michael_taylor
Registered Senior Member
Yes, that's fine then.
Electric cars are a pipe dream
- Thread starter Syzygys
- Start date
Yes, that's fine then.
Yes I did "miss that" top line note, but it is not surprising nor very important because I assume one or two things (or both) is the case:
(1) They don't have contracts (or production facilities) for the volume of batteries they need / want to use / in it yet.
OR
(2) It is not the finished design - needs mods to make more economical production, etc.
I'm pretty sure they did not assign 300 engineers to work on it for more than a year, just for the Detroit auto show. I also know they can make a IC car for 10% of the $20,000 price they designed to hit. - It is called the Nano and has been on sale for about three years, mainly in India, but a few in other countires too, Including at least one dealer in Sao Paulo - I think he just buys them in India, and ships them here for resale at about twice the price, which is still the cheapest car available, I think. My doubts are based on fact I have seen two or three Chinese cars on the Sao Paulo streets too. One was a "chery." I'm not much of a car buff - It looked much like any other car to me, but I happened to be stopped behind it at a light and saw the name.
I am sure that Tata would not sell you (or anyone) that pictured car for even $200,000 as they don't want any "reverse engineering" done before they are mass marketing its "cousin." Probably the main reason it was in the Detroit auto show was to forcefully tell potential competitors considering making a cheap EV not to by dissuading them. I.e. Show Tata already is putting millions into the cheap EV as demonstrated by the prototype unit in Detroit.
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New technology is always more expensive. Capability improves every year. EVs are definitely here to stay. Would a thousand mile range still be insufficient? How many years do you think it will take to attain this kind of range for motorway driving? How much time does the fastest charging car take to charge as we speak? Would eight hours driving, one hour charging, eight hours driving be sufficient? Would 16 hours non-stop be sufficient with an overnight charge? Where does it have to get to before you eat your hat?
Think about how far the ICcar has come in the last hundred years. Then apply to EV another hundred. Where does it get to? Or is hydrogen the answer? Even if hydrogen or something else is the answer, do you still think there is no place for advanced EV transportation. Diesel and petrol coexisted rather well until development ironed out many differences.
I remember growing up to the tinkle of fresh milk on the doorstep delivered by electric powered milk floats. I work everyday with electric forklifts buzzing around. Why electric? It is clean and convenient and economical. Will shipping hydrogen around be as economical as electricity? Will we be driving around with mini thorium reactors under the hood?
All I know is that as soon as EV price comes down, and ranges increase, many more people are going to buy EVs. Demand drives the markets. Where there is a will and demand there is a way.
PS Hydrogen is highly dangerous, thorium reactors sound dangerous. How will they hold up to crashes? How does an EV do in a crash? (I have visions of people having their skin melted off by battery acid!)
Not necessarily.
Often new technology is far cheaper than what it replaces.
Like the Cotton Gin or Gasoline IC vs Steam Power.
Yeah, so?
That's not exactly the question posed in the OP.
Depends on weight, cost and recharge time.
Don't think it will happen in my lifetime.
Well the 480V DC quick charger that Nissan is making available for the Leaf, sometime this year, at a cost of $10,000 will charge it to 80% full in 30 minutes.
But when full the battery is only good for ~70 miles, so on a long distance trip, you could drive for an hour, stop recharge for 30 minutes, drive another hour and repeat, assuming that Fast Charging stations were available every 50 miles. Of course they aren't and worse, fast charging is not good for the battery.
That is one of the major drawbacks of Electric cars is intercity driving is very problematic.
When it has reasonably the same utilization as a gas IC car and where and how far I drive it are not constrained by lack of charging locations, short distances between recharging and long recharge times.
How about a more realistic 80 years?
Answer, not that far.
The 32 Deuce Coupe with a V8 wouldn't FUNCTIONALLY be much different than the functional ability of any of today's car as far as utility, range and speed.
I don't think anyone is talking about 100 years from now.
None of us will still be here.
How about over the next decade or two being a more meaningful discussion?
So what both are specialized niche markets.
We are talking about use for normal personal transportation (forget use in long haul trucking)
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My take is I think I need a new idea. :/
Don't you just hate it when that happens? . . .
Yeah, and it seems to happen with depressing regularity.
Oh but for some capital to invest...
Interesting note . . . . a friend of mine has a 2008 Prius with ~ 150,000 miles . . . last week he was advised that the 'battery is kaput and needs replacement . . . cost (dealer)? . . . $3800.00 US . . . . friend said that he could have spent the $3800.00 on gas for a 'normal' car over the same 3 years and been further ahead of the game . . . and not have to replace a $3800.00 battery . . . . . he said he'll never fall for that electric car line again.
Is that I would love to have an electric car that is as capable as an IC car and reasonably the same cost to operate.
BUT I also understand the caveats to this new technology:
So a decade from now let's see if this is still worth talking about.
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I've had two ideas as a solution for this aspect, one will work, but it's only half of the solution, as far as the second goes, I've never been sure how to approach this from a perspective of judging reliability - I have no idea what the failure rate might be, but it seems that in conjunction with the first step, if it's implimented properly, there would be long term savings to be made as well.
Mine's got 120,000 miles on it. No problems. On the other hand I had a Plymouth that got to just over 100,000 miles before it cracked a cylinder block. I'll never fall for the "simple reliable gas car" line again.
Hardly, your's is BOTH an IC car and also requires an expensive Battery.
The good news is that Toyota is good enough and smart enough to make really reliable vehicles.
As to the assertion:
Well compare the Toyota Camry vs the Prius.
The 2009 Camry gets an avg 30 mpg vs the Prius at an avg 46 mpg (real life, real drivers).
http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/prius
http://www.fuelly.com/car/toyota/camry
The price difference between them was roughly $4,000
So the gas savings, over 150,000 miles is 1,740 gallons of gas, at $3.25 per is $5,655 - $3,800 cost of new battery - higher cost of initial car = -$2,145
of buying Prius over Camry.
BUT
Then I went to Kelly Blue book and it turns in the trade in value for the 09 Camry with 150k miles is $1,500 better than the Prius.
http://www.kbb.com/toyota/prius/200...415116|false|2301491|false&pricetype=trade-in
Which means total cost of ownership of the Prius is about $3,600 more than the Camry over these 3 years and 50,000 miles per year (twice average miles per year). Had he been lucky enough to trade it in just before the battery went, he would have essentially broke even.
YMMV
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80 kW AC synchronous motor
I must have had a bad night sleep lastnight - I don't suppoe you have an average value of amps so I can work out whether some flow rates are feasable?
And yeah, I know that depends on a bunch of things like loading.
You're right in that Amps would depend on a lot of things.
Besides loading, the Voltage supply would be critical, the higher the voltage the lower the Amps.
From what I can gather, based on the specs of the Leaf's fast charger (440 volt), is the battery is very high voltage, on the order of 420+ Volts, which would put the peak amp requirements for it's 120 hp motor at around 140 amps or so.
Ordinarily, NMC Li-Ion cells have an open circuit voltage of 3.7v and a charge voltage of 4.2v It's done at using current limited constant voltage, so 440v to charge 100 cells with a 20v buffer for usage in the charger itself sounds about right.
The problem then becomes it's 370VDC which needs to then be inverted for use in the AC motor. Let's say 20v to run the inverter so that's 350VDC, so 350 VAC peak, which is 247 VAC (rms).
This in turn implies 323 A (RMS) and 458A Peak.
But that's peak current with absolutely no loading on the motor. Once you start loading the motor by making it do work accelerating mass and over coming friction, the amount of current it draws deacreases, because the physical resistance against the motors movement translates to electrical resistance against the current in the coils (according to $$P=I^2R=\frac{V^2}{R}$$). This, incidentally, is what causes vacuum cleaner motors to overheat and blow up when the tube is blocked - it's not because they're working hard, it's precisely the opposite - all of a sudden, there's less resistance to the motion of the impeller, they start drawing more current, and overheat.
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True - but if he had bought a Nissan Versa he would have come out way, way ahead of both of those people (if money is your only criteria.)
Actually that's peak power which you can only get with a significant load. If you apply that much power to a motor without a load it will very quickly overspeed and self destruct.
I think you meant "increases." Without any phase advance a synchronous motor takes almost zero current at its synchronous speed when there's no load on it. (And DC motors take almost zero current at their base speed when there's no load on them.)
Vacuum cleaner motors often speed up with their intakes blocked because their fans stall when there's no air. This decreases the torque on the motor. Their speed increases to compensate and they have troubles. (They tend to have cheap series wound universal motors, which do not handle overspeed well.)