175 MPH Student-Built EV Smashes Speed Record 164
An anonymous reader writes "A team of Brigham Young University students recently smashed the world land speed record for electric vehicles by hitting a top speed of 175 miles per hour in their self-built electric car. The car, named 'Electric Blue,' reached high speeds thanks to lithium iron phosphate batteries and its streamlined design, which is capped by a tail fin for speed and agility."
LAND speed record ? (Score:2)
Do they know a tgv hit 574kph / 357 mph ?
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That would be a train, not a car, and I don't believe that the TGV operates under battery power either.
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in 99% of its routes, the TGV doesn't even go that fast, because the french tracks are in such a crappy condition. 574km/h were only reached once on a test track.
Major fail in your comment.
It won't hit 357mph on any scheduled service (100% do not reach this speed), since that was a research experiment. The scheduled services run at 186mph (300Km/h) and 200mph (320km/h), depending on the line and train. It does this in an amazing level of silence and lack of vibration/sense of speed -- until you look out the window. When a TGV is moving quickly, rain doesn't stick to the windows. It's like being in a ground-level aeroplane.
No slower train is allowed on LGV lines, and
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I got to ride the TGV when I was in Europe and I was definitely impressed. You're definitely correct about the lack of vibration, compared to the much slower moving AmTrack trains we have in the US, it was without any meaningful sense of either vibration or speed.
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i bet it will - considering that they only place they would run that is on the salt flats..
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The 315mph one is hydrogen powered rather than battery powered, too.
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The venturi buckeye bullet isn't an EV, it's hydrogen powered.
Electric BLUE? Seriously? (Score:2)
"Car Smash Record!"
No they didn't. (Score:2, Informative)
FTA: An electric car designed and built by BYU engineering students set a world land speed record for its weight class.
That qualifier makes a world of difference.
Here's an article [wired.com] about students setting a EV speed record of 307.7 mph last year.
Re:No they didn't. (Score:4, Informative)
The streamliner, named “Electric Blue,” competes in the “E1” class, which includes cars weighing less than 1,100 pounds. Because electric cars rely on heavy batteries, engineering a speedy vehicle at such a light weight is very difficult. That’s why there were no prior certified speed runs for this class
Hats off to them though, still a pretty impressive feat!
Sound? (Score:2)
I heard these EVs are incredibly silent. This will cost lives unless loudspeakers are installed. Great opportunity for creativity. You could have a lion roaring or something like that. Or just an engine sound.
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You could have it play ice cream truck music, and troll kids as you drive though residential areas!
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At idle, sure, they're silent (until some ass puts a ridiculous sound system in), and even when driving they can't compare buses and semis. But then, most cars don't either.
EVs are really not much quieter than a well built gas vehicle. Consider the road noise from a Tesla Model S [youtube.com] as an example. The cars are almost as loud as the truck that tows them in.
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Just attach a whistle. Much cheaper (construction and energy-wise) than loudspeakers. Not a referee whistle though, something designed with a low, smooth tone, so if a million of these are on the road, it won't drive everyone else nuts.
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If the first thing you hear as a modern car approaches is its engine, then there's something wrong with that car.
True. It's still a safety issue but one that also exists with ICE cars. I often have to beep to let pedestrians know I'm there while driving a sports compact with noisy high-performance tires and metallic brake pads. It's an older car and it might seem noisy at high revs while you're driving it, but from track-side videos I've seen you can't hear the engine at all unless the exhaust is pointed at the camera. In one video I was screaming towards the camera at high revs, and all you could hear was a quiet whi
Physics fail (Score:2)
capped by a tail fin for speed and agility
Uh, no. It has a fin for stability. The whole design of the car (long and narrow) is set up for linear speed, not agility. The fin doesn't improve the speed other than preventing you from crashing before you top out.
If you want to build an agile electric car, it'd look something like a Tesla Roadster.
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Yep fins are bad for speed and agility if anything. They can also help to stabilize cars and make them handle better, but that's not an issue on anything you'd drive on the street...
Phosphates (Score:2)
Nothing says "green" like phosphates.
So when do we get to buy one? (Score:2)
We always see these developing stories about tech that is now coming out into the light, but we never see the tech actually make it to the market.
I am still waiting to see the solar cell paint that you can spray on the side of buildings to turn them all into major electrical generators, yet I have not seen anyone come out with that, let alone see whole cities turn into big generators because of it.
Lithium IRON batteries? (Score:2)
How IRONic!
Nahhh. I'm pretty sure it's Lithium ION batteries. Pretty funny, spell checkers can't handle it when you misspell it to another English word.
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Actually, if you read the article ... uh, crap. Yeah, anyway, the article does say that it is lithium iron phosphate. Just sayin'.
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Baby steps tiger, baby steps.
The first cars were expensive and slow. Slowly they became faster and cheaper. Now they are fast and cheap.
First EV were slow and expensive. Slowly they are becoming faster and cheaper. One day they will be both fast and cheap.
Don't you read Wikipedia? (Score:2, Insightful)
In the 1890s, electric cars were competitive with conventional petrol-engined vehicles in speed and range, manufacturers even began to address the problems of recharging by introducing removable battery packs. Given the cost of a non horse-powered vehicle then, cheap didn't enter the equation, but they were certainly fast enough It's all here [wikipedia.org]. The fastest car in 1899, at 100km/h (62mph) was La Jamais Contente [wikipedia.org], driven by Camille Jenatzy, a Belgian racing car driver.
In the early 1900s, London had a large fle
Got much of an agenda? (Score:3)
Thanks to the fantasy of "cheap oil"
I don't think you know what "fantasy" means. I also think you don't realize that batteries are not a fuel like oil is; batteries have to be charged from something, and it sure wasn't solar power in 1899.
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They had hydroelectricity back in 1899 in a few places though.
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Neither did the petrol vehicles of the time. Did you have a point?
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Your "average consumer" only has to go a few tens of miles to work (at most), and go shopping a bit.
The average consumer COULD realistically have an EV.
(I say this as someone who has a gasoline powered car, but if I could've bought an EV1 when I bought the car I have now, I would have considered it.)
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You cannot drive them at fast speeds on public roads. They need to be cheap and have longer ranges. That is all.
Agreed. Speed hasn't been a problem since they broke 75 miles per hour. We need the charge to at least last long enough to get you BACK from where you are going. Actually I guess what we really need is a way to charge while you are away from home, same as I may drive to a neighboring city now yet need to buy fuel to get home.
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The reason why we have "sports" EVs on the market is pretty simple -- if you want to recapture all your braking energy, you need really beefy motors, and a really beefy capacitor bank. Once you have those, you are 80% of the way to a sports car. So the marketers decided hey, if we are essentially building sports cars anyway, let's see if we can market then as such.
So yes, range, battery longevity, and charging flexibility are what needs to be worked on now, but the high brake horsepower is going to stay e
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Improving the ability to recapture braking energy is not going to affect range significantly.
When you're looking at maximum range numbers, there's an assumption that you're mostly driving on highways. On highways, you don't use your brakes (until you reach your exit). You're only limited then by your battery capacity.
The only thing regenerative braking is good for is to improve your range in the city, but that's not even a problem right now; we can already build EVs that have a good range for short commut
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While it's true that in average highway travel, braking only accounts for 2% energy loss, that's still 2% off the top, post drivetrain. However, I think your assumption that any range driving is highway is a bit off. You have to get to the highway, first. Also in urban areas brake use on the highways is more frequent. I speak from experience, being that I drive 33% "country" and 67% highway, and I still regen in my Prius even on the highway, though most of the time even with the weak electric motor I ma
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I guess you never drive on highways outside of cities?
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What state is that in? Here in AZ, 2-lane rural highways are frequently fairly empty, and when there are other people on them, they're usually driving 85. Braking isn't something you have to do very often, unless there's some kind of problem. The city freeways (Phx has a population of 4+ million) are insane though.
Even when I lived on the east coast, I don't remember having to deal with that much traffic on rural interstates, except in eastern Virginia.
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So you're obviously a far outlier.
You could still get a hybrid, and use less gas than you do now.
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You are definitely not the norm, but for those that occasionally go more than 100miles (160km), a towable generator would work just fine for the average EV. Just include a bit more in the plug; charge, on/off control; along with the brake/turn signal lights.
Re:Cmon (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much every major technical advance you can think of in internal combustion cars that made them faster and cheaper came from people racing them.
Of course, they've been getting more expensive over the last couple of decades - but a huge chunk of that cost has been the addition of things that cars don't really need to run - safety, electronic gadgets, emissions controls. And even with that, most modern "sporty" family cars will leave all but the hottest 1970s era sports or muscle cars in the dust, especially when handling is considered.
If we made new cars to 1970s safety standards, without mileage and pollution controls, they'd be insanely fast, much lighter, and about 1/2 the price.
The side effects of that can be left as an exercise for the reader.
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"sporty" family cars will leave all but the hottest 1970s era sports or muscle cars in the dust, especially when handling is considered.
Granted on handling, but I don't believe you ever experienced big block performance first hand. Virtually anything under 3 tons weight with a 454cid engine (and un-restrictive breathing) will completely smoke a "sporty" 3 liter sedan, even today. Of course, not many people are willing to put up with 7mpg to go with the acceleration and top speed that those kinds of displacement bring (and they get far less MPG when opening the throttle.)
In my book, if it doesn't have a big block, it's a weak muscle car.
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Owning a 70's lead sled and having owned a 3.8 liter supercharged v6 sedan there is no comparison. The sedan cornered better than the 70's stock suspension but driving performance on highways and get up and go I'll take the big block (502 chevy with a blower and nos in a TA BTW). It's not easy to get a big heavy car to corner well it's just that much more inertia to overcome, but there is a lot that can be done to either cars suspension.
The premise of the safety bits is funny, it's always assuming the acc
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2010 Ford Taurus SHO 0-60 mph 5.2 Quarter mile 13.6
1972 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 0-60 mph 7.4 Quarter mile 15.3
2007 Chevrolet Impala LTZ 0-60 mph 7.3 Quarter Mile 15.4
2011 Chevrolet Malibu LTZ (3.6L) 0-60 mph 6.3
The OP's point stands, the sporty version of a modern family car is the equal of most 1970's muscle cars (in factory trim) in the quarter mile and will completely crush it in just about every other metric you care to meas
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could you find me a production car from that time with >=500 cid? that had roughly the same cost (as a percentage of median household income) as a 25K-35K modern sports sedan?
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A '64 Pontiac GTO [wikipedia.org] did 0-60 in 6.6 s and the 1/4 mi in 14.8 s. A V6 Camry can easily match that.
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Don't ever buy the v6 Camry, for whatever reason, the in line 4 is way faster :P
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Of course, they've been getting more expensive over the last couple of decades - but a huge chunk of that cost has been the addition of things that cars don't really need to run - safety, electronic gadgets, emissions controls.
The 2008 Civic has almost identical dimensions as the 1990 Accord, and is better equipped, faster, safer and gets better mileage. Adjusted for inflation, it's also $8,000 cheaper than the Accord.
The 1972 Chevy Nova (with the top-of-the-line 165 gross horsepower 350) cost $13,300 in today's dollars, or about $3,000 less than a Civic, so while there has been some inflation since the 70's, I think we've done all right, and certainly better than in the early 90's.
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However, the problem with electric cars is, as it was in 1890 - batteries are expensive and heaving - this cost is due to using hideous amounts of raw materials - and (although we know it is not theoretically impossible) no one has come up with a suitable chemistry yet.
The electric car will trash all opposition - if we only had a brain^h^h^h^h^h battery.
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...batteries are expensive and heaving...
I got a mental picture of a well-dressed battery puking its guts out over the rail of a luxury cruise liner.
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I was personally picturing the battery out of breath as it tried to make it to the end of the race.
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I believe the message is quite clear: As safety and the environment have become much more important since the 70's, the additional costs of safer design, more fuel efficient engines, added safety equipment and emission controls have increased the cost of cars. That's it. No hidden message there. Sure, we could still be building big, fat polluting hogs for cheap if safety and the environment were not important.
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Safer, narrowly defined to only include harm from car crashes. The lack of exercise from people driving when they could walk or bike kills far more people.
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i'd bet a roll cage, harness, helmet and HANS device, weigh less than the air bags/safety systems in most new cars. Lighter cars mean better performance and less accidents due to better maneuverability and stability. I would expect the devices I listed earlier to be safer as well. Just as a thought, the best way to make sure the passengers in a car don't hit anything damaging is to simply make sure they don't move, instead of trying to make a pillow appear in a few microseconds.
I'd love an electric car, but
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Yes, lighter, '70s cars were heavy but look at mid '80s-early '90s cars, that actually had to deal with tighter safety and emissions regulations. We could build them that light again.
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seems to me that someone missed lemans and world rally of the 60s and 70s. None of the Detroit muscle cars even participated, the ford GT40 did, but it was purpose built to win lemans. I don't know about you but where I drive I hardly get over 70( and that's above the speed limit), but I know of some fun twisty =40 and =55 MPH roads. Taking a high torque low top speed car on one of those at near the speed limit but getting to drive all the corners sounds more fun to me than a short blast down a track on a d
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Make EV cheap, not fast!
There's only one thing holding it up and that's cheap light batteries. The thing you have to realize is the last major commercial battery upgrade happened a dozen years ago and there's nothing on the horizon. Lithium Ion batteries have actually been around a long time but only became commercial fairly recently. Yeah if you follow the press releases light high capacity batteries are around the corner just like a cure for cancer. Realistically we are probably 10 to 20 years away from a major innovation that w
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Last time I checked they weren't making anymore dead dinosaurs.
I eat freshly-killed dead dinosaurs at least 3 times a week. I call them "chicken", however.
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>Long before we run out oil will simply get too expensive to burn in cars.
Sure, but almost every new car currently being sold in the US can burn either E85, or Bio-Diesel, neither require Oil. E85's link to ethanol may make it sound bad, but you can make your own from rotting corn, and yeast you can but at any homebrew store, just smash, mix with water, wait a week, then add heat to distill (Illegal in the US without a revenuer permit.) Make sure it isn't mixed with gasoline, and your good.
Hybrid still
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And make them "normal". Not a car that only seats one and has everyone gawking at your as you drive down the street (and not in a good way like with a Tesla).
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I want a car that looks "normal", but I wish they built more one-person cars. Wouldn't you be able to save a whole bunch of weight in the car (thus increase range)?
I know you could say, get a motorcycle.. But I want a car (covered, and obviously something you don't have to balance on to drive). A one-person (or possibly two-person but the second person's seat would usually be for your shopping or whatever) car that still met safety requirements would be cool.
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EV is cheap is the the power storage systems that suck.
batteries are heavy, and have barely 1/3 of the power that they need to even come close to replicating normal driving habits.
They are getting better, but in real world testing, the limitations are coming to light.
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Do you mean range instead of power? If you do, then you're way off. You're claiming people need to drive 180 miles/day on average? (Even picking one of the lower end of 60 mile range cars.)
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Cheap isn't even as important as "good", which in this context would mean having a long range. As long as an EV can reach 80mph or so, that's all you need for normal roads; the Achilles' Heels of EVs are range and recharge times. The latter can be gotten around with quick-swap standardized battery packs, but they still need to beat 100 miles for range.
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I agree, a racecar is not really in the spirit of an electric car that actually improves our world. The point isn't just to switch out the engine, the point is something sustainable.
When it comes down to it most "eco" cars are greenwash. This is just more proof. You can't really move a small 150lb person in a large heavy metal box and call it sustainable. Especially when bicycles are so practical. Electric bicycles are another matter entirely.
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to be honest with out car racing many of the "efficiency" improvements would not have been made in road cars.
1) There are a lot of racing classes that require stock production cars simply fitted with harnesses and roll cages.
2) Making the fuel more dense, and the engine/motor more efficent means taking less fuel for the race, which means a lighter car, which means faster.
as for your bicycle comment... let me know how you would like to do 16 miles one way at -20F while taking you to work and your kid to scho
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You could always just swap them out.
I mean, if six guys can change four tires, fill a tank of gas, clean the grill and take a round of wedge out the ass end of a car in ~15 seconds then surely we can figure out how to switch a battery pack (or two) in a couple minutes.
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Only if you can engineer the batteries to be light enough that a single person can move an entire array of them. Even the highest-performance battery packs that are capable of being engineered today, in enough quantity to reasonably power a vehicle, weighs many times more than an individual can lift absent machinery or disconnecting each member unit individually. Neither of those are practical.
The same can be said of a pit crew (regarding practicality). The cases where the expense is justified are extremely
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Nowhere did I state machinery was impractical.
I said this particular suggestion, given current technology, is impractical.
With new technology that isn't even on the horizon yet (at least not publicly), it may become practical. A hypothetical tomorrow that nobody has the slightest idea of how to realistically get to doesn't really fill the bill for a solution to problems today.
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Nowhere did I state machinery was impractical.
"... weighs many times more than an individual can lift absent machinery or disconnecting each member unit individually. Neither of those are practical." I included the quote so you could see. To those who can't read minds where you are saying that machinery is not impractical, it reads as: "[it can't be done] absent machinery [which is not] practical." If that edited version is not your intention, then I assert you have a severe problem with the English language. Reading the other comments, absolutely
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Most of the comments were stated in such a way that it appears they were taking issue with the idea of machinery being impractical in a more general way. I did not mean, nor is it implied in my statement, that machinery is impractical when taken by itself. Given the way vehicle culture operates in the USA, from manufacturers down to consumers, the standardization itself required among manufacturers is highly impractical. That, in turn, makes the application of replacement machinery impractical to implement
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Given the way vehicle culture operates in the USA, from manufacturers down to consumers, the standardization itself required among manufacturers is highly impractical.
I agree. It's much like getting a standard charging port on a cell phone. It's technically trivial to do it, and most certainly not "impractical" to have a universal power port, but it will never be done in the absence of legislation requiring it. Because of the large environmental issues related to EVs (the ones they cure and the ones they cause), as well as safety issues, I can see legislation on those managing to make it past, even if castrated by the big-2 in protectionist form.
Overcoming cultural inertia can be just as impractical. The difficulty should be weighed in terms of whether there is enough benefit from burning coal (which is where the majority of the electricity to charge them actually comes from in the US) in your EV, versus burning gasoline in an internal combustion engine.
Little, if any, of my
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I'm pretty much in agreement with all that. I think the disagreement is between "have" and "get." It's practical to have and use such a system. The problem, as you outlined above, is actually getting there. Politics, economics, culture, and technology all have hurdles that need to be overcome, and that's why I consider it to be impractical. Once critical mass of EVs is reached, it may become practical to overcome the issues regarding quickly and cheaply storing and replacing thousands of pounds and several
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It's funny you have to couple an informative link with the behavior of an asshole. I suppose that's why you post anonymously though.
I have no problem with non-liquid storage mechanisms, but let's not let what I actually said get in the way of what you'd like to represent that I said. That wouldn't make things any fun, now would it?
You posted a great link. You're also apparently a dick. I'm perfectly willing to admit there are points of technology I've missed. I bet there are things you aren't aware of too.
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Yes, focusing on the simplest part of the equation and implying that the rest of it is irrelevant or just as easy.
Getting into space is cheap and practical too! All you have to do is mount an engine on a cylindrical object!
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It was stated that it's feasible. It's just not practical or cheap, both of which are necessary in any end-user, non-professional application that's not limited to a tiny niche application.
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Any swap that isn't part of a contractual program will remain both infeasible and impractical until batteries exist that do not wear out or where the cost and ease of refurbishing or recycling worn batteries is much smaller than their replacement value. None of those things are true with current battery technologies, nor are they likely to be true in the near future (barring some amazing, out-of-left-field discovery that allows high energy potential and low cost and complexity).
The technology exists, but it
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I believe unrtst was referring to the trip from the external opening on the car to the opening in the fuel tank being the "gravity fed" mechanism.
The rest is pretty spot-on. It seems like many who are interested in engineering conflate "feasible" and "practical." Yeah, it's cool to do a lot of things that are feasible, but that doesn't make them practical.
Most of the complaints here are as amusing as the ones you get when you mention EVs are almost universally coal-powered (at least in the USA).
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This is a much more practical approach. The resistance is also exactly as you stated: old habits die hard.
The culture in the US is very much opposed to anything that requires you to wait though, unless you're in a rural area. There is very little tolerance in urban areas for any sort of delay, at least among the mainstream, car-driving public.
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But swapping batteries? It's insane right now. The previous owner/user could damage it in subtle ways -- overcharge it, undercharge it, or maybe just overheat it. Or even just ignore it for 36 months. Or physically puncture it -- maybe a tiny hole -- the hydrogen gas slowly building up in the battery compartment for weeks until it explodes.
Batteries need to be better at a lot of things to beat out
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They are if you synthesize them using thermal depolymerization processes, instead of digging them out of the ground. Of course, you might argue they're not truly "fossil fuels", but if it's the exact same mixture of hydrocarbons as those you get by refining crude oil, the term still fits.
Re: Swapping stations (Score:2)
You could always just swap them out.
Yes, Better Place [wikipedia.org] is already deploying swapping stations in a few areas. They have signed contracts for various stages of deployment on a much larger scale.
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How about zero guys and ~5 minutes? [betterplace.com]
Problems... Expensive charging stations and you don't really own the battery. [nytimes.com]
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Infrastructure:
- Small stations with a couple of pumps deployed all over the place (a farm can be a gas station)
- The small station can be fed by wind or solar or off the grid
- The station charges 'chargeable fluid' to a certain level of energy
- The fluid is some sort of suspension with a high energy capacity (probably involves metallic salts)
- Generating power and selling charged fluid is supposed to be decentralized and help f
I had a more solid but otherwise similar idea (Score:2)
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In 1911, you couldn't drive across the US in a petrol powered vehicle and expect to fill up in 5 minutes wherever you pleased, either. So, should we have focused on grass eating cars then?
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"In it's weight class" is the qualifier here.
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Yes, but as the grid gets cleaner, so do the EVs - right up to fully renewable power. Gasoline cars will never improve beyond the limit of the liquid petroleum that they carry.
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EVs charging on coal power are still cleaner than gasoline cars. And at that point the car is power-source-agnostic, which means the US could potentially get their heads out of their asses and run on a combination of nuclear, solar and wind with no changes required to cars.
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Dear user 894406,
We regret to inform you that Mormons stopped practicing polygamy in the late 1800s. Therefore, your humor is behind the times by over 100 years. Once a joke is more than a century out of date, it loses too much of its zing and backfires (cf. asking a Catholic, "how them Crusades goin'? Har har!") While not keeping up is somewhat of an inalienable right on the internet, we do ask that in the future you make sure that any outdated humor is still below the 100 year threshold.
Sincerely,
- The Ma
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Dear user 894406,
We regret to inform you that Mormons stopped practicing polygamy in the late 1800s.
That's cute. BUT IT'S WRONG [wikipedia.org].
Though the LDS stopped practicing polygamy in the late 1800s, there are a number of other mormon groups who still practice it today.