Gasoline powered cars are worse...
Posted on 02/06/2019 10:36:58 PM PST by Olog-hai
It’s in the mid 30s this morning on the San Fran peninsula. Snow blanketed all the surrounding hills and mountains on Tuesday.
Put a friggin trailer hitch on the dammed electric car so it can tow a compact trailer with a diesel fuel tank and a generator that can also supplement the heating and air conditioning, plus extending the mileage.
I could design one with a live axel that gives extra pushing and dynamic braking.
Kinda like a diesel electric freight train helper engine.
Somewhere I have an old cartoon saved about the electric car in winter. It shows an electric car stopped on the highway at night while it is snowing & blowing & one of the occupants climbing a light pole to get some power. In the meantime, there is a string of cars behind waiting as far as the eye can see.
Gasoline powered cars are worse...
Thy have. I'm getting really tired of ignorant, anti-science snark. The problem isn't that electric battery technology hasn't improved in the last 100 years. It has. Significantly. The problem is that it STILL sucks compared to gasoline. The energy density of batteries is so small that even 100 years of real improvements haven't brought even with liquid hydrocarbons.
The setup you’re describing reminds me of the “slug” on railroads, which is a diesel-electric locomotive with the diesel “prime mover” removed and its traction motors powered by another diesel-electric coupled on. Railroads use them as boosters for extra traction at low speed, and sometimes as fuel tenders to extend range.
That's an important point, although it invites a nitpick. Your neighbor's Tesla is almost certainly a fossil fuel powered car. It burns coal ...
And that's where the problem comes in. In your gasoline car or diesel truck, the fuel is burned right there in the car/truck. The waste heat is generated in the car/truck and must be dissipated by the car/truck. That's convenient in the winter: you can dissipate it into the cabin. Mmmmmm. Toasty.
The Tesla power system also generates waste heat. At the power plant. It must be dissipated at the power plant, not at the car. Bummer. It still exists, but can't be used for anything.
Battery technology has improved significantly in the last 100 years. Electric motor technology has as well, though not as much. To deny that is stupid, and yes, it’s anti-science. Sort of like the left’s worship of “global warming”.
Try building an electric RC flying “drone” with 1919 electrical technology. You can’t, and you know damn well that you can’t. They, and the Tesla etc electric cars represent significant improvement in battery and motor technology ... and compared to liquid hydrocarbons and internal combustion engines, they STILL suck. That’s how bad electrics are compared to ICE.
Significantly to the point where they are a viable competitor to Otto-cycle-engined cars? No. And to assert that is not “anti-science” but the most pro-science position one can take.
Again, I did not say there were no improvements. Stop trying to put words in people’s mouths while using left-wing rhetoric, please.
Good point. Although there are no Teslas in my neighborhood. There are a couple of Priuses (Prii?) and one Leaf (I think). Only one house in the area with solar cells. The power plants within 200 miles are all coal with one exception. There's one very small hydro plant that's probably more of a curiosity than a serious generator. Probably just there so the power company can get a pat on the head from the environmentalists.
You're not reading my posts. If you think a Tesla isn't a serious improvement over a Baker, you're not thinking. That is all.
I keep telling you, even after 100 years of significant improvement, they STILL suck.
Try to keep up.
The Prius is a gasoline powered car, with an interesting (complicated) drive train. I have driven them as rental cars. On the highway, the gas engine is running essentially all the time, and it produces reasonable heat in cold weather. It's also weak; really fades climbing hills.
Again, you’re ignoring what I meant by “serious improvement”, which does not entail comparing Teslas to Bakers. No manufacturer of Otto-cycle cars is looking over its shoulder(s) at Tesla or rushing to switch their line of cars to all-electric, not even VW.
Please stop being a science denier, lol.
Why did you do that, then? You're gibbering.
Here: learn some science about Energy Density.
Go ahead. Read it. All of it. Slowly, so you'll understand.
OK.
Now that you've done that, you know (as I keep telling you) that despite an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE improvement in storage battery technology over the last 100 years, they STILL suck.
American Physical Society, "Has the Battery Bubble Burst?" by Fred Schlachter, August 2012.
Gasoline was quickly recognized as nature’s ideal fuel for cars: it has a very high energy density by both weight and volume–around 500 times that of a lead-acid battery.
Stored energy in fuel is considerable: gasoline is the champion at 47.5 MJ/kg and 34.6 MJ/liter; the gasoline in a fully fueled car has the same energy content as a thousand sticks of dynamite. A lithium-ion battery pack has about 0.3 MJ/kg and about 0.4 MJ/liter (Chevy VOLT). Gasoline thus has about 100 times the energy density of a lithium-ion battery. This difference in energy density is partially mitigated by the very high efficiency of an electric motor in converting energy stored in the battery to making the car move: it is typically 60-80 percent efficient. The efficiency of an internal combustion engine in converting the energy stored in gasoline to making the car move is typically 15 percent (EPA 2012). With the ratio about 5, a battery with an energy storage density 1/5 of that of gasoline would have the same range as a gasoline-powered car. We are not even close to this at present.
You’re really a little too overheated on the subject, evidenced by your parsing my comments.
Again, where did I say there were no improvements? It’s not unscientific to infer that while there’s a pretty wide gulf tech-wise between a Tesla and a Baker, the Tesla is still not a serious improvement (my actual words) to the point where Otto-cycle cars can be supplanted, never mind the safety concerns that this post is concerned with primarily—which you appear to agree with.
This isn’t news. Shocked its being packaged as news. Little surprised we haven’t looked at other low temp applications (COUGH,spaceprogram,COUGH) to crack the code on this.
Battery science has been catching up of late, but not at the rate you’d expect.
Funny how they haven’t come up with any serious improvement over this century-old technology.
It is indefensible.
Beat me to it, and with a far more elegant post than I would have put up.
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