RE: Driven: Tesla Roadster

[skwdenyer]

Dagnut said:

kambites said:

Dagnut said:

There is already better solution in place with the hydrogen fuel cells so not real point in debating the merits of he Tesla, its not really a technological advancement to stick a load of laptop batteries in car, lets be honest about it. Bit of a cheek using his name considering the genius of the man.

Except:

1) Hydrogen is significantly less efficient as an energy storage and distribution medium than batteries and the national grid.

2) You need significant quantities of platinum which is environmentally expensive to mine and there simply isn't enough of it for all of the world's transport need.

3) No-one has really managed to make a viable fuel cell powered car anyway.

And probably some more that I've forgotten.

1) Your forgetting where the national grid gets the power from, yes producing hydrogen now is in-efficient but it has only just begun.

2)Platinum is already being replaced,
http://www.hydrogen-motors.com/hydrogen/2009/10/da...

3) It's early stages again, your missing the point I was making but, my point is the only thing that Tesla have done is slapped a pile of laptop batteries together, they haven't done any significant development of the auto mobile, I don't see them as deserving of the praise they are getting.
I no I didn't watch James May and think "wow" that's amazing I have been following the FCX for a while..I think if the production of hydrogen can become a simpler and safer processes, its the way forward for the greenies(I personally don't subscribe to the theories of oil running out or see cars as a contributor to global warming)..just a humble opinion mind you..

TBH, you might as well use Hydrogen in an ICE range-extender; running under constant-revs and constant-load conditions can massively increase the "30%" efficiency.

However, if you do that, Hydrogen is still a non-starter. There's far more Hydrogen in a litre of Methanol than there is in a litre of (as compressed as you can possibly get) Hydrogen. The compression costs money (for which read efficiency), and the infrastructure needs to be all-new. In reality it makes no sense at all.

Methanol can be stored, transported and pumped using equipment of the same basic pattern as we already have (even if there need to be some detail changes to materials). It can progressively replace fossil fuels over a relatively short period of time in existing IC engines, whilst providing an excellent fuel for ICE range-extenders.

I simply don't understand what the obsession with spending enormous amounts of money on trying to optimise production of a fuel which is pointless. Can anybody help me here?

[JonnyVTEC]

Because it keeps the oil companies in business, same reason Chevron have that large format NiMH battery patent. Lithium has allowed electric cars finally, rather than 10 years ago.

[XitUp]

Anubis said:

> The CEO of Aston Martin is also 100% correct. Electric cars are NOT the future - hydrogen based one's will replace fossil fuel based vehicles. This is where the real vehicle technology is being developed today.

Wrong.

A Scotsman said:

There will inevitably be some electric cars but any massive increase in numbers means generating a lot more electricity.... It's got to come from somewhere so do you want nuclear, gas, coal or renewables such as offshore wind, tidal or wave?

The answer in case you're struggling is coal...... Burn coal and you create lots of CO2 which when you pass it through reactors containing certain algae the algae consumes the CO2 and converts it to an oil and a protein. Dependent on the algae and how u process it you can produce a choice of biofuels including a diesel, an ethanol, butanol and even hydrogen.

The protein can be added to fish or animal feed..

1. Most electric cars would be plugged in at night when most power stations are operating at no where near peak output so we wouldn't need to build many more.
2. Nuclear not coal please.
3. Algae fuels/foods will be very big in the future.

Johnnypoo said:

i love this car & its a great piece of engineering, but watching the Top Gear review showed just how unreliable the car was......shame

Really? You're taking Top Gear as authentic investigative journalism and not scripted light entertainment?

[robsti]

XitUp said:

Anubis said:

> The CEO of Aston Martin is also 100% correct. Electric cars are NOT the future - hydrogen based one's will replace fossil fuel based vehicles. This is where the real vehicle technology is being developed today.

Wrong.

A Scotsman said:

There will inevitably be some electric cars but any massive increase in numbers means generating a lot more electricity.... It's got to come from somewhere so do you want nuclear, gas, coal or renewables such as offshore wind, tidal or wave?

The answer in case you're struggling is coal...... Burn coal and you create lots of CO2 which when you pass it through reactors containing certain algae the algae consumes the CO2 and converts it to an oil and a protein. Dependent on the algae and how u process it you can produce a choice of biofuels including a diesel, an ethanol, butanol and even hydrogen.

The protein can be added to fish or animal feed..

1. Most electric cars would be plugged in at night when most power stations are operating at no where near peak output so we wouldn't need to build many more.
2. Nuclear not coal please.
3. Algae fuels/foods will be very big in the future.

Johnnypoo said:

i love this car & its a great piece of engineering, but watching the Top Gear review showed just how unreliable the car was......shame

Really? You're taking Top Gear as authentic investigative journalism and not scripted light entertainment?

If every household in the land charged up a car everynight then dont you think there would be a problem?

[Dagnut]

skwdenyer said:

Dagnut said:

kambites said:

Dagnut said:

There is already better solution in place with the hydrogen fuel cells so not real point in debating the merits of he Tesla, its not really a technological advancement to stick a load of laptop batteries in car, lets be honest about it. Bit of a cheek using his name considering the genius of the man.

Except:

1) Hydrogen is significantly less efficient as an energy storage and distribution medium than batteries and the national grid.

2) You need significant quantities of platinum which is environmentally expensive to mine and there simply isn't enough of it for all of the world's transport need.

3) No-one has really managed to make a viable fuel cell powered car anyway.

And probably some more that I've forgotten.

1) Your forgetting where the national grid gets the power from, yes producing hydrogen now is in-efficient but it has only just begun.

2)Platinum is already being replaced,
http://www.hydrogen-motors.com/hydrogen/2009/10/da...

3) It's early stages again, your missing the point I was making but, my point is the only thing that Tesla have done is slapped a pile of laptop batteries together, they haven't done any significant development of the auto mobile, I don't see them as deserving of the praise they are getting.
I no I didn't watch James May and think "wow" that's amazing I have been following the FCX for a while..I think if the production of hydrogen can become a simpler and safer processes, its the way forward for the greenies(I personally don't subscribe to the theories of oil running out or see cars as a contributor to global warming)..just a humble opinion mind you..

TBH, you might as well use Hydrogen in an ICE range-extender; running under constant-revs and constant-load conditions can massively increase the "30%" efficiency.

However, if you do that, Hydrogen is still a non-starter. There's far more Hydrogen in a litre of Methanol than there is in a litre of (as compressed as you can possibly get) Hydrogen. The compression costs money (for which read efficiency), and the infrastructure needs to be all-new. In reality it makes no sense at all.

Methanol can be stored, transported and pumped using equipment of the same basic pattern as we already have (even if there need to be some detail changes to materials). It can progressively replace fossil fuels over a relatively short period of time in existing IC engines, whilst providing an excellent fuel for ICE range-extenders.

I simply don't understand what the obsession with spending enormous amounts of money on trying to optimise production of a fuel which is pointless. Can anybody help me here?

However much you think it's a non starter, in case you haven't noticed it has started. The technology will advance with demand.
does methanol not produce emissions when it burns?
People are missing the biggest draw back of battery powered cars...the charge time..what if I want to go from southampton to glasgow in one day?

Edited by Dagnut on Monday 23 November 00:51

[RCHRGBL]

robsti said:

If every household in the land charged up a car everynight then dont you think there would be a problem?

Not as much as you think. I drive my Tesla Roadster about 12,000 miles per year, which works out to roughly 4000kWH / year, 320kWH / month, 11kWH / day, or 450 watts continuous. This is about half as much power as a typical household uses on a continuous basis. In my case I offset the entire thing with solar panels that generate 8500kWH/year for my house and car, but even if few people do that, there's plenty of off-peak capacity to absorb the additional demand.

As I write, the state of California is drawing about 28 gigawatts. http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html With roughly 12 million households in CA, each with one electric car, this would add an average of 5.4 gigawatts to this demand. Concentrated in the off-peak hours, with a bit of "smart-grid" technology to prevent overshoots, the system could easily handle an increase of this magnitude. Look how much spare capacity there is between the red and green lines in the graph.

Edited by RCHRGBL on Monday 23 November 02:04

[XJSJohn]

As a lot of others are saying, it is a rather impressive stab at a "first generation EV sports car". And as a first generation it is not so expensive, look at what the first Home PC's cost, the first mobile phones compaired to now when they are mainstream products.

Give this a few years and as battery technology improves, underlying infrastructure for recharging comes in, and more people start buying there will be more variations and at better consumer costs just because of volumes.

As mantioned though there are 2 green catch 22's with EV's

1 - The power still has to come from somewhere, and if we start getting even 10% ev's on the road in the next 10 years this will start to affect the grid.

2 - the manufacture / disposal of batteries is rather brutal on the environment too.

However i am sure that there are minds greater than mine already working on these issues.

The plus side of these is that you have your "eco friendly" (eventually) EV for daily use and you can still have your (by then) classis Petrol driven car for high days and holidays!

[RCHRGBL]

XJSJohn said:

As mantioned though there are 2 green catch 22's with EV's

1 - The power still has to come from somewhere, and if we start getting even 10% ev's on the road in the next 10 years this will start to affect the grid.

2 - the manufacture / disposal of batteries is rather brutal on the environment too.

1- The power will come from spare capacity in off-peak hours, with minimal impact on the grid, even with millions of electric cars. See my post just above yours.

2- Not really. Lithium batteries are NOT classified by the US as hazardous waste. Further, they are recyclable with high efficiency. http://www.toxco.com/processes.html. And even though their capacity diminishes over time, Tesla's li-ion battery packs have a long useful life as a backup power supply even after they are swapped out of the car. As battery technology improves, the lifetimes will increase, and the impact on the environment will further diminish.

Also, from a Time Magazine article: "Another concern is the environmental impact; but lithium mining, as observed in countries with deposits like Chile, Argentina and China, seems to be less hazardous than other kinds of mineral extraction."

[XJSJohn]

Your breakdown of the figures make for interesting and good reading, ok so the grid has the ability to handle the load, but looking forward with older coal fired power stations due to be decom is the future power management being scaled to handle such extra loads (again, if i have thought of this i am sure that there is a quango out there that is also researching so should not be a problem)

Regarding the battery damage, i have spend quite a bit of time over the years working across the mining industry for the largest players out there and have seen the actual damage that the extraction and processing / refining of some of these products do. Currently the processes are fairly small scale (compaired to oil refining / extracting) but the impacts and risks when you start upscaling these things are also a concern

I am not knocking these EV's in any way more highlighting that these are first generation vehicles and there is a lot more background work that has to be done from manufacture to the infrastructure, and as this is ongoing so will the range, usability, variety and infrastructure for them grow, thereby making them the obvious main form of transport!

Hats off to you for running one though, how is the 12kpa usage compairing to the equiv cost in a similar Petrol vehicle? i.e. when do you think you will get to your break eaven point against the petrol?

got any pictures of it?

[XitUp]

Dagnut said:

However much you think it's a non starter, in case you haven't noticed it has started. The technology will advance with demand.
does methanol not produce emissions when it burns?
People are missing the biggest draw back of battery powered cars...the charge time..what if I want to go from southampton to glasgow in one day?

Edited by Dagnut on Monday 23 November 00:51

Hydrogen won't work. Physics says so.

If you need to get from Southampton to Glasgow in one day you would use a car with a range extender, which I reckon the next gen of electric cars will nearly all have.

[The Wookie]

Dagnut said:

However much you think it's a non starter, in case you haven't noticed it has started. The technology will advance with demand.
does methanol not produce emissions when it burns?
People are missing the biggest draw back of battery powered cars...the charge time..what if I want to go from southampton to glasgow in one day?

Methanol is a closed loop cycle, you produce it from Captured CO2 at a far greater efficiency than electrolysis of water.

Charge time is only a limitation of certain types of battery, as I've said before there are batteries in development, and already in production, that can take the charge as quickly as you can put it in. Contrary to popular belief, THAT is going to be the limiting factor with EV's rather than they physical capability of the batteries.

Think about it, a Tesla can take full load from a 3-phase supply to charge it, which is the most amount of power you can deliver outside a heavy industrial facility.

Who knows how it will progress... could even be micro nuclear plants that supply local areas with electricity and have direct charge points to fill your electric car up in a few minutes

[kambites]

Dagnut said:

People are missing the biggest draw back of battery powered cars...the charge time..what if I want to go from southampton to glasgow in one day?

But how many cars do you have in your household and how often do you take them all on trips of that length in one day?

Obviously battery/electric cars can't replace all ICE cars but the majority of cars probably never have to travel more than a couple of hundred miles in a day and rarely travel more than about 50.



Anyway hydrogen is largely just another way of transporting electricity so it still leaves us with the problem of how we generate enough electricity for all of the cars.

Edited by kambites on Monday 23 November 08:57

[Dagnut]

XitUp said:

Dagnut said:

However much you think it's a non starter, in case you haven't noticed it has started. The technology will advance with demand.
does methanol not produce emissions when it burns?
People are missing the biggest draw back of battery powered cars...the charge time..what if I want to go from southampton to glasgow in one day?

Edited by Dagnut on Monday 23 November 00:51

Hydrogen won't work. Physics says so.

If you need to get from Southampton to Glasgow in one day you would use a car with a range extender, which I reckon the next gen of electric cars will nearly all have.

Hydrogen won't work? You should of mentioned that to the state of California, GM and Honda before they sunk 100's of millions of dollars into developing the cars...those idiots at Honda what are they like!...thats just irresponsible of you..If you have that kind of expertise in the field, do you not feel it is your duty to share it with the world?

[kambites]

What he meant, was Hydrogen doesn't provide any added value to the chain. It's just a (rather inefficient) energy storage medium.

[The Wookie]

Dagnut said:

Hydrogen won't work? You should of mentioned that to the state of California, GM and Honda before they sunk 100's of millions of dollars into developing the cars...those idiots at Honda what are they like!...thats just irresponsible of you..If you have that kind of expertise in the field, do you not feel it is your duty to share it with the world?

I've been heavily involved in development of a Fuel Cell vehicle, it needs some serious, serious advances before it's even remotely practical. At the moment I can't see it making up the ground it's lost to battery tech recently. Funding is generally being withdrawn at the moment.

It gets millions of dollars because on the face of it, it's green and thus fashionable.

Edited by The Wookie on Monday 23 November 10:23

[Dagnut]

I'm just glad I have people on forums to set me straight on these issues. Thanks Guys!

[The Wookie]

[eldar]

The Wookie said:

Dagnut said:

Hydrogen won't work? You should of mentioned that to the state of California, GM and Honda before they sunk 100's of millions of dollars into developing the cars...those idiots at Honda what are they like!...thats just irresponsible of you..If you have that kind of expertise in the field, do you not feel it is your duty to share it with the world?

I've been heavily involved in development of a Fuel Cell vehicle, it needs some serious, serious advances before it's even remotely practical. At the moment I can't see it making up the ground it's lost to battery tech recently. Funding is generally being withdrawn at the moment.

It gets millions of dollars because on the face of it, it's green and thus fashionable.

Edited by The Wookie on Monday 23 November 10:23

Hydrogen is just another form of battery. It requires lots of energy to produce the hydrogen, probably more than electric cars, as its more lossy.

You can, of course make petrol and diesel from coal, we do have huge reserves of coal. Becomes economic with oil at around $80 to $100 per barrel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel

[XitUp]

Dagnut said:

XitUp said:

Dagnut said:

However much you think it's a non starter, in case you haven't noticed it has started. The technology will advance with demand.
does methanol not produce emissions when it burns?
People are missing the biggest draw back of battery powered cars...the charge time..what if I want to go from southampton to glasgow in one day?

Edited by Dagnut on Monday 23 November 00:51

Hydrogen won't work. Physics says so.

If you need to get from Southampton to Glasgow in one day you would use a car with a range extender, which I reckon the next gen of electric cars will nearly all have.

Hydrogen won't work? You should of mentioned that to the state of California, GM and Honda before they sunk 100's of millions of tax payersdollars into developing the cars...those idiots at Honda what are they like!...thats just irresponsible of you..If you have that kind of expertise in the field, do you not feel it is your duty to share it with the world?

EFA

[Dagnut]

XitUp said:

Dagnut said:

XitUp said:

Dagnut said:

However much you think it's a non starter, in case you haven't noticed it has started. The technology will advance with demand.
does methanol not produce emissions when it burns?
People are missing the biggest draw back of battery powered cars...the charge time..what if I want to go from southampton to glasgow in one day?

Edited by Dagnut on Monday 23 November 00:51

Hydrogen won't work. Physics says so.

If you need to get from Southampton to Glasgow in one day you would use a car with a range extender, which I reckon the next gen of electric cars will nearly all have.

Hydrogen won't work? You should of mentioned that to the state of California, GM and Honda before they sunk 100's of millions of tax payersdollars into developing the cars...those idiots at Honda what are they like!...thats just irresponsible of you..If you have that kind of expertise in the field, do you not feel it is your duty to share it with the world?

EFA

The Japanese government gave Honda money to develop the FCX? I got owned there.