Electric cars are not practical. No, really.

A buddy just bought a ZAP XEBRA, a little 3-wheeled sedan which seats 4 and registers as a motorcycle, for $10K:



http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=188

He ran out of amps the other night, so he stopped by my house, we plugged him in for 45 minutes, and he set off again for home. I got this email this morning:

"We did just fine - got home no problem. Thanks again!

Did my first commute this morning. Went beautifully."

He is using it on an 18-mile commute across L.A. Because the car is limited to ±25 miles range, he plugs it in again at work (his job still has electric vehicle charging stations) and it's ready to go at the end of the day. 7K miles/year at 4¢/mile, using an exotic battery technology called "lead/acid" which has been around for about 150 years. He still has his Honda for longer trips.

I know these are not practical, I just keep forgetting why.

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php

I'll bet the battery replacement is a major project and major cost, though.

It will be interesting to see what happens when they go into production. They're building a plant in my town.

200 miles won't do that family vacation or get you to Grandma's house a couple of states away, but renting a gas powered car for that stuff wouldn't be that big a deal.

I look forward to the day when parking meters have electrical outlets in their bases.

My other car is an electric moped, same range as the Zap. I use it for short errands instead of my Korean econobox. It's worked out very well for me.

Check the "buy" tab on the link below:

http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php

But market forces will drive the prices down in the next couple of years.

jljkl

Just wow. I'm far from poor but that is out of my budget. I wish it wasn't. The rumored price of the one I linked to is mid 20s. Get even 50% above that and I'd still do it. $100K? Would love to, but that's not realistic. Here's hoping success eventually brings the price down on these (or subsidies and R and D granst do)

Remember what those first Betamax systems cost? Remember what LCD computer screens cost when they came out? Remember what COMPUTERS used to cost?

My first computer was a refurbished job and it was still a grand.

Remember those $500 microwave ovens in the 1950s? That's when a loaf of bread was seventeen cents.

I fully expect the price to come down when they're up and running. It will be a rich man's status symbol for a few years, then an option for wealthy professionals, and then we'll get it.

and hey I probably qualify as a wealthy professional so how about I sell you mine when I replace it? :-) Just joshing of course. My car has about three years to go before I trade it in. Hopefully something like this will be in reach by then. I don't really need the Ferrari-like styling and would probably go for something with more cabin practicality given the choice, but surely would not refuse one of these as they are if they get about half the price or less.

And our first computer, a TRS-80, including the table and a printer (or maybe both printers we had), was $3,500.00. I've learned to wait a while for a new technology. The price always comes down.

I always wondered where I'd recharge if not at home if I got an electric car. Hotels in locations where a lot of people drive to need to make recharging stations available, too.

a second to pay for the recharging? If you are parking w/o recharging, it's $.25 for 30 min., and if recharging it's another $.25?

There would have to be a way to pay for the charging, as well as the parking.

(No pun intended.)

It would be a great incentive for people to drive electric cars. The guy driving the non-electric car would be paying the same parking rate as the electric car guy, but the electric car guy would be getting his car "fueled" as part of that bargain.

Even if the recharge rate was limited to 1200 watts (every electric car should have should have a slow "plug in" charger, right?) the cost of the electricity still wouldn't be a large fraction of big city parking rates.

The 25 mile range for a start. Exactly how many places of employment have electric car plug-ins? Maybe it's because I'm not in CA but I've never seen one that has.

Make that 75-100 miles and I'm there.

I'm waiting for this one to come out though. More practical for my needs and fun too.

www.flytheroad.com

I guess, I'd only have to plug it in every 2 or 3 days.

going to meetings, etc. I'd like something with a range of at least 100-200 miles.

when it comes out. In the meantime, I'll probably get a SMART car next year when the lease on my Lexus is up. If not that, then a MINI. By the time I'm ready for my next car after that, I think the Volt will be in production.

I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car?" last week, and it got me seriously angry -- almost made me cry.

There are a few reasons why lead/acid batteries are obsolete. One is the fact that to make a lead/acid battery, you have to mine a whole pantload of highly toxic lead. The second is that you have to figure out how to dispose of that lead in an environmentally sound manner once the battery has reached the end of it's useful life.

Also, there's the acid problem - the acid in question is sulfuric acid, which isn't pleasant stuff. How does the manufacturer recommend that the acid be contained in the case of a leak - say, one that would occur after a collision? I used to work in a datacenter with a lead-acid battery backup, and I needed to have hazmat training just to be allowed to enter the room where the batteries were stored. Do you know if your friend had to be hazmat trained to buy his car?

My other question here is - what would your friend have done if you weren't home and he ran out of battery power? where would he have plugged in otherwise? Or, would he have required a tow truck?

The car you drive has an obsolete lead-acid battery, along with every car on the road. They are packed in an extremely durable shell and seldom leak. When they do, it's not a catastrophe. Far safer than 15 gallons of highly-flammable gasoline spilling out on the road.

Re: the recharge, he would have been stuck. Probably a tow truck. It does take a shift in thinking and planning.

The car I drive has a single, relatively small obsolete lead-acid battery. This car would have to have MANY such units. With every additional battery cell, the risk of a leak goes up.

And as to whether car batteries "seldom" leak - BS. They leak all the time, especially after frontal and side-impact collisions. The reason it's not a catastrophe is because the battery in most vehicles is relatively small. They also spontaneously leak due to manufacturing defects (something I've personally witnessed on more than one occasion), which is why I need hazmat training to enter a room with a bunch of them. And, those are batteries that aren't exposed to the vibrational stress that a battery in a car would be.

And, what is the environmental impact of manufacturing those batteries? This is something that drives me NUTS about battery-powered cars - the people who drive them REFUSE to take into account the environmental impact of manufacturing batteries. Oh, and where is the electricity coming from? If he's here in the US, probably a coal-fired plant.

Bottom line is that electric trikes like what your friend has are a crappy, unsafe half-measure. The real measure is livable cities with usable public transit. Spending money on development of electric vehicles isn't going to work long term.

it is cleaner than auto exhaust, and if it is from NG it is far cleaner.

I'm not sold on the dangers of H2SO4 leaks. I've spilled battery acid all over my clothes before; it ate right through my jeans but other than that I wiped it off and it was gone. In the ZAP there is about 30 lbs of acid. If more than 5 lbs of that ever saw pavement in a collision, you're dead anyway.

IMO most electric car advocates are well-aware of the environmental impacts of manufacturing batteries, but how do they stack up against the enivornmental impact of refining gasoline? Of transporting it?

In my friend's case there is no public transportation available for his route. Nothing wrong with public transportation, but like electric cars, it's not suitable for everyone.

If you live in Vermont, all of your electricity is produced by a combination of nuclear and renewables.

Here, where I live, in New Jersey, we're more than 50% nuclear. When I have a choice, I use electricity here.

California produces 33% of its power from renewables (chiefly hydro, but also a decent bit of wind and geothermal) and 16% from nuclear.

I can't imagine that any electric car running in these areas is comparable to one being run on dangerous fossil fuels.

It is very, very, very, very unlikely that the risks associated with battery use, even lead/acid batteries, are comparable to the risks from breathing dangerous fossil fuel wastes.

I applaud WTMusic's work and effort.

Public transport could never reach the level of penetration needed to seriously take over for privately owned vehicles. Have you seen how large this country is? Just look at the rural areas where people have to commute ten, twenty, thirty miles over rural routes. You think operating a bus is going to be practical out here?

Thanks to your post. Sadly I suspect they won't work for me, but getting closer! The 4 person capacity is a bit of a stretch to start with as the weight limit is 303lbs. I suppose their target market is the lean vegan crowd but even then two of those people will have to be infants to get even scrawny 4-person families in, without groceries etc at that. I go 280 on my own so need a bit more than that.

Give me something like that with say a minimum 50 mile range and minimum 600lb capacity and you might have a convert though! I'm not exactly Mr. Environment (and electricity production is not exactly blameless there either) but some of the elctric/hybrid car technology is getting close to swaying me. The difference in the likes of teh hybrid Camry or even Prius aren't dramatic enough to sell me on the technology, but a workable commuter shiopper all electric car might be if it had the payload and range (and unlike the tesla was vaguely affordable!) Getting darn close though. There is hope.

and it all comes down, believe it or not, to crash testing.

To register as an automobile federal regulations require rigorous crash testing: frontal, side, and rear, at various speeds. That means you have to waste up to 100 cars, and the cost typically runs into the tens of millions. Most startups don't have anywhere near that kind of money, and big automakers are very aware of that. Are they exploiting that leap to keep EVs out of circulation, maximizing profits on existing technology and parts/repair? I don't know. I do see a huge incentive and very little risk (at least under the Bush administration), and a huge incentive for the petroleum industry to play an active part as well.

its got an spherical shaped 2 passenger compartment up front and several different configurations of back end. Anyone know the brand or have a link?

Ignore the slick artist's presentation on the home page and click on the demo/prototype pics

www.flytheroad.com

and others in shopping malls and such. Never see them here in MD though...

We've seen a few around town here, but I don't know what they are specifically. Unless people have imported Smart Cars from elsewhere. The site says they'll be available in the US in the 1st quarter of '08.
http://www.smartusa.com/

Since we're 6'+ people in my family this looks better for us. Headroom is always an issue when looking at cars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corbin_Sparrow

Info on various EVs
http://www.evfinder.com/index.htm

They're better than having a dino-powered car, but not that much better. The real solution is to not have one in the first place. One day when you tell people your friend drove a car *36* miles every day, people will finally gasp in horror.

Lead acid? Don't we already have enough acid rain?

Lead Acid batteries have LOTS of problems (see my message above), but acid rain isn't one of them.

1) You can't yet transport a family of seven over snow covered roads on a 600 mile trip, therefore EV's are entirely unsuitable for anyone, anytime.
2) Every time you charge the battery, black clouds of smoke will billow from the nearest coal power plant.
3) Every time you charge the battery, lights will dim in the surrounding area.
4) Batteries are highly dangerous. In the event of a crash, lightning will strike everyone dead in the area.

;)

No, he would have demanded "snow-covered roads with air conditioning on"

:hi:

Seating: Up to 4 (303 lbs.)

In America? :rofl:

Cute car, though. Perfect for getting to the grocery, library and some medical visits.

My buddy does use it for him and two kids though. I drove it and there was plenty of space (I'm 6'3"). The back seat legroom is similar to that of an old VW bug. Not much.

I can see driving this as a "neighborhood" car. Ideal for someone retired living close to most services. That's my situation. Even if a person had a large place, they could use it to zip around their acreage.

I love my car but this one could fit a niche. We just couldn't get our two "niches" into it!

Primarily because while they pack a lot of energy, they're also incredibly heavy, which reduces the vehicle's range. If you're trying to drive a regular sized car on them, you need something like 20 pounds of battery for every mile travelled on a single charge. Lithium Ion batteries, on the other hand, are much lighter and can pack more energy into less mass, providing far greater range.

which makes them impractical for everyone but an elite few.

The only other viable alternative is NiMH, which is really not viable at all due to patent restrictions.

So lead acid turns out to be the most practical for an electric car--at least right now.

The current main uses of Li Ion cells are things like mobile phones, laptop computers, and handheld devices. There's never been a demand to produce them in the kind of large quantities you'd want for mass vehicle production. But once the demand is there, I suspect you'll see a significant drop. Not to mention, it's not as expensive as you make it out to be: the different would only be a few thousand dollars extra. If you can't afford another few thousand dollars to triple the range of your electric car, you probably can't afford an full size elecric car to begin with.

Valence Saphion Li-Ion large format battery (currently the only brand which won't explode in a ball of flame if punctured):

$600 for 46 Ah or $13/Ah

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:GfKpOgZvigUJ:www.calcars.org/PriusPlusComponents040826.pdf+valence+u-charge+price&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Trojan J-150 deep cycle lead acid battery:

$287 for 150 Ah or $1.90/Ah

http://ebatteriestogo.com/merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=EBTG&Product_Code=CBJ150

Almost 7x as expensive.

There is all kinds of demand. But large-format Li-Ions are sensitive to overcharging, need an expensive battery managment system, and until recently were dangerous as hell. Not practical.

If you're talking safety, what's worse - a punctured battery pack or a punctured tank full of highly flammable gasoline?

... we should find a video of someone shooting a 5.56mm bullet
through a tank full of petrol (gasoline) to see if it is *really*
a safer option ... such an everyday occurence for cars don't you know?

:eyes:

I mean, it's not as if Valence had any point to prove with their
promotional video is it?
:shrug:

It's worthwhile to note that whatever the chemistry: when you store a lot of energy in a small space, you tend to end up with a lot of energy stored in a small space :)

AND various ways that energy can be released in an uncontrolled manner

Lead Acid is not the way to go.

However, the next generation of Li-Ion based electric cars will get hundreds of miles on a charge and go freeway speeds.

In fact, if ZAP's new car delivers as promised, it will be a very practical car. 300+ miles and it only takes 10 minutes to charge. Plus it looks pretty darn cool

http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=4560

The ultimate is 'livable cities with usable public transit'. Anything less is a waste of time.

Never mind that we have invested the last 50 years of the cheap oil blow out in building suburbia, and that it will take nearly as long to build said 'livable' cities, along with tremendous amount of money, once the politicians decide to change the laws that promote the current paradigm. As someone who designs and builds infrastructure, I just need to believe.

And lets ignore the fact that mass transit has just slightly less energy intensity (BTU/passenger mile), and in some modes more, than the current fleet of ICE powered vehicles. Whereas a personal vehicle EV fleet would have a fraction of the energy intensity of the best mass transit of today.

Yes, a small, light, highly energy efficient EV personal vehicle is an unneeded personal mobility bridge from the suburban sprawl of today to the compact, localized communities of a few generations from now. After all, we have at least a few generations more of marginally affordable liquid fuels.

Oh, wait . . .

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

The latest statistical work by Dallas geologist Jeffrey Brown over at The Oil Drum.com, suggests that something else is happening, something that was not anticipated: an imminent oil export crisis. This Export Land Theory states that exporting nations will have far less oil available for export than was previously assumed under older models. (Story here.) The theory states that export rates will drop by a far greater percentage than net production decline rates in any given exporting country. For example, The UK's portion of the North Sea oil fields may be showing a nine percent annual decline for the past couple of years. But it's export capacity has declined 60 percent. Something similar is in store for Saudi Arabia, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela -- in short, the whole cast of characters in the export world. They are all producing less and they are all using more of their own oil, and have less to send elsewhere.

Brown's math suggests that world oil exports will drop by 50 percent within the next five years, certainly enough to trigger a systemic breakdown in market allocation, meaning serious supply shortages among the importing nations. That's us. We import two-thirds of all the oil we use.

The implication in all this is that the activities that have become "normal" for us during the post World War Two era will very shortly become untenable. An economy based on suburban expansion and incessant motoring is on the top of the list of supposedly "normal" activities that will not be able to continue. I would maintain that even if we had 20 years, no combination of bio-fuels and other alternatives would enable us to keep suburbia running. But this latest work indicates that we have much less time to adjust.


Boy howdy, sure glad we don't import much go-juice.



Someday. Maybe.

The man's a kook, who's proven himself wrong over, and over, and over.

And public transportation could never replace personal vehicles in America, no matter how much anyone wanted it to. Are you going to run a rail line to every cluster of houses in the middle of nowhere? Is a bus going to cover every mile of some backwoods road for the sake of the two people who live there?

My recommendation is, don't read him.

And where did I imply that public transportation would replace personal vehicles? Guess the sarcasm was not clear.

I thought I saw the same old mass-transit argument being reiterated, and just twitch-replied. You're correct, of course. My bad.

Ten minute charge time? http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/

http://imgred.com/

You could use that car to supplement your driving for short trips, but it is not going to replace a gasoline powered car.

a couple of years ago, made in India
Reva
http://www.iloveindia.com/cars/reva/index.html


Also Bleecker Electric Car Company seems to market electric vehicles built by various manufacturers

www.ElectricCarCo.net

The GM EV-1, created to deal with the California mandate for emission free vehicles, had a range of 60 miles. The creator of the battery they used claimed he informed GM at the time they were working on the EV-1 that he had a battery with a range of 100 miles.
If you haven't seen it, watch "Who Killed the Electric Car"

with Stan Ovshinky's NiMH batteries. I think that's when they decided that EVs were too practical.

Yeah, They were way too practical... until you had to replace the batteries.
The original EV battery pack retailed for around 6000 dollars, and had a shipping weight of 350 lbs.

The EV1 battery pack weighed 1046 lbs:

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:cshJxHBV1bYJ:avt.inl.gov/pdf/fsev/eva/ev1_eva.pdf+ev1+battery+weight&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

The battery pack cost $5000 and had to be replaced every 5-10 years:

http://www.speedreadingcourse.com/hopeforhumanity/02_theev2.htm

The yearly running cost (fuel not included) of a mid-sized internal combustion car is about $1500, or $7500 every 5 years:

http://www.mynrma.com.au/cps/rde/xchg/mynrma/hs.xsl/operating_costs.htm

The EV1 was a wonderful experiment in planned obsolescence.

So much misinformation, so little time :eyes:

The state of California also determined a substantial reduction of co2 with use of electric vehicles.

As you know only 1400 were made, mostly by hand

I know the battery pack I ordered for a customer was lead acid, not mickle metal hydride. And it sure didn't weigh 1000+ lbs. The Tech would not have been able to get it in the car if it did.

And yes I've been a GM parts man for 20+ years.

Just did a bit of digging, GM still has 13 of the electric motors in Livonia Michigan PDC

I also saw and sat in a Zenn. It's kind of an electric Smart Car - very cute, very much a niche product given its two seats, and not yet licensed in its province of manufacture.

The CEO, Ian Clifford, is very enthusiastic about EEStor's supercapacitor, to the extent that he's put $2.5 million into the company. If EEStor can pull it off, this supercap could be a transformative product.

Oddly enough, I'm extremely unhappy about that prospect. IMO the last thing this poor old planet needs is humanity beavering on in its destructive ways with some magical new energy source. Much better we should just run out of oil, shed some population and start civilization over again with a shot at some truly sustainable values. At least that way the remaining life in the biosphere would stand a chance. EEStor may just give us the time and energy we need to finish the planetary rape we started a couple of millenia ago.

is a supercap/battery hybrid, with the caps providing acceleration and power in much the same way an internal combustion engine does for gas/electric hybrids. Though caps have it all over batteries with recharging and general predictability, what they don't have (yet) is energy density.

I like the Zenn too, it's one of the few NEVs that actually looks good. :) I'm hoping they can sell enough of them to make a car that can be licensed to go over 35mph in the US.

Pricey now (of course), but with much faster charge times and "good for tens of thousands of charge cycles equivalent to 500,000 miles of vehicle travel".

http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1258

The best energy storage technology in the world isn't going to save us from anything. At least, not by itself. Because it's the energy sources we use that are killing us. And that we're having the hardest time replacing.

Of course batteries and caps don't produce energy. But used wisely, they can yield quite a bit in the way of energy conservation, as well as greatly reduced greenhouse gases. The energy efficiency of electric vehicles doesn't just nudge out that of internal combustion, it destroys it. Combine that with offering the grid something it has never had before, storage capacity (unless you want to count pumping water uphill) using vehicle-to-grid technology, and there are big gains to be had for both energy conservation and the fight against vehicular greenhouse gas.

Not saying car culture could, should, or can continue indefinitely, but given the best our 'leaders' can offer (35 mpg by 2020? woo-hoo!), it's a step that can be taken now that will yield positive results.

Although a CO2-free system of EEStor supercaps recharged from nuclear generated electricity would sure get up the greenies' noses, nicht wahr?

The main point is that any new development that lets us just keep doing what we're doing has zero chance of making things better, no matter how little CO2 it generates.

suppose genuinely usable batteries, are on the way.

... --> the whole world tells the Middle East to pound sand.

secure people, would be a lot more cooperative, on environmental matters.