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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.
This soooo reminds me of the Sinclair C5 "urban" low emissions car.
http://www.sinclairc5.com.nyud.net:8080/
I'd be terrified of being smushed by a truck while driving one.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
I don't think these special vehicles like TFA car will achieve any real commercial success. Most people want a safe, comfortable and practical car. And you most certainly don't want anybody to laugh at you while riding it...
No, I believe the future (until fuel cells are available) lays in hybrids, like the Toyota Prius, even though they're still not completely environmental friendly - fuel consumption is not better than most diesel powered cars. But battery powered only cars have their problems as well, darn expensive, well you have to plan your trips carefully, batteries have a limited life span and probably more important batteries are not environmental friendly.
Here is an interesting hybrid from Saab, running on 100% ethanol and batteries. It's a good looking convertible, and runs 0-100 km/h in just 6.9 seconds, not very bad from a fossil fuel-free car. Only problem is that 1) you can't buy the car yet 2) you can't buy 100% ethanol (and producing large amounts of ethanol is also a problem).
Without resorting to the 'alternative energy' sources, there are several factors in favour of EV:
CCGT (>50% thermal-electrial efficiency)
Peak efficiency of IC auto engines is pretty irrelevant in real world use. Expect to see less than 15 percent efficiency for normal driving.
Regenerative braking (yeah, hybrids do this too, but still suffer from the above disadvantages).
The disadvantage of highly efficient vehicles (electric and others), is you then start having to be 'inefficient' with energy use to create a comfortable driving environment in cold climates. Conventional IC engines have loads of waste heat to put to use. Reverse cycle airconditioners would solve this though.
Well, by all accounts- much less. Electricity doesn't have the insane levels of taxes gasolene and diesel do (this is the primary reason it costs a fortune to fill up at the pump.) Even home heating oil (which is basically diesel) isn't taxed, and they dye diesel so anyone can inspect what's in the tank (or a piece of clear tubing installed just for this purpose- I kid you not, it's on ever VW TDI) and see if you're using home heating oil and avoiding taxes.
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?
Rolling blackouts in California were not caused by lack of generation capacity. They were caused by Enron calling up plant operators and saying "Hey. Shut down for maintenance. Find an excuse. Any excuse." Watch "Enron, The Smartest Guys In The Room"...they have tape recordings of the traders calling up grids and plant.
Also, right now, we've got gas shortages throughout the country because the EPA mandates MTBE (a known carcinogen, by the way) be in summer fuel, so all the refineries supposedly have to essentially "re-tool" for summer fuel. They happen to also go down for maintenance in "preparation" for the summer driving "season."
So in short- gasolene isn't without its problems as well.
How about the transmission line waste?
Probably compares to the waste in transporting gasolene or diesel.
What if I let my car sit for a week or two?
Lithium batteries don't self-discharge as badly as other battery technologies (mainly lead acid.)
Aren't these the batteries that tend to explode if you look at them funny?
Sort of. "Normal" lithium ion cells catch fire or explode if overcharged, discharged too quickly, charged too quickly, punctured, and so on. They vary greatly in what their discharge rating is (ie 5C,= 5 x capacity in Amp-Hours). There's a company in Japan that seems to have solved most of these problems with stability; I forget how. There's a Massachusetts startup that designed the packs in one of the tool manufacturer's new lithium ion construction tools; they claim insane recharge rates, and more safety as well (and using more common raw materials.)
As to your other questions, no idea. But I will tell you that for a few years, EMTs and firefighters were pissed as hell that Toyota and Honda didn't have a clue as to accident procedures involving hybrids with high voltage packs...ie what was safe to cut with a buzz-saw or jaws of life (ie roof pillars and such), where the cables were, how the battery pack contactors worked, and so on. For a while, departments had a "don't approach the vehicle if..." policies in place.
Please help metamoderate.
Instead of buying this, you could buy a regular car and take the $18,000 you saved and buy carbon credits. $18,000 of carbon credits in the USA, which has an underpriced market because laws don't create demand, would offset the burning of, I kid you not, close to one MILLION gallons of gasoline. Yup, enough to take an 8mpg hummer and drive it around the Earth over 300 times!
So buying one of these is like driving a Hummer almost 8 million miles. Doesn't seem so good.
At the more expensive price for European credits ($13 per metric tonne CO2) it's still like driving the Hummer for a million miles.
How can it be that dramatic? The genius of pollution credits is they move the money spent on emissions reduction to where it can be done most efficiently. You can cut emissions by buying an expensive electric car, sure, but somebody else can do it far more cheaply by improving the output of a factory, or putting up a wind farm, or planting a grove of trees -- which are all things that allow people to sell these credits.
Now you may not like the credits, or think the numbers should be different, but the numbers in this case are so off the scale that there's no way that you will do a better job of helping the environment, at least today, with this sort of tech. At best you can feel good while being a gross polluter, and hope you're encouraging a market so that they eventually become cheaper and a thus more efficient way to reduce emissions.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
2% of road users are motocyclists here in the UK,
as are 20% of road fatalities.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter