Mercedes Benz, the best car maker in the world, had experimented with battery swapping back in the 70ies: http://www.emercedesbenz.com/Images/Nov07/21_Mercedes_Alternate_Drive_Systems/38867_1195673501452/580819_1028806_2703_2548_72177-5.jpg
More experimental vehicles: http://www.emercedesbenz.com/Nov07/21_Alternative_Drive_Systems_At_Daimler_AG_For_The_Mobility_Of_The_Future_1.html
Ok, I am having trouble understanding the problem here. Ignore the possibility of 10 minute charges or battery swapping infrastructure because it won’t happen for a long long time, if ever.
The electric car is not a direct replacement for other technologies.
It is for shorter, daily-style driving. It is a low pollution, highly energy and cost efficient, short-to-medium range vehicle. That is what the current generation of electric cars are meant to be.
Debate over the usefulness of electric vehicles for long drives is at best missing the point, and at worst just plain silly.
Think of it this way: in a golf game, you could play a round with one club, say a 3 iron. The 3 iron is ok for distance, great in the fairway, but the short game would be pretty terrible. The gasoline car is a 3 iron. The electric car is a 9 iron. It’s way better for the short game, but not so much for the fairway. If you spend 99% or your time dicking around on the practice green, and you can only buy one club, why not the 9? (Putter would be walking from the parking lot.) If you get more enjoyment out of the 9 iron than frustration out of having to borrow a 3 iron for when you play a round, then the 9 iron is a fine choice.
So, if it costs me $20 to buy an amtrak ticket for my bi-monthly trip to grandma’s, and I save more than $10 a month by using electricity over gasoline, it’s a perfectly fine alternative. Either you are claiming that electric cars will never replace all other technologies (which is obvious, and therefore pointless) or you are claiming that electric is the wrong technology for people who need extended range (which is obvious, and therefore pointless).
Are you only interested in selling electrics across the whole market? Why? The market of “daily drivers” is huge. Pickup trucks, delivery vans, and sports cars sell fine, and they are a subset of the market as well. There’s no reason to say electrics are problematic because they don’t fit everyone’s needs or that they have limitations – it’s a meaningless argument, and a false dichotomy.
:mad: Where’s the death ray?! It’s not worthy of being named after Tesla if it doesn’t have a death ray!
I think it’s funny how little attention gets paid the a vehicles weight. All this attention to engine types, hybrid technology and alternative fuels and people seem to never ask how much a car weighs. The new Chevy Volt is supposedly 3520 pounds. That’s about 1000 pounds too heavy, but Americans are so damned risk adverse and gizmo hungry that they can’t ditch the traction control, ABS, Nav systems, 5-star crash test ratings, power seats, mirrors and windows, seat warmers, back seat DVD players and good old fashioned American steel.
If they built cars with a little less crap on them and invested a few extra dollars into carbon fiber and aluminum we’d save billions in fuel, be it electricity or gas. Much the same could be said of aerodynamics as well.
All this fervor over the race to build a better battery and too few dollar are being spent on more practical, incremental improvements.
Well one thought. Why does the initial electrical collection have to be on the car? Why not build the charger to trickle charge it’s self then when a car plugs in it could dump the queue electricity in.
Also no matter how you slice it you’re going to have to upgrade, or expand the nation’s electrical systems to handle enough juice for cars too, should the technology become wide spread. So why not deploy substation level recharge points? The technology to do that is almost a century old.
You might put fourth a chicken or the egg problem as a counter argument, and you’d be right. The point though stands that there’s no engineering reason that 10 minute recharge points would be impossible. Only economic problems setting up the infrastructure.
What?
This is obvious. We can build solar powered cars that cross Australia. Obviously the engineering challenges of designing the most efficient car possible are surmountable. We could just replace all cars with bicycles and trains.
Few people want one of these, but they are available. And if you are complaining that people don’t want a smartcar, your options are to 1) convince people to buy them 2) have the government force the issue, or 3) deal with the fact that our market based system generally works and that we are willing to trade off some efficiency for performance or comfort reasons.
And complaining about too much safety and then saying this is some sort of American conceit (because Volvos are totally Made in America)? Just wow.
The problem isn’t so much gathering up enough energy at the charger, it’s the wiring you need to transmit the power from the charger to the battery.
A gallon of gas contains about 35kWh of energy, that’s 35,000 watts of power flowing for a full hour, and it gets pumped into a gas tank in less than 10 seconds. If you’re looking at a short charge time, for a car with decent range, you’ll need wires an inch think running at outrageously high voltage. Electricity is simply a lousy mechanism for transmitting these large amounts of energy in a short period of time.
I again refer those interested to Bright Automotive
And of course for those willing to make a more radical statement, Aptera.
Hmm that is an interesting problem. Another problem is holding on to the power while the batteries catch up. The only thing that could handle instacharges like that are arrays of ultra capacitors, but they have other problems. A hybrid system where banks of ultracapitors charge slower batteries for long term storage could work but that’d have loss, safety, complexity, and weight problems. So baring some unforeseen advance you’re prolly right about the impracticality of direct current transfer.
Now fuel cells could still work.
One question with the gas; is the 35kWh figure before or after engine losses? The average gasoline engine losses a large chunk of energy as waste heat right off the bat. IIRC only just over a quarter of the fuel energy is turned into movement.
What are you talking about? In what way does my suggesting that cars (all cars, not just American cars) be made lighter correlate to us riding bicycles and trains?
The fact is that you could take a standard Ford Focus, Chevy Malibu, Honda Accord, Toyota Camry etc., and shave 500 pounds off of it and gain about 15% in gas mileage. No one talks about this. No one is willing to pay a bit of a premium for it, though they are willing to pay a huge premium for a Prius. The relative cost of entry would be way less and the benefits would me far more widespread. The problem is it’s just not sexy and marketable.
There are light mini-cars out there but that’s not the point. It’s not an all or nothing proposition. We should be clamoring for lightening every car we make, not just the econoboxes. But because of the sense of security big, heavy cars with dozens of bells and whistles create it’s not happening.
This Nova Segment highlights it better than I can.
I like these guys and I’m very curious to see what they are making. I think they might be directly affiliated with the Rocky Mountain Institute featured in the Nova special linked above and I bet we’ll see that the car they are making looks a lot like the “Hypercar” highlighted in the piece.
Hybrids and plug-ins are fine and dandy. But would could be working on improving gasoline cars too, since they might always be a piece of the transportation puzzle, and these technologies would make electric vehicles much, much better and more realistic as well. The obsession with the electric car is bit of a red herring and it distracts from the big picture.
I don’t even know where to start with this. Yes, lighter weight and better aero are very helpful in increasing efficiency. You can actually do this yourself by ordering a car without the extra niceties, switching wheels, adding aero features, or changing the ECU. Or, you can spend a bunch of premium and get a higher end sports car (Lotus Exige S gets 35mpg highway).
But then you veer off into wrong! territory. It isn’t as if there is a set amount of funding and that every dollar we spend on electric cars is one we don’t spend on carbon fiber production (which is getting cheaper and more common every day – the new Pontiac G8 GXP has CF body pieces). Aero and other efficiency research from electric cars is applicable to any other type of car.
Furthermore, you are acting as if we aren’t doing research on or talking about lightening our cars up, and making more efficient gasoline engines. This is also wrong. (As shown in your video, which is ironically sponsored by Exxon…) Look at the Toyota Yaris, which is efficient, safe, AND dirt cheap.
No, most people don’t want to pay a premium for less functionality in order to save a little on gasoline (even 15%). Some do. And some want to pay a premium for a car that costs them the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon at 100+mpg, which will save them more money in the long run than a measly 15% at the pump, and make them less likely to die, and is much more environmentally sound.
I just don’t understand what point you are driving at, or why you think we need to focus all our research on certain areas, or why you think we are ignoring fossil fuel mileage. Yes, we can and do work on making more efficient vehicles of all types. But saying our cars are “too safe” merits a resounding “Huh?”.
My point is that the 160 mile figure is not engraved in stone and in the real world it might be a hell of a lot less.
Now I live in Southern California, and as such might have a longer commute than many, but for 13 of my 15 years at Volvo I drove 65 miles each way on my commute. The last 2 years I only drove 34 miles each way.
Now I drive about 22 miles each way, but it is straight down the 405 freeway with a few hundred thousand of my closest personal friends each AM and PM. There are hundreds of thousands of people that live in So Cal that go quite a bit further than I do.
The bottom line is until I see some real world numbers of actual people driving actual cars in actual traffic using air conditioners and heaters I would be real leery of stating a range of more than from here to around the corner for these cars. IOW what will be the effect on battery life of doing an average of 5 mph in stop and go traffic while running the AC on high for 90 minutes?
Don’t forget if you run out, you can’t call the AAA to brig you a bucket of electrons. You are in Rebook mode. You either walk, or get towed. There is no third choice.
Yup. They are spun off from RMI including John Waters, who had been in charge of GM’s EV-1 project.
Another closely related (and I suspect collaborating) RMI spin-off is Fiberforge - specifically devoted to carbon fiber composites in all applications (I suspect that the Nova special mentioned them).
What the fuck are you talking about? Find me one car where the difference between trim levels reaches even 3% of the vehicles dry weight, engine displacement aside. The average consumer cannot notably lighten a vehicle without buying a blowtorch.
My point is that the media and public clamor over hybrids and electric cars is disproportionately driving the market towards the one technology that has the highest cost of entry. This necessarily comes at the expense of others to some degree because there’s a finite number of dollars and man-hours available for research and development. The fact that there are tax incentives for hybrids but nothing based on gross weight further solidifies this fact. It’s asinine that you can get a tax incentive for buying a 4400 lb Lexus RXh that gets a comical 25 mpg.
Nowhere am I saying that we should abandon electric technologies, just that the media is covering it as stupidly and with as little perspective as they cover just about everything, and the laypeople that make up the buying public are gobbling it up with next to no scrutiny as usual.
It’s demonstrably true that we aren’t. Look at the gross weights of cars within a model from generation to generation. They are getting heavier and heavier. The Chevy Malibu gained 300 pounds in the last 5 years it’s been produced. The Honda Accord gained 200 pounds. The Toyota Camry gained 200 pounds.
What part of “I’m not referring to econoboxes” did you not understand? I understand that there are purpose-built feather weights, but we need to be addressing this industry and portfolio wide.
I’ll tell you what, let me start saving 15% now when the technology is readily available. We can worry about your 60 cents per gallon (or whatever electricity costs are in 10 years) equivalent when there are battery vehicles on the road and in your garage. We’ll see who’s ahead in 2025. I promise you it will be me, by a wide (insurmountable?) margin.
Where did you see me say all? I’m saying the biggest immediate issue we face in regards to greenhouse gases and dependency on foreign oil is weight. It’s most readily fixable and no one talks about it. That’s stupid and shortsighted. The fact that cars like the Tesla S and Chevy Volt seem to disregard weight as a major design goal in order to maintain the stylistic status quo is an issue. Usually dopers have more perspective than that.
Nevermind what it’ll be like in cold weather Chicago running a heater (there isn’t any combustion heat remember) during a nice January blizzard.
My point exactly
So, basically both of you are afraid that you won’t be able to drive an electric vehicle around, because it will be too cold. There are already smartcars in Chicago. They seem to work fine. There are also smartcars driving around in London. They work fine too.
The Chevy Volt comes out next year, and it’s a fully electric vehicle for the first 40 miles. That’s not in 2025, that’s NEXT YEAR. So yes, I will be glad to take your bet.
Rick, your point is that you wont buy one because you don’t trust them to not run out of juice. Fine. No one is asking you to buy one. Other people will buy one. They already have. Why are you so opposed to anyone having an electric car? Do you own an oil company? Does the existence of electrics and their drawbacks somehow physically hurt you? What is your problem with them, other than you think everyone should have the same needs and fears and goals that you do?
And Omniscient (ironic) you also have yet to make a point other than “Why aren’t we reducing the weight of cars, OMG” and you are failing to say at all how electric cars cause all cars to be heavier. But now your claim is now just “the media is overhyping electrics”. That’s all you’ve got? What does this have to do with Tesla motors or the usability of an electric car? All I am asking you for is some link between your fear of electric cars and how it hurts gasoline engine efficiency other than “Tax incentives” and “Dumbass public”. I have yet to see one, because there isn’t one.
Both of you are apparently unable to look at any situation other than your own. If an electric car has a range of 10 miles, it will be enough for me. I am guessing that YMMV doesn’t mean 300 miles to 10 miles – that’s alarmist and just plain silly. No one is forcing you to buy one. The research dollars aren’t wasted. Most people drive less than 20 miles a day, and hey, electrics don’t idle when they are stuck in traffic.
Both of you are just having some sort of kneejerk reaction to non-fossil-fuel cars, when you have been proven wrong by actual working electric vehicles that are selling and have waiting lists. You haven’t yet made a coherent, valid point as to why you are even worried about people buying electric cars.
What is a smartcar?
You keep setting up strawmen. Time to work on your reading comprehension skills.
I guess I’ll have to settle for strawmen, since you have yet to actually make a point.
Again, how does the design and sale of electric vehicles actually hurt you? And I’ll need a cite for the claim that electric cars take away from economy gasoline vehicles.
