Boris Johnson is always worth reading, whether you agree with him or not. He’s just been opining on electric cars. But it seems to me that the real problem with these vehicles is not the initial go, but the time it takes for a second go. Sure the Tesla can go for 250 miles, but how long is it before it can go for another 250? With a petrol engine, you just pour in more fuel and you’re good to go. With an electric car, you have to wait for the batteries to recharge. Or do you?
Yes…right now it takes several hours to recharge even the high tech batteries we currently have. One way to get around this is to use a fuel cell instead of batteries. Another would be to figure out how to create a battery that acts like a capacitor and allows for rapid recharge while acting like a battery and allows discharge over time instead of in short periods.
Personally I think in the end we’ll go with some kind of fuel cell…this seems to be a model for electric vehicles that is closest to how we do it today.
-XT
Series hybrids attempt to tackle this problem by including an on-board generator. The Chevy Volt is supposed to get 40 miles/charge. For trips exceeding 40 miles, the motor starts and charges the battery.
Ultracapacitors are supposed to provide the combined benefits of rapid charging/discharging and high capacity, but I don’t really know what separates them from being a commercial product. I read somewhere that charging a capacitor with something like the energy equivalent to 250 miles worth of gasoline would require roughly 4MW to charge in 10 minutes. Potentially, the caps could be swapped out I guess or a hybrid system could be used or something.
I haven’t heard of any technology that will make filling up a pure BEV as convenient as a current ICE-powered car and I like to trawl pie-in-the-sky tech mags like Popular Mechanics for such things.
FWIW,
Rob
I think the plug-in hybrid (PHEV) is the best option. The upcoming Chevy Volt is probably the best known example. With a PHEV you can eliminate your use of gasoline for most commuting (less than 40 mile commute) and nearly all regular errand trips while still maintaining the ability of long-range travel with the on-board generator. Even when running on gasoline (say a family vacation) you will get about 40MPG since the engine is small and always runs at optimum RPM, etc. Pollution control at the power plant is going to be far superior and cheaper than onboard the car plus the electricity generation may be near pollution-free with wind, solar, geothermal, or even nuclear. Looks like an ideal solution for greatly reducing our oil consumption while still getting good use out of our current infrastructure. The only real drawback is that it would be inconvenient for apartment dwellers, but PHEVs can be used economically even if they’re never plugged in.
If a car can get only 40MPG and the engine is small, why buy it unless it is half price of a standard gas car? No way you are going to sell me that POS unless you cut the price and I don’t see that happening. Let’s face it, the electric car we all want isn’t here yet.
Here’s an article about the Zenn Car that uses an Eestor battery that promises to propel a car up to 400 kilometres at highway speeds after just a five-minute charge. This “battery” is really a ceramic “ultracapacitor” that Eestor promises will provide 10 times the energy of existing batteries at one-tenth the weight.
It’s still in development, but food for thought.
:dubious:
Are you sure you read that correctly? You would not want a car that gets 40 miles per gallon of gasoline burned? Not 40 miles, but 40 miles per gallon.
Most vehicles today get less than 25 miles per gallon. Most people would be saving money immediately if they nearly halved their gasoline consumption.
I should point out tho, that AFAIK, the Chevy Volt is a work of fiction. Last year, it had to be pushed out for the press event at NAIAS. It was nothing but a PR job. Just an empty shell with a bunch of fancy talk, no real technology.
I’ll believe an ultracapacitor 100 times better than conventional batteries when I see one.
Long recharging times are only a problem if you’re trying to preserve the gas station business model. But with every building in the country already hooked up to the electrical infrastructure, why would you need fueling stations? Plug it in at home, and let it charge overnight. Or you could double your commuting range, if your workplace also put in outlets, and you could charge while you’re working. If you regularly need longer ranges, then get a plug-in hybrid instead of a pure electric, and only burn gasoline on the long trips where you need it.
I likewise fear that may be true, however, I think it has more immediate potential than either fuel cells, futuristic batteries or giant caps, Hydrogen power, or any other new tech I’ve seen bandied about as a solution to our excess oil consumption.
The problem is that people are used to the current system…they have the mind set geared toward the current system. Certainly if you could schedule exactly when you would need your car then plugging it in at night (or whenever) would work…as long as you didn’t need your car unexpectedly. And as long as you remembered to plug it in when not in use. And as long as the grid would be ok with millions of people plugging in their new cars at around the same times.
-XT
You’re impressed with 40MPG? :dubious:
My main mode of transportation in the summer gets 80MPG minimum (motorcycle) and cost me so little to buy that it was effectively free when compared with today’s $40,000 prices for a new truck.
My 25 yo Toyota 4cyl truck gets 25 MPG in the worst case with an air conditioner running in the city, and 35MPG cross-country. Haven’t any technological improvements been made in the last 25 years? I always thought I was losing out on the newest, fuel-efficient models, but maybe not. I think I’ll keep her.
Sigh.
Option 1: Plug-in hybrid/Extended Range EVs. The Volt is on track if only GM stays afloat long enough. Mulesare being tested and performing well. 40 miles for a charge (covers most folks daily commutes) and as far extra as you need to go with the ICE. Problem is price point. At the upper 30s they are talking about … boy. Multiple other manufacturers have PHEVs at various points of development. Ford has plug in Escapes on the road in testing and has a Volvo product less far in the works. Toyota’s PHEV is due out in 2010 even though it’s all-electric range aint all that impressive. And many others.
Charging using today’s infrastructure is no problem. Even if 80% of the fleet switched over overnight it could be handled so long as charging was done at off-peak hours.
Option 2: Pure Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV).
Rapid recharge is possible but requires special charging stations. (Like these.)For fleets this makes lots of sense and these cars exist. The upfront investment though would be substantial. Still Fordtoday committed to BEVs for fleet use by 2010 as part of their plan to Congress.
The alternative is to have a service that can swap out the batteries. Project Better Place works on that premise and is on track to become the model in Israel, Denmark, and Australia. Even some sections of California are making commitments to the model.
Nissan-Renault is partnered with Project Better Place and plans on bringing these cars to broad mass market by 2012. Pure BEVs without a Project Better Place sort of infrastructure or widely available rapid recharge are indeed limited by their range. Wide acceptance would require a shift in thinking: one car that is your daily commuter that is also your cross country trip car it would not be, but one car with enough range to handle any reasonable daily commuter needs and renting a car for the cross country trip if you ever go on one is doable. It wouldn’t be for everyone but a smaller commuter pure BEV makes lots of sense for many people. Many other contenders in this space including some Chinese manufacturers (such as Miles EV)
Option 3: Ultracaps like the EESTOR product. Yeah, I’ll believe it when it has been tested by third party testing and not before.
So bottom line: very close indeed.
Oh Musiccat that 40 mpg is when running the ICE. The vast majority of commuting would be on electric which would cost a small fraction per mile traveled and even using all coal powered generating plants produce a small fraction of greenhouse gases per mile traveled.
Letting my imagine run wild there are a few things that I would love to see happen in terms of “fuel efficiency”. Which I would take to mean getting the most distance / convenience for the energy expended.
First up – I believe that diesel gets far greater efficiency than petrol, and is an easier refining process (it take less crude to get one litre of diesel than petrol) so this would be a natural switch straight away.
Next up. Just how much energy could we save if we implemented full “computer control” of cars in stages. It is not practical YET to go to full computer driving, but what about some sort of system whereby for long interstate commutes what if cars could really travel in convoys – a few inches apart?
How much fuel would this save? And also, how many people really enjoy driving on interstates (I love driving but hate the long monotonous drive of straight highways). Give control to the computer, save money and read the paper on the way!
Then what if we could design cars with a “variable” aerodynamics package. Looking towards sports cars, their aim is always to increase downforce right? Well downforce is not ALWAYS needed. It is useful when cornering or stopping, but when you want to “go” downforce is your enemy. What if the variable aerodynamics could increase lift when on straight roads without hazards? Just how much fuel would this save? The system could revert to downforce when stopping was required.
For the above the technology exists NOW, it is just a matter of implementing. Saving fuel / energy is going to be a lot of incremental steps – not one major leap. I personally foresee also that one day we are NOT going to drive our own cars – they will all be computer controlled / robot driven. But to make this happen it will take incremental steps to implement over time.
Amazing! That’s exactly what my high school physics teacher said. With confidence.
In 1962.
Yeah, I get it. I may be exaggerating a little just to make a point. I’d love to have an electric car for many reasons, and I don’t have an extreme transportation need at all compared to some. A typical trip for me would be 25 miles garage back to garage. But then I might have to take a 80 mile trip unexpectedly, and suddenly the price goes up or the destination is out of range or I have to switch cars or bum a ride with someone else or…
Just too many hassles. The electric car as it presently exists is too expensive and meets too few needs for too few people. Only Ed Begley, Jr. could put up with the inconvenience.
Now if you make a car that sells for $10,000 or less at today’s prices, lasts for as long as other cars, can travel for 300 miles without stopping, for pennies a mile, needs only ONE fuel (electricity, not gas AND electricity), can be recharged in the same time I can pump 20 gals of gas (or cheaper if overnight) and doesn’t need a new set of fuel bodies (batteries) every 5000 miles at a cost of $20,000 each time, I might take hard look. And so would a lot of people. We’ve been waiting for 50 years and it ain’t here yet.
Wake me when it arrives, wilya? I’m gonna make like Rip Van Winkle. Again.
Nice summary DSeid.
Any form of electric vehicle will be a novelty item for some time to come. The darling of the electric car set, Tesla, is teetering on the brink right now. They’re asking for a bailout from the government, and the estimates I’ve seen for when battery technology will be to the point where Tesla needs them to be is 10 years.
Ford has stated that one of the issues they’re finding that they’re going to have to be dealing with when it comes to things like PHEVs and BEVs are building codes. That’s going to be more difficult to deal with than battery technology, I have a feeling. Then there’s the issues of infrastructure and climate.
Not only are electric vehicles going to put added demands on the power grid (which is going to require some kind of expensive change, such as increasing capacity and/or so-called smart meters), but you’re going to need specialized outlets to plug in your car. The Tesla takes some thirty hours to recharge using 120 V power. To get their fast recharge time of a few hours requires the installation of a special power box in your house. Safety reasons prohibit people from hooking their car up to a standard 220 V outlet.
Presumably, the car makers could all agree to adopt a standardized charging system, though there is a bit of an incentive for them not to. (If everybody uses a different system, then you’re pretty much tied to one car company for a long time.)
Then you have folks in places like apartment complexes, where it’ll be up to the landlords to install charging stations, and who’ll get the complaints when someone comes out to discover that some punk kid has unplugged the car during the night.
As for the environmental issues, the one most people are going to notice is that cold weather significantly reduces their range. The next is the recycling of the batteries. Lots of the nasty work involved in this is done overseas where there’s no environmental regulations, and apparently the EPA has not been exactly what one would call “dilligent” in the enforcement of their regulation of electronics recycling. And if the batteries are lithium based, the main source for that material is a nice, stable part of the world called Bolivia.