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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

#231

Post by ineedasername »

We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

All true. If we ignore the massive increase in infrastructure needed to make them viable outside of cities. And also ignore, as the article does, the time it would take to charge along with the short lifetime of batteries in that era. It doesn't matter if their range equaled that of an IC, the IC could be ready for the next leg of a trip almost instantly compared to an EV. Effectively this halved the range of an EV. If you could only drive 60 miles and there was no guaranteed prospect of charging at the end, you had to be able to return home to charge, meaning 30 miles out and 30 miles back.

All issues that still represent bottlenecks to EV adoption today, albeit much less so, and which are gradually being overcome.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#232

Post by nradov »

graycat wrote: post #211
nradov wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stream engines are no longer used on large ships (except for nuclear powered warships). Merchant ships now use large 2-stroke diesel engines for maximum fuel efficiency.

Yup, the nuke ships are what I was thinking about -- wasn't sure if there were any other examples of pushing steam through a turbine.

There used to be many large ships driven by oil-fired steam turbines but those have gradually disappeared over the past few decades. Compared to diesel engines, steam turbines are less efficient and require more maintenance.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#233

Post by magduf »

ineedasername wrote: post #231

We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning All true. If we ignore the massive increase in infrastructure needed to make them viable outside of cities. And also ignore, as the article does, the time it would take to charge along with the short lifetime of batteries in that era. It doesn't matter if their range equaled that of an IC, the IC could be ready for the next leg of a trip almost instantly compared to…

The range isn't really a problem: all you have to do is have "battery stations" where you swap out the batteries in a few minutes. This has its issues (related to ownership of the batteries, and also standardization), but technically it's completely doable. They've had lead-acid batteries for over a century now, so if society had wanted to make EVs the norm, this could have been done.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#234

Post by magduf »

godelski wrote: post #129
chadcmulligan wrote: post #121

Some of the reasons why petrol won: There was no electric grid to speak of - even now there is concern the grid can't support all EV's, once you were outside the cities (and there weren't many back then) the grid was spotty. The miracle of being able to pour some cheap liquid in an engine and drive for miles is a considerable achievement. Lead acid batteries weren't very good and were expensive (and still are) and do…

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…

>Another reason: Even today the energy density of batteries is SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than that of fossil fuels.

That's irrelevant. The thing people keep forgetting with fossil fuels is that most of that energy is being wasted to just produce heat. With an EV, 95-98% of the battery's energy is being used for propulsion (unless you turn on a heater of course).

In short, you're comparing apples to oranges.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#235

Post by avar »

Tade0 wrote: post #52
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...

I think that if, then only in terms of cost. Every quarter or so I do a 1500km(935 mile) trip and back. Nowadays it takes me two days, because I realized that spending around 20h behind the wheel without rest is simply dangerous. My car's highway range is about 440 miles - but I rarely drive that far without refueling because the longest distance between my usual stops is 350 miles. And once stopped I don't just fill…

Where do you live where your favorite spots happen to have superchargers?

I've looked into buying a Tesla and part of the reason I dismissed it is because here in Western Europe the supercharger stations are all in some bleak industrial estate by the highway usually next to a McDonalds or 1-2 restaurants.

I recently did a 1200 km drive between the Netherlands and Denmark & back. Looking at a map there's a supercharger every 100 km or so around that route, but having looked at some road trip videos on YouTube from Tesla owners their long distance trip becomes all about planning around the charging times.

I.e. I might drive for 6 hours with brief 3-4 brief 5-10 minute stops along the way, and maybe have lunch at some nice restaurant in a forest by the highway. Also, if you have young kids you really appreciate being able to loosely plan stops. I.e. "kids are asleep, let's keep driving" and "they just woke up, let's stop in the next 5 minutes for lunch".

Changing that sort of trip to introduce the variable that we must stop for 40 or so minutes (for 80% charging) in specific charging stations along the way might work for some, but I can't see how to plan around it without a lot of hassle. I'm not going to seriously consider an electric car unless there's something like Tesla's proposed battery swap where "refueling" takes less than 5 minutes.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#236

Post by magduf »

clouddrover wrote: post #158
gambiting wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy density of hydrogen per litre is few orders of magnitude lower than that of petrol. Really the only saving grace of hydrogen vs batteries is the speed of refueling.

> Really the only saving grace of hydrogen vs batteries is the speed of refueling. And range, weight, and (eventually) price. Batteries need to improve in all these areas. Fuel cell cars are expensive at the moment because they're produced in such low volumes. But Toyota thinks that if they produced FCEVs at scale they could build them cheap: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/26050/exclusive-toyota-hydroge...

Toyota is the only company pushing hydrogen as a fuel for cars, and it's puzzling why, because they really don't have many advantages, and a ton of disadvantages compared to BEVs.

Everyone else is working on BEVs, including the Chinese.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#237

Post by magduf »

snakeboy wrote: post #166
gambiting wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy density of hydrogen per litre is few orders of magnitude lower than that of petrol. Really the only saving grace of hydrogen vs batteries is the speed of refueling.

Am I misreading the gp's cited chart? According to that, it seems like hydrogen is only a factor of around 4x worse in terms of volumetric energy density, and is better than petrol in weight density.

Weight density doesn't help you in a car; these aren't rockets where most of the weight of the vehicle is fuel. In a car, the weight of the fuel is barely noticeable. What's much more important is the size of the tank, and a hydrogen tank takes up a lot of room (to get decent range), and is also quite heavy to contain a pressurized gas that literally leaks out constantly because its molecules are so small.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#238

Post by magduf »

raxxorrax wrote: post #162
gambiting wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy density of hydrogen per litre is few orders of magnitude lower than that of petrol. Really the only saving grace of hydrogen vs batteries is the speed of refueling.

Still better than current batteries. You could pump that up if you store it in a liquid state to a level above common fossil fuels. Not saying you don't open a can of worms for implementing it...

Besides in-vehicle storage being completely infeasible for many reasons, how exactly do you propose to safely allow consumers to refill a tank with liquid hydrogen? They use it for rockets sometimes, but it's handled very carefully by highly trained technicians under very controlled conditions and the fueling procedure is nothing like a stop at your local gas station.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#239

Post by magduf »

AstralStorm wrote: post #144
chadcmulligan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bicycles / scooters have a limited application though - families with young kids, long trips, older people, people with injuries, its raining, are just some of the groups / times these are excluded. Cars still are superior general purpose solution for travel.

You'd be surprised how much a simple bicycle or scooter cab can accomplish in solving this objection. These are very popular in Asia. The main limit is carrying capacity - maximum power - and you really do not need that much stuff. This works long range too, and could work even longer range should there be proper cargo trains for bikes. But there aren't. The trip time is typically needed to be less than 10h or you ne…

I've been to Japan, and I saw lots of people riding bicycles there. However, they were all relatively fit. Disabled people don't ride bicycles, nor do elderly people. And almost no one rides a bicycle in a downpour. Of course, in a city like Tokyo, if the weather is bad, people can just walk their bike, or take the subway, because things are relatively close together and the public transit infrastructure is excellent. It also helps that they can just leave their bike parked somewhere if they need to, and not worry about it being stolen, unlike America where you can't leave a decent bike in a city like DC for long without someone stealing it unless you have it U-locked to a post (no one locks bikes to solid objects in Japan; they just have simple locks on the back wheel so no one can easily ride away on it).

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#240

Post by magduf »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #152
AstralStorm wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised how much a simple bicycle or scooter cab can accomplish in solving this objection. These are very popular in Asia. The main limit is carrying capacity - maximum power - and you really do not need that much stuff. This works long range too, and could work even longer range should there be proper cargo trains for bikes. But there aren't. The trip time is typically needed to be less than 10h or you ne…

They are popular in Asia because relatively speaking Asia is poor. Just like the flying pigeon bike was massively popular in china back in the 70's, I even saw one being ridden at Cranfield university by a Chinese masters/doctoral student in the late 70's early eighties.

No, Japan is one of the richer countries on the planet per-capita, and bicycles are very popular there. They're popular because they're cheap and simple and they have excellent public transit for longer distances and they don't have to worry much about thieves like in crappier countries. And as a result of people biking and walking more, almost no one there is fat, unlike America where the majority of the population is obese (not just overweight).
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