Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Holden McGroin on March 27, 2008, 07:00:51 AM
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San Carlos, Calif. – (March 17, 2008) -- Regular production of the 2008 Tesla Roadster commenced today, marking an historical milestone for Tesla Motors and a watershed in the development of clean, zero-emissions vehicles.
First unveiled as a prototype on July 19th, 2006, the revolutionary Tesla Roadster generated an extraordinary response from people everywhere who were inspired by the vision that beautiful, high performance cars could generate zero-emissions and burn no oil.
Perhaps the log jamb is beginning to break...
Come up with a commuter for 30K or so and the Prius is a gas hog.
http://www.teslamotors.com/media/press_room.php?id=841 (http://www.teslamotors.com/media/press_room.php?id=841)
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Here's Jay Lenos Video:
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/video_player.shtml?vid=229378 (http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/video_player.shtml?vid=229378)
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Compare the price with the Lotus Elise on which the Tesla is based and it doesn't look quite so attractive.
The Tesla costs $50,000 more than the Lotus, for which you get similar performance, but higher weight and less agility.
If you take the $50,000 saved by buying the Lotus, you get 12,500 gallons at $4 a gallon. The Lotus gets about 23 mpg, so the money you saved will be enough for about 288,000 miles of driving. And that's before you take in to account the costs of running the Tesla.
And of course neither car is likely to last that long.
You can certainly find alternatives to gasoline, they just aren't as good and cost a lot more. That's not going to change until someone makes a major breakthrough.
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I probably want be ordering one this week. :rofl
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I'm seriously considering buying a ford focus for a commuter car. under 13k brand new and 35mpg.
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Pretty interesting car.Still they are way out of price range for most but Im betting the Ca. eco groups will be time sharing one. At least someone got the ball rolling but its got a long way to go to be affordable.I wish them luck.We gotta get off this oil monkey on our backs.
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Remember how much a VCR cost when they first came out?
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Electric cars haven't just come out, though. They have been around for a hundred years or more. Batteries and electric motors have both been in very widespread production for more than a century. Electric cars might not have seen much investment and research work over the years, but battery manufacturers have been trying to make better batteries for decades.
The big problem for electric cars isn't the cars themselves, or even the motors, it's the batteries. Batteries just don't store much energy for their weight compared to gasoline or diesel.
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Good point Nashwan. Couple those things with the fact that the electricity to charge the car has to come from somewhere as well. Nice toy but not all that practical yet.
Frankly I think they could do better with bringing back the steam car rather than an all electric car.
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How many W for the mile? That's what I want to know ;)
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Gunslinger, my work car is an 05 Focus. Although I prefer to drive the stang on weekends and evenings, the Focus runs about 400 miles per week and the gas mileage is fantastic. Car rides a bit tinny but it is really holding up well.
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well you still need to burn SOMETHING to heat up the water to make steam.
got wood?
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Propane works for steam as does CNG, alcohol and other fuel sources of heat. Using electrical generators for braking can also add more heat to the water. Some time ago someone thought up an almost instant steam pressure car. It took just a few seconds to get enough steam to start moving.
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Man...just think....you could get where you are going and clean your clothes at the same time. :)
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Electric cars haven't just come out, though. They have been around for a hundred years or more. Batteries and electric motors have both been in very widespread production for more than a century. Electric cars might not have seen much investment and research work over the years, but battery manufacturers have been trying to make better batteries for decades.
The big problem for electric cars isn't the cars themselves, or even the motors, it's the batteries. Batteries just don't store much energy for their weight compared to gasoline or diesel.
That was not the point I was trying to make. The public has never taken it seriously enough in the past for it to really go anywhere. Things will improve at a faster rate now.
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I always wondered on the electric cars, if charging them up is a problem, can't say a 5-10 hp or so briggs and stratton engine be hooked up to a good 12v generator or alternator and keep itself charged up? Or charge it up while parked somewhere and there is not a plug in handy?
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You could probly build a fun little electric sportscar for a lot less than that lotus. I think the price will come down. we are now talking a range of over 200 miles and a 3.5 hour recharge time.. they are getting more practical and.. more important.. fun.
the liberal socialists are wrong.. you can't shame people into doing what you like. You have to make it work for them.
lazs
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That was not the point I was trying to make. The public has never taken it seriously enough in the past for it to really go anywhere. Things will improve at a faster rate now.
The point I was making is it doesn't matter how seriously the public have taken electric cars. Electric cars are easy, after all it's just the integration of two existing technologies, cars and electric motors.
The problem is the batteries. But batteries have been big business for a long time, and there's no reason to expect that increased interest in using them in cars is going to lead to any breakthroughs.
You could probly build a fun little electric sportscar for a lot less than that lotus.
Not with any range. Petrol stores about 47 million joules per kilogram. A 50 litre fuel tank stores getting on for 2000 million joules.
Lithium ion batteries, which is what the Tesla uses, store about 250,000 joules per kilo. Electricity is more efficient for car use, but to equal even a small 50 litre tank requires about 2.8 tons of batteries.
That means electric cars have to be built very light to offset the weight of the batteries. That pushes up cost, even before allowing for the price of the batteries. The Tesla roadster uses over 6,800 cells that cost about $4 each.
The end result is an electric car weighs more, has less range, and costs a lot more, than a comparable petrol or diesel car. And that's going to remain the case until there is a major breakthrough in battery technology.
I think the price will come down. we are now talking a range of over 200 miles and a 3.5 hour recharge time
I'd take the range with a pinch of salt. It doesn't include things like air conditioning or heating which have a major effect on electric vehicles. It also doesn't allow for much "fun". The Tesla has a motor that produces a max of just under 250 hp, and that consumes about 220 kw/h at max power. The battery pack stores about 53 kw/h, which means you can use maximum power for about 14 minutes (somewhat less because the battery cannot be totally "emptied")
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I'm still wondering why they can't figure out a way to hook a small electric generator up to the drive wheels that will allow the vehicle to recharge while it's being driven. I know that you can't fully recharge as fast as you drain a battery pack but if you could charge at a rate of even 30% over the current draw needed to move the vehicle that would amount to a rather large increase in available battery power and range. Maybe add some solar cells as well and the range and available power would increase even further.
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I'm still wondering why they can't figure out a way to hook a small electric generator up to the drive wheels that will allow the vehicle to recharge while it's being driven. I know that you can't fully recharge as fast as you drain a battery pack but if you could charge at a rate of even 30% over the current draw needed to move the vehicle that would amount to a rather large increase in available battery power and range.
It would increase range, but you then have the extra weight of the generator and its fuel.
Maybe add some solar cells as well and the range and available power would increase even further.
Forget solar cells. A square metre receives about 1 kw/h on a sunny day close to the equator at noon. Solar panels have about 15% efficiency, meaning in ideal conditions a square metre of solar cells will add about 150 watts to the battery pack per hour around noon, somewhat less in the afternoon and morning, little in the evening, and nothing at night.
In a day you'd be lucky to get a kw/h out of a 1 square metre solar panel. When you consider that a Tesla roadster has a 53 kw/h battery pack, the extra thousand dollars for solar cells would make little difference.
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""The Tesla has a motor that produces a max of just under 250 hp, and that consumes about 220 kw/h at max power.""
you do not need 250HP to move a small car.
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It would increase range, but you then have the extra weight of the generator and its fuel.
I wasn't talking about a gas generator. I was thinking alternator, like what is already used in gas cars to charge the battery. I'm sure they could make one that would generate at least 50% of the power used by the drive motor and put that back into the battery. The weight is nothing. Hell my truck has a 136amp alternator in it and it only weighs 9 pounds, so says Auto Zones website.
With that installed if I'm cruising down the interstate at 65mph and drawing say 300amps an hour with a 150amp alternator hooked directly to the drive motor I would be recharging at half the rate of battery consumption and increasing my range.
You would think that they could build an alternator that recharges faster than the drive motor uses power that would allow you run almost indefinately. You would use more battery energy starting and stopping but on long drives if you could produce more electricity than your using, the alternator itself would be supplying 100% of the drive power with the rest going to the batteries and charging them.
Of course I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know how feasible an idea that is, but it kinda makes sense doesn't it?
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You would think that they could build an alternator that recharges faster than the drive motor uses power that would allow you run almost indefinately. You would use more battery energy starting and stopping but on long drives if you could produce more electricity than your using, the alternator itself would be supplying 100% of the drive power with the rest going to the batteries and charging them.
Of course I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know how feasible an idea that is, but it kinda makes sense doesn't it?
thats called diesel electric locomotive, they have been in use since the 1950's.
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What part of, not a gas generator, did you not get??
Electric car, hook alternator up to the drive motor, recharge batteries at the same time your using power from them. Build alternator efficient enough to provide 100% of drive power at speed and charge batteries at same time. No fossil fuels used at all. That's what I'm wondering if they can do.
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What part of, not a gas generator, did you not get??
Electric car, hook alternator up to the drive motor, recharge batteries at the same time your using power from them. Build alternator efficient enough to provide 100% of drive power at speed and charge batteries at same time. No fossil fuels used at all. That's what I'm wondering if they can do.
That would be the closest thing to perfection in a car, although as long as theirs oil on the planet, the oil company's would have you killed before they let that hit the open market.
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Lol, where do those dumb idiots think electricity comes from? Here on the East Coast, we tear up the forests in the mountains to mine for coal. Then we burn the coal, releasing all kinds of mercury (dont eat too much fish now) and CO2 so we can heat water to turn steam turbines.
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I'm still wondering why they can't figure out a way to hook a small electric generator up to the drive wheels that will allow the vehicle to recharge while it's being driven. I know that you can't fully recharge as fast as you drain a battery pack but if you could charge at a rate of even 30% over the current draw needed to move the vehicle that would amount to a rather large increase in available battery power and range. Maybe add some solar cells as well and the range and available power would increase even further.
That violates every law of physics we know. That's why it's not done. The electric motors CAN be used for "regenerative braking" when the car is slowing down, but let's do a simple exercise...
Let's say the car requires 5 watts to propel down the road. The battery must expend 6 watts because 1 watt is converted to heat in the motors and circuitry, and wasted.
Now let's hook up a generator to the wheels that generate 5 watts of power. It takes, you guessed it, 6 watts of energy input to output 5 watts of power, because of waste heat, mechanical losses, etc.
So, you have either a car running down the road sucking 6 watts and getting 5 watts worth of work, or a car running down the road sucking 12 watts of power, getting 5 watts of work, and putting 5 watts back into the batteries. 12 minus the 5 you get back is 7 watts expended in the second case, vs. 6 watts expended in the first case.
It's simple thermodynamics. You simply can't try to take any more energy out of the system than you put in, and it's doubly inefficient to simultaneously stand on the brakes and the gas (run a generator and the motors at the same time) because you double the heat and mechanical losses. The ONLY mechanical way you can recapture the energy in a conventional electric car is to either use the motors as generators when it's time to slow down, and even then you will only get out a portion of the kinetic energy the car has at the instant you start braking (basically it's mass times the square of the velocity, minus losses for inefficiency and factors like rolling resistance). You could theoretically capture some of the waste heat either via the principle that runs the sterling engine or some of the newer technology coming out right now, but those options are either very heavy, don't recapture enough energy to be worth it, or are cost prohibitive (around a few million bucks to capture a couple of watts).
A more efficient way to do this is to run a large flywheel, using the rotating mass as a big capacitor. You only pump in enough energy to keep the flywheel spinning, and the mass of the flywheel absorbs instantaneous loads which really helps with the efficiency of the whole system since you can trickle in energy to the flywheel at the most efficient rate using cheaper components, and let the flywheel handle loads greater than the energy transfer rate from the battery. This can be fairly efficient especially in stop and go situations, however to be effective it must be VERY heavy, it makes turning somewhat interesting due to gyroscopic precession, and when heavy flywheels break they can explode or at the very least go tearing around smashing things until the energy is expended.
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I wasn't talking about a gas generator. I was thinking alternator, like what is already used in gas cars to charge the battery. I'm sure they could make one that would generate at least 50% of the power used by the drive motor and put that back into the battery. The weight is nothing. Hell my truck has a 136amp alternator in it and it only weighs 9 pounds, so says Auto Zones website.
With that installed if I'm cruising down the interstate at 65mph and drawing say 300amps an hour with a 150amp alternator hooked directly to the drive motor I would be recharging at half the rate of battery consumption and increasing my range.
You want to drive an alternator with an electric motor? So you have one motor drawing power from the battery pack to power another motor that's charging the battery pack?
You would think that they could build an alternator that recharges faster than the drive motor uses power that would allow you run almost indefinately. You would use more battery energy starting and stopping but on long drives if you could produce more electricity than your using, the alternator itself would be supplying 100% of the drive power with the rest going to the batteries and charging them.
Of course I'm not an electrical engineer so I don't know how feasible an idea that is, but it kinda makes sense doesn't it?
You can't make an electric motor 100% efficient. For your idea to work you would have to make it more than 100% efficient.
Imagine you have an electric motor that's 90% efficient. You are going fast in your electric car, so you need 90 kw of power to maintain your speed. The electric motor is using 100 kw from the battery pack. Net drain on the battery pack is 100 kw.
Where does the spare power come from to power the alternator? If you couple up an alternator to the motor, either the amount of power going to drive the car drops, or you have to draw more power to run the alternator.
Let's say you draw more power to run the alternator. The motor is now putting out 180 kw, and drawing 200. The alternator is being driven by 90 kw, and if the alternator is also 90% efficient, it will be putting 81 kw back in to the battery. That means net power drain has gone up to 119 kw.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. The power to run the alternator has to come from somewhere, and in an electric car it has to come from the battery. A motor that turns an alternator ending up with a net gain in energy is called a perpetual motion machine. People have tried to make one of those for centuries, no one ever has, and unless there is something fundamentally wrong with basic scientific theory, no one ever will.
you do not need 250HP to move a small car.
No, you don't. But note that the same principles apply whether you are talking about a sports car or a small runabout. The electric car will be more expensive, heavier, have less range and will cost more overall than the petrol powered car.
Consider the fact that in Europe petrol/diesel is taxed to around $7 - $8 a gallon. Electric cars usually have subsidies to encourage people to buy them. Yet even in Europe there are only a handful of electric cars on the road.
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so...how much power would a small gas engine driven generator capable of recharging the batteries at a decent rate need...and how much would it weigh?
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Vort,
Now you're talking about a hybrid, and we already have that answer. There are several smallish cars that get around on anywhere from 1 to 2 liter engines. The "breakthrough" for hybrids in the US will be when we get decent diesel gas and a couple of nice modern small turbodiesels. A prius using a modern high efficiency diesel ought to get another 50% improvement in fuel efficiency with no additional emissions or reduction in drivability. What that'll do to the price of diesel is another story of course, and we'll see the price of both diesel and regular consumer goods go up when diesel becomes more popular because truck shipping expenses will skyrocket. Independent truckers are already feeling the pinch, and it's only a matter of time before the effects trickle down to prices at wal-mart.
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Vort,
Now you're talking about a hybrid, and we already have that answer. There are several smallish cars that get around on anywhere from 1 to 2 liter engines. The "breakthrough" for hybrids in the US will be when we get decent diesel gas and a couple of nice modern small turbodiesels. A prius using a modern high efficiency diesel ought to get another 50% improvement in fuel efficiency with no additional emissions or reduction in drivability. What that'll do to the price of diesel is another story of course, and we'll see the price of both diesel and regular consumer goods go up when diesel becomes more popular because truck shipping expenses will skyrocket. Independent truckers are already feeling the pinch, and it's only a matter of time before the effects trickle down to prices at wal-mart.
not so much a hybrid, as those still use the gas engine to directly drive the wheels at some points.
i'm talking about a small engine running full time to recharge the batteries to increase the range of the car, used from the point where the added range of the gas generator provides better efficiency than simply adding more batteries.
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Vorticon,
Those types of vehicles already exist. They are trains and the large trucks used in mining.
While the idea sounds really neat you need to have a fair sized engine to be able to run the rather large generator. There is a lot of resistance when you put a load on the generator. Someone who is an electrical engineer should be able to tell you how many HP a certain number of amps will supply from a motor. They can also tell you how many HP will be needed to supply a given number of amps from the generator based on the size of the motor.
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Vort,
The tradeoff as Maverick implies is in how much power you can get at one time out of the batteries, and how many batteries you must carry. A diesel-electric train doesn't need a whole lot of acceleration, so it can get away with a steady stream of power coming from the generators. Getting more than about 50hp from a bank of batteries in a car means you must have a whole lot of batteries and they must be capable of high discharge rates. So then you need a big motor, lots of batteries, and a hefty generator to recharge those batteries. Not too efficient in a little car due to the surge requirements during normal driving.
I think they'll be able to work on making everything more efficient in the future but I think pure electric motive power with onboard electricity generation is not very efficient in personal vehicles due to the surge power requirements. You end up needing huge motors and either a lot of batteries or a fewer amount of very expensive batteries that get really hot while charging and discharging and which may fail in spectacular fashion (kablooi!).
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Vorticon,
Those types of vehicles already exist. They are trains and the large trucks used in mining.
While the idea sounds really neat you need to have a fair sized engine to be able to run the rather large generator. There is a lot of resistance when you put a load on the generator. Someone who is an electrical engineer should be able to tell you how many HP a certain number of amps will supply from a motor. They can also tell you how many HP will be needed to supply a given number of amps from the generator based on the size of the motor.
okay. good enough answer for now...
if someone on the board has enough knowledge of electrical engineering to run the numbers and elaborate, it would be interesting.
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The tradeoff as Maverick implies is in how much power you can get at one time out of the batteries, and how many batteries you must carry. A diesel-electric train doesn't need a whole lot of acceleration, so it can get away with a steady stream of power coming from the generators. Getting more than about 50hp from a bank of batteries in a car means you must have a whole lot of batteries and they must be capable of high discharge rates. So then you need a big motor, lots of batteries, and a hefty generator to recharge those batteries. Not too efficient in a little car due to the surge requirements during normal driving."
okay, i knew that there would be issues like that but wasnt sure how much of a requirement there would be.
would it be feasible to have the gas motor kick in for steady rate highway driving, and recharge fast enough to get, say, an additional 60 miles...while burning less than a gallon of fuel? while remaining lighter than the equivalent in batteries required?
thats seems to be the biggest problem with electric vehicles. range. if your doing a lot of acceleration/deceleration, chances are your in the city or on the track. as long as you have enough range to get to and from work its not that big of a deal.
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I used to be able to do the math, but that was back in 1994 :)
It's not impossible to do electric only, but there are severe tradeoffs due to energy density and our ability to turn electricity into mechanical energy. I'm sure one day they'll produce a battery that has as much or more energy density than gasoline (and which doesn't explode if you jiggle it too much or poke a hole through it with a stick) but right now electric only loses out due to the sheer mass/weight of the components required to meet consumer expectations.
That said, a modern electric golf cart goes faster, farther, and can carry a larger payload more reliably than an old model T. A golf cart isn't too useful as a household vehicle for most people, but even 80 years ago people would be overjoyed to own a modern golf cart. Instead of gas stations, you'd be able to simply swap out a discharged battery for a full one, for a suitable charge fee of course. That tells me we're only a generation or two away from the next big thing in consumer vehicle technology.
Heck, the first coal powered steamships were slower and less reliable than the big sailing ships of the day. The coalers were derided as being too slow, too heavy, not efficient, etc. Just like electrics are scoffed at today. Things change as the technology matures however. The problem is that while nature has provided us with relatively safe and dense power sources in coal and petroleum, the next big thing will be man-made and so far anything we make that has the same power density of gasoline tends to be really twitchy and dangerous. Early gas or diesel boilers tended to blow up too, so again I think we'll see the technology mature eventually.
Those looking for an electric car TODAY however... dream on. It's about as likely as asking Henry Ford to make a Roush Mustang or Orville/Wilbur Wright to come up with a concorde, and then blaming it on the govt when they fail even after shoveling an infinate amount of money at them. The technology just wasn't there for the Wrights to make a concord back in the 1930s, and the technology isn't there to make a really useable pure electric car today no matter how much people stomp their feet and blame the oil industry or greedy politicians for not funding whatever line of research is popular today.
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I used to be able to do the math, but that was back in 1994 :)
It's not impossible to do electric only, but there are severe tradeoffs due to energy density and our ability to turn electricity into mechanical energy.
So you take the Tesla system as a start, use a motor of 75 hp, put it in a lightweight econobox and you have a VW rabbit size car that does 0-60 fast enough to enter the freeway, can cruise at 70, and can go 250 mi range. Good enough for 90% of us. I mean if we were realistic.
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I guess the idea that's running around in my head is this.
You have your car. The car has a battery pack, and a drive motor. Now add a very efficient alternator or 2 to the car and have it/them connected to the drive wheels. Now I know an alternator will not generate enough electricity unless the rotor is turning at a certain speed so clutch the things and have the clutch controlled by the onboard computer so they don't engage until the car hits, say 45mph.
So while driving in town and stuff, your simply running on the battery pack, regenerative braking is used to send some power back into the system. But when the car is on the highway and running over 45mph, the alternators kick in providing a steady charge to the battery pack while the car is moving. Again I'm not an electrical engineer, but something like that should increase available power and range without adding a bunch of weight to the car, and again if the alternators are capable of generating more power than the single drive motor is using to move the car down the road, then they can provide 100% drive power, diverting the rest back into the battery pack to recharge it.
What I'm describing is not a perpetual motion machine. I know power is going to be lost due to heat. That's not my concern. I'm just thinking there should be a way to harness the energy of the cars physical movement, i.e. the wheels rotation, and use that to generate additional power. If the drive motor is using 250amps of power to drive the car at 55mph down the highway, and you have a 150amp alternator connected to both rear wheels of the car, then they would be generating 300amps of power. Use 250amps of that power to drive the motor at 55mph and send the other 50amps to the battery pack to recharge it.
Even if that's not possible, if you could generate 50% of the power your using to drive the car and channel that back into the batteries, you'd almost double your range before needing to plug in and recharge.
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So you take the Tesla system as a start, use a motor of 75 hp, put it in a lightweight econobox and you have a VW rabbit size car that does 0-60 fast enough to enter the freeway, can cruise at 70, and can go 250 mi range. Good enough for 90% of us. I mean if we were realistic.
I'm not sure 75 hp would be enough, after all the Tesla weighs 2700 lbs empty (about 1000 lbs of that is the battery). If you want a 4 seater car with the same battery, it's going to be heavier.
And what you end up with is a small, heavy car with not enough power, that costs far more than a comparable petrol car.
No one is saying electric cars won't work, it's just that they cannot compete with petrol or diesel vehicles, even when the price of petrol or diesel is $8 a gallon.
What I'm describing is not a perpetual motion machine. I know power is going to be lost due to heat. That's not my concern. I'm just thinking there should be a way to harness the energy of the cars physical movement, i.e. the wheels rotation, and use that to generate additional power.
But that slows down the car.
If the drive motor is using 250amps of power to drive the car at 55mph down the highway,
Right, it's using 250 amps, without powering the alternator. The car is going a steady 55 mph.
and you have a 150amp alternator connected to both rear wheels of the car, then they would be generating 300amps of power.
Which comes from where? The car going 55 mph has considerable kinetic energy, but if you start taking that to power the alternator, then the car has less kinetic energy, ie it slows down.
The only way to keep the car travelling 55 mph and power the alternator is to increase the power to the drive motor, by at least as much as the alternator is drawing (if you have perfect efficiency) or by more than the alternator is generating (in the real world where efficiency is less than 100%).
Even if that's not possible, if you could generate 50% of the power your using to drive the car and channel that back into the batteries, you'd almost double your range before needing to plug in and recharge.
Generating 50% of the power you use will require more than 50% extra power from the battery. You will have a net loss.
There is no way to do this and end up with more energy. A similar idea would be to mount a wind generator on the roof of the car, the faster you go the more electricity it would generate. Of course, it would greatly increase drag, meaning you would have to use more power to go the same speed, and the windmill would generate less energy than the amount required to overcome the extra drag.
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It doesn't take that much power to turn an alternator. Geez I can spin one with my bare hands and produce a voltage reading on a multi meter. An alternator DOES NOT load up a system the faster it spins. The stators free spin inside an stationary induction coil producing electricity. So if a car is running 250amps to drive at 55mph, 2 alternators would not require twice a much energy for the drive motor to keep the car going at 55mph.
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Using an alternator means you are only using half of the sine wave from it and it means you will need to change it to DC. Using a generator provides direct current and that is what your battery really needs. A load on an alternator WILL cause it to require more power to turn it and produce voltage. When I say load I do not mean a radio or a single small light, I mean a load like trying push a 4,000 lb car down the road.
Like everything else, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Power to do work means you have to do work to provide power.
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Right, that's why you have a bridge rectifier inline with the alternator output to produce DC power. I'm not an electrical engineer but I am an Electronics Technician. I know how power works. You guys just don't seem to grasp the idea I have, and how simple it is.
Screw it, I might just have to build myself a prototype and do some testing. Might start out with a bike cart. I have a buddy who's into stuff like that. Who knows, maybe Marty and I will be the next generation of car builders. He gets it.
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Lol, where do those dumb idiots think electricity comes from? Here on the East Coast, we tear up the forests in the mountains to mine for coal. Then we burn the coal, releasing all kinds of mercury (dont eat too much fish now) and CO2 so we can heat water to turn steam turbines.
Well if they can make the thing recharge itself then they could figure out how to make a house work like that we wouldn't need the coal to make electricity now would we? And trees would still be there for you to hunt deer in, and live in .
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Perhaps the log jamb is beginning to break...
Come up with a commuter for 30K or so and the Prius is a gas hog.
http://www.teslamotors.com/media/press_room.php?id=841 (http://www.teslamotors.com/media/press_room.php?id=841)
Actually there might be a total reversal and gas maybe the thing of the future..There are several new companies that have been started by groups of scientists whom are working on making a clean reproducible fuel oil out of bacteria. In fact they have already done it, it's just the matter of figuring out how to do it in mass production.
So in short, we would be self sufficient for our fuel needs (assuming they don't ship the production off to China) and we could continue to drive the same cars we do today, but would be a clean fuel. They expect to have a bio-diesel and a jet fuel out within the next 5 years.
here is a quick link on the subject, but not the article I read. (what I read was in the popular science magazine) http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?ch=specialsections&sc=biofuels&id=19128&a=
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Lol, where do those dumb idiots think electricity comes from? Here on the East Coast, we tear up the forests in the mountains to mine for coal. Then we burn the coal, releasing all kinds of mercury (dont eat too much fish now) and CO2 so we can heat water to turn steam turbines.
We also use Hydropower: Much of NY state is powered by HydroQuebec.
We also use Nuclear
We now have wind coming on strong.
And Coal plants are on the order of 35% heat efficiency, which is better than most cars, as the coal plant is run at peak efficiency as much as possible, while your car idles at a stoplight.
Electric cars are an option for a future of diverse power sources.
Gasoline and diesel is not diverse, unless you want to go to F-T, which requires us tear up the forests in the mountains to mine for coal. Or we can get it from shale, which requires us tear up the forests in the mountains to mine for shale.
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The little generator that was on older cars took about 6 hp to run. try to spin one. If you hook up a generator to the wheels it will cause drag.. that is why most electric and hybrids use the charging system as brakes.
lazs
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I'm not sure 75 hp would be enough, after all the Tesla weighs 2700 lbs empty (about 1000 lbs of that is the battery). If you want a 4 seater car with the same battery, it's going to be heavier.
My folks had a '62 Beetle. 34 hp IIRC. Kept up on LA freeways, Mom, Dad, and three boys.