The Electric Car

Small EV cars don't really need a transmission in the sense that most EV motors don't need more than one gear ratio and a reverse. The motor controller does all the speed management. Most EV kit conversions use a standard transmission and you only need to leave it in second gear and never need the clutch. So no, no real transmission is needed, or at least a very simple transmission. Future EV may also have smaller individual hub motors right on the wheels, so again, no transmission, fewer parts to fail, redundancy and regeneration even.

 

So they should be cheaper. A lot cheaper. Right now the car companies are charging a lot to recoup R/D costs on the batteries and motors.
One of the challenges I see for the future of electric cars is making them lighter. Aluminum and carbon fiber will replace steel. I see the outer panels incorporating solar cells for recharging. And like relaxx said regenerative breaking.

 

Making cars out of strong, light materials will make a huge impact on efficiency. However, this is not an electric car issue -- it applies to all vehicles.

 

Yeah the price of Lithium batterys may come down soon if they can get more hard workers like this guy...



Chilean lithium mine

http://www.phongpo.com/2010/05/05/c...ies-to-invest-in-mineral-exploration-lithium/

ZW

 

I agree with the last few posters - cars can be made way more efficient than what is currently accepted as standard. Check out the cars on YouTube for the 'Progressive Automotive X-Prize'. It was a competition to build cars that get 100 miles-per-gallon or better. (Standard production cars get less than 40mpg.) Some of the entrants did better than 200mpg

When you bring energy demand down that much, supplying it with a battery becomes much more realistic. The problem is that our cars now weigh over 1000kh and have twice as much drag as is necessary; you can't just swap out the fuel tank of such a beast for a battery. But if we make our cars more like 300kg, and teardrop-shaped rather than box-shaped, then high-performance electric is possible with current technology and awesome with emerging technology

 

Am I the only one here that sees the extreme juxtaposition of us discussing via the internet all this high tech shit while a guy in Chile wearing a bandana for a respirator
mines lithium with a fucking pick and shovel?
This is insanity

 

Well, if we can get the car lightweight with carbon fiber instead of steal and designs with minimum drag we wont have to use lithium batteries.

 

There'll have to be some kind of battery...

High-tech battery powered personal transportation should not be the direction we are looking anyway, if we want a more sustainable solution.

Mass transportation is where the technology should be focused IMHO, no batterys required!

 

Lithium-free batteries might be closer than you think. I'm not prescient enough to see which technology will win the battery wars, but it could well be carbon nanowire batteries. Prototypes of these can recharge 1000 times, have 10 times the energy density of li-ion batteries, and use no rare elements.

It's not an either/or thing. It depends on the journey. For instance, if you want to go to your Aunt Mabel's cottage down the country to spend a weekend in her orchard picking apples on LSD, you need a car.

 

I agree but what about people in small towns? Mass trans. is great for big cities and the coasts and across country. I'd like to see high speed trains in all the Interstate mediums. For the rest of us in the sticks a electric/hybrid would be so much better then petrol.Lead acid batteries can hold a lot of power but heavy. Plus they are recyclable.

 

Yes, population will by necessity have to be more centralized...
decadent suburbanites and entrenched rural folks will have to just pay the price or maybe sacrifice a bit of their frivolous travel.

 

I've heard there are many small towns in Alabama that are dying because they are too far away from the jobs and people can't afford the gasoline anymore.

 

^^^Yup, sad but inevitable.

 

I think this is one of the main reasons for the recession and then housing bubble. People bought houses to far away from work and when gas went up to $4.00 a gallon they went bankrupt. When gas went up everything else went up in cost and they could no longer afford commute and mortgage. It was a perfect storm.

This is true. Many rural properties around me sitting empty. Rural people are going to have to learn to become self sufficient again. Cant rely on commuting to cities for work. This is a huge opportunity and challenge and could be very fulfilling and rewarding for rural people to create a opportunity for their resources.

 

Its really not the gas prices that are hurting folks as much as other things.
It's something we all have gotten used to complaining about though, not sure why...

According to the Census Bureau, the typical consumer spends just 5.4 percent of his take-home pay on motor fuel, . We spend four times as much paying the rent or mortgage, and more than twice as much on food.

In my view, personal saftey, impact on the environment is the concern with personal transport...Where I live it's very intimidating to drive the freeway in a tiny lightweight vehicle around giant 18-wheelers in wintertime!

Electric cars are still ultimately powered by mainly coal-fueled power plants, and never mind about toxic battery factorys, the various components of the resins (epoxy) used to fabricate those high tech carbon-fiber parts( or even the recent nano-tube shit I'll bet) are toxic as fuck until mixed and cured...I certainly wouldn't want to have to work in a factory with those materials everyday. And what do you think they do with the leftovers and fucked up mixes? They dump it, pay someone to get rid of it...thats right, the lowest bidder.
barrels of the shit...one of the components bonds with proteins and is known to cause pancreatic cancer among other things. :ack2:

ok I'm Done :daisy:

 

New, excellent video of the state of electric cars:
State of Electric Vehicles

Video claims that user running cost is about 1/4 of gasoline, but does not give the assumptions behind that figure. I really wonder what price per kWh they are using. Also claims that total emissions is about half of gasoline, even when electricity comes from dirty coal.

 

New, excellent video of the state of electric cars:
State of Electric Vehicles

Video claims that user running cost is about 1/4 of gasoline, but does not give the assumptions behind that figure. I really wonder what price per kWh they are using. Also claims that total emissions is about half of gasoline, even when electricity comes from dirty coal.

 

The tesla base model has a range of 160 miles with a 42Kwh battery. At 12 cents per Kwh it costs $5.04 to charge. Add 10% for loss in efficiency and it's probably more like $5.54. So $3.46 per 100 miles. How much does gas cost in the US? $3.30? it's more than $4 here in Canada and that barely gets me 30 miles in my car. So 1/3rd the cost to drive than my chevy which is also currently hemorrhaging $5 worth of transmission fluid a day.

Always keep in mind that this technology will get cheaper in the future and as it becomes more popular. Also if the average family also invested in a modest 2kwh grid tie solar system it would more than cover their charging costs for EV transportation.

 

Looks like a big failure to me. I'm not poor, but I've never considered spending more than about $20,000 for a car.

 

Even if power plants were burning gasoline to make electricity, electric cars would be better for the environment. The unsolvable problem with burning any kind of a fuel in a car is that the engine is too small. Burning fuel on a large scale is always cleaner and more efficient. Besides the natural economies of scale, power plants have unlimited space for heavy, bulky, expensive equipment that makes the plants run better. This advantage will become an even bigger deal as carbon emissions capture technology matures. Whatever they come up with is not going to fit under the hood of your car.

GM is way behind. They got a late start, assuming for too long that hydrogen cars were going to be the future. They may be right about hydrogen in the long run, but the gasoline hybrids are going to have their golden era first.