Electric cars are a pipe dream

[Fraggle Rocker]

And we have had brownouts over the past few decades why, class? YES! Because the Leftist Luddites have opposed . . . .

Actually, many of the brownouts, and virtually all of the cascading brownouts, are due to the increasing inefficiency of the quasi-governmental public utilities who generate and distribute the energy, and of the governmental organizations themselves who "regulate" the utilities. We continue paying more money in direct and indirect taxes and getting less for it, as sixteen layers of civil "servants" sit in meetings all day, "administering" each other.

Government is an organism, and as organisms grow larger they devote more of their resources to their own internal processes, while becoming less responsive to external stimuli.

 

[adoucette]

The follies of electric vehicles are many, including those cited by the OP.

In the U.S., 50% of electricity is generated by what, class?
YES! Burning fossil fuels! And that is bad.

Except one misses the IMPORTANT point and that is that only about 1% of that fossil fuel is OIL.

We have FAR more coal and natural gas supplies and more importantly, the renewable energy supplies we are creating all generate ELECTRICITY.

So, NO, there is nothing at all BAD about switching to electricity as a fuel source.

And we have had brownouts over the past few decades why, class?

Why no WE we haven't.
I've never had a brown out in my life.
Most people in the US haven't had one either.
California made some mistakes trying to deregulate their electrical industry, and while I don't live in California I don't think that is occurring any more.

We have quite a bit of excess electrical generation capacity and have a reliable distribution system and we are in the process of upgrading it to be even more so.

You think those big, heavy batteries don't wear out faster than internal combustion engines? And they cost a little more than two D cells.

Yes, but they are only an energy storage device and they are very recyclable.

Indeed, Lead Acid batteries are the most recycled product in the US.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/whats-the-most-recycled-product-in-the-usa-car-batteries.php

One will certainly expect that the more expensive Lithium batteries will essentially be 100%

Arthur

 

[RenaissanceMan]

Except one misses the IMPORTANT point and that is that only about 1% of that fossil fuel is OIL.

You miss the important point that coal is FAR dirtier than gasoline.
Moreover, since there is no oxidation of hydrogen, all of the coal burned produces the dreaded (gasp! cover the children's eys) carbon dioxide!

We have FAR more coal and natural gas supplies and more importantly, the renewable energy supplies we are creating all generate ELECTRICITY.


///
Arthur

And nowhere new to burn those supplies, as I said. Luddites on the Left scream at progress constantly. Arizona brushlands burned out of control after the Leftists there prevailed in stopping preventative cutting.

La plus change....

 

[Stoniphi]

..and it is so cool that the Volt is the new "Car of the Year" for the stated reasons.

I have been living with (direct gain passive) solar heat for 30 years now, plan to install roof - mounted DC panels and an (on - sight) storage facility "soon" (when the price is just right for the parts ) so I can unplug from the grid if I want to and sell electricity to you fine folks in the interim. :teeth:

I expect to be driving an all - electric sooner or later, for all of the 'right' reasons. I will most likely be charging that sukka with my own solar juice, thanks! :wave:

You think that CO2 etc is a joke?

*looks around*

This is a Science forum. :shock: You put in the wrong url (that is the little address thingie at the top of this page that sends you to a web site on the Internet-thingie)

Mebbe you should Google "conservation of matter and energy" and have someone help you with the big words.

 

[adoucette]

You miss the important point that coal is FAR dirtier than gasoline.
Moreover, since there is no oxidation of hydrogen, all of the coal burned produces the dreaded (gasp! cover the children's eys) carbon dioxide!

Yes, the central plants do produce CO2, but the overall efficinecy of using an instant power source like electricity is that the overall effective fuel efficiency is much higher, and since fossil fuel is only used for ~half the electricity (today) the net is an electric car like the Volt or the Leaf is going to produce less CO2 per mile. In the future the amount of electricity produced by renewables will increase and thus the TREND is positive.

For instance:
The first % is the amount of our electricity from renewables and the second is the amount of our electricity from Coal.

2001 1.9% 51.0%
2002 2.1% 50.1%
2003 2.0% 50.8%
2004 2.1% 49.8%
2005 2.2% 49.6%
2006 2.4% 49.0%
2007 2.5% 48.5%
2008 3.1% 48.2%
2009 3.6% 44.6%

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epmxlfile1_1.xls

Project this out 10 years, to say 2020, as electrical cars start coming into their own and you can see that a reasonable expectation is that renewables will be about 7% of our electricity and Coal will be a bit below 40%. Again, a favorable trend for use of electricity to replace a lot of oil in our transportation system. (Biofuels will also replace a lot as well)

As to pollution, I don't think you will find that modern integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) units, compared to the amount of output they produce are dirtier than cars (diesels put out plenty of soot and SO2, cars put out plenty of NOx and CO).

What's more, we are on a path to clean up our old coal plants.

Just 86 plants, representing only ~10% of total U.S. electric capacity produce ~29% of the TOTAL US SO2 emissions (and Coal only accounts for 60% of our SO2). They are also among the oldest in the country (the median age of the 86 plants is 45 years) and thus when the new Clean Air regs go into effect in April and November of 2011 will invariably cause the utility industry to accelerate retirement of these old coal-fired power plants rather than upgrade to meet the new requirements.

Arthur

 

[adoucette]

I expect to be driving an all - electric sooner or later, for all of the 'right' reasons. I will most likely be charging that sukka with my own solar juice, thanks! :wave:

Unfortunately neither is likely.
I mean you could be driving an electric car right now, but the fact is the production of them will only be a tiny percent for the next half decade at least, and thus they won't be a common sight on the highway for some time.
A lot of production/infrastructure issues have to be addressed before the industry can ramp up the volume.

As to your own solar juice, again, not likely. Recharging cars needs a LOT of power, indeed a car can easily exceed the demands of an entire large house, and typically most people need to use the car more when the sun is out and need to charge it when they are sleeping, so solar is not a great fit. A much better fit (for the average user) is to use solar to help run your house during the day and use the grid to charge your car at night.

The good news is that charging cars at night off the grid IS a great fit with all the excess capacity we have at those times and indeed, the percent of power that could be provided at night, via renewables is much higher at night than during the peak use times of the day.

Arthur

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

. . . . and typically most people need to use the car more when the sun is out and need to charge it when they are sleeping, so solar is not a great fit.

Can't you just have two batteries? Or does it take a crane and inspectors from six government departments to swap one out?

 

[adoucette]

Can't you just have two batteries? Or does it take a crane and inspectors from six government departments to swap one out?

Well to start with, the batteries are very expensive and so having a spare would add maybe $15,000 to the cost of the car. At that cost any savings in fuel costs would almost never happen.

As far as swapping them out, there are possible designs for fleet cars (like taxis) where the battery would be mounted under the frame and you would use an automated system to swap them out but expecting your average joe homeowner to do the same everyday is not likely. They are very heavy.

And so in the current models, the batteries are not even one piece and because of the need to keep the center of gravity low, they are under the seats and consoles etc, so no, swapping them out would take way too long to do.

Think of it this way, since the batteries are not expected to need any maintainence over the life of the car the designers are not at all concerned about providing easy/fast access.

Arthur

 

[ElectricFetus]

I prefer the idea of flow cell batteries like zinc-air flow cells, that way you can just pump in fresh paste to fuel up. Zinc is cheap, environmentally friendly, efficient, easy and safe to handle in wet paste form.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Think of it this way, since the batteries are not expected to need any maintainence over the life of the car the designers are not at all concerned about providing easy/fast access.

• So battery-powered cars will not be practical until there are charging stations everywhere, so every time you park the car you can just plug it in.
• And it won't be reasonable to build those charging stations until there's a large fleet of battery-powered cars.
• And people won't buy them until they become practical.
• And they won't be practical until...

 

[Skeptical]

As I have said before, it will all build up nicely. There are already people buying electric cars, and charging them at home. Some cities are already putting in the first recharge points for the public.

This process will just continue, and accelerate. The technology will also build up, at an accelerating rate, as demand increases and $$$ can be seen.

 

[adoucette]

• So battery-powered cars will not be practical until there are charging stations everywhere, so every time you park the car you can just plug it in.
• And it won't be reasonable to build those charging stations until there's a large fleet of battery-powered cars.
• And people won't buy them until they become practical.
• And they won't be practical until...

See the points that skeptical just made.

Then there are so many different sets of user requirements that there will be more than enough people whose requirements are met even with the limitations of today's electrics. Not to mention that owners of cars like the Prius Plug in Hybrid and the Volt will be able to take advantage of recharging stations (thus increasing demand) even thought they don't require it (have onboard gas recharging capability) so they will help to drive demand, while obviously satisfying a greater range of user requirements.
But as these initial adopters start buying more and more of these cars, then an increasing level of supporting infrastructure will also be built that will then make the cars fit even more users needs, thus the bootstrap process that skeptical alluded to.
To help the process along, the government and the manufacturers are spending quite a bit of money to build the supporting infrastructure in some key transportation areas and these areas are sufficiently large that they will help support the initial manufacturing capacity requirements and this will also increase over time.

 

[Stoniphi]

They have been installing those electric charging stations all over where I am in the metropolitan Detroit area. You can pick one up for your home now as well. Edison is doing it, they have also decided to buy some 40,000 electric autos for their company use. The Leaf and the all - electric Prius will be around as well, and the Chinese plan to dominate the world electric auto market within the decade, so I wouldn't bury the electric auto just yet.

I built that passive solar heating system myself some 30 years ago and am upgrading it with contemporary materials at this time. It functions quite well, thanks, which is why I am upgrading it. I have been studying roof mounted solar systems for quite some time as well, have apportioned out about 3 - 4 times the space I need to supply my own needs. I plan to sell the surplus to you by running my electric meter backwards and distributing it through Edison. I am skilled enough to fabricate the entire system.

There are several schemes for storing excess power as well, vanadium oxide batteries are one, cracking water and storing the hydrogen is another. Both are viable in my book. This field is also in a great state of flux right now, they are building battery research facilities here to create the next generations of auto batteries and I expect home storage batteries to come along for the ride.

The industry screamed when they took the lead out of gasoline and the asbestos out of brakes. Then the air got a lot cleaner. I cannot wait until they take the sulfur out of diesel and replace the IC engines with electrics, hybrids and opposed cylinder IC's. The air is going to be so much cleaner, all of our lives will be improved.

 

[quadraphonics]

Can't you just have two batteries? Or does it take a crane and inspectors from six government departments to swap one out?

Like Adoucette said, such is highly impractical (the weight alone makes it very cumbersome, even if it is modular - we're talking about like half of the weight of the entire vehicle). It may well be cheaper to simply buy a second EV and use them on alternating days (so that one is always charging), once you factor in the expense and trouble of swapping batteries in and out.

So battery-powered cars will not be practical until there are charging stations everywhere, so every time you park the car you can just plug it in.
And it won't be reasonable to build those charging stations until there's a large fleet of battery-powered cars.
And people won't buy them until they become practical.
And they won't be practical until...

The same is also true of gasoline cars, railroads, airplanes, and just about every other form of modern mass-scale transit. What this tells us is that the adoption (or not) of these various forms of transport is necessarily a policy-level decision and not a matter of individual consumer preference. You have to have the government throwing its weight behind the chosen options in the form of subsidy and provision of start-up infrastructure (at least until the system gets up and running, if not permanently).

And along those lines, hydrogen powered cars may be a better bet than electric cars. No huge batteries, refueling process similar to gasoline cars, good driving range and reliability, etc. It's just a question of producing enough hydrogen cheaply and cleanly enough (via nuclear power, probably) and subsidizing the erection of an infrastructure of fueling stations. California already has the latter in the more populated parts of the state, as does the NYC metro area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Hydrogen_Highway

 

[ElectricFetus]

And along those lines, hydrogen powered cars may be a better bet than electric cars. No huge batteries, refueling process similar to gasoline cars, good driving range and reliability, etc. It's just a question of producing enough hydrogen cheaply and cleanly enough (via nuclear power, probably) and subsidizing the erection of an infrastructure of fueling stations. California already has the latter in the more populated parts of the state, as does the NYC metro area:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Hydrogen_Highway

Hydrogen fuel cells and electrolysis is far less efficient then most battery chemistries. Lithium Ion can achieve 95% charge-discharge efficiency, Electrolysis is at best 75% efficient, and PEM fuel cells are 50% efficient, total efficiency is 37.5%, compared to lithium Ion's 90%, that means you would need nearly 3 times as much energy to power a fuel cell economy verse a Battery economy! Its also a pain to store with horrible volumetric energy density, fuel cells are expensive, storage is expensive. I put my bets on battery technology.

 

[chimpkin]

Has anyone mentioned "superbatteries" yet?
(can't post linky, I'm a newbie)

Battery tech is coming along nicely, and charge speed-a big issue-is improving...
Saying electric cars can't replace internal combustion engines is premature at this point because the tech isn't mature.

And I like to remind people that when the interstate system was built, it actually sucked down one-third of the federal budget (I believe I read that in "The End Of Oil, by Paul Roberts) So, yeah, we have to use the government to get it done.

Not saying I wouldn't prefer hydrogen...because I'd love to be able to build myself a backyard windmill for hydrolysis through generated electicity...and go fuel up my car every morning from the yard tank...for free...

OTOH, replace that with a HAWT charging my car battery array for free, and I'm still a somewhat happy camper...It's just that you KNOW the car manufacturers are going to make things more difficult to repair than they have to be, and..well, rather lose all my hydrogen in a gas leak than have my heart stopped by a catastrophic short b/c I screwed up the wiring...

 

[snowfox]

the way i see it is its like swapping out propane tanks for your grill at the gas station
instead gas stations become extensive charging stations with a giant storage bunker underneath where the gas reserves are now. instead of charging it your self you now have your friendly gas station attendant on a bycycle and his herd of 20,000 hamsters charging batteries for later use.

this of course would have to mean standardizing cells to be easily removed and replaced by consumers. im thinking something along the lines of a giant rod in the trunk you have to twist to remove like something out of a scifi movie where they have to replace the core of a nuclear reactor but they are perfectly unnaffected bythe radiation for some reason

 

[Stoniphi]

Do not forget that just because they haven't nailed them down yet, those carbon nano-layered capacitors are not off the playing field. They charge instantly and are currently in use in some electric vehicles for use during rapid acceleration.

This is too rapidly expanding technology right now to really see where it will be in a few short years, but it is here to stay and will indeed be expanding rapidly.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Now mind you combine capacitors and batteries are a great idea, but ultra capacitors will likely never have energy storage densities greater then batteries.

 

[adoucette]

the way i see it is its like swapping out propane tanks for your grill at the gas station
instead gas stations become extensive charging stations with a giant storage bunker underneath where the gas reserves are now. instead of charging it your self you now have your friendly gas station attendant on a bycycle and his herd of 20,000 hamsters charging batteries for later use.

this of course would have to mean standardizing cells to be easily removed and replaced by consumers. im thinking something along the lines of a giant rod in the trunk you have to twist to remove like something out of a scifi movie where they have to replace the core of a nuclear reactor but they are perfectly unnaffected bythe radiation for some reason

This is one possible future of the electric car.
If it is, it would probably start with fleet cars, like taxis in NYC, where a company with several thousand identical cars has conveniently stationed battery swapping locations, and it is done in an automated fashion. Drive in, a machine pulls the battery out and inserts a charged one, and you drive away.

A prototype of this type station was displayed in Japan a few years ago.

Arthur