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Electric Cars


ignis

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It looks like that nobody has ever heard of Fuel Cells. :lol:

Almost all manufacturers are still doing R&D and some field trials on fuel cell vehicles, but the problem remains that hydrogen is the most logical fuel for the idea, and it requires new infrastructure. The other problem is making the stuff - the places where they're trialling it are usually islands with good persistant winds, using windmills to split the H2O into H. Outside of these type of environments, the amount of energy needed to split H2O exceeds what it can give back as a generator fuel, so not cost/energy effective on a large scale.

Battery powered electric currently make the most sense, as everyone has the ability to charge themselves, rolling out additional infrastructure (i.e. charging stations) is quick/cheap, and battery tech is progressing at a pace that continually improves storage capacity, weight and price.

Don't forget that fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles too :)

Edited by MoonRiverOasis
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I know more than something about 'fuel cells'. There happens to be a multitude of fuel cell types, many of which do not rely on hydrogen as a fuel component.

The main problems with fuel cells are temperature (operating) & weight versus effiency.

Don't forget that fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles too

A fuel cell is not a 'vehicle', unless your meaning is obtuse.

Edited by elkangorito
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Don't forget that fuel cell vehicles are electric vehicles too

A fuel cell is not a 'vehicle', unless your meaning is obtuse.

Selective reading I see. He did say Fuel Cell Vehicle which is standard terminology. Fuelcelleconomy.gov

I also "know more then something" about the technology as Senior Researcher directly involved in fuel cell research at a university and coauthor of several publications on the subject. ;)

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I know more than something about 'fuel cells'. There happens to be a multitude of fuel cell types, many of which do not rely on hydrogen as a fuel component.

Apologies if my earlier reply seemed a bit simpleton elkangorito, but there was nothing from you to suggest you had any expertise in field ;)

I also "know more then something" about the technology as Senior Researcher directly involved in fuel cell research at a university and coauthor of several publications on the subject. ;)

In that case, we're all quite fortunate to have two experts on hand - great! :)

Either of you care to bring us up to speed on the latest fuel cell developments (for automotive applications)?

Perhaps an educated guess on how long you think it'll be before they'll truly be commercially competitive for general automotive use?

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  • 1 year later...

Electric vehicles at present tend to mean "hybrids" or "battery powered" - both source visually all their energy from oil or other fossil fuels

A "fuel cell" wouldn't do that....

Well, a fuel cell still needs Hydrogen, and still requires rare materials for it's electrolytes, so they're not without environmental impact.

In any case, it's all acedemic. The cost of electricity from a Hydrogen fuel cell is still at best 400% more expensive than grid electricity. Some experts say they might match grid prices sometime in the 2020's (but even then, that could be based on systems that have operating temps far in excess of what could safely be used in public transportation) , but most experts are less optmistic, putting their estimates more in the 2050 to never range.

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Yes, and the oil companies bought the patent and destroyed the research.

That sounds a bit far fetched.

The other thing about electric that concerns me is if everyone (or a lot of people) start using electric cars, how will the national grids cope with the massive amount of extra electricity required?

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I thought fuel cells PRODUCED hydrogen which in turn was used as fuel?

Furthermore I believe that an experimental fuel cell bus (i.e. public transport) is in use in Australia?

If you're talking fuel cells in the context of what every major car manufacturer that's played with fuel cells has used, they all convert hydrogen into electricity (to run the car) and water (as the primary by-product "exhaust") - i.e. Hydrogen is the fuel.

Hydrogen is created from water using a process that consumes masses of electricity...

Edited by MoonRiverOasis
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Yes, but there’s not pollution because electricity is clean.

Besides, the car companies are in bed with they oils companies, they don’t want clean running, energy efficient cars. Back in the ‘70s there was and engineer that developed an engine that burned water, and look what happened to him. The oil companies bought the patent then destroyed the engine and research.

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how will the national grids cope with the massive amount of extra electricity required?

Why ? you are charging batteries, if you charged everyday the amount of electric used would be less the 1x air con..

1500 w electric motorbike use 3 baht of electric to charge....

As things are at the moment would think people buying electric cars would be the ones using there car 1 or 2 times a week, so the cost would be no more than running a electric fridge or PC per month.. maybe one day there will be fast charge electric filling stations everywhere....

Just think for a moment you use petrol........ lots of electric used at refineries, pumps to get it to storage tanks, pumps to get it to tankers, pumps to get it in you car.......... just look at a motorbike/scooter for 36 baht for petrol you can cover the same distance for 3 baht using electric..

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how will the national grids cope with the massive amount of extra electricity required?

Why ? you are charging batteries, if you charged everyday the amount of electric used would be less the 1x air con..

1500 w electric motorbike use 3 baht of electric to charge....

As things are at the moment would think people buying electric cars would be the ones using there car 1 or 2 times a week, so the cost would be no more than running a electric fridge or PC per month.. maybe one day there will be fast charge electric filling stations everywhere....

Just think for a moment you use petrol........ lots of electric used at refineries, pumps to get it to storage tanks, pumps to get it to tankers, pumps to get it in you car.......... just look at a motorbike/scooter for 36 baht for petrol you can cover the same distance for 3 baht using electric..

You don't get something for nothing - A car - and a slightly heavier one than a petro lot diesel car requires the same energy to move it whether powered by electric or gs/diesel.

THere are millions of cars if they are replaced with electric ones the power that was distributed through the petrochemical industries will have to be sent through the national grid - and the extra power that needs will be gained by burning the same fossil fuels that ae currently used to produce gasoline and diesel.

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Just think for a moment, should we burn oil to generate rotational force to generate electricity to charge a battery to store electricity to generate rotational force, or just burn oil to generate rotational force. Yes, I can see where battery powered cars make a lot of sense.

Last time I looked, scooters didn’t have radios, air conditioning and comfortable all-weather seating. That said, if everyone plugged in another refrigerator the grid would overload pretty fast. Also, quick-charge stations still have to get the power from the grid. This would actually create a bigger problem in that overnight charging uses power during off-peak hours, where quick-charge stations would use power during peak-hours. Of cource, once everyone starts changing their cars at night there will be no off-peak hours.

Currently (no pun intended) electric cars make sense in a limited number of applications, but we will not see widespread usage until an inexpensive, reliable “super-conductor” is developed. A big breakthrough here would mark the end of the internal combustion engine in automotive applications. Unless of course the oil companies buy the patent and destroy the research.

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1500 w electric motorbike use 3 baht of electric to charge....

. just look at a motorbike/scooter for 36 baht for petrol you can cover the same distance for 3 baht using electric..

I use an electric scooter in China and have for 5 years. I love it. But even if the electricity were free, battery replacement (sealed lead acid) costs about the same per km ridden as a gas powered scooter. I start out with 30 km of range and within a year, it's down to 10 km on a full charge. I now replace the batteries when I get to about 20 km on a charge and that's 4 each at about $20 per battery. And if I had to pay any disposal costs for the batteries, (or took into consideration the lead and sulfur pollution), it would look even more grim.

I'm a fan of electric vehicles, including the 2 wheel type, but if you look at the total cost and total pollution created per km throughout their life cycle, I don't see them coming out much ahead of a gasoline engine that's sized to get around and not sized to break speed records.

Still, I'm enjoying the back and forth and hoping they come up with something great.

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Interesting read through with EV cars being around since the 1800’s, it reminded me of an email sent that was trying to get a people power thing going about when buying a car ask if they have any EV, Hydro or water powered cars, the story goes :-

Starting with the 1996 GM EV1 used in California 0 – 100 km/h under 9.0 secs, 10 years later they were gone !! Reason, could only rent not buy, GM claimed them back and crushed em. post-87530-0-40421600-1327999826.jpg

The lease of 1997 Nissan hyper mini EV chosen to be used by the DOT in Pasdenna, 2006 least ran out, they tried to buy them but Nissan said no, took em back and crushed em.

post-87530-0-54933200-1327999880_thumb.j

The talk of the leases of the 1997 Toyota Rav4-EV-4x4 is maybe not brought up in 2012, better for PR, in 2003 they decided to stop production and you’ve guess it in 2005 leases ran out, Toyota recovered them and destroyed em.

Some people got together and saved their beloved Rav4 in a 3 month battle to be able to buy them, they won but all in vain because production & parts were discontinued and the battery EV-95-NiMH patents were bought by Chevron - Texaco for $30 m, the factory was dismantled & closed. post-87530-0-87559700-1327999932_thumb.j

Lobbies of the the big money oil companies and motoring industries will always be in control, Taking speed out of the equation and just adding comfort imagine the Genepax water energy system car going into production !! At 80 km/h for 1 hour it uses 1 litre of water, you don’t have to wonder what would happen to the price of oil. post-87530-0-68961700-1327999983_thumb.j

Cars OK but going back to speed, what about the E1pc motorcycle made by Moto Czysz a motorcycle company based in Portland, Oregon, when at the IOM TT they recorded a winning time of 99 mph ( 160 Kph. ) average lap speed. on an electric motorcycle. not bad when you think a 1000cc machine time is 131mph ( 210 Kph ). post-87530-0-50943400-1328000055_thumb.j

EV yes cost is topical but supply and demand and future development will take care of that.

There was talk about Hydrogen powered cars but to me that should be another topic.

Edited by Kwasaki
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IMO - A viable alternative to Petroleum has not yet been found.

Oil companies are now Energy companies. They have the most money, the most research and the best technology. IF there is a viable alternative, it is these energy companies who will find it utilize it and profit from it.

At the moment there is simply no cost effective (or profitable) alternative to Petroleum. Electric cars while perhaps a nice idea are fundamentally flawed in the fact that energy needs to be generated. It is lost in storage and transport. Nuclear energy is perhaps the only viable 'emissions free' source of this energy (but with significant waste disposal issues).

I suspect Electric cars are simply car manufacturers being politically correct and paying lip service to various governments....

A great energy revolution will occur when nuclear fission is mastered.

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To put a different slant on the thread consider this.

Fuel cells do not use hydrogen exclusively for feed, depending on the design they can use pretty much any fuel including Ethanol. There is a emerging industry in Indonesia for Sugar Palm growing which grows well on poor soils and produces a sugar that can be refined into Ethanol. The sugar Palm does not need exclusive use of the land and can easily be mixed with other food crops, plus produces other products in addition to the sap for sugar/ethanol. I cannot find the exact figures I was looking at the other day, however I will stick my neck out and say it was 6 mature palms will produce 20,000 litres of Ethanol per annum from memory. The guy leading the project up is named Willie Smits, so if interested let google be your friend.

Anyway we have a green option for providing Ethanol, Indonesia/Thailand similar sort of climate, a fuel cell that can use Ethanol as feed, so what are the chances of an EV using this mix plus batteries and grid top up as required. PS I work fo an oil company and I am not really worried, there are more uses for oil than just car fuel. Diesel, jet fuel, lubricants, petrochem and plastics come to mind.

Cheers

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Sorry if this comes across as sounding like a downer (I'd love to be optimistic about it), but I'm a believer that there's no commercial future for fuel cells in civilian applications. That's not to say they won't have their applications, but when it comes to buyers that are going to be comparing the technology against more mainstream (and far cheaper) options (i.e. civilians), it's just not going to fly.

Hybrids are the short and medium term future - but not necessarily in the same shape/form as we know them now though. We're soon going to start seeing a wider spectrum of hybrid designs - some lower-cost versions that simply use ultracapacitors and low-cost small motors to help FE in stop-and-go traffic (e.g. Mazda's i-ELOOP), up to models like the Volt (AKA Ampere) and Jag C-X75 which are solely electric propulsion, using gasoline (and other fuels) the recharge their battery packs on the move.

Pure EV is still waiting for the "magic electrode" battery that can withstand routine high-rate charging, and achieve higher levels of effeciency, an energy:weight that's competitve against combustion, and a reasonable range (i.e. 300+KM). There's so much work going on in so many places, that it's highly likely we'll be seeing some real improvements in this area within just a few years though.

My guess... In developed markets Hybrid's will be outselling combustion-only models by around 2015-2017, and pure EV will finally get viable range and recharge abilities (though still at a price premium) before this decade is out.

I don't think there's anyone in the world that's optimistic enough to think the Fuel Cells will get anywhere close to competing with these types of timeframes. And form a business standpoint, once battery tech makes the grade, fuel cells will quicly be relagated to strictly military applications only.

Just my thoughts :)

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Sorry if this comes across as sounding like a downer (I'd love to be optimistic about it), but I'm a believer that there's no commercial future for fuel cells in civilian applications. That's not to say they won't have their applications, but when it comes to buyers that are going to be comparing the technology against more mainstream (and far cheaper) options (i.e. civilians), it's just not going to fly.

Hybrids are the short and medium term future - but not necessarily in the same shape/form as we know them now though. We're soon going to start seeing a wider spectrum of hybrid designs - some lower-cost versions that simply use ultracapacitors and low-cost small motors to help FE in stop-and-go traffic (e.g. Mazda's i-ELOOP), up to models like the Volt (AKA Ampere) and Jag C-X75 which are solely electric propulsion, using gasoline (and other fuels) the recharge their battery packs on the move.

Pure EV is still waiting for the "magic electrode" battery that can withstand routine high-rate charging, and achieve higher levels of effeciency, an energy:weight that's competitve against combustion, and a reasonable range (i.e. 300+KM). There's so much work going on in so many places, that it's highly likely we'll be seeing some real improvements in this area within just a few years though.

My guess... In developed markets Hybrid's will be outselling combustion-only models by around 2015-2017, and pure EV will finally get viable range and recharge abilities (though still at a price premium) before this decade is out.

I don't think there's anyone in the world that's optimistic enough to think the Fuel Cells will get anywhere close to competing with these types of timeframes. And form a business standpoint, once battery tech makes the grade, fuel cells will quicly be relagated to strictly military applications only.

Just my thoughts smile.png

You like my post then.? smile.png

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