Electric Car vs. --- Horses

Vince

......
If Obamy has his way, we will all be driving those things in the near future. What he just can't get through his stupid head is it takes oil to make the electricity to charge the cars. :doh:
 

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
See, electric cars make sense if:

1. You have the ability to cheaply and abundantly make electricity without consuming the fuels you intend for it to replace;
2. You have an existing infrastructure to support the widespread use of electric vehicles (charging stations, etc.)
3. You have the technology, such as really good battery technology to provide the juice you need to either really haul big loads or at least, make long distances without needing refueling.

At this point, we have absolutely none of those, nor are any of them likely to emerge.

I'd add a fourth one, but widespread adoption WOULD actually achieve it -

4. It has to be cheap enough that it can actually compete with other vehicles without huge subsidies. If, for example, electric cars cost half what a regular car did, people would be willing to try them. Right now, with the huge subsidies and the large upfront costs, the government is actually paying rich people to buy them, since there's no one else able to pay that much for them.

I wonder how that would sound as a campaign point - "paying rich people to buy a car".
 

Beta84

They're out to get us
4. It has to be cheap enough that it can actually compete with other vehicles without huge subsidies. If, for example, electric cars cost half what a regular car did, people would be willing to try them. Right now, with the huge subsidies and the large upfront costs, the government is actually paying rich people to buy them, since there's no one else able to pay that much for them.

I wonder how that would sound as a campaign point - "paying rich people to buy a car".

I saw some concept cars that were electric cars. It looked like they'd be pretty small and limited in distance, but they were good for driving in cities (such as NYC, DC, and whatnot). The costs were going to be a few thousand a piece, which is pretty cheap.

Unfortunately they aren't very realistic because the range is low and everyone would need to adopt them, which isn't as feasible here as it would be in Europe. Even if I lived in the city and had the option of one of those cars, I may not take it because other cars would be a hazard. Driving my car next to an SUV (someone from out of town, perhaps) or Mack truck (long range delivery) probably wouldn't be very comforting.

We're too much into size and distance to let the small electric cars take off here.
 

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
We're too much into size and distance to let the small electric cars take off here.

I still think a lot of it is cost. If Porsche's sold for a fourth of what they cost now, people would buy them. Fast maneuverable sports cars would outsell SUV's IF they were inexpensive.

My dad used to drive an MG Midget many years ago. They were about the smallest thing on the road, although they were astonishingly heavy for their size. So on long trips - we used to drive from Maryland to NE Pa every weekend - it was a little intimidating to drive next to those trucks through Harrisburg and York, and then on the Baltimore Beltway. But we could zoom around everything faster than they could react.
 

ImnoMensa

New Member
Let look at a budding community in Fla for a good example of electric travel.

It's called "The Village's" The Community is fairly small , but it has everything right there in the community. Shopping Malls Hospitals Golf Courses, and best of all pathways built especially for Golf Carts.

Everyone has a Golf Cart there and they are pretty free from accidents because they don't intermingle with automobiles that often, and they don't have far to go to get what they need.

Of course 90% of them are retired and don't have to drive to work either.

Put a top on a Golf cart and basically you have the electric car.

Placing a Golf Cart in its basic form , Light, small, slow moving , sorry acceleration on the beltway and you have disaster.Small cars should be separated completely from larger vehicles. We have all seen the smart car, It's a death trap.

You can buy a good used Golf cart for about $2,000 dollars, Most have 6 Batteries to proplel them. at $110 dollars apiece, that means almost half the cost of the cart is just for the batteries.

Yes the battery in your electric car will someday need replacement.
 

ylexot

Super Genius
2. You have an existing infrastructure to support the widespread use of electric vehicles (charging stations, etc.)

Along these lines...I wonder if the electrical grid could handle the load if a bunch of people had plug-in cars.
 

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
Along these lines...I wonder if the electrical grid could handle the load if a bunch of people had plug-in cars.

I have to admit - I saw a comic about twenty years or so ago where Henry Ford was looking for investors in mass production of the Model T, and the prospective investors ridiculed it, because it would require filling stations, repair shops, networks of non-existent roads able to carry automobiles, stores with supplies, oil pipelines - just a long, long list of infrastructure necessary to make it useful - with the final remark that he should simply give up such a ridiculous idea.

Anything that has so invaded our modern life - from airplane travel to computers to the Internet - that has acquired a niche so very quickly (I'm often amazed that we went from solo flights across the Atlantic to commercial flights over the same route in astonishing time) did so because the public demand grew and that there was a real need for what it offered, with real, observable advantages.

The electric car requires this kind of support, yet offers very little advantage except to environmentally conscious people who think they're saving the planet. They don't cost less to buy, they don't cost less to own and they don't do anything that isn't done better by something we have now. About the only thing they do offer is a quieter ride, and they're actually finding out that psychologically, people NEED sound to operate a vehicle.

Try to imagine selling the idea of word processing on a computer versus a typewriter if the typewriter consistently produced documents better, faster and more efficiently.

You just need a compelling reason to adopt a new idea, and they haven't done it yet.
 

ImnoMensa

New Member
You just need a compelling reason to adopt a new idea, and they haven't done it yet.

Obama is working hard to create that compelling reason by not allowing America to become oil independent, by driving up the cost of gasoline by subsidising the electric cars.

Then at the same time the stupid SOB has sworn to close down the electric companies who use coal and is doing nothing to build a good electric grid system to supply the chargers of these cars. Not building any new Nuclear plants and betting against all odds that we will be able to come up with an alternative wind mill or solar panel, before the old plants are forced to close down.

Ya know what?? I dont think he knows WTF he is doing, or else he does know and is determined to put us all afoot.
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
The other day, I was looking at a well-engineering hybrid powerplant system that is available/marketed to retrofit fleet vehicles. The example I used for cost purposes was their package for a 1/2-ton pickup truck.

Interestingly...it worked out to be almost the same: The conventional V-8 pickup made it about 6 miles on a dollar's worth of fuel and the hybrid made it about 6.5 miles on a dollar's worth of electricity. No cost benefit in there that I can see, and of course the initial cost of the hybrid solution is far higher...

And where does that electricity come from?...at least 50% of it from burning coal.
 

JoeRider

Federalist Live Forever
Let look at a budding community in Fla for a good example of electric travel.

It's called "The Village's" The Community is fairly small , but it has everything right there in the community. Shopping Malls Hospitals Golf Courses, and best of all pathways built especially for Golf Carts.

Everyone has a Golf Cart there and they are pretty free from accidents because they don't intermingle with automobiles that often, and they don't have far to go to get what they need.

Of course 90% of them are retired and don't have to drive to work either.

Put a top on a Golf cart and basically you have the electric car.

Placing a Golf Cart in its basic form , Light, small, slow moving , sorry acceleration on the beltway and you have disaster.Small cars should be separated completely from larger vehicles. We have all seen the smart car, It's a death trap.

You can buy a good used Golf cart for about $2,000 dollars, Most have 6 Batteries to proplel them. at $110 dollars apiece, that means almost half the cost of the cart is just for the batteries.

Yes the battery in your electric car will someday need replacement.

New rule, if you are over 75 you have to drive a golf cart!
 

Sparx

New Member
While it is true that energy cannot be created, it can only be transformed or converted from one form to another, the electric motor is nearly 100% efficient and an internal combustion engine is around 50%.
 

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
While it is true that energy cannot be created, it can only be transformed or converted from one form to another, the electric motor is nearly 100% efficient and an internal combustion engine is around 50%.

Not totally accurate. High power electrical motors - hundreds of watts - are nearly that efficient, but you miss some of the big picture. The creation of electrical energy is inefficient; the transmission of electrical energy is inefficient; and during storage, a significant amount of electrical energy is discharged while doing nothing. So from the source of electricity - usually coal - to its appearance as kinetic energy on the road - a significant loss of energy ensues.

So while it's accurate to say that it is efficient in converting battery power to kinetic energy at drive time, you could conceivably lose ALL of that power just sitting in the garage doing nothing, while the gas in your tank loses none of it.
 

Sparx

New Member
Not totally accurate. High power electrical motors - hundreds of watts - are nearly that efficient, but you miss some of the big picture. The creation of electrical energy is inefficient; the transmission of electrical energy is inefficient; and during storage, a significant amount of electrical energy is discharged while doing nothing. So from the source of electricity - usually coal - to its appearance as kinetic energy on the road - a significant loss of energy ensues.

So while it's accurate to say that it is efficient in converting battery power to kinetic energy at drive time, you could conceivably lose ALL of that power just sitting in the garage doing nothing, while the gas in your tank loses none of it.

How high power do you want? One horsepower alone is over 1,400 watts. The generation and grid will be there whether we talk cars or lightbulbs or microwave ovens so that doesn't matter. Batteries have always been the hold-back on electric anything so don't buy any car electric or fossil fuel if you don't plan on driving it.
 

Gilligan

#*! boat!
PREMO Member
How high power do you want? One horsepower alone is over 1,400 watts. The generation and grid will be there whether we talk cars or lightbulbs or microwave ovens so that doesn't matter. Batteries have always been the hold-back on electric anything so don't buy any car electric or fossil fuel if you don't plan on driving it.

Actually ..1 HP is 746 watts.

But more to Sam's point. The BTUs of energy in that coal are converted to electrical power and distributed from source to the outlet you use to charge a battery in your electric car with a total combined process efficiency that is pretty low, well less than 50% in most cases. Modern digitally-commutated permanent magent motors are indeed amazingly efficient, often exceeding 90%. But that power has to get from the lump of coal through steam generation through 80-85% efficient power generators though many step-down transformers (each with its own less-than-100% efficiency rating) over long transmission distances..well..you get the picture.

If the power is from hydro, wind or nuclear..in other words..'free'..then it would make more sense to use electric vehicles. But in this country, 50% is simply created from buring coal.
 
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ylexot

Super Genius
How high power do you want? One horsepower alone is over 1,400 watts. The generation and grid will be there whether we talk cars or lightbulbs or microwave ovens so that doesn't matter. Batteries have always been the hold-back on electric anything so don't buy any car electric or fossil fuel if you don't plan on driving it.

1 hp = 746 W

...and I think he meant hundreds of hp, not Watts.
 
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