good news for environment
by
civilengineer
·
· Score: 4, Informative
One of the main reasons electric car sales are not picking up is that they are percieved to be slow pickup vehicles. Looks like this wont be an issue any longer.
The car, priced at $220,000, is available only directly from AC Propulsion and has not yet met federal safety regulations.
and that's one more problem
--
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Re:good news for environment
by
MourningStar
·
· Score: 5, Informative
You can also get the Tango from http://www.commutercars.com
It's only 80K and it runs off DC motors with a range of 100+ miles and 0-60 in under 4 seconds.
For those that don't have NYT, the home page for the Tzero is http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home.htm
Re:good news for environment
by
StewedSquirrel
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Hydrogen-based vehicles ARE electric vehicles.
The atomic bonds of H2 gas are just much more efficient at storing electricity than those weak ion based things we call "batteries".
The "Fuel Cell" is just an electric power source that is much more efficient output/weight.
Stewey
-- There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Re:good news for environment
by
Jeremi
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· Score: 2, Informative
you want to know why this thing will never sell? it looks stupid, and, imagine getting broadsided by H2 in this. no, don't imagine-
Personally, I think it looks pretty cool, but that's a matter of opinion. As for getting broadsided, so what? Getting broadsided by an H2 while on a motorcycle would be even worse, and yet plenty of people buy and drive motorcycles.
--
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Re:good news for environment
by
anethema
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· Score: 2, Informative
Thats not why electric cars can have such quick starts. Its one of the benifets of the electric motor. An electric motor has 100% of its available torque from a dead stop. But the same amount of torque at any speed. Thats why their top speeds generally arent tooo high, unless you do fancy transmission stuff (doesnt really need to be fancy just needs to be there haha.) But its that torque thing that allows such amazing 0-60 times from low horsepower.
--
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
Re:good news for environment
by
Tailhook
·
· Score: 2, Informative
1) Lengthy refuelling time 2) Limited cruising range 3) Cost is not competitive
4) Isolated repair resources 5) Environment still damaged
It's going to be a couple years before Midas can do a $99 break job on a machine with regenerative breaking. Physics dictates that the materials will wear and stuff will fail. Bubba the wrecker driver is NOT going to know what to do with a bugged electric drivetrain or a composite chassis. If you wish to go here, you had better be resourceful enough to cope with this.
This is no environmental panacea either. Still need roads, tires, auto parts stores, junk yards, etcetera. Still have to manufacture the things. Large volumes of fun chemicals are involved with battery and composite manufacturing. Never mind the resources used to make the electrical power...
This is cool, but keep in mind that it's only an alternative power supply. The rest of the story is a bit bigger.
-- Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Another article...
by
DrEldarion
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here's an article that you don't have to register to see.
January 29, 2000 -- AC Propulsion' s tzero out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held last weekend at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart' s northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. The tzero was driven to the Bay Area from southern California last week. That journey spanned more than the geographic distance between those two areas, it spanned two cultures as well. Hot rodding, coming from the garages of Los Angeles, and high tech, growing from a garage in Palo Alto, are combined in the tzero.
The tzero is a silicon hot rod. It starts with the hot rodder's holy grail, horsepower - 200 of them. But the tzero harnesses the power with 120 IGBTs, equal to 7200 square millimeters of silicon-based control. The result is acceleration to 60 mph in 4.1 seconds, efficiency equivalent to 70 mpg, and emissions equal to zero. The tzero is an electric car.
The trip to Silicon Valley was planned to demonstrate the tzero to entrepreneurs and investors interested in the concept of a high-performance, environmentally-sensible, silicon-intensive automobile. As word of the tzero visit spread, the planned demonstrations took on an edge when a Ferrari-owner challenged the tzero to a race.
The race became reality when both Moffett Field and Calstart made their facilities available for the politically correct contest of speed. Saturday, January 22 dawned bright and sunny and an eager group of exotic car owners, high-tech gurus, venture capital investors and electric car enthusiasts gathered along the 4000-foot north taxiway at Moffett Field. Cones were set to mark the start and finish lines, and the tzero, with AC Propulsion vice-president Alec Brooks at the wheel, pulled up to the start line and sat silently. The Ferrari made glorious sounds as Rick Schick, a race car driver assigned to drive the Ferrari for the event paced the high-strung Italian thoroughbred up and down the track, warming its complex internals with nervous blips of the throttle and heating the tires with sudden burnouts. Finally the race was on. Immediately the crowd saw what it had not expected to see. The tzero leapt ahead at the start. The Ferrari' s 32-valve, 4-cam V8 engine screamed its delicious song in vain effort against the mute power of the tzero' s 120-IGBT-fed 3-phase induction motor. The spectators gasped at the sight of the tzero driving away from the automotive icon from Modena. At the end it was tzero by eight car lengths.
A Corvette C5, the newest example of American V8 muscle from Chevrolet stepped up to defend the honor of combustion power. Considered opinion had the Corvette, with its large displacement, high torque V8, putting up a good fight in the short 1/8 mile sprint. But against the tzero, the result was the same, proving in equally convincing fashion that American brawn fares no better than European sophistication against the tzero' s combination of light weight, high-current lead-acid batteries, and electric propulsion.
More races were run.
Different drivers wheeled the tzero. The result stayed the same. A Miata driver, unfamiliar with high power levels, got into the tzero and immediately blew away the Ferrari. She wants a tzero now. The Ferrari owner took a turn and was astounded by the continuous surge of smooth power. A newspaper reporter who arrived in an Escort allowed himself to be talked into driving the tzero and he beat the Ferrari. An investor from Sweden, after one victorious run in the tzero decided make a second run when challenged by his friend and investing partner who was proudly driving a brand new Porsche Carrera Cabriolet. By now everyone was surprised when the tzero lagged behind. Was the tzero battery dead? Was it collusion between two friends? Neither actually. The tzero inadvertently ran the whole race with its hand brake on, and the Porsche won by seven car lengths.
Re:Grrrr
by
Strudelkugel
·
· Score: 5, Informative
-- Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
RTFA
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Informative
At the end of a hard drive, including five scorching zero-to-60 runs, the car had traveled 57 miles and used only 9,900 of the 50,000 watt-hours in its batteries, costing less than the price of two gallons of gasoline.
Re:Grrrr
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0, Informative
Christ. Stop bitching about the NY Times registration thing. You only have to do it once. Once you're registered, Mozilla, K-Melon, Firebird, Opera, Safari, Omni or whatever else is out there would handle the rest by filling in your user info when you click an NYT link (which cookie expires once a week). You just have to click "OK" to view the articles from that point on.
That wasn't hard, was it?
Afraid to give out your email? No problem. Use Mailinator. Make up a moniker, register, log in, authenticate, and you're done.
It's strikes me odd when people would dedicate their Friday nights to compiling kernels and fucking around with Linux config files, but when it comes to a simple task of registering for a stupid news site, it becomes a problem. Cut it out.
Re:If i had that many spares...
by
molarmass192
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Insane as it is, McLaren F1s go for a over $1M at auction, $680,000 ain't gonna cut it. However, you can get a not too shabby Saleen S7 that easily does over 200MPH (top speed not listed) for that kinda dough!
--
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Anybody else notice that the races were 1/8 mile, instead of the normal 1/4 mile? Fast to accelerate, but low top speeds?
And aren't most Ferrarri's V10s, not V8s?
Re:1/8 mile?
by
gmhowell
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The car is a fucking joke. Thanks for pointing out that we are talking about 1/8 drags, which are going to strongly favor the car that can't top 100 mph, and that makes peak torque at 0 rpm. Guess what care those two points describe?
-- Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Re:1/8 mile?
by
f00duvoodu
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The ferrari 355 is the cheap ferrari model. Its a v8 meant for those who dont have the money or dont want to spend it on the better ferrari's. The 355 is a $150,000 model. While its stats dont seem to bad to the eye 1/4 mile - 13.0 @ 109mph Max. Speed - 183 mph 0-60 mph - 4.6 sec 0-100 mph - 11.3 sec Engine Type - V8 mid mounted Displacement - 3496 cc Horsepower - 380 bhp @ 8250 rpm Torque - 268 lb-ft @ 6000 rpm
the main thing with the 355 is it corners thats what its better at helps with a mid-engine layout
now lets look at more pricey but better model ferrari f50 GT price for this baby $1,430,000 id say a bit more expensive. 1/4 mile - 11.2 sec @ 129 mph Max. Speed - 236 mph 0-60 mph - 3.3 sec 0-100 mph - 6.7 sec Engine Type - V12 Displacement - 4700 cc Horsepower - 680 bhp @ 10500 rpm Torque - 383 lb-ft @ 8000 rpm
one thing though with the f50 GT only three were made so... lets look at something different but dang this is a nice ferrari(besides that price ouch)
instead of just picking another f50 i decided for something at a lower price so heres the ferrari 360 GT at a price of $389,500 1/4 mile - 12.0 sec @ 115 mph Max. Speed - 180 mph 0-60 mph - 3.5 sec 0-100 mph - 8.9 sec Engine Type - V8 Displacement - 3586 cc Horsepower - 430 bhp @ 8500 rpm Torque - 289 lb-ft @ 5000 rpm
now when you start going against some better ferraris that electric car dont do so good... basically they got lucky that a better model wasnt there...
Re:Grrrr
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
It's strikes me odd when people would dedicate their Friday nights to compiling kernels and fucking around with Linux config files, but when it comes to a simple task of registering for a stupid news site, it becomes a problem.
Dear Anonymous Coward,
You're an idiot. The point if that people fuck around with their kernel and config files on Friday nights because they *want to*. Spending time on the NYT registration is added aggravation nobody wants, therefore it's a waste of time.
Re:What they don't tell you is...
by
WhiteBandit
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Motor type AC Induction w/copper rotor bars, 4 poles Peak torque 246nm (181 ft-lb) Peak power (at 326V DC input) 177kW (237hp) Base speed at 330V 5,000 rpm Maximum speed 12,000 rpm Peak current 687 A rms Mass, include plenum and blower 50 kg Dimensions (less fins, termination, plenum) 213mm dia by 257 mm long Dimensions of motor incl cooling plenum 305mm dia by 305 mm long Maximum winding temperature 180 deg C
What is the range of the tzero? -100miles possible How can the tzero be so fast with 'only' 200 hp? - power to weight ratio + no gears midrange acceleration - 30 to 50 mph 1.4 Does the tzero have air conditioning? - side windows off and the wind in your hair How long does the battery pack last? What does it cost to replace? - two to three years, or 15,000 to 20,000 miles $3,000 from Optima
-- There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary.
SHUT UP!
There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Hey, cool...
by
NewWaveNet
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Then again, I remember some guy signed up slashdot124 pass:slashdot as a North Korean. Want to use that?
Re:Grrrr
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
OT? Some guy was bitching about having to sign up for NYT. I provided a username and password. How is that OT?
Re:That would cost you HOW much?
by
Patrick
·
· Score: 2, Informative
and that's $60 * 6800 == $408,000.
RTFA. The entire car retails for $220K, and presumably some of that goes into buying the ugly body, paying for all that R&D, and so on.
They claim the battery has 50,000 Wh. My Dell battery has 66 Wh, so it would only take 758 such batteries (about $80K before any discounts) to power the tzero. Maybe the 6800 batteries figure actually refers to individual cells?
If nothing else, they must see some sort of economies of scale. Those 6800 batteries (or cells) don't all need casing, status LEDs, individual charging circuitry, and so on.
Still a little pricy to maintain when all that lithium dies after a year or two!
not bad for a $220,000 sports car that gets 70mpg equivalent.
Re:Don't be silly
by
kcbrown
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It says it costs about $3000 to replace the batteries, and it should be done every 20,000 miles.
Of course, that $3000 buys 1500 gallons of gasoline at $2/gallon, and if you're averaging 20 mpg you can go 30,000 miles.
So the gas car still wins, and we haven't even factored in the cost of the electricity to recharge the Tzero.
The Tzero might do significantly better in Europe, but that depends a great deal on how much electricity costs there.
-- Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Re:Someone has to do it...
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Informative
"Good luck getting a charge when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. At least the AAA can bring you a 5 gallon container of petrol with a conventional vehicle."
Good thing there's an on-board, gas-powered charger then, eh?
Re:Someone has to do it...
by
evilviper
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Good luck getting a charge when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. At least the AAA can bring you a 5 gallon container of petrol with a conventional vehicle.
Terrible point... One of Electricity's advantages is how very flexible it is these days. If you thing you are going to run out of power, then you just need to bring along some sort of generator. A small gas-powered generator would do the job if you think gas is going to be available.
With cars that run on gasoline, you NEED to have a gas station nearby. With electric, you could just as well pull out a solar panel, and get a charge in the middle of nowhere.
Not to mention that you could just plug-in to any homes that might be around. There might not be a gas station for 200 miles, but just about anywhere you are, you can see power-lines along the roadside.
A 100 mile cruising range is less than one half of the range of a typical passenger car
Yes, 100 miles isn't as much as normal cars, but that's only important if you need it. Most people drive much less than 100 miles each day. The only thing higher capacity gets you, is the ability to get gas half as often.
The emissions aren't "near zero," it's just that the extra pollution would be emitted from power generation facilities.
But power generation can be near-zero pollution, just because much of it isn't, is not a reason to say that electric cars cause a lot of pollution. Even with the most ineffecient power generation, electric cars are far, far more effecient than gasoline-powered cars.
Can we move the focus off of electric vehicles, and concentrate on better power generation and storage technology?
Electric cars are the ideal vehicles, it's just that no car companies are spending much money on R&D. Technologies like flywheels promise to hold an incredible deal of electrical energy, while being very light, just as fuel-cells do. Electric cars really are the only logical next step, although more effeciency with gas-powered cars in a good step in the interim.
You should have read more closely
by
Tau+Zero
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Unfortunately for your critique, it's addressed to the old version of the tzero (the one with lead-acid batteries, not lithium batteries). You made a number of other mis-statements which you could have corrected with a visit to the manufacturer's web site. (Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with AC Propulsion, and I think their vehicular product is a toy for people with too much money. If they can get some of that money, more power to them [150 kilowatts at a time].)
* It may do 0-60 in 4 seconds, but so can lots of vehicles if you do hairy modifications to the engine and drivetrain. The car is tiny and light, obviously, since it needs only 200 horsepower to produce those figures.
2450 pounds is not light in my book, though the lithium-ion version is reported to weigh a bit under 2000 pounds. The sparkling performance is due in no small part to maximum torque being available from zero speed, a characteristic of many types of electric motors.
* Note the careful wording: "...Efficiency *to* 70 mpg." That tells me they are taking an average and counting when the motors are off while cruising.
You count the time your engine isn't working on a downslope when calculating your gas mileage, and your car gets its best mileage when putting along on the cruise control too. Not that the tzero's motor shuts off; the tzero doesn't have gears or even a clutch, so the motor is spinning whenever the car is moving.
* Good luck getting a charge when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. At least the AAA can bring you a 5 gallon container of petrol with a conventional vehicle.
If these vehicles were common you'd have charging stations everywhere, and you could always accept a partial charge from another vehicle. You know, like siphoning gas only without the risk of fire? (AC Propulsion used to list this as one of the features of their technology, but they've either removed it from their web site or made it very hard to find. It is implicit in the ability to generate AC to back-feed the grid; see the link named "Vehicle-to-Grid Demonstration Project: Grid Regulation Ancillary Service with a Battery Electric Vehicle".)
* A 100 mile cruising range is less than one half of the range of a typical passenger car with an ICE
That's for lead-acid batteries. The lithium-ion version has a range of about 300 miles.
* Totally electric cars are less efficient in the winter, when power is drawn for heating.
That's what hybrids are for. If you are using the hybrid battery in "depletion mode", you just switch over to engine power after you use the battery's non-surge capacity. If you run short distances between charges, that might be never.
* The emissions aren't "near zero," it's just that the extra pollution would be emitted from power generation facilities. Those power generators may be more efficient, but an increase in output (to supply these vehicles) is going to introduce tons (literally) more pollutants into small areas of the planet.
Figures? The typical ICE vehicle runs around 20% efficiency or less on average. If the tzero is powered by combined-cycle powerplants burning natural gas at 50% efficiency and has 40% losses in transmission, batteries and conversion, that's still 30% net efficiency. Plus, the waste heat of the combined-cycle plant can be harnessed to do useful things; you can't do that with the heat coming out of the radiator, exhaust or brakes of the ICE car. And with electric cars and microturbines as co-generating heating plants, the net efficiency of the system can go over 80%.
You can also hook the tzero up to a wind plant or solar panels. 500 watts of solar panels would give you about 12 miles a day. The I
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Question: What happened to the 1984 Lectra
by
zakezuke
·
· Score: 2, Informative
For those who don't remember, the 1984 Lectra had a solar-charged battery bank, 4 wheel independent electric motor drive, and claimed that it could be charged in as little as 20-30min with house current, and assuming this book I have is accurate [50 years of cars Troubador press] a crusing range of 350-500 miles (though I assume this is in good weather daytime)
-- There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary.
SHUT UP!
There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Re:good news for environment-What?
by
angel'o'sphere
·
· Score: 1, Informative
Where do you think that the electricity to charge this car is going to come from? In the US, most likely from a coal or nuclear power plant. This whole electric/hybrid hype is idiocy, until we change the source of our energy, how we use it is immaterial.
Well, seems you should take a course in phyics or something.
A combustion engine yielding 100kW (about 120 horese powers) driving your car with a speed of 60 miles, likely uses up about 7 liters gasoline per hour(or per 100km distance).
Driving a electric car, filled with power from a coal plant or a nuclear plant, uses only half a liter of oil/gasoline or teh equivalent amount of coal.
Electric engines are about 10 to 20 times more efficient than combustion engines. That means at the point of usage, that is in your car, you produce only a tenth of the amount of environmental damaging stuff than with a combustion engine. And further more: you can handel the environmental damaging stuff in a plant far better than all over the land where it is distributed by combustion engines.
angel'o'sphere
-- Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Re:Here's another article with picture . very nice
by
Doug+Loss
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Don't forget that battery life isn't infinite, and that used-up batteries must be disposed of as toxic waste...
Re:One question answered, another created
by
DaChesserCat
·
· Score: 2, Informative
First off, the batteries are not "laptop" batteries per se. They are 18650 lithium ion cells, like these. While this ad shows them as "3.7 volts" and "1300-1400 mAh," the nominal voltage is considered 3.6 volts; let's split the difference and call them 1350 mAh. That means (3.6v x 1.350 Ah = ) 4.86 Wh / battery. A two-pack is $12.99, which mean ($12.99 / 9.72 Wh = ) $1.34 / Wh. At that rate, 50 kWh (which the article states is the car's capacity) costs about $67,000.
Their tZero gets at least 5 miles / kWh (according to other sources), which means at least 250 miles / charge (the EV1 got closer to 6 miles / kWh).
Note: many laptop battery packs (especially the third-party, aftermarket ones) are simply plastic enclosures with these replacement Li-Ion batteries in them. Hence the comment about "laptop batteries."
Still too pricey for making my own Battery Electric Vehicle (the batteries alone are more than I spent on my last three cars, combined), but we're DEFINITELY getting there. A year ago, the best deal I could find was over $11 / Wh.
If you've got RealPlayer installed on your machine, EVWorld.com has an interview with one of the car's builders, providing some more technical detail.
-- ... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
Slashdot Mirror
One of the main reasons electric car sales are not picking up is that they are percieved to be slow pickup vehicles. Looks like this wont be an issue any longer.
The car, priced at $220,000, is available only directly from AC Propulsion and has not yet met federal safety regulations.
and that's one more problem
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Here's an article that you don't have to register to see.
e .html
http://www.evworld.com/archives/reports/tzero_rac
Why are electric cars always so damned ugly?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Electric Tzero
January 29, 2000 -- AC Propulsion' s tzero out-accelerated a Ferrari F355, a new Corvette, and a Porsche Carrera 4 in a series of impromptu 1/8 mile drag races held last weekend at Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, and at Calstart' s northern facility at the former Alameda Naval Air Station. The tzero was driven to the Bay Area from southern California last week. That journey spanned more than the geographic distance between those two areas, it spanned two cultures as well. Hot rodding, coming from the garages of Los Angeles, and high tech, growing from a garage in Palo Alto, are combined in the tzero.
The tzero is a silicon hot rod. It starts with the hot rodder's holy grail, horsepower - 200 of them. But the tzero harnesses the power with 120 IGBTs, equal to 7200 square millimeters of silicon-based control. The result is acceleration to 60 mph in 4.1 seconds, efficiency equivalent to 70 mpg, and emissions equal to zero. The tzero is an electric car.
The trip to Silicon Valley was planned to demonstrate the tzero to entrepreneurs and investors interested in the concept of a high-performance, environmentally-sensible, silicon-intensive automobile. As word of the tzero visit spread, the planned demonstrations took on an edge when a Ferrari-owner challenged the tzero to a race.
The race became reality when both Moffett Field and Calstart made their facilities available for the politically correct contest of speed. Saturday, January 22 dawned bright and sunny and an eager group of exotic car owners, high-tech gurus, venture capital investors and electric car enthusiasts gathered along the 4000-foot north taxiway at Moffett Field. Cones were set to mark the start and finish lines, and the tzero, with AC Propulsion vice-president Alec Brooks at the wheel, pulled up to the start line and sat silently. The Ferrari made glorious sounds as Rick Schick, a race car driver assigned to drive the Ferrari for the event paced the high-strung Italian thoroughbred up and down the track, warming its complex internals with nervous blips of the throttle and heating the tires with sudden burnouts. Finally the race was on. Immediately the crowd saw what it had not expected to see. The tzero leapt ahead at the start. The Ferrari' s 32-valve, 4-cam V8 engine screamed its delicious song in vain effort against the mute power of the tzero' s 120-IGBT-fed 3-phase induction motor. The spectators gasped at the sight of the tzero driving away from the automotive icon from Modena. At the end it was tzero by eight car lengths.
A Corvette C5, the newest example of American V8 muscle from Chevrolet stepped up to defend the honor of combustion power. Considered opinion had the Corvette, with its large displacement, high torque V8, putting up a good fight in the short 1/8 mile sprint. But against the tzero, the result was the same, proving in equally convincing fashion that American brawn fares no better than European sophistication against the tzero' s combination of light weight, high-current lead-acid batteries, and electric propulsion.
More races were run.
Different drivers wheeled the tzero. The result stayed the same. A Miata driver, unfamiliar with high power levels, got into the tzero and immediately blew away the Ferrari. She wants a tzero now. The Ferrari owner took a turn and was astounded by the continuous surge of smooth power. A newspaper reporter who arrived in an Escort allowed himself to be talked into driving the tzero and he beat the Ferrari. An investor from Sweden, after one victorious run in the tzero decided make a second run when challenged by his friend and investing partner who was proudly driving a brand new Porsche Carrera Cabriolet. By now everyone was surprised when the tzero lagged behind. Was the tzero battery dead? Was it collusion between two friends? Neither actually. The tzero inadvertently ran the whole race with its hand brake on, and the Porsche won by seven car lengths.
Much better link, with more details and pictures.
Resistance to /. effect unknown.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
At the end of a hard drive, including five scorching zero-to-60 runs, the car had traveled 57 miles and used only 9,900 of the 50,000 watt-hours in its batteries, costing less than the price of two gallons of gasoline.
Christ. Stop bitching about the NY Times registration thing. You only have to do it once. Once you're registered, Mozilla, K-Melon, Firebird, Opera, Safari, Omni or whatever else is out there would handle the rest by filling in your user info when you click an NYT link (which cookie expires once a week). You just have to click "OK" to view the articles from that point on.
That wasn't hard, was it?
Afraid to give out your email? No problem. Use Mailinator. Make up a moniker, register, log in, authenticate, and you're done.
It's strikes me odd when people would dedicate their Friday nights to compiling kernels and fucking around with Linux config files, but when it comes to a simple task of registering for a stupid news site, it becomes a problem. Cut it out.
Insane as it is, McLaren F1s go for a over $1M at auction, $680,000 ain't gonna cut it. However, you can get a not too shabby Saleen S7 that easily does over 200MPH (top speed not listed) for that kinda dough!
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Anybody else notice that the races were 1/8 mile, instead of the normal 1/4 mile? Fast to accelerate, but low top speeds? And aren't most Ferrarri's V10s, not V8s?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
It's strikes me odd when people would dedicate their Friday nights to compiling kernels and fucking around with Linux config files, but when it comes to a simple task of registering for a stupid news site, it becomes a problem.
Dear Anonymous Coward,
You're an idiot. The point if that people fuck around with their kernel and config files on Friday nights because they *want to*. Spending time on the NYT registration is added aggravation nobody wants, therefore it's a waste of time.
Random NYTimes Registration Generator
For those of you who missed earlier posts of this info,
NY Times
username: slashdot.com
password: slashdot.com
http://www.autospeed.com.au/cms/article.html?&A
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_F
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
the company's website
Ferrari makes no V-10s for the street. I don't believe they ever have.
That's outdated though - the NYT article has the laptop battery version, whereas your link has the older lead-acid version.
Then again, I remember some guy signed up slashdot124 pass:slashdot as a North Korean. Want to use that?
OT? Some guy was bitching about having to sign up for NYT. I provided a username and password. How is that OT?
RTFA. The entire car retails for $220K, and presumably some of that goes into buying the ugly body, paying for all that R&D, and so on.
They claim the battery has 50,000 Wh. My Dell battery has 66 Wh, so it would only take 758 such batteries (about $80K before any discounts) to power the tzero. Maybe the 6800 batteries figure actually refers to individual cells?
If nothing else, they must see some sort of economies of scale. Those 6800 batteries (or cells) don't all need casing, status LEDs, individual charging circuitry, and so on.
Still a little pricy to maintain when all that lithium dies after a year or two!
It says it costs about $3000 to replace the batteries, and it should be done every 20,000 miles.
A Qs .htm
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_F
not bad for a $220,000 sports car that gets 70mpg equivalent.
"Good luck getting a charge when you run out of juice in the middle of nowhere. At least the AAA can bring you a 5 gallon container of petrol with a conventional vehicle."
7 .J PG
Good thing there's an on-board, gas-powered charger then, eh?
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/DSC0046
Terrible point... One of Electricity's advantages is how very flexible it is these days. If you thing you are going to run out of power, then you just need to bring along some sort of generator. A small gas-powered generator would do the job if you think gas is going to be available.
With cars that run on gasoline, you NEED to have a gas station nearby. With electric, you could just as well pull out a solar panel, and get a charge in the middle of nowhere.
Not to mention that you could just plug-in to any homes that might be around. There might not be a gas station for 200 miles, but just about anywhere you are, you can see power-lines along the roadside.
Yes, 100 miles isn't as much as normal cars, but that's only important if you need it. Most people drive much less than 100 miles each day. The only thing higher capacity gets you, is the ability to get gas half as often.
But power generation can be near-zero pollution, just because much of it isn't, is not a reason to say that electric cars cause a lot of pollution. Even with the most ineffecient power generation, electric cars are far, far more effecient than gasoline-powered cars.
Electric cars are the ideal vehicles, it's just that no car companies are spending much money on R&D. Technologies like flywheels promise to hold an incredible deal of electrical energy, while being very light, just as fuel-cells do. Electric cars really are the only logical next step, although more effeciency with gas-powered cars in a good step in the interim.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
thats 88 MPH you IDIOT!
keanmarine.com
2450 pounds is not light in my book, though the lithium-ion version is reported to weigh a bit under 2000 pounds. The sparkling performance is due in no small part to maximum torque being available from zero speed, a characteristic of many types of electric motors.
You count the time your engine isn't working on a downslope when calculating your gas mileage, and your car gets its best mileage when putting along on the cruise control too. Not that the tzero's motor shuts off; the tzero doesn't have gears or even a clutch, so the motor is spinning whenever the car is moving.
If these vehicles were common you'd have charging stations everywhere, and you could always accept a partial charge from another vehicle. You know, like siphoning gas only without the risk of fire? (AC Propulsion used to list this as one of the features of their technology, but they've either removed it from their web site or made it very hard to find. It is implicit in the ability to generate AC to back-feed the grid; see the link named "Vehicle-to-Grid Demonstration Project: Grid Regulation Ancillary Service with a Battery Electric Vehicle".)
That's for lead-acid batteries. The lithium-ion version has a range of about 300 miles.
That's what hybrids are for. If you are using the hybrid battery in "depletion mode", you just switch over to engine power after you use the battery's non-surge capacity. If you run short distances between charges, that might be never.
Figures? The typical ICE vehicle runs around 20% efficiency or less on average. If the tzero is powered by combined-cycle powerplants burning natural gas at 50% efficiency and has 40% losses in transmission, batteries and conversion, that's still 30% net efficiency. Plus, the waste heat of the combined-cycle plant can be harnessed to do useful things; you can't do that with the heat coming out of the radiator, exhaust or brakes of the ICE car. And with electric cars and microturbines as co-generating heating plants, the net efficiency of the system can go over 80%.
You can also hook the tzero up to a wind plant or solar panels. 500 watts of solar panels would give you about 12 miles a day. The I
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
For those who don't remember, the 1984 Lectra had a solar-charged battery bank, 4 wheel independent electric motor drive, and claimed that it could be charged in as little as 20-30min with house current, and assuming this book I have is accurate [50 years of cars Troubador press] a crusing range of 350-500 miles (though I assume this is in good weather daytime)
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Where do you think that the electricity to charge this car is going to come from?
In the US, most likely from a coal or nuclear power plant.
This whole electric/hybrid hype is idiocy, until we change the source of our energy, how we use it is immaterial.
Well, seems you should take a course in phyics or something.
A combustion engine yielding 100kW (about 120 horese powers) driving your car with a speed of 60 miles, likely uses up about 7 liters gasoline per hour(or per 100km distance).
Driving a electric car, filled with power from a coal plant or a nuclear plant, uses only half a liter of oil/gasoline or teh equivalent amount of coal.
Electric engines are about 10 to 20 times more efficient than combustion engines. That means at the point of usage, that is in your car, you produce only a tenth of the amount of environmental damaging stuff than with a combustion engine. And further more: you can handel the environmental damaging stuff in a plant far better than all over the land where it is distributed by combustion engines.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Don't forget that battery life isn't infinite, and that used-up batteries must be disposed of as toxic waste...
First off, the batteries are not "laptop" batteries per se. They are 18650 lithium ion cells, like these. While this ad shows them as "3.7 volts" and "1300-1400 mAh," the nominal voltage is considered 3.6 volts; let's split the difference and call them 1350 mAh. That means (3.6v x 1.350 Ah = ) 4.86 Wh / battery. A two-pack is $12.99, which mean ($12.99 / 9.72 Wh = ) $1.34 / Wh. At that rate, 50 kWh (which the article states is the car's capacity) costs about $67,000.
Their tZero gets at least 5 miles / kWh (according to other sources), which means at least 250 miles / charge (the EV1 got closer to 6 miles / kWh).
Note: many laptop battery packs (especially the third-party, aftermarket ones) are simply plastic enclosures with these replacement Li-Ion batteries in them. Hence the comment about "laptop batteries."
Still too pricey for making my own Battery Electric Vehicle (the batteries alone are more than I spent on my last three cars, combined), but we're DEFINITELY getting there. A year ago, the best deal I could find was over $11 / Wh.
If you've got RealPlayer installed on your machine, EVWorld.com has an interview with one of the car's builders, providing some more technical detail.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning