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Washington State Legalizes NEVs on Public Roads
ptorrone writes "Washington State just passed NEV legislation, legalizing them for in-road use. NEVs are neighborhood electric vehicles. This is a big deal with more and more consumers having the choice of a variety of non-car solutions, we'll see charging stations and more people in general considering alternative transportation means. It'll also be fun to geek out some NEVs." From zero to twenty in 9.8 seconds!
What are NEVs, fancy golf carts and Segways?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
If it's not a car and can't kepp up with traffic it shouldn't be on the road. All they will do is cause traffic congestion. And don't complain about pollution. Modern, working cars don't pollute enough to make a difference either.
The problem with this is that there aren't really any road-capable NEV's or whatever you want to refer to them as.
The segway hits a top speed of what....11MPH? Do you really want to get stuck behind some yuppie and his $5000 segway inching along the street when you are in a rush to get to the office?
We already have enough traffic problems with vehicles that CAN do the speed limit, lets not worry about alternative transportation until it can at least keep up with normal means of travel.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
Well this is one way to combat gas prices. Not to mention you can always find plugs around in public property ^_^;
Have a look at the Ultra project for a more creative solution to electric mass transport :-)
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Now we can have vgolf carts everywhere! I can't wait to get on the freeyway behind a group of 'em!
Could you please post a link to the study that links automotive exhaust to asthma? Or Are you just making this up off of the top of your head?
Why you hate-in on the auto this weekend
Story 1
Story 2
Stroy 3
I hope it doesn't screw up the paint on my Dually when I start running these things over
Well, not geeky, but pretty kinky with that leather underwear thing...
From zero to twenty in 9.8 seconds!
Won't be long before some gearhead straps a Chevy 350 in that thing.
As cool as this could be, it can be a bad thing. I know of at least one company that markets and sells NEVs in California on behalf of one of the big three automakers. They do this to inflate the number of low-emissions vehicles they sell in that market to evade state regulations.
Could be this law is just a push by the automakers to play the same shell game in WA if similar state regulations exist there....
You think it's tough getting laid driving a Toyota Corolla
you hear on the BBC. Hell...even the Royal Ark stopped carrying it because they were broadcasting bullshit and the soldiers aboard KNEW it.
I seriously hope that sig is an attempt at poking fun at them....they are getting increasingly rediculous as time goes on.
While I can't provide studies that directly link automotive exhaust to asthma, it can be safely inferred.
Studies have shown that the majority of urban pollution comes from vehicle emissions. Other studies have linked increase in respiratory ailments (asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, etc) to urban pollution levels. Therefore, it can safely be inferred that automotive emissions contribute to asthma and other respiratory difficulties.
What?
The biggest problem with electric cars is recharging them - it takes hours.
Instead, I've seen other solutions that provide similar capabilities as electric cars, but without the recharge headache. The one that I find most promising is the air car.
It's about the size of a Geo Metro, and goes ~200 miles on $2 worth of electricity, and you can refuel in under 1 minute! It also has a small built-in compressor which takes a few hours, which means that at its worst, it's no worse than an electric vehicle.
The best part - they are apparently already being manufactured in France and South Africa. If I had the money I'd definitely want to get one.
No pollution, dirt cheap to operate, and the engine should be more reliable than a gas engine because there's no combustion.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
See L.A. Can't see it through the smog?
Visit L.A. take a deep breath
Feel the soot on your car after just one day there. Lovely isn't it.
Leave L.A. compair and contrast the ease of breathing in L.A. and just 20 miles north.
Los Angles California is a pretty toxic enviroment. While I don't have any ACTUAL studies in front of me, I can reasonably assume that the vast majority of their air polution comes from cars. It kinda makes it a good testing ground for new clean air regulations, it being a basin filled with millions of people, and millions of cars.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
There are those of us who would actually use cheeper more eco-friendly forms of transportation if it was available. People like my self would invest the the expence of using natural gas if it wasn't for the lack of filling stations. But I personaly can't refuel on it unless I drive roughly 40miles away, making it none too practical.
You *can* have convenience with natural gas -- by installing a refueling compressor in your garage. They *are* available for home users. I'm not sure how much they cost -- probably a couple thousand bucks. Of course it should cost less, but that's how it goes with these things -- they're always marked up several hundred percent. The bigger hassle is probably road taxes. Depending on which state you're in, you may have to file a road tax return, and/or get your mileage verified by some nitwit inspector who doesn't return phone calls, etc.
So we are going to use electric cars.
Big toxic batteries.
They have no tailpipe emissions, but where does that power come from?
Power plants, oil, nuclear, coal, solar, wind, hydro which one will generate the extra. I bet that the wind isn't gonna start blowing harder, and the sun isn't burning brighter, and the water won't flow faster.
Moving the source of the pollution doesn't really change much. The only benefit of these vehicles is they might be more efficient with the energy they do have, but they aren't a zero environmental cost. If they don't have the 10 year life of a conventional small car they might have an even bigger impact then the other new cars being sold today.
They do not cause traffic congestion, since the areas they tend to be used the most in areas with stop every block or two. While military bases make for an ideal location to use these I have seen the same types GEMS on the streets in Los Vegas. You can rent one for a night on the town. They've all been done up with extra neon lighting so you can't miss them. Even loaded down with four large and usually very drunk males, they kept up with traffic just fine on the main strip.
The only bad thing is if you live in areas such as Calfornia, you are going to get raped on the cost of electricity.
Quote form Unregistered: "Modern, working cars don't pollute enough to make a difference either."
Modern cars do pollute enough to make a difference, especially when you are talking about a couple of million of them opperating in the same area. Come out here to LA and drive down the 405 and try saying that again with a straight face.
Like I said NEV have their place, and hopefully cities being more friendly towards these vehicles will help stir up interest in EV's and maybe the end of the excuses that the technology is not ready coming form the auto manufactures.
Dammit, I never have points when I need them, only when they're inconvenient.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
The exact cause of asthma is unknown, but, there is a relationship with alergies. Often though an asthmatic may not be alergic to anything at all. For some it's stress. For others food allergies may be the cause. For many asthmatics there is little to no warning of an approaching attack. Additionally the common treatment for asthma is steroids which work to weaken ones immune system which is causing the imflamation in the air passages.
In fact some "studies" indicate that the sterile environments provided for children by over-anxious yuppy parents prevent proper development of the immune system. A link has also been shown between asthmatics and premature births. But to pretend that a link to arbitary pollution can be made is dishonest at best, and a disservice to those with the disease at worst.
Some simple background facts: the majority of American families own more than one automobile; the majority of American families live in urban areas; the majority of imported oil is used for automobile fuel; oil exporting countries are not necessarily our friends and are members of a price-fixing cartel (OPEC); aggregate automobile fuel economy is under 25mpg; a large percentage of automobile trips are 5 miles or less (both individual excursions and total miles driven). Taken together, these suggest that a highly-efficent (75+mpg or electric), short-range vehicle would make sense for a lot of people.
Unfortunately, although these vehicles may exist, nobody buys them because they're too expensive (e.g. $14K+ for the Ford Th!nk IIRC) to justify their utility and savings. Solution?
A Federal program to eliminate oil imports and to reduce air pollution in urban areas while simultaneously reducing traffic congrestion, stimulating the economy, and increasing jobs.
How?
Encourage adaptation of appropriate vehicles by providing tax incentives to both manufacturers and buyers. Provide tax incentives to get rid of older and/or low mpg cars; make zero percent financing available; allow really big tax write-offs and/or credits to individual purchasers of such vehicles (how about allowing the entire purchase price - up to some defined limit - to be applied as a credit toward tax liability over a three year period?).
What would this cost and what would it accomplish?
Cost? Presuming that the $14K price of the Ford Th!nk is typical, and that 100% of that price would be returned to the buyer as tax credits, it would cost only $140B (about 1/3 of the tax cut for the rich currently in process) to allow 10 million families to obtain and use such a vehicle.
Accomplish? Replacing 10 million 25mpg vehicles each being driving 5000 miles per year in short, local trips might save 2 billion gallons of gasoline per year (which require approximately 60 million barrels of oil to produce), reduce air pollution, and relieve dense urban traffic congestion, create thousands of jobs in the manufacture and maintenance of the vehicles and their components, and reduce oil imports from the middle East by approximately 10%.
Applying the same concepts to fuel-efficent hybrids for long-range vehicles would have even larger benefits.
Slashdot readers interested in this stuff should read EV World regularly. Support its dedicated editor by purchasing a subscription if possible.
1. uncouple the regenerator/motor on downhills. My bicycle can go 40+ mph on a downhill. I don't see why a NEV can't, as long as you beef up the brakes for safety.
2. Lower it and re-do the roof. Most of the NEVs I've seen are built for comfort, not speed. They have high roofs and look like expensive golf carts, which is really what they are. Close those windows too. Plenty of room to reduce wind resistance on these babies.
3. DIY pulsejets. 'nuff said.
4. I'm already sick of Monster Garage, but as long as that show's on the air, they might was well stick one of their chromed bike motors in a NEV.
Of course, these last two suggestions take the E out of NEV, but what they heck.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Well if it's too slow, the geek solution is to bolt a Jato unit on the back.
You should read Slashdot more often, do we have to spell out everything?
Try passing a bike on a windy road or near a hill. Can't go 100 feet in western PA without seeing a hill or curved road. I just worry about passing some guy on his bike and him falling off and suing me.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What I don't understand, is why most of them are designed with radiator grills (functional or faux).
The thing that keeps electric vehicles from stomping all over top fuel dragsters and sending the conventional boys home crying to their mommas is the weight. Batteries weigh more than gas. A lot more. Oh well.
Check out http://www.nedra.com/records.html for a rough idea of the top quarter-mile electric car times. Keep in mind that most of these are hobbyists, and all the 12 second times become a bit more respectable.
--it's the same, wherever you go, just someplaces are more blatant than others. "royalty" and excessive and blatant hedonism have done them in, and pure boneheadedness and laziness, and all that mixed in with nutjob fundies. so yes, we'll be seeing more "terrorism" no doubt. You take what one fatcat saudi prince drops in an evening at the casino, what with his retinue and whores and drinks and limos and high stakes gaming and renting entire floors of suites, etc, you got a whole small villages income for one year, if not more than that.
now, how many princes do they have again?
Biggest mistake the islamic oil owners did was to SELL most of their oil, if they had started USING it more as an energy source to become vertical manufacturing nations-like china did-they'd all be quite well off now, probably by orders of ten or better. They could have sold small amounts of it for expensive prices, but it was too ridiculously easy and lazy of them to just pump it all out and sell it off for cheap (with a little help from their western handlers of course). Much easier doing that than actually working with it. Now they've blown 50 years of decent income, and will all be taken over, just watch it happen. Saudi Arabia is as much on the neowarcons hit list as the other "axis of targets" list nations are.
North Korea, though, I think they will wait on, them boys would put up a fight. The other ones, iran, libya,syria, sudan, wherever = targets.
That's my guess anyway.
Oil is still far and away the big kahuna, no matter what the apologists say. This is what the future historians will write about as the century of the resource wars, oil, water,and exotic and precious metals.
I like solar and use it, but I am also a realist, whether it's a normal piston engine or a hybrid or a turbine, most of the fuel is coming from the black slimy stuff for the next buncha years. Hydrogen sometime, not right now though for most places.
From zero to twenty in 9.8 seconds!
And with respect to the segway, zero to broke in the speed of an amazon transaction!
right.
let's "solve" the traffic problem forever by making it permanent.
Electric vehicles are great, BUT, how much fossil fuel must be burned to recharge the batteries??
If they are charged by solar panels then that it fantastic and I'm totally, 1000% for it.
But it they are burning oil and even worse, foreign oil, to charge them up, then it seems to defeat the purpose.
Electricity doesn't grow on tree, unless you burn them for it.
And it doesn't rain down from the sky either. Oh, wait a minute, it sure does! You just have to use the right collector to catch all that free energy....
Let's get cracking on non polluting, FREE energy..
Hydroelectric has enviromental consequences that are far reaching and difficult to see in the short term, oil & coal is just not a good thing. NG is the lesser of the fossil fuel offenders but it too has consequences that are far reaching.
Solar, wind, geothermal are what we need to pound on, over and over.
I would like to see the roof of EVERY house and building in the country covered with solar panels and use them to power small collective, community grids. And in places where it's feasible, windmills too.
That and more energy-efficient designs in appliances, lighting, heating, cooling and most importantly, insulation procedures.
This country was designed and built in a very energy wasteful manner and still operates under that mindset. We've GOT to change.
Just another example of being introduced to a new acronym in a slashdot article, without any explanation as to what that acronym might stand for.
There is a low cost option that exists today in the Seattle area--Biodiesel. I recently sold my '96 Honda Accord and with the proceeds bought a '79 Mercedes diesel. I now drive the Mercedes on biodiesel-a fuel made from vegetable oil. Why would I do such a thing?
- This car does not contribute to global warming as the CO2 it emits was fixed from our current atmoshpere, not a Jurassic atmosphere like petro fuels
- It has 50% the CO emissions of a regular diesel engine
- It has 10% the total hydrocarbon emissions
- It has a 100% reduction in sulphides compared to standard diesel fuel
- There are 4 pumps in the Puget sound area
- If I can't get a hold of biodiesel, I can just put regular diesel in the pump, with no problems
- The car gets 27 MPG
- I don't rely on foreign oil to get around town
- I don't support Exxon/Mobil/Texaco
- I support the American economy by using fuels grown in America
Biodiesel is here today, is inexpensive to get into, has no switching costs, has great political and economic ramifications, and I look suhweet rolling in my Benzo.
I'm much funnier now that I'm a subscriber.
http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/seminars/delfino/de lfino.htm
Has anyone driven one of these? I've been told they are cool. They are only 60lbs, made of a carbon fiber, and look bad ass. I've often thought it looked like the perfect local commuter vehicle.
There is a distributor in Cali from what I hear.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Sure it has an internal combustion engine... but have you considered the enviromental costs of producing all those batteries or solar cells in your electric vehicles? What are their expected life spans? These scooters will still be put-putting along when the apes take over, and they are made from almost all recycled steel and aluminum. The environmental costs over their expected life spans will put almost any electric vehicle to shame.
I just bought one for my wife New Scooter and it's an amazing little vehicle.
The best solution is rarely the highest technology one.
--Mark
The Ford Th!nk seems to list for about $7K, not $14K, as do several other short-range electrics.
That would reduce the cost of 10 million of them to only $70 billion - or less than 20% of the proposed tax cut for the rich. On the other hand, using the entire proposed tax cut to pay for short-range electrics could put over 50 million of them into American garages - at essentially zero cost to their owners.
Question: if you could get a nice little electic car essentially for free, would you use it rather than buying a gas-guzzling SUV to drive Burger King or the 7-11? Any answer other than an immediate "yes" suggests that you didn't take the question seriously.
In 1992 I lived in Peachtree City, GA, just a little south of Atlanta. One of the things that made the city interesting was that all publicly accessable buildings had to be accessable via the golf-cart road system in the city. New sites had to be linked into the golf-cart roads. This was a golfing community, and residents could drive anywhere in town on these little roads. The only city roads you drove on were residential roads to get onto the golf-cart roads.
:)
It was the only place I know of where KMart sold golf carts and there were used golf-cart lots on the side of the road.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
This is the big error you people make, you assume there's a nice big river everywhere that is suitable for making a hydro plant. You never paid attention in geography class, did you?
--umm, I just looked at the pics for those things. They ARE cars, just smaller, electric, and more efficient for their tasks as intended. We have towers, servers, laptops, notebooks, PDAs and cell phones that can do all of the above badly, plus make a call. Same deal with vehicles. I think they are cool for what they are for, urban/suburban commuter specials. Now, you don't tow your skiboat to the lake with them. Besides that, 4 wheels, steering wheel, body, out of the weather, I'm sure pretty moddable-yep, that's a car!
I have a small 4 banger , a full size van, an RV, and a jeep, they all serve different purposes. I still have a moped, too, for when I lived in town, and 4 bicycles. They all got a use, and if I could get a used cheap one of these eletric things I probably would. I'll wait until a million have been sold and snag a trade-in sometime.
Tell ya what I would like right now, a garden tractor that was electric. I make a lot of surplus juice in the middle of the day from the solar panels here, usually by 1PM on sunny summer days all the batteries are full, I could plug in an electric vehicle then, the almost 4 acres of grass I cut would appreciate it, and I could do without the stink and noise of the little gassers I use now.
ya, they probably got them, I just never saw one for a few hundred for sale used anyplace. I've seen the little push mowers and robomowers that are electric, that ain't gonna cut it though, pun intended, need to be able to cut a scosh more than 18" wide at a whack.
dunno about you but I like SUV's because they destroy the enviroment AND because they're large cages of metal that will protect me in the event that some moron decides to get me into a accident. I'd actually like to drive a glorified golf cart if not for a fact that event he smallest of non-suv type vehicles can probably toast it in an accident. Thats bad news for me inside, no?
I could care less if there was a bike that ran on a perpetual motion machine, I would not use it.
Why? I value not being made into a paraplegic in an accident. When in transport, I want a frame around me. In a battle of a head hitting the road, the road always wins.
Lets be realistic, electric motors have a tremendous amount of torque. Anyone who has driven a golf cart knows this. I better the electric cars will go from 0 to 20 in 2 seconds at most.
Checking out my form of escapism.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Damn, I'd be pissed off if I got stuck behind it, and I'm a bicyclist. Cars are always slowing me down, anyways. And then they have the nerve to suddenly honk loudly if I ever *might* be slowing them down. Like I care if some SUV driver takes 1 second longer to get to their destination when they've cut me off before.
For NEV, as well as their older and more practical predecessors (bicycles), to become popularized as an alternative transportation method, cities are going to have to start paving bike lanes into their streets. Right now, it's just too frickin' dangerous to ride a bike (or NEV) because most the cars aren't watching for you, many of them try to squeeze around you so close I'm amazed the side-view mirrors don't hit me every time, and a few of them actually swerve to hit (Not exaggerating. Quite a few cyclists die because of this every year in the USA.)
NEVs should be outlawed and their previous owners given a choice between buying a Chevy Suburban or spending 60 days in the county jail.
If you build neighborhoods correctly, you don't need to rely on any external forces to get you the food you need.
Aye, there's one big source of our dependance on the auto. The U.S. has an *enormous* installed base of poorly-designed neighborhoods. Winding streets with no sidewalks, strict segregation of residential and commercial activities, and sprawling development (single-story houses on 3/4 acre lots. gag!) make it almost a requirement to drive to get any sort of outside input! NEVs are a stopgap solution, what we need in the long term is better urban planning. We need more mixed-use development, more compact residential areas, etc. The guiding principle should be to have everything needed on a daily basis within easy walking (or bicycle) distance from every home.
0 1 - just my two bits
I understand that golf exists to give White guys an excuse to dress like Black guys, but I refuse to become one.
Electric vehicles have been banned from the drag strip in my town because some guy rigged together a battery powered car that started out being ridiculously fast compared to all the other cars there, and just kept getting faster every time he refined it.
The point about efficiency rather than performance is the crux of the situation. The truth is, although many alternative fuel vehicles may be cleaner while you drive them, their energy efficiency tends to be about the same if you make them as fast as a normal car. This makes it self-defeating to make them fast. Besides, the target market for alternative fuel vehicles is largely the group of people who buy Geo Prizms for the 44mpg and don't give a damn that it's a Geo - they probably don't care that the AF car is slow, either.
How much more efficient?
Total efficiency?
Lets see, move gas to car. Burn gas(moderately efficient)
vs
Move gas to power plant, run turbine (efficient), generate electricity (low efficiency), transmit to car (ok), recharge battery (generally ok), turn electric motor (a little more efficient then a gas engine, depending on duty cycle).
I think that it might be a slight improvement, but mostly it is a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard).
I also again question the longevity of the car, more waste comes from the production of the vehicle then its tailpipe emissions anyway.
Take a quick look at efficiencies, the generation of electricity is quite inefficient, and hurts the overall efficiency of the system.
Will there be special lanes, so SUV drivers won't be running everyone over?
Be awesome if they can get the room temp super conducting .
to work with NEV's, would make them super efficient
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/7/4/5
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
i never thought i'd see the day someone quoted beer zone lyrics on /.
I'm waiting until this nation (us) abandons coal as it's primary energy source. Driving an electric car is not neccesarily any more eco friendly than driving a combustion powered vehicle unless your energy source is renewable and clean. When you plug your electric car into the grid you're probably burning coal.
Unfortunatly, electric cars will probably not lower our dependance on fossil fuels anytime soon. If anything they may increase them. The important step is the adoption of alternative energy sources.
Until then I'll still rely on human-powered transportation.
I can't read your link (fonts too tiny), but can you tell me how it recharges? What powers the compressor? Electricity? Gas? Inflating rubber balloons?
Or about what goes in crashes in them. First of all, the cars are made to absorb energy. This means that big crash you see where the car gets torn apart, that's the car material sacrificing itself, taking in all the kinetic energy. In a "stock car", there also is a frame around the driver. Then the driver is encased in a 5 point harness. Then there's the Han/Hutchens device, which prevents the whiplash effect (what killed Earnhardt, he could have used one). Just simply wearing a helmet doesn't afford instant protection (ask Earnhardt), it's the multitudes of all these protections doing that.
yeah boo solar
Actually electric motors used in cars have much more torque than gas motors. The fastest acceleration from 0-60 in a four wheeled vehicle was done with an electric car. Do a google for John Whaland(sp?) for more information.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Hey, I'm a WA state resident. I just saw two people using a Segway today! It was a guy who had one, and his son. They were waiting at a crosswalk just standing there on them. The segways actually look kind of silly, plasticy and playskoolish. It was cool though. I thought it was funny that I read this story then went out and saw a Segway for the first time.
Technical problems are trivial to overcome compared to market inertia...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
We use more renewable enrgy than you thank,
not nearly enough of course. Besides, there
are two arguments for using electric even
though that energy clearly has to come from
somewhere
1) It is cheaper and easier to make a more
efficient, cleaner single large power plant
than it is to try to make millions of small
efficient clean vehicles
2) electric vehicles are source agnostic,
they don't care what the source of the energy
is and it would make it that much easier to switch the economy over. Only a few key players would
have to change vs. every ignorant or mis-informed
Tom, Dick and Harry.
PS> And for something like an NEV with low
energy requirements it would be quite easy
to setup a photovoltaic system for charging.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Right, but what is lost in your argument is that a gas engine is 13% or so efficient while a gas-fired electric plant is >70% efficient in transferring energy from gas to electricity (including delivery losses). So a hypothetical electric plant that runs on gasoline could make 5 electric cars go the same distance as one gasoline car - all other things being equal.
"Find a way to extract energy from hydrogen (and likewise convert it into energy a vehicle can use) that doesn't require more net energy (and waste) in the process and then come talk to me."
Again, all energy conversions are suboptimal. There is no way to change energy from one form to another without losing some of it. This is why photovoltaics aren't really viable - because it takes more energy to refine the silicon and grow the cell than the cell delivers during its lifetime. All energy conversion processes have waste - there's no way around it.
Where are the teen-punks going to put the fart cannon? The giant spolier? Where are all the stickers going to go?
:)
Maybe if they put a "Type-R" sticker on the back, they'd be popular.
A quick google didn't show any aftermarket vinyl racing stripes to make these go faster, so I don't see where these will do very well.
Ooohhh I know what I'll patent now - a giant speaker to mount under the rear with a continuous-loop recording of a highly-amplified bumble-bee, just to make it sound like it has an engine. Then it'll sell
It looks like a normal, electrically powered compressor. I'd stick a solar panel on the roof and it could charge itself up while it sits idly parked.
Interestingly these machines would also be exempt from the £1250pa ($2000pa) London congestion charge.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I probably know more about race car design than you do, having wrenched on them myself.
You seem to be making the argument that helmets play an insignificant role in preventing death in auto racing accidents. That is, simply put, absurd. They were saving lives long before many of the safety innovations you cite were ever invented.
First of all, the cars are made to absorb energy. This means that big crash you see where the car gets torn apart, that's the car material sacrificing itself, taking in all the kinetic energy.
It's what they call "crumple zones" in passenger cars.
Then the driver is encased in a 5 point harness.
And in a passenger car, the speeds are lower and the driver has a lap/shoulder belt and an airbag.
Then there's the Han/Hutchens device, which prevents the whiplash effect (what killed Earnhardt, he could have used one).
No, there are two different devices and they are know as the HANS (Head and Neck Support) device and the Hutchens Device.
Just simply wearing a helmet doesn't afford instant protection
Yes, it does. It may not be absolute, but it is instant. Helmets have saved the lives of thousands of motorcylcists over the years. The motorcyclists whose lives were saved had no roll cages, crumple zones, HANS-type devices, or five-point harnesses.
I never claimed that the use of helmets in automobiles would eliminate deaths, did I? It would just drastically reduce the number of deaths caused by brain injuries -- one of the leading causes of death in automobile accidents on public roads.
A cars energy cost seems pretty simple to me, 20 mpg, 40 mpg, whatever.
But these things are misleading. You think that somehow it is 'green' and better then a car just because you are plugging it into an electrical outlet.
And electricity comes from where, fossil fuels, nuclear, damns, wind and in a small amount of cases solar.
If you want to measure the true environmental impact of these things you cannot stop at the electrical outlet on your wall. You really must consider what is generating that electricty.
Case in point. Hydrogen cars. To create the hydrogen they use an electric charge to separate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen atoms in water.
Currently if our country went to a hydrogen economy we would use MORE fossil fuels running power plants then what we use currently running cars.
Don't be fooled. The green people are just that, green, moldy and without a lot of thought.
Yes you are. Anecdotes about how you were almost killed however many times are unconvincing. You should also check out some of the discussion in the literature on bike-lane safety. They're not a panacea.
Sure. And people get hit standing on the sidewalk every year, too--it's a big country, after all--but we don't think of standing on the sidewalk as "frickin' dangerous". One or two sensational news articles don't make a trend. Bicycling in traffic can be done safely; produce real statistics (not just anecdotes) or you're just spreading FUD.
--Bruce Fields
Not being well versed in electric vehicles, what do you classify this car (click on "the fish car") as? I see this thing zipping all over Portland. They claim a top speed of 60!?
I'm assuming it's street legal in Oregon.
Does the WA legislation support these too, or will the support only apply to strict NEV's? And what is a electric "thing" called when it can do more than 25, yet isn't a real car chassis?
You know what?
Try to contact the air car company to get licenses to distribute... You will find that there are already exclusive licenses taken everywhere by the big car companies.
Would someone in an NEV have to purchase insurance? What if someone in a huge Chevy Tahoe or Ford Explorer mowed them down because they didn't see them or couldn't stop in time? Sounds really messy. Major liability because you have basically no protection AND you move at such slow speed. No thanks!
A few flaws (as I see it) in your thinking. Ford no longer sells the Th!nk vehicles. There are some other companies (gemcar) that sell comparable vehicles, at around $7,000.00 for a base model (i presume that's a 2 seater with no doors, not very practical). This saves as you said 2billion gallons of gas over a year. (I didn't check the math).
Now, let's say that an average of $0.46 of that is tax (IIRC that's what Colorado has). That's an additional $920,000,000.00/year lost in tax revinue that goes towards road maintance. This could be replaced in part by adding taxes to the electic, but that's not really fair is it, since only 10 Million will be using these cars and everyone uses electic powered items that don't cause wear on the roads.
$70,000,000,000.00 to provide cars for people plus an added cost of $920,000,000 per year. Kind of expensive don't you think?
Not sure how this is going to allieve traffic congestion, since you're still driving on the same roads (just slower).
I really don't care to speculate on how many jobs this would create, since selling an electic car to someone, in most cases would preclude them buying a traditional auto, so those sales would decrease by 10 million and those workers would be displaced (fired or transfered).
Now the tax cut that you infer that we should cut into to pay for this is for everyone. The "rich" that you speak of might see a greater portion of this than you or I, but that's because they are already paying more in taxes. The sliding scale tax means that the more you make, the larger chuck of money that you earn each year goes to the governement. Seems only fair if that were to be evened out a little.
Now, don't get me wrong. Gas powered cars have their days limited and this is a good thing, but I don't see that it's the governement's job to finance the whole thing with our money. I think some of our money should go to funding research, but not too much of it. The private companies that fund this research will be the ones to reap the bennifits.
Sorry for the long rant there. You've got the right idea in general - let's move away from internal combustion engines, but not in the way you've proposed.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
There isn't a good dense storage medium for electricity. So, although electricity makes sense in stationary applications, it can be troublesome in mobile applications.
The electric car loses efficiency because it has to accelerate and decellerate the weight of the batteries. Furthermore, unlike a gas car, which becomes lighter as it runs out of energy, an electric car is the same weight the whole time!
Electric cars do have efficiency downsides. They would be a plus overall, if they could just store enough energy to make them useful to the average person. (i.e. the range problem).
Hybrids are just a joke. You carry two engines, two or three trannies, gas and a hunk of batteries. All that to get regenerative braking? A scam. The secret to them is they are pitifully slow and have super low rolling resistance narrow high pressure tires.
If you make a gas car with those, it gets great gas mileage. Sometimes even better on the highway than the hybrid.
But Americans won't buy slow, poor handling cars unless they are hybrids.
HP is a measure of power, not torque.
Electric cars don't produce as much HP as gas cars usually. And furthermore, if you count total energy available (joules, Watt-Hours, gallons of gas), the electric cars are pitiful.
I like electrics. All my RC vehicles are electric-only.
But electric vehicles don't produce the same total power and nowhere the total energy as a gas vehicle.
Yes, specialized electric vehicles can beat your average (off-the-shelf) gas vehicle on a drag strip.
But, want to make a specialized vehicle that only does the 1/4 mile? Okay, I'll take a top-fuel dragster. It does about 320 mph in 1/4 mile in less than 4 seconds. Too expensive? You can make a jet car for $50K and it does about the same.
A great innovation.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Air Car is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. Note that the information supplied by MDI is all about 'predicted' performance, however none of the people who have actually set eyes on the bi-energy prototype or the new compressed-air-only engine has been able to verify MDI's claims. I estimate the useful energy storage capacity to be something like 3 kWh for 90 litres at 300 bar, using basic physics and assuming an ideal gas. There is no way any vehicle of that size is going to travel up to 300 km at around 100 kmph on the equivalent of five 50 Ah car batteries.
Ever hear of reading the post. He says right at the end if you are charging your vehicle off solar power that would be different. But I guess it's just to DAMN easy to read the entire frikkin post, typical I'm better than you shit.
Oh, and one other question who the hell modded him insightful.
I use an 600 kg, 19 kilowatt car (Trabant 601s) to get to work. That involves moving 600kg + me (about 65kg) with a reasonable speed an acceleration, and average power usage of about 5 kw for 20 minutes. The engine, in my calculations, has efficiency of about 25% excluding idling and startup loses. Lot of us use much more powerful and much bigger cars
The segway device is no more than 20 kg, 1 kilowatt or less, and could do the same job (get me to work) for the same time, just because it moves less mass (and less air, not taken into account). It doesn't idle, it recovers energy from braking and slopes
assuming the electric power efficiency of about 40%, it still uses 10 or 20 times less primary energy (heat from burning fuels)
Assuming easier and thus better control over power station exhaust, and the fact that, at least in my country, 45% of electricity comes from nuclear, and other 4 or 6% from water power stations, the final account is less than 1/50 of emissions for the same job. That's not zero, but a very good start.
Damn segway prices!
(if I had one, I would hide it under my workdesk and charge it from my company's electrical outlets... wew! but I know my current boss and I'm sure that he'll be the first using them, so even no problems about hiding)
It's "Ark Royal", you pathetic little wanker.
Here at Edwards we can build any kind of aircraft (wanna Joint Strike Fighter) you want from scratch, but everyone knows only the Aliens at Area 51 can build Pro-drivers.
Those GEMS are more fun than our EZgo's (think heavy duty industrial flat bed cart). They do make side panels for them. There's two or three that are in my neighboor hood, with one a little old lady bought having the sidepanels. Made much like a Jeep softtop and doors.
Yeh the smog still is pretty sucky. Everytime I fly into LAX the area has that perma-cover of browninh smog clouds.
Try this energy production model instead:
Install Solar heated Sterling engine driven electricity generator for local energy source. Bottle up any locally unused energy with a) chemical reaction storage (batteries, electrolysis extracted hydrogen, long chain hydrocarbon production)), b) potential/mechanical energy storage (compressed air, spring storage, gravity sump, flywheel), or c) sell to utility company.
Pros:
No polution, except in production of the power plants themselves or reextraction of chemically stored energy.
Free (gratis) fuel for power plants.
Less electricity wasted from transimssion losses due to local power generation.
Since high voltages are not required for power transmission, a low voltage local power grid may be feasable, allowing cheaper and simpler power supplies in household appliances.
Connecting to the existing power grid is not required, eliminating cost of long powerline runs.
Cons:
Consumer grade Solar heat/Sterling engine power plants are not available at local K-Mart.
Power plant works for shit in high latitude and cold climates.
NIMBYism on power generation plants themselves.
Requires additional safety knowlage on part of end user.
The truth is, although many alternative fuel vehicles may be cleaner while you drive them, their energy efficiency tends to be about the same if you make them as fast as a normal car.
True, but, seems that's just a battery capacity issue. After all, even though you may be getting the same number of miles per unit of stored energy, you can get the energy from sources that aren't dependent on an exhaustible supply of dead dinosaurs.
In Los Angeles, the Department of Water and Power offers the option of getting "Green Power," where you pay a couple bucks extra per month but they are buying power from renewable resources on your behalf. (Obviously they can't ensure that EXACTLY the same watts they purchased from a particular source end up in your socket, but it changes the balance of consumption a little at a time.) So, if I drove an electric car (which I don't, because basically I don't drive), and if I still lived in City of Los Angeles (instead of the Island of West Hollywood which unfortunately is powered, or not as the case is at least a few seconds out of every week, by Southern California Edison), I could ensure that every mile I drove came from renewable resources. Which isn't an efficiency argument per sé, but has a certain ecological elegance to it.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
How about a Solar Heat powered Sterling Engine? Sterling engines opperate at nearly theoretical maximum heat->mechanical energy conversion efficency. Also, production of a Sterling Engine doesn't require the evil chemical processes that semiconductors do.
There are advantages to an electric vehicle:
1. Power generated elsewhere -- even if its burning hydrocarbons, you can have better filters on plants than you can on a combustion engine = less polution entering the environment overall.
2. Pollution exitting power plant pollutes one area. This is much better than cars constantly polluting everywhere.
3. Probably it's more efficient (don't know though) even burning hydrocarbons
4. As mentioned, many places can use wind or hydro (if the god damned environmentalists would get the hell out of the way instead of playing contrarian everywhere they can. Ironically, it's a lack of understanding the bigger picture...)
"Has [being a kidnapped teenage girl, raped repeatedly for months] changed you?" - Katie Couric to Elizabeth Smart
What you said. [nodding vigorously]
-- haaz.
LEAF = SOLAR PANEL (..and a darn good one at that).
The roof area is about 6m^2 which should be able to produce 400-500 watts on a sunny day.
The on-board compressor however is 5kW and takes 3 hours to charge the air tank. So estimate around 30-40 hours to fill up in summer, say 40 hours, that's 1/4 of a tank per day. The range is 300km, so if you're doing less than 75km (45miles)/day you're laughing.
Something nobody mentioned about it. It does 0-60 in 7 seconds, with passengers[1]... Doesn't go any faster than 60 though.
[1] http://www.carstreet.com/fullstory.asp?code=334
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.