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Hardware

Electric Car Drag Racing 181

Posted by emmett from the 1.21-gigawatts dept.
rumba writes, "The National Electric Drag Racing Association (NEDRA) exists to increase public awareness of electric vehicle (EV) performance and to encourage through competition, advances in electric vehicle technology. This organization's first big event of the year is coming up next weekend. Anybody in the Phoenix Area going to this? There's no slots on these babies. Still, I'd hate to see the utility bill."
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Electric Car Drag Racing More

Electric Car Drag Racing

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  • Re:Amazing performance (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I can explain how they get such amazing performance with one word: TORQUE

    An electric motor produces maximum torque at ZERO RPM. That allows for some pretty interesting gearing. In fact, the Current Eliminator was only recently fitted with a suitable multi-speed transmission. Previous attempts at using a multi-speed tranmission were met with failure as the Eliminator would simply destroy them with the massive torque from it's twin GE motors.

    That is why rail locomotives that pull 500 ton trains use electric for the motive power. Torque.

    Also, I would like to say that, as an automotive engineer (well, OK, a sysadmin for a bunch of automotive engineers), I'm most intriqued not by the environmental aspects, but by the mechanical superiority of electric vehicles. How many moving parts in a internal combustion powertrain? How many moving parts in an electric powertrain? (Don't forget that the high torque allows fewer gears in the transmission too.)

    For a look at a REAL interesting electric car, head on over to AC Propulsion [acpropulsion.com] and have a look at the TZero. 200KWs of power. Zero to sixty in just over four seconds.

    They have a few quicktimes there of the TZero beating a Ferrari and Corvette in 1/8 mile drags. (Admittedly, both the Ferrari and the 'Vette would beat the TZero in a 1/4 mile drag, because the TZero's single-speed transmission limits its top speed to about 90 MPH. So it's beating a Ferrari without even leaving first gear. :) It's quite humorous to listen to the Ferrari revving and straining through four gears while the TZero silently whips its ass.

    -EV Advocate

  • Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmmm.. Guess you failed chemistry.

    Burning Hydrogen will only give water.

    ( 2H2 + O2 => H2O )

    (The O2 comes from the air).

    The only CO2 you could possibly get would come from combustion of the oil lining on the cylinder walls - and this is an absolutely tiny amount
    (possibly not even measurable except for an old smoker). There is no other carbon present to make CO2.

    The nitrous oxides you mention in the air intake are tiny - just the few ppm in the air coming in.
    One problem with burning hyrodegn in an internal combustion engine is that the burn temperature is higher which causes a higher (but still pretty small) amount of NO2 in the *exhaust* gases. (the nitrogen comes from the air: 80% N2, 20% O2).
    However this is readily cleaned up with a catalytic converter, just as for petrol engines.

    P.S. Still think we should get rid of AC posting ?
  • I know, the coolest thing about that car is the engine. So much better then shitty ones that use pistons and waste so much momentum. People brag about the big 5.0's but the little 1.57 liter wankel could toast them all.
  • I guess you drive down the street attracting women with your uncovered penis?
  • Burn coal? Why not extract the binding energy of U-235?
  • .. an RX7 without a wankel engine!
    What is the world coming to?
  • You lucky bastard!!!!
  • Wouldn't zero friction mean zero traction? Perhaps you meant resistance or somesuch?
  • Wired Magazine had a great article about these cars. Their performance often outpaces gas-powered dragsters and they don't make noise.

    Street cars, yes. NHRA dragsters, um no. Look at these [nhra.com] results. Top Fuel dragsters are faster than "jet cars" in the 1/4 mile. They burn 7 gallons of fuel in less than 4 seconds and have speeds of over 200+MPH at the finish line.

    Don't get me wrong, electric toy dragsters sound like fun, but they are not THAT fast.
  • Orbital engines have been widely discredited. Why? Because the surface area of the combustion chamber is too large. This causes very inefficient combustion, with severe pollution and fuel consumption problems.

    The Wankel engine looked like a great idea, but it didn't pan out.
  • has anyone heard of powerball [powerball.net]
  • That's absolutely right. Everyone out there driving a SUV thinking you're a badass, pay attention! You've been fooled again!

    Electric cars have excellent performance, with the exception of range. If they crack that nut, then electric cars will be superior to internal combustion cars.

    The reason is that the torque is instantaneous, but more importantly, the torque is CONSTANT. No matter what speed your electric motor is going, you're getting constant torque out of it. That means that you can get great performance out of a little motor.

    Example: GM's EV1 goes 0-60 in under 8 seconds. That's not crappy performance at all, and the vehicle was designed to make the batteries last as long as possible, not go like a bat out of hell.

    Trust me, performance enthusiasts; it's much much easier to make an electric car that can smoke the tires through an entire 1/4 run. What kind of internal combustion engine car will do that? Your stock Mustang? Your stock Camaro? Nope, you're going to need a Viper at least to do that. I don't know what kind of electric car would be able to do that, but with the constant torque it'll be easier to do it.

  • And if we go the methanol route, we can grow our own fuel stocks!

    Actually, you're not quite accurate. While methanol can be made from biomass, it is more typically made from carbon-based feedstocks such as natural gas and coal. And, when it is made from biomass, it is usually done with wood which is not as renewable as some other resources.

    Besides, if you've ever been in a garage with someone tuning a methanol powered race car, you know how noxious the fumes are. Unpleasant. One alcohol we can grow is ethanol, which is typically made from corn. However, there are better alternatives, such as hydrogen. Hydrogen, which is readily available, burns down to just water, but suffers an image problem due to its very volitile nature. But, there are technologies that will make this safe, like metallic hydrides. This is a very cool technology which empregnates a metallic substrate with hydrogen atoms, which are released in a controlled manner when heated. Very cool.

    Some guy named Chris

  • I think it's purpose is PR-related, not technology-related. Powerful, fast electric vehicle can help persuade the (buying) public that electric = something they want to buy.

  • It appears the local power company here in Miami gives free electricity to electric car owners. I've gone over and played with their pumps (or whatever you call them) and they have no keys or access number or anything you need to make them start. Also they leave the electric cars unlocked on their lot and you can get in and try them out. It isn't like you could steal one anyway, they look so funky retarded the first cop would spot you, but hey it's fun to check em out. I think it'd be awesome to put up publicly funded stations at all rest stops and such that gave free charges to electric car owners and the stations were powered from solar/wind/whatever power so the only cost would be upkeep of the stations. Sure as hell beats these gasoline prices. I know a lot of people talking about how they'd change right now with gas prices so high. Any car makers listening? This is the time to push these babies to the public.
  • As soon as I can afford it (maybe a year or so) I promise I will post and tell you all about it.

  • I'm wondering why the animal rights people are so rabbid about fur, but dont seem to have any problems with leather?

    Who are "the" animal rights people? I've never considered myself to be an animal rights person, but I don't wear any leather. :)

  • The poiont is that fuel cell cars aren't BATTERY electric cars, which is what most people think of when I refer to electric cars. Hence the distinction.

    Greg
  • Actually there was an article about these cars in Wired magazine about a year and a half ago. The author mentioned that one of the cars had so much torque, that he actually cracked a gear in his drive system.

    They get their power from large arrays of batteries working together, no one battery is required to carry the entire load

    Also electric engines are much more efficient at accelleration than gas engines, which is why hybrid cars get such good gas milage, they use the electric engine to accellerate, and the gas engine for crusing. By running off of a battery that is charged by an engine continually running at top speed, they are incredbily fuel efficient.
  • (Don't forget that the high torque allows fewer gears in the transmission too.) Why have conventional gears - take a look at the torotrak transmission [torotrak.com] This would probablt work well with a conventional IC engine - you could tune the engine to run very efficiently in a small rev range.
  • Or a Diesel VW Lupo that does 90mpg, or Smart CDi (diesel) which gets similar range.

    There are a few small diesels in Europe that will get this sort of mileage.

    The Honda is good, but is intended as a showpiece. I view the Prius and upcoming Citroen as more practical.
  • It's electric rail transportation, of course

    I can't believe that electric rail transportation is anywhere near as cost efficient as electric bus transportation.

    Road construction and maintenance is far cheaper than rail construction and don't even talk about the difference in price between 10 new buses vs. a new train!

    Bus travel can be safe and efficient if separate roads are built solely for buses, as is the case is some places in Brazil (anywhere else?)

    So isn't bus travel more popular? Because people don't like taking the stupid bus. And this is the same reason that people don't take the train. It might be better than a bus, but most people prefer using their own car.

    The solution? Come up with some way of taxing carbon and pollution, raise the tax a certain amount every year and let the laws of economics figure out the best solution!

    -Bruce

  • Actually, the Top Fuel dragsters are only faster than the jet cars because of NHRA rules. Jet cars are an "exhibition only" category, so they're not allowed to pull out all the stops (I believe they have a 300 MPH speed limit). Once the exhibition status is lifted, jet cars will crush Top Fuel (which is why it's there, I think).

    Personally, though, I think there's a LOT of potential for electric dragsters. I have one word for you: torque. If they can solve the weight problem, they might really be onto something.
  • I'm about to take my cats and mufflers off mine, and I quite enjoy the leather interior. :)

    Maybe I'll go home and set a couple of old tires on fire, just for fun.
  • >However this is readily cleaned up with
    >catalytic converter, just as for petrol engines

    Not true.. in petrol engines the mixture is run rich which results in lower cylinder temps and faster burns which reduce the NOx emmission. The catalytic converter "burns" the excess hydrocarbons. No one has yet invented an effective catalyst for NOx. (Honda claims to have one.. but last I heard they could not scale it to full production) Once a good NOx catalyst is available it will allow the use of "lean burn" technologies which can greatly increase the efficently of petrol engines.

    That having been said 90% of the pollution caused by autos is caused by the worst 10% on the road (Mostly early 80s late 70s era cars ) Tougher enviornmental standards that force these cars off the road would do wonders but these cars are also owned by people least able to afford to replace them. A social problem that won't prove easy to solve.
  • How often do you drive from Akron to Detroit?

    Any time I feel like it. Which is the point - freedom. If I were content to deal with scheduling my comings and goings around someone else's timetable, I probably wouldn't own a car.

    But for day-to-day commuting of, say, 50 miles or less each way, (and if you commute more than that you need to re-evaluate the value of your time!) they work great.

    Does that 50 miles include NE Ohio winters? IE, snow, cold, dark, heater, defroster, headlights and windshield wipers on 100% of the drive?

    And if it does, I still have to wait for the blessed thing to recharge before I can go home. Bad news if there's an emergency that requires me to leave right now.

    It's the freedom angle again.
  • ...it's endurance. When I can jump into an electric car and drive from Akron to Detroit non-stop, heater, defroster, wipers, headlights and stereo all going full-blast, I'll take electric cars seriously. Until then they just don't cut the mustard.

    Sorry, eco-geeks. But pound for pound, gasoline rules over batteries. I'd love to see a leap in technology that changes this, but I'm not holding my breath.
  • Find me one Fossil fuel, or renewable resource which is more expensive today than a decade ago. (In real dollars, take out inflation)
  • I don't know if oil fields are actually filling up. (Haven't heard about this) However, the use of more powerful computers is allowing oild companies to use 3-dimensional siesmology where they used to only use 2-d. This means they can place taps more efficiently, effectivly returning production to fields thought to be dead. Also remember that we have had 20-30 years of oil left for about 80 years. There was an article in the Saturday post in the 1920s saying that we had thirty years left, and similar claims since then.
  • From what I read so far, I don't think so.

    The company I work at has many of them.
    All are normal "buyable" cars, only their engine is different.

    Sure, they are very expensive. But driving is fun,
    just be careful about the walking people, they don't hear the car...

    OK, the range is small 70-120 Km and they don't go faster then 120 Km/h. But driving is the same as in just any other car.

    Yours Michael
  • Even Mazda has given up on it.

    That is not true. Check out this [mazda.co.jp].

    I have a 1994 RX-7 twin turbo.

    Ken

  • the "Current Eliminator" (336 volts) took the current top prize, pulling 141 mph in 8.861 seconds. Wow. I'd give good money to see how they pulled performance like that out of an electric motor assembly.

    If you're designing a car specifically for this, it wouldn't be so tough; perhaps precharging a super heavy fly wheel.

  • There's nothing wrong with electric cars (well, okay, nothing wrong with the idea anyway). However, it still seems that it's just not quite time yet. Recently I read an article in which a General Motors high-up guy said something like "for us, the cheapest way to get NiMH batteries is to buy a Toyota EV, take the batteries, and throw the rest of the car away" (or similar).

    Personally, I don't see storage as the problem here. The range of an EV is getting better by the day (almost). The problem is the recharge time. I, and most other people are used to spending a few minutes at a gas station to "recharge" the fuel tank. If someone comes up with a snazzy way to recharge a bank of NiMH batteries in a time equal to filling up a 20 gal tank, then there's virtually no problem.

    Another thing I recently read made the comment that the current (year 2000) Honda Civic actually produces cleaner air out the tailpipe than it breathes in, when driving in downtown Los Angeles. Granted, there's no Oxygen in the exhaust, but there's less NOx, CO2, etc... than went in the front. I dunno, I think the environmental aspect of "needing" alternative-fuel vehicles is losing it's oomph. Today's Honda motors are almost 90% cleaner than the Honda motors of 10 years ago. The problem now is simply the fact that we're slowly but surely running out of fossil fuels.

    Shutting up...


    Del
  • I love the smell of stinky exhaust that comes from my exhaust when I fire up my big gas guzzling 5.7L V8 (if you consider 27 highway mpg "gas guzzling"). I also like red meat.
    Fur.... I don't like fur, because fur only comes from cute animals. I have no problem with alligator skin or leather.
    I doubt I'll ever go electric (I'll go Tofu first, dammit) but as soon as Mr. Fusion comes out, I'll jump on it!
  • The range of the NiMH EV1s is about 100-120 miles on a full charge, depending on driving conditions. This is significantly more than most people need for a single day's driving. The issue is really those occasional times when you do drive a long way, if you aren't a 2 car family. If you don't do it often, then renting a car those couple times, or stopping along the way for a charge isn't that big a deal. But for people who do it often it doesn't really work out too well. So the current EV isn't for everyone, but it has gotten to the point where it's definitely a good second car, and for some people it may be a good single car.

    For those who complain about recharge time, it's definitely an issue if you drive long distances in a single day, but don't forget that it only takes a couple seconds to plug it in when you get home, so you're essentially having your car fueled every night while you're sleeping.

    I would definitely like to see faster charge methods available (or if charging got very cheap to setup, you could essentially have charging available everywhere you go, which would work just as well, charge while you shop). But EV's are definitely getting to be useful. I've had my NiMH EV1 for 2 months now and I've enjoyed every minute I've had it, and I haven't doubted my choice for a minute. I don't think I'd ever want to go back to driving a gas car again, and I'm really hoping in a few years when my lease is up that there will be plentiful choices out there.
    Battery and alternate storage technology needs to improve so that an alternate fuel vehicle can be a choice for everyone, but it's already a lot better than most people realize.
  • Well where I live in California, you can pick where the electric company gets your power, and I get mine from Commonwealth Energy [powersavers.com]. They produce green power- last I checked it was 90% biomass and 10% geothermal. This means that I can power my EV1 totally with green power (which is actually slightly cheaper than the default through the power company) and help the environment on both ends, in addition to the convenience of just plugging the car in every night. My electricity is about 1/3 cheaper than the gas I used to buy and signficantly more convenient.
  • "are people who are just too poor to buy a decent car. All of those cars are tiny, uncomfortable, dangerously underpowered rolling deathtraps. "

    We that is great an example of American ignorance and stereotypes that has caused us Americans to have such problems as the SUV craze. New small cars today are as safe or safer than those old big cars from 20 years ago with no ABS or other refinements of the last 20 years. They also have lower profit margins than big cars/SUV, hence the car makers FUD campaigns against small cars.
  • I don't know what kind of interstate you have around your hometown, but *my* interstate doesn't let you drive at 141 miles an hour. In fact.. most cars around here don't even go that damn fast. (That's not to say that these nuts don't try..)

    Always keeping it in perspective,
    Rami
    --
  • >The once-depleted oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico have refilled themselves

    Please post actual links to this 'fact'. As you are so confident that the oil fields are re-filling, you can post a link, can't you?
  • When I go to drag races, I expect my ears to suffer permanent damage. How the hell am I supposed to get that effect from electric cars?

  • Cost (Score:1)

    by AlexA ( 97006 )
    How much do electric vehicles cost these days? What about the cost of getting electricity at gas/electricity stations?

    How widespread are "electricity stations" anyway? Can you really drive across the country in an EV and not have to worry about not finding those stations?
  • what do you think creates heat for all the vehicles on the road?

    sure they are working on pumping up the batteries for cars so they may travel longer distances but what about when winter comes along and people start firing up those dangerous electric heaters?

    It's just a thought but I'd rather have my heat pump under the hood where it belongs and not next to my babies jacket or a dust bunny, let's face it, how many people keep their cars impecably clean?

  • Prudes.

    I thought it was funny
  • Here is a quarter

    /me hands AC a quarter

    call someone who cares.
  • Public transportation depends on high population densities for economy. A bus designed to move sixty people that only carries three or four is obviouslly inefficient and wastefull. The only thing more wastefull would be an electric rail that runs the same route. Rails cost more than roads! The price structures of rails built in US cities reflects this underlying economic reality.

    Unfortunately, people here in the US don't want to live in high popluation areas. That's their choice, good luck convincing them to do otherwise.

    Where do you live?

  • Dude, rails are more expensive than roads. They have a far more substantial foundation. Think about it the next time you drive over the tracks. Rails also demand a precision lay out. They must be parallel and level. Out of tollerance means derailment. Roads are poured, rails built peice wise. Maintanence is also a concern. Defoiliation costs plenty, but vines and treel can not be alowed to grow on the right of way. For all the care and cost that goes into construction, rails wear out. The sleepers fail and replacing them costs a great deal.

    In the end, you still need to fill the train for it to work. This does not happen unless you have lots of people all going to the same location and this requires a high population density. Most US cities don't qualify. What works for Paris, Tokyo and New York is not a universal solution. Smaller and more spread out cities are better served by a well planned road grid.

  • nothing like watching cars rip-roar at interstate speeds! VROOOOOOOOOOOM!

  • i bet they load up those nice, non-polluting race cars on some huge diesel trucks and drive them all the way to Phoenix. Ya way to protect the enviornment!
  • How do you know what current they were running?

    ahh. say constant accelleration, quarter mile track, blah blah blah. comes out at about 170 kW. at about 510A. sounds feasible. range can't be great though. say the batteries are rated at 40 Ah, then you've got about 5 mins. nicely practical then.

  • Most photovoltaic cells are very inefficient. So I'm not sure that this is an improvement.

  • It only takes a few Aum Shinryko Tokyo Subway gas attacks, Long Island Railroad massacres, and London Underground station bombings to make one appreciate driving to work every morning on a crowded expressway in one's own car...

    LaoK

  • Coal is pure carbon, so all its energy comes from making CO2 molecules, which cause the greenhouse effect. Gasoline has several hydrogen atoms, so part of its energy comes from generating water molecules.

    Nuclear, of course, is the cleanest energy we are likely to have for the next decades. I think the "green" resistance to nuclear is going to fade, when the public gets better educated (maybe I'm too hopeful!) and when energy bills start going through the roof.

    Remember, fossil fuels are becoming more and more expensive because they are getting scarcer. Nuclear energy is so expensive because there is very dumb "green" legislation imposing useless regulations. It wasn't expensive in the early 1970s.

  • Three mile island ?

    No radiation was released, no one was hurt, in an accident that destroyed the entire reactor core. How's that for safe?

    Chernobyl ?

    Thirty one dead, one of which was a fireman who fell from a ladder. A power plant designed in a Communist state, with no regard for profits or safety. A design no longer used.

    Counting all the nuclear power plants in the world, considering that only two serious accidents ever occurred, nuclear is by far the absolutely safest and cleanest energy source we have now or are likely to have for a long time.

    Also nuclear power generation is much more expensive if you account for the costs of decomissioning the plant after it's life is up.

    That's part of the regulation costs I mentioned. The plant doesn't need to be decommissioned, they could simply keep modernizing and updating it. But the renovation of all the licenses in the current bureaucracy is impossible, so the plant must be torn down after its first license ends. And then there is a huge cost related to all the disposal of "nuclear waste", which is mostly composed of things like a rubber glove that was once used to hold a test tube containing radioactive material. This glove must be held in a "safe storage" for 300 years, not because it's radioactive, but because the regulations say so.

    It's a tiny fraction of the available desert even if you assume a REALLY bad efficeny such as 10%.

    For the kind of solar technology you mention, 10% would be a rather good efficiency. There have been some studies by the US Department of Energy about such power plants, but they were far too expensive at the current technology levels. Think of how much all those mirrors would cost. As you said yourself, a large area is required. And all the pollution that would be generated in fabricating those plants should also be considered.

    But that's not the main case against solar or wind energy, of course. Assuming these were viable and economical forms of obtaining energy, we would be back to the problem I mentioned: we do not have any really good batteries. How would you store your energy for use at night, or when the wind isn't blowing?

    I see no practical alternatives for the mid-range future, that is about 30 to 100 years from now. We will either have nuclear power or freeze in the dark.

  • Great points, but missing something: traffic.

    I live in Minnesota, and drive 20 miles to work. (Lets assume that works provides a recharging station so I have a full charge when I leave) Take a cold winter morning, -25, with a coule traffic accidents. It now takes not 30 minutes to get to work, but 75. Since the tempature is so cold I expect the heater to be running the entire time. The electric car does not have the range I need already, just running the heater on full.

  • A well planned transportation policy should get rid of this subsidized personal transportation policy and make people pay the real cost for the use of cars and trucks over public roadways.

    Subsidized? You mean by the gas tax, and personal property tax on cars, and title and tag fees on cars, and (in some places) road tolls, and ticket revnues?

    Or do you mean the Federal Highway "assistance" that the federal goverment likes to use to get "assistance" on unrelated issues from the states? (lots of funds are conditonal on parcipation in various drug programs, or other non-road related issues)

    The reason why public transportation systems have been so neglected is mainly a question of bad pricing regulation. You don't need to explicitly pay anything to drive on public roads and streets.

    Thats one thery. Another is people don't like standing in the cold and rain to catch a bus. Another is that the busses and trains don't run all the time (i.e. people are afarid if they rely on the bus that if they have to stay late at work they won't be able to get home). As a former rider of busses and trains, I can say those were big downsides for me.

    People want to have a personal computer on their desks, but mainframes are still the best solution to many tasks.

    Intresting choice of analigy, since I bet the ratio of public transit systems to private cars and of mainframes to personal computers are allready pretty similar, yet you are arguing for more public transit (and fewer cars).







    What's my answer? I don't really have one. I wouldn't be opposed to more directl linking the costs of cars to their operation, through say even higher fuel taxes, but only if the existing monies allready used to pay for the roads are given back. I'm not intrested in anything that makes cars more expensave without making something else less expensave.

    I would also like to reduce the "zero emissions vechile" requirments a bit. Zero emissions really only has an eletric solution, and only because electric power lets you cheat by having the poultion gennerated elsewhere (nasty coal plants). Having a very low emissions standard would get you things that actually polute as little as an EV, and may have better range, or a better ride, or actually not be so dammed expensave.

    But most of all, I would like to reduce goverment involvment, because they seem to fuck up everything the touch. Look at our public eductaion system and tell me otherwise. Or the highly regulated helthcare industry. Or compair the still regulated phone componies with the internet componies (or the current not-as-regulated phone componies with the highly regulated Bell System of the 1970s).

  • Survey says... BZZT! Nuclear plants continue to be engineered and built, just not in the US. Both Westinghouse and General Electric have been developing new reactors (search for CANDU). They're just not being built in your backyard.
  • The "solar cells" used are optimized for light in the relatively far infrared - heat radiation. One of the nicest things about this method is that it can recover energy from waste heat which would otherwise be unusable. If only the cells weren't so expensive and made from such toxic materials...

    ----
  • The current state of the art in low-pollution petrol powered cars has almost nowhere to go

    Wrong. Research in to learn-burn technology, petrol-electric hybrids, and petrol-powered fuel cells continues.

    2. Research on electricity based transport is advancing rapidly . . .

    I haven't heard of any major advances in battery technology in years. Yes, new electronics is helping, but power density and cost are as unfavourable now as they were ten years ago.

    If America (and my home country Australia for that matter) are serious about reducing greenhouse emissions the only real choice is a carbon tax (and a substantial one). That might even things up and give alternative fuels (not to mention public transport) a chance.

  • EV infrastructure is practically non-existent in this country (not that it's all that swell elsewhere).

    Actually, if you have a charger that can use 110v, you can charge just about anywhere. A lot of people use the outlets intended for block warmers in the colder parts of the country. For commuting, it's usually not too dificult to get an employer to let you charge there, if necessary.

    But for travelling across country, it's not so much the charging facilities as it is the time needed to charge. You go 50-100 miles, then you have to stop and charge for a few hours. Not too practical, but it forces you to really see the country.

    Of course, your best bet for long drives is a rental car.

  • acceleration power has traditionally been the major weakness of these cars

    Actually, as I understand it, acceleration is one of the strengths of EV's. You have instant torgue -- no revving up. But, keep in mind that I'm not much into the racing side of EV's; I want an electric Land Rover [wilde-evolutions.com].

  • But trains and subways do have their own advantages. Have you tried to read or sleep as you drive your car every day to and from work?

    Therein lies the real advantage of public transit. I could drive to my main client (about 45 minutes) or ride the train (about an 1.5 hours.) But in a car, I have to drive. On the train, (electric, of course!) I can work, read e-mail, or even sleep. That hour and a half is worth a lot more to me than saving a couple of dollars a day (which I would end up paying for gas anyway.)

    It comes down to do you want to have a small amount of unusable time, or more usable time?

  • Probably the best source of info on EV's on the web is Bruce Parmenter's site [aol.com]. Other good sites include Wilde EVolutions [wilde-evolutions.com] (the source for electric Land Rover info, as well as general conversion info), and the Electric Auto Association [eaaev.org].

  • An electric vehicle requires charging, and guess where most of that electricity comes from? Coal fired plants produce the bulk of electricity in north america... due to "green" resistance to nuclear power plants, most of the electricity is not generated in a clean fashion...which is worse, burning coal or gasoline? Probably coal, as it generally burns dirtier.

    --
  • Here in Los Angeles, our base Metro Rail system cost $ 3.46 billion for 4.4 miles of track and rolling stock, so I don't see $1 billion for a major freeway as terrible. If I recall correctly, that particular segment of road was one of the more expensive ones in the entire system because of the complex engineering involved.

    The real bottom line is that people hate to wait for rail or bus transit, people hate it when they can't get seats, and people like the freedom cars give to travel when and where they want. Unfortunately, economic viability of public transit requires that you pack 'em in like sardines. Do I want to become a human sardine, or do I want to ride in my comfortable European luxury import?

    I don't think cars are subsidized at all when the taxes paid by drivers are taken into consideration. In California, we pay a gas tax of about $ 0.30 a gallon - until the recent gas price spike, that was almost 1/3 of the total cost at the pump. I think we should expect gold-plated roads for that kind of money, but our government generally spends it elsewhere. Cars are a net contributer to government, not a net loss like public transport.

    D

    ----
  • I wonder if they have tried using thermal batteries. These will put out huge amounts of power over a short period of time. The military likes to use them to power the electrical systems in missiles. They have an integral pyrotechnic heat source that brings them up to a high internal temperature (over 350C) to melt the electrolyte.
  • ...that are on the road now.

    The Honda Insight [honda2000.com] is a 70 mpg gas/electric hybrid that has won the Sierra Club's Excellence in Environmental Engineering Award [sierraclub.org]. Base model MSRP is $18,880. You can read Carpoint's review of the Insight here [msn.com].

    The Toyota Prius [toyota.com] is a 66 mpg gas/electric hybrid that has received the United Nations Environmental Protection Award. It has been available in Japan for about two years now, and is scheduled to be released in the US sometime this year. Toyota's site doesn't currently list the MSRP, but it sold in Japan for about $16,500 USD. There is a review of the Prius at TopGear [beeb.com].

  • The motor industry is extremely interested in all forms of fuel economy

    The motor industry is less interested in economy than they are in performance, or building the biggest SUV they can. Why? There is a lot more profit in building vehicles like that than there is in building the low-end cars that get good fuel economy.

    high MPG sells cars

    You must be from Europe. Almost nobody thinks that way in the US. The only people in the US who buy the high MPG cars like the Geo Metro are people who are just too poor to buy a decent car. All of those cars are tiny, uncomfortable, dangerously underpowered rolling deathtraps.

  • 5.0? Big? Big doesn't start until over 7 liters. And all but the last generation RX7's weren't really that impressive performers for drag racing (no torque at low RPMs). And those didn't compare that favorably in price/performance (they were priced in the range of Vettes). Also the rotary has always had durability problems and its fuel consumption per liter displacement is pretty attrocious.

    There is a reason the rotary engine never took off, even after the Wankel patents expired. Even Mazda has given up on it.

  • Most of the cheap low end cars that are sold over here which get the high MPG don't offer any of the ABS or other refinements of the last 20 years. Why? Because they are cheap, low end cars that the auto makers don't want to put the good stuff into, precisely because they aren't that profitable.

    The micro cars aren't just in competition for safety against old big cars of 20 years ago anyway, they also have to compete against the mid size and larger cars of today and against the road monster SUVs. No amount of ABS brakes or airbags are going to negate the fact that if a car like a Metro gets hit by a 6000 pound SUV (let alone a semi trailer rig) doing 65 miles an hour, the Metro is going to look like it was a tin can crushed by a 200lb man's shoe.

    Your argument still does nothing against the fact that the high MPG cars are dangerously underpowered either. My wife used to have a Ford Festiva with a dinky littly 1.2L four cylinder engine and a 5-speed manual transmission. On a short freeway onramp, no matter how hard you pounded the thing through the gears there was no way you could get it up much above 45 MPH to merge into traffic. Dangerous, and scary as hell when you have 18-wheelers bearing down in your rear view mirror. It is my opinion that any car that can't get up to 65 by the end of one of those ramps without being a major ordeal is dangerously underpowered and should be banned.

    You also completely ignore the fact that most people don't want something like a Metro because they are just too small and uncomfortable for most people here in the US. Automakers don't really have to engage in that much of a FUD campaign to sell people on larger cars. That is what people want, and has been since before there really were any small cars. The American love affair with the big car dates back to the 1930s when there was no such thing as an econobox (the Model T was dead by then) or SUVs either.

  • Do you have a reference to the article you mention? I'd be curious as to which model and year Ferrari and Vette they are using in their comparisons and what the actual performance specs on the electric car you mention are. Most of the Ferrari's I've seen have been published with numbers in the 13-14 second range, which is not bad for a production car, especially one that is intended more for road racing than drag racing, but not really that impressive when you consider it is the same ballpark that a $20k Firebird Formula V8 is. 99% of the cars on the road are absolutely horrible 1/4 mile performers (look at the number of minivans, SUVs and econoboxes on the roads), that doesn't make a Ferrari or Vette outstanding 1/4 mile performers.

    If they wanted to pick a car for example that was a reasonable comparison based on price, they might have picked the Dodge Viper, for example. It will toast either the current C6 Vette (which is a much less expensive car) or a Ferrari (which is a lot more expensive) in either the 1/8 or 1/4 mile. I'm not really a huge Viper fan personally (for that kind of money, I'd build a Cobra kit car with a 502 Chevy box motor and have money left over), but it is hard to argue with the numbers in this case.

  • You apparently are picking purposely bad internal combustion cars at the 1/4 mile. Neither a Vette, nor a Ferarri (and you don't specify year or model either) are particularly stellar performers in 1/4 mile and even less so in 1/8 mile drag racing. Both of these cars are more orriented for handling and road racing, especially the Ferarri. Line the specially built electric vehicle up against a internal combustion vehicle that is built for drag racing, and the story will likely be significantly different. Let alone that the electric car probably costs several times as much to build.

  • O.K., "Even Mazda U.S. has given up on it.". The article you reference mentions that those cars will be built only for sale in Japan.

  • Batteries are usually designed with the possibility of recycling. That's why used car batteries (the regular kind) don't present an environmental hazard in disposal; auto garages already know what to do with them.

    As for cars blowing up, remember, real life isn't like you see in the movies. It doesn't happen that often! Nowhere near enough to present an environmental issue.

    The real environmental hit of electric cars are the power plants, which have to work harder to feed them when they're plugged in. So if your city is powered by a coal-fired plant, and everyone gets an electric car, the air ain't getting any cleaner.

    But the advantage, then, is that-- in programmer's parlance-- the power source has been abstracted away from the car engine. So you can change the power source's implementation (say, from coal energy to wind energy) without breaking the rest of the system. Unlike the internal combustion engine, where the power source (gasoline) and application logic (engine) are so closely intertwined that it's impossible to port to any other architecture.

    Methinks, however, even better than electric power for transportation is hydrogen power. You don't need super-high-tech batteries to power it, just armored fuel tanks, and an efficient way of producing the stuff. The exhaust products are (theoretically) just CO2+H20. (IIRC, however, since some nitrous oxides inevitably get into the air intake, you do get some icky exhaust hydrocarbons too, but nothing overwhelming)

  • Cool stuff this, but everyone seems to be caught up on the power density problems of batteries. Electric motors have efficiencies way beyond what ICE's (Internal Combustion Engines) can produce. The problem comes in feeding enough energy to the motor over a prolonged stretch of time.

    This problem is pretty much moot if you consider fuel cells. Fuel cells come in a variety of types, but the most popular for vehicle applications run on Natural Gas or Methanol. Check out the efficiencies when compared to ICE's here [aol.com].

    These babies are the future. And if we go the methanol route, we can grow our own fuel stocks!

  • Electric motors aren't that fantastic in cars, actually. Sure, they've got high torque at low revs: too much, actually. Most larger electric testbeds have to be managed VERY carefully to minimise this, or you spin your wheels rather embarrassingly every time you pull away, damaging your tyres in the process.

    Battery energy density's pretty poor, too, while the energy tends to come from coal fuelled power stations which actually increases pollution. So your nice clean electric car's only serving to move the pollution away from the cities - NIMBY all over again.

    Electric motors have a lot less moving parts than a conventional petrol engine, I'll agree, but have you come across orbital engines? Six or seven parts, only a couple of which move. Still more than an electric motor, I'll agree, but a more realistic proposition for cars, too.

    If you want a practical alternative to petrol powered cars, it's likely to be either hydrogen fuelled combustion engines or fuel cells. Both are substantially better than electric cars for the environment and are relatively easy to slot into the existing infrastructure. Wait 10-15 years and they'll probably cost little more than current petrol vehicles of similar ability.

    Greg
  • My apologies, I must've got the names wrong.

    Orbital engines may be a bad idea, but this was being promtoed a few months ago. It was an unconventional two-stroke where everything 'orbitted', hence my assumption it was an orbital.

    This system could have combustion chambers of any type acheivable with conventional engines. With that few moving parts. Looks a VERY nice idea.

    Greg
  • Say, something like the 24 hours of LeMans or Daytona. Max speed 100MPH (to make the results more practical to the average driver). He who drives farthest wins. This not only stresses battery endurance but charge/change time. Maybe allow each team only 2 sets of batteries (one in car, one charging).
  • Actually, electric cars would be considerably worse for the environment than our current IC engines. Remember, they're not zero-emitting, they're just remote-emitting, and that's after losing most tof the power generated to the hideous inefficiencies of the electric's systems.

    I know some of you folks love to bash gasoline engines, and no, I don't think we'll use them forever myself - although I'm betting it's >50 years before we see a dent in thier dominance.

    But you have to recognize that technology has improved the performance, efficiency, and cleanliness of gasoline engines by several orders of magnitude, while electrics remain steadfastly immune to technological progress. Remember that gasoline engines weren't given a ghost of a chance at the turn of the century (that would be the 1901 one) - *everyone* knew that steam and/or electric would trounce the stinking, noisy IC motors. But what happened is instructive to all students of technology: the gasoline engine, for all its faults, became the best option - to the point that its competition quit trying. This happened not because of a conspiracy by Detroit and the Oils, but because unlike other powerplants, the ungainly IC engine continues to respond well to technological attention, and seems to show no sign of slowing down its progress anytime soon. At tthe same time, we have only proven that electric cars are as unviable as ever, and that even spending ridiculously high sums on them results in vehicles that are still seriously sub-par compared to their gasoline eqiuvalents. Electric cars are scarcely more viable today than they were in 1920.

    Today's gasoline engines are remarkably efficient and clean, with emissions that are effectively zero after the catalyst is warmed up. Today's running emissions would be off the bottom of the scale for cars of just twenty-five years ago. Further, efficency is now remarkable - Honda's new (normally aspirated!) S2000 roadster has a specific output better than many *race cars* of the 1960's!

    And don't forget that we don't have excess electricity generating capacity out there burning a hole in our pocket, either. Most utilities are seriously encouraging conservation as a method of delaying the construction of new power plants, which is becoming horrendously expensive due to new environmental rules. Even if the electric car side of the equation were solved, it would likely be a very long time before electrics became economically viable as an alternative, since sharply increased demand would soon cause skyrocketing electric rates. We've gotten very, very good at producing, distributing, and using fossil fuels, and you don't replace that infrastructure overnight.

    Oh, and don't forget that there is very little energy lost in transporting fossil fuels, but considerable loss even in the best high-voltage transmission lines we can make...

    Electric isn't likely to be the answer anytime soon. (Pure electric, that is - hybrids may be sort of viable sometime soon, although they'll always cost more.)
  • You have to wonder how long these motors last. That smoke you see coming out the back? No... it's not just the tires. :)

    Obviously not designed to be an environmentally friendly demonstration, but it does raise awareness about electric motors.

    Also... I'm wondering if they use special batteries in order to get that super-quick drain rate. And what gauge their wires are. :)
  • Well sir, you are an evil, evil man. Have you read your bible lately? It has many grievances with your way of thinking. You'd better read it, or the forces of heaven and hell will banish you to the land of ghosts and spirits. Why, it says so right in Revelations 13:13 - "Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast(RMS) rising up out of the sea, with 7 GNU Utilities and 10 Man Pages, and in his 10 Man Pages, 10 factual bits of information, and on his head a blasphemous name(RMS). And then he killed everyone...STOOPID"

    Mud99
  • It doesn't matter if the green resistance to Nuclear power fades anymore, the damage is done. No new nuclear power plants have been initiated in the past few years, and with the length of time it takes to build one in the US, even if a major utility decided to build one tomorrow, it would likely take 20 years to get it operating. In another few years, there might not be any more engineers qualified to design these plants, as the current group retires. (My father is a nuclear engineer who designed power plants, a large number of his peers have already transferred into other areas of engineering, or retired.)

    In this case, the Luddites won.
  • Subsidized? You mean by the gas tax, and personal property tax on cars, and title and tag fees on cars, and (in some places) road tolls, and ticket revnues?
    Actually, gas taxes, etc, do not pay all the direct costs of roads you drive on. At the state and national level, they cover most of the direct costs, but adding and maintaining local roads is largely paid for from general taxes.

    And that's only looking at direct costs. If you factor in indirect costs, such as traffic cops (I'm not even going to get into environmental costs), then yes, driving is heavily subsidized.

  • How many cars does your household have? If you're married I'd be willing to bet there are two.

    Most EV's today have a range of 120 miles on a full charge. If you can't get to work with that amount of juice you drive worse than my mother :P
  • You didn't quite balance the equation okay either, it's 2H2 + O2 --> 2H2O. 8-)

    Also, you are still using a combustion, which has efficiencies limited by a thermodynamic Carnot cycle. If you took the hydrogen and pumped it into a FUEL CELL, the reaction is far more effective (theoratical limit is actually a 100%)
    Fuel cells are already in use for power
    generation, notable example is the space shuttle.

    And, yes, abstracting the power source can mean more cleaner power generation methods (such as wind, tidal, nuclear, hydroelectric, etc).

    -=- SiKnight
  • That's not surprising-- pour enough juice into a big motor and you have a very efficient, monster torque producer. All we need are super-efficient batteries now.
    The problem with electric cars is making them accelerate without killing the battery life.
    In a drag racer, you don't care how long the batteries last, you just want to draw as much current as you can without melting them. I doubt we'll see an electric vehicle running in Le Mans anytime soon.
  • There's one big advantage to electric powered cars when looking at it from a Drag racing standpoint: full torque is available from 1 RPM. compared to the popular internal combustion engines for drag racing (V8 or turbo'd imports) this is an amazing advantage. A typical V8 will start producing useable torque by 1500-2000 RPM, and peak around 3000. Turbo'd cars (mainly seen in the import drags) are even worse. The torque curve there is dependant on the turbo being at full spool, so it's a slow build to a peak around 5000 RPM (generalizations, but good to make a point). This translates to wide ranges of the power band that are for all intents and purposes un-useable for the race. When you have a power supply that is at full torque from the moment you step on the accelerator, and holds that through the entire band, your biggest hurdle is in keeping the tires stuck to the ground. The hard part of translating this advantage to street vehicles is in the range these cars have. They have been designed to go a short distance at full power. It equates to the funny cars and rail-dragsters that only have a 5 gallon fuel cell, and it has to be re-filled after each 1/4 mile race. Having any engine run at maximum power generally makes for a very short range.
  • I've had the fortunate opportunity to experience some really effective subways in London, Japan (Tokyo area), Paris & Washington, DC.

    The things I really liked about them, and which I consider necessary for any system which will be used & cost-effective:

    1. They go everywhere. I could get to anywhere in those cities by walking a couple of blocks, with one or two transfers in between.

    2. They were cheap (a buck or two at the most), and got cheaper the more I used them (volume discount/passes).

    3. They were convenient. I could walk into any subway entrance & get tickets in any amount to any destination with either cash, ATM or credit card, within a minute or two.

    4. They were frequent - in Tokyo, I never had to wait more than 2 minutes for any train. They arrived on time, to the second.

    5. They all ran on raised platforms so that they were completely independent of the local traffic patterns, which really sucked in most of the high-density urban environments. I contrast this experience to the light rail stations running here in Portland, Oregon, which have to go through the stop lights just like all the other cars.

    6. They had many overlapping local/express routes - so you could take the express routes to get quickly into the area you wanted to go, then switch to a local route to get dumped practically on the doorstop of your final destination.

    The BIG problem that I saw, is that without the incredibly high population densities in these particular urban environments, NO ONE is going to be able to build self-sustaining mass transit.

    These systems work because of a critical mass of people who are using them on a regular basis, paying good money & who need them available to survive.

    As long as the people in the Mid & Western United States prefer a low-population density lifestyle, they will never be able to build an effective mass transit system which can compete with all of the above benefits of a mass transit system w/o massive subsidization (which will inevitably appear to most taxpayers as an incredible waste of taxpayer money).
  • While electric cars that can do wheelstands may be cool, they probably aren't too pratical. Check out the Vehicle Research Institute at Western Washington University [wwu.edu]. They have some really cool alternative fuel vehicles, everything from solar to electric to hybrids. The best engine they have developed so far is what they call the Midnight Sun. Check out the webpage for more details, but the gist of it is this: The engine is composed of very efficient burners which burn methane (I think). The trick is that the car doesn't get it's power from the heat, rather from the light energy. Highly efficient "solar cells" are located very close to the flame, and those charge banks of batteries. A very cool setup indeed. Not to mention the fact that this thing can ALSO peel out for a full block :0)
  • Wired Magazine had a great article [wired.com] about these cars. Their performance often outpaces gas-powered dragsters and they don't make noise.

    I'm inspired enough to someday build an electric vehicle for myself for city use.

  • If electric motors were inefficient, this would be a great competition that would spur advances in motor technology. But motors are already 90-95% efficient.

    If batteries were unable to give massive amounts of current, this competition would spur advances in battery technology. But your average lead-acid car battery can already pump 600 amps, and NiCad cells have an even lower internal resistance (a single D-cell sized NiCad rechargable can put out 50 amps).

    No, the problem with electric vehicles is the combination of power and range. Battery technology today simply cannot store a tenth of the energy that is stored chemically in a modest tank of gasoline. I don't see these competitions as improving this.

  • The Lead Wedge [fortunecity.com], back in 1969, was the first battery-powered dragster. Autolite-Ford built the thing, and was embarassed at how good the performance was. Electric cars weren't supposed to go that fast.

    We've made some progress since then.

  • This is just another example of the white man trying to hold down the National Electric and Gas Racing Organization (NEGRO). Seems nobody cares about gas/electric hybrids anymore.

  • ...you'll love seeing $1.80 a gallon for the stinky toxic gasoline that you fill your car with every time you go to the pump.

    electric motors are in every way superior to gasoline engines. as few as a single moving part, lifetimes in the range of 250K miles, and the torque curve of an electric motor is better than any gas engine ever built. when you kink in an electric motor, it's solid torque from 0 rpm to [in some cases] over 15k rpm -- no gas engine can do that. transmissions are not even used on many electrics -- except for reverse. no need to constantly adjust the drive ratio to match the pathetic powerband of the gas junker.

    it the energy density/storage that's killing evs. just no way to store all those electrons in anything close to an efficient way. the energy density of chemical fuel is many times that of even the best theoretical batteries.

    it's a shame, cuz gas engines are a horrid relic of the past. having a heat pump under the hood is a big waste. better to do the conversion at the remote power station, where you can make the engines ultra efficient at one rpm and let 'em spin. you can also put good stacks/scrubbers on a power station that limit emissions, no room on gas junk.

    hopefully, someone will have a storage solution ready before too much longer. maybe right about the time fusion goes online! that would so rock.

    gasoline==fur==meat==(death&&poison) although i still eat meat. too tasty. sorry.

  • Not only is power generation more efficient en masse, but electric cars can also employ regenerative braking, a system in which the vehicle is slowed by the magnetic drag of the vehicle's motors, thus converting its kinetic energy, no longer wanted, into potential energy in its batteries, instead. Of course the system isn't 100% efficient (duh), but it's unspeakably better than simply throwing all that energy away by converting it into heat with break pads.

    It also serves worth noting that hybrid electric vehicles can be made extremely efficient as well, even when the "hybrid" involves a traditional internal combustion engine: An engine running at a constant speed and load (or a very tight range thereof) can be fine-tuned to maximum efficiency in that target mode of operation. One of the things that makes current automotive internal combustion engines so inefficient is the wide range of conditions which they must serve.

    In addition, finely-tuned engines serving an electric "drivetrain" can be made significantly smaller, simpler, and lighter-weight than their traditional counterparts, for the aforementioned reason. All in all, this makes for some dramatic increases in efficiency (I'd give figures, but I don't have my automotive engineering notes handy at the moment) without sacrificing range of travel and without completely alienating the petroleum industry.

    Factor in recent advances in energy storage technology and regenerative braking, and you could have a ridiculously fuel-efficient vehicle that still ran (secondarily, primarily, or completely) on petroleum.

    There was an interesting article [wired.com] in the March 1999 issue of Wired regarding high-performance (ie racing) electric vehicles. All of these are technologies which exist now. The only real barrier is retrofitting existing manufacturing facilities to work with a (completely) new system and getting over that intital cost hump. Until the major automakers decide that they really want to mass produce such vehicles, their costs will most likely remain prohibitive. But the automakers don't want to produce them because they cost too much now. And then there's the petroleum lobby.

    There are certainly plenty of barriers, but it's feasible stuff, and worth developing, IMHO.

  • Re:It's about how far you drive in a day. (Score:3)

    by UncleRoger ( 9456 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @10:19AM (#1208890) Homepage
    Ah, the old "I drive from Akron to Detroit everyday" argument...
    When I can jump into an electric car and drive from Akron to Detroit non-stop, heater, defroster, wipers, headlights and stereo all going full-blast, I'll take electric cars seriously.

    Someone once said (I can't recall who, unfortunately) "The best way to extend the range of an Electric Vehicle is a rental car." (or something like that.)

    How often do you drive from Akron to Detroit? How far do you really drive on a daily basis? One of the problems is that the general public is conditioned to thinking of refueling as a pain in the butt, hopefully done no more than once a week (Often in the rain or snow, or late at night when you'd rather be in bed, or when you're late for a meeting.)

    Not so with EV's. You come home at the end of the day, pull into your nice warm garage, and plug the car in. The next morning, you've got a full charge. Around here, (San Francisco Bay Area) there are all kinds of places for an "opportunity charge." Offices have EV charging stations in the parking lot, as does BART (the local, inter-county train system,) and even Fry's Electronics. Even in Akron or Detroit, I'm told that many parking lots have public outlets for block heaters -- which work fine for most EV chargers.

    For driving across country, generally speaking, EV's are not the answer. But for day-to-day commuting of, say, 50 miles or less each way, (and if you commute more than that you need to re-evaluate the value of your time!) they work great. For running errands around town, they're great.

    You don't want to use your EV to drive to visit your mother-in-law, but how often do you do that? You don't want to use an EV to drive the kids to Disneyland, but that's not an enjoyable task in any vehicle -- you're better off flying anyway. You're a travelling salesman and you drive 150 miles a day? You need gas. But for the rest of us, EV's would work for most of our driving.

    On a side note, I was in Yosemite a few years back (9/22/95, to be exact) to do a little backpacking and attend the unveiling of some electric busses that were to be used in the valley. There were quite a few EV luminaries in attendance with samples of their work, including one gent who had just driven his electric Honda CRX from Washington DC. (He used, of course, a high-efficiency gas generator built into a trailer to get something like 60mpg.)

    But pound for pound, gasoline rules over batteries.

    If you're looking at distance per pound, yes. But that is not the only criteria. There are others such as cost per mile (EV's win), convenience of refueling (EV's win for day-to-day, Gas wins for the unusual), noise (EV's win), power (EV's win), and so on.

  • Re:Electric cars a bad for the environment (Score:3)

    by PhiRatE ( 39645 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @12:57AM (#1208891)
    Obviously a joke, or at least close, but the same argument (Electric cars are not better for the environment) has been pulled out of many hats, not just for cars but buses and trains and all sorts of things. The simple fact is that the argument doesn't hold water.

    1. The current state of the art in low-pollution petrol powered cars has almost nowhere to go. Further research is giving fewer and fewer returns in methods of making mobile petrol-based propulsion systems cleaner. On the other hand, factory scale plants using both petrol and other forms of raw material such as coal have been making large advances, with many by-products of the electricity production going into creating other useful products.

    2. Research on electricity based transport is advancing rapidly, greater efficiencies in all areas are constantly being achieved, with new software able to micro-manage power consumption, newer battery methods and flywheel technology offering better storage per gram, and longer life for all components.

    These alone are excellent reasons why electric cars, although they may _possibly_ be less environmentally friendly right now taking into account the entire supply chain, are the future.

    Their primary attractiveness as far as the environment goes is the shifting of by-products to large generation plants where the benefits of scale and space can be used to filter and reuse pollutants. They are also demonstrably quieter, and in many cases can take advantage of their electrical nature to make driving as we know it today more fuel efficient (brakes tied into flywheels mean that stop-go traffic would cost far less in energy terms, and wear out your brake-pads less).

    I'm looking forward to it :)

  • Amazing performance (Score:3)

    by Captn Pepe ( 139650 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @12:52AM (#1208892)
    From their records page [nedra.com], the "Current Eliminator" (336 volts) took the current top prize, pulling 141 mph in 8.861 seconds. Wow. I'd give good money to see how they pulled performance like that out of an electric motor assembly. After all, acceleration power has traditionally been the major weakness of these cars (besides range, which is a power storage issue).

    Although for that matter, I'm pretty impressed with a power supply that can deliver that kind of current, too. (Quick calculation on xcalc...) Conservatively, that comes out to around 100 KW from a battery!

  • Re:Rather useless (Score:3)

    by karlm ( 158591 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @03:51AM (#1208893) Homepage
    A few comments on a few of the ideas floating arround here. My electric vehicle knowledge is about two years old. However, most of my info somes from my experience on the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle team, so most of it should still be applicable for anything priced for the consumer market.

    Right now, IMHO, the best candidates for near-term energy storage in EVs are ultracapictors and flywheels. Both have a clear advantage over batteries in terms of discharge rates. Ultracapicitors currently have energy density issues and flywheels have some efficiency issues. However, flywheels have the advantage of requiring a controller to convert to and from kinetic energy. It would be relatively easy for the controller to be linked to the power management computer via a digital command coax. In an accident, there would be very little risk of electrical disharge, even if the output terminals are shorted.

    I eas very surprised at the ammount of noise an MGM wheel-hub motor makes, especially considdering that it's 98% efficient, IIRC. I believe that most air-cooled brushless DC motors would have a similar noise level. There is a clacking noise generated that is load enough to get anoying inside the unshielded body of the Manta GT sloar race car. The stator coils contract slightly when energized becasue the individual windings are attracted to eachother. Most of the motor controller inefficiencis result from its inability to generate perfect square wave outputs. Rise times kill effiency. This means that the input to the coils will be as sharp a feasably possible, whcih means that the contraction of a coil will probably produce an audible "clack" if there is no insulating medium (such as liquid coolant ductwork) between the listener and the coil. When I first heard it, I thought there was a piece of plastic in contact with the rotor because it sounded like a playing card clacking on a bike spoke. Granted, an electric motor will be quieter than a comparable IC engine, especially an unmuffled nitromethane engine with racing cams. Don't be fooled into thinking that electric cars are necessarily silent, though.

    About the constant-torque issue: it is true that most brushless DC motors develop nearly constant torque over thier entire RPM range. However, this is sub-optimal. The near constant torque arises from constant clearance between the rotor and the stator coils. The maximum RPM is also determined by the back-EMF, which is affected greatly by the rotor clearance. There is an optimum clearance for a given set of operating paramiters, so many of the more advanced motors have an actuator that moves the stator back and forth in order to continually optimize the rotor clearance for efficiency. So it actually turns out that the optimum torque curve decreases with RPM. Right now, however, manually adding shims to the motor controls rotor clearance more accurately than an actuator that adjusts clearance dynamically. Since most of the time durring solar car races is spent on highways, cruising right at the speed limit, it's most efficient for the MIT Manta GT to have the rotor clearnce set for cruising speed by dissasembling the motor in lab and adding or removing shims. The extra efficiency gained at cruising speed more than makes up for the inability to continuosly optimize the motor.

    On a side note, don't assume that exotic processes and materials are better. Take for instance, the University of Michigan's solar car frame is made of titanium. (At least a few years ago it was.) Titanium is light weight, but very difficult to work with. Titanium is notoriusly expensive and comparitively expensive to work with. It is also imposible to design Titanium for an infinite fatigue life. (The maximum vibration allowable amplitude asymptotically aproaches zero as designed fatigue life approaches infinity. For most steels, however, the allowable amplitude asymptotically appraoches a positive value. Trust me, I spent an entire semster at MIT learning about crack growth and fatigue.) I'm told that the University of Michigan's Ti frame weighed only seven pounds less than the MIT ChroMolly steel frame. Which is more reliable? Which cost less? How many pounds are you willing to shave at eh cost of money and reliability?

    Karl

    Karl

    I'm a slacker? You're the one who waited until now to just sit arround.

  • Re:Amazing performance (Score:4)

    by Skald ( 140034 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @01:28AM (#1208894)
    Actually, the tricky part was keeping the dragsters from running over each other's extension cords...

  • Why can't anyone see the obvious? (Score:5)

    by mangu ( 126918 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @05:27AM (#1208895)
    There's some mental block at play here. Most threads here are reminding us how terribly inefficient batteries are. So, what's the obvious solution? Get rid of batteries, of course. With what, fuel cells? No way, too expensive. The obvious solution to the high cost of batteries has been implemented for a hundred years now. It's electric rail transportation, of course.

    Public transportation may not be the best solution for some cases, people will still want their cars to drive wherever they want. But trains and subways do have their own advantages. Have you tried to read or sleep as you drive your car every day to and from work? I compare the transportation problem to computers. Public transportation is like a big mainframe. People want to have a personal computer on their desks, but mainframes are still the best solution to many tasks. We need a well planned, well integrated, public transport network, which we will use on a day to day basis. We also need roads and cars, for special trips, like what we do on weekends, for instance.

    The reason why public transportation systems have been so neglected is mainly a question of bad pricing regulation. You don't need to explicitly pay anything to drive on public roads and streets. You do need to pay to ride on trains. This makes roads and streets seem to have a much lower cost than they really do. A well planned transportation policy should get rid of this subsidized personal transportation policy and make people pay the real cost for the use of cars and trucks over public roadways.

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