Petrol engine is so last year... (or saving the planet, fast!)

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
10,573
Location
Seattle
Just saw this on slashdot:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/04/technology/business2_wrightspeed/
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2006/05/01/8375936/index.htm

A car that could save the planet—fast
Silicon Valley's big brains think they can beat Detroit and Tokyo and save the planet -- all while doing 0 to 60 faster than almost anything on the road.
Business 2.0 Magazine
By Michael V. Copeland, Business 2.0 Magazine senior writer
May 5, 2006: 5:57 AM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - Ian Wright has a car that blows away a Ferrari 360 Spider and a Porsche Carrera GT in drag races, and whose 0-to-60 acceleration time ranks it among the fastest production autos in the world. In fact, it's second only to the French-made Bugatti Veyron, a 1,000-horsepower, 16-cylinder beast that hits 60 mph half a second faster and goes for $1.25 million.

The key difference? The Bugatti gets eight miles per gallon. Wright's car? It runs off an electric battery.

Wright, a 50-year-old entrepreneur from New Zealand, thinks his electric car, the X1, can soon be made into a small-production roadster that car fanatics and weekend warriors will happily take home for about $100,000 --a quarter ton of batteries included. He has even launched a startup, called Wrightspeed, to custom-make and sell the cars.

But Wright isn't some quixotic loner. He's part of a growing cluster of engineers, startups, and investors, most of them based in Silicon Valley, that believe they can do what major automakers have failed at for decades: Think beyond the golf cart and deliver an electric vehicle (EV) to the mass market.

Indeed, the race for the new consumer EV has already begun: Just a year ago, Wright was working for his Woodside neighbor Martin Eberhard, co-founder of Tesla Motors, a startup that has 70 employees and a major investment from PayPal founder Elon Musk, which is building a mass-market rival to the X1. Wright left, believing he had an even better idea.

Beyond that, startups are forming to equip new "plug-in" hybrids that run almost entirely on their electric motors. And around the country, a handful of other exotic EVs are showing up on the road -- including George Clooney's new ride, a $108,000 commuter coupe that's just 3 feet wide.

The more that cars become technology platforms, the more the future plays into the hands of people like Wright and Eberhard. "Automakers can't do this," Eberhard says. "If you drill into the complexity of an electric car, it's not the motor, it's the electronics and battery system, which car companies aren't good at."

Adds Musk, "The time is right for a new American car company, and the time is right for electric vehicles, because of advances in batteries and electronics. Where's the skill set for that? In the Valley, not Detroit."

Wright's garage-born heroics are, in many respects, long overdue. After all, electric cars predated the gasoline combustion engine. But they soon headed for museums, replaced by gas engines. A mid-1990s wave of all-electric cars was short-lived -- GM (Research) spent more than $1 billion to introduce a short-lived electric vehicle -- and were soon replaced by Toyota's hot-selling hybrid gas-electric Prius.

So how do you build the EV of the future on a six-figure budget when GM couldn't do it with more than $1 billion? For starters, you get all the basic parts off the shelf. By itself, all the hardware in the X1 is nothing new. The X1's real secret is how Wright engineers it all to keep the car in optimum race mode whenever you hit the accelerator.

Proving grounds

Last November, Wright towed the X1 to a racetrack near Sacramento to see how his prototype would do against a Ferrari and a Porsche. On paper, a win seemed guaranteed. But he hadn't yet run the car full out.

In the first matchup, the X1 crushed the Ferrari in an eighth-mile sprint and then in the quarter-mile, winning by two car lengths. In the second race, against the $440,000 Porsche, the two cars were even after an eighth of a mile. But as the Porsche driver let out the clutch in a final upshift, his tires briefly lost traction. The X1, blazing along in its software-controlled performance mode, beat the Porsche by half a car length.

It never occurred to me that I would lose," says Kim Stuart, the Porsche's driver. "It was like a light switch. He hit the pedal and was gone."

So what now? Wright isn't sure himself. Only 50 or so people have driven the car, and Wright has just begun to hold his hat out for potential investors. With $8 million in funding, he says, he is convinced he can put a consumer version of the X1 into production that meets federal safety standards, has a 100-mile range, and recharges in 4.5 hours.

To bring any EV to the masses, of course, will require much improved battery technology. But a handful of startups backed by Valley VCs are claiming that big advances are just around the corner. Menlo Park-based Li-on Cells claims that its technology will double the performance of lithium-ion batteries for about half the cost.

Thus, the X1 and the Tesla could be just the things to throw the EV race into high gear. As battery prices drop and performance improves, the cars could come within reach of a wider audience. And if oil prices keep climbing, more and more consumers will demand alternatives that are punchier than a Prius.

Of course there is still that killer for me. The distance you can manage on it. It'd be fine for me for the most part, I do about 5,000 miles a year, all social. Generally its not long distance, but sometimes it is and 100 miles just isn't practical.
 
Soldato
Joined
8 Jan 2005
Posts
6,453
Location
wiltshire
Jonny69 said:
Not normally a clutch on a leccy car. They can develop full torque without actually turning so it can pull from a standstill.

damn :( dont suppose they will be standard for a few years yet but part of the fun is driving is shifting through the gears :p
 
Suspended
Joined
17 Mar 2004
Posts
4,934
Location
Market Drayton, Salop
perhaps you can but a trailer to go with it to hold more batteries giving you longer travel time :D

All they need to do now is make the exterior a solar panel and build a windmill onto the roof for charging on the move!!
 
Associate
Joined
22 Nov 2004
Posts
1,170
Location
NW5
Couldn't you harness the nitrogen and oxygen in the air somehow, and use it similar to nitros oxide. I'm no chemist, so don't fully understand properties and stuff...
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Feb 2006
Posts
9,570
What I don't get is why they don't stick a tiny engine (few cc) in a car to charge the batteries. This way you get the best of both worlds and not the crappy hybrids that are out now.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Feb 2006
Posts
9,570
Yeah, but a tiny petrol engine and a huge electric one like this car.

Hybrids do not work. You get a cheaply made car that is very slow and not very efficient.
 
Associate
Joined
16 Jun 2003
Posts
1,858
weeble said:
Couldn't you harness the nitrogen and oxygen in the air somehow, and use it similar to nitros oxide. I'm no chemist, so don't fully understand properties and stuff...

not possible. the necessary energy is very large.

living things harvest nitrogen but we aren't clever enough yet
 
Associate
Joined
28 Sep 2004
Posts
1,151
Location
London
Trifid said:
Yeah, but a tiny petrol engine and a huge electric one like this car.

Hybrids do not work. You get a cheaply made car that is very slow and not very efficient.

That's how hyrbids work...

Most of them at least - no direct connection from wheels to internal combustion engine.

The acceleration is usually very good and every hybrid I've seen can do up to 70mph, which is the most you'll ever want to do. If you want to go faster, get a real car.
 
Associate
Joined
29 Oct 2002
Posts
806
Electric motors are definatly the way forward. The hurdle is storing or generating enough energy. As petrol holds a huge ammount of energy compared to even the best batterys we commercially available today.

Electric motors are extremely powerful - this car is already beating a ferrari and a porsche, albeit for not very long as im sure it would run out of juice pretty quick at that rate!
 
Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
871
mosfet said:
That's how hyrbids work...

Most of them at least - no direct connection from wheels to internal combustion engine.

The acceleration is usually very good and every hybrid I've seen can do up to 70mph, which is the most you'll ever want to do. If you want to go faster, get a real car.


I think what he means is to use an engine to generate electricity exclusively rather than to move to the car. This is what most modern trains do, they move via motors with diesel generators. The upside of this is that you can get the most from your fuel, by running the engine at it's most efficient rate all the time.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Nov 2004
Posts
8,182
Location
Couvains, France
Jonny69 said:
Not normally a clutch on a leccy car. They can develop full torque without actually turning so it can pull from a standstill.

Indeed, the majority of electric motors have higher torque stalled than they do when spinning..

More load you add more the torque increases until you stall, when it produces full torque...

Torque is produced when current flows, so a stalled motor uses more current than a spinning motor... hence more torque..

The big issue is startup as a slipper type clutch will reduce the load on the motor making it more battery efficient...

Direct drive to the wheel is least battery efficient as the startup currents and heat produced as a result are huge.... or can be with an optimistic driver..

The best would be some form of costantly variable transmission...

:eek:
 
Back
Top Bottom