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Nissan Unveils All-Electric LEAF
MojoRilla writes "In Japan, Nissan unveiled their all-electric LEAF (press release, and Flash site). Slated to launch in late 2010 in Japan, the US, and Europe, this car will have a 100-mile range, seats 5, has an advanced computer system with remote control by IPhone, and promises to be competitively priced. While this car's range won't work for everyone, it could be a game changer as a commuter car." Recharge time is 8 hours with a 200-volt power source, and "just under 30 minutes with a quick charger" (no further details given) to charge to 80% of capacity.
But I prefer my leaves unelectrified.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
From TFA: "An iPhone application allows for remote monitoring of battery levels and control of air conditioning in electric cars"
The "remote control" just lets you check if it's charged, and lets you start the AC/heat early to get the cabin comfortable while it's still plugged in.
with no backup gas engine or generator addon. like anyone is going to buy TWO cars.
In a slowly-moving traffic, a running A/C will really eat into battery life... Somebody working, say, 40 miles from home — not that unusual — will need the charge to last 80 miles plus whatever extra for the air conditioning... Depending on how hot it is, they may or may not be able to pick kids from school on the way home...
Unless it is really cheap, I don't see, why many people would rush to buy it. "Normal" cars last about 300 miles and can be "recharged" (to 100%) in 3 minutes, instead of 80% in 30...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"has an advanced computer system with remote control by iPhone"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddAi8FF3F4
Apple's iTunes app store bans Nissan's iPhone application allows for remote monitoring of battery levels and control of air conditioning in electric cars.
Remember when Chevrolet announced that they were going to release the Volt, a similar all-electric car?
Of course, the climate (chuckle chuckle) has changed in the industry so we'll see. But still, I'll believe it when I see it actually go into manufacturing.
1) There is already enough juice in the grid at night to power 80% of the 220 million cars without any further need for more power plants. (According to the DoE).
2) The average commute for people is far less than 100 miles, which means the only thing you could be missing out on is a truck for hauling or a car for road trip vacations.
Now, the price hasn't been released. If it's under 30K, it's a winner. As the summary said, there's no details on the charge, but as long as I can plug it in at night and it's charged in the morning, it will not only save me gas, but I don't have to bother with filling up.
I've been waiting for a serious announcement from a major automaker for a long long time. Where do I sign up?
If this car is less than $22k, I will buy one day-of-release. TFPR does not provide an MSRP, but it does say it will be low-priced. Four doors, and your gas bill gets moved over to your house electric bill. I never drive more than 100 miles in a day, so it would be perfect for getting me around town on all my stop-start errands.
Moving the cost of driving from a fuel purchase tracked with credit card might make it more difficult for people to get reimbursed by their company for business driving. I wonder how that's going to get sorted. Also, in a roommate situation, it becomes a little unfair to evenly split the electric bill if only one tennant is charging a car.
Looks cool.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Not everyone owns a house with a handy electrical outlet available.
A little hard to plug in at a condo car port or an apartment parking lot.
Hm, but how many people drive with no electronics? No AC, no heat, etc? A 30-40 mile commute isn't unheard of (in fact its very typical) where I live, and it tends to be very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter, so that is 60-80 miles both ways, every day. Lets mix in the fact that heat (has to be electric thus running down the battery) or AC (also electric) is going to without a doubt cut down on the battery's life, making it uncertain if you can make it any other place (such as to pick up your kids, run and grab some groceries, etc) without taking it home to charge. However, what I think is the worst part about electric vehicles is there is no easy way to get started if you get stranded. Its happened to all of us, either you forgot to get gas, or the gas gauge was inaccurate, but you run out of gas. Most of the time its not a huge problem. Just call up someone and have them bring a bit of gas to make it to the next gas station, but how are you going to move that electric car? Its unfeasible to just call up someone to lug 100 pounds + of batteries to you, and solar just isn't efficient/fast enough to charge it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
New technology is for chumps. I can think of a billion things that are different with this car, so I am not even going to consider it. And get off my lawn!
I love my Linux Embedded Appliance Firewall!
Did anyone else wonder about that too ?
Based on AESCs testing, the cells will retain more than 80% capacity after 7 years, including 70,000 km (43,496 miles).
9.2 kWh pack recharges in 15 minutes time. This truly could be a game changer in EV-battery technology.
Full detail on the battery tech:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/05/aesc-lithium-io.html
can I control the thing **WITHOUT** an iPhone? If it requires the iPhone, well, that would be a total deal-killer for me, as I will NEVER buy an iPhone.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
Did you bother to read that muddled up mess before you hit submit? you really shouldn't post while you're under the influence.
You might want to double-check those figures before accepting them as gospel. They're not assuming charging at night; they're assuming that any and all excess non-peaking capacity in the electrical grid is used to charge the cars. This is wildly unrealistic and provides only a best-case figure. Basically they're saying that if you ran every coal plant in the country balls-out at all times, you could provide power to 180 million cars... average. In the summer and winter less, in the fall and spring more.
From the report:
"The valley-filling methodology is predicated on the notion that the entire PHEV load is managed to fit perfectly into the valley without setting new peaks."
It could make the car disappear. Parking problem, solved
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Apartments were one of the first spots with internet access, because you could run a few lines and connect up a few hundred people.
Likewise, some company will be offering a cut of metered electric service to the apartment complexes, and they'll be able to list "EV Charging Spots" as an amenity to the apartment.
Really, once an electric car is mass produced, inexpensive, and safe, the rest of the problems that come up are completely trivial.
Heating and AC only are a problem on the return trip as you can have it start heating/cooling while still in your garage at home. The biggest draw is going to be getting to the set point temp, keeping it there is relatively easy after the first few minutes. The option of having a trickle charge solar panel on some models would really be nice to help recharge while at work. It might not get to 80%, but the 8 hours you are at work it could at least get something.
I was wondering if I could do the same thing I have for camping trips. I have a front and rear receiver hitch, and a 220V generator on a mount that slides into the receiver hitch. It's 5 hp, and runs a RV air conditioner for 5 hours on under 5 gallons, I am sure you could do a better generator mount than this guy if we get a hitch mount, and just plug the car charger into it for road trips, ditch the weight for in town. Hopefully the chargers aren't locked out while moving. Not only does the GEN not have to meet as many emissions standards ( = cheaper) but has other uses also.
If the batteries for electric cards turns into a BluRay-HDDVD type format war things would get messy and hobble the efforts of getting this off the ground. All car manufacturers need to look the greater good (environment and consumers)and be in agreement on one standard form factor. Here's to hoping this happens.
Let's remember some other things that I think are relevant to the discussion. Or really just one thing: Amdahl's law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl's_law, which I think is woefully ignored in the green-car world. As an result-oriented environmentalist, this disappoints me immensely.
In short, Amdahl's law says that when you want to improve a system that is made up of lots of different components, you do best to improve the lowest-performing part first. In programming, that means focusing your performance analysis on the parts of the program that are taking the most time before you focus on making the fast parts faster. In terms of automobiles, that means you should replace the most fuel-guzzling part of the fleet before you start thinking about making the thrifty cars thriftier.
Let's do some numbers, for the same number of miles driven, replacing a 12 mpg vehicle with a 15 mpg vehicle saves you as much as replacing a 30 MPG vehicle with a 60 MPG vehicle. Improve that 12 mpg to 18 mpg and now you need to replace a 30 mpg with a 180 MPG car (the EPA calculates the carbon-cost of an electric vehicle using our mix of power source to be roughly 120 mpg) to match the fuel savings.
So if we were really serious about making a dent in oil consumption and CO2, we would be pushing for more fuel-efficient pickup trucks, cargo vans and SUVs instead of this inane (but highly press-friendly!) pursuit of ever-more-efficient small vehicles. The people that drive those vehicles can't or won't replace them with small cars no matter how efficient.
Ultimately, it comes down to whether we value results or whether we value cool technology. As a gadget-nerd, I freely admit that all-electric cars are much sexier than a new pickup truck that gets 16 mpg instead of 12. But the programmer inside me knows that the pickup truck will probably do a lot more good over the lifetime of the vehicle. There are only so many R&D dollars going around and I feel like they aren't being well spent (from the point of view of the environment -- for marketing, the halo effect of the Prius is definitely worth it).
the price, go here. It is currently slated for under $30k.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
You have posted elsewhere the same thing. What are you, the brain damaged step-child of an Exxon board member?
A DOT vehicle can easily carry the batteries to get you to a charging station or even back to your house.
The hurricane fear mongering is just sad.
And maintenance is far less expensive for an EV, because it's far less complicated mechanically. If you'd done any research on the GM vehicle, you'd know that they basically rotated the tires. There are Priuses with over a hundred thousand miles that haven't needed new batteries. And the batteries will be less expensive too replace than putting in an entirely new engine, so you could literally keep the same car for decades if you kept it rust free.
Honestly, who is paying you to repeat the same inane bullshit?
Ya, cool...that's nice and all. But could someone please tell me where the apartment dwellers are supposed to charge their cars at? Unless there's some sort of metered charging pole (via credit card swipe), I doubt they will let us leech for free. Also, will there be charging poles at designated parking areas while at the office?
I'm not opposed to electric vehicles, but there is some serious down-to-earth questions that need answered first.
Life is not for the lazy.
I'm sorry but the range and charging time aren't even close to being acceptable to the vast majority of users. How many people can afford two cars: one for the city and one for the highway? Yes, some families have two or more cars, but usually there are as many cars as commuters, so you'd still need an extra car for the highway. I think this car would have a very limited market. They wouldn't even be useful as pizza delivery cars for heaven's sake with that kind of charging time!
Wasn't there a story on Slashdot recently about a car that had a range over 200 miles with a ten minute charge time? That would be useful. But stats like the one on this car will simply turn people off electric cars for good.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Speaking of the obvious:
all-electric ... car will have a 100-mile range,...
In other words, it will have a 60 mile range when it's fresh off the lot, and a 30 mile range after the first few months.
Let's be honest, this is combining an industry that habitually lies about fuel economy with batter tech (Laptop manufacturers are regarded as always lying about these.).
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
They call it an "extension cord". It actually carries charged energy from one locale to a different one! Imagine if you will an emplasticized orange coloured cord. You bind one end to the source of your electical energizement, and then plug your desired device (in this case your electro-conveyance) into the other end. I know it sounds truly bizarre, but this is THE FUTURE and almost anything is possible.
Did you miss that the government is doing just that? In fact it was so popular to do that (replace the old inefficient SUV, etc.) that the program subsidizing it ran out of money?
From the Age article:
Mr Palmer said the Leaf, excluding its battery pack, would cost the equivalent of a small family car, and the company planned to enter into a multiple-year lease of its special lithium-ion battery pack with its first customers.
Sounds like they're trying to make it affordable, let's hope they do. I for one would really enjoy smog-free cities.
Just because it isn't appropriate for your use case doesn't mean there aren't a lot of people who it is appropriate for.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Lets say my commute is 60 miles. You're saying that improving a 30mpg to a 60mpg vehicle, which halves the gas usage, is the same as a 12mpg to a 15mpg, which does nowhere near that kind of improvement?
60/12=5
60/15=4
60/30=2
60/60=1
And then you state:
180/12=12 to 180/18=10
is a greater improvement than
180/30=6 to 180/180=1
What kind of math is this?
The problem, of course, is moving freight around. Rail is insanely more efficient than any other method available. And no, your pickup truck is going to be used for commuting 95% of the time, so over it's lifetime, you will have the worst vehicle for your situation 19 out of every 20 times you use it.
I only drive about 100 miles per week on average. A rechargable electric car would not only do the job in this case, but it could be particularly helpful during the winter. As it is, I have to drive around randomly sometimes just to get the engine warmed up and get rid of the moisture that collects in it. My commute is too short for an ICE in cold weather.
Of course, the other side of the coin is.. for someone who doesn't drive a great distance an electric car is unlikely to be cost effective. And the turd-on-wheels styling and OMGiphone gimmick don't make this particularly appealing.
Recharge time is 8 hours with a 200-volt power source
Recharge time is dependent on amp-hours, not volts. If you hook up a 200 volt power source that can only deliver 1 amp, you are not going to charge your batteries in 8 hours because that is only 8 amp-hours.
I image that the car is designed around residential wiring, which is usually 12 gauge and rated at 20 amps, so in 8 hours you should get 8*20=160 amp-hours, which at the quoted 200 volts is 32kWatt-hours. Based on $0.10 per kWh, it should cost $3.20 per charge.
The metered outlets will be installed by a third party and offered as an amenity. It's just like when internet started in apartments first. You install one EV Charge Parking Spot, and you have ten times as many potential customers driving by it every day.
Again, once there's an inexpensive, safe, reliable EV that goes 100 miles on a single charge, all other problems become trivial to solve.
an advanced computer system with remote control by IPhone,
So, which character do I send to hotwire your car?
Have gnu, will travel.
The Japanese, as a matter of national policy, do not hire engineers who lack Japanese citizenship. The engineers at Nissan are Japanese.
Um, I'm an engineer, and I'm in Japan, and I'm working for a Japanese company despite my American nationality. Watch it before you make such blanket statements. ;-)
um, im an american engineer and i work at a japanese company in japan...
"I am a LEAF on the wind - watch how I soar."
If it comes to Australia and isn't too expensive then I'd get one. I have a Prius for longer trips (our Family needs 2 cars) and this would be perfect for my commute to work. I'd use Public transport if I could, but the drive takes 15 minutes compared to 1 hour plus by bus. I think once these things are availabe you will see more infrastructure appearing. It's good to have a choice! :-)
Leave it to the Japanese to 1up the American competition.
They need a big enough battery to recycle the energy from coming down from a mountain pass to go up the next pass (a longer-range analog of recycling power from a full stop for the next start and acceleration) or cruise across the valley. That will also get a range in excess of a hundred miles on the level and in city traffic.
Do this, with enough engine plus electric horsepower to maintain highway speed up a mountain road, and you've got a car that can fully replace a gasoliine vehicle.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yet, if we buy the nonsense sold by the American companies like Sun and Intel, Japanese companies cannot innovate unless they hire foreign engineers. Intel managers use this lie to convince the American Congress to open the floodgates on H-1B engineers.
It's not a lie, you just have to read between the lines. When ever an American company says "foreign", they're saying "not American". It all makes sense if you just make that substitution.
Sounds to me like we need to issue more of those H-1B visas so we can get some of those Japanese engineers to work for our companies.
I wouldn't exactly call adhering to the National Electrical Code and Fire Code to be something trivial. Planning and routing conduit for 220v and maintaining public safety is not to be scoffed at.
Doable? Sure. Trivial? Hell no!!!
Life is not for the lazy.
Um, I'm an engineer, and I'm in Japan, and I'm working for a Japanese company despite my American nationality. Watch it before you make such blanket statements. ;-)
Liar. If you live in Japan, tell me what Mothra is doing right now.
Thought so.
XML causes global warming.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I wish I can get a hold of the batteries. I am sure they are a better replacement to the Trojan batteries I am using for my solar system.
The article fail to mention that owner doesn't own the battery and the infrastructure of electricity to power the electric car.
Nissan Leaf is part of Project Better Place have been discussed since last year. Wired have a article about it http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi?currentPage=all
And this is the presentation about the Project Better Place. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfGEbTcNuzA
Yea, Luddites!!!!
XML causes global warming.
So, I'm 50% wrong, and out of the box we can only charge 90 million cars. Or I'm 75% wrong and it's 45 million. Or I'm 90% wrong, and we can only immediately put 22 million EVs on the road.
Can you give up on progress and go back to whittling wooden crucifixes where you don't have access to a computer? Jesus fucking Christ. I've never run into so many absolutely stupid and cynical naysayers. Just give up and die already, and at least leave more oxygen unmolested.
There are places in the world that are literally just a single city, with nowhere else to go: Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Monaco, Windhoek and many little islands. Those could make good use of these type of cars.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
A Tesla Model S
It has a better range, a quicker full charge, a potential 5 minute battery swap, and the "S" is for SEXY.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Seriously... is everyone in America a "can't do" blowhard these days?
An auto manufacturer from Japan just did what American companies said was impossible, and has built a 5 seater EV with a 100 mile range with today's technology.. and the problem will be running some goddamn conduit and 220V?
ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?
Hey man, don't bitch to me. Bitch to our federal Government.
I'm not the one making the rules, only point out that they exist and can become a major stumbling block.
Am I serious? No, they are. Take it up with them.
Life is not for the lazy.
I'm very glad to see this. I'm glad electrics are getting here and are real.
But must it be SO VERY CRAMPED!??! What's wrong with a xB-like chassis?
Now they don't say what kind of amps it is pulling which is actually the only thing that matters but still.
My A/C runs on 220/240V and if I were to run it for 8 hours a night my power bill would be thousands of dollars per month.
I agree, what I would like to see are all electric drive trailers. Parking is a pain for many, but a all wheel steer, all wheel drive trailer could be pulled behind something like a Camaro (with a cooling system upgrade.) Currently you can't tow much with most cars, because they have to weigh more than the load to manhandle it around corners, stops, emergency moves. Electric + load cell on the hitch you could guarantee a purely steering neutral pull on the car, since electric motors can nearly instantly change torque/loads, so you could even have one wheel braking feeding the other wheel around corners. Charge the battery into hills, etc. The all wheel steer could help out those drivers who can't back a trailer,
Most could then replace our trucks with a car and no worry about those days needing hauling. If the trailer could be fitted to be a flat bed, but slide a RV camper under it also, I could haul heavy/bulky stuff, camping, and then the hybrid can also be applied to any existing vehicles immediately.
Heck if this could be flexible enough to be quickly stripped down to a single axle with a direct connect hydraulic lift, during parking it could be hoisted into the air without steered wheels. Working on all existing vehicles, and transferable to new cars.
Yeah, my math was wrong, and so were my assumptions.
Does anyone else read other news sites? Use Google? I want to clarify things I have read elsewhere. Their aim is to price it "similarly to the Altima" The Quick charge requires serious hardware not available at your home.
>So if we were really serious about making a dent in oil consumption and CO2, we would be pushing for more fuel-efficient pickup trucks, cargo vans and SUVs
Did you know there are only 2 models of cargo vans in the U.S.? Ford makes the E150/250/350, and Chevy+GMC make the 1500/2500/3500. They get about 12 MPG, and you can't get diesel on anything less than a 350/3500. Thing is, all the car magazines rave about how "modern" these vehicles are.
Then there is the Dodge, aka Mercedes Benz "Sprinter" which is diesel and gets 29 MPG. It also costs $40,000.
>replacing a 12 mpg vehicle with a 15 mpg vehicle saves you as much as replacing a 30 MPG vehicle with a 60 MPG vehicle.
OK let's check this:
12mpg over 60 mi = 5 gallons
15mpg over 60 mi = 4 gallons
30 mpg over 60 mi = 2 gallons
60 mpg over 60 mi = 1 gallon
WOW you are right. In both cases, the savings is 1gallon.
ExxonMobil announces an new accessory for the upcoming Nissan LEAF car: A gas powered field generator, allowing you to conveniently recharge your electric car on the go! The new generator runs on Unleaded or Super gasoline.
Alright - so you're correct that improving the efficiency of extremely inefficient vehicles saves more gas.
But question then is - why?
Why drive around a 5 liter V8 truck when you're hauling around yourself and perhaps a hundreds pounds of small cargo 90% of the time? Going from 12mpg to 15mpg beats going from 30mpg to 60mpg, but going from 12mpg to 120mpg is still the winner by far.
Why is it that all 'green'cars are prohibitively expensive(Tesla Roadster), horribly ugly(LEAF, Prius, Volt) or largely impractical?(Tesla again) Seriously, if they made some decent, normal looking 'green' cars, more people might be enthusiastic about buying and using them...
*runs*
They also need to get the cost under $35k.
Uh, any savings in gas will result in increases in your electricity bill? Hello? Unless there's some sort of magical electric car unicorn that shits rainbows and free energy. Why is it that combustiphobes always invoke unicorns when it's time to discuss finances?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Israel was one of the first countries to push 'Project Better Place' and give a financial commitment.
AC and heat are the only two major current draws. The power drawn by the radio is trivial compared to what it takes to run the wheels and the A/C.
Yes, if you want to preserve the battery you'll have to lay off the heater and put on a coat. Lots of people bike to work, and they wear coats in the winter...
I see this being very useful for things like mail delivery trucks, or other daily government or fleet uses. The routes are predictable, and even the excess charge needed to avoid being stranded in the event of delay would be pretty easy to take into account. Big purchases from agencies and fleets would do wonders to keep this floating till the tech improves to the level needed for regular consumers.
I still get run off the road by people driving shiny SUV's in the city with no clue how to drive them.
If you really want to do something, raise the gas tax so that it's $8/gallon. Then take all the money raised by that tax and use it to lower other taxes.
I've drafted commercial buildings before. I know electrical codes and fire safety are a pain in the ass, and sometimes seem inane.
But then you look at how many people die of fire and electric shock in America versus a place where there's no oversight, like India or China, and trust me, you're thankful that the regulations are in place.
So, is the problem the Federal Government or the laziness of contractors who don't want to learn or abide the regulations?
Remember that such systems would be "recycling" energy by taking speed away from the car. There is always a friction cost for regular driving, but you would always add more when you were charging. Catching energy while braking is a good idea since you want to stop or slow down anyway, and you would lose all that kinetic energy to friction then. But it you are trying to catch energy driving along, you will always lose more total energy to friction than if you just left well enough alone.
"Unless it is really cheap, I don't see, why many people would rush to buy it."
When you wake up one morning and find gas is $10 / gallon. . .
When you have to search for a gas station that's open for business, and wait in a long, long line, while hoping there will be some gas left by the time you get to the front. . .
When you finally make it to the front of the line and find out you don't have the right ration card and aren't allowed to buy any today. . .
Then you might want an electric car.
I've thought about this sort of thing too. It works even better with an electric or hybrid towing it, since you don't need an extra battery in the back (just a big cable).
A variant is a trailer with small electric motors on the wheels that can exert a large peak torque but need to cool off after doing so (for maneuvers and emergency stops), along with an onboard diesel generator. The generator feeds power to the electric motors on the car in front, so you have enough sustained power to tow the thing.
If we're going to give up on an invention that has the potential to drastically improve our world just because a few lawyers are in the way, then we're a bunch of pussies.
Run the 220V through the lawyers, and you solve the problem.
Most of those issues can be handled by more advanced systems in electric-only platforms. Most gas-powered cars have massively oversized heating and cooling systems, and they leak like a sieve. In a gas vehicle, that's a good thing since there is always surplus heat to remove, and there are exhaust gasses to be dealt with, and moving tons of air through the system is a cheap way to deal with it. Electric car systems can recirculate more cabin air, and remember there's not a boiling hot chunk of metal sitting right in front of your feet, and that hot exhaust system and catalytic converter running below the cabin.
As for emergency charging, who's to say that future road service vehicles won't be equipped with quick chargers? At home, the charge rate is limited by a number of factors. The main charge circuit is typically limited to a single 120 or 240 VAC circuit, at 20, 30 or MAYBE 50A. Any more and too many houses couldn't handle the charging. Plus, your daily charger has to be user-friendly and be able to run safely unattended. An emergency charger, used by trained personnel, could pump much more energy into the batteries, so I'd expect in a few years that you could get about a half-way charge in the time that it would take to change a tire. Not a big problem.
The problem that I see with solar is what I'd call the pie slice problem. Right now, you take the new car buyers, and slice the pie based on the current limitations of electric cars. Commute too long? Cut out that slice. Wicked hot or cold? They're out too. Not feasible to install a charger at your home (e.g. apartment dwellers)? Cut out that slice of the market. Can't afford the extra expense of the vehicle? Need to haul cargo periodically? Worried about ongoing costs of the battery system? Don't always return to your home base? Suspicious of new technology? All of these and more trim down the slice of the electric car to very small numbers. Some of those issues will be resolved, but some others never will. Unless there's a major technical breakthrough, electric vehicles will never be widely adopted.
I suppose that once electric cars are more commonplace, roadside assistance insurance will cover things like emergency re-charging, and towing companies will be outfitted to offer that.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Lithium-ion batteries are not ready for this task. They are not easy to make. That is why they cost a fortune. I don't think I am alone, but I have never had a Li-ion laptop battery make it more than 1 year in a laptop. After about 1 year the run time on the battery goes from 2 hours ( new ) down to 30-45 minutes. Plus, I don't run on battery power that often. Less than 2 hours a week. This tech is not ready to be put in mass produced cars. I know all the new claims about longevity. I bet the those who believe those claims also believe the claims Lenovo made about the battery in my current laptop. Battery life claims are notoriously unreliable.
One issue is that Li-ion batteries are very sensitive to heat. Leave them out in the sun, and their capacity will drop like a rock - even if you do not use them. This is going to be a huge problem anywhere where it is sunny through much of the year. Heat kills a Li-ion battery's longevity. Parking a car under the LA sun is a perfect way to quickly kill an electric car.
I don't know how much the Nissan battery pack will cost, but a Tesla battery pack runs about $30,000. If you replace it every 2 years, the cost quickly gets out of hand. My guess is that Nissan will not make an binding promises about warranting the battery pack. If it fails ( drops to less than 50% initial capacity ) in less than 3 years, you will be SOL.
I did see an article in the WSJ ( Wall Street Journal ) about an electric lawn mover about 2 months ago. The company clearly stated that the $800 battery pack would have to be replaced approximately every 2 years. Sadly, I think this is the brutal reality when it comes to battery powered vehicles. Massive piles of batteries that will require disposal, and the expense of purchasing new while disposing on the old.
I think a better solution is a supercharged engine that is 1.5 liters or less. Add to that capacitors and electric motors for acceleration. Capacitors are light, so they don't weigh down a car like batteries do. When and only when accelerating, the capacitors power the electric motors to give acceptable acceleration. When cruising, a 1.5 liter supercharge engine should be able to carry most light cars along at 100 mph or less no problem. Massive power is only needed for high speeds ( 100+ mph ) and rapid acceleration. When cruising at constant speed, it does not matter if you have 600 hp or 90 hp. During cruising and braking, the capacitors can be recharged. The capacitors only need enough power for short bursts. They discharge quickly, but also recharge quickly. Start and stop traffic might wear down the power in the capacitors fast than the system can recharge. However, you can accelerate on the engine alone in start and stop traffic. You generally don't need rapid acceleration in start and stop traffic.
Keep in mind coal power production is not exactly what one would call efficient ( less than 50% ). Nor is power transmission ( 10% or more loss ). Nor is turning electricity back into forward momentum. Also, high efficiency batteries are going to require a lot of rare earth metals. Unfortunately, world supply is limited.
Wake me up when I can drive home to visit my parents (250 miles, one way) without having to stop two or three times to recharge.
Range is only reason I'd ever have to get a car, and it's the one thing the electrics refuse to deliver. I don't care what it looks like - I want to be able to drive from Pittsburgh to Corning or Virginia Beach or Jersey (yes, Jersey) on one charge.
Hell, I can do it on one tank of gas. And the batteries are just as bad for the environment as the fuel emissions.... and gas cars are generally cheaper.
Oh, and another point - how does one charge an electric car in a metro area where on street parking is iffy and unreliable at best and a driveway is one of those little luxuries that quintuples your mortgage?
Electric vehicles are nearly twice as efficient as ICEs converting their energy store into forward motion. Even if electric energy was 50% more expensive than gasoline energy, it would still save you money.
The problem is, this doesn't address the problem. The problem is too many cars on the road causing too much pollution. The solution isn't cheaper cars! The solution is FEWER cars, and less energy usage in general. This will undoubtedly have some effects on the lifestyle of some people, but it's unavoidable.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Off-the-cuff anecdotes aren't worth squat. The average commute in America is 16 miles each way. 100 miles is ample for most people most days. Would it be anybody's only vehicle? Probably not.
It will not be "relatively easy" to keep a cars temperature at a set point. Cars have MASSIVE heat gain in the summer. Most cars have an AC system as large or larger than the one in your home. A car is pretty much a greenhouse on wheels.
Sure, I use another car for driving vacations, but these battery electric cars are perfect for some of us.
Why do people always worry about optimizing the wrong things?!?!
Seriously... I'm 36 years old and I've never run out of gas. Never. Am I really that much of an anomoly? Even for someone like yourself, it's got to be more rare than having your car break down with a flat tire or a busted hose or a water pump failure or an alternator.
So yes... running out of juice would require that you call AAA and get yourself towed home. It would suck.
But seriously. I think I'd rather worry about optimizing the other 99.9% of the time. My guess is that with the electric car you'd have a net decrease in the number of times you'd need a tow.
Looks like a pretty good little car. But how would it work in a place say like Manitoba, Canada? If it survives there it will survey anywhere on the planet. I think Nissan should test it there and see if those batteries will withstand the temperature, snow and ice. A electric car has to function across the planet, well unless we are all to move to the equator to respect our carbon foot print.
I think you are overlooking the number of cars sold. If the most polluting cars (on an individual basis) only make a relatively small percentage of your total car sales then it may indeed make sense to improve the performance of your more thrifty cars. I don't know what Nissan's market is like, but I'd have to guess that in Japan and Europe there are vastly more small to medium cars than larger ones.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
They need a big enough battery to recycle the energy from coming down from a mountain pass to go up the next pass
I really hope you don't mean the second pass being as high as the first.
THL phish sticks
You're ruining our lives!
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
What I want to know is why car makers are doing 4 door sedan electric cars for commuting? I don't need a stinking 5 passenger car, I need an inexpensive 2 seater!!
Just remember to bring a few packs of AA batteries. No?
Running out of power at that low 100 mile threshold would be inevitable - An ol' fashioned gas-powered power generator would have to be in there somewhere before I'd consider buying. A 90 lb, 4-gallon portable provides 8 hours of power. I'd need at least the 30 mins worth.
Don't hypermile in the left lane.
Mothra sleeps under my desk. He just goes out in the evening to suck on poor salary mans blood on the commuter train.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Yes, if you want to preserve the battery you'll have to lay off the heater and put on a coat.
Why then, if we are losing convenience of a warm car, not to make the next logical step and simply ride a horse?
Amen to your ilk.
Most upcoming EVs use about 200Wh/mi pack to wheels, ~225Wh/mi wall to wheels. The average person pays about $0.10/kWh. That's a little over 2 cents per mile in energy costs. How does that compare to what you pay for gas? At $3/gal, it'd take over 130mpg to beat that. And that's assuming you don't get time-of-use rates, since EVs typically charge off-peak.
And it's not all energy costs, too. It's also maintenance. EV drivetrains have about a tenth as many moving parts as gas drivetrains. And contrary to the stereotypes promoted by lead-acid EVs, if you look at the failure rate on Prius packs, they're very low. Heck, GM is *warrantying* the Volt pack for 10 years. And no shock, when hybrid packs were mass produced, the prices went way down. Hybrid packs nowadays are typically $2-2.5k. That's no worse than replacing a transmission (EVs are generally direct drive and thus don't have transmissions). Expect the same sort of longevities and price reductions with EV packs as with hybrid packs. People aren't exactly yet mass producing, say, large format manganese spinel battery packs.
Aeris Died For Your Sins.
Copponex,
Can't believe your frustrated post got modded higher than your earlier posts...
Anyway, I agree with your perspective here. The OP is interpreting the problem without considering scaling economies of efficiency by replacing SUV's and unneccessary trucks with hyper-efficient vehicles. I'll give some anecdotal support for your position.
I used to have an employee who would drive his diesel F450 pickup to the jobsite everyday from his house that was 40 miles away. It had low gearing for towing, but he was never towing anything, so it got the same poor gas mileage whether it was fully loaded with equipment or empty. I was covering his gas on this project, which cost me something like $200 per week. I asked him why he wanted to drive his truck everyday when he had a Dodge Neon at home. He said he wanted to have all his tools with him. We had a storage container on the jobsite, so I would have preferred that he leave his tools in the container and drive that Neon. Would have cost a heck of a lot less than $200 per week. Look around our roads and ask yourself, does that person really NEED to drive that truck where they're going? If we were to raise gas to $8 per gallon, I think you'd see a lot of truck drivers start to ask themselves that question, which would quickly reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
As a contrast to that employee, I had another guy who drove a diesel Volkswagon TDI wagon. Just a few weeks ago, he drove to a job 1600 miles away with 600lbs of tools in the back of his station wagon. His car is rated to get 40+mpg, and the trip literally cost him $80. Should the other guy with the F450 have attempted the trip, it would have cost roughly $474. If you ask me, I'd like to see more people dump their big pickups and drive more fuel efficient vehicles.
Oh, and for those few instances when you need plywood and 16' 2x4's transported, Home Depot has trucks you can rent by the hour and they also deliver to the jobsite. Most materials we use are delivered, anyway.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
The problem is, this doesn't address the problem. The problem is too many cars on the road causing too much pollution. The solution isn't cheaper cars! The solution is FEWER cars, and less energy usage in general. This will undoubtedly have some effects on the lifestyle of some people, but it's unavoidable.
You are so right. There are too many cars on the road. So, why don't you sell your car and take the bus everywhere?
I'll assume that you are not a hypocrite and do not own a car because of your beliefs. Now, explain to me how you convince people to give up their cars? You are asking people to lower their standard of living (giving up personal transport) so that others can improve their standard of living (less crowded roads). How do we decide who can keep their personal vehicle and who cannot? Do we raise taxes on gasoline and/or fees on automotive licensing to the point that it drives people to give up their cars? I am very opposed to social engineering through taxes for a variety of reasons.
Also, I don't buy the "pollution" argument. Modern internal combustion engines burn fuel very cleanly. Most of that is because the fuels we use now have the sulfur removed and no longer add lead. People will argue that CO2 is a "pollutant" which I don't agree with, CO2 is plant food. CO2 is a naturally occurring substance that all plant life needs to survive, by adding it to the atmosphere we are feeding the plants that feed us.
I don't think that the reduction of our lifestyle is unavoidable. We can avoid the use of petroleum fuels by using nuclear power and synthetic fuels, electric vehicles, improved mass transit, and so on. We can all keep our standard of living and reduce our pollution with the adoption of more nuclear power. The problems we have right now are political, not technological.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Recharge time is 8 hours with a 200-volt power source, and "just under 30 minutes with a quick charger" (no further details given) to charge to 80% of capacity. 8 hours to drive 100 miles? no thanks - why don't they run two batteries in parallel that use 2 power outlets to charge?
I work 15 kms from home. My parent live 200 kms away, the inlaws 600. I don't care how much it costs, I want it NOW.
I don't hypermile or drive in the left lane except to pass... ... actually I drive pretty fast on the highway.
AC (also electric) is going to without a doubt cut down on the battery's life
Actually, not that much, unless you drive *really* slowly. The LEAF will have a 24 kW-h battery. The motor gets .24 kW-h/mile[1], and assuming you average 30 mph[2], the AC draws .75kW[3], and you use it 100% of the time, we have (x is hours drive time):
24 kW-h = 30 * .24 * x + .75 * x
[algebra happens]
x =~ 3.0
30mph * 3.0 hours = 90 miles, a 10% hit to overall range.
If they use the AC system as a heat pump instead of a resistive array, range on full heat will be about the same.
Just call up someone and have them bring a bit of gas to make it to the next gas station, but how are you going to move that electric car?
And then, the next gas crunch hits. Everyone's gonna be calling me up to borrow my electric vehicle, but how are you going to move that gas-powered car?
I give a decent percentage chance of this actually occurring for some reason in a closer timeframe than my mean-time-to-oops-dry-tank, which is currently measured in decades.
[1] 100 mile range / 24 kW-h battery
[2] With a crappy 1 hour, 30 mile commute, where you spend good chunk of time cruising the freeway followed by some traffic lights when you get to the city
[3] The amount a 8200 BTU/h window-type air conditioner pulls, which is a reasonable comparable for this size car.
Electric ovens and dryers already have 220V hookups. They're completely normal. What is your point about the Federal Government making this impossible?
Why would I buy one of these when Tesla will have their "300" miles-per-charge vehicle out not long after this one is slated to go to market? Honestly, the only reason I can think of would be price, but I seriously doubt that it will be any less expensive than the Model S.
Electric motors have another neat trick - converting forward motion into stored energy (regenerative braking). Internal combustion engines are useless for this. In city driving, that's huge.
Ever since i first sat down in my dads electric Berlingo ive been wanting an electric car. The feeling of turning the key and silently whisk away is hard to explain. The odd acceleration thats constant all the way is nice, its more like a subway train than a car accelerating. I commute about 10 miles a day at most and does longer trips once or twice a month. We have two cars (three actually if i count my old car). Replacing one of them with an electric car and using one of them for longer trips will work excellent.
The government should make theese cars taxfree, without benefit taxes and subsidize them. Use the vast amount of money gotten from Gas taxes and enviroment taxes.
HTTP/1.1 400
See this month's Scientific American. Average European/Japanese gas mileage is already about 60% higher than it is in the US and still improving. And Nissan is building a battery factory in the UK.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Most cars have an AC system as large or larger than the one in your home. A car is pretty much a greenhouse on wheels.
The second part there doesn't necessarily follow from the first. Most cars have massive AC systems because you leave them in the sun all day and then want crispy cold air 10 seconds after you turn them on, when the interior of your car is probably 50+ degrees Celsius. Sure, a car is less well insulated than a house but it's only 3-4 cubic meters of air to cool.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
fat americans driving unnecessary SUVs in unsustainable suburbs are funding islamic fundamentalism, russian neoimperialism, and venezuelan blowhards
this of course is the most important thing about the need to adapt electric cars
but this won't stop some nitpicker on slashdot pointing out minor detraction {xyz}, completely missing the fucking point that minor detraction [xyz] is MINOR, by any measure, in comparison to the fact that when you go to the pump, you fund what's wrong with this world
enjoy your smog and your dead father/ brother/ son in iraq, since electric cars are slightly impractical
not to mention the fact WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF OIL ANYWAYS
some of you need to try to understand what's fucking important here
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Surely you mean AAA? Or alternately the RAC, CAA, DAA, whatever your local Automobile Association is called? ;)
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
+1, Backs Up Assertions With Maths.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
You also forgot that most houses in US already receive 220VAC. Granted it isn't single phase, however with two 115VAC lines with 180 degree separation. Secondly Japan uses the same power configuration, 115VAC, and I am sure that the 220VAC is brought in the same way (2 phases).
yeah. you know, i live in a mountainous area and there aren't any roads and until someone makes a car that can fly they're just totally unfeasable and no one will buy one.
An auto manufacturer from Japan just did what American companies said was impossible, and has built a 5 seater EV with a 100 mile range with today's technology
Not impressed.
"Today's technology" has been capable of it for the past 15 years, even "American companies" (what's with all the America hate on here anyway?).
Wake me when the Model-S breaks $30K.
Yes, if you want to preserve the battery you'll have to lay off the heater and put on a coat.
Why then, if we are losing convenience of a warm car, not to make the next logical step and simply ride a horse?
Because maintenance of a horse is much more complicated than maintenance of an electric car. To start with, you can leave your electric car alone for a week without it getting damaged. A horse needs regular food and care even when not used. Also, electric cars don't produce horse shit.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
sheesh.
Take off every 'sig' !!
There already is a more efficient form of SUV and pickup truck (cargo vans are less discretionary). It's called the car. There are assembly lines already constructed for them which will easily crank out the equivalent numbers of cars as is currently used for SUVs and pickups. If the government were to legislate the larger vehicles off the roads, the people who would otherwise buy such vehicles and put them into circulation in the used car market for the next 20-30 years would buy a car instead. People got along just fine with cars and station wagons in the 70s and 80s. Civilization will not cease to function if SUV/pickup drivers are forced to make do with cars.
Ever-more efficient small vehicles will take off (as they have in Japan) when the government lowers registration and other costs for vehicles above a certain efficiency (or below engine size or dimensions, as with the Kei car). Many people would benefit greatly from having one large family vehicle doing small distances per year and a very small and efficient commuting vehicle to do everything else. However, above a certain efficiency the costs like vehicle registration start to dominate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Well, I would like a car which would run on a few packs of AA batteries! But AAA batteries wouldn't be too bad either. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I guess that's why you prefer to stay anonymous. The company might find out. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You have a point about heating but not AC. Even a cheap solar panel on the roof would provide sufficient power for AC and AC isn't needed when the panel doesn't provide it. Thus your point is only valid in areas where heating is needed.
In case you're interested: Fans with built-in solar panels are pretty popular in boats since electricity is always an issue - especially in sailboats. And those panels are small compared to what could be placed on the roof of a car since they're mounted on the fan (such fans are sold as accessories that you mount by making a hole in a suitable window).
There are a lot of employers who can't (due to building or lease codes), or just will not (either the money isn't there, or the management just isn't interested) spend the outlay for additional circuits for their employees' electric vehicles.
The thing I don't get about this car is that it doesn't have a gasoline powered engine for a generator. I'm not meaning a hybrid with two engines coupled to the drivetrain, but a gasoline engine whose purpose is to charge up the electric motor's batteries when electricity is not available.
It isn't going to be for a while (5 years at the minimum, realistically 10-20 years) before gas stations around the US can retrofit electric circuits for fast charging. So, until then, vehicles which are designed for daily commutes will need to have either a gasoline engine or a diesel engine as a generator to keep the engine powered.
So, I hate to chime in with the many others, but until this this vehicle offers a gasoline generator for sake of range, it will remain a toy at best, just like the Zap three-wheelers.
Napkin math time:
8 Hr charge @ 200V and 50A? gives 80kwh
looking at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html I see an average of 11.59c per kwh gives $9.722 per charge
100 miles per charge mean a direct charging cost of 9.722 cents per mile
Similarly my 1994 minivan gets 23mpg. @ $2.549 per gallon according to http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/
thats 11.08 cents per mile
now if i drove something smaller that got maybe 28mpg (not an unreasonable number) that would drop to 9.104 cents per mile
Talk to me when I can save some money and drive an electric vehicle.
Obviously none of this includes taxes, infrastructure maintenance or any other costs,. just cost per mile for the charge vs gasoline.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Slowly running traffic is one thing electric cars have significant advantage. There is no need for an idling (but running) motor while you wait. Just to remind you its running (albeit silently), to heat up a car before you leave takes 5-6 mins at most. People using gas to heat faster are just wasting gas and killing environment even more.
Go ask what happens to those perfect millage ratios when the cars get into the real traffic in a real crowded city. Petrol based motor has to run, there is no S3 state.
While it is some super advanced electric car, there is nothing stopping one to couple it with a Yamaha generator at baggage "just in case".
It is not like it will be meaningless, a generator charged electric car will still have amazing low environment impact compared to old fashion always running motor.
... and the problem will be running some goddamn conduit and 220V?
Shoudn't somebody point out that america has 110V outlets!
Oh, sorry, terrible news, now there is really NO way that this car could work, everybody knows it's impossible to change voltages...
Then I'd say this car isn't really for your locale. The vast majority of people don't share the dilemma you describe.
-Tom
That's why GM did hybrid SUVs. They took the Tahoe from something like 14MPG to 21. There are a few other vehicles with the 2-mode system as well. While you are probably right about attacking the worst vehicles first, most people think "hybrid SUV" is an oxymoron. They feel the way to attack that part of the market is to kill it, not make it better. Of course that neglects the actual utility of such vehicles which cannot be replaced by small cars. Anyway, GM already took the approach you mention.
create a _LOT_ of waste heat. an electric car is likely to be much better behaved.
The average commute for people is far less than 100 miles, which means the only thing you could be missing out on is a truck for hauling or a car for road trip vacations.
1. There are more than three possible modes for people (commute, haul, road trip vacation). It would not be unusual for me to drive over 100 miles on a Saturday, with various errands to run, events, friends and family to visit, etc. Not a couple-of-times-a-year vacation, but a regular occurrence. Few people I know have a car that's only used for commuting: most have a car that happens to be used for the commute, but it's also used for other things as well. A car-on-a-leash would basically have to be dedicated to commuting on weekdays and short errands on weekends, increasing the number of cars per family.
2. The 100 miles capacity is probably a maximum: weather can lower mileage directly (rain) or indirectly (air conditioning).
3. Is that 100 miles with just a single passenger, or with several?
The bottom line is that the 100 miles is probably a best-case scenario and it has a hard penalty: a half-hour wait IF (big if) you happen to have a charging station in your area, and the installation of charging stations is starting at zero.
With my hybrid car, it's not a worry and I'm currently using half the gas that people who are someday (but not yet) going to get an EV.
We live in a condo in a very efficient urban setting. No place to plug in the EV, though. And unless the electric company decides to foot the bill, I doubt that we'll have 360 underground parking spaces wired to charge vehicles.
Not saying that it can't fly, but until we have reasonable hybrids from all manufacturers and until these hybrids have a larger market penetration, EV's are a pipe dream for the vast majority of drivers. Hybrids would halve our gasoline consumption without increasing electricity consumption, would push EV technologies (batteries, motors, control systems) forward, and fit exactly into our current refueling infrastructure. All this EV hype would be better directed at hybrids first, then plugin hybrids, then EVs.
The National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) is behind the National Electrical Code (NEC), not the federal government. That's right, the electrical safety rules are written by people whose job is to prevent fires, which makes some sense for once. Most states adopt the NEC as their official electrical code, sometimes with slight (and sometimes not-so-slight) changes.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Sorry - I replied to the wrong post. The National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) is behind the National Electrical Code (NEC), not the federal government. That's right, the electrical safety rules are written by people whose job is to prevent fires, which makes some sense for once. Most states adopt the NEC as their official electrical code, sometimes with slight (and sometimes not-so-slight) changes.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
More of these bullshit electric cars. We need a way to generate diesel from useless farmland, like land you can't grow food on. And a law against growing biofuel crop on more than X% of land suitable for food or feed crop. Here's an idea: we subsidize farmers to keep $LAND but grow nothing on it; let's change the law such that they get a Biofuel subsidy for using that land to grow biofuel crop, IF they don't replace any feed crop land with biofuel crop.
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It's a little more difficult to hook up an idiot-, water-, abrasion-, and UV-proof 220V public outlet than a (hopefully) stationary indoor dryer or oven. The problems I see are liability and charging (no pun intended) for use. The rules are already in place for the logistics of installing the outlet, although they're pretty expensive to implement (GFCI [and possibly arc fault], watertight conduit, covered-in-use receptacle, etc). The aesthetic and insurance angles remain open issues.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Seriously, when we have alternatives that give a huge benefit and people don't use them, how do you expect the magical leap to occur?
I drive a hybrid, and thus use 1/2 to 1/3 of the gas that most drivers use. (Perhaps including you?) Widespread hybrid adoption -- throughout manufacturer's product lineups and by consumers -- would slash our gas consumption without increasing electricity consumption, and without requiring any new infrastructure. It would drive innovation in EV drivetrains (batteries, control, motors), and would set up the perfect transition: hybrid, plugin hybrid, EV.
How about harnessing your enthusiasm on something that is here right now, that accomplishes a huge chunk of the task right now, that will finance the future you want right now, that will work for absolutely anyone right now and not just the already-energy-unfriendly suburbanite-with-garage? But you prefer to scream "Luddite!" at people who won't get onboard with your vision, instead of pushing something that's already working and that will accelerate the coming of your vision.
(No, I'm not saying US manufacturers have it right. They should have hybrids in every single market segment, from econo-cars to trucks. They're way behind the curve and with products like the Volt they're trying to do a Hail Mary and leapfrog the Japanese, but...)
Nit: Power in the US is single split phase, so the 220V connection is single phase. You're equating the number of 'hot' wires with the number of phases, which isn't always the same. Two phase was something else entirely.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Funny you say that. Our Jeep gets 18 city and 28 highway; the V6 that they tried to talk us into got 12 city and 18 highway. Glad we opted for the diesel, eh?
The EV1 only sat 4, but it had a 200mi range in 2002...
Typical low power outlets are 120V, but we also have 240V outlets for high power items like ovens, cooktops, water heaters, and clothes dryers. We use Split phase 240V.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
100km is fine for an urban vehicle, and all-electric appears to be the way to go. The infrastructure is already there in the form of the national grid. In Nice, France, they are starting to convert commercial vehicles to electric. The first half dozen have just hit the streets, cost 21,613 euros each and 1 euro to recharge for 100km (as opposed to 9e/100km for petrol). There is already an electric tramway here, and the buses have been running on natural gas for over a decade, but now a new infrastructure has been put in place all over the city... bicycles! Really popular, I see them all over the roads every day. Pick one up from anywhere, and just then reattach to the nearest rack the other end of your journey. Not for me but refreshing to see such enthusiasm for it.
If they can make the Leaf as cool as the Smart Car then they can make a lot of money. If it takes off then start selling extension cables on Ebay! Students will be trailing cables out their bedroom windows to charge their cars in the parking lot.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Not everyone lives in a third world country like the USA where you need to burn coal to generate electricity.
improve that 12 mpg to 18 mpg and now you need to replace a 30 mpg with a 180 MPG car (the EPA calculates the carbon-cost of an electric vehicle using our mix of power source to be roughly 120 mpg) to match the fuel savings.
Maybe the government could help. They could maybe give an incentive to people with old, inefficient cars to be used toward purchase of new efficient cars. Some sort of "cash for clunkers" type deal. Just a thought.
Saying that the efficiency of electric motor is higher than gasoline for the stored energy does not take into account losses related to:
A) Transfer of electricity
B) inefficiency of the local power plant (assuming part is produced by burning fossil fuels)
C) energy losses from charging the battery which turn into heat
Also it rather handily misses the whole point of energy density, which still is rather appalling (by comparison. It will get better, but right now still very far behind) for electric engines
If you live with a room mate and only one of you uses and charges the electric car, you might want to consider the killawatt
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/7657/ [Thinkgeek]. It can tell you how much power and how much the power costs to charge the car.
Ever notice that most science fiction technology assumes a really kick-ass power source? It's tiny. It delivers enough energy to slice through big steel doors or to go to hyperspace. And it lasts forever. 100 miles? Are you kidding me? Yeah sure that's fine if ALL you do is commute. But who wants to run the risk of being dead in the water because you can't find a place to charge it?
small vehicles aren't inane.. as an ase certified, and toyota/hybrid certified tech, they might be inane for the ridiculous lifestyle that perpetuates so much vehicle ownership, but they make sense for population centers, i live in chicago, and our expwy's are parking lots every day. parking is a constant issue, but instead of meters we're switching to ticket boxes, making more space for more vehicles, and most people have started buying smaller cars over the past 10 years, because it just doesn't make sense to cart your children around with all 3 of your cars. i also hail from an incredibly wealthy suburb where the price of gas is completely unrelated to the type of vehicle you buy, simply because status is more important than function. it really is absurd to believe we're gonna run all of our cars off of algae or green-er biofuels when electricity is the easiest thing to create as far as energy goes. why do we have kinetic watches, and solar charging stations for small electronics. the only legit counterarguement is that we burn coal for a pretty high percentage of electricity, but that can change over time, and people are using the grid less and less everyday, every new building that goes up is greener than the old resource hungry 70s and 80s era buildings, at least in this city. at any rate. YES. thousands of people every year trade one or two of thier large vehicles in on smaller models, they may retain one for towing thier boat or carting thier kids, we might not be ready for an electric suv yet, but these cars will be the standard in 20 years. unless of course you prefer to pay thousands of dollars a year for fuel, instead of hundreds for electricity.
You are asking people to lower their standard of living (giving up personal transport)
Two fallacies, here. First, places with good public transportation are correlated with a higher standard of living, not the other way around, and some of that is direct cause and effect. I don't blame you for not knowing this, because it's likely you're an American, and thus likely that you haven't spent much time (much less lived) in such a place, and you can't love what you don't know.
The second error was that no one said anything about giving up your personal transport -- just using it less. Reducing the problem to absolutes is to create a false dichotomy. There will be no 100% solutions.
You also forgot that most houses in US already receive 220VAC.
No, it's close enough to 100% of houses. And it's actually 240 VAC. For commercial property, you can take any two legs of a three-phase circuit and get 208 VAC.
There is no need to lug 100's of pounds of batteries or tow the car if you get stranded. There is the quick charge option. A portable generator could charge the car roadside to 80% in half an hour if needed.
However, what I think is the worst part about electric vehicles is there is no easy way to get started if you get stranded. Its happened to all of us, either you forgot to get gas, or the gas gauge was inaccurate, but you run out of gas.
Existing battery powered vehicles 'run out' of power at about the 30% charge level in order to extend the useable life time of the batteries. My guess is that the car will shut down and require you to re-start in some 'get yourself to a charging station now' mode if you attempt to drive below this level; not unlike gas vehicle warning systems. However, with a 100 mile range and a daily charging routine, I suspect this would never be an issue. People are going to want to use this car for commuting, not for intracity-state travel.
As for the AC and heat, those will represent significant drains on the battery, but probably not as much as you think. The electric motor already generates heat and could be used as a pump with a little more energy.
Is it possible to tow a tiny dolly that carries a small gasoline powered generator? Will there be franchises at highway entrances that will rent you one for long trips?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So, why don't you sell your car and take the bus everywhere?
I keep my car because it's useful at times. I don't take the bus because the train is so much more convenient. Cheaper, faster, and practically guaranteed to arrive at a predictable time. You 'mercans with your "can't do" mentality could never pull off a system as good as this, though. Too bad for you.
So if we were really serious about making a dent in oil consumption and CO2, we would be pushing for more fuel-efficient pickup trucks, cargo vans and SUVs instead of this inane (but highly press-friendly!) pursuit of ever-more-efficient small vehicles.
Agreed, lets not try to do both, who knows what would happen then. All of us people who think your post was +5 insightful, would much rather be able to cummute in our SUV's without having to look at those nasty 'greenies' making us feel bad about our wasteful habits!
Nissan is knowingly setting itself up to over-promise and under-deliver by quoting the EPA range of 100 miles, because the EPA test is well known to be extremely optimistic for EVs. AC Propulsion's eBox has an EPA range of ~170 miles, but a realistic range of 130. Tesla's Roadster has an EPA range of ~220 miles, but a realistic range of 175.
Nissan's car will probably have a realistic range of 70-80 miles. The good news is that this is more than enough for many, many households. The bad news is that many households don't realize it, because "range anxiety" is a very real (psychological) phenomenon, even though actual range limits are not.
So if we were really serious about making a dent in oil consumption and CO2, we would be pushing for more fuel-efficient pickup trucks, cargo vans and SUVs instead of this inane (but highly press-friendly!) pursuit of ever-more-efficient small vehicles.
Agreed. But you cannot directly change human behavior through technology. Automotive developers are oriented to exploiting existing unreasoned human behavior (bronx cheer the marketeers), and trying to indirectly change human behavior for the better through them is a waste of resources. Altering the tax structure has a more direct effect on changing habits with fewer unintended consequences (remember that the SUV market was created by automakers as a means to get around the fleet average mpg requirements that were supposed to reduce the number of gas guzzlers on the roads).
We have the technology now to implement a vehicle wastage tax. There are several ways it could be done but here is one possibility:
Those who can demonstrate a need for their gas hogs are unaffected; those who could as easily drive vehicles with a smaller carbon footprint are encouraged through the tax bite to change their habits.
Will
You've made some very excellent points!
So if we were really serious about making a dent in oil consumption and CO2, we would be pushing for more fuel-efficient pickup trucks, cargo vans and SUVs instead of this inane (but highly press-friendly!) pursuit of ever-more-efficient small vehicles. The people that drive those vehicles can't or won't replace them with small cars no matter how efficient.
Under the assumption of "can't", that's actually not true. Many studies have shown, in the US, anywhere from 60%-80% of all SUVs and trucks can be replaced by a car tomorrow. That's because the vast majority of these people use them as a status symbol. These vehicles never leave pavement (meaning they don't need to be 4x4 either) and have a single occupant greater than 80% of the time. In short, 60%-80% of all truck/SUV owners are dicks taking money out of all of our pockets by needlessly driving up oil costs in an empty attempt to convince the world their penis really isn't small.
I want to stress again, you have excellent points but I want to add yet one more. If Obama is serious about kick starting the economy and reducing the US' demand for oil, he need only get congress to pass a single bill. Thus far he has not even hinted at doing so. Most people don't realize the US's military is the world's largest single consumer of oil; bar none. Furthermore, the bulk of the US military is using engine and turbine technology from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. We have made drastic turbine improvements since the 70's. One study I read stated if the Air Force was to modernize their jet engines, the US military's consumption of oil would drop almost in half. Furthermore, passing a military modernization law would immediately spawn jobs to design/adapt replacement turbines as well as new jobs to manufacture and upgrade the equipment. Not to mention all the new jobs required for training. Also, most people don't realize but the bulk of non-deployed turbine maintenance in for the US military is actually subcontracted to civilians so all of this immediately translates to additional work in the civilian population.
So long story short, Obama has proved to be nothing but a farce. If he wants to be anything other than a joke, he need only pass a law requiring turbine modernization over the next five years for the Air Force to drastically reduce the US' dependence on oil while at the same time creating thousands of new jobs. And best of all, such law would pay for it self very quickly because of the drastic reduction in our nation's oil consumption. Such a law is a win-win-win for everyone except foreign nations who sell oil. So come on Obama, stop being a joke and actually do something that makes a difference.
What I don't understand about these electric vehicles, to help people get over the 'range anxiety', is why they don't put a small gas or electric generator in the car somewhere? Not some expensive hybrid engine which switches between internal combustion drive and electric drive, but more like a Diesel Locomotive - when the battery dies, the generator automatically starts, and provides the electricity to keep the electric motors spinning.
What's the problem with this? Why doesn't anyone do this?
I never heard of a result-oriented environmentalist. For many environmentalists, it seems to perfection or nothing. And perfection means their definition of environmentalism.
s/gas or electric gen/gas or diesel electric gen/
It wouldn't be a big deal if it weren't for the environmentalist full-court press. Supposing EVs really were the best thing since sliced bread... we could build more power plants to support them, and more infrastructure; we know how to do that, no breakthroughs required. But nuclear causes waste, hydro kills fish, solar thermal ruins the desert, wind is ugly and chops up birds, and most everything else results in CO2 emissions. Also electric lines are ugly. At some point one tends to throw up one's hands and say the problem is over-constrained and admits to no solution.
No, I'm not so good at whittling; maybe you'd like a nice sort-of-pointy stick? An abstract wood sculpture? Anyway, first you have to show the electric car is progress and not a dead end.
Depends on the mountains. Ever been to Colorado? In a gas vehicle, you use a combination of engine compression and braking to keep from going too fast downhill. In an EV, you could regenerate that energy back into the charging system to extend your range rather than losing it to heat on the break pads.
In Soviet America, horse shit produces electric cars.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Two words: Solar Carparks.
I've personally seen these in New Jersey and read articles about them in other places. Basically, build solar panel racks over the parking lots. Not only do you get to park in the shade, but it would generate power to freshen up your car's battery. Excess capacity could generate extra value with a grid-tie and buyback meter, or subsidize the building's operational needs.
Plus it helps reduce the heat island effects of all that pavement.
=Smidge=
If it's not good for somebody then its not good for anybody. That's a known fact around here.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
...where a different axis is a different axis. sheesh. make sure your stuff does the right thing when you cross gridlines!
39 years old and you're still working on your first tank of gas? I guess you don't drive as much as some other people. Sitting on the side of the road with a gas vehicle is much more difficult than with an electric. Once I hit 1/4 tank I can pull into a station and be full again in 7 minutes. With an electric i have to hope that I can make it home or I can pirate a plug for an hour or so to make sure I have enough.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
My ONLY vehicle can handle 100% of my needs. Why should I get a 2nd car that might get me to & from work, but would never manage my looong weekend drives? I'll stick to just one car, thank you.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The only time I ran COMPLETELY out of gas was when my gage was broke. But I've often ran low on gas when I was far from home. With a gas car, I just pull into a station and pump for 5 minutes. With an electric, where will I stay for the 8 hours it takes to charge the SOB?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
so the car's not for you - don't buy one. maybe in soviet russia everyone has to drive the same car, but here in the free world we each choose the one we want. i know people who still make the same kinds of arguments against cell phones and they still don't use them. however that doesn't mean the rest of us won't take advantage of new technology.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
9.6Kw = 63lbs of carbon? there's no fucking way that's right. "The 1999 national average output rate,(4) 1.341 pounds of CO2 per kilowatthour generated" according to this government study. So it should be more like 12 lbs, you're off by a factor of more than 5x. And these numbers can only get better as the country moves to cleaner power sources (such as nuclear)
Here in the 21st century we use l/100km. A Ford F150 would consume about 17, a large car 10, a small one 6 and a Prius 4. That would achieve what you want don't you think?
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Your employer, as part of your compensation, could offer to let you charge while you're at the office. Or you could pay to charge at the office, maybe. Society could change to have recharging "spots" every 70 miles where you can get a meal, get on the internet, take a nap, do your laundry, whatever you do at home (almost). Just being hung up for 8 hours doesn't mean you absolutely cannot do it. I would buy one. I live 6.5 miles from work. I bike everywhere else, weather permitting. Some places where I socialize are further, but this car would let me get around to them as well, and home again, wherever home turned out to be that day. For gypsies or telecommuters, a car like this could be all you would ever want or need. We have to do something.
You misunderstand what energy I want to recycle.
When you're going DOWN a steep slope you are gaining more kinetic energy from the loss in altitude than you're losing to rolling and air friction. You can throw that extra energy away as heat and sound by using your brakes and engine braking. Or you can save much of it by charging batteries to run a motor later.
Yes your generator / charge controller / battery / inverter / motor system is far from 100% efficient. So your battery will be more depeleted by the time you've run up to the same height later - unless you ran the engine. But every horsepower-minute you recover and apply to the next upslope is one you don't need to get by burning fuel.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
They need a big enough battery to recycle the energy from coming down from a mountain pass to go up the next pass
I really hope you don't mean the second pass being as high as the first.
Yes if you're going generally uphill the batteries will be more depleted by the time you reach the same height (unless you've run the engine to replace the losses). But the power you salvaged by regenerative braking is power you'd otherwise had to supply by burning fuel.
If you're going generally downhill you can generally use the regenerative braking salvaged power to get up the next, lower, pass without running the engine and can thus arrive at the valley floor with more charge than you had at the top of the highest pass, without burning fuel, even if you had to slow in the intermediate valleys until you didn't have the kinetic energy to climb the next hump.
Regenerative braking is about making the engine "see" a load roughly equivalent to a constant speed on a long, constant-slope ramp, though the real cycle is up/down, speed/slow, stop/start.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A rescue charge car. People are going to be breaking down all over the place in these things. "But my iPhone said I could go 23 miles on what I had left and home is only 20 miles according to my Garmin..." Someone's going to make millions on a 15 minute 'quickie' charge to get people home or wherever they're going. Of course you could always create a swappable battery system too.
And this sort of thing is where we WILL go, whether we like it or not.
Currently the utility I work for offers incentives if they can control your air conditioner during peak load. Thus they can shut down your compressor to help prevent load shedding during high load. With the advent of the "smart grid" where your electric meter will be read at least once an hour versus once a month electric cars and rechargeable hybrids are going to become a very important part of the "grid" as we know it. The way you buy electricity is going to change, it's going to be a lot more like picking a cell-phone plan (as in you will only use 1kw max at your house between 12:00 PM and 8:00 PM or you'll pay more), you'll buy "plans" that specify how much energy you will use and when.
At present, there is no feasible way to store energy but with a bunch of electric cars that can pick up the load when a wind farm starts cranking out 100% of it's capacity at 2:00 in the morning and can operate your home in the event of a major transmission line trip, electric cars are going to be part of the electric infrastructure.
Heck if you can charge your car for $0.06 between 01:00 and 05:00 then run your house when you get home from work off your car battery when electricity is $0.30, the thing might even pay for itself.
Yeah, a lot of this is pie in the sky but stashing an electric car at 50% of residential customers and %75 of businesses will allow greater exploitation of green energy and a more stable grid.
American homes are already wired with 240V AC 60HZ This is what the cloths dryers use.
I don't think I'll buy a vehicle until I can get an all-electric one. As far as I understand it, the drive system of an electric doesn't really wear out, leaving brakes (except they use regenerative braking, so that's less wear on them), suspension, and tires. And as I understand it, there's little penalty for only driving the thing a few times a month, unlike with an engine where things settle and cause problems.
It's not that hard: replace your electric stove with a gas one. Now, you have electrical capacity free to power your car. The length of the cable-run may be a problem. Heavier-gauge wire?
This is Nissan's 12 year old press release:
http://www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19971229/press008845.html
It's been about fifteen year or so since I last heard this. It's been my understanding that air pollution was (still is???) so bad in Mexico City, that the government mandated that all vehicles had a sticker that stated what days of the week you could drive. The idea was that if you drove less, you would pollute less.
Here in lays the unintended consequence of this law. Rather than a single family owning once nice car rated with good emission standards, they instead own two shit-boxes that bellowed smoke. The idea was that by owning two cars of lesser quality for the same price as a single nicer car, they could alternate driving them throughout the week.
It's a classic example of taking one step forward, three steps back.
Life is not for the lazy.
women
Quick comparison: Charge time: Ultra capacitor (Charge time of 1 second [practically limited by the amount of juice you can deliver] versus 30 minutes-8Hrs) Lifetime: Ultra capacitor (Infinite [your drive train will go before these do] versus ~10 years, depending on who you believe) Availability of construction materials: Ultra capacitor (Can you say carbon and aluminum? This is versus a handful of countries that control the worlds supply of lithium, some of whom's governments are not on the best of terms with us, whatever their reasons may be). Someone remind me why we aren't throwing billions of dollars towards ultra capacitor development? Quite literally, it is the only practical solution to the electric car question. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_double-layer_capacitor
Regen braking systems are about 30% efficient right now. So yes, if each mountain is about a third of the size of the previous one you'll be fine. But don't kid yourself into thinking you're recovering the vast majority of the energy it took to get up.
The only problem is your [3] where you make a hugely wild assumption. Now, I've got a 12,000 BTU A/C that draws 1.1kW and a ~5,000 BTU unit that draws 0.5kW... but neither one has as much compressor as even my Subaru Impreza, which is designed mostly for low weight (for what it is.) The systems run similar pressures in spite of being charged with different refrigerants - most comon refrigerants are within the same ballpark. But the car is actually assumed to be taking on much more energy from the sun than your house! You are assumed to be lowering the shades in your house, for example, but you generally do not have this option in a car, nor would it be especially safe to do so if you did. In addition, the insulation in your car is usually limited to about a half-inch of lint-like batting, or even less foam. The foam is of course much more effective, but neither one comes close to six inches of fiberglass with an air gap on each side, even when covered with some ABS plastic, perhaps with upholstery fabric glued to it.
In reality, a particularly small automotive A/C will likely draw nearly 2kW. That would be a 20% or greater hit to your overall range, and totally unacceptable. Unfortunately, there is little to be done about the problem, short of painting every car flat white (clear coat absorbs a lot of UV) because interior room comes at such a premium, especially in the smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Thus, you cannot add much insulation, even if you use something very lightweight. You also don't want to reduce the amount of glass in the car, because you negatively impact visibility.
It is not uncommon for ordinary vehicles to have an A/C system which draws as much as five horsepower, or nearly 4kW. I would assume they would go to some lengths to minimize this draw for this vehicle, but I believe it will impact range significantly more than you believe.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have one, but it's very small. :P Alternately, it's conceivable that not too far in the future, one may be able to lease an AA battery to get one home if one runs out of charge...
:) But doing it with alkaline would be a pain - remember your Jet Hopper when you were a kid? Remember trying to get mum and dad to shell out for 8 new batteries? (or waiting 32 hours for your 4-slot charger to slow charge your rechargables, no 2-hour fast charge back then). Imagine if you had to find 24000 of them! O.o
Oh, and for what it's worth, the early lithium cars such as the Lithium T-Zero and the Tesla had battery packs wired together from the dinky little 3.6v cells used in laptop batteries.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Most cars have massive AC systems because you leave them in the sun all day and then want crispy cold air 10 seconds after you turn them on, when the interior of your car is probably 50+ degrees Celsius.
Wrongo! Most cars have massive AC systems because the amount of heat gained in the car's interior is actually greater than that of most houses. I covered this at some length in a recent comment, but the truth is that houses have a lot more insulation, and you can have blinds in them, and close them. But neither is practical in a car for a lot of reasons I just discussed [some of anyway.]
Sure, a car is less well insulated than a house but it's only 3-4 cubic meters of air to cool.
That's really quite irrelevant; a car is a metal greenhouse. A house is [hopefully] designed to keep excess light out. And in a house, you generally have inches of insulation, and if it is properly installed, air spaces on either side of it. The car has none of that. Even a good-sized sheet of plywood is more insulative than many cars' sheet metal+insulation.
P.S. I am ASE certified in Automotive heating and cooling systems.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Regen braking systems are about 30% efficient right now. So yes, if each mountain is about a third of the size of the previous one you'll be fine. But don't kid yourself into thinking you're recovering the vast majority of the energy it took to get up.
Anything you recover is fuel you didn't have to burn.
I expect the efficiency of regenerative braking to rise significantly with the deployment of the new fast-charge (low internal loss, high current, high power density) lithium battery technology.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Charging for use is relatively trivial. You will need either an account or a credit card. A time-of-use meter is installed, and the fees for the billing cycle are programmed into the billing system that activates the charging plug. The meter keeps track of how much power is used, and it can be queried by the billing system using the same facility the utility company uses to read the meter to a handheld computer. The rest of the details are pretty much the same as a fuel pump. The meters could be installed and operated by the utility company, or by any third party. The user is billed out for power based on how much they used and when they used it, and the charges are handled in precisely the same way the charges for filling up with liquid fuel are, which is to say that you are either billed at the end of the month, either for what you used when or for a pre-determined rate and by the gallon, or you pay on the spot with a credit card or perhaps cash. There's no reason you couldn't sell the power by the dollar, but if you're being charged for time-of-use (and it would be crazy not to, since we want to incent people to use the off-peak available power) it would make more sense to sell it on the sliding scale that the power company provides, plus a fee.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But the car is actually assumed to be taking on much more energy from the sun than your house!
Per unit volume, yes, but the volume is much smaller than the size of room a 8200BTU/h air conditioner serves.
It is not uncommon for ordinary vehicles to have an A/C system which draws as much as five horsepower, or nearly 4kW.
This is true, but automotive AC is a very inefficient, belt-driven system that increases the rotating mass of the engine, sapping power every time you accelerate, and they don't run full time (there's a pressure switch that cuts the system in and out, necessary because the car's AC has to run at any RPM). Let's do some more math for a small car:
Car MPG, highway cruise @ 60 mph (no AC): 36
Car MPG, highway cruise @ 60 mph (AC on): 34
Fuel used per mile for AC: 1/34 - 1/36 = 1/612 gallons of gas
Fuel used per hour for AC: 60 * 1/612 = 5/51 gallons
Energy per gallon of gas: 36.65 kW-h
Energy efficiency of a car engine: 1/3
Energy spent to power AC: 5/51 * 36.65 * 1/3 = ~1.2 kW
I think I'm being generous with the 2 mpg and 1/3 efficient estimates.
In any case, rather than try to compute from horsepower levels on a car-type AC system (which isn't really comparable), I looked up the BTU rating of car AC systems. I found that typical cars have 10,000 BTU/h systems. I figured that 8,200 was probably reasonable for a small car, especially one optimized for energy savings.
If you bump it up to your 12,000 BTU/h example, the car's range is still 87 miles at 30mph.
All this is also assuming that Nissan didn't include some AC use in their mileage estimates. While they want to pump the numbers up, they also don't want their car to be perceived as an overhyped dud, so I'd speculate they're being at least somewhat conservative on the estimate.
Interesting, thanks for your more qualified input. I wouldn't have thought the lower insulation values would have been enough to counter the huge difference in area and the fact that you're sitting directly in front of the vents, but then again, intuition on stuff like that can easily be misleading. Also I guess on a hot day, if you're moving you have a lot of hot air moving against the car, giving you a sort of reverse windchill factor.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Also I guess on a hot day, if you're moving you have a lot of hot air moving against the car, giving you a sort of reverse windchill factor.
Yep, that's HUGE. I remember being in TX with no air conditioning, and it was over 100 EVERY DAY FOR A MONTH. It NEVER got under 75 degrees... this was about a decade ago. Never under 75% humidity, 99% EVERY NIGHT. Can you tell I was disgusted? Anyway, I had no air conditioning, and going faster only made you hotter. From the apartment, STRAIGHT TO THE MALL. heh.
Automotive air conditioning is considered to be working at or near peak efficiency when it is cooling 20 degrees Fahrenheit. There is actually a per-vehicle chart (SOMEONE has it, if only the manufacturer, it's usually in the service manual) that tells you what should come out when the input temp and humidity is a certain value, but this is a good ballpark for a warm to hot day. So, if there's 100 degree air in your car, the vents only blow 80 degree air, and that only when the system is working at or near peak efficiency. Most of the time the A/C recirculates approximately 80% of the cabin air, so the real situation is significantly more complicated. This, of course, varies from vehicle to vehicle, and some few will let you set 100% recirc, 80/20, 50/50, etc.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But the car is actually assumed to be taking on much more energy from the sun than your house!
Per unit volume, yes, but the volume is much smaller than the size of room a 8200BTU/h air conditioner serves.
The volume of air is, while not irrelevant, not the most important part of the story. The total energy gain from insolation in the car is greater than that served by a similarly-sized system installed in a house.
This is true, but automotive AC is a very inefficient, belt-driven system
Compared to a shaft, a belt is inefficient. But really, the efficiency of a non-stretching belt (e.g. basically every one you've ever put on a car, and certainly anything intended to handle that much power) is usually very, very good. In fact, at these sizes and levels of power, it can be similar to a chain, or even better, not least because it's not wasting energy making noise.
Anyway, counting BTUs of output doesn't tell you anything about efficiency; all you really need to know is that the system can be counted on to draw significantly more power than you think, probably twice as much. I wasn't really trying to do ALL the math over again, I'm not very good at it. I just know something about automotive A/C, and why it has to be so big. It's not the belt.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not JUST the belt, no. There are other factors. That's why I went based on BTU's instead of trying to compute how efficient car AC systems really are.
tl;dr version: Car AC's are about 10,000 BTU/h, and a 10,000 BTU/h air conditioner is about 1 kW.
BYD Already has a plugin on the market... Soon, will be near you thanks to Warren Buffett
Many of the issues of EV's limited ranges can be solved by adding charge points at work, charge points at the shops, and charge points at home. But the REAL breakthrough is an integrated renewable energy and battery swap program being marketed in various countries by "Better Place". Israel and Australia, among others, are due to have this program rolled out. Got an unexpected trip that you're not charged for? Then program your trip into the SatNav/GPS, and it will tell you where the closest automated battery-swap program is.
Also, electricity is so cheap to sell as a "fuel" that the company owns the battery, not you! (Shai Agassi makes a huge song and dance about forcing consumers to buy the battery is like forcing regular car owners to buy not just a little oil, but the whole oil-well that the car will ever drink from in its life.) So THEY wear the "risk" of the battery being overused and needing replacement... they test the batteries at the recharge station and wear the cost of recycling the lithium at the end of the batteries lifespan.
So my question is, will this car manufacturer be complying with the battery swap standards being developed by "Better Place" and Renault, or will they be forcing us to operate under the old car model of owning the battery! It's not just a new car, but a whole new business model for the car and totally changes the economics and feasibility of electric cars.(Eewww...)
http://www.ted.com/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html
According to their FAQ the quick charger is a 3-phase 200v connection. This explains the quicker charging time.
Again, it isn't the technical issues that get you, it's the practical ones, like keeping your time-of-use meter on the wall and unviolated (spray painted, glued shut, hax0red, skimmers installed, etc). To be practical, these things have to be as ubiquitous as parking meters, which makes video monitoring infeasible.
You're right in that the system is like a gas pump, but those are at a central location that is videoed, attended, and so forth. Your electrical dispenser is more like an ATM in that it'll be in the wild, subject to all sorts of bad behavior.
What's to keep an enterprising person from trimming a little insulation off the wires leading to the meter and using jumper cables to bypass it? It's not going to cause a massive fuel spill, so no one may find out for a long time. If you push the switch that starts the current flowing farther away from the customer (like under the sidewalk or up the utility pole) that'll incur more cost and trouble.
Unless your box uses cellular comms, you'll need a data line, and that's another weak point (damage-prone and hax0r-bait).
It's not quite as easy as sticking a parking meter in the ground.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
tl;dr version: Car AC's are about 10,000 BTU/h, and a 10,000 BTU/h air conditioner is about 1 kW.
From the page you linked: The energy efficiency rating (EER) of an air conditioner is its BTU rating over its wattage. For example, if a 10,000-BTU air conditioner consumes 1,200 watts, its EER is 8.3 (10,000 BTU/1,200 watts). Obviously, you would like the EER to be as high as possible, but normally a higher EER is accompanied by a higher price. I just gone done saying what we didn't know was the efficiency, which could vary dramatically. See sig.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're right in that the system is like a gas pump, but those are at a central location that is videoed, attended, and so forth. Your electrical dispenser is more like an ATM in that it'll be in the wild, subject to all sorts of bad behavior.
You're making an ass out of you, and umption. In practice, the dispensers will be ganged together, at least in the short term. There are numerous ways to prevent the theft scenario you describe, I can imagine at least five of them right now, so I will not begin enumerating them now, only to say that you lack imagination.
Unless your box uses cellular comms, you'll need a data line, and that's another weak point (damage-prone and hax0r-bait).
You're full of shit. All that stuff can come up inside a shack, metal box like a transformer lives in if you don't trust the crap the phone company uses, et cetera. People don't steal electrical power much in this country, perhaps because they're afraid of dying. In any case, the jack won't be live until you've paid, and the relay can be inside the controller shack. Oh shit, I said I wasn't going to explain everything to you, I guess I have to end this comment now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nice ad hominem attacks.
To be really useful, outlets must be available wherever cars are parked. That means on the street, in parking lots, decks, etc. You shack idea fails under those situations.
People don't steal electricity because there's no real financial incentive to do so since there are no portable (or mobile) electrical appliances that consume enough power or are able to store enough power to make it worth their while -- start using it instead of gasoline and you'll have the electrical equivalent to drive-offs and siphoning.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
You want to strap a gas engine onto an electric car? Why don't you go all out? Just run a belt from the rear axle to your generator and then you can charge as you go. You'll never need to charge it again ;-)
To be really useful, outlets must be available wherever cars are parked. That means on the street, in parking lots, decks, etc. You shack idea fails under those situations.
Not really; all it requires is sacrificing the occasional parking space. That is a show-stopper in only a few situations. It's not true when you get into urban areas, because there's so many parking spaces right up against buildings. The meter doesn't need to be ON the shack. The plug itself can be destroyed without much cost, although it does result in denial of service.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As long as that scary cult with all the white stuff is involved - count me out. Those wierdos have become way worse that M# in the last few years..,
which could vary dramatically
Modern ACs are in the 10-12 range. For instance, your 12,000 BTU unit draws 1.1 kW, an EER of 10.9.
As I said above, your 12,000 BTU unit would give an 87 mile range. Try reading your own sig. :)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The only time I ran COMPLETELY out of gas was when my gage was broke. But I've often ran low on gas when I was far from home. With a gas car, I just pull into a station and pump for 5 minutes. With an electric, where will I stay for the 8 hours it takes to charge the SOB?
Holy shit, at least RTFS (emphasis mine):
Recharge time is 8 hours with a 200-volt power source, and "just under 30 minutes with a quick charger" to charge to 80% of capacity.
For 30 minutes, might I recommend grabbing a newspaper or a book, and sipping a coffee at Denny's?
Since the power for these things only costs $1-2 or so, I can see a lot of restaurants and similar places using this as a lure.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling