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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

#41

Post by AWildC182 »

chmielewski wrote: post #33
vvanders wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same thought about rotary motors, they're interesting beasts and I wonder what we'd see if they had the same R&D investment like we saw in piston engines. Alas I think that ship has sailed, aside from energy density the modern electric VFD wins along a whole range of design constraints(torque, size, latency/traction response, efficiency, etc).

We have seen a significant long-term R&D investment but all the nice rotary engines are in prop planes. Edit: since you mention a ship, some use large opposed-pistol Diesel engines (two oppositely meeting pistons around the combustion chamber per cylinder which also allows the cylinder to be much wider)... don’t see these in either planes or cars... Hydrogen power?—- Hydrogen is difficult to keep contained because it…

Unless you're talking about turboprops (jet engines with a gearbox) there really aren't any wankel engines in aircraft. Just a few experimental/EAB conversions out there.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#42

Post by bdamm »

chmielewski wrote: post #33
vvanders wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had the same thought about rotary motors, they're interesting beasts and I wonder what we'd see if they had the same R&D investment like we saw in piston engines. Alas I think that ship has sailed, aside from energy density the modern electric VFD wins along a whole range of design constraints(torque, size, latency/traction response, efficiency, etc).

We have seen a significant long-term R&D investment but all the nice rotary engines are in prop planes. Edit: since you mention a ship, some use large opposed-pistol Diesel engines (two oppositely meeting pistons around the combustion chamber per cylinder which also allows the cylinder to be much wider)... don’t see these in either planes or cars... Hydrogen power?—- Hydrogen is difficult to keep contained because it…

A rotary engine is not the same as a radial engine. Radial engines go in airplanes, rotary engines go in Mazdas.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#43

Post by stale2002 »

potta_coffee wrote: post #16
willyg123 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is the "full effect" more than a million deaths a year?

Because that's how many people coal kills. And Im not talking about global warming. I am instead only talking about the pollution deaths.

If Chernobyl happened like 3 times every single year, that would still be safer than coal, TBH.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#44

Post by smileysteve »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #18
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 imp…

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 acceleration without a hybrid design)

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#45

Post by Something1234 »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
Causality1 wrote: post #3

They could've worked in cities. Lead-acid batteries, though, have never had the energy/weight ratio necessary for the type of long-range driving necessary outside of highly urbanized areas.

Likely if the fossil fuel bonanza had not happened there would have been more interest in improving battery chemistry.

I would say that fossil fuels are very important for a lot of our battery technology. I believe that a large number of important chemicals and materials like plastics are derived from oil.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#46

Post by jacquesm »

standardUser wrote: post #32
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It turns out the same was true for internal combustion engines all along.

Actually, no. Given the state of the tech at the time and our knowledge about pollution and the effects of various types of exhaust gases on the atmosphere it wasn't true 'all along'.

There were levels of vehicle use that were perfectly acceptable. But now that transportation is a world wide commodity instead of a luxury those effects are inescapable.

So there was some point in time where the balance shifted, and then it took a long time for the reality to set in (and some part of the world are still in denial). And it will take some time still to shift to electrical vehicles, but those too have their own waste and risks, some of which will only become apparent when their adoption rate crosses certain thresholds.

Crystal balls are in short supply.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#48

Post by bmurphy1976 »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
Causality1 wrote: post #3

They could've worked in cities. Lead-acid batteries, though, have never had the energy/weight ratio necessary for the type of long-range driving necessary outside of highly urbanized areas.

Likely if the fossil fuel bonanza had not happened there would have been more interest in improving battery chemistry.

Or more public transportation.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#49

Post by smileysteve »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #25
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…

What do you mean steam powered cars? When I think of an X powered car I think of putting X into the car to power it. You put petrol in a petrol car and electric power in an electric car. You don't put steam in a steam train, aren't they actually coal powered? According to Wikipedia, steam cars just ran on petrol, but the combustion engine was external, and the car was less efficient overall. Steam engines don't seem…

It's not a combustion engine, but a burner, not unlike a grill or stove. To your point they could also be electric.

The earliest ones were coal or wood burning, we're also talking 1880s

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#50

Post by smileysteve »

Swizec wrote: post #14
tomjakubowski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Too heavy? But the skateboard puts all of the weight as low as possible
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