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Is the Future of the Electric Car Industry in Silicon Valley?
fiannaFailMan writes "The San Jose Mercury News is speculating about Silicon Valley's potential for becoming the Detroit of a future electric car industry. Among the valley's strengths is an ability to adapt to rapidly changing business environments and develop new business models, something that the Big Three can hardly be accused of. On the downside, it's a capital-intensive business and isn't like raising $40 million and having an IPO. Apparently there are five companies in the valley already pursuing electric car technology, most notably Tesla motors."
Does anyone know how much more/less polution is put into the atmosphere by using these coal powered cars as opposed to gas powered ones? In most cases it seems that the electricity for these cars is generated by coal burning power plants. I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm really just wondering if anyone has stats on this.
Because there are already 3 in detroit perusing it too.
Oh, and can't forget about Audi, BMW, etc. that all have headquarters in Detroit. I see the audi prototypes around auburn hills all the time. Also have seen several time GM's electric car.
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That unless they can find a way for Big Oil (c)(tm) to get a huge slice of the revenue pie, there will be no electric cars in our future...
I Like http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/ because the car looks nice and those 10minute charge batteries are cool.
If I knew the future you think I'd fucking waste my time here answering?
Well do ya punk!!
*sigh* I just wish they'd let me buy a Tesla over here in Germany. I, like MANY others, would be more than happy to pay one and a half times the price that they go for in the US, both for the savings on petrol (our prices are MUCH higher than what people in the US pay), and just for the fact that it's a damn cool car.
Honestly, given the chance, I'd hand over the cash TOMORROW for one.
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Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
It will be slow going, but I think that oil-based cars are heading for the scrap pile. Even now, a number of small electrical car companies are springing up all over the world. Yes, our oil companies will try to hold that back, but in the end, it will happen. The cars can be faster, are more efficient, and much cheaper on maintenance. It is only a matter of time before they are cheaper up front.
As to the slice, you are aware that BP, Exon and Shell are busy installing wind generators all over, yes?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
OK, sorry, I'm being sarcastic. Let me try again:
Awesome, because the world has a decent supply of low-emission, low-cost electricity.
Ooops, that sounds better, but it is still far from truth. One more try:
Awesome, because the world suppliers of electricity (coal, nuclear, NG) would love to be able to build new electricity generation plants.
Yes, it's interesting how Silicon Valley may be where new car tech breakthroughs will happen, but the comparison here is misleading. The reason Detroit was the automobile mecca of the US was because that's where all of the cars were made. That's where hundreds of thousands of people toiled to send car after car off the assembly line. Do you think that the same is going to happen in Silicon Valley? SV will be the same thing it's been for the past several decades . . . a place where ideas and technology are born. And like a lot of the technology invented in SV, it will get manufactured in Taiwan, China, etc.
Near where I work (New Forest, UK) there is a new housing development going up, and I happened to notice that they are having solar thermal fitted into the roofs as standard. I did idly wonder if in a few years time all houses would have solar panel roofs as standard and electric cars would automatically recharge when not being used. I don't know, you park the car up pops a small wind turbine and the entire top surface of the vehicle is covered in photo voltaic paint? Park it in the garage or near the house and up pops a cable to connect it to the house power wind/solar array.
Now, I realize that I am in Sci-Fi could cuckoo land here, but bear with me. There are some things that need to happen.. well I would like to happen..
1. Reverse the trend of people living 80miles from their workplace and seeing a >1hr commute both ways as normal. I realize this would require a society change - but if conventional cars cost too much and there is no reliable public transport infrastructures then this could happen.
2. Cheap, High efficiency solar cells mandated on all new builds. 3. Energy efficiency mandated on all new CE devices and proper OFF switches as standard.
4. Micro generation being normal, and grid "top up" being extra.
5. Smart housing that automatically switched off lights, water heating on demand from stored power, low power devices.
Sorry, I'll get off my soap box before I get carried away....
While electric cars are great for environmental reasons, why has no-one taken up the cause against them to help protect the children? Think about it, one of the great things of electric cars is that they're effectively silent (usually). How can children cross the road safely, knowing there won't be a car hurtling around the corner, when they couldn't hear the car even if it was coming?
The only solution is to put speakers into the outside of cars that play the appropriate noise for a petrol engine. That way we get green cars _and_ safe roads where you can hear the traffic!
The way I've seen the folks in Detroit treat the concept of an electric car, and the consumers in America respond to buying one, the future of the electric car is far more likely to be in places like Kyoto, Tokyo, and Shanghai.
(Our next car will most likely be an electric/hybrid RAV-4 or CR-V.)
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
You can get an advanced propulsion system from AcPropulsion. Get a used sportscar over there and pay someone to do a retrofit for you. Do your homework on the best vehicle to do a retrofit with you can get there and start a business! These guys even came up with the range solution, a small trailer with a generator. Around town, battery only, want to go on a trip, attach the trailer, plug it into the car, fire up the generator, poof, same range as any other vehicle.
... That BMW is short for Bayerische Motoren Werke, which is headquartered in Germany?!?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
What are the main problems with the US car makers?
1. Accounting: Chrysler had target cost accounting. This means they decided how much to spend on the car and worked backwards to the profit margin. They looked at each component as taking away precious money from them, from their target. GM & Ford go the other way they pile shit on until they reach a magical profit mark. The problem with this is it suffers from the "because it's bitching syndrome." As in "Q: Do we really need another lighted mirror on the driver's side? A: Yeah its bithcin'" Ford started to take its head out of its ass and headed to better accounting methods, got scared because it costs a lot to make the switch, and then chickened out. They brought in that fucking asshole Ford to make cars they way his Grandfather did BLA BLA BLA BLA... instead of looking at someone who was making money and coping them. By the way the main rule of going to cost based accounting is once you start DON'T stop in the middle or you're fucked. Oh wait isn't Ford trading at about $.25 a share right now. Chrysler got bought by Daimler because they were making bacon unlike the other two.
2. What the customers want: Ford & GM says the American public in the 1990's wanted big fat SUVs. Toyota didn't say anything, Toyota just sold a shit load of cars to poeple who loved em, and then came back and bought more of em. So if GM and Ford were right and people really wanted what they say they want why aren't they making money? Becasue GM can't find its dick, its hands, or anything else.
3. Where they are located: They are managed out of fucking Detroit! Who would honestly buy a product other than a car from a city that is basically in a state of total fucking chaos and disrepair? I mean for fuck's sake Robocop's depiction of Detroit wasn't far off. Fire the management, move the design centers to LA, or just bring in Ford Europe or Holden lock stock and barrel to run the place.
4. Lean manufacturing, six sigma, Statistical Process Control, and generally Deming's legacy. Toyota fucking owns when it comes to supply chain management. In a fight between Wal-mart and Toyota I don't know who would win, probably Wal-Mart becasue they are way more evil but it would be a good fight. Toyota has vendors that are one man shops in Japan making them parts but somehow they have enough control that the shit gets there on time on budget and right when it's needed.
5. Detiot thinks its better to buy a congressman than to fix thier business model.
1. Detroit has a lot of good engineers, that don't get enough credit.
2. Detroit has a big manufacturing base geared for automotive production and it is definitely a cheaper place to operate. Even if the technology is developed in Silicon Valley, I doubt they would actually produce cars there.
3. Detroit has already gotten its ass kicked by foreign competition. They are going to fight for every piece of market share.
"The San Jose Mercury News is speculating about Silicon Valley's potential for becoming the Detroit of a future electric car industry."
That is unlikely. Silicon Valley is not cheap real estate. I'm sure California's laws are also rather restrictive regarding employment law. The trend in automobile manufacturing is to move to rural areas where the real estate is much cheaper, unions are farther away, or the state's employment laws are less favorable to the employee. Thus, you have more manufacturing jobs showing up in rural Indiana and the Southern States.
Based on that model, I disagree with that conclusion. Sure, SilVal is good for innovation, but manufacturing is not innovation. Development of new electric car solutions may happen there, but the day-to-day construction (i.e., "Detroit") will not be there. Too darn expensive.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Tesla motors is having problems delivering on it's promise, and it is FAR from cheap. Until the startups can prover their clout in lording over batteries, only Fisker has enough potential to really make a dent into the plug in like they are currently squaking over. Ultimately, unless the power generation is by nuclear means, the "carbon footprint" won't be offset, but quite the opposite. So you've got a question veiled in a question. Do you want to "be captain planet?" or "get great mileage?" You can't do both with exponentially jacking the cost up out of joe q. publics reach. But one or the other is possible for nearly all. There are still plenty of ICE options to explore to get considerably more efficiency out of the combustion process. But, all of these are moot when everyone wants to have mug and ass warmers in their car, and 50 speakers, and 40 way adjustable seats in their daily driver. Weight is by far the biggest enemy to the mileage they want, and those options alone add a crapload of weight, and then the gov't regulations compound this effort. Eventually, a '70 Chevelle will seem like a light weight car.
Sure, the boys and girls in the valley could probably build a great electric car, but there is more to it than that. Take safety for example. You like those fancy airbags and "crumple zones" that protect you in a crash? It takes a lot of R&D to get those things right. The Big 3 in motor city have a lot of issues, but they still have a lot of experience with the whole car building thing, especially from a safety standpoint.
We are also overlooking the obvious issue with any alternative fuel: Infrastructure. Electric cars, fuel cell cars, E85 cars just won't catch on unless you can easily drive coast-to-coast, and everywhere in between, with a support network to fill'er up. The last you want is to be on %50 battery life and see a sign that says next electric fill up station 800 miles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_motors#Michigan_Technical_Center
OK, not exactly IN Detroit, but almost as close as Ford's Dearborn Headquarters, and everyone considers that to be in Detroit.
-- Boycott Shell
I have nuclear power in the Chicago area (www.comed.com). I've checked, and it's not heavily subsidized.
There's probably little subsidy in day to day operations. The building was subsidized in part, and cleanup (Yucca mountain) is more expensive than building it and entirely at government expense.
Infuriate left and right
Actually, there is a minor issue along these lines for blind people. They rely on car sounds to see if it's safe for a street crossing, and if one doesn't make enough noise...not that it would happen a whole ton, but it's something that needs to be taken into consideration.
Poor silicon valley, destined to be a ghost town with no industry, no jobs, and nobody there but drug dealers and crackheads.
That is Detroit, right?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The biggest problem with Auto companies, even the more successful Asian Auto companies is that of volume.
40,000 cars a year (or even 10,000) to Tesla is a screaming success, while to Toyota, GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc. it is a colossal failure.
GM coined the phrase "economies of scale", and used it to great success. But as anyone knows, David usually kills Goliath in the end.
I liked my prius partially for the mileage, but also for the low pollution and even just for the quiet, smooth ride it had when on batteries. So even if gas were $1 a gallon, if the electric were the same (or slightly more) cost/mile to operate, I'd use electric/hybrids to enjoy the other benefits.
I guess I'm just saying, they might not focus exclusively on cost/mile as compared to gas, 'cause I'm not sure that argument holds water....
Electric cars are not the answer do we really need more coal burning power plants? Bio fuels, hydro, high speed rail, mass transit etc. Detroit has the technology already, the almighty dollar rules. Let's just bike to work.
Get up!
When will you learn that there are people in a position of power over you and your wallet that will never let you see an electric car that doesn't use some form of petroleum in your lifetime?? The electric car is hardly anything new nor is the concept of alternative fuels. Read your history...the first car ever made by Mr. Ford ran on corn oil. There are an estimated 2 trillion gallons of oil left in the earths crust. That's a huge amount of profit for these people and they will kill every attempt at breaking free of their monopoly that you throw at them. One only needs to do their research and see that this is so. Remember when the P.H.E.V. car was built in Korea in 2000 and when they presented it to the American Automakers were told to "make it use a bit of petroleum" to make it interesting to them? When the price at the pump goes up is there really anything you can do about it? When it gets right down to it...no. We'll gripe while filling up our vehicle that can't seem to get above 30mpg even with todays technology. Funny how in the 80's you could own a Ford Festiva that got close to 47mpg on one tank of gas. Cars like that cut into their profit margins. Thank you Toyota for sticking the finger up at American Automakers and proceeding forth with the Prius even when asked not to do so "just yet".
You're totally right. Tesla are making a car that is small and doesn't use petrol. These are both factors that are far more attractive to europeans!
For the first Teslas, europe would be a far better market. (However, it must be noted that Teslas production runs are already sold out. Can't they ramp up production any more?)
http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/01-11-07_1/ Fisker Coachbuild, is making a four-door plug-in hybrid premium sports car. They have operations in and venture funding from the Valley. Unlike other startups, these guys have been in the car business for a long time.
"It needs an Internet approach, a Google approach."
and internet approach?..WTF?...this is pure marketing. didnt GM, Toyota, and other have fully electric cars in the late 90's and early 2000's?..GM had the EV1 I believe...weren't the big 3 making electric cars way back (1920's-30's)...
Im absolutely sick of hearing about all this great new technology which is basically old shit just repackaged and re marketed (just like commercial software industry).
Watch, they will make a great electric car but it will totally die in about 2 years forcing you to buy a new one. But it will be OK because we will be saving the environment.
Follow the energy:
Gas engine: Chemical Energy (gas) -> heat -> mechanical energy
Electric engine: Chemical energy (coal) -> heat -> mechanical energy -> electrical energy -> (step up transformer) -> (power line) -> (step down transformer) -> (charger) -> chemical energy (in the battery) -> electrical energy -> mechanical energy
Each link in that chain is less than perfectly efficient and wastes energy, so even if the last two or three steps (the actual car engine) are more efficient for electric, there's a lot of catching up to do.
So, while electric cars might make cities more pleasant, unless the upstream source of the energy is either renewable or nuclear* its not going to solve the problems associated with burning fossil fuels (i.e. global warming or - if you don't believe in that - the self-evident fact that we're consuming a finite resource at an accelerating rate).
They may, however make cities cleaner, and once they're in place at least you have the flexibility to change the energy source at will. However, you also need to factor in the cost of manufacturing enough electric cars to get everybody driving one (not just those kind people who buy a new car every 2 years, but all the sensible people who buy 2-year-old cars and run them until they fall apart).
No one gizmo is going to solve our energy & pollution problems unless its part of a coherent system.
(* nuclear is, of course, safer and cleaner than fossil fuels unless (a) it goes wrong, (b) the current sources of easily extractable fissile material run out , or (c) some asshat uses the byproducts for making bombs. Of course there's absolutely no reason to believe that a massive expansion of nuclear power would make any of those more likely, so that's OK then. However, its probably the only route out of our current hole).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Tesla Motors' has a chart on their website regarding well-to-wheel efficiencies, they even look at it in two steps. Well-to-station (not good for electric @ 52.5% vs. gas @ 81.7%) and overall well-to-wheel (great for electric 1.14 km/MJ vs 0.515 for regular gas car). I like the fact they are being open and honest about this slight negative instead of hiding it by just reporting well-to-wheel http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php
;)
It is true that power plants (even Natural Gas / coal) have very high efficiencies when compared to automotive, however transmission losses through power lines are the killer. This results in awful Well-to-station efficiency. What makes up for it though is the incredible efficiency of the electric vehicle. If you could combine the high well-to-station efficiency of "gas" cars with the electric drive train then that would give you the greatest distance for your gallon...
Amazingly GM seems to be looking at this "big picture" in the design of their series hybrid electric Volt concept car. This could of course be designed to be a plug-in-hybrid (if it's not already). If you know where your current source of power is coming from (nuclear, coal, NG) or can choose your supplier; you have more power to make an educated decision.
For example, If you live in California where smog is a killer and you know your power comes from nuclear you could choose to plug in as much as possible. If you live in Texas and want to support local big oil industry you could choose to only run on gas from a station and never plug in
You'd have to look at the big picture and see if having the on-board electric generation can be more efficient than current big generation facility + transmission losses.
If I were a businessman... I'd say who could blame them? They make a killing off of all the extra moving parts that can go wrong on gasoline engines.
I'd dare to say they make MORE money off spare parts. That's just my guess with no research.
There is one slightly better option that has yet to be mentioned.
In my of Hamilton, they have purchased new buses. They are a reversed hibryd.
What happens is the the diesel runs for a while charges the batteries. Once they are charged, the bus runs for 3 or so ours on the charge.
There is no reason that you cant do the same thing with cars. A one-litre engine could charge that battery for a whole, either on diesel or gas, or anything in between.
This way there is less reliance on the grid as well. Reducing the need for increasing output demand, on an overly-taxed grid.
Why not do away with the "charge it here" methodology? Why not simply implement a system of battery cells all linked together. Make the battery cells about 1.5 times the size of a can of soda (4" diameter, 6" height), build a system of loading/unloading that is easy to use, say something like the way orange juice cans are loaded on a track system at the store so that when you take one out, the next one rolls into place, but make it a U shaped device so the loading spot is on top and the dispenser is on the bottom... no fancy mechanics needed to unload... just pull one out and gravity takes care of moving the rest. For safety, the device could turn off the power if the access hatch is opened to unload/load batteries. A simple charge light could show the amount of charge left in that battery, so you don't dispense of a charged battery.
It would have to be an industry standard agreed on by the manufacturers, or mandated by the government (shudder), but with this type of system, you could set up a swap system similar to the propane tank swap system. Stations could offer full service (someone to swap out all of your batteries, however many that may be), and for the cost conscious, self service. I can't imagine it taking more than about 5 minutes to dispense the empty batteries from your "tank" (I've seen soda machines stocked with 4 24 packs of soda in under 5) and load fresh ones in. The system could charge your credit card a fee per battery as opposed to per gallon, and now you have a system that from the end user's perspective is only slightly different in experience to what they currently do now:
Look at gauge and realize that of your 15 batteries, only 2 still have charge (of your 15 gallons, you only have 2 left). Drive up, park the car, turn off the engine, get out and open the hatch (electric styled hatch instead of gas tank hatch), begin dispensing batteries until you see the light indicate that the current battery still has charge (fill the tank until the pump stops), as you place a discharged battery into the "fill station", it dispenses a charged battery, charging you for the new power.
As you can see, the only differences are looking at a single indicator to see if the current battery should be removed (this could even be automated in the future, to simply keep dispensing batteries as you place new charged ones in and beep when the "tank" is full, ie the current battery to be removed contains a charge), and putting batteries in instead of putting gas in.
Small moves... small moves...
The data is out there, electric makes senses for many people.
1) The environmental impact - depending on who you listen to (ignoring big oil financed studies) - an 1 well tuned contemporary gas car running after warm up creates about the same pollution as 25-50 electric cars charged by electricity produced by traditional coal fired plants. If you have hydro or wind production, it's cleaner. If you have nuclear, the air is fine but you'll eventually have spent nuclear fuel. I don't know how much more over the life of the plant, but you could figure it out. I think that it depends on how many electric cars. Right now, there are so few that they just soak up extra capacity at night rather than creating significant new demand. (Yes, that capacity still uses more powerplant fuel that if they weren't plugged in)
2) You can build or have built a conversion of a gas to electric today. I'm converting a Ford Escort myself at a cost of about $8000 including the car. I've seen them done for less than $3000. You can buy an appropriate care and spend $10,000-$14,000 and have a shop convert it for you in many parts of the country. This assumes you use old fashion lead-acid batteries. You end up with with a car with a range of 30-100 miles per charge depending on trade-offs you control (size car/payload/cost). Think about your ordinary day's drive. Do you really need 300 miles range? or would 50 do? Then you have to decide what you do for the times you do need a greater range. Rent? Own another vehicle that you drive on special occasions? Form a co-op? At $3/gallon and $0.10 kilowatt/hr, you can drive electric for less than 50% of the cost of gasoline, once you factor in the maintenance and replacement costs. So that leaves some head room for a solution.
3) In my case, (family with 3 kids), we're planning to convert both cars to electric for daily use. We plan to own a 3rd gas powered vehicle for occasion weekend trips and other exceptions. We expect the savings accumulated from driving electric to be completely eaten by the cost of the 3rd vehicle unless gas prices go up (hah!). However, that means we'll be driving clean and quiet and not subject to gas prices at our current cost. Seems like a good idea.
This wouldn't necessarily work for a traveling salesman, or a farm-call veterenarian. But if you commute more than 30-50 miles round trip, what are you thinking anyway? (I realize there are people for whom this is a necessity. I hope they get mass transit. For most people, commuting more than 30-50 miles is already a problem.)
I've never heard of a reactor plan that does not have accommodations for onsite waste storage. Prairie Island 1 and 2 have onsite storage, and the additional cost for more rad waste casks (the plant got re-rated for additional service life) is the responsibility of Excel Energy, according to the state legislation.
If you had a TVs that switched themselves off if nothing is on that's worth watching, you'd never be able to turn them on!
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
but not in the point being made.
My wife's PT Cruiser will go about 285 miles between fill ups. So the monthly trip from here to LA to see the parents/grandparents(320 miles) requires a single stop to fill up, each way. The key factor though is that it takes me about 5 minutes to fill the tank and then we're back on the road.
Call me when they have an electric car that will recharge in 5 minutes (heck, I'd settle for a 30 minute charge) so that I can make that same trip without adding an overnight hotel stay/recharge stop to the cost of it.
I'm not opposed to electrics, but the conspiracy theorists/head-in-the-sand crowd that thinks that the only reason EVs aren't a hit is some plot by big oil/unreasonable requirements by consumers... those folks drive me nuts. In my opinion, the markets in the U.S. are free enough that if/when someone comes up with a good electric solution, it will sell and sell and sell. Until then, it's all talk.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Everyone seems to be knocking detroit for how and what they build, but, until very recently, no one has ever manufactured anything as complicated and at the scale of the Big Three. Those that scale up to GM, suddenly find themselves with GM's problems, and they don't do that much better, if at all. Toyota quality, for example, has plumetted as they ramp up production to be #1.
It's one thing to build a piece of software or even a PC, but try building something that people will sit in going 70+ mph for 10 years in generally absolute mechanical safety, and then fit that to real physical limits on weight, power, strength, and see how you do.
It's no different than how software people trying to build rockets have run into a hailstorm of problems. Elan, the guy building the Falcon rockets, has made a bunch of promises and we're still waiting for a launch. Similarly, Carmack and Co have built some interesting gadgets but they tend to blow up an aweful lot. Both of them have said, as of late, that geez, rocket science really is hard.
Surprise - when your test cycle is governed by the pace of a machine shop or a foundry and a part that breaks or fails, rather than 5 minutes of compile and run, building any system takes considerably longer and requires more money.
This is my sig.
Wasn't there a guy in Ohio who found a cheap, rapid way to turn water into hydrogen and made a water powered ICE? Anyone have a clue why we're not taking advantage of that invention? Or have I just recalled some old hoax?
There are some issues with battery use and design that make your suggestion difficult to implement in practice.
The cells have to be wired in series to allow the minimum wire cross section in the wiring harness and connectors. Even given that, the current demands are high enough that simple pressure contacts between cells will not be sufficient to generate a low enough resistance to prevent thermal heating at the contact and possibly catastrophic damage. In the past when I have built my own high power packs using cylindrical potassium hydroxide based cells (NiCd and NiMH), I etched the cell terminals and soldered directly to them for this very reason.
There is also an issue with using large single cells with a high volume to surface area. The internal resistance can generate considerable heat and the low surface area makes cooling difficult. It is not uncommon for multiple smaller cell stacks to be connected in parallel for this very reason in high current applications.
Cell stack voltages are typically 170 volts or higher in electric cars and there is no real way to turn the cells off during replacement which presents another hazard. High power solar cell installations can have this same issue as well which is why they often keep the voltages lower then optimum from a wiring standpoint.
While it's true that there's less of an emphasis on manufacturing than on design in the Valley, that doesn't mean that it's inevitable that things will be designed here, and made in China. As it turns out, there's even a car factory in the Bay Area, though it's not quite in "Silicon Valley", per se. Given that the initial market for practical electric cars is going to mostly be on the West coast anyway, it would make sense to manufacture the cars here, rather than transporting them from across the Pacific. That economic argument was sufficient for several Japanese and European car makers to build auto plants here, rather than shipping cars overseas.
Very interesting documentary on how big oil and the big three conspire to protect their interests.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
If you're interested in superconductors, check out the Physics program at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Allen Goldman is the Dean of the dept. and is doing related work. Anyone who has an interest in superconductors should do all they can with their enthusiasm. On the other side of things, if you have an interest in developing video games for the rest of your life, you should develop other skill areas, just in case the market is saturated already.
Among the valley's strengths is an ability to adapt to rapidly changing business environments and develop new business models, something that the Big Three can hardly be accused of.
And presumably a non-union workforce, inflexible labor being one of the main brakes on the Big Three's ability to adapt.
Actually, it did. Maybe you're not from the USA, or maybe you live on one of the coasts, but there's no arguing with the fact that automation reduces the number of factory jobs, and directly leads to unemployment in manufacturing-heavy areas. The promise was that eventually the country would switch over to a services-based economy, and that'd take up the slack. That's happening, to some extent, but those guys that used to manufacture cars at $28/hour are now mostly working in service jobs that pay minimum wage, or slightly above. That's not exactly an equitable trade, and increasing automation is going to squeeze them out of some of those jobs, as well.
I actually worked at a company that produced automation for manufacturers, and the majority of my family has worked in/around the US car industry, so I know whereof I speak. The primary goal of all the "plant modernization" programs I was ever involved with was simply to reduce the labor cost of goods produced. That means reducing the number of workers. Anything else (increased quality, or increased flexibility) was, at best, a secondary goal.
Even on the non-manufacturing front, the news reports tell us that the productivity of American companies are up, but that the unemployment rate is holding steady. That implies that office workers are simply working longer hours to keep up with doing the work of more than one person, and in fact that's largely the case. E-mail, cellular phones, and other technological gadgets also keep employees "plugged in" to their jobs, even when they're nominally not at work.
The point is that automobile manufacturing is a highly capital intensive industry. It was then and it still is now. It is an industry where the margins and volumes are such that by shaving a nickel off the cost of a floor mat, you're perceived as a saint. VC's in SV are used to thinking about investments on the order of millions or tens of millions, not the tens of billions it's going to take to be a playa.
That is all.
All figures are rounded to keep things simple...
"Smart" subcompact car with ~600 cc gasoline engine emissions: 120 g / km
Loss of energy "well-to-tank" due to gasoline refinement and distribution: 15%
=> gasoline well-to-wheel emissions = 120 / 85% ~= 140 g / km
"Smart" subcompact car electric energy requirement to drive (at the wheel): 100 Wh / km
Emissions of coal-fired power plant: 1 g / Wh
Efficiency loss "plant-to-wheel" due to grid inefficiency, battery storage...: 60%
=> "pure coal" electric driving emissions = 100 * 1 / 60% ~= 165 g / km
Energy mix in USA is roughly 0.6 g / km => 100 g / km
Energy mix in France / Sweden is roughly 0.06 g / km => 10 g / km
How is this a troll? Even if it is very blunt and slightly antagonistic... it raises the very important issue... oil is, probably, a multi-TRILLION dollar industry, they are certainly going to have a say what is used. Does anyone seriously believe that Exxon, Kerr McGee, Shell and a plethora of other companies are seriously going to sit by while the very product that made them wealthy is phased out? Whether their intervention will be beneficial or a hindrance... you can damn well bet these companies are going to have a HUGE say in the development of vehicles that eliminate reliance on fossil fuels.
Yes, I totally want to drive around in a completely gutless (it HAS to be to save power) electric car with a 200 mile range filled with 500 lbs. of lead-acid batteries. No pollution there. And it costs twice as much as a comparable gas vehicle.
Pure electric cars are a nice IDEA. Few people mention that the best thing about them is that they're very, very, quiet. You don't realize what a cacophony gasoline cars generate until you see a street filled with electric vehicles (I have). But that's basically all you get, and it's not enough to justify all the other problems.
Don't get me started on the incredibly bad idea of alcohol fuel either.
The solution to the current problem of auto pollution is to force the manufacturers to make more fuel-efficient cars by changing the CAFE standards to raise efficiency standards and narrow the exception for SUVs. 65 MPG is completely achievable on a 4-door sedan RIGHT NOW for 2009 models. SUVs should be pushed off the market or taxed as luxury vehicles. I have no problem with people paying $350,000 for their Lotus that gets 11 MPG, and I'd have no problem with people paying $150,000 for their H3 that gets 8 MPG.
Small power generation, like solar and wind, is great from a grid management perspective, because a grid operator can shut down or bring up a solar or wind service more easily than a large power plant. They need to do this to control voltage fluctuations and meet demand.
As someone who has worked in several power plants, I can say that this is never done and is completely wrong. The clean plants, your Hydro, your wind, your solar, are running at maximum sustainable capacity all of the time. Because they don't consume fuel theres very little overhead aside from maintanance. Thus they are much cheaper to operate than conventional natural gas plants. The initial cost is much higher on a per-MW basis, sure. And you can't run a hydro plant at full blast all of the time because your resovoir would run out of water.
But in general, the clean plants run full speed ahead and you regulate the fuel-consuming plants to meet load.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
While similar in form and function, electric cars are monumentally different from gasoline
Not at all, particularly if it uses a single electric motor that rotates a single driveshaft (vs. per-wheel hub-mounted electric coils). Visual design, crash survivability, wind resistance, suspension & handling, tire performance, passenger compartment UI & design are all similar.
Not to mention the BUSINESS aspect of being a car manufacturer.
Just think about the supply chain for an assembly line, and how long it took to get that in place and optimized. Does Telsa have hundreds of suppliers they're already working with, who can supply thousands of parts custom-designed for Telsa in a JIT supply chain? Would that be easy to create from scratch?
National marketing, sales platforms, distribution & servicing channels?
These days, even for manufacturers like auto companies, a huge piece of the company is the intangibles: in-place assembled workforce, corporate organization, institutional knowledge, supplier arrangements & supply-chain logistics, intellectual property, customer recognition of the brand. You don't create that from scratch - it takes years if not decades, and a lot of invested capital.
It's much easier for a company such as Tesla to start their production model making cars numbering in the hundreds and ramp up their scale than it is for a huge manufacturer to go from the large scale and start small.
I couldn't disagree with you more. You think it'd be easier for Telsa to start producing 50,000 autos a year than it would be for GM to create a new electric model? I'm not talking about the corporate will to do so, just the technical & business requirements. Knowing there is a large market for your product has no impact on your ability to create a business from scratch to meet that market. You want to grow production from 100 to 10,000 cars a year? Several billion dollars and a decade.
"Business" often gets derided here on Slashdot, and I think that a lot of IT folks have very little idea, and often no respect for, how & why businesses actually work, and why "Managers" are often more important to the success of a company than the people in the trenches who actually make the product.
"Create a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." Not today. Create a better mousetrap, get regulatory approval, develop a following, invest in scaling your business, market it to that masses, get investors, scale some more, and then the world will realize you exist and maybe want to come into your showroom.
Colorado State U. has created a corn based oil that has been used in fleets of cars. Turns out that it was MUCH better than regular oil (break down was far less) and was on the order of synthetic oil. Problem is that Detroit says that you MUST use petroleum based oil. The nice thing is that the electric cars will probably not require that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The dollar is falling relative to euro, and most likely against the Yeun. At that point, you will be able to buy our car at much less than what you can now.
"Yes, I totally want to drive around in a completely gutless (it HAS to be to save power) electric car with a 200-mile range filled with 500 lbs. of lead-acid batteries. No pollution there. And it costs twice as much as a comparable gas vehicle."
Actually, there's no reason electric cars have to be "gutless". Electric motors get all their torque right from the get-go. As long as the electronics are laid out right, you should be able to actually out accelerate almost any gas car. An example of this is the aforementioned Tesla roadster. You're probably getting you impression of gutlessness from either golf carts or older generation electric cars like the EV1. Golf carts are based on ancient technology and have had no reason to change for a long time. They are built dirt-simple. The EV1 was the auto industries first real attempt at an electric car and certainly needed to be improved on. As for top speed, it may be limited but, then again, there's really no excuse for driving faster than ~90mph on public roads anyway, even when passing.
The other thing you need in order to avoid the "gutless" problem is to get rid of the lead acid batteries you hate so much. This is a large part of the problem with golf carts and the EV1. You are right that they are horrible for the environment (though most states are very effective at recycling them so that should mitigate most of the environmental impact). The other thing that they do is severely limit the amount of power you can draw at once without killing the battery pack.
The good news is that we have alternatives to lead acid batteries that didn't exist when the EV1 was developed. We have Nickel-Metal-Hydride and Lithium Ion batteries that are lighter, provide far more power, and are made of chemicals that are mostly inert from an environmental standpoint. While there have been problems with Lithium Ion batteries in laptops exploding, the newest generations of batteries uses a completely different chemistry and are capable of being punctured with the possibility of blowing up.
The other thing you need to make electric vehicles a possibility is somewhere to plug them in. Here in Chicago, most people live in apartments and park on the street. That means we have no power plug to plug into at the end of the day. Even if the apartment complex you live in happens to rent garages (and you want to shell out the $100+/month for it) it's unlikely to have power running to it.
That still leaves a lot of people with houses who could benefit from an electric car. As long as there's enough range to meet any daily driving needs (which the new batteries also help accomplish) then it should work out just fine. Planes, trains, buses, etc can be used for any trips longer than a day's drive.
-GameMaster
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
The Tesla battery pack lasts 5 years and costs $10k to replace. You don't throw out the whole car. Battery technology has advanced just slightly in the last 100 years. This is not just repackaging the same thing. Real advances are being made and a decade makes a whole lot of difference in car technology.
When the montly cost of gasoline gets close to or surpasses the cost of leasing or financing one of these electric plug-ins. Regular biking to work wasn't practical due to no shower facilities and it just plain took too long from where I live. The answer for me was to convert my commuter bike to an electric bike. I bought the parts off of www.ebikes.ca and had it converted in a weekend. It is cheaper than paying for gas and parking downtown where I work. It is also the fastest way for me to get to work in rush hour. The pack for my bike uses batteries harvested from dewalt drill packs bought on ebay. I can do 55kph for 25km or more depending on how much I pedal. More than enough to to work and back. It costs pennies a day to charge and the batteries (http://www.a123systems.com/) will last for 3000 cycles. By the time my bike pack dies, I'll be retired anyway. And its damn fun to ride. The only moving part on the motor is the axle bearings. The conversion can cost about 500 to 2 or three thousand depending on how much you want to spend on batteries. I got a bit carried away but with $20-30 a day for parking, I'll have it paid for in three more months.
The fundamental problem with the electric car is that no battery ever developed even approaches the useful energy density of liquid hydrocarbons. This is despite over a century of people trying to improve the energy density of batteries, including extensive efforts from "high tech" firms. Maybe somebody will stumble upon a miracle, but it's not because there hasn't been intensive effort to do better.
Sure, you can overcome the battery disadvantage partially by reducing the energy demands of an automobile with efficiency tricks. The thing is, most efficiency tricks apply just as effectively to gas automobiles as they do to electric ones. Any inexpensive innovations will be adopted by both forms, so the electric car will gain no ground relative to the gas automobile. That leaves the expensive ones, which drive up the cost of the electric car. Innovation might make the expensive ones less expensive; at that point they'll be adapted to the gasoline car and the gasoline car will wind up ahead of the electric again.
The only technology improvement that can make the electric car truly competitive with the gasoline car is improved batteries, and Silicon Valley does not have magic pixie dust that will suddenly make batteries improve -- or else they'd have already put them in your laptop.
I was just thinking about how to reduce the recharge time when it hit me. Why try to reduce recharge time, when you could just change the batter? The batter would still be rechargeable and it would be a standard design with a standard hook-up. You pull into your "energy station" on your long haul trips. Un-plug the battery, carry it over to the excahnge counter. You turn in your dead battery and they give you a fully charged one. You pay for the charge difference between your old battery and your new battery. The "energy-station" then throws the dead battery on the charger. Once it's charged, they hand it off to the next customer. The distribution model would be much like getting a new propane tank for your grill, beer kegs and water cooler jugs. Has anyone considered this before? If not then...ummmm don't steal my idea cause this could make me rich.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I think it depends. My parents tend to be off doing their own things all the time. Sometimes, when coming to my place (a 30-45 minute drive), they arrive in separate cars, despite both working in the town that they live in. To them, a small "commuting car" might not be reasonable.
For my family, my wife drives the family car with the car seats (she carpools with a friend, so both kids have car seats). Her drive is 27 miles to work, add in errands, etc., on the way home, and an electric car for her would need to support 100-150 miles between charges. I drive a small car for commuting. In the past, that was 10-15 miles, so a car that goes 50 miles between charges would be perfect (to have room for a few errands). Unfortunately, right now, I am commuting 250 miles round trip twice/week for a job almost two hours away, so now isn't that time to switch.
However, if we go somewhere as a family, we take the family car. It wouldn't be unreasonable for most 2-car suburban families to have 1 electric car and 1 gas-powered family car. True people complain about seeing SUVs driving around town with a single passenger going to/from the mall or grocery store, but the reality is that people won't get a dedicated car for 5 mile trips.
A family car needs to be able to haul "stuff" for short trips, and be able to go 300-1000 miles without trouble, and gas does that just fine. But for the average family, I bet you could get them to drive a "commuting car" to/from work if it was cheap and electric. If 1/3rd the cars switched over 10 years, that would be a substantial environmental improvement. Too many people are looking for Perfect solutions. Hyrbids for family cars and electric commuting cars might help.
The problem is the charging. Some people keep their cars in garages and could plug them in. The Condos down the street from me have a large parking lot with all the cars in it... you'd have to run electricity to all the parking spots, plus deal with the HOA having to foot the bill for everyone's driving, so it's a non-starter there. In addition, most people I know around me have converted their garages into extra bedrooms or rec rooms, so again, it's an electrician trip out for charging stations.
I'm not saying that it's not doable, just that a plug-in car is a solution for 1 car/multi-car family that keeps it in the garage or is willing to retrofit their electrical by the driveway. That said, a 20% switchover that uses spare capacity at night might reduce transportation pollution by 10%-15%, which is non-trivial and might be cost effective.
I don't go very fast, or very far.
And if you drive me, people will think you're gay.
Weight is the big issue and how many batteries you want to throw at it. Those are the primary ways you'll get range, lighter weight, more batteries. For this kind of money, I'd suggest you contact those guys at ACPropulsion and kick some models around, maybe something lightweight you might find like an older lancia scorpion? About as lightweight as you might find over there cheap and used. Actually, for my loot (I have no where's close to being able to do this, I am rebuilding a datsun diesel pickup for my high mileage vehicle), doing a retrofit makes more sense, you aren't limited to the body styles the electric car company has, you can get anything you want, then put enough batteries in it to give it the range you want. How about an old xke convertible? (cost more than a house most likely) probably too heavy...hmm, saab sonnet? They were lightweight and sporty looking. I am more or less a truck and tractor guy myself, so my taste in cars would be at the low end a minicooper or classic bug/beetle to medium a detroit muscle/pony car (my favs were always studebaker avantis), or for the high end, a for sure street screamer,a full winged mopar, a superbird or a daytona. But if I had one of them I just...couldn't..make it electric. Have to be a gas hog. I just don't know enough about foreign cars to know what might work well or not, but I bet porsche conversions are probably the most popular, or maybe look for an old ferrari or maserati or lamborghini junker to start with.
Anyway, shoot them an email or call them, ask their opinion on it. I'd be interested to hear back if you decide to do it and how it goes, you can post the process at technocrat if you want under the DIY section, it would be most interesting, especially with pics! My *next* project vehicle after the little truck will be an electric something, I was thinking of cutting my teeth on a small lawn and garden tractor first,(a real one with attachments, not just a lawnmower), then do a road vehicle.
I was told for instance that about 1/3 of the electricity costs come from transporting, dispatching and billing it. Would not the electric car, where energy does not come from nuclear plants (which have their own drawbacks too), put us in the same situation than France in october 1973 ? Its governement decided at that time not to reflect fully the multiplied oil price to the industry, increasing to the base customers. The goal was to avoid penalizing the job creations. Unfortunately, Pechiney was French, Pechiney produced aluminium, 90% of the price of aluminium is the price of the electricity used in producing it, ans as Pechiney exported a good pard of its production, the net result was exporting energy at a lower price than it was bought.
The more complex a system is, the most difficult it is to solve. Alexander the Great knew about that when he chose to cut the gordian knot.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
Much like the PC business, someone needs to invent the "clone" of the car, with a standardized baseline and expandability of features. Once there are tons of components out there, integrators (think dell) can put together systems for people who don't want to build their own. When you think about it, all cars are pretty much the same now. There are a few established leaders in reliability, such as Toyota. Since you are drastically simplifying the car by getting rid of the noisy messy internal combustion engine, you have time and money to make something really special from a software perspective. IE: new safety features, better handling, etc. Obviously the motor manufacturers will keep developing more efficient motors which you will make uncompatible with the other items, so you can build in functional obsolescence (IE Waste) to keep the economy trucking so no one thinks we're commies. You need some bright fellow to publically declare a "law" that cars will become twice as efficient every 3 years or something and of course accept and buy any crazy idea, as long as you can recycle it when you're done. Plastics will come into handy here.
Now we just need to get rid of the 30 million idiots who buy Ford pickups to hold their Jesus fish collections and we'll be safe *driving* in the new cars too!
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Right now everybody here is upset over rising gas prices, but if you look at the global oil production and consumption trends, it's going to be more than just high prices in a few years. It's going to be shortages and rationing.
Let's imagine a future where gasoline is $10+/gallon -- if you are lucky enough to find a station that has some, and if you have a ration ticket allowing you to buy a few gallons. Let's imagine your neighbor has an electric car that he can charge at home for the equivalent of $0.60/gallon and drive whenever he wants. Hmm. . . You just might find yourself wanting an electric car too.
The Roadster is assembled by Lotus in their plant at Hethel England. The plant isn't designed for high-volume automated production, it's really only meant to produce a few thousand cars a year -- and Lotus's own cars have to come first, one must assume!
My understanding is that Tesla could produce as many as 2,000 Roadsters per year there, after they get production ramped up. That would probably require adding shifts, and I think 1,000 per year is a more likely limit.
Tell your European car makers to get with the program! Tesla shouldn't be the only company in the world making cars like this. If electric cars can become popular, there's no reason why Volkswagen (for example) couldn't make them. If enough people ask, they'll do.
I liked the VW EcoRacer concept car, by the way. It could have been the biofuel counterpart to the Tesla Roadster -- if VW had actually put it into production. That's an opportunity lost.
No, I don't think the oil companies are going to take this lying down. I think they are going to kick and scream and lobby and bribe and sue and fight every way they can. And eventually they're going to lay down and die -- just like the RIAA. This is the fate of a powerful business cartel when its business model no longer works.
Actually, there will be some demand for oil for a long time to come. I don't see any easy way to replace petroleum in aircraft fuel, or plastics, solvents, adhesives, pesticides, asphalt and all the myriad other petrochemicals. But if you take cars off the table -- light passenger vehicles -- then you're striking out about 80% of demand, and the oil business becomes a shadow of its former self.
Okay, back to the nuclear aircraft. Back in the 50's they designed a nasty little weapon called Project Pluto. It was a supersonic, unshielded reactor on wings that would fly around indefinitely at low altitudes over our the homelands of our enemies, bombarding them with harmful radiation. So, my idea of a commercial, nuclear aircraft differs only in appropriate shielding, crash core safety, and probably subsonic speeds. I would also suggest that a good cooling design can make use of the heat in a thrust capacity, which makes the engine that much more efficient. Commercial airplanes are roughly the same size as tactical nuclear ships, so size is not the issue. Mass is. Since they have "glassed" steel, I think they can also "glass" tungsten, and that would make for a very solid shield. One benefit of this idea is that when a carbon-based aircraft crashes, it is engulfed in flames. A nuclear aircraft would not have that same effect. The key is really core safety. The entire airplane needs to be built around a failsafe to detect a collision, explosion from terrorist weapons, and so forth, but perform a core shutdown in seconds.
"So, while electric cars might make cities more pleasant, unless the upstream source of the energy is either renewable or nuclear* its not going to solve the problems associated with burning fossil fuels.. "
And that's why every city with a population of greater than say, 300,000 - 500,000 people should be building a nuclear plant, starting, like, yesterday.
We might eventually get to the point where solar and wind (I read somewhere that Tesla's original dream was to have a windmill on every single building in Chicago, but that meant there was no good way to charge money for electricity) and other renewables can handle the demand for electricity in the developed world, but not for a long time.
It's too bad that a combination of sloppiness on the part of those building/designing nuclear plants and scientific illiteracy on the part of some anti-nuclear activists has left a real lingering NIMBY attitude towards nukes.
About the only thing I can possibly say bad about nukes is, as you sell them to every single country, then you might find a concern w.r.t. nuclear proliferation. Not in the sense that you can get weapons-grade stuff from a nuclear power plant, but in the sense that once a country has nuclear for power generation, then you get expertise in nuclear engineering. For example, the time between Canada selling CANDU reactors to India and Pakistan and those countries getting the bomb was only about 5-10 years. But that's a minor concern, any state that wants nuclear weapons can get them eventually, and there isn't a damn thing anybody else can do about it short of war.
Besides, sure, the idea of Iran having nukes is a bit scary, but is it really that much scarier than nuclear weapons being in the hands of Regan or Nixon?
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
"The established car companies have many designs in their drawers for all kinds of cars, including energy efficient cars. The consumer kept demanding something different."
Let's keep in mind that the reason consumers keep 'demanding something different' is because there's artificial subsidies in terms of road building, price of gas, foreign oil, that keep the actual price of operating a car artificially low.
Statistics Canada, (non-partisan government entity up here in Canada) did a study a few years back, and they found that, depending on who's numbers you use, (i.e. did you get your numbers from Greenpeace or from Exxon-Mobil?) the average motorist underpays the actual cost of operating a car by between 5 and 25 cents per kilometer. (Roads, costs associated with smog/pollution, costs to the taxpayer for car crashes, etc)
So, assume you drive 30,000 km/year (that's what most car dealerships assume when you lease), then there's a bill for between $1500 and $7500 that the taxpayer is picking up.
These numbers are probably even more dramatic in the US, owing to the fact that (until very recently, anyway) gas was about twice as expensive in Canada as in the US, mostly due to higher taxes up here.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
That won't be realistic for a long time. Right now, batteries capable of powering a car just aren't small enough to be swapped as easily as you suggest. My Hybrid's battery is about 10 times as large as your proposed system.
When Tesla gives presentations, they talk about how battery capacity doubles every 5 years. Their claim is that in 5 years, a luxury electric sedan will be able to go 200 miles on a charge. Extrapolating from this prediction, in 10 years it'll do 400 miles, then 800, then 1600, then 3200 in 25 years. Most people do about 3000-6000 miles between oil changes.
What this means is that in about 20 years, the whole concept of fueling or charging a car will be an artifact of the 20th century. Likewise, just as computers keep getting faster, batteries will keep lasting longer. In 50 years, if battery capacity doubles every 2 years, a luxury sedan will be able to go 102,400 miles on a single charge!
No, I will not work for your startup