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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."
I really don't see why anyone would want one, except maybe as a toy. It's pretty easy to show why.
The average home has a 150A electrical capacity from the grid. 150A at 120V is 18kW. 18kW is 24hp.
Assuming you have a 100% perfectly efficient electric car and charging system (ha!), and use 100% of your house's energy capacity a one hour charge will let you drive your 24hp moped for one hour. Or, you can drive your tiny 100hp car for about 15 minutes. An eight-hour charge gives you 2 hours drive time on a 100hp car. For a more powerful car (200hp), you'll get one hour on an overnight charge.
That just sucks. I can fill up a car with gas in two minutes, and drive hundreds of miles.
Remember, this is the absolute theoretical maximum, and using 100% of your house's available power. In practice, the numbers are much, much worse. No amount of engineering will ever overcome this.
There are plenty of other problems (battery disposal, electricity generation, reliability, etc.) but the pure energy equation is a killer - there's really no way around it, unless you want to be relegated to puttering around in a golf cart all the time.
You, sir, are a misinformed, ignorant fool.
Let me summarize the legions of faults in your arguments.
i am more interested in batteries
This argument is one the anti-Bushies and others push, without understanding the real problems. There is no electric economy, and electricity is ridiculously hard to manage in battery form. Did you know batteries lose capacity when you use them to store electricity in them, they have to be very specific types of batteries that are ridiculously expensive and complicated. There is no infrastructure to support the additional load on the power grid, nor will there ever be one. Can you imagine the cost of replacing every gas pump with an electric recharging station, every gasoline and oil tank with a lithium-ion battery? Battery electric cars are a great dream, but will never actually function until breakthroughs are made in battery capacity and lifespan. Give up this dream and focus on what is possible now.
The number one obstacle in hydrogen-based vehicles is working with hydrogen. Full stop. And there has been so much work put into hydrogen storage technology in the last 5 years, that the time of the hydrogen car is here, and it's here to stay. Stop poopooing the technology that is proving itself to work (notice the fleets of hydrogen buses out there), and wishing for castles in the sky. Work with what's here and now.
In other news, zealots are blinded by their own views, to the exclusion of all others. The problems you mention with hydrogen are either very similar to those with batteries, or have already been solved. I invite you to read up on the FCX clarity, which has similar price and range compared to the Tesla Roadster. Also you may wish to check out home hydrogen generators.
Electric engine is less efficient (~40%) than internal combustin engine (~55%).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Electric cars need energy and where does it come from? In a large part of America, that is from coal-fired power plants. But do you understand how much coal it takes to do this? How many power plants consume how much coal over how many years?
The Appalachian mountain range with their mountain top removal has the same problem as here in the west...Wyoming has several HUGE open pit coal mines and, for example, Colorado has a moderate sized coal fired power plant near Pueblo. The Commanche Power Generating Plant was built when I was at the University in the mid '70s. The power plant consumes coal -- LOTS OF IT! They're expanding it by 50% and adding another power unit now.
* Trains have been running to the Commanche Power station since 1976
* There are a minimum of 8 trains of coal each day to the power plant. Often 12 or more.
* Each Train has between 100 and 125 cars of coal
* Each car holds between 286,000 - 315,000 pounds of coal
30 Years = 10950 days
8 trains x 100 cars x 10950 days yields 8,760,000 cars of coal
8,760,000 cars x 286,000 lbs per car = 2,505,360,000,000 Pounds of coal
One could assume that 2.5 trillion pounds of coal have been burned.
That's 1,211,753,400 tons!
Now there's 45 cu ft per ton for hard coal
So just this one power plant has consumed 54,528,903,000 cu ft of coal.
That's just one power plant. That's one hell of a big hole! That's also only for one small power plant. Almost 7 times that number of trains run through here and who knows how many in other directions from the mines. That same mine in Wyoming is also sending about the same amount of coal to Utah and other states. The hole above is just to keep one power plant running. Wyoming Some day I'm going to head up there because I want to see the hole that has produced over a trillion cubic feet of coal..
27 trains a day come through here (and 27 empty trains return through here) every day.
Each of the 54 trains has six engines smoking away as they go back and forth for hundreds of miles.
If North, East, West and SouthWest all have comparable train volumes from just this one mine, and there are many similar mines in Wyoming, we are consuming coal in mass quantities and stripping the land of its features in the process.
So, now what does it cost to run your little green car?
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix