Slashdot Mirror
Electric Vehicle Kits for the Masses?
Aciel asks: "I just finished watching 'Who Killed the Electric Car', and was quite impressed. I'm too poor to buy anything but an old clunker, and not eager to pollute the atmosphere (or empty my wallet) with gasoline. The movie inspired me: I think I'd like to convert an old car (or perhaps a motorbike) to run on electricity. Have Slashdot readers attempted such a thing before? What experiences have you had, and what would you recommend or not recommend?"
No, I'm not an expert, but maybe I can sound like I make sense.
Transmission over power lines is about 85% efficient (over very long distances). A good internal combustion engine is (if I recall correctly) about 10-20% efficient. Plus, it takes a whole lotta batteries to equal the weight of the engine block plus the half-full gas tank.
Peeking around the tubes, the estimates I've been finding for EV fuel efficiency is about 1 or 2 cents per mile (compare to 7.5 cents per mile for a car that gets 40mpg at $3.00/gallon). Another benefit is that your electric car becomes more environmentally friendly every time someone puts up a new wind farm. Finally, slapping pollution controls on a handful of power generation facilities is much much more efficient than trying to convert a fleet of millions of vehicles.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
That's just wrong. The RAV4-EV requires around 30KWh for a full charge and has a range of around 110 miles. PG&E's highest tier for energy usage is $0.21 per KWh, meaning it costs $6.30 to "fill up" your vehicle. At the current national average gas price, $2.27/gal, that's equal to 2.76 gallons of gas. Thus, the RAV4-EV gets 39.9 equiv miles to the gallon, which is significantly higher than the gas-powered variant (28-30MPG).
It looks even better at CA's average residential electric price, $0.14/KWh.
That's a crap argument based on overdramatized supposition. Yes, we are running the grid closer to capacity than we have ever done - but that's because unused capacity is inefficent. Everyone points to the energy shortages in CA (which were caused by market factors) and the 2003 blackout (which was caused by a number of factors, including poor maintenence and inadequete staffing by FirstEnergy).
The grid is more complex than it has ever been. We need more power and we want it at a lower price and with fewer emissions than ever before. Better control systems, tighter monitoring, and better maintenence are necessary to keep the grid operational. The trade-off is that the grid is far more efficent.
As for adding capacity, our electricity usage has more than tripled since 1970. More plants will need to be built to support electric vehicles, but that's not a problem at all. We just have to keep doing what we have been doing for the past 100 years - building enough capacity to meet demand.
Wrong. The technology is there, it was just abandoned by the auto-industry. Current conversion EVs may have poor performance, but that's because they were never designed as integrated systems and generally run on low-voltage DC. High-voltage multiphase AC systems (like the system in Toyota's Rav4 EV and GM's EV-1) had no problems maintaining highway speeds and normal acceleration, and achieved ranges of up to 140 miles - that's useful for a lot of people.
Assuming that the tehnology isn't there because conversions don't act like traditional vehicles is foolish. Inverter, motor, and battery technologies are mature and on the road today (Toyota Prius, anyone?). Electric cars may not be economically feasable currently, but that doesn't mean that the technology doesn't exist.
Ni-MH batteries don't burn when abused, nor do Lithium-Ion-Phosphate batteries. And every time someone says something like "car bomb", I just have to laugh - you're driving around with 10+ gallons of highly flammable fuel as is. Ford Pinto, anyone?
but the manufacture and disposal of large numbers of toxic batteries is not exactly green either
This is a misconception. Ni-MH batteries are not particularly toxic, and they recycle well - there are both economical and ecological reasons for recycling. Toyota, for example, pays $500 for every dead Prius battery packs.
Any production has environmental impact. Oil exploration and refining, for example, requires a huge quantity of energy and carries significant environmental risks.
And as for avoiding pollution, not only does most current electricity generation use fossil fuel and thus pollute at the generation site
Absolutely. But even modern coal power plants are considerably more efficent than the
At least solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, ethanol, etc are all possible at the plant (or in your house). It may be expensive, but we could actually switch them over to clean energy. You can't do that at all if everyone's driving gas cars.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!