Lithium–air battery, they could make electric cars practical.

Batteries and Chargers Rechargeable Batteries
41

There is a big difference from driving round a homestead on an electric vehicle to electric vehicle use in the real world it’s quiet and no fumes, but your also safe in the knowledge that if you run out of charge you might only hold up a cow or some other wildlife and before long someone will miss you and come out in a gas powered whatever and recover you or bring you another battery,or at worst you might have to take a little walk back to your house across land you know well.

I’ve got both an electric car and a bike and the worst thing about them is the ‘am I going to run out of power’ or if I go to low how much will I damage to battery packs, will I be stranded in the middle of nowhere or on a fast moving freeway/highway.
That seems to be the biggest issue, the constant range worry,no spur of the moment detours from your carefully planned route, it might say range 150 miles, but it’s never anything like and it gets worst as the batteries age as we all know so for most pure EV owners, even the hardcore ones, range really is the biggest thing holding these things back, plus some of the things mentioned in this thread lol

42

I assume this is the far larger and heavier li-ions, not the little cylindrical ones that use polyethylene and such as the separator.

43

All this must have 800 mile and 30 min charging nonsense is simply incorrect. Real life experience and many articles analyzing actual driving patterns have found its simply not an issue. The only reason most people don’t drive electric is lack of availability and clinging to incorrect ideas.
In the next 5 years cheaper and easy to acquire cars will be much easier to come by, and incorrect ideas will fall away as people realize they sound good in theory but everyone else seems to somehow manage and electric costs less then gasoline cars.
Creative destruction is brutal in its efficiency, but people cling to ideas like super glue until they are personally left in the dark.

44

Looking far into the future, what will become of all the gas stations?

Will I have to use an electric lawnmower or drive quite some ways to find a relic of a gas station to get fuel for it?

If say 50% of people started using electric cars, how would it effect the cost of gasoline?
Would it go up? Would this impact the cost of flying?

If electric cars take hold en masse, it is really going to shake up lots of things.

I’m not complaining, just thinking…

45

Probably, if a lot of people start using electric vehicles, then fuel prices will drop, as there will be less demand for it. Flying, trucking, and anything else that still needs liquid fuel would be cheaper.

46

My impressions
At 50 percent of cars probably 2/3 of gas stations will close due to lack of demand. So you will still be able to get gas, those 50% of cars still need to be fueled.
At 75% electric gas stations will be closing left right and center, forcing electric to 90% or more of market share in a few years, then you will have problems getting gas.
By this time your gas mower will be ready for replacement, and electric mowers will have as much range as your gas one did, hence by replacing it you don’t need gas. :slight_smile:

47

I have always believed that cars (and now houses) have to get smaller. That now seems one of the less bothersome things that have to happen soon for our species to survive. I think Tesla had the solution with the Roadster, and then they blew it with the S. It isn’t necessary for people not to have big cars, it is necessary for them not to drive them to work alone. The technology postpones these decisions, but it doesn’t make Malthus wrong.
I think is is reasonable to expect cars, eventually, to be no heavier than the people they carry. Something like a Messerschmitt Kabinenroller made mostly of carbon fiber. The accident problem and passive safety will go away with self driving cars.

48

I have to admit, I know that feeling well, I worry when we ride too far from home, wondering if we’re gonna have enough charge to get back.

And I agree, I think the fear of the unknown is a major component that keeps people from widespread acceptance or adopting a “new” technology. New in the sense it’s different from what they’re used to, and people fear the unknown.

I know a golf cart isn’t the same as having to depend on a electric vehicle for daily transportation, but I’m just saying it does have benefits, and once you get in a routine of plugging in it its really no hassle from that standpoint. I’ve actually run some of the numbers and looked into building a small SUV with a Warp9, but the associated cost vs. performance, or more specifically ROI, is prohibitive for a comparatively larger vehicle at this time. Doesn’t keep me from wanting one though. You know, sometime in the early 2000’s, GM had a 1/2 ton pickup with an electric motor, a large electric motor. It matched the performance of the smaller 4.6l V8, I don’t remember the range. Why that was never produced I don’t know, sure would have been nice, even with less than stellar range.

-Michael

49

Eventually, the car can connect to the charger unaided like a robot vacuum cleaner.

50

+1
Earth has had five previous extinction and many believe we are in the sixth.

We will need to revolutionize how we define a well lived life in the highly developed nations. A reading of recorded history will show that collapse has happened before, and a belief that it could not ever happen again is fertile ground for another collapse.

51

The technology certainly isn’t stagnant and shows plenty of promise for solving range and refueling problems.

52

There are several problems with EV’s right now.
1- Cost: You can get an equally sized and equipped dinosaur-burner for a lot less.

2- Service: Nobody but a dealer works on EV’s and that’s costlier than an independent mechanic shop.

3- Resale at high mileage: It will need a new battery pack and they aren’t cheap; either you pay to sell or you lose value.

4- Convenience: Do you really want to plug your car in during a heavy thunderstorm, when a dino-burner can wait awhile instead leaving you a bit drier?
4A- You’re almost late for work and really need a charge on arrival but all the charger spaces are taken; now what do you do?
4B- You forgot to plug in last night and now you’re going to miss the most important business meeting of the year because you’re home charger will take hours to recharge; can you say unemployed?

5- Weight: No EV can be light for it’s size compared to an equal dino-burner

6- Crash costs: What’s going to happen with insurance after we begin seeing numerous hydrogen flouride and Li fire events from crashes on gridlocked city streets and in tunnels?

7- Power outages, they still happen but now your car is dead too.

8- RFI: Turn on an AM radio near an operating Prius; that god-awful noise is entering your body as radiation too, and nobody has tested it in a multi-car environment.

9- Electricity costs: More demand always equals higher prices, but now everyone pays and that includes your own home energy bills.

10- Range decrease: A dino-burner goes almost as far on one fueling no matter how long it’s been in service; EVs don’t so you may need a 800mi range to start with so you can end up with half that in a few years (or paythe cost of a new battery so you don’t.)

11- You think fake cells are a problem now? Wait till China starts making ‘budget’ EV batteries; and we know they will if there’s a big enough market.

12- Truck/SUV/Off-Road applications: Still too fragile, too weak, and too heavy for these applications even if you can get the needed range.

There’s my “dirty dozen” :stuck_out_tongue: But don’t get me wrong- I like the idea of EV’s but only when they can make them do what I need them to and that is still a long, long way off. As long as we have decent dead-dinosaur reserves we’re going to be using them to power most of our vehicles simply because that is the best most economical way and nothing else can match that or even come close yet. Someday, yes. Tomorrow (or even in the next foreseeable decade) nope. And I’m betting that fuel-cell technologies are going to give battery-equipped EV’s a run for the money by the time they’re truly viable for most folks. And for portable applications like chainsaws and construction equipment, electric power will never be an option. I/C is king of portable power for a reason :wink:

Phil

53

What we really need to see is cost per mile figures, which will take a while to accumulate.

But I remember learning back in the early 1970s that the reason diesel buses are preferred over gasoline is how long the engines last between major rebuilds.

That’s why it was then (presumably still is) cheaper to schedule a diesel bus, full size, even on a run at a time with only a few passengers, instead of putting a gasoline engine van on the same route and filling up most of the seats.

The people I know with EVs so far just aren’t spending significant money or time on mechanic service visits, which are routine for gas engine vehicles.

Time will tell if that lasts.

Of course the manufacturers at this point are mostly building with reliable parts.

We’ll see how that lasts, too.

54

SawMaster, you forgot a couple :wink:
Nobody ever talks about how much energy is required to heat the cabin of the car in the winter, There is no “free” engine heat that can be used, it has to come from the batteries, reducing range. Also in the summer, the airconditioner has to be run off the battery, also reducing range. How much, I do not know. But on very hot or cold days it could be significant.

Also I believe there is a class action law suit against Tesla, not the ones for the fires, but for damage to the cell packs due to hot weather. Park a Tesla out in the sun and the battery bakes to the point of greatly reducing the life expectancy of that expensive battery pack.

55

BTW, Electric cars have been around for as long as the gasoline ones. They were not popular because they never made much sense.
If batteries get a LOT better, then maybe they will. Present day batteries are good, but not good enough. While better than Lead-Acid, they are only incrementally better. Like a ’386 was to a ’286.
What we need is an i7 running at 6GHz





56

Hank, what we need to see is cost-for-entire-life cycle. From manufacture to recycling along with everything in between including best estimates of planetary harm. That’s the only really accurate figure. Cost per passenger mile says we should all be walking which is a lot healthier too :stuck_out_tongue:

Dchomak, I know there’s more but I just wanted to throw those out to keep folk’s feet on the ground where reality is. We need to keep looking for better but we need to overcome the problems we have now and those which we know will come or we may wind up with different but not really better. If you die from global warming, or environmental pollution, or excessive RF radiation, you are still just as dead.

Phil

57

Me and my wife each have a car. I would love to replace one with a Tesla. Most of our miles are just 10 minute drives anyway. It would be perfect, for one car. And most households are probably in the same situation as us. That one time a year you take a vacation you just take the gas car. Look at your odometer and think about it. You racked up 50,000 miles going to work and back since you bought it. And what, 500 at best for a vacation once a year?

58

The next big thing is to un-invent the two extraneous wheels on today’s vehicles:

3 on the ground: 3-wheel efficient car - Google Search (some nice looking electrics and small gas engines there, upcoming.)
and

No wheel in the passenger compartment, to eliminate the leadfoot/uncooperative human problem.

I don’t think I like that whole idea, but “… when you pry the steering wheel from my cold dead hands” doesn’t quite have the ring of optimism I’m looking for.

59

Over the years I’ve worked with a lot of different subcontractors most of whom were ok at pointing out problems, and most of those just stood there looking blank waiting for someone not an expert in their field to come up with the solution. Very few would take the next step and try to imagine possible solutions. Problems are obvious, it takes little or no effort or imagination to point them out and most people seem to stop thinking at this point and assume the topic is closed but somehow the problems do get solved and we move on. I always found work much more enjoyable when working with people who when faced with a problem automatically dug in and started looking for solutions. Those are the people who are working on this one.

Our taxes pay for the cleanup of hundreds of superfund sites around the nation but that cost was never included in the original bill. Eventually the cost of burning fossil fuels will come due and with a far higher price tag that won’t begin to cover the things we’ve lost in the meantime. I was raised to believe that with freedom came responsibility. Buying a gas guzzler has a price and responsibility for consequences far in excess of a sticker price. Hook, line, and sinker we’ve taken the bait offered, it’s about time to look at that tasty morsel a bit more carefully. If Detroit builds what they think they can convince us to buy then it’s high time to change their minds.

60

I’m quite interested in this topic. Currently running a Honda Jazz 1.2 litre which is now ten years old. It has been a reliable car. I’ve covered 131,000 miles in that time. My MPG is around 50, give or take. I drive very gently. Most of my driving is the short (12-14 miles) commute to go to work or collect my children. The most miles I do in a jaunt is maybe up to 50 miles round trip, rarely more than that when I think about it, though I may do a couple of these length trips in a single day. Next month I retire, so taking away my journey to work, my mileage is going to drop substantially, I reckon to around 8,000-10,000 miles per year.

Anyway, I bought the car new, it cost me around £9,000 ($12,000).

On the basis of my MPG, the fuel over the decade (looking at roughly £1.15-£1.20 per litre or so) is around £14,000 ($19,000) - that figure is variable, bearing in mind fluctuations of fuel costs.

Car tax is £100 a year, so £1,000 ($1,350)

I’ll not include annual servicing costs or usual tyre changes etc, neither will I include any one-off repair costs I’ve had to do because that is just the luck of the draw. Neither will I include whatever my car is worth now.

So, without these costs, my 131,000 miles have cost me £24,000. Call it $32,000.

When I think of these costs, an electric car such as the Nissan Leaf starts to become attractive. I can get a deal through work where a Leaf is (after a £499 / $650 deposit) £199 / $262 per month. They will fit a fast charger at my home. This will be for three years then I can either hand back the car or give them about £10,000 ($13,200) and the car is mine. So the three years would be £7,663 ($10,000) - if I was to keep the car then it would cost me £17,663 ($23,200). This is on the basis of (in those three years) 6,000 miles per year. Extra miles are 10p / 13c per mile. Of course, if I buy the car after three years then I can do as many miles as I like in it. According to the blurb, the Leaf costs around 2p per mile, so if I did 131,000 miles it would cost me £2,620 ($3,500) in fuel. Grand total is just over £20,000 ($26,500), not including the servicing or other ad-hoc costs.

My thoughts are to maybe, potentially keep my little Jazz for those longer journeys and have something like a Leaf as my day to day car.

Certainly, the sums start to make sense. By the way, EV’s don’t pay car tax in the UK.

So over ten years, my costs would be around £3,000 ($4,000) less than even my very frugal Jazz.

Food for thought.

SP