An Electric Very Light Car?
Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 10:59AMEdison2’s Very Light Car Scoffs at Electric Avenue said AutoBlog Green in January, highlighting the irony of our internal combustion engine powered car sitting in the midst of all the electrics at the Detroit Auto Show.
But electric vehicles are here to stay and an electric VLC makes sense. Our breakthroughs in platform efficiency make all vehicles way more efficient, regardless of power source, and in an electric help solve issues of cost and range.
Billions are being invested in electric vehicle technology for a number of reasons. EV’s provide a path to energy independence and with American jobs, whether in the creation of green energy sources or in the mining and processing of coal. As a new industry, electric cars have the potential to revitalize important sectors of our economy. Electric vehicles are particularly efficient in short-cycle applications, such as Postal Service vans or some predictable commuters, and the relocation of emissions to a distance can be an advantage. Night-time charging will utilize excess generating capacity, and as the electric grid becomes green so can the future of transportation.
Currently, however, electrics cars have real issues. Batteries are heavy, big and costly. With electric drives cars get heavier, performance suffers and costs go up. Range is especially an issue, as witnessed by the numerous EVs in the 100-mile range X Prize alternative classes that made it to the knockout stage, versus only one EV in the 200-mile range mainstream class.
The hope and plan for electric cars is that the tremendous investment in battery technology will cause the weight and expense of batteries to go down, increasing range and decreasing costs of electric cars. But another way to increase the range of electric vehicles is with VLC innovations: a car that simply takes less energy to move can go farther and faster with a smaller, lighter and less expensive battery pack.
Coming soon, perhaps: an electric Very Light Car.
Reader Comments (95)
John, I really like your optimism, but the reason the VLC is Very Light is because it doesn't have an electric motor, and consequently a big, heavy, and very expensive battery. If you put batteries in the VLC, other things like the suspension, and chassis have to be considerably beefed up, I.E. the car gets exponentially heavier because it takes more batteries to haul the extra batteries for the beefed up chassis, and before you know it, the car is almost as heavy as the Nissan Leaf. I'm sorry John. I agree with you that one day, one way or another we will run out of fossil fuels and we, like the rest of life, will have to obtain our energy from the sun. Maybe when that day comes, batteries will be light enough to make a happy marriage, but right now batteries and a light weight car are mutually exclusive. Many people I've talked to want the cheapest, and they don't care much about the greenest because they have hourly waged jobs that don't pay enough for their living to even permit other options, unless they are mutually inclusive. So if you had a VLC with a small, affordable engine, then you could convert many more people over to more efficient forms of transportation, why? because the more finite a resource becomes, the more expensive it gets, and basically only the rich, and the richer can get off of oil dependence by being the only people rich enough to pay for a BEV. So, this way, many more people could experience and afford a greener alternative, which would actually help our energy consumption in a much bigger way, than the tiny percentage of people that could afford a Lithium -ion BEV. I'm sorry John, but I have an hourly wage job that pays me less than $9 an hour and it's barely enough to live on. It sucks, I guarantee it does. It makes me sick to hear about you pie in the sky greenies talking about energy consumption as though every person has such an easy choice as to convert their home that they could so easily afford over to solar energy like as though anybody and everybody had that kind of financial security. Well, I'm sorry to inform you John or anyone else, but most Americans DON'T!
Actually a battery electric VLC with a 150+ km range would only weigh 500 to 600 kg, which is less than one third the weight of the Volt, and the heavy Volt can only go 60 km max on its 16 kWh battery. That big weight and range advantage is what makes the battery electric VLC so attractive.
With the true cost of gasoline being 10 to 15 dollars a gallon, it is the gas powered IC engine that is not affordable. Oil wars and oil spills are absolutely not affordable. Even domestic natural gas is not affordable because toxic chemicals used in natural gas production poison ground water supplies. New York State just voted overwhelmingly to ban natural gas fracking because of what it was doing to irreplaceable ground water supplies.
The bottom line is that we simply must stop burning fossil fuels; there is already far too much CO2 in the air and dissolved in the Oceans. Solar or wind energy powered battery electric transportation is really the most efficient, most affordable option compared to the outrageous true costs of fossil fuels.
Getting off the dead end fossil fuel addiction, and switching to a solar electric economy in the US would create millions of new jobs, and would stop the massive drain of dollars overseas to pay for oil imports, military protection of oil, and perpetual oil wars.
Building an electric VLC requires less than half the raw materials to construct compared to the Leaf. The VLC platform makes the switch to solar powered electric cars much more affordable.
Really, fossil fuels cost more than just massive amounts of dollars; fossil fuels threaten life itself.
John, dam you're good! I don't really know how to beat that. Ok, but how can an hourly waged person afford a Lithium ion battery car? I mean I know that because the VLC is very light there would be less battery needed, but I guess the question I have is could they make the VLC, A: still light weight with batteries, and B: as affordable or close to their original $20,000-$25,000 price tag? Today, the BEV's out there are so expensive that only a very few people can afford the luxury to begin with. John, I couldn't possibly afford to build a super efficient house even though it's in my dreams everyday just like the VLC. If the real price of oil is 10-15 dollars a gallon, I'm guessing that the government is paying for the rest in one way of another, that eventually we the people, ultimately end up paying. I get what you're saying. It's just if that's the case then, one way the government could save money, and save ourselves is to provide similar incentives to "cash for clunkers", in other words helping by tax credit so that someone like me could afford to get off of the oil addiction too. Believe me, I really want to, and I also know and fully acknowledge that what you say is true about oil being costly to the planet and of course we are part of it. Thomas Edison even said, "If only we could capture all of the radiant energy of the sun" I bet if he was alive today, we would already be much closer to his, and our dream.
Yes, Fracking natural gas from giant rock beds is definitely not good for our precious drinking water. One thing I found interesting that I read in an Oregon newspaper, and in it, it was talking about the mis-leading information that volcanoes,like the one that stopped European air travel, emitted far more greenhouse gas in one eruption than we create in a year. The article in the paper at the end said that the truth eventually came out to say that the eruption actually created only about half of the emissions that the planes would have created, just from the few days of air travel that were lost! Funny our world.
Well Edison 2, just don't forget about us poor college graduates. We are smart enough to know that our resources are limited, but for college graduates that includes financial resources as well. We want something better, and wouldn't it really be the game changer if lots of people could afford it.
Long term, I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect an VLC with a Li-Ion battery could be affordable. Something like the LEAF has a 24KWH battery pack. Assuming a VLC could cut that need in half, then only a 12KWH battery pack is needed.
Today, Li-Ion battery pack can be purchased in low volume at $400/KWH. That is only $4,800 for a 12 KWH battery pack. Not too bad.
Let's say in the future that this price drops in half to $200/KWH. That would be only $2,400 for a 12 KWH pack.
Of course one of the keys is that the life of the pack needs to be at least 10 years with less than 20% degradation.
But we will have to see if anyone every builds such a thing for the American Market. It is not like you can get a US$2500 Tata nano here.
Later
John C. Briggs
Edison2 said the IC engine VLC could be produced for less than $20,000. A 12 kWh battery might cost as little as $2,400 (see John Briggs entry). Add the cost of the electric motor and controls, and then subtract all the costs of the gas engine system (engine, starter system, clutch, transmission, gas tank, radiator and coolant system, exhaust system, and pollution controls) and the battery electric VLC might still be built for around $20,000. You would not even need the costly high amp home charging station required by some heavier electric cars, since 120 volt outlets found almost everywhere could charge a 12kWh battery over night. (solar power is really the best choice however)
With the government tax credit of $7,500 for electric cars, the net cost for the battery electric VLC could be as low as $12,500. And the total operating cost would be much lower than any gasoline powered car. Line electric power would cost less than 2 cents per mile for a battery electric VLC, and maintenance costs would be minimal. With the use of regenerative braking, even the brake pads would last much longer. Li-ion car batteries already have 8 year warranties, and batteries are improving dramatically. And Solar PV power is being installed at no cost to home owners and businesses, along with a guaranteed fixed electric power rate for 20 years or more.
At $12,500, the battery electric VLC could turn out to be a low price leader. With solar power, the VLC would also be the environmental choice leader, and lowest total cost to drive leader.
And it will probably also be the best handling, most fun car to drive.
Who would turn down a great handling, Solar powered battery electric VLC, and instead choose a future of oil spill disasters, oil wars, and deadly global warming.
New Battery for Cheap Electric Vehicles
Founder of A123 Systems starts a new company to commercialize the technology.
By Kevin Bullis
Technology Review
MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2010
A new startup company will attempt to solve the biggest roadblock facing electric vehicles today--the cost of their batteries.
Battery pioneer: Yet-Ming Chiang has a new battery design that could make electric vehicles much cheaper.
Credit: Yet-Ming Chiang
The new company, called 24M, has been spun out of the advanced battery company A123 Systems. It will develop a novel type of battery based on research conducted by Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science at MIT and founder of A123 Systems. He says the battery design has the potential to cut those costs by 85 percent.
The battery pack alone in many electric cars can cost well over $10,000. Cutting this figure could make electric vehicles competitive with gasoline-fueled cars.
The new company has raised $10 million in venture-capital funding, and about $6 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which will fund collaboration between the company and MIT and Rutgers University. A123 Systems will work closely with the new company, and owns stock in it. The name stands for "24 molar," referring to material concentration levels that Chiang cryptically calls "technically significant" to the company.
Chiang isn't saying much about the details of the new battery--such as exactly what materials it's made of. But he does say that it uses a "semisolid" energy storage material (rather than the solid electrode material used in most batteries today), and that it combines the best attributes of conventional batteries, fuel cells, and something called flow batteries, while avoiding some of the disadvantages of these technologies.
One advantage of lithium-ion batteries--the kind used in laptops, and which will be used in a new wave of electric vehicles coming out starting at the end of the year--is that the electrode materials can store large amounts of energy. But the packaging required to handle that energy takes up a lot of space and adds cost and weight. "In a typical rechargeable battery, only half of it is actual energy-storing materials. The rest is supporting materials," Chiang says. "That's a problem I've been thinking about for years--how do you improve the efficiency of the design?"
Reducing the amount of materials isn't easy. To extract useful amounts of electric current from electrode materials, these materials have to be spread in very thin layers over sheets of foil, which take up a lot of volume inside the cell.
[1] 2 Next »
Great discussions on challenging issues! I agree 100% that we need to move away from fossil fuels (and CO2 emissions) ASAP. However, I also have a few viewpoints that I think are worthy of consideration. I’d like to split my inputs into 3 pieces: A) VLC related and B) infrastructure related and C) energy .
A) I agree with Edison2’s statements that low weight and low drag are universal “virtues” for a car, and that they have wonderfully optimized both. However, I believe that in most real-world usage profiles the weight is much less important than low drag. Some easy thought experiments can clarify this – weight only uses energy while accelerating (or going up a hill). Power required to cruise down the highway is dominated by aerodynamic drag. For urban driving or a mail truck which continually starts / stops, then low weight becomes important. If, however, there is regenerative braking – then the weight even in these situations becomes much less important because a good portion of the accel. energy is recovered each cycle. By this reasoning, adding extra battery weight to a VLC is not really a bad thing if (as I’m sure is the plan) regenerative braking is implemented too. This assumes that the added battery weight is moderate, and doesn’t force a wholesale redesign. The battery cost and cruising range of an eVLC will be better than a conventional eCar because the drag (and weight) is lower.
B) Although I’m a technology enthusiast and therefore would love to see batteries and eCars developed to a practical point – I think a lot of the discussions miss some important issues. First, the power grid is already taxed near its limit. No way can it support mass eCars today! Of course, we can re-wire the country and build a bunch of new power plants – but that will be phenomenally expensive and take many years. Second, there are more alternatives than just “fossil fuel burning ICE cars” vs. eCars. For example, consider the potential of solar-synthesized liquid fuels (but NOT corn-based, as using food for fuel makes no sense). See: www.sapphireenergy.com/green-crude . This is a way of harnessing solar energy but retaining all of the existing infrastructure of tanker trucks, gas stations, etc. – and the wonderful convenience of filling up in a few minutes and long driving range, etc. This is CO2 neutral. If we can develop and deploy such a fuel technology, then even long-haul trucking and aviation can use this fuel! The car technology doesn’t even need to change (much). If you wrap your mind around the scale required and costs – doesn’t this seem like a much more practical way to go ?
C) Wind power and Photovoltaic panels are fine – and should continue to be pushed. However, because neither of these have energy storage – they cannot easily become our MAIN source of power. Once again – there are other alternatives that are rarely mentioned – in this case SOLAR THERMAL. For an excellent overview, see a Stanford lecture: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjwKIQ2ON-M Storing Solar energy in heat form is relatively easy and low cost. Apart from nuclear (which has its own controversial “issues”) this is probably the only non-fossil-fuel power production technology that can provide clean 24/7 power on a scale that would be needed on a national or world level. Once technology such as this is developed and the "smartgrid" deployed - then eCars make a lot more sense. Until then, eCars are likely to be expensive "niche" products.
Cheers, Kevin
Kevin,
Some interesting food for thought there.
The discussion on aerodynamic forces versus rolling resistance (weight) forces need some more attention.
You seem to place more emphasis on aerodynamic forces than rolling resistance (weight). However that is quite right. If you run the numbers on this you can find out why. Once you have made a very aerodynamic vehicle, e.g. Aptera, the rolling resistance forces dominate. So weight quickly becomes important in very low aerodynamic drag vehicles.
Also, let's sharpen up this weight issue a light more. While a car does use energy to accelerate or go up hill, that energy is not necessarily lost and therefore less important. The real issue with weight is that it increases the rolling resistance of the vehicle. That energy is always lost.
Regarding the grid, I have to go with the experts here who say that the grid can handle the coming EVs easily. EPRI (the Electric Power Research Institute) does not see any serious problems with EVs as long as they are charged at night or on demand. A few local transformers with need to be upgraded, but this is a normal activity anyway.
Also, are you serious about wind, solar, lack of storage, and EVs. I think you missed the point that EVs are the storage on the grid. If the EVs can be setup to be charged when the electric company says so, then the wind and solar can be put to best use. Also, even without storage, 30% to 50% renewables can be accommodated on the grid as Denmark and Germany will quickly show.
Later
John C. Briggs
I suspect that the successful ELV of 2025 will be fuel cell powered, not battery.
This article on a biologically enhanced glucose-based fuel cell technology is intriguing:
http://geobacter.org/publications/Chaudhuri-p1229.pdf
With CO2 now at 390ppm we need to stop burning anything. We must stop releasing any CO2, and instead aggressively sequester carbon in every way possible, to bring CO2 back down to 350ppm or lower. The climate disaster in Pakistan and Russia is a glimpse of the future in store for the world if we do not act. Carbon in bio materials should be sequestered in the soil, not burned for energy. Destruction of forests absolutely must be halted, and billions more trees planted everywhere to recapture the Giga tons of CO2 that we have thoughtlessly dumped into the air and oceans.
For needed energy supplies, it is more efficient anyway to directly use the Sun's energy, either as heat, or by converting it into electricity. PV cells now have 20% efficiency, and one new solar cell design converts both light and heat to electricity with up to 60% efficiency. The really nice thing about solar electric is that you can use it to power your EV and most everything else in your home. And the large battery in an EV can serve as efficient storage for that solar electric power. Solar electric powered EVs and homes could help make households substantially energy independent, and reduce grid demand and the use of coal for electric power.
Electric VLCs would make that transition to solar power much more affordable.
Wow! You've just given me hours of research to do! John, I totally agree with you. The government going towards energy independence is exactly what this country needs. It certainly would give our country much stronger bartering leverage to say, "Fine, we don't need your oil in the desert." instead of spending huge amounts of money to go to war. Oil for energy I think, definitely has seen it's peak, and I think it will, one way or another, die.
Ok, so I'm finally done with all of that watching and reading.
Kevin is right that there are a lot of advantages to solar thermal energy. I think it's a great way to go, because it much more easily allows for total capture of the sun's energy as heat. Basically it makes more bang for the buck than PV can accomplish in efficiency alone, let alone the capital of the start up cost of PV versus solar thermal.
SRFox, what an interesting idea. Life powered fuel cells. It will be amazing if they can get it to the right people. Either way, fuel cells make more sense in the fact that they can carry more energy in them per pound than batteries currently can. Batteries are sill good technologies to look into though. Anyway of storing energy is a good thing to look into, as well as the percent efficiency of that energy being used for the objective.
Greetings,
You folks have a good discussion going here, and I'd like to join in. I would like to bring the "data" from the Automotive X-Prize into the conversation; in the Knockout Round, there were 24 cars. Six were internal combustion, 5 were hybrids, and 12 were electric. (I am counting the FVT as electric, because it never used it's onboard generator; so it carried that weight around and never needed it.) Please look at my blog entry called "X-Prize Knockout Round - Con't." for a more detailed version of this -- the link should be part of this post.
The 6 ICE powered vehicles got an average of ~83MPGe.
The 5 hybrid vehicles got an average of ~62MPGe.
The 12 electric powered vehicles got an average of ~134MPGe.
Now, while weight is a very important factor, as is aerodynamic drag and rolling efficiency -- I posit that drive train efficiency is the most important, of the four. Here's why: the ICE powered vehicles were the lowest weight, by far, of the 23 vehicles. The 4 Edison2 cars are very light, the Spira is even lighter, and the heavyweight of the group was the BITW.
So, based on the results of the Knockout Round (http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/files/downloads/auto/Knockout_Final_Results_v1.0_06-29-10.pdf) the order of the four main factors that affect efficiency, from most important to least; quoting myself from my blog:
The X-Prize results table does not include weights, but I daresay that the average weight of the internal combustion cars was lowest (the Edison2 and Spira are all much lighter!).
The best aero drag is on the X-Tracer, followed by a very close group including the Aptera, Edison2, Li-ion.
As many have said, the X-Prize is setting a very high standard (which is both good and bad). They are essentially looking for the complete package, and virtually no glitches. Even the well financed/professional teams had several glitches. I would have set up the X-Prize a bit differently; to measure (and therefore emphasize and encourage) the four main things that need to be improved to get the maximum efficiency.
Those four critical things are; from most important to least important (as I am interpreting the Knockout results):
* Drivetrain Efficiency
* Aerodynamic Drag
* Weight
* Rolling Efficiency
Sincerely, Neil
Well Neil, Kevin said a long time ago that the electrics have a distinct advantage in calculating the MPGe, because the X-prize's electric cars did not take into consideration of the thermal losses at the power plant. Here in this discussion is where we can account for it.
Now, if you included thermal heat conversion into the equation for the electrics already then yes, based on your numbers 83,62, and 134 for electrics would seem to indicate that drive train efficiency is possibly of the highest importance. However, if you, along with the x prize, did not include the thermal conversion loss at the power plant, then the BEV's would have roughly 50% of their original 134 MPGe, putting them at 67 MPGe. So, then they would be better than hybrid, but interestingly enough is that the ICE would be on top in this case.
Either way though, Neil I very much agree that drive-train efficiency would be more important than rolling resistance. I think on the overall though we've narrowed it down to those 4 things quite well. Aerodynamics certainly plays a huge role, as does weight, and drive train efficiency. Rolling resistance, eh, not quite as critical as the rest but still important. Which is interesting, because many contenders were using three wheelers.
One thing I do know is that Sharks have a lower swimming resistance than many other fish of the same volume and shape. The reason is denticles on their placoid scales actually create tiny "eddies" kind of similar to a golf ball's dimples, only it's been optimized from millions of years of evolution for swimming through a medium in a somewhat straight direction. Swimmers have used suits replicated like a shark's for beating world records in swimming faster. If we could expand this by 600 times, since air is 600 times less dense than air, it would mean that a car with that "skin" on it could gain a significant aerodynamic co-efficient advantage. Just an idea from the biologist.
to Kevin, John, and the rest of you guys.
I find myself confused. John posted an article by Kevin Bullis, other posts come from Kevin, and I am Jim Bullis. Who the heck is who? I am Jim Bulis and Kevin might be Kevin Bullis. But Jim Bullis does not know Kevin Bullis, though that might not be a bad thing.
Some of the discussion here can be guided by a complete formulation, though approximate, for the various forces on a vehicle: (written in text is clumsy)
F = (Cd x A x rho x velocity ^2)/2 + Cr x W + m x a + W x sin (alpha)
where
Cd is the aerodynamic drag coefficient,
A is the projected frontal area,
rho is density of air,
Cr is the coefficient of rolling resistance which includes tires mostly, but also machinery losses,
W is the full weight of the vehicle, and it does not matter how many wheels support it,
alpha is angle of road from horizontal,
m is mass, and
a is acceleration.
The first two terms are always positive, and the last two can be positive or negative, hence the opportunity for regenerative braking exist, and theoretically this can eliminate these terms, though the First Law says it can never be complete. Acceleration effects from the m x a term can be huge, so regenerative braking is really important. I think we can observe that edison2 cars were hurt in the urban and city performance by the lack of this capability. And also we can observe that batteries for this purpose do not have to be that big, since they do not operate for long periods of time. The same is true for hill climbing, though to lesser degree.
At low speeds the aerodynamic force term mostly goes away, and if really good regenerative braking is used, weight is of prime importance.
However, most of us want to get around quickly so that aero term often dominates the others. Cr is considered constant at all speeds, though only roughly constant, but its increase with speed is not very significant.
Work or energy required is force times distance and power is force times velocity in the direction of force. A simple integral form is needed if velocity is not constant.
The reason for writing this is to show that making a car very light is only part of the battle for efficiency, and in fact, it is not generally the most important part. Weight plays no part at all in aero drag.
Cr also is not related to the number of wheels on the vehicle, since more wheels simply means that weight on each wheel is less.
I am trying to make the case that weight should not take such precedence in a design process. Toyota seemed to agree with me on that with their Prius configuration.
Basically, I contend that there is still a lot of opportunity to improve things in the aerodynamic department, though necessity of regenerative braking should be recognized as a basic assumption.
But take note, the equation says nothing about how the force needed to move the vehicle is provided. It makes no difference whether it comes from a heat engine carried on the vehicle or a heat engine somewhere else, with electricity as the carrier of energy to the vehicle. Edison2 has made this statement. Of course, there is a point where heat is made and converted in both systems, and of course that should be the basis of comparing efficiency. If this had been done correctly by the Xprize folks, all the electric vehicles would have flunked and edison2 would have been the clear winner in all categories. Why? Because they did the overall job very well, even though some areas could be improved on. The electric cars were coasting in with sloppy designs that were made to look good from the mis-guided xprize rules.
Jim,
Excellent post.
Let me add slightly to this discussion.
Having graphed the equation for the Aptera vehicle, I was really surprised at the important of rolling resistance once the aerodynamics are in good shape. On a typical car, aerodynamic forces and rolling resistance forces are about equal at 30MPH. On the Aptera, due to low drag, they forces are equal at close to 50 or 60 MPH.
This means that weight and the rolling resistance of the tires become the limiting factor in low aero-drag vehicles.
I also take strong exception to the idea that a heat engine should be considered as the source of electrons for EVs. Those electrons can, and should, come from solar, wind, and hydro. At this point, the idea of efficiency is totally strained. Do you really want to compared relative efficiency of
A) fossil fuel converted to torque at the wheels of a car to
B) efficiency of sun light converted to electrons into a battery, out of the battery, into an electric motor to create torque at the wheels of a car?
These efficiencies don't really have the same meaning. Lack of efficiency in an ICE engine has many negative consequences, CO2 emissions, pollution emission, balance of trade issues, noise, etc. In contrast, lack of efficiencies from solar panels only have a negative economic implication. Solar panels with less than 100% efficiency don't make extra noise, extra pollution, etc. So not all efficiencies can be meaningfully compared.
The best comparison for efficiencies would be
1) Burn gasoline in a power plant, generate electricity, send it over the wires, to the battery, to drive an EV electric motor to generate torque to the wheels., versus
2) Burn gasoline in an ICE engine to generate torque for the wheels.
This would be a great technical comparison, but completely irrelevant. We do not generate much electricity from gasoline in this country. So the comparison is meaningless.
You might ask yourself why don't we generate electricity from gasoline in this country? Well, again it is all the negative consequences of expense, balance of trade, etc. There are simply more economic ways of making electricity than burning gasoline.
So let's not make meaningless comparisons about EVs assuming that a heat engine is the source of electricity.
Later
John C. Briggs
Biologist -- The idea of reducing drag with dimples on a car's sheet metal is interesting. Dimples help golf balls with their high surface area to mass ratio, and 180 mph air speeds. i wonder what percent difference dimples would make on the drag of a VLC traveling at 60 mph?
Well if mythbusters can be trusted, dimpling helps quite a bit.
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/10/22/mythbusters-golf-ball-like-dimpling-mpg/
Greetings!
The reason that the X-Prize doesn't add any losses from the power plant, is that gasoline and diesel and every other fuel also have additional losses in production. Gasoline doesn't just materialize from nowhere -- it has a lot of energy, including a lot of electricity and natural gas "input" at every stage along the way. From what I understand, this leads to a far greater amount of "embedded" energy in gasoline and diesel, than is "contained" in electricity.
I won't go into the numbers, but suffice it to say, for the purposes of this discussion, I think we need to compare BTU's used by the vehicle -- for the same reason that the X-Prize did it. It is the efficiency of the car as a system that we are interested in for this discussion.
Electric drive trains are far more efficient that are piston driven internal combustion engines. For starters, virtually all the energy is applied in a near perfect vector to rotate the armature and create torque. The peak pressure developed in a piston engine is too early in the rotation of the crankshaft to get the best mechanical advantage (it needs to occur more like 60d past TDC, and in reality it occurs 10-15d past TDC; when it is partly "trying" to bend the crankshaft sideways. Then there are all the parasitic losses and the pumping losses, and the frictional losses. And last but not least, an ICE needs a transmission with different gears to try and keep it in the best RPM range; and there is idling losses. And, ICE power trains require a lot more maintenance; including oil changes, which obviously add even more embedded energy in the system.
So, electric drive trains have different challenges. They do still have some heat losses, which increase the resistance, which increases the amperage used, and this can get into run away mode. So, the electric motor can need some cooling. But, it is much less cooling than an ICE requires, and so it makes a lower drag cooling system possible. A differential is still needed if you have one motor, but not if you use direct drive; like several of the X-Prize cars did (FVT and Raceabout and maybe others, too). Yes, the weight of the batteries is an issue, and it affects city-type driving the most, but as it happens, this is where an EV is best, because of the peak torque at 0 RPM. And the weight helps coasting (greater potential energy) and so it is not as big of an issue as one might have thought.
Packaging in an EV is a bit easier. And regenerative braking can be done far more easily and effectively on an EV. I think that there may be other things like regenerative suspension, that might increase the efficiency of EV's, though certainly not to the same degree. Energy density in an EV is no where near as high as a gasoline car -- but then again, almost nothing else is as dense, either! This is why it is such a shame that we have squandered this amazing resource.
Electricity has one HUGE advantage over most liquid fuels: it can come from many, varied sources, and it can easily be renewable and locally generated -- making it independent of most things that make petroleum so problematic. And those renewable sources are limitless, for intents and purposes. Once we transition away from finite energy supplies as much as possible -- we can use electricity without any guilt, maybe even? :-)
So, electricity is locally produced and can transition to renewable sources. Most of the money surrounding electricity stays in the local economy, and none of it requires any military spending, and no soldier's lives are lost, and doesn't put our foreign policy in a bind. Electricity can come from many sources, makes regenerative gains possible.
Electricity is the nexus, and the pragmatic energy.
Sincerely, Neil
John C. Briggs,
The folks in California who need their air conditioners might be wishing for coal to be the cheap source of power that it would be without the California law that prohibited it. This was not an economic development based on market forces.
Those who might have planned industrial expansions here might also be taking note of the future shortages and cost of power that we have to anticipate, as is the case since we are dependent on cheap natural gas to make things work.
$.30 to $.50 per kWhr is not an electricity price that will help bring California out of economic depression.
Of course, everything will be fine when there is reserve capacity from solar panels that is standing by to fill EV loads. Then the term 'MPGe' will be completely meaningless, as it is now for EVs.
Jim Bullis,
The term "need" is often thrown around carelessly, as in "need air conditioners." All too often people "need" a Ford Expedition because they just had a baby, or they need a second or third refrigerator, etc. etc. Life is full of choices. California has made one and it has implications, good and bad, for the people who live there. Now the people get to make their decisions.
I was amused recently to find out that the NIagara Falls can be shut down over night just to supply more cheap electricity. It shows the interesting compromises we make between cheap electric power and the environment.
Thanks
John C. Briggs