RE: Tesla: Charging Anxiety Is 'For The Weak'

[kambites]

But hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy transport medium (unless you know of a major source of natural hydrogen gas that the rest of the world is ignorant of).

[Daniel1]

kambites said:

But hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy transport medium (unless you know of a major source of natural hydrogen gas that the rest of the world is ignorant of).

what do you mean? It is in the burning of all transport mediums such as coal oil and gas that you receive the energy source from. Natural Gas doesnt just give you energy by sitting in its bottle. So i guess i dont understand what youre getting at.

[kambites]

Daniel1 said:

kambites said:

But hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy transport medium (unless you know of a major source of natural hydrogen gas that the rest of the world is ignorant of).

what do you mean? It is in the burning of all transport mediums such as coal oil and gas that you receive the energy source from. Natural Gas doesnt just give you energy by sitting in its bottle. So i guess i dont understand what youre getting at.

We dig natural gas, oil, coal etc. out of the ground. Until it runs out, it is essentially a "free" energy source. Where do you get your hydrogen from?

Edited by kambites on Monday 11th January 20:47

[XitUp]

Daniel1 said:

Could you be any more patronising because im not too good with subtlety?

It looks like I probably should.

Hydrogen is not an energy source. It's an energy carrier, and a very poor one at that.

[Daniel1]

XitUp said:

Daniel1 said:

Could you be any more patronising because im not too good with subtlety?

It looks like I probably should.

Hydrogen is not an energy source. It's an energy carrier, and a very poor one at that.

But everything is an energy carrier untill you do something with it, such as burn it. And hydrogen Fusion is an extremely productive energy source, unless Einstien was incorrect. The second most efficient in the (known)universe if im correct?

I'm not afraid to admit im wrong or to learn anything new, but im not receiving any counter argument except keyboard warriors with short uninformative replies.

ETA

Kambites

The only way i know of obtaining is hydrogen is by splitting water, using as i think you said, a lot of energy. When fusion is obtained, say in a hundred years (or as in one Horizon program, top physicist believe to be as little as 35 years given appropiate funding) then you have the energy source availble to do the 'splitting'. There is plenty of commentary on this throughout the internet.

Edited by Daniel1 on Monday 11th January 20:58

[kambites]

I thought you were talking about fuel cells, not nuclear reactors?

[ewenm]

kambites said:

I thought you were talking about fuel cells, not nuclear reactors?

Once we crack fusion power then electric cars will be properly viable (and they won't be hydrogen based), but as you say, posts above were about fuel cells.

[Daniel1]

kambites said:

I thought you were talking about fuel cells, not nuclear reactors?

im talking about both, it requires a lot of energy to seperate the hydrogen out, which can be obtained from fusion reactors. Sort of self-sustaining.



All in all i still dont think battery cells are the way forward for cars

[pacman1]

Before I consider an electric vehicle, I want to see electric buses or trams first, not 15 year old chuggabooms that clog up cities with few passengers on board.

[JonnyVTEC]

Ford Focus Fuel Cell vehicle.

240KWh is needed to make 4kg of H2.

Which then gives the same range as a 38KWh battery in a EV Prius.

Thats a BIG difference.

I like the look of the ZEBRA Nickel Sodium batterys, heated so you have acess to instant heat and ambients make little difference to the range and performance. 100% coloumbic efficiency, to recylcle you thrown into a stainless steel furnace, the nickel is added to the steel and the sodium and other slag can be used to make roads. Production figures for the 21KWh battery (weighing 182Kg) (as fitted to the A class EV and some others) at 30k units a year is around £3000. CARB and the end of the EV mandate prevented that number of batteries being made yet so there around £13k.

Then Mercedes tried to put an ICE in the A class and it fell over.

So instead you will find those batteries in most of the NATO Submarines.

Edited by JonnyVTEC on Monday 11th January 22:23

[JonnyVTEC]

Daniel1 said:

kambites said:

But hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy transport medium (unless you know of a major source of natural hydrogen gas that the rest of the world is ignorant of).

what do you mean? It is in the burning of all transport mediums such as coal oil and gas that you receive the energy source from. Natural Gas doesnt just give you energy by sitting in its bottle. So i guess i dont understand what youre getting at.

Considering we didnt have to spend millions of years applying force and temperature to make the gas and coal and oil. We can pretty much consider it as a fuel. Unlike Hydrogen gas.

Worth noting whilst were doing ABC's is that a hydrogen fuel cell car is an electric car... with a battery.... just a really expensive fuel cell and complicated cryogenic storage unit.

Edited by JonnyVTEC on Monday 11th January 22:22

[ewenm]

pacman1 said:

Before I consider an electric vehicle, I want to see electric buses or trams first, not 15 year old chuggabooms that clog up cities with few passengers on board.

I have wondered why Bath's council haven't mandated that any new buses run by the 3 local companies aren't electric. With regenerative braking they could easily recharge down the big hills here. The council do claim to be environmentally focused...

[ctallchris]

Daniel1 said:

kambites said:

But hydrogen isn't an energy source, it's an energy transport medium (unless you know of a major source of natural hydrogen gas that the rest of the world is ignorant of).

what do you mean? It is in the burning of all transport mediums such as coal oil and gas that you receive the energy source from. Natural Gas doesnt just give you energy by sitting in its bottle. So i guess i dont understand what youre getting at.

basically To get hydrogen you either extract if from natural gas... where you put in 100Watts of electricity to get 80 Watts worth of hydrogen out. This then gets converted into electricity through an outrageously expensive Proton Exchange membrane where the current efficiency to aim for is 50%so you put in 100 watts and you get 40 Watts of drive from it.

Of course natural gas is in short supply and is expensive so you will undoubtedly end up seperating water which is the next best source only difference here is you only get 50 watts worth of hydrogen out for every 100 watts you put in so at the wheels you end up with 25 Watts of energy.

in a battery the battery takes in energy at about 98watts for every 100 watts you put in and you get about 75-85 watts to the wheels.

At the moment the FCX clarity is a prototype and the cost an absolute fortune think of honda loosing 200-300,000 per car.tesla make a profit on their car and it's a damn site higher performance.

[XitUp]

I'm gonna say sorry for being a bit rude. It's just that this argument crops up so often and it annoys me when people actually think the Top Gear presenters know what they're talking about.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars ARE electric cars.

[jazzyjeff]

Daniel1 said:

jazzyjeff said:

Marf said:

snotrag][cynic said:

I'd be interested to see some calculations based on the charging current as seen, the total charging time, total kWh used during the trip. Also the cost in terms of kWh used and then the relevant C02/emissions/"Carbon hoofprint" calculations based on those figures.

[/cynic]

ETA - I'm actually not one of the people completely against electric cars, nor am I one who flatly refuses to listen to anything regarding MMGW etc. I dont necceasarily believe it, but i'm happy to hear to both sides of the coin.

Happy to be corrected(my understanding of the mathmatics is probably quite simplistic) but from doing some googling I've found the following

http://enochthered.wordpress.com/category/electric...

"The battery in the Tesla takes 3.5 hours to charge from zero charge, and stores 53 kWh of energy. Efficiency of the charging electronics is 86%, so 62 kWh of electricity is needed for a single charge."

"In February 2008, Tesla Motors reported that, after testing a Validation Prototype of the Tesla Roadster at an EPA-certified location, that those tests yielded a range of 220 miles (354 km) and a plug-to-wheel efficiency of 199 Wh/km"

http://www.swivel.com/workbooks/18161-Carbon-effic...

According to this producing 1kWh of electricity emits 0.346kg of CO2 if generated from coal.

So 62kwh x 0.346Kg CO2 = 21.452Kg CO2 per 220miles.

According to this, my MR2 Turbo would put out 5.51tonnes of CO2 doing 10,000 miles a year averaging 26mpg

http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

So the Tesla over the same mileage would put out 975kg of CO2.

Surprised it was that much lower to be honest.

Interesting calculations.

I presume those for your MR2 included the CO2 impact not just at the exhaust, but of all the stages in getting the petrol into your car, i.e.

- the power used to extract and refine the oil into petrol;
- the tankers, trains and lorries used to transport the petrol to the forecourt;
- the power used in pumping the petrol from the forecourt tank up to the filler neck?



JJ

yeah but how far do you want to go with this? Mining the raw materials for both cars, all of the production of the cars, the coal (+infrastructure) and the petrol (+infrastructure)

That sounds like a government job with billions to spend to figure that out.

That may be the case.

All I was suggesting is that any attempt at a comparison is meaningless unless one is able to determine like-for-like energy consumption and pollution

I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to undertake such an exercise pitting a Tesla against an Elise - very similar cars bar the battery gubbins...

JJ