So that gives you just over 300 miles a "tank" before you have to stop and recharge...which AFAIK takes significantly longer than pumping gas...unless you were able to do what the first post suggested and harness the power of lightning (or plutonium) to get your 1.21 gigawatts.
not so good news for environment
by
GISGEOLOGYGEEK
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
where do you think the hydrogen comes from? What about the oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel that will have to be consumed to produce the hydrogen?
What about the huge greenhouse gas potential created by the constant release of hydrogen into the atmosphere? - It is notoriously difficult to keep hydrogen bottled up, to the point where it can seep right through metal bottles.
It is the future but it will not be the perfect answer you may think it is.
Recall that in the 1950's nuclear energy was advertised to be not only clean and safe, but as a source of unlimited free energy.
-- George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
That would cost you HOW much?
by
JessLeah
·
· Score: 0, Interesting
Even the "cheap" laptop batteries sold on eBay go for around $50 per. (This is assuming that you need (new or new-ish) batteries that will actually hold a charge.) Factor in $10 per for shipping and "handling" (read: "extra profit" for the seller) and that's $60 * 6800 == $408,000.
what happens when you get in an accident with a car that has batteries pretty much surrounding the driver/passenger. do you end up swimming in lead and acid?
Range more impressive
by
Teahouse
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The fact that they can get 300 miles out of a charge is more impressive than the fact that it accelerates like a ferrari. The real impressive new piece of tech on the car is their regenerative braking, which turns off to avoid skidding. This is a well thought out EV. My only wish is that they made one more in my price range.
-- "Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
Re:this is a lame comparison
by
borgboy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The point of the exercise was to demonstrate the fallacy in the popular opinion that electric drive vehicles are lacking in power. With a transmission, stiff, balanced frame, and all wheel drive, this technology demo could become exciting. Of course any of those cars could beat it in oval track or rally.
-- meh.
Re:Here's another article with picture . very nice
by
GigsVT
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
emissions equal to zero
How much emission does manufacturing 6800 lithium-ion batteries produce?
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Hybird trailer range extender
by
chhamilton
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Not only is the tZero a sporty little electric car with amazing acceleration, it can also achieve reasonable mileage and range using their hybrid range extended trailer. There are links in the AC Propulsion white papers section regarding the range extending trailer. Also, a link to a PDF
With this thing attached the car it gets a combined 40 MPG (highway driving at 100kph/60mph) and a range of around 380 miles. Not bad for a sports car. Another cool feature of the trailer is that it has a linked steering system; it's not a freewheeling trailer, rather the trailer wheels move with the car steering. This makes things like backing up (parallel parking and the like) much easier for those without experience towing a trailer.
Despite the clear unfeasibility of this car in particular, I think it's good to see AC Propulsion making some waves and getting its name out. I was on my university's FutureTruck team (we called it the Hybrid Electric Vehicle team--the page is way out of date), and the team used an AC Propulsion motor the year before I was there (if I remember correctly...could be wrong here).
The FutureTruck competition is highly sponsored (read: "Ford"), and produces good research, but also good, experienced electrical and mechanical engineers (I'm neither, which lead to my quitting the team--oh well) who have faced the design challenges of a real vehicle. Anyway, we can sit here and pick apart why the Tzero isn't worthwhile, but the fact is that it's a concept car, pretty much, and it shows that it is possible to get great performance out of batteries.
--
This side up.
Re:good news for environment
by
afidel
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Or, just give people what they want but make it more friendly for the environment. For instance the Union of Concerned Scientists crafted the UCS Guardian which is a Ford Explorer made green. It gets up to 35mpg, is safer than normal SUV's, and the increased cost is minimal (about $2,300 more than the normal Explorer which will be made back two times over the life of the vehicle in gasoline savings).
-- There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You missed the point
by
Tau+Zero
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
As far as price/performance fuel wise: $200,000 buys a lot of petrol!
The tzero is a hand-built car at a hand-built price. I can buy a lot of Mack Truck for the price of a Testarossa, but my ride won't be nearly as classy.
What the tzero lets people do is make a statement with their money. I think that most anybody who spends that much money on a vehicle just to make a statement is silly, but the same technology often winds up being used in mass-production vehicles at a tenth the price.
Some things you might have noticed had you been paying attention:
Power electronics are cheap and follow a Moore's Law-like curve.
Lithium batteries are the up and coming technology, and are also getting cheaper at a dizzying rate.
Induction motors are dumb, cheap affairs of laminated steel and copper which are rugged and extremely cheap in quantity.
The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.
Where are the hybrid gas/electric kits for existing cars? That would be a great project!
The first really insightful thing you've added to this discussion! I can't say for sure, but I'll wager a pitcher of beer that the engineering hassles of a dual-powered vehicle are not appealing to the kind of person who wants to be "green", and the costs defeat the purpose for people merely trying to save money. To be truly practical you'd need the efficiencies of mass production, and they appear to be coming.
-- Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The 'bizarre thinking' here is that the energy released in a hydrogen fuel cell comes from the difference in the amount of energy stored in a hydrogen-oxygen bond versus a hydrogen-hydrogen bond. The hydrogen gets oxidized to water, and when you balance the books that extra energy went somewhere, in this case it went to providing an electrical potential to drive your electric motor. In an internal combustion engine, you're oxidizing carbon-hydrogen bonds to carbon dioxide and water, and again the products have lower energy bonds. That extra energy in this case goes into producing heat, which drives pistons. In the case of a battery, virtually the same thing is going on in that one chemical in getting 'reduced' by electrons flowing through the circuit from some other source chemical, which is getting oxidized by loosing electrons. In all three cases it's about electrons going from a high energy configuration to a low energy configuration, and giving up the difference in some harnessble manner.
And the weak force has nothing to do with it.
Re:Here's another article with picture . very nice
by
Bagheera
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I notice the races were all 1/8 mile rather than the standard 1/4 mile we're used to in drag racing. Could that be because the electric motor's torque curve tapers off at higher speed/RPM where the high strung exotics shine?
Electric motors have max torque at 0 RPM, which is great for off the line acceleration. The Porsche is producing maximum grunt much higher in the rev range, which will show further down the track.
Off the line, it's no surprise the electric could win. I'd be much more interested in it's performance at higher speeds and how it handles under extremes of cornering. Little sports cars handle well because they don't weigh anything. Battery packs are still heavy if you want any usable range.
-- Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
"So that gives you just over 300 miles a "tank" before you have to stop and recharge."
At 27 miles per gallon equivalent
We have petrol cars which are more efficient than this, but I don't believe that anything capable of accelerating that fast does 27mpg.
Re:Don't be silly
by
atcurtis
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In the UK, US$3000 would buy about 660 US gallons of fuel... at 20 mp(US)g would be about 13000 miles.
However, many cars in the UK can do about 36mp(UK)g which would be about 43mp(US)g.
Conclusion:
If the average car in Europe were as inefficient as cars in the US, then the Electric car would be cheaper to operate within Europe.
or
If the average car in the US were as efficient as cars in Europe, emissions would be down greatly and much more research would be required to make Electric cars economical. Especilly if one conciders that electricity in California is much more expensive than Europe.
More research is required in fuel cells - my hopes are on methanol based fuel cells, since methanol can be manufactured cheaply by biological processes.
-- -- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Home to school to home was 400 miles (Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Terre Haute and back) while I was in college. Having a vehicle with a range of only 300 miles would have been sh*t for the parents who took me to school and back.
The only downside to electric cars of this sort is the charging time. But for long trips there's a simple way around that.
An automobile needs high horsepower for accelleration. But for cruise it requires very little. On the straight-and-level it depends mainly on air and rolling friction, and 18 horses might suffice for even a moderately large sedan, significantly less for a streamlined sports car.
The electric car described has stored battery power enough to both accellerate from stop repeatedly and climb mountains, and uses regenerative braking to salvage much of the gravitational potential and momentum when going downhill and stopping. So the problem for range extension is just to replace the average straight-and-level cruising losses.
Refueling mid-trip is out, due to charging time. But (if I recall the article correctly) the charging circuit is capable of charging the car at about twice the average consumption on a long trip.
So one solution for longer trips is obvious: A small trailer, about the size of a motorcycle sidecar, containing a gasoline generator and a fuel tank. The generator tops off the batteries while the batteries provide the accelleration and climbing power (so you don't hold up traffic in the mountains, as "eco-friendly" gasoline cars do).
The article talks of charging the car from an oven-style home outlet. Let's be pessimistic and say it's not a standard 30-amp oven but more like 50 amps (at 240 volts). That's 12 KW, about 16.09 HP (plus generator losses). So figure about a 20-25 horse engine (so 17 horses is near the peak of its efficiency curve and you can run it at that long-term), a bit less (since the efficiency of the SYSTEM might be better if you reduce the weight of the engine a bit and run it a tad fast), or even QUITE a bit less (since you don't have to charge at a rate that lets you run 70 MPH for 24/7, but can start out charged and finish up mostly drained).
It's not just a speculation: Follow some of the links you see when googling "tzero charging time" and you'll see such a trailer hanging behind another model of electric car.
If the car is set up for it you can reduce the weight of the trailer by leaving off the starting battery and starting the engine from the battery in the car. (Leave off the starter motor, too, using the generator as a motor for startup.) The car's computer can direct the trailer engine to only run when required, eliminating the idling losses and running it at the peak of its efficiency curve, and arranging proper warmup after start before putting load on the engine.
-- Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Slashdot Mirror
So that gives you just over 300 miles a "tank" before you have to stop and recharge...which AFAIK takes significantly longer than pumping gas...unless you were able to do what the first post suggested and harness the power of lightning (or plutonium) to get your 1.21 gigawatts.
where do you think the hydrogen comes from? What about the oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel that will have to be consumed to produce the hydrogen?
What about the huge greenhouse gas potential created by the constant release of hydrogen into the atmosphere? - It is notoriously difficult to keep hydrogen bottled up, to the point where it can seep right through metal bottles.
It is the future but it will not be the perfect answer you may think it is.
Recall that in the 1950's nuclear energy was advertised to be not only clean and safe, but as a source of unlimited free energy.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Even the "cheap" laptop batteries sold on eBay go for around $50 per. (This is assuming that you need (new or new-ish) batteries that will actually hold a charge.) Factor in $10 per for shipping and "handling" (read: "extra profit" for the seller) and that's $60 * 6800 == $408,000.
;)
Oy, what a deal!
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
what happens when you get in an accident with a car that has batteries pretty much surrounding the driver/passenger. do you end up swimming in lead and acid?
A blog like any other.
The fact that they can get 300 miles out of a charge is more impressive than the fact that it accelerates like a ferrari. The real impressive new piece of tech on the car is their regenerative braking, which turns off to avoid skidding. This is a well thought out EV. My only wish is that they made one more in my price range.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
The point of the exercise was to demonstrate the fallacy in the popular opinion that electric drive vehicles are lacking in power. With a transmission, stiff, balanced frame, and all wheel drive, this technology demo could become exciting. Of course any of those cars could beat it in oval track or rally.
meh.
emissions equal to zero
How much emission does manufacturing 6800 lithium-ion batteries produce?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Not only is the tZero a sporty little electric car with amazing acceleration, it can also achieve reasonable mileage and range using their hybrid range extended trailer. There are links in the AC Propulsion white papers section regarding the range extending trailer. Also, a link to a PDF
With this thing attached the car it gets a combined 40 MPG (highway driving at 100kph/60mph) and a range of around 380 miles. Not bad for a sports car. Another cool feature of the trailer is that it has a linked steering system; it's not a freewheeling trailer, rather the trailer wheels move with the car steering. This makes things like backing up (parallel parking and the like) much easier for those without experience towing a trailer.
Neat little car.
The FutureTruck competition is highly sponsored (read: "Ford"), and produces good research, but also good, experienced electrical and mechanical engineers (I'm neither, which lead to my quitting the team--oh well) who have faced the design challenges of a real vehicle. Anyway, we can sit here and pick apart why the Tzero isn't worthwhile, but the fact is that it's a concept car, pretty much, and it shows that it is possible to get great performance out of batteries.
This side up.
Or, just give people what they want but make it more friendly for the environment. For instance the Union of Concerned Scientists crafted the UCS Guardian which is a Ford Explorer made green. It gets up to 35mpg, is safer than normal SUV's, and the increased cost is minimal (about $2,300 more than the normal Explorer which will be made back two times over the life of the vehicle in gasoline savings).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
What the tzero lets people do is make a statement with their money. I think that most anybody who spends that much money on a vehicle just to make a statement is silly, but the same technology often winds up being used in mass-production vehicles at a tenth the price.
Some things you might have noticed had you been paying attention:
- Power electronics are cheap and follow a Moore's Law-like curve.
- Lithium batteries are the up and coming technology, and are also getting cheaper at a dizzying rate.
- Induction motors are dumb, cheap affairs of laminated steel and copper which are rugged and extremely cheap in quantity.
The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader. The first really insightful thing you've added to this discussion! I can't say for sure, but I'll wager a pitcher of beer that the engineering hassles of a dual-powered vehicle are not appealing to the kind of person who wants to be "green", and the costs defeat the purpose for people merely trying to save money. To be truly practical you'd need the efficiencies of mass production, and they appear to be coming.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The 'bizarre thinking' here is that the energy released in a hydrogen fuel cell comes from the difference in the amount of energy stored in a hydrogen-oxygen bond versus a hydrogen-hydrogen bond. The hydrogen gets oxidized to water, and when you balance the books that extra energy went somewhere, in this case it went to providing an electrical potential to drive your electric motor. In an internal combustion engine, you're oxidizing carbon-hydrogen bonds to carbon dioxide and water, and again the products have lower energy bonds. That extra energy in this case goes into producing heat, which drives pistons. In the case of a battery, virtually the same thing is going on in that one chemical in getting 'reduced' by electrons flowing through the circuit from some other source chemical, which is getting oxidized by loosing electrons. In all three cases it's about electrons going from a high energy configuration to a low energy configuration, and giving up the difference in some harnessble manner.
And the weak force has nothing to do with it.
I notice the races were all 1/8 mile rather than the standard 1/4 mile we're used to in drag racing. Could that be because the electric motor's torque curve tapers off at higher speed/RPM where the high strung exotics shine?
Electric motors have max torque at 0 RPM, which is great for off the line acceleration. The Porsche is producing maximum grunt much higher in the rev range, which will show further down the track.
Off the line, it's no surprise the electric could win. I'd be much more interested in it's performance at higher speeds and how it handles under extremes of cornering. Little sports cars handle well because they don't weigh anything. Battery packs are still heavy if you want any usable range.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
"So that gives you just over 300 miles a "tank" before you have to stop and recharge."
At 27 miles per gallon equivalent
We have petrol cars which are more efficient than this, but I don't believe that anything capable of accelerating that fast does 27mpg.
In the UK, US$3000 would buy about 660 US gallons of fuel... at 20 mp(US)g would be about 13000 miles.
However, many cars in the UK can do about 36mp(UK)g which would be about 43mp(US)g.
Conclusion:
If the average car in Europe were as inefficient as cars in the US, then the Electric car would be cheaper to operate within Europe.
or
If the average car in the US were as efficient as cars in Europe, emissions would be down greatly and much more research would be required to make Electric cars economical. Especilly if one conciders that electricity in California is much more expensive than Europe.
More research is required in fuel cells - my hopes are on methanol based fuel cells, since methanol can be manufactured cheaply by biological processes.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Home to school to home was 400 miles (Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Terre Haute and back) while I was in college. Having a vehicle with a range of only 300 miles would have been sh*t for the parents who took me to school and back.
The only downside to electric cars of this sort is the charging time. But for long trips there's a simple way around that.
An automobile needs high horsepower for accelleration. But for cruise it requires very little. On the straight-and-level it depends mainly on air and rolling friction, and 18 horses might suffice for even a moderately large sedan, significantly less for a streamlined sports car.
The electric car described has stored battery power enough to both accellerate from stop repeatedly and climb mountains, and uses regenerative braking to salvage much of the gravitational potential and momentum when going downhill and stopping. So the problem for range extension is just to replace the average straight-and-level cruising losses.
Refueling mid-trip is out, due to charging time. But (if I recall the article correctly) the charging circuit is capable of charging the car at about twice the average consumption on a long trip.
So one solution for longer trips is obvious: A small trailer, about the size of a motorcycle sidecar, containing a gasoline generator and a fuel tank. The generator tops off the batteries while the batteries provide the accelleration and climbing power (so you don't hold up traffic in the mountains, as "eco-friendly" gasoline cars do).
The article talks of charging the car from an oven-style home outlet. Let's be pessimistic and say it's not a standard 30-amp oven but more like 50 amps (at 240 volts). That's 12 KW, about 16.09 HP (plus generator losses). So figure about a 20-25 horse engine (so 17 horses is near the peak of its efficiency curve and you can run it at that long-term), a bit less (since the efficiency of the SYSTEM might be better if you reduce the weight of the engine a bit and run it a tad fast), or even QUITE a bit less (since you don't have to charge at a rate that lets you run 70 MPH for 24/7, but can start out charged and finish up mostly drained).
It's not just a speculation: Follow some of the links you see when googling "tzero charging time" and you'll see such a trailer hanging behind another model of electric car.
If the car is set up for it you can reduce the weight of the trailer by leaving off the starting battery and starting the engine from the battery in the car. (Leave off the starter motor, too, using the generator as a motor for startup.) The car's computer can direct the trailer engine to only run when required, eliminating the idling losses and running it at the peak of its efficiency curve, and arranging proper warmup after start before putting load on the engine.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way