Posted on 02/03/2011 10:02:48 AM PST by qman
You hardly need me to tell you that the only problem with electric cars is the treachery of their almost entirely useless batteries.
Everything else about electric cars is pretty wonderful and we’ve known that electric is the way to go for more than a century. I like the idea of one; the smoothness, the futuristic whooshing noises and twinkling dashboard displays, the low maintenance, the mechanical simplicity.
The internal combustion engine is a wonderful thing, but I suspect we love it for its foibles. Its gift of power is actually pretty feeble and fairly inflexible, so it needs gearing and complex management. The internal combustion engine makes a right song ’n’ dance about the fairly straightforward job of making a shaft go around and around – which is all we’re after – and has to be left running even when the car it’s in is stationary.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
The cost/energy density ratio of liquid fuels beats anything - anything - the Luddite Left can come up with. The ones who are smart enough to udnerstand that simple fact hate it. They hate it along with the very civilization that provides them their comforts.
They already have these—trolleybuses, hybrid buses with a gas or Diesel engine that also have an overhead pantograph allowing them to use power lines like an old-style streetcar or tram. The technology exists, and has worked well in Europe (and here) for decades, but it’s only practical in high-density areas for high-density vehicles like buses.
It’s an interesting idea from Captain Slow, but nothing that will happen anytime soon. In the meantime, I’ll take a Ferrari 458 Italia like May was driving the last time Top Gear came to the US, please.
}:-)4
The rolling blackout happening in Texas ought to be proof that our current energy and environmental policies would not allow any significant expansion of rechargeable electric vehicles or even the electrified motorways envisioned in this article. We have wasted billions building wind farms, solar collectors and ethanol plants while environmental regulations have stymied the building of new fossil fuel plants, hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants. Now we have to import electricity from Mexico just to make ends meet. While the US has more oil than Saudi Arabia, we must import most of our oil because of government regulations, now these regulations are forcing us to import electricity too.
A system such as that has a high level of potential (no pun intended).
“The cost/energy density ratio of liquid fuels beats anything”
Absolutely true. When we learn how to convert that energy contained in gasoline into turning wheels without the IC engine in between, we will all be better off.
Fuel cells that can burn gasoline (or about any other liquid or gaseous fuel) are coming.
LOL! Ok, so now we have taken the bumper car from the carnival environment and put it on the road. Well, the traffic patterns would be interesting, mostly people just sitting around chatting until the next lightning strike.
Can’t we just get along and call the electric car the “Tiny Coal Powered City Worker and Mall Shopper Summer Transporter” or by its shorter name “Truck Food” and resign ourselves to using it only when “appropriate” (like 1/4 of the time)?
If electric cars are outfitted with links to overhead electricity, will the manufacturers also include the “clang, clang” trolley bell instead of a horn?
So it would work like those propane tank exchanges?
You trade your new battery rack for one that is nearly at the end of its useful life?
No thanks.
And serious BBQ'ers never use propane or lighter fluid.
;)
Build more nuke plants now!
Using the EPA to cancel permits for coal mines and coal-fired power plants due to CO2 production.
Check FR keyword “coal”.
I think with current technology, electric cars would be an acceptable choice as a daily commuter vehicle for quite a few families that owned a second gasoline or diesel vehicle.
I am an electrical engineer, with a degree option in power systems. I don’t shy away from electrical options and have considered building my own S-10 electric conversion as a project.
But I don’t view swapping out batteries that I have owned and maintained for some unknown units an acceptable option for range extension. I would rather rent a trailer generator unit for occasional long distance travel.
Batteries are too easy to damage through abuse. The same model is not equal to one that was not properly maintained.
Mix ground quartz with pavement tar. Press a thin, maybe 1 inch thick, topping to our highways.
Incorporate ceramic into our tires. The piezo electric effect will produce electricity by means of the stress applied by a ton or two of steel automobile.
I would suspect and increase in friction will occur, but if properly managed, may act as a way of almost doing what the author intended.
TANSTAAFL
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