Slashdot Mirror
230mph Electric Car
An anonymous reader writes "It ain't cheap, but Hiroshi Shimizu has finally shown off his latest electric car 'Eliica'. It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and will cruise for 200 miles on a one hour charge. Stories at drive.com.au, and an image video and tech video. Interestingly, Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids, as a simple electric engine dramatically lowers the cost of manufacturing, and will lead to a flood of cheap, mass produced cars from Chinese factories." A UK auto site has a story as well, including a test drive.
Shimizu believes that the Japanese motor industry is deliberately ignoring his invention and instead focusing on complex hybrids
Of course they are. Electric cars may be more efficient and cheaper to build, but you have to plug them in and wait. That's not acceptable, if only once every year when your friend/family member needs a ride.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
I think that it should be noted that electric motors always accelerate faster than their combustion counterparts. That is because their torque begins at it's highest during the beginning of the acceleration cycle, not the end like a combustion.
Generally competition helps the costumers, yet here it is, damaging a very good car
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Presumably, the Chinese could license and start building these themselves, without waiting for Japan's lead? 200 miles is the critical value that I've been waiting for for a range, assuming that the recharge time isn't any longer than overnight....
All kidding aside, I'm not trying to troll, and I know that there's probably some merit to his claims. But for the love of god, why do all these new efficient cars have to be so damned ugly? The prius is hideous, so is the echo, and now this?
I know some people will disagree, as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but come on...
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The UK auto link in the submission text says recharge time is 10 hours not the 1 hour quoted above. So whos right?
USA may have to invade to stop this.
The "tech video" isn't worth much IMHO (unless you understand Japanese), but the image video was kinda amusing in that it had data shown on the screen, but the Japanese style of commercials is definitely different than I'm used to and was entertaining in a different type of way.
One more interesting thing not mentioned above is that it has 8 wheels.
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Because it looks so damn cool. The designer appears to have overdosed on Thunderbirds during his youth.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
American hated the concept of Electric Motors in cars for one simple fact. Speed. They like to go fast and with the ones introduced to us, they did not. They were slower, hybrid animals that may have accelerated faster, but were not up to par by American standards. At least in a few years this car proposed will develop into something more hormone ravaged teens will dream and adult driving enthusiasts will utilize. Only now, to develop a ample charging device...
_
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One of my favorite jokes: "There are liars, there are damn liars, and then there are battery chemists."
Electric cars don't become economical until batteries do. Don't hold your breath either. People have been working on this for a long time and there doesn't seem to be a breakthrough in the offing.
... that wouldn't be an issue with a replacable cell station.
Consider the gas station. We pull in, refuel and leave. How could the gas station business model work with an electric car? Simple. No one wants to wait for a battery to charge. But what if there was a cell-swap activity involved rather than a recharge? Perhaps in the future we'll be pulling into a station and they swap out our battery cells instead of adding more fuel? They make a profit by offering bad cell insurance or whatever and they get to own the cells... I dunno... I haven't really thought it through to the detail but on the outside it seems like a good way to continue our general business model and to continue to provide convenience to the end user. And most assuredly, the daily work-commuter would plug his machine in to charge each night.
But as for the idea that current auto makers intentionally suppressing electric cars? I'll go in on that since there is still too much money at stake for the old ways and the pressure would come from too many sources to determine any particular "bad guys." We just have to wait for the fossil fuels to run out before we can really expect electric cars to really take off...and then we can expect the current oligopoly to find a way to lock up the electric car and fuel systems in some other way... somehow they'll make a privately owned windmill to charge your car illegal...
Hmm...I wouldn't buy a cell phone that took 10 hours to recharge, the downtime would be too hurtful to its overall usefulness. Why on earth would anyone use a car that was out of commision for 10 hours, when one could go refill their hybrid in less than 5 minutes?
Someone actually made "The Homer" a reality !
It probably handles like a Tomahawk.
Although it may goto 200 mph on a one hour charge, The only downsides, apart from the tiny cockpit, are that it takes 10 hours to recharge, and a production version would cost £170,000.
The slashdot post was a bit misleading I think, still pretty cool though.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
Of course they are. Electric cars may be more efficient and cheaper to build, but you have to plug them in and wait. That's not acceptable, if only once every year when your friend/family member needs a ride.
I disagree - I would happily have one. First, it looks wicked! And second, by far the majority of my driving is less than 50 km / day on weekdays. There would be no problem using it as a commuting vehicle for me.
What I think really needs to change, is in the insurance arena. I own a 1989 Toyota 4runner. Reliable, but hellish on gas. I own this vehicle, because there are occasions when I *NEED* the carrying capacity and 4WD (hiking, whitewater kayaking etc). Yes, I own a SUV, and I am one of the few with a legitimate use for it.
Having said this, I don't need an SUV to commute to work. If it were possible for me to switch my plates to a more fuel efficent car - without taking out a separate policy - and only use my SUV when I needed it, I would be saving myself money, and doing a great deal for the environment. As it is, here in BC, if you have two vehicles, you have two insurance policies, there is no sharing allowed.
An electric car would be perfect for that.
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The design of the car was not quite what I expected to see after i read that:
"It accelerates faster than a Porsche 911 Turbo, and will cruise for 200 miles on a one hour charge" =)
Stories like this seem to come every few months... is this legit or some weirdo scammer?
we should eb switching to electric. A simple electric car can accelerate faster and hit higher speeds.
Of course, that particular car can not travel very far as it will be carrying few batteries. If you wish to travel any distance, then you will need batteries or fuel cells.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Does anyone know where Japan gets most of its energy from, i.e. fossil fuel power plants vs nuclear vs. hydroelectric and etc? because even if they all switched to no-emissions cars, that doesn't mean that total emissions would drop. On that same note, what is the efficiency of a fossil fuel power plant vs. a standard gasoline fueled car? of course, its almost bound to be better than some of the gas-guzzlers out there, so i might be better to shift to a centralized system anyways. not that the japanese are really into gas guzzlers, i think.
If you watched or know the story of Tucker you'd see that you cannot challenge a market with powerful players without being squashed. Theres only one way around this and that is to go overseas and establish the technology in another country under the protective wing of the government and then introduce it as an import everywhere around the globe.
Tucker was unable to win against the big three auto makers, nor was Delorean.
Mark my words, the only way we will ever see a flying car or radically advanced automobiles or cheap diamonds is if another government does it first.
If you dont want the powerful companies that control the US to stifle what you're doing take your innovation overseas and develop it there. That is the only way you can become a real player.
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sigs, as if you care.
If they can get electric cars to outperform others in Formula 1, that's when they'll break into public consciousness as legitimate vehicles.
- Charging. You need to let these cars sit for a period of time between use to let the batteries top up. Without that, it's just a very expensive paperweight (and not a very good one at that.)
- Battery life. A typical Li-ion battery will lose twenty percent of its capacity every year, from the day that they are manufactured. With a pure electric vehicle, that means a 20% drop in range. Would you buy a car that ranges up to 200 km the first year; 160 km the second; 128 km the third; and 102 km the fourth? (ie: a 50% drop in range every three and a bit years.) Would you buy a new set of batteries (see next point) every three years, or even more often?
- Cost. How much will those Li-ion batteries cost? (Hint: they're not cheap. My PowerBook needs a battery that costs $US130. And that's just a tiny fraction of what a car engine would need...)
- Charge cycles. The more you use a Li-ion battery, the faster it degrades. (The above 20% is regardless of usage, btw -- so even if the car sits in the garage...)
Those are just off the top of my head. There's probably plenty more. Car manufacturers know damn well that with disadvantages like the above, consumers won't buy. That's why they're not interested. There's no conspiracy here, folks. Move along.How are you going to produce the electricity needed to power this 600kW beast? Diesel locomotives and fossil fuels? I am also sure the track version of the car has things like heater, AC, CD players, sound systems, power seats, all removed to reduce weight and power.
Also, in cold climate this car has to work to produce heat, where traditional cars have a natural heat source.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
One hour is definitely less than overnight, assuming you don't live close to the arctic circle
Why is there no transmission?
Don't you still have to balance power vs speed with gears? Or I guess with electricity you can supply power and speed on demand?
It'll be sad day when standard transmission dies out!
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Imagine getting an alignment for that eight wheeled beast ...
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
If I add a new rig to my home w/ monitor speakers printer the whole works I bet my bill will go up 10 dollars a month...
Now,
I have to plug in my car, that will dive me 100 miles a day to and from work.
I'll stick to oil....
Such a vehicle does not fit into the automotive industry's model of planned obselescence. Your car must wear out quickly so that you will buy a new car.
Wow. That car looks like a cross between something driven by a Speed Racer villian and one of those promotional films from the 1950s about the "car of the future." Pretty damn cool. I have to admire a daring vision of design like that.
As mentioned, the major drawback to pure electrics are the wait. If they solve that hurdle, I think you could see electrics boom, especially in countries in China where the car market is exploding and so is the pollution.
Pesonally though, I would rather see a pure zero-emission hydrogen solution. At least in the U.S. electrics are still deriving their energy from mostly fossil-fuel power plants.
I like it.
fish and pipes
...the Chinese could license and start building these themselves...
The Chinese must first solve the quality issue with their cars.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Too bad it's not 230 mpg, no more trips to the gas pump.
That's MPG -> miles per gallon
Brandon Petersen
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every time I read your sig I start laughing. It rules.
+++ATH0
It's somewhat misleading to compare these to your car, because your car carries around a lot of extra weight for safety. The article doesn't say how much this weighs, but it wouldn't surprise me if the range were reduced by half by the time they made the thing safe enough to drive on a US road.
I'm sure I'll hear the usual arguments about how it wouldn't need all that if it didn't have to worry about splatting into a three ton SUV, but drivers (even electric car drivers) screw up and plow into things like trees. Cars have lots of extra metal to save passengers when that happens, and that metal is heavy. It's less heavy in a cleverly-designed Japanese car with crumple zones, as opposed to an American-built behemoth that depends on sheer mass to solve the problem, but it adds to the weight of every production car.
I'm not entirely certain what this car has that's new that allows it to be faster, and I hope whatever it is will scale to build a real car. Electric cars have a lot of potential to supplant gas and help break the dependence on Middle Eastern oil. But the figures can easily mislead you into believing that's closer than it is.
essentially have perfectly flat torque over their entire RPM range. They can keep spinning and making torque at really, really high RPMs so they dont need to be geared down as road speed increases.
ICE (internal combustion engines) really only produce torque in a VERY narrow range of revolutions, and are limited to a fairly low maximum rev count by mechanical issues..
an electric motor, comparatively, will spin as fast as you want it to, and make the same torque at any rpm (within reason)
as someone else pointed out, electric cars always out-accelerate ICE cars in these "electric sports car" tests for two reasons
1) instantaneous peak torque, held all the way up to V_max
2) car is a prototype with no basis in reality for production use.
The average ICE car engine is only usable from 1000 to 6000 rpm. Diesel truck engines are more like 500 to 2200 rpm. The enormous diesel ship engine everyone was sending the link to a few months back runs at _90_ rpm.
It is not uncommon for an electric motor to spin at 20,000 or more rpm. The only practical displacement motors going this fast are the Formula 1 3L V10s, which spin up to 19k rpm but need to be rebuilt after 1 weekend.
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There is a market. I drive 5 minutes to the bus park and ride, and 5 minutes home. My car sits _a lot_.
Think creatively, okay?
Well, maybe 200 miles is OK in Japan or Europe, but it sure won't get you anywhere in North America. The next town is 300 clicks away...
Oh well, what the hell...
We need to reach 400kmh to make an impact on a gasoline car-dependent world," Shimizu says.
WTF is this guy thinking. The car does 370kmh, if only he could get to 400 then the car will become popular?
The public has little interest in a top speed of 400. It's the fact that you need to charge batteries and it costs a shitload.
Waking Up - There must be a better way to start the day.
I have one phrase. repeat after me. Energy density. Ask youself how far you can go on a 1 gallon jug of gasoline. Then ask yourself how far you can go with a 1 gallon battery. Its no coincidence that gasoline cars are everywhere.
I'm on a downer, so take this all with a large grain of salt. Think it through:
Your clickage may not be commensurate.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Doing no research into this question at all...
A working prototype and a car ready for the assembly line are two different things. I'm sure much more work needs to be done before this can be a production car. Japan's major automakers have vast engineering resources set up for this kind of thing. It might be the case that China has the manufacturing capability to produce such a car, but lacks whatever intermediate resources (such as expertise) are needed to take a car from prototype to production. Once Japan designs a production model though, it would be much easier to immitate.
Anyway, just a guess.
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"Or perhaps fuel cells, in which case you've built a hybrid car anyway"
Hybrid cars = internal combustion engine + electric motor.
No need for hybrid - if the fuel cells are hydrocarbon fuel cells, or hydrogen fuel cells + carbon fuel cells. You can leave out the internal combustion engines.
In which case you get an electric motor car that is powered by petrol/diesel/biodiesel - just fill up at the usual fuel stations.
Current issues are contaminants in the fuel poisoning the various catalysts or fuel cells. Also max sustained power output of the fuel cells. You need high output to run a car.
You'd still need batteries or some other way to store power from regenerative braking - which is where a lot of the efficiency gains come from, and for "sprinting", but you no longer need such a high capacity battery - tens of KM on battery charge should be good enough (have to take into consideration hilly places).
Try to post it
The "customer" posed a question that the resident genius was unable to answer. Obviously, they were on wrong sides of the bar.
You must not have ever been an Apple user.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Wow... somebody jammed a ton of batteries (literally) and eight big@ss motors into a chassis to create a car that weighs 5300 lbs yet has a 'tiny cockpit'. Really, really cutting edge stuff. I especially like the elegant solution of integrating power from 8 motors... just use 8 wheels! Really great solution there, just like something Bubba would have designed in the tinkerin' shop behind his barn. CN: There's nothing new or special here.
Even if you live within the arctic (or antarctic) circle, one hour is STILL considerably less than overnight.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Don't forget TZero.
Or possibly he just couldn't actualy spot the difference between the two people. What kind of crappy cartoon, which relies on the switching of the two characters for the punch line, draws them almost identically, including colouring of hair and pants. What kind of messed up world does he live in. Glasses shape is not an answer.
clicks are kilometres. 200 miles is roughly 320 kilometres, so the car will at least get you to the next town. :-)
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
In the U.S. state of Colorado, drivers are insured, not automobiles. It's not like that in most states, though.
I've been watching this thing on the news here in Japan for a long time now. I'd say at least a year.
Now, the extra wheels are a semi-common setup here. Trucks use them, and well. The distrobution of the force helps them move easily, and turning also becomes smoother (all 4 front wheels move at the same time, giving a beautiful turn). The physics to it are simple: more places to put force on the ground, more (weaker) engines you can use. See electric engines put out instant torque, but that torque is weak compared to gas equivalents, and larger motors are less battery efficient. That's it!
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- Have a picture
Think about this...
The amount of time it takes to charge an electric is equivalent to the time it takes to sleep. Big Deal...
You save a kid's Asthma, you help your planet repair an Ozone tear in the fabric of Life, you sacrifice what? 10 hours downtime while you're sleeping?
I own a Think Neighbor electric car. 10 hours charges 6 gel batteries good for 30 miles. It's only good for a 12 mile radius. This car goes 200mph. Now, this guy enables 100 mile radius for 10 hrs charge.
He owns the electric commuter layer. I guarantee, if it will do 200mph (80mi radius) for 10 hours charge. He can deliver a 100mph (200mi radius) for 10 hour charge. He owns the Family electric car layer at that point.
THAT's disruptive technology!
His business plan could provide the *paradigm shift* Transportation has needed since Henry Ford died with it in his combustion engine fist.
Although this particular case is the rare exception, whenever the mainstream auto/oil companies are obliged by regulation to produce a non gasoline-only vehicle, they go out of their way to make them ridiclous-looking, since they know that image-conscious motorists aren't interested in driving around in something which looks like a golf cart held together by duct tape. Works a treat everytime.
For the most part, there's simply no reason whatsoever to make these vehicles look much or any different from regular gasoline-powered vehicles...but if the manufacturers did that, people might buy them, and that's unacceptable.
I want one so badly. Now I know what's my next car is going to be...
Not faster than a 911 Turbo. As a long-time Porsche fan, I feel the need to set the record straight. . .
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
My question is, where will the power come from? Yeah, sure, you press down on the excelerator and it doesn't put out any carbon monoxide but that doesn't mean that it is truly a pollution free car. The electricity used to charge the batteries might have come from a coal burning power plant. This is just a matter of shifting the pollution from the inner city out to the country side where the power plants sit.
Additionally, every summer we hear about power blackouts because the U.S.A. is near or at our power generating capacity. This gets back to my first question, where is the electricity going to come from if a significant number of the population suddenly decides to buy electric cars? I realize Dubya wants to fund the building of a nuclear power plant on every street corner but is this really wise? Why can't we just bite the bullet and develop a real public transportation system in this country?
When they can do at least 120mph for at least 500miles on a single charge and a facility exists to either quickly and easily swap out batteries at a "recharging station" or else the batteries themselves can be charged to full capacity from empty within 10 minuts, I'd say they've gotten them to where they really need to be.
Now granted, 120mph may not seem that speedy compared to this 230mph, but it's plenty fast enough for the average home consumer. Heck, I can't even think of any time I've ever really gone over 80 for any real periods of time.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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There is nothing surprising about his car out accelerating a porsche. Electric cars are fast, because electric motors can have high power compared to size and they are always at their max power (as opposed to gasoline motors that have to reach a certain rpm to get to max power).
However there are problems with electric cars. The batteries are heavy and expensive and as there is no battery technology breakthroughs in sight, they are likely to remain heavy and expensive. And the range is likely to remain limited.
So the Japanese car industry is not in cahoots against this guy. Hybrid cars make much more sense nowadays because they still store the most of their energy in gasoline (as opposed to heavy and expensive batteries) while they allow the electric engine to perform where it is at its best -- when a lot of power is needed and for regenerative braking. Thus the gas engine can be much smaller and operate at max efficiency RPM as opposed to max power rpm.
I would not be so sure that the US car companies arent in a conspiracy, however - they have no good hybrid or electric offerings. GE had a great electric car and decided to kill it, and actually took back all cars from their customers.
I misread the headline at first... I thought it said 230 mph electric chair . My first thought was Holy shit, it'll be able to catch me on the highway. How clever of them.
Then I had the ahhhh moment.
I need some more coffee... or more sleep, whichever comes first.
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
This baby does 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds and they actually started to take orders: http://acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_home.htm
They all look too geeky and no style.
If they put some decent designer on, and make it look like a Ferrari or NSX - people would line up and buy those baby
I don't know about down there, but in the states, any vehicle with a less than 50cc engine needn't be insured - mostly because they can't really do damage themselves, and cost so little to repair. Similarly sized electric vehicles often meet the same requirements, though most can only go 20 miles or so.
I personally own a scooter to save on gas milage. I get roughly 80mpg with a top speed of 45MPH and a 1 gallon tank. Since I'm in city traffic on my way to work, it's the same as if I drove, but I save gas. Turning it off at the stoplights has almost no effect on fuel consumption, so I save gas there, too.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
post to e car
It's like a cross between the Thunderbirds car and a Citroen!
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Some issues I see that are not being discussed:
1) Ok so we decide to do electric.
How do we deal with the fact that over the past 100 years we have had time to build GAS fuel/support infrastructure to a convienant level?
I think it will take conservatively half that amount of time till every 7/11 is a EVT quick stop.
Training new Technicians.
Converting EVERY Gas station to a EVT stop.
(Thats a LOT of stations.)
Manufacturing plants/parts for the Power source.
2) The car...well the car has a lot of the same issues as the power.
How well does it work in hot/cold environments? How far can the motors really go?
Safety Regulations need to be revamped for this technoloy. With no past history, we start from scratch.
These are justa couple issues, that I see could amount to about 30 years and about a trillion dollars to make it all happen.
(Everyone Drives EVT's and they are just as convienant to use as liquid fueled or GAS cars.)
I just do not see how such a wide spread adoption could happen in a really short time, it is really a people issue in my opinion.
My point is that people I think are not putting into perspective what it takes to build the support structures required to support a pure EVT economy.
It will take a very long time, and it will cost a great deal.
I would also like to point out that ANY technology we select for an alternative to get from A -> B will have this problem.
How do we address it?
What do you think?
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Vanadium Redox batteries solve a lot of these problems. You can fill them with charged solution in the same way you fill up a tank of gasoline.
These are already in industrial use. They are discussed here
If batteries are the problem, why can't they at least get some heavy duty machinery and change the batteries on things like busses and taxis once every 3 hours or so. You could drop off your bus at the end of the route, pick up a fresh one, and the battery would be swapped in after you left. Electric vehicles are good in stop and go traffic and public transport uses a lot of gas as it is, and only has to travel in a fairly local area. If they had several changing stations located around a major city with buy-in from a few major corporations, wouldn't that solve the biggest problems? Public transport could provide a good starting point for supporting the infrastructure, as well. It could then be opened up to the public.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I own a 1990 Honda Accord. I don't know what pieces of shit you are buying, but my nearly 15 year old car has had absolutely no major problems and I take no special car of it. Hell, I don't even know how to change my own oil.
Cars are not computers. When people buy a new car every 3 years, it is because they want to. If they are buying a new car every 3 years, it is because it is breaking down, then they are a god damn idiot because they keep buying crap.
There is no 3vil corporate consipracy to force people to keep getting new cars. Car companies get all of their parts from suppliers. The only thing a car company does is put the stuff together. If a supplier sells a car company bad parts that break down, then they lose their contract. If I buy a car and it turns out to be crap, I just don't buy from that same company again. Take off the tin foil hat. Car companies want to sell cars. If electric cars could be made cheaply and even come close to having the same characteristics as a combustion car in all areas, car companies would be killing each other to sell the most.
If we have large electrical supply capability but poor batteries, what's wrong with putting inductive pickups in the road?
Surely we have switching devices that can activate the "track" as the car runs over it, minimizing electomagnetic pollution. You couldn't cover every road of course, but it would mean the main routes are catered to. I presume the issue is with charging for usage, but heavy vehicles have meters for similar purposes. Inductive electric cars could have a "charge meter that calls home and gets billed ever month or so.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
...if scientists are successful in their current research to produce stable room temperature superconductors, we may not have to change that battery nearly as much as you'd think.
Maybe that sort of car would fly in Europe, but never in the US. You can't convince the average American to spend more money on a car with drastically reduced capabilities. The US is just too damn big to be stuck to a 200 mile radius.
Battery exchanges might be one way of getting around it, but I don't believe for a second that such an exchange would even come close to rivialing how cheap gas is. For all the talk of gas rising in price, it is still cheap stuff. Hell, it is cheaper then bottled water. One day there will come a time when the cost of gas rises such that electric powered cars are cheaper. The second that day hits the change will happen over night. However, that day is most certainly not here yet.
Personally, I won't worry much about it. People will keep working on electric powered cars as this man has done. He might not sell anything, but the research will go into the big pot. When gas powered cars become to expensive some company (or companies) are going to rise up with eletric cars and reap the reward.
All this guy did was build a nice-looking platform around a ton or so of lithium-ion batteries. It's cute, but it doesn't represent a new solution to any problem. Price out a ton of laptop batteries and you get the picture.
GM had an EV1 with a lithium-ion battery option at one point, but that ran the cost through the roof.
Admittedly I don't know much about batteries but it seems like they could keep a giant battery there and recycle the fluid from your battery and pump in freshly charged fluid. Instead of recharging the batteries, how about you go to the "fuel station" and have the old electrolyte pumped out and fresh electrolyte pumped back in. Make it so there is a quality test done on the station's battery fluid so that if it reaches a certain point , perhaps 75% efficiency, the station has some of their fluid pumped out and fresh fluid pumped back in.
This car has been on /. before but you may not have seen it. Of course it is a strictly commuter car sort of deal, what with the 80 mile range... but it has me looking twice. If they ever got it manufactured to their target price then I would be tempted to buy one (used) from someone else. hehe I still won't fork over the money for a brand new car, especially a future car like that.
But it would satisfy all my commuting needs. The only concern I have is the 4" clearance... They must not expect this car to be driven in a city with speed bumps.
jason
I'm don't understand why everyone is so concerned about range. I realize that the average electric car has a range of less than the average combustion engine car's "magical" 400 miles, but so what?
For me, a range of 75 miles would probalby be more than enough MOST of the time. To/from work is about 30 miles, and there are the occasional trips that extend beyond that. I'm not sure I've ever driven my Accord through a full tank of gas (~400 miles) ever. I may want to do that someday, but I could rent a car if the need came up.
Seriously, on an average day for an average commute, how many miles do you need? I'm sure for most people my suggested 75 miles would probably be more than enough.
200 miles? WAY more than I need.
Hopefully there would be efficient ways to recycle old batteries so they can be re-used. Lest we end up with a (worse) landfill problem as millions of people start using electric cars. I think its workable. It has to be workable. We have to get off this addiction to oil at some stage.
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
In all seriousness the average hybrid does not achieve better fuel economy than a diesel, has a much quicker rate of deterioration and leaves tons of burned out shitty batteries as waste. Clearly not the eco-friendly vehicle every one thinks it is. The future is BIODIESEL, diesel engines, diesel hybrid BUSES not shitty little cars, and concentration on PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. If this fricken country had good PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION energy could be conserved. But guess what politicians are all in the pockets of business and gasoline cars are a big money item.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
A CAR with 8 wheels? Isn't that just a train engine fully loaded with batteries?
While in theory you might be producing just as much pollution by having one big power plant than by using a gas car, but each car is a power plant, and it would definitly be easier to make sure that one plant is as clean as possible than it is to make sure that the 100,000+ power plants in all the cars are running as clean as possible.
Maybe someone with more engineering knowledge than me can answer this, but what is the drawback of having an "all electric" vehicle that has a generator sitting in the trunk. This would dramatically simplify the engineering of the vehicle, while giving you the range of a gas vehicle. If and when fuel cells become viable, simply pull out the gas generator, and drop in the fuel cell. In the mean time, if you have a ethonol station in your town, you could run much cleaner by just swapping your gas generator with your ethonol generator. If designed properly, swapping power sources could be a 15 minute job.
The questions that come to mind are, can a gas generator, produce enough electricity to power the vehicle?
Would this use dramatically more fuel than running directly off of gas?
On the plus side, the 10 hours you have it plugged into your home (That has solor panels right?), you get to refuel for free.
This is very similar to Chep pallets. You (as a company who ships stuff) simply reports who you shipped pallets to, and in the end, Chep has a good idea of what everyone has (also noting what breaks). In the end, you get a higher quality pallet than a standard wood one. Similarly, you 'subscribe' to the service, they always know which battery you have and what the life is on it (X charges), and you pay for each 'fill up'. At the end of the month, you get a bill for the number of swaps you made. Include some fancy monitoring gadgets on the top that measure their effeciency of their last few runs and you can easily see what you should expect out of this run (and even calibrate a fuel guage acurately). Think about it :)
What we really need is better battery cell technology that doesn't have these issues.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
What is important to note is that we must safeguard this outstanding technology from the Chinese. China is morally bankrupt, and the Chinese would use this technology to enhance their armored transport in the People's Liberation Army.
China and the West (i.e. Japan and the USA) are really very different societies. Tibet, anyone?
What is important to note is that we must safeguard this outstanding technology from the Chinese. China is morally bankrupt, and the Chinese would use this technology to enhance their armored transport in the People's Liberation Army.
China and the West (i.e. Japan and the USA) are really very different societies. Tibet, anyone?
Can someone here explain to me how 8 tires are better then 4? Wouldn't 8 contact points create more
drag then four and waste energy?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
In summary. Torque gives you acceleration, horsepower determines your 0-60 time.
what's 0-60 again? acceleration isn't it?
torque is what gives you a "kick in the back" feeling. horsepower is what makes you accelerate. in fact, i'd go as far as to say having "torque" only means you have more horsepower at a lower rpm.
applying the formula in grand parent (Torque in Foot Pounds * RPMs)/5252 = HP to your example gives us somewhat more meaningful data:
Volkswagen Jetta = 42hp @ 1500rpm
Mazda 6 = 108hp @3800 rpm
if we had two cars with one making more torque at a lower rpm, it means that car is also making more HP at that lower RPM. let's take this as a call for more informative labelling... instead of just printing out the peak torque and hp figures, why not print out the entire dyno graph? this would give buyers much more information about a car than two arbitrary points on the hp/torque vs rpm curve.
I work in the field of electric storage, including batteries, and there is absolutely no reason they cannot come out with a vehicle that can't use batteries that can be rapid-charged, nor set up the charger to do them. (Granted, you would still be looking at a charge time of roughly an half-hour to an hour, little longer than it takes to get gas.) The standard deep-cycle batteries used for applications like RV's and boats cannot be charged like this, but those like the Optima and Odyssey do have this capability.
This begs the question, then, why is there not a workable electric car out there? 200 miles is plenty for the average person's daily driving, and it would be a simple matter to charge the vehicle every night. (In fact, this is better for the health of deep cycle batteries than full discharge.)
Further, a half hour recharge would only be a slight inconvenience on cross-country trips, especially since recharging stations could be set up right along the interstate, or set up in rest stops, not requiring the underground tanks and the like that a gas station does. Generally, after driving 200 miles, I for one am ready to get out of the car for a little while anyway.
The biggest downside that I see is that the cost of replacing the batteries (especially premium batteries like the Odyssey or Optima) would be considerable, given that these cars would have to use banks of 10-15 batteries, at a current cost of about $160 per battery. Of course, the massive boost to production of these would probably create competition and an economy of scale, driving the price down, as more and more migrated to electric cars. The savings on gas (which will only get more expensive) would also be considerable, although a high volume of these cars would create additional demand on the electrical grid.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Since there has been no new Nuclear plants in the U.S. since 1986, the U.S. and many other countries of the world are still generating the largest portion of their electricity by burning fossil fuels anyway. So using an electric car actually contributes to the burning of fossil fuels anyway, until electricity comes from some other source, too. Phoenix, AZ for instance is powered almost exclusively by burning coal in Northern Arizona.
The real threat to the existing car industry isn't this. It's the electric scooters that already come out of china for around $50 in bulk. They are light, easy to maintain and do around 20Kph.
But you can already get electric scooters that go up to 100kph, and just 1Kw of electric motor will get you up to around 50 to 60 Kph.
How long before a 5 to 10 Kw electric car, weighing around 300Kg, with a lightweight tube-steel frame for a single person comes out under $2000 using the same technology as they build into present bikes and scooters?
The biggest hurdle to this was cheap electric motors in mass supply. Battery technology was at the right level a few years back. Now the motors are available because of scooters with hub drives appearing. Mostly being built for use *in* China.
And the niche for a vehicle that carries a single person around at 80 to 100 Kph for daily commuting that could park in a MC bay still exists (Clive Sinclair's M5 was a realisation of this niche, but failed for a number of reasons, although they are still worth more than when new)
I'm waiting for the $2000 model.... Even if I do have to license it, it will actually make it cheaper to drive to work...
Besides, I have a much more serious car to drive for when I want to have fun, which is wasted on the daily commute trip!
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
station.
Every day just use the next one, while one charges.
Simple!
Even if you live within the arctic (or antarctic) circle, one hour is STILL considerably less than overnight.
Inside/near the arctic circle sunset to sunrise can be less than an hour during mid-summer.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Thanks for reinforcing my view that american republicans really know nothing about the rest of the world. /A scandinavian
What does hate have to do with it?
People buy vehicles for many reasons, applying very different criteria to their decisions. I'll never buy a Ford product again, but that has nothing to do with "hate", it has to do with their failures in quality control in the mid 1980's, when I last used one of their products.
When it comes to electric vehicles, I'll buy one or not based on whether they can manage the kind of price and performance that I want. If they fall short, I'll stick to conventional vehicles, but I wouldn't "hate" the electric car any more than any other product I didn't buy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I cant wait to see something like this in an off road vehicle! Imagine if you could get rid of all the junk(ie driveline, tranny, oil pan, axle) that you can catch on rocks and damage. Put a skidplate the length of the vehicle similar to a H1(first gen hummer). With 75degree angled verticle struts going down to oversized offroad tires where the engine is actually inside the wheel hub itself. I think a few inch wide strut made of sufficiently durable material can be done today. Then attached to some form of shock system, maybe even something encased in the strut itself. Talk about a high clearance vehicle. Embed photo cells in the roof and hood for trickle charging coupled with a brake type generator that is already in use. Or maybe you charge half the system while you run off the other half? A simple button switches between the two, or even better is automatic. Imagine the possibilites!
I don't know much about battery technology (how it works) but is there away to replace the fluid in a battery with having to change the battery?
I don't think it's gonna be that popular down town :)
They are working on it - with mfg plants producting models as we speak.
Saw the Japanese TV special on electric/hybrid cars a few weeks ago. The show centered around our famous inventor and his quest for funding and support.
Some people from Mitsubishi agreed to see him. They saw the car, and performed a test race with one of their cars around a track - it was pretty funny watching electric car kick ass on the track.
Sorry about the AC - It's late.
It would actually be easier to just exchange the car with a charged one or build the entire thing on a hot swapable frame (and still pass crash tests).
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
What most people miss when thinking about electric cars is the electrolyte can be a charged liquid. This allows the consumer to charge/refuel the electric car simply by flushing the old electrolyte out then replacing it with the now recharged electrolyte. You can recycle the electrolyte liquid that is flushed, and its a simple matter of testing the quality of the electrolyte your recycling so as to calculate the total refueling cost.
...Of Captain Nemo's car from LXG.
I personally wouldn't have a problem with the 200 miles of distance per an hour charge, so that's not a low point for me.
I might have a problem with something like it's length - more than five metres (16+ feet) long (?!) - but other than that, I like it.
Be kick ass to whoop the butts of all those V8 "rev-heads" around here in a nearly silent eight-wheeled car too. :)
His name is Robert Paulsen...
welcome our electric-car-developing Japanese scientist overlords!
;)
Lame running-gag aside, I think we (as in: everyone except this huge Gallic village across the Atlantic) are heading in the Right(tm) direction. Sure, it's a new technology, but so far every technology has had its benefits and trade-offs. It's purely a design issue.
Once there is an ongoing momentum in the car industry to create VLEV (very-low emission vehicles) like electrically-powered or hyrdrogen-powered cars, we will see improvements in battery-time and chemical composites. And who knows, maybe the computer industry is going to benefit from those technological advancements?
Downside to all this: this will increase our dependance on electric hydro. We're going to need a couple more terawatts (or terajoule?) to keep the common citizen rolling. What if there is a major black-out like two years ago? No traffic due to lack of electric current? (Although quite alot of people seemed to have enjoyed the sereneness and the lootings of big electronics outlets... j/k
By the way, the car is ugly as hell. I like Japanese cars (even the old hachi-roku), i.e. the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution or any other Japanese 4WD/AWD vehicle, but this looks like a freaked out American mini-van with 4 axes.
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
I don't know if the UK's article had it wrong, but they said "10" hours for a recharge.
Batteries are bad for the environment. Lead, cadium, icky heavy metals. They can explode, injuring humans and spilling toxics into the ground. Aquiring these metals involves strip mining. The metallurgy throws other nasties into the environment. And the electricity to charge is by no means free, typically generated from burning coal or drowning biomes to build a dam.
The question though, are batteries less harmful than the internal combustion engine? I say no. Batteries and electrical generators cause dense point pollution as opposed to diffused thin pollution. The batteries get the pollution out of your backyard, but they do not eliminate it. Spill a gallon of gasoline on your lawn and you get a big spot of dead grass. Spill the contents of your average battery on your lawn and endangered species downstream will start having mutations. Heavy metals are BAD! We've solved the problem of heavy metals in gasoline, we haven't solved it for batteries.
Don't take this wrong and think I'm arguing against electric engines. I'm not. Eventually we'll have realistic fuel cells to power these engines. But in the meantime we shouldn't be acting like batteries are a general and universal solution.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You need to look at the image video. The way they have made the battery compartment part of the frame would make for an excellently rigid passenger compartment. I don't like how they extended this out front, as it looks like it lacks a crush zone, but that's something that can be fixed easier than a conventional combustion engine model. The mass of the battery will protect you from rapid deceleration as well.
Compare it to the typical vehicle where a much too rigid engine compartment stops you dead. The best conventional vehicles try to dump the engine on the road so you don't get impaled by it as your hood crushes. A well built electric will lose the motors off the side and have you protected in a generous crush zone surrounded but way rigid cage.
I know how effective crush zones are from personal experience. 1997 I was hit by a dump truck. It demolished the trunk, but the dump truck bumper was too high and missed the bumper and frame of the crown viki I was in. The force was enough for my body to bend the bench seat and for my hands pulled the steering wheel out of shape. I got a flash of the dome light on the roof and it was over. I had a sore neck for a few days, but I'm sure I'd have been really injured if that dump truck had hit something rigid, like an engine compartment. The trunk was pushed almost to the back seat, about 2 feet, so I reckon that's a good crush zone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
OK, an 800bhp supercar is kind of interesting, but the real advance if you ask me is the in-wheel motors.
I wonder if I can install a pair of these on my car? Hmm, adding 200bhp and a longer range wouldn't be too bad. The trunk would be completely filled up with batteries though. Still, it seems like the end result would be better performing and save energy at the same time.
Maybe instead he should sell a retrofit kit with a pair of in-wheel motors, a power inverter and a few other parts so that automotive hobbyists can hybridize their existing vehicles.
...where can I get me a couple of those wheel motors? They would be perfect for an aftermarket hybrid conversion for a normal car!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
An electric car isn't hard to make. An electric car that goes fast isn't hard to make. An electric car with a long cruising range isn't hard to make. And an electric car that goes fast *and* has a long cruising range still isn't too hard to make.
On the other hand, making an electric car that can go reasonably fast, has a reasonably long cruising range, has a reasonably long battery life span, and is reasonably affordable does seem to be pretty tough to do. If you want to do some good for the planet in the area of electric cars, work on that problem.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Depending on how small they can make the cells, why not just do what I do with old camera batteries... have one in the camera until it gets drained, and another topped off ready to replace it. Drain one, stick the replacement in and put the other in a charger. Rinse, lather, repeat.
After all, I'd imagine that over time they could make the batteries fairly compact in size - I'm not talking AAA but perhaps big flashlight-battery sized of perhaps at least managable.
Did anyone else notice that both posted articles have very similar text?
From drive.com.au: It's more than five metres long, is shaped like a bullet and carries its batteries, software and motors in a narrow chassis bed, giving it a low centre of gravity... The mind-boggling acceleration is similar to a 370kW racing car, the only difference being that without a transmission there is no gearshift shock and the linear acceleration pushes the driver back in the seat.
From autoexpress.co.uk: It's more than five metres long, shaped like a bullet and carries its batteries, software and motors in a narrow chassis bed, giving it the lowest centre of gravity of any prototype we've come across... The mind-boggling acceleration was on a par with that of a 500bhp GT racing car. Yet the lack of a transmission meant there were no jerky cog swaps as we were thrust back in our seat by an incredible 0.8Gs.
So did one site copy from the other, or (more likely), did they both just copy text from a press release? Did the poster actually read both articles before this was posted?
If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?
Should read:
Cars have lots of extra metal to save passengers when that happens, and that metal is heavy. It's less heavy in a cleverly-designed Japanese car of 2004 with crumple zones, as opposed to an American-built behemoth of 1958 that depends on sheer mass to solve the problem, but it adds to the weight of every production car.
What are you smoking? Cite an example of a mass produced car sold in the US market in the last 20 years that doesn't have crumple zones. You can't, because there aren't any, American-made or otherwise.
American cars, like Japanese or European cars, are designed and crash tested inside things called "computers" before the hard tooling or even the first prototype is ever built. Vehicle designers design not only the thickness of the materials, but also the shape, to control crash performance.
There are no vehicles produced today for the North American market that rely on mass alone for crash performance. Those three ton SUVs and pickup trucks are built with crumple zones in the body and in the frame, and even class 8 trucks (them big things with 18 wheels) are designed for occupant protection during an accident (although there isn't much you can do with 80,000lbs of mass behind the cab).
Putting moderation advice in your
While I really like the idea of this battery replacement program, I don't think it would be at all like filling up a tank with gas. IINAEngineer, however I would think that at least initially, the battery for an electric car would be huge... at least far bigger than a typical car battery today. How exactly does one simply change a 200lb* battery? Will a technician do it? And if so, would this fee include his pay?
Perhaps this could be solved by creating a robotic mechanism that removes and installs batteries. However, this would severly limit the design possibilities for future vehicles. Batteries would have to be placed in standardized locations of standardized sizes. Also consider accidents: A gasoline spill can be stopped by the pump technician, and petrol is *relatively* harmless unless exposed to open flame or ingested. Battery acid from a dropped/cracked/faulty battery is an entirely different story.
*Note: 200lbs is a rather rough assumption of what a battery would be. It could easily be halved or doubled... but keep in mind that the design would have to be standardized. My point is that anything even as big as a current car battery could be troublesome for some elderly folks or people with back problems.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Uh, will they really bother to get a license? Probably making these things already for the home market...
...
Inside/near the arctic circle sunset to sunrise can be less than an hour during mid-summer.
I was referring to the long nights up north (and south).
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Ahh we finaly find that nasa engineers slashdot handle.
just kidding, all in good fun, no offence intended,IANAPC, don't try this at home, etc.
Mcyroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
Too bad we run the world though, right?
Someone else mentioned battery exchange. I don't know if I was the source for that, but I described it some time ago as part of the necessary infrastructure for electric taxis. In that case, the battery ownership can be "globalized" to the cab companies, but I think it would be harder to do for privately owned cars.
Also, the troublesome side effect of battery exchange would be like having different size gas tanks depending on the condition of your current battery. I don't think this approach would be very practical for long distance travel, though it would be fine for commuters and cabs. It depends on your personal confidence level, but in my case, if my daily travel was less than about 2/3 of the normal charge state, I'd feel secure enough. If I was able to charge it up while I was at work or parked elsewhere, that would of course improve the effective range without battery swapping. You'd notice your battery deteriorating over time, but it would be a gradual thing, not like a sudden shock when you exchanged a factory fresh battery for an almost unchargeable one.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Students at Ohio State have designed, built and run a car called the Buckeye Bullet that topped out at 321 mph. It holds the world land speed record for electric cars, and was tested at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It obviously isn't in the running to challenge hybrids or gas powered cars, but is quite an accomplishment. Go Bucks!
I should also mention that the EV1 weighed 2970 pounds, approximately 2590 of which was battery weight (87% of the weight of the car). I dare say, that your bringing up the EV1 has just validated my original point completely.
You could have an awesome electric car for sale now, and nobody will buy it, for fear of being stranded.
I always knew that we've got "combustion lock-in" which always seemed a bit irrational to me. I guess I didn't think it might be because of a conspiracy to shut out emerging auto competition. But is that a crazy explanation? Not really.
But... here's a way China could really kick our ass if they wanted to: They set up the infrastructure in their own country to run electric cars, get good at making them, and laugh at us while we're sending billions per week to the Middle East. It's not like the Chinese market is small, and I bet they could export the tech to India, Thailand, etc. That's enough to get this caught on. China is beginning to realize that they have the luxury of giving the world the finger. They can make their own DVD format, their own fancy cell phones, etc., and just aim those things at the domestic market... and they do fine! It might not be easy for them to break through with auto manufacturing, but I expect them to try (I don't know, have they already? I know they had some Porsche engineers meeting with the government asking them to propose a Wagen for the Chinese Volk....) The Chinese government might still have enough power to "give incentives" to large numbers of people to buy domestic cars once they're made. Of course, they could do that more effectively still if they start taxing gas at $10/gallon and using the proceeds to subsidize electric cars. It's in their interest anyway; they don't have a lot of domestic oil either.
Despite heavy advertising, GM never managed to lease more than 800 of them, only a fraction of the manufactured inventory. Bear in mind that designing a car and ramping up for production usually costs ~$1.5 billion.
Thus, it's clearly false that GM cancelled the EV1 because of conspiracy, despite "great demand" (your words).
...If you use either fuel cells or hybrid motor arrangements to generate your electricity. Our existing transport infrastructure is almost entirely structured around the use of liquid fuels in vehicles, and it makes sense to leverage this to make electric vehicles more widely used.
It would be fairly straightforward to introduce ethanol/methanol liquid refuelling capacity, (gas stations could dedicate one or two bowsers to these fuels, much like they do with deisel (at least here in Europe)
And by using plant derived liquid fuels such as ethanol or methanol which ultiamtely derive their energy content from the sun, we could reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
Using biomass derived fuels would seem to offer an alternative to all the worrying about batter lifespan and charge time etc.
In Soviet Russia, all our base are belong to YOU!
No-one's mentioned the obvious refuelling advantage.
Run out of gas in the middle of nowhere with a conventional car, and you've got a long walk or wait for rescue.
Stick some solar cells on the roof of an electric, and run out of charge in the middle of nowhere. Couple of hours later, you've got enough juice to get crawling, or at least recharge your cellphone.
Not to mention that any time you're driving or parked in sunlight, you're refuelling for free. Heck, if you only use the car for monthly grocery runs, you may never have to pay for gas OR recharging again.
And my personal favorite for a car that sees limited use: charge it from the mains during off-peak, and sell the charge back to the power company when it's of greatest profit to you. Or use it to cut down on the amount of maximum-rate electricity you personally use at home.
The chinese don't even need to license anything, since DC motors are already public domain, and they already have licenses on almost any battery type which is still covered by patents. (E.g., for use in laptops.)
I.e., if this car was that great, the Chinese could start producing it right away anyway.
So this guy's logic is... what? "All the Western world manufacturers just want to let the Chinese take over the market"? Because that's what it boils down to.
I.e., the guy is an idiot. Plain and simple. The tin-foil paranoia makes for some sensationalist trolling, but fails even the most minimal reality check and common sense.
Not that he'd be the first one. "Waah! There's a world-wide conspiracy not to use my invention!" seems to be a common theme these days. Invariably it's a piece of crap that noone wants to manufacture for some perfectly good reasons.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This is a signifigant advance in my oppinion for the electric car industry... Despite the cost of the proto-type the research points toward getting further away from fossile fuels...And after all this is the fossile fuel age not the computer age, the electronic age or even the age of enlightenment (the latter evident since we still rely on fossible fuels to power our major transportation modes) The current hybrids are indeed a step in the right direction. But we are spoiled on the use of oil- we are dependent on comming and going when we want and oil as a power source to service that need has yet to be surpased...Really before we can truly accept electric transportion altenatives we will need to adapt a new and more conservation oriented attitude in gear with eltric alternatives...Forsinstance...the personal automobile may become less and less and electric trains may become a more dominant source of transportation. The pros being we will have safer and more reliable transportation. the cons being we will not be able to go by our own sched... A price we will have to pay to achieve the loft goal of electric tranportation...Or at least till we develope a battery that charges as fast as a capacitor yet holds its charge like a battery...
looks like the ripped of the design from here http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&q=+car+l ady+penelope&btnG=Search
Am I the only one that thinks this ought to be painted pink? With either 'FAB1' as the number plate, or a pink moggy in the back? :)
www.europositron.com
Rainer Partenan has created prototype RECHARGEABLE sealed aluminium-based batteries that are FIVE TIMES more power/weight ratio than Li-Ion batteries.
plus, aluminium batteries won't explode on contact with air, unlike lithium-ion batteries, in an accident.
60kg of partenan cells could get a standard family car a distance of 500 miles.
a 5-fold reduction in weight of this 2400kg vehicle's battery, probably about 1,000 kg, would bring the battery down to 200kg, reducing the weight of this vehicle to a frightening 1600kg.
that means that those numbers on the 0-60 time? assuming that it's still possible for the eight wheels to stick to the ground with only 1600kg weight, well you divide those by 1.5.
so with only 1600kg, the 0-60 time on this vehicle would be 2.7 seconds not 4, and the 0-100 time would be 4.7 seconds, not 7.
Each battery and each vehicle is equipped with a smart card. When you swap batteries at a service station, using a palletised system that'll do it in a minute, your credit card is swiped and you are charged for
(a) the period of time you have used the battery (basically a lease)
(b) the net change in electrical charge of the battery (so if you partially recharge it before returning it you pay less)
and most importantly
(c) the 'damage' you have done to the battery either by overcharging, excessive discharge, or just sheer number of cycles. This damage is fairly easy to calculate.
This has the following knock on effects.
1) A vehicle that is kinder to its battery will be cheaper to run
2) A battery that is more robust will be more cost effective.
Therefore there is a direct economic value in trying to develop better cars and batteries.
Things I haven't worked out yet - how do you recharge the batteries at the service station - does it have its own power station? Or does a big truck deliver 100 new batteries every couple of hours and pick the old ones up to take back to a recharging station?
no, you don't have to have DC brushless motors to get the most. the LRK motor design is a stonking electric motor that is amazingly 96% efficient or better, and it is very simple to build (requiring only a lathe).
a new technology doesn't work for EVERYONE there is no reason not to introduce it where it works.
For instance, battery powered tractors just aren't going to work for ploughing.
Internal combustion engine; burns gasolene & oxygen releasing it's chemical energy as heat, uses heat to turn a turbine.
Fuel cell; release chemical energy, possibly straight to electric energy, possibly using heat to turn a turbine.
What's the big difference exactly?? Apart from the type of fuel? And the type of turbine?
You still need to carry a fair amount of fuel, but there is less weight required than compared to a straight electric car (which is just stored chemical energy).
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
How much does the average person spend on fuel each week? Then how much would the average person spend on recharging the battery each week? It seems to me that it would cost ALOT less to refill the batteries juice than to refill a fuel tank with petrol. So it seems like there should be a little more insight as to where the savings come from in the long run, in terms of battery maintenance, right?
--mOodah--
You screw them up to the floor from underneath using a jack.
Out in the bush you operate the jack and the screws yourself, in the city there'll be some fancy pants automatic system.
Alternatively some vehicles already use a crane to carry the spare wheel under the car, you just do the same thing, but with electric drive, and bigger.
The disadvantage of putting the batteries under the car is that the floor is raised, so the aerodynamics will be worse, but it keeps the batteries outside the cabin, and the handling will be excellent due to the low cg.
might be an answer to our fuel problem, at least a temporary one. I just did a google search on this idea, it's obviously been looked at before.
I think I've heard of proposals to make gasoline out of sunflower oil or something.
Does anyone know more about this? I'm sure there's a reason why it's not currently being used ( I'm guessing cost here ).
Has anyone looked at the possibility of reconditioning/recycling large Li-Ion or other batteries?
Wouldn't it be great to burn off all those alpine be-stickered cars at traffic lights and be socially conscious?
When can I order one. Internet hype at its best, the segway had a huge impact, this slides by.
This seems to be the best buy, I want one, heck, two, with corn-based body work coated with that new anti-scratch/mark polymer.
Please. Oh, and 802.11g and IrDA ports, a SD slot and *must resist gadget urge*...
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
That video is SO BAD. It doesn't show car, it shows a poorly-composited CGI car. This thing doesn't even exist!
Combustion engines have for the most part reached the peak .
.
.
s tr yInformation/IndustryInformationExternal/NewsDispl ayArticle/0,1602,3805,00.html
of their efficiency and fuel cells even now are more efficient
and are relatively new on a consumer scale
They have been around since the early NASA days, but only recently
has research made them more flexible, more affordable, and
easier to mass produce and make lighter/smaller
So small in fact that methane fuel cells are in line to power
cell phones and other hand helds much longer
http://www.fuelcelltoday.com/FuelCellToday/Indu
Peace,
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I don't think he's being *ignored* by companies that make hybrids. Electric motors may be cheaper to manufacture than a gas engine, but the long term manitenance costs of an electric-only car are WAY higher than a hybrid. With no gas engine, you have to have many many many more batteries. Batteries have a much shorter lifetime than pistons. Batteries are also an environmental quagmire because, while disposal of NiMH batteries is clean-ER than lead-acid, the manufacture of NiMH batteries is much more expensive and polluting. Batteries also waste a huge amount of energy just moving the mass of the batteries. Say your light 2000lb car has 500lbs of NiMH batteries in it. 25% of the energy is wasted...
Nobody is going to buy a car that you can only drive 200 miles (when the batteries are brand new), and have to spend $5k on batteries every 2 years or so.. Hybrids are a wonderful solution because they spend 10% effort to eliminate 90% of the problem. Gas Cars use most of their fuel to accelerate from a stop, but are otherwise quite efficient under constant load (i.e. steady speed). Having a little booster there takes that load-spike off the engine, allowing the energy to be put back at a constant rate later, which is much more efficient.
Electric-only may be feasible if you never go farther than a few miles, and drive very little... but in a place where people drive 100 miles every day, the maintanance costs of an electric-only vehicle make then more or less inappropriate..
As of October 13th, 2004 the Buckeye Bullet is the fastest electric vehicle ever recorded
http://www.buckeyebullet.com/
But I live close to the arctic circle, you insensitive clod.
Most people are used nowadays to keeping a device fully powered. What do you do with your mp3 player or mobile phone the moment you come home? Plug them in for a recharge. Most people even got a recharger at work.
People run out of fuel with petrol cars as well. At least this one makes it easier to keep it filled up. Just plugin when you park. And for the truly stupid like you who can't remember to plugin everytime. This has one advantage over petrol. All electric power is the same but guys like you do insist on putting diesel in petrol cars.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
the chick drinking coffee in the image.mwv movie clip? :) Look to me like there is something going on between the here and the dude in the office.
By trying to solve one problem you've just created another one.
Still I find it slightly worrying that exhaust fumes are being routed through my car seat to give me a nice warm bun on a cold morning.
Oh wait. Of course not. Most cars nowadays use electric heating or cooling for that matter.
As for the track version having all the gadgets removed. That is nowhere in the story so your just guessing. But this is pretty standard behaviour. Nascar seems to use road going vehicles and yet seem always to leave out the digital entertainment center for the childeren on the backseat. Or for that matter, seem to leave out the backseat.
And where do you get the power from? The grid. Where do you think far far heavier electric engines are powered from? The electric grid. Unless you live in pure residential area you can even get extra power easily. You know for all the small business running high powered tools.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...only double-exposed.
Take this one, for example, mirror it horizontally and clone the wheels. Look familiar? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
You sign up and get a smartcard. You use the web to select what make/model car you want, and when you need it from/to. It gives you the pickup location nearest your house.
When you want to use the car, you go to the point at the right time, and place your smartcard on the windscreen. The doors and glove compartment open, giving you the keys. You then have full use of the car until your time's up. The cars are always gassed, always clean, and always available. You save money on taxes, congestion charge (toll), initial payment, maintenance, etc. Very, very useful. As I mentioned, you can select the type of car you want, so if you need an SUV, you select SUV. If you need to drive somewhere, you select a smaller car, and drop it off when you get to your destination, at the nearest car point.
WWII for japan was about finally getting their paws on some natural resources like oil. Oh and killing and raping but japan also does that while at home. (if you ever read about japan having a low crime rate realize that crime rate is reported crimes. Making raping kids not a crime or have crimes not reported because of shame and you got yourselve a low crime rate)
Anyway they got no coal gas or oil to power their plants so it must all be exported. Nuclear material must also be imported but is easier to stockpile.
Japan has had some nuclear incidents but is very protective of its nuclear industry. It is also looking into expending it since for japan it makes sense. If you consider putting nukes ontop of earthquake zones sensible.
As for japanese car use. Japanese don't use the car all that much. Although japan is pretty big most of the population is bunched up wich creates travel distances more in line with western europe and places like New York then say Texas or LA.
A lot of japanese housing is also extremely small with simply no place to park a car.
So small distances. No place for cars. All you need is a good alternative and your set. Japanese public transport is pretty good if crowded at peak times. Then again japan is crowded all the time. And why would you want to drive a heavily taxed car you can't park stuck in a traffic jam when you can be in a train wedged up against a school girl in sailor uniform who is raised not to resist groping?
Please note this is all based on dated experience. Japan has changed a lot according to people that visited recently.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
here in chicago that would be a car you'd drive at most 9 months of the year. leave it out for a couple hours in 5 degree Chicago winter and it's f*cked.
What you'd get for drawing a cock in her mouth one can only imagine
from the article "... and it's built for no one taller than 178 cm...."
If they built one for a typical american height and, worse yet, a typical american girth...it would weigh twice as much and get 1/2 the acceleration. Also, it is too low to the ground to go where americans, with their SUV's have gotten used to going.
All that said, I still want one in my garage. [but it costs more than my house!]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
PRO TO TYPE
But more or less the power of the explosion is the power of the engine.
So until the first explosion happens an internal combustion engine cannot generate power. You can not simply hit a switch and it will start. Instead you have to help the engine complete its first cycle and get enough speed so that the cycles happen fast enough to sustain themselves.
This is what a kickstart or electric starter motor do. They simple give the engine a couple of revolution to get started.
What would happen if you started the engine and you applied a load to it greater then the power of the engine? Well simply put the piston would now require a power greater then X to push it down. The explosion doesn't have that so it will simply remain in place. Their would be no power to get the engine to its next stage and the engine stalls. Pretty common, just watch at a traffic light.
Electric engines work totally differently. Magnets attract each other. This is simple enough to test. Get two magnets, align their oppisite poles and hold them close. Do you feel them pulling? Notice how this pull is constant? An electric motor works no different except that with the uses of electric magnets wich switch on and off they create a constant cycle of magnets pulling. Again search the net for a detailed description.
However unlike an internal combustion engine an electric motor can always pull. As long as power is applied the magnets will be pulling. You can easily try this with a drill. Set it to low power and hold the drill bit with our hand. It doesn't matter how low the rpm gets. The motor will still be pulling. Also notice how easy it is to switch directions. Electric motors can turn either way with ease. Internal combustion engines can not.
So a clutch is to allow an internal combustion engine to achieve at an RPM while what it powers is at rest. Gears allow the RPM required by an internal combustion engine to be reduced to the RPM of your wheels.
Neither are needed. This electric car goes one step further. Because no gears or clutch are needed they have moved the engines into the wheels themselves. So the wheel is the engine.
this means no power is wasted on the transmission. It also means it is very easy to maintain. Try it on a normal car. Replace a tyre and replace the engine. Electic wires are not exactly hard to replace. Plus electic engines got another intresting capacity. They are exactly the same as electric generators. Apply power and you start the engine turning. But a turning engine can also generate power. So uphill it costs power. Downhill you get power. Beat that mister petrol engine!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How many kilowatt hours of juice does it take to charge? Electricity is very expensive in some parts of the world (and some parts of some countries).
Also, would you need a 200amp 3-phase power drop from your utility company to accomplish the charging in a reasonable time frame or would you plug it into a 110V or 220V wall plug?
Cheers,
The point was that I'd be happier with the transaction: should I buy a tangible asset or a consumable one? I'd rather have the tangible asset.
sigs, as if you care.
I live above the artic circle myself, but even though we currently have darkness for 18+ hrs of the day, we don't call 2 pm to 8 am "overnight". We don't use the term "overnight" at all when we have 24/7 sun during summer though.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
If you consider angular velocities in [0,infty). Extending the range further, what about the torque at negative angular velocities?
While it might be regarded as the ultimate entropy-producing sinful behavior, application of electric current could serve to brake these cars in a real hurry [realizing the virtuous energy efficient technique is let the car generate and store electric power from a braking maneuver].
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I was referring to the long nights up north (and south).
Yes, and he was referring to the long *days*.
Because of the tilt of the Earth's axis, 1/2 the year you get long nights, and the other 1/2 you get long days.
An alleged breakthrough in production automobiles and their power plant, and the best they can do is a really fuzzy picture?
Doesn't this bother anyone else?
This reminds me of the BMW (or was it a VW or something...) transformer post that made it's way on Slashdot as "news".
Geez guys, if you WANT news, go to a NEWS website, not a rumour mill for geeks!
Can you say "fake"? Sure, I knew that you could.
What the articles all fail to mention, is that night time driving range is actually 13km with those headlights on.
The upside is you can blind all oncoming traffic with the candlepower of 3 suns!
That has to be the FUGLIEST "car" I have ever seen. I can just hear your passengers now... "sure, the cabins cramped as all hell, but atleast from inside we don't have to look at this ugly thing."
And don't give me any "this is just the prototype" BS, either.
Yeah. We're working on that.
It's 10 hours to charge! Not 1 hour to charge. Yet another toy, sad to say.
J.E.B.
Joshua Corps
and its butt f**cking ugly
I know they say it is ballasted to avoid tipping over, but man, that thing looks like a sail.
It also looks like one of those cartoons where the thin people have thin cars and fat people have fat cars (regular cars in this case). I sure hope the rollcage is as good as they say it is, because I just know I'd be T-Boned in one of those.
I read the internet for the articles.
Many people have proposed swapping batteries out in an electric car to eliminate the wait involved in charging the car. I'm afraid I don't have any hard numbers, but aren't the battery stacks for these cars extremely large? If you are imagining swapping a ~20lb 1'x.6"x.4" battery from a gasoline car it makes sense, but the full stack from an electric car will weigh much more. For instance there is the 88kg for the stack used to run buses serviced by the electric fuel transportation corp. Details at: http://www.electric-fuel.com/evtech/EF-tech-brochu re.pdf
They actually use the swap-out method, but it is an automated (heavy robotics, hydraulics?) system, and even then it takes 10 minutes. Admittedly this might be more manageable on a commuter car scale, but I think people are severely underestimating the difficulties invilved with a "swap out" plan.
Personally I think plugging your car in at each destination isn't a big deal. On the other hand I would like to see a breakdown on how much that would increase one's power bill per month as compared to how much you pay for gas. I'm guessing this does not come up because the electricity would end up costing more, otherwise we'd be seeing hard numbers from the electric car fanatics.
So electric cars are cheaper, faster, and generally better than Gas-powered cars.
Its a shame it won't be allowed in the US for at least 5 more years because of all the president's oil money and connections.
n/t
I've already seen city vehicles running biodiesel - biodiesel is a renewable fuel that can be produced relatively easily. You need a chem suit to make it because of the methanol, but beyond that, it's fairly straightforward. You could do it in your back yard, although in England, they would give you a hard time about taxes.
Diesel engines are more efficient, and using biodiesel tends to reduce the overall CO2 in the atmosphere - growing the soybeans to make the biodiesel requires almost four times as much CO2 as burning the biodiesel in the diesel engine puts out - yeah, it's not as "clean" as electric - not by a long shot, but it's also true that power plants are far from clean in many ways, and most important of all it's a "renewable" resource. Just grow more soybeans using tractors and other farm machinery that runs on biodiesel to do it.
In the winter, you have to blend, I believe it's usually 10 or 20 percent biodiesel or it gels up, so that's kind of the bad part. Maybe something like a diesel/electric hybrid? Remember, at least in the summer or in warm climates, any modern diesel engine can run 100% biodiesel with absolutely no modifications at all. Just have to keep an eye on the fuel filters because biodiesel has a way of loosening up the petro-gunk particles in gas tanks left over from regular diesel (like a solvent) - and it also has a tendency to eath through older fuel lines (newer fuel lines are fine).
Biodiesel is available now, if your diesel is older you may need new fuel lines and keep and eye on the fuel filters, otherwise no modifications necessary, and people report that their diesels have more power, and run quieter with biodiesel.
Why wait? Do it now. A diesel/electric hybrid might be real nice, too.
If you move between the pole and the (ant)arctic circle, the period of non-stop daylight and night changes from 6 months down to days. (Exactly on the circles, at midwinter you get one day with no sunrise; while the preceeding and subsequent day each has a short period of daylight of a few minutes.) Of course, at noon on the wid-winter days the sun is close under the horizon even on the day that it doesn't appear, so it is not totally dark but more of a pre-sunrise dawn leading straight into a post-sunset dusk.
Anyhow, except for exactly at the pole, in mid-summer you can have an "overnight" that only lasts for minutes, which is considerably less than one hour. I'd have to do more calculation than I feel like to determine just how much further away from a pole than the closest (ant)arctic circle to ensure that "overnight" cannot take less than an hour.
>Would you feel safe driving 80MPH down the freeway, >in a car that only weighs 400 pounds?
;)
Yes, actually, I would. It's called a "motorcycle", and it's two or three times as fuel-efficent as a car. Well, actually, maybe "safe" isn't quite the right word. Would you settle for "well, I'm not dead *yet*?"
>Suspicious is fine, but there is plenty of
>evidence to support that fact. Just look at the
>story of GM pulling their EV1 from the market,
>despite great demand, or the similar story behind
> every other major manufacturer's story.
Disclaimer: I'm 100% for the adoption full-electrics for daily transport. It makes monetary and statistical sense to me, at least in urban areas. Of course, I'm also for CarShare programs and mass transit, which I think are considerably more effective at reducing unnecessary driving, but that's a bit more challenging to Americans (I am one).
Anyway:
I worked at a company that helped design the EV1 (several years prior), and when I started there we had one as a company car. I hear the EV1 held up quite frequently as the example of all that is great and wonderful and yet being smashed down by the iron fist of GM, and I am highly skeptical. Why is this?
Prepare yourselves...
The EV1 was a poorly built, miserably designed junker of an electric car. I've seen nice EVs, which I would gladly own, like the little Honda and Th!nk cars, but the EV1 plain sucked. Build quality was below unfinished prototype, all the buttons and dash controls were mounted terribly and felt worse, it had the *worst* windshield in the history of automotive design (made me feel like I was wearing coke-bottle glasses [I'm 20/20]), and it was in the shop at least once a month to repair all the random stuff that kept breaking. The cabin was uncomfortable, the visibility poor, and the stereo sucked.
Driving it was similarly underwhelming. The narrow rear axle gave a very loose, sliding, tail-happy turn, but the drive was in the front wheels, preventing the driver from *utilizing* said tail motion for anything save sideswiping bushes. Acceleration was brisk, but kneecapped by the front wheel drive and poor tires -- you could probably keep up in a stock 4-cylinder camry.
Now, I understand that environmental soundness is not about performance. I am all for small, fuel-efficient cars. However, I also think that a small, fuel-efficient car CAN be fun to drive -- just as racing 50cc GP bikes takes incredible skill to maintain speed around a track, driving a small, efficient car to the limits is *way* more entertaining for me than having to rein in a 300hp monster.
To this end, the EV1 was a dismal failure. Sure, everyone who had one wanted to keep it, because it was neat and there *weren't any other options* for an electric. To some people it was worthwhile as a novelty, or simply as an environmental statement, both valid concerns. However, I personally watched the amount of time/money that went into keeping the thing running, and I am *quite* willing to believe that GM would have had a financial fiasco on its hands had it continued to build/sell them.
Not to bag on EVs in general -- they're great and becoming more viable all the time. But the EV1 is a poor choice of idols for the EV movement. Take a look at Th!nk if you want to see a cool little EV that's really been oppressed by The Man.
About 17% of mine comes from nuclear power produced at the the Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant in Florida.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Nice, but expensive. The stated price is $200-$500 per kW. That's $150-$375 per horsepower, or $15,000 to $37,500 for a 100 horsepower battery.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Gasoline powered cars may not be bettered by battery powered cars for the forseeable future. However, gasoline won't last for ever. Now I know that battery powered cars are recharged, in the main, by 'fossil fuelled' power stations. But when the fuel runs out the governments will HAVE to seriously deal with the nuclear fission problem, the sustainables (wind, water, solar). In those times, a battery car that GOES will be better than any porsche.
Unless you run on BioDiesel or indeed SugarCaneGasohol.
Just some points that came to mind..
Kev
-- These views are my own and do not represent those of my employer in any way.
When this thing appeared on the cover of the April 2003 issue of some car magazine... I was convinced that it was an April Fools stunt!
-MattT *** Not speaking for my employer, or any other sentient beings ***
from the demonstration movie. But not about cars. In the movie, they drive up to the client's building, and the person they are meeting is waiting outside to greet them.
This is enough to brand the whole affair a fantasy.
Imagine that even being imaginable in an American scenario. The American verison of the movie goes like this: drive to visitor parking in lot A. No room. Try lots B-E before parking on the grass and hoping you won't get towed. Go to building 101 to get directions to building 170. Hike across coampus to building 170. Guard tries for 20 minutes to reach your appointment. Finally they send an intern down to guide you to the conference room. Client spends the entire meeting playing with his Blackberry.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'd say a curb weight of 2,400 kg is a pretty big "systemic problem"! Just trying to find VR-rated tires with that kind of load rating drove him to the 8-wheel design. That, and putting enough brakes on the car to stop it from high speed.
Though the reviewers noted its low center of gravity, there is another big problem in where some of the weight is located. One lovely feature of "in-wheel" motors is astronomical unsprung weight. All that inertia keeps a wheel from responding rapidly to change of direction (like going over a bump) which turns the tire sidewall into the main "suspension" element.
Just the same, maybe it will help generate interest (pun intended) in developing realistic electric performance vehicles. Oh, and maybe someone can look into how to efficiently recycle all those batteries so we aren't just moving our pollution from the air to the landfill.
I hate to break this to you, but the 1970s were over more than 30 years ago. American cars have gotten a lot better. I know many people who have got more than 200,000 miles from American cars, and you still see a number of mid '80s American cars on the road, even up here in the rust belt. In fact I see more mid '80s American cars than Japaneses cars because the American cars have been built so that parts that wear can be replaced. I can replace the tie rod ends on American cars (not to mention grease them), while the Japaneses cars were built with planned obsolesce so everything wears out in 150,000 miles. But since you don't fix your own cars, and you don't buy used cars you don't realize what is really going on.
Note that the above is in general. I know of several junk American cars. Some Japaneses cars are worse that others. Germans used to be known for great engineering, but today German cars are about as close as you can get to badly engineered. I'm told that Korea is better than and of the above, but that is today and will change in a few years as they look into cutting quality for profit while someone else looks into quality to salvage their reputation.
I just had this idea, and while it seems workable I don't have the training or inclination to make it happen. To make the system work you would need to solve some engineering problems but existing battery technology should be up to it. I hereby place this idea in the public domain (assuming it isn't an old and patented idea, of course:) )
Instead of large batteries in cars, use a 'tank' of small self orienting batteries, maybe the size of a BB. By self orienting I mean that they have to be able to line up the + and negtive - poles by themselves (engineering problem one, making the small batteries is fairly common though the cost effectiveness may be questionable)
If the small batteries can be recharged then you charge them at home, at work, whatever. When they degrade or when you are on a trip that is outside of your 1 charge range you go to a battery station. At the battery station you do 2 things.
1. you empty your battery tank. as the tank empties the "station" divides the small batteries into "good" and "bad" batteries (chargable and non, live or dead, whatever the criteria) (this is the BIG engineering task quick sorting of good and bad)
2. fill up with a tank of good batteries. Your cost is based on the ratio of good to bad batteries that you turned in. If your batteries are all dead and unchargeable you are filling up, if your ratio is half and half you are buying half a tank etc. (plus the inevitable taxes, fees, etc.)
Maybe this is impractical but I don't see any reason why it would be given the reasonable limits of today's technology. Good luck if someone takes this idea and runs with it.
Insert pithy comment here.
Shimizu suggests a comparison with laptop computers, digital cameras and iPods. "With each generation, they get smaller, yet they have more memory and longer battery life. In a few years, car batteries will be lighter, smaller, have more power and have a longer life too. It's just a matter of time."
In small electronic gadgets, some of the big power improvements between generations are due to lowering the amount of Work that must be done by the batteries. Not so with cars. The Work a car battery must do is moving a mass (people and parcels) over a distance, with accelerations, decelerations, etc. We will not see the work loads of these batteries cut by orders of magnitude with each new generation of these cars.
I hope he succeeds with his project, but the comparison of cars to logic circuits is disingenuous.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
its a fokin CGI ... blah
Go grab those torrents.
I'd have to do more calculation than I feel like to determine just how much further away from a pole than the closest (ant)arctic circle to ensure that "overnight" cannot take less than an hour.
Wow, I just worked out the calculations. It's much smaller than I expected. The limit for a 1-hour night (on the summer solstice) happens a mere 0.18 degrees outside the arctic circle.
I did a full 3D calculation to find the exact coordinates of the sunrise/sunset under these conditions, but here's a plain english rationalization of why the answer is so small: 1 hour is 15 degrees of earth rotation. The time between noon and sunrise or sunset is 1/2 hour, or 7.5 degrees. However that 7.5 degrees of the small arctic circle aligns with only about 3.3 degrees of the full day/night great circle. 3.3 degrees of the great circle is virtually a straight line, with 3.3 degrees of horizontal movement only yeilding about 0.18 vertical change in latitude.
So you can walk less than 11 miles south from the arctic circle (where you just barely get a 0-hour night on the summer solstice) to get a 1 hour night.
And actually the whole definition of sunrise/sunset is blurred by more than 0.18 degrees anyway. The sun itself has a radius of about 0.26 degrees.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Big difference. Motorcycles don't have a large cab and body like cars do. If they did, you can be sure they'd be blown around like cardboard boxes in the wind.
While I can't speak for everyone you've heard talk about this, I can explain myself.
I've never touted the EV1 as a great car. Personally, I also thought the body was pretty poor. However, it was a practical electric vehicle, and as such, it doesn't matter that it was about the equivalent of a Geo Metro. It worked, people wanted it, GM didn't want to give it to them.
I have a few big issues with GM. First, they destroyed them all, rather than selling them. That surely shows something is wrong. Second, they never made another electric car, instead telling the world that electric cars are simply impractical. It was an obvious ploy to help shoot-down a Ca environmental law, that was supposed to go into effect shortly.
Those things make it pretty clear that they ARE indeed trying to squash the very idea of electric cars.
As you've said, incredibly similar senarios have happened with most other car makers at the same time.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I ran across a video of the car doing a cone course on a lot somewhere and it was amazing. All the weight for the car is at or below the axel of the wheels because the cage weights nothing compared to the battery packs.
jason
Simple: - The car is horribly ugly. - One hour to charge? Filling up at the gas station barely takes 5 minutes - 200 mile range? Is he kidding? Most gasoline cars can go for well over 300 miles between fillups. Shimizu needs to get back to reality and stop dreaming.
- http://www.newpath4.com/icyhot7.htm
More: http://www.newpath4.com/44INDEX/44index.htm#newpa