Electric car efficiencies

[user removed]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Don't know how you figure that, but it seems way off. It's not all that much more expensive to build X MWatts renewable (or nuclear) power than it is to build the same amount of fossil fuel generation, and obviously the human race could afford to build the existing fossil fuel infrastructure, unless you believe it was magically whisked into existence by the fairies :-)

I guess you are planning on the fairies paying for it.

regards
Mech

[TheEnemy]

Ok mech that sounds better.

I used to monitor an old satelite that was launched in the early 70s that had NIMH, they were reconditioned, and I don't remeber what % capacity they had left when one of the motors failed causing it to start tumbling.

I was supprised then I saw what battery tech they were using, but even then we did a series of recondioning runs on them twice a year. The whole system was temperature controled I doubt that a production pack with the hot and cold cycles it would see in regular use in cars.

I have heard people say that a PV solar panel will last 50+ years when they do the cost return analysis, I typically use a much more conservative 20 year lifespan in my calculations. Just because they can last 50+ years in ideal conditions doesn't mean they will last anywhere near that. Same is true of any other technology. I had a TRS80 m3 up to 8 years ago when I tossed it before a move that still worked. That doesn't mean that every computer built then should still be running. And as far as warranties, I have learned the hard way that it is easy for companies to just make up a reason to void it, or just say there is nothing wrong until the warranty is up.

As far as what current battery technology in a car I would expect about 5ish years.

[TheEnemy]

Niel: Germany pays 2.5x (taxes) for electricity which makes converting to solar more economicaly viable paid for by said taxes. Iceland has a lot of geothermal available which makes it a lot easier for them. I don't know the specifics on the other countries.

A local project at the campususing geothermal for heating because we actually have a fair ammount available in my area. The problem is that after all of the technical issues that popped up, they had to dig deeper than expected, and the water still turning out colder than expected, the water was more brackish than expected etc.... the system will likely never pay for itself as far as economic cost, even if it lasts as long as claimed.

[TheEnemy]

James: The current system has been and still is a work in progress for over 100 years. The transition to renewable sources is also a work in progress. Expecting to change a system that took 100+ years to get in place in even a few decades even though it is possible is unrealistic.

[user removed]

Lets be honest as well as pragmatic. The existing infrastructure, as you already know, evolved over the last 120 years. It's generally speaking old and needs constant repair and replacement of components.

That's a far cry from embarking on any complete replacement and you KNOW that. There are portions that are remarkably efficient already, especially hydroelectric, but then you have the inevitable environmental issues. Many decades ago legislation provided incentives for small scale hydro, but those incentives died in the legal quagmire of species extinction, and environmental destruction, even though the most reliable power available is hydro and the only cost effective way to store electrical energy is in elevated water reservoirs.

Wind turbines kill birds, so I guess they are dead, right? Every other power generation method has consequences which in a litigious society like ours makes innovation an extraordinarily difficult pursuit, which creates long tern nightmares for utilities decades after implementation.

The panic over oil related pollution while we have passed the peak (supposedly) in consumption creates hatred for the US, the ultimate glutton for fuel of every type, and an attitude of why should I be penalized with astronomical costs while you were not (the US). Why should I freeze because the hypocritical US now decides that my actions will kill the planet, which theirs have done for over a century.

Demonstrate some objectivity and at least try to understand my solution has a place. It earns this place becasue it is avaialble now, does not reuqire any further "predicted advancements" which have little basis in fact. The manufacturers of vehicles move at a snails pace in advancement compared to the predicted revolutionary innovation just around the corner.

While idealism certainly has it's place, claiming a dream is reality destroys credibility. Without long term destructive testing and marathon driving in real world scenarios, people just become so pessimistic you end up with the biblical "boy who cried wolf" scenario.

I've been around the block a few thousand times. I see my wifes Sorento get mileage that was just about identical to my 59 Bug Eyed Sprite, a car the weighed 1/3 of the Sorento's weight with 40% of the displacement. The Sorento gets about the same mileage as my 99 Maxima.

To claim that any battery will last well beyond 10 years requires absolute proof for credibility. With the average car on the road at 11 years age today, Neil, that means over half of your electric cars will be out of warranty, their range will be significantly reduced, and the failure of a major component will mean the scrap yard, just as it does with any other car on the road today. The only reason the warranty is 10 years is becasue California required it to be that long for the cars to be sold there, so the manufacturers just passed the cost on to the customer, or risked bankruptcy.

That's not a new battery. It's a repaired battery that will never last as long as the original since most of it's components will still be original, just as the engine block is original on a rebuilt engine, except the remaining battery packs that were not replaced are not far behind the ones that were replaced.

Maybe within a year I will buy a Leaf at a salvage auction and rebuild it for less than half the new cost. It looks pretty promising from the one in the link I provided. I've provided links for a lot of things that have been ignored, and their relevance is factual and my doubts are founded in a practical lifetime of real experience working on cars for over 45 years.

Imagine today if every car on the road was electric, with todays technology, the tow trucks would make a fortune picking up dead batteries and towing them to charging points. It will be decades before that is resolved and the cost will be substantial. You still can not drive from my hosue to Washington DC, 165 miles, without a recharge.

Someone has to pay the bill, the manufacturers distributors and installers don't take monopoly money.

While you can calculate the amount of avaialbe energy for solar and wind, and you can estimate the cost per KWH, many areas of the country do not have the best concentration of those resources, and the number of people who can spend tens of thousands of dollars, upgrading their house (while the value is dropping like a rock) are few a far between.

I could write a check tomorrow for a $30,000 solar array for my house, but it would never come close to providing all of the energy we consume, much less all of the energy for an electric car, which would add about 50% to our consumption. We have hurricanes and power outages, so what is the solution for that?

We blather on about new sources of energy, new methods of applying energy, new this, new that, ad stupidium.

My design makes things significantly more efficient NOW, with todays technology. It can be implemented immediately and provide real benefits without any need for a "break even point of any sort" It utilizes the energy we already have more efficiently, jsut as the best hypermilers utilize their energy more efficiently.

Right now, not some time in the future, when the rest of society has slowly crawled to the point we see in the future, with absolutely no negative effect or cost.

It does not exclude any advancement you can imagine or claim, any advancement that becomes reality, at any time in the future, will only serve to make the whole system more efficent.

It even requires no controller to modulate the power from the battery to the motor, just a simple switch to turn it on or off to maintain capacitive storage (assuming your "fuel" is electricity).

As dcb posted in the thread about transmissions and his graph demonstrate, electric cars are more efficient with some form of transmission. It absolutely has to be efficient and reliable, but more improtant than both of those, it has to be cost effective, or people will jsut keep driving their old cars spewing out many times the pollution the could if they just bought new cars. My design works with batteries and electric motors. It could extend the range of a Leaf by as much as 50%, right now. It does this by eliminating the periods of operation where efficiency could be improved.

Read and learn or fail to understand and join the masses of those who have no ideas or the perseverance to see them to fruition. Someone else will read this post and understand, and thats good enough for me.

reagrds
Mech

[user removed]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

What is the power source for a hydraulic system? Keep it brief, or start another thread, please.

Neil you could have read the answer on this forum two years ago, if you chose to actually pay attention to what I had posted. I had a email from Kuttner's engineer. He told me he would contact me after the x prize contest was finished. I PM'ed YOU and basically begged YOU to help me meet with Kuttner and talk to him for an hour, to show him my design research and evidence of practicality. The company is in Lynchburg Va, less than 3 hours from my home. I offered this on my dime, with absolutely no obligation.

YOU never even bothered to respond to the PM.

I guess that just more of the information I have been posting here for years that YOU decided was of no significance. It could have been a fabulous collaboration, with absolutely no risk to Kuttner whatsoever.

The offer still stands.

But I did not realize you were the official "thread police".

regards
mech

[TheEnemy]

Mech: where is the thread where you talk about your design?

[user removed]

Here is the link Neil to an electric hydraulic hybrid. It's been posted many times on this forum, almost impossible to believe you have never seen it before.

Electric Hydrid

Enemy my Patent is US#7677208

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7677208.html



I also have an 82 page research document done by Va Tech school of engineering that was focused on my design with their efficiency calculations. In wheel drives at lower than 1000 RPM maintain drive efficiencies above 93% with the lowest at the highest speeds. The bent axis pumps that the EPA used were spinning at prop shaft speeds where their efficiency dropped off to 75% because they were running the same speed as the prop shaft.

Also Neil this IS RELATED to electric car efficiency as you could easily see if you open the link and read the material.

regards
Mech

[Ladogaboy]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Enough solar energy strikes the earth in one hour to power the entire world for a year.

Two things:

First, what kind of environmental impact would covering 60,000 square kilometers of the Earth's surface have? And that is a minimum number assuming 100% conversion efficiency and no growth in energy usage. Oh, and that is also assuming that those 60,000 square kilometers moved with the Sun so they were exposed 24 hours a day.

Second, how much energy and natural resources would it take to create these 60,000 square kilometers of photovoltaic cells, interface them with the current electrical grid, and keep them up and running?

See, my big problem is with this concept of "renewable" energy is that its biggest proponents refuse to acknowledge its darker side (in this case, literal). I'm going to say this very slowly so all can understand: EVERYTHING we do has an environmental impact. The ecosystem of this planet is built around having access to every single one of these renewable energy sources, and every time we've try to bypass that, we've ended up impacting the environment in one way or another. Now, as members of this ecosystem, impacting the environment is our birthright, but as a species, we need to recognize our place and our role.

Screaming "renewable energy" is just a way of sounding holier than thou, and it results in nothing more than candy coating the fact that we as a species are putting ourselves and our needs above the rest of the environment. We've already pushed the environment far out of balance, and our arrogance -- our hubris -- makes us think that we can still push even further, or at least maintain this position (that includes this silly idea of differentiating between fossil fuels and renewable energy). Make no mistake, there will be a reckoning, and nature will push back... very, VERY hard.

[drmiller100]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Enough solar energy strikes the earth in one hour to power the entire world for a year.

Actually, this is incorrect. To be precise, enough solar energy strikes the earth in one hour to power the entire world for one hour.