Slashdot Mirror
Low Emission Cars Continue to Gain Popularity
Rio writes "A company may soon offer American motorists a new option to save on high gas prices -- vehicles powered by lithium batteries. From the article: 'Just plug in these cars for about five hours or so and you'll get about 300 miles on a single charge.' The vehicles cost about $35,000 or about double what buyers would pay for a gas-powered model." Relatedly acidrain writes to tell us The BBC is reporting that a prototype of the new "Clever car" (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport) is starting to make the rounds on European test tracks. The car is one meter wide and less polluting than normal vehicles. It has a top speed of 100 km/h (60mph) and uses a novel tilting chassis to make it safe and maneuverable.
The BMW C-1 looks way more comfortable than the reclining Clever car. It didn't require a helmet (in Germany, France, and Spain) but they only made 2000 then discontinued it due to poor sales. Despite the fact that this article is just a PR piece, I can't see it helping sales much.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Horsepower isn't really an issue. Electric motors are capable of generating large amounts of torque - enough to rip the motor loose of the mounting if you're willing to give it enough amperage (do a google search on EV drag racing - no shortage of smoking tires there.) The issue is battery life. You load the motor that heavily, and you will lose a lot of energy through resistance losses, thereby depleting your driving range.
So to answer your question, haul away, but be prepared to sacrifice range for pulling capacity.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It really needs noting exactly how poorly researched the BBC News article on that car is.
. You really would expect that a BBC Journalist reporting on automobiles would have some knowledge of them. Or, at the very least, have watched Top Gear for a couple of years.
Drivetrain asside, the vehicle is effectively a clone the dutch-designed Carver http://www.carver-europe.com/.
So, why am I accusing that BBC journalist of being lazy? Well, the Carver has appeared on the BBC excellent flagship car show Top Gear http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/prog19/carver.shtml>
>What is this going to do to the power grid which has been known to collapse, famously >with the northeast blackout and the rolling blackouts in California?
Known to collapse during the day, when the ACs are cranked. If the electric cars start causing the power companies problems they just move their off-peak rate breaks to the morning, and the owners just install a timer (actually with cars like this the timer is usually built into the charging station) Then they can recharge using all that extra baseload capacity that ends up going to waste because we can't just shut down coal and nuke plants when we aren't using them, unlike combined cycle spinning reserve.
> How about the transmission line waste?
Yep that's waste, for sure.
> What if I let my car sit for a week or two?
Lithium batteries are famous for not self-discharging very fast. It's NiMH that do that, and even then it takes more than a week or two to lose very large amounts of power.
> Aren't these the batteries that tend to explode if you look at them funny?
Li-Poly are touchy, however the new Li metal phosphate batteries are very stable, and considering their superior performance they will likely supplant Li-poly for this application very rapidly.
> Just what does battery production do to the environment? How about leaks and recycling?
Well, to answer the second question first, normal lead-acid car batteries are one of the biggest success stories in recycling ever. When you own a battery pack that large, you're damn sure going to recycle it because the scrap value is pretty high. These aren't camera batteries you don't just throw them out.
As to the "leaks" concern, modern non-lead-acid batteries rarely "leak" -- their insides aren't liquid in the first place and they tend to be in hermetically sealed metal cylinders. It takes a lot of effort to get them to spill their guts. I suppose if you make a habit of parking your dead cars on your lawn and allowing the body to rust such that the batteries get a bath every time it rains, in a decade or so you might actually manage to generate an evironmental hazard. People that do that are pretty rare though, especially when the salvage value of the battery is so high, and for the most part the neighbors will complain before that happens.
The fabrication is not especially environmentally destructive. Li is mined from some of the most barren areas on the planet (dry lakebeds in South America.) The rest of the chemicals and materials are fairly common and probably even have a market surplus problem as is. There is some concern in that the supply of minable Li is limited, but by the time it is exhausted decades will have passed and we'll be onto the next battery tech or fuel cell or whatnot.
Anyway, pure EVs and PHEVs (where fuel use is low enough to consider biofuel without too much inconvenience) are an important first step, not necessarily because they will be cleaner on face value, but because they open up the owner's option. The owner could buy renewable energy credits from the power company, or they could charge from solar panels, or like I said for PHEVs they could use biofuels since they don't have to fill up much/often. It's that flexibility that will finally put the automobile owner in control of their own energy choices. That's a heck of a lot better of a situation than we have now.
Someone had to do it.
According to Toyota - and the company is commendably frank about its car's environmental equations - Prius doesn't even begin to break even on greenhouse gas emissions until it's been driven around 20,000km. This is because extracting and manufacturing the raw materials to make a Prius consumes more energy than a conventional car. The extra energy required means more carbon dioxide is emitted to make a Prius than a conventional technology car.
So no, hybrid cars don't grow on trees, but they do win in the end on total emission. Toyota cars are known for their reliability (the main German automobile organization have found toyota to be the top reliable car for years in a row already), so expect them to overcome this 20.000 km barrier many, many times over. (estimated battery life seems to be about 160.000km at minimum).
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
In a lot of cases the issue is whether governments should be co-ordinating transport to cut down on pollution or whether it should be left to private individuals to use vehicles that pollute less or consume less resources. A decent train service can keep thousands of cars off the road for most of the week. An electric train, LPG bus or other forms of mass transit are often a better answer.
Greenhouse gasses have nothing to do with the issue unless you get all your electricity from hydro, geothermal or whatever - so currently in no city anywhere. The nuclear lobby is pushing nuclear generated hydrogen and nuclear supplied electricity to power cars for greenhouse reasons but whatever your feelings that can be considered irrelevant to the issue for the next decade as far as a car purchase is considered (it takes a long time to build a big thermal plant of any kind, much longer for a cutting edge nuclear design).
You were doing well until you repeated that old hybrid-EMT scare. Any first responders that were afraid to approach a hybrid weren't well informed in their profession. I can't speak for Honda, but not only did Toyota work with national first-responder organizations to get their comments on the design of the US model, it made presentations on its design at their national conventions, made publications about it in the trade press, and distributed literature about the car freely and widely. The locations of the high-voltage elements of the car have been available on the web since time immemorial, and Toyota, at least, spent a lot of time repeating over and over that there's no high voltage in the roof pillars (how do these rumors get started?!?).
Both Toyota and Honda were and are exquisitely well-aware of accident procedures involving their cars; that's why the high-voltage lines in the Prius are armored International Orange cables isolated from the ground of the chassis, surrounded by identified conduit, and centered under the car floor, where the jaws of life and other EMT tools are least likely to be used. The battery itself is placed in the statistically safest place in the car (just over the rear axle), and protects first responders by an accelerometer-based circuit breaker, a Ground Fault Interrupter, and interlocks. Criminy, what do you want?
http://www.lotpro.com/cars/2006/hummer/h3/safety/
The NHTSA gives the H3 4 to 5 stars for front and side impacts.. 5 starts being the best in that vehicle class.
The front impact looks like it takes most the abuse: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/NCAP/Cars/3682.html
Maybe your aricles are a little "anti" sided perhaps? Of course.. you only said "Hummer" so maybe you mean the orignal.. these are H3 numbers.