What? The batteries were flat?Quote:
Originally Posted by goingbush
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What? The batteries were flat?Quote:
Originally Posted by goingbush
A close look at Tesla's position vs the rest of the car manufacturers getting into electrics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHM82UzRCkA
Been reading the early parts of this thread with interest.
Battery exchange in electric vehicles has been going on for 50 years or more in Australia with the process only taking a few minutes.
Electric vehicle battery recycling has been going on in Australia for about the same time.
I am in the forklift game.
All large electric forklifts from 80 percent of electric forklift manufactures have quick change batteries which only take a few mintues to change.
To work a electric forklift or tow tug vehicle 24 hours per day will take 3 batteries, one in use and 2 on charge.
The heavy batteries are changed over by a roller set up or overhead crane with lifting sling designed for the purpose.
Of course these batteries are lead acid.
Lithium batteries are now available for electric industrial vehicles.
Factories and industrial sites which use electric industrial vehicles in a large scale have dictated charging rooms and AC multi phase power supply.
Nothing is new.
In Australia electric industrial vehicles are not the main type in use.
The main reason is purchase cost.
The copper and alloys used in electric vehicle manufacture and extra energy used in producing them makes them double the cost of a LPGas forklift or tow tug.
Lead acid battery life is anywhere from 4 to 20 years with a average of 8 years.
The problem these days the new battery cells,are coming from China so battery life tends to be shorter than 20 years ago.
Battery purchase price is expensive and alot of LPGas can be purchased for the price of a single battery.
The electric industrial vehicle resale is is extremely low or near zero if it is sold with a old battery as no one wants to take a 5 to 8 k hit to the bank balance on a second hand vehicle a short time after purchasing it.
Weight with forklifts is not a disadvantage and in some applications a electric forklift will out perform is internal combustion equivalent, especially if the unit is a high end espensive machine .
Electric industrial vehicles have cheaper day to day servicing cost than internal combustion.
Industrial electrical,vehicles had a more expensive option up until the mid 1970s of iron peroxide ?? Batteries which had a almost unlimited life time by just flushing out the cells every 10 years or so and adding new chemicals and it would be good for another 10 years...........the batteries companies took them off the market..........they were worried about losing money.
Ships in the 1930s used the same sort of battery because of the long life.
Lithium batteries in forklifts need weights added to the battery case so the forklift can lift the designed loads.
LPGas and diesel forklift and industrial vehicles have cheaper to purchase replacement parts and a Internal cusbustion engine if looked after has a far more certain and known costs with rebuilding it over time compared to a battery which lifes could suddenly end without warning.
I owned a road going electric car with lead acid batteries in the mid 1980s when electric cars were non existant on our roads.
It was a British made Enfield electric.
Even
With lead acid technology the off the mark acceleration could spin the rear wheels.
Point the thing at hill and it was a joke..........it always got to the top but may be at 20 mph.
The Enfield was single speed , but had a good electric motor using compound windings which it also used for speed control with voltage switching too.
No regen braking or electronics...........simple , but the electrical side of it worked.
It is interesting someone over in England found one of these things and fitted modern brushless motor, electronics and Lithium batteries and nothing much can get near it over the quarter mile.
The Enfield just needed to get rid of the heavy batteries for some thing lighter and I knew it could perform.
The future is either in full electric in smaller vehicles with reinforced electric in small to medium vehicles for much longer ranges.
Hybrid is a heavy expensive to produce and complicated.
Having a fully electric drive system with the option of a small alloy petrol, LPG diesel generator motor of say 5 hp running only if you want to do a long trip.
The weight off set of a small 5 hp genset is small.
If doing Sydney to Melbourne a 5 hp genset would give you the range with a very small fuel cost and use.
A round town the weight of the small now not used genset would decrease range little.
The cost of production is little above a normal fully electric
If the vehicle is driven until the battery is discharged and is protected by the electronics the small on board genset could in time provide enough power to drive the vehicle to the next recharge station..
What will push us to electric is the unreliable anti pollution internal cumbustion motor with more crap on them evey year.
You can only eat so much of your own poo before you call it quits.
In Australia the electricity system is in so poor a state and a future lack of base load generation that a big up take of electric vehicles is not possible even if the politicians think it is.
Australias short to medium term vehicle energy source should be LPGas as we have plenty of it if we stop giving it away over seas.
CNG,LPG are reasonably clean,simple and especially with LPG infrastructure is largely in place.
Govt just needs to get rid of the tax on.LPG to off set its higher storage costs and it would take off without any further help.
Did I mention we have something like a 300 year supply of shale oil in Australia............digging it up would up set the greenies too much until we have to walk every where.............cracking shale also provides large amounts of fuel Gas, but at a higher cost to natural gas or petroleum gas.
Modern electric and even internal combustion vehicles owe something to electric forklifts and other industrial electric vehicles.
On forklifts have had on some models direct electric drive assisted steering since the late 1970s..........only just come out on cars recently.
In the mid 1990s California was going to make electric cars compulsory base on a prototype electric car using lead acid batteries and up to date electronics and motors giving 90 mile range.
After production was started they wisely chicken out at the last minute.
All the production cars were destroyed to hide the error of the greenie law makers of the time.( and GM who made the electric cars wanted to sell Internal combustion)
It was the Tesla of its time and would have been if the Lithium batteries were fitted which by the time the last ones were destroyed was 2002 ?????? Lithum batteries were just getting off the ground.
The AC motor tech and the compact high current inverter tech, large power transistors tech, regen tech was all taken from forklifts and had been used in electric forklifts since the mid 1980s including on board self diagnostic and liquid crystal displays etc.
Nothing is really new............it just comes of age in a sightly different way.
I,forgot one other thing.
Self driving forklifts have been around since the very early 1970s and they have been up dated over time now using GPS tech and camera with wireless communications and order picking. ..........another thing been there done that in forklifts many years earlier than late model cars.
The 1970s collision avoidance was by use of special light beams instead of radar and sonics etc.
I like this early Tesla [smilebigeye]
Electric Car (1948) - YouTube