Lina - City EV Made from Plants

[seifrob]

I am aware of that. Yet still, does anybody know about direct comparision? One steel frame against one wooden frame with complete life cycle?

Imagine how many trees you would need to supply one year worth of Ford and GMC production. It somehow does not feel too green anymore.

Just silly thoughts, never mind.

[NeilBlanchard]

I asked Mr Google:

How much energy does it take (on average) to produce 1 kilogram of the following materials? - LOW-TECH MAGAZINE

Energy per kilogram:

Wood (from standing timber): 3-7MJ (830 to 1,950 watt-hours).
Steel (from recycled steel): 6-15MJ (1,665 to 4,170 watt-hours).
Steel (from iron): 20-50MJ (5,550 to 13,900 watt-hours)

[freebeard]

How about fiberglass or carbon fiber. I'm going to email Nick at basalt.guru — over the phone all he had was "That's a good question". The composite matrix will be the same as fiberglass or carbon fiber, but the fiber itself practically falls out of the rock.

Range is up to 80km on just 5.7kWh pack - three 1.9kWh units that can be swapped out in a few minutes.

Oh really, I'll be darned. The Tesla has a 100kWh pack and the Leaf has 60kWh.

Those lunchbox sized batteries as so cute.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by seifrob

I have quite stupid question. Steel frame you can cut to parts and melt with other scrap metal to make steel again. How do you recycle wooden/plywood/wood composite frame, that is probably infused with ton of epoxy resin to add protection against elements?
So is the wooden frame just a pose, or does it have benefits I do not see?

Yea Morgan car company like to use birtch which is rot prone, so they dip it in preservative resin.

For a 5.7kw pack to move a vehicle any where 80km there hast to be almost 0 wind resistance. So it's moving along at mountain bike speed.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

I have never found anything about the recyclability of wood-based composites, but there might be some way to either repurpose frame components made out of those materials or to just chop it and blend it with resin for other applications that would not require so much structural strenght.

[seifrob]

That was what I thought too, because to burn it does not seem like a good idea. But it all ends with the treatment used. If it is vax, oil based, epoxy resin or urethane. Bee wax would be probably really eco friendly, but who will treat his car every spring with new coat.

Any Morgan owners here? How do you treat your frame?

[freebeard]

Eh, Thermal Depolymerization will eat anything.

[NeilBlanchard]

I think the Lina may use super efficient hub motors. And weighing less than 700 pounds makes it much lower consumption. Doing the rough math, 5.7kWh for ~50 miles is 114Wh/mile, which is quite plausible. This is similar to the Edison2 VLC Electric which was under 100Wh/mile, if my memory serves me. The electric VLC was a relatively porky 1140 pounds. It had much better aero than the Lins, but it used a DC motor; which are far less efficient than a hub drive AC unit.

The Electrathon vehicle that C. Michael Lewis set the record run of 55MPH for an hour was using just 2 Optima RedTop batteries - I did the math when I was talking to him at the meet up in Watkins Glen a few years ago - and it was under 16Wh/mile.

[oil pan 4]

The lower the watts per mile go the slower you travel and the less car like the vehicle becomes.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Fingie

cool if you could make a car out of plant-based materials.

But I'd bet that a lot of that car isn't made from plant-based materials. Like the electric wiring, bearings, the glass in the windows...

I think Lotus perhaps has a better approach to incorporating plant-based materials in their cars: http://www.lotuscars.com/engineering/eco-elise And I bet the Eco-Elise is a lot more fun to drive :-)