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GM, Utilities Partner To Advance Plug-In Hybrids
chareverie writes "General Motors is forming a team with utility companies nationwide to create a charging infrastructure for electric cars. Their goal is to improve the design of charging stations — making them weatherproof and child-proof, for example — in locations such as public garages, meters, and parking lots. They're also working on ways to avoid overwhelming the utilities during peak hours. Their goal is to have these improved charging stations implemented by 2010, when the Chevy Volt is introduced. Everyone recognizes however that a national car-charging infrastructure would be far from complete at that time."
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
The volt will come out just in time for Oil to hit $45 a barrel.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I believe we are approaching the era of the "commuter car". Things like this:
http://www.greenvehicles.com/specs/triac.html
80 MPH, 100 mile range. This will suit the majority of people's daily driving needs. We'll all still have our gas-burning minivan or SUV for weekend trips to granny's or the lake or whatever, but most of the time we'll be driving our electric covered motorcycle to work and back.
All you need for this is an electrical outlet at home.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
You'll need a GM Certified "Super VOLT-adapter" for just $499.99 for any non-VOLT electric car to use this grid. (Licensing and Taxes may apply, adapter not sold in California or Alaska).
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
The biggest barrier to pure electrics right now is the time it takes to charge a vehicle.
Super Capacitors are supposed to change that by allowing charge times equivalent or less than the time spent at the petrol pump.
Last time I heard about them was early this year as they were seeking to scale them to the industrial level.
That technology is what will make electric cars "feasible"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Just as Eisenhower signed off on the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act to kickstart the roads system in the US so too should the government act to fund this.
We have to go electric in the future, gas power isn't a viable long term solution and oil is going to be too valuable in the future to waste on driving around. But the 'free market' isn't going to fund the kind of network we need in the short term. Sure, they'll build the cars but infrastructure costs are beyond them.
Without a national infrastructure program the move towards electric transportation will be slow and patchy. This really is a case of if we build it they will come.
Hybrid cars are economically viable and relatively practical.
Electric cars? Not so much.
You don't need a conspiracy theory to explain the lack of electric cars on the market. People don't want them. Very, very few people will pay new-car prices for a car that will go 150 miles then require a 3-hour recharge.
I just read an article about the Lightning electric vehicle on elReg
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/22/lightning_fast_charge_supercar/
This may make electric cars practical.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7081
Imagine: 200 miles/charge and a 10 minute "fill up" at a commercial charging station (overnight at your house with 50 amp service)
I'd much prefer this over the "hydrogen economy" that people tout as the future. Also, it would be easier to build out a high voltage charging infrastructure than a hydrogen dispensing infrastructure. The only problem I see is everyone charging their vehicles during peak usage instead of at night causing even greater peaks, but there is no reason people (with garages) can't trickle-charge the car at night.
I may even give up my venerable diesel if I can drive coast to coast in the same time frame and same expense on batteries as on diesel.
(only slightly off topic because I was talking electric vehicles instead of hybrid)
More music, fewer hits
Yes, but 90% of the energy from gasoline ends up as heat, not in moving the car. Electric motors have much higher efficiencies.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Very, very few people will pay new-car prices for a car that will go 150 miles then require a 3-hour recharge.
Yeah, because my friends and I all drive more than 150 miles every day.
Is making GM cars not TEH SUCK.
Just imagine, a Electric Cavalier, sweet!!!
If it leads to a proprietary method which other automakers and utilities must license with fees then I am hoping someone else comes along and whacks them.
I still think while we are doing our typical over reaction; c'mon Europeans put up with prices higher than this; at least this over reaction is leading somewhere good. Granted it may mean life with even more SUVs as the technology will make their mileage acceptable. Since the majority of SUV/CUV don't do any heavy towing it can easily be adapted to their increased carrying capacities.
I guess giving up the "frivolous" luxuries was too much to ask
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A gallon of gas contains approx. 1.3 x 10^8 joules of energy, and there are 3.6 x 10^6 joules in a kilowatt hour. At $0.10 per kilowatt hour, that is equivalent to $3.61 worth of electricity to replace a gallon of gas. Which isn't a whole lot cheaper than current gas prices.
Of course, this leaves out difference in conversion efficiency of gas v.s. electricity.
Yep, and that is a difference of at the very least a factor of 2. Naturally, regenerative braking and other nice aspects of hybrids that would be quite unfeasible in a gas car are also still there.
That is a pretty big glossing over of the realities, especially since the efficiency of a gasoline powered ICE is around 18% - not including additional losses in the transmission.
Right. And all those people had to have SUVs because of all the off-roading they do.
What people need doesn't enter into it.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
GM's finally seeing the light, I want a Volt. But PG&E's regulated rate structure will put me at 400% of baseline and US$0.35 / KWh to charge it. $5.00/gallon gas is still cheaper(!)
Back in the late 20th century the EV1 had a waiting list.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Detroit shifts gears from Big Oil to Big Electricity
Meanwhile, in other news, Big Pharma and Big Media cooperate to extend monopolies.
Obituaries: Net neutrality killed in a hit and run by Ma Bell++
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
People don't want them? I'm so glad you are here to speak for the rest of us people.
You don't need to drive 150 miles every day to need a car that has more than a 150 mile range. Just two days ago I drove 350 miles in one day while driving back from Canada.
I'd sure as heck rather own a car that has the capability of taking me where I want to go than own a car that can take me some places but be useless for other trips.
Close a hybrid is around 25% efficient so at $.10/kwh it's closer to $0.90 or at 8c/kwh it's 72c.
Which proves nothing.
And more importantly, it already effectively INCLUDES the conversion efficiencies of both gas and electricity, as it is the retail price, which is based on final use, not creation.
If you were talking about creation costs, that would be a different story.
Most importantly, there are areas in the US where electiricty costs as little as 6.24 cents instead of 10, and other places where it costs as much as 14.31 cents.
But most importantly, all those numbers are based on getting the electiricity at peak times (noon). Smart utilities offer discounts to those that buy from midnight to 6 AM, which would be the most intelligent time to charge your vehicle.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The main downside of solar panels at home and EVs, apart from the cost, is that the EV is usually at work in the daytime. So the obvious place to put solar panels is on business sites where they could feed into EV chargers during hours of maximum sunlight.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What happens with some thug snips your power cord?
Will the cord be coming from your car, or from the outlet, and how easy and cheap is it to swap out cords?
I don't drive 150 most days, but I DO drive 150+ miles SOME days. And since I can't afford two cars, my one car needs to be able to go as far as I need to go, including vacation trips.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
OK, first, the Volt is larger than the Prius, faster, has better acceleration, and will only cost a couple grand more, easily saved on the back end with infinite MPG on trips shorter than 60 miles, and at 60-80MPG when running on the engine. Electric costs are increasing, but at a fraction of the rate of oil, and electric power is renewable (or at least, the renewable portion is increasing, and can eventually be 100% of energy used).
The lack of electric cars on the market? mostly, we've been waiting for slightly better CPUs to run the car on, and improved energy to weight ratios in the batteries. Li-Ion by itself could have done this, if it wasn't for the potential of catistrofic cell collape (aka, battery explodes). Li-Polymer, and Li-Tit batteries just recently developed do not have this problem, and additional safteys with on-battery chip technology further improve saftey.
Also, 2-3 hours is no longer an issue. Li-Tit batteries charge to 80% in 3 minutes, 100% in less than 10. A simple 3 phase 400 amp connection is required (available at almost any auto shop). Don't believe the hype about how much the cable weights for these either, look at the cable on an electric welder; same cable...
Sure, at home, 3-4 hours will be the norm, 8-10 on 110 volt outlets. Of course, saince the car will have a gas backup, and can go 360 miles on 10 gallons of gas AFTER the battery dies, who cares? On a side note, if you popped for the upgrade to rapid charge at home, hooking up a 220 volt 100 AMP cable, you can actually run your HOUSE off of your CAR in the event of a power failure, without needing a generator, for 3-5 hours, or just your fridge and AC for about a day.
People DO want them. Patents, mostly, and a few technical hurdles were standing in the way. I WILL pay 30K for a car that gets the USD converted electrical equivolent of 150MPG average for my driving habits and takes 3 minutes to recharge.
DO RESEARCH BEFORE SPREADING FUD NEXT TIME!
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
When I was a kid we had these 'friction' cars, you pushed them along the floor a few times while they "revved" up and then let them go.
That's the technology I want, with a big robot to "re-rev" them at every intersection.
The best cars made sparks too.
Nullius in verba
Back in the late 20th century the EV1 [wikipedia.org] had a waiting list.
Well, it was subsidized... and they didn't make very many.
I was lucky enough to drive one. Pretty darn cool, but the little skinny wheels they put on it were too narrow. On the other hand, you could get them spinning at just about any speed :)
The appeal of an expensive 2-seater was pretty limited, I think. If they charged full price and tried to make more than a handful I think the waiting list would have vanished :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Fuel cells will never be reasonable. Even best case estimates at this point put fuel cell costs at 100K per vehicle, once the government subsidies fall away, without a MASSIVE leap in nanotechnology. Besides, H2 is NOT a viable option. (either too dangerous (liquid H2 fill ups) or too heavy, bulky, and expensive for on-demand fuel. (you know that BIG SUV they run around on H2? It's a 2 SEATER! ...and NO, we can't make it much smaller... not for decades even with the best estimates.)
The future is in windfuels (www.dotyenergy.com).
Electric cars ARE viable, now, today. It's just a matter of vamping up production. The power grid? We can EASILY keep up with car demand added to the grid, since the average new car lasts 17 years on the road, and it will be 10 years before even a large percentage of new cars are electric (we've got 30-40 years to grow the grid, which is the same timeframe they ALREADY PROPOSED for the wind/water/solar/geothermal superconducting grid overhal, the first part of which came online in Long Island, NY in April this year.)
The Volt hybrid, on 14 galons of gas, goes 600 miles. Without gas, 60 miles. The average american drives 70 miles per day. At 60-80MPG, that means the AVERAGE person will get more than a MONTH on a fill up, assuming they charge at home nightly. If they also charge at work or on the run, it's possible we'll be talking about the gas SPOILING before you can use it all. (and charging on the run costs less, and is only a 3-5 minute inconvenience).
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Toyota's 2009 plug-in Prius will make all this irrelevant. When the Volt comes out with worse specs and a higher price - and without the internal combustion "back-up" the Prius has GM's stock price will take yet another plunge. Too little too late. Somebody needs to buy GM, break it up and liquidate what's left. Hopefully Toyota, Honda, Nissan, or somebody who knows anything about selling cars will see value in some of their assets.
Look, this is a straw man argument. If you NEED to drive more than the range of an electric car, don't get one, get a hybrid. For suburban and urban car owners, an electric car is a viable alternative. I'm married and my wife works less than five miles away. An electric car would be fantastic for her needs, and we have two cars anyway, so we have a hybrid for long trips. We may come to a time when your 350 mile trip is fantastically expensive as well.
I don't drive 150 most days, but I DO drive 150+ miles SOME days.
Isn't that the whole point of the subject Chevrolet Volt car? Electric motor to carry you up to ~60 kilometers for commuting purposes, and an ICE for anything longer in a single day.
You're focusing on passive safety rather than active safety, which is primarily a North American way of thinking.
Here, read this.
Most of us think that S.U.V.s are much safer than sports cars. If you asked the young parents of America whether they would rather strap their infant child in the back seat of the TrailBlazer or the passenger seat of the Boxster, they would choose the TrailBlazer. We feel that way because in the TrailBlazer our chances of surviving a collision with a hypothetical tractor-trailer in the other lane are greater than they are in the Porsche. What we forget, though, is that in the TrailBlazer you're also much more likely to hit the tractor-trailer because you can't get out of the way in time. In the parlance of the automobile world, the TrailBlazer is better at "passive safety. " The Boxster is better when it comes to "active safety," which is every bit as important.
The safest cars are the ones that can dodge an accident, rather than plow through some obstacle and hope to survive due to sheer mass.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
What facts do you have to support your opinion that "very, very few people will pay new-car prices for a car that will go 150 miles then require a 3-hour recharge."?
Because I would buy a car like that in a heartbeat.
The average US commute is only 32 miles per day. People don't need a 500 mile range to commute to work everyday.
Here is an online petition with 1755 signatures wanting Mitsubishi to bring the i-MiEV to America, which gets 100 miles per charge and will sell for approximately $24,000.
Here is an article from NPR in which the president of Nissan says "Today, there is latent consumer demand, but no offer."
As gas prices continue to increase, there is plenty of demand for an affordable electric car. Just no one supplying them.
I would think that a vehicle that could plug into any 50-60Hz, 90-260VAC source would make the absolute most sense.
Thinking of that, at a motel I recently stayed at in Montana, each parking spot had a regular AC outlet mounted about 7 feet high on the wall in front of the parking spot.
That kept it out of casual contact from kids, pretty much ensured that any water on the cord would run down-hill away from the outlet, and each outlet had a spring-loaded weather-proof cover for when they were not in use.
(Those were primarily for winter use: Block heaters to keep oil and fuel from gelling.)
With the addition of some way to simply meter the load on each outlet, and providing a key-switch so one could only use the outlet one is assigned, something like that could be an inexpensive, nearly universally available, simple to install and maintain charging grid for plug-in vehicle charging. (I've seen very similar things on parking meter posts, and they could even be coin/bill/credit card operated, just like modern parking meters...)
Still, though, my biggest problem with plug-in rechargeable vehicles is the length of time it takes to recharge and the very limited mileage between charges.
Driving from home to destination on that recent trip required about 600 miles/day, and is not something that any currently-being-discussed plug-ins can accomplish.
When electric vehicles were first being energetically discussed, one of the promising ideas was removable battery trays/packs that were "leased" with a full charge and rolled into the vehicle.
Instead of parking and charging to "refuel," each electric car service station would have a batch of charged batteries available on carts to be swapped in no longer than it takes to refuel a petroleum powered vehicle.
The discharged batteries would be charged overnight at off-peak times and be ready for the next day's needs.
That would also cover the cost of replacement batteries, as the lease or rental fees would cover not only the cost to charge and change the battery packs, but the cost of replacing them when they were no longer up to required minimum power retention levels.
At least doing it that way, stopping every 200 miles or so to swap batteries, would be better than stopping every 200 miles for several hours to recharge non-swappable batteries.
(It would also allow for some much needed standardization in battery packs and such...)
What bothers me is that idea is from reading magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science in the '50's and '60's... We don't seem to have come very far since then, eh?
--Tomas
The answer is single-use-zoning and suburban sprawl.
Daily needs are separated from each other so that you have to drive between home, work, shopping and entertainment. It's flat out illegal to build a corner store in a residential neighbourhood or build a building with apartments above retail stores, and developers are forced to set them back off the road behind enormous parking lagoons, just to make sure the cars are happy and pedestrians are prohibited.
This is a monumentally wasteful pattern of settlement. It's like building a 'house' with the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom all miles apart but connected by roads.
Bring back mixed-use mixed-income development. Bring back the humble 'street' that has served humanity so well for millennia ever since we started living in cities. This isn't the industrial revolution age anymore, the days are gone when every workplace spewed soot into the air and it made some sense to partition it off where people didn't live. An office in the same building as your apartment isn't going to hurt you, nor will a corner store that you can walk to. Write to your congressman and tell him to back the New Urbanist movement.
But before you do that, you have to get mad! I want you to go out to your window, lean out, and yell, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!!!"
Drill baby drill - on Mars
It's a change of mindset but how often do you really drive > 150 miles in a day where a recharge wouldn't be practical? A few times a year? The cost savings of an electric vehicle would more than pay for a car rental when you need a long range vehicle.
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
...if they're able to charge your car in 10 to 15 minutes! Otherwise, except if you're at your destination and your car is waiting at the parkometer, will you really wait 4 to 8 hours for your car to be 85% to fully charged?
Those of you who will say that it's impossible to recharge a car in 10 to 15 minutes, I'll just tell you that Altair Nanotechnologies builds a battery pack that can do the job, it just needs the proper infrastructure to send enough amps and volts to the car.
The price of Gas in Dubai is 25 cents a gallon, Iran 42 cents, Qatar 83 cents, Saudi Arabia is 45 cents per gallon, Venezuela 11 cents. That is the real cost. What we in the western countries are paying is designed to generate huge profit margins for oil companies. They are fucking over the consumers, and yet you stand here saying, "Please sir can I have another!"
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Depending on your value of "SOME" couldn't you rent a car when you need the extra range?
Some more info on the Volt: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=126606
I am excited to see these type of advance to pull us away from our dependency on oil.
Sure, charging stations are needed for rechargable cars. Only, there are a few little problems. The biggest one is that we aren't building power plants any longer. We are running on coal-fired plants from the 1950s and hydroelectric plants from the 1930s. Nobody is going to build a new high-efficency coal-fired power plant today. Where, exactly would they put it? How long would it take to get through the environmental impact studies? What community group would come out and say they need it, vs. all the groups saying it will kill children and ruin the landscape?
Nuclear? Sure, maybe a couple of plants might get fast-tracked in the next few years. But the electric boom is pretty much over.
Plan on more brown-outs. Supply exceeding demand? I don't think so, not in any future that I can foresee. Will there be more wind and solar generation? Absolutely. Will it keep up with growth in demand from cities? Today, right now, we could use a few hundred megawatts additional for every city in the US. It isn't going to happen.
Yes, they are going to build a huge wind farm in Texas. Only problem is, the transmission lines aren't up to carrying any massive increases, so a huge part of the project will be to increase transmission capacity. And this is happening in a small part of Texas. What about the rest of the states?
Reduce, reuse and recycle. Mostly, for electricity it is reduce. California and Florida both have home controls to turn off your electric consumption during peak demand periods. It is coming to other states as well. There simply isn't enough electricity to go around today in the US. We are not building power plants. We are not increasing transmission capacity.
Do you really think there is enough power to charge up hundreds of cars in a city of any size today?
GM's other electric car (EV1, the one that they killed because it worked too well) had a waterproof, childproof, and in fact idiot-proof charger. It looked kind of like a ping pong paddle, except the handle was gripped parallel to the paddle instead of perpendicular. The paddle had a cord that was reeled (coiled? been a while) up on a box that was bolted to a wall, or on a free-standing pedestal in front of a parking spot. You pushed the paddle part into a slot on the nose of the car, and induction was used to pump some juice into your batteries.
There weren't many EV1's on the road, but if you lived in CA or AZ and knew where to look, you could find charging stations for them, so clearly building the infrastructure isn't THAT hard: all you do is bolt down some charger boxes and plug them in to ordinary wall sockets. Generally you'd see them in parking garages near places that engineers worked :p Anyways, the charger boxes themselves are dead simple to build; it's a friggin' transformer and some heavy gauge wire. All of the fancy charge monitoring computers are already built into the car. If GM's smart, they'd license the design for a song, and use it as a marketing coup.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Caps are perfect for regenerative braking and bursts of acceleration.
GM Volt: ha! I'll believe it when I see it. GM isn't about bad luck, its about bad decisions and so much clout that they survive when they do not deserve it.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Natural gas pipelines feed many, perhaps most of the homes in US48, about 6m^3 per hour max. The energy in 6m^3 natural gas is about 6*39Mj = 234Mj:h, or 65 kilowatts. NG fuelcells already get at least 40% efficiency into electricity, so that would be 26KW peak. Which means that the average home at 2KW average continuous needs only 0.08% of maximum duty (the typical 5KW peak demand would be 0.2% duty).
Big SUVs have about 80KW max output engines. If a 40% efficient fuelcell drove a 90% efficient NEMA-B motor, 80KW kinetic would consume about 225KW in NG, which would still consume only 84% of the home's incoming flow. So overnight "charging" even a big SUV could still drive that SUV for as many hours as it spent charging. Since most people don't drive SUVs at full motor power all the time, even an hour charging is probably enough to refuel after a day's driving.
In April 2008, NG cost about $7:Gj, while direct electricity cost in February, 2008 about $0.09:KWh, which is about $25:Gj. Even at 40% efficiency converting NG to electricity, that's only $17.5 per Gj.
Another advantage of NG powering homes and cars is that very little energy is consumed/lost in the NG distribution, compared to double-digit (up to 50%) losses in electric distribution. Compared with gasoline powering cars, the distribution of gasoline is very wasteful, with not only tankers driving around to filling stations, but cars driving to (and lining up at) filling stations for every refill. While NG can refill along the car's normal route, at home. Meanwhile, any kind of energy storage at home, whether electric in batteries, or tanks of NG, or raising water to roof tanks, or heating water even into steam, all can let the home user buy more energy input only when prices are lowest, which also takes pressure off the distribution systems.
A NG home charger that is also a fuelcell for a 2-5KW (or more) home should cost under $10,000. That's about as much as a good new water heater that's part of a home (air) heating system, which the fuelcell can also supply to bring its efficiency closer to 100% total. In fact such a fuelcell should really cost $3-5K. Which that $7+ savings per Gj would repay in 9 years or less.
And as efficiencies go up, that 9 years could go down to 2-5 years pretty rapidly.
--
make install -not war
For starters, time is usually very precious when such a car is needed.
Huh? Picking up/dropping off a rental car takes about 30 minutes total tops. Less if you plan ahead. I do it all the time. In most cities in the US there is a rental car agency within a few miles of wherever you live.
Such proposals have the consistent flaw of valuing the driver's time at zero.
Time has value to be sure but it's not the only economic consideration. I've rarely met anyone who is so busy however that they find it impossible to rent a car when one would be needed.
I'm sure your needs are different than mine but I drive relatively small cars normally and borrow or rent larger ones as the need arises. I've done the math and for my lifestyle it works out much better economically. A single tank of gas for my VW is around $50 right now. For a large truck it would easily be double that. I can rent a large truck for a whole day for $50-100 so we're basically talking the price differential on one or two tanks of gas. You might have different needs than me and that is fine but it's easy to work out scenarios where renting makes a lot of sense.
Then there's the extra driving and related fuel costs to pick up and drop off the specialty vehicle.
Some rental companies make it a key part of their advertising that they will pick you up. This is a non-issue.
Then there's the enormously higher cost per passenger mile of a rental vehicle
As opposed to the enormously higher operating cost of using a Ford F250 as a daily drive so you can haul all your trailer and gear a few times a year? Yes if you rent every day that would be stupid but no one would do that. Buying an oversized gas guzzler for features you might need once in a blue moon is stupid from an economic perspective not to mention irresponsible.
Then there's the risk of the vendor not having a suitable car when you need
There are about a zillion rental car companies. If one screws up us another. I've done a LOT of vehicle rentals and it is rarely a problem to find a suitable vehicle even for unusual needs.
"The real problems with hydrogen are as follows: It has to come from somewhere, and you have to distribute it to people somehow. Every other problem (even embrittlement!) can be solved with existing technology. We still have no cost-effective way to produce and distribute hydrogen."
2008 called, 85% efficient electrolysis with the promise of 97% 'by the time hydrogen cars roll out' is here now, i'll forgive you for missing it, as it was a roland p /. article, so i'm linking directly to the article, not slashdot.
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801669
now, you were saying? 85% energy efficiency makes hydrogen combustion look tasty, because of a number of things. 1. hydrogen, like gasoline can quickly refuel a vehicle, with a LOT of power 2. there are very few fueling stations, so making grids that can handle high voltages to make hydrogen is easy, doing this to each house is HARD. that's why we have 110 or 220 at home, not 6000 volts.
http://www.hybridcars.com/electric-cars/power-of-pump.html
a really nice summary of why electric cars that plug in at home never panned out.
using the numbers in that article filling up a hydrogen car at 85% efficiency 4660 kilowatt hours. for the equivalency of 120 gallons of gas. or $466 for the equivalent energy of 120 gallons of gas, this assumes that hydrogen combustion/fuel cells is at the same efficiency of petroleum, sorry i'm bad at math so someone else will have to post a correction if they know the efficiencies of fuel cells/hydrogen combustion. BTW that's $3.88 a gallon. at 97% efficiency that's $3.20 a gallon.
battery based hybrids get better mileage, "In general terms... 1 kilowatt-hour--will move an electric car about four miles down the road." so $.10 for 4 miles, if 1 gallon gets you 33 miles, then $0.82 per gallon for an electric vehicle
but that doesn't compare the real story either, and this guy is comparing a household battery charger, compared to a plug in electrics hybrid charger. in his article, so i don't know how fast 19 amps at 110 V can charge (plug in will use charging arrays duh) or 39 amps at 220 v if you wire a special plug, then we have to consider if you have 2 plug-ins or not, and if you ran separate lines for them or not... well i won't do the math...
the point being, electric cars get great economy, hydrogen i don't know where it falls, but it doesn't make sense to promote hydrogen if battery tech has evolved to the point where electric cars are better for the pocket book, and don't take forever to store that power..
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
We already have the ZENN car, but it is not allowed on most Canadian streets, so unless GM can eliminate government bureaucracy we won't be seeing the Volt any time soon.
-AlPhAbEt
OK, first, the Volt is larger than the Prius, faster, has better acceleration, and will only cost a couple grand more, easily saved on the back end with infinite MPG on trips shorter than 60 miles, and at 60-80MPG when running on the engine.
{snip}
I WILL pay 30K for a car that gets the USD converted electrical equivolent of 150MPG average for my driving habits and takes 3 minutes to recharge.
DO RESEARCH BEFORE SPREADING FUD NEXT TIME!
OK, who modded you up? I'm excited about the Volt for many reasons but your post is filled with misinformation.
First off, the Prius starts at $21k. The Volt's targeted subsidized cost was $30k, but that has since been deemed unrealistic and it's now likely to hit $35k or higher (unsubsidized, it'll cost somewhere between $40k and $48k).
The Prius is roomier (the current generation Prius has more legroom, shoulder room, and headroom than the Volt and the 3rd generation Prius will be even larger).
The Volt will not get infinite MPG on trips shorter than 60 miles. For one thing its electric range was never 60 miles... it started at 40 miles. However, rumor has it that's been reduced to 32 miles (on a side note, its 600 mile gasoline range has been dropped to 360 miles). More to the point is that even if the Volt achieves its goal of the equivalent of 150 MPG, that D.N.E. infinite.
So, next time you decide to accuse someone of not doing research and spreading FUD, perhaps you should do a little research yourself. Or at the very least, don't shout.
With regard to point #2, I (as a residential customer) already pay different rates depending on the hour here in AZ. SRP, one of our local utilities, has a time-of-use system with a digital meter they can read and program remotely. Currently it only has 2 rate schedules, but it can support up to four.
:).
During on-peak (1pm - 8pm; M-F) power is twice what the standard rate payers pay. But it's less than half during off-peak hours and we've tried to shift most of our usage to those times. Laundry, dishes, A/C, lighting, pool pump, etc. are all timed to run during off-peak only as much as possible. All lighting is CF or LED (even the night-lights).
Granted, when it's 115F outside the A/C will run some. But we pre-cool way down before 1pm, and let it rise as much as is tolerable with ceiling fans on (between 83-85F as it's fairly dry here). The result is a power bill about half of my similarly sized neighbors. It's fairly easy to compare in tract houses where they're all the same anyway
If Star Trek had the internet: Captain, we've received an IM from the romulans. "Surrender or be destroyed. LOL. o.O"
As is usual whenever electric cars comes up, it's time for some mythbusting.
No, they don't increase pollution and overload the grid; precisely the opposite (more specifically, the only pollutant that goes up is particulate matter, and it's displaced away from population centers. NOx and SOx remain the same, CO2 drops, and CO and VOCs are nearly eliminated; the grid gets to make use of its surplus off-peak capacity and, with smart charging, can eliminate the supply/demand fluctuations that are currently so troublesome).
Yes, they are far more energy efficient than their alternatives.
No, modern batteries don't take forever to charge. The phosphates, titanates, modern spinels, and others can all charge in 5-20 minutes, given sufficient power.
Yes, fast chargers exist. The SAE J1772 standard covers Level 3 charging at hundreds of kilowatts. Yes, chargers as strong as 250kW exist. Yes, there's already a network of 60kW Level 3 chargers in place around Oahu. Install one yourself.
No, the batteries are not toxic. Current li-ions are only mildly toxic, and this only because of their cobalt-based cathode. The phosphates and spinels eliminate this cathode in favor of nontoxic elements.
No, lithium is not running out.
Yes, the batteries last a long time. The phosphates last 7000+ gentle cycles, having only 20% capacity loss after 1000 abusive cycles. The titanates? 20,000 cycles. Accelerated aging tests suggest LG Chem's packs will last 40+ years in typical use.
Yes, both rapid charging stations and EVs make financial sense.
Hmm, did I miss any?
Why must all aquatic villains play the organ?
That we wouldn't be paying out around 700 Billion dollars a year overseas. That in itself would help to lessen nuclear threats from some countries like Iran, since - Hey - no money, we can't afford it.
..........FULL STOP.
If electric cars become popular, why not have electric equipped parking lots? Perhaps employers can put outlets in their lots for employees. Hotels, restaurants, etc. This would make longer trips possible.