Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

[klf]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Eric Bryant</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: maggot</div><div class="ubbcode-body">What ever happened to American Muscle?...Plymouth 426 Street Hemi.</div></div>

Yeah, there aren't any more powerful American cars. I mean, the new Camaro ZL1 has only 580 HP, the Vette ZR1 has 638 HP, the Caddy CTS-V has only 556 HP, the '13 Mustang GT500 has a measly 662 HP, and if you're a real pussy then Chrysler will sell you a variety of full-size cars with 470 HP.

Bunch of weak crap, I tell ya. You know that they suck because they can actually stop and turn, and no real man would ever be caught in a car that can do those things. That sort of performance is for <span style="font-style: italic">furrin</span> crap.

Oh - and most of the aforementioned will also get 20+ MPG on the highway. Dammit, how I hate modern performance cars!

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">There's nothing wrong with a big truck if you actually USE it. But it's sad/funny how many people I know that have 3/4 tons and have never hauled anything, never pulled a trailer, never even been on dirt roads, then complain about the high gas prices when they fill up haha. </div></div>

I'm not going to get into the business of complaining about other people's decisions. Most people with a Prius don't drive enough to realize the fuel savings, most people with pickups drive them empty the vast majority of the time, minivan owners hardly ever haul more than three or four people, station wagon owners aren't always carting around a bunch of kayaks or guitar amps, and full-size van owners are rarely in the plumbing or kidnapping business. But I don't care, because I don't want anyone else telling me what I should be driving, no more than I want anyone else telling me what firearms I can and cannot own. </div></div>

+1

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: W54/XM-388</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Apparently according to what I heard from a friend that was talking with one of the Executives from the North American division of Honda, people ask him that all the time and the answer is that due to all the government mandated things they have to put on cars now days & all the extra emissions regulations, the cars are just too heavy for a tiny little engine to pull and the engine can't run as un-restricted as before.</div></div>

The biggest issue with selling small, light, cheap cars with small engines is that very few people want them. Just go look at the top-10 best-selling vehicles in the US for a hint at what people will buy. It's a simple issue of economics.

Also note that you cannot compare the window-sticker numbers of cars from the 80s to those sold today, since the method by which the testing occurs and the numbers are calculated has changed over the years.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The current biggest problem with all the hybrid and electric cars is the weight of the batteries totally kills the potential, or if you go with small batteries it is rather range limited.</div></div>

Nope - the weight of the vehicle is not of significant concern when the vehicle has regenerative braking capabilities. Aerodynamics plays a much larger role in energy efficiency. Losses due to accelerating the mass of the vehicle are considered "recoverable", while losses due to friction and aerodynamic losses are "irrecoverable").

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The Hydrogen cars (such as the Honda Clarity) show a lot of promise just the whole where to fill them up thing.</div></div>

There are larger problems to hydrogen vehicles than just fueling infrastructure:

1) Hydrogen fuel cells are f'in' expensive! I'm about a year out of date, but last I heard, the estimated pricing for a production 60kW fuel cell is still somewhere well north of $100k. That's not for the whole car - just the fuel cell. Yikes.

2) You still need an intermediate energy storage device (batteries or ultracapacitors), an "inverter" (motor control unit), and an electric motor capable of providing 100% of the vehicle propulsion power. These components are also very expensive.

3) Fuel cells do not like cold weather.

4) Fuel cells have not yet been proven to have an acceptable life (10+ years).

They are pretty damn amazing devices, though. At my previous employer, I got to work on a brushless DC motor for a fuel cell water pump (no crankshaft means that even simple tasks can get complicated). Frankly, I don't expect much to happen with this technology for the next decade or longer; even the federal government has decided not to throw significant money at fuel cells in the near term.

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: maggot</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I stand corrected.

</div></div>

Dude, get to a GM, Ford, or Chrysler dealer ASAP!!! Or, if you don't like the domestics, you can get some real monsters from the German luxury manufacturers - (relatively) little twin-turbo V8s that put out 500+ HP, push a two-ton sedan to flat-12s in the quarter, and still get 25 MPG on the highway.

I grew up loving muscle cars, but there has never been a better time to be a car guy than right now.

 

[Gildoom]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Eric Bryant</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: W54/XM-388</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Apparently according to what I heard from a friend that was talking with one of the Executives from the North American division of Honda, people ask him that all the time and the answer is that due to all the government mandated things they have to put on cars now days & all the extra emissions regulations, the cars are just too heavy for a tiny little engine to pull and the engine can't run as un-restricted as before.</div></div>

The biggest issue with selling small, light, cheap cars with small engines is that very few people want them. Just go look at the top-10 best-selling vehicles in the US for a hint at what people will buy. It's a simple issue of economics.

Also note that you cannot compare the window-sticker numbers of cars from the 80s to those sold today, since the method by which the testing occurs and the numbers are calculated has changed over the years.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The current biggest problem with all the hybrid and electric cars is the weight of the batteries totally kills the potential, or if you go with small batteries it is rather range limited.</div></div>

Nope - the weight of the vehicle is not of significant concern when the vehicle has regenerative braking capabilities. Aerodynamics plays a much larger role in energy efficiency. Losses due to accelerating the mass of the vehicle are considered "recoverable", while losses due to friction and aerodynamic losses are "irrecoverable").

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The Hydrogen cars (such as the Honda Clarity) show a lot of promise just the whole where to fill them up thing.</div></div>

There are larger problems to hydrogen vehicles than just fueling infrastructure:

1) Hydrogen fuel cells are f'in' expensive! I'm about a year out of date, but last I heard, the estimated pricing for a production 60kW fuel cell is still somewhere well north of $100k. That's not for the whole car - just the fuel cell. Yikes.

2) You still need an intermediate energy storage device (batteries or ultracapacitors), an "inverter" (motor control unit), and an electric motor capable of providing 100% of the vehicle propulsion power. These components are also very expensive.

3) Fuel cells do not like cold weather.

4) Fuel cells have not yet been proven to have an acceptable life (10+ years).

They are pretty damn amazing devices, though. At my previous employer, I got to work on a brushless DC motor for a fuel cell water pump (no crankshaft means that even simple tasks can get complicated). Frankly, I don't expect much to happen with this technology for the next decade or longer; even the federal government has decided not to throw significant money at fuel cells in the near term. </div></div>

Truth.

What people want, what Congress and Elites want people to want, are almost assuredly never going to intercept one another.

Fuel Cells are neat, but they are like looking at drawings of spaceships going to Neptune on Nuclear power. They are so far from practical, the other thing, is how do you break the bond between H2O? Massive electromagnetic force. How do you get that power? Getting back to Nuclear Power again.

The other thing, like Eric pointed out, is drag, one thing about vehicles today is we have left that 90s sloped nose car. Why? Pedestrian Impact Standards. So we are making cars less aerodynamic, to overcome people getting hit by cars, all the while trying to make higher cafe standards.

It is like putting a coke addict in charge of the evidence locker at a police station, eventually things just get messed up.

 

[W54/XM-388]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

Window stickers are of no use to me, I go by how much gas you put into the car and how many miles of travel you get for your gallons.

Go get a nicely tuned and well maintained 1987 or similar CRX HF Manual transmission car, and drive it, you'll be surprised how good good the gas mileage is, (I know as I drove one for over 100,000 miles) it still can beat all the current hybrids including the Prius, with the exception of more exotic ones like the original Honda Insight.

But yes small cars like that had their downsides where they were mostly 2 seaters with cargo room in the back and if you wanted good acceleration, you had to know how to work your stick. The problem is that most people don't buy cars for what they actually use every day but rather for what they may need one day.

Saying weight makes no difference in a car for fuel economy because you have regenerative braking is ignoring some fundamental parts of basic science. While yes you can capture some of the energy back into your batteries, you are still loosing a lot of it because no matter what, even in space, it takes more energy to get xxx amount of mass moving than x amount of mass. You can capture some of that back again when you brake (this assumes lots of starting and stopping and not mostly highway driving which is where most electric cars start to fall down), however you are not going to capture 100% of the energy you had to use to boost it (plain simple science settled hundreds of years ago with the ill fated quest for perpetual motion). More likely you will capture less than 50% of the energy you took to begin with.

The other big issue is that unless everything runs out, nothing major is going to be allowed to change that would affect the profit streams of either the big companies that own the polticians, or the government's ability to easily collect a steady guaranteed tax stream.

As it is now, Hydrocarbons are the cheapest easily available energy storage mediums with the best efficiency rate per size / volume. Even the best battries rate way lower. Then it comes next to speed of refil, yes you can do super fast chargers for your batteries (Super fast being like 15 to 20 minutes, vs 5 to fill up your gas tank), but if you use them often your batteries wear out a lot faster, in addition if you use the full range of your batteries charge capacity they also wear out faster.

A classic example of this is the Honda Civic Hybrid and the lawsuits about it. It was sold as getting great gas mileage and it did because it used a lot of electric assist, then after time went on, Honda realized that the battery packs would wear out a bit too fast and may have to be replaced under warranty, so they changed the software on the cars when people went to the dealerships and now it uses a much smaller range of battery charge capacity so the battery packs last a lot longer, but the fuel economy now sucks and the courts pretty much ruled tough luck for the consumers.

Or in All electric cars, the Karma and the Telsa both first have issues with how far they claim you will go vs how far you will actually go. Then if you look at the actual tech specs, you see that if you constantly use the maximum range your battery life goes way down and if it's too hot your battery lifespan is short etc, or if your car sits for more than 6 to 8 months without being plugged in, your battery pack may stop working etc.

 

[turbo54]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: fng23</div><div class="ubbcode-body">My wife and I found ourselves in need of a new "used" car awhile back and she said, "I had a geo metro in the early 90s that got fifty miles per gallon, so I want something that gets 50mpg". It seemed like a reasonable request. Unfortunately the only real options were an older diesel jetta, civic hybrid (so I thought), and prius.
Ern </div></div>

Being there were cars in the 80s and 90s that got 50mpg, getting a new or at least new-ish car that gets 50mpg doesn't seem unreasonable...until you consider:

1. Customers demand crash safety - which means weight
2. Customers demand luxuries like power windows, locks, mirrors, seats, cruise control etc etc etc - which means extra weight
3. Custoemrs demand larger cars that actually fit stuff - which means extra weight
4. Customers demand lots of horsepower and torque, which requires big engines, or expensive power-adders
5. Government demands less emissions, which requires extra equipment and calibration tradeoffs
6. Customers demand low prices

More weight means less fuel economy.

Oftentimes, emissions equipment and calibrations that foster lower emissions requires tradeoffs in economy

The OEM's could produce vehicles that got 50mpg, but few people would buy them because they would be crappy little cars with no creature comforts, with little crappy engines that didn't make any power. Think "Smart car".

 

[turbo54]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Eric Bryant</div><div class="ubbcode-body">[

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The current biggest problem with all the hybrid and electric cars is the weight of the batteries totally kills the potential, or if you go with small batteries it is rather range limited.</div></div>

Nope - the weight of the vehicle is not of significant concern when the vehicle has regenerative braking capabilities. Aerodynamics plays a much larger role in energy efficiency. Losses due to accelerating the mass of the vehicle are considered "recoverable", while losses due to friction and aerodynamic losses are "irrecoverable").

<span style="color: #FF0000"> At steady speed on flat ground, you're right - vehicle weight doesn't matter. But, those aren't the roads and traffic conditions we have here on planet earth. Thus, weight <span style="font-weight: bold">IS</span> a huge factor on fuel economy for cars.</span>

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The Hydrogen cars (such as the Honda Clarity) show a lot of promise just the whole where to fill them up thing.</div></div>

There are larger problems to hydrogen vehicles than just fueling infrastructure:

1) Hydrogen fuel cells are f'in' expensive! I'm about a year out of date, but last I heard, the estimated pricing for a production 60kW fuel cell is still somewhere well north of $100k. That's not for the whole car - just the fuel cell. Yikes.

2) You still need an intermediate energy storage device (batteries or ultracapacitors), an "inverter" (motor control unit), and an electric motor capable of providing 100% of the vehicle propulsion power. These components are also very expensive.

3) Fuel cells do not like cold weather.

4) Fuel cells have not yet been proven to have an acceptable life (10+ years).

They are pretty damn amazing devices, though. At my previous employer, I got to work on a brushless DC motor for a fuel cell water pump (no crankshaft means that even simple tasks can get complicated). Frankly, I don't expect much to happen with this technology for the next decade or longer; even the federal government has decided not to throw significant money at fuel cells in the near term. </div></div>

Fuel cells are a neat technology, but are NOT a legitimate methodology for powering our cars. Hydrogen is the most reactive element in the universe. Free (as in molecularly free) Hydrogen is simply not "available" to just grab and use. You've got to extract it from whatever bond(s) it's already made, which is energy intensive. You're not going to get find any appreciable amount of Hydrogen hanging around your hot water heater.

 

[turbo54]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: W54/XM-388</div><div class="ubbcode-body">As it is now, Hydrocarbons are the cheapest easily available energy storage mediums with the best efficiency rate per size / volume. Even the best battries rate way lower. Then it comes next to speed of refil, yes you can do super fast chargers for your batteries (Super fast being like 15 to 20 minutes, vs 5 to fill up your gas tank), but if you use them often your batteries wear out a lot faster, in addition if you use the full range of your batteries charge capacity they also wear out faster.

A classic example of this is the Honda Civic Hybrid and the lawsuits about it. It was sold as getting great gas mileage and it did because it used a lot of electric assist, then after time went on, Honda realized that the battery packs would wear out a bit too fast and may have to be replaced under warranty, so they changed the software on the cars when people went to the dealerships and now it uses a much smaller range of battery charge capacity so the battery packs last a lot longer, but the fuel economy now sucks and the courts pretty much ruled tough luck for the consumers.

Or in All electric cars, the Karma and the Telsa both first have issues with how far they claim you will go vs how far you will actually go. Then if you look at the actual tech specs, you see that if you constantly use the maximum range your battery life goes way down and if it's too hot your battery lifespan is short etc, or if your car sits for more than 6 to 8 months without being plugged in, your battery pack may stop working etc. </div></div>

Spoken for truth.

I guess I'm a bad guy...certainly politically incorrect, because I don't believe there is any shortage of hydrocarbon based energy. Let's use what we've got while we've got it.

An analogy:

If you and your family were on a desserted island with a 10 year food supply, would you tell your family you couldn't eat the food, because you would someday run out?

Sure - keep looking for new food. Use it for what you can when you can, but don't STOP using the proven food supply you've got!

 

[The Mechanic]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

Gasoline and diesel are horribly inefficient compared to electricity but gas and diesel are significantly cheaper and pound for pound have significantly more stored energy. Until electricity prices come down significantly and technology of batteries gets to the point of storage capacity close to fuels it will always be a second choice. Take it from someone who has worked on them for YEARS now they suck to work on.

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

Ok, then - does anyone want to take a guess at how much fuel, on a percentage basis, goes towards moving the weight of a typical midsize car? Extra credit will be given for those who provide answers for both "city" and "highway" cycles. <span style="font-style: italic">Extra</span> extra credit for those who can relate this back to the driving patterns of a typical American driver.

 

[turbo54]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Eric Bryant</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Ok, then - does anyone want to take a guess at how much fuel, on a percentage basis, goes towards moving the weight of a typical midsize car? Extra credit will be given for those who provide answers for both "city" and "highway" cycles. <span style="font-style: italic">Extra</span> extra credit for those who can relate this back to the driving patterns of a typical American driver. </div></div>

This is a very vague question.

 

[misparkz]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

If you want a electric vehicle knock yourself out...just quit making the rest of us pay for part of it so it becomes affordable to you! What was it in the news about a month ago?...said the sticker price on the Volt was $49,000 less than actual cost to build. No wonder a pickup costs what it does.
Without subsidies most of the green movement would never fly. Not saying it never will but right now the technology isn't there.

 

[The Mechanic]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Eric Bryant</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Ok, then - does anyone want to take a guess at how much fuel, on a percentage basis, goes towards moving the weight of a typical midsize car? Extra credit will be given for those who provide answers for both "city" and "highway" cycles. <span style="font-style: italic">Extra</span> extra credit for those who can relate this back to the driving patterns of a typical American driver.</div></div>
It is between 15% and 25% on average depending on the motor. You dump about 70% just in heat loss from combustion through the radiator! Then some more with internal friction, friction from drivetrain, accessories losses, tires rolling resistance, wind resistance etc etc. Like I said before the internal combustion engine is VERY inefficient. But still is the best thing we have right now by a long shot. Diesels are better than gasoline in the efficiency dept though.

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: turbo54</div><div class="ubbcode-body">This is a very vague question. </div></div>

You're an automotive powertrain engineer - fill in the blanks with some good assumptions. How about taking a guess for, oh, a 3500lb mid-size sedan with a average-size four-cylinder engine (call it 2.5L) on the EPA "city" (FTP) and "highway" (HWFET) cycles? I prefer the US06 cycle myself since I feel that it is a more accurate representation of American driving, but it's not as familiar.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: The Mechanic</div><div class="ubbcode-body">It is between 15% and 25% on average depending on the motor.</div></div>

It's actually quite a bit less. For a typical midsize sedan (think of 4cyl Camry/Accord/Fusion/Malibu) on the EPA "city" cycle, about 10% of the total fuel consumed goes towards accelerating the vehicle mass. This drops to 3% during the EPA "highway" cycle. On the other hand, aerodynamic losses account for 5% of the losses on the "city" cycle and 14% on the "highway" cycle.

For a hybrid on the "city" cycle, you might see that 10% number increase to 11% due to the added mass of the hybrid components, but it's possible to recover more than half of that total energy in a regenerative braking system (also note that while the losses to accelerating mass are greater on a percentage basis, they are lower on an absolute basis since the hybrid is consuming less fuel over the total distance of the cycle). Overall, the extra weight of the battery is more than justified, despite the far-less-than-perfect efficiency of the regen cycle.

The point here is that aerodynamics matter <span style="font-style: italic">a lot</span> for typical American driving patterns, and that if one decides to "spend" a bit of weight on a battery pack in a hybrid, it's not a bad design decision.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">You dump about 70% just in heat loss from combustion through the radiator!</div></div>

Well, you're very close in the 70% number for heat loss in the engine, but "only" about half of that energy is lost through the cooling system - the other half exits the tailpipe. Thus the interest in exhaust-heat energy-recovery schemes (solid-state thermoelectrics, Rakine-cycle systems, etc.).

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">But still is the best thing we have right now by a long shot.</div></div>

Agreed! And getting better every day. There are some smart mofos in the transportation industry.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Diesels are better than gasoline in the efficiency dept though.</div></div>

In a trip across the state yesterday, I got just shy of 18 MPG in my Super Duty. Not bad for a 7800 lb truck with the frontal area of a barn (and that runs [email protected] in the quarter mile). Obviously, scaling that same powertrain into a midsize car produces even better results.

Unfortunately, modern high-performance diesel engines are very picky about their fuel choice, and thus will be at the mercy of the oil market. The latest turbocharged spark-ignition engines are almost as efficient, and can run on a greater variety of fuels (alcohol, butane, NG, propane, etc.).

 

[Greg Langelius *]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

Chicken Little was wrong. Still is. Yet a surprising percentage of consumers (and a like percentage of lawmakers) still haven't gotten that message.

Folks who campaign to save the planet are arrogant fools.

Their first mistake is in believing that humans are capable of either consciously or unconsciously saving or destroying it as a consequence of daily commerce.

Their second mistake is in believing that humans are capable of figuring out how make any meaningful impact either way. Even if we were all trying to destroy it, we couldn't be doing much more harm. Even of we were all trying to save it, we couldn't be doing much less.

Their third mistake is in thinking that humans, for some reason, are ouside the natural stream of the planet's ecological makeup. We, as a species, have just as much right to favor our own prosperity, and just as much chance of failing at that as any other species; and deliberately shooting ourselves in the foot on the first Tuesday of every fourth November isn't helping that process. If democracy is such a wonderful boon to mankind, how come we've managed to get ourselves into our present state? More importantly, how did we ever manage to persuade ourselves that only politicians hold the real keys to our salvation?

Allowing ourselves to be persuaded or coerced into defeating our own best strategy for prosperity is little less than a neurotic distraction, and possibly as much as a symptom of species wide suicidal psychosis. Overcrowding of any species, even lab rats like ourselves, can lead to self destructive behaviors, nay?

In time of war, traitors get executed. In time of peace, tolerance is (at best) a semi-affordable luxury.

Time to decide whether we are at war or peace.

Right now, the species is under huge stress, pretty much of its own making. Neither the land, the sea, the air, nor any other species has put us in our current position. Remember, an economy is a uniquely human artifact. We made it, we should be controlling it. Allowing it to control us is a lot like allowing the world savers to steer the ship, and there's a lot of that kind of conceptual overlap running free up there on the bridge these days. Between you and me, I'm not at all certain whether they are smart enough to steer clear of the rocks on general principle, or whether they are too caught up enjoying the thrill of seeing how close they can get without wrecking us all.

I think it's time to take them sillybuggers by the scruff, and escort them all off the bridge. A little restlessness in the ranks is always expected, and never completely bad except when it's completely absent.

Greg

 

[turbo54]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

^^Well put, Greg.

I'd like to follow that up with a quote from Jurassic Park, that the late Charlton Heston made famous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozO4YB98mCY

For those that prefer to read:

"You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There’s been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that’s happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn’t have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We’ve been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we’re gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us."

 

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

Plant that got $150M in taxpayer money to make Volt batteries furloughs workers

President Obama touted it in 2010 as evidence "manufacturing jobs are coming back to the United States,” but two years later, a Michigan hybrid battery plant built with $150 million in taxpayer funds is putting workers on furlough before a single battery has been produced....

...“Considering the lack of demand for electric vehicles, despite billions of dollars from the Obama administration that were supposed to stimulate it, it’s not surprising what has happened with LG Chem. Just because a ton of money is poured into a product does not mean that people will buy it,” Paul Chesser, an associate fellow with the National Legal and Policy Center, told FoxNews.com....

...“Electric car batteries do not perform much better than they did 100 years ago," he said. "Research has not conquered the battery storage issue, and therefore the electric transportation ‘stimulus’ did not boost the ‘technology of the future,’ but instead a century-old technology as far as performance and capability goes.”...

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Fred_C_Dobbs</div><div class="ubbcode-body">...“Electric car batteries do not perform much better than they did 100 years ago," he said. "Research has not conquered the battery storage issue, and therefore the electric transportation ‘stimulus’ did not boost the ‘technology of the future,’ but instead a century-old technology as far as performance and capability goes.”... </div></div>

Boy, this Paul Chesser guy is a real hack.

While the "Edison" nickel-iron alkaline battery was (and still is) a marvel of engineering, it pales in comparison to a modern lithium-ion battery in the standard metrics. The older technology provides only one-fifth the specific energy (energy per unit mass) and one-third the specific power (power per unit mass). I don't care who did what with taxpayer's money (and trust me, I'm furious at what occurred), that's a pretty obvious difference.

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Greg Langelius *</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Folks who campaign to save the planet are arrogant fools.</div></div>

Maybe the planet will survive our inflicted abuse with no apparent long-term side effects, but understand that the actions of others can infringe upon my property rights, and that's a big no-go in my book. While the effects of certain types of pollution are certainly open for debate, there's little doubt in my mind that one can engage in stupidity and royally fuck-up the water and soil quality on my land. Do something dumb that affects my well water, and there's no need to concern yourself with how Mother Earth responds over the coming centuries - you'll have much worse problems to contend with in the short term.

I'm not exactly a tree-hugger, as the coal-black stain on the rear fender and bumper of my diesel truck will attest. But I also recognize that I'm not the sole inhabitant of this planet, and even if we ignore every single other species on this big rock, we do not have the right to mess things up for our fellow human beings.

 

[znztivguy]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

WoW...something is effected whatever we use.
If you are talking cheap for USA then Natural gas is the way to go. We have humungous reserves of the stuff!

 

[powasky]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Eric Bryant</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Greg Langelius *</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Folks who campaign to save the planet are arrogant fools.</div></div>

Maybe the planet will survive our inflicted abuse with no apparent long-term side effects, but understand that the actions of others can infringe upon my property rights, and that's a big no-go in my book. While the effects of certain types of pollution are certainly open for debate, there's little doubt in my mind that one can engage in stupidity and royally fuck-up the water and soil quality on my land. Do something dumb that affects my well water, and there's no need to concern yourself with how Mother Earth responds over the coming centuries - you'll have much worse problems to contend with in the short term.

I'm not exactly a tree-hugger, as the coal-black stain on the rear fender and bumper of my diesel truck will attest. But I also recognize that I'm not the sole inhabitant of this planet, and even if we ignore every single other species on this big rock, we do not have the right to mess things up for our fellow human beings. </div></div>

QFMFT.

I'm not a green party freak either, but I do think that everyone should take a few small steps to reduce our impact on the world for our sake and the future population's sake.

Wasting food is a big thing for me. Americans waste near half of their foodstuffs, and its not just the waste of food but everything else that goes with it...like transportation of the food, and all of the land and resources that are used to cultivate and produce the food that could potentially be used for something else.

 

[Greg Langelius *]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

QFMFT; I had to look that one up. Please refrain from further veiled profanity here at SH, it is not appreciated by all but a few.

I appreciate and respect opposing viewpoints.

I just don't appreciate being one of the millions of American taxpayers who are compelled by prostituting the tax code to fork over upward of $49,000 per electric car so some treehuggers can indulge their ecocentric fantasies. If they had to pay the full ticket, they'd pretty much all of them be driving something else. Next time you want to do something unsustainable, do it on <span style="font-style: italic"><span style="font-weight: bold">your</span></span> dime, and not on all of ours.

I hate waste like the next guy. Moms used to slap their kids' hands for stuff like that, before the government forbade them. I buy completely into ecologically sound strategies that achieve their goals by enhancing efficiency and productivity. I do not buy into pseudoecological strategies which detract from efficiency and productivity to benefit solely philosophical and/or political purposes.

There's a buncha folks who make a shameless buck off the government (i.e. off all the rest of us) by forcing government mandates on behalf of 'the public good'. They disgust me, and they should be disgusting all of us. My Old Man taught me that if I wanted to know where the truth lies, I should follow the money. There's a lot 'green' getting buried in all that currently popular shade of Green.

Just like gun control, it doesn't really deliver the intended results as well as expected, guess the answer is we just gotta really do a whole lot more of it. Yep, that's it....; and our government is hell bent to make that happen. Just watch and see, better times are right around that corner.

Like I said elsewhere recently, our troubles are all of our own making; and shooting ourselves in the foot on the first Tuesday of every fourth November isn't helping.

Money/productivity's hard enough to find, nobody excepted; without letting a buncha cockeyed ecofreaks throw it away by the bushelfulls on an hourly basis. I can't begin to estimate how many cents of every tax dollar is actually being expended on something productive, but I'm pretty well convinced it's getting smaller and smaller each year. I have a few ideas why that's so, but I won't be airing them, here, it's too depressing to inflict on the rest of us.

I will say that if someone(s) wanted to bury the USA, they couldn't find a much better/faster/effective approach than the ones we've already laid out (completely?) on our own. That's worth a pause and a thought or two all in itself.

Greg

 

[Sean the Nailer]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

Yes Greg, it be the latest craze. Another close competitor though, is the "pink" stuff. Buy this pink item, for support. (pun intended) or that pink item, to help cure.

When in fact so very little of the payment for the item goes to the 'pink people' and even then, so very little of the 'pink people's money' gets used for actual research.

The idea/intent/philosophy sounds and looks wonderful. Whereas the actuality of the system is a gong-show at best, and darn near ponzi-scheme at worst.

But the consumers, they throw money at them, because it's the "right thing to do" eh? It appeases their guilt, and the greedy bastards at the other end, they just keep slurping in the money.

I feel sorry for the women though, because they are the ones to which are being exploited. And that brings us full circle to the green "exploitation", writ-large. Except in this case, you don't even volunteer to "pay", it is done for you. All of you.

 

[turbo54]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Greg Langelius *</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
....I just don't appreciate being one of the millions of American taxpayers who are compelled by prostituting the tax code to fork over upward of $49,000 per electric car so some treehuggers can indulge their ecocentric fantasies....</div></div>

Greg, as far as I can tell, a Volt sold to an individual costs the taxpayer $60k+, and one sold to the government costs us $100k+.

My logic: Taxpayers are funding $50k on each Volt to cover GM's losses. On top of the $50k, the taxpayers front another $7k-10k on tax credits per vehicle when they're sold to individuals. The "+" is for the taxpayer money that went to bail out GM, and them not paying it back, and no interest even if they do.

Now that no one will even buy the stupid thing, the gubmint has agreed to buy them all. So that's $50k from the taxpayers to pay GM to build it, and then another $50k from the taxpayers to the gubmint, so they have the money to buy it from GM.

What a boondoggle.

 

[Jedi]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: turbo54</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Greg Langelius *</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
....I just don't appreciate being one of the millions of American taxpayers who are compelled by prostituting the tax code to fork over upward of $49,000 per electric car so some treehuggers can indulge their ecocentric fantasies....</div></div>

Greg, as far as I can tell, a Volt sold to an individual costs the taxpayer $60k+, and one sold to the government costs us $100k+.

My logic: Taxpayers are funding $50k on each Volt to cover GM's losses. On top of the $50k, the taxpayers front another $7k-10k on tax credits per vehicle when they're sold to individuals. The "+" is for the taxpayer money that went to bail out GM, and them not paying it back, and no interest even if they do.

Now that no one will even buy the stupid thing, the gubmint has agreed to buy them all. So that's $50k from the taxpayers to pay GM to build it, and then another $50k from the taxpayers to the gubmint, so they have the money to buy it from GM.

What a boondoggle. </div></div>

The Volt tax thing makes me see red
Let GM fall on there ass maybe then they will build cars that have a market and turn a profit

 

[TNT]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

I can say I like this electric vehicle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nFkPfh9Cqc&feature=related

I just think it's flat out cool, and direct drive is a neat technology with great performance possibilities.

As for the environment, no I don't think any of them today are better for the environment. Until we find a way to not have China dump acid waste into rivers and leave nasty sludge deposits in mines in order to create these marvelous batteries and electrical components that the electric vehicles use more of than their ICE counterparts, then I think having a little more CO2 is still preferable.

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

In the "glass half-full" category, at least the Chinese won't be getting a majority ownership stake in A123:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/martinlamonica/2012/10/16/a123-bankruptcy-is-a-complete-sell-off-next/

 

[Fred_C_Dobbs]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

Something I don't recall being alluded to before in this thread, you can't keep that much energy bottled up without creating potentially lethal electrical potential:

More Than A Dozen Fisker Karma Hybrids Caught Fire And Exploded In New Jersey Port After Sandy

"Approximately 16 of the $100,000+ Fisker Karma extended-range luxury hybrids were parked in Port Newark, New Jersey last night when water from Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge apparently breached the port and submerged the vehicles. As Jalopnik has exclusively learned, the cars then caught fire and burned to the ground.

Our source tells us they were “first submerged in a storm surge and then caught fire, exploded.” This wouldn’t be the first time the vehicles, which use a small gasoline engine to charge batteries that provide energy to two electric motors, had an issue with sudden combustion...."


Formula 1 cars now have a hybrid electrical 'booster' motor, which means they also are carrying high potential batteries. And on occasion a car will pit with a known problem with the booster system and the driver comically will jump from the car rather that stepping from it so they don't ground the car and have all the juice from those supercapacitors discharging through their junk.

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Fred_C_Dobbs</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Something I don't recall being alluded to before in this thread, you can't keep that much energy bottled up without creating potentially lethal electrical potential</div></div>

I certainly am glad that none of my current vehicles "keep so much energy bottled up" that they pose a potential fire hazard. Oh, wait a minute...

 

[E. Bryant]

Re: Are electric vehicles better than gas vehicles?

As a note to any aspiring journalists out there - if you're going to lie about a car, make sure that it isn't capable of telling its own side of the story:

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive

I'm still not a huge fan of Tesla, but I'm also not a huge fan of people who let preconceived biases get in the way of objective data.

And as a side note, it looks like my previous enthusiasm about the post-bankruptcy ownership of A123 was premature