THE Electric Vehicle (EV) Thread pt 3 (merged)

[Arthur75]

wait until J6P tries it out. By analogy, all we need is to do laundry, watch TV, run the dishwasher, and hoover the house at night. How many of us do that?

Yeah but I think having a car getting recharged at night would be more common than hoovering the house or watching TV at 3am, special tariffs if needed.
But to me the key point is that the electric car cannot really replace petrol cars, it will be something else (provided no crash stops everything)

PS to Rangerone : How funny, and original ! (remember Yorktown ? )

[rangerone314]

wait until J6P tries it out. By analogy, all we need is to do laundry, watch TV, run the dishwasher, and hoover the house at night. How many of us do that?

Yeah but I think having a car getting recharged at night would be more common than hoovering the house or watching TV at 3am, special tariffs if needed.
But to me the key point is that the electric car cannot really replace petrol cars, will be something else

PS to Rangerone : How funny ! (remember Yorktown ? )

I was being ironic.

Unlike a lot of Americans I actually LIKE the French. And I've read $h1tloads about history and particularly military history, so I know all about the French intervention...

Surrendering and knowing when it is time to quit are not exactly the same thing.(Dien Bien Phu & Vietnam comes to mind) People who call the French surrender monkeys overlook the Maquis.

More power to the French if they can outdo the Chinese in electric cars. (If my money isn't going to be spent here, I'd rather it go to France than China)

Actually if I ever get the money saved up for another vacation, I might be in Paris in a few years. I did a 10-day 360-degree circuit around Ireland by car in 2005, so I'm chomping at the bit to do my planned London-Bath-Stonehenge->Chunnel->Paris vacation.

[yesplease]

...how many people vacuum, wash the dishes, watch TV, and do the laundry, all at the same time, for four solid hours every night?

Exactly my point, isn't it?

Only if we could schedule the TV, laundry, dishes, and vacuum to perform themselves w/o our input. I think the closest is something like a Roomba for most people. It's a lot easier for an OEM to incorporate a timer into an EV charger since it's a set it and forget it situation than it is to somehow reschedule all those activities off peak. Not that we would need to since those other activities require less energy for most people.

[davep]

I was being ironic.

Unlike a lot of Americans I actually LIKE the French. And I've read $h1tloads about history and particularly military history, so I know all about the French intervention...

Surrendering and knowing when it is time to quit are not exactly the same thing.(Dien Bien Phu & Vietnam comes to mind) People who call the French surrender monkeys overlook the Maquis.

More power to the French if they can outdo the Chinese in electric cars. (If my money isn't going to be spent here, I'd rather it go to France than China)

Actually if I ever get the money saved up for another vacation, I might be in Paris in a few years. I did a 10-day 360-degree circuit around Ireland by car in 2005, so I'm chomping at the bit to do my planned London-Bath-Stonehenge->Chunnel->Paris vacation.

If you ever get to France, get in touch. Along with possibly visiting the doomstead, I could blow your mind with the food and wine.

[dorlomin]

Surrendering and knowing when it is time to quit are not exactly the same thing.(Dien Bien Phu & Vietnam comes to mind) People who call the French surrender monkeys overlook the Maquis.

FWIW you might also try the Marne and Verdun for how to cling on and take pure bloody murder.

Dien Bien Phu is often reported as being a very German heavy operation. That does come from a controversial book mind (The Devils Guard).

[Graeme]

Electric cars in Adelaide can recharge using fuel cell power

The South Australian state government and Adelaide City Council have installed an electric vehicle charging station at the city’s Central Market car park, that is powered by low-emissions electricity from a solid oxide fuel cell system supplied by Ceramic Fuel Cells Ltd.
The installation is believed to be the world’s first fuel cell powered public EV charging station.

The Ceramic Fuel Cells BlueGen gas-to-electricity generation unit enables city shoppers to recharge their electric vehicles from low-emission sources rather than carbon-intensive power from the electricity grid.

The new station is free to users, and can charge two vehicles at a time.

The ChargePoint recharging station’s BlueGen solid oxide fuel cell – the first such unit installed in South Australia – will be able to generate at least 12.5 MWh of clean electricity per annum.

This is enough to power to the average South Australian home and two electric cars travelling 15 000 km each per year. Excess power not required for vehicle recharging will be fed into the grid.

renewableenergyfocus

[Graeme]

Seven Reasons to Believe Electric Cars Are Getting in Gear

Still, this is shaping up to be a sweet little watershed month for electric vehicles, aka EVs.

(1) Nissan announced that, together with researchers at Kansai University, it has developed the technology to fully charge an electric car battery in only 10 minutes. It could be years before such an efficient charging station is widely available, but the fact that it’s coming eases one of the bigger anxieties about EVs—that it takes forever to get a full charge.

(2) Last week, seven car companies—Ford, GM, Audi, BMW, Daimler-Chrysler, Porsche and Volkswagen—agreed to standardize charging stations in North America. Which means you won’t have to drive all over town looking for a place to charge your particular EV. There goes that anxiety.

(3) GM also announced last week that it will start selling a truly all-electric vehicle called the Spark in 2013. (The Volt’s back-up gas engine makes it a plug-in hybrid.)

(4) The sequel to the scathing documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? opens in theaters this Friday. The new film, Revenge of the Electric Car, is a lovefest by comparison. This time, filmmaker Chris Paine had the cooperation of the three companies selling EVs in the United States—Nissan came on board after it heard GM and Tesla were in. One of the screening parties will actually be held in a Tesla showroom and each of the three carmakers will be showing off models.

So now that everyone’s holding hands, the electric car is finally ready to silently roar into the future, right?

smithsonianmag

[Graeme]

Want To Charge Your Car For As Cheap As Possible? There's An App For That

That is likely to change, as utilities roll out home smart meters, and systems like one being developed by IBM for charging electric vehicles come to market.

IBM’s system, which it is developing with the Swiss utility EKZ, allows customers to see from a mobile handset what the current cost of electricity is, and to decide the best moment to charge their EVs. It works from a simple app, which links to a book-sized unit in a car, and the grid itself, which relays information on power availability. Drivers can see whether their car needs topping up, then decide when to charge, and whether to use conventional or renewable output. If the car is plugged in, they can even complete the process remotely.

“The mobile application essentially allows people to control how their electric vehicle is charged,” says Clay Luthy, IBM’s global distributed energy resource leader. “They can choose to charge immediately, delay the charge until when electricity rates are cheaper, or use an optimized charge schedule.”

fastcompany

[babystrangeloop]

Electric car UK sales sputter out
Figures show that only 106 electric cars were bought in 2011 third quarter through 'plugged-in car grant' scheme
Adam Vaughan / October 21, 2011

Hopes that £5,000 government grants would make 2011 "remembered as the year the electric car took off" have been dashed with the release of new figures showing uptake of the greener cars has sputtered out.

Only 106 electric cars were bought in the third quarter of 2011 through the "plugged-in car grant" scheme, launched in January. It marks a significant slump in demand on already sluggish-take-up, with 465 cars registered through the scheme in Q1 and 215 in Q2. ...

[Windmills]

I think price is the primary anxiety. People who can afford electric cars right now aren't people who need to be worried about the price of gas. Electric car makers need to be able to compete with the price of a $10,000 econobox that gets good gas mileage.

[pstarr]

I think price is the primary anxiety. People who can afford electric cars right now aren't people who need to be worried about the price of gas. Electric car makers need to be able to compete with the price of a $10,000 econobox that gets good gas mileage.

Not really. EV is cheaper to construct, operate, and maintain then ICE's given equal manufacturing efficiencies of scale. EV has simpler mechanics--inexpensive solid-state control systems and no transmission or elaborate cooling. But there is no real demand for EV's, because EV application is limited to urban and closed route transit or as a town car. Not so good in the real natural world that feeds, clothes, and powers us is not crisscrossed with power lines, like suburbia.

Plus it just ain't Amuricun to be riding around in no electrik hedge trimmer.

[Plantagenet]

Obama's DOE just gave half a billion dollars to create a factory to build electric cars in FINLAND.

I wonder how many US jobs will be created with the US grant of a half a billion dollars to build electric cars in FINLAND? Seems like that will mostly create jobs in for FINNS who live in FINLAND.

Obama said his green energy program would create millions of jobs---he just didn't tell us they'd be FINLAND.

Whats next----will Obama give a grant to CHINA to build solar cells in CHINA? Sheesh.

[pstarr]

Dude, that grant was given to Finland and China many decades ago. It's called;

INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE.

(sheehs. Where's the blinking font style when you need it).

[Serial_Worrier]

Stupid, pointless technology when there are NO charging mechanisms readily available! Oh and the EV-supporters are all for shuttering coal-fired power plants right?

[Serial_Worrier]

I think price is the primary anxiety. People who can afford electric cars right now aren't people who need to be worried about the price of gas. Electric car makers need to be able to compete with the price of a $10,000 econobox that gets good gas mileage.

Not really. EV is cheaper to construct, operate, and maintain then ICE's given equal manufacturing efficiencies of scale. EV has simpler mechanics--inexpensive solid-state control systems and no transmission or elaborate cooling. But there is no real demand for EV's, because EV application is limited to urban and closed route transit or as a town car. Not so good in the real natural world that feeds, clothes, and powers us is not crisscrossed with power lines, like suburbia.

Plus it just ain't Amuricun to be riding around in no electrik hedge trimmer.

Your hatred for all things American and suburban will not push EV forward.

[pstarr]

Plus it just ain't Amuricun to be riding around in no electrik hedge trimmer.

Your hatred for all things American and suburban will not push EV forward.

Like I said. No self-respecting cowboy/girl is gonna park their junk in a four-wheel electric toothbrush.

(The red gas can is really a suitcase conversion. it has a hinge and latch. The guy uses it to get sympathy rides.)

[Expatriot]

"Vair R zu carz? Vair r zu carz?"

[The Practician]

One reason not to believe electric cars are getting into gear: Young people are becoming more and more disillusioned with car culture every day, and would rather just ride a bike than deal with inherent expense of a car centric lifestyle, no matter what the thing runs on. EROEI's a bi*tch.

Here's my take on cars: they're cool...but they're also stupid. the more expensive energy becomes, the less sense they are going to make, no matter what they run on. On top of that, the less people that don't really need to drive drive, the more there is for those that have honest to goodness reasons to drive to use and the cheaper it is for them-and the rest of us to afford their services. Given the unholy infrastructure arrangement my generations been left to deal with, this is just how it has to be.

[Plantagenet]

Electric cars get worse mileage than a regular old SUV

electric cars get worse mileage than an SUV

It turns out the Obama administration jiggered the DOE formula used to calculate mileage for electric cars to make the mileage look bigger. They changed the original formula so that it underestimates the fossil fuel used to make the electricty by ignoring the very significant energy losses resulting from converting fossil fuel energy into electricity, and more losses from transmitting the electricity through power lines and more inefficiency and energy lost due to converting the electrical energy to chemical energy in the car battery and more energy loss due to converting the chemical energy back into electric energy in order to power the car.

When you take all these energy losses into account, the Fiskar KARMA electric car gets only 19 mpg of fossil fuel----worse than a regular old gas engine SUV and much much worse than a hydrid car or a motorcycle or scooter.

[Bruce_S]

Plus it just ain't Amuricun to be riding around in no electrik hedge trimmer.

I drove a Chevy Volt for 30 miles yesterday. Interstate at 70 mph, amazed at how quiet the thing was, gentle cruising on city secondaries gaining me back a few miles through regenerative braking, a few impromptu drag races against whoever wanted to cut over on me from the other lane and doesn't understand that electric motors are all about torque, made sure the stereo was obnoxious enough to be a teenagers wet dream, and had another 19 miles showing of electric power when I parked it back at the dealership. Excellent front seats and quite nice interior (little too many buttons and gizmos on the center stack), little short of 6 footer room in the back seats, no spare tires (a real drag for those get flats) and the hatch volume was reasonable, but nothing special, although admittedly this is not a large automobile. No gasoline molecules were harmed during this exercise.

The engineers who built this thing did an excellent job. The future is here, and it ain't no hedge trimmer.