Running on Empty: Cars that Never Need Gas (Sierra Club)

Running on Empty: Cars that Never Need Gas _______

There are hybrids. There are electric cars that plug into a wall and get their juice from whatever mix the electric company is offering. And then there are electic cars that are charged by solar panels on the roof of one's house. They never need gas, and the power is free after the set-up cost.

We wondered: How tough is it to do this? Are electric cars hard to find? Is it difficult to get a rooftop solar collector set up? Here are the stories of two guys whose vehicles run on empty...>


http://www.sierraclub.org/wecandoit/home/electric_cars.asp

I love the thought of solar power. Extremely cloudy days and night can make travel prohibitive.

However, the vehicle can still have a very low carbon impact if it has a photovoltaic charging source for more than half of the charging that it needs to do. (yes, it is dreamy)

Home Power magazine. They had a how to, a couple of issues back.

company was going to set a very aggressive goal to get the first truly viable reasonably priced electric vehicle on the market. He said this is what consumers want. I believe his goal was 2012.
We will be needing a new car in a couple years. I have been saving my pennies hoping that a viable EV would be available when we are ready.

been for some time except for market manipulation by major car manufacturers who know that combustion engine cars represent long-term profit for them and their compatriots in the oil industry.

Wiki on "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

was the battery - not enough range, too long to recharge, not enough life. Whatevere happened to the Altairnano battery?

capability -- if I recall correctly from the film GM bought the company from the inventor of the greatly superior battery and then, essentially, shut it down. The inventor got to continue inventing but nothing went into production. My memory could be fuzzy, but I remember my jaw-dropping around that point in the film.

:(

to bet the farm on electric. I would imagine there would need to be some validation before retooling. Big bet on hispart.

a life expectancy of about 10 years. They're also very expensive. Does anyone know for sure if that's true?

but are expected to last "indefinately." Their efiiciency may decline over time, so you may have to add panels twenty or thirty years down the line.

Most panels used today in larger installations are warrantied to produce their rated power for 20 years, some for 25 years. That means a 100 watt panel bought today will still be producing at least 100 watts in full sunshine in 2028. And it won't stop dead the next day. It'll trail off gradually

And past panels, warrantied for fewer years, have generally outperformed their warranties. That's part of why warranty periods have increased.

I think a problem not yet anticipated is that todays panels are going to outlast the roofing materials they cover.

There is a professor at Univ. of Toledo (who actually lives in MI, just south of Detroit) who runs his home off of PV and charges his electric pickup from the same source. The Detroit/Toledo area is not exactly known for sunny weather, but he manages with only a little occasional make-up from the grid.

How can you charge it if you are using the truck (and you're not home) during the day? How big do the solar collectors need to be? What is the capital and energy investment in the solar collectors?

I suspect the answers will be disappointing.

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/index.php

expensive, but can pay for itself in 5 - 10 years.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1016_TVhypercar.html

Just to think, there are only 250 million cars in the United States.

It's a slam dunk, this bit.

The battery has two huge problems, first is is basic lack of efficiency, for every watt you put into a battery you get 1/4 watt out of it. For small electronics this is not bad, for transportation it is terrible. Around 1900 one of the local Railroads ran battery trains. They worked alright for the short distance they ran, but up the only grade the car went on, the Railroad had to install an electric Trolley system to provide enough power to go up the hill (Steam Railroads did NOT like installing electric lines where steam engines went, the Steam and soot from the Steam engines tended to ruin the electric lines, which meant they had to be replaced almost weekly (This problem disappeared with Diesels). Competition from Automobiles did in the battery car even before Diesel did in the Steam locomotive on that line. I mention the battery railroad car for it is an old concept, but whose limitations have been known for over 100 years. Batteries have NOT improved much since 1900, they have become smaller and lighter but the energy efficiency is still terrible.

Now Fuel Cells have a 50% efficiency ratio, a hugh improvement over batteries, but at a much higher costs for the fuel cell. The most efficient is the Fly-wheel, with its 90% efficiency rating, but at much higher costs AND increase danger if the fly wheel get lose in an accident (Thus no one is thinking in terms of Fly Wheels, but Fuel Cells are being Researched).

The second problem is that the 25% efficiency rating assumes moderate to high temperatures, Batteries efficiency really drops like a rock below Freezing (Thus GM only marketed its late 1990 Electric cars in Southern California).

I am sorry, the better solution may be to go back to Streetcars with overhead electric lines, you eliminate the 50-75% loss of power inherent when using Fuel Cells/Batteries bu at the cost of fixed lines of transportation. We may have to unlearn that the best way to get from one place to another is by Car (i.e. the most efficient way to get somewhere may be on an electric Train or Streetcar).

But you are really off base about battery efficiencies and capabilities. I'd suggest you would benefit some additional research.

Lithium is both safe and better than 90% efficient. Particularly interesting is the nanowire technology for using silicon as the anodes; it stores 8-10X the current capacity of LIon.

The temperature problem isn't difficult to deal with if you are using insulation and a plug in V2G configuration.

I ran across a lot of cites singing the praise of Lithium Ion, Claiming 99% efficiency in some cases (but that is storage power, i.e. once the battery is charged it will retain 99% of the power stored). My problem is power STORED is not the same as power used to store that power. That is where the 25% efficiency kicks in for most batteries (i.e. what it takes to store power, NOT how that power is used once Stored). I did look but could NOT find anything on point.

I ran across article talking about being able to store twice as much energy is half the weight as previously done.:
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31939/118/

I ran across articles saying Lithium Ion can be 1/2 the weight of other batteries for storage of the same Amount of Power, this may even increase in the Future, but again that is total energy stored NOT how much energy it took to store that power.

Lithium Ion batteries also lose very little electrical power over time, unlike most other electrical storage devices, but again no comparisons between the electricity GOING INTO THE BATTERY Compared to the electric power out. The problem seems to be Lithium Ion is NOT any better on that factor than other batteries. I ran across articles taking about even greater efficiencies, but again per weight not per watt into the battery:
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908.html
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=5210.php

Thus I have looked and come up empty on the subject I brought up, the "watt in watt out" efficiency of the Lithium ion battery. I appears to be superior to regular batteries but not by much and this still within the 25% efficiency of regular batteries..

You seem to think that the world is just chock full of electric cars running on LiON batteries.

Do you have any idea how many cars are in the US alone?

You don't?

Why am I not surprised?

It takes 30 seconds on Google to find out.

Oh wait a minute. I forgot. You don't believe in government reports, because well, you are - without producing a shred of evidence to support yourself - smarter than the government.

For those who do believe in Government statistics, we have the following.

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html

I note that replacing 250 million cars with LiON battery cars in the era of global climate change is a dead issue.

Of course, one would have to give a rat's ass about the dead to understand this. Frankly there are zero car culture apologists and greenwashers who give a rat's ass about the dead.

Millions of people die each year as a result of the car culture, and that's not even counting the wars that take place to support the car culture.

I note that there is NOT ONE fundie on this website who has even the remotest clue, or even a modicum of research of any type to detail where the lithium for 250 million cars worth of "LiON" batteries is going to come from.

It's all glib fantasy and fraud.

Have a hydrogen HYPErcar on me: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1016_TVhypercar.html

I will amend my previous oft repeated slogan "Ignorance kills," in this case to say that "Ignorance and laziness kills."