Chevy Volt - Electric Car
- Thread starter nintenho
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ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Well, who knows... if GM's Hy-Wire control layout ever takes off, there wouldn't really be "hitting" involved. There'd be twisting and squeezing....
Maybe the Japanese have it right with their "Akuseru zenkai!" (Accelerator to the max!) phrase... that at least, is sort of generic. Something serves as an accelerator which has some upper limit and similarly with the brake, even if not pedals.
How about moving from gas stations to fast food and resturant fill ups .
Think about it. You go to a wendys and you plug into the grid and start charging up. You go inside and enjoy a nice burger or something and get a quick charge. Sit down resturants would be even better. You would most likely spend an hour or so eating .
I wonder how fast you could charge up a battery for these things. If a 30 minute charge at special filling stations could get you 70-80% filled up they could take off.
Think about it. You go to a wendys and you plug into the grid and start charging up. You go inside and enjoy a nice burger or something and get a quick charge. Sit down resturants would be even better. You would most likely spend an hour or so eating .
I wonder how fast you could charge up a battery for these things. If a 30 minute charge at special filling stations could get you 70-80% filled up they could take off.
To be honest, I don't think voice control will be interesting, until we get to the point where you only say the address of where you want to go and the car drives you there. Until then, I'd prefer to be able to use my voice exclusively for conversation with other human beings.
Meh.
Voice control in the new S-class is more than good enough. The few times ive tried it its very handy, click in the correct button, and say the street adress (or nation\city whatever) it finds it within seconds and you have your GPS directions. Works like a charm every time. But i have only used it like 3 times or so, as i dont own the car.
Much more practical than me trying to navigate my old merc's GPS systems (you have to type each letter, it has some wordrecognition system, but you still need to give it attention and look at the screen)
(The previous S-class had voice regonition aswell, but it didn't understand any languague known to man)
It is fine, but the electrical infrastructure can be quite investment heavy if you are trying to provide enough power to charge a large battery pack in a very short time.
Yeah, I think that's the biggest problem about electric cars right now. How to charge them, except for at home?
People aren't going to want to give away power for free, so you'll have to have some ubiquotous, cheap setup that can bill you for you plugging up. And it has to be vandalism proof. And convenient.
For home owners with garages, you can always do this in your own garage, assuming you've got enough range for the day. I can't see my work putting in outlets in the parking garage. Or Kroger or Safeway putting outlets in their parking lot. I'd be surprised if apartment complexes would be connections that weren't completely locked down in someway. Maybe its possible (bring your own cable? pay with a credit card?), but I don't see it as being 'easy'.
People aren't going to want to give away power for free, so you'll have to have some ubiquotous, cheap setup that can bill you for you plugging up. And it has to be vandalism proof. And convenient.
For home owners with garages, you can always do this in your own garage, assuming you've got enough range for the day. I can't see my work putting in outlets in the parking garage. Or Kroger or Safeway putting outlets in their parking lot. I'd be surprised if apartment complexes would be connections that weren't completely locked down in someway. Maybe its possible (bring your own cable? pay with a credit card?), but I don't see it as being 'easy'.
There are a decent number of ideas. But if you charged 10 cars at wendy's in 30 minutes that is a whole lot of power.
Charging your own vehicle at your home overnight (>=6hours) would mean way less current draw that is what I was getting at.
If you want to charge cars quickly you need new wiring to support the load not just the devices to meter it and somehow keep thieves from stealing it.
No more siphoning your gas, just stealing your power instead
A brave new world it will be.
Charging your own vehicle at your home overnight (>=6hours) would mean way less current draw that is what I was getting at.
If you want to charge cars quickly you need new wiring to support the load not just the devices to meter it and somehow keep thieves from stealing it.
No more siphoning your gas, just stealing your power instead
A brave new world it will be.Use the current gas pump setup. No one steals gas. Just have it set up that you can't start "pumping" electricty without first inserting a credit card / gift card. Or have the plug unlocked when your in wendys and add the amount of power to your bill to pay with cash like gas pumps are like now.
As for the power , I admit that it would cause a problem , however at first you would need few power stations . You could charge the power stations and pull from the grid as needed.
Well plaes like that can allways set up solar charging stations.
You guys are looking at this wrong. Your looking at it as electric cars being abnormal and not the norm. If these cars work well they will become the norm and the way things work will be geared to them. The first generation volt and vue plug in (which should be out first and is based on the volt) have a generator on board which gm claims will allow them to get a 650m range. They also say it can use e85 or regular gas. The car itself has the solution built in . As time goes on we can shift and that generatior wont be needed.
No, quite the opposite. I think an electric car, being out of the norm could probably find 110V outlets that are normally used by the establishment for lawn equipment or other random things that nobody would ever use right now.
But if everybody needs to recharge their cars, there just isn't he infrastructure right now.
But if everybody needs to recharge their cars, there just isn't he infrastructure right now.
Isn't part of the beauty of electric cars charging at night (at home) is that they tap unused power? If we all start zipping around and plugging in during the day, that would seem to lessen the efficiency argument.
Maybe that's too narrow a view of efficiency, and solar charge stations sound tailor-made for daytime charging, albeit slowly. That slow charge may make the whole idea of quick-stop charging moot, though. Even 30 mins is close to an order of magnitude more time than gas, and if you couldn't depend on an outlet being available (this probably applies to non-solar, grid-based supply, too) or the sun being out, that would seem to almost nullify the utility of a midpoint charging stations.
Then again, I kind of doubt electric will explode initially--not everyone's buying a Prius--and the built-in price premiums should better accommodate a rolling transition. Even when electric cars are the norm, I'm not sure the ideal is to have that much more power draw active during the day.
Maybe that's too narrow a view of efficiency, and solar charge stations sound tailor-made for daytime charging, albeit slowly. That slow charge may make the whole idea of quick-stop charging moot, though. Even 30 mins is close to an order of magnitude more time than gas, and if you couldn't depend on an outlet being available (this probably applies to non-solar, grid-based supply, too) or the sun being out, that would seem to almost nullify the utility of a midpoint charging stations.
Then again, I kind of doubt electric will explode initially--not everyone's buying a Prius--and the built-in price premiums should better accommodate a rolling transition. Even when electric cars are the norm, I'm not sure the ideal is to have that much more power draw active during the day.
How many cars do you think it would take to become a problem? For the first few years I'd think they can offset most of the problem by offering people a timer (or some good advice) so they charge their vehicle only in off peak hours. Its going to take years before they could build enough vehicles to cause serious problems.
The Volt obviously addresses the charging issue with its built in generator, I'd assume any electric car trying to make a go of it without a generator of some sort would have to have a much better range. It wouldn't really be hard for some of the major parking garages to offer some juice just on an hourly basis or something, perhaps some kind of secure cable if you really think vandalism is a major issue.
but that wont happen for years. We already hear from gm that this car will cost them alot and they will loose money on it for years. I don't see electric cards selling in huge numbers for years after they come out and by then we will have the time to gradualy shift and build the infastructure for it. We can see 30k volts in 2010 then 80k volts the next year , 140k the next but thats still nothing compared to whats on the road already . It would take a decade for the volt to put a drain on the grids. Thats with the assumtion that those buying these cars wont look to renewable power to charge these. I would most likely buy a solar array for the garage and use it to charge my volt that way.
Well i don't think its all efficiency however.
1) Coal , nuclear , solar , wind power plants will be much cleaner than having millions of ice's running around. You can add scrubbers to Coal plants to help clean them up and having a dozen smoke stacks as opposed to a million tail pipes allows us to maintain quality. nuclear waste would be a problem but we can just burry it some where and let it live out its half life.. Solar power is still expensive because of the demand for the solar cells however building more production will allow the price to come down and I believe the panels last 10-15 years currently. The only waste on them is producing and disposing of them. Wind is the same, it already rivals coal and nuclear power costs and once again the only waste is producing and disposing of them.
2) Dependancy on oil . Right now the majority of our oil comes from other countrys. By increasing our use of coal (which we have large amounts. I believe the ride at epcot with ellen and that science guy said we have more coal here than all the oil left in the world) solar and wind we can reduce our need to import oil. The middle east and other countrys wont be able to affect our economys that much , we wouldn't have to fight many wars for oil anymore , we also wouldn't be funding these goverments that abuse their people and fund terroists.
3) the cost for the consumer. Even if we are stuck with gas for a few more decades having cars that get large miles per gallon is huge. The volt with its gas /e85 engine may still use gas but it will allow it go much further on the same amount of gas . Who knows if the goverment gets its hand out of its back side and realises that you can make more ethonal off that alge and switch grass and its cheaper than using corn then e85 could replace gas and the use of electric cars would reduce the load on that fuel too.
as for 30 minutes being to long. Well who knows. My idea is based around the fact that you would do something else at that time and really for many people they wouldn't need to go through that . IF the volt gets the 40mpc they think it will , that would be enough for the average driver to use through out the day. For others they may need a charge or when you go on a long road trip. However getting 600mpt would allow you to go further than most cars . 600miles at 65mph gets u 9 hours of driving. if you leave at 8am your going to need a charge / fuel on a volt by 5pm. That is just in time for dinner. Charge up while your sitting there eating and whatever else for a half an hour , top off the gas engine and beon your way.
Right , I don't see people destroying gas stations. All you need is an extension cord and a credit card machine hook up they can be much smaller than current gas pumps. Throw it up on a parking deck and it becomes a reason for someone to seek out that parking garage . Parking decks have alot of surface area on their roofs that are just crying out for solar panels. They can invest in that and produce their own energy to charge you with. The person just going to the mall that day and using 5 miles of their charge wont plug in , only someone who went to work and camehome and is now running errands would need a charge.
I doubt u will ever get every electric car user plugging in and pulling a full charge at once. Some people may be able to go days without needing a charge.
The other thing for city folks may be solar panels built into the roof of the car. I don't know how much it would cost compared to the power it would produce , but thats another option and i'm sure if they can be easily added to the volt you will see alot of 3rd party options for such a device.
30 minutes isn't long enough. Cars need KW to run, and that kind of power from a standard 110 (or even 220) plug is way too much (which is why you need to charge over night) to do with current infrastructure.
Thats based on our current infastructure. However what about a set up based on these guys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor
You would only need them at the point of fill up. Have them sit and charge over night and then they can be used to charge the cars quickly .
Kyyla
Veteran
The problem with electricity is that it is a very refined form of energy. For example if we produce electricity for our cars in a coal powered plant, the coal is burned: it's chemical bonds release thermal energy. This energy is used to evaporate a liquid that powers the turbines thus mechanical energy is converted to electricity. Then finally the electric car converts electricity to mechanical energy again.
Now you don't have to be an engineer to understand that we are going to have an efficiency problem here.
Now you don't have to be an engineer to understand that we are going to have an efficiency problem here.
Aaah, so what we need are coal powered cars!
Mintmaster
Veteran
It doesn't matter if you have a supercapacitor or a fast charging battery. 110V outlets would need massive current to charge a battery. If you're going to charge a 35kWh battery, that would take 20 hours to charge it from a regular outlet. The battery would only give you as much range as 4 gallons of gas.
eastmen, read the earlier parts of this thread, and look at the arguments that me, Russ, and DemoCoder posed to Frank. There is no need for an all-electric car. Plug-in hybrids could save 90% of the emissions while requiring none of the infrastructure and having none of the drawbacks in driving range.
If we ever get cheap batteries with huge energy density, then we can think about whether it makes sense. Until then, PHEV is a far better solution in every aspect.
You are not really right in this effect. B/C of the limitations of the ICE the efficiency already sucks using a combined cycle plant and then electricity --> mechanical energy is way more efficient actually.
For faster charging you could easily take a page from video cards and use 2 or more connections (on different circuits).
With some rewiring you'd easily have that down to 6 hours of off peak use.