All-Electric DeLorean Car To Hit the Streets In 2013 366
An anonymous reader writes "The DeLorean Motor Company just announced plans to launch an all-electric version of its gull-winged Back to the Future car in 2013. While it doesn't run on fusion power (yet), it still has a top speed of 125 mph driven by a 260 horsepower electric motor."
Damn, is it April 1 already? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Were those cars actually popular before Back to the Future? I don't remember seeing any on the road.
Re: (Score:2)
I highly doubt this car will be made out of stainless steel. The article mentions SS models but it doesn't explicitly say this one will be. It will therefore be a cheap knock-off that nobody will want.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the gull-wings, plus the futuristic white with black speed-stripes, sports-car look with the large rear light indicators made it distinctive. At least from the estate-cars with the adhesive wood-panel veneer look, the three-wheeled Reliant robins, Rover Minis, and Volkeswagon Beetles (aka Herbie).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't rust but it dents and scratches just fine. Get into a minor fender bender and you need to replace panels. If you fix a dent in brushed stainless steel you will always see it. Add to that the fact that welding stainless isn't easy. What about weight; stainless isn't very light.
Re: (Score:2)
I may be wrong though, I have no experience, I'm just parroting what I've heard said by friends that work on expensiv
1.21 gigawatts (Score:3)
This sucker is electrical!
The only question remains - do you need to wait for a lightning storm to charge it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:1.21 gigawatts (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
This sucker is electrical!
Marty, the time circuits are electrical, but the internal combustion engine runs on gasoline! It always has!
260 horsepower... (Score:4, Funny)
...can someone give that to me in jiggawatts?
It's gigawatts pronounced oddly... (Score:3)
260 horsepower...can someone give that to me in jiggawatts?
Anyway, here is, from google [google.com].
Re: (Score:2)
260 horsepower = 0.000193881967 gigawatts
So, I just carry a rug around and wipe it to get a static charge into the car every once in a while?
Re: (Score:2)
Considering that's still nearly 200 kilowatts (or about the consumption of the UNIVAC I), I think you're going to need a lot more rug.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're going to need a lot more rug.
That's what she said?
Re: (Score:2)
According to BTTF.COM [slashdot.org], it's jigowatts.
Re: (Score:2)
stupid preview... changing links and stuff... it's http://bttf.com/index2.php
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The man wanted jiggawatts, not gigawatts, but thanks for trying
I guess the Kryptonian education system isn't what it used to be. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Go to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary [merriam-webster.com] and you will find that bot a hard G and a soft G are acceptable in pronunciation of "giga", but thanks for trying.
Re: (Score:2)
jiggawatts == gigawatts. It is just an alternate pronunciation, one more quirk of old Doc Brown.
cite [nytimes.com]
Gigawatts vs. Jigawatts (Score:3)
The term Gigawatt used to be pronounced "Jigawatt" in the United States. In the 1950s this was common practice. I know this because I am an electrical engineer and have worked on RF projects. Almost everyone today says "Gigaherz" and "Gigawatt" but a few old timers nearing retirement still say "Jigaherz" and "Jigawatt".
According to one of these guys arguing the correct pronunciation of Gigawatt was a holy war in the 60s, similar to vi vs emacs or mac vs pc.
"Gigawatt" won. Because it is superior. Like v
Re: (Score:2)
"jigga" is an accepted pronunctiation of the "giga" prefix.
No. No, it's not. Only in english (possibly in a few other languages) could you possibly pronounce the two g's differently, and even then it's relatively uncommon and usually derives from combining roots from two different original languages, or from a deliberate construction for the purpose of creating distinctness.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you pronounce "gigantic," which is from the same Greek root?
Re: (Score:2)
"jigga" is an accepted pronunctiation of the "giga" prefix.
No. No, it's not. Only in english (possibly in a few other languages) could you possibly pronounce the two g's differently, and even then it's relatively uncommon and usually derives from combining roots from two different original languages, or from a deliberate construction for the purpose of creating distinctness.
You realize that the Greek gamma is pronounced as a voiced velar fricative now right? So, neither English pronunciation is actually "correct". Although, Dutch would pretty much have the most accurate pronunciation.
Re: (Score:2)
Those few other languages would include French, Spanish, and Italian. The soft g seems to be mostly a Romance language thing. True, "giga" is Greek (which as far as I know only has hard g).
Re: (Score:2)
And you just made the voice in my head say "jibi-bytes." Deeply disturbing.
I can't find any "official" pronunciation direction for gibibytes, but my understanding was always that the "giga-" prefix is always pronounced like "jigga-" unless you're talking about computers, in which case it's always pronounced with a "hard" g.
In any case, I'm one of those freaks who actually does use the -bi- notation, and it usually causes people to stare at me and say, "did you just say giBIbyte?"
Re: (Score:2)
Actually "jiga" is the correct pronounciation, seeing that it derives from a greek word that is pronounced like that. And in other languages I speak, it is pronounced as "jiga" in all of them.
Checking the various language Wikipedias, it seems to be relatively split actually. Arabic, and Spanish use "jiga-"; Japanese, German, Esperanto, Russian, Hebrew use "giga-", French uses "zhiga-" ("jiga-" with a fricative instead of an affricative in the same place of articulation.), Greek and I presume Dutch both use the voiced velar fricative. (These were the only ones I could really check for sure, as they have strictly accurate spelling, or their Wikipedias have a clear pronunciation note. It appears th
Re: (Score:2)
Did ancient Greek even have a j sound? I thought that all of their g's were hard.
Re: (Score:2)
"jigga" was the preferred pronunciation when the prefix was devised. Ignorant usage made giga (hard g, long i) common, and by the usual progression of language, giga has become the default.
Vox populi, vox dei.
Re: (Score:2)
Ignorant usage made giga (hard g, long i) common,
I can say I've never heard anyone pronounce it that way. It's always short i when I hear it.
Fast Enough (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It sounds like the Mr. Fusion [wikipedia.org] might be coming to a store near you by 2015.... just like the movie said it would. Or perhaps not. The hover mod [wikipedia.org] also keeps being talked about, but I think that is still a few more years away before it gets built. Isn't the future grand!
Smacks of silly publicity stunt (Score:2)
I mean, making an electric car out of heavy stainless steel is rather missing the point.
I wonder will they remember to design in windows that open this time?
heavy stainless steel???? (Score:2)
as compared to mild steel, which is denser? (7.85 mild steel vs. 7.65 for 440 stainless)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, the prius has some heavy batteries to contend with. Though yeah, a DeLorean with an electric drive would be easily in the weight area of the big name electric vehicles, though probably not nearly as safe in the event of an accident.
Now we know where Doc got the conversions done... (Score:2)
They were factory mods!
This is heavy!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Has there been a change in Earth's gravity? Is this why everything's heavy in the future?
Top Speed (Score:3)
"it still has a top speed of 125 mph"
That's purely theoretical, though, since I've never seen one go over 88.
Re:Top Speed (Score:4, Interesting)
How much? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How many Kilos of coke does one cost?
Good one. I remember a political cartoon of that era of the car using its gull-wings to flap its way over the border inspection station. One guard says to the other: I think we'd better check that one next.
Safe driving (Score:2)
For better safety while driving an electric car, I recommend humming your music instead of listening to the radio, getting manual controlled windows instead of electric and only drive in daytime to avoid having to turn on headlights. It might sound silly, but the last thing you want to have happen is to die in an accident - at night in the summertime because your car stalled trying to roll down the window since it was too hot and turning the radio to hear your latest hits of Mozzart CD.
Can I pre-order (Score:2)
an ounce of blow?
http://www.delorean.com is DOA (Score:2)
Apparently their website is also running on refurbished 1980s technology.
Oddly enough... (Score:2)
Slashdot needs to be proofread more carefully! (Score:2)
wasteful (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure you know the DeLorean - it is a very large very very heavy car - and i couldn't imagine making an EV version of it. (100$ says the range blows)
Roads (Score:2)
Roads? <slips on futuristic sunglasses> Where we're going, we're still going to need roads... <sheds tear>
Re: (Score:3)
I think that's the point of the article. In your rush to be 'first', you probably failed to notice that the car doesn't run on fossil fuels. Given that the 80's had no such car that was fully electric and ran at 125 MPH, then it's unlikely we'd find such a car unless we went to the future. Say, somewhere around 2013 to find it, no?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More like the past; I'm not sure about 125mph, but I believe electric cars were doing over 100mph in the 19th century. But then people realised they sucked and switched to gasoline instead.
More like barely 20mph, but thanks for playing.
http://gas2.org/2009/04/19/9-electric-cars-100-years-old-or-more/ [gas2.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Barely 20 mph? Nope, thanks for playing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente [wikipedia.org]
100 *K*PH (not mph) was done in the 19th century.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
But then people realised they sucked and switched to gasoline instead.
Gasoline: Lousy Engine, incredibly great energy storage
Electric: Great Engine, incredibly lousy energy storage
There's nothing wrong with electric cars that a battery that costs half as much for twice the life(range and longevity) wouldn't fix.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure there is. Charge time.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, for a mod point.
In the 70s there was some speculation on flywheels for energy storage. High energy density, even higher power density (charge and discharge can be *very* fast) and some designs (called "superflywheels" and made with carbon fiber) were claimed to fail gracefully without big chunks breaking through their containment vessels. Not sure what ever happened to those plans.
You did have to engineer around some "interesting" gyroscopic effects if you planned to put them in a vehicle though.
Re: (Score:2)
Set them up for bank stability. Who needs all four wheels to touch the ground in a corner?
Re: (Score:2)
Just use two parallel counter-rotating flywheels. The precession force will cancel out.
Though really what we don't need is to store the entire fuel capacity of a vehicle in a form that can be released almost instantaneously. A small bank of flywheel, ultracap, or LiFePO4 backed by a high energy density storage with a rated for a non-degrading C of about 1 what is needed.
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming you don't mind charging it for an hour for every hour you drive.
Flywheels (Score:2)
I remember reading about a company working on them back in the '90s. Carbon fiber, vacuum housing, the works.
Failing 'gracefully' was relative - it was more that the carbon fiber used for the wheel would basically disintigrate at the velocities it'd spin at, such that it wouldn't penetrate the heavy housing used to maintain the near-vacuum. Might pop it so it's no longer air tight though.
Last I'd heard they'd backed completely off the car angle(which they hit discover magazine for), and were making specia
Re: (Score:2)
Actually they handled that too, by have sets of alternate flywheels spinning in the opposite direction effectively canceling out gyroscopic effects (at least everywhere except at stress points where the flywheels met their bearing.) The problem was coming up with enough titanium to build the scatter shields for all those flywheels, and waiting 5-15 minutes at a power up station getting yourself spun back up.
Re: (Score:3)
Doesn't seem all that long to me.
Battary swaps... (Score:2)
The idea is that you end up with a standardized battery pack, perhaps a couple of them. With a little custom wiring, you can even make the same battery put out a couple different voltages.
Or, to handle a range of sizes, you have the 'standard' EV1 battery. The future electric Civic takes 2, the Escape takes 3, my light truck 4, etc...
That leaves the legacy Tesla Roadster types out in the cold, but it's still not that bad.
Even if they end up with a dozen types, outages should be fairly rare, given that the
Re: (Score:2)
Might bring back full service gas stations, in that case. Lugging those heavy batteries into the convenience shop would get old fast.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Battary swaps... (Score:4, Interesting)
But seriously folks, the auto manufacturers would fight tooth and nail to NOT use standardized parts so they can have a huge markup on THEIR brand of part.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Its simple. Put a cheap IC and sensor on the battery that warns if the battery is no longer working properly. The driver get's a little red "Battery is Shite" icon and a buzzing noise. He kindly informs the attendant that this is a crap battery, and with all due haste please install one that isn't on its last charge. Done.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually the top speed for the first electric cars was about 60 MPH. Even at the time they recognized that electric cars were cleaner, pronounced less noise, and more economical. Their downside was the battery, which was primitive and prone to failure.
As in all things, it lost out to gasoline and diesel as those became cheaper to operate and easier to fuel as opposed to swapping out batteries. That didn't necessarily mean that electric sucked, but rather it couldn't compete at the time as fossil fuels were
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But they weren't that far off. The first 100 mph race car was in 1919.
Re: (Score:2)
Citations and explanations would be awesome. As a wise man once said: "Saying something sucks isn't a take."
Someone made a rocket version of an electric car to get to 100mph... but still wildly dangerous back then. Funny thing, check out the wikipedia article on the electric car from 1911 talking about the various advantages of electric over gas back then...
How about this: Electric cars fill a particular market very well. There are plenty of drivers who need a commuter car, and saving a couple gallons
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe I’m missing something, but where do you live? In the US, many large intersections in cities and even rural areas have at least one gas station. Even if there's not, chances are you can find one in less than a mile radius. You almost never have to go out of your way to find a place to fill up unless you're waaaaaay out in the sticks and you just went past the last station for 20 miles. (I've only seen one of those and it was clearly marke
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
uhh until we're not burning petroleum to generate electricity, using electric cars INCREASES our dependence due to their inefficiency.
gasoline car
pump out of ground -> ship -> crack/process -> ship to station / pump into tank -> burn -> kinetic energy.
electric car
pump out of ground -> ship -> crack/process -> ship to power plant -> burn -> phase change water -> kinetic energy -> electrical energy AC -> multiple step up and step down transformers -> AC to DC and voltage stepdown conversion -> chemical change in battery -> second chemical change -> electricity -> kinetic energy.
The greens need to accept something like ubiquitous nuclear energy before electric cars become feasible and more environmentally friendly than ICE based cars.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
shhh don't tell the greenies the truth. they don't like it.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly, the inefficiency difference isn't as bad as you make it out to be since the power plants are vastly more efficient at extracting power from that fuel than the cars would be and because a lot of our power comes from non-oil sources anyway (admittedly a lot of them aren't very green, but still).
The other thing to consider is that using electric cars means that all you have to do to move away from fossil fuels is to switch your power plants over to a different energy source (admittedly no mean task) whereas if you're running all your cars of petroleum products when it gets to be impractically expensive to pull oil out of the ground (ie Peak Oil, which a number of experts believe we're hitting right now) you've still got to switch the fossil fuel burning parts of your grid to a different energy source but on top of that you've then get to either deal with the inefficiency of the Fischer–Tropsch process or replace every car on the road and all your fueling infrastructure in one go (and with no real experience in creating/using/maintaining electrics or whatever alternative you end up using because you've refused to use any out of some harebrained notion of them not being green).
Lastly, I'm what you'd probably consider a green and am a staunch supporter of Nuclear Fission in the immediate future and Beamed Orbital Solar + Nuclear Fusion in the medium to far future. Just because there are plenty of loons out there that don't realize the need for reliable baseload power capacity and spend all their time fapping over solar and wind doesn't mean that everyone that supports sustainable, environmentally friendly development is a moron.
Re: (Score:3)
even if the power plants were as efficient, the TRANSPORT is where the problem lies. oil or not, the context of this discussion was that carbon based fuel sources are damaging the environment.
Yes..and how long does it take to switch over? if we started today, it would be what? 5-10 years to build plants assuming they were funded, designed, insured (this is a big one), constructed in parallel, and with a massive country-wide push. this is a best case scenario which will never happen.. in reality it'll take
Re: (Score:3)
The greens need to accept something like ubiquitous nuclear energy before electric cars become feasible and more environmentally friendly than ICE based cars.
Yes, because that's what the greens need to do. Listen to biased liars like you try
Re: (Score:3)
Don't we (in the US) burn coal to generate electricity? According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_electricity_production [wikipedia.org], we use petroleum to generate 1% of our electricity and coal to generate 44.9%. Of course, coal is a bit dirty, but it doesn't make a great vehicular fuel unless you spend energy to change it.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
The fastest electric car (and fastest vehicle, period) in 1899 was La Jamais Contente, which hit 62mph on a straightaway. And wasn't exactly a 4-seat crash-rated vehicle with modern accessories, to put it lightly ;)
Rechargeable batteries have been doubling in energy density about once every 8 years, have maintained such a pattern since the 80s, and show no signs of slowing down. Don't think today's ranges are good enough? What about in a decade? Two decades? Three decades? If your car can go 800 miles per day (a whole day's drive), what need to you have for frequent fast-charge stations? You just need to be able to get your 800-miles of range charged while you settle in for the evening/eat/go to bed/wake up/get ready/eat/leave. 250Wh/mi and, say, 10 hours charge time requires 20kW (~83A). Modern houses are generally built with 200A panels nowadays (most of that being little utilized at night), and hotels far larger.
So at some point, all of those other issues just go by the wayside. 800 miles not good enough for you? Then wait for 1000. Or 1200. But at some point, you hit your mark. And low current distribution panels are increasingly a thing of the past.
The bigger question is cost. Battery cost per watt have generally declined, but not followed a very predictable path. A given tech (say, PbA, NiMH, Li-ion, etc) generally shows a predictable price decline over time, but at random intervals, a new tech comes along to continue the aforementioned energy density increase. Usually (but not always) it starts out pretty expensive, but then declines over time. In short, though, it's really hard to say how expensive those 800-mile packs of 20 years from now will be -- only that no matter what their initial price, it will drop over time.
As for history: "Fuel" powered engines have a much longer history than "electricity" powered engines. The early brushed DC motors and lead-acid batteries are the electric-car equivalent of the steam engine. The modern synchronous AC drivetrain and lithium-ion batteries are the electric car equivalent of early internal combustion engines. It's a game of catchup. There was one point where electric vehicles briefly took the lead, but only due to extreme deficiencies of the gasoline vehicles of their day (the lack of a starter, nonstandardized fuels, horrible reliability, etc). Speaking of "nonstandardized fuels" -- electric cars are just now having to get over a related problem (nonstandardized connectors).
It's simply an industry that needs time to mature.
Faster vehicle before 1900 (Score:2)
145 kph (90mph) LNWR No. 790 Hardwicke Steam United Kingdom 22–23 August 1895 (wikipedia)
Steam rail vehicles were the fastest vehicles in the last half of the 19th century.
Re: (Score:3)
If your car can go 800 miles per day (a whole day's drive), what need to you have for frequent fast-charge stations?
Sure, not now, but in a few years when the car does only 500 miles (or whatever).
10 hours charge time requires 20kW (~83A)
The main circuit breaker for my house is ~32A, which means that I can use about 7.3kW. 1.2kW is used by my computers, add the lights, TV, microwave, electric teapot and not that much is left for charging the car. I could get three phase power and more current but that would be expensive.
In short, though, it's really hard to say how expensive those 800-mile packs of 20 years from now will be -- only that no matter what their initial price, it will drop over time.
There is also a problem with the battery life. Over time the capacity gets smaller, so you need to replace the batteries after a few years when
Re: (Score:2)
The main circuit breaker for my house is ~32A
Unless your house was wired by Thomas Edison, I seriously doubt that. That's not enough to even run a modern 4-burner electric range -- range sockets are 50A. A dryer socket is 30A.
There is also a problem with the battery life
False. One always has a choice in battery life as a balancing factor versus other factors (price, energy density, etc). There are nickel-iron batteries out there that have been operational for over 100 years. You're referring *specific
Re: (Score:3)
Unless your house was wired by Thomas Edison, I seriously doubt that.
I do not live in the US and heat my house with natural gas (much cheaper than electricity). So, I only have single phase 230V 32A power.
You're referring *specifically* to non-climate-controlled laptop cells wired in series with no charge balancing.
Not only to laptop cells. UPS batteries (lead-acid) shrink in capacity (and increase internal resistance) quite fast, especially at higher temperatures. Car starting batteries (again lead-acid) do the same, with the bonus of degrading fast at low (-10C) temperatures. Cellphone batteries (NiCd, NiMH, Li-Ion, Li-Pol) also shrink in capacity over time.
And NiFe batteries most l
Re: (Score:3)
Twice you used "sucked" and twice you didn't substantiate your claim.
Point not made.
It's all about what's the cheapest (at the time) form of energy. Unfortunately, that only means dollars and cents TODAY; it doesn't mean dollars and cents TODAY plus whatever today's use makes unavailable in the future. The artificially cheaper oil prices enjoyed in the US make alternate forms of transportation almost non-existent (in the US). Batteries, until very recently, have been much heavier and required payment up f
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I have a PV kit on top of my garage.
My bad . . . Nuclear or Photo Voltaic.
Re: (Score:2)
According to Wikipedia, about 70% of our electricity is generated by fossil fuels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_electricity_production [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that similar to the Tesla Roadster?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
And since they have a number of original 1980s chassis, they can sell them as "reconstructed" 1980s cars, and they don't need to worry about modern safety and environmental requirements.
Re:DMC? (Score:4, Interesting)
When DeLorean Motors was liquidated, the naming rights along with the spare parts inventory and a few unfinished chassis went to some group of investors in Texas where they continued to "hand-build" a few cars at a time based off of the original DMC-12 model design. They also purchased the production certificate, with some restrictions that didn't really matter due to the low production volume.
So the company, in one form or another, has been around awhile even if they haven't exactly been thumping their chest about what it is that they are doing except to existing owners (buy genuine DeLorean parts for your cars!) and to the hobby car/car mod market.
It isn't as if this is something new. Louis Chevrolet [wikipedia.org] originally established the company that bears his name, did some fancy racing with cars, sold the company to General Motors, then blew his money where he finally ended up becoming a mechanic.... working on Chevrolet vehicles including on the engine he designed himself. Then again Chrysler isn't exactly under the same management team they were operated under two decades ago... with several incarnations of that company over the years.
Re: (Score:2)
The car never ran on fusion power ... only the time machine add-on did! The car itself ran on gas.
It also ran on Being Pushed by a Steam Locomotive.
Re: (Score:2)
Looks to me like your dreams have already been realized.
Re: (Score:2)
If you spend 24 hrs driving at 125 mph you will experience a time dilation of 1.5 ns.
.. relative to your start and end points, and your start and end points will experience an exactly corresponding time dilation, leaving you with what relative time dilation exactly?