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All-Electric DeLorean Car To Hit the Streets In 2013
An anonymous reader writes "The DeLorean Motor Company just announced plans to launch an all-electric version of its gull-winged Back to the Future car in 2013. While it doesn't run on fusion power (yet), it still has a top speed of 125 mph driven by a 260 horsepower electric motor."
This sucker is electrical!
The only question remains - do you need to wait for a lightning storm to charge it?
You can't handle the truth.
...can someone give that to me in jiggawatts?
I think that's the point of the article. In your rush to be 'first', you probably failed to notice that the car doesn't run on fossil fuels. Given that the 80's had no such car that was fully electric and ran at 125 MPH, then it's unlikely we'd find such a car unless we went to the future. Say, somewhere around 2013 to find it, no?
260 horsepower...can someone give that to me in jiggawatts?
Anyway, here is, from google.
More like the past; I'm not sure about 125mph, but I believe electric cars were doing over 100mph in the 19th century. But then people realised they sucked and switched to gasoline instead.
More like barely 20mph, but thanks for playing.
http://gas2.org/2009/04/19/9-electric-cars-100-years-old-or-more/
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
But then people realised they sucked and switched to gasoline instead.
Gasoline: Lousy Engine, incredibly great energy storage
Electric: Great Engine, incredibly lousy energy storage
There's nothing wrong with electric cars that a battery that costs half as much for twice the life(range and longevity) wouldn't fix.
I don't read AC A human right
Actually the top speed for the first electric cars was about 60 MPH. Even at the time they recognized that electric cars were cleaner, pronounced less noise, and more economical. Their downside was the battery, which was primitive and prone to failure.
As in all things, it lost out to gasoline and diesel as those became cheaper to operate and easier to fuel as opposed to swapping out batteries. That didn't necessarily mean that electric sucked, but rather it couldn't compete at the time as fossil fuels were much more abundant and the infrastructure was easier to provide for.
This is not the DeLorean Motor Company that we knew in the 1980s. This is a resurrection of the name, by a . Which is how they are able to take the original car, put whatever they want into it, and still call it the DMC-12.
And since they have a number of original 1980s chassis, they can sell them as "reconstructed" 1980s cars, and they don't need to worry about modern safety and environmental requirements.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The fastest electric car (and fastest vehicle, period) in 1899 was La Jamais Contente, which hit 62mph on a straightaway. And wasn't exactly a 4-seat crash-rated vehicle with modern accessories, to put it lightly ;)
Rechargeable batteries have been doubling in energy density about once every 8 years, have maintained such a pattern since the 80s, and show no signs of slowing down. Don't think today's ranges are good enough? What about in a decade? Two decades? Three decades? If your car can go 800 miles per day (a whole day's drive), what need to you have for frequent fast-charge stations? You just need to be able to get your 800-miles of range charged while you settle in for the evening/eat/go to bed/wake up/get ready/eat/leave. 250Wh/mi and, say, 10 hours charge time requires 20kW (~83A). Modern houses are generally built with 200A panels nowadays (most of that being little utilized at night), and hotels far larger.
So at some point, all of those other issues just go by the wayside. 800 miles not good enough for you? Then wait for 1000. Or 1200. But at some point, you hit your mark. And low current distribution panels are increasingly a thing of the past.
The bigger question is cost. Battery cost per watt have generally declined, but not followed a very predictable path. A given tech (say, PbA, NiMH, Li-ion, etc) generally shows a predictable price decline over time, but at random intervals, a new tech comes along to continue the aforementioned energy density increase. Usually (but not always) it starts out pretty expensive, but then declines over time. In short, though, it's really hard to say how expensive those 800-mile packs of 20 years from now will be -- only that no matter what their initial price, it will drop over time.
As for history: "Fuel" powered engines have a much longer history than "electricity" powered engines. The early brushed DC motors and lead-acid batteries are the electric-car equivalent of the steam engine. The modern synchronous AC drivetrain and lithium-ion batteries are the electric car equivalent of early internal combustion engines. It's a game of catchup. There was one point where electric vehicles briefly took the lead, but only due to extreme deficiencies of the gasoline vehicles of their day (the lack of a starter, nonstandardized fuels, horrible reliability, etc). Speaking of "nonstandardized fuels" -- electric cars are just now having to get over a related problem (nonstandardized connectors).
It's simply an industry that needs time to mature.
"It felt almost as good as stealing cars from grandma." -- Margaret Thatcher, probably.
Sure there is. Charge time.
"it still has a top speed of 125 mph"
That's purely theoretical, though, since I've never seen one go over 88.
Twice you used "sucked" and twice you didn't substantiate your claim.
Point not made.
It's all about what's the cheapest (at the time) form of energy. Unfortunately, that only means dollars and cents TODAY; it doesn't mean dollars and cents TODAY plus whatever today's use makes unavailable in the future. The artificially cheaper oil prices enjoyed in the US make alternate forms of transportation almost non-existent (in the US). Batteries, until very recently, have been much heavier and required payment up front. (Gas tanks are much cheaper than batteries.) In short, it isn't electrical cars that 'suck'; the ('unfair') competitive prices of gas power engines 'suck'.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
"Thank you for your empty battery. Here's a full one. That'll be x-dollars. Thank you and have a nice day"
Doesn't seem all that long to me.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
uhh until we're not burning petroleum to generate electricity, using electric cars INCREASES our dependence due to their inefficiency.
gasoline car
pump out of ground -> ship -> crack/process -> ship to station / pump into tank -> burn -> kinetic energy.
electric car
pump out of ground -> ship -> crack/process -> ship to power plant -> burn -> phase change water -> kinetic energy -> electrical energy AC -> multiple step up and step down transformers -> AC to DC and voltage stepdown conversion -> chemical change in battery -> second chemical change -> electricity -> kinetic energy.
The greens need to accept something like ubiquitous nuclear energy before electric cars become feasible and more environmentally friendly than ICE based cars.
But seriously folks, the auto manufacturers would fight tooth and nail to NOT use standardized parts so they can have a huge markup on THEIR brand of part.
When DeLorean Motors was liquidated, the naming rights along with the spare parts inventory and a few unfinished chassis went to some group of investors in Texas where they continued to "hand-build" a few cars at a time based off of the original DMC-12 model design. They also purchased the production certificate, with some restrictions that didn't really matter due to the low production volume.
So the company, in one form or another, has been around awhile even if they haven't exactly been thumping their chest about what it is that they are doing except to existing owners (buy genuine DeLorean parts for your cars!) and to the hobby car/car mod market.
It isn't as if this is something new. Louis Chevrolet originally established the company that bears his name, did some fancy racing with cars, sold the company to General Motors, then blew his money where he finally ended up becoming a mechanic.... working on Chevrolet vehicles including on the engine he designed himself. Then again Chrysler isn't exactly under the same management team they were operated under two decades ago... with several incarnations of that company over the years.
It sounds like the Mr. Fusion might be coming to a store near you by 2015.... just like the movie said it would. Or perhaps not. The hover mod also keeps being talked about, but I think that is still a few more years away before it gets built. Isn't the future grand!
If your car can go 800 miles per day (a whole day's drive), what need to you have for frequent fast-charge stations?
Sure, not now, but in a few years when the car does only 500 miles (or whatever).
10 hours charge time requires 20kW (~83A)
The main circuit breaker for my house is ~32A, which means that I can use about 7.3kW. 1.2kW is used by my computers, add the lights, TV, microwave, electric teapot and not that much is left for charging the car. I could get three phase power and more current but that would be expensive.
In short, though, it's really hard to say how expensive those 800-mile packs of 20 years from now will be -- only that no matter what their initial price, it will drop over time.
There is also a problem with the battery life. Over time the capacity gets smaller, so you need to replace the batteries after a few years when the capacity is not enough. A gas tank does not shrink, it can develop a hole, but the hole can easily be patched and the tank is as good as new. Even for a 30 year old car. Now, how far will a 30 year old electrical car go if it was originally advertised to be able to go 1000km?
The point is, electrical cars suck now, they may stop sucking in the future (like gasoline powered cars did).
Actually, I have a PV kit on top of my garage.
Crap. What did the new CSS do with the "Post anonymously" option??
Firstly, the inefficiency difference isn't as bad as you make it out to be since the power plants are vastly more efficient at extracting power from that fuel than the cars would be and because a lot of our power comes from non-oil sources anyway (admittedly a lot of them aren't very green, but still).
The other thing to consider is that using electric cars means that all you have to do to move away from fossil fuels is to switch your power plants over to a different energy source (admittedly no mean task) whereas if you're running all your cars of petroleum products when it gets to be impractically expensive to pull oil out of the ground (ie Peak Oil, which a number of experts believe we're hitting right now) you've still got to switch the fossil fuel burning parts of your grid to a different energy source but on top of that you've then get to either deal with the inefficiency of the Fischer–Tropsch process or replace every car on the road and all your fueling infrastructure in one go (and with no real experience in creating/using/maintaining electrics or whatever alternative you end up using because you've refused to use any out of some harebrained notion of them not being green).
Lastly, I'm what you'd probably consider a green and am a staunch supporter of Nuclear Fission in the immediate future and Beamed Orbital Solar + Nuclear Fusion in the medium to far future. Just because there are plenty of loons out there that don't realize the need for reliable baseload power capacity and spend all their time fapping over solar and wind doesn't mean that everyone that supports sustainable, environmentally friendly development is a moron.
The greens need to accept something like ubiquitous nuclear energy before electric cars become feasible and more environmentally friendly than ICE based cars.
Yes, because that's what the greens need to do. Listen to biased liars like you trying to sabotage the movement for what they "should" do. Tactics like that work great and gave us the World Class healthcare bill we now live under. Always give more attention to the opposing side than your supporters.
Learn to love Alaska
Don't we (in the US) burn coal to generate electricity? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_electricity_production, we use petroleum to generate 1% of our electricity and coal to generate 44.9%. Of course, coal is a bit dirty, but it doesn't make a great vehicular fuel unless you spend energy to change it.
Unless your house was wired by Thomas Edison, I seriously doubt that.
I do not live in the US and heat my house with natural gas (much cheaper than electricity). So, I only have single phase 230V 32A power.
You're referring *specifically* to non-climate-controlled laptop cells wired in series with no charge balancing.
Not only to laptop cells. UPS batteries (lead-acid) shrink in capacity (and increase internal resistance) quite fast, especially at higher temperatures. Car starting batteries (again lead-acid) do the same, with the bonus of degrading fast at low (-10C) temperatures. Cellphone batteries (NiCd, NiMH, Li-Ion, Li-Pol) also shrink in capacity over time.
And NiFe batteries most likely won't be used in electric cars because they are as heavy as lead-acid batteries.
Also, batteries in cars will have to be operational at wide temperature ranges. Where I live, outside temperature can be anywhere from -35C (all time low -42.9) to +35C (all time high +37.5), the car with the battery will be outside and I might even want to drive it when it's -34C (and use the heater of course). Climate controlling the batteries will reduce the range of the car in the temperature extremes.
Barely 20 mph? Nope, thanks for playing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente
100 *K*PH (not mph) was done in the 19th century.
even if the power plants were as efficient, the TRANSPORT is where the problem lies. oil or not, the context of this discussion was that carbon based fuel sources are damaging the environment.
Yes..and how long does it take to switch over? if we started today, it would be what? 5-10 years to build plants assuming they were funded, designed, insured (this is a big one), constructed in parallel, and with a massive country-wide push. this is a best case scenario which will never happen.. in reality it'll take half a century or more to do something like this as, like you suggest, it has to happen in stages. meanwhile, all the marketing and hype surrounding electrics will simply result in them having their tailpipes extrapolated back through a vastly less efficient delivery system (energy wise) compared with petroleum shipping and storage, causing us to burn more carbon per car than we were doing before, with lower performance and range as well.
people don't do certain things with electricity that they could in theory because of cost. it's easy to generate electricity, but hard to store it, which is key here. bottom line: if we're gonna burn the carbon anyway, lets use it as efficiently as possible until we find other systems.. one tank of gasoline has immense amounts of energy..to get that equivalent in batteries, the car would have to weigh twice what it does now. (no these are not calculated figures, they are meant to make a point). to get that equivalent charge INTO those batteries as charge will take a lot more carbon than simply burning the carbon onsite as needed.
I don't have a problem with being 'green', but a lot of the hippie-types involved will not see reason.. they don't like nuclear either. .they scream chernobyl every time someone suggests it.
The term Gigawatt used to be pronounced "Jigawatt" in the United States. In the 1950s this was common practice. I know this because I am an electrical engineer and have worked on RF projects. Almost everyone today says "Gigaherz" and "Gigawatt" but a few old timers nearing retirement still say "Jigaherz" and "Jigawatt".
According to one of these guys arguing the correct pronunciation of Gigawatt was a holy war in the 60s, similar to vi vs emacs or mac vs pc.
"Gigawatt" won. Because it is superior. Like vi.