Quote:
Originally Posted by gasstingy
I don't know anyone (locally) who would not laugh at me for driving a car like that. But then, most of the people I know don't really care about the environment, renewable energy, lowering their homes energy consumption through thoughtful improvements, etc.
Since that crowd doesn't translate into Mark's (me) opinion, I would dearly like to have one like this. I hope he shares more about how he did this. At 170 watts/mile (I rounded up for safety), I could make my 40 mile roundtrip commute on 6.8 kilowatts of electricity, which means at 8.5 cents per kilowatt hour, it would cost me about $0.58 to drive to work and back. 
A BIG  for this streamliner! |
It would be good to understand the electrical operating cost of this wonderful machine. Did we take reported amp-hour usage times nominal voltage of the battery pack as killowatt-hour consumption, then times utility rate for dollars, and divided by miles driven? If so, that would not account for efficiency of recharging the batteries. Now if a KillAWatt meter was used to measure the recharge, for example, then all bets are on!
BTW, for me (Northeast) $0.15/kW-hr is more realistic. So
180Ah * 72V = 12.96 kW-hr @ $0.15/kW-hr => $1.94 / 80 mi = $0.024/mi
For grins I compared that to my daily commute by motorcycle.
90 mpg @ $2.85/gal => $0.032/mi
Rock on!
KB