What's wrong with this idea? (electric cars)

[Stinky The Clown]

My son and I were musing this afternoon ...... electric cars.

What about cars with one or several standardized removable batteries? You buy the car and rent the battery. Small batteries for small cars, larger batteries for trucks or large cars. Go zippin' on down the highway. When you run out of charge ("gas") you pull into a battery ("gas") station. At the battery station, they remove your discharged battery and replace it with a charged one ("refuel") and you get on with gettin' on.

That seems pretty reasonable to me. Kinda like we do now with tanks of propane gas for the grill. Or oxygen and acetylene for welding rigs. Or deposit soda bottles. Or racks for hamburger buns at a McDonald's.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Tangentially, there's a flick out there called something like "Who Killed The Electric Car?"....

It's supposed to be a good behind-the-scenes eye-opener.

[Radical Activist]

20. Great movie.

I was expecting it be a bore but it was very entertaining.

[Wickerman]

2. the size and bulk of a current electric car battery

makes your idea, as great as it is, cost prohibitive:


Right now, the weak link in any electric car is the batteries. There are at least six significant problems with current lead-acid battery technology:

* They are heavy (a typical lead-acid battery pack weighs 1,000 pounds or more).
* They are bulky (the car we are examining here has 50 lead-acid batteries, each measuring roughly 6" x 8" by 6").
* They have a limited capacity (a typical lead-acid battery pack might hold 12 to 15 kilowatt-hours of electricity, giving a car a range of only 50 miles or so).
* They are slow to charge (typical recharge times for a lead-acid pack range between four to 10 hours for full charge, depending on the battery technology and the charger).
* They have a short life (three to four years, perhaps 200 full charge/discharge cycles).
* They are expensive (perhaps $2,000 for the battery pack shown in the sample car).

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/electric-car3.htm

[Stinky The Clown]

9. I guess we were discussing it in terms of newer battery technologies

That said, the notion is that the batteries are not owned by the car owner, but rather by the recharging station/battery renter. They would be recharged at the "battery station" where they are accepted for turn-in when discharged, and let out when fully charged. But you (the driver) simply pull in, pay the fee, get a charged battery installed, and go on your way.

[lapfog_1]

47. Of course, never mind the counter examples...

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2008/05/25/rivers.nepal.rickshaw.cnn

cause it would never work here...

[Wickerman]

53. of course, one could just offer up the counter example without being snarky

Nothing like missing a teaching moment.

:eyes:

[Terran]

76. Ultracapicitor technology

The wave of the future (or "a" wave...).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor

[LiberalFighter]

3. Gasoline is regulated... would the batteries?

With transfer of batteries from one vehicle to another how would stations be kept from pawning off over used batteries that won't hold a charge?

[Stinky The Clown]

11. " ..... how would stations be kept from pawning off over used batteries that won't hold a charge?"

It kinda doesn't matter, in a way. You'll get a battery installed. Your car will have a meter showing the charge (the new version of your gas gauge). A partially charged battery would be instantly recognizable, no?

[Radical Activist]

27. How about customers pawning off bad batteries on the business?

I can see that being a barrier to anyone wanting to do this.

[Stinky The Clown]

30. How?

I have no idea, specifically. But I am willing to bet anything the businesses who rent the batteries will figure it out before they even start in business.

[Arctic Dave]

64. The company that services the battery would do a load test

to ensure the battery is still strong for service. I would guess this would be in the regulatory quality assurance policy if this were to be implemented.

[wtmusic]

67. The battery packs would be electronically ID'd. nt

[XemaSab]

73. Simple bar code technology

:shrug:

[wtmusic]

74. Better! nt

[dysfunctional press]

55. as batteries get older, they don't hold a charge as long...

it could show fully charged on a meter, but be totally dead an hour later.

[LiberalFighter]

78. There are batteries that would show a full charge and then discharge faster than normal.

[Fovea]

4. The wrinkle (and it is a small one)

is the fact that batteries have a limited service life in recharge cycles and require replacement.

So some sort of replacement deal needs to be figured into the package. But there is a compromise being talked about where the utilities use your electric car to store excess electricity for the grid, helping even out sources like solar and wind.

Other than that, electric is one solution.
But overall, rail is more efficient than single occupant vehicles of any stripe, except of course, human powered vehicles.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. In the OP, I suggested the battery woujld be owned by the battery company, not the car owner .......

..... the cost to replace old batteries would be built into the rental cost for a charged battery.

I agree with you about rail and have so posted on a number of occasions.

[Fovea]

41. The thing i like about the

utility company storage idea is that they would provide the batteries, and you would have a block of hours a day you would have your car available for usable storage and retrieval.

That way, your car has a dual function, travel costs very cheap, and the utility company gets a power storage system of immense scale.

[burrowowl]

5. Coal fired power plants

If the charging electrity is solar or wind OK

[Stinky The Clown]

14. Presumably, the charging is from the grid ........

.... so whatever powers the grid.

Also, charging would likely take place in off peak and make use of "residual power" (there's a technical name for this which escapes me right now).

[Radical Activist]

23. Its still more efficient.

So even charging them from coal power plants results in less CO2 emissions than regular cars.

[madokie]

60. its definitely a win/win for all

[Selatius]

6. You would need to radically expand the power grid to handle the load of 100 million cars.

The amount of power required to support that kind of load likely could only be derived by burning fossil fuels and utilizing atomic power. Solar and wind alone could not support that kind of energy consumption.

The idea you have to get away from is the notion that everybody can have their own private transport. That's not sustainable unless you want eye-sores like this to continue to pop up:



A fleet of electric powered mass transit trams and trolleys would be more energy efficient in terms of carrying people from place to place. One bus that could seat 40 people would be more fuel efficient than 40 cars carrying those 40 people respectively. The result is cities don't look like the freaking LA Freeway where gridlock never ends.

[Stinky The Clown]

15. That won't happen in places other than big cities.

[Selatius]

18. True, but the point still remains. Where are you going to get that kind of power?

[Stinky The Clown]

28. Scientists have estimated that we can go to electric cars charged on the grid right now by using ...

.... 'excess power' ..... there's a technical name for this but I can't recall it cuz I'm old and search for words a lot. :)

[NYC_SKP]

43. "Excess Power" may refer any generation exceeding demand

And there is, sort of, no such thing as the grid involves "on demand" generation of electricity without overage.

The "Grid" is an amazing thing.

All kinds of generation facilities, coal, hydro, natural gas, etc., generate EXACTLY as much as is needed every minute of the day.
During a 24 hour day, this demand varies greatly.
Nuclear and Coal plants which run pretty much at 100% day and night provide a constant "base load" of say 20%.
Peak load, which rises in the morning, as the business day begins, and falls in the evening is met with hydropower, natural gas, and a mix of other, usually smaller, generating facilities.

Solar runs when it's sunny, and that matches peak load, which is perfect.

Wind, however, runs when it's windy and it might be windy at night, and if the wind power exceeds demand it has nowhere to go, you might call it "excess".

We'd all love to see a way to install more renewables if only we could store that power.

Enter the car batteries, it's a way to use any overproduction. Large scale charging facilities could also act as a buffer to the demand response of ISOs (Independent system operators) which manage grids.

Here is the ISO for California:

http://www.caiso.com

[Radical Activist]

26. We haven't tapped a fraction of our wind and solar capacity.

Also, large reductions can be made through energy efficiency programs. I think you're too pessimistic. Studies estimate that we could get at least 20% of our power from wind and solar and right now we're at around 1%.

[greenman3610]

44. this is a common misconception

electric cars will charge at night, off peak.

According to DOE, we can handle many millions with
no new generation.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/12/doe_study_offpe.html

We were very conservative in looking at the idle capacity of power generation assets. The estimates didn’t include hydro, renewables or nuclear plants. It also didn’t include plants designed to meet peak demand because they don’t operate continuously. We still found that across the country 84 percent of the additional electricity demand created by PHEVs could be met by idle generation capacity.

—Michael Kintner-Meyer, PNNL




already being planned around the world
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1705518,00.html

[Juche]

70. I think its possible

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/12/12/turn-off-your-ac-nations-power-grid-can-handle-180-million-evs/

We have enough potential electric to power cars, esp if they are plugged in at night.

[seriousstan]

7. No problem by me. I understand the risks of sudden discharge and scamming bad batteries for

good.

These are things that can be overcome. I mean, we use 200vAC in our houses and pump gasoline routinely. The sticker is the time required to test the capacity of returned batteries. There will be a sudden glut of spent batteries at a certain time. The odds of a criminal element introducing them into the returned batteries stream is high. I think that is solvable.

I have always liked this idea. Electricity doesn't care about friction. It is the ultimate vehicle thrower. I love fast cars, I await electricity.

I have a couple 60's - 70's cars I can't wait to make electric.

[csziggy]

10. Somewhere here I have a book published in the 1970s

on coverting gas cars to electric. Would you want it?

[seriousstan]

17. WOW. What book and author? Thanks.

[csziggy]

80. I'll have to dig it out

We just moved and I think that got put in the pile of books on house building and stuff I was going to throw in the yard sale. I think it was from Rodale Press and would have been published around 1978-80.

PM me and I'll try to remember to sort it out tomorrow.

[gravity]

8. Well the batteries will weigh hundreds of pounds for starters

Which will make this task difficult to do without heavy equipment. There are also many safety issues that could be involved.

Actually setting up the infrastructure at the stations and getting the auto manufacturers to agree on a battery standard is difficult, especially when battery technology is constantly improving and you don't want to lock into an old design. It just won't be practical when it comes down to it, especially when electric cars would only be getting a 100 miles per charge. Think about making a 1000 mile trip.

I think concepts like a chevy volt are the best route to go for electic vehicles. Having the battery run the car, but with an gasoline generator to charge it up for the occaisional longer trip.

[Stinky The Clown]

24. Heavy batteries are no problem ........

.... we already lift whole cars to change oil. Presumably a smart engineering department will devise easy ways to remove batteries quickly.

As to changing techonolgy, this .........



........ plugs into the same outlet as this:



We just need to get to a common plug and battery compartment. What goes in there can keep evolving.

[gravity]

39. Easier said than done

You would have to lift it with a crane for each gas change, compared to lifting the fuel nozzle for a tank of gas.

The problem with this idaa is that it sounds simple any theory, but when you get into the details, it becomes so complicated that it isn't worth doing. I thought about this same idea before, but there are too many problems for it to work.

Removing batteries are just part of the problem too. First you have to develop batteries that can allow a 4 door car that can go 300 miles while still being reasonably prices. Scientists and engineers have been working on this for years, and we are still along way aways from anything close to that. It ain't gonna be easy, and there might not ever be a solution that involves batteries. Hydrogen fuel cells could be the route to go.

[BlooInBloo]

12. Always remember the laws of thermodynamics...

in illuminating-paraphrase form:

0th: You keep score.
1st: You can't win.
2nd: You can't tie.

Moral: No matter what solution is devised, it's gonna have substantial downsides.

[seriousstan]

16. So just shoot yourself, it is all a futile effort. I'll pay for the ammo and donate the gun.

[BlooInBloo]

21. Whoa. Hardcore.

[muriel_volestrangler]

57. 3rd: You can't get out of the game (nt)

[BlooInBloo]

61. yes - the game never ends. I suppose it *is* kind of depressing when you think about it - lol!

[The2ndWheel]

72. I think that would depend on your expectation

If you plan on beating existence, and never having to pay any price as a result of the consequences for any action, then you might as well shoot yourself.

However, if you get that you can't win, can't break even, and can't get out of the game, it's actually kind of freeing.

[realisticphish]

19. one nagging worry

is jobs. yes, that shouldn't drive everything, but a LOT of jobs would vanish overnight in that situation. Perhaps they would be equally replaced, i dunno, it's just a concern :shrug:

[Radical Activist]

32. A lot of jobs will be lost when people lose their homes and places of work

to rising sea levels, natural disasters, disease epidemics and food shortages.

[realisticphish]

75. yes

but tell that to someone who can't feed their family. im not arguing against it, i'm just saying that we need to consider ALL ramifications

[Bennyboy]

22. There are lots of electric cars out there right now.....

http://www.aptera.com/

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/vehicles/phoenix-sut.php

http://www.flytheroad.com/

The thing is, we will not be able to replace gasoline completely. But for most of the drving we do, these cars are just what is needed. most people don't need to to drive day to day longer than 40 miles and these vehicles all do that. 80%of all driving is short trips.

So keep your gas car and use it only for thsoe trips longer than that. The gas bill goes down. the maintenance bill goes down. the car lasts longer. gas is not scarce, in fact it is more plentiful, thereby cheaper.

Then take your savings and put solar panels on your house. And get rid of another corporation intruding in you life. Free energy. Free energy for travel.

[dysfunctional press]

56. here's another: tesla motors.

http://www.teslamotors.com/

[krispos42]

25. The future here is in ultra-capacitors

Remember on the old-style flashes for 35mm camera that would "whine" as they charged up? That whine was a high-powered capacitor charging.

Capacitors hold charge mechanically, not chemically. The typical capacitors you see on things like printed circuit boards (little blue cylinders or light brown pills, usually) are able to very quickly charge and discharge electricity, but hold very little total electricity per unit weight when compared to a regular chemical battery. In the flash mentioned above, the comparative trickle of electricity from a pair of AA batteries is compressed into a capacitor, which then releases the energy in a fraction of a second when you press the shutter button.

A company in Texas has developed so-called "ultra capacitors", which hold far more charge per unit weight than regular capacitors and can actually hold enough to compete with standard rechargable batteries. However, unlike regular batteries, which have a chemistry-limited recharge rate, you can pump juice into a capacitor at very high rates.

A car with a 1000-lb ultracap might get, say 200 miles on a charge, then pull into a "gas" station, plug in a heavy-duty cable, and put 1,000 or 2,000 amps of currrent into the battery, recharging it in minutes instead of hours. By comparison, your electric stove circuit is rated to 50 amps. This would turn an 8-hour overnight charge on a dedicated 50-amp circuit in your garage into a 10-minute pause at the gas station. And people can do 10 minutes. It takes that long to fill up the tank of a large pickup, right? And you could trickle-charge the ultracap at home if you wanted to, just to "top it off". This would be especially useful if you did not drive a lot. The "gas" station would really only be for people that drive a lot and their home charger can't keep up with demand during the week, or people that rent an apartment and don't have a garage.

The "gas" station itself would probably be a whopping big ultracapacitor bank buried under the ground where the fuel storage tanks would normally go. It would probably do the bulk of its charging at night, when demand is low and there is extra capacity from the generating plants.

The extra electrical power to do this would come from running existing generator plants at 100% capacity 24 hours a day. We would probably need to expand our rooftop electrical systems, which if we change our regulations to encourage that would be fairly easy to do. Small domestic wind turbines and photovoltaic arrays on most houses would really help, as would developing the solar power available in the American Southwest.

Eventually we'll get fusion power, and be able to power our entire grid while only emitting helium. This is a good thing because we're running out of helium and could start seeing major problems in a couple of decades.

[Stinky The Clown]

34. I like it!

[wtmusic]

40. Ultracaps have one-tenth the energy density of NiMH batteries

If a GM EV1 were to replace its 1,000 lb battery pack with equivalent storage in ultracaps they would weigh 5 tons.

So they're a long way from being practical as a complete storage solution, but I expect you'll see "hybrid" electrics which use a battery pack to charge ultracaps, which then discharge during peak loads like acceleration, etc.

[krispos42]

42. Well, it's looking better and better

A completely different approach is being pioneered by EEStor, who claim to have developed a dramatically improved insulator based on barium titanate that improves the permissivity of the insulator by several orders of magnitude, improving energy density not through electron capacity but via much higher potentials. EEStor claims that their capacitors can operate at extremely high voltages, on the order of several thousand volts.


Ragone plot showing energy density vs. power density for various energy-storage devicesIn terms of energy density, existing commercial electric double-layer capacitors range around 0.5 to 10 W·h/kg, with the standardized cells available from Maxwell Technologies rated at 6 W·h/kg. Experimental electric double-layer capacitors from the MIT LEES project have demonstrated densities of 30 W·h/kg and appear to be scalable to 60 W·h/kg in the short term, while EEStor claims their examples will offer capacities on the order of 200 to 300 W·h/kg. For comparison, a conventional lead-acid battery is typically 30 to 40 W·h/kg, modern lithium-ion batteries are about 120 W·h/kg, and in an automobile applications gasoline has a net calorific value (NCV) of around 12,000 W·h/kg operating at a 20% tank-to-wheel efficiency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultracapacitors

(boldface mine)

We'll see if Big Oil can surpress this or not.

[wtmusic]

46. Yes it is

and the idea is very appealing on several fronts: virtually immediate recharging and unlimited cycle life.

The article states 12,000 wh/kg of net calorific value for gasoline, but despite the use of the word "net" this is still in tank, so 20% efficiency leaves 2,400 wh/kg to actually move the car. Take away the bulky hardware required to combust gasoline and EEStor's energy density becomes very competitive.

Based on their claims, which have yet to be demonstrated. :shrug:

[Rosemary2205]

29. I like it.

It would certainly solve the problem of long range electric car travel long before the batteries are developed that will deliver on that need. If we could just get batteries that will propel a fully loaded SUV 150 miles minimum at 70 plus mph, pulling the boat or the camper, and a power grid that can handle it (right now it couldn't possibly) -- well, it would take some doin' but I like it. I really do like it.

[NutmegYankee]

31. My idea is hybrids with range extenders.

Have a plug-in electric vehicle with a range of 200-250 miles on electric alone and add to this vehicle a small gas tank and small engine sized to support highway speeds of ~ 80 MPH max. Make the engine run off biodiesel or ethanol and have stations to supply it in the event of a long trip, such as cross country or down the east coast etc. If you kill your battery around town, you can limp home on the engine. The engine must be sized such that the performance sucks for driving around town, while the electric motor makes the car zippy and fun to drive. This would persuade people to plug them in.

The majority of your driving is on electric, which even with coal is cleaner since the power plant gets better efficiency and can scrub it emissions more uniformly. Ideally, we use other electric sources, but we'd need nuclear or fossil fuel plants since the electric loads would greatly increase and solar and wind would be unable to supply the massive nighttime power demand.

[NYC_SKP]

45. I ran out of gas in my Prius once....it was cool!

Lights on the dashboard lit up. I was out of fuel. Dry as a bone.

The car, however, still drove me the 1/2 mile or so I needed to go to fuel up.

One of my pet peeves is the fuel gauge; 11 little squares that disappear until there are none.
And, like old analog gauges I remember, the last 1/4 tank always disappears much more quickly.

That, and the seats are cheap and very uncomfortable.

[Bucky]

33. Electricity isn't a power source. To charge the batteries, you need a fuel, plus...

whatever energy you need to actually make the batteries. Besides the weight problem with battery powered cars, engineers have yet to design an electric car that does not burn up more fuel in charging up the batteries than what you normally use just to run a car.

There's a similar problem with nuclear energy, since all the power expended in extracting and processing the uranium or plutonium more than offsets what you save by converting from fossil fuel to nuclear power generation.

I hope, eventually, our scientists will come up with an energy source that's more efficient than petroleum. Right now, they haven't. Most alternative energy sources waste more fossil fuels than they spare.

[Stinky The Clown]

35. And so we .................. ?

[Bucky]

36. Well, I'd say go back to riding horses, but as you know, they pollute far more than cars.

The government should be challenging scientists and engineers to solve our multifaceted energy problems, much as previous generations were challenged to put a man on the moon, defeat the fascists, and cure polio.

Their accomplishment will be all the more sweet if they develop safe, renewable energy sources over the braying negativism of doom-and-gloomers like me.

[krispos42]

37. Wind and solar-powered ethanol plants

To distill the ethanol. Directly focusing the sun's rays or using electric burners to boil off the ethanol. That would work, especially in the Midwest and Southwest, where the population is fairly sparse and you'd have to otherwise build lots of long-distance power lines to export the wind and solar power.

That's the first possibility. Later on, well, like I said before, nuclear fusion is the cleanest way if we can ever get it commercially viable.

Another intriging possibility is the construction of a space elevator. Imagine a rope that extends from the earth's surface to a point 60,000 miles straight up. It's center of gravity in geosyncronous orbit, so it states in the same place in the sky relative to Earth, and it rotates once per day on that center of gravity so the lower end does not move from it's appointed place on the globe. Basically, imagine sticking a sewing needle into pea.

With a space elevator we can use "climbers" to crawl up the rope and bring loads of stuff up into space for very little money. That means we could build vast, vast arrays of photovoltaic cells in space and beam the power down to via microwaves.

Not to mention we could run barrels of toxic waste up to the end of the rope (where they would have escape velocity) and launch them into the sun or something. No more salt mines in Nevada! Just up the rope and goodbye!

And of course we could launch space probes and colonization ships the same way.



It's a hell of a concept.

[Selatius]

50. People have said you could also use it to get rid of nuclear waste, but ...

the microwave idea isn't feasible, simply because one nudge, such as a meteor the size of a thumbnail or smaller, and the microwave beam flies off and hits something else on the surface of the planet.

[krispos42]

51. We'd need to take safety precautions, obviously

Such as maybe floating the receiver grids in the oceans. And some kind of failsafe where if the beam wanders the satellite's output cuts off.

The engineering will come, I have no doubt about that.

[wtmusic]

38. I like it. Although even small cars will require sizeable batteries.

Standard wet lead-acid batteries can offer one mile for every 15-20 pounds of lead, so for forty miles of range you're talking about 800 lbs. of batteries.

Li-Ion batteries will do much better than that, but a battery pack would be worth at least $8,000 and they're pretty easy to destroy by mischarging.

So your idea may fly someday, but concurrently we'll see charging get faster and faster, so it may not be necessary.

[dorkulon]

48. I was thinking about precisely this myself.

I was prodded into the thought after watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" showed me that "fill-up time" was an obstacle. The standardized, swappable battery seems a good solution for this.

[AdHocSolver]

49. You are 96 years too late with this idea.

In his book "Internal Combustion", Edwin Black relates that Thomas Edison and Henry Ford envisioned such a system as you describe back in 1912. They proposed building electric cars that could be charged overnight for short commutes. For longer trips, when your car's battery was exhausted, you would pull into a battery exchange station and swap your discharged battery for a fully charged one.

Edison was working on developing such a vehicle in his laboratory. When he came close to having a working model to be considered for production, a mysterious fire occurred at his laboratory complex destroying all of his work. He and Ford then abandoned the project.

There is another way to use hybrid technology to develop electric vehicles. Currently, both an elctric motor and an internal combustion engine deliver power to the wheels as well as charge the batteries.

I think that a more efficient method would be to have the motive power come solely from electric motors. A small onboard gasoline or other type of fuel using engine could be used to drive an alternator that could be started whenever the batteries needed charging. On long trips this engine could run continuously to charge the batteries.

Since this engine would only be used to run the alternator, it could be small and run at a constant speed and be designed to be very efficient. such a vehicle would NOT need a complex, heavy, and energy wasting transmission.

An internal combustion engine provides weak torque and must run at high RPM to produce any usable power. Therefore, it requires a complex transmission that wastes a lot of energy due to the production of heat from friction. A small engine dedicated to running an alternator to recharge the batteries would be very efficient.

Why haven't we seen such a design? It is simple. Gasoline engines with their complex transmissions and their cooling systems require lots of expensive parts and lots of expensive maintenance and lots of expensive pollution control equipment. Electric vehicles are near zero pollution vehicles, need no expensive transmissions, no complex cooling systems, no mufflers to replace, and no oil changes. Electric motors contain dozens of parts rather than hundreds of parts.

Electric vehicles would use less fuel (of any type) and cost the consumer far less to maintain. That means less profits for oil companies and less profit for auto companies.

Performance? The Tesla all-electric car can go from zero to 60 MPH in 4 seconds.

[and-justice-for-all]

52. There is NOTHING wrong with EVs..

NOTHING!!

There were/are an excellent alternative to fossil fuel earth destroyers. Will they end our use of oil based products, no. But they sure as hell would dramatically cut our use and dependents on foreign oil.

[Ganja Ninja]

54. I think probably the biggest problem right now is ...

no one knows what type of technology we are going to replace the internal combustion engine with.

What happens if, after all the expense of investing in this type of interchangeable battery technology another better option comes along and makes it obsolete?

I think if we had a standard everyone agreed upon we could change over no problem.

[NNN0LHI]

58. Where does the energy for the climate control come from?

Or for the power brakes and steering or on-board computers? Cooling and heating the inside of a car in very hot or sub-zero temperatures without the assistance of an internal combustion engine and alternator would require a tremendous amount of energy from somewhere. Where does all that energy come from?

Don

[Stinky The Clown]

62. The same place as the rest of the power

[NNN0LHI]

63. Then how much energy is left over for actual propulsion?

Must be some big batteries.

Don

[wtmusic]

65. Air conditioning and heating use almost as much power

as moving a car down the street. So yes, they will deliver a big hit to the range of any electric vehicle.

Still, 90% of Americans drive less than 30 mi/day, so for a second car electric vehicles are very practical. Even the most primitive cost the equivalent of about $2/gallon to drive.

[Chan790]

66. Well...

I have no idea overall, it's a discussion to be had and I'm sure it is taking place somewhere. Let's have a discussion and see if we can brainstorm point-by-point. First that requires a list of needs parsed to rudimentary function goals.

Here's what I came up with. Feel free to add more:

Heating: Not sure. I'd suspect that an EV engine is going to generate heat somewhere, thus it becomes a matter of channeling that heat much like one does currently. It doesn't require a lot of heat energy, most heat generated by automobiles, even in the dead of winter is dissipated into the environment, not used for climate control. If nothing else, brakes work on friction and generate a large measure of heat in their own right. (If one doubts this...watch NASCAR. On hot days and small tracks you can see the discs glowing orange behind the wheels...and they're not exactly riding the brakes. In fact, the goal is to use them as sparingly as possible in order to maintain the highest speed, best-line through the corners and fuel economy.)

Cooling: Is inefficient, no matter what you do. Roll down the window. It worked for your grandparents. If need be, run A/C off the battery. The drain will be less than currently used as it no longer needs to offset ambient heat within the passenger compartment generated by combustion.

Computers/Navigation: Run off the battery?

Power Controls: Run off the battery?

One part of this solution is to simply replace the alternator with a turbine on a moving part to function in a similar way...possibly a non-drive wheel? That way it generates some power on any inertial movement not being immediately offset by battery drain? One effects some energy generation from coasting and rolling down hills because, unlike a combustion engine, no locomotive force is being generated by the powertrain and no energy is being expended.

[wtmusic]

68. The power drain from computers, stereos etc is negligible

and there is quite a bit of existing technology for regenerative braking (using inertia to recharge batteries).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_braking

[NNN0LHI]

69. Roll down the windows when it is 100+ degrees in the shade?

And catch the heat off the brakes to keep the inside of the car warm in sub-zero temps?

Your kidding me ain't you?

Don

[wtmusic]

71. There are a lot more electric car conversions with added heaters

than added A/C.

When it's hot I drive mine with the window open and pretend it's a convertible. It was over 100° last weekend and I didn't miss A/C much, although I realize most people wouldn't tolerate it.

Not being at the mercy of gasoline prices makes up for it.

http://www.aspire-ev.com

[NNN0LHI]

79. Its not uncommon here to be near a hundred degrees and also raining

These are some of the same reasons I never have owned a motorcycle. Can't use them enough to be worthwhile. Its either too hot or too cold or raining or snowing here or some combination.

Now if I lived in say, Jamaica it would be a completely different ball of wax. I probably wouldn't even own a car.

Don

[madokie]

59. I think it's a great idea

I've advocated for such in the past

[readmoreoften]

77. Most folks knowledge of "what's wrong" with EVs comes from astroturf groups set up by corporations.

See "who killed the electric car?" The electric car is the answer. There really isn't a probably with them. Except no profits from gas, no profits from engine parts for the car companies, no gas filters. They put out the electric car because they had to. Then they flooded the world with fake consumer groups, fake science tests, and fake concern in order to kill it.

The fuel cell idea is useless and going nowhere. It is unnecessary. We would be electric if it weren't for capital squashing good ideas to make a buck.