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.'"
No Shit, Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, if you look at the pictures this is actually just an electric Ariel Atom [arielmotor.co.uk], which is also faster than a 360 Spider or Carrera GT.
Don't get me wrong -- this is cool. It's just not nearly as revolutionary as the article writer thinks it is, and it certainly won't "save the planet--fast!"
This matters to me why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wake me when they are affordable and widely available will you?
That's not a car (Score:1, Insightful)
It goes fast, what about far? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, as an obligatory point... Where are they getting the electicity to run this thing? Most of the US still get's it's power from Gas run power plants. It's good to see improvement in the tech though, so when we do have other methods of power generation we'll be ablt to take full advantage of them.
$100,000+ is not "Available for the masses" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No Shit, Sherlock! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuel cells aren't very heavy or bulky, but they still don't put out as much power as batteries (and they don't even approach ultracapacitors). Thus, an ideal situation would have fuel cells charge batteries or ultracapacitors, producing electricity faster than it's used at cruising but slower than it's used during acceleration.
Re:This matters to me why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ever been in a Prius? They're surprisingly roomy. Yes, they're over 20k, but when you look at the features that come standard (just ignoring the efficiency), and the sort of warranty you get, there's not that much of a hybrid surcharge; you'll easily make it up over the vehicle's life versus a vehicle with similar features.
Re:Acceleration Range (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're being a bit unrealistic here. What you describe is the typical characteristics of a gas powered vehicle. However, how many people need to drive for 6 hours and then refuel in 5 minutes (so they can drive another 6 hours)?
Most people drive less than 100 miles a day commuting and have all night to recharge. This car meets these specs just fine.
If you're driving cross country, rent a gas car.
Re:This matters to me why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriousely. Those people that get 15 to the gallon raise the global demand by consuming far more than they need to. They drive up the price of gas.
They should pay more and the rest of us that are responsible people that give a damn should not have to subsidize their selfishness.
SUV's should flat out be banned. Trucks should be restricted as work vehicles or heavily taxed for personal use.
There is absolutely no reason why you cant get away with every personal use vehicle getting at min 25 to the gallon. I just bought a brand new corolla. 41 to the gallon, just a standard, rather roomy vehicle. There are tons of cars that use regular gasoline that get great mileage.
There is no reason to be buying SUV's other than to look retarded (SUV's are rather ugly)
Either ban those vehicles or make them pay $5 a gallon. Let the rest of the country enjoy lower prices because we act responsible.
Re:This matters to me why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Liberals always end up with the same point of view, and take the same route to get there:
suggest, recommend, shun, urge, require, force, coerce, punish.
The American way is to put a carrot in front of the mule; the communist way is to create a narrow channel for the mule that only goes where YOU want him to go and provides for nasty shocks if he does anything different.
Re:Acceleration Range (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nice (Score:3, Insightful)
However, this may be feasible by using a spare battery charging during the day and swapping (in smaller-than-500lbs increments).
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, so's an electric drivetrain. The big difference is the torque curve. An internal combustion engine at 0 rpm stalls out, providing absolutely 0 torque, so you need some way to couple non-rotating parts (red light!) to an engine that has to idle at some minimum rpms. And then the engine delivers more torque as you spin it up.
Electric motors deliver their maximum torque at 0 rpm, and then it drops off as mechanical friction starts acting as a parasite. And since you don't need to worry about mating non-rotating to rotating parts, your drivetrain can be more efficient overall, since you can get out some of the lossy linkages.
You're right. This is nothing new. I saw a video online of an all-electric car beating a Ferrari off the line years and years ago (And not just beating, dominating). But at the end of the quarter-mile it needed a recharge. There are a lot more obstacles to electric cars replacing IC cars than just performance.
Re:A car that could save the planet--fast (Score:3, Insightful)
Today's battery technology is the main obstacle to electric cars. There's no question that batteries will improve, the only questions are how much and how soon? And there are alternative technologies. . . Supercapacitors look promising. The newest ones, in the lab, are achieving energy density similar to batteries -- but they recharge much faster, never wear out, and don't contain a witches brew of chemicals. Another potential is flywheel energy storage. Flywheels aren't there yet, but they are gradually being improved.
I do think that biodiesel is most promising in the long run, especially if it can be produced from algae. Savinar is quick to dismiss that idea with a haughty laugh and a wave of his hand, because it "has yet to produce a single drop of commercially available fuel". Well of course not, when oil is still cheap and plentiful. There's no incentive. But the research has been done, and on paper it looks like this should work. When the real crunch hits, someone will surely give it a try.
Re:This matters to me why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Since you've clearly thought this "large-vehicle" tax out completely, what is your solution for people, like me, who are 6'6" tall? Under your propsal, I would pay nearly a 2x penalty for being tall, since the only truly comfortable vehicle for me is an SUV or large-ish vehicle, and most likely not going to get 25 mpg+.
[Disclaimer: I actually own 1 SUV - a Jeep - and a Honda Civic. I just moved from an older Camry to the Civic. Yes, I can drive them (the Camry and Civic), but it is painful after any large amount of time. Only in the Jeep, do I truly feel comfortable. That isn't taking into consideration when I try and put my whole family in the car...in which case...forget it.]
For the record, your "rather roomy" Corrola is "extraordinarily cramped" for some of us...
Goodbye Hydrogen, Hello Fusion (Score:2, Insightful)
Woah, Self-Righteously Indignant Much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulations on your new car purchase. Has it occured to you that you could've saved the environment even MORE by buying a used corolla? or by making sure your current vehicle is up to spec?
Probably this doesn't apply to you, but people who buy a new car every year have no right to criticize people who buy an SUV every ten, no matter how miserly the new car is with gas.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:No Shit, Sherlock! (Score:3, Insightful)
I really think that Hydrogen is simply a back-door to bring nuclear power in, after electricity prices start to rise, centralized cheap power will be needed. What will he suggest to fix that? Something where his cronies can still get rich, so it has to be centralized and not easily implemented by consumers...hmmm.
Personally, I think nuclear power can be safe, but NOTHING is ever safe in the hands of our corporations, and that's where it will end up--so for now I'm going to grab a sign and go a-protesting with the anti-nuke freaks.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think this is the case.
I would love to see a credible link to prove me wrong though.
TUTORIAL: why electric cars will never replace gas (Score:5, Insightful)
The batteries in hybrid cars are only used for acceleration in city driving and short periods of excess speed on highways. They are NOT used for anything else because ultimately 100% of the average power comes from the gasoline.
Thus the sole benefit of hybrids is that it turns city driving inefficiency (stop and accelerate) into the equivalent of highway driving since the engine can run at a constant, efficeint, tuned point almost continuously. For people who actually stop and leave the engine running for long periods, the hybrid can save a few sips by shutting down the engine. Also the hybrid can make use of engine type not associated with sexy car performance, like diesel.
But anyhow it cant avoid getting 100% of the energy from the gas.
What about charging the batteries off the grid? That will not work if everyone tries to do it.
If you wanted to be able to pull your car into gas station and gas it up in under 10 minutes to a range of 300 miles like you can with gasoline then the gas station would have to deliver power to your car at a rate of a megawatts. Besides the absurdity of delivering that over the powerlines, any practical battery would explode when charged that fast.
Okey you say, well what about trickle charging it overnight or while you are parked for a long time at work. Well that would work, for you. But if everyone else in your neighborhood did it, then we are back to delivering many megawatts to every neighbor hood. that simply is impossible until we have underground superconduction transmission lines in every city in america.
Thus electric cars re nice show pieces but cannot replace gasoline on a large scale at this time.
Thus the only way to charge an electric car is to have distributed power production or distributed chemical fuel delivery.
So this can mean: 1) hydrids that burn fuel like now. 2) hydrids that burn hydrogen like fuel cells (make the hydrogen at nuclear plants and ship it as chemical energy not over wires)
or charge batteries at nuclear plants and ship them in trucks to refueling stations where you swap batteries.
Thus you can only transport the power needed for typical driving as chemical energy.
30 HP = 22,371 watts
300 miles @ 55 Miles/hour = 19,636 seconds
30hp for 19636= 43,9285,090 joules
delivering 24 mega joules in one minute requires
7,321,418 watts from "pump" at gas station to recharge one car.
If a gas station was a busy one and was processing one car per minute all day long then it would have continous feed of 7 megawatts.
The total capacity of the US for power production is 300 terrawatt hours. so that would mean that if we doubled the entire electrical capacity of the US we could build less than 10,000 gas stations, ignoring all the transmission problems.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:4, Insightful)
OK so far...
Exxon-Mobil holds the patents to the nickel-metal hydride battery, so there's why the price for NMH for cars is so damned high.
You want to know why pure-electric cars are incredibly unlikely to become popular? Answer: it's not possible to get a full battery charge in 2 minutes. When you run out of gas, you can fill up again in 2 minutes. Travelling cross-country, it simply is *not* acceptable to have to sit around for 3 hours at the gas station waiting for your car to get enough juice to continue. Nor is it likely to be possible to improve on this, until someone invents some radically new battery technology - no existing battery technology will allow charging at this kind of speed without the batteries exploding.
So we need a new battery technology which will, at which point Exxon-Mobil and their battery won't matter a damn. The world and their brother is working on that, bcos everyone knows that whoever gets better tech is going to be in the money big-time. Trouble is that nothing's coming along - the best bet so far is fuel cells, and we're back to fossil fuels again (or hydrogen, which will be produced and distributed by the same folks anyway).
Grab.
they conveniently leave out... (Score:3, Insightful)
The X1 is good as a track car and that's about it. That's definitely not the market bugatti is aiming for.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't need a new battery technology. Just build batteries so that they are standardized in some form of rack or enclosure that can be swapped out. You pull into the "gas" station an automated device pulls the battery rack out of your car, gives you credit for any remaining charge, loads in a new rack of already charged batteries, and charges you for the difference in energy between the two packs. If properly designed, the enitire transaction could happen much faster than filling a 24, or even 10, gallon gas tank.
The issues come in where someone figures out a scam of pulling in with "bad" battery packs from the junkyard, and pulling out with brand new, fully charged packs.
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:4, Insightful)
The present generation of hybrids suffer the problems of both gas and electric vehicles. Gasolene engines can be very efficient if run at a single load and speed, so you build a car in which that is all the engine does: recharge the batteries while running at its most efficient load/speed combo.
Maybe there is some good reason why this does not work, but it would seem to have a bunch of advantages, including elimination of the transmission, more efficency, etc..
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:TUTORIAL: why electric cars will never replace (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This matters to me why? (Score:2, Insightful)
This would provide an additional incentive for people to use less gas, and to use more efficient cars. You'd still have the freedom, should you wish to expend your wealth doing it, to drive any gas guzzler you want, of course, but doing so would at the same time help finance rewarding people who push the limits of efficiency and help pay for development of even greater efficiency.
Re:I'm not impressed. (Score:1, Insightful)
The rider they had either sucked, or was taking it easy b/c he was on a stock 600RR (Decent kit, but not the best 600 to test with either).
The Atom is a race car with blinkers. I can put blinkers back onto my race bike if you'd like, and still suck the paint off that Atom as I blew by it on a race course.
Don't get me wrong, the Ariel Atom is the best excuse to drive a car that I've seen in a loooong time, but with a decent rider and a somewhat prepped race bike, it would lose. Maybe not by a huge margin, but it would lose.
A mild correction (Score:3, Insightful)
None of the currently available hybrids use a setup where the gas engine can run at constant RPM.
The benefits of the current drivetrain designs are as follows:
1. Your engine is the same total power, but now has two pieces. You can turn half of it off when both are not needed, such as when cruising.
2. In stop-and-go traffic, regenerative braking turns your kinetic energy back into stored power you can use to accelerate.
3. The large electric motor acts as an "instant starter" making it easy to shut down at stoplights and start up again seamlessly.
4. The high-torque electric motor lets the gas motor be run on the more efficient but less torquey atkinson cycle.
Thats 100 million cars! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Interesting, but not new (Score:2, Insightful)
In the US.
14 Million new cars are sold annually.
455 Million galons of oil are used daily.(for transportaion purposes)
If the demand is there, somebody, somewhere will find a way to fill the production needs. We did for oil and we can do the same for other commodities.
As for disposal, the batteries could be striped for heavy metals and recycled. Fluids or pastes within the batteries can be purified and reconstituted. Yes we will still be dumping tons of unsalvagable material into the ground but currently we are doing the same with the air. The key difference being that these materials are only being used to store energy, not create it.
You could make a battery from tin, copper and lemon juice if you so choose. The ability to choose what materials to use allows us to search for options that are effective to use while at the same time having relatively benign effects on the environment. You cannot make gasoline out of anything other than oil. Granted you can use vegetable oil but producing that consumes more input energy than it releases as output energy, even moreso if you consider the required sunlight.
Energy production can come from solar, wind, hydroelectric or tidal sources. Hell find a river you don't like very much and put a dam in it. While that reservoir is filling, put a dam below it. Repeat as necessary or until you run out of room.
The point isn't so much that oil is dirty, it's that oil is finite whereas sunlight, the rotation of the moon and the spin of the earth are, for our purposes, not.
I want it, I dream of it (Score:3, Insightful)