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EVs In the Spotlight At West Coast Green Conference
DeviceGuru writes "Electric vehicles were prominent among the 'hot products' showcased at West Coast Green in San Francisco this week. The event's product expo featured an assortment of preproduction units, prototypes, and concept models based on two-, three-, and four-wheel designs, along with several of the vehicles' creators. Specifically, the EVs and plug-in hybrids that participated in the show included Wheego's Whip, Saba's Carbon Zero Roadster, Green Lite's three-wheeled plug-in hybrid, Brammo's all-electric Enertia motorcycle, and Mitsubishi's i-MiEV EV, which PG&E is evaluating for some unstated purpose. Notably absent were Nissan's LEAF, Chevy's Volt, Toyota's Prius Plug-in, and Tesla's sexy Roadster, though in fairness the conference wasn't an actual auto show. So how many Slashdot readers plan to switch over to a plug-in EV in the next few years?"
Paid to stand in line and expect delivery by end-of-year. I nearly had an EV-1 back in the day, but backed out when they refused to sell them, would only lease. This time should be the charm. The charger location is approved by my HOA and the install estimate is done, so it's just a matter of when Nissan can get production ramped up enough. there's a set of legacy chargers across from my office, so I have the option of plugging in during the day. And the city gives free parking to EV owners in their garages, so it is even subsidized. They just need to update the AVCON plug to the newer version and things should be set.
Since we can plug in an electric car for repowering in our homes and at our offices (and other destinations), they don't need as far a range. And since we generally use our cars for much shorter trips than the maximum range, that range was wasted capacity anyway, except for rare trips. Trips for which we can rent a car more suited for it.
The main problem with our transit economy has been buying cars with much more capacity than we need, and then looking for excuses to use it. If the lower capacity of early electric cars gets Americans to change our driving habits to use less energy, plus they're more efficient, we'll have won on both the important fronts needed to use energy responsibly.
Once the technology can offer the same full range at the same price for the machines as combustion cars did, we'll largely have outgrown them. But to get there, we need more people to realize that these early versions are completely satisfactory for reasonable use. Which will increase consumption, deliver returns on the initial models' investment, and bring down prices while increasing performance.
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make install -not war
This one probably won't be true. Most wires just can't give out enough power. Recharging a car at speeds at which a gas car is charged takes around 5 megawatts. That means that 10 of my local costco gas stations = 1 powerplant.
It's not quite that bad. 1 megawatt is more like it. The Tesla Roadster battery has a capacity of 53kWh. Their "fast charge" is 3 hours, and requires 220V 80A, or 17.6 KW. To charge 60x faster, in 3 minutes, would require about 1 MW. (4KV at 250A, perhaps?)
It's been suggested that stations on weaker parts of the power grid might have local batteries, to level out their load. They could still charge a car in 3 minutes, but maybe only 5-10 cars per hour. Then they only need 100KW coming in.
Batteries that can take charge rates like that don't exist yet. There are claims from the "nanotechnology" crowd that they will be available Real Soon Now. We'll see.
15 minute charge, though, is feasible now. That can be addressed with marketing; the combo gas station/Burger King/Starbucks/grocery store might work. (Or not.)
Consider a service plaza on a major Interstate highway in an isolated area. A good example would be I-15 from LA to Vegas. Assume a range of 200 miles, like a Tesla roadster. Every 20 miles, there's a service plaza. Assume 10% of cars come in for a recharge at each service plaza. An expressway lane has a capacity of 2000 cars per hour, so an 8-lane freeway has 16,000 cars per hour at max. If 10% of those need a Tesla-sized recharge, that's about 50KWh per car, or 1600*50 KWH/hr, or 8 megawatts per service plaza per direction, or 16MW per service plaza, or 80MW for 100 miles of road. That's big, but not unreachable.
The answer, of course, would have been an Aptera 2h.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptera_2_Series
An electric that went 100 miles or so, and later a hybrid that has the same batteries but when it ran down, a tiny gasoline motor would kick in recharging them. It's the exact same principle as diesel-electric trains that has been around since the 30s. The plus side is you can still have power (electric DC motors are potent) but you don't need a huge gasoline engine whose size is only used to 100% effect at hard acceleration (and wasting gas otherwise) and instead gear towards the lowest possible gasoline motor (smaller is much more mpg friendly) whose maximum output will roughly match the average depletion of the batteries during normal driving. Maybe a tiny fraction more.
Hell, even the really advanced big motored cars are trying to save gas by turning of cylinders (some Mercedes and Cadillacs, maybe others), why not bypass all that mechanical complexity and go with a tried and true system that worked the last 70 years for big ass trains?
Jay Leno testing the all electric Aptera just to prove it's not 100% vaporware:
http://vimeo.com/5285448
It doesn't need to be aptera only, but I think the only thing holding up the system are the weenies that think it's better to reach Utopia first (no gas instead of, say 100+ mpg) forgetting their little envirobiles will be made of plenty of lightweight plastic (petroleum).
I mean, if you really have a hard on for an electric car but need range from time to time, the only other real solution is to buy some electric car and rent a gas car when you need it.