Comment Re:Infrastructure (Score 1) 659
This study says that's not the case:
This study says that's not the case:
Only downside, it's poisonous. On the upside, you can easily smell a leak at safe levels 1ppm.
I knew a guy who worked on Ammonia refrigerations systems. One day he told me they had a safety drill, simulating an Ammonia leak at the facility. The fire department was called, they drove through where the Ammonia cloud would have been, and he said that they figured 100% of them would have died if it had been a real leak. Granted because it was simulated they couldn't smell it, but he believed that by the time they would have smelled it, they would have been doomed. Just saying!
He also said that when they were working and the managers would hang around getting in the way, they would just surreptitiously vent a little Ammonia and the managers would scatter.
Seems like a nasty material for the general public to be pumping into their cars!
Even if that Carbon-Carbon battery turns out to be a scam, it's hard to believe battery technology won't improve dramatically in the next 10 years. It's not just EV automobiles driving the technology, it's portable electronic equipment and probably at some point home solar installations.
Battery tech needs to go up in power density at least an order of magnitude
That seems an exaggeration. I have a Honda Fit EV that will go about 105 miles on a charge (best case). I have a Subaru STi that goes 250 miles on a fillup. There are electric vehicles that have smaller and larger ranges, and the same is true for gas powered cars, but I don't think we need an order of magnitude improvement in battery capacity in order to be useful to the majority of people. The Fit EV is a lease (it's a compliance car) but my plan when the lease ends is to get a Tesla Model-E with 200 miles of range. Based on my experience with the Honda, 200 miles of range should be enough for all but a couple trips a year that I do.
With the Honda, I use about 50% of a charge on my 55 mile commute. It takes about 90 minutes to recharge that when I get home, i.e. I can commute to work and back home again, grab a bite to eat and have nearly a full charge before I'm ready to go back out that night. This is all without public charging infrastructure!
I think that when people talk about wanting to recharge their EV in the same time it takes to fill a gas tank, they're missing the point that the refueling of the two vehicles would typically be different, specifically that cars tend to sit for long parts of the day and installing a recharging network that can be used (say, while you are at work) is not an insurmountable barrier.
Long trips are indeed the one case that the EV struggles with, but I think that Tesla et al will come up with reasonable ways to deal with this, whether it be superchargers or towed battery packs
I maintain my gas car for just such trips, and I find that when I'm commuting daily with the EV, the gas car only gets run once or twice a month (seldom enough that I've had problems with the brakes rusting so that it's difficult to get the vehicle to move).
I have to question whether this is really the Toyota plan, or whether Hydrogen is a delaying tactic to be able to continue shipping their ICE cars, which let's face it, they have a large investment in. My gut tells me that Hydrogen powered cars in large numbers is decades away. If I'm right, why would Toyota be jumping on a technology that isn't likely to be useful anytime in the near future when we have a technology (BEV) that is already sufficient for a large number of people (the technology is, perhaps the price point isn't there yet) and it's a technology that is almost certainly going to greatly improve during the time frame necessary to bring Hydrogen automobiles to market.
I've read that the grid is already capable of charging large numbers of EV cars. For instance: http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...
Also, if the electric company offers off-peak discounts, people would almost certainly take advantage (my Honda Fit EV, and most if not all of the other major EVs can be programmed to charge at a specific time, i.e. I just enter into my smartphone when I want the car to charge and it will then delay charging until that time. You can force it to charge immediately if you think you'll need to use the car again that day before normal charging time).
I'm leasing a Honda Fit EV which has a quoted range of something like 84, but when not using heating systems during the winter I see about 105 miles per charge (which costs about $2.50 in electricity). Interestingly, if you encounter a traffic jam in an electric car your range tends to go up because higher speed causes higher drag and a loss of efficiency; the EV car loves low speed driving. It's only a 19 kWh battery, so it would be relatively easy for Honda to produce one with more range (and I think Tesla has the right amount of range). There are enough chargers that there is little chance of getting stuck, but it would be a pain to have to plug in and wait, so typically I would only charge near my destination (like, if I'm going shopping and the mall has a charging station). The charging station issue is fairly easily solved - certainly there are no technical hurdles to greatly increasing the number of chargers out there - there simply needs to be a large enough user base to justify adding more. The fact is, however, that it's very rare that I charge away from home. Most of the time the range is sufficient for all the driving I do in a day, and I can simply plug in at home. I have a dryer outlet installed in my garage so that I can recharge at the end of a typical day in about 90 minutes (about 50% of the capacity is pretty typical when I get home from my 55 mile commute).
I've already decided that my next car will be a Tesla Model-E (200 mile range in a beemer 300 style chassis). I would guess that with that range, I might have to rent a car a couple times a year for long trips...
I commute about 2 miles to and from work each day.
But the Leaf is ugly, the Tesla S is expensive and neither is convertible.
I agree about the Leaf - I'd buy one if they weren't so darn ugly. I'm currently leasing a Honda Fit EV and love it My commute is 48 miles round trip and it can do that twice before recharging (but obviously I just charge it every night when I get home). Biggest drawback so far has been wintertime in Boston - the range drops by 50% when you have to run the heat (so I just drive my Subaru instead).
You have a good point, but there could be an advantage to your night vision with the camera - since you can limit how much light the screen emits, you won't be blinded by the reflection of someone's headlights But as someone else mentioned, it's important for the screen to properly dim (which seems to be something that eludes manufacturers).
She's one of my very unfavorite people as well. Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way.
Yes, you can get goopy green biologic stuff in the fuel cell eating the Jet fuel. The worry isn't loss of fuel, it's contamination of the fuel system causing blockage/flameout. It's one of the reasons we sump/filter fuel before every flight.
Yeah, even as I was writing that, my little voice was telling me something was wrong
The estimator I used (which takes geographic location into account) mentions 4.28 kWh/m2/day which is where I got my original number. I see that it also mentions 158 sq-ft as the roof area needed. I think that's the entire roof of my house 3 layers deep
I agree that the lease makes it harder to compare to other cars. Honda only offers lease of the FIT EV at this time, but I also liked it because it was a risk reducer for me - worries about battery life etc. I have used the air conditioning and it makes a surprisingly small impact on milage - I saw a loss of less than 1 mile
The 90 minute charging time is to re-charge after my 10 kWh commute. If I was to run the battery flat, it's more like 3 hours. I've only done that twice in 6 months of driving... I think the 20 minute charging time is with a special DC charger. I think they charge at 400+ volts (Honda doesn't have this, but I think the new Nissan Leaf does). Mine uses a modified dryer outlet for 220 volt charging. Charging at 110 volts is not practical. It takes all night to charge at 110 volts. It's definitely an emergency thing (Honda supplies a 110 volt charging cable that is carried in the cargo area, but if you had to use it I think you would plug in and come back for the car the next day!)
I have no doubt that purchase price for an electric is higher than that of a gas car, although one could probably make a case that the Tesla is comparably priced to similar luxury vehicles. Certainly if I could buy a Honda FIT EV it would cost substantially more than the gas version. TCO I'm not so sure about. There is the savings in fuel which isn't huge but adds up over the years. The maintenance is probably unknown, but looking at the systems of the FIT, there's a LOT less to maintain than in an ICE car. I think chances are good that maintenance will be substantially less (certainly you'll save on brakes - probably never replace them for the life of the car!).
Tax break - Honda took the $7,500 tax break, not me (because it's a lease)
Where do you live and how long is your commute? You sound like you don't think you could rely on an EV car...
I think Honda is being very conservative because of the bad press it would generate if people were ending up at the side of the road with no charge left. Interestingly, if you *do* run out of charge they'll send a flatbed truck to come get you. My guess is that if you do that more than once or twice they cancel the lease!
As for efficiency, I think one of us made a math error. I got:
Diesel #2/ US gallon: 146,300 kJ converted to Imperial Gallons = 175,560 kJ/gal imp.
If you get 60 mpg, 175,560kJ / 60 = 2,926 kJ/mile == 4,681 kJ/km == 1.3 kWh/km
(http://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/wholefarm/pdf/c6-87.pdf pdf alert)
Simpler way to look at it:
Diesel US gallon = 138700 BTU * 1.2 (imp gal) = 166440 BTU = 48 kWh. 60miles / 48kWh = 1.25 miles / kWh
So, based on that even the Tesla @ 3.5 is twice as efficient as the diesel and the FIT is up to 5 times as efficient.
Did I miss something?
6.5 is an optimal milage, 4.5 is a pretty typical number with passengers and/or cargo. Air conditioning doesn't seem to cost that much in milage, heating does - I expect my winter numbers to be lower. Interestingly, I get better milage when I hit traffic jams! (lower speeds, thus lower air drag).
Actually, in another post I did a calculation on PV - it looks like here in Boston (not the solar capital of the world) it would take about 4 square meters of PV to generate enough electricity for my daily commute).
"I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens." -- Woody Allen
