Americans Refusing To Wait For Mainstream EVs 779
hazehead writes "The growing trend of folks refusing to wait for big-car manufacturers to deliver mainstream electric vehicles is starting to get some press. From DIY tinkerers in Atlanta trying to keep money from going overseas (or simply from leaving their wallets) to a guy in Oregon building an open source Civic conversion kit, Americans are taking energy policy in their own grease-stained hands."
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
It does get arround the immediate problem of rising gasoline prices. Fact is coal is much cheaper per unit energy than oil and afaict the US mines most of it's own coal supply whereas they are having to import ever increasing ammounts of oil. It also moves polloution out of cities and iirc big power plants have much tighter emmisions controls than motor vehircles and those controls are much easier to enforce.
It won't help with global warming though :(
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
But not all power generated in the US is from coal and fossil fuels. My power is generated via Hydroelectric. There are Windmills popping up left and right. Except for trying to say no to all fossil fuels the trick is to reduce the need for it. fossil fuels are easy to transport and offer a lot of energy. Nuclear has to many left wing hippies who think of it as a bomb waiting to happen stopping it from popping up next door (Aka a field 10 miles away from you) Solar isn't ready neither are others. But even a dirty coal power plant is probably more efficient then a gas power car.
Re:Cost Effective? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, there is the question of whether the $700 represents a real savings, or simply a transfer of costs from gas to electric. Unless he's stealing power from his neighbors, of course...
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it does help a little. Pollution can be better controlled at a single point than at many thousands of points. Economies of scale can also be implemented.
And just as importantly, that single point doesn't have to move, and thus doesn't pay an efficiency cost due to having to move the extra mass of any emissions controls.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of people want to eliminate petroleum imports, and consider environmental protection a lesser priority or no priority at all.
I know plenty of conservatives that scoff at the idea of environmental protection and global warming but who still have a strong interest in electric cars, alternative fuel vehicles, and hybrids as a means of cutting the trade deficit and reducing the leverage that OPEC has over our foreign policy.
Cooking Oil in CA. That's California (Score:3, Interesting)
Please, you Californians, if you see any of that horseshit on the ballot, please oh please vote it down!
Re:Cost Effective? (Score:5, Interesting)
you assume that gas prices stay the same for the next 7 years.
Re:yes it does (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with you. Not only that, but I bet that with microgrids with many small generators, like solar panels or windmills or perhaps MIT's new solar heat dish (discussed earlier on this site) as needed, could do it. Improve public transportation and agriculture similarly, and my god, we'd have solved some problems.
At this point, the advantages are so compelling that it's only corrupt political fatcats in the way. Maybe when more of us Americans notice that Europe's superior energy efficiency is a big economic advantage with high energy prices, we'll make the switch whether Big Oil's paid lobbyists like it or not.
I want one of THESE to go with my Tesla... (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love an electric car. But a few times a year, I drive from the Bay Area to San Diego. This [mrsharkey.com] is the perfect solution to the problem.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:yes it does (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to add in for those not aware, projections for the percentage increase in ones monthly electric bill have ranged from 28% to 64% once the caps are removed. There are efforts to spread those increases over a period of years rather than all at once.
It was during the Ridge(R) administration that electric utilities lobbied and won the right to set their own rates, rather than having the PUC (Public Utility Commission) set the rates (i.e. deregulation). In response, the rates electric utilities could charge was capped for a period of time with the caps ending in 2010 and 2011.
With the rise in electric generation fuels (natural gas, oil, coal) having risen substantially since the caps were put in place, utilities will raise their rates to compensate as well as continue to provide dividends to their shareholders. In fact, PPL (Pennsylvania Power & Light) who serves my area, said somewhat recently that its shareholders should expect their stock performance to improve once the caps are removed (i.e. we (PPL) are going to crank up our rates)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:5, Interesting)
Cottage-industry bicycles? Yes. Cars? No. (Score:3, Interesting)
The bicycle industry seems to be one of the last bastions of Yankee ingenuity, where small entrepreneurs make a successful business out of a few thousand square feet of floor space, some machine tools, and a few dozen employees. Once you get beyond the Huffies in Wal*Mart, a large percentage of the $500-and-up bicycles seem to be made by large numbers of small companies. But I don't think this is going to happen with cars.
The bicycle craze and the horseless carriage fad hit the U. S. at roughly the same time, maybe 1895 or thereabouts. An 1896 Boston Globe article quotes a livery stable operator as being worried by bicycles but dismissing the horseless carriage as "a pack of French nonsense." At the time, bicycles represented a high level of mechanical and engineering sophistication. It's not surprising that the Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics; bicycles, early automobiles, and early airplanes were not at terribly different levels of complexity.
Not any more. (Pace, members of the Experimental Aircraft Association; I know that there are people still building airplanes in their garage).
But I don't see cottage-industry carmaking as going much of anywhere. For one thing, it's not about the car, it's about the battery. I don't think great breakthroughs in batteries are going to be the province of cottage-industry entrepreneurs.
In the 1900s, electric cars had a range of about thirty miles. In the intervening time, advances in batteries have been counterbalanced by increased expectations of what a car should do, and I find it very discouraging that the Chevy Volt should have a promised electric range of only forty miles.
The brilliance of the Prius (which uses a fundamental design worked out by the U. S. company TRW in the last sixties, who couldn't get U. S. carmakers interested in it) is that it achieves something significant without requiring revolutionary new batteries made of unobtainium. The battery is just a short-term buffer that makes up the difference between the torque required for normal driving and the torque obtainable from a small, fuel-efficient engine. But it does so by being mechanically and electronically very sophisticated. I don't think anyone could cobble up a Prius-style hybrid engine in a small machine shop.
I'd love to see a disruptive-technology electric car emerge from small companies, but I don't think it will happen.
caveat (Score:3, Interesting)
if you shoot heroin, you really do support the taliban and al qaeda. especially if you shoot heroin in europe
its funny, but the only positive effects the taliban had in afghanistan while they were in power was they utterly destroyed the opium trade there (the ONLY positive effect. blowing up ancient buddhas, beheading prostitutes and adulterers and prodiving a safe haven for bin laden and his jolly crew was their real achievements.)
before 9/11/01, american drug officials would fly over opium growing regions in afghanistan and be mind boggled at how there just was no opium anywhere. the taliban completely razed the poppy fields and issued death pronouncements on anyone who would grow poppies
so apparently, murderous religous fundamentalism is the way to win the war on drugs. "stop growing opium or we'll kill you" seems to weigh heavier in the minds of poor farmers than easy money i guess
but please note how shallow the taliban's religious convictions are: they got to power in afghanistan in the first place by relying on opium growing funds, and now that they are out of power again, they are relying on the poppy fields again
there's no religious fundamentalist like a hypocritical religious fundamentalist (well actually, that's doubly true, as all religious fundamentalists are hypocrites)
Re:2010 is just too long to wait (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:yes it does (Score:3, Interesting)
Or maybe you should see if your company would consider it a valuable perk?
Or... why not see this as an opportunity? Build your own charging system (big sucker) and charge your other friends at work to use it. Use electrolysis to break water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, burn both, and charge the cars with that.
Where there's a demand, offering a supply is almost always accompanied with profits.
Sounds like openings for businesses. (Score:3, Interesting)
odd (Score:4, Interesting)
It is still both cheaper and more environmentally friendly to buy a use car with good millage.
EVs make the best sports cars, period. Nothing competes with electric for performance. We should have been making electric sports cars 15 years ago. But soon Tesla & co. will finally push the internal combustion engine out of the high performance market.
After EVs are dominating the sports car world they weill trickle down rapidly.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:4, Interesting)
its also very unsafe to be driving around with a tank full of highly exlposive gas
And this is different from driving around with a tank full of highly explosive gasoline because...?
In the long run, electric will be the better choice. We can get electricity from a number of sources, which abstracts that away from the engineering of the vehicle. An h2 powered car will have significantly fewer of sources
Since one of those sources in the hydrogen case is electricity, I don't see the number of sources to be fewer than in the case of battery-powered cars.
Please criticize valid points of hydrogen as an energy storage medium instead of making up silly points that can be refuted in an instant.
Electric cars arent fun just for the enviroment. (Score:3, Interesting)
My dad bought an electric Renault a couple of years ago and after i took it for a spin i was totally lost. First of all an electric car has a very flat torque curve, it accelerates pretty evenly from standstill to 90 Km/h. Its easy to drive it very smoothly and elegantly. The next thing is sound, the car is dead silent until you hit 60+ km/h and road noise starts. Electric cars arent all about the enviroment.
Myself i really want one but sadly you cant buy one no matter how much you are willing to spend. The demand is here but for some strange reason no western or japanese manufacturer wants the money. The Chinese on the other hand are getting up to speed very quickly and at current pace of development it wont be long before their EV's start pouring into the west.
Re:Can-do spirit (Score:3, Interesting)
But still, are they that much more difficult to work on than computers?
Computers are easy; my car otoh, well, I took it to a certified machanic to find out why my engine light was on, and even he couldn't figure it out. He reset it, two weeks later it came back on. Now I'm just ignoring it until I have to have it towed back.
I never skinned my knuckles working on a computer (knock on wood). From Good Riddance to Bad Tech [kuro5hin.org] (yeah, it's mine)
Re:Highly Irregular (Score:1, Interesting)
If more people move away from gas powered vehicles we will also need to alter how taxes are collected to maintain our roads. This is a serious issue.
The federal gas taxes may have to increase next year due to the reductions Americans are making now due to fuel prices.
Perhaps we can shift this to our power bills, but this is conversation will eventually need to have.
Re:Can-do spirit (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:3, Interesting)
Hydrogen electrolysis of water will almost certainly always be less energy efficient than using capacitors for storage. The only reason anybody cares about Hydrogen is that you can get a little bit better energy density right now, but supercapacitors are quickly catching up. Hydrogen is not the answer. It is the question. "No" is the answer. The primary goal of Hydrogen-based power is to keep people dependent on filling stations, not fixing our energy problems or saving consumers money.
Apart from people taking long trips, it offers no advantages over a pure electric system and lots of significant disadvantages, both in terms of producing emissions (H2O is a greenhouse gas, sorry to say) and in terms of inefficiency. Add to that the extra risk of driving around on top of what amounts to a giant bomb (gaseous hydrogen + spark = barbecued passengers), and it just screams "completely wrong answer". Oh, and it is much more complex. The car companies love this idea because that hydrogen power plant is one more part that will wear out, leak, or otherwise require maintenance ($$$) and is likely to cost almost as much as a new car does when it comes time to get it replaced. More money in their pockets, less money in the pockets of consumers.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:3, Interesting)
Fast-charging battery tech is certainly a possibility, but the faster the charging, the shorter the life of the battery tends to be. By contrast, supercapacitors can also charge up in seconds but have no such limitations about lifespan. And unlike those batteries you're talking about, they can scale up to vehicle sizes today. For all practical purposes, charge speed with supercaps is more likely to be limited by the amount of power the grid can provide. :-)
Either way, though, the argument about recharge times made sense ten years ago when lead-acid batteries were the norm, but doesn't make sense in light of modern technological advances.
Need a powerful, lightweight motor... (Score:3, Interesting)
What I need is an electric motor that weighs less than 125 lbs, and will put out 100 hp at 2500 RPM. Then I could build a decent light sport electric airplane!
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, EVs won't require a radiator.
The result is that electric cars are much less likely to fail mechanically.
This is one of the reasons why the mainstream car manufacturers won't want to support EVs.
1. They make a ton of money selling parts. If EVs become popular, this revenue will dry up considerably. Also take into consideration the fact that vibration and heat contribute considerably to wear and tear on the parts. EVs have much less vibration and heat in the engine compartment which means that the parts will last longer. The car companies are pretending that EVs are complex machines by spouting all kinds of statistics about the "complex" power storage techniques, battery technology etc. So they price the cars very high stating that the batteries are very expensive.
But this is not really a big problem to solve. The batteries can be easily switched over when the owner of the car has the money to afford cheaper/lighter/more efficient batteries sometime in the future.
2. The service and support infrastructure (mechanics, service stations) will all lose money if EVs become popular. Even an oil change becomes unnecessary. Car companies have invested a lot of money in setting up their cars so that they can only be serviced by "authorized" service personnel who have the equipment which can interface with the car's proprietary control interface. All this becomes redundant if EVs become popular.
3. Automobile companies pride themselves on their engines which are difficult to replicate exactly and reuse between different models and even brands unless the person(s) making this modification have considerable experience and skill.
However in the case of EVs, the electric motors are fairly easy to reuse between different models and even brands. So if my 2008 EV has a motor which has a certain power rating, I can easily change to a motor with a different power rating or some other characteristic sometime in the future when this motor becomes available. It won't take very long to make this modification and it will also be reasonably simple to do.
Car companies won't want this to happen - they would prefer that you went in for a completely new car instead of purchasing just an updated part.
So in a sense, EVs reduce the car industry to makers of chassis, frame and panels and the basic drive train, steering, lights etc. This is not what a car company would want.
Re:Still doesnt solve jack (Score:2, Interesting)
Excuse me? Are you actually suggesting that the same battery chemistry that can't be relied on to power an iPod with greater than 80% capacity after a year and a half is suddenly going to magically become reliable and long-lasting in an automotive setting?
In my experience with batteries, the more complex and newer-fanged the chemistry, the faster it dies.
Lead-acid cells, while they may have a low energy density, last about twice as long (five years) and don't degrade anywhere near as much during that time as my experience with Lithium chemistry (both LiIon and LiPol). LiPol lasts about two years, then it's dead as a doorknob. The last six to nine months it's running at about 80% of it's old capacity. Not something you'd want in a vehicle.
I'd love nothing more than an electric vehicle, but the poster of the great-grandparent is right... supercapacitors are the only feasible option. Batteries die, and replacing them several times in the life of a vehicle that has such an otherwise elegant and simple design is a giant glaring flaw.