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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

#201

Post by oblio »

TomMarius wrote: post #189
oblio wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UK railways The keyword being "UK". We can include the US and a bit of Western Europe plus Japan. For much of the world a train was exotic even far into the 20th century.

Except for China you named most of the world population back then ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

That's a funny comment. The colonies had a smattering of railways, most colonial subjects probably never saw any railways or trains. Heck, for an example, look at how the African railway networks look in 2019 (!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union_of_Railways#/med...

And then compare that to the UK in 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Great_Britai...

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#202

Post by adrianN »

Mirioron wrote: post #195
adrianN wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cities bikes are faster than cars. In central London for example average speeds are around eight miles per hour (and falling). During rushhour it's even worse. Rushhour traffic in Berlin averages around five miles per hour. Even untrained cyclists are faster than that.

But would you like to be in rush hour traffic on a bike?

I am every day. It's much nicer than being in lighter traffic, since the cars are slower than me and thus much less dangerous.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#203

Post by adrianN »

Mirioron wrote: post #194
hwillis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly myopic take masquerading as "first principles". First, you're flat wrong on the differences between gas and batteries, especially for cars. Second, you need an actual reason energy density is the fundamental metric- cars aren't rockets and weight isn't the end-all. It's impossible to neglect the efficiency here. Car-scale combustion engines have a real world efficiency of around ten percent comp…

Will charging speed really only be of minor importance? How do you charge your vehicle if you live in an apartment building? And if you can't do that and charging at a station takes more than 3-5 minutes then you cut out a huge part of the populace.

For mass adoption you need chargers at most parking spots. Since cars spend almost all their time parked, charging time really is not all that important.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#204

Post by smileysteve »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #169
smileysteve wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we're also omitting the steam car. Where the maintenance and dirtiness were their major detractors, refined fuels and new burners solve these. Steam engines can and could have been refilled at any gas station, could run on any multi fuel including biodiesel. They theoretically require less maintenance, no oil changes, no cooling system. They'd also have had greater range and greater top speed (though less acceleratio…

> no cooling system. How can this be true?

A closed loop steam engine, the burners get the boiler hot enough to produce the power they need, then the engine extracts that heat from the boiler to mechanical energy.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#205

Post by sokoloff »

hwillis wrote: post #200
sokoloff wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you responded only to the gravimetric density part of the chart and not the volumetric part of the chart. For performance cars, weight is absolutely a factor. (I'm not aware of any performance cars that weigh twice as much as their competition.) (I do think it is fair to ignore the financial energy density and assume that a century of progress would have addressed substantial fraction of that gap.)

> It seems like you responded only to the gravimetric density part of the chart and not the volumetric part of the chart. Gravimetric (specific energy, Wh/kg or MJ/kg) energy is generally more relevant than volumetric (energy density, Wh/l or MJ/l), because batteries are about twice the density of gasoline. Weight is also more valuable than volume in most vehicles, and a battery system already takes up hardly any mor…

> If you want to talk about power density, an electric battery will beat a gas engine to absolute shreds.

Most (all?) production electric cars struggle to do a full power complete lap of Nürburgring Nordschleife without heat-related issues. They're amazing at the Stoplight Grand Prix (and I enjoy my cheap LEAF daily), but struggle as racecars.

>> I'm not aware of any performance cars that weigh twice as much as their competition.

> Sure, but again this is an 11% weight difference

I was just responding to a previous post claiming that "performance cars in a given class can weigh DOUBLE the lightest cars in the same class", nothing more. If you claim the span is much less than double, then I agree.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#206

Post by nickik »

jacquesm wrote: post #19
wmf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is denser than gasoline but we don't run cars on it. There's a lot more to the discussion than the best technology.

You meant 'there is a lot more to the discussion than the density of the energy carrier'. A nuclear vehicle would be impractical due to waste and risk.

Waste isn't a technically a big issue. Risk of a crash leaking radiation is far more relevant. Also its not easy to build small nuclear reactors.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#207

Post by iguy »

oblio wrote: post #201
TomMarius wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for China you named most of the world population back then ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

That's a funny comment. The colonies had a smattering of railways, most colonial subjects probably never saw any railways or trains. Heck, for an example, look at how the African railway networks look in 2019 (!): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union_of_Railways#/med... And then compare that to the UK in 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Great_Britai...

Wait until you see the map of superchargers!

This is an odd tangent, though, if you are interested in humanity's ability to do fine metalworking etc. and how this influenced what transport technologies were viable in what year. This isn't about rural backwaters, anywhere. It's reasonable to define mass adoption to mean that millions are using the thing, although obviously the first million will be in advanced bits of the world.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#208

Post by jessriedel »

hwillis wrote: post #184
godelski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason: Even today the energy density of batteries is SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than that of fossil fuels. [0] We frequently see this graph [1] showing how far batteries have come (they have! and we need to keep going) but not understanding this is part of the issue too. [0] is why we need to keep researching, but [0] is why electric was never going to win in the beginning. It is taking very advanced materials to…

This is an incredibly myopic take masquerading as "first principles". First, you're flat wrong on the differences between gas and batteries, especially for cars. Second, you need an actual reason energy density is the fundamental metric- cars aren't rockets and weight isn't the end-all. It's impossible to neglect the efficiency here. Car-scale combustion engines have a real world efficiency of around ten percent comp…

I like the detail that went into your reply, but it would be a lot better (and less downvoted) if you removed the vitrol.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#209

Post by nickik »

oblib wrote: post #47

Early models of Ford's Model T had adjustable carburetors to run on ethanol with gasoline as an option. Not electric, but renewable, sustainable, and I'd assume (maybe wrongly) mostly carbon neutral.

I think methanol makes far more sense then ethanol. But basically you can cheaply build cars that can run on pretty much anything. It would be easy to require all cars to support everything from M10,E10 to M80,E80 without much issue.

I think 20-30 years ago cars should have started requiring cars to support all that stuff and allow competition between the different fuels and different methods of fuel production. Meaning most likely methanol from gas, ethnaol from food or gas from saudi arabia.

Methanol from natural gas could have been incredibly successful specially because natural gas export is not an easy problem. Meaning that gas prices in the US were incredibly cheap and a huge fleet of car hungry for methanol would have made it reasonable to do the conversion process. Far less methane could have been wasted into the air.

Now I feel like time has passed and EV make more sense.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#210

Post by nickik »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #153
oblib wrote: post #47

Early models of Ford's Model T had adjustable carburetors to run on ethanol with gasoline as an option. Not electric, but renewable, sustainable, and I'd assume (maybe wrongly) mostly carbon neutral.

The problem with ethanol is that the most efficient plants for making it also happen to be food crops.

That's only an issue if you assume that farm land is a limited resource but that not really the problem in practice.

There are no fuel shortages just because you have cars that use ethanol.

I'm not a huge fan of ethanol specially not how it was handled in the political process (farm subsides) but using it in general is not a bad idea if it can compete.

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