Slashdot Mirror
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."
I Like http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/ because the car looks nice and those 10minute charge batteries are cool.
A lot of poeple call this the long tail pipe.
I'm sure he's the recent phenomenon of blind people being hit by electric cars simply because they make so little noise and they cannot hear them coming. i mean honestly, what other reason could there be for his opinion that no engine noise sucks...?
No, I haven't any stats. The thing to keep in mind is that the 1000 internal combustion engines (gasoline, diesel, ethanol, whatever) moving 1000 vehicles are together less efficient and produce greater emissions than a single centralized plant providing electric power to move that same 1000 cars. There are economies of scale involved in utility-scale generation that aren't available in small packages.
The internal combustion engine, depending on whose numbers you believe, is something like 25-40% efficient. That is, 25-40% of the chemical potential energy stored in the fuel is converted to mechanical energy for moving the vehicle. A combined cycle power plant, where you burn a gas in a turbines, then use the hot exhaust to also create steam to drive more turbines, can be upwards of 60% efficient. In situations where co-generation is also possible (a rarity, since most homes and buildings aren't powered by utility steam), that efficiency can be raised closer to 70%.
The other benefit, as others have noted, is that it is easier to clean the emissions (i.e., remove particulates, reduce SOx and NOx, remove mercury, etc.) and, eventually, capture the carbon dioxide output, at a single large location than to try and outfit every vehicle with the same equipment.
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.
The only solution is to put speakers into the outside of cars that play the appropriate noise for a petrol engine.
Hate to break it to you, but many modern cars are nearly as silent at low speeds as an electric could be. At higher speed wind noise is the significant contributer to noise levels.
I don't read AC A human right
Now, if you'd been talking about Solar Power, I'd be more inclined to agree with you with the viability only through subsidies. Nuclear power is as cheap or cheaper than coal, and it always has been. An average 1000MWe nuclear plant produces one contained 53' trailer load of vitrified rad waste per year, and all plants have been designed and approved for on-site storage for the duration of the plant. Over 50 years ago, our innovative American scientists developed a "stepper" reactor family design that actually consumes the rad waste, so in a total system, the 2N+2 radioactive family produces a full cycle with no long-term (more than 30 years) waste. Let's not forget that nuclear waste is also used for medical nuclear therapy and imaging.
Electric Cars + Nuclear power grid = 0 harmful energy emissions, nationally, except for the occasional campfire, gas stoves, and our entire space program.
I'll give anyone who currently agrees with the parent post a "by" on mass ignorance fed by the media and under-educated educators, but only a little bit longer. There's a big discussion tonight on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, during their green week. After tonight, you can't even blame the media for people having this wrong.
There's room for solar power, wind power, and deep-sea hydro power, but pound-for-pound, watt-for-watt, wind and solar cannot be our primary energy grid technology. For one, they depend on the weather, which is unreliable from a regional power grid perspective. For two, if you take a KWh from Solar and stand it next to the KWh from Nuclear, Solar produces a quantity of toxic waste during manufacturing (which is always toxic, forever), and Nuclear produces a quantity of rad waste during operation (enrichment takes over a dozen possible forms, including centrifuge, laser, and aerodynamics). Noting that solar cells eventually break down, but nuclear reactors in our grid today are being re-rated for now up to 60 years of operation, I wonder what the toxic waste to rad waste (and I've established it is reusable) ratio is, given a single KWh of electricity.
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.