Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Apparently this fellow did not read the instruction manual. This is dangerous for several reasons.
The biggest problem with EVs that I see is they do not actually achieve the advertised range in real life driving conditions. Wind, hills, temperature, use of heat or cooling, number and weight of passengers, and other factors all significantly reduce the actual range in real life conditions. Further, the range indicators do not work well. They tend to drop rather suddenly once you get to about half the indicated range. If it is a pure EV and you run out of power, you cannot simply go get a can of electricity to fill it up, you have to call a lift truck. They also tend to lose a bit of the charge while parked, particularly in cold weather. It is not a lot of loss, but it does not take a lot to cause a problem. If your round trip commute is close to the range of the EV, you will likely not make it home even if you still had half a charge at time of arrival.
They need to make the batteries standard and exchangeable for the EV concept to work. Then you could pop into a fueling station, swap a low battery for a charged one and be on your way in a matter of minutes. If they do that, continue to improve the actual range, and get the price down, they will be very practical. To get the prices down, they need to increase production and sales. To increase sales, they need to make them more practical for a broader spectrum of potential buyers.
Replacement battery for leaf is $5,499 now were is your gas savings.
Try useing a EV in the north that just dumped a foot of snow, see how far you will get. Never seen a EV 4x4 have you.mEV are for the west were you yuppies live. EV will never make it in colder states. I ould rather spend $30,000 on a 4x4 truck in case I have to tow a Telsa car. Give me a V8 gas power horse any day.
One clue would be that Arizona could easily be the Saudi Arabia of solar power, yet there is no political will in the state to make that happen. I wonder why.
Public utilities in this state are governed by the elected, Republican-dominated Corporation Commission. They are now in the process of OKing the electrical utilities to add extra fees to people who have put solar panels on their roofs on the grounds that there are now too many of these tree-huggers and they're preventing the electric utilities in the state from making the profits they "deserve." So they "must" cut back on the savings gained by people who voluntarily joined the solar movement.
But it's the voters' fault. If they kicked these backward-thinking pols out of office, we could have some innovative change.
Repeat after me the GOP mantra: Spread out expenses and losses among the many, privatize profits among the few.
If electric cars are charged by renewables then they do make sense. If you can charge one from solar panels on your house then great. Except you're probably at work when all the solar power is available.
But electricity is fungible, and with a grid tie system you feed energy into the grid during the day, and draw it down to charge your EV after midnight, when the demand is lowest. Oh, and yeah, that's when wind power is strongest overall.
Quote:
If an electric car is powered off the grid it starts to make less sense depending on how much of the grid's power is derived from renewables.
Let me interrupt you there, because the issue has been thoroughly researched and EVs actually consume about half the energy per mile... accounting for the entire production cycle... as ICEs do. They are also responsible for less than half the carbon pollution as ICEs, and cost less than half as much to run. No need to waste the back of that envelope.
Quote:
Btw, solar panels use plastic substrates (fossil fuels), so when the cells wear out in 15 years give or take, unless the panel is re-worked then all that plastic is headed for landfills.
Btw, this is totally misinformed. I personally know people with solar panels over 30 years old that are still working fine, and modern panels typically have a 20 year warranty with an expectation of reaching 30 years or more. Otherwise all those 20 year leases would make no sense.
Quote:
I did a rough calculation one time to see how much area would be required to provide all of the power consumed in the U.S. via solar panels. I was very conservative, assuming the panels made power 24 hours a day and were always pointed right at the sun. I came up with an area of about half the state of Arizona. In reality it would probably be 3-4 times as large to account for things I ignored. Maybe the tortoises could use night vision goggles in all the shade created by that solar farm.
MIT made the calculation that only 10% of our total desert land could yield enough electricity to power the entire country if we could solve the energy storage issue. I believe that solution will surface within a few years.
And Texas has done their own calculations, because it is in the perfact location to produce both a lot of solar energy and a lot wind energy, which happily are complementary for time of day, with wind blowing strongest at night, and it shows that Texas could literally power the entire country. And all without producing carbon pollution. And some folks are jumping on the bandwagen, with big wind farm and big solar developments going in all over. J.R.'s oil wells dried up, as they all do over time, but the wind and sun will go on forever.
Quote:
I am starting to like hybrids. The Porsches and Audis at Le Mans this year were amazing with about a third of their power coming from regenerated energy. F1 is on that path too, though somewhat limited by only being RWD. This only helps in stop and go driving of course. It always cracks me up to see Prius drivers flying down the 405 in the diamond lane at 80 mpg thinking they are saving the planet, when at that point all they are doing is driving an under-power internal combustion powered car with a very small frontal area. If you are not braking, regen is pointless.
Funny thing is, straight hybrids like the Prius are starting to decline in sales, after more than 15 years on the market, while "plug-in hybrids," which have an actual electric drivetrain and a large enough battery for typical urban commuter distances are trending up sharply. And now there are models in development that are using improved Wankel engines to drive the generator at constant speed, and other interesting development.
Wrong. If you think about it Conservative stems from conserve. Some of us love technology and its development. Electric cars have advantages such as quiet operation, instant torque and no concentrated burning of fuel in an urban environment...instead energy is generated from coal, hydro, sun, wind, etc in rural areas primarily. Of course electric cars still have significant technical challenges but I still think they could be a huge factor in the future especially if they develop a long range battery system.
"but where does the electricity come from? It comes from coal which is an even worse fossil fuel than oil". So in a way you are using more energy than any fossil fuel run vehicle.
He doesn't have much of a clue. Coal is burnt using scrubbers in the smoke stacks. The end to end fuel usage and pollution is far less than end to end using petro fuels in cars. Also, poisonous emissions will be taken away directly from millions of lungs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OpenD
unny thing is, straight hybrids like the Prius are starting to decline in sales, after more than 15 years on the market, while "plug-in hybrids," which have an actual electric drivetrain and a large enough battery for typical urban commuter distances are trending up sharply. And now there are models in development that are using improved Wankel engines to drive the generator at constant speed, and other interesting development.
As an aside. batteries can be added to a Prius, the battery bay is big enough, extending the electric range and a plug in charger connection fitted. The car is then transformed for little cost.
Your landlord is more or less right. I don't think burning 1 gallon of oil in the power plant will give me enough electricity to run 30 miles.
You are wrong. In end to end, burning to produce the energy and using it on the road, EVs are cleaner and more fuel efficient than end to end petro burning in the cars.
Electric cars will not save people money or help the environment. With all the extra parts and more batteries needed in electric cars it increases manufacturing pollution. And when the batteries go bad on electric cars they are very expensive to replace.
You are 100% wrong. There is far less in an electric car. They are simpler. Batteries are 100% recycled.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrendanSWM
The biggest problem with EVs that I see is they do not actually achieve the advertised range in real life driving conditions.
Every car I have ever bought never met the mpg the makers stated. What's new?
Quote:
They need to make the batteries standard and exchangeable for the EV concept to work. Then you could pop into a fueling station, swap a low battery for a charged one and be on your way in a matter of minutes. If they do that, continue to improve the actual range, and get the price down, they will be very practical. To get the prices down, they need to increase production and sales. To increase sales, they need to make them more practical for a broader spectrum of potential buyers.
You have a point and this has been suggested. One was a subframe that holds the batteries that is dropped and taken out from the rear by a dedicated fork lift truck and replaced in minutes.
Last edited by John-UK; 09-26-2014 at 06:20 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
