A practical electric car, and the end of Islamic terrorism

[Kuroko]

The only problem with this is that, eventually other batteries would come into the market, this will create a little bit of a problem when involving battery pack swapping, for instance I know for fact that one brand will be better then another, it's innevitable that one brand tries to get one up over another.

Even if one doesn't try, the fact one might use better matterials or better disign is also plausible. I think people will then become a little concerned over the quality of the battery they are recieving, not to mention batteries do have a deterioration rate and after so many charges they do tend to die BUT!

It is posible to.. quick charge a battery, my only concern is that these batteries are already designed to be quick charge, for instance, I have a number of batteries here which have the same battery life as normal rechargable batteries, but they only take 15 minutes to fully charge the name brand is Varta (for the charger and batteries).

A question would be how do you get that much charge into the batteries to quick charge them, well I'm not sure you need it but you can always hook up to multiple wall sockets.

Any way, the ability to quick charge in such a short time would be pretty much like filling up at a petrol station (time yourself next time you go to one, you'll find you spend a little more then the 60 secconds you think you do).

[5010]

@Captain Chaos:

According to the way I presented it, the 499th cycle blues would be sung by the station, not the driver. The station bills the consumer by the difference in charge between the swapped packs. The station has to provide a good replacement, and the driver can verify by running a test before driving away. Therefore the station should mark up enough profit to handle dead cell replacement.

One problem with this is a consumer who charges the pack at home 499 times, then goes to the station. The station hasn't been able to get profit from those charges. The solution to this is for the pack's internal memory to keep info on charging history so the station can query it and increase the dead cell mark-up or something.

@Fonceai:

I agree, the pack should be at least as well protected from collisions as current engines. I bet there is a way to engineer this while keeping them swappable. How about the same location an engine normally goes? Maybe the mounts slide and lock so that the locking part doesn't bear any load. The reason an engine is hard to swap is because there are so many systems connected directly to it (especially the drive train). Battery pack just needs 1 cable plugged in. Connections to everything can be routed in a box on the other end of the cable.

@Kuroko:

That is a serious problem. 2 brands, both passing the standard but one goes above and beyond the standard. If I pay more for the better brand, I don't want to go to a station and swap it for the mediocre brand. Also how can the bill be for the difference in charge if brand X requires 100 kW to charge and brand Y requires 200 kW to charge to the same voltage? I didn't consider that.

What if all packs were owned by a non-profit organization that rented them to car owners and service stations? Brand vendors could negotiate selling packs or replacement cells to the organization. Because of recharge limits, the organization would be able to phase out old-tech cells for new-tech cells. Since neither the consumer not station owns the pack, their only concern is "give me one that takes me at least X miles". I'm sure there is more to it than this, but it's an idea.

As for billing based on difference in charge, I think it would be better to bill based on difference in Watts needed to fully charge the pack brought in. There should be a way to compute this based on the charge of each cell and the model of each cell. The car should be able to query the pack for recharge information so that the driver doesn't get the shaft from a disreputable station.

[Captain Chaos]

I think the billing should be based on the amount of miles you will get out of the recharged battery. This will vary between batteries, based on how many cycles it has left. This will even out the problem with purchasing a recharged older battery - you are simply purchasing a certain number of miles.

[Kuroko]

There is one major problem with this and that is theft.

Think about it, batteries worth up to X amount made easily interchangable and readily available.
Aside from conventional methods of theft (as in actually stealing the battery from vehicles) one could trick or alter a batter to show that it has more charges left in it then it does, in general I would not trust other batteries from people to begin with. bassically think of it like changing your underwear for a cleaner pair of some one elses underwear, you would have different sizes, matterials and different levels of standards between them. I am not saying interchangable batteries is a bad idea, indeed it is a good one, perhaps there could be a seccond battery which is the interchangable one, there is one in the vehicle which remains in the vehicle and another which is purchasable by service stations, perhaps kept strict by way of the road and traffic authoritives of that state, for instance in mine VicRoads would be responsible for the standard of batteries being traded by service stations, much like the EPA regulates the standards of gas canisters for gas barbiques and the sorts here in Australia.

This way I would be using thier batteries which are thiers to begin with, which might only be chargable by them by way of connection, so as to minimalize theft from service stations of this battery sort, it is regulated outside of the stations standards so I would have to feel less stressed over getting a battery not up to the standard of powering my car.

[Osborn F Enready]

I love the debate, love the ideas, but don't have a lot to contribute to it.

[Fonceai]

Ultimately the idea of swapping out batteries is to accomodate Americans who want to drive long distances. These are truly commuter or short-distance vehicles. The vehicles are probably better off without the swapping capability.

[Captain Chaos]

I disagree. Why not have more options? People will want the option to drive long distances, and will be willing to pay for it - so why not meet the demand?

[Fonceai]

Consider that in smaller areas of Europe, they don't drive cars that much.

Walking is the preferred method of getting around your local town.

A car is only used to go on long distance drives. In Europe, long distance drives are usually on one tank of gas, maybe two.

Similarly, these electric cars would be ideal for short distance driving, commutes to work, weekend trips, etc. Use the gas-powered cars for the long distance stuff. Because let's face it, internal combustion engines are still very efficient and won't be phased out for a long time.

[Captain Chaos]

These electric cars are more efficient than gas-powered cars, quieter, produce zero emissions. Why not use them for long distance, save yourself some money, and enjoy the trip more?

[Fonceai]

Because when you drain the battery, you need 3.5 hours to recharge it.

And considering the issues of theft and actual safety, putting the batteries in an easily accessible location might be a bad idea.

Trust me, I'm all for the possibilities. I'm just worried that in an effort to Americanize the cars, they will lose the advantages for which they were designed.

[Captain Chaos]

Bah!

Details. They can all be worked out. The battery can require the key to get to.



Personally, I think it wont be necessary. By the time we are ready to start creating an infrastructure for switching batteries, the recharge time will be down to 15 minutes. That is my prediction. If that is not possible, switching can be made to work.

[Fonceai]

Agreed. The speed of charging is based on the battery material and safety. Those can be "fudged"

Also, if these cars have an alternator, they self-charge.

It just occurred to me to think of that.

The hybrid cars all use gas to start the car, but after so many miles, the battery takes over and the car runs itself.

So if the effiency of the alternator is improved, the batter will only be needed to start the car and otherwise it will constantly run itself. Slap a solar panel or two on it to charge it while parked, and you'd only have to change the battery for maintenance, and not for "refueling".

[tivodan1116]

Quote by: Kuroko o.0 I'm bound by copy right laws and a contract which says I can't talk about the alternative fuel method I REALLY want to. but bassically the conversion of normal combustion engines is in order to accomodate an already well based fuel easily obtained.. and shazam! I'm off again!

Great. Let me guess... Tesla coils? Perpetual motion machine? Unless you can tell us more, spare us, don't spam us.

Quote by: Sonart I listened to an interview with the CEO of Teslamotors on NPR last night, and the Tesla Roadster is coming out as a production model, for around $80,000, about the same as a hi-end Porsche. He explained his plan thusly... because the common view of an electric car has traditionally been that of a stodgy putt-putt, he decided to come out first with a glamorous, sexy, hi-end, hi-performance sports car that would get hi-profile buzz. Orders are coming in already from green-leaning movies stars, etc.

I can see that... Sort of the "anti-Hummer" vehicle. I bet the Tom Hanks Hollywood types who are driving their Toyota Prius' around now will snap up a vehicle that both is "green" concious AND allows them to show off their wealth.
Certainly not wide production, but limited profitable production will give the company a great combination of profitability and marketability/mass media attention that will help them raise money through venture capital etc. to improve and broaden the product's appeal. If they can really do it for that price and that performance, it might work.

The release of the Roadster, if all goes well, will be followed by the release of a Tesla 4-door family sedan, for around $40,000.

I have my doubts about this one. A family sedan might work for some families, but not for mine. My relatives live 300 miles in one direction, and my wife's folks are 300 miles in another. A lot of people take road trips our length, as 300 miles is an entirely drivable distance in about half a day.
The more likely scenario is this: An upper class family buys a traditional large sedan, SUV, or van for a family car and long trips. Then, they buy a Tesla as the commuter car/play car. If I ever got into a high enough income bracket, it would work for my family - my wife drives the big family car, and my car is used about 99% of the time to drive just me to work and school.

As far as reducing our dependance on oil, or running out, there is enough oil in the tar sands of Canada to fuel our entire oil consumption rates, at a profitable price of about $50 per barrel currently, for over a century. Running out of oil is not happening. If we were able to eliminate much of our passenger car usage, and cut our overall consumption by about half, we could just buy this oil from Canada and let the people in the Middle East nuke each other since we'd have no more "interests" in the area.

Quote by: Milton Bradley I'm not a big fan of battery technology as a solution to the oil crisis. Particulaly when you realize what they're burning to produce the electricity you will ultimately be using to supplement your oil consumption.

I'm not either, but to be intellectually honest you have to admit that power plants churning out electricity to power millions of homes are far more efficient users of natural resources than what are basically individual power plants transporting themselves and one or two human passengers to 7-11 for a Big Gulp.

Quote by: Fonceai Electric cars are intended as commuter vehicles, not vacation vehicles. Even the high fuel efficiency SMART cars, European specs, have a max speed of 60 mph. They aren't meant for long hauls. European countries use trains to travel longer distances. Americans, however, insist on the ability to drive across the country. These cars will not satisfy Americans.

Well, Tesla Motors can have a global market, then. Europeans using less oil is good for America, too...
And I agree with you - Americans enjoy the personal freedoms that come with personal, easily refuelable, basically unlimited range vehicles. It's a cultural difference that may stem from the fact that Europeans grow up identifying themselves as "Germans" or "French", small nations barely the size of many of the United states. We grow up identifying with a country that is bigger than the entire continent of Europe. We think bigger and more spread out.

Quote by: gallo p.s. - yes, I know that the Viper is a tweeked Mitsubishi 3000GT. But there was still a "concept car" that was public knowledge before production.

Incidental to the debate, but what?????? The Viper is most certainly NOT a "tweeked" 3000GT... the two cars are built on completely different platforms and are in no way related. I think you are confusing the Viper with the Dodge Stealth.

Quote by: Osborn Americas dependence on oil was built, by corporations and the dependency on oil was foisted by politicians, working for corporations under the table, via lobbyists and incentives

Give us a break with your conspiracy theories. America's dependence on oil was built by CONSUMERS... No one forced us to give up our horse-and-buggies.

Quote by: Kuroko I am telling every one here right now, the need for oil is void, mute. There isn't any. Oil is control. I am NOT saying this without fact or truth, a nine volt battery is capable of converting five letres of water into oxygen and hydrogen and it should still have charge left in it, a solar pannel on the roof of a house would be sufficiant to seperate the two atoms to be burned in a generator for the real power for a house. Every thing you see arround you could be powered litterally from water.. and the funny thing, the hillarious thing? not even from fresh water, salinated water would be ideal, ocean water because salination has made the water ion rich and for the simplest forms of electrolisis to occure all you need is a anode and cathode and an ion rich solution of water, be it salt, sulfiric acid etc.

Aside from your vast oversimplification - Hydrolysis is slow, expensive, and not capable of producing hydrogen quickly enough to power a car. I know you THINK it's the answer, but it certainly isn't. At least not with current techniques.

Technology has been withheld some where, well before I was born, this is easy technology, simple, so simple it isn't funny, and so available it could possibly destroy the very fabric of society.

Technology has not been withheld. Companies are in business to make money. If they thought an idea like hydrolysis could make money, they'd do it. You think General Motors lost $3 billion last year and yet they have products in hiding that could make them money? Yeah, right.

There is a literal ability to turn each and every combustion car into water powered vehicles through the means of burning the hydrogen produced through electrolisis. I know this from personal experience, governments (Australia in this case) is not interested in funding a project to create a definite converter for normal cars. It would be impossible to put a levy or tax on people using rain water for fuel.

Why should government invest in a private industry? If hydrolysis is so cheap and easy as you say it is, why haven't private investors stepped up? (Hint: It's neither easy nor cheap, and wouldn't make money)

besides the point they already have it --_-- 1964 an oil company bought a patent on a water powered vehicle and that was the last it was ever heard of.

Conspiracy theorist crap. Why don't you just say Tesla built a car that was powered by free energy that he kept in a box in the glove compartment? :rolleyes:
Your next few posts are spam, bullshit and off-topic...

I will address the whole battery swapping thing in my next post... this one is already unmanagable.

[5010]

@Captain Chaos:
Technical problems with your suggestion: 1) miles depends on many factors unrelated to the battery (wind, load, motor efficiency, wheel/road conditions) and 2) I assume they aren't going to use all of the charge. There's always a little gas in my tank when I get to the station.

But your basic point is brilliant. Don't bill based on the difference in charge (voltage) but the difference in kWh power. It still evens out the problem with swapping high power battery with low power one. Compare with swapping a large gas tank with a smaller tank and only paying for the difference in gas between tanks (neither of which you actually own but are rented from some non-profit org).

@Kuroko
Very good points.

Theft: yes absolutely a valid concern. Tires also are very quick and easy to steal, but people who have the more expensive tires and hubs can get locking ones. This reduces risk of theft, but we are still vulnerable no matter what, so we have insurance policies for that. Similarly, make sure the pack's compartment is locked and get theft insurance.

Trust: We have the same situation with gasoline. I trust the pump to calculate it accurately. What if it says I bought 15 gallons/liters/whatever but it really gave me 14.5? I agree with your solution and it is similar to what we have for gas here in the states. To help me in my trust, a gov't bureau sends agents randomly or after a complaint to verify pumps. Something like that would be necessary in a battery swap system.

As for the "used underwear", there are people who will want to only buy new packs and charge 'em themselves. But a lot of us don't have any problem trading in a broken alternator for a refurbished one and getting money back for the core deposit. It's kinda like that but taken to everyday life. And I think the idea of owning one and having a slot for a smaller booster pack is cool too.

@Fonceal:
True, one is less hampered with designing a vehicle if they don't have to follow a standard battery pack, and maybe such cars would continue to have a market. As for long distance, actually most Americans don't drive long distances every day, but we do like to travel once in a while to visit distance relatives or go on vacation, and maybe some of us can't afford both a short range and long range car. So I think there would be a market for it.

@Captain Chaos:
True on efficiency/emission of electric long distence. There was an even better thing mentioned earlier in the thread. I think a personal electric rail system would be even more efficient than cars that have to lug the battery around. Big problem with that, though, is we need something that can go everywhere that roads are currently made for.

15 min recharge sounds great, but what if a lot of people are plugging in during peak usage and drawing enough power to move it 200+ miles? The nice thing about swapping is that stations could put off charging till off-peak time (if they have enough spare packs). I know that doesn't seem extremely likely, but it's possible.

@tivodan1116:
Standing by for your opinion...

[Captain Chaos]

Quote by: 5010 Technical problems with your suggestion: 1) miles depends on many factors unrelated to the battery (wind, load, motor efficiency, wheel/road conditions) and 2) I assume they aren't going to use all of the charge. There's always a little gas in my tank when I get to the station. But your basic point is brilliant. Don't bill based on the difference in charge (voltage) but the difference in kWh power. It still evens out the problem with swapping high power battery with low power one. Compare with swapping a large gas tank with a smaller tank and only paying for the difference in gas between

Kilowatt hours - that is it. That is the way to do it! Very nice.

[Samildanach]

In most places a lot pf people dont travel 250 miles in a day. I still think the alternator chargingcombined with regenerative breaking and solar panels integrated intothe body to charge while stationary is the way to go. Work on making the car efficently self charging rather than creating a huge infrastructure necessary to power it. For example at night you maybe could have miniwind generators you could attach to the roof. or some kind of thermodifferential power supply which extracts heat fromthe atmosphere and turns it into electricity. what happened to those paint/spray on solar panels we all heard about a while back? I think if you concentrate on upping solar efficency and battery storage capacity, soon you would end up with cars independent of external power sources. ie What happens when you can get 1000 miles out of a charge and solar is 90 percent efficent. Thats only a small extrapolation away. Give it maybe 20 years. Your cells phones and laptops are going to be pretty much self charging within two years time, no rechargers needed. Its the next big thing, self powering devices. Cars will just take a bit longer but the technology is coming.

[Captain Chaos]

The alternator cannot charge the battery - it is being run by the battery to begin with.

Teslamotors uses regenerative braking now.

Solar panels on the car won't do it. Solar panels on your house might - and they are planning on offering that as an option. Solar panels are just not very efficient right now. If they ever reach 90% efficiency, our energy woes will have been solved for good!

[Fonceai]

The alternator is nothing but an electromagnet that rotates as the engine rotates.

This is why, when your battery dies, they only need to give your car a jump and leave it running.

If you have a bad alternator, you battery doesn't charge.

So an alternator could charge the battery.

[Captain Chaos]

Quote by: Fonceai So an alternator could charge the battery.

bah!
- The battery is turning the motor
- The motor would then turn the alternator
- The alternator would then produce electricity
- That electricity would then be used to charge the battery


This is just a complex way of using the battery to charge itself, which would be a waste of power. You cannot exceed 100% efficiency. Better not to use that extra power to begin with, than to use it to try to get the battery to charge itself. Attaching an alternator to the motor increases the burden to the motor, thus increasing the power drain on the battery. This extra power drain will always exceed the amount of power you could generate from the alternator. The laws of physics simply do not allow you to exceed 100% efficiency.

[Fonceai]

100% efficiency?

No.

But there two things to remember about the alternator...

1) You are not preserving, in the physics sense, the same amount of energy through the system.

And this is important, so I want to make sure I say it correctly:

Depending on the quality of materials and construction of the alternator, you can create a substantial amount of electrical energy from very little kinetic energy.

2) The alternator doesn't necessarily need to completely recharge the battery. It could simply prolong the life of the battery.

I'll have to find time to research it, but I think it's possible for an battery-motor-alternator combination to forever power itself. It's not perpetual, and rules of efficiency don't apply because of energy conversion methods. I'll look into it.