For my second link to a Fully Charged episode on YouTube today, they did a story about this company in Europe refitting older vehicles with electric gear Their big plan is to have local river barge traffic be managed with electric tugs instead of diesel, but they’re having fun as they prove the technology. They have a Jaguar XJS converted to the same system as the tug to help debug it https://youtu.be/7zz3H0pSQ4Q
That nasty CRT whine (15KHz) made me instantly guess Siemens old timely brushed system :( You have to be really old to not go insane from hearing it.
Brakes on Tesla are said to last twice as long or more. That would be a direct reduction in brake dust. Even with my Model 3 being floored from every stoplight since I’ve bought it, I’ve yet to hear the tires chirp. Suspect the tire wear is less than a comparable gas car due to the better traction control, and the harder tread in pursuit of lower rolling resistance.
All tyres are in a state of slip when you are accelerating or braking, it's unavoidable.
Isn’t the purpose of traction control to keep the tires in contact with the ground in a static coefficient of friction, and thus not slipping?
Power-boating was going to be my new expensive hobby, but I couldn't get over the noise and horrible pollution, not to mention direct (usually inadvertent) leaks of fuel and oil into the lake. So after training and getting my license, it has been shelved until I learn to sail, but electric will do nicely when it is ready.
The gas is a little expensive but the motor noise seems fine to me and you can just not have leaks. Rinker 230 Festiva here for reference.
Why would they even have oil to leak? Oil is a lubricant for the extreme heat conditions of a combustion engine. This is just an electric motor. If you think about it, you don't put oil in a ceiling fan that runs 24/7.
I mean, the buyer doesn't, but the factory does. Ceiling fans function with ball bearings that are oiled, same as bicycles function with chains that are oiled. Obviously oil doesn't get into the air, but contact with water is a different matter. I have zero knowledge about boat motors but had always assumed the oil leakage had something to do with lubricating movement of the propeller that also prevented sea water fr…
Yes, electric motors function without oil. They're mainly magnets and coils of wire and are mostly* friction-less. Boat engines are the same concept as your car. Air, fuel, spark, piston. In fact, the boat my family had when I was a kid had an inboard/outboard setup. The engine was a Chrysler V6. It was fascinating to me as a kid because when the cover was pulled off, the entire engine was exposed and very accessible compared to it being in a car. Instead of a transmission connected to a drive shaft, it was connected to some worm gears that turned the prop. The main difference is a car's leaking oil mainly falls onto the streets (and gets diluted before hitting the water sources) where the boat's goes directly into the water.
What is the relevance to the article? I skim read it, was there a part to do with tyre wear I missed?
It's great that they're getting reductions of this magnitude for watercraft, this should absolutely continue. But it is damning for electric cars. The tailpipe emissions (measured in this article) that are reduced by going electric are marginal in comparison, and the other emissions are still entirely present.
It doesn't seem damning, electric cars are a not a silver bullet.
This seems like an additional problem to tackle concurrently.
If we came up with a new "Environmentally Friendly" tyre that solved that problem, than we would still have exhaust emissions to deal with. You don't need to fix both to attempt to improve one.
What this article is really saying is "Two stroke engines are outrageously nasty". Which we knew. They really are dozens of times worse for immediate pollutants (soot/particulates, hydrocarbons, NOx) than a routine car engine and catalytic converter. And they're significantly less efficient, so even their CO2 output is quite a bit higher than a gas engine of the same power. But they're a tiny market and no one has bo…
Is 2 stroke really that common for personal-use boats? I've only heard of them running on 93 gas, which is all I see sold at marinas, no oil to mix in.
I've seen tiny outriggers used for fishing,etc that are two-stroke. Maybe some jet skis too? I'm not sure.
Certainly anything substantial won't be two-stroke.
What this article is really saying is "Two stroke engines are outrageously nasty". Which we knew. They really are dozens of times worse for immediate pollutants (soot/particulates, hydrocarbons, NOx) than a routine car engine and catalytic converter. And they're significantly less efficient, so even their CO2 output is quite a bit higher than a gas engine of the same power. But they're a tiny market and no one has bo…
Is 2 stroke really that common for personal-use boats? I've only heard of them running on 93 gas, which is all I see sold at marinas, no oil to mix in.
It depends. My family bought a boat, and it came with a 90HP outboard engine that was 4 stroke. For they same price, they offered a 2 stroke engine that was 120HP. Everyone agreed adding a single bottle of oil when you fill up the tank with gas was a simple enough thing to do to get the extra 30HP. My family also never filled up at the marina because of the extreme mark up. The boat was always on a trailer, so it just got filled up on the way at any normal gas station.
What this article is really saying is "Two stroke engines are outrageously nasty". Which we knew. They really are dozens of times worse for immediate pollutants (soot/particulates, hydrocarbons, NOx) than a routine car engine and catalytic converter. And they're significantly less efficient, so even their CO2 output is quite a bit higher than a gas engine of the same power. But they're a tiny market and no one has bo…
Is 2 stroke really that common for personal-use boats? I've only heard of them running on 93 gas, which is all I see sold at marinas, no oil to mix in.
With 2 stroke you need to mix the oil with the fuel before injecting it into the engine in order to lubricate all the moving parts. With 4 stroke the oil and gas are kept separate and you just feed the fuel in.
4 stroke is more commonly sold today but with boating, the lifespan of the equipment is so long that there are a non-trivial amount of 2 stroke engines still in use today.
Is 2 stroke really that common for personal-use boats? I've only heard of them running on 93 gas, which is all I see sold at marinas, no oil to mix in.
I've seen tiny outriggers used for fishing,etc that are two-stroke. Maybe some jet skis too? I'm not sure. Certainly anything substantial won't be two-stroke.
As I understand it, there are increasing restrictions and calls to ban 2-stroke marine engines for smaller lakes, because the exhaust contains a fair amount of oil mist that settles on the water.