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Americans Refusing To Wait For Mainstream EVs
hazehead writes "The growing trend of folks refusing to wait for big-car manufacturers to deliver mainstream electric vehicles is starting to get some press. From DIY tinkerers in Atlanta trying to keep money from going overseas (or simply from leaving their wallets) to a guy in Oregon building an open source Civic conversion kit, Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands."
Exactly. It's like getting a hydrogen powered car. Totally crazy.
I'd imagine that getting the power from sources that are many times more efficient is still better than waiting on a magic bullet that will solve things completely.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
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If we move our transport systems over to electricity, then change the way we generate that electricity, it does a great deal.
Also, its a hell of a lot easier to control emissions from power stations then it is to control millions of cars pouring exhaust fumes into the air in cities.
Its going to take a while to get the somewhat large number of nuclear power stations and solar power farms the US now wants up and running, but it is going to happen, and when it does, things will get a lot better.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
And so we should do what? Nothing? That's how we got here. 100 years of doing nothing.
shifting the source of power from an inefficient source to a more efficient one is an improvement. most cars average around 20% efficiency while even coal plants get around 35%. That and the fact that not all of our power comes from coal, that is nuclear, hydro, natural gas etc.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Most manufacturers are going to have a version of an electric car (EV) by 2010, but since car manufacturers have such long development times, by the time we actually need it, its too late. I'm glad these heroes are doing something about it.
Actually it does help a little. Pollution can be better controlled at a single point than at many thousands of points. Economies of scale can also be implemented.
There are a myriad of other problems that arise, 10 years down the line you'll need a new set of batteries and what do you do with the old ones?
I'm all for using less gas and improving the environment, but the guy spent $12,000 to turn his Chevy into an electric car. He now estimates that he's saved $700 in gas. It doesn't mention exactly when his conversion was done, but mentions January as the time he began the conversion. If the conversion took two months, then he's saved $700 in 5 months, or $140 per month. This works out to $1,680 per year. In other words, he would need to drive the car for over 7 years to make up the price of the conversion. (Yes, there are additional savings since he doesn't need to change the oil or filters, but there might be other maintenance costs that might be higher given that it is a DIY project.) Based on this, I'm not about to tear the gas engine out of my car anytime soon.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
... and getting some press, car companies will step-up the EV production. They don't want any competition eating into their future market.
then more electricity will be generated (assuming capitalism is still alive in the US). It does help to solve the US' dependency on foreign oil. Although is the US people would stop demanding everything be made out of plastic and return to metals and natural fibers then our dependency on foreign oil would drop even more. It is a good start, at solving some of the problems, but it does not solve all the problems and EV's do have one large problem, how do you dispose of the energy storage devices?
insert inflammatory comment here!
> Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands.
Don't worry. The regulators will put a stop to it. Can't have people going around doing things without permission.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Exist for some cars. I've been thinking about this investment for a while now.
I would posit that electrical power from coal to drive electric cars would ultimately be cheaper for consumers, better for the environment, and would place on a better path to national energy independence.
It is far more efficient to have a single big plant burning electricity and sending electrons to people rather than having everyone around with their own little tiny power plants. A single giant coal plant has a generator that runs at a fixed rate, maximizing power output for fuel burned, whereas an internal combustion engine car operates over a wide range of RPMs, offering more of a compromise than a fuel solution.
The single giant plant is only one physical distribution point for many cars. Instead of having fleets of tanker trucks with hundreds of people hauling fuel around to dozens of gas stations, you instead have a single train run by one or two people hauling up to a month's supply of coal for a big coal unit and in one single trip.
If we did switch to electric cars, even if they did come from coal plants, you would also eliminate the environment problem of gasoline spills. There's nothing to "spill" in an electric car that is really bad. Yes, you will wind up with either lead acid batteries that are environment nightmare, or, lithium polymer batteries that periodically explode and kill everyone in the car, but ultimately, the birds will sing and trees will wave their branches in joy, if that's the sort of stuff you like.
This is my sig.
Decoupling transportation from energy generation through use of electrical storage ... yeah separating systems couldn't possibly have any benefits.
Guess where Oregon gets a large portion of its power (I can't imagine the Civic-EV guy is going to ship a lot out of his area).
It's not coal or fuel. It's the OR/WA border.
Those central sources are far cleaner than an ICE. They are also cheaper per watt.
It's a start, and I like the idea of an electrical vehicle because I can't build a gasoline refinery in my yard...but some solar cells and/or wind power...those can help.
Right now I'm just driving for no good reason so I can drive up the price of gas :D
Nah, just kidding.
Blar.
It does get arround the immediate problem of rising gasoline prices. Fact is coal is much cheaper per unit energy than oil and afaict the US mines most of it's own coal supply whereas they are having to import ever increasing ammounts of oil. It also moves polloution out of cities and iirc big power plants have much tighter emmisions controls than motor vehircles and those controls are much easier to enforce.
It won't help with global warming though :(
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It's the concept of "waste" heat you see.
Deleted
From the "green" point of view, you're correct. However, the first guy quoted says he does it for political reasons: no money going to oil producing countries that most certainly support terrorism.
Not that I buy his explanation ;-) It's most likely a Republican that never would use the "Green" argument. ;-)))
But not all power generated in the US is from coal and fossil fuels. My power is generated via Hydroelectric. There are Windmills popping up left and right. Except for trying to say no to all fossil fuels the trick is to reduce the need for it. fossil fuels are easy to transport and offer a lot of energy. Nuclear has to many left wing hippies who think of it as a bomb waiting to happen stopping it from popping up next door (Aka a field 10 miles away from you) Solar isn't ready neither are others. But even a dirty coal power plant is probably more efficient then a gas power car.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There are quite a few folks in the Seattle area tooling around in home-brew electrics, including a co-worker of mine who's done a nice job with a Miata. There are two local factors that encourage this. One is that, being in Boeing's backyard, it's fairly easy to obtain a surplus jet-engine starter motor. The other is that most of our electricity comes from falling water, and therefore is relatively cheap.
EVs are way more frugal with their power compared to gasoline engines. So much so, that even taking into account loss in transmission lines and energy lost in charging batteries, you still come out ahead. I'll take an extra $100 on my electric bill than at the gas station any day... plus I don't have to make a special trip to 'fill up' the car.
Gas engines are at best about 30% efficient... as in only 30% of the energy consumed actually goes to making momentum for moving the car.
This is just more BS perpetuated by those who stand to lose their income streams from oil, including car mfgs who stand to lose the income stream of spare parts, since EVs are waaaaay more reliable than gas or diesel engines.
I can't wait until somebody finally gets around to making a full EV car that seats two with ABS and Airbags, PS, Heat and AC, even if it only goes 100 miles. If they can do it under $25k I'm there with cash in hand.
The development of the powertrain and the source of the fuel is two separate issues. Whether the electricity comes from coal, sun, or wind, at least it fuels a platform of choice-an electric vehicle.
No, it improves the situation greatly. Your view is far too simplistic.
A big power station is a lot more efficient than a small car engine. A typical gasoline engine is perhaps 15% efficient. The combined cycle gas power station they recently built here makes use of about 80% of the thermal energy of the gas. The gas turbines are the first stage, then waste heat from the gas turbines drive a steam turbine, then any heat that is still left is used to heat the NSC sports centre swimming pool and the sports centre itself. Those efficiencies are simply impossible for a small internal combustion engine on a car.
An electric car is a lot more efficient than a gasoline one - for a start, it doesn't idle, and you can have regenerative braking.
If you change the power generation (say, from coal to nuclear) you don't have to also change the fleet of vehicles. Automatically, overnight, they are suddenly nuclear powered.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Perfect... Let the government worry about courts, police, and military. The rest we'll do ourselves, thanks.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Good point for electric powered cars. Hyrdrogen though probably doesn't make sense though.
Like when you shop at WalMart. You get cheaper goods, but you also encourage CEOs to shift more and more jobs to cheaper over-seas nations. Less job opportunities, less wealth in the nation to pay for specialized services, etc.
You gotta look past your wallet to see how your choices can cost you. Giving money to a 'find the missing baby' charity is not cost effective.
Blar.
Actually it does help a little. Pollution can be better controlled at a single point than at many thousands of points. Economies of scale can also be implemented.
And just as importantly, that single point doesn't have to move, and thus doesn't pay an efficiency cost due to having to move the extra mass of any emissions controls.
The enemies of Democracy are
Read the article.
A lot of people want to eliminate petroleum imports, and consider environmental protection a lesser priority or no priority at all.
I know plenty of conservatives that scoff at the idea of environmental protection and global warming but who still have a strong interest in electric cars, alternative fuel vehicles, and hybrids as a means of cutting the trade deficit and reducing the leverage that OPEC has over our foreign policy.
Common argument, but so very wrong, because producing electricity in large power plants, even from really disastrous ones as coal or oil, is very much more efficient than producing it in millions of small engines.
Subsequently adding cleaning solutions is also very much simpler/cheaper than doing the same to millions of small engines.
And later changing the production from one system (say coal or oil) to another (say nuclear, wind or solar) is very much simpler than to replace millions of cars.
You can make Hydrogen using any source of electricity. Same difference.
I think this is a great point waiting on the perfect solution means waiting forever. Increase the population of electric cars then increase the amount of renewable resource power generators. If the price of electricity skyrockets due to high demand the cost comparison of renewable vs nonrenewable resources begins to tip heavily in favor of renewable power sources. In addition the idea of a self fueling partially solar powered vehicle becomes much more desirable.
Why stop and recharge as often if you can just put solar panels on the car and increase your miles per watt. Once the general public sees the value in not wasting the constant barrage of energy (from the sun) we receive everyday we might just start the trend we are looking for.
Umm...RTFA!
The $12,000 INCLUDED the truck. The truck probably ran around $7,000. So $5000 saved $700 in 6 months. At $1400 a year we are looking at 3.6 years. in addition EV's typcially cost 50% to run outside of the cost of fuel. Since he would probably spend around $1000 a year for repairs on the truck, the actual savings are $1900 a year for about 2.5 years.
Electic Vehicles are about break-even for city driving/daily commutes. In the next 2 years the power storage will increase and become cheaper pushing EV's into the financial smart move category.
I am not sure of this, but it's probably more efficient to use electricity directly, rather than use it to make hydrogen.
Please, you Californians, if you see any of that horseshit on the ballot, please oh please vote it down!
Other components such as a fuel injector were replaced with their electric counterparts
What's the electric counterpart to a fuel injector? A... wire?
--sabre86
your cash goes to:
1. Chavez in Venezuela to support anti-American jingoism
2. Putin in Russia to support Russian Neoimperialism such as in Georgia
3. Bin Laden via Saudi Wahhabism, the ultra-fundamentalist form of Saudi Islam that gives rise to treating women like cattle, nonSunnis like subhumans, and Islamic terrorism in its myriad forms wherever such groups are supported by conservative Arabic funds
the American government doesn't seem to think getting off foreign oil is as much a priority as the American people think it is. The priorities of the American government conflates dependency on foreign oil with other foreign problems that, if they examined many problems around the world more carefully, they would see that it is the American people and their SUVs that fund those problems in the first place. this complacency is partly our own fault, for not hammering our leaders on this issue hard enough. likewise, you can complain to GM about building SUVs instead of electric cars, but we as Americans buy SUVs instead (until quite recently)
we need electric cars supported by a new wave of modern nuclear power plants. of course there are better sources of electricity than nuclear, but most of these are boutique and cannot scale like nuclear can. this includes wind and solar. but i don't really care to champion nuclear that much as i care about the need to get off foreign oil, any way possible. so please, invest in solar and wind as well, let us find new ways for nonnuclear tech to scale
modern nuclear via pebble bed reactors just does not go chernobyl, and via breeder reactors waste in lifespan and quantity is dramatically reduced (1/10th quantity of waste, a few centuries instead of 10,000 years of radioactivity, and lower radiation levels of safer forms of radiation). breeder reactors also dramatically increasing energy yeild, and allow us to use thorium as well as uranium. security concerns are real with nuclear technology, but if we spent 1/1000th of the amount of money and lives we spend securing our petroleum in iraq on securing breeder reactors instead (they make plutonium, that's the danger with breeder reactors), we would still be many orders of magnitude safer than our current status quo of funding terrorism and russian imperialism and anti-american jingoism like we do now. of course even thorium will run out in a century or two, but if we haven't mastered fusion technology by then, we are doomed anyways, or would have found a way to scale wind and solar by then
zero reliance on foreign petroleum by 2025. whoever enunciates that idea the loudest amongst a range of candidates in any contest before you, elect them to Senator/ President/ Congressman/ Dogcatcher
if petrodollars were to dry up on the international stage, many of the intransigent problems that all peoples of the world face today, not just Americans face, would dry up as well
thems the facts. get with it America
no more foreign petrodollars. stop feeding your damn SUVs
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Also consider that most electric cars will recharge overnight, and during other "non-peak" hours. This also helps improve the efficiency of the power generation station.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
It solves the dependency on foreign oil problem as well as lowering (not eliminating but it's something) the overall CO2 emissions. Right now if we run afoul of a foreign supplier (say like, Venezuela) they can cut us off and drive the cost through the roof if not causing a supply problem entirely. The oil bust of the 80's should have taught us the value of diversity.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
People have been doing this since the 70s. Popular Mechanics even had some projects back in the 70s and 80s.
Let me know when anybody is doing more than a thousand conversions a year. Until then it just the same as it ever was. A few will spend a lot of money on EVs and then the price of oil will drop. And yes oil does drop. Around 2000 gas was cheaper per gallon after inflation than it was in 60s!
Look up the oil glut of the 80s for another example.
It might not this time but if you asked anybody in 77 if the price of oil was going to drop they would have also said "Never"!
This is not a comment about EVs as much as this is just an over hyped news story that really means next to nothing.
Now the number of people that are signing up to by the Volt is a lot more interesting.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Would you buy it for $35000? That's the price of a regular roadster, but one that wouldn't match the performance of a Tesla ever.
The Tesla competes in the supercar sector... That's the whole problem. We'll just have to wait that the technology trickles down that us mere mortals can afford it too.
Actually, cars are hydrogen powered already - liquid hydrocarbons.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Not only is this a great example of the American can-do tradition, hopefully it will also go a long way toward dispelling the myth that cars are too complicated for "regular people" to deal with.
Think about it. When my parents were graduating from high school (1969) it was a given that people would know the basics of how to service a car. For guys especially, it was just something that guys "should" know. These days the attitude is more like, "meh, it's too complicated, leave it to the experts".
Let's hear it for can-do, rather than pay-someone-else-to-do.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
didnt we just have a slashdot article yesterday that implicated most americans dont know anything about science?
"hand me the bible, and a copy of USA Today honey, im going to build my way out of this energy crisis."
Good people go to bed earlier.
I can't build a gasoline refinery in my yard.
I've been told that many people, especially in the deep south, operate devices called "stills" which can produce an ethanol based fuel.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
1. $12k includes the price of the truck.
2. According to this, his truck would get 16 mpg, not 25.
Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands."
How dare they??? I want government oversight of this dangerous endeavor immediately! I want it taxed, and regulated and I want government subsidies.
How dare people do things without asking for government permission!
They need to make sure that these vehicles can pass all the safety regulations. You know, to protect the children. Do it for the Children! Won't anyone think of the children????
OMG This is crazy. These people are Terrorists! They are out to destroy America! How dare they!
And don't forget Illegal Aliens. I know they are involved somewhere.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You lose a lot of power in the hydrogen generation, that's true, but batteries and power lines aren't especially efficient either. I'm not sure which one would best/most practical though.
There are a myriad of other problems that arise, 10 years down the line you'll need a new set of batteries and what do you do with the old ones?
Recycle them. Lead acid battery recycling is one of the most successful recycling programs in the US - 97% according to the Wiki article. Further, I have seen statements (no reference, sorry) that recycled lead is cheaper/cleaner than mined lead.
I can't comment on other battery technologies, but I don't see why similar results couldn't be achieved.
If they really want to do something they're better off protesting.
Personally I have much more respect for the man that takes matters into his own hands, than the one who just yells and whines.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
I'd like to see some references for your numbers. What I've found is that the grid is much more efficient (over 90%) and even coal generation can be over 60% efficient using newer technology. That means that you're getting 54% efficiency at the wall plug from a brand new highly efficient coal plant. Much better than a gasoline powered car.
http://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html
I hear that term a lot "sending our money overseas" or "giving all our money to the middle east"...Thats not quite how it works. US has contracts(not a well kept secret) with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait...etc, that state they will pay X dollar per barrel of oil. In the case of Kuwait I bet its pretty damn low (they would no longer be a country without western intervention). So how it goes, from my understanding, is this: US companies buy oil at contract for 40/barrel, then sell it to US citizens at 110 barrel...Oil companies see all the profit. Big oil = republican = current government = high oil prices. US didn't invade Iraq to steal the oil, they invaded Iraq to prevent Saddam from giving it away(oil for food lol) to EU and driving the prices down BELOW contract values..In that case the money does go the middle east. On topic: I think high oil prices are the greatest thing ever...you can't give away SUVs now. EV hackers get my support, they'll be the auto barons of the future.
Whenever I saw those damn "If you smoke pot, you're supporting terrorist" all I could think about was the distasteful regimes we buy our oil from.
Well said.
Blar.
Yep ""Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands"" You are exactly right... i do agree with your answer.. Regards, Elechub-SEO
Whatever fuel we conserve will just end up in stupid redneck toys like ATVs, dirt bikes, skidoos, recreational fishing boats, and those modded pickup trucks with giant wheels.
Oops. Wrong link. This is what I meant to include:
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/reinsider/story?id=49238
I would love an electric car. But a few times a year, I drive from the Bay Area to San Diego. This is the perfect solution to the problem.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy (in 2003)... Oil Demand by Sector: Transportation 68% Industrial 23% Residential 4% Electricity Generation 3% Commercial 2% The US does not depend on oil for electricity. The US creates 49% of its electricity from coal, 19.4% nuclear, 20% natural gas, and 7% hydroelectric. The left over is made in other ways, but only 1.6% of the power generated in the US is actually produced from OIL. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/figes1.html Priority 1 here should be energy independence with transportation, based on the numbers. Our ability to create electricity has almost nothing to do with oil.
On Ni-MH batteries in 1996.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solectria_Sunrise
That's close to twice the range of my petrol car.
Deleted
A tank of hydrogen can store more energy than an equivalent sized battery, so in that right, the H2 concept is more viable. However, in addition to the H2 generation being much less efficient, its also very unsafe to be driving around with a tank full of highly exlposive gas... so in that right, the electric is more viable.
In the long run, electric will be the better choice. We can get electricity from a number of sources, which abstracts that away from the engineering of the vehicle. An h2 powered car will have significantly fewer of sources (aka naturally occurring, electrolysis, byproducts from fission events)
Just my $0.02
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
Your reasoning would be sound if you didn't just make up all those numbers.
Power plants are 33% efficient on average (http://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html).
Overall, transmission and distribution losses are less than 10%. That is, over 90% efficient. I can't find the reference right now, but I did not make this up.
My Freakin Blog
You lazy bastards, get to work! Discover, innovate and become the next Henry Ford to save our sorry asses! I hope someone does come up with a good idea that they can sell, and I hope they only make black ones....take it or leave it.
WTF? Over?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, "Peak" and "Non-Peak" hours will change drastically once the Electric Vehicle catches on.
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
Ah, yes! I can't disagree. And round and round we go - leaving out the rest of us.
all Canadians: athletes, actors, comedians, newscasters, etc., who achieve some sort of fame wind up moving south of the border. this includes Gretzky
so please, train better Canadian Hockey players. so we can hire them ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who is going to foot the bill to upgrade the US power grid? When windmills generate large amounts of electricity outside of Los Angeles, PG&E shuts down many of the windmills as the transmission lines can't handle the additional electricity.
I found an interesting article about the US Power Grid: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/43823
According the American Society of Civil Engineers, http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=25 gave the US power grid a grade of D,
"The U.S. power transmission system is in urgent need of modernization. Growth in electricity demand and investment in new power plants has not been matched by investment in new transmission facilities. Maintenance expenditures have decreased 1% per year since 1992. Existing transmission facilities were not designed for the current level of demand, resulting in an increased number of "bottlenecks," which increase costs to consumers and elevate the risk of blackouts."
If everyone in your neighborhood upgraded their houses with another 220v circuit, could the transmission lines handle it? The increase in gas powered cars spurred an increase of gas stations, and that was paid for by the gas companies, through profits from selling gas. Remember tho in the US, power companies aren't allowed to be profitable.
If you had to pay 2,3,4x your electrical bill to pay to have your regions power grid upgraded, would you go for it? Better still would you pay for it even if you didn't have an electric car?
The DOE did a study stating that 76% of vehicles in the US could be converted to electric with no additional generation capacity required, due to the base load power available at night that goes unused.
The job of the injector is to provide a metered supply of fuel, so the nearest answer is probably the plug, not the wire. High current connectors are not trivial to implement - the Vectrix scooter had a recall because of a problem in this area. But, generally speaking, it is the metering system - the controller - that is the major technical challenge of an EV. Because the batteries are available, if expensive, the brushless motors are available (and really solid proven technology), but connecting the two together is hard. The Vectrix has an advanced controller that allows regenerative braking, as do some hybrid cars, and effective regen is a major factor in mileage. The controller needs to be extremely efficient to avoid wasting lots of energy as heat, it needs to be very reliable and durable, and it needs to function correctly under many load conditions. In fact, I would submit that the sheer technical cleverness of modern motor controllers is what makes EVs possible on modern roads. If you had to start one like a tram, moving a huge brass switrch bar across a resistor bank to prevent the motor shorting before it ran up to speed, they would be impossible to commercialise.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.
In contrast, is says this about fossil fuel powerplants:
Subcritical fossil fuel power plants can achieve 36â"40% efficiency. Supercritical designs have efficiencies in the low to mid 40% range, with new "ultra critical" designs using pressures of 4,400 psi (30 MPa) and dual stage reheat reaching about 48% efficiency
Your coal plant is getting around double the efficiency of the ICE. Not sure about the other losses, but I'd be really surprised if you're losing 80% of the energy in the grid as you claim - figures I remember from school were closer to 95% efficiency. If your electric motor is 50% efficient, it's about even with an ICE.
And this is assuming that all of your power is generated from fossil fuels. If some is from solar, wind, hydroelectric, or nuclear, then you've got a net decrease in fossil fuel consumption and you've moved the pollution away from population centres.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Stealing precious tax dollars from fuel tax so they can drive their tax free electric vehicles all over town on road they haven't paid for!!!
Someone contact the MPAA (Motorcar Pavement American Association) and the RIAA (Roadway Improvement Advancement Association).
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
its also very unsafe to be driving around with a tank full of highly exlposive gas...
Wrong, all viable H2 systems store it in a chemical bond, not 'just' compressed gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Mod parent up.
... while they park it in front of a McMansion that does more to negatively impact the environment than an Escalade could dream of.
He's exactly right. Let's say you plug your car into your outlet at home and charge it over night. You have a "zero emmissions" car to drive around during the day -- Hooray! You're a Hero!
Except not quite. You charged it from your house. Your house is getting its electricity from where? A power grid that, all things blended together, is DIRTIER than a modern internal combustion engine.
But wait, it gets worse. The grid powering your home is powered by a variety of sources from solar (a small fraction) to dirty coal (a whole lot more than solar) but then you have the inefficencies of having to transport it to your house and store/discharge it to/from the batteries in your car. Factor in these inefficiencies and you're no hero, you're now a villain.
Want back to hero status? Put solar on your house, take it off the grid (at least during peak hours). Plug a car into it too, if you want, but much more of our carbon emissions, pollution, and other bad things come from our buildings than from our vehicles.
The only problem is that people's images are so tied up in their cars that suddenly driving a Prius is the image that people want to project
My favorite quote doesn't fit into 120 characters. Now no one will like me.
The best part is current and soon to be made electric vehicles can simply swap their storage system for a higher-density version when it becomes available. No obsolescence.
Any power plant is more efficient and produces less pollution per watt than a car engine, especially when coupled to a car's inefficient drive train. Then there are the cleaner alternatives some utilities have already been using for decades, like hydro.
Right now for the cost of a nice car you can cover your roof with solar panels and have almost no power bill at all. That would more than offset the extra cost and pollution from charging your electric car.
If you believe otherwise I guess you could power your house with a V8 hooked up to a generator.
I *so* wanna hug you!
Nukes! Nukes! Nukes! Nukes!
$12,000 to convert a car. Let's see - estimating $200 a month in gasoline costs, and assuming that electricity is free (which it isn't)...He might break even in 5 years.
As for paying $2 to keep one dollar from going overseas, I didn't know that Canada was overseas.
-Turkey
I can't abide using food crops to move my vehicle. If I could use a still to create ethanol from lawn clippings, pine needles and brush...then I'd be down.
Blar.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The bicycle industry seems to be one of the last bastions of Yankee ingenuity, where small entrepreneurs make a successful business out of a few thousand square feet of floor space, some machine tools, and a few dozen employees. Once you get beyond the Huffies in Wal*Mart, a large percentage of the $500-and-up bicycles seem to be made by large numbers of small companies. But I don't think this is going to happen with cars.
The bicycle craze and the horseless carriage fad hit the U. S. at roughly the same time, maybe 1895 or thereabouts. An 1896 Boston Globe article quotes a livery stable operator as being worried by bicycles but dismissing the horseless carriage as "a pack of French nonsense." At the time, bicycles represented a high level of mechanical and engineering sophistication. It's not surprising that the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics; bicycles, early automobiles, and early airplanes were not at terribly different levels of complexity.
Not any more. (Pace, members of the Experimental Aircraft Association; I know that there are people still building airplanes in their garage).
But I don't see cottage-industry carmaking as going much of anywhere. For one thing, it's not about the car, it's about the battery. I don't think great breakthroughs in batteries are going to be the province of cottage-industry entrepreneurs.
In the 1900s, electric cars had a range of about thirty miles. In the intervening time, advances in batteries have been counterbalanced by increased expectations of what a car should do, and I find it very discouraging that the Chevy Volt should have a promised electric range of only forty miles.
The brilliance of the Prius (which uses a fundamental design worked out by the U. S. company TRW in the last sixties, who couldn't get U. S. carmakers interested in it) is that it achieves something significant without requiring revolutionary new batteries made of unobtainium. The battery is just a short-term buffer that makes up the difference between the torque required for normal driving and the torque obtainable from a small, fuel-efficient engine. But it does so by being mechanically and electronically very sophisticated. I don't think anyone could cobble up a Prius-style hybrid engine in a small machine shop.
I'd love to see a disruptive-technology electric car emerge from small companies, but I don't think it will happen.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Sure, that did so well for the EV1 crowd. Except for the ones who were arrested for the heinous crime of trying to buy an EV1 instead of watching them get crushed.
Me, I have a RAV4 with a blown engine in my driveway. My timeline is about 12 months before it has an electric motor and 144V battery pack in it. I'm taking the extra time because I want to sell kits to help others to convert their vehicles to do the same.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
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except we have a number of oil and gas power plants now operating, so it only solves the problem for those whos power comes from portions of the grid that are independent of those sources. And considering gas and oil power is CHEAPER than coal, solar, wind, or nuclear, the increased need for electricity will in effect cause MORE gas and oil plants to be built.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
The power companies should be given incentives to offer cheaper off-peak electricity. A great example is drying clothes, it produces heat and takes lots of electricity. During the summer, this makes your A/C run more to balance the heat when people are already consuming the most electricity out of the whole year.
If it were cheaper to run your dryer after 10PM, why wouldn't you wait, reduce the load on the grid and the load on your A/C? Just one example, but charging cars is a great future example. I'm genuinely surprised there's not something like this being done by power companies to reduce summer, daytime loads on the grid.
if you shoot heroin, you really do support the taliban and al qaeda. especially if you shoot heroin in europe
its funny, but the only positive effects the taliban had in afghanistan while they were in power was they utterly destroyed the opium trade there (the ONLY positive effect. blowing up ancient buddhas, beheading prostitutes and adulterers and prodiving a safe haven for bin laden and his jolly crew was their real achievements.)
before 9/11/01, american drug officials would fly over opium growing regions in afghanistan and be mind boggled at how there just was no opium anywhere. the taliban completely razed the poppy fields and issued death pronouncements on anyone who would grow poppies
so apparently, murderous religous fundamentalism is the way to win the war on drugs. "stop growing opium or we'll kill you" seems to weigh heavier in the minds of poor farmers than easy money i guess
but please note how shallow the taliban's religious convictions are: they got to power in afghanistan in the first place by relying on opium growing funds, and now that they are out of power again, they are relying on the poppy fields again
there's no religious fundamentalist like a hypocritical religious fundamentalist (well actually, that's doubly true, as all religious fundamentalists are hypocrites)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It won't help with global warming though :(
Yes, it will. The efficiency of using only a coal power plant to charge an EV is so much greater than a standard gasoline engine that the CO2 produces is cut by 1/3. And, as no one ever truly uses pure coal power, it is really a bit more. http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1569/69/
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Automatically, overnight, they are suddenly nuclear powered.
Yeah, but then you get people randomly popping into the past and the future, and totally subverting the timestream.
Good point, but even H2 cells used for electricity generation can explode, albeit not under normal operations. Its still H2 afterall. Hell, even the H2 O2 from electrolysis occurring in a Lead Acid battery can explode under the right conditions. Best to leave H2 out of the picture all together.
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
>shifting the source of power from an inefficient source to a more efficient one is an improvement. most cars average around 20% efficiency while even coal plants get around 35%.
Diesel cars have an energy efficiency of 45%
But that means that 45% of the energy stored in the petrol is converted to movement energy.
Cogas plants can have an efficiency of 60% (if you can make use of the heat: 85%).
This figure is the amount energy of coal converted to electric energy (via movement).
It still has to be distributed to the cars (7% power grid), used to charge the battery (4% charger) and converted back to movement (10%) results in 48% efficiency (68% heat).
I (knowingly) neglected the transport of the energy to both the car and the factory, and the use of regenerative braking in possible hybrid diesel and fully electrical cars as both would go far behind a back of the hand calculation.
But you can see, if you are going with just a 30% efficient coal plant, you better stick with a new diesel car, than an EV.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
i always wondered at the status quo of nuclear power in canada
in the usa the rightful resurgence of new nuclear power technology is held in check by NIMBYs and a public opinion based on the failures of 1960s era nuclear tech (silkwood, three mile island, the china syndrome, etc... it just isn't like that anymore)
in canada is public opinion and NIMBYs a major influence too?
i know it is downright worse in great britain. NIMBYs and morons in the public there rule the day
only france and japan seem to have gotten nuclear tech right (that is, they rely on it a lot more than we do, and therefore don't fund wahhabism, antiwestern jingoism, and russian neoimperialism as much as we do)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
they already do this in some places - i live in NC and here you can get a time of use meter - which does exactly what you are asking for.. we get reallllllllly cheap off peak power and we pay higher than normal for peak times.
mix that with our dish washer and washer/drier that has a wailt x hours ability.. and we just load it up and have them run at 2am
doing this (along with setting comps to go standby while we are at work and wake up before we get home) dropped our power bill from about 250 to ~120$ a month..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
More like it kind of takes two problems and just turns them into one big problem. Kind of like consilidating a mortagage. Except that that increased reliance on the power grid might also cause additional problems.
But it's not like you're going to go to a DIY'ers house and tell him/her to stop doing it. Part of a free market is being able to choose to not participate in it, at least untill the industry meets the consumer's interests.
Not that the US economy is a completely free market, but the principals are close enough in this case.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
Add in the weeks of fun he had (he's a tinkerer, this stuff is fun for him), and he basically broke even before he drove away :).
Nuclear is the only form of power that isn't solar power. The sun powers the wind; wind power is solar power. It powers evaporation that causes the rivers to run, so hydroelectric is solar. Plants are made of sunshine, so biodiesel is solar. Oil and coal are from prehistoric plants so they, too, are solar.
Oops, I forgot tides. If you get your electricity from tidal generators, then I guess you're using Moonal power.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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Very cool.
Of course, they have newer crash test regulations essentially designed to jack up the weight of cars. So we probably need to trade some safety to get out of the gas engine altogether...
This is my sig.
But the grid is, depending on the distance as bad as So the total still pans out around 1/3th, about the same as a modern (non US) car.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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I don't know about you but the electric car I build will get it's power from a solar panel on the roof of my garage.
I think more most people it's not about being "green" so much as the low price of running the vehicle... with the cost of electricity compared to gas EVs get the equivalent of 200MPG. Not to mention the other benifits such as smooth and quiet operation, no nasty oils, coolants, or other crap to keep up with, and of course a "full tank" every time you leave your garage.
Collector's Edition
Tesla has promised sub $60k and sub $30k cars...
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
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Saturn AMP is just one. There is room for many businesses to start up doing conversions. In addition, this would be a good time for small manufacturing company to put together kit electric cars. Buy the frame, electric drive, then pick your chassis and batteries. You can assemble it yourself. Detroit is trying hard to keep their gas engines. But if a small business man was smart, they would make the kits such that others could sell the assembled kits, perhaps with add-ons. Heck, I could buy a kit car that did 80 MPH, had decent acceleration and got 50 Miles/ charge for $15K. Ideally, it would be a truck or a small SUV (crossover or whatever the new name is). But 50 miles/charge is fine here. To work and back, and then some. Out with the old and in with the new.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It is still both cheaper and more environmentally friendly to buy a use car with good millage.
EVs make the best sports cars, period. Nothing competes with electric for performance. We should have been making electric sports cars 15 years ago. But soon Tesla & co. will finally push the internal combustion engine out of the high performance market.
After EVs are dominating the sports car world they weill trickle down rapidly.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Actually they are working on and perfecting solar powered refueling stations. http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/home-hydrogen-fueling-stations.htm
Once that is in play the hydrogen cars are the perfect solution.
love the taste, hate the texture
If they really want to do something they're better off protesting.
Plenty of people doing that already. A handfull of additional voices won't make enough difference to affect decision-makers.
But people willing to put tens of thousands of dollars and six months of their spare time into actually BUILDING an electric vehicle proves there's an actual demand out there, not just politically-correct lip service. That MAY get through to decision makers. (If not, at least it made a disprorportionate splash - which itself is a far more effective protest than writing letters or marching.)
I would like to point out there is no such thing as "clean coal"
But there IS such a thing as "clean wind". For instance - I have a fine site for a small mill, which would be big enough to charge an electric car if I could get one. (Doesn't have a mill now - because of ZONING laws. B-b But that may change.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
its also very unsafe to be driving around with a tank full of highly exlposive gas
And this is different from driving around with a tank full of highly explosive gasoline because...?
In the long run, electric will be the better choice. We can get electricity from a number of sources, which abstracts that away from the engineering of the vehicle. An h2 powered car will have significantly fewer of sources
Since one of those sources in the hydrogen case is electricity, I don't see the number of sources to be fewer than in the case of battery-powered cars.
Please criticize valid points of hydrogen as an energy storage medium instead of making up silly points that can be refuted in an instant.
Amazing that you did not bother to look up our situation. 48% coal. 20% NG, and the rest is Nuc and AE. The difference is that we would be moving from imported oil with distributed pollution, to using local fuel with central pollution and the ability to control it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Rather than have a car's engine convert at say 30% efficiency, by burning gasoline, you get power from the grid instead. The grid gets power at ~20% efficiency from the distributor, which gets it at 20% efficiency from the power plant, which gets 20-30% efficiency from burning goal and oil.
Something doesn't seem quite right here, your automotive efficiency sounds too high -- I seem to recall a typical gasoline engine has a Carnot limit around 40%, but is something more like 18-25%. Putting the efficiency of a powerplant at or below an automobile engine is ridiculous, considering the powerplant can operate at a higher temperature for its heat resevoir and optimize its design trading off parameters a car engine cannot (like size, weight, and RPMs), 35% efficiency isn't unusual for a real-world coal plant.
The power distribution efficiency seems skewed somehow as well, you have a 80% loss after conversion to electricity when it goes to the "distributor", and another ~80% loss in the grid. Power losses for electricity distribution shouldn't be nearly as disasterous as for a heat engine's conversion.
its also very unsafe to be driving around with a tank full of highly exlposive gas... so in that right, the electric is more viable.
It's just as unsafe to drive around with a tank full of very flammable gasoline, or a battery loaded with lethal voltage. Each requires some safety engineering, each has dangers, each has different fail modes. I found this interesting: http://evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=482 In it, a gas and hydrogen car have fuel line leaks that ignite- which car is destroyed? Not the hydrogen-fueled car.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
From those figures It seems like the various coal options (other than CO2 storage but I have serious doubts about our ability to store CO2 for the long term) all come out higher than a non plug in hybrid.
Natural gas is better (especially with combined cycle plants) but gas prices like oil prices are on the march skywards so I doubt we will see many more gas plants (especially in the USA) unless utilities are really desperate to build plents quick and I presume those that already exist will be used as little as possible..
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
An additional problem for biofuel in CA is that the vehicle antipollution regulations make it difficult to get a diesel powered car.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Good point, but even H2 cells used for electricity generation can explode, albeit not under normal operations. Its still H2 afterall.
Hydrogen cannot explode by itself, it needs oxygen and an ignition source. Thus, it is no less safe than using gasoline, and people do not seem to object to using that. And even batteries can explode, as some laptop owners had the bad luck to experience.
when you implicate the usa in all of the problems in the world, you lay responsibility for cleaning up the world at the feet of the usa by inference
in other words, those like you who seem to find a creative line of reasoning for blaming washington dc for everything in the world are actually more guilty than american neocon warhawks for putting the usa in iraq, or georgia. that's because, if you will recall, the usa is directly and 100% reponsible for saddam hussein (so the braindead kneejerk thinking goes). or, as you say above "In fact, the current conflict in Georgia is a direct result of American meddling in their affairs"
meanwhile, if you wish the usa to butt out of places in the world you would rather it not be involved in, then what you want to do is lay responsibility for things in the world at the feet of other players. yes, *gasp*, there are other world powers in the world. and yes, *gasp* they do evil meddling things outside their borders too. amazing huh?
there are more countries in the world than the usa. it is a big world, you should get out and see it some time. this lesson applies to those obsessed with the usa as the blame for every problem in the world more than any other ideologue partisan out there
blame implies responsibility. responsibility furthers involvement. therefore, your rhetoric, your words above, guarantees the usa remain involved in georgia, your words and your thinking guarantees the usa remain in places it doesn't belong more than the rhetoric of the most hardcore neocon warhawk in washington dc
that's a fact. understand why, and grow the fuck up and develop a more nuanced understanding of the world and its many peoples. its not an american playground. at least the world is not an american playground except in one place: your mind and the minds of braindead one dimensional partisans like yourself
people who think like you are the reason why the usa is overextended in the world. your rationale expects them to be involved. you can't even conceive of a world where the usa has its fingers in every little event. you can't establish a line of cause and effect that does not somehow creatively meander its way back to washington dc. that the usa is involved in places it doesn't belong is a bedrock principle of the way you think. to imagine a world functioning with other players besides washington dc> to you this is science fiction
pathetic, puerile, low iq stupidity: what is happening in georgia right now is the fault of the usa
hilarious
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But it takes so long to charge a battery, but the hydrogen tank fills up just like a gas tank.
Properly designed tanks don't explode.
Oh Noes back to hydrogen.
Here in Sacramento SMUD has a hydrogen fueling station. It's got banks of photovoltaic cells on the roof.
Ask, and you shall receive
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Nuclear is solar power too. All heavy elements were forged in the bowels of a star billions of years ago, and ejected throughout the galaxy by supernovae.
When you think about it, everything is "big bang powered", even our sun.
all it does is shift the problem
I think that's a somewhat nearsighted view of the effect. While it's accurate to say it shifts the problem, it's more accurate to say it centralizes the problem. Once the problem is centralized to, relatively speaking, a few locations (power plants) you can then, as thermian points out, deal with those few problem areas by generating power in a more efficient/renewable/clean manner.
the usa should stay involved on the world stage
but staying involved by funding imperialism and terrorism with american petrodollars is not the way to do it
as for talk radio, i never listen to it. if you have a problem with the way someone thinks, you have to address what they actually think, rather than writing them off as a stereotype that actually has nothing to do with the person
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Tesla is bootstrapping a new technology. As such they are going for the high end first. The early adopters pay a premium to get a status symbol.
As they get to mass production and get their startup costs paid off, investors happy, and cash-flow positve, they plan to drop prices, build some more mainstream models, and go for the big time rather than the niche market. (As another poster pointed out, they've already announced plans for $60k and $30k models within the decade.)
Fast nickels are 'way better than slow dimes - once you have the infrastructure to make the nickels come in fast.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How about recycling them like that have done for over 100 years with current lead acid batteries? Come on, new lead hasn't been mined for decades now. The Lead recycling system for lead acid batteries works very well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And this is different from driving around with a tank full of highly explosive gasoline because...?
I was comparing and contrasting Electric to H2. So to retort, please read the post instead of jumping to silly conclusions that can be answered in an instant.
Since one of those sources in the hydrogen case is electricity, I don't see the number of sources to be fewer than in the case of battery-powered cars.
The electrolysis of water and the subsequent use of the gaseous energies from H2 and O2 is a significantly inefficient energy conversion process.
Since you seem to be a bit of an elitist, I will use simpler words:
There are more ways to get electricity than there are ways to get H2.
You can get H2 from electricity and electricity from H2, but that's not the topic I was speaking about.
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
if everybody was charging their car at night, wouldn't night be the new peak hours?
During the summer, this makes your A/C run more to balance the heat
Serious installations of tumble dryers and/or drying cabinets usually have separate ventilation pipes to carry away the heat from the drying equipment, and the A/C should only be minimally affected (such as when you open the doors to the machines).
Except for the fact that most energy plants, even those that use coal, are much more efficient at producing energy than a small combustion engine.
People, this is the *market* working! Great ideas don't just stand alone, market pressure pushes them into mainstream use. There was no doubt that someday oil would be priced high enough for other sources of energy to become attractive.
I just hate it when people think *they* are the smart ones and know what is best for the market. The market optimizes itself. It might take longer than you want, but it will eventually cut away the deadwood in a much smarter way than a centrally managed system.
Can also get H2 from aluminium+gallium dropped into H20. Drop the alloy into H20 and H2 is released. The H20 and gallium+aluminium alloy alone are not explosive. There are a few people (in warmer places FL is one) that are driving their cars by doing this now. The alloy is used since alluminium alone will not create that much H2 when dropped into water. Gallium+aluminium alloy stops the protective coating on the aluminium so more H2 is released. It works, but I do not think there is enough gallium to kame it go mainstream. We need another way to coat aluminium to get the same result.
The colombia river defines much of the OR/WA border. The river has several hydro generation stations on it. The gorge is also one of the most consistently windy spots on the west coast. WA is currently in the process of tripling its wind generation portfolio, much of which is being sited along the gorge.
If there's one thing I won't stand for, it's intolerance.
True. Both Explosion and Shock are a hazard but engineering can keep battery voltages low enough to keep the shock Hazard next to zero. Besides, its not the voltage that will hurt you, its the current!
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
But, since the sun is powered by a nuclear reaction, wouldn't that mean that all power is nuclear?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Under current technologies, yes, battery recharge does take a while. I need to dig up the link, but there is a research firm that has a protoype cell phone battery with the standard 2h talk 2day standby capacity, but with a charge time of nearly 15 seconds. If they could scale that to EV sized batteries... now we are talking.
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
In the next 2 years the power storage will increase and become cheaper pushing EV's into the financial smart move category.
as a guy that has tinkered with EV for 2 decades.... I hear that promise or prediction every year. It's a lie.
Affordable high capacity is still 10+ years away. until then the normal tinkerer is stuck with 30-50 mile range and Lead acid batteries. Only the disgustingly rich can afford the LiIon packs that give them longer ranges. (The LeCar I had would weigh 1/3rd the weight and go 150 miles on a charge with the change to LiIon. The pack would run me $36,000. no thanks.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Could be. Depends on how many people are charging their cars, and how much energy that consumes.
Even so, it'd balance things out, at least initially. Energy usage tends to drop off pretty sharply at night.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
My dad bought an electric Renault a couple of years ago and after i took it for a spin i was totally lost. First of all an electric car has a very flat torque curve, it accelerates pretty evenly from standstill to 90 Km/h. Its easy to drive it very smoothly and elegantly. The next thing is sound, the car is dead silent until you hit 60+ km/h and road noise starts. Electric cars arent all about the enviroment.
Myself i really want one but sadly you cant buy one no matter how much you are willing to spend. The demand is here but for some strange reason no western or japanese manufacturer wants the money. The Chinese on the other hand are getting up to speed very quickly and at current pace of development it wont be long before their EV's start pouring into the west.
HTTP/1.1 400
The upside however is that you can jumpstart the transition without having to create an entirely new infrastructure. As new forms of electricty come on line you can take off line the older plants. The problem cannot be solved all at once, and moving to electric cars is a pretty good starting point because we can start doing it now, where as the future of electricity production is still in the air, but we know it will happen. The stars will never align themselves so that everything can be done at once and just click into place. You have to start somewhere, and electricty is always going to there, unlike moving to something like H which may or may not really be possible or happen. Of course we do have to commit to system upgrades to handle all these cars straining an already old system.
A lot of people want to eliminate petroleum imports, and consider environmental protection a lesser priority or no priority at all.
I know plenty of conservatives that scoff at the idea of environmental protection and global warming
Conservatives aren't ignorant about environmental protection.
Lots of them are hunters and understand why hunting seasons & quotas are necessary and proper.
If you put environmental protection in the right context, there's no way they'll say that they want to eat deer, fish or duck that have been feeding on lands full of heavy metals or carcinogens because they're downwind or downstream of [industrial facility].
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That may be correct if the only problem we are trying to solve is an environmental (specifically emissions) one. It seems to me that this should be the least of our worries. I see electric power from any source as a means of decreasing the economic load generaed by high demand for oil products as well as energy security on the national and personal level. If we run electric cars and we have a problem with getting, say, coal, we can switch our generation method to something we can get. If we are dependent on oil and we can't get any more, how do we run our cars/trucks/trains?
Well, if you want any of your car energy consumption to be satisfied by, say nuclear, the only way to do this is to have a car, like a plug-in hybrid or electric car, that can be charged from the grid.
At least in the near future.
Electricity is not an energy source, its an energy transmission medium, and a damned versatile one. If there is no one "solution" to maintaining our economy in a post-petroleum world, then having a versatile, standardized medium for transporting energy will at least make cobbling together partial solutions possible.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Aside from the cost savings, efficiencies and other benefits already mentioned, the electric car I rode in back around 1990 was wonderful for more reasons.
- silent, no noise pollution, just wind noise
- no shifting, the better torque allowed it to be driven in one gear
- no idling, it only is "on" using power when accelerating, otherwise completely off
- regenerative braking, actually GAIN power instead of wasting energy slowing
- less maintenance/cost, no oil changes, no cooling system, fuel injection, ignition system, clutch, timing belts
- never stop at a refilling station again or ever "run low" between fill ups, basically have a "full tank" at the start of every day
"Um uh, 33% x 90% is But as an electrical engineer I can tell you a large power plant is way more efficient than 33%, probably better than 90%"
Most power plants operate at about 35%-40% efficiency on their primary turbines. If they have secondary steam turbines, they add another 15%-20% giving an overall about 60% efficiency at converting heat into electricity. The only way to get above that is to sell the "waste" heat to someone who needs it.
Deleted
I am looking forward to hearing more about eestor.
52 KW-h at 400 lbs and $3200
They claim units will be shiped early next year...
Um uh, 33% x 90% is
But as an electrical engineer I can tell you a large power plant is way more efficient than 33%, probably better than 90%
But the grid is, depending on the distance as bad as
So the total still pans out around 1/3th, about the same as a modern (non US) car.
is... is.... super??!? is.... exploding?!?!?
IAMAEE, but as someone who knows how to read, I can tell you that a power plant can only be 90% if you include cogeneration, which is fine, but doesn't describe the efficiency of producing electricity.
Yes, the overall system efficiency is about 30%, which is quite good. Plus, the power source can be anything. Which is great.
My point was that the guy I replied to claimed that transmission and distribution are a 96% LOSS. (20% efficient in transmission and 20% efficient in distribution) That is not true.
This paper from the DOE has the numbers I was looking for. It puts average generation efficiency at 33%, and transmission efficiency at 92%. That's where I get my 30% figure.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2000_register&docid=00-14446-filed.pdf
It is also about calculating the efficiency of electric cars, which is muy apropos.
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And where did the electric plant get it's power from? Coal or oil, probably.
This tech will be more environmentally friendly when we start opening up more nuclear plants. Coal is for barbecues, not power.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
And this is where electric cars really let us down. For, you see, that 'Transportation' cost carries with it a large portion of over-the-road trucks. And as far as I know, there are no plans of replacing those with battery-powered beauties any time soon.
So we'll all have electric cars, and will use less gas. We'll have less cost, individually, until 'the man' comes up with enough invisible costs to put us back down.
All the while, the trucker is still buying diesel fuel. Lots and lots of it.
Over time the lessened demand for oil used by cars will cause the cost of the trucker's oil to go up, and those extra costs will be passed onto us at the shelves of our local Walmart.
At the end of the loop we have extra taxes/fees/etc AND higher prices.
WOOT?
I'd guess that the "fuel" is water, as in hydro power plants.
yes, arrogance is expensive, isn't it?
throughout the last 15 years, after the fall of the soviet empire, europe has increasingly plotted its own course, away from washington dc. this is natural: europe didn't need the usa anymore, the soviet threat was dead
now what do we see? we see a neoimperialist russia invading an outpost of european style liberalism on the black sea, and shutting down oil pipelines that fuel your car and heat your house
so naturally, we shall see europe huddling up against the usa again in the near future
for example had bush invaded iraq in 2008 instead of 2003, after the resurgence of russia, rather than before, you would see france, germany, etc., dutifully falling in line and supporting that with troops, rather than vocally distancing themselves. why? because suddenly EUROPE NEEDS THE USA AGAIN
so yes, arrogance is a bitch. the arrogance in your words is suddenly expensive: you need america suddenly again
so be prepared to grow beet red in the facwe and throw food at your television. because what you will see there is merkel offering obama or mccain shoulder rubs, and sarkozy renaming french fries freedom fries: kowtowing to the next american president in ways you dislike, stifling all voices in your country that run antiamerican
europe has to do that again. its 1988 again, in geopolitical terms
so yes, arrogance is a bitch. you can't afford european arrogance anymore ;-)
hugs and kisses, your american poppa
xoxoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
For that matter, a tank full of gasoline is much less volatile than one full of H2. H2 explodes. Gasoline vaporizes, and then burns.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
yes, i agree with you. i used the shorthand term SUV with the implicit implication that i was talking about an internal combustion engine SUV. as frankly, when you talk about SUV, 99.999999% of them are ICE SUVs
now if every suburban soccer mom in the country had 4 trucks in their driveway: an electric power supersize hummer, an electric power big wheel chevy tahoe, and an electric power lincoln navigator, i would support that 100%
because i don't have a problem with the SUV, i have a problem with the ICE SUV. which, when you talk SUV today in shorthand terminology, that is what is naturally implied
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Solve it, no. Reduce pollution by 2/3 rds yes. But anyway, the electric production is a different discussion, unless you are an oil industry shill.
The systems are still 12v based, as far as I know, which don't hurt you. Also note that volts alone don't kill, it's combination of volts+amps.
My electricity is nuclear and my BBQ is natural gas..
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
because if we had 10x the amount of reactors we have today, but they used breeder technology instead, we would have waste that:
1. would be the same in quantity (breeder reactors consume 10x more fuel)
2. would last 200 years instead of 10,000 years
3. would give off less radiation
4. would give off less damaging types of radiation
so you could throw it in a hole and forget about it, because in 200 years it wouldn't be waste anymore
meanwhile, loading any nuclear waste for jettison into space is:
1. many orders of magnitude more expensive than putting it in a hole
2. if there is an accident, you are irradiating a large part of the atmosphere, whether breeder reactor waste or old style waste
even with a very low risk of #2 happening, no risk at all (from burying it) is still superior
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The PHEV 20 produces approximately the same GHG emissions as an HEV if powered by electricity from coal-fired power plants that do not capture CO2,
Note: PHEV 20 means plug in w/ 20 mile battery range.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Really, it does. Look it up.
Not that I'm a proponent of using more oil, but the "terrorists have all our oil" argument needs to be put in perspective.
Most power plants operate at about 35%-40% efficiency on their primary turbines. If they have secondary steam turbines, they add another 15%-20% giving an overall about 60% efficiency at converting heat into electricity. The only way to get above that is to sell the "waste" heat to someone who needs it.
Yes, that's a reasonable estimate, though the primary chain can be better and a tertiary generator is usual.
In Europe it is common to sell the remaining heat, maybe to industry or often to nearby cities but I've also seen fish ponds.
In certain parts of The Netherlands even (part of) the CO2 is piped to greenhouses.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I can tell you a large power plant is way more efficient than 33%, probably better than 90%
No, that's not thermodynamically possible, unless you are referring to the combined efficiency of both electricity production and heat generation (for district heating). Thermal power stations get efficiencies in the range of 30-50% for pure electricity generation. Higher efficiencies (upwards of 90%) are achievable only by putting the "waste" heat to good use, such as supplying it to district heating systems.
But the grid is, depending on the distance as bad as
The grid is not nearly as inefficient as many people seem to think. Electricity can be transported for pretty long distances (like 1000 km) with only minor losses (less than 10%). This is achieved by using a very high voltage (in Sweden, 400 kV is a common voltage for long-distance power lines), which minimizes the current and thus the loss to ohmic heating of the cables.
Chevron, a large petroleum company, owns the patent on NiMH battery technology that is critical for EVs.
Toyota produced the RAV4 EV starting in 1997 using NiMH technology. Chevron sued on patent infringement and got Toyota's NiMH production line shut down. Now there are no replacement NiMH batteries anywhere, yet many of the RAV4s are still operating on the original batteries. That's a little known secret that the oil companies tried to suppress.
With fuel costs out of control, there has been growing criticism over oil companies abusing the patent system to prevent competing technologies - technologies that the country badly needs - from ever reaching the market. The founders of the patent system intended the system to protect inventors from having their hard work exploited, not for corporations to maintain their monopoly. Chevron's ligitant tactics prove that they have no intention of producing NiMH batteries in the interest of maintaining their monopoly. They executed patent law in bad faith and a good argument could be made that they should have their NiMH patent revoked.
This is a shining example why our patent system is broken.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
It's a total piss off, and indicates the degree of cranio-rectal inversion present in the provincial government. We even have an electric car company (Zenn Motors) but we can't buy their CARS!!!
Pathetic bunch of cowardly shitbags at the top, standing in the way, as usual. And it's not like it's a Liberal v conservative v NDP v Green problem. The Greens are good to go, but the other three parties are too busy getting fucked by the car companies and the auto workers unions.
Utterly depressing.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It doesn't solve it, but does reduce it. Electrical generation in a modern power plant is much, much more efficient than an automobile engine.
And nuclear - at least nuclear-as-we-know-it, uranium or plutonium fission - doesn't solve the problem either, as the issues of peak uranium, reactor security, nuclear proliferation, and waste disposal remain unsolved. (Accelerator-driven reactors using thorium fuel, and of course someday fusion, hold promise.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Ah, yes, but your nuclear electrical generators are fission generators, while the sun works on fusion. But Yeah, you're right, it is nuclear!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
One of the main problems with commercial electric vehicles has been the treatement of the batteries. The GM EV1 was classed by California as a rolling hazardous waste dump which was partly why none of them could be sold only leased. There was no other way that GM could assure the California government that the batteries would not somehow end up in a landfill.
Think about it. What are lead-acid batteries? Well, first you have the acid. It would certainly burn any child's hand if you poured some on the child. That is obviously hazardous then. Lead comes next. Lead causes all sorts of learning disabilities and is toxic. Lead has to be hazardous also. So we have a lead-acid battery which is doubly toxic and hazardous. How many of these do you need for a car? Right next to a child? Sounds like some serious regulation is needed.
From what I understand mass production of lithium batteries isn't much cleaner, and the lithium batteries themselves aren't 100% perfectly safe. So you can expect the same kind of reaction when hybrid vehicles start reaching end-of-life. It hasn't happened yet, mostly because of sheer blindness to facts - something that will certainly disappear the first time somebody puts a hybrid car into a car crusher without removing the battery first.
You can be there will be regulations in place long before there are a lot of electric vehicles on the road. Some places they might make sense, but it is doubtful there will be any sense in them in California.
Which makes more sense?
1) Install a single, as-large-as-you-want, possibly even fuel generating smokestack scrubber on a single smokestack, or:
2) Install millions of mufflers on millions of combustion engines which have difficult engineering restraints on them? Mufflers need to be small, lightweight, and inexpensive as design concerns - concerns that are placed at least on equal footing with efficiency. Possibly more so.
Which seems like the better idea?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Not totally crazy. It would address the smog problem in many cities. The geography of L.A. makes for a tremendous smog problem, but a power plant down the road might be in a better position to deal with emissions.
Also oil and coal power plants don't burn heavily refined fuel like gasoline. And they can be easily substituted with nuclear and wind power. California is the US leader in wind power, seems like electric cars would be good in a place like L.A. but maybe it wouldn't be good for places like Georgia, Ohio, etc where oil and coal plants are so popular.
Hydrogen can be taken from things other than oil cheaply, it is usually taken from natural gas. And if there is ever a "hydrogen economy" a nuclear powered electrolysis station could be practical. And there is the S-I cycle which should be practical for large scale hydrogen generation, it produces just hydrogen and oxygen and whatever you use to power the process (just needs heat, not electricity)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
A great example is drying clothes, it produces heat and takes lots of electricity. During the summer, this makes your A/C run more to balance the heat when people are already consuming the most electricity out of the whole year.
There is so much wrong with this sentence it's difficult to know where to start....
Pro tips:
* Try a clothesline
* Try closing the door of the rooom the dryer is in so the AC doesn't have to try and counteract it.
Oh yes, following your example nearly 300 megawatts would be thrown away at a large 800 megawatts plant, since 1973 not done.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
There are different degrees of "highly explosive." Hydrogen falls far higher on the scale than liquid gasoline. Cars don't generally blow up like they show you in the movies except in very rare circumstances, but hydrogen actually DOES blow up quite easily - see the Hindenburg. There's a reason lighter-than-air craft only use helium these days.
If you believe otherwise I guess you could power your house with a V8 hooked up to a generator.
Or if he wants efficiency, he could use a Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C, the most efficient diesel engine in the world, coupled to a generator. Of course, it could be a bit overkill, since it produces 84.42 MW (it was designed for large container ships). :)
And this is where electric cars really let us down. For, you see, that 'Transportation' cost carries with it a large portion of over-the-road trucks. And as far as I know, there are no plans of replacing those with battery-powered beauties any time soon.
So we'll all have electric cars, and will use less gas. We'll have less cost, individually, until 'the man' comes up with enough invisible costs to put us back down.
All the while, the trucker is still buying diesel fuel. Lots and lots of it.
Over time the lessened demand for oil used by cars will cause the cost of the trucker's oil to go up, and those extra costs will be passed onto us at the shelves of our local Walmart.
At the end of the loop we have extra taxes/fees/etc AND higher prices.
WOOT?
BobMcD - You make an excellent point here, and I hope more people read it. The roads we drive on were designed for the transport of goods. This lead to us using large trucks to carry our goods to points across the US. It was much cheaper to transport it via truck than train (or other) at the time. In time that cost savings may no longer exist, and "the man" will pass down the extra changes in all of our goods/services. I found an EXCELLENT article from the early 1900's which discusses this predicament and the reasoning behind the creation of these roads in the first place. (as described above). http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=980CE1DB143AEE32A25753C3A9639C946195D6CF Your point is dead on.. The solution is not just figuring out how we get to work without oil, but the delivery of goods across the US without oil.
The efficiency numbers quoted by Wikipedia there have sources at the bottom of the article. My reply, however, was to someone who posted numbers with no source at all. A number from Wikipedia requires a more reputable source to refute it. A number pulled out of the air can be refuted by any source, even Wikipedia.
And if you really expect the same citation standard in Slashdot as you would in an academic setting, then you are an idiot.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Same thing is happening "worldwide". Group of finnish people formed association around start of 2008 called "SÃhkÃautot Nyt", "Electric Cars Now". Their goal is to order bunch of older Toyota Corolla's and transform those into EV's with "opensource" solution. I remember also reading that some ev reseller in Norway has placed a big order for these remodelled Toyota cards.
Finnish website about the group:
http://www.sahkoautot.fi/ (Parts available in English too)
yush
One thing that many people seem to miss: Autonomy. Electricity is *much* easier to generate on a small-scale basis than gasoline. Believe me, there are ways for small and large communities to generate electric power from many sources, enough to keep you going for a long time. Maybe not as comfortable, but it will be enough to meet the dearest needs. If your transport depends on gasoline, you're totally screwed if there isn't any. With electric cars, you'll still be able to get around and get things done, even when you've got nothing than a few windmills. Beets a handcart any time.
Okay, so a power plant is more efficient than an internal combustion engine. But with a power plant you have to transmit the power across the grid, charge up a battery, have it lose a bit of charge sitting in the battery, then use the energy to run a motor. With the ICE, less energy is produced per amount of input, but it's already in the form of mechanical energy.
So what I'm wondering, given comparable amounts of fuel in the gas tank / power plant, which method produces more work not at the end of the combustion process, but at the point where you are actually turning the driveshaft?
you can blame the greenies for the coal plants - they're terrified of teh nuke plants, but coal is just fine.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
too IF you could get electric motors AT A DECENT PRICE.
I was going to make a 'lectric motorcycle, there are plans all over the internet.
But they all used a deprecated pancake 20hp electric motor. Back then they cost about $500 or something. The closest replacement I could find was closer to $2000! Just for the motor.
First person to make a kickass electric sportbike that does 100mph for 100miles will make a fortune.
Conversions are great, but we have to be able to get motors.
They Live, We Sleep
Golf cart manufacturers are responding to the demand for EVs by creating a new class of "leisure" carts with turn signals and breaklights designed for the whole family. Local govs are starting to alter traffic laws to allow them on the roads or in special lanes.
"Concentrating" all the pollution to one area (the power plant) makes it easier to deal with. Electric and hydrogen cars don't make filthy atmospheric pollutants for everyone to breath in -- even if the overall saving is minimal, as someone who lives in a metropolis I'll support any increase in their use.
EVs are also quieter (the only hydrogen vehicles I've seen are buses, and they've been really noisy, but YMMV).
I am surprised no one mentioned Hymotion or their parent, A123 systems, that makes a conversion for Prius that allows you to charge your battery via plug. http://www.a123systems.com/hymotion DR
It is shifting the problem, but it is a partial solution, as even coal plants are more efficient than small gasoline engines, especially when you consider the entire supply chain.
It also centralizes the problem, which makes it easier to solve.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
You are failing to take into account the efficiency of an electric motor vs a gasoline engine. An example is something like the Chevy Volt, which has a gas powered electric generator to drive the electric motor after the batteries are dead. Burning a gallon of has in a similarly sized care would get you around 25mpg city, the Volt will get ~60mpg when burning gas to generate electricity for the electric motor. Move the electricity generation to a large coal fire plant and even then it is much more efficient than burning gas in your car. Mile for mile you are putting less CO2 into the atmosphere w/ electric cars.
And this is where electric cars really let us down. For, you see, that 'Transportation' cost carries with it a large portion of over-the-road trucks. And as far as I know, there are no plans of replacing those with battery-powered beauties any time soon.
So, if you want to make money you've just got an idea here. Trucks are actually suited quite perfectly for electric motors and nobody seems to build electric trucks. Well, you'd need to reduce power needs (trucks are usually really bad in the aerodynamic department) and make sure you have both the range and (since it won't be enough) the infrastructure for recharging. There's surely money waiting here for those who want to pull this trough. Could easily be the next boom.
It's not so simple. There are also inefficiencies in transporting gasoline to you, not just electricity. And there are large regional variations in how dirty your power supply is. I attended a talk by an energy engineering professor last year who was doing a detailed analysis of this issue for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He found that if you live in some states, PHEVs are a net win, and in others a net loss (in terms of CO2 emissions). He didn't look at pure EVs, but if PHEVs are a net win in some states I would expect EVs to be as well.
The lesson: if you want to get an electric vehicle, check your electricity source as well as you driving habits. (Hybrid electrics like the Prius don't come ahead, economically speaking, unless you do a lot of city driving, because they don't use the electric motor enough.) Someone needs to build a good CO2 emissions calculator that lets you input this information and estimate (a) their net change in CO2 emissions if they were to get this car vs. another one, and (b) the net time to recoup the extra costs in fuel savings over an equivalent non-electric vehicle.
Oh? Why is it California (which everyone associates with "greenies") uses mostly hydro and natural gas? Please count how many coal plants there are. You may have to strain a bit because they're buried by the avalanche of cleaner types of power. Blame your own state's government for putting coal power online.
Stay informed, my friend.
You can save considerable doing your solar install if you do the bulk of the work yourself. I mean a lot, I wouldn't be surprised at all if anything you got quoted was like 40% labor. There's only a few parts that require a licensed electrician. (I have helped put in two big systems and did all of my own small system) As to your current electric bill, unless you have a signed contract from your supplier guaranteeing the price you pay now for the next 30 years, you can't compare it to a solar install which does give you such a contract. You can hope your bill won't go up drastically, but that's about it.
As to your car, good luck. Get a diesel that gets good mileage, or one of the better gasoline cars from the 80s that get better mileage than even hybrids now. I got a smallish diesel (pickup) last year used for really cheap, although it is a rat, it was the best I could find in my area for sale. My next project though will be pure electric (another small pickup, I'll do a conversion) for local driving into town, (I don't have to commute so once a week is fine, 40 mile range is fine, and I will keep it charged from my existing solar panels) then I will put a fuel generator in a trailer or in the bed (maybe, batteries suck down the weight)for longer trips. That solves the range problem quite easily, plus, having a decent generator is good back up emergency power for your home anyway, just a good thing to have.
As to rebates or tax credits, too many variables state to state to say yes or no, but the feds still have a 2 grand tax credit. Not a lot, but at least it beats nothing. Do a google search and check your individual state, they really vary a lot, some are quite generous. but heck ya I think we should have them, much better tax credits would get solar adopted faster and help with the overall long range energy issues, plus home installations are decentralized, meaning we don't need to expand the existing expensive powergrid network.
The cheapest way to start to go alternative energy is to drop demand. Sounds weird, but just getting really good energy efficient appliances and making sure your home is more than adequately insulated, etc, helps a lot.
Personally though I draw the line at compact fluorescents, I detest them things. I am holding out for cheaper LED lighting. We save in other ways like we get by without expensive AC here in georgia because we picked out our little cabin because it sits under really decent shade meaning we can get by with a few window fans and it has it's own water supply from a well, we have a woodstove hookup and that is our primary heat, and the huge garden spot cuts the food bills drastically, that and we raise our own beef. Nothing like "locally sourced" for a lot of your day to day necessities to cut the bills!
If you want to look at examples of self powered homes that also power the family car, just for some ideas and they are cool anyway, you can check out this for some working examples.
Hydrogen cannot explode by itself, it needs oxygen and an ignition source.
I've heard that you can get oxygen very easily (and cheap too!), some would say it's growing on trees!
-Kz-
A great example is drying clothes, it produces heat and takes lots of electricity. During the summer, this makes your A/C run more to balance the heat when people are already consuming the most electricity out of the whole year.
There is so much wrong with this sentence it's difficult to know where to start....
Pro tips: * Try a clothesline * Try closing the door of the rooom the dryer is in so the AC doesn't have to try and counteract it.
Even easier, move your thermostat out of your laundry room?
I'm not not licking toads.
switzerland is most definitely involved on the world stage in partisan ways. think about where all the bad guys in the world store their money. think about swiss drug policy's effect on drug trafficking. think about swiss immigration policy as it affects migrants. etc., etc., etc. you just don't notice these bad things because switzerland is tiny
also the usa does actually do good on the world stage. china and russia do good too on the world stage. but the good any of them do doesn't get as much press attention
and the european union throws its weight around too, and will throw it around more: its just a matter of size. the only countries that look good in comparison to the usa/ china/ russia are the tiny ones. and they do evil things too, but the countries are tiny, so the evil they do is tiny too, and so you don't notice it
not being involved on the world stage is an impossibility for a country the size of the usa (or china or russia). actually not being involved on the world stage is an impossibility for any country. you can't hide an elephant in a dorm room
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Residential would also be an easy target for reduction if by residential you are talking about heating? If so there are loads of different ways that are all better and cheaper (like heat pumps for example)
You must be referring to our complete dependence on Saudi Arabian coal.
--Richard
Do you realize that the average American spends about 60 cents/mile paying for the car, maintenance, license fees, etc. and only about 13 cents/mile in putting gas in the tank?
I would argue that most people stand to gain a lot more by buying a car that costs less up front and less to maintain than they would ever gain in buying just because it's more fuel-efficient. If it's about cost, that's where you can start.
Don't give me this nonsense that people can't afford gas, the fact is they can't afford expensive cars (and they buy them anyway) and gasoline is a minor player in the 'highway economy' of the United States.
i never said it wasn't
the crazy part is you saying that american involvement is the deciding factor. americna involvement is a tiny minor nondecisive factor. i mean, what about the europeans? what do they want? how are they invovled? how about other countries afraid of russia in the russian sphere: ukraine, poland: how about what they want, what they are doing in georgia?
i think more important factors in the situation in georgia now is:
1. what georgians want to do
2. resurgent russian imperialism
its as if i told you that all of the problems the usa has with cuba is the fault of russia because the ussr tried to move some missiles there. woudl you believe that? of course the ussr mattered in cuba, of course the ussr was involved. but to say that that ussr involvement was the deciding factor, and completely ignore what cubans want, and completely ignore the history of the usa's involvement in cuba and the caribbean imperialistically, is completely insane
likewise, you want us to ignore what georgians want, and you want us to ignore centuries of russian imperialism in the caucasus
really? what are you smoking? can i have some?
if the usa disappeared into a giant lake tomorrow, and all americans disappeared off the face of the earth, and every mention of the usa in history was scorched from the history books and everyone's mind, what would happen in georgia?
you believe georgians would be in love with russia? you believe russia would smile benevolently on a free caucasus region?
do you believe that? no? then why do you believe anythign americans do is the deciding factor about what happens in the caucasus?
georgians would still be thumbing their nose at russia, because they do that because georgians dislike imperial russia. it has nothing to do with the usa. meanwhile, russia would still be a resurgent imperialist force in the caucasus because of new oil money and a desire to not seem weak anymore after the collapse of the ussr. that has nothing to do with the usa. get it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We do it here in AZ also. it's called time-of-use. In addition the power company here gives you a lower electric rate if your house passes a series of additional inspections for energy efficiency done by the power company.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
what about all the free venezuelan oil that goes into the usa to support anti-bush venezuelan policies?
i'm not going to pretend the usa doesn't like chavez. i'm also not going to pretend the usa doesn't meddle in the internal affairs of caribbean countries. and i'm also not going to pretend gw bush is anything but a retard, and i'd like to see him out of office just as much as chavez
so you owe it to me to stop pretending the usa is the only country in the world that does dirty tricks, you have to stop pretending chavez doesn't fund the farc, you have to stop pretending that every crime you can lay at the doorstep of washington dc does not also fall at the doorstep of caracas
do we have an understanding?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you've merely indicated that the connections of petrodollars to antiwestern jingoism, russian neoimperialism, and saudi wahhabism is from a subsection of the piechart, not the whole piechart
what canada does with its slice of the pie is, god bless canada, nothing like what russia, venezuela, or saudia arabia does with their slices. this is to the eternal credit of canada. it isn't a destruction of my argument about what happens to the other slices of the pie
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Solves a whole lot more than you give it credit for, and I speak from firsthand knowledge. The other posters have effectively rebutted your assertion, so I'll just leave you with my blogs:
Volt914
Electrojeep
And note, I get my electricity from wind power, so zero carbon emissions from my conversions.
Imagine that a car was a free software computer program... Some people plays with free software in their spare time... But can everybody modify a computer program, or would some, if not most, be better of paying someone else to do it? :)
:)
- Now a programming analogy about cars on slashdot, that's not something you see everyday
Ontopic: People plays with cars everywhere not just in the US... And it's not going to even remotely touch the environmental issues... All it can do is make the stupid crowed that reads about it believe that government regulations are not necessary...
BTW: Don't take the "stupid crowed"-thing personal, IMO the crowed is just always stupid
1. I would appreciate some sources for those efficiency numbers, as I'm pretty sure your numbers for grid and conversion losses are way high.
2. Car batteries are a prominent example of a highly successful recycling program. the recycle rate for lead-acid car batteries is over 90% and I fail to see why this would be significantly different for the larger packs used in hybrids/EVs.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
No cause coal is seriously bad shit... Especially if you don't reuse the waste heat for warming houses... Which is not the case many places in the world..
Of course one could argue that powerplants are more efficient than cars...
"There are a myriad of other problems that arise, 10 years down the line you'll need a new set of batteries and what do you do with the old ones?"
Recycle them and buy a newfangled set that doubles your range? That's what I'm thinking...
.
How many of those "heroes" are there?
It is no less necessary I think to ask where they are.
"It never rains in southern California."
But in the northeast oil remains an important source of heat in winter - and winter driving demands endurance and horsepower.
In the central and mountain states, distances can be daunting.
Lithium Ion Goped's now available! 31 mile range! Clean, silent and 10 cents a charge!
http://www.goped.com/
and you can have regenerative braking.
I agree with everything you said - and I'm sure this is just a matter of time - but regenerative braking really doesn't help. It's marketing fluff. Only in the most stop and go situations (think mail delivery truck) does the power generated from the braking exceed the power used by the additional weight of the apparatus. But, again, I'm sure it's just a matter of time for the efficiencies to increase.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
The Columbia River generates a huge amount of hydroelectric power, but it's somewhat unique as it falls much faster than most rivers with similar volumes. I think there are more than 40 dams on the entire river system.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
NY Times Story
Autoweek Story
PhysOrg Story
If the NY Times story doesn't come up from the link, just search Google for Nissan electric car and you'll be able to read it.
if by explodes, you mean burns really fast (as opposed to detonate, like TNT) then what exactly do you think happens inside the cylinders of an gasoline engine? Gasoline in liquid form burns (quickly), gasoline in vapor form explodes (burns REALLY quickly) bigger & badder than hydrogen.
Flour will explode, too, if you have he right Flour/O2 mixture and an ignition source, but I'm still making chocolate cake when I get home.
-- D-23994, Muff#2613
My electricity is nuclear and my BBQ is natural gas..
Oh yeah? In my neighborhood, it's the other way around!
(try my Cs-137 Chili some time - yum!)
"nothing is ever that simple, especially when you throw politics into the mix"
so stop making simple prejudicial assumptions about what i am saying
"your politically charged rhetoric is in-line with that of isolationists"
what you mean by "in-line" is "i've never thought about the issues enough to make a discernment between energy policy and foreign policy"
stop prejudicing me. read what i say. judge me on what i actually say. anything else is prejudice on your part and fails your own litmus test outlined in the comment you just made
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
tiny countries emit tiny amounts of evil. large ones emit large amounts of evil
of course switzerland didn't invade iraq, switzerland is too tiny. that doesn't mean that were switzerland a huge country, it wouldn't do some evil blunder of its own. every single country of enough size has a pretty solid track record of doing evil
so switzerland looks like a saint compared to the usa not because the swiss are saints, but because the swiss aren't allowed to prove they are just as human and prone to failure as americans are. the swiss are too tiny to show they can fail just as bad as the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Electric cars are a huge win there, too. The complex emissions control nightmare that U.S. law requires makes the drive train incredibly failure-prone. Automatic transmissions make them doubly so. Add in the complexity of computer-controlled everything and you have a device that is orders of magnitude more complex than cars were fifty years ago. And people wonder why cars seem to break down more often. It is like using a shiny new computer with monitor and printer where a printer-calculator would do the job. The simpler the device, the less failure-prone it will be.
With electric cars, you have basically four parts: a battery, a bunch of heavy gauge wires, a charge controller, and an electric motor. All of those are generally simple devices except the charge controller. Okay, so there are a few other things like an electrically-powered pump for your power steering and a modified A/C system, but in terms of the drive train itself, you get rid of a lot of crap. You get rid of the internal combustion engine, the computer that controls it, the transmission, potentially the radiator and hundreds of feet of water hoses (that leak), the oil pan (that leaks), the oil hoses (that leak), the fuel pump, most of the vacuum system, the catalytic converter, and the entire exhaust system, all of which are fairly frequent points of failure. Add to that dozens of sensors that no longer apply, including emissions compliance sensors (O2 sensors, catalytic converter temperature sensors, NOx sensors, etc.), axle speed sensors (largely used to verify the transmission is working correctly), vacuum line pressure sensors, etc.
The result is that electric cars are much less likely to fail mechanically. Much less. In fact, one could reasonably argue that the reason auto manufacturers are dragging their heels is that, ignoring people who upgrade for appearance reasons or because their old car is too small to meet their needs, people are likely to replace their vehicles much less frequently than they do now. If the average person drives a car for 300,000 miles before they sell it and require no maintenance in the process, a $30,000 car costs only $0.10 per mile average, not counting energy costs. And that's a conservative estimate of EV longevity once we solve the problem of short battery lifespan. There's every possibility you'll have a rust hole where your feet should go before the electric motor or wiring gives out.... :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Crap. Grammar error. If the average person drives a car for 300,000 miles before he/she sells it and it requires no maintenance in the process....
*sigh* Sorry. My bad.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
russia invades georgia, in a few days doing 10,000x worse evil than georgia did with all the american support it could ever have, for all the reasons georgians want
to fight bandits in their own soil
oh, i'm sorry, does that propaganda sound different from your propaganda?
for reasons of russian imperialism that has been going in the caucasus for centuries russia invaded
and...
drum roll please...
you want to criticize the usa for that
amazing
russia crushes a tiny neighbor it has crushed many times before... and you want to criticize the usa?!
amazing, dumbfounding, the way you think
i can't even fathom how your mind works
its like some sort of all consuming obsession. did you date the usa and it dumped you or something? where does this monstruous blinding obsession come from?
"We need a multi-polar world"
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
russia just invaded a tiny neighbor. welcome to the multi-polar world you want. so, now that we have this mutli-polar world, do you stop obsessing about the usa now? (snicker)
probably not. weird stalkers never give up, no matter what reality says
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And what about states where hydro isn't viable but there are vast quantities of cheap coal. Life exists outside of San Fransisco after all. If environmentalists weren't so opposed to nuclear power, there's a pretty good shot many of those plants would be offline.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Nope, they are not 12 volt, some electric cars go up to hundreds of volts because of series connections and in order to get some speed out of them. Even just slow speed golf carts are typically 48 volt with 6-8 volt batteries onboard. If you mean individual batteries, there are a variety of them, no one size fits all has come out to be the clear winner unless you can afford a tesla level battery pack which uses a form of lithium cells, thousands of them.
Also note that volts alone don't kill, it's combination of volts+amps.
Grrr - Not really.
If you had to grip two ends of a power supply would you rather grip the 12V PS with a current capability of 10000 amps or the 1000 V power supply with maximum current of 20 mA ?
hint V=IR where R is your resistance which is usually in the meg ohm region. It takes only a few mA to fry you.
or more accurately: If R1 is your resistance and R2 is the internal resistance of the power supply (approx: R2 = Vps/Ips Vps = open circuit voltage of PS, Ips = current capability of PS) then Vps = I ( R2 + R1) : again current "I" here has to be less than the fry value.
Of course if you had a power supply of many thousands of volts but current level capability is well under the value to interfere with your biological systems (Ven Der Graff (sp?)) generator - well it would be a hair raising experience but thats about it... Such a power source would have not applicability to EV. If there is a possibility of someone coming in contact with the PS, voltages need to be keep below the threshold that would pump more than a couple mA thorough a person. Of course this could be gotten around by having various protections if higher voltages are used.
you said
the "terrorists have all our oil" argument needs to be put in perspective
under my argument
when i obviously did not make that argument
have a nice day
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're citing businesses trying to block alternative approaches.
If you really want to see a mess, take a look at Compressed Natural Gas. Used to be you could convert your truck/car/bus whatever to run on natural gas/gasoline. When you burn natural gas, it burns cleaner than gasoline and is cheaper than gasoline. Right now, CNG is going for under a buck/gallon in Oklahoma, $2.60 in California.
The EPA and the California Air Resources Board, for reasons unexplained, decided to regulate conversion companies out of existence. EPA started out by mandating that companies that manufacture the retro-fit kits get their kits tested for each and every car model it was being installed on. Smog test wasn't good enough, it had to be a special $40,000 EPA test. California, not wanting to be left out, upped the test fee to $300,000. *EVERY* US kit manufacturer threw in the towel on the domestic market. The costs of the testing put the costs of the kits up so high that no one would buy them. The only way the remaining manufacturers stay in business is exporting kits to other regions of the world like Europe and South America. European countries only require that the engine has a regular smog test after the install to verify the kit is properly installed and functioning correctly. If you happen to find a kit, you don't dare install it in California because the cops will confiscate your car.
We have enough domestic natural gas to run every car in the United States for 100 years. We're the Saudi Arabia of natural gas and we can't use it except to cook and make electricity.
It's damn stupid.
Except it's odourless, stored at extremely high pressure (dangerous enough with non-explosives), ignites easier, spreads out from leaks quicker and at higher volumes than petrol vapour.
Also, when Lithium batteries explode, it's due to a build up of hyrdogen that then gets ignited. Hence the big whoosh as the hydrogen ignites followed by the 'slower' burn of the lithium.
For the NiMH battery in the Prius, Toyota says
"Toyota has a comprehensive battery recycling program in place and has been recycling nickel-metal hydride batteries since the RAV4 Electric Vehicle was introduced in 1998. Every part of the battery, from the precious metals to the plastic, plates, steel case and the wiring, is recycled. To ensure that batteries come back to Toyota, each battery has a phone number on it to call for recycling information and dealers are paid a $200 "bounty" for each battery."
Hydrogen electrolysis of water will almost certainly always be less energy efficient than using capacitors for storage. The only reason anybody cares about Hydrogen is that you can get a little bit better energy density right now, but supercapacitors are quickly catching up. Hydrogen is not the answer. It is the question. "No" is the answer. The primary goal of Hydrogen-based power is to keep people dependent on filling stations, not fixing our energy problems or saving consumers money.
Apart from people taking long trips, it offers no advantages over a pure electric system and lots of significant disadvantages, both in terms of producing emissions (H2O is a greenhouse gas, sorry to say) and in terms of inefficiency. Add to that the extra risk of driving around on top of what amounts to a giant bomb (gaseous hydrogen + spark = barbecued passengers), and it just screams "completely wrong answer". Oh, and it is much more complex. The car companies love this idea because that hydrogen power plant is one more part that will wear out, leak, or otherwise require maintenance ($$$) and is likely to cost almost as much as a new car does when it comes time to get it replaced. More money in their pockets, less money in the pockets of consumers.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
That assumes that the H2 is transported as a compressed gas or when the container is breached that the gas is released all at once. If the H2 is part of some matrix then there are other considerations.
It still is likely that it's more environmentally friendly even if the electricity comes from coal plants, because generating power centrally in large amounts is going to be more efficient than having millions of little emissions-producing power plants.
This space available.
That's not what you will see in a car, though. If you have to break up a chemical bond, you're losing a huge chunk of the energy you will produce from the Hydrogen, and depending on the process used, it could actually be net energy negative.... All of the car prototypes I've heard of are using high pressure hydrogen with the exception of cars that are using gasoline reformers (and thus store the hydrogen in the form of gasoline).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You lose a lot of power in the hydrogen generation, that's true, but batteries and power lines aren't especially efficient either. I'm not sure which one would best/most practical though.
The conversion of electricity to hydrogen, then back to electricity, is about 25% efficient, and I'm not even counting the penalty for compressing or otherwise storing the hydrogen gas. For batteries, it's something like 85%. Basically, you need around 4x the electricity (from your solar panels or the grid or whatever) to run your car on hydrogen than you will with batteries. The prospects for hydrogen improving significantly on that seem slim.
True, hydrogen can get better energy density, so for applications that really need it, such as airplanes, ocean liners, or big trucks, it may ultimately be the way to go -- but in that realm, it's chief competitor is biodiesel and/or ethanol, not batteries.
For regular cars, 90% of the fleet's needs will be met with even modest batteries such as what the Chevy Volt will have. Arranging that in a hybrid setup eliminates the range issue completely -- and leverages the current refueling structure, as well. Ultimately that will translate into biofuels serving as the range-extender, but by then battery capacities may rise to the point where hybrids are no longer needed anyways. If not, then hydrogen may start to become a player -- but again, this is as a competitor to biofuels, not to batteries.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
Fast-charging battery tech is certainly a possibility, but the faster the charging, the shorter the life of the battery tends to be. By contrast, supercapacitors can also charge up in seconds but have no such limitations about lifespan. And unlike those batteries you're talking about, they can scale up to vehicle sizes today. For all practical purposes, charge speed with supercaps is more likely to be limited by the amount of power the grid can provide. :-)
Either way, though, the argument about recharge times made sense ten years ago when lead-acid batteries were the norm, but doesn't make sense in light of modern technological advances.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I've never thought of Canada as a regime. I'm pretty sure that what little oil America buys abroad it gets from Canada.
Canada leads, but Saudi Arabia is close behind. Notably, Venezuela is fourth on the list.
Do get me wrong, I like honda (only the bikes though), but I just hate FWD cars.
Now I am sure some of you will start ranting about how much safer an FWD car is, I still hope that there are /. people who will go back to logical reasoning as opposed to "safer because we can make it cheaper" car manufacturer propaganda.
There are a bunch of Miata (Mazda MX-5) electric projects, and I can understand it. Car people understand why all sports cars (real ones) are RWD, why BMW, Mercedes and (most?) Lexus cars are exclusively RWD, and why oversteer is a lot better than understeer, not even mentioning autox-ers and drifters who would not look at an FWD.
So why a Civic ? Really?
Just for the record, I drive an old (95) BMW, as I found that it was the only reasonably priced RWD car around here (besides Mercedes, which is just not my style ( I think most models are for old people who like comfortable big cars ...)
I would better change it to a 86 toyota or Nissan 240 (RWD), then drive a brand new honda, toyota, or any FWD crap.
... all viable H2 systems store it in a chemical bond, not 'just' compressed gas.
I assume you're talking about the metal hydrides or some such, not, say, gasoline, which stores more hydrogen per unit volume in its chemical bonds than even liquid hydrogen.
Please point to one such storage system that is (a) proven, and (b) gets anywhere near the energy density that would be viable for use in an automobile. Hell, give me one that even approaches the performance of Li-ion batteries.
All of the hydrogen prototype cars I've ever heard of use compressed-gas tanks for storage. There was a Honda, I think, that claimed some 600mi of range with such a setup.
In terms of safety: with a compressed-gas setup, there is one important safety issue that I can think of: the fact that a leak could be ignited, and yet totally invisible. So if your car's H2 tank has some kind of small puncture, enough to send out a jet for a few feet, and that somehow gets lit, you may not notice it until your foot catches on fire when you walk past your car.
With gasoline, at least you know when it's on fire!
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
EVs give you the possibility of getting your energy from some source other than crude. Petrol/Diesel-powered cars don't. It's not the whole solution, but it's part of it. It's also nice to remove the immediate pollution from city streets to out-of-town locations where it can disperse. And the smaller amount of noise is nice too. There's something peaceful about the cafe-lined neighbourhoods in San Francisco that have trolleybuses purring along instead of their louder (and smokier) diesel equivalents.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Dude. 1kw/m2 is 100% efficiency at noon at the mid-latitudes. Given efficiency losses, you will see 0.25kw/m2 and that's just not a hell of a lot of power even on a huge car (which takes MORE POWER to drive) with 3m2 of (really expensive and fragile!) solar cells.
Cars need DOZENS of kw to accelerate and at least a few kw to run reasonably at highway speeds. You're only solving 10% to 25% of the problem - at best - with solar.
Moving the power supply from a polluting/global warming hydrocarbon fuel tank + engine to a battery that stores energy derived from a huge infrastructure we already own is a BIG WIN. We can expand and improve that infrastructure incrementally (making it greener, etc.) as we go, not only making this world's growth rate POSSIBLE but also avoiding the obvious downside of killing our planetary economy through infinite wait + global warming + oil/(stupid)ethanol/biofuel silliness.
More to the point, any reduction in bureaucracy that does not compromise safety but that does remove barriers that are not designed to protect but merely to thwart are most welcome.
Perhaps. But once you have a whole lot more electrical vehicles on the road, you move from millions and millions of fossil fuel-burning engines to tens of thousands of fossil fuel-burning power plants. Then you just need to replace old coal power plants that are no longer operating efficiently with new solar, wind, or nuclear power plants.
What? Were you thinking this would all happen in a year or two?
>This has given me roughly 4 hours a day back to me instead of driving.
People underestimate the value of this. I don't understand why.
For me, it was worth $60,000 of home value (25%!)
Others don't value their own lives so much.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
i live in NZ and not only do they not even make cars here, i can't even import an electric vehicle. i've been looking for a while, but with no joy.
i've even talked to a manufacturer in India (Reva) and although they say it's been "approved" for sale in the UK, they refused to supply the certificates. w/o any proof, i can't get approval for even a private import into NZ.
Mark Smith
If you must have a SUV or large truck or van then I suggest looking into a compressed natural gas vehicle. They're especially a money saver for businesses that have whole fleets of vehicles that move a lot. I wish more fueling stations would offer CNG as an option but if you have the money ($5000+ depending on the model) you can fuel from home (or the corporate parking lot) using something like the FuelMaker Phill. Probably to much for the average home owner but not bad for businesses. Kind of a geek toy too I think - be the first on your block with your own CNG fueling station (woot).
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The difference between what you're describing, and what conservatives (myself included) "scoff" at, like global warming caused exclusively by CO2, is that the things that you are describing are tangible, and putting measures in place to deal with them will have an actual, justifiable impact. My problem with environmentalists is that I find them almost completely ineffectual.
For example, in my state environmentalists pushed through legislation that would require new gas cans to resist evaporation. At first glance, this may seem like a good idea, gasoline is expensive and I don't want to lose any of it. The cans accomplish this by having a self-sealing spout and no secondary venting holes. The problem is that because there is no exterior venting, when the can is initially raised and the spout pressed open, the air and fuel attempt to rush past each other causing fuel to shoot everywhere. Since I use my can in a marine application, this causes many ounces of fuel to spill directly in the water. I'm not sure how much fuel was evaporating from the can before, and I'm not an environmental scientist, but I would be willing to bet that the evaporation is a hell of a lot better for the environment than dumping half a quart of fuel directly into the river. I'm sure there are some environmentalists somewhere that are balls deep in an orgy of self-satisfaction over the whole mess, while I had to have a "non-environmentally friendly" banned can shipped to a friend out of state, who in turn shipped it to me, solving my problem.
I tend to view environmentalists the same way I view the people on my homeowners association. They're not necessarily bad people, they're just looking for a way to feel important, and environmentalism happens to be their outlet. I just wish that the movement possessed and ounce of foresight. If they had, we'd probably have a lot more clean, efficient, cheap nuclear plants online today.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Good thought progression, but I do need to ask: How does your analysis run when you replace the Coal Plant with the Nuclear Power plant? Shouldn't the longevity of Nuclear Power Plants help to stabilize rising energy costs while using any form of petroleum only depletes world supplies more, thus driving energy costs higher, faster?
Mal: "So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave."
Right, but then there's the whole air conditioning/heating situation which most EV proponents forget to mention. 40 miles goes WAY down when you're cooling your vehicle.
What is your agenda? I can't figure anyone would spread such misinformation. Where did you get it? Do you actually believe it?
The air conditioner in our EV uses 600 watts. (Actually it cycles on and off while running, so the average load is certainly lower.) Compared to a typical road load of 20,000 watts, the 600-watt cooling load gets lost in the noise. It's barely measurable.
We have a 4000 watt water heater in our car. Compared to the 20kW road load, it's certainly noticeable but not a big deal. EVs will eventually gravitate toward heat pumps, which will provide heating and cooling for the same 600-800 watt load.
The real point that you're missing (it is rock solid obvious that you're not an EV driver) is that, regardless of the heating and cooling, the car always takes you where you need to go, so you stop thinking and worrying about it. You never need to stop for gas; you simply wake up with a full "tank" every morning, ready for another 100-plus miles.
Stop being an apologist for your gasoline addiction. If you want to bash EVs, pick a legitimate criticism: they're still very expensive and have limited availability.
Even if the electric companies try to inflate their prices, we'd be better off with two viable energy sources for cars. The gas and electric guys would be forced to compete with each other, and not so likely to increase their prices just because they can.
I think you should stick to things you actually know something about. Computers and sensors have actually simplified the engine control system considerably. In fact, well-engineered cars are insanely reliable devices. Usually, the engine and the transmission are the two most reliable components. Most of what REALLY limits the lifespan of a car is the bodywork/paint, interior, and electrical systems. There are many cars that are over 500,000 miles with the original engine/transmission. It's just that most people choose to get rid of their cars before they get that old, simply because they no longer look too good.
I doubt the motor controllers will last much longer than 10 years, on average. They all use large electrolytic capacitors, which don't last that long. In general, complex high-power electronics is not too reliable. If you do make that reliable, you still have the issue of batteries, which will certainly last less than 10 years in any EV. In all likelihood, an EV will be much more expensive to own than a gas-powered car.
Throw it in a dump, of course
Burning a gallon of has in a similarly sized care would get you around 25mpg city, the Volt will get ~60mpg when burning ...
I think that, similar to electric recharge stations, we won't see this sort of technology take off until a large number of gas stations in the US are also offering hasoline.
I'm not sure how SF figures into this. Ya know, life exists outside of hating SF. The point was to rebut the notion of "greenies" wanting coal.
The fact that they don't is lost on you. But nice strawman anyway.
Economics of Kensington's (RTFA) home built EV.
That $2000 set of lead acid batteries taking our friend Kensington 20 miles/charge is only good for 500 charge/discharge cycles or 10,000 miles. He's paying 20 cents/mile for batteries. Add the cost of the electricity(without regenerative braking) to this and we're closer to 30 cents/mile or 3.33 miles per dollar. At $10/gallon for gas a 34 mile per gallon vehicle has him beat. At $4/gallon, a 13 mpg vehicle has him beat.
I believe you're over-generalizing what "greenie" is. I used the entire state of CA as an example. You tend to think that SF's borders extend to Oregon, Nevada, and Mexico as far as policy, and you forget that CA also has deeply conservative regions. Where do you think Reagan and Nixon came from?
The power generation options you conveniently left out are natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal. Your state can't provide any of that? You'd rather pollute with coal for short-term gains than explore other options? It sounds like you are gung-ho about nuclear, which is fine except you're blind to all the other options. Nuclear *by itself* will not solve your power issues, because peak demand is what causes problems and a nuclear plant can't easily respond to large fluctuations. Overbuilding a nuclear plant is wasteful and too costly as all the capacity will be unused at non-peak. You can fire up another hydro/gas turbine much quicker than you can fire up another reactor. You need base power as well as peak power.
Your advocacy of nuclear for everything is just as specious as those who completely oppose nuclear power. Would you like it if I lumped you into a group called "glowies" as those who only want nuclear?
Plus, the implications of pursuing EVs are enormous, for example: biofuels can be grown from algae on coal power plant exhaust. I'm sure it could be done in the outfall of nuclear power plants, too. After all, who cares if the algae is irradiated?
Wait, what? 'outfall from nuclear power plants'!? ...You do know that those giant towers you see by nuclear power plants with the steam rising from them are cooling towers. They contain water. The only 'outfall' from an NPP is the radioactive waste. Which isn't spewed into the air. At all. It's all put in big heavy containers and shipped to storage areas. [Or more often, placed in a storage location on-site.]
The only place Algae could be irradiated would be in the primary cooling system that comes into direct contact with the nuclear fuel. Even so, you don't want algae in there, or any other part of the cooling system - since they could clog it up and cause problems. This of course ignores all the power plants that don't even use water as their coolant.
If you go out and buy a new car, don't expect to have to change the oil for 7000 miles, and don't expect to have to do anything other than change the tires, fluids, and wiper inserts up to about 70000. Any decently made car nowadays will not run into the ground until well over 200000 miles. Engines are way tougher than they used to be, they are cast better and tooled *way* better with automation. Let's not even get into all the computer systems will do for you that a car 20 years ago would most certainly not.
Greenies are so afraid of nuke plants that they blocked any being built for quite some time.
Blocked in part because the glowies were blind to the problems of the reactors at the time and the problems of scalding hot water discharge that destroyed the surrounding water ecosystems, as well as the fishkill from the intakes. And there was always the issue of cost -- states would rather build coal plants because it had cheaper rates! Much on those fronts has been solved today, but a lot of that resistance was well-founded. Now that nuclear is becoming more responsible and more mature, you'll see (and are seeing) less resistance.
>I can't wait until somebody finally gets around to making a full EV car that
>seats two with ABS and Airbags, PS, Heat and AC, even if it only goes 100 miles.
>If they can do it under $25k I'm there with cash in hand.
This, of course, is the big problem.
What The People want is a commuter car. They are willing to sacrifice on range and amenities, BUT they are going to expect the PRICE to be less for that sacrifice. Basically they are going to expect motorcycle prices for what amounts to a covered motorcycle.
But the car companies don't want to sell $10-$20K cars. The profit margins aren't nearly as nice as on $30-$40K SUVs and trucks.
Now you might say that the car companies will simply keep the prices artificially high. The problem here is that the barrier of entry to get into this micro-car business is not so high anymore. There are several EV car manufacturers getting off the ground now that are primed to hit this small commuter car market.
If the big car companies don't get with the program very fast, they are going to get their lunch eaten.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
And how efficient is transferring the electricity across the grid to your house so you can charge your batteries?
It's well over 90%. And it will improve as the new HVDC trunk lines are built out.
Furthermore, you obviously wouldn't generate the hydrogen yourself at home, but rather get it at some filling station like today (unlike with batteries which would be difficult to refill within a minute at a "recharging station").
So what? Hydrogen will still use 4x the resource of a straight battery charge, for essentially no benefit over a hybrid setup. An incredible waste.
Again, as a source of range-extending energy within a hybrid setup, hydrogen may eventually prove viable, but only as a means to displace biofuels for that purpose. I did some calcs, showing the mileage yield from a solar installation creating hydrogen to be about 10x that of the best-case cellulosic ethanol, for the same land area. But batteries easily beat it as the primary mover of autos and light trucks (and eventually heavy trucks too, I expect).
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
we just load it up and have them run at 2am
pfffft, amateur. When my family found out about the low off-peak electric costs my siblings transferred to night school and my parents transferred to the night shift at work. Now we all sleep during the day when the power is pricey. Using computers, tvs and everything else at night has cut our electric bill to a THIRD of what it was!
What I need is an electric motor that weighs less than 125 lbs, and will put out 100 hp at 2500 RPM. Then I could build a decent light sport electric airplane!
"hundreds of feet of water hoses (that leak), "
I defy you to find a car with hundreds of feet, or even 50 feet, of water hose. :)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
My BBQ is all wood, usually either hickory, or a mix of hickory and mesquite.
Or, were you talking about a 'grill'? A different beast from a BBQ pit/smoker, which is low and slow cooking.
My grill is charcoal. A bit more of a PITA than a gas grill, but, worth it for the flavor.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Over time the lessened demand for oil used by cars will cause the cost of the trucker's oil to go up
So, as the supply of petroleum available for diesel increases because cars are no longer using gasoline, the price also increases? That's not the way it works, it goes against the MOST basic economic principle, the law of supply and demand. As the demand decreases and the supply increases the price for diesel will go down, not up.
This will have the side effect of controlling inflation on food and manufactured goods -- as we are seeing right now, if the price of diesel increases we feel it quickly in the prices of things that are primarily carried by truck. If we convert just our private and fleet autos to electric we can easily supply the remaining demand (trucks, trains, jet fuel, heating oil, oil power plants, etc.) with our domestic production and not incur the huge trade imbalance that we are currently experiencing.
Enigma
That and you lose the fun of a manual transmission, and the sound of a well tuned exhaust note.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or, were you talking about a 'grill'? A different beast from a BBQ pit/smoker, which is low and slow cooking.
Nope. I mean I have a natural gas barbecue. Stainless. Only the US has a distinction between a grill and a BBQ - I'm not American.
Here both 'grills' and wood BBQs are called BBQs and 'grill' is typically a verb - eg. 'I grilled the chicken on the barbecue'
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
If it were cheaper to run your dryer after 10PM, why wouldn't you wait, reduce the load on the grid and the load on your A/C? "
Well...my dryer is gas.
But as far as doing it at night? Well, it would be a bitch to have to wake up 2-3 times a night to change loads....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What is hasoline? The Chevy Volt is a production vehicle slated for release in 2010. It requires _no_ new infrastructure. You plug it in at home for 40 miles of pure electric drive-time, and when your batteries are dead a gasoline power generator kicks in to run the electric motor. It truly is a transition car. Its like you didn't even read my post and just cut-and-pasted a response. Tell me, did you get it off of johnmccain.com?
My dad invested in a small electric car company in the late 70's. My sister was the model they used in the brochure photos. It never took off though. It was fun to ride in, barely made a sound. Can't say he didn't try. Our family has a dismal record with entrepreneurial projects. They are usually interesting projects, future-looking, but we don't have the knack for timing and/or marketing.
Oil dropped in price in the 80's, killing the market. I imagine the same thing might happen again due to unforeseen world events, such as an Asian recession and/or governmental crisis in China.
Table-ized A.I.
read the italicized portion of gp's post more closely.... he was making a joke about hasoline. dont overreact.
Your argument stipulates that he was going to purchase a new vehicle anyway, rather than going out and buying a new one that contained the batteries and engine, which we SHOULD assume he bought specifically for this conversion because the article stated $12,000 included the cost of the truck. Even if he bought it new and spent $5,000 for the conversion, there's still the original MSRP for the truck, plus the cost of paying off the interest in the loan, but THAT can be more successfully argued as not being incorporated into the cost of conversion. Buying a vehicle for a conversion is still part of the cost of the conversion.
Also, EVs won't require a radiator.
The result is that electric cars are much less likely to fail mechanically.
This is one of the reasons why the mainstream car manufacturers won't want to support EVs.
1. They make a ton of money selling parts. If EVs become popular, this revenue will dry up considerably. Also take into consideration the fact that vibration and heat contribute considerably to wear and tear on the parts. EVs have much less vibration and heat in the engine compartment which means that the parts will last longer. The car companies are pretending that EVs are complex machines by spouting all kinds of statistics about the "complex" power storage techniques, battery technology etc. So they price the cars very high stating that the batteries are very expensive.
But this is not really a big problem to solve. The batteries can be easily switched over when the owner of the car has the money to afford cheaper/lighter/more efficient batteries sometime in the future.
2. The service and support infrastructure (mechanics, service stations) will all lose money if EVs become popular. Even an oil change becomes unnecessary. Car companies have invested a lot of money in setting up their cars so that they can only be serviced by "authorized" service personnel who have the equipment which can interface with the car's proprietary control interface. All this becomes redundant if EVs become popular.
3. Automobile companies pride themselves on their engines which are difficult to replicate exactly and reuse between different models and even brands unless the person(s) making this modification have considerable experience and skill.
However in the case of EVs, the electric motors are fairly easy to reuse between different models and even brands. So if my 2008 EV has a motor which has a certain power rating, I can easily change to a motor with a different power rating or some other characteristic sometime in the future when this motor becomes available. It won't take very long to make this modification and it will also be reasonably simple to do.
Car companies won't want this to happen - they would prefer that you went in for a completely new car instead of purchasing just an updated part.
So in a sense, EVs reduce the car industry to makers of chassis, frame and panels and the basic drive train, steering, lights etc. This is not what a car company would want.
You forgot diesel-electric locomotives.
Clearly you don't. The simplest definition would be that your rights end at my nose. Or to put it another way a Libertarian is very likely to support the logic of emmision controls that work because you DONT have the right to produce nox that I (a libertarian) might be forced to breath to my detriment. As a libertarian this also means that I don't care to impose my will unduly on your wallet, and I am wholly uninterested in what you do in your bedroom. Libertarianism is practically the definition of logic. It is the antidote to the Red / Blue stupidity which has consumed this country.
Here in Oregon, at least, most of our electricity already comes from hydropower. But even if that were not the case, electric transportation still does good things for the environment. It shifts pollution away from population centers, potentially reducing the short-term health impact. It prepares consumers for accepting lighter, more efficient vehicles. And most importantly, limited adoption by forward-thinking consumers is the first step toward cracking the Catch-22 of not having the infrastructure in place to support electric vehicles. Nobody's going to have a financial incentive to build those green power plants and electric "gas stations" until there's a significant demand. And as an employee of a shop that primarily sells electric bikes and scooters, I'm glad to say that demand is soaring. Progressive cities like Portland are creating the markets that are going to change the world.
Got sources for any of those outrageous claims?
If you are interested in the electric car scene, check out this website with all the individual conversions, there's a lot of them, from lawn tractors to commuter cars to sportscars to full size trucks, scooters, e-bikes, you name it, it's been converted. EV Album
I never said anything about batteries. Supercapcitors are clearly the best choice for energy storage. They don't suffer from the failure rate of batteries, charge much faster, and are quickly approaching the same capacity.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I have this itch to build a alow autonomous electric vehicle.
The missing components I need are a series of data structures and layers so I can make a connection from points on a google map to a data structure describing the next 50 feet of roadway or highway shoulder that my vehicle is going to traverse.
The thing that is true for all the autonomous vehicle concepts is: most of the problem is finding a complete open source software stack.
Right now i have these components. These things just cry out for a "Do something interesting with this stuff."
-- I have a salvaged junk electric wheelchair that works. The signals from the joystick appear on a single 10 or 12 pin plug.
---I have a GPS that makes track data. I can convert the track data to google maps .kml overlays.
---I have an (old) laptop with a USB web cam, usb input for the GPS, and a high power wireless 802g.11 networking card. It runs Ubuntu beautifully.
--- The wheelchair pulls 2 to 5 kilowatts when running at 6.5 miles per hour top speed. (It is real hard to hold an ammeter over the battery lead while driving down the street!)
--- A 100 watt peak solar panel runs $800. So the charge -to- run ratio is 20:1 to 50:1.
--- The job for the wheelchair is to fetch a bag of groceries I ordered by email.
--- Of course, the same little heap of computer stuff can be dropped into any converted vehicle. If you stick to a low power and low speed performance model, then the main problem is simply coming up with an open source software stack and an open, extensible set of data structures.
A modern car is more efficient and runs smoother. It is NOT simpler in its construction. A carburetor is pretty mind-bogglingly simple compared with computer-controlled fuel injection. It either works or it doesn't, and when it doesn't, you're not sitting there trying to figure out which damned vacuum line is clogged causing the engine to run lean. Likewise, manual transmissions are so much simpler than automatic transmissions that any suggestion to the contrary qualifies as delusional thinking. Ask anyone with a Ford Windstar what they think of transmission reliability. Ask anybody who has gone through three computers in their Chevy pickup what they think. There are simply way more things that can and do go wrong with a modern engine without abusing it.
In the old days, if something went wrong with an engine, it ran rough or misfired once in a while. If a mechanical distributor went bad, odds were you lost a cylinder once in a while. Nowadays, when the computer or the electronic distributor goes haywire, you don't get spark on any cylinder. Instead of a simple carburetor in which your foot controls the mix of air and fuel, you have this computer doing the controlling, and if one of those vacuum lines gets a bit clogged, You die every time you take the foot off the gas. And so on.
No, those sensors and fancy electronics do not make cars simpler. They make repair somewhat simpler so that people can diagnose many problems without actually having to learn anything about how the vehicles work. That's not the same thing as making the vehicle actually simpler. Further, making diagnosis easier actually means that when something goes wrong that the computer can't explain, you have people with no real car repair knowledge whatsoever standing around with dumb looks on their faces not being able to figure out how to find a low temperature leak in a metal water line just under part of the intake manifold shroud. Five days.
A motor controller does not necessarily need any electrolytic capacitors. There are designs for PWM-based controllers that do not use any capacitors. Here's one.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
By 70,000 miles, my Ford Windstar had already had to have the intake torn down and cleaned due to a flawed valve cover design sucking oil through the EGR hose (emissions control crap) clogging the vacuum lines, causing the computer to adjust the fuel mixture incorrectly and show a Check Engine light. The overdrive off light started blinking periodically due to a solenoid problem in the automatic transmission. It also had a faulty switch on the air conditioner that caused the rear air to randomly turn on and off. Several replaced bulbs. Recall for something wrong with the fan controller for the rear heat or something, recall for overheating wiper motor, recall for two or three other things. Problem with the suspension system causes a rubber boot to rub against something under there and make noise. Oh, and then there was the fuel line that blew off the back of the fuel filter while I was driving down the road. I'm sure if I thought about it long enough, I could list plenty of other problems.
Okay, so maybe that qualifies it as not a "decently made car", but nearly 100% of the problems I've had with my vehicle stem from actual problems with the drive train, and the bulk of those stem from emissions control hardware.
Don't tell me these modern engines are a dream. They can be great, but so could engines 20 years ago. The difference is that now there are a lot more things that can go wrong because of all the complexity of the emissions control system, and that when things go wrong, they often go cataclysmically wrong.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little bit.... That said, it depends on whether you have a van with rear air. Some systems may use freon for heat and air---not sure---but some of have a complete heater core back in the back. In a 15-passenger fan, that's about 25 feet of water hose each way by itself---about 20 feet for the length plus a little extra to reach the heater core, which I assume is in the ceiling. So in that case, you'd have on the order of fifty feet before you even count whatever length of hose is under the hood. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
When a petrol tank leaks, it drips out, and is very difficult to ignite. When a hydrogen tank leaks, it fires out at high pressure, and lights very very easily. Hydrogen leaks very easily btw.
The conversion in the article maintained the drive train, presumably in a dedicated electric car you would have motors mounted directly to the wheels reducing the weight of the vehicle by replacing the transmission, differential and propeller shafts with batteries and wires.
Further by implementing regenerative braking (such as that used on electric trains) you could recover energy and recharge the batteries increasing the efficiency of the vehicle whilst reducing the unsprung weight (i.e the car handles better). Placement of the batteries would also assist in the weight distribution of the vehicle producing cars that are more streamlined and have a better drag co-efficient. Controllers smart enough to recognise wheel spin and compensate and there you have traction control.
A major benefit would be that you would have three other motors available if one broke down AND they would be nicer to work on without dirty grease and oil. I haven't seen any major increase in fuel efficiency in combustion engines for a long time and if they were twice as fuel efficient then there would be an incentive to keep buying them when fuel is twice as expensive. I am fairly certain the the price of fuel is going to continue to increase so electric cars just keep on looking better and better.
I wish I had one.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Where's that 60 cents coming from? That implies well over a hundred thousand dollars in your average car's lifespan.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
I have a feeling these myths are going to be around for a long time :P
You still don't have me convinced. The fact is that batteries have to get a whole whole whole WHOLE lot better before they are reliable
You've never used LiP before, have you? LiP, stabilized spinels, titanates, SCiB, etc, are all good for thousands of cycles, many years, and operation at temperatures ranging from well below zero to hotter than it ever gets on Earth in normal conditions. They can take abuse like it's going out of style.
These are not the batteries of ten years ago.
and compact enough to compare to the energy density and ease of use of gasoline.
In a typical car, batteries don't compete for size and weight with gasoline. They compete with the ICE and all of its support systems. Electric motors are small and lightweight. It's a case of one side having a heavy drivetrain and a light fuel, while the other has a light drivetrain and heavy fuel. Yes, gasoline vehicles still win in this regard, but the competition isn't as far off as it used to be, and the next gen batteries should be pretty much breakeven if not better.
Charging has to get a lot faster
You've never heard of Level 3 charging, have you? Ranges from a couple dozen kilowatts to 250kW or so. There's already a network of 60kW chargers across Oahu. As for charger prices, the lower-end level 3 chargers are $30-40k, while the upper end are $100-150k. Look up AeroVironment's PosiCharge line for an example. As for the batteries, LiP and stabilized spinels can charge in 15 minutes, the titanates in 5-10, SCiB in 5 or so, and so on.
lifetime has to get a lot longer.
To give you an idea of what we're talking about, LG Chem expects ~40 years out of their cells, and most new EV makers are looking at ten year warranties on their packs.
then you aren't saving the environment
No lithium ions are very toxic. The ones with cobalt cathodes are minimally toxic. Many automotive li-ions don't even have that, and are essentially nontoxic.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
From the article let us assume this car requires $2000 worth of batteries every year.
If you're dumb and use lead-acid, sure.
If you use the long-life automotive li-ions, you're set for either most or all of your vehicle's entire lifespan, factory to recycling center.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
"Add in the complexity of computer-controlled everything and you have a device that is orders of magnitude more complex than cars were fifty years ago. And people wonder why cars seem to break down more often."
Are you smoking crack? Or have you only been driving Maseratis for the past 20 years? Cars today are so much more reliable than 50 years ago it's not even funny. With many new cars today you could conceivably go 100,000 miles and not have to do a damn thing to the car except oil changes. My '01 Toyota Sienna has 75k miles on it, it never needed anything other than brake pad replacement and oil changes (and 1 set of tires - 50 years ago you'd be talking 10 tire/inner tube changes)
Storing hydrogen in a solid media makes the whole system even less efficient than the already atrocious well to wheels efficiency of a hydrogen car. Plus, it's still gaseous as it *leaves* the storage medium. A tubing or fuel cell leak will still vent it and allow it to collect under your hood, in the cabin (it diffuses through almost anything and likes to follow pipes), a garage, an overhang, etc. And it has a minuscule ignition energy requirement and an extremely broad explosive range for fuel-air mixtures. Plus, H2 deflagrations readily evolve into detonations.
Oh, and to the GP: Power transmission in the US is 92.8% efficient (a lot more efficient than most people assume), and li-ion batteries are 96-99.9% efficient. There are a few other losses -- chargers are ~93% efficient and electric motors will usually get 85-90% efficiency in a normal drivecycle.
It's not so much any one aspect of a hydrogen car that's the problem as it is all of them. Commercial electrolysis is 50-80% efficient. There are some new techs coming out like liquid or nanoparticle catalysts that could boost this higher; we'll have to see. Fuel cells are ~60-70% efficient in and of themselves, but they need support infrastructure, such as compressors and heaters, which add parasitic losses and bring the fuel cell stack as a whole down to ~40% efficiency. There's also hydrogen compression and pumping, which will lose you another 10-20% of your total enregy. And, of course, there's still an electric motor. All in all, it's pretty darned bad, and there's no ready solution to make it anywhere close to EV efficiency.
Even with green power, efficiency is critical. Who wants 3-4 times the desert acreage covered in solar? Who wants 3-4 times the coastline covered in wind turbines? Who wants 3-4 times the rivers flooded for hydro? And so on.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
"what exactly do you think happens inside the cylinders of an gasoline engine? "
I'm going to have to go with, "Carefully engineered vaporization of a gasoline aerosol, mixed with just the right ratio of air, and then pressurized to several times higher than atmospheric pressure to make it react in a way that it never would in normal atmospheric conditions."
Seriously. Gasoline has nothing on hydrogen when it comes to danger. Not even close. And NASA would know; they've used the stuff more than pretty much anyone else on the planet.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
Ok, I gotta comment on this.
How can you base your opinion of modern automobiles on Ford products? They are all crap compared to Japanese cars, or even Chevys. The Windstar was especially horrible!
I'll never forget the endless problems my family had with our '87 Sable, and how every time we took it to the local Ford dealer to get it fixed, it would come back with something else broken on it. Or how it left us stranded on the side of the road, where thankfully our next-door neighbors just happened to drive by at that very moment.
Contrast that to our eight Hondas over the years and it's like night and day. I will never spend any of my money on a Ford product, and I don't honestly understand why anyone else would choose to do so either, after having the chance to try something better (like a Honda, or even a Toyota).
Don't judge all modern cars by the absolute worst example. (What other car company's products can burn your house down while parked and turned off in your garage? That's right, Ford, with another flawed design. That's what Ford should stand for: Flawed Or Ridiculous Design.)
Ford has improved slightly over the years, but their designs are still years behind GOOD cars that were on sale 15 years ago! Why would anyone buy one?!
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Excuse me? Are you actually suggesting that the same battery chemistry that can't be relied on to power an iPod with greater than 80% capacity after a year and a half is suddenly going to magically become reliable and long-lasting in an automotive setting?
In my experience with batteries, the more complex and newer-fanged the chemistry, the faster it dies.
Lead-acid cells, while they may have a low energy density, last about twice as long (five years) and don't degrade anywhere near as much during that time as my experience with Lithium chemistry (both LiIon and LiPol). LiPol lasts about two years, then it's dead as a doorknob. The last six to nine months it's running at about 80% of it's old capacity. Not something you'd want in a vehicle.
I'd love nothing more than an electric vehicle, but the poster of the great-grandparent is right... supercapacitors are the only feasible option. Batteries die, and replacing them several times in the life of a vehicle that has such an otherwise elegant and simple design is a giant glaring flaw.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
Yeah. Just ignore the cost of transmission. No loss at all there.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
H2 explodes. Gasoline vaporizes, and then burns.
The correct mixture of gasoline vapors and air certifiably explodes, just like the correct mixture of hydrogen and air.
I remember a school excursion we had to the local fire department exercise area, where they among others showed the explosive power of gasoline. They had a bucket with one liter of gasoline, which they threw out over a small burning patch of something. The fireball was breathtaking. If that wasn't an explosion, I don't know what is. Anyway, the morale was something like "this was one liter, most moped tanks carry five liters or more. Don't sit on your moped with the tank cap open and drop your cigarette in it".
but hydrogen actually DOES blow up quite easily - see the Hindenburg.
The Hindenburg didn't blow up, it burned rapidly. Watch the video again and you'll see.
When a petrol tank leaks, it drips out, and is very difficult to ignite.
Petrol that has leaked out of the tank is not hard to ignite. If the catalytic converter is a fire hazard just for parking the car over tall grass, I would think that it would be a fire hazard if parked over a puddle of leaked gasoline.
And a fire under the car heats the gasoline in the tank, increasing the pressure and forcing it out through the leak at a higher speed.
::EVs are presently about as efficient, overall as IC-powered vehicles.
Actually they are a fair bit better in well-to-wheels efficiency, even with electricity from coal power.
Tesla published a whitepaper on their site, unfortunately theirs is taken down for an update, a working link is still here
http://me222.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/twentyfirstcenturycar.pdf
Now coming from an EV manufacturer, that may not be the most trustworthy source, so i encourage you to go to Michelin Challenge Bibendum site to dig out their reports.
Link here
http://www.challengebibendum.com/challengeBib/AfficheServlet?Rubrique=20080611093557&Langue=EN
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Oh, no, electrics have far less maintenance cost. Well, that's the most popular belief about why GM canceled theirs.
Batteries are the only real candidate for replacement issues. I imagine they last longer than laptop batteries, but you may still see significant performance degradation. Imagine you have a 60 mile commute and buy a Tesla whose range is 200 miles. If your office won't let you install a charger, then, after the batteries degrade to only 150 miles, you best be quite careful about speed & errands.
I'd say, give the technology two years if your commute is so long. But I can't forsee any downside if you want a nice sports car and live near work.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Since one of those sources in the hydrogen case is electricity, I don't see the number of sources to be fewer than in the case of battery-powered cars.
Please criticize valid points of hydrogen as an energy storage medium instead of making up silly points that can be refuted in an instant.
If you're going to refute points and insult someone in the process, please read over your own first.
The original point is still valid. Though electricity is one part of harvesting hydrogen, it's only one part. This doesn't mean that access to electricity = access to hydrogen. I have access to plenty of electricity, but have no access to hydrogen in any form that can power anything.
I used to think that too, until someone took the time to point out to me that such a system would collect such a pifflingly small amount of energy even on a car utterly slathered in solar panels that it would be almost unnoticable in terms of additional driving range.
/.er with more up-to-date data.
Of course, this was a while ago so I may yet receive a clue-bat of correction from a
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
I agree, just a couple people tinkering in their garages doesn't make a huge difference (even if it is cool), they need to get the word out about this. Maybe protesting isn't the best idea, but some sort of advertisment or word-of-mouth/viral campaign is needed.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
No. The fastest cars in the word are electrics, although gas cars are close. The cars with the best acceleration are electrics by a wide margine. Of course, gas will still out preform electrics in an endurance race for some time. But sports car buyers are looking for the "feel" which mostly corresponds to acceleration.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I'm bringing in foreign oil demands as well. The limited supply will be redistributed to meet demand in China, India, etc. That will mean less opportunity for profit locally, and higher prices.
Supply will not go up if we use less, because we are not the only consumers and the product isn't being produced locally.
No, not at all. My father used to work in the battery shop for UP. It is a matter of scale. A truck with enough batteries wouldn't be able to operate on our roads. Also, those locomotives take miles to get up to speed and miles to stop. Not going to equate on our highways, unfortunately...
Perfect... Let the government worry about courts, police, and military. The rest we'll do ourselves, thanks.
Who let the conservative on? Next we'll get geeks with actual girlfriends!! This has to stop. (Feel free to file this under disagreeable email in the idle section)
Point taken. But for widespread public consumption, I still have a concern with the higher volatility of hydrogen over gasoline. Liquid gasoline is fairly forgiving if Joe Schmoe at the gas station is careless with his lit cigarette, but gaseous hydrogen would be much less so at the hydrogen station. Maybe we'd have to require strict New Jersey-style "you can't pump your own" laws nationally. As well as some serious containment tanks within the cars themselves, to account for the newly increased fuel volatility.
Actually I don't know that he bought it new. I actually figured he was using a used truck. I guessed at $7K since it is a reasonable price for that kind of used truck. However the truck did look newer so it might be even more.
But regardless he went from having a ICE powered truck to a EV truck. The truck part should be removed from the equation.
Therefore by spending the $5000 extra he has saved $700 in six months over what he would have spent with his gas truck.
But you bring up an interesting point...are you sure it is neccessary to buy a vehicle to do the conversion?
A vehicle is something you can climb into and it moves. If you are going to strip out the engine compartment anyway, you could always buy a vehicle that is dead because the engine block is cracked. So long as the frame and transmission are in good shape nothing else really maters. You can buy dead trucks/cars for under $1000...That would drop the price to $6K or so....
I just meant in the amount of fuel required to start those locomotives moving and getting up to speed. Once they're at speed, sure, they're efficient... Maybe we can electrify certain distances near where they stop (as far as I know, they stop at regular locations) to make it more efficient for them to get moving again and once they are, cut back over to diesel. The PRR had most of SE PA electrified and it kind of made sense, however it doesn't make sense to electrify the entire stretch from LA to to Dallas, or Santa Fe to Billings, y'know? Way too much electricity lost over that kind of distance.
The problem is that only ONE of the four non-nuclear options you list has any ability to provide baseline power or is economically viable. That's Nat Gas. Only problem? You can only GET NatGas by drilling for OIL. So since drilling for oil is supposedly SO bad, that leaves us three rather crappy options:
Wind - inconsistent power generation, requires ridiculous amounts of land for a "wind farm" and tends to need to be placed in the same locations that very rich and powerful people (who REALLY don't want a bunch of giant windmills blocking the view) want to put their homes.
Solar - inconsistent power generation, requires very specific weather patterns (IE: craploads of sun and almost no clouds which means it cannot be used economically on more than half the planet.
Geothermal - fantasy tech. Is only beginning to be used in some areas of the world with high geothermal activity (read: Iceland, Iceland, and um... Iceland.) Not viable for the large swathes of the planet that are geologically stable, still many questions on the long-term viability of building a power plant on top of geologically unstable ground.
I'm sorry, but those options just are NOT going to work. They sound so cool and sci-fi-ish in THEORY. But in reality they are expensive, inconsistent, and unrealistic for large large areas of our planet. No, we basically have one way forward here:
1) Drill for more oil in the short term to "get us over the hump" energy-wise. We are going to need the petroleum for all the other niceties of modern life anyway (plastics, anyone?) so let's just go ahead and get the stuff out of the ground and in use while we...
2) Build lots and lots of nuclear power plants and massively upgrade the power grid so that we can support the heavy use of EV's.
Yes, we can (and should) still build solar, wind and maybe even geothermal plants too, but they will NEVER provide consistent baseline power like nuclear can. And our future is going to need consistent, plentiful power. Lots of it.
Time to get off the fantasy train kids. Oil + Nuke is the only way to go. Any other plan is a fantasy ride to cultural and technological oblivion.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Not only does that bring in price, but that's also more environmentally friendly because that car would have been scrapped (and recycled, sure, but there's still energy that was lost originally making it, recycling it, and making something new from it). It just sounded like he bought the truck for the conversion (it makes sense to have a small light truck--it's light and has storage room for batteries) when they said "including the cost of the truck". He might not have bought it when it was new, but unfortunately, we can't make any assumptions on whether or not he bought the truck for the conversion from the article, other than the author's "including the cost of the truck".
further, leaking hydrogen rises, leaving the crash site very quickly. Puddles of gas sit around for a while, gasoline vapors sit around for a while. It's really pretty ugly, we're just used to the way it behaves and have accepted it's dangers because of familiarity.
If you think about it a little, which would you prefer?
1. A volatile liquid that drips/sprays out and then evaporates into a cloud of flammable gas that hangs around in low spots waiting for a spark, or
2.a flammable gas that while potentially hazardous from high-pressure leak is essentially almost immediately gone once it escapes from its containment.
man, I feel like mold.
Even after revising the 1985-2007 mpg estimates to make them comparable to the new 2008 mpg estimates, the 1989 Honda CRX-HF is rated at 41 city and 50 highway mpg.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/5263.shtml
After 20 years of technological innovation, and four years of sky-rocketing fuel costs, shouldn't a new car model get at least 41/50 mpg before that car is considered to be ecologically friendly? Yet greencar.com features the 2008 Nissan Rouge (22 city/27 highway mpg) as a "Top 2008 Fuel Economy Faves." The 2008 Nissan Rouge also has a sticker price of $19,250.
http://www.greencar.com/features/fuel-economy/
Seems to me that true economy cars been pulled from the market, and replaces with the new hybrids. Major car manufacturers want us to think that 30+ mpg is something miraculous, and requires an expensive, heavy, complicated, hard-to-maintain, hybrid.
In my opinion there is more to ecological friendliness than just mpg (although the present line-up fails at even that). Hybrids have huge batteries, and disposing of those batteries is never ecologically friendly. Then there is the ecological impact of manufacturing and shipping these huge, heavy, vehicles. Furthermore, recent road tests carried out by Auto Express show that hybrids often have worse CO2 emissions than standard autos.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3958376.ece
To have a real impact on fuel consumption, and emissions, new vehicles need to be affordable. Hybrids are about the most expensive vehicles on the market. How can hybrids have a positive effect of the environment, if practically nobody can afford the beasts? Even if you can afford the steep sticker price, what about the cost of maintenance? Hybrids have two engines, and use a complicated system to charge their huge batteries. I hate to even think about the cost of maintenance and repair.
It used to be common that most fuel efficient cars also had the lowest sticker price, and lowest maintenance costs. The cars where simply smaller, lighter, and required more manual operations. With smaller, cheaper, parts, and a less complicated design, the cars were cheaper to maintain. When I bought my 1992 Ford Festiva, the 30/37 mpg rating was the least of my criteria, I was also concerned with sticker price, and maintenance costs.
Why can't we do as well now, as we did 16 to 35 years ago?
1973 Honda Civic rated 35/40 mpg
1986 VW Golf Diesel rated 31/40 mpg *
1989 Geo Metro rated 43/51 mpg
1989 Honda CRX-HF rated 41/50 mpg
1992 Ford Festiva rated 30/37 mpg
* I got over 50mpg driving from Florida to New Jersey, while running the air conditioner.
Related:
57 mpg? That's so 20 years ago
Want to drive a cheap car that gets eye-popping mileage? In 1987 you could - and it wasn't even a hybrid.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/17/autos/honda_civic_hf/index.htm
Efficiency? Think Racing Cars, Not Hybridso
A renowned racing car designer has said that car manufacturers should be looking at making cars lighter to improve efficiency, rather than adding complex drive trains.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7387432.stm
Hot Cars Best Gas Milage
Welcome to hi-mpg.org. We are automotive enthusiasts and travel aficionados who also love the environment. We appreciate both form and function, all while striving to leave future generations a legacy of clean air, scenic grandeur and a continuum of natural resources. In addition: the freedom to drive.
http://hi-mpg.org/best-cars-with-high-gas-mileage.phtml
Yes.
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
I'd say that any properly made ICE car will have similar or even lower maintenance requirements, thing is, its not as straightforward aswith EV, and manufacturers avoid doing that for the reasons you stated.
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
The extra weight I see is the traditional friction brakes. At some point those can be dispensed with (once the other systems are as consistently safe as the friction brakes).
-DwS
Let me preface this by saying that I am all for electric vehicles but I just had an interesting thought. Assuming we're talking about mostly "plug-in" vehicles wouldn't switching large amounts of the populace over to EVs set up the infrastructure for a single point of failure? (The power grid). In the case of a power outage such as: Northeast Blackout of 2003 you would have large amounts of the population that would be unable to drive their vehicles. A couple of caveats: 1) This is more of an issue with the current state of our power distribution system than with EVs. 2) Increasing the effective range per charge on EVs would put them on equal footing with gasoline powered vehicles in case of emergency.
In addition, another overlooked feature is the simplified air-conditioning. R-12 refrigerant use was halted because, one a vibrating engine, flexible coolant hoses and joints leak and cause ozone depletion. So instead R-134a is used, which is less harmful, but less efficient. And it still leaks. In an electric vehicle, the AC can be self-contained, like a windows AC. How often do you hear of a refrigerator or window AC unit leaking or needing a re-fill? Thus, more efficient R-12 could be used, reducing energy usage FTW!
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
recycle them
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
Aaaaa... How ABOUT diesel?
I know full well that tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack
so your position is that russia is an unthinking alien force, like lightning strikes or a mass of angry bees. to you, russia is not composed of human beigns that can be reasoned with, or responsibility or accountability can be expected of
to you, the only responsible human beings ont he planet are americans. all other peoples and cultures in the world are composed of inscrutable forces that can only be avoided. only the usa is a responsible human being that must bear responsibility for whatever happens
this is what oyu are trying to tell us
see, i have a funny idea. my funny idea is that russian policy is set by russians. who, as human beings like americans, can bear responsibility for their actions, just like americans can
isn't that a crazy wack idea?
so, for example, when a woman wears a mini skirt and gets raped, i blame the rapist. you, apparently, would rather blame the woman, because she wore a miniskirt. THATS YOUR THINKING ON THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF GEORGIA
so the georgians took american assistance. therefore, all the evil the russians did or ever could do, is the fault of the americans
"Russia's response was predictable, and almost unavoidable and USA knew this."
is like saying " a mowan is respnsible for being raped because she wore a miniskirt. she knew she would attract bad men, so what bad men do is her fault" gee, maybe we should blame BAD MEN for what BAD MEN do? isn't that a crazy idea?
so if the RUSSIANS invade a country, the RUSSIANS are responsible for that
that's the weird alien bizarre thinking i have to offer you
pfffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I would argue that most people stand to gain a lot more by buying a car that costs less up front and less to maintain than they would ever gain in buying just because it's more fuel-efficient. If it's about cost, that's where you can start.
Absolutely right. Car payments are by far the largest cost of owning a car. My paid for pickup truck gets 16MPG. I spend $3,000 on gas per year.
If I were to buy a car that got a 32MGP the car payments would have to be $125 per month just to break even. There is no way that replacing my 16MPG Ford Pickup truck could save me money
But some day I'll be forced to replace it. It's got 165,000 miles on it and I figure it's only going to last for another 90,000. That's about 8 more years I think. Them I'll buy an plug-in hybrid.
Damned hard to sell an engineer a new car isn't it? My wife buys new ones just because she likes to, doesn't need a reason.
Actually, it looks like this is only in the past couple of years - the hot water discharge (well, it warms the river) changes the ecosystem and in at least one case led to fish wintering by the plant, while the coal plants have been cheaper because of the absurd amount of red tape associated with going nuclear. Granted, they could also save cash by getting one plan for a plant approved and building 300 of them, but that requires some work at a federal level. Now that the greenies are more mature and some of them see the consequences of their actions (whatever they may be), they are being more pragmatic and offering less resistance.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
of america
america is evil. evil, evil evil
do you hear me clearly?
however, in georgia, right now, the actions of the russians are far more evil
do you understand?
the usa is not good
russia is not good
and right now, in georgia, russia is being far more evil than the usa ever could be
south ossetia, btw darling, IS GEORGIAN TERRITORY
THEY DONT NEED ANYONES PERMISSION TO DO ANYTHING THERE
HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Like the GGP has pointed out, a EV car has far fewer parts than an ICE car. Just from that standpoint, maintenance is bound to be cheaper for an EV than for an ICE.
The BIG problem for EV is that the batteries will need to be replaced every few years. But this situation will change as better batteries become available, and perhaps batteries will themselves be replaced by hydrogen fuel cells or ethanol fuel cells later.
engage in genocide like the serbians did?
when the georgians engage in genocide, we can talk about splitting up georgia
meanwhile, georgia go after bandits on their own territory, and russia uses this as an excuse to invade the territorial integrity of another country (the west worked throung the united nations to engage the balkans, btw, it didn't act on its own)
and its just hilarious how you keep talking about the usa being the blame for this
1. you tell me not ride my skateboard in front of your house or you will beat me with a baseball bat
2. my friend gives me a skateboard and i ride it in front of your house, knowing it will make you angry
3. you come out of your house, and beat me bloody with a baseball bat
who is wrong? no matter what i did, beating someone with a baseball bat is worse, even though you warned me. get that? this is the same as above:
1. russia tells georgia not to try to police your own territories within your internationally recognized borders
2. usa gives georgia weapons to dow hat georgia wants to, in its own borders
3. russia invaes the territorial integrity of georgia
your conclusion? its the usa's fault. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
if a guy warns his girlfriend not to wear a slutty dress or he will beat her, and the girlfriend's best friend tells er to wear the dress any way, you blame the best friend. me? i blame the boyfriend for being an asshole
you want to say the usa is wrong for baiting russia to do great evil. i say rusia has done great evil, SO ATTACK RUSSIA
furthermore, i know what you are going to say: usa invaded iraq, so russia can do that to. so two wrong makes a right? how about the usa invading iraq is wrong AND russia invading georgia is wrong
this is your problem: pick which view is right:
1. russia good, america evil
2. america evil, russia good
which do you believe?
BZZZZZZZZZ
your wrong, trick question, both choices are wrong. the correct answer is:
1. russia evil, america evil
so you can't use what america does as an excuse to excuse russia. you can't use what russia does as an excuse to excuse america. YOU CALL THEM BOTH EVIL
and CLEARLY on the isue of invading georgia, RUSSIA IS BY FAR THE MOST EVIL BY ANY MEASURE OF THE SITUATION
but if you continue to blame the usa for the evil russia does, it just means you are a propagandized moron
and notice, I AM NOT SUPPORTING THE USA, so i am not a propaganda victim on the other side. i am calling you a propagandzied moron because i hate the usa AND russia. BOTH ARE EVIL. wake up you retard
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Eh? That's exactly what you end up doing with a carburetor. Once in a while, you have to take it apart and clean it out and replace all the little mechanical bits. It has tons of adjustment screws, vacuum lines, and other shit. It takes an expert to adjust and tune it. It requires constant attention to run well, and still has horrible emissions performance (since it runs open-loop). A fuel injection system is extremely simple. In the most basic case, it involves a fuel pump, fuel injector, a MAP sensor, and an oxygen sensor (and an RPM signal from the distributor). That's it. On most cars, you will have more injectors and sensors, but that's mainly necessary for emissions purposes.
In fact, I don't think the fuel injection system itself requires a single vacuum hose. Most of the hoses and vacuum switches under the hood are needed for the EVAP system, which collects fuel vapors from the gas tank and feeds them to the engine. Some are also needed for the EGR system, which reduces NOx. These systems are required by federal regulations, not by the fuel injection system.
That's why I said well-engineered vehicles. American cars do not fall into that category. Compared to automatics, manual transmissions have to have the clutch replaced relatively often (every 30-60 thousand miles), which is quite an expensive job. Not to mention, high-mileage manuals often develop problems with the syncros. I'd say the overall cost-to-own and reliability is pretty similar for the two (assuming the automatic is a good one).
I can show you 20 patents for perpetual motion machines, it doesn't mean they actually exist. Show me a motor drive on an actual production car that actually meets all of the requirements and doesn't use large electrolytic capacitors. Honestly, I don't think that's possible. It's a moot point, anyway, since the lifespan of batteries is even shorter.
Still nothing like the cost of driving your power plant with you everywhere you go.
This space available.
Actually, if the Nuke plant isn't already maxing it's capacity out, it can compensate for demand just as easily as a coal or gas plant can. The reactor doesn't generate electricity directly, it heats water and steam turns the generators. This is no different then any other "fired" plant like coal.
Most of the time, the generators are running at around 80% capacity or so I am told. This is supposed to be some sweat spot that gives the most production with the least wear and tear on the equipment. They increase at peak if necessary but generally use either turbine engined powered generators or 12 cylinder diesels engine powered ones at peak. Every electric grid in the US has to have a 10% or 20% reserve capacity by law in case something happens too. Now this reserve isn't necessarily reserve from a generator, it could be just produced and waisted in the transmission lines or it could be stored at the generator and it just goes under a heavier load (thereby using more energy) when someone flips a light switch on or turns a table saw or blender on or something.
Anyways, even with coal or nuclear, it is generally more efficient and greener on a per megawatt of power basis then an internal combustion engine. So technically, an EV is more green then a gas powered car. And yes, wind or solar would be greener yet if it was both as affordable and reliable as coal and nuclear or gas.
Excuse me? Are you actually suggesting that the same battery chemistry that can't be relied on to power an iPod with greater than 80% capacity after a year and a half is suddenly going to magically become reliable and long-lasting in an automotive setting?
Excuse me, but you're apparently of the impression that automotive li-ions are the same chemistry as those in iPods. They are not. LiP and the stabilized spinels use a completely different cathode. The titanates use a very different anode. These are quite different chemistries. They sacrifice some energy density for extreme stability.
These things have been on the market for years. Just because *YOU* have no experience with them doesn't change this fact. Consumer electronics makers don't care that much about lifespan because consumer electronics on their own don't tend to have very long lifespans. They use conventional li-ion for the higher energy density and because of the more established production lines.
In my experience with batteries, the more complex and newer-fanged the chemistry, the faster it dies.
That's why NiMH lasts longer than PbA, right? FYI, the even the more modern and complex PbA versions, like the carbon foam-backed ones, last longer than the older, simpler ones.
both LiIon and LiPol)
Both of which use LiCoO2 cathodes and graphite anodes. That's a completely different chemistry than the automotive li-ions, so trying to equate them is just silly. You might as well pretend that nickel-iron batteries are the same as nickel-metal-hydride batteries because they both contain nickel. The automotive li-ion batteries still work by moving lithium ions back and forth between the cathode and anode through a membrane, but they vary greatly in the expansion ratios of their electrodes during charge/discharge cycles and how vulnerable they are to plating by metallic lithium -- the things that kill li-ion batteries.
Batteries die, and replacing them several times in the life of a vehicle that has such an otherwise elegant and simple design is a giant glaring flaw.
Jay Leno has a Baker Electric from the early 1900s that still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries. It is simply incorrect that all batteries must die during a reasonable lifespan of a vehicle. It's all about the stability of the chemistry, and the automotive li-ions are extremely stable. They have to sacrifice a third of their energy density to achieve this, but it's well worth it for the application (and they still have a notably higher energy density than NiMH).
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
rape the little girls of iran, swallow the hearts of north korean toddlers, drink blood from the skulls of iraqi children
that makes america pretty evil
and doesn't in any way make anything evil russia does somehow better, or somehow worse, or modifies it in anyway
therefore, when russia does something evil, you say "russia did something evil"
you don't say "yeah but america..."
america what?
america can do 1,000,000x worse than anything russia did
and?
so i'm going to go next door to my neighbors house, knock on his door, and shoot him the face
then when someone says "you're evil"
i'll say "yeah but stalin killed millions, which is worse, so that means i'm ok"
what the fuck does anything stalin did have to do with me shooting my neighbor in the face?
what the fuck does anything the usa ever did have to do with a RUSSIAN decision to defy the territorial integrity of another country?
the usa defied the territorial integrity of 10 countries? 1,000 countries? ok, america sucks
AND HOW DOES THAT EXUCSE WHAT RUSSIA JUST DID?
i don't fucking care about america. fuck america. america is evil, evil evil, evil
understand me?
AMERICA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE EVIL RUSSIA IS DOING IN GEORGIE RIGHT NOW RETARD
i expect you to reply to me by saying "yeah but america..."
THIS IS SOMETHING RUSSIA DID
HELLO?????
do you have morality? a sense of human conscience?
or are you just obsessed with one stupid country?
if you have morality, when someone does something wrong, you chastise him
WHO invaded goergia?
WHO decided to invade georgia
therefore WHO did something wrong?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
because i have no respect for you. i am not talking to an open minded person concerned with right and wrong. you are a propaganda victim, your mind is not clearly thinking
you honestly think that russia invading georgia is america's fault
which, you have to understand is completely absurd. i don't support america. i repeat, i do not support the usa. i am not for the usa, i am not for the usa, i am not for the usa
my criticism of russia comes from a neutral point of view. my criticism of russia come s a neutral morality. my ciricism of russia is not pro-american, or anti-american, or anything about america, because thinking about the crime russia committed by violating georgian territorial integrity does not involve anything america ever did. it is russia's decision, it is russia's crime
you apparently do not understand that, because you are so prejudiced, so partisan, you cannot even view the world without pro- or anti-american blinders. when some things that happen in this world honestly do not have anything to do with the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
there, fixed that for you
libertarians have several logical policies...it's the ones that are secretly neo-cons using libertarian rhetoric that are really anti-logic
Thank you Dave Raggett
taste like, since you obviously suck on it so hard
oh great apologist for russian neoimperialism
russia invades a tiny neighbor, and its tha usa's fault
amazing!
did you know that usa's invasion of irag is russia's fault for arms sales to hussein?
that sentence is complete bullshit, i don't believe it, it is just an example of the kind of bullshit you believe in
and yes, bush, that retarded moron, was elected by propaganda victims. people who think just like you about the usa's motivations, who swallow the most incredible bullshit
like you swallow incredible bullshit about russia's intents and purposes
you're a braindead partisan zombie
apologise some more for moscow retard, see if you can keep talking with your mouth full of putin's penis so firmly implanted in it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Some companies won't use "automotive grade" batteries, and I know that's exactly the sort of thing they'll use to cut corners and save money, like all large companies are wont to do.
Example: my mother drives a Honda hybrid. The batteries in that are actually (I believe) NiMH, for some reason. They are exempted from the general warranty, and only are covered for five years. Replacement cost is estimated to be something in the neighborhood of $3,000 when they finally do die. I had the battery in my car (an older, possibly factory lead-acid) last me for seven years, and it probably would have lasted longer still if I hadn't killed it by leaving an auxiliary device on one night and draining it dry.
It's not in the best interest of the automotive companies to promote batteries that last a long time, then they won't have the constant stream of revenues that would otherwise come from replacing them every three to five years. And if people keep an electric car longer than it's ICE-based counterpart, where's their tithe going to come from?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
It's also the lightest element -- lighter than anything except a vacuum -- and disperses extremely quickly. It is also non-toxic and non-corrosive, so I'm not sure what the "odourless" fear-mongering is about.
In 1937, America controlled most of the world's helium reserves, and helium was in direct competition with hydrogen, which was readily available to everybody. When the Hindenburg went down, there was a lot of FUD spread in the US about the dangers of hydrogen, which is obviously still be propagated.
Slightly off-topic, but in support of the statement that there was a determined FUD campaign against hydrogen in the 30's, is the fact that in the Hindenburg incident, only 30% of the passengers and crew were killed. Most of those deaths were from people jumping from the Hindenburg. All of the passengers who rode the Hindenburg to the ground survived. By contrast, nearly 50% of the helium-buoyed Akron were killed in its disaster, and 100% of nearly all airline accidents of this scale perish. The fear around hydrogen is entirely out of proportion.
Yes, hydrogen is flammable. So is gasoline, propane, and natural gas. Propane is heavier than air, meaning the risk for asphyxiation is greater than that of hydrogen. Some 6,700 propane explosions, from barbecues alone, injure Americans annually, and industrial-level explosions killing people occur every year (2005 Toronto, 2006 Falk Industries in Milwaukee, 2007 Atlas Castings in Takoma, etc). And yet there are Americans driving around in propane-powered cars (around 190,000 of them, not counting the 450,000 propane-powered forklifts in use in the US). I won't go into the number of natural gas explosions that occur, which tend to affect whole neighborhoods.
--- SER
Some companies won't use "automotive grade" batteries, and I know that's exactly the sort of thing they'll use to cut corners and save money
There are only a tiny handful of them that aren't (Tesla being the most notable example). Aptera, GM, Mitsubishi, Subaru, Venture, Nissan, Toyota, and on and on are all using the automotive li-ions.
It's not in the best interest of the automotive companies to promote batteries that last a long time
People aren't going to buy an EV in large numbers that they have to regularly change the batteries on unless they're wealthy enough that it doesn't matter (see Tesla). They generally demand long warranties on the battery packs. GM, for example, is giving a huge 10 year warranty on the Volt's pack.
Now, further down the line, when EVs are more mainstream, I imagine that you're right -- people will cut corners for that lower price point. But for now, it's all about making it more comfortable to make that leap to a different drivetrain, which means long warranties and thus quality parts.
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
what's sad is it took me 5 days to even notice my spelling mistake. can't rely on spell check all the time i guess.
H2O is water. If it is also a greenhouse gas then the earth being made up of 80% H20.. we are in BIG trouble. As for the Giant Bomb... have you looked in your current gas tank lately??? try using a lighter to see way down in the bottom... let me know how that works out.
I would like to know more about the supercapacitors. Are they being used now? in what form of transportation? etc.
Also what will be the recharging aspect? coal? gas? solar?
Good idea but I do not want to wait another 50 years for the "right" answer to come along.
love the taste, hate the texture
Can you suggest an automotive li-ion product? I'm converting a Jeep Wrangler to all electric, and shopping around for batteries. I've got some sample A123Systems cells, but am willing to look at others if you have any suggestions.
Gasoline does not need to be stored at several thousand PSI and need a specially reinforced fuel tank for safe containment (unlike H2).
What's your budget? :) If you've got money to spare, I don't think anything out there (with the possible exception of Toshiba's SCiB, which while I haven't found a way to get yet, is supposedly out there) that beats AltairNano's "NanoSafe" titanate cells. But they're pretty darned expensive. If you're on a miserly budget, you can try ThunderSkys; you can get them in small orders for almost as cheap as the big players are getting A123s in bulk. The Valence and A123 cells are probably a good "middle of the road" compromise. The reviews I've seen of A123's cells are probably slightly better than I've seen for Valence's, but both are very well received.
Kudos to you for doing a conversion :) I'm curious -- what drivetrain are you going with (motor, charger, inverter, etc)? I'm getting an Aptera, which uses Azure Dynamics's AC24LS motor and DMOC445 inverter; I've seen Azure hardware used in several very nice conversions, and Azure has responded to all of my requests for more info very quickly (others have reported excellent support from them as well). But there are a lot of good options out there (AC24LS would, IMHO, be too small for a Wrangler, too... if you went Azure, you'd probably want an AC55). Also, what sort of connector are you going to use to plug in? Technically, in the US, you're supposed to go with some kind of Avcon setup, but given that there aren't very many Avcon chargers out there in most places yet, it's not really needed. One setup that I liked was to use either 30A or 50A 240V NEMA locking connectors and then adapters to hook up to different plugs to them -- NEMA 5-15 wall sockets, NEMA 10-30 and 14-30 dryer sockets, NEMA 10-50 and 14-50 range and RV sockets, etc. Are you ditching the transmission? If so, what are you planning to do about parking -- just the emergency brake? If you lost the transmission, unless you added a gearbox, you wouldn't have a parking pawl.
Sorry for all the questions; I just like to see what different people are doing with conversions and how things go :)
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
Since I ordered a Tesla Roadster, I'm trying to have Tesla sell me a motor and a PEM. I'm going a different way for the battery storage system (not a fan of the ESS they've put together). I'm planing on making the energy storage system interchangable, so I can easily pull the power system out and swap it for EEstor ultracapacitors when they come out (3-6 months). Haven't worked out the details on charging yet, although I know I'm going to need to pull between 30-80 amps at 220V. It's going to be a fun project =)
If you're going with Tesla's motor, you'd probably be best off going with their inverter/charger as well, too (they do reductive charging, so it's one system for both). If not... hmm. Manzanita Micro makes a good 50A charger, although they don't go up to 80A. Not sure what'd be best for currents that high.
Sounds like you've got a neat project underway! :)
"Define 'interesting'". "Oh God, oh God, we're all gonna die?"
I thought that was the case, as Tesla had to license the Reductive Charging patent from AC Propulsion. I also looked at going with AC Propulsion for the electric motor and controller system, but they wanted $25K for it. I'd much prefer go with Tesla's refined system.