And the 10% is growing significantly faster than the other 90%.
So in 10-20 years it will hit 25% and grow even more. That is assuming nothing odd happens like a new technology shows up (fusion...I know, but it COULD;-) ) or maybe there is a spike in petroleum prices....A spike huh, that could NEVER happen ($3.53 average / gallon and went up 2 cents over the day before).
Actually, MOST decent electrical motors don't need much maint. for many years. They are typically selfcontained and do not use a fluid. So pick the stock you like...there are dozens.
I never said the batteries wouldn't lose cappacity. However EVERYTHING is less efficient after 200,000 miles. The current battery profile is often not much different than ICE in efficiency loses.
And you are right, pay no attention to the coal burned. Coal fired power plants are about twice as efficient as car ICE and with modern plants, significantly cleaner. Simply upping the use of coal to compensate for turning ALL vehicles into electrics will cut the CO2 emmisions caused by transportation in half!
Please re-read my post...or even ACTUALLY read it for the first time. I never suggested the Electric vehicles are a miricale zero-emmision system. I never said they would run perfectly for all of time with no efficiency loses.
Why does it have to power directly off the house grid? Assuming fast discharge/recharge systems like super capacitors are availible at a reasonable price (hey it's my imagination:-)) why not put a small bank in your garage or parking spot etc and recharge from them quickly? They would recharge at your house current rate.
#1) I was NOT talking about hybrids...by there very nature (two power sources) hybrids will always have significantly higher maint costs. I was speaking of pure electrics, which is the conversation you started. Depending on the design, electrics can either have a central motor and a traditional drive train OR have 4 wheel based motors and completely remove the drive train. The one motor version will have similar costs since you are replacing an engine with a motor. The 4 wheel version will have significantly reduced cost since you are removing some of the most expensive pieces to replace (drive train, transmission). In addition current battery technologies have a life span of 8-12 years NOT 2-3. Most cars don't last much longer than 12 years anyway. Plus in all but a catastrophic failure (which would probably total the car anyway) batteries are still functional when they are replaced they just have reduced capacity. Therefore many of the newest electric cars (and hybrids) have no need for battery replacement over the expected life of the vehicle.
#2) True that a sub compact is NOT practical for a family vehicle. Never said it was HOWEVER it is practical for commuter cars or those singles or childless couples you mentioned. You seem to think I am suggesting that we should all turn in out ICE's for Electrics tomorrow. I never made that argument. I am saying that Electrics are now a viable options for more than a niche market and this market is growing well over twice as fast as the general auto market.
#3)Toxicity. Yes, some older batteries are extremely toxic. Those technologies are not typically used in newer electric vehicles. While there is an issue with disposal, it is comparable to 60-100 gallons of used oil, not to mention transmission fluid, extra coolant and of course gas spills from pumps etc. Plus, who says you can't recycle used batteries? Why MUST they go into a landfill?
#4) Power plants. True, gasoline fired power plants are relatively rare (but they do exist). However Diesel power plants are relatively common (and significantly more efficient than gas plants). The difference between gas and diesel is how the crude is processed. The excess oil from reduced ICE can be turned into diesel and used to power the electrics. In addition, you should check up on your news. Slashdot has had a half dozen articles about building power plants in California, primarily solar-thermal but others as well. While the CA power grid IS strained, it is primarily due to extreme population growth rather than oppressive regulation. In addition CA has had more than it's fair share of fraud and other hindrances which strain the system even more (think Enron and others).
#5) The power grid: Projects suggest a 10% increase over current infrastructure growth would handle the power needs of 100% of all transportation if every vehicle was made electric using today's technology. This is because most electric cars would charge at night when there is already a huge surplus in capacity (capacity created for office building as and AC's) at both the power plants AND the electric grid. We need to update the grid for other reasons but NOT because of an influx of electric cars.
#6) Ethanol was always stupid as a power source. It was NEVER suggested in anything but PR documents that it would even help. Ethanol is harder to move, more volatile and contains less energy/Gram than gas. It was a give away to the farming industry. HOWEVER even with that said, the amount of corn that was directed to ethanol was minuscule. We (the US government) could easily double or more the crops grown simply by stopping the farming subsidy. The primary reason for the corn shortage is distribution issues rather than production issues. Corn is bulky and it is expensive to ship it from the US to where the hungry people are.
#7) Powering the cars. One thing you forgot to mention is that with CURRENT technology, home photo voltaic are economically competitive with
Actually, most small (sub compact) size electric cars have similar ranges to gas powered cars. Since to this point most electrics have been intended as in-town cars, so long as the recharge time was under 8 hours it didn't make a difference. Now that electrics are trying to go more mainstream, the recharge time is gropping fast. I have seen systems that can recharge in under an hour and this can drop even further.
As for replacing the batteries, even with older systems like lead-acid, it has ALWAYS been cheaper to maintain electrics than gas powered vehicles. Things we take for granted like regular oil changes, tune ups, timing belts etc aren't on electrics at all. On top of that, newer battery systems are projected to last the life of the vehicle. Think about the only maint. you need to do is to change your tires.
You are correct that electric cars must be powered off power plants. However, electric cars are so much more efficient that california would end up with GOBS more power if they simply redirected the gas for cars into powerplants. Currently electrics have an 85-90% efficiencey considering battery and motor loses. Gas vehicles have a 26% efficiency at best. Considering transmission losses, about 5% of electric power is lost and a similar percentage is used in the transportation of gas. Finally, the processing. Power plants typically operate on a 60% efficiency. Therefore, gas powered vehicles operate at around 20% efficiency at best while electrics are hovering around 50%. Two and a hoalf times better! Plus much of the US power is generated by hydro electric and wind, solar-termal and nuclear are starting to come back...
Over the last 10 years electric cars have been a niche market. However the current technology actually allows for wide spread use and the price tag (especially when you include power/fuel expenses) are actually comperable. With near term developments in super capcitors and batteries, the range of applications will increase, the fueling times will decrease and the cost will drop.
See, your first impulse is to check for a drug / chemical reason.
If I couldn't figure out how it COULD happen I might eventually go to magic, but that is a long way away and very unlikely.
Magic can't exist because that is not what most people assume is the cause. For instance, there was a huge number of UFO sightings over air bases in the 50's. These are essentially all because Jets were just invented and they radically changed the shape, speed and general power of planes well beyond what people expected.
My question is why did people assume it was spacecraft RATHER than witchcraft? The answer is that technological societies generally assume there are technological solutions to problems.
Tell me, if you saw an animal (say horse or even pig) sprout wings and fly would you think it was magic?
You you immediately conclude that there is a mystical force outside your ability to comprehend that made that animal grow wings?
Or would you conclude that the animal was genetically engineered or that it was actually a robot of some sort or even that you imagined it?
My point is simply this, the idea that advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic ONLY applies to pre-industrial/technological societies.
This is a little sad, like losing some innocence but I suppose that is the price of society growing up...I can only hope that we are in the early-mid teen years right now and that we will "grow out" of this phase.
Personally I have no problem with the death penalty at all. If it applied to murderers, rapists, or j-walkers it makes no difference to me.
My problem with the death penalty is that it isn't PUNISHMENT and it doesn't provide reducation...the death penalty is just society giving up on someone.
What is important is to at least attempt to help the criminal and ensure that the person still helps society. While for especially heinous crimes we as a society may never be able to trust the person enough to release them, they can still provide a benefit. They can become role models on what NOT to do. They can provide insight into how criminals think and help prevent other crimes. They could even simply make license plates or the like.
However if a criminal is unable to help society than the death penalty needs to be on the table. After we have learned everything from this criminal, and then learned why we haven't learned any more THEN we can talk about the death penalty.
But the concept of death as punishment is ridiculous. If you are agnostic than you believe they don't suffer any more. If you are religious you might believe that you have sent them straight to Heaven (IE Christianity and faith in Christ regardless of your sins sends you upstairs).
The death penalty needs to be available but it needs to be exceptionally rare.
The actual "waste" part of nuclear waste is pretty small. If we reprocessed all the fuel used by the entier US, the annual unusable portion would fit in a small closet.
Now an interesting thing is that if you hit atoms with neutrons they tend to turn into different atoms that tend to have shorter half-lives....
Interesting thing #2, current nuclear reactors must be sheilded against the excess neutrons they produce...
So we line fast breeder reactors with the waste and it gets converted into stuff with 50 year half lives instead of 100,000 year halflives...
You could, but you would also need a mounting system as well as an enclosure to keep dust of of it...Plus since it already has a fairly fixed focus on the existing screen you may need to remove that set up and finally, well ground kenses of any size can be extremly expensive.
If only there were a small projector device that probably would cost about the same as creating a focusing box from scratch...something that cost say about $300?
Correct, and as the technology has improved over the last 30 years (since the last N-plant went active in the US), the initial capital costs have dropped.
Also, it is important to remember that other power plants have similar initial upfront costs.
Hydroelectric dams well exceed nuke plants. Even coal fired plants are approaching the same price as a nuclear plant.
The major issue is NOT the upfront cost but rather the societal pressure to avoid nuclear and the perceived problem of nuclear waste. The first is dropping fast and the second is solved with reprocessing.
France gets most of it's energy from nuclear and the processed waste fill one small closet a year. Plus there are also technologies that can "burn" up nuclear waste with neutron bombardment, cutting down the danger period to 50-100 years.
absolutly agree...until fossil fuels start to become scarse and the price of extracting them from the ground goes up while at the same time solar, and nuclear (Thorium maybe) power prices come down.
Eventually, probably in the next two decades it will become economically feasible to extract carbon from the air rather than the ground.
Slashdot Mirror
And the 10% is growing significantly faster than the other 90%.
;-) ) or maybe there is a spike in petroleum prices....A spike huh, that could NEVER happen ($3.53 average / gallon and went up 2 cents over the day before).
So in 10-20 years it will hit 25% and grow even more. That is assuming nothing odd happens like a new technology shows up (fusion...I know, but it COULD
Actually, MOST decent electrical motors don't need much maint. for many years. They are typically selfcontained and do not use a fluid. So pick the stock you like...there are dozens.
I never said the batteries wouldn't lose cappacity. However EVERYTHING is less efficient after 200,000 miles. The current battery profile is often not much different than ICE in efficiency loses.
And you are right, pay no attention to the coal burned. Coal fired power plants are about twice as efficient as car ICE and with modern plants, significantly cleaner. Simply upping the use of coal to compensate for turning ALL vehicles into electrics will cut the CO2 emmisions caused by transportation in half!
Please re-read my post...or even ACTUALLY read it for the first time. I never suggested the Electric vehicles are a miricale zero-emmision system. I never said they would run perfectly for all of time with no efficiency loses.
Just an idea I had seen floating around...
:-)) why not put a small bank in your garage or parking spot etc and recharge from them quickly? They would recharge at your house current rate.
Why does it have to power directly off the house grid? Assuming fast discharge/recharge systems like super capacitors are availible at a reasonable price (hey it's my imagination
I said MUCH not Most :-)
Couple of counter points...
#1) I was NOT talking about hybrids...by there very nature (two power sources) hybrids will always have significantly higher maint costs. I was speaking of pure electrics, which is the conversation you started. Depending on the design, electrics can either have a central motor and a traditional drive train OR have 4 wheel based motors and completely remove the drive train. The one motor version will have similar costs since you are replacing an engine with a motor. The 4 wheel version will have significantly reduced cost since you are removing some of the most expensive pieces to replace (drive train, transmission). In addition current battery technologies have a life span of 8-12 years NOT 2-3. Most cars don't last much longer than 12 years anyway. Plus in all but a catastrophic failure (which would probably total the car anyway) batteries are still functional when they are replaced they just have reduced capacity. Therefore many of the newest electric cars (and hybrids) have no need for battery replacement over the expected life of the vehicle.
#2) True that a sub compact is NOT practical for a family vehicle. Never said it was HOWEVER it is practical for commuter cars or those singles or childless couples you mentioned. You seem to think I am suggesting that we should all turn in out ICE's for Electrics tomorrow. I never made that argument. I am saying that Electrics are now a viable options for more than a niche market and this market is growing well over twice as fast as the general auto market.
#3)Toxicity. Yes, some older batteries are extremely toxic. Those technologies are not typically used in newer electric vehicles. While there is an issue with disposal, it is comparable to 60-100 gallons of used oil, not to mention transmission fluid, extra coolant and of course gas spills from pumps etc. Plus, who says you can't recycle used batteries? Why MUST they go into a landfill?
#4) Power plants. True, gasoline fired power plants are relatively rare (but they do exist). However Diesel power plants are relatively common (and significantly more efficient than gas plants). The difference between gas and diesel is how the crude is processed. The excess oil from reduced ICE can be turned into diesel and used to power the electrics. In addition, you should check up on your news. Slashdot has had a half dozen articles about building power plants in California, primarily solar-thermal but others as well. While the CA power grid IS strained, it is primarily due to extreme population growth rather than oppressive regulation. In addition CA has had more than it's fair share of fraud and other hindrances which strain the system even more (think Enron and others).
#5) The power grid: Projects suggest a 10% increase over current infrastructure growth would handle the power needs of 100% of all transportation if every vehicle was made electric using today's technology. This is because most electric cars would charge at night when there is already a huge surplus in capacity (capacity created for office building as and AC's) at both the power plants AND the electric grid. We need to update the grid for other reasons but NOT because of an influx of electric cars.
#6) Ethanol was always stupid as a power source. It was NEVER suggested in anything but PR documents that it would even help. Ethanol is harder to move, more volatile and contains less energy/Gram than gas. It was a give away to the farming industry. HOWEVER even with that said, the amount of corn that was directed to ethanol was minuscule. We (the US government) could easily double or more the crops grown simply by stopping the farming subsidy. The primary reason for the corn shortage is distribution issues rather than production issues. Corn is bulky and it is expensive to ship it from the US to where the hungry people are.
#7) Powering the cars. One thing you forgot to mention is that with CURRENT technology, home photo voltaic are economically competitive with
Actually, most small (sub compact) size electric cars have similar ranges to gas powered cars. Since to this point most electrics have been intended as in-town cars, so long as the recharge time was under 8 hours it didn't make a difference. Now that electrics are trying to go more mainstream, the recharge time is gropping fast. I have seen systems that can recharge in under an hour and this can drop even further.
As for replacing the batteries, even with older systems like lead-acid, it has ALWAYS been cheaper to maintain electrics than gas powered vehicles. Things we take for granted like regular oil changes, tune ups, timing belts etc aren't on electrics at all. On top of that, newer battery systems are projected to last the life of the vehicle. Think about the only maint. you need to do is to change your tires.
You are correct that electric cars must be powered off power plants. However, electric cars are so much more efficient that california would end up with GOBS more power if they simply redirected the gas for cars into powerplants. Currently electrics have an 85-90% efficiencey considering battery and motor loses. Gas vehicles have a 26% efficiency at best. Considering transmission losses, about 5% of electric power is lost and a similar percentage is used in the transportation of gas. Finally, the processing. Power plants typically operate on a 60% efficiency. Therefore, gas powered vehicles operate at around 20% efficiency at best while electrics are hovering around 50%. Two and a hoalf times better! Plus much of the US power is generated by hydro electric and wind, solar-termal and nuclear are starting to come back...
Over the last 10 years electric cars have been a niche market. However the current technology actually allows for wide spread use and the price tag (especially when you include power/fuel expenses) are actually comperable. With near term developments in super capcitors and batteries, the range of applications will increase, the fueling times will decrease and the cost will drop.
If it were viable right NOW there would be no need for the X-prize.
This sort of contest provide direction and potentially takes some of the sting out of development.
The hope is that by 2012 a process will become available that McDonald's, KFC and the others can perfect.
It should be very exciting!
See, your first impulse is to check for a drug / chemical reason.
If I couldn't figure out how it COULD happen I might eventually go to magic, but that is a long way away and very unlikely.
Magic can't exist because that is not what most people assume is the cause. For instance, there was a huge number of UFO sightings over air bases in the 50's. These are essentially all because Jets were just invented and they radically changed the shape, speed and general power of planes well beyond what people expected.
My question is why did people assume it was spacecraft RATHER than witchcraft? The answer is that technological societies generally assume there are technological solutions to problems.
Tell me, if you saw an animal (say horse or even pig) sprout wings and fly would you think it was magic?
You you immediately conclude that there is a mystical force outside your ability to comprehend that made that animal grow wings?
Or would you conclude that the animal was genetically engineered or that it was actually a robot of some sort or even that you imagined it?
My point is simply this, the idea that advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic ONLY applies to pre-industrial/technological societies.
This is a little sad, like losing some innocence but I suppose that is the price of society growing up...I can only hope that we are in the early-mid teen years right now and that we will "grow out" of this phase.
Personally I have no problem with the death penalty at all. If it applied to murderers, rapists, or j-walkers it makes no difference to me.
My problem with the death penalty is that it isn't PUNISHMENT and it doesn't provide reducation...the death penalty is just society giving up on someone.
What is important is to at least attempt to help the criminal and ensure that the person still helps society. While for especially heinous crimes we as a society may never be able to trust the person enough to release them, they can still provide a benefit. They can become role models on what NOT to do. They can provide insight into how criminals think and help prevent other crimes. They could even simply make license plates or the like.
However if a criminal is unable to help society than the death penalty needs to be on the table. After we have learned everything from this criminal, and then learned why we haven't learned any more THEN we can talk about the death penalty.
But the concept of death as punishment is ridiculous. If you are agnostic than you believe they don't suffer any more. If you are religious you might believe that you have sent them straight to Heaven (IE Christianity and faith in Christ regardless of your sins sends you upstairs).
The death penalty needs to be available but it needs to be exceptionally rare.
They suggest SELF-regulation...
I wonder how long this regulation will actually last before it goes back to the status quo.
I for one welcome our "new" glactic core Overloards!
The actual "waste" part of nuclear waste is pretty small. If we reprocessed all the fuel used by the entier US, the annual unusable portion would fit in a small closet.
Now an interesting thing is that if you hit atoms with neutrons they tend to turn into different atoms that tend to have shorter half-lives....
Interesting thing #2, current nuclear reactors must be sheilded against the excess neutrons they produce...
So we line fast breeder reactors with the waste and it gets converted into stuff with 50 year half lives instead of 100,000 year halflives...
You could, but you would also need a mounting system as well as an enclosure to keep dust of of it...Plus since it already has a fairly fixed focus on the existing screen you may need to remove that set up and finally, well ground kenses of any size can be extremly expensive.
If only there were a small projector device that probably would cost about the same as creating a focusing box from scratch...something that cost say about $300?
focus.....
Giving grad students unlimited computational power does NOT provide quality science.
Not true....Inside the moons orbit, especially low earth orbit to geo-sync you can use reaction-less propulsion.
Specifically if you have a tether you can feed a charge onto it and it will either get pulled in or pushed out by the earths magnetic field.
This may be useful for stabilizing portions of the tether and controlling any vibrations that develop.
My wife is an AE and her job offers are booming.
True, if you want to work on planes or rockets the options are few and very competitve but remember that AE's are used for ANYTHING that moves.
Boats, cars, bikes etc.
So, are you a ramblin' wrek too?
hey...I resemble that remark!!!!
I am almost done with my MBA (applied bio undergrad) and I plan on being the pointy-haired boss shortly!
People take a hard major to be challenged and then they are upset when it is challenging!
I wonder what the incomes of the soft majors that got all A's will look like compared to a good chemical/electrical/mechanical engineer.
We on Slashdot just learned how to use a TB of ram only yesterday!
I type as I speak and I often speak "per say" ;-)
Correct, and as the technology has improved over the last 30 years (since the last N-plant went active in the US), the initial capital costs have dropped.
Also, it is important to remember that other power plants have similar initial upfront costs.
Hydroelectric dams well exceed nuke plants. Even coal fired plants are approaching the same price as a nuclear plant.
The major issue is NOT the upfront cost but rather the societal pressure to avoid nuclear and the perceived problem of nuclear waste. The first is dropping fast and the second is solved with reprocessing.
France gets most of it's energy from nuclear and the processed waste fill one small closet a year. Plus there are also technologies that can "burn" up nuclear waste with neutron bombardment, cutting down the danger period to 50-100 years.
absolutly agree...until fossil fuels start to become scarse and the price of extracting them from the ground goes up while at the same time solar, and nuclear (Thorium maybe) power prices come down.
Eventually, probably in the next two decades it will become economically feasible to extract carbon from the air rather than the ground.