Posted by Max Dunn
Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:57:39 GMT | no comments
For those of you wondering what is in my eVolvo, here are the specs:
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:33:43 GMT | no comments
With all this talk about fuel cells, I have been wondering if it is possible to actually buy one. Here is one I stumbled across a reformed methanol fuel cell that puts out 25 watts. With the standard 12 oz cartridge of methanol, it will produce power for about 7 hours. One drawback is that it takes between 12 and 30 minutes to start-up, not very convenient if you need to get someplace quick. However the real kicker is the price – $5,000! If you wanted enough of these to power a car which takes about 15,000 watts, it would cost over $3 million! Or course this is a methane fuel cell and not a hydrogen one, but it provides another reason to believe that fuel cells are not the answer to the future of transportation.
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:06:37 GMT | no comments
ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future
by Vijay Vaitheeswaran
I wanted to like this book – I really did. With a name like "Zoom" and the promise to show the car of the future, I was excited to read it. But in the end, the book turned out to be at best a dud, and at worst misleading and harmful to the future of transportation.
Read more...
Posted in Electric Vehicles, Global Warming
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:24:48 GMT | 3 comments
Sometimes you will hear that electric vehicles produce more CO2 than gas vehicles, however, this isn’t true. Let’s look at an easy CO2 calculation to see why.
Burning a gallon of gas creates 20 lbs of CO2. So a car that gets an average of 20 MPG produces 1 lb of CO2 per mile. Ok so far?
Electric cars get an average of 3 miles per kWh and 1 kWh creates an average of 1.3 lbs of CO2. So an electric car produces about 0.4 lbs of CO2 per mile. So electric cars produce only about 40% as much CO2 as gas cars. Easy, right?
Read more...
Posted in Electric Vehicles, Global Warming
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:18:08 GMT | 1 comment
I finally did it – I got an electric car!
We had been considering a Miles NEV, but were concerned that even after tweaking it to go 35 MPH (rather than the 25 MPH it is supposed to go) that we would still get run over when driving on streets where the speed limit was 40 MPH or higher. The Miles also would have cost close to $20,000, and even then it was pretty minimal – vinyl seats, manual crank windows and no air-conditioning. So when a converted 1995 Volvo 850 came up for sale nearby for $14,000 we jumped on it!
Read more...
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:00:37 GMT | no comments
One question that is often asked is that if we start to have a lot of electric vehicles, won’t this strain our electric system and require us to build a lot of new electric power plants?
The answer is no – at least at first. The reason is that electric usage goes down considerably at night. By simply charging at off-peak times, then we can use electricity from the plants that would have otherwise been idle.
Let’s look at the math. An electric vehicle consumes 1 kWh from the wall socket for every 2-4 miles driven. The average car is driven about 30 miles per day – so the average
daily energy needed per car is only 10 kWh. If these vehicles are charged over 10 off-peak hours, the average power consumption per car is 1 kW. Since California has 25 GW of spare off-peak electric capacity, this can power 25 million electric cars in California alone.
This is just a rough calculation, but the same conclusion was reached in a detailed analysis which found that 84% of all cars in the US could be powered by the existing electricity infrastructure.
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 31 May 2008 23:30:07 GMT | 1 comment
Which do you think provides more performance by weight and size – a gas motor or an electric motor?
You are right if you said an electric motor. Here is a picture of an electric motor that provides twice the performance of the gas motor, yet is much smaller and has only 1 moving part!
(Reference: EVDrive BMW Project)
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 28 May 2008 19:47:27 GMT | no comments
All of the major electricity generating systems in use today have a fairly steady output. Whether they are powered by nuclear, coal, hydro or natural gas, the electricity output will be fairly constant unless there is a malfunction. However, solar and wind systems aren’t consistent – clouds can dramatically affect the output of solar systems, and lulls and gusts can affect wind systems.
In our electrical grid, it is important that the supply of electricity consistently matches its demand. This will become more challenging once solar and wind systems are producing a larger percentage of the total electrical power, and there are currently no good ways to smooth out these fast fluctuations. Spreading the solar and wind units far apart helps so that clouds and gusts won’t affect all the units at the same time. Also pumped hydro (where water can be pumped up into a dam using electricity as well as letting it out to produce electricity) can help smooth things out as well as using natural gas spinning reserves.
However, we will still need more regulation that is much faster than these, and this is where Vehicle-to-Grid can help. If we can reach a level where a significant amount of electric vehicles are hooked up to the grid with fast command communication, they will be able to quickly smooth out the electrical surges and lulls from solar and wind systems. Otherwise, we will likely run into severe regulations problems with these systems due to clouds and gusts.
Posted in Electric Vehicles, Global Warming, Peak Oil, Sustainable Energy
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 28 May 2008 15:47:59 GMT | no comments
There certainly a lot of excitement over electric cars these days. A 2001 Toyota RAV4-EV with over 47,000 miles sold on eBay for almost $70,000! (The selling price listed was $89,000 but this was an illegally retracted bid and the seller confirmed that it was sold for $69,850.)
It was in good shape with only minor scuffing on the left bumper and had an HOV stickers so it can drive in the car pool lane, but $70k seems like a lot of money for an electric car with almost 50,000 miles. Hopefully next year we will start seeing brand new electric cars closer to $40,000.
If you still are dying to get one, there is another RAV4-EV for sale on eBay and the bidding is currently at $50,000.
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Sat, 24 May 2008 02:12:51 GMT | 1 comment
As we have seem, the biggest per mile cost of running an electric vehicle
is not the electricity, it is the battery depletion. So it is
important to maximize the life of your batteries. One trick that works with
all battery techologies is to take short trips and recharge after each one.
By minimizing your depth of discharge (DOD) you will maximize the total energy that the batteries will deliver over their life.
Another very important factor is to charge the batteries correctly.
Especially for sealed lead-acid batteries like gel or AGM, correct charging
is critical. Deka states that if their batteries are continuously charged
with a voltage that is only 0.70 volts over the proper charging voltage, it
will reduce the battery life by 60 percent! This is because if sealed
batteries are overcharged, they will dry out and there is no way to replace
the lost moisture. It is likely that all sealed lead-acid batteries will suffer from this, not just Deka batteries.
Here is the kicker: the proper charging voltage varies depending on the
temperature. It ranges from 15.10 volts when it is below 40 degrees 13.60 volts when it is above 120 degrees. And it is not good enough to just measure the air temperature, instead it is important to measure the temperature of each battery since they will often be warmer than the outside air.
So unless your charger or BMS has a temperature probe on each battery, it is almost guaranteed that the batteries are not being charged correctly and that their potential life span will be reduced.
Posted in Electric Vehicles