Mercedes To Phase Out Gasoline By 2015 908
arbitraryaardvark sends in a story a couple of weeks back in Yahoo's Ecogeek blog, reporting that Mercedes will phase out petroleum-powered cars by 2015 (mirror), and notes: "Story is unconfirmed but well sourced." "In less than 7 years, Mercedes-Benz plans to ditch petroleum-powered vehicles from its lineup. Focusing on electric, fuel cell, and biofuels, the company is revving up research in alternative fuel sources and efficiency."
Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
If electric cars can be made to charge from ordinary outlets, isn't the infrastructure already there? I suppose the trick would be to get the cars to charge fast enough and/or to last long enough on one charge that you don't have to stop every 4 hours to charge the car for 12 hours at a time, but assuming we can solve that, replacing all those gas pumps at fuel stations with extra outlets shouldn't be that big of a deal.
Basically, I think electric cars are the only real way to handle this stuff long term, but battery technology has to get better. Today's batteries are too heavy and don't last long enough.
I think better public transit is a good step, but I don't think you can put the private vehicle genie back in the bottle at this stage. People are accustomed to private transport, and the more efficient and environmentally friendly we can make that private transport the better.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Informative)
Most electric outlets have a 15 or 20 amp breaker. That means on the best of days you're only going to be able to get 1.8 to 2.4 kw or about 2.4 to 3.2 horsepower out of it. Unless your car uses less than an average of 3hp while it's running you're going to have to charge it, or at least your spare battery pack, for a pretty long time to get any range out of it.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, well, first let's look at some common outlets in the US. Your standard NEMA 5-15R has a 15A breaker and, while there's a nominal delivery voltage of 120V, you'll probably get 117V or so out of it. That's 1.755kW. Kitchen outlets generally have a 20A breaker, so 2.34kW. The NEMA TT-30R, the standard low-power RV outlet, is also a nominal 120V, so assuming 117V still, that's 3.51kW. Dryer outlets are split-phase, either NEMA 10-30R or 14-30R (the 14-30 ones are properly grounded; the 10-30s are grounded through the neutral). They're able to feed a nominal 240V (we'll say 234V) at 30A. That's 7.02kW The higher power equivalents, the 10-50R and 14-50R, are the standards for range outlets. The 14-50R is also the standard high-power RV socket. This is 11.7kW.
Okay, so these are the outlets found all across the country. The RV ones are especially interesting, since RV parks can often be found in even the most remote places, and I'm sure your average RV park owner would love a new revenue stream, what with RV travel down due to high gas prices. Now, let's take an upcoming EV like the Aptera Typ-1e -- 2+1 seating, 120 miles@55mph, 70 miles@80mph, 90mph top speed, 0-60 in Oahu. They use 60kW PosiCharge fast chargers by Aerovironment. Aerovironment already makes them as big as 250kW.
To get an idea of what sort of driving distances you can get in a given length of time and how those compare to gasoline, there's always this convenient spreadsheet [daughtersoftiresias.org]. Adjust the EV pararmeters to those of the EV of your liking. Explanations of the formulae and parameters are at the bottom.
Oh, and as for Mercedes? Who wants to bet that they'll make one or two EV/PHEVs, one fuel cell vehicle, and do the cheap/lazy thing and simply make all of the rest of their vehicles flex-fuel capable?
Post messed up (Score:4, Informative)
Ack, the post got messed up... I should have previewed. Replace that second paragraph with:
Okay, so these are the outlets found all across the country. The RV ones are especially interesting, since RV parks can often be found in even the most remote places, and I'm sure your average RV park owner would love a new revenue stream, what with RV travel down due to high gas prices. Now, let's take an upcoming EV like the Aptera Typ-1e -- 2+1 seating, 120 miles@55mph, 70 miles@80mph, 90mph top speed, 0-60 in under 10 sec, 15.9 cubic feet of cargo space, etc for $27k. It has a 10kWh battery pack. Charger efficiency isn't known, but 93% or so is standard for slow charging (i.e., charging in more than half an hour or so). Li-ion batteries range from 96% (fast charging) to 99.9% (trickle charging) efficiency. Let's say 99%. Let's ignore the slowdown at the end, since that's more significant with .
For ~2 hours worth of moderate speed driving or ~1 hour of high-speed driving, and assuming an appropriate onboard charger, you get the following charge times:
NEMA 5-15R (15A): 6.2h
NEMA 5-15R (20A): 4.6h
NEMA TT-30R: 3.1h
NEMA 10-30R or 14-30R: 1.5h
NEMA 10-50R or 14-50R: 0.92h
Now, these are with standard outlets that you can already find across the country. Thanks to modern batteries and chargers, fast charging is not only possible, but already available in places, such as Oahu [dailykos.com]. They use 60kW PosiCharge fast chargers by Aerovironment. Aerovironment already makes them as big as 250kW.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
If electric cars can be made to charge from ordinary outlets, isn't the infrastructure already there?
Absolutely not. At least in the US, electrical power distribution networks are already are at capacity, and are not even *close* to what they'd need to be:
* Total electrical power consumed in the US - about 12 Exajoules (for more is generated, but most power is lost in generation and distribution).
* Total petroleum power used for transportation in the US - about 28 Exajoules.
The way these numbers are measured, electric cars are significantly more efficient, but still we'd need to distribute *triple* the electrical power distributed in order to stop using gas for transport. That's significantly harder than replacing the tanks and pumps at every gas station.
Re:Thank god! (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget that when I'm on a long trip and my tank is running low, it's currently about a 5 minute process to refill it, then I'm on my way.
How long does it take to charge batteries?
This alone will severely hamper the adoption of purely electric vehicles until the charging technology improves.
Picture yourself on the way home from grandma's house after visiting the family for Christmas. It's 1:30 AM. It's snowing and the wind is whipping. Everyone's tired and your wife is bitching up a storm because your mom put her in a bad mood. Your batteries are running low and you're still 200 miles from home. And it's going to take 4 hours to charge them.
Fuck that. I'll pay $50/gallon for gas before I buy a car that puts me in that situation.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
You pull into a gas station and they swap out your battery for a completely charged one.
You drive away and they recharge the battery.
Problem solved.
Of course, there are a few issues to be worked out, like standardization of batteries (or being dependent on a single chain for swaps), liability for defective/damaged batteries, etc.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
The same way they store liquid fuel -- in a storage container designed for the purpose.
That's a question of inventory on hand. See my answer to your first objection.
By factoring in the replacement cost into their pricing, either on a blanket basis, or by assessing a surcharge based upon battery age.
Pneumatic lifts? Hydraulic lifts? There is plenty of mechanical assistance available for lifting heavy objects. As for environmental concerns, how do garages cope with the same wrt engine coolant, petrol, motor oil, transmission fluid, etc?
Who says we need to use coal? Maybe as a stop-gap, but nuclear and renewables are good options in the future. Especially if we reduce our wasteful need for so many vehicles. I know you mention the nuke-blockers, but most of the hard-core anti-nuke reactionaries are getting old, and I firmly believe that a massive information campaign could be successful in swaying the enough people.
In short, every problem has a solution, and while the economics need to be worked out, it sure seems to me that you're an obstructionist and would rather look at the problems and say, "Why bother?" than look at the problems and say "How can that be solved?".
I personally believe that electric cars are part of the solution in the long run, but in the short-to-medium term, we've got to work on alternative fuels that can make use of the existing infrastructure (with modifications).
Re:Thank god! (Score:4, Informative)
Just ignoring all of your erroneous stereotypes (addressed in earlier posts, not worth a repeated debunking), an electric motor is generally only 85-90% efficient in a normal drivecycle. If the vehicle is averaging, say, 25kW, that's still ~3kW of heat -- the output of two large plug-in portable space heaters.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Informative)
Error in your logic: Electricity has already undergone Carnot losses. Gasoline hasn't. The average ICE is only about 20% efficient. The average li-ion EV is about 80% efficient when fed already-generated electricity.
Don't take my word for it. Take the word of a peer-reviewed study from PNL conducted for the DOE [pnl.gov]. We already have enough electric infrastructure for 84% of our existing vehicle fleet to switch. Of course, not as though it's somehow *harder* to build electric infrastructure than develop new oil fields and pipelines. Just the opposite, actually -- that's largely why electricity is so much cheaper per joule.
Re:Thank god! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't like swapping my propane tank because I have a fairly new one. I really don't think I'd like to swap my nice new $5000 battery pack for whatever the last guy left at the station.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Never going to happen. Nothing will ever beat the private car for convenience. Its right there, whenever you want it. Its fast, it can be used by almost anyone, regardless of physical health. No wait times to use it, no sharing it with the smelly unbathed guy, the psycho homeless person, or the screaming infant. No stops along the way. And it can be used for trips of any length, to any location, without being forced to walk a mile from a bus stop to the destination. And depending on where you're driving, it can be quite pleasant- driving in the mountains with the top down is *fun*. I've never had a fun bus ride.
On top of that- cars, to a large portion of the population, are freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want. Freedom to live where you want. Freedom to just say "fuck it" one day and go on a road trip. Freedom from the clock- I don't have to leave the bar with my friends to make that last 10:30 pm bus, I can stay til closing time (assume I'm sober for this one). There is no substitute for this.
The people will never give up their cars. Don't bother trying to make us- we won't. We'll use every last drop of gasoline first. Find a better way to power them instead, they will never go away.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
To summarize:
My point is not to get rid of cars, I understand that. My point is to give people better alternatives for urban transportation.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wish I had some mod points. The car offers too much freedom to be done away with entirely. But we can design better cities and public transportation to make it so you don't need or want to use it as much.
The town I live in is made up almost entirely of 4 lane roads (or it feels like it) -- I'd never bike there for fear of getting squish (just like grape), everything is 2 miles away from anything else, etc. I'd trade my two car garage and 1000 sq foot back yard for a decent apartment with a view if I could walk to the local wine, cheese, and bread stores, to the large park with rowboats and bike trails...heck, even throw in a movie theatre in the apartment building.
The American Dream, last I checked, isn't suburban hell...it's raising a family in a secure, healthy environment. Planned right, even smaller towns can avoid the sprawl. But it takes planning, and buy-in from developers of corporations as well as condos.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Thank god! (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you have a subway system that will pick me up less than a block from where I am (no matter where I am), drop me off less than a block from where I want to go, and do so with a no more than 5 minute wait for said subway, it just won't replace the car. Its the transportation form of the last mile problem. But unlike in networking, here it is solved- the car.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Get real. In any dense city, you're parking and walking anyways.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you have a subway system that will pick me up less than a block from where I am (no matter where I am), drop me off less than a block from where I want to go, and do so with a no more than 5 minute wait for said subway, it just won't replace the car. Its the transportation form of the last mile problem. But unlike in networking, here it is solved- the car.
Any Americans wondering why they have a reputation for being lazy should read the quoted comment.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
why do you assume that we all want to live in high rise apartment buildings in large cities? Can a city of 100k people support a subway system? Doubt. Maybe the county of surrounding towns can support the bus system, but surely the bus system won't be going into every neighborhood.
Also, I and many other people on this planet live in the suburbs. I like having a lawn, not hearing heavy-footed neighbors upstairs walking around. I like grilling out in the backyard on a warm summer night. Going up to a 'rooftop garden' isn't even close to it, as how many apartments can invite their X closest friends up there?
Sure, I guess I could load up a couple of carts with a bbq, charcoal and coolers of food/beer and walk a few blocks, get on the subway with this stuff and take that to a park, whereby if I forgot something, I'm truly f-cked, b/c I can't run back into the house and get the g-ddamn ice.
I don't want to have to go to special cordoned off area of the city just to see grass, trees, birds and squirrels. I actually like putting up a bird feeder and seeing what shows up. Or planting a small tree when my son was born, or putting up a basketball hoop in the driveway, instead of having him walk down to the same park that 5000 other kids are trying to use.
You may love living in the city, but I'll give up my lawnmower when you take it from my cold dead hands.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
The current solution to not wanting to live in a city is horribly broken in the US. The basic plan has been to build huge, sprawling housing developments that literally require people to use a car for every trip. In american suburbs cars are required because the nearest convenience store is two miles away. Because cheap energy is basically over this situation is untenable, sorry. Electric cars are a stop-gap, but we need to stop depending on private vehicles to get you to work, get a gallon of milk, get the kids to school, etc. This is just too expensive.
Luckily the solution to not living in cities but not depending on cars for everything is solved. Its called small towns. Back in the days of Normal Rockwell do you think every family had two cars?
Generally this means getting away from sprawling hierarchal street suburbs and moving towards denser small towns, focused on transit to urban centers.
This is what exists in western europe. For example: my cousin lives in a suburb of paris in her own house with a backyard. She walks half a mile to the train station to commute into work in the city and keeps one small car for (rarish) long trips. The town is small but dense, so she can walk to the grocery store, walk to the market, walk to the bank. Her kids walk to school. I promise, promise you that you will like this lifestyle. Its very consistent with the lifestyle you lead now. You do not have to live in an apartment, you do not have to live in a high density city. And once you have the option to take a train to work rather than drive you won't believe you ever spent all that time in traffic.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Insightful)
Automated toll roads won't happen either. Any city council who tried to push that stuff through would quickly find himself out of a job. You'd end up pissing off
*All the business owners downtown
*All the people who live downtown
*All the people who work downtown
*All the people who go downtown semi-regularly
The only people you'd make happy are
*The people who go downtown once in a long while. And maybe not even them.
Despite what some ultra left Sierra Club people want, that kind of tolling isn't going to fly anywhere in the US. It works in Europe only because downtown infrastructures predate the car and they have to restrict the number of cars going into the area. There's no such excuse for any American city.
Re:Thank god! (Score:4, Informative)
The NSW and Vic State Gov'ts (Australia) have pissed off everyone with automated toll roads, but they still did it, and they're both still in office (for now).
These automated toll roads were created to relieve congestion, not reduce car use, but in a couple of cases (Lane Cove Tunnel, Cross City Tunnel) they made the congestion on existing roads even worse, because the toll companies were allowed to reduce lanes and make changes to existing roads to force people onto the toll roads where the profit$ are.
Of course the reason these governments are still in office is because the only credible alternative to them is even worse.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
Never going to happen. Nothing will ever beat the private car for convenience.
No? How about walking out of your house and to the nearest subway station (for me, 4 minutes), waiting for the next train (3-8 minutes, depending on the time of day) and being taken to your destination, or within a five-minute walk of it. There's no need to buy fuel, no need to have a car serviced, freedom to do what I want while I travel (read, use a phone, sleep, be drunk), much greater safety.
The car is only convenient if the place you live has been shaped around its use.
Its right there, whenever you want it.
So is a good transportation network. Your car isn't available if you've drunk alcohol, or if you're really tired.
Its fast, it can be used by almost anyone, regardless of physical health. No wait times to use it,
Traffic lights, junctions, traffic jams, filling with petrol, servicing, cleaning it.
no sharing it with the smelly unbathed guy, the psycho homeless person, or the screaming infant.
Hardly ever a problem round here.
No stops along the way.
Do you have traffic lights?
And it can be used for trips of any length, to any location, without being forced to walk a mile from a bus stop to the destination.
Unless the place you want to go to is on a road which forbids cars (quite common in Europe in the centre of towns and cities). And in any case, that just means there aren't enough bus routes.
And depending on where you're driving, it can be quite pleasant- driving in the mountains with the top down is *fun*. I've never had a fun bus ride.
Bus rides are usually commutes to work, done out of need rather than for pleasure. Driving in the mountains with the top down is different, that's for pleasure. I've never had a fun commute to work in a car (though I used to like my commute by train, the scenery was nice).
On top of that- cars, to a large portion of the population, are freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want. Freedom to live where you want. Freedom to just say "fuck it" one day and go on a road trip. Freedom from the clock- I don't have to leave the bar with my friends to make that last 10:30 pm bus, I can stay til closing time (assume I'm sober for this one). There is no substitute for this.
A decent transportation system is an excellent substitute. If the buses run all night you can stay as late as you like (and drink as much as you like).
The people will never give up their cars. Don't bother trying to make us- we won't. We'll use every last drop of gasoline first. Find a better way to power them instead, they will never go away.
The distance driven in Britain is falling, the distance travelled by rail is increasing. I read that the yearly distance driven by Americans didn't increase for the first time for years too.
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thank god! (Score:5, Interesting)
You're kidding right? Have you done the numbers yourself, or are you also pulling figures from the same place I did? (Well, not the _same_ place, since I'll assume you pulled them from your ass, and I pulled from mine :) )
If you live in the inner city, look at:
$100/mo for insurance (+/-)
$100-200/mo for parking (more if you're in Manhattan).
Inner city is a bad example for fuel, but a good guestimate would be $25/mo for a very short commute. Average commute probably ranges from 10-30 miles each way, so 200-600 miles per month @ (very generously) 30 mi/gal == 6-20 gal or roughly $25-$80/mo. Actual figures are probably more like $50-$200.mo.
Car payment (lease) say $300/mo. Car payment (purchased) say $150/mo factoring in life of vehicle. Maintenance say $50/mo over life of car (again, on the low side).
So, realistically, you're looking at $600 per month.
Now look at mass transit. I was paying $320/mo for railpass and subway card. Add in $150/mo for car rental for weekend trips, and it's still better than owning a car. Never mind the fact that parking would have cost me $500 for both sides, plus tolls.
OK, so NY is an extreme. But you are severely underestimating the cost of owning and operating a car.
Correct link to "HCCI" (Score:4, Informative)
The discussion about HCCI is written by someone named named Benjamin Jones. He obviously does not have much technical understanding.
Nobody wants to be the next GM (Score:5, Insightful)
GM failed to appreciate the coming change.
Good for Mercedes to be acting ahead of the curve. That is how you build technology and establish markets and presence.
Nobody killed the electric car. They killed their own opportunity. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nobody wants to be the next GM (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get too excited. It will be difficult to make a "biofuel" engine that won't run just fine on petroleum. And they won't try. As soon as they have biofuel capability across their product lines they will declare themselves "green" regardless of what the customers are actually putting in the tanks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Then it will be up to economics (with a "graceful" nudge from subsidies and taxes) to determine what consumers put in their tanks... the point is that petrofuels will not be required.
Seriously, I fail to see what the problem is... what exactly would you want Mercedes to do instead? Make power trains that will get all borked up if someone tries to use petrol? That's a great way to make sure no one buys their product.
I think that fuel flexibility is one of the answers.
"Patriotic" consumers killed American autos (Score:5, Interesting)
That's right, all of the "buy American" dolts destroyed the American auto industry. That is, the American-based carmakers, I'm not talking about foreign companies that build cars in the US like Honda and Toyota and BMW and Mercedes and.. well, probably just about everyone. For what it's worth, my BMW was built in South Carolina, and the quality is identical to the previous one built at the Motorsport factory in Germany, which is to say pretty damn good.
My car's in the (body) shop and I ended up with a Ford Taurus rental. 2 miles down the road and I concluded that every person involved in the Taurus should be immediately fired. The car sucked so much that I took it back the next day and ended up with a Mazda 6 instead (which I know from previous rentals to be a decent car).
The Taurus is a wholly incompetent car. I shudder to think that it was built in 2007. It droves like a 1984 Lincoln. Wallows all over the place, can't turn, can't brake, slow as hell, doesn't track straight, hard to see out of, big enough to require its own zip code, and ugly as sin, inside and out.
So, thanks for continuing to "buy American", thereby allowing our auto industry to maintain sales despite utterly worthless products.
Though I admit the Focus is a pretty decent car, that's actually what I had hoped to get in exchange for the Taurus.
I'll wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Mercs run just fine on used chip-fat - TODAY! (Score:5, Informative)
Plenty of people are already running their Benz on the stuff the local chip-shop would have thrown away. How hard is it to ramp that up a bit?
unconfirmed (Score:5, Funny)
Well if a blog says it's "well sourced," that's good enough for me!
and US car companies ? (Score:5, Insightful)
are still left in the 70's building 5 litre v8 guzzlers with solid rear axles
though looking at GM and Fords financial statements they wont be building much of anything if they dont change, fast.
Re:and US car companies ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:and US car companies ? (Score:4, Interesting)
But the problem the airlines are in is a middle area where it is important enough to drastically impact our day to day lives, but not drastic enough to ensure self-correction.
Sounds to me that if that really proves to be the case then the market will have judged airlines to be of less value then alternative uses of the wealth. I don't see why the Gov needs to mess with that outcome. Infact we could cut huge federal expenditures in that area without an airline industry.
Maybe only international air travel will be offered. Get you ass to NYC or LA by train/auto and then you fly over the ocean. That would be plenty practical. Air travel by and large is wasteful! It takes lots of fuel to move a little load. A train makes much more sense, given the rising cost of energy. Air travel was only selected by the market in the first place because the cost of the extra fule was less then the cost of building/maintaining all the extra railroad infrustucture that would be needed to serve the customer with trains. Airlines and interstate trucking all but killed rail because fule was cheap and plenty. Now that fule is expensive it might make more sense to build out railroad and if the airlines go the way of the doddo that could happen more quickly. Their is nothing wrong with these transitions its how a market is supposed to work. I don't know why our public officials refuse to understand that.
The buggy whip industry died with Ford, the canal industry died by the rail, the rail industry nearly died by the Ford and air freighter/liners. Rail cold come back and kill both and why not. It does not need to be your great grand pappy's railroad either we can run modern high speed trains with great fuel efficency as well if we replace our 120 year old track.
Haven't they heard? (Score:3)
> Focusing on ... biofuels, the company is revving up research in
> alternative fuel sources and efficiency.
Haven't they heard? Biofuels are now officially evil.
Re:Haven't they heard? (Score:5, Funny)
Local temperature been below average for the last two weeks? So much for global warming!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At yet, grain commodities dropped significantly the last couple of days. So much for biofuels being the cause of higher food prices.
Biofuel processing plants have been going belly up recently as well, I wonder if there's a connection.
Either way, the population isn't going anywhere (until the pubs cause wwIII), so we should NOT be using food grade arable land to grow biomass for fuel.
There are plenty of weed-like plants which can be used for biomass, one is non-marijuana grade hemp. It's not my fault politicians are so polarized they refuse to act for the good of the country and legalize its cultivation.
phasing out "gasoline" is not phasing out "diesel" (Score:4, Insightful)
Since this isn't an official announcement coming from MB themselves, I'm going to guess that "phasing out gasoline" and "focusing on biofuels" still means that they will still be running on diesel for their internal combustion engines. Not knowing much about automobile engines, or diesel in particular, I'm going to guess that they'll focus on the lower-sulfur diesel fuel that Europe has mandated (I believe, again, too lazy to look this stuff up), but it doesn't mean "no petroleum products ever"
Not to mention, there's still going to be plenty of oil in that engine, not to mention plenty of petroleum products in the rest of the car.
Biodiesel FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
tremendous energy density, easy to transport, not even hazardous when spilled, near-identical performance to diesel /50 mpg in my VW
Gasoline (Score:5, Informative)
No matter how we choose to generate power in the future, we have very few options for switching to anything other than gasoline for transporting that power.
Gasoline has a fantastic energy density. A 14 gallon tank of the stuff contains 491.2 kilowatt-hours of energy ($68 in electricity at New York rates [michaelbluejay.com]), and the gasoline itself only weighs 81 pounds. If you fill up the tank in five minutes, you're transferring power at 7.368 megawatts. Can you imagine what kind of electrical infrastructure you would need to transfer the same power over mere wires?
About the only alternative I can imagine that would be comparable would be to hot-swap whole huge batteries at gas stations.
No, I think we'll be using gasoline, or at least a similar liquid fuel, for quite a while.
Incorrect Conversion (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong on several levels.
First, the math:
491 kilowatt-hours = 0.491 megawatt-hours.
0.491 MWh over 5 minutes = 5.892 MWs of energy.
Second, you are ignoring efficiency:
5.8 MWs of energy is far more than it takes to move a car. Gasoline engines are remarkably ineffecient at converting all that energy into actual power.
Third, and most importantly:
"If it were possible for human beings to digest gasoline, a gallon would contain about 31,000 food calories -- the energy in a gallon of gasoline is equivalent to the energy in about 110 McDonalds hamburgers!"
Soure: http://science.howstuffworks.com/gasoline1.htm [howstuffworks.com]
(Okay, so maybe not most importantly, but it's the coolest.)
Re:Gasoline (Score:5, Informative)
You're forgetting the relative efficiency of the motors.
Gasoline engines are only about 25% efficient once drivetrain loss is taken into consideration. A 250hp electric motor is close to 95% efficient. With no drivetrain loss if you use lightweight electric motors inside each wheel. So you don't need to store as much energy on the vehicle in the first place.
ie: Of the 491.2kW/h energy you fuel up with, you only make use of 122.8kW/h in a gasoline car.
That lower number should be the storage target for an electric vehicle with comparable performance (and cost $17 using your rates). And you get other efficiency boosters almost for free: regenerative braking; freedom to change the shape of the car for efficiency because you don't have to worry about placing the engine above the wheels.
So you're overestimating the magnitude of the problem - and of the design freedoms that come with a switch to electric operation. It is a problem that will be solved within our lifetimes.
Re:Gasoline (Score:4, Informative)
Seems fitting (Score:3, Insightful)
The cars will be powered by... (Score:3, Funny)
EV1 revisited (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, GM really stepped on it's dick when it decided to crush the EV1. Here they had the chance to become the biggest auto manufacture on the planet, design a fully electric car, nearly maintenance free. Nickel metal hydride batteries that would outlast the life of the car, a motor good for a 1,000,000+ miles, regenerative breaking, would go 130+ miles between charges (NiMH), 300+ with L-ion.
If I had the chance I would buy a fully electric car, my commute is 60 miles round trip. However, not using gas would get me labeled as a thief by the state and federal governments since I wouldn't be paying the gas tax that never seems to go towards it's intended purpose (and never goes down when said road project is finished).
Its not the fuel that counts (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual, people assume that the problem is the fuel. Its not. Its the lifestyle. People are right to say that nothing can replace gasoline for the lifestyle we currently live. That is why the lifestyle is going to change, because there is not going to be affordable gasoline enough to live like that, and there are going to be no substitutes.
Folks, the 20th century is over. It was great while it lasted, suburbs, drive ins, shopping malls, long distance commutes. But its over. What is going to replace it will not be different fuels, electric cars, whatever. What will replace it is commuting by mass transit, living closer to where you work, moving into high density cities, walking to shops. Biking to work in some places. It will be a lot like Europe in the fifties. The suburbs will vanish.
And you won't like it.
You underestimate the ingenuity of lazy people... (Score:4, Insightful)
People don't want to change their lifestyle and if somebody comes up with a plan where they don't have to, they'll jump on it.
Waiter! Cheese for this man's whine! Pronto! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its not the fuel that counts (Score:4, Insightful)
-----
That's an interesting statement when you consider it was the insane policies of the Republicans that got us into this mess in the first place.
If wacko, insane, bumbling moron GWB hadn't destablized the entire mideast with his WMD-hunt (when Saddam had been a known, contained, and closely monitored element), then we'd still only be paying $1.50 per gallon at most. But, because of a few greedy individuals, we are now shoveling hundreds of billions into the pockets of a few and we've created the largest transfer of wealth in human history.
So, go on, spout on about how the democrats are to blame for everything. In the meantime, GWB will continue to lose popularity, and will likely be considered "Worst President in American History". Just remember the party he came from -- the party that represents wealthy, greedy, self-centered, fat white people who couldn't give a shit about the rest of the world.
Ethanol and performance (Score:5, Interesting)
As an interesting note, an engine designed with ethanol in mind will actually produce more power than a gasoline vehicle of similar displacement. This is because, while ethanol has a lower energy density per volume of fuel, it has a much higher octane rating and a higher synchromatic reatio (you can burn more fuel for a particular volume of air.) So, you can design an engine to run at a much higher compression for better efficiency (more power from the same amount of fuel,) or you can design a turbo engine to run with more boost (useful in a flex fuel design.)
A great example of this is the Koenigsegg CCXR [wikipedia.org]
There are other issues with Ethanol, however. Some countries with a primarily agricultural economy are converting much of their production to produce bio-fuel. This is exasperating some of the world starvation issues.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Nobody really gives a damn what fuels their cars, they care about cost and acceptable performance (can I make 70-80 on the freeway, or will I have a top speed of 40). If they can solve the problem of refueling infrastructure and sufficient mileage per refuel, there's no reason why not to go with a non-gas car.
The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody really gives a damn what fuels their cars, they care about cost and acceptable performance (can I make 70-80 on the freeway, or will I have a top speed of 40). If they can solve the problem of refueling infrastructure and sufficient mileage per refuel, there's no reason why not to go with a non-gas car.
you want this [teslamotors.com]
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, since Slashdot is now getting its stories from blogs that seem to be finding their 'well sourced' information in UK lowest common denominator tabloid The Sun:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/motors/phil_lanning/article1314732.ece [thesun.co.uk]
we might as well link to their story about Jet Packs!:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article744857.ece [thesun.co.uk]
Re:Yes it is - take a look at this: (Score:4, Insightful)
Though I wouldn't be surprised if it was 80mph for 30 miles or 30mph for 100 miles...
The real question is: "What's its range under normal motorway/town driving?"
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Insightful)
How does a car that costs $109,000 address the "cost" concern? Sure, Mercedes vehicles aren't exactly the cheapest, but few of their models go for over 6 figures.
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Informative)
This is only really the case here in the US. Around Europe, Mercedes is similar to Ford here in the States. They produce a wide variety of less expensive models that don't make it to the US, and are common in fleets (Police, taxis, etc.).
Not that this negates your argument, however. I think Europeans are far more likely to embrace alternative fuels than Americans.
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Interesting)
On TOP of this, Tesla is looking into distributing solar panels for your roof with the car that would be able to generate about 50 miles a day in energy. So if you travel less than 50 miles a day you would be driving completely for free.
Also maintenance of an electric motor is significantly cheaper than that of a traditional gas engine in a car, due to significantly less moving parts and not constantly trying to harness mini-explosions for power.
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Interesting)
And those cars are frequently a better solution to the MPG problem, when compared to new hybrid and electric cars. Buying a new car has a huge impact on the environment, as does discarding old cars.
In order:
1. Change your driving habits to achieve better mileage out of the car you already own. ($0)
2. Fix and maintain your existing car to get the best mileage out of it. ($0-500)
2. Buy a reasonable used car that is more efficient than your current car if your actual fuel savings will pay for the car in a reasonable amount of time. ($500+)
3. Buy a new car, following the same rules as the above. Unless your current vehicle is a semi that gets 7 MPG on diesel, this probably isn't a realistic cost-effective solution. ($10,000+)
Now, if you want to buy a car anyway, that's fine, but the fallacy of buying a different car to save tons of money on gas is ridiculous. Unless you're buying a $500 beater, chances are low that you'll really save any money.
I think most people are pretty short-sighted when it comes to finances and they think that paying less at each fill-up means they're saving money, even though they may have spent $4,000 on another car and are paying more in auto insurance.
Now, I'll admit that I don't really care about the environmental impact of buying new cars. If you want one, buy one. That just means more cheap used cars for me to play with.
What amuses me is that people who claim to care about the environment would trade in their old reliable Volvos (blatant stereotype ftw) for a new Prius. The environmental effect of that used car happened a good 5-25+ years ago most likely, and the ongoing effects of driving it (if maintained properly) are negligible compared to the production of a single Prius.
Buying used cars is environmentally-friendly and an excellent and effective form of recycling that requires no additional energy. YMPGMV.
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Funny)
Trust me, I'd LOVE it to be true, but there is no magical, mystical free energy source that's gonna make all our woes vanish overnight.
There is. It's called the sun. (NOT the tabloid newspaper! ;)
I don't think you read the parent very carefully...
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Insightful)
If I owned a Tesla, I'd show it off at the lights. Who cares what sound it makes when I'm already going 60 a mere three to four seconds later?
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, don't forget that lithium phosphate batteries are made from a small amount of a lithium salt (~$5/kg; even from seawater, it's only ~$30/kg), a bulk electrolyte, and various ingredients you'd find in a can of coke or around the house (phosphoric acid, sugar, iron, graphite, a PVC membrane, and an aluminum casing). They're only expensive because they're not mass produced yet like conventional laptop li-ion batteries are (conventional laptop batteries being price limited largely by the cost of the cobalt in the cathode, with LiP eliminates).
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a 6 foot tall Asian, you insensitive clod! :)
Re:The electric car you want is ready now: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In other news (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
With 300 million people in America and 6 billion in the world, "a lot" of people do a lot of things. But the Majority does not care.
Re:In other news (Score:4, Interesting)
Beyond that, your walking shoes have the same issues, as does your bicycle.
I'm not saying trying to help in this way is BAD, but you have to pause to consider that EVERY bit of energy we use pretty much comes from petroleum or coal, with the exception of a small percentage from other sources.
Societies that aren't industrialized rely on food at their ONLY energy source. They have to be able to grow more energy than it took them to plant and harvest, or they would have starved to death. Discovery of fossil fuels is the ONLY thing that's broken us out of the Malthusian trap, and your ability to walk or bike instead of drive a car is completely dependent on fossil fuels -- especially petroleum.
Having said all that, hydrogen is the only viable fuel we have right now. Not fuel source, but fuel. Even if we are using solar power to run electric cars, we still need to make fuel for them to run on. Hydrogen is being proposed in fuel cells, but that's a VERY new technology. The idea of burning fuels is thousands of years old and works well enough. There's nothing inherently bad about hydrocarbons. If we could produce and oil or gasoline from purely organic sources, we'd be as well off doing that as any other idea I've heard of. When you really think about it, oil is a hydrogen fuel. An oil economy is a hydrogen economy.
The problem is the environment and political problems associated with using the stored reserves of oil in the ground. We are using oil as an energy source -- that's BAD. But using it as a fuel, just as a way to easily transport energy around; there's not inherently bad about it. We have the technology to synthetically make oil, and I think that's the best route to go. Making oil from renewable resources. There will likely be a period of time where we mix synthetic and natural oil to make gasoline (think E85), but eventually, as natural oil reserves dwindle, synthetic oil will replace it. As we being mass producing synthetic oil, we'll figure out ways to make it better and cheaper, too. It's really just a matter of time...
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
Mass Transit? California? Hah. California performs an epic fail when it comes to public transit.
In the Bay Area no one single public transit system will get you around the whole bay. Getting from say Oakland to San Jose requires a number of rather inconvenient transfers. Actually trying to get around San Jose at all on public transit is a mess. BART was supposed to go to San Jose, but never did and trying to get funding to finish it has become a bureaucratic nightmare.
Down south, supposedly there's a subway system in LA but I've never met anyone that's actually used it. I think it exists purely so east coast writers can use it in their movie plots. Wikipedia lists its ridership as being 258,710 in a county with 9 million people. (NYC's subway system by comparison has 5mil daily riders). Southern California (and the whole state really) is very car centric, which is partly why the traffic around LA is so messed up.
As for trying to get between the major population centers in California (let's say, The Bay Area, LA, San Diego and Sacramento), your only options pretty much are Amtrak and Greyhound, both of which generally cost more then the cost in gas to just drive to whatever your destination is---assuming you have a car which most Californians do. If you start taking into account multiple passengers then the cost difference really becomes noticeable.
There is one potentially bright spot though. If high speed rail actually could somehow materialize into a reality it could offer a compelling alternative to driving or flying, in reasonable time. A major bond measure is on the November ballot to support funding for building the high speed train network in California. (Not to mention could actually solve the SJ to SF issue--- now if they'd only add a line along the Central Coast.)
Re:In other news (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you would be hard pressed to prove that point for any person with a decent diet.
1) Cars require more resources to build initially
2) Cars require more resources to run per mile (not just in terms of the fossil fuels themselves vs. human energy, but also in terms of the energy required to transport those fossil fuels around the world [hint, it's much greater than the energy used to bring you a peach or two] - 50% of the world's energy is burned just in transporting OTHER energy around the planet).
3) Cars cost more to maintain
4) Exercise is good for you and there are dozens of uncounted, beneficial health effects which will save you money later.
I'm sorry, but this is just pure FUD
Re:In other news (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of great reasons to bike, but $$ isn't one of them.
It is in this city -- and, I imagine, many others -- but that's due to how expensive it is to park rather than gas.
Good call - I've never had to work anywhere where I had to pay for my own parking. I only factored in price-per-mile (and left out all kinds of random overhead - If you can actually eliminate a car from your life, it makes a big difference). Sometimes I forget that not everyone shares my life-style - Shallow, I know.
Cheers.
Re:In other news (Score:4, Interesting)
In other news, the public will phase out Mercedes purchases by 2015.
Which public is that?
Mercedes is kind of a big deal in Countries that are not the USA.
Not to mention that it'll be a lot easier to build the necessary infrastructure in Europe, rather than in the USA, to support fuel cells & biodiesel.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
the USA only seems to import the luxury cars from Europe. In Spain and Italy, I have seen Mercedes-Benz garbage trucks, which shocked the hell out of my the first time when I was 15. Trips since then, barely noticed.
But the thing about a lot of Mercedes and BMWs and stuff -- especially the older ones: turbo diesel engines. Can't any diesel engine run biodisel unmodified? That was my understanding.
Lamborghini makes tractors (Score:5, Interesting)
Mercedes truck division is way bigger than its car division.
And plenty of Italian farmers drive a Lambo [lamborghini-tractors.com] to work.
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure you have to swap out your fuel lines and injectors. The engine is the same, though. All told, it's supposedly a very easy conversion to biodiesel.
Re:In other news (Score:5, Interesting)
You only have to swap out fuel lines on pretty old diesels. The injectors should be no problem.
The only real problem with bio diesel is that it tends to "clean" old diesel engines. You get a bunch of old crude floating around and hopefully clogging your filters.
Any modern diesel can run bio right now. Now straight vegetable oil takes some mods.
So to meet the goals all MB has to do is drop there gasoline power plants.
Of course what people tend to forget is that you can make gasoline from a lot of non petroleum sources including water and air. The only thing that prevents it is cost.
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
Of course what people tend to forget is that you can make gasoline from a lot of non petroleum sources including water and air. The only thing that prevents it is cost.
Exactly. It's not the unavailability of all of the fuel that is the issue, but how much it will cost, and more importantly how quickly that cost will increase. This rate of increase will determine whether we will be able to actually continue with this easy motoring way of life, or not. The higher the rate of increase, the less probability that we will be able to maintain the current way of doing things.
The cheapness of the fuel *is* the issue. Right now, diesel and gasoline still give the biggest bang for the buck.
See these (now quite well known) sites for more info: Kunstler [kunstler.com] and The Oil Drum [theoildrum.com]
Re:In other news (Score:5, Informative)
Which is a perfectly good way to ruin a new diesel engine.
WVO/SVO is great in theory, but once you add modern high pressure common rail or unit injector fuel systems WVO causes nothing but havoc. There are numerous reports of failures on WVO/SVO. Injectors sticking open and burning holes in pistons, etc.
Keep your WVO/SVO for your 80's Benz. The future will be GTL and designer BioD.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly, the emphasis is on biofuels rather than electric. Basically this boils down to burning food. At best, arable land that could be used for food crops will get used for fuel crops instead (this is already happening).
Electric cars, on the other hand, can be powered by nuclear reactors. And dang it, where's my flywheel?
Re:In other news (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when has there been a corn supply shortage? There is more corn in storage now than there ever has been before.
Re:biofuels (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps what the OP meant was that as producing corn becomes more profitable, farmers will switch to producing corn instead of other crops, thus creating a scarcity of *those* grains and raising the price of food in general. A big chunk of world already finds it hard to afford food and hence the conclusion of people starving if prices rose further.
Re:Shifting Focus... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would we phase out fissile energy? We should be using that for everything. Nuclear power is the best thing we have.
"Besides, the vehicles will still probably depend on petroleum-based products for lubricants."
Not so much, actually. If you have a 100% electrically-powered car, you simply put an electric motor on every wheel. Electric motors don't need much lubrication.
Re:Shifting Focus... (Score:4, Insightful)
He is saying that current fission, not fusion, is still the best source of energy we have. I agree. However I stipulate that the "waste" must be used to create electricity as well!
Through transmutation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation) much of the "waste" of current reactors (30 years old here in the US) can be further used to create electricty. And the result is less, and less dangerous, waste.
There are valid reasons to fear nuclear, however the benifits outweigh the results by billions of tons of carbon emissions. If we moved to a purely nuclear society, the innovations made in the long term would virtually eliminate the risks... making electrical power generation a truly clean enterprise... especially compared to current methods!
I would take a nuclear plant in my back yard before another coal one within 100 miles!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)