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Posted on 02/20/2012 10:28:53 AM PST by Brookhaven
What does it cost to replace a Volt battery and the cost to set up a 220v charging station.
The only way electric cars will ever be practical when you can get power from the road.
Production of these cars is nothing more then graft.
The best evidence that hybrids are all hype is that they use gasoline instead of diesel. Serious diesel electric vehecles, to wit locomotives and submarines, use diesel engines. The reason consumer hybrids avoid diesels is because that would shatter the myth that they are somehow “clean”.
Most people completely disregard the fact that the majority of our electricity comes from burning coal. And it is not cheap -- an 8 hour charge on 220v is like running your dryer all day nonstop. Every day. I'd love to see that bill each month.
How can people (and governments and corporations) be so stupid?
It’s also worth noting that there has been a huge market-based incentive to improve battery technology throughout its history.
Everybody who uses battery-powered devices — which is to say virtually everybody — wants longer battery life. There are few potential products that would have comparable instantaneous demand if they could only be invented and commercialized.
It is foolishness to think that, if government would only spend more money on research, it would accomplish a technological breakthrough in battery technology.
Could try capacitors, though. They can hold large amounts of power and they charge up very quickly.
The problem is, though, that they are made to discharge all at once. If there was a way to regulate the discharge to a set amount over time... it might be more feasible that trying to figure out a better battery.
Because the government is subsidizing with large tax breaks..
>> “How can people (and governments and corporations) be so stupid?” <<
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Simple: - The sole purpose of electric cars is to destroy the mobility of the common man. (cue-up Jimmah Cahta’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”)
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Liberals...play at building cars...play at building housing..play at having families...play at being mortgage brokers...play at being traders ...and play at being doctors...and play while presidentin’!!!
they don’t REALLY DO a DA*% THING useful...except to provide a contrast to reality!!!
It’s a perfect analogy to help people understand the concept of energy density, which has always been the holy grail of all battery designers. Go back to the days before we had alkaline cells, and your typical flashlight might last a few hours. Lithium technology has brought a new level of performance, and batteries will continue to improve and new technologies such as miniature PEM fuel cells will come into widespread use. I’ve seen models of fuel cells that can be recharged in a few seconds and will run a laptop, for example:
http://www.gizmag.com/at-last-an-affordable-portable-pocket-size-fuel-cell/15425/
Why it’s become fashionable on FR to bash new technologies, I don’t quite know. We’re not typing on Underwood portables, you know? So rather than belittle these developments, we should focus our frustration on GUMMINT involvement, and let the free market and private investment determine which are winners and which are losers. It will be some time before other energy sources come close to the energy density of a gallon of gas - but the market will be the first to tell us when it does.
Government over-reach is the real outrage when it comes to energy.
Well, that battery may only hold one gallon of gas, but the Volt pays a lot of UAW wages and thus Democrats. Instead of measuring by gallons of gas, it should be measured in dollars of Democrat campaign donations. There’s the real metric.
“The problem is, though, that they are made to discharge all at once. If there was a way to regulate the discharge to a set amount over time... it might be more feasible that trying to figure out a better battery.
“
Ah a little correction is needed here. Capacitors are not DESIGNED to discharge all at once. They can if desired or can be discharged over time if desired.
It is known as an RC time constant T=RC where T=Time in seconds, R= Resistance in ohms, and C= Capacitance in Farads. While in the olden days a one Farad capacitor would have been huge that is no longer the case but you still need many, many Farads to power an electric vehicle. A one Farad capacitor, connected to a resistor of 100 ohms to discharge to approx 60% of its full charge in 100 seconds. See the problem? The resistance in an electric vehicle will be very low to get enough current into the motor therefor you will need copious Farads of capacitors for any appreciable drive time.
As far as batteries, if people are really interested spend a few hours researching the Edison Battery used in the first electric cars. Lighter than Lead Acid, they are an Alkyine battery and the fluid does NOT destroy the electrodes so the life expectancy can be up to 100 years and no that is not a misprint. Jay Leno has a Baker electric car with the original Edison Battery and it still works.
The Edison battery can be fully discharged without damage (try that with some batteries) and can be over charged and the only thing which needs to be done is topping off the lost water with distilled water. It is also much less toxic than Lead Acid batteries.
These batteries do lose about 1% of their charge per month if not trickle charged but for an electric vehicle that is not much of an issue.
Why are we not using them? Well for one Exide purchased the rights for the current methods of manufacturing in the mid 70s and proceeded to halt production. On the surface it would seem they did not want a 100 year battery on the market.
They are being used as backup supplies for solar or windmill system and of course mainly manufactured in China.
One of the posters on this thread did touch on a real issue even if there is a PERFECT battery it has to be charged from some source.
Can you imagine millions of cars all plugged into the grid everyday while at the same time we have a POS of a president who is doing his best to reduce our ability to produce energy.
ZI’m sure the Exide people deliberately suppress the 100 year battery for short-term profit;such behavior is typical business. Buy out the competition and then shut down the product has happened many times.
It is why a real patent reform that would void any patent simply held or hoarded and patenents and copyrights would expire after the limited time of as originmally set up,that is, within a decade or two of the grant.
ZI’m sure the Exide people deliberately suppress the 100 year battery for short-term profit;such behavior is typical business. Buy out the competition and then shut down the product has happened many times.
It is why a real patent reform that would void any patent simply held or hoarded and patenents and copyrights would expire after the limited time of as originmally set up,that is, within a decade or two of the grant.
I ran the math one time on the cost to charge vs. gasoline, based on numbers from a Motor Trend article and my own electric bill. It did look like you’d save a fair amount to use electricity, everything being equal. I don’t remember exactly but it seemed like electricity was about 75-80% cheaper than $3 gas. But if I recall, those numbers assumed better performance of the Volt than I’ve heard about lately. And it didn’t account for battery replacements. Also, it doesn’t count the in-elasticity of supply of electricity. If electric cars were widely adopted and electrical demand shot up in a short period, not only would the cost have to increase, but we’d see blackouts and probably some kind of rationing like they do with AC in the summer. Government should have learned from the CA 1990 ZEV law that just because you pass it doesn’t mean the technology exists to get you there.
There is no doubt the Chevy Volt is state of the art, best in class as far as electric vehicles go--and it has a gasoline engine as a crutch. It must have that crutch, because the batteries in the Volt only hold the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline—one single gallon.
Ironic that GM put their "green" car in front of a wind farm. Not only does the Volt need a crutch so does every other source of "alternative" energy (except tidal and hydroelectric). Because of the quixotic nature of the wind every single watt of wind generated power has to be backed up with conventionally generated power (coal, oil, NG, or nuclear). The same is true for photovoltaic (solar cells). Hydroelectric makes sense as it is dependable, renewable, nonpolluting, safe as churches, and of course the "tree huggers" are demanding that we remove our dams to return the rivers to their "free and natural state".
This country has too many people making too much money out of lousy engineering.
GtG
That's an interesting question. Since the car causes the fire which burns down the garage, would the auto policy cover both, so you only have to pay the deductible on your auto policy, or would you have to pay the deductible on your home policy as well?
I cannot argue one iota on your opinion regarding patents. A patent was not intended to deprive the world a product or invention but to give an inventor a chance to profit from the invention before it could be produced by anyone else.
Given the pluses of the Edison Battery I would think it would be a great jumping off point for electric vehicles until something better came down the pike. It is proven, less toxic, much longer lasting, less susceptible to damage via over/under charging, less weight than lead acid.
Exide could only have bought a patent on a method of manufacturing as I do not believe a battery from 1900 could be still protected by a patent. If I put on a tin foil hat I could imagine battery manufactures conspiring to NOT manufacture a 100 year battery.
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