Electric car efficiencies

[user removed]

Originally Posted by mort

Maybe. Total power used by people on earth is about 13 TW. Solar power available on accessible land areas: 580 TW.
-mort

Cost to change the planet to renewable electrical power=
More than the total net worth of every entity and human being on the planet.
Reality apparently is a difficult pill for some here to swallow.

regards Mech

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Cost to change the planet to renewable electrical power=
More than the total net worth of every entity and human being on the planet.
Reality apparently is a difficult pill for some here to swallow.

I realize that we are not worth a whole lot and that renewable energy can get pricey but you could say that the cost to build any new form of power generation is going to cost more then the net worth of the people who are going to use it, coal powered power plants take more then 25 years to pay back the investment it took to build them, nuclear is over 35 years, wind is 4-7 years although it can be 10 to 15 if it's a smaller wind turbine and solar is closer to being on par with coal for pay back at 15-25 years.
So while I don't have enough money in my bank account right now to install enough solar on my house to take care of all of my electrical use including charging my electric car, I could in the next 1 to 3 years and that is taking in to account that I work 20 hours a week and am waiting to hear back from the local solar electric installer on current prices.

[user removed]

Originally Posted by TheEnemy

How is he getting 99% efficiency on a hydraulic system?

Never said I was. At 0 wheel speed a hydraulic drive beats everything else and I can hold a 500 HP hydraulic motor in my hand (a quote from Charles Gray, head of the EPA consortium on HH research).

Direct electric drive regeneration efficiency is probably less than 20%. Some here like to ignore the facts for which they have no answer. It doesn't change the facts. It just dilutes an intelligent discussion with repetitive dogma, that has no basis in fact.

How do you recover the several hundred horsepower seconds of energy in 20-25 revolutions of two out of 4 wheels in your direct drive electric car. That's a 60-0 panic stop.

Since you can not regenerate it, then you need a brake system to stop. How can you claim no maintenance when you know it is a false claim. Less maintenance maybe. The battery pack and electric motor in a 2004 Prius was $14,000 replacement cost. When either of those two (out of 1000s) components fail the car is scrap metal. Just like the noisy cooling fan on my 3 year old CPU, when it finally gives out the whole thing is scrap.

People know this, they aren't idiots, like some may assume. I can ride my $2000 bike 100,000 miles at 60MPG on 1600 gallons of fuel. At the exact same time when your battery warranty runs out on a new Leaf. The math doesn't work and you will spend $4500 a year (at least) in 10 years on a new Leaf, especially if you don't pay cash for the car. Finance it and the price increases. They will lease it to you for $600 a month.

You claim it will last a lot longer, but there is no way you can support your claim with facts. As it ages the range deteriorates to 50 miles (estimated).
Sorry I just don;t have that much faith in "claims" 'Probablies" and "estimates". It's called legitimate skepticism. It reminds me of some of the gubbmnt estimates of the cost of legislated entitlements, or the cost estimates for defense contracts.

"It was an honest mistake" when someone overcharges you for a good or service.

Then why is the "mistake" never in your favor. Because it is not an honest mistake, it's really an attempted fraud, just like "claims" that have no basis in proof. Sure a 300k mile Prius taxi cab that is two years old will still have a good battery pack. What happened to Honda? Can we assume Nissan will have issues with their packs. Wait another 5 years and lets see how many Prius packs fail, but THATS RIGHT, they are that second class NIMH battery that no one wants any more. Priced one of those obsolete battery packs out lately?

Not rebuilt, brand new. Remeber the manufacturers like to mark their stuff up 100%.

Bottom line, there are many who read these threads. Do you honestly believe they can be convinced by "claims, Possibilities, no maintenance, and peak" when this is not something that has been proven over time.

Just plunk down $4500 a year and trust me, you will save $2k a year in gas.
Cost effectuive? Must have been that I was raised by a cost accountant.

Will your electric car last longer than your computer?

Probably
regards
Mech

[user removed]

How about the "claim" that NIMH batteries would last 30 years.

YEAH RIGH, anyone here got any 30 year old NIMH batteries?

regards
Mech

[user removed]

Originally Posted by Ryland

I realize that we are not worth a whole lot and that renewable energy can get pricey but you could say that the cost to build any new form of power generation is going to cost more then the net worth of the people who are going to use it, coal powered power plants take more then 25 years to pay back the investment it took to build them, nuclear is over 35 years, wind is 4-7 years although it can be 10 to 15 if it's a smaller wind turbine and solar is closer to being on par with coal for pay back at 15-25 years.
So while I don't have enough money in my bank account right now to install enough solar on my house to take care of all of my electrical use including charging my electric car, I could in the next 1 to 3 years and that is taking in to account that I work 20 hours a week and am waiting to hear back from the local solar electric installer on current prices.

What's your estimate to build a complete Interstate Highway system today from scratch. The original estimate was 40 Billion. Today, probably 40 trillion.
In the same time period they like to claim inflation is only 700%, but that is 10,000%. So much for claims and estimates by people with agendas.

"Just pass the bill, then we will figure out how much it cost"

Give me a million dollars and I will build a car that gets twice the mileage and costs less than the cheapest car you can buy today.

Do you believe that?

I guess not, so I will build it myself, thank you. It will cost you nothing when it is implemented and start saving you the day you start driving. Then you can take that money and buy your solar panels (although I wouldn't trust the chinese ones to not burn down your house). Then convert your cheap car to battery electric with the "estimated" 3 times more efficient batteries we will have in 5 years and you will have free fuel, that cost you basically nothing.

There you go from "I don't know where the money will come from" to "it wont cost you anything".

regards
Mech

[NeilBlanchard]

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

Obviously, we cannot collect all of that, so say it takes a week to collect all the energy needed for the entire earth.

Wind power could supply all the energy in about a month for the entire earth for a year.

Similar time frame for wave power. Geothermal would take longer -- I think 3 months, if my memory serves? Biomass also has a lot of potential.

I've read that in total, we could get about 16X more energy than we need from renewable sources. It is all around us, and very dependable. We can store power, too with elevated reservoirs of water or underground compressed air or underground thermal storage with molten salt.

Don't underestimate the great fusion reactor in the sky, or the moon's gravitational pull, or the earth's gravitational pull. These are the ultimate sources for all renewable energy sources.

The electric motors themselves are up to 94% efficient. The TWP4XP folks had about an 85% efficient plug-to-wheel drivetrain. Sounds about right to me.

Since it takes more electricity to drive an average car 100 miles than it does to drive an electric car 100 miles -- the "long tailpipe" argument goes away. This ratio gets worse and worse as we begin to use lower and lower quality crude oil; and the tar sands is another order of magnitude worse.

Electricity will get cleaner and cleaner over time. And renewable energy will last as long as the earth -- about another Billion years.

What's not to like?

[NeilBlanchard]

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

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

Cost to change the planet to renewable electrical power=
More than the total net worth of every entity and human being on the planet.

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 :-)

[user removed]

It's way off but you can't figure it. I understand completely.

Neil it's already been posted and linked, see if you can find it.

regards
Mech

[NeilBlanchard]

Germany, Costa Rica, Monaco, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and Iceland all seem to be able to afford the transition to renewable energy. If the USA stopped spending the 4 billion a year on oil company subsidies, then we could afford to make the transition, too. We spend ~1.5 billion A DAY on foreign oil, so if we conserve, we can save plenty of money, and spend some of that on renewables. As Amory Lovins says (Rocky Mountain Institute) we can spend $100 per barrel to buy oil, or we can spend $18 to *save* a barrel of oil.

That adds up very quickly.