That scale is called PUR, and unfortunately, PUR stats are rarely given out on lights. I've even seen grow lights which use lumens, which is just ridiculous. Lumens has become the standard, but it's not universally applicable.
I simply object to the notion that if something puts off few lumens, that means that it's inefficient. Far from it; it's just that it's not very useful for *general room illumination*. It's great for, for example, growing plants.
Yeah, yuk it up. I'd just love to see the DEA raid my home and haul out tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce, pumpkins, basil, shiso, vine peaches, muskmelons, crookneck squash, ronde de nice squash, odessa squash, english daisies, trailing soapwort, lupine, and half a dozen other plants I'm forgetting off the top of my head.
I don't have much in the way of south-facing windows, so if I want to start my seedlings indoors, it needs to be done under lights. And LEDs are the most efficient option available.
That's not the next step; the next step is transplanting outdoors so they can make use of that nice free light, The Sun.;) Just this evening I finished setting up vine clips on hanging strings to support my climbing plants. I look forward to the airborne pumpkins and melons;)
Oh, and in case anyone is curious about growing plants under LED lights, I've been documenting the experience here.
Net result? The UFO works better than the Xmas lights, but the Xmas lights do work. Everything but the lettuce and brassicas seems to thrive under the LEDs, and the lettuce and brassicas would probably thrive if they were right under the UFO instead of on the periphery. Some plants, like the pumpkins, have been acting like the LED light is steroids. So, if you want to grow plants indoors but don't want a huge power bill, I'd go with a UFO or two inside a reflective chamber.
And yeah, I know, most people just use them for pot:P
That's the problem with the lumen scale. The most efficient LEDs are red and blue. The lumens scale weighs green an order of magnitude more than red and blue because it's based on the sensitivity of the human eye. In LEDs, there's a so-called "green gap"; there are no efficient green LEDs, which is right where we need it the most when it comes to lighting that our eyes can see effectively.
Now, for plants, it's a different story. Plants love red and blue, which is what LEDs do best. But really, we're supposed to be impressed by 100W of LEDs? I have 200W of LEDs in the room next to me (I start my garden seedlings under LED light). A standard UFO grow light is 90W, and many dozens of them sell daily on Ebay alone. What the heck are they doing spending $500 AUD on only 100W of LEDs? I got my UFO for $140-some; that took watching for a few weeks, but you can "Buy It Now" on them generally for $225. The rest of my LEDs are LED xmas lights, which are even cheaper (although the UFO seems more effective... pretty nice product, IMHO).
And yet, there are no electric cars on the market right now that can charge in 10 minutes.
There's almost no highway-speed electric cars on the market, period. But there's a whole wave of them coming out in the next few years, and a good number of them are fast charge.
which might use a different battery tech
Not "might". "Are". These vehicles have been in development for years; they're not going to suddenly randomly decide to go backwards and throw away their work to adopt a tech that Tesla used out of necessity due to their early start.
Even according to Aptera's own FAQ, recharging takes about 8 hours from a standard socket.
1) Aptera isn't a rapid-charge vehicle. If you want rapid charge, look at, say, the Phoenix SUT or the Lightning GT. 2) That's from a normal NEMA 5-15 only being used at 10A, for 100 miles. It can also handle 240V/30A for 2-3 hour charges. But again, see #1.
You leave the street, refuel, and take the exit from the gas station which is further down the initial street you were stuck on
You're not serious, are you? Your argument is "I can pull through their driveway"? Seriously?
The Golf simply does have at least a 55 litre fuel tank
I'm not denying that it does. I'm saying its pointless.
No, I don't think it's a good idea to drive for 10 hours straight, but it is possible.
So the standard vehicles are to be judged by are "I don't think it's a good idea but it is possible"? Can we please focus on real-world driving here?
The 50MPG Prius is just what everybody says it achieves
No, that's the EPA rating for the new Prius. The 2008 Prius is 48mpg city/45mpg hwy. That's FTP and US06, respectively, which is tougher than NEDC.
at 4.3 vs 4.9 for the Golf.
Once again, you're ignoring -- I can only say willfully by this point -- the fact that you're not making an equal comparison. You're pretending that diesel is the same as gasoline (when it actually emits 12% more CO2 per gallon, and a heck of a lot more of other pollutants) and that it's perfectly reasonable to compare a larger car (the Prius) with a smaller car (the Golf) on equal footing. You realize you're doing this, right?
You can't escape the fact that this *smaller car*, the Golf, emits almost 1/3 more CO2 and a heck of a lot more other pollutants than this *larger car*, the Prius. I know you really want to be a diesel fanboy, but there's no comparison. True hybrids win hands down, ridiculously easily over diesels in any *fair comparison*.
However, you're still ignoring that Prius is just one hybrid out of dozens which are all less efficient
Yes, you can be called a hybrid for doing something as trivial as a larger starter motor. That's why I explicitly ruled out so-called "mild hybrids"; they're not the same thing. We're comparing true hybrids to diesels. Of course, even a mild hybrid can push a car up to about the same CO2 emissions as a diesel when comparing to cars in the same class on the same drivecycle (something that, I know, you're loathe to do).
The Prius is of course slightly larger than the hatchback Golf, but not any faster.
"Slightly"? It's nearly a foot longer. The Golf is a "compact car". The Prius is a "midsize car". They're in different classes, and the Prius still trashes it.
As long as we aren't talking about emissions
Yeah, because who cares about breathing clean air or what our climate is like...
the energy density of diesel vs petrol is irrelevant, especially when the prices are almost identical
Naturally, you only bring this up on diesel versus gasoline, and only now (I'm sure you wouldn't have six months ago), and you don't bring it up in relation to electricity, which is far cheaper than both.
If the fuels are sufficiently different (puppy farts and fission, for example), then of course such measures become pointless.
You do realize that fast chargers are battery-buffered, right? You could run a fast charger from a NEMA 5-15 if visitors were infrequent enough. You do realize that "changing out the pumps/tanks" in a gas station means rebuilding the entire thing *plus* demolition costs, right? You do realize that hydrogen stations are notably more expensive than gas stations per-pump (and fast-fill hydrogen stations, even more expensive), while EV fast chargers aren't, right?
Oh, give me a freaking break. No, it's a giant conspiracy, and the 320 (as of my last check) people who've "gotten" their roadsters are in on it, right?
Look, if you're going to live in a fantasy world like that, there's no helping you.
While the US considers them no environmental threat they can still lead to iron and cobalt contaimination in water streamswhich can lead to posioning of children down the road
Okay, first off, the only such EVs that I can name off the top of my head that have any cobalt in them are the Phoenix SUT, the Tesla vehicles, and the Lightning GT. That is, AltairNano's titanates and traditional li-ion cells. There might be a couple more high-end sports cars going the AltairNano route. Pretty much all of the rest are using manganese or phosphate cathodes, which do not. And LiCoO2 is only mildly toxic... and this assumes that you just throw the cells in the trash rather than recovering the cobalt, which is the most valuable part of said cells.
Secondly... *iron contamination* in water? Is that a joke? First off, iron is poorly soluble in water, so poorly that you're pretty much down to iron chelates if you want to use it in hydroponics. Secondly, most people get too *little* iron in their diet. Third, the amount of iron used in batteries would be utterly dwarfed by the amount of iron we use everwhere else on the planet. Fourth, *gasoline cars use iron, too*. What were you thinking when you wrote that?
also, these batteries have a higher risk of exploding and causing fire of thrown away using conventional waste streams, which ironically the US actually recommends...
No, phosphates, titanates, and spinels have zero change of "exploding", and are no more likely to burn than your gas tank; their chemical stability the entire point of them, and the very reason people accept their sacrifice of energy density and higher prices; they don't like to burn and last a very long time, even under heavy abuse. The fact that yes, you can dispose of them in ordinary trash is a testament to how harmless they are.
It has no transmission, unlike Volt or Tesla which have transmissions
They have a single fixed-gear, just like Aptera. No fluids. Tesla was originally going to be going for a two gear transmission, but the motor was too powerful for it, and it kept ripping it to shreds; instead, they just upped the power of the motor to make up for it and switched to a single gear.
All these vehicles use tires that must be replaced (I'd venture yours cost a lot more than mine, too, for optimal range)
I can't comment on the others, but the Aptera uses Bridgestone Potenza RE-92s, which are about $70 each if you shop around. Not exactly a huge cost in the maintenance ledger there.
You're also going to have lights, wiring harnesses and mechanical failures over time.
In general, moving parts fail far more often than non-moving (purely electrical) parts. And EVs have a tenth as many moving parts. Think hard drives vs. ram. Take from that what you will.
whose camy has seen $4000 in upkeep over 10 years
Are we back to anecdotes already? Really? $33 a month is way, way less than the US average for maintenance.
This is America, no one looks at the gritty details
Sadly, yes. The thing that really gets me is when people look at the economics of a car purchase and only consider the first few years of ownership.
In a scenario where you do 42 miles a day to and from work, add another 6 miles for lunch, 10 miles in "other errands" like a trip to walmart or to go see your aunt, and all of a sudden you can't get 4 days worth of charging out of the car, you've got to charge it sooner.
Whoa, first off, if that's the case, then you're *not* doing 300 miles a week; you're doing 406 miles a week. 65% more than the average driver. And what on earth do you mean "4 days worth of charging out of the car"? Why would you not plug the car in when you get home every day? That's the whole point -- you start every day with a full charge and never have to worry that you forgot to fill up the gas tank recently.
With the exception of one Reuters article, every last thing you posted (both here and below) is blog entries from Owen Thomas of Gawker.com, grossly misrepresenting the source material or making uninformed speculation. And the NYT article isn't damning in the slightest. It's almost amusing reading Owen's doom and gloom about how Tesla's going to collapse and go bankrupt in articles from last year, and meanwhile, here Tesla is, about to secure a DOE loan, gained GE as an investor, and has Roadster production ramping up at an exponential rate; they made 106 of the $109k+options cars in March alone.
May Owen continue his doomsaying; he has a lovely track record.;)
If a joe-sixpack model is so lucrative and such a good idea, why aren't investors running to give Tesla money? Why aren't YOU giving them money?
Because it's a privately held company, genius. You can't buy stock in it. The only way to get in on Tesla is to be part of a fundraising round. And Tesla *has* raised a huge amount of money from private investors -- $186m at last check, of which only $55m was from Musk.
If the government is the only source of investment capital, then you no longer have capitalism.
Then capitalism died when this banking crisis happened, because right about now, the federal government *is* pretty much the only source of investment capital for high-risk, high-payout ventures. Whether you "want" that to be the case or not. The banks discovered that the gold they were sitting on was gold-painted lead.
Yes they are. If they do not get either of their two federal loans they will need to declare bankruptacy.
That's simply false. Musk has stated that they'd be profitable right now if not for the money they were sinking into the Model S program. That's what the price hike/feature cut on the Roadsters was for -- to make Roadster production in the black.
Musk has said that the deposts are at risk unless they get a federal loan.
Well, the one advantage of hydrogen is refilling times. It is very straightforward to refill a hydrogen tank quickly and be off on your way (though some safety issues do exist).
Do you know how long it takes to refill, for example, the Fuel Cell Equinox (GM's hydrogen showpiece)? 25-30 minutes for a full tank. Phosphate and spinel batteries charge in 10-20 minutes, and titanate batteries in under 10 minutes from quick chargers. GM is looking at doing what Honda does, which is store the hydrogen in bulk at the station at the same sort of massive pressures used in the vehicle tanks, but that's a nightmare waiting to happen, IMHO, as well as a major increase to the already-way-to-expensive price of hydrogen fuelling stations.
1. Simply recharnging most conventional battery chemistries is just out of the question. Most take hours. Apparently some exotic ones can take 10 mins, but I'm not sure what the tradeoffs are.
Wrong. Recharging most batteries in *common consumer devices* takes hours, but that's not due to a limitation of the chemistry. It's due to two things: one, most consumer devices are very high-C in discharge, which means they have to their batteries during charge to increase longevity; and two, there's simply no space or budget for the kind of cooling and charge balancing systems used in electric vehicle packs that enable such fast charges. NiMHs can be charged in 20-30 minutes (see the Hawaii Electric Vehicle Demonstration Program, which has been doing this for a decade), lead acid in 15-20 minutes (see fast-charge forklifts), etc.
There are three leading contenders for electric vehicle battery packs (not counting Tesla's near-unique approach of using laptop cells): titanates, phosphates, and manganese spinels. Phosphates are generally limited to about 15 minutes. Spinels are similar, 10 to 20 minutes. The titanate packs can be charged pretty much as fast as you can cool them -- most go for 10 minutes or less. There are two main disadvantages of titanates over phosphates and spinels, though: they hold less energy per kilogram and they cost about four times as much. Two examples of their usage are Phoenix, whose SUT uses them in order to qualify for the top tier of California's ZEV credits, which they sell; and the Lightning GT, a fast-charge sports car.
This is current, on-the-market tech. However, there are about two dozen in-the-lab techs that offer some pretty astounding increases in density *and* charge times. The odds of every last one of them failing are near zero percent.
It's kind of funny, and not what you'd expect, but do you know the prime impediments right now to manufacturers including fast-charge battery packs? 1) A lack of standardized hookups for high-power charging (unlike charging at up to 19kW, which is standardized at the SAE J1772 Yazaki connector), and 2) the need to have sufficient cooling for the battery pack. The latter is an extra expense that is hard to justify given the former. It has little to do with the cells themselves at this point.
2. There are things like supercapacitors which do solve the recharging problem, but those are a very new technology and I suspect there are downsides.
Huge downsides: they have horrible energy density. They're still struggling to merely try to get up to the energy density of lead-acid.
3. Any technology based on actually putting electricity into the battery has to contend with very high power draws. A "gas station" might need 300kV supply lines and look more like an electrical substation.
Not true. First off, instead of "gas stations", most chargers thusfar have just been at random local businesses, especially places who want EV customers to spend time there (grocery stores, restaurants, etc). But just ignoring that, any large charging centers, as well as very high power rapid chargers, will share a common battery bank that is trickle charged from the grid.
An electric in any rural or urban sprawl area (reads: most of america) is basically useless if it can't go beyond the established 'norm' of the ICE/gasoline engine.
You're talking to someone who lives in Iowa City. Don't lecture me about what you need in "most of America". Cedar Rapids is 30 miles away. Grinnell, 66. Mt. Vernon, 38. Davenport, 58. Des Moines, 115. Peoria, IL, 153. Dubuque, 103. Waterloo, 83. These are all places I would consider a long distance, not something you do every day (I drive to Cedar Rapids monthly, and that's about the furthest I go on regular intervals -- it's 45 minutes each way after you factor in surface streets, so going that far takes an hour and a half out of your day). Don't lecture me about range.
I'm also not convinced that any battery (shy the virus batteries being developed by MIT, was it?) is "cleaner" in all consumed time/parts/energy than any Diesel (or gas for that matter) vehicle.
Which means that you know absolutely nothing about modern li-ion batteries. Come on, tell me: what is it that goes into, say, lithium iron phosphate cells that is so environmentally damaging? Lithium salts, commonly found in mineral water (they're literally produced from salt flats where mineral waters evaporated)? Iron powder? Phosphoric acid (like in coke)? Sugar (carbon binding)? Graphite (anode)? Polyethylene (membrane)? Really, what is it that your fantasies is picturing that is in them that is somehow so dirty? Or if your argument is "energy", that's even funnier; most li-ion batteries go through the amount of energy used to create them in just a dozen or so cycles.
Will you keep the Tesla for 10 years?
I'm not buying a Roadster, so I can't comment on what Roadster buyers will do. But I *am* buying an Aptera, and you better believe I plan to keep it for a long, long time.
which to date has had 5 timing belts
Which don't exist in EVs.
a head gasket
Which don't exist in EVs.
and a clutch (ONE clutch)...
Which don't exist in EVs.
And obviously you're leaving a ton of things out. Oil changes, lead-acid batteries (lead-acid batteries have notoriously short lifespans -- which is one of the many reasons they're very poor for making EVs as well), brakes, radiator fluid, etc. And with the exception of brakes, none of those exist in EVs -- and brakes get a small fraction of the wear due to regenerative braking. EVs generally have under a tenth as many moving parts and a fraction as many fluids.
And whether or not your anecdotal case means you haven't spent much on maintenance, anecdotes are irrelevant; what is relevant are averages. And the average amortized maintenance on a car today is about $100-200 a month (less in a typical month, but occasionally a lot more).
but I also expect a 600 to 700 mile range
Why? No, seriously, why? Unless you're driving for 10 hours straight without so much as a freaking bathroom break or meal, that makes absolutely no sense.
as I (and most everyone else in my state) drives more than 300 miles per week
Equals 42 miles a day, which is a big whoop in terms of home charging. You'd never have to use a public charger except on long trips. Congratulations -- an EV will *save* you a lot of time on average.
and often more than 40 miles in a single direction to get to work.
FYI, your numbers don't add up. And nor is "more than 40 miles" anywhere close to the 160-300 mile (depending on pack option) that's being talked about with the Model S.
I also don't buy the stats that the grid can handle the power.
Hey, call peer-reviewed DOE research conducted at PNL BS all you want. Surely you know more about the grid than the experts.
I can promise everyone's rates will go up if 3 to 6% of the cars on the road
Wrong. Rates go *down* with electrics. Power companies are thrilled about the prospect because it allows them to use a lot more off-
It's correct that most of the steps in refueling are the same, but your numbers for recharging the batteries come, ehm, from a dream world.
You do realize that there are about a dozen or two EVs coming out with charge times of under 30 minutes from major marques, right? Several of which have charging times of under 10 minutes. Many if not most of those dozen or two of which have already *demonstrated* said charging times. Are you even aware that rapid charging of forklifts and electric Santa Fes (by HEVDP) has been going on for over a decade?
While I don't deny the existence fast-charge battery cells, that's not what's used in the current electric cars.
What "current electric cars"? Outside of government/industry fleet leases, the only highway-speed, reasonable-range EV available today is the Tesla Roadster, and you're right, it *does* use cells that can't charge fast. But I count about about three to four dozen non-Tesla upcoming highway-speed, reasonable-range++ EVs coming out in the next few years, and not a *one* of them that has announced anything about their pack uses the same type of cells that Tesla does. Most of them use phosphates (limited to about 15 minutes currently), spinels (limited to 10-20 minutes, depending on the type), or titanates (limited to how fast you can cool the pack -- 10 minutes or less).
Instead, the Tesla cars use pretty standard laptop battery cells which take a few hours at best to charge.
If you cool them sufficiently, they can handle about 45 or 50 minute charges to the DoD Tesla uses. NiMH can handle about 25-30, Lead-acid 15-20 with some varieties, and other numbers as aforementioned.
If you recharge at home, then sure, the situation is different. But then, I can also refuel on my way to work on a station next to a jammed street, possibly saving time by cutting in front of the cars that stayed in the line.
What is that supposed to mean, exactly?
A VW Golf appears to have a 55 litre tank, and can realistically do 5l/100 km
Once again, the standard for diesels is "can achieve", while the standard for EVs is "what it gets when being raced at top speed around a track". The latest Golfs are NEDC rated at 5.2 to 5.6 l/km on the NEDC, which equates to about 38mpg on the faster US drivecycles. That'd mean that this tiny car would have to have a 16 gallon tank. What's the point of a tank that size on such a small car?
(a TDI, not the one from the link), putting the range at over 1000km or over 600 miles. Yes, some people drive that long without stopping for anything more than a bathroom stop or driver swap.
So the standard for whether a vehicle is acceptable or not is "whether or not it's possible to drive it for 10 hours straight without stopping"? Give me a freaking break, please. And FYI, a 5 minute bathroom stop is half a charge in a titanate-powered vehicle.
If the google calc is to be believed, that's about 4.7l/100km. That's just a bit better than the 5l/100 km for a diesel Golf, which is the official EU combined cycle number (actually 4.9)
Did you not notice what you just did? You just willfully compared an EPA number with an NEDC number, as though the NEDC isn't a slower, higher-MPG drivecycle. Sorry, but that's just not going to fly. On the NEDC, the Golf emits about 140g/km CO2 and the Prius just over 100g/km. And the Prius is bigger and faster.
Saying that diesel is the same or better is indeed "complete nonsense", and it takes switching up drivecycles and comparing cars with smaller ones to try and even make them look similar.
I don't see what the energy density of diesel fuel has to do with anything
Really? You really don't see the relevance? So, if I could squish 100 gallons of gasoline down into one gallon of "Supergasoline" (which, when burned, still had the CO2 emissions of that 100 gallons, of course), and I created a car that got 1,000mpg on Supergasoline, would you herald it as some sort of eco-wonder?
So the range/mileage standard for diesels now is "it's not unheard of"? Meanwhile, the standard for electrics seems to be "what happens if you race it on a track as fast as you can".
The question is pointless, because if it's even once a year that means the vehicle is impractical for most people.
Completely untrue. Last month, I had to rent a cargo van to go pick up a furnace in Missouri. I probably need a cargo van once or twice a year. Does that mean I should own a cargo van and do my daily commuting in it? Of course not; that'd be ridiculous! But that's exactly the standard you want to apply to electrics. And furthermore, for those rare cases someone does need to charge faster then they can do at home... then go to a fast charging station on those occasions! On every *other* day of their life, they get the convenience of home charging. Gas stations have to go out to "charge" every last time; they *never* get to charge from home. So that's a pretty dumb argument to make.
It depends. Apparent power is voltage times current, so the current of the sockets also matters. I believe that the UK sockets (correct me if I'm wrong) are 13A. I also believe that you *are* allowed to draw the rated amps over a UK socket, unlike in the US, where you're supposed to not draw more than a few amps below it. In the US, standard NEMA 5-15s are on 15A breakers, with no more than 13A safetly drawn over time, excepting kitchen, bathroom, garage, and outdoor sockets, which are generally 20A (with 18A or so safetly drawn). If we assume a literal 230V and 120V (actual numbers vary), and if my understanding of UK sockets is correct, they can provide 38% more power than a US garage socket.
According to the EPA and my own independant testing, ULSD vehicles are 10% less CO2 output than gasoline,
From the numbers I've seen, it's more like a 25% improvement in terms of CO2, for the same car with a diesel drivetrain versus a roughly equivalent power gasoline drivetrain. But for true (non-mild) hybrids, it's more like a 50-80% improvement. So your claim that it beats hybrids is just silly.
After reading Clarkson's review online, it's clear that the biggest problem the TG presenter has with the Roadster is that it's not powered by hydrogen. Clarkson suggests that even if the car were completely flawless, it would still be old-tech, since hydrogen is clearly the fuel of the future as far as he's concerned, and until then, apparently we should all be content with fossil fuels
From the original, re Clarkson:
In the fullness of time, I have no doubt that the Tesla can be honed and chiselled and developed to a point where the problems are gone. But time is one thing a car such as this does not have. Because while Tesla fiddles about with batteries, Honda and Ford are surging onwards with hydrogen cars, which don't need charging, can be fuelled normally and are completely green. The biggest problem, then, with the Tesla is not that it doesn't work. It's that even if it did, it would be driving down the wrong road.
Clarkson has repeatedly and publicly expressed his disdain for electrics and his love of hydrogen. This is just yet another example.
Slashdot Mirror
That scale is called PUR, and unfortunately, PUR stats are rarely given out on lights. I've even seen grow lights which use lumens, which is just ridiculous. Lumens has become the standard, but it's not universally applicable.
I simply object to the notion that if something puts off few lumens, that means that it's inefficient. Far from it; it's just that it's not very useful for *general room illumination*. It's great for, for example, growing plants.
Yeah, yuk it up. I'd just love to see the DEA raid my home and haul out tomatoes, eggplants, lettuce, pumpkins, basil, shiso, vine peaches, muskmelons, crookneck squash, ronde de nice squash, odessa squash, english daisies, trailing soapwort, lupine, and half a dozen other plants I'm forgetting off the top of my head.
I don't have much in the way of south-facing windows, so if I want to start my seedlings indoors, it needs to be done under lights. And LEDs are the most efficient option available.
What good is a scale that gives equal weight to a part of the spectrum that we cannot see?
Human eyes aren't the only thing on the planet that light is relevant for, you know.
If you care about your power bill or heat signature, you certainly can.
I don't give a rat's arse about heat signature, but I certainly care about my power bill.
That's not the next step; the next step is transplanting outdoors so they can make use of that nice free light, The Sun. ;) Just this evening I finished setting up vine clips on hanging strings to support my climbing plants. I look forward to the airborne pumpkins and melons ;)
Oh, and in case anyone is curious about growing plants under LED lights, I've been documenting the experience here.
Net result? The UFO works better than the Xmas lights, but the Xmas lights do work. Everything but the lettuce and brassicas seems to thrive under the LEDs, and the lettuce and brassicas would probably thrive if they were right under the UFO instead of on the periphery. Some plants, like the pumpkins, have been acting like the LED light is steroids. So, if you want to grow plants indoors but don't want a huge power bill, I'd go with a UFO or two inside a reflective chamber.
And yeah, I know, most people just use them for pot :P
That's the problem with the lumen scale. The most efficient LEDs are red and blue. The lumens scale weighs green an order of magnitude more than red and blue because it's based on the sensitivity of the human eye. In LEDs, there's a so-called "green gap"; there are no efficient green LEDs, which is right where we need it the most when it comes to lighting that our eyes can see effectively.
Now, for plants, it's a different story. Plants love red and blue, which is what LEDs do best. But really, we're supposed to be impressed by 100W of LEDs? I have 200W of LEDs in the room next to me (I start my garden seedlings under LED light). A standard UFO grow light is 90W, and many dozens of them sell daily on Ebay alone. What the heck are they doing spending $500 AUD on only 100W of LEDs? I got my UFO for $140-some; that took watching for a few weeks, but you can "Buy It Now" on them generally for $225. The rest of my LEDs are LED xmas lights, which are even cheaper (although the UFO seems more effective... pretty nice product, IMHO).
And yet, there are no electric cars on the market right now that can charge in 10 minutes.
There's almost no highway-speed electric cars on the market, period. But there's a whole wave of them coming out in the next few years, and a good number of them are fast charge.
which might use a different battery tech
Not "might". "Are". These vehicles have been in development for years; they're not going to suddenly randomly decide to go backwards and throw away their work to adopt a tech that Tesla used out of necessity due to their early start.
Even according to Aptera's own FAQ, recharging takes about 8 hours from a standard socket.
1) Aptera isn't a rapid-charge vehicle. If you want rapid charge, look at, say, the Phoenix SUT or the Lightning GT.
2) That's from a normal NEMA 5-15 only being used at 10A, for 100 miles. It can also handle 240V/30A for 2-3 hour charges. But again, see #1.
You leave the street, refuel, and take the exit from the gas station which is further down the initial street you were stuck on
You're not serious, are you? Your argument is "I can pull through their driveway"? Seriously?
The Golf simply does have at least a 55 litre fuel tank
I'm not denying that it does. I'm saying its pointless.
No, I don't think it's a good idea to drive for 10 hours straight, but it is possible.
So the standard vehicles are to be judged by are "I don't think it's a good idea but it is possible"? Can we please focus on real-world driving here?
The 50MPG Prius is just what everybody says it achieves
No, that's the EPA rating for the new Prius. The 2008 Prius is 48mpg city/45mpg hwy. That's FTP and US06, respectively, which is tougher than NEDC.
at 4.3 vs 4.9 for the Golf.
Once again, you're ignoring -- I can only say willfully by this point -- the fact that you're not making an equal comparison. You're pretending that diesel is the same as gasoline (when it actually emits 12% more CO2 per gallon, and a heck of a lot more of other pollutants) and that it's perfectly reasonable to compare a larger car (the Prius) with a smaller car (the Golf) on equal footing. You realize you're doing this, right?
You can't escape the fact that this *smaller car*, the Golf, emits almost 1/3 more CO2 and a heck of a lot more other pollutants than this *larger car*, the Prius. I know you really want to be a diesel fanboy, but there's no comparison. True hybrids win hands down, ridiculously easily over diesels in any *fair comparison*.
However, you're still ignoring that Prius is just one hybrid out of dozens which are all less efficient
Yes, you can be called a hybrid for doing something as trivial as a larger starter motor. That's why I explicitly ruled out so-called "mild hybrids"; they're not the same thing. We're comparing true hybrids to diesels. Of course, even a mild hybrid can push a car up to about the same CO2 emissions as a diesel when comparing to cars in the same class on the same drivecycle (something that, I know, you're loathe to do).
The Prius is of course slightly larger than the hatchback Golf, but not any faster.
"Slightly"? It's nearly a foot longer. The Golf is a "compact car". The Prius is a "midsize car". They're in different classes, and the Prius still trashes it.
As long as we aren't talking about emissions
Yeah, because who cares about breathing clean air or what our climate is like...
the energy density of diesel vs petrol is irrelevant, especially when the prices are almost identical
Naturally, you only bring this up on diesel versus gasoline, and only now (I'm sure you wouldn't have six months ago), and you don't bring it up in relation to electricity, which is far cheaper than both.
If the fuels are sufficiently different (puppy farts and fission, for example), then of course such measures become pointless.
Which they're not. They're
You do realize that fast chargers are battery-buffered, right? You could run a fast charger from a NEMA 5-15 if visitors were infrequent enough. You do realize that "changing out the pumps/tanks" in a gas station means rebuilding the entire thing *plus* demolition costs, right? You do realize that hydrogen stations are notably more expensive than gas stations per-pump (and fast-fill hydrogen stations, even more expensive), while EV fast chargers aren't, right?
More drivel out of Musk I presume.
Oh, give me a freaking break. No, it's a giant conspiracy, and the 320 (as of my last check) people who've "gotten" their roadsters are in on it, right?
Look, if you're going to live in a fantasy world like that, there's no helping you.
While the US considers them no environmental threat they can still lead to iron and cobalt contaimination in water streamswhich can lead to posioning of children down the road
Okay, first off, the only such EVs that I can name off the top of my head that have any cobalt in them are the Phoenix SUT, the Tesla vehicles, and the Lightning GT. That is, AltairNano's titanates and traditional li-ion cells. There might be a couple more high-end sports cars going the AltairNano route. Pretty much all of the rest are using manganese or phosphate cathodes, which do not. And LiCoO2 is only mildly toxic... and this assumes that you just throw the cells in the trash rather than recovering the cobalt, which is the most valuable part of said cells.
Secondly... *iron contamination* in water? Is that a joke? First off, iron is poorly soluble in water, so poorly that you're pretty much down to iron chelates if you want to use it in hydroponics. Secondly, most people get too *little* iron in their diet. Third, the amount of iron used in batteries would be utterly dwarfed by the amount of iron we use everwhere else on the planet. Fourth, *gasoline cars use iron, too*. What were you thinking when you wrote that?
also, these batteries have a higher risk of exploding and causing fire of thrown away using conventional waste streams, which ironically the US actually recommends...
No, phosphates, titanates, and spinels have zero change of "exploding", and are no more likely to burn than your gas tank; their chemical stability the entire point of them, and the very reason people accept their sacrifice of energy density and higher prices; they don't like to burn and last a very long time, even under heavy abuse. The fact that yes, you can dispose of them in ordinary trash is a testament to how harmless they are.
It has no transmission, unlike Volt or Tesla which have transmissions
They have a single fixed-gear, just like Aptera. No fluids. Tesla was originally going to be going for a two gear transmission, but the motor was too powerful for it, and it kept ripping it to shreds; instead, they just upped the power of the motor to make up for it and switched to a single gear.
All these vehicles use tires that must be replaced (I'd venture yours cost a lot more than mine, too, for optimal range)
I can't comment on the others, but the Aptera uses Bridgestone Potenza RE-92s, which are about $70 each if you shop around. Not exactly a huge cost in the maintenance ledger there.
You're also going to have lights, wiring harnesses and mechanical failures over time.
In general, moving parts fail far more often than non-moving (purely electrical) parts. And EVs have a tenth as many moving parts. Think hard drives vs. ram. Take from that what you will.
whose camy has seen $4000 in upkeep over 10 years
Are we back to anecdotes already? Really? $33 a month is way, way less than the US average for maintenance.
This is America, no one looks at the gritty details
Sadly, yes. The thing that really gets me is when people look at the economics of a car purchase and only consider the first few years of ownership.
In a scenario where you do 42 miles a day to and from work, add another 6 miles for lunch, 10 miles in "other errands" like a trip to walmart or to go see your aunt, and all of a sudden you can't get 4 days worth of charging out of the car, you've got to charge it sooner.
Whoa, first off, if that's the case, then you're *not* doing 300 miles a week; you're doing 406 miles a week. 65% more than the average driver. And what on earth do you mean "4 days worth of charging out of the car"? Why would you not plug the car in when you get home every day? That's the whole point -- you start every day with a full charge and never have to worry that you forgot to fill up the gas tank recently.
Oh wait it uses a 220v, where will I find that?
All three of the cars you ment
With the exception of one Reuters article, every last thing you posted (both here and below) is blog entries from Owen Thomas of Gawker.com, grossly misrepresenting the source material or making uninformed speculation. And the NYT article isn't damning in the slightest. It's almost amusing reading Owen's doom and gloom about how Tesla's going to collapse and go bankrupt in articles from last year, and meanwhile, here Tesla is, about to secure a DOE loan, gained GE as an investor, and has Roadster production ramping up at an exponential rate; they made 106 of the $109k+options cars in March alone.
May Owen continue his doomsaying; he has a lovely track record. ;)
If a joe-sixpack model is so lucrative and such a good idea, why aren't investors running to give Tesla money? Why aren't YOU giving them money?
Because it's a privately held company, genius. You can't buy stock in it. The only way to get in on Tesla is to be part of a fundraising round. And Tesla *has* raised a huge amount of money from private investors -- $186m at last check, of which only $55m was from Musk.
If the government is the only source of investment capital, then you no longer have capitalism.
Then capitalism died when this banking crisis happened, because right about now, the federal government *is* pretty much the only source of investment capital for high-risk, high-payout ventures. Whether you "want" that to be the case or not. The banks discovered that the gold they were sitting on was gold-painted lead.
Yes they are. If they do not get either of their two federal loans they will need to declare bankruptacy.
That's simply false. Musk has stated that they'd be profitable right now if not for the money they were sinking into the Model S program. That's what the price hike/feature cut on the Roadsters was for -- to make Roadster production in the black.
Musk has said that the deposts are at risk unless they get a federal loan.
That's simply a lie; he has personally guaranteed all of the deposits from his own fortune.
Where on Earth are you getting this stuff?
Well, the one advantage of hydrogen is refilling times. It is very straightforward to refill a hydrogen tank quickly and be off on your way (though some safety issues do exist).
Do you know how long it takes to refill, for example, the Fuel Cell Equinox (GM's hydrogen showpiece)? 25-30 minutes for a full tank. Phosphate and spinel batteries charge in 10-20 minutes, and titanate batteries in under 10 minutes from quick chargers. GM is looking at doing what Honda does, which is store the hydrogen in bulk at the station at the same sort of massive pressures used in the vehicle tanks, but that's a nightmare waiting to happen, IMHO, as well as a major increase to the already-way-to-expensive price of hydrogen fuelling stations.
1. Simply recharnging most conventional battery chemistries is just out of the question. Most take hours. Apparently some exotic ones can take 10 mins, but I'm not sure what the tradeoffs are.
Wrong. Recharging most batteries in *common consumer devices* takes hours, but that's not due to a limitation of the chemistry. It's due to two things: one, most consumer devices are very high-C in discharge, which means they have to their batteries during charge to increase longevity; and two, there's simply no space or budget for the kind of cooling and charge balancing systems used in electric vehicle packs that enable such fast charges. NiMHs can be charged in 20-30 minutes (see the Hawaii Electric Vehicle Demonstration Program, which has been doing this for a decade), lead acid in 15-20 minutes (see fast-charge forklifts), etc.
There are three leading contenders for electric vehicle battery packs (not counting Tesla's near-unique approach of using laptop cells): titanates, phosphates, and manganese spinels. Phosphates are generally limited to about 15 minutes. Spinels are similar, 10 to 20 minutes. The titanate packs can be charged pretty much as fast as you can cool them -- most go for 10 minutes or less. There are two main disadvantages of titanates over phosphates and spinels, though: they hold less energy per kilogram and they cost about four times as much. Two examples of their usage are Phoenix, whose SUT uses them in order to qualify for the top tier of California's ZEV credits, which they sell; and the Lightning GT, a fast-charge sports car.
This is current, on-the-market tech. However, there are about two dozen in-the-lab techs that offer some pretty astounding increases in density *and* charge times. The odds of every last one of them failing are near zero percent.
It's kind of funny, and not what you'd expect, but do you know the prime impediments right now to manufacturers including fast-charge battery packs? 1) A lack of standardized hookups for high-power charging (unlike charging at up to 19kW, which is standardized at the SAE J1772 Yazaki connector), and 2) the need to have sufficient cooling for the battery pack. The latter is an extra expense that is hard to justify given the former. It has little to do with the cells themselves at this point.
2. There are things like supercapacitors which do solve the recharging problem, but those are a very new technology and I suspect there are downsides.
Huge downsides: they have horrible energy density. They're still struggling to merely try to get up to the energy density of lead-acid.
3. Any technology based on actually putting electricity into the battery has to contend with very high power draws. A "gas station" might need 300kV supply lines and look more like an electrical substation.
Not true. First off, instead of "gas stations", most chargers thusfar have just been at random local businesses, especially places who want EV customers to spend time there (grocery stores, restaurants, etc). But just ignoring that, any large charging centers, as well as very high power rapid chargers, will share a common battery bank that is trickle charged from the grid.
I agree with you about swapping, mind you.
This means that to sell that power, they only have to pay capital costs, not marginal costs
Erm, "marginal costs, not capital costs".
An electric in any rural or urban sprawl area (reads: most of america) is basically useless if it can't go beyond the established 'norm' of the ICE/gasoline engine.
You're talking to someone who lives in Iowa City. Don't lecture me about what you need in "most of America". Cedar Rapids is 30 miles away. Grinnell, 66. Mt. Vernon, 38. Davenport, 58. Des Moines, 115. Peoria, IL, 153. Dubuque, 103. Waterloo, 83. These are all places I would consider a long distance, not something you do every day (I drive to Cedar Rapids monthly, and that's about the furthest I go on regular intervals -- it's 45 minutes each way after you factor in surface streets, so going that far takes an hour and a half out of your day). Don't lecture me about range.
I'm also not convinced that any battery (shy the virus batteries being developed by MIT, was it?) is "cleaner" in all consumed time/parts/energy than any Diesel (or gas for that matter) vehicle.
Which means that you know absolutely nothing about modern li-ion batteries. Come on, tell me: what is it that goes into, say, lithium iron phosphate cells that is so environmentally damaging? Lithium salts, commonly found in mineral water (they're literally produced from salt flats where mineral waters evaporated)? Iron powder? Phosphoric acid (like in coke)? Sugar (carbon binding)? Graphite (anode)? Polyethylene (membrane)? Really, what is it that your fantasies is picturing that is in them that is somehow so dirty? Or if your argument is "energy", that's even funnier; most li-ion batteries go through the amount of energy used to create them in just a dozen or so cycles.
Will you keep the Tesla for 10 years?
I'm not buying a Roadster, so I can't comment on what Roadster buyers will do. But I *am* buying an Aptera, and you better believe I plan to keep it for a long, long time.
which to date has had 5 timing belts
Which don't exist in EVs.
a head gasket
Which don't exist in EVs.
and a clutch (ONE clutch)...
Which don't exist in EVs.
And obviously you're leaving a ton of things out. Oil changes, lead-acid batteries (lead-acid batteries have notoriously short lifespans -- which is one of the many reasons they're very poor for making EVs as well), brakes, radiator fluid, etc. And with the exception of brakes, none of those exist in EVs -- and brakes get a small fraction of the wear due to regenerative braking. EVs generally have under a tenth as many moving parts and a fraction as many fluids.
And whether or not your anecdotal case means you haven't spent much on maintenance, anecdotes are irrelevant; what is relevant are averages. And the average amortized maintenance on a car today is about $100-200 a month (less in a typical month, but occasionally a lot more).
but I also expect a 600 to 700 mile range
Why? No, seriously, why? Unless you're driving for 10 hours straight without so much as a freaking bathroom break or meal, that makes absolutely no sense.
as I (and most everyone else in my state) drives more than 300 miles per week
Equals 42 miles a day, which is a big whoop in terms of home charging. You'd never have to use a public charger except on long trips. Congratulations -- an EV will *save* you a lot of time on average.
and often more than 40 miles in a single direction to get to work.
FYI, your numbers don't add up. And nor is "more than 40 miles" anywhere close to the 160-300 mile (depending on pack option) that's being talked about with the Model S.
I also don't buy the stats that the grid can handle the power.
Hey, call peer-reviewed DOE research conducted at PNL BS all you want. Surely you know more about the grid than the experts.
I can promise everyone's rates will go up if 3 to 6% of the cars on the road
Wrong. Rates go *down* with electrics. Power companies are thrilled about the prospect because it allows them to use a lot more off-
The link cited the article that I just quoted. Is today National Day For The Vision-Impaired on Slashdot or something?
It's correct that most of the steps in refueling are the same, but your numbers for recharging the batteries come, ehm, from a dream world.
You do realize that there are about a dozen or two EVs coming out with charge times of under 30 minutes from major marques, right? Several of which have charging times of under 10 minutes. Many if not most of those dozen or two of which have already *demonstrated* said charging times. Are you even aware that rapid charging of forklifts and electric Santa Fes (by HEVDP) has been going on for over a decade?
While I don't deny the existence fast-charge battery cells, that's not what's used in the current electric cars.
What "current electric cars"? Outside of government/industry fleet leases, the only highway-speed, reasonable-range EV available today is the Tesla Roadster, and you're right, it *does* use cells that can't charge fast. But I count about about three to four dozen non-Tesla upcoming highway-speed, reasonable-range++ EVs coming out in the next few years, and not a *one* of them that has announced anything about their pack uses the same type of cells that Tesla does. Most of them use phosphates (limited to about 15 minutes currently), spinels (limited to 10-20 minutes, depending on the type), or titanates (limited to how fast you can cool the pack -- 10 minutes or less).
Instead, the Tesla cars use pretty standard laptop battery cells which take a few hours at best to charge.
If you cool them sufficiently, they can handle about 45 or 50 minute charges to the DoD Tesla uses. NiMH can handle about 25-30, Lead-acid 15-20 with some varieties, and other numbers as aforementioned.
If you recharge at home, then sure, the situation is different. But then, I can also refuel on my way to work on a station next to a jammed street, possibly saving time by cutting in front of the cars that stayed in the line.
What is that supposed to mean, exactly?
A VW Golf appears to have a 55 litre tank, and can realistically do 5l/100 km
Once again, the standard for diesels is "can achieve", while the standard for EVs is "what it gets when being raced at top speed around a track". The latest Golfs are NEDC rated at 5.2 to 5.6 l/km on the NEDC, which equates to about 38mpg on the faster US drivecycles. That'd mean that this tiny car would have to have a 16 gallon tank. What's the point of a tank that size on such a small car?
(a TDI, not the one from the link), putting the range at over 1000km or over 600 miles. Yes, some people drive that long without stopping for anything more than a bathroom stop or driver swap.
So the standard for whether a vehicle is acceptable or not is "whether or not it's possible to drive it for 10 hours straight without stopping"? Give me a freaking break, please. And FYI, a 5 minute bathroom stop is half a charge in a titanate-powered vehicle.
If the google calc is to be believed, that's about 4.7l/100km. That's just a bit better than the 5l/100 km for a diesel Golf, which is the official EU combined cycle number (actually 4.9)
Did you not notice what you just did? You just willfully compared an EPA number with an NEDC number, as though the NEDC isn't a slower, higher-MPG drivecycle. Sorry, but that's just not going to fly. On the NEDC, the Golf emits about 140g/km CO2 and the Prius just over 100g/km. And the Prius is bigger and faster.
Saying that diesel is the same or better is indeed "complete nonsense", and it takes switching up drivecycles and comparing cars with smaller ones to try and even make them look similar.
I don't see what the energy density of diesel fuel has to do with anything
Really? You really don't see the relevance? So, if I could squish 100 gallons of gasoline down into one gallon of "Supergasoline" (which, when burned, still had the CO2 emissions of that 100 gallons, of course), and I created a car that got 1,000mpg on Supergasoline, would you herald it as some sort of eco-wonder?
So the range/mileage standard for diesels now is "it's not unheard of"? Meanwhile, the standard for electrics seems to be "what happens if you race it on a track as fast as you can".
The question is pointless, because if it's even once a year that means the vehicle is impractical for most people.
Completely untrue. Last month, I had to rent a cargo van to go pick up a furnace in Missouri. I probably need a cargo van once or twice a year. Does that mean I should own a cargo van and do my daily commuting in it? Of course not; that'd be ridiculous! But that's exactly the standard you want to apply to electrics. And furthermore, for those rare cases someone does need to charge faster then they can do at home... then go to a fast charging station on those occasions! On every *other* day of their life, they get the convenience of home charging. Gas stations have to go out to "charge" every last time; they *never* get to charge from home. So that's a pretty dumb argument to make.
Production on mine starts this October, and I'm in the upper-300s on the waiting list, so probably some time next winter.
And that's a pretty weak argument, by the way. "Yours isn't here yet"? Please.
It depends. Apparent power is voltage times current, so the current of the sockets also matters. I believe that the UK sockets (correct me if I'm wrong) are 13A. I also believe that you *are* allowed to draw the rated amps over a UK socket, unlike in the US, where you're supposed to not draw more than a few amps below it. In the US, standard NEMA 5-15s are on 15A breakers, with no more than 13A safetly drawn over time, excepting kitchen, bathroom, garage, and outdoor sockets, which are generally 20A (with 18A or so safetly drawn). If we assume a literal 230V and 120V (actual numbers vary), and if my understanding of UK sockets is correct, they can provide 38% more power than a US garage socket.
According to the EPA and my own independant testing, ULSD vehicles are 10% less CO2 output than gasoline,
From the numbers I've seen, it's more like a 25% improvement in terms of CO2, for the same car with a diesel drivetrain versus a roughly equivalent power gasoline drivetrain. But for true (non-mild) hybrids, it's more like a 50-80% improvement. So your claim that it beats hybrids is just silly.
Did you not bother to read the link?
After reading Clarkson's review online, it's clear that the biggest problem the TG presenter has with the Roadster is that it's not powered by hydrogen. Clarkson suggests that even if the car were completely flawless, it would still be old-tech, since hydrogen is clearly the fuel of the future as far as he's concerned, and until then, apparently we should all be content with fossil fuels
From the original, re Clarkson:
In the fullness of time, I have no doubt that the Tesla can be honed and chiselled and developed to a point where the problems are gone. But time is one thing a car such as this does not have. Because while Tesla fiddles about with batteries, Honda and Ford are surging onwards with hydrogen cars, which don't need charging, can be fuelled normally and are completely green. The biggest problem, then, with the Tesla is not that it doesn't work. It's that even if it did, it would be driving down the wrong road.
Clarkson has repeatedly and publicly expressed his disdain for electrics and his love of hydrogen. This is just yet another example.