since its a software program that is spitting out only an answer with no justification as to why.

So now I sit and wait. I have two options – wait for mortgage companies to start accepting ratings below EA-I, or wait a few months and try again and see if my rating has changed between now and then.

30 Days with the Chevy Volt

The Car

The car is based on GM’s global compact car chasis. Its not the biggest car, but thats OK since most of my driving is as a lonely commuter. Unfortunately, no wife and no kids means its usually only me driving by myself to work. I don’t even drive my friends around much, since I’m so far away from them. The car itself isn’t a 5 seater, rather a 2+2 configuration, due to the large T-cell pack running up the center tunnel of the vehicle.

The outside styling is great, in looks like a normal compact hatchback model car. It doesn’t stick out like most other green cars (Prius, Leaf). Its a little different in ways that respect the aerodynamic necessities of electric vehicles, but for the most part it still looks like a normal gasoline car, except for the charge port forward of the driver door (the girl at the car wash asked me if my gas tank was at the front of the car, I said  thats where I plug it in, she was surprised).

The interior is well appointed for a Chevrolet, which is good considering how much it costs. There are two LCD screens, one replacing the speedometer, tachometer and gauges area, and the other is the infotainment/navigation screen showing your music, outside temperature, and other facets of the car’s operation (showing where power is coming from or going to, efficiency meters, total power and gas used, etc). The center-mounted infotainment screen is touch-based, and you can tap around on the different screens. Your heating and cooling are controlled through the center screen, and not by any knobs or buttons on the center console. This can be a little annoying since you cant turn knobs by memory to crank up the heat or A/C – you have to look at the screen to tap. However, I usually operate the system by the “Auto” button on the console to turn on the climate control, and two other buttons to turn the fans up or down.

The Electric Powertrain

The electric guts of the vehicle is a 16kWh (10.6kWh usable) liquid cooled lithium-ion battery. This feeds a 111kW (150HP) electric motor. When you’re out of juice, a 1.4L engine turns a generator that creates 55kW of energy at maximum. The energy goes from the generator to the electric motor to turn the wheels, and when there is extra energy, the rest goes into the battery. If there is a momentary energy defect, the electric motor can pull a little extra power from the battery. The car gets 35-40 miles in EV mode and 38MPG or so afterwards. Cold or hot weather decrease the range significantly (down to 25 miles in the worst cold cases, around 32F).

The battery is warrantied for 8 years or 100,000 miles. Long enough to make a good return on the investment of the Volt. However the resale market is a little iffy due to no one really knowing how the batteries will last with time – Chevy only offers an “EV Miles” metric available to the user, and not some battery life expectancy forecast that would be useful to second-hand buyers.

The Technology

GM really went to town with the technology. As I mentioned above, there are two LCD screens in the vehicle, and one of those is a touchscreen.

There is also an app for iPhone and Android smartphones. This app allows you to view battery charge state, fuel tank status, tire pressure, total EV milage and MPG, send commands to the vehicle to lock or unlock the doors, remote start, and for those with a nav system, send navigation destinations to the car. The On-Star system can also send you reminders to plug in the car if you forget.

The MyVolt website offers a view into the statistics GM is collecting on your driving (if you opt-in to having an On-Star account).  You can view efficiency information, daily mileage, as well as send commands like the smartphone apps. You can also program the Volt’s recharging cycle. You can specify to charge the car immediately on plug-in, or tell it when you’re leaving in the morning on which days of the week (it’ll figure out what time to start charging so its done when you’re set to leave), or setup a time-of-use schedule so it will charge when your electric rates are the cheapest (my utility offers time-of-use rates, and even a special cheaper night time rate for EV owners).

On-Star is included for three years. After that, the included package is $300/yr.

The “Goldilocks” Zone

What makes the Chevy Volt unique is that, given its high price tag, you probably want to do the math to make sure this is the right car for you. If your average daily driving is between 25-50 miles and your daily driving is somewhat regular (doesn’t vary outside that range often, in math terms – the standard deviation is small), the Volt is a good choice financially. You’ll drive it enough to save a ton on gas, while not driving it too much where a Prius would be a more sensible car.

The effective cost of the car, when the tax incentive and gas savings are factored in, is closer to $25,000, rather than the $40,000 sticker price. The $15,000 difference is from the $7500 tax credit, along with $7500 in gas savings over the first five years of ownership compared to a standard 25MPG vehicle (15,000 miles a year).

For me this number is about right. I drive 12,000 miles a year, and my daily (four days a week) commute is 32 miles round-trip, plus weekend driving that usually stays in the EV range of the car.

So what happens if you’re outside of this zone? My advice would be to wait. Battery technology will get better, but slowly. As battery technology gets better and cheaper, the range will start to expand. Don’t expect a huge electric-only driving range (40 miles is about right given current US driving habits, though if that changes in the future then the range may change), but expect smaller, lighter, cheaper batteries. And eventually bigger cars. Don’t expect anything big for another 4-5 years though, since the batteries to make a crossover-style Volt wont be ready for a while, mostly because of how long it takes for a prototype cell to go through qualification to be used in an electric vehicle (2-3 years of testing to make sure it can last and it will be safe to charge in your garage every night).

My Power Bill

One Work Week of Recharging (the Volt is set to start charging each night at 10PM, to help out NV Energy’s grid so that it doesn’t get overloaded in the evening hours from 6-10PM)…

So the total kWh each night was 10.1kWh, 11.2kWh, 10.3kWh, 8.8kWh and 8.8kWh, finishing charging before 2AM. The data above was taken from NV Energy’s website via my Smart Meter. I tried to factor out baseload of my house, as well as minimize the impact of fans and air conditioners.

It’ll cost me an extra $25-35 per month for the Volt, most of the variability depends on how often I leave the house on the weekends to go hang out with friends (lately my weekends are spent at home and alone so it’ll be closer to the lower end of the range…). This will displace about $150 of gasoline from my budget each month based on my previous 23MPG car, for a savings of about $115-125 per month.

If I switch to a time-of-use plan with the electric vehicle rider, I would cut my monthly electricity costs to $12-15/mo. I’m waiting to see what kind of effect this would have on my electric bill, but my preliminary estimates indicate it would save me about $150/yr before the electric car savings are factored in, or about $350/yr total. I’ll find out when June and July hit and my smart meter can tell me how much power I use during the peak hours. (I’m also looking at new thermostats that claim to reduce A/C costs by 30% in dry environments like Nevada.)

Energy Implications

If there was one thing George W. Bush taught me (the only thing, perhaps) is that oil is fungible. When you buy an oil-based product, it doesn’t matter where that specific gallon of oil product came from. Because there is a worldwide, robust trading network to transport oil around the world, the money you give the oil company essentially is paid to each company and country that produces oil in the amount they represent the world market. A gallon of oil not purchased by me in the US is a gallon of gas purchased somewhere else in the world for a slightly lower price.

According to EIA, that $4 gallon of gas you bought, 72% of that cost was the cost of oil (or $2.86), and the economic impact of that $2.86 is spread out amongst every oil producing country in the world. So the US gets 12% ($0.34), Russia gets 12% ($0.34), the middle east gets 31% of that ($0.89), and Venezuela gets 3% ($0.08), and the rest to various other countries around the world. But if I buy electricity, not only do I get equivalent motive force for much cheaper, but that money stays in the US – to my friends and neighbors who work for the power company (and their CEO’s ever increasing total compensation), all that natural gas from fracking that pushed the price of natural gas to its lowest price ever, and coal from coal mines throughout the country (my utility’s energy mix is approximately 70% natural gas, 18% coal and 12% renewables, and natural gas only creates 1/4 the amount of CO2 per MWh as coal).

As far as the power grid goes, NV Energy says they can accommodate 1,000,000 plug-in cars on their grid at night without needing any substantial transmission and distribution upgrades (read: rate increases). Don’t expect to be able to charge those vehicles during the day in the summer time though. Nationally, the US power grid can accommodate an electric vehicle penetration rate of about 40% using overnight charging, and 70% using a smart grid-optimized recharging scheme based on information from 2006 (the grid has added substantial transmission capacity, especially in the West, so those numbers might go up). We have a very long way before those numbers become a reality.

The Unknowns

The biggest unknown is the resale value of the car. This car has a few things working against – first generation technology, only 4 passenger seats, along with the state of the battery along with replacement battery costs.

Replacement battery costs are closely tied with how successful (or not) electric cars become. If EVs are prominent in the future and lots of lithium-ion batteries are made, its likely that a replacement battery wouldn’t cost much in 2020 (around $3500). If EVs don’t take off, and the technology remains a niche application, batteries will be more expensive due to lack of mass production.

The Only Thing I’d Change

The front air dam. Chevy offers a shorter air dam, but it comes with an aerodynamic penalty and I lose about 1 mile of EV range if I switch to it. I scape this longer air dam everywhere I go.

The Cost

As I mentioned above, the actual cost of the Volt is around $25,000 once you factor in gas savings and the federal tax credit. Recently, GM has been throwing money “on the hood of the car” (term used by dealers to describe cash rebate or financing incentives). When I purchased the car, the deals were $350/mo for a 36 mo. lease (not including taxes or registration) or 0% for 60 months to purchase. As of May 1, GM upped their incentives even more, to 0% for 72 months to purchase, and increased the lease capital cost reduction from $3000 to $4500, resulting in a lower payment – I’ve seen some dealerships offer sub-$300/mo lease offers, factoring in gas savings, that can lower your effective monthly payment to under $200.

One thing to remember, is that if you don’t qualify for the full $7,500 tax credit when buying the Volt, you can still take advantage of it by leasing the car. The lease rate factors in the leasing agency will take the $7,500 credit for themselves. Also, leasing reduces the risk associated with buying first generation technology.

The good news is that I believe GM is able to increase incentives because the Volt is getting cheaper to make as they manufacture more of them each month, as well as moving the battery cell production from Korea to the US – a GM executive stated that the cost savings of manufacturing batteries across the state of Michigan instead of the opposite side of the world was significant. Its my hope that the 2013 model year vehicle may have an after-rebate price below $30,000 (about the same as an after-rebate Prius Plug-in), compared to the current after-rebate price of around $32,500.

Final Verdict & Future Outlook

I’m very happy with my Volt. Unless world peace breaks out and the geopolitical instability oil premium goes away and prices retreat to $60/bbl ($2.50/gal), its a wise financial choice for me.

Almost five years ago now I stood in line for nine hours to buy the first iPhone for $600. I feel the same way about the Volt. The price wont come down nearly as fast but I’m confident that this is the wave of the future. (The rate of improvement on silicon chips is 40-50% per year, while the improvement in lithium-ion batteries is between 8-10%.) But I still look at it as the dawning of a new era. The electrification of transportation starts here, in the early 2010s. Once electrification takes off, we move to self-driving cars. Then self-driving flying cars. And then we’re the Jetsons.

Also, see my article on the six things regular car owners need to know when they buy a Volt.

Debunking the Spin

A lot of people (mostly right wingers) like to hate the Volt (to hurt Obama, to hurt the UAW, to support big oil, whatever). So here are the few bits of truth to counter the lies…

  • Its a rolling fireball. The battery fire was 3 weeks after the Volt had been crash tested. I’d die of exposure or starvation if the fire department cant get me out of the wrecked Volt after three weeks. I’d also want to move to a different city with a more competent fire department. The testing facility did not follow proper post-crash procedure to drain the battery of energy. GM knows through the On-Star system to contact field staff when there is a severe Volt crash.
  • The Volt is subsidized $250,000-500,000 per car ($3B/6000 units as of late 2011). Most of that subsidy money went to domestic lithium-ion battery manufacturers, an infrastructure shared amongst all domestically made electric cars that use lithium-ion batteries – the Chevy Volt and Spark EV, Ford’s C-MAX Energi Hybrid and Plug-in models, Ford Focus Electric, Chrysler’s various electric vehicles in various stages of development, and even the Nissan Leaf later this year. Also that money is spread out over 20 years in many cases (tax breaks on property taxes), so you’re taking 20 years worth of tax breaks vs less than one year of car production. Sloppy math.
  • It can only go 40 miles. I get this one repeated to me a lot, and I think it has to do with people not understanding its a dual-fuel vehicle. I can go 40 miles on electricity and then forever on gasoline as long as I keep putting fuel in the tank. I don’t have to recharge the battery before I refill the tank. Once the battery is empty, it acts like a hybrid car.
  • Obama is responsible for the Volt, and he is giving owners a hand-out. Development was initiated by Bob Lutz (who wanted a pure EV) and then with Jon Lauckner (who came up with the extended range idea) in 2006, and unveiled as a concept in January 2007. The $7,500 tax credit was in the 2008 Energy Act signed by George W. Bush. This is one of those things where, if successful, Republicans will try and take all the credit for the Volt’s success, no matter how much they bad-mouth it now.

All the Math!

Vehicle MSRP: $44,875 as delivered
Voltec at-home 220V charger: $878 total – $550 for equipment (including tax and shipping), $225 for installation, $103 for city permitting and inspection fees.

Monthly charging costs: $25-30 at 11.7c/kWh, or $12-17/mo at 5-7c/kWh if I switch to time-of-use (TOU) billing
Total miles driven: 1,000
Miles driven on electricity: 914
Miles driven on gasoline: 86
Fuel Savings over my old 23MPG Escape:  $123/mo at $3.75/gal

Six things new Volt owners need to know…

  1. The car switches from electric to gasoline seamlessly. I get this question asked by non-owners a lot, so you might want to be prepared. That and they generally don’t understand the dual-fuel approach.
  2. Hook up the smart phone app. Its really awesome. Plus in the cold winters and hot summers you can pre-condition your car before you get there. Plus it’ll remind you to plug it in at night if you haven’t. Also check out myvolt.com for many of the same features, plus the ability to set delayed & time-of-night charging.
  3. Make sure your recharge outlet doesn’t have anything else installed on that circuit (or get a dedicated 120V or 220V circuit installed). I had problems with my Volt tripping my 120V GFCI circuit that also had a refrigerator on it.
  4. To override delayed charging settings (so you can charge immediately upon plug-in), open the charge port door before you open your car door, then select temporary override.
  5. Charging at night is best for the power grid in most cases. Energy use peaks during the evening hours (5-10PM) and then goes way down. Most power companies have a lot of unused capacity at night.
  6. Make sure you take advantage of all financial incentives possible. Everyone gets the $7,500 tax credit if they buy the car (not lease), and many states have their own tax credit for state taxes (Colorado has a massive $6,000 tax credit). Contact your power company to see if they offer any incentives – from cheaper rates at night to recharge your vehicle or incentives to install a 220V home charging station. Also check to see if your state allows you to drive in HOV lanes with just one person.

 

Two weeks with the Chevy Volt

I’ve had my Volt for two weeks now, and I’ve been pretty happy with it so far. I’ll probably post a more detailed report a few months into ownership detailing all the costs associated with owning a Volt and how much money its saving me every month.

But there is nothing bad to say about the car right now. Other than some poor sight lines out the rear window (which is why I got the model equipped with the backup camera), the design of the vehicle is strong. I’ve been getting anywhere between 39 and 44 miles on the battery so far (in the mild spring weather), but that will probably decrease to around 32-35 miles once I have to use the AC full blast during the summer months.

In my driving so far, I’ve driven about 600 miles and have used 2.8 gallons of gas (thats about 215 MPG). By my initial estimation, my electric bill has gone up about 20 dollars a month, but thats only judging by two weeks worth of numbers. So, compared to my old car, I’m not spending $150-200 a month in gas, and replacing it with about $20 in electricity and about $10-15 in gas every month. When I factor those savings into the 5 years I’m going to have the car (because the loan is 5 years), thats $8,400. Combined with the tax rebate, and the real price of the car is closer to $24,000. We’ll see if those numbers hold up…

HARP 2.0 – Part 2: Finding a lender

So you’ve read part 1 and figured out that you’re qualified for the HARP 2.0 program. Good, now comes the more difficult part of the process, finding a lender that will refinance you. This can be easy or difficult depending on how underwater you are on your house, and whether or not your current mortgage servicer offers refinancing programs. I was in the difficult position of having two strikes against me – my current mortgage servicer does not lend (they’re strictly a mortgage servicer) so I had to find a different lender and my Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio was above 125%. The only thing that could have made that worse would be if I paid PMI when I bought the house or if I had a second mortgage (neither of which were a problem for me).

Your Existing Lender

If your current mortgage servicer offers programs to refinance your loan, this process will go much smoother. You aren’t required to refinance with them, but it is a good place to start looking and comparing rates. If your LTV is below 125% then it’ll be easy to shop around, but if its above 125% you might be stuck with your current servicer with only a few other options to check out.

A Different Lender

If your current mortgage doesn’t offer programs to refinance (like mine) you’re stuck having to find a new company to refinance with. This becomes especially difficult if your LTV ratio is above 125% as many lenders aren’t refinancing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac backed loans above 125% even though March 15th has passed and the new software (Desktop Underwriter or DU Refi Plus) has been rolled out to everyone.

Also in my case and the case for those refinancing at above 125% LTV, only one loan program through Fannie Mae is currently being offered – 30 year fixed rate. No other programs (20, 15 year) are currently being offered for those above 125% LTV. They may be rolled out in the next few months (June 1st was a date I had heard but I don’t know if thats accurate).

In my experience, I had tried the major banks and none of them were accepting customers from other loan servicers with LTV ratios above 125%. Even major online mortgage companies were capped at 125% for the time being. I had to contact about 12 banks before I was able to find two that would refinance me in my current situation. (names intentionally omitted until I’m done with the process)

Getting Multiple Quotes

Finding multiple lenders is important, as you can play them off each other to get a better rate. When I had first got my house, I had two rate quotes, and one lender was able to match the other’s lower rate and pay for part of the closing costs, instead of just having the lowest rate.

Moving Forward

The last step is getting all the documents from both the lender and that you’ll need to complete the underwriting process.

Thats it for part two. As I move through the process I’ll post the third (and presumably final) part when my loan closes and I get a final figure for how much my payment will go down a month, and what I have to do to amortize at the same rate as my current loan.

GM shutting down Volt production for 5 weeks…

It was annouced last Friday that GM would be shutting down production on the Chevy Volt for five weeks starting in mid-March until mid-to-late April. The stated reason was that there was too much channel inventory, about twice as much as a normal car.

There are a few problems with that outlook, in that the Volt isn’t a normal car. Its a specialized low-volume (for now) car. If a GM dealer only sells about 1 car for every 3 dealerships per month (3,000 dealerships, 1,000 cars a month), that would mean a dealership would either have zero or one Volts on their lot when the customer shows up to look at them. Not very pleasing from a customer point of view, “well this is the only one we have, and we wont get another one for 2 months, and all the other dealers in town only have one each too!” If you want the customer to have a reasonable choice of configurations, you’ll need about 3-4 cars per dealership, varied in color and configuration throughout the city. My local market has about 15 Volts (including 4 models that were originally demo units) for sale, some of which are still in transit to the dealer. My rough approximation is about 10 cars per million people in a metro area. So where I live should have about 20 cars for sale. This is also roughly a 4 months inventory. The problem with 4 months of inventory is what are you going to do when the new models come out in August or September? Take huge losses on 1/3 of your annual inventory? Not likely.

So what I’m expecting is that GM is trying to push down inventory to about 5 cars per million people so that when it comes time for the 2013 models to show up, dealers aren’t stuck with four or five really slow selling cars.

I’m somewhat optimistic that such an aggressive early push is hinting at some bigger, better things to come in 2013. By then, GM should be producing both the engine and battery cells domestically (Austria and S. Korea, respectively). GM has stated that the cost of freight for the battery cells is non-trivial, possibly in the range of $100-200/kWh. This would translate to a $1600-3200 cost per vehicle when the freight costs are factored in. Combined with the engine’s reduced freight costs as well, a $2,000-4,000 price cut could be in store for 2013, necessitating even deeper cuts in the 2012 Volt price to move them off the lot. Plus, the idea of a $29,950 price tag after rebate seems really appealing from a marketing standpoint — after tax credit it would be cheaper than the plug-in Prius, and the same price as the high end Prius, and all the comparisons with a loaded Civic start to look better.

EDIT: On April 8, GM announced that in the wake of record sales in March 2012 (including the one Volt I bought!) the plant will open one week early, on April 16 instead of April 23.