Low Emission Cars Continue to Gain Popularity 744
Rio writes "A company may soon offer American motorists a new option to save on high gas prices -- vehicles powered by lithium batteries. From the article: 'Just plug in these cars for about five hours or so and you'll get about 300 miles on a single charge.' The vehicles cost about $35,000 or about double what buyers would pay for a gas-powered model." Relatedly acidrain writes to tell us The BBC is reporting that a prototype of the new "Clever car" (Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport) is starting to make the rounds on European test tracks. The car is one meter wide and less polluting than normal vehicles. It has a top speed of 100 km/h (60mph) and uses a novel tilting chassis to make it safe and maneuverable.
BMW C-1 (Score:5, Informative)
Those are cute... maybe too cute. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:60mph (Score:5, Informative)
So to answer your question, haul away, but be prepared to sacrifice range for pulling capacity.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:60mph (Score:4, Informative)
TFA is actually two TFAs merged into one. The 100mph electric car is vapourware, while the 60mph CLEVER car is a prototype that runs on gas (real gas, not gasoline).
The CLEVER looks like fun but is not really a car, more a 3 wheel motorcycle with a suspension which leans into corners. It might appeal to commuters who would be nervous about a real bike or who want a bit more dry storage than a traditional scooter or motorcycle would allow. Sort of like a motorbike for Volvo drivers...
Top Speed (Score:3, Informative)
Clever Car = Carver (Score:4, Informative)
Drivetrain asside, the vehicle is effectively a clone the dutch-designed Carver http://www.carver-europe.com/ [carver-europe.com].
So, why am I accusing that BBC journalist of being lazy? Well, the Carver has appeared on the BBC excellent flagship car show Top Gear http://www.bbc.co.uk/topgear/prog19/carver.shtml>
Re:and... (Score:5, Informative)
Known to collapse during the day, when the ACs are cranked. If the electric cars start causing the power companies problems they just move their off-peak rate breaks to the morning, and the owners just install a timer (actually with cars like this the timer is usually built into the charging station) Then they can recharge using all that extra baseload capacity that ends up going to waste because we can't just shut down coal and nuke plants when we aren't using them, unlike combined cycle spinning reserve.
> How about the transmission line waste?
Yep that's waste, for sure.
> What if I let my car sit for a week or two?
Lithium batteries are famous for not self-discharging very fast. It's NiMH that do that, and even then it takes more than a week or two to lose very large amounts of power.
> Aren't these the batteries that tend to explode if you look at them funny?
Li-Poly are touchy, however the new Li metal phosphate batteries are very stable, and considering their superior performance they will likely supplant Li-poly for this application very rapidly.
> Just what does battery production do to the environment? How about leaks and recycling?
Well, to answer the second question first, normal lead-acid car batteries are one of the biggest success stories in recycling ever. When you own a battery pack that large, you're damn sure going to recycle it because the scrap value is pretty high. These aren't camera batteries you don't just throw them out.
As to the "leaks" concern, modern non-lead-acid batteries rarely "leak" -- their insides aren't liquid in the first place and they tend to be in hermetically sealed metal cylinders. It takes a lot of effort to get them to spill their guts. I suppose if you make a habit of parking your dead cars on your lawn and allowing the body to rust such that the batteries get a bath every time it rains, in a decade or so you might actually manage to generate an evironmental hazard. People that do that are pretty rare though, especially when the salvage value of the battery is so high, and for the most part the neighbors will complain before that happens.
The fabrication is not especially environmentally destructive. Li is mined from some of the most barren areas on the planet (dry lakebeds in South America.) The rest of the chemicals and materials are fairly common and probably even have a market surplus problem as is. There is some concern in that the supply of minable Li is limited, but by the time it is exhausted decades will have passed and we'll be onto the next battery tech or fuel cell or whatnot.
Anyway, pure EVs and PHEVs (where fuel use is low enough to consider biofuel without too much inconvenience) are an important first step, not necessarily because they will be cleaner on face value, but because they open up the owner's option. The owner could buy renewable energy credits from the power company, or they could charge from solar panels, or like I said for PHEVs they could use biofuels since they don't have to fill up much/often. It's that flexibility that will finally put the automobile owner in control of their own energy choices. That's a heck of a lot better of a situation than we have now.
Re:Electrical cars are BAD (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive#Diesel-ele ctric [wikipedia.org]
Electric motors rock (vs. internal combustion engines) because they have no torque curve. They have instant-on full-blown torque.
Re:doing my part (Score:5, Informative)
According to Toyota - and the company is commendably frank about its car's environmental equations - Prius doesn't even begin to break even on greenhouse gas emissions until it's been driven around 20,000km. This is because extracting and manufacturing the raw materials to make a Prius consumes more energy than a conventional car. The extra energy required means more carbon dioxide is emitted to make a Prius than a conventional technology car.
So no, hybrid cars don't grow on trees, but they do win in the end on total emission. Toyota cars are known for their reliability (the main German automobile organization have found toyota to be the top reliable car for years in a row already), so expect them to overcome this 20.000 km barrier many, many times over. (estimated battery life seems to be about 160.000km [wikipedia.org] at minimum).
Electrical cars are to reduce pollution (Score:5, Informative)
In a lot of cases the issue is whether governments should be co-ordinating transport to cut down on pollution or whether it should be left to private individuals to use vehicles that pollute less or consume less resources. A decent train service can keep thousands of cars off the road for most of the week. An electric train, LPG bus or other forms of mass transit are often a better answer.
Greenhouse gasses have nothing to do with the issue unless you get all your electricity from hydro, geothermal or whatever - so currently in no city anywhere. The nuclear lobby is pushing nuclear generated hydrogen and nuclear supplied electricity to power cars for greenhouse reasons but whatever your feelings that can be considered irrelevant to the issue for the next decade as far as a car purchase is considered (it takes a long time to build a big thermal plant of any kind, much longer for a cutting edge nuclear design).
Re:and... (Score:3, Informative)
And not a single prosection. Caught red-handed enacting possibly one of the largest, most ongoing acts of economic sabotage in world history and they got away scott free. Big companies truely are above the law.
Re:and... (Score:3, Informative)
An EV on the highway uses about 20KW of electric power. 300 miles at 60MPH is about 5 hours. Simple math says about 20KW X 5 = 100 KWH. A KWH in many palces is about 15 cents in the US. 100 X $0.15 is about $15. It seems to be less than a tank of gas by quite a bit.
What is this going to do to the power grid which has been known to collapse, famously with the northeast blackout and the rolling blackouts in California?
As with any unstable power source having a redundant standby source isn't a bad idea. Look into a standby generator for the home if this issue is critical.
Aren't these the batteries that tend to explode if you look at them funny?
Yes. Look online. There are some great video's of these overheating and failing in flames. There is a company that has solved the thermal runaway problem. This should help their stock. As a side note that is why the Prius uses the Nickle-Metal Hydride instead even though it has a much lower capacity.
Just what does battery production do to the environment? How about leaks and recycling?
I simply don't know yet, but you may find out with a little research.
Puhleeze. (Score:5, Informative)
Both Toyota and Honda were and are exquisitely well-aware of accident procedures involving their cars; that's why the high-voltage lines in the Prius are armored International Orange cables isolated from the ground of the chassis, surrounded by identified conduit, and centered under the car floor, where the jaws of life and other EMT tools are least likely to be used. The battery itself is placed in the statistically safest place in the car (just over the rear axle), and protects first responders by an accelerometer-based circuit breaker, a Ground Fault Interrupter, and interlocks. Criminy, what do you want?
Give me something RWD, compact, ~1.8L, w/ high MPG (Score:3, Informative)
I currently drive a Civic, which is nice, but it's not RWD. Why look for RWD? RWD kind of has gotten bad rap over the years, because it can oversteer in wet/icy conditions, or when gassed too hard - the steering becomes so sensitive that the rear end of the car can slip towards the outside of the turning circle. When done in a controlled manner, this can a lot of fun, the rear end of the car literally steers around you, and you feel the car pivoting around from behind. Steering FWD is boring in comparison, the rear end always follows the front end, up by the hood. Now oversteer does not mean that RWD cars handle poorly, just that they become acutely sensitive to steering when on slippery roads or when gassed hard. A good driver understands that he can use this to his advantage, as the same overly sensitive steering that can throw the car off path can be used to correct it.
Here is a google video demonstrating oversteer -
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-25708751
Search for oversteer or drift and you will find lots more.
Modern tech could also make such a car more practical. On cars equipped with ABS, which is most models these days, stability control can be added to selectively enable/disable oversteer prevention at the push of a button. Software within the car's computer detects oversteer and cuts engine spark/power and/or hits the brakes on individual wheels (using the ABS hardware) to largely cut out out oversteer. Car review magazines refer to stability control as the "nanny," for good reason. This sort of tech would help make a compact RWD car attractive to a wider range of buyers, who might not want to be so conscientious of their driving all the time, but want to have some fun once in a while.
Another thing that could widen the appeal of such a car would be to make it tweakable, say through adding a USB engine computer interface, or offering an MP3 capable stereo option that has USB inputs for external drives and takes customizable firmware. While this would most definitely appeal to the \. crowd, I think over time the appeal could carry over to a wider audience, as youth today are much more tech saavy and a lot of customizations could be made by third parties. Neither of these options would cost a ton, and could translate into some serious sales.
I hope Honda will eventually make such a car, perhaps in the same class as it's new budget Fit model, but that doesn't seem likely. If anyone takes the leap I think it will be Nissan, they have been doing more unconvential designs lately, being the underdog. They still don't match the quality of the big two Japanese auto makers, but I would serisouly consider it if such a model arrived.
Re:Battery Disposal? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:and... (Score:3, Informative)
Li in any shape or form is toxic noxious substance and getting it out of the old batteries into new ones is going to defeat most of the environmental advantages of electrical and hybrid cards in the long term.
I would much rather look into getting more suitable storage options for hydrogen, biofuels or biofuel derivatives.
Re:Low emmisions??? (Score:3, Informative)
Currently, most of the power (where you live) might be generated by burning coal, but large scale power generation is:
- vastly more efficient at turning chemical energy into something usable compared to small scale (small scale being a car engine)
- vastly easier to make clean via scrubbing 'bad stuff' out the exhaust than small scale catalytic converters on cars
An electric car can also get better efficiencies by using things like regenerative braking - instead of just turning kinetic energy into heat when you want to slow down, you turn the KE back into electricity which you put back into the car's battery instead. Electric cars also don't use energy while stopped at a traffic light or stuck in a traffic jam unlike an idling car engine.
The other thing about electric cars is if you start migrating your power generation to nuclear, wind, solar (etc). no one has to go and buy a new car. No infrastructure has to be changed. However, to move from (say) gasoline cars to hydrogen cars, everyone has to buy new cars and all the infrastructure has to be changed.
La, La, La. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:and... (Score:3, Informative)
That's BS, they do not. MTBE is not even allowed to be used, sold, or imported into NY state. I am pretty sure Connecticut is the same way, not sure of any others. http://www.pcnr.com/News/2000/0531/Front_Page/may
From http://www.epa.gov/mtbe/gas.htm [epa.gov]:
The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAA) require the use of oxygenated gasoline in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution. The CAA does not specifically require MTBE. Refiners may choose to use other oxygenates, such as ethanol.
Re:Done before (20 years ago!) (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.lotpro.com/cars/2006/hummer/h3/safety/ [lotpro.com]
The NHTSA gives the H3 4 to 5 stars for front and side impacts.. 5 starts being the best in that vehicle class.
The front impact looks like it takes most the abuse: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/NCAP/Cars/3682.html [dot.gov]
Maybe your aricles are a little "anti" sided perhaps? Of course.. you only said "Hummer" so maybe you mean the orignal.. these are H3 numbers.
Nah, that's too slow (Score:3, Informative)
There's a company called Hybrid technologies that's launching this car, which also run on Lithium-based batteries.
Here's a business week story [businessweek.com] on them. It looks a bit like vaporware though, so a grain of salt is recommended.
Re:BMW C-1 (Score:4, Informative)
In the UK (where this incident took place) using a mobile 'phone while driving is illegal. If she were caught she would be subject to a £30 fixed penalty (or a fine of up to £1000 if she took it to court). There are currently proposals to increase the fixed penalty to £60 and three license points (if you get 12 points you lose your license).
A polite warning that you are doing something illegal is generally considered helpful. Personally, I would just have noted her registration and got a passenger to call it in to the police, but then I'm probably more of a bastard than the original poster.