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We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

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Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#21

Post by whenchamenia »

wmf wrote: post #7
Swizec wrote: post #5

We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…

Isn't the whole point of the article that ICE was not way better and racing is a harmful distraction?

Racing has led the development of more economical, lighter weight, and more powerful cars that handle better and stop faster. No other development method has made such rapid progress in automotive technology.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#22

Post by jacquesm »

Causality1 wrote: post #3

They could've worked in cities. Lead-acid batteries, though, have never had the energy/weight ratio necessary for the type of long-range driving necessary outside of highly urbanized areas.

Likely if the fossil fuel bonanza had not happened there would have been more interest in improving battery chemistry.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#23

Post by Buttons840 »

potta_coffee wrote: post #16
willyg123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could be running all electric cars on nuclear, indirectly, if we would start building more power plants. cue the anti-nuclear power comments

We still don't know the full extent of the environmental impact of the Fukushima disaster. Can we afford more incidents of that nature? I'm not certain.

Is this satire?

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#24

Post by anchpop »

potta_coffee wrote: post #16
willyg123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could be running all electric cars on nuclear, indirectly, if we would start building more power plants. cue the anti-nuclear power comments

We still don't know the full extent of the environmental impact of the Fukushima disaster. Can we afford more incidents of that nature? I'm not certain.

That's nice, but we do know that burning fossil fuels kills a huge number of people [0]. Moving away from fossil fuels will require some form of nuclear power. Much of Europe has successfully transitioned most of their power to nuclear [1], so it's not like the concept is some experimental sci-fi dream. From an environmental standpoint, nuclear is by far our cleanest option based on all the information we have.

[0]: https://qz.com/568450/fossil-fuels-kill-more-people-every-ye...

[1]: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pro...

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#25

Post by ClassyJacket »

Swizec wrote: post #5

We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…

What do you mean steam powered cars? When I think of an X powered car I think of putting X into the car to power it. You put petrol in a petrol car and electric power in an electric car. You don't put steam in a steam train, aren't they actually coal powered? According to Wikipedia, steam cars just ran on petrol, but the combustion engine was external, and the car was less efficient overall. Steam engines don't seem to make sense for cars.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#27

Post by pfdietz »

Swizec wrote: post #5

We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…

And more importantly, the Model T was a factor of 6 cheaper than the competing steam cars.

External combustion just sucks. Heat exchangers, or indeed anything that transmits heat through solid/fluid interfaces, are not something you want if you can avoid it. The ICE has the advantage that the working fluid carries most of the waste heat away from the vehicle.

Interestingly, we're seeing the same thing play out in stationary power plants today. Gas turbines are beating steam-based power plants (coal, nuclear), because they have much lower capital cost.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#28

Post by loeg »

Swizec wrote: post #5

We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…

> My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph

This is a silly point of fact. Motorcycles have been capable of achieving far greater than 110 mph for a long time; a top speed of 110mph puts your 2018 vehicle on the low end of the speed range for "motorcycle" class vehicles (as opposed to scooters, mopeds, ebikes, etc). My random 1997 low-end 600cc sportbike could exceed 130 mph when it was 15 years old.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#29

Post by loeg »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #9
Swizec wrote: post #5

We also could have had steam powered cars. Jay Leno once said that he got pulled over on the freeway for breaking the speed limit in his Stanley Steamer from 1906-ish. Darn thing has a top speed of 127mph. My 2018 motorcycle tops out at 110mph, to give you a comparison. Why don't we have steam cars? Because in the early 1900's steam cars they couldn't compete with the elegance of ICE vehicles. The engines were big an…

> Tesla, for example, still doesn't have an official Nurburgring lap time because it simply isn't able to drive at racing speeds for long enough without the battery overheating and reducing power output to avoid damage Now I'm really curious: with a limit on the Tesla's performance to keep the battery from overheating, what's the fastest time it could do? That they don't have an official lap time for this reason stri…

Nurburgring has a notoriously long lap. Fast times are measured in handfuls of minutes. It's an interesting fact that Teslas aren't race cars capable of going full out for minutes on end, but I'm not sure that's relevant to most potential customers.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#30

Post by vvanders »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #18
lgleason wrote: post #2

Battery technology has been, and to a certain degree still is the limiting factor for electric cars...and the fact is that gasoline is still a denser form of energy storage than batteries by volume, weight etc.. I'm saying this as a someone who prefers electrics over ICE...

It's perhaps a more limiting factor now than then. As the article notes most EVs at the turn of the century had a range of 40-70 miles. The model T of around 1910, ten years later, had a range of about 90. Earlier ICE cars were down nearer EVs. A century ago battery and ICE technology were not that far apart. i.e. both fairly primitive. If electrics had been chosen and had 100 years of continual minor incremental imp…

I've had the same thought about rotary motors, they're interesting beasts and I wonder what we'd see if they had the same R&D investment like we saw in piston engines.

Alas I think that ship has sailed, aside from energy density the modern electric VFD wins along a whole range of design constraints(torque, size, latency/traction response, efficiency, etc).

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