Americans Refusing To Wait For Mainstream EVs 779
hazehead writes "The growing trend of folks refusing to wait for big-car manufacturers to deliver mainstream electric vehicles is starting to get some press. From DIY tinkerers in Atlanta trying to keep money from going overseas (or simply from leaving their wallets) to a guy in Oregon building an open source Civic conversion kit, Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands."
2010 is just too long to wait (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:2010 is just too long to wait (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? It sounds to me like you're saying:
"I'm against government regulation because industry is myopic.
Because one guy in Oregon says he will eventually have a kit to turn a civic into a EV it proves that EV's are something consumers want and are willing to pay for. Therefore, industry will necessarily pick up the concept. This proves that the invisible hand of the market will provide whatever the consumer wants in the most efficient manner possible."
Do you think catalytic converters are a good idea? Do
Re:2010 is just too long to wait (Score:5, Informative)
Holy cognitive dissonance.
Yes, efficiency, as measured by MPG would go up without a cat. However, it's quite a leap of (il)logic to conclude that they'd have better emissions without. Are you really saying that a cat INCREASES emissions? If it were physically possible to get reasonable power and stop the increased NOx formation that happens in lean situations, we'd be doing it. Cats are expensive, and cat's aren't actually required per se, its just that there are no known superior processes for reducing NOx emissions.
Also the bit about the cat not getting hot enough is nonsense. My car has three cats - which is a bit crazy - but the first cat is really only works during start-up until it gets too hot.
Now that home-grown solutions are growing,,, (Score:3, Insightful)
... and getting some press, car companies will step-up the EV production. They don't want any competition eating into their future market.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have heard of EVs charged a higher registration fee to at least partially compensate for the fact that they do not consume taxed petroleum fuel.
I don't have citations, but there are 50 different possible ways this is being implemented, so check with your DMV if you are curious (as am I.)
Highly Irregular (Score:5, Insightful)
> Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands.
Don't worry. The regulators will put a stop to it. Can't have people going around doing things without permission.
Cooking Oil in CA. That's California (Score:3, Interesting)
Please, you Californians, if you see any of tha
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like regulators to me. They will of course, use the excuse that "The industry requested it". The real reason is taxes. Eventually all biofuels (including old fry
Re:Cooking Oil in CA. That's California (Score:5, Informative)
Eventually all biofuels (including old frying oil) will be subject to fuel taxes and they want to be sure that it all flows through "legitimate businesses" that they can compell to collect the taxes for them.
What do you mean "eventually?" [newsobserver.com]
Pshaw! Businesses are Piss Ants (Score:4, Informative)
You're citing businesses trying to block alternative approaches.
If you really want to see a mess, take a look at Compressed Natural Gas. Used to be you could convert your truck/car/bus whatever to run on natural gas/gasoline. When you burn natural gas, it burns cleaner than gasoline and is cheaper than gasoline. Right now, CNG is going for under a buck/gallon in Oklahoma, $2.60 in California.
The EPA and the California Air Resources Board, for reasons unexplained, decided to regulate conversion companies out of existence. EPA started out by mandating that companies that manufacture the retro-fit kits get their kits tested for each and every car model it was being installed on. Smog test wasn't good enough, it had to be a special $40,000 EPA test. California, not wanting to be left out, upped the test fee to $300,000. *EVERY* US kit manufacturer threw in the towel on the domestic market. The costs of the testing put the costs of the kits up so high that no one would buy them. The only way the remaining manufacturers stay in business is exporting kits to other regions of the world like Europe and South America. European countries only require that the engine has a regular smog test after the install to verify the kit is properly installed and functioning correctly. If you happen to find a kit [ebay.com], you don't dare install it in California because the cops will confiscate your car.
We have enough domestic natural gas to run every car in the United States for 100 years. We're the Saudi Arabia of natural gas and we can't use it except to cook and make electricity.
It's damn stupid.
Conversion Kits (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on the area (Score:5, Informative)
There are quite a few folks in the Seattle area tooling around in home-brew electrics, including a co-worker of mine who's done a nice job with a Miata. There are two local factors that encourage this. One is that, being in Boeing's backyard, it's fairly easy to obtain a surplus jet-engine starter motor. The other is that most of our electricity comes from falling water, and therefore is relatively cheap.
Re:Depends on the area (Score:5, Informative)
We have an active electric vehicle group [veva.bc.ca] here in Vancouver. Their cars are almost all DIY conversions. We don't have Boeing jet engine starter motors, but we have an active group and cheap electricity.
The cars are all usable on the road, 100+ km/h top speed, none of this golf cart neighbourhood vehicle nonsense. The range varies from 70 km per charge for lead acid batteries to 200+ km per charge for the fancy stuff. Since my commute is 10 km each way, I have followed this with interest.
...laura
Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
EVs are way more frugal with their power compared to gasoline engines. So much so, that even taking into account loss in transmission lines and energy lost in charging batteries, you still come out ahead. I'll take an extra $100 on my electric bill than at the gas station any day... plus I don't have to make a special trip to 'fill up' the car.
Gas engines are at best about 30% efficient... as in only 30% of the energy consumed actually goes to making momentum for moving the car.
This is just more BS perpetuated by those who stand to lose their income streams from oil, including car mfgs who stand to lose the income stream of spare parts, since EVs are waaaaay more reliable than gas or diesel engines.
I can't wait until somebody finally gets around to making a full EV car that seats two with ABS and Airbags, PS, Heat and AC, even if it only goes 100 miles. If they can do it under $25k I'm there with cash in hand.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Gas engines are at best about 30% efficient... as in only 30% of the energy consumed actually goes to making momentum for moving the car.
And every time you touch the brake pedal, your efficiencey goes down even farther, as you just converted the momentum that you converted that 30% of your gasoline to, to waste heat.
Nothing drags your mileage down like stop signs, tailgating, and not taking your foot off the accelerator when the light ahead is red.
That's one plus for a hybrid - rather than its brakes conver
And that's how things are supposed to be! (Score:5, Insightful)
Perfect... Let the government worry about courts, police, and military. The rest we'll do ourselves, thanks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perfect... Let the government worry about courts, police, and military. The rest we'll do ourselves, thanks.
If that's all the government is doing, then where do you plan to drive your homebuilt EV?
If people with your mindset had their way, there would be no public highway system, national electric infrastructure, food/worker safety regulation, child labor laws, etc etc etc. In the last 80 years, the government did a lot of things that we now take for granted. And private industry certainly wasn't about to do any of it.
Very wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Common argument, but so very wrong, because producing electricity in large power plants, even from really disastrous ones as coal or oil, is very much more efficient than producing it in millions of small engines.
Subsequently adding cleaning solutions is also very much simpler/cheaper than doing the same to millions of small engines.
And later changing the production from one system (say coal or oil) to another (say nuclear, wind or solar) is very much simpler than to replace millions of cars.
Electric... fuel? (Score:5, Funny)
Other components such as a fuel injector were replaced with their electric counterparts
What's the electric counterpart to a fuel injector? A... wire?
--sabre86
Serious answer (Score:4, Informative)
The job of the injector is to provide a metered supply of fuel, so the nearest answer is probably the plug, not the wire. High current connectors are not trivial to implement - the Vectrix scooter had a recall because of a problem in this area. But, generally speaking, it is the metering system - the controller - that is the major technical challenge of an EV. Because the batteries are available, if expensive, the brushless motors are available (and really solid proven technology), but connecting the two together is hard. The Vectrix has an advanced controller that allows regenerative braking, as do some hybrid cars, and effective regen is a major factor in mileage. The controller needs to be extremely efficient to avoid wasting lots of energy as heat, it needs to be very reliable and durable, and it needs to function correctly under many load conditions. In fact, I would submit that the sheer technical cleverness of modern motor controllers is what makes EVs possible on modern roads. If you had to start one like a tram, moving a huge brass switrch bar across a resistor bank to prevent the motor shorting before it ran up to speed, they would be impossible to commercialise.
when you fill your SUV (Score:4, Insightful)
your cash goes to:
1. Chavez in Venezuela to support anti-American jingoism
2. Putin in Russia to support Russian Neoimperialism such as in Georgia
3. Bin Laden via Saudi Wahhabism, the ultra-fundamentalist form of Saudi Islam that gives rise to treating women like cattle, nonSunnis like subhumans, and Islamic terrorism in its myriad forms wherever such groups are supported by conservative Arabic funds
the American government doesn't seem to think getting off foreign oil is as much a priority as the American people think it is. The priorities of the American government conflates dependency on foreign oil with other foreign problems that, if they examined many problems around the world more carefully, they would see that it is the American people and their SUVs that fund those problems in the first place. this complacency is partly our own fault, for not hammering our leaders on this issue hard enough. likewise, you can complain to GM about building SUVs instead of electric cars, but we as Americans buy SUVs instead (until quite recently)
we need electric cars supported by a new wave of modern nuclear power plants. of course there are better sources of electricity than nuclear, but most of these are boutique and cannot scale like nuclear can. this includes wind and solar. but i don't really care to champion nuclear that much as i care about the need to get off foreign oil, any way possible. so please, invest in solar and wind as well, let us find new ways for nonnuclear tech to scale
modern nuclear via pebble bed reactors just does not go chernobyl, and via breeder reactors waste in lifespan and quantity is dramatically reduced (1/10th quantity of waste, a few centuries instead of 10,000 years of radioactivity, and lower radiation levels of safer forms of radiation). breeder reactors also dramatically increasing energy yeild, and allow us to use thorium as well as uranium. security concerns are real with nuclear technology, but if we spent 1/1000th of the amount of money and lives we spend securing our petroleum in iraq on securing breeder reactors instead (they make plutonium, that's the danger with breeder reactors), we would still be many orders of magnitude safer than our current status quo of funding terrorism and russian imperialism and anti-american jingoism like we do now. of course even thorium will run out in a century or two, but if we haven't mastered fusion technology by then, we are doomed anyways, or would have found a way to scale wind and solar by then
zero reliance on foreign petroleum by 2025. whoever enunciates that idea the loudest amongst a range of candidates in any contest before you, elect them to Senator/ President/ Congressman/ Dogcatcher
if petrodollars were to dry up on the international stage, many of the intransigent problems that all peoples of the world face today, not just Americans face, would dry up as well
thems the facts. get with it America
no more foreign petrodollars. stop feeding your damn SUVs
So true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I saw those damn "If you smoke pot, you're supporting terrorist" all I could think about was the distasteful regimes we buy our oil from.
Well said.
caveat (Score:3, Interesting)
if you shoot heroin, you really do support the taliban and al qaeda. especially if you shoot heroin in europe
its funny, but the only positive effects the taliban had in afghanistan while they were in power was they utterly destroyed the opium trade there (the ONLY positive effect. blowing up ancient buddhas, beheading prostitutes and adulterers and prodiving a safe haven for bin laden and his jolly crew was their real achievements.)
before 9/11/01, american drug officials would fly over opium growing regions
Can-do spirit (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only is this a great example of the American can-do tradition, hopefully it will also go a long way toward dispelling the myth that cars are too complicated for "regular people" to deal with.
Think about it. When my parents were graduating from high school (1969) it was a given that people would know the basics of how to service a car. For guys especially, it was just something that guys "should" know. These days the attitude is more like, "meh, it's too complicated, leave it to the experts".
Let's hear it for can-do, rather than pay-someone-else-to-do.
Re: (Score:3)
No, modern cars are quite easy to service, as long as you buy Japanese. American cars are intentionally designed to be impossible to work on. If you can't work on your car, that's what you get for buying American.
As for "expensive, proprietary diagnostic computers", you can buy an OBDII scan tool at Autozone for about $150 which will interface with every car made since 1996. That's pretty cheap compared to a tool box and a good set of wrenches.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But still, are they that much more difficult to work on than computers?
Computers are easy; my car otoh, well, I took it to a certified machanic to find out why my engine light was on, and even he couldn't figure it out. He reset it, two weeks later it came back on. Now I'm just ignoring it until I have to have it towed back.
I never skinned my knuckles working on a computer (knock on wood). From Good Riddance to Bad Tech [kuro5hin.org] (yeah, it's mine)
SUE! (Score:4, Funny)
Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands."
How dare they??? I want government oversight of this dangerous endeavor immediately! I want it taxed, and regulated and I want government subsidies.
How dare people do things without asking for government permission!
They need to make sure that these vehicles can pass all the safety regulations. You know, to protect the children. Do it for the Children! Won't anyone think of the children????
OMG This is crazy. These people are Terrorists! They are out to destroy America! How dare they!
And don't forget Illegal Aliens. I know they are involved somewhere.
I want one of THESE to go with my Tesla... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love an electric car. But a few times a year, I drive from the Bay Area to San Diego. This [mrsharkey.com] is the perfect solution to the problem.
Petrolium use in America - Where do we target 1st? (Score:5, Informative)
Bunch of Theives (Score:3, Funny)
Stealing precious tax dollars from fuel tax so they can drive their tax free electric vehicles all over town on road they haven't paid for!!!
Someone contact the MPAA (Motorcar Pavement American Association) and the RIAA (Roadway Improvement Advancement Association).
Cottage-industry bicycles? Yes. Cars? No. (Score:3, Interesting)
The bicycle industry seems to be one of the last bastions of Yankee ingenuity, where small entrepreneurs make a successful business out of a few thousand square feet of floor space, some machine tools, and a few dozen employees. Once you get beyond the Huffies in Wal*Mart, a large percentage of the $500-and-up bicycles seem to be made by large numbers of small companies. But I don't think this is going to happen with cars.
The bicycle craze and the horseless carriage fad hit the U. S. at roughly the same time, maybe 1895 or thereabouts. An 1896 Boston Globe article quotes a livery stable operator as being worried by bicycles but dismissing the horseless carriage as "a pack of French nonsense." At the time, bicycles represented a high level of mechanical and engineering sophistication. It's not surprising that the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics; bicycles, early automobiles, and early airplanes were not at terribly different levels of complexity.
Not any more. (Pace, members of the Experimental Aircraft Association; I know that there are people still building airplanes in their garage).
But I don't see cottage-industry carmaking as going much of anywhere. For one thing, it's not about the car, it's about the battery. I don't think great breakthroughs in batteries are going to be the province of cottage-industry entrepreneurs.
In the 1900s, electric cars had a range of about thirty miles. In the intervening time, advances in batteries have been counterbalanced by increased expectations of what a car should do, and I find it very discouraging that the Chevy Volt should have a promised electric range of only forty miles.
The brilliance of the Prius (which uses a fundamental design worked out by the U. S. company TRW in the last sixties, who couldn't get U. S. carmakers interested in it) is that it achieves something significant without requiring revolutionary new batteries made of unobtainium. The battery is just a short-term buffer that makes up the difference between the torque required for normal driving and the torque obtainable from a small, fuel-efficient engine. But it does so by being mechanically and electronically very sophisticated. I don't think anyone could cobble up a Prius-style hybrid engine in a small machine shop.
I'd love to see a disruptive-technology electric car emerge from small companies, but I don't think it will happen.
Sounds like openings for businesses. (Score:3, Interesting)
odd (Score:4, Interesting)
It is still both cheaper and more environmentally friendly to buy a use car with good millage.
EVs make the best sports cars, period. Nothing competes with electric for performance. We should have been making electric sports cars 15 years ago. But soon Tesla & co. will finally push the internal combustion engine out of the high performance market.
After EVs are dominating the sports car world they weill trickle down rapidly.
Electric cars arent fun just for the enviroment. (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad bought an electric Renault a couple of years ago and after i took it for a spin i was totally lost. First of all an electric car has a very flat torque curve, it accelerates pretty evenly from standstill to 90 Km/h. Its easy to drive it very smoothly and elegantly. The next thing is sound, the car is dead silent until you hit 60+ km/h and road noise starts. Electric cars arent all about the enviroment.
Myself i really want one but sadly you cant buy one no matter how much you are willing to spend. The demand is here but for some strange reason no western or japanese manufacturer wants the money. The Chinese on the other hand are getting up to speed very quickly and at current pace of development it wont be long before their EV's start pouring into the west.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Insightful)
I think more most people it's not about being "green" so much as the low price of running the vehicle... with the cost of electricity compared to gas EVs get the equivalent of 200MPG. Not to mention the other benifits such as smooth and quiet operation, no nasty oils, coolants, or other crap to keep up with, and of course a "full tank" every time you leave your garage.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you realize that the average American spends about 60 cents/mile paying for the car, maintenance, license fees, etc. and only about 13 cents/mile in putting gas in the tank?
I would argue that most people stand to gain a lot more by buying a car that costs less up front and less to maintain than they would ever gain in buying just because it's more fuel-efficient. If it's about cost, that's where you can start.
Don't give me this nonsense that people can't afford gas, the fact is they can't afford expensive cars (and they buy them anyway) and gasoline is a minor player in the 'highway economy' of the United States.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Insightful)
Electric cars are a huge win there, too. The complex emissions control nightmare that U.S. law requires makes the drive train incredibly failure-prone. Automatic transmissions make them doubly so. Add in the complexity of computer-controlled everything and you have a device that is orders of magnitude more complex than cars were fifty years ago. And people wonder why cars seem to break down more often. It is like using a shiny new computer with monitor and printer where a printer-calculator would do the job. The simpler the device, the less failure-prone it will be.
With electric cars, you have basically four parts: a battery, a bunch of heavy gauge wires, a charge controller, and an electric motor. All of those are generally simple devices except the charge controller. Okay, so there are a few other things like an electrically-powered pump for your power steering and a modified A/C system, but in terms of the drive train itself, you get rid of a lot of crap. You get rid of the internal combustion engine, the computer that controls it, the transmission, potentially the radiator and hundreds of feet of water hoses (that leak), the oil pan (that leaks), the oil hoses (that leak), the fuel pump, most of the vacuum system, the catalytic converter, and the entire exhaust system, all of which are fairly frequent points of failure. Add to that dozens of sensors that no longer apply, including emissions compliance sensors (O2 sensors, catalytic converter temperature sensors, NOx sensors, etc.), axle speed sensors (largely used to verify the transmission is working correctly), vacuum line pressure sensors, etc.
The result is that electric cars are much less likely to fail mechanically. Much less. In fact, one could reasonably argue that the reason auto manufacturers are dragging their heels is that, ignoring people who upgrade for appearance reasons or because their old car is too small to meet their needs, people are likely to replace their vehicles much less frequently than they do now. If the average person drives a car for 300,000 miles before they sell it and require no maintenance in the process, a $30,000 car costs only $0.10 per mile average, not counting energy costs. And that's a conservative estimate of EV longevity once we solve the problem of short battery lifespan. There's every possibility you'll have a rust hole where your feet should go before the electric motor or wiring gives out.... :-)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Funny)
My electricity is nuclear and my BBQ is natural gas..
Oh yeah? In my neighborhood, it's the other way around!
(try my Cs-137 Chili some time - yum!)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually they are working on and perfecting solar powered refueling stations. http://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/home-hydrogen-fueling-stations.htm [hydrogencarsnow.com]
Once that is in play the hydrogen cars are the perfect solution.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Insightful)
Why stop and recharge as often if you can just put solar panels on the car and increase your miles per watt. Once the general public sees the value in not wasting the constant barrage of energy (from the sun) we receive everyday we might just start the trend we are looking for.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Informative)
they already do this in some places - i live in NC and here you can get a time of use meter - which does exactly what you are asking for.. we get reallllllllly cheap off peak power and we pay higher than normal for peak times.
mix that with our dish washer and washer/drier that has a wailt x hours ability.. and we just load it up and have them run at 2am
doing this (along with setting comps to go standby while we are at work and wake up before we get home) dropped our power bill from about 250 to ~120$ a month..
yes it does (Score:5, Insightful)
If we move our transport systems over to electricity, then change the way we generate that electricity, it does a great deal.
Also, its a hell of a lot easier to control emissions from power stations then it is to control millions of cars pouring exhaust fumes into the air in cities.
Its going to take a while to get the somewhat large number of nuclear power stations and solar power farms the US now wants up and running, but it is going to happen, and when it does, things will get a lot better.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:yes it does (Score:4, Insightful)
Compared to the years it takes to amortize the Crazy Dictators and Wackadoos financial baggage that comes with buying a great portion of your energy from places trying their hardest to be run by medieval-minded mysoginistic violent theocrats like the people running Iran, or blowhard Marxist buffoons like Hugo Chavez? Nukes have indirect and long terms costs, but so does having to buy oil from crazy people.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Compared to the years it takes to amortize the Crazy Dictators and Wackadoos financial baggage
Well from the point of view of the energy company, those are what're called "externalities", which is economics-speak for "Who cares? I'm not footing the bill. LOL."
Halliburton doesn't pay for the problems caused by Middle East instability; in fact it profits from them.
Whereas even with government aid they'd still have to sink a lot of the up-front costs for nuclear plants.
Sure from the standpoint of us, the consum
Re:yes it does (Score:5, Insightful)
From my understanding, about half that cost comes from dealing with the inevitable lawsuits that occur whenever a nuclear power plant is about to be built. Most power companies run all their available nuclear power plants at full capacity (and hydroelectric if they have them) and then take care of the rest of the power needed with fossil fuel generators. The cost per kilowatt hour for nuclear power is a lot cheaper than fossil fuels, but there has been a lot of trouble building nuclear power plants due to legal issues. Hopefully that is changing now.
Re:yes it does (Score:5, Insightful)
According to an article in National Review I read recently, nuclear power proponents are hoping that the combination of advances in nuclear technology, high oil prices, and the relatively light carbon foot-print of nuclear power power will encourage and enable reductions in some of the bureaucracy.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If we move our transport systems over to electricity, then change the way we generate that electricity, it does a great deal.
Yeah, and who really drives more than 40 miles a day anyways right? Oh wait...
Re:yes it does (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe you should see if your company would consider it a valuable perk?
Or... why not see this as an opportunity? Build your own charging system (big sucker) and charge your other friends at work to use it.
Re:yes it does (Score:5, Insightful)
Not good enough. I need:
a) 300+ miles per fill up
b) 5 min fill ups
c) 700+ mi daily range
d) Infra everywhere I go
Yawn. Everyone thinks that at first. Statistics unassailably reveal that most of you are wrong. For the tiny fraction of people who do need that spec, then, sadly, an EV is not the car for you. EVs don't have to solve everyone's problems all the time at first. They can still be extremely useful for the other 90% of us in the meantime.
Re:yes it does (Score:5, Informative)
[EVs] can still be extremely useful for the other 90% of us in the meantime.
So how do you enjoy your EV? (I thought so)
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. I drive our EV several times per week, and we love it. In the past 18 months there were exactly two times that its 100-mile range wasn't adequate. The first time, we just used our gas car, which we've since sold. The second time we traded cars with a neighbor. The EV is powerful, efficient, and fun to drive, so we have about a dozen friends who are happy to trade cars for a week if we need to take a long trip.
Hope that answers your question.
Re:yes it does (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG!! This partial solution doesn't fix EVERYONE'S problems?! Then what the hell good is it? Just because 80% of the cars out there drive 10 to 20 miles, sit in the sun for 8 hours and then drive another 10 to 20, doesn't mean a solution that will allow them to drive it for practically nothing is worth a damn. Damn liberal idiots with your goofy, do nuthin' solutions.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with you. Not only that, but I bet that with microgrids with many small generators, like solar panels or windmills or perhaps MIT's new solar heat dish (discussed earlier on this site) as needed, could do it. Improve public transportation and agriculture similarly, and my god, we'd have solved some problems.
At this point, the advantages are so compelling that it's only corrupt political fatcats in the way. Maybe when more of us Americans notice that Europe's superior energy efficiency is a big ec
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to add in for those not aware, projections for the percentage increase in ones monthly electric bill have ranged from 28% to 64% once the caps are removed. There are efforts to spread those increases over a period of years rather than all at once.
It was during the Ridge(R) administration that electric utilities lobbied and won the right to set their own rates, rather than having the PUC (Public Utility Comm
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Informative)
Power stations can reach nearly 90% efficiency. (Score:3, Informative)
It's the concept of "waste" heat you see.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also consider that most electric cars will recharge overnight, and during other "non-peak" hours. This also helps improve the efficiency of the power generation station.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it does help a little. Pollution can be better controlled at a single point than at many thousands of points. Economies of scale can also be implemented.
There are a myriad of other problems that arise, 10 years down the line you'll need a new set of batteries and what do you do with the old ones?
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it does help a little. Pollution can be better controlled at a single point than at many thousands of points. Economies of scale can also be implemented.
And just as importantly, that single point doesn't have to move, and thus doesn't pay an efficiency cost due to having to move the extra mass of any emissions controls.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Informative)
There are a myriad of other problems that arise, 10 years down the line you'll need a new set of batteries and what do you do with the old ones?
Recycle them [wikipedia.org]. Lead acid battery recycling is one of the most successful recycling programs in the US - 97% according to the Wiki article. Further, I have seen statements (no reference, sorry) that recycled lead is cheaper/cleaner than mined lead.
I can't comment on other battery technologies, but I don't see why similar results couldn't be achieved.
Coal is better. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would posit that electrical power from coal to drive electric cars would ultimately be cheaper for consumers, better for the environment, and would place on a better path to national energy independence.
It is far more efficient to have a single big plant burning electricity and sending electrons to people rather than having everyone around with their own little tiny power plants. A single giant coal plant has a generator that runs at a fixed rate, maximizing power output for fuel burned, whereas an internal combustion engine car operates over a wide range of RPMs, offering more of a compromise than a fuel solution.
The single giant plant is only one physical distribution point for many cars. Instead of having fleets of tanker trucks with hundreds of people hauling fuel around to dozens of gas stations, you instead have a single train run by one or two people hauling up to a month's supply of coal for a big coal unit and in one single trip.
If we did switch to electric cars, even if they did come from coal plants, you would also eliminate the environment problem of gasoline spills. There's nothing to "spill" in an electric car that is really bad. Yes, you will wind up with either lead acid batteries that are environment nightmare, or, lithium polymer batteries that periodically explode and kill everyone in the car, but ultimately, the birds will sing and trees will wave their branches in joy, if that's the sort of stuff you like.
The Solectria Sunrise was getting 370 miles (Score:4, Informative)
On Ni-MH batteries in 1996.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solectria_Sunrise [wikipedia.org]
That's close to twice the range of my petrol car.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
It does get arround the immediate problem of rising gasoline prices. Fact is coal is much cheaper per unit energy than oil and afaict the US mines most of it's own coal supply whereas they are having to import ever increasing ammounts of oil. It also moves polloution out of cities and iirc big power plants have much tighter emmisions controls than motor vehircles and those controls are much easier to enforce.
It won't help with global warming though :(
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
But not all power generated in the US is from coal and fossil fuels. My power is generated via Hydroelectric. There are Windmills popping up left and right. Except for trying to say no to all fossil fuels the trick is to reduce the need for it. fossil fuels are easy to transport and offer a lot of energy. Nuclear has to many left wing hippies who think of it as a bomb waiting to happen stopping it from popping up next door (Aka a field 10 miles away from you) Solar isn't ready neither are others. But even a dirty coal power plant is probably more efficient then a gas power car.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it improves the situation greatly. Your view is far too simplistic.
A big power station is a lot more efficient than a small car engine. A typical gasoline engine is perhaps 15% efficient. The combined cycle gas power station they recently built here makes use of about 80% of the thermal energy of the gas. The gas turbines are the first stage, then waste heat from the gas turbines drive a steam turbine, then any heat that is still left is used to heat the NSC sports centre swimming pool and the sports centre itself. Those efficiencies are simply impossible for a small internal combustion engine on a car.
An electric car is a lot more efficient than a gasoline one - for a start, it doesn't idle, and you can have regenerative braking.
If you change the power generation (say, from coal to nuclear) you don't have to also change the fleet of vehicles. Automatically, overnight, they are suddenly nuclear powered.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people want to eliminate petroleum imports, and consider environmental protection a lesser priority or no priority at all.
I know plenty of conservatives that scoff at the idea of environmental protection and global warming but who still have a strong interest in electric cars, alternative fuel vehicles, and hybrids as a means of cutting the trade deficit and reducing the leverage that OPEC has over our foreign policy.
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Any power plant is more efficient and produces less pollution per watt than a car engine, especially when coupled to a car's inefficient drive train. Then there are the cleaner alternatives some utilities have already been using for decades, like hydro.
Right now for the cost of a nice car you can cover your roof with solar panels and have almost no power bill at all. That would more than offset the extra cost and pollution from charging your electric car.
If you believe otherwise I guess you could power yo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me ask you this then: (Score:3, Insightful)
Which makes more sense?
1) Install a single, as-large-as-you-want, possibly even fuel generating smokestack scrubber [csmonitor.com] on a single smokestack, or:
2) Install millions of mufflers on millions of combustion engines which have difficult engineering restraints on them? Mufflers need to be small, lightweight, and inexpensive as design concerns - concerns that are placed at least on equal footing with efficiency. Possibly more so.
Which seems like the better idea?
Re:If the demand for electricity increases (Score:5, Informative)
Batteries can be recycled. Today, you pay more for your new lead acid car battery unless you turn in your old one. You get a pretty considerable discount when turning in an old one, which gets recycled into more car batteries. I think there's something like a 90% recycling rate for car batteries as a result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-acid_battery#Environmental_concerns [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, most engines retain an average efficiency of about 18%-20%.
In contrast, is says this about fossil fuel powerplants:
Subcritical fossil fuel power plants can achieve 36â"40% efficiency. Supercritical designs have efficiencies in the low to mid 40% range, with new "ultra critical" designs using pressures of 4,400 psi (30 MPa) and dual stage reheat reaching about 48% efficiency
Your coal plant is getting around double the efficiency of the ICE. Not sure about the other losses, but I'd be really surprised if you're losing 80% of the energy in the grid as you claim - figures I remember from school were closer to 95% efficiency. If your electric motor is 50% efficient, it's about even with an ICE.
And this is assuming that all of your power is generated from fossil fuel
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Rather than have a car's engine convert at say 30% efficiency, by burning gasoline, you get power from the grid instead. The grid gets power at ~20% efficiency from the distributor, which gets it at 20% efficiency from the power plant, which gets 20-30% efficiency from burning goal and oil.
Something doesn't seem quite right here, your automotive efficiency sounds too high -- I seem to recall a typical gasoline engine has a Carnot limit around 40%, but is something more like 18-25%. Putting the efficiency of a powerplant at or below an automobile engine is ridiculous, considering the powerplant can operate at a higher temperature for its heat resevoir and optimize its design trading off parameters a car engine cannot (like size, weight, and RPMs), 35% efficiency isn't unusual for a real-world
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
its also very unsafe to be driving around with a tank full of highly exlposive gas...
Wrong, all viable H2 systems store it in a chemical bond, not 'just' compressed gas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage [wikipedia.org]
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Informative)
Good point, but even H2 cells used for electricity generation can explode, albeit not under normal operations. Its still H2 afterall.
Hydrogen cannot explode by itself, it needs oxygen and an ignition source. Thus, it is no less safe than using gasoline, and people do not seem to object to using that. And even batteries can explode, as some laptop owners had the bad luck to experience.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, when Lithium batteries explode, it's due to a build up of hyrdogen that then gets ignited. Hence the big whoosh as the hydrogen ignites followed by the 'slower' burn of the lithium.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
its also very unsafe to be driving around with a tank full of highly exlposive gas
And this is different from driving around with a tank full of highly explosive gasoline because...?
In the long run, electric will be the better choice. We can get electricity from a number of sources, which abstracts that away from the engineering of the vehicle. An h2 powered car will have significantly fewer of sources
Since one of those sources in the hydrogen case is electricity, I don't see the number of sources to be fewer than in the case of battery-powered cars.
Please criticize valid points of hydrogen as an energy storage medium instead of making up silly points that can be refuted in an instant.
Re:Cost Effective? (Score:5, Informative)
Read more carefully, the $12,000 included the truck itself.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, there is the question of whether the $700 represents a real savings, or simply a transfer of costs from gas to electric. Unless he's stealing power from his neighbors, of course...
A choice can cost you in ways other than $$. (Score:3, Insightful)
Like when you shop at WalMart. You get cheaper goods, but you also encourage CEOs to shift more and more jobs to cheaper over-seas nations. Less job opportunities, less wealth in the nation to pay for specialized services, etc.
You gotta look past your wallet to see how your choices can cost you. Giving money to a 'find the missing baby' charity is not cost effective.
Re:Cost Effective? (Score:5, Interesting)
you assume that gas prices stay the same for the next 7 years.
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The main problem here is in expecting a Chevy to last 7 years. Chevies never last that long without everything falling apart on them. And it's not the engine itself that's the problem, it's the rest of the car; many of the engines are actually ok.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Every 80s Camaro I've ever seen outside of a junkyard looks like its owner lives in it, along with a family of rats.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Savings in gas: $700
Satisfaction at not forking over money to the Saudi royal family and their BFF Bin Laden: priceless
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, right or wrong, a core tenet of American culture is independence.
I disagree. That used to be a core tenet of American culture 100+ years ago, but not any more. There's still a tiny minority of people that believe strongly in independence; they're the ones who voted for Ron Paul recently. All these EV DIYers are probably from that group. The vast majority of Americans, however, couldn't care less about independence, and only care about consumerism. They have no problem giving away all their
Re:$12k?! (Score:5, Informative)
Umm...RTFA!
The $12,000 INCLUDED the truck. The truck probably ran around $7,000. So $5000 saved $700 in 6 months. At $1400 a year we are looking at 3.6 years. in addition EV's typcially cost 50% to run outside of the cost of fuel. Since he would probably spend around $1000 a year for repairs on the truck, the actual savings are $1900 a year for about 2.5 years.
Electic Vehicles are about break-even for city driving/daily commutes. In the next 2 years the power storage will increase and become cheaper pushing EV's into the financial smart move category.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I am looking forward to hearing more about eestor.
52 KW-h at 400 lbs and $3200
They claim units will be shiped early next year...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2. According to this, [fueleconomy.gov] his truck would get 16 mpg, not 25.
Re:Heh. (Score:5, Insightful)
If they really want to do something they're better off protesting.
Personally I have much more respect for the man that takes matters into his own hands, than the one who just yells and whines.