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Author Topic: Death of the electric car  (Read 27244 times)

DavieTait

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #25 on: April 02, 2009, 09:04:41 pm »

The Toyota Prius has a worse fuel consumption than a normal Peugeot 207 1.4Tdi and costs only about double !!!

My 10 year old 206 1.9LD ( non-Turbo ) with 96,000 on the clock still gives me a steady 40mpg on a tank over 320 miles with only about 50 miles of that outside of town. On long motorway runs it goes right up to 55-58mpg.

It would be cheaper for me to run an Electric Car , I only need a 50 mile range tops ( but 120 mile would let me go to Aberdeen and back without worrying about running out of juice ) and the cost per mile is a lot lower than running even my car
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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #26 on: April 02, 2009, 10:36:10 pm »

Hi David, most of my trips around the flatlands of Norfolk are 30 mile radius , ideal for electric car usage.
I mustn't moan about fuel consumption however, it was my choice to by a Honda CR-V which gives me around 32mpg running around with lots of cold starts. Haven't tried it out on a long run yet so still don't know my best figure on it.
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Howard Q

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #27 on: April 02, 2009, 11:08:21 pm »

Hello malcolmfrary.
looking back to the development of the combustion engine, a lot of people would not contemplate driving from one end of the country to the other at it's inception, battery power has and I hope will continue to develop at a similar if not more rapid rate, I am not a tree hugger but within the ability of mankind; it must eventually find a solution to the vehicle emission pollution problems :-). I think this was one human attribute that realised scraping our knuckles on the ground was not a good idea. I look forward to seeing the electric motorbike on the Isle of Man, it gives a new edge to postman pat, don't know about his cat though.
Howard Q.
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Bartapuss

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #28 on: April 03, 2009, 12:31:21 am »

Another fact with these so called hybrid cars i.e Toyota Prius, Honda Insight etc etc, is that some of the components use highly toxic and dangerous processes in their hybrid system construction, not only that but the construction stages are carried out in different places all over the world. The amount of energy needed that goes into the production of these vehicles is very very high and has a far greater impact on the planet in real terms, we would all probably be better off if we all bought something like a Jeep, which are built like tanks and last for ages,  and including the fuel to run it too.
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Ghost in the shell

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #29 on: April 03, 2009, 01:07:22 am »

The Toyota Prius has a worse fuel consumption than a normal Peugeot 207 1.4Tdi and costs only about double !!!


you would guzzle fuel like it was going out of fashion if you were lugging a generator and 2 tons of batteries around.  put a Prius and a caravan together and you'll need a tachograph!
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steamboatmodel

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #30 on: April 03, 2009, 02:43:30 am »

Electric cars really are an evolutionary dead end for the simple fact that they will never be able to run for long distances (anybody fancy driving from one end of the contry to the other in one?) without having very very long recharge intervals between.

The future is Hydrogen cars, the only discharge from them is WATER!
Not to mention the fact that we could not ever run out of the stuff!

Once they have sorted out the (not inconsiderable) issue of safely filling up at the pumps they will be on the road with Hydrogen pumps  appearing up and down the country.

These so-called 'enviromentally clean' dual-fuel cars are a rip off, the milage is nowwhere near as good as they claim and the toxins produced in the manufacture (and I'll bet disposale) of their batteries gives the lie.

Spare batteries at the filling stations???? Can you imagine the sheer size of the stockpile they would need to maintain!?!?
The problems with Hydrogen are:
How do you disassociate it with the Hindenburg.
How do you store it Liquid or Gas
How do you produce it electrolysis or generated from natural Gas
Are you going to use it in a Fuel Cell or a internal/ external engine.
I have been waiting since the 70s for the "Hydrogen Age" it was supposed to be right around the corner. Hydrogen has to be looked at as a fuel storage medium rather than a fuel. There are no large deposit of Hydrogen like there are oil and gas, Hydrogen must be made, the most common way at the present time is Steam reforming which uses methane.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/sources/IntermediateHydrogen.html
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/hydrogen-fuel/
I think Hydrogen would work, but it will require a lot of effort. It would be best not only in cars, but as a type of battery that could be used to even out the highs and lows of renewable energy.
Regards,
Gerald
 
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tigertiger

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #31 on: April 03, 2009, 02:53:00 am »

These are all new technologies and will evolve or be superceeded by a newer better technology.
Look at the early cars, under 10 hp and slow.

I remember laser discs back in about 1978. Big discs (300mm) and you needed two or three for a movie, and each disc was 75quid ( a lot of money back then).
It died, but then 20 years later the CD led to the VCD, led to the DVD. And most of us have one.



In China there are a lot of electric bicycles. Because everybody has one they are cheap (from about 100 quid), a flash one that does 30mph (a useful speed) and looks like a modern motor scooter (attractive) costs about 250 quid (good proce for what you get).

Unlike the electric bike I saw in the UK recently, 500 quid and 14mph. Ugly, overpriced, and a speed that means it is not an alternative to the car or motorcycle.
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portside II

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #32 on: April 03, 2009, 10:33:19 am »

I like the idea of an electric car (plug and play) but the idea that you can pull into your local station and have your batterys replaced would never catch on , too manny problems and it would be open to fraud , think your battery on your car is about dead and past its life so you change it for a new one for the price of a charge ,i dont think the reciever would be to happy .
What about Mr Ford's original idea of using ethernol (bad spelling) this stuff is the by product from beer so every one could be happy , not sure what the gasses from the exhaust are compaired to petrol/diesel
Electric bikes now theres a thing , that was my opinion of the ones in the uk TT until i saw a guy the other day on what i thought was a normal 2 seater scooter , when he pulled away from the lights and shot up the road at about 50mph i realised it was an electric as all i heard was a slight whistle/whine and that was it . I have seen this bike around a lot so he must be commuting and it must be reliable .
daz
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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #33 on: April 03, 2009, 12:47:01 pm »

Daz, I don't see why an automated battery swap-over machine would not be viable. Just chasing it around in my mind here but  NiMh batteries can be fast charged.. and the technology WILL advance on cells where they can receive rapid charge rates. I can forsee an underground conveyer belt system whereby you would drive into a boxed area, a framework would emerge from the ground, align itself with your underbody battery pack and remove it. It would disapear into the underground conveyer system whilst another charged pack is raised up under the car, attaching itself and its contacts in it's cradle, then you drive off. It could all be done as easily as putting you car park ticket in the barrier machine and would take a fraction of the time it would take to fill up from a petrol pump . You wouldn't even get out of your car. I also forsee a time when you won't even have to change the battery packs, the whole thing could be rapid charged by driving onto an induction coil system which would impart a rapid charge into the pack installed under the car.
I think all this kind of thing is good for a bit of brainstorming and you just know the scientists have already done the sums on it, it's not science which is holding it back!!  Remember, most of the technology we use today was the stuff of science fiction years ago, the dreamers thought it up, the scientists made it work. Look at your mobile phone...Star Trek! Space travel... Jules Verne and so on.
If we are forced to have nuclear power, then lets use it as sensibly as we can but alternative energy sources could contribute to this power demand in a big way , as well as turning half the unnecessary lighting off which we see blazing uselessly away every night.
It can be done.. and I want to live long enough to see it.
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tigertiger

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #34 on: April 03, 2009, 12:57:38 pm »

I was lucky enough to get invited to an industry conference that was aiming to outline the auto industry's needs for research for the next 20 years. (2002-2022). This was the research needs.

If things like nano-technology were being seriously discussed as a research need, then you can imagine what they were thinking about for electronic vehicles.
Battery technology was among the areas highlighted as research needs.
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wombat

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #35 on: April 03, 2009, 02:00:25 pm »

The batteries develped for these vehicles were originally invented by a scientist for precisely that purpose, they are the NiMh variety and are recycleable in a way which inferior ni-cads are not, so no toxic waste products to anything like the same degree. Gm bought the rights to production of the car batteries when they were building their cars, afer scrapping the cars, they sold 61% of the shares in the batteries to..... TEXACO! Now there's a company who really want to make batteries!

Actually, an oil company is probably a good owner. The pundits are saying that we have reached peak-oil, the oil is getting more and more expensive to extract. So they are facing growing costs and falling yields - more than that, there will be growing pressure to limit output, all of which will affect profits. To maintain cashflow, they will need to find new market places - what better than one of the main potential oil replacement technologies.

Hybrid, IMHO is an empty technology - it is  style over substance.

All the alternatives to oil that I can see ae going to relay on large quantities of electricity - in the short term this means nuclear - there is no other viable bulk energy source. Renewables will improve, but they will not offer the same energy density. The size of plants will be much bigger so there will alot more real-estate required.

Wom



As far as power requirements for charging go, unless we see a reduction in world population or a massive drop in demand for power, the nuclear option is apparently (so we are told) the only one we have and if this is the case, there would be plenty of 'freely' available generatiing potential for recharging our transport. If that were dismissed, then another solution would be to switch off most of the uneccessary street lighting at night and use the available surplus to fuel our vehicles for the trip to work thenext day. If the government really wanted to make this work... THEY WOULD.
It doesn't surprise me that they take no action, nor am I amazed by the lack of it, or the manipulation which goes on in boardrooms to perpetuate polluting industries, I just get more angry about it. Is it any wonder we have the demonstrations going on around London right now? Although I don't agree with a lot of what is going on there, there are some very intelligent and enlightened people out there and some may know a lot more about the political manipulation of our lives than we do and thats why they are there.


[/quote]
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toesupwa

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #36 on: April 03, 2009, 02:55:39 pm »

I seem to remember the Wilson Government (Yes, i CAN remember that far back) telling us that with all the oil in the North Sea, GB would have the cheapest petrol in the world...

Isnt that what the present UK Govenment (SIC) are telling us about Nuclear power?...
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Ghost in the shell

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #37 on: April 03, 2009, 03:25:01 pm »

yesd they did say that toes, BUT regarding nuclear energy, as we dont live near any geothermal hot spots (volcanoes), going Nuclear is by far the best way to go. 

with wind turbines, you take post card beautiful scenery and put ugly turbines on them, not just one or two but hundreds of the bloomin' things.

Nuclear power stations can be buried inside mountains, so apart from a warm lake, and a tunnel with a security fence on it, no one will know its there.  as for the pollution due to nuclear waste, we have the technology avaliable to use the thermal energy from spent nuclear fuel to get use out of it.  Radio-Thermal Generator.

Solar is good as well, take the power station to the building directly, so that can be used to run air-con systems that Americans and Australians seem to love, (understandable since low temperatures are 90f+)
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Subculture

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #38 on: April 03, 2009, 03:34:09 pm »

Following that link I was reminded of the early Sinclair adverts - totally accurate while being as optimistically misleading as possible in the interest of future profit.  The recharge time quoted is for 80% of the shortest range battery.  The range quoted is for a larger, and presumably more expensive battery.  The prices quoted are for the smallest battery, and as for estimated battery life, ROFL.
The world is still full of snake oil salesmen.  Not every journey can be entirely downhill.

How wildly optimistic are car manufacturers about the predicted fuel consumption for their vehicles? Battery technology is moving at the fastest rate ever, and we will soon see batteries that make current models seem lacklustre.
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Ghost in the shell

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #39 on: April 03, 2009, 03:36:13 pm »

well I get 40mpg from a nissan serena.  not bad, (2.0td)
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Bartapuss

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #40 on: April 03, 2009, 03:37:24 pm »

A new manufacturing method for lithium-ion batteries could lead to smaller, lighter batteries that can be charged in just seconds.
Batteries that discharge just as quickly would be useful for electric and hybrid cars, where a quick jolt of charge is needed for acceleration. The approach only requires simple changes to the production process of a well-known material
A prototype battery made using the new technique could be charged in less than 20 seconds - in comparison to six minutes with an untreated sample of the material.

Viruses have been used to help build batteries that may one day power cars and all types of electronic devices.
The speed and relatively cheap cost of manufacturing virus batteries could prove attractive to industry.

Flexible paper batteries could meet the energy demands of the next generation of gadgets, says a team of researchers.
They have produced a sample slightly larger than a postage stamp that can store enough energy to illuminate a small light bulb.
But the ambition is to produce reams of paper that could one day power a car.

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toesupwa

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #41 on: April 03, 2009, 04:00:22 pm »

BUT regarding nuclear energy, as we dont live near any geothermal hot spots (volcanoes), going Nuclear is by far the best way to go. 

with wind turbines, you take post card beautiful scenery and put ugly turbines on them, not just one or two but hundreds of the bloomin' things.


Interesting idea Ghost.. create your own Volcano...  ;D

I would rather have ('free'/ clean) wind power over a billion $$$'s worth of Nuclear (expensive / dirty) power...
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toesupwa

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #42 on: April 03, 2009, 04:07:43 pm »

.. as we dont live near any geothermal hot spots..

By the way, the whole world lives over a geothermal 'hot spot'..  ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_energy
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sheerline

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #43 on: April 03, 2009, 05:10:13 pm »

Ah, I see it now, 'earth core tax'!!  <*<
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Bryan Young

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #44 on: April 03, 2009, 05:14:35 pm »

This discussion is both entertaining and informative. But as the heading implies, it is about cars and so the use of the i/c engine which has provoked some comments about "how much more oil is there" and about the role of the petro-chemical companies. No-one as yet has mentioned that petrol/diesel is only a small part of the products that come out of a barrel of oil. Just about everything we use nowadays from textiles through to washing up bowls comes from oil in one form or another. Even the computer keyboard that I'm using now is an "oil" product. Without oil, modern life would certainly not be as we know it...forget petrol. The "plastics" industry is much more important, and as far as I can see there isn't a replacement material anywhere on the horizon as yet. BY.
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Ghost in the shell

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #45 on: April 03, 2009, 05:18:11 pm »

BUT regarding nuclear energy, as we dont live near any geothermal hot spots (volcanoes), going Nuclear is by far the best way to go. 

with wind turbines, you take post card beautiful scenery and put ugly turbines on them, not just one or two but hundreds of the bloomin' things.


Interesting idea Ghost.. create your own Volcano...  ;D

I would rather have ('free'/ clean) wind power over a billion $$$'s worth of Nuclear (expensive / dirty) power...

To generate the same power as say an RBMK reactor, you need several hundred turbines scattered over a wide area on a hilltop somewhere, for a reactor,  take one building the size of sasquehanna power station which has 2x BWR reactors and that takes up hardly any room when compared to the wind farm.  

B-Y, yes, plastics are a petrochemical based product, and as it doesn't degrade easily, it can be reground up and recycled.  time to go mining for plastics, as there is a s**t load buried under the earth in landfill sites

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Jimmy James

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #46 on: April 03, 2009, 05:55:07 pm »

I seem to remember a few years ago some one using buses that were using fly wheels to power them and a small diesel engine to top them up. what about using battery's and solar panels or laying tracks on the motor ways like slot cars use for long distance trips ---or a combination of all ??????
Freebooter :-))
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wombat

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #47 on: April 03, 2009, 05:59:54 pm »

I don't think that anyone would seriously advocate the use of an RBMK type reactor though...any reactor that risks a positive feedback situation cannot be classed as adequately safe.

Saying that Nuclear is safe if properly managed.

Tapping the heat of the earth's core is an attractive scheme - but only if we can get down far enough into the crust of the earth to get at it.

Mining for plastics is becoming a viable business - landfill is being raided for plastics, especially PET bottles

Problem with photovoltaics for the generation of electricty is the relatively low energy yield. You need a heck of a lot of panel area to yield a significant amount of energy.
I think that ditribuitng electricity over the road system is a non-starter. The voltages and currents would be phenomenal.

Wom
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portside II

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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #48 on: April 03, 2009, 10:55:34 pm »

Back on the subject of car/engines what did happen to that ceramic engine ,virtually zero friction very economical .
daz
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Re: Death of the electric car
« Reply #49 on: April 04, 2009, 09:20:11 am »

Maybe it was all down to costs in the end but, I was under the impression some of the technology is used in some BMW motorcycles.  I believe the pistons may be some kind of ceramic material.
 Dunno, but perhaps some of the other bikers on here could enlighten us on that one.
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