Electric Car Faster Than A Ferrari or Porsche 741
jumpeel writes "CNN's Business 2.0 has photos and video of a Silicon Valley-made electric car with a 0-60 acceleration rate that's faster than a Ferrari Spider and a Porsche Carrera. From the article: 'In fact, it's second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.' The X1 is built by Ian Wright whose valley startup WrightSpeed intends to make a 'a small-production roadster that car fanatics and weekend warriors will happily take home for about $100,000 --a quarter ton of batteries included. The X1 crushed the Ferrari in an eighth-mile sprint and then in the quarter-mile, winning by two car lengths.'"
Seen it before (Score:5, Informative)
Ariel Atom? (Score:5, Informative)
AC Propulsion did this years ago - Tzero (Score:4, Informative)
The original lead acid version was even earlier than 2003.
Instant torque (Score:5, Informative)
The best work truck you can get right now is a Dodge "Contractor" model with a 6 cyl cummings diesel and four electric motors. Instant torque combined with the long haul power of a diesel. It gets 24mpg and has an internal 20Kw generator that can power four 3000 sq ft homes. It can run on Biodiesel too. Now THAT is a hybrid.
Re:It goes fast, what about far? (Score:1, Informative)
Try coal, actually. Power sources for generating plants are fungible. Try running a car on hydroelectric or nuclear power.
The Tango (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fuel comparisons? (Score:5, Informative)
Automobiles aren't very fuel efficient at all. Car engines waste in excess of 30% of the energy from gasoline (http://staff.science.nus.edu.sg/~parwani/htw/c2/
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:4, Informative)
There is really no reason why even a less racy looking EV could not be as fast as a Ferrari or Porche, even more pedestrian EV's are quite peppy.
The problem is range and battery performance. A range of 100 miles is mentioned, but this does not mention driving style or ari temperature (sure to be nice and hot, since it is a permanent convertable).
Here is an interesting video blog by a guy who owns a small EV and drives it around London." [dannyscontentment.net] He gets free parking down town and pays no congestion charge. [wikipedia.org] Other good things mentioned is the durability of the car and the fact that is very cheap to own and operate.
The problem is, his range becomes very limited, especially in the winter he can only do 25 miles. Another problem is the 16h equalization charge he has to do every month. These could of course be because of the specific battery technology used in his particular model of car, but I'm sure similar problems exist with other EV's.
I guess these are the reasons that EV's never really caught on.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gas turbines! (Score:3, Informative)
A gas turbine produces peak torque when the output shaft is turning at zero rpm.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:3, Informative)
That second part is not true. As the motor speed up it generates back-emf which reduces the current thru the motor. Motors are current flow operated devices. This also limits the maximum motor rpm with no load.
Re:I'm not impressed. (Score:2, Informative)
The CBR600 while darn quick still has about half the performace of the Honda CBR1000-RR
And it just didn't look like the biker was trying that hard either...
Look at his lean angles.
However the bike in real world terms still hold several advantages over the Atom.
Smaller size ( I can get more of them in my garage!)
Cheaper, I could buy 2 brand new sportbikes and insurance for the cost of the Atom.
Better fuel econony.
Better parts availablility.
I'd still rate my Yamaha YZF600R Thundercat as way more fun.
Besides, you'd never get an Atom down the white stripes in the middle between 2 dumbasses cruising side by side down the Intersate either.
Re:Seen it before (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:3, Informative)
Conversion losses. Everytime you switch between mechanical and electric power, you're losing some of your energy in the process. As a result, hybrids are designed to accept losses only in power requirement profiles where the gain outweighs the loss. e.g. Acceleration is often handled by the more efficient electric motors while the gasoline motor is reserved for crusing.
As it so happens, alternative engines such as Stirlings [intelligentblogger.com] work much better in a full hybrid configuration like you describe.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:2, Informative)
Transit rail traction motors were often series-excited, for their great low-speed torque. And your streetcar really isn't going to be running any races.
But that's just DC machines. If you go to AC induction and synchronous machines, and add solid-state motor controls, you've got a world of possibility. Modern subways use synchronous AC motors and a combination of frequency- and pole-changing control circuitry so that the motors can be driven up from a very low speed at high torque, and then the number of poles is reduced to allow the motor to run up to higher speeds. The noise the motors make sounds like "electronic gears". Top speed is limited by the lowest number of poles and the highest frequency AC you can produce--3600 RPM from 2 poles at 60 Hz, 7200 RPM if you can get to 120 Hz, and so on. (Hmmm, what's the circumference of a car tire... say 16" tire, that's .4 m in diameter, so about 1.25 meters around. 100 km/h gives you 1666 m/minute, and divide by 1.25 m/revolution gives 1333 revolutions/miniute. So a two-pole AC motor driven at up to 45 Hz can get you to 200 km/h, without gearing. Heck, stick with a four-pole configuration and run up to 90 or 100 Hz.)
And AC synchronous motors produce BUCKETS of torque at high speed--unless you hit one of those suckers with a load heavy enough to cause it to stall. And you'll know if you get a load that high--the vibration from the motor reversing direction twice a cycle will be rather loud and hard on the drive train. Even induction motors have great torque at speed, though they slow down a bit from the "coasting" speed to produce it. And stalling an induction motor isn't as damaging, if you cut the power before it overheats.
In other words, "these ain't your grampa's electric motors."
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:3, Informative)
You would not have to charge the battery as an intermediate step.
Also you could use a small diesel or gas turbine engine in place of the petrol engine which had further advantages.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:3, Informative)
toshiba 1 minute 80% charge batteries [physorg.com]
on the new toshibe batteries(actually its been over a year now, wonder where we can buy them, i've got a few projects they'd be useful in :
- my 2KW mini mini scooter (looks like a little kid push scooter, weighs less than 7 kg, goes like hell (not yet finished)
- my busking portable power source, currently use SLA batteries cos I already had them, but damn are they heavy to lug round (15kg plus my other gear (guitar, amp, mikestand etc) ouch)
They really should be pushing these by now for all sorts of purposes, but cars especially, being able to charge your car fully in under 2 minutes is VERY impressive, and will convince lots of those doubtful about electric cars that they are ready to be used widely (if they ever start selling them cheap enough to afford enough to get decent range).