Commuter Cars Tango Vs Smart ForTwo ED

If you caught the first episode of the HBO show called "Silicon Valley", then you've seen the Tango.  It's the very narrow electric car that eccentric billionaire Peter Gregory drives in the show. And yes, George Clooney has one.  But how does it compare to the Smart ED?

On similarities, the Tango and the Smart ED are both electric.  They're both exceptionally small vehicles that seat two people and they get about 80 miles of range on the standard battery pack.  One of the comments that both cars get regularly is that they look like they'd fall over in a tight turn. But with all the battery weight in the floor, they both corner quite well.

The differences between the cars are distinct. The Tango uses two DC motors to the Smart's one AC motor.  The reason for the Tango to use these is the raw power, DC can push a vehicle quite a bit faster than AC  Although the Smart has been clocked at around 7 seconds for 0-60 MPH, the Tango is more like a motorbike with its 3.2 second time.

There's no denying the size differences, since the Tango weighs about 50% more than the smart despite being about 2/3rd of its width.  Also, the Tango is 4-inches shorter in length. At 3200 lbs, where does all the weight come from?  The battery pack is about 1200 lbs alone, and much of the frame of the Tango is reinforced with steel bars to guarantee that you will survive in a crash.

The most notable difference between the two vehicles are not the dimensions, but rather the price.  The Tango is quite a bit smaller and does not accommodate two people in the traditional side-by-side seating style.  Oddly enough, the Tango costs nearly seven times more ($160k) than a Smart ED.  But hey, it's still cheaper than a half-million dollar Porsche Carrera GT.

Frankly, the Tango was not built to be direct competition for the Smart.  Mercedes Benz created the Smart ForTwo over 15 years ago as an inexpensive city car for Europe.  It was not sold in the United States until 2008 and then only as an internal combustion model.  The Smart started out at a mere $12,000 and could be leased for $99 per month.  It's remains the smallest and least expensive car in the U.S. market.

The Tango is a limited production model that will never be powered by internal combustion. It is slim so that two Tangos can be driven in the same lane.  It's basically a motorbike with four wheels... a very expensive motorbike.  Okay, okay,... it's more of an electric toy for wealthy people.  But it is at least comparable in size and drive train to the Smart ForTwo ED.   As it is the Smart ForTwo ED gets a lot of attention, I don't think that I'd get that much more from owning a Tango.

If you're interested in either of these cars, check out the websites

National Smart ForTwo ED
San Jose Smart Center
Commuter Cars

Dual Carbon Batteries, what next?

The announcement of the Dual Carbon battery got me thinking about power storage in electric cars.  There are two lines of thinking in this area, (1) faster charging (2) greater range.  At the moment most people are concerned about the range, but charging or refueling is also a concern.

The dual carbon battery promises much and, at least supposedly, can deliver.  It should be noted here that the dual carbon battery is not all new.  Many battery chemistry types have been, in theory, possible for decades, but there was not much time spend on research.  A company called Power Japan Plus is the one to announce a functional dual carbon battery last week, that is making headlines.

Current battery technologies like Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) and Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePHO4) have provided a solid example of what is possible with battery technology.  But there is always room for improvement.

Gasoline has ruled the automobile industry for 100 years because of it's energy capacity.  Although gasoline requires that it be burned to harness the energy, that has not slowed its use. We could have been using nuclear power to the same end, creating massive quantities of radioactive waste rather than pouring carbon monoxide into the atmosphere, but gasoline was available first.

We don't use nuclear energy as much because of its toxic waste products.  Even batteries have some toxic materials in them, until now.  However, the dual carbon battery is made of 90% recyclable materials and offers many other features that are not found in Lithium Ion batteries.   By comparison the LiFe battery does the following better than any of its predecessors...

• It doesn't get hot or explode when in operation (lithium is volatile)
• It's made of carbon, which is quite plentiful (compared to lithium which is not)
• It charges much faster than lithium, about 20x faster
• It can be recharged more times that any other battery chemistry

So Dual Carbon solves problem number one, and by chance resolves a few other issues.  It might just be the solution that arrives sooner than lithium air and in the long-run is cleaner. 

But the revelation of Lithium Air and now Dual Carbon, leads me to wonder, what's next?  Is there some super material out there that we've yet to find that will be more energy dense than gasoline, clean, fast to recharge, and recyclable?  Based on these two recent technologies, it's my guess that there is something better.

How Far Does Your Car Go?

As it stands, the Smart ForTwo Electric Drive has an EPA estimated range of 68 miles. The average U.S. driver covers about 30 miles per day.  It would seem that the electric Smart more covers this by more than double.  But in the near future, your car could go a great deal further.

It's been said that "your mileage may vary".  The EPA estimates that the Smart ForTwo ED gets between 92 and 122 miles per gallon equivalent to gasoline (MPGe).  Unlike internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, for EVs the low number is on the freeway, and the high number is on the street.  But the average still comes out to about 108 MPGe.  The EPA also sets a range for ICE vehicles, which on average tends to hover around 25 MPG.

How far does your car go on a full tank or battery? Does it go 250, 300, 500, 1000 miles?  The average range on a tank of gasoline tends to be between 250 and 300 miles.  Whereas the average for an EV tends to be around 100 miles. For an ICE vehicle, the range depends how many gallons of full can be carried.  The same goes for electric vehicles, but for kWh of charge.   But what if the capacity of the battery could be drastically increased, in the same space?

Currently gasoline has a strong advantage over even the battery that can hold the most charge.  In terms of charge density (Wh / kg) gasoline holds 13,000 Wh / kg.  The technology in electric cars today has a charge density of 250 Wh / kg, a ratio difference of roughly 50 to 1.  Even with the 4 to 1 ratio of better performance over ICE, EVs still can't compete.

However, there's a new technology that's being worked on in chemical labs around the world.  IBM is one company that has taken a strong interest in the idea of greatly improved battery capacity.  The new technology is called Lithium Air and promises to increase the energy density of batteries to 11,700 Wh / kg.

As noted above the Smart ForTwo ED has a range of 68 miles.  With the new Lithium Air battery, and without changing the size of the battery, the range could be increased to as much as 3,182 miles.  I currently drive about 10,000 miles per year.  At this rate I might recharge every 4 months.  The battery in the Smart ED is now 17.6 kWh, with Li-Air it would 813.1 kWh (that's 0.8 Megawatt-hours).  At current electricity prices where I live that's only $80-worth of electricity.

Check out this video that IBM created to better explain the idea of Lithium Air

Six Months and 5000 Miles

I'm quite sure that there are some of you out there in the audience who are scoffing at my low mileage.  I've only driven 5000 miles in six months.  That's only about 833 miles per month or roughly 27 miles per day. I haven't taken too many long trips in the last six months, deliberately. And even so, I can't very easily take the Smart out of town too far.

Correction:  I can take the Smart ED anywhere I please, but since the recharge time is quite slow (5 hours from empty). So it's impractical to go further without a great deal of time to compensate.

The most impressive aspect (and I doubt that it will stop being so until there are many more EVs on the road) is that in these last 6 months and 5000 miles I've only spent $147 on fuel. I get on average 3.4 miles / kWh. That's enough money to fill the tank in my truck once by current gas prices ($4.5 / gallon).  The truck gets about 14 MPG and was costing me about $0.294 / mile.. The car cost me exactly 1/10th as much to fuel.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the cost to drive the Smart ForTwo ED 25 miles is $0.96.  Estimating that the average citizen of the United States drivers 15,000 miles annually, that equates to about $575.  I've driven 5000 miles which in six months which is a third of that total and spend only $147.  So if I drive the average number in a year, I will only have spent $440.

By contrast, had I been driving my truck (and I had for the prior 18 months), I would have spent ten times as much.  And by my own calculation while tracking costs and miles driven, I did tend to spend between $3300 and $3800 per year on fuel alone.  Over the course of several years that costs of driving the same distances back and forth, to and from the office, I could have purchased another vehicle and actually saved myself money.  Which brings be back to the Smart ForTwo ED.

I'm quite grateful to have the electric car with all its apparent shortcomings.  I get about the city to and from work, to and from church, to and from everywhere locally, quickly, quietly, and in all honesty quite happily.

So if you live in the South San Francisco Bay Area and want to find out more about electric cars, the Smart ForTwo ED, or any electric car, please contact me at wes@eaasv.org