One of my main attractions to an all electric vehicle is my software
guy's aversion to anything with too many precision mechanical moving
parts. The modern gas engine just has too many things to service or
wear out. It sort of seems like old-tech to me.
Of course with the electric cars the darn batteries currently seem to
wear out even faster. But hopefully that will change. Anyway, I'm
interested in these now, even if I don't yet see an economical way to
get one.
- Tom
Kon Wilms wrote:
I think a tank of gas would do the job just fine. Batteries not required. When I said modification I meant boost or turbo, not an electric supercharger. :)
As for the chassis.. no shock there, Lotus Engineering has been doing that for some time for the 'niche automotive OEM market'.
There are easily two dozen sportscars I would choose that are far superior to the Tesla for the $100k range - without having to resort to battery packs and skewed dyno graphs. :P
If you can afford 100k... you can afford the gas!
Amen to that.
Anyone can benefit from a low-roll-resistance chassis. I liked the way the white paper
http://www.teslamotors.com/display_data/21stCentElectricCar.pdf
referred to "well to wheel" efficency when it made comparisons, but I did not like the way it compares one non-existant technology against something you can go out and buy today.
The other factors to consider are:
1. To compare apples with apples, the same light, low-roll-resistance chassis should have been applied to the diesel powered alternative. If these advanced chassis are NOT used today, it's because they cost more than they would save in fuel costs. Not because there's something incompatible between them and a gasoline or diesel engine.
2. The efficiency claims made for the Tesla depended on a specific type
of natural-gas-powered electric generation plant. Are those the ones in
typical use? Or are we also depending on a total redo of power
generating plants around the country? The argument made that electricity
is already being distributed everywhere does not figure back in their
efficiency numbers.
3. Some of these new fancy batteries operate at ridiculously high temperatures. Not sure if the lithium-ion is one is among those, but let's not forget the recent Sony battery recall. Also, the energy storage equivalent of 8 liters of gasoline does not sound all that impressive, does it?
4. What are the pollution concerns when these batteries are used up and/or the cars are used up?
5. The white paper did not take into consideration alternative sources of energy that may be used for making H2, but perhaps not as easily for recharging a typical Tesla car. Such as, make H2 in wind farms offshore, perhaps, rather than depending on fossil fuels for that. Here is what the paper says: "if we are willing to build all-new hydrogen production plants to power a hydrogen car future, then we should be just as willing to build new electric generators to power an electric car future. We have assumed 60% efficient best-of-breed electric generators, but not science-fiction electric generators." Is this a sensible comment? I don't think so.
I like the idea of replacing the reciprocating engine with electric motors, of course, but having to use batteries is what makes this difficult today, IMO. Not conspiracies.
Bert
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