Fred, it's refreshing to see someone who has an understanding of the limitations of electric vehicles.
The real issue is the enormous amount of power required to push a car around and the lack of sustainable capacity to feed the worldwide demand in to the future.
Combustion engines generate enormous amounts of power, an engine averaging just 25Kw over a couple of hours and would need almost 3 times the daily household national average to run for those couple of hours electrically.
Extrapolate that to the numbers of cars worldwide and you'll understand why electric cars aren't the future.
IMO future transport needs to be more efficient, public transport, foot and bicycles.
Yes, the energy density of petrol to volume and delivery/storage efficiency is insane, nothing else comes even remotely close, in orders of magnitude. Unless we have an absolute revolution in power delivery/battery technology, electric power is but a pipe dream.
Well yes actually. Solar panels are made of Silicon, steel, aluminium and glass. All those materials require high temperature foundries that use vast amounts of power to produce. Ive seen research that shows (depending on the scource of power, mostly coal if from China) that the carbon footprint of manufacturing solar panels can have an enviromental payback time in the order of 15 years, about the same as the usefull lifetime of a solar panel. This is improving all the time with panel efficiency BTW, but as it stands, the enviromental impact of solar panel manufacture/lifetime output use has no enviromental damage advantage over fossil fuel. Are you suprised?.
what research is that Fred? - everything I have ever seen shows an energy/carbon payback of less than 2 years for modern solar panels, typically about a year and even less for newer technologies. interestingly, wind generators also seem to have short payback times of less than a year.
I purchased 2 panels 20 years ago.
They both still work.
However in that time have had 3 sets of batteries and 4 cheap two stroke gennys and 2 good 4 stroke gennys and 2 inverters one of which still works.
Off grid is expensive and very high maintenance.
You need to keep panels.clean and battery maintenance required topping up water and keeping terminals clean.
Yes, the energy density of petrol to volume and delivery/storage efficiency is insane, nothing else comes even remotely close, in orders of magnitude. Unless we have an absolute revolution in power delivery/battery technology, electric power is but a pipe dream.
With all due respect Fred, I disagree for a number of reasons.
Whilst it is true that fossil fuels have a high energy density, it is also true that the means by which we convert that energy to motion is incredibly inefficient. In a typical vehicle, only 10% of it reaches the back wheels, and only 0.3% is used to actually move the occupant.
Furthermore, the battery storage technology is viable but has been prevented from being deployed by patent encumbrance - bought out by Chevron (gotta love free market capitalism) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_...NiMH_batteries
Or... the General motors EV1 from two decades ago.
Withdrawn from circulation by GM and every single example crushed (bar one - in a museum) in spite of the howls of protest from the people who had them in their driveways.
Why? because they worked.
You can watch the documentary 'who killed the electric car' here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r75lqbA0uMM
Anyone see a pattern emerging?
Last edited by clive milne; 18-05-2015 at 05:12 PM.
Clive, yes on board electric power to traction power is efficient some 85% I think. The big problem with electric is the reverse of IC. The generation, transmission and battery storage is very inefficient, im loose with the numbers, but its about 10-15% energy efficient I think. Petrol generation transmission and storage is very energy efficient indeed.
So, the IC path from oil in the ground to traction power, is about efficient as coal in the ground to traction power for electric, all things considered.
The whole "the barstds killed electric cars" conspiricy theorys are a myth, debunked years ago and im supprised you believe all that shiet.
Electric cars back then were leased and then trashed at the end of the lease for a very simple reason. The infrustructure required to support them was expensive for such a low volume production. Consumer law requires support and spare parts etc is available for the life of a product if they had sold them. The cost to make all spare parts available country wide for 20 odd years for such a specialised low volume product would have been insane. Or imagine actually resetting up an entire production line 15 years after it was shut down to make 3 spare batteries or motors!
Great idea, but unfortunately electric cars generate 30 to 200% more greenhouse gas than internal combustion engines when used in Australia (guess where the electricity comes from), hydrogen cell powered is the worst by far, insanely inefficient.
source for that claim?
....a combustion engine is about 25% efficient, with about 40% going out the exhaust, 30% into the coolant and 5% as frictional losses. Combustion engines generally use fossil fuels which are one-off burns. Insanely inefficient, and environmentally destructive..I suppose we do need to keep all those wars chugging along for the sake of controlling the fossil fuel reserves.
The future is in electric cars. No oil changes, filter replacements, periodic tune ups, exhaust system repairs, fixing water pump, fuel pump, alternator...
Only one moving part thus little maintenance. Just need to develop better batteries. Hopefully those carbon nanotubes will meet expectations.
As for environmental sustainability, we better buy less stuff and repair what we have instead of throwing things away as soon as they break down. How many toys amateur astronomers have nowadays?
The future is in electric cars. No oil changes, filter replacements, periodic tune ups, exhaust system repairs, fixing water pump, fuel pump, alternator...
Only one moving part thus little maintenance. Just need to develop better batteries. Hopefully those carbon nanotubes will meet expectations.
As for environmental sustainability, we better buy less stuff and repair what we have instead of throwing things away as soon as they break down. How many toys amateur astronomers have nowadays?
Along the same lines, this "Test drive of a petrol car" by Tesla Club Sweden is funny, and very close to the mark. Best read in a comedy Scandinavian accent:
The petrol engine consists of literally hundreds of moving parts that must have tolerance of hundredths of a millimeter to function. We begun to understand why it is car repair shops that sell the cars – they might hope for something to break in the car that they can mend?
...
The seller looked very puzzled at us and explained that it is not possible to refuel gasoline cars at home, and there are no free gas stations. We tried to explain our questions, in case he had misunderstood, but he insisted that you can not. Apparently you have to several times a month drive to the gas station to recharge your petrol car at extortionate prices – there are no alternatives!
I think good electric cars will change personal transportation, and I'm looking forward to the day I can get one! And networks of charging points are only going to grow, quite apart from home charging/power generation. If a significant chunk of the energy used in manufacture and recharging is renewable, then the environmental impact argument is easily lost by the fossil fuel companies. Bye bye dirty coal
Fred, try this for size - EV cars produce fewer lifecycle emissions than internal combustion cars, even when the electricity source is coal. If the electricity source is renewable (significantly in South Australia, for example), then EVs win by a large margin. Also try the "State of Charge" report (2012)" which has an interesting map showing how well the cars rate depending on geographic areas of the USA (depending mainly on electricity generation mix).
That was a great read from Tesla Club, thank you Andy.
I am also looking forward to the day when I will be able to afford an electric car with a decent range. I am not an engineer, but know a thing or two about electric motors and they seem to be a very logical move from combustion engines. Now, back to the batteries...
Look, im not against electric cars persay at all. I deal with electric vehicles in my job, and they are way more efficient and superior in many ways. EV is certainly the way of the future. Its the generation, transmission and storage technology that has to change/improve, and it is improving all the time.
Im a bit behind in developments obviously and have learnt a lot in this thread. Thanks for your input Andy, I stand corrected.
Just got back from Hawaii, and there are quite a few of them around. And it really makes sense. Highest gas prices in the country (about 70c higher than the mainland) and range/lack of refuelling points isn't a problem when you are on an island.
Keep up the tax on petroleum, and subsidise electric vehicles. Our lungs will thank us.
The present power grid can't handle very many electric cars. If we all went electric, the grid would crash.
That's not true, for two reasons.
1) The national grid has been designed for steadily increasing demand. In the last few years, we've actually seen a drop. As a result, there is now more spare capacity than there has been since the 80s.
2) Electric cars largely charge at night, when demand is at its lowest, and the lower tempreratures actually increase it's rating.
I'm a massive fan of seeing electric cars roll out here. Now that are stopping producing fossil fuelled cars here, there's no economic reason for not doing it either.
