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...you'll need to do a lot of the DIY, perhaps just in the configuring. You can always sub out the actual work. You'll be retrofitting the entire drive train, plus adding space for batteries as well if you want any sort of at least minimum range before you are forced to use the fueled engine. What you are contemplating is a self propelled generator basically, with you along for the ride. That is in essence what a hybrid is.

Here is a generic link to get you going

http://www.evworld.com/

As another poster pointed out, this is a fabulous new industry idea, some places are doing it, but it's still in the mom and pop shop stage most places, sort of like the original mom and pop whitebox shops back in the haydays of making decent money at it.

pure electric conversion kits and links

http://www.electroauto.com/

Now what I think might be a useful idea, one already built at ACPropulsion, is to make the vehicle pure electric, and have the generator part that makes it a hybrid be in a tow behind trailer. Short range, run pure electric, extended range, tow the trailer.

read about that and more info here, these guys know their stuff

http://www.acpropulsion.com/ACP_FAQs/FAQ_products.

good luck and do a blog on it, would like to see the project as it unfolds

"I just realized I suggested a 'gentleman's wager' on slashdot...to an AC...Doh!"

Hehe, although you caused me (not the AC) to check my electricity costs.

Seems I can buy off-peak electricity at about 0.06$/KwH, so for as long as I run Hydrogen generation during the night. I just need to go see how well the fuel cells do per cubic meter....

However I also saw the cost of Hydrogen generators, let us merely say they haven't become "consumer items" yet. But then at tens of cubic meters an hour, they are obviously designed for commercial use.

Although I suspect with a little help from my engineering guru friend, I can make a home sized hydrogen generator for a miniscule fraction of the retail price. I recall it being fairly easy to extract hydrogen from water, with electricity, when I was at school.

I was looking around at pure electric cars recently, just to see what is out there. And it does look like improvements in battery technology may finally be making it feasible to use these for more than short urban commutes. Although I want to see it working before I buy.

But then most days my car only does work and back, which the lead/acid electric cars would do fine.

My criteria though is my dad lives about 320 miles away, and anything that can get me there with only one moderately long stop for charging (I need recharging on 6 hour car journeys anyway, and am quite happy to spend 2+ hours over recharging me - purely if the car needs such a long stop you understand!).

http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home .htm

I need to offset the cost of buying a TZero. Perhaps if I can find enough people at /. to offer me good odds on my next car not being electric.

The current diesel is in need of some welding, and the current "best electric car" appears to be a Reva (which no self respecting geek would be seen dead in - although might be seen trying to wire into the national grid halfway down the motorway to help a stranded motorist). So if you guys could see your way to offering me odds of about 100 to 1 against......

There's something wrong with your estimates.

Let's compare apples to apples.

From your Ford Focus example, the hybrid fuel-cell/li-ion car weighs 1,600 kg = 3,527 lb. We know that a 60 kWh li-ion battery (at 200 Wh/kg) is 660 lbs of that.

The rest of your analysis is worthless, derived from a faulty assumption.

The article also insinuates that the hydrogen storage capacity has been increased in the hybrid, by up to 40%, by increasing the pressure. This may also account for a good portion of the radical range differences between the two vehicles.

Neglecting friction, 60 kWh at maximum speed (65 kW, 80 mph) gets you about an hour of driving, or an 80 mile range.

This means that... a li-ion-only system would have a range of about 140 miles.

I'll admit this range is suprising to me

Hydrogen can do things that batteries cannot.

lead-acid batteries are nearly as powerful.

The prices for large lithium ion batteries are still a bit insane

When gasoline becomes a non-option, it will be hydrogen.

Have you ever actually seen a fully electric car?

The Simpsons joke isn't far off.

Advanced [batteries] are little more than reversible fuel cells.

Electrolysis is more like 90%, and usually even higher.

Electricity at even $0.10/kWh is so much cheaper than gas it's not funny.

there's nothing stopping [fuel cells] from also being 90% efficient.

Easier for whom? Easier for the people whose homes are demolished to make way for the coal strip mines?

Go electric, and people will be able to make their own "motor fuel" with panels on the roof or some airfoils in the breeze (someone else's panels or someone else's airfoils will work just fine too). They won't have to buy another expensive piece of hardware to take water apart so that the car can put it back together again, and they won't have to pay for the losses of the double conversion. As for batteries, the iron lithium phosphate chemistry has gotten rid of the cobalt and thermal runaway issues in Li-ion, and the price has been coming down steadily year over year. They'll be ready before hydrogen fuel cells will, and then we won't need hydrogen fuel cells (unless we want them to be one more source of juice for the grid, rather than the sole source for the car).

Batteries with enough performance to go 300 miles cost too much today, but that's not a problem. Outfit hybrid cars with enough batteries to go 20 miles before they have to start burning gasoline, and you can replace something like 2/3 of all gasoline with electricity. Batteries enough to go 20 miles are fairly cheap.

What if the global warming nuts turn out to be right?

I meant to say energy. If I'm not talking to another electrical engineer I tend to slip into layman's terminology.

Then there are the people who say "kilowatts per hour" and arrogantly assert that they actually know something; they're either trolls or ignoramuses and I'm heartily sick of them. It's good to prove that you aren't one of them at the outset.

A battery with a capacity of 60KWH is not neccessarily fully charged if you run 200A @ 300V for an hour, as a significant portion of the incoming energy is dissipated as waste heat.

So, do you have any figures as to the charging efficiency of said batteries?

• 70% coulomb efficiency for NiCd, nearly 100% for Li-ion.
• Another claim of 100% coulomb efficiency for Li-ion, and 85-90% overall efficiency.

I understand that lead-acid efficiency is particularly poor because of the need to overcharge them to prevent sulfation, but my cursory search found nothing on that. Familiarity with their web site did let me find the efficiency graph on page 41 of this paper, but I doubt that a search engine would have. Those figures are interesting, showing small-cycle efficiency no lower than 90% over the entire charge range even for lead-acid batteries.

Could you please point me to where I can find these numbers, then?

You've got to be ready to cross-check numbers to be sure they're legit.

It's that I though that... batteries (and especially the charge cycle) are also rather inefficient.

Do you have any figures as to how much power you have to put into these batteries to charge them up to 60KWH?

A Newton is the force required to accelerate one kilogram at one meter per second squared (kg-m/sec^2). A Joule is a unit of energy equal to one Newton-meter. A Watt is a Joule per second. That's where you start.

Could you please point me to where I can find these numbers, then?

You've got to be ready to cross-check numbers to be sure they're legit.

It's that I though that... batteries (and especially the charge cycle) are also rather inefficient.

Do you have any figures as to how much power you have to put into these batteries to charge them up to 60KWH?

A Newton is the force required to accelerate one kilogram at one meter per second squared (kg-m/sec^2). A Joule is a unit of energy equal to one Newton-meter. A Watt is a Joule per second. That's where you start.

AC Propulsion, a company dedicated to creating electric vehicles, has had the tZero in development since the mid 90s and actually has a working prototype on the road. I've had the pleasure of riding in this car, and it's FAST!

Well, here are some videos of the tzero, one of which is a brief segment on The Auto Channel. That page lists the range as being 100 miles, but that was the lead-acid version of the car. The car is real, and I have no reason to doubt the claims of its maker. If there's a catch, it's that the car sells for >$200k.

Umm, the T-Zero is already faster than the Porsche 911, Ferrari Enzo, and Lambourghini in the quarter mile. Check it out. http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home .htm

Sorry no link.
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home .htm

Check out the new Tzero electric sports car. It beats a Ferrari or a Corvette easily:

http://acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home.htm
http://acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_performa nce.htm

If you have the $85,000 to spare you can order one already.

Check out the new Tzero electric sports car. It beats a Ferrari or a Corvette easily:

http://acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home.htm
http://acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_performa nce.htm

If you have the $85,000 to spare you can order one already.

My classmate Al Cocconi has been building fast electric cars for years (http://www.acpropulsion.com./ Both his T-0 and the Venturi Fetish ($705,000) can beat Ferraris. Al helped develop the GM EV-1 which is also pretty darn fast and was in production briefly. See the article on tech cars including the Fetish in The March 2005 IEEE Spectrum, page 27. (been there done that got T-shirt)

It's linked from the front page.

ACP Press release

An actual long distance trip.

You're right about it being a toy, it's there to prove range, performance and to make a bundle of money for the builders, sportscars have *much* bigger margins than mass manufacture vehicles.

Slightly more practical and comfortable is the UEV Spyder

EV UK have a load more information on electric vehicles.

My own petrol car only gets 240 miles to a tank BTW.

It's linked from the front page.

ACP Press release

An actual long distance trip.

You're right about it being a toy, it's there to prove range, performance and to make a bundle of money for the builders, sportscars have *much* bigger margins than mass manufacture vehicles.

Slightly more practical and comfortable is the UEV Spyder

EV UK have a load more information on electric vehicles.

My own petrol car only gets 240 miles to a tank BTW.

Even home-built models can be fast. The problem is range. Battery technology essentially sucks.

Cheaper (deep cycle lead-acid) batteries are heavy, charge relatively slowly, and don't store anywhere near as much energy-per-pound as gasoline. They have to be changed out after about 500 - 700 charge cycles.

Moderately priced (flooded NiCads) are somewhat lighter, and last forever (life of vehicle). They have moderately better range for their weight, but still charge slowly.

Expensive (Lithium Ion, Nickel metal, other "exotics") can be used to give range because of their higher density and lighter weight, but at a cost that is often 3X the price of a new Honda.

Fuel cells take a long time to "warm up," and are expensive.

Hybrids -- well, they're not really electric nor non-polluting, are they?

When you consider that as little as 10%-20% of the energy in gasoline is applied to the tires, and electric vehicles can be as high as 70%, you realize that batteries are a very poor way of storing energy.

One more thing: Neither the DC nor AC motors presently used in electric vehicles has permanent magnets. The DC motors are series wound motors capable of 6000 RPM. The AC models often can go over 10000, allowing them to be used with only one ratio to the wheels. Neither can be considered bulky; a "large" dc motor is 18 inches long with a 9 inch diameter. The AC motors are often about the size of a coffee can.

Also, check out the tzero.

First person who mentions putting generators on the wheels, or a windmill on the roof shall be shot.

You mean the T-Zero from AC Propulsion, which back in 2000 out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held on January 22, 2000 at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart's northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (press release) (More pictures)

And with Lithium Ion batteries has a range of over 300 miles per charge and can fully recharge in 1 hour.

You mean the T-Zero from AC Propulsion, which back in 2000 out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held on January 22, 2000 at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart's northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (press release) (More pictures)

And with Lithium Ion batteries has a range of over 300 miles per charge and can fully recharge in 1 hour.

You mean the T-Zero from AC Propulsion, which back in 2000 out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held on January 22, 2000 at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart's northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (press release) (More pictures)

And with Lithium Ion batteries has a range of over 300 miles per charge and can fully recharge in 1 hour.

You mean the T-Zero from AC Propulsion, which back in 2000 out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held on January 22, 2000 at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart's northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (press release) (More pictures)

And with Lithium Ion batteries has a range of over 300 miles per charge and can fully recharge in 1 hour.

You mean the T-Zero from AC Propulsion, which back in 2000 out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held on January 22, 2000 at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart's northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (press release) (More pictures)

And with Lithium Ion batteries has a range of over 300 miles per charge and can fully recharge in 1 hour.

You mean the T-Zero from AC Propulsion, which back in 2000 out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held on January 22, 2000 at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart's northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. (press release) (More pictures)

And with Lithium Ion batteries has a range of over 300 miles per charge and can fully recharge in 1 hour.

There is already a prototype car that exists with really impressive specs (you can even buy it if you want):

0 to 60 mph: 4.1 s
1/4 mile: 13.2 s
Range at 60 mph: 100 miles

Check it out here: http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home .htm

It's not only possible, it's been tested. Read some of these white papers if you don't believe me.

Yes, perhaps you were reading about the Tzero. Indeed it out-accelerates most sports cars. I'd buy one if (a) production models were available yet, (b) the line-up wasn't so long, (c) I had somewhere to part it, and (d) I could afford one.

1: Chinese Li-Ion batteries have slashed the cost massively.
e.g.
http://www.thunder-sky.com/en/index.htm
They still cost in the thousands, but no longer the tens of thousands.

2: (In the UK) 90% of journeys are less than 10 miles.

3: The number of cycles quoted for a battery is usually full discharge/charge cycles which is bad for them anyway. The number of cycles quoted is also to a degradation of (usually) 80% of new capacity. Frequent top ups increas life quite a bit. To the point that we're talking a life of somewhere around a hundred thousand miles. This is a vehicle which would require almost no servicing in the meantime and the energy is dirt cheap domestic electricity at a fraction of the cost of petrol. Overall, substantial savings can be made over a petrol powered vehicle.

4: Heat kills them, but it's a simple thing to fix in something the size of a car.

ACP Tzero: 300+ mile range (better than my petrol car). 0-60 in 3.6 seconds (waaaaay better than my petrol car). Top speed of only 90mph though.
http://www.acpropulsion.com/

The Solectria Sunrise did 370 miles at motorway speeds on the US highways using nimh batteries in 1997.
e.g.http://www.solectria.com/about/mileston es.html

The result is that the perceived deficiency of battery technologies is just that, perception. They've been practical for vehicle use for a very large number of people for the last 5 years or so.

an electric perfromance car called the Tzero already has regenerative brakes with enough braking force to lock the wheels so it doesn't look like getting the charge into the battery fast enough is an issue anyway.

1. The fleet was small and expensive to maintain only because GM deliberately kept it small and expensive to maintain. They almost hand-built only a few hundred vehicles in each of two model years (1997 and 1999). While they claimed they could resume production if demand warranted, it became quickly clear they had no intention of doing so. Their existing stock quickly sold out, long waiting lists formed, and then nothing ever happened.

2. What liability issues? If anything, electric cars are safer than gasoline cars. You're not driving around with a good-sized bomb's worth of volatile, toxic, and extremely flammable liquid fuel that can spill out after an accident. Gasoline vehicles catch fire all the time, and you rarely read about it. A few EV1s were involved in accidents; they performed no worse than comparable gasoline cars.

3. The range myth is the single biggest red herring with the EV. Everyboy just seems to know that a "practical" EV must have a range of at least 300-400 miles per charge. Everybody, that is, except those of us who actually drove EVs every day in real life. Marketing studies showed early on that while not everyone's needs are met with a car having 100 miles of range per charge, most of the population drives considerably fewer than 100 miles in their daily routines. Yeah, that still means you have to recharge the car every day, but you do it where and when your car would be parked at home or at work anyway. I found that considerably more practical than having to go out of my way to a gas station every week or so. Every morning and every evening I drove away from home or work with a full charge.

Nothing says your EV can be your only car. Most families already have more than one car. On the rare occasion that you need to take a long road trip, you leave your EV at home and drive your gasoline car. Mine otherwise sat undriven for weeks.

And having said all that, prototype EVs with lithium-ion batteries were just starting to appear that yielded 300 miles of range per charge at the same capital cost as lead acid. (See AC Propulsion.)

4. Simply untrue. Operating costs of EVs are far lower than gasoline vehicles. That cost consists almost entirely of electricity, as very little maintenance is needed, and even in California at the height of the electricity crunch it cost considerably less per mile than gasoline. Routine maintenance for the EV1 consisted of rotating the tires every 5,000 miles and inspecting the brakes and high voltage wiring. My Saturn shop always did it in about 10 minutes. NiMH batteries had estimated lifetimes of 100,000 miles, and except for a few infant mortalities I think they demonstrated those numbers were reasonable.

There's been talk of building hybrid vehicles for performance, as an electric motor can provide a great boost in acceleration, but instead we have mostly wierd-looking, slow econo-boxes for hybrids. Sure, what's out there now appeals to an environmentally-concious niche market who wishes to make a statement, and that's fine for them, but the appeal doesn't go beyond that and won't until there's something that gets people excited. That's when electric vehicles and hybrids will start making a difference.

GM doesn't seem to be anxious to build an electric car, yet 100 years ago electric cars roamed the roads with internal combustion cars, GM conspired to destroy the electric street railway system in the 1930s to force streetcar customers to buy more cars, and they built the electric vehicle Mars Rover.

It was acknowledged that the streetcar railway fiasco was done not only for GM's interests, but for the oil and tire industry's interests.

GM is in no hurry to build an electric car.

Maybe you should take a look at someone who is actually trying to make and electric car http://www.acpropulsion.com/ instead of someone who is trying to show that is not economically feasible.

I won't say whether this is real or not, as I obviously have no idea.

I will, however, say this: check out the TZero electric car, which has a range equivalent to my Nissan Sentra 1.8* and supercar-like performance using an onboard pack of Li-Ion laptop batteries.

Now reduce the number of batteries (and associated cost) by 2/3, and add the ability to charge it up in a few minutes. While still not practical for daily use (still no A/C or windows), you've now got something you could drive from LA to Las Vegas, play a single slot machine, "fill up" the batteries in a hurry, then drive back.

Less weight, long range, short recharging time -- those are the three things electric car manufacturers have been hoping for.

*Note that the TZero model on their front page, and currently for sale, does NOT have the Li-Ion batteries to my knowledge, and so has a shorter posted range (100mi); the model in the linked page above, however, carries Li-Ion batteries and traveled 245 miles to Vegas without stopping (and with some range left).

**Note: this post does not explicitly endorse the use of electric cars in any way, shape or form, and was written from the point of view of the technology only. No need to start a side war about electrics vs others.

"Just use a hybrid design. "

The trouble with hybrids is that is you are dragging around the dead weight of ICE fuel and engine itself all the time PLUS the batteries. A more sensible approach would have an ICE trailer for long trips.

Also, BEVs arent wasting energy for idling which AFAIK hybrids still do. And just think how much of idling does an engine do when driving in peak traffic hours.

Plugin-hybrids like Prius+ project are a step in the right direction, but it would be nice to have the ICE as a completely optional part of the car. And, BTW, li-ion powered prototype BEVs already have a comparable range to common production cars.

The only two real issues remaining are recharge times and cost. Recharge times could be alleviated with quick-swap battery backs and alternatively ICE trailers. Costs are dropping thanks to portable computing and communication devices that always demand better batteries and if automotive industry would start mass producing BEVs some eceonomies of scale would surely kick in to reduce costs further.

So, dude, where is my ELECTRIC car ?

Yeah, but it gets a bit compicated when you want to insta-charge your tZero, Venturi Fetish or simply have a Tango

FYI, here's a small primer on how large scale generation works: first there is a generation source, producing low (5-20 kV) voltage electricity, which is then 'stepped up' by a transformer to above 100 kV over alternating current. This is then sent through power wires to a substation which then 'steps down' the current to residential levels (there may be multiple transformers up and down).

The big difference is PV is distributed . This means a far more efficient, redundant, and secure grid. But it also mean less grid stress, because more power is generated locally. For example, normally my power comes from my roof (distance 20 ft). Sometimes some of my power comes from my neighbor (dis. 500 ft). Occasionally some my power comes from the shopping mall (distance 3 miles). When the insolation is low some of my power is imported from 2 states away (600 miles). Say the weighted average distance my power travels is 1 mile (down the same wires it would have before). Now compare that to the centralized infrastructure we currently use which 90% of the time its traveling 600 miles! Transmission efficiency is improved and grid utilization is reduced.

For the 'grid' is a misnomer - its NOT a two-way street

And that the EROEI is quite different when you consider solar taking the major power role.

We've already shown it to have a better EROEI than fossil fuels, even when favoring the fossil fuels with less stringent EROEI calculations (i.e. not counting embodied energy of equipment). If PV has a EROEI of 15 (minimum), and since the fuel/sun is a free resource, its energy output can replicate itself by x^15. Hardly a problem

Ever have trouble starting your car on a really cold day? Now imagine if you had to use those batteries to drive around.

Ever want to go on a trip?

Excited about the idea of replacing thousands of dollars in batteries every N years?

Batteries just do not have the energy density of gasoline.

I've never seen a electric car with very good crash protection.

There's no way my dad is going to give up his Volvo for something that doesn't even have real side doors

For $10,000 I could make a picnic table faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo but that doesn't make it the wave of the future.

You might get the speed but not the range

One thing at annoys me about this article people comparing acceleration of vehicles that aren't even in the same class

There are lots of cars out there faster than a Porsche IN A STRAIGHT LINE

The thing I have yet to see is an electric car that competes with ALL the perfomance characteristics of a good car.

oh well, I guess if a man living in the 18th century time-traveled to the 21st century and saw wicked concept cars at autoshows, he would probably think they are all ugly. Electric cars are still in development, and shapes of machine will be refined as the technology matures. If you continue seeing 8-wheel electric cars for the next several years you would probably start to feel that they look as they are supposed to. As for design of the body, that's subjective and depends on viewer's aesthetics, and I have to agree with you somewhat. This car is not the prettiest, but it still has a very distinctive, unique look though.

This is another electric car that's not as attractive as its specs.

Don't forget TZero.

Batteries do not come close nor does anything else that I remember hearing about.

How exactly is hydrogen power advancing? Automotive fuel cells are getting smaller and cheaper, but they don't seem to be getting significantly more efficient. About 50% from hydrogen gas to electricity seems to be par for the course. Combine that with the 70% efficiency of industrial-scale electrolyzers, and we're already down to a 35% end-to-end energy transmission efficiency even if the transmission and distribution infrastructure is 100% efficient and cost free. That compares to an end-to-end energy efficiency fo about 95% for the existing power grid. And I thought part of the point of all this was to help save energy and reduce global warming?

And what about the hydrogen storage problem?

The grid already does go just about everywhere it needs to go. Very few of today's homes lack the necessary utility capacity to support an EV charger, especially if it is used mainly at night. My charger drew about the same as an electric clothes dryer (30A @ 240V). A timer kicked it on at midnight when the rates dropped, and it was always done well before morning.

Battery technology has improved remarkably over just the past decade. Just not as much as Moore's law (though few things have). Even so, old-fashioned lead-acid technology is surprisingly practical when combined with modern, efficient EV drive systems, tires and body designs. NiMH and Li-ion are even better. My NiMH EV1 had a range of 100-125 miles, which was actually much more than I needed in routine daily use. Li-ion EV prototypes with per-charge ranges approaching 300 miles have already been built and tested (AC Propulsion, IncCharging speed does need to be improved, but there are no really fundamental obstacles here. Most battery chemistries, including Li-ion, can be substantially recharged in an hour if enough power is available. Overnight at home, it's just not an issue but I could see a role for commercial high-power charging stations for daytime boost charging if needed.

After a brief splash, I'm seeing very little hype about fuel cells for laptops or mobile phones, and for good reason. The mobile phone application is especially silly given that today's phones can already remain on standby for days without recharging. Laptops are certainly more power-hungry than phones, but the power and energy densities of small fuel cells suitable for laptop use are still not there. Besides, how is it an improvement to have to go to the store to buy additional fuel for your laptop when you can just get it now from the nearest wall outlet in your home or office, 24 hours a day? For convenience and safety, you'd probably want to package the fuel in disposable cartridges. Even better, make the fuel solid so it can't spill. Such disposable solid-fuel cartridges are already available: they're called "alkaline batteries".

I suppose fuel cells might find a role when you're in a remote area without commercial power for a long period of time, but then again solar panels work well too.

Yeh, about those trailers...
http://www.acpropulsion.com/Products/Range_extendi ng_trailers.htm

If you want to really save money and do something cool, go for an all-electric car. With lithium battery chemistries, the range is good. There are plenty of companies that offer help in retrofitting old ICE cars to be electric. The big problem here is that automotive-scale lithium batteries are not in mass-production yet so they are very expensive. The battery pack on a lithium-powered electric could cost in the tens of thousands. This is not because the materials that make up a lithium battery are inherently expensive; they just aren't mass-produced in large enough sizes and quantities yet.

As a further advantage, all-electric cars have much less maintenance. Hybrid cars should have more maintenance than regular ICE cars because hybrids have everything a regular ICE car has, plus all the electric stuff, plus a complicated way to interface the two of them.

Maybe if you do almost all stop-and-go city driving, hybrids have some advantage, but I think they are just a boondoggle. If you don't want to buy gas, then go 100% electric, but don't think that bolting on a bunch of electric parts to your current ICE is going to do much more than have you pay a hefty up-front fee to save a trickle of gas over the next decade.

Hydrogen is an even worse boondoggle. You have to have some enormous source of cheap energy to produce this hydrogen, and right now, that means you have to burn a huge amount of fossil fuels to get a little of that energy converted into hydrogen. You end up paying far more than you would pay for the equivalent energy in gasoline. Then you end up with a car that costs ten times what a regular car costs, has half the range and poor performance, and when you add everything up, it actually results in more carbon emissions.

There is an alternative to both hybrids and hydrogen: it's called electric vehicles. They are based on lithium batteries. They have a range that is almost as good as gasoline vehicles. They have no tailpipe emissions, and obviously they are powered by electricity, which can be generated from fossil fuels (obviously) but can also be generated by solar, nuclear (cf. France) and many other forms of energy. It seems like the big interest in boondoggles such as hybrids and hydrogen is because it preserves the huge barriers to entry that exist in creating a new car for sale. The barriers to entry for creating electric vehicles are much lower than for gas, and infinitely lower than for hydrogen cars.

According to AC Propulsion, the profit potential from the use of batteries to provide regulation services to the grid could pay for the batteries. Even if it doesn't pay for all the battery deterioration, so long as it pays for more than its share it reduces the cost of using the vehicle.

Take a look at the way that the proponents expect to actually use V2G capabilities before you say that. Study here; pointers to that and other documents here.

Take a look at the way that the proponents expect to actually use V2G capabilities before you say that. Study here; pointers to that and other documents here.

|Oddly, the TZero is one of the more practical electric cars out there, but not because of speed (and certainly not because of price) -- it has a range of almost 300 miles on a single charge. That's the same range I get out of my Nissan SE-R on a single tank, more or less.

No the range is only 100 miles, and then only if you drive "very carefully".

Did you know every 2-3 years you would need to spend $3000 just on new batteries? The car is insanely expensive both to buy AND maintain.

Also, it's powered by a bank of laptop batteries, no kidding. Clever, that.

No, it's powered by spiral-cell lead acid batteries. See the features page.

Except that most people (not all) are driving vehicles that get between 15 and 25 mpg and gas is running between $1.85 and $2.00. Plus, a modern automobile requires regular oil changes ($20+ extra every 2-3 months), occasional radiator fluid replenishment, air filter changes, injector cleaning, etc.

An EV significantly reduces the amount of regular maintenance required to keep your vehicle healthy. And while the Sparrow has a modest 40 mile range, there are plenty of vehicles out there (including home-brew conversions of regular gas cars) that get better mileage. And if you are willing to pay through the nose for the batteries you can get ranges on the order of 300+ miles if you use a Lithium Ion pack in a lightweight chassis like the T-Zero does. Note that the specs listed on the linked page are for the Lead Acid version of the car the Lithium Ion version accelerates even faster and has nearly triple the range.