Electric cars are a pipe dream

[adoucette]

BS. No one is talking about buying new each time. If you sell a car. Then buy the same model, same age as the car sold then you lose nothing.

You still didn't explain where the loss comes from. A car is worth what it is worth.

Except I stated from the begining of this discussion when I brought up depreciation:

Not if the car is reasonably new, they will take a bath on it because of the high depreciation over the first few years.

If not new then depreciation isn't much of a factor.

Try to keep up.

I doubt everybody ships their car over.
My guess is that the newer a car is the more likely they are to ship it though because the loss of depreciation is so much higher in those first few years.

Still, assuming you buy from dealers and many people do because they trust the dealers and want the warranty they often offer, then each time you buy you pay the dealer's margin.

Since if you don't ship this results in buying/selling two extra cars then you lose that money.

When you come back to the states and buy your replacement car, you will then pay State Sales Tax, which depending on your state can run you an additional $2 or $3,000.

Arthur

 

[adoucette]

BS. I buy at auction then resell a year later and make money.

What a deal.

That's a much better then actually paying money for a car.

Make money every time you sell.

You say that like it's something that even a Yank right off the boat could do as well, and if that's the case, I assume that everybody in the UK follows your lead.

You know what though?

That sounds almost too good to be true, but you wouldn't lie to make a point would you?

Arthur

 

[universaldistress]

I am talking about selling and buying kind for kind. There is no loss. Even if you sell 1 year old car and buy another 1 year old car, then a year later sell it as a 2 year old and replace it with another 2 year old, there is no loss. Get it?

Depreciation IS NOT a factor dumbass.

I thought you said that cars are more expensive in the UK? We do not pay sales tax on a used car.

 

[universaldistress]

What a deal.

That's a much better then actually paying money for a car.

Make money every time you sell.

You say that like it's something that even a Yank right off the boat could do as well, and if that's the case, I assume that everybody in the UK follows your lead.

You know what though?

That sounds almost too good to be true, but you wouldn't lie to make a point would you?

Arthur

Think what you want. Auctions in the UK are full of bargains. Just wait for the right day and BANG.

 

[universaldistress]

Depreciation happens whether you keep or sell. It is a standard thing. A car is worth what it is worth, period.

 

[adoucette]

I am talking about selling and buying kind for kind. There is no loss. Even if you sell 1 year old car and buy another 1 year old car, then a year later sell it as a 2 year old and replace it with another 2 year old, there is no loss. Get it?

Depreciation IS NOT a factor dumbass.

Yes it is because the dealer you get your car from makes money on each sale, in essence you sell at wholesale, you buy at retail, thus you lose.

I thought you said that cars are more expensive in the UK? We do not pay sales tax on a used car.

New cars are quite a bit more expensive in the UK than the US even when you factor in our Sales tax (your VAT tax is apparently much higher).
That Passat I looked at that was ~$22,000 in the US with sales tax and was $38,000 in the UK.

Most states charge sales tax, even on used cars. The buyer can't register the car without paying it.

So when you sell your car in the US you don't get that initial sales tax back, then when you come back in three years and buy a replacement car, you pay it again.

That's going to cost the typical car buyer of a $25,000 car about $2,000 or more dollars, again depending on the state they are in.

Arthur

 

[universaldistress]

Yes it is because the dealer you get your car from makes money on each sale, in essence you sell at wholesale, you buy at retail, thus you lose.

Sell and buy privately. If you don't then you deserve to lose money.

Most states charge sales tax, even on used cars. The buyer can't register the car without paying it.

So when you sell your car in the US you don't get that initial sales tax back, then when you come back in three years and buy a replacement car, you pay it again.

I take that on board. First meaningful point you have made for a while. I take it this is a percentage of the car's value?

But it doesn't force you to increase your car budget/fund. Simply buying a cheaper car or shopping around for a deal is just common sense.

 

[adoucette]

Think what you want. Auctions in the UK are full of bargains. Just wait for the right day and BANG.

Oh BS

If that were so easy to do no one would ever pay a penny for a car, like you they would all be friggin making money.

Buying a car BANG, driving it for a year and then selling it for a friggin profit.

But you know that in fact is not the case.

Even the margin for people in the business of buying and selling used cars isn't high enough for them to buy a car, drive it for a year and then sell the same car but a year older and with 10,000 more miles on it, but at more than they bought it for.

Just doesn't work that way.

And you (and everyone reading this thread) knows it.

Why have you stooped to outright lies?

Arthur

 

[adoucette]

Sell and buy privately. If you don't then you deserve to lose money.

Someone NEW to a country, not knowing who's who or where anything is and not having a car to scurry around in and in a hurry to get settled and get a car doesn't necessarily have the time to drive all around the UK looking at used cars and buying privately. Going to a dealer saves time and you are backed by the dealer if you have problems. Same thing when it comes time to sell, you've got your orders to ship out and you have to unload your car in a hurry, and so you aren't likely to be able to get top dollar. Again you just ignore the situation these people are in.

I take that on board. First meaningful point you have made for a while. I take it this is a percentage of the car's value?

Percent of what you pay for the car. ~10% is typical.

http://www.tax-rates.org/California/sales-tax

 

[universaldistress]

Oh BS

If that were so easy to do no one would ever pay a penny for a car, like you they would all be friggin making money.

Buying a car BANG, driving it for a year and then selling it for a friggin profit.

But you know that in fact is not the case.

Even the margin for people in the business of buying and selling used cars isn't high enough for them to buy a car, drive it for a year and then sell the same car but a year older and with 10,000 more miles on it, but at more than they bought it for.

Just doesn't work that way.

And you (and everyone reading this thread) knows it.

Why have you stooped to outright lies?

Arthur

I was only stating what I DO. I didn't say this is the norm. It was just an aside. You take this as a serious point? LOL.

 

[universaldistress]

Someone NEW to a country, not knowing who's who or where anything is and not having a car to scurry around in and in a hurry to get settled and get a car doesn't necessarily have the time to drive all around the UK looking at used cars and buying privately. Going to a dealer saves time and you are backed by the dealer if you have problems. Same thing when it comes time to sell, you've got your orders to ship out and you have to unload your car in a hurry, and so you aren't likely to be able to get top dollar. Again you just ignore the situation these people are in.

The bases offer vehicles to get people going, if they want to travel and look around before they buy. There a thousands of cars for sale privately within a short drive of the base.

In fact you can buy a car on base in Lakenheath. There are thousands of people living there. The American community is quite large.

 

[universaldistress]

There is Mildenhall base just down the road to. And many yanks living in the surrounding areas.

 

[adoucette]

The bases offer vehicles to get people going, if they want to travel and look around before they buy. There a thousands of cars for sale privately within a short drive of the base.

Again, you are just making the most favorable assumptions and I'm sure that while you can probably buy cars on the base you can't presume everyone will find what they need.

The fact is the bigger problem comes when you have to sell in a hurry because you are leaving. Which is why if you have your own car from the states you just ship it back (which the AF again does for you) but no one wants a right hand car in the US, so that's a non-starter.

Finally there is the financing cost hit you take.

Again, since I looked up the Passat I'll use that.

In the US you can buy the car for $20,000 with $2,000 Sales tax. Let's pay the sales tax with cash and put 20% down and finance the rest for 5 years at 6% interest.

That's a monthly payment of $340 per month.

After one year you get shipped off to the UK, and so you sell the car.

Well the first year the car depreciates about 20%, and so what you owe on the car and the loan amount are both about $16,000, so now you have no car but you get no money from the sale, but you are square with the bank.

Of course besides the first year car payments you are also out about $6,000 for your down payment and sales tax.

So now we go to buy the car in the UK.

Well the same car in the UK goes for $38,000 but we want one that is a year old and its also depreciated by 20% and so you find one just like the one you sold back in the US for 20% less or $30,400.

So now you come up with $6,000 as a down payment and finance the rest for 4 years at the same rate of 6% (this makes this loan end on the same date as the original loan to make the accounting simpler)

Well that new payment is $570 per month or $2,800 per year more then you were paying for the exact same car in the US.

Now the four years are up and they are shipping you back to the US and you sell the car for its nominal value (15% per year depreciation after that first year) or $16,000.

So now you go to buy the same car you sold in the UK, and since it's now worth $8,500, plus $500 in sales tax, or $9,000 to get your exact same car you sold in the UK back.

Leaving you with $7,000.

BUT

You paid $6,000 in a down payment that you wouldn't have had to pay in the states, and you also paid an extra $11,000 in finance charges over the 4 years.

So

At the end you are $10,000 in the hole by buying the exact same car in the UK that you had in the States.

Change the price of the car a bit, the length of time you own it in the states vs the UK, and the numbers shift a bit, but the basic math stays the same, it saves you to let the AF ship your US car to the UK.

If you're smart, you should probably pick a model of US car that Brits are willing to pay a lot for and sell it when you leave (I'm sure there are some).

Arthur

 

[Billy T]

immulett's post 1846's impossible "over unity" claims now have a better known, but equally silly claim:

"... What we're essentially looking for is trying to take the photos that Reggie took of Michael Jackson, his legacy, use those funds to try to take our prototype to the market and ultimately clean up the environment and use less greenhouse gases as a result of a motor that's very highly efficient," Mahronic said.

{See 10 early photos of MJ he is selling here: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/SHOWBIZ...5/14/michael.jackson.photos/index.html?hpt=C1 }

The motor buzzed as two voltage meters measured the energy going in and the power flowing out, back to the battery.
{Note same confusion that higher voltage implies higher energy. Also note Moronic ~ Marohnic, his name. }

"It's generating more energy recharging the battery than it actually draws from the battery," Marohnic said.

Garcia reconfigured the brushes and rewound the copper in a standard motor "so it captures the negative electromagnetic field as it collapses, sends energy to a capacitor and recharges the battery," he said.

The sale of the Jackson photographs will allow them "to certify that the prototype does everything that we say it's going to do," Marohnic said. ..."

BT comment: Perhaps he is just trying to get a higher price for his photos from ignorant MJ fans who think they are also helping save the world with his "over unity" device?

 

[Billy T]

In world's largest and fastest growing luxury market, China, non-electic cars are what is selling:

“…BMW Group recently announced it will almost double the investment in its new Shenyang factory to around 1 billion euros ($1.42 billion) to enable higher production {100,000 cars a year}and increased local content. … Planned products made at the facility include the X1 SUV.

"The plant is being built in record time," Olaf Kastner, president and CEO of the joint venture BMW Brilliance Automotive, said in an interview at the Shanghai auto show last month. "We have never before built a plant in such a short time - 18 months."
From: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-05/16/content_12515840.htm

 

[jimW]

can a scientist double check some numbers for me. We where looking at GreenGas.cc website. Re GreenNH3..
A company from india told us they could make a Norm or Stan cubic meter Hydrogen from water with an electolyser for 4.5 kwh of electric. If we take this new process of sunlight H, I will guess we can cut that in half? (suppose?). what amount of N and H does it take to combine and how much energy to combine the 3 parts H and 1 part N to make one liter NH3? In the lab we make N gas for 1 or 2 cents a liter using PSA

 

[Billy T]

I have made several posts over the years telling that super flywheels, not batteries were the way to go especially for buses, but now even for cars:

"a Porsche 911 GT3 R hybrid racing car that used a Williams flywheel system capable of boosting output at the wheels by an extra 160 horsepower and weighing just 47kg (instead of a battery system two or three times heavier) achieved 25% better fuel economy than conventional versions of the car. Now, Land Rover and Williams are working on a tiny flywheel design that can be mass produced for under $1,500, and used instead of batteries in hybrid family cars.

Besides finding their way into road vehicles, high-momentum flywheel systems are being investigated as ways of storing energy collected from intermittent sources such as wind and solar power, and for responding quickly to increases in demand that are now dealt with by switching on stand-by generators fuelled by natural gas. Beacon Power, a firm based in Massachusetts, is building a 20-megawatt plant in Stephentown, New York, that uses 200 flywheels to stabilise the local grid in this way.

Back on the road, flywheel hybrids that cut both fuel consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions by 30% or more appear to be only three or four years away. When they arrive, today’s coal-fired electric cars will look decidedly dirty by comparison. ..."
From: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/07/techview_electric_cars_crossroads


BT comment:Flywheels can rapidly recharge and will last longer than the car will. Perhaps someday when you buy a new car, you will have the option of transfer the flywheel unit from your old one into the new one for reduced purchase price. They store more energy per pound of weight than Li-ion batteries do and cost less to make. They make for more efficient recovery of breaking energy too.

 

[taichitarot]

Driving not the only thing..
you can ride in a big carpark called the city.
Try a bike.
Make me proud.

 

[billvon]

I have made several posts over the years telling that super flywheels, not batteries were the way to go especially for buses, but now even for cars

Flywheels are good devices for hybrids because they store relatively small amounts of energy but can release them VERY quickly. This is both good and bad. Good because hard regen braking and acceleration are possible; bad because a failure releases all that energy at once. If you had a, say, 24kwhr flywheel (equivalent to a Nissan Leaf battery) and had a containment failure, the resulting energy release would almost certainly kill you and everyone within several meters. In addition, the more energy you store in a flywheel the more gyroscopic moment you have; it can become very difficult to design suspensions or steering systems with enough gyroscopic moment in the flywheel.

Given that, smaller flywheels for hybrids seem like a better choice than larger flywheels for traction energy storage.

 

[Billy T]

Flywheels are good devices for hybrids because they store relatively small amounts of energy but can release them VERY quickly. This is both good and bad. Good because hard regen braking and acceleration are possible; bad because a failure releases all that energy at once. If you had a, say, 24kwhr flywheel (equivalent to a Nissan Leaf battery) and had a containment failure, the resulting energy release would almost certainly kill you and everyone within several meters. In addition, the more energy you store in a flywheel the more gyroscopic moment you have; it can become very difficult to design suspensions or steering systems with enough gyroscopic moment in the flywheel.

Given that, smaller flywheels for hybrids seem like a better choice than larger flywheels for traction energy storage.

No. When super flywheels fail they are not hard to contain as they are made of thin fibers that turn into dust inside the containment chamber. One of my friends and collegues at APL, Dan Rabenhorst, was and early developer of them - he spun many to destruction. He made me aware of their potential. Breaking those super strong carbon fibers into tiny dust specks takes a lot of energy. Some were wound hoops of fibers and others radial brushes of short (= to wheel diameter) length fibers.

Yes you would want to gymbal the flywheel in the "pitch" direction so going up or down a hill would not try to lift the front or back wheels from the ground, but boy would they "corner well" (on a dry road) without the car rolling over.

Also the stored energy is proportional to the square of the rotation rate (very high when fully charged) but the angular momentum goes only linearly with rotation rate. Thus there is not as much angular momentum as one might be inclined to guess. I forget the numbers but am sure that the energy to momentum ratio of a super flywheel can be >10 times higher than an old fashioned iron disk and of course they can store more than 10 times the energy per pound that a steel disk can. Thus for the same stored energy, the angular momentum would be less than 1% of that old style iron flywheel.

Once you start thinking of storing wind energy for hours of later delivery, yes you had better put the wheel under ground for safety, but in car or even bus size units they can fail without hurting anyone. I think they would be great for buses as you are correct they can have the kinetic energy of bus put into the flywheel and taken out again with every stop /re start. Unlike a battery, you can do this a million times with no damage to the flywheel and at much higher energy transfer rates.

NASA was one of the earlier developers and planned to put them in man-rated space craft. I think some of Dan's funding came from NASA and that is why he intentional spun to destruction so many.