261–270 of 399 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe this could be applied to water towers? That's a lot of potential energy just sitting there.
Before electricity there were many household appliances that operated on water pressure.
The most spectacular example of regenerative braking are trains that are used in Scandinavia, heavily loaded with iron ore that is transported to the coast: "In Scandinavia the Kiruna to Narvik electrified railway carries iron ore on the steeply-graded route from the mines in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on th…
The heavy iron ore is essentially a large battery storing gravitational energy. In a way it's just another natural energy source. Maybe in the future clean power can be generated from pulling down mountains.
The most spectacular example of regenerative braking are trains that are used in Scandinavia, heavily loaded with iron ore that is transported to the coast: "In Scandinavia the Kiruna to Narvik electrified railway carries iron ore on the steeply-graded route from the mines in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on th…
The heavy iron ore is essentially a large battery storing gravitational energy. In a way it's just another natural energy source. Maybe in the future clean power can be generated from pulling down mountains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given the mileage of towing a vehicle with its brakes on, I can't imagine it wouldn't be more efficient to just tow the stranded vehicle to a charger.
When you're stranded, energy efficiency isn't the top concern: any solution that works could be an acceptable one. And it's probably a lot easier to tow a car on a long straight road for awhile then cut them loose than it is to tow a car through intersections and into parking lots to find a charger.
I would think unless the tide is coming in, getting a generator and hanging out for awhile would be a safer for everyone solution.
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You can get this sort of benefit with a gas car with a manual transmission too. Engine braking uses no gas, its just your wheels turning your pistons and the friction from all of that slows the car down. Most of the time I only hit the brakes to go from 5mph-0mph in a manual car thanks to this.
Most mechanics will quip "Remember, brake pad replacement is a lot cheaper than a transmission replacement". Don't over do it.
Regenerative braking is so neat. I drove up a steep windy road to go on a hike with my plugin hybrid. On the way down I tried to let gravity do all of the acceleration and regenerative braking do all of the deceleration. At the bottom of the hill I had racked up +3 miles in total. Another fringe benefit is that brake pads wear out slower and produce less pollution.
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Sure, but it would be worth it. The cost is that you'd have to re-engineer maybe ten or twenty percent of major freeways and interstates (like have two miles of charging per every ten to twenty miles of regular road), and you'd need to establish a standard for trucks and passenger vehicles and get automakers to adopt it. (Or make it simple enough that it can be added as an aftermarket kit.) You'd also need to install…
> Sure, but it would be worth it. Are there really no better investments in electric than tearing up 17,000-35,000 miles of highway to make them slightly more efficient?
- do a lot of (probably expensive) road construction in the short term
- expect every family to own at least one car with a giant battery if they want to go on road trips
- everyone keeps on burning gasoline for the foreseeable future
The second option is the one most people seem to expect to happen eventually as EV prices drop and batteries get better and cheaper. But the present reality is that only around 2% of cars in the United States are battery electric vehicles. The main reason BEVs are expensive is the batteries, and the factories needed to make the quantity of batteries we'd need to electrify all our cars just don't exist yet. We can change that by reducing the amount of batteries needed per vehicle. (To be fair, if the project takes ten years or so and batteries have gotten a lot cheaper and better by then, maybe the picture will be different.)
Electrified roads could greatly improve EV adoption, as range wouldn't be an issue as long as you keep on the main highways, and charging would be more convenient, as you don't really have to do anything at all. It would also allow manufacturers to use cheaper batteries like lithium iron phosphate which are also much safer and more durable than the lithium ion batteries that most EVs use, and they don't require cobalt or nickel.
Also, the same considerations that apply to small passenger vehicles are even more true of long-haul trucking. Hauling giant batteries is not only expensive, it reduces the cargo capacity. Reductions in diesel consumption could be pretty huge, which is good both for transportation costs and for climate concerns.
(This is probably best done as a government project, but I suppose a private company with adequate funding could just create some electrified road segments parallel to some existing heavily-trafficed freeway as a pilot project, and maybe expand it if it works out. Sort of like Tesla's supercharger network, but with roads instead of fixed charge stations. It'd be easiest if were a car or truck manufacturer, as they could make the required hardware standard on their vehicles.)
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I've sometimes wondered if it would be viable to build a "range extender" for electric cars which is basically a generator which is designed to integrate with the vehicle, but can be easily removed. Then people could fit them when they were going on longer trips converting the car to a plug-in serial hybrid. Car dealerships could perhaps rent them out and do the install/removal.
Range extenders exist. The 2014 BMW i3 offered one as an option. But now that batteries can provide 200+ miles of range there's less need for them and most EV companies have stopped making them. (Of course this hasn't stopped people from building their own.) https://www.autobytel.com/car-ownership/technology/what-is-t...
The most spectacular example of regenerative braking are trains that are used in Scandinavia, heavily loaded with iron ore that is transported to the coast: "In Scandinavia the Kiruna to Narvik electrified railway carries iron ore on the steeply-graded route from the mines in Kiruna, in the north of Sweden, down to the port of Narvik in Norway to this day. The rail cars are full of thousands of tons of iron ore on th…
The heavy iron ore is essentially a large battery storing gravitational energy. In a way it's just another natural energy source. Maybe in the future clean power can be generated from pulling down mountains.