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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.
Generally competition helps the costumers, yet here it is, damaging a very good car
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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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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...
Problem here is that batteries rely on chemical reactions and they become less and less efficient as you use it. It's more noticeable in certain chemicals (ie, Ni-Cad) than others (Li-Ion).
So, unless the charge station periodically takes out the old batteries and replaces them with brand new ones (which will cost a bundle of money, something they'll have to somehow pass on) people will start to see less and less mileage out from their "newly" replaced batteries. Would you be willing to trade in your brand new set of batteries and possibly get something that's close to dying?
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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- 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.With the dollars involved, we might finally have truly long-lasting batteries (both per charge and over time). What you describe as a down-fall is a technical problem which can surely be solved. Especially with battery packs which can be factory-remade between each and every charge. That opens a whole new avenue for making battery longevity a reality. I have no doubt this can be done.
And no more physical exposure to carcinogenic gasoline fumes and fluid every time you "fill" your car.
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.
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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?
Drive to work, drive home, and charge. Exactly what people did with older mobile phones. One could argue that something that "fills" overnight when you are sleeping saves you 5min at the pumps once a week.
I'm not going to say that this is better than a gas powered car. The range of a gas powered car is limited only by tank size, and the availability of fuel pumps along your path of travel. But for a daily driver this would be more than acceptable, esp. among those two car households.
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Really? Care to fill in the rest of the world on what this heavy stuff is? Airbags, seatbelt, and seats don't weight all that much. Consumer cars don't have roll-cages, even though they'd be a huge safety feature, and add very little weight.
This thing no doubt has a strong frame, otherwise it couldn't reach high speeds.
So, what are these heavy safety features that cars have? I've certainly not seen them in any cars I've worked on.
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The same problem applies to money: dollar bills become less and less usable as time wears one - becoming frayed, ripped, and generally uglier.
So unless banks take out old bills and replace them with brand new ones (which, by the way, isn't completely free), we'd have to stick with substandard bills.
The system we have seems to work with bills, doesn't it? The government can put the cost of battery maintenence as a tax in the replacement service and contract out this creation and maintenence to qualified companies, or do it themselves. Considering the simplicity of the design, they could just come up with a standard set of batteries and uphold the spec.
Stations that gave out bad batteries rather than returning them "for free" to the replacement agencies would get a bad rap and go out of business or stop doing it.
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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.
If people are accustomed to paying for gasoline, would it be out of the question for them to pay a fee when they get a fresh battery? That fee could obviously cover the costs of battery replacements as needed.
Fuel Cells I believe will the the ideal way to generate current. Not only can you get a renewable fuel source, but can make Water and Hydrogen in either process of creating or burning the fuel. It is efficient, non-polluting, and will power something great to come. Even better is if we can create an fuel cell to power the car directly to the motors so there are less batteries and thus less weight on the car to make it go even FASTER and FURTHER! [maybe even combine the power of both to the drivetrain...]
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I think it's little too much to ask the government to do something like that efficiently... :)
Politics aside, it's not fair to compare batteries to bills. Bills are basically the same, but batteries are not. Each car would have differing requirements in terms of pack voltage, peak current output, and total capacity. We can make the packs into smaller standardized cells (again, someone needs to standardize it which will be major pain) but then you may have cell and current inbalance problems which can be deadly in such a high capacity battery pack.
Yeah but power produced at a power plant (as long as it is not coal) is much usually less polluting per unit of energy than the one produced at your engine. Power plants can use industrial strngth technology to remove pollutants from their exhaust. Also they can afford complex large reactors that capture more energy than car engines.
That does not work for coal powerplants as burning coal is just inherently dirty (and one could say poisonous). This is especially true for Bush's "grandfathered" coal plants which can avoid pollution standards because they are really old (try to figure out the logic behind that reasoning).
So the first thing we should do for the quality of our air is get rid of coal plants. Even if we replace them with nukes, it would be an improvement.
But after coal plants are done away with one can be reasonably sure that the plants will produce less pollution than cars' engines.
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?
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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.
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.
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The same problem applies to money: dollar bills become less and less usable as time wears one - becoming frayed, ripped, and generally uglier.
Uh, no they don't. Unlike batteries, a dollar bill has no intrinsic value, it is only an abstraction of value backed by the US government.
My raggedy dollar bill with a pair of horns and a mustache scribbled on ol' George's face will buy exactly the same amount of goods as a brand new, crisp and tidy, bill will.
On the other hand, a dead battery ain't going to produce any more juice even if George Bush and Alan Greenspan personally praise it on the floor during a joint session of congress.
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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.
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BTW/OT: A lot fewer people need SUVs than think they need them. SUVs are responsible for most highway deaths in the Whistler area and the Cheakamus and Nahatalach are both very 2WD accessible (for example).
Very true - when I lived in the Okanagan skiing at Apex and Silver Star, almost universally the vehicles that were rolled or in ditches were 4X4 capable. People don't seem to realize that 4X4 helps you go it does not help you stop. This is why I drive in 2WD until I get stuck, then turn on 4WD.
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All these so called problems are not really big problems if a city really wanted to do the switch, so to speak.
The only thing that is required is that it is done on a large scale and it would almost certainly require (local) government involvement.
Having to stop to recharge would not be a problem if all parking lots where required to have electric outlets. Very few people need to drive their cars non-stop.
Making a practical system for battery swapping is also just a matter of money and will.
The show-stopper is that such a large scale deployment of infrastructure to support electric cars is costly, at least in a short perspective. I'm guessing no city will do this until there is a large recognition of a financial model that takes environmental factors into account.
Why get the government involved at all. I'm sure the stations, battery companies, and auto manufactures can work out a deal. The knee-jerk reaction should not be let's tax it and have the government do it.
/sarcasm
Yeah, look at how terrible the idea of a federal highway system turned out to be. Oh, and that Army. What about that enormous waste of money and resources sending people into space? What a big mess major government projects turn into!
For real, man. Don't let the media make you think we need to be safe from liberal spending. Without this type of crazy spending, we would have turned out "nice and safe" from liberals, in our puritan styled-cabins still use donkeys on dirt trails to haul things around and get work done.
I guess what I am leading to, in my rambling, is there sometimes needs to be government action to stimulate the rest of the system into accomplishing a goal. What goal would be greater? Giving up the dependancy on oil would cause terrorism to disappear as far as the US is concerned. We would lose all need to keep the mid-east stable -- we wouldn't even have to go there and start wars anymore! Then, the mid-east would lose all its wealth and collapse. Poof, no more islamic fundamentalists screaming that US foreign policy is holding them down. While on that note, I'll bet if we had used the money spent (and will be spent) on the war in Iraq and Afganistan on research and manufacture of highly efficient vehicles, we would have made great progress by now. All we seem to be doing at the moment is stirring up more trouble for our kids and grand kids to deal with. Oh yes, and doing nothing to quell our appetite for oil. And finally, I am not saying the parent post's idea was all that great, I just disagree with a blanket, negative approach to government action. If nothing else, it would sure as hell beat hearing about gay marriage and today's other "hot" partisan topics.
Hydro-electric. Wind turbines. Nuclear power plants. Geo thermal. Even if it is all produced by oil-burning power plants, the power plant will get FAR more effeciency out of it than your own car's engine ever could, and pollute far less at the same time.
The thing is, once people switch to electric cars, the whole world can switch to 100% clean energy sources, without negatively affecting everyone's vehicles... Unlike today, where a switch to ethanol, natural gas, propane, et al., will require everyone to buy a NEW car that runs on that fuel, and every gas station will have to be converted at great expense.
You can't get something for nothing. If you turn on your headlight in your car, you are using up more gasoline. If you are heating up the cab of your car, you are using up more gasoline.
Plus, in warm climates, outputting less heat is a HUGE advantage, all around.
Besides that, the motors on this vehicle will no doubt produce quite a bit of heat. The matter of putting that heat where you need it is only slightly tricky.
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i think you're right. just have to paint it pink, and give it the licence plate "FAB 1"
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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.
Another mistaken assumption is that batteries themselves are "pollution free". Just because it doesnt let out gaseous emissions from an exhaust doesnt necessarily mean it wont damage the environment. I'm sure even the first gasoline powered engine designers never thought the pollution caused by they're creations would be enough to impact global climate. But when you multiply these cars (and hence they're batteries) by a few million times you will eventually lead up to a pollution problem of some kind or the other. Hell even unused plastic computer cases these days are a pollution hazard, let alone millions of unused car batteries with all sorts of lethal pollutants in them leaking out into the environment.
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.
>Why would an invention/new technology have to solve ALL problems, instead of just being better overall?
OMG, can't believe there's still people thinking like that in 2004....
Solving a part of the problem: good.
Solving ALL the problem: best.
How about if the Gov. allowed your employer to charge your car during work whilst in the company car park without charging you tax on the perk.
Now look at the current cost of an electric car when the driving is essentially free. This could be the catalyst required to jump-start the electric car business. If more people buy them, the prices will come down and the technology will improve. As a bonus, the more people who decide to have the free ride to work will also not be polluting the towns and cities where they work.
If the Gov. commits to the perk for sufficient years (5 or 10 maybe?) it would be enough to have everyone driving around in electric vehicles for most of their journeys.
During this time, we have to think about how we generate the electricity too, but at least we have moved away from petrol/diesel to start the ball rolling.
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So what's to stop people tampering with the batteries and make them look better than they are before handing them over?
IMHO while all of this is great, overcomming the problems inherent in this type of electrical design is more expensive then the value society will get out. Investing in cleaner diesel fuel, and dieselectric engines for cars (they use them for trains alread) would have solved 90% of the problems with automobiles without a major shift.
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