Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:22:18 GMT | 1 comment
Putting in lithium-ion batteries in my Zapino scooter was a big investment and I am still a little nervous about how well they will work and how long they will last. But I just went for my first ride on my newly converted Zapino and came back with a big smile on my face after covering 18 miles!
I had planned on just riding to the library and back which would have been about 6 miles, but it felt so good after I got there that I decide to ride down to Los Gatos along the long stretch of Hwy 9. The entire trip, the acceleration remained peppy as the voltage on the batteries never sagged below 60 volts. I could also feel the difference that the 80 lb lighter weight made in acceleration and handling. I passed one radar speed sign and it said I was doing 37 MPH. The whole way the voltage of each battery pack remained very similar, which was a good sign.
I am estimating that with the new lithium batteries and lighter weight, I should be able to get about 40 miles out of my newly converted Zapino. Next up, a longer trip to test this range!
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:54:56 GMT | 3 comments
This post is very specific about the new Elite Power Solutions Thundersky battery balancers. I am posting it in order to help other people that might have the same questions I did about how to mount them.
First off, here are the old battery balancers that Elite Power Solutions provided for Thundersky batteries:
Notice that the circuit boards have a short wire attached. This makes it easier to mount and allows both LEDs on the board to be seen. However, some might think that the wires look a little sloppy.
Here are the new battery balancers:
Read more...
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:12:35 GMT | no comments
I finally did it – I got Li-Ion batteries for my Zapino and started the conversion! This will reduce the battery weight from 150 lbs to 70 lbs and increase the range from about 20 miles to about 40 miles. While quite a bit more expensive than lead-acid AGM batteries, they will last more than 3 times as long so the lifetime cost will be less.
The first challenge I ran into is that the batteries are slightly taller so the two in front wouldn’t fit. The fix for this was to take the Zapino to my mechanic and have him reweld the battery box to add about 2 inches to it. This worked fine, but does reduce my clearance so I will need to be more careful about speed bumps and going up curbs.
Before
After
Batteries Mounted
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 07 Jul 2010 03:36:35 GMT | 1 comment
I have long heard that oil companies get a lot of special tax breaks, but no-one has ever been able to explain clearly what those tax breaks actually are. Now an article in the New York Times As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Subsidies provides the best explanation I have seen. Some of these tax breaks are:
- Moving corporate headquarters offshore to avoid taxes in the US
- Capital investments like oil field leases and drilling equipment are taxed at an effective rate of 9 percent, significantly lower than the overall rate of 25 percent for businesses in general
- Leasing rigs, like the Deepwater Horizon, to take advantage of a special oil industry tax break that allows them to write off 70% of the leasing cost
- A lingering provision from the Tariff Act of 1913 that allows many small and midsize oil companies based in the United States to claim deductions for the lost value of tapped oil fields far beyond the amount the companies actually paid for the oil rights
- Reclassifying the royalties charged by foreign governments to American oil drillers as taxes which entitles the companies to subtract those payments from their American tax bills
While some of these ploys are also employed by other industries, like moving their headquarters outside the US, the US tax code makes it especially easy and profitable for oil companies to employ these tactics.
Furthermore, many of these tax breaks no longer have any valid reason for existence since they were enacted a century ago to encourage oil exploration in the fledgling industry and then later in the 50s to decrease Soviet influence in the Middle East.
It is estimated that these tax breaks averaged $12 billion from 2006 to 2008. While this is a large number, it is only a small fraction of the $280 billion the oil industry was taxed in this period.
Nonetheless, with a growing deficit, dismantling these archaic tax breaks for the oil industry would raise badly needed revenue and help reduce the unfair advantage that the oil industry holds over cleaner forms of sustainable energy.
Posted in Peak Oil, Sustainable Energy
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:13:02 GMT | no comments
Battery life has always been a big concern of electric vehicles (EV). Being the most expensive element of an EV, if they don’t last long it would drastically increase the cost of owning an EV. Early ead acid batteries last about 300 to 500 cycles, which is good for only a year or two of driving. Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries are much better, lasting about 1,500 cycles and with a 100 mile range, this would give a life of 150,000 miles, or about the same as the life of the car.
However, Toshiba has been working on a new battery technology with a greatly increased life span of 6,000 cycles. This would give an EV a lifetime range of about 600,000 miles, or enough to swap into 4 different EVs! Imagine that you buy an EV and 10 years later it is starting to fall apart, but you can use your batteries for your next EV greatly reducing the cost of your subsequent EVs.
Another advantage of the SCiB technology is that it is safer and can withstand fast charging. Now word on price or when it will be available, but they are working with Mitsubishi and several other partners to bring it to market.
Source: AutoBlog Green: Toshiba partners with Mitsubishi for development of li-ion SCiB EV batteries
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:18:10 GMT | 1 comment
The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.
“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” says the Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command.
It adds: “While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India.”
(From: guardian.co.uk)
Posted in Peak Oil
Posted by Max Dunn
Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:32:54 GMT | 3 comments
There was an interesting article today on The Oil Drum today titled Using heat to refine kerogen from oil shale. The basic idea is that in order to get oil out of shale you need to heat it up, but then the oil can flow away and water can flow in. So first, it is necessary to create an ice wall around the site.
However, both the freezing and the heating takes tremendous amounts of energy. The article states:
“It has been suggested that the technology would need a dedicated power source of some 1.2 gigawatts, in order to yield a production of 100,000 bd.”
Let’s look at these numbers: 100,000 barrels of oil contains 4.2 million gallons of oil and if this were all converted to gas and used in standard cars that get 20 miles per gallon, it would power cars 84 million miles.
However, a 1.2 GW power plant would produce about 28 million kWh of electricity per day and if used for a standard electric vehicle (EV) which gets about 3 miles per kWh (plant to wheels) then it would power cars for 86 million miles.
So why spend all that effort and energy to extract oil from shale when the same amount of energy would power EVs farther?
Posted in Electric Vehicles, Peak Oil
Posted by Max Dunn
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:01:57 GMT | 1 comment
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery prices are dropping rapidly and automakers are already seeing quotes of $450 per kWh for next year.
This is a huge drop from the historical price of $1,000 per kWh and even better than this year’s price of $650 per kWh.
In addition, this new report by Deutsche Bank not only predicts that performance of Li-ion batteries will double in the next 7 years, they also predict the price will decline by another 50% in the next 10 years.
At $450 kWh, the 16kWh battery in the Chevy Volt would add only an additional $7,200 to the price of the car which will pay for itself in the gas savings after 90,000 miles – or sooner if gas rises above $3 per gallon.
(Source: GM-Volt.com. Report Reveals Lithium-ion Battery Prices Already Dropping Steeper Than Expected.)
Posted in Electric Vehicles
Posted by Max Dunn
Sun, 07 Mar 2010 06:10:06 GMT | no comments
I have often thought that the recession was really caused by the high price of oil and not by subprime mortgages. However, I haven’t seen any credible source to back this up until I read a post by Jeff Rubin today called: We’re all PIGS now.
Rubin worked for nearly 20 years as the chief economist of CIBC World Markets and here is what he believes:
It wasn’t subprime mortgages but triple-digit oil prices that brought down the world economy.
And unless that economy started to wean itself off an ever-depleting supply of affordable oil, there would be other recessions to follow as economic recoveries would simply push oil prices right back into triple-digit range.
While I took exception with a lot of what Rubin said in Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, here he is in the territory he knows best – economics – and I think his conclusion that record oil prices caused the recession is right on the money.
Posted in Peak Oil
Posted by Max Dunn
Wed, 10 Feb 2010 06:10:55 GMT | no comments
Electric utilities are are scared of plug-in hybrids and battery electric vehicles (EVs) – scared they will all plug-in to recharge after work on a hot summer day and bring down the grid.
As long as EVs are charged off-peak, there is more than enough power to charge about 160 million EVs without building any new power stations. Below is an outline of some of the ideas I have about making sure EVs don’t charge during peak times but instead, actually help the electric grid.
Read more...
Posted in Electric Vehicles