Electric Cars Will Kill The Planet

If we get self charging cars lets have them be free too. That was so funny. Biggest cost of Hybrid/Electric is the battery pack. If they could get the price of the battery down and have it power the car for 40 mile range most of us would not need gas for daily use.

I just got a small car. It was cheaper in the short term and LONG term to not get a hybrid car. Got a Yaris instead.

DM
 
To followup on Steve's original post, I think a secondary feature would the following: everyone knows that applying the brakes should involve a mechanism that transfers the spare energy back into the batteries. Therefore, the solution is to leave the brakes applied continuously. I suspect that between this braking and the continuous recharge that Steve outlined, we can actually turn the car into a free energy generator :p

and if you were to add wind turbines to the roof of the car....

yes, yes, I think we've just solved the energy crisis!
 
If we get self charging cars lets have them be free too. That was so funny. Biggest cost of Hybrid/Electric is the battery pack. If they could get the price of the battery down and have it power the car for 40 mile range most of us would not need gas for daily use.

I just got a small car. It was cheaper in the short term and LONG term to not get a hybrid car. Got a Yaris instead.

DM

Thats the big issue, they arent nearly cost effective yet. The Volt maybe, if you drive less then 40 miles a day 95% of the time. But the Prius/Insight take years for the gas savings to catch up to the buy-in cost.

Honestly the U.S. needs to get some diesel cars quickly. Thats a woefully underused technology here. Even so, it does nothing to help the long term issue.
 
Better public transportation is the real answer, everyone really doesn't need a car, nor one for every family member with a license!

Bring on the trains, buses, and airplanes!
 
Better public transportation is the real answer, everyone really doesn't need a car, nor one for every family member with a license!

Bring on the trains, buses, and airplanes!

I like public transportation myself, but reliability and convenience really suffers, especially in places with poorly implemented public transportation. If they can somehow get rid of the "human" in driving, say, automatic vehicles, then that would help public transportation a lot.
 
+2 for nuclear!

If people were serious about being "green," they would walk instead of drive....
 
I will never get an electric car until they offer more price/performance than an internal combustion car or until I have no alternative.
 
Your talking around $20,000 in solar panels to charge any contemporary electric car over night and have your charge batteries ready again when you get home. That's counting on about 2killowatts of wind power. Which may or may not be sustained. These are conservative estimates.

After all is said and done, between contractors, charge controllers and batteries your looking at $40-45k and you haven't even bought a solar car yet.:eek:

But you would never have to pay for power in your life again.
 
The energy to wheel efficiency of electric is hard to beat assuming you can overcome the added weight of batteries and the size impediment they place on the interior space of the car. From a structural design sense Honda's FCX is superior to an electrical vehicle since it closely resembles a normal hydrocarbon consuming vehicle. Obviously with an efficiency ration of around 60% FCX it isn't as efficient as an electric's 90+, but it terms of putting it in the driveway of the average person it is far more feasible. Consider that while the tesla looks cool it is both horribly unreliable and not very practical as shown in Top Gear's test of multiple Teslas. I have driven the EV1 and thought it was an excellent car, maybe the only decent manufactured electric car. If GMs Volt is close to EV1 then maybe electric cars stand a chance, however if they are like the Tesla, then forget it.
 
You guys have never seen how batteries are made. Even more so, you've never seen the operations required to mine, extract, refine, and assemble the essential metals required for battery manufacture and processing. Go look at a nickel mine in Canada that sells it's nickel to companies like Sanyo, Panasonic, et al. that make battery packs for the auto industry. The place looks like another world. The toxicity levels in producing these metals is off the charts bad, but hey, it's all about looking good with the end result right? If you followed the actual process of each component and it's manufacture that goes into making just about anything much less an electric vehicle or a plug in hybrid, you would see this whole eco-green-save-mommy-earth thing as one gigantic bait and switch scam from top to bottom.
 
+2 for nuclear!

If people were serious about being "green," they would walk instead of drive....

You really wanna go "Green" I have the solution for you. Lets commit mass suicide, starting by the oil companies executives. That way the planet can sustain what's left of the human race on China and they'll take good care of the planet for us.

Tthe problem with the lack of honesty of people these day and this holier than thou attitude is what's bringing us down.
 
Oh, by the way, in many circles, especially the wacky alternative energy, perpetual motion crowd, a self-charging battery powered car would be considered to be an overunity device.
 
We need to go hydrogen. People have used a hydrolysis to convert water into hydrogen. The emissions from hydrogen is just water vapor also which is perfect for everyone. Its the best thing since sliced bread but we all know it will never happen. One of the first innovators of hydrolysis in a vehicle were assassinated for trying to make the design go public. Oil companies offered one guy tons of millions of dollars to shut up but he didn't and he was killed. You can't win in this world when theres corrupt people. Heres how old the technology really is. It goes back in the 70s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qM325S_3TI&fmt=18
 
+2 for nuclear!

If people were serious about being "green," they would walk instead of drive....

True, but how does someone who is a shallow thinking greenie getting his/her marching orders from any number of greenie groups much less the top end of the political structure all the way to the president even think about how much generating capacity is going to be required when you set forth a plan to nearly mandate the production of 1 million plug-in hybrids by 2015 if you don't use nuclear power? So the lefty no-nuke crowd will inadvertently do a couple of things, they will push for more solar, windmill, geo-thermal, etc. while this only makes up 5% of total global alternative energy to be double to 10% in 25 years. Really?

Build 100 modern pebble bed or molten salt reactors nationwide and call it a day. You would literally be injecting untold gigawatts into the system that could conceivably deal with this type of load. But you won't get it because of fear of teh nu-clee-are!!! The people on the right see the writing on the wall and are saying hey, uncap the current oil field we have now, start building oil/gas rigs and deploy them where we know there are untold billions of cubic yards of oil and gas right off our coasts and make us foreign oil independent, and the lefty greenies will squeal in horror, go screaming into the night and say NO the whole way through. It's lose-lose. You can't win with these people. They have sold their souls to Luddite way of life.
 
We need to go hydrogen. People have used a hydrolysis to convert water into hydrogen. The emissions from hydrogen is just water vapor also which is perfect for everyone. Its the best thing since sliced bread but we all know it will never happen. One of the first innovators of hydrolysis in a vehicle were assassinated for trying to make the design go public. Oil companies offered one guy tons of millions of dollars to shut up but he didn't and he was killed. You can't win in this world when theres corrupt people. Heres how old the technology really is. It goes back in the 70s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qM325S_3TI&fmt=18

Oh, I'm a huge proponent of hydrogen, but you will get the battery fanatics who will tell you that you it is the end all. Go search around on this forum for these discussions and see for yourself.
 
We need to go hydrogen.
Aside from the numerous other problems (platinum shortages, stable reliable storage and trillion-dollar distribution infrastructures to name a few...), the energy you put in to produce hydrogen from water is less than the energy you get back from the fuel (the actual amount of energy in each phase is identical, but there are efficiency penalties in each direction).

This is an inescapable fact - hydrogen is not a fuel, it's just another kind of battery.

(And rest assured that every water-powered car conspiracy theory you've ever heard is a steaming pile of shit.)
 
and large-scale coal generation is typically 50-70% efficient.
The theoretical maximum, according to the laws of thermodynamics, is in the region of 35-45% (dependant on certain parameters). In reality, 30-35% is typical. Some may be in the region of 40%, but state-of-the-art facilities are few and far between.
 
Aside from the numerous other problems (platinum shortages, stable reliable storage and trillion-dollar distribution infrastructures to name a few...), the energy you put in to produce hydrogen from water is less than the energy you get back from the fuel (the actual amount of energy in each phase is identical, but there are efficiency penalties in each direction).

This is an inescapable fact - hydrogen is not a fuel, it's just another kind of battery.

(And rest assured that every water-powered car conspiracy theory you've ever heard is a steaming pile of shit.)

You can go thousands of miles with just gallons of water. This was the inventor that was assassinated for his invention. Watch the video ;). This is real technology thats here today but is abandoned due to big oil and politics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDHT0hBgVOw&fmt=18
 
Cheve is counting on the volt to be the next ipod, and being the lefty-commie-canadian-hippy that I am I'm really looking forward to this project.

Anyways, as to your serious notes, as many before have said your proposing perpetual motion which is a concept that's not feasible --that said the idea of regenerative energies isn't that preposterous. Regenerative breaking already exists.

"Electric vehicles do not yet have the range of regular cars."

This needs a whole lot of elaboration, but its is false at face value. True, a standard 4 cylinder goes further on a single tank than the volt will on a full charge, but you can recharge. The issue here is recharging time. It takes a few minutes at a chevron to fill up, where as it might take hours to bring your battery from 20% to 80%. If this is our only engineering problem I think we'll find a solution mighty quickly: a couple companies have now filed patents on so called "Ultra capacitors" with ratings up to 35 Farads (massive!) and breakdown voltages of 5kV (also massive!); capacitors charge in seconds. MIT also has some new information on a form of powdered lithium which apparently can bring charging times on standard lithium ion batteries down substantially.

"The research adds that to produce the same amount of energy, coal emits more carbon dioxide than even gasoline."

This is false. Its always astonishing to me to see just how high the efficiency numbers soar when space isn't an issue. A standard car engine gets (at maximum) 25% efficiency. When gasoline goes bang most of the energy is in the heat produced, not the compression wave driving the piston. Using steam as a medium means you can use pressure produced by the heat rather than a shock wave, which can boost the efficiency from gasoline by as much as 50% (bringing it to 75%).

"The irony is that you don't need a lot more electricity for electric cars," Raddatz, said. "But the problem is that if they cause these peaks, we would have to have power plants that would be ready to start (as) the massive charging starts."

RIght. Capacitors and/or batteries at home. Problem solved.
 
We're right behind them. People are so shit scared of nuclear from watching too many movies it's almost hilarious.

Chernobyl ring a bell? I know Chernobyl had many design flaws that were ignored just to get the plant out in time before the deadlines, but damn, that would be scary to have happen in California.
 
My two biggest reasons foe liking electric cars is

1 reduce dependence on oil (quit sending a trillion dollars a year to the middle east and other parts of the world that aren't particularly friendly towards us.)

2 in about 20-30 years when batteries are are small enough, light enough, cheap enough and can quick charge you can have some amazing muscle cars. Think No transmission or maybe a 2 speed transmission and a 300-500 hp electric motor with a nearly flat torque curve from 0-14000 rpm's.

There's also the reliability factor. again when the batteries are good enough and cheap enough you can make practical pure electric cars. Electric motors are extremely reliable and have 1 moving part plus unless you need to go over 110-120 mph you don't need any transmission further simplifying the car. You could end up going from motor to wheels with only a dozen moving parts.
 
They were doing things to the reactor and were never intended to be done on a crappy design with a liquid metal heat transfer system that's incredibly dangerous; because the reactor loosing coolant flow due to a mechanical flaw will not automatically shut down the reactor. There were so many serious flaws with that thing including the people running them comparing it to a modern western reactor isn't even realistic.

Look at 3 mile island. Some people say it was a disaster. I say it was good engineering. only a minor amount of radiation escaped not even enough to make living near by dangerous. the rest was contained and still is to this day and it took a lot of really stupid decisions over a good period of time to cause the accident. The operators basically did exactly the wrong thing at every step to get the reactor to partially melt down.
 
You can go thousands of miles with just gallons of water. This was the inventor that was assassinated for his invention. Watch the video ;). This is real technology thats here today but is abandoned due to big oil and politics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDHT0hBgVOw&fmt=18

@2:55-3:05:
"three times as much energy is consumed as is produced in hydrogen". Bingo. Electricity cost++
 
You can go thousands of miles with just gallons of water.
It's BS.

Converting hydrogen to water releases energy.

Converting water to hydrogen requires exactly the same amount of energy as input.

You can't use water as a "fuel" like this without an external energy source. And in that case, the external source is what's really powering the car.
 
It's BS.

Converting hydrogen to water releases energy.

Converting water to hydrogen requires exactly the same amount of energy as input.

You can't use water as a "fuel" like this without an external energy source. And in that case, the external source is what's really powering the car.

Magical explosive water is REAL! REALLL!!!! :mad::mad::mad:
 
Think switching to electric cars will make you more smug…errr, I mean “environmentally friendly?” You’d better think again. Electric cars will be the death of us all!



On a serious note, is there any reason we couldn’t make an electric car with dual / switching battery packs? You’d have one that operates the car while the other is being charged by the spinning of the wheels. That way, you could charge the car once and forget about it. I’d pay more for a self charging car, wouldn’t you?

It Might be possible Steve,and a good idea. You would probably have to make sure the circuit is disconnected when charging one set of batteries while the other set is being used and vise versa. Similiar to running duel gas tanks.
 
2 in about 20-30 years when batteries are are small enough, light enough, cheap enough and can quick charge you can have some amazing muscle cars. Think No transmission or maybe a 2 speed transmission and a 300-500 hp electric motor with a nearly flat torque curve from 0-14000 rpm's.

hehehe, I love this topic because I always talk to gear heads and they always make scoobydoo sounds when I say it:

Electromagnetic flux doesn't care how fast somethings already spinning. So, in the case of an electric car the issue of your zero-to-sixty time is just dependent on how available the electrons are. In a battery they're kinda sticky, but in a capacitor, like say a 30F 3.5kV Ultra Capacitor? Put your foot down and your doing warp-9 in 2.9 seconds :cool:

and then, of course, your out of charge :(.

So when you say "near flat torque curve" yeah its reallly flat. When you tell an electric motor to go it doesn't wait until your at such and such an RPM (it waits for the electrons to ionize off the lithium :() it just... goes.
 
I said it before and I will say it again.

The amount of energy/resources used to develop/create/maintain these systems is equal to the energy potentially saved by them.

The only way to "save" or to possibly reduce any issues is about usage and practice. Failing that, we could just make everyone is cities use bicycles (unless you have special needs).
 
Hydrogen is just moving the problem from inside the engines into the coal/oil plants. The only way electric/hydrogen cars would be worth it is having a LOT more wind turbines, solar panels, hydroelectrical dams, etc etc. Right now most of the countries rely on fossil fuels for their energy demands and this is without adding the huge amount that switching cars into electrical would increase that demand.

Right now? Gasoline isnt too bad, but people need to think smaller. Take a moment to compare engine sizes between the US and Europe, it doesnt make sense the size of the engines in America. Meanwhile invest on green sources of energy, loads of them, then we should consider switching to electrical. Also I agree on what some one said the US needs more diesel cars.

Yeah its easy to complain about oil prices being too expensive, but its not like when it was too cheap you were gonna pay more for it to be fair. Same thing about giving out about OPEC countries, sure when it suited you it was all good but now then its not. Americans dont realize how most of the world is sick of their policies and wish they could just end relationships with them, if it wasnt because of the mayor economic influence the US has im sure lots of countries wouldve done so.

Dont take it personally its a peaceful critic.

Cheers
 
We need to go hydrogen. People have used a hydrolysis to convert water into hydrogen. The emissions from hydrogen is just water vapor also which is perfect for everyone. Its the best thing since sliced bread but we all know it will never happen. One of the first innovators of hydrolysis in a vehicle were assassinated for trying to make the design go public. Oil companies offered one guy tons of millions of dollars to shut up but he didn't and he was killed. You can't win in this world when theres corrupt people. Heres how old the technology really is. It goes back in the 70s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qM325S_3TI&fmt=18

Hydrogen having "no emissions" is a non-issue, because hydrogen is not an energy source. Hydrogen is a proposed method of *transmitting* energy, not *generating* energy. Hydrogen would be used instead of say, electrical lines, to transfer energy as Hydrogen instead of charged Electrons.

I'll repeat again: Hydrogen is NOT an ENERGY SOURCE. You cannot start with water, get hydrogen and oxygen, and then burn them to end up with a net energy gain. The reason no respected and/or serious scientists are working on the idea is because it can't work, ever.

There's all kinds of designs for how to "make it work", and guess what? They all do precisely dick. Anyone can rig their car up with something they made at home and hit the Dyno for a BSHP test, but do they? No. They still rig their vehicle up with something they made from plans on the internet, but then they just drive around like normal and subjectively declare "It works!"

Testing such a device would not be difficult, and being assassinated would NOT stop your idea from becoming the most important thing humanity had ever done.

But like I said, it's not possible.
 
there is no reason you cannot convert the engine to run off of hydrogen, it's simply using hydrogen as a replacement for gasoline, when you have an oxygen rich environment it will burn.
 
IMHO, cleaner air in the streets is good enough reason for me electric cars, really, who would really miss all those smog even if it were just 1% or 0.1%?, 1% or .1% is still better than nothing..

Not buying a car and not driving at all will make a much bigger improvement for everyone and the environment.... you should try it.
 
..any reason we couldn’t make an electric car with dual / switching battery packs? You’d have one that operates the car while the other is being charged by the spinning of the wheels. That way, you could charge the car once and forget about it. I’d pay more for a self charging car, wouldn’t you?
Hhhmmmm... lets see. Maybe because a one time charge car would be scientifically referred to as a "perpetual motion machine" that does not and cannot exist. Nice try though.
 
True, but how does someone who is a shallow thinking greenie getting his/her marching orders from any number of greenie groups much less the top end of the political structure all the way to the president even think about how much generating capacity is going to be required when you set forth a plan to nearly mandate the production of 1 million plug-in hybrids by 2015 if you don't use nuclear power? So the lefty no-nuke crowd will inadvertently do a couple of things, they will push for more solar, windmill, geo-thermal, etc. while this only makes up 5% of total global alternative energy to be double to 10% in 25 years. Really?

Build 100 modern pebble bed or molten salt reactors nationwide and call it a day. You would literally be injecting untold gigawatts into the system that could conceivably deal with this type of load. But you won't get it because of fear of teh nu-clee-are!!! The people on the right see the writing on the wall and are saying hey, uncap the current oil field we have now, start building oil/gas rigs and deploy them where we know there are untold billions of cubic yards of oil and gas right off our coasts and make us foreign oil independent, and the lefty greenies will squeal in horror, go screaming into the night and say NO the whole way through. It's lose-lose. You can't win with these people. They have sold their souls to Luddite way of life.
+10 for reality
 
Here in Britain there is tons of chat about how we should all get electric/hydrogen cars so we can save the world etc. The government keeps offering financial incentives to adopt these technologies.

However there is SO LITTLE chat about where the electricity required to make these fuels comes from. Currently in Britain coal power stations make up a large part of the energy market, followed by nuclear and finally very little from renewables. Until people realise that the source of this electricity is the big issue we will get nowhere. I bet most people don't realise their nice hybrid cars are powered by burning fossil fuels.

Personally I feel it is criminal that the debate on the source of our electricity is being put on the backburner whilst the make of our cars hits the headlines. Personally I believe nuclear fuel on balance is a good thing. After that renewables such as hydro and wave seem sensible.
 
As for the dual packs, I think this would fall under the physics of Perpetual motion, which has never been accomplished.

It would take more energy to produce any energy you could get out of it.

Would it extend range? Probably. But slowly it would fall behind and eventually both packs would be depleted.
 
Sure... Then people would only have to leave 3 days before they have to be at work. If yo uwork daily, you'd need some sort of time machine to make it.

I would not think about that too hard :)

The REAL solution is to get people to stop travelling to work. With the age of the Internet, there is no need for a very large population to be driving to work. Working from a home office is now not only feasible, but greatly preferred.

We have one big problem with this. Employers fearing the "loss of control" this would present, whether real or perceived.

I have not driven to my office in almost 4 years.

+2 for nuclear!

If people were serious about being "green," they would walk instead of drive....
 
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