Electric Car vs Battery Technology

The point is money. 1. Money in the form of subsidies from the government whether a company achieves a solution or not. 2. Money in the form of not having to pay the penalties for failing to meet the CAFE standards. 3. Money in the form of profit if any of the technologies under development achieve a breakthrough in battery technology.

The first two are bad ideas because they are government-imposed burdens that distort the market and are inefficient. In 1 they are spending our money, so there is less incentive to use it efficiently; in 2 the money/penalty avoidance is just another name for a tax that is arbitrary and an attempt at social engineering that is out of touch with true engineering advancement.

They are spending money because they don't have a clue about electric drive system and propulsion tech.

A quick trip through their own warehouses and a little research into how their own electric forklifts work and manage to do what they do all day long with basic and highly reliable deigns would be a giant eye opener to the engineers trying to design a reliable and cost effective electric vehicle.

The other option would be for them to team up with the large mining equipment manufactures. They pioneered and pretty much perfected electric vehicle drive tech over 30+ years ago and have proven it and how it can be done efficiently and reliably even at power levels and work cycles that are way past what any pubic commuter vehicle would ever need.

EV tech is not new or uncharted terititory.

Although I understand what you meant, some might conclude from your statements that, " large mining equipment" is battery powered.

They can conclude what ever they want if they would rather take my comments as facts rather than reading up on how much of the large mining and earth moving equipment uses hybrid electrical drive systems to maximize fuel efficency and service life and have been doing so for decades now.

I've seen this in progress, now. It's the future and its made in CHINA.

Earlier this year on a different thread I made an observation:The electronics to manage battery sets in brutal street use are being experimented with right now. Prototypes are nice. Prototypes do not matter, except for publicity. For that they are good. But...

A fellow recently made a remark concerning stationary battery sets. It went like this: the designer only have to change the chemistry to meet the cold end of the specifications. ONLY, said that infantile character. Yeah, right! Draw your own conclusions.

I do not know from where you got your figures. Please open the following link:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/greendorm/participate/cee124/TeslaReading.pdf

It shows based on Stanford research how a Tesla Roadster has double the absolute efficiency of a Prius and 3.5 times of a Honda Civic.

It's not Stanford Research, I think it's a case study written up by Tesla Marketing team which happens to be hosted at Stanford for discussion. (there's a difference).

My figures are a minimal set of applicable figures and correct at least for lead-acid batteries (it doesn't take me 10 pages of case study like this tesla brochure to convey what i've stated with my figures, only thing is i use English-US units).

Kiers,

The charge efficiency depends upon the state of charge of the battery. From full discharge you may get 85% efficiency. Please see the link below:

www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/266357-4jspuu/.../266357.pdf

I imagine one of the reasons would be the Brownie points they get for producing a "zero emission" vehicle which they could use to counter act the poor ratings that the profitable vehicles they produce create.Both the Canadian and the US governments have brought in legislation that says the first 200,000 electric EVs they produce can be considered Zero emission and the rest would have to consider the source of the electricity in the emission picture...the manufacturers were upset at this...for it cuts into thier brownie points.They say that they are not responsible for where the recharge energy comes from...they just build the cars. Here is what I know about the full EV picture and how they like to tells us it is "zero emission".North America gets 75% of it's electricity from the burning of fossil fuels.The dirtiest(cheapest) source is coal at 65% of the total.Coal sourced electricity is 33% efficient.Grid inefficiency takes another 13%.So from that dirty coal that you burnt 20% of it goes to charge your "zero emission EV. Battery technology is in need of serious advancements to make EVs practical.Michio Kako has been quoted as saying EVs will only become practical once nano technology in battery energy density becomes reality...could take 10 or 15 years.

The potential.

Why are YOU spending so much money on cars?

That is the answer to why auto makers are spending so much.

Because YOU want a car that costs less to run, and makes less pollution from the fuel it utilizes. (YOU does not include the embedded technology monkeys posting that it is useless to try to develop these transports)

The majority of replies to your question are very uninformed, but since you have observed that battery technology has stalled, this will probably be unimportant. You even ask us what the point would be to answer a question that you yourself posed. My guess is that there would be no point in answering it, as you have already reached a conclusion.

You could solicit informed answers, and they would be important. Funny how that idiom works.

It's also too bad that high strength light weight materials can't be developed, as that may help.

Or that lightweight high torque motors can't be developed.

Or that High speed charging, or automatic station battery replacement can't be developed.

Or transportation corridors that that provide energy to the driver as needed.

Internal combustion rules!

Yes ,I agree with you that ICE rules.I am developing a car for which the main goal is energy efficiency and conservation.There is so much potential that has not been captured with this ICE technology that I have taken it upon myself to put a team together to build an outstanding,very efficient,energy conserving sports car. We are optimizing the aerodynamics to reduce energy requirements.WE are designing a fully variable flow control cylinder head.This will reduce pumping loses( no throttle body needed) and mechanical drag by getting rid of the old poppet valve and associated springs. We are also incorporating brake and thermal energy recapture technologies.

Also, if you can somehow incorporate what is common practice in the developing world, it would put ICE out of reach of electric:

Have the engine cut off during idle and start again when ready to move! Drivers in the developing world hit the ignition switch on the old Fiat 1100 so many times at every traffic light; it's unbelievably robust! This is what today's "hybrids" do. yet you couldn't do that on today's pure ICE cars here in the US, it would definitely kill/wear out the ignition and starter.

Then there's the huge weight of the lead-acid battery and charger. If more efficient more compact more abuse tolerant LiPo (or whatever) batteries could be swapped in, that would help too.

FUEL CELL looks so promising though with respect to efficiency.

We could gather up H2 with the use of a solar power plants by electrolysis. It would be an ecofriendly technology. H2O+sunlight==> H2+O2==>H2O+Energy.