GM Working on Feasible Electric Car 673
Posted
by
Zonk
from the general-motors-not-game-master dept.
from the general-motors-not-game-master dept.
WindBourne writes "While Ford wants to simply offer cosmetic changes to automobiles interiors and exteriors, General Motors has finally gotten the message about electric autos. They are about to introduce the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid which gets 40 Miles on a charge, but has a generator that can keep the auto going up to 640 miles range. From a styling POV, it is not a tesla, but it is also not a focus or a pinto. From the Rocky article: 'GM did not release cost estimates but said they recognize the Volt's price will have to be competitive. Company Vice Chairman Robert Lutz said in a statement that more than half of Americans live less than 20 miles from their workplace and could go to work and back on a single charge.'"
What is GM doing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Sure, the Volt is moving in the right direction, but it looks wacky and won't meet many people's expectations. Still, if it was under $25K, I'd consider one.
Re:The thing to watch:hybrid full size truck platf (Score:3, Interesting)
Where are the turbine/electric hybrids? Why are we still dealing with pistons?
Scott Adams on this concept car (Score:2, Interesting)
The future is AC, not DC (Score:4, Interesting)
Toyota and ABB of Sweden really have taken the first step in the future of transportation making a 500 volt integrated Variable Frequency Drive ( VFD ) to an AC drive motor.
This 1st step was really only scratching the surface and in the future you will see 400hz and above AC motors where the VFD's DC bus is excited by batteries.
Tesla experimented with many frequencies and found 60hz right for the 1890's bearings and engineering technologies.
Jet aircraft starter motors are usually 400hz AC multi pole motors. These are very light and have tremendous torque.
As computer controls become faster in processing speed, and the IGBT transistors can be switched faster VFD's and AC motors of 400, 600, 1200hz will bring more power and lower weight than ever imagined.
The limiting factor is the processing speed of the VFD cpu's in order to do sensor less torque vector calculations, then fire off the IGBT transistors.
I hope that one of the major VFD makers will have some engineer playing games on a CELL based console and have the brilliant idea that this would solve the intense calculation requirements needed.
If Toshiba ( major VFD maker ) and Nintendo ever merge, this will be the beginning of the electric era and the sunset of the internal combustion time on earth.
Think of the possibilities.
Cheers
Amazed at anti-GM stuff (Score:2, Interesting)
The EV1, in my opinion, was one of the most impressive accomplishments in energy efficient design the industry has ever seen. It's failure, in my opinion and many others', was primarily the result of a huge discrepancy between what the public said it would buy and what the public actually does buy when it comes down to actually opening their wallets -- it's as simple as that. The EV1 was unchartered territory so they had to put tremendous effort and trust into asking the public what they wanted, but it turned out there was huge difference between what a consumer says he or she would buy and what he or she actually does buy when it actually comes down to it.
By the way, before you accuse me of working for some evil oil company or the evil Big 3 or something -- I am not an automotive engineer and have never worked anywhere in the industry. However, I have done a lot of work in energy systems and did considerable research in propulsion technologies.
Re:Don't be silly (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, stop and go is the best case for hybrids. Reciprocating engines are most efficient when they can be designed to work at fixed rpm. Starting from a stop in your car or diesel truck is very inefficient. It is much more efficient to use an electric motor for the initial start. Electric motors make max torque at 0 rpm and love low-speed operation.
When I drove transit in Seattle, I was lucky enough to drive their new New Flyer diesel-electric hybrid [metrokc.gov] articulated buses. Because the big diesel didn't have to yank the bus away from a start, the buses were more fuel-efficient and much, much quieter. The lack of transmission made them unbelievably smooth. They were also the quickest transit buses I've ever driven despite being heavy 60-footers. The dynamic brakes made for a low-effort brake pedal, very smooth stops, and almost no brake wear. A full hybrid powertrain, while expensive, is absolutely ideal for urban transit buses -- which see more stop-and-go operation than any other vehicles. Fast, quiet, smooth, and fuel-efficient.
Re:yes, but road subsidies are also interference (Score:3, Interesting)
Simply not true for most US states. In the US, gas and vehicle taxes are reserved for vehicle and transportation related uses, mostly roads. Virtually no general tax money is used for highways. In Europe, the motorists are one of their governments main cash cows and the taxes collected from gasoline and vehicle taxes get used for all government related expenses, including roads. That is why fuel costs almost double of what it costs in the US. After all much of the fuel used on both sides of the Atlantic comes from the same Arab holes in the ground.
Re:The thing to watch:hybrid full size truck platf (Score:3, Interesting)
These aren't great solutions anyway. We're at a technological crossing; we have great electrical motors, but we're still stuck with shitty storage (batteries.)
When ultra-capacitors become widely available, batteries will go away, cars will be able to store enough energy to have 300-400 mile ranges, and the only reason to have a combustion engine in the car will be for emergency power (when you run out of electrons, which mostly, you won't.)
You watch. Ten years from now, the idea of having an internal combustion engine in a new vehicle will seem ludicrous.
I'm already vastly cheered by the idea of a car that has a 40 mile electrical range. 99%+ of my driving is under 40 miles cumulative every 7 days or so; if I remembered to plug it in once a week, I'd be covered. Lots of other people around here see the same kind of uses. Drive to work, the grocery store, the post office, occasionally the hardware store... and all of it within 10 short blocks. We only have ten blocks. :)
Bring it on.
Re:The thing to watch:hybrid full size truck platf (Score:2, Interesting)
That is, in fact, how diesel trains already work, so it's obviously feasible. They have an electric motor on each wheel, which would result in some interesting car engineering changes if that was implemented, but nothing requires switching away from a traditional drivetrain for now. (Although having four motors would be a great safety feature. If you lost one motor, they could cut out the matching motor on the other wheel, and you'd still have two to drive to safety.)
What would be really cool is if they actually made a car with the ability to remove the turbine, generator, gas tank, everything, for short trips, and put it back in if you needed to drive long distances. I mean, it's just attached electrically, so it's not like there need to be tight mechanical threshholds to hook it in.
It could take up half the engine compartment, and essentially just sticks supports downward, you swing the front bumper open or something, and back up, leaving it in place. Either in your garage or build a way to lock it in place if it's outside, probably by attaching it to rings set in poured concrete. (Not that people would be likely to steal them at first, they'd weigh like 500 pounds and have no obvious way to move it. People don't normally steal car engines sitting on the side of the road for the good reason that it's really really hard. But eventually they'd figure out a way.)
Actually, there's no reason you couldn't do the same thing with extra batteries, too. Think about it. You have once set of batteries that gets you 40 miles, you have another set you can put in that gets you another 35 miles (Reduced because of the added weight), or you can put in a generator instead that gets you 25 miles on the battery but also holds 5 gallons of gas to get you another 150 miles on a single tank, and of course you can buy gas.
And it's trivially upgradable to the 'buy batteries on the side of the road' model of electric cars. In fact, let's just build those cars, with the automated replacement systems and all that, and make sure we can put self-contained generators in in place of batteries. Maybe instead of 50/50 that I was talking about, maybe have a very very small battery, and a large battery swappable for a generator, where the generator is designed to provide enough power to run 75 down the highway and 55 up mountains and essentially runs all the time, and the small battery is just a buffer.
That way the biggest complaint of electric cars, that you need at least one non-electric car to hand driving to grandmothers or whatever, is removed. You can get to work, and you can get anywhere else with five minutes of work. Not only that, but when you drive cross country for a week with the relatives, you can remove your generator there and tool around totally electric until you need to leave again.
Re:The thing to watch:hybrid full size truck platf (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really. They are very lightweight, and therefore will have little inertia. Turbochargers spin between 60,000rpm and 100,000RPM and have a strong, long, proven track record (102 years) and the only time they become unreliable is when there is a lack of lubrication, usually from piss-poor maintenance (e.g., an owner gets an oil change once every 100,000 miles whether it's needed or not), or from running the car at FULL boost, then immediately shutting down (e.g., your average teenager pulling into a mall parking lot), without letting it idle down and cool off.
Turbine generators will be far less prone to the latter. There is no cure for poor maintenance, except that the turbine housings will be strong enough to protect against shattering during a catastrophic failure. Heck, even most turbines on jet aircraft are built to contain their massive, extremely high-speed turbines, and ditto for power plants with their even more massive gas turbine engines which are run at full speed at nearly 100% duty cycle.
And waste heat? They may run at a hotter temperature, but they use far less fuel than a conventional engine. There will probably less total heat output. The fix to lower the temperature of the exhaust? Mix the exhaust with ambient air (like the stealth bombers do to reduce their heat signatures), or reclaim the heat for other purposes, such as thermocouples or sterling engines to further increase efficiency, or during cold weather, heat exchangers for heating the vehicle, rather than relying on electric coils for heat.
General Motors already HAS an Electric Car (Score:2, Interesting)
I had no idea about this until recently, when I watched a documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car? [wikipedia.org], but General Motors already had a fully-electric car on the market: the EV1 [wikipedia.org]. This came as quite a surprise to both myself and my father, who has worked either with GM directly or as a GM dealer for many years here in the snowy state of Canadia. I have always had a special place for GM in my heart, and I always will, but I'm not naive enough to neglect some of the information put forth in this documentary. I've yet to do further research regarding the biasedness of this documentary etc., but even still, it seems quite disturbing.
How can so few people, including my own family, have known about this car? It looks like it could have done wonders for modern transporation..
Aikon-
Re:The thing to watch:hybrid full size truck platf (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't be silly (Score:3, Interesting)
Since it's unlikely that you're actually trying to argue otherwise, then maybe you're arguing that the free market is already achieving optimal fuel usage patterns. This is false for several reasons:
1) The current market doesn't account for the effects of usage on global warming. Those who extract, refine, distribute, and burn all that fuel are not the ones who will be paying the costs associated with climate change. They don't call climate change "the greatest market failure the world has ever seen" for nothing.
2) The current market for fuel is heavily subsidized by our government. I'm not talking about direct oil industry subsidies (though they do exist). I'm specifically thinking about the way our addiction to oil fuels and distorts our foreign policy. 9/11 (and the incredibly expensive wars that followed it) would never have happened had our country not been so heavily involved in the Middle East these last few decades, and a great part of that involvement was due to the oil resources of that region.
3) The market doesn't want to believe that oil (or any resource, for that matter) is finite. This is especially true for the oil industry, which would be greatly hurt if people were to believe en masse that they couldn't expect cheap gasoline for the forseeable future. Car manufacturers mostly go along with this, because they don't want to change the way they do business, and it doesn't hurt them if their customers are left holding the bag in a few years when gas hits $5/gallon.
If we preemptively increase the price of gasoline, it will generate far more demand for aggressive fuel-efficiency technology than currently exists. I believe such a measure is necessary to ensure an early (and smoother) transition away from an oil-based economy.
You also criticize the idea of taxes in general. Of course it would cost money to administer, but taxes can be designed for low administrative overhead. For example, a tax scheme that required individuals to report their annual mileage (broken down into taxable and tax-exempt usage) would require a huge administrative infrastructure. One that simply requires gas stations to cut a check based on the number of gallons sold would require far less. Sticking to the "a tax is a tax is a tax is an abomination" mantra simply leads to crappy policy.
Yes, a tax on fuel is going to have wide ramifications on the economy, generally making goods and services more expensive. I don't object to that fact, because I believe that such a tax would be a corrective measure, counterbalancing the artificial cheapness of fuel that exists when we allow fuel users to pass much of the cost of fuel use (climate change, for example) onto third parties.
My response to your "fuel tax == regressive tax" argument is threefold.
1) Fuel use patterns are more nuanced than the equation suggests. Wealthier people are more able to buy fuel-efficient cars, but are also able to live in the suburbs and take more elaborate vacations. Very poor people are more likely to use mass transit.
2) The regressiveness of the tax could be (imperfectly) counterbalanced by simply increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit. Such an action would require almost no additional administrative overhead. It could also be countered by a tax rebate. The tax could even be made revenue-neutral, by passing back as much money as is collected.
3) Since when have conservative free-market ideologues ever cared about the poor?
Regarding #3: please try not to become a cynical misanthrope like myself. It just isn't healthy.
Re:yes, but road subsidies are also interference (Score:1, Interesting)
As a point of reference, in Michigan, this tax comes to ~$0.62/gallon, or approximately 30% of the price of the fuel. Every time that I fill up the tank on my 1997 Dodge Ram, I am paying ~$17 towards the building , maintenance, and repair of roads.
If we stick with the state of Michigan, in the USA, we have approximately 6.4 MILLION people between the ages of 18 and 65 [census.gov]. Assuming that these people are all licensed drivers, and that they drive an average of only 16 miles/day [slashdot.org], 5 days/week, in vehicles which get an average of 20 mpg [epa.gov], then we are talking about more than $817 MILLION dollars/year for Michigan, alone, from fuel taxes. That's an extremely conservative estimate, and it does not even begin to consider e.g. commercial traffic, joy-rides, &c. (16 miles/day? I drove ~556 miles this past weekend.)
Sticking with Michigan, the Department of Transportation has a budget of ~$3.1 Billion dollars [mi.gov]. That's not exactly a huge leap from the extremely conservative estimate above.
In short, your $10/gal figure is absurd.