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6 Major Pre-Production Electric Vehicles Compared
rbgrn writes with a review of six major pre-production electric vehicles. The review offers an easy side-by-side comparison of these six cars with projected release dates of either 2008 or 2010. "With all of the hype surrounding hybrid vehicles today, I thought I'd do some research and post my findings on the next generation of fully electric and plug-in hybrids. The fully-electric EV has had a bad name in the past, mostly due to insufficient battery technology, politics, lack of performance models and other factors. Starting this year with the Tesla Roadster, the EV is going to take on a new form in the eyes of John Q Public. Quiet, efficient EVs will start to become commonplace in the next few years as major manufacturers go into production with the newest generation of vehicle sporting more powerful motors, efficient generators and the latest battery technology."
But a purchase price of $30,000 for a hybrid (which you'll need if you plan to drive it more than 120 miles round trip without a recharge), no cargo space, and room for only one passenger makes this an extremely limited option. TFA's right, the Volt, provided they can keep the price UNDER $30K, will be by far the most attractive option. As a small car, I'd like to see the Volt priced under $20K, actually, but I'm sure it's only a pipe dream at this point, given what 1st gen hybrids like the Prius are going for.
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Amusingly, it seems like there is a car or van on fire in my county probably every day - some days there are up to 10 car fires.
You can live in Fear.
Or you can be a proud patriotic American and refuse to live in Fear.
Those are the choices.
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It's only going to take one vehicle fire involving lithium ion batteries and then the public will sour on the whole thing for years.
Because of course, gasoline is non-flammable. Actually, for a while there was no official method to fight a car fire in a hybrid or electric vehicle, or to cut one open in a major accident. That was solved a few year ago when people started seeing all those Toyotas... Now it is just like any other car... The most dangerous part is the loose nut behind the wheel.
You, sir, are a misinformed, ignorant fool.
Let me summarize the legions of faults in your arguments.
Electric cars reduce, but do not eliminate, these emissions, because while they are more efficient, the power has to come from somewhere, and right now that means a power plant
No one said the energy is free. And anyone who does is just flat out stupid. Of course the energy has to come from somewhere, but approaching things in absolutes as you have eliminates the gray areas that is the whole point of this process. Yes, 1kw consumed in an electric car has to be produced somewhere. However, 1kw produced by an internal combustion engine in a single car is FAR less efficient than 1kw out of 100,000 produced in a central plant. Any centralized power production facility, based on current technology, will be more efficient than individual producers.
Solar is very inefficient
Congratulations for dismissing an entire industry based on one point. Yes, current solar cells, operating somewhere in the mid-teens efficiency wise, are inefficient converters. But they are CLEAN converters. They consume no energy in when in use, produce no by products, and do not require frequent maintenance. By those metrics, Photovoltaic cells are fantastic energy sources. There is an argument that production of the cells is 'dirty', but understand that production of a combustion engine, a nuclear power plant, or a hydroelectric dam is 'dirty' as well.
wind is costly and unsightly
You must work for the idiots on Nantucket that are fighting against the Cape Wind project. Which is more unsightly, a silent windmill on a hill, or smog and dead plants and animals everywhere? Windmills are more expensive than buying a tank of gas at the pump, but they are enormously efficient, very low maintenance, and produce clean, no by-product energy. Unsightly? Then put them somewhere you don't want to see them, like out to sea or in isolated regions. Personally I find them very attractive and fascinating - far more beautiful than a coal plant pumping garbage into the atomosphere.
Nuclear presents it's own problems
In teh grand scheme of things, nuclear power is one of the most efficient, cleanest processes for producing energy (that uses at thermal variance process - heated steam to turn a turbine) on the planet. The by-products of used fuel can be managed and dealt with, becuase the by products are KNOWN quantities. What people dont' realize is that the junk a nuclear reactor generates is not far off from the garbage a coal plant puts into the atmosphere. The difference is the nuke plant has the by products contained and controlled, while coal and oil plants just throw them into the air. "Oh well, someone elses problem."
i am more interested in hydrogen
This argument is one the Bushies and others push, without understanding the real problems. There is no hydrogen economy, and hydrogen fuel is ridiculously hard to manage in compressed or liquid form. Did you know you cant' put them in tanks? Nope, tanks corrode when you store hydrogen in them, they have to be very specific types of tanks that are ridiculously expensive and complicated. There is no infrastructure for delivering and fueling vehicles based on hydrogen, nor will there ever be one. Can you imagine the cost of replacing every gas pump with a hydrogen pump, every gasoline and oil tank with a hydrogen tank? Hydrogen is a great dream, but will never actually function until breakthroughs are made in hydrogen storage and transportation. Give up this dream and focus on what is possible now.
The number one obstacle in electric based vehicles is batteries. Full stop. And there has been so much work put into battery technology in the last 5 years, that the tiem of the electric car is here, and it's here to stay. Stop poopooing the technology that is proving itself to work (notice the fleets of priuses out there), and wishing for castles in the sky. Work with what's here and now.
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One of the problems I've noticed with electrics is that they don't seem well-suited, ironically, to urban drivers in many cases. In many cases if you live in the city you rent and you park on the street (and, in my case, my neighbors with houses and garages even park on the street and fill their garages with crap). If you don't have a garage to house the car in at night and thus, easy access to recharge it this is going to be a serious problem. Prices for commercial charging are likely to be vastly higher than charging it yourself at home and with the short power life it would seem to be necessary to charge on an almost daily basis.
Likewise, the stated mileage doesn't sound like it takes into account things like being stuck on the freeway for hours while your engine is still idling and consuming power or being stuck in downtown traffic so, while you're unlikely to be driving your full range daily, it seems just as likely that with greater urban congestion you'll be running through a lot of power while you don't manage to actually go very far making the need for frequent recharging necessary.
Likely solutions will arise, but problems seem to be significant (what about jackasses just unplugging your car if it's somehow charging on the street?) regardless. It's a shame too because the urban environment is the ideal place for an electric car where it would help reduce both air and noise pollution and where trips are generally much shorter and infrequent. I can really see a car share program being able to make excellent use of electrics, but that's about it.
First, efficiency of generating electricity (work done/energy produced) is 60% tops.
This is roughly correct for state of the art gas-fired plants. Efficiently numbers like the above don't even make sense, though, for the large (and growing) fraction of our power mix that is nuclear, and the growing portion that is wind-powered.
Then there is attenuation loss while its delivered to the consumer.
The power grid is over 90% efficient overall. Locally generated energy (say, from PV panels on your roof) is even better in this regard.
Then it has to be stored in batteries which lose energy over time.
It's starting to sound like you're outside your area of expertise. IAAEVE (I am an electric vehicle engineer.) Are you?
Electric engine has THEORETICAL top efficiency of around 45%.
This is total BS. Are you spreading misinformation deliberately or do you actually believe this? AC Propulsion's AC-150 drive system is about 90% efficient over a typical driving cycle. Follow the link to a spec sheet with the detailed efficiency map. Tesla Motors' propulsion system is based heavily on ACP's, and will be roughly the same in terms of efficiency.
The theoretical efficiency of gasoline engine (which I don't remember at the moment) is 2-3 times that.
The BS is flying thick, now. I don't know what you mean by "theoretical efficiency", but it's clear that you don't, either. Gasoline engines in the real-world cars I drive are around 15-18% efficient. (Did you really think they were 3 * 45 or 135% efficient?)
So for every calory [sic] of heat we burn (and release into atmoshere) with a gasoline engine we'd get 2-3 as much work.
Somehow you managed to get your conclusion in the right ballpark, but you have it backwards. Most modern EV propulsion systems are at least 3x as efficient as gasoline cars in a real-world, fair, wells-to-wheels energy comparison, making them about equivalent to 120-140 miles per gallon. You can do your own homework on this -- it's well documented. Tesla Motors' website has some interesting whitepapers and other material on the subject that's pretty easy to understand.
These cars will just end up burning more coal and release massive amount of greenhouse gases. But hey, it's cool to be green.
Spreading FUD when you don't know what you're talking about isn't cool at all. Even from coal, EVs are substantially more efficient and clean. This. Is. Well. Documented. And coal is just part of the power mix. Electricity is the ultimate flex fuel. And EV charging is biased towards off-peak times, when baseline (e.g. nuclear) energy is a larger part of the grid mix.
I travel to work everyday on an electrically powered vehicle. It's called a tram, or a streetcar if you're of the American persuasion. 100 or so passengers travelling on a zero (local) emissions vehicle which takes up the same space as about, oh, 100 cars and the cost to the passenger is next to nothing.
The problem with cars in our cities is not that they run on petrol, gas, diesel or supergreen pie-in-the-sky imaginary fuel, it's that there are cars in our cities. Sure, if you live in the remote wilderness I might understand the need for wheels, but most of us live in urban areas or within commuting distances of them. Cars are a horribly inefficient and outdated mode of transportation, not just with energy but with space and the social ramifications that poor land usage entails.
Sure, the car was a good alternative to horses and given a choice I'd rather step in tarmac than horseshit, but that's about the only advantage the car has bought as far as I can see. It's time to remodel and redesign our cities. Higher density and better public transport. Nothing new about it, that's how cities like Paris, London and New York grew so big in the first place. Or you could look at the alternative, LA. I know where I'd rather live.