7.3/6.4 = a 15% CO2 benefit. Gee, what do you know -- that's the number I've been stating this entire freaking thread.
How did you find that 2008 figure? I went Here, then here, and there are no diesels listed.
And want to see something weird? Click on the "Show detailed air pollution information" on the link you provided. When you do so, that "6" drops down to a "1". You click to close the detailed information and the 1 sticks around; the 6 is gone. Given that the model just two years prior was a 1, I seriously doubt the vehicle jumped up five rankings that fast; looks like a bug to me.
Anyone who registers that complaint without checking to see if things have changed is just being a jerk. Here's the most recent one that fueleconomy.gov has an EPA pollution score for -- 2006. Guess what? Still score 1.
You think that dramatically increasing the surface area (and thus evaporation rate) of a major river that barely sustains millions in a water-parched region and no longer reaches the ocean through most of the year is environmentally benign?
I'm not opposed to all hydro, but Glen Canyon was a mistake. The value of the water being lost there may soon equal the value of the power the dam is generating these days if things keep on going the way they're going.
Of course, diesel engines *don't* have ten times the mileage. They generally have about 25% better MPG, half of which is simply due to the denser fuel.
But hey: go to a dealer and take a test drive. Then you'll know.
And then mosey on up to that tailpipe, breathe deeply, and enjoy that score 1 out of 10 (10 is best, 1 is just barely legal to sell) EPA emissions rating.
It's quite true that modern diesels are generally reliable, powerful, and comfortable. But it's a myth that they're clean, from anything but a marginal CO2-reduction perspective.
For what it's worth, Aptera couldn't find a *single* diesel engine in their target power range that could meet modern US emissions reqs. The Jetta TDI barely passes.
Despite the "clean diesel" PR campaign, diesel still sucks in terms of emissions. Just not as much as it used to. It is marginally (~15%) better in terms of CO2, though.
Show me more than a handful of non-hybrid SULEV vehicles.
Fine. Show me a LEV diesel engine smaller than what you'd put in a school bus.
Besides, since diesels hardly sell in the US, there hasn't been a lot of point in developing the technology. SULEV is a US (not EU) standard, and diesels only account for a small percentage of passenger car sales. Most of the diesel vehicles are produced by EU companies and there is no reason SULEV cannot be achieved by diesel.
The modern "clean diesels" generally barely meet modern US emissions reqs. The Jetta TDI, for example, has an EPA Air Pollution Score of 1 out of 10, where 1 is the worst (the Prius gets an 8). You can't sell a car in the US that has worse emissions than the Jetta TDI.
The reason diesels are popular in Europe is because gasoline is so heavily taxed in Europe that the 10-30% improvement in fuel economy diesels get adds up to real money. Furthermore as of this writing the EU and Japan have more stringent emissions standards than the US.
Almost every EU diesel would be illegal to sell in the US because they don't meet US emissions reqs.
It's almost 15% denser and releases correspondingly more CO2 per gallon
Even if that were true (and this study says you are wrong)
Huh? The densities of diesel versus gasoline are not up for debate. Even a sixth grader doing a science fair project can measure fuel densities. Diesel is denser, plain and simple. It's made of longer-chain hydrocarbons. That's what defines diesel. Hydrocarbon densities increase with average chain length, with methane as the least dense and your bitumen/tars as the densest.
diesel also uses 10-25% less fuel for the same power output thanks to that same energy density.
You're 100% wrong. The EPAs tests rated my vehicle 31/40.
Aaannd.... ? How does this argue against my point? 31/40, dividing for the greater energy density of the fuel, is 27/34. Which is about 15% better than a typical sedan.
I've never seen less than 38mpg from day one and I drove the hell out of it.
Thanks for reinforcing my point about anecdotes.
Also the Jetta TDI set the world record for most efficient non-hybrid vehicle in a cross country road trip: 58mpg.
Wow. You seriously can't do better than to parrot a commercial? Oooh, a company hypermiled as a PR stunt -- stop the presses!
The R10 basically proved that diesels are cleaner, faster and more efficient
Laboratory testing proves that diesels are NOT cleaner. Show me a single SULEV diesel. Heck, show me any LEV diesel smaller than school bus sized. Aptera Motors wanted to use a diesel for their plug-in hybrid, but couldn't because there wasn't a single diesel engine on the market in their desired power band that could even *pass* US emissions reqs. As for efficiency, diesels are more efficient, but only by about 15%, as stated in my previous post. As for the R10, it got a whopping 5.7mpg at Le Mans. Come on now.
My puny 140hp (chipped, 100hp stock) diesel makes 300ft/lb at low RPMs
And it's still a 100 (or 140) hp engine. Big fat deal that it's oriented more for torque at the expense of RPM; that's what gear ratios are for. And your chipped engine probably has worse emissions than stock, as is usually the case.
It's not an issue of "past" versus "present". Yes, modern diesels are far cleaner and more powerful per unit mass than they were in the 1970s. But you know what? So are gasoline engines. Modern diesels still lag well behind gasoline engines in both respects. Show me a single SULEV diesel, for example. The modern "clean diesels" generally barely meet modern US emissions reqs. The only reason they're so widespread in Europe is because they have more lax emissions reqs.
Secondly, this entire thread is based on two huge fallacies.
1) That one driver's (likely hypermiling, and at least anecdotal) mileage reports actually reflect a difference over EPA numbers; and 2) Diesel gallons are roughly equivalent to gasoline gallons.
Both of those are just that: fallacies. Vehicle mileages should only be compared on standardized test cycles, because driving habits from one person to another can vary *dramatically*. And diesel is *not* equivalent to gasoline. It's almost 15% denser and releases correspondingly more CO2 per gallon burned (as well as far greater amounts of many other pollutants). And it's no longer true, thanks to modern desulfurization reqs, that diesel takes significantly less energy to refine, offsetting the difference.
That said, even per unit mass, diesel engines do tend to be more efficient (usually about 15% average in real-world driving). Does the CO2 and operation-cost savings justify the higher release of other emissions? That's a tough call, and depends on how much you value different aspects.
Agreed. Just come up with a naming scheme and stick with it. Otherwise, you're just going to waste time trying to keep the names matching the machines' current status.
At the university I work, the servers are named after famous figures in the fields of psychology and brain research. At home, they're named after things from Star Control II (Ultron = the desktop that always breaks; Chmmr = the powerful computation server; Spathi = the laptop (which can flee the network); Greenish = the printer; Quasispace = the wifi network; etc).
Oil is not hydrogen. Oil can be used to produce hydrogen, but if you're going to do that, why bother?
We have the TOTAL capacity, IF we run 100% of our plants at 100% peak output and IF we can stagger the load across those 24 hours... That's not possible.
Straw man. Of the major sources on our grid, only wind, hydro, and solar can't be run close to 100%, and they make up a small percent of the total. The rest can all be run at near 100%. With our current grid, we can generate about double what we already do.
when 8 remains, the generator kicks in... (that happens after about 25 miles under most test conditions)
40 miles, according to GM, but by all means, continue to make up whatever you want.
Estimated recharge nightly on a 40 mile drive is 12-15KWh
No, the pack will *never* discharge down that far. The generator cuts in at 30%. The pack doesn't charge over 80% when plugged in at night.
Roll that out to 2 cars per family and you're adding 900KWh per month per household, which is actually higher than the current household monthly usage for the average home today!
1) There are more people in the US than cars. 2) Residential power usage is only a fraction of the total power usage. 3) That's not how you calculate the additional load at all. Americans were estimated to drive 4 trillion miles in 2007, and there were 300 million people then. That's a per-capita mileage of 13,333. At 250Wh/mi wall to wheel, that's 3.3m Wh per year, or 3.3k kWh/year. The average American household consumes over 10k kWh/year. That's a 1/3 increase on average. More at some houses, less at others.
This is just the Volt, which has a measly 16KWh battery. The Tesla has a 53KWh battery
The size of the battery pack is 100% irrelevant in terms of total power consumption. What matters is how many Wh/mi it uses and how many miles you drive all day. It could have a billion kWh battery pack, but if you only drove 40 miles a day at 250Wh/mi wall to wheel, it'd be exactly the same power consumption.
the upcoming Chrysler plug-in EV hybrids are expected to have 25-35KWh batteries to acheive the same 40 mile ranges.
Utter made-up nonsense. Chrysler has not announced the range on any of its PHEVs. It hasn't even announced which ones it's going to ultimately produce; it's only listed candidates. The only car it's announced for production is the Circuit, which is a 150+ mile range BEV with a 35kWh pack.
a) They make H2, then use it in the catalytic process.... RWGS/RFTS is you have STILL not follwed the link
1) Once again, *what link?* 2) RWGS is not catalytic. It consumes CO and H2O and needs heat input to make H2. There is *a* catalyst needed for the reaction to occur, but the reaction itself still needs energetic inputs (in this case, CO and heat). 3) RFTS is not catalytic. It consumes CO and H2 to make hydrocarbons. There is *a* catalyst needed for the reaction to occur, but the reaction itself still needs energetic inputs (in this case, CO and H2).
If you want to call those catalytic, you might as well call making a cake a catalytic process since the mixing bowl isn't consumed in the process of making the cake. Free cake for everyone, right?
b) tank costs are NOT expensive, they're generic steel drums
Hydrogen cannot be stored in "generic steel drums". One, hydrogen must be kept either highly pressurized, extremely cold, or in a storage material (such as a metal-hydride). Otherwise, the density is laughably bad (90 grams per cubic meter) and just plain silly to contemplate storing in bulk. You don't store pressurized gasses in "generic steel drums" even if said gasses *aren't* corrosive. You either store it in spherical tanks or cylindrical tanks with hemispheric caps. For a cylind
1/3rd as much power huh? in terms of joules or BTUs, yes, but where one power source is coming from the ground, the other is coming from power plants, and we don't have those power plants!
1) Hydrogen isn't "coming from the ground". 2) We *do* have those power plants, according to the DOE.
Also, the local grids (last mile) can't handle that extra load...
3) Since when? Even a full recharge to a Volt every night -- 8kWh plus a little more for conversion losses (say, 9kWh total) -- can be done on a single normal 110V socket in 6 hours. How exactly is that going to tax the local grids?
Also off-peak is NOT considered "night time" but varies by region and time of year. in the summer, off-peak is typically midnight to 5AM. but BEVs take 8-10 hours to charge, oops.
"Oops yourself". First off, "Off peak" generally starts at around 11:00 and ends at around 6:00. 12 to 5 is just somewhat deeper of an off-peak than 11 to 6, but you're definitely not going to overload the grid. Secondly, 8-10 hours on even a 110V/15A socket (and a 110V/15A will *not* overload the grid) is 48 to 60 miles range per day. Only a small fraction of the US population drives that much. If you want to talk, say, dryer socket-level charging, even 100 miles of range is just over four hours.
Also, once we move to fast charge, it will NOT be stady, stable off-peak loads.
That's not how fast charge works. Commercial fast chargers tend to have battery banks that they draw from. The banks are trickle charged (and ideally, smart-charged).
Also, if you read the link's data, they are NOT storing H2, they're making it as part of a catalytic process.
A) What link are you talking about? B) Hydrogen cannot be made "in a catalytic process". It's an energy sink, not a source.
It's only kept in short term, low pressure tanks for 12-36 hours.
Doesn't matter. It's still hugely expensive. So is large-scale hydrogen production and compression equipment.
These types of tanks are CHEAP
They absolutely are not. Hydrogen tanks are typically composite (since they embrittle metals). Often carbon fiber with a polymer lining. Show me a large, cheap carbon fiber tank and I'll show you a living unicorn.
efficient
Nonsense. Electrolysis is 50-80% efficient (with the more efficient systems being more expensive due to lower throughput), and you generally lose 10-20% of the remaining energy in compression. Then you have the fuel cells at 40-60% efficiency (you can get slightly higher in the lab, but that's only under controlled conditions, with pre-compressed oxygen rather than uncompressed air). Or you have an H2 ICE generator, at ~40% efficiency.
and have extremely little leakage
Hydrogen leaks through steel at about 100 times the rate propane does (which is positively a leaker compared to gasoline). It is the easiest chemical on the world to leak, bar none.
EV batteries contain toxins, rare chemicals, and though the most recent technologies are highly recyclable, its a messy expensive process, not to mentoin LiIon pack failure and fires...
Wrong on every front. One, the types of batteries mainly being used for EVs today are lithium iron phosphate and manganese spinels. Neither of these are toxic. You can legally just throw them straight in the trash. Two, they contain no "rare chemicals" (fuel cells do, however! They use platinum). Three, the recycling process is neither "messy" nor "expensive"; most packs are having their recycling costs included in the purchase price. Four, LiP and LiMnO2 cells have almost no fire risk, unlike the LiCoO2 cells that most people are familiar with from laptops and cell phones (only Tesla is using those).
I also read the DOE result when it came out recently, and there are a few things you should note: 1) the study completely ignored local grid distribution, and was a statement of average available energy across the USA (total poewr p
If only facilities to create and store hydrogen were free to build and maintain, rather than being hugely expensive as they are in real life. And way less efficient than just storing it in EV batteries at night (which the grid operators get at no extra charge to themselves).
Battery powered vehicles can NOT replace fuel cars for 30-50 year until we build YET MORE power sources, and figure out how to handle the MASSIVE swings in usage that would come with 100million cars sucking from the grid at odd hours...
BEVs take *one third as much power* to operate as H2 FCVs and *one fifth as much* as H2 ICEs. They *stabilize the grid*, because they're steady sources that mainly charge during... wait for it... off peak hours.
Storing energy as hydrogen is both expensive and inefficient. Hydrogen is a nasty chemical to store, as it has awful density, requires storage under pressure, embrittles metals, leaks through almost anything, catches fire with extremely low ignition energy in almost any fuel-air mix, etc. Oh, and it destroys ozone, too. EV batteries come on to the grid at no charge to the grid operators. Hydrogen production and storage facilities are a huge charge.
but if even 5% of us started driving electric cars, we'd brown out whole cities,
According to the DOE, 84% of our cars and vans could switch over to electricity on our *current grid* without an iota of new infrastructure. We generate less than half as much power as we actually consume in this country, namely because off-peak power consumption is so low. And EVs primarily charge as off-peak. And even when they charge during the day, they're steady, stable loads (unlike air conditioners, which go on and off). Unstable loads like ACs cause brownouts because it takes time for generation levels to ramp up and down when the grid is already producing at high levels.
He was correct. Certain steps in the photosynthetic process are very efficient, but the fact that only part of sunlight is photosynthetically active, the fact that plants don't process all light that hits them, and that not all energy they produce goes into biomass, generally limits the total biomass yield to 3-6%. Food crops generally yield between a fraction of a percent and a couple percent of the solar energy that hits them as food, but practical growth limitations make that even lower (by a good margin). To give an example of how that comes into play, sugarcane is a rare photosynthesis exception, at about 8% efficiency turning sunlight to biomass, but only 0.13% solar efficiency to ethanol. That's 4000 liters per hectare of 225W/m^2 insolation land. That's 7.1e13 joules of solar energy to prduce 9.36e10 joules of ethanol. Awful efficiency, no?
No, they're not using nickel-iron. But they're using similarly high-longevity chemistries. People like to say that they're using "lithium ion" as though there's just one li-ion chemistry. It's really a whole family, which runs the gamut from the high energy density but unstable and short-lived LiCoO2/graphite cells (such as found in laptops and cell phones) to the low energy density but uber-stable titanates, which are so durable that they're used in grid load balancing where they rapidly charge and discharge, nonstop, over and over again for years on end (the company that makes them, AltairNano, gave up on trying to get them down to 80% capacity after 15,000 cycles).
With the exception of Tesla, they're pretty much all using phosphates and manganese spinels, which are very stable chemistries (at the cost of some energy density). If climate controlled and at 85% DoD and normal EV usage, A123's cells, for example, get 7,000 cycles before losing 20% capacity. If rapid charged and discharged nonstop (15-20 minute charges, 8-10 minute discharges), they get about 1,000 cycles to the same capacity loss. And even in Tesla's case, they're babying their cells so much that they can get 5-7 years out of them.
These automakers aren't sacrificing energy density for nothing. They're sacrificing it because laboratory testing and real-world usage in other devices says that's what's needed to get the desired longevity. They don't do that for laptops and cell phones because people don't hang onto them for 20 years.
Which are anticipated to go up, as the materials become more rare, and environmental regulations make it harder to dispose of them
LiP and manganese spinel are made from common materials, are nontoxic, and are easy to recycle (the biggest impediment to recycling is simply that the raw materials are so cheap, there's little value to their recovery).
If you're not going to do the most basic research before you respond, why even bother? It's a full 10 year, 150,000 mile warranty, as required by California law to meet pzev criteria. Leno's Baker Electric does run on its original batteries. Tell me your "personal experience" with nickel-iron and lithium iron phosphate batteries. Go on, give me the complete rundown. Every last detail. I'm waiting. While you're at it, go ahead and explain how your "personal experience" with large, actively-cooled 50% DoD NiMH packs explains why so many people are deluding themselves into thinking that they never had their Prius pack replaced.
After all, your experience with high-DoD, non-cooled 18650 cobalt cells and similarly managed lead-acid batteries has oh so much bearing on actively cooled nickel-iron, LiP, manganese spinel, or NiMH packs with low DoD.
Tell we where I can go buy one of these cars with the 10 year battery warranty?
Obviously the Volt is not on sale yet, but you can get a Prius today with an 8 year warranty and a near-zero battery failure rate.
Slashdot Mirror
7.3/6.4 = a 15% CO2 benefit. Gee, what do you know -- that's the number I've been stating this entire freaking thread.
How did you find that 2008 figure? I went Here, then here, and there are no diesels listed.
And want to see something weird? Click on the "Show detailed air pollution information" on the link you provided. When you do so, that "6" drops down to a "1". You click to close the detailed information and the 1 sticks around; the 6 is gone. Given that the model just two years prior was a 1, I seriously doubt the vehicle jumped up five rankings that fast; looks like a bug to me.
The air pollution score is based on non-CO2 emissions. There's a separate rating for CO2.
Anyone who registers that complaint without checking to see if things have changed is just being a jerk. Here's the most recent one that fueleconomy.gov has an EPA pollution score for -- 2006. Guess what? Still score 1.
You think that dramatically increasing the surface area (and thus evaporation rate) of a major river that barely sustains millions in a water-parched region and no longer reaches the ocean through most of the year is environmentally benign?
I'm not opposed to all hydro, but Glen Canyon was a mistake. The value of the water being lost there may soon equal the value of the power the dam is generating these days if things keep on going the way they're going.
Yet there's no shortage of gasoline engines that can meet that requirement.
Like it not, diesels are simply dirtier than gasoline engines. The Jetta TDI barely even passes spec.
Of course, diesel engines *don't* have ten times the mileage. They generally have about 25% better MPG, half of which is simply due to the denser fuel.
But hey: go to a dealer and take a test drive. Then you'll know.
And then mosey on up to that tailpipe, breathe deeply, and enjoy that score 1 out of 10 (10 is best, 1 is just barely legal to sell) EPA emissions rating.
It's quite true that modern diesels are generally reliable, powerful, and comfortable. But it's a myth that they're clean, from anything but a marginal CO2-reduction perspective.
For what it's worth, Aptera couldn't find a *single* diesel engine in their target power range that could meet modern US emissions reqs. The Jetta TDI barely passes.
Despite the "clean diesel" PR campaign, diesel still sucks in terms of emissions. Just not as much as it used to. It is marginally (~15%) better in terms of CO2, though.
Show me more than a handful of non-hybrid SULEV vehicles.
Fine. Show me a LEV diesel engine smaller than what you'd put in a school bus.
Besides, since diesels hardly sell in the US, there hasn't been a lot of point in developing the technology. SULEV is a US (not EU) standard, and diesels only account for a small percentage of passenger car sales. Most of the diesel vehicles are produced by EU companies and there is no reason SULEV cannot be achieved by diesel.
The modern "clean diesels" generally barely meet modern US emissions reqs. The Jetta TDI, for example, has an EPA Air Pollution Score of 1 out of 10, where 1 is the worst (the Prius gets an 8). You can't sell a car in the US that has worse emissions than the Jetta TDI.
By the way: all of New England is in a smog alert right now.
The reason diesels are popular in Europe is because gasoline is so heavily taxed in Europe that the 10-30% improvement in fuel economy diesels get adds up to real money. Furthermore as of this writing the EU and Japan have more stringent emissions standards than the US.
Almost every EU diesel would be illegal to sell in the US because they don't meet US emissions reqs.
It's almost 15% denser and releases correspondingly more CO2 per gallon
Even if that were true (and this study says you are wrong)
Huh? The densities of diesel versus gasoline are not up for debate. Even a sixth grader doing a science fair project can measure fuel densities. Diesel is denser, plain and simple. It's made of longer-chain hydrocarbons. That's what defines diesel. Hydrocarbon densities increase with average chain length, with methane as the least dense and your bitumen/tars as the densest.
diesel also uses 10-25% less fuel for the same power output thanks to that same energy density.
And divide that by the density difference....
You're 100% wrong. The EPAs tests rated my vehicle 31/40.
Aaannd.... ? How does this argue against my point? 31/40, dividing for the greater energy density of the fuel, is 27/34. Which is about 15% better than a typical sedan.
I've never seen less than 38mpg from day one and I drove the hell out of it.
Thanks for reinforcing my point about anecdotes.
Also the Jetta TDI set the world record for most efficient non-hybrid vehicle in a cross country road trip: 58mpg.
Wow. You seriously can't do better than to parrot a commercial? Oooh, a company hypermiled as a PR stunt -- stop the presses!
The R10 basically proved that diesels are cleaner, faster and more efficient
Laboratory testing proves that diesels are NOT cleaner. Show me a single SULEV diesel. Heck, show me any LEV diesel smaller than school bus sized. Aptera Motors wanted to use a diesel for their plug-in hybrid, but couldn't because there wasn't a single diesel engine on the market in their desired power band that could even *pass* US emissions reqs. As for efficiency, diesels are more efficient, but only by about 15%, as stated in my previous post. As for the R10, it got a whopping 5.7mpg at Le Mans. Come on now.
My puny 140hp (chipped, 100hp stock) diesel makes 300ft/lb at low RPMs
And it's still a 100 (or 140) hp engine. Big fat deal that it's oriented more for torque at the expense of RPM; that's what gear ratios are for. And your chipped engine probably has worse emissions than stock, as is usually the case.
It's not an issue of "past" versus "present". Yes, modern diesels are far cleaner and more powerful per unit mass than they were in the 1970s. But you know what? So are gasoline engines. Modern diesels still lag well behind gasoline engines in both respects. Show me a single SULEV diesel, for example. The modern "clean diesels" generally barely meet modern US emissions reqs. The only reason they're so widespread in Europe is because they have more lax emissions reqs.
Secondly, this entire thread is based on two huge fallacies.
1) That one driver's (likely hypermiling, and at least anecdotal) mileage reports actually reflect a difference over EPA numbers; and
2) Diesel gallons are roughly equivalent to gasoline gallons.
Both of those are just that: fallacies. Vehicle mileages should only be compared on standardized test cycles, because driving habits from one person to another can vary *dramatically*. And diesel is *not* equivalent to gasoline. It's almost 15% denser and releases correspondingly more CO2 per gallon burned (as well as far greater amounts of many other pollutants). And it's no longer true, thanks to modern desulfurization reqs, that diesel takes significantly less energy to refine, offsetting the difference.
That said, even per unit mass, diesel engines do tend to be more efficient (usually about 15% average in real-world driving). Does the CO2 and operation-cost savings justify the higher release of other emissions? That's a tough call, and depends on how much you value different aspects.
Agreed. Just come up with a naming scheme and stick with it. Otherwise, you're just going to waste time trying to keep the names matching the machines' current status.
At the university I work, the servers are named after famous figures in the fields of psychology and brain research. At home, they're named after things from Star Control II (Ultron = the desktop that always breaks; Chmmr = the powerful computation server; Spathi = the laptop (which can flee the network); Greenish = the printer; Quasispace = the wifi network; etc).
Interesting approach. So I assume your network was a bunch of machines with names like, "Spot", "Lady", "Princess", "Bessie", "Flicka", etc?
I'd be too tempted to have my message be something like, "Come to the Wired. God is here. The other side is full; the dead will have no place to go."
I wonder how far they'll go along the "no original research" route?
"Guns fire bullets.[citation needed]"
1) no, OIL comes from the ground...
Oil is not hydrogen. Oil can be used to produce hydrogen, but if you're going to do that, why bother?
We have the TOTAL capacity, IF we run 100% of our plants at 100% peak output and IF we can stagger the load across those 24 hours... That's not possible.
Straw man. Of the major sources on our grid, only wind, hydro, and solar can't be run close to 100%, and they make up a small percent of the total. The rest can all be run at near 100%. With our current grid, we can generate about double what we already do.
when 8 remains, the generator kicks in... (that happens after about 25 miles under most test conditions)
40 miles, according to GM, but by all means, continue to make up whatever you want.
Estimated recharge nightly on a 40 mile drive is 12-15KWh
No, the pack will *never* discharge down that far. The generator cuts in at 30%. The pack doesn't charge over 80% when plugged in at night.
Roll that out to 2 cars per family and you're adding 900KWh per month per household, which is actually higher than the current household monthly usage for the average home today!
1) There are more people in the US than cars.
2) Residential power usage is only a fraction of the total power usage.
3) That's not how you calculate the additional load at all. Americans were estimated to drive 4 trillion miles in 2007, and there were 300 million people then. That's a per-capita mileage of 13,333. At 250Wh/mi wall to wheel, that's 3.3m Wh per year, or 3.3k kWh/year. The average American household consumes over 10k kWh/year. That's a 1/3 increase on average. More at some houses, less at others.
This is just the Volt, which has a measly 16KWh battery. The Tesla has a 53KWh battery
The size of the battery pack is 100% irrelevant in terms of total power consumption. What matters is how many Wh/mi it uses and how many miles you drive all day. It could have a billion kWh battery pack, but if you only drove 40 miles a day at 250Wh/mi wall to wheel, it'd be exactly the same power consumption.
the upcoming Chrysler plug-in EV hybrids are expected to have 25-35KWh batteries to acheive the same 40 mile ranges.
Utter made-up nonsense. Chrysler has not announced the range on any of its PHEVs. It hasn't even announced which ones it's going to ultimately produce; it's only listed candidates. The only car it's announced for production is the Circuit, which is a 150+ mile range BEV with a 35kWh pack.
a) They make H2, then use it in the catalytic process.... RWGS/RFTS is you have STILL not follwed the link
1) Once again, *what link?*
2) RWGS is not catalytic. It consumes CO and H2O and needs heat input to make H2. There is *a* catalyst needed for the reaction to occur, but the reaction itself still needs energetic inputs (in this case, CO and heat).
3) RFTS is not catalytic. It consumes CO and H2 to make hydrocarbons. There is *a* catalyst needed for the reaction to occur, but the reaction itself still needs energetic inputs (in this case, CO and H2).
If you want to call those catalytic, you might as well call making a cake a catalytic process since the mixing bowl isn't consumed in the process of making the cake. Free cake for everyone, right?
b) tank costs are NOT expensive, they're generic steel drums
Hydrogen cannot be stored in "generic steel drums". One, hydrogen must be kept either highly pressurized, extremely cold, or in a storage material (such as a metal-hydride). Otherwise, the density is laughably bad (90 grams per cubic meter) and just plain silly to contemplate storing in bulk. You don't store pressurized gasses in "generic steel drums" even if said gasses *aren't* corrosive. You either store it in spherical tanks or cylindrical tanks with hemispheric caps. For a cylind
1/3rd as much power huh? in terms of joules or BTUs, yes, but where one power source is coming from the ground, the other is coming from power plants, and we don't have those power plants!
1) Hydrogen isn't "coming from the ground".
2) We *do* have those power plants, according to the DOE.
Also, the local grids (last mile) can't handle that extra load...
3) Since when? Even a full recharge to a Volt every night -- 8kWh plus a little more for conversion losses (say, 9kWh total) -- can be done on a single normal 110V socket in 6 hours. How exactly is that going to tax the local grids?
Also off-peak is NOT considered "night time" but varies by region and time of year. in the summer, off-peak is typically midnight to 5AM. but BEVs take 8-10 hours to charge, oops.
"Oops yourself". First off, "Off peak" generally starts at around 11:00 and ends at around 6:00. 12 to 5 is just somewhat deeper of an off-peak than 11 to 6, but you're definitely not going to overload the grid. Secondly, 8-10 hours on even a 110V/15A socket (and a 110V/15A will *not* overload the grid) is 48 to 60 miles range per day. Only a small fraction of the US population drives that much. If you want to talk, say, dryer socket-level charging, even 100 miles of range is just over four hours.
Also, once we move to fast charge, it will NOT be stady, stable off-peak loads.
That's not how fast charge works. Commercial fast chargers tend to have battery banks that they draw from. The banks are trickle charged (and ideally, smart-charged).
Also, if you read the link's data, they are NOT storing H2, they're making it as part of a catalytic process.
A) What link are you talking about?
B) Hydrogen cannot be made "in a catalytic process". It's an energy sink, not a source.
It's only kept in short term, low pressure tanks for 12-36 hours.
Doesn't matter. It's still hugely expensive. So is large-scale hydrogen production and compression equipment.
These types of tanks are CHEAP
They absolutely are not. Hydrogen tanks are typically composite (since they embrittle metals). Often carbon fiber with a polymer lining. Show me a large, cheap carbon fiber tank and I'll show you a living unicorn.
efficient
Nonsense. Electrolysis is 50-80% efficient (with the more efficient systems being more expensive due to lower throughput), and you generally lose 10-20% of the remaining energy in compression. Then you have the fuel cells at 40-60% efficiency (you can get slightly higher in the lab, but that's only under controlled conditions, with pre-compressed oxygen rather than uncompressed air). Or you have an H2 ICE generator, at ~40% efficiency.
and have extremely little leakage
Hydrogen leaks through steel at about 100 times the rate propane does (which is positively a leaker compared to gasoline). It is the easiest chemical on the world to leak, bar none.
EV batteries contain toxins, rare chemicals, and though the most recent technologies are highly recyclable, its a messy expensive process, not to mentoin LiIon pack failure and fires...
Wrong on every front. One, the types of batteries mainly being used for EVs today are lithium iron phosphate and manganese spinels. Neither of these are toxic. You can legally just throw them straight in the trash. Two, they contain no "rare chemicals" (fuel cells do, however! They use platinum). Three, the recycling process is neither "messy" nor "expensive"; most packs are having their recycling costs included in the purchase price. Four, LiP and LiMnO2 cells have almost no fire risk, unlike the LiCoO2 cells that most people are familiar with from laptops and cell phones (only Tesla is using those).
I also read the DOE result when it came out recently, and there are a few things you should note: 1) the study completely ignored local grid distribution, and was a statement of average available energy across the USA (total poewr p
If only facilities to create and store hydrogen were free to build and maintain, rather than being hugely expensive as they are in real life. And way less efficient than just storing it in EV batteries at night (which the grid operators get at no extra charge to themselves).
That's completely incorrect.
Battery powered vehicles can NOT replace fuel cars for 30-50 year until we build YET MORE power sources, and figure out how to handle the MASSIVE swings in usage that would come with 100million cars sucking from the grid at odd hours...
BEVs take *one third as much power* to operate as H2 FCVs and *one fifth as much* as H2 ICEs. They *stabilize the grid*, because they're steady sources that mainly charge during... wait for it... off peak hours.
Storing energy as hydrogen is both expensive and inefficient. Hydrogen is a nasty chemical to store, as it has awful density, requires storage under pressure, embrittles metals, leaks through almost anything, catches fire with extremely low ignition energy in almost any fuel-air mix, etc. Oh, and it destroys ozone, too. EV batteries come on to the grid at no charge to the grid operators. Hydrogen production and storage facilities are a huge charge.
but if even 5% of us started driving electric cars, we'd brown out whole cities,
According to the DOE, 84% of our cars and vans could switch over to electricity on our *current grid* without an iota of new infrastructure. We generate less than half as much power as we actually consume in this country, namely because off-peak power consumption is so low. And EVs primarily charge as off-peak. And even when they charge during the day, they're steady, stable loads (unlike air conditioners, which go on and off). Unstable loads like ACs cause brownouts because it takes time for generation levels to ramp up and down when the grid is already producing at high levels.
He was correct. Certain steps in the photosynthetic process are very efficient, but the fact that only part of sunlight is photosynthetically active, the fact that plants don't process all light that hits them, and that not all energy they produce goes into biomass, generally limits the total biomass yield to 3-6%. Food crops generally yield between a fraction of a percent and a couple percent of the solar energy that hits them as food, but practical growth limitations make that even lower (by a good margin). To give an example of how that comes into play, sugarcane is a rare photosynthesis exception, at about 8% efficiency turning sunlight to biomass, but only 0.13% solar efficiency to ethanol. That's 4000 liters per hectare of 225W/m^2 insolation land. That's 7.1e13 joules of solar energy to prduce 9.36e10 joules of ethanol. Awful efficiency, no?
Now we're favored guests, treated to the finest in fuels that make you blind.
No, they're not using nickel-iron. But they're using similarly high-longevity chemistries. People like to say that they're using "lithium ion" as though there's just one li-ion chemistry. It's really a whole family, which runs the gamut from the high energy density but unstable and short-lived LiCoO2/graphite cells (such as found in laptops and cell phones) to the low energy density but uber-stable titanates, which are so durable that they're used in grid load balancing where they rapidly charge and discharge, nonstop, over and over again for years on end (the company that makes them, AltairNano, gave up on trying to get them down to 80% capacity after 15,000 cycles).
With the exception of Tesla, they're pretty much all using phosphates and manganese spinels, which are very stable chemistries (at the cost of some energy density). If climate controlled and at 85% DoD and normal EV usage, A123's cells, for example, get 7,000 cycles before losing 20% capacity. If rapid charged and discharged nonstop (15-20 minute charges, 8-10 minute discharges), they get about 1,000 cycles to the same capacity loss. And even in Tesla's case, they're babying their cells so much that they can get 5-7 years out of them.
These automakers aren't sacrificing energy density for nothing. They're sacrificing it because laboratory testing and real-world usage in other devices says that's what's needed to get the desired longevity. They don't do that for laptops and cell phones because people don't hang onto them for 20 years.
Which are anticipated to go up, as the materials become more rare, and environmental regulations make it harder to dispose of them
LiP and manganese spinel are made from common materials, are nontoxic, and are easy to recycle (the biggest impediment to recycling is simply that the raw materials are so cheap, there's little value to their recovery).
See the post above yours for a response (since they wrote pretty much the same thing)
If you're not going to do the most basic research before you respond, why even bother? It's a full 10 year, 150,000 mile warranty, as required by California law to meet pzev criteria. Leno's Baker Electric does run on its original batteries. Tell me your "personal experience" with nickel-iron and lithium iron phosphate batteries. Go on, give me the complete rundown. Every last detail. I'm waiting. While you're at it, go ahead and explain how your "personal experience" with large, actively-cooled 50% DoD NiMH packs explains why so many people are deluding themselves into thinking that they never had their Prius pack replaced.
After all, your experience with high-DoD, non-cooled 18650 cobalt cells and similarly managed lead-acid batteries has oh so much bearing on actively cooled nickel-iron, LiP, manganese spinel, or NiMH packs with low DoD.
Tell we where I can go buy one of these cars with the 10 year battery warranty?
Obviously the Volt is not on sale yet, but you can get a Prius today with an 8 year warranty and a near-zero battery failure rate.
Even the most wildly optimistic forecasts are for 32.7 million EVs on the road worldwide by 2015 (Wintergreen Research). That's a drop in the bucket.