My guess... internal combustion is on the way out. It will take years, but I don't think this is a fad. Improved performance, improved efficiency, improved simplicity and maintenance... better for the environment and decreased dependence on oil (world) tie-in very strong personal and national appeal...

This is a "halo" car of sorts. Much more affordable models can surely be made, and there will also be competition down-the-road, further drivng-down prices, while increasing desirable attributes, like range, for example.

I would love to have an electric motor in my MINI!

 

Let's not forget that generating the electricity to recharge the batteries negates the "greenhouse" gas emissions. It would be cool to have PV panels to generate power, but it takes as much power to make those PV cells as will be produced in their lifetime so that's a wash too.

It's just something for fun.

 

A PV panel roof, or something like that, I'm sure has been contemplated, and will be doable. The full "cost" to make electricity has been improving, and the last I heard, it is no longer true regarding the enviornmental impact to produce PV cells...

With performance and range being less and less of a limiting factor, and actually plus on the performance side, more demand will drive further creativity and ingenuity.

I guess I also like the time-savings. Each gas station stop is about 10 minutes, on average for me, depending upon how many blocks I drive out of my way, any wait, and the amount of fuel needed. I guess that's about 30-40 minutes a month that I could be somehwhere else, doing something else. The hour or so spent every other month to change oil... Taking the old oil for proper recycling... Between gassing-up and oil changes, that's about 12-14 hours gone a year (per car), and usually a hassle at that...

 

Chassis designed by the same guy who did the Elise.... But with improvements!

Don't know battery replacement costs, but they will be cheaper when it comes time to do it!

For hopping up electrics, you change the controller to allow for more current, and if you're lucky, the motors don't cook!

But any real hot rodder would give any internal combustion boat anchor to get the torque curve of an electric!

Matt

 

Thanks Matt.

Have you visited that guy/company doing the Atom conversions (electric)? Curious to know if folks are sourcing Atoms, minus the drivetrain, not only saving money, but making for a kit, and with that, a path to registration via SB100....

 

but there are picuters of the Tesla and Atom guys in Bucks cafe (in Woodside) so the people are around. I think it's just a matter of time.

Matt

 

^^ +1 my thoughts exactly.

kinda like how some environmentalists were raving about hybrid
cars... imagine wat it costs in energy and waste to run a low
volume production hybrid vs a gasoline powered Civic. it's
not evironmentally friendly at all.

if you take a moment, step back, and look at the entire picture
it's a totally different story. wat people were raving about was
only part of the picture or short term. those are fads. but
fads often have innovation and thats wat makes it fun.

 

pure electics have no CO2 foot print of operation if run from hydro-electric or geo-steam is uses. IF the electricity comes from one of those anchient coal fired power plants on the east coast of Texas, you're screwed.

Many of the negative arguements focus on a straw man comparison. What it will do compared to a perfect world, as opposed to what we have now. And this is further compouded by the fact that what we have now doesn't reflect total costs to society, mostly it's just the cost of extraction, refinement and delivery, with the clean up cost distrubuted world wide, like a nasty credit card no one is thinking of ever paying.

If you make a small diesel/electric hybrid with the diesel not power the wheels, but running a generator, you can make a hybrid that runs on diesel (this is good because the energy density of these types of molecules can't be beat), gets 2-3 times the miles per gallon of todays cars, and has a CO2 foot-print of aobu 1%-2% of what pure gas cars do now. All this with a smaller battery pack, becuase you don't have to store electical energy for the entire range of the vehicle. This is because you can use the diesel at it's most efficeint operating state, as opposed to what we do now, which is make the motors run off peak efficiency because we insist on bolting them to the drivewheels!

While you can't buy a car like this, there are demonstration vehicles that do this. UPS has a fleet of delivery trucks like this. And they have the added benefit that they don't have to idle at the loading dock, running pure electric at load and unload, when the vehicle is moving slowly and near lots of people.


in the 10-20 year horizon, hybrids will gain some poplularity, and loose some as good clean diesel penetrates the US. But the technology will have it's place, especially for urban fleet use, like the UPS truck of busses, where the direct benefits of reduced CO2 emissions locally will have other posative effects (reduced asthma and the like).

But if you just want to look for reasons why todays hybrids aren't a universal solution, you're missing the whole point of the technology. Look at Kenchans example of a hybrid vs his civic. True, if you just look at the energy balance. But what you can't do with your civic is sequester the CO2. So you let it out into the air. Wiith electrics, you can sequester the CO2 at the power plant (it's just a single point source) and use the electricity to drive the car. The gas car still wins the energy balance, but one of the costs of this is that you accept the green house gas emmissions. There will never be a motor vehicle that sequesters it's own CO2, just do the math on how much you have to be able to carry, and it's scary! But you will be able to drive an electric with no effective CO2 footprint, becuase the CO2 associated with power generation is pumped into some spent natural gas well.

And one other thing that you naysayers are ignoring is that you can charge the car over night, when power is cheap and generating capacity is plentiful. For example, my moms EV-1 took less than 2 cents a mile to drive. Her Prius is more than twice that, and dads Avalon is higher still! It would be like getting a dollar off the price of gas per gallon if you bought after 10 pm.

Matt

 

My mom has a hybrid, and I am not a fan, and as they stand now, if anything is a fad, it's them...

Electric has too many compelling virtues to not pursue further.

Time will tell, as always, but I'm quite certain that electric is the next big step...

 

my point is not about just the finished product. that is the fad view.
i am talking about the entire picture from getting raw materials,
moving raw materials into a factory (by wat a co2 less truck? plane?
container vessel?) moving the parts to another plant to make
a module, then to another plant to make a subassembly, and
then to the assembly plants, and so on.

at the end of the day, high volume gasoline powered Civic will
still be more engergy efficent than a low volume electric vehicle.
but i think it can change in the future. until then, i think these
electric cars are more of a fad. nice concepts, nice innovation,
nice awareness of the potential. might work, might not, but still
fun.

 

89AKurt, plugging in an electric car does help with some greenhouse emissions. Gas engines run in the 20-30% efficiency range, diesels in the 40's. A power plant using even a turbine to generate power is 60-80% efficient.

My family also owns a couple hybrids. We have a Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. We've had the Insight since 2000 and have put 80k miles on it. It's a great car averaging 64 mpg over it's entire life. I like it much more than the Prius since the user has a lot more control over the car. It actually feels sporty as well. The Prius is a nice car but not my style. My mom drives it and gets around 50 mpg. The steering and brakes are VERY vague.

The Insight has already saved us almost $3k in gas compared to a car that gets 30 mpg. The Prius has a 10y/100k mile hybrid system warranty so there's nothing to worry about there. Hybrids aren't the answer but they do their part in lowering emissions and saving us money.

 

You love comparing a mature technology to an immature one. Use this same logic in the past, and we never would have gotten past horses! Also, the only thing you're looking at is energy cost, and while that is a better metric than purchase price, it's still a very, very incomplete picture. Couple in health effects (remember the electric makes it's mess at the power plant, the gas whereever it goes) and the like (not easy, but one can estimate) and the balance starts to swing to less energy efficent mobile soulutions that use a centralized power source... One can also do the math with cost to the commuter, and with time of use metering (buying the electricity to charge the car at night) the energy balance may not be good in terms of joules, but out of pocket costs can be much, much less over time.

Matt

 

you see, this is the kind of passion one would need to make a
chicken fly. jk doesn't always make sense but
thats fine, we're just making conversation.

happy holidays, dr. matt.

 

Matt, I just found a forum for the Tesla Roadster. You might find these threads of interest:

http://teslamotorsclub.com/forum/ind...opic,37.0.html

http://teslamotorsclub.com/forum/ind...pic,173.0.html

http://teslamotorsclub.com/forum/ind...opic,99.0.html

There are other cool threads, and and plenty of interesting, geeky talk there!

I think converting cars to electric will get more and more popular as this science gets refined...

Just joined that forum, and like this one, the Ariel Atom, Caterham, and the Solstice... TonyB.

 

From AutoBlogGreen:

Elon Musk says Tesla is still planning on $30,000 EV by 2010

"By 2010 he wants to have a range of three models including one costing only $30,000 that he expects to eventually reach a sales volume of 100,000 annually."

Now that is more like it!

 

Sweet!

 

here in Stanford. When it happens, I'll sneak in and see what he has to say....

Matt