We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning • Hacker News Board

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#11

Post by jerrysievert » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #6

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...

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.

not for lack of trying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

but there are a lot of reasons why it never made it into production.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#12

Post by willyg123 » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:12 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #6

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...

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.

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

cue the anti-nuclear power comments

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#13

Post by ummwhat » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #6

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...

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.

Not for lack of trying.

https://youtu.be/kR5gefU87TY

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#14

Post by Swizec » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

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…

> But you can't actually drive either to its limit for more than a couple minutes? Lame.

Notice all of Tesla's marketing is about acceleration, not lap times. They beat any other car hands down on the drag strip. But cornering is just not their forte (too heavy) and driving fast for a long time is hard (too much power draw).

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#15

Post by agumonkey » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:15 PM UTC

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…

Leno steam car video was thrilling. Even with the early century crippled controls it was tempting.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#16

Post by potta_coffee » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:20 PM UTC

willyg123 wrote: post #12

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.

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.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#17

Post by Swizec » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

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?

I have strong doubts about both those claims. Depends on what you want your car for, of course, but how do batteries of the time stack up to ICE cars in terms of range and durability?

If memory serves, until very recently, most consumer rechargable batteries would basically stop holding charge after 2 or 3 years. Was that better for bigger batteries? I don't know ... but it would suck to have to buy a new car battery every 3 years since the lifespan of most [modern] cars is much longer than that.

As for racing being a harmful distraction: maybe. Depends on the type of racing. I like racing as a driver of what-can-this-technology-possibly-do. Bleeding edge engineering that trickles down to consumer devices. Racing is great for that.

As for the article's claim that electric cars even back then were better than ICE for city driving ... in the city nothing beats a bicycle, a brisk walk, or public transit. Cars were never a good fit for cities.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#18

Post by NeedMoreTea » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:22 PM UTC

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 improvements...

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#19

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:25 PM UTC

wmf wrote: post #6

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...

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.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#20

Post by whenchamenia » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 9:29 PM UTC

rb808 wrote: post #4

You can visit Thomas Edison's house with his lab near Newark NJ. There are two electric cars on display. Interestingly here it says in 1914 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered. http://www.edisonmuckers.org/edisons-cars/

Of all the pre-war cars I have been in or around... only steam had the power to throw you back in the seat. It would be interesting to see a modern multifuel interpretation of one. Might be well suited to long runtimes and alternate fuels.