Electric cars, why are some of their ranges so poor?

lordrobs · 4 May 2010 at 16:13

Amp34 said:
Makes sense. However most people don't actually need to drive on those journeys, instead of selling them an electric car which arguably is just as polluting (during manufacturing) get them to walk/cycle or use public transport.

I'll make sure I take a bus next time I do the weekly shop or nip up to B&Q to get some 2m lengths of timber

Hxc · 4 May 2010 at 16:17

Amp34 said:
You mean something like Hydrogen...

Hydrogen is not a viable solution to the "problem", even if you ignore the storage issues. Getting it on it's own is best done by electrolysis, a proceedure that requires rather a lot of electricity, which needs to come from somewhere.

Glaucus · 4 May 2010 at 16:19

Hxc said:
Hydrogen is not a viable solution to the "problem", even if you ignore the storage issues. Getting it on it's own is best done by electrolysis, a proceedure that requires rather a lot of electricity, which needs to come from somewhere.

or as a secondary product from a 4th generation nuclear power plants.
although I still don't think it's the solution.

tapping into the national grid, means no shipping things about in costly tankers. Large set up cost, but ultimate you save in so many areas, it is worth while.

Jonnycoupe · 4 May 2010 at 16:23

Kitchster_uk said:
There is another cost here that people do not count - the rare earth alloys required and the ecological damage caused in their extraction and the fact they are, as the name suggests, rare. Digging this stuff out of the ground generally occurs in 3rd world countries. Much of it is done by the Chinese who basically missed the 'care factory' out of their suite of mass polllution. But the environmentalist mafia are happily ignorant of this, or worse do not want you to know that so they can ponce about in their Prius on the moral high-ground.

I hope your not talking about lanthium, it is called a rare earth metal yet is nothing of the sort in terms of abundance.

Look how clean that oil stuff is in comparison though?...

Jonnycoupe · 4 May 2010 at 16:24

Mr_Sukebe said:
A

I have to say that I'm surprised that more manufacturers haven't investigated kinetic storage devices more closely. They rely on spinning up a centrifuge whilst under braking, then using it for acceleration. As some of the newer hybrids can only achieve 2 miles under electric power alone, a centrifuge would seem a potentially viable option. I believe that at least 1 of the F1 KERS systems used that, as did a prototype racing car a few years ago.

Massive Power density, next to no energy density,

Imagine the size and speed of a flywheel you would have to spin up at home to take you 100miles? Would use more power than a battery electric car grid to wheel anyway.

Jonnycoupe · 4 May 2010 at 16:27

Amp34 said:
And this is why I still think hydrogen is the better bet, alongside less laziness. Less use of cars/less cars and the cars that are actually needed used with hydrogen.

the hydrogen fuel cell car?

Platnium fuel cell?
Neodynium in the motor and stuff.
Still has a battery?

Grid to wheel for the same mileage, take your kWh figure and QUADRUPLE IT. Wins on range, ill give you that. Even though most fuel cell vehicle milage by joe average will rarely use the actual hydrogen and just use the plugin capability of the battery.

Amp34 · 4 May 2010 at 16:32

AcidHell2 said:
Not on all roads, major roads. dual carriageways/motorways. Where pedestrians/cyclists would not be allowed.
Not really like a railway as you can go anywhere you want. Railways are expensive due to inflexibility and far less users than road.

Or a monorail, with self driving cars would be the best solution.
several companies are developing it and with much nicer cars than that picture
http://www.markstechnologynews.com/2008/07/liberator-car-monorail-and-automobile.html

So a tiny minority of roads as most dual carriageways allow pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders. It won't work.

With regards to the monorail idea isn't there something being developed using GPS that allows that sort of thing, without a change to the infrastructure of the roads. However most car drivers were against it. Why would they be for something even more restrictive?

NeilFawcett said:
True, but if you look at our case.

We have a Ford SMax for the family. I suspect this will do 10,000-12,000 miles a year.

Meanwhile my 15yr old car, only does about 3,000 miles a year.

Now, logically, we want the family car to be the efficient one, for £££ and green reasons. Changing my 3,000 miles a year to instead be electric miles will not have the biggest/most impact. And probably will not save a real money... So there's no incentive.

That is a problem yeah, and why there is going to be an issue with todays/the near futures electric cars.

lordrobs said:
I'll make sure I take a bus next time I do the weekly shop or nip up to B&Q to get some 2m lengths of timber

You obviously didn't read the other posts that was related to.

How about nipping to the corner shop/high street to get a loaf of bread? Loads do in their car and those sort of trips are ones that make up a large propotion of trips in towns...

Amp34 · 4 May 2010 at 16:40

AcidHell2 said:
or as a secondary product from a 4th generation nuclear power plants.
although I still don't think it's the solution.

tapping into the national grid, means no shipping things about in costly tankers. Large set up cost, but ultimate you save in so many areas, it is worth while.

Exactly, alongside generation of electricity from renewable sources.

Jonnycoupe said:
I hope your not talking about lanthium, it is called a rare earth metal yet is nothing of the sort in terms of abundance.

Look how clean that oil stuff is in comparison though?...

What do you mean clean?

Generally oil production is very clean, in comparison to strip mining that goes on with a lot of these sort of elements. Generally to get these sort of elements the soil (in areas of hundreds of square km) is stripped from the underlying rock, after the vegetation and animals/insects are removed.

I do think it's going to be years before electricity is going to be the main powersource, whereas hydrogen would be a good substitute in the near future.

A hybrid system of electricty only short range cars and hydrogen longer range cars could be used in the future.

Glaucus · 4 May 2010 at 16:43

Amp34 said:
So a tiny minority of roads as most dual carriageways allow pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders. It won't work. :

you know they can change rules.
Yes there are several systems that need less infastructure change. But need hugely technological packed cars instead and they still don't get over the fuel problem. What ever we change to, it os going to cost a fortune in infastructure. So we might as well make self driving cars at the same time.

Amp34 · 4 May 2010 at 16:47

Personally i'm really against the idea of banning other road users form a large number of roads.

Glaucus · 4 May 2010 at 16:50

You like getting stuck on small problems that are easily solved.

Roads would have to be modified, so you put a seprate cycle/walkway in.
It's hardly an unsumountable problem, especially when you back hydrogen. Which has so many more issues.

Third Opinion · 4 May 2010 at 16:55

Ford are releasing an electric focus with a range of just 60 miles. Who in their right mind would buy that?

markweatherill · 4 May 2010 at 16:59

Look, we've all seen dodgems, those funfairs are open for hours and the cars never need recharging.
I think Big Oil bought up one of those patents like the 200mpg carburettor, only this one was for batteries, years ago and the Gypsies somehow got hold of it for their own use but had to agree never to use it for road cars.
A bit like GM and the EV-1.

Amp34 · 4 May 2010 at 16:59

AcidHell2 said:
You like getting stuck on small problems that are easily solved.

Roads would have to be modified, so you put a seprate cycle/walkway in.
It's hardly an unsumountable problem, especially when you back hydrogen. Which has so many more issues.

True, but then the almost insurmountable problems you are backing are going to be the main issue.

Once they are sorted we can contemplate changing the law.

The tech I am talking about seems to be very close to fruition (for example the BMW that went round the top gear track). It will take 20+ years before we even get to building the monorail type systems and by that point GPS type devices could easily have become mainstream and battery/hydrogen tech would have become a lot more efficient.

Glaucus · 4 May 2010 at 16:59

Third Opinion said:
Ford are releasing an electric focus with a range of just 60 miles. Who in their right mind would buy that?

Depends on price, there are people who do a few miles for work, local supermarket and that is all they ever do.

Glaucus · 4 May 2010 at 17:02

Amp34 said:
True, but then the almost insurmountable problems you are backing are going to be the main issue.

Once they are sorted we can contemplate changing the law.

What problems.
Mono rails are well understood and used, electric pick ups are well undserstood, as is national grid, the only real problem is set up cost, as it is with pretty much any alternative to oil.

Amp34 · 4 May 2010 at 17:08

Just added a bit to my previous post.

AcidHell2 said:
What problems.
Mono rails are well understood and used, electric pick ups are well undserstood, as is national grid, the only real problem is set up cost, as it is with pretty much any alternative to oil.

But it will take at least 10-15 years before any building will start, with another 30-40 years before most of the motorways are converted. There would also have to be a massive investment into the cars to use it, which most car companies probably wouldn't do on their own due to the low sales potential out of the UK (unless the rest of europe decided to use the same system).

On the other hand battery/hydrogen power and gps driving will be international and there is already substantial development into it.

Both systems would involve people buying new cars but one would involve substantially less investment, which could very well be put into helping research into mobile energy systems.

Glaucus · 4 May 2010 at 17:15

Ecept it is international, with companies doing reserch in several diffrent companies, there is very little car devlopment to do, compared to hydrogen, gps self driving.
You also have problem of producing hydrogen, total oil infastructure retrofit to handle extremly cold, high pressure storage.
Non insomountable, but it isn't an easy solution and is a worse solution than other potential sources.

Electric cars with small battery are cheap and use old tech. Most of the tech would be in the road/monorail which is far easier than placing it in all cars. A lot of which is allready well understood from trains.

Kitchster_uk · 4 May 2010 at 17:16

All this electricity is lovely and a great way to knock off all the pollution caused by burning fossil fuels. And it's totally clean, no pollution, no nasty waste either. And there hasn't been any talk of blackouts by 2017 with the current usage. Nope, sounds like a brilliant idea.

Amp34 · 4 May 2010 at 17:19

AcidHell2 said:
Ecept it is international, with companies doing reserch in several diffrent companies, there is very little car devlopment to do, compared to hydrogen, gps self driving.
You also have problem of producing hydrogen, total oil infastructure retrofit to handle extremly cold, high pressure storage.
Non insomountable, but it isn't an easy solution and is a worse solution than other potential sources.

Electric cars with small battery are cheap and use old tech. Most of the tech would be in the road/monorail which is far easier than placing it in all cars. A lot of which is allready well understood from trains.

The question is how much is it going to cost to run electric cables/tracks down every main road in the country, how long will it take and how much chaos would it cause? Especially when to begin with you will have very few cars able to use the system, yet massive upfront investment and chaos. Those cars that could use it would have to have a decent battery system in it anyway (or an alternative fuel system) and wouldn't need the system in the first place.

Instead stick the new tech in the cars, no change or up front cost for the government and little difference in cost to the consumer.

Instead you can push all of the