why can't we just use electric cars

sirrom

i know this has probably answered already,but when petrol prices become really high ,whats stopping us all from just getting electric cars?
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azreal60

Um, lack of electric cars?

Search posts with toecutter posting. It's doable, don't get me wrong. But both the electric grid having a trouble handling it, and a lack of appropriate battery technology are highly problematic. And by appropriate, I mean useful enough for the application. It's that, and the way american's use their cars make it, well, problematic.
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aahala · Intermediate Crude Joined: Feb 03, 2005 Posts: 954

morph · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 28, 2006 Posts: 105

and the fact that we need to generate the electricity needed to power these cars probably using fossil fuels anyway.

Then there is the technological problems in that most people won't buy an electric car that has a topspeed of 40mph, a range of 50miles and can only carry two people.

Ancien_Opus · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 21, 2005 Posts: 148

You can! Just go buy a Tesla Roadster now (~$80,000) in your choice of four colors and Tesla is planning to have a working Minivan type of vehicle (Whitestar) available by 2009. These utility vehicles will still be costly.

As far as the major manufacturers go, Mitsubishi and GM both have all electric vehicles in the works hopefully by 2010. Ford and others are vigoursly researching electric vehicles. It is doubtful that they will be made in sufficient numbers or inexpensive enough to make a whole lot of difference to the average Joe anytime soon.

If you believe we're all just going to trade in our petrol powered vehicles for electrics, well you're in for a crude awakening. Just keep dreaming. It will cost us all plenty and of course only those still gainfully employed will be able to afford them. Of course that will be for those that have any money left after dropping 24% of their income (historical average pre green revolution) on basic food stuffs! If you're looking for something economical to get through the transition, you best be thinking about a bike or light motor scooter.

pedalling_faster · Intermediate Crude Joined: Dec 10, 2005 Posts: 947

i've been admiring the Zap electric mini-pick-up-truck, one of the guys at the gym has one
http://www.zapworld.com/ZAPWorld.aspx?id=390

BUT - have you ever had a family member in a freeway accident in a small car ? who doesn't want that side impact protection, etc.

as long as the roads are occupied with Big Cars and trucks, getting a small easily crush-able vehicle seems almost like a suicide move.

when companies like Zap make a car that is safe (safer ? relatively safe) in a collision with an SUV - and affordable ($25K ?) - i think then we'll see more electric cars on the road.

steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2560 Location: MA

Electric cars are a great idea, but...

* Driving habits - Driving to the store and driving 25 miles to work isn't enough for Americans. They need to be able to drive 50-100 miles to work to keep driving how they are. They need to be able to make long trips to see relatives scattered all over the country... Perhaps for work it would be easier for a person to sell their house and move closer to work, well if homes were selling...

But I will say that 300 miles from a well engineered battery powered electric car is probable in a commercial vehicle. So only long distance travel would be a problem.

* Scale - The car fleet takes 15 years for a sizable portion to turn over. So after production starts and everyone wants one, and the wealthy market is served, then in 15 years the rest of the market could have electric cars. Assuming there is enough (good quality) lithium battery material in the earth to use in all these cars. Yes the earth has lots of lithium, but you have to remember there are only a few spots where it is cheaply mineable. Otherwise you are trying to extract it from sea water or some other unfeesable scheme... The same goes for most other battery materials, mining enough cadmium could also be an impossible challenge. No one designed the earth so it had enough weird poisonous metals support a billion electric cars.

* The Limited Power Grid - First off, I'll mention a disturbing fact, there is not enough copper in the world to wire up the third world the way we are. And expanding our power grid from this point is going to be very difficult, look at the price of copper due to demand and mining shortages. This takes us back to out metals shortages problem... The grid we have is at maximum capacity and when everyone kicks on their air conditioners at night and plugs in their car, there will be problems (if it's even possible).

* Autonomous charging stations - Well, what about charging stations that run off of wind or solar instead of the grid? It's not a bad idea, though wind or solar require even more batteries to charge cars at night or when the wind isn't blowing. So if there are problems getting batteries this will only make it worse. Could modern super low friction flywheel technologies be used, perhaps. But batteries or flywheels, or directly plugging it into the car, it doesn't matter... Charging stations are trouble, expensive, and slow if they don't have a fast charge system. Trickle charging a fast charge system off the grid might work, but it would be very difficult to set up and costly. If it took just a short half hour to fill up your car, imagine how many chargers this would take.

But this could be made to work if the big heavy batteries could be swapped out like batteries for your mp3 player. Then the solar/wind or whatever could directly charge car batteries and charging time would be less important. Amusingly, that would probably look a lot like the old gas stations from history, perhaps 10 men would come out and change your batteries, clean your windshield and check your tire pressure... Smile

Solar panels - Just a note, like batteries solar is running into the metals shortages problem, they use lots of rare metals and aren't particularly recyclable. So ironically, for this form of renewable energy, the technology itself is not renewable. Isn't that a kick in the head.

* Hydrogen Cars, the tech has so many problems it's a joke. Requires rare metals, likes to explode violently like Hollywood movie explosions, the metals to hydrogen schemes like "aluminum/gallium" loses much of the aluminum and gallium in the recycling process, and would require impossible things like increasing aluminum production by a factor of 100...

But could it be done?

But could it be done and if so how long could an electric car system last? Well numbers aside, I'll give you my gut feeling. I would like to imagine that if our population was decreasing and only first world nations used electric cars, with current technology perhaps half of our car fleet could be replaced by electric for the next 50 - 100 years. If this is the case, there will be electric cars on the streets. Perhaps not for forever, but it's not impossible if production and growth is limited.

And some applications like farm equipment, solar/electric may be more widely implemented. Farm equipment doesn't have to go far, batteries can be rediciously heavy and charging time is not a problem. You can leave a solar powered tractor to charge for a couple days and then plow a field with it. But waiting a couple days for your 6000 pound car to charge might not work as well, you have to use much lighter batteries for a car. So at the very least, there is a great deal of potential for farm equipment to go electric and for a limited number of electric vehicles on the road.

So if our society keeps rolling and doesn't just fall apart, I'm going to guess electric cars have some kind of future (but not like what the I.C.E. had)...

syrac818 · Heavy Crude Joined: Jun 01, 2005 Posts: 115

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/07/toyota-to-obtai.html#more

Pretty cool news IMO. My next car for sure. Seriously, I would never, ever have to fill up.

steam_cannon · Expert Joined: Dec 28, 2006 Posts: 2560 Location: MA

sirrom

thanks for all the info guys,i never really believed that electric cars could replace out current fleet,i just needed some info to try and convince a friend we are all screwed Smile

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Sierrasparky · Coal Joined: Jul 20, 2007 Posts: 2

For those single people out ther yes the Electric car is not for You.
But for all those others I feel they are great.
Most two car familes don't need two cars that travel more than 70 miles a day. I'm sure they dont even need on that goes 50 a day.

I'm sure a lot of you folk saw "who killed the electric car"
Most of us realize that even though the Electric car uses grid power it could be supplemented with Solar.
Also with fewer need for Maintenance :
Oil changes , brakes, clutches, filters, antifreeze, and such The cost in money and environment would still be reduced.
The electric car is much more efficient than a gasoline car.. A gas car wastes a tremendous amount of energy given off as heat, and such

that my view and sticking to it.

MonteQuest

Bas

MonteQuest

Bas