Don't buy a car unless it's electric!!!

Almost everyone in the U.S. drives vehicles- we need to start thinking seriously about the way we get around. Biking and walking are great, but sometimes you just need a car. My solution is to not buy a car until 100% electric vehicles are available. They are cheaper, safer, cleaner, and more efficient than gas, hydrogen, and fuel-cell powered cars. Hybrids don't make sense either.... Gasoline engines waste 80% of their energy. Instead of using gasoline engines to power an electric battery to power a car, we should just be developing better battery technology. This is a topic you NEED to inform yourself about. Successful electric cars have already been built by GM and Toyota, but they were sued by Chevron (because electric cars means bad business for the oil industry)

There are a lot of resources online to learn more about this topic. I would recommend the book "Two Cents Per Mile" by Nevres Cefo ( http://bit.ly/2centspermile ) It's a quick read, it's informative, it's interesting, and it provides a lot of good facts. If you have any more questions about electric cars, feel free to e-mail me at jb100ec@yahoo.com, and for news about electric cars follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/2centsbook

Thanks for your time, and I look forward to your responses.

 

sure.. when everyone has an electric car the cost of a kilowatt with be going for 100 bucks.
And then when theres no gasoline cars, the gas will be a nickle for gallon.
To many flaws in this Electric car idea..

 

Yes the flaws. Most people kind of forget that the electricity for the car comes from the power grid and what do you think produces that power? Coal?

 

Watt?. no more mountain tops..

The way I see it, The car is only good if it comes with a collection solar panel or a wind generator.. That a few thousand dollars more to go with the cost of the car.
Another thing is the cars cost. If the Car cost $8,000.00 or under 10k you wreck it. You might as well call it TOTALED.. When the repair cost is as much as a new one..

 

i will drive whatever i please

 

Yes, I agree, freeinalaska. Electricity as an energy source is one of the dirtiest currently, because almost all of it comes from fossil fuels and nuclear. On the other hand, if smart technologies like regenerative braking systems are optimized and you can add a solar photovoltaic roof for the AC, like the new Prius, you might get away with not charging the batteries very much. But to call electricity "clean" currently shows great ignorance. In the future, if we follow a soft energy path, we can get a lot of it from the sun and wind, so the situation will slowly improve.

 

electric cars ARE expensive... its cheaper to buy used gasoline cars.

 

100% electric vehicles are avaliable now if you look hard enough. They tend to be reliable, easily and cleanly fixed, and comfortable. The only problem is that batteries cost shed loads to produce. They weigh a lot, and store relatively little energy. The result is that electric cars cost a pile, and are short ranged. Are you sugesting that poorer people put off getting any kind of vehicle until the cost of batteries falls to under a quarter of their current values, bringing the cars to a competative cost compared to todays avaliable petrol cars?

Cheaper? Well, after you pay for the vehicle, they do consume less energy and with todays electricity costs end up cheaper per mile, but you'd need to drive round the world more than a couple of times for the cost benefit to start to swing the electric car's way instead of the petrol car. Oh, and you'll also be driving in shorter hops, as whilst the range of electric cars is increasing (I believe the best ranged production electric car is the Optimal Energy Joule with a range of around 200 kilometers but this can be doubled by adding a second battery pack that will take away from space in the car and limit its utility, aswell as costing an arm and a leg), you still need to take 6 or 7 hours off to recharge when you get towards the end of any one charge. I suppose you could possibly physically swap batteris at "refuelling" stations, but that would be bloody heavy, and take far longer than a standard petrol pump.

Safer? I honestly have no idea how you reach that conclusion. The manufacturers of electric cars will have to squirm through the same quagmire of regulations as any other vehicle manufacturer with regards to safety. They have no stricter rules regarding crumple zones, airbags, seats etc than any other vehicles. The only 2 ways I can see them being safer than other cars is if they are built even more like tanks than Range Rovers thus the occupants are safer at the expense of the passengers in other vehicles in a crash, or due to quitness they dont have the VROOOOOOOM to attract boy racer types and therefore dont get wrapped round as many trees or lamp posts.

Cleaner? In terms of the energy output per kilo of CO2 produced, electricity is reasonably better than petrol, but that is as far as it goes. Modern batteries require some absolutely noxious chemicals to create. These chemicals are developed using some of the most polluting industrial processes yet devised by mankind. I have seen absolutely no reason to suppose that the marginal gain of carbon efficiency using batteries and electricity over petrol is still worth it after considering the manufacture of the batteries.

More Efficient? That depends on how you look at it. If you are thinking in terms of the percentage of useful energy you extract from a battery compared to the energy you put in during charging, the battery would indeed end up to be more efficient. If however you are thinking about the energy stored per unit volume or mass, batteries fall flat on their face compared to petrol, gas, or hydrogen.

I do not pretend to know much about fuel cells, but the other options you present each have significant advantages over batteries.

I would love to know where you got the 80% figure from, I wont comment further until I have some idea about its basis.

I think you're missing the point of hybrid cars. Hybrids do not usually charge from the engine, they let the engine do the maintaining motion work, but when the car decelerates, a generator is used to convert the kinetic energy to electrical to be stored for accelerating again, menaing less energy is used in starting again due to energy saved stopping previously. In an urban environment this means they consume far less fuel than their peers due to saving most of the energy wasted in the stop start routine of urban driving. On long journeys cross country they make less sense as there is less accelerating and decellerating.

If I remember rightly, GM released an electric car experimentally in California, before realising that they got little or no revenue for spare parts, and they were proving a little too popular and making all their other cars look bad so they were all taken off the road and cut up. I have no knowledge of any law suits with Chevron though, and I have absolutely no idea what legal basis an oil company would have to sue a car manufacturer for its products fuel requirements.


In my personal view, there is no significant benefit to batteries if the energy isnt produced cleanly. Renewable energy sources tend to be on and off at best, so it is essential that there be an electricity storage solution to take the excess during the on times, and store it for use in the off times. In my view Hydrogen poses the best option here, as it can be produced by electrolysis of water very easily, so at any time there is energy excess in the grid, you can use it to produce Hydrogen. It can then be converted back into electricity on demand, aswell as being used for fuel by anything from cars to short ranged airliners given the appropriate investment in technology. The proportion of energy you get back out of hydrogen compared to energy used creating it is only marginally poorer than batteries, and you ctore vastly more energy in terms of per unit mass and per unit volume. You also dont have to worry about the pollution of the industrial practices making batteries.

 

The problem isn't electric or gasoline, it's how we use it. Replacing every car with an electric won't solve our problems. But improving our public transportation systems definately will.

Excess energy in the grid would be a terrible way to create hydrogen since the system isn't sustainable. And turning fossil fuels -> electricity -> hydrogen -> electricity? How is that being efficient.

Sure these cars may run more efficiently, but you also have to consider the energy costs in producing these cars. And on a massive scale too.

Hydrogen (if at all) seems like a much better option than batteries. You only need to produce one battery to make all the hydrogen, instead of millions of batteries to run off electricity. Sure it's a little less efficient, but tons more environmentally friendly.

I vote for changing infrastructure.

 

Until the majority of electricity comes from earth friendly technology, the reasoning for buying electric cars is faulty. At present it is far worse ecologically to buy electric cars.
Now the hydrogen cells technology being used in Brazil, sounds truly exciting....but have not researched it yet to say it is better.
Course steam turbines are very much more efficient than any gasoline/ diesel vehicles out there....everything is still being based on fossil fools (misp on purpoes)....maybe $$$ still rules - aye.....foot power still looks good to me...pedaling works too.

 

I believe the Chevy Volt is going to be a huge failure because it won't sell.

 

Amen to that brotha.

 

Ahh yes, but where do the old batteries go? I can't wait till all that shit gets into the groundwater.

Unless we go back to riding horses we're fucked.

 

Ok ,,, I want a Chevy Volt.. I really want to be one the first in the hood to have it..
put some 22''s on it...

 

Electric cars aren't a solution. The batteries are extremely toxic and electricity doesn't come out of nowhere - it has to be made - which means the use of fossil fuels.

If everyone drove an electric car, the demand for electricity would grown tremendously -- meaning the use of more fossil fuels. And we sure do love those toxic batteries in our landfills.

 

And you can't forget about the recreational point of view with cars. For MANY MANY MANY people, cars are art, a hobby, a career and a life style. It is the same principle as with advertisements and entertainment...think about all the money, time and energy that would be saved had the last twenty movies not been made, and every cooperation having just a few less commercials, etc.
Think of all sorts of money spent on sports and such, and how some cause out there could have benefited had that time, energy, and money be spent on it instead of frivolously wasted.
My point here is that it isn't how you use what, it is that people are always going to want to do what is best for them, that is simply how it is.

 

Sorry, I live in the middle of fucking nowhere. If I try to bicycle my way into a bigger town, I will probably die from heat exhaustion or being eaten alive by an alligator. Or both.

 

methinks the op is pushin a book

 

Probably. If GST doesn't get a response we shall know.
I'll respond to him if the OP doesn't, atleast then it won't have been a complete waste of his time and energy

 

You are amazing.

This is the one social theory that trumps every other in existence.