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8 US States Pushing For 3.3 Million Electric Cars
An anonymous reader writes "A coalition of eight U.S. states, including New York and California, have announced a plan to get 3.3 million zero-emission electric vehicles onto their roads by 2025. 'The states, which represent more than a quarter of the national car market, said they would seek to develop charging stations that all took the same form of payment, simplify rules for installing chargers and set building codes and other regulations to require the stations at workplaces, multifamily residences and at other places.' An editorial in Quartz says that while the initiative itself is fine, the states should really take cues from Tesla if they want to plan out an infrastructure that will convince people to switch. ' For longer distances, [Tesla drivers] can stop at "Supercharger" stations strategically placed along highways that let them add 150 miles of range in as little as 20 minutes. Currently, [government] money is being spent on installing much-slower chargers at stores, shopping malls and other urban locations in the hope that drivers will use them. Tesla says it will blanket the US with its Superchargers for a fraction of the cost, because it studies the driving patterms of its customers and installs charging stations only where they tend to travel. This isn't hard; most other electric cars also record their drivers' habits. If privacy concerns could be addressed and automakers would be willing to share that data with government transportation planners, the rollout of public charging stations could be more targeted and cash-efficient.'"
You can be sure that Texas is not one of those eight states.
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Where do they think the power comes from? Those magic wall sockets most likely are connected to coal burning plants. There aren't enough sites for hydroelectric power to increase by a substantial amount, and solar and wind power aren't capable of supplying the "base curve" of the grid demand because of their unreliable nature. Either allow nuclear energy and/or fracking to supplement them, or STFU about renewable sources please.
"If privacy concerns could be addressed and automakers would be willing to share that data with government transportation planners, the rollout of public charging stations could be more targeted and cash-efficient."
How would one adequately address privacy concerns when the spy agencies routinely lie about what they do?
Given the current state of the US electrical grid, I'm not confident it would fare well against a sudden increase of large battery packs being plugged in at once. Yeah, we can setup delayed or offset charging times, etc.
This is a problem with increase in the usage of electric cars in general..... more grid capacity will be needed.
The good news is: less shipping gas around..
The bad news is: lots of construction work.
Maybe some solar panels on the roofs of these facilities, or some $500,000 fuel cells....
Solar isn't going to work for this. Nor fuel cells. There is a solution that will ultimately win. But it will take a radical change in the power distribution network. I'd love to go into detail, but I'm unable to for reasons I choose not to discuss.
Place nail here >+
Overall demand has been flagging with no reversal in sight. If anything, this would help generators stay in business.
I see the power company lobbyists are busy.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
This is correct. The solution is not ready yet. People forget how bad pollution was with horses, and how much cleaner gas-burning cars were. A buildout of the current grid to handle electric cars is incredibly wasteful.
Place nail here >+
What a load of crap. There is no reason at all to share any personal data with the government. Lets ignore that NSA already has it all, if they want to know where people drive, well, they already have good road usage statistics for most roads. They certainly don't need data on where current electric car drivers are driving now, they "need" data on where they would be driving their over priced toys if they could drive there and get back, and the current data will not tell them that. To meet their idiotic goal they would really need data on where the people who don't buy electric cars (perhaps because they perceive them to be impractical with the current infrastructure) would want to drive them, not data on where people who already bought them already can drive them. And even the "need" for that other information, which can't be obtained by turning over people's private travel history, ignores the questions of "should government be doing this at all?" and "wouldn't everyone benefit more from research into better batteries or alternate energy storage or production than from the government getting involved in the car charging business?".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yes if you are standing around waiting for it. If they had slow charging stations in parking locations it doesn't matter, and at some locations a 20 minute gas stop is normal even for gasoline cars. Last time I took I-80 westbound we had to wait for 15 minutes to get to a pump, then 5 minutes to pump with another 10 minutes to wait for traffic to get out of my way so we can get back on the highway. Instead, if there was a charging station at the oasis I would plug in, go inside to use the bathroom, get a coffee, and walk back out in those 20 minutes instead of sitting in my car while the guy with the F950 pickup truck fills both his 300 gallon gas tanks.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hell with more grid capacity, how about a grid that is modern and in good condition.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Actually solar can work, you can easily build a 200amp 100% solar charging station.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/09/02/solar-integrated-ev-fast-charging-station-eco-station-gets-coda-energy-storage-system/
CODA energy is putting them all over the place.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes, they are still sub-optimal for long road trips. However, as long as you can get a full day of normal driving in on a single charge, and recharge overnight in your own garage the picture looks much better, especially as a primary car where the second car where the other is gasoline powered. Weight it largely irrelevant to most people - once you can't pick it up it's just one more factor in the efficiency and performance characteristics. And cost, well that is what it is for now, the early adopters always pay a premium.
As someone said "There's nothing wrong with electric cars that batteries with twice the capacity at half the cost wouldn't fix", and there's plenty of promising new battery technologies on the horizon, we just need one of them to make it out of the lab.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Actually a viable option in the short term - cars are terribly inefficient and spend most of their time operating the engine well outside it's optimal efficiency band, unlike a power-generating station.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Or just get uneducated americans to stop freaking out about having a small nuclear reactor under the hood. That would be my solution.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
And I'm sure the owners tend to travel where there are charging stations.
Nuclear reactors cannot modulate their level of output several times per day, yet as anyone reading this should know, demand changes greatly over the course of the day. On a minute-by-minute basis, demand is pretty chaotic. That's why the nuclear industry spurred the construction of a great deal of the hydropower capacity that we have today.... so it could actually stay in business.
The interesting thing is that today's deregulated energy markets don't have the stomach to stick with nuclear power projects: Once bureaucrats commit their ratepayers (you and me) to a project, the price invariably skyrockets. Geographic monopoly, business culture and the sheer size and complexity combine in an unfortunate way that sets nuclear up for failure.
Those renewable sources, however, are already making use of the hydropower capacity that the flagging nuclear industry in no longer using. They say: Thanks!!!
As for the dis-ingenuity of posting about "unreliable" renewables in a thread about BATTERY-based transportation.... LOL.
You're full of shit. :-P
One of the advantages of electric cars is that with sufficient range (greater than your normal daily usage) the vast majority of charging can be done overnight when power demand is at a minimum, thus using transmission and generating capacity that's currently sitting unused.
Granted, if everybody got an electric car tomorrow that might be an issue, but it's going to be decades before electric vehicles see that kind of market penetration, plenty of time for the power companies to adapt. And really the grid is already overdue for an overhaul, and as we move towards cleaner power sources that will only become more true.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
BTW, the federal government is giving a $7,500 tax credit to save $6,000 is gasoline.
That is assuming that nobody else has a leccy car already hooked up to each pump.
More likely you would sit there waiting at least 20, possibly 30min to get a charging plug then continue as you described. Since if there really is that long of a petrol line leccy would be long as well... if not, it will be.
For this too work at least 100 million cars with compatible charging units would have to be on the road in those states by 2025. In addition every unit of power would have to be subsidized by either the state or federal government. Plus think of the strain this puts on an aging power producing infrastructure. Electric prices will soar. Unless we switch to nuclear power or solar become MUCH cheaper this plan can't be sustainable.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I wonder if these states adopt Tesla's supercharger stations then will Tesla be able to charge $$$ or get royalties from licensing the technology etc...
If so then that could lead them down the path towards being a monopoly, since they'd own all the supercharging stations...
Yes if you are standing around waiting for it. If they had slow charging stations in parking locations it doesn't matter
That's fine if 0.05% of cars around are electric. But it's totally unrealistic to think anything justifies the expense of putting an electric charging unit into every single parking spot.
Even if there aren't ever very many electric cars, you have to worry about non-electric cars taking up your spot. And if you decide that there are going to be some electric-only spaces now you have reduced the capacity of the whole parking lot for something used even more infrequently than handicapped spots.
Instead, if there was a charging station at the oasis I would plug in, go inside to use the bathroom
The thought that every time I need to charge in public I get to experience a public gas station restroom is reason enough to go buy a stiff drink and a hummer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Charge all day long from a photovoltaic panel the size of a parking space. On a sunny day, that energy might get you a few miles, on a cloudy day, it might not get you out of a big parking lot. And that is being generous.
We are not ready for mass adoption of electric cars, but the technology is not yet cheap enough for that yet anyway. By the time the technology does get cheap enough, and starts trickling down to the majority who have rarely if ever bought a new car in their lives, we will have had plenty of tie to start shifting to more sustainable power generation.
For that matter we could roll out high-efficiency gasoline generator power plants that will burn far more cleanly, and generate far more power per gallon, than most modern cars do. Even with transmission and storage losses you'd *still* come out ahead with electric vehicles in terms of fuel pollution.
Perhaps more to the point that substantial delay in adoption means you can't quickly change the fuel source for hundreds of millions of gasoline cars on the road. You can try shenanigans like ethanol fuel "enrichment", but that's really a drop in the bucket. Diesel has a little more potential since they are a lot more tolerant to alternative fuels. Electric cars though, those will be powered by whatever your power plants happen to be consuming, without any modifiation. That's mostly coal right now in the US, but that's starting to change, and IIRC Germany already gets something like 60% of its electricity from solar, and they're not exactly known for their long sunny days.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
How long does it take to charge a 'regular' car? Mine typically takes about 10 minutes because the pumps in large stations are relatively slow and I need 20 gallons. Most people take about 15 minutes (paying cash inside, getting snacks etc). And that 20 minutes is just for the current technology, I anticipate that within 5 years this can be halved. And 20 minutes would only be on long distance trips (>4 hours). Most trips (groceries, work, family and friends) can be done in 4 hours and then you just charge at home/work/family. And every 4 hours you SHOULD stop for 30 minutes anyway (or at least nature will make sure you do).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Right now even the cheapest hybrid cars tend to cost double what a cheap gas powered economical car costs. This means you can go through like 100,000 miles of gasoline before you break even.
Some company should try and make a bare bones economical car with electromagnetic return braking. Aim for a short range if you have to 20-40 miles, and have a or a hybrid gas/electric drive. Basically you'd charge at home, so most of your commute is near-free.
A car like this would empower a lot of low income families who spend a noticeable portion of their income on gas to get to their minimum wage job. Also it would give low income families the chance to shop around more at stores since often you don't go to stores for discounts when the gas money eats up the savings.
The downsides are that the highways would get a lot more crowded, and the power grid would be hammered and need upgrading. A hammered power grid can be offset temporarily by people getting solar installs at their houses. When your car is using lots of electricity, the investment is worth it. Whether you're going to be driving a hybrid now or even a hydrogen later, solar panels help with both.
God spoke to me
Nothing will educated them about nuclear like a pacific ocean without fish!!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Oh, also worth mentioning - the shift towards electric cars creates the promise a vast and lucrative new high-dollar market for *good* batteries (safer, cheaper, and/or more environmentally friendly) - which makes the necessary R&D far easier to justify, bringing significant attention to a technological field that had been largely languishing.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Running a car on energy from the electric grid is greener than running on gasoline, even if your power comes from coal plants.
Not true. In city driving Tesla claim a 292 mile range off a 85kWh battery, or 651kJ/km. Adding in battery manufacture and allowing a generous 1000 cycles, that goes up to 923kJ/km. Allowing for losses in electricity generation (40% at best) and transmission (~7%), the overall consumption is 1653kJ/km.
A medium size diesel gets about 60mpg (UK gallons), equivalent to 1690kJ/km. The difference is just 2%.
Citing diminishment of of revenues from gas taxes, due to the influence of electric cars, 8 states are working to impose a per-mile road tax.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
A powerplant has much higher efficiency than an ICE. Heck, even a Diesel generator is more efficient since it operates at optimum settings.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Check out the grid utilization from Midnight to 6am in any timezone. Would it surprise you to know the load is generally less than 40% of peak? Assuming reasonable charging models, there is no need to radically expand the electric grid.
And no, it is not zero emission, but certainly using an electric vehicle produces far less direct polution than driving a typical ICE car.
Electric cars still look quite unattractive to me.
I keep seeing this claim, and honestly can't quite figure it out - I mean sure, the Tesla S doesn't quite have the sexyness of a Bugatti, but y'know, when you have the Veyron in for detailing, you have to let the chauffeur drive something.
Solar isn't going to work for this. Nor fuel cells. There is a solution that will ultimately win. But it will take a radical change in the power distribution network.
It is not likely that there are going to be any radical changes to the power distribution network, due to the cost.
I actually think Solar and Fuel cells can work just fine for this, but there need to be enough of them in proximity to chargers, to offset at least a majority of the additional capacity requirement.
Charge all day long from a photovoltaic panel the size of a parking space. On a sunny day, that energy might get you a few miles, on a cloudy day, it might not get you out of a big parking lot. And that is being generous.
I'm thinking more along the lines of entire buildings' rooves decked with PV cells; so the building is mostly powered using solar, and the reduced building power consumption serves to offset additional capacity demand being pulled by the charger during the day.
Given the current state of the US electrical grid, I'm not confident it would fare well against a sudden increase of large battery packs being plugged in at once.
Actually, having a large distributed storage capacity could (if the utilities had any will to take advantage of it rather than just do the absolute minimum necessary to keep the PUC from shutting them down) vastly improve the grid's overall resiliency. Each one of these cars stores roughly the same amount of electricity as a typical house uses in three or four days.
It actually surprises me that Tesla hasn't actively promoted the idea of using the car itself as a necessarily well-maintained whole-house UPS. "Does the thought of losing power overnight cost you precious sleep? Never again! With Tesla's patented bidirectional charging station and crossover inverter, Mother Nature will need to throw more than a few flakes or gusts of wind or downed trees your way to keep you from enjoying the big game!".
And that ignores the possibility of actually tapping into them to help smooth out the peak demand curve - Our baseline consumption would cost us around two cents per kWh, if not for the fact that normal residential rates average that against insane on-demand spikes of 30-60 cents for a few hours a day.
All this blather and government planning and so on.
I said nothing about government planning. I'm not sure your comment was directed at me?
What I said is that it's not feasible to put charging stations in every parking spot. It is insane. There's no way you will ever make a return on that investment.
Electricity is the future of autos; but not the kind where your car needs charging via electric cables to every home or parking spot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
10 m2 * 150 W/m2 * 8 h/day / (150 Wh/km) = 80 km/day. (*)
That covers the average commute quite nicely some of the time. In winter or inclement weather, not so much.
Still, the smugness of travelling gratis - abstracting investments - is seducing.
(*) Conversion to other units, including but not limited to BTU, miles (your pick), square feet and 1/32nds of a fortnight left as an exercise for the reader.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
There is already a vast and lucrative market for safer, better, cheaper, environmentally friendly batteries. There has been for quite some time.
IF you have your car in a garage and charge it overnight, then you may rarely ever need to charge it away from home -- only for road trips, really. Depending on your driving habits, you may go months without visiting a charging station.
Even then, if you have a Model S and stop at a Supercharger station, you'll have the option of paying for a battery swap, which can get you back on the road in about two minutes.
Finally... Remember that even 3 million cars is only about 1% of the cars in the USA. Today's electric car technology can't meet everyone's needs, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine it meeting the needs of 1% of the population. Things can grow from there as the technology continues to improve.
What reference car are you using?.
You know you are quoting power output in optimal test conditions of the most expensive and exotic type of PV panels, right?
Oh, and on hot days, you might need to choose between Air Conditioning and getting home.
You're totally right, and I think the industry is keenly aware of this, and they are working on how to address it.
Gasoline cars have been mass-produced and cost-reduced for decades. It's really quite amazing to look at the cost of an internal combustion engine and see just how cheap they are, considering the materials, parts and tolerances that they require to produce them. The same can and should happen to electric cars, but it just doesn't happen overnight, and it won't ever happen without them being in active production.
The Tesla Model S is Tesla's second car, and it's a huge advance over the Roadster. The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf are first-generation products. We're just at the beginning of this change, so be patient!
If they had slow charging stations in parking locations it doesn't matter, and at some locations a 20 minute gas stop is normal even for gasoline cars. Last time I took I-80 westbound we had to wait for 15 minutes to get to a pump, then 5 minutes to pump with another 10 minutes to wait for traffic to get out of my way so we can get back on the highway
I like how you just assume that won't be the same when electric cars are common.
Using your same metrics, 5 minutes to pump after 15 minutes waiting, means three cars were ahead of you. Also implied is that one car arrives
every 5 minutes so that the 15 minute wait time persists.
With a fast charging Tesla, those three cars will take an HOUR to charge. Further, in that hour 12 cars will arrive.
With other cars like the Leaf, the charge time is 4 hours, so I'm not even going to do that math for you.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I hate that term as it is inaccurate. While the vehicle may not emit pollutants one is just shifting the emissions to the coal/natural gas fired electricity generation plant. If the cars were not charging the plants would not be emitting as much. It is less emissions that an internal combustion engine but it is non-zero. Sure, you can hook your car up to you PV array or wind turbine but if you are using grid energy it is not zero emission. If the source of the electricity is not zero emission then calling the electric car zero emission is a lie.
A quick check shows common electric vehicles today are actually using about 400 Wh/km. That can be improved under optimal condition (perfect temperature, no stopping/starting, no air conditioning, everything maintained perfectly, flat terrain)
That $10k differential, if invested, could pay a return that would cover most of your gas.
Fuel, or cars in general, need to get much more expensive for this to make sense. Better to start the transition now, and hey - props to everyone buying a Tesla.
..don't panic
Long road trips along well traveled routes, maybe. But not when there are 30 cars ahead of you lined up to charge.
The Tesla is the only car that can charge in 20 minutes. All the others seem to require hours.
Twice the capacity at half the cost sounds like a Moore's law of batteries, but we simply have not seen such progress in battery technology.
Probably because we have two other considerations to weigh, namely recharge time and weight. If twice the capacity can be accommodated in
the same weight, fine. But that seems unlikely.
There is also the consideration that we probably don't have the electrical grid capacity to accommodate recharging that many vehicles.
(There are those that insist we do, but the raw math indicates otherwise).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
How often do you urinate?
15 minutes?
Try closer to 5.
The US fuel flow rate at filling stations is 10 gallons per minute.
Your twenty gallon tank is full in two minutes.
Allow another minute for fumbling with your wallet, swiping in your card at the pump.
Nobody pays cash inside these days. And I don't need snacks every time I fill up the tank.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
As I've been saying for years - solar carports on every parking lot, giving power & shade. The US Southwest, among other places, would benefit greatly from these.
If the power is being used to charge EVs, you can bill for it.
If not, you're still providing shade and offsetting some of the use of the businesses / shopping centers.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
at some locations a 20 minute gas stop is normal even for gasoline cars. Last time I took I-80 westbound we had to wait for 15 minutes to get to a pump, then 5 minutes to pump with another 10 minutes to wait for traffic to get out of my way so we can get back on the highway. Instead, if there was a charging station at the oasis I would plug in, go inside to use the bathroom, get a coffee, and walk back out in those 20 minutes
So, we should set our standards and expectations based on the existing worst case scenarios? Not me. I typically gas up and am out of there in 5 minutes. The credit card reader at the pump is a truly great thing.
How long is the wait if all the chargers are being used?
Electric cars still look quite unattractive to me. The primary problem is the weight, cost, and limited life of the batteries. But long charging times are also still a problem, and even 20 minutes is rather long.
Actually, they LOOK attractive to me at first glance, but get up close and get to know them better and they get uglier. Weight and cost of keeping them happy, I mean running, is too much, plus you just can't depend on them to be there for you when you need them. Then you are always waiting on them to get ready.
The US fuel flow rate at filling stations is 10 gallons per minute.
That's the maximum allowed by law, not the standard. Read your own link. No pump I've seen goes anywhere near that fast.
Free Martian Whores!
The bad news is: lots of construction work.
How is more labor needed for construction (you know, actually making shit) in any way bad news?? I have friends in construction.
Free Martian Whores!
While an interesting thought, my company is in the uninterrupted power generation/supply business and its anything but easy to configure larger sites. I dont know specs of a Tesla but if the grid disappears we usually have a transfer switch somewhere in there between the grid, the load and the UPS to handle load transfer and I doubt the place where you plugin your car is adequate for this. Usually the various devices in the new microgrid now have to synchronize with each other and someone has to be the grid reference now that the actual grid is down and that can be a pain. If I have 2 Teslas and a gas powered generator all three have to agree who is master and who is slave and to actually be a UPS solution there better not be any drop in the wave form during that or its not gonna be a UPS for very long. I could see something like this more likely at a place of work where it can be controlled but I'm not sure I'd want my car supporting my office building in a power outage as it may drain it enough that I'm not getting home.
Anyway if I were Tesla I would not want the car that I build to now be liable for keeping power up for houses and businesses in an environment I've never seen and have no control over. There is no way they could support a warranty for that.
exactly what was centrally planned for the populace in that case? centrally planning to send a handful of people to the moon isn't centrally planning transport for 350 million people
Even a coal power plant is more efficient than your car's engine.
So long as most charging is done overnight when the grid has a lot of unused capacity I suspect it will take several decades before electric cars have become common enough to stress it, plenty of time for upgrades to be handled gracefully - we'll probably need those impressive new, cheap batteries before even half the population can afford to adopt them. Even if there were government subsidies subsidies we'll still need battery chemistrys that rely on fewer rare earths just to be able to produce the sheer number of batteries needed on that kind of timescale.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
First you make the power plants not run on fossil fuels or anything that emits CO2, THEN AFTER THAT you push for electric cars. Do it in the opposite order and you're wasting time and money.
It's not even close to being an issue, check out the graph in this link.
Unlike you, I know where this equipment comes from.
There are only a few (less than 9) providers of gas pumps in the US, and they all compete.
Fast delivery is key to profitability of gas stations in busy areas.
The reason the EPA had to limit delivery rates was to prevent tank venting from blowing right by the
recovery system. The EPA insisted they dial back the deliver rate.
10 GPM is not difficult to achieve.
How GPM A 1/2 inch pipe can deliver per minute depends on the pressure. If you have low pressure (flowing out of a slightly elevated tank), you can get about 7 gallons per minute. For average pumped pressure, you can assume you will get around 14 gallons per minute. If you have it set on a high pressure, you can easily get 21 gallons per minute. The nozzle of an unleaded delivery hoze is 0.840 inch, the inside diameter is slightly larger than 1/2 inch.
However the vapor recovery systems can't handle the vent fumes coming out of the tank when it is being filled that fast, so stations were required to dial down the pressure. This is one of the things a State weights and Measures inspector checks.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Remember that even 3 million cars is only about 1% of the cars in the USA.
Since we're talking about Tesla, why not just say 'meet the car needs of the 1%'?
That is assuming that nobody else has a leccy car already hooked up to each pump.
More likely you would sit there waiting at least 20, possibly 30min to get a charging plug then continue as you described. Since if there really is that long of a petrol line leccy would be long as well... if not, it will be.
I know, because it is almost impossible to add electrical outlets to meet demand.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
more grid capacity will be needed
Not if the charging occurs between midnight at 6am. Install smart meters and charge less to charge at night. Build cars that have an option to only switch on their charging circuits after midnight, or, even better, after the meter 'tells' them it's time to start slurping juice.
A lesser known fact involving the economics of electric cars is that by using electricity you typically are using a locally generated energy source. If this is combined with renewable energy sources such as solar panels on your house the economics become even more interesting. The key to all this being that money normally spent "fueling" traditional vehicles often leaves the country or even the continent completely. By switching to a more local source of energy this money is freed to be potentially spent on local goods. While this sucks for the oil producing areas and countries it really works for the vast majority of countries that import massive amounts of vehicle fuel.
The above only applies to those areas that are able to source their energy locally.
Why this economic fact is important is that it must be taken into consideration when looking at the cost of improving the grid or even putting solar on people's houses. The benefits of not exporting your money can easily outweigh a fairly sizable margin in the cost of fueling the vehicles.
Some small countries with bounties of sun and no fossil fuels will really win when the combination of cheaper batteries and better solar cells become available.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the concept of an oil war will be gone in 20 years.
How long is the wait if all the chargers are being used?
I have this radical idea. Add more charging stations. I figure if we have a really big reseqarch program, just like Fusion power, in twenty years or so, we'll come up with a way to wire in more charging stations.
We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Which doesn't really matter since the entire point is pollution shifting from street level in crowded cities to power stations with high stacks and a pile of pollution controls behind them (since it's not 1970).
The lead time on battery technology is getting very short - stuff from less than a decade ago is commercially available. Compare that with things like the single layer indium gallium arsenide semiconductors made in dozens of labs before the year 2000 but not yet in a product. Aviation is another since the most recent large passenger aircraft have the first new implementations of technology that was in the lab before most slashdot readers were born. I saw a working scramjet model in 1986 and there's still a bit of work before an engine manufacturer condescends to take decades of work for free and build a commercial engine out of it.
Only because you are not looking beyond the shelves at Walmart. Wikipedia is probably a good place to start.
Electric cars still look quite unattractive to me. I keep seeing this claim, and honestly can't quite figure it out - I mean sure, the Tesla S doesn't quite have the sexyness of a Bugatti, but y'know, when you have the Veyron in for detailing, you have to let the chauffeur drive something.
The people who think electric cars are ugly are often the same people that think a Hummer3 or a Escalade are attractive.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You couldn't get that in 1980 so the chances of getting it now with a high global copper price and the economy in a hole are nil.
I was pretty astonished by the cause of some of those fires in NY after the hurricane, third world countries have banned some of the stuff used in the substations there for safety reasons, but it's been "grandfathered" in since it was seen as OK until the 1930s. Here's a tip, thousands of volts separated by a bit of wet wood is trouble.
A diesel engine is an ICE.
probably what you meant was that ICE's used to directly power vehicles are less efficient than ICE's used to indirectly provide power.
I'm surprised/annoyed that there aren't more vehicles using hybrid setups, as you can use smaller, cheaper batteries, nice strong electric motors to propel/brake the vehicle, and an ICE generator to keep the battery topped up.
It's commonly used for the largest vehicles [mega-sized digging machines and dump trucks] and now for some of the smallest vehicles, but nothing in the middle.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
[reposted with the correct parent]
A diesel engine is an ICE.
probably what you meant was that ICE's used to directly power vehicles are less efficient than ICE's used to indirectly provide power.
I'm surprised/annoyed that there aren't more vehicles using hybrid setups, as you can use smaller, cheaper batteries, nice strong electric motors to propel/brake the vehicle, and an ICE generator to keep the battery topped up.
It's commonly used for the largest vehicles [mega-sized digging machines and dump trucks] and now for some of the smallest vehicles, but nothing in the middle.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
oops, replied to incorrect post.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Here's what you do. Electric vehicle for the everyday city commute and local shopping. When you need to go further, with the money you save on the electric vehicle, you hire a top end motor vehicle and enjoy yourself. For those that travel all day, obviously neat stuff like companies with induction charging stations, parking meters with induction charging (pay for park and charge at the same time. All that is require is a government led standard for induction charging connection, receiver and connecter, as well as limited secured data transfer to initiate and bill the charge and the park.
Of course never to forget, 20 minutes is not a long time to charge the car, if you have also stopped for lunch ;).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
It costs tens of thousands to add more gasoline pumps. An electrical charging spot costs less than $900 and are trivial to install.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have this radical idea. Add more charging stations. I figure if we have a really big reseqarch program, just like Fusion power, in twenty years or so, we'll come up with a way to wire in more charging stations.
Just like they do now, by always adding enough pumps so there is never a wait.....brilliant thinking.
Cost of electricity during the day: high
Cost of electricity at night: low
Solar doesn't have to be used to charge the car at night, just offset the energy used. Additionally, there are things called batteries that can store energy during the day to use at night. The goal is to have zero net energy usage which can actually make a profit for a charging station.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
then how about a 90 second battery change? Tesla offers you the ability to charge in 20 minutes for free, OR to change the battery for about the price of a tank of gas.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Build cars that have an option to only switch on their charging circuits after midnight, or, even better, after the meter 'tells' them it's time to start slurping juice.
This is no good, if you put the car on your charger, because you need to use it sometime within the next 18 hours and BEFORE some ridiculous time, such as midnight.
They are pushing hybrids, not electric cars. If they have junk like the volt, which will encourage daytime charging, then our electric bills will go up.
Instead, you really want to encourage real electric cars, not hybrids. And they should have 100 mile range or better. In addition, the chargers should charge a tax if you use them in the busy time. By switching the charging to nighttime, it actually lowers the cost of electricity for all, and this not only cleans up the environment, but drops our imports.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sigh. Then you push the big 'start charging now' button on the dash. I know this is Slashdot where perfect is the enemy of good, but for the majority, charging the car in the wee hours of the morning is perfectly fine, and is the solution to the OMG THE GRID WON'T HANDLE IT response.
We have had quite a few presidents and other politicians asking all of us to save fuel and not pollute. Now is the hour to put the money on the line. Sure charging stations will be needed but since buying an electric car is a huge service to our nation shouldn't the charging be free of costs? Already we see states that want electric cars to pay an extra tax as they no longer pay tax on gasoline. So what it the real truth about government wanting to encourage real, energy efficient cars?
As a matter of fact if we add a big tax to gas and diesel it would push people towards electric cars and start to wind down gas and oil production. So do we want to placate the rich companies and give them tax money to keep poisoning all of us? We might as well declare that our nation is severely mentally ill and we really don't have a clue as to what we really want or need to do.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/02/electric-cars-in-alaska/
So if our neighbors in the crispy cool north do it without an issue, what makes it impossible or insane in the rest of the country? This is not only possible, but we have a sort of prototype out there already. Next up is to start doing Nuc plants again.
The utter lack of "possiblenous" in so many slashdotters makes me think that it would be impossible to have any more than 64 K of Ram in computers.
Who sort of misses the point of the article that the engines need heating to make sure they start.
As it sits, you're looking at putting down an additional $10k on a car *JUST* because it's electric, while the typical price-conscious consumer looks at that money difference and realizes that they can actually just get a whole lot nicer car instead.
I suppose I'm an "atypical" price-conscious consumer, because I looked hard at the costs... and chose to buy electric because it's cheaper. Sure, if you just look at the vehicle price, gasoline-powered vehicles are less expensive, but when you factor in fuel and maintenance costs over a suitable time horizon (I chose 8 years), gasoline isn't so cheap. Even without any subsidies, I found that the break-even point was just shy of 6 years for the less-expensive EVs (LEAF, i-MiEV, etc.), at least for my driving patterns. With the federal and state tax credits available, it was two years.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I like how you assume that there would be exactly the same number of parking spots with power outlets as there are gas pumps now.
Because power outlets are as difficult and expensive to install as gas pumps, right?
When you need to go further, with the money you save on the electric vehicle...
And still no one has been able to demonstrate to me that this statement makes any sense (don't forget that charging stations cost a lot more than at home). How much does it cost per mile in a Model S vs a Prius? How many miles before any per mile savings actually pays for the difference in the sticker price?
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
"Also, central planning doesn't work."
Yes, we all saw that in 1969 when all those competing private corporations sent people on the Moon.
"If we could put a man on the Moon, why can't we put a man on the Moon?"
Only private companies have any chance of sending men to the Moon in the next decade. SpaceX will probably have tourists waiting there to watch the next NASA landing, if they aren't just flying the astronauts there as passengers on what would otherwise be a tourist flight.
It is just feel like forever.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
Economy in a hole? You mean setting record levels in all areas besides employment, right?
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
why do you need the government promoting them? You would think if it was such a great idea that people would just ber flocking to them.
Most drivers will use one of the closest available spots. If the charger spots are far from the door, gas drivers won't use them unless the lot is full. That will keep them available for EV use without needing yet another law.
If that also messes with some selfish prick's sense of entitlement because he thinks he should get the best spot due to his $80,000 car that the rest of us had to pay half the cost on, so much the better.
You are a moron.
First of all, how is any time or money wasted? It isn't. At all.
Second, real life is not a fucking game of Civilization. In real life, we can in fact research more than one technology at a time.
Third, you're saying that electric car manufacturers should just sit on their hands waiting for new power plants to be developed and deployed (a process that will take years or decades), even though the technology they've invented is usable and marketable now, today. That's obviously stupid on many levels. If you're better at making business decisions than, say, Elon Musk, why is he a billionaire with multiple successful business ventures while you're a pissant little computer-shop drone who gets no respect even in the place he (mistakenly) thinks he runs? You have NO intelligent response to that question, and you never will or can.
Fourth, if you have electric cars out in use before power plants are upgraded, that means that when any given plant is upgraded, you IMMEDIATELY get the benefits for EVERY electric car whose power originates from that plant. If electric car makers followed your symptom-of-fetal-alcohol-syndrome advice and just twiddled their thumbs until every power plant in the world ran on unicorn farts or whatever, then you would have to wait for EV's to be developed, brought to market, and adopted for use before you'd start to see the automotive gains from them, and in the meantime all the fossil-fuel cars that would have been replaced would be out there gaining NOTHING from the new plants.
You are reading this post, and as you read it you are feeling the shame and humiliation you deserve for being such a stupid little fuck.
Now either babble some more stupid bullshit that digs you even deeper into your retard-hole, or just tuck your tail between your legs and slink away like the little bitch we both know you are.
Those are your ONLY possible choices.
Because electric cars presently are bullshit.
"Yeah, 68% of the electricity in the US comes from fossil fuels but big plants burn it more efficiently than your car's IC engine."
So, we've established it's okay to burn fossil fuels if the process is efficient enough? Okay, screw these damn batteries and let's develop better ways of turning fossil fuels into forward motion. Or, perhaps, accept the fact that maybe burning fuels that have the potential to be carbon neutral (like biodiesel and ethanol) may actually be more green than a car that essentially runs on 68% dead dinos.
"There's all this unused grid capacity during the night."
There's also a lot of unused road capacity during the middle of the night, too. Just like roads, the electrical grid needs to be designed with the capacity to handle peak usage, like around 6pm when everyone gets home, plugs in their car, cranks up their air conditioning and starts cooking dinner.
"Electric car technology will come down in price, just like cell phones."
Electric cars have actually been around since 1888. Electric cars are expensive not because the technology is new, but because the batteries are resource intensive to build.
"The price of electricity won't be affected."
Used cooking oil was essentially worthless until demand started for using it as feedstock for biodiesel. Corn jumped up quite a bit in price when the government increased the amount of ethanol required to be blended into gasoline. Adding more demand to the electrical grid will cause electrical prices to increase, it's a simple matter of supply and demand.
"Electric cars will help lower demand for gasoline."
Yes. But gasoline isn't really used for much else other than as a motor vehicle fuel, so your electric car purchase is actually helping make my gasoline slightly cheaper. Thanks.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
The best cars in the World Solar Challenge average about 100 km/h, for 9 hours a day, using the full days' sunlight. (They start charging at dawn, finish at dusk, but Challenge rules only allow them to drive for 9 hours a day.) So that's 900 km per day, every day, off 6 square metres of cells. A parking space is at least 12 square metres.
Just like it is impossible to add gas stations or fuel pumps to meet demand?
DO you expect all charging stations to have ample room for every vehicle to pull up and charge at the same time? Here is a hint, they will still be limited in space by the length of the cars more then the technology to deliver the fuel or the charge. Little to nothing would be different to how we get fuel already except the time it takes to fuel/charge.
FTFA :- "Tesla says it will blanket the US with its Superchargers for a fraction of the cost, because it .... installs charging stations only where [customers] tend to travel"
:- "Tesla will put chargers only where there is a lot of traffic"
Translation
Self-contradiction. Putting only where there is a lot of traffic is not "blanketing". No wonder Tesla can do it cheaper.
In the 1960's, the UK closed most of its railways because a study for the Beeching Report found that a third of the system generated only 1% of the revenue. In fact, a similar statistic would be found for the UK roads (and any nation's roads I suspect) - ie a third of the roads carry a tiny % of the traffic - buy no-one talks of withdrawing public finding for them. If such backwaters are to have any modern infrastructure they require subsidy and I don't imaging Tesla would be prepared to provide it. Although I live in the hills, I don't care - because I'll continue to drive home over the neglected roads in my gas-powered off-roader.
Yes, and with electric, you will wait 60 minutes to get to a pump (or longer) because everybody's fill-up takes longer now.
So now I need two garage spaces. I also pay for insurance, registration, and regular maintenance for two cars. And that's supposed to be either cost effective or environmentally friendly?
Well, and once they are out of the lab, electric cars may be cost effective. Right now, they are not.
I use public transportation or my bike for commuting (depending on the weather). I use my car for all the other trips. But everybody has "other trips", so the fact that electric cars work reasonably well for daily commutes doesn't change the fact that they are not a good solution for other trips.
Yes, in the sense that a Porsche may also meet the needs of 1% of the population: if you don't have to worry about money, get an electric car. And don't pretend that you're doing something for the environment in doing so, because you aren't.
It's cheap to add gasoline pumps compared to upgrading your electrical service feed to allow your charging station to pull several more megawatts...
I can see it being used as a lure to get people to visit particular shops or towns. Some UK supermarkets are already looking to put solar panels on every major store and reduce their electricity costs to zero. They often sell cheap petrol too, even below cost with vouchers, so I think free recharging is going to be common once more people have EVs.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, filling up itself doesn't take "10 minutes", it takes a couple of minutes, the rest is other things people do. If you increase fill-up time, you increase overall waiting times substantially. At 2 minutes, most people stick with their car, in particular when it's busy. At 20 minutes, you are guaranteed that everybody leaves their car and goes off doing something else.
Was the Honda Clarity a failure? Why the push for electric over hydrogen?
Your misconceptions are showing themselves. First of all, the cost of gas pumps is irrelevant, the number of pumps at a given station is usually driven by expected traffic and available space. I am sure you knew this, right?
You don't just simply have a power outlet. That is the simplistic view many have. You have a charging station which included control electronics, breakers, transformers, and payment electronics. For a large station with many outlets, you will need some pretty hefty electrical switchgear with arc-fault protection. All of this stuff, when built to safety and reliability standards for commercial rather than home use, gets pricey. But here again, the amount of stations will be limited by space more than anything.. For electric cars, which take 5 times as long to charge, you will need 5 times as many "refueling stations" to get an equal amount of service. To ensure there is never a wait, you probably need 15 or more times the number of stations and in many places that space does not exist, even when you take in to account that charging stations probably don't require as much area. Save room for that electrical switchgear too, it needs to be safely separated from the rest of the service area. Underground distribution will likely make the most sense, so adding new stations means digging up the pavement, etc.
I am all for electric cars, and hope they become practical. I won't let that stop be from being realistic about the challenges.
The solar challenge did not have passenger vehicles, they had glorified go-karts. I don't think anybody is gonna drive to work lying down in a fiberglass foam death trap with no safety features traveling at 25 mph max, even if they have the luxury of a flat road with no potholes the whole way. There are real numbers out there for what practical electric passenger vehicles require, we don't need to use some overpriced, impractical research vehicles as the comparative case, that would be plain stupid. And I didn't even get to the cost of those solar challenge carts.
Don't be afraid to acknowledge the challenges. I never said they could not be overcome. But they exist. It amazes me how hard some folks work to ignore them.
Assuming you mean the owners of the business could keep it, they could keep half after assorted business and personal taxes.
Citation needed. My Leaf uses about 150 Wh/km. With charging losses that should be less than 200 Wh/km. Even a Model S uses less than 250 Wh/km under normal conditions,
There's no question that money laundering schemes politicians come up with that have "green" in the marketing plan are very good for the politicians and the corrupt businessmen who profit from them. It's the new cronyism, rob people of their money because they feel good about being ripped off. What's incredible is the number of people who fall for this crap.
If one were to really dig into this, they would surely find that the makers of the charging stations are corrupt to the bone, and are looking to get rich off the government teat. They conspired with eight blue states, who's population is easily duped, and they have come up with a new way to steal from the people and pad their greedy pockets.
In 1903 the electric car was a fierce competitor with the internal combustion engine. In 1903 the electric car had about a 40 mile range, using lead acid batteries. Fast forward one hundred and ten years and the range of the electric car in real life... is about 40 miles. Yet politicians have hoodwinked a large segment into the population into believing that we if just throw enough of YOUR money at the problem, it will be magically solved, using unicorns and pixie dust to overcome the laws of chemistry and physics.
Never mind the fact that many here have pointed out, nobody actually knows where the electricity to run all these cars is going to come from, and nobody is talking about the environmental impact of producing that many batteries.... The same people pushing electric cars are the same people who are slowly destroying our ability to generate electricity in the first place. Or the fantasy that a solar panel on the roof of your garage is going to power your daily drive.
We have failure after failure after failure of green energy schemes to do any of us any good - and in the post mortem analysis it turns out that the whole thing was just a way to take money from YOU, give it to some evil and greedy businessman, and they then returned a good portion of that money to the corrupt politician, who used it to give the businessman more breaks. Living in Michigan, we have seen this right before our eyes more than once in the past few years alone.
So here we have eight corrupt states with sucker populations who are going to pay some exorbitant sum for a fantasy that will only put money into the incumbents pockets, insuring that they remain in power, and the people in those states get screwed. And we have legions of passionate idealists who wouldn't know the reality of how this will work in practice if it hit them in the face.
Putting all of our effort into electric cars, because of slick marketing, means we aren't actively looking at every other alternative, we aren't open to other ideas, and we are committing ourselves to a path that has the highest short term profit, not what's best for you, the consumer.
It's the same story with so many other things... Al Gore comes to mind... Wind Farms - that work in a few places, sure, but generally do not pay for themselves unless the government steals money from you to make up the difference.
We had the Ethanol scam - Where a group of greedy agribusiness companies led by ADM used their powerful lobby to sell us on Ethanol, not because it was good for the environment, but because it was good for their profit. They sold us a package where the amount of Ethanol produced per year was fixed - assuring them a steady guaranteed client in any economic condition. Then gasoline consumption went down, because the economy sucks, and surprise the refiners are now sitting on massive stockpiles of ethanol they were forced to buy by this onerous legislation. The solution? Force us all to buy even more of the stuff, reducing gas mileage and costing us all more. This is how this will turn out too.... Who will be hurt the most? Poor people, minorities, and the middle class -- the exact people the feel good crowd claims to want to protect.
And the government continues to help corporations like ADM with this
Murphy was an optimist
So you favor stealing money from the rest of us (That's where that subsidy money comes from) in order to support your personal decision.
And I am sure you rant about how evil corporations steal from the people too, don't you?
Murphy was an optimist
Only to the extent that taxes are theft... but consider that since the person who is getting those subsidies is also paying taxes, they are at least also contributing to such subsidies.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You don't just simply have a power outlet. That is the simplistic view many have.
I quite well understand that you won't necessarily have an identical situation as with the Alaskan block heaters. However, it does not follow that it is somehow impossible to have power delivered to parking meters.
You have a charging station which included control electronics, breakers, transformers, and payment electronics. For a large station with many outlets, you will need some pretty hefty electrical switchgear with arc-fault protection.
This stuff is really pretty trivial. I have that stuff in my house already.
I am all for electric cars, and hope they become practical. I won't let that stop be from being realistic about the challenges.
That's good, but say if we were switching from electrical cars to gasoline powered ones. Would you be equally "realistic" about the long oil transmission lines that would have to be built, the armies of delivery trucks, the digging and burying of underground tanks, the flammable and poisionous and carcinogenic vapors, the water table pollution issues. the deflagration susceptability of gasoline, the redundant fuel mediums of standard, medium and high octane, and diesel?
Most people have a resistance to anything new. And It seems to me like if we were making that switch from electrical to gasoline and diesel, there would be a lot better arguments for there being problems. But here we are with a potentially much simpler system, and people love to point out just how darn difficult it is.
Which is why, when compared to the issues involved in our present fuel systems, Electrical delivery to the street level is remarkably trivial.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So, unless I'm making a dumb math error, you're off by almost a factor of three for my electric car (Honda FIT).
I get between 4.4 to 6.5 miles per kilowatt hour, which I think works out to about 140 Wh/km? Did I make a mistake, or is the chart you used measuring much larger cars?
Just like it is impossible to add gas stations or fuel pumps to meet demand?
DO you expect all charging stations to have ample room for every vehicle to pull up and charge at the same time? Here is a hint, they will still be limited in space by the length of the cars more then the technology to deliver the fuel or the charge. Little to nothing would be different to how we get fuel already except the time it takes to fuel/charge.
Isn't your second point in contradiction to your first?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yes, thank god for the clean/safe petrochemical industry. Their 100% safety record and 0 spill record makes me proud every time I fill up at the gas station. That crap about the Exxon Valdez and the Gulf of Mexico spill was just a bunch of crap made up by hippies who hate America.
Not at all, the second point is a limit of reality share between the teo different techs. The first is an observation that neither problem or solution are all that different. So in effect, the second point only shows a practical limitation of the first. They work together in essence.
For one thing, as noted those are for block heaters - not charging, which would consume a significant amount more electricity. They are there because they are required by the nature of the environment, whereas a charging station at a parking spot is more for convenience.
Also, there is no kind of payment situation there - adding payment stations significantly increases the cost and requires some kind of connectivity beyond just connection to the electrical grid.
You really are not fully grasping the extent or what would have to be done to have EVERY car be electric, not just a handful driven by the rich or highly dedicated.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's good, but say if we were switching from electrical cars to gasoline powered ones. Would you be equally "realistic"
Absolutely. If we had an embedded electrical infrastructure and electric cars were serving the needs of the market, and we tried to move to gas cars that weren't yet ready for that market and without the infrastructure, I'd be saying the exact same thing.
I see you like the words "simple" and "trivial". Unfortunately, changing over isn't either one of those. You think it is about resistance to the concept when folks talk about the challenges. You are 100% wrong. It is the people that recognize the challenges before they present themselves that are key to success. And folks that trivialize those problems and ignore those that do, are simply clueless cheerleaders.
Bottom line is, if the product is ready, the market will make it happen. If it is artificially forced ahead of its time, those that are forcing it better be ready to deal with the realities.
you just need to look at it long term and not in pure revenue-per-charger terms.
I *am* thinking of it long term; you are plainly not. If you ignore the economics of a situation then you are doomed to failure eventually.
It's a shame you don't have socialized healthcare in the US because then things which improve the population's health
The U.S. already has one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Meanwhile socialized healthcare is starting to fail around the world, as is inevitable for a system that is not economically feasible long term.
like removing particulate spewing ICE vehicles from the road and replacing them with zero emission vehicles
You don't seem to understand that is my goal, which is why I heap such scorn on ideas that get you half-way there and then collapse. The only realistic way to get to 100% zero emission vehicles is hydrogen. It takes longer (maybe) but it actually works. All efforts should be put into furthering that solution, not wasting time and a LOT of money on charging station boondoggles which you'll be pulling up in 10 years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I used the averages in three different charts for what appeared to be mid sized passenger vehicles under average driving conditions. I'll take your number for a subcompact car. I assume that is your optimal mileage, no passengers, no air conditioning or cargo, no traffic jams, etc. Take a realistic PV rating and you may get more like 10-15 miles on a good full sun-day of charging. My point is still valid.
6.5 is an optimal milage, 4.5 is a pretty typical number with passengers and/or cargo. Air conditioning doesn't seem to cost that much in milage, heating does - I expect my winter numbers to be lower. Interestingly, I get better milage when I hit traffic jams! (lower speeds, thus lower air drag).
Actually, in another post I did a calculation on PV - it looks like here in Boston (not the solar capital of the world) it would take about 4 square meters of PV to generate enough electricity for my daily commute).
You said you use 10 Kwh for a commute. 10,000 wh / 100 w/m2 = 100 m2. Even if you use the exotic highest end PV cells @150w/m2, it would still be a lot more than 4 m2.
Yeah, even as I was writing that, my little voice was telling me something was wrong :-)
The estimator I used (which takes geographic location into account) mentions 4.28 kWh/m2/day which is where I got my original number. I see that it also mentions 158 sq-ft as the roof area needed. I think that's the entire roof of my house 3 layers deep ;-)
No problem, my numbers are off here and there. Don't forget, those PV output numbers don't include losses for the charger circuit, which can be significant but I don't know exactly what they are.
I enjoyed the back and forth. I learned a bit from you. Thanks.
So you favor stealing money from the rest of us (That's where that subsidy money comes from) in order to support your personal decision.
Stealing money from you? That's a rather twisted way of looking at things. You're saying that my money is yours. I disagree, completely. I think 80% of the federal taxes I pay are theft from me, and I'm perfectly happy to reduce that burden in any (legal) way I can. And I still pay plenty.
I'm philosophically opposed to subsidies for EVs (or any other product). If you offer me the chance I'll vote against them. However, if you offer me a legal way to reduce the taxes I pay -- regardless of its basis -- I'll take it.
And, even without the subsidies, I'd still have bought the EV, because it still would have made financial sense!
And I am sure you rant about how evil corporations steal from the people too, don't you?
I don't think I have ever in my life ranted about evil corporations stealing from people.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No not really, Try again. Or are you one of those that think they only have just enough for a town ran to it... If so how cute.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Or, you know, you could make sure everyone has the *right* to paid maternity (or paternity) leave, as in most of the world... That you have to depend on the goodwill of your employer in cases like this is mindboggingly insane.
Whether you make up a new "right" or not, you can't pay someone for paternity leave if the money is already spent on government mandated BS.
You seem to be confused about the definition of the word "right" is, though. When you talk about giving people new "rights", you've made the word virtually meaningless, turning it into a synonym for "entitlement" or "privilege". This is important, very important
The right to free speech means I can voice my opinion EVEN IF THE MAJORITY OR GOVERNMENT DOESN'TLIKE IT. You have the right to a fair trial even if the government would rather ramrod you. The Bill of Rights is a list of freedoms the government "shall not infringe". Note it doesn't say "should give you", it says "shall not infringe". Rights are not at the government's discretion. They can not take your rights away because your rights don't come from the government. Your right to think your own thoughts is intrinsic to your humaness; government can only infringe your rights or not. They can not take them because they did not give them.
Your natural rights as a person include your right to have your own thoughts, and your right to your own production - to eat what you grow in your own garden, to live in the house you built.
If you build your house for your family, I do not have the "right" to kick you out and take it for my family. I do not have any right to take your food you grew in your garden. My wife is pregnant at the moment. That has zero bearing on your rights to your own food. You may choose to share some tasty vegetables with me, but knocking up my wife doesn't give me the right to take your stuff.
You want to create a new government mandate? Fine. Do not lie and call it a "right", though, because as soon as you pretend that government creates rights, government is justified in taking away your rights that "they gave you".
I see you like the words "simple" and "trivial". Unfortunately, changing over isn't either one of those. You think it is about resistance to the concept when folks talk about the challenges. You are 100% wrong. It is the people that recognize the challenges before they present themselves that are key to success. And folks that trivialize those problems and ignore those that do, are simply clueless cheerleaders.
Thank you for calling me unsuccessful, and a clueless cheerleader. I can assure you that I am not. Since my "simple and trivial comments cause you great umbrage, I'll try to refrain from using them so as not to cause you further upset. But let us see exactly why I use such foolish terms......
There are kiosks existing righ now that process a person's credit card - or cash - and are internet connected, and have apps that will tell you with a text message if your time is running out, and you can purchase more time via your smartphone if you have one.
Here's one: http://www.statecollegepa.us/index.aspx?NID=1151
It's a pretty cool system I've used it, and it works as claimed. Now imagine if we wanted to have some charging ports for EV's. This would entail a software update, and the addition of the appropriate cables and connectors. I would imagine that these devices should carry 240 volts, because that will be a lot more energy efficient. If we assume a Tesla, we'll not be expectinf a full charge, because of tapering currents the batteries like. So the idea is to provide some level of charging for a few hours. I don't imagine that it is too difficult to run some underground cables to various parking spots. The cables would probably be on a reel, have a sliding access gate, and a breakaway if the vehicle moves before the cable is disconnected. Or we could become clever and make some manner of slotted system. Or more likely a connection not unlike the Alaskan system (except that it is 240 volts) Male plug on the car would mate with the female one on the pipe - parking meter or added pipe to the lot, or on the wall in a parking garage.
This is not even close to a techological issue, it is completely applied technology, 90 percent of which already exists today.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This is a bit unexpected. I've actually designed many products that are used to construct the grid, with several patents, so I have a bit of knowledge about it. Yet my post was modded flamebait. Wow - talk about shooting the messenger.
Place nail here >+
Who said it was a technological issue? This technology has been around forever, there is nothing new. Charging cars is easy. That is irrelevant. Maybe you did not realize that this conversation is about charging time and wait time, not technology, and in that sense you were clueless.
Let me spell it out, again, as clear as I can..... The number of charging spaces at any given spot is limited by the amount of area you have available. The number of charging stations chosen for a given facility will be a factor of space available and expected number of customers (per hour/day, etc).... It takes 5 to 20 times longer to charge a car than to refuel with gas, so for the same amount of customers to be able to charge with no wait, you will need many times more charging spaces as compared to pumping spaces. There are many places where the need for these huge lots will be a problem, and therefore the number of charging station will not be enough to prevent anybody for waiting.
It has nothing to do with cost, technology, or difficulty of installation. It has to do with time to charge, number of customers, and available space. Presently at gas stations it is somewhat acceptable for customers to wait a turn for pumping, it will not be for charging as the duration is way too long.
As for the best 'setup' for charging cars. You can dream up all the cool stuff, in the end the market will figure out the most optimum that meets industrial and safety standards and is customer friendly, so it really doesn't matter which one we think could be employed.
Let me summarize for those who think that my critical analysis means I don't like EVs, which would be a completely incorrect assumption.
The filling station model for charging electric vehicles probably won't work. It will more likely require a distributed approach where you can charge up at work, at the mall, at the grocery store, and at home. That will eliminate a certain percentage of folks that need a filling station, but there will still be a lot of drivers that will need to stop and charge as quickly and conveniently as possible so they can continue their travel. In areas where available space is limited, this can be a challenge. Existing gas stations can probably add a few charging stations, but will need to keep their gas pumps as well for the foreseeable future. Regardless of the solution, nobody will be willing to wait for a charging station to become available.
The "mall parking lot model" brings its own interesting little complications. Mall owners will install the number of charging spaces they expect to be used consistently, so they probably don't want you using those spaces if you are not charging, and not leave your car for a long time after it is done charging. On the other hand, they don't want you leaving the mall any sooner than you otherwise would, so they have to balance that as well. It is certainly not a big deal as far as challenges, but its an example of the kind of thing you can foresee with a little critical analysis.
Challenges are adventures for those who see them before they appear, obstacles for those that see them when they appear, and barriers for those that do not see them.
> So now I need two garage spaces. I also pay for insurance, registration, and regular maintenance for two cars. And that's supposed to be either cost effective or environmentally friendly?
Or you could do something really crazy and like renting a gasoline car for your once a year road trip. Or just take a 20 minute recharge break every few hours.
IIRC Most households in the US have two or more cars, for most of those a combination of gas and electric vehicles would probably work quite well, if they needed the extended range of gasoline at all.
>Well, and once they are out of the lab, electric cars may be cost effective. Right now, they are not.
For who? That's like saying big screen HDTVs weren't cost effective until they fell below the $1000/$2000/$5000 price point. Not for most people perhaps, but plenty of early adopters felt they were a worthwhile purchase, and if not for them production would never have scaled to the point where you can now by a new 40" HDTV for $200. The only way anyone is likely to invest the time and resources to bring any of the new battery technologies out of the lab (a process typically *far* more expensive than the initial invention) is if there's a market waiting for them. And the only way there's going to be a market is if people are already buying electric cars and the infrastructure is in place.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Is your life really that dull? Most people I know do something almost every weekend, and usually far away from any EV recharging stations.
People have two cars because both people commute; it doesn't solve the problem.
Yes, they were not. And states weren't trying to subsidize them either.
And that's my point: electric cars are a luxury item and status symbol for the wealthy right now. And that means that government shouldn't subsidize them, because those people can pay for it themselves.
When a politician passes a law that puts money in his or his party's pocket by making a back door deal with a corporation, or a lobbying firm, that results in money being taken from me, it's stealing from me to pad his (and his parties) pockets. When I pay taxes for things that result in income redistribution to other citizens, that is an entirely different matter.
:-)
Those of us who live in or near some of America's most corrupted cities (Detroit, Chicago) know exactly how this works, and have watched this same way of doing business imported into Washington, DC by this Administration-- not surprising as Chicago is where Obama learned politics. Not that it was clean as whistle before Obama came by any means
In Detroit the difference between the Mafia and the Democratic Party and the Unions is negligible. Same thing in Chicago... In Detroit a good percentage of the last administration is in prison, and the city went bankrupt because they couldn't possibly pay all the bribes they had committed to pay!!
Murphy was an optimist
When you said eight states that have 25 percent of national car rentals, I think you meant to say 50 percent of US GDP.
Fixed it for you.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Huh? The solar panels won't even offset the power demands of the building.
Nonsense.
My house used 975 kilowatt hours last month, about average for me most months. Supplying my house with 100% solar power would take approximately 20 305 watt solar panels with a battery system for night time. 20 panels fits on one pallet for shipping and covers approximately 400 square feet. That's less than half of my south-facing roof space. I could order two pallets today and cover my roof with enough panels to power my entire house twice over.
Or my entire house plus two electric cars from Tesla with enough left over to power an electric lawnmower. For around $12,000.
I'd like to be able to use a Tesla vehicle for emergency house power, but I'd be even happier to just use a Tesla battery pack. Sell me the battery pack, without the wheels. Install it in my basement with its own integrated grid-tie inverter.
Problem solved.
Um, that's for 1 hour.
10m^2 * 100 w/m^2 * 8 hr = 8000 wh, or 80% of his commute. Not bad.
Yes, you are right, I was in error. Another thing missed in the discussion is that solar PV averages about 4 "full sun" hours a day. In an eight hour period, I would guess you would get, at a maximum, about 3.5 effective full sun hours in a normal 8 hour workday. That accounts for the fact that the cells are not producing at 100% the entire time. It varies location to location, and time of year as well. That can be factored into either the power/area or the hours. In other words, 100 w/m2 * 3.5 effective full sun hours (or whatever numbers you prefer). It is certainly more than I gave credit for. Thanks for the correction.