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Why on earth would you need a 600 horsepower engine to charge a battery? The electric portion is a cheap way to boost the HP to over 800 without designing a new engine.

No. A car that costs the better part of a million dollars can have any engine it wants. The car has electric motors because they have a better power/weight ratio than gas engines, an advantage maximized by a relatively small battery. It has just enough electrics to take the top spot in the 0-60 list and the rest is gas for the energy density. Each time battery energy density goes up, the electric/gas ratio will go up until the gas motor disappears completely, with a huge weight saving in motor, transmission and support systems.

Until they can make a 1000+ HP electric motor that still has range, ICE engines will still be faster.

Electric horsepower isn't the issue, the P90D already comes in a 762 HP. Range is the issue, which is the only reason the Porsche 918 is not all-electric. A secondary issue is cost: huge engineering resources beyond the power plant are required to create a street legal production car that is stable at nearly 300 MPH. I do not doubt that Tesla will go after the top speed record eventually, after all Musk also makes rockets, don't you know? But 0-60 matters a lot more in the real market, and so does price. The P90D costs ten times less than the Veyron and six times less than the 918. That's an awful lot of fast for the buck.

"The point is, the fastest production cars are now electric."

Uh, no. With a top speed of only 218 mph the Porsche 918 it doesn't even make the top ten fastest production cars.

Fastest production cars by acceleration. Porsche 918 is number one. Top two are hybrids. Number four is the all-electric Model S.

By the way, this Datsun 1200 does 0-60 in 1.8 seconds. Gas engines are well on their way to the museum.

Yes, let's go for a long cross country journey in a drag racer

OH WAIT that would be RIDICULOUS

That's not a drag car, this is a drag car.

FYI, drag racers are operated on 1/4 mile strips, not full-on racing tracks.

I still want to see American History Channel's Top Gear race a Tesla Roadster vs this guy's homebrew:
http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/

My guess is that the White Zombie, while having a much smaller battery pack and thus a lot less range, beats the Tesla in the quarter mile.

Sure, you can slap a Tesla-looking body on a golf cart or Nissan Leaf, and there's your good-looking electric car.

Oh wait you want performance too? No way in hell right now, not on an electric car - and you may never be able to drive one out of the showroom.

Maybe if you build it yourself from an old car like an AW11 MR2 or Porsche 944 - look at the White Zombie dragster project for example. By doing this you're basically avoiding the need to pay for modern safety standards - this allows for a light, small, good looking and affordable car.

Actually, LiPo batteries have way best weight to power ratio, and are used A LOT in RC cars. Downside is that anything below 10c temperature and their output capability drops very fast, and i mean reaally fast. You basicly have to get them above 10c to be useable. Here in Finland, that can be as much as 45c difference in ambient and required. (-35c)

LiPo can provide 8mAh 20C / 40-50C peak in under 500gr. That's more power than required to start your car. NiMh maxes out at around 60A before voltage drop, even the very best, ultra expensive cells. Normal car battery can do about 40A, and it's quite normal for car battery to go down to 8-9V when starting. A 8mAh 50c peak LiPo can provide *400A* for 30seconds without over heating, or voltage drop.

The total energy is not the greatest feat of LiPo, but the voltage stability. It stays up in voltage almost until it's empty, the moment you notice degrading performance it's time to stop and charge, or you damage it.

Another downside of LiPo, why it DEFINITELY is not going to end up in cars, is their volatility. Puncture the casing and you are going to have one hell of a fire, or even an explosion. Charging is just as dangerous, you need certain precautions with LiPo when charging. Also run the cells too low, you might have them exploding on your hands as well. All LiPo cells have to be carefully balanced (when doing manually with multimeter, to a 0.01V accuracy or better)

Here's an quite regular LiPo: https://www.hobbycity.com/hobbycity/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=9963
5mAh, 40C constant / 50C peak, or in other words 200-250A discharge rate, 14.8V and 566gr.
50mAh, 2 000A discharge rate in 5.6kg
Compare that to your 60mAh, 40-60A discharge rate car battery weighing in around 20kg...
That is ROUGHLY 4 times the energy density and 400 times the discharge capability without any voltage drop off.

If doing EV for drag racing:
That 5.6Kg battery would be able to provide you 29.6kW for 1.5minutes
Proper 148V battery (40S10P) would give you 296kW for 1.5minutes

And the Zippy ain't even the best batteries around...

Checkout http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php for some EV drag racing.

Diesel history
A short primer

Setting aside the whole ability to use WVO to power diesel engines for the moment, the main reason why diesels are so lacking is Detroit.

Here's a quick history lessons on Diesel engines in the US.

In the late 70's and early 80's, GM turned to it's (now defunct) Oldsmobile division to produce a diesel engine. There was much pressure for this, as gasoline prices were skyrocketing at the time.

Oldsmobile then took the standard GM V8 gasoline engine body, and changed the cylinder head to incorporate fuel injectors. No changes were made to the cylinder block, and no changes were made to the torque used to hold down the head. In addition, there were no water traps added anywhere in the fuel system, and the critical, high-pressure fuel pump was chain driven.

This cheapening-out lead to numerous points of failure:

• The cylinder head would leak like a sieve due to the lack of torque holding it down against the increased pressure inside the cylinders.
• The engine block would crack, again due to the increased cylinder pressure
• Water would enter the fuel system and be taken through the fuel system, rusting the steel parts within and causing catastrophic failure
  • This was exacerbated by well-meaning owners adding anhydrous alcohol (DryGas) into the mix, which is incompatible with diesel fuel, and would eat the seals and gaskets of the engine
• Water would also be injected with the fuel charge into the cylinder, leading to misfirings
• With the above problems, the head gaskets would fail, leading to coolant and oil leak into the cylinders and causing Hydrolock, breaking push rods and crank shafts, and essentially destroying the engine entirely.
• Dealerships and mechanics were not trained in the maintenance and repair of diesel engines, leading to the one-time-use cylinder head bolts being re-used, and causing even greater catastrophic failure on "Fixed" engines.

Most after-market garages had such problems with the GM diesels that, rather than fixing the problems, they found it easier to swap out the cylinder head and fuel system and convert the engines to run on gasoline instead. Unsurprisingly, this so tarnished the reputation of diesel engines with the American public that a stigma was attached (and still exists to this day), and less than 5% of cars on US roads are diesel-powered, compared to at least 50% in Europe.

Internal Combustion vs. Electric Motors
Or Why the numbers don't compare

I noticed another reply to this post state that a 100hp electric motor is larger and heavier than the equivalent ICE engine. There is, however, a good reason for this, and it all comes down to how each measures horsepower.

• With an Internal Combustion Engine, the Horsepower rating shown is the absolute peak rating.
• With an Electric motor, the Horsepower rating shown is the CONSTANT rating.

This means that while an ICE can deliver it's rated horsepower only over a very short period of time, an electric motor can, and will, deliver it's rated horsepower continually, hour after hour, day after day. The peak rating of an electric motor can be as much as 20 times higher than it's constant load, but as electric motors are typically used more often for a continual load, that value is rarely given. This is how a "Siamese" pair of 40hp (WarP 8) 8" electric motors can drive White Zombie from 0-60mph in 2.9 seconds.

As far as all electrical or even hybrid vehicles all my experiences with them tell me a few things, they don't have the same sort of get up and go power to them that a regular vehicle has in most cases and they are terribly expensive to repair.

Hmm, your Tundra can do 0-60 in under 4 seconds, and a quarter mile in under 13? A stock Tesla roadster can http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/video/3068-tesla-roadster-sport-nedra-record-12-643-1-4-mile.html

And a 1972 Datsun converted to pure electric is even faster. 0-60 in 2.9 seconds, quarter mile in 11.5 seconds. http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/whitezombie.php

That's an awful lot of get up and go power.

As for repairs, all indications are battery electric vehicles will be much cheaper to maintain and repair, due to the much simpler design of an electric motor vs a ICE. Time will tell on that one. But with no oil to change, no air filters, no timing belts, PCV valves or catalytic converters, and only one moving part in an electric motor -- it seems a good bet.

--Woof!

Looks like Plasma Boy and his White Zombie have a competitor out there. (AFAIK, he uses hot-swappable battery packs as well, and only goes full out on the quarter mile).

(but that vehicle still isn't as practical as a gasoline vehicle, especially if gas costs $3).

Bingo. The other problem is that most people are so hung up on one of two things: 1) "it's electric therefore it's slow" (um, no), and 2) "I can't drive it to Zimbabwe and back on the weekend" (Well, no, not unless you can add a range extender module which you easily can).

The range issue seems to be the major one, because people can't handle the idea of "filling up" their car each evening when they get home instead of leaving it for 500+ kms. They don't seem to be able to look past the "plug it into your garage wall when you get out" to the "and for $2 you have a full battery".

As for people stepping in to build one, they fall into two groups, the golf buggy manufacturers who make golf carts with headlights and wind up windows and expect people to use them like cars, and the "let's make a ferrari-beating electric car to prove something to the world" types who make a car that's awesome, but costs as much as a private jet. If only these people could see that the right market is actually "people who'd buy a Toyota Corolla". Just make it go fast enough to be fun, and far enough to get them to work or drop the kids off at school, with a stop at the shops on the way home, and it'll be a perfectly good second car. They have to stop trying to build a vehicle which will do everything and take over the world, and just take baby steps to start with.

Well, in the colder parts of Canada (read: everywhere but Vancouver), there are few parking spaces *without* plugs. Not on the street mind you, but in every apartment parking lot for sure. And while Li-Ion batteries do still suffer from cold weather, they suffer much less than lead-acid batteries. And you can easily counteract that with a low-voltage battery heater.

Now, about your idling in traffic? Well, electric motors are great for idling in traffic. Because they don't need to idle like gas engines do. Electrics have all their torque available at zero RPM, so there's no such thing as stalling. Oh, and they also make kick-ass drag racers for that same reason.

Fire isn't that much of a danger. Plasmaboy got his nick name by droping a wrench onto the bus bars on his record holding drag racer EV. You have to see this scary little home brew bitch in action, 11.4 second quarter miles, wheel stands, and heaping gobs of tire smoke, all in a datsun 1200.

http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/

And when placed in a Datsun 1200, along with a pair of 8" forklift motors and a 600,000watt motor controller, it turns nto the worlds fastest electric door slammer called the White Zombie. :D

http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/reviews.php
11.466 in the quarter mile!

While the article isn't online, the same gentleman, John Wayland, was featured in this May's Car and Driver magazine. He got 4 pages worth of astonishingly positive article (C&D has a history of negative response to electric vehicles) with some excellent photos.

John's website is http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/ . There you can find videos of his latest races (and other escapades). This year he expects to be breaking into the mid-11's in the 1/4 mile. Not bad for a 1972 Datsun 1200 with no transmission powered by two modified forklift motors.

Check out the videos on the White Zombie EV drag racer site.

There's a lot of misinformation in your response as well. The EV1 was not underpowered and had full modern safety equipment. As did the RAV4 EV from Toyota, the Ford RangerEV (only sold as a fleet car), and the Chevy Silverado EV (also only sold as a fleet vehicle). The performance of the EV versions of the gas cars was identical except for range, which has been corrected since these vehicles first came out with LiIon batteries (which are much lighter with better energy density than PbA batteries). Latter version os the RAV4 EV and the EV1 took advantage of early LiIon packs to achieve 120-175 miles per charge.

Modern LiIon batteries from folks like Kokam can be recharged from empty in as little as 2 hours with high amperage chargers like the ones from Nazita Micro (http://www.manzanitamicro.com/chargers3.htm). AGM VSLA (PbA variant) batteries like the Optima Yellow Top or Excide Orbital can be dump charged (one pack to another) in a few minutes. Chargeing off a 50 amp charger from 80% DoD is about a 2 hour affair.

Electric cars ain't slow, either (http://www.nedra.com/). The fastest electric dragster out there run 8 second 1/4 miles regularly. The owner races in Arizona NHRA bracket racing competing with top fuel rail dragsters and was second int he state last year. He's looking for sponsors so he can build his sub 6 second electric dragster.

The top completely street legal electric car (with street tires on) does the 1/4 in 12.245 @ 104.50 mph (http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/videos/pir%20oct.2 2%20run%207.MOV). These are all home made conversions no less. Without access to the money and technology available to major auto manufacturers.

The Tango (http://www.commutercars.com/) may look a little funny, but it has better safety features than modern passenger cars, outperforms the Viper RT/10 and get close to 100 miles to a charge on PbA batteries. George Clooney bouight one recently.

There is really no reason that a 200-300 mile per charge EV that recharges in under 2 hours, carries 4, with all the modern safety features, and better performance than your average sedan. Other than there is no market pressure to create one.

I leave you with a little 6 minute video showcasing the amatuer EV world in all it's weird and wild glory at the Woodburn races in 2003. The original prototype Tango shows up in the second half:

http://www.deadwarrior.com/downloads/AustinEV/wood burn_2003_small.avi

Which makes it all the more fun for the electric vehicle racers when they blow your Corvette/Viper off the road. :P

Electric Mazda RX-7 vs Viper RT/10

Electric 1972 Datsun 1200 running a 12.15 1/4 mile.

Yeah, 'cause electric cars are all solar challenge style carbon fiber coffins...oh wait, no they're not:

http://www.nedra.com/

http://www.plasmaboyracing.com/videos.php