A Practible Electric Car?
A Practible Electric Car?
(OP)
Other than the $100K price, this seems promising to me. What do you think?
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1
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A Practible Electric Car?
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RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Looks good but.....
.....does it really contribute to the environment?
(see thread730-167009)
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
This is a page which shows not a single wind turbine, not a wind farm and not a power station, just scenery.
So, ewh, they say this isn't an "emissions elsewhere" vehicle. Of course, they don't justify that claim and they ignore exactly the points made in the SUV thread.
One item of information lacking was the typical battery life... if it is like my laptop, mobile phone, etc etc there'll come the day when I run out of charge miles from anywhere... what's the equivalent of a spare gas can?
I would guess Ted Danson and the green Hollywood Elite bought all the first 100 cars (http://www.nndb.com/people/690/000022624/ ... )
Next thing you know these guys will be pointing the finger at the Prius owners and accusing them of being polluters!
(Why did Michael Chriton's "State of Fear" have such a poor image of Hollywood Stars turned environmentalists? is that modelled on any one?)
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
I don't think it can be considered a replacement for all cars in all situations, just that seems to be much better situated for current urban driving than a hydrogen vehicle would be, for example.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Their "zero emissions" is just nonsense. They don't even account for the emisssions from fabrication of the steel/plastic/carbon fibers used in construction, or the emissions from the coal-fired power plants that provide electricity. It takes a well-defined number of ergs of energy to move a known mass from one point to another--you just can't fool Mother Nature. Those ergs come from somewhere and it is really disingenous to claim that they don't. It could be that the whole process is a point or two more effecient than a Prius, but I would be suprized if it were more than that.
David
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Wasn't some gas/diesel used in the transportation of parts to the fabriction plant or ore to the foundry? The zero oil contention is just marketing puffery.
It still looks like a pretty cool vehicle.
David
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
http://www.eurotuned.com/0-60.htm would put in the fastest 3% of the cars listed there.
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Huh? Not that it's relevant to the thread, but how many ergs does it take to move 100lbm 10 feet horizontally?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Watts! Joules! Kilograms! Metres!
Mother Nature measures in S.I. these days.
----------------------------------
Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
The first component of energy use will be acceleration.
Variable.
Now, in a propeller driven, frictionless, vehicle such as a boat or a hover craft the energy to decelerate will equal the energy to accelerate.
In a vehicle with heat disipation braking, the energy will be one half of the energy used by our propellor driven vehicle.
That is only the energy used for acceleration.
In a vehicle that uses an efficient regeneration system of braking, almost all of the acceleration energy may be returned to the source. Think efficient, battery powered, electric vehicle.
Now we can consider the variables of friction losses of several types.
Would these ergs be the type described in?:
h
respectfully
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
FYI, here is another electric car in the market:
http://www.zenncars.com/index.html
It seems like an interesting company.
regards,
Joseph
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
I notice it has "climate control" (no pun intended, we hope).
By the way, in the UK, milk has been delivered by electric "milk floats" for ever since I can remember. Top speed around 10-11 mph, I think.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
"The EV1 was the first production quality battery electric vehicle produced by General Motors in the United States and, at the time, was the only electric vehicle in the history of the company to bear the "General Motors" badge."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
cheers,
Joseph
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
The British Milkfloat.
Built out of girders with a tonne of Nickel Iron batteries... (they used to be NiFe, but who knows these days...)
Do try not to hit one coz you'll come off worse...
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Latter floats have fibreglass battery boxes.
I hate to see wood go to waste...
One school mum decided to have one coverted for the school run but alas, she mistook the difference between average traffic speed and milk float top speed. These may match for a milk float but it meant she was an even worse obstruction on the school run than most other mums.... where the trafffic could normally top out at 30-40mph, they were now stuck behind here at an 11mph max.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
MIT, Prof. Mitchell from GM and Frank O. Gehry are developing a city concept car. The city car will have high tech wheels with embedded electric motor and suspension.
For more information go to
http://www.archinode.com/mitcar1.html
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
I saw these running all over SF recently:
ht
60mpg w/ a top speed of 35mph. Looked ridiculous, but definitely green.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Ridiculous.
The MIT car is even worse.
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Of course in most cars all 4 seats aren't used so saying a 4 seater that gets 30mpg is as efficient as a 2 seater 30mpg is a simplification.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
I wasn't trying to say the thing is the "wave of the future" or phenominally amazing, just pointing out a (relatively) efficient vehicle that's on the road. I was also wondering how that was street legal, considering the DOT wouldn't certify the Smart Car due to safety concerns, but thats another thread.
As for the OP, the car looks great. Don't see how it overcomes the established problems with electric cars, though (range and battery reliability/volatility). My thought on the shifting of emissions issue: isn't it true that point source energy production is preferable because of higher efficiency and use of heavy equipment like scrubbers and the like to reduce emissions? (OK, the nasty stuff is still there, but its not air emissions at that point)
Also, I don't see the modern world getting away from providing electricity to homes -ever-, so isn't it logical to assume that the electrical generation technology will continue to improve and evolve? And if so, doesn't it make sense to develope electric cars to anticipate that eventuality?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Wouldn't be so easy to restart production etc but there you go.
Plus there are numerous other ways to produce electricity, some need further development others just have large up front costs with the current technology.
That said in the medium term I think a plug in (possibly series) hybrid would have been a better idea, though ewh it does look pretty cool.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
As for CO2, I've got a plan. Its very complicated. It involves an extremely complex carbon sequestration device.
It's called a tree. Plant many. Cut them down after about 20 years and plant some more. Repeat. Use them to make things out of *wood*. The engineering historians may be able to shed some light on how that was once done.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Cheers
Greg Locock
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
More energy efficient might be to use it for fuel but then as you say, you're returning most of the CO2 to atmosphere.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
A properly maintained wooden structure can last 100 years, easily; maybe more with modern moisture control techniques. Other, more disposable products may have a life span of a few months to a few years. But each item increases the inventory of the "warehouse".
Have I fallen prey to some logical fallacy here? Feel free to poke holes in the argument.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
The CO2 in the atmosphere cannot be readily re-warehoused, not without burning a whole bunch of energy to get there. How are you going to get the atmospheric carbon into wood without cracking the CO2, which requires at least as much energy as was released when the carbon was originally combusted?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Lets build lots of HMS Victory's. Must be one of the oldest wooden structures around still in fairly good repair (yes I know a lot of her has actually been replaced over time).
Of course we still might be better burning most of that wood/vegetation in place of digging up new fossil fuels. Now if we can get the wood or other vegetable matter to grow faster than we can combust or otherwise turn it into useful energy we can start building victory's or burying it.
I propose a new unit. The Victory. An amount of sequestered carbon equivalent to that in the HMS Victory.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
We can build a bunch of USS Constitutions, though! (Hey, she's still afloat, which totally one-ups the HMS Victory).
As far as planting, there are very efficient ways to accomplish that. Which you choose depends on your purpose. I recently saw a technology which dropped seedling from an aircraft at relatively low altitude. Or you just use old farming technology. If you're planting seedlings, the energy cost is pretty low per tree. Even lower if you use seeds.
I've not heard the methane isssue before. I'll read up on it.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Trees probably aren't actually the best choice if you just want to trap a lot of CO2 and not necessarily build things from the resultant material. There are I believe other types of vegetation which grow faster/absorb CO2 relatively faster.
Saw one scheme for essentially passing power plant exhause gases through water filled with algae. Plan being the algae would use most of the CO2 and could then be turned into alchol. Seems the biggest problem is getting light to the algae, it tends to stick to the sides of the container/light pipes etc blocking light.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
GM plans to build a plug-in hybrid vehicle, here is the article.
http://transport.seekingalpha.com/article/21671
"... the Saturn plug-in hybrid will include lithium-ion batteries, two interior permanent magnet motors..."
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
TTFN
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Volunteers for a "Johnny pineseeed"?
Actually, I'm sure monocots (sp?) such as bamboo could do a better job of carbon sequestration than trees. Would they be as useful afterwards, though?
KENAT: The HMS Victory is dry docked! Whats the point of having a commisioned ship permanently in dry dock? Crazy Brits! Our Constitution, now theres and old boat that floats- Here's to Old Ironsides! ;)
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
The first street recharging points for electric cars in the UK have been unveiled in London:
h
Here is an electric car (the G-Whiz) is becoming popular in the UK:
http://www.goingreen.co.uk/store/content/gwiz
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
There I was laughing at the Jaguar paint job, then I clicked over to the BBC story and saw one on the street. Hilarious.
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
The problem caused by all the hype about the climate is that the wrong parameter is being measured and as a consequence these initiatives, unless they can project an even lower carbon footprint than conventional manufactured and powered vehicles as a consequence of a sufficiently sized market for these "green" vehicles, is that they can make the situation worse and not better.
JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com
RE: A Practible Electric Car?
Very good question jmw.
FYI.. I started thread730-172835 with links to a model known as GREET that evaluates the impact of plug-in EVs and other advanced technologies and fuels.