Posted on 07/18/2006 12:05:31 PM PDT by LouAvul
If you're fed up with paying high gas prices, Hybrid Technologies says it has a solution for you.
The company is out with an "electric smart car" that runs on a lithium battery.
The company's co-founder, Richard Griffiths, pointed out to The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler Tuesday that that's the same type of battery you'll find in cell phones, PDAs, computers, "pretty much anything we use now that's a portable electronic device."
Griffiths showed Syler how you simply plug the car in, literally, to a conventional 110 volt outlet.
"If you completely drain the battery," Griffiths said to Syler, "it's like your cell phone, if you drain the battery, a full charge is five to six hours. Normally, people won't drain the entire battery, so maybe one to two hours at night. Basically, it's like, 'Honey, did you take out the garbage and plug in the car?' It's kind of a new way of thinking. It's a plug-in hybrid. It uses absolutely no gas.
"On a single charge, you can go up to 120 miles and, depending how you drive, 150 miles."
"It's very, very small, though," Syler observed. "I am thinking safety. How does it crash test?"
"It has a three-star crash test rating," Griffiths responded, "and it has air bag systems, five air bags, three in the front. It's like a walnut. It's actually a very safe car. This is a city commuter car, so it's not a car that you'll necessarily be driving on the highway every day. So we're not looking at high speeds, necessarily."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Proof positive Americans are failing in science.
It doesn't matter how many turbines it hits - a drop of water will only produce an amount of energy directly proportional to the height it falls. To get it back to its original height, you have to put the same amount of energy back into it. Because machines aren't 100% efficient, you have to spend more energy pumping it back up than you would ever get from the turbines.
What you describe is ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY IMPOSSIBLE.
FYI, a perpetual motion machine would never need a net input of energy to keep running. What you're claiming is that it produces more energy than it takes to run, which makes it even more physically impossible than a perpetual motion machine. Unless you are converting some of the mass of water to energy via fission/fusion or some process like that...
Too bad the executive forgot to mention rechargeable batteries tendency to get a "memory", if you charge them before they are fully discharged, that lower level soon becomes their new maximum charge!
At $35K this thing is about three times more expensive than is should be.
Almost anyone can convert a Beetle/VW to electric for $5,000 or less.
Several companies sell the kits, but customers are few unless they can claim a large state sponsored rebate/scam.
We will probably see many types of solution, probably like the birth of the auto industry 100 years ago, or the birth of the IT industry a few years ago.
I checked out the availability of E85. Some midwest states have a few dozen statons. Minnesota has over 200. Several midAtlantic states have about 3, none open to the public. Many newer cars are manufactured to be converted to E85 for no more than $200. E85 supports farmers and minimizes transportation costs by being used close to home. The distillation residues can be used as livestock feed.
Demand for solar panels is outrunning production. Nevertheless, all our states should allow net metering (the capacity to feed excess electricity back into the grid). Last I heard only 36 states had it. The industry is predicting major breakthroughs in panel production soon. A lot sooner than hydrogen technology.
A probable scenario for the future might be as follows: 1) increased use of hybrids. 2) Ramping up ethanol and biodiesel production and imports using corn, sugar cane and beets, oilseeds, etc. 3) Breakthroughs in cellulose/ethanol production and manufacturing. 4) Other kinds of breakthroughs, such as Bikers' comment. 5) eventually, hydrogen, maybe? Many of these developments will help farmers and smaller entrepreneurs. The big guys won't like it. Watch out for political sabotage and help fight it.
"I doubt whether a cold car in the winter would appeal to many americans. "
Winters here in Minnesota demand heaters. Most often, they also demand 4WD. One of our cars is a 4WD with an excellent heater. That's what I'd use in the winter. The rest of the year...who cares.
I can live without A/C, frankly. My beater's AC quit working a while ago. I just roll down the windows and remember the days when no cars had A/C. No biggie.
Don't the recent-ish oil discoveries under the Rockies make this a moot point? Or is NewsMax pullin my leg?
Drill more,
Drill deeper,
Build more refineries,
Wring more power and efficiency out of gasoline,
Build more nuclear plants,
Take an American approach and we can use the electric cars as the wonderful toys they are.
Believe what you'd like, it's happening.
I'm not going to bother arguing with you about it.
A large dam does not include the pumping of water back up to the level above the dam. Dams produce energy by capturing the potential from falling water. There is NO pumping it back up.
It couldn't replace my truck and I have no intention of getting rid of my full sized 4x4 truck, but I might consider a small, and fuel efficient vehicle as a second vehicle if it were cheap enough.
For the time being driving my truck, which I do have a need to keep, if much cheaper than adding a second vehicle even getting 15 MPG with gas priced at $3 a gallon.
Believe what you'd like.
Last time I checked, gravity was free.
Give us a number, we'll call them, and then they'll call you back laughing their tails off at your claims...
In Seattle, I rode to and from work from renton to Lynnwood (32 miles one way through the heart of Seattle and rush hour) on I-405, I-90 abd I-5, year round, rain or shine. It was scary at first, but I really never even came close to a misshap. I did this for two years.
The worst was 5:00 in the dead of winter, pitch dark and driving rainstorm, riding at 50 in the HOV lane with the traffic going 20 or less next to me. You just gotta be paying attention, because they sure aren't!
That is still not viable. You are still thinking in terms of going 300 miles and getting your energy "fix" by filling your tank in 2 or 3 minutes before resuming the trip. When you have exhausted the 300 mile range, you will have to stop your travel for 4-6 hours minimum before having a go at the next 300 mile increment. The trip I make from Pocatello to San Diego is 927 miles. I can do that in 3 stops before a fillup at the destination. It's a 15 hour drive with a gasoline powered car. The electric would add another 24 hours of end to end time to allow for the recharge intervals.
Sorry slick, process is proprietary.
"You're saying that you generate more energy than you expend by pumping the water back to the top. That would mean every multistory apartment building would have a water tower with one of these generators to power the apartments and we would have endless energy. No, there is something missing here. Anyone else care to comment on this?"
They may be pumping in hours of low demand. In the Sierras in California, they make a whole industry of it. At night, they use surplus electricity to pump water up the mountain to holding basins, then feed it back through the turbines during hours of peak usage.
The energy to do that comes from hydroelectric plants that don't have that system in place. The cost to run those is minimal, so they use off-peak energy to pump water back uphill.
Very interesting stuff. They've been doing this as long as I can remember. It only works on hydro systems, though, because there are always losses in pumping water up the mountain. If you have another hydro plant, though, that runs all the time from river-fed dams, the cost is minimal.
I read about a variant to the falling water mine generating technique. That was to pump water up to a large pond or holding tanking on a hill/mountain. Pump the water up during the night when power demands are low, let it flow and generate during the day when the grid needs more energy.
It is. But it's unidirectional only.
Then it has to work a lot differently than what you describe because that system would lose energy, not create it. Einstein has to be turning over in his grave hearing about this.
There must be a huge step in this process that you left out, otherwise there's no way it could produce power.
How in the world could you think that the water running downhill would generate more energy than it takes to pump it back to the top?
If that worked, a person could set up a hill, pump water, run a generator and get energy for free. There's no free lunch in science.
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