So Magiver apparently people want “the BMW 7-series, Audi A6, Mercedes-Benz S-Class and the Lexus RX 400h and CT 200h hybrids” even less. And saying that there are markets for those cars is “putting lipstick on a pig.”
And oil is not getting more expensive to recover. Oil companies are not investing in hard-to-recover and unconventional oil sources.
And false claims that the Volt costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a car, and this montage is completely impartial … nope, the independent media watchdogs are just part of the lamestream when they point out falsehoods being promoted by sources like Fox.
I’ll tell you guys the secret to a quick-charge battery. It is totally obvious and I’ll like to hear why it can’t be implemented right now. I’ll put it behind a spoiler tag so you can take 3 more seconds to realize how obvious it is.
[spoiler]Parallel charging circuits. Design the battery in 2 or 4 or 8 or 32 or whatever cells depending on things like how big the battery is and how fast you want it to charge. Attach each cell to a different outlet. If you are doing this in the garage, you probably have only 2 outlets, so you’ll be limited to charging 2 cells at once. Maybe you have a 220V along with 2 outlets- adapters, baby, adapters. Standardize the charging point interface so it can accommodate multi-channel charging. Design it such that the car figures out what is being plugged into it via the interface.
It’ll work best at a formal charging station. Say 8 outlets could be bundled together into a single, standardized plug which fits right into your electricity tank. Voila! Your car takes 1/8 the time to charge! If you only got 10 minutes, well it’ll probably make a dent at least. If you got a hybrid, top off the NG while you’re there. And grab a cappuccino and a donut, you’re at a [del]gas station[/del] 7-Eleven/restaurant/hotel. In any case, don’t worry about the carrying capacity of copper wire- just go parallel.
This method is scalable for things like semis and trains as long as the batteries are large enough. Maybe you’d want a 32 or 64 channel charger for an electric semi. Maybe that much trouble is appropriate for a high-end industrial application, especially considering that in the long run your fuel source in inexhaustible and ever-cheaper. It could take a massive up-front investment, but using the technology that already exists today this country could become mostly energy independent using solar power alone. And a colossal effort.[/spoiler]
The world is free to take this idea and run with it. In return, I only ask that capital gains taxes return to a more reasonable (25-30%) level to help balance the national budget. You’re welcome.
On the off-chance that you are serious, and I implemented a 8-channel charging station in my garage at 120v/20 amps each, I would blow the master circuit breaker for my entire house all at once. Have you really run the numbers on this?
Well, I did point out you wouldn’t be able to fully implement it in your garage- my max example there was two ordinary outlets plus maybe a 220v. You’d need a specialized charging station for the 8-channel (x220v). In essence it’d be 8 separate cords terminating in a plug that connects them all at once to 8 separate cells, charging in parallel.
Never mind the garage – My house has 150 amp service, and you are planning more than the entire house’s capacity just for one task, leaving my poor refrigerator out in the cold, so to speak.
It also might be a good idea to crunch the numbers for KWH usage. In my neighborhood, that’s about 14 cents per. What will a fill-up cost? Just a WAG, but 8 220v lines running all night isn’t going to be free, even if a service entry didn’t have to be upgraded and special lines run. It might make a tank of gas cheap by comparison.
They wouldn’t have to run all night, though. The point of the multiple lines is to charge up faster. If the 220v chargers can do the whole thing in 3 hours then multiple lines would easily shave that down. Plus I think the chargers are smart enough to turn off when the battery is fully charged.
That would also require 8x as many charging circuits within the car, not an insubstantial extra cost.
You also run into the issue of providing enough power to the charging station. At home, you’re generally going to be limited to 200V 200A service. Hooking up 8 200v/50A circuits is going to require you to upgrade to a 600Amp service.
If you’re talking roadside charging, which is where raw speed matters, start with Tesla’s 30 minute charge. That sucker pulls 120KW. Plug 8 of those in at a time, your car is sucking in 1 megawatt. Every summer weekend would threaten to take down the nation’s power grid as Jersey Shore goers try to fill up on the Garden State Parkway.
Just for shits & giggles, does anyone have the number of KWHs needed to charge a small all-electric car for a 200-mile range? People are acting as if plugging something in to the residential house socket provides free energy because it’s not gasoline. There must be a number that can be multiplied by the cost per KWH in your area (and we shouldn’t forget to amortize the replacement cost for batteries).
Many Americans appear to believe that cheap gas/petrol is going to last indefinitely.
Sorry muckers, it isn’t.
And all of the heart felt pleas about how you can’t manage without your own personal car aren’t going to cut it when the military and power stations want the oil.
Well, for 180 miles, the proposed Tesla supercharger uses 30min of power at 100KW, giving us about 50KWh of energy per charge. Assume $.13 per Kwh*, that’s $6.50 for 180 miles. Assuming an 30mpg car, we’re talking $6.50 for the equivalent of 6 gallons of gas.
It can’t be that hard to approximate the impact of the RickJay Gas Tax on a poorer household; you could even fix it to the number of persons oin the family. Raise gas taxes by an estimated X dollars per year, then hand a percentage of X back to the lower tax brackets. You encourage less gasoline usage while minimizing, or eliminating, the imapct on people who are the most affected.
If the problem is gasoline use, any solution that does not impose the true cost of gasoline use on the people using it is hopelessly economically ass-backwards.
Frankly, the amount of money wasted on these things is insane-would it not be better to reduce fuel usage through taxation? Like taxing cars based upon their engine size. It would be better to wait until improvements in battery technology results in an electric car with viable range.
I’m waiting to read that Tesla has gone broke-they are not profitable, and their stock is down.
Here are my calculations based on UK prices (petrol is damn pricey here):
Assuming the best charging cost (economy rate electricity at night):
£1.73 per full charge, divided by 93 mile range = Under 2 pence per mile
Assuming the normal charging cost:
£2.91 per charge, divided by 93 mile range = a little over 3 pence per mile
Comparable petrol fuel submini car is probably the Smart Fortwo - does around 65 MPG
Unleaded fuel is about £6.40 a gallon currently, so the Smart costs nearly 10p a mile
Obviously there are lots of other factors to consider - initial purchase cost, life expectancy, performance, useful range, etc - and I can’t be bothered to do the maths on those.