[QUOTE=DSeid]
See item 3 in the post above yours. The thread is still on its first page, reading the posts in it isn’t too much too ask, is it?
[/QUOTE]
Why don’t you read item 3. I can’t make sense of it In particular the last sentence. I’m sure you haven’t read it either or you would have edited that statement.
Sigh.
Let me state it for you again then. I’ll try to state it more clearly.
The capacity is here. Now. At least in the MidWest and the East there is enough extra capacity during off peak hours to handle all cars as PHEVs and EREVs charging overnight even if they all changed to that overnight. There is a bit less excess off peak capacity in the West. Cite provided.
In the West extra capacity would be needed if all cars were to suddenly be PHEVs and EREVs powering their average daily commutes totally off of the grid on off peak hours. Wind, which is already a rapidly growing power generation segment, becomes even more competitive with this evening out of demand over the 24 hour day. Part of the problem with wind as a power source is that it produces energy just as much (actually more) during traditional off-peak hours (nighttime), when it is not needed, as it does during peak hours. That’s energy generated that goes to waste, by and large, as storing it both costs and loses energy in the process. Increased demand during those off peak hours plays to wind power’s strength and makes wind power much more cost competitive on a needed power delivered basis for additional capacity needs. Interestingly enough, most of the West, where new capacity might be needed, has higher average wind speeds than the MidWest and the East.
I am so tired about the “lack of infrastructure” fallacy.
My god Saint Cad! You mean we had the infrastructure built in all of the time and I just didn’t see it? :eek:
Yes.
[QUOTE=SaintCad]
I am so tired about the “lack of infrastructure” fallacy.
My god Saint Cad! You mean we had the infrastructure built in all of the time and I just didn’t see it? :eek:
Yes.
[/QUOTE]
While we’re at it, why not just have the government pass a law that all current cars have to run on the newest alternative technology, be it hydrogen or electricity ot hamster wheels, and save the cost and expense of replacing out all the old cars?
[QUOTE=Rick]
Not sure where you are getting your twice as much figure. Looking at Toyota.com for my zip there appears to be about a 4K difference on a Camry between a mid line gas engine and the hybrid. (24K-28K).
[/QUOTE]
Indeed…I think that is a better estimate. When I bought my Prius in 2004, New York State had a sales tax rebate on what they estimated to be the cost differential between a hybrid and non-hybrid car. As I recall, their estimate was something like $3000 (leading to a rebate of ~$250 on the ~8.25% sale tax).
[QUOTE=SaintCad]
I am so tired about the “lack of infrastructure” fallacy.
[/QUOTE]
Concur.
Hey, Wilbur, let’s work on a flying machine.
But, Orville, there are no airports!
[QUOTE=begbert2]
While we’re at it, why not just have the government pass a law that all current cars have to run on the newest alternative technology, be it hydrogen or electricity ot hamster wheels, and save the cost and expense of replacing out all the old cars?
[/QUOTE]
So hyperbole is now a valid logical argument?
Relative to your suggestion that was scarcely hyperbole.
[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
General Electric has recently developed an electrolyzer that can produce hydrogen from water at a cost of $3.00 per kg. A kilogram of hydrogen is equivalent to a gallon of gas. Now I have no illusions that the price of oil won’t double in the next ten years. I’ve seen the price already double in that time span. It won’t be long before hydrogen will be regarded as cheap.
[/quote]
Let me guess. It has to be fresh water, right?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Desal plants are always fun.
[QUOTE=marshmallow]
Let me guess. It has to be fresh water, right?
[/QUOTE]
Why would the water have to be fresh water to use electrolysis (I assume that is the method they are talking about)?
Personally I don’t think that we’ll be using water/electrolysis unless we build a boat load of nuclear power plants. I think we’ll use LNG or methane (assuming we can figure out how to do so without releasing more GHG, which would kind of defeat the purpose)…but could you explain why you couldn’t do this on sea water? Granted, been a while since I took chemistry in college, but I don’t see any show stoppers off the top of my head…
-XT
[QUOTE=marshmallow]
Let me guess. It has to be fresh water, right?
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Desal plants are always fun.
[/QUOTE]
Electrolyzing salt water presumably would leave a sea-salt residue. Thus, you have a salt plant – and, indirectly, a desal plant (it doesn’t produce drinking water, but, when the hydrogen is used as fuel, it does add water vapor to the air via motor exhaust; I have no idea how much that would affect air humidity or rainfall in metropolitan areas).
[QUOTE=treis]
The big advantage of hydrogen over electricity is that you can refill Hydrogen tanks quickly. In order to recharge a battery system you are looking at least at a few hours.
[/QUOTE]
Couldn’t that problem be solved with a modular swap-out system? Pull into the filling station and exchange your exhausted battery for a freshly charged battery. The station has dozens of batteries charging up at any given time.
[QUOTE=The Flying Dutchman]
What I don’t know is why all this fuss with hydrogen fuel cells. What’s wrong with burning hydrogen in internal combustion engines ?
[/QUOTE]
An engineer once told me hydrogen is so corrosive (one single proton per atom, it will bond with anything) that it will eventually destroy any engine that is not made of ceramic, and a ceramic engine is problematic. I don’t know if that’s true. Nor how fuel cells avoid that problem.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Electrolyzing salt water presumably would leave a sea-salt residue. Thus, you have a salt plant – and, indirectly, a desal plant (it doesn’t produce drinking water, but, when the hydrogen is used as fuel, it does add water vapor to the air via motor exhaust; I have no idea how much that would affect air humidity or rainfall in metropolitan areas).
[/QUOTE]
Well, aside from the fact that many commercial and industrial applications for sea-salt, the amouts of water altered by this would be trivial compared to the overall size of the oceans, would only be used in ocean-side areas most likely, and on average all the wayer returns to the sea. It might raise local saline rates slightly but won’t be killing off sea life en masse.
This is a really problematic idea. Batteries are extremely expensive ( a large chunj of the total cost of the car. They are extremely heavy. We’d need service people with small cranes to handle them, and if one gets dropped, it’s smashed to pieces possibly along with the car. It’s be like having to remove your engine block every time you went to the service station. Plus, everyone would want to make sure they got a new(er) battery. These things may run $20,000 and up-up-up! So you wouldn’t want an old, broken one (if it breaks, you’re out the whole price). The service station certainly won’t pay for replacing them. It’s an elegant solution, but not one suited to the engineering or the financing.
The advantage of Hydrogen, once again, is that you can simply pump it into the car’s tank. In fact, I’ve heard tell that Hydrogen is actually much less dangerous than gasoline in case of fire. It might also be lighter, though I suspect the fuel savings from weight would be minimal.
SaintCad, your proposal is, I think, way overbearing. Iron-handed laws are not really a good way to encourage the economic growth and tend to lock down industries, preventing them from advancing. Not to mention being an absolute killer in forcing service stations to change over regardless of whether or not they can afford it. Hydrogen can switch over with little more than a tax break writing off the cost of it.
Cost. Current cost estimates for a 16kWh battery, big enough for an extended range EV (EREV) like the Volt, are @$10,000. Those costs are expected to drop quickly to about a third with mass production techniques. There are also cost savings associated wiith the lack of a transmission, a smaller simpler ICE that is a generator only, less maintenance costs, etc.
Weight. That size battery would be expected to weigh less than 400#.
Infrastructure issues. EREVs have virtually no infrastructure at all. Charge at home overnight. Yes, apartment dwellers will need a system to charge in a garage for a fee, but these are minor infrastructure fixes. Very few BEV would be driven over their expected 120 or so mile range in usual commutes so for the vast majority of driving they also have no infrasstructure issues. But what about those who do drive cross country or at least high daily mileage?? Can pure BEVs be used by them? AGAIN, there is rapid recharge capability that could be built into any of these batteries. The problem there is the infrastructure to provide it. It is a lot of power flowing and a rapid recharge station would cost some. The first users of that capacity will be high mileage fleet vehicles with defined routes or access to a central garage once every 200 or so miles. And a roll out of those charging stations along the interstates is an easier infrastructure issue than is hydrogen delivery!
The possibility of battery swaps is a real one (automated and from under the car). Probably not in America but very likely to be implemented in Israel with Project Better Place which is well funded and set to get major tax breaks from the Israeli government. (As prviously pointed out to those have actually read the thread.) It may be a good fit for many other countries as well. GM, for its part, would love to lease the batteries. (Also as already pointed out.)
Affordable EREVs, PHEVs, and BEVs are being released over the next several years. They are not a technology of the distant future that might bear fruit later like fuel cells. They are ready. The infrastructure is ready. The price is affordable.
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Relative to your suggestion that was scarcely hyperbole.
[/QUOTE]
Suggesting that fueling stations should have to sell fuel? What the hell was I thinking? :smack:
[QUOTE=DSeid]
Cost. Current cost estimates for a 16kWh battery, big enough for an extended range EV (EREV) like the Volt, are @$10,000. Those costs are expected to drop quickly to about a third with mass production techniques. There are also cost savings associated wiith the lack of a transmission, a smaller simpler ICE that is a generator only, less maintenance costs, etc.
[/quote]
While that’s nice, it’s a ludicrously expensive item to be hot-swapping routinely. And you’re still talking about a vague hope.
Thank you for making my point. Your best (read: optimistic) estimate is enough weight to crush a man. Which means you need a crane to remove it.
While that’s a possibility, you’re rather optimstic about a lot of things, most notably that people will want to have to plug in their cars every night. And if you happen to forget, well, you’re stuck. With a car, worst comes to worst odds are heavily in your favor that you can get to a service station well before your gas tank gives out. With electric you’re gonna hafta wait for four hours at best. That’s something I’d definitely consider, as my employer would not take too kindly the 20th time I forgot to charge my car. And the engine would be far more delicate in case of wrecks, which will cost a lot more $$ on the insurance end.
And this is even assuming the range you want, which may not be practical, especially in a production model.
There are also other troubles, which I won’t go into too heavily (strike 1: we’d need a big upgrade in peak power generation for the hours 5:30-10:30, and it would be built with less efficient and more expensive generators that don’t have to run continuously). But the biggest problem is that I think you’re being awful narrow-minded about this. You’ve decided and there’s nothing else to say, and anyone who thinks differently is obviously not reading everything.
I think hydrogen is probably the way we’ll go eventually. If electric can be brought to a much tougher standard than you’ve predicted, it may take over. But we might just go with nice simple (by comparison) with ethynol-hybrids. It might be something totally different.
In any event, hydrogen delivery isn’t terribly difficult, which is one reason I don’t favor SaintCad’s heavy-handed top-down approach. A retrofit would be fairly simple, since it would intially involve just one or two hydrogen pumps. The existing pump lines could be readily removed with a concrete slicer and replace. Putting in the storage tank is a little more work, but the overall construction could be done within a week without closing the whole service station.
Yes, Smiling Bandit the battery swap concept as envisioned by Agassi is to have a highly machine automated battery swap program (he owns all the batteries, you pay a monthly plan rate) - not your mechanic just picking it up and tossing it into a pile. Still, not exactly changing an engine block. Even on an EREV like the Volt these batteries are positioned for accessibility. And again, I am not a fan of the concept. And I think it is an especially poor fit for the American market. I’m just pointing out this very well funded and government supported plan to try it out to those who dismiss it out of hand as totally unrealistic or as a mere “a vague hope”. He expects to make money doing this and his track record of success has lots of others betting with him.
And yes, I have this optimistic view that someone who bought a pure BEV (not something I expect many to do for quite a while) would remember to plug it in at night. I even expect that most who buy EREVs and PHEVs of various sorts (which can run powered by their gas engines/generators but could have most daily commutes powered by grid-derived power alone) will remember to plug them in too, and probably prefer that to taking the time to stop off at the gas station. Of course if they forget their only penalty is having to buy gas and pay more. Those are the vehicles that will likely take off first, for many reasons, as already stated. (But yeah, I’d fire someone who claimed that they didn’t make it to work because they could remember to plug in their car last night twenty times. (S)he is either not truthful or really impaired.)
As to your assumption that an electric motor is more delicate than an ICE … well “cite please.” There is no reason to believe that whatsoever. In truth there are far fewer moving parts and much less to break. Even more so, since you are a bit of a fan of hydrogen and fuel cells, you do realize, don’t you, that they have the same electric motors powering the cars? That the only difference is energy carrier/production to power the motor: hydrogen storage/fuel cell with small battery or ultrcap to the electric motor vs. large battery to the electric motor? I guess you didn’t.
As some of your other claims, well, I’ve provided cites about electricity production capacity which show that any claim that “a big upgrade in peak power generation” would be required is false. If you are going to make a claim otherwise then please back it up with more than your say-so.
As to my being narrow-minded because I expect that people debating on this should be a bit informed and not just saying things that are not only false, but for which cites have already been provided showing that they are false … without providing any evidence to back up their claims to the contrary or even any awareness that those points have been addressed … well if that is narrow minded then I am guilty. I just don’t see it that as narrow minded. Impatient with those proving themselves to be willfully ignorant, sure.
SaintCad Obviously that’s not what you were saying. What you are wanting to do is wave a magic wand of governmental fiat, as if all we need to do is say that everyone has to and there is no problem. Poof.
First off, an automated exchange system would require a lot of work. You’d have to make a system which would work well over 99% of the time with every model period, even if the drivers aren’t lined up just right. It’s possible, just difficult.
I believe it would be more prone to failure because of the materials involved. You’ll need lighter cars and lighter materials to squeeze more mileage out, which may have consequences for safety, too. Ths is partly true of hybrids today, but less so. And it wouldn’t be true of hydrogen, a big plus in my book, and one of the reasons I like it. I can have a hefty armored shell if I feel the need for one.
And as far as safety goes, you’ve got to seriously think about the safety of any kind of rapid charging station. It has got to be ultimately idiot proof. Because people are going to be plugging in extremely lethal high-energy current, and if they make the slightest mistake they could turn their car into a waffle iron, not to mention themselves into Barbeque. It can be done. But that doesn’t mean anyone will want to pay for doing it or risk doing it.
There’s also the nasty fact that people will need cars just to take on trips, too, unless they want to stop every two hours to trade in the battery. That’s a seriously non-trivial matter, and at best every family would only want one electric, saving the other for gas. Hydrogen doesn’t have that flaw; its flaws are largely the same as we have now, but it’s less polluting, with cheaper fuel in the long run. It also has the advantage of not having to wait on any new technologies to make it workable. People could rent cars, but that’s never been terribly popular.
See, I dont have an optimistic view of any new science/engineering plan, which is cynical, I admit. I’ve seen technologies turn out BS my whole life, and I’ve learned that when it comes to engineering and technology, assume the worst, because it will happen. And despite the big to-do over dozens of new great ideas, most of them nevercome to light because tthere are basic economic/engineering problems.
And I’m just not terribly impressed by a government plan for anything. Governments wouldn’t know engineering practicalities if they hit them in the head, and they certainly don’t know whatever the optimal solution would be.
And no, your links do NOT explain how you will deliver the power. Not everyone has natural gas, and natural gas has a lot of issues on its own. Especially in the cities, you’re looking at peak time use, which you wholly failed to note. There’s already a jump in power demand when people get home and use the TV, cook, etc. Had you actually read your own link, you migh have noted that off-peak potential is not helpful. Off-peak is 1:00 am to 6:00 am. We need to be able to meet demand at 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm. That’s a hugely different story.
Look, I’m not saying there’s no place for these vehicles. I can see a strong market in the urban core. But there’s a lot of other people running around, and I have serious doubts this is going to emerge as a or even the winner. At best, we’d need a substantial fleet of other fuels, which is uneconomical and awkward. And check out your silly “well-to-wheel” efficiency. It’s ridiculous, as that’s not a significant issue and never has been and ignores the numerous options for future hydrogen production (there are dozens of potential ways). Moreover, unlike gasoline, there’s no reason for hydrogen or electricity to get relatively more expensive in the future, so we can expect standardized costs and expectations: this is the real issue with gasoline.
As has been shown, hydrogen is also coming along. It has fewer quirks and hews closer to our current standard. Apart from the filling stations, we can use them exactly like we use our current cars, and thus fit them into our lifestyle more easily. And that is the going to be the ultimate test of the transportation of the future. Does it get people where they want to go when they want to be there *in a manner which they *like? I don’t think electric will do that. And you’re flaming nuts if you think I am going to climb into a tiny little cockpit of deathtrap and get on the road at 70 MPH. People in the Midwest and South and West and probably East will look at you like you’re a madman if you suggest it.
[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
While that’s a possibility, you’re rather optimstic about a lot of things, most notably that people will want to have to plug in their cars every night. And if you happen to forget, well, you’re stuck. With a car, worst comes to worst odds are heavily in your favor that you can get to a service station well before your gas tank gives out. With electric you’re gonna hafta wait for four hours at best. That’s something I’d definitely consider, as my employer would not take too kindly the 20th time I forgot to charge my car.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t see this as a major problem for two reasons. The first is that people are good at routines. You might forget a few times, but the standard routine of “park in garage, get out, plug in” is simple enough that it would become standard.
The second is that there are trivial technological solutions to it. Keys pretty much all have radio transponders in them, now, and there’s no reason you couldn’t put one in the charger as well. So when you turn off the car and its near its charging station, maybe it gives you an audio reminder. Maybe it refuses to turn off until it’s actually plugged in, unless you do a special override. Maybe it honks the horn and flashes the lights if you leave it by the charger, not plugged in, and walk away with the key. That’s what I came up with in three minutes of thinking about it. I’m sure someone else will come up with better ideas.