No prob.
Being a hippie and into technology I kinda turned into a Volt fanboy even if it’ll be many years before I’ll be able to get one.
There’s no guarantee that electric is the most efficient way to transport people, but it’s pretty damned good.
But for me, the big advantage of electric is that you are separating the infrastructure of consumption from the infrastructure of production. Automobiles are dependent on fossil fuel. The size of the automotive economy alone makes it hard to transition to other sources of energy. But electric transportation can run on coal, or oil, or natural gas, or wind, or solar, or whatever else we come up with. That makes our energy infrastructure much more flexible and adaptable.
I’ve been surprised by how good electric cars are getting in only their second generation. The new Ford Focus Electric looks like the real game-changer. It’s got a 100 mile range, and can be charged in 3 hours on a 240v charger. That makes it a completely usable vehicle for almost all city driving. 100 miles per day is a lot of city driving, and even if you come home near empty a 3 hr full charge means that even after an hour or so of coming home you could go for another 30 mile drive.
I have no financial interest in Ford, but man this looks pretty cool. This is a car I’d like to drive on its own merits, even forgetting the environmental benefits. And that’s what you need to be able to sell these cars to the mass market.
A metal-air battery has a metal anode (usually zinc, AIUI) and is porous to air, providing an oxygen “cathode” – basically a fuel cell. What’s suggested for cars is a mechanically replenishable cell, with circulating zinc granules or powder, and an ionic liquid electrolyte, which would have much greater energy density than water-based batteries.
A solar panel garage that can recharge a Volt would be ideal.
Mr Fusion only powered the Flux Capacitor. The DeLorian required petrol.
Just to nitpick, the Volt acts as a series and parallel hybrid, depending on the needs – the engine can power the wheels directly to provide extra torque.
Asking if electric cars are ideal assuming you set aside battery issues is like asking if the Titanic was safe assumed you set aside iceburg issues.
Right now, battery disposal and shipping batteries around really do change the issue from ‘Should I save the environment’ to ‘Which method should I fuck the environment?’ As others are mentioning, there’s lots of battery research going on now and reason to be optimistic that the next generation or two of electrics cars will be great. Currently? They’re just a rich man’s toy so he can feel more ecological than thou, even though he’s dumping a large amount of heavy metals at some point and the carbon footprint of shipping that batteries currently go through is fucking huge.
The shipping carbon footprint on those batteries is minimal compared to a 7 year life in a car reducing CO2. The first generation Hybrids seem to have a very good record on recycling the batteries.
Electric cars are at best a stop-gap measure, until we reduce our dependency on cars. The problem with internal-combustion cars is the car part, not the internal-combustion part.
Cars are large pieces of machinery that require a lot of energy (of some kind) to operate. Moreover, cars require a lot of land use, for parking and roadways. This necessitates cities and suburbs that are spread out, which increases our transportation needs even further. Until we break that vicious cycle, the environmental (and other) cost of cars will always be a problem.
This is not strictly a battery problem. The key problem with rapid recharging is pushing an extreme amount of power through copper wire. Level 3 recharging is a 480V system, and it still can only give you <100 miles of range in 20 minutes of charging. You can’t really increase the voltage any more, so the only way to ramp this up is to make the wire thicker and thicker to push more amps. It’s hard to see it as viable when a gas tank “recharge” is 2 minutes and gets you 400 miles of range.
Batteries can solve this problem, though, by making “on the road” recharging a non issue. If you can manage a 400-500 mile range, it would be an extremely unusual event for you to need recharging on the road, 99.9% of your trips would start and end within your base range, at which point you plug in for a leisurely 240V 30-50A overnight recharge.
Hotels and motels could offer charging services, for folks who are taking a long trip, but I would see that as a scheduled stop, rather than stopping at the “next” station.
I’m anxious to see how the Germans do with these batteries. From the link, it’s not only more powerful than other batteries, it will also be less expensive, although they weren’t able to give a price. Unlike most electric cars that have short range, this four seat Audi went 376 miles at 55 mph on average. It can be fully charged up in six minutes. They are supposed to be 97% efficient. They hope to have 1 million of these electric cars cruising their highways by the end of the decade.
I’ve always thought the ultimate electric car would be one that got their power from the road itself. The road could supply the electricity by having metal strips built into it, and therefore being able to eliminate all batteries that power the electric motor if one wanted to. One could still either have a small battery pack or small gasoline engine for where there still wasn’t power connected up to the road. Popular Mechanics magazine did an article on this decades ago on how it could be done, and how it would be safe too, but I don’t remember much in the way of details. I also wonder how the electric company would collect on the electricity the cars are using. Would they have a special meter that automatically got read by satellite that would bill them monthly? Perhaps, but anyway, I think at least one American city ought to experiment with this. If it proved successful, others should join in on setting up major highways with this system.
Good luck with trying to get people to give up personal transport. Not really a viable option, since not many people who have access to them (even leaving the US out of the equation) think that it’s a ‘problem’. And most people who don’t have access to them wish they did.
-XT
Quoth flickster:
If most recharging is done overnight, we wouldn’t even need any more power plants, or expansion to the distribution grid. Currently, most electrical usage is during the day, so there’s a lot of surplus generating capacity at night (this is why many electric companies charge lower rates at night). As for the cost of recharging, even at peak rates and with the current state of technology, it’s still a fraction of the cost of gasoline.
I don’t see a 1 petrol / 1 electric car 2 driver family as needed to rearrange their lifestyle to any extent like you state above. Yes it some car switching will be needed occasionally, though this already is pretty common today when a family has one good car and a station car, occasionally the normally station car driver will need the ‘good car’ and usually for the same reason - a longer trip.
Again much more ideal for a 2 driver household where both normally drive w/i the electric range. For singles I would say a serial hybrid is about as good as currently gets.
Charging time and infrastructure is also a factor, but I agree better batteries, or other storage, would go a long way.
I think the charging infrastructure is a large hurdle at least in some areas. In many urban environments people park overnight at the curb in whatever space they can find open on their block. They can’t be expected to charge at home overnight.
I live in a second floor apartment and park on the street, so my gas electric hybrid is a good compromise for my situation.
I think the long term answer may be plug-in electrics for those with garages or some other way of charging, and for everyone else some sort of electric / liquid fuel hybrid that uses some kind of renewable liquid fuel.
Why do you think “reducing our dependency on cars” means giving up cars and not having access to them anymore?
In most American suburbs and small cities, the car is the only means of transportation. And I think many Americans do see that as a problem. It means teenagers can’t go out anywhere unless the parents give them a ride, or allow them to own and drive a car. It means your grandparents can’t even go to a social gathering on their own when their eyesight is too bad to drive. It means having to buy and maintain as many cars as there are drivers in your household. These are not inevitable consequences of owning cars. They are a consequence of our complete dependency on cars.
In most other countries, people have (and want) cars, but they’re not dependent on them. There are other ways to go shopping or get to work. People without cars (by choice or otherwise) still live a full life without being dependent on family members or friends. Most families can get by with one car, rather than one for each driver. I don’t see that as an unachievable goal for US cities and suburbs.
It was implicit in your statement that the car is the problem, not what powers the car…which is what I was responding to. I don’t think that, realistic, we can reduce our dependency on cars in any case, not unless no means exists or will exist to power said cars at an economical rate that most people can afford. It’s only if the costs become prohibitive that cars would fade away for the general public.
Setting aside how accurate it is that the car is the ONLY means available for transportation in ‘most American suburbs and small cities’, one question would be to ask why this is so and how it came to pass. WHY are we so dependent on our cars and what does this say about how we think about the ‘problem’.
Well, a couple things here. This is a meme that is often repeated, but how true is it, really? Certainly smaller wealthy countries that have very concentrated populations have better options for mass transit than the US does, but in every country I’ve traveled too that has a population with any sort of wealth you will notice something right off…that is, a rather large amount of traffic. From cars. Travel around Europe and you will be surprised to see that, while yes they have good mass transit, they still have a hell of a lot of cars tooling about. Same in Asia. Go to Tokyo sometime, for instance and you will notice lots and lots of cars. Ooodles of the things.
Even in poor countries you will see something odd…lots and lots of cars. Go to Mexico City and take a look around. They may not use them to the same extent as we in the US do (and they aren’t available to everyone as they pretty much are to citizens in the US), but this is only a degree of difference.
No, I don’t either…which is why I don’t believe you were correct that the car is the problem. The real problem is simply finding an economical alternative to the current model of power plant and fuel we use to make the car go. The car is simply too convenient and flexible for people who can afford it (such as Americans) to give up unless there is simply no economical alternative. And, IMHO, unless you are a small country with a large and dense population distribution, the car is going to increasingly become the dominant form or transportation as long as it’s affordable. Which is why countries like China and India are having explosive growth in the numbers of cars on their roads, and will continue to have explosive growth if we can figure out how to continue to power the things in the future. Something I’m pretty confident we will do, since it seems to be something that a large majority of people want.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have alternatives such as mass transit for folks who don’t want to drive, especially in high density population areas…but then, we DO have those things, even in backwards America. We have them because people actually want them and are willing to pay for them. Just like we have cars because people want them and are willing to pay for them.
Anyway, I don’t want to hijack the thread, since it’s really about magical batteries and interesting stuff like that, and not about mass transit.
-XT
The carbon footprint on batteries is far smaller than 7 years of a gasoline operated car. However, the carbon footprint on batteries is larger than zero, and quite a bit larger because of excessive shipping.
Recycling is good, and mandated by law in all the US AFAIK. However, the point is that there are literally tons of heavy metals in batteries. Or a different battery type can be used, which bring their own downsides. Nickel metal hydrides for example have poor efficiency, poor performance in cold weather, slightly toxic (although fully recyclable) and some patent issues IIRC. Lithium ion degrades relatively quickly, can pose a fire risk if punctured, and still have some toxic parts.
Then, of course, there’s the issues of material supplies. The metals for batteries still has to be dug up which involves all the environmental issues of any large scale mining. As well, there’s the rare earth issue we’ve been hearing about from China. It may be that we’d trade a dependence on the middle east for oil to a dependence on China for rare earths. Which is a rather questionable trade. Or we open up rare earth mines in the US, many of which already have been shut due in large part to environmental concerns.
Anyway, my point is, electric cars are great. I’m not dissing them. However, many people seem to think electric cars are the magical cure all that will save the world or something. They aren’t. There are many problems with them, beyond just their range. Pushing to go to them with the technology in use right now is, in many ways, just trading one type of problem for another rather than actually solving problems. There’s good indications that in a generation or two of design they’ll be far superior, but at the moment it just isn’t true.
You seem to assume future vehicles will be as space and energy inefficient as what we drive today. There are some designs that don’t have a much bigger footprint than a bicycle. We will be able to fit 4 vehicles in what a single car takes up today.
I’d suggest reading up about robocars.
The secret to hydrogen is to convert it into ammonia and use that for fuel. Ammonia is a cheap efficient way to transport and store hydrogen. It is actually better than methane (natural gas), since it easier to liquefy and doesn’t produce GHGs. The catch is that we can just pump methane out of the ground , which we have to make ammonia. If we built a lot of nuclear power plants, then we could harness them to make ammonia at off peak hours.