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The sticker arrived while I was traveling these past 10 days. It came in a new Volt owner’s kit that included a nice hardcover book that tells the story of the Volt, from concept to today. Also included are 10 small cards to hand-out when people invariably ask about the Volt. And they do, believe me.

Although I like the idea of the cards, the QR code sticker is a smart move on GM’s part to address misconceptions about the car with its large battery and gas generator.

Instead of scanning the QR code and simply being taken to the Volt’s website, the code points to a phone-friendly YouTube video showing how the Volt works. The video quality is only 360p resolution so it’s not going to eat up gobs of mobile broadband data. And at the lower resolution, it should look fine on a low-end phone. I’d rather see higher quality video on my Galaxy Note 2, since the screen is  capable of viewing high-definition video, but I understand why GM presents the video for the lowest common denominator displays.

Here’s a look at the video if you don’t have a QR code scanner:

What I like about it the most is that it does exactly what I do when asked about the Volt: The video explains how it works and what the capabilities are. This way, people understand if it’s the right vehicle for them.

I’ve had someone who drives 30,000 miles a year ask me about the car, for example, and I explained that while the Volt is innovative, it wouldn’t likely fit his driving usage patters. Folks in Philadelphia, however, get the same story from me and can see that with mostly city driving, the car is one of several great options. They’d get much the same impression from the linked video simply by using their smartphone near my Volt now.

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Lutz, who is well known for his outspoken opinions, has a unique vantage point on electric cars. As former GM Vice Chairman, he acted as the public face of the Chevy Volt, and once said that startup Tesla had inspired him and GM to seriously tackle vehicle electrification. Lutz retired in 2010, and now is on the board of startup VIA Motors, which converts gas-powered vans and trucks into extended range electric cars for company fleets.

The reality is that many electric vehicle startups struggled in 2o12, like Better Place, Coda, Fisker, Think and A123 Systems (battery maker). The media reports from a few years back claiming a sudden and swift transformation to electric cars now stand in stark contrast to these current difficulties.

VIA Motors could be an example of a more sober approach to electric cars. As Lutz explains it, the fuel-savings that companies, like Verizon and PG&E, can gain by buying extended-range electric vans and trucks from VIA Motors is a lot easier sell economically, than the fuel savings from electric cars for consumers.

Verizon has bought two of VIA Motor’s extended range electric vans (a pilot purchase), which Verizon technicians will use to drive to customer sites and install its fiber network and support its wireless and wireline network. Verizon’s Chief Sustainability Officer Jim Gowen told me that Verizon will evaluate the fuel savings of the VIA Motors vans this year, and he expects that multiple vans could save a 100,000 gallons of fuel over a year.

But conversions could be a limited business. VIA Motors told us last year that its vehicles cost 35 percent more to buy up front, but that the fuel savings provides a return over time. Smith Electric vehicles has also been focused on the corporate fleet market, and withdrew its IPO plans last year.

The road is hard for even a more sober approach to selling electric fleets. While VIA Motors was expecting to start volume production on its extended range conversions in 2012, Lutz tells me that the company is now expecting to start production in the late Spring or early Summer.

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Meantime, our loyal readers also appreciated our profiles of new and under-the-radar startups, feature stories on clean energy and electric car trends, and explainers on new battery technologies.

Here are our 10 most-popular cleantech stories of 2012:

10). A Khosla-backed big data energy startup you should know about: Published in late October, this profile of energy data startup Bidgely, which has backing from Khosla Ventures, had a combo of buzz-worthy terms like “big data,” “startup” and “Khosla.” The startup does energy data appliance disaggregation, which means it can take data from your smart meter and accurately determine which of your appliances are energy hogs and which are energy misers.

9). Bill Gates-backed Liquid Metal Battery is now . . . Ambri: In this nice little exclusive, I wrote about how a battery company called Liquid Metal Battery had decided to change its name to Ambri, as the company moves closer to commercialization. The internet cared partly because Bill Gates has invested in the company, and also because the founder of Ambri, Donald Sadoway, went on Jon Stewart later in the year.

8). Video: We test drive Tesla’s Model S electric car! Now this was a fun one. For our Green Overdrive show this summer, we got to be one of the first journalists to do a test drive of Tesla’s Model S electric car. It was a smooth, vibration-free ride, and the car had excellent torque.

7). The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built: Whenever I get a chance to travel or visit a site where new clean power technology is being installed I take it. For a data center road trip series, I drove around North Carolina and visited some of the towns and talked with the economic-development folks that helped pave the way for Apple’s huge new solar farm there, which is being built next to its data center. My most popular story in the four-part series was “The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built.”

6). Nest thermostat reviewed: A smart device for all seasons: GigaOM’s mobile guru Kevin Tofel wrote a detailed review of the Nest learning thermostat, after he used it for several weeks at his house. Tofel is used to getting attention for his stories: His reporting helped influence Apple’s decision to build the iPad mini, and he’s recently been doing some great stories about GM’s Chevy Volt, which he bought a month ago.

5). A rare look inside Facebook’s Oregon data center [photos video]: On a tour in mid-August we visited Facebook’s energy efficient data center in Oregon and learned about its outdoor chilling system and its new server architecture. We grabbed a series of mini Flip videos, as well as a full photo spread of the technology that Facebook is using there.

4). Hands-on video with Tesla’s electric Model X: Thanks to the mad-dash editing skills of GigaOM Creative Director Chris Albrecht, we shot and unveiled this video of Tesla’s Model X electric car over a few-hour period at Tesla’s event in February 2012. Because the live feed of the Model X launch was delayed that night, we also got a nice audience boost as it was the only footage — video and photos — of the Model X at the time.

3). The first photos of Tesla’s electric SUV the Model X: Along with the video, we posted these first photos of Tesla’s Model X car. We were one of the first sites to post these, and we were one of just a few journalists at the preview event, so we got a lot of traction with them.

2). A battery breakthrough that could bring electric cars to the masses: A profile of promising battery startup Envia was near the top of the top 10 list, at #2. I got out early with the story, so that helped draw attention, but thanks to Reddit, the article also got some more mainstream attention.

1). Behold Apple’s massive solar farm from the sky [photos]: Sometimes the killer posts are the ones that just kind of fall into your lap. North Carolina’s TV Station WCNC-TV sent me some aerial photos they took of Apple’s solar farm in North Carolina, after I did an interview with them about the data center cluster in the state. I popped a snappy headline on top and the rest is page view history (with over 50,000 page views on the post alone).

Runners-up included:

• Bill Gates: We need crazy energy entrepreneurs
• The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster
• 12 smart grid startups to watch in 2012
• 10 reasons Apple, Facebook, and Google chose North Carolina for their mega data centers
• Opower the big data energy player to beat

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My wife and I both work from home, so even though we can rack up miles on our vehicles, most travel is short-range. But we didn’t want to go completely electric for our next car because we occasionally like to take trips to New York City, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; all of which are 100 or more miles away.

How much was our Chevy Volt

I shared the details and costs of our solar panel project, so it makes sense to cover the Volt financials as well. The car still qualifies for a $7,500 federal tax credit, which can help offset some of the next cost. And that’s good because the base 2013 Volt starts at $39,145. Our particular vehicle has a few options — alloy wheels, a rear camera, sensors for front parking assistance and a forward collision alert camera — bringing the MSRP to $41,935 with destination charge included.

We actually opted to lease the vehicle for a few reasons, so we’re not get the direct tax credit benefit. Instead, the dealer gets the credit and can apply some of it to reduce the leasing costs. Since the Volt doesn’t have a long history of proven technology, we opted to work with the dealer on the lease and after applying some equity on our trade-in, our total payment including tax is $301 a month for 36 months. We also got a 4000W gas generator from the dealer, which was a Thanksgiving weekend perk, so now we’re really ready for the next big storm!

Ultimately, we paid nothing out of pocket, as a result of our trade-in and various incentives that GM and Ally Bank are currently offering. We also opted for 15,000 miles per year — which raises the monthly cost — because the Volt will be our primary vehicle. Another $6 of the monthly payment extends the 36,000 mile warranty to our potential 45,000 miles. Bear in mind that any particular deal you work out on a Volt will likely vary from ours; I’m simply trying to provide an idea of what it might cost.

Is it efficient?

Obviously, it’s too soon to say how efficient the car will be but so far I’m impressed. Here’s a screen shot of the first 73.2 miles we drove, which used 0.4 gallons of gas after the battery was depleted. Note that this data is for two days and the battery was recharged once; GM says you should expect about 38 miles of driving on the battery before the gas generator kicks in.

The Volt uses premium gas, which is currently near $4.00 a gallon nearby, so the 0.4 gallons used essentially cost $1.60. Of course, there are electricity costs involved as well when you consider the need to recharge the Volt, even though we over-produce energy with our solar panels. We currently pay just under $0.09 per kWh — not including any distribution costs, taxes or other fees — and we get paid at that same rate for excess energy.

So the 20.1 kWh used for our 73.2 mile drive would cost $1.81 on our electric bill. That works out to $3.41 for this driving session. Our old vehicle averaged 20 mpg and also used premium fuel, so the same 73.2 miles we covered would have cost $14.64 in gasoline. Note that there are many costs and benefits to look at, both short-term and long-term. The above exercise is just one example to view the cost to travel.

Better bring your smartphone!

Although we got a Volt to pair with our solar panels, I’m impressed with the MyLink system in the car, which is also available in other Chevy vehicles. MyLink is used on the 7-inch touchscreen — the same one that monitors energy usage above — through voice commands and GM’s OnStar service.

My wife and I both paired our smartphones with the MyLink system over Bluetooth, which lets us stream audio through the Pandora and Stitcher apps on our handsets. Both iOS and Android are supported and there’s even a MyLink application for both platforms. With it we can remotely monitor, stop or start the battery charging process, check our fuel level, start the car and much more.

MyLink will also play music from a USB-connected iOS device or from a USB stick. The system integrates Gracenote’s music database for audio file information such as title or artist and can display cover art as well. All of this music can also be controlled through voice. Say “Play artist” and the system will ask for an artist name. Speak it and the appropriate artist tunes start playing over Bluetooth audio or USB.

I like the idea that the car uses a smartphone for connectivity, mainly because I don’t want my connected car to have an embedded connection of its own. That’s just another potential data plan to pay for and there’s no need for it when a smartphone can provide a 3G or 4G connection to the car. I expect more apps to be supported in MyLink as well, although I’ve already streamed music over Bluetooth from my Rdio app. GM is expected to soon add a connected map service called BringGo that stores maps on a connected smartphone and uses them on MyLink for in-dash navigation.

We’re just starting down this road

Adding a Chevy Volt to our garage may make more sense for us than most others. We have excess electricity and we can go farther on that energy for less than the price of gasoline and with our driving habits we may not need to fill the gas tank for 6 weeks or more. I realize that not everyone fits into this category. But I think it’s important to share the details of this experience to help those interested learn more about the pros and cons of electric vehicles… and solar electric energy too, for that matter.

So as we do more traveling with the Volt, I’ll periodically share more of the experience. Until then, leave any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to address them!

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But wait, there’s more . . . Add to their inevitable demise an overall lackluster performance in battery storage technology, and we have ourselves the makings of a blog post on the failure of batteries to live up to their promises.

To set the stage, the specific energy of gasoline — measured in kWh per kg, for instance — is about 400 times higher than that of a lead-acid battery, and about 200 times better than the Lithium-ion battery in the Chevrolet Volt. We should not expect batteries to rival the energy density delivered by our beloved fossil fuels — ever.

A recent article in APS News reported on an emerging view that batteries are failing to live up to our dreams in the electric car realm:

Despite their many potential advantages, all-electric vehicles will not replace the standard American family car in the foreseeable future. This was the perhaps reluctant consensus at a recent symposium focused on battery research.

I was somewhat stunned to see this article. I am accustomed to seeing articles emphasizing the possible — albeit often improbable, in my mind. Also appearing in the article is a quote from Paul Alivisatos, an accomplished physicist, summarizing the need for further research:

“It remains true today, as in the past, that we need a fundamental understanding of the physics of how energy-conversion processes take place, at a much deeper level, in order to achieve a truly sustainable energy future.”

Rephrasing: the physics we currently understand is not sufficient to deliver the kind of battery we need to make the future work without fossil fuels. Red flags go up for me when it is our understanding of physics rather than practical engineering challenges standing in the way — as serious as the latter can be. Physics limitations instantly present a much taller order to overcome.

Anecdotes

I’m sure everyone has tales of how batteries have let them down — ranging from the merely annoying to life-threatening situations. I find that I am more often disappointed than pleasantly surprised when it comes to batteries. Here are some examples:

• I frequently go for months without driving my truck. The battery is often dead when I try to start it. Lead-acid batteries only get worse if left in a discharged state, so it’s a runaway process. Fortunately, I live on a hill and can often roll-start my way back onto the road.
• The rechargeable NiMh batteries I use for small electronics devices are rated for 1000 charge cycles. I’ll bet I only get about 15–20 cycles before noticing a serious degradation in performance.
• The first set of lead-acid batteries I used with my home-built solar photovoltaic system only lasted two years before showing substantially reduced capacity. A newer set is still in good shape after 2.5 years, but the drop in performance can be pretty fast, I have found.
• Lead-acid batteries for cars tend to last 5–6 years, often failing with little warning, in many cases resulting in being stranded.
• New laptop batteries seldom fail to delight their owners in how much longer the charge lasts compared to the previous generation batteries. But give it a few years and it is not uncommon to be operating at half the original capacity.
• Batteries left in a device for a long time can develop corrosive crud around the terminals, often in hard-to-clean places.

A counter-example is the occasional amazement I experience when alkaline batteries in a device that has not been utilized in years crackle to life after all that time — if the batteries haven’t gooped themselves up, that is.

Energy-Power Tradeoff

The chief measure of a battery, in my mind, is how much energy it can store. But it makes sense to adjust this concept to the size or mass of a battery. Obviously, a more massive and voluminous battery can pack in more energy. So for a given mass (we’ll take a kilogram), we want to know how much energy a battery can store, called specific energy.

At low power demand (sipping rather than gulping), lead-acid batteries tend to hold about 30–40 Wh per kilogram (one Watt-hour is equivalent to 3600 J, or 0.001 kWh of energy). Ni-MH batteries score 45–60 Wh/kg, and Lithium-ion gets about 120–180 Wh/kg. Part of the reason for Li-ion’s better performance is that lithium itself is lightweight; by volume lead-acid has about 40percent the capacity of Li-ion. Gasoline, at 36.6 kWh/gal, has a specific energy of 13,800 Wh/kg. Off the charts!

As power demand increases, the battery flags, and will not offer as much total energy. Obviously, the battery discharges faster under heavier power demand, but the effect is exacerbated by less actual energy available. This is best shown on a Ragone plot, in which specific energy is plotted against specific power.

Note that the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) exceeds both specific energy and power goals for vehicles (the mass must include engine weight, rather than the fuel by itself). Fuel cells provide decent specific energy, but typically insufficient power (per kilogram). Capacitors, including super-capacitors, discharge super-fast with lots of power, but have very low specific energy.

As useful as this plot is, it does not convey the whole story. While it looks like Li-ion meets the the goal for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, this does not necessarily remain true if demanding 5,000 deep charge cycles, a ten-year lifetime, a moderately inexpensive product, etc.

Spider Diagrams

The U.S. Department of Energy teamed up with the automotive and battery industries to define benchmark performance targets for batteries that would result in electric vehicles being competitive with ICE vehicles on a mass-produced basis. The resulting coalition was called USABC/FreedomCAR, and their various target requirements are available here, with a useful summary presentation also available. Below is a subset of the target parameters pulled from these sources, and I have also thrown in the Chevrolet Volt for a side-by-side comparison to current capabilities.

The 300 mile (580 km) range for the pure electric vehicle (EV) comes from the presentation rather than the official USABC source, and does not look right to me based on the 40 kWh battery size. Electric cars typically need 30 kWh of storage for each 100 miles of driving (about what the Volt, Leaf, and Tesla achieve, based almost entirely on air resistance — not battery technology). So I would expect the 40 kWh battery pack associated with the EV goal to deliver half as much range as what’s in the table.

Some of the figures for the Volt deserve explanation, since many cannot be directly looked up, and require inference and calculation. Firstly, the 2013 model battery pack has a capacity of 16 kWh, but only 10.5 kWh are made available so-as to avoid potentially damaging deep discharges. Meanwhile, I have no choice but to use the entire battery pack mass and volume (197 kg; 100 L) in conjunction with the partial 10.5 kWh charge in calculating energy densities, because available energy density is what’s important.

For lifetime and cycle computations, I use the 100,000 mile, 8-year guarantee on the battery, together with the estimated 37 miles per gallon (MPG) on gas alone and 98 MPG for combined gas/electric. This implies an expectation that about 62,000 of the 100,000 miles will be driven under battery power. If recharges typically happen after 30 of the 38 miles are spent (corresponding to 80percent of available capacity), this translates to about 2,000 deep cycles. Perhaps this is pessimistic in the sense that most guarantees correspond to aminimum expected performance. But offsetting this is the fact that the USABC targets are specified for end-of-life performance, whereas I use the beginning-of-life numbers for the Volt. General Motors estimates a 10–30 percent degradation at the end of 8 years (100,000 miles).

A comparison between actual performance and target performance can be cleverly displayed graphically in a “spider chart,” as illustrated below for the plug-in hybrid performance as of May 2011 (I first saw such diagrams in a presentation by Venkat Srinivasan, in 2008).

We can make our own spider diagram for the Volt, based on the numbers in the table. Please excuse the sub-optimal placement of labels, etc.

Besides looking like some sort of cool fighter jet in a dive, the diagram highlights performance deficits on several fronts. It is not terribly hard to get lots of current out of a battery, translating to more-than-adequate power performance. But all other measures fall short of the goals by varying degrees. The APS article intones that we should not hold our collective breaths to see a march of progress in lithium-ion technology at a level that would satisfy this (still hungry) spider. In practice, improving one aspect of performance tends to decrease another somewhere else (see the piece by Srinivasan for more on this principle). So it’s not a simple matter of advancing on all fronts independently and incrementally.

Full Cost of Electric Drive

Let’s say you pay $0.10 per kWh for electricity delivered to your home. Charging the Volt battery with 10.5 kWh at 90 percent efficiency to replace the drain from 38 miles of driving will cost $1.17. If using gasoline alone, the same car uses about a gallon of gas to go the same distance. Let’s put the cost of that gallon at $4.00. Electric looks pretty good, at these rates!

Now figure in the estimated price of the Volt battery at $8,000 (a disputed number, but GM has not revealed the actual cost). If we get 62,000 miles of electric drive out of the battery, we will spend $1950 on electricity for charging, plus $8000 for the battery. That’s $9,950. The same distance on gasoline would cost $6500. Not an order-of-magnitude difference, but still gasoline currently wins.

If the price of gasoline goes up (it will; but so will electricity), and the cost of the battery goes down (it should), the two may cross. But there are other added costs to the Volt (or hybrids in general) besides just the battery. After all, hybrids can’t jettison the ICE, and require an electric drive train to boot. Even the fact that the space occupied by the battery forces bucket seats in the back of the Volt is a “cost” that must be paid.

Beyond Cars

Batteries are, of course, useful for purposes other than transportation. While transportation hardship may be the most pressing problem in the decades following peak petroleum production, solar and wind resources cannot scale to be very large without a viable storage solution.

I worked out in an earlier post how large a lead-acid battery would have to be to support the entire U.S. energy demand in the presence of solar/wind intermittency. It turned out that our estimates for recoverable lead in the world do not satisfy the need. Lithium and Nickel are even more constrained. It is possible that some other approach like sodium-sulfer or zinc-air can step in. But these are already relatively well-known options and have not blazed a wide path into storage over the past few decades.

Sigh

Don’t get me wrong: even though I dwell on the shortcomings of batteries in this post, I still hold a net positive view. When it’s dark at my house, my refrigerator, television, computers, and internet goodies are all powered by stored sunlight in lead-acid batteries. My laptop battery gets me through many a bus ride and an occasional airplane ride. Batteries really do work, and provide value. Moreover, electric cars are more than a notion or fantasy: they are actually on the road getting people where they want to go.  Despite their lackluster performance next to fossil fuel storage, batteries still beat the pants off of mechanical or gravitational storage.

And even though I might appear to be picking on the Chevy Volt by highlighting its deficiencies, I actually rather like the design point (electric vs. gasoline range hits the sweet spot, in my view). In fact, I was half way to buying one. By half way, I mean that if the price were cut in half, I would surely have one now.

The real point is that batteries fall pathetically short of our customary fossil fuel energy storage medium. When we wake up to a declining global availability of petroleum, we won’t just switch over to electric cars. We may not be able to collectively afford such a transition, given the huge up-front costs in both money and energy. Where will the prosperity come from? If oil shortages drive recession in the usual fashion, expensive options may be off the table.

ADDENDUM

The same author of the APS article referenced above wrote an extended version, worth a look.

This post originally appeared on Tom Murphy’s blog, Do the Math: Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth, options.

Tom Murphy is an associate professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. An amateur astronomer in high school, physics major at Georgia Tech, and Ph.D. student in physics at Caltech, Murphy has spent decades reveling in the study of astrophysics. He currently leads a project to test general relativity by bouncing laser pulses off the reflectors left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts, achieving one-millimeter-range precision. 

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Although both cars and smartphones are filled with sensors, the solution GM is testing doesn’t need any of them. Instead, GM is banking on wireless connectivity; specifically the Wi-Fi Direct standard. Conceptually, cars would be actively looking for Wi-Fi Direct smartphones — and the owners of those devices — and could signal an imminent collision in advance by comparing the two signals up to 656 feet apart.

The concept is similar to Ford’s own vehicle detection system that uses a different Wi-Fi standard, 802.11p, to help cars detect each other. These Wi-Fi implementations work without access points on a peer-to-peer basis, so they can be used anywhere. Pedestrians will of course need to keep their Wi-Fi radio active on their smartphones for GM’s solution to work but I don’t think that will be an issue.

Wi-Fi generally uses less battery life than mobile broadband radios, for one thing. And we’re clearly moving towards heterogeneous networks — or hetnets — with seamless Wi-Fi offload from traditional cellular networks.

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RelayRides — which raised money from GM’s venture arm — says it is the first third party to use OnStar’s API, and later this Summer GM plans to open up the API to other third party developers, too. OnStar uses satellite-connected on-board units to offer connected services, but the primary application to date has been to summon help in the case of an accident or other emergency. GM offers the service to car buyers free for a few months to try out before initiating a monthly fee — the service can cost $200 to $300 per year — and is looking to offer more services to retain those trial customers.

Using the OnStar system, RelayRides members can use a mobile app to reserve a car and unlock and lock the door. Owners of the vehicles can earn money from renting out their cars, and set the price for how much they want their cars to be rented. Depending on the location of where the car is parked, car owners can earn hundred of dollars per month, says RelayRides.

RelayRides, which first launched in the Summer of 2010, has been building a network of car owners and drivers interested in using cars a service. For much of the time, RelayRides has been installing a communications device in the vehicles to facilitate the reservation process, which can be a somewhat expensive and labor-intensive process. But in the GM cars, the OnStar system acts as that control gadget. RelayRides also won’t be installing communication devices in its customer’s cars in the future, but will use a combination of the OnStar system and will facilitate key sharing for non-OnStar subscribers.

RelayRides isn’t the only peer-to-peer car sharing company out there. Getaround, which sells a kit to its car owner customers, and Wheelz, which has an investment from Zipcar are two other ones. The service can be envisioned as sort of “car sharing 2.0″, in contrast to traditional car sharing networks like Zipcar and CityCarShare, where the organization owns the fleet of cars.

One of the major hurdles with these services is security. HiGear, a high-end luxury peer-to-peer car sharing company was the target of thieves and shut down. Investor Sunil Paul backed away from his idea to launch peer-to-peer car sharing via a startup called Spride Share because of his concerns over insurance and the business model. RelayRides says the OnStar system makes its peer-to-peer service more secure, as the OnStar vehicles can be controlled and tracked in the network.

Auto makers have an interesting relationship with car sharing. Car sharing has been proven to lead to fewer cars being purchased, so in a small part, car sharing is cannibalizing the auto maker’s business. But a variety of automakers are realizing they can benefit from car sharing in various ways, including getting their cars in front of the young and urban who normally wouldn’t be test driving their cars. Other companies, like Daimler, and Volkswagen, are trialling their own car sharing pilots.

RelayRides is backed by over $13 million in venture funding from investors including Google Ventures, August Capital, Shasta Ventures and General Motors Ventures.

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