Thread: Electric Cars

Interesting slide show, a film "who killed the electric car" was made a few years ago covering what happened to the ev1.
Hydrogen cars have been around for a while, honda have one on sale in the USA for limited numbers, but they bring a heap of problems namley storgae and cost as well as ensureing its safe, the other problem is getting hyrdrogen the last figures i read was it takes 3gallons of oil to make 1 gallon of hydrogen, so a bit like the electric car (how much does it cost to make the batteries) there is still arguments as to its viability.
eventually i think we will all have some thing electric be it a hybrid of one varation or another.
ian

Me
I love em!
Hybrids mostly at the moment .
I specialize in fixing these devices I don't call them vehicles.
I got trained on them a few years ago with the emphasis on Toyota but their systems are in Ford and Nissan to name just a few.
With maximum torque available at zero revolutions the power to launch is impressive compared with ICE power systems of the last century which I was taught to fix.

The transmission of power is a marvel of engineering, the focus not on the engine running on the Atkinson cycle, but the transmission and the battery (Nickle metal hydride or lithium) punching out about 250v DC to provide traction through the internal motor generator MG2.

The transmission (gearbox)is just a single speed epicyclic pack but the trick is the input motor generator MG1, which is used for instant start of the IC engine during power cycling and controlled slip of the sun wheel in the drive giving unlimited gearbox reduction ratios depending upon loads and speeds. All this with power melding of the IC engine power when the demand arises.

The system is remarkably simple mechanically but devilishly complicated when you take into account the one electric motor generator is emitting a sin wave from a simple 3mm thick ellipse rotor on the drive shaft and the other a cosine wave. So the on board computer knows exactly what each motor gen unit is doing. These two control systems are called resolver circuits and essentially 21st century industrial motor technology has met ancient motor vehicle technology to produce something quite remarkable.

The systems have come along way in ten years and with advances accelerating in the MV world as they do we will be driving them as town cars quicker than we think. I have two in the household for commuting.
Doubts on reliability???
The two units I have are Prius Mk 1 & 2.
They have 175K and 202 K miles on them respectively all operating on the same battery!

Its the future for townies and the new Chev Volt uses regular pump fuel for long runs but the engine (ICE) and the electric drive are not connected!
The engine just generates electricity for the traction motor to use.
I am a firm believer that urban and suburbanites will be buying these cars like hot cakes very soon.
Dennis
zedcars

so who is going to buy a Range_E then,
LAND ROVER REVEALS ITS FIRST FULLY CAPABLE 4WD PLUG-IN DIESEL HYBRID | Land Rover International



.

Toyota was a bit ahead of them on the diesel hybrid as an experimental.
I got following a pair of experimental Toyota Highlanders heading for the mountains about 4 years ago..

Here I was scudding back to my shop in my Rangie when I spied these two white nondescript "Toyts" coming up at a fair clip in the middle lane doing a good 75 mph.
The license plate showed a Detroit Michigan registration, an instant giveaway in Colorado; its a factory experimental/proving platform.
Sure enough as the two past me there were packed full of test gear and test blokes inside with "gear".

Written, more like scribbled in glass markers on the tail gate was "dslhbrd#1 & dslhbrd#2" . Hmm I thought!

Instead of peeling off to my destination I decided to follow these two units making for the mountains. The road (Interstate) gets steep going further west as you climb from 6500ft to about 8000' on the first part of the front range of the Rockies . Pushing the Rangie hard I could just keep up @ 75 with these two, then 80 then at 85 mph the LR just didn't have the grunt, I peeled off at my next exit.
Crikey talk about keep on trucking!
Dennis
zedcars

Originally Posted by zedcars

..........
I am a firm believer that urban and suburbanites will be buying these cars like hot cakes very soon.
Dennis
zedcars

Would be nice to think so (assuming electric vehicles, not hybrids), and it may happen. But there are severe hurdles to overcome. The first one is range - barring serious breakthroughs, this means they cannot be used for long distance travel, which may suit many urban dwellers who never travel anywhere except locally or where public transport is available. But most of Australia's minor towns and villages have poor or no public transport. This implies that urban dwellers need one electric and one other, perhaps hybrid, which may work for many people, but not for many others. It would help if fixed costs (registration, insurance etc) could be moved to usage costs, to encourage ownership of special purpose vehicles.

The second major problem is cost. At present, and for the foreseeable future, it is impossible to make a financial case for using an electric vehicle. Sure, the fuel and possibly maintenance costs may be lower, but these are swamped by the cost of ownership. Even for high mileage private cars (and no electric vehicle will be high mileage without solving the range problem) the cost of capital, opportunity cost, and standing charges represent about two thirds of the running costs. Because of the high initial cost, the two largest numbers, cost of capital and opportunity cost, are much higher for electric vehicles. While it is possible that change to mass production will bring the cost down (after all, as you say, these are basically simpler than IC engine vehicles) this needs much higher demand than at present, and this is unlikely to happen until the cost comes down. A bit of a chicken and egg situation.

A third major problem is that it seems unlikely that the widespread use of electric vehicles would actually reduce emissions, which is seen as a major intent of moving to electric vehicles. This is because most electricity in Australia is generated by burning coal. While large, modern coal fired power stations have an efficiency comparable with that of a modern small diesel, suggesting that the electric vehicle would be better by the proportion of non-coal power, this ignores the very real losses in efficiency in distribution of the power and the charge/discharge cycle of the vehicle battery. A separate related issue is the effect of changes in consumption patterns and indeed overall electric power use would have on both the efficiency and scale of the power grid.

The same comments that apply to electric cars also apply to hydrogen vehicles, except that they do not have the range limitation but neither do they have the inherent simplicity and reliability of electric vehicles. And it must be emphasised that hydrogen is not a primary source of energy - like electricity, it needs to be produced from a primary source of energy, with an efficiency that is very roughly the same (around 10-30%). As with the electric vehicle, it has the advantage of zero emissions at the point of use.

From a city pollution point of view the use of either electric or hydrogen vehicles has an overwhelming advantage - but then so does an efficient public transport system that would take most commuting cars off the road - and would probably cost less overall, and make cities a far better place to live.

John

Within the next 10 years the economics of brown coal fired electricity will change (notwithstanding Abbot's promises) as coal seam gas replaces coal proper in generation. Electric cars are ideally suited to the city environment as short range vehicles. Just imagine all the school and shopping trips done in Leafs instead of Prados. Petrol or diesel/electric hybrids will have enough range for much of the mid-range travel and conventional vehicles will be needed for the last 25% of users.

As an aside, the website for the Australian electric vehicle association is here:

AEVA | The Australian Electric Vehicle Association Inc.

Plenty of room for experimentors, hybrid-to-plug-in conversions etc.

Originally Posted by bee utey

Within the next 10 years the economics of brown coal fired electricity will change (notwithstanding Abbot's promises) as coal seam gas replaces coal proper in generation. Electric cars are ideally suited to the city environment as short range vehicles. Just imagine all the school and shopping trips done in Leafs instead of Prados. Petrol or diesel/electric hybrids will have enough range for much of the mid-range travel and conventional vehicles will be needed for the last 25% of users.

As an aside, the website for the Australian electric vehicle association is here:

AEVA | The Australian Electric Vehicle Association Inc.

Plenty of room for experimentors, hybrid-to-plug-in conversions etc.

Brown coal power generation never made economic sense in Australia, and was only started in Victoria and SA in the 1940s when militant unions in the NSW coal industry threatened that security of Victoria's electricity supply. It remains to be seen whether coal seam gas will replace coal - my guess is that it will replace the growth rather than existing base load.

As for your suggestion as to the future of city vehicles - I agree your scenario is technically ideal - but then the existing pattern of vehicle use (e.g. Prados as city vehicles) is hardly technically optimum, so I have perhaps less faith than you that the population as a whole will suddenly start doing the technically optimum thing.

I suspect that in real life people do not choose a vehicle on the basis of its technical performance (if they did, how many on this forum could justify owning a four wheel drive?) - other factors come in - some rational (even if mistaken) such as the desire to drive a car which is easy to get in/out (i.e. high, like the Prado), but others simply following a fashion - something notoriously difficult to predict or guide.

John

I think there needs to be incentive to be able to 'have your cake and eat it too'

Make EV style vehicles.... Cheap / Subsidised

Rego them for a greatly reduced sum

Fixed rate insurance (at very low rate)

Discounts on toll roads for EVs

Reduced parking costs for them in cities....


Make it that to own them as the 'town car' is so economical they are *wanted* and then people can have whatever long range vehicle they like at home...

Only a quick idea... Implementing it... well