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Electric Cars? Think again if we really want this.(Another lib myth shattered)

Posted on 09/18/2008 2:33:43 PM PDT by bestintxas

Hurricane Ike just brought the reality back to the dreams of liberals who think electric cars are the solution for the future.

We just went thru Ike and guess what happened? Virtually the entire city was knocked out of power.

What would have happened if the libs would have made it mandatory to have electric cars? No one could have gotten around as there was no way to recharge them.

Cars like the Chevy Volt have a very low range of miles before they need recharging. I thought I saw ~ 40 miles but could be wrong. This would not be enough to even escape a hurricane like we just had.

We have light rail service here in Houston that was also reduced to immobility for the same reason - no power. The city's solution was to go back to independently driven diesel-powered buses that drove exactly the same routes.

The libs would have us believe that electric cars are the God-send we need for efficiency and environment. Truth is they run poorly and do not stack up against the combustion engine.

Although I have not seen the new "Energy bill" that Pelosi just passed thru the house, I bet it contains more money thrown at electric transportation in the form of vehicles or mass transit.

Thanks, but I will keep my polluting old car.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: cars; energy; transportation
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To: marron

I guess the gas station with a generator on their pump could have just as easily hooked up the electric car...hehehe

I like to see a gas car go 300 miles on one tank, I have never owned one that would. I think of electric cars with a particular niche, and that would be in town commuting which is where most miles are spent anyway. Trying to make relatively new technology fit the role of a very established one is a ridiculous line of reasoning.


21 posted on 09/18/2008 3:45:46 PM PDT by DonaldC
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To: bestintxas

Speed? Suspect if it can go 70 MPH that the 40 mile range will probably drop to about 10 if lucky. P=VA Would require more amps to sustain the voltage and it is the Amps that would be the problem. Have to question the little gas generator for the same reason. Suspect to get the 70 MPH the little gas engine would run constant to augment the battery supply. Could be wrong.


22 posted on 09/18/2008 3:46:37 PM PDT by Logical me (Oh, well!!!)
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To: bestintxas

Liberals don’t THINK.

Liberals only react.


23 posted on 09/18/2008 3:53:08 PM PDT by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: Logical me

40 mile range is for the EPA combined cycle. And no, a 1.4L 4-cylinder will have no trouble at all keeping a car with an EPA-estimated 48mpg combined mileage (in charge sustaining mode) going at highway speeds.

Really, I’m amazed at how many people here are soagainst electric vehicles. Do you all *enjoy* funding a bunch of terrorist SOBs in Venezuela and the Middle East? This situation simply has to stop, and I don’t care what it takes. We need to extract every last drop of oil from our own land and switch as much oil consumption as possible to other sources. Even if *you* don’t buy a plug-in vehicle like the Volt, all the people who do are reducing are oil imports — swapping oil for things that we’re domestically awash in, like coal, natural gas, and nuclear. What on earth is wrong with that?

Can you imagine how long tyrants like Chavez would last if oil dropped down to $30 a barrel on a combination of increasing US production and decreasing world consumption? He’d be overthrown in a heartbeat. He can only keep his position of power by pretty much paying off the poor to overlook his abuses. Same thing goes with Putin, Ahmadinejad, etc.


24 posted on 09/18/2008 3:57:29 PM PDT by OldGuard1
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To: DonaldC
I think of electric cars with a particular niche, and that would be in town commuting which is where most miles are spent anyway

I agree with you there. Most commutes in a big city are going to be less than 100 miles round trip, and you have all day to charge while you're working theoretically.

I was using the 300 mile figure if you want to replace your gasoline car as your primary transportation. The problem right now is that charging is slow, like hours, compared to 10 or 15 minutes to gas up. So you won't want to re-charge until you're done driving for the day.

But its coming. The Tesla will do 250 miles, but it takes minimum 4 hours to recharge on quick charge, supposedly, and 16 on normal. That, plus the car is still over $100,000. But once they sell a few, and get the manufacturing ironed out, and once the big boys start competing in the same market, the price will probably drop dramatically.

25 posted on 09/18/2008 4:00:48 PM PDT by marron
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To: bestintxas

Not really a good argument.

Real issue is what in the world are we going to do with billions of pounds of toxic waste from all these batteries.

And what (fossil fuel) method are we going use to generate the electricity to charge all of these polluting batteries?

Electric cars are smoke and mirrors.


26 posted on 09/18/2008 4:03:54 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s........you weren't really there)
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To: marron

The big issue is the battery pack. Tesla’s pack uses conventional li-ion batteries, which are ~$0.30/Wh and they don’t have too much room to drop in price because they’re limited by the price of cobalt. There are some new cells on the market that are really interesting, though — phosphates and spinels that ditch the cobalt cathode for one made from incredibly common raw ingredients. They’re currently $0.50-$0.60/Wh due to limited batch production, but they have the potential to have their price fall by a huge margin as things scale up. Things like phosphoric acid or iron powder are simply never going to be a limiting factor to price. Also, there are about two dozen major anode and cathode techs in the lab that can increase the energy density two, three, four times over; there’s no way all of them are not going to pan out. Anyone who’s watched batteries progress in the past 25 years can attest to how much they’ve advanced — nickel-cadmium up to the 80s, then NiMH started showing up in the late 80s, then li-ion in the 90s, and now these advanced li-ion variants. Leaps and bounds better. It’s been disguised somewhat because a lot of consumer electronics today draw more power, but when you compare the raw stats, the improvements are huge.

I’m pretty bullish on EVs. It’s going to take a while, but I think you’re going to start seeing a lot of them showing up 3 to 5 years from now.


27 posted on 09/18/2008 4:08:35 PM PDT by OldGuard1
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To: ChildOfThe60s

Li-ion batteries are either minimally toxic (if they have a cobalt cathode) or nontoxic (if they have a phosphate or spinel cathode). You’re mixing up NiCad and lead-acid with li-ion.

As for what fossil fuel method we’re going to use, who cares? Natural gas, coal, and nuclear are domestic, abundant, and cheap. And that’s what I care about. Not everyone who wants an electric car is on some crusade to save the environment from some evil CO2 monster.


28 posted on 09/18/2008 4:11:09 PM PDT by OldGuard1
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To: OldGuard1
40 mile range is for the EPA combined cycle. And no, a 1.4L 4-cylinder will have no trouble at all keeping a car with an EPA-estimated 48mpg combined mileage (in charge sustaining mode) going at highway speeds.

What highway speed? Try staying on the subject of the car.

29 posted on 09/18/2008 4:11:51 PM PDT by Logical me (Oh, well!!!)
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To: Logical me

Do I actually have to explain to you what combined cycle is? The EPA rates vehicles for city, highway, and combined mileage. City is comprised of a variety of low speeds with lots of stops/starts and acceleration. Highway is comprised of a variety of high speeds with less stops/starts and acceleration. Combined cycle is a combination of the city and highway cycles.

There is no single speed, but let it suffice to say that if you go to fueleconomy.gov and compare combined cycle mileages to what real people are reporting for their vehicles, you’ll find that the revised EPA combined cycle is pretty representative of what the average driver encounters (the old EPA numbers used to be way too optimistic).


30 posted on 09/18/2008 4:16:36 PM PDT by OldGuard1
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To: marron

AeroVironment, a company that makes UAVs, also makes fast chargers. They were initially designed for EVs back in the 1990s, then they switched over to forklifts, and now they’re going back to EVs. They have a bunch of 60kW ones installed all over Hawaii, and they make them as big as 250kW. A sleek, conventionally shaped car will use 250 watt hours every mile, so I’m sure you can do the math. 250kW mean 16 miles of range per minute of charging. So, not as fast as a gasoline refill, but it’s no slouch either, especially if you consider the overhead needed on every fillup, whether gas or electric.


31 posted on 09/18/2008 4:25:32 PM PDT by OldGuard1
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To: steve-b

sorry, doesn’t work that way.
the generator, which is widely used by businesses here since the storm, are hooked not to the pump itself but to the power cord which works the pump.

there is no difference essentially to the way it is done now.

i cringe everytime some fool comes out of his car smoking and tries to pump gas at the same time. i always tell them to wait to pump or smoke until i am gone form station


32 posted on 09/18/2008 5:20:51 PM PDT by bestintxas (It's great in Texas)
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To: ChildOfThe60s

actually, besides coal, the best and cleanest power generation system ever designed is nuclear. france makes over 70% of power from nuclear.
If he French can do it, we certainly can


33 posted on 09/18/2008 5:22:55 PM PDT by bestintxas (It's great in Texas)
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To: NavVet

“the electric cars being developed are far from golf carts.”

That’s what they’ll have you believe. However, once you actually have a chance to experience the lack of air conditioning, heat, limited accessories, limited range, and lack of carrying capacity that electric cars will all feature, the golf cart analogy will come to mind for many dissappointed owners.


34 posted on 09/18/2008 5:27:41 PM PDT by RFEngineer
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To: RFEngineer

Google “Tesla Roadster” and “Phoenix motorcars”

I can’the afford one but they have AC and all the usual bells and whistles.


35 posted on 09/18/2008 6:02:50 PM PDT by NavVet ( If you don't defend Conservatism in the Primaries, you won't have it to defend in November)
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To: OldGuard1

Thanks. I’m also bullish on EVs. And I learned a lot in a couple minutes reading you.


36 posted on 09/18/2008 7:05:01 PM PDT by marron
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To: RFEngineer
That’s what they’ll have you believe. However, once you actually have a chance to experience the lack of air conditioning, heat, limited accessories, limited range, and lack of carrying capacity that electric cars will all feature, the golf cart analogy will come to mind for many dissappointed owners.

I'm all for limited acessories, especially when it comes to electronics *LOL. Car alarms that spontaneously go off during the night, malfunctioning power windows that manage to actually smash the glass, I've experienced it all. Thus my new dream car is this:



Ariel Atom
37 posted on 09/18/2008 7:29:01 PM PDT by wolf78
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To: wolf78

Speaking of the Ariel Atom, are you familiar with its EV equivalent, the Wrightspeed X1? 0-60 in 2.5 seconds, and the production model, the Wrightspeed SR-71, is expected to be able to beat a Veyron.


38 posted on 09/18/2008 8:27:47 PM PDT by OldGuard1
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To: RFEngineer

You’re right. Apart from Audi’s EV “Up!”, the Shelby Supercars Ultimate Aero EV, the Subaru R1e, the Aptera Typ-1e, Aptera Typ-1h, Aptera Palomar, the Tesla Roadster, the Tesla Model S, BMW’s EV Isetta, the Silence PT2, the Fisker Karma, BYD’s F3DM, F6DM, and E6; the Chevy Volt, the Volkswagen twin-drive Golf PHEV, Chrysler’s EV, the Smart Fortwo ED, the Eliica, the Lightning GT, the Loremo EV, Mazda’s PHEV, the Mercedes PHEV, the Miles Javlon, the Think City and Think Ox, the Mitsubishi MiEV, the Phoenix SUV and SUT, the Pininfarina/Bollare EV, the Nissan-Renault EV sedan, the Saturn Vue Green Line, the Tata Indica EV, the plug-in Prius, Toyota’s EV, the Venturi Fetish, and the Wrightspeed SR-71, they all lack air conditioning, heat, have limited accessories, limited range, and lack of carrying capacity.

(sarcasm)


39 posted on 09/18/2008 8:38:08 PM PDT by OldGuard1
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To: OldGuard1

The discussion was electric vehicles, not hybrids, which have a motor to power the accessories that a battery pack cannot power without significantly reducing range.

electric vehicle = golf cart that will be sold in dry temperate areas so heat/ac doesn’t dampen the enthusiasm by reducing the hype.

The chevy volt will not have 40 miles range if you are operating the AC (or heat) in electric mode.

I stand by my statement - the all electric vehicles will have all the amenities of a golf cart, for all practical purposes, even the much-vaunted Tesla. I’d love to see a review from someone in Minneapolis in the winter, assuming they even survive a drive to work in the morning in the a Tesla.


40 posted on 09/19/2008 4:37:48 AM PDT by RFEngineer
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