Electric Car Drag Racing

rumba writes, "The National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) exists to increase public awareness of electric vehicle (EV) performance and to encourage through competition, advances in electric vehicle technology. This organization's first big event of the year is coming up next weekend. Anybody in the Phoenix Area going to this? There's no slots on these babies. Still, I'd hate to see the utility bill."

Comments

Electric cars are really bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, electricity has to be generated by fossil fuels, or the few nukes still on line.

Electrical transmission has terrible efficiency, about 91% loss of energy in transmission. You're only getting 9% of an already poor energy conversion from fossil fuels, which is 3 times that of electric transmission.

And gasoline cars are about to see a big boost in efficiency. Honda has an electromotive car, should get 70mpg.

Electricity is very dirty, it's just that the pollution is in somebody else's back yard. Electricity is for convenience, and those who've dealt with a kerosene or propane powered refrigerator understand this.

Re:Amazing performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Street cars, yes. NHRA dragsters, um no. Look at these results. Top Fuel dragsters are faster than "jet cars" in the 1/4 mile. They burn 7 gallons of fuel in less than 4 seconds and have speeds of over 200+MPH at the finish line.

Don't get me wrong, electric toy dragsters sound like fun, but they are not THAT fast.

Not yet, anyway. Russ Wilde of evparts owns a modified mazda that can smoke a dodge viper off the line. It can do the 1/4 mile in 11.039, whick is only two hundreths slower than the '69 AMX my dad used to drag race. Russ Wilde is working on a 1000HP *street legal* racer. There's no way you can build a door-slamming gas-burner with that power, since it could never be licenced (it could not meet emissions standards). The electric will be totally legal, and have *much* better performance than the souped up cameros and their kin that you see on the street.

Re:Electric bus transportation

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can't believe that electric rail transportation is anywhere near as cost efficient as electric bus transportation."

Diesel trucks or buses burn five times as much fuel than trains for the same cargo or passengers transported per mile. Steel rolling on steel has practically zero friction, compared to rubber on concrete or asphalt.

Create an instant SuperFund site!

[Anonymous Coward]

If we had a significant number of electric cars in use,they would likly have the same accidents as other vehicles: people would run them into lakes, off the road into creeks, into each other, and so on. The problem is that batteries are full of toxic metals such as Cadmium or Lead; strong acids or bases (depending on the type), and additives. It's an inheriently dangerous technology, just like nuclear energy. Sure, you might be able to make them safer but the results of a serious accident are much worse than with diesel.

Fossil fuels not getting scarcer

[Anonymous Coward]

The once-depleted oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico have refilled themselves, and are now producing. Why, we don't know. We just don't know as much about geology as we thought we did. And this is happening in other regions.

This does shoot down the idea that oil came from dead plants and dinosaurs.

To power electric cars, we would have to burn astounding amounts of coal. Coal, among other things, contains radioactive nuclides. A coal fired plant throws off more radiation than a nuke!

The other problem with coal is the destruction of third world rain forests. The cleanest coal comes from Malaysia and Indonesia, and vast tracts of virgin rainforest will be felled to meet your fantasy.

Re:Fossil fuels not getting scarcer

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a scientist named Thomas Gold has come up with a theory that the oil fields are created by "deep boimass".... vast colonies of subsurface bacteria living deep within the earths crust.

For more info check out this article

Still, even if "fossil fuels" are not as scarce as we thought, they do make a mess of the atmosphere.

Re:Fossil fuels not getting scarcer

[Anonymous Coward]

Thomas Gold is one of those fakes that is proven wrong every time they open their mouths, but are still quoted by the press because they are "controversial".

There are many experiments that show TG is wrong, but the popular press still quotes him as if his words were gospell. Why is that? Because there is just one "scientist" saying oil doesn't have a fossil origin. He stands out from the rest. He's controversial. But he's wrong anyway.

Re:Fossil fuels not getting scarcer

[Anonymous Coward]

Also remember that we have had 20-30 years of oil left for about 80 years. There was an article in the Saturday post in the 1920s saying that we had thirty years left, and similar claims since then.

"people made wrong predictions in the past" != "oil will last forever"

What if they are wrong now and oil only lasts five years, instead of thirty?

Re:Fossil fuels not getting scarcer

[spencerogden]

I don't know if oil fields are actually filling up. (Haven't heard about this) However, the use of more powerful computers is allowing oild companies to use 3-dimensional siesmology where they used to only use 2-d. This means they can place taps more efficiently, effectivly returning production to fields thought to be dead. Also remember that we have had 20-30 years of oil left for about 80 years. There was an article in the Saturday post in the 1920s saying that we had thirty years left, and similar claims since then.

Re:Fossil fuels not getting scarcer

[mr]

>The once-depleted oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico have refilled themselves

Please post actual links to this 'fact'. As you are so confident that the oil fields are re-filling, you can post a link, can't you?

Re:Coal is worse than gasoline

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. What these guys really want is to push their dirt out on those of us who live in the country. As far as I am concerned, any power plant needed for personal transportation should be located right downtown where the distribution losses will be least-- Let them "eat their own dogfood"! We could achieve all the pollution reduction needed if we let the price of fuel rise to the point where these idiots can't drive an hour each way to get to work.

Re:Coal is worse than gasoline

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice comment. I am offended when I hear that it's OK to almost "pave" the desert with solar industrial farms but I can't take a ride out there with my jeep to look around. I guess one is more "PC" than the other.

Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

People are always saying that electric cars are so much better for the environment than gas gars. But what happens when you have to throw away those batteries full of poisonous chemicals? What happens when your car blows up and sends cloudds of pollution shooting into the sky? Exactly, environmental catastrophy! I like gas cars better anyway since I have a strange attraction to the smell of gasoline, and I sometimes like to light it on fire.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed the missing 2 myself after I posted, but it makes no difference to the discussion so I didn't think it worth posting a correction myself. (I guess the smiley indicates that you understand that anyway).

Yes I know that an internal combustion engine isn't the most efficient way of extracting power, but it is almost economically viable, with the only remaining problem being the storage of the hyrdogen.

IIRC aren't fuel cells hideously expensive - even more so for large power outputs, (And still have the storage problem as well, although reduced due to the greater efficiency requiring less volume for the same vehicle range).

(not that I wouldn't like to see fuel cell powered cars - seeing as I live in a major city and would like to breathe some clean air for a change ! ).

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know that I'd count regenerative braking as a bonus. That it is used is more an indication of the low energy density of batteries. If petrol were as expensive we would probably be doing this mechanically (eg., with a flywheel) as a braking assist to save fuel. But fuel is cheap enough that no one bothers about it.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Get real. The motor industry is extremely interested in all forms of fuel economy, high MPG sells cars. You don't see regenerative braking on combustion engines because the only realistic way to add it would be to use an electric motor based transmission, and we call those cars hybrids. If you're designing an EV from scratch, you'd add regenerative braking whatever energy density the main electron tank could hold, because it's basically built into the design for free.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehmm, when you burn hydrogen you get just water, and no C02 or hydrocarbons: O2 + 2H2 -> 2H2O. Of course with the high temperatures you might also get nitruous oxides by 'burning' the N2 in the air. You can get rid of these by using a fuel cell powered on H2, resulting in an electric car after all. Bas (he who forgot his password)

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.. Guess you failed chemistry.

Burning Hydrogen will only give water.

( 2H2 + O2 => H2O )

(The O2 comes from the air).

The only CO2 you could possibly get would come from combustion of the oil lining on the cylinder walls - and this is an absolutely tiny amount
(possibly not even measurable except for an old smoker). There is no other carbon present to make CO2.

The nitrous oxides you mention in the air intake are tiny - just the few ppm in the air coming in.
One problem with burning hyrodegn in an internal combustion engine is that the burn temperature is higher which causes a higher (but still pretty small) amount of NO2 in the *exhaust* gases. (the nitrogen comes from the air: 80% N2, 20% O2).
However this is readily cleaned up with a catalytic converter, just as for petrol engines.

P.S. Still think we should get rid of AC posting ?

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[mfarver]

>However this is readily cleaned up with
>catalytic converter, just as for petrol engines

Not true.. in petrol engines the mixture is run rich which results in lower cylinder temps and faster burns which reduce the NOx emmission. The catalytic converter "burns" the excess hydrocarbons. No one has yet invented an effective catalyst for NOx. (Honda claims to have one.. but last I heard they could not scale it to full production) Once a good NOx catalyst is available it will allow the use of "lean burn" technologies which can greatly increase the efficently of petrol engines.

That having been said 90% of the pollution caused by autos is caused by the worst 10% on the road (Mostly early 80s late 70s era cars ) Tougher enviornmental standards that force these cars off the road would do wonders but these cars are also owned by people least able to afford to replace them. A social problem that won't prove easy to solve.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Bright_Steel]

"are people who are just too poor to buy a decent car. All of those cars are tiny, uncomfortable, dangerously underpowered rolling deathtraps. "

We that is great an example of American ignorance and stereotypes that has caused us Americans to have such problems as the SUV craze. New small cars today are as safe or safer than those old big cars from 20 years ago with no ABS or other refinements of the last 20 years. They also have lower profit margins than big cars/SUV, hence the car makers FUD campaigns against small cars.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[small_dick]

when you "abstract the fuel burn" away from the vehicle, you do more than allow choice of primary fuel. you also lose weight and size restrictions. thus, your hypothetical power plant can have state of the art stacks and scrubbers that (done right) have a very low impact on the environment.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Goonie]

The current state of the art in low-pollution petrol powered cars has almost nowhere to go

Wrong. Research in to learn-burn technology, petrol-electric hybrids, and petrol-powered fuel cells continues.

2. Research on electricity based transport is advancing rapidly . . .

I haven't heard of any major advances in battery technology in years. Yes, new electronics is helping, but power density and cost are as unfavourable now as they were ten years ago.

If America (and my home country Australia for that matter) are serious about reducing greenhouse emissions the only real choice is a carbon tax (and a substantial one). That might even things up and give alternative fuels (not to mention public transport) a chance.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[SoftwareJanitor]

The motor industry is extremely interested in all forms of fuel economy

The motor industry is less interested in economy than they are in performance, or building the biggest SUV they can. Why? There is a lot more profit in building vehicles like that than there is in building the low-end cars that get good fuel economy.

high MPG sells cars

You must be from Europe. Almost nobody thinks that way in the US. The only people in the US who buy the high MPG cars like the Geo Metro are people who are just too poor to buy a decent car. All of those cars are tiny, uncomfortable, dangerously underpowered rolling deathtraps.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[SoftwareJanitor]

Most of the cheap low end cars that are sold over here which get the high MPG don't offer any of the ABS or other refinements of the last 20 years. Why? Because they are cheap, low end cars that the auto makers don't want to put the good stuff into, precisely because they aren't that profitable.

The micro cars aren't just in competition for safety against old big cars of 20 years ago anyway, they also have to compete against the mid size and larger cars of today and against the road monster SUVs. No amount of ABS brakes or airbags are going to negate the fact that if a car like a Metro gets hit by a 6000 pound SUV (let alone a semi trailer rig) doing 65 miles an hour, the Metro is going to look like it was a tin can crushed by a 200lb man's shoe.

Your argument still does nothing against the fact that the high MPG cars are dangerously underpowered either. My wife used to have a Ford Festiva with a dinky littly 1.2L four cylinder engine and a 5-speed manual transmission. On a short freeway onramp, no matter how hard you pounded the thing through the gears there was no way you could get it up much above 45 MPH to merge into traffic. Dangerous, and scary as hell when you have 18-wheelers bearing down in your rear view mirror. It is my opinion that any car that can't get up to 65 by the end of one of those ramps without being a major ordeal is dangerously underpowered and should be banned.

You also completely ignore the fact that most people don't want something like a Metro because they are just too small and uncomfortable for most people here in the US. Automakers don't really have to engage in that much of a FUD campaign to sell people on larger cars. That is what people want, and has been since before there really were any small cars. The American love affair with the big car dates back to the 1930s when there was no such thing as an econobox (the Model T was dead by then) or SUVs either.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Straker Skunk]

Batteries are usually designed with the possibility of recycling. That's why used car batteries (the regular kind) don't present an environmental hazard in disposal; auto garages already know what to do with them.

As for cars blowing up, remember, real life isn't like you see in the movies. It doesn't happen that often! Nowhere near enough to present an environmental issue.

The real environmental hit of electric cars are the power plants, which have to work harder to feed them when they're plugged in. So if your city is powered by a coal-fired plant, and everyone gets an electric car, the air ain't getting any cleaner.

But the advantage, then, is that-- in programmer's parlance-- the power source has been abstracted away from the car engine. So you can change the power source's implementation (say, from coal energy to wind energy) without breaking the rest of the system. Unlike the internal combustion engine, where the power source (gasoline) and application logic (engine) are so closely intertwined that it's impossible to port to any other architecture.

Methinks, however, even better than electric power for transportation is hydrogen power. You don't need super-high-tech batteries to power it, just armored fuel tanks, and an efficient way of producing the stuff. The exhaust products are (theoretically) just CO2+H20. (IIRC, however, since some nitrous oxides inevitably get into the air intake, you do get some icky exhaust hydrocarbons too, but nothing overwhelming)

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[dublin]

Actually, electric cars would be considerably worse for the environment than our current IC engines. Remember, they're not zero-emitting, they're just remote-emitting, and that's after losing most tof the power generated to the hideous inefficiencies of the electric's systems.

I know some of you folks love to bash gasoline engines, and no, I don't think we'll use them forever myself - although I'm betting it's >50 years before we see a dent in thier dominance.

But you have to recognize that technology has improved the performance, efficiency, and cleanliness of gasoline engines by several orders of magnitude, while electrics remain steadfastly immune to technological progress. Remember that gasoline engines weren't given a ghost of a chance at the turn of the century (that would be the 1901 one) - *everyone* knew that steam and/or electric would trounce the stinking, noisy IC motors. But what happened is instructive to all students of technology: the gasoline engine, for all its faults, became the best option - to the point that its competition quit trying. This happened not because of a conspiracy by Detroit and the Oils, but because unlike other powerplants, the ungainly IC engine continues to respond well to technological attention, and seems to show no sign of slowing down its progress anytime soon. At tthe same time, we have only proven that electric cars are as unviable as ever, and that even spending ridiculously high sums on them results in vehicles that are still seriously sub-par compared to their gasoline eqiuvalents. Electric cars are scarcely more viable today than they were in 1920.

Today's gasoline engines are remarkably efficient and clean, with emissions that are effectively zero after the catalyst is warmed up. Today's running emissions would be off the bottom of the scale for cars of just twenty-five years ago. Further, efficency is now remarkable - Honda's new (normally aspirated!) S2000 roadster has a specific output better than many *race cars* of the 1960's!

And don't forget that we don't have excess electricity generating capacity out there burning a hole in our pocket, either. Most utilities are seriously encouraging conservation as a method of delaying the construction of new power plants, which is becoming horrendously expensive due to new environmental rules. Even if the electric car side of the equation were solved, it would likely be a very long time before electrics became economically viable as an alternative, since sharply increased demand would soon cause skyrocketing electric rates. We've gotten very, very good at producing, distributing, and using fossil fuels, and you don't replace that infrastructure overnight.

Oh, and don't forget that there is very little energy lost in transporting fossil fuels, but considerable loss even in the best high-voltage transmission lines we can make...

Electric isn't likely to be the answer anytime soon. (Pure electric, that is - hybrids may be sort of viable sometime soon, although they'll always cost more.)

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[Silicon_Knight]

You didn't quite balance the equation okay either, it's 2H2 + O2 --> 2H2O. 8-)

Also, you are still using a combustion, which has efficiencies limited by a thermodynamic Carnot cycle. If you took the hydrogen and pumped it into a FUEL CELL, the reaction is far more effective (theoratical limit is actually a 100%)
Fuel cells are already in use for power
generation, notable example is the space shuttle.

And, yes, abstracting the power source can mean more cleaner power generation methods (such as wind, tidal, nuclear, hydroelectric, etc).

-=- SiKnight

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[fooyen]

Not only is power generation more efficient en masse, but electric cars can also employ regenerative braking, a system in which the vehicle is slowed by the magnetic drag of the vehicle's motors, thus converting its kinetic energy, no longer wanted, into potential energy in its batteries, instead. Of course the system isn't 100% efficient (duh), but it's unspeakably better than simply throwing all that energy away by converting it into heat with break pads.

It also serves worth noting that hybrid electric vehicles can be made extremely efficient as well, even when the "hybrid" involves a traditional internal combustion engine: An engine running at a constant speed and load (or a very tight range thereof) can be fine-tuned to maximum efficiency in that target mode of operation. One of the things that makes current automotive internal combustion engines so inefficient is the wide range of conditions which they must serve.

In addition, finely-tuned engines serving an electric "drivetrain" can be made significantly smaller, simpler, and lighter-weight than their traditional counterparts, for the aforementioned reason. All in all, this makes for some dramatic increases in efficiency (I'd give figures, but I don't have my automotive engineering notes handy at the moment) without sacrificing range of travel and without completely alienating the petroleum industry.

Factor in recent advances in energy storage technology and regenerative braking, and you could have a ridiculously fuel-efficient vehicle that still ran (secondarily, primarily, or completely) on petroleum.

There was an interesting article in the March 1999 issue of Wired regarding high-performance (ie racing) electric vehicles. All of these are technologies which exist now. The only real barrier is retrofitting existing manufacturing facilities to work with a (completely) new system and getting over that intital cost hump. Until the major automakers decide that they really want to mass produce such vehicles, their costs will most likely remain prohibitive. But the automakers don't want to produce them because they cost too much now. And then there's the petroleum lobby.

There are certainly plenty of barriers, but it's feasible stuff, and worth developing, IMHO.

Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment

[PhiRatE]

Obviously a joke, or at least close, but the same argument (Electric cars are not better for the environment) has been pulled out of many hats, not just for cars but buses and trains and all sorts of things. The simple fact is that the argument doesn't hold water.

1. The current state of the art in low-pollution petrol powered cars has almost nowhere to go. Further research is giving fewer and fewer returns in methods of making mobile petrol-based propulsion systems cleaner. On the other hand, factory scale plants using both petrol and other forms of raw material such as coal have been making large advances, with many by-products of the electricity production going into creating other useful products.

2. Research on electricity based transport is advancing rapidly, greater efficiencies in all areas are constantly being achieved, with new software able to micro-manage power consumption, newer battery methods and flywheel technology offering better storage per gram, and longer life for all components.

These alone are excellent reasons why electric cars, although they may _possibly_ be less environmentally friendly right now taking into account the entire supply chain, are the future.

Their primary attractiveness as far as the environment goes is the shifting of by-products to large generation plants where the benefits of scale and space can be used to filter and reuse pollutants. They are also demonstrably quieter, and in many cases can take advantage of their electrical nature to make driving as we know it today more fuel efficient (brakes tied into flywheels mean that stop-go traffic would cost far less in energy terms, and wear out your brake-pads less).

I'm looking forward to it :)

Electric cars produce **MORE** pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical "not in my backyard" thinking by the tree huggers. If there's no soot coming out of the tailpipe, they proclaim their vechicle to be "clean". All they've done is concentrate the emmissions from all electric vehicles at the local power plant. Now before anyone talks about how the plant is more efficient in the fuel it burns, all that efficiency and more is lost in the conversion from electrical to chemical energy, charging the car's battery (woefully inefficient, most power makes heat and gas), and upon the conversion from electrical to mechanical energy (more wasted energy). How will you heat cars in the winter with no warm engine to get heat from? Resistive heating? Bye bye battery. And I can drive 300 miles in my car, gas up, and drive 300 more. How does this work for electric? Drive 50 miles, charge 8 hours, drive 50 more? No thanks. next, my car lead-acid says 5 deep discharge cycles and it's toast. Electric cars will do this regularly (WTF?!). Got some new battery tech for these cars I don't know about? Cadmium? Mercury? Lithium? (All far more toxic than lead). And do you think the electric grid can handle the power demand if everyone switched to electric cars? We'll need more power plants. Where will we build these (oil burning, coal fired, or maybe nuclear)? Another "not in my backyard" issue, right? All this is just the tip of the iceberg. Look beyone your exhaust pipe before you talk about how "clean" electric cars would be. Electric cars will CREATE more problems and pollution than they solve.

Re:Electric cars produce **MORE** pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

Now before anyone talks about how the plant is more efficient in the fuel it burns, all that efficiency and more is lost in the conversion from electrical to chemical energy, charging the car's battery (woefully inefficient, most power makes heat and gas),

No, some, not all, of that efficiency is lost in the conversion. You still get a net reduction in emissions.

Re:Electric cars produce **MORE** pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

And do you think the electric grid can handle the power demand if everyone switched to electric cars? We'll need more power plants.

"....until you reach 10 to 20 million or more EV population level, you're not going to require additional electrical generating capacity...By owners charging their electric vehicles in the evening hours (valley periods) they recieve the benefits of off-peak (typically lower) electic rates. By raising the valleys and bringing up the base load demand, the electric utility is able to more efficienty utilize its existing plant capacity. This is a remendous near-term economic benefit to our electric utilities because it represents a new market for electricity sales with no additional associated capital asset expense."

- Build your own electric vehicle, pg. 38

Re:Electric cars produce **MORE** pollution

[Anonymous Coward]

By owners charging their electric vehicles in the evening hours (valley periods) they recieve the benefits of off-peak (typically lower) electic rates.

Bwahahahaha!!!!! You mean like how the US has flat-rate unlimited use dial up connections to the net? Flat rate was created to serve a different purposes. That's why the phone companies are crying "foul", and "abuse", and "theft of service", over the people using their flat rate service to get what has become a dedicated leased line, all without paying for that priveledge. If people start sucking more power at night, don't expect to see lower off-peak rates. They'll go away faster than green meat goes out your ass.

Re:Charging Infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

So, can your get energy out of a 110v circuit? How long does it take to "download" 300 miles worth of electric energy? I know I fill up with liquid fuel in about 5 minutes. Maybe you would just swap out the batteries? That could be done in 5 minutes, I suppose.

The most obvious question...

[Anonymous Coward]

...does it run on Linux?

Re:The most obvious question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well actually ours does . . .
check out http://www.vt.edu:10021/org/hybridcar/
last year we produced the first non-OEM fuel cell hybrid. We have a network of PC-104 modules running corba. And yes the battery monitering, fuel cell system monitering, and user interface do run linux.

Honda Insight

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone out there get their hands on a Honda Insight????

Car is only slightly electric, it runs mostly on its gas engine, and gets an assist from the electric on hills and when accelerating.

Idonknow $8,000 more than a civic hatchback and only twice the gas mileage (at $1.60 a gallon it would take 400,000 miles to recoup your investment).

I'd have to be a lil greener to pony up to that LEV table.

Re:Honda Insight

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if this car came with variable profile tires we might see over 100 mpg. Seriously why hasn't someone come out with a tire that rolls easy like a roadbike tire but collapses onto more tread area when you need to corner, accelerate or deccelerate? A traction when you need it tire design could double fuel mileage.

Don't be an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

95% of a standard lead acid battery (what NEDRA people normally use) is recyclable. Furthermore, the chance of an electric car blowing up is next to nil. Besides, even if they did blow up, it would not be as big a pollution problem as the internal combustion cars....

Re:Don't be an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah after all the Hydrogen Sulfide (HS) that results from the breakdown of sulfuric acid catalyzed by iron isn't more deadly than cynide gas; oh sorry it IS more deadly than cynide. Sorry I would much rather be near a car crash with a ruptured gas tank than one where the batteries burst and spewed acid on the frame.

Moron (was Re:Electric cars produce **MORE** ...)

[Anonymous Coward]

next, my car lead-acid says 5 deep discharge cycles and it's toast. Electric cars will do this regularly (WTF?!).

No they won't. Ranges on electric cars are computed with a reduction to 50% of the total battery charge. People don't drive them until total discharge, for the very reason you mention. Before you talk about the problems with driving electric cars, you should read about how people drive them.

Re:Amazing performance

[Anonymous Coward]

If they wanted to pick a car for example that was a reasonable comparison based on price, they might have picked the Dodge Viper,for example. It will toast either the current C6 Vette (which is a much less expensive car) or a Ferrari (which is a lot more expensive) in either the 1/8 or 1/4 mile.

I don't know about the TZero, but Russ Wilde's electic mazda beat a viper in the 1/4 mile....

Honda Hybrid

[Anonymous Coward]

I was talking to a Honda Dealer last week. The only reason that they hybrid gas-electric machines are so good on milage is because of the electric portion. How can you possibly use this as an arguement that gas burners are getting more efficient and that electrics are more polluting?

Re:Coal is worse than gasoline

[Anonymous Coward]

>Nuclear, of course, is the cleanest energy we are likely to have for the next decades

Really ?. Three mile island ? Chernobyl ? Windscale/sellafield ? Do these ring any bells! (plus any others we aren't told about.)

Also nuclear power generation is much more expensive if you account for the costs of decomissioning the plant after it's life is up. Strangly these costs are often overloooked, maybe that's why it was so cheap in the 1970s.

There already is a lovely fusion reactor 93 million miles away. The incident energy at earths surface is nearly 1kW per sq metre.
Do the calculation of how much desert (eg arizona or texas) is needed to provide all the US's electricity.

It's a tiny fraction of the available desert even if you assume a REALLY bad efficeny such as 10%.
(it is still large area required, but the desert isn't used for much else).

(Note I'm not referring to a silcon/GaAs cells but an old fasioned low tech heat some water water and feed it to a steam tubine, collect condensate and feed back solution).

Technology available now, cheap to build ( but multiply up for large scale) and if it goes bang in a big way, then a relatively teensy bit of dessert gets wet
for five minutes. No expensive cleanup required. No expensive - "oh shit we have to store this stuff sealed away somewhere for 20 to 10000 years till it becomes only mildly less dangerous".

Still I guess nobody will get to build such a plant in texas - to many oil vested interest's there.

Re:This isn't about the environment...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I for one would love to see a video of an ev doing a smoke show.. i've done tonnes of them in my iroc, but.. i've never actually heard what it sounds like to spin rubber fast enough to cause them to burn.. all i ever hear is the sound coming out of the three inch duals.. i can't even begin to imagine what a silent car sounds like roasting it's rubber.. hehe.."

It's not a video, but check out these shots of an "electric smokeshow".

If you really want video, head for Wilde Evolutions and order a video of one of the past NEDRA races... if you think an electric burnout must sound cool, wait till you hear the sound of an electric dragster launch.

Roger.

Re:Lifespan of a drag race electric motor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Berube was/is running lead-acid batteries, but "plain-old" might be a bit of a stretch... I think he was running Hawker Genesis pack previously, but I think he may now be running the Johnson Controls "Inspira" batteries which are currently popular among the top vehicles.

1/0 cable is a bit on the wimpy side for the drag racing crowd though... at least 2/0 is more probable, with multiple runs between the controller and motor. 400-600 amp draws are common for typical on-road (DC) cars, with higher performance ones running on up to 1200A or more.

Don't have much info on Berube's car, but Wilde's Maniac Mazda was running 4 1200-amp DCP motor controllers at the Woodburn drags last August. (Each of these controllers can deliver upto 1800A to the motor, and this car runs a pair of controllers on each of its 2 motors.)

Roger.

Re:Lifespan of a drag race electric motor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Berube's car uses plain old lead-acid batteries. Optima Yellow Tops, I believe. And the wire used is typically 0-gage welding cable. Power is from two GE motors used to start jet engines. For more information, STFW.

Lifespan of a electric drag motor? Well.. what's the lifespan of an IC motor used for drag racing? It's hard to say, because they are completely torn down after every couple of runs, so that the spun bearings, bent conrods, scored cylinders, and cracked pistons can be replaced. Don't you think it's a little unfair to point out that the NEDRA racers are destroying their equipment? It's part and parcel of drag racing, you know.

I think the perfect contest for electric vehicles versus IC vehicles would be a pulling contest, like a tractor pull. Electrics would have all the advantages: gobs of torque, loads of lead-acid batteries for weight/traction, and who cares about the range, since you only have to go a couple hundred feet. An electric pulling truck would be practically unbeatable, done right.

-EV Advocate

Re:Amazing performance

[Anonymous Coward]

To clarify:

• I didn't pick the cars, AC Propulsion did. What cars would you suggest, then? I think a Ferrari would beat 99.9% of the cars on the road in the quarter mile... that makes it a bad 1/4 mile performer?
• The TZero is not a purpose built dragster, like the Current Eliminator. It is a small roadster, with a top speed of 90MPH, and a range of around 100 miles. It probably handles as good as the Ferrari. (It's based on a chassis designed by Dave Piontek; a chassis which did 1G on the skidpad when powered by a four-cylinder motorcycle engine.)
• The Tzero's price tag is a hefty $80K. But the Ferrari cost much more than that, I'm sure. Ask Carmack what a Ferrari costs.
• Lastly, in the performance range we're talkiing about (0-60 in 4 seconds), the main issue is traction. _That_ is the main reason that a 'Vette or Ferrari won't do as good in the 1/4 mile as some hot-rodder's heavily modified '72 Nova. Traction. And it's also one of the main reasons that the TZero can beat just about any car out of the hole; it has an electronic traction control system controlling a largely electronic drivetrain. The tires do little more than squeak as the car accelerates as fast as the laws of physics (coefficient of friction and all that) will allow.
• -EV Advocate

Re:Why can't anyone see the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to your chances of being killed/injured in a drive to/from work the chances of being involved in one of the incidents you've listed is minute.

Re:Moron (was Re:Electric cars produce **MORE** ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric cars use "deep cycle" batteries. They can be discharged heavier without problems. (Although going to far (below 10% charge) can cause real problems.

Re:Electric cars are really bad for the environmen

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of imprompto debating where one team isn't allowed to ask the other team for the source of their made up information. Realistically the electrical grid is about 30% efficient from a grade 9 science video(you wouldn't happen to have a source for your 9% figure, would you?). You seem to be comparing the engine at the power plant to the one in your car. Larger engines that can run at their peak effciency(as in rpm not having a tune up ever time it runs) and they tend to be more efficient at higher temperatures which just aren't achievable in a car. Also you seem to be overlooking that they can use renewable energy sources such as solar or wind. Before you start bringing the efficiency of solar or wind to electrical energy conversion, the energy prior to that conversion isn't extreamly useful, is free, is abundant in supply(to dispell some common myths solar energy is still ok on cloudy days and in the shadow of building) and easy to obtain. The Honda insite mentioned, electromotive car isn't correct terminology, IF you looked at any scrap of information, you should know that it's properly refered to as a hybrid electric vehical(hev). With regards to your last comment, I challenge you to find the "dirt" in a photovoltaic system. Actually this one may be a little difficult for minds like yours, instead I challenge you to define the term photovoltaic.

I used to see Civic/Geo 'drag races' at my HS.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was really pathetic to see these itty bitty economy cars racing one another. A whole generation has grown up not knowing what a muscle car is. (!) Oh sure they know a corvette will waste 'em, but they have never seen the affordable power, that was once common to most cars and even low end cars. How sad. They think 'power' means the 2.8L V6. Oooo 190 horses! Pathetic. Give me even a stock unmodified a Chevy 454 and I'll show you what power is.

Re:Amazing performance

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what makes MOST of the winning cars go FAST: http://www.evcl.com/Zillaman.html -C-

ASU is Participating

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on an email I received from the Academic Advisor for the whole College of Engineering the ASU EV Team is going to be participating at this event. There homepage is HERE. I will probably attend the event and bring my digital camera with me. If so I will post some of the pictures on the web with the space ASU has provided me.

Re:having a heat pump under the hood is a big wast

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, a car does not have a heat pump. A heat pump is a specific type of HVAC solution used in homes and buildings, but not in any cars that I know of.

Secondly, "dangerous electric heaters"? There is nothing 'dangerous' about the ceramic heater cores of the type that EV hobbyists install in coverted ICE vehicles. They are direct replacements for the factory heater core, and reside in the heater plenum, well away from any passengers. The hot air from the ceramic heater core is pumped through the ducts in the car, in exactly the same manner that hot air from a regular heater core is. Of course, the electric one gives you instant heat... with the disadvantage being that it is sapping energy from your batteries to do so. Luckily, the amount of energy required to heat the cabin is a pittance compared to the amount of energy required to move the car down the road. The biggest 'danger' in using an electric heater is running you EV out of juice, and being stranded somewhere.

A couple more advantages of electric heat: 1) it could be controlled by a timer. At 8:00 AM, the Linux box in your EV could turn the heater on, so that at 8:20 AM, when you get in the car, it's already nice and toasty, with no loss of battery capacity, because at night your EV is plugged in, and 2) electric heater cores won't corrode out and start leaking coolant into the cabin. Anyone who's had this happen to them knows what a pain in the ass it can be.

You make it sound like electric cars are heated with open coils, like in a toaster. This is not the case.

-EV Advocate

Re:alright......

[Anonymous Coward]

NEDRA is not about promoting EVs as 'good for the environment'. NEDRA is about changing people's perceptions about electric cars. People (falsely) think that electric cars are slow and underpowered. The racers at NEDRA are pointing out how wrong that is, which is a Good Thing, IMHO, even if it does mean hauling the cars around with a smokey old diesel truck.

Avoiding the use of one diesel truck won't make a difference. But showing several thousand people at the race track that electric cars can be as fast and as powerful as ICE cars will make a difference. Especially if some of those people invest in EV technologies themselves.

-EV Advocate

Re:Amazing performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to AC Propulsion's web site for the details.

I agree that a Ferrari or 'Vette isn't much (maybe not any) better in the 1/4 than a Formula Firebird, Mustang GT, or Z28. Again, I say the main problem is traction. Put some fat Mickey Thompson drag slicks on the Ferrari, and I don't think it would have much trouble beating a Formula Firebird or Z28. (Depending on what model Ferrari, of course... I think the one that raced the TZero was an F355...)

As for racing a Viper, that is the NEDRA 'nemesis of choice'. They routinely race their electric drag cars against Vipers, and routinely win. (The wheelie-pooping red Mazda featured on NEDRA's home page beats a Viper in the full 1/4 mile, and is streetable (barely) to boot.)

And, as a side note, a Viper only does low 12s in the 1/4 mile, which isn't all that impressive either, when I know guys who have built cars for under $10K that run in the 10s. But, you can't really drive such vehicles on the street, and certainly not with drag slicks mounted.

I'm sure that the TZero could beat a Viper in an 1/8 mile drag. Never in a quarter, though. Only because, as I've already mentioned, the TZero has a single-speed tranny.

-EV Advocate

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[Anonymous Coward]

electric motors are in every way superior to gasoline engines. as few as a single moving part, lifetimes in the range of 250K miles

Gas engines still sound better.

Re:It's not about speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

You commute from Detroit to Akron every day? Wow...

This is exactly the sort of attitude I mentioned in another post. People think that range is an issue, when it rarely is. "I can't drive to Akron non-stop!", they say, then get into their car and drive 3 miles to work.

-EV Advocate

Re:Why the hell would anyone want to go see this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick an ice-pick in your ear canal?

-EV Advocate

Re:Marketing Value

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Those are the people who are buying new cars every couple of years, no?

-EV Advocate

Trains vs. Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.public.asu.edu/~ender/Projects/StateMes s/Articles/99-12-09_01.html

btw: think: train fare == gas cost

Re:Perhaps a better competition would be endurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Electrathon

NOTE: People who find 140MPH electric dragsters boring will find Electrathon racers extremely boring.

-EV Advocate

Re:It's about how far you drive in a day.

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree. If you only refuel your gas car once a week, an electric would probably work perfectly for you.

That guy with the electric CRX with trailing genset was Alan Cocconi, designer of the power electronics in GM's EV1, builder of the TZero, and the 'AC' in AC Propulsion.

-EV Advocate

Re:This might be bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it's fun. -An EV Advocate who's not an environmentalist

Re:Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding, right?

EV infrastructure is practically non-existent in this country (not that it's all that swell elsewhere).

I could go into why this is, and how GM's inductive charging system screwed a lot of shit up, but I won't. If you're interested, there's plenty of stuff around the web about the problems of EV infrastructure, possible solutions, and the State of Things Now.

-EV Advocate

Re:Why can't anyone see the obvious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, some sanity.

To answer the question in your subject line:
usually it's because of where they grew up.
Most Slashdotters are USians, and most USians
have no conception of public transport as being
anything other than an inefficient waste of
taxpayer dollars used to subsidize the really
poor and truly desperate who don't own cars.
Well, except in Manhattan. :-)

They react with vitriole when their misconceptions
about cars are exposed. Cars are heavily
subsidized, arguably more than public transport
in most places. One section of I-880 that's four
miles long cost over $1 billion. A replacement
for one half of the Bay Bridge will be over
$1 billion. Are any alternatives seriously
considered? No. It's just pay-through-the-nose
to maintain the status quo - or, rather, to not
even maintain the status quo. How many places
can afford to maintain the road networks they
already have, let alone expand them to handle
the inexorable increase in demand?

Curiously, the people who get into their car
every day and drive bumper to bumper along
congested highways so that they can live
20 miles from work are the same people who
often equate cars with freedom. Well, no
thank you. With a car in a city you are never
free - you have to spend time and money parking
the thing and you always have to go back to
where it was parked. In a city with decent
public transport you just go to each place
you want to go, without having to go out of
your way very much for the next vehicle.

Not that there are many places in the world
with decent public transport, let alone good
public transport, but solving the pollution
problem of cars with EVs is the wrong focus.
Why isn't anyone talking about the huge cost
of roads and of road accidents and the
unlivability of places where cars dominate?

I would love to have an EV, but given a choice
I'd rather have better public transport.

Re:Squirrel Generators.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the most wrong thing i have ever seen.

I think alot of people forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other ways to harness energy besides nuclear and coal burning power plants... Environment-friendly energy harnessing is largely ignored, no doubt due to the firm institution of the oil companies. If we used the following forms of collection:

Solar
Hydroelectric
Wind
Geothermal

we could easily supply everyone with electricity. It is true that at this point in time, solar cells may not be as efficient as they could be, etc., if all of the resources of the oil companies were diverted towards researching these environmentally friendly sources, things would quickly improve. Solar power alone has enormous potential. I believe it's 1.4 kW per m^2 that the sun provides. Do the math. You'll be surprised.

We don't need to conserve energy, we need to find a better way to obtain it.

I am so disappointed in slashdotters today...

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all let me say, to the few people who know what they are talking about, and posted correct information, thank you, and this obviously doesn't apply to you. For the rest of you:

I am amazed and sickened to realize how ignorant and myopic most of these posts are. I have been reading slashdot for a couple of years and researching electric vehicles off and on for about eight years. I never would have guessed that the usually intelligent, forward thinking, able to see through the BS- crowd here at slashdot would be so uneducated and unwilling to see the benefits of electric vehicles.

The idea that an EV is a greater environmental threat than any internal combustion engine (ICE) is ABSURD.

Yes, the electricity comes from plants, many of which burn coal, but those power plants burn cleaner and more efficiently than almost any ICE vehicle on the road. Think of it in terms of mass production- you can make thousands of ________ for a lot less than you can make one _______. And the same goes for kilowatts. The boiler in the power plant is always at OPTIMUM temperature, and the turbines are always spinning at OPTIMUM speed. Also, when you build a power plant in some wide open space it's easy to tack on another acre or 100 acres if you want, to install scrubbers to keep emissions in check.

For those of you who think that burning coal is so much dirtier than burning gasoline- where exactly do you think gasoline comes from? It comes from a filthy black sludge that is ostensibly liquid coal. And it has to go through extensive processing (i.e. refining) to become the "clean burning" gasoline. Do you really think that drilling hundreds of feet into the earth, pumping out sludge, using ocean freighters the size of a college and then 40 ton semi trucks to transport it to a refinery, then the refining process, and then more 40 ton trucks to get the fuel to a gas station so you can drive over there and pump it into your car, and spill some on the ground.... do you really think that's easier, cheaper, and more efficient than plugging your car into the wall at night?

Furthermore, one of the biggest problems with pollution isn't just the AMOUNT of pollutants, it's the pollution DENSITY. Using electricity from a one power plant out in the middle of nowhere to power hundreds of vehicles within a few hundred square miles is obviously going to distribute the environmental load more evenly, and the planet can process it more efficiently.

Worried about batteries as a source of pollution? Read this article. If you're to busy/lazy to read it- it addresses that specific issue, and the punchline is: batteries are better than fossil fuels.

For those of you that think electric drag racing serves no purpose- It does. With the exception of a few things that come from aerospace programs and crash testing facilities, almost every significant advancement in automotive technology has come from racing. In this case, efficiency, range, and performance are universal. Electricity obeys Ohm's Law, and that simple equation dictates that anything we learn about how to make a car go fast in a quarter mile can be directly applied to making a car go 100 miles, it just wont go as fast for that long.

"Electrical transmission has terrible efficiency, about 91% loss of energy in transmission. You're only getting 9% of an already poor energy conversion from fossil fuels, which is 3 times that of electric transmission. "

This is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard. That means that for 626 KWH of power that of energy that I used last month, the power plant had to make 6329 KWH. Times how many homes in a city? And how many businesses? Ohm's law is V=IR and power P=VI. Anyone who doubts that the person who posted this is wrong, please do some math. If the transmission system dissipated 91% of the energy, we'd have glowing wires running from pole to pole all over the country. Until they burst into flames.

"I haven't heard of any major advances in battery technology in years. Yes, new electronics is helping, but power density and cost are as unfavourable now as they were ten years ago."

Then you aren't paying attention. Check out evercel. They have a new Nickel-Zink battery with almost double the energy density of current lead acid technology. And this article talks about how the expense of Li-Ion batteries is based solely on it's incredible performance and politics; not on cost of materials or production. Li-Ion is better in every way than any battery currently available and will eventually be cheaper than all of them. The technology to make EVs viable is here today, you just can't get your hands on it because the people in the oil industry and people in the automotive industry are protecting their present interests.

"You have to wonder how long these motors last. That smoke you see coming out the back? No... it's not just the tires. :)

Uhmm, yes, Beavis, I think that was just the tires. Furthermore, and electric motor will survive a drag racing environment for orders of magnitude longer than an ICE engine.

"It's not about speed ...it's endurance. When I can jump into an electric car and drive from Akron to Detroit non-stop, heater, defroster, wipers, headlights and stereo all going full-blast, I'll take electric cars seriously. Until then they just don't cut the mustard.

Sorry, eco-geeks. But pound for pound, gasoline rules over batteries. I'd love to see a leap in technology that changes this, but I'm not holding my breath.

Why not both? Check out the tzero built by ,ac propulsion. It has a 100 mile range (longer than the EV 1 built by GM) and is faster than a Ferrari (and Porsche, and Corvette, and everything else).

There are a lot of things that an EV wont be able to do for a long time. Like a cruise ship. But for MOST people, MOST OF THE TIME, an EV is a cleaner, quieter, cheaper (by far, on a daily basis) solution than an ICE powered car.

On the other hand there are lots of things that an ICE vehicle could never do that an EV can do. A good example of that is this hybrid electric hummer (which is discussed in more detail here) that can be operated off of it's battery pack and run in almost complete silence to sneak up on the enemy. And it outperforms it's ICE counterpart in EVERY other area (yes, even range) as shown in the graph on this page.

Normally when I read or hear about people dismissing electric vehicles, I let it pass, because most people don't have the technical knowledge to understand all of the energy conversion arguments and do the math (literally and figuratively). But I couldn't do that in this case because there are a lot of people from all over the world who consider slashdot to be a meeting ground for intelligent people, and a source of good information. Slashdotters aren't stupid, but some of you are ignorant about this stuff. Please educate yourselves before you spout fallacies. EVs have enough perceived and political problems to overcome without intelligent people propagating incorrect information about them.

Thank you.

Re:I am so disappointed in slashdotters today...

[morbid]

Burn coal? Why not extract the binding energy of U-235?

fuel cells

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a practical alternative to petrol powered cars, it's likely to be either hydrogen fuelled combustion engines or fuel cells. Both are substantially better than electric cars....

What are you smoking? Fuel Cell powered cars are not better than electric cars; they ARE electric cars, and many of them don't require fossil-fuel or nuclear power plants to generate energy. The new alcohol powered fuel cells will be great for automobiles....

Re:fuel cells

[GregWebb]

The poiont is that fuel cell cars aren't BATTERY electric cars, which is what most people think of when I refer to electric cars. Hence the distinction.

Greg

Re:Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a cute little electric porche 914 for $11,000.(bottom of the page, left column)

BTW, despite what GM wants you to think, you don't need the inductive charger generators of "electricity stations" like they use for the EV1. Most electric conversions plug into an ordinary outlet to charge. Most houses today come with electricity....

don't need to burn coal

[Anonymous Coward]

first of all, charging electric cars from your outlet during non-peak hours doesn't cause power plants to burn any more fossil fuels than they are now. That will continue to be true until a sizable portion (say 20% of the population) are using electric cars.

Second, tiny portable alcohol powered fuel cells are now available, so we won't need power plants or batteries to recharge the next generation of electric cars....

Re:SLASHDOT INJUSTICE

[Anonymous Coward]

You said that allready...

Re:where are all the trolls????

[gabrielm]

(Score:-1, Flaimbait)

whats this have to do with linux, linux sucks,
freebsd had usb first, linux smp sucks, IIS is
better than apache, i submitted this article
three days ago, cmdr taco sucks, hemos sucks
too, i remember when the internet was all text
based before all you windoze lusers came over
and ruined the fun, real men code in vi, emacs
sucks, rms is a commie, esr is a wacko, whats
this story have to do with the hotgrits pouring
down my pants? natalie portman
NAKED AND PETRIFIED!!!! mac os sucks, visual BASIC sucks, PERL RULES!!!! kde sucks gnome rulez!!!

Re:EV drag racing pics

[gabrielm]

moderators, mark this up to 5!!!!!!!

Re:Squirrel Generators.

[mud99]

I honestly can't believe that someone would post this. I thought that most of the /.ers were just a little more mature than this. This offends me & I don't think that I will read /. ever again.

I enjoy the junk mail with the porn pics i get in my email...but this...I lost my dinner when I saw this picture.

Mud99

How Rude

[redmist]

How dare you post such an inappropriate link such as that you anonymous beast!? -redmist

.{redmist}.
-------------------------------------------------

Squirrel Generators.

[os2mac]

that would take a WHOLE LOT of nuts....

Re:Squirrel Generators.

[BrightSun]

Prudes.

I thought it was funny

Re:Squirrel Generators.

[mud99]

Well sir, you are an evil, evil man. Have you read your bible lately? It has many grievances with your way of thinking. You'd better read it, or the forces of heaven and hell will banish you to the land of ghosts and spirits. Why, it says so right in Revelations 13:13 - "Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast(RMS) rising up out of the sea, with 7 GNU Utilities and 10 Man Pages, and in his 10 Man Pages, 10 factual bits of information, and on his head a blasphemous name(RMS). And then he killed everyone...STOOPID"

Mud99

Re:Amazing performance

[Anonymous Coward]

I can explain how they get such amazing performance with one word: TORQUE

An electric motor produces maximum torque at ZERO RPM. That allows for some pretty interesting gearing. In fact, the Current Eliminator was only recently fitted with a suitable multi-speed transmission. Previous attempts at using a multi-speed tranmission were met with failure as the Eliminator would simply destroy them with the massive torque from it's twin GE motors.

That is why rail locomotives that pull 500 ton trains use electric for the motive power. Torque.

Also, I would like to say that, as an automotive engineer (well, OK, a sysadmin for a bunch of automotive engineers), I'm most intriqued not by the environmental aspects, but by the mechanical superiority of electric vehicles. How many moving parts in a internal combustion powertrain? How many moving parts in an electric powertrain? (Don't forget that the high torque allows fewer gears in the transmission too.)

For a look at a REAL interesting electric car, head on over to AC Propulsion and have a look at the TZero. 200KWs of power. Zero to sixty in just over four seconds.

They have a few quicktimes there of the TZero beating a Ferrari and Corvette in 1/8 mile drags. (Admittedly, both the Ferrari and the 'Vette would beat the TZero in a 1/4 mile drag, because the TZero's single-speed transmission limits its top speed to about 90 MPH. So it's beating a Ferrari without even leaving first gear. :) It's quite humorous to listen to the Ferrari revving and straining through four gears while the TZero silently whips its ass.

-EV Advocate

Ahmen!

[Jonathan Hamilton]

I know, the coolest thing about that car is the engine. So much better then shitty ones that use pistons and waste so much momentum. People brag about the big 5.0's but the little 1.57 liter wankel could toast them all.

Re:Ahmen!

[morbid]

You lucky bastard!!!!

Re:Ahmen!

[kwclark]

Even Mazda has given up on it.

That is not true. Check out this.

I have a 1994 RX-7 twin turbo.

Ken

Re:Ahmen!

[SoftwareJanitor]

5.0? Big? Big doesn't start until over 7 liters. And all but the last generation RX7's weren't really that impressive performers for drag racing (no torque at low RPMs). And those didn't compare that favorably in price/performance (they were priced in the range of Vettes). Also the rotary has always had durability problems and its fuel consumption per liter displacement is pretty attrocious.

There is a reason the rotary engine never took off, even after the Wankel patents expired. Even Mazda has given up on it.

Re:Ahmen!

[SoftwareJanitor]

O.K., "Even Mazda U.S. has given up on it.". The article you reference mentions that those cars will be built only for sale in Japan.

Re:Marketing Value

[Defiler]

I guess you drive down the street attracting women with your uncovered penis?

Sacrilage!!!

[morbid]

.. an RX7 without a wankel engine!
What is the world coming to?

Re:Electric bus transportation

[unitron]

Wouldn't zero friction mean zero traction? Perhaps you meant resistance or somesuch?

Re:Amazing performance

[fatboy]

Wired Magazine had a great article about these cars. Their performance often outpaces gas-powered dragsters and they don't make noise.

Street cars, yes. NHRA dragsters, um no. Look at these results. Top Fuel dragsters are faster than "jet cars" in the 1/4 mile. They burn 7 gallons of fuel in less than 4 seconds and have speeds of over 200+MPH at the finish line.

Don't get me wrong, electric toy dragsters sound like fun, but they are not THAT fast.

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[hpa]

Orbital engines have been widely discredited. Why? Because the surface area of the combustion chamber is too large. This causes very inefficient combustion, with severe pollution and fuel consumption problems.

The Wankel engine looked like a great idea, but it didn't pan out.

fuel source for electric cars

[slicer1]

has anyone heard of powerball

Re:Amazing performance

[PD]

That's absolutely right. Everyone out there driving a SUV thinking you're a badass, pay attention! You've been fooled again!

Electric cars have excellent performance, with the exception of range. If they crack that nut, then electric cars will be superior to internal combustion cars.

The reason is that the torque is instantaneous, but more importantly, the torque is CONSTANT. No matter what speed your electric motor is going, you're getting constant torque out of it. That means that you can get great performance out of a little motor.

Example: GM's EV1 goes 0-60 in under 8 seconds. That's not crappy performance at all, and the vehicle was designed to make the batteries last as long as possible, not go like a bat out of hell.

Trust me, performance enthusiasts; it's much much easier to make an electric car that can smoke the tires through an entire 1/4 run. What kind of internal combustion engine car will do that? Your stock Mustang? Your stock Camaro? Nope, you're going to need a Viper at least to do that. I don't know what kind of electric car would be able to do that, but with the constant torque it'll be easier to do it.

Re:"Roads..we don't need roads!"

[Some guy named Chris]

And if we go the methanol route, we can grow our own fuel stocks!

Actually, you're not quite accurate. While methanol can be made from biomass, it is more typically made from carbon-based feedstocks such as natural gas and coal. And, when it is made from biomass, it is usually done with wood which is not as renewable as some other resources.

Besides, if you've ever been in a garage with someone tuning a methanol powered race car, you know how noxious the fumes are. Unpleasant. One alcohol we can grow is ethanol, which is typically made from corn. However, there are better alternatives, such as hydrogen. Hydrogen, which is readily available, burns down to just water, but suffers an image problem due to its very volitile nature. But, there are technologies that will make this safe, like metallic hydrides. This is a very cool technology which empregnates a metallic substrate with hydrogen atoms, which are released in a controlled manner when heated. Very cool.

Some guy named Chris

Marketing Value

[KyleCordes]

I think it's purpose is PR-related, not technology-related. Powerful, fast electric vehicle can help persuade the (buying) public that electric = something they want to buy.

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[MikeFM]

It appears the local power company here in Miami gives free electricity to electric car owners. I've gone over and played with their pumps (or whatever you call them) and they have no keys or access number or anything you need to make them start. Also they leave the electric cars unlocked on their lot and you can get in and try them out. It isn't like you could steal one anyway, they look so funky retarded the first cop would spot you, but hey it's fun to check em out. I think it'd be awesome to put up publicly funded stations at all rest stops and such that gave free charges to electric car owners and the stations were powered from solar/wind/whatever power so the only cost would be upkeep of the stations. Sure as hell beats these gasoline prices. I know a lot of people talking about how they'd change right now with gas prices so high. Any car makers listening? This is the time to push these babies to the public.

Working on it...

[raygundan]

As soon as I can afford it (maybe a year or so) I promise I will post and tell you all about it.

Offtopic (Re:if you hate the utility bill...)

[kvajk]

I'm wondering why the animal rights people are so rabbid about fur, but dont seem to have any problems with leather?

Who are "the" animal rights people? I've never considered myself to be an animal rights person, but I don't wear any leather. :)

Re:Amazing performance

[miahrogers]

Actually there was an article about these cars in Wired magazine about a year and a half ago. The author mentioned that one of the cars had so much torque, that he actually cracked a gear in his drive system.

They get their power from large arrays of batteries working together, no one battery is required to carry the entire load

Also electric engines are much more efficient at accelleration than gas engines, which is why hybrid cars get such good gas milage, they use the electric engine to accellerate, and the gas engine for crusing. By running off of a battery that is charged by an engine continually running at top speed, they are incredbily fuel efficient.

Re:Amazing performance

[twinpot]

(Don't forget that the high torque allows fewer gears in the transmission too.) Why have conventional gears - take a look at the torotrak transmission This would probablt work well with a conventional IC engine - you could tune the engine to run very efficiently in a small rev range.

Re:Honda Insight and Toyota Prius: Hybrid Cars...

[twinpot]

Or a Diesel VW Lupo that does 90mpg, or Smart CDi (diesel) which gets similar range.

There are a few small diesels in Europe that will get this sort of mileage.

The Honda is good, but is intended as a showpiece. I view the Prius and upcoming Citroen as more practical.

Electric bus transportation

[brucet]

It's electric rail transportation, of course

I can't believe that electric rail transportation is anywhere near as cost efficient as electric bus transportation.

Road construction and maintenance is far cheaper than rail construction and don't even talk about the difference in price between 10 new buses vs. a new train!

Bus travel can be safe and efficient if separate roads are built solely for buses, as is the case is some places in Brazil (anywhere else?)

So isn't bus travel more popular? Because people don't like taking the stupid bus. And this is the same reason that people don't take the train. It might be better than a bus, but most people prefer using their own car.

The solution? Come up with some way of taxing carbon and pollution, raise the tax a certain amount every year and let the laws of economics figure out the best solution!

-Bruce

Jet cars and Top Fuel

[Alanzilla]

Actually, the Top Fuel dragsters are only faster than the jet cars because of NHRA rules. Jet cars are an "exhibition only" category, so they're not allowed to pull out all the stops (I believe they have a 300 MPH speed limit). Once the exhibition status is lifted, jet cars will crush Top Fuel (which is why it's there, I think).

Personally, though, I think there's a LOT of potential for electric dragsters. I have one word for you: torque. If they can solve the weight problem, they might really be onto something.

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[Alanzilla]

I'm about to take my cats and mufflers off mine, and I quite enjoy the leather interior. :)

Maybe I'll go home and set a couple of old tires on fire, just for fun.

Re:It's about how far you drive in a day.

[Monte]

How often do you drive from Akron to Detroit?

Any time I feel like it. Which is the point - freedom. If I were content to deal with scheduling my comings and goings around someone else's timetable, I probably wouldn't own a car.

But for day-to-day commuting of, say, 50 miles or less each way, (and if you commute more than that you need to re-evaluate the value of your time!) they work great.

Does that 50 miles include NE Ohio winters? IE, snow, cold, dark, heater, defroster, headlights and windshield wipers on 100% of the drive?

And if it does, I still have to wait for the blessed thing to recharge before I can go home. Bad news if there's an emergency that requires me to leave right now.

It's the freedom angle again.

It's not about speed...

[Monte]

...it's endurance. When I can jump into an electric car and drive from Akron to Detroit non-stop, heater, defroster, wipers, headlights and stereo all going full-blast, I'll take electric cars seriously. Until then they just don't cut the mustard.

Sorry, eco-geeks. But pound for pound, gasoline rules over batteries. I'd love to see a leap in technology that changes this, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Coal is worse than gasoline

[spencerogden]

Find me one Fossil fuel, or renewable resource which is more expensive today than a decade ago. (In real dollars, take out inflation)

Has one of you ever driven a electric car?

[charon.de]

From what I read so far, I don't think so.

The company I work at has many of them.
All are normal "buyable" cars, only their engine is different.

Sure, they are very expensive. But driving is fun,
just be careful about the walking people, they don't hear the car...

OK, the range is small 70-120 Km and they don't go faster then 120 Km/h. But driving is the same as in just any other car.

Yours Michael

Re:Amazing performance

[bvmcg]

the "Current Eliminator" (336 volts) took the current top prize, pulling 141 mph in 8.861 seconds. Wow. I'd give good money to see how they pulled performance like that out of an electric motor assembly.

If you're designing a car specifically for this, it wouldn't be so tough; perhaps precharging a super heavy fly wheel.

EV's and Gas V's

[kermit1221]

There's nothing wrong with electric cars (well, okay, nothing wrong with the idea anyway). However, it still seems that it's just not quite time yet. Recently I read an article in which a General Motors high-up guy said something like "for us, the cheapest way to get NiMH batteries is to buy a Toyota EV, take the batteries, and throw the rest of the car away" (or similar).

Personally, I don't see storage as the problem here. The range of an EV is getting better by the day (almost). The problem is the recharge time. I, and most other people are used to spending a few minutes at a gas station to "recharge" the fuel tank. If someone comes up with a snazzy way to recharge a bank of NiMH batteries in a time equal to filling up a 20 gal tank, then there's virtually no problem.

Another thing I recently read made the comment that the current (year 2000) Honda Civic actually produces cleaner air out the tailpipe than it breathes in, when driving in downtown Los Angeles. Granted, there's no Oxygen in the exhaust, but there's less NOx, CO2, etc... than went in the front. I dunno, I think the environmental aspect of "needing" alternative-fuel vehicles is losing it's oomph. Today's Honda motors are almost 90% cleaner than the Honda motors of 10 years ago. The problem now is simply the fact that we're slowly but surely running out of fossil fuels.

Shutting up...


Del

Re:EV's and Gas V's

[cdaveb]

The range of the NiMH EV1s is about 100-120 miles on a full charge, depending on driving conditions. This is significantly more than most people need for a single day's driving. The issue is really those occasional times when you do drive a long way, if you aren't a 2 car family. If you don't do it often, then renting a car those couple times, or stopping along the way for a charge isn't that big a deal. But for people who do it often it doesn't really work out too well. So the current EV isn't for everyone, but it has gotten to the point where it's definitely a good second car, and for some people it may be a good single car.

For those who complain about recharge time, it's definitely an issue if you drive long distances in a single day, but don't forget that it only takes a couple seconds to plug it in when you get home, so you're essentially having your car fueled every night while you're sleeping.

I would definitely like to see faster charge methods available (or if charging got very cheap to setup, you could essentially have charging available everywhere you go, which would work just as well, charge while you shop). But EV's are definitely getting to be useful. I've had my NiMH EV1 for 2 months now and I've enjoyed every minute I've had it, and I haven't doubted my choice for a minute. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to driving a gas car again, and I'm really hoping in a few years when my lease is up that there will be plentiful choices out there.
Battery and alternate storage technology needs to improve so that an alternate fuel vehicle can be a choice for everyone, but it's already a lot better than most people realize.

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[CausticPuppy]

I love the smell of stinky exhaust that comes from my exhaust when I fire up my big gas guzzling 5.7L V8 (if you consider 27 highway mpg "gas guzzling"). I also like red meat.
Fur.... I don't like fur, because fur only comes from cute animals. I have no problem with alligator skin or leather.
I doubt I'll ever go electric (I'll go Tofu first, dammit) but as soon as Mr. Fusion comes out, I'll jump on it!

Getting green power

[cdaveb]

Well where I live in California, you can pick where the electric company gets your power, and I get mine from Commonwealth Energy. They produce green power- last I checked it was 90% biomass and 10% geothermal. This means that I can power my EV1 totally with green power (which is actually slightly cheaper than the default through the power company) and help the environment on both ends, in addition to the convenience of just plugging the car in every night. My electricity is about 1/3 cheaper than the gas I used to buy and signficantly more convenient.

Re:speedy demons

[Lonesmurf]

I don't know what kind of interstate you have around your hometown, but *my* interstate doesn't let you drive at 141 miles an hour. In fact.. most cars around here don't even go that damn fast. (That's not to say that these nuts don't try..)

Always keeping it in perspective,
Rami
--

Why the hell would anyone want to go see this?

[dyslexia]

When I go to drag races, I expect my ears to suffer permanent damage. How the hell am I supposed to get that effect from electric cars?

Cost

[AlexA]

How much do electric vehicles cost these days? What about the cost of getting electricity at gas/electricity stations?

How widespread are "electricity stations" anyway? Can you really drive across the country in an EV and not have to worry about not finding those stations?

having a heat pump under the hood is a big waste

[BrightSun]

what do you think creates heat for all the vehicles on the road?

sure they are working on pumping up the batteries for cars so they may travel longer distances but what about when winter comes along and people start firing up those dangerous electric heaters?

It's just a thought but I'd rather have my heat pump under the hood where it belongs and not next to my babies jacket or a dust bunny, let's face it, how many people keep their cars impecably clean?

Re:SLASHDOT INJUSTICE

[BrightSun]

Here is a quarter

/me hands AC a quarter

call someone who cares.

not obvious

[NuclearArchaeologist]

Public transportation depends on high population densities for economy. A bus designed to move sixty people that only carries three or four is obviouslly inefficient and wastefull. The only thing more wastefull would be an electric rail that runs the same route. Rails cost more than roads! The price structures of rails built in US cities reflects this underlying economic reality.

Unfortunately, people here in the US don't want to live in high popluation areas. That's their choice, good luck convincing them to do otherwise.

Where do you live?

Re:not obvious

[NuclearArchaeologist]

Dude, rails are more expensive than roads. They have a far more substantial foundation. Think about it the next time you drive over the tracks. Rails also demand a precision lay out. They must be parallel and level. Out of tollerance means derailment. Roads are poured, rails built peice wise. Maintanence is also a concern. Defoiliation costs plenty, but vines and treel can not be alowed to grow on the right of way. For all the care and cost that goes into construction, rails wear out. The sleepers fail and replacing them costs a great deal.

In the end, you still need to fill the train for it to work. This does not happen unless you have lots of people all going to the same location and this requires a high population density. Most US cities don't qualify. What works for Paris, Tokyo and New York is not a universal solution. Smaller and more spread out cities are better served by a well planned road grid.

Re:not obvious

[mangu]

Rails cost more than roads!

Let's compare: a railroad track needs a 5m wide right of way, vs. 15m for a two lane road with shoulders at each side. A railroad track is made with gravel, sleepers, and steel tracks. A well built, paved, road is built on a bed that's at least one meter deep gravel, plus at least 30cm of concrete. Then there's maintenance costs. There are no potholes in rails. The only thing that's more economical to build in a road than in a railroad is the earthworks, because the road can have steeper grades.

Perhaps in Europe, where gas costs about $5/gallon, the actual cost of building and maintaining roads is more closely reflected on the cost of using them, but road transportation in the US is heavily subsidized, no matter how "expensive" you think gas is at $1.65/gallon.

speedy demons

[soulsteal]

nothing like watching cars rip-roar at interstate speeds! VROOOOOOOOOOOM!

alright......

[Caspuh]

i bet they load up those nice, non-polluting race cars on some huge diesel trucks and drive them all the way to Phoenix. Ya way to protect the enviornment!

Re:Amazing performance

[perky]

How do you know what current they were running?

ahh. say constant accelleration, quarter mile track, blah blah blah. comes out at about 170 kW. at about 510A. sounds feasible. range can't be great though. say the batteries are rated at 40 Ah, then you've got about 5 mins. nicely practical then.

Re:On the _SLIGHTLY_ more pratical side...

[DeepDarkSky]

Most photovoltaic cells are very inefficient. So I'm not sure that this is an improvement.

Re:Why can't anyone see the obvious?

[LaoK]

It only takes a few Aum Shinryko Tokyo Subway gas attacks, Long Island Railroad massacres, and London Underground station bombings to make one appreciate driving to work every morning on a crowded expressway in one's own car...

LaoK

Coal is worse than gasoline

[mangu]

Coal is pure carbon, so all its energy comes from making CO2 molecules, which cause the greenhouse effect. Gasoline has several hydrogen atoms, so part of its energy comes from generating water molecules.

Nuclear, of course, is the cleanest energy we are likely to have for the next decades. I think the "green" resistance to nuclear is going to fade, when the public gets better educated (maybe I'm too hopeful!) and when energy bills start going through the roof.

Remember, fossil fuels are becoming more and more expensive because they are getting scarcer. Nuclear energy is so expensive because there is very dumb "green" legislation imposing useless regulations. It wasn't expensive in the early 1970s.

Re:Coal is worse than gasoline

[mangu]

Three mile island ?

No radiation was released, no one was hurt, in an accident that destroyed the entire reactor core. How's that for safe?

Chernobyl ?

Thirty one dead, one of which was a fireman who fell from a ladder. A power plant designed in a Communist state, with no regard for profits or safety. A design no longer used.

Counting all the nuclear power plants in the world, considering that only two serious accidents ever occurred, nuclear is by far the absolutely safest and cleanest energy source we have now or are likely to have for a long time.

Also nuclear power generation is much more expensive if you account for the costs of decomissioning the plant after it's life is up.

That's part of the regulation costs I mentioned. The plant doesn't need to be decommissioned, they could simply keep modernizing and updating it. But the renovation of all the licenses in the current bureaucracy is impossible, so the plant must be torn down after its first license ends. And then there is a huge cost related to all the disposal of "nuclear waste", which is mostly composed of things like a rubber glove that was once used to hold a test tube containing radioactive material. This glove must be held in a "safe storage" for 300 years, not because it's radioactive, but because the regulations say so.

It's a tiny fraction of the available desert even if you assume a REALLY bad efficeny such as 10%.

For the kind of solar technology you mention, 10% would be a rather good efficiency. There have been some studies by the US Department of Energy about such power plants, but they were far too expensive at the current technology levels. Think of how much all those mirrors would cost. As you said yourself, a large area is required. And all the pollution that would be generated in fabricating those plants should also be considered.

But that's not the main case against solar or wind energy, of course. Assuming these were viable and economical forms of obtaining energy, we would be back to the problem I mentioned: we do not have any really good batteries. How would you store your energy for use at night, or when the wind isn't blowing?

I see no practical alternatives for the mid-range future, that is about 30 to 100 years from now. We will either have nuclear power or freeze in the dark.

Re:Coal is worse than gasoline

[Single GNU Theory]

Survey says... BZZT! Nuclear plants continue to be engineered and built, just not in the US. Both Westinghouse and General Electric have been developing new reactors (search for CANDU). They're just not being built in your backyard.

Re:Coal is worse than gasoline

[Desert Raven]

It doesn't matter if the green resistance to Nuclear power fades anymore, the damage is done. No new nuclear power plants have been initiated in the past few years, and with the length of time it takes to build one in the US, even if a major utility decided to build one tomorrow, it would likely take 20 years to get it operating. In another few years, there might not be any more engineers qualified to design these plants, as the current group retires. (My father is a nuclear engineer who designed power plants, a large number of his peers have already transferred into other areas of engineering, or retired.)

In this case, the Luddites won.

Re:How do you "abstract" away the storage?

[small_dick]

energy density has always been the issue holding back evs. the poster said pulling the heat exchanger away from the vehicle has the benefit of allowing multiple "plug and play" fuel options. my point was that you also lose the size, weight, rpm and cosmetic restrictions placed on vehicles; thus you can make ultra efficient heat exchangers and emission controls that do not have to be hampered by real world vehicle designs. thus coal (or any other fuel) can be much more efficiently and cleanly burned in a large power plant. as far as flywheels, electric vehicles have no need for them. a flywheel stores energy on a combustion engine, which is used for several purposes, but the primary use is smoothing the pulses from the fuel explosions. electric vehicles have no such issue.

Re:you'd probably hate the extra pollution...

[small_dick]

the point you are missing is that by using a remote powerplant to do the heat exchange/burn, you lose all constraints on size, rpm and cosmetic issues that vehicles have.

for example, the design team working on the engine can make it run ultra efficient at a single rpm, wrap all the tubing in heat shields, use a flywheel the size of a house, etc. -- none of which can be done on a little car.

Additionally, if someone comes out with a new way to burn coal, that is far cleaner and more efficient, you can replace the powerplant *now*, and (in effect) instantly upgrade the power source of millions of vehicles.

technology shifts, and it remains to be seen if some kind of "ultra capacitor" will come down the pike and make evs surpass the gas junk in every way. afaik, the best ultracapitors are at about 1/3 the density of lead acid batteries, which have about 1/10th the energy density of gasoline (this is from memory so cut me some slack here).

i think they need to get about a 30x increase in ultra capacitor density before all the issues fade and we get some real cars on the road.

Re:Amazing performance

[small_dick]

it's not the motor, it's the batteries.

gasoline's energy density is far greater than any battery. thus, a drag racer can go through a quarter mile with a half gallon or less of fuel.

the batteries in this vehicle weigh many times the weight of that fuel.

in actuality, a electric motor has power characteristics far superior than any heat echanger/gas engine. the only reason they are not is wide use for moving people is the energy density problem.

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[small_dick]

actually, depending on the controller used, they are more enjoyable to drive. reduced vibration, and no more likely to "light up" the tires than if you floor it in a gas junker.

like any chemical vehicle, tire issues are a function of design, there is no inherent cause for the problems of tire wear, etc. The torque is from the applied current, which must be controlled properly.

as far as energy density, there are many threads spun off the article that mention this as being the primary issue holding back evs.

i completely disagree with your assertions for any chem burner being better than an electric motor for ev's.

electricity is clean, efficient and safe to transport. your hydrogen is not. it may be that chemical combustion will be used at the remote plant, where it can be carefully monitored, tuned and upgraded, but i honestly hope you are wrong.

it makes no sense to have a chem burner under the hood of millions upon millions of vehicles, when a single electric motor will, with some advances in energy density, do everything you need.

Small scale electrics

[cybergremlin]

You may want to look at something a little bit smaller. The Natcar competition sponsored by National Semiconductor is a contest to see who can build the fastest miniature autonomus electric vehicle. These RC car sized units follow a signal in a wire along the floor. Contestants not only learn how to let the car controll itself, but they have to build the motor controll and power management systems.

As for the coments on fuel cells:
Bill Gates is investing in fuel cell research. Why? Because a small fuel cell can run a laptop for a very long time.

This isn't about the environment...

[esobofh]

This is about racing, and having fun with electric vehicles.. I for one think this is really cool.. it always scares me that with the advent of ev's there will be no more 'garage tinkering' but this is proof that we will still be able to have our fun.. perhaps i can still build a street machine with my son in our garage just like i did with my father.. only it may just be electric.. it really doesn't matter.. so long as that whole 'experience' is there.. I for one would love to see a video of an ev doing a smoke show.. i've done tonnes of them in my iroc, but.. i've never actually heard what it sounds like to spin rubber fast enough to cause them to burn.. all i ever hear is the sound coming out of the three inch duals.. i can't even begin to imagine what a silent car sounds like roasting it's rubber.. hehe..

----------------------------

Misinformation

[Dr.Zap]

There sure is alot of misinformation here about electric fueled vehicles! 1. Lead Acid Batteries are over 90% recyclable, so any percieved toxic waste problem is not serious compared with ICE waste. 2. More than 95% of automobile usage is for trips of 20 miles or less. An EV is practical for most of an average american's driving.

Smaller EV's

[Dr.Zap]

While Slashdotters were posting like crazy on this topic, myself and a band of fellow PEV (That's personal Electric Vehicle) enthusiasts wer having the first ever e-board derby. Find out more at: http://www.egroups.com/group/zappy/

This might be bad

[HowIsMyDriving?]

Isn't burning rubber bad for the enviroment?

How do you "abstract" away the storage?

[Stoutlimb]

The problem with electric, or hydrogen, is the storage. The amount of joules/cm^3 and/or joules/gram is what makes a vehicle efficient or not, in addition to the efficency rating of the engine itself. Who cares if I can get a 95% fuel efficency if the fuel weighs my car down so much that I can't even get it rolling, or it only lasts long enought to go down the block.

Not even flywheels have the required energy density that even comes close to deisel and gasoline. Once you factor in the efficiency rating of having to haul huge amounts of fuel or batteries around, you'll realize that electric cars are nowhere near as efficient as gas powered ones. If you were to investigate the theoretical limits (that have yet to be achieved), they too fall short of gasoline. Because you have to create the electricity somehow, the pollution may actually be greater, just not local. Out of sight, out of mind?

It's not PC to say this, but electric cars are just not realistic unless flywheels or ultracapacitors go a long way yet. And you're still left with burning coal at the powerplant. :-)

But hey, global warming is good, because otherwise we'd be due for another ice age.

Very good point (slightly offtopic)

[Stoutlimb]

Many good geeks and academics throw their entire lives, heart and soul, into their research in their field of study. For an academic (geek), money is the last thing they want. Just a bit of recognition and appreciation would be nice.

I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard (or would it) to modify the slashdot code to (maybe through a small hyperlink) list the names of other people who submitted the same story, perhaps in chronologial order.

It's a small thing, but to people who's only joy is to help and be a part of the community, recongition can be a very very big thing.

Let's keep this a community, and give some more recognition to the people who try to make it a great place. I think that is all the original poster really wants, and it's not too much to ask.

/me steps off soapbox.

H car better?

[doorbender]

IF Hydrogen becomes a more viable alternative fuel a vehicle that emits only H2O from its exhaust pipe could conceivably be better for the environment than EVs BUT, WIREDs one year old article is enough for me to be interested in a commuter/cruiser powered by optima batteries and a DC motor or two. Suck AMPS! Hey it's the title of the article.

sig? never touch 'em.

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[lcrawford]

Fuel cells fit the bill... It's old technology... hydrogen/oxygen fuel cells powered the early spacecraft, but they arn't economical at the moment. until they are, i think that if fuel prices keep going up, hybred vehicles, such as that dinky honda (I forget the model) are the future. Power is really only needed when accelerateing. Holding speed only takes enough power to overcome any friction. A dinky little 3 cylender engine can hold a rather large vehicle at any given speed, but badly needs the electric assist while accelerateing. as for your gas, fur, meat comment, I'm wondering why the animal rights people are so rabbid about fur, but dont seem to have any problems with leather? what, cows arn't cute enough for them to care?

Re:Why can't anyone see the obvious?

[piku]

Sure thats all fine, but what will really be an innovation is the cars you drive hooked up to an electric network embedded into the road, or above it. Sure it will cost a hell of alot of money to set up an maintain, but it would provide constant electrical energy to anything driving on it. Sort of like how bumper cars work, just with more power.

Just ignore all of the technical hurdles and its a flawless idea! :)

piku

Re:It's about how far you drive in a day.

[bluGill]

Great points, but missing something: traffic.

I live in Minnesota, and drive 20 miles to work. (Lets assume that works provides a recharging station so I have a full charge when I leave) Take a cold winter morning, -25, with a coule traffic accidents. It now takes not 30 minutes to get to work, but 75. Since the tempature is so cold I expect the heater to be running the entire time. The electric car does not have the range I need already, just running the heater on full.

Re:Why can't anyone see the obvious?

[stripes]

A well planned transportation policy should get rid of this subsidized personal transportation policy and make people pay the real cost for the use of cars and trucks over public roadways.

Subsidized? You mean by the gas tax, and personal property tax on cars, and title and tag fees on cars, and (in some places) road tolls, and ticket revnues?

Or do you mean the Federal Highway "assistance" that the federal goverment likes to use to get "assistance" on unrelated issues from the states? (lots of funds are conditonal on parcipation in various drug programs, or other non-road related issues)

The reason why public transportation systems have been so neglected is mainly a question of bad pricing regulation. You don't need to explicitly pay anything to drive on public roads and streets.

Thats one thery. Another is people don't like standing in the cold and rain to catch a bus. Another is that the busses and trains don't run all the time (i.e. people are afarid if they rely on the bus that if they have to stay late at work they won't be able to get home). As a former rider of busses and trains, I can say those were big downsides for me.

People want to have a personal computer on their desks, but mainframes are still the best solution to many tasks.

Intresting choice of analigy, since I bet the ratio of public transit systems to private cars and of mainframes to personal computers are allready pretty similar, yet you are arguing for more public transit (and fewer cars).

What's my answer? I don't really have one. I wouldn't be opposed to more directl linking the costs of cars to their operation, through say even higher fuel taxes, but only if the existing monies allready used to pay for the roads are given back. I'm not intrested in anything that makes cars more expensave without making something else less expensave.

I would also like to reduce the "zero emissions vechile" requirments a bit. Zero emissions really only has an eletric solution, and only because electric power lets you cheat by having the poultion gennerated elsewhere (nasty coal plants). Having a very low emissions standard would get you things that actually polute as little as an EV, and may have better range, or a better ride, or actually not be so dammed expensave.

But most of all, I would like to reduce goverment involvment, because they seem to fuck up everything the touch. Look at our public eductaion system and tell me otherwise. Or the highly regulated helthcare industry. Or compair the still regulated phone componies with the internet componies (or the current not-as-regulated phone componies with the highly regulated Bell System of the 1970s).

Thermophotovoltaic power

[XNormal]

The "solar cells" used are optimized for light in the relatively far infrared - heat radiation. One of the nicest things about this method is that it can recover energy from waste heat which would otherwise be unusable. If only the cells weren't so expensive and made from such toxic materials...

----

Re:Charging Infrastructure

[UncleRoger]

EV infrastructure is practically non-existent in this country (not that it's all that swell elsewhere).

Actually, if you have a charger that can use 110v, you can charge just about anywhere. A lot of people use the outlets intended for block warmers in the colder parts of the country. For commuting, it's usually not too dificult to get an employer to let you charge there, if necessary.

But for travelling across country, it's not so much the charging facilities as it is the time needed to charge. You go 50-100 miles, then you have to stop and charge for a few hours. Not too practical, but it forces you to really see the country.

Of course, your best bet for long drives is a rental car.

Re:Amazing performance

[UncleRoger]

acceleration power has traditionally been the major weakness of these cars

Actually, as I understand it, acceleration is one of the strengths of EV's. You have instant torgue -- no revving up. But, keep in mind that I'm not much into the racing side of EV's; I want an electric Land Rover.

Re:Why can't anyone see the obvious?

[UncleRoger]

But trains and subways do have their own advantages. Have you tried to read or sleep as you drive your car every day to and from work?

Therein lies the real advantage of public transit. I could drive to my main client (about 45 minutes) or ride the train (about an 1.5 hours.) But in a car, I have to drive. On the train, (electric, of course!) I can work, read e-mail, or even sleep. That hour and a half is worth a lot more to me than saving a couple of dollars a day (which I would end up paying for gas anyway.)

It comes down to do you want to have a small amount of unusable time, or more usable time?

EV Info Links

[UncleRoger]

Probably the best source of info on EV's on the web is Bruce Parmenter's site. Other good sites include Wilde EVolutions (the source for electric Land Rover info, as well as general conversion info), and the Electric Auto Association.

you'd probably hate the extra pollution...

[Barbarian]

An electric vehicle requires charging, and guess where most of that electricity comes from? Coal fired plants produce the bulk of electricity in north america... due to "green" resistance to nuclear power plants, most of the electricity is not generated in a clean fashion...which is worse, burning coal or gasoline? Probably coal, as it generally burns dirtier.

--

Some comments from a former public transit rider

[daviddennis]

Here in Los Angeles, our base Metro Rail system cost $ 3.46 billion for 4.4 miles of track and rolling stock, so I don't see $1 billion for a major freeway as terrible. If I recall correctly, that particular segment of road was one of the more expensive ones in the entire system because of the complex engineering involved.

The real bottom line is that people hate to wait for rail or bus transit, people hate it when they can't get seats, and people like the freedom cars give to travel when and where they want. Unfortunately, economic viability of public transit requires that you pack 'em in like sardines. Do I want to become a human sardine, or do I want to ride in my comfortable European luxury import?

I don't think cars are subsidized at all when the taxes paid by drivers are taken into consideration. In California, we pay a gas tax of about $ 0.30 a gallon - until the recent gas price spike, that was almost 1/3 of the total cost at the pump. I think we should expect gold-plated roads for that kind of money, but our government generally spends it elsewhere. Cars are a net contributer to government, not a net loss like public transport.

D

----

Thermal Batteries

[Detritus]

I wonder if they have tried using thermal batteries. These will put out huge amounts of power over a short period of time. The military likes to use them to power the electrical systems in missiles. They have an integral pyrotechnic heat source that brings them up to a high internal temperature (over 350C) to melt the electrolyte.

Honda Insight and Toyota Prius: Hybrid Cars...

[Guppy]

...that are on the road now.

The Honda Insight is a 70 mpg gas/electric hybrid that has won the Sierra Club's Excellence in Environmental Engineering Award. Base model MSRP is $18,880. You can read Carpoint's review of the Insight here.

The Toyota Prius is a 66 mpg gas/electric hybrid that has received the United Nations Environmental Protection Award. It has been available in Japan for about two years now, and is scheduled to be released in the US sometime this year. Toyota's site doesn't currently list the MSRP, but it sold in Japan for about $16,500 USD. There is a review of the Prius at TopGear.

Re:Amazing performance

[SoftwareJanitor]

Do you have a reference to the article you mention? I'd be curious as to which model and year Ferrari and Vette they are using in their comparisons and what the actual performance specs on the electric car you mention are. Most of the Ferrari's I've seen have been published with numbers in the 13-14 second range, which is not bad for a production car, especially one that is intended more for road racing than drag racing, but not really that impressive when you consider it is the same ballpark that a $20k Firebird Formula V8 is. 99% of the cars on the road are absolutely horrible 1/4 mile performers (look at the number of minivans, SUVs and econoboxes on the roads), that doesn't make a Ferrari or Vette outstanding 1/4 mile performers.

If they wanted to pick a car for example that was a reasonable comparison based on price, they might have picked the Dodge Viper, for example. It will toast either the current C6 Vette (which is a much less expensive car) or a Ferrari (which is a lot more expensive) in either the 1/8 or 1/4 mile. I'm not really a huge Viper fan personally (for that kind of money, I'd build a Cobra kit car with a 502 Chevy box motor and have money left over), but it is hard to argue with the numbers in this case.

Re:Amazing performance

[SoftwareJanitor]

You apparently are picking purposely bad internal combustion cars at the 1/4 mile. Neither a Vette, nor a Ferarri (and you don't specify year or model either) are particularly stellar performers in 1/4 mile and even less so in 1/8 mile drag racing. Both of these cars are more orriented for handling and road racing, especially the Ferarri. Line the specially built electric vehicle up against a internal combustion vehicle that is built for drag racing, and the story will likely be significantly different. Let alone that the electric car probably costs several times as much to build.

"Roads..we don't need roads!"

[DamnYankee]

Cool stuff this, but everyone seems to be caught up on the power density problems of batteries. Electric motors have efficiencies way beyond what ICE's (Internal Combustion Engines) can produce. The problem comes in feeding enough energy to the motor over a prolonged stretch of time.

This problem is pretty much moot if you consider fuel cells. Fuel cells come in a variety of types, but the most popular for vehicle applications run on Natural Gas or Methanol. Check out the efficiencies when compared to ICE's here.

These babies are the future. And if we go the methanol route, we can grow our own fuel stocks!

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[GregWebb]

Electric motors aren't that fantastic in cars, actually. Sure, they've got high torque at low revs: too much, actually. Most larger electric testbeds have to be managed VERY carefully to minimise this, or you spin your wheels rather embarrassingly every time you pull away, damaging your tyres in the process.

Battery energy density's pretty poor, too, while the energy tends to come from coal fuelled power stations which actually increases pollution. So your nice clean electric car's only serving to move the pollution away from the cities - NIMBY all over again.

Electric motors have a lot less moving parts than a conventional petrol engine, I'll agree, but have you come across orbital engines? Six or seven parts, only a couple of which move. Still more than an electric motor, I'll agree, but a more realistic proposition for cars, too.

If you want a practical alternative to petrol powered cars, it's likely to be either hydrogen fuelled combustion engines or fuel cells. Both are substantially better than electric cars for the environment and are relatively easy to slot into the existing infrastructure. Wait 10-15 years and they'll probably cost little more than current petrol vehicles of similar ability.

Greg

Re:if you hate the utility bill...

[GregWebb]

My apologies, I must've got the names wrong.

Orbital engines may be a bad idea, but this was being promtoed a few months ago. It was an unconventional two-stroke where everything 'orbitted', hence my assumption it was an orbital.

This system could have combustion chambers of any type acheivable with conventional engines. With that few moving parts. Looks a VERY nice idea.

Greg

Perhaps a better competition would be endurance

[barzok]

Say, something like the 24 hours of LeMans or Daytona. Max speed 100MPH (to make the results more practical to the average driver). He who drives farthest wins. This not only stresses battery endurance but charge/change time. Maybe allow each team only 2 sets of batteries (one in car, one charging).

Lifespan of a drag race electric motor?

[AtariDatacenter]

You have to wonder how long these motors last. That smoke you see coming out the back? No... it's not just the tires. :)

Obviously not designed to be an environmentally friendly demonstration, but it does raise awareness about electric motors.

Also... I'm wondering if they use special batteries in order to get that super-quick drain rate. And what gauge their wires are. :)

Re:Why can't anyone see the obvious? (OT)

[mouseman]

Subsidized? You mean by the gas tax, and personal property tax on cars, and title and tag fees on cars, and (in some places) road tolls, and ticket revnues?

Actually, gas taxes, etc, do not pay all the direct costs of roads you drive on. At the state and national level, they cover most of the direct costs, but adding and maintaining local roads is largely paid for from general taxes.

And that's only looking at direct costs. If you factor in indirect costs, such as traffic cops (I'm not even going to get into environmental costs), then yes, driving is heavily subsidized.

Re:It's about how far you drive in a day.

[Keeper]

How many cars does your household have? If you're married I'd be willing to bet there are two.

Most EV's today have a range of 120 miles on a full charge. If you can't get to work with that amount of juice you drive worse than my mother :P

Re:Amazing performance

[CausticPuppy]

That's not surprising-- pour enough juice into a big motor and you have a very efficient, monster torque producer. All we need are super-efficient batteries now.
The problem with electric cars is making them accelerate without killing the battery life.
In a drag racer, you don't care how long the batteries last, you just want to draw as much current as you can without melting them. I doubt we'll see an electric vehicle running in Le Mans anytime soon.

Re:Amazing performance

[Sivart_R1]

There's one big advantage to electric powered cars when looking at it from a Drag racing standpoint: full torque is available from 1 RPM. compared to the popular internal combustion engines for drag racing (V8 or turbo'd imports) this is an amazing advantage. A typical V8 will start producing useable torque by 1500-2000 RPM, and peak around 3000. Turbo'd cars (mainly seen in the import drags) are even worse. The torque curve there is dependant on the turbo being at full spool, so it's a slow build to a peak around 5000 RPM (generalizations, but good to make a point). This translates to wide ranges of the power band that are for all intents and purposes un-useable for the race. When you have a power supply that is at full torque from the moment you step on the accelerator, and holds that through the entire band, your biggest hurdle is in keeping the tires stuck to the ground. The hard part of translating this advantage to street vehicles is in the range these cars have. They have been designed to go a short distance at full power. It equates to the funny cars and rail-dragsters that only have a 5 gallon fuel cell, and it has to be re-filled after each 1/4 mile race. Having any engine run at maximum power generally makes for a very short range.

Public transportation

[mOdQuArK!]

I've had the fortunate opportunity to experience some really effective subways in London, Japan (Tokyo area), Paris & Washington, DC.

The things I really liked about them, and which I consider necessary for any system which will be used & cost-effective:

1. They go everywhere. I could get to anywhere in those cities by walking a couple of blocks, with one or two transfers in between.

2. They were cheap (a buck or two at the most), and got cheaper the more I used them (volume discount/passes).

3. They were convenient. I could walk into any subway entrance & get tickets in any amount to any destination with either cash, ATM or credit card, within a minute or two.

4. They were frequent - in Tokyo, I never had to wait more than 2 minutes for any train. They arrived on time, to the second.

5. They all ran on raised platforms so that they were completely independent of the local traffic patterns, which really sucked in most of the high-density urban environments. I contrast this experience to the light rail stations running here in Portland, Oregon, which have to go through the stop lights just like all the other cars.

6. They had many overlapping local/express routes - so you could take the express routes to get quickly into the area you wanted to go, then switch to a local route to get dumped practically on the doorstop of your final destination.

The BIG problem that I saw, is that without the incredibly high population densities in these particular urban environments, NO ONE is going to be able to build self-sustaining mass transit.

These systems work because of a critical mass of people who are using them on a regular basis, paying good money & who need them available to survive.

As long as the people in the Mid & Western United States prefer a low-population density lifestyle, they will never be able to build an effective mass transit system which can compete with all of the above benefits of a mass transit system w/o massive subsidization (which will inevitably appear to most taxpayers as an incredible waste of taxpayer money).

On the _SLIGHTLY_ more pratical side...

[v6stang]

While electric cars that can do wheelstands may be cool, they probably aren't too pratical. Check out the Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University. They have some really cool alternative fuel vehicles, everything from solar to electric to hybrids. The best engine they have developed so far is what they call the Midnight Sun. Check out the webpage for more details, but the gist of it is this: The engine is composed of very efficient burners which burn methane (I think). The trick is that the car doesn't get it's power from the heat, rather from the light energy. Highly efficient "solar cells" are located very close to the flame, and those charge banks of batteries. A very cool setup indeed. Not to mention the fact that this thing can ALSO peel out for a full block :0)

Re:Amazing performance

[Barry Brown]

Wired Magazine had a great article about these cars. Their performance often outpaces gas-powered dragsters and they don't make noise.

I'm inspired enough to someday build an electric vehicle for myself for city use.

Rather useless

[rcw-home]

If electric motors were inefficient, this would be a great competition that would spur advances in motor technology. But motors are already 90-95% efficient.

If batteries were unable to give massive amounts of current, this competition would spur advances in battery technology. But your average lead-acid car battery can already pump 600 amps, and NiCad cells have an even lower internal resistance (a single D-cell sized NiCad rechargable can put out 50 amps).

No, the problem with electric vehicles is the combination of power and range. Battery technology today simply cannot store a tenth of the energy that is stored chemically in a modest tank of gasoline. I don't see these competitions as improving this.

Re:Rather useless

[karlm]

A few comments on a few of the ideas floating arround here. My electric vehicle knowledge is about two years old. However, most of my info somes from my experience on the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle team, so most of it should still be applicable for anything priced for the consumer market.

Right now, IMHO, the best candidates for near-term energy storage in EVs are ultracapictors and flywheels. Both have a clear advantage over batteries in terms of discharge rates. Ultracapicitors currently have energy density issues and flywheels have some efficiency issues. However, flywheels have the advantage of requiring a controller to convert to and from kinetic energy. It would be relatively easy for the controller to be linked to the power management computer via a digital command coax. In an accident, there would be very little risk of electrical disharge, even if the output terminals are shorted.

I eas very surprised at the ammount of noise an MGM wheel-hub motor makes, especially considdering that it's 98% efficient, IIRC. I believe that most air-cooled brushless DC motors would have a similar noise level. There is a clacking noise generated that is load enough to get anoying inside the unshielded body of the Manta GT sloar race car. The stator coils contract slightly when energized becasue the individual windings are attracted to eachother. Most of the motor controller inefficiencis result from its inability to generate perfect square wave outputs. Rise times kill effiency. This means that the input to the coils will be as sharp a feasably possible, whcih means that the contraction of a coil will probably produce an audible "clack" if there is no insulating medium (such as liquid coolant ductwork) between the listener and the coil. When I first heard it, I thought there was a piece of plastic in contact with the rotor because it sounded like a playing card clacking on a bike spoke. Granted, an electric motor will be quieter than a comparable IC engine, especially an unmuffled nitromethane engine with racing cams. Don't be fooled into thinking that electric cars are necessarily silent, though.

About the constant-torque issue: it is true that most brushless DC motors develop nearly constant torque over thier entire RPM range. However, this is sub-optimal. The near constant torque arises from constant clearance between the rotor and the stator coils. The maximum RPM is also determined by the back-EMF, which is affected greatly by the rotor clearance. There is an optimum clearance for a given set of operating paramiters, so many of the more advanced motors have an actuator that moves the stator back and forth in order to continually optimize the rotor clearance for efficiency. So it actually turns out that the optimum torque curve decreases with RPM. Right now, however, manually adding shims to the motor controls rotor clearance more accurately than an actuator that adjusts clearance dynamically. Since most of the time durring solar car races is spent on highways, cruising right at the speed limit, it's most efficient for the MIT Manta GT to have the rotor clearnce set for cruising speed by dissasembling the motor in lab and adding or removing shims. The extra efficiency gained at cruising speed more than makes up for the inability to continuosly optimize the motor.

On a side note, don't assume that exotic processes and materials are better. Take for instance, the University of Michigan's solar car frame is made of titanium. (At least a few years ago it was.) Titanium is light weight, but very difficult to work with. Titanium is notoriusly expensive and comparitively expensive to work with. It is also imposible to design Titanium for an infinite fatigue life. (The maximum vibration allowable amplitude asymptotically aproaches zero as designed fatigue life approaches infinity. For most steels, however, the allowable amplitude asymptotically appraoches a positive value. Trust me, I spent an entire semster at MIT learning about crack growth and fatigue.) I'm told that the University of Michigan's Ti frame weighed only seven pounds less than the MIT ChroMolly steel frame. Which is more reliable? Which cost less? How many pounds are you willing to shave at eh cost of money and reliability?

Karl

Karl

I'm a slacker? You're the one who waited until now to just sit arround.

The Lead Wedge

[Animats]

The Lead Wedge, back in 1969, was the first battery-powered dragster. Autolite-Ford built the thing, and was embarassed at how good the performance was. Electric cars weren't supposed to go that fast.

We've made some progress since then.

damn the man

[Nastard]

This is just another example of the white man trying to hold down the National Electric and Gas Racing Organization (NEGRO). Seems nobody cares about gas/electric hybrids anymore.

if you hate the utility bill...

[small_dick]

...you'll love seeing $1.80 a gallon for the stinky toxic gasoline that you fill your car with every time you go to the pump.

electric motors are in every way superior to gasoline engines. as few as a single moving part, lifetimes in the range of 250K miles, and the torque curve of an electric motor is better than any gas engine ever built. when you kink in an electric motor, it's solid torque from 0 rpm to [in some cases] over 15k rpm -- no gas engine can do that. transmissions are not even used on many electrics -- except for reverse. no need to constantly adjust the drive ratio to match the pathetic powerband of the gas junker.

it the energy density/storage that's killing evs. just no way to store all those electrons in anything close to an efficient way. the energy density of chemical fuel is many times that of even the best theoretical batteries.

it's a shame, cuz gas engines are a horrid relic of the past. having a heat pump under the hood is a big waste. better to do the conversion at the remote power station, where you can make the engines ultra efficient at one rpm and let 'em spin. you can also put good stacks/scrubbers on a power station that limit emissions, no room on gas junk.

hopefully, someone will have a storage solution ready before too much longer. maybe right about the time fusion goes online! that would so rock.

gasoline==fur==meat==(death&&poison) although i still eat meat. too tasty. sorry.

Re:It's about how far you drive in a day.

[UncleRoger]

Ah, the old "I drive from Akron to Detroit everyday" argument...

When I can jump into an electric car and drive from Akron to Detroit non-stop, heater, defroster, wipers, headlights and stereo all going full-blast, I'll take electric cars seriously.

Someone once said (I can't recall who, unfortunately) "The best way to extend the range of an Electric Vehicle is a rental car." (or something like that.)

How often do you drive from Akron to Detroit? How far do you really drive on a daily basis? One of the problems is that the general public is conditioned to thinking of refueling as a pain in the butt, hopefully done no more than once a week (Often in the rain or snow, or late at night when you'd rather be in bed, or when you're late for a meeting.)

Not so with EV's. You come home at the end of the day, pull into your nice warm garage, and plug the car in. The next morning, you've got a full charge. Around here, (San Francisco Bay Area) there are all kinds of places for an "opportunity charge." Offices have EV charging stations in the parking lot, as does BART (the local, inter-county train system,) and even Fry's Electronics. Even in Akron or Detroit, I'm told that many parking lots have public outlets for block heaters -- which work fine for most EV chargers.

For driving across country, generally speaking, EV's are not the answer. But for day-to-day commuting of, say, 50 miles or less each way, (and if you commute more than that you need to re-evaluate the value of your time!) they work great. For running errands around town, they're great.

You don't want to use your EV to drive to visit your mother-in-law, but how often do you do that? You don't want to use an EV to drive the kids to Disneyland, but that's not an enjoyable task in any vehicle -- you're better off flying anyway. You're a travelling salesman and you drive 150 miles a day? You need gas. But for the rest of us, EV's would work for most of our driving.

On a side note, I was in Yosemite a few years back (9/22/95, to be exact) to do a little backpacking and attend the unveiling of some electric busses that were to be used in the valley. There were quite a few EV luminaries in attendance with samples of their work, including one gent who had just driven his electric Honda CRX from Washington DC. (He used, of course, a high-efficiency gas generator built into a trailer to get something like 60mpg.)

But pound for pound, gasoline rules over batteries.

If you're looking at distance per pound, yes. But that is not the only criteria. There are others such as cost per mile (EV's win), convenience of refueling (EV's win for day-to-day, Gas wins for the unusual), noise (EV's win), power (EV's win), and so on.

Amazing performance

[Captn Pepe]

From their records page, the "Current Eliminator" (336 volts) took the current top prize, pulling 141 mph in 8.861 seconds. Wow. I'd give good money to see how they pulled performance like that out of an electric motor assembly. After all, acceleration power has traditionally been the major weakness of these cars (besides range, which is a power storage issue).

Although for that matter, I'm pretty impressed with a power supply that can deliver that kind of current, too. (Quick calculation on xcalc...) Conservatively, that comes out to around 100 KW from a battery!

Re:Amazing performance

[Skald]

Actually, the tricky part was keeping the dragsters from running over each other's extension cords...

Why can't anyone see the obvious?

[mangu]

There's some mental block at play here. Most threads here are reminding us how terribly inefficient batteries are. So, what's the obvious solution? Get rid of batteries, of course. With what, fuel cells? No way, too expensive. The obvious solution to the high cost of batteries has been implemented for a hundred years now. It's electric rail transportation, of course.

Public transportation may not be the best solution for some cases, people will still want their cars to drive wherever they want. But trains and subways do have their own advantages. Have you tried to read or sleep as you drive your car every day to and from work? I compare the transportation problem to computers. Public transportation is like a big mainframe. People want to have a personal computer on their desks, but mainframes are still the best solution to many tasks. We need a well planned, well integrated, public transport network, which we will use on a day to day basis. We also need roads and cars, for special trips, like what we do on weekends, for instance.

The reason why public transportation systems have been so neglected is mainly a question of bad pricing regulation. You don't need to explicitly pay anything to drive on public roads and streets. You do need to pay to ride on trains. This makes roads and streets seem to have a much lower cost than they really do. A well planned transportation policy should get rid of this subsidized personal transportation policy and make people pay the real cost for the use of cars and trucks over public roadways.