The Electric Car

Put away those gas nozzles. Save your money and starve the oil companies. Stop breathing the air auto makers make for you. Refuse to do it.

Go electric!

http://www.teslamotors.com/

http://www.zapworld.com/

http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/10/27-electric-cars-companies-ready-to-take-over-the-road/
The prices will come down with mass production. No worries.

http://www.evworld.com/

And these are just plain cute...Look like something out of a cartoon. I can see these being sold in Walmart someday.

http://www.autounleashed.com/detroit-auto-show-tang-hua-weird-chinese-electric-cars



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Sales figures for the Chevy Volt are now available. The mostly electric car, which costs $41000, has been on sale since December 2010.

During July 2011, GM managed to sell a total of 125 Volts! Worldwide!

What do you think? Looks to me like the Volt is a failure. It costs way too much. In what ways is it better than a Prius, which costs about $24000?

 

Plug-in hybrid is the ultimate design. You can buy gas if you need to drive a long distance, but most days you won't need to burn a drop.

It's a starting point for Chevy. Nothing more.

 

I think electric cars are not the best idea. We don't have time-of-use rates for residences; we don't have good batteries; producing electricity from coal and other fossil fuels means that electric cars are not zero-emission.

Some day, far in the future, when we get our electricity from renewables, it could make sense.

The best idea for the meantime, I think, is using non-corn ethanol (from stuff like switchgrass) and vehicles made of super light, super strong, carbon-fiber composite materials. This way, we can get over 100 mpg while using the existing energy-delivery system -- service stations.

I would be very surprised if all-electric vehicles will succeed in the marketplace, even with large taxpayer subsidies.

 

As the most "green car" atm.. the good ol fossil fuel burners are still the greenest car out there... sure emissions from the car are lower.. but you do realize that these car batteries are filled with tons of precious metals that are torn from the earth in the least costly way possible.. usually also found in remote areas.. sometimes disrupting indigenous life.. also these electric cars burn roughly 5 gallons of water per mile. And endless amounts of coal. Where do you think we get all that energy from right now? Sure ain't solar power.

Until developed countries adopt a completely solar power lifestyle.. we're just finding other solutions that cause different and more complex problems.

 

joker's got it right, electric cars really aren't all that efficient as they seem to be. if you have to plug your car into a socket every night then you'll be using a lot more electricity. that electricity comes from somewhere. power plants burn a lot of coal and oil

 

I looked into making an electric conversion before, about 8 thousand for a complete conversion and batteries. I spend about $120 on gas, I figured it would cost 20 - 30 dollars a month in power for charging for the distance we drive. Yes our power utility runs from 80% coal and batteries are toxic. As peak oil and coal become realized the cost will eventually skyrocket while advancements in solar, wind and cleaner energy storage become more efficient and cheaper. The sooner we embrace this future the better off we'll be. I will eventually own an electric car, and I will have solar panels for heat and power and possibly a wind turbine or two.

 

yeah i don't see the market for the electric car going up anytime soon.

i won't ever be buying one for sure. i don't like to make myself dependent on one single form of energy to such a huge degree. i think the ethanol fuel might be a viable alternative, much more so than electric power.

 

the approaches that are currently being taken are deliberately crippled. but the car, even electric, isn't the best approach to transportation anyway, except for people who live where population density is a LOT lower then where more then 95% of people do.

there's no reason they couldn't have swappable battery packs that one or more could be left on the charger somewhere while the fresh one is being driven with. also on board solar charging options.

a better approach is the effeciencies of very small form factor rail systems with onboard solar charging, as well as auto-charge-at-stopping-place.

so a solar charged battery propulsion system would set out in the sun for most of a week to run for a day or so and then repeat. so you'd have maybe for of five times as many solar battery engines as you'd need to have running in service at any one time.

this is not an insurmountable problem. it works and does so without hurting anything.

and if batter chemestry gets to be too much of a problem, there are other ways besides chemical batteries to store a useable electrical charge. flywheels with non-contact magnetic bearings, for example. use multiples of two, rotating in opposite directions to overcome undesirable gyroscopic effects.

you know everything to do with cars is made as expensive as it can, and that's gotten away with by the brag factor. humans are so gullable. but what i'm talking about is applying the concept to minimal form factor PUBLIC transportation.

bunch of pictures of it on my furaffinity gallery page.

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/themnax/

 

I'd also like to point out that these batteries for the electric cars only live roughly 4-5yrs... and cost in the range of $4k to replace

 

Say old bean! these Electric cars sure are a revolutionary new idea! Smashing!

 

There is another problem with batteries. They only hold a full charge during the brief period in which they are broken in, and then their capacity goes down throughout their lifespan. I've heard that they've made some progress with this, but I'm skeptical. Hydrogen seems like a viable solution, still requires fuel to separate it from water, but that could be done outside of urban areas, where no one gives a shit, and the air in the cities would be cleaner.

 

GM just announced a new electric car, the Spark. It's a very small car. But it won't be here until 2013 and there's no indication of price.

Latest stats on the Volt: they've sold 3,895 of them total, but they were hoping to sell 10,000 this year. No one believes they will make their target.

GM stock is way down since their IPO.

 

Love to subscribe to the prospect, though there is sadly not the infrastruture to support usage in the area, region or country

 

hell yeah! let's destroy more natural resources! who care's if its in the middle of nowhere... no one cares!

You're a complete idiot.. cities have already destroyed tons of natural resources.. so you think it would perfectly ok to clean something that we destroyed by destroying areas we don't use for no matter other than we don't use it???

 

Right now , Its still fledgling industry. The thing is its the industry that every tech power is putting Kagillions into , its full steam ahead for batterys and DC cars for better or worse.

 

I would definitely buy a little electric car if I could make it to work and back on one charge. 30 miles each way. That's not counting heat and headlights.
A couple posters mentioned flywheels and hydrogen. The ideal energy would be a car with the combination of battery, flywheel and hydrogen. This is going to be the future and probably a great investment for those who get in the market early.

 

I've heard that flywheel failures are quite spectacular and deadly.

 

Wait until after peak oil. Desperate people will be blowing themselves up with hydrogen and HHO all over the place. It's going to be a blast!

 

That's because were all so fcucken' realistic about nature and the universe. I can't change that, for the mankind that describes profit in the same turn as progress in knowledge.