Your new, electric car.

[Phil]

i.e. the inefficiency and waste of an ICE is what you would miss. A bit daft if you think about it logically.

Not necessarely. Using electric engines aren't exactly waste-free either - they're bound to waste as well, only that the "waste" is shifted to different areas, like battery production etc.

There are also ICEs that use less waste (or practically none) during run-time and still have what I define to be 'character' (though I agree the term character is very subjective). As an example, before I'd be thinking of getting an electric car, I'd find a way to use bio ethanol fuel (which ironically even increases power).

 

[nelg]

I think there is a huge market potential for short-range electric "city cars" (as second or third car for some people). I don't travel far with my car, so I'd be fine with a range of less than 150 km if I could recharge at home or at work. I don't need sports car like acceleration either, nor a top speed beyond 150 km/h or manual transmission (so get rid of the gearbox cost/weight). Even with the battery, electric should save some space and weight as well as require substantially less maintenance.

- inexpensive
- easy to maintain
- safe
- nice and comfortable interior
- rechargeable at home
- swappable battery
- standardized battery and charging, widespread recharging/battery swap infrastructure (e.g. parking spaces with recharge option)

And with wheel motors you could do fancy things such as driving sideways or turning on the spot.

I agree completely! It is time for legislation (crash worthiness etc.), to allow for such "commuter mobiles". While I need a larger vehicle for my family, using it everyday makes me feel as though I am driving around in my living-room.

 

[RussSchultz]

I think there is a huge market potential for short-range electric "city cars" (as second or third car for some people). I don't travel far with my car, so I'd be fine with a range of less than 150 km if I could recharge at home or at work. I don't need sports car like acceleration either, nor a top speed beyond 150 km/h or manual transmission (so get rid of the gearbox cost/weight). Even with the battery, electric should save some space and weight as well as require substantially less maintenance.

- inexpensive
- easy to maintain
- safe
- nice and comfortable interior
- rechargeable at home
- swappable battery
- standardized battery and charging, widespread recharging/battery swap infrastructure (e.g. parking spaces with recharge option)

And with wheel motors you could do fancy things such as driving sideways or turning on the spot.

http://www.zapworld.com/
See the zap-xebra sedan. Its reasonably priced, though uber dorky and pretty useless for anything outside the city (won't go faster than 40).

They do have some other concept cars there that look pretty hot (The Obvio 828e and 012e), plus the lotus thing. Of course the really interesting models are 'not in production' and wanting upfront money to reserve your car, but they do actually have storefronts/dealers here in Austin for the Xebra things, so they're not totally full of poo.

More info on the 'obvio' website: http://www.obvio.ind.br/obviona/home.htm They claim production in end of 08 early 09 for the electic versions, and $49K and $59K. Kinda pricy, quite honestly, and the styling of the Tesla is much nicer.

 

[Xmas]

Russ, I think your links show pretty well why electric cars haven't caught on yet. The big companies are reluctant to take the risk, while the cost of entering the market is so high that startups need upfront money and can't offer reasonably priced cars.
Instead they build butt-ugly, underpowered, uncomfortable three-wheelers – or go into the performance car segment where reasonable prices aren't a requirement.

I dare say that it will stay that way until one of the established car makers goes ahead and proves that electric is a viable alternative, leveraging an existing small car design to keep costs low.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

From what I've read, it's a "mid engined" rear-wheel-drive. Not AWD. I've checked the official website and there's nothing that hints it to be AWD...

Using the Tesla roadster as the only example of an electric car is somewhat of a problem. In any case, the ultimate goal with electric cars is still individually powering each wheel with a separate motor. If you look at things like the Hy-Wire, that's pretty much what they do, and pretty much what everyone would like to do when electric cars are actually feasible.

From a dynamics point of view, separate electric motors at each wheel does affect your unsprung weight, but at the same time, the vehicle as a whole is lighter (especially since things like the transmission and differentials become a wad of silicon) and has a much lower center of gravity.

Even it it were, all wheels powered individually wouldn't be much different than what EVO's are doing today.

Well, several people try to emulate it mechanically, but you end up with loss at every single junction point. The transmission is a point of energy loss, the center differential, the axle differentials, etc. -- every single one of those is a point of loss. With individual power trains at each wheel, you get no mechanical loss per se. Certainly electrical will be there, but it won't be anywhere near the thermodynamic inefficiency of the ICE.

No matter what comes out of the tailpipe you can't escape that the ICE is inefficient. Only about 30% of the energy in the fuel ever reaches the pavement, and that's for a really really good case. For the ones you'd characterize as having more "character", they're generally worse. Is there room to work on this? Sure, but I don't see any alternative engine design ever really happening in any production vehicle at any point.

As an example, before I'd be thinking of getting an electric car, I'd find a way to use bio ethanol fuel (which ironically even increases power).

Ummm... it actually doesn't... not on its own, anyway. Ethanol is a higher octane fuel, so you can tune an engine for greater compression and thereby have more room to increase your net power output. Inherently, the energy of combustion is pretty low, and you have to enrich the mixture to compare, so your fuel consumption rate goes up anyway.

In any case, electric cars are certainly not coming tomorrow. Even if someone perfected the technology today, right now, it would be a good 25 years before it's even possible to bring anything to market and have the infrastructure to support it. And the first 15+ of those 25 years will be political lobbying to get governments of all scales to fund such an infrastructure change. Things like ethanol and biodiesel are very good stopgap solutions for the here and now.

 

[Dresden]

Are you talking fully electric or a hyrbid of gasoline and electricity, much like todays....awful...hybrids.

 

[Xmas]

In any case, electric cars are certainly not coming tomorrow. Even if someone perfected the technology today, right now, it would be a good 25 years before it's even possible to bring anything to market and have the infrastructure to support it. And the first 15+ of those 25 years will be political lobbying to get governments of all scales to fund such an infrastructure change. Things like ethanol and biodiesel are very good stopgap solutions for the here and now.

I don't think it has to take that long. Sure, building the full infrastructure might take 10-15 years, but you can start using electric cars much earlier, at least for commuter cars and locally operating businesses. Of course, someone needs to build decent electric cars first...

A hybrid car with a small diesel generator to recharge anywhere would be another possible stopgap solution.

 

[suryad]

Didnt Tesla just say that the range is going to be now less than 200 miles and the acceleration figures nowhere near that close cause the car is too heavy? I knew it was too good to be true. Give me a Lamborghini LP640 engine anytime. Give me an Enzo engine anytime. Give me that thundering Audi W12 TDI anytime. Heck give me the Veyron W16 quad turbo anytime. Where is the sound? How electric cars could ever match these inefficient internal combustion engines in terms of grin factor I do not know.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

I don't think it has to take that long. Sure, building the full infrastructure might take 10-15 years, but you can start using electric cars much earlier, at least for commuter cars and locally operating businesses. Of course, someone needs to build decent electric cars first...

I was actually being generous when I said 25 years. It takes a good 10 years for ANY major new automotive technology to make it from concept to production vehicle even when there isn't an infrastructure change involved. Granted, that's a matter of new technology, not a new packaging of existing technology, so it kind of excludes a lot of the things that everybody thinks are major advances but they

And when there is an infrastructure change involved, you have to get tax dollars behind it before any real work begins to get it there, and that's going to be a matter of several years of schmoozing politicians and getting the niggling bureaucrats to actually get off their asses so things actually move. That alone is a decade-long process.

Then making things marketable (consumers need to believe that everything is better in every way and no real sacrifices need be made), and making it look like a necessary shift. That's by far the hardest, and it's usually not going to happen until it's really perceived as a big deal by everyone. That's why in some ways, I kind of don't mind the idea of treehuggers getting into fatalist views because the less catastrophic the expectation is, the more catastrophic it really will be (Murphy's Law). In practice, I think it will actually take more like 60 years to get us there.

 

[Frank]

Then again, the technology needed is relatively ancient. The only thing you need to be able to recharge your batteries is any wall outlet. And you can fill up your tank for less than five dollars.

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Then again, the technology needed is relatively ancient. The only thing you need to be able to recharge your batteries is any wall outlet. And you can fill up your tank for less than five dollars.

You're basing your "ancient" assessment on the wrong point of focus. Ability to charge the batteries is a different problem from the batteries themselves -- as far as the technology has advanced, we're probably only a quarter of the way there right now. I'd also add that ability to charge batteries completely in 5 minutes or so requires a pretty massive influx of current -- far more than any home's electrical capacity today, and putting together an infrastructure for that that can support a large number of vehicles on the road is an enormously massive problem. For that matter, the motors themselves are only recently proving viable for said application.

 

[Xmas]

In practice, I think it will actually take more like 60 years to get us there.

Even if by "there" you mean 100% electric cars, I think that's a very pessimistic estimate. Looking back 60 years, the petrol infrastructure was only a small fraction of what it is now. The car industry was way smaller.

With this enormous growth possible in 60 years, if there is enough external pressure you could have massive paradigm shift far quicker than that. And as I said, some people could start using electric today if there were more cars available, without additional infrastructure.

 

[Simon F]

Then again, the technology needed is relatively ancient.

Indeed. I've ridden in an electric car which probably dated from before 1920. (The car, that is, not me riding in it ). I can't recall the make/model details though.

 

[Sxotty]

Not necessarely. Using electric engines aren't exactly waste-free either - they're bound to waste as well, only that the "waste" is shifted to different areas, like battery production etc.

There are also ICEs that use less waste (or practically none) during run-time and still have what I define to be 'character' (though I agree the term character is very subjective). As an example, before I'd be thinking of getting an electric car, I'd find a way to use bio ethanol fuel (which ironically even increases power).

That is wrong. There are no ICEs that have practically no waste. The very best I believe are in the 60% efficiency range, and that doesn't include the fuel production etc...

 

[ShootMyMonkey]

Even if by "there" you mean 100% electric cars, I think that's a very pessimistic estimate. Looking back 60 years, the petrol infrastructure was only a small fraction of what it is now. The car industry was way smaller.

Well, I'm a pessimist by nature. If you look at my sig, I think that's plainly obvious.

Nonetheless, part of the reason for the uptake of the ICE was that it was attractive and little "revolutions" like cheap production lines came right at the right time, and you were also building on the basis of a super-cheap fuel because gasoline had previously been nothing more than a by-product of kerosene production. Now it is the product.

Additionally, you can't really prove to everybody like you could with the car vs. the horse that the electric car is wholly superior to the ICE. Even in this very thread, you had a number of people posting "it doesn't sound like a throaty V8, therefore it is utterly inferior, lifeless, sterile, and will only serve to bleach the souls of human beings forever, QED."

if there is enough external pressure you could have massive paradigm shift far quicker than that.

Yeah, that's the main problem, and that pressure is what I think won't exist for at least 30 more years. In general, I think it will take longer than necessary to get there (i.e. it can only happen after it's too late to make a difference).

That is wrong. There are no ICEs that have practically no waste. The very best I believe are in the 60% efficiency range, and that doesn't include the fuel production etc...

The way his post was written, I think his definition of "no waste" is "non-polluting" or "carbon-neutral," in which case, he's talking more about alternative fuels. The average driver will never in a trillion years give a damn about thermodynamic efficiency -- they only care about the end result.

BTW, when you speak of 60% efficiency, what are you referring to? Turbines are about the only thing that comes to mind in that range. Regular old Otto cycle piston engines in cars, I can only picture being in the 20-25% range.

 

[Phil]

That is wrong. There are no ICEs that have practically no waste. The very best I believe are in the 60% efficiency range, and that doesn't include the fuel production etc...

I was refering to Biofuel (Kompogas).