A practical design for an electric car. The faster you go, the more power it generates. /s
Posted on 04/08/2009 4:22:32 AM PDT by Scanian
Isaac Martin pointed out in yesterday ’s American Thinker some of the problems with the new technology behind the proposed switch to electric cars -- there are many other issues as well.
A few of a multitude of problems are the high cost of the batteries, $25,000.00 for the Tesla’s (6,831 batteries) pack, the pollution problem of replacing and disposing the packs, and the relatively short life span of the batteries. (For example, the life of a lithium ion cell phone battery seems to be about a year and a half. Finding exact information on the actual useful battery life is difficult.)
Let's give the battery manufacturers the benefit of the doubt and say the useful life is four years. The cost per year is $6,500.00 before the cost of charging the car. Add to this, four dollars per charge. Let’s say you use the car to commute to your job and tool around on Saturday matching the mileage in Martin's article of 100 miles per day. This equals 31,200 annual miles. That is $24.00 per week times fifty-two = $1,250.00 in additional costs. Therefore the annual fuel and amortization cost is $8,000.00.
Battery packs are very susceptible to temperature extremes both high and low, thus making their use impractical in the northern and southern halves of the country. This limits their use in these areas to spring and fall when temperatures are moderate. So, you will need another (evil gasoline) car for cold winter and hot summer days. Another problem with the batteries is that the charge/ length of their use cycle gets shorter and shorter with every charge/use cycle.
Next it the problem of heating and cooling the passenger space. This will significantly affect the range of the vehicle. Lithium ion’s energy density is significantly degraded in hot
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Do you know how many kWh will be needed for a full charge and the cost per mile at 10 cents per kWh?
Except in the summer when air conditioners are on full blast
I don’t know how many kWh a “Volt” takes for a full charge.
If I recall correctly, the “EV1” they built a few years back took 13 kWh, and was good for about 100 miles. At $0.10 per kWh, that would have been 1.3 cents per mile.
The painful part of that one (EV1) was that the battery-replacement cost would have been about 6 cents per mile.
No, in the summertime, after the sun goes down, the air conditioners run much less.
Thanks, the EV1 numbers don’t sound too bad. I was a little concerned readiing above that the new car wanted a 70A 240V circuit, that seems like a lot of power.
I’m glad I just finished my coffee. that would have cost me a keyboard.
Not up in my neck of the woods or any where that is high humidity.
Most of the brownouts and blackouts occur at night in the Northeast in the middle of summer.
People up here turn their air conditioners off when the go to work during the day and then turn them on when they get home at night.
When we are in a heat wave all of the warnings to reduce power consumption take place at night.
That’s backwards from my experience in the southwest ... new large buildings there sometimes have large (million-gallon) cold-water tanks which are cooled by the chillers at night, when electricity is plentiful and cheap, then the building is cooled during the day using the water tank as a heat-sink.
Electric rates (and meters) there are set up to encourage people to leave the air-conditioner on during the day, to avoid the peak that would result from everyone coming home at 5:00 PM and cranking up the AC, along with the stove, and washing machine and dryer.
Except for when a major storm has devasted an area...
A practical design for an electric car. The faster you go, the more power it generates. /s
That’s true - I’ve seen thunderstorms that shut-off electricity for several days in parts of Phoenix in August.
Come to the east in the summer, the nighttime is oppressive.
Anyway you slice it, in the eastern united states during the summer, big changes would have to be put in place in the power grid to incorporate recharging a large fleet of electric vehicles.
Running your air conditioner during the day will not alleviate the need of having an air conditioner on at night in your home. Power consumption is at it highest in the summer at night in the east. Always has been.
Yes, and imagine having to get to an important meeting in the morning only to find that someone else used your power for his car.
How much is the “road fee” or usage tax that would be imposed to replace the lost revenue not harvested by the consumption of gasoline?
Well... it works like a diesel electric locomotive.
The batteries are charged while in the garage to about 90% or so capacity and then you drive till they hit 30% capacity and then the gas motor kicks in to give power to the electric motor while the battery acts as a surplus charge for extreme driving conditions.
It’s ultimately the best of all worlds.
The generator operates at 99% efficiency (most regular autos run theirs at about 20-30%) thus giving it about 50mpg as opposed to 30mpg.
The charge control keeps the battery at optimal cycling(and has a built-in heatsink to regulate battery temp) so it virtually guarantees a 5-10 yr life cycle on the batteries.
And the use of electricity rather than gas makes it more efficient on the whole. That being rather than using x amount of watt-hours to go x miles you use the same amount to go 4-5x.
Really the estimates are that at worst, with a dead Volt battery you’re stuck going 70mph or so and maybe 55mph on a slight incline.
Has no one considered the costs of re-charging all these batteries?
I think you will find that most here are well aware of the many issues surrounding EV’s.
Maybe so. But I have not seen here an estimate of the costs of re-charging batteries for, say a typical 12,000 mile per year auto usage. Could you please give me a reference site?
Generator efficiency needs to include the efficiency of the engine turning it.
90 during the day, 80 at night with 90% humity in Houston means air conditoners rarely are shut off.
Unfortunately no because I wouldn't seriously consider powering anything other than a golf cart with existing battery technology.
Some enthusiasts do use lead acid battery packs to operate converted electric vehicles where they've removed the engine and connected an electric motor directly to the transmission but I have no idea what the annual cost is.
New battery technology is required to make EV's practical on a large scale. That technology is on the horizon but since it's not yet in mass production, I don't think anyone could hazard anything but a wild guess as to annual costs. If you have such info, that would be handy to know.
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