GM Pulls Plug on Electric Car 674
davebo writes "General Motors' EV1, the all-electric dynamo of a car, has been pulled from the market. You can read the letter GM sent out to current EV1 drivers here. When the EV1 came out, the chairman of GM said it would
"define the GM of the future". Guess he'd like to take that back now . . ." With Ford also cancelling their electric vehicle program, looks like hybrids are it for the next few years.
Makes sense... (Score:4, Funny)
So what he's saying is the future of GM is to pull out of the market
Jason
ProfQuotes [profquotes.com]
Re:Makes sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll notice that the EV1 and other first generation automotive technologies like the first hybrids are almost always small, ugly, and generally impractical (but very expensive) vehicles with very little appeal to the masses. These vehicles are purposely marketed to appeal ONLY to the early adoptors (usually geeks and hobbyist types with relatively large disposable incomes).
These clunky vehicles are simply beta versions and their drivers are simply beta testers that are being used to work out the bugs prior to the first release. The automakers never expect to make a cent off these individual cars and programs, but set the prices sufficiently high (and limit the features) to scare off the average joe and to recoup a (minor) percentage of their R&D costs.
Limiting the availability of these beta units to a small group of enthusiasts allows automakers to understand the technical and (perhaps more importantly) the behavioral issues associated with the various innovations WITHOUT turning off the mass market due to the known and expected bugs and limitations. Removing these products from the market is the same as removing support for a beta program once the real deal has been released. Cost and liability may be factors, but the real issue is removing the association of electric/hybrid/fuel-cell vehicle with some sort of early generation and experimental toy.
Many of the lessons learned from the introduction and road-testing of the EV1 have led and will continue to lead into the eventual (hopefully) mass marketing of more promising technologies such as hybrid vehicles and fuel cells. While it is a total shame that GM is treating their EV1 innovators the way they are, this probably has much more to do with very poor PR and Legal advice than a reflection of their commitment to alternative energy.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:3, Informative)
They could create REAL cars and run a sensible beta program with a handpicked collection of customers.
Detroit just has no interest in innovation. Like another company that need not be named, GM will only do the barest minimum that it can squeak by on. It will only do serious R&D at gunpoint.
Someone made California put it's shotgun down.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Talk about Stale News...... (Score:3, Informative)
electric (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:electric (Score:5, Insightful)
That is if your electricity power plant is using fossils fuels. Look a little bit further (or back, a couple of days ago on
Re:electric (Score:5, Interesting)
After looking at the article a bit, it's very interesting to note that the main reason the car was being discontinued was not sales nor popularity issues, but rather CHARGING issues! Apparently CARB (California's nazi regime of pollution control) mandated a new charger system that basically requires a redesign of the EV1 in order to be compatible. Hopefully with these new standards now set, we'll see electric cars back on the market soo.
To explain the charger problem, CARB mandated a conductive charger, or one that uses a direct electrical connection to the charging system. Many vehicles, including the EV1, currently use the Inductive charging system, which utilizes no electrical contact (for safety reasons) between the charger and the vehicle, but rather a inductive magnetic coupling. There is no cheap way to convert between the two systems, hence the discontinuing of the EV1.
Re:electric (Score:5, Informative)
A sizeable portion from renewable energy?
If you're in the US, that's about 6% [doe.gov].
The UK sits at an embarrassing 2.3% [doe.gov].
If you're in Canada, then it's a much more respectable 60% [doe.gov] - gotta love that Hydropower.
Unless you're in Canada, I don't think it's fair to say that a healthy chunk of your electrical power is from clean sources. Not yet, anyway.
Re:electric (Score:4, Interesting)
Canada gets away with a higher ratio of "clean" to dirty power because their power requirements are so much lower. New York City uses as much power as the entire country of Canada. A lot of programs that work in Canada do so because of the small population size and pattern of distrubution.
Re:electric (Score:4, Informative)
Re:electric (Score:5, Informative)
The latest data I could find on Canda's population is from the 1996 Canadian Census listing which states that there are 28,846,761 people living in the country. I belive current estimates put Canada at 31 million and the US at 270 million. My remark about population size and distribution and implementing "programs" (whether it be power distribution or internet) still holds. Most of the population is clustered around major cities (as with most countries, the US included) and the smaller sized population allows large public works to be slightly more effective at reaching the majority of the population. That's an oversimplification of course as there are political and social factors as well, but the population size and distribution does play a major role.
NYC consumes a lot more power than you might think, but yeah, I was making a gross exaggeration and being abnoxiously sarcastic. My apologies both for not making that clear and for any percieved insult.
In the interest of clearing the air here are the actual stats for the relevant areas. I can't find the numbers for the city itself, but New York State consumes approximately 4.28 trillion BTUs (1.26 billion kWh unless I totally screwed the conversion up) of power a year (according to 1999 DOE data) and Canda consumes 551 billion kWh per year (according to 1998 data). The US as a whole consumes 3.36 trillion kWh. So yeah, slight exaggeration.
Then again so was your estimation of the size of Toronto.
According to the City of Toronto's facts guide [toronto.on.ca], the city has a population of 2.48 million people. What it is has that is big is government. The same site boasts that Tornoto has, "5th largest municipal government in North America."
Here is the top 10 (including Mexico) in North America:
Pouplation (in millions)
1.) New York USA 20.2
2.) Mexico City Mexico 19.8
3.) Los Angeles USA 16.2
4.) Chicago USA 8.9
5.) Washington D.C. USA 7.5
6.) San Francisco USA 6.9
7.) Philidelphia USA 6.1
8.) Boston USA 5.7
9.) Detroit USA 5.4
10.)Dallas USA 5.1
And for the sake of completeness the world:
1.) Tokyo, Japan 28
2.) New York City, United States 20.1
3.) Mexico City, Mexico 19.8
4.) Bombay, India 18
5.) Sao Paulo, Brazil 17.7
6.) Los Angeles, United States 16.2
7.) Shanghai, China 14.2
8.) Lagos, Nigeria 13.5
9.) Calcutta, India 12.9
10.) Buenos Aires, Argentina 12.5
Re:electric (Score:3, Informative)
When all is said and done about 1000 watts of sunlight falls on a square meter of ground under optimal conditions. Since sunlight at most will only fall for 12 hours of the day and in the morning and evening the amount of sunlight hitting a PV panel is reduced a general rule of thumb for PV panels is to figure over the count of 12 hours the average output of a PV panel will be 42% of its maximum output. PV panels are pretty wasteful devices and for your average panel under great conditions you have to assume about 13% efficiency, 130 watts of 1000 per square meter. So if we work this out (.42 x 12 hours x 130W/m^2) we end up with 655W per day per square meter. We need to remember this number, it will be important later I believe.
The EV1's standard battery compliment is a 18.7kWh valve regulated lead acid battery assembly. The EV1 will go about 130 miles at 45mph on a single charge. In order for your PV setup to generate enough power to recharge your EV1 once a day you'll need 28.55 square meters of PV paneling plus inverters and batteries to store the power while your EV1 charges at night. Check out the pricing, a 12kW system even after California's $4/W rebate costs you over thirty six thousand dollars ($36,000+). Adding the cost of a 6kW and 12kW system to recharge your EV1 you're out more than $54,000 up front. Oh yeah, the EV1 costs $34,000 for the base model. That is $88,000 in expenses.
If you distribute that cost over 20 years at 130 miles a day it comes to 949,000 miles. Over 20 years that is $.09 per mile. Over 30 years (the absolute maximum lifetime of your PV panels and probably far beyond the life of your EV1), you get 1,423,500 miles at $.06 per mile.
Say you get a diesel car like a TDI Jetta and get say 50mpg out of it and you buy all your fuel up front (to make it fair). We'll put Diesel prices at $1.54 per gallon (the average price in the US as of Feb 4 2003). That is $.03 per mile.
In the end you see solar-electric is FAR more expensive in both the long term and short term. I intentionally leave out the cost of maintenance and other mid term costs. Neither the EV1 or the TDI Jetta is going to run for a million and a half miles without a metric assload of repairs and tuning. You still end up with a Diesel car costing a third as much over 20 years and half as much over 30 years. The solar-electric option has a lower long term ecological impact as the ecological cost of the PV and car construction is a one time thing where driving a Diesel is a continuous polluting process. Then again with batter replacements for the EV1 you're looking at some serious environmental impact. With the Jetta you can stick some new high tech catalytic converters on it and have emissions that are cleaner than the surrounding air in some cities.
If you need the self satisfaction of owning a PV system and an electric car and have almost ninety grand to plop down then your idea has merit. For the rest of the country and ostensibly world reality is a harsh mistress. Solar electric is still inefficient and expensive, far too much of both to gain truly wide acceptance in the near term.
Re:electric (Score:2)
Fact is, central power generation is only "cleaner" if the source is truly renewable - and even there, I can only think of wind as a good example of appropriate clean power generation. I'd like to see a convincing argument that it's more efficient to mass a bunch of solar cells in a single location rather than, say, making roofs out of the stuff. Yes, solar cells are expensive now, but that seems to be more a matter of will, or rather the lack thereof. (As an interesting aside, I am led to understand that the large solar plant near Barstow, California, sometimes produces a bizarre reflection in the sky, making it appear that there are two suns. Does anyone have information on this?)
I'm not saying I prefer coal or (gag) nookleyear, but hydro is definately down on my list of preferences for power generation. IMHO, the best solutions are almost always local, adapting to climate, terrain, and resources.
Re:electric (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a BS argument, essentially.
Re:electric (Score:5, Informative)
Some points:
#1. The EV-1 program has been dead for several years. To my knowledge, no new units have been leased (they lease, never sell) to consumers, and they've been steadily retiring their entire EV-1 fleet as they come off lease (scrapping them, as it were.) At the present time, the only major auto manufacturer to EVER sell EVs to the general public is Toyota (the RAV4EV, at over $40k, only in California.)
#2. The inductive MagnaCharger design was very expensive, proprietary, inefficient, and was forced upon the EV industry by GM at the time (about 5-6 years ago) as a defacto method of charging. Unfortunately, GM was really the only one who used it - there were several variants, including a mini-magnacharger used by Honda (or was it Ford?), but all this did was require that the free public charging spaces had to accomodate two different charging standards, so two spaces that could have two cars with two chargers could only support one of each type.
Even worse, inductive charging as a standard was viewed as an attempt at using regulations to destroy the hobbyist EV market, which used standard 3-pronged conductive chargers (plug into your wall type). By cornering and enforcing their standard, GM attempted to make their EV model the only legal one. Yes, it was possible for hobbyists to purchase magnacharger equipment (in fact, there were converters you could buy that would convert a magnacharger paddle into a 3-prong conductive for your conventional charger), all it did was add cost.
Although GM had practical saftey reasons for advocating inductive charging, the fact that they had patents on everything relating to the magnacharger design probably factored into the decision.
So, in conclusion, GM will probably NOT bring back the EV-1, except as a demonstration unit. They're scrapping every EV-1 they can get their hands on, probably to claim the depreciation for their taxes. Note, that there's nothing to prevent an EV-1 driver from carrying around an adapter unit to convert from a CARB-conductive to a Magnacharger (as leasees of the EV-1 had in their garages, in a bigger form), but I doubt that GM will ever produce one now...
All true, excellent points, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending GM. They were definately trying to make sure they got a piece of every bit of electric car action via their inductive charging patents and such. And there's nothing wrong with a normal household power cord if you have all night to charge the car. But for those quick charge stations in public parking lots, inductive charging was really the only way to go.
Re:electric (Score:4, Informative)
I recommend you also take a look at the book _The Hydrogen Economy_. Rewiew at http://www.thekewfiles.net/BookReviews/Hydrogen_E
- Serge Wroclawski
Re:electric (Score:2)
Re:electric (Score:5, Informative)
"Supporters of electric vehicles say that they are environmentally friendly in every sense. Opponents say that EVs are `net polluters' - in that more CO2 and other undesirable emissions are given off by the power station chimney than if the fuel were burnt in the car engine.
We have used the data derived from our own Ford Fiesta fitted with Lynch electric motors and running in average London traffic to try to illuminate this debate with facts rather than assertions, as seems to be commonly the case at present.
The Ford Fiesta has 7.5 kilowatt hours (Units) of usable electrical energy in its 300 Kg lead-acid battery pack, which gives it a range of over 50 miles (81 Km) when driven in London traffic - that is, 10.8 Km per KWhr (units of electric power).
A carefully researched paper by Jean Delsey* for the 1992 OECD Conference on electric vehicles, using automobile and electricity industry figures, gives the following emissions for petrol cars, in grams per Km under urban conditions, and for power stations (fuels averaged, excluding nuclear power) in grams per KWhr (Unit) generated:
CO2 Oil CO HC Nox Partics
Petrol 144 54 3.9-5.1 0.5 0.2-0.3 0
Power stn. 928 290 0.03 0.03 2.6 0.15-0.45
Dividing the lower figures by 10.8 times 0.75 to correspond to the energy used by the Fiesta per Km run (allowing only 75% for charger efficiency) gives comparable figures for the electric and petrol cars:
CO2 Oil CO HC Nox Partics
Elec. Fiesta 114 36 0.004 0.004 0.32 0.02-0.06
So it seems that, even running on conventionally-generated power, a typical electric car creates only 77% of the CO2 of a petrol car. If the electricity were generated by Combined Heat and Power (CHP) or renewables (solar or wind power) the improvement would be even greater.
These figures are remarkable and we invite others to verify or disprove them.
Jean Delsey,` Environmental comparison of electric, hybrid and advanced heat engine vehicles', INRETS, 109 Av Salvador Allende, 69500 BRON, France, 1992"
And the advantages of an electric car are more than just being a "greenie." An electric car has far less maintenance issues than the Rube Goldberg contraption that is the standard ICE. Your overall cost of ownership on an electric car is far less than that of a typical 90's era ICE vehicle. As the automakers slowly add improvements to modern vehicles in terms of durability this gap is closing, but it does still exist.
The mechanical difference is mainly that a standard ICE vehicle contains hundreds of moving parts large and small. Most of which require constant lubrication and routine maintenance. An electric vehicle has perhaps a dozen moving parts and regular maintenance is required on only a few of these (brakes, wheels, steering).
Then there are the fun factors of EVs. An electric vehicle generally has all of its power and torque available instantaneously at any RPM. So long as you can deliver enough power to the motor an electric motor the car will move. And electrics don't have to worry about stalling and the like. Its one of the reasons you can burn rubber (see the National Electric Drag Racing Association [nedra.com] ) from a standstill in many an electric car in third or fourth gear as easily as 1st.
And if you think electric cars can't be attractive sporty vehicles you need to checkout cars like the A/C powered T-Zero. Maybe watching it smoke a Corvette [acpropulsion.com] or fly down the drag strip [acpropulsion.com] would help convince you?
Or perhaps it's the cost of electric vehicles that is off putting? Take a gander at the various conversions [austinev.org] of ICE vehicles done both professionally and by enthusiasts.
Electric cars aren't dead by a long shot.
Proud member of the Austin Electric Auto Association [austinev.org]
Re:electric (Score:2, Interesting)
Fact: more pollutants are created and released during a car's manufacture than it could possibly release during its lifetime. Therefore, your best option is to keep running that banger into the ground, no matter how polluting it seems to be.
But logic never really has any place in these arguments, does it?
Re:electric (Score:3, Interesting)
You will also find that most electric conversions are being done on older automobile chassis like 70's era Porsches and 80's era Fieroes.
But if you don't have any car, and are going to purchase one, is it wiser to get a moderately high polluting new ICE vehicle, a heavy polluting 70's or 80's era beater, or a low (if your energy is mostly traditionally produced) to zero emissions electric vehicle?
As to that old beater...how exactly are you going to keep it running for 20-30 years? By swapping out lubricants (production of which cause pollution, disposal of which is pollution) and replacing parts as they fail. Parts which are produced by the same polluting processes you mentioned previously. Over the course of even the "normal" lifespan of a car you will go through enough components to be able to build one or more additional vehicles if you really wanted to.
Do we produce too many cars in this country? Yes.
Should you keep your car as long as possible? Yes, it makes economic sense at the very least.
Does the polluting costs of building any car have any place in this discussion regarding the differences and merits of ICE and electric vehicles? No.
If you have something that is actually germane to the discussion at hand that you would like to express, please feel free.
heaters and one size fits all and some side issues (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there's room in the market, and uses for, a variety of vehicles, advanced ICE, hybrids, and pure electric. There's no real one size fits all category for transportation, humans just got too much imagination, we all like doing different things, in different areas, for different reasons. I have 5 vehicles, all old, basically any of them would be considered beaters. One has over 300 thou miles, original engine and tranny. That's my chevy van from 75, still runs well, rarely drive it, only when I need to haul very large "stuff". Got an RV, that hardly ever gets used because we live in it but it's a vehicle and when it DOES have to move it has a v-8 because it needs it. Got a little tiny old car with 1.5 liter motor and a 5 speed, a 4 banger, that gets used some but not much, because the last little car we had basically self destructed within one year of driving it a lot up here, just got beat to snot but it got good mileage, which all the benefits of that mileage disappeared as a perfectly good car we used to use a lot in the city turned into junk and had to be literally scrapped. Got a moped, which was fun as heck when I used to drive it all the time, then we moved out to where it's real hilly as opposed to the area where I first bought it back to the big city, it's useless, won't go up the hills but it got close to 200 mpg when I ran it a lot. That leaves the jeep, what we drive the most here because it is far and away the most practical. Call a jeep the original SUV
Now if they made a vehicle that was built like the transformers and would morph and do all that stuff I need a vehicle for, and still get good mileage, I'd buy one. Until then, sorta stuck with different types of vehicles. That could be a radical new business model for vehicle manufacturers, either a transofrmer arrangement, or make vehicle practical to be re built right back at the factory, make drivetrains and bodies much easier to change so people could bring in their vehicles for an "upgrade" rather than a full replacement. Works for computers and components, you start with a case. Say like you own "the frame". Depending on where you live or what you do it could be changed radically but easily. Swap econobox style for a pickup style, or minivan style, or whatever. Swap low clearance for higher. Swap drive trains from lightweight tall geared to heavier dutier and lower geared, etc, etc, etc.
Different strokes.
another total aside, just an observation
One thing I've noticed on slashdot. Many arguments are seen about slashdot being US centric versus euro centric or whatever. That ain't what I see,not even close, I see URBAN centric posts all the time. I would bet well over 90% or more of the readers and posters here live in urban or suburban "urban lite" areas. I think it skews perspective a lot, one reason why we have so many rural ethnic cleansing laws on the books now, the big differences that people build up in their minds over perceptions of reality as opposed to "real" reality. Frankly speaking, I'm almost at the point I consider city people to be "the enemy", it's like their goal is to make it impossible to live rural,make a living, do anything. total out to lumch views on where "stuff' really comes from. You copuld have all mass transit-whoops, you really need to "mine" and get steel and etc. People like to sit in "furniture", whoops, need to do this e-vile thing called "logging" to get wood. order that pizza delivered, whoops, need this "farm" deal to "make food". Want to take a shower at least once a quarter, whoops, need this "water" stuff that starts in the sticks and gets pumped into the city in these big steel pipes, back to mining again. So the US model seems to be make everyhting that is required for modern life illegal, but somehow we are all supposed to have all this "stuff". and it's by law, and primarily by the insistence of city people. Living both places about 1/2 and 1/2, I'll call city folks mostly nuts when it comes to practicality, heh heh heh. I wish I could reduce their skewed vote, or make it irrelevant to where I live. Maybe bring back the vote to land owners over one acre, anyone else only gets a fraction of a vote.
Ya, I'm kinda joking but really, kinda not joking,too.
Battery Technology is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
To make matters worse, batteries are made from quite toxic materials.
To add to a bad situation, the batteries degrade quite rapidly.. how many times have you had to change your car battery? We have a helluva problem right now just dealing with spent batteries. Now imagine we multiplied this problem many times over with spent car propulsion batteries.
There is much hope in the hybrid, as the energy of fossil fuel can be converted to electricity much more efficiently if we build specialized generators. Maybe based on Microturbines [microturbine.com].
Much research is going on to use ultracapacitors [powerpulse.net] as a cache for energy to provide sufficient boost energy for decent acceleration, as well as being able to recover that kinetic energy upon deceleration. ( I still want to say "braking", but that implies brake shoes - i.e. frictional - and what we want is to recover the energy by using the drive motor as a generator - not waste the kinetic energy as heat. ).
I think they have seen the laws of physics just are not going to support a car running from battery alone just as we can not practically make a computer run from cache RAM alone. So, they are doing what any sane company should do, quit throwing good money after bad, call it a day, and proceed from lessons learned.
Re:Battery Technology is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
EV batteries are typically much better than standard car batteries. They're made to handle the increased demand. Also they are almost fully recyclable.
EV's are much cheaper to run than a hybrid. You don't have near the mechanical complexity so the vehicle breaks less and is cheaper to fix. Also you can generate your own electricity which makes them nearly free to run. With the ever growing cost of gasoline and the ever shrinking supply of gasoline the freedom you get from an EV is huge.
There is no reason you can't store an electrical charge at the density of power you get from fuel. It's just that nobody has bothered to make it practical. Car makers typically also own stock in oil companies so they have no motivation to make EV's.
I like hybrid cars to but there is certainly a place for EV's.
Re:Battery Technology is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
huh? Common lead acid batteries are the most recycled product in the United States. Nearly 98% of the batteries sold are returned often for a deposit. Returned batteries can be completely recycled (the plastic case is often discarded, but the active lead and electrolyte is recovered). While lead is a toxic heavy metal which should not be disposed of improperly, it is hardly the worse once out there.
Alternative batteries used for electric vehicles is Nickel Metal Hydrid NiMH, and Lithium Ion. Both of which can be safety disposed of in a landfill, or recycled. The only really toxic battery tech is nickel cadmium, which is being phased out worldwide.
Much research is going on to use ultracapicators
The EV community is following ultra caps closely, but so far they have had either Poor energy density, or restricted charge discharge cycles worse than batteries. The military is heavily funding ultracap research for railguns and the like so I expect to see results within 10 years or so..
I think they have seen the laws of physics
Physics have nothing to do with it. The energy densities require to built a 400 mile electric vehicle are theoretically possible. Building said batteries affordably is hard. However, lithium ion still shows the most promise, as it did for notebook computers. My electric Ranger could be powered off a 400lbs lithium pack, and get 250 miles to a charge, while costing half as much per mile to run as a gas car.
Re:Battery Technology is not the problem (Score:4, Informative)
No, not really.
"The problem is we flat do not have the battery technology to store anywhere near the energy density of fossil fuel."
This correct. However, this is especially an issue with the "old style" lead based batteries, which are ungodly heavy. Other chemistries have far better power/weight ratios than that (albeit currently never as good as fossil fuel).
"To make matters worse, batteries are made from quite toxic materials."
Mainly the lead batteries and those which contain cadmium. Lead is toxic when released into the environment, cadmium more so. But lead doesn't kill you when you touch it. Other battery types use chemistries which are either entirely non-toxic (lithium comes to mind), or at least much less (like NiZn based batteries) so than the cadmium stuff, which is the worst. I find it also difficult to judge, considering that most batteries are usually made from chemistries which can be very easily recycled, which is more environmentally unfriendly in a crash situation: a broken batterie (preferrably with non-liquid electrolyte) which simpley lies there, ready to be picked up - or 10 gallons of fuel and another gallon of oil poisoning the water.
"To add to a bad situation, the batteries degrade quite rapidly.. how many times have you had to change your car battery? We have a helluva problem right now just dealing with spent batteries. Now imagine we multiplied this problem many times over with spent car propulsion batteries."
There is the question: what is meant by "rapidly"? Cheap starter batteries may have only 30-150 deep discharge cycles, that is true. However, this cannot be applied to other battery technologies. Even the first generation of the new NiZn batteries is good for about 500 cycles (in a car maybe 2 years of usage - much less maintenance than the "typical" inspection intervals for ICE engines). Other technologies may go up to 2000 cycles and more. Since those types of batteries are - as mentioned - recyclable, the real issue here is cost.
"There is much hope in the hybrid, as the energy of fossil fuel can be converted to electricity much more efficiently if we build specialized generators. Maybe based on Microturbines [microturbine.com]."
I belive Hybrids are just a political solution, nut a real one. They lower overall fuel consumption of the car somewhat, but face it: a low consuption high-tech diesel engine (like a Volkswagen Lupo 3L) today actually consumes less fuel than most Hybrids available now (such as the Toyota Prius). The proposed "generate power on board" hybrids do nothing, IMHO, than to combine the worst of both technologies.
"Much research is going on to use ultracapacitors [powerpulse.net] as a cache for energy to provide sufficient boost energy for decent acceleration, as well as being able to recover that kinetic energy upon deceleration. ( I still want to say "braking", but that implies brake shoes - i.e. frictional - and what we want is to recover the energy by using the drive motor as a generator - not waste the kinetic energy as heat. )."
I do not really believe in the ultracapacitor concept. I'd consider it dangerous in case of a crash, also, the current (as in amperage)requirements as relating to time of accelerating an electric vehicle seem to be outside of the expected operating envelope of these things. A simple high-quality lead buffer battery of standard starter battery form factor, such as the Hawker Ice-Pack, can deliver up to 1000 A for several seconds. For capacitors we are very far away from that - at least at manageable volume/cost points.
As to "braking" - all electric vehicle controllers today (from wheelchairs over golf cars to electric vehicles of all kinds) use that technique to recharge the batteries during deceleration or when going downhill.
"I think they have seen the laws of physics just are not going to support a car running from battery alone just as we can not practically make a computer run from cache RAM alone. So, they are doing what any sane company should do, quit throwing good money after bad, call it a day, and proceed from lessons learned."
You are wrong here, methinks. I suggest to look up on NaS battery technologies, or, for currently available types on NiZn. Also, If we look at eg. Li types, the main issues is again cost, not laws of physics. We'll probably would have to look at combined solutions, e.g. LiIon pack for high energy density, thus long range cruising, combined with NiZn (or somesuch) as acceleration buffer.
Also, a lot of the possible battery technologies are still in infancy: e.g. the already mentioned NiZn. Overall, the nickel-zinc battery chemistry has a theoretical specific energy of 334 Watt-hours per kilogram (above even Lithium). Practical first generation batteries deliver up to 70 Wh/kg (about what you'd get from NiCd, but less expensive - and app. 50% weight savings as compared to lead). The weight savings of a more fully developed 2nd or 3rd generation NiZn compared to the currend lead crap could be about 70% to 80%.
Regards,
scotchco
Re:electric (Score:5, Informative)
Notice you don't see any of it driving around the streets?
Electric cars, per se, aren't silly. You know what's silly? Using reciprocating piston gasoline engines to drive a car. That's just plain daft.
They don't generate any torque to speak of when you need it, so you have to have all these gear thingies. You can't stop them and start them again convientiently while you're driving. You can't feed back energy into the system from your braking. They've got a godzillion little bits to wear out that are ridiculously expensive to replace. Their fuel is toxic and volatile, not to mention in possibly very limited supply in the long run. I could go on, and on.
They really do stink, figuratively and literally.
Electric motors, on the other hand, can start and stop at will. They're clean, both physically and in operation. They're bloody fast, having maximum torque at the lowest rpms, right where you need it. They have *one* moving part and two bearings and last damned near forever. They're quiet.
I could go on and on about the merits of the electric motor as well.
So why don't you see my brilliant old work running about the streets around you?
The *fuel* for a gasoline motor is convienient and cheap in use.
The "fuel" for an electric motor is problematic at best. Where do you put it? How do you get it there? Batteries suck and power cords don't have infinite length.
So, the question is, the right motor with impractical fuel, or the wrong motor with convienient fuel?
Guess which one won?
Well, I ain't designed any electric cars since the 70's, if you need a hint with the answer.
(Well, not strictly true. I do R/C's)
Electrics still actually make sense for 30 mph city runabouts that are never going to be driven more than 10 miles a day.
For everything else, gas still rules, because gas fuels.
KFG
Overall Efficiency of an EV vs ICV (Score:3, Informative)
Oil Well 97% -> Refinery 90% -> Transportation and Distribution 97% -> Engine 14.4% -> Transmission 85% -> Wheels
Coal mine 97% -> Electric Plant 36% -> Transmission 92% -> Charger 90% -> Battery 75% -> Controller and Motor 90% -> Transmission 85% -> Wheels
And that gives your roughly a total efficiency of 10.3% for the internal combustion engine vehicle and 16.6% for the electric engine vehicle. Now of course this is ignoring hybrid vehicles, natural gas powerplants, the whims of the Gods, the miracle fuel that was stolen from the Incas and only revealed to me after 5 years of wearing my aluminum beanie, and the real reason the Smurfs was pulled from the air.
But what it comes down to is, under my understanding, when you plop down an average gas powered car next to an average electric one (there isn't such a thing yet is there?) then your electric one is going to produce less pollution overall due to total energy consumed from start to finish.
Re:electric (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, fossil fuel power plants can use a lot of technology for getting rid of emissions that are impractical for cars (including things like injecting CO2 into the ground). Second, there are zero-emission power plants, including solar plants.
But, perhaps most importantly, one of the main purposes of electric cars is not to reduce total emissions, but to get emissions away from city centers. Not quite as noble as saving the environment, but still very important.
Re:Wrong (Score:2)
With *any* car, if you assumed no friction all you would ever pay for were you accelerations anyway, which would give you a godzillion miles to the gallon with a conventional gasoline engine.
I advise never assuming any such thing.
At least not unless your name is "Veeger" or something.
"Young lady, in this house we will OBEY the sec. . . " Ah, you know the rest.
KFG
Re:Perfect Car (Score:5, Informative)
And asssuming an electrical system which is twice as good as the theoretical best case.
My university [dur.ac.uk] engineering department were doing some work on a hybrid car [dur.ac.uk].
It was their experience that a pure electric car is very inefficient; for example it's not good at low-speed acceleration. But a combination electric/chemical power system with an intelligent control system allows you to reach very high effiency levels.
The car does indeed use retarders to recharge its batteries when braking, but the majority of battery charging comes from other sources. Besides, retarders radically drop in efficiency as speed falls, so they still have conventional brakes as well.
Re:Perfect Car (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, these guys must be pretty dumb then. If an electric motor is good at anything, it is acceleration. An electric motor has its highest torque at zero rpm. Do a Google search for electric dragsters and you'll find some neat stuff, e.g. like this [nedra.com].
Re:Perfect Car (Score:3, Informative)
Your thinking power
P=power
T=torque
r=moment arm
F= Force
w=angular velocity
T=Fr
P=Tw
If I grab hold of a lever and pull on it and it doesn't move I'm appling a force to it, and the lever has a lenght, this would be it's radius from it's pivot point, or mount. I'm not moving it but I am causing a torque about it. Now when I start moving it, and it revolves around it's pivot i'm still applying the torque as before, but now I have an angular velocity. Now there is an amount of power I am applying.
In theroy Electric motors can put out full torque at zero rpm. If I put a arm off the end of the motor and had it hitting a block, if the block required 500N of force to move it, but the motor only could produce 499Nm of torque and the arm was 1 meter long it would not move the block, but it would still be at full torque.
Now in reality do to efficencies and stuff motors don't always have so much torque at zero rpm, but the do still have massive amounts of low end torqu at very low speeds. This is why EV's can accel. so fast. Also one of the reasons electric motors are nice in machine apllications.
Did they expect different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic cars - even ones you have to plug in every few hundred miles - may have their day, someday. But not yet. Not while oil is so cheap. Cost of gas + Convenience of being about to fuel up anywhere at any time = Lower cost, for most people, all things considered (remember, price is but one factor) than driving an electric car.
I want to know why only 1000 were made. They spent a billion on a program and only sent it out to a wishlist? Or did they withhold it from the market because the infrastructure didn't exist?
When the time is right, both the cars and the infrastructure will change as needed. The time is not right.
Re:Did they expect different? (Score:2)
Re:Did they expect different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, compared to electricity, oil's very expensive indeed. It's a shame this has been abandoned, because electricity generation benefits from both obvious economies of scale, and the fact that there are fewer generators than cars. If all cars became electric cars, you'd only have to upgrade the (relatively few) power stations to improve efficiency every time you found a better way of generating, rather than trying to persuade everyone in the population to change their car(s)!
But only the efficiency... (Score:4, Insightful)
While some of our energy comes from other sources (coal, nuclear, hydropower, etc.), the variable sources of energy are oil based. The reason we can't get alternative energy is because oil is SO cheap and plentiful. Sure, the current "cheap oil" will run out in 20 years (it will ALWAYS run out in 20 years, that's how you extract oil), the newer technology expands the amount of oil that we can get cheaply.
Now, oil power plants can/should be more efficient ways to get energy from oil than cars are... however the amount of increase is the problem. Are power plants 20% more efficient? 50% more efficient? 100% more efficient? What about getting the power from point A to point B?
Your point about upgrading missing something. Power plants are operated for a LONG time. Taking one down for an upgrade is expensive and reduces power output... you can't do it unless there is a lot of spare electricity. And given the desire to not build extra plants, there isn't a lot of spare. As a result, plants are upgraded less frequently that you'd desire.
Cars on the other hand, are in service for between 10 and 20 years (sure exceptions on each side, but I'd say that the average car is probably in use for 10-12 years). This is a guess, maybe I'm over/underestimating how long cars are used. However, that process of replacing cars frequently means that they ARE upgraded regularly. Once you have a new way of converting gasoline to energy (say, reducing gas use by 20%), within 3 years, a LOT of cars have that in place, and within 5 years, at least half of the cars on the road have it.
Compare that to power plants, where you need a massive change to take them down, and new ones aren't that common.
Will a power plant shut down for 6 months for a 5% increase in efficiency? Will all new GM owners get the new generation capacity if it happens to be in the hood of their car when they buy it?
Alex
Re:Did they expect different? (Score:4, Interesting)
It ran on car batteries, and he used the same set of batteries for over 10 years before they finally couldn't hold a significant charge. Car batteries are easily recyclable (see my previous posts from where I worked at a secondary lead refinery recycling car batteries).
He eventually sold the car to a man from California who drove to Iowa hauling a trailer so he could haul the car back to California. Unlike a lot of cars, my Grandfather got more money for the car than he paid for it 10 years before.
Re:Did they expect different? (Score:3, Interesting)
My website (mentioned below) is for exploring mods for cars that make them more fuel efficient or make them into electrical vehicles. Okay, I'm not entirely altruistic, there are mods there that make nice polite cars into gas mongering pavement pounders also.
Its a shame I haven't gotten anyone to write an electrical vehicle article for it yet. Unfortunately there isn't as much journalism supporting efficiency mods as there is for performance mods. I've found that theres quite a few people out there more willing to make their car biodiesel or electric then a 10s 1/4 miler.
-----------------
OnRoad [onlawn.net]: Hit the Road.
Re:Generation & Distribution Losses (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps.
But to be fair. Shouldn't one consider that an engine with a more or less constant load is more efficient than one that is continually changing, dur to traffic conditions?
Additionally, you quote that 70% figure as if conventional cars made effective use of 100% of their engine's energy. According to this site [powerchips.gi]
One word: (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as we're burning fossil fuels to generate power, all an electric car does is move the pollution somewhere else. Just think about it:
Gas car: Chemical energy -> kinetic energy
Electric car: Chemical energy -> kinetic -> electrical -> long distance transmission (power lines) -> chemical (batteries) -> electrical -> kinetic
In the end, you get sucky performance for a couple times the energy cost. The idea of an electric car is utterly absurd, and I can't understand why it happened at all.
Maybe after get serious about cheap, clean nuclear power, and we make some major breakthroughs in batteries, the electric car can happen.
Re:One word: (Score:5, Insightful)
Moreover, it's easier and cheaper to de-polute the gasses coming from a big power plant, also due to scale, than to de-polute the gasses coming from a single car. Also, a big advantage is you get to decide where the polution is released; aka not in the city.
Re:One word: (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) Power plants are more efficient than your car engine (typically twice as efficient).
(2) Oil is not universally cheap. I pay 4-5x more for petrol than you do. I think Europe has a similar high price for oil.
(3) Dense cities cannot cope with pollution from fuel-burning cars. A perfect example is your own LA. Moving the pollution away is good for the city even if it doesn't greatly help the planet.
(4) Power plants don't have to burn oil or gas or coal. There are plenty of alternatives (though none of them quite as cheap as oil or gas or coal, yet). Hot rock and solar are my personal bets for the future of electricity production; both have potential to be cheaper than fuel-burning plants.
(5) It takes decades to develop technology from concept to production line. It's important that research into EV continues so that the technology is fully developed when (if) the cheap sources of electricity finally appear. This may seem "absurd" to you but many people thought the Altair was absurd too. Look where it got Bill Gates. Being on the bleeding edge can often pay off in the long run. Companies with deep pockets (ie, GM) are willing to sink billions into "absurd" concepts because every now and then one of those crazy ideas will pay off big.
Re:One word: (Score:4, Informative)
A perfect example is your own LA
LA's air pollution problem will never go away. Local geography traps the smog layer over a series of warm, dry vallies that get very little in the way of air circulation. Compare to San Diego (the 6th largest city in the US), which is in the same region but has a drastically lower amount of air pollution, even when the population difference is taken into consideration. And San Diego gets a lot more pollution from military bases (heavy polluters, and San Diego has more military personel than any other city in the world)...so the smog isn't from the air pollution restrictions (California's are the strictest in the US, and some of the strictest in the world) but rather geographical and weather issues. Oh, and LA is nowhere near being a dense city...its thousands of square miles of suburbia.
No need for these underpowered buggies... (Score:2, Insightful)
For the time being, I think hybrids are where it's at.
Re:No need for these underpowered buggies... (Score:3, Informative)
0-30 in 2.6 seconds is respectable stuff and sure feels nice with perfectly smooth transmission (no pesky gear changes to spoil the ride). Yup, that *is* about as fast as a Porche Boxster. Sad to see it die.....
Re:No need for these underpowered buggies... (Score:5, Interesting)
Give a look see at the National Electric Drag Racing Association [nedra.com] website.
Or try the A/C Propulsion systems T-Zero [acpropulsion.com]. 0-60 in 4.1 seconds, the quarter mile in 13.2, and a 100 mile range hardly makes it a golf cart.
Its all about incentive (Score:5, Interesting)
India makes [revaindia.com] its own electric cars which seem to be doing well due to its low cost of use (electricity is subsidised) and small size (Roads are congested).
Cheap too at around $6,000.
Re:Its all about incentive (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of the world will have to lead here, and America will follow, once it gets a president that listens to his own commisioned scientists and understands the pressing issues of global pollution.
DIY College Class (Score:5, Informative)
They use pickups because they can line the bed with batteries, 1 layer thick, and still have room to store stuff on top.
The cost is about $7,000 (not including the vehicle). The finished product costs roughly $40 per month to operate as a commuter vehicle, with a range of 50 - 75 miles (not much, but it's meant to be a commuter).
Re:DIY College Class (Score:2)
Give it a life of 10 years before replacement, so the replacement costs you $700 a year or $58 a month. So basicly over the the life of 10 years, you are paying $98 a month on fuel. Much higher then I currently pay for gas.
The saving may come in with having less costs in fluids such as oil,etc. But what is the life time of the batteries?
Re:DIY College Class (Score:2)
And if the gas prices rises another 50%-100% I don't see why this couldn't make sense for people like me. Not that I can afford a new, electrical, car, nor retrofit the one I have, but it gives you a little different perspective.
Re:DIY College Class (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, doing total cost of ownership analyses, are we? Well, let's see here. Maintaining a gas-powered car requires 1) an initial investment in the car itself, 2) an ongoing fuel supply, 3) oil changes every few thousand miles, 4) regular tune-ups (at least yearly), 5) emissions checks (plus engine work if it fails the first time), 6) car registration. Not to mention any atypical maintenance, like for when some idiot clips you in traffic and breaks your brakelight or something.
In addition to the simple costs of all this, you have to add the time it takes you to perform all this maintenance.
Now, let's look at an electic. You have to 1) buy the car, 2) keep it supplied with electricity, 3) Uh, yeah. Does use oil so no oil replacements. The internals of an electric are a hell of a lot simpler than an internal combustion-type car, so much lower maintenance. You might want to get the tires and brake pads checked, say yearly; a simple brake-pad/tire check is much cheaper than a full tune-up. No radiator fluids to be messed with, for example, 'cause there's no radiator. You've still got to attend to accidental damage (like that busted brake light from the idiot in traffic) but overall an electric requires much less maintenance because it's basically just a motor, some batteries and gears.
The batteries do have to be replaced every 2-5 years (depending on which kind of batteries you get and how hard you use 'em).
Then there are the tradeoffs. Internal combustion cars have a MUCH greater range than an electric. This is great if you're taking a road trip from LA to DC or something, or if you have a really long commute because you live in a rural area but work in the city. If you live in the suburbs or the city, though, and most Americans do, then chances are you're driving less than sixty miles a day even with all your to-ing and fro-ing to the supermarket and what-not. That's well within the range of a decently designed electic car, even without fancy features like regenerative braking (which generates and stores small amounts of electricity from the kinetic energy you lose when you're using the brakes) or a solar panel on top so it'll quietly trickle-charge itself while sitting in the parking lot.
Electrics are quiet. Really quiet. Perhaps it's the lack of explosions under the hood.
Gas-powered cars often fail to start properly on cold mornings. Electrics don't suffer from that problem (though to be honest they can get chilly unless you have an electric heater installed, which of course decreases the range because it feeds off the same power source as the rest of the car).
Basically, electric cars work fantastically well in an urban/suburban setting. They are not suitable for long-distance work and won't be until we either massively increase battery capacity (not likely to happen rapidly) or find an alternative source of electricity (eg super-efficient solar panels, don't hold your breath on that though).
Re:DIY College Class (Score:3, Interesting)
He's talking about letting the batteries charge slowly while your car bakes in the parking lot all day while you're in work. Then when you drive home, it's running off the batteries (and still getting trickle-charged by the solar cells.)
Not a bad idea, really.
Not really surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
My electric car has no wheels (Score:5, Funny)
If you and your boss trust you enough to let you stay home x/5 days a week, then you cut your commuting polluting by x * 20%.
I also get to sleep with the woman in my home office - my wife.
It makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it makes sense, It would be nice for the world to switch over to electric cars in a year, but in reality, it's not going to work that way.
What will probably happen is that for the next several years, we will start to switch over to hybrid cars, and ease into the electric car idea, and as the prices of gasoline continue to rise, we'll start to switch to completely electric cars. I think it will be at least ten to fifteen years though, before such a thing happens. It's such a massive change to our economy, infrastructure, etc, that we can't really switch overnight like some manufacturers seem to think. This is probably a smart move on GM's part.
Before you jump the gun... (Score:5, Informative)
Before everyone gets on my case about it, I spent 2 years on a team that built hybrid cars. Electric powerplants, by themselves, are ecological nightmares. The majority of our wall-socket power is via coal or other equally ecoterrorizing sources. Their battery packs are highly poisonous, and gigantic on normal electric vehicles. GM's even spending a good portion of its money on hydrogen powered cars, which don't create any CO2.
Even though there are some concerns about the source of hydrogen, you can 'cook' oil and extract it from there, without combustion.
History of Electric cars (Score:3, Interesting)
Electric cars have come and gone through the decades, common [xerox.com] in early 20th century. Went out with the Model T and made a comeback [econogics.com] in WW2 time, along with wood burning cars, coal burners and the like.
Then GM introduces this one and then take it back out again
What just happened? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Renewable" sources (Score:5, Interesting)
The CHEMICAL and ENGINEERING power costs of making the plastics and metals, the chemicals in batteries, damn, even the wires means that we would use up most of what remains of our (i.e. the world's) oil supplies just building enough "renewable energy" equipment to keep us going for a few years.
We've got, maybe, far less than 75 years of oil left. That means we have about 50 years to become totally dependent on renewable sources, enough for us to use them to produce everything we know and use today.
I have a close friend, who's got more degrees, PhD's and Doctorates than I've had hot dinners and he was the first to show me the figures and open my eyes to this. How do you build and maintain a wind farm of giant metal and plastic structures without oil, coal and gas to power the factories and foundries? It's EXTREMELY difficult.
This is why the scientists are worrying. It's no longer just a matter of "Hey, let's just switch to solar." The manufacturing and maintenance power-cost of anything new is phenomenally expensive if we've got no fossil fuel left to make the damn things and keep them running.
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Being willing to haul my own ass around.
Talk about renewable energy. I just put a Macintosh Apple in the top hole (no not an Apple Macintosh), sooner or later it comes out the bottom hole, but in the meantime I get to move around.
Around the city center my ETA on a bicycle is about the same as a car. Between cities the bicycle ETA is about half a car's. Long hauls, well, the bicycle does drop to a third the average speed of a car.
I don't consider it a bad price to pay to make my fuel problem, "Hey, where's a good place for pizza around here?"
And to top it all off, it keeps my ass to a handy haulable size.
KFG
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:4, Insightful)
You maybe able to maintain a constant speed of ~25mph for a 50 mile journey on a bicycle, but the problem is that the majority of the population actually can't. Some people just aren't genetically programmed to be fit, others don't do enough excercise. They also don't like the idea of getting soaked to the bone when it's raining, or blown off the road when it's windy, etc...
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I'm not exactly unaware of the problems inherent in my choice. I live them every day, in upstate NY, year 'round.
I will make some points though. The reason I can do this and most can't is very simply because I do and they don't. I am not "genetically programmed" to be fit. In fact, if it were not for modern medical science I wouldn't even be alive. My own lungs are trying to kill me, and someday they will succeed. I am dwarf compared to the rest of my family and have a hard time digesting foods other people take for granted as standard fare. In fact, most of that standard fare will kill me. One of the side effects of this is arthritis in all my joints. I'm not Stephen Hawking, but I'm certainly not Mr. Olympia.
But an 11 year old girl who had never taken a long bicycle trip before pedaled with her family from California to NY. It really isn't that hard.
I can do what I do. And so could you, and 99.99% of the population *if they did.*
*Humans* are genetically programed for just this sort of energy output. Even the nearly dead ones without lungs, joints or digestive systems.
The downside is that they are clearly not as comfortable as an automobile. When it rains you get wet. When it's hot you sweat. When it snows you get cold. The wind is the cyclist's mortal enemy, not because it blows you off the road, it doesn't, because it slows you down.
If this stuff bothers you, don't do it. I'm not on a soap box saying you're evil if you drive.
However, I'm not going to say it's not a viable solution when I've found that it can be, and may be for you, even if you don't think so right now.
Fuel is cheap and pleasant to consume. Use makes you stronger instead of weaker. You spend nearly nothing on maintainence. You spend nothing on licenses, permits, insurance, etc. Having to worry about tickets is a virtually null issue, you never have to dig a bike out of a snow bank just to get started in the first place, and they're nifty, geeky little machines to boot.
And it may take you a bit longer to get where you're going, but. .
Am I an advocate? Yes, just as I'm an advocate for free software, and for the *same reasons.*
Am I a zealot? No. If you don't want to don't do it. But that's not the same as saying you *can't* do it. It's a choice.
KFG
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, it was not the parent that said this but others have said we only have 75 years of oil left.....BS! There is TONS of oil. There's alot of oil we just can't get to because it's not economical to get to. Current oil prices are also artificially high because the oil companies think that the war in Iraq might affect the oil supply. Watch this..after the war (this summer or 4 weeks....depends on the when we start the war), gas will drop to below a dollar a gallon (at least in the US). Gas is still, at current prices, cheaper then a gallon of bottled water. SO I am not complaining about the price much!
The EV1 was a failure because GM built it to fail. The fact that all EV1's "purchased" were leases (only thing allowed) and that they practically excluded 48 of the 50 states (I think it was only available in CA and AZ) did not help as well as their choice of using a heat pump for Heating and Air Conditioning. They did not even include a small bank of solar cells to help maintain charge during a sunny day trip! Also, the fact that the battery tech in the ev1 has now been superceded and the fact there was no real incentive for GM to sell the thing were just two more things on why the EV1 failed. With current electric motors, the best choice for a reduced emission car is a hybrid. It prolongs the use of Gas which makes all of the R&D that the automakers have done last longer and lets them make money while they can research making more efficient batterys and more efficient electronic and electrical parts. Eventually they can make a battery (or fuel cell) that will make operatining a electrical car econmical. I think that Fuel Cells will power electric cars eventually. Fuel Cells coudl even be made to run off of Gasoline, Diesel or Hydrogen. The first two could be used while the last one is developed. They could even include 2 tanks....one for gas and one for hydrogen in the same car. And I think since a electric motor and a fuel cell will take less space then a ICE engine, it would not even be a space issue to include a duel tank. The future will have different cars. Back in the 50's, they thought we'd all have air cars and be flying from point a to b. Boy were things wrong there!
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:3, Insightful)
What is true is that for any single activity, such as cycling, or power lifting, most of us are not capable of becoming elite. Natural ability is distributed on the bell curve; in absolute terms the difference in capacity between elite and ordinary is not that big. An average person could train to reach sustained speeds of 25 mph over flat terrain. An elite athlete is perhaps on the order of 25% faster.
Eddy Merckx did 49.431 km in one hour (or 30.72 mph) on a conventional racing bike; that's since been bested several times. The current record is 56.375 km/hr (about 35 mph). These are elite athletes on closed tracks at high altitude to reduce aerodynamic drag. They are also exerting themselves to the maximum.
A good estimate of the comfortable sustained speed of an ordinary commuting rider would be 15-20 mph. I doubt that more than ten or fifteen percent of the population could sustain the upper end of that range if you just dragged them in off the street; however 100% of the healthy population could train to that speed in a few months.
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:3, Funny)
Those people used to get eaten.
I'm not sure I have a point.
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:2, Informative)
We've got 30 year of oil to go maximum. I made the calculation 2 week ago. I think this figure is broadly overestimated (yes, over).
It's basically all world proven reserves of oil (1000 Bilion barels) divided by the world daily consumption (75 milion barrel per day).
That brings us to 36,5 years (2040).
BUT the reserves can't be fully extracted (usually only 60%) and the consumption is likely to go up, so 20-25 years seems more likely, or even less. (ouch, isn't it?)
The figures were comming from the Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government [doe.gov]
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:5, Insightful)
It will become increasingly difficult to find and extract, on a gradual basis. This difficulty will be reflected in the market price for oil, as it happens. It may be that, eventually, oil will be more precious than gold.
But I'll say it again: Oil isn't going anywhere. Even if it's as scarce as diamonds, it will still be available in some amount. The cycles which produce oil have not ceased: Believe it or not, even our own decomposing corpses will someday become a small puddle of crude.
It is not as if, 75 years from this moment, all oil will instantaneosly cease to exist. Instead, as the price of crude increases, our reliance on it will automatically decrease.
At some point, it will become more economically viable to drive an electric car which is plugged into a wind-powered grid than something which burns dinosaurs.
At the same point, there will plenty of oil left for manufacturing of the requisite wind machines, albeit at somewhat-elevated expense.
As the price continues to increase, other alternatives for crude will become apparent.
Another example:
We make consumer merchandise out of plastic because it's cheaper than other materials. And we make those plastics from crude because it's cheaper than other materials. When oil becomes so expensive that it's cheaper to make goods out of, say, hemp or soy, then that's what the market will direct companies and consumers to do.
An example in reverse:
Aluminum used to be amazingly valuable stuff, due to the difficulty in consolidating it. A big chunk of it tops the Washington Mounument, mostly for this reason. Nowadays, it's cheap enough to throw away after one finishes a can of Coke without thinking much of it, just as one currently burns through 20 gallons of gasoline without a second thought.
This isn't rocket science, nor does it take a PhD in microeconomics to understand and forecast these issues.
The market, with its greedy corporations and frugal consumers, will take care of the "oil problem" just fine by itself.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Lots of coal and shale (Score:4, Informative)
However, I must point out that the economic adjustment of which you speak may not be so painless as you imply. Ask the former residents of Easter Island what happens when you run out of an important resource (in their case, lumber) :)
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:3, Insightful)
But diamonds are a plentiful commodity in the earth's crust.
It's an effective cartel -- DeBeers -- which creates the impression that diamonds are scarce, that you need to give one to your fiance to show your love, and that second-hand-diamonds and artificially produced diamonds are an insult instead of a "gem."
Re:"Renewable" sources (Score:3, Interesting)
Close, but not quite.
Consider: Supposing oil didn't become scarce enough to drive for several hundred or thousand years. We would pollute the earth to the point where it was unlivable. It's only if we have the happy coincidence that oil becomes hard to find at a rate that is fast enough that we don't hit the earth's tolerance for changing CO_2 levels in the atmosphere that your explanation works. That is, there is more than simply accessibility of oil to consider, there is also the pollution of the planet. That's what environmentalism is about -- stopping the pollution *before* the market forces of oil force us to do so.
-Rob
Hybrids are the way to go ... (Score:5, Insightful)
An electric engine for the city and one of the new, very efficient diesel engine otherwise. My Audi A2 TDI runs around 50 mpq (4,5 l/100 km), which is quite good.
Remember that electricity is not emission free unless it's solar power/wind or water. Emissions are just made somewhere else.
Bye egghat.
Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
Benefits of electric cars (Score:2)
Re:Benefits (Score:2)
couple of things (Score:3, Interesting)
An official letter from GMATV explaining that the charger conversion efforts funded by GM have been terminated due to the CARB decision to standardize on conductive charging. Click on the pages at left to read the letter from GMATV - Torrance Operations.
Ok.. so it's being standardized.. nothing wrong with that.. parallel ports are standardized.. so are serial ports.. it doesn't get simpler than that..
Now, back tracking to the Ford TH!NK [ford.com] article..
General Information
Why is Ford discontinuing TH!NK products?
As part of its continuing efforts to develop advanced vehicle technologies, Ford Motor Company has decided to concentrate its resources on the development of hybrid and fuel-cell technology.
Right, no ELECTRICAL cars.. but they will still be concentrating on developing HYBRID and FUEL-CELL cars..
So.. in conclusion.. NO.. the plug is NOT being pulled on Hybrid cars.. from my own personal standpoint.. I believe.. once we full utilize production and strengthen the abilities and features that hybrid cars and fuel cell cars.. we will concentrate on electrical cars..
And by we.. I'm talking about the car manufacturers, of course
Burt Rutan Loves His Electric Car (Score:2)
Cost of fuel (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, that would include the cost of the pollution generated by using fosil fuels.
Yes, that would include the cost of a war over oil.
Prices of $1000,-/liter anyone?
General Motors (Score:2, Informative)
There are two problems with oil (Score:3, Interesting)
The second is that oil isn't distributed fairly around the world. Some countries have it, others don't. This leads to a number of problems, everything from religious, economical, to practical.
Why not look into making alternative fuels that you can produce locally? We can, for instance, grow a hell of a lot more crop in Europe than we need for food. There are a number of plants that can produce oils that can be refined and used in disel engines, and they pollute less than fossile oil already.
What is needed is that companies like GM invests $1 billion in alternative fuels and make the production much much more effective and the engines more clean/effective with the new types of fuels. This is far more realistic than electrical cars is today.
Fusion could of course change this in a heartbeat. But although we (humans) should persuade this scientifically we shouldn't base our economy on it quite yet, thank you very much.
But imagine cars that you wouldn't have to fuel, were totally clean, and I am sure a lot of people would be happy;) We can simply start chaning models much more often instead.
Re:There are two problems with oil (Score:3, Informative)
This used to be a serious problem in the past but with today's computer-controlled fuel-injection gasoline engines and modern exhaust emission controls they are VASTLY cleaner than gasoline engines of even 30 years ago! For example, the 2003 Honda Accord has available in California a gasoline engine so clean it has less than 1% of the harmful pollutant output of a gasoline engine dating from the 1970's.
The second is that oil isn't distributed fairly around the world. Some countries have it, others don't.
You're forgetting that oil extraction technology has advanced to the point that many oilfields that would have been impossible to tap just 20 years ago are now economically viable to exploit. There are massive oil reserves sitting out in the oceans; the only reason why we haven't exploited them is the daunting cost up until now to pumping out from ocean sites. Engineers from British Petroleum has estimated that there is enough oil sitting in the Gulf of Mexico to equal the entire Persian Gulf combined. Also, Canada has massively huge reserves of tar sands that could yield enough oil to also equal the entire Persian Gulf combined. There are potentially huge oilfields in the former Soviet Union that could be tapped--but not done so due to the extreme cold of Siberian winters. The only reason why the Persian Gulf is economically viable for oil production is the fact the oil there is very close to the surface and the weather is conducive to year-round production.
read GMs explanation - it's because of regulations (Score:5, Informative)
I don't personally understand it. Does anyone know why inductive charging shouldn't qualify for zero emmissions?
Where's the motivation? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's very easy to look at the situation and either dismiss it as not your problem or not worth the potential effort. The only way to get around this is to make it profitable.
Think of it this way, what do you think is more effective for recycling: 1) Totally Volentary Recycling, 2) Depoit Based Recycling (ie getting money back), or 3) Fines if you don't Recycling.
I'm willing to bet number one is the least effective. So how do you go about making it worth the car companies while to invest and properly support such things?
BioDiesel (Score:5, Insightful)
When speeding (I've done 115mph and there was some more left) and doing mostly city traffic I go down to only 44 mpg.
In Germany they have the VW Lupo, a car that gets ~80mpg. And also the bigger sedan VW Passat TDi, with ~45 mpg IIRC.
Now, those cars need zero modifications to use BioDiesel fuel. BioDiesel is vegetal oil. Nothing else could be more ecology-friendly. And, if needed, you can mixe it with regular petro-diesel, for older engines.
Now, Diesel fuel used here in the US are waaaay too dirty (this is what kills Diesel cars in the US when you look at EPA statistics). There are some laws in place to reduce pollutants in US Diesel to European/Japan levels (1/100th of current sulphur contents).
Also, my car drives like a sports car: very nice handling (corners, break...), it has side aribags and all kind of safety features... and I have to really try to drive it under 85 mph, 'cause it wants to go fast.
Then, the Wagon version has about the same cargo room as a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Good for soccer moms...or for carrying those plasma TVs and huge monitors for our computers
I say that current technology (Diesel/BioDiesel) is good to reduce pollutants and fuel consumption. In Europe, Diesel represent more than 50% of total new car sells.
The US has lots of land. The tobacco industry s looking for a replacement... Maybe all can go to soy for BioDiesel (or similar crops). This way we decrease our dependency of foreing oil, decrease pollutants in the air, provide a good income to our farmers (the new "bio-oil industry") and Detroit has a new field to innovate and generate new jobs. And Diesel engines last 200,000 - 400,000 miles. Not bad.
What do you all think?
Re:BioDiesel (Score:4, Interesting)
A Honda Civic 1.6VVTi is capable of near-enough 50mpg when driven so's to maximise use of the green `economy' light.
I've got the Seat Toledo 1.9TDi SE (so a very similar engine to your VW diesel, no doubt). The quoted mpg ratings are 45, 55, 65.7mpg. I get around 55mpg on the motorways myself, ticking along at 70-75mph (only had it a fortnight, results still pending!).
"very nice handling"
Check. I went for a spin around the back-roads in deepest darkest Surrey last night, bombing around corners at a rate of knots, with no sideways rolling/wallowing at all.
"side aribags and all kind of safety features"
Check
"What do you all think?"
I think I got the same performance - almost the same car - but without the VW-brand price-hike, myself
And the power-to-weight ratio seems about right at 1.9TDi and 1.3 tonnes.
Re:BioDiesel (Score:3, Interesting)
Total miles: 1012.7 mi
Total Fuel: 19.475 g
milleage: 52 mpg
So I was wrong. It was 52 mpg
And, AFAIK, Toledo and Jetta have the same engine (Seat is part of the Audi-VW-Skoda-Seat thing). Seat engines use the same TDi technology than the VW. TDi was developed by Audi in the first place
And, anyway, I cannot get a Toledo in the US. And in the US, a VW is ~ the same price of a Honda Accord with the same load of features (manual transmission, security features, abs, disc brakes on both trains, 10 year extended warranty, road assistance...).
And the VW is a German car, if you know what I mean. An Accord is not half the fun. Your Toledo, being designed by German engineers, qualifies as German, so the fun you have with it is the same that I have.
Then, how clean is Diesel around the UK? Surrey is in the UK, IIRC my ancient history classes...
Note: I just wish that fuel be more expensive in the US, so SUV people would be forced to pay a price for the insanity of driving those monsters (12 mpg!!!!!!). Even at this cheap price, I'm saving $2000 on a 5-year period comparing with an Accord.
Hydrogen... (Score:3, Interesting)
This may also have something to do with President Bush pushing for research funding for hydrogen fueled cars.
Electric just doesn't have the power or range of gasoline powered cars. I think everyone is begining to realize that and hydrogen seems to be the best of both worlds, powerful yet environmentally friendly. Oh, and not dependent on dead dinosaurs.
Re:Hydrogen... (Score:3, Informative)
Some specs:
- Complete Car Maximum Speed 93 mph (150km/h)
- Vehicle (curb) Weight 3,713lbs (1684kg)
- Driving Range 220 miles (355km)
- Seating Capacity 4 adults
- Motor Maximum Power Output 80hp (60kW)
- Maximum Drive Torque 201lb-ft (272Nm)
- Motor Type AC synchronous
- Fuel Cell Stack Stack Type PEFC (Polymer Electrolyte Fuel cell - Ballard)
- Power Output 78kW
- Power Storage Honda Ultra Capacitor
- Fuel Fuel Type Compressed hydrogen gas
- Storage Method High-pressure hydrogen storage tanks
- Hydrogen capacity 3.75 kg @ 5000 psi *
Toyota is also leasing a hydrogen fueled car but I don't have a URL for that one.Synergy? (Score:3, Interesting)
BUT theese 2 lost the battle for comformity. All the others car companies joined forces to make fuel cells. Which means if theese 2 also went with fuel cells then they could get cheeper mass produced parts all the fuel cell cars had in common.
conspiracy theory start
I wouldn't be suprised if the president, chemical companies, and oil companies didn't have something to do with this choice. It keeps us going to a station to buy 'fuel'. Since electric cars eliminated MUCH of the need for theese company's products and the services gas stations provide lots of jobs would be 'lost'. And lots of companies would have to change the way they do business. And we all know how hard financial groups can fight.
conspiracy theory end
Energy Density (Score:3, Informative)
EV-1 Is Not A "Tech Story" (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a political story. Death of the EV-1 is pure politics and economics. Patent politics. Market share politics. Regulor old government politics. As others have mentioned, GM was trying to forc their proprietary charger on people. GM was never really wanted the EV-1. The lease-only business model has been a bone of contention in the EV community for years. Leases suck. Most people want to own. It's no secret that GM set the EV-1 up to fall from day 1. End of story.
As for what the "best technology" for engines is, there isn't one. What's needed is for somebody to design a modular engine--think RAID for cars. Instead of one engine under the hoold that costs $5000, you need several easily removeable components under the hood that cost several hundred dollars. I'd like to see these components cost $200, but even $500 would be beneficial. Notice, I'm not talking about the actual tech of these components--I'm leaving that as a total abstraction for a very specific reason. Stop and think before you read the next paragraph.
Now think about your computer. A hot system can cost $3000, but none of the components in that system is more than $500, except maybe the monitor.
Computer tech is driven in part by the ability of geeks to swap inexpensive components out of their chassis and have them all interface together. Now imagine the same thing with cars:
Standard pressurized fuel system. Standard battery rack. Standard fuel to electricity converters. Standard exhaust bus. Standard computer monitoring and control interfaces.
Do that, and in no time at all you'll have dozens of companies striving to offer gasoline to hydrogen reformers that are just a little cheaper, or a little quiter, or a little more efficient. Geeks will be reprogramming their control units every other day, and RMS will be saying "GNU/Car", but that's about the only downside I can think of.
Something like this won't come from the incumbent manufacturers; certainly not in the US. Even the Asians are probably more interested in protecting the current business model--nobody wants their cars "cloned".
A revolution like this will have to come from someplace like North Carolina, where there are machine-shop workers, mechanics, and NASCAR techs who know how to build cars without "the man" getting in the way. A lot of NASCAR vehicles are losing sponsorship. There's nothing like unemployment to breed new ideas sometimes.
Regardless of who does this, it needs to be done. Only through interoperation of standard components can the automobile shake itself out of the ossified corporate tool inspired funk in which it is mired. Modular components could be the engine (no pun intended) of the next economic boom--but only if we can sneek them under the RADAR.
Call it conceeding to the Japanese (Score:4, Insightful)
What's ironic is it's so short sighted. Every year the Toyota and Honda get that much further ahead. When I go car shopping I look for cars made in Japan. They are made better, and more fuel effient, and usually cheaper.
Oh well... (Score:3, Interesting)
At a recent "Engineers' Week" party, the local Toyota dealer had a couple of Prius available for inspection and demonstration. I was unimpressed. The drive system is overly complicated and 50 MPG is pathetic for a "reduced emissions" vehicle that has economy as its main selling point. Granted, it's better than 20-30 MPG I get in my eight-year-old Firebird, but it's not impressive. A ten-year-old Honda Civic or Geo Metro can do that, and they're pure gasoline!
This car [rqriley.com] has it right. The most efficient way to run an internal combustion engine is to have it operate at high manifold pressures and low RPMs: Wide Open Throttle. By using a 17 horsepower (12.7 kW) diesel tractor engine and a tall final drive ratio allows this car to get around town at 35 miles per hour while achieving 128 miles per gallon. Of course, it has a top speed of only 65 miles per hour.
GM's R&D bullshit (Score:3, Interesting)
Ten years and OVER A BILLION DOLLARS??? If that's what it takes GM to develop a simple DC drive system, the stockholders of GM need to rethink their investment! That figure is more likely to be what they want to try and write off their corprate tax returns!
Anyone who has ever turned a wrench on an electric golf cart could design an electric car. As far as charging the vehicle, who gives a damn how it's done?! Plug it in or park next to the charger. Pick the LEAST expensive technology and go with it.
The problem with the electric cars is that you can't turn a big ass SUV into an electric car. Ford and GM are interested in PROFITS, not ecology. If they have to devote parts of their assembly lines to a niche vehicle, that takes up resources from their SUV lines.
And for the record, I drive a big-ass Ford Bronco with big tires and a lift kit.... I have nothing at all against SUV's and their drivers. But I'm getting damn tired of this country relying on foreign oil. Electric cars may not totally be the answer, but they are at least a step toward the solution. I'd drive one to/from work if I could buy one. Then keep my Bronco for trips, pulling my boat or camper, or hauling stuff from Home Depot. You know, like use the right tool for the job??! Cheaper and smaller for short trips, big and bulky when the job calls for it.
I always thought GM sucked, now they have confirmed it....
I've leased/owned all three (EV1, Prius, Th!nk) (Score:5, Informative)
My husband and I leased an EV1 for three years. It was the best car we've ever driven: quiet, amazing acceleration, and zero emissions. (There isn't even a tailpipe.) We (and other drivers) sent money to GM asking them to extend the lease without a warranty, rather than crush the cars, and they said no. GM's claims that electric cars failed in the marketplace are false. EV1 drivers wanted to keep them, and there were many waitlisted would-be drivers who never got a car, despite GM's lack of advertising, etc. For much more information, see http://cleanup-gm.org.
Our primary car now is a Toyota Prius, which we've been happy with (except by comparison to the EV1). Driving around San Francisco and commuting over the Bay Bridge, often in bad traffic, I average 46 MPG, and it has lower emissions than other cars with internal combustion engines. It cost a little more ($22K) than an ordinary car, but I expect to recoup some of that with the tax deduction and lower fuel costs.
We recently assumed the lease on a Ford Th!nk City. As its maximum speed is about 55 MPH and range about 40 miles, neither my husband nor I can drive it to work. Instead, my husband drives it to the Caltrain station. We also drive it around town, where it can fit in tiny parking spots.
My points are:
- The EV1 was a great car. It was not pulled because of any deficiency or lack of demand.
- The only electric car available for lease for a little longer (Th!nk) is vastly inferior to the EV1 but still meets some people's needs.
- I was fortunate enough to get to lease electric cars because I was in the right place at the time. Many other people tried without success.
- While hybrids are better than ordinary cars, purely-electric cars have been designed and produced in ridiculously small quantities, not meeting consumer demand.
- If the government hadn't loosened its regulations, more people would be driving electric cars now or in the near future, and we'd be using less oil and polluting less. (Lest you dismiss all regulation as bad, consider the government's role in seatbelts, catalytic converters, and airbags.)
(And, yes, I know electricity needs to be produced somewhere. Internal-combustion engines are one of the dirtiest and least efficient methods, and spew most where populations are dense.)Re:Hydrogen-powered vs. electric vs. hybrid (Score:2)
a) producing the energy
b) distributing the energy
c) storing the energy in the vehicle
d) converting stored energy into motion
e) recycling motion when braking
f) pollution
Almost no concept is unique to any solution. E.g. nuclear power causes pollution (and potentially nuclear proliferation) of a different but possibly more worrying kind than gasoline. Likewise, flywheels have been used in gasoline powered cars to store power when braking. Similarly, the electrical grid loses power in distribution, but then a gasoline tanker consumes gasoline in delivering gasoline.
Re:Enough Oil (Score:2)
Re: Design of Electric Cars... (Score:2, Interesting)
I saw a link posted here recently (can't seem to find it) that demonstrated just how much less drag one of these designs produced, and it was pretty impressive. It makes sense to use a design like this (even if it's ugly) when the target market is people extremely concerned about the efficiency of their cars. Makes less sense to attempt to push the efficiency on SUV owners, though I agree that making vehicles more efficient across-the-board would be great.