yes people care what the station looks like. This is why it will never work.
when people think of getting gas, they think of going to the clean shell station on the corner with the TVs and candy bars. A level III charger is like parking at an electrical substation and plugging in. it's not going to be adopted, even in pilot phases.
During normal EV use, you'll never have to visit a charging station
I agree with you that level III charging is as unneccesary as it is impractical. Everybody will charge at home, and nobody will buy an EV unless they have the capability for home charging.
I completely agree that everyone with an EV will charge at home (or work).
However, the fast-charge stations will still be necessary for longer trips. 90% of my trips are less than 100 miles (probably 80% are less than 12 miles). But for those occasions when I want to make the 150 mile trip to grandma's house, I'd like the ability to charge up on the way there. a 20 minute charge stop on a 3 hour, 150 mile trip is just an extra 10%. And while I'm at grandmas, I can plug into her 120VAC outlet and charge up overnight.
The nice thing about EV charge stations is that they don't have to be limited to gas stations since there are no big tanks of flammable fuels to store - anywhere that can handle a high power electrical feed (Shopping centers, business parks, etc) can put in a charge station. McDonalds could put in a few Level III chargers to let patrons charge while they eat. Shopping malls could put in dozens of Level II chargers to let shoppers charge for a few hours while they shop.
Another solution that I've seen proposed is to come up with a standard "generator pod"
I've never heard of this. Sounds like weasel words. I imagine one of those uhaul tows, except with a diesel generator inside! The idea is essentially the same as a Chevy Volt - a plug in hybrid or extended range EV. a gasoline engine maintains state of charge after 40 miles.
And you're right, it's exactly like a u-haul trailer with a generator inside. Why should I pay for and maintan an Internal Combustion Engine when nearly all of my trips are short enough to run on batteries alone? I'd rather rent an engine when I need it. I don't understand your "weasel words" comment?
15 - 30 minute fast charge stations for BEV's already exist
No they don't. The link says that Level III chargers *will* exist. In reality I know of one unit in use in Tokyo operated by TEPCO.
So these mythical charging stations don't exist, yet you know of one in use:?
The reality is that fast charging will never catch on. The car charges in 30 mins, but the station essentially looks like back to the future -- a dedicated attendant plugs in a snake line of 500V, 50kw into your car. Super dangerous, super expensive, needs its own substation.
no fair comparing FCEVs to vaporware charging technology.
Do you really care what the station looks like? An EV charging station is for occasional use during long-distant trips. During normal EV use, you'll never have to visit a charging station since the average commuter will be able to commute for several days at a time on a single charge, and can charge up in his garage (or his employer's garage).
Why is a fast charging station any more vaporware than nationwide hydrogen fueling infrastructure? There are some serious technical hurdles to creating such an infrastructure.
Another solution that I've seen proposed is to come up with a standard "generator pod" that you can hook up to your car when you need added range -- it's essentially a big generator on wheels fueled by fossil fuels (even hydrogen, if you must). You rent it when you want to make a long trip and tow it behind your car, it generates power to keep the batteries charged. There are maybe a half dozen times/year that I make a trip exceeding 100 miles round trip, so such a device would be very practical for me.
How do we get the Hydrogen? Unless the energy needed to extract it comes from solar, wind, hydroelectric or nuclear, we burn fossil fuels to extract the hydrogen. Currently hydrogen is an energy storage medium, not an energy source.
That's why I said "it depends on your definition of burning". One of the most common ways to get H2 from Natural gas is a steam reformer where the natural gas reacts with steam at a high temperature giving H2: CH4 + H2O CO + 3 H2
Combing water with a gas isn't typically what most people think of when they think of "burning" something.
(granted, the high temperatures likely come from burning fossil fuels, but I don't think you'd say that the process is markedly better if it used alternative energy to heat the steam)
FCEVs are a form of electric vehicle so they get EV efficiency ~85%, while natural gas cars are still internal combustion so they get ~30%. efficiency ftw!
Do you have a source for this? I thought real world fuel cell efficiency was much less than 85% - like closer to 40% or even less
*unlike BEVs, FCEVs avoid the range anxiety issue, and can be filled up like a regular car instead of needing 8 hour charge. convenience ftw!
15 - 30 minute fast charge stations for BEV's already exist and i would expect that even faster options will exist faster than a large hydrogen creation and distribution network could be built.
Luckily pure hydrogen is not combustible. So even if you ignite the tip of the pump, which is already a stupid thing to do, it will burn at the tip and not travel back in.
Isn't that the case with most commonly used fuels? (ignoring solid rocket fuels that come with their own oxidizer)
They can see which nights I sleep at my girlfriend's house, and which nights she sleeps with me.
Like anybody gives a rat's ass.
My wife who is on an extended business trip would give a rat's ass.... "hey honey, how come our "average estimated occupancy" on our utility bill says "2 people" starting the day after I went to the UK on business and and went back to "1" the day before I came home? Who was sleeping here!?"
In theory the idea is that once you have hydrogen fueled vehicles you can switch to cleaner sources of hydrogen. Like cracking water in a high temperature nuclear reactor. Either way everything is just storage of energy from the big bang.
Oh gee, that sounds simple, just build out an entirely new energy distribution network to distribute hydrogen, and then it's as easy as building a hundred nuclear powered hydrogen processing plants to create unlimited green hydrogen! I guess Hydrogen really *is* a great solution!
What is the overall efficiency of a Hydrogen powered car (including the energy cost to extract the hydrogen) as opposed to one that runs directly off of fossil fuels?
From below, I posted about the efficiency. Here is a graph from this research paper. To sum it up, if you're burning the H2 in an ICE, you're only making the situation worse. PEMFCs can be a little better than ICE vehicles, but they pale in comparison to electric cars.
Thanks, I had always suspected that was the case, I'm glad to finally see some real numbers!
Because Hydrogen creation is taking transportable energy and converting it (at a loss) to a different form of transportable energy. What is the point? We already have vast natural gas and liquid fuel distribution networks, why do we need one more?
There are no vast fields of Hydrogen waiting to be mined (at least not on this planet). Hydrogen is an intermediate energy storage medium most commonly extracted from fossil fuels. It can come from water via electrolysis, but there's a lot of waste energy form that process so as far as I know it's not done on a large scale.
What is the overall efficiency of a Hydrogen powered car (including the energy cost to extract the hydrogen) as opposed to one that runs directly off of fossil fuels?
If someone is worried about their data at the utilities then they should be worried even if there were no smart meters! The data is there no matter what the technology is!
That's not exactly true -- without a smartmeter, my power company knows only how much power I use in a month, which is all they really need to know to bill me.
With minute-by-minute data collection enabled by smartmeters, the power company can figure out what time I wake up the morning and when I go to bed. They can see what time I shower in the morning and if I have an on-demand hot water heater, they can figure out exactly long i spend in the shower. They can see what time I go to work and what time I come home. They can see which nights I sleep at my girlfriend's house, and which nights she sleeps with me. They can see when I'm on vacation.
None of this data is visible to the power company without a smartmeter.
Since there's no U-235 in it, you certainly may do so. Just like you can harvest the Unicorns in the chip and send them to meat processing plants. (which otherwise would be illegal due to the Unicorn horn trade that's been depleting the stocks of wild Unicorns)
The subject line says "Do geeks make better adults", but the summary talks about successful adults.
I've known a number of successful people (financial, political and/or celebrity), but very few of those are what I would call a "better adult". And many of them seem to be generally unhappy despite their "success".
On the other hand, I've known some weird, quirky people in high school that grew up to be weird, quirky, unsuccessful people in adult life. Being weird doesn't guarantee success.
Why is there so much of this spam popping up on Slashdot lately? Slashdot has historically done well at avoiding comment spam, but it seems that in the past few weeks, I've seen a number of these types of spam.
That's another key difference. 90%+ of potential customers today are already using iTunes, so Amazon/Google/etc. has to convince people to leave all the music that they may have purchased in a protected format behind, and start over with them.
Are you sure about that 90% figure? I know lots of people that don't use iTunes.
I for one would love to have an online music service that lets me upload my (large) existing collection of CD's (preferably with a "virtual" upload so I don't have to actually transfer the same bits to google that they already have), *and* that lets me play it through a Roku type appliance (Google TV?) through my TV sound system, as well as my Android phone. Ideally, I'll also have access to my music through my 3G (LTE?) enabled car stereo at some point, though for now I'm content to connect my phone to my car speakers.
Until used CD's stop costing more than digital music (~ $5 including shipping, versus $9), I'll keep buying CD's and will want a solution that let's me play them on various devices.
Yes, they make less money, but they have a lot more money to throw at lawyers and lobbyists than Google does. The record groups also have been in business with doing DRM for over a century.
They've been doing Digital Rights Management for over a century? Was there really that much music on punched cards? (ignoring paper tape fed pianos)
They've had very little Analog Rights Management in the past - I've made copies of records and over-the-air broadcasts in the past. And I never got sued for making a mix tape for a friend. The earliest DRM that I've been exposed to was the SCMS copy protection on DAT drives which came out sometime in the late 80's, early 90's.
Given that this is largely uncharted legal territory, I'd say that Barely Legal Creampie is a more accurate term. And surely such a term will result in less titillating search results!
I've ripped all my DVD's to a NAS drive which I view on my BluRay player over UPNP and DLNA
This is offtopic, but what (linux friendly) software did you use to rip all of your DVD's? I've got about 150 DVD's that I'd like to do the same to. I'm looking for something quick and easy - put the DVD in the drive, hit "go", and walk away.
Jaunty: Yay! This is great! Happies! Karmic: Yay! This is better than Jaunty! Happies! Maverick: Yay! This is better than Karmic! Happies! Natty: DEATH AND THE DEFILEMENT OF SHUTTLEWORTH'S IMMORTAL SOUL MUST NOW COMMENCE BECAUSE HE HAS CHANGED SOMETHING THAT I CAN EASILY UNDO AND I AM TOO LAZY TO GIVE IT A CHANCE. All who do not hate it as much as I very clearly are drinking teh koolaid and are rabid cultists. So sayeth I, such is law, as I am talking ON TEH INTARNETS, and am thus right and just.
Maybe people praised previous releases because they thought they were improvements, and they blast Natty because, for many people, it's a big step backwards.
Have you looked at the scope of the UI changes between each of those versions? Janunty, Karmic, Maverick all built on and extended functionality from previous releases, Natty turned the UI on its head and made it completely different.
I don't want a touch-screen UI on my dual 1600x1050 monitors.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really care what the station looks like?
yes people care what the station looks like. This is why it will never work.
when people think of getting gas, they think of going to the clean shell station on the corner with the TVs and candy bars. A level III charger is like parking at an electrical substation and plugging in. it's not going to be adopted, even in pilot phases.
Have you seen a Level III charge station?
http://www.hybridcars.com/news/coulomb-promises-gas-pump-style-ev-rapid-charging-26436.html
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/4092-TEPCO-CHAdeMO-Level-III-quot-quick-quot-charging-station-connector
Is it really any worse than a modern gas pump?: http://travis.kroh.net/archives/003205.jpg
During normal EV use, you'll never have to visit a charging station
I agree with you that level III charging is as unneccesary as it is impractical. Everybody will charge at home, and nobody will buy an EV unless they have the capability for home charging.
I completely agree that everyone with an EV will charge at home (or work).
However, the fast-charge stations will still be necessary for longer trips. 90% of my trips are less than 100 miles (probably 80% are less than 12 miles). But for those occasions when I want to make the 150 mile trip to grandma's house, I'd like the ability to charge up on the way there. a 20 minute charge stop on a 3 hour, 150 mile trip is just an extra 10%. And while I'm at grandmas, I can plug into her 120VAC outlet and charge up overnight.
The nice thing about EV charge stations is that they don't have to be limited to gas stations since there are no big tanks of flammable fuels to store - anywhere that can handle a high power electrical feed (Shopping centers, business parks, etc) can put in a charge station. McDonalds could put in a few Level III chargers to let patrons charge while they eat. Shopping malls could put in dozens of Level II chargers to let shoppers charge for a few hours while they shop.
Another solution that I've seen proposed is to come up with a standard "generator pod"
I've never heard of this. Sounds like weasel words. I imagine one of those uhaul tows, except with a diesel generator inside! The idea is essentially the same as a Chevy Volt - a plug in hybrid or extended range EV. a gasoline engine maintains state of charge after 40 miles.
Here are some home made examples:
http://evmaine.org/html/ev_trailers.html
And one commissioned by Toyota:
http://www.evnut.com/rav_longranger.htm
And you're right, it's exactly like a u-haul trailer with a generator inside. Why should I pay for and maintan an Internal Combustion Engine when nearly all of my trips are short enough to run on batteries alone? I'd rather rent an engine when I need it. I don't understand your "weasel words" comment?
15 - 30 minute fast charge stations for BEV's already exist
No they don't. The link says that Level III chargers *will* exist. In reality I know of one unit in use in Tokyo operated by TEPCO.
So these mythical charging stations don't exist, yet you know of one in use:?
The reality is that fast charging will never catch on. The car charges in 30 mins, but the station essentially looks like back to the future -- a dedicated attendant plugs in a snake line of 500V, 50kw into your car. Super dangerous, super expensive, needs its own substation.
no fair comparing FCEVs to vaporware charging technology.
Do you really care what the station looks like? An EV charging station is for occasional use during long-distant trips. During normal EV use, you'll never have to visit a charging station since the average commuter will be able to commute for several days at a time on a single charge, and can charge up in his garage (or his employer's garage).
Why is a fast charging station any more vaporware than nationwide hydrogen fueling infrastructure? There are some serious technical hurdles to creating such an infrastructure.
Another solution that I've seen proposed is to come up with a standard "generator pod" that you can hook up to your car when you need added range -- it's essentially a big generator on wheels fueled by fossil fuels (even hydrogen, if you must). You rent it when you want to make a long trip and tow it behind your car, it generates power to keep the batteries charged. There are maybe a half dozen times/year that I make a trip exceeding 100 miles round trip, so such a device would be very practical for me.
Why? Burning hydrogen with oxygen makes:
2 H2(g) + O2(g) 2 H2O(l) + 572 kJ (286 kJ/mol)
You don't like water?
If you're burning H2 in air (as opposed to pure oxygen), there are a bunch of other byproducts generated like various NOx pollutants.
How do we get the Hydrogen? Unless the energy needed to extract it comes from solar, wind, hydroelectric or nuclear, we burn fossil fuels to extract the hydrogen. Currently hydrogen is an energy storage medium, not an energy source.
That's why I said "it depends on your definition of burning". One of the most common ways to get H2 from Natural gas is a steam reformer where the natural gas reacts with steam at a high temperature giving H2: CH4 + H2O CO + 3 H2
Combing water with a gas isn't typically what most people think of when they think of "burning" something.
(granted, the high temperatures likely come from burning fossil fuels, but I don't think you'd say that the process is markedly better if it used alternative energy to heat the steam)
FCEVs are a form of electric vehicle so they get EV efficiency ~85%, while natural gas cars are still internal combustion so they get ~30%. efficiency ftw!
Do you have a source for this? I thought real world fuel cell efficiency was much less than 85% - like closer to 40% or even less
*unlike BEVs, FCEVs avoid the range anxiety issue, and can be filled up like a regular car instead of needing 8 hour charge. convenience ftw!
15 - 30 minute fast charge stations for BEV's already exist and i would expect that even faster options will exist faster than a large hydrogen creation and distribution network could be built.
Luckily pure hydrogen is not combustible. So even if you ignite the tip of the pump, which is already a stupid thing to do, it will burn at the tip and not travel back in.
Isn't that the case with most commonly used fuels? (ignoring solid rocket fuels that come with their own oxidizer)
It'd be cool if we weren't burning stuff to make power.
Hydrogen fuel cell powered cars technically aren't "burning stuff" (depending on your definition of "burning")
Like anybody gives a rat's ass.
My wife who is on an extended business trip would give a rat's ass.... "hey honey, how come our "average estimated occupancy" on our utility bill says "2 people" starting the day after I went to the UK on business and and went back to "1" the day before I came home? Who was sleeping here!?"
In theory the idea is that once you have hydrogen fueled vehicles you can switch to cleaner sources of hydrogen. Like cracking water in a high temperature nuclear reactor. Either way everything is just storage of energy from the big bang.
Oh gee, that sounds simple, just build out an entirely new energy distribution network to distribute hydrogen, and then it's as easy as building a hundred nuclear powered hydrogen processing plants to create unlimited green hydrogen! I guess Hydrogen really *is* a great solution!
From below, I posted about the efficiency. Here is a graph from this research paper. To sum it up, if you're burning the H2 in an ICE, you're only making the situation worse. PEMFCs can be a little better than ICE vehicles, but they pale in comparison to electric cars.
Thanks, I had always suspected that was the case, I'm glad to finally see some real numbers!
Because Hydrogen creation is taking transportable energy and converting it (at a loss) to a different form of transportable energy. What is the point? We already have vast natural gas and liquid fuel distribution networks, why do we need one more?
The sooner we can stop buying gas from the Middle East, the better.
It'd be cooler if Hydrogen didn't come from fossil fuels.
There are no vast fields of Hydrogen waiting to be mined (at least not on this planet). Hydrogen is an intermediate energy storage medium most commonly extracted from fossil fuels. It can come from water via electrolysis, but there's a lot of waste energy form that process so as far as I know it's not done on a large scale.
What is the overall efficiency of a Hydrogen powered car (including the energy cost to extract the hydrogen) as opposed to one that runs directly off of fossil fuels?
If someone is worried about their data at the utilities then they should be worried even if there were no smart meters! The data is there no matter what the technology is!
That's not exactly true -- without a smartmeter, my power company knows only how much power I use in a month, which is all they really need to know to bill me.
With minute-by-minute data collection enabled by smartmeters, the power company can figure out what time I wake up the morning and when I go to bed. They can see what time I shower in the morning and if I have an on-demand hot water heater, they can figure out exactly long i spend in the shower. They can see what time I go to work and what time I come home. They can see which nights I sleep at my girlfriend's house, and which nights she sleeps with me. They can see when I'm on vacation.
None of this data is visible to the power company without a smartmeter.
Since there's no U-235 in it, you certainly may do so. Just like you can harvest the Unicorns in the chip and send them to meat processing plants. (which otherwise would be illegal due to the Unicorn horn trade that's been depleting the stocks of wild Unicorns)
The subject line says "Do geeks make better adults", but the summary talks about successful adults.
I've known a number of successful people (financial, political and/or celebrity), but very few of those are what I would call a "better adult". And many of them seem to be generally unhappy despite their "success".
On the other hand, I've known some weird, quirky people in high school that grew up to be weird, quirky, unsuccessful people in adult life. Being weird doesn't guarantee success.
Air Jordan is a brand enjoy h...
Why is there so much of this spam popping up on Slashdot lately? Slashdot has historically done well at avoiding comment spam, but it seems that in the past few weeks, I've seen a number of these types of spam.
1981 called... They want their technology back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#Infrared
(and yes, for you xkcd fans, I did warn them about Haiti and Japan)
That's another key difference. 90%+ of potential customers today are already using iTunes, so Amazon/Google/etc. has to convince people to leave all the music that they may have purchased in a protected format behind, and start over with them.
Are you sure about that 90% figure? I know lots of people that don't use iTunes.
I for one would love to have an online music service that lets me upload my (large) existing collection of CD's (preferably with a "virtual" upload so I don't have to actually transfer the same bits to google that they already have), *and* that lets me play it through a Roku type appliance (Google TV?) through my TV sound system, as well as my Android phone. Ideally, I'll also have access to my music through my 3G (LTE?) enabled car stereo at some point, though for now I'm content to connect my phone to my car speakers.
Until used CD's stop costing more than digital music (~ $5 including shipping, versus $9), I'll keep buying CD's and will want a solution that let's me play them on various devices.
Yes, they make less money, but they have a lot more money to throw at lawyers and lobbyists than Google does. The record groups also have been in business with doing DRM for over a century.
They've been doing Digital Rights Management for over a century? Was there really that much music on punched cards? (ignoring paper tape fed pianos)
They've had very little Analog Rights Management in the past - I've made copies of records and over-the-air broadcasts in the past. And I never got sued for making a mix tape for a friend. The earliest DRM that I've been exposed to was the SCMS copy protection on DAT drives which came out sometime in the late 80's, early 90's.
Where's MP3.com right now? They tried this 10 years ago, and got shot down in court. What's different now?
I think the difference is that Google has unlimited money for legal defense.
Given that this is largely uncharted legal territory, I'd say that Barely Legal Creampie is a more accurate term. And surely such a term will result in less titillating search results!
This went arround the net over a year again, also I think it was posted here. ./ should die
If you'd just stop coming here and inflating the page-views, you'll get your wish.... slashdot will die.
Oh wait, looks like you wrote dotslash. Looks like http://dotslash.org/ is already dead. You win!
I've ripped all my DVD's to a NAS drive which I view on my BluRay player over UPNP and DLNA
This is offtopic, but what (linux friendly) software did you use to rip all of your DVD's? I've got about 150 DVD's that I'd like to do the same to. I'm looking for something quick and easy - put the DVD in the drive, hit "go", and walk away.
Jaunty: Yay! This is great! Happies!
Karmic: Yay! This is better than Jaunty! Happies!
Maverick: Yay! This is better than Karmic! Happies!
Natty: DEATH AND THE DEFILEMENT OF SHUTTLEWORTH'S IMMORTAL SOUL MUST NOW COMMENCE BECAUSE HE HAS CHANGED SOMETHING THAT I CAN EASILY UNDO AND I AM TOO LAZY TO GIVE IT A CHANCE. All who do not hate it as much as I very clearly are drinking teh koolaid and are rabid cultists. So sayeth I, such is law, as I am talking ON TEH INTARNETS, and am thus right and just.
Maybe people praised previous releases because they thought they were improvements, and they blast Natty because, for many people, it's a big step backwards.
Have you looked at the scope of the UI changes between each of those versions? Janunty, Karmic, Maverick all built on and extended functionality from previous releases, Natty turned the UI on its head and made it completely different.
I don't want a touch-screen UI on my dual 1600x1050 monitors.