Mandate Electric Cars to save the environment.

[Cold Fusion38]

Oh I don't think a tax credit is a con or forcing people to buy something they don't want. The fact is they are and will be very expesive until they become more mainstream. I would just like to be able to get a nice plug in sedan for say 30K.......Not that I'm in the market for a 30K car.....Hell I'm not in the market for a $30 car right now but.......CROSS MY FINGERS I hope I won't need to buy a car before I graduate.

Tax credits take money from the government, which they have to regain by increasing taxes on other things, therefore forcing people who do not benefit from this to pay for it indirectly. Ultimately taking choice away. As I said, I am against all tax credits though write offs for donating to charities I am for. I won't drive, I prefer to walk everywhere I can (when my knees don't hurt too much) and bus everywhere else, so I would be paying for these tax credits even though I hate all cars. My dream would be to make horse travel popular again.

Well I don't like paying for education as I have no children but I recognise that there is a social "GOOD" in doing so so I don't bitch about my taxes going to it.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

My dream would be to make horse travel popular again

What a fucking IDIOT.

 

[sitarro]

Oh I don't think a tax credit is a con or forcing people to buy something they don't want. The fact is they are and will be very expesive until they become more mainstream. I would just like to be able to get a nice plug in sedan for say 30K.......Not that I'm in the market for a 30K car.....Hell I'm not in the market for a $30 car right now but.......CROSS MY FINGERS I hope I won't need to buy a car before I graduate.

My dream would be to make horse travel popular again.

Electric horses? Otherwise......PEWWWWWWWWWWWW

Ford makes a Mustang.

 

[frazzledgear]

Electric cars need to be mandated. PERIOD !

What do you mean by "mandate" electric cars? Do you mean government should just force people to give up their gasoline-fueled cars and force them to buy electric ones if they want to drive -like to work, the grocery store or doctor? I'm sorry but you must think you live under a different system, some other one where government is the master of the people. But in THIS country, the only authority for government to mandate anything comes from the people and so far the people have not given government any such mandate. Not real big on that freedom thing, are you.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

Oh I don't think a tax credit is a con or forcing people to buy something they don't want. The fact is they are and will be very expesive until they become more mainstream. I would just like to be able to get a nice plug in sedan for say 30K.......Not that I'm in the market for a 30K car.....Hell I'm not in the market for a $30 car right now but.......CROSS MY FINGERS I hope I won't need to buy a car before I graduate.

My dream would be to make horse travel popular again.

Electric horses? Otherwise......PEWWWWWWWWWWWW

Ford makes a Mustang.

What the hell do you feed electric horses?

 

[Midnight Marauder]

My dream would be to make horse travel popular again.

Electric horses? Otherwise......PEWWWWWWWWWWWW

Ford makes a Mustang.

What the hell do you feed electric horses?

Batteries.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

ColdFusion: Getting back to your theory that IC engines are "the most inefficient user of fossil fuels" I'd like you to elucidate on that, especially since you seem to equate heat with inefficiency.

Know what happens if your air/fuel mixture is too lean (too much air) in a IC engine? Well for one, it's an extremely efficient burn. For two, it burns holes in the pistons. The more efficient the combustion, the MORE heat you will generate!

If you made a IC engine out of titanium, you might could beat this issue. You could probably also get 80 MPG out of a 5 liter V8 made this way.

You also, couldn't afford the $200,000 engine.

Gasoline IC engines today, are far, far more efficient than their 70s counterparts. And 80% less polluting. And they still are far more cost effective than any other engine out there.

THIS is why the "alternatives" need to be subsidized. Because you simply cannot make an engine that is economically feasible to compete with IC any other way.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

Well I would think you would also risk detonation which isn't very good for an IC car either.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Well I would think you would also risk detonation which isn't very good for an IC car either.

You get detonation every time the piston comes to the top of the cylinder in the combustion cycle. Detonation of the air-fuel mixture under tremendous compression.

If by "detonation" you mean, premature detonation in the intake manifold? Yeah that can be bad but a lean mixture typically won't cause it.

Hopefully we are now past the "heat equals inefficiency" fallacy. It's the other way around.

Here's another example: Natural gas fired boilers. I'm licensed and am a certified "tuner" of boilers. I use instruments to measure the exhaust gas and make adjustments to the mixture accordingly. But visually, you can tell alot. A yellow flame is a bad flame. It's low on heat, it expels soot, and lots of CO2. Because we are not burning the gas efficiently. We are wasting a good deal of it in this situation.

The fix is always the same -- more air, less fuel. The flame then turns blue and gets five times hotter then the yellow one was, and hundreds of times "cleaner."

Again, when our burn got more efficient, we generated MORE heat.

I can then hook up my instruments and fine tune this boiler. I can tune a boiler to be putting out less than 5% more CO2 than is ambient. That's damned clean. It means, if the atmospheric CO2 right now is say, 380ppm, my exhaust gas from this fine-tuned boiler is 400ppm.

Same boiler, same tuning... But if the ambient CO2 the next day is 480ppm, then this boiler exhaust gas will contain 504ppm of CO2 concentration. What?

Few people realize that the air any engine or boiler or any other combustion device takes in already has CO2 in it. And it will be ambient, whatever ppm it is at any given time, and your combustion process adds to that by only a small percentage if it is reasonably efficient.

The hotter a combustion is, the more efficient and less polluting it is. Always. It's science.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

True, but even if you can increase heat and pressure in an engine without premature detonation, you run into a problem with nitrous oxides (NOx). The nitrogen in the ambient air is literally being oxidized.

It's true that engines are inefficient, much more so than an electric car charged from a modern power plant. But that doesn't matter. "We have the technology, we just need to push it!"--is false. There is no electric car on earth, even prototypes, which can go 300 miles and then charge up in 5~10 minutes. None. Not at any price. Not yet, anyhow. Maybe within 10 years, possibly.

It will happen eventually, and when the technology is available, you won't need government force to ram it down people's throats. People will adopt them voluntarily because they will produce a superior driving experience. Think about why people love Toyota Camrys. Smooth, silent, reliable, economical, cheap to repair. Electric cars can do all these things 10x better, and don't even need transmissions. Once the range/carge time issue is overcome, the IC engine will be history (aside from enthusiasts who love the roar of an engine. But they will be outperformed by electrics, mark my words. The only people driving gassers in 100 years will be crotchety old men who value novelty and nostalgia. Sort of like the guys who like to shoot flintlock muskets.)

 

[Cold Fusion38]

Good post. If you compare the electric car of just 2o years ago with the electric of today you see a QUANTUM increase in range and performance. I just can't wait to be able to buy one. One other great thing about plug in electric cars is they require VERY little maintnance compared to an IC car. Much fewer parts to go bad.

 

[Cold Fusion38]

I think we will have fuel burners for the next century but they will be MUCH more efficient and will only be used for certain needs like heavy towing. MM idea of a diesel electric truck sounds GREAT and I hope he can make it work. As for peole who just NEED to have the sound of an IC engine i suggest cranking up a CD that has whatever sound you want from V-6 to V-12.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

True, but even if you can increase heat and pressure in an engine without premature detonation, you run into a problem with nitrous oxides (NOx). The nitrogen in the ambient air is literally being oxidized.

NOx emissions have much to do with fuel quality as well. Which unfortunately varies. Re-burn of exhaust gases can solve some of this. Fuel consistency is a variable which unfortunately has to be lived with.

It's true that engines are inefficient, much more so than an electric car charged from a modern power plant.

Heat isn't an indicator of inefficiency. I think we have safely put that idea to rest.

Right now there's no purely electric cars that match a IC car in energy efficiency. It's a "feel good" proposition that has nothing to do with science. There's simply no getting around the fact that to do a quantity of work, it costs you a quantity of energy.

The answer so far has been, reduce the work. So they make electric cars lighter, smaller, and compromise on capabilities. They approach it with a defeatist mentality from the start. No one ever wants to compare an IC powerplant in that lower work situation to an electric. The IC would be much smaller and more efficient because you have greatly reduced the workload. So it's a fallacy until you make it a apples to apples comparison. Is an electric car more efficient than a pickup truck? You can't determine that until you compare the workloads. No one really thinks of this, they just accept without really thinking, the "electric is more efficient" mantra.

But that doesn't matter. "We have the technology, we just need to push it!"--is false. There is no electric car on earth, even prototypes, which can go 300 miles and then charge up in 5~10 minutes. None. Not at any price. Not yet, anyhow. Maybe within 10 years, possibly.

And none that can do comparable work.

It will happen eventually, and when the technology is available, you won't need government force to ram it down people's throats. People will adopt them voluntarily because they will produce a superior driving experience.

As soon as we stop compromising on capabilities from the outset, drop the initial defeatist mentality, we will cross the technological barrier by ceasing to limit our thinking.

Think about why people love Toyota Camrys. Smooth, silent, reliable, economical, cheap to repair.

And,they are doing comparable work and don't compromise on capabilities.

Electric cars can do all these things 10x better, and don't even need transmissions.

The mechanical advantage here is separate from the comparative energy efficiency advantages, and even with this advantage, you're still not winning the work/energy war.

Once the range/carge time issue is overcome, the IC engine will be history (aside from enthusiasts who love the roar of an engine. But they will be outperformed by electrics, mark my words. The only people driving gassers in 100 years will be crotchety old men who value novelty and nostalgia. Sort of like the guys who like to shoot flintlock muskets.)

Anyone in the next 20 years at least who will want a vehicle to actually be able to handle a workload beyond simple person travel will still be needing either a diesel or an IC powered vehicle. So don't write the epitaph just yet. But in 100 years? Who knows.... We have now entered the realm of pure speculation. In 100 years we may have fusion. Or something we've never thought of yet.

This is the basic idea behind the diesel-electric Hummer. It starts out by saying, "we are not compromising on capabilities" unlike what we have seen thus far on EV design. Unlike what we see on hybrids even. If we start that way -- instead of starting with a defeatist mentality -- we will do more, faster than what we're seeing right now. Advancing the technology while maintaining practicality. No compromises.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Good post. If you compare the electric car of just 2o years ago with the electric of today you see a QUANTUM increase in range and performance. I just can't wait to be able to buy one.

Build one!

One other great thing about plug in electric cars is they require VERY little maintnance compared to an IC car. Much fewer parts to go bad.

There's many, many things that can and do go wrong with EV systems. None of them are repaired cheap either. For every mechanical part we do away with we replace it with an electronic part that hates vibration, moisture and heat. That likes to corrode and short out. That digs losing its electrical tolerance and response. The case is open whether these will be as reliable and cost effective to repair as today's vehicles. Tune in again, when we have a actual baseline, some EVs that have been driven 140,000 miles would be a good start to any such study.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

Heat isn't an indicator of inefficiency. I think we have safely put that idea to rest.

Umm, that is categorically false.

Take three light bulbs that put out 1,000 lumens of light. One is incandescent, another is fluorescent, and the other is white LEDs. The incandescent will burn your hand if you touch it. The fluorescent will be uncomfortably warm, and the LED will barely be above room temperature. The very definition of efficiency here is, "of the electricity consumed, how much is turned into useful lighting, and how much is wasted as heat?" Of course, the incandescent is least efficient, the fluorescent is better, and the LED is best of all.

Same thing with engines. The least thermodynamically efficient engine on the road today is Mazda's wankel rotary. Not surprisingly, it runs blazing hot. Not surprisingly, they also respond extremely well to turbocharging.

Or look at Bruce Crower's six cycle engine. (Owner and founder of crower cams) It eliminates the radiator altogether. After the exhaust stroke, it injects water which flashes to steam and produces power from the heat that was otherwise lost through the radiator.

Right now there's no purely electric cars that match a IC car in energy efficiency. It's a "feel good" proposition that has nothing to do with science. There's simply no getting around the fact that to do a quantity of work, it costs you a quantity of energy.

Any mundane, off-the-shelf electric motor can easily hit 80%~85% efficiency. Better motors get into the low 90's. There is no engine on the face of the earth that can begin to approach that. Not turbines, not turbodiesels, not even Stirling engines. The world record holder for brake specific fuel consumption in a gasoline piston engine is Revetec's prototype, which is 39%. Maybe a turbodiesel version of their engine could hit say, 50%. That's still way behind electric motors built 50 years ago.

You can prove this by looking at cost-per-mile for various fuels. Electrics always win. CNG cars come in second, then diesels, then hydrogen cars come in dead last. Electrics run equivalent to 70 cent per gallon gasoline, because they are efficient.

The answer so far has been, reduce the work. So they make electric cars lighter, smaller, and compromise on capabilities. They approach it with a defeatist mentality from the start. No one ever wants to compare an IC powerplant in that lower work situation to an electric. The IC would be much smaller and more efficient because you have greatly reduced the workload. So it's a fallacy until you make it a apples to apples comparison. Is an electric car more efficient than a pickup truck? You can't determine that until you compare the workloads. No one really thinks of this, they just accept without really thinking, the "electric is more efficient" mantra.

I do agree that we need an apples to apples comparison. What you will typically find is, for a regular car or truck converted to lead-acid batteries, the range is a paltry 20~40 miles. Ni-Mh...maybe 60. The newest and best lithium batteries? 120 miles. For a full size, steel body 4-door pickup anyhow. Did you ever see that electric truck that Bush posed with for a photo op? It had a 120 mile range and could charge up in 10 minutes. Of course, 120 miles is still not good enough, not by a long shot.

That's the problem. Batteries. It's always been about batteries, not the motors. Motors are great, but batteries are terrible. Electric motors are miserly and make great use of the power they have available, but the trouble is there is very little energy stored in that battery for them to use. Which of course is why they resort to lame gimicks like undersized motors and ultralight ultraexpensive construction, to wring out every last drop of range.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Heat isn't an indicator of inefficiency. I think we have safely put that idea to rest.

Umm, that is categorically false.

Take three light bulbs that put out 1,000 lumens of light. One is incandescent, another is fluorescent, and the other is white LEDs. The incandescent will burn your hand if you touch it. The fluorescent will be uncomfortably warm, and the LED will barely be above room temperature. The very definition of efficiency here is, "of the electricity consumed, how much is turned into useful lighting, and how much is wasted as heat?" Of course, the incandescent is least efficient, the fluorescent is better, and the LED is best of all.

Here we are comparing lighting now, to engines/motors? C'mon now. It might be different were my claim about lighting.

But, stop to think: Your comparison here isn't fair either, because the incandescent light is a resistive load, and the others are inductive loads. A resistive load will always generate heat no matter the application. That alone does not make it inefficient. It is what it is, a resistive load and comparing resistive loads to inductive loads isn't apples to apples right from the jump.

Of course a inductive load is going to be more energy efficient than a resistive load, it's the nature of the two beasts. But there are jobs a resistive load can do that a inductive one cannot, and vice-versa. Inductive loads are much more suited to lighting than resistive ones are. You've taken the resistive load in one of its worst applications, and compared it to inductive loads in one of their best?

Same thing with engines. The least thermodynamically efficient engine on the road today is Mazda's wankel rotary. Not surprisingly, it runs blazing hot. Not surprisingly, they also respond extremely well to turbocharging.

Which does three things: greatly increases fuel efficiency, ability to do work, and heat!

Or look at Bruce Crower's six cycle engine. (Owner and founder of crower cams) It eliminates the radiator altogether. After the exhaust stroke, it injects water which flashes to steam and produces power from the heat that was otherwise lost through the radiator.

If you trouble yourself to read back, you'll see I quite eloquently shot down the broad-brush, blanket premise that "IC engines are the most inefficient users of fossil fuel," an assertion that was based solely on the fact that they generate "waste heat." Heat alone is not an indicator of inefficiency, that's my only claim here, and in fact in a combustion process it's quite the opposite.

Right now there's no purely electric cars that match a IC car in energy efficiency. It's a "feel good" proposition that has nothing to do with science. There's simply no getting around the fact that to do a quantity of work, it costs you a quantity of energy.

Any mundane, off-the-shelf electric motor can easily hit 80%~85% efficiency. Better motors get into the low 90's. There is no engine on the face of the earth that can begin to approach that. Not turbines, not turbodiesels, not even Stirling engines. The world record holder for brake specific fuel consumption in a gasoline piston engine is Revetec's prototype, which is 39%. Maybe a turbodiesel version of their engine could hit say, 50%. That's still way behind electric motors built 50 years ago.

These efficiency ratings aren't measured under loaded conditions. And they also aren't application-specific, such as if used to drive an automobile. We're debating mechanical efficiency or fuel efficiency? There's no way when comparable work is being done, with comparable sized engines/motors, the electric motor trumps the IC.

You can prove this by looking at cost-per-mile for various fuels. Electrics always win. CNG cars come in second, then diesels, then hydrogen cars come in dead last. Electrics run equivalent to 70 cent per gallon gasoline, because they are efficient.

We are back to the fact that the workloads are different, and so is the performance. Cost per mile on a EV that is half the weight of a typical IC car, can't go very fast for very long, isn't exactly a fair comparison, as you admit next:

The answer so far has been, reduce the work. So they make electric cars lighter, smaller, and compromise on capabilities. They approach it with a defeatist mentality from the start. No one ever wants to compare an IC powerplant in that lower work situation to an electric. The IC would be much smaller and more efficient because you have greatly reduced the workload. So it's a fallacy until you make it a apples to apples comparison. Is an electric car more efficient than a pickup truck? You can't determine that until you compare the workloads. No one really thinks of this, they just accept without really thinking, the "electric is more efficient" mantra.

I do agree that we need an apples to apples comparison. What you will typically find is, for a regular car or truck converted to lead-acid batteries, the range is a paltry 20~40 miles. Ni-Mh...maybe 60. The newest and best lithium batteries? 120 miles. For a full size, steel body 4-door pickup anyhow. Did you ever see that electric truck that Bush posed with for a photo op? It had a 120 mile range and could charge up in 10 minutes. Of course, 120 miles is still not good enough, not by a long shot.

When workloads are comparable, electric loses in vehicles. Hugely so.

That's the problem. Batteries. It's always been about batteries, not the motors. Motors are great, but batteries are terrible.

Batteries are also heavy.

Electric motors are miserly and make great use of the power they have available,

Huge advantage here, electric motors in most applications don't idle. In a electric vehicle, there's NO energy being spent until you are actually propelling the vehicle. Mechanical motors idle, keeping the hydraulic pressure in the tranny up, keeping the 12v system charged, the power steering hydraulic pressure up, the water pump going, and many other things. This is another factor no one takes into consideration when making these comparisons -- the different nature of the two beasts. If the electric motor in a EV had to idle to keep all the same stuff up, it would be further demolished in the comparison.

but the trouble is there is very little energy stored in that battery for them to use. Which of course is why they resort to lame gimicks like undersized motors and ultralight ultraexpensive construction, to wring out every last drop of range.

This is why they approach EV design with a defeatist mentality from the start. You don't see locomotives ever plug in to charge their batteries, in their design there's no compromise for less work. They are a rolling power plant. You don't need very many batteries when you are generating megawatts of power with a big diesel genset, any more than I will on my 5000 volt/amp diesel-electric Hummer I am building.

The semantic noise in the EV vs. IC vehicle debate prevents logical conclusions until all the parties involved level the playing field of the comparisons and just admit that the limitations of battery-operated electric far outweigh the cherry-picked odious efficiency comparisons. Can you make a EV drag racer to smoke the asses of typical factory stock IC vehicles? Well hell yes, you can and the video posted here earlier shows that quite nicely. But can you take that same vehicle and smoke the ass of a IC vehicle designed for drag racing, with a comparable power to weight ratio? Of course you cannot.

When the workloads are equal, the EV loses each and every time.

The diesel-electric? We shall see.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

These efficiency ratings aren't measured under loaded conditions.

Uhh...yes they most certainly are. Electric motors and IC engines have been around for over a century. Engineering organizations like ASME have lengthy and detailed specs which state exactly how stated efficiency is to be determined. They have been testing power producing devices since before your grandparents were born.

And they also aren't application-specific, such as if used to drive an automobile.

It doesn't matter in the slightest. Work is work. The engine doesn't know what work it is doing. The only question that matters is, "What percentage of potential power fed to the device is converted into mechanical power?" For electric motors, that number is in the 80% range, and no IC engine in existence can touch that.

We're debating mechanical efficiency or fuel efficiency? There's no way when comparable work is being done, with comparable sized engines/motors, the electric motor trumps the IC.

Let me put this simply.

gasoline > today's batteries
electric motor > IC engine

Comparing a 200 hp motor to a 200 hp IC engine, the motor will convert the battery's power with far greater efficiency than the IC engine will convert the gasoline's potential energy. From Wikipedia:

Heat engines operate with very low efficiencies because heat cannot be converted directly into mechanical energy. Electric vehicles convert stored electric potential into mechanical energy. Electricity can be converted into mechanical energy at very high efficiencies. A quick analysis will show electric vehicles are significantly more efficient.

...The greater efficiency of electric vehicles is primarily because most energy in a gasoline-powered vehicle is released as waste heat. With an engine getting only 20% thermal efficiency, a gasoline-powered vehicle using 96 kW·h/100 km of energy is only using 19.2 kW·h/100 km for motion.

When expressed as a percentage, the thermal efficiency must be between 0% and 100%. Due to inefficiencies such as friction, heat loss, and other factors, thermal engines efficiencies are typically much less than 100%. For example, a typical gasoline automobile engine operates at around 25% efficiency, and a large coal-fueled electrical generating plant peaks at about 46%. The largest diesel engine in the world peaks at 51.7%. In a combined cycle plant, thermal efficiencies are approaching 60%.

Electric car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thermal efficiency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Admittedly, this is all being a bit pedantic, because an electric vehicle cannot exist without it's battery. Of course EV's suck right now, but I'm just saying it's the batteries that suck, not the motor itself. If motors were inferior to IC engines, you'd see gas powered elevators and gas powered air conditioners in office buildings and so forth. You'd see machine shops powering their lathes and mills with gas engines. Show me a stationary power application with available power (both electric and natural gas), and I'll show you an engineer who picked an electric motor, guaranteed.

If a better battery/capacitor comes along, EV's will be worthwhile. If it doesn't, they won't.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

These efficiency ratings aren't measured under loaded conditions.

Uhh...yes they most certainly are. Electric motors and IC engines have been around for over a century. Engineering organizations like ASME have lengthy and detailed specs which state exactly how stated efficiency is to be determined. They have been testing power producing devices since before your grandparents were born.

And they also aren't application-specific, such as if used to drive an automobile.

It doesn't matter in the slightest. Work is work. The engine doesn't know what work it is doing. The only question that matters is, "What percentage of potential power fed to the device is converted into mechanical power?" For electric motors, that number is in the 80% range, and no IC engine in existence can touch that.

We're debating mechanical efficiency or fuel efficiency? There's no way when comparable work is being done, with comparable sized engines/motors, the electric motor trumps the IC.

Let me put this simply.

gasoline > today's batteries
electric motor > IC engine

Comparing a 200 hp motor to a 200 hp IC engine, the motor will convert the battery's power with far greater efficiency than the IC engine will convert the gasoline's potential energy. From Wikipedia:

Heat engines operate with very low efficiencies because heat cannot be converted directly into mechanical energy. Electric vehicles convert stored electric potential into mechanical energy. Electricity can be converted into mechanical energy at very high efficiencies. A quick analysis will show electric vehicles are significantly more efficient.

...The greater efficiency of electric vehicles is primarily because most energy in a gasoline-powered vehicle is released as waste heat. With an engine getting only 20% thermal efficiency, a gasoline-powered vehicle using 96 kW·h/100 km of energy is only using 19.2 kW·h/100 km for motion.

When expressed as a percentage, the thermal efficiency must be between 0% and 100%. Due to inefficiencies such as friction, heat loss, and other factors, thermal engines efficiencies are typically much less than 100%. For example, a typical gasoline automobile engine operates at around 25% efficiency, and a large coal-fueled electrical generating plant peaks at about 46%. The largest diesel engine in the world peaks at 51.7%. In a combined cycle plant, thermal efficiencies are approaching 60%.

Electric car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thermal efficiency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Admittedly, this is all being a bit pedantic, because an electric vehicle cannot exist without it's battery. Of course EV's suck right now, but I'm just saying it's the batteries that suck, not the motor itself. If motors were inferior to IC engines, you'd see gas powered elevators and gas powered air conditioners in office buildings and so forth. You'd see machine shops powering their lathes and mills with gas engines. Show me a stationary power application with available power (both electric and natural gas), and I'll show you an engineer who picked an electric motor, guaranteed.

If a better battery/capacitor comes along, EV's will be worthwhile. If it doesn't, they won't.

I'm sailing the specific ocean, while you're wallowing in the speculantic. Thermal efficiency wasn't the topic. It was the myth that heat alone indicates inefficiency. It does not, especially in the combustion process.

The efficiency specs by ASME and others do not take into account such factors as inrush current under load, and lifetime insulation loss. Off the shelf, you have this efficiency. In real life, you never see it. If that's a thermal efficiency rating, again it's not comparable.

Of course electric motors are used in elevators, lathes, and stationary rotating devices. That's part of the infrastructure. Again, you are unable to make apples to apples comparisons. Take for example the 200hp motor vs. engine: You realize of course that the 200hp electric motor there weighs three times as much as the engine, making the power to weight ratio horribly skewed? This is the point I am making -- when the workload is comparable, the EV loses out hands down, in vehicles. Not in lighting, not in stationary rotating machine applications, in vehicles.

As I showed you earlier. If a electric motor had to idle in order to keep the various components such as power steering, alternator, hydraulic pressure in the tranny, water pump, AIR system, vacuum pressure and etc. going, it really begins to lose all of its advantages very quickly. No one takes this into account when making these comparisons because they're locked into group-think.

This is why you don't have any successful EVs. But you do have successful and highly efficient diesel-electric vehicles.

Batteries? As soon as we lose our fear of anything labeled "nuclear" or "radioactive" we will start making great strides in this area. Right now no one seems to want to apply this technology on a scale larger than to power a onboard computer in space, but if they did I think we would see the first major breakthrough in 70 years:

Nuclear battery keeps going, and going ... - LiveScience- msnbc.com

 

[Bern80]

The tech is here NOW it just has to be made available for a reasonable price. Massive tax breaks for electric cars.

Did any of you boneheads suggesting these ridiculous subsidies ever take an economics class?

 

[Bern80]

The other thing to be aware of with electric motors is the scale to which they must be built to make them compariable to an IC motor. I work for an electric trolling motor company and the issue we are running into is that many state governments are mandating that peope operate electric only motors on bodies of water. The issue is then that people want performance, in terms of power and speed, comparable to the gas motor they used to be able to run. And you just can't get anywhere near it with an electric. Not without a ridiculous number of batteries and ridiculously sized motor.

Electric motors are most definately efficient users of potential power. What they aren't is efficient producers of work. Sure you could get an electric motor with a couple hudrend horsepower that'll go 50 mph. It would have to be about the size of a house and take 50 or so batteries, but it could be done. That is the simple reason electrics aren't heavily adopted. They are a product that costs more and does less. It shouldn't be much of a head scratcher as to why people aren't waiting in line for smart cars.