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Electric Car Nano-Batteries Aim For 500-Mile Range
An anonymous reader writes "Consortium members read like a Who's Who in technology research for the Battery 500 Project which aims to use nanotechnology to extend the range of all-electric cars 200 miles beyond the 300-mile range of gasoline powered cars. IBM, the University of California at Berkeley and all five of our US National Labs are collaborating to make the 500-mile electric car battery. Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens, then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad."
until it actually happens.... This is more like a press-release rather than actual news.
One problem I see with the 2 year prediction is that it just doesn't give people enough time to transition from gas powered cars to half-gas-half-electric cars (Prius) to electric cars. People will still drive their gas powered cars well into the next 20-30 years and so to say "I predict a mass exodus" is to predict that in two years the global economy will not only have turned around but created enough wealth that banks can lend out 40-50,000 per person to guy buy their new shiny Toyota Batterius.
People will drive their cars and people will eventually switch but 2 years is MUCH too soon to think that we can start tearing down gas stations.
I predict the electric car produced with this battery will look like a Prius, since it has an excellent coefficient of drag, so good, Honda chose to copy it for the new insight.
The battery pack doesn't have to charge that fast. And a normal petrol tank is also a bomb.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
It IS a fad...
I spend all night charging my mobile phone. Its such a pain, sitting there and waiting for it to finish.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
...so what's this "the 300-mile range of gasoline powered cars" garbage?...
My 1977 Fiat is upwards of a 400-mile range with a tiny 12 gallon tank...(heh just pre-empting the Fiat haters...)and that's without pushing it or towing it :)
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
AskOxford: Commonly Confused Words. I suspect most people will discover that they regularly make at least one of the mistakes in that list; I certainly did.
Well they are more of a fad/statement then anything else. You don't buy a Prius to be "green", you buy one to say "Look at me, I care about the environment". Now that may come off a bit trollish, but that certainly is the reality of the situation.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
"Yes dear, the battery in the car is flat, I've just got to wait an hour for it to charge, then I'll be on my way home..."
how about witching batteries ?
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/better-place-unveils-battery-swap-station/
that's a battery swapping station, like a fuel station, except you don't have to leave the car, and it is faster.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I was too distracted by "Whose Who" to absorb much after that. Of course, most of it was after that.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
In order to replace the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine,) charge time needs to drop to less than 10 minutes. With recharging stations nearly as common as gas stations.
Batteries aren't going to do that. Supercapacitors will. (Or some yet-to-be-invented technology.)
Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens,
and the cost of the battery allows the car to be similarly priced to a gasoline car, and the charging time is reasonably short so when you run out you are not carless for 8 hours or something, and the infrastructure is in place to charge the car on the road,
then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad.
There, fixed that for you
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Yea, and when you wake up in the middle of the night and need to take your mobile phone for a 50 mile drive because your server broke down, or you dad had a heart attack, or your kid thought someone was in her house and is scared shitless, or something, you are going to wish you could pull up to a gas pump and fill your mobile phone up in a matter of minutes and not have to worry about it.
If battery engineers can actually increase energy storage densities to allow 500 mile range electric vehicles, there will be something of a stampede among car buyers, yes. However, one key remaining factor will be the range achievable with about a 15 minute quick charge (i.e. a stop for a Slurpie). If that range is, say, about 200 miles (40% of maximum), and assuming the economics otherwise work (i.e. battery costs and durability), we may finally see the end of the internal combustion engine in widespread automotive use.
Electric transportation is humanity's next (and very important) step in reducing CO2 emissions. It has to happen. It will happen. But I think this (non)story is a little optimistic.
Many great minds have been working to improve chemical energy storage devices for 50 years. It's a fantastically complex problem. We've made strides, to be sure; compare the latest commercial lithium ion polymer batteries to 80s NiCD, and the future looks bright.
But two years is a very short time period, in battery development.
Still, good luck IBM.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
"Yes dear, the battery in the car is flat, I've just got to wait an hour for it to charge, then I'll be on my way home..."
Sure, why not? Still better than walking.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
1986 Taurus 3.0 L V6 with 18 Gallon tank had a real-world highway range of over 500 miles.
Filled up in Phoenix and drive it home to Orange County, CA, then didn't bother to fill for a few days.
300 miles is piss-poor range for a mid-size sedan.
A lot of the time the phone doesn't take all night to charge and it has a usable charge most of the time anyway. Thank about all that time you can save by not going somewhere to fill your car with fuel.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
What will happen on the demand side of electricity when electric cars become common? Could it be that demand will quickly outgrow supply? What, oh what, will a KWH cost then? DIE, ELECTRIC CAR, DIE
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
I don't know to whom it belongs, but traditionally the directorty of notable identities is known as Who's Who.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Electric cars don't have much muscle
wrong. TGV: top speed : 574 kph (350 mph). tesla roadster : 3.9 seconds to 60mph/100kph.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
My '96 Toyota T100 regularly gets 325+ miles per tank. But that's 21 gallons worth.
'Though, I'd rather get 325+ on a third of that at the very least.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Battery powered cars will never become popular. Who wants to wait hours (or even tens of minutes) to recharge a battery? Hydrogen powered cars are the future, not battery powered cars. Honda have already created a car that runs off hydrogen: http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/
Hydrogen sounds cool and it's a great PR stunt but the physics don't work. You'll never get 500 miles out of a hydrogen car. 200 miles would be an achievement and electrics can already do that. The power density is really low for what can be stored in a car. Also storage is an issue period since hydrogen loves to leak. I've been hearing about absorption based systems since the 70s but none has really proven itself. The major problem with hydrogen is it has to be extracted and it's an net energy loss extracting it. Batteries are more efficient. It'll be tough to get hydrogen to match gas prices where as electrics are already far cheaper to operate. Fuels cells are also likely to always be more expensive than batteries so it's not a cheaper option to make the cars or the fuel. Would you still want hydrogen if it was going to cost you 50% more than electric to buy and several times as much per mile? The source for the power to extract it is a major issue. I know nuclear is supposed to save us but we've yet to deal with the waste from the last 50 years and nuclear has never provided more than 14% of the power worldwide. That means 7X the waste and uranium each year to replace existing sources. There isn't enough uranium let alone waste storage for it all. It'd take decades to ramp up and we don't have that much time left in oil reserves. The economic collapse actually bought us a few years but we need new sources in five to ten years not twenty. Wind and solar may not seem as limitless but nuclear is far from limitless it's just another finite resource that can't keep up with demand. We've got to stop trying to find one magic bullet to solve all our woes and tap different sources for more long term solutions. We have two major sources of energy currently used, stored energy like mineral energy and petroleum and solar sources which include biofuels. Wind and tide power are other sources but they need to be better tapped. Solar, wind and tide are long term solutions. Mineral sources are finite and most will soon be exhausted. Even coal won't last forever just long enough to ruin the environment. One way or the other electric is the future because even hydrogen comes from electric it's just not very practical.
I spend all night charging my mobile phone. Its such a pain, sitting there and waiting for it to finish.
What about situations where lack of a quick turn-around might be more of an inconvenience - like taxi fleets, or independent taxi operators? For the fleets it's probably less of an issue, as they'll have quieter times and will probably be able to rotate some of their vehicles out during those, but the smaller operators might have a problem. If you've got a taxi (as in vehicle, rather than drivers) licence and one or a few vehicles, you'll probably want to hire other drivers to keep them on the road as much of any given day as possible - there's no 12-hour downtime while you eat and sleep, or eight-hour downtime as you sit in your office, in which to plug it in at home or at the car park. Hybrids or fuelcell vehicles are likely to be more important than battery-only vehicles in those kinds of applications until a five minute recharge to 70-80% of 500-mile battery's capacity is possible.
Speaking of efficiency, how does the new VW's 235 mpg sound? It makes a prius look like a fleet of hummers: http://www.switched.com/2008/05/10/volkswagen-to-produce-1-liter-car-in-2010-should-get-over-200mp/
A bomb? Hardly- getting the right fuel-air mixture for an explosion (rather than a fire) is a 1 in a million chance.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
"the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes" Do you mean WATTS or JOULES? Don't know the difference? Then please don't post on technical issues.
sounds like fud from the days when people tried to introduce a clean burning hydrogen engine... Remember the Hindenburg!
Wherever You Go, There You Are
... miles on a tank of diesel every two weeks.
That is what I get now and I would want more from advanced technology.
(yes it is a FIAT)
realkiwi
That's nice and all, but I carry spare batteries and have a cradle charger to charge the batteries without the phone at all.
The point is that regardless of how convenient the charging might be, there will be times when it isn't. Call it Murphy's law or whatever but it's just one of those realities.
To solve the problem of recharging such a crazy big battery system I propose a merger of the 2 "greenest" technologies. Just have a passive recharge system based on hydrogen. Fuel hydrogen tanks, easy to store and fill up and then use those hydrogen tanks to recharge the battery as you drive (preventing megawatt recharge stations). That way you get ridiculous range, 0 emissions (except water) and unless you're driving continent to continent no real urgency to fill up the tank. Synergy FTW!
If they can make such dense batteries, I'd rather have 50 mile range with 1/6 the battery weight / cost. No use dragging around excess batteries all the time.
my faith is still in the super capacitors. coleman claims that their electric screwdriver with "flash cell" technology can charge in 90 seconds. too bad they cant make anything that puts out more power... yet
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
i think this is just for the high classes, when will i drive or have the car like this? when im 80? i can't even handle the battery that's in my car:(
Yeah while the "charge overnight" mode is okay for a personal commuting machine its not so good for commercial vehicles which are on the go a lot of the time. Maybe, as you suggest, different architectures will be used, so there will be less cross over between commercial and domestic applications.
Builders use commercial grade battery powered drills with multiple pluggable battery packs. Construction sites have places for charging tools. Maybe the generally short usage cycles of taxis will suit shorter range vehicles. How about a battery pack with enough charge to do one job, but with faster charging capability.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
My Peugeot 405 Estate gets over 600 miles from a tank - over 700 if you're on a long run. Admittedly it doesn't use anything as outmoded as petrol.
But you don't need 3 MW of power to move a car. Half the reason it uses so much energy is that A. two-thirds to three-quarters of the energy input is wasted (mostly in the form of heat), and B. another huge chunk of it is wasted lugging around that insanely heavy engine block and all the crap that it requires. You can easily get equivalent amounts of torque from an electric car that uses much, much, much less energy than a gasoline-powered car.
Gasoline contains 121 MJ per gallon, but by the time you factor in the efficiency, you're getting closer to 25-35 MJ per gallon, which is only about 8.3 kWh. With a 15 amp circuit at full capacity, every 5 hours charging is equivalent to a gallon of gas (approximately). As long as you don't *average* more than 60 miles per day, charging overnight is likely to be sufficient. And that's assuming a 110VAC charger. Most electric car chargers, AFAIK, are at 220VAC with a 30 amp circuit or larger, so it would only take two nights (or all day one day and night) to charge up a battery with a 500 mile range, give or take.
Sadly, it's not necessarily cheaper. At my current PG&E rate, even after accounting for the engine efficiency, gasoline is at a dead tie with what I paid at the pump on Monday---literally within tenths of a cent per gallon. If I could buy an engine that was 100% efficient, it would cost a fourth as much money to run a gasoline-powered generator as it does to buy power from PG&E, and that's at full retail gas prices. There's a fun stat for you, as though I needed any more proof that PG&E is screwing me.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I squeezed 900 miles out of a ford excursion on 1 44 gal tank.
The Navy Motto "IF it ain't broke Fix It" "A day is wasted if you don't learn something new"
maybe we could incorporate this into that plan to make solar panel roads. cars built with big antennas that scrape along a metal wire above and a metal wheel that runs along the conductive yet somehow transparent material below. everyone will want fords new trollymobile and all of our energy problems will be solved!
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
32MJ/l * 50l/(2*3600s) = 222kW aren't SI units wonderful? Transferring an amount of energy per time unit is the definition of power - and it is relevant. A normal electrical socket provides only ~1% of that value, they need to solve that too.
Builders use commercial grade battery powered drills with multiple pluggable battery packs. Construction sites have places for charging tools. Maybe the generally short usage cycles of taxis will suit shorter range vehicles. How about a battery pack with enough charge to do one job, but with faster charging capability.
One job could be from East Melbourne to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, or it could be from Scoresby to Werribee - plus however far you drove before it, plus however far you have to drive to get to a charging station.
Interchangeable battery packs with a very short swapout time at central depot might go some way towards helping with this, but being able to take a job from one end of the city to the other and knowing that you can fill up anywhere if you need to is likely to remain important to commercial operators.
We can have batteries that are good for 10000 miles per charge and charge in 5 minutes, and that truly would be great, but that is not enough to make electric cars a mainstream technology. The real questions is, where will the energy come from? What energy source will be used to generate all of that additional electricity that our power grids will require? In North America we already have important segments of the power grid that are under supplied during peak load. Rolling blackouts are occasionally experienced. There is no capacity in the system for this.
The original poster states, "Within two years, they promise to have a new kind of battery technology in place for the 500-mile electric car. If that happens, then I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make the Toyota Prius look like a fad."
This is simply impossible... without first figuring out how to generate huge amounts of additional cheap electricity.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense.
Creating a better battery is and exercise in developing an energy storage solution. We are talking about a battery with a high enough energy density to take us 500 miles on a charge. Thats nice but not nearly a game changer. This addresses the "energy density" problem, but not the bigger "energy supply" problem. In order to have a "mass exodus from gasoline", we have to find another source of cheap abundant energy first.
To get us all into electric cars we would need to generate much more electricity. We could:
- burn more natural gas or coal. In North America we burn copious amounts of that already to generate electricity. But then again,I'll stick with my gasoline engine if its going to come to that. As a bonus, in this case it is more wasteful to power our electric cars this way. We would be better of fueling our cars directly with natural gas. We would save the energy lost converting to electricity. Coal....could be complicated.
- pepper the world with renewable energy generation projects. I sure hope we do this. I'm pretty sure we will, but it will take time and a very large investment. Germany is WAY ahead of everyone else on this and still, they only hope to realize a goal of 45 percent renewable energy in Germany's total energy mix by 2050, and they don't think that will be possible without major conservation efforts. So, don't strap your buick to the backyard windmill just yet.
- innovate - find new power sources. I hope we do this too. Although the next big breakthrough could happen tomorrow, this will probably also take a lot of time and money.
Oil is an incredible substance. It is very abundant ( which is why we can use rediculous amounts of it ) and very energy dense. Replacing it will be a big challenge.
By the way, we already have an energy storage soltion that has a far greater energy density that of gasoline....hydrogen. Hydrogen is just like a battery. It is an energy storage medium (a very good one too) but not a source of energy. There is no freely available source hydrogen. Like electricity, we have to create it using some other source of energy.
Where can I buy one?
a few more notes. the 30KW figure for the honda is based on air resistance not engine efficiency. So unless you are prepared to lie flat in a coffin shaped car, your pretty much stuck with the crossection of a Honda as the minimum useful car. Thus there's no way to beat that power demand by more than a small percentage let alone a factor of even 2.
You might suppose then that service stations will instead swap battery packs. But that does not really solve the problem well. At any moment a filling station might have 5 cars trying to fill up every 5 minutes. (probably even more in some stations) so no matter how you slice it, you need the filling station to be delivering 5*3.6= 18 megawatts of juice. (assuming perfect efficiency which won't happen).
This is huge problem that will require massive infrastructure changes to achieve.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And a normal petrol tank is also a bomb.
Gasoline is only explosive under very specific circumstances. That's why cars have exotic hardware like carburettors and multi port fuel injection systems - to get the exact mix of gasoline and air that will ignite with the biggest bang.
Gasoline BURNS quite readily, but except for an initial "whoosh", it's not particularly explosive. In a sealed container it won't burn at all.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Putting aside the fact that the TGV doesn't run on batteries, are you suggesting that because the Tesla roadster has enough "muscle" to do 0-60 in 3.9 seconds, a tractor trailer, cargo van, or heavy-duty pickup equipped with a comparable number of lithium-ion batteries will perform similarly?
The battery pack doesn't have to charge that fast.
Especially if it can go 500 miles on a single charge. The further it goes, the more likely it is that you won't need to charge it 'til evening.
I think you mean Whose-Whom.
I wonder if it would be possible, given the safety hazards, to simply make a battery that can be removed and replaced with a charged battery for long trips---the old battery would get sent back to a recharging station and resold. Obviously, I guess, you'd have to take into account wear and tear...
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
The range of electric cars is only a major issue because it takes a long time to recharge them (and because there isn't a publicly available infrastructure to recharge away from home, but that is a technically easier problem.) If recharging away from home is very slow and/or difficult, then whether the range is 200 miles or 500 won't have a huge effect on demand: if you believe you'll want to take trips longer than the battery range, you won't buy one as your primary car. If you expect to take trips over 200 miles, chances are fairly good you also expect to take trips over 500 miles.
If easy recharge is available, a 200 mile range is also not a big deal: you want to take a break from driving that often anyhow, and extra time on long trips will more than be made up for by time saved by recharging at home instead of going to a petrol station to refuel. (Note: the alternative range of 200 miles is just a guess on my part.)
Conclusion: long range is nice to have, but is not make-or-break for electric cars, so long as you have enough to drive around town.
Changing the topic, the article is about using lithium air batteries with the air contact area made very high by nanoscale structure. I'd expect this to require some serious air filtering to avoid gumming up that nanoscale structure with particulates.
Finally, lithium-air batteries might be safer. A (charged) standard battery needs to have an oxidizing agent and a reducing agent in close proximity to each other (a bit like a rocket) whereas the air battery only holds a reducing agent (like a standard fuel tank). In any catastrophic failure, the energy release rate will be limited by access to air (i.e. it will burn, like petrol does.) (Any concentrated source of easily available energy will have dangers almost by definition.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
It's 2 minutes not 2 hours. So your figures are 60x less than what they should be.
Try: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&q=32+megajoules+*+50+%2F+(2+*60+seconds)
About 13MW.
As a 9-5 working stiff what will this car offer me if its costs 20-30K CDN when I can get tons of compact used cars for 2-4K that get 30mpg+ and this still leaves me with $15-25K+ for gas and car maintenance which I'd be hard pressed to use up for years and years.
Say I take my '74 BMW 2002 and say it costs me $200 per month to drive to work and back I'd be spending $2400 per year on gas which still leaves me tons of leeway for car maintenance costs and gas price inflation. Now substitute a 1995+ Honda Civic for my BMW and my maintenance costs go down even further. So unless all electric cars make a big fast difference in our average working joes life I don't see that huge amount of people dropping their daily drivers.
Now if they can get me that kind of electric battery millage for my 88 Bronco with 35" mudders I'm game for an electric Bronco conversion.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The exodus is already here.
-
This seems like a troll to me. But maybe not.
I just read this article about this history of the SUV:
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html
I wonder if they did a similar study on Prius owners what the feedback would be.
I've been mildly considering a Prius, and my though was: it would be an efficient and responsible purchase (and buying an SUV would be an irresponsible purchase).
I suspect this is what people think. I was following a car the other day with this license frame: "Your SUV Sucks" "My hybrid sips"
So maybe the Prius is the SUV backlash.
Or maybe it's the first (practical) step towards really efficient cars.
A normal electrical socket provides only ~1% of that value, they need to solve that too.
Not really. Assuming your formula is roughly equivalent to a full tank, and using the OP's two minutes estimate, it just means that charging from a wall socket would take 100x longer than filling at the pump; i.e., ~3 hours, 20 minutes. If you don't normally exceed 500 miles between outlets, you shouldn't need quick-charging for anything other than road trips.
Or require a licensed operator at charging stations. Or something else.
The point being, it's probably feasible if the consumer drops their assumptions about the way fueling their car is supposed to go.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Since no one's responded, let me be the first to say that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Why you were modded up I'll never understand.
A Prius, in capable hands, is able to get in excess of 80 mpg. In not so capable hands it's still getting in the 40-50 mpg range. For lead foots it's still high 30s mpg. I know a guy who's a complete lead foot in his Prius (ie WOT almost all the time in the city, way over the speed limit on the highway, etc), and he still manages to get 40 mpg.
Absolutely false. If you're talking about the absolute highest MPG you'll ever get, then every single car right now will get better mileage at 20 mph than at 55 mph. Hell, I can easily get over 50 mpg at an average speed of 20 mph on my 5-speed MkV Jetta. However, the Prius is the most fuel efficient vehicle at each speed point from 1 mph to 100+ mph compared to any other car on the market. That's because at lower speeds, the car's computer turns off the engine until needed. The ICE has late intake valve closure (aka Atkinsonized cams), which makes the engine more fuel efficient. This, coupled with a more aerodynamic shape than most other cars makes the Prius more fuel efficient on the highway as well.
Assuming a 5hr charge time you would get 100miles an hour of charging. So if you got home after a trip from Detroit to Philly then took a shower and took a dump you would be able to drive those 50miles.
Really 500miles translates to 9 HOURS of driving with no breaks. You shouldn't be driving much more than what a car as described can do. I'd like to think that if you did say 13hours of driving in a day. That you would take at least two 1 hour breaks. And you might say HAH I've done more than that before on a road trip. I must say, I don't think that is a necessity for a car. And safety wise I don't think it is a good idea either, even if the vehicle could manage.
The problem with replacable batteries is that you have not solved the average power delivery problem. You just moved it. if you picture the gas station as doing nothing at all till you arrive, then they swap in a pack, and off you go, there seems like there is no problem. In reality you have 5 to 10 cars all day long filling up for 5 minutes. that means the station has to be charging batteries at the same rate it handing them out. so that's 18 to 36 megawatts of power all day long on average to just stay even with the incoming batteries.
Then of course would you be willing to hook up a megawatt line to a battery that just came into your shop for charging? I would think you'd want to spend maybe an hour safety testing it before you throw the switch.
If you want to charge then 1000x more slowly (which would make more sense-- that would be like about 3 or 4 toaster worth of paper per battery) then you are going to need 1000x batteries in the back room charging.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
i can see people using it as a line to hide the real reason for their lateness already. . .
Or require a licensed operator at charging stations. Or something else.
The point being, it's probably feasible if the consumer drops their assumptions about the way fueling their car is supposed to go.
Not so fast. let's say the consumer was willing to wait 2 hours for his battery to get charged at the filling station. Does that solve the problem?
No the average rate of power usage by people going do the highway is still the same. if you figure 5 to ten people need to fill up at one station every 5 minutes then yor waiting room has to hold 120 to 240 people for that 2 hours it takes. plus you have to have enough service people to be processing 120 batteries per hour.
it's not totally unthinkable. But I suspect you will find people prefer gasoline that putting up with that.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
No the original poster is quite correct. The Prius relies on the fact that the car is stopping and starting to lower the long run (average) energy requirements of the car. Hence you can use a smaller power plant and supplement the higher instantaneous energy demands with the electric motor driven from a storage battery. However when travelling at speed the average power requirement goes up and the IC has to work harder. If you drive conservatively (ie slower and very smooth) you don't overtax the IC and run it in an inefficient mode. If you try to keep up with every other car then that small power plant coupled with heavy batteries become a significant disadvantage.
By comparison my large Citroen C5 station wagon averages 5.6l/100km on long runs in summer with the a/c running over rolling hills without me being very careful*. My C5 is a much bigger car that is well within the margin of the Prius' efficiency on highway cycle, but worse round the town ~8.2 l/100km around the city for the last 3000km. As you will notice I get a significant increase in efficiency between city and highway driving, as all IC cars do. They are designed to perform well at high speeds and do OK around the city (people like fast powerful cars). This doesn't happen with the Prius, is can actually be the other way around.
More generally, if you look at other comparable small cars they do significantly better than my car and seriously embarrass the Prius. The Prius may look good in the US when compared to a SUV, but they suck in comparison other small cars and then there is diesel.
* Remember a single persons experience does not make a data set.
Electric motorcycle KillaCycle: 1/4mile in 7.8seconds @ 170mph
It sounds like a pod racer and launches about as fast. They intend to get it to 560hp and under 150lbs for their next run.
Here, watch an electric car obliterate some exotic sports cars (This is old btw, electric tech is advancing fast): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqqtJpfZElQ&feature=related
Last Friday/Sat I drove from Bergerac to Calais (both in france) via Reims. Distance covered 1070km on 55litres of Diesel in my 2004 Saab Estate.
I'll leave it to you to do the conversions but 300miles on a tankfull is just silly.
My 1969 Triumph TR6 Motorcycle in touring trim and loaded up with camping gear etc gets easily that distance on a 4 (uk)Gallon tank full.
Progress pah.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
It's fine if you use fuel cells that run on petrol/gasoline instead of batteries[1].
:) ).
50 litres of petrol in two minutes = 50 * 34 megajoules in 120 seconds = 14 megawatts.
Random fact: the EPA limits fuel pumps to a max of 37.9 litres / minute (or 21.5 megawatts
[1] You'd still want super capacitors or much smaller batteries to store energy for regenerative braking.
> Confusing Watts and Joules much?
The EPA max limit for fuel dispensing is 10 gallons per minute.
One litre of petrol has about 34.2 megajoules in combustion energy.
So that works out to about 21.5 Megawatts as the upper limit for fuel dispensers (some of which could clearly hit those - hence the regulations).
Assuming the pumps now operate at half the flow it's still about 10MW.
I think this is the key for battery powerered cars. Switching the batteries using a robot takes no longer than a stop at gas station. You don't own the batteries, you just rent them.
The hardest part with this is the need for the car manufacturers to commit to a few form factors. I think they are again too stupid and release brand specific batteries.
(I saw this working with electric bicycle rent service here in Switzerland/Engadin, where you've got a battery service in each village. You just change the batteries if they are empty. So you'll able to drive a whole day).
~Andy
an electric engine with the same amount of horsepower is 5-10 times lighter and smaller than its petrol-powered cousin. So, it isn't the engine that's the problem with electric cars, but the batteries.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes. try to get a battery pack to recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB (literally, a coupla sticks of dynamite)..
However, you cannot fill up the gas tank at home. That is one of the killer features of the battery: no more annoying visits to the gas station, just plug it in when you get home. No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
And seriously, driving more than 800km in a day is a long stretch.
But I do not really believe that range will be the range on a motorway for a holiday-packed car :)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
1988 Citroën CX 22TRS, 17 gallon tank, 475 mile range and over 500 if I drive gently. This is a carb=fed contact-breaker ignition 1970s-era engine design, 2.2 litres and 115bhp. I used to get 32mpg for over 500 miles range but something's a little sick under the bonnet.
2008 Mercedes Vito 111 van, around 17 gallon tank, over 500 mile range, 116bhp diesel in a medium-size panel van. Again, about 30mpg.
It's worth noting that these are UK gallons, so 20 US gallons.
You're making contradictory assumptions. You can't claim that rapid charging is only for long distance trips and then claim that the 99% of commuters on highways will need to use it.
The only people who need a quick recharge are those going more than 500 miles at once with no long stops. If they stop to sleep then that's 10 hours to recharge at a hotel/motel. If they get to their destination same thing. If they stop to eat same thing. If the car isn't driving it can be charging.
With some rare exception even long distance trips are generally less than 500 miles one way and probably even both ways.
It's silly to take a system designed for gasoline and apply it to electric cars with no consideration for the inherent differences. Unlike gasoline electricity is everywhere. Every street, building, house and apartment has a gigantic ever refilling storage tank of it. You don't need to have special locations with giant underground tanks and tanker trunks to deal with it.
That's fine for people who will only ever commute or do short trips. What about an annual or even bi-annual vacation or an emergency that requires you to drive 600 miles? The fact is that battery-powered vehicles that require a lengthy recharge time are not practical for long term future use or wide-scale replacement of gasoline powered vehicles if that is the goal. The only technology that has any promise of providing the flexibility of gasoline without the associated issues of fuel supply is hydrogen. The GM HY-WIRE is a great concept of this technology.
The original poster was incorrect.
"3 MEGAWATTS of energy ... in 2 minutes" implies units of "megawatts per minute", or "Joules per second per minute", which is meaningless.
It would be more correct to say "3 megawatts *for* 2 minutes", or "X *megajoules* in 2 minutes".
I haven't bothered to do the math myself, but I can see that yours is incorrect, because 2*3600s is 2 hours, not 2 minutes.
an electric engine with the same amount of horsepower is 5-10 times lighter and smaller than its petrol-powered cousin. So, it isn't the engine that's the problem with electric cars, but the batteries.
And how you generate/transport the power to charge them.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Except the Honda Insight and a number of 1.4 and 1.5 litre diesel engined small cars from Renault and Citroen.
You might want to take a look at Better Place whose core business plan is based on developing battery swapping stations.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
correct. but for the batteries, the problem is one of technology; the generating/transporting problem can be solved by just starting to build HVDC lines and wind turbines, both established tech.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Wrong. ICEs get better fuel economy in the vicinity of 50 mpg, just before drag becomes a major factor. See e.g. this chart.
Wrong. Turning off the ICE does not modify the car's tires' rolling resistance, or its air drag, or the (often substantial) load imposed by climate controls. The only reason that the ICE is not 'needed' instantaneously, is because the Prius is draining its batteries instead, and those must eventually be recharged by running the ICE. They could have easily given the Prius a very small gasoline engine, strictly for running a generator, which would run all the time.
The advantage of the Prius is that it can run its ICE at an optimal speed, rather than the constantly-changing speeds (many of which are sub-optimal) of a traditional car.
Wrong. Read up on electronic valve-trains (e.g. BMW), or variable valve-timing by advancing or lagging the timing chain (e.g. Toyota's VVTI).
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Sadly, outside the US it is already easy to reach the 500 mile range on gasoline. I can routinely hit 450 miles/tank with my Golf TSI and that includes combined city/highway driving daily. For longer trips on the highway 500 miles/tank is routine. When will the gasoline cars sold in the US ever actually actually reach the efficiency of most cars sold in Europe? Oh that's right, it's gonna happen when everyone in the US gives up on the idea that they need a huge SUV and accompanying large V8 or V6 engine. I was appalled to read recently that the AVERAGE fuel consumption of cars in the US today is about 21 mpg. I can come extremely close to double that on the highway (40 mpg).
I'm not saying that gasoline cars are the future, but if you think you can't get an efficient gasoline car today, that's pure BS. They do exist, just not in the US.
Nuclear.
Comparatively cheap per megawatt, and per megawatt, the most enviromentally friendly power source we've yet discovered.
Consider this. Suppose it's the middle of winter, you come home from a trip like you described. I'm willing to say that most people will take longer then 9 hours on a trip that long because it's difficult to average 55-60 MPH and drive for 9 hours while remaining alert. Lets say the trip is business related. Ok, there was no places to charge your car along the way. Now your home and someone slides off the road taking a utility pole and your electric out.
Do you call off work, not go to the store for supplies, not go to a hotel where the heat is actually on, not go to family members houses to check up on them, or do your hit a gas station, fill up the tank and proceed as best as normal as possible considering the situation.
Where I live, it's not uncommon for the electric to go out for 2-5 days at a time during winter and with wind storms (it appears that trees grow ten times faster then the utility company can trim them around their lines. 7 days during an ice storm with nothing but a kerosene heater is the longest I've had in about 15 years. Anyways, when you do not have electricity, having gasoline at your disposal and the ability to use it can mean quite a bit in the survival arena. Heating just one or two rooms will cost you about 3 gallons of kerosene a day. Trips in town to refuel are a necessity. Trips in town for food, sanitation (well water so showering and shitting is a little difficult without electricity to run the pump), and general supplies like candles and oil for the lamps are a must when this happens. Sometimes you can be more prepared then others and need to rely less on it, but life is unpredictable to say the least. Sure, 99 percent of the time, it would be life as normal. That one fuck up is generally the one that counts though.
That would be the problem.
There's a reason virtually all trains use electric motors (even most diesels). Electric motors are really good! They're small, cheap, lightweight, high torque, reliable - better than ICE in most respects. Batteries are a problem. They're big, expensive, and charging takes time.
Faster than a V8 Jaguar XK, (0-60 under 5 seconds), 500+ bhp, 188 mile range (not bad for a sports car), recharge in _10_minutes_ http://www.lightningcarcompany.co.uk/home.php
If your going for a "bi-annual vacation" your in suburbia and have a 'second' gasoline powered vehicle.
As for an emergency, if your rich you will have a second car and can escape.
If your poor, the bus will take you to the stadium to be sorted, starved, robbed and raped.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/20-04-06_1?template=template/printable.xml And the BMW diesels are more fuel efficient, they just have a smaller fuel tank...
With some rare exception even long distance trips are generally less than 500 miles one way and probably even both ways.
I beg to differ. Most long distance trips I do are longer than 500 miles. My mother-in-law lives about 550 miles from my home, my brother about 700 miles from my home, and only my parents are less than 500 miles (400 in fact) away from me. On the other hand: all of them live in Germany, so more than 80 mph cruising speed are not an issue, which easily allows to drive those distances during a day.
For me a car that takes longer than half an hour to recharge is useless for those distances.
For commuting I am using the bicycle, except for the time I am oncall, because then I have to lug around my tool boxes. A car that can only be recharged overnight thus has not much appeal to me.
(My current car interestingly though manages to go about 600 mls on a single refuel.)
It's probably MrFusion!
No matter what the range is, there is always someone who needs to go a little further. If the battery range is 1000 miles then this author is likely to whine that he wants to go 1200 miles.
For your example situation that hasn't happened to me in my lifetime, the longest time I've been powerless is during the 2003 north america blackout. I'm more worried about being attacked by ninja's than having regular power outages after 9hour drives such that it'd effect my life.
2-5 days at a time is common??? I've been to place up north where bears and moose walk the streets and that would never happen. Electric cars will likely roll out faster in 1st world conditions. I doubt wherever you live where you need candles and oil lamps.... has the electrical infrastructure to support electric cars. Seriously where do you live? 1920's Alaska? I know places where there arent roads to and you have to take a helicopter to reach... and they would be insulted if you thought they used oil lamps, though their internet sucks which is almost as bad as not having flashlights yet.
The engine block isn't the insanely heavy part, the chassis is, since it has to be safe and car companies don't value simplicity.
But you don't need 3 MW of power to move a car. Half the reason it uses so much energy is that A. two-thirds to three-quarters of the energy input is wasted (mostly in the form of heat), and B. another huge chunk of it is wasted lugging around that insanely heavy engine block and all the crap that it requires.
Well we all know there there is no heat generated by electric motors, and they, as well as the batteries weigh next to nothing.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
> A full-size car may have a range well over 300 miles
Agreed, 300 miles is pretty poor.
2000 VW Golf, last tank was 60mpg, approx 12 gallon (55 litre) tank = range over 700 miles if you ran it dry - actually I filled up at around 670. That was (mostly) long distance driving - on short commutes into city I get less - 50-55mpg, typically fill up at around 620 miles. These figures are fairly typical for the car and not far off the combined and extra-urban numbers.
These are UK gallons - convert as appropriate if you get short measures.
The added range would make an electric car a lot more useful, but there are still some problems to solve. With a petrol car if I get low on fuel I can fill up and be on my way again in 5 minutes. If my charge in an electric car runs out how long will it take to charge? Probably a lot more than 5 minutes. Also where can you charge it? Not everyone has off street parking or off-street parking with an electric supply (e.g. a garage in a block). You can hardly run a long extension lead down the road to where you car is parked to charge it. I think this will only work if the battery can be *easily* removed (so it can be charged in your house ready to put back in the car in the morning). It would also be good if petrol stations could swap a discharged battery for a charged one (for a fee, obviously) much like filling up with petrol today. Until these issues are resolved I don't see electirc cars being as popular as petrol/diesel.
I sold my car, and bought an electric cycle this year, and I'm pretty impressed with it. I commute on it - charge it overnight once or twice a week, and don't get a sweat up even on hills into a head wind. Costs $5 per year to charge it, and $12 to insure it. Compared to my car it's ridiculously cheap - and because most of the time I'm passing cars that are waiting for other cars ahead, I get to work in around the same time as a car (12 minutes by bike. When there's no traffic I can do it 10 minutes in a car, but a normal morning is 15-20 minutes). I've seen those tuk-tuk's around where a bike pulls a carriage and takes a couple of people in the back. All you need is a carriage on it and a bigger motor and you could go anywhere in the city on it all weather, but to be honest it's not too hot to wear rain gear on the bike anyway as you aren't working, the battery is. I had to go out of town on a bus instead, but cost about the same as petrol for the trip would have or maybe even cheaper. Not quite the same freedom as having a car, but at less than 10% of the cost, I'm happy enough. I would say that within 3 years, at least 30% of the population will move to electric simply because of the cost. And I think it will be bikes not cars that show the biggest growth.
I've seen a hundred-car train towed by an electric vehicle.
In fact, so've you, since they're *all* towed by an electric vehicle -- what do you think diesel/electric locomotives are?
The electric vehicles built now aren't designed for towing. This isn't because it's impossible to do, but because nobody's seen a market for it. If these super-batteries come out, you'll be able to build an electric truck that will out-tow any ICE truck. Hint: torque curves.
2008 Honda Accord 6 Cylinder gets 500 miles on 18.5 gallons easily. But then its running on 3 or 4 cylinders most of that time.
Bringing it back on topic, yes, all of that energy can be loaded into the tank in about 2 minutes.
500 miles is about all I care to drive in a day, but I've put in longer days on occasions. So recharge time does matter in
a small percentage of trips made in an average sedan.
If you could rapid charge while stopping for lunch you could extend the range. If at least some of the battery pack were quickly replaceable, you could drive into an exchange station and do a swap.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The car/battery needn't be useful for everyone in every circumstance to sell well, just useful enough for enough people to buy it. I can't go 600 miles in a day on my bicycle, but I still use it daily.
I live in Great Britain, so the furthest I could drive without meeting water is 837 miles (and the only people doing that trip are cyclists, it's a traditional route for obvious reasons). The furthest I've ever driven in one go is ~400 miles from ~Birmingham to the Scottish Highlands. If I'm travelling alone, a train is my preferred way to go (because of comfort and cost), with more people the car gets less comfortable but cheaper.
In continental Europe water doesn't get in the way, but still most people won't drive much more than 500 miles at a time for a bi-annual holiday.
Gasoline is only explosive under very specific circumstances.
Those being "setting light to the vapour".
What will happen on the demand side of electricity when electric cars become common? Could it be that demand will quickly outgrow supply? What, oh what, will a KWH cost then? DIE, ELECTRIC CAR, DIE
I don't think you understand how utterly inefficient a car engine is at converting gasoline into movement.
Basically, you could build gasoline power plant and run electric cars off the output. You'd power more cars and reduce kWh cost.
BTW: Oil is non-renewable, which means demand is guaranteed to outgrow supply.
I lost my sig.
What is commonly called a 'petrol bomb' actually contains a lot more than just petrol. Otherwise it would be rather unspectacular.
Man, people on Slashdot are so negative and surprisingly restrictive in their thinking. All this moaning about "will never work, because I don't want to wait for my battery to charge" and hardly any ideas to solve that problem! Why not ALSO have the option to swap the battery at a service station when it goes flat. See: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/ for that idea.
Um, why not just swap out the battery if it goes flat? See: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/better-place/ for that idea.
I got 444 km (276 mi) out of my Suzuki. That's on a 17 l (4.5 US gal) tank, running full to bone dry -- some 3.8 l per 100 km or 60 mpg.
On a side note: running dry in the middle of a one-lane highway section ain't that funny, so bikers everywhere: don't forget to switch the reserve off after refueling ;)
Now how long do you want to wait to recharge it? let's say 5 minutes (1/12 hour) at the filling station is the normal time to fill a tank.
Why would you want to recharge the batteries in 5 minutes? If you've just driven 500 miles, a wee bit longer stop might be in order. After 8-10 hours in your car, a 1-2 -hour break sounds very appropriate. Eat something, have a coffee. Relax. Take a walk or even a nap. Your car is not the only thing that's in need of charging after all. The driver - that's you - needs to be alert and vigilant when on the road.
30KW * 10 Hours / (1/12 hour) = 30*120 KWatts
Based on this logic:
30 kW * 10 h / (1 h) = 300 kW
30 kW * 10 h / (2 h) = 150 kW
I agree the current is still rather large, but not unmanageable anymore.
Currently batteries are expensive large because of costly/scarce materials, recouping hefty r&d costs, and poor performance (simple need a big battery back for any usable mileage).
The price/performance is getting better all the time. At some point, I predict, electric cars will be cheaper per horsepower or mile of range. Because well you're cutting out, well gee, a few hundred moving parts, fluids, and reaping added cost savings to the chassis in flexibility of packaging and scalability (ie no need to route exhaust, drive line, cooling).
We better start building more roads, because in a decade (give or take) there will be a flood of new cars of all shapes and sizes, and they will be cheap.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I live at 37 degrees south where I sometimes use a heater or an aircon in the car, but a lot of the time I don't. Other people live in Finland, Alaska or Malaysia where the energy situation is a little bit different.
Some electric cars get their range by shaving mass or drag, but then parasitic energy costs might still be there. Okay thats an issue. My family has two cars. I am considering looking at an electric car to replace my wife's corolla. It mostly goes around town. I think that would work for me.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
one man's treasure, is the world's junk. WHy pick such an inefficient car to emulate?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Of course there is heat generated, the parent never said otherwise -- but just using rough figures, an electric motor, IIRC, can easily reach in excess of 90% efficiency, whereas a reciprocating gasoline engine would be lucky to get 30% efficiency. That is a significant difference, even before you take into account the losses in the multi stage transmissions that are required with an IC engine that are redundant with an electric motor. I can't remember off the top of my head how much is lost in a typical vehicle gear train, but it is of the order of ~10%. The weight issue is certainly much less clear cut. The motor itself will likely weigh less than the equivalent IC engine, and a heavy power transmission system isn't required with electric motors, but a battery pack will certainly weigh much more than the equivalent amount of petrol/fuel oil for quite a while yet....
You do know that a 1 in a million chance has to occur all the time. We have proof it actually does in the holywood videos, their cars explode all the time !
All electric cars still use transmissions. These have non zero weight.
Motors built into the wheels also have non zero weight, and major maintenance problems, which is why all production electric automobiles choose a single large electrical motor over in-wheel motors at each wheel.
This motor needs a transmission, because the voltage draw at starting would be enormous without it.
Most EVs use some form of continuously variable transmission (CVT), which is lighter, but not unique to electrics. The Nissan Altima also uses a CVT transmission, which allows it to accelerate while keeping engine speed within a vary narrow range.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Here's a potential solution.
At present we drive a big lorry full of petrol from the refinery to the petrol station every so often?
How about we drive a big lorry full of batteries from the power station every so often and take the old batteries back?
Or how about we put a great big power lead into the fuel station. The sort of lead they use for hospitals, data centres, aluminimum factories etc.
You only need to supply replacement batteries to people who are making >500 miles journeys without an overnight stop so the number of people stopping and drawing energy from the fuel station is comparatively low. In the UK you could get away with less than a dozen stations in total on the major motorways (M5,M6,M1,A1M,M62,M25,M4, somewhere in Scotland) and you'd cover almost every non pathological 500mile journey you could do. Really, that's replacing the entire petrol station network in the UK with less than 12 battery stations.
Actually that's probably overkill. Starting from London, Aberdeen and Inverness are the only cities that's far enough away to need a recharge (535miles/560miles). It's entirely possible that the number of people needing a battery swop on the way would be so low it would be uneconomic to make the batteries swoppable or to fund a battery swop station.
Besides, in the UK you're strongly recommended to stop for 30 minutes after every three hours driving. At most that's 210miles of energy every 30 minutes, that's a delivery rate of 180kW to the car while it charges. That's difficult (in particular getting the battery to accept the power without overheating) but may not be impossible.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
As E-cars become more popular, and battery tech evolve, standardized batteries will evolve. When this happens, there might be "switching stations" where you can grab a freshly charged battery pack, and swap it in for the old discharged one. A "gas station" could charge you $10 for labor to do it, and still make more money than they would for selling a regular tank of gas.
..........FULL STOP.
Does it really matter ? all the rechargeable batteries get slower and slower as they recharge. charging the first 80% is much faster than charging the remaining 20%.
Even if that ratio is brought back to 50% to make the battery marketable (recharge and go in 3 minutes),it's ok. On a 500 miles battery that would leave 250miles autonomy.
And the capacity is bound to be increased as the technology progresses.
I don't have the time to check right now, but I think I read that the electric motors are more efficient than gas powered ones, therefore an electric car could go the same distance with less energy no ? where you need 3Megawatts to go 500 miles with gas, you may end up needing only 1Megawatt, thus only 500kW for 250 miles.
There is no going around the fact that motorized transportation requires a dense energy source and that there is little difference between a dense energy source and a bomb.
Well, AFAIK we have this system of petrol stations that covers quite a lot of the places we might want to visit. Now why wouldn't we just build a system in which you could replace the whole battery pack with a fully charged one, and leave the empty one to the station to be serviced / recharged? If done right it wouldn't require any more time than refueling normally. That's your 600 mile range covered, unless you want to go somewhere really remote, but you wouldn't go to the south pole with your standard 4x4 anyway.
Your petrol is very cheap, so I would expect electric cars to sell much better in Europe (and other developed countries, they mostly have higher fuel tax than the USA). (And perhaps your electricity is unusually expensive? I thought that was cheap in the USA too?)
A litre of petrol is about £1.05. 1 litre provides 32MJ, so with your 25% efficiency that's 8MJ, or 2.22kWh.
2.22kWh would cost me 8.9p at night (4p/kWh) or 31p in the day (14p/kWh).
You have been lucky then. Well, that or you live in an area with a relatively timid climate.
2-5 days at least once per winter. Generally it's during an ice storm but we have a lot of utility poles that travel through farm land and sometimes access to those lines is difficult. I remember last year, I had two bucket trucks and a bulldozer stuck on my property from where we got a heavy snow (about 5 inches) that turned to freezing rain which snapped the power lines, and then a warm up the very next day with about 40 degree F weather and rain for a week. It took a crane, another dozer and a crap load of steal cable and 02 stone to get them out.
There are probably years it doesn't happen but it's a reality enough to expect it.
I live in Central Ohio. But I live in the country about 6 miles to the nearest city. The electric utility is some local coop but when they are having problems the larger ones like AEP is too. Shit just gets messy here fast. Here is a link to an article about the wind storm we had last year. Basically it was the storm system of hurricane Ike that hit the gulf and somehow picked up steam around Ohio and gave us 75mph winds for a day or two.
Don't act like it's that bad of a deal. People along the gulf and southeaster seaboard are in the same situation much of the year. Oklahoma and tornado alley have the same problems. This type of infrastructure problem is more common in the US and first world countries then you might know. Here is a list of some of the larger outages as tracked by the government. It's only for 2009 and up to mid june. Here is last year. These aren't all of the power outages, just the larger ones where it was considered an emergency. Quite a bit of the US experiences those for various periods of time.
So electric cars with a 500 mile range are problematic if
1: You live somewhere very isolated with very unreliable electricity supply and life threatening weather
2: When you plot a 500 mile journey you're completely unable to go past a quick charge point to compensate for (1)
I'd suggest that when you go to Heaven, you don't have a conversation with Mr Darwin and his survival of the fittest theory.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Which is entirely reasonable, since, in a petrol vehicle, you can simply throw a few inexpensive, filled jerry cans in back to extend its range. Aside from knowing that they can output enough energy for a high performance (or workhorse) engine, I'd also want to know how much these batteries will cost, and how much space they take up.
I imagine at some point in time, these people are going to develop a swappable battery. And I imagine once that happens, we are going to be able to stop at battery station and swap them out for another one and move along.
Not nearly as many people would need to visit the filling stations as with combustion engines. Most people will charge their cars during the night and while I don't have any statistics to back this up, most trips people take in a day are less than 500 miles. Hence the only people at the filling station would be those actually going long distances or needing servicing to their cars / themselves.
Oh my, your just trying anything to shoot down critics of electric cars and their impracticality. Stop attempting to create a false dichotomy, those were just part of the issues I can see and not all of the possibilities.
What's so bad at recognizing the drawbacks of electric cars? I mean if you want to live with them, fine but why such the effort to force your opinion on people who do not? I don't like the color of green on a car either, are you going to find fault with that too?
Charging overnight will be fine for house owners who have brought the charge units. But for flat owners/renters, people with no garages or for road parked second cars, will need garage charging. Battery Technology limits the charging rate. But modern people are vary impatient, at 30 minute charge, in a garage with a really great cafe, might be exceptable to mums with time on there hands. The average time pressed commuter wouldn't even accept that. Parking points with inductive chargers in city centers, good solve this. For any of these thing to happen, we're going need a standardized charging technology and years or decades of new infrastructure built to handle electric charging.
Perhaps what we need is not longer lasting batteries, but batteries that run on energy rich liquids. But thats a technology that is nowhere near prime time yet. Good luck to the Batteries 500 Project, if it produces cheap(ish) 500 mile rated batteries, we can begin build electric car infrastructure, and begin phasing out gasoline, maybe as soon as 2020. Which would save a lot of C02 emissions.
---
Electric Vehicle Feed @ Feed Distiller
Why should the station be charging the batteries? Why not have them delivered by trucks from a factory? I mean, it's not like the station refines crude oil today.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
You don't need to have special locations with giant underground tanks and tanker trunks to deal with it.
Storage isn't the issue, transport is. It's a lot easier to provide existing gas stations with a big fat electricity pipe and a bunch of charging points that have massive nozzles than it is to overhaul every existing neighbourhood to account for all the extra drain.
Doesn't mean people won't still be recharging at home(or work), but there definitely needs to be infrastructure where an electric car can be filled with juice in a reasonable timeframe.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Ouch your infrastructure must suck :/ I live in Canada and definitely get worse weather than Ohio. Probably in heat and cold and precipitation. I get maybe a couple hours of outages a year. Earlier this year we had enough rain that floods ruined houses and swept away some cars but we only lost power for about 2~3 hours. I live in a city mind you. Though 5" is regular snow... I've gotten over 50cm in a day (20inches).
I don't understand why oil lamps would continue existence in Ohio... Perhaps people in central Ohio are very backwards but... There are these things called flashlights, don't need to buy them oil, no risk of fire and no glass. Also they are brighter and cleaner. You can flip them between directed light and area lights. They probably hasn't been good reason to use oil lamps since widespread electricity. I have seen one probably 15yrs ago now but it was bought because it was funny not to actually use...
Unlike gasoline electricity is everywhere. Every street, building, house and apartment has a gigantic ever refilling storage tank of it.
This is functionally untrue. Over here in the UK, the average house has a single phase 230V 80A mains connection.
If you happen to own two cars, then there will have to be some pretty spiffy load management going on.
The problem gets worse if you expect (for example) an hotel to charge all its guests' cars. Let's see : 250 (cars) x 16A x 230V is just under a megaWatt. If you want a supply over 275kVA over here then you have to install your own 11kV substation (and you need the space to put it).
That's just *local* infrastructure. We're not sure we can avoid large-scale power outages over the next 10 years because of ramping demand and limited generating capacity, without factoring in a move to electric cars.
This problem is much bigger than it looks.
put a live wire in the freeway and people can charge up as they go along and only use their batteries when on local streets. Wire up route 66 and a truck could breeze from coast to coast without burning a drop of gas. There are already powerlines alongside most roads.
*sigh*
I wasn't commenting on whether the figures were correct, just that the poster was measuring the wrong thing. Joules are a unit of energy, Watts measure the rate of energy. Yes, I know the difference.
The original poster's statement was meaningless. Read it carefully.
Watts, Joules, Volts and Amps are not just interchangable terms which mean 'energy stuff'. If people don't know what they mean, they should stick to Crystal Therapy.
Go ahead mod me 'troll', I don't care. I'm sick of New Age Science masquerading as the real thing.
No it doesn't. Take a beer bottle, fill it 3/4 full with petrol, insert a rag to act as stopper and fuse. Light fuse. Throw in such a way that it breaks on impact. The impact breaks the glass showering the surrounding area with petrol which is then ignited by the fuse. It doesn't explode, it spreads fire. (see also Molotov Cocktail)
Not going to happen.
The people who are complaining that 200 miles isn't enough for their daily commute will then complain that 500 isn't enough either. Get to 5,000 and they'll complain about charging time, get that down to an hour and they'll still complain.
As good as won't win over masses. Better than won't win over masses either if they have to change anything. Just look at how much people bitch if you suggest they buy a smaller model engine for the same car to save money on gas and purchase. Even if you're talking about a 350 BHP vs 400 BHP model. They'll whine about how they couldn't possibly tow their four ton trailer that they only need once every four years.
People really REALLY love to whine and complain. And that won't change any time soon.
I get 550+ miles to a tank in my 3 year old VW diesel Jetta DSG, My bet is that this will be 6 - 700 miles by the time this battery technology arrives. The downside to this car is that its so high precision (common rail injection etc.), it can't use biodiesel :(
I'm willing to bet that if you venture outside of the city, the outage rates are comparable.
As for oil lamps, that's not backwards at all. It's called preparation. You see, those flashlights need batteries and generally will not light up a room for several hours at a time. Those batteries start become scared when 100,000 people start attempting to replace theirs. Anyways, the economics are in favor of the oil lamps and candles. You can get some pretty decent candles that will last 2 or 3 nights at 4 or 5 hours a night for around 3 dollars. A 20 dollar oil lamp which will look pretty stylish on the fireplace mantel will burn a half pint to a pint of kerosene or Liquid Paraffin lamp oil that goes for between 5 and 7 dollars a gallon for about 7-8 hours. Considering that there are 8 pints in a gallon, it gets dark around 5 and you hit the sack around 10, that's about 11 days of emergency lighting for the costs of one or two sets of batteries. They can also be used to set the mood is you want to get naughty with the misses.
Anyways, it appears I'm not the only one who swears by oil lamps. I guess maybe you are just to inexperienced to be prepared.
However, due to the limitations of household current (at least here in the USA), recharging the battery pack from a standard 110 V/15 amp connection could take 7-8 hours even with improved battery pack designs. You'd probably need the same 220 V connection used by electric ranges and electric clothes dryers to keep the recharge time reasonable.
Someone's going to be (Mg,Fe)7Si8O22(OH)2
Someone's going to be anthophyllite? I'm sure that's not what you meant, but your sig can definitely be interpreted that way!
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Charging with normal household connectors is convenient but slow. But the EU has adopted a standard for charging electric cars. It is a 3 phase connector for 400 Volt and up to 63 Amps. The idea is that charging will be much faster. Also the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has a group working on an international standard for an electric car connector.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Problem with that argument is the costs of the second (in my case diesel not gasoline) vehicle.
I do a bit over 100 miles per week commuting, plus several long distance (work & leisure) trips a year. At first glance, the commute would be ideal for EV, but if I still need the other car to cover the long trips it just doesn't add up. The fixed costs on the car (tax, insurance, servicing & repairs) are actually _more_ than the fuel costs of my commute over a year, so even if the electricity was free, buying an EV for the the commute would leave me out of pocket, even before looking at the cost of the car itself (finance / depreciation).
A viable EV needs to do practically everything a current ICE car can do so it can replace it. 500 mile range _plus_ a reliable charging infrastructure might just do it - 500+ miles a day is probably very unusual, but 500+ miles over several days away from home is routine for me (and, I suspect, for a lot of people). You would need to _know_ that you could get a re-charge overnight at each stop, and that is going to take a lot of infrastructure. Alternatively you need the fast charge at a dedicated charging station on the way, just as you now fill up with fuel - but that brings all the design problems already covered in other posts.
Essentially the problem is that liquid hydrocarbons are a very very efficient way of storing transporting and transferring energy, and EV tech somehow needs to match that.
I disagree. Existing power grids can take a lot more load as long as it's off-peak.
Gas stations are everywhere and so you'd need to overhaul every neighborhood. Running new massive cable to them would be a huge undertaking due to the sheer amount of current on each one and the extra requirements that'd probably have.
And that's going to be peak load which means a lot more new power stations, upgrading almost all the substations and so on. None of which will be used 70% of the time but it's that 30 minute time when everything is on that's the killer.
Prius efficiency has nothing whatsoever to do with moving the efficiency point to 20mph.
Yeah, you get more mileage in city-type situations... at least for the duration of an EPA test. That's the effect of running on electric-only for a fair percentage of the time, and particularly, off the line, where electric is so much more efficient than gasoline.
The big issue with the Prius that people have is the same issue they have with every other car -- they just don't know it with most cars, because they don't have mileage computers. The EPA numbers are based on slower travel. If I drive my 2003 Prius (less efficient than the newer models) at the posted speed limit, with 40psi in the tires and other basic good sense, using a little feedback from the computer, I get over 50mpg, unless it's the dead of winter. If I drive like a bandit (which, alas, is more typical).. 75-80mph on the highway, then I'll see those 42-46mpg results. Duh! Even with the Cds of the Prius, you still have a significant component of turbulent airflow... that component is based on the square of your speed.
What you're missing is the whole basic understanding of how the Prius works. There's a small win on efficiency due to using the Atkinson cycle on the ICE, rather than the Otto cycle.. more efficiency, less peak power -- which you don't need, because the MG2 motor provides that for peak power demands. So the ICE doesn't need the same power peaks. Then there's the transmission... which doesn't exist. A set of fixed gears, two motors, and a computer that can dial in the peak possible RPMs out of the engine for any given load requirement. And power normally wasted by the ICE, and by braking, is put in the battery.
Also, keep in mind that the original (G0/G1) Prius was designed primarily for low emissions, with fuel economy secondary. Compare that to the Honda Insight, the original model designed for maximal mileage (1L 3-cylinder engine, electric boost, well over 60MPG in regular use, beyond that if you drive hypermiler style).
Why the Prius mileage isn't better is simple -- ICE engines just suck. A typical car gets about 15% efficiency on a good day. A Prius is likely more in the 25% range... still sucks, compared to a 95+% efficient electric motor coupled to an 85+% efficient battery.
-Dave Haynie
Since no one's responded, let me be the first to say that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Why you were modded up I'll never understand
Well, I certainly didn't intend it as a troll, I'm quite serious. It's fair to say that the Prius is flavour of the month, and a lot of people are considering buying one, and when you speak against a popular fad (for that is what it is, in the longer view) then people will disagree with you, abusing mod points to suppress an unpopular view. C'est la vie. It doesn't mean I'm wrong.
People talk about cams this and split differentials that and Atkinson late closure the other. These are all super-complicated, mechanical band-aids that are trying to prop up an increasingly untenable lump of machinery for turning fossil fuel into rotary motion. Compared to the pure simplicity of passing a current through a wire in a magnetic field all these devices are Heath Robinson (or Rube Goldberg, if you're from that side of the pond) in comparison. Given a supply of electric current, some control electronics and a motor will give you 80-90% efficiency with no heavy and unnecessary clutches, transmission, differentials or other props necessary. The problem of course is that we are not given a supply of electricity, we are given a messy tank of petrol and therein lies the problem. However, I do not believe the Prius is the right solution. As a parallel hybrid it marries the chief disadvantages of IC and electric. If we are stuck with the need for hybrids for the short term (we probably are) then FFS why not build a series hybrid that actually marries the advantages instead? As the infrastructure starts to come on stream for plug-ins and hydrogen or whatever these vehicles can be easily adapted, as the essential drivetrain will remain common. Where will these developments leave the Prius? Dead and gone, that's where. 80mpg might sound impressive for those of you SUV owners used to less than 20, but many small conventional European and Japanese cars have had similar figures for decades. Ho hum - wake me up when there's really something to write home about, like 200-400 mpg (theoretically possible).
Don't kid yourselves, buying a new vehicle to "save the planet" is deluded. Keep your old one, no matter how inefficient it is, until something truly better and efficient comes along. Its energy costs have already been paid, for better or worse. Don't pay them over again, how is that ecologically sound?
Yes dear, the battery in my car is flat so I can't start the engine. Triple A will be here in about an hour, then I can come home.
Is this false dichotomy day on slashdot ?
you could still just have 2 engines, one for each front wheel. No transmission, no diferencial, no satellite box, no bearings, no crankshaft ... those are all made of nodular iron, so it would be much lighter, that is until you put on the batteries.
Being a 4-door hatchback, we've surprised more than a few people at what we've shoved into a Prius so I would call it "full-sized" even if it would be considerably less comfortable to live in than an Expedition if we became homeless. (I call Expeditions "Super-Sized" -- like people who eat at McDonalds every day.) Currently averaging 52 mpg x 11 gallon tank, so admittedly less than 600 per tank.
Yeah, but many states in the US have a self-inflicted embargo on nuclear power plants. First, get Exxon and Texaco off from the governing positions so these embargos are lifted, then you coulds have cheap nuclear power. But for now, you're stuck with your crappy coal and natural gas power plants.
Here in Quebec, we use Hydroelectricity, a clean, high potential and renewable energy.
However, due to the limitations of household current (at least here in the USA), recharging the battery pack from a standard 110 V/15 amp connection could take 7-8 hours even with improved battery pack designs. You'd probably need the same 220 V connection used by electric ranges and electric clothes dryers to keep the recharge time reasonable.
Forgive my ignorance og the American system, but around here 400V/16A is pretty much universal (from two phases, used for stoves and ovens and such). Surely you have something similar? If push comes to shove, you could hook up two of these for 12.8kW, which should get the job done 'ere the cock crows.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
No mod points, so I befriend you instead and post this:
This is a "News for Nerds" Forum, being technically correct is something that the majority of this community favors, nay, requires in their daily lives. If more people would take the time to learn about the details, they might understand that spouting nonsense is as disrespectful to the efforts of the educated as having some tagger spray paint over the Mona Lisa.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
Not too long ago I saw an interview with someone (sorry, too lazy to look up the name) who is trying to create a system of standardized swappable battery packs for cars. Just like toys and electronics, the solution for electric cars is not necessarily greater range and faster charging. Instead, batteries should be packed and installed in such a manner that they literally snap in and out. This would allow drivers to drive into any gas station that offered this service and swap out your dead or dying battery pack for a new, fully charged pack. This would function just like it does for propane tanks. You simply swap the tank/battery pack out and pay only the cost of the electricity. The station would "own" the battery packs and would charge them for their customers. Heck, in some places they could use wind or solar to provide the electricity for this and it would be very profitable (after start up costs). Also, this would remove the scary idea that maybe these battery packs have a limited lifespan and I as a consumer would have to pay for a new pack. In this scenario, the station would take care of that.
I don't think this is all that far fetched. And, if standardized, this could even be automated to the point where you just drive your car over a machine which removed the batteries from the bottom of your car and puts in a new one. You swipe your credit card and you're back on the road.
Food for thought. :)
Cars... not so much.
Wait! Do they say that modern gasoline powered cars have a range of 300 miles?
My question exactly. My parents have a Volvo S60, which can hold 70 liters of gas. On long-distance trips with a near-constant speed of about 100 km/h, the fuel consumption is about 7 liters per 100 km. Thus, the range is around 1000 km (621 miles).
Wrong. ICEs get better fuel economy in the vicinity of 50 mpg, just before drag becomes a major factor. See e.g. this chart [wikipedia.org].
While true, what you're missing is that on cars with manual transmissions the engine can be turned off while the car coasts in neutral (this can't be done on most automatics without destroying the transmission). Popular Science wrote an article on the high gas mileage competition that Shell sponsors back in the late 1980s. One of the things the writers did was to emulate what the drivers in the competition were doing, and they were able to squeeze out about 100 mpg on a Civic averaging 20 mph.
Wrong. Turning off the ICE does not modify the car's tires' rolling resistance, or its air drag, or the (often substantial) load imposed by climate controls. The only reason that the ICE is not 'needed' instantaneously, is because the Prius is draining its batteries instead, and those must eventually be recharged by running the ICE. They could have easily given the Prius a very small gasoline engine, strictly for running a generator, which would run all the time.
Well, the Prius is more aerodynamic than most vehicles and is equipped with low rolling resistance tires. It also has regenerative braking. If driven carefully, the need for the ICE can be delayed significantly. Even if not driven carefully, the Prius still gets better gas mileage than practically any car in the market in city driving.
Personally, I like what Chevy's doing with the Volt, just not the price.
Nuclear costs upwards of $8 million/MW for a power plant and then you have to pay for fuel. This is more than four times as much as for thin film solar PV. You might be thinking that the cost of energy rather than capacity is low. Not so. It is also the most expensive on a kWh basis. http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E09-01_NuclPwrClimFixFolly1i09.pdf
nuclear plants have issues in the summer when it is too hot for their cooling towers to works. also when there are droughts. but out side that, good stuff
And that's just with a $20 propane tank. How irritating would it be when my multi-thousand dollar brand new battery pack gets swapped for something two years old and near the end of of its lifespan?
> I predict a mass exodus from gasoline to electric powered cars that will make
> the Toyota Prius look like a fad.
It was.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Smoker2, these two nice gentlemen from the FBI would like to have a chat with you about your posting of a detailed set of instructions to make and use a weapon of mass destruction.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The Department of Energy has 17 national laboratories and 4 additional "technology centers" (mostly colocated at one of the labs). TFA doesn't mention particular laboratories, just that the National Labs are involved. Which 5 are the submitter referring to?
Well, there will be range extender packs. Essentially a gasoline/diesel powered genset on a dolly that could be towed behind your battery vehicle. These range extender tow-packs can be either owned individually, or collectively by condo-associations/clubs or be rented from franchises situated close to highway entrance ramps.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
People keep saying how wonderful the idea is of an all-electric car is, but the need to charge the batteries won't disappear. So, we go from paying $20-$50 to fill a tank with gas to $100-$200 to charge the batteries, because the increased draw on the electric grid will increase the price of electricity by a HUGE amount.
Think about it, there are times of the year where there is concern about the supply of electricity in some parts of the country. So, let's just increase the demand without adding a significant amount of supply to the power grid and that will be fine, right? Coal, oil, nuclear, solar, water, and wind are what provide power to the electric grid.
Coal....people don't like it because even clean coal isn't terribly clean in terms of air polution.
Oil....ok, so we move from gas in our cars to using it for extra electric production...even if it is more efficient to use a big plant vs gasoline in engines, the number of NEW power plants would still require a lot of oil, and the electric companies would still charge US a ton of money with no additional regulation to keep us from being ripped off.
Nuclear....Most people are still against nuclear power, even though they don't have a clue how it works, or about the improvements to knowledge and safety of Nuclear power.
Solar, water, and wind are seen as the clean and renewable power sources, but because these technologies have not been as popular until fairly recently(the past few years), the deployment and investments in these technologies have been fairly low. How long would it take before a massive deployment of these technologies could actually supply power?
So, that is really the problem, there just isn't enough power in the power grid to handle the demand, and in some areas of the country, there isn't a lot of extra capacity with CURRENT uses. Some may know about the rolling blackouts that have been done in some areas to help address the shortage of electric power on the power grid. Picture what adding millions of cars would do, where you can't go to work because you can't charge up your batteries.
Or we end up on a quota system where we can't use more than a certain amount of electric power in our homes TOTAL, or we suddenly lose power when we exceed what the government says we can use.
So, be careful what you wish for, because you might not like the price when you get the bill.
A 220V outlet is not the problem. It is not hard to add a 220V circuit.
Many people, including me, would need to get a higher amp drop.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Your units are wrong. Energy is not measured in MEGAWATTS. Power is. Energy is measured in Watt-Hours or Joules. Gasoline is grandfathered out of present day laws and regulations of hazardous materials. Gasoline is as hazardous as couple of sticks of dynamite. Because our transportation infrastructure depends on gasoline so much, we let 2000 gallon gasoline tankers into the crowded city streets to supply fuel to the gas stations. We dont seem to realize how dangerous these things are.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Heh, my goal for vehicles is 10 years. My strategy is to buy new, then drive for double the loan period. What I do is when I finish paying off the loan I start paying myself - the goal is to be able to pay cash for my next car. Last car made it 6 before an accident. Just paid the sucker off the year before. :( I don't see myself keeping a car for 30 unless I'm really, really lucky.
Anyways, back on topic a common concept for environmental stuff is 'reduce, reuse, recycle' - Cars are pretty much 100% recycled, but recycling is at the bottom of the list. For reducing pollution from cars, first you'd reduce your usage of cars. Then you're reuse(drive used, for example), repair, etc... Only when those fail do you recycle(buy a new car).
There are exceptions - an older vehicle with something wrong with it can pollute more than replacing it would, but that's case by case. Generally if it's not spewing thick smelly smoke you're better off sticking with it, assuming it meets your needs*. Another reason to replace would be if/when repair costs to keep it meeting your needs exceeds that of obtaining a different, better suited vehicle. The old 'it'd cost more to fix than it's worth'.
*size, range, reliability, safety, etc...
I don't read AC A human right
So here's an interesting question I've wondered that I bet some slashdotter may know the answer to :
For this hypothetical electric vehicle with a 500 mile range, what is the capacity of the battery to achieve this range? With the anticipated charging efficiency, how many units of mains electricity are required to charge from empty to achieve this range and hence, what would the approximate cost to the user in electricity be?
Some other interesting questions :
- If we moved in great numbers to electric vehicles, could the national infrastructure satisfy demand? We'd certainly need a lot more high current outlets everywhere.
- When we run out of oil and we're all happy with our gas / electric / solar / human powered vehicles, where do we get the tarmac from to maintain the roads these vehicles will still need to drive on?
~Pev
I would like to subscribe to his newsletter.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
300 mile range for a gasoline car?
That is only 482.8032 kilometers according to google.
Assuming 1 liter per 12 kilometers (which is bad!) we get a 40.2336 L tank.
Is that the normal size for obscenely big american cars?
Yes, it may sound unnice to say so, but they are too big, really.
Even my own small VW Fox (5Z, BNM) has a 50L tank, and that is a diesel car!
So what is the deal?
Are they saying that they will stop improving the mileage for petrol cars (which should be easy since the current average is bad) and wait two years for electric cars while they do not yet have enough green electricity?
A 500 mile range would be great since it would probably translate into a usable real world range.
I currently average 22-23 mpg in my full-size, V8, rear drive Mercury Marquis. I calculate my mileage every time I fill up and I've broken 25 mpg once or twice and dropped below 20 roughly the same number of times over the last 10 years.
My commute is 90 miles a day. That 90 miles is across the insanity that is Houston rush-hour traffic in the "just before it slows to a crawl" time window. That means I have multiple drag-strip starts, multiple full-throttle accelerations to 80 miles per hour, and I cruise at anywhere between 65 and 85 if I leave the house early enough. (Yes, for Houston residents who want confirmation, that means I spend most of my time on the Sam Houston tollway.) Full-time, full-blast air conditioning is an absolute must.
Most electric vehicles quote range stats based on gentle starts and low, steady cruising speeds that are completely unrealistic in my commuting environment. A while back, for example, I looked at an electric motorcycle that quoted a range over 100 miles. Then I dug deep into the specs and found that the published specs assumed some ridiculously slow steady cruising speed for the entire range. When I plugged in the way I must drive just to get to work without being run over in traffic, the range of that particular vehicle would drop to less than 10 miles.
So I figure if somebody quotes me a 500 mile range the vehicle just might get me to work and back. We'll see.
Great - now they're going to outlaw beer bottles!
Maybe they'll outlaw clothing, too, to eliminate rags.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
Don't kid yourselves, buying a new vehicle to "save the planet" is deluded. Keep your old one, no matter how inefficient it is, until something truly better and efficient comes along. Its energy costs have already been paid, for better or worse. Don't pay them over again, how is that ecologically sound?
Actually in some countries there's a good financial reason for getting a Prius; eg. in NL there is a 40% tax (called BPM, it's in addition to about 20% VAT) for every car sold. This tax is waived on the Prius and, needless to say, makes a huge difference in price.
Now if only we could convince goverments that optimal aerodynamics "save the planet", we'd be getting somewhere....
I think we *do* know how dangerous a tanker full of fuel is, and that's why we just don't hear about fuel tankers blowing up in city streets - they are made so they are unlikely to get breached. The fuel in a full tanker that hasn't been breached simply won't blow up - the fuel/air mixture is wrong. I can't even recall hearing about any incident where a fuel tanker has blown up in a city street in my country. I can't even recall a tanker blowing up in a motorway accident, for that matter. The only incident of a fuel tanker I can think of which blew up was the one that was *bombed* by NATO a few weeks ago in Afghanistan.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Here in New England the electrical transmission system is already about at capacity. So if there's a large-scale move to electric cars that will require a major investment in transmission lines. Those costs get passed through in electric rates. It will also require new generation capacity. We already get a big chunk of power from hydro in Quebec. But if we need more, well have to bid for it on the markets. If the rest of the nation (and Canada) are going massively to electric cars, that will be a sellers' market. Oh, we could erect thousands of windmills - we've got the ridge lines for 'em. But the rich retirees tend to live with views of and from the ridge lines, and love nothing more than a good fight against that sort of development. They also put up good fights against new transmission lines. And their hippie relatives are ferocious against the few nuclear power plants in New England - with some real chance of shutting one or more of those down.
So unless we're going to charge our cars from solar arrays on our roofs - at times under a foot of snow, and presuming our roofs aren't shaded by the hills and forests - the electricity to power our electric cars - not to mention our TVs and refrigerators and computers - is going to get far more spendy when those cars take off. Meanwhile the political and utility entities around here worship energy conservation, in the name of which they join our vacation and retirement home owners in fighting new generating and transmission capacity.
Would I buy an electric car? Sure, if the internal EM concerns can be alleviated. But it's going to be a disaster in the energy economy. And it'll probably lead to New England doing what it doesn't do much of now - importing large amounts of electricity from old, dirty coal plants in Ohio. On the plus side, this'll keep the price of oil lower for those still burning it. Many of us here heat our homes at least in part with oil.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Electric cars can manage with a single fixed gear due to the flexibility of electric motors compared to petrol engines. The Tesla Roadster does, for example. No need for complicated multiple gear transmissions or CVTs.
There are some in-the works, but the catch is that hybrids work by taking the wild swings out of the tachometer. If you can keep the engine either off or steady, then you keep in the optimal power area for that engine. Gas engines have a fairly narrow "optimal" area, and thus benefit by being kept in this range. My 2001 Honda Insight (the little 2-seater model) with a CVT generally keeps the tach between 1500 and 3000 all the time, depending on travel speed.
Diesel engines have a very wide power band, such that they're almost always in the right range. Thus, they don't benefit as well from the use of a electric helper. There was a recent story here on /. where someone had shoved a diesel engine into an Insight (I don't know if old or new model). While they saw great MPG gains, it was also clear that the electric assist motor didn't come into play as often as it did with the old gas motor. The experimenters had future plans to try and change when the electric kicked in, but hadn't gotten to it.
Here in the US, diesel passenger cars are relatively rare and tend to be German imports (VW mostly, and a few older Mercedes); up until recently diesel fuel had a fairly high sulfur standard and the emissions were horrible. Early American diesel passenger cars were pretty poorly made, as well.
I can design a completely solar car which will go to infinity before it needs a recharge. The only problem is it travels along at a 1kmph. So mileage isn't the only issue, "fun to drive" is a factor as well. For instance, my M3 gets about 19MPG. Extremely fun to drive. But when I'm low on gas and far from a station, I can hyper-mile it, and according to my computer if I drive that way all the time, I'd get another 33-40!% out of a tank. But hyper-miling is not fun.
The only way an EV will be fun is if it adds solar and has efficient reclamation so as to provide fast acceleration at minimal cost.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Try igniting it with a lit cigarette. Bonus points if you can figure out why it doesn't ignite.
One limiting factor of the availability of electric cars that we will be hitting if they become popular is that the motors for them rely on Rare Earth elements to make them light enough to be feasible to operate in an automotive environment. And the problem with rare earth elements is that they are, well, rare. Unless new sources are found (Canada is a probable place), world supplies are likely to be strained, driving up the price of these cars and making them unaffordable.
Just what I was going to say.
There is no thermodynamic reason why an electric motor cannot achieve arbitrarily close to perfect efficiency. With heat engines, you are limited by the maximum temperature your materials can accommodate, and by needing to have a cycle that doesn't have forty thousand year long isothermal expansion/compression steps
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
But you can probably still use your phone while it's charging, if necessary.
And you're probably not sharing your phone with someone else who might need to take it with them overnight.
Why should the station be charging the batteries?
Because people desperately need to look clever by insisting that their own idiotic ideas about the right way to use a technology is the only conceivable way.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Pretty soon, we will all be driving electric powered mustangs, somehow, that seems so wrong!
I am all for electrical powered vehicles, but we need to keep some backwards compatibility...in case the battery runs out...
not a full out electric car!
For bonus points, mix laundry detergent (the dry kind) with the petrol before creating your device. It reduces the viscosity and makes it much "stickier"
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Great, 500 mioles off a charge.
Now:
- tell me over 100,000 miles it's break even or cheaper than driving a petrol car
- Tell me the battery lasts 300,000 miles
- Tell me the battery pack size does not reduce the vehicle storage capacity by more than a negligable amount (it can be mounted entirely under the floor and under the hood, not saccrificing any trunk space and leaving me with a flat floor inside the car)
- Tell me this 500 miles is based on a standard sized fully equipped sedan, or small SUV, and that a large SUV or minivan can also be equipped with a slightly larger battery and get the same range
- Tell me the charge time from 10% to 85% is less than 20 minutes, or there will still be a gas backup engine.
- Tell me charging on a standard home power supply (2 phase 220v) can be done in under 10 hours
- Tell me the materials in the battery pack are both common, there's enough of that material to support every car having packs within 30 years, and that the packs are easily reculced and easily repaired.
- Tell me the packs provide no dangerous chemical output when burned, can easily be put out if on fire, and are not subject to the combistion common in LiIon packs.
- Tell me you've included maintenance costs and higher insurance costs in the 100,000 and 300,000 mile vehicle costs.
- Tell me production is easy to ramp up quickly, and we can actually build enough facilities to make these batteries in capacity to satisfy demand.
- Tell me these batteries have other uses (laptops, phones, etc).
- What to do with people who don't have a garrage?
Even IF you get past these hurdles, provide an affordable solution (even if it's not exactly break even, but close enough to justify the expense in favor of cleaner air, which some still debatable on electric cars), there are other FAR more pressing issue:
The grid can NOT handle it, for more than 0.5% of us to have a plug-in hybrid, let alone full electric car, by 2020. We have enough aggregate power, yes, but not in the right places, and not at the right times of day, and the grid system can't suffle the load around properly. Large numbers of cars charging in any area would brown out local grids and cause transformer issues. We have 30-40 years of work and trillions of dollars to spend before we can let electric cars start to become the norm.
I know the response: "We have to do SOMETHING now, and this is something, the other options are too far down the road..." Well, partly right. mostly wrong.
1) Vehicle efficincy changes in ordinary petrol cars can compete directly with the CO2 savings of buying an electric. We CAN drive 50MPG in an ordinary engine in a car on a competitive size to an electric. We don't becauase those engines are not universally offered in larger sized cars, and hardly at all in America.
2) Cross-over hybrids (electric drive, gas generator, very small battery) are a cheaper option, and will limit the electrical draw from the grid while doubling average fuel economy at a $1-2K premium instead of 8-12K premium for full electric.
3) We can make UNLIMITED fuel in a carbon nuetral fashion for about $3 a gallon using RFTS and waste carbon from coal plants. There's enough material to make gas today for about half the US fleet, and this technology is proven, and available now (www.dotyenergy.com). Keep running the current cars (replace them over time with more efficient ones) and do it with no additional CO2 released... Over time, this will be a 60% vreduction in total CO2 output from cars, and gives us the 30-40 years we need to overhaul the grid.
4) Abandon H2 investments, stop wasting money on green technology that can't make impacts for 20+ years, stop wasting money on solar (we have enough wind at both a lower price and longer lifespan, and simpler deployment in North america to power the entire hemisphere on it's own and then some). Take ALL those billions and billions and invest it instead into vehicle replacement programs to get the worst guzzlers off the road sooner.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
I can buy a little 1000W gas generator for $400. It's not hard to imagine a "range extending" generator you could use for such trips. Plug-in hybrid designs already include a generator for just such an eventuality; if you had a 500 mile range, and knew you were going further, you could run a small generator from the moment of departure, which would mean you would get a range boost even from a small source that wouldn't run the car on its own.
No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
If you're that sloppy with the nozzle, you should probably let the station attendant take care of your refilling.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Coal: Output is mostly CO2. We can CAPTURE that CO2, feed it into an RWGS/RFTS catalytic processor, with some H2 and some additional water, and make ANY kind of hydrocarbon you want, without additional waste materials (other than O2, which there's pleanty of market for, and which releasing is not an issue).
Dotyenergy has solutions to make gasoline grades up through jet fuels for as little as $60 a barrel using off-peak wind energy. As we expand wind deployments, we have an increassin issue with what to do with the energy we donp;t need at the moment it's gernated. Their facilities can adjust dnaamically, in less than 1/60th of a second, to take that excess and turn it into carbon nuetral gasoline to run in our current cars.
The GRID needs a lot of work, but our energy production expansion is holding up. (getting power to where it;s NEEDED is the problem, not making it). This process lets us use excess energy made from cheap sourtces when it's not needed, turn it into fuel, and ship that fuel to places that can't support the additional electric loads on the grid. It will also feed wind energy expansion, which by nature also feeds grid expansion and overhaul.
There's enough wind availabe on non-farm, non-residential, easy to access (aka inexpensive to build on) land, plus some limited offshore deployments, within the boarders of the USA to power the entire hemesphere all by itself, and that's only using high tier wind areas suited for large scale wind deployments. We have pleanty of green energy. You're right, no grid = no electric cars (for now), but we CAN use that energy to make carbon nuetral fules, so who cares, we can still reduce carbon emissions from cars by over 60% in 30-40 years...
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Capacitors have two problems: Low energy density (which may not matter for hybrid electric vehicles where you just want improved performance for a given engine power and regenerative braking) and variable output voltage. The later complicates the power electronics for the AC or DC motors because the input voltage has to vary over a much wider range if you want to actually recover a significant amount of energy from the capacitor.
You might notice that Coleman produces that screwdriver using supercapacitors but does not produce an equivalent cordless drill because the energy density just is not there to be even close to useful.
At least battery powered cars can currently be built and only suffer from an economics (or political if you include patents) problem.
Actually, most batteries are WAY more dangerous than gas tanks ... Gas tanks don't explode in the real world, unlike in hollywood.
To make a bomb out of gas, you need the right air-fuel mixture in compressed space, and compressed a lot ...
Batteries DO explode. Infact, some batteries are so dangerous that while charging you need to constantly watch and be around to make sure it's not going to explode, despite electronics controlling already the charge rate, balance etc. Overcharge = Explosion, Undercharge = Might explode. That's Lithium Polymer batteries, which are most energy dense on the market currently, used widely in RC vehicles.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Just like everyone is always complaining about gas price being too high ...
(Ref: US people earn more than Finnish people, has percentually higher buying force, and pays about 60% less for gas....)
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes. try to get a battery pack to recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB (literally, a coupla sticks of dynamite)..
However, you cannot fill up the gas tank at home. That is one of the killer features of the battery: no more annoying visits to the gas station, just plug it in when you get home. No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
And seriously, driving more than 800km in a day is a long stretch.
But I do not really believe that range will be the range on a motorway for a holiday-packed car :)
OK, you can't fill up 3MW at home either, in any reasonable time. The battery pack in the Chevy Volt goes ~40 miles. It's a 16KW battery, but is never less than half full for saftey and battery longevity. It takes 8 hours to recharge that 8KW over a home 2Phase 22v outlet, and that's no ordinary outlet like you plug you're dryer into, that's a high AMP circuit like an inline hot water heater, 80-120amps... Most homes don't even have a power box that can support it (most "modern" homes have a total 200amp panel, my 4600sqft 2 year old home only has 320 available).
40 miles = 8kw. OK, easy math is 50miles : 10kw. 500 miles = 100kw. 1kwh = 1 hour, so 100 hours to fully charge at home... They can make a denser battery, but you can only put juice in as fast as you have it available to you. Even the "fast charge" 3-phase 400Amp rigs being tested for SCiB batteries (the 80% charge in 15 minute batteries) is based on a 12Kw pack. So even on fast charge, which is only available on industrial grade circuits and not on common residential streets, would take 3+ hours to recharge, assuming the battery can actually suck it in that fast and the grid can handle the load of a couple cars doing that at once.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
Who in their right mind gets their hands wet on fuel every time they stop at the pump? oO;
Really, learn to use the pump right.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
A) how often do you make those trips?
B) Would you not agree that people whose relatives live more like 100-200 miles away visit them more often than you do yours because they are closer?
C'mon, man, don't extrapolate your anecdotal evidence into data.
You are the "With some rare exception" the GP is talking about. Can't you recognize that?
Nuclear.
Comparatively cheap per megawatt
Not really. In reality, it's one of the most expensive. You ought to get some up to date facts. This has been known for a decade or two.
Infuriate left and right
Everyone is thinking about this the wrong way. First off, we don't have the charging infrastructure in place (no parking meters with chargers - pay for an hour charging and get free parking) and that means that it's useless to think about range in a one-way manner. You must think about it in the round-trip manner instead, which means your usable range is short by 30-60 Miles. In other words, a 300 Mile one-way range translates into a 120 Mile usable range for round trip purposes and the 500 mile one-way becomes a meager 220 usable miles and until we get the round-trip range to 300-500 usable files (600-1000) one-way, the EV simply wont be practical in the United States.
I'll give you an example of the difference between round-trip and one-way consideration. Once a quarter (every 3 months) I have to drive into Los Angeles, Ca for the day. For me this is a One-way trip of 180 miles and I normally avg. 420 miles for the round-trip. In order to complete such a trip with an EV, I must have a minimum of a 500 mile range, which gives me 20 miles of spare range over the requisite 220(440) mile usable range. You might wonder why I state usable and the answer is simply asked "Do you run your car on empty?" to which most people answer a resounding "Hell No!" so why would you run an EV down to empty? You can't coast into a fuel station and buy 10 miles of Electricity can you, so you have to keep some range in reserve.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Of course, when one can drive a big comfortable car full of their family for 1000 miles and only spend 1/4 the cost they would now... I suspect that many people will drive rather than take mass transit for longer trips.
Sure trains and planes are great for trips, however the more people you bring the greater the cost. When I vacation with my kids we almost always drive for exactly this reason. Here in the US a flight to my wife's home state of Florida is about $300 per person (more near holidays). So for $1200 plus the cost of a rental car, we can fly. For about $400 we can drive, sure it takes a couple of days off the vacation time, but $800+ in savings is worth the "lost" time driving. If that $300 drops by 75% and only costs me $75... I don't suspect I would even bother to check the cost of the flight.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Sure, 500 mile range sounds great but unless the thing can be recharged in, say 5-10 minutes, it'll be useless for cross-country travel. One should be able to drive about 700-800 miles solo before calling it a day and getting a hotel. If you're going non-stop with multiple drivers across the U.S., you have to be able to recharge quickly. This is all dependent on the existence of the power-distribution infrastructure too. And then there's the question of load-carrying capability. Four adults plus luggage comfortably seated is probably average. And what about long-term storage of the charge? What's the self-discharge rate of the battery? Can you leave the vehicle sitting unconnected for a month or more without having to charge it? And what about an emergency situation where you run out of schlitz? Will there be a tow-truck-ish mobile charging system that can give you a gallon of electricity?
At least in SyFy books. In real life however the actual evidence points to a net energy deficit when the entire fuel cycle is taken into account. But for some reason as soon as someone says something good about nuclear power on slashdot they instantly get modded up. I simply don't understand why there is a collective drop in IQ when the available scientific *evidence* and an examination of the legal and political constructs demonstrate statements like these are complete fantasy. So lets examine them;
Operative word "Comparatively", but what about some institutional assesments?
Standard and Poor's assessment of the Nuclear industry's financial viability "the industry's legacy of cost growth, technological problems, cumbersome political and regulatory oversight, and the newer risks brought about by competition and terrorism keep credit risk too high for even federal legislation that provides loan guarantees to overcome"
an assessment supported by Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs "even with an explicit tax on carbon-based power generation, new nuclear power plants cannot be economical without government subsidies"
The breakdown of U.S energy research and development reported by the US DOE is roughly 60% for nuclear, 25% to fossil fuels and 15% to SUSTAINABLE energy sources. In addition to what I mentioned above you can add the 2005 U.S energy bill which provided another $13 billion dollars worth of subsidies, revocation of the Public Utilities Holding Company Act (PUHCA) which was put into law in 1935 to stop a re-occurrence of the 1929 stock market crash. The Price-Anderson Act to underwrite the Nuclear industry with $600 Billion of Taxpayer money and closer to a trillion if you factor the huge amount of land you are going to lose in the event of an actual accident.
Half a billion dollars worth of subsidies for procuring companies (i.e oil companies) proposing "pre-approved" reactor designs, even if they don't build it, and a 1.8 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit if they do. The reality is if the Nuclear power industry was forced to cover it's own liability and fund itself it would cease to exist. I could go on and on but the bottom line is how can America, of all countries, continue to justify this form of corporate welfare?
Ok, lets look at radioactive isotope emissions only. Over the entire industrial process radioactive isotope emissions are inevitable. Here are the *authorised* effluents not the accidents.
Mine tailing: radioactive mine tailings from open cut mining where ever it has occurred, radon 220, radium 226, thorium etc.
Enrichment: U-238 or DU. Used as weapon projectile, is pyrophoric and burns into a radioactive powder. Groundwater contamination from leaking Hexafluoride tanks
Reactor facility: tritium, iodine 131, xenon 141, 143, 144, cerium 141, 143, 144, tritium, tritium and tritium AND Noble Gasses Which Decay Into More Dangerous Daughter Products (Xenon 137, Krypton 90, rubidium 90, strontium 90, Xenon 135, xenon 133, krypton 85, Argon 39). Of course no epidemiological studies have been performed on the noble gas venting which are released hourly from *all* Nuclear reactors. (did I mention tritium) 4000 gallons of primary coolant water PER DAY containing plutonium 238,239,241, technetium 99, iodine 129, carbon 14 and *ahem* tritium which is highly mutagenic once it's in the foodchain.
Reactor decommissioning: cobalt 60, iron 55, nickel 63.
Radioactive Waste: Plutonium, Strontium 90, Iodine 131, Cesium 137 and on and on
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
WE NEED CLOTHES, We're geeks! If I wasn't wearing clothes, I'd be mistaken for a beached whale and be either harpooned or dragged back into the ocean by the skinny PETA / Greenpeace people.
Please, let me have clothes!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
there has been much work on battery technology in the last decade and even some companies blocking some of that tech from getting used in EVs, but progress is happening. Jumping to a 500 mile range is a huge leap and will likely require a break-through design to achieve it. What comes to mind is that in the EV market, there is really only one breakthrough required to make the EV a game changer. Under the guidance of the GW Bush in 2001 and for the following eight years, they were pushing hydrogen with the fervor of Charlie Brown pushing the Great Pumpkin. Unfortunately, they hydrogen gimmick required at least three breakthrough technologies to be viable as a system for consumer based vehicles.
If only we had the same kind of vicious backing of this one attempt to improve batteries as we had when the Oil Administration was pushing hydrogen. Even if it isn't successful, we'd probable end up with a more educated public instead of a public still thinking "The Great Pumpkin" was going to rise. I still hear people talk about hydrogen fuelcell based cars as if it's just around the corner.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I've been doing fine with $5/gal gas for years. $20-$25 per gallon gas would go mostly unnoticed if we all have electric vehicles. Aviation, on the other hand, would become prohibitively expensive as there is no affordable replacement for fossil fuels in sight for large aircraft.
All the more reason to switch to electric cars and renewable+nuclear and conserve what fossil fuels are left. The planes really need the dinosaur juice.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Is that you?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It'll also self-destruct if discharged below a threshold
I think you're confusing Li-Ion with Li-Po, which is permanently dead once discharged below a certain voltage (although Li-Po batteries are better all around, apart from this issue). Li-Ions can be completely discharged.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Fuel shouldn't be much different in the U.K. than in the U.S. except for the amount of tax that is placed on the fuel and possibly the amount of alcohol in the fuel. Europeans think their fuel is higher quality because the fuel octane is rated just by the RON instead of the (RON+MON)/2 method in the U.S. The MON is a smaller number than the RON due to a higher test engine load and RPM for the MON testing. This makes U.S. fuel look like its octane rating is 3-4 points lower than European fuel of the same quality. I am also pretty sure the 15 ppm ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel available in the U.S. is pretty similar to what's available in Europe as well.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
I think you missed the big point here. How long does it take to fill a car full pf petrol? 5 minutes? 7 if you get a line at the till.
Now on a long trip with kids, 15-20 minutes would be a fine amount of time to stop, assuming there is a place for the kids to run around for a bit while the car charges. If it is just me by myself, I need a whole 5 minutes.
The problem I see with electric cars on trips exceeding their range, is I don't want to stop every 500 miles for 8+ hours just to "fill the tank". Even more annoying is when your trip is say 530 miles.(8 hours, 50minutes @ an average 60MPH) The problem here is that you'll want to stop and charge the car slightly before it runs out. Say 475 miles. if it takes 4 hours to fill up my total trip time is now close to 13 hours. It would probably have been 9-9.5 in a petrol car. If they can get charge times to say triple the time it takes to fill the tank, I'll stop caring much as long as the car goes 300+ miles, and I can easily find refilling stations on my route as needed via highway signs.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Actually, the typical American house has 220V service from the step-down transformer. One transformer will serve several houses, and typically each house is wired for 400 or 200 amps total capacity.
However, even though most houses have 200 or 400amps available, most only have a circuit breaker designed for about half that, just because it's cheaper and 99% of people don't need more.
So... Most Americans have 220v/100-200amp available at their house, with some additional electrical work to make it available to a car charger.
well, if you read later in my comment, that's kind of what i meant when i said "too bad they cant make anything that puts out more power... yet." Im fully aware of the problems with super capacitors, but i think if they can get it working properly, it will be a better solution than battery swapping or somehow designing one with a 500 mile range
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Q: How can you travel long distances in electric powered vehicles without long recharge breaks?
A: Battery switching stations
But this is the point actually. It COULD be nuclear. It COULD be solar. It COULD be a number of things. It most likely will be a mix of them. Once you've got every one switched over to electric cars, 80% of the battle is won there. At least on that side of things (the other side, industrial / manufacturing is another issue). On the consumer side, most housing I would hazard is electrically heated and or air conditioned these days (I know there are oil and coal(?) hold outs), so the electric vehicle is the last real poluting source in the general public during daily use. Since it turns not NOT EVERYONE BURNS COAL OR OIL AMERICA, to make their energy (hint, hint, I'm just above your boarder), it means that demanding more energy, because of your electric car, doesn't mean more coal or oil is burned up in the process. It might mean that those of us that have lots of Hydro Power or whatever might have less to sell to other people south of us. And then those people south of us might have to start making some serious choices about how to generate capacity finally in an economical and environmentally friendly way. I don't see any of these things as a bad thing.
Who ever was saying before, DIE ELECTRIC CAR DIE, clearly understands little of the benefit. I think that internal combustion engines will still be infinitely useful where there isn't alot of infrastructure around (read: harsh environments, remote locations, etc), but in terms of city and near city driving, its the future for sure.
What about renting a longer-range car when you need it?
Expected time to finish is 1 hour and 60 minutes.
I think that I wouldn't have any trouble averting my eyes for you.
But for Scarlett Johansen and Natalie Portman............
My vote is that I don't look at you and let the legal system follow isn't natural stupid course this time.
I'll give you one concession, I'll quit sending money to Greenpeace.
"Yes dear, the battery in the car is flat, I've just got to wait an hour for it to charge, then I'll be on my way home..."
"Yes dear, I ran out of gas and now I have to walk to the nearest gas station, fill up a can, walk back to the empty car, put enough in there to *drive* to the gas station, fill it for real, then I'll be on my way home."
I guess my point was that it's impractical to consider a car charging as the same thing as a phone charging like the GP attempted to assert. I know I didn't pull it off well enough considering the other replies so I need to thank you for having the intellectual insight to see where I was going with that and pointing it out. If we were in grade school, you would have a gold star by your name. Good job!
Power and energy are too often confused when discussing electric vehicles. Capacitors already have the needed power density. They just lack the energy density and I am not sanguine that they will ever exceed chemical batteries in that respect.
Currently most hybrid vehicles size the battery packs based on longevity and power requirements making for a rather short electric only range. The GM Volt and other electric vehicles designed to run exclusively on battery power for significant distances have limitations because of battery pack energy requirements and not power requirements. By the time you have accumulated enough cells to meet your energy requirements, you are way above any likely power requirements that the car would require.
That is one of the reasons Toyota continues to use NiMH cells in their hybrids versus a lithium based chemistry. The former is more economical for a given power even if not for a given energy. It is too bad that the Cobalsys patents have been holding up large format NiMH cell development and production for years in the US. High power density lithium cells have only recently become generally available and I was rather surprised when I first saw them in power tools.
Home is fine except for the capacity. Can the existing grid support the transfer? Can your house? Can the current infrastructure GENERATE the power?
The answer to all of the above is no. Nor will changing that be easy or fast. Try to build a new power plant and see how long it takes. The current administration is more into shutting them down if they use coal. The plug in the wall is not magic people.
Further what about travel? Are hotels going to expand their power grid to act like filling stations for the people that stay the night? Will your workplace?
Then add in the 2 years of improvement by management mandate is like getting good advice on stocks from a crack head, it can happen but doesn't.
So I'm wondering..Instead of syphoning gas from your car..would they then use cables to steel the electricity from it? I'm worried that thieves may try to cut my run time down to 100 miles per charge...
Definitely not the most environmentally friendly. The expended waste product from nuclear is atrocious and because such, I would argue is the WORST environmentally. The lifespan of the waste is pretty much "forever"... certain common fuels are around for tens (or hundreds) of thousands of years (e.g. Pu-239). Once you use it, it doesn't just go away and that makes it the worst IMO.
Unlike all other approaches involving fuel, nuclear waste is minuscule in amount (even if we scale production up significantly), and is trivial to contain. Furthermore, large parts of what we label "waste" now - especially the most radioactive parts - are reprocessible.
Some of your figures for the Volt are wrong. The Chevy Volt can recharge in 6 or 8 hours from a standard 120 volt receptacle. The 240 volt option is 16 amps and recharges the Volt in three hours. You are correct that the Volt battery is suppose to take a 8 kWhr charge. I agree that the 500 mile battery would probably need a 100 kWhr charge. So worst case for a fully discharged battery is 12.5 times longer than a Volt at the same rates. Probably take 4 days to recharge from a standard 120V outlet.
touche
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
There is a lot of capacity left for off peak charging over night. If people don't charge during peak hours there shouldn't be any problem. It's the people who want megawatt quick charges during the day that worry me. An infrastructure where people are charging away from home during the day is going to lead to more power problems.
Hopefully it will be a lot cheaper to charge at home over night. People who must charge during the day and contribute to the peak load should pay a big premium.
Sorry, you're wrong. You should read your own post -- "As you will notice I get a significant increase in efficiency between city and highway driving, as all IC cars do."
At any speed at which your IC car is most efficient, the Prius will be even more efficient because in the worst case it is simply an IC car with a smaller engine and lower drag profile. Any boost from the battery obviously improves the efficiency even more. BTW the battery in a Prius only weighs about 110 lbs--hardly a big factor in the overall load on the engine.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So, we go from paying $20-$50 to fill a tank with gas to $100-$200 to charge the batteries, because the increased draw on the electric grid will increase the price of electricity by a HUGE amount.
Electricity can be generated by renewable resources, some of which the energy itself is free -- hydro, solar, wind. We're running out of oil; an estimate I saw last night said the pessimists say we're going to peak in twenty years, the optimists say forty before oil prices start skyrocketing. Be prepared for breathtakingly enormous price increases for oil-based products in the next couple of decades.
there are times of the year where there is concern about the supply of electricity in some parts of the country
I've never lived anywhere that there were concerns about suply. California's problems a few years ago were caused by bad deregulation that let sociopaths get richer by manipulating the market. That wasn't a fault of the economy, it was the fault of California's abysmal legislation and regulation.
So, let's just increase the demand without adding a significant amount of supply to the power grid and that will be fine, right?
We're already increasing the supply to the grid, and have done so pretty much continuously since the late 1800s. They just completed a new 200 megawatt generator in my town, retiring two older generators at a net increase on capacity. They're ahead of the curve.
As electricity here is dirt cheap it would be a net gain for me if I had an electric car. Suply follows demand: when electric cars start getting popular, you'll see a LOT of new power plants being built (at least in states that don't have entirely clueless governments, i.e. California), and most of them will be non-polluting, like solar, wind, tidal, hydro, and nuclear (which has its own problems, yes).
"Supply side economics" is bunk. The economy is driven by demand, not supply. If consumers demand a product or service, that demand will be met by increased supply.
Free Martian Whores!
Its time to inject sanity back into the discussion.
The point the original poster was making is that gasoline is portable and easy to replace/refuel albeit at a cost while batteries take much longer
to charge even on rapid charge. While his use of terminology was wrong , his understanding of the issue was correct.
Ive been in many slashdot discussions (hence my 5 digit slashdot id) where slashdot users proclaim their profound and often
wrong knowledge of the law/psychology/political theory/education yet nonsense will continue to fly.
The fact that someone has a degree in computer science does not make them an expert on anything except computer science...and maybe not even that. If they seriously equate their knowledge with that of Leonardo da Davinci...they better be ready to show it.
how about witching batteries ?
You mean like in Thud? No thanks, I don't want to see exploding cabbages every time I go to work!
Free Martian Whores!
true, and I said as much in another reply. But this does not change the average power that the service station has to supply. While you wait, another car is going to drive up, and another and another. if an interstate service station averages 1 car per minute then that means in the hour you wait 120 cars are parked, and perhaps 200 people are in the waiting area. the same amount of average megawatts ~20MW is still needed by the service station (assuming perfect effciency).
Also the danger zone for a 300KW line is huge. it's not the same as a wall plug or even a 220 once you get to 480V class systems you have the chance for a propagating arc flash through the air. At 300KW it's pretty extreme danger. These days breakers that operate at that level are done by remotely operated motors.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Solar panels on cars is a dumb idea. Even if we had 100% efficient solar panels, the surface area of a vehicle just isn't large enough to provide meaningful charging. I don't have the math in my back pocket, but my recollection is that direct sunlight for a whole day might get you a mile or two in a really efficient car. Oh yeah...and people tend to park their cars in garages.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I can buy a little 1000W gas generator for $400.
Yes, but unless you think you're going to go speeding down the highway on 1.34 horsepower, it's not going to do you a lot of good.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
You see, they have these nifty things called "car rental agencies." I predict that if small electrics become common, there will be a great opportunity for companies to rent larger trucks & gas-powered cars for people that only need them every few months to haul stuff around or go on a trip.
Your savings on gas would more than pay for the occasionally necessary rental.
Emphasis mine. Yeah, I'm under the understanding that any material needs oxygen to burn (aka oxidize).
Also just because we do tricks to get the most out of each gallon of gas doesn't mean it is relatively safe before. A gallon of gasoline has about 57x as much energy as a stick of dynamite. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamite)
Gasoline is only explosive under very specific circumstances.
Such as on TV cop shows after any high speed chase that ends in a crash.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Of course, when one can drive a big comfortable car full of their family for 1000 miles and only spend 1/4 the cost they would now... I suspect that many people will drive rather than take mass transit for longer trips.
I've heard bad things (on here) about trains in the USA. Trains in Europe run on time, and are usually faster (sometimes much faster) than driving. There is no 'check in', no security, no stupid restrictions on what you can take, no losing baggage. No delays at land borders within much of Europe anyway (until you get to Ukraine etc). You arrive at the station two minutes before the train is due to depart. A family of four can sit around a single table and play board games, eat, walk around, go to the toilet and so on. On many trains there are power points for laptops, and some have WiFi. This is much, much nicer than being in a car.
Many people are willing to pay extra for this, and it's not necessarily much more than the cost of driving (depending on number of passengers, route, time, advance booking, etc)
"Mass transit" suggests (to me) a subway packed full of people, with little comfort. Longer-distance trains are public transport, but are rarely crowded. (Yes, all the trains on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are rammed, but that's an exception.)
When did I ever say it would be free? Is gas free right now? Is the concept of charging people for something that amazing to you?
This isn't quite right. The reason a gas station has 5 cars filling up every 5 minutes is that the station is the only place they can refuel. When EV owners can "fill up" at home every night, there won't be nearly as many people looking to fill up at the station.
Of course, this is a double-edged sword. Personally I don't think battery-swap stations will ever be viable simply because there won't be enough demand to support a network of stations. Everybody will be filling up at home 99% of the time, and only need the stations for long road-trips. So, figure we could support 1% of the stations we have today. Suddenly there aren't enough stations that there's always one around the corner, which sort of defeats the purpose.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Why not? We should be able to easily build very small generator trailers that you can tow. The generator could easily put out enough current to power the car and charge it's battey. Just pick up a trailer for those long trips when you know you'll need it. And late night emergencies shouldn't really be an issue so long as you haven't completely drained the battery during the day. And you could always purchase your own generator trailer if it's really such a big concern for you just in case.
No, gasoline actually doesn't burn at all in its liquid form. Only the vapor is flammable. Of course, it vaporizes very easily, but only if it's spread out. In a container, it's not so fast.
Diesel fuel is even better. It doesn't burn at all in liquid or vapor form. The only way to burn it is by pressurizing the vapor until it auto-ignites.
"... which aims to use nanotechnology to extend the range of all-electric cars 200 miles beyond the 300-mile range..."
I thought the energy density of a battery was based on the volume of its reactants, not the shape of its cathodes.
Ok, nanotech might solve the charging speed problem, the "it costs too much" problem, and even the "I can't charge a lithium air battery, period" problem, but I don't see how it can increase the energy density.
We can only dream of having trains like that here in the USA. We have very few passenger trains; they're mostly along the Northeast Corridor (between Wash. DC and Boston I think), and frequently used by commuters. For long-distance travel, there are some trains, but they're extremely slow (limited to 75mph), don't travel very often, and are very, very expensive. It's cheaper and faster to take a plane, even though you'll feel like a sardine.
The USA would be the perfect country for very high-speed trains (like 250mph+) because of its size. If such a thing were available, at a low cost (lower than planes, but not necessarily lower than the Greyhound bus that all the drug addicts take), people would flock to it because they're sick of airplanes. Flying sucks. It used to be nice decades ago, but now it's just torture: seats way too small, no food, fees for using the toilet, long security lines with strip-searches, etc. Unfortunately, passenger trains like that would require massive capital investment, and would not be allowed by lobbyists from the airlines or automobile industries, so it's not going to happen. And using existing rails won't work either because it's just too slow; we really need high-speed maglev.
Most long distance trips I do are longer than 500 miles. My mother-in-law lives about 550 miles from my home, my brother about 700 miles from my home, and only my parents are less than 500 miles (400 in fact) away from me. On the other hand: all of them live in Germany, so more than 80 mph cruising speed...
Are you confusing gallons with litres and miles with kilometers? A gallon is just inder 4 litres, and a km is .6 mile. I just looked at a map of Germany, and a rough glance shows it to be roughly 400 miles across at its widest, and 600 miles at most from its northernmost border to its southernmost point. I don't see how your brother can be in Germany and 700 miles from any point in the country.
Free Martian Whores!
No more fiddling around with plastic gloves/wait for your fingers to stop smelling of diesel.
If you're that sloppy with the nozzle, you should probably let the station attendant take care of your refilling.
I haven't spilled yet, but just touching the handle makes my hand smell.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Absolutely false. If you're talking about the absolute highest MPG you'll ever get, then every single car right now will get better mileage at 20 mph than at 55 mph
Correct. At 20 mph wind resistance is negligible. Get much past 35 or 40 and it's your biggest fuel drain. In the city your biggest fuel drain is stop signs and red lights, since you get zero mpg at red lights, and very low mileage in first gear and while accellerating. If you drove on a long trip at 20 mph your mileage would be far higher than the EPA estimates say you could.
Your best mileage would be the lowest speed you could cruise in high gear.
Free Martian Whores!
Home is fine except for the capacity. Can the existing grid support the transfer? Can your house? Can the current infrastructure GENERATE the power?
Yes, yes and yes. At least here, in DK, assuming the load is not during peak ours (and why should it be?)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
yeah right, its going to be REAL PRACTICAL to put 500 mile range into a battery pack. the gasoline nozzle pumps 3 MEGAWATTS of energy into your gas tank in 2 minutes.
Megawatts are not a measure of energy, and you can't pump in "X megawatts per Y minutes".
Oh, and FYI, Aerovironment already makes a 800kW battery charger. Now, you need a battery bank to buffer between that and the grid of course, but in terms of supplying the power, it's already been done.
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
Who in their right mind gets their hands wet on fuel every time they stop at the pump? oO;
Really, learn to use the pump right.
Either the fuel pump handles (or whatever they are called) are cleaner elsewhere, or you just don't have a sense of smell. I have never spilled yet, but I do smell the diesel on my hands every time I have tanked diesel. Hm. Of course, it might be different with gas, I have never tried tanking gas.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
What's wrong with something like the AC Propulsion Long Ranger? You wouldn't even have to own one; something like that readily lends itself to low-cost rental or sharing.
I just invaded Grammar Czechoslovakia and duped Grammar Neville Chamberlain; now it's on to Grammar Poland.
Trench a buried cable from the house out to the curb with a lockable weatherproof receptacle.
Those batteries start become scared when 100,000 people start attempting to replace theirs.
Even batteries fear for their job security...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Its already done Now "roof area" is for a house, to cut that down a bit. A 10' long car has about 30 sq feet of hood and roof. But when comparing to gasoline, be sure to factor in that IBEs are inefficent and your eletric motors will do more for your energy.
I'm not saying you can power the car this way, only that it would help with driving enjoyment.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Mike Turner modified his Honda Civic to reduce its Cd from 0.34 to 0.17 for less than $400 in parts. That is exactly a factor of 2.
Sorry for the mistakes. your numbers are more accurate, thank you. Charge time I must have confused with some of the other EVs with much larger packs.
but ...still 2 days on fast charge, and 3-4 hours at a 3phase charging station at 400Apm....
Still completely unacceptable.
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
My go-kart had one drive wheel. It didn't go off into a ditch every ten seconds.... Well, it did, but only because I steered it through ditches.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You're probably not familiar with me, but I'm also a big advocate of nuclear power.
I once figured it out - Switching to EVs would probably raise most peoples electric usage by ~30%. Extremely highly variable on an individual scale, of course.
I think EVs could be a great way to help balance demand via load control systems - IE the electric cars only charge off-peak.
You might want to check your local rates, who's your power company? They probably have a webpage I can check. You might be able to get your power for about the same price I pay for anytime power if you go for an off-peak system.
I don't read AC A human right
Gasoline-generated electricity is some of the most expensive power out there---far more expensive than nuclear, hydro, coal, etc. If at full retail gasoline prices, I would be almost break even using a cheap gasoline generator---and that's roughly what the numbers seem to show---then I'm paying an obscene rate for my power.... Almost 38 cents per kWh for a significant portion of my bill.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Diesel fuel is even better. It doesn't burn at all in liquid or vapor form. The only way to burn it is by pressurizing the vapor until it auto-ignites.
Tell that to my oil fired boiler which merely sprays liquid diesel fuel through a nozzle and into the flame-front that heats my house. Or pour some diesel on a pile of slightly damp wood and light it to start a bonfire.
"A: Battery switching stations"
And how do you switch batteries in an electric car? I mean seriously. The batteries are removable in the same way a gas tank is removable (well probably not that difficult....)
Switching stations would require standardized battery packs, standardized cars, etc. Very similar to electric powered industrial trucks such as forklifts. Not going to happen.
"No matter what the range is, there is always someone who needs to go a little further."
True. But you don't need to satisfy everyone. Just most of them. Basically overcome the resistance to buy. 500 mile range would be a great help.
Cumming{}tonite.
http://www.galleries.com/minerals/silicate/cummingt/cummingt.htm
Yes, I had to google to figure it out. Yes, it is lame.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
They are notorious for being dead when you need them 8 months after putting the flashlight into the drawer. I'm not sure why that's a surprise to you.
My 1996 Nissan Primera, which has four-wheel-drive just to increase its consumption, can get around 440km of urban driving off a single tank. On a long trip (such as Auckland to Wellington) I regularly achieve in excess of 600km from a tank. That's nearer 400 miles than 300. In an older car, with the extra drive-train losses from powering all four wheels. I'm not a particularly conservative driver, either, in terms of my acceleration habits - I don't exceed the posted limits, but I like to get there as quickly as possible.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
"Why should the station be charging the batteries?"
For the same reason that rechargeable batteries (or any rechargeable item) need to be charged after purchase. They may not be precharged and/or they may be only partially charged.
And batteries are heavy and take up lots of space and would require many deliveries.
God you are dumb. Changing speed to amount of weight you can pull is simple gearing. If a setup can go really fast you can re-gear it to pull heavy things. Since the motor is comparable to racing engines we can make one comparable to the biggest trucks. I mean Jaguars have truck engines in them these days... God you are dumb.
As I mentioned in my previous comment, the renewable energy needs to be set up by someone to generate ENOUGH power to handle the increase in demand. Electricity may not be as cheap as it currently is if the electric grid itself becomes overloaded.
Now, keep in mind that not all areas of the country are set up the same way. You have places like NY City where the value of land makes it very difficult to justify setting up a power plant in many areas(not all). Just because it is practical in some places does not mean it is practical everywhere, and that is where you run into trouble.
And then, you get the old "Not in my backyard" response to new power plants, no matter how clean they may be.
And, more demand means higher costs for electric, no matter how cheap it may be to generate. It could cost one cent per megawatt, and we would still end up paying through the nose to the power company.
Don't worry, it won't be that cheap for too much longer.
At first glance, the commute would be ideal for EV, but if I still need the other car to cover the long trips it just doesn't add up. The fixed costs on the car (tax, insurance, servicing & repairs) are actually _more_ than the fuel costs of my commute over a year
Except that you don't have to buy the second car. Rental rates are not that steep. Or as Rei suggested, just rent a towable generator for your EV. If the trip is for work, expense it.
For me, a viable EV needs to do practically everything a current ICE car can do so it can replace it.
Fixed that for you. But seriously, to replace a particular ICE car with an EV, the EV only has to do what the ICE car does, not what it can do. Contrary to your opinion, I suspect most cars never travel more than 100 miles from home, nevermind 500 miles in a day. And unless you're single, being a 1 car family would be the exception rather than the rule.
A little Googling shows I was mistaken. Diesel does burn at atmospheric pressure, though not very well unlike gasoline. It has a higher flash point apparently, and needs to be sprayed into a mist to burn at 1 atm. Lighting it with a match probably won't work too well.
I just took it for granite that shadowknot, although fully aware of the pun, was not familiar with the orthorhombic polymorph.
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
I worked out the numbers for my Honda Civic a year or two ago: assuming a solar array 14 feet long by 5 feet wide, on a tiltable (but not steerable) frame, I could drive between 15 (winter) and 30 (summer) miles on a day's sunlight.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I was trying to tailor my comment to Europe's love of rail. What I am suggesting is that if the cost of driving were cut by 75%, you would see far more people choosing to drive in order to save money... especially when they have a group of people to move. They would do this because the costs go up with the number of passengers on rail and plane.
Sure there is sacrifice (comfort & time) but if we assume it's about equal now for a family of 4 to travel by train as it would be to drive... then in the future (if the GGP is accurate in his assumption of a 75% reduction in cost), it will save you over 75% if you drive rather than take the train and you gain some advantages (no rental car, freedom to stop and explore during the trip, choice of lodging and food, no undesirable company, etc.)
Essentially, if battery powered cars become far cheaper to operate, then in all likelihood mass transit will suffer some losses, especially vacation travelers who are not leaving the continent.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Rather than having to worry about charging overnight or charging stations in parking lots, I'd like to see the battery pack be durable and standardized, so instead of charging it, you just swap it out. It'd be nice if self charging was still an option though.
I imagine that most batteries are under the floor of the trunk? So maybe the sides of the car near the trunk can have a sliding panel. Open it, and all your batteries are bundled and sitting on a sturdy rack that slides out.
Either some 'car wash-like' automated process where your car rides along a track and a robotic arm swaps the batteries out, or maybe just a hydraulic assisted but manually controlled arm that an attended could use to give you a new set.
What if I'm at zero battery power but need to drive 200 miles? Swapping them out would 'fill them up' instantly. It would also allow for some central quality control and testing of the batteries that the 'swapping station' could do.
tritium, tritium and tritium AND Noble Gasses Which Decay Into More Dangerous Daughter Products (Xenon 137, Krypton 90, rubidium 90, strontium 90, Xenon 135, xenon 133, krypton 85, Argon 39). Of course no epidemiological studies have been performed on the noble gas venting which are released hourly from *all* Nuclear reactors. (did I mention tritium) 4000 gallons of primary coolant water PER DAY containing plutonium 238,239,241, technetium 99, iodine 129, carbon 14 and *ahem* tritium
If tritium were so terrible and dangerous, then why is used in things like gun sights that are sold to members of the public? Also, primary coolant water is inside a closed loop - that is why you need at least one other coolant system to move the heat out to the generators. Thus, your figure of 4000 gallons per day of waste primary coolant water makes no sense.
The batteries are removable in the same way a gas tank is removable (well probably not that difficult....)
For now, anyways.
But I agree that is isn't going to happen.
Batteries degrade with use and time. I don't like the idea of having to go somewhere on short notice and run out of juice halfway there because at the last switching station I was handed an old battery. Unless we come up with a battery technology that won't degrade (super-capacitors?), it won't be viable.
The large battery packs for cars need not be built monolithically. There can be a standard created, where the smallest size battery using the new tech is (for example) 0.5 cm x 5cm x 4cm. That would be good for small devices. Then, maybe 10 of these together in a tray make a brick suitable for power tools etc. Keep building composite batteries this way until you get a car size unit that would be composed of hundreds of the original small standard size, but still easy to slide in / out of a car at a swap station. Swap stations would charge for the convenience of fully charged packs, of course. Getting away from devices that work with only one type of stored energy (gasoline) and instead tap a source-agnostic energy bus will be a big step forward. Whether the electricity comes from nuclear, wind or whatever, the energy infrastructure can evolve and get better and cleaner, without breaking standards dependencies by end consumption devices.
Same problem - doesn't add up. About 30 a day for basic model at a size I'd be happy driving long distance (being 6ft+) - and that is assuming you're happy with massive insurance excess (add another 10-15 a day to drop that).
I'll need maybe 20-30 days a year (only 2 or 3 days a month away), so that's 600-900. Assuming I find completely free electricity for the EV, I'll be "saving" around 600-700 in commuting fuel costs. Oops.
YMMV = and obviously your rental rates may vary...
Fixed (by the tax man) per-mile rate for car travel.
Agreed, but it needs to do everything it does, even if it does some things very rarely - even for a few trips a year, having to buy alternative provision can easily wipe out your fuel savings. You get the same problem when looking at big vs. small cars - if only a few times a year you need a big 7 seater, then that is what you need, and unless you are doing really high mileage you will not be able to save enough on fuel to pay for a smaller car for the times you don't need the big one. Sure, you could rent, but a big 7 seater for a week away will cost me around 500, 2 of those a year and I will never make it back on fuel savings.
YMMV - thinking around my extended family, friends, and work colleagues I can't think of any car driver who _never_ drives 100miles away.
500 miles a day would be very rare I think - I would always look to break that kind of distance overnight. On the other hand, 250 one day to get there, day or so on site, 250 to get back - that is somethng I do several times a year, and then you'd need to charge at the hotel. Lots of people have jobs like that (I work with a fair few) and plenty of people in sales will do a lot more mile a lot more often.
The EV + towed generator is interesting - effectively a serial hybrid (IMO a much better engineering solution than parallel - which I thnk is a whole lot of complexity for little gain over a decent ICE). But serial hybrids aren't a popular solution, at present, and some claim they are a lot less efficient than (complex) parallel, so why is this if it is so simple to just attach a generator to an EV like this, and why not just stick it in the car (still detachable) ? I have a suspicion (I may be wrong...) that the difference is between "generator" and "engine", and that if you stick it in the car you find it becomes the latter and all sorts of emmissions regs come into play and you find the generator isn't clean enough to be an engine. All in all it smells a bit like an interesting loophole in emmissions regs rather than a way to a cleaner transport system.
Where I think we need to be for really viable EV is probably 200 miles off a suitcase size (and weight) battery. Use one battery for commuting, throw in an extra couple for long journeys, and carry one into your hotel (or your house if you only have on-street parking) to charge overnight when needed.
I'm just making fun of your spelling. I agree on the lamps.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What part of "tritium which is highly mutagenic once it's in the foodchain" didn't you understand?
I guess you don't know as much about nuclear power as you think you do. Leaks between primary and secondary cooling are commonplace.
What part of "the *authorised* effluents" did you not understand?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
For most people night charging will be acceptable.
ResoMail - the alternative secure e-mail system
there are already batteries that can charge in minutes, and even top up large percentages of their charge in under a minute. combine this with a similar battery pack or supercapacitor as a buffer at the servo and you could fill your electric 'tank' quicker than with a petrol car. Get with the times :/
watch "the money masters" on google video
ha ha. WRONG.
http://green.autoblog.com/2007/08/21/woz-gets-700-ticket-for-going-105-mph-in-a-prius/ :)
This is how far I read because if you seriously think Nuclear power ends up in an energy deficit you are either completely ignorant about the subject, your sources are rubbish, or you are deliberately lieing ( or possibly a combination of the three ).
To give a slight idea of just how much energy is released in a nuclear reactor, the main limit of a reactor's power rating is how high temperatures the construction materials and cooling system can cope with. The reaction itself is limited only by the temperature at which the ceramic fuel rods and steel cladding melts, and at any time the fuel present in a large reactor contains more energy than entire countries consume in a year. If that is not enough to convince you, consider that the energy bound in chemical molecules like gas or petroleum is measured in electron volt, while the energy released in a fission reaction is hundreds of millions of electron volt.
Or put another way, one atom of uranium when fissioned will release an amount of energy equivalent to hundreds of millions of molecules of conventional fuel. Even if you take the fuel that has the highest chemical energy/weight ratio there is ( hydrogen ) it still releases only 1.53eV per atomic weight unit, while uranium fission is closer to a million eV per atomic weight unit.
For nuclear power to end up on an energy deficit the energy needed to extract, refine, burn and dispose it would have to be hundreds of millions times larger ( per atom counted ) than the energy needed to extract and refine conventional fuels. Now I accept that handling, mining, burning and disposing uranium and the waste products may be more involved than say coal. I'll even let you say 100 times more energy intensive, or heck why not say 10.000 times just for the hell of it, lets even assume coal is used 100% efficiently, and that only 1% of uranium is burned. You would still have THREE ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE to account for.
Really it is hard to grasp the energy released in nuclear reactions. A few kilograms would be enough to turn an entire city to ash, a couple of metric tonnes correspond to entire nations' annual energy consumption. Even though most reactors today only burn about 5% of it the amount much power you can tap from it is limited only by how much energy the cooling system can safely transport away, and the energy content is enough that a reactor can run for years without refueling.
The part where it is chemically equivalent to hydrogen and hence rapidly dissolves and disperses in water, quickly being diluted to lower than background levels. In addition the very low energy of the beta radiation it emits, it's tendency to be ejected with urine or sweat if ingested ( as opposed to staying in the body ) the short half-life, the minuscule amount produced, and the lack of any major pathway into the food-chain that would not first dilute any release by many orders of magnitude.
Honestly of all the elements in nuclear waste tritium is one of the more harmless ones. If you want to do scaremongering it's Iodine, Caesium, Strontium, Technetium and Neptunium you should harp about ( your arguments would still be rubbish of course, but those are the elements most likely to cause trouble ).
Good thing then that the secondary circuit is also a closed circuit that is heavily monitored for radioactivity. Seriously can you quote even a single incident where a dangerous amount of radioactive material was released through the secondary circuit ?
I got news for you buddy. Your body fluids are radioactive, as is air, milk, ponies and everything else on the planet. If it is dangerous or not is not simply a matter of it containing something radioactive and being a lot of it. The concentration, chemical properties, decay constant, and concentration matters. It is physically impossible to do ANYTHING without releasing small amounts of radioactivity. Even the carbon dioxide in the air you exhale contains some C-14. The authorised emissions from nuclear power-plants are set sufficiently strict that if you lived next to one for 50 years you get just a couple of "banana units" equivalent of exposure ( the same amount as you would get from eating a few bananas ).
I don't know if you are unaware of the serious flaws in your scaremongering, or if you do it deliberately, in either case you've quite clearly demonstrated that your claims are half-truths at the very best if not deliberately misleading.
"Why should the station be charging the batteries?"
For the same reason that rechargeable batteries (or any rechargeable item) need to be charged after purchase. They may not be precharged and/or they may be only partially charged.
And batteries are heavy and take up lots of space and would require many deliveries.
For sure, but trucks can carry quite a few batteries, and remember, most people would be charging at home. As for the rechargeable batteries today, they are not precharged because that prolongs their shelf life. If we are moving batteries as quickly as the this, that would hardly be a problem.
In conclusion, there is no real obstacles for having electric cars like this, except for that tiny itchy problem that the battery tech is just too expensive and not quite good enough, and not durable enough. Give us a battery that has a reasonable write-off and capacity, is stable and don't decharge much when unused, and the rest would be easy. Note that such batteries would be thrice-welcome for the windmill industry.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
That's fine for people who will only ever commute or do short trips. What about an annual or even bi-annual vacation or an emergency that requires you to drive 600 miles?
Just take a spare battery.
Of course, if you have to drive more than 1000 miles, then you'll have to walk the rest of the way. There's no going around that.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
In continental Europe water doesn't get in the way, but still most people won't drive much more than 500 miles at a time for a bi-annual holiday.
Not at all, lots of Southern Spaniards just love to go spend their vacations to Cape North "just 'cause". The place is crowded with them. They're speaking of building an arena to fight reindeers.
The Costa sin Sol they call it.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Methanol is a LOT easier than hydrogen to store, pipe, and transfer. Methanol can use most of the present gasoline infra-structure. I suspect that most existing IC engines could use it with suitable modification, although there may be corrosion issues.
Like hydrogen it needs to be made.
Currently usually made from natural gas but it can be made from coal. It also can be extracted from the gas stream that produces biochar.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Honda cross section.
While I think that a factor of 2 is hard, it's not impossible.
Conventional laminar flow airfoils get a Coefficient of Drag under 0.1 -- and they are designed to produce lift too.
* Most cars have to abrupt a back end for good streamlining, and the front end is too bumpy.
* Most cars have lots of junk protruding underneath.
* Most cars do little about wheel well drag.
* All north american cars are wider than they need to be.
Consider: A Cessna 150 gets 15 mpg flying at 120 mph. Given that (to first approximation) drag goes up with the cube of velocity, this type of streamlining should get 120 mpg at highway speed.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
The average American drives 10,000 miles per year.
Let's assume that the average electric car will get the equivalent of 50 miles per gallon.
That's 400 gallons of gas per year.
Gasoline is roughly 120 MJ/gallon A MJ is about 33 kW hr.
So that's 2640 KwHr.
With charging inefficiencies call it 3000 KwHr/year.
That would close to double the electrical demand. Gonna be some warm wires somewhere.
The one advantage: Most of the extra load is at night. In the climates where electric is appreciated, air conditioning is also a big load.
(In Canada an awful lot of the engine's waste heat is used to heat an badly insulated box with lots of windows in a fast moving cold wind. )
I suspect that large neighbourhoods exceed that 10,000 mi/yr figure -- bedroom communities, long commutes. Which means the load won't be evenly distributed.
If eeStor's capacitor technology works then you can have a smart charger that keeps the household battery full, and easily charge the car at whatever rates the wiring will allow.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
I'll need maybe 20-30 days a year (only 2 or 3 days a month away), so that's 600-900. Assuming I find completely free electricity for the EV, I'll be "saving" around 600-700 in commuting fuel costs. Oops.
There are a lot of assumptions here. One that you're going to travel more than 500 miles one way at least 20 and up to 30 times a year. Also, that gas prices will remain fairly constant. And that any incentives for buying a zero emissions vehicle for some reason don't augment the fuel cost savings. I'm ok with that, since this theoretical 500 mile per charge EV may come with a premium price tag, or maybe any incentives just offset the cost of electricity, whatever.
Fixed (by the tax man) per-mile rate for car travel.
In your own car. Doesn't apply to the cost of renting a vehicle for work.
YMMV - thinking around my extended family, friends, and work colleagues I can't think of any car driver who _never_ drives 100miles away.
On the other hand, I can think of several people who wouldn't even consider a car trip of more than say, 200-300 miles-- that's why airplanes were invented, they opine. However, I did not say people. I said cars. You may find a different result among your family and friends if you ask how often each of their vehicles make 100, 200, 500 mile trips. Lots of cars are owned by multi-car families that typically use one car (the biggest or most comfortable, whatever) on their long trips. Census data from http://factfinder.census.gov/ show that about 55% of households have 2 or more vehicles. So again, while it may not quite work for you, there are lots of people for whom an EV -- even with perhaps as little as 100 or 200 mile range -- would work just fine.
exactly how many street races can i get out of this battery?
When did I ever say the electricity would be free? Do you get your gas for free? There is still amazing concept called charging people for things, you may wish to look it up. It's also amazing how quickly people will set things up if they make money from it, like all those ATMs everywhere that the store owners get a cut of the fees from.
Stop making assumptions about the availability and widespread nature of human kindness.
I never id, you're the one trying to do that.
We do not all live in cities, nor are all people (or corporate entities) going to go through the hassle of retrofitting their buildings or roads so that your electric car works.
An electric car is still a fucking car, roads stay the same...are you really that much of an idiot? Actually those living in cities would have the MOST difficulty with electric cars since they'd have much more difficulty in charging their cars at night. There is also of course no need for everyone to do anything but simply for enough people to do it.
NASA and the FAA have been working on a small airport system for years to try and replace the massive hub traffic problems they encounter currently.
The hub system costs less which is why it's used. This matters why exactly?
There have been viable systems for cars that drive themselves. But the infrastructure is not there, and the cost to overhaul it is astronomical (as in, more money than we can reasonably assume would be available for the majority of state and country governments).
This matters why exactly? Frankly, I'd guess the costs of such a system would be more than the GDP of the US for a decade. The technology is not there unless you want something horribly expensive (as in an order of magnitude more expensive than the average car) or prone to catastrophic failures (300 car pileups due to hardware failures in the road and lack of proper sensors in the car itself).
Right, so your saying that, magically, Tritium (3H) changes it's physical characteristics, stops being a beta emitter and just isn't radioactive anymore. What about when it's in air?
3H is biologically mutagenic *because* it's a low energy emitter. This characteristic makes readily absorbed by surrounding cells.
The available evidence from studies conducted contradicts you, so I'll just quote from those works;
Tritium can be inhaled, ingested, or absorbed through skin. Eating food containing 3H can be even more damaging than drinking 3H bound in water. Consequently, an estimated radiation dose based only on ingestion of tritiated water may underestimate the health effects if the person has also consumed food contaminated with tritium. (Komatsu)
Studies indicate that lower doses of tritium can cause more cell death (Dobson, 1976), mutations (Ito) and chromosome damage (Hori) per dose than higher tritium doses. Tritium can impart damage which is two or more times greater per dose than either x-rays or gamma rays.
(Straume) (Dobson, 1976) There is no evidence of a threshold for damage from 3H exposure; even the smallest amount of tritium can have negative health impacts. (Dobson, 1974) Organically bound tritium (tritium bound in animal or plant tissue) can stay in the body for 10 years or more.
Tritium can cause mutations, tumors and cell death. (Rytomaa) Tritiated water is associated with significantly decreased weight of brain and genital tract organs in mice (Torok) and can cause irreversible loss of female germ cells in both mice and monkeys even at low concentrations. (Dobson, 1979) (Laskey) Tritium from tritiated water can become incorporated into DNA, the molecular basis of heredity for living organisms. DNA is especially sensitive to radiation. (Hori) A cell's exposure to tritium bound in DNA can be even more toxic than its exposure to tritium in water. (Straume)(Carr)
Where do you think the numbers come from. Thats authorised effluents - from every reactor. And since the danger is a scale dependent on exposure I'll again just quote the scientists;
First, as an isotope of hydrogen (the cell's most ubiquitous element), tritium can be incorporated into essentially all portions of the living machinery; and it is not innocuous -- deaths have occurred in industry from occupational overexposure. R. Lowry Dobson, MD, PhD. (1979)
Well considering that I am talking about radioactive isotope effluents as opposed to radioactivity you have either missed the point or just don't/won't get it. I'd suggest you spend some time educating yourself and re-engage the discussion with some actual facts as opposed to rhetoric.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Thanks for the science lesson but what you are confusing is the *potential* energy available with the reactors capability to release that energy within it's engineering limitations, or it's "potential capacity". This "potential capacity" is also limited by the availability (or uptime) of the reactor. Of the 104 reactors operating in the U.S 41 experienced year plus outages to restore their safety levels and 10 reactors did it twice. That's 51 'year plus' outages in operating nuclear reactors and I haven't even gone into general reactor availability and uptime. The most concerning of this indicates that the infrastructure is showing systemic signs of wear.
Of course, you don't have to believe me just read the report on reactor outages (pdf) so you can educate yourself with real scientific data.
First of all mean energetic estimates for construction of a nuclear power plant is somewhere between 11TWh and 35TWh (40-120 PetaJoules). However energy cost for demolition are around 70TWh (240-300 PetaJoules) if deconstruction is performed safely. Just in the construction/demolition phase you have consumed 1 third of the 300TWh's expected from the life of a brand new AP1000 reactor. Then factor the energetic costs of the dismantling and clean up of the core 5.6 - 16TWh's and it really is starting to look like a very poor energy return from your 1GW reactor.
Using a conservative energy expenditure of 1528Kwh per ton of rock (containing Uranium) you have to process 500 tons of rock, that's 763500Kwh's, to produce one kilo of Uranium. Assuming an extremely optimistic extraction efficiency approaching %50 AND assuming you have a high grade ore that's roughly 763Gwh's per ton and you need 160tons for your first core. Even before enrichment you've consumed over 100TWhs without a 1/3 core refuel every ten years for forty and we haven't even factored energetic costs of a spent fuel containment facility or the logistics of moving spent fuel safely.
It is *common knowledge* that current reactors have a burn up rate of roughly less than half of one percent (0.3%) of the fuel, not a good starting point fuel wise, with the reactor being around 33% efficient. That might be typical for an industrial power plant but as the industrial energetic inputs weigh heavily off the efficiency of the plant, that is going to be another figure we will never be able to determine simply because the plants will consume energy *after* they are decommissioned.
This brings us to Storm van Leeuwen and Smith whose analysis was to asses the net energy return of the Nuclear industry. You can check their research which is one source for the above figures and tell me what you think (the other being nuclear industry estimates which are *not* peer reviewed). The nuclear industry itself has spent much time attempting to refute their research. You will find it's been peer reviewed and constructed using using U.S government standards for industrial process measurement. So until you come up with a better argument, then this one alone is enough to reveal any further investment in commercial nuclear power as pointless.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Personally I favor technical correctness.
As to the intent of th GP I can not speak, and unless you are the original AC, neither can you. However, the GP clearly states "...recharge that fast or hold that much energy and what you have is a BOMB", which I infer to be about the inability of all battery technology to function in that capacity. To make a carte blanch claim of that magnitude implies an intimate knowledge of the field, which the GP then precludes by their failure to correctly apply the units of energy.
The respondent then replies (admittedly in a somewhat snarky fashion) that the GP was technically meaningless. The AC (probably the same person based on the apparent vitriol of the remark) responds with one fact and one falsehood. Another technical failure.
Great claims require great support. The AC provided no foundation for their claim and was deservedly, IMHO, shot down for their lack of technical correctness.
As to my Mona Lisa simile, I was not attempting to equate bovination with Davinci, that would be absurd. What I was attempting to disseminate is that the standards of rigorous communication in the advanced fields of study require years of training, and to belittle those years is disrespectful.
HTH
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.