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 ...
At my age,if I drive 300 miles from home, then stopping for a few hours rest wouldn't be so bad!
:)
But I understand what you mean.
O.k. That's a different story and I agree that is becoming common where you have a source of water and a nearby hill or cliff (or a mine shaft) where you can do this to produce peaking power. But the energy to pump it back up to the top does not come from the energy produced by its descent, but from another source.
One hour's charge in a 110 v. outlet even at the full 15 Amp capability of most outlets, stores about 3% of the energy in one gallon of gasoline (assuming a very high efficiency in the charging operation). Either the reporter or the car company is smoking something strong. The car will likely go further on whatever they are smoking than it will on the electric charge.
No, really, it works. ;^)
I apply the same principle when I bench press. As I lower the bar I store that energy in my muscles and I then I use part of that energy to raise the bar again. By the time I'm done lifting I'm so refreshed and full of energy I usually run a marathon.
Don't worry, you'll never explain the fundamental limits of physics to someone who knows better. :)
You're right...they're missing a step. Roughly, the plant generates power during peak (read: expensive) periods and pumps the water back during off-peak (read: cheap) periods. Energy is *not* conserved, just money. :-)
Hydro plants do this all the time - generate during the day and pump at night.
"It doesn't take as much energy to pump the water back up as it generates going down because instead of passing just one turbine the same water passes hundreds of them generating enough to pump the water back up and they sell off the rest."
C'mon, now, think about what you're saying. In falling over a given distance, there is only so much potential energy in the water. In falling that potential energy is converted to kinetic energy (ie velocity), which is then converted into electricity by a turbine. One turbine or a hundred on the way down, there is only a fixed total amount of energy that can be extracted in the form of mechanical motion (with losses) and then into electricity (with more losses). The total amount of electricity generated will ALWAYS be less than the original potential energy of the water, and that original potential energy is the minimum (assuming no losses, which is impossible) that would be necessary to restore that water to the top of the shaft.
The laws of thermodynamics are immutable and no clever device or system can get around that. You've either misunderstood what they're doing down there, or they're selling snake oil.
You're a braver person than I.
I've seen too many accidents on the highway on my morning commute. Too many people just aren't paying attention in the morning - for some reason, the accidents are far less common during the evening commute.
That could be accomodated. Plug the car in, swipe your employee ID card and the power comes on....metered. The kilowatt-hr charge appears as a deduction on your paycheck.
"But the energy to pump it back up to the top does not come from the energy produced by its descent, but from another source.
"
Right. That's the only way such a thing would work, obviously. There's no free energy in a closed system, I'm afraid.
I love hydroelectric power. If I were in charge, we'd be generating from every river and stream of adequate size. Back in my Mother Earth News days, I even had a small turbine working in a stream so small you couldn't really call it a stream. It powered an automobile alternator, then charged 12 v. batteries to run lights in the chicken house.
But that was long ago and far away. It's amazing what a small stream can do.
I didn't see them until after I posted. TANSTAAFL!
They use the pool at the top almost like a giant storage battery for potential energy and then use it during peak loads.
"Would you consider a large dam to be perpetual motion?"
Normal hydroelectric plants don't involve pumping water back up into the resevoir (although this can be done as a means of storing excess electrical power from other sources for a later time). The water does make its way back up into the resevoir eventually, thanks to the input of solar energy that drives the precipitation cycle (you know, solar heat causes evaporation which turns into rain in the mountains that ends up in the resevoir again). Technically I guess you could call hydroelectric solar power, but then almost every form of energy on earth does originally derive from solar energy, if the "fossil" fuel model is correct. Nuclear and geothermal energy are exceptions.
It's not about what I believe, its about physics.
Water at a higher elevation has POTENTIAL energy.. when it falls it releases that energy as KENETIC energy... When it reaches the bottom of the hill.. it takes as much energy to put that water to the top of the hill as it gave up falling down the hill.. its called the law of conservation of energy.
So, to do what you claim, every bit of energy of that water falling would need to be captured, and then used to put that water back to the top of the hill... which would not throw of any extra energy at all for any other use... not to mention the loss of energy through friction and basic inefficiencies of mechanical devices.
What you are suggesting is going on is impossible, not because I believe it to be, but because it defies the fundamental laws of physics. Trust me, if someone has built a system as you describe they would be receiving the nobel price for science and it would be headlines around the world. Our fundamental understanding of physics would be shattered.
If it was cheap enough, people would buy it.
One of the local lakes rises and falls a foot or more due to this process, depending on time of day. I took the time to figure out how many gallons it look to change the water level by an inch.....this was back in my college days.
If I was smart, I'd have spent the time figuring how much energy pumping all the water back in would've consumed.
"Now, how much will it cost me to recharge it?"
I'm recalling around $1.00 per night, so roughly $30.00 a month, for a Prius converted to plug-in hybrid. Even though the guy refers to his as a hybrid as well, it's a pure electric, so expect something higher, but certainly not double; fifteen dollars a week on your electric bill is way cheaper than a tank of gas a week. Battery replacement is costly, and would have to figure in somewhere, in order to get a good grasp of the comparison, though.
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