Electric car myths

[dieseltaylor]

There is a lot of bull around about EV cars and I found htis interesting:

More myths busted about electric cars

April 27, 2010 By Jim Motavalli Enlarge

I recently went to Finland to drive the all-electric Think City plug-in car (thinkev.com), which is already on European roads and coming to the U.S. later this year. To help it have a soft landing, Think CEO Richard Canny (who spent 25 years at Ford) put together these nine myths about electric vehicles (EV). I've had my own version, but Richard's list is quite different and well worth sharing. He's not an objective party, of course, but he has hands-on experience.

Here are Canny's nine electric vehicle myths:

1. You are just moving the pollution out of the cities to the countryside.

Busted: Electric vehicle motors are three-to-five times more efficient than gasoline-powered vehicles. While it's best to power EVs from renewable energy sources (which are growing quickly), the efficiency of EVs makes them cleaner, producing less carbon, under any situation -- even when they are charged using coal-fired electricity.

2. Customers will never buy a car with less than a 200-mile range.

Busted: So-called "range anxiety" diminishes when people get used to driving EVs on a daily basis. It's just like charging a cell phone overnight. You plug it in, and in the morning it's ready to go, fully charged. As more EVs hit the road, businesses and cities will add charging points to encourage EV use. EVs can also be fast-charged (our system goes from zero to 80 percent charged in just 15 minutes) to help cover those rare situations when an EV will be needed to cover more than 100 miles in a single day.

3. The battery won't last.

Busted: EV batteries are designed to last at least 10 years and more than 100,000 miles. There are cars on the road in Europe with batteries approaching the 10-year mark. Some EVs have been on the road in Europe with packs approaching the 10-year-old mark, and modern lithium-ion batteries will definitely meet or exceed that target.

4. You'll need to build a lot more power plants.

Busted: Actually, there's enough off-peak electricity in the U.S. to power 79 percent of U.S. driving demand. As more EVs are deployed, it's important to ensure that the smart-charging (time-based charging management) and vehicle-to-grid connectivity progresses as well. A connected network of millions of micro-energy storage devices (which is what EVs will become) provides significant opportunities to improve the stability and performance of electric grids and better balance peak demand.

5. We're going to run out of lithium - and isn't it poisonous?

Busted: Lithium carbonate today comes from dried salt lakes in South America (Chile, Argentina and Bolivia) and China. There are also other huge sources for lithium, although these are more expensive to develop. Lithium can even be extracted from salt water and projects are under way to do this. The industry will not have a shortage of lithium for the next decade. It is also possible that new battery technologies will be based on other light metals like zinc or nickel. Lithium from used batteries will be recycled in dedicated recycling plants. Lithium batteries contain no poisonous heavy metals like lead in lead-acid batteries or cadmium in NiCd batteries.

6. The infrastructure has to come first.

Busted: The best way to deploy EVs is to get cars on the road first, then add infrastructure. If there are no EVs to use those plugs and parking spots, people see it as wasteful. We think infrastructure is a small part of good policy at a federal, regional and local level to support EV early adopters.

7. They're not safe.

Busted: Highway-certified EVs meet all the same safety and crash test requirements as regular production cars with some important extras.

8. The technology is too complicated.

Busted: A modern electric car has only about five main moving parts compared with hundreds in an internal-combustion engine. There are no regular visits to the dealership for an EV. No oil changes, no filters -- even brake pads last two-to-three times longer than in conventional cars, because EVs use regenerative braking to recapture the energy that would otherwise be lost while braking. Your first trip to the dealership with an EV for scheduled maintenance is at 40,000 miles to check the brake pads. Eventually, you'll need new wiper blades and tires. But that's about it!

9. Fast charging EV batteries in 15 minutes will wear them out quickly.

Busted: Modern prismatic lithium batteries can be developed with fast-charging in mind. The critical technology is in the cell design to manage battery temperature during charging. Limiting fast charging to the zero to 80 percent range also protects battery life. We think that 95 percent or more of all EV miles will be driven on cars charged during overnight off-peak periods when electricity is cheaper and readily available. Fast charging locations provide reassurance and peace of mind for those occasional days where more than 100 miles are required.

http://www.physorg.com/news191596951.html

[GetSome]

thank you for your informative post.

[Wicky]

'Fire from Below' is an immaculately researched Kettlerian true story of laptop batteries turning on their masters...

Digging at a nearby cave, a careless industrialist unearths a vein of pure base Lithium and inadvertently brings it to the surface, where the Lithium combusts when coming into contact with water and begins to wreak havoc on the country side

[rleete]

I've been looking into electrics for some time now. Everything from buying one to converting an existing vehicle. There's one problem that trumps all the rest, and until they figure out a way to fix it, it's all moot. That problem is cost.

$20k for a 25 MPH "city" vehicle (can you say speedbump?), and $40k or more for a highway capable version. $12K and up to convert an existing vehicle, and that's doing all the labor myself. Ten thousand or more dollars buys a used car and plenty of gas for it for a couple of years at least, and doesn't involve me rebuilding the damn thing.

They claim 100kph, but that's top speed with nothing left. Have you ever driven in rush hour traffic? You're gonna be a rolling roadblock in that thing, assuming that you don't get blown out of your lane by an 18 wheeler. Give me a reasonabley sized mid/compact car, and give it the same top speed as any other car on the road, and make it similarly priced. Oh, and stop making every electric look so damned ugly. Then we'll talk.

[Stalins Organ]

Try hydrogen?

Rleete - your needs may not be met by an electric car's performance , but 95% of mine would be - rush hour traffic here is slow, not fast, so 100kph is fine - my little 1300cc roller skate hardly ever goes faster than that even when ther is no traffic, and my driving is almost all confined to 2 adjacent cities and the dual-carriageway connecting them.

For longer trips & picnics in the country I have a lovely 3 litre V8 that does fine thanks...but is normally garaged over winter!

Cost is cdertainly an issue - it will be a long time before lifetime costs (capital and running combined) of a new electric car compare with the $2k it cost me to buy a Festiva & it's petrol sipping 7l/100k on regular gas*.

* - more modern cars do as well or better and are much more comfortable....but they also start at $30k and go upwards from there.....

[Runyan99]

What about the fact that here in the US, we get most of our electric power from coal plants? So, far from being 'clean' cars, electrics are in truth coal cars. It seems none of the hippy-dippy hybrid buyers ever seem to make that connection.

[Pak40]

What about the fact that here in the US, we get most of our electric power from coal plants? So, far from being 'clean' cars, electrics are in truth coal cars. It seems none of the hippy-dippy hybrid buyers ever seem to make that connection.

Did you even read the first myth bust?

1. You are just moving the pollution out of the cities to the countryside.

Busted: Electric vehicle motors are three-to-five times more efficient than gasoline-powered vehicles. While it's best to power EVs from renewable energy sources (which are growing quickly), the efficiency of EVs makes them cleaner, producing less carbon, under any situation -- even when they are charged using coal-fired electricity.

As far as "hippy-dippy" hybrid buyers are concerned, their cars are solely powered by gasoline - they don't plug into the grid so they don't use any coal fired electricity.

[mididoctors]

4. You'll need to build a lot more power plants.

Busted: Actually, there's enough off-peak electricity in the U.S. to power 79 percent of U.S. driving demand. As more EVs are deployed, it's important to ensure that the smart-charging (time-based charging management) and vehicle-to-grid connectivity progresses as well. A connected network of millions of micro-energy storage devices (which is what EVs will become) provides significant opportunities to improve the stability and performance of electric grids and better balance peak demand.

where does the other 20% come from?

this "busted: is a contradiction in terms

[JonS]

where does the other 20% come from?

this "busted: is a contradiction in terms

Yes, but only when EVs make up greater than 80% of the US vehicle fleet, which I'm guessing may take a wee while. Until then you're golden.

[dieseltaylor]

http://solaraero.org/index.html

Interesting and as it is ecologically sound I thought I would throw it in to the mix. Anything Tesla was involved in starts with pedigree : )

As for autos I think the big thing is what is the countryside like. Whats good in Wyoming is not so clever in city travel. My guess is hybrid electric for those longer journeys or where people live in the boonies.

Hydrogen does have legs as home based hydrogen production is available now. For lorries injecting hydrogen apparently reduces fuel consumption by 17%. Payback is 6 months in Europe on a Volvo truck doing serious highway work.

Also it was announced last week that a catalyst to replace platinum [$200 per ounce] has been discovered and is non-precious metal and will be 30 times cheaper. I think hydrogen is looking good.

[dieseltaylor]

Trust Physorg to be more informative on the fan

(PhysOrg.com) -- A bladeless wind turbine whose only rotating component is a turbine/driveshaft could generate power at a cost comparable to coal-fired power plants, according to its developers at Solar Aero. The New Hampshire-based company recently announced its patent on the Fuller wind turbine, which is an improvement on a patent issued to Nikola Tesla in 1913.

The bladeless wind turbine is completely enclosed in a relatively small compact unit. Instead of using wind-powered blades to rotate a shaft and generator, the Tesla-inspired design consists of an array of closely spaced, parallel, thin metal disks separated by spacers. When air flows in the spaces between the disks, the spacers are arranged in such a way as to provide inward momentum to the air, causing the disks to move. The disks are connected to a shaft by spokes, so that the rotating disks cause the shaft to rotate as well. As explained in the patent held by Howard Fuller, the turbine design “provides maximum efficiency in converting wind energy to mechanical power.”

“The turbine of the present invention has the advantage that it is efficient over a wider range of fluid flow rates, as compared with turbines of the prior art, due to the airfoil-shaped spacers,” the patent explains. “This feature makes the present turbine especially useful for generating power from wind, which is inherently random and variable.”

What this efficiency translates to, according to a recent article at EcoGeek, are final costs of about $1.50/watt rated output, which is roughly 2/3 the cost of comparable bladed units. Further, “total operating costs over the lifetime of the unit” are estimated at about $0.12/kWh, which is comparable to current retail electrical rates. The number of disks determines the amount of power that can be produced, and a unit the size of the one pictured should be capable of generating 10kW of power, according to the company.

One major advantage of not having blades is reduced maintenance costs. For instance, the turbines can be mounted on towers or poles, while generator equipment can be located at the tower base, eliminating the need for climbing the tower for routine maintenance. Also, the turbines only need to be mounted high enough to clear nearby obstacles to wind flow. Since there are no external blades that require ground clearance, the tower can likely be shorter than those used for turbines with blades.

Further, the screen-enclosed turbine prevents injuries to birds and bats, avoids the visual pollution of spinning blades, and proper construction can make the turbine nearly transparent to radar microwave emissions, such as those from nearby defense facilities. Due to its reduced maintenance costs and limited infrastructure requirements, the turbine could even be located on urban rooftops.

Besides wind, the turbine’s design also makes it adaptable for geothermal applications, in which a heated fluid is used to drive the turbine. Since the turbine works even with relatively cool fluid, the invention could be particularly useful for situations where the geothermal source does not provide enough heat to produce the “superheated” steam needed to drive a conventional steam engine.