Re: Electric vehicles, was Re: hey

Sea Wasp wrote:
Catja Pafort wrote:
Sea Wasp wrote:


Well, the generation of power through fossil fuels like gas in a good
combined-cycle plant can hit around 60% efficiency. Transmission losses are roughly 7%. If the batteries you use to store the energy are lithium, you could get 99% efficiency in energy storage and extraction; with a good brushless motor at 90% efficiency, this gives
you 100%*.6*.93*.99*.9 = almost 50% (49.7%) efficiency at the motor end. If the batteries are NMH or something similar, you have an efficiency of only 66% for the battery and thus an at-the-motor efficiency of 33%.

20% overall is a good figure for typical IC engines today, so on that
front I think it's clear that the electric power wins out.

There are a lot of other issues, of course.



But if we're going into full accounting,

We're not. Or I'd have had to use the SAME "wastage" issues for batteries, since the electric power would have to include the same stuff. Electricity is mostly generated by fossil fuels -- currently, coal for over 50% -- so I'd need the mining overhead, etc.

I figure that mostly balances out for both IC and electric; when you get that far from the primary energy source it's going to get fuzzy.


As I said, there's a lot of other issues. I left out the really big one for electric, which is the expense, energy cost, and environmental cost of the batteries themselves.


One of the arguments the green friendly types pose is that if the auto industry had spent a hundred years developing electric motors, those problems would have been solved. I sort of agree on that one.

Separately, I think, service wise, that the nominal state will be a very quick charge with the battery remaining in place for the standard life of a car, which is closer to five than ten years. I think 220 miles per charge in an urban environment is reasonable, but that the competitive electric car will need to get in excess of three hundred miles per charge out on the open road.

This is a technical question designed to expose my ignorance. Where does the charge in a battery reside? I mean, would it be possible to drain the electrolyte from a wet cell battery and pour in charged fluid? If so, I could see cars having two fuel ports, both closed circuit, one of which drains old fluid out, and the other of which pumps new, charged, fluid in.

Bill
.

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