Re: Who Killed the Electric Car?

On Mon, 19 Jun 2006 06:00:23 GMT, The Ghost In The Machine
<ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 19:12:39 -0700, liberalhere wrote:

B1ackwater wrote:
On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 06:24:46 -0500, " Kurt Lochner"
<kurt_lochner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brokewater whimpered:

Harry Hope indicated this URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSBykAngDpY

Physics Harry ... just physics. Do the math.

Like you even could, past a rudimentary junior high school level..

Get back to me when you can put two and two together ...

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=7885

EV1 Vigil Ends - GM Hauls Off Last of Electric Cars

Source: EV World
[Mar 16, 2005]

SYNOPSIS: Vigilers pledge to fight on for electric car technology with
California state legislators next in their sights.

Blah, blah, blah ...

Anyone can build electric cars ... GM/Ford/DC/Honda/Toyota etc
need not be in the biz. However there are REASONS they're not
in the biz - because all-electric cars SUCK.

Battery performance is still an order of magnitude below what's
necessary to make a good general-purpose electric car - and
todays top-performing batteries are also EXPENSIVE batteries.
Toyota and Honda are selling their hybrids pretty much at cost,
as a promotional gimmick, because getting a proper profit margin
on the batteries would push the price of the cars well beyond
what consumers would pay (they'd NEVER make up the price diff
even if gasoline went to five or six bucks).

But up-front costs are only part of it.

Lithium-ion and metal-hydride batteries have a finite LIFE -
two or three years in normal service. They are packed with
toxic materials. No disposal/recycling scheme is in place.
Replacing the batteries ... well you can't go zero-profit
forever, can you. They'll COST - a lot. That's the hidden
price of a hybrid or all-electric.

Energy-density issues limit how many batteries you can put
in a car and still keep the weight in check. This puts
strict limits on performance and especially RANGE. They
don't recharge in three minutes either ... more of an
overnight thing ... so once you're used up the power you
ain't goin' anywhere for quite awhile. These problems
were the reason hybrids were created, with their full-
time gasoline-powered 'recharger' on board, plus the gas
engine dealing with most of the driving requirements.

Finally, an electric car IS polluting. All that electricity
has to come from SOMEWHERE - and it's probably a coal-burning
power plant. Electrics are no more energy efficient or clean
than their power source. It's a lot of power too, you ain't
gonna make if from an itty bitty solar panel or windmill.

Electric cars DISPLACE pollution ... ie you can keep the
downtown smelling nice while the big stink is being generated
thirty miles away. For some cities this may be a useful
tradeoff - L.A. for example where weather factors conspire to
trap pollution. If your powerplant is located somewhere else,
preferably where inversions don't trap the pollution, it's
good for L.A.. However, regular autos using alcohols for
fuel would be pretty clean too.

So, all-electrics MAY have a few niches where they're
appropriate and useful - maybe even the best. But those
niches are few. For short-range urban driving they're
just fine ... but if you want to go over hill and dale
to the NEXT town you'll run into serious problems. How
many people ONLY drive around their hometown ?

And now, since bitchin' should be accompanied by
a BETTER idea ...

I'll propose FLYWHEEL-powered cars instead. You can
store more energy per pound using flywheels plus
they're cheap, simple and contain no toxics. They
can be 're-charged' pretty quickly too, and they
will be as good the 10,000th recharge as the first.
Any worries about exploding flywheels pretty much
vanished when the 'radial fiber' design was invented.

Envision one of those wire brushes you usually see
on a bench grinder - but the 'wire' is carbon fiber.
Spins in a vaccuum. If it fails, the fibers turn to
hot dust/vapor which can be directed safely out of a
vent - loud but pretty safe, no flying chunks.

The Swedes built some city busses that used flywheels
(the less-safe kind) and by all reports they were
quite successful. The same regenerative schemes one
can use on electric cars can be used with a flywheel
powered system. Flywheels are the "better battery",
by that critical order of magnitude.

Ol turdwater, trying to play the techno-lord, offering last century's
solutions. GM and Ford refused Rosen's flywheel work twenty years ago.
That aside, the actual solution will be capacitors, not batteries or
flywheels. Go steer your electric wheelchair into the solarium, geezer,
and let the more nimble minds work the problem.

Capacitors? Are you serious?

I'll refer you to my webpage

http://home.earthlink.net/~ewill3/eer

which goes into some detail as to why a capacitor of any sort is a
ridiculous answer for transport energy storage. Briefly put, caps depend
on bond distortion (of the dielectric), batteries and chemical fuel depend
on bond breakage, but chemical fuel has the additional advantage of taking
about 3/4 of their input from the surrounding air (by weight).

I'd have to research flywheels, but since bond strength also presumably
determines metal tensile strength, I have my doubts. There's also the
gyroscope problem, although one might consider that a technical issue.

One can also look up energy density figures.

He's not gonna look it up.

Those 'super-caps' you can buy are a kind of halfway
technology, combining some characteristics of caps
and some of batteries. Even thus, they're useless
for the power demands of an automobile.

As of right now, diesel's the best we've got, unless one wants to go
nuclear. Gasoline's not far behind.

Diesel DOES deliver.

There's an alternative 'hybrid' design where the dinosaur-fuel
motor never powers the drivetrain but instead is only used to
constantly recharge the batteries. There's a hidden advantage
there. Because the engine will be operating at a constant RPM,
a fairly predictable load and won't be thumping and bumping
as you shift and drive it's possible to highly OPTIMIZE the
thing. You can use the PERFECT valve and injection timing,
design the PERFECT intakes and exhausts, and you can cut out
a lot of the WEIGHT since it doesn't encounter mechanical
abuse. These factors should squeeze far more energy out of
every drop of diesel - and that saves money AND CO2.

Downside, the electric motors and battery packs have to be
larger.

Still, check out modern flywheels. Fantastic energy-storage
potential. Looks as if the safety issues have been licked.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Who Killed the Electric Car?
    ... EV1 Vigil Ends - GM Hauls Off Last of Electric Cars ... todays top-performing batteries are also EXPENSIVE batteries. ... Electrics are no more energy efficient or clean ... Any worries about exploding flywheels pretty much ...
    (talk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Who Killed the Electric Car?
    ... EV1 Vigil Ends - GM Hauls Off Last of Electric Cars ... todays top-performing batteries are also EXPENSIVE batteries. ... Any worries about exploding flywheels pretty much ...
    (talk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Who Killed the Electric Car?
    ... EV1 Vigil Ends - GM Hauls Off Last of Electric Cars ... todays top-performing batteries are also EXPENSIVE batteries. ... Any worries about exploding flywheels pretty much ...
    (talk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Who Killed the Electric Car?
    ... EV1 Vigil Ends - GM Hauls Off Last of Electric Cars ... todays top-performing batteries are also EXPENSIVE batteries. ... Any worries about exploding flywheels pretty much ...
    (talk.politics.misc)
  • Re: Who Killed the Electric Car?
    ... EV1 Vigil Ends - GM Hauls Off Last of Electric Cars ... todays top-performing batteries are also EXPENSIVE batteries. ... Any worries about exploding flywheels pretty much ...
    (talk.politics.misc)