Posted on 11/25/2015 5:07:47 AM PST by thackney
Bummer. You dudes are, like, real buzzkills, ya know?
“An electric car is no different than a spring or rubberband powered car”
You’re correct. The article mentions 95% efficiency of the electric car’s power train but does not mention the efficiency of the power plants producing the electricity, the transmission losses from generating plant to battery charger, or the loss in charging and discharging the battery.
Having said that, I’d like an electric car but the range and the time to recharge are now unacceptable.
Here’s a scheme that might have merit. An electric car would be “recharged” by replacing its dead battery with a freshly recharged one. The dead batteries would be hooked up to a solar powered charging system. In this case it’s ok if the batteries are recharged only when the sun is out. You’d have a stockpile of fully charged batteries for immediate use in the automobiles.
“internal combustion engine has reached the limits of physics.”
So, probably, have batteries. The more energy you pack into a given pound of battery, the more the battery becomes like a bomb.
Are the generators powered by electric motors, too? Or do they use icky liquid fuels like diesel?
They'll be driven by the trailer wheels. It's genius!
Electric cars = Town cars only
They have been for the last 50 years.
I assume they will be for at least the next 20.
As far as efficiency goes it takes a lot more charge to recharge a battery than it puts out. It’s a chemical process. It takes like 3 or 4 times the amount of charge you get out of a battery to recharge it. Electrics are nothing like efficient. It’s a pipe dream. Chemical batteries used in vehicles are a dead end and are extremely toxic to the environment. Replacing even 10% of the gas cars with battery cars would be a monumental disaster.
Most of the promos of these joke vehicles cleverly leave out the fact that to get the ranges they claim you have to drive at very low speed without using lights or a radio or anything. But the socialists want them so we will have them regardless of whether they make sense or not.
A prime example of the stupidity of socialists was the flourescent lightbulbs. Remember when congress passed a law that would ban incandescent bulbs? One of the prime movers of that was a congressman who thought it would allow his donors to make a killing. As we can see the industry went completely past flourescents onto LEDs. None of the genius lefties even mentioned LEDs even though anyone with scientific knowledge of these things could see that LEDs would replace everything.
Electric vehicles are an idea that sounds great to some envirowacko freak. However the actual physical universe we live in follows certain laws that aren’t subject to the wishes of the mentally ill.
We'll buy some at the hardware store, bring them along.
“An internal combustion engine peaks at ~30% efficiency. Yet there I was, driving the first generation of a car that comfortably hit 85-90% efficiency!”
Coal is around 35% efficient. So a car that converts power at 90% efficiency brings it down to 32%.
There are 2 parking spaces in front of Whole Foods where you can charge up your electric car. I have never seen a car being charged there so I have no one to ask this question. Do you know how much it would cost to charge your dead electric car to a full charge?
-— Coal is around 35% efficient. So a car that converts power at 90% efficiency brings it down to 32%. -—
6% of electricity is lost in transmission, so that brings it down to 30% from 32%.
There is a brand new Leaf in our neighborhood. Yesterday, I saw a truck from Nissan Services towing it away.
Depends on the capacity of the outlet and several other factors. Car and Driver did a Tesla test and charging overnight a pretty dead Tesla only gave about a 50% charge, as I recall.
If you were plugging it in at home do you have any idea what that one overnight charge would add to your electric bill?
People I have heard talking about how wonderful it would be don’t have an electric car but act like it would be free.
I can’t wait for the electric car revolution. However, there seems to be a problem with these cars that has not been discussed: What happens when you run out of electric power on the road? Do you get an “electricity can” and walk up to the nearest charge station and get a few gallons of electrons? Better yet, do you wait for the next vehicle up the road to “jump your POS car’s battery?”
Now, I don’t want to hear anything about an auxiliary GASOLINE/DIESEL little motor in your car that will charge the battery if this happens...FOSSIL FUEL IS BAD...ELECTRICITY IS GOOD...even if does result in the discharge of ozone gas.
Inquiring minds need to know!
that chart is brilliant. informative and really well designed. thanks for posting. where is it from?
Be nice for someone to noodle out where the raw materials to make the batteries for these cars is going to come from before they make all these starry eyed prognostications.
“Moore’s Law does not apply to electricity storage.”
I would replace ‘electricity’ with ‘energy’.
Gasoline is no different than a battery. They both store potential energy.
A car’s gas tank IS a battery.
Only its a better battery, since it can be ‘recharged’ in a few minutes. And, by weight, it has a much better energy density than a traditional battery - another advantage in a moving vehicle.
These electric car nuts think they are talking about something revolutionary. But really their electric batteries are just a lesser competitor (tried and abandoned 100 years ago) in a large class of energy storage devices that includes NG, gasoline, diesel, and even compressed air.
Some back of the envelope calcs on the LEAF, btw. The EPA says the leaf uses 0.29 kwh per mile. Coal produces around 2 lb CO2 per KWH....and gas produces 20 lb co2 per gallon. This means that, on a co2 basis, a car getting 35 mpg is equivalent to the LEAF. So, for those that worship carbon, any economy car (and some mid-size) should grant them the same carbon absolution as the LEAF.
Well what do you know...same as gas.
The author thinks electricity comes from the wall.
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