A TV documentary on "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

[Pathfinder]

In fact, electric vehicles are the most polluting vehicles ever built. Years ago a study was done which compared the electric Ford Ranger to a 4-cylinder Ranger. The electric ranger required an average of 4 TONS of coal for one recharge (remember you not only need the power you put into the batteries, but also the power to push those little electrons through the wires, and then there are all the losses that come with the power grid) and dumped more pollution into the air than running the gas Ranger 100,000 miles.

I like hybrids (they converted ATV to the GM, Daimler, Chrysler, BMV Hybrid Development Center while I was there) but the suck in America.

I recall an article some years back comparing the ownership of a Prius and a Hummer H1. Turns out the total cost of ownership of the Hummer was 1/3 that of the Prius, due to the Prius' short lifespan (100k miles) and the fact that the batteries that Toyota used (custom as well but mass produced) started life in Canada.

The materials for the batteries were mined somewhere in Ontario, turning the landscape into something so devoid of life that NASA used it to test extra-terrestrial rovers. Then the stuff was shipped to Germany for processing, then on to Japan for development into batteries, and finally, shipped to the US in the Prius to sell to greenies here. All that shipping helped kill the Prius' TCO.

[Rastus]

Who killed the electric car...well none other than Mr. Physics.  

Mr. Physics says you can only do so much with what you've got...so if you are using conventional power lines you are going to lose about 30% of the electricity generated to heat before it ever get's to your home...a huge loss in efficiency if you were to use...say gasoline to power an electric plant.

Then there is that old bug-a-boo Mr. Physics again...he says you lose the heck out the what's left of that energy when you charge a conventional battery...awww...party pooper that Mr. Physics is.  Another oh...20% or so lost.  Then Mr. Physics says with that same battery when you use it it heats up again so....of that maybe 70% that made it from the power plant you only got to use 50-55% of that electricity to go to your car motor.

Bad old Mr. Physics.  He just doesn't want to play the liberal game.  In fact...he demands that if you want better you have to spend money on research and an industrial complex that sucks money from the power and victim game that elects the liberals.  Mr. Physics says that if you had room temperature super-conductors that you would get 99% plus of that electricity to your home and battery.  Mr. Physics says since a super-conductor works so well the power plants would not have to burn so much fuel....well dang Mr. Physics that sounds good but why can't you just use the old lines because the libs say so?  

Anyway, Mr. Physics says nano-batteries can recharge with far less loss and far more quickly...less than 5 minutes.  Mr. Physics says they are just maturing in the reseach phase right now.  Toshiba has one that recharges fully in two minutes with very little loss, mPhase company has one that will stay fully charged for 20 years if you walk off and lose it....a little more research and some scaling up might do it.

The libs know that what they say is true so the bad old car companies, power companies, oil companies and the such must be regulated and taxed until the black helicopters fly out of their corporate offices and the world is at peace.  Because the libs know and they are right we must elect them or we will continue to be the victims they say we are.

Well boys and girls...Mr. Physics really rules.  I think the libs know that but don't really care because as long as you believe them they will stay in power, rule over you and live very well....and happily ever after too!

 

[Tyler Durden]

Hmmn...ooookkkkaaayyy...thanks for that post.

Now, smartey pants, tell me just how efficient is your typical gasoline powered internal combustion engine, eh???

And for me, this isn't a green or tree hugger issue...or a liberal issue...NO! for me this about telling the A-rabs to literally go pound sand.

There have been 5,338 American servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'm just speculating here, but I would imagine there are about five thousand parents who asked themselves, "Why did my son or daughter have to die in Iraq or Afghanistan?"

@ warhawke...  thanks for your informative post.  I do appreciate you broadcasting your credentials and experience with the program like you did.

[billt]

There is a point to coal fired electric plants. If your electric is produced by nuclear power you will be "more green" if you drive electric. At least until the next Chernobyl. The big issue is batteries. Extreme temperatures kill batteries. Cold makes them inefficient, and hot simply makes them die. Here in Phoenix I have yet to get more than 2 Summers out of a car battery. No big deal, I can get a new one at Auto Zone for $50.00 or less on sale. If I'm driving a Prius or any other hybrid, I'm guessing at least a couple grand to replace the batteries. Most likely more for a pure electric vehicle. That's the problem with all of this new "green technology". You cannot recoup the cost of the unit with whatever savings you might realize. Solar hot water, solar electric panels, electric cars, etc. all crap out before you save anything.

I agree with your assessment of the ragheads. I'd love to see them drown in all of their own thick, black $h!t. But to be realistic, we're a long way from energy independence in this country, T. Boone Pickens and all.  Bill T.

[Rastus]

...Now, smartey pants, tell me just how efficient is your typical gasoline powered internal combustion engine, eh???
.....

Not as efficient as a fixed power unit that would be used in a power plant.  However, looking at it as a system far more efficient than generating electricity and charging batteries as a system of use.

Superconductor research should be a crash program.  If it were a fair world, we'd see the portion of our bills that include the energy source in drop 30% if superconductors were incorporated into electrical transmission.  It would also benefit batteries to move the internal resistance closer to zero.

[Sponsor]

[Tyler Durden]

chernoybl is like bringing an apples to oranges comparison when it comes to nuke plants here in the US.  If I recall correctly (if I am wrong, I am sure someone more experienced with nuke plants will correct me...    ) the Chernoybl plant used graphite rods to control the rate of the nuclear reaction.  Again, IIRC, the reason the Russians did that that was that the spent fuel rods or waste could then be converted over to nuclear material used for atomic bombs weapons.  I guess in that respect, the Russians were being cheap like that, and it turned around and bit them in the @$$.

Here in the US, we use water...and again IIRC, we also use boron rods to control the reaction...I guess until the water and the rest of the cooling system is up to speed.

Your lead acid car batteries, I think, is dead technology as far as powering up an electric car....mainly for those reasons you cited...weather extremes....life expectancy....and of course, just their weight.

I am not so sure your idea that green stuff wears out sooner....I guess it all depends on who builds it.  

Like in that documentary "Who killed the electric car?"  there is lots of money to be made in fixing and maintaining gasoline powered vehicles....

So, with my tin foil hat firmly in place....it is not too much of a stretch in my imagination that the car manufacturers have intentionally designed in the  notion of planned obsoleescence.

They only want to make a car so good, but not so good that you will NOT every buy another one from them.

slight thread drift ahead...  way back when I used to work at the Wick's Pipe Organ company.  They build pipe organs for churches/cathedrals.  Way back when, Great Grandpa Wicks came up with the idea of using magnetic solenoids to open and close the valves that let the air into the pipes, which in turn, produced that pipe organ sound.  There were two advantages to this system versus all other pipe organ makers:  1.  the console the organ player sat at could be several yards away from the actual pipes.  2.  there were no mechanical linkages between the console and the pipes that could wear out.

One day while Grandpa Wicks was giving a tour to some church group...probably in an effort to sell that church a pipe organ...one of tourists asked about the longevity of the Wicks system.  His reply was something along the lines of "Thomas Edison's house now turned museum still has light bulbs burning from one hundred years ago.  G.E. and Phillips can't make any money selling you incandescent light bulbs if they don't burn out."

getting back more on topic....

Again, with my tin foil hat still firmly attached, I am not so sure that I can now buy into that notion, at least as not as much as I used to that we have to be dependent on the A-rabs for oil.  Said another way...I am beginning to think that we have been mis-informed or fed propaganda that we need to have our military in the middle east because of oil.

here is just one recent article about finding oil here in the States:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100224/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tribal_oil

Here in Illinois, we have a huge refinery complex in Wood River.  Conoco-Phillips/British Petroleum are kinda in a partnership to expand that facility because they are going to take oil sand in Canada, get the sand out of the oil, then pipe line it all south.  At some point in say like Nebraska or Kansas, that pipeline will branch off.  One leg going to the east to Wood River.

And if I recall correctly, the other leg of the pipeline will continue south to Texas to another refinery down there.

Oh, yeah, the pipeline has to be made out of stainless (which they are importing from India...   ) ...so if you know anybody who can weld stainless and they are looking for a job...there ya go...

[billt]

I am not so sure your idea that green stuff wears out sooner....I guess it all depends on who builds it.

It's not that it wears out "sooner", but it wears out before you can recoup the savings, because the technology is still much too expensive to realize any cost savings. We have 300+ days per year of sunshine here in Arizona. I looked into solar. If I covered my patio roof with solar panels, and went to a solar hot water heating system, I was looking at a minimum of $14,000.00 for the cheapest system. Even with tax incentives it didn't make financial sense. Especially when you factor in one good hail storm and no more solar panels, and homeowners insurance is smart enough not to cover it any more than if you have a pit bull and it bites the mail man. Either way, you're on your own. Babies being born today will see all of this stuff. We won't. NASA had fuel cells on the Apollo Moon Missions. It will be 30 more years before you see them in cars that cost less than 6 digits. If I had to buy a new car today I'd get a Jetta Turbo Diesel. 40 MPG city. I can live with that, and buy more guns with the savings.  Bill T.

[Timothy]

Here in the US, we use water...and again IIRC, we also use boron rods to control the reaction...I guess until the water and the rest of the cooling system is up to speed.

Close enough....I was gonna make a long diatribe but this says it better.  And yes, PWR and BWR reactors use boron and control rods to modulate the fission process.  Nuclear Fuel Services (my old employer) reprocesses fuel for the Navy PWR reactors.  One of our success stories in the industry.

Pressurized water reactors, like thermal reactor designs, require the fast fission neutrons to be slowed down (a process called moderation or thermalization) in order to interact with the nuclear fuel and sustain the chain reaction. In PWRs the coolant water is used as a moderator by letting the neutrons undergo multiple collisions with light hydrogen atoms in the water, losing speed in the process. This "moderating" of neutrons will happen more often when the water is denser (more collisions will occur). The use of water as a moderator is an important safety feature of PWRs, as any increase in temperature causes the water to expand and become less dense; thereby reducing the extent to which neutrons are slowed down and hence reducing the reactivity in the reactor. Therefore, if reactivity increases beyond normal, the reduced moderation of neutrons will cause the chain reaction to slow down, producing less heat. This property, known as the negative temperature coefficient of reactivity, makes PWR reactors very stable.

In contrast, the RBMK reactor design used at Chernobyl, which uses graphite instead of water as the moderator and uses boiling water as the coolant, has a large positive thermal coefficient of reactivity, that increases heat generation when coolant water temperatures increase. This makes the RBMK design less stable than pressurized water reactors. In addition to its property of slowing down neutrons when serving as a moderator, water also has a property of absorbing neutrons, albeit to a lesser degree. When the coolant water temperature increases, the boiling increases, which creates voids. Thus there is less water to absorb thermal neutrons that have already been slowed down by the graphite moderator, causing an increase in reactivity. This property is called the void coefficient of reactivity, and in an RBMK reactor like Chernobyl, the void coefficient is positive, and fairly large, causing rapid transients. This design characteristic of the RBMK reactor is generally seen as one of several causes of the Chernobyl accident

[pequin06]

Electric cars have been around in some form or another for over 100 years.
They just don't work as well and can't seem to get over the hurdles that have always been holding them back.

[billt]

In spite of our reactor "Knowledge" over the Soviet Russians, (Or whatever you want to call them now), we still managed to damn near melt down Three Mile Island. I live 30 miles from the Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant. The largest in the country. I'm not worried about Al Qaeda, just the guys who work there.  Bill T.