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See above - hydrogen tanks and valving is really not that heavy.

quote the numbes then. It's not going to be as heavy overall but it's not as light as you're making out. It's not a 75x difference.

A couple hundred kg to carry the equivalent of a tonne or two of batteries.

It's reached the stage of needing actual hard numbers.

Hydrogen has ~75X the power density by weight

ITYM energy density.

that leaves a BIG overhead factor for a tank or valving system.

Well no. Hydrogen has more or less fixed costs for the valving and fuel cells, and a linearish scaling for the tanks (surface area goes by the square, volume by the cube, but the wall thickness has to increase too) and actual gas. The scaling factor is smaller than batteries.

The batteries have a zero overhead and a higher linear scaling factor.

But er're not in the unlimited region, so there's a tradeoff. What is the weight of a BEV versus the weight of an equivalent HEV, all things considered?

As far as infrastructure - we have one now, with tens of thousands of refilling stations all around.

No, there are 39 in the entire US (mostly in california)

https://www.greencarcongress.c...

BMW has been working on this for years.
https://www.greencarcongress.c...

Jesus, I can't believe I'm falling for a piece of shit troll. Thanks a lot, now I'm wasting my time going through your bullshit.
Fine. FINE.
Here's a report of a Nissan Leaf catching fire.
Mitsubishi has had problems with their Lithium Ion batteries overheating, it resulted in a temporary halting of the production of the model.
Apparently the Dodge Ram had a hybrid for awhile (who knew?). They were designed to have a reverse power flow, so vehicles plugged in could power a building in the case of a power outage, but the battery packs overheated again.
GM redesigned the Chevrolet Volt to reduce the chance of fires in an accident.
There are a number of incidents with a bunch of smaller EV manufacturers outside of the US as well.

Jesus, I can't believe I'm falling for a piece of shit troll. Thanks a lot, now I'm wasting my time going through your bullshit.
Fine. FINE.
Here's a report of a Nissan Leaf catching fire.
Mitsubishi has had problems with their Lithium Ion batteries overheating, it resulted in a temporary halting of the production of the model.
Apparently the Dodge Ram had a hybrid for awhile (who knew?). They were designed to have a reverse power flow, so vehicles plugged in could power a building in the case of a power outage, but the battery packs overheated again.
GM redesigned the Chevrolet Volt to reduce the chance of fires in an accident.
There are a number of incidents with a bunch of smaller EV manufacturers outside of the US as well.

This is what photosynthesis does -- synthesizes hydrocarbons with using light (photo) and atmospheric carbon dioxide. I'm confident this is why Harvard scientists are working on an "artificial leaf". http://www.greencarcongress.co...

well you're looking too narrowly. Electrical generation plants that burn fossil fuels are a lot more efficient than ICE. The use of ICE is based on the ease of accelleration/torque on demand, lack of long startup phases. If you use an electric motor for the kinetic activities, the the options for generating electricity for the powertrain to use are wide open. Say when the battery gets down to 25% charge, you start up a compact gas turbine, and run it until it's back up to >90% and then shut it off. so the duty cycle is long, no varying torque, something like this: http://www.bladonjets.com/ has only one moving part... should last forever, far simpler than an ICE, and likely more efficient. another product: http://www.capstoneturbine.com... Walmart's gas turbine hybrid truck: http://www.greencarcongress.co...

There were no cars capable of 250k charging and the standard itself is limited to 80kW, so it was a stunt only. I have no idea where you got the 2008 date, the official international ChADeMO standard was released in 2011 ( http://www.iec.ch/dyn/www/f?p=... ).

Standards are not made by some aliens, but by people interested in them. The fact that Chademo standard wasn't finalized to the last detail until some years later doesn't mean compatible chargers didn't existed before.
http://www.japanfs.org/en/news...
http://www.greencarcongress.co...
http://www.chademo.com/wp/wp-c...
As Tesla has chosen to fragment market in "DVD regions" style and do not participate, their needs for more power were not addressed. It doesn't mean it is not possible with the same or compatible plug. You can always extend software protocol for more power options and leave it backwards compatible. Changing plugs of existing widespread infrastructure is next to impossible. Chademo plug geometry allows up to 200 A, likely more if you use different alloy to handle higher temperature. It means 80kW at 400V or 160kW at 800V.

And anyway, it's being deprecated in favor of another shitty standard (from SAE this time).

Exactly. Some shitty "standard" was invented by German/US automakers to drag down Japanese EVs. Some FUD was spread that competitors are "deprecated" and it worked, you repeat it now. Tesla had option to use common open standard at that time and CCS may be not have happened. Like in Japan BMW i3 is sold with Chademo outlet instead of CCS:
http://insideevs.com/bmw-i3-ge...

And no, Tesla network do not use one standard. In Europe and China their plug is completely different and not compatible with American version.

They are not completely different. They just use different wiring arrangements and can be adapted by a simple wiring adapter.

I don't think they sell such adapter, and I wouldn't be sure they would start charging when VIN from other region would be sent to supercharger, and you already may be carrying a dozen different adapters in your trunk or frunk. What a hassle. Well, next year we will see GM Bolt, and most likely GM's own (CSS or whatever) fast charging infrastructure will follow, more wider as GM (plus others) is bigger player, and Tesla will be left on isolated island. Isn't that what they wanted?

Model S are prevented from use superchargers as they check VIN when you plug in. Do you really want to say all this is good business ethics?

Since Tesla actually foots the electricity bills and funds the network rollout - that's perfectly fine. Also, superchargers are more powerful than ANY of the deployed standards out there right now.

It is called abuse in my book but as the are trying "to save the world" they are entitled to do anything in they eyes of their fans. Most evil things in the human history were done by people fighting "for greater good". They receive lots of subsidized loans/credits/all kinds perks from all taxpayers and it isn't exactly correct that they foot all the bills or that it is impossible for them to charge others for use of their network to recoup all reasonable costs. Such practice may be even become illegal in Europe soon, there is bill proposed that publicly accessible charging stations should not be discriminating against other EVs. How about gas stations with different hoses and owned by GM, Toyota, BMW, each incompatible with each other? Do you imagine what absurd waste of resour

Look at the 3rd map. That is the one for the golf Think that you are going to drive the nation with that? Otherwise, you have to use level 2s, which will take you a LONG ways.

German and Japanese car makers are actually opposed to EVs. They want fuel cells with H2, along with hybrids. As such, both are getting HUGE subsidies from their gov. for H2 and fuel cells. And yes, both gov. are pouring in a great deal more money into the fuel cells rather then EVs or simply keeping neutral.

That is also why VW buillt the battery poorly. It has no effective HVAC,. As such, it will suffer the exact same battery issues that leaf, and other none tesla cars will suffer. Their batteries will be luck to last 7 years, let alone 10. The ONLY chance that those batteries have of making it to 7 will be if the owners does not use the fast chargers.

Finally, golf really is poorly put together. They are charging top dollars for that. NOT impressed.

And BTW, I used to own a rabbit. I liked it back then. But, that does not change the fact that e-golf is highly overpriced.

If one looks at the average power generation an EV is more efficient than diesel. Where I live none of my power is generated from diesel and a fair amount comes from renewable sources (wind, geothermal, solar, etc). The percentage of renewable power is growing quickly in my area as well and most new power plants coming online are natural gas since it's cheaper than coal. The percentage of power in the US generated from coal is dropping rapidly.

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-d...

The energy losses in electricity transmission are fairly low (estimated around 7%). The chargers are also fairly efficient (over 90%) and charging Li-Ion batteries is also quite efficient. Similarly, the inverters are also quite efficient (over 90% is typical) and the electric motor are also quite efficient (typically 80% or higher). There is minimal loss in the transmission compared to an ICE vehicle as well since there are only two gears (single speed, just a 9.73:1 gear reduction). At least in my Tesla, losses due to resistance are quite low due to the very short runs between the battery, inverter and motors and very heavy duty power buses. On top of that, a lot of energy is recovered from braking, unlike diesel vehicles.

There are other advantages as well. An EV is extremely smooth and quiet, unlike a diesel. It cost me a fraction the amount it cost per-mile compared to a diesel vehicle as well. My EV gets cleaner as time goes on whereas most vehicles emit more pollution as they age.

Another thing to consider is that many EV owners have also installed solar to help offset their energy use, further reducing CO2 emissions.

For urban delivery trucks electricity makes even more sense.

https://www.fleetio.com/blog/n...
http://www.greencarcongress.co...

I'm struggling to see what's different here to what was done 3 years ago. In other words, self annealing fast charge batteries using a titanium dioxide nanotube anode aren't new. The linked article says capacity for the Na variant of the cell is 144 W.h/Kg, which compares to around 250 for LiPo batteries. The linked article also says they had it working for Li at higher densities.

But it hasn't taken over the world yet, and so there must be some problem with it. Maybe the nanotubes cost a small fortune.

As for those of you whining about charging a car in 5 minutes, maybe it is a bit optimistic. But I'd happily settle for charging my phone in 10 minutes via 100W USB C connection.

Seriously, this guy has written about Tesla for a number of years. Yet, he has always been negative on them, and WRONG.

The global EV market will grow from 65,000 units in 2012 to 450,000 in 2020; and yet, pure evs nearly doubled in 2013 to 111K and on-track to double last years sales in 2014. Heck, at the end of 2015, Tesla ALONE will be producing 50K cars / year.
and here, he gripes about Tesla as being a large unknown, and not likely to hit its numbers.

Basically, Anderman is NOT about batteries, but just an industry troll, with lousy ability to make accurate predictions.

All signs point to the next breakthrough as being some form of magnesium taking the place of Lithium.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/07/20140725-kyoto.html

In terms of criteria air pollutants (CO, NOx, SO2, PM2.5, PM10), it's certainly true that modern cars are cleaner, even an F150. But that 150 gets 12 mpg, less than half of the U.S. average mpg for new cars. Since climate change is a thing, since automobiles are collectively a significant emitter of CO2, and since the F150 emits twice the CO2 per miles as an average new car, and since those average new cars also emit small amounts of those criteria air pollutants, no a 2011 F150 is not a green car.

Then you just slip into some strange piece of climate change denier and anti-tax zealot. There's no question that the impacts of climate change are systemic, pervasive, and real. Parts of Miami and Norfolk VA are under water during high tide. Hell, there are island nations preparing to no longer exist. Somehow, these "local" disasters are hand-waved, along with the hurricanes, droughts, floods, etc. But you call high gas taxes ruinous for the economy and claim that they have no impact on the environment, despite the facts that (a) most Western European nations have high gas prices, (b) most have higher mpg fleet averages, and (c) most have economies that are functioning just fine.

We get it. Regardless of your actual age, you behave like the old Brits referenced in the summary. That doesn't warrant a 5: interesting, except that it's interesting that old British-type dudes who are entirely wrong on the science and implications of climate change (and foolish about tax policy) are on slashdot.

Ford (and maybe others) have suggested that an E30 blend would allow them to make significantly more efficient engines due to the strong anti-knock effect of ethanol, particularly when used with direct injection.

Links as I find them

Ford/Ballard partnership in 2007 to build plug-in hydrogen/electric

Efficiency information was there, I guess the dumbed-down article linked from the post didn't feel like including it. This link (that was in TFA) has much more interesting details:

http://www.greencarcongress.co...

Summary is, not only does it have 42% efficiency (for reference, efficient DI gas engines are about 35%, and diesel about 40%), it allows for a lighter, simpler engine with reduced cooling and lubrication requirements. Higher efficiency, lower weight, fewer moving parts all just generally contribute to a lower TCO, which would be a great thing, as series hybrids are still not particularly cheap (at least without their current subsidies)...

This has been studied extensively as well. While specific chemistries have their own pollution issues, most EV batteries are made in Japan, Korea and the U.S., with relatively strong pollution controls. There is general agreement that the manufacturing impact is relatively small compared to the operating costs of both electric and gasoline cars.

It's easy to be skeptical of electric vehicles until you realize just how bad even the best gasoline cars are. All those tailpipe emissions are making you and the people around you sick. All the money you spend on gas goes back to the oil companies, and you know how they treat the environment... Not mention all the motor oil, frequent maintenance and potential breakdowns, and subconscious stress induced by the constant engine noise in a gas car. Whereas EVs are perfectly silent, never smell like gas or exhaust, have no routine mechanical maintenance and far fewer parts to break. And powering it with grid electricity costs between 1/3 and 1/5 of what a 35mpg car costs in gas, coming from power plants which are under constant pressure to improve their emissions. Or just put solar panels on your house and be carbon neutral.

Actually, large temperature increases over a short period of time (decades or centuries) isn't at all unprecedented:

http://www.greencarcongress.co...

Ferret

Shoving a spike through my gas tank is not a guaranteed fire. An environmental incident, maybe, but certainly not a guaranteed fire.

Puncturing a LiIon battery is a fire almost every time.

Maybe (though I'm skeptical), but no one has died from a punctured battery in a Tesla yet due to the firewall design. Each cell is wrapped in a gel that reacts in the presence of fire to cool down the pack and to harden into a material with low conductivity to heat. You can read more about the very interesting design here.

Sadly, you can't say the same for a gas tank, and punctured tank fires can get very energetic, very fast. Just ask the families of any number of Jeep Grand Cherokee owners, thanks to an unshielded plastic tank anchored close to the rear.

It's not impossible for an electric vehicle to catch fire due to the battery, but there's less that burns easily without gas & oil, and a more careful design like Tesla's allows you to safely bring the car to the side of the road and exist first. The only people to have died in an incident where an electric vehicle's battery system caught fire most likely did so from the force of impact.

Hell, that's another nod for Tesla, because one of the three fires that got so much press involved some drunk idiot driving through a concrete wall into a tree. The man walked away just fine. (Or more ran away to flee the cops and asked Tesla to expedite the replacement. However, being bought by total douches is no sign your car isn't safe.)

it's a hydraulic hybrid. hydraulic fluid over nitrogen in accumulators. http://www.greencarcongress.com/2013/01/psabosch-20130122.html Parker Hannifin has these already on the road in refuse trucks where they achieve a 45% improvement in fuel consumption the sources should be ashamed

You made references as if I was in Europe. I'm not. Read the first two letters of my name, or my sig for a better hint of where I am.

Heh, talk about coincidence- I'm in Fairbanks. In any case, I didn't want to make any allegations. As far as I knew you had an unhealthy obsession with Harry Potter, or 'AK' were your initials. I normally pay no real attention to sigs.

After that, let me let you in on a little secret. I'd bet there are more PV panels per capita in Alaska than Nevada.

I know of 2 installs here in Fairbanks. I'm willing to bet there's a lot more down in Nevada, even per capita, though the remoteness and low population density which makes our electricity bloody expensive makes PV attractive here, at least in the summer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_consumption The EU has more population and lower oil consumption. Thus savings measures will have a greater effect in the USA than Europe. Thus, EVs *should* be adopted in the US before Europe.

You live in Alaska and you don't know that there are more uses for oil than simply burning it in automobiles? I use approximately equal measures in my truck and house! If I had a family and the house was occupied more I'd be seriously looking at wood.

In any case:
Fewer cars? False. Though if you include 'all' 4+ wheel vehicles, we take the lead again(though it's still around 75% as many vehicles per capita).
Fewer miles? 14k km(9k miles), vs ~15k miles, though latest DOT is closer to 13k. So about 50% more. Your earlier assumption of 8k km was therefore only slightly above HALF of what the statistics actually say about average driving over in Europe, and is still less than if you misstated and meant miles. Plus Americans are driving less as well.
Better Economy: True, but I never disagreed with you there. On average, US vehicles use 32% more fuel. Still, Europe averaged €1.59/liter vs USA's $3.85. A US gallon is 3.79L, And 1 Euro =$1.28. Making European gas $7.71/gallon. Adjusting for the average superior mileage of European vehicles, they're still falling behind at $5.84/gallon equivalent. Raise prices that much and Americans drive less.

Again: My statement was merely trying to state that EV adoption should be quicker over in Europe.

1, The battery is the single thing that drives the cost of an EV higher than a traditional gasoline vehicle.
2. An EV driven less doesn't need as large of a battery.
3. A denser average population also means that potential charge points are also more common.
4. The cost of fuel is far higher in Europe

Conclusion: Small EVs should be quite popular over there(if they were 'almost' economical in the USA), but they're not, so they're not really that close yet.

Most of the land in Alaska has no access to any utilities at all.

True; though if you want water it's more 'dig a well' or 'drive into town once a week/month to fill up a big tank in the back of your truck' and most of our population IS collected around population centers where utilities(at least electricity) is available.

Still, just to fact check:
Alaska: .1 MWp. 723k people, .00014 MWp/person. Only 10 registered installs?.

... selling each one at a net loss.

False.

Err, no. Those figures are just estimates.

... selling each one at a net loss.

False.

"What is we ran the exhaust alongside some materials like this"

you mean like this:
http://www.gentherm.com/page/automotive-0
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=107768&p=irol-newsArticle_print&ID=1326140&highlight=
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/08/bmwthermal-20110830.html

or this:
http://www.serdp.org/Program-Areas/Energy-and-Water/Energy/Conservation-and-Efficiency/EW-1651
http://www.navysbir.com/10_3/8.htm
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012SPIE.8377E..15S

The problem is usually in actually getting that level of total conversion efficiency. By the time you take all of the efficiency chain fractions into account, you're far below the theoretical 15% (which only occurs at peak, steady conditions).

and I haven't read the article linked, but I have read the NHTSA press release.

First of all, the 2025 MPG is augural -- the NHTSA is statutorily prohibited from setting standards more than five model years in the future. Secondly, the numbers of 49mpg is based on their estimate of the maximum achievable fleet-wide technology. The 2025 number is a *projection* of the requirement the NHTSA estimates that they will propose sometime around 2020.

A better link is:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/08/nhtsaepa-20120828.html

90% is too conservative. Brushless DC motors (the sort you'd pair with a VFD in any electric car) are pushing 96%: http://www.ti.com/ww/en/motor_drive_and_control_solutions/motor_control_type_brushless_dc_BLDC.htm. Lithium Ion battery efficiency is, depending on your source, 95% or 97-99%. So your 27% figure could be 34%. More importantly, since you have a drivetrain capable of driving the car at highway speeds in pure electric mode (something current parallel hybrids lack), a series hybrid could potentially be cheaper to operate if charged at night, and you can recoup more energy through regenerative braking.

Quit whining: Inifinti has got you covered.

Don't get me wrong on this, because I think all the variety in the market is great, and I love having choices, and I was really looking forward to buying a Prius and doing fun stuff with it. (This was before Volt was available.) But:

I did recently buy a car, and did the math on a few, and gasoline prices have to go really high to break even. One issue, really a good thing, is that efficient gasoline cars are already past the TCO node where the cost of gasoline = cost of rest. They've started down the path of diminishing returns for fuel efficiency. That's one reason the cost premium of a hybrid or electric hurts so much.

In my case, Prius beats Matrix when gasoline averages something like $7/gal, over the life of the car. I didn't expect that to happen, so I picked Matrix.

You may be right, we may get to $7/gal, even beyond, but here's why I dodn't expect gasoline to get a whole lot more expensive than $5/gal (2009$):

There are a number of fuel technologies waiting in the wings when gasoline gets that expensive, which the oil companies will resurrect and improve. There are a lot of neat, new fuel technologies, but don't forget that there are also old standbys, industrially proven processes, for fuel synthesis from coal and natural gas. They've been more expensive than drilling, and they're capital-intensive, so oil companies aren't going to build plants on a whim, but they're not outrageously expensive.

That's in the medium term. In the short term, sure, oil is volatile, so there will be price spikes.

In the long term, I'm looking forward to all kinds of neat synthetic fuel technologies based on all kinds of energy sources. An estimate of $3/gal + CO2 capture for electrolytic synthetic fuel, while it may be optimistic, shows the scale of the possibilities for post-fossil liquid fuel. We don't really know how much industrial atmospheric CO2 capture will cost, yet, though.

Anyway, the point being, fuel may never get much more expensive, despite how things look. Hybrids and electrics have a bright future, but it lies along the path of overall cost reduction.

I fully expect my next car to be a turbine-electric, like the old Capstone demo. Microturbines and electric drivetrains will get cheaper. There's no fundamental reason I know why they can't be cheaper than piston cars; piston engines are just, for now, very well established, finely tuned, efficient technology.

Not big at all:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/01/kspg-20120111.html

BTW, 30kW is still an overkill for a car, which already has a full-size battery and an electric motor. It's perfectly fine to let the battery deplete, as long as it gets you to the destination.

Many of the "diesel performance" guys seem to take glee in producing large amounts of diesel smoke when modifying their rigs.

A quick google/youtube search of "diesel smoke" will turn up lots of hits of people installing "smoke switches", purposefully "smoking" people, etc. Crazy!

There also was some research on particulate emissions on highways which found that gasoline engines have likely been underestimated in the amount of black carbon they emit, particularly ultra fine emissions. These emissions can also be particularly harmful since they are so easily absorbed into the blood stream and body.

New real-time measurements suggest that black carbon emissions from light-duty gasoline vehicles are significantly underestimated

Burning stuff to produce energy is harmful on a large number of levels - yet so many people are resistant to change since the full costs are rarely "paid for" by the people who benefit the most from it.

from press release it is clear, that the plant is not for plug in hybrids market ( and the possible answer - is low quality,which in below the current plugin batteries ). For buses and for grid storage - molten salt batteries are preferred ( because materials are much more abundant and cheaper and for these applications the biggest problems of molten salt batteries ( high temperature ) could be of less significance than in cars ). There are examples of such uses http://asmoronurhadi.blogspot.com/2011/03/tindo-worlds-first-solar-electric-bus.html and http://engineering.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/2011/03/11/so-what-battery-technology-powers-our-electric-bus/ etc, there are new developments http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/low-temperature-molten-salt-battery-ten.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/11/sumitomo-2011111.html in this field, which could make molten salt batteries even more attractive. and if to consider, that lithium reserves are quite limited - mass production of low quality batteries seems a strange idea. I can't say for any good reasons for RUSNANO except they need to spend huge money on something ( they have a big budget and just few mostly idiotic projects )- it is moronic organization which is run by the man who put Russia into poverty in 90s due to badly designed reforms and any degree of idiotism could be expected, but what drives Chinese in this venture is an intresting question. It might turn out, that both sides are driven by bureaucratic logic and thus the project has no real value.

Well from just making Energy Star compliant devices (Which is cake to do) GE earned itself about $200 million. . http://eyeonfreedom.com/index.php/whirlpool-parlays-obama-green-tax-credits-into-zero-tax-liability/

Here's another $25.5 Million for batteries.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/01/taxcred-20100109.html

This is from 2007, where they got a net profit of $250 million for BUILDING wind turbines. Just building them, not to mention the money they'll make when they're actually in use. They get a tax break on the energy output ast well.
http://www.progressivefuture.org/media-center/news-we-can-use/ge-says-tax-incentive-for-wind-power-pays-for-itself

Here's an article where GE tells congress that if they don't extend green credits they'll take jobs elsewhere
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/09/15/ge-extend-clean-energy-tax-credits-or-well-go-to-germany-china/

All in all, GE receives quite a lot in tax credit in the US for green subsidies every year. Now, is it the only thing they do to avoid tax burden? Absolutely not, but it is a significant part of the equation. I can't find the total, but I believe it's in the hemisphere of about a billion dollars a year in tax credits that GE gets off of tax credits. Considering they profited $5.1B in the US, you've already knocked out over half their tax liability.

The only thing the electric car threatens is 160 billion dollars of income every year for the 2 billion barrels of oil we wouldn't have to import for finished motor fuel, if 2/3 of the country switched to electric. There's also the terror of reliable electric drive trains, fewer moving parts, and the closure of tens of thousands of gas stations.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html

Current batteries for PHEVs could store the energy for driving the national average commute—about 33 miles round trip a day—so the study presumes that drivers would charge up overnight when demand for electricity is much lower.

Researchers found that in the Midwest and East, there is sufficient off-peak generation, transmission and distribution capacity to provide for all of today’s vehicles if they ran on batteries.

However, in the West, and specifically the Pacific Northwest, there is limited extra electricity because of the large amount of hydroelectric generation that is already heavily utilized, and increasing electricity from hydroelectric plants is difficult.

We were very conservative in looking at the idle capacity of power generation assets. The estimates didn’t include hydro, renewables or nuclear plants. It also didn’t include plants designed to meet peak demand because they don’t operate continuously. We still found that across the country 84 percent of the additional electricity demand created by PHEVs could be met by idle generation capacity.
        —Michael Kintner-Meyer, PNNL [DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory]

The study also looked at the impact on the environment of an all-out move to PHEVs. The added electricity would come from a combination of coal-fired and natural gas-fired plants. Even with today’s power plants emitting greenhouse gases, the overall levels would be reduced because the entire process of moving a car one mile is more efficient using electricity than producing gasoline and burning it in a car’s engine...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout

Though the term did not enter popular use in the U.S. until the California electricity crisis of the early 2000s, outages had indeed occurred previously. The outages were almost always triggered by unusually hot temperatures during the summer, which causes a surge in demand due to heavy use of air conditioning. However, in 2004, taped conversations of Enron traders became public showing that traders were purposely manipulating the supply of electricity, in order to raise energy prices.

The DoE has stated that most of the Eastern Seaboard could support the energy requirements of every single car used for commuting today, without any changes to transmission or power production, as long as the cars are charged at night.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html

"Carbon fluoride batteries have been around since the 1970s, featuring high energy density, high temperature performance, and shelf life. However, they have suffered from limited power capability and reduced low temperature performance." link

No, you be the to understand the laws of thermodynamics. It does not matter how many steps there are. It matters what the total efficiency is.

The battery is not the "direct" storage of electricity (no such thing really exists). It is the storage of electricity in the form of lithium fuel. Hydrogen fuel cells (as well as other fuel cells) merely mean we take apart the battery before use and put it back together again when we need it. Capacitors might work, but they have very low energy density, and are expensive.

Natural gas and oil are renewable resources if you use carbon dioxide from the air as the source. Why don't you see them as renewable?

Hydrogen is silly, because of its ridiculously low energy density. The best way to store hydrogen is in the form of gasoline. The thing is that synthetic gasoline is really the only way to power all our cars without replacing them all.

And by the way, that original post was not sarcasm. Using renewable energy to synthesize oil completely eliminates batteries, fuel cells, and a lot of other nonsense from the equation. You'll have to do it anyway to make plastics and other oil-based products. Fortunately, some folks are working on it. The only fuels which can really fully compete with oil are aluminum, silicon, lithium, boron, magnesium and other hydrocarbons. Zinc, iron, and some other transition metals might work, but they still can't compete with the raw power of gasoline. Even if you believe EEStor's claims, it's still got no energy density when compared to gasoline.

Actually, I found another link with more info (and some interesting comments):

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/02/gt3r-20100211.html

It looks like the flywheel itself has an integrated magnet, so it's basically a generator. Clever, and means it doesn't need a mechanical connection, so gimbals would work.

Though it also looks like it does not in fact use gimbals... may just use some sort of spring suspension?

This assumes we have no complaint with the design of the truck itself. Being overrun happens in cases where the squashed person is not at fault (and I note that the pedestrian in this accident was unable to present her side of the story; do we have an account from a disinterested party?) I had heard that safety skirts were required in Europe to prevent exactly this accident, when I googled for "europe trucks safety skirts", I found this:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/04/aerodynamic-hea.html
and here:
http://trailer-bodybuilders.com/mag/trucks_outside_frame_avoids/
Apparently, they can also add significant fuel savings.
As to whether this is reasonable, I note that unmarked, unbarricaded open manholes are considered an actionable problem in this country.

The Prius, which blows away the Jetta TDI's CO2 and other emissions ratings while having more interior room, wasn't nominated.

Sounds great except the 2010 winner was the Audi A3 TDI and the Prius WAS in the competition as was the Honda Insight. That's two years running for diesels from Volkswagon.

A mass-market SULEV diesel is still a long way away.

By long way away you mean possibly 2010?

And to get there will almost certainly involve some PITA features, such as urea injection or regularly-replaced particulate filters.

Refilling the urea tank once every 10-15,000 miles is a pain? Umm... sure. Whatever.

They will be there

It is not a technical problem. There are already diesel cars with a start/stop mechanism. There are small cars with small diesel engines. The real problem is price. Diesel engines are a little bit more expensive. Hybrid components make it even more expensive. Nothing a little bit of subsidy can not solve.

That and the fact that most producers are trying to catch up to Toyota that already is in its third generation of hybrid cars.

OK, I was referring to the ICE plus electric kind. They do make an alternative, the hydraulic hybrid boost (and/or complete hydraulic drive), that is already out there in some city delivery trucks and buses. It captures braking force and pressures it, then it adds the boost needed to get going again from a stop. Does it loads cheaper than the electric "regenerative braking" version. Now these sorts of hybrids I can see being useful in a number of scenarios, heck, most vehicles could use it. That's really the big waste in stop and go urban driving, all that starting and stopping inertia. It's fairly efficient in recovery, easily as good as or superior to the electric kind, also easier for the manufacturers to get into, hydraulic and air brakes are by far and away the most common now anyway. Some info, various ideas, random google selection

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/10/parker-20091018.html

http://machinedesign.com/article/hydraulic-hybrids-boost-fuel-economy-1012

http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/market-insight-top.pag?docid=6752777&ctxixpLink=FcmCtx7&ctxixpLabel=FcmCtx8

As to the electric generator trailer and the electric vehicle, pretty much doable today at a normal entry level ICE vehicle budget. They make kits now to convert real common vehicles (as in by used and cheap to start the project with), like ford rangers or chevy s-10s (some sedans but I forget which ones now they recommend, I am in favor of smaller pickups over sedans for electric vehicles, they can haul the weight better and still have useable cargo and room space). One just needs then a normal landscaper type lightweight steel mesh framed trailer, the kind you see people towing that have a riding lawnmower on them and a few tools, etc, home depot or wherever special, relatively cheap, the generator, can be cheap to expensive, just a judgement call there, some u-bolts to clamp the thing down over the balance point on the trailer axle, add a starter battery on the nose for the down weight needed for attachment, and maybe some additional fuel tank action, etc then sill room for cargo. Probably need to make your own jumper cable thing, not that hard, to connect to the vehicle charge point. Now I am *guessing*, but I would bet you could just about get real close to a new prius price, and have pure electric instead with the genny trailer doing it this way.

  You are basically just trading the cash you would have put into an advanced battery system, that is *still* limited, into a more affordable generator system for the once in awhile long trip, and then just having a modest battery system instead. Which also has the benefit of as battery tech advances, you can buy into it easier and cheaper, because you just don't need that many batteries total.

I even noted around a six (to ten) grand NEV modular hybrid type thing that could be assembled completely in one trip at my local home depot before. Not exactly a commuter experience, but you can see the potential there is real close now to this being affordable, the vehicle itself just needs to be a little more realistically a car, say add five more grand to it to get it out of the NEV class, then do the trailer idea with it.

http://slashdot.org/~zogger/journal/207291

There is laboratory proven - and efficient - technology of converting CO2 (from factories' chimneys) into metane. Technology was developed by prof. Dobieslaw Nazimek. They are trying to implement it in large scale, at the cost about USD 200M per one factory like carbon energy plant. There are 2 main problems: cleaning fumes and finding brave investor.

You assume that gas will remain at it's current price. This is wish thinking.

The battery is laminated lithion-ion, not from golf carts, slated to be at 80% after 7 years or 50k miles. Given that the car is going to cost 25-30k, I doubt it will cost more than 5k to recycle the batteries, and by then, you may get extended range as a nice bonus with new battery tech.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/05/aesc-lithium-io.html

http://www.ecoworld.com/fuels/electric-car-cost-per-mile.html

Based on AESCs testing, the cells will retain more than 80% capacity after 7 years, including 70,000 km (43,496 miles).

9.2 kWh pack recharges in 15 minutes time. This truly could be a game changer in EV-battery technology.

Full detail on the battery tech:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/05/aesc-lithium-io.html

Unless you're driving a car that already uses regenerative braking

True. If you're one of the 0.3%* of people who drive an electric vehicle, you may lose out.

*: Estimated based on most recently available sales figures, those for 2006, in which 54,000 electric vehicles were sold in Europe compared to 15.4 million cars overall. Later years may have had higher proportions electric, but earlier years undoubtedly had lower and those cars are mostly still on the road.

turbo-diesels are dropped from the lineup

Here is a perfect example of it. Turbo diesels are particularly useful where high torque is needed, like small vans or trucks or utility vehicles. It is a dream power plant for those applications. Yet, when Ford decides to bring the Transit Connect, they drop the 1.8l Duratorq Diesel engine and substitute it with a 2.0l gas engine. Here is a relevant quote on the subject from greencarcongress.com:

Rather than the 1.8-liter Duratorq diesel engines featured in the Transit Connect in Europe, the version headed for North American offers a 2.0-liter, four-cylinder gasoline engine and automatic transmission. The North American version of the Transit Connect delivers fuel economy estimated at 19 mpg US city and 24 mpg US highway. The 66 kW (88 hp) version of the 1.8L Duratorq on the European cycle delivers 30 mpg US (7.9L/100km) city and 40.6 mpg US (5.8L/100km) highway.

Here we go again.

Hmm, actually there isn't much wrong with Ford and GM - if anything. The trouble is that many states encouraged eastern car makers to set up factories in the US offering them huge (hundreds of millions and very low tax rates) subsidies and now everyone is wondering why there is over capacity.

The lack of demand was finally brought on by the banking system collapsing due to a real-estate bubble. People who wanted to buy cars, simply could not get finance. You certainly can't blame that on the car makers and everyone is suffering from that - Japannese production is off by 40% too.

Here is a good run down of the many years of pork offered to Japannese and Korean car makers, at the expense of the incumbents:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-parker/transplant-automakers-get_b_150804.html

and here is an old one from 2006:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/11/hyundai_request.html

The problem is that current batteries are expensive, and horrible for the environment. For modest expense proven efficiency advantages are provided by simply changing the aerodynamics of the truck: http://www.freightwing.com/ http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/11/study_improveme.html

Actually, a few Formula 1 teams are adopting a flywheel solution to implement KERS (Kinetic Energery Recovery System) for the upcoming 2009 season.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/11/second-major-f1.html

From memory, BMW and Ferrari have opted for different technology though.

Actually, more than 50%.