Don’t worry, just a little bump - $70 is just around the corner. Short traders just keep making those margin calls, mortgage the house if you have to. Fortunes await you! PO is for pansies and doomers. At $70 short some more ..... it is going back to $22 .... the world is awash with oil ........ reality has nothing to do with it, its all in those charts!!!!!!!!!!
Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2005 11:58 pm Post subject: Why not switch to electric cars?
Read. This article is the personal experience of a man who owns and operates them, and charges them with solar panels on his house. What the article doesn't mention is that the RAV4 EV he owns using antiquated 1990s technology can do 120 miles per charge, 0-60 mph in 17 seconds, seat 5, and tops out at 80 mph. In mass production, it could have been a $25,000 SUV back in like 1998. Now days it would be even cheaper to sell at a profit in mass production and would have double the range and performance faster than the gas version.
Electric cars are not an all-encompassing solution that will magically solve our problems. Indeed, we need to drastically look at cutting car use to about 1/3 to 1/2 of its current level in the states and make cities walkable, bikable, and with mass transit. But in the short term, it is a way to KILL 40%+ of America's oil use, at least 10% of the world's oil consumption just by cutting the fuel from America's cars by themselves. Start switching Europes, Asia's, Australia's cars to electric as well? We've freed up 30% of the world's oil!
Anyway, read:
Why Not Switch to Electric Cars?
We hear a lot of empty talk about attaining energy independence and about reducing our need for overseas imported oil. But absolutely nothing is being done by our oily political leaders.
Yet there is something that people have found they can do, and which bears out the axiom "when the people lead, the leaders follow." There is a small but surprisingly unyielding number of people who adopt the "PV-EV" way of living, using solar Photo-Voltaic ("PV") panels to generate more electricity than they can use and driving a plug-in electric vehicle ("EV") to soak up some of that power. The only impediments to expansion of this small number are the loss of our solar panel industry to foreign companies and the failure of our leaders to make plug-in electric cars available for sale on the open market.
There is more than enough off-peak electricity available to easily allow the transfer of all of our driving miles from gasoline- to electric-powered vehicles. That's an exciting prospect, but for now let's just see how we can eliminate overseas oil imports.
http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic8972.html _________________ The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
Joined: Dec 20, 2004 Posts: 890 Location: Scotland
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:07 am Post subject: Re: Why not switch to electric cars?
Quote:
one problem being that the construction of an electric car consumes the same quantity of oil as a regular car would comsume in its lifetime.
that cant be true. plus, the normal car must use some oil in construction too. im pretty sure an electric car would require less maintenance too, and would not require servicing as much and would probably last a lot longer than a normal car.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 4:51 am Post subject: Re: Why not switch to electric cars?
Albente, do you have a link for the car you posted? Or even the manufacturer's name. I actually think it's an interesting design, plus or minus the fact that it appears to be a "commuter vehicle" i.e. single seat with no real cargo capacity.
NEWS FLASH:
Today I spoke with a friend of a friend, who I met some time ago. His company will be producing electric cars with specs that will give any gearhead a proverbial hard-on.
They've built a working prototype. Working. Performing on spec.
He's got more than adequate capital to do the job right. Including dealing with all the obnoxious regulatory overhead. He's got adequate staff for the latter task as well as the engineering aspects. That says something.
He's got some very interesting angles in his engineering and in his business plan.
He's got new patents under application.
His company has been carefully avoiding publicity, and their website is deliberately opaque about details. When they unveil this thing, jaws are going to drop.
He told me a bunch of stuff I can't disclose in public. I'm going to go see him in a couple of weeks. This is the real deal, no BS, no pie in the sky.
He's hiring.
And the jobs come with real paychecks (probably also with stock options).
Anyone here who is really serious about doing electric vehicles that make the best gasoline-powered cars look clunky & slow by comparison, feel free to get in touch with me via private-message on this board, send me your phone number, and we can talk and see what happens.
Joined: Oct 16, 2004 Posts: 1371 Location: Appalachian Foothills of Virginia
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 6:10 am Post subject: Re: Why not switch to electric cars?
The_Toecutter wrote:
Electric cars are not an all-encompassing solution that will magically solve our problems.
Indeed, I had been a member of the Electrical Vehicle Association of America. The only problem with electric vehicles at this time is the expansion of electrical grid capacity; would that be coal? nuclear? how would renewables play into this?
If coal, then a shift to electric vehicles would blacken our skies. "Clean coal" is an oxymoron, regardless of how pristine their commercials look.
Nuclear could work; where are we going to put the waste, as Yucca Mountain's feasibility is questionable for the waste we have now? How many thousands of nuke plants will it take to replace oil?
The true answer lies in renewables, energy efficiency, and conservation. Networks of buses and light rail. Bike paths. Walkable communities.
Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 257 Location: Sydney, Australia
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 6:35 am Post subject: Re: Why not switch to electric cars?
Quote:
one problem being that the construction of an electric car consumes the same quantity of oil as a regular car would comsume in its lifetime.
I think this is a fallacy. I believe the original line was something like... the construction of a car consumes the same quantity of oil as a regular car would consume in one year. I think it comes from Energy for Survival, an Alternative to Extinction published in 1974.
If anybody has any actually figures on this subject could you please PM me. _________________ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. - Aldous Huxley
Joined: Apr 06, 2004 Posts: 257 Location: Sydney, Australia
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 6:39 am Post subject: Re: Why not switch to electric cars?
At the risk of creating my own fallacy... I have heard that as most EVs would be recharged during non peak-periods the actually demand increase for electricity would be in the range of 7-12%. Can't seem to find where I read that one so take with a grain of sodium chloride.
Toecutter, you got the low down? (love your handle btw!)
MAD MAX
Station Master: That must be your friend over there. They didn't leave much of him.
Bubba Zanetti: Must've cut his heart out, eh?
Station Master: Yes. That's what I meant. Poor bastard!
Toecutter: [whirls on the Station Manager] The Nightrider. That is his name... the Nightrider.
Station Master: [frightened] The NightRider.
Toecutter: Remember him when you look at the night sky!
Station Master: I will.
Toecutter: Take your hat off.
Station Master: Anything you say.
Toecutter: Anything I say. What a wonderful philosophy you have. Take him away. _________________ Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. - Aldous Huxley
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 7:27 am Post subject: Re: Why not switch to electric cars?
rowante wrote:
At the risk of creating my own fallacy... I have heard that as most EVs would be recharged during non peak-periods
Don't get hung up on peak vs non-peak power. Both require the same amount of coal (for eg) to produce a Kw/H of electricity. The reason off-peak power is cheap(er) is a practical one. Steam boilers can't be powered up/down or switched on/off at a whim. Providers need to keep "spinning reserve" to meet their delivery obligations. Think of a coal fired generator as a super-tanker: Hard to start, hard to stop, hard to change either speed or direction. But never cheap! But during off-peak they can buy from a hydro when a gen set drops off-line who merely opens a tap. Easy. But the hydro sells at a premium, in spite of his power sourse being "free".
I worked for a while with a generating authority and if there was water available, frequency control (they don't control voltage) was given to our hydro station. This station (Kareeya) regularly exceeded 110% of design capacity. The operator (only one) loved us comms guys, without us they only had the radio.
Joined: Oct 16, 2004 Posts: 1371 Location: Appalachian Foothills of Virginia
Posted: Fri Sep 02, 2005 7:42 am Post subject: Re: Why not switch to electric cars?
rostov wrote:
Self-build wind turbine in a place with strong prevailing winds, plugged into an electric car.
Possible?
Yes, though one has to know what they are doing. A major factor is turbine sizing based on vehicle energy use, seaonal/daily variability in wind. You would need to determine what voltage you are going to run the vehicle at, then determine how to obtain that voltage from the wind power system.
I assume on those times when the wind is low, the vehicle will be plugged into house power to recharge?
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