Posted on 02/19/2012 12:09:07 PM PST by Brookhaven
Would you buy a car that held only one gallon of gasoline? Neither would I. Yet, we've invested billions of dollars developing and promoting a car with a “gas tank” (the batteries) that only holds one gallon's worth of energy.The Chevy Volt's batteries hold the same amount of energy as one gallon of gasoline—one single gallon.
I've heard that new super batteries are just around the corner. All we have to do is invest enough money and they'll appear. Just like computers (in the 1950's they were the size of rooms, today they can be held in the palm of your hand), battery development is whizzing along at a blurring pace. Unfortunately, that isn't true. The development pace of batteries is nothing like that of computers.
A better analogy for battery development is radio. In the 1950's most people listened to music on AM radio. In the 1970's, FM radio became the standard for listening to music. Digital radio was introduced in the 2000's. Each of these was a step up in quality, but they weren't such a huge step that they made the old standards obsolete.
Alkaline batteries were commonly used in the 1950's, and they still are today. Plug a C, D, or AA battery into any device; odds are it's the same alkaline battery technology they were using back in the 1950's. Nickel batteries appeared in the 1970's. Lithium batteries appeared in the 1990's, and have three times the capacity of 1950's alkaline batteries. Truth is, the change in battery technology is slow, slow, slow.
The Chevy Volt battery pack weighs 435 pounds. That's what's required to store the energy found in one gallon of gasoline. If you wanted to create a Volt that had a “five gallon” energy tank, it would require at least 2,175 pounds of batteries—literally over a ton. Even if batteries suddenly became dirt cheap, the weight alone makes creating a car that holds more than a couple of gallons of energy unfeasible.
When Consumer Reports tested the Volt, they managed to get 28 miles on a full battery charge; which sounds about right for one gasoline gallon's worth of energy.
The Nissan Leaf did a little better. Consumer Reports got 68 miles out of a full charge (about two gallons worth of energy). Nissan didn't use more advanced technology than the Volt. The Leaf has a larger battery than the Volt (660 lbs. Vs 435 lbs.) and the non-battery part of the car weighs less (2,694 lbs. Vs 3,346 lbs.). Nissan just put more batteries in the car, and made the rest of the car lighter.
So, why isn't just adding more batteries and making the car lighter a solution? Look at the Tesla Roadster. It gets 211 miles on a full battery charge (that's what Tesla claimed in a lawsuit against the show Top Gear—who said they only got 55 miles per charge—so we'll go with that over the 250 plus miles Tesla claims in their advertising). 211 miles is still a great range, but how did they achieve it? They increased the battery pack to 992 pounds (557 pounds more than the Volt) and decreased the non-battery weight to 1,731 pounds (2,053 pounds less than the Volt). The Tesla Roadster is a small, small car. I'm sure it's fun as a sports car, but if ask it to do any of the mundane tasks in life (carry a family, or bring home a load groceries) it's not anywhere near to being up to the task.
The fact is, when it comes to practical vehicles, the Chevy Volt is the state of the art, best in class as far as electric vehicles go. The best electric vehicle available only holds the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline—one gallon.
This might still be workable, if you could refill the “electric gas tank” in just a few minutes. Unfortunately, it takes at least 8 hours to fully recharge the batteries in the Volt. A drive from Atlanta to Birmingham (about 150 miles) takes about three hours (I drive slow and like to make a couple of stops along the way). If I tried to make that trip in the Chevy Volt, it would take about 50 hours, because I would have to make five 8-hour stops to recharge the battery.
Would we be calling a car with a conventional internal combustion engine with a gas tank that only held one gallon of gasoline “the car America had to build?” Would we have spent billions of dollars developing that car? Would we be offering $7,500 tax credits to encourage consumers to purchase that car?
Yet, that is what we've done with the Chevy Volt. We've put all our money and efforts behind a car with a “gas tank” that holds the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline. The Chevy Volt, or any other electric car, will not be the answer to our energy problems until we can equip a car with a battery pack that can hold the same energy equivalent as the gas tanks in current cars. Given the history of battery development (tripling capacity every 40 years), that will be somewhere between 120 and 160 years from now.
Buying an electric car today is the same as buying a regular car that only holds one gallon of gasoline. Building one is, well...I'll let you answer that one yourself.
What is the point, then? Without the several hundred pounds of battery and electric drive gear, the range would likely be greater. Hell, the weight savings could go to a larger petrol tank.
And it takes about ten hours for that one gallon of energy to drip into the “tank”. An Owsley County, Kentucky whiskey still pumps out moonshine faster than that (don’t ask me how I know - old family secret).
Yet they want to ban spare tires because they weigh too much.
When Consumer Reports tested the Volt, they managed to get 28 miles on a full battery charge
That wouldn't get me to the grocery store.
The main reason locomotives use the diesel/generator/motor combination is that such an arrangment provides an infinite speed transmission.
The engineer can transmit an infinite range of horsepower to the drive axles, from a couple horsepower to the 4400 rated horsepower and beyond.
The locomotive can also respond nearly instantly to slippage on any single axle, reducing power to that axle. Dynamic braking, something difficult for a mechanical connection, is also available.
It has nothing to do with the number of drive wheels.
You do know that the Chevy Volt has a gasoline engine. The trip would take no longer than it does now.
Good post!
Newt just gave a speech where he noted the average Volt owner, along with $7,500 in Tax Credits (that Obama wants to increase to $10,000 BTW), makes $170,000 a year.
It's a One Percenter car that runs on Coal and / or evil “premium” gasoline...
GM is now offering a $369.00 a month Lease on the Volt with no down payment.
3 years, 36,000 miles with a $.20 per mile charge for any overage.
They will be leasing a lot more cars, especially with $5.00 per gallon gas on the way. The Volt requires Premium Gas which is currently $4.19 a gallon where I live.
“I’ve heard that new super batteries are just around the corner.”
“Yeah, they’ve been just around the corner for 40 years.”
...and so is the fusion energy source with which to charge them.
Still, the car’s range is not better than the competition. Even if gasoline climbs to $5/gallon, I am not going to exchange my car which averages 35mpg on the highway for a Volt.
Ha. I did the same calculation. Even if gas goes to $5 (unfortunately, not unimaginable), it would amount to pre-paying 60,000 miles worth of gas @ 30 mpg.
True but won't you use that "extra gas" you save while braking by accelerating back up to speed?
The real phoney part here is the ignoring of the Volt gas tank which extends the actual range to several hundred miles. You won't need to spend fifty hours charging batteries to go to Atlanta.
That having been said, the "one gallon" equivalence to the entire multihundred pound battery fiasco is a compelling image. I'm sticking with my fossil fuels thankee very much.
It’s more than common sense. It’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Three Laws of Thermo go like this:
1. You can’t win. (ie, you can’t create more energy than you started with)
2. Not only can you not win, you can’t even break even. (any time you convert energy from one form to another, there’s a conversion loss)
3. You can’t quit the game. (you can’t create some isolated, special environment in which the first two laws don’t hold, because the outside universe will enforce the first two laws from outside your little unicorn habitat.)
As for diesel-electrics: That’s part of the reason. The other is that when diesel/electrics first started, they used series-wound DC motors. For those who don’t read up on various types of motors for fun and profit, series-wound DC motors produce incredibly high torque into a stalled load - just what you want when you need to get a train off the stopped position. If you were to try to drive the wheels directly from the diesel, you’d have to have some manner of clutch to bring the load onto the engine without stalling it.
This is unlike steam, where you can directly couple the expansion pistons to the wheels without a clutch. You can’t do with diesel engines.
Today, diesel-electrics use different types of motors with modern, solid-state DC motor drives, which allow the engineer to control the torque and acceleration to a very fine degree, which enables longer trains.
To be fair, the progress in PV panels has been much greater than the progress in battery technology, relatively speaking. That doesn’t mean that PV pencils yet, it just means that it sucks less than it used to.
Batteries, on the other hand, suck every bit as much as they have for decades.
I didn’t mention the number of drive wheels.
I didn’t mention dynamic braking either but that is a good point.
My point was that the Volt was sold on the idea of having an engine running at it’s most efficient speed or speeds and then driving a generator that could drive the wheels or charge the batteries or both but since the engine is connected to the drive train, the idea of running at its most efficient speed is out the window.
Then again, maybe it does, and maybe you're wrong, LOL.
Diesel-electric powerplants became popular because they greatly simplified the way motive power was transmitted to the wheels and because they were both more efficient and had greatly reduced maintenance requirements. Direct-drive transmissions can become very complex, considering that a typical locomotive has four or more axles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel-electric_transmission
1) The car is sold as an electric car.
2) The engine is there to charge the batteries and drive the drive motor and an engine’s efficiencies if it is tuned for that are higher than one that has to go from 1-6000RPM. Drive your car sportingly and you use more gas and more (not much) wear on the engine. I assume the same thing happens with an electric vehicle but one thing an electric motor can do that IC engine cannot is supply 100% torque at 0 RPM. Pretty cool. I bet if they eliminated the batteries and electric motor and used a four cylinder, it would get better mileage.
3) I had high hopes for the Volt but it just isn’t finished. The problem of charging times is there but a range equivalent to one gallon of gas makes zero sense. They made a lot of noise about super capacitors that could be charged quick, I haven’t heard that in a while. Like the article states, I think the battery technology is not there yet. I think the Tesla has over 6000 individual cells. Must be fun to wire.
4) All the talk about quicker charge times mean installing a high current box in your garage, I recall it was $3,000 and I don’t remember if the main breaker box has to be changed as well.
5) I do think it’s a good idea when all the technologies finally come together. I don’t like the rebate of what, $7,500? Do you know anyone with a Volt? I would like to hear what a normal commuter thinks of the car.
Ha, an X1/9! A good looking car but the joke was that x stood for experimental and 1 stood for the engineer that designed it and 9 stood for the engineers that fixed his design.
Uhh, those four cylinder Chrysler engines, weren’t some sourced from VW? Better than a Vega but not much, I think it least had a cross flow head. I don’t know what genius thought of putting the intake and the exhaust on the same side of the head was a good idea. At least the Cosworths heads were well designed and injected. I’ve been looking at them on Ebay but they don’t have the ‘72 Camero look and they desized the engine to 2.0 liters. I wonder what a little work (cams, EFI tuning) and the 2.3 liter bottom end would do?
I did a rough estimate of the cost difference between a Volt ($40K) and a Cruze($15K) (same chassis) If I recall, the payoff in difference between gas and electric (free charges) would be around 150,000 miles.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.