Chevy Volt - Electric Car

[Sxotty]

What are the reasons not to switch to all electric right away?

1. It's new and scary. The big car companies don't like it, and the consumers don't like it.

2. The volume is very low, so they are very expensive in purchase.

3. The oil companies don't like it, as they run on selling gas.


The first one is being adressed by the specs of the new breed of all electric supercars. Although the design and marketing are still way beyond the regular supercars. But, given the same manufacturing and marketing budget, the electric one easily outperforms any ICE car in existance.

The second one is the classic chiken-and-egg one, and can only be adressed by simply waiting (so the other producers who want efficient batteries make the volume rise), or some big volume contracts from large car manufacturers.

The third one is probably the hardest one: the oil companies are very rich, which is why they demand some solution that uses a fuel that can be pumped at the gas station, which they can produce. A liquified gas is fine.

It isn't that simple. An electric car cannot provide the same things that and ICE can. Sure it provides other benefits, but unless it can match an ICE it will never replace it.

That is why I like PHEVs. They allow us to get all the advantages of an ICE (no limit on how far you can drive except the speed limit and you bladder, and gas tank).

Unless a battery can be recharged at the same speed that you can fill up your tank an electric will not replace an ICE. And that will likely never happen. The infrastructure would be crazy expensive just to provide enough power to make it possible even if the battery technology was available, and it isn;t...

This might work though, but still expensive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9bc4vNccL0&eurl=http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1233/

 

[Simon F]

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Unless a battery can be recharged at the same speed that you can fill up your tank an electric will not replace an ICE.

There is a simple alternative - standardise on some simple battery "cartridges" that can be slid in and out of a car in a, say, under 1 minute. A driver then simply swaps a depleted set for a freshly charged set.

 

[Mintmaster]

What are the reasons not to switch to all electric right away?

1. It's new and scary. The big car companies don't like it, and the consumers don't like it.

2. The volume is very low, so they are very expensive in purchase.

3. The oil companies don't like it, as they run on selling gas.

We've been through this already. The problem is the range/cost ratio (and also range/weight ratio) of the battery pack.

RANGE, RANGE, RANGE.

That's why we need to go PHEV right now. It's pretty much as good as all electric anyway, as you can probably do 90% of your mileage on electric with "only" a couple hundred kilos of batteries. PHEV is enough to switch our fossil fuel dependence overwhelmingly to coal, for which we have alternatives. Even environmentally, PHEV is probably better because making battery packs an order of magnitude larger just to switch 10% of the energy used from gas to electricity is probably not worth the waste they generate.

There's no point in going all electric unless huge battery packs cost less than the gas backup engine. Until then, PHEV is great.

 

[Mintmaster]

There is a simple alternative - standardise on some simple battery "cartridges" that can be slid in and out of a car in a, say, under 1 minute. A driver then simply swaps a depleted set for a freshly charged set.

That would require one heck of an infrastructure, and you'd have to somehow guarantee the quality of battery packs. It would really suck for a charging station owner to put a new pack in a car and get a bum pack back. The number of battery packs needed across the country would be insane. Early on you might have 20 times as many packs as cars in order to get the technology to catch on.

High power charging is more feasible than something like that.

 

[Frank]

Range is only a problem as long as you want to be able to drive hundreds of miles non-stop, and while the volume of the new Li-Poly pack production stays small.

If you ask people how often they drive more than 100 km a day, they respond: "Well, at least a few times each year. So it should be able to do so."

 

[Frank]

That would require one heck of an infrastructure, and you'd have to somehow guarantee the quality of battery packs. It would really suck for a charging station owner to put a new pack in a car and get a bum pack back. The number of battery packs needed across the country would be insane. Early on you might have 20 times as many packs as cars in order to get the technology to catch on.

High power charging is more feasible than something like that.

Have the recharging stations own and test those packs. You simply "fill up".

High power charging is totally doable, but it reduces the lifespan of the packs greatly, and requires a lot of stuff like integrated cooling and individual monitoring.

 

[Mintmaster]

Range is only a problem as long as you want to be able to drive hundreds of miles non-stop, and while the volume of the new Li-Poly pack production stays small.

If you ask people how often they drive more than 100 km a day, they respond: "Well, at least a few times each year. So it should be able to do so."

Exactly. That's why all-electric is pointless and won't sell well without some sort of massive infrastructure.

The family vacation and weekend road trip are both a big part of North American culture. All-electric cars will never go mainstream if they make those difficult and/or impossible.

Have the recharging stations own and test those packs. You simply "fill up".

Simon was talking about switching packs. Unless the charging stations are a monopoly, the station owner will potentially be getting someone else's pack. Some car owners may abuse a pack for their own purposes.

Why don't you give me some reasons that we should go all-electric and forget the PHEV route?

 

[Frank]

Exactly. That's why all-electric is pointless and won't sell well without some sort of massive infrastructure.

The family vacation and weekend road trip are both a big part of North American culture. All-electric cars will never go mainstream if they make those difficult and/or impossible.

It's just what they are used to. I take a plane or train if I have to go far, or through heavy traffic. While I do have a car that can drive a long way. And I'm not complaining that my car cannot travel the Atlantic, like a plane.

Simon was talking about switching packs. Unless the charging stations are a monopoly, the station owner will potentially be getting someone else's pack. Some car owners may abuse a pack for their own purposes.

I was talking about switching packs as well. You just fill up by replacing the pack, not by recharging it. And there are many solutions to the potentional abusing.

Why don't you give me some reasons that we should go all-electric and forget the PHEV route?

I am.

 

[RussSchultz]

Actually, no. You're providing potential solutions to problems with going directly to all electric and avoiding PHEV, but you're not providing any reasoning why.

IMHO, given that the battery backs are going to be quite large and bulky, the infrastructure required to rapidly switch them out is going to be difficult to achieve and maintain.

I, too, think the PHEV route is probably for the best given America's 'car culture' and lack of mass transportation infrastructure. Most car trips are done because:
1a) its quicker than flying (and its attendant time spent in the airports)
1b) its cheaper to bring the whole family that way
2) The scenery and trip is part of the experience (though I personally don't like long drives, because, no matter where you go, you always have to drive back)
3) you have your car when you get there

In Europe, its a lot more feasible to go all electric, because long distances can be done by train/plane and when you get their, the inconvinience of not having your car is pretty minimal.

 

[Frank]

Agreed. Then again, you can always rent a car.

 

[RussSchultz]

Agreed. Then again, you can always rent a car.

Let compare a weekend trip for a family of 4 from Austin to Galveston (or Corpus Christi) to go to the beach:

Galveston
Flying
Distance: 212 miles
Airfare: $150 per person (flying into Houston, still an hour from the beach)
Flight time: 1 hour
Time in the airport: 1.5-2.5 hours, each way
Cost of car rental: $60

Driving
Gas cost: $100
Drive time: ~4h each way

Which makes more sense?

Or..a week in new orleans
Flying
distance: 500 miles
Airfare: $200 pp
car rental: $200
Flight time: 2 hours
time in airport: 2.5-3 hours, each way (no direct flights from austin)

Driving:
Drive time: 9 hours each way
gas: $200

It simply doesn't make financial sense to take most vacations for families of 4 by flying and renting.

 

[Frank]

No, but you can simply rent the car you use to drive there. If it's cheaper to rent that car a few times a year when driving electric the rest of the time, you still win. And unless the majority of the people drive all electric, I doubt most people wouldn't be able to simply borrow a car for a few days/week, while leaving their car for commuting.

 

[_xxx_]

We already had the electronic breaks, look for "Sensotronic brake control". Over 1.5 million cars with it out there (mainly E-Class and SL-Class). So far it seems to work fine as is, but I have to say I don't feel really well driving around with it. Though it doesn't matter, it is here to stay. All our hybrids are going to have a system akin to this.

There is an "emergency brake", but that is laughably weak. We rely on the (very extensive) diagnostics to never let it come that far.

The newer developments are pointing towards the wedge brakes, but I have no experience with those.

 

[Mariner]

I agree that the PHEV concept is a "no-brainer". If nothing else it could be seen as akin to an improvement in engine efficiency with the potential to improve MPG even when burning fuel.

The Volt claims 50 mpg when burning fuel and the Volvo claims 60 mpg, I believe - pretty decent figures considering the size of the cars themselves so it is reasonable to use such a car even if you don't have the chance to plug in every night.

Once the PHEV concept becomes commonplace (or maybe the norm), alternative power sources to recharge the battery could be used easily, whether further improved ICE generators, fuel cells, whatever.

 

[Arwin]

Another advantage I think of the way hybrids can be set up is reduction in several pollutants, small dust particles and so on, because you have more control over at which rpms you want your engine to run most of the time. That should allow for more efficient and complete burning of fuel, I think.

 

[_xxx_]

Well the people always forget the secondary effects - how much pollution does the large-scale production of batteries introduce? Or manufacturing fuel cells? How do you get rid of the waste? And so on. It all sounds nice and clean if you only look at one side, but there are many hurdles on the way.

 

[Arwin]

Yes, except that the battery thing has already been discussed to death. Lifecycle stuff is even completely spelled out in the basic Prius brochure including recycling, energy consumption during production, etc. etc. etc. It's not really something that is looked at from 'one side' and hasn't been a long time.

 

[Sxotty]

There is a simple alternative - standardise on some simple battery "cartridges" that can be slid in and out of a car in a, say, under 1 minute. A driver then simply swaps a depleted set for a freshly charged set.

Did you check my link? That was what I posted...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9bc4vNccL0&eurl=http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1233/

 

[Sxotty]

Well the people always forget the secondary effects - how much pollution does the large-scale production of batteries introduce? Or manufacturing fuel cells? How do you get rid of the waste? And so on. It all sounds nice and clean if you only look at one side, but there are many hurdles on the way.

Not necessarily true.

The huge advantage is entropy.

When you build stuff at a factory the waste is in one location. It is way cheaper to clean that up then clean up millions of exhaust pipes on cars. That is another huge reason to push toward PHEVs. Cheaper to clean up a coal plant than orders of magnitude more vehicles burning gasoline.

So the economics of cleaning the environment up favor point source pollution really.

 

[nelg]

There is also the possibility of using a liquid cathode so one literally could 'fill-up' an electric car at the pumping station.