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Stormrider wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

The advantage of battery power is that the electricity can be produced from any source, and the batteries can be recycled when they die.

Hate to burst your bubble, but batteries can only be recharged so many times before the metal (usually lithium) is permanently spent. Recycling the metal is fruitless at that point since its been changed molecularly, thus making a very useful paperweight.

...

That's not how atoms work.

Hmmm... The examples you chose for standardisation are not very relavant to the battery dilema. Infact most the parts you chose are replaceable, moderately easily, by the car owner themselves and by an independant garage, the standardistion of these parts is to ensure a measure of autonomy in the product, it is not profitable to constantly recall cars or make bespoke spares. There is no profit for the car company in fostering a bad reputatation for delivering spares. Plus the profit comes from the tyre not the mounting, the carbon vanadium triple phallus weave tyres etc, not the lug nutz.

They have ALOT of electro chemical cell ideas to try out, it will take a WHILE to develop it. Plus Petrol never had the goal of being an infinite resource hence why unleaded is as far as the development went but rechargable batteries cells do, there is ALOT of development still to go before we can think about standardisation. And who knows, if they can find a non -energy deficit way of storing hydrogen we will be driving hydro cars.

Stormrider wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

The advantage of battery power is that the electricity can be produced from any source, and the batteries can be recycled when they die.

Hate to burst your bubble, but batteries can only be recharged so many times before the metal (usually lithium) is permanently spent. Recycling the metal is fruitless at that point since its been changed molecularly, thus making a very useful paperweight.

Thats not how batteries work, the lithium metal is inherent to the process of electron transfer (very simplistically), it's destruction is not where the energy comes from. Thats the chemicals. The metal is highly reactive, but it's reusable if you can separate it from the... crap. That they put in LiOns.

So long as the the batteries were consistent shapes and voltages, I don't think there'd be a problem with new designs leaving them incompatible with existing cars.

The problem I see is if the batteries are made by different companies, there's going to be a quality difference, or one of cost, so someone could drive in with cheap, cruddy batteries in the car, only to have them replaced by top end, brand new ones, or vice versa, meaning either a lot of economic confusion, monopolies on who gets to manufacture them, or else a sort of "you don't own the batteries, you're just (effectively) renting them" sort of situation.

That's my point. You'll just rent batteries, which no doubt will be made by several companies according to legal standards.

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

The price would certainly have to come down for it to be viable, but I suppose it's sound in theory, if we don't get faster charging batteries/a workaround to the slow charge time sorted out before then.

Well, even if you get the price down to around 2000$ (about where I would consider the idea to be practical , on the grounds that its what I payed for my car), its still a major theft problem.

You'd have to get the things cheap enough that either the stations can afford insurance that will replace them, or the temptation to steal them is low enough that you don't need 4 well payed armed security guards to watch the station.

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

So? Why is that a challenge?

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

They don't even cost that much now except maybe the tesla roadster, but that car is two hundred grand anyway. The leafs battery doesn't make up 120% of it's total cost.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

They don't even cost that much now except maybe the tesla roadster, but that car is two hundred grand anyway. The leafs battery doesn't make up 120% of it's total cost.

The Roadster is just over $100K, and doesn't the Leaf also have something like a fifth of the range?

So what? The point of changing batteries is to be able to exceed the range without stopping to charge.

Or we just ignore the hippies and their quest for green cars and keep driving our 60's and 70's muscle cars that don't give a rats ass about fuel economy and just sound and look good?

Make me a car that looks and sounds as good as a '65 Mustang GTO and is "green" and I'll consider buying it.

Fateweaver wrote:Or we just ignore the hippies and their quest for green cars and keep driving our 60's and 70's muscle cars that don't give a rats ass about fuel economy and just sound and look good?

Make me a car that looks and sounds as good as a '65 Mustang GTO and is "green" and I'll consider buying it.

Can you even afford a '65 Mustang GTO?

filbert wrote:Hardly surprising really. The electric car market is an absolute joke and its really only because of pressure from the eco-nuts that these things ever made it to market. Under normal circumstances, any right thinking CEO would laugh the idea out of the office.

Its all very well wanting to cut emissions and carbon footprints but where is the sense in swapping petrol emissions for power plant emissions due to having to charge the damn things? And for the pedants, yes obviously the emissions total is reduced but still, its woolly thinking all the same.

Secondly, the tech just doesn't cut it. If I had a daily commute of 60 miles or so, why would I swap my high MPG diesel car for an electric car that I have to stop and charge up halfway for eight hours because it doesn't have the range?

An unfair assassment it is only significantly less green if you have fossil fuel based power stations. Electric cars would give a genuine environmental dividend in places with green and near free energy like Switzerland with so many opportunities for hydroelectric power.

The second thing to consider are the tax breaks for electric vehicles.

Third the technology is becoming less and less of a joke, it just hasn't caught on with the public yet. Storage and capacity has increased, costs have dropped and efficiency is going up. Give it time. This tech hasn't matured yet.

Last and most practically in the short term you ought to look at hybrids. Hybrids help enormously by being able to shunt to lectric power in heavy or slow moving traffic for a great increase in efficiency, IC engines are horribly inefficient in a stop-start role, as increasing congestion and it is anything but 'woolly thinking' to look at the environmental practicalities of a hybrid in urban traffic. Sure with fossil fuel based power stations and hybrds/electric cars you get pollution either way, but its a matter of where it is distributed, in a remote power station or on suburban streets.

Legislators look favourably at hybrids for a number of well sounded reasons, power on the open road with genuine sensible practicality in urban traffic. Got a hybrid, get a tax break, in London hybrids and electric cars are exempt from congestion charge. Other similar scheme also encourage electric cars.

I would definitely get a hybrid if I could afford one, most are kit cars though. Electric, I am not so sure, Nice idea but not practical for long distances, it would have to be a second car. But by no means is either a joke.

I don't think electric will catch on very soon, as internal combustion engines just get better and better:

To prove a point, John and Helen Taylor have just completed an around Australia road trip and averaged a record breaking 3.13L/100km or 90.75mpg. This figure gives the Peugeot 308 HDi a theoretical range of approximately 2000km! These figures also accounted for real world driving and were not conducted in a controlled laboratory environment.

Read more: http://www.worldcarfans.com/10802272097/peugeot-308-hdi-sets-two-fuel-economy-guinness-world-records-au#ixzz1FryylLER

Pulse detonation engines are even better than combustion engines and are in development at the moment so I doubt electric cars will EVER catch on....

ShumaGorath wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:Or we just ignore the hippies and their quest for green cars and keep driving our 60's and 70's muscle cars that don't give a rats ass about fuel economy and just sound and look good?

Make me a car that looks and sounds as good as a '65 Mustang GTO and is "green" and I'll consider buying it.

Can you even afford a '65 Mustang GTO?

Not me personally but given the choice between a '65 GTO or a 2011 Hybrid I'll take the GTO.

I'm happy with my Nova SS.

Fateweaver wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:Or we just ignore the hippies and their quest for green cars and keep driving our 60's and 70's muscle cars that don't give a rats ass about fuel economy and just sound and look good?

Make me a car that looks and sounds as good as a '65 Mustang GTO and is "green" and I'll consider buying it.

Can you even afford a '65 Mustang GTO?

Not me personally but given the choice between a '65 GTO or a 2011 Hybrid I'll take the GTO.

I'm happy with my Nova SS.

So this isn't a choice you actually get to make, and yet you're basing your opinion of other peoples tastes and the general direction of research on a hypothetical comparison between several cars that you can not have on the premise that high value gas guzzling 'merican classic cars are inherently going to be better then electrics because you say so. Would it help if they just dropped the engine out of a Charger and put an electric motor in there? It's got the truck space for the batteries and the motors themselves are actually quite small for the amount of performance they put out. It would still steer like a boat though.

Is there a specific reason you hate the idea of electric cars (vehicles with theoretically much higher weight performance, vastly superior torque, far less maintenance needed, and much longer lasting)? Is it just because it's a "hippy thing"? I mean, cars can look like whatever the designers want, it's not like a battery pack doesn't fit in a muscle car frame.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

So? Why is that a challenge?

Because they're extremely expensive portable things that can be stolen. It's a security thing.

Kilkrazy wrote:So what? The point of changing batteries is to be able to exceed the range without stopping to charge.

Stopping to refuel every 40 miles? Seems somewhat impractical.

Because they're extremely expensive portable things that can be stolen. It's a security thing.

So's a car. People still rent those. Presumably it would function off of some sort of credit or ID based system with inbuilt securities and liabilities. That said it's an unrealistic concept that would require massive infrastructural investment on the order of total battery standardization, regulation, and the development and deployment of tens of thousands of charge stations all over the country (hundreds of thousands for the world). Its much more realistic to just plan for the development of fast charging batteries, something that many companies are working on as I write this. Building an infrastructure around a battery formats not the best idea in the first place, they tend to change too often for it to be practical. The battery will become practical before ownership of the car does, infrastructural development will follow proven technologies, not be created short term to deal with their inefficiencies. The investment simply wouldn't be there to implement a flawed technology nationally when easier alternatives exist.

Stopping to refuel every 40 miles? Seems somewhat impractical.

Given that battery storage has been on an accelerating upward curve for the last decade it's unlikely that will be the case for long. Hell, it's not even the case now.





Try to utilize more hyperbole, it will mask your lack of interface with the fields you're discussing.

Orlanth wrote:Got a hybrid, get a tax break, in London hybrids and electric cars are exempt from congestion charge. Other similar scheme also encourage electric cars.

The only problem with that is that as soon as most people have switched over, tax breaks stop and everyone goes back to paying again...

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:So what? The point of changing batteries is to be able to exceed the range without stopping to charge.

Stopping to refuel every 40 miles? Seems somewhat impractical.

It's a lot more practical than stopping after 40 miles and staying the night.

Orlanth wrote:
An unfair assassment it is only significantly less green if you have fossil fuel based power stations. Electric cars would give a genuine environmental dividend in places with green and near free energy like Switzerland with so many opportunities for hydroelectric power.

The second thing to consider are the tax breaks for electric vehicles.

Third the technology is becoming less and less of a joke, it just hasn't caught on with the public yet. Storage and capacity has increased, costs have dropped and efficiency is going up. Give it time. This tech hasn't matured yet.

Last and most practically in the short term you ought to look at hybrids. Hybrids help enormously by being able to shunt to lectric power in heavy or slow moving traffic for a great increase in efficiency, IC engines are horribly inefficient in a stop-start role, as increasing congestion and it is anything but 'woolly thinking' to look at the environmental practicalities of a hybrid in urban traffic. Sure with fossil fuel based power stations and hybrds/electric cars you get pollution either way, but its a matter of where it is distributed, in a remote power station or on suburban streets.

Legislators look favourably at hybrids for a number of well sounded reasons, power on the open road with genuine sensible practicality in urban traffic. Got a hybrid, get a tax break, in London hybrids and electric cars are exempt from congestion charge. Other similar scheme also encourage electric cars.

I would definitely get a hybrid if I could afford one, most are kit cars though. Electric, I am not so sure, Nice idea but not practical for long distances, it would have to be a second car. But by no means is either a joke.

Actually, there is quite a heated debate over the Prius' green credentials. For example, a recent What Car? study found that a VW blue motion Polo diesel produces less carbon dioxide per kilometre than a Prius. Not only that, but there are serious environmental concerns and impacts from the mining that needs to take place to produce the nickel needed for the batteries. Another study claims that the average Prius owner needs to drive ~30,000 miles just to break even with the eco impact of producing the thing. So I wouldn't be touting its green credentials just yet. Like a lot of these things, its just a sop for people to think they are doing something positive and feel a little better about themselves when really its doing bugger all. If one were really concerned about saving the environment, one would bike everywhere, simple as that.

Its all well and good saying that electric cars are great when power is free but how many countries are at that state or anywhere near that situation yet? How many countries are heavily reliant and invested in solar and hydroelectric power? I know the UK government has given the green light to mass wind farms but that won't take shape for a decade or more and will still only be a drop in the ocean to fulfilling the UKs power demands. The bald facts are that very few countries are in a position to withdraw dependency on coal, gas and nuclear power.

I expect that 100 years ago there were people saying exactly that sort of thing about those demmed newfangled horseless carriages.

Well even they had emissions of a sort....

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

There would be few change stations methinks, and the cost would be high.

At the moment we spend a lot of money on the logistics of petrol stations.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

So? Why is that a challenge?

The average gas station sells ~600 gallons per day. At an average of 25 miles per gallon, that's 15,000 miles the gas station is 'selling' every day. If we assume 8 hour charge cycle and a regular rollover, at 40 miles/charge, that means the average gas station would have to have 125 batteries in stock all the time, just to keep up with demand.

At $30,000 per part, that's $3.75 million in inventory sitting around every day, which is an incredible startup cost for what is essentially a small business.

Of course, that's assuming the gas station turns over it's inventory every 8 hours, and that they see an average amount of business daily. More likely, they'll have to (at least) double their inventory to account for low sales at night and on the weekdays. But taking into account the economy of scale, each service station would still have to have $3-4 million in inventory sitting around on a daily basis. From what I've been able to find, the average gas tank at a station is no more than 10,000 gallons ($40,000 in inventory).

This doesn't even take into account battery life, which would be a significant issue at these 'gas' stations.

biccat wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Requia wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There is a simple solution to the battery problem.

Don't charge the battery, change the battery.

When you pull into the equivalent of a petrol station, there'll be a machine to replace the battery with a fresh one, and put the old one on charge. You'll pay for the difference in charge.

You'll be able to "fill up" just as fast as with a petrol pump.

There's the slight issue that you're changing out a $30000 (or more) part at said change station.

So? Why is that a challenge?

The average gas station sells ~600 gallons per day. At an average of 25 miles per gallon, that's 15,000 miles the gas station is 'selling' every day. If we assume 8 hour charge cycle and a regular rollover, at 40 miles/charge, that means the average gas station would have to have 125 batteries in stock all the time, just to keep up with demand.

At $30,000 per part, that's $3.75 million in inventory sitting around every day, which is an incredible startup cost for what is essentially a small business.

Of course, that's assuming the gas station turns over it's inventory every 8 hours, and that they see an average amount of business daily. More likely, they'll have to (at least) double their inventory to account for low sales at night and on the weekdays. But taking into account the economy of scale, each service station would still have to have $3-4 million in inventory sitting around on a daily basis. From what I've been able to find, the average gas tank at a station is no more than 10,000 gallons ($40,000 in inventory).

This doesn't even take into account battery life, which would be a significant issue at these 'gas' stations.

Battery swaps are a strawman arguement, don't get suckered into it, don't get suckered into trying to figure out a way for it to work, because battery swaps are a complete non option due to the is a huge difference in value between batteries depending onits conditions. There are however 2 very viable options.

Option #1 extended range electric vehicles aka series hybrid aka electric car with a fossel fuel powered electric generator.

Option #2 live with the range of an electric vehicle. As a 2nd car in a 2 car household being used to drive to and from work and around town the range of an electric vehicle is no problem. If option #2 isn't an option for your lifestyle option #1 still is an option.