Slashdot Mirror

When considering the full energy cycle of ICE cars vs EV's, EV's are more efficient by a fairly significant amount.

REFERENCE: http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf

Keep in mind that even taking into account the full energy cycle of both technologies, ICE (gasoline) vehicles are significantly less energy efficient than electric's:

http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf

I have been watching the EV conversion market for a long time. I have amassed a few quality web sites links for advise on converting a car to EV and some of them sell the parts. The arguments about moving the pollution from tail pipe to smoke stack are just arguments. As long as you don t expect an EV to totally replace an ICE car and want to save energy and money on your daily commute, an EV is great way to go.

Most EVers have one EV car for the daily drive and one ICE or hybrid for longer trips. All of the EVers I have read about get a kick out of sneeking up on friends with their silent cars and out running sports cars from a standing start at the light. Electric motors can provide max torq at any RPM. ICE motors only supply max torq at a very narrow range of RPMs.

The only reason I don t build one myself is the lack cash to buy a host car and materials to convert it. If I had the cash, I would go with an AC based system with nickel metal hydride batteries and maybe some ultra-caps for enhanced acceleration and regenerative braking. AC systems do the best job at regenerative breaking even without ultra-caps. DC systems require special circuits and the motors requre an extra set of brushes for regenerative breaking or reverse.

The sites listed here have complete guides and step-by-step pictures of their examples conversions. The hardest part is understanding how to size the motor you need and the battery pack to run it and where/how to mount the pack. Otherwise anybody that can change a waterpump or alternator can do one of these. It just takes longer and lots of planning.
AC drive systems for electric vehicles
Electro Automotive Catalog
Electro Automotive Electric Car Conversions
High End AC Drive Systems and Power Electronics for Electric Vehicles
AC Propulsion Home
EVA-DC - Build an EV Choosing a Car

Do you have a source for your claims? I can cite sources that show ICE vehicles are far less efficient than EV's. Taken over, say, a 10 year lifespan of a typical car, an EV will use significantly less energy than a gasoline powered car. I still have not seen a single shred of proof behind the the myth that EV's are less efficient than ICE.

The full energy cycle of an electric vehicle is FAR more efficient than the full energy cycle of a gasoline powered car. But don't take my word for it, here's the research, rather than the usual "common sense" that passes for ill-informed criticism on slashnot these days.

I am constantly amazed by the anti-EV mindset that pervades Slashdot. Every time the subject comes up, INVARIABLY, someone claims that because EV's are powered by coal plants that there is something somehow wrong with that, like they would not still be a huge jump in both efficiency AND technology (power distribution issues like AWD, ABS, traction control, etc... with EV's they become *SOFTWARE* problems... perhaps I am just too old school for Slashdot, but I happen to think that is pretty cool).

I assume you've done the hard work of actually calculating the efficiencies of electricity versus gasoline and that is why you can state this so matter of factly? Or are you instead simply basing this on a pre-conceived notion that sounds plausible so you assume it is correct?

People who have actually sat down to think about this question have come to a different conclusion. Electric cars, even when sourcing energy from dirty coal, are significantly more efficient than gasoline cars. In addition, as the "dirty" electricity sources get cleaner and more efficient, EVERY ELECTRIC CAR ON THE ROAD BENEFITS. With gasoline cars, the efficiency of the existing fleet that is on the road cannot be improved.

If we eventually wisen up and move our electricity generation to all nuclear, and all our cars to electricity, the air pollution levels would be reduced significantly. Yes, electric cars are not "zero" pollution cars, you still have batteries to recycle after all, but they are much much cleaner than gasoline engined cars.

You are still wrong. Electric cars are significantly more efficient than gasoline powered cars once you take into account the entire energy cycle of both energy sources.

We don't need to do that - the tech exists to coat radiators with a catalytic coating that will clean the air as you drive.
http://www.engelhard.com/documents/1999-01-3677.pd f

If they took the money they spend on sucking up to oil companies (and car companies http://www.evadc.org/news.html ) and handing over pollution credits to them http://www.edmunds.com/news/column/carmudgeon/4682 9/article.html http://www.houstonmopars.org/noscrap.html and trying to kill the hobby of automotive work... ...then we could easily have a state full of NEVs (Negative Emission Vehicles) - the state could retrofit existing vehicles with the new radiators.

But the politicos would never do that, just like Arnie et al pussed out on the big solar bill that he could have signed when he first took office http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/stor y?id=36390 - it would have put California far ahead in terms of distributed solar PV usage. No politicians have the guts to do something on the order of the "National Defense Highway System" http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/nd hs.htm , Rural Electrification System, Golden Gate Bridge, Hetch Hetchy, etc.

http://www.evadc.org/pwrplnt.pdf

So the heart of their argument is that 41% of our electricity comes from hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, and wind power. Yet we will not be seeing significant investment in hydroelectric or nuclear power any time soon. Instead, the popular practice will be to build coal plants to meet increasing demand from electric vehicles. Thus, their whole argument is flawed.

It is a myth that switching to electricity would cause more pollution due to the nature of how the electricity is generated. Even taking into account that the energy comes from coal and the losses due to transmission, electric cars are still more fuel efficient (and thus cheaper and cleaner) than gasoline powered cars.

Bzzzt. Wrong. Yes they do. Electric cars powered by coal and gas plants are about twice as efficient than gas cars (28% versus 14% for cars).

In addition to that, electric cars (powered by fossil fuel sources) have only about 0.2% the emissions of a gas car per 100,000km driven.

Practically speaking for most people right now, I agree with your conclusion, but a common misconception about electric cars that you seem to share is that EV's have no benefit since the electricity has to be generated by fossil fuels. In fact even if the electricity is generated by burning coal or gas or oil, there is still a significant efficiency advantage for electric cars (PDF link to a study about this very subject). In addition to that, keep in mind that it is a lot simpler to improve the efficiency of a single power station than it is 10 million individual mini power plants.

I forgot to add that this could make them safer, too. Right now cars that have high voltage systems (e.g. hybrid or electric cars) usually have separate electrical systems; a high voltage one for the drive train, and a low voltage one for the rest of the car.

This is works, but it can cause fires if the high voltage system comes in contact with the low voltage one. Fires and high voltage systems in cars can be very nasty. This complicates the job of resuing people from an accident or repairing the car afterwards.