Ford Pulls The Plug on Electric Cars 457
Cytos writes "Apparently Ford has called it quits on their EV program Th!nk Mobility, stating "... we don't believe that this is the future of environmental transport for the mass market." Ford had purchased Think in 1990 and did a short run of advertisments in California for it's lease trial, even involving Hertz in helping out. I was really hoping to see this pan out, I guess our only hope for an EV now is the Toyota Rav4 EV." From the sound of it, most companies are looking at hybrid cars.
I don't th!nk they tried hard enough. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The Inevitability of Resource Wars (Score:1, Informative)
I don't. They were a market failure. No company is going to waste millions on a failure. There is no "vast right wing conspiracy" here, no more than normal capitialism weeding out inferior products. Mr. Ford (yes, it really is a Ford in charge again) didn't call up Bush and discuss this, I'll guarantee you.
Eventually, we're going to be at a point where we deal with electric or bio-fuel whether we like it or not. There is just not an infinte supply of petroleum.
Arguable [cornell.edu]. In fact, oil fields are not being depleted as fast as predicted, leading some geologists to conclude that they are being somehow refilled.
The hell of it is, if we were to start *now* working on getting all the kinks and problems worked out of things like bio-fuel or solar-panels with the same energy and resources that the auto industry spends on developing new models every year, when the time comes that petroleum is so rare as to inspire strife, war, and conflict, we will be far enough ahead of the curve not to be affected.
You don't think this time is now? Persian Gulf war? New Iraqi war? HELLO??!!!
However, to avoid conflict with my above points, I'll say that these current conflicts are about oil that's easy to get to. When you really have to, you'll start baking oil out of the shale rock in the Rocky Mountains.
While hybrid cars may be a step in the right direction, they're only postponing the inevitable.
The world is not ending. Get out of your bunker, and go to work already.
Re:This is good -- citations? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All I Want.. (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, this is almost impossible. You underestimate the tremendous energy density of gasoline. To move an equivalent amount of electical energy in such a short time would probably require conductors too heavy to lift, and refueling stations would require special high capacity hookups to the electrical grid.
Gasoline has an energy density of about 44 MJ/kg, and a density of 740kg/m^3. Let's assume you put 15 gallons into your tank in five minutes (which would be a pretty slow gas pump if you ask me.) That's 1.85 GJ of energy! Now, certainly not all of that energy is put to use moving the vehicle. Most of it goes to the atmosphere as heat. Let's say 20% of it does useful work. (Or, alternatively, that electric vehicles are 1/.2 or 5 times more efficient.) That means that our electric vehicle needs 370 MJ of energy for the equivalent fillup. If you want that in 5 minutes, you're looking at a rate of 1.23 MW (that's megawatts!) At 120 Volts, that would be over 10,000 amperes. Even at at 10,000 Volts, that's still 123 amperes.
It requires either extremely high current or very high voltage to move that much electrical energy that fast. Neither is practical -- that much current would be horribly inefficient unless you had a cable the diameter of your leg. The notion of very high voltages at filling stations is no better. This completely ignores the fact that the "system voltage" of the vehicle is probably around 75 - 150V, so this refilling voltage would have to get stepped down again, and you're back to the problem of how to handle 10,000 amps. And of course there's the fact that the electrical grid probably could not handle short bursts of several megawatts for every person refilling a car. How many simultaneous people are refilling their cars at any given time? And how much extra headroom does your power company have?
This is one of the classic problems of the all-electric vehicle. I don't think you'll ever see charging times reduced to less than 4 - 6 hours. And that's for specialized refilling stations. Most households just aren't wired for anywhere close to that much power. Older houses I think had 150 amp service, newer houses are built to 200 or 250 amp service, if I recall.
Re:All I Want.. (Score:3, Informative)
It requires either extremely high current or very high voltage to move that much electrical energy that fast. Neither is practical -- that much current would be horribly inefficient unless you had a cable the diameter of your leg. The notion of very high voltages at filling stations is no better.
While a true recharge in under two hours may be out of the question,
a "fill up" at a station could be as quick as changing a battery pack.
If the batteries were cheap enough, then you could have one at home charging at all times.
(Or only at night, when the rates are lower.)
The real problem is energy storage, not energy transfer.
-- this is not a
what is going on? (Score:2, Informative)
i tested drived an electric car about 4 years ago.
it went 85+ miles an hour.
it accelerated faster then any car you can buy from ford right now.
it had a range of 400 miles (300 with excessive use of radio/ac/heat)
it looked, felt, and drove, like a regular car. none of you could tell the difference from 20 feet away.
there were only 2 drawbacks at that time.
they were expensive.
they took a long time to charge.
its sad that so many of you have been fooled into thinking electric cars have to be small plastic toys or cant go faster then 55 miles an hour. go test drive one.
Re:This is good -- citations? (Score:3, Informative)
Uhh, I call foul to your claims.
I call foul on your figures first. Emission levels are here [defra.gov.uk]. The carbon emissions for a modern coal-fired plant are 263gC/kWh. You are claiming 920gC/kWh. To compare, an oil-fired plant is 213gC/kWh and a gas-fired plant is 113gC/kWh! This is one THIRD of the Mazda 626's 350gC/kWh. I expect there's a mistake in your calculations.
But the problems in your argument aren't over. You're comparing coal-fired power plants against an oil-fueled 626! Coal is a poor alternative to oil. Energy densities here [hypertextbook.com]. Coal is at best 31MJ/kg. Oil is at worst 41MJ/kg. Gasoline in your 626 is 45MJ/kg. These energy densities influence CO2 emissions. To use a tired cliche, you're comparing apples and oranges.
Also I call foul with your conclusion. You only compared CO2 emissions per kWh and then concluded that the EV1 has better mileage!? If you want to compare mileage then you need to use the same fuels in the two cars and the plant and concentrate on the miles travelled!
But let's do some napkin calculations to get a feeling for "mileage". The electrical transport cost of overhead powerlines is less than 10%. Motors are 95% efficient. The best gas-fired plants are now exceeding 50% efficiency. So the fuel->wheel efficiency is 43%. Even the most efficient diesel generators as used on hybrids are less than 40% efficient. Cars range between 25% and 35% with petrol. So the plants use fuel more efficiently and therefore have the better "mileage".
We can also do some napkin calculations for cost. Cost calculator here [gsu.edu]. A car will typically cost 3x more per kWh than the plant. This is because plants get huge economies of scale and use much cheaper fuels. Cost alone proves nothing but combined with my previous arguments it proves that purely electric vehicles - not hybrids - are the best choice.
Re:All I Want.. (Score:2, Informative)
That's the heat power you'd get if you completely burned the gasoline as it came out of the nozzle. That's a lot!
But for a more reasonable comparison we should multiply 20MW by the average efficiency of a car engine, say 15%. That gives us 3 MW, still a lot. (EV efficiencies are much higher; 70-85% is typical, and that's dominated by the battery since motors and inverters are so efficient).
So it's clear that EVs will never have charge times that approach the refueling times for gasoline cars, unless the batteries are physically swapped.
But is this really a problem? My EV1 spends most of its time parked in one of two places: my driveway, and the parking garage at work. I can charge in either place, and I have plenty of time to do it. So as long as I can get through a typical day's driving on two charges (one overnight at home and another during the day at work), I really don't have a problem.
Actually, I hardly ever charge at home anymore. And the electricity at work is free.
As an EV1 driver for the past four years, I will say that charging speed is the biggest drawback of the current generation of EVs. (In fact, it's the only drawback even worth mentioning.) I would very much like to see charging powers increased from the present 4-6kW range to perhaps 15-20kW, which can still be managed in most homes. But given the considerable convenience of being able to charge at home or at work without ever having to go to visit a gas station, there's just no compelling need for charging speeds comparable to those of gasoline cars, at least for cars used for routine commuting and shopping.
For long road trips, use a gasoline car. But for everyday driving, EVs are already entirely practical.
Re:idiotic argument (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, please, read a little bit about large scale solar energy before opining.
no 'friendly' energy. Just energy sources that are less destructive than others.
Nonsense. Energy sources do not have to be "destructive"--they can be sustainable and have a small, one-time impact on the environment.
"plant based fuels" means chemicals in the ground a la the mass argriculture we currently practice in growing food
Absolutely not. Unlike showy supermarket fruits, most plants grow without fertilizers or pesticides, and many plants are suitable for making fuel.
How exactly do you plan to recycle inert chemicals into useful batteries for the next generation of equipment?
Oh, come on, that's elementary chemistry. For example, for lead-acid batteries, you recover the remaining solid lead and melt it down. You recover the various lead compounds from the acid and reduce them back to metallic lead. And the acid itself, free of heavy metals, can be neutralized and the resulting salt disposed of harmlessly. The process doesn't even require much energy. Other batteries can be recycled similarly.
Re:All I Want.. (Score:2, Informative)
The second is to have recharge points at any given parking space-where it is incorporated in parking charges should you use it. It would probably work out cheaper for companies to supply these than deal with petrol expense forms/claims anyway and much fewer tax oddities.
The third is having a built-in unit that acts like the secondary coil of a transformer, with the roads having an EM grid underneath them. The car on the road would be constantly charged from a field. Using superconductive materials- this could be HIGHLY efficient. I recharging by coil induction. This would mean that 90% of the time- the car may be running directly of grid, and only using batteries where there was no grid yet.
The 4th is the h2 fuel cell which is fairly well known-so I wont discuss this further.
The 5th is the attempt at using a flywheel for powering these- although I dont beleive it was entirely succesful- but suspending it with magnetic bearings, then engaging it when power was required. Charging would involving spinning up the flywheel.
I think the real problem here is that attitudes,politics and economies need to change before we would see people using EV's or alternative fuels. Until then-we can only speculate where it could lead us. I still feel the research done on this has been in no way conclusive-and although money has been spent on it- you can guarantee a great deal more was spent on the bodywork and ad campaign for the new mundano.