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 Posted: Mar 03, 2012 - 10:20 PM |
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Joined: Feb 06, 2009
Posts: 859
Location: TN
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Posted: Mar 03, 2012 - 11:51 PM |
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Joined: Dec 01, 2003
Posts: 2507
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No surprise, there!
One of those "not if, but when" situations  |
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Tom Pappano
Tulsa, Oklahoma
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 12:43 AM |
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Joined: Apr 16, 2001
Posts: 3526
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
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| I thought the first of his "comes in three's" would have been the EV1, way back in the 90's. |
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 12:49 AM |
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Joined: Sep 04, 2002
Posts: 21396
Location: Orlando Florida
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| The Volt had a lot of buzz at first... engineers were saying that finally someone was going to make a serial hybrid with electric only drive, but when they revealed it was Yet Another mechanical kludge like a cash register that had the engine drive the wheels through a differential contraption, I saw the buzz turn into a phffft. |
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Imagecraft compiler user
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 12:57 AM |
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Joined: Apr 16, 2001
Posts: 3526
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
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| Too much pressure from the oil companies _not_ to go all electric, plus a government that doesn't have the balls to mandate some all electric developments. |
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 02:58 AM |
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Joined: May 28, 2006
Posts: 718
Location: Toronto, Canada
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 03:08 AM |
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Joined: Sep 04, 2002
Posts: 21396
Location: Orlando Florida
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| The Oil Company Conspiracy might be right. Why else would the Imperial Federal Dept of Transportation have one of their unelected bureaucrats write a regulation that says Neighborhood Electric Vehicles have to be artificially speed limited to 25 mnph? Some crapola about 'They aren't crash tested'. Let the insurance companies do that. The Constitution doesnt say anything about crash testing cars. I'd by a Zap Zebra in a second if it would go about 40mph. Car company lobbiests. Polititcians on the take. Kick the bums out. Vote all incumbents out. Power To The People! |
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Imagecraft compiler user
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 03:33 AM |
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Joined: May 28, 2006
Posts: 718
Location: Toronto, Canada
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Quote:
Vote all incumbents out. Power To The People!
Sounds like a Communism.
Anyway, in the end EV will prevail, maybe first not in US but they will have to accept it. Some battery improvements needed.
George. |
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www.sofgel.ro bootloader for mega and xmega
www.elsofgel.com XME development board
Last edited by angelu on Mar 04, 2012 - 07:47 PM; edited 1 time in total
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 04:56 AM |
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Joined: Apr 16, 2001
Posts: 3526
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
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While I was digging around on the Wiki EV1 page
Code:
The film documents that the company which had supplied batteries forThe film documents that the company which had supplied batteries for EV1, Ovonics, had been suppressed from announcing improved batteries, with double the range, lest CARB be influenced that batteries were improving. Later, General Motors sold the supplier's majority control share to Chevron/Cobasys
Gee why would Chevron want to buy the controlling interest in a battery company? Other then to bury it? |
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 09:31 AM |
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Joined: Jan 03, 2006
Posts: 4447
Location: Hemel Hemsptead, UK
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I'm in an odd position on electric cars.
I love the idea, but I can also do the maths...
In the UK, best figures I can get, the amount of energy delivered as liquid fuel (petrol and diesel) to private cars actually slightly exceeds that delivered from electricity generators in total.
Which means that it would require - at a minimum - a doubling of the power generation infrastructure, all the way from the power stations to the national grid, to support the present *private* transport needs. This does not even consider commercial transport use.
As an aside, in most of the western world there is a large tax component on fuel prices; if battery-powered electrical vehicles ever became popular, how long might it be expected that electricity would hold the same £/MJ advantage over liquid fuels - thereby removing the primary reason for many people's purchase? (I seem to recall seeing that at least one US state has now introduced multi-tier pricing of electricity for exactly this reason... California perhaps?)
Seems to me that the two major political reasons for choosing electric vehicles - fuel economy and pollution - are probably best served by using in-vehicle generators using liquid fuels as efficiently as possible, with *small* storage batteries to take care of peak requirements. |
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Neil Barnes
www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 11:53 AM |
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Joined: Jun 15, 2008
Posts: 1780
Location: North Carolina USA
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Electric cars can contribute to a smart electric grid, charging when there is excess (e.g. from wind generators) and supplying when there is deficit (also providing emergency backup during outages). From that perspective they would support the power grid rather than strain it.
Mileage-based road tax is already being tried out. This would favor heavy gas guzzlers over light electric vehicles unless there were also a liquid fuel tax.
There are estimates that road construction and maintenance require four times the amount of energy than is used to actually propel the vehicles on a road system. If true electric propulsion would be addressing a minor fraction of fossil fuel consumption. |
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 12:18 PM |
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Joined: Jul 02, 2005
Posts: 6039
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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angelu wrote:
No problem, there are others that will succeed in the end.
http://www.renault.com/en/vehicules/ren ... ce-ze.aspx
George.
This is on that website ... and was unknown to me.
Quote:
In each of the three countries where Renault has reached agreements with Better Place (Israel, Denmark and Australia), the QuickDrop battery switch system will enable Renault Fluence Z.E.'s battery to be swapped in less than 5 minutes at bespoke battery exchange stations Fluence Z.E.
(my bolding) |
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Ross McKenzie
ValuSoft
Melbourne Australia
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 02:46 PM |
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Joined: Sep 15, 2006
Posts: 172
Location: Northern Colorado
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I would build a gasifier and put it in the back of a pickup before I would go electric. But then I have lots of trees.
Electric cars are a feel good idea that don't work well enough in most populated places on the planet except maybe small islands.
Roger |
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 03:59 PM |
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Joined: Sep 04, 2002
Posts: 21396
Location: Orlando Florida
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| Engineers are good at analyzing data. Anyone know how many one person commutes there are daily? Electric cars should be great for city and short commutes. Not so good for several hundred mile vaction trips. I'd drive something like a Miata that had hard tires (I'll give up cornering for mileage), low drag coefficient, small frontal area. A car like this should get about 50 mpg at cruising speed using a gas engine, and we can have an argument about the Total Energy Used in the Gas and Electric fuel chains, but we know the gas engine is 30% efficient, and the electric should be A Lot Better. |
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Imagecraft compiler user
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 04:21 PM |
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Joined: Apr 16, 2001
Posts: 3526
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
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| barnacle, since the city of Phoenix is powered primarily from a nuclear power plant, I don't see how we would double the fuel consumption for electric vehicles (course I don't know much about power generation). That also assumes that everyone would switch over to electric, but it would be more like what Bob mentioned. An electric commuter to get to work and a conventional car for longer drives. |
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Posted: Mar 04, 2012 - 10:59 PM |
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Joined: Jun 15, 2008
Posts: 1780
Location: North Carolina USA
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Nuclear plants like to run at constant power for a variety of reasons, and much of their nighttime generation is wasted on unnecessary lighting which is often subsidized to help dump the excess. Fossil fueled plants can do load following but even with 40% thermal efficiency the transmission and charging losses means no fuel is saved compared to powering the equivalent car directly (i.e. not a gas guzzler).
Electric cars win when the charging can be done using variable rate renewables. Photovoltaics are ideal and easily scalable to match such demand. They don't have to be located right next to where cars are parked during the daytime; each home could feed 10kW to the grid to receptacles in the workplace parking lot.
But as I said earlier, that saves maybe only 20% of the fossil fuel needed for an automobile-based transportation system. |
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Posted: Mar 05, 2012 - 06:51 AM |
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Joined: Jan 03, 2006
Posts: 4447
Location: Hemel Hemsptead, UK
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Agreed, provided
- your power plant has excess capacity at times when charging is required (i.e. on the whole, night time)
- your end user power cabling has sufficient capacity to provide the charge transfer in an overnight session
- you can manage the security of the connection
- your delivery infrastructure - distribution cabling and substations - is sufficiently robust
- your battery systems have a life in excess of that expected of the car (not just the first user - in the UK there are plenty of cars around up to twenty years old) without significant expense
- your battery systems require low power/resources to manufacture and to safely dispose/recycle at end of life
- your battery system is at least as safe as liquid fuels in case of impact accidents
My feeling is that at while some of those conditions are true for a small number of users in an otherwise petrol economy, they don't hold once a significant proportion of the population uses electric cars. Brownout/blackout is very rare in the UK, absent occasional storm damage in localised areas, but I recall cases when huge swathes of the US have been without power...
There's still a lot to be said for generating as efficiently as possible in the vehicle using existing power delivery systems. |
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Neil Barnes
www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk
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Posted: Mar 05, 2012 - 04:05 PM |
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Joined: Dec 11, 2007
Posts: 6982
Location: Cleveland, OH
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When I was on vacation last summer a Tesla pulled into the parking lot at the shopping center. The owner saw me drooling over his car and popped the hood so I could look around, but he didn't take me for a drive. He had to get his groceries home before his ice cream melted.
Note the license plate, too. Cool car.
JC |
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Posted: Mar 05, 2012 - 06:23 PM |
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Joined: Apr 16, 2001
Posts: 3526
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
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| Did you get a shot under the hood? |
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Posted: Mar 05, 2012 - 07:39 PM |
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Joined: Jun 08, 2011
Posts: 314
Location: Maryland, USA
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Not much to see under the hood, unless you're really into heatsinks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla ... C_0179.jpg
The Tesla's tiny, it makes my Honda Fit* look like a land yacht! I think I'd sooner go for something like the Nissan Leaf.
* 'Jazz' for the rest of the world. |
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